Caught in the Loop - Chapter 1 (draft)

It’s lunch. On a good day, I have forty-five minutes, no more, and I get it at a moment’s notice from the big Boss Man, Mr. Peters.  There’s always something that needs extra hands at the warehouse, so you take what you can when you can, is what he says. Sometimes, I only have thirty minutes, and every once in a while, I have zero minutes and I’m starving by the end of the day. Today, I have a full forty-five minutes as long as I get out of the building before he thinks for something else. I have my sandwich in wax paper. I have my bag of chips in a twist tie bag, and I have my can of Dr Pepper. The lunch bag, which I recycle until it falls apart, fell apart today, so they’re all loose.  I find a vegetable bag that someone left behind in one of the cabinets, so I stick all of them into that.  Looks like a homeless guy’s lunch, but it all chews the same.

When the weather is good, I’ll go over and sit maybe at the Water Gardens, or I’ll go up over by the courthouse.  Burnett Park is about as far away, but there’s always so many streets to cross that it takes damn near forever, so if I want trees, my only good option is the Water Gardens. It’s okay, though.  Most of the time, I’ll go sit at the edge of the big pool, the one they show in Logan’s Run. They shot it last year here, and a bunch of friends and I came to watch in the middle of the night.  I don’t remember what that pool is called, but I like having all that rushing water in front of me.  Sometimes I can get mesmerized, though, and I feel like I’m about to get sucked into the waters, tumbling down the steps to a very wet and sore death.  When that happens, I’ll move over to the plaza or go sit on the edge of the quiet pool.

Wherever I end up sitting, which is usually something I don’t figure out until I’m down the sidewalk a ways, the bottom line is that I get some fresh air and a little time away from Mr. Peters, and then I go back and I can get through the bullshit day, y’know?

I put my windbreaker on – it’s only October, but we just got a front come in overnight and it’s sixty degrees with a light drizzle.  That’s all we’re supposed to get today – drizzle, so I'm not too concerned. I stuff my lunch into my jacket pockets and head out.

I hit the back door and automatically check my pockets for my keys.  Doing so, I fish three bills out of my pocket.  I have two fives and a twenty, but I don’t see how.  Did I get too much in change somewhere? Usually, this time in the month, I only have ten dollars in my allowance pocket, and then I remember.  Mary Ellen and I were planning on going out to the movies night before last to see “Oh, God!” which just came out, but she ended up starting her time of the month that morning and didn’t feel like going out.  That explains why I have fifteen dollars more than I was expecting.

So, I’m walking out, and I’m going to the Water Gardens, and then, two blocks down, it starts to rain. Not heavy, but if I walked a mile, I’d be soaked. I’m right next to the Greyhound station, and I actually think about going in there.  I can sit on one of the benches and just eat my sandwich in peace.  I see like three homeless guys wander in, though, and I figure, it’s middle of the day. Place will be full.  Chances are, I’ll be stuck next to these guys and they’re gonna smell like wet dog.  That would be the best scenario. Worst would be they’d smell like dead dog.  Yeah, that always goes good with bologna and American cheese. Not for me, my friend.

So, I keep on walking, trying to stay under overhangs as much as possible, but there’s not a lot of that on the Hell’s Acre side of downtown.  The heart has been gone for, I don’t know, ten years I guess, maybe the mid 1960s, but there’s still plenty of run down rat holes around the edges that you’re not going to get a lot of awnings and stuff.

It goes from raining to pouring.  Not only pouring, but pouring and blowing – blowing right into my face.  I’m half way to the Gardens, which won’t give me any cover, and the same distance back to the warehouse.  The next door on my right is an arcade, not a game arcade but one of those dirty movie arcades, with the tiny booths and films running all the time.

Truth is, I’ve never been in one.  Some guys at the warehouse talk about going in them after work, watching the 8mm loops or maybe getting a booth with a real dancer. She’s on the other side of a glass, but still, it’s a real woman there, in “all her glory.”

I don’t have a lot of options for escaping the rain, and the one that means getting the least wet is right in front of me, so that’s the one I pick. It sounds like an excuse, but hey, it’s the first time I’ve used it.

I push through the door and before my eyes adjust to the dark, the door snaps shut and I’m left in a skinny hallway with a window and countertop about ten feet down.  I walk up.  An old guy in a Mets ballcap is on a stool with a cashbox on one side and what must be forty stacks of quarters in front of him.

“Hey … uhh … mister. It’s my first time here. What do I ~”

“Two bucks in quarters gets you through the curtains.”

I hand him a five.  He starts to slide five stacks of four quarters my direction.

“Sorry,” I say, “all I really want is two dollars worth.”

He keeps sliding and says “Don’t got any ones yet.  Still early.”  He cracks the lid of the cashbox about a quarter of an inch and tosses the five in, then scoots the box back a little like I’m about to make off with his fortune.  I know it’s a scam. He’s got to have ones in there, but I guess he figures guys will spend more quarters if they’re carrying them around.

I scoop the quarters into my hand and drop them into my pocket as I start to go. Then, I turn back and add “What kind of ~”

“Film booths down both sides.  Green light means empty, red means occupied.  There's a card on the doors telling you what's showing in that room right now.  We got a whole mix of movies depending on your tastes.” He gives me a quick eyeball like he’s assessing what my tastes are likely to be. “The three rooms on the far wall have the models, when they're here, which is usually after lunch.”  I nod, then he remembers more “Oh, and the rooms where the projector isn’t working, there’s a big white sheet of paper saying so.  We got maybe two out right now. Don’t even think about going into those rooms, ‘cause we have them locked.  We catch anyone in there, and it’s his ass.”

He just stares at me at this point, and I think the only thing in his head is wondering what the hell this stooge is doing in there when he has no idea when he’s doing in the first place.

I wait a sec to see if he's going to say anything else, and he isn't, so I turn and walk between the velvet curtains, just like in a regular movie theater.  Just before the curtains close, he adds one more thing. “There’s paper towels – don’t leave a goddamn mess!”

It's much darker in there, on the back side of the privacy curtain, and I almost walk into the dead end wall before I see the faint left and right arrows right under signs that say “We have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time” and “No loitering.” The loitering sign has a city ordinance number down at the bottom even though the lettering is the same as the other sign. Official or not, even if I had the inclination to loiter, I don’t have the time.  I swing to the right and see the first row of booths.  Both sides of the little hallway have something like a pantry door every five feet or so. Half of each wall is made up of doors and there's a sign on each one and a light over each one.  Rows of little doors with little lights, like, I don't know, the confessionals at the Vatican, maybe. Plenty of doors, no waiting.  I'm immediately embarrassed by the thought, though, and tell myself to add it to my own confession this week.  

A guy with a mustache comes around from the far corner and just stops to read the first sign, so I stop and read a different sign.  I don't want to give him the wrong idea.  The first one has this big swirl of color and says "Swedish Erotica" on it, and there's a picture of a guy and two girls doing it right on the card.  He's sitting and the first girl is sitting on his lap facing out and you can see their whole business right between her legs clear as daylight.  The other girl is leaning in and kissing the first one, and playing with her breast - the first girl's breast, not her own.  And they are all buck naked, of course.

I stare at that one a bit and think about going in, but the light is red.  Lots of rooms, I tell myself, and walk down one door.  That one has the same big swirl of colors, but this time it says "Color Climax." This card has the same blonde girl that was standing up in the first one, but she's on her knees now, and a dark-haired guy is behind her, holding on for dear life and she's got a face like a howler monkey.  They must be about done, it looked like.  I think about going into this one.  The light is green, but I decide to hang off and check one more.

When I move down, the other guy glances my way and moves a door closer, too, until we're standing in front of adjacent booths not three feet from each other.  This one has a big black man and a girl with pigtails. She's on the couch and displaying her altogether to the world and he's leaning in so he can put his enormous thing in her mouth.  This light is green.

I look around as if anyone is going to notice or care if I go in, then walk in and close the door.  I latch it, too, with a flat kind of sliding latch though I don’t think it’s necessary.  It’s there, though, and I’m a little obsessive about locking thing when a lock is offered to me.  Besides, that’s probably what activates the little light over the door. There's one wood chair in the middle.  Every edge of every flat surface, from the chair to the rim of the projector screen has little burn marks from who knows how many cigarettes left resting there.  There’s also a roll of toilet paper on a handmade shelf and a little waste can in the corner.  I think that's kinda odd and puzzle for a couple of blinks, then I remember what the guy said about paper towels, and it dawns on me. It's so a guy can do his business right there when he gets cranked up, and nobody's the wiser.

The screen in front is a yellowed grey and covered with streaks that I avoid thinking about.  I almost sit down and get ready for something to start, but it doesn’t take me long to decide against doing that.  There’s no telling what might be on that damn seat.  Actually, yeah, I do have a real good idea what’s on it and I don’t want any of it.  I take the toilet paper roll with two fingers though and spin it around so it unspools, then I yank it into pieces long enough to drape over the seat.  Not perfect, but close enough.  I shift and the quarters rattle in my pocket and I remember what they’re for.

I pump a few quarters into the slot below the screen, being very careful not to touch anything. They clatters down through the machine’s little maze, then the sound seems to rise up from behind the screen.  The projector starts flashing a completely naked woman on the screen, brunette with medium size breasts and curvy hips. She’s walking right to left and black lines are worming their way down the screen from left to right, running right over the top of her as she goes.  She looks a little like my girl, Mary Ellen, but I’ve never seen all of Mary Ellen.  We’ve only gotten as far as second base, but looking at this woman I can imagine what Mary Ellen would look like if she was naked.  I’m sitting there watching her start to play with herself on the couch and I just remember that I’ve got my lunch and better get started on it.  Before I know it, the rest of the forty five minutes is going to be gone, and I’ll be starving the rest of the afternoon.

I unwrap my sandwich and crumple up the wax paper and toss it into the trash can for two points and start to chow down just as she is sliding a big black fake penis up inside herself.  She has all my attention, ‘cause like I said, I’ve never seen any movies like this before, maybe a random picture here and there, but not a whole movie. I’ve for sure never seen a naked woman in real life.  The most I’ve ever seen is up Mary Ellen’s skirt to her panties, but even then everything was covered by her panty hose, so she was doubly covered.

As I chew away on my bologna and pickle sandwich her fingers are going wild on her privates and she’s rocking away in wonderland.  Before I know it, my chewing is in sync with her rocking.  Chomp-chomp-chomp – rock-rock-rock, and I’m completely lost in what’s going on in front of me.  I can feel pickle juice running down my the inside of my sleeve under my jacket and shirt and I know it’s going to end up sticky because these are bread and butter pickles, not like my usual dill pickles, and they’re just more sticky like that.  But I don’t care, really, because I’m fascinated, y’know.

All of a sudden, the door rattles and I jump and almost choke on a piece of pickle.  It’s latched – I latched it when I came in, I remember that clearly, but still it was a noise I wasn’t expecting. I spit my mostly un-chewed piece of sandwich into my palm and call out “Occupied!” like the latched door and the red light weren’t clear enough.  I guess they weren’t though, because why else would he be wanting to come into an occupied booth.  Dumbass.

Anyway, so I think about it twice, and then go ahead and pop the sandwich bite back into my mouth.  It didn’t even have time to get cold.  I swallow it, then wash it down for good measure and then I turn and double check that the latch is secure.

I keep watching and in a few minutes, she’s joined by people who I think are supposed to be neighbors, like maybe a couple from next door.  There’s no point in really trying to describe it except to say that, if there was a position two women and a man could have sex in, they try it over the next fifteen minutes or so.  I can hear latches snapping and doors opening and closing every few minutes up and down the hallway, other guys coming and going from other booths, but I don’t see any big reason to come and go.  I have plenty to watch right where I am.

So that’s all I do for the next fifteen-twenty minutes.  Eat, drink, watch these three have sex, and feed the machine.  A quarter buys two and a half minutes, so eight quarters get me a solid twenty minutes, which honestly is up before I realized it.  My sandwich and my baggie full of chips, I practically inhaled, but I still have some Dr Pepper left in my can. I’m trying to be judicious, knowing that it’s only 12 ounces, but this awfully thirsty work, like we say over at the warehouse.

The handle gets jiggled twice more, but since I’m kind of expecting it, it doesn’t startle me.  It annoys me, but there’s a big difference.

When the last loop ends, I give myself a minute to get more presentable and then gather up my Dr Pepper can, baggie and wax paper.  I’m about to carry it out with me and then I remember the trash can, which I didn’t use for anything else, but it seems kind of tacky to put regular trash in.  Not that it’s some special semen box, it just feels weird, suddenly, to have brought my lunch in.  Somehow, the “normal” thing is to sit there in the dark, with the bleachy smell and the cigarette smoke smell soaked into everything, and the abnormal thing is to have my lunch with me, and I feel a little queasy.  I toss all my stuff in the can and walk back out the windy hallway and right out the front door.  The mustache guy is still back there, reading a sign just across the hall from the booth I was in.  I don’t look at him, but I can see in my peripheral vision that he glances my way.  The manager or owner or whatever the old guy is, is reading the paper and doesn’t even look up as I pass him on the way to the door.  No hello or goodbye or “Come again!” which is okay.  It’s not a chatty kind of place, y’know?  The only way to tell I’d come or gone is the door chime making its “bing-bong” sound as I pass through it.  I didn’t notice it when I came in, but I can sure hear it now.

It has actually stopped raining – quit sometime while I was in there.  The sidewalks are all wet, but the sun is already out, at least for a moment.  The sunlight on the water makes a nasty glare in places, and I’m trying to shield my eyes as I walk back to the warehouse.

It’ll be forty-five minutes on the dot when I walk back into the warehouse, I’m sure of that.  Maybe a minute early if traffic is light and I don’t have to wait for a crossing sign.

The afternoon is a busy one.  We’re in the middle of adding a little more office space, and so the floor crew, which includes me, is having to move some racks of document boxes around to make space for the expanded walls.  It’s not bad.  At least there are no chemicals to spill in this move, which has happened to me there before.

Before I walk out, I call Mary Ellen from the break room phone to see if she wants to eat.  I offer to come pick her up and we’ll go to the [Swiss House], like we planned the other night.

We’re sitting at dinner and I can’t help but think about the girl on the screen, the one who I thought looked like Mary Ellen.  Looking at her now, I can see there’s really no resemblance.  No real resemblance anyway.  Her hair is different, her face is different, nose, eyes, even her breasts.  Not that I can see them, but if I glance down while Mary Ellen is looking someplace else, I can tell that Mary Ellen’s are maybe a little smaller.  It might be the blouse, but probably not.  At the time, though, I sure kinda wanted them to look alike … to imagine Mary Ellen like that.  Not that I don’t do it myself sometimes when, y’know, but it seemed like it was a lot easier doing it that way, with the movie.

“What would you like to do after dinner, Brendan?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it.  We could maybe go to the drive in.  It’s going to be nice, but we’d have to pick up a paper and see what’s showing.  We could stay on this side of town and go see “Oh, God!” like we were going to do the other night.”

“Maybe not the drive-in tonight.  I hate walking back to the restrooms on a regular day, and you know, right now …”

“Oh, yeah.  Right. Yeah, no, let’s not do that.”  I really had forgotten why we canceled the other night, at least for that moment.

We just sit and stare at the picture on the wall next to us for a few minutes.

“Are you okay, Brendan? You seem quiet tonight.”

“Me? Nah. I’m probably just a little tired.  Things were kinda busy this afternoon and I didn’t sleep good last night.”

“Oh. Well, maybe we could just go to the Tandy Center for a while and have some ice cream? Maybe there’ll be skaters we can watch.”

I’ll be honest. I perk up a little at the thought of skaters, but I don’t want her to notice.

We drive to downtown and park in the Tandy lot by the river, then take the subway in to the Tandy Center. The whole place is nearly empty, but the ice rink has two skaters, probably a mom and her kid. Maybe a babysitter and somebody else’s kid.  He was about ten and she was maybe ten years older than me.  Mid thirties seems about right.

We watch them for a while.  She’s a good skater.  She’s probably had some lessons.  She also has the right body for a skater. Curves, but not too many or too big.

“Did you ever skate, Mary Ellen?”

“Me? No, not really.  I’d come to birthday parties here when I was younger, but I never had lessons or anything and I never was any good at it? Do you skate, Brendan?’

“No, I’d just fall down if I got out there.  I’m not graceful enough on the ground. I’m sure not going to be any better on ice.”  We both have a good laugh at that, and Mary Ellen touches my arm like she’s saying “You’re silly, but I like you anyway” that way women do.  “She’s good, though, Mary Ellen.  You might like it if you had lessons.  They probably don’t cost a lot if you do them here.”  It reminds me that we’ve never been dancing yet.  We could go dancing, Mary Ellen and I.  I’m okay with safe things like the two-step, and they made us learn the waltz in P.E. when I was in Junior High.

The son - the boy, anyway - stops and rests against the rail for a bit while the mom or sitter or whatever goes out and really opens it up.  She’s really good, and in a way that I have trouble imagining Mary Ellen being.  I try to picture her out there, in that body, doing the gliding and the little loops, and it’s hard.  I still like it, though.  I could give her lessons for her birthday, but that’s not coming up until May.

Or I could make a surprise gift to her.  It doesn’t have to be her birthday or anything for me to give her a present.  We’ve only been going out a couple of months, since she about the time she went back to college, but we’re pretty close for just two or three months. I don’t think she’d say it was too much.

I reach down and squeeze her hand and we watch her some more.  When the boy skates back out into the center, we’ve already finished with our ice cream, so I stand to go.  She tugs me back down by my hand and says, “Please ... this is so sweet. She seems like such a nice mommy, doesn’t she?”

So we watch for a while, and I’ll be honest, I’m day dreaming a little bit.  The boy spins off from the woman and takes a big tumble, then just drifts for another twenty feet, spread eagle flat out on the ice, twirling as he goes.  I kind of miss the first part right after he launches, but I look over when Mary Ellen gasps.  Almost immediately, though, the mom is there, leaning down to give him a hand up.  She’s turned just the right way that someone could see down her blouse maybe, but she covers her cleavage when she bends.  She’s no rookie there, either, which I kind of embarrass myself thinking, but hey, it stayed inside my head, so no harm, no foul, I say, right?

We’re both about done at that point.  We walk back to the subway and as we’re waiting for the car to show up, Mary Ellen snuggles up under my arm like she’s cold, but she’s not.  She just says, “Thanks, this was nice” in a little, soft voice.  She stays like that till the subway car comes, and then snuggles back in when we’re on the car, heading out to the far stop where I parked my car.  It’s so much better to park out there. You have less congestion around you, both in terms of cars sitting and in terms of cars all tangled up trying to get to the exit and blocking you in until they can move out of your way.

I walk her to her door.  Her dad is home. I can tell because just as we get up on the front porch, the porch light comes on.  Even when we go up the steps quietly, he knows.  She’s twenty two now, and you’d think she was still sixteen the way he watches over her.  We sure don’t fool around together much at her house.

When I start my car up and drive away from the curb, I think about that woman on the film again.  She and Mary Ellen looked so much alike.  Maybe kind of creepy, I guess, but I don’t let myself dwell on it.

The next couple of days, it’s real busy at the warehouse, plus it started raining that next morning.  It ends up raining for two days straight, so there’s no way I’m going to go wandering anywhere with my sandwich.  I just sit in the little break area each day and eat my sandwich and chips and drink my Dr Pepper, and I read through all the old issues of Field & Stream that my friend Kyle brought in from his dad’s barber shop last week.

On the third day, I’m starting to feel trapped, and like I want to eat lunch out, so I leave my sandwich and chips at home.  I could treat myself – I could go over to that burger place in the Tandy Center, or I could go to the little barbeque place next to the Federal Building.  I don’t know which yet, but I just step out the door, put my sunglasses on, and start walking.  I’m letting my feet decide.  Right away, they seem to start drifting toward the barbeque place, and I let them.  I love their chopped brisket sandwiches, and it’s still pretty cheap even if you get the chips and soda to go with it.

It’s all going great, and my stomach is getting set on the chopped brisket, and then I decide to turn one block earlier than I usually do, and there’s that movie arcade just down the block on the right.  I do good, though; I just walk right on by like it’s not even there.  I go on to Robinson’s and I get my sandwich and chips and a Coke this time, and decide to walk over to Burnett Park. I should have stayed and eaten at the bench in front of Robinson’s, but I didn’t.  As soon as I start walking, I know where I’m headed with my lunch again.

I feel a little guilty because I was raised Catholic and we feel guilty for the wind blowing, but I’m also – to be fair – feeling guilty because I know what I’m about to do and I do it anyway.  I don’t think Jesus is too happy about it, no.  But I also am pretty sure this isn’t the biggest issue Jesus has to worry about on a Thursday afternoon in October.  All I do is watch a movie for a few minutes while I eat my lunch.  I don’t think I’m going to hell for a movie.

So, I’m there and I’m all by myself this time. Nobody else in the hallway, anyway, though some booth have their red light on. Also, I can just make out the sound of other projectors running and other sounds seeping in. I walk around more and pick a different booth from the first time. I’m not looking for anything in particular, just something different. Roll the dice and take your chances. What’s the Mousetrap game motto? “You roll your dice, you move your mice” or something like that.  I did glance at the pictures on the door, though, just to make sure it’s not anything like two guys or something else weird. I’m a little annoyed at myself because when I got a lot of change from the guy at the counter. I go ahead and ask for a whole five dollars’ worth, like I have time to sit in there for … well, however long five dollars would take. I guess if two dollars is twenty minutes, then five dollars would be almost an hour.  But again, quarters spend everywhere, right?

I feed in only two dollars’ worth, just to make sure I don’t get carried away. The projector starts and what I see this time is a party and at first the couples go off into other rooms for sex, but after a while, it’s all happening out in the open and with multiple people.  Girls are kissing and touching girls, two guys are both having sex with a girl, things like that. This goes on in all kinds of combinations.  I open my drink first and take sips from time to time.  I also open my chips, but I feel very self-conscious for some reason. Every chip sounds like glass bottles falling from the sky.  At least I can sip my drink quietly, but there’s no way I’m going to go through even one of those tiny bags of chips without making a lot of noise.  I eat maybe three or four and it sounds to me like I’m walking across broken glass, so I stop.  I don’t even touch my sandwich.  I can either pay attention to the show and sip my drink or I can pay attention to not getting barbeque all over my shirt.  So, I pick the show.

One guy who shows up late has an enormous penis, and three of the girls – a redhead and two blondes - race right over like they’ve been waiting for him to get there. I can’t even describe what they’re doing because every minute or so it changes and they’re doing something different.  There was one scene where one of the blonde girls was holding the guy’s penis for the redhead while she put it in her mouth and sucked.  I kinda wish that the blonde holding it for the redhead were the brunette from the other day, the one who looks so much like Mary Ellen.

Then my time runs out.  It just runs out. There’s no warning, no nothing.  One minute the projector is going and the next minute it’s dark.  It’s so abrupt.  I start to put in another four quarters, but I talk myself down.  If I put in just one quarter, then I can see a little more before I have to go back to work and it’s not just a sudden stop.  I pop the quarter in and sit back down.  The film picks up right where it left off.  The guy has reached down and he has his hand on the redhead’s head, just holding it in place while he starts thrusting.  I set down my drink, which is now empty, and put my right hand down on my crotch.  I can feel my own hardness through my jeans, and I imagine that it’s my hand resting on her head.  Quietly, I start moving like him.  Very quietly.

The projector stops again and I think it really couldn’t have been two and a half minutes, because it seems like it had just started up. Who am I going to argue with, though?  The projector?  The old fucker up front at the counter?  Like he’s going to worry about whether I’ve seen my full two and a half minutes of his dirty movies.  Time is time, though, and now I have to get back to work.  I’ve got eight minutes which should be plenty, but still -

I scoop up my can and toss it in the trash. I almost do the same with my sandwich and the rest of my chips, then I remember how hungry I am and calm myself down.  I stuff the two of them into my pockets, unlatch the door, and next thing I’m out on the sidewalk.

I eat while I walk, which is easy enough with the chips, but I slow down a little when I’m working on the sandwich.  I still don’t want to get back to the job covered in barbeque sauce.  I zip up my windbreaker.  At least most of it will fall on the jacket and not onto my clean shirt.

Later, when I’m leaving work, I think about calling Mary Ellen and seeing if she wants to get together. It seems like maybe I should do it, but I don’t really want to.  Wednesday isn’t one of our usual nights, plus sometimes she has church activities anyway so it’s very hit and miss if we did want to do something. I must just be feeling guilty, and wanting her to reassure me that I’m not a bad person, or that she has no idea of what I’ve been doing.  I don’t feel like going home though, so I take a walk around downtown for a bit.  I happen to walk by the arcade twice.  No, that’s not true.  I just happened to walk by it once. I walk by it on purpose the second time.  I don’t go in. Not either time.  Instead, I walk on to the Richelieu Grill and have a bowl of their chili and a grilled cheese sandwich. That’s a lot of food, but it was a busy day, and I was pretty hungry.  After I eat, I walk around a little more.  A new cold front is coming in tonight, they say, and I can already kind of feel it.  I don’t walk by the arcade again.  I go home.

That night, as I’m getting ready for bed and taking care of business like they say, I think about the redhead and what she was doing.  I imagine her as a brunette while she’s doing the oral sex thing.  It seems like a good look for her.  A real good look. She would actually look a little like Mary Ellen if she were a brunette.

The next day, everything is just off.  I’m going the wrong way at work and everyone is annoying me.  I’m edgy, which isn’t all that unusual, especially if Mr. Peters is having one of his Management by Riding Everybody’s Ass days.  By the time lunch comes, I really want to get anywhere but the building. I don’t even want to see the building from wherever I am.  I think about going back to Richelieu’s, but I brought my sandwich and chips, and besides, I’ve been eating out almost every day it seems, and a couple bucks here and there start to add up after a while.

So, I get my jacket, sandwich and chips and grab a Coke from the vending machine before I leave the building.  I’m going to go to the Water Gardens for a while and just sit in the sun.

It’s a great plan, except when I get outside, I find the wind has really picked up.  It was breezy when I came in, but now it’s really gusting.  Still, I made up my mind, and that’s where I’m going to go.  Make a plan, stick to it.  I turn down Commerce, and even with the Convention Center in the way, the wind is still blowing in my face.  That’s okay, though.  I can sit on the bottom step of the mountain next to the plaza and be protected from the wind.  I’ll shoo away a couple of panhandlers, and then they’ll all leave me in peace.

It’s still a good plan, except when I get there, there’s about a hundred elementary school kids there for a field trip or something.  Four FWISD buses on the street and kids everywhere, but especially in the middle of the plaza where they’re settling in to have lunch.

So much for my great plan. There’s nobody to yell at, though.  Do I yell at the kids for being around or all the adults for bringing them, or the wind for being a pain in the ass in the first place?  Right.  That’s what I’ll do.

As a payoff for the aggravation, though, I decide that I’m going to enjoy myself at lunch, and you know what that means.  The wind almost yanks the door out of my hand when I get to the arcade, and even rattles some of the display cases with old posters.  I just walk right on through and shake my handful of quarters as I walk by Grady, who is the old man who runs the place.  Or at least, he’s the guy who sits at the counter while someone else runs the place. Probably the mob or someone like that.  I bet if I ask, I could buy a marijuana joint from Grady or maybe some uppers or downers.  Random fantasy, because I wouldn’t know what to do with any of those things.

I brush past an older guy in a ball cap and sports jacket and just walk back toward the booths with the girls.  I stop when I see the little sign next to the first booth that says “Live girls / $5 for 10 min / $12 for 30 min / $25 for 60 min.” Even I can figure out that two thirty minutes cost less than one sixty minute, but maybe they don’t get too many of the sixties. Or maybe they want people to stay more than ten minutes but less than an hour.
”
At any rate, I figure maybe I’m not going to see a live girl today. I wasn’t planning on spending so much, even if it’s a real live girl on the other side.  Also, as I look around, I don’t see any pictures.  Whoever is in there could be eighty years old with boobs down to her hips for all I know.  That’s definitely not worth five dollars.

So, I backtrack down the hall.  The guy in the cap and jacket is still where he was when I came in, reading the same sign he was reading.  I don’t feel like going around the long way or squeezing past him, so I just turn left into the last booth before where he’s standing.  I close the door and start rummaging through my pockets to pull out my lunch.  First, I get everything out, then I start the movie and just relax.  Today, I don’t care how much noise the chips make. If someone doesn’t like it, they can stuff it.

I pop the tab on my Coke, sit down, and immediately feed four quarters into the machine.  I empty my pockets while the reel starts up. It has fewer scratches and damage than the one yesterday, plus the colors are better and it’s in focus. I figure that means it’s a lot newer.  I can’t tell from clothes because nobody has any.  It just starts with this redhead pulling this guy back on top of her into a big four-poster bed.  It has canopy, drapes, big pillows and comforter – the works.  No warm up or foreplay.  He just starts pounding into her like gangbusters and she’s wrapping her legs around him and making all kinds of crazy grunts.

That must be the point where the door opened because all of a sudden, I can tell someone’s right behind me.  In all this, I didn’t lock the door, I figure, and there’s a cop who’s just walked in on me violating who knows how many laws and health codes and things.  My heart is pounding.  I want to jump up, but I just freeze.

The guy puts his hand on my right shoulder and leans in to my left ear.  I just know he’s going to start reading me my rights or tell me to stand up so he can put cuffs on me.  Instead, he just says “I can help you feel even better” and starts massaging both of my shoulders.  When he’s in close, I realize he’s the ball cap guy who just waited until I was settled and followed me into the booth I left unlocked. His breath smells like a queasy combination of chaw and doublemint.

“Oh, uh, sure, but no thanks.

“Nobody’s gotta know, buddy.  I’ll just latch the door again and you can get our dick out of your pants. You’re gonna love it, trust me.”

“No, that’s okay.  I ‘preciate it, but that’s alright.  I’m gonna pass.  Uhh ... listen, I just put ... umm ... a buck into the machine, but I’m going to head out. I got stuff I have to do.”

As I pop the door back open, I’m embarrassed at barely managing to say something that lame.

Of course I don’t really need to think of something clever. It’s not exactly a social error that I’m not interested in getting a blowjob from a guy.  Even knowing that, though, it occurs to me that maybe that’s what most guys come here for.  Does everyone but me just prowl around until they find a guy that lets them into the booth?  Maybe this guy really does think I came in wanting it and then got scared.

Grady is probably getting used to me sailing out of the place.  Maybe most guys sail out of the place once they get whatever it is they want there. That makes sense now that I think of it.  Like people, guys I mean, are going to hang out in a waiting room or something and have tea?  First off there’s no room down that skinny dark hallway.  Second, holy crap, can you imagine what kind of germs and stuff are probably all over in there?

I’m nauseated now, and my heart is pounding.  It’s just so strange, y’know?  I had no idea what I was getting into when I went in the first time.  I just figured I get a cheap thrill and that would be it.  I’d go in for lunch every now and then, and that’s all,  Here, I’m already going in three days in a row, but I tell myself it isn’t all my fault.  If it wasn’t for the school kids, I’d be eating lunch at the Water Gardens right now, and not trying to get it eaten walking back to the warehouse.  And then, I get even madder at myself because I realize that I don’t have to worry about eating as I walk because I left my damn sandwich and chips back at that … that darn place!  Now, I’m muttering to myself as I stomp down the block. “I can’t believe all the darn stupid crap you get yourself in all the time.  If it’s not one thing it’s another.  You really try ~”

I stop myself there because those aren’t even my words.  It’s my mom in my ear, saying all those things she always says when she gets mad.  The next thing she says is “~ our patience sometimes.  I don’t know what your dad and I are going to do with you.”  Even now, when I’m twenty two and mostly living on my own, I have to listen to that business a couple of times a month.  Even now, I’ll pick up the phone, and if she’s not yelling at me, she’s telling me how concerned she is about me ever making anything of myself. Last week, she called at ten thirty on a Tuesday when I was already in bed, and spent twenty minutes telling me that dad had run into Mr. Peters at the Meadowbrook golf course, and just happened to ask him how I was doing, and all Mr. Peters would say was “Oh, fine. Fine” in a way that didn’t sound to my dad like I was doing fine at all, and he came home and told her about it, and she’s been worrying herself sick since lunchtime that I’m going to get fired from another job and nobody was going to hire me because I’m getting a reputation.

Really all that in one sentence - hand before God.  Now take that sentence and make it twenty minutes long and you’ll see what kind of noise I have to put up with, and then maybe it’s not so bad that every once in a while, I waste a couple of bucks on something that doesn’t exactly make me a good citizen.  And y’know, that other job I got fired from, and there really was only one, was a lawn mowing job back when I was fifteen, and I got fired because the boss’ son came back from college before the end of the year, and the guy was desperate to give him something productive to do. He even apologized to me, for crying out loud, because he couldn’t afford two of us and he was stuck with his son or his wife would give him “holy hell” – his words.  I went home and told my parents and they acted like I’d just confessed to burning down a church full of puppies.  I told them exactly what Mr. Sloan told me, but it didn’t make any difference.  Here I was at fifteen, about to ruin my life and end up panhandling and living in the woods at Trinity Park. Well, I guess now you know that, when I get mad, I can get pretty long-winded, like my mom – unless I just shut up completely – also like my mom.  I couldn’t get mad at myself the way my dad does, ‘cause there’s no way I’m taking myself into my room and beating my own ass with a belt until I can’t sit for a week.  I have to laugh a little.  It’s just so crazy.  I really want to give Mary Ellen a call just to say hi, but she doesn’t get to take calls at her office, and I don’t have time at the warehouse to get anywhere near the payphone that’s out in the loading dock.

I guess it’s okay that I left my lunch behind, because I’m not feeling very much like eating.  If I didn’t have a real upset stomach when I walked out of the arcade, it did just fine until the real one showed up.  Fortunately, I do have a big bottle of Tums in my locker basket at work.  That’s going to pretty much be my lunch today – a handful of Tums and maybe a quarter’s worth of peanuts from the Tom’s snack machine. Tums and Tom’s, the lunch of degenerate losers.

I spend the rest of the afternoon in a mood. I don’t want to talk to anyone and I don’t want anyone to talk to me.  I work up a pretty good sweat loading archive boxes onto the cart for disposal, then unloading them near the shredder.  Back and forth, back and forth.  I see Mr. Peters watching me, and maybe he’s a little surprised by how much I’m getting done.  He shouldn’t be, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

On the way home, it occurs to me that maybe I’m just bored at lunch.  If I had something different to do, that would probably change everything.  I’ve gotten tired of sitting outside and watching birds at lunch, but if I took a magazine along or maybe had a little radio with me, that could be exactly what I need. That’s an exciting idea, and for the first time all day, I’m feeling better about myself.  I realized that all I needed was a plan and now I have one.

There’s a Wards and a Sears up at the mall, but there’s also a Radio Shack not a mile from my apartment, so I stop there on the way.  At first, I’m very disappointed.  Everything I’m seeing is a radio and a cassette or eight-track deck combo and they all run anywhere from seventy to two hundred dollars!  I’m walking out of the store with my mood hanging down to the floor and I see a little display of AM/FM portables, which is all I want for cryin’ out loud.  There are two – one for fifteen and the other for twenty-two.  I could probably go with the more expensive one, but I look at both the boxes and as far as I can tell, the only difference is that the more expensive one has a bigger speaker and runs on C batteries, and the other runs on nine volt batteries. They both come with an ear-phone and have a carrying handle.

Easy decision. I take the cheaper one.  I have to skip fewer lunches to pay for it, right?  It’s been an expensive week and “not as much” is the perfect price for me.  I pay with a twenty and the cashier asks for my address and phone number.  I just shake my head. They always ask and I always say no.  They say it’s so they can mail catalogs.  I’ve given my address before and I’ve never gotten a catalog.  I don’t know what they do with them, not that I think they do anything evil with them, but still I don’t feel like playing whatever game it is they have going on.  Ask my parents.  They’ll tell you I have a problem with rules that I don’t understand.  Ask my mom. She’ll talk your ear off.

Anyway, I make another sandwich when I get home.  It’s a big sandwich to make up for the one I left behind earlier today.  I call Mary Ellen and we talk for a couple of minutes, but I’m tired and still a little irritable, so we hang up fairly soon.  I want to tell her that I’m really feeling good about this, but that would involve telling her about what brought me to this, so that’s not going to happen.  I don’t want to make her put up with any of this noise.  It’ll pass and things will be fine, and she doesn’t need to even know.  It’s a non-event. Seriously.