Lost Memory of Skin (17 page)

The truth? The truth about what? His crime?

No. The reasons for his crime.

There have to be all kinds of reasons why a person does . . . what they do. What they’ve done.

I don’t think so, Glory-Glory-Hallelujah. It’s why they often go back and recommit the crime again and again. It’s why sex offenders are viewed as incurable.

Maybe they’re just programmed to do what they do. You know, hardwired.

These men are human beings, not chimpanzees or gorillas. They belong to the same species as we do. And we’re not hardwired to commit these acts. If, as it appears, the proportion of the male population who commit these acts has increased exponentially in recent years, and it’s not simply because of the criminalization of the behavior and a consequent increase in the reportage of these crimes, then there’s something in the wider culture itself that has changed in recent years, and these men are like the canary in the mine shaft, the first among us to respond to that change, as if their social and ethical immune systems, the controls over their behavior, have been somehow damaged or compromised. And if we don’t identify the specific changes in our culture that are attacking our social and ethical immune systems
,
which we usually refer to as taboos
,
then before long we’ll all succumb. We’ll all become sex offenders, Gloria. Perhaps in a sense we already are.

Oh, please.

We cast them out, we treat them like pariahs, when in fact we should be studying them up close, sheltering them and protecting them from harm, as if indeed they were fellow human beings who have inexplicably reverted to being chimpanzees or gorillas, and whose genetic identity with us and their shared ancestry with us can teach us what we ourselves are capable of becoming if we don’t reverse or alter the social elements that caused them to abandon a particularly useful set of sexual taboos in the first place.

This is a little boring, you know. And far-fetched. These people are sick. That’s all. Sick. Are you coming to bed soon?

First I have to check the sex offender registry for Calusa and find out how to spell the Kid’s real name.

You like him, don’t you?

Personally? I don’t really feel anything personal for him one way or the other. I suppose I admire him somewhat.

Admire him? He’s a convicted sex offender!

He’s plucky. And his defiance doesn’t take the form of denial, like most of them.

“Plucky.”

Go to bed, Gloria. Please.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
P
ROFESSOR
STANDS
BESIDE
HIS
VAN
IN
the parking area at the edge of Benbow’s and watches the Kid drag a large plastic bag across the sand between the buildings and in among the low bushes and trees and mangroves, stopping here and there to collect dropped and discarded empty beer cans and bottles. There’s no one else in sight. The Kid stops for a moment by the bar and appears to be talking with the caged parrot—a short two-way conversation. He listens and talks. The parrot listens and talks. The Kid laughs, as if the parrot’s told a parrot joke, waves good-bye to the bird, and moves on.

When the bag is filled to bulging, the Kid drags it to the tailgate of the red, rusted-out pickup truck parked next to the Professor’s van, where he separates bottles from cans and tosses them into a pair of metal barrels placed in the bed of the truck. Though it’s still early in the day, the sun is already pounding down and the air is thick as syrup. The Kid moves slowly. He knows how to work in the heat. He’s wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs and sockless sneakers and a baseball cap. The Professor wears his usual dark three-piece vested suit, and though he stands in the shade of his van, sheets of sweat run down his entire body, soaking his underwear and socks. He wipes his face and neck with his handkerchief and folds and tucks it neatly back into the breast pocket of his suit coat.

The Kid, who until now has not acknowledged the Professor’s presence, tosses a glance in his direction and looks away.

I see that you are now gainfully employed. Good.

Benbow told me the deal. Not clear who I’m working for, though. Him or you.

You’re employed by Benbow. You answer to him. I’m merely the guarantor of your salary. He’s your boss.

Whatever.

I brought you a few items.

Yeah? What?

Household items. For your campsite.

The Professor slides back the side door of his van and pulls out a cardboard box and sets it on the ground. The Kid walks up to the box. He purses his lips, crinkles his brow, and peers skeptically into it, as if wondering what this weird fat dude wants in return. It’s got to be some kind of trick. What’s the exchange rate here?

Early this morning before leaving for his office, the Professor raked through the kitchen cupboards, linen and cleaning closets, filling the box. Gloria asked him what he was doing, and he told her he was bringing a few things to the Kid.
Necessaries,
he called them. She said nothing in response, just stood with her back to the stove and watched in silence, wondering: What’s the exchange rate here? What does her husband really want from this person?

The Kid reaches down and pokes through the contents: a cast iron skillet, a large pot, a spatula, a small wooden salad bowl and serving spoons, a set of old mismatched bath towels, laundry detergent, several bars of hand soap, a gallon-size thermos jug.

The Kid grunts.
I can’t use this shit. I can’t use any of this shit, man. I travel light.

What could you use, then?

A Mercedes S-Class coupe. A condo twenty-five hundred feet in the air in a building where no children are allowed. That’d be enough, I guess. For a start.

No, seriously, Kid. You might be settled here for a while now.

I don’t think so, man. Benbow didn’t give me no guaranteed lease or anything. He could boot my ass outa here anytime he wants.

No, he can’t. I arranged for you to stay.

There’s still the problem with my parole officer, man. My caseworker, she calls herself. But she’s a parole officer and she can pretty much ruin my life if she wants to. The part that isn’t already ruined. Anyhow, she don’t want me settling here. She didn’t say it, but she wants me to go back to the Causeway. Did you bring the map? The treasure map?

It’s in a file in my office at the university. I’ll bring it next time. I’ll speak with her. Your parole officer.

The Professor pulls out his cell phone and hands it to the Kid. He instructs the Kid to call the woman and tell her that someone wants to discuss the Kid’s housing situation with her.
I’ll take it from there.

The Kid shrugs and punches in the caseworker’s direct number, which after these many months of reporting in to her every week he has memorized. Her name, he tells the Professor, is Dahlia Freed. She’s a black lady, he adds.
Cold. And hard. Goes by the friggin’ manual.

When Dahlia Freed picks up, the Kid in a flat, uninflected voice tells her that he has someone here who wants to speak with her about his housing situation.
The guy’s some kind of professor. He’ll explain,
he says and passes the phone to the Professor.

Benbow has stepped from his trailer and stands on the steps watching the Kid. Benbow pointedly looks at his watch, and the Kid immediately goes back to work picking up bottles and cans, leaving the Professor alone by his van to speak with Dahlia Freed.

He introduces himself to the woman and informs her that he is a professor of sociology at Calusa State University.

She is not impressed. She sounds bored and skeptical.
Okay, so what’s the purpose of your call?
She has a Brooklyn or Queens accent. Queens, he decides. She was probably a New York City cop before coming to Calusa. Half the Calusa police force are ex-cops from northern cities. Snowbirds with badges and guns.

The Professor explains that he’s doing field research for a paper on convicted sex offenders and the causes of their high rate of homelessness and low rate of recidivism. He wants to interview young Mr. Kydd, who has agreed to talk with him about his present situation and his personal history. He invites Ms. Freed to verify his academic credentials and the seriousness of his project by checking the faculty listings on the university’s website or by looking him up on google.com, where he has many listings. She can visit his personal website as well.
You will find that I am a legitimate researcher and social scientist and have published numerous monographs and studies on the subject of homelessness. I’m now trying to expand my research into the lives of convicted sex offenders who happen also to be homeless. A subject I’m sure you’re more than familiar with.

So why call me? You want to interview him, go ahead and do it. You don’t need my permission.

He explains that it would be helpful to him if Mr. Kydd could remain in residence here at Benbow’s while he’s being interviewed, since he’s already encamped here and has even arranged to be employed by Mr. Benbow.
Otherwise it may be very difficult for me to track him down again and interview him in an ongoing way for the length of time required by my project. I need to meet with him many times over several months in order to test the veracity of what he tells me.

Yeah, yeah.

This is very important work I’m doing, Ms. Freed. Someday it may turn out to be helpful to you in your line of work as well. In fact, I might want to interview you yourself. I’m sure your perspective would be helpful. I would give you proper credit in print, of course. Which might be useful to you down the line. With your department head, when you seek promotion.

She barks a laugh.
Maybe. Maybe not. But I don’t like him living at that place. Benbow’s. It’s got a reputation. Supposedly they do all kinds of fashion shoots there. Fashionistas. It’s like a whaddaya call it, a location. But even if that’s all they do there, it’s still clothes coming off and on, cameras rolling, lights, et cetera. It’s only a step or two removed from the porn industry. Which is something I heard they’ve done over there in the past anyhow, make porn films, and are probably doing it still. So-called adult films. It’s not illegal, although you ask me it oughta be illegal. Besides, Benbow’s is a known hangout for upscale junkies. Which means there’s dealers present—we’re talking coke mainly and smack. Lots of soft money moving around. And where there’s upscale drugs being bought and sold, Professor, there’s pretty little sex workers standing on the sidelines looking for work, male and female. And some of them are underage. He’s gonna get caught up in that, one way or the other. At one end of the trade or the other.

The Professor decides to deal with her as if she were the worried parent of a teenage son, not a parole officer. He tells her that he understands her concerns, and he sympathizes. He’s willing to help her by checking in on the Kid daily and reporting to her afterward, either directly by phone or, if she prefers to have a written record of his visits, by e-mail. The Kid, of course, would continue to check in with her on his own once a week as required. His camp is not really at Benbow’s anyhow, he points out. He’s pitched his tent in an isolated spot outside the area where people gather, on a piece of property owned by Benbow, close to the Bay. His job is as a maintenance man, a part-time day job, so he’s not around the place at night. And as for the filming, there seems to be no evidence of it at present, and he, the Professor, would be sure to keep the Kid away from the scene if a crew and actors showed up and started to make an adult film. He certainly wouldn’t want the Kid mixed up in any of that!

He’s thinking, however, that maybe it would be interesting to interview some of the actors—a separate research project—and find out how they came to this line of work, how the males manage to keep their erections for so long, and do the females have actual orgasms or do they fake it? Do the actors take sexual pleasure from their work? Do the directors and the crew get turned on while filming? Or is it all, for everyone concerned, purely and simply work
?
Skilled labor. The manufacture of a product. Do they take pride in their product? Do they in a Marxist sense identify with it?

He’s in no sense an expert, but he’s seen plenty of porn films in his time—who hasn’t? Anyone who’s spent a night in a hotel or motel room has seen a porn film. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection has watched clips from porn films. He’s seen enough of them both ways, films and Internet clips, to find pornography too boring to watch anymore, even when he has an itch to masturbate and is alone. But he’s never seen one being made, has never seen a porn film
live,
as it were. Never been in the audience for a live sex show. At least not in America, and suddenly for the first time in years the Professor is remembering live sex shows in Thailand and Malaysia. He recalls being a member of an audience, being pressured by the audience, all men, mostly Europeans and Americans, to become aroused by the coupling taking place on the stage. The members of the audience nudged one another with their elbows, laughed and cheered, whistled and stomped, then settled into rapt silence, their hands buried in their trousers. No matter how odd or bizarre—male performers with grotesquely large penises, racial mixes, dwarves, huge multicolored dildos, chains, whips and rubber suits, twins, once even a set of triplets—it didn’t work for him. His fly stayed zipped, his cock remained stubbornly flaccid, buried beneath rolls of belly fat. Somehow the pressure he felt from the other men in the audience interfered with his ability to respond sexually to the show. He grew quickly bored, then detached, and finally analytical. He ended up considering the cruelly exploitive politics of the event. Another instance of late capitalist imperialism.