Mark's Skin
by Vanessa Gebbie
Yesterday, I put on Mark's skin. I was going to wear it for a day and most of a night. I was looking forward to being a bloke, even a bloke like Mark. I wanted to know what it was like to have a dick. I found his skin hanging on a hook behind the bathroom door, so I borrowed it, that's all.
Marks's dick is kind of shrunken, like it wants to hide, like it's given up. Close by there are bruises, livid, deep, where he fished around time after time after time for a vein, or artery. Straight up. Faster that way. Stuff goes to the heart like lightening. To the brain, no stops.
Mark's scalp is balding, buzz cut stubble round the sides. He's grey at thirty nine. I ran my fingers over his skull, felt the scars left where he was hit with a half-brick in a street fight. They are ridged, like someone took a trowel to the head and planted something under the skin which is waiting to come up.
Mark's arms are thin. There are more bruises, old, faded, and if I hold his forearms up to the light, his skin's like thick translucent rice paper. It doesn't fit. It was made for someone stronger. I look underneath the top layer for the web of veins I know must be there. But these arms are alabaster. Solid.
I inspect our legs. Somewhere under this skin is his skeleton, not mine. He's six foot at least maybe that was part of the deal. Maybe this body-swap is total. Mark's left leg below the knee is one big black brown purple ulcer radiating outwards from just above the ankle. If I half close my eyes, it looks like one huge hole. The toes stick out of a bruised foot like ghosts, like they don't want to be there.
Looking in the mirror, Mark's face peers out at me, questioning. His eyes are full of apology. He is cowed, broken. I wonder if he's going to cry, but maybe not. Maybe there's just not the energy to make tears.
Then I am given a choice. I can carry on at skin level, playacting at being a man on methadone, or I can really live it for a while. I can feel what he feels. That won't be just a bit of fun. I'll feel stuff; no preparation. No slide into it.
No matter. In for a penny I'm flippant now. I know what having a dick is like and it's no big deal. Don't know what all the fuss is about. Of course; bring on the rest.
Sickness. The deepest nausea I've ever felt floods up from my centre. It takes me over. Even my fingers ache with sickness. My mouth is filled with bile. I have to spit on the floor, once, twice, three times. I cup my hands, shaking, and hold them under the cold tap, take a mouthful of water which burns as it goes down. I'm bending at the sink and my knees protest. Mark once said his joints felt like broken glass and now I know why. Every movement I make, my ankles, toes, knees, hips, every vertebra, my neck, shoulders, elbows and wrists, every finger joint, they all scream. Ground glass has been eased under the skin and the surface of the bones rub together jarring and setting off sparks.
My head is full of wire wool. Or sandbags. It is so heavy. I want to lay it down somewhere, take it off, anything. My eyes are lead, and hot, so they might melt and run down my face, scorching it. My eyelids are edged with barbed wire.
I am standing in my bathroom trying to wash Mark's skin. Wanting to make it feel a little better so when he has to put it back on it will have healed a little. I run the shower at my normal temperature and step inside. It's too cold, then too hot. The water is razorblades then pellets of fire. The soap stings under my arms, between my legs, in all our folds and dark places. I wash his hair. That feels good, at least, rubbing the half-brick scar, smoothing it. Running my fingers along his eyebrows as though he were a child trying to sleep and I am helping him go off.
I lean against the tiles, close my eyes, and listen to the water howling down the drain.
I hold my dick, and I ache.
That's when I decide. I'm not giving this skin back. It stands more chance of being healed on me than it does on his back.
I get out of the shower, pat him dry with a yellow towel, and use baby powder. I splash his face with cool water and use a cream which sinks into his skin like he's been dying in a hot, dry desert for a hundred years. I make him drink five glasses of water. Two come up again, but that's OK. It's washing the system.
I walk his skin to my bed and lie him down. I pull the soft duvet up over his legs, and the ulcer screams with the weight. I turn on his side and draw the duvet up to his chin. His chin grazes my knuckles. I guess I should have shaved. Wouldn't know how. Maybe he'll forgive the oversight.
Then I lean across and switch off the light, hugging myself, himself, like I was hugging him to sleep. Sleep is a great healer, they say.
Maybe when I wake, I'll think about this. Maybe I'll go back to the bathroom and take my own skin down from the hook, put it on again. But now, drifting off, it seems a far better thing to stay Mark. And that's why I haven't changed back yet.
Copyright © 2006 Vanessa Gebbie
Vanessa is a journalist living and working in the UK. Her short fiction has appeared in print and on the web, and she has had some success in competitions. She teaches Creative Writing as therapy in addiction treatment centres in her home city, Brighton, and is the founder and editor of Tom's Voice Magazine.