I’d like to think I’m long past the age of surprise, especially about sex, and especially about myself. My partner and I have racked up well over a century of living between us, and we’ve both buried spouses and raised children and now have our own separate, sprawling broods of grandkids. Our lives, at least on the surface, spiral around fairly predictable axes: family brunches, book clubs, and the endless stream of birthdays and graduations. But beneath that, in the slow-burning undercurrent of our hours together, we still find our way to the old obsessions. Lately, that means frequent stops at Airport Video 2, the adult theater and arcade near the Seatac runways—our island of carnal mischief amidst suburban grayness.
It’s an odd crucible for nostalgia, really. The lobby of Airport Video 2 still reeks of bleach and cigarette ghosts from the eighties, but the benches, covered in industrial-grade clear plastic, gleam in the fluorescents. There’s a kind of stripped-down honesty to the place: rows of battered viewing booths, the shuffle of men in ill-fitting windbreakers, and the pervasive hum of flickering screens locked on loops of skin and sweat. I could recite the orientation of every theater room and the rotation schedule for the feature films; my partner could probably sketch a floor plan of the private arcade stalls from memory.
That night, we ducked in to kill time before a dreaded extended-family dinner, a preemptive strike against the slow suffocation of polite conversation. My partner migrated immediately toward the peepshow arcades—her guilty pleasure, the labyrinthine aisles of tiny rooms where anything is possible and nothing is spoken. I gravitated toward one of the larger theaters, the one usually loaded with straight features (a weird comfort, probably lingering from the early years of my explorations), and found a spot midway down the center row. The movie was something generic: muscle-bound fake-cops with suspiciously neat body hair, arresting and “frisking” women in tiny, colorless apartments. I was barely paying attention, lazily stroking through my slacks, more content to people-watch the regulars who trickled in and out.
After ten or fifteen minutes of zoning out, I clocked the entrance of a younger couple—mid-to-late twenties, I’d guess. You learn to spot the couples immediately: the men are always a hair too eager, the women either radiantly confident or shrinking apologetic. But this woman was neither; she had the calm, unhurried grace of someone who saw through the entire production. She wore jeans so slim they looked painted on, and a vintage Seahawks jersey barely covering her hips. Her boyfriend (or husband, or whatever) was tall with a mop of curly hair, all nervous limbs, a few tattooed forearms peeking from his hoodie.
They moved down the aisle, slid into the row in front of me, and set off a cascade of whispers and head-tilts from the scattered men up and down the benches. Within seconds, the boyfriend had unzipped and presented himself, and she—without fanfare—bent forward, took him into her mouth, and began to work him with practiced, languid strokes. There was nothing rushed or furtive about it. She made eye contact with the screen, occasionally glancing at the men who watched her instead of the porn. The boyfriend leaned his head back, knuckles white on the edges of the seat, quietly shuddering.
Then, as if on cue, she slid off him, peeled away her jersey and bra, and shimmied out of those impossibly tight jeans, revealing an athlete’s body: toned arms, a taut belly, and the kind of ass that could inspire sonnets. Her breasts were substantial, pendulous, capped with areolas the color of cinnamon. And she seemed—if I’m being honest—completely at home in her own skin. She straddled the boyfriend’s lap, her hips rolling slowly, and he reached down to toy with her pussy, stroking her lips and clit with both hands as she rocked against his other, still-rigid cock.
By then, the crowd had doubled. Five, maybe six men hovered nearby, some openly masturbating, others trying to look casual, but all utterly rapt. I was just as drawn in, my own cock hard and leaking through my hand. The woman, still riding her boyfriend’s lap, caught my gaze. She grinned—a wide, predatory thing—and nodded once, as if giving permission. Then she leaned over, whispered something in the boyfriend’s ear, and shifted to kneel on the seat, putting her ass and gently parted pussy on full display for the gallery.
That was when she turned to me and said, “If you cum on me, you have to lick it up.” Her voice was warm, conspiratorial, with that perfect blend of challenge and invitation. The words cracked something in me. I edged forward, joining the ring of men crowding their bench, all of us focused on the sight of her boyfriend fingering and tongue-fucking her while she reached down to stroke and beckon any willing collaborator.
One of the men—a broad, older Black guy I’d seen here many times—stepped up next to me, his cock already thick and bobbing against his thigh. The woman reached around, gripped him, and pulled him close. With a single practiced move, she took him into her mouth, alternating between sucking him and yanking her boyfriend’s head back so he could suck her breasts. Her nipples were rigid, and she kept arching her back, pushing her chest toward the ceiling.
Things went blurry after that, or maybe hyper-focused. Bodies and hands and cocks everywhere. The woman’s moans were genuine and loud, bouncing off the cinderblock walls, and more men filtered in, drawn by the noise and the urgent pheromone of public sex. I looked over and saw my partner standing at the edge, watching with a sly, proud smile, her own hand buried between her thighs.
It was chaos, but choreographed. The boyfriend finally mounted her from behind: she bent over the bench, bracing herself, while he drove into her, slapping against her ass. She egged him on, cursing and laughing and throwing glances to the men all around. “You’re all such fucking perverts,” she said, and it landed like a blessing.
I felt myself getting close, lost in the rhythm of the scene. The woman’s eyes found mine again. “Go ahead,” she said, and I did, spurting across her lower back and ass. Two other men followed almost instantly, painting her with their own loads. True to her word, the woman reached back, smeared the cum with her fingers, and licked every drop clean, then sucked the boyfriend’s cock until he joined the mess, groaning and collapsing against her.
It ended as quickly as it began. The couple gathered their clothes, towel-wiped the bench, and walked out, hand-in-hand. Most of the men drifted back to their solitary stalls, spent and silent. I sat for a while, still catching my breath, the aftershocks buzzing through my thighs. Eventually, an older man—a regular, with a beard like a Christmas tree—came and sat beside me. He offered me a Kleenex and said, in a voice like gravel, “Best show I’ve seen in years.” I nodded and laughed.
On my way out, I saw the couple at the soda machine. I approached, awkward but grateful, and said, “Thank you. That was—really something.” The woman grinned, wiping a stray streak of cum from her thigh. “We’re engaged,” she said, “and kind of addicted to this.” The boyfriend nodded, blushing. “We like putting on a show. Makes us feel alive.” I told them I understood entirely, and I did.
I have been haunting porno theaters since the days when they ran 16mm loops and the world was a little less forgiving. I’ve seen every permutation of sex and loneliness, every shade of desperation and joy, but never, until that night, had I witnessed something so completely, unapologetically vital. The couple’s exuberance stayed with me well into the week that followed: a reminder that the animal in us never really ages, that lust can be a kind of communion, and that there are still brand new things at the edges of even a very old map.
I wished them both a lifetime of good sex, and meant it.
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