Drew Smith - Arcade

If you wanted someone to save you, I saw, it was a cinch finding someone willing to try. Same if you wanted to save someone else. It was an undiagnosed fetish, some kind of mutual need that drew people together and then locked them in place like shopping carts, so that life had to yank hard to separate them, even long after it should have been clear that no one was doing any saving.

Before we parted for the last time, the hedgehog said, “I could take such good care of you if you’d let me. All you need is someone to help you out a little. I like to help people when I can. And, honest to God, you’re just what I like. You’ve got exactly that thing that I like.”

I wanted to believe him. I surprised myself when he gave me his number and I actually saved it in my phone.

“You’ll call,” he said. “Maybe not tomorrow, but you will.”

I WANTED TO TAKE THEIR OCCASIONAL BICKERING AS Ahopeful sign, but it was growing obvious even to me that I probably wouldn’t be going on that cruise in the kid’s place.

I mentioned my despair about this to Jack, who had come to my house to take me to lunch. After all those months, I was still being treated as an emotional invalid. Though friends conspired to organize semi-regular meals to get me out of the house, I could see they were all growing tired of me.

“The cruise is just a couple of weeks away,” I told Jack. “If the staph infection is cleared up by then, they’ll be on a vacation together. They’ll be drinking and having sex. And then everything will be good between them again.”

“I can’t believe he tells you all this stuff,” Jack said. “It’s really sick in a way. It just keeps you so involved with everything.”

“He only tells me some things. I get a lot of it from his email. I told you that.”

“I thought you got into his email once early on. Or that it was a joke even.”

“No. You obviously have no idea how upset I am.”

“You’re reading it regularly?”

“Yes, Jack. Do you not listen to me at all?”

“Are you kidding? What the fuck, man?”

Jack sat there shaking his head and thinking about it.

“Oh, don’t be so judgmental,” I said. “It’s no tragedy. We’re talking about stupid little notes they send one another. I’m not stealing government secrets.”

“I honestly don’t think I can go on being your friend if you keep doing this.”

“You’re so extreme,” I said. “I can’t just stop now. I’ll never see how it ends.”

“It’s not ending. Obviously. And if it does end, it’s none of your fucking business. You can’t just rationalize doing anything you want.”

“It’s not that bad,” I said. “You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m not. I think there’s something seriously wrong with you.”

After that, we were quiet until Jack finally calmed down enough to take me to lunch. We both drank beer and ate sandwiches and didn’t talk about the cop and the kid again until he dropped me off.

“Think about what I said before,” he said, as I got out of the car.

I did think about it, but I logged in to the cop’s email when I got home. The kid had sent some information about an excursion he wanted to take during the cruise. A day of snorkeling. I followed the link to a website that showed pictures of that incredibly blue water and bright-colored fish and turtles and smiling people wearing those stupid masks.

I could see the cop and the kid there, mentally superimposed in the photographs. Like the ones I’d have to log in and see for myself a month hence. The frustration welled up in me until it was all I could feel. I read the email one more time, then deleted it. Then I deleted it from the trash and logged out.

SOMETIMES IT FELT LIKE EVERY MAN AT THE ARCADEwanted something from me. They wanted me not to be there competing for the same people. Or they wanted me to come into a booth with them. Or not to come into a booth with them. To leave them alone. To stick around as an alternate in case something didn’t work out with the other guy they were trying to cruise, or were hoping would arrive. They wanted me with my shirt off, with my shoes off. To look them in the eye, or not to. They wanted me in a suit, or a pair of running shorts, or Levi’s. They wanted me with long hair that fell over one eye like a skateboarder from the early 1990s, or they wanted my hair buzzed like a military man. They wanted to see the way my hard dick pushed against my jeans. They wanted me in boxers or briefs or boxer briefs. Or they wanted me not to wear underwear under my jeans. They wanted me to be ten years younger or older. Ten pounds lighter or fatter. They wanted me to be a way I wasn’t. To stand with my hip cocked or to subtly roll my r’s. They wanted more from me than they realized they wanted.

If I paid attention, I could see how much they wanted because I could see when I’d gotten off track. My eye became attuned to their nearly imperceptible micro expressions, the slight narrowing of their eyes, the withdrawing of the corners of their mouths.

They wanted me to do more than I wanted to do. They wanted to persuade me, to cajole me. They wanted me not to want to do anything other than what they wanted from me. Or they wanted me to resist and then concede. Or they wanted to be submissive and for me to dominate them.

They wanted to see me come, even when they weren’t going to come themselves. Because if they got off, it would be over. If they came, they had to go home. Or, they’d tell me, it was because they just loved to give pleasure. Like those men who are always bragging to anyone who’ll listen that they love to go down on women, that they get off on getting her off.

If they didn’t want me to come, they wanted me to make them come. And they wanted it in a very particular way. They wanted me to suck them this way or to fuck them slow or hard or at alternate speeds. They wanted the door unlocked so someone else could come in. Because they wanted me to suck another guy while we fucked.

They wanted me to squeeze their nipples.

Harder. Not that hard.

That felt good. What did you just do? Do it again.

They wanted me to precome.

Do you precome a lot? When you’re really excited? Oh, yeah, I bet you really leak.

They wanted me to come.

Do you come a lot?

No one asked if I came just a little. They wanted a gusher. They wanted me to come like I meant it. And they even knew where they wanted it. They wanted me to come on their faces, their chests, their beards. Come in their hands. Come in their mouths.

It was a lot to want from someone who had just walked in the door. Maybe they wanted me to be like someone they were with once, or someone they wanted but could never have, a fantasy to which they’d jerked off a million times.

Of course I wanted things from them too. Once I saw that, I had to think about the whole list and why I wanted those things, all while trying to stay hard and have something resembling a good time.

I WAS SUPPOSED TO MEET MALCOLM AT THE BAR OF THEOld San Francisco Steakhouse, a place famous for a swing dangling from its thirty-foot ceiling where an attractive girl performed at intervals, swinging until she made it high enough to ring a bell hanging from a roof beam. It had also earned some renown for providing each table with an enormous block of Swiss cheese upon being seated. Malcolm and I had spoken about the place on the phone one night. I told him I had read it was closing down. We agreed that it was a kitsch institution, although I’d never been there, and he had only been once years earlier for a business lunch, when the swinging girl had been out with the flu. It seemed like a perfect place to meet, where it was a given that neither of us would run into anyone we knew. And it seemed nice to go right before it closed forever.