A Common Pornography: A Memoir

through Columbia Park on the Kennewick side. There were bleary-eyed union workers freely swigging beer, stereos cranked up loud, scantily clad headbanger girls, the smell of sweat and cocoa butter lotion, and some fistfights here and there.

I wasn’t allowed to go until I was thirteen, and then only if Dad went with me. So, that year, after church got out on race day morning, we headed to the river. Not wanting to pay the steep $5 charge, Dad parked somewhere along the outskirts and showed me a dark irrigation tunnel that we could sneak through to get to Columbia Park. For a moment, it wasn’t like I was with my dad at all. He wasn’t a humorless, God-fearing bore, but rather a rule- breaking outlaw. I almost expected him to take off his shirt and light up a joint as we walked.

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.