Skipper's Stolen Kisses: The Logic of Second Skin by John Hawkes

Second Skin, like most of John Hawkes's novels, looks like a long nightmare, both for the characters and for its readers who cannot help feeling extremely uneasy, confronted as they are by apparently meaningless scenes and unusual alliances of words. ¹ It is unclear from the start what Skipper, the main character and narrator of the book, wants. Second Skin is a long flashback, telling us about his life from childhood onwards. He explains that he was able to survive in very trying circumstances—among them the death of his wife, then that of his daughter, Cassandra. There is a marked contrast between the end of the book and the earlier parts. At the end, Skipper has settled in a paradise-like island, and he seems to have reached the end of his trials. Most of the book, however, deals with his past experiences recounted through harrowing scenes.

One of the most difficult of these scenes could act as a sort of mise en abyme, as it seems to orchestrate all of the main themes of the novel. The passage—it would be the third chapter of the book if chapters were numbered (pp. 40 to 44)—is puzzling, for it is crowded with details which look perfectly useless so far the progression of the plot is concerned. Indeed, the scene seems to be more a fantasy than the actual description of a series of events. If the end of the book on the utopian island means the perfect fulfillment of the narrator's wishes, ² the rest of the book can be said to represent an indirect expression of Skipper's unconscious desires. The two scenes are not unrelated, however, and the logic of Skipper's fantasies in the passage can be understood only in relation to the end of the novel.

This chapter, called "Soldiers in the Dark," relates a bus journey from San Francisco to New York. Skipper, a former sailor, has been demobilized and is trying to reach the East Coast with his daughter and granddaughter when the bus breaks down in the desert near a military base. As the three are standing alone outside the bus, three young soldiers who are absent without leave oblige them at gun-point to follow into the desert. They fear that for unknown reasons they are going to be robbed and put to death. It appears, however, that the deserters simply want to get rid of their equipment in order to escape inconspicuously. They undress completely and kiss Cassandra one after the other before returning to the bus and merging with the other passengers. The reader will never know if this strange meeting actually took place or if it represents a dream of Skipper's. In either case, it is a nightmare, and it is undeniable that the way it is told reveals Skipper's pervert unconscious.

At one point, Skipper confesses to us that he is indeed trembling and trying to protect his daughter. At the same time, he unaccountably smiles. The verb forms "trembling" and "smiling" together seem to form a kind of oxymoron, or at the very least a paradox. ³ It would seem that he finds pleasure in suffering. As is the case with all masochists, ⁴ pain and persecution provide him with the feeling that he is alive and that he has an identity. Readers remember perhaps the way he was raped by Tremlow during a mutiny on board his ship and the fact that he did not resist; they also certainly remember the long passage describing how he had himself tatooed by a man using a dirty needle.

The way in which the scene is related is pure masochism. ⁵ What is foregrounded is a stasis. The way it is presented suggests that time has stopped: the characters are moving towards the culmination...