The Skin of Things

“I don’t know what to do next,” Cade said one morning.

“What do you mean?” Don said.

“I can see behind me,” Cade said. “But I can’t see in front. If that makes any sense.”

“It makes lots of sense,” Don said.

When Cade said nothing more, Don asked, “What would you do? If you were not here? With me?”

“I’d go away. I’d go away with you.”

Don nodded, got up and went to the kitchen. He was gone for a while before he came back.

“I think you’re being courteous. You aren’t mine you know? We aren’t a couple. I think if you weren’t here and we hadn’t been sharing a bed, I think you would go away.”

“It would be nice,” Cade said, “to go on a trip.”

Then Cade said, “Would you come on one?”

“It can’t be like that,” Don said. “It’ll never be like that.”

“Whaddo you mean?”

“Me. Taking up your space. Me needing to go everywhere you go. No, you need to go and sort some things out, have some time to yourself. You can’t really do that with me.”

“Well, shit,” Cade said.

“What?”

“When you say it like that then its real.”

“Where would you go?”

“All the old places. Home, but I wouldn’t want to see anyone. The Lake. And then new places too, probably.”

“When will you leave?”

“I hadn’t really planned to leave at all.”

“If you’d stayed it would have been me holding you.”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Cade sighed.

“I guess I could leave tomorrow.”

“Will you be gone long?”

“No,” Cade said. Then, “I don’t think so.”

Cade left the next morning, and that night he called Don to make sure he was fine. He called every day, and then Don noted the first day he didn’t call at all. He felt petulant about the whole thing, but remembered he was an adult and called Cade himself. They talked a while, but there wasn’t much to say. Nothing was really happening in town for Don, and Cade was only sitting by the edge of a lake, and then hiding out in motels. They were speaking every couple of days, and then once a week, and Don began to wonder if that time when Cade had lived with him, and they had spent whole hours together was an illusion.

In the newly private apartment, Don spent his free summer days reading and sculpting, writing in his journals and preparing for a new story. Ideas fled him, but the friends he had not seen in some time returned, and when the Muse returned, he was finishing up as much writing as he could before the school year started back up. It would be nearly the end of summer before he saw Cade again, and then, toward the end of July, there was a knock on the door and there, tall and slender as ever, silver in his hair, stood Brian Vaughn.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Don said, embracing him, and then taking one of his bags, Don brought him inside.

You’re so guarded about things,” Brian said when they sat on Donovan’s sofa, drinking coffee after dinner.

“I’m not guarded. I’m discreet,” Don differed, “because I don’t think everything has to be talked about.”

“But you’ll talk to me. About this guy?”

Don raised an eyebrow.

“The one you think you aren’t talking about all the time. Who’s gone for the summer. Or finding himself.”

“Yes,” Donovan said. “Then, sure. His name is Cade Richards.”

“And what’s he like.”

“He’s a lot younger than me.”

“So the opposite of me.”

“He’s about sixteen years younger than me.”

“Then actually pretty much our age difference. And we still happened.”

“Yes,” Donovan said. “We did happen. But Cade isn’t happening at all right now. In fact, he’s on the other side of the country coming to terms with himself. As I suggested. I told him he should go. I thought it would be a week or two. It’s turning into a whole summer.”

“That’s awkward.”

“It’s bullshit.”

Then Donovan said, “I have lived like a monk for some time now, and I don’t see the point in that since the person I was with is nowhere around and doesn’t seem to be coming back, so the question I ought to ask is what are we doing tonight?”

“What we would be doing all the time if we lived in the same place,” Brian said.

“So are we happening?”

“Yes,” Brian said, “we’re definitely happening.”

The first time Donovan had ever talked to Brian was online, and Donovan was wistful for those days when meeting someone online actually worked, when you could meet someone golden. Being queer was more of a revelation than people understood. It wasn’t simply that people spent years telling you that you were unacceptable, and then told you, embrace the fact that you’re unacceptable, and then told you that what was unacceptable was now acceptable, you were also almost non existent. After all, how could something seen nowhere else exist? If you could not see yourself in the mirror, how could you exist? And if the feelings that rocketed through your body were full of danger, how could you understand them, speak of them, celebrate them?

The Internet was a boon. All the networks to meet men on a computer in your parents’ house were a boon and this day, when Donovan was barely eighteen, typing to Brian was the biggest boon of all.

The first time he had met Brian, he was waiting for him in a restaurant back home.

“You look just like I thought you would, just like your picture!” Brian announced, sitting down in front of Donovan.

“You look better.”

Brian burst out laughing. “I knew I’d like you. What should we get?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not hungry either. Or thirsty. But we’re supposed to get something. Right?”

“Water?”

“Will that make them mad?”

“Do you care?” Donovan asked.

Brian discovered he did not.

When the waters came, they talked about this and that only for a little while before Donovan said, “This is awkward. Isn’t it? Just sitting in this café, chatting like we’re on a date.”

Brian leaned across him and said, his voice quieter. “The two of us have chatted everyday. All the important stuff I know. I feel silly sitting here shooting the breeze.”

Donovan smiled at him and reached into his bag. He took out a notebook, ripped out a scrap of paper and wrote on it:

Would you feel less silly if we just went across the street and got a room?”

Brian blinked at the paper. He smiled. He took the pen from Donovan’s hand and wrote:

Yes.