While on vacation recently, I got an urge I haven't felt in years, and decided to walk down to an adult bookstore I know of in the neighborhood, to see what action, if any, I might find in the back room. The last time I'd been down there, the place had been pretty grungy, but the whole area has been renovated in the past decade, so I hoped the businesses around there would have been improved as well.
When I got there, the main room of the store was bright and clean, and well organized, with a young man in jeans and a t-shirt behind the counter. There were about a half-dozen men, mostly in their late 20's to late 30's, looking through a wide selection of videotapes and magazines. Unlike most such stores I'd visited in my misspent youth, there was no real dividing line between gay and straight material, and the racks were set up so that you could easily be looking at straight stuff on one, then turn around and have gay or lesbian or bondage or whatever behind you.
After checking out the selection available for sale (which had apparently expanded and improved dramatically in the past years), I went to the counter and bought a couple of dollars worth of tokens (also a new idea for me), and went into the hall that led to the bathroom and video booth room. No rank smell greeted me, as it so often had in years gone by, and there was a display case with 16 boxes in it mounted on the wall, showing the videos that you could see. Apparently the management had decided to alternate between straight and gay videos, probably to cater to the clientele, which in that area was at least half gay, and often militant about it.
I checked out the offerings (which were mostly fairly subtle in their presentation, though by no means always), and walked through the red velour curtain into the video area. This was somewhat familiar to me, though still a drastic change from the old days. The booths were small, but each had a padded seat, and a 90-degree angle between its opening and the room itself, which meant that to look at its occupant a person would have to make a definite effort, attracting attention. There were also prominent displays of posters announcing local laws and AIDS centers. Of the dozen or so booths in the place, 3 or 4 had the lights over their doorways lit, announcing the fact that they were occupied.
I walked slowly through the place, checking out the atmosphere (mostly pine-sol), and scoping out what I could of the occupants without being obvious or obnoxious. A couple of booths bald middle-aged men sitting quietly, watching movies. A token machine, much like a regular change machine, sat by the door. Finally, the booths furthest from the door were different from the rest.
The booth in the wall that backed onto the shop was about six feet from the wall facing it, to leave room for an emergency door. This left the opening into the booth facing out into an open, dark area. The two booths on the other side of the room faced each other, which was necessary to make the last booth accessible without walking through a wall. I sat in the booth by the door, and fed in a couple of tokens, watching the room with one eye.
About two or so minutes later (just before the second token ran out), a young man walked into the room (I could see the light change as he opened the curtain), and walked slowly but certainly to the last booth on the other wall. As I'd suspected, I could see him somewhat from where I was sitting, and when he looked over at me, I got the impression that he'd chosen his place as carefully.
I fed in another token, and waited, flipping through the available selections almost absent-mindedly, while waiting to see what would happen next. The young man also fed in a couple of tokens, and I could tell by the sound coming from his booth that he was also channel-surfing. I guess there's nowhere men don't always look for something more interesting. A few seconds passed, and the man shifted a bit, occasionally peeking out through his doorway toward my side of the room. Only his shoulder and a bit of his hip were visible to me, so when the third token ran out on me, I decided to be a little bit more proactive, and check things out.
