The Skin of Things

Donovan Shorter was in bed going through the Encyclopedia Britannica online, looking up the boundaries of Prussia for a history paper, when he found an offline message in his IM inbox.

Donovan,

I shouldn’t do this, but you’ve got a hold over me and I couldn’t let things end the way they did today. I don’t even know what we are or where we’re supposed to stand. Are you the grown-up, and I the kid? Is even writing you wrong? All I know is you were my friend, and I did love you and no matter what the truth is now I think you loved me too. I won’t feel right until we talk again. So, please do write me back.

Yours,

Ezekiel

Donovan typed into the inbox.

I got it, and I want to talk to you too.

And instantly the IM lit up and there appeared

SIMONIZE: Donovan?

Donovan: Ezekiel? Yeah. It’s me. How are you?

All right, I guess, Donovan.

You said you wanted to talk to me. I want to talk to you.

Well, what’s there to say, Donovan? Really? We probably shouldn’t be talking. If it was anyone else but you…

I miss you, Ezekiel.

There was silence for a while, and then Ezekiel came back online.

I miss you too, Donovan. Donovan, why did you do what you did?

I saw your picture and I liked you. And then I started to talk to you and I really liked you, and then, when we brought up sex, I thought…

You thought what?

I don’t know, I just felt something. I really wanted to be with you.

You knew how old I was.

I thought that if it just happened once it wouldn’t matter. If we just met up once then who would care how old I was? Or how old you were?

But it wasn’t just once, Donovan.

Yeah, I know that. I thought that sooner or later it would work itself out. I’ll be eighteen at the end of the year.

It’s February, and you’re not eighteen. You’re seventeen.

Well, what’s that matter?

It’s the law.

The Law? Is the law the only thing that makes it matter?

What makes it matter is I’m a grown man and you’re still a child, Donovan.

No, that’s not true. Not really. You’re not talking to me like a child. We’re talking like equals.

Well, only a child would have done something this irresponsible.

Donovan didn’t respond right away, but when he did, what he wrote was:

Children do not fall in love with and sleep with men, and men don’t return the favor unless they’re child molesters. Are you a child molester?

Ezekiel signed off and Donovan swore.

He wrote in the offline messages:

Ezekiel, I didn’t mean to say it like that! What I meant was I’m really not a child. There’s nothing wrong with what happened between us.

Donovan sat in front of his computer screen for a long time, and then he got up, tapping his foot. Finally the light flashed back on and there was Ezekiel.

Donovan, what do you want from me?

Donovan wrote back, quickly:

I want you. Like I had you.

I can’t be your boyfriend.

Yes, you can. That’s what I want.

I can’t process this right now, Don.

What do you want? You haven’t told me what you want.

Don, what I want, right now is to go to bed. And get some work done. I need to think. I need to get offline right now.

Donovan nodded, though no one was there to see him. Ezekiel had signed off. In the offline message, Donovan typed:

If you want me just let me know. You have me.

-Donovan

Donovan,

PLEASE MEET me for lunch at Lulu’s on Saturday, if you have the time.

Yours,

Ezekiel

Ezekiel, I just got this message, if you get my message, please write me back,

Donovan

He had thought of writing Love, Donovan. But that was pushing it. He left that message in the morning and went to school, hoping there would be something for him when he got back, thinking, even of going over to Citeaux, or going to Ezekiel’s apartment and seeing if he was there. But he knew that would be too much.

School bored him. School went on all around his head. He only half showed up for it. If Ezekiel had seen him here, impersonating a teenager, he would have understood that Donovan was not too young. He had friends, or at least he had people he liked and who liked him, who talked to him, that he knew nothing about really. And they didn’t know him. He wished that one day one of them would come up to him and see through him, or see him at all and say, “Donovan Shorter, what are you all about?” But no one did. Or maybe he could have said that to someone else, except he didn’t know how not to make that seem strange and corny in the real world. In his mind being friendly and outgoing worked so well.

His English teacher, Mrs. McNair, a woman whose eyes bulged from behind her glasses, and whose temples were shot with veins when she recited poetry in class, her hands, clawlike, gesticulating liked to murmur—no matter what the month—“April is the cruelest month.”

Well, surely the cruelest month was February. This February in this dreadful year more than any other. It snowed and snowed without relief. Five inches followed by a foot, horrible stuff to take a moped through. And then it rained for a day, enough to melt the shit. And then it was back again. Evan seemed impervious to horrible weather, but Adrienne was markedly depressed, and the depression was shared by Donovan. He reflected that for the last two days, not even webporn could turn him on. But then, Ezekiel had something to do with all of that as well.

Traveling home from school, Donovan took it slow coming to the house on Colby. What if Ezekiel hadn’t written back? It would be too much to get on his computer, turn on his IM and find nothing. So he dillydallied. He even let himself fantasize, one more time, about showing up at Ezekiel’s apartment.

He went upstairs and turned on his laptop. There, to his breath exhaling relief, was a little message. How could such a little thing make him feel so good?

I’m online right now. Write me if you want to. We can talk before we talk at lunch on Saturday.

Ezekiel?

Donovan, how are you?

(He didn’t seem angry. That was a good sign.)

Good, how are you? I was hoping I’d hear from you.

(Donovan took a chance and wrote:)

I missed you.

(a moment later Ezekiel’s typing came)

I’ve missed you too.

So, what time on Saturday?

I was thinking one o’ clock. I know it’ll be a bit crowded, though. Is that okay with you?

Yeah. It’s fine. Anything’s fine.

(Donovan added)

What do you want to talk about?

(After a pause)

US.

“This is what I call a very cool place,”

“Isn’t it?” Donovan said.

“Why didn’t we come here before?”

“It’s all the way in the city. We were just meeting to… fool around,” he told Simon. “But this is the real deal. The Coffee House.”

“I can get you coffee with some cream and sugar or coffee with some cream and sugar,” Donovan had said, stepping in, “Or you can just take it black. Or a variation of what I said.”

“So, you’re serious,” Simon said, at once going quiet as he entered the place. “This is like a no frills coffee shop.”

“It’s just real debate and real artists and musicians. Small enough for intimacy. Large enough so everyone doesn’t trip over everyone else.

In the corner Simon heard two dark skinned women arguing;

“Yes, I perfectly agree with Hirsi Ali when she says that there is something fundamentally wrong with Islam itself. That the religion really needs to change. But there is a bitterness in her, I think—”

“Well, you would be bitter too if you’d been excised as a little girl, your clit scooped out of you, and then forced into marriage twice.”

“I’m not saying she doesn’t have a right to bitterness, I’m just acknowledging that the bitterness is there and, what’s more, that it affects her work negatively.”

“I think it gives it fuel.”

“I don’t. I don’t think that anger necessarily does that much, especially if you’re not aware of it. And from the ending of the book, and from her attitude in some of her interviews, I would say she isn’t. In fact, I would go so far as to say she is as fundamentalist an atheist as she was a fundamentalist Muslim.”

“Well, but that’s what bothers you. That she’s an atheist.”

“Of course that bothers me. That’s how fundamentalists are. They grow up in one religion that is overly simple and claims to be true. This is true. It has all the answers and they terrify you. Then, one day, you put it away, only you’ve been taught to think that way your whole ife. So instead of just not knowing what’s true, or being open to wonder you say: ‘That’s it. There’s no God’. There’s not anything. And she says that, and that’s just as stupid as her old position. And this is where I lose respect for her.”

“You’ve actually lost respect for her?”

“Yes!”

Donovan arrived from behind the counter where he had made the coffees, and startled Simon out of his enjoyment of the conversation.

“This is a wonderful place!” he said.

“I think so. It’s nice to just come here and listen sometimes. People are always saying something interesting. Or singing it.”

“I wish we could join their discussion,” Simon said. “I think they’d let us in. But I don’t really know anything about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”

“The woman who wrote Infidel? Used to be in the Dutch Parliament?”

Simon looked at Donovan, and then said, “I forget you come from an overly literate household.”

“You forgot I wasn’t some dumb kid,” Donovan affected to feel hurt by this.

“Actually, yes,” Simon said, seriously. “Yes, I did, Donovan. And I’ve got to remember to stop making that mistake about you.”

“I’m just glad we’re here,” Donovan said. “Together and past… What I did.”

“I’m glad too. But the truth is I’m glad you did what you did,” Simon said. “I think I had to look inside of myself and realize how I really felt.”

“Well, I think you do have to learn non-violence,” one of the girls at the next table was saying. “I mean, I thought I was a nonviolent person because I look like one on the outside. But then I realized that when you work for justice, when you want justice you’re so angry. So here I was, pissed off on the inside… I wasn’t non-violent at all. It’s really got to be something you work at from the center…”

“I want to know them,” Simon said.

“We could introduce ourselves.”

“No!”

Donovan got up and went to their table.

“Excuse me, my name’s Donovan and this is my friend Simon, and we’ve been listening to you all. I mean, we can’t promise we have anything intelligent to say, and we might be drags on your conversation, but we just wanted to know if we could sit with you anyway?”

One of the girls, who had black rimmed spectacles and a knit cap cracked a smile and smacked a chair. “Com’on over. Usually most guys are afraid of a girl if she’s got half a brain.”

The red headed girl beside her waved Simon over.

“You’re cute,” she said.

“Thanks,” he smiled nervously.

“I’m not hitting on you,” she said. “We’re lesbians.”

“Oh,” Simon let out a relieved laugh. “We are too!”

At the look on their faces, Simon said, “I mean… what I mean…”

But the girls just kept laughed, and the first one said, “I’m Saffron. This is Kelly. Sit on down. Let’s be lesbians together.”

CADE

I am lying. I suppose I lie everyday. Many of us do. But right now I am conscious of really and truly and frequently not telling the truth. If you think about it, lying is like editing. Everything that happens is everything that happens, but to make it into a story, to make it into the proper story, one must edit. One has to leave out. To protect people you love you had better leave out. I’m going to say something else that’s going to sound crazy. To let people see the you that you truly are, you had better leave out.

My very first real true I’m-in-love-with-you-boyfriend used to tell me shit that would break my heart. He would watch my face change, and then he would say, “I’m being honest. Don’t you want us to be honest? Would you rather I lie to you? “

I’m old enough to see he didn’t really love anyone, but I do, and so I lie. When Donovan asks me what it’s like living with Simon after we’ve broken up, I say it’s the same except for no drugs and no sex. He never asked, but to not say it would have been to leave the question hanging in the air. I think. The truth is after I came back to the apartment, after my summer trip. After Don and I decided starting over as friends and rebuilding our relationship was what mattered, I went back home. It was my apartment. I did pay rent on it, and I moved my stuff into the spare room. Me and Simon fought, but not about what you think. He said I should keep our old room, I said no. At last he said, “Well, at least take the bed.” So we put the bed in my room, and that was that.

We lived awkwardly for a week or so. Courteous separate lives. Friday night he came home depressed, but with cocaine and we spent the night drinking and snorting. When I went to bed, Simon came with me. It all happened about once a week. I never talked about it with anyone else, certainly not with Don. Every time me and Simon had sex I knew I didn’t love him. I knew I wanted to be touched. I knew I wanted someone who was safe and I knew I wanted that for him, that I cared about him, but it wasn’t the same as being in love.

So I know things have to change. I edit the truth again when I get back to the hotel.

In the official version of the story, Andrew and I have civilized coffee.

“I have a friend waiting for me.”

“A he friend or a she friend.”

“A he friend.”

“Like a boyfriend?” Andrew raised his eyebrow.

“A friend who is very important to me.”

“Well,” Andrew said. “Yeah. So… No crazy sex parties.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Andrew lifted his coffee and took another sip.

“We’re going to keep being friends, right? Talking?”

“Yeah!” Cade said. “Definitely.”

“I gotta ask you this. I will regret not asking.”

“Okay.”

“I get you don’t want a sex party and all that. But…. What about something else?”

I’m wearing thin jersey shorts with no underwear, and if I get up the whole world will see I have a tremendous boner. I touch Andrew’s foot with my toe, then open my legs and Andrew scoots his chair back to look under the table.

I take off my ball cap and put it over my lap, walking along the little outdoor café, back into the combination of lights and darkness that is this street with its shops at night The air smells like the lake and like seaweed, and the moist heat is coming back up. Only a moment later, Andrew is there. He turns his ball cap backward and gets down on his knees, and in the alley, he pulls down my shorts and starts sucking me off. I haven’t been with Simon in over a week, and Simon doesn’t go down on me often. It isn’t long before I come in Andrew’s mouth, and he gags a little bit then spits my nut out in the alley.

“Thanks,” Andrew says.

“Thank you.” I reply.

We hug awkwardly in the alley and I say, “Have a good time tonight.”

I’m still hard. I wish I was going to the sex party, but am afraid, and I wish I had fucked Andrew, but I am weirded out by the fact that I just let him blow me in the alley. I don’t know how I feel about myself or anything. This is why I strip when I get to the water. Why I just want to get back to Donovan and the hotel room. I never feel confused when I’m with him.

I say, “Don, I hooked up with that guy.”

He looks at me, and I say, “I need you to tell me if you care or if you don’t care, because here’s the thing. I do care. See, this summer I was silly. I should have stayed, but I left and I did things. Hooked up with guys, and I’ve been being this way for a long time.”

Donovan looked away. He was talking to the sand, not looking at me when he said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Cause you’re telling me about this great guy, this guy you’re kind of sad about and I’m telling you, if you want to you should strike shit up with him again. Cause he does sound great and I sound… really fucked up. I’m fucked up Don. I am fucked up and I’ve been fucked up by other people, and I’ve… paid that forward. I am a screwed up man, Donovan Shorter, but, I am a man who loves you.”

Don looked up a him.

“No one’s going to love you more,” I told him. “I love you.”

We are still looking out on the water and Donovan says, “What in the…?”

He stops. He is pointing to something past the pier, and my eyes follow his.

Neither one of us says anything as it comes up from the water, first like a woman who has dived in later at night, except for, no one saw her go in.. And then, where legs should be… there are none. We look. I don’t dare describe. We cannot take our eyes away.

Donovan looks away first.

“I feel like it’s bad luck to look on too long.”

I nod my head. After all the little lies I’ve told here is this amazing truth than no one would believe.

“I always thought I would be afraid if I saw something like that,” Donovan said, “Feel stranger. Like in the movies.”

Donovan Shorter was in bed going through the Encyclopedia Britannica online, looking up the boundaries of Prussia for a history paper, when he found an offline message in his IM inbox.

Donovan,

I shouldn’t do this, but you’ve got a hold over me and I couldn’t let things end the way they did today. I don’t even know what we are or where we’re supposed to stand. Are you the grown-up, and I the kid? Is even writing you wrong? All I know is you were my friend, and I did love you and no matter what the truth is now I think you loved me too. I won’t feel right until we talk again. So, please do write me back.

Yours,

Ezekiel

Donovan typed into the inbox.

I got it, and I want to talk to you too.

And instantly the IM lit up and there appeared

SIMONIZE: Donovan?

Donovan: Ezekiel? Yeah. It’s me. How are you?

All right, I guess, Donovan.

You said you wanted to talk to me. I want to talk to you.

Well, what’s there to say, Donovan? Really? We probably shouldn’t be talking. If it was anyone else but you…

I miss you, Ezekiel.

There was silence for a while, and then Ezekiel came back online.

I miss you too, Donovan. Donovan, why did you do what you did?

I saw your picture and I liked you. And then I started to talk to you and I really liked you, and then, when we brought up sex, I thought…

You thought what?

I don’t know, I just felt something. I really wanted to be with you.

You knew how old I was.

I thought that if it just happened once it wouldn’t matter. If we just met up once then who would care how old I was? Or how old you were?

But it wasn’t just once, Donovan.

Yeah, I know that. I thought that sooner or later it would work itself out. I’ll be eighteen at the end of the year.

It’s February, and you’re not eighteen. You’re seventeen.

Well, what’s that matter?

It’s the law.

The Law? Is the law the only thing that makes it matter?

What makes it matter is I’m a grown man and you’re still a child, Donovan.

No, that’s not true. Not really. You’re not talking to me like a child. We’re talking like equals.

Well, only a child would have done something this irresponsible.

Donovan didn’t respond right away, but when he did, what he wrote was:

Children do not fall in love with and sleep with men, and men don’t return the favor unless they’re child molesters. Are you a child molester?

Ezekiel signed off and Donovan swore.

He wrote in the offline messages:

Ezekiel, I didn’t mean to say it like that! What I meant was I’m really not a child. There’s nothing wrong with what happened between us.

Donovan sat in front of his computer screen for a long time, and then he got up, tapping his foot. Finally the light flashed back on and there was Ezekiel.

Donovan, what do you want from me?

Donovan wrote back, quickly:

I want you. Like I had you.

I can’t be your boyfriend.

Yes, you can. That’s what I want.

I can’t process this right now, Don.

What do you want? You haven’t told me what you want.

Don, what I want, right now is to go to bed. And get some work done. I need to think. I need to get offline right now.

Donovan nodded, though no one was there to see him. Ezekiel had signed off. In the offline message, Donovan typed:

If you want me just let me know. You have me.

-Donovan

Donovan,

PLEASE MEET me for lunch at Lulu’s on Saturday, if you have the time.

Yours,

Ezekiel

Ezekiel, I just got this message, if you get my message, please write me back,

Donovan

He had thought of writing Love, Donovan. But that was pushing it. He left that message in the morning and went to school, hoping there would be something for him when he got back, thinking, even of going over to Citeaux, or going to Ezekiel’s apartment and seeing if he was there. But he knew that would be too much.

School bored him. School went on all around his head. He only half showed up for it. If Ezekiel had seen him here, impersonating a teenager, he would have understood that Donovan was not too young. He had friends, or at least he had people he liked and who liked him, who talked to him, that he knew nothing about really. And they didn’t know him. He wished that one day one of them would come up to him and see through him, or see him at all and say, “Donovan Shorter, what are you all about?” But no one did. Or maybe he could have said that to someone else, except he didn’t know how not to make that seem strange and corny in the real world. In his mind being friendly and outgoing worked so well.

His English teacher, Mrs. McNair, a woman whose eyes bulged from behind her glasses, and whose temples were shot with veins when she recited poetry in class, her hands, clawlike, gesticulating liked to murmur—no matter what the month—“April is the cruelest month.”

Well, surely the cruelest month was February. This February in this dreadful year more than any other. It snowed and snowed without relief. Five inches followed by a foot, horrible stuff to take a moped through. And then it rained for a day, enough to melt the shit. And then it was back again. Evan seemed impervious to horrible weather, but Adrienne was markedly depressed, and the depression was shared by Donovan. He reflected that for the last two days, not even webporn could turn him on. But then, Ezekiel had something to do with all of that as well.

Traveling home from school, Donovan took it slow coming to the house on Colby. What if Ezekiel hadn’t written back? It would be too much to get on his computer, turn on his IM and find nothing. So he dillydallied. He even let himself fantasize, one more time, about showing up at Ezekiel’s apartment.

He went upstairs and turned on his laptop. There, to his breath exhaling relief, was a little message. How could such a little thing make him feel so good?

I’m online right now. Write me if you want to. We can talk before we talk at lunch on Saturday.

Ezekiel?

Donovan, how are you?

(He didn’t seem angry. That was a good sign.)

Good, how are you? I was hoping I’d hear from you.

(Donovan took a chance and wrote:)

I missed you.

(a moment later Ezekiel’s typing came)

I’ve missed you too.

So, what time on Saturday?

I was thinking one o’ clock. I know it’ll be a bit crowded, though. Is that okay with you?

Yeah. It’s fine. Anything’s fine.

(Donovan added)

What do you want to talk about?

(After a pause)

US.

“This is what I call a very cool place,”

“Isn’t it?” Donovan said.

“Why didn’t we come here before?”

“It’s all the way in the city. We were just meeting to… fool around,” he told Simon. “But this is the real deal. The Coffee House.”

“I can get you coffee with some cream and sugar or coffee with some cream and sugar,” Donovan had said, stepping in, “Or you can just take it black. Or a variation of what I said.”

“So, you’re serious,” Simon said, at once going quiet as he entered the place. “This is like a no frills coffee shop.”

“It’s just real debate and real artists and musicians. Small enough for intimacy. Large enough so everyone doesn’t trip over everyone else.

In the corner Simon heard two dark skinned women arguing;

“Yes, I perfectly agree with Hirsi Ali when she says that there is something fundamentally wrong with Islam itself. That the religion really needs to change. But there is a bitterness in her, I think—”

“Well, you would be bitter too if you’d been excised as a little girl, your clit scooped out of you, and then forced into marriage twice.”

“I’m not saying she doesn’t have a right to bitterness, I’m just acknowledging that the bitterness is there and, what’s more, that it affects her work negatively.”

“I think it gives it fuel.”

“I don’t. I don’t think that anger necessarily does that much, especially if you’re not aware of it. And from the ending of the book, and from her attitude in some of her interviews, I would say she isn’t. In fact, I would go so far as to say she is as fundamentalist an atheist as she was a fundamentalist Muslim.”

“Well, but that’s what bothers you. That she’s an atheist.”

“Of course that bothers me. That’s how fundamentalists are. They grow up in one religion that is overly simple and claims to be true. This is true. It has all the answers and they terrify you. Then, one day, you put it away, only you’ve been taught to think that way your whole ife. So instead of just not knowing what’s true, or being open to wonder you say: ‘That’s it. There’s no God’. There’s not anything. And she says that, and that’s just as stupid as her old position. And this is where I lose respect for her.”

“You’ve actually lost respect for her?”

“Yes!”

Donovan arrived from behind the counter where he had made the coffees, and startled Simon out of his enjoyment of the conversation.

“This is a wonderful place!” he said.

“I think so. It’s nice to just come here and listen sometimes. People are always saying something interesting. Or singing it.”

“I wish we could join their discussion,” Simon said. “I think they’d let us in. But I don’t really know anything about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”

“The woman who wrote Infidel? Used to be in the Dutch Parliament?”

Simon looked at Donovan, and then said, “I forget you come from an overly literate household.”

“You forgot I wasn’t some dumb kid,” Donovan affected to feel hurt by this.

“Actually, yes,” Simon said, seriously. “Yes, I did, Donovan. And I’ve got to remember to stop making that mistake about you.”

“I’m just glad we’re here,” Donovan said. “Together and past… What I did.”

“I’m glad too. But the truth is I’m glad you did what you did,” Simon said. “I think I had to look inside of myself and realize how I really felt.”

“Well, I think you do have to learn non-violence,” one of the girls at the next table was saying. “I mean, I thought I was a nonviolent person because I look like one on the outside. But then I realized that when you work for justice, when you want justice you’re so angry. So here I was, pissed off on the inside… I wasn’t non-violent at all. It’s really got to be something you work at from the center…”

“I want to know them,” Simon said.

“We could introduce ourselves.”

“No!”

Donovan got up and went to their table.

“Excuse me, my name’s Donovan and this is my friend Simon, and we’ve been listening to you all. I mean, we can’t promise we have anything intelligent to say, and we might be drags on your conversation, but we just wanted to know if we could sit with you anyway?”

One of the girls, who had black rimmed spectacles and a knit cap cracked a smile and smacked a chair. “Com’on over. Usually most guys are afraid of a girl if she’s got half a brain.”

The red headed girl beside her waved Simon over.

“You’re cute,” she said.

“Thanks,” he smiled nervously.

“I’m not hitting on you,” she said. “We’re lesbians.”

“Oh,” Simon let out a relieved laugh. “We are too!”

At the look on their faces, Simon said, “I mean… what I mean…”

But the girls just kept laughed, and the first one said, “I’m Saffron. This is Kelly. Sit on down. Let’s be lesbians together.”