content warning: this story is VERY adult in nature and should probably not be read by anyone.
so one day my friend keith asks me if i've ever heard of the "video arcade" down at the local sex shop. i told him no. keith is one of the most interesting people i've ever met and used to run a gay bar. he exudes sexual energy, which is funny next to me who has none. he tells me that we have to go. so we go.
we show up to the sex shop. it's in a nasty little concrete building near the edge of town. inside is your usual assortment of tons of porn movies, dildos, vibrators, and a massive glass case counter of expensive lubes. like most other sex shops, you could buy VCR cleaner and pressure chargers for whipped cream cans. those, of course, were not used to clean VCRs or make whipped cream.
keith pulls out a 20 and asks for 20 ones at the counter. he shows me into a door on the side of the building. entering this door was some fuckin house of leaves shit. it's not very big but the outer structure makes it seem like this place can't physically exist. it is a dingy and dark series of tiny rooms going off of a square, looped hallway. it has this awful smell of cleaning chemicals covering something else i couldn't identify. there are a couple of men just standing around in the cramped hall. i follow keith into one of the rooms.
inside is a very small room that both of us barely fit in. opposite the door is a terminal with a screen behind a clear plexiglass barrier. there are some buttons on the terminal and a slot to accept dollars. keith feeds a dollar in the machine and the screen lights up in the middle of a porno. you can press the buttons to change channels, all of which are showing off a different porn they had for sale. a dollar gets you some minutes of viewing. ostensibly, this is for previewing pornography and seeing if you like it before you buy. in practice things were a little different.
flipping through the porno, keith explains that this is a cruising spot. this is where men who are into this kind of thing come to meet other men, hoping to get together for some anonymous risky business. he says that local college boys love this spot.
he tells me he has to check something. we exit the room and go into a specific one.
"There it is."
he points lower down at the right wall and indeed there it is, the first and only honest-to-god glory hole i've seen in my life. he puts in a dollar to the screen and the porn plays. we flip through the porn, a dizzying array of fetishes and bodies, a bizarrely fascinating spread of varied content. i see movement out of the corner of my eye. i look down and see a finger poking out of the glory hole, which then makes a come here motion, beckoning.
"put your dick in there and he'll suck it" keith says to me, quietly. i laugh, trying not to laugh too loud. on top of the situation being one of the most ridiculous i'd ever been in, i am ace and don't know it yet. i politely decline but admire the bizarre place and time i am experiencing.
we keep flipping through porn. the finger gives up and goes away eventually. the circus of flesh on screen continues.
some minutes later, i see something in the corner of my eye again. what's this poking through the hole but a curious little penis. the finger had not given up so easily it seems. horrified, i cannot stop myself from laughing. i feel bad. the penis does not relent though. maybe i was feeding it with my laughter. you never know when the rest of the body is on the other side of a wall.
finally, i tap out. as funny as everything is, this place is too much. we leave. i have learned much.
the sex shop eventually moved to a nicer, newer building that did not have an adult video arcade or accompanying glory hole. but that dank little hallway with men creeping around lives to this day in my memory.