Arcade by Drew Nellins Smith; Unnamed Press, $16
Written while the author worked at a motel in Austin, Texas, Drew Nellins Smith's provocative debut novel Arcade showcases the mystery, the taboo allure, and the "Wild West of promiscuity" found at a triple-X porn arcade. Though many of these classic institutions have gone the way of the record store, the ponytail, telephone sex lines, chatrooms, and VHS video stores, Smith breathes new life into one particularly seedy, nondescript roadside shop located in rural Texas, where his protagonist Sam becomes a regular customer with mixed results.
Hoping to consummate his secret passion for men, he ventures way beyond casually perusing the "Missed Connections" ads on Craigslist and heads for an out-of-the-way bastion of unashamed sexuality and pornography. Armed with a fistful of tokens, Sam becomes one with the arcade's "catalog of potential partners, all moving in circles and lines and figure eights, from booth to booth, hallway to store to hallway."
Curiously, Sam treats his visits to the booths as one treats a hopeful, recurring date: showering first, and donning "a clean pair of jeans and a striped polo shirt that I didn't like particularly, but had twice been complimented on." He makes small-talk with the clerk first, then embarks upon a succession of adventures within the cloaked recesses of the store.
Smith has created a relatable character in Sam. He is an instantly likeable guy filled with common insecurities, longing for both the thrill of an orgasm with a stranger and the intimate contentment of another's hand to hold. Sam is often humorous as well, as in one scene when leaving an almost deserted booth hallway in the arcade. "When I found myself alone in terrible and shameful situations," he laments, "my first assumption was always that the end of the world was upon us, and I had been caught with my pants down. Had the nuclear apocalypse been announced, and here I was to die alone, blasted apart along with one of the biggest collections of sex toys and videos in Central Texas?"
The novel's primary focus is on his visits to the arcade, which will please lovers of erotica, well-written smut, and the multifaceted world of human sexuality. Smith describes Sam's adventures in expert detail, lingering over the specifics of the dark dankness of the back hallways, the creaking of booth doors, the shadowy faces hungry and whispering for any human connection, and the bleachy smell of sticky floors from booths that "were just destroyed" at the end of the night. The sexual encounters, both the wildly satisfying and the crestfallen, are just as vividly portrayed, though Sam admits he is somewhat obsessed in his awareness of contracting an (incurable) sexually transmitted disease, alongside the hard cold truth that he'd "spent a lot more time alone in those booths than I ever did with someone else."
One wishes Smith embodied Sam with more depth and characterization outside the swinging doors of the arcade. As much as his novel exposes the shrouded microcosm of the video arcade store, he leaves his main character without much soul. When there's a hint that the narrative may veer into more of Sam's past aside from his horny anecdotes, the story, almost embarrassed of itself, moves right back to the arcade.
The novel's bittersweet conclusion occurs with the arcade's abrupt closure causing Sam to sadly reflect on the education, the sexual freedom, the fantasy, and the orgasmic gratification he'd received there. "I pictured the other men from the arcade like satellites cut loose in space with nothing to orbit. There was no chance I'd see the Marine again, or the bull, or the hedgehog, or the guy who said I should read The Better Angels of Our Nature."
Though readers don't really get to know Sam as well as they might have liked, still, this is a sexy, amusing, and thoroughly engrossing slice of gay fiction that is impressively accomplished for a debut. It's also a highly auspicious beginning for a Texas writer with certain promise.