A Common Pornography_ A Memoir - Kevin Sampsell [13]
Something broke in my naïve 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