Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium.

When the mechanism that allows me to feel things is broken and I need to force an emotional experience, I sometimes go to this place and wander around these coin pushers and claw machines and Buck Hunt and Ridge Racer and Time Crisis, and for some reason the juxtaposition of things I like with things I hate does the trick and I leave feeling either really good or really bad.

In here are things that are tacky and shiny and colourful and trivial and beautiful and anthropomorphic and nostalgic and weird. And also things that are cynical and misogynistic and exploitative; and seedy and greedy and hopeless; and violent in a way that’s cruel instead of cathartic.

Some days I want to step into this strange glittering cave, and walk past all the kitten-eyed kids trying to win keyrings and sticker tattoos, and then walk past all the rows of dead-eyed adults mechanically pumping the slot machines, and then keep walking to the games at the very back where there’s never anyone around, and just play Dance Dance Revolution by myself.