A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Dipper were juiced up beyond awareness anyhow. It was economical and mischievous. Sometimes the people would be standing just inches away as we emptied their bottles or pitchers into our glasses. During the encore we’d find some girls to scam on and were pretty lucky most of the time, even if it just meant making out for five minutes in a Denny’s parking lot. There was one girl named Alison who always went out with band guys. One night she was standing at the bar looking bored while some punk band played for ten people out on the floor. Vince was daring me to go kiss her and she looked over at us and kind of smiled. “She knows what we’re talking about,” Vince said. Alison looked over at us and kind of laughed, even though she couldn’t hear us. Vince had slept with probably more girls in Spokane than I had. Finally I slid out from behind our table, banging my knees and sloshing our pints, and stumbled over to Alison. I didn’t really know her at all; she was just a girl I’d see at the clubs all the time, and to her I was just some guy who drove his motorcycle in the snow. “I’m bored,” she said. I leaned down toward her and reflexively she turned her mouth up to me and we shared an unbridled fifteen-second kiss.

Empty Nest

At some point in the late eighties, after I left home, Mom and Dad went to visit Elinda, who was living in a community housing project in Seattle. Elinda had arranged for Mom to go with her the next day to the Museum of Flight. Dad was irate at not being invited, and after everyone went to bed, Elinda heard the loud bang of a fist hitting something in the next room.

Gentle Dental

I wasn’t blaming anyone but myself. I had bad teeth.

I could blame the numerous candy bars stolen from the grocery store across the street from my parents’ house. I could blame my parents for being burned out, raising five children before me, and not paying attention to a damned thing I ever did, much less make me brush my teeth. I could blame the mean orthodontist who scolded me too lightly for not brushing, not wearing my rubber bands, not changing my rubber bands often enough, letting them snap in my mouth from time to time. No, it was simply my fault, and I regretted my actions.

Having a root canal could be enough to convert you to a new religion. I’d always thought that death by dentistry would be the most awful way to go—worse than being burned alive or drowning—some guy grinding a syringe into your jaw while you slobber all over yourself with that burned clay taste on your tongue.

When I saw the Yellow Pages ad for Gentle Dental, I was immediately swayed. My job gave me insurance and as much as I wanted to avoid it I knew it had to be done. I was popping about eight aspirin a day to combat my toothache, and had all but stripped any chewing duties from the left side of my mouth.

Once in the chair, I was given the option of wearing headphones. It was when dentists were doing these “extra” things for patients, and because I didn’t want to have to make small talk with the dentist and his assorted assistants while they stuck their fingers and metal tools in my mouth, I said yes. One of the assistants, who looked like Joyce DeWitt from Three’s Company and seemed to purposely rest her chest on my right arm as she scraped my teeth, eagerly told me about a new “virtual reality” system they had just installed. Being pro-anything that would distract me from whatever pain I was about to endure, I said sure. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I pictured skiing down steep slopes covered in soft snow or maybe parachuting out of an airplane. Instead, what I had to choose from were A Motown Tribute to Smokey Robinson, a Final Four basketball game from three years before, and a walking tour of Italy. The assistant fished out some embarrassing goggles and plugged them into a machine that looked like a VCR. I put on the headphones and goggles and wondered how the hell they were going to maneuver around them. I saw the stage at the Apollo in the goggles but it wasn’t even 3-D and the picture seemed annoyingly fuzzy. I could hear the opening beats of “Going to a Go-Go” but it wasn’t in my headphones. It was coming from elsewhere in the room and I wasn’t sure what was going on. The dentist and his assistant started working on my mouth and, under the impression that I was being thoroughly entertained, pretty much ignored me. I wondered if they had numbed me yet and started to grow panicked. They stretched a piece of rubber around my ailing tooth and framed it with a couple of cold metal bars that rested uncomfortably on my face. I couldn’t tell if it was Smokey Robinson on the stage or not, the reception of the goggles was crap. The dentist sang slowly and menacingly along, thinking that I could not hear him. I grunted a few times and the assistant asked me if the goggles were working, if everything was okay. I couldn’t say anything so I made a nuh-uh sound with my throat. She pressed her breasts into me and lifted the headphones from my ears. “Maybe these aren’t plugged in,” she said. I heard the dentist get up and leave and then her tinkering around with certain wires on the virtual reality machine. Finally, there was music coming from the headphones and she put them back on my ears. I squinted to see what was going on in the goggles and saw a close-up of Elton John, complete with feathery sunglasses. The music in the headphones was nice and clear but I instantly realized it was not going with the visuals. I heard mandolins, fiddles, some piano. Elton John was really getting into it, whatever it was, but I heard someone speaking Italian instead. It must’ve been the walking tour of Italy.

The dentist returned and patted me on the shoulder. I could see him under the bottom of the goggles. I grunted a little. “You want me to turn up your headphones?” the assistant asked. I lifted my hand slightly and pointed down. “Turn it down?” I nodded as much as I could and the volume went low enough that I could hear the Motown show playing on a small speaker somewhere else. The dentist was singing along again. This time with the Four Tops. I tried to drift off. I closed my eyes and concentrated on Joyce DeWitt. I had always liked Joyce DeWitt more than the others. The rubber thing stretching across my mouth and cheeks was wet with my numb gum slobber. I was almost queasy. George Michael was singing a blue-eyed soul version of “Tears of a Clown.” I opened my eyes a little and noticed that he was wearing sunglasses too. “That George Michael can sure sing, can’t he?” the dentist commented to himself. “Hhmmph,” said the assistant.

Spokane Girls

At my worst, I was seeing three different girls, with my eyes on a fourth.

First there was a sad and mysterious redhead named Ingrid, who gave me a ride home once and later began sneaking me into her basement bedroom, with her parents sleeping above us. The only social thing we did was go to her friend Molly’s apartment to drink beer. There would be the three of us plus Molly’s boyfriend and some army guy who was always trying to scam on Ingrid. They’d sit around and talk about their favorite local bands and listen to Operation Ivy.

Only a day or two after I started seeing Ingrid, I got together with Lisa, whom I was infatuated with because she looked like Sherilyn Fenn. I walked her home one night and nervously held her hand. I knew she was going out with a really dumb bass player and I tried to convince her that writers made better boyfriends. She said she had a secret dream of being a children’s book author. It was a romantic notion, but ultimately sad. She didn’t even know who Maurice Sendak was.

The third victim of this triangle was Laura, who was the only real poet I met in Spokane. She worked as a nurse, and I met her one night at a club where I was preparing to do a poetry reading. She wore stretch pants with skeletons on them and said her favorite bands were T. Rex and the Stone Roses. I wasn’t physically attracted to her, but her personality intrigued me more than the others and she had a round face that made me want to cup it and kiss it softly. During my reading that night I played a cassette deck on the stage with the mixed sounds of industrial scrapings and an audience laugh track. I turned this up loud and stripped down to my boxers. I went out the side door of the Big Dipper and walked around the block like that. When I reentered two minutes later, I had a bag of candy and passed it out to the audience. Then, back onstage, I put my clothes back on. During that time, before I even began to read from my erratic pile of rants and poems, Laura said she fell in love with me.

Of course, there’s always an outside disruption, something, someone, that will not let you rest easy, will not