A Common Pornography_ A Memoir - Kevin Sampsell [7]
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