They were stacked in a brown paper grocery bag at the curb, sturdy and proud in the afterschool autumn sun. Me and Mikey stared from across the street, our backpacks sagging from overstuffed Trapper Keepers, shoelaces stubbornly untied, and pockets stuffed with quarter candy we had just picked up at the Tobacco Shop, a bunch of old-timey selections in tiny boxes that no other shop sold: Red Hots, Cherry Clan, and Lemonheads. 

We had already walked past the bag twice, just to be sure. Mikey even sent his little brother on a reconnaissance mission; Noah had recently gotten the training wheels off his bike and welcomed the assignment. He returned with confirmation and no clue what he had confirmed. We rewarded his success with a box of Red Hots and a punch to the gut.

We planted ourselves on the curb strip and glued our eyes to the shopping bag. I didn’t know what I wanted to see but I knew I wanted to see it, like each time I peeked behind the curtain at Palmer Video, or eagerly flipped through a National Geographic, or when I saw the Jamaica poster in a friend’s older brother’s room—THE Jamaica poster. And I wondered what kind of crazy person left a bag of porno at the curb to be picked up and tossed in the trash. 

No one would do throw out porn on purpose. This had to be a mistake. 

Fortunately, my almost-teenaged neighbor Joel noticed our gawking. Barely had “nudie mags” exited my mouth, and he had sprinted across the street faster than Maniac Magee. His hormones gave him super strength, like moms whose arms become jaws-of-life to rip their children from the mangled metal of auto wrecks. Like nothing, he lifted that shopping bag, secured it to his chest, and ran. We knew he was headed to The Creek, where we explored industrial ruins, poked dead things, and lit small fires. 

Joel dumped the contents, and we surveyed our treasure. A familiar, weird feeling bubbled in my stomach. I remembered the time I opened the liner notes to Appetite for Destruction and was confronted by a cartoon space robot hovering over its open-legged victim with her panties at her ankles. We were well-acquainted with the ethereal worlds of Playboy and Penthouse, but each glossy page immersed us deeper into a sordid, visceral realm we had never experienced. I wasn’t sure I liked what I saw. But I knew I’d need to see it again.

I gathered plastic bags tangled in the shrubbery, as Mikey dug a hole. We wrapped the magazines and laid them down gently, before covering our treasure with leaves. Joel planted a rusty piece of metal in the ground like a flag pole to mark the site.

We made an agreement: 1) don’t tell anyone you can’t trust; 2) nothing leaves ever. 

That was the beginning of our communal porn stash.

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