A Common Pornography_ A Memoir - Kevin Sampsell [1]
There was a short echo that brought more panic into my chest and I turned and ran out the door.
I got in my car and started it. I didn’t have my phone, my wallet, or any clothes. I drove around the quiet streets for a while. A few times I drove past early-morning commuters, driving slowly with their headlights on, sipping coffee from their travel mugs, half asleep and unaware that a scared, naked man debated whether or not to plow into them with his car like a missile.
I knew I needed help, but I didn’t want to go to a hospital. If you go to an emergency room naked, what do they do? I wondered. I decided to go to my friend Lynne’s house. She woke up, dazed and probably wondering if she was dreaming. She tried to calm me down, but I couldn’t stop shaking and whipping my head around, like someone was sneaking up on me. She started a bath for me and gave me an anxiety pill. She covered me with blankets as the tub filled and I was telling her, as if giving her instructions, “The books [this book and an anthology I was editing] are on my computer. My will is in one of my yearbooks.” I felt like I was cracking apart, drowning in an ocean, losing a long battle.
When I got into the tub my body started convulsing. Lynne was in her kitchen trying to find something and I felt deserted for a moment. I began wailing and crying uncontrollably. I felt possessed by a demon, both awful and sad. Maybe this, six months after the fact, was how I grieved for Dad. Maybe his ghost said, You haven’t grieved for me properly. He didn’t care that I didn’t want to grieve for him or that I felt like I didn’t have to. He was going to make me, even if it was against my will.
Washington Street
Dad came home and went straight upstairs to the bedroom I shared with my older brother Matt. “I’m going to throw everything into the middle of the street,” he yelled. He would get mad when the house wasn’t clean. His brown work shoe tapped the side of our small television, making the picture flicker. I imagined the traffic on our busy street, dodging our piles of clothes, destroying our dressers, spraying chunks of broken dishes everywhere.
Matt and I had grass stains from playing Nerf football all day. There was a bowl of melted Neapolitan ice cream sitting next to my bed, near a pile of clothes and some comics.
This kind of scenario happened more than once.
I was the youngest. Two of my older brothers lived there in the house still, but all the others—two half brothers who seemed like myth and a half sister—had walked through similar emotions and trials already. They were free somewhere in the world.
Egg Hunt
When the gun sounded, Matt ran ahead of me with the other kids who filled the park. I could tell they were all excited, yelling into the wet spring air. The sky was speckled with birds and high dark clouds. I ran the other way, back toward home.
When I got to the house, Mom held me as I cried for no good reason. My brother came in the side door with his homemade Superman cape over his shoulder and a basket of decorated eggs and chocolate candies. It was the first time I gave up.
Attractions
I thought Kennewick was the ideal place to grow up. Of course, this was before I even saw anywhere else.
My favorite attraction was the Cable Bridge. I remember the kind of awe and joy that only an eleven-year-old can muster about such an object. When the bridge opened for traffic in 1978, it seemed almost unbelievable that this was the first cable-stayed bridge in the country.