Laser Challenge

        An address: 620 S. Atlantic Ave. A1A, Ormond Beach, Florida.
        Before: an empty commercial building across the street from The Other Place, or the OP,
what my dad called the only gay bar on that stretch of beachside, and across from that bar was
Pirate’s Cove miniature golf.
        After: immediately, a Dollar General, and much later a spiffy new beach park with ample
parking for tourists and locals, probably part of the city’s mission to clean up and clear out
undesirable elements (they bulldozed the building with the gay bar, too, but the mini golf place
survived).
        But for a few years in the 1990s, it was Laser Challenge, a place where boys could play
laser tag and pump quarters into arcade games and turn in tickets for cheap prizes like Chinese
finger traps and gold rings that turned our fingers green.
        The laser tag arena: jungle vibes, fake palm trees and hanging vines and gray plastic
grottoes for hiding in; boys of various ages running around with neon-lit vests on our chests and
backs, doing everything we could to kill more than we were killed; big speakers blasting hype
jams.
        The music: techno mostly, the repetitive club tracks of the mid-’90s, a steady bass line
with pulsing noises overtop, songs that started hot and never cooled off, like the theme for the
Mortal Kombat movie, hypnotically simple and breakneck speed, perfect for intense focus, for
boys pretending to be men with guns.
        We became soldiers, sneaking around, forming temporary alliances with other boys,
conducting ambushes, hoping to get a turn in the sniper’s coop up top in the arena’s corner—
that's how you could rack up the kills and win the match.
        We’d emerge back into the arcade, sweaty and satisfied, checking our pockets for money
to go right back in for another round, knowing the arcade games paled in comparison to who we
had become in the arena, and could become again for the right price.
        We could suit up, take aim, and return to that phony jungle. None of us knew our future,
but inside that arena felt infinite, a place outside time, where I could disappear from who I was at
school, at home, and from all that I hoped to not become as an adult. The arena was simple.
Point and shoot. Run and hide. Kill or die. We didn’t have to memorize multiplication tables or
attend career days or pretend like everything was okay at home. In that laser arena, all of it was
smothered by the music and the hunt.

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