A Common Pornography: A Memoir

people, Cherokee tribe / So proud to live, so proud to die.”

Sometimes at the end of the song we’d pretend to fight, and one day we actually did. He was twisting my arm really hard and I threw a wild punch at his groin. It was the only time I ever hurt him.

Scratchmuback

As far as I can tell, I am the itchiest person in the world. I think it started when I was a small kid and started to demand back scratching from Mom. Every day for probably too many years, often multiple times a day, I would sit on Mom’s lap and say, “Scratch my back.” But it was more like one word: Scratchmuback. She never tired of doing it and probably spoiled me for all my future girlfriends, many of whom did in fact say that I was the itchiest person in the world. Many of my itches are in places that I can easily reach, but I still get a strange pleasure from asking someone to scratch my elbow, ear, or nose.

For most of my thirties, I even developed an odd patch of skin on the outside of my left nipple. It was dry and slightly scaly and scratching it gave me the greatest pleasure. I knew that it probably wasn’t healthy, but I didn’t want to get rid of it because that would put an end to all those moments of scratching pleasure. It was simply known as “the Patch.” My girlfriends thought it was weird when I explained it to them but they reluctantly humored me when I would ask them to “Scratchmupatch.”

I did try some lotions and creams, halfheartedly hoping to cure myself, but it wouldn’t go away. Eventually a prescription steroid gel did the job and the Patch faded away.

Sometimes if I scratch in that same spot, I can still feel a trace of pleasure.

Grapes

Sometimes, when I was very little, we’d go to my grandparents’ house, on the other side of Kennewick. Dad’s mom and dad.

They lived right across from Kamiakin High School and had several rows of impressive grape vines and a big garden. Matt and Mark and I would sometimes spend hours there, picking grapes and goofing around in their big barn. When we got hungry, Grandma would make toast and a special milk drink with malted milk powder or strawberry Quik. Grandpa always drank buttermilk. It almost made me sick to watch him drink it because it was so lumpy.

During the week, students from the high school would sit in their yard during lunch break and leave behind their trash. Grandpa told them to clean up after themselves or not sit there. Some of the kids got mad about this and began leaving more trash in the yard, sometimes in the middle of the night. One day, while talking to one of the kids, Grandpa had a heart attack and died. That was the first funeral I ever went to.

Soon after that, Grandma sold the house and property to the Welch’s company, who wanted to expand the vineyard. The house was vandalized and riddled with graffiti: spray-painted swear words and pentagrams and swastikas. A couple of years later, the land was leveled and an apartment complex was built.

Grandma lived her last years in Walla Walla, a town I hated for no good reason. But whenever we drove there to visit her, there was a big wooden sign in the shape of the Jolly Green Giant that Matt and I thought was cool. We mimicked the jingle (“Ho ho ho—Green Giant!”) and then went back to playing Slugbug.

Grandma died in Walla Walla.

Car-Mull

Jeffrey was a snot-nosed neighbor kid who was a year younger than me. He hadn’t even reached the wisdom of a double-digit age. My brother Matt seemed ancient and stoic at the ripe age of fourteen by comparison. I looked up to him and any kid who was older than eleven. Matt always seemed older than he actually was.

Once we told Jeffrey that all the bird poop on our car was caramel. We sat on the hood and pretended to pinch some in our fingers. We brought our fingers up to our lips and pretended to chew and smack our lips. We were convincing and Jeffrey smeared some onto his tongue. “Where does it come from?” he asked.

We told him that when rain drips from certain trees, it becomes caramel.

“My mom won’t let me eat caramel,” he said. He pronounced it “car-mull.”

“We won’t tell her if you don’t,” I said.

Fights

Sometimes Mom and Dad got into unexplainable fights. I wasn’t sure where the tension was coming from at the time. (I’m sure what happened with Elinda had something to do with it, but I had no idea about that yet.) Dad had typical gripes, like Mom not having dinner ready on time. Sometimes Mom would question Dad about staying at the bar too long after work. I remember him saying, “They kept buying me drinks. What am I supposed to do, say no?”

My dad had a quick temper and things escalated without warning. There were fists thrown, choke holds, objects broken. I would go to my room and jump into bed, crying and pressing my head into the pillows to mute the noise, though I still felt it pounding like an earthquake through the walls. Sometimes Matt would do the same thing.

Eventually, when we were older and bigger, there was a time when Matt got fed up with the fights and decided to do something. He stepped between them and pressed Dad against the wall, his strong arm under Dad’s chin, and told him, “You’re not going to talk to Mom like that. You’re not going to hit her again.” Dad’s body was tensed and surprised at Matt’s strength. He started to panic and asked Matt to let him go. After that, he never got mad when Matt was around. He became more passive. He looked at Matt sometimes with eyes that shyly asked, Are we okay? Is everything cool between us?

Centerfolds

Todd’s family lived right across the alley behind us. His dad was always working on his race car in their garage, and it was the loudest thing in the neighborhood. He raced it at the local speedway and in other cities too. Sometimes I’d go in there and ask if Todd was around and his dad would let me cut through their backyard to get to the front of their house. The reason I liked going into the garage most, though, was because Todd’s dad had a bunch of Playboy centerfolds up on the walls. I remember seeing Playboy centerfolds in other people’s garages too. But there were pictures from other magazines as well. Women wearing bikinis or torn shirts and leaning on motorcycles or across the hood of a hot rod. Maybe having all those naked women around helped Todd’s dad feel better about all the time he worked on his car.

One time when I was over at Todd’s, I had to use the bathroom and walked in while his mom was in the shower. I stopped for a second and started to back out. But then I realized that she didn’t know I was in there. She was on the other side of these thick and blurry shower doors. I saw her warped image as she rubbed the water and shampoo into her hair, the shape of her body out of focus. It felt like my bladder was about to burst, but I stared for a long time while holding it in.