The Big Metal Stomach

At nine years old I was able to produce a boner, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I tried rubbing it. Nothing happened. It just turned red. So I decided to hump a pillow. That was nice. It made me feel like the guy with fluffy hair that was humping Morgan Fairchild in the Cinemax movies I’d been watching. I started humping pillows in the living room, right in front of my parents as they sat in their armchairs reading the New York Times. “Watch this!” I cried. They didn’t care. They were hippies. For months I’d been begging them to buy me a dog, but they wouldn’t have it. They were vegetarians but they hated animals. “They shit everywhere,” said my father. So I asked for a cat instead. They said they didn’t like the smell of cats. Besides, who would look after the dog or cat when we went on vacation? No, it was too much responsibility. “No pets,” they said. Now that I was humping pillows and becoming a pervert, however, it seemed to me they no longer had much of a choice. I needed a pet in order to be healthy again, in order to be like the other children. “Don’t you see what’s happening?” I said. “I watch too much TV.” Every day I came at them with a different argument. After awhile I began to notice a new expression on their faces. It was guilt. I had them. If they couldn’t buy me a pet, they would have to buy me something else. And this is how I ended up with the Coleco Vision game console.

One month later and my basement bedroom had turned into a sort of terrorist training hideout. I’d always had friends coming over — neighborhood kids, classmates, kids of my father’s coworkers — and we’d always found things to do. But with Coleco Vision our lives had purpose. Now if we ate or drank something, it was fuel for gaming. If we went for a swim at the municipal pool, it was to cool our fingers for more gaming. The electronic noises were reconfiguring our neural pathways. Our thumbs and eyeballs were being re-geared for greater sophistication. When the aliens invaded the planet, whom would they choose as the prime specimens of humankind? It would be us, the electro-athletes.

The year was 1985 and Coleco had the best graphics of any console on the market. “Sorry, Atari” was the tagline from the TV commercial. Since it was my Coleco, I had the privilege of practicing more than anyone else. I set all the high scores. The only other player to come close was a half-Chippewa Indian named Littlepaw. My ego was big enough that I encouraged Littlepaw to beat me. I needed the competition. Sometimes I let Littlepaw sleep over at the house. Mornings he would show up at the breakfast table with a blanket wrapped around him like a toga, reeking of urine — he was a bed-wetter. After a couple bowls of cereal the two of us would return to the basement and play a few warm-up games. When our other friends showed up, we’d let them play. We’d sit at the back of the room and smile at their inadequacies. They seemed to be having fun, which for us was beside the point. A true gamer was after power and domination. Inevitably someone would ask if we wanted to play. “No no, you go ahead,” we’d say. If we got bored, we might step in with a pointer or two — especially if there were girls present. Finally one of us would reluctantly grab the controls and yawn. Then we would destroy everyone’s hopes of having a future in video games.

It wasn’t long before Littlepaw and I felt the need to test our skills on a larger playing field, a place where money was at stake. Our town’s most important video arcade sat in a row of buildings just around the corner from the Red Carpet bar. We made our debut there on a sunny day in the middle of June.

It was dark and wet inside the arcade, filled with a blue electronic haze. There was a row of games on each side of the room, with a token machine at the back where a manager sat behind a little desk. I noticed right away that Littlepaw and I were the shortest people in the house.

We set to work. Littlepaw went for Tron and I took over the Track and Field, the game where you drum two “run” buttons as hard and fast as you can. After that we played Mario Brothers, Paperboy, and Galaga. It was all warm-up at this point, getting used to the new environment . . . Then we noticed a small crowd gathering around the Centipede machine. Some guy was setting a new record. I remember he was wearing a baseball hat with a nicely shampooed rattail streaming out the back. We walked over to watch him play.

“This guy is good!” said Littlepaw.

As soon as Littlepaw said this, the guy stopped playing. He turned around, grabbed Littlepaw’s shirt and shoved him across the room.

“WHO YOU CALLIN’ GUY!!”

It turned out the guy was actually a girl — a bony Latino girl with a rattail.

The manager showed up. “Take it outside!”

Rattail’s friend was standing over me now. All bad acne and buckteeth. She was a foot and a half taller and outweighed me by at least fifty pounds.

The manager decided to join us outside. He gathered the four of us in a circle around a parking meter.

“What’s this about?” he said.

“This shitfuck called me a guy!” said Rattail.

“It was a mistake,” said Littlepaw.

The manager didn’t look well. He was running his fingers through his hair, clenching his teeth as if about to vomit.

“I just said she was good at Centipede,” Littlepaw went on.

Rattail Girl was still in battle mode. Her friend was red-faced, picking her boobs up and fuming. I couldn’t believe the manager wasn’t defending us. For a second I thought he was going to let the girls throw punches. Instead he asked them back inside the building.

They didn’t move.

He pleaded with them. “Please ladies, please go back inside. I’ll handle this.”

Finally the girls left, after spitting at our shoes.

The manager turned to us, wiping his forehead: “I’m gonna have to ban you from the arcade.”

Littlepaw: “What?”

I thought I was dreaming.

“You’re both banned,” he said as he walked back to the arcade. “Don’t come back.”

We walked home.

The whole thing was nonsense. I could only imagine how emasculated Littlepaw felt. The arcades weren’t ready for us. Either that or Cloud Two, Minnesota was the wrong place to be chasing our dreams. Minneapolis was just an hour away, and that was where Prince had thirteen girlfriends, where Prince was five feet tall and nailing his father’s girlfriend at age 12. For the next couple weeks we were listless and unmotivated — Littlepaw much more than me. I felt sorry for him. With no desire to play Coleco or visit another arcade, the two of us settled into our usual summer routine of sitting at the municipal swimming pool, making trips to the snack bar. Littlepaw would eat popcorn while I watched our friend Bjorn’s sister rub suntan oil all over her body. I wondered if she would ever care that I was a Coleco champion. I daydreamed about her and me, about doing something that would impress and overwhelm her, I’d be exactly like Ferris Bueller. I started thinking about the idea of sex, about how it worked . . . when a log of feces floated by.

It was a human turd, right there in the swimming pool. A few people screamed, everyone jumped out. The lifeguards had to bring out one of those nets for collecting leaves and moths. “It’s just like in Caddyshack,” I said to Littlepaw. “Except instead of a candy bar it’s a real shit.”

We would have hopped a train and escaped Cloud Two for good, if not for the miracle that happened next.

Our local Coburn’s grocery store had just acquired a new video game, replacing the old Pole Position machine that had been sitting near the entrance since as long as we could remember. The day we first spotted the new machine, Littlepaw and I were walking out the store with our Sunday donut bags.

I remember thinking it wasn’t a real video game. It was more like a film. All the usual crude 1980s pixelated graphics had been replaced by rich, fluid Disney animation. “Dragon’s Lair,” said the voiceover. “The fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon.” A series of grotesque cartoon characters flooded the screen — skeletons, lizard kings, purple-lipped ogres running around with squiggly daggers. At the end of it all was a blonde princess named Daphne, filling the screen like a ribbon in a marble. She was all lips and skin, wrapped in transparent black lace. You only saw her for a second as she drew her legs up and squealed as if penetrated from a surprise angle. My heart collapsed when I saw her. I would have had a boner if not for the chill rushing up my spine. Daphne was the woman Tawny Kitaine and Heather Locklear aspired to be, she was the inspiration for all the Ratt and Van Halen songs that still form the general architecture of my psyche.

I’d already shoved two quarters into the machine before Littlepaw had a chance to think. Now I was controlling Dirk, the valiant knight. On my first game I didn’t even make it into the castle. I lost two lives trying to get past the tentacles that slapped out of the moat and tugged Dirk underwater. On my last life I managed to sword the tentacles, only to fall off the drawbridge as it drew up behind me. The game was hard as fuck.

Littlepaw managed only a little better. He got into the castle, but in the first room a set of snakes crept out and strangled him.

We were out of quarters.

Our minds were doing cartwheels. Dragon’s Lair was unlike anything we’d ever played. It wasn’t nearly as intuitive as moving a spaceship back and forth at the bottom of a Galaga screen. All that Disney animation was guided by a fairly rudimentary set of actions — you either shoved the joystick up, down, left or right, or tapped the sword button or the jump button. But your timing had to be near perfect in order to slip into the next animation sequence. Basically, you had to memorize the moves.

On the way home Littlepaw and I were jumping all over the alleyways, kicking gravel at the garage windows. We had found a new purpose.

The next day we asked my mother for money — for Grab Bags.

“But it’s Monday,” she said. “I thought Grab Bags were on Sundays.”

“No. They’re every day now,” I said.

She refused us the money. Said it wasn’t healthy to eat Grab Bags every day.

Littlepaw had an idea. He told my mother that we could try the barbecue lettuce burger instead. It was a new innovation that was just a little more expensive than the Grab Bag, he explained.

Mother believed it. She gave us four dollars each.

Dragon’s Lair, Day Two. We both managed to get past the snake room, only to fall into an abyss when the bricks crumbled beneath Dirk’s feet. We discovered that if you nudge the joystick left and then forward, Dirk somersaults onto firm ground, but unless you immediately jump over to the one remaining brick, he won’t make it. This took another two days to figure out.

We needed more money. We told our mothers that the barbecue lettuce burger came with a salad for just a dollar more. And since we did such a good job eating all that lettuce, why not allow us an ice cream cone for dessert? Whether they believed us or not was irrelevant. We had the quarters, and more quarters meant faster learning, which in turn meant longer and longer sessions at the joystick. When we ran out of excuses, we settled on the truth. “There’s a new game at Coburn’s,” I announced one day. “Can we have money to play?” That worked too. Soon it was morning, noon and night with the skeletons, ogres and slimes, the Giddy Goons, Dirk’s yelping and Daphne squealing “save me!” as the dragon’s tail snatched her back through a trap door.

We were catching more and more glimpses of Daphne now. I was salivating. I was Pavlov’s dog. An earthquake or a revolution couldn’t have torn me away from that machine. Meanwhile the grocery store traffic flowed around us like a Koyaanisqaatsi assembly line. Mothers and daughters arrived in their Buicks and brown Oldsmobiles. Stuffed shopping carts rolled by as the sun glided from East to West outside the deli windows. By evening, mobs of drunk college students gave way to the divorcees and the liquor store customers. Some frat boy or bum would walk by saying, “Hey, look at these dorks — they’re getting good.”

By the end of July we had reached one of the most difficult levels in the game — the room of the Dark Knight. He stabbed his sword into the floor, sending crooked networks of electrical charge down a wide checkerboard of death. It took more than a week to memorize the intricate set of acrobatics required to traverse the grid without letting so much as a toenail come in contact with an electrified square.

More worlds opened up — an underground river rapids where Dirk paddles a rowboat through whirlpools and stalagmite growths, a Tron-like gauntlet filled with giant rolling marbles, and the cave of the Lizard King — the castle’s architect — who chases you through piles of broken china.

The wheels of progress were nicely oiled. I went to bed every night content in the knowledge that new Dragon’s Lair universes would unfold before me, forever and ever, just like new television shows. I was feeling good about myself. And then Littlepaw had to ruin everything.

“I beat the game,” he told me one day.

I didn’t believe him.

“So what are you saying? You just go in and slay the dragon?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You kill the dragon and save the princess. What did you think happens?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that you could beat an arcade game. It was then I realized that Littlepaw was a greater talent than I, and that he was possibly more intelligent too. At the same time, he must have been coming into Coburn’s on his own time without telling me. It angered me at first, but in the end I was too focused on the game. I could capitalize on Littlepaw’s friendship now. He could help me get to Daphne.

It took me two weeks. I insisted on doing as much as possible on my own, and only needed Littlepaw’s help on four or five key levels. More often than not a few words was enough — “go left and then right really fast” or “wait till the last second, then jump up.”

The day I first entered the dragon’s lair it was like I’d burst out of a bubble, like I was breathing different air. All that pain, death and torment fell away, leaving only this perfect glowing uterus of luxury. Inside the lair I was surrounded by piles of gold and sparkling jewelry. Dirk jumped on a little treasure chest and rode it like a skateboard down a mountain of coins, landing right at the base of the dragon. Daphne was there. She was floating inside of a crystal ball, sleeping. The dragon was sleeping too, snoring and breathing smoke.

Daphne woke up. She spotted Dirk and had one of her spontaneous orgasms. My eyes watered . . . She was half-naked, high heels, blonde hair tumbling down. She shoved her ass out and squirmed, and then she read her lines — badly — like an actress in a porn film: “Please save me. The cage is locked with the key. The dragon keeps it around his neck.” Pause, clever smile. “To slay the dragon, use the magic sword.”

A shaft of light revealed the magic sword, stuck in a purple gem. I flicked the joystick. Dirk rushed forward and tugged at it — like Excalibur — until it came out, glowing and sparkling. The dragon woke up, furious, breathing fire. And then he chased Dirk all over the lair, through canyons and grand avenues that meandered through the endless expanse of treasure. It dawned on me that the lair is actually one of the easiest stages in the game. It’s more a victory lap than anything else, full of open spaces, room to celebrate. I was euphoric, dancing away from the dragon at every turn, hiding behind treasure chests, jumping over piles of rubies and emeralds.

When the moment of truth finally arrived, all it took was one jerk of the joystick and a tap of the sword button. Dirk jumped out from his hiding place and thrust the sword into the dragon’s stomach. The dragon slumped to the ground and died. Daphne cheered. Dirk grabbed the key from around its neck. By this time Daphne was standing up inside her crystal bubble — bristling, squirming, anticipating. I took my hands off the controls. It was a show now — all for me. Dirk smiled and inserted the key. The glass shattered. Daphne was exposed now. She combed her hair back, crouched down and leapt into Dirk’s arms. Together at last! Dirk was cross-eyed and dizzy. Daphne kissed him on the cheek and they were framed by a heart. The end.

That night I could barely sleep, I was filled up with my accomplishment. Buzzing, endlessly fantasizing. I was a winner now, a champion. What would Bjorn’s sister think of me now?

As soon as Littlepaw heard that I’d beaten the game, he showed up at the house with a new mission.

He wanted to go to the arcade.

“Just for fun,” he said. And with that he slapped two twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen table.

“Where‘d you get that?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

And so we marched downtown with more cash than we’d ever had in our lives. Littlepaw insisted on spending it all in one day, which seemed insane at the time. In a way I felt honored by the suggestion. I stopped caring about how he’d gotten the money — We were a hundred-feet tall now. We walked through Cloud Two, Minnesota as Dragon’s Lair champions — walked past the comic book store and the record store and the Red Carpet bar, past the Norwest Bank and the Radisson Hotel. Nothing could stop us, not even the budding lesbians and their pansy manager. Could we really be banned from an arcade?

When we got there our mood was perfectly contrary to when we’d first visited. There were no particular games to conquer, no hoops to jump through. With forty dollars we could behave like celebrities. We could lose games on purpose if we wanted to. So when we arrived at the token machine and noticed that there was a new manager on duty, it was just more icing on the cake. I was surprised he didn’t notice us when 160 tokens came spitting out the machine.

There were too many tokens to count, so we just filled our pockets. Front pockets, back pockets, side pockets. It was like carrying machine gun rounds.

To describe what took place over the next five hours is like trying to describe a primary color. We were bathing in a drug called Joy. We played everything. For five hours that arcade was hovering above the earth in a cottony world of limitless tokens. It was a Journey song. It was carefree, limitless possibility like I’ve never experienced before or since.

When we walked out, the sun was on its way down over the Mississippi. Our fingers reeked of metal and our ears were ringing.

That night my mother reported $40 missing from her purse. Littlepaw had stolen the money, of course. I’d been clueless the whole time. I had the same reaction as when Littlepaw told me he’d beaten Dragon’s Lair. I was angry for about two minutes, then I realized what a genius he was.

The two of us didn’t hang out much after that. I ended up joining the Cub Scouts and Littlepaw got heavy into shoplifting. Six years later I was an Eagle Scout and he was in prison.