The Man With No Skin (3)

 

-3-

The Man With No Skin

 

Start to grow a second skin
To keep the insides in
This one is obviously not thick enough
It's time to grow a second skin
Keep the insides in

-Great Lake Swimmers

 

 “Can I get another drink?” Cale mumbled and slid the tumbler across the counter top.

“Let me get you something thick.” An older man, probably in his late twenties, but with the sunk posture of a blown-over father, sank onto the bar stool next to him. He wore a peach polo and wrinkled khakis, his face the color of old canvas, his thin stripped brows hanging loosely above swamp pond eyes, his mahogany hair thick and gelled, the clumps ringing off the tips like spray-on snow. “Scratch that highball, two Black Russians.”

Cale wasn’t a fan of Black Russians and he wasn’t interested in trading words with anyone right now, especially someone he didn’t even know, but he couldn’t really afford anymore holes in his wallet and a free drink he’d take if all he had to do was cash out a few words with someone he probably wouldn’t even remember in the morning.

“Max.”  The man threw out an arm and shook like he practiced.

“Cale.”

“You used to play in this bar, didn’t you?”

“A while back.”

“I remember you did a pretty good cover of that Pixies’ song, the one from Fight Club.”

“’Where is My Mind?’” Cale eyed him briefly before turning to the bar tender, she was taking far too long and he wanted his damn drink.

“That’s right.  Why’d you stop?”

“Got a teaching gig.  Didn’t have the time.  I’m trying to land some paid gigs though before I get back home.” Cale rubbed his neck to distract himself from the wait and line of questioning.

“You still teaching?”

“No, finished up last month.”

The bar tender slid the highballs across the counter.  Cale scrambled for it, Max caught his and clang Cale’s glass.       

“To you going home.” Max smiled and swallowed half the glass, Cale followed suite, nearly gagging, his stomach turning, but he took it- you can’t be a guy and fall under par.

“When are you going back home?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Don’t know yet?” Max took another sip and wiped his chin. “You trying to get out of here, right?”

“I am, but I saved enough from teaching that I can room here with a buddy and play some guitar for a bit longer, least until my girlfriend is done school for the summer.”

“Right, right.” His eyes flickered like a flashlight under covers.  Cale wondered if he knew, if he could pick beyond the clay sheet, but Max wouldn’t show, he just drew out a pack of cigarettes and offered it up casually. “Want one?”

Cale shook his head.

“So.” Max began before fitting a smoke between his paper bag lips, cupping his hand, and lighting it up. “Why wait until she’s done school for the summer?”

Max had his fingers in the wedge; this was the question Cale had been wrestling with. Why wait? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to.  She was the one pressing him to remain, to continue traveling, to see all he could while he was out here, but he’d seen all he wanted to and whatever he missed, he didn’t care to see, he just wanted to come home to her, that’s all, he just wanted to come home.

“I won’t really be able to see her much until then, she’ll have work and all, I’ll have to find a place, apply to jobs, all that jazz.” Cale danced his finger around the rim of the glass just like he was seemingly dancing around the real problem, her gradual falling out, his growing uncertainty.

“’Love boat has smashed against the daily grind?’” Max took a hard drag before scraping off the ash against the lip of the glass tray, his eyes caught Cale’s like dusk against a naked valley.

“I suppose.” Was it that? Was it becoming that? The everyday that they both faced without the other worlds away?  She had her friends, her life, her world, he had his, and between them was miles and miles of ocean and dirt and no common ground anymore.  So was that it? Was it choking the hell out of everything real, everything they worked so hard and for so long to save, to make happen?

“Mayakovski knew. It always does.” Max held his drink like a torch and set his eyes on the countertop.  “We fall into the trap of all this garbage, so caught up in work and school and all the shallow crap in society that we fail to clutch the real color within and we let it creep into our lives, our friendships, our love, our desperate moments of being.”

Max exhaled and curled the smoke with a yellow finger.

“And what’s worse is that we created every system, every reason to repress it, to shake it out.  Why? I don’t know really, maybe it’s all too much, maybe it reminds us nothing is here to stay, we live to die, I don’t know.”

Cale rolled his shoulders before taking a strung-out sip. He thought about it for a bit, it must boil down the universal human trait, fear, laziness, the combination of both.  We’re too scared to pitch ourselves into anything, into freeing ourselves, into becoming liberated, into loving completely.  And it’s that collective fear that kills us, that enslaves us to the tyrant, to societal convention, to prejudice, to retired dreams.

And laziness. 

 Couple that with fear and you have humanity: bodies on couches without the will to strike out and become, the mind to persevere, or the heart to strip itself and love without condition.

“That’s what’s wrong with us.” Max turned and blew up his gaze. “We enjoy the idea of love, we enjoy hopping into it, but once we’re knee deep in it, damn, it’s like I’m covered in mud, nothing makes sense anymore, it’s all nuts, it’s all pain, it’s all beyond words and what they tell you on TV and the radio and in trashy vanity magazines and you want to shake it off because you’re too afraid it’ll all fall through.  And of course it will if you let it, it’s easier to swim in shallow water and love, love’s got no bottom.”

Max killed his drink and nailed Cale’s. “Finish up.”

“Two more.” He handed the bar tender a clump of notes before snuffing his light and drawing out another.

“And it’s so alien, it’s so different, and it happens delicately and only once with a real bang, but you’d rather trade it in for something familiar, something you think might comfort you in the end, something without pain cause you’re a coward when it comes down to real feeling you’d rather erase it off the chalk board, live in some illusion, pretend the scars aren’t there and won’t last.  Anyway, go with the safer bet, ‘the love boat smashes against the daily grind’, every damn time.” Max cleaned off the ash dramatically. “Every damn time.”

“You think I should go back?” Cale curled his fingers around the tumbler as he carved pictures of her in the oak countertop with the palette of his memory.

“I think you, like me, like everyone.” Max threw up his hands and shrugged. “Have no idea what you’ve really got until it’s gone. I guess that’s life, we won’t understand until we’re at the end, it’ll click, and then we’ll die. A quick tease.  But who knows really what going back right now would do anyway? It could make it worse, it could make it better.”

Max nearly killed another glass before continuing.

“Rationale is impossible; you’ll only create a maze.  But even with gut, who knows.  Pick one, go all out, don’t look back, turn the choice into positive consequence.”

“I don’t know though.”

“S**t no one knows.” Max scoffed and rocked back in his chair.  Cale felt like a priest on the edge of his faith; his hands raw, his nails bloodied and shattered from digging through the glass snow to find the absolute, the certainty, the cement for his final resolution, but he would cling onto it no matter what, he would cling.

“I want to propose, you know, I want to make it really happen, I believe she’s it.”

Max laughed; Cale was caught off guard, unsure of how to react, and he made an effort to cope by swallowing the rest of his highball.

“We always believe she’s it.  That’s what’s so fucked up about belief.” Max emptied his drink and called for more, his eyes like a lake under a dying moon, diamonds in certain corners, shadows across the rest. “Like Whitman said, ‘what we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.’”

“I know, I know, but I believe.” Cale stammered and took a swig. “I believe she’s it.”

He did. He always did.  Least he thought he did.  Once he knew he did.

“You’re missing the point.” He began. “If it is, you don’t scramble to laminate it as quick as you can, you trust that you don’t need to.  You stuff the letter in the bottle, chuck it into the sea, and wait, and if the tide brings it back, what need is there for faith after that?”

“I suppose.” But Cale hadn’t heard a word, he was too convinced underneath. “I mean, I know though, I just know.”

“Come on.” Max chuckled and waved his ring finger. “So did I.”

 Cale turned away; he was getting sick of this, of facing it, of this Max character.  The guy must come in here every night to give one on one lectures, his pretty list of literary quotes rotating weekly, his drink always the same. 

And what did this guy know about him and Aurora anyway? What did he know about love?  Seems like he just picked and hitched, throwing himself down the well only to find the bottom after a quick drop. 

“You like Korea?” Max switched tracks and extinguished another smoke.

Cale shrugged. “It’s alright.”

“Been here five years, hate it.”

“Why are you still here?”

He lit up another cigarette and nodded at his finger through the flame.

“Ah.”

“Yep.” Max tucked away his pack and lighter before throttling his next round.

“She Korean?”

“Yep.” He leaned upturned wrists against the counter top like he was waiting to be crucified.  All his thoughts, regrets, and memories pacing behind his eyes like a shadow beyond a window pane in a faceless city. “Been married almost three years. Now she wants kids.”

Cale sipped on his drink, his head spinning, feeling awkward about this character on the verge of opening up, feeling caught up himself in half-wanting to vent.  But sometimes that’s what it takes, a vent to a stranger, to someone who knows nothing about you and no one in your life, who can really gauge it from the outside and pick out the gears and strings you otherwise might have overstepped. 

“I mean we’re in love, don’t get me wrong, it’s just-” Max rolled his wrist, kicked the ash, and turned to Cale. “It’s different now, it’s dried up I guess, I mean it’s hard.  I know a bit of Korean, her English isn’t bad, but she wants to live here and I want to live back at home.”

“You could, uh, you could switch back and forth.” Cale slurred.

“Well, if we have kids we’ll move back to the States for school.”

It sounded like a relationship of compromises, Cale thought, based on nothing outside of the initial fascination with exotic love.  Everyone has that fleeting fantasy of meeting someone on the other side of the world, of falling into a new culture, of shattering the bounds and falling in love. 

Cale wondered how it really worked.  There would always be a language barrier, a cultural wall, and a difference in perspective between them.  He assumed love could overcome, but if it had, Max wouldn’t be in a bar right now smoking, drinking, and stove-piping to some random stranger.

“Then back here?”

“No, no, I won’t let her, maybe to visit every summer, but I’m not moving back here ever again, especially not with kids.”

“You really hate it here?”

Max leaned his elbow against the counter top, his smoke dangling between ocher fingers, scowling, his voice edgy as sawdust. “Can’t stand it. Example. I knew the in-laws were out of some food, thought I’d save them the hassle and get their groceries and what do you think they say? Not a thank you, no, they want to know why I bought this instead of that or where’s this and you forgot that.”

“Mm.”

“Hell, that’s how it is every time.  After all these years they still treat me like I’m some outsider who stole their daughter.”

Cale had to bite his knuckles to keep from laughing, trying not to look obvious or suspicious, but Max was far too caught up in his rant to notice anyway.

“And all they want to do is sit around here and drink and eat.  Maybe go on vacation once or twice a year to Seoul or Jeju Island.  They haven’t even seen my parents since the wedding.  Every time I bring up going to the States for a few weeks all I get are a bunch of head nods and yeses before they all turn back to TV or dinner.”     

Cale couldn’t sympathize, he was in the ruts himself and besides, it’s what Max signed up for.   

“It’s all whatever.” Max pounded his drink, wiped his mouth on his shoulder, and hollered for two more.

“I’m good.”  Cale lifted his drink.

“One more, just one more.  Come on, kill it.”

One free drink… one free drink… turned into how many?  He damned himself and wondered what time it was.  He could barely make out the digital clock on his cell along with the half dozen text notices from Aden, all probably about dinner or a movie back at the flat or whatever.

7:46 and nearly plowed already… 

“So you really thinking of proposing?”

Cale shoved his cell back in his pocket and turned to Max, he had to press a palm against the edge to keep from swaying.

“I am, I just, I don’t know what she’d say.  I, uh, I mean she’s still got to finish school and it, it feels like it’s gradually slipped away since I’ve been here.”

Max slapped Cale on the back, his brows bent, lips pursed.

“I can’t really help you there, no one can, just know you’re running through fire, know I’m still running through fire, that’s how the whole show is, love and everything, fucked, from start to finish, straight fucked.”

The bar tender slid them two more Black Russians.  Max passed one to Cale then lifted his.

“To it all being fucked.”

Cale muttered it back. “To it all…”

He hesitated, lingering on his thoughts, watching Max start to down his. 

Was this what he wanted to become?  A body in a bar, his heart screaming underwater, always trying to drown it all away.  No, he didn’t want this, he knew what he wanted, he knew what lay underneath, and it wasn’t in all this.  He wouldn’t let his grip on reality, on Aurora, sink away.  It would all work out, he knew it would, and Max was right, no one could help him, no one but himself, and he’d go with his gut and freefall.

Cale slammed the highball back on the counter top, picked himself off the stool, and left, Max hollering after him, something about his drink, something about love, something about it all being fucked. 

Least that’s what Cale imagined himself doing, but a part of him knew Max could just as well be right, and that part of him had taken him out tonight to drink and think.  And he couldn’t very well disappoint. 

  “Good man.” Max smiled as Cale polished off his drink and set it on the counter top. “Just one this time.”

The bar tender eyed Cale, who was now clearly trashed, before taking the empty glasses and won from Max. 

“Love is all frosting now, no cake.  It was shredded way back, gradually sometime between the Odyssey and swing dancing.  The art of love was lost, consumed, and bought.  It’s become just another product, a word on a T-shirt, a Facebook status update, the name of some hip hop song.” 

Cale felt his cell vibrate, slid it out of his pocket, and saw it was Aden.  Again.  What the hell, he thought, Aden couldn’t leave him alone for a night? He turned back to Max who was still ranting, sipping on his drink, and carving smoke sketches in the dun.

 “-love is all knotted, backward, inside out, and scrambled.  Girls play ‘hard to get’ to shift cards and move chips and they want the guy to make them feel desperate, to be ‘hard to get’ himself at times, cause we’re taught from the start to want what you can’t have, you know, that’s the incentive that keeps capitalism going, they’ve drilled it into us so deep it’s flooded all our human facets-” 

Cale was falling in and out of everything; his phone rang again, his head felt like a rock quarry, his heart strung out and bruised, and the noise, smoke, and wasted bodies did nothing but sink him deeper and deeper into the dark water.

“-and even if you get there, then what? You love too much at first and she backs away, you love too little and she shakes you out, you love just right and then you find out your love is imbalanced, you love her more then she loves you and when it falls apart you walk away with a hole bigger than your heart and-”

Aden rang him for a third time and he finally decided to pick up.

“Yeah.” But he couldn’t hear him with all the noise. “I can’t hear, let me go outside.”

“You going?”

“Just a quick phone call.”

Max nodded, finished his drink, and roared for another before turning to the next guy to finish his rant.

Cale stumbled up the stairs, his hand cupping the cell.  He tripped on the last step and barely caught himself before heading out into the street.

“Yeah, what do you want?”

“Cale, Aurora’s called twice, where’ve you been?”

“Communes.”

“You’ve been at Communes the whole time?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought you were trying to land some gigs?”

“I was.”

“Right, better get back.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Cale pocketed his cell and fell into a skinny alley to puke.  He damned himself for getting so drunk, it didn’t help calm a thing, and instead of facing a dozen thick, rushing thoughts he now had several dozen pieces, all scattered and fuzzed. 

He clambered back out of the alley, down the street, and collapsed into the back of a taxi, muttering in split Korean the address of his flat. 

Could he face her now? Could he face it all? Not like this, Christ, not like this.  It was all spinning ruin, a web caught in a storm, buried explosives, and all he wanted now was to sleep it off and fade away, fade away…