Kevin Sampsell - Three Collages and an Essay

Editor’s note: the collages featured below will appear in Kevin’s collection I Made an Accident: Collages and Poems, forthcoming from Clash Books.


How Do the Sounds Feel
History of Layers
Old New Beats

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Mushroom Chair

I was asked by a curious friend what my first-ever relationship was. I was asked if it was with a person or maybe a pet. Perhaps a thing? “Maybe a blanket or coat,” they wondered.

My thoughts turned sepia tone for a second: A ring of mysterious keys my grandfather gave me? An action figure?

But I said, “Do you know what I mean when I say mushroom chair?”

It was covered in the kind of child-enticing blue fur that was prevalent in the ‘70s. It had a pillowed circle on top that I sat on and a thick stem base under that. I worked this stem out greatly while listening to music for hours every day. I would sit in this mushroom-shaped chair and rock back and forth, grinding a divot in my red shag carpet. My head nodding. My back swaying. My hips thrusting. So lustful in my puberty. So alone in my bedroom.

Music gave me comfort. My record collection on the floor, leaning against the wall, as to be flip through-able. My cassette collection in shallow wooden fruit boxes. I listened to soul, rap, new wave, glossy top forty, the random pop of radio. I sometimes wore headphones, especially when I wanted to tune everything out and forget things like school, or God, or how loud my dad was yelling at my mom.

This chair I had for years. I learned to sit-with-myself in it, being bored and not knowing what to do. But also fantasizing in it. Thinking.

Just thinking.

I remember wondering what it would be like when I got my driver’s license. I’d sit in a driver’s seat then. Operate a moving vehicle—while listening to music! Instead of rocking in place in my static bedroom, I would watch the world go by, sitting behind the steering wheel, perhaps drumming it lightly.

When I felt stuck and held captive in a classroom at school, I would daydream by looking out the window, at cars driving by. I imagined the people driving these cars and how elated they all must have been. They were free! Windows rolled down! The whole day off! I bet they were driving to the record store or Burger King. I bet they were listening to My Sharona by The Knack. 

But hold on. Before the mushroom chair, there was the rocking chair in the living room. How I loved the ease of it, the gravity, and the curve of it cradling my silly kid body. I leaned back, it took me forward. I leaned forward, it automatically swung me back. Sometimes my mom sat in it and I’d sit on her like she was the chair. She would scratch my back while we rocked. “Scratchmaback,” I’d say like a one-word command. The greatest combination of pleasures! But those days didn’t last long enough. I grew and grew. I wanted to be alone. I mean I didn’t want to be alone, but I was anyway.

I started thinking about girlfriends in that mushroom chair. Someone to hold hands with. Maybe even a boy. A real best friend. Someone to celebrate a birthday with. A relationship. But I don’t think I knew what a relationship was yet. What does that word mean? Does it mean chair? Something to sit in?

When I moved out of the house, out of that bedroom, at eighteen, I took the chair with me and did the same thing in my room at the cheap apartments I lived in with friends. I rocked back and forth on it while listening to Janet Jackson or The Cure, or that song, Blue Chair by Elvis Costello. One of my best friends, who I used to share everything with and who I haven’t talked to in decades, once made fun of the way I rocked in the mushroom chair. He called me “Rain Man.” I didn’t care. I felt fine in that chair.

I’m not sure what happened to the blue furry mushroom chair. It likely fell apart, eventually. Did I sell it at a yard sale for five bucks? Three bucks at least? I miss that chair. That was a good relationship.