Outside of the Suck Shack I try, and fail, to light a blunt. The wind is too much. It whips down I-70, attempts to offset the constant flow of interlopers. The billboard outside of the Shack—Shackled By Lust? printed in bold, black lettering—threatens to topple. I secure the blunt between my lips anyway, savor the sweetness of the tobacco leaf, and watch cars, vans, mid-size SUVs, and semis fight against the wind, half hoping one takes the exit, loops back around to the Porn Palace. They do not. One after another, they continue on, attempting to outrun the spring storm that’s begun to creep up and across the state.

Really, it’s not the Suck Shack or the Porn Palace, but a Quonset hut. Or rather, it is the Suck Shack, just not officially. If you were to search the internet for either Suck Shack or Porn Palace, you would almost assuredly find adjacent materials, maybe even an address, but it would not be an address for here, specifically, because here, specifically, is Dave’s Adult Video Emporium, which I find as cumbersome as I do generic. And too, Dave’s boasts the last active glory hole in Howard County. So, it’s the Suck Shack, or if I’m meaning to be less vulgar, the Porn Palace, which I recognize is just as generic as Dave’s Adult Video Emporium, but offers at the very least an alliterative twist.

During a brief break in the wind, I try, again, to light my blunt and find success. I inhale deeply, hold it, hold it, let go.

The incoming weather would mean a slow day. A betting day. I alternate taking pulls of the weed and scrolling through the relevant applications on my phone. When I receive a text message, I swipe it up and away. Via these applications, I navigate my local bank account, from which I would transfer money, to the cryptocurrency broker, where I’d exchange American tender for something universal, untraceable, to, finally, the application on which the fight streams and bookmakers were obscured by poor translations and a facade of being a legitimate nature publication concerned with documenting wildlife, where I would exchange the cryptocurrency for Japanese yen. I transfer two hundred—less than usual, but enough to last my shift—and place ¥7500 on a camel spider scheduled to fight in fifteen minutes. Halfway through the blunt, the sky breaks.

In four years of employment at the Suck Shack, I had not once met the eponymous Dave, not even at my interview, not even signing my paperwork. Instead, I interviewed with Misty, a butch long-haul trucker that served as a, mostly remote, general manager. Between bouts on the road, Misty would be at the Shack, locked in the small rear office, where she’d chain smoke vanilla cigarillos and talk on a Bluetooth headset, laughing that husky laugh she has. In the truck, she’d call in at quarter-to-close, ask how the day went, then start in on whatever she had come across on her travels. Once, Misty told me that she found a body in the stall of a rest area bathroom. The walls were covered with blood and shit. The smell, she had said, was unholy. Highway patrol held her for three hours and required of her both an oral and written statement and at the end of it all, the death was deemed an accident. And, Misty had said, wasn’t the cherry on top of that shit sundae that the lost time ate up all her profit? And there was Gavin, who I sensed had some blood relation to Misty, and who worked the shifts opposite mine, and who had a habit of making the customers uncomfortable. Online reviews of Dave’s provided a rap sheet of Gavin’s misdeeds: leering, lip-licking, unwanted touching. In one review, Gavin is charged with proposing the customer “try it on” and give him a show. Otherwise, it was just me.

Which, as you might imagine, afforded certain benefits unlisted on my official paperwork. Rarely did I have to report to anyone. When Misty called, a brief all good sufficed, and when she was in the shop, she was either on the phone in her office or rooting through various cases of deadstock product cluttering the padlocked shed we kept outside of the Shack. I could make bets on my phone. There were cameras aimed at the counter area, but they were only props, meant to deter horny would-be shoplifters, and would not capture my on-the-clock gambling. I could get high. It wasn’t all bad. The pay could have been better.

In the time it takes me to flick the cherry off the blunt, to walk from my truck to the front door, the rain evolves from slow, fat droplets to sharp, surging sheets. The slow creep of the high starts in my brain. Thirteen minutes until the fight. I load a sampler DVD provided by a distributor, which shows a ninety-minute compilation highlighting the wettest and wildest in pornographic media, and play it on mute. I switch on the neons: the busty blonde cowgirl bending at the waist and snapping back up, the stack of text blinking sequentially CLEAN and then PRIVATE and then BOOTHS, the mustached man licking the lollipop, the OPEN sign bolted onto the corrugated steel front panel of the Quonset. I stock the counter products, disposable cock rings and glow-in-the-dark condoms and lube that tastes like strawberry jam. I prop my phone up, in such a way that I’d have full view of the screen without sacrificing my view of the store, against a box of areola shaped suckers. Two minutes. The bell over the front door rings.

She’s wearing jeans, an oversized sweatshirt, a small leather bag slung on her shoulder. Inside, she pulls the sweatshirt’s hood back. Her hair—half blonde, half black and worn in a sharp bob—is dry. The sweatshirt is wet but not drenched. I look beyond her, past the front door, but can see only a corner of my Ranger’s tailgate. Was she dropped off? For a moment, I wonder if she had somehow gotten into the shed. One minute until the match. In my peripheral vision, I can see that the live feed has begun, the camera focuses on the arena. Fuck, I think.

“Welcome to Dave’s,” I say. “It’s really dumping out there.”

The woman looks left, then right, then at me exactly. Her hand moves to her bag, as if she’s getting ready to protect herself, as if she wasn’t expecting me.

“Hey,” she says, smiling a small half-smile. Her hand drops back to her side. With the other, she hitches her bag strap. Twenty seconds.

I glance at my phone. A handler is urging a camel spider out of a plastic container and into the arena, which has been designed to look like a colosseum. The pinned bodies of grasshoppers and 3D-printed figures make up the audience. A colorful countdown begins on the screen and beyond it, I can see the praying mantis being prodded off a stick, and the countdown ends and an animation of confetti explodes around text exclaiming in broken English, Let’s Going On!

Before the action really starts, I say, “Is there anything I can help you find,” and look up and away from the phone, but the woman has already begun weaving through aisles and, though I can hear her response, I’m unable to see her.

“Just looking,” she says, maybe by the bondage restraints, handcuffs (metal variant), handcuffs (fuzzy variant), and Shibari ropes.

“Well, uh,” I say, glad to stay behind the counter, “let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure,” she says, this time maybe by the pocket pussies, Fantasy Fucks Elf Strokers, and oscillating cock sleeves.

On the stream, the mantis, a pugilist, goes arear, tibial spines raised like skinny fists. The camel spider, taking wide laps around the circumference of the arena, looks alien, or maybe what an alien would conceive of if it were to hear the words camel and spider paired in context. It is tan, brown markings atop the protective tergites running down the length of the creature’s body. From the stream cam’s vantage point, the camel spider’s head looks vaguely vulvar, its chelicerae are pink and swollen and hairlike setae grow out and over the pincers. A pair of tiny red beadlet eyes sit centered in the arachnid’s crown. On the screen, an animated illustration demonstrates the rhythmic back-and-forth articulation of the camel spider’s jaws.

It had been, I would say, a particularly brutal streak of misfortune vis-à-vis the gambling. In an attempt to compensate for recent losses, I began betting—and losing—more. I quickly burned through the savings I had amassed after hitting a successful eight-leg parlay promotion the application had offered during a spider themed tournament. And now I’m into emergency funds. A little left. Two hundred less. A win here would help, would, probably, in actuality, be necessary to cover rent.

The camel spider takes several uneventful laps and, perhaps settling into a state of comfortability, is caught unawares by the giant mantis’ raptorial legs striking downward, an attempt to snare its opponent. And my breath hitches, but the attempt is a miss, and the camel spider begins to move more chaotically and, upon realizing it is unable to escape the threat via climbing up the arena walls, begins to move more quickly. A new graphic appears on the screen now, a bolt of lightning with kanji superimposed over the top, but all I can make out is the flashing text exclaiming 16kmh!

I glance up, scan the store, still can’t see her. In the convex security mirror installed in the far corner of the Suck Shack, I make out a distorted approximation of her form, nearer now, by the shelf displaying the various supplements we offer—Spanish Fly gummies, tablets that exponentially increase arousal and load size, several types of pills for harder erections, longer-lasting erections, more satisfying erections, and stamina gel-packs.

The camel spider moves more purposefully, its laps around the arena now hit-and-run strikes. The mantis appears flustered at the attacks, staves the camel spider off with defensive jabs. The arachnid is tenacious, persistent, its ferocious labial pincers articulating wildly. It snaps at the mantis, attempts to grab onto its foe with thick, segmented pedipalps. But if the camel spider is all frenetic hostility, the giant mantis is patient, calculating, and its next strike is accurate. Pinned to the ground, the camel spider flails. The mantis takes control, leans in to find the arachnid’s soft abdomen, bites.

“Motherfuck,” I say, more loudly than I intend, partially because of the lost yen, and partially because, in my preoccupation with the insect gladiators, I did not notice the woman’s arrival at the counter.

“Sorry,” she says, but she smiles a new kind of smile, like she’s fulfilled, or not fulfilled but getting there. Like the mere act of scaring me just now got her revved up.

I say, “no,” and “I’m sorry,” and “all ready?”

Now, at the counter, I see her better.

She’s my age, maybe, maybe a couple of years younger. The name of a university is embroidered on the front of her sweatshirt. Not the local university but one nearby. In the same conference, perhaps. Midwest definitely. I can see that her bag is heavy by the way it sinks into her shoulder. She looks tired. Determined.

“No,” she says. “I mean, what’s wrong?”

“Oh,” and then, “you scared the shit out of me.”

She laughs and something inside me shifts, some new kind of endorphin binding the nerves in my brain.

“Uh,” I say.

She looks expectant. Like she’s got all day.

“I lost,” I say, lifting the phone so that she can see the screen.

The giant praying mantis is clinging onto a miniature winner’s podium, and a cartoon crown is superimposed onto its head. Animated mylar confetti is raining down.

“What,” she says, “the fuck.” And then, again, that laugh, that shifting inside. And I laugh, too.

Her name is Sam, she says, and she’s just looking, she says. She does cam work, independent, none of that sketchy agency bullshit.

“I like to spice things up,” she says.

The shame and sting of the loss still feels hot in my face. I wonder if it’s visible, if Sam can see the guilt blooming on my skin, can track its movement across my cheeks and across my brow like a news anchor tracks a bad storm on a weather map.

“Ah,” I say. “Let me show you around.”

Sam hesitates at this. As if it’s unexpected that I’d offer to help. As if this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. She tugs at her bag, smiles.

I lead Sam, first, to our small offering of Erotica Gymnastica products, start in on the list of selling points provided by the manufacturer: the weight limits for each of the swings, that EG products are water and stain-proof, that the soft cover zipped around the Pushin’ Cushion floor mats are washing machine safe, but should be air dried instead of tumble. I’m halfway through the list of available colors offered directly through our distributor when Sam cuts me off.

“Maybe,” she says, “I don’t think I’m very dexterous.”

I take her, next, to the corner of the Quonset we referred to as The Wardrobe.

“What about a new personality,” I say. “Haven’t you ever wanted to be someone different? A new you?”

Sam laughs, flips through a series of clichés. Sexy maid. Sexy firefighter. Sexy nurse. She stops for a moment at sexy astronaut, then pivots to a shelf of props. She runs a finger through a faux tiger-skin carpet, looks at the generic label on a fake bottle of wine.

“We have an extensive selection of wigs,” I say.

Sam wanders away, back toward the counter. Cautious not to emulate Gavin’s creeping, I stall a moment, look at the small television playing the sampler DVD. The camera is low, angled upward on an actress’s wincing face. Behind her, an actor thrusts rhythmically, his fingers tucked in the space between the actress’s stomach and hips. Both actor and actress are overly-shined. The glare of studio lights on their slick bodies makes them look plastic. The actress’ eyes flutter in well-acted orgasmic bliss. The scene changes, and then I, too, begin to move.

I find Sam near the register, eyeing the bachelorette party favors lining the counter, and when she realizes that I’m near, she pivots again.

I take this as a hint. I take this as, maybe I should just do my damn job. I return behind the counter, to my phone, to the gambling.

I place another bet, ¥5000 on a rhinoceros beetle, and watch the fight while Sam continues browsing. The rhinoceros beetle is matched with a stag beetle, and it takes three or four minutes of the beetles clicking and poking and snapping at each other before the rhino is able to overturn the stag beetle, forcing a win by default. The payout covers only half of the yen I lost on my previous wager, but it is, I think, a step in the right direction.

There has been a reprieve to the rain. It is, I know, only the eye of the storm, the sense of calm a false one. The torrent will start anew soon. But it’s welcome, nonetheless, and offers an opportunity to smoke the remainder of the blunt. Sam has made it to the rearmost portion of the Shack, where customers could find several adult arcade machines, Misty’s office, and our three private viewing booths. And, between Booth II and Booth III, that pleasure portal, site of the sacred anonymous communal sex act: the glory hole.

“Um,” I say, loud enough to earn Sam’s attention. “If you’re still looking, I’m just going to step out for a smoke.” I point to the front door, the quickly lapsing break in the storm. She nods in acknowledgement.

“Come grab me if you need me,” I say, tucking the crutch end of the blunt back between my lips. “Don’t steal anything.”

Sam smiles.

The calm is startling. Even highway traffic seems muffled, distant. The air is still, and without the cold, cutting breeze, the day is comfortably tepid. I light the blunt with ease, the ashy, cauterized end flaring up an acrid puff. I take a pull, check my phone for missed messages (none), and then return to the Insect Sport World application.

“More bug porn?”

I’m immersed in numerical odds and searching my memory for stray facts about various arthropods, aphids, and arachnids, and her voice pulls me back into reality violently. The shock manifests in shaking hands, in an increased heart rate. I squeeze my lips to ensure the blunt does not fall, then, pinch it between thumb and pointer finger, return it to an idle state at my side.

“Jesus Christ,” I say.

“Sorry,” Sam says, “intrusive thoughts.”

“It’s not bug porn,” I say, returning blunt to lips. I turn my phone to Sam, inhale while she makes sense of the screen.

“This might be worse,” she says, gesturing for the blunt.

I offer the crutch end to her. She pulls on the weed, coughs.

“It’s not exactly like the Shack is a lucrative career choice,” I say.

“The Shack?”

I tilt my head toward the Quonset, then, understanding that alone would not suffice, explain.

“A glory hole here?” Sam is laughing at this, an infectious laugh that makes me laugh too, and then she’s closer to me, shoulder to shoulder, looking again at the phone.

“Let me pick,” she says.

We scroll through: black widow versus brown recluse; cricket battle royales; bald faced hornet versus yellowjacket; horned katydid versus owl butterfly; three jumping jack ants versus a single green-bellied huntsman spider; assassin bug versus ogre-faced spider; desert centipede versus desert trapdoor spider. What we settle on, what Sam settles on, is a tarantula hawk versus an Indian red scorpion.

I can recognize the lunacy of my actions as they are happening, and yet I cannot seem to stop myself from betting much higher than I know I should. ¥20000. The majority of my remaining balance. I place the wager on the tarantula hawk, and hope that my face, my body language, are not indicative of the sharp anxious pangs that have begun to prickle inside my gut. I focus on masking my worry, start instead to spiral into the anxiety, clam up.

We smoke the blunt until inhaling burns our lips and the first zephyrs along the eyewall of the storm begin to whip.

Sam breaks the silence.

“So,” she says, “have you ever done it?”

“What,” I say, “win a bet?”

Sam shakes her head, then mimics the way I had gestured to the Quonset hut a few moments before.

“Get sucked,” she says, “at the shack.”

Sam is smiling. Her lips tremble at the corners. But her words are blunt, resolute. I can’t parse it.

The Suck Shack’s primary demographic are long haul truckers, local lonely saps, tittering teenagers. On occasion, the truckers would arrive with a companion. Sometimes another trucker, sometimes tired, wiry looking women in yoga pants thinning at the knees. When Misty was in the shop, the truckers would stop at her office, shoot the shit for a few minutes. I assumed that some or all of the truckers were utilizing the glory hole, but suspected that most other customers were too chickenshit. I’d certainly never been propositioned, only questioned about the legitimacy of the glory hole’s existence by shithead kids. I need clarification. Confirmation.

“What?”

“Have you ever,” she’s speaking slowly, deliberately slow, a playful mocking, “had your dick sucked at the glory hole?”

No obfuscation remains. Sam’s smile has grown larger, toothier.

“Uh,” I say, suddenly hyper aware of my being, “I don’t, I mean.” My tongue feels swollen and heavy. It takes a moment of concentration to sync what I am saying with what my brain is projecting.

“No,” I finally say. The rain is picking up again.

“Want to?”

At the booths, I’m unable to decide whether to enter II or III. I wonder if there is an expectation as to which side of a glory hole belongs to the giver and which to the receiver. I wonder if it’s something like right and left-handedness. I did not, I realize, tell Sam which booth I’d be in, but a small window above the handle would indicate which door was locked and thus which booth occupied. I enter Booth III, flip the lock, pull out my phone.

Sam had directed me to the back, had said she was going to find a condom and freshen up. I showed her where we kept a shelf of condoms of all types. Flavored. Various textures. Studs. Ridges. Ruffles. Whatever. It was a ten for ten type deal. Customers filled a small paper bag with Dave’s branding on one side and The Shag Bag on the other.

“Think about me,” she had said, and, again, the shifting, the endorphins. Almost enough to distract from the knot in my stomach.

The fight is scheduled to begin in three minutes. I won’t, I suspect, be watching the match, but felt it best to double check the bet, my wager, the odds. On the screen, the tarantula hawk has been introduced to the arena, a new one, designed specifically for the fight. It stalks around artificial terrain. It looks pissed. The odds are the same as I remembered. The wager sends another pang radiating through my inside.

I set my phone on a small shelf along one wall of the booth and unbuckle my belt. Then, down pants, down boxers, and I’m standing in the booth with my pants at my ankles and, probably, maybe, because of the absurdity of it all, a soft dick. I wonder how much time I have until Sam makes it to the back of the Shack. I estimate just a few minutes at most, but am compelled, anyway, to make an effort. I retrieve my phone, open a second tab, navigate to Nudie Nexus and then to the Camgirl category, begin to scroll, offhand tugging at my flaccid penis. On pages one and two, I scan titles: Stuffing Myself ASMR, PayPigPen, Jenna’s Clubhouse. On pages three, four, and five, I switch to surveying thumbnails, attempt to find a match via hair color: blonde, black, blonde, blonde, bald, teal, black, blonde. Finally, having no luck in scanning or surveying, I begin backtracking to the categories, call an audible, attempt, instead, the search bar. Sam, I type.

Three minutes have elapsed. Sam still freshening. Before scrolling, I switch back to the fight.

The wasp has recognized that there is a threat in the arena. It strafes wide circles around the scorpion, curious antennae flicking at the air. The tarantula hawk is all blue-black malice. The scorpion is small and orange and still, its tail is curled at its side. I think perhaps the scorpion is unaware of the tarantula hawk’s presence. My heartbeat quickens. My mouth waters. My dick stirs. Back to Nudie Nexus.

The search results list several hundred videos with “Sam” in the title, and just over a hundred profiles with “Sam” in the username. I wade through thumbnails, click randomly on profiles, will my dick to rise as I scroll past stills of sloppy blowjobs, but do not find a match. Resigned, I opt for another Sam, a Sam with a choppy wolf cut, strands of dyed scarlet framing her face. This different Sam begins a slow striptease. She dances seductively in front of a camera. She pulls a floral sundress over her head and off her body, traces a finger up her abdomen. The different Sam cups a breast. She teases. I feel the familiar warmth spreading, feel myself begin to harden in my hand. I watch the different Sam touch herself until my erection is full, and then I guide it through the glory hole, careful to avoid any splinters.

Seven minutes have elapsed now. No Sam. No Sam on the phone, at least, not Sam Sam. No Sam in Booth II. Fully hard now, penis in place, pants at ankles, I know I should check, and know, too, that I cannot without stopping the momentum and upkeep of my arousal.

“Sam?” I yell. And then, “Is everything alright?”

I yell loudly, so as to compensate for the booth door, then shut my mouth, hold my breath, listen for a response. I hear what may be a muffled voice shouting coming or may be something else entirely. A crack of thunder. The cough of an air vent. I switch back to the match.

The wasp is closer now. Still sidling around the arachnid, antennae still flicking, but closer. It kicks tarsi at the scorpion, and when that fails to provoke a reaction, it pokes a mandible at the scorpion. Upon contact, the scorpion moves. A defensive twitch. Barely a retreat. The wasp advances. The scorpion’s tail stirs, unfurls into striking position. The wasp uses its enemy as leverage, barrel-rolls, thrusts. The tarantula hawk’s first thrust is a failure, the stinger missing the soft belly of the thorax and glancing off the underside of the scorpion’s chitinous exoskeleton, and the scorpion retaliates. Flick of the tail. The bodies are a blur. Black streaks blue streaks bronze. And then the scorpion has the wasp between a pincer and the wasp pulls away, sacrificing a wing, part of the thorax, a string of hemolymph separating the newly severed pieces from what remains intact. The remaining wasp half stumbles momentarily around the arena, then stops, collapses. Animated fireworks are exploding on the screen. I’m soft again, and feel nauseous. I slide out of the hole, pull my pants up. Situate myself. Two more minutes elapse. I open the booth door.

“Sam?”

I do not hear a response this time, just, in the distance, the thrum of rain and the highway traffic cutting through it. The small bathroom is empty. The whole shop is. The immediate sense of loneliness is striking. I walk the length of the Quonset, glance down aisles, confirm what I already know. At the far end, I open the door and survey the parking lot. It’s empty. The nausea is unbearable now. I double over, hot with shame, hypersalivation overwetting my mouth. I allow myself a moment of humiliation, and when the shock and sense of sick pass, I get up and I go back inside the Shack.

At the counter, the cash tray has been removed from the register, emptied, and now sits on the worn barstool left for our comfort. My jacket is on the floor. I replace the cash tray. I pick up my jacket. In Misty’s office, the small wall safe is untouched. I close her door, return to the counter. The store’s merchandise looks undisturbed. The total loss, it seems, is two hundred in cash from the register, a used Ranger pushing one hundred and eighty thousand miles. I sit on the stool, stare dumbly at my phone. I wonder whether to call Misty, the police, or my mom first. I can’t. A soft bed of moss has grown across the various folds and ridges of my brain. I choose, instead, Insect Sport World. The balance window shows ¥5132. Thirty-five bucks. I navigate to the list of upcoming matches and scroll.

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Daniel Miller helps edit hex literary. His work is perpetually forthcoming. You can find him at ONLY DANS for now.

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