Arcade

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I SAW PEOPLE MENTIONING IT IN THE PERSONALS ONLINE, but I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know places like that existed. In the Missed Connections, there were ads that made clear that men were having sexual encounters of some kind there, in what I pictured as a Wild West of promiscuity. The ads said things like, “The XXX place west of town. We’ve played out there before. This time you came in wearing gym clothes. I had to get back to work, or things would have gone further. Tell me what you said about my shirt so I know it’s you.”

In a few posts, a particular highway was named. I drove out looking for it one Saturday afternoon, feeling adrenalized and nervous. I had probably passed the place a hundred time without noticing it. Aside from the red “XXX” mounted near its roof, it was an anonymous-looking building clad in corrugated metal. It could have been a hastily-erected industrial shop, or one of those oversized fireworks super centers on the side of the highway that are only open a few weeks of the year around the Fourth of July and New Year’s. It looked like the worst possible place to shelter during a tornado. It would have been safer in one’s car.

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