Guns and other father figures (ch 3)
I dream about guns. They go off inside of my head like warning shots given after the fact. But guns don't kill people, right? Other people do it. And they don't even need a gun. I know this is true.
My nicest step-dad didn't need a gun; he sold liquid wallpaper.
But I don’t want to talk about him and there’s not a lot to say anyway: With him we had a house in rural Utah with an already pink bedroom for my 12 year old self. Lilac bushes abounded, hedging in a half acre of green grass filled with clover and bees. I flooded holes with water from the hose to make lakes for my barbies. I had a cat who had kittens and I took polaroids of them and of my dolls and for some reason, my feet. My last year of youth was governed by a half husky/ half wolf named Rufus that someone stole from our yard. I had an occasional step brother who looked like Michael J. Fox and did Elvis impressions at their wedding in a field of flowers. Step-dad drank too much, cheated on mom. We left another place again. But he was nice. I really liked him.
If he hadn’t cheated we wouldn’t have gone to Arizona; I wouldn’t have met my dear Esther; and I wouldn’t have ended up in the Salmon colored bedroom listening to the cops try and break in my window.
First, they came to the front door and knocked politely and officially. But I wouldn’t answer so they started snooping. I crouched in the darkest corner of my bedroom pulling my legs tight to my body so their searching beams of flashlight didn’t land on me.
The Salmon Room, or the Tuscany room (which was my first hopeful, naive impression), was the biggest, most glamorous bedroom I’d ever had. It had real Spanish tiles and it’s own bathroom and a huge walk in closet. There wasn’t enough of me to fill up all that space. I was just one tiny girl living out of a suitcase, faking residency, pretending to be someones daughter. The other bedrooms of the house were small and located upstairs. My mom, her boyfriend, and a friend of theirs had those rooms.
Why did they sleep upstairs in the smaller rooms and let the 17 year old girl take the large, extravagant one on the main floor? I finally figured it out- I was a decoy. It was safer to be upstairs. If you're going to be weighing out piles of cocaine and bagging them for sale, you didn’t want to be in plain view on the main floor. Maybe they knew the cops would come.
The dealers and mom were out for the night, probably at a club, snorting lines and dancing to shitty music. Boy were they in for a shock when I told them about the cops; talk about paranoia full tilt for a few weeks. I enjoyed watching them squirm.
I don’t know why the cops never got in, maybe they did after I fell asleep, but they never came back. I would bet they were paid off in coke.
My mom’s boyfriend was Gary. He was 24 years old. That sounds young, and it was, but my mom was only around 32 herself. Gary wasn't such a bad guy. He was from the Bronx and talked like a real New Yorker. With his tight jeans and gold chains and shoulder length black hair feathered and sprayed- he looked like an Italian Bon Jovi. I don’t think he did too much coke, though. I mean, he did it for sure, but his personality was always very level and he was quite the professional dealer.
Shane was the other guy who lived there, he payed for half the house. He was redheaded and nasally and scrawny but tough. His psychotic eyes let you know to not mistake his small, geeky stature for weakness. He also wore tight jeans. If you could sneak a peak when he wasn’t looking -which was always, he was always looking at me- you could see the outline of a gun in the front of his pants. He liked to take it out and wave it around to remind you how close you were to death, if he was so inclined. He was just itching for a reason to shoot that gun. He would’ve have shot those cops.
Sometimes when I was alone in the house I would sneak upstairs and look through their bedrooms. They were kept dark and very tidy with brown stained wood paneling, brown shag carpet and dark wood blinds always shut. Mom and Gary’s was not that interesting: no books, lots of make up, hair supplies, clothes, dildos, weighing scales etc... Shane's room, however, was like nothing I had ever seen. From the ceiling on fish wire at all different levels and angles hung at least 40 model airplanes. And that was just the ceiling. Airplanes were everywhere in all states of completion. And books, too, so many books. I later learned that his IQ was abnormally high. He was a gifted spaz, a genius drug dealer with a gun for a cock.
One night I was lying in my bedroom. It was nearly midnight and I was immersed in a book. Sometimes, I eavesdropped when mom and the dealers were in the living room which was just on the other side of my door. But mostly, I tried very hard to not hear them. They were antsy this particular night, or the boys were, rather. Something was up. Too much coke? Not enough sleep? I don’t know. My mom barely spoke and was probably just trying to watch TV.
I wasn’t eavesdropping. My own head was in the book, deep in escape when suddenly Shane's nasally voice broke through very clear and loud: Where’s your daughter? ( talking to my mom)
-She’s sleeping.
-Why don’t you go get her so I can fuck her.
Silence.
I sat up: primitive brain kicked in: I ready to run from tigers and bears. But if I’d had to, I would’ve killed that fucking geek. Smashed his red, Brillo pad head into the serene Tuscany sunset walls. But he didn’t come in. He probably went upstairs and masturbated to images of me naked, covered in his model airplanes.
So it is not such a big deal. Nothing happened. If he would have come in and raped me, while my own mother was unable to stop him, and the cops had to come back which would have led to a shootout and I would have hidden in the same dark corner again while their blood spattered walls, well, then I would have something to complain about.
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I’m thinking about guns and I’m done talking about Shane and the salmon room, for now.
I want to talk about guns.
Real quick:
When I was eight my dad robbed a gas station with a screwdriver in his pocket. He told the lady it was a gun. She said she didn’t believe him. He was a bad liar and a nice robber. He went to prison.
This chapter is about real guns and obviously, this story about my dad doesn’t contain a real gun but it is real enough to belong here.
I want to talk about guns.
Real quick:
When I was eight my dad robbed a gas station with a screwdriver in his pocket. He told the lady it was a gun. She said she didn’t believe him. He was a bad liar and a nice robber. He went to prison.
This chapter is about real guns and obviously, this story about my dad doesn’t contain a real gun but it is real enough to belong here.
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One night, at 14 or 15 years old, my mom’s boyfriend, Levi King,(none of the previously mentioned men) sat in the living room with a gun in his mouth. He was sobbing into the phone that if mom didn’t come home RIGHT NOW, he was going to blow his fucking brains out.
I see him sitting there, his dark curls softly falling around his handsome, pale face, cheeks wet with total despair, and that is all I see. He was a very sweet man. I don’t remember what happened. My best friend at the time told me that she and I and Levi’s 6 year old daughter climbed out the bedroom window. We ran into the dark neighborhood and hid for hours, crying. I guess the cops came. I guess mom came home. I don’t remember.
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I see him sitting there, his dark curls softly falling around his handsome, pale face, cheeks wet with total despair, and that is all I see. He was a very sweet man. I don’t remember what happened. My best friend at the time told me that she and I and Levi’s 6 year old daughter climbed out the bedroom window. We ran into the dark neighborhood and hid for hours, crying. I guess the cops came. I guess mom came home. I don’t remember.
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I have had a gun shoved in my face by a Dj. Dj Monki was a criminal. Robbery, organized shoplifting, pot and occasional coke sales. He had a posse: his little brother James, who was a jittery little Geri curled freak, and his tall and handsome friend Hiram. He created an army of young, white girls to party with, to fuck and to commit his crimes. I never fucked him. I thought he was repulsive. I liked Hiram but he dated Esther. She got all the boys I liked or else I wanted all the boys she got because they were already taken by her. The last time I saw the Dj Monki posse, my friend Tarin’s mom was out of town and we had gathered at her house after a day of looting the mall. We were drinking and snorting a lot of coke. Something big was happening, but I was too out of it to know what it was, Dj Monki and his brother were amped up and pacing the long hallway, the outside pool area, the dining room, the bedrooms; I kept wanting to be away from them but they seemed to be everywhere.
At one point I noticed that there were 3 of us girls and 3 of them. Hiram and Esther, Tarin and Dj Monki and me and James. So it finally became clear what was expected of me. This revelation hit me right before Tarin walked into her mom’s bedroom where I was hiding out, and declared that they were all heading to the store for more alcohol and cigarettes and I was to stay behind with James.
"You’re not leaving me here alone with James".
"Oh, come on, he’s cute. We’ll be right back."
"He’s not cute, he’s scary."
A noise in the hallway pulls both of us around. It's James and he's pissed.
"Oh my god, Tarin, why didn’t you fucking tell me he was there"
"I didn’t know you were going to say that, what the hell is wrong with you? He’s cute, he’s got money."
Then, Dj Monki comes charging like a bull, cartoon steam shooting from his nostrils, eyes and horns directed at me. And Im cornered, there is no way out, and he has put a gun into my face.
"You scared you little bitch? You scared now?"
Every cell in my body shrunk, every bone collapsed inward to cave around all my shrunken-ness. I could smell the gun. Had it been shot recently or was I imagining it?
"I’ll give you something to be scared of, I’ll shoot your white bitch face right the fuck off."
I didn’t say anything. I was terrified but I didn’t cry. I never cried in those days. Why would I cry over such a stupid thing? He didn’t shoot me. I didn’t have to fuck James. I would never see the Monki posse again, not even at Esther’s funeral.
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I have held a gun in my hands. I have felt its weight like the hand of a sweet lover; it said lover things to me. We sat together in a different room, a different house, before the Salmon Room. A house bought by Step dad number 2.
Another new bedroom. New furniture. New pets. New school. New Step dad. Do you want to know what this Step dad did for a living? Besides selling used cars, can you figure out what he did for the big money?
That’s right, he sold cocaine.
If you have a coke problem, and you are a beautiful woman, it’s best to fall in love with the men who will keep you high. You stay beautiful and fuck with their heads, keep them jealous and paranoid, and they will keep you deep in the powder.
Back to the gun. I had walked into the step-dad and mom's bedroom, took the gun out of the nightstand and sat down in front of the mirrored closet doors. The room was dark, with barely any light coming through the wood blinds.(more wood blinds) That room was eerie. I’m watching a movie when I watch this memory. I have no connection to it emotionally but I do feel slight nausea and throat tightness when it plays.
I had yet to try anything sophisticated with self harm: I wasn’t a cutter, had never attempted suicide, didn’t have an eating disorder. I wasn’t crying out for help. Remember, I knew how to protect myself.
I was merely fascinated with how quickly that gun could take my body out of the equation. I was obsessed with my soul. I wanted to meet my soul.
It became a little ritual. Me and the gun. Put gun to head, observe in mirror. See how pretty I look with perfect skin and high cheekbones and dark eyes and short dyed red hair. Put gun in mouth. Lick the gun. Love the gun.
I never shot it; I didn’t die. I was too interested in my depression. I wanted to crank up Bauhaus and research this Satori they sang about. I wanted to read Siddhartha and not understand a word of it but let it sink in subconciously because someday my surface would crack and the deep waters would well up with everything I had stored, including Siddhartha. I wanted to find ways to alter my reality and push it’s boundaries. I wanted to do more drugs. I wanted to discover which god or goddess could potentially save me, or maybe a guru or Buddha.
I wanted to figure out if I was capable of ever loving again.
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