I'm Glad for Other People's Guns

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Oh, and mama — there is ONE brief sexual reference in this post, but it is far from the point.

The author, age six. 1973.

“Squeeze, don’t pull,” said Uncle Peter.  I froze.  It would be years before I’d hear the phrase “a distinction without a difference,” but at that moment at the ranch, in the summer of 1977, I first understood the problem the phrase conveys.  

I closed my eyes, and my ten-year-old self squeezed (or more likely, jerked) the trigger of the ancient .22 rifle -- and hoped for the pinging sound of a bullet hitting a can.  No noise came, except my uncle’s exhale.  I opened my eyes in time to see a small puff of dust rising off the hillside.  The half dozen empty cans of Coors, Olympia, Fresca and Tab remained unharmed on the fence rail.

“You’ll get there if you keep your eyes open,” said my cousin Dean, gently prying the rifle from my hands to take his turn.  He reloaded the single-shot gun, aimed, and sent an amber tin of Oly flying into the air.

I was ten, and I was learning to shoot for the first time.  I felt clumsy and scared. My friends at school bragged about going hunting with their dads, or at least taking target practice, and I wanted a story of my own to tell.  The guns my family kept at the ranch all dated back before the Second World War, and were used mostly to scare off scrub jays – and to initiate boys into something it was conceded that they ought to know.

My mother didn’t like guns of any sort.  Raised in a family of genteel cowboys, mama often reminded me that despite what I saw in the movies, real cowboys seldom wore guns on their hips.  While I was never forbidden from playing with toy pistols, I got the distinct impression from my elders that guns were “not the family way.”  One should know how to use a long gun, but in the canon of knowledge that country boys were expected to master, it was a very minor virtue.  Knowing how to rope and ride, or how to drive fence stakes, were of infinitely greater importance. 

We didn’t hunt, though in deer season, we welcomed hunters to use the family land. Knowing I liked to tramp the trails and the woods of the ranch, which still lies nestled against Northern California’s Sunol Wilderness, mama bought me a bright orange t-shirt and hat to wear so that I wouldn’t be mistaken for a deer. “Boys from the city will shoot at anything,” my grandmother warned; “You need to be careful.”

There was little sense that we needed a gun for self-defense in the country.  That same summer I first shot a rifle, I spent as much time as I could with our ranchman, George.  George had been a frogman in the war, seen action in the Pacific, and according to my cousins, “killed many J*ps.”  I had tried shyly to ask George for a story about the war, and this normally warm and ebullient man had shut down instantly.  “It was a long time ago, Hugo.  I’d rather not talk about it, if it’s all the same to you.”

George drove the ranch truck, a 1965 Ford F-100.  He kept an axe handle on the dashboard.  When I asked him what it was for, he grinned.  “It’s to deal with any old boys who are where they aren’t supposed to be.”  I asked him if a gun wouldn’t be better, and George shook his head, and grabbed the handle.  “A man can solve most problems with a strong word and this,” he told me.  

 I wasn’t convinced.  “What if the old boys have guns?” 

George shrugged.  “You learn to swing the handle right and you stand your ground, then 9 times out of 10, they turn tail and run.”

“What about the tenth time?” 

The ranchman sighed.  “Then what’s gonna be is gonna be. Still ain’t worth a gun, kid.”

The same family that recoiled at firearms had no problem with a ten-year-old boy going on long horseback rides by himself.  They had no problem teaching him how to use a chainsaw to cut brush.  The first time my grandmother saw me cutting up tree branches with our battered old Homelite, she shouted at me – not to be careful, but to remember to clean and oil the saw before putting it away.    (I cannot imagine allowing David or Heloise to go riding unsupervised, much less wield a gas-powered chainsaw, but we live in a different age with different fears.)

We were raised to be at home in the country – just without the country’s iconic device for self-defense.

As I grew into adulthood, I developed my own fear of guns.  The thought that if one were nearby, I might use it to hurt myself became something of an obsession.  When I was in high school, a classmate of mine blew his brains out with a shotgun, using a child’s golf club to pull the trigger while the barrel was in his mouth.  (When I told that story to a girlfriend years later, she declared it the WASPiest way to die – the shotgun a symbol of country masculinity; the golf club, a totem of urban affluence, working together in one final desperate act.) 

Nearly 40 years on, I think about Kevin’s suicide often.  I know that at my worst moments, had a gun been nearby, I would not be here.  Under California law, I am barred from buying or possessing a firearm, thanks to my many commitments to mental hospitals.  It is a good law.

And yet.

Tracy was the first woman I’d ever dated who owned a gun.  Guns, actually – she had three in her apartment. She’d showed them to me on our second date, when we were lying sweaty and spent on her sheets, one cold night in December 1996.  “Open my bedside drawer,” she’d said with a sly grin.  Figuring that Tracy wanted another orgasm while I caught my breath, I reached in, certain I was going to find a vibrator.   I jumped in shock when my fingers closed around her handgun.   

Tracy laughed happily at my surprise. “It turns you on, doesn’t it?” 

I couldn’t lie and say it didn’t.

Tracy’s ex-husband had a bad habit of knocking drunkenly on her door late at night.  She told me she never let him in; I assured her that it wasn’t my place to criticize her if she did.  I had no desire to meet Ray under those circumstances; an aspiring chef, he’d been a soldier in the first Gulf War.  He had a jealous streak, his former wife told me, and he liked to fight.   Somehow, he’d found out about me, and learned that I was Tracy’s professor.  That enraged an already ill-tempered man even further.

At 1:00AM on a morning in early January, Ray came by.  We woke to the sound of his fists on the door. “I know you’re in there, Trace,” he yelled, “Open the fuck up!”   

Ray stopped using his hands, and started throwing his body against the door. 

“Should I call 911?” I whispered.

“No. Don’t make a sound,” Tracy told me.  “Lie still.” 

Without turning on the lamp, she reached into her bedside table and pulled out the gun.  The moonlight streaming in the window caught the barrel; in my sleep-confused state, I was convinced it gleamed with excitement at the prospect of imminent use. Tracy walked softly to the bedroom door and stopped, cocking her head to listen. 

Few images are more deeply burned into my memory than that of Tracy silhouetted naked in the doorway with her back to me, one hand holding a loaded Sig Sauer at her hip, the other resting lightly on the doorframe. As I watched her, my heart pounding, awe battled fear for the upper hand.  Awe won. 

After a few more minutes of banging and wailing, Ray gave up and stumbled off.  Tracy came back to bed, put the gun away, and kissed me, first on the cheek and then on the mouth. 

“I got this, baby,” she said, “I’ve always got this.” 

I never came closer to convincing myself that I could fall in love with her than I did that night.   (It was better for both of us that I didn’t, but that’s another story.)

Because of my own particular vulnerabilities, I would prefer not to have easy access to guns.  I would rather they not be in my home.  I will be haunted all my days by how my friend Kevin died, and how easily that could have been my story too; a gun-free house is my way of mitigating the omnipresent danger of suicide.  

I know better than to make generalizations based on my own particulars, however.  I do favor responsible gun ownership.  I am glad that both police officers and private citizens can carry weapons, and I am leery of too heavy-handed an infringement on that liberty.

And I think of George with his axe handle and his war trauma, and I think of the confident ease with which Tracy held her handgun in the middle of the night, and I am grateful that others can wield what I cannot.  “I got this, baby,” Tracy had told me that night. Twenty-five years later, I am thankful for those who “got this” come what come may.

———

I’ve been listening to Gabe Lee a lot this past year. Gabe is from Memphis — but his parents were both born in Taiwan. He’s one of a growing number of Asian-American country artists who are changing the face and sound of my favorite genre. This was a good choice to have on repeat today.