Dance Dance

With the month's Shonen mag clasped beneath my arm, I headed down to Video 501 along some stretch of residential housing. Summer days in Ontario are enormous; it was pushing eight and the sun was still going strong. I pushed back a bead of sweat with the palm of my hand. It broke and lost into my eyebrow. This was June and almost the summer solstice.

You can hear it, sounds of bells and strobing rhythm, pang and clatter of pin balling metal from two blocks away, music rising above the subliminal hurrah of sunday market. It's like a thorn in the side of weekend shoppers, like some horribly deformed freak everyone tries to ignore in the middle of the mall. But it's there, and when you walk by it, you really can't ignore it.

It's more of a sight at night, but since it was summer, perpetual day, only latenight knowing people recognized it, the blue-haired grannies all inside. At night, moths batted themselves to death against the neon, and by the time we'd finished, morning low, I'd be soaking wet and wild eyed. Cool wind in the mat of my hair. Robot flashing and redundant electric thunder behind us.

There, I was an action-hero, my moves the stuff of legend and lore. I felt vibrant. On fire. In my prime, I was the best you could see without going to Harajuku, and even there I'd be kickass.

I shouldered in through the doors, felt a change of air from outside to in: sweat, palpable anxiety. My eyes run on auto, sweep-pattern scan for friends, enemies, new faces and newbies across the rife subcult grounds. I hear, somewhere close, “Maybe luck was against you! Maybe.”

“Hey Rob!” I hear a familiar female voice ahead of me, Sara emerging from behind a column sheathed in green ceramic. She could see me reflected in the black mirror fixtures. I waved back.

She was alright, Sara. She had the right attitude, the right approach; a secret, invisible posture only the ones in the thick veins could notice, a smoky dotted outline of technique and character you don't see too often. And when she was on the pad, oh boy, it seemed as if that matte white siloute figure affixed to the center of the plexiglass was her, punk lolita, reverse carbon shadow burned on by the radiation pouring off her. Conjurer's feet.

I came around the green column, carefully placed my mag on a ledge meant for leaning. Stepped up to the plate, got into my kung-fu dandy battle stance. Someone slotted a coin in with the heel of their fist, internal machine sounds, and then wham, wham, wham, throbbing techno and images, red neon exploding on sodium-silvery plexiglass and the Japanese kitsch-fetish we all dug.

You needed someone like me in a place like this. Earlier incarnations of the arcade were half-formed affairs, barely surviving and under perpetual reconstruction. Larva. The oeuvres of arcadable gaming weren't anything remotely subversive, perhaps bubbling in the background of late 20th century pop culture, but now, now you've got something to market. Now arcades are places you go to get club-lagged, bohemias with their own etiquette and intricate protol. Special zones.

We're all postgraduates of this, here at Video 501.

And in any case, something was afoot in the hazy parts of the street, in Harajuku, burning under bright laser, people like me the dynamic function.

I punched those arrows with a tight grace, arms taut by my sides, hands dug deep into my pockets. It's a groove stance; nothing really efficient about it, and definitly nothing I would do in a competition. But it did the trick, AAAed Nori Nori Nori and pulled down a string of free games and food, split it with the kid who slotted the coin and went and bought myself a Mr. Big plus V8 at the vending machine.

I stared at a red-black pattern brick wall caked in ancient grime, classic arcade decadence, listened to the roulette-click of the consoles and the psychidelia funk coming from the dust-furred fabric-covered speakers.

“Rob, have you seen the new Star Wars?” It was Sara again, coming up quick behind me.

“No, I haven't. Was it any good?”

“Yeah! So good!” She smiled, did a sort of skittish laugh-choke. “I'm thinking of seeing it again.”

I still don't know why people say women are mysterious, or that they bring men down to their most basic level. That they can't be understood, and that's why we men are attracted to them, or some such bullshit. The concept was probably made by the same rotten bastard who said penis size mattered. Sara, she was my first, and I never really knew it at the time. I guess I was too caught up in the all-glitz hoopla and raging rivers of wet neon that went along with the dance trance subcult territory to even notice the human element of my obsession.

“Cool.”

I took a gulp of my healthful V8 and hit the machines.

I think they wiped the machines, must have, all our Names some sort of freakish otaku cognomen, mine CASE, a secretly subtle sobriquet mad wink and nudge to Neuromancer. Our cult handles were so frighteningly fetishistic that when the high-scores rolled up on the screens, new comers would advert their eyes as if from the sun, trying not to acknowledge what they were doing was actually resque qua resque ad infinitum. But to us, it just added to the groovitudina.

I think I did six or seven Catas that day, my steps spinning on an axis equal to the chakra of my DDR karma maxima. Which of course was exponential. Wicked. My dances were mostly uninterrupted, an unusually uneventful course.

And then, stepping off the pad and glancing up, Mark reared his ugly, rotten face.

He was an even six-feet, lanky and face set to glare. He stood with posture, immaculate procedure stroll through the flashing lights, a crooked grin and a head full of white teeth. Upright, moving between wedges of interstice to interstice, passing through dull smoky vista of arcade, hands in pockets and sporting a blank, brandless brand of french Tee.

He was the forerunner of the place, his pseudonym HIRO a steady constant in all the east-side machines. His technique? He lurches forward on the pad like some sort of savaged deep-sea marine species, evolved exoskeleton from millennia of fighting tooth and nail with praying nightmares in the dark, with a snarl smashes the buttons to a total eclipse and astigmatism as the reverberations rush along the spine of his opponent in Tesla-strength voltage.

“Hey Sara. Rob.” He came up beside us, lent on an adjacent console called Burning Tanks. Nuclear sunrise on its screen. “You gotta come watch this.”

We followed him under a pergola of bundled wires, down past popcorn superkilns and turbocharged jet-simulators. From a window, through a half-opaque layer of peeling green phenolic resin I could see The Jungle restaurant across the, Lion King-motif leafy laminate tabletops and salad bar plus fruity cocktail overpriced combination. We used to eat there, sometimes, the floor a patina of metalic scratches from us dragging the legs of their purple plether scrolly castrol stools. It was raining. Rain hissing on the road. He took us past that window, down along a stretch of greasy pay phones and juke-boxes straight out of a Neo-Victorian gentleman's club, fake cocobolo faces and dials studded plastic lazuli playing perpetual J-pop, asian jojo anime opening crap. You'd only catch fragments, the body of the songs mostly lost in the rich arcade amalgam. Smells and sound blended, stale clothing and people lost in their games somehow mixed up with the subliminal hum of the background radiation of electronica and foreign voices. Above sound.

It was all part of the bohemian life. Optics kaleidoscopic, and the lights flash strobic, great clouds of silver lining and hologram filigree in bluish tint.

And when I saw his face, strangely convex features flaring azure as a tank blew, I knew. Purposely tainted. It was a performance. Dance steps too quick, too insectlike, so advanced and refined. You could trace his moves all the way back through the lineage, revery to humble origins, all the way back the Bemani and Space Invaders, back to the days of change slammers and console cowboys, culmination of longtime gaming in secondhand smoke under burning ghosts. He was a native.

Sometimes, even today, I wonder what happened to him. I'm just trying to close a gap that bleeds.

“This is Danny,” said Mark, smiling. So many crap-ass cats coming up in your face day in and day out, some part of me believed there might not be any good players left that didn't dance at our arcade. Seeing Danny there, then, at the peak of my prime, my cultivated presumption was introduced to an exception, and I accepted it, this exception to the rule, his hair sizzling a special green in the aftermath of some other game's end.

“So...”

I knew what was coming next. Time to roll up my sleeves, kick off the leisure footware and breath deep, the commisary in hallucinatory hyperreal clarity. Coccyx crackle with jittery warm-up routine on the way over, hopping. He turns, still playing, looks over at my direction and it was like the the world was tipping towards his face.

I hit the pad hard, tasted my spit, slotted coins one after another. Beside me, he was finishing up a ten-footer, moving so fast he'd break through a brick wall. The build-up from the anachronism of the process, kachunk of coin, I thought of all the train rides in my life, cool shocks running through my body like a wind had risen.

He reached the end of the song. When he stood still, his frame reminded me of a bird, mildly successful species but still wary, rope-muscled and thin, feet planted on the plexiglass like suction.

“What song do you want to do?” He said, eager.

“Legend of Max,” I said automatically.

He dialed through the selection, braked at the song. It was quiet, suddenly, all the ceaseless bustle and noises simultaneously ending at the same place. I actually could hear the music, pure, the lyrics and beats coming through clear. And then it started.

I was almost caught off guard, torn fingernail catch-up steps, aureoles of dust appearing around the pad. Guess it was old, unused since they brought it in. My suspicions solidified.

I didn't have time to think over how Mark had set this up, the ten-footer insanity unraveling before my eyes, within my head, my feet. I was burning, anger red-hot charcoal. Gut-level. I wanted to win. I had to win. When I hit the horizontal steps I'd catch scraps, fragments of his moves, his cyberprep clothing, luminous UV-reactive materials and superfluous goggles, strained and pulled taut. A crowd was ready, regarding our duel. Moves that make heads bop. This shit ain't a show. Go back to your games. The crowd seethed counterpoint to our steps like grass in the wind, gathered like whispering conspirators.

And then-

My combo was huge, burning solid on the screen, going nova. Cool it down. I spun, kicked off from each step, LEDs lighting up like shifting bubbles of unstable crystal reflecting globs of neon. I was hot, jazzed by the tumbleweed stillness, Eastwood and Lee shot through psychedelic thrash metal and seiyu bandol.

It wasn't even a problemette when the song really started, eleven point one steps averaging per second. I treaded space, threading steps strung on a wire of sequence, blinking beads that triggered something that no one but the best could understand. When it comes to streamlining, running to a miracle, it handles like polished clouds, silver springs, waterworn alternations of phasing technosexual stepping-stones in zen sand-brushed nirvana.

I lost.

It unfolded in my mind in scarlet tiers of rage, frustration, shame. His motion came to a vague stop, edges blurry phosphene, eclipse-outlined in monochrome filigree. His hair settled, clothing braking on a bird-like body.

“Good game.”

And then the crowd scattered, off to post on blogs and reflect in groups, cluster like quanta and the exchange of information high.

When night came I walked down to The Jungle, holding my mag. Rows of wrought-iron came up on either side, down a steep incline into the mid-town uni-student restaurant archipelago. Chien Noir, Atomica, The Jungle. It was raining again, a bit, and I hurried inside, the Jump used to canopy the water.

I got a seat off in to the corner, close to a couple that said very little. The room smelled like damp paint, monomers and vermouth. The walls, green, reoccuring circular jungle-motif pattern also at the edges had, creeping, black resin, sludge silicon that reminded me every time of a cyberpunk dance club in Toronto. Al Green was playing, so, surreal juxtapositions.

I ordered very little, a glass of orange juice and a beef sandwich. The prices were good, surpisingly, then I remembered it was a weekday. My parents were probably worried.

I stared off into space. The colour and texture of the place was black-white video-static, despite the green. A certified hole-in-the-wall that couldn't live with itself, so it bought lots of flowery things to hide the cracked limestone. I wondered what sad behind-the-counter life the owner must lead, like a neutered tomcat dwelling in bachelor flat. The rain streaked the windows, showing me a circumferential avenue and the few dark figures on its sidewalks.

What had happened? A rigged, sooty machine- a player so good he could dominate Tokyo. Mark had been smiling. A head full of teeth. But I was so fast- the right stuff, and then...

I didn't go back for a long time. A few months. Before, it was home, somewhere to not feel so niche, to feel niche, to explore the niche. A shadowy, bootlegged new media; gutted consoles and mythology. Now, when I walk by some street-newsstand the glossy covers of the Japanese magazines always compose the image of my childhood in mind, vermillion-varnished and almost painful.

The last time I returned, somewhat surreptitiously, I caught a glimpse of Mark and Sara, Sara leaning against an opposite console to the one Mark was unloading on. Most people I didn't reccognize, a crowd driven by something else.

One vaguely gathers that it's gone sideways, dissapeared without so much as a cat's purr in a puff of marketing and something like micro-globalization. It needed a backwater kind of condition, it needed to be left alone. But cool was too valuable. It took three or four years for the hippies to be commodified. Punk took a year. Grunge was on the catwalks of Paris two months after anyone realized those kids in Seattle with lumpy flannel shirts were actually doing something.

The difference was being lost, the flavour and fun.

And when I had my fill, pushing through the revolving glass-paneled doors, I think I heard my name, somewhere, very close.