The Skin of Things

WHEN YOU WERE DEFEATED, there were only so many people you wanted to tell, and names came quickly to the top of one’s list, and so it was, coming back into town from their weekend that Cade texted Donovan.

I just broke up with Simon.

Almost as quickly as Cade had typed, a reply came.

Where are you?

In the car with Simon. On my way back from New Union.

Oh shit.

Yeah. That’s where we broke up.

When do you get back?

In about an hour.

And Don simply typed.

Come over.

When Cade got to the apartment, Donovan already had cigarettes and a bottle of bourbon out, and they didn’t talk, they just drank.

Don got up and made sandwiches, and then brought them back.

“I couldn’t eat a thing,” Cade said, sitting up.

“Well,” Don acknowledged this with a shrug before saying, “I could.”

But then Cade realized he could eat a thing, and he was in the middle of his second sandwich when Don’s phone began to ring.

“You can get that,” Cade said, stuffing ham in his mouth.

Don looked down and said, as his finger swiped over it, “I don’t think I will. It’s one of those people who’re only around when they want you to do something and… I’m sorry, I just feel like too many of us live our lives for all of our straight friends and married siblings and then end up alone. I might end up alone, but tonight, I’m going to end up with you.”

By the time the bottle of bourbon was gone, and they were into a second, Donovan said, “It is quite clear no one is going home tonight. If you want you can take the couch. I, of course, will sleep in the bed.”

With that, Don gingerly made his way to the bathroom, where he quickly washed and then, wrapped in a towel, climbed into bed.

Cade had listened to Don moving through the house, the water from the sink running, the toilet flushing, heard him go into his room, half shut his door. Not shut all the way. That would have been too much. It would have killed Cade.

He lay on the couch for a long time looking at the shadows on the ceiling before finally he got up, went to the bathroom where Don had laid out towels and cloth and a soap, and helped himself to a shower. He thought he would become sleepier under the water, but instead he became, even as he yawned, more restless. He could not go back to the couch or back to the loneliness he was feeling. He needed Don as he always needed him, and wrapping the towel around himself because all of his clothes from the past day were dirty with that day, he went into the darkened room, and lay beside this man.

In the night Donovan awoke to see Cade beside him.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Cade said to him.

Donovan nodded, and made more room for his friend.

“Well, really,” Cade amended, “I don’t want to be in one room when you are in the other.”

Donovan wrapped his arms around Cade and the long tall man pressed into him.

“This is how lovemaking starts,” Cade said.

Donovan was naked, and the towel was still draped over Cade. Donovan removed it so that their bodies came together. He felt his penis stiff against Cade’s own erection, the veins of life down the middle of both their cocks jumping. Their legs went firmer about each other.

They kissed.

CADE

I had heard someplace that we are all broken, every one of us. The first time I heard this it made me feel good. Some people say this is schadenfreude, a very fancy German word meaning: pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. It’s a variation of misery loves company. I think both things are cruel to say, especially if you are in misery. What we need to know, more than love to know, more than enjoy knowing, is that our painful state is not ours alone. It isn’t pleasure in the misfortune of others or even loving other people’s misery, but the relief of knowing you aren’t alone, and that your suffering doesn’t mean you’ve failed, just that you’re here, in this suffering world.

And yet now there is no relief and no need. I wish no one suffered. I look back on certain parts of my life, and I don’t wish them on anybody. I think about the other night, playing guitar, when I started crying and hoped you were asleep, Don, when I felt like I was less than a man. I think about the many times when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, despair hit, and I felt like, please God. I hope no one ever feels like this.

“When I was about twelve my parents divorced. This wasn’t really a tragedy, at least I don’t remember it that way. We were Catholic.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“Yeah, but Mom stopped going to church except for my Confirmation. She said she was bored by church and, this is going to get ironic in a moment, she was tired of priest scandals.

“Then my Aunt Patty started talking about this evangelical church, and my mom was all into it. My brother wasn’t interested, but I was okay with it. Mom started reading her Bible and listening to Christian music, and she seemed happier, and I wasn’t that happy myself, so when she asked me to go with her, I was like, ok. I went. The music was cool. The people were different, and Don, I can’t tell you how much I needed to be different.

“I have noticed something. The people who become devil worshipers and atheists and Christians are all pretty much in the same crowd. The burn outs and the born agains. Did you ever notice that? I think, now, it’s because none of us likes the world the way it is, and we are all waiting for it to burn down.”

“Jesus even said he came to set the world on fire.”

“And I really wanted him to. So I went to the church with mom. It was in an old abandoned theatre on the east side, or at least, it was abandoned until a church started in it, and everyone was excited about building this new church.”

“I didn’t understand Protestant churches, or evangelicals, and I heard how beautiful it was, but the first time I saw it, I was like…. It just looks like a big theatre. I was still expecting….”

“Incense. Stain glass?”

“Something like that. Actual beauty.”

“But I got saved in that church. I devoted myself to that church. There was only one problem.”

“That you were gay.”

“I thought I might be gay.”

Don says, “It took me a long time to realize the problem wasn’t homosexuality, but sexuality, and that straight people were just as troubled by their desires as I was by mine.”

“Yes,” I say, “but I didn’t know that at the time.

“I went to Pastor Skip.”

“Pastor Skip?”

“Yes.”

“Was he the cool pastor that was down with all the kids? Did he have blond hair that was gelled and shaped into wings?”

“He was all of that,” I said, “and now I realize I was attracted to him and now I even realize I was attracted to him because he was gay. I couldn’t see any of that at the time. I went to him and told him I was gay and he said I couldn’t be because it was a sin and I was saved from sin by the blood of Jesus. He told me to pray about it and come back to him in a few days. He gave me some shit to listen to.

“That weekend I listened to this awful ass Christian radio show where basically teenagers called in about all the shit a real person with brains should have given them advice on, sex stuff, and the host said all this stupid Christian shit, and I listened to all these kids crying about…. Basically…. Sex.., And I’m in my room crying about how my secret burden that God has given me, that I cannot give into, is homosexuality and… it’s all so stupid now. But I didn’t know that then.”

Don is saying nothing. I am just lying there with my head against his chest, and his heart is beating slowly.

“So, I went to Pastor Skip, and I told him all this. And he’s like, but how do you feel about guys? About sex? And I tell him, honestly, I still like guys. I still think about them. I still think about sex.

“We’re both standing up. He’s facing me. He’s already closed the door and without much warning he puts his hands down my shorts. It’s like the moment he does that, half of me leaves my body and the rest of me just freezes. I mean, I am… I don’t know what to do. He starts jacking me off and when I come it’s all over his hands, and he tells me, ‘Now, you’ve just had sex. How do you feel?’

“But I don’t say anything. I pull up my shorts and I’m all sticking to myself, and I can see his hands are sticky with my come, and I’ve never even masturbated before. I just feel weird. I feel dizzy. Like you do. But… the way you feel when someone touches you where no one should. I’ve never had an orgasm, and he just stands there, my come on his hands, and tells me to think about how I feel right now.

“‘That’s what sin feels like. That’s homosexuality. Go home and pray about it.’

“He wipes his hands off on some paper napkin from McDonalds, doesn’t even wash them, and I just walk home. I can still smell that burger, the grease. I’ve got my bike, but I don’t ride it. I don’t trust myself to. I only make it two blocks before I double over and throw up in the bushes.

“When I get home I don’t tell anyone about it. But every time I think about sex I think about Pastor Skip doing what he did to me, and me feeling helpless and scared and I want to cut my dick off. I want to cut off what he touched and every time I get an erection or think about sex I want to cut out… the feeling. The desire. I’m so sick. I don’t even like being touched.”

That’s when Don moves away from me.

“No. No. I don’t mean it like that. I like being touched by you. Anything that asshole did to me that fucked me up… I love it when you do it. Don’t worry about that. With the right person… with you, it’s almost like when you touch me you change things, make everything that felt dirty clean again. You know?

“But he wasn’t done with me.

“Next week he asked me how I felt, and I told him. I told him everything I told you, the throwing up, the wanting to castrate myself. He said… He said, well that means it’s working. And then he told me to kneel. I did. But this time he put his dick in my mouth and made me blow him. When he came in my mouth I choked and almost threw up. This shit went on for a few months until mom got tired of church and we just never went back.”

“Did you ever tell her?”

“I never told anyone. Except a few not very helpful therapists. I think it’s one of the reasons I like the water, and the beach. I would go out there and it was only looking at the water I felt okay. I’d sit out there for hours and hours.

“So much happened to me, Don. I even slept with girls. A few, so I wouldn’t feel gay because feeling gay made me feel like I was being molested again. It wasn’t until KJ in college that I started to really be a little bit healthy and get over Pastor Skip.

“They say you never get over stuff like that. They even say you don’t have to. But you do have to. The place he put me in… I’m still so angry that it screws me up now. But I can’t stay in it. I will fight like fuck not to stay in it.”

“No, let me hold you,” Cade says in the dark. “I like to be held and protected, but I like to hold and protect you.”

He says, “You can tell me anything.”

“I know.”

“Or not,’ Cade says. “It’s like… have you ever been with someone who tells you every fucking thing, just honesty diarrhea?”

Don laughs, “Yes. Actually yes.”

“I don’t want that for us. I just don’t want to be a liar, and I realize that I’m starting to be one, not telling everything, editing the truth. I don’t want to do that Don. I don’t want to edit myself into the person I should be. I want to be the person I should be.”

Don turns around and touches his face.

“I get it.”

Cade clears his throat.

“That first time we slept together was me being deceptive, and I never apologized for that, and I don’t like being that person—and,” he said as Don opened his mouth, “before you say that you sort of knew, or that I was traumatized from being abused or… any of that… I want to say that I take ownership for everything I’ve done, and… I’m going to be a better person. I’m going to be the person you believe I am. Okay?”

“Okay,” Don said.

Don lay on his back before speaking.

“And you need to know that whatever happened before we were together is in the past, and what matters now is the promises we make here, with each other.”

“Then we are together?”

“We certainly aren’t not together.”

CADE

“Thanks Dad,” he said.

As he stuffed the money into his pocket, more money than he’d ever had, and the bills almost came out, Cademon Richards thought how awkward this whole thing was.

“Well, you couldn’t go to your mom for that,” his father said. “She wouldn’t understand.”

“No,” Cade said. “She wouldn’t.”

There was a little more awkward silence, and then Cade stepped in and hugged his father quickly, turned around and left the house, heading down the porch and crossing the dry lawn to the car.

When he got to Ashley’s house, he said, “Here it all is,” and she said, shaking her head, “You didn’t even put it in an envelope?”

“I… I didn’t think.”

“No,” Ashley said, dismally. “I guess neither of us did.”

“Uh,” Cade pulled the knit cap off his head, and was wadding it in his hands, “do you want me to come with you? I mean. I’m coming with you.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Ashley said. “But… I don’t need you to.”

Cade wasn’t sure what to say next and while he was thinking, she said, “I really don’t want you to. Angie’s going with me. She’ll drive. And all that.”

“I’ll be here. When you need me.”

“I won’t need you, Cade,” she said.

That was the most certain break up he’d ever had though, looking back, Cade was never sure how together they were. She must have resented him. Even if he’d been good about the whole thing, she would have resented him. They’d only been together a few times and when she had come to him, he’s said, “You’re getting rid of it, right?”

It had just sort of flown out of my mouth, and on the other side of things it’s hard to believe I would ever say something like that. I’d like to say I wasn’t myself back then, but you’re always yourself. right? There was just something different, cold, unloving about me. And I’m not saying that only unloving people don’t go through with pregnancies, but it was unloving of me, how I handled it. And when I walked away from Ashley after giving her the money, I felt relieved, a little guilty, because good people are supposed to feel guilty. But mostly I felt relieved about the whole thing.

When I drove to the lake, I don’t know what led to what happened next. I mean I don’t know if it was the whole business of Ashley or that Ashley was the last in a long string of weird things. I had been sleeping with girls for the last couple of years, making myself do it, hating the feelings I had about guys, and now I felt like I was being punished the other way around. Want guys and a pastor jacks you off, get with girls and they get pregnant. And then there was the business of taking responsibility. When we had left that church I’d had several acts of rebellion, going into my backyard and burning my Christian CDs, pissing on my Bible, and fucking girls, fornicating. I hated God. Fuck him. And anything good, any innocence, any ability to see beauty or wonder, or be seen by them, was gone.

Ashley didn’t have to get pregnant. I just didn’t care about what I was doing, and even after I gave her the money and walked away, I didn’t give a shit about her. She was taking care of her problem, my problem, and that was all that mattered. It was just a very expensive mess, and the truth is I was more upset about how much it cost, how it made me have to go to my dad and ask for money and tell him about everything than anything else. I told him I’d gotten Ashley in trouble. He gave me the cash, and as I got in the car I thought, “You’ve done this shit before.”

They tell you that when you stop caring it’s insulation. I used to think that not feeling was the way to prevent all the horrible things that happened when you felt too much. So why did I drive ten minutes past New Union to that distant spot I always see, and walk onto the abandoned gravel beach and then sit on the pier—it was so fucking desolate—no one was there, just lonely sea gulls—and start taking pills and drinking my dad’s vodka until I felt sufficiently fucked up, and then, roll my ass into the water?

I had the sense to fill by pockets up with rocks—Virginia Woolf style—and for a moment, under the choppy water, there was just this peace. I just felt icy with the water, and when I opened my mouth, the dirty lake water came into it, and after a while my nostrils gave way. For a moment there was panic, the shudder of this happening, and it being entirely too late to do anything about it. I was drowning. The water was too choppy and I was too fucked up to help myself.

Then the dark water was like the water in movies. I mean, that undersea water that’s blue and green, and full of light. And it was still, and warm, and I thought, well, this is heaven. And then I saw the fish, and I saw the biggest fish I’d ever seen, and then. well, then I saw it was not a fish. It was her. Or one of them. I feel like I can’t ever describe her, or them. Even under the water I felt the tears coming to me. There she was, hair streaming, breast bared, face grave, and she lifted me up and up and then I was gagging on the ground, throwing up water, and I tried to turn over and look for her, but she was gone. It was just ordinary stormy water, and cold fall rain was coming down. I knew I’d be sick, and I was for three weeks, but that evening I just kept crying because I was sure that after everything that had happened to me, and that I had done, grace was gone. And now I knew that I wasn’t beyond it.

More after the weekend. Cheers...