Marcos is a homeless guy I met my first month on the island. I gave a friend a ride to Tripler Army Hospital for an appointment and Marcos was in the lobby for no particular reason other than to play his guitar and serenade the sick.
He wasn't any good, but I admired the sentiment. I went to Tripler 3 times in two onths and he was always there.
Some months later, I was in Waikiki admiring the prostitutes one night when lo and behold, there was Marcos in a bus stop, two blocks from the beach, playing his guitar. He hadn't gotten any better, but hey, it was Marcos; on another part of the island.
What a coincidence.
And now, some more months later, I see Marcos on a regular basis, as he is a regular customer at the adult arcade gig I snagged on Hotel Street. Nowadays I see Marcos almost every day.
It's such a small island...
Anyways- you may be wondering why Marcos is the focus of my premiere installment of The Arcade Memoirs and if you're not, you've probably stopped reading by now. So I'd better continue without further dispatch...
Last Sunday while I was in the middle of a 16 hour shift, he strolls in and announced that he had been sleeping all morning on Waikiki Beach but was still soooooo tiiiiired. So tired. After sleeping all morning on the beach at Waikiki. (It's amazing what some people take for granted, no? Here he is, living the dream of literally millions of people on the mainland and he blows it off like I do a pleasant fart.)
After I explained that I had no interest in hearing his tale of how he accomplished absolutely nothing that day, I politely requested that he buzz the hell off! Afterwhich he smiled and shuffled away to the pits of our private peepshow booths to watch a little PRON. That was the last anyone saw of Marcos for the next 45 minutes.
Once he got that out of his system, he had a new itch to scratch; video games! He dug deep in his pockets for the last of his loose change. A dime, two nickels and five pennies. He asked to trade them in for a quarter. He gave me the coins, and they stuck to my hand!!!
OH MY FRIGGING GAWD!
Dr. Jekyll took a back seat to Mr. Hyde as I was just a sniff away from tearing him a new a**hole. I would have too, but I was too disgusted to touch him. He started to clean off the coins on his shirt. "NO FRIGGING WAY!" I explained to him, as calmly as I possibly could. I told him to go to the restroom and clean each coin individually with soap and water while I dumped half a bottle of hand sanitizer on my hands and face. FREE-KING GROSS, DUDE.
Feel free to leave snide comments. Go ahead, get it out of your system. But know this; such is the manner of tales you may expect to read about in future episodes of The Arcade Memoirs. Abandon all hope, ye who dare to read my stuff.
The impatient ghost of Robert Shaw says, "Bloody Christ! I would prefer to read your tawdry, pedantic, opinionated bantering about pornographic cinema than this filthy mess! At least pornography is fanciful fiction. This tale is so disgusting it must be a true story. This makes me wish the afterlife had a Pub."
