The Skin of Things

“Sex isn’t shitting.”

- Cademon Richards

Those last few minutes, when Donovan was winding up the road to the coffee shop, and when he was parking in the lot outside of it, his hands cold with the winter air, the wind stinging his cheeks red, his heart beat faster. He thought, he won’t really come. We won’t really meet. Something’ll come up. He won’t really be there.

But Ezekiel was already there when Donovan came in. His coat was behind his chair, and he rose from the table in that fawn colored blazer with the smile on his face. He was wearing a light blue shirt tonight, open at the collar, and he crossed the barely crowded room to Donovan.

“I didn’t mean to be late,” Donovan said, coming forward.

“You weren’t. I was early. I got finished with work, and then there just wasn’t much else to do. I didn’t want to hang around the apartment, you know? So I came here. Oh, my gosh, you’re so cold!”

“Not really,” Donovan shrugged, though now he realized just how cold he was.

Not entirely convinced, Ezekiel also shrugged, and then said, “Let’s order.”

At the counter Donovan asked the girl, “What’s best?”

“Well, we’ve got this coconut mocha special I think is really good. It comes in tall and large and extra large because we’re trying to be like Starbucks and don’t sell a small anymore.”

She sighed with her fist under her chin to indicate how she felt about it.

“It does look good,” Donovan said. “It’s a little steep though. I’m not used to paying for coffee.”

“Don’t worry about price. I’ve got it,” Ezekiel said.

“I’m not worried about it,” Donovan said. “I just think it’s sort of ridiculous to pay the same amount for a cup of coffee you would pay for a whole canister at the grocery store.”

The girl sniggered but Ezekiel said, “Forgive my friend. He thinks he’s forty-five. I…” Ezekiel looked over the list, “do not think it’s ridiculous, and I’ll take one for me, one for my stingy friend here, and a couple of cannoli.”

“You’re going to break your graduate student bank,” said Donovan.

“It’s meant to be broken,” Ezekiel said. Putting his hand on Donovan’s hair, wondering what that looked like, what it felt like, looking to Donovan to see if he’d noticed or cared. He didn’t, and so Ezekiel decided not to care as well.

“Whaddid you do today?” Donovan asked him.

“Well, I had this three hour long course on the Peloponnesian War which is stimulating, but confusing. Basically all you need to know is that in ancient Greece everyone has the same name, and everyone betrays everyone and nobody trusts anybody else. I can’t remember the names of half the places, and that’s funny because I could when I was an undergraduate. Tomorrow I attend a lecture on the early Roman Empire.”

“You mean during the late Republic or with the Julio-Claudians?”

Ezekiel blinked at Donovan.

“What? You thought I was just some ignoramus who was fun to fuck?”

Even though he’d laughed when he said it, Ezekiel turned red and said softly, “No, Donovan, I didn’t think that at all.”

Donovan wondered if he should have said that. Some of his experiences had given him a rough tongue. He wasn’t always gentle. Ezekiel was probably one of those who coped by being gentle. He might say the word ‘fuck’ in bed, like while they were fucking, but not out of it. Not here.

Donovan said, “I’m not smart. I just saw I Claudiusthree times.”

Ezekiel grinned again. “It’s the first in a three part lecture on the Julio-Claudians actually. And we’ll be reading The Annals.”

“Of Tacitus?”

“Yes. You’re an undergrad. What school do you go to where they teach that?”

“No school. I mean, City—on the south end of town. But, I’ve just always been into history and art. I love early Roman history. Most kids wanted video games. I asked my Dad to get me the unabridged Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? How dorky is that?”

Ezekiel grinned at him. He wanted to touch his hand. He did it quickly.

“Pretty dorky. You’re pretty dorky, Don.”

“You’re pretty dorky yourself,” Donovan said admiringly.

“I do try.”

“Coffees,” the girl called. “Two coconut mochas, two cannoli.”

Ezekiel got up and came back a few moments later to the table.

“Wow! They’re so big,” Donovan said when he saw Ezekiel coming with the tray bearing the large red and blue mugs, and the tray of cannoli.

Ezekiel took the first sip.

“How is it?”

“This,” Ezekiel pointed to the mug, “makes me glad to be alive.”

“Wow. So you’re saying it’s worth four-fifty.”

Ezekiel gestured to the mug, “You be the judge.”

Donovan lifted the large red mug and sipped, then nodded his head.

“Um… It is good. I would agree… It’s worth your four-fifty.”

Ezekiel laughed. “Your own coffee must be really good.”

“I can make this,” Donovan pointed to the coffee. “I can make all sorts of coffees. I’m like a master.”

“A regular barista.”

“If barista wasn’t the lamest name in the world, then yes,” Donovan said. “One day I will make you coffee, and you will agree with me.”

They sipped coffee and listened to the music with their elbows on the table. Donovan looked around at the dimly lit coffee house. Finally he said, “What is this music?”

“It’s Indian.”

“I thought so. I was getting it confused with North African music. I wonder who it is. Listen to those drums, like rain. And the zither. It just takes its time. It’s in no fucking hurry. Ah…”

Donovan stopped as the zither playing increased. “Now it is.”

“No. Now it’s dancing,” Ezekiel said. “Zithers never sound like they’re racing, not like guitars. They’re just sort of…” Ezekiel hummed a little and moved in his seat: “Dancing.”

The girl came around near their table and Donovan said, “Excuse me, but do you know what this CD is?”

“I can check,” she was going back to the kitchen.

“Not if you’re busy.”

“I make it a point to never be busy,” she said as she disappeared.

A second later she returned with the CD case and read: “Wajahat Khan. Indian Raags.”

“Thank you,” Ezekiel said.

“It reminds me of the end of Gandhi. The last piece of music the movie goes out on,” Ezekiel was saying as the girl left.

“I think Ravi Shankar does that,” Donovan said.

Ezekiel made a vow to not be surprised, but Donovan saw it.

“It’s not you,” Ezekiel said. “It’s… everyone. No one knows anything, no one… cares about anything. And you know all this stuff.”

Donovan said, “Toward the end of the movie there is this one part that’s really sad, but at the same time… beautiful I guess. Ghandhi has walked away for a bit, and it’s Meribehn and Candace Berghen’s character. Meribehn says, ‘He feels like he’s failed because for one moment he offered the world a way out of madness, and the world refused.’”

Ezekiel was quiet.

“That is sad and beautiful. Maybe cause it’s true. The world is mad, isn’t it? In both senses of the word. Driven crazy and driven angry. But the idea that there is a way out of it, that you can escape it if it’s offered you…”

“People always talk about Eighties movies being bad, but I love the English ones,” Donovan said. “Jewel in the Crown, Maurice. It’s like English people got obsessed with how they’d screwed up in the past and started looking for how we could do it in the present.”

Ezekiel was nodding with his mouth half open, thoughtfully.

“You saw Maurice ?”

“God, yes! It’s like Brokeback Mountain wishes it was Maurice. When that guy just climbs through the window, ‘I heard you calling for me!’ Donovan imitated a cockney accent, “and then just gets naked and he and Maurice make love all night…”

Ezekiel said, “Did you ever read the book?”

“No. Not yet.

“There’s this part,” Ezekiel raised a finger.

“France or Italy, for instance. There homosexuality is no longer criminal.”

“You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?”

“Share?” Donovan interrupted.

“Yes. That’s what they call it… Sharing.”

“Um,” Donovan smiled, “do you think that maybe…” he leaned in and whispered, “we could find some place to share?”

Ezekiel was dry mouthed with desire, and then he said, “Well… “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Share…” Donovan said thoughtfully. “Please continue.”

Ezekiel shook sex out of his head, and remembered.

“Ah, yeah…Then he says:

“Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.”

“Will the law ever be that in England?”

“I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

Maurice understood. He was an Englishman himself, and only his troubles had kept him awake.”

Donovan grinned and Ezekiel said, “Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent half of my life in England too. You know?

DONOVAN

At this moment, things are old. The summer is ended. Everything feels old when the new school year begins, and though we are all glad to see each other, though we embrace, things are still old, not entirely right. Everything is changed. The pre-school was a great addition to school. Now the pre-schoolers are gone, and we have twice as many students, students from nowhere, students from worse schools. In addition to this, the day has been lengthened. I can’t see doing this much longer. But this is not a story about work. Work never really interested me much. It’s the thing that pays your rent so you can go on living, and this is a story about love, and about desire. All you have to do to imagine these new and strange late August days, is picture a student dragged down the hall by cops, screaming.

“It sounds REALLY shitty,” Cade says.

Because I am a friend, I don’t ask him about going back to Head Start. He’s said nothing about work. He’s been living in that apartment across the river with his ex. You know I can’t stop wondering if they still occasionally sleep together. After all, when they were together they weren’t really together, so what’s happening now?

“Can you picture me in an office job?” Cade said.

“Not really.”

“I’m going to try it. Shirt and tie. Stuart and Bachman and Sanders on Monday.”

I realize I will always do this crazy education shit because the idea of a cubicle makes me shudder far more than fifth graders.

“But this weekend I’d like us to go to the beach.”

“Where?”

“Do you remember how me and Simon split up in New Union?”

I will give this to Cade. He’s always insistent about not being a victim. He never says, when Simon left me, or when Simon dumped me.

“Yes.”

“Well, he’d gotten us a room for this weekend. Presumably to fuck some more people. He told me I should take you, and we should enjoy it, and I know you love the beach, so—”

“How soon do we leave?” I say, springing to life.

“How soon can you be ready?”

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