The Quarter Booths

To: MeL Heath
Australia
via email
January 24, 1998

MeL:

Tonight for my story I'm going to share one of MY deep dark sexual secrets, which is on my mind tonight because I just did it again. You're not the first person to hear this story, but there has definitely not been too many people before you, maybe just one or two.

I don't know if Australia has these, but in America they have these special kind of pornography stores. The front half is like a normal store, with videotapes for sale, books, magazines, dildos, handcuffs, condoms, etc etc. But you walk down a back hallway and you are confronted with a dimly lit corridor of little booths. You can then go into one of the booths and watch porn there at the store and masturbate before being on your way again. They're traditionally called 'quarter booths' because that's what they used to take, 25 cent pieces, but now you have to buy tokens from a machine. Now, it's no secret that I own porn and, although I don't volunteer the information, I freely tell anyone who asks that I usually buy my porn from these porn shops. My secret is that every once in a great while, when I'm incredibly horny and happen to find myself with about an hour to kill and am near one of these stores, I will go into the quarter booths and masturbate, like I did tonight.

The booths themselves are these strange little contraptions. There is a light over the door that turns off when someone's inside, so you walk down this dark hallway looking for a lit door. The nicer stores have prefabricated booths like cubicles in an office; there is a built-in padded formica stool to sit on and a formica cube holding a television set. In the cheaper stores they are usually these handbuilt booths made out of wood, with an old office chair on the inside and a hole cut in the back wall to show the tv set which is housed in an adjoining room so that the screen pokes out of the hole.

In any case, you feed these tokens into a coin machine. Each token is a quarter, and gives you 100 seconds of video time. So, say, you put in $3 in tokens (the minimum you have to buy) and you're given 1200 seconds, or 20 minutes, in which your television is left on. Next to the coin slot is a button that, when pushed, flips forward through a series of 20 to 35 'channels' which are regulated by a central bank of VCRs and wired into each television. All the channels (like the 35 I had tonight) are in various stages of showing individual videotapes, some in the middle, some just beginning, some showing just snow because the tape is currently rewinding. The button only allows you to move forward through the channels, so if you're, say, watching channel 15 and flip through to 20 and then decide you want to watch 15 again, you have to rapidly flip through the gamet of channels until getting back to the beginning again. And then next to the button is a knob which you can twist to control the volume, from a speaker that's not in the television itself but built into the wall, like a drive-in movie. The volume choices range from silent to so-loud-I-can't-believe-why-they-would-even-build-them-that-way.

These hallways and booths are naturally pretty seedy, pretty dark and forboding and really give you the sense that sex is something tawdry and dirty to be doing in a backroom behind locked doors. This, frankly, is why I go. There are certain times when I like to view my sexual activities as something taboo, something being hidden away from the public. It increases the tension, increases the excitement, doing something that would seem shameful if caught doing. I spend x amount of time in the front, browsing through magazines and laughing internally at the blow-up dolls. And then at a certain point, I get my courage up, take a quick look around, and slink off into the back hallway.

It is a strange mix of videotapes they show in these booths. By my estimates, this is a rough breakdown of what they were showing tonight:

About 17 gay tapes, which I'm sure vary in subject but I don't really watch so don't know.

2 'mainstream' porn tapes -- that is, the ones with the big porn stars and high production values and pretty much straight one-on-one sex.

3 'amateur' tapes -- sex scenes involving people reportedly not in the industry, chosen because of their normal 'next door neighbor' appearance and shot with low-quality videocameras, many times held by one of the partners themselves as they have sex.

5 bondage/S&M tapes. This includes: classic purist scenarios, where a woman is being abused but the man is not actually doing anything sexual and in fact has all his clothes on, the abuse highly ritualized, using whips and handcuffs and various complex binding mechanisms; a tape of a man actually having sex with a woman but mentally and verbally abusing her while doing so; and a tape that was nothing but 90 minutes of women getting spanked.

2 tapes exclusively of black people having sex.

1 tape of nothing but come shots -- hundreds of ten-second videotape segments spliced together, showing various men having their orgasms on women's faces.

1 tape of nothing but double penetrations -- one man fucking a woman in her vagina while another one simultaneously fucks her in her anus.

1 tape of gang-bangs: one woman having sex with a varying group of men at once, never less than five in number. This varies greatly from double penetration videos, however -- gang bang videos almost always have just one man having sex with the woman at any given point, all the others standing in a circle around them, masturbating and waiting their turn.

1 tape involving what is claimed to be hermaphrodites (more likely pre-operation transvestites).

And 2 tapes of lesbian sex scenes, which seems low until you consider the likely clientele and the fact that there are 17 gay male tapes playing.

My viewing habits are always interesting to me at the booths, considering the sudden amount of pornographic choices that I would never spend the money to actually own. I always assume that I'll get engrossed with one of the more unusual films, since they are right there and I'm naturally curious. But I always find, after watching one of the unusual ones for a minute or so, that it is weird-looking to me, or stupid, or dangerous, or simply unerotic, and I always end up gravitating back to the types of tapes I naturally buy on my own, namely the amateur scenes and the double penetration ones. And I always end up having my orgasm from one of them.

I never have gotten up the courage to undo my pants in a booth. I almost always reach in and masturbate under my zipped pants, end up coming into my underwear. Sometimes when I'm feeling very adventerous I'll poke my cock out over my belt and masturbate that way. The reason for this is that there are always big signs in the booth that say, "The inside of this booth is being monitored by a videocamera for your safety." And I'm terrified that I will breach some decorum and have a booming voice come over a speaker that says, "Hey, you have to keep your pants on!" or, God forbid, someone show up to the booth itself and kick me out. After all, there has never been a booth I've gone into that hasn't been spotlessly clean, and I can't imagine all the customers being as naturally fastidious as me, so a certain amount of policing MUST take place. The first time I ever went to a booth, in fact, I wasn't even positive that masturbation was allowed inside, but just eventually decided that there wouldn't be much of a point to them if there wasn't jerking off going on. Still, though, I am horrified at the prospect of attracting attention to myself in one of these stores, so still masturbate under sealed clothes.

The group dynamic is interesting in these hallways. The men around you influence the experience you're having -- some men purposefully turn the sound in their booth all the way up to blasting level, and suddenly everyone in the room is acutely aware of what exact type of porn that guy is beating off to. I suppose it gives some men a thrill, which is why they include such a loud volume option to begin with. I, however, have this aforementioned fear of attracting attention to myself, so always leave the volume on minimal -- although I have to admit that sometimes it can be kind of exciting to hear that you're watching the exact same channel as the guy next to you, that you are both currently achieving orgasms from the same sexual scene.

There are, of course, always an amount of men hanging out in the back, leaning against the walls and looking like they're waiting for the bus. They of course are waiting to be invited into a booth as I make my way into the hallway, to have sex with a random stranger. I've never seen a man invited into a booth, however, so am intensely curious as to whether there's a formality to it. I wonder how it's done? Does one man simply walk up and say something like "Do you want to come in with me?" Is there some ritualized nodding of the head or blinking of eyes that signals it? Or does one man simply grab the other by the hand and lead them in?

I have to admit that this is a pretty big fantasy of mine when I'm there. In a perfect world, where I have more courage and exhibit more dare (and, of course, I would actually enjoy having sex with a man) I take one of these men into my booth. I know enough about men like this to know that many of them don't even want to be sexually satisfied themselves, but are content to bring the other person off. I would sit down on my stool and unzip my pants, pull my cock out so my scrotum was still inside my underwear, and the stranger would kneel down in front of me and quickly put my cock in his mouth, slowly moving his face up and down over it. I would sit and watch my porn as I got blown, and a few minutes into it I would grasp the man's hair tightly in my fist and shoot my come deep into the back of his throat. Then he would stand up, I would zip up, and we would both exit, neither of us the wiser about the other's identity.

I can't concentrate on the fantasy too much, because any extended thought about having sex with a man beyond the superficial aspect of reaching orgasm ends up turning me off. The real fantasy is about having a place, a specific place where you could go and be surrounded by other people who you know are specifically there because they want to get fucked, and then simply leave. No strings, no commitments, just simply a roomful of horny people wanting to quickly get their rocks off. The thought of walking into one of these hallways and seeing four or five women hanging around fills me with unbelievable excitement. But the idea is so patently ridiculous that it can't even hold up as a fantasy. It helps if I think of the man blowing me as another young straight guy, perhaps a college student who simply hasn't gotten laid in so LONG that he actually comes down to the porn shop simply to get some, however and with whoever possible. Again, though, this fantasy only works to a certain point -- and besides, this is never the case in reality anyway. The guys leaning against the walls are always overweight, balding middle-aged men, men so desperate and needing of any kind of intimacy that they are willing to risk AIDS, physical violence and a lack of their own orgasms simply for the chance to touch another person. It's easy to be tempted to feel sorry for these men. But then you have to remind yourself, "Hey... I'M back in these booths too, you know."

You know, in the older booths (unlike tonight) the customers have made a concentrated effort to gouge little holes in the wooden walls seperating the booths. Management periodically tries to repair the holes, but the customers can tear down the repairs much faster than they can be fixed, so the holes usually remain. This freaked me out considerably when I first started going, but then I quickly realized that the vast majority of men are like me, just there to do their business and not screw with anyone, and ESPECIALLY not draw any undue attention to themselves. Still, I wonder what my reaction would be if and when one day an erect cock pokes its way through one of those holes. Would I ever wrap my hand around it? My lips? If not, would I say something to the man? "Um, no thank you..." Or would I just let him stand there, his cock issuing forth, until he finally got the hint and withdrew it of his own accord?

I actually once got up the courage (or the horniness) to watch another man masturbate through one of these spyholes. I arranged my face so that I could only see his lap and he would have no idea that I was watching him. He was watching one of the mainstream tapes, I remember that. HE had the courage to undo his pants, and his rather small cock was standing straight out from him, wrapped by an undulating fist. I also remember that he tried to control his orgasm but got it all over his fist anyway, and he had to wipe the come off his hand with the t-shirt he was wearing under a button-down one. But then I started feeling weird about invading the man's privacy, so have never done it again.

I invariably always reach my orgasm before my time is up -- again, I'm afraid of calling attention to myself, and am terrified of running out of time before coming, just to have an employee bang on the door and yell, "You can't SIT in there unless you put MONEY in!" To tell the truth, the excitement I get from being in one of these booths is so great that I will often have two orgasms in the space of ten to fifteen minutes, something nearly impossible for me to do with an actual lover. But once I come, I always feel a sense of silliness at being in the booth. I watch the videos as my time slowly winds down, feeling the sperm quickly cooling to an icy temperature against my belly, feeling my penis shrink down into its day-to-day safety length, and I think of how stupid most of these videotapes are, pointless and vapid and degrading and utterly capable of sucking a half-hour and six bucks out of my life. I get mad at the fact that my libido is so large that I resort to things like this when I'm not having sex, resort to locking myself in a cubbyhole in the middle of the city, furtively beating off to a videotape of other people not ONLY having sex when I can't have any, but getting PAID to do it, for God's sake. Paid REALLY GOOD MONEY, beause of schmos like me who are willing to pay out the nose for it.

But then that feeling quickly vanishes, overrun with the realization that I haven't had a cigarette in nearly an hour and I should really get going 'cause it's late anyway and I know I've got to write this note to you later and I'm almost finished reading my latest book, Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and so I'll probably do that before I write, which means, jeez, I better get going if I want to finish this damn letter before the sun rises (I failed). I obsessively tug at my clothes so as to give no hint to the fact that I was just currently jerking off in the back room, when in reality I know and the employees know and all the other customers know that I went back in the hallway in the first place expressly TO do that. I go up to the counter, collect my things, always laugh, each and every time, over the fact that I'm picking up a bag full of laptop computer equipment and witty intellectual contemporary literature off a countertop in a porn shop, I take a deep breath and walk out the door, hoping that I didn't accidentally time my exit to coincide with a beautiful young woman walking by at the exact same moment. And I head to the el. And I go home.

And that was my Friday night. How was yours?

Copyright 1999, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.