“I really have to go now. We’ll talk soon.”
“Okay, I wasn’t trying to keep you. I was just wondering. But I understand. Okay. Have fun.”
“You too. Take care, buddy.”
“Okay then. Bye.”
SOMETIMES I COULD HEAR TOKENS DROPPING INTO A container behind the screen, the sound like a quarter falling into a pile of quarters in the bottom of a plastic five-gallon bucket. Usually only one clerk worked the arcade at a time, and sometimes he’d have to go into the little hallway behind the booths to resolve a maintenance issue. Alone in a compartment, I could hear the opening of the heavy door leading into the tight passage. I could see the light come on through the coin slot, a bright white light different from the other lights in the store. Putting my eye to the slot, I could see inside. It was like looking into the workings of a pinball machine. Everything was indistinct, and it was hard to tell what was happening. I could see the figure moving around if he stood in the right place. Then, very quickly, because they couldn’t leave the sales floor unattended for long, the light would go out and I would hear the sound of the heavy door closing. Then I was alone in the booth again. I spent a lot more time alone in those booths than I ever did with someone else.
HOME FROM THE ARCADE LATE ONE NIGHT, I DISCOVERED an email from Malcolm. I hadn’t heard from him in several months. Malcolm, who didn’t know my real name, my regular email address, or even my phone number, addressed me as Sam, a name I sometimes used with men. We had been in communication off and on for a couple of years, sometimes speaking for days in a row and sometimes falling out of touch for long spans of time. I considered him a kind of friend since it was undeniable he knew many things about me that no one else in my life ever would.
We’d met online during one of several periods when I felt I absolutely had to have sex with another man in order to feel like a normal human being again. I thought of it like an illness, the way vampires felt compelled to drink blood even if they didn’t want to be vampires and were in fact moral beings who had been transformed quite against their will.
When we met, I hadn’t had much experience, just quick and risky things, sometimes in motel rooms, but mostly in cars—hurried blowjobs in parking lots that made me come so fast out of nervousness and excitement that the experience itself was only ever a fraction as long as the drive to the agreed-upon location. For days after, I was sleepless with shame, swearing through hour after hour of insomnia that I’d never do it again.
During one of my frenzies, Malcolm responded to an ad I’d posted online. He emailed me several pictures of himself, and I replied in kind, stopping short of sending any of my face, which I always refused to do. His photos revealed an attractive, balding guy in his mid forties, hairy-chested, with about thirty pounds of extra weight and a tasteful, expensive-looking duvet cover. We traded the usual emails about what we wanted to do to one another and things we didn’t want or refused to do. His was the typical “no scat or pain” requirement, whereas I detailed my prohibitions in a lengthy bullet-point index to which he replied, “Haha, nice list.” I liked him. Like a zookeeper who had by chance encountered one of my species before, he seemed to intuitively know how to deal with me. Most people had no idea.
I was weirdly titillated when I learned that Malcolm lived in a neighborhood in a far-away part of the city where people with money lived. When I asked for his phone number he replied with it right away. I called, first blocking my number by dialing *67 like a prank-calling teenager, and, though I felt his gayness was audible, it wasn’t too bad, and I found I truly liked him.
We talked for a long time about all sorts of things. Then, around 1:00 a.m. he invited me to his house. I still feared he might be a lunatic because who else would invite a stranger to his private residence in the middle of the night. Though I was deep into a cycle of same-sex mania, I was exhausted, so I asked if we could just jack off on the phone together.
“Sounds good, Sam,” he said. “It’s late and I’ve already got my dick out.”
“So do I,” I said, as if we had just discovered an unexpected commonality.
After we came, I hung up and found I didn’t feel horrible the way I usually did after a sexual attack. I hadn’t actually touched anyone but myself. It was nothing but fantasy. No one had officially sinned or done anything wrong. I found, too, that the pressure had been released somewhat. I didn’t feel compelled to spend the next day finding someone else to have sex with. When Malcolm emailed early the next evening asking if I’d like to come over, I ignored it for several days, replying later that I had been out of town and rarely checked that particular account.
We never met in person, but talked on the phone with some frequency after that. We spoke about what was going on in our lives, and as time passed, we even talked about other men—the ones I saw very rarely, and the ones he connected with more frequently. I felt a twinge of possessiveness at the thought of Malcolm having sex with anyone other than me, but I could never quite work up the nerve to meet him in real life. He was twenty years my senior, and he listened to all my stories and anxieties as if he knew exactly what I was going through. Every time I made what seemed to me to be a completely bizarre confession, he replied, “That’s pretty normal, I think” or “That’s understandable.”
At some point, he began a romance with someone he’d met. At first the man only wanted to come over and give Malcolm rim jobs while jerking him off. But after several visits consisting of the same spectacular—per Malcolm—tonguing, they slowly graduated to kissing and then talking. Malcolm and I continued to chat regularly while they were dating, the two of us jerking off over the phone and eventually over online video chats in which I’d point the camera at my body and never allow him to see my face. After watching each other come in grainy, jerky video, we’d say good night, both correctly taking for granted that as soon as we’d shot our loads, the call had reached its end.
The expiration of the rim job champ’s lease precipitated their impulsive cohabitation, an event that unfolded during one of our many lulls in communication. One day I received an email from Malcolm that read:
“Dear Sam, I wanted to let you know that Ron moved in with me. (Crazy, I know.) I won’t be able to talk late at night anymore, and I can’t have you calling whenever you feel like it. I’ll miss our wee-hours chats, but we can still find time to talk if you want, and you can always reach me via email if you need me. I hope you’re well. Malcolm.”
I hadn’t heard from him at all since then, though I can’t say I missed him terribly. I had been having a parallel relationship with the cop all along, just talking and getting to know one another, until, unlike Malcolm and I, we had met at last.
Before reading Malcolm’s email, just seeing his name in my inbox, I suddenly felt as if, now that the cop had abandoned the playground, some great cosmic seesaw had tilted, revealing Malcolm on the other end in his place. He wasn’t the one I wished to see, but maybe he could be the key to something. It seemed impossibly strange that I hadn’t consulted him sooner. I hadn’t told him about my desperation and sorrow or asked his advice about what to do next. I’d always believed that people appeared in my life at precisely the right moment, and here Malcolm was again. He’d be the one to help me come up with a plan for how to prove my love and get the cop back.
Of course, the cop and the kid were on yet another in a series of long weekend getaways, which they seemed always to be taking. Before the kid, the cop never took vacation days. He had been hoarding them apparently, waiting for the right teenager to blunder into his life.
I opened the email from Malcolm.
“Dear Sam, Long time, no talk. I hope you’re alive and well. I miss you! I’m alone in a hotel room in a strange city called Boston, Massachusetts. Have you heard of it? I had three or four drinks at the bar downstairs, and now I’m getting ready for bed.