Lost Memory of Skin

by Russell Banks

  Nothing, really.

  If you didn’t do anything, why did they arrest you, then?

  On account of the way it looked. I did something really stupid.

  Then you did something. And they arrested you for it, and now you want me to bail you out with money I don’t have.

  Well, they said you could put your house up if you own it.

  Who’s “they”?

  The guy who set bail. The judge, I guess he is.

  You’re not innocent. You’re guilty of a crime, and you want me to risk my house just to get you out of jail. What kind of crime did you commit? Was it drugs? It better not be drugs, mister. ’Cause if it is, you can forget about me bailing you out. You can forget about me bailing you out anyhow, since you’re not innocent. Was it drugs? Did you rob somebody?

  No, it was a sex crime.

  Oh, Jesus!

  That’s when she hung up. It was the last time he spoke with his mother. At his trial he looked for her in the audience which was made up mostly of the families and friends of other people being tried that day and their lawyers but she wasn’t there which he understood because by then there had been at least two lengthy articles in the Times-Union about child pornography and a five-part series on the nightly TV news about protecting children from sexual predators prowling the Internet. He didn’t blame her for staying home.

  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.

  CHAPTER SIX

  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 prospe
cts 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.

  P: Don’t be so sure.

  K: I said “pretty” sure.

  P: What did you end up pleading guilty to? All it says on the registry is you were convicted of a Class Two felony.

  K: I don’t feel like going there. I gotta spend some time with my animals. I gotta get Einstein talking. I gotta encourage Annie here to act like a regular fucking watchdog. All she wants to do is sleep. Maybe I’ll get Rabbit or somebody to try and sneak up on me while I’m pretending to sleep in my tent, and if she barks give her a treat to reward her. Sort of get her started.

  P: Why don’t you feel like going there?

  K: Where?

  P: Telling me what you pleaded to.

  K: I’m not telling you, I’m telling that fucking little black box. I don’t like little black boxes. Besides, it sounds worse than what I actually did. What I’m actually guilty of.

  P: Are you ashamed of what you did? What you’re actually guilty of ?

  K: No. Not really. Except it was stupid, like I said. But I’m not ashamed. Actually, yeah, maybe I am.

  P: If you’re unsure, maybe you should tell me what you did. It may help you make up your mind about how to feel.

  K: You can’t make up your mind about how you’ll feel, man. How you feel is how you feel. Besides, you’ll just think I’m like the rest of these guys down here, making up excuses and shit. Lying and blaming the victim, like they say, or I’m like the Shyster and some of the other weirdos who don’t have a moral compass, like they say, and think there’s nothing twisted about wanting to bonk little kids or wag their weenies in front of old ladies in wheelchairs. I know the difference between what’s normal and what’s weird. And I’m not making up excuses for myself when I admit that what I did was stupid, because it was illegal and I sort of knew it, but I did it anyhow. That’s not an excuse and it’s not blaming anyone else. It’s just a fact. Everybody does shit that they sort of know is illegal. Even you, Professor. Right?

  P: Yes. Right.

  K: So what do you do that’s illegal? Smoke weed? You don’t look like you’re into blow.

  P: To tell you the truth, nowadays I don’t do anything that’s illegal. Nothing that I’m aware of anyhow.

  K: “Nowadays.” So you have a shady past, Professor.

  P: (chuckles) You could say that.

  K: Big-time? I mean shadier than smoking weed or cheating on your taxes.

  P: Big-time.

  K: Cool. Can you tell me about it?

  P: No.

  K: You ever do time?

  P: No.

  K: That’s why you can’t tell me about it. Your side of the story. You can only tell your side of the story if you got caught. If the story has an ending. Right?

  P: Right.

  K: And your story’s still running.

  P: In a sense. But yours isn’t. You got caught. So tell me your story. If I ever get caught I’ll tell you mine.

  K: I hope you get caught, Professor. I’d like to hear what a guy like you did that was big-time illegal and shady, a famous professor and all, respected pillar of the community, guy in a three-piece suit and necktie doing valuable research on down-and-out homeless convicted sex offenders like me living like rats under the Causeway. I’d like to hear that story.

  P: Let’s hear your story for now. Maybe someday you’ll hear mine.

  K: When you get caught for what you did.

  P: It won’t happen.

  K: That’s what you think.

  P: Tell me about it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE KID’S STORY ACCORDING TO THE KID:

  He rode the bus south from Fort Drum all the way to Calusa without getting out except for coffee and a take-out sandwich at the bus stops and he sat alone the whole way—fifteen hundred miles and four days and three nights—depressed and angry at himself and the U.S. Army regulations against distributing pornography that couldn’t make a distinction between distribution for a profit and giving away DVDs to guys in your outfit who you wanted to respect you and be your buddies so that when you got to Iraq or Afghanistan they’d watch your back. Now he has no place to go except to his mother’s house, his old bedroom and his tent in the backyard next to Iggy’s cage. He has no job to go back to—the new guy who took over the light store after Tony Perez got killed in the robbery acted like he still believed the Kid was somehow involved even though thanks to his mother’s lie he had an ironclad alibi. No friends either, male or female, except for Iggy of course, Iggy being one of the reasons—a minor reason—for no friends since most people especially people his age thought it was weird to have a full-grown thirty-pound iguana for a pet or else they were scared of it or disgusted. So no posse just like when he was in high school and the other kids and even the teachers thought he was boring and not very bright and short and skinny with a personality that had no specialty. They never even bothered to bully him in school. He might actually have liked it for the attention if once in a while his fellow students had slammed him against a wall or a bank of lockers or stuck his head in a urinal and flushed or yanked off his backpack and tossed his books and notebooks into a toilet. A loser. That’s what he was before he joined the army and that’s what he was while he was in the army and now that he had been kicked out of the army he was even more of a loser than before.

  His mother seemed to think so too. The only reason she was glad to see him when he arrived back at her door was because she was sick of taking care of Iggy. Within days of his departure for Fort Drum she had given up following his careful instructions for feeding and watering the iguana and cleaning its cage but couldn’t quite bring herself to ignore the creature altogether and had started tossing unopened loaves of white bread into the cage and the occasional leftover pizza crust and had started hoping for Iggy’s death or escape and disappearance. Several times a week she forgot to close and latch the door of his cage and managed to be both surprised and disappointed when she returned in the evening from work and saw that the cage was open and Iggy was still inside it. It was more or less how she had treated the Kid himself in recent years. Most of his life actually, even when he was a baby. She believed that she was not cut out to be a mother, that’s how she put it to her friends and lovers. Which allowed her to give herself extra credit for keeping her son fed and clothed and housed, however inadequately it may have appeared to a social worker, for example, or to someone who in fact was cut out to be a mother.

&nb
sp; So the Kid moved back in with her. Temporarily, he figured, until he got a job and could afford a place of his own preferably over on the Barriers where you could walk along the beach or sit at one of the outdoor cafés on Rampart and let your eyes caress the shoulders and thighs of girls and young women in their bikinis and wonder about their hidden body piercings—nipple- and clit-rings and so on. But he hadn’t been honorably discharged from the army and when he applied for jobs at McDonald’s and Starbucks and the other fast-food chains and even the supermarkets and especially Walmart they ran him through the usual databases and came up with a reason not to hire him. It’s what they wanted, a reason not to hire him. He was a lousy interviewee and got worse as he went along—sullen, inarticulate, evasive—and with each interview grew more pessimistic and discouraged until he came to believe that he was worse than unemployed, he was unemployable and ought not to be hired. His message to the person sitting across from him was Don’t hire me, I’m unemployable.

  Soon he gave up reading the want ads altogether or visiting once a week the state unemployment office to check the listings there. When they saw the Kid walk through the door the clerks rolled their eyes and sighed audibly and he noticed and slumped down in the chair and waited until finally one of the clerks called him over and gave him a shorter and shorter list of potential employers and sent him out to be interviewed and not hired again. He made them feel like failures and they in turn passed it back until to break the downward spiral he stayed home at his mother’s and let night turn into day and day into night and talked to Iggy and watched porn on his computer until he ran out of money and maxed out his debit card.

  That’s when he started clicking his way onto the sex-talk chat room that he didn’t know at first was a sex-talk chat room. He thought it was a regular discussion forum open to all subjects. It’s how he met brandi18. He followed his mouse from craigslist.org to Calusa to jobs to food/hospitality as if he were looking for a job on the Internet. In minutes he was depressed and discouraged by the curt clean language of the job requirements and knew he was defeated before he even started, so he followed his mouse back out to Calusa again and clicked on services and from there to adults where he declared he was over eighteen years of age and watched a little free porn for a while and when he had jerked off into a tissue he zipped up his fly and clicked out to Calusa again and tried checking out discussion forums thinking maybe somebody out there with a female iguana was looking for a stud like Iggy and he could raise a little cash on stud fees.