In fifth grade I was woefully shy, with a slapdash haircut and a crush on Robert from the class next door. I was going through some traumatic shit at home and was struggling to make even average grades. I can’t remember whole, long stretches of that time in my life, but there are certain days, certain instances that blaze in my head.

Thanks to a totally insane, 100% certifiably abusive and psycho stepfather, I spent a lot of my youth sheltered. I wasn’t allowed to say “gosh” in case it sounded sorta like taking the Lord’s name in vein. I was forbidden from drinking Cheerwine, no matter how hard I begged, because–you guessed it–it had the word wine in it. Well, my stepfather didn’t count on Marty Gross.

I sat next to Marty Gross all year long. Assigned seats. Marty was short and impish with big, round freckles all over the tops of his cheeks. He was a Very Bad Kid. Marty rode the bus with me, and he got off at the shabbiest, rundown shack in all of Ashland City. And that is saying something. There were always way too skinny dogs in his yard, along with an old couch and shoes and trash and cigarette butts. So, Marty had it pretty bad at home, we can all agree.

To say that Marty acted out due to his desperate situation would be a preposterous understatement. That kid was always getting paddled or sent to in school suspension. He would curse as much as he said any other words, and he was always hitting kids who’d never tell on him.

One day Marty was passing a folder around class that was causing quite a stir in the cramped aisleways of the classroom. Our teacher was frequently gone for just a minute, probably taking smoke breaks or something; it was then the folder would begin to float in and out of the hands in the room. I was the resident Ass Licker Kid, who was an obnoxious goody two-shoes, always willing to rat out my dearest classmate for my teacher’s affection or approval. Telling on Marty was something I knew I had to do, I just had to figure out what was in that folder. I managed to sneak a look at what was inside to discover, utterly horrified, that it was a Playboy magazine. A naked, squatting woman with red painted lips and slick breasts leering into the camera.

I was frozen with terror. This was my first ever experience with pornography and I was wholely unprepared for what I saw. I didn’t tell on Marty that day–and he never got caught–because I couldn’t find it in me to speak of what my scarred eyes had witnessed.

I didn’t have to tell on Marty the last day I ever saw him.
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