Kevin Sampsell: A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Almost ten years later, while discussing that night with Matt, he told me he had seen the same silhouette, and that’s why he never wanted to sleep outside again.

My brother Mattis black. We have the same mother but little was known about his father, who was an African man named Everest Mulekezi. Our mother dated Everest for a short time after meeting him at a dance in Eastern Washington. He was a foreign student attending Washington State University.

Mom and Dad had split up at this time, though they would eventually get back together and have me a couple years later.

There was only one other black kid in our neighborhood. His name was Larry, and we were friends with him for a while. One time Matt and Larry got into a fight about something though, and Larry called my brother a “half breed.”

Just two weeks later, Larry drowned in the Columbia River. We went to his funeral at a black church in Pasco. His family became hysterical. I think it was his sister who started screaming and had to be taken away. We left early.

When Matt turned thirty-five, he decided to look for his father. His search took him to Africa, where he met several family members but learned that his father had died in 1971 in Uganda. He was some sort of a district official who was executed by Idi Amin’s army after a dispute over a hotel bill. The rest of Everest’s family was hunted as well, but most of them escaped.

There was an odd moment during his African trip that Matt told me about. He had just met his real father’s sister for the first time and many of his other relatives were coming to her apartment to meet him. As he sat and talked and got buzzed on a terrible-tasting local brew consisting of smashed up bananas and alcohol, he realized that his newfound relatives were watching him extra close, almost studying him. Matt asked them if something was wrong. They paused and then smiled and told Matt that he did indeed display parts of his father. He had his dad’s mannerisms and his determination. Physically they could see Everest in Matt’s eyes, forehead, and hands. Though he never knew his father in life, Matt had been carrying his ghost for all these years. He felt this ghost become more a part of him now, and with his family circled around him, he began to weep.

Matt and Iplayed out some game while listening to one of our favorite 45s, “Indian Reservation” by Paul Revere and the Raiders. We would take turns playing the roles. One of us would be the sad and angry Indian in jail while the other was the guard. Around this time was when the TV commercial with the crying Indian was so popular—the anti-littering one.

“Indian Reservation” was one of the biggest hits for this band of white guys who dressed in pirate outfits. It seemed to have this great dramatic sense of impending revenge that pulsed just behind the drumbeat and the heartfelt sentiment of the singer/narrator. It was like a story song. The chorus went something like: “Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe / So proud to live, so proud to die.”

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.

As far asI 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.

Sometimes, when Iwas 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.

Jeffrey was asnot-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 to chew and smack our lips. We were convincing and Jeffrey smeared some onto his tongue. “Where does it come from?” he asked.

We told him that when rain drips from certain trees, it becomes caramel.

“My mom won’t let me eat caramel,” he said. He pronounced it “car-mull.”

“We won’t tell her if you don’t,” I said.

Sometimes Mom andDad got into unexplainable fights. I wasn’t sure where the tension was coming from at the time. (I’m sure what happened with Elinda had something to do with it, but I had no idea about that yet.) Dad had typical gripes, like Mom not having dinner ready on time. Sometimes Mom would question Dad about staying at the bar too long after work. I remember him saying, “They kept buying me drinks. What am I supposed to do, say no?”