SKIN

by Craig Wallwork

The way the world sounds when beneath ten feet of water. The way you can hear your neighbour’s television, but cannot make out the words being said.

We have signals. Prompts. For Annie to shout that I am pushing too hard, or that my lip ring is ripping into her, would be a one-way conversation with a deaf person.

There is no sign language for pain. Only prompts.

One tap on my shoulder means I am okay to keep pushing. Two taps and my head is hurting her. Sometimes I hear the crowd jeering, a muffled noise that his overbore with the sound of my heart beating, and her heart beating. At times, I can make out words from the screaming crowd: “PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!!” “HARDER! FASTER!” “JESUS!”

Most of the time, I hear only my breath amid words of regret.

To everyone else in our quiet little backwater, we are normal. The little cobbled street we live on is the same as any other street in the area. We have a window basket, net curtains and a big red door. We have a car, a Fiat Uno. And we have a cat called Molly that digs up the neighbour’s garden. In summer, we stop and talk to people in the street about the weather and the price of petrol. We walk, hold hands, and dream of raising a family. But at the weekends, we dress in togas, laurel leaves and sandals. At weekends, we are Sam-Hung and Delabia

For a small fee, Annie and I will attend your social club, your stag do, your best friend’s birthday party. For a small fee, you get Annie first. She will start with a strip show, nothing out of the norm. When fully undressed I will hand her props: a lemon; an orange; a marrow, working our way up to a watermelon. We have a great deal with the local grocery shop.

Usually this does it for the punters. They are happy seeing a woman open her legs and consume a small allotment.

On the odd occasion, there is a demand for more.

At the end of the show, I go around with an empty pint pot. For a few extra Euros, we take it up a notch. The punters usually cave. What possibly could we do to outmatch a watermelon? Place your money in the pint pot, my friend, and we will show you. When the pint is full, I take off my shirt.

Encore! Encore!

The way your heart sounds underwater. The way a car alarm sounds to those in peaceful slumber.

They call me Sam-Hung for a reason. I started out in Amsterdam. A friend of mine introduced me to the owner of a strip club while I was travelling through Europe. The friend was an ex girlfriend, and she could vouch for my talent. I was given a job that night. Nothing too seedy at first: skin only. The second night I let a girl from the crowd lick my balls.

Acceptance is applause.

For the thing you thought made you a freak, the appendage that turned away the woman you love, having an outsider stand beside you with “it” in her hand, a flash bulb go off, a smile…it means so much.

Three weeks in and I was offered a full time slot.

The slot belonged to an English girl called Annie. She had worked in and around the area for some time. I had heard about her. She was reputed to be able to take any man, regardless of length and girth. A few of the Negroes were big, a man they named Tripod had split a new girl once on stage. But when he fucked Annie, she didn’t even let out a murmur.

The night we first worked together, I was nervous. She could tell and she held my hand and said everything would be okay. She was a pretty woman, with auburn hair and skin that had seen too many good days. She guided me through the first time. On stage, she whispered in my ear, telling me what to do. And I followed her instructions. Annie did not make any noises for me too, and I had to make sure, at first, that I had entered her. Later that evening we had drinks. We talked. She told me that her “condition” was due to an abnormality in her vaginal walls. There was little muscle tissue surrounding her vulva. When she was twelve a boy broke her hymen by inserting his father’s torch into her. Annie did not bleed. Annie just sat back and waited for the feeling of sex to overwhelm her like she had read about in books. It never came. Boys she slept with were either too small, or too thin, and after a while, Annie gained a reputation of being a slag. Too loose. Too slack.

Concerned she may be a freak, Annie tried to fill her void every night, too feel, if only for a moment, the passion, the joy.

She began with a candle, an old church candle four inches wide. When that didn’t help, she used a tin of Baxter’s soup, then a mason jar. Her mother’s crystal vase given for her fiftieth birthday lost its shine. The 2-litre tin of magnolia paint used to decorate the kitchen walls was emptied of its contents, cleaned of its overspill. Annie was a freak, just like me. And the only home for freaks is a lonely, blue-lit stage in Amsterdam.

During the week, we walk along the canals, visit museums, and drink coffee in small cafes. We dress in blue denim, Marino lamb’s wool, and nice Italian leather shoes. We plan holidays to Greece and the Balearic Islands. During the week, we are normal. But then it changes.

The way the piano sounded to Beethoven. The way a widow’s wail sounds to her dead husband six feet under. The way the world sounds to a newborn baby.

After a difficult night, one where a man in a crowd of drunken students taunted Annie for being a whore, and me a freak of nature; a night that led to me stopping the show halfway through our encore and running into the crowd to where the man sat; the same night I left the premises with blood on my knuckles and a black eye, I told Annie that the only time I feel safe, and not a freak, is when I was around her…inside her. That night we finished the encore in our own bedroom.

Hold your breath.
One…two…three….

As I pushed, slowly at first, Annie said she liked me being in her too. Then she tapped once on my shoulder. We were never as close when I had my head inside her. A sacred connection shared. She likened it to birth, only in reverse.

Why we crawl into the foetal position when scared, or lonely. Why we like to rest our heads on our lover’s chest. We have a need to return to where it all began. Security. To have someone else look after us.

Annie is talking; telling me about the time we met, how such a person with my talent could be so insecure. She wanted to mother me, take me home and make sure I was okay. Then I feel her tap me on the shoulder.

I close my eyes, her voice suffocated behind thick walls of skin, of what the doctor’s labelled, abnormal skin. Annie talks in soporific tones. No words can be deciphered.

The way the screams from a rescue team sound to a person trapped under a landslide.

Prompts. She taps my shoulder. I hear my breath; smell the warm flesh of her uterus. I push, and keep pushing. My head clears the vulva, my neck too. I keep pushing. I push my hands up and through, stretching the muscles, prizing the opening wider so it can accommodate my shoulders. I bring my knees up to my chest.

Never gone this far.

Annie once told me that due to her condition, she could not bare children. The doctor had used the term, barren.

Up to my waist. My knees. Not pushing now. The womb is pulling.

Her heartbeat is the only noise, a dull rhythmic thud. I crawl into a ball and rest my head against the walls of flesh. I hear the gurgle of food being processed: the soft whisper of words spoken by my lover. I push my head into my chest, and bring my knees up. My eyes grow tired.

The way sanctuary must be for the fallen.

The way life is before it starts.

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~ This piece was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 and was filed under Writing, Short Story, Featured. You can make comments on it below. ~