A Friday night down at the local Galleria, and my brother and I were "mall rats" at the end of our mother's tether. It was the Seinfeldian absurdity of "being out somewhere", the ritual of public space, as she moved with a loose-fitting, yet high-strung shrug among the emotional-splotch of concourse "dings" and frittering "fashion bait" toward our intended purpose, her boys carrying on like hunched-over, heat-seeking missiles increasing speed as they skipped about insufferably.

Well-lit, airy halls and black marble floor suggested a haughtiness about "this fountain of commerce", of rock videos and Spanish tile that was yours for the right price in the ball club of capitalism, the strong, honest combat of the dust, and sepia-colored photographs in a Men's Magazine like "Esquire" that set the standard and was probably "out of reach" for low-pedigreed St. Louisans like us throwing our future away on "cheap thrills".

Grape soda instead of Dom Perigon. A quarter-pounder with cheese instead of filet de sôle. Video games instead of brain-building activity which will help you get into a high-ranking university as "a junior overachiever" who made the most of his youthful years.

Yes. . . . . cheap, coin-operated entertainment. . . . . no less classy than Hulk Hogan cutting a rock n' roll album in Japan. Or the neon pizza signs in the food court with the cool, creamy marble floors and the artificial potted plants in cheap brass pots, the leaves like felt when you rubbed them between your fingers nervously when a young lad glanced over toward a table of popular teenaged girls with frizzy hair and red scrunchies tying their locks back. You wondered if you could go up to them with the confidence you didn't have and speak to them "in a magical key", somehow cross that deep gulch of inadequacy that sunk in your throat and tensed up your muscles. . . . . like leaping a gorge with a skateboard.

Instead you go up to the arcade games with the art stenciled on the side of commandos and aliens and street fighters "and everyman justice" and find yourself trapped, ensconced, dependent inside that screen-generated world where you were too self-conscious to look off to the side, wishing upon "Lady Luck" to throw your quarter to the furthest reaches of Washington/eagle-driven pixelated-heaven, but not understanding that the reality of whipping up these games and bolting together the cabinets was far simpler. You hear the desperate "thunk" of the "Game Over" screen, if not the heavy metal "fish hook riff" of bad feeling. . . . . that indeed the "bad dudes" have taken over the world like a bucket of worms splattering on the bottom of said gorge.

It was the same feeling when you saw a pair of young adolescent teeny-rappers "frontin' an attitude" with ultra-aggression before a third world assemblage of poor "chain-grabbers", gold and "flash" and pinkie rings the ultimate existential authority, as the whole community waved its arm in the air like a bunch of Islamists who prayed at the altar of "Mortal Kombat" and "NBA Jam".

One would want to withdraw from "that heart of darkness" a bit and go into "Babbage's", where well-spoken help in shirt-sleeves knew their stock of games and showed you about like a nebbish clerk on an auto lot. By and large, no one wanted to admit owning "a geeky Super Nintendo" but you were safe here. Monitors outside built into smooth, sloping plastic gave a preview of upcoming games which kids stared at while their mothers, usually, sat down and rested on the benches.

In the air was a general sense of gloom, a gray cloud of depression, and an everyman's animosity toward Japan and their efficient, work-obsessed ways that put us to shame. But we kids shrugged, and had our games. There was lore, legend, and myth about these electric delights though it basically came down to a series of patterns and algorithms decked out with artwork, a code that the masses "cracked" like a rising tide.

Life was a puzzle, of ceaseless experimentation, and I found myself in trouble "for breaking the rules", like a splatter of worms in a grotesque turning of justice. There I sat in the "E-Mass" office with my probation officer, a miserable sub-contracted job auctioned off by the state "to the lowest bidder". The phone rang every 20 seconds and interrupted our sanctimonious patter "of paying one's debt to society" as this young guy seemed too distracted to see beyond my fulsome insincerity, much like Winona's movies. Personally, I was getting so irritated that I wanted to pick Jason up and throw him up against the wall like Hulk Hogan in a bad cult film. . . . . but that when only put me back in "the penalty box".

But society has its own "checks and balances", particularly the one "of looking like a fool" when my brother and I parked ourselves into a brick "blues bar" and were oppressed with the notion of coming across "like cool cats" in the dark.

The fear of missing the show and getting our car towed had us nervously plodding along the maze of downtown St. Louis by the stadium and crunching down "in Elephant hole", a blemish on the pavement that the street department never got around to fixing. We walked along the chop-houses that had giant colored lights strung up like some kind of dive on a wharf-front as the band belted out old Bruce Springsteen favorites about "steel mill towns".

"Bad girls" idled by the bar who, to our timid selves, we concluded "were probably trouble".

It was settling back down into yourself perhaps a bit too morosely for what would come next there in the candle light, waiting for your steak as the climbing ivy whispered pathos and a long-neck or two made the night slightly-dizzy.

The blues singer's voice was shot, and he sounded like a hound dog with corn-rows as he closed his eyes and concentrated with extra focus. The band mostly played instrumentals, but then they broke into this surf ballad that echoed with the harmony with the wind and the sea, going on and on in an eternity of good feeling that left us stunned and moving up to the front of the room.

There was a can labeled "tips". Funny thing was, the only thing we had on us was quarters. . . . .