Читать книгу Arcade - Drew Nellins Smith - Страница 10

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I HEARD STORIES FROM MY FATHER AND AUNT ABOUT THEIR high school days in the small Texas town where I grew up, and where they grew up before me. When they were young, all the high school students hung out at the town square, flirting and talking and showing off their cars. There were all these stories about things that happened there, pranks they played and songs they turned all the way up, who was smoking cigarettes and who was making out or leaving to go make out someplace else.

It seemed like somewhere other than the place where I was growing up, another world where there could exist this semblance of nightlife. I envied everyone who got to experience it, for having something to do in that town where I didn’t have anything. Even my cousin had hung out at the town square when she was in high school, and she was only nine years older than me. Somewhere between her youth and mine, the practice fell out of fashion.

Reading about the XXX place in the Missed Connections ads had evoked visions like those I’d once had of weekend nights at the town square. I pictured men leaning against their cars, smoking, fixing their hair in rear-view mirrors, checking one another out, talking casually as if nothing might happen or everything might happen.

I imagined something secret, but also right out in the open for people who took the time to look into it or join, like Freemasonry or the Elks. When I discovered the arcade, it was sort of like that after all. I couldn’t believe it.