Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

She asked him if he’d been in Afghanistan in the army and he wrote: ya .

She thought that was really cool and did he see anybody get killed or anything?

He wrote: don’t want 2 talk abt that.

She understood. She hoped he hadn’t been wounded or anything over there and he said he was lucky because he came home in one piece and some of his buddies didn’t.

He asked brandi18 if she had a bf and she said she just broke up with him after three months of going steady. But she was over him now. He was a real loser even though he was older and a senior with his own car.

He asked her why she broke up with him and she said he cheated on her with her best friend and now she hated them both.

plenty of fish in the sea, he typed.

what abt u? she asked.

no gf, he answered. Before he went to Afghanistan there was someone but it wasn’t all that serious. mostly just sexual, he told her, ready to back off and get light again if she took it the wrong way.

She wrote: same with my ex-bf and my ex-bgf.

He told her that it probably wouldn’t last then and the bf would soon come back to her on his knees and ask to be her bf again.

She didn’t think so. Not unless she agreed to have sex with him.

i ggyzbro: u dont want that?

brandi18: am scared 2 do it.

iggyzbro: y?

brandi18: dont want 2 get preg.

iggyzbro: what abt protection? u no. condoms.

brandi18: he says only gays use condoms. true?

iggyzbro: no!!! r u a virgin?

brandi18: my moms coming. got 2 go.

He asked for her e-mail address and gave her his so they could talk later, he said. In privacy instead of on the craigslist forum.

Then brandi18 logged out and left the Kid staring at the screen reading and rereading the thread from start to finish, trying to determine if he had written anything to her that he couldn’t have said to her in person in public and finally deciding that even though he had been more intimate with her than he had ever been with a girl before he had been respectful of her youth and the difference in their ages. He was surprised that he had dared to ask her if she was a virgin though. He’d never asked that of anyone before, male or female, and wondered what he would have said if she had answered yes. What if she’d said no? Where in the conversation would they have gone next? Would she have asked him if he was a virgin? Probably not. He was twenty-one, after all. No one his age was a virgin except maybe a few Jesus freaks and you couldn’t be sure about them.

He was sorry he had lied to her about the Beemer and Afghanistan and the rest — although maybe it really was a good idea to take a course in computer programming at the community college in the fall. Maybe it was more than an idea grown from a lie to impress a girl online. Maybe it was a plan. It was the first plan he’d come up with since arriving back at his mother’s house from Fort Drum. Talking to brandi18 was good for him and he felt better about himself than he had in a very long time.

The next night shortly after ten the Kid checked his e-mails and there she was again. It was a different format than the craigslist forum — no ads, no columns of subjects and lists of offerings to click onto, just the simple in-box and subject line. It was like she had showered and changed clothes and her hair was still a little wet from the shower. He could almost smell her soap and a touch of cologne when he saw her name brandi18 under sender and read hi again on the subject line.

He was in his bedroom in front of his old Dell laptop, his mother was out with her girlfriends from the shop making the rounds of the bars — younger women than she, in their late twenties, heavy drinkers and dopers who like to do shots of tequila and get high on weed in guys’ cars in the parking lots outside. Iggy lay on his back sleeping in his cage under the heat lamp, his belly full and rounded from his supper of a pound of spinach leaves, his twin penises engorged in their pouch, ready for action as soon as he converted the spinach into pellets. The Kid opened brandi18’s e-mail and she said wassup? been thinking abt u since last nite.

He answered nuttin up and hoped he hit the correct jocular tone. Harder to do with e-mail than in a chat room. E-mail was a step or two closer to actual conversation, almost like writing a letter which made it harder to control his tone of voice especially with a girl at the other end, a fourteen-year-old girl he was trying to impress. He wanted her to think he was intelligent and worldly and handsome and knew he was none of those things.

She answered right away: u mad @ me?

Okay, wrong tone. Better try sincere and confidential, even though that won’t help make him sound worldly. His idea of worldly was sarcasm. He told her he’d had a hard day. Flashbacks to Afghanistan. Beemer’s still in the shop. Can’t get a decent job because his computer skills aren’t up to speed which is why he needs to enroll at Calusa Community College. Money problems. His mother was nagging him to pay rent for his room (that part was true) and the insurance company wouldn’t pay for the repairs to his Beemer (not true since the Beemer was a total lie) because his driver’s license had expired while he was in Afghanistan. (Only partially true as he never had a driver’s license in the first place. All he had for an ID was his old high school photo identification card that he was still using as a bus pass. He looked younger than twenty-one and the bus drivers never checked the birth date on the card when he flashed it getting on. He didn’t tell her any of that.)

Sincere and confidential worked despite the falsity of almost everything he told her. She said she was really sad for him. that sux . She had problems too, she said. But nothing as bad as his because she was only a kid still and her mom was too cheap to let her have a cell phone of her own and too strict to let her go out alone with guys who had cars even though her mom was almost never home because she traveled a lot for her job and couldn’t know what Brandi was doing when she was away anyhow. And her dad only checked in on her when he wanted to fight with her mom about his alimony and support payments. He was a total asshole, she wrote.

so do u like have guys over when your mom’s away? he asked. do u party when she’s gone?

She said not big parties that the nosy neighbors would notice but sometimes friends came over with beer and weed. She asked him if he smoked weed.

ya, when it comes my way, he typed. That sounds worldly, he thought. btw, u never answered my q yesterday.

what q?

r u a virgin?

lol, she wrote back.

He asked her why it was funny — funny to ask or funny to answer? just curious, he said, so I can no how 2 talk 2 u better.

She said he could say anything he wanted. She knew all about sex, she said, even though she’d never really done it with a guy.

what about w a girl?

ew!! no way!!

what about bjs?

not saying.

He said he’d take that as a yes to blow jobs and suddenly had an erection: gets me excited, he typed.

She changed the subject then, asking him if he had a cam on his computer or cell phone so she could see what he looked like.

No cam, he told her, and no cable to download pictures from his cell phone to send as a PDF from his computer.

She asked him if he looked like anybody she’d know from TV and how tall he was. She said he must be muscular from being in the army like all those guys in the TV ads that try to get guys to enlist.