Arcade (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781939419729)

A new world opens up to Sam when, fresh from a breakup, he discovers a XXX peepshow on the outskirts of town. More than a mere venue for closeted men to meet for anonymous sex, it's an underground subculture populated by regular players, and marked by innumerable coded rules and customs.

A welcome diversion from his dead-end job and the compulsive cyberstalking of the cop who broke his heart, Sam returns to the arcade again and again. When the bizarre setting triggers reflections on his own history and theories, he contemplates his anxious, religious upbringing in small-town Texas, the frightening overlap between horror movies and his love life, and the false expectations created by multiple childhood viewings of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then, of course, there is the subject of sex.

As his connection to the place strengthens, and his actions both outside and within the peepshow escalate, Sam wavers between dismissing the arcade as a frivolous pastime and accepting it as the most meaningful place in his life. Arcade is a relentlessly candid and graphic account of one man's attempt to square immutable desire with a carefully constructed self-image on the brink.

Author: Drew Nellins Smith
ISBN-10: 1939419727
ISBN-13: 9781939419729
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Language: English
Published: 06/14/2016
Pages: 222
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/13/2016
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/0001