By Alex Rost
We weren’t getting along too well just then, so we went bowling.
We walked in at the far end of the alley.
“I love how it smells in here,” I said.
You wrinkled your nose. “It smells like dirty socks and stale beer.”
“I know, right?”
It was a long way to where we had to pay and rent shoes – past rows of alleys, past bunches of people milling about, talking or not talking or whatever.
“No one is bowling,” I said.
“Yeah, what’s up with that?”
“Why isn’t anyone bowling?” I asked the employee after we covered the ten fucking miles to the register.
“League play,” he said. “Hasn’t started yet.”
“Oh,” I said. “That makes sense.”
Now I could feel it – anticipation. That was what really smelled.
The employee must have said something, because he was staring right at me.
“What?”
“It’s gonna be like twenty minutes. We only have the last ten lanes for open bowling tonight.”
“Only ten lanes?”
“Leagues,” he said, and pointed off behind me.
“Okay.”
“Or thirty.”
“Or thirty what?”
“Or thirty minutes. Twenty to thirty minutes.”
I turned to you. You shrugged and nodded at the same time.
“Okay,” I said to the employee. “Let’s do it.”
“How many games do you want to play?”
“Three. At least three, I think.”
I turned to you again. You shrugged and nodded at the same time.
“Three games,” I said to the employee, with confidence.
He typed something into the computer on top of the register.
I noticed an index-sized laminated card propped on the counter. It said, ‘Buy three games, get a $5 arcade play card.’ It said, ‘STATE OF THE ART ARCADE!!!!!’ with all those exclamation points.
“Hold up.” I flipped the card around and showed it to the employee. “What’s this all about?”
“You get a free play card with a purchase of three games,” he said.
“Both of us?”
“Yes, both of you.”
“Were you going to say anything? Like if I didn’t notice this, would you have given us the arcade cards?”
The employee raised his eyebrows.
“Is it really state of the art?”
He pursed his lips, glanced at the line behind us.
“I mean, is it worth it?”
“Are you going to buy three games?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then I’d say it’s worth it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Done deal.”
I turned to you, grinning, and said, “State of the art, baby.”
You shrugged and nodded at the same time.
“What size shoe?” the employee asked us.
You told him your size and I said, “Sometimes a twelve, but sometimes a thirteen.”
He slapped a size twelve and a half onto the counter.
“Whoa, man. Twelve and a half? Thank you.”
We paid and headed to the bar. I held my shoes up, showing you the 12 ½ printed on the heel.
“I can’t believe they had a twelve and a half,” I said.
“I think it’s pretty standard.”
You didn’t understand.
“I feel like I should tip him.” I looked back at the employee. He was helping someone else now, looking sleepy and annoyed.
“He was kind of a dick.”
There was one bartender, busy filling a tall tube with a spout at the end full of beer.
“Check it out,” I said. “A hundred twenty ounces. That’s like a full twelve pack.”
“That’s ten beers,” you said.
“Sure is. Should we get one?”
“No way, that’s fucking gross.”
“Really? Why?”
“How do you think they clean those? Rinse them out with a hose? No way they’re sanitized.”
Maybe they had a sort of chimney sweep tool they jammed in the tube to scrub it, but I doubted it.
“You’re right,” I said.
“Plus, it’ll get all warm and flat before we drink it all.”
“You’re right,” I said again. “Fuck.”
We ordered beers – boring ass regular size beers – and took them to the arcade.
It’d been a while since I’d been in an arcade, and this one being billed as state of the art had me all excited.
“What the fuck?” I said when I saw it. I said it louder than I meant to.
“That guy said fuck,” said a little kid, walking past.
“I heard him,” said his little kid buddy.
The arcade had a bunch of claw machines in the middle, like an island, and your standard ticket winning games like basketball toss and whac-a-mole along the walls. The featured attractions were two ten-foot screens – one showing a giant version of Pacman, the other Asteroid.
We stood under the ten-foot Asteroid screen.
“State of the art?” I said. “You can’t take a forty-year-old game, put it on a big ass screen, and call it state of the art.”
“So you don’t want to play it?”
“God no.”
We picked the basketball toss. You were a hotshot ball player in high school, supposedly. You were also super competitive.
A couple kids came over holding basketballs from the game.
“You can pull them out from underneath,” one said. “You don’t have to pay.”
“Yeah,” you said, “but then it doesn’t keep score, right?”
The kid stared off, passed his basketball from hand to hand.
“Which machine did you take that ball from?” you asked him.
He pointed at the one you stood in front of.
You held out your hand, made a beckoning motion for the ball. The kid handed it over. He looked defeated. I knew that look. It said, ‘I tried to help someone and got fucked over.’
“Good idea though, man,” I said. I brought up my fist for a bump. There was a second where he just looked at my fist. Like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to touch it. Another second passed – enough time to wonder if the little shit was really gonna me hanging.
But he didn’t, thank God. He balled up his fist and gave me a hesitant little bump.
Fuck yeah, brother.
At first I threw up bricks, one after another. I could see you from the corner of my eye, in the zone, knocking down baskets.
Then I made one.
Swish.
And another.
Swish.
I caught a rhythm, didn’t look down to pick up fresh balls, just locked in on the front of the rim and let my hands work their automatic magic.
Swish. Swish. Swish.
“Three, two, one,” the kid behind us announced.
The buzzer buzzed.
I looked at my score, at yours. I won, by one basket. You looked pissed.
“Again,” you said.
We inserted our prepaid arcade cards and the balls released.
Swish, my net went. Swish. Swish. Swish.
“Three, two, one,” the kid announced.
The buzzer buzzed.
I won, again. By one point, again. You looked pissed, again.
“One more,” you said.
I pointed at the card slot. “It says two fifty a game. We’re out of money.
“I’m getting more.”
Most of the balls were still free of the game’s lock, and I motioned to the kid, told him the balls were all his.
“Thanks,” he said, and started to toss them at the basket.
The balls went – Swish. Swish. Swish.
“Kid’s good,” I said and followed you to the kiosk, but right when you were about to slide your credit card, they announced our name.
Our lane was open.
It was time for the main event – bowling.
But I don’t want to talk about bowling.
What I want to talk about is the people dressed as animals in the next lane. Furries, they’re called.
We were assigned to the first of the regular walk-in lanes, and both teams in the league game next to us were fully geared up furries – dogs, a bear, a cute little wolf in a tutu, and all sorts of animals in the greater cat family.
Most of them seemed peaceful, but there was a faction wearing leather jackets and heavy chains and studded collars. One of the rough bunch was dressed as a fox with a spiky mohawk, completely immersed in his sly routine. I watched him sneak behind the bear furry, do the old tap-one-shoulder-but-stand-on-the-other-side. The bear’s head blocked his peripheral vision and he kept falling for it.
“I can’t keep my eyes off them,” I said while lacing up my sweet size twelve and a half shoes.
“They want you to watch,” you said.
The fox was onto other mischief, like stealing people’s beer and running a few steps away and pretending to drink them. All sly like.
“This guy is great,” I said.
And we bowled.
Everything was going pretty well, but a tiger from the furry crew kept crossing over onto our side. It wasn’t intentional or anything, but there were a few times where we were winding up to roll the ball and the tiger’s ass backed damn near into us and we’d have to give each other lame, embarrassed-to-be-dominated looks.
“Next time he does it, I’m gonna grab his tail,” you said.
“No. No way. You never grab an animal’s tail.”
“Watch me.”
I didn’t doubt you. I never doubted you.
Sure enough, the next time the tiger’s ass came pushing its way into our lane, you reached out and gave his tail a proper tug.
The tiger turned and said, “Hey! Did you just pull my tail? That’s not cool.”
“Then quit wagging it all over our lane,” you said.
“You never pull an animal’s tail,” said the tiger.
The cute little wolf furry came up beside the tiger and bent over in front of you, lifted her tutu and exposed her tail, swayed back and forth seductively to make it wag.
You giggled and gave the tail a tug.
The wolf put her hand over her mouth all bashful and skipped away giggling. You came and sat next to me, a grin across your face.
We watched a bulldog furry follow around the cute wolf and act theatrically jealous until the wolf finally relented and bent over and lifted her tutu. The bulldog gave her tail a tug.
The wolf straightened and hugged the bulldog, her head against his chest. She was tiny and looked safe in his arms. They stood together like that, slightly swaying to the melody of clattering pins.
“I like bowling,” you said, and interlaced your fingers in mine.
I lifted your hand and kissed the back of it.
“Me too.”
We were getting along really well just then.
Alex Rost runs a commercial printing press outside of Buffalo, NY
