Skinned Alive by Edmund White

Author:Edmund White [White, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76452-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1995-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

By day, Ray would go swimming or motorbiking to old churches or ruined monasteries or hidden beaches, but all day long and during the endless evenings, he’d daydream about Marco. He bought a phrase book and pieced together Greek words for that night’s rendezvous.

Once Marco asked Ray if he should bring along a friend, and Ray agreed because he thought Marco wanted him to. But the friend was a portly sailor (“Greeks go off early,” Ralph had said, as though they were a temperamental triple-cream cheese, a Brillat-Savarin, say). Ray sucked them both at the same time, doing one then the other, back and forth, but his only pleasure was in imagining reporting it to the other Americans tomorrow. The boys seemed embarrassed and talked loudly to each other and joked a lot and Marco kept losing his erection and he sounded nasty and used the word putana, which surely meant “whore” in Greek as well as Italian.

Ray paid them both and was tempted to mutter putana while doing so, but that might queer the deal, so he swallowed his resentment (yes, swallowed that, too) and drew Marco aside and said, “Metavrio,” which meant “the day after tomorrow” (meta as in metaphysics, “beyond physics”). The delay was meant as some sort of punishment. He also indicated he wanted to see Marco alone from now on. Marco registered the compliment but not the punishment and smiled and asked, “You like?” pointing to himself, asked it loud and clear so the other guy could hear.

“Yes,” Ray said, “I like.”

As he walked home, Ray took a stroll through the zoological gardens, where there was also an outdoor movie theater. Inside people sat on folding chairs and watched the huge screen on which a streetlamp had disobligingly cast the shadow of a leafy branch. Tonight he sat outside but he could hear the end of Querelle, of all things, dubbed into Greek and offered to the extended Cretan family, who chuckled over the perversities of northern Europe. In the closing sequence, Jeanne Moreau laughed and laughed a shattering laugh and the caged egrets dozing beside Ray awakened and started to chatter and call. Then the houselights came up, the families streamed out, for a moment the park was bright and vivid with crunched gravel and laughs and shouts, then car doors slammed and motorbikes snarled, the lights were dimmed and finally, conclusively, everything was quiet. Ray sat in the dark, listening to the awakened birds paddling the water, a leaf spray of shadows across his face like an old-fashioned figured veil. The jasmine gave off a shocking body odor, as though a pure girl had turned out to be a slut.

Ray regretted his spiteful decision to skip a day with Marco. The depth to which he felt Marcos absence, and his anxiety lest Marco not show up at their next appointment, made Ray aware of how much he liked Marco and needed him. Liked him? There was nothing to like, nothing but a mindless, greedy Cretan teen who was, moreover, heterosexual.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.