A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Washington Street

Dad came home and went straight upstairs to the bedroom I shared with my older brother Matt. “I’m going to throw everything into the middle of the street,” he yelled. He would get mad when the house wasn’t clean. His brown work shoe tapped the side of our small television, making the picture flicker. I imagined the traffic on our busy street, dodging our piles of clothes, destroying our dressers, spraying chunks of broken dishes everywhere.

Matt and I had grass stains from playing Nerf football all day. There was a bowl of melted Neapolitan ice cream sitting next to my bed, near a pile of clothes and some comics.

This kind of scenario happened more than once.

I was the youngest. Two of my older brothers lived there in the house still, but all the others—two half brothers who seemed like myth and a half sister—had walked through similar emotions and trials already. They were free somewhere in the world.