A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Space Shuttle

We went to California once in a motor home to see a space shuttle land. One of my half brothers, Russell, was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base and that’s where it was supposed to land. We went to some kind of NASA museum that morning before this “historic event” was to occur. Dad bought a black baseball- style cap with NASA in yellow letters on it. It was really hot out there by the landing strip and there were hundreds of people around with cameras and umbrellas. People were taking scissors and cutting the sleeves off their T-shirts. Dad got carried away and cut the whole top of his new cap off.

“My head’s gotta breathe,” he said. Everyone thought it was foolish, even Mom, who kind of snorted at him and said it looked silly.

We felt sorry for Dad and I think he felt sorry for himself too, because after a couple of hours he took it off and put it in the motor home.

The space shuttle landed without a hitch, but we couldn’t see anything with all the people there. Later that day, I saw the cap in the motor home’s trash bag.

Russell

I always thought that my oldest half brothers, Russell and Gary, were the favored children in the family. They were both in the military, Russell in the Air Force and Gary in the Coast Guard. I figured Dad was proud of them because they had real careers that were serious and respectable. I was never interested in joining the military, mostly because I was afraid of going to war and I hated those commercials where they said they did more before 8 a.m. than most people did in a whole day or whatever they said. Waking up so early seemed like torture to me. Plus, I didn’t like being yelled at and I knew there was a lot of yelling involved.

Russell told me later that the real reason they signed up for the military after turning eighteen was to simply get away from Dad, not to earn his respect. The way he described Dad’s treatment of them as his stepsons was like psychological torment. At Christmastime, Russell said my father would get him and Gary the most minimal gift possible, sometimes used toys. But for Mark, he would bring out something new and big, like a bike or guitar. He would make a big presentation of telling Mark that Gary and Russell weren’t allowed to play with his gift. It turns out that, back then, Mark was like the Golden Child in the family. Russell and Gary, the older boys, were the targets of Dad’s anger and resentment. Russell said that after he earned his license and bought a car, he would often drive to his girlfriend’s house and sleep in the backseat until morning, and then give her a ride to school. His car was a place to escape.

Gary

Once, when I was twelve, Gary was visiting us when a huge family fight erupted. It started with Dad and Mark at the dinner table. Mom tried to stop it and then Matt got involved too. Dad didn’t like it when Matt voiced his opinion about family matters. He would sometimes try to mute Matt’s presence by saying, “He’s not even my kid.”

Then Mark and Matt began arguing and eventually ended up outside, ready to fight. Mark called Matt a nigger and then it was a blur of arms and legs tumbling over in the middle of the yard.

Something broke in my naive brain at that moment. I obviously knew Matt was different, but we never really voiced it. It was probably for my comfort that we ignored the difference of our skin. I thought if we talked about this difference it would create a distance and awkwardness between us. I wanted to think that other people were accepting of Matt without thinking about it too much. But in our small-town reality, he was the only black student at Kennewick High School. When he was a kid, there were signs on the bridge to Pasco that said all blacks had to be back in Pasco before a certain time. We never lived in Pasco.

I was totally unfamiliar and ignorant of what he had to deal with because of his skin color. I knew the word nigger though, and I knew I never wanted it anywhere near my lips, though there were surely times when I was angry enough to use it. But it would be a knife I’d never be able to pull out. A bullet that would spike his heart and stay there.

Mark scrambled up and ran off somewhere down the alley. Matt walked away in the other direction. Gary came outside then and found me, stunned and alone in the yard. He spoke to me calmly but in a tone of voice that said he was leaving. “If you ever want to get out of here, you can always come and stay with me,” he said. I wasn’t even sure where that was—North Carolina or Ohio maybe—but I could tell he totally understood my situation, as if he had lived through it himself. I let his words calm me. I let them give me hope for some kind of escape. And though I never took advantage of his offer, I still remember those words.

Seventh Grade

I was a terrible seventh grader. I made no effort with schoolwork and rarely bathed. I was one of just four boys in concert choir, the reasons I joined still a mystery to me. Perhaps the last fragments of pop-star dreams still squirmed inside my queasy gut. One boy in choir, Mike Rome, was very mean to me. He’d point out when my hair was especially greasy or had dandruff flakes. I started to get pimples as well. My hormones had a war with my body and slaughtered it from the inside out. On the day when Ronald Reagan was shot, our class was interrupted by the announcement squawking over the intercom. Our teacher, Miss Haff, an obese woman whose body resembled one of those Weeble toys, turned on our classroom television. We watched in silence as they showed the shaky footage of John Hinckley Jr.’s attack. As the day wound down, I secretly hoped that Reagan would die. I craved a tragedy for everyone.

After the class, Miss Haff asked me if I could stay after and finish an assignment. I had no clue how to do it. She asked me why I wasn’t paying attention in class. I started balling my eyes out. She tried to console me and told me I was going through puberty and that it was a tough time. She hugged me until I stopped hyperventilating. I felt covered by her. I was disgusted and then relaxed.

At the end of that school year, our choir was having buttons made for everyone as a souvenir. We could have our real names or a nickname on ours. We went around the room, each person saying what they’d like on their button. When it came to me I blurted out, “Desperado.” The other kids grimaced my way and some of them giggled. Mike Rome called me Desperado for the next year, but not in a nice way.

United

As I became more insecure in seventh grade, my brother Matt was starting to make real friends in high school. He was the first black student ever to attend Kennewick High, and because of that, he was probably the first and only black person they knew. At this point in his life, Matt still didn’t have a good idea who his father was and never felt like he could pry into the matter. A nagging feeling of not knowing who he was always shadowed him. Some people asked him if he was Mexican and some asked him if he was adopted. When he signed up to play on the high school football team, the coach wanted him to play running back and said he was going to make him “the team’s Walter Payton.” The implied stereotype of the comment weighed heavily on Matt’s mind for a long time.

Besides, his favorite sport was actually hockey. But there wasn’t a hockey team in Kennewick. And at the time, I don’t even think there were any black players in the NHL. I remember the New York Rangers were always playing on the USA Network and that was Matt’s favorite team. I’d hear him shouting and cheering from his