excerpts from A Common Pornography...

Records

Two plastic record players and a nice stack of Top-40 45s were all I needed to start my own radio station. My plan was to do a pirate radio show that would broadcast to my neighborhood. Instead I just pointed my speakers out the upstairs window and hoped the sound reached the corner.
In fifth grade I started writing really bad pop song lyrics.4 When I wrote something I thought to be particularly hitworthy, I'd cut out a piece of paper in the shape of a 45 and then, after coloring in the black wax area, I'd put the name of my song and band on the "label". I can't remember my imaginary band's name but some of the hits were "Sound of Thunder", "Rich Dude", and "Diamond Girl". Come to think of it, I didn't even have an imaginary band; instead I just went by the name Billy Rivers, because I thought it sounded cool. After cutting out the center hole, I'd string the smash hit to a hook on my ceiling. If you ever saw my bedroom you'd think I was a mega-star. Sometimes I'd even put them on one of the turntables and watch it spin. Forty-five revolutions per minute. Once I put a needle on one as it spun and ruined the needle. I had to go to the record store where they sold little smoking pipes and stoner posters, spending my entire allowance on a new snap-on needle.

4 Baby, you make the picture flicker/Baby, there's no defense against your hold/on me//The sky was full of birds/because I thought it sounded cool/when you told me we could fly/I ran the other way/with grass stains on my knees/from playing Nerf football all day//Baby (etc...)

Wet

At halftime of the football game, Dad and I walked down the bleachers and waited for our turn in the bathroom. There was a long urinal where about six people could go at once. Dad and I went side by side and he seemed to be watching me as I pulled my pants down to my knees and went.
When we were back outside, standing in line to get hot dogs, he explained to me that I didn't have to pull my pants down to pee. He pointed to our zippers showing me how they were made to open up so just our peters came out. I felt embarrassed, not realizing that people were probably staring at me in there, wondering why I had to pull my pants all the way down.5 I believe I was eleven at this time. Soon after, I also stopped wetting my bed at night.

5 If the belt buckle was heavy enough, and it usually was, they'd hit the floor on their own accord.

Laynee12

After the house fire, when we lived in the small dirty apartment on Alder Street, there was a 10-year old girl named Laynee who lived with her mom in the apartment above us. Her mom was never around. Whenever Dad wasn't rebuilding the old house, he was hanging out with this little girl. They'd watch TV, go for walks, and play games together; things he'd never do with my brothers or me. Matt and I were curious what the deal was. They seemed to be keeping secrets. I even remember Laynee going to Mass with us once. We suspected Dad of being a pervert. (Even before Laynee, we noticed how he would always stare at young girls.)
We began following them on their walks and watching them through the window curtains when they would watch TV, sitting close together on the couch. Even Mom sensed something and acted tense whenever Laynee was around. The whole family, except Dad of course, began to secretly hate Laynee. We'd sometimes split up with walkee-talkees and spy from the bushes or trees that lined the alleyways and ditches of our neighborhood. I don't think we were jealous of them, but on some nights we'd lie in bed and hear sounds from upstairs. We wondered what was inside her heart.

12 Laynee. Oh, Laynee.

Braces
One of my first girlfriends had braces and thick glasses and was not thought of as pretty or anything acceptable. In fact, even though I told some friends I had a girlfriend, I made sure no one saw her. I was 16, she was 13. When I had my first car I'd go to her house. It was nice, and big. I would pick her up and we would drive around and then make out somewhere. Her breath was always unpleasant; and she had stuff on her braces like she never brushed her teeth. Still, I went out of my way to spend time with her and was jealous once when she told me about an ex-boyfriend, an 18-year-old who had his own apartment, where he wanted her to suck his dick once. It was a story she told me once with an "I can do anything to you" tone of voice.
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 a pimple. 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.21

21 Scratch. The next time the narrator did it on a pool table was with his 19-year-old rich girlfriend and he got the crabs. See Crabs, page 123 in How To Lose Your Mind With The Lights On (1994, Future Tense Books), by Kevin Sampsell, for resolution.

Secret Notebook

When I started to accumulate too many dirty magazines to possibly hide in my ceiling, I had to devise a new plan. I started to cut out the pictures in the magazines. Only the ones that turned me on a great deal. I was 15 years old and this took a great deal of time, probably a weekend or more. When it came to Playboy and Penthouse they were mostly articles and it was a little easier. When it was done I had a full garbage bag of disregarded magazine pages and I tossed them in a dumpster three blocks away. I put the salvaged clippings24 in a new Pee-Chee25 and put it back in my ceiling. It would be easier now to look at these pictures because I wouldn't have to spread several magazines across my bedspread anymore. Still I collected more magazines whenever the opportunity arose to steal them from the neighborhood grocery. I had to start another Pee-Chee and grew tired of most of the old photos. Like drugs, I started to need harder, stronger, more dangerous forms of pornography.26 A few years later Ted Bundy mentioned having this problem as well. Many people thought he was trying to blame pornography for his sick crimes but I couldn't help but wonder if I was not a good person myself.
I relegated the first Pee-Chee to the basement. I put it in an old light-blue suitcase with little snap buttons. When my father found the secret stash a few months later I claimed not to know whose they were.

24 Juggs, page 62, December 1980, lick. Cheri, page 112, March 1981, erect nipples pushed together by suspenders. Penthouse, page 80, April 1979, bright lipstick, back of van. Raunch Farm, page 7, Winter 1982; special edition: Milk Sex. Playboy, page 148, date unknown, Margot Kidder, topless...

25 Notebook folders with drawings of athletes on them. Typically manila brown or mustard in color.

26 Friends: This is how romance dies.
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