26 Songs About Sex and Death #1: Skin On Skin

(a project, an exercise, a draft, some word salad for you)

The story:

Until we came over the hill I didn’t think it had happened at all. I imagined that there’d be some mania, some psychedelia. Some kind of druggy rush. But there was nothing. A man was alive, and then he wasn’t. Like my dad had always said at funerals to make me feel better, “It’s just a biological process,” which always made me more scared.

Over the hill Shelby turns to me to ask how it felt. Like that. Like we were talking about a new pair of jeans. Or a sneeze. Or the woman at the massage parlor in Gary. He is feverishly enchanted but that is only a degree away from his demeanor when I met him. Floppy haired gentleman, this one, hair imposing on his face there at the moment over the hill with all the windows down.

“You know there’s no speed limits in this state?” He chews on something. Plastic fork?

“Course I know.”

“Course you do.”

Back home I took care of Maribeth because Maribeth needed taking care of. She was so gentle, such a quiet thing most of the time. She held both parts of the cat the same way until it squirmed out of her hand, squirmed right out of her hand. If it’d had claws her forearms woulda been spaghetti. But she held the cat close. That’s how I know her gentle heart, in spite of her fits and rages.

Maribeth met a gentleman. And I am not one of those. One night he told me to leave so they could have a quiet evening and I invited the gents, my type of gent, to go shooting in the backyard. Cans mainly.

Maribeth wasn’t a reason to leave as much as she was a reason not to stay. I have connections to the town in the dirt, I suppose, but it hasn’t been home since the new war started and it won’t be again until all the wars of man end.

Shelby, in the car with all the windows down, he asks if I’d ever seen a woman like that before.

“You mean, naked?” I ask.

“Course I do.”

“Course I have.”

“Course you have. But have you ever seen one so pretty as that?”

“No, no, no. Never in person. Only in magazines.”

“Yeah, she could have been in magazines, too. Pert little thing, though I hate it when they scare and go mute, I do.”

“You think she’ll be alright?”

“I think she’ll recover like a champion. Never speak of it again after she tells her authority I’m sure. But recover she shall.” He reaches over and grabs a pack of cigarettes from the glovie. “Cigarette?” he asks, making eye contact for a full five seconds before returning his gaze to the road.

I take one and we drive.

Queens of the Stone Age—Skin on Skin
Amazon


the song