Short story I'm working on (he works?!)
The inside of the booth was lined with mahogany tiles, most likely fake wood paneling, but it was too dim to tell. The only source of light was what little diffused from the long flickering fluorescent bulb covered by a white panel in the ceiling. A short orange bench lay in the room's center; it had no back support or arm rests. The machine was in the right corner of the room: it was a silver coin slot in the center of a black box. Above the slot a small white sticker read "$1" in black text. In the left corner of the booth was a white tissue dispenser, duct tape lining some of its edges:
"PLEASE HELP KEEP THE PLACE CLEAN: USE PAPER IN DISPENSER. THANK YOU." It was empty.
This was my fourth trip to the same booth. Each time I couldn't help imagining the men who had no doubt hunched over the bench, pumping quarters into the machine until they came. Then they'd stare into the darkness with a limp dick in their hand, regretting everything. Again I didn't want to sit, but I couldn't see clearly into the peep show window otherwise. My four quarters slid in with a hollow whir and rattled in the base of the machine. The black cover on the other side of the glass rose and a dim piss-yellow light filled my booth.
She was in the background, dancing; I could make out the pale skin of her hips as she danced at another window. She wore black knee-highs, a red thong, and newly dyed auburn hair that waved stiffly over the small of her back. Her right arm was bent at the elbow and she cupped her neck in her hand; the other hung to the side and swung left to right with her hips.
I could see the silhouette of a man in the other booth between the opening and closing of her legs. After a few moments a black cover fell over his booth window. She moved away and lurched toward mine, still dancing. I held my hand over my mouth to cover my face and bent my head forward, peering up at her. Her face and breasts pointed upward as she approached my window: only the undulation of her stomach, thong and hips paid me any attention. I tried to find where her eyes were pointing, but the dim red spotlight of the showroom centered on her torso. I could only hope she regretted every moment up there, like these men who get off watching her. This was my wife, my fucking wife. The window closed again. I took a Kleenex out of my coat pocket and fumbled for the door.
I had questioned the cashier of the porn shop upstairs before I first used the booth. I entered under the pretense that I was a customer. Thinking I needed to look a certain way, I wore my black raincoat and a baseball cap that I had bought off a street vendor in Manhattan just an hour prior. I looked at a wall of porn magazines before choosing one: Teen Sluts Drain Your Nuts. The assonance caught me.
"What else you got in here?" He looked up, surprisingly from a book, fixing on me with black dot eyes. He had a wide, chubby nose with a low, stern dark gray brow. His curly afro of unkempt, thinning gray hair and washed-out green plaid shirt rolled up at the shoulders told me he must own the place.
"Movies in the back room, VHS and DVD." He looked back down at his book and pointed at the red neon peep show sign in the shop's window to his left.
"Dollar for two minutes- some nice ladies down there."
"Yeah?"
"Just take the stairs." My friend Steve had tipped me off to my wife's employment here a few weeks prior, but I didn't believe him- how would he know?
"Another bender? Woke up in a booth, right?"
"I'm serious," he said. "Rob recognized her, okay? Well, we both went. This is all beside the point- your wife is stripping behind your back and who knows what else, man. What the fuck?"