Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

At first once he was convicted, sentenced, and in jail, he didn’t miss her very much. But then after he got out of jail and started living under the Causeway and knew that she was living and working only a short bus ride away he began to miss her. Before he left home for the army and everything went bad for him there and when he came back to Calusa and resumed living in his old bedroom again she cracked jokes like she used to and teased him sometimes as if he were still a little boy and asked him what he thought about her clothes and makeup and hair when she was about to go out. She wasn’t mad at him for getting kicked out of the army — not after he explained the circumstances. She actually thought it was kind of funny and the army was being stupid for making it illegal for our young men and women in uniform to buy and sell and watch pornography when we were engaged in a worldwide war against Islamic terrorists.

Plus she was somebody to report to. Everybody needs somebody to report to at the end of the day or in the morning when you wake. But here under the Causeway the Kid has no one to report to. Not even the Rabbit who never asks what the Kid did today or last night. No one down here asks questions except on the first day or two like the Shyster did when he first arrived. It was like a code: Don’t ask and don’t tell. So with no one to report to after a while the Kid missed his mother.

Now however the Professor has come into his life and because he doesn’t live under the Causeway he feels free to ignore the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell code and the Professor asks all kinds of questions of the Kid. In spite of the games he sometimes plays the Professor has gradually gained the Kid’s trust — the bit about the map actually helped because it provoked a temporary feeling of intimacy. At least on the Kid’s part. Plus the stuff he brought the Kid and carrying him and Einstein and Annie and all his worldly possessions in his van from Benbow’s back here to the Causeway. And now he’s helping the Kid organize the settlement and make it clean and safe — or at least cleaner and safer than it was — and has eased the Kid into a position of authority and responsibility down here which the Kid to his surprise enjoys. The fat man’s even willing to help the Kid get food and medicine for Annie and Einstein.

But payback time is on the horizon, the Kid knows. On the drive over to the pet shop on Rampart he asks the Professor what’s all this going to cost him?

You mean for dog food and birdseed and maybe a salve for Annie’s sores? Probably not much. Under twenty dollars for the next four weeks. Do you need money?

Not for that. Not now. I can cover expenses for the next few weeks. Till I find another job busing tables or whatever. No, I mean, what’s it gonna cost me for this, the rides, setting things up back there under the Causeway and shit like that? And the stuff you gave me? What’s in it for you? From me?

The Professor smiles and drives on.

K: I get to see all this footage and shit and listen to it and give my permission or maybe not give it depending on how I feel about it, right? I ain’t signed any kind of permission slip or anything yet, y’know.

P: Don’t worry, I’ll make you a copy and you can review it before signing a release. It’s not for public distribution anyhow.

K: What’s it for then?

P: Research.

K: Whose?

P: Mine.

K: What’re you researching? Convicted sex offenders? Homeless people?

P: Both. When they’re the same.

K: Yeah, well, usually they are the same. Is that thing running?

P: It’s running.

K: You planning on interviewing the other guys living down here after you finish with me? ’Cause most of them won’t do it, you know.

P: They’re… what? Shy?

K: Fuck no. Ashamed. Scared maybe. Mostly ashamed though. Even though most of ’em don’t think they did anything wrong.

P: What about you? Do you think you did anything wrong?

K: (long pause) Illegal for sure. And stupid. Really stupid. I hadda do group therapy in prison, y’know. We hadda talk about all this right-versus-wrong shit. It never did get cleared up except when guys were lying about it and saying oh yeah it was really wrong what I did and I’ll never do it again for sure, I’m not a come-freak anymore, no more kid fruit for me, no more peeping, no more quail hunting for me, nossir, I’ve learned my lesson, no more weenie-wagging for this old guy. But it was all bullshit. Especially for the chomos.

P: Chomos?

K: You know, child molesters. Guys who’re into little kids.

P: I take it you’re not a chomo.

K: I’m not “into” anything, man. Okay, maybe I used to be like into porn and banging the bishop a little too hard for what’s considered normal, but it was always your normal porn showing the usual run of normal sexual activities between two and sometimes three or more consenting adults. The kind of stuff you can see on pay-per-view TV or your computer screen any night anywhere in America even where Jesus rules. As for banging the bishop all the time, I pretty much had a woodie every minute of the day due to my youth so what else was I gonna do except stroke it? Like I said, I never had a regular girlfriend I could fuck or who would blow me. Listen, is this all being recorded and like on film? ’Cause you’re gonna hafta edit a lot of this shit out on account of the language.

P: Don’t worry, no one but me will ever see or listen to it. Just use the occasion to tell your side of the story. That’s all I’m looking for, your side of the story.

K: That’s not so easy to do, tell my side of the story.

P: Why not?

K: It’s hard to know where it begins and where it ends. Or if it ends. With other people’s versions of your story it’s easy. The cops’ version, the lawyers’, the judges’, even your mother’s version. They can pick and choose where your story begins and what it leads to because they weren’t really there when it began. They weren’t inside you when you were eleven or twelve and started whacking off under the blanket with a flashlight and a beat sheet. You ever wonder why they call them skin mags and skin flicks, by the way?

P: Can’t say I—

K: (interrupts) Me neither. I mean they’re not really skin, they’re just pictures of skin. The only skin they get you touching is your own.

P: I don’t understand.

K: Never mind.

P: So where do you think your story, your side of the story, begins?

K: Good question. I kinda think my story’s pretty much the same as most guys my age up to when I got shit-canned outa the army. Most guys means guys like me who’re pretty much normal sexually speaking but don’t have a regular sex life with another person. No girlfriend and no wife and no prospects on the horizon, so to speak. And no money for ho’s. I never went to a ho. Lap dances. I had a lap dance once. I tell you about that? Yeah, I did. All most guys like me got for sex is their computer and their chubby. Most guys are like that, and face it, most guys my age could end up doing what I did easy.

P: Most guys your age aren’t convicted sex offenders.

K: Don’t remind me.

P: Were you guilty as charged?

K: I pleaded guilty. My lawyer said it would go easier on me if I did. He was only a public defender, but I guess he was right. Six months is a long time for what I did, though. Six months and ten years’ parole and the rest of my life. ’Course I only got to wear this electronic foot collar for ten. But even when I get to take it off I’ll still be on the fucking registry for the rest of my life. I’ll still be homeless and living under the Causeway or someplace like it that’s more than twenty-five hundred feet from wherever there are kids gathered or else I’ll be living in some wilderness where there’s only animals for neighbors, like I’m an animal myself, one of those pet store pythons that people get tired of feeding mice to so they drive out to the Panzacola Swamp and leave them by the side of the road and drive off while the python slithers down from the road into a culvert or under a causeway or an overpass and makes his home there for a while. Until the park rangers decide they can’t have giant pythons from like Asia and South America living in the Great Panzacola Swamp so they raid the place with dogs and baseball bats and guns and bust the pythons and shoot them. For the public’s safety. That’s my fate, I’m pretty sure.