How I Shed My Skin Read Online Free PDF Page A

mattered was that she had chosen me as a special friend. My family was very poor and not at all the equal of hers in social terms, though poverty was not the whole measure of a family’s status in the community by any means. I felt the difference between our circumstances keenly when I visited her house, which was built of brick, with an actual dining room, much nicer than any of the houses where my family lived over the years. But that hardly mattered to Marianne.
    She had introduced me to music groups like Herman’s Hermits and Paul Revere & the Raiders, and to teen magazines with glossy full-page pictures of television and pop music stars. We poured over these in school. We talked about the television shows we watched, especially
American Bandstand
and
Th
e Monkees,
and in sixth grade, during one long day in Mr. Vaughn’s class, we both practiced telepathy. She read my mind and I read hers. No matter what the outcome, when she guessed my thought, I swore she had it exactly, and she did the same for me.
    When I developed an obsession with Batman and Robin on the television series, and when in the sixth grade I grew a gigantic crush on Davy Jones of the Monkees, Marianne never questioned my feelings or viewed them as abnormal. As the year developed, our telepathy game grew in scope to the point that she claimed to be in mental contact with members of Herman’s Hermits and I did the same for Davy Jones. Whispering from desk to desk, we shared stories of what we were learning through our mind-reading efforts.
    The fact that I felt a romantic attraction to men at that age never concerned Marianne, and I accepted it myself without much understanding of what it might mean. Davy Jones was far from the first crush I had on a handsome celebrity; I had daydreamed about courting Little Joe Cartwright for a long time, living with him on the Ponderosa, my body mysteriously changed into that of a slim girl, blonde, dressed in a poodle skirt. As I aged I no longer transformed myself into a girl in the narrative; I became instead the adopted son of Davy Jones, and later of William Shatner.
    Marianne never questioned the fact that we were both in love with male celebrities, and I assumed from this acceptance that she thought of me as a friend more than as a romance. I had an inkling that my preference for males was not normal, and so kept it hidden from most other people, though Rhonda also became aware of it when we began to share magazines and speak in breathy voices about Davy Jones’s blue eyes.
    Marianne was not the only one to supply magazines to the class. One day Rhonda brought an issue of
Ebony
magazine, and as she leafed through its
Life
-sized pages, I stared over her shoulder in some confusion. The issue in question would have been from 1966, most likely fall or winter. Perhaps what I saw over her shoulder was the September issue of the magazine, Bill Cosby and his family, his wife with her hair swept to the side in one of the iconic sixties hairdos, Mr. Cosby’s hair natural, a short Afro, and their plump-faced son raising his hand to the camera. Printed on Mrs. Cosby’s shoulder were the words, “Life with TV Award Winner Bill Cosby.” Also on the cover was a headline that read, “Stokely Carmichael: Architect of BLACK POWER,” and another, “Australia: Its White Policy And the Negro By Era Bell Thompson.”
    Rhonda was reading the magazine between lessons, or maybe during one of the many intervals when Mr. Vaughn lost control of our classroom and sat at his desk to consider his plight. She flipped pages idly, and I glimpsed the pictures inside. So many black people in suits, in nice clothes, smiling at the camera. I stared and stared. I had never seen black people depicted in this way before, as if they were just like white people, as if there was no social or racial difference. In my tiny world, I had been taught to concentrate on the differences, and to view them as