Drew Smith - Arcade

“Like what? It took me months to get this job.”

“Looking for a job is easy. Especially if you already have one. You just have to get used to people turning you down a lot. Then something always works out unexpectedly.”

“God, I feel like I get rejected all the time as it is.”

“Oh, please,” Malcolm said.

But it was true. The longer I went to the arcade, the more it felt like a study in rejection. It certainly wasn’t a place one went to forget one’s shortcomings.

“By the way, we’re set for Saturday night at seven o’clock,” Malcolm said. “I fly in on Wednesday, so we can email, but no phone calls. Saturday night. Don’t forget.”

“How are you managing it with Ronald?”

“He has a dinner and book club thing with some friends. He’ll be out late.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t. I’m worried it might be weird.”

“I think that because you are weird, it might be weird. But we’re still meeting.”

“I just hope you won’t get mad if I get sick or something.”

“Don’t even think about standing me up, Sam. Seriously.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I mean, I probably wouldn’t. I don’t think I would.”

I MET AN IRRESISTIBLE HEDGEHOG OF A MAN. IRRESISTIBLEbecause he found me so attractive. He carried himself as though everyone at the arcade wanted him, and I confess it did make me want him a little, even though every time I saw him, he was wearing a button-up shirt unbuttoned and untucked over an untucked white undershirt. It was exactly the style in which I dressed in the seventh grade. He came in while I was pretend-perusing DVDs, and looked at me and smiled, even as he was purchasing his tokens at the counter. He put the tokens in his pocket and walked directly over to me.

“Would you like to see a movie with me?” he said.

No shopping around. No seeing who else was there. I’d never had anyone ask me that way. I was accustomed to looks and head nods. I’d had guys brush against me, then give me sly grins. But no one had ever walked up to me and asked if I wanted to see a movie with him.

Alone in a booth together, I said, “I have to warn you, I don’t do very much out here.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

He undid my pants and I undid his. We reached in and touched one another. Then he began to lift my shirt. “I don’t want to take my shirt off,” I said.

“Please,” he said. “Do it for me. You’re so sexy.”

I let him take my shirt off and hang it on one of the clothes hooks.

“You smell like pot,” I said.

“I smoked on the way over,” he said. “I’ll smoke you out if you want.”

“That’s okay.”

Once my shirt was off, the hedgehog’s hands were all over me. I didn’t get the sense that he’d hurt me or do anything especially weird, but he was much stronger than I was, and he seemed to be blissing out into some kind of touch-induced trance amplified by the weed he’d smoked. He put one hand on my shoulder and rubbed my chest with the other.

I didn’t like having my shirt off because it meant I couldn’t leave in an instant. When I stopped his hand from making the rounds of my torso again, he knelt on the ground and tried putting my dick in his mouth.

“No,” I said. “Stop.”

“Come on, bud. I want to make you feel good. I want to make you feel so good.”

“I don’t do that out here.”

“That’s okay. You can trust me.”

He opened his mouth and put my dick inside.

Over his head, I grabbed my shirt and put it on. I pulled it over my head and was still putting my dick in my pants as I fled the booth. I went to the sales floor and pretended to look at DVDs. He walked out of the hallway and straight over to me.

“Would you please come back and watch a movie with me?” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“Why?”

“You’re too grabby and you don’t listen when I say no. I told you I don’t do much out here, and then you tried to force me. Forget it. I’m sure you can find someone else.”

“I’d never find someone else out here like you,” he said. “Because you’re what I like. You’re exactly what I like. All my boys have been like you.”

I don’t know why I went back with him. I must have liked the idea of being one of his boys, the newest one in line. I was probably flattered he thought of me as a boy at all, though he wasn’t more than ten years older than me. This time he was more courteous, though he was still passionate in a way that made me feel I had less control than I preferred.

“Sit on my lap and make out with me,” he said.

He pulled down his pants so they were around his ankles, then sat down and patted the tops of his thighs. “Take down your pants and sit on my lap.”

I did it. I don’t know why. I could feel his dick pressing against my thigh, and I let him kiss me. He was a fantastic kisser. We kissed for a long time stopping only to put tokens in the slot when the movie stopped.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

I thought it over then said, “Honestly, I’d only make one up.”

“Then make one up,” he said. “Next time I see you, I’ll remember it. You’ll see.”

And the next time I saw him, he did remember.

“Hey, Sam,” he said. “Would you like to come see a movie with me?”

He was stoned and too handsy again, and I found that I wanted more and less of him at the same time. He was still a terrific kisser.

“Let me bring you to my house,” he said. “I don’t live far from here.”

“That’s the last thing I’d do.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Well, you should,” he said. “I’m very trustworthy.”

“You look stoned.”

“I am stoned,” he said. “Come out to my truck, and we’ll get you stoned too.”

“I have stuff to do later,” I said.

“So do I. I’m going back to work here in just a little while.”

He looked at me and smiled and said, “You’re exactly what I like. Have I told you that? You’re just like all my boys. Every one I ever had.”

This time, I was less taken with the notion of being one of his boys. Maybe I was thinking about John Wayne Gacy, who had boys of his own that he eventually buried in the crawlspace beneath his house.

The hedgehog didn’t get off either time I saw him, but he made sure I did.

When he was getting dressed and pulling up his pants, I noticed a bottle of cough syrup protruding from the pocket of his jeans.

“Why do you have cough syrup in your pocket?”

He gave me a sideways grin. “I’ve had a little cough lately.”

“And you bring the cough syrup with you into the arcade?”

“You want a sip? Just say so. You can have some.”

Were I to list the highs I found most absurd and lowbrow, the one offered by cough syrup would be very near the top, in the vicinity of gasoline huffing and the canned air people use to clean their keyboards. I could understand a little pot smoking, but, hell, we already had the arcade. How many drugs could the hedgehog possibly need?

I wondered if his other boys drank cough syrup with him or if they preferred getting drunk on hand sanitizer, as I’d read was being done. I was sure it wouldn’t be hard to find someone like that, some boy so trashy and young he wouldn’t know that the hedgehog wasn’t any kind of salvation from anything.

The cop thought he was saving the kid, setting him on the right track. I could tell from their emails. It was all coming into focus now, how that’s what they all liked. The boys liked being set on the right track, and the men liked setting them on it. God knows I would have done anything to find someone who could tell me how to make a little sense of my life.