Lost Memory of Skin

by Russell Banks

  He knew people did that with dogs and horses, so why not iguanas? Iggy was ready. Once a year since Iggy was three years old and sexually mature as summer came on and there was a slight increase in the length of the day and a rise in humidity and temperature, starting at his head and dewlap and ending at his tail Iggy turned orange. Male iguanas have two penises hidden in a pouch between their hind legs and in breeding season the pouch swells and the iguana grows restless and lustful and will try to mate with anything animate or inanimate shaped even vaguely like a female iguana, biting down where it thinks the neck is supposed to be located and humping its backside with one of its penises until it splats a dollop of semen and relaxes its grip and sleeps for a short while, when it starts all over again with the second penis. Then a short rest period and it’s back to the first. And on and on.

  Usually the Kid filled an athletic sock with wood chips and tied off the open end and tossed it on the floor of Iggy’s cage for him to mate with and a week or ten days later Iggy’s color would slowly turn back to its normal green and he’d calm down and resume his old habits and quiet routines, finished for the year with sex. This time the Kid thought he’d try to put the iguana’s annual sexual crescendo to some money-making use and save himself a sock in the process.

  He typed: healthy full-grown m iguana available 2 mate w healthy f. And waited for a response. His handle was iggyzbro.

  Almost immediately he received a reply.

  brandi18: Huh?

  He wasn’t going to dignify the question with an answer—obviously brandi18 knew nothing about iguanas—but when no one else after a day and a night responded to his text, iggyzbro wrote: my iguana rdy 2 breed. do u have a f and want babies? stud fee neg. He would have written negotiable but wasn’t sure how to spell it.

  brandi18: stud fees r for losers. r u a ho?

  iggyzbro: no way.

  brandi18: way. illegal 2 sell sex on craigslist u no.

  iggyzbro: im selling iguana sex.

  brandi18: gross!!! u serious???

  iggyzbro: do u have a f iguana?

  brandi18: that’s not what i call it.

  iggyzbro: what do u call it?

  brandi18: pends on my mood.

  iggyzbro: mine’s called iggy.

  brandi18: cool. how big is iggy?

  iggyzbro: huge. what’s yrs called?

  brandi18: like i said, pends on my mood.

  iggyzbro: what mood u in today?

  brandi18: kinda curious abt u. lol.

  iggyzbro: k. what’s yours called when yr curious abt me?

  brandi18: kittycat. get it?

  iggyzbro: no.

  brandi18: gotta go. my mom’s calling me. how old r u?

  iggyzbro: 21

  brandi18: yeah, sure.

  iggyzbro: how old r u?

  brandi18: 2 young 4 u and iggy 4 sure.

  iggyzbro: pends. iggy likes iguanas younger than him if theyre sexually mature. is yrs sexually mature?

  brandi18: what do u mean?

  iggyzbro: how old r u?

  By this time the Kid knew they were no longer talking about iguanas and was scrambling to keep up with brandi18. At first she said she was eighteen and when he asked if she was on Facebook and had any pictures of herself posted there and said maybe he’d check her out and be her friend she admitted that she was only kidding, she was really fourteen. But she looked older, she wrote.

  The Kid pulled up Facebook and signed on and peeped her, then came back and told her she did look seventeen or even eighteen but was real cute. yr a hottie, he added after a pause. He decided not to ask her to friend him and instead continued their conversation on the craigslist forum. It was their own more or less private thread and felt safer to him than Facebook if she really was only fourteen—although he couldn’t imagine why a girl would lie about that, say she was younger than she really was. Until they’re eighteen or so underage girls usually say they’re older than they really are to keep the guy from logging off and deleting the evidence.

  No harm just chatting with her, he decided. If he ran into her at a bus stop or sat next to her in a café he’d feel safe asking her about herself like this and telling her a few things about himself. Especially someone as pretty as brandi18, cute and a hottie: in the picture on Facebook she had long brown hair with blond streaks tied back in a ponytail and cream-colored skin and didn’t seem to be wearing any makeup or jewelry except for pearl studs in her ears. Her eyes were large and round and either blue or hazel, he couldn’t quite tell from the photograph, and she appeared to be looking slightly up at the camera as if she had taken it herself with her cell phone with her arm extended and the camera held above her head a ways. It gave her a flirty look that he liked—warm and reassuring but also inviting. Promising. Tempting. She was wearing a Disney World T-shirt, he noticed.

  She told him her real name was Brandi and she used brandi18 online because there were seventeen other Brandis in front of her subscribing to the same Internet provider. She said her mom and dad were divorced and she lived with her mom alone in West Calusa Gardens, a suburb that she said was boring and she hated. sux, she wrote. Especially because she could only get to the mall by bus except when her mom drove her and that she said sux 2.

  He agreed. He told her he had a car, a two-year-old Beemer that he’d almost totaled a few weeks ago so it was in the body shop forcing him to take the bus too. which sux, he wrote. so i no how u feel. He wished his Beemer was fixed so he could drive her around in it and she wouldn’t have to rely on her mom.

  that wld b cool, she wrote.

  He said he was living with his mom too but only temporarily because he’d just gotten out of the army and was still getting adjusted to civilian life and planned to take night courses at Calusa Community College in the fall in computer programming.

  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.

  iggyzbro: 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 a
sk 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.

  He admitted he was short, five eight, he said, adding three inches. But yeah, pretty muscular though not bulging like a bodybuilder. He wasn’t sure if he looked like anybody she knew from TV but people sometimes told him he reminded them of Michael J. Fox who had some kind of disease he was always going on about, Parkinson’s or epilepsy or something, although he looked pretty normal to the Kid. It was his mother who had pointed out his resemblance to Michael J. Fox which at the time he had not taken as a compliment except for the fact that the actor was famous and presumably rich. i don’t have any diseases, he reassured Brandi. i’m clean and healthy as a teenager.

  lol, she wrote back. u don’t know teenagers.

  used 2 be 1 myself a few years ago.

  She asked him his real name and he told her. Why did he use iggyzbro for his online name? she wondered and he told her his pet iguana was named Iggy.

  She was surprised to learn that there really was an iguana after all and wanted the Kid to describe Iggy in detail because she had never seen one before and wondered why anyone would want an iguana for a pet.

  So he described Iggy in affectionate detail and when he got to the part about the two penises and that Iggy was going through his brief sexually active cycle and was turning from green to orange he realized he was starting to flirt about sex with brandi18 again as if he himself were turning from green to orange and had two erect penises. He didn’t mean to go there. He didn’t need reminding that she was only fourteen and he was twenty-one but somehow her questions and comments kept drawing him back to sexual innuendo and inquiry until they both, the Kid and brandi18 too, were getting dangerously explicit—dangerous at least for the Kid. When he read back over their string of e-mails it seemed she was only being playful yet her play kept drawing him forward until finally he typed id rly like 2 hang with u some nite when your mom’s away.

  what wld we do?

  whatever we want 2 do. just c what happens. i could bring beer and a movie.

  what kinda movie?

  a sexy 1. u ever watch p?

  whats p?

  u no. porn.

  o ya, i watched a couple on pay-per-view when my mom was away. she found out frm the bill and was pissed.

  turn u on?

  ya!

  were u alone? or w yr bf ?

  no!! only alone.

  wld be fun 2 watch p 2gether.

  maybe.

  The Kid asked her for her street address and she gave it to him which he took as a clear invitation to visit her. He asked when her mom would be away next and she said this coming weekend she was going on a gambling cruise on a ship out of Calusa with the people who worked at her office.

  all weekend? he wondered.

  ya!

  He said he’d come over.

 
She reminded him that his car was still in the shop. He’d not be able to drive out to West Calusa Gardens unless he could borrow a car. Better wait till his Beemer was fixed.

  He said no, he could take a bus. He’d do a search on MapQuest and find the closest bus stop and walk from there. He lived in the north end of the city and there were buses running west to the suburbs and back every half hour till midnight and every hour after that. Even if they hung out till late he could still get home, he said and waited for her answer to come up on his screen.

  After a long five minutes he finally heard the ping signaling the arrival of a new e-mail and the announcement from the AOL woman, you’ve got mail. It was brandi18. Who else? He never got e-mail, never heard that announcement except for spam. He clicked it open.

  sorry. had a phone call from my mom checking up on me. i’m sorta grounded.

  what 4?

  grades. so r u coming fri or sat?

  i’ll come fri. c what happens and maybe sat. 2 if u like. u might invite me 2 stay over.

  yr 2 old. and a guy. my moms’ll kill me if she finds out.

  she wont.

  bring the beer. my moms counts her stash when she gets home.

  k. i’ll bring some surprises 2.

  like what?

  u’ll see. Around 10 ok?

  k. bye. gotta log out and delete. my moms is home. sometimes she reads my e-mails when she gets home. she’s a bitch. c u fri around 10.