A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Trespass

Once, during a snowy winter break, Maurice and I were jonesing to play basketball, so we walked over to our high school to see if any of the doors were open. Sometimes there were doors left open near the gym because there were teams practicing or a janitor working.

We got there and found the doors unlocked and the gym lights on, but no one else around. No sign of a janitor. We had our boom box with us and plugged it in at courtside. We had some sodas and a bag of chips from the store. It was like we had set up camp for the night.

We shot baskets on the beautiful hardwood floors and listened to Kurtis Blow and the Bar-Kays. About an hour into our private practice, three cops appeared. Two of them were up in the stands, walking around as if we had hidden bombs somewhere, and one of them approached us on the court. “What are you guys doing here?” he asked. Maurice turned the music down and told him we were just shooting baskets and that the doors were open and that we were students of the high school. They took our names and phone numbers and made us walk back home in the snow.

When school started again in January, we were called into the office and told we were to do Saturday school for two weeks because of our “trespassing.” The school narc gave us each a police report and told us to have our parents sign them. Maurice and I went home that day, nervous that they had called our parents. They hadn’t, so we forged the signatures on the reports and served our two weeks of Saturday school without our parents knowing.