The Skin of Things

Here is the kitchen, and here is the living room I never use. One day if you need to crash, there will be a place for you.”

“Just for that I want to be homeless right now.”

“It’s not that great.”

“Ha!” Cade declared, “I love a man who keeps candles in his bathroom.”

“The bathroom’s one of the most important rooms in the house.”

“And you keep a bookshelf in it! And I love the kitchen.”

“And there is the bedroom.”

“I will turn on the light. If you don’t mind? I should have asked.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Don hasn’t seen him in shorts before. His legs are hairy, but Don thinks the hair is soft. He is looking around at the books and the sculptures.

“Did you do those?”

“I did.”

Someone is looking at Donovan’s life, and he isn’t ashamed, nor is he proud. He’s just sort of offering himself.

“I’m tired,” Cade says.

“Me too.”

Donovan plops down on his bed, watching his new friend look around. At last, Cade joins him and they lay down looking at the ceiling.

“I feel so at home here,” Cade says.

“Me too,” Donovan says, and they both laugh.

“I don’t know,” Cade says. “It’s just… I feel at home with you. I don’t feel that way with that many people.”

“It’s too bright,” Donovan says. He gets up. Flips off the light.

“I want the moon,” he says and opens the curtains.

Back on the bed again, Donovan feels the weight of it as Cade turns over and looks at the ivory disk in the sky.

“I think,” Donovan says, “the reason we love the moon is because it’s the only way we have of staring into the sun.”

“What kind of underwear do you have on?” Cade says just as simply.

Donovan pulls down his shorts, and Cade runs his hand over Don’s briefs.

“You’re soft you know. So soft,” Cade breathes, pressing himself against Donovan.

Fairly swiftly, Cade lowers his shorts and then they pull off their tee shirts and lay together in their underwear. They lay side by side in the light of the room until, at last, Cade’s hands slip through the soft waistband of Donovan’s briefs and Donovan begins to stroke and massage Cade at the same time Cade touches him. They don’t look at each other, just at the ceiling, then at the blackness of their own closed eyelids, and, at last, Cade rolls over to kiss him, and, in the end, the underwear is gone and their limbs link.

Oh, he is soft, Cade thinks. Oh his kiss is just what I wanted. I could gather him up and be in his arms and feel his body, these thick thighs, this soft, sweet skin, this warmth, oh God, the beauty of a shaved head, of cheeks not shaved for a couple of days, of those eyelids and the mouth, the generous mouth, oh, those hands up and down me.

And oh, the hair on his legs, so gentle, the perfect length of legs, the firmness of his ass, the dent in the small of his back, oh his back, Donovan gathers as much of him as possible between his thighs, pulls his face down to kiss him in the dark, to luxuriate in his kiss, in his kiss, in his firm kiss, in his tongue thrust into his mouth, tasting gently of beer and the memory of cigarettes and spearmint gum, in the tangling curls of his hair.

“I love you.”

It slips out of his mouth like a surrender. He never tells it to a lover and has never believed it from lovers in the past.

How tender it sounds when Cade says it too.

“Be inside me,” Donovan says.

The whole apartment is quiet and dark. The only sounds are small, the small creaking and giving way of the bed, of little moans and gasps. If one was there to watch you could see them, burrowed into the corner of the bed like a ball, Cade, white assed, on hands and knees, dark thighs bunched as he kneels, gathering Donovan to him, his thighs around Cade’s waist as, piston like, Cade fucks him.

“I’m about to come,” Cade tells him. “I’m about to come.”

“Come inside of me.”

“Are you…?”

But Donovan is pulling him in, and Cade has not stopped, and he cannot stop. His body freezes and then jerks, and Donovan feels him pumping, pulsing, feels the slick semen coming between his thighs. He cradles Cade’s damp head to his, kissing his face, feeling his own hardness, knowing he will do the same to Cade before the night is over. He cannot say he’d always wanted to do this because he cannot say this was planned. Cade, gasping, reluctantly unlinks from him, and they hold each other, lying face to face, unable to speak.

DONOVAN

I mourn it, and I don’t know why. I understand the regret that comes from things you’ve done that never get repaired, but not the regret from things that, in the end turned out quite alright. I know everything that was going on that night on Cade’s side, but what in the world was going on with me? What did I expect? When we said, let’s go to the bedroom, when I turned off the light, surely I knew what I was doing. Or did I just want to lie next to him and feel the heat of his body? And what is the difference, really, between wanting his presence and wanting to make love?

It was almost one in the morning when I walked him down, his guitar over his shoulder. We held hands, his thumb rubbing the inside of my palm, I his. My apartment is on the second level and a stair whose smell I can’t quite describe leads down to the little foyer or whatever where there are two more doors to other apartments, and the glass door leading to the street. There we hug for a long time, and then he kisses me, and says, “Don’t forget Sunday.”

As he gets into his car and heads down the street, I feel the regret of not asking him to stay. Maybe I thought it would happen on Sunday, or maybe I’d been with so many men I didn’t want to stay that I couldn’t realize how much I wanted to wake up with this one until he was gone. All through the night the regret was an ache that turned into yearning and longing. Even after I had showered and lay in bed thinking of work in the morning, I could still feel Cade Richards inside of me.