The Skin of Things

Cademon Richards met his sister in Coloma, and they planned to go on toward New York. He was relieved to not have to talk while he drove. Her husband was leaving her, and she couldn’t carry a child to term. She wondered if she would ever find love. How was Simon? Well, that was too bad with gay marriage being legal and everything. You would have thought that would have taken care of everything. Cade didn’t know what to say to that.

Past eleven o clock they came into Greenfield, and though they had both agreed to stay at the Motel 6 there was, up the street, an old one story hotel with curtains all along its glass wall and a half abandoned parking lot. There was a hooded driveway and the light was on.

“It looks so…” Lyssa began.

“Seedy.”

“Let’s stay.”

And so they did. It wasn’t seedy. The lobby was quiet. The bellhop said there was a pool.

“Will you need two beds or one?” he asked, and Lyssa turned to Cade, not for confirmation, but because the boy with the dark hair and scruff was frankly eyeing him.

“She’s my sister,” Cade said.

“A room with two twin beds then. There’s a pool by the way.”

“We’ll only be staying the night,” Cade said as Lyssa picked up her bag.

“That’s too bad. Here,” the boy in the white shirt and jacket came around the desk. “Let me lead you to your room.”

“There’s nobody else here?” Lyssa heard Cade say.

“Not at this time of night. It’s not like anyone’s coming. This is Greenfield, not Chicago.”

“And I bet even in Chicago the night manager isn’t busy at this time.”

“And here you go,” the young man said. “Hopefully you noticed the pool. We passed it. It would be a shame not to enjoy it.”

“I’m going to enjoy a long shower,” Lyssa said, walking into the room. “And a good night’s sleep. You can enjoy the pool. I’m going to bed.”

“You hit the shower first,” Cade said, tapping the manager on the arm as he slowly turned to leave. “I’ll go in next and then maybe I will visit that pool.”

“Good for you,” Lyssa said, opening her suitcase and taking her toiletries into the bathroom.

“What time is it now?” Cade asked the manager.

He looked at his watch, raised an eyebrow and said, “It is exactly 11:38.”

“Well,” Cade cleared his throat. “I guess that means I’ll come to that pool at exactly 12:20. It’ll be open then, right?”

“Oh, yes,” the manager said. “It’s open all night.”

“And no one ever comes?”

“Nope,” the manager sighed. “You might say it’s the most private place in the hotel.”

Cade was surprised that Lyssa was asleep by the time he got out of the shower. Towel wrapped about him he went to check his phone and saw that it was ten past twelve already. He dressed casually in shorts and a tee shirt, and looked at himelf for just a moment. He had avoided looking at himself naked in the mirror. He was twenty-six and though he felt thrown away, he also knew he looked good. He also knew the trick to everything was not to think too much about it. In unassuming red trunks and a v neck t shirt he made his way to the pool and entered the chlorine scented space where fluorescent light shone on the blue water. He sat down on the edge of the pool and dipped his legs in the water, kicking about slowly. Only a moment later, the door opened to the pool room and the night manager entered.

There was a ripple of water as Cade pulled out his legs and looked up at the night manager, a guy who was good looking, not tall, wavy haired. Pleasant. Suddenly he laughed and the night manager did too.

“I’m Joseph,” he said.

“And you’re free right now?” Cade said.

“I’m as free as I need to be.”

Cade chuckled at that and then said, “I’m Cade.”

He stood up and he was not quite a foot taller than Joseph.

“You have very nice eyes,” Cade said. And then he said, “In fact, you’re nice all around.”

“Thank you, Cade. Thank you,” Joseph said.

“I wish I could offer you….” Cade gestured to the natatorium, “hospitality. But… as you can see… As you know… I don’t really have a room for such things.”

Joseph gave a small laugh and nodded, touching Cade’s elbow.

“Cade…”

“Richards. I’m not one of those who’s afraid to have a last name. Of Wallington, Indiana.”

“Well, Cade Richards of Wallington,” Joseph said. “You are in luck because I happen to be the night manager and that means I have several rooms in which to offer you hospitality. If you’d let me?”

Cade nodded.

“I would be honored to let you.”

Cade’s alarm went off and grey light was coming through the curtains into the hotel room. He stretched out in it, turned over on his back and then pushed up and went to the bathroom to piss loudly before collapsing on his back. A half hour more. He wasn’t quite ready to leave a king sized bed and return to his room with Lyssa.

Last night, or really five hours ago, Joseph had made polite conversation, and then, when they’d gotten to the room, Joseph had reached for his shorts, tugging at them, and Cade had stopped Joseph to undress the dark, wavy haired night manager, to pull his trousers and his underwear down and put him on the bed and take his erection into his mouth. He’d needed to suck a cock, and Joseph’s was perfect. He pulled the boy’s clothes off and admired his perfect body. There were so many boys who were perfect and didn’t know it, who didn’t know how soft their skin with a little bit of hair was, how round and firm their asses were, how good the shape and girth of their cocks. Joseph moaned in pleasure until Cade turned him over, and buried his face in his round ass, surprised by the sweetness of it. Joseph had prepared for this it.

He was also surprised when Joseph ended up fucking him. His legs were over his shoulders, and the boy was fucking him rhythmically, desperately. All sex was desperate. That was what made it worthwhile.

“I need to go. I need to go. I should get back,” the boy kept saying while he fucked him, but Cade’s hands were on his thighs and on his firm ass while Joseph’s hands rested on his shoulders, went down his chest, needed to knead him, to feel another man.

They had lain in the dark, and Joseph said, “You don’t have to leave, Cade. You can stay in here tonight as long as you’re gone by seven.”

“Thanks for that,” Cade said. “I didn’t really want to leave.”

There was no snuggling with Joseph, no real pressing body to body. Cade was old enough, had been with enough men to know that the sex having been done, Joseph didn’t know what else to do with himself.

“I better get back to the desk,” Joseph said, climbing out of bed.

Joseph had not bent to kiss him during sex, and so Cade had not kissed him. Or touched his perfect hair.

“I had a… thank you, Cade,” Joseph said, politely.

Cade used to assume that the weirdness that often occurred in sex was because there were so many closeted fags who couldn’t handle what had just happened. But he had talked to enough women, enough straight people by now, to realize no one could really handle intimacy. Sex was the cigarette even after the cigarette was banned, the bad thing you needed to have, wanted to have, would have, but would feel bad for later, would want twenty miles away from you, buried in the dark. He had thought it was gay men afraid of their lusts because society was afraid of gay men. Now he realized that all of society was afraid of all of desire.

“Goodnight, Cade,” Joseph said.

He opened the door, closed it and left.

It was the dirty ones who were the best lovers. It was the ones who hit you up with a picture of their cock and said they wanted to fuck who stayed around. The polite ones could not last. Sex was not a polite business, and when Cade had pulled on his shorts and tee shirt and left the room, he was not surprised that the person at the front desk was someone new and Joseph had already left.

You ought to be able to let people go. You can ache and pine and think of the times you had, and the love you made, but after a time you have to do what you don’t want to do, which is let them go. You can make the resolve to do it eventually, or right away, in times when they or you are in danger, or again and again every day. But you have to let them go. These are the things that Donovan Shorter told himself, and even after what happened that day, while Brian was still with him, while he still smelled of Brian’s cologne, and the unique salt smell of Brian’s skin, he never changed his mind from this resolve. It’s always good. Always true. But that afternoon he got the letter and he read the letter. Brian was out on a run then, and when he came back, later on, before they ate dinner, he showed the letter to Brian.

I haven’t written or called, and I’m sorry for that. There isn’t much to say and then it’s been so long since I’ve called I don’t really trust my words. I have lied so much. Not to you, but to myself mostly. The voice lies so much. It’s almost as if you can’t stand to hear yourself say certain things.

You probably want to know what I’ve been doing? Maybe you wondered if it was interesting, or if I should have taken you. I don’t really wish to talk about everything because the truth is most of those places would have been better with you at my side.

And do I understand you? I hope I do. Or if I don’t, I hope I do one day. I hope one day the way you are always there for me, you feel that I am always here for you. I hope one day you don’t mind me singing corny songs to you.

Do you know the worst part of a letter? You’re always trying to justify them, make them long enough, wondering if you’ve said everything you need to say. The longer the letter gets, the more you think, I need to write more. More must be written. I am leaving a hotel that I stayed the night at on my way to New York State, not the city. I was on my way to the city when it seemed sort of unfair, shitty really, to go there without you. I was thinking about you so very much that I just sat down and wrote this letter, and then I left these lines right here because I heard the song, and it made me think of you, and in the end, these words sum up everything on my mind. If I had to send this in a telegram I would send you these words. And I would hope you’d understand.

Forever, no matter what
You've got my love to lean on darling
That's what's up
You've got my love to lean on darling
No matter what!

-Cade.

P.S. Even as you read this, I am on my way home.