The Loosening Skin

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Some people burn love and some people bury it. Some keep it locked up, or push it far under the bed. Some sell it.

The awards ceremony is over and Max didn’t win.

That is fine with him. ‘It wasn’t my best work,’ he says into the phone, on the drive to Sussex. He sprawls in the back of the limo, beside me. ‘I can do better. I want to feel like I earned it. I might try directing.’ Then he shrugs, and says, ‘Well, yeah, I know. But I can’t run away from Daddy’s shadow forever.’ He has long conversations on the phone with his psychiatrist about his father, and what it means to be a success in a world where money no longer has meaning.

When he puts the phone down I tell him, ‘You did deserve it. You just didn’t get it. Different things.’ We squeeze hands.

Awards. Weights and measures, women and men, prizes and parties and perfection. It’s late, and I’ve watched Max all day in a professional capacity. Now I can watch him in my own time, and he is a sight in that suit, the lines cut sharp over his shoulders, the shirt so white; I want him, and so much more than that. Chemistry is one way of describing it, but underneath that there is love. I don’t care what the science books say; love doesn’t only have to be as deep as this layer of skin. It can survive. When it feels like this it must survive.

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