A Common Pornography_ A Memoir - Kevin Sampsell [21]
Another time, when her parents were gone, we were in her basement. We took our shirts off on the couch. I ran my fingers over her small chest, feeling the nipples, no bigger than pimples. We stood up and slow-danced to a radio song. I picked her up and put her on the pool table. We stared at each other. “Do you want to know something I haven’t done before?” she asked. I asked her what it was. “I’ve never had anyone kiss me upside down,” she told me. She kicked the cue ball off the table.
Hiding Places
When we were getting our house done enough to move back in, Dad asked me if I wanted to pick out a ceiling for my bedroom. We went to a home decoration place and I picked out the kind that was divided up into squares. The square tiles rested on a metal framework so it kind of looked like a checkerboard. The metal part was black and the tiles were a bumpy white texture, like on a globe where you can feel the mountains.
After getting my room all set up and living in the house for a year, I realized it was weird to have that sort of ceiling, that it was usually seen only in offices and fancy modern buildings like city hall. I stood on a chair one night and pushed on one of the tiles. It moved up and slid over. I could put my hand up there and feel a couple of feet of space. I started hiding my dirty magazines up there. It seemed perfect, and it was. Dad was a snoop and would find them if I kept them under my mattress or in a sock drawer like my friends.
Years later, after I moved out, my bedroom was converted to a sewing room for Mom. My stash was gone by then, hidden somewhere in the basement. I’d still find myself looking at the ceiling though, imagining those naked women above Mom’s head as she sewed.
Troubled Girl
Whenever I went to Fruitland Park to shoot baskets, I noticed a girl sitting on the porch of a house across the street. I thought she was really cute, but couldn’t tell how old she was. The Karate Kid was my favorite movie and I’d seen it six times in the theater. She looked a little like Elisabeth Shue—I liked the scene in that movie where she had on the tight sweater and they went to the amusement park.
She started to come over to the courtside benches when I’d show up. I was nervous as I talked to her. She told me she lived with her cousins because her parents were murdered in Chicago. Nothing ever happened with this relationship, not even a kiss. She gave me Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. for Christmas. I never listened to it. We drifted apart that winter, partly because it was too cold to play basketball.
Five years later, I lived in a different town and was in my twenties. I’d visit my parents for holidays, and one time she called. I met her in a grocery store parking lot and we sat in my car. The steering wheel of my car seemed enormous, almost as if it were growing in front of me, as she confessed that she had told me lies about her family. She said she was married but had always loved me. I almost wanted to kiss her but was nervous again. She said her husband beat her up sometimes and that she had a baby boy. His name was Kevin. I thought about how long she would have to live with that.
My Friend Pat
In tenth grade, I started to embrace my weirdness a little more, thanks to one of my new friends, Pat Kennelly. He was this short kid with curly white hair and glasses. He sort of looked like an albino. He lived with his family in a pretty big house a couple of blocks from the