Lost Memory of Skin (18 page)

It would be a lot more interesting, possibly a lot more arousing, he thinks, to watch a porn film being
made,
to be on the actual set, close enough to the actors to see their sweating faces and the women’s breasts and nipples and their vaginas and anuses and the men’s huge thrusting penises, and to know that everything, the sucking, licking, squirming, jamming, and ramming, is being done, not for the sexual stimulation of the director and crew or for the other performers, but for the camera. For an audience that’s not present and is not situated
in
the present, either, but is instead located somewhere out there in the future, unknown and alone in a darkened motel room or at home in front of a computer screen, invisible to the performers and to the people observing and filming them live in real time. For pay. For money fed to the computer or the TV pay-per-view cable company by credit card number.

The parole officer, Dahlia Freed, says,
Okay, I’ll give it a shot. Only temporary, though. I gotta check out the situation in person first.

When? I’d like to be here and introduce myself.

I don’t give advance notice when I make my visits. And you’ve already introduced yourself, thanks.

Well, perhaps I’ll come by your office.

Call ahead.

I will.

CHAPTER SEVEN

K:
So you’re back. And lugging another gift box, I see. Whaddaya got for me this time, Haystack? No more household goods, I hope.

P:
I think you’ll find these items somewhat more useful. Sorry I misread your needs this morning. Here we have a Swiss Army knife. Many blades, nine by my count. Very handy, given your circumstances. And this terrific little radio. Doesn’t need batteries. You just crank the handle and it charges the radio for eight hours’ playing time.

K:
Cool.

P:
And a portable telescope. To help while away the time while you’re sitting here by your tent.

K:
I ain’t a peeper, y’ know.

P:
Yes, I know. But you could watch the cruise ships come and go and the birds and keep track of cars and check out the visitors arriving at Benbow’s from right here by your tent. You could watch the stars at night.

K:
What’re you, like the white explorer bringing high-tech presents to the low-tech Indians?

P: (laughs)
Something like that.

K:
What’s the Indian supposed to do in return? Carry all your shit on his back into the jungle?

P:
Just talk into the little black box for an hour or so every few days.

K:
It don’t look like no recorder. Is it running? I thought you was just gonna use a tape recorder.

P:
It’s a digital camera. A minicamera. Very useful for making both a visual and aural record of interviews. In my field visual cues are as telling as linguistic cues. I’ll just set it on its little tripod here in the sand . . . and we can forget about it. It’s miked, of course. It has a very good microphone. We can speak normally and just forget it’s there.

K: You
can forget about it maybe. Not me though. It’s a fucking camera. I don’t mind recorders but cameras make me nervous, man. Surveillance cameras, hidden cameras, cameras you don’t know are watching. And cameras you forget are there. Especially them. Is it running?

P:
It’s running. Okay, where do you want to start?

K:
No, where do you want to start? You ask the first question. Then I’ll like decide if I want to answer it. I’m only doing this because I guess I owe you. Like for talking with Dahlia this morning and cutting the deal with Benbow and all. And bringing me the knife and radio and shit. But that don’t mean I hafta tell you shit I don’t feel like telling you. Right? You’re not interrogating me, you’re interviewing me. There’s a difference, man. You’re not a cop, you’re a professor. Correct?

P:
Correct. This is an interview, not an interrogation. So let’s begin by talking about your family. Everything starts there, doesn’t it? Tell me about them. Your mother, your father, and so on. Your siblings.

K:
My family. That’s a joke. Siblings, that’s like brothers and sisters, correct?

P:
Correct.

K:
Okay. No siblings.

P:
An only child then. Everyone has a mother and a father, however. At least in the beginning they do. Tell me about your parents.

K:
Sure. I have a mother. No father though. I mean my mother raised me, not my father. Like there was someone who “fathered” me, but nobody who was my father. My moms, she’s the one who gave birth to me and you could say she took care of me, at least till I was a teenager and was more or less on my own. She’s alive and I guess well and lives right here in Calusa. She’s out in the north end in a house she owns where I used to live and where she has a job as a beautician that she’s had since Day One. My moms is okay. At least I assume she’s okay. I haven’t seen her in a while.

P:
How long is that?

K:
Not since I got convicted and sent up. About two years now, I guess.

P:
Does she know you were living under the Causeway?

K:
No. Unless she figured it out on her own when it got into the newspapers and such. Though the papers never used my name or singled me out. She’s not much for newspapers anyhow. I know she didn’t learn it from me. Not that she’d give a shit. Which I can understand.

P:
I’ll come back to that. What about your father?

K:
Yeah, right, what about him? My so-called father took off as soon as he knocked up my mother. They should have a different word than “father” for someone who just happened to fuck your mother and she got pregnant from it. To me he’s not even got a name. They were never married or anything. That’s why my last name’s the same as my mother’s. He was from up north and went back there supposedly where he probably already had a wife and kids. He was like a roofer or something. Even my mother doesn’t know much about him. One of those northern guys with a pickup and a set of tools who shows up for work after the hurricanes. They fuck all the women and girls for a few months, spend a lot of government and insurance money on booze and drugs and then disappear back north till the next hurricane. My mother’s a sucker for those guys. Especially the black dudes. She likes only black dudes with northern accents though. The same with Latinos. Like Puerto Ricans from New York. That’s what she says anyhow. Maybe she thinks inside they’re really northern white guys, only outside they’re these sexy dark types, if you know what I mean. It’s sort of racist but she doesn’t have a clue. She thinks it’s liberal and all. My mother’s okay but kind of a dim bulb.

P:
Was your father black?

K:
You shittin’ me?

P:
Latino?

K:
Look at me, for chrissake.

P:
How old is she? Your mother.

K:
I dunno. Maybe in her late forties.

P:
How old are you? The registry says you’re twenty-two.

K:
Registry?

P:
The National Sex Offender Registry. I looked you up online this morning.

K:
Oh yeah. So you know everything worth knowing about me already. Why bother interviewing me then?

P:
To learn what the registry leaves out. And to let you tell your story yourself. Like about your mother. Tell me more about her. And about your childhood. Would you say you had a happy childhood?

K:
C’mon, man, what’s a happy childhood? Anybody says he had a happy childhood is bullshitting. But mine was okay I guess. At least nobody beat on me and I didn’t starve and I always had a roof over my head, thanks to my mother, which are things she always likes to remind me of. Until I enlisted in the army anyhow. Although afterward when I got out she let me have my old room back. So I can’t complain about my childhood. Or my mother. Not really.

P:
You were in the army?

K:
Yeah. For a while. I signed up when I was twenty right after I lost my job at this light store which closed on account of the guy that owned it got killed in a robbery. It happened on my day off, so for a while there the cops thought I was involved and almost busted me for it, but I had an alibi. My mother. Another thing she did for me and won’t let me forget. She said I was home with her all day. Which was basically true, since I really was home all day, only not with her, because she was at the beach working on her tan with her boyfriend of the moment. That’s okay. I was home alone with my friend Iggy but he’s an iguana and couldn’t testify. Or he was an iguana. He’s dead now.

P:
I’m sorry. You were in the army? For how long? Did you get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan?

K:
I really wanted to. Yeah, Afghanistan, man. I was jonesing for Afghanistan. But no. I only got as far as basic training at Fort Drum in New York State which is way the fuck up by the Canadian border in the middle of winter, man. Freeze your ass off up there. Not exactly good preparation for desert warfare. Except you get really buff in basic, plus you learn how to use your weapon and shit.

P:
You didn’t complete basic training?

K:
You could say I got discharged early. Not a dishonorable though. I got what they call a general discharge. So I never made it to Afghanistan. Pissed me off. I think I would’ve done good there, kicked some serious Arab ass. I could like kill people with my bare hands, man. They teach you that in basic.

P:
Why were you discharged early?

K: (long pause)
Porn. Distributing pornography, they said.

P:
Pornography! What type of pornography? You mean children?

K:
No, no! Just the usual kind. Videos. Triple and quadruple X. Your basic hard-core. I wasn’t really distributing them anyhow. I was only giving them away free to my buddies. Some DVDs I bought and paid for myself. It’s a long stupid story. You don’t wanna hear it.

P:
I do want to hear it. Tell me.

K:
Well, like I said, I was stationed up at Fort Drum which is only about an hour’s drive from the Canadian border, and over there in Ottawa on the French side of the river there’s a lot of strip clubs and such, and I overheard some of the guys in my outfit saying that this actress who’s my favorite porn star was appearing in a place called Lucky Pierre’s. Her name’s Willow. Just Willow. Which is cool. No last name. I mean she has a last name but she doesn’t use it in her profession. And she’s really special. At least to me. Not like your regular suck-’n’-fuck porn actresses with tats on their butts and clit rings and nipple rings and shaved pussies and who all they do is moan and groan and squeal and can’t act for shit. Willow’s different.

P:
How do you mean, “different”?

K:
I dunno. Most guys don’t really get off on her. Her Internet videos only get one or two, sometimes two and a half stars instead of five and not many hits compared to Cassidey Rae say or Brianna Banks or Hannah Hilton who look like they’ve had these huge breast implants installed and get thousands of hits. Maybe not Cassidey Rae. Her tits are pretty normal-looking. But Willow’s tits are kind of small. Like plums. With these dark almost purple nipples. Willow’s more natural, if you know what I mean. Also her teeth aren’t perfect white, and she has curly brown hair instead of straight blond like she’s maybe Italian or Jewish. She’s got this fantastic warm smile. Actually, I bet she’s French Canadian, which is why she was performing at Lucky Pierre’s. It’s on the French side of the river in Ottawa where they’ve put all the strip clubs and hookers for the Canadian politicians that keep their offices and homes over on the English side. She was probably in town visiting her family and took the gig to pay off some of their overdue bills. She looks like she comes from a poor family. Her website says she was born in Colorado and went to college in Southern California and studied architecture, but they always lie on those websites. They’d never say things like she’s French Canadian from Ottawa, Canada, and dropped out of high school and got into stripping and porn to help support her family. But that’s what she looks like, and that’s one reason why she’s my favorite porn star. Or was. I don’t have any favorites anymore.

P:
Why not?

K:
Dude, get a clue! On account of I can’t watch porn anymore! I’d get busted. Back then though, like all the guys in my outfit, I watched porn all the time on my computer, and I really wanted to meet Willow, so I hitched up to Ottawa on a two-day pass. I had to hitch because none of the guys who had cars wanted to take me where they went on passes and hung out, and none of them gave a shit about Willow, and to tell the truth I wasn’t tight enough with anyone to ask any favors, let alone borrow their car. Besides, I didn’t have a driver’s license. I pretty much kept to myself most of the time because from the first day of basic guys gave me a lot of shit. Not just the sergeants and officers. Every outfit has somebody who gets shit on by everyone else, and I guess I ended up being that somebody. You know what I’m saying?

P:
Why, do you think?

K:
I dunno. It’s my personality maybe. Most people’s personalities have like a specialty. They tell jokes good or they know a lot about cars or computers and video games or heavy metal music or they excel at some sport or at least if they don’t play sports they know everything about the NFL say or the NBA. Or they’re religious and can talk about Jesus and the Bible and shit. There were some guys like that in my outfit. Jesus freaks. Or they can talk about all the women they fucked. My personality just doesn’t have any specialty. All I know about is iguanas, and who gives a shit about iguanas? Plus I’m shorter than most guys and kind of skinny for my age, so I look younger than I’m supposed to be, which means that guys my age and even younger tend to treat me like their stupid little brother. Or they just ignore me. It was like that in school. It’s always been like that for me. You get used to it, and I didn’t mind it after a few years. It was weirder in the army, though, because it was the first time I had to shower naked with other people, and I had the biggest dick in the outfit, and you’d think that would have got me some props—