Pornography: In Memoriam

I remember the first time that I saw a porn magazine. I was in the third grade. I was over at a friend's house. His name was John Crees. The reason I remember his name, and not anybody else's from the third grade, is because I thought it was interesting. It sounds like 'creek,' but it isn't. He owned every Star Wars toy ever made. And he had a Colecovision. I thought that was cool, even if he was an ass to his mom. His mom was disabled or some shit. I didn't know what was wrong with her, just that she was skinny and had trouble walking. She was always at home. She didn't work. The only time that I ever really talked to her was after she lost one of her fillings while chewing on a jolly rancher. I thought it was stupid that somebody would chew on a jolly rancher. They're meant to be sucked. A person could hurt their teeth trying to chew on something that's meant to be sucked. Even I knew that, and I was only in the third grade. After she was finished complaining about her teeth, she asked me if my mom ever watched the daytime soaps. I told her that I didn't know. I didn't think so. The only shows that I remember my mom watching were Murder, She Wrote and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. John's mom then talked about how much she liked that show too. Scarecrow and Mrs. King. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't understand why she would be telling me what shows she watched. I didn't care. I didn't watch the show. I liked to watch The A-Team and The Dukes of Hazzard. Those other shows were boring shows about boring women. Why would I care about that? Why would I care about whether or not somebody watched them?

John's mom wasn't married. There was sometimes a man around the apartment, but he wasn't John's dad. Or at least, John never called him dad. Maybe he was her boyfriend. Maybe he was a new husband. All I know is that this guy never spoke up when John yelled at his mom. He would just sit at the kitchen table, not speaking. John yelled a lot. He would be playing a game, and she would tell him to do something, and he would flip out. He'd throw the controller across the room and go into an epileptic-like Tourette seizure. I couldn't believe that he'd say things like that to his mom. I couldn't believe that this adult guy sitting at the table would let him say things like that. But I didn't care, really. He had every Star Wars toy ever made. And he had a Colecovision.

One day I was walking to his house. There was a car on fire in front of his apartment building. John was standing in front of the car, looking at it. I walked to where he was and stood beside him, looking at it. It was the first time that I had ever seen a car on fire. It was the first time that I had seen glass melt. We stood there for a while, and then John said,
-I sold all my Star Wars toys.

I didn't say anything. I was jealous of whoever this person was that got all John's stuff. I couldn't understand why, if John was going to get rid of everything that he owned, he didn't give it to me. We watched the windshield melt. We watched the side-windows melt. I didn't say anything. When we heard the sirens, John said,
-Come on. I've got something to show you.

We went to his apartment. He took me downstairs, into his bedroom. He pulled a Playboy out from under his bed and started flipping through it.
-Look at this. You ever seen anything like this before?

I said that I hadn't, and then I asked,
-Why do they have all that hair down there?

-I don't know. I think it's so that when you're going to stick it inside her, the hair tickles you and you get hard.

That made sense to me. John put the magazine away, and we played his Colecovision. When I tried to come over the next day, Saturday, nobody answered the door. When I looked in his window, the apartment was empty. On Monday I looked for him in school. He wasn't in class. He wasn't in school on Tuesday either. He wasn't in school ever again.

I made new friends. One of them taught me how to steal, how to smoke. When I was caught shoplifting my mother forbid me ever speaking to that friend again. Without my friend to provide me with cigarettes, I was forced to quit smoking. I made enemies. Once, the teacher left our class to speak to somebody in the office. I was in the back of the room. I've always preferred the back. It's the only place where you can see everything that happens in the room. On this day I was playing with my lunch money on my desk. The kid sitting next to me said,
-You're crazy like Murdock in The A-Team.

I hit him. He hit me. The teacher came back into the room and separated us. I had the worse of it. I started crying. She took us to the office. We each got a week's worth of detention. Our parents weren't called. On the way home I saw a box on the side of the road, in front of somebody's house. I looked in the box. It was full of magazines. Some of the magazines were Playboys. I tucked them under my coat, where my mother wouldn't see them.