On Sunday, Rachelle and I drove out to Scarborough to go to the Pacific Mall. We were both ridiculously excited, imaging a sort of theme park, where absolutely anything we could imagine would be available, with some freaky Asian flair, and sold for next to nothing.
This was not the case.
The mall is large and generic, arranged in a practical, if unimaginative grid that resembled a network of office cubicles. Although there were hundreds of stores, there were really only about six different types of them, with each place being a minute variation on the one that preceded it. In short order, this became utterly numbing, and we had the sensation that we were wandering around the exhibition grounds, each store feeling like a carnie-operated stall selling the same junk as the last.
Perhaps because of this, we were attracted to the video arcade. I wandered in circles looking for an old school game like Galaga, but realizing I was 20 years out of step, settled on some shooter game involving aliens. As I never figured out how to activate my flamethrower function, I was quickly dispatched.
Nearby, a 17 year-old Asian girl was playing Rock Hero. She was dressed-up in the provocative manner of a Japanese schoolgirl gone bad, sporting three inch heels, a mini skirt, and stockings that ended about two inches beneath her skirt. She had the guitar balanced saucily on her hip, and kept tossing her long, black hair back.
This attracted a crowd of excited teen boys, who pretended to be playing the adjacent game, where they had to toss little basketballs into a hoop. It’s actually a kind of humiliating game, one that always makes you look like a clumsy, panicky kid, and so, that’s exactly the way that they looked.
However, one guy stood apart. Bald and wearing a sleeveless Michael Jordan jersey, he walked with a swagger designed to suggest a thug’s life. Instead of playing the juvenile version of basketball, he chose to hit a speed bag that measures the force of your punch. He would wind up, and then hop twice, before unleashing a devastating roundhouse. Each time he did this, he was really casual about it, like it was no big thang, but after each blow, he allowed himself a quick peek back at the girl, hoping that she’d noticed.