A Common Pornography: A Memoir

by Kevin Sampsell

  When we emerged at the other side of the tunnel—an excruciating half hour later—we pushed aside an old fence and climbed up a rocky bank to get to the park. Some people saw us come in this way, but they were either embarrassed for us or didn’t care. This place, where we snuck in, was the same place the bones of the famous Kennewick Man were found a few years later.

  With nowhere to sit and watch, we strolled back and forth along the river, struggling to see the race through the people cheering for the boats. It didn’t matter to me though. I was busy gawking at the slumped drunks, loose bikinis, muscle cars, motorcycle gangs, and skinny, pony-tailed stoners. Dad was also transfixed, especially by the bikinis.

  It was like how I imagined Mardi Gras, or a college football game would be.

  That was the year the Pay ’N Pak hydroplane did a double flip and almost killed its driver. I remember the sound that came from the crowd when it happened—the collective gasp, the exhale, the sudden silence.

  Vibrator

  Dad gave me a vibrator once. Sort of oval-shaped. He gave it to me so I could wrap it and give it to Mom as a birthday present. Later, they kept it in a drawer by the bed. Then, shortly after, they slept in separate beds.

  Nicknames

  In middle school, I became really good friends with a skinny redheaded kid named Maurice. We were the kind of friends who had their own secret language. We wrote notes to each other, full of weird words, and passed them to each other between classes. We decided that our parents needed nicknames.

  My mom was Fuzz because she had one of those white old lady Afros that became so popular, partly due to the influence of the TV show The Golden Girls. My dad was Pudlow because he was kind of scrawny and weak, even though he had these little humorous outbursts (known as spazzes back then) and tried to act all authoritative. Maurice’s parents’ nicknames were somewhat more random and obscure. His mom was Art for the simple fact that she made some fuss about taking up painting once. Garno was his dad’s nickname, because it rhymed with Yarno, and John Yarno was a big dorky-looking offensive lineman for the Seattle Seahawks at the time. Maurice told me once that his dad’s fingers would often become curled in cold weather because of some metal in his hand. He called that “doing the Garno.”

  Country Music Memories

  1. I’m in our bathroom and Dad is listening to Hank Williams on a tinny-sounding radio, which sits on the washer. I am probably six or seven. I’m sitting atop the dryer because it’s warm on my bottom. I watch him shave and he sings along with Hank, sort of yodeling-like. My brothers are outside playing football with the neighbor kids. I can’t play because I have the mumps. I look just like Robert Blake, who we watch on the TV show Baretta. I like looking at my face in the mirror as Dad sings.

  2. I am supposed to meet my parents at the big fountain in the mall. I’ve been hanging out with my other twelve-year-old friends at the drug store, where we shamelessly loiter and look at comic books. I have to walk through JCPenney to get to the fountain. In the stereo department I hear the Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Although I’m already late to meet my folks, I sit on the floor and listen, fascinated by the singer’s fast-talking tale of deceit. I am grounded for a week.

  3. Not long after Charlie Daniels became a household name, I decided to go with the crowd on a certain consensus: country music is bad. I know now that much of the country music from that era (the seventies) was actually good, but I was trying to be popular. I was into the Clash and Elvis Costello. Still, Juice Newton was becoming popular at this time and she was actually playing a concert at our high school gymnasium that I wanted to attend. She was a good-looking Daisy Duke type of lady with long Crystal Gayle–like hair. Plus her name was Juice. I sat in the upper seats and discreetly tapped my toes to her hit “Queen of Hearts.”

  4. One of my first jobs out of broadcasting school was doing the weekend evening shows at a Spokane country music station. There was a big History of Country Music book that I used for little factoids when I wanted to sound like I knew what the hell I was playing. I’d talk about how Freddy Fender was once in prison or that Eddie Rabbitt was from Brooklyn. I spoke of George Jones as if we were ancient friends. I learned that I actually liked some of the music, especially the old wild hollerin’ stuff like Bob Wills and Earl Scruggs. I even took a shine to singers like Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton, whom of course I fantasized about. I even felt an emotional tug whenever I played Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman,” looking out the big seventh-floor window and wondering, “How is my girlfriend doing me wrong tonight?”

  Confession

  Dad went to confession every Saturday. He always asked me if I needed to go too. Sometimes I’d say yes, just so he didn’t think I was blowing it off completely.

  When I did go with him I would confess things in a very general way—I said a bad word, I had dirty thoughts, I took a dollar from my mom’s purse. If I wanted to be more revealing I could have mentioned my nights of amateur graffiti, looking in my cousin’s underwear drawer, and stealing from the Salvation Army store.

  The confessionals had two spaces for confessors, one on each side of where the priest sat. They were dimly lit on the inside and when the priest was ready to hear your confession he would slide a little door open and make the sign of the cross. There was a thin piece of fabric in that small window separating us, but I always feared that he would figure out it was me. When he spoke through the fabric, in his best soothing tone, I could see some of the features on his long face and that fabric pulsing with his breath. Sometimes I would try to hide in the darkness or change my voice a little or pretend that I was from another town. I didn’t want him to look at me during Mass the next day and think to himself, There’s that little masturbator.

  My penance was usually three Hail Marys and a couple of Our Fathers. I didn’t quite understand why there had to be so much repetition. I pictured God watching over and listening in on all the penances from all over the world. Maybe it was like counting sheep to Him, a comforting lull.

  I couldn’t imagine what Dad had to confess every week, but he was in the confessional for a good fifteen minutes each visit. Maybe he was being forgiven for all the terrible things I learned about him later, but at the time I imagined that he just needed someone to talk to and instead of his sins, maybe he was boring the priest with stories about his job. I was also his victim in this regard. Sometimes when we were out driving somewhere, he’d start telling me about how he worked on this road and who he worked on it with and how much it cost the state. Details that had no chance of sticking to my brain.

  Sitting in the pews, penance done, I watched the short line of confessors getting smaller. The monotonous whispers of the prayers around me turned to sheep and flew to the heavens to be counted and slept on.

  What I Would Think About During Mass

  The football games I was missing.

  The woman’s hair in front of me.

  Who I would have to shake hands with at the “offer each other a sign of peace” part of the service.

  Should I make my dad wonder what I’ve done by not going to communion?

  Is it a sin for minors to drink the “blood of Christ”?

  Are my pants too baggy?

  Is the person behind me staring at my ass?

  The person’s ass two rows in front of me.

  I wish they had chocolate-dipped communion.

  It must be embarrassing being an altar boy.

  Should I really try to sing, or should I moan along with everyone else?

  I wonder what kinds of donuts they’ll have in the basement after the service.

  Am I going to miss the halftime highlights?

  Physical

  “Flip me some shit, boy. C’mon, flip me some shit.”

  After the P.E. soccer game we all ran back to the locker rooms to shower. I had accidentally kicked Farrell in the knee. Two of his friends ran beside him as he taunted me. He didn’t need backup though. It was widely be
lieved since grade school that Farrell was probably the meanest and biggest kid in our grade. With only Chongo being arguably tougher.

  “You think you’ll be okay in the shower, boy? I wouldn’t want you to slip or anything,” said Farrell. His friends smiled, then he tried to trip me.

  Once inside, he leaned against my locker. “I don’t think you got any friends in here, do ya? Nobody’d give a shit if I flushed your fucking head down the toilet. They’d probably laugh.” What frightened me most about him saying this was how he said it slowly and calmly, as if discussing what was on the lunch menu.

  High Dive

  I never took swim lessons when I was a kid and (though I didn’t announce this fact to anyone) I was terribly afraid of any water. Perhaps it was my imagination going crazy, but it seemed to me like there was a drowning at the public pool every year. When I first started high school there was a quiet Asian kid—maybe he was even a foreign exchange student—who drowned while swimming in P.E. Some kids said that his body sat at the bottom of the deep end for a good fifteen minutes before anyone noticed.

  I think the Jaws movies probably contributed to my fear as well. I was especially haunted by the scene where Roy Scheider scubas down to inspect a sunken boat and the bloated head of one victim suddenly appears.

  Our public pool was right across the street from my high school, so we had a couple of weeks each year where we swam and played water polo during P.E. class.

  We practiced diving too. Going up the ladder was the dizziest part for me. I always wanted to turn back, but there were people in the way. I had no choice but to jump. I plugged my nose and dove to the right, so that I wouldn’t have to swim so far to get out. I paddled like a dog. I suppose I could have learned the breaststroke but I never wanted to put my face in the water. I thought I’d open my mouth at the wrong moment and water would flood into my throat and I’d be done for, plummeting to the bottom, my lungs exploding.

  One of my friends made fun of me—“Here doggy-doggy.” I’d laugh along, scared for my life. When I was out of the pool, I noticed how white my feet looked. I almost wanted to swim with my socks on. I sat in a plastic chair and draped a towel over my lower legs.

  When I got older, I eventually taught myself how to swim a little better and, though I was still wary of rivers and lakes, I actually enjoyed going to swimming pools. But one day while I was at a Portland pool, I must have stepped on a small piece of glass or something. I sat down on a lawn chair and noticed blood shooting out of my right big toe like a little squirt gun. I couldn’t figure out what was causing this blood fountain, but it stopped after a few minutes, only to start up again at various random times for the next few months. I went to a foot doctor and he said it was probably a tiny pebble that sometimes shifted and caused the blood to pulse out. He offered to give me a shot to numb my toe, make a small cut, and peel the skin back to see what the problem was. It almost made me sick just to hear him describe the procedure. I said no thanks and decided to see if it would fix itself. A couple of months later, whatever was in there finally came out. I was healed.

  Korea

  Darren and I wanted to feel the skin of the cashier at the Mayfair Market.

  It was cold outside and I had just gotten two ski masks from my brother Russell, who was stationed in Korea. They were Christmas presents, and I think they had trees on them—red trees on white stitching. In black letters it said KOREA on the back. Darren and I thought ski masks were funny looking, and we knew from watching TV that only people in Antarctica or guys robbing banks wore them. I gave one to Darren and we wore them on our heads but never pulled them down over our faces.

  Behind the grocery store were some doctors’ offices and a pharmacy. By the pharmacy was a big generator. One afternoon, we hid the two Korean ski masks behind the generator, where nobody would find them.

  That night, after the store had closed, we hung out by the telephone booths. Five minutes, then fifteen, passed. Darren took a lap around the store and looked in the windows to see what the cashier was doing. She was still there and so was a yellow Volkswagen in the parking lot.

  We had no knowledge of being watched, but we were. Across the street in the dark lot of a Chevron station was a police car with its lights off.

  After Darren got back to the telephone booths, we talked about the girl and made a decision. As we started back to get the masks by the generator, we saw the police lights. We told the police we were looking for a cat (we whispered this alibi to each other as they got out of their car). They wrote down our names and phone numbers and asked us to show the tread on our shoes. They told us to go home and got back in their car to watch us walk away.

  When I got home I remembered the ski masks by the generator. Then I quickly tried to forget.

  Braces

  One of my first girlfriends had braces and thick glasses and was not thought of as pretty or even anything resembling “friend” material. In fact, even though I told some people I had a girlfriend, I made sure no one saw her. I was sixteen, she was thirteen. When I had my first car (a cheap Chevette) I’d go to her house. It was nice, and big, with a pool in the backyard. I would pick her up and we would drive around and then make out somewhere. Her breath was always unpleasant, and she had stuff on her braces like she never brushed her teeth. Still, I went out of my way to spend time with her and was jealous once when she told me about an ex-boyfriend, an eighteen-year-old who had his own apartment, where he wanted her to suck his dick once. It was a story she told me with an “I can do anything to you” tone of voice.

  Another time, when her parents were gone, we were in her basement. We took our shirts off on the couch. I ran my fingers over her small chest, feeling the nipples, no bigger than pimples. We stood up and slow-danced to a radio song. I picked her up and put her on the pool table. We stared at each other. “Do you want to know something I haven’t done before?” she asked. I asked her what it was. “I’ve never had anyone kiss me upside down,” she told me. She kicked the cue ball off the table.

  Hiding Places

  When we were getting our house done enough to move back in, Dad asked me if I wanted to pick out a ceiling for my bedroom. We went to a home decoration place and I picked out the kind that was divided up into squares. The square tiles rested on a metal framework so it kind of looked like a checkerboard. The metal part was black and the tiles were a bumpy white texture, like on a globe where you can feel the mountains.

  After getting my room all set up and living in the house for a year, I realized it was weird to have that sort of ceiling, that it was usually seen only in offices and fancy modern buildings like city hall. I stood on a chair one night and pushed on one of the tiles. It moved up and slid over. I could put my hand up there and feel a couple of feet of space. I started hiding my dirty magazines up there. It seemed perfect, and it was. Dad was a snoop and would find them if I kept them under my mattress or in a sock drawer like my friends.

  Years later, after I moved out, my bedroom was converted to a sewing room for Mom. My stash was gone by then, hidden somewhere in the basement. I’d still find myself looking at the ceiling though, imagining those naked women above Mom’s head as she sewed.

  Troubled Girl

  Whenever I went to Fruitland Park to shoot baskets, I noticed a girl sitting on the porch of a house across the street. I thought she was really cute, but couldn’t tell how old she was. The Karate Kid was my favorite movie and I’d seen it six times in the theater. She looked a little like Elisabeth Shue—I liked the scene in that movie where she had on the tight sweater and they went to the amusement park.

  She started to come over to the courtside benches when I’d show up. I was nervous as I talked to her. She told me she lived with her cousins because her parents were murdered in Chicago. Nothing ever happened with this relationship, not even a kiss. She gave me Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. for Christmas. I never listened to it. We drifted apart that winter, partly because it was too cold to play basketball.
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  Five years later, I lived in a different town and was in my twenties. I’d visit my parents for holidays, and one time she called. I met her in a grocery store parking lot and we sat in my car. The steering wheel of my car seemed enormous, almost as if it were growing in front of me, as she confessed that she had told me lies about her family. She said she was married but had always loved me. I almost wanted to kiss her but was nervous again. She said her husband beat her up sometimes and that she had a baby boy. His name was Kevin. I thought about how long she would have to live with that.

  My Friend Pat

  In tenth grade, I started to embrace my weirdness a little more, thanks to one of my new friends, Pat Kennelly. He was this short kid with curly white hair and glasses. He sort of looked like an albino. He lived with his family in a pretty big house a couple of blocks from the high school. We had a couple of classes together and even though I really wanted to be popular (and Pat was like a poster boy for Not Popular), Pat cracked me up and I realized we had the same kind of weird humor. We both liked Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the movie Airplane!, and Devo.

  I started to hang out less with Darren and Maurice. I hung out at Pat’s house a lot and spent the night there on most weekends. We stayed up late and watched Night Flight, an assortment of music and comedy that took over the USA Network on the weekends.