Arcade

A Novel · Unnamed Press · 2016

A new world opens up to Sam when, fresh from a breakup, he discovers a XXX peepshow on the outskirts of town. More than a mere venue for closeted men to meet for anonymous sex, it's an underground subculture populated by regular players, and marked by innumerable coded rules and customs.

A welcome diversion from his dead-end job and the compulsive cyberstalking of the cop who broke his heart, Sam returns to the arcade again and again. When the bizarre setting triggers reflections on his own history and theories, he contemplates his anxious, religious upbringing in small-town Texas, the frightening overlap between horror movies and his love life, and the false expectations created by multiple childhood viewings of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then, of course, there is the subject of sex.

As his connection to the place strengthens, and his actions both outside and within the peepshow escalate, Sam wavers between dismissing the arcade as a frivolous pastime and accepting it as the most meaningful place in his life. Arcade is a relentlessly candid and graphic account of one man's attempt to square immutable desire with a carefully constructed self-image on the brink.

Praise

One of Time Out New York's Best Books of the Summer

One of Out Traveler's Recommended Beach Reads

"It's almost impossible to write directly and well about sex. It's almost impossible to be simultaneously deadly serious and extremely funny. It's almost impossible to be extraordinarily precise while giving off the effect and affect of slacker casual. In Arcade, Drew Nellins Smith manages to do all these things. A minor miracle."

— David Shields, author of Reality Hunger

"A dark valentine to American men, mailed from a booth in a gay video store. Think Holden Caulfield, trapped in The Last Picture Show. Sardonic, sad, and laugh-out-loud funny."

— Andrew Holleran

"Smith has one of the most honest and original voices of any of our young novelists. He's willing to tear his guts out for us—like the greats do—and remind us that, terrified and confused though we are, we're not alone. He's also hilariously funny and a beautiful stylist."

— Clancy Martin, author of Bad Sex

"Obsessive, dark, and tender, Arcade investigates longing and modern loneliness with care, invention, and a complete lack of fear."

— Michelle Orange, author of This Is Running for Your Life

"The novel is funny and chilling by turns, and because of its subject matter, necessarily dark."

— Michael Schaub, The Los Angeles Times

"A book that is both incredibly American and incredibly gay... The sex in the novel is nothing short of splendiferous."

— Ilana Masad, Electric Literature

drewnellins@gmail.com