I had a Psychology class in my Junior year at Fredericksburg High. I loved it. Who can care about algebra homework when you have a paper on sexual deviation due on Monday? The chapter on criminal psychology was interesting, too, and it was right around the time the "Beltway Sniper" was shooting folks in and around my town so we spent a long time going over false empowerment and all that; but my favorite was always mental disorders -- the penultimate of which is Dissociative Identity Disorder.
People call it "Multiple Personalities" usually. It's fascinating, the reality of it. Sure, it's used as a cheap plot device in a lot of bad fiction to the point that most people start to question whether it really exists (like amnesia), but the mechanics of it are downright admirable.
You see, in some cases when a person's body is experiencing some severe trauma his mind just decides that it's not going to deal with this, so it ducks back into the dark recesses of the brain and invents on-the-spot a new personality or character to take your place and handle the trauma (typically when your mind gives up you throw up and pass out, but it's the rare cases when the mind makes up an imaginary friend to take its place). This usually crops up in cases of repeated trauma, like a girl being consistently raped by a relative; the alternate personality will take over and handle it and leaves the "real" personality with no memory of what went on. You just wake up a few hours later, thinking you were asleep while "somebody else" was dealing with the pain of reality.
This creates massive havoc in the brain's infrastructure, but the real problem is the one associated with all coping mechanisms. As someone who drinks to forget his problems will soon start drinking for no reason, a person whose brain splits off into multiple personalities to avoid dealing with problems will start doing it for no reason. Coping mechanisms are addictive, and people with DID can go their whole lives without consciously realizing that their life is being shared between two or more identities who simmer below the surface and struggle for control.
If those problems could be solved, the concept has a high value for consumer application, as I see it. There's been many times when I have to deal with crap and I wish I could just stroke off and have someone take over my body and I can wake up later with problems bypassed. Times like when I have to write stupid huge essays or for some reason have to sit around for hours to wait for something, it would be nice if some broken part of my psyche could take over for me.
Obviously, when I got in that fight or shot guns that well and couldn't consciously account for my actions the first thing I thought of was that maybe my dream had come true and I had formed a separate identity to defend myself. I suppose if someone were to have a split personality, the ideal would be to have one that could put four attackers on the floor in seconds or tag three bullet holes in a straight ascension in center-mass of a target ten feet away; it's just not realistic. I didn't show any of the signs of Dissociative Identity Disorder. I was never missing any time, I was always painfully aware of how unusual the world was becoming. I hadn't pulled the genetic lottery winner, my brain was all Chris all day.
If there ever was a time when I'd want to be able to leave my body behind and let someone else deal with this for me, it would have been now. My father was dead and I didn't seem to care, he'd left me more money than any 17-year-old should ever be accountable for, I'd assaulted four teenagers and nearly punched a cop and all the people who should have cared didn't, my powers of observation seemed to be running on overdrive, I could shoot a 9mm semi-auto like it was a squirt gun, and now that squirt gun was sitting in a box under a plastic bag filled with ammo behind me as my car sat parked in someone's driveway while the red and blue lights of a police cruiser spun around. A 16-year-old girl sat in the seat next to me, watching my face and expecting me to tell her what to do.
All I could do was stare at the rear-view mirror, past the police officer stepping out of his car, past the unlit street and shadows of mailboxes and sidewalks, hoping I could see into the inky darkness of the back of my mind. If ever there was a time to have a split personality, this was it, and boy was I trying.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Knock on Wood
Trying to ignore the fact that there was now a -- well, two lethal weapons in the back seat of my car, we stopped at a Wendy's in Lorton before the expressway so we could have the some food since it was around 4pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast.
I got a spicy chicken sandwich with fries and Dr. Pepper, Amy got a double cheeseburger with a side salad and a milk.
"Milk? Are you 16," I said as soon as she'd ordered, "or 6?"
"What's wrong with milk? It does a body good."
I fought every instinct to make a lewd joke about that.
"Besides," she continued, "they make them in these cool bottles now and offer them at all the fast foods so hopefully there'll be fewer fat kids running around in the future."
"I don't think it would be hard to stop fat kids from running around," I said as our trays were served up.
We found a table and unwrapped our sandwiches like Christmas presents, Amy asked if I'd told my mom about anything. I told her I hadn't yet, not because I wasn't sure if she was "one of them" but because I was never sure if I wasn't making too big a deal about everything.
I felt like too much attention was being put on me when Amy was around, so I asked her if she told her parents where she was going today.
"Did I tell my dad I was going an hour upstate to shoot guns with a boy? No, I didn't." She jabbed at a tomato slice from her salad with her fork.
With a boy. Was that a joke about what this might look like, or what it was? I didn't know anything about either. Jeez, she's 16. Well, I was 17. Maybe she was going to turn 17 soon, because if not I was going to become two years older than her in a month. I could ask her when her birthday is, but I don't want to keep bringing that up.
I realized just then that I hadn't said anything in quite a while, and pulled my eyes away from Amy's salad. "So what did you tell him?" I asked.
"That I was going to the mall with some girlfriends. He doesn't like to deal with girl stuff so he doesn't keep track of my friends well enough to know I don't have any girlfriends," she said.
Her hair kept falling from behind her ear and into her face. The streaks of color had mostly grown out and were fading. I noticed she wasn't wearing the "I'm a punk" wristbands she used to wear, and her shirt wasn't heralding any bands or 1980s fad. She wasn't using pencil under her eyes anymore either, it made her face look more innocent.
"What about your mom?" I asked. I never heard her say anything about her mother in the few times the conversation wasn't on me.
Amy held her lower lip in her teeth for a moment before saying, "My mom left about six years ago."
Ah crap.
"Oh," I said. "Sorry."
She shook her head, "No, it's alright. She had a breakdown or something, said she couldn't live with my dad anymore and at first said she couldn't even look at me. She moved out, never got around to filing for divorce. After a few months she started talking to me again, she calls every once in a while. Kind of distant, still, but I dunno. My dad's been different since then too, he left the Marines and started doing construction. Sometimes I think he did something that freaked the hell out of her, but he never talks about it."
"Wow." I didn't know what else to say.
Her face flushed for a moment. "Yeah," she said.
"Do you have any siblings?" I asked.
"Nope, only-child-syndrome; just like you."
Just like me.
"But anyway," Amy continued, "since he keeps his distance from me I get plenty of freedom. If I wanted to I could be doing all kinds of wild stuff."
"Like driving an hour upstate to go shoot guns with a boy," I said. We both laughed, I was glad I could bring some levity to the conversation at last.
Amy pulled a napkin around in front of her. "I don't have a pen," she said, "but this makes, what, six?"
"What? The shooting?"
"Yeah, the shooting. I'm not like an expert, but you shouldn't be able to shoot like that on will."
And so the conversation was back on me. "Might bunch it together with the fight thing. Maybe something is just different with my brain where I memorize all the stuff I see in movies, like fight scenes and gun fights, and it all simmers there under the surface waiting to be summoned up."
Amy snuck one of my fries.
I thought for a second and said, "Maybe I'm some weird Remembers-Everything Kid, and the FBI or NSA has been paying Mr. Comstock to keep an eye on me and stop the word from getting out until they could figure out a way to use me."
Amy frowned, "And your dad got close to finding out so they killed him?"
I shrugged. "Maybe he just died. People die. Maybe this is all just some crazy way for me to keep my mind off of the fact that my dad is dead."
Amy looked disappointed, "I asked you about that before, at Starbucks, and you said you thought this was real."
"Maybe I wanted it to be real, maybe I wanted to keep going on not even thinking about the reality of the situation and keep my brain in fairy-tale land, maybe I wanted to get you to keep talking to me."
This conversation was entirely too deep to be taking place at a Wendy's.
"You think I just talk to you because I think you're a ninja or Batman or Jason Bourne or whatever it is any given minute?" Amy asked, defensive.
I didn't say anything.
"I talk to you," she went on, "because this is interesting, and you're interesting. And because you talk back, and don't just think I want to borrow your chemistry notes."
"You don't take chemistry."
"You know what I mean."
"You didn't drink your milk."
"Are you mad at me now?"
I pressed my back against the chair and leaned my head back. I don't know what I'm mad at.
"No. I'm just worried, I think, that if this whole thing is real. If there's some big, government... thing going on here, and it now involves me and guns..." I trailed off.
"What?" Amy asked.
"...then it's only going to get worse."
Amy set her elbow on the table and plopped her chin in her hand. "You should knock on wood," she said.
"You should drink your milk," I said.
"I'm serious."
"The table's formica."
"That's not wood?'
"Laminated plastic composite."
"You should find some wood."
I stood up, we were both done eating. "Come on," I said, "you can take your milk to-go."
And we were gone. I pulled out of the parking lot and could see the sign for the highway onramp when a bright light filled my vision. I looked up at my rear-view mirror, the car behind me was flashing brights. "What is this?" I said to myself, angling the mirror to get the light out of my eyes, then more lights came -- these ones red and blue and spiraling. The car behind me was a cop, trying to pull me over.
I swore, and tried to pull over but the road I was on had no shoulder and I didn't want to just stop in the lane, so I flashed my brakes and kept going slowly until I got to a road I could turn into. It was a residential road with houses on both sides onward as far as I could see in the dusk light. I pulled into the first driveway, and the police cruiser stopped on the road behind my car.
"Were you speeding?" Amy asked.
"No, I don't kno--" I was reaching for my car's registration when I suddenly remembered the gun in my back seat. And the hundreds of bullets. And the knife. I might as well have stopped and bought some crack rocks and strapped a dead hooker to my trunk.
I should have found some wood.
I got a spicy chicken sandwich with fries and Dr. Pepper, Amy got a double cheeseburger with a side salad and a milk.
"Milk? Are you 16," I said as soon as she'd ordered, "or 6?"
"What's wrong with milk? It does a body good."
I fought every instinct to make a lewd joke about that.
"Besides," she continued, "they make them in these cool bottles now and offer them at all the fast foods so hopefully there'll be fewer fat kids running around in the future."
"I don't think it would be hard to stop fat kids from running around," I said as our trays were served up.
We found a table and unwrapped our sandwiches like Christmas presents, Amy asked if I'd told my mom about anything. I told her I hadn't yet, not because I wasn't sure if she was "one of them" but because I was never sure if I wasn't making too big a deal about everything.
I felt like too much attention was being put on me when Amy was around, so I asked her if she told her parents where she was going today.
"Did I tell my dad I was going an hour upstate to shoot guns with a boy? No, I didn't." She jabbed at a tomato slice from her salad with her fork.
With a boy. Was that a joke about what this might look like, or what it was? I didn't know anything about either. Jeez, she's 16. Well, I was 17. Maybe she was going to turn 17 soon, because if not I was going to become two years older than her in a month. I could ask her when her birthday is, but I don't want to keep bringing that up.
I realized just then that I hadn't said anything in quite a while, and pulled my eyes away from Amy's salad. "So what did you tell him?" I asked.
"That I was going to the mall with some girlfriends. He doesn't like to deal with girl stuff so he doesn't keep track of my friends well enough to know I don't have any girlfriends," she said.
Her hair kept falling from behind her ear and into her face. The streaks of color had mostly grown out and were fading. I noticed she wasn't wearing the "I'm a punk" wristbands she used to wear, and her shirt wasn't heralding any bands or 1980s fad. She wasn't using pencil under her eyes anymore either, it made her face look more innocent.
"What about your mom?" I asked. I never heard her say anything about her mother in the few times the conversation wasn't on me.
Amy held her lower lip in her teeth for a moment before saying, "My mom left about six years ago."
Ah crap.
"Oh," I said. "Sorry."
She shook her head, "No, it's alright. She had a breakdown or something, said she couldn't live with my dad anymore and at first said she couldn't even look at me. She moved out, never got around to filing for divorce. After a few months she started talking to me again, she calls every once in a while. Kind of distant, still, but I dunno. My dad's been different since then too, he left the Marines and started doing construction. Sometimes I think he did something that freaked the hell out of her, but he never talks about it."
"Wow." I didn't know what else to say.
Her face flushed for a moment. "Yeah," she said.
"Do you have any siblings?" I asked.
"Nope, only-child-syndrome; just like you."
Just like me.
"But anyway," Amy continued, "since he keeps his distance from me I get plenty of freedom. If I wanted to I could be doing all kinds of wild stuff."
"Like driving an hour upstate to go shoot guns with a boy," I said. We both laughed, I was glad I could bring some levity to the conversation at last.
Amy pulled a napkin around in front of her. "I don't have a pen," she said, "but this makes, what, six?"
"What? The shooting?"
"Yeah, the shooting. I'm not like an expert, but you shouldn't be able to shoot like that on will."
And so the conversation was back on me. "Might bunch it together with the fight thing. Maybe something is just different with my brain where I memorize all the stuff I see in movies, like fight scenes and gun fights, and it all simmers there under the surface waiting to be summoned up."
Amy snuck one of my fries.
I thought for a second and said, "Maybe I'm some weird Remembers-Everything Kid, and the FBI or NSA has been paying Mr. Comstock to keep an eye on me and stop the word from getting out until they could figure out a way to use me."
Amy frowned, "And your dad got close to finding out so they killed him?"
I shrugged. "Maybe he just died. People die. Maybe this is all just some crazy way for me to keep my mind off of the fact that my dad is dead."
Amy looked disappointed, "I asked you about that before, at Starbucks, and you said you thought this was real."
"Maybe I wanted it to be real, maybe I wanted to keep going on not even thinking about the reality of the situation and keep my brain in fairy-tale land, maybe I wanted to get you to keep talking to me."
This conversation was entirely too deep to be taking place at a Wendy's.
"You think I just talk to you because I think you're a ninja or Batman or Jason Bourne or whatever it is any given minute?" Amy asked, defensive.
I didn't say anything.
"I talk to you," she went on, "because this is interesting, and you're interesting. And because you talk back, and don't just think I want to borrow your chemistry notes."
"You don't take chemistry."
"You know what I mean."
"You didn't drink your milk."
"Are you mad at me now?"
I pressed my back against the chair and leaned my head back. I don't know what I'm mad at.
"No. I'm just worried, I think, that if this whole thing is real. If there's some big, government... thing going on here, and it now involves me and guns..." I trailed off.
"What?" Amy asked.
"...then it's only going to get worse."
Amy set her elbow on the table and plopped her chin in her hand. "You should knock on wood," she said.
"You should drink your milk," I said.
"I'm serious."
"The table's formica."
"That's not wood?'
"Laminated plastic composite."
"You should find some wood."
I stood up, we were both done eating. "Come on," I said, "you can take your milk to-go."
And we were gone. I pulled out of the parking lot and could see the sign for the highway onramp when a bright light filled my vision. I looked up at my rear-view mirror, the car behind me was flashing brights. "What is this?" I said to myself, angling the mirror to get the light out of my eyes, then more lights came -- these ones red and blue and spiraling. The car behind me was a cop, trying to pull me over.
I swore, and tried to pull over but the road I was on had no shoulder and I didn't want to just stop in the lane, so I flashed my brakes and kept going slowly until I got to a road I could turn into. It was a residential road with houses on both sides onward as far as I could see in the dusk light. I pulled into the first driveway, and the police cruiser stopped on the road behind my car.
"Were you speeding?" Amy asked.
"No, I don't kno--" I was reaching for my car's registration when I suddenly remembered the gun in my back seat. And the hundreds of bullets. And the knife. I might as well have stopped and bought some crack rocks and strapped a dead hooker to my trunk.
I should have found some wood.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
A Buyer's Market
Always in threes. When I tried to shoot like a normal person, I couldn't get more than two shots off before the recoil had kicked my aim all the way off the target. But when I turned my brain off, stopped thinking about the muscle movements and just tried to shoot on instinct -- like how I tie my shoes on instinct or throw a baseball without thinking about all the different arm and hand movements that come together -- three shots in a straight line.
I killed the silhouette guy at least 10 times.
"There's something I should probably tell you about myself," I said as Amy came back into the range.
"What?" she asked in stride, pulling one of the ear cups from away from her ear.
I looked at her flatly and calmly for a moment.
"I'm Batman," I said in all seriousness.
Amy made a face, "I thought you were a ninja."
I turned and looked at my perforated paper target, "Ninjas don't use guns," I said.
"Neither does Batman," Amy said while poking a fresh box of ammo into my chest.
"Oh yeah," I said after trying to keep my fictional vigilante ducks in a row, "well he should, they're freakin' sweet."
I moved Amy's free ear muff back to her ear and let off three more shots, this time with one hand.
She pulled one of my earmuffs away and said, "I think he got a bit turned off on them after his parents were shot in front of him." Then she let go of the earmuff and it sprung together and cupped my ear. Ouch.
"Ah yes," I said loud enough to breach our ear protection. "Dead parents, the great call to action."
Three more shots.
After about two hours altogether Amy had enough shooting, and by the male-female transitive property so had I. We went back into the store and returned the eye and ear protection, and set two emptied handguns on the counter.
"How was it?" the guy asked me. He was a portly guy, had a big gut squeezing between his two suspenders. Fifty, balding, uneducated.
"It was... the same as usual," I said when I remembered that I'd told him before that I went shooting all the time. Keep your lies straight.
"No, I mean the USP. It's a clean shot, isn't it?" His accent was a bit thick, didn't sound like Virginia. Georgian, if I had to guess. The state, not the country.
"Oh," I said, "Yeah, I took right to it." Amy smiled and walked past me to go look at the pocket knives. There was another customer, a guy wearing an orange camo hunting coat, looking at the knives as well, between squeaky drags through the straw of his Taco Bell cup.
The store owner wiped the gun I was using down with a rag, oiled the slide and cleaned the barrel, then affixed a metal trigger lock and placed the gun back in the glass case behind a tag that said,
USED
H&K USP
$580
"Is that cheap?" I asked the guy.
"Hell yes," he said in a snort, "new ones go for over a grand." I stepped over to look at the unused handguns and verified that.
"Why are used ones so cheap?" I asked, "Do they wear down or something?"
"Naw," the guy said with a wave of his hand, "People think they gotta buy new so it'll still be 'pristine' or whatever. That's bunk, though. It's just like buying cars. You buy a new car just so you can say nobody's driven it before, but a used car'll be broken in a bit. A brand new gun won't shoot as good as it could, it doesn't have the grease worked in and the barrel hasn't been set from the heat yet."
"Set?" I said, looking down at the used USP I was using. I wanted that gun.
"Yeah, set. The heat from cartridges firing will make the metal warp a bit, so a new gun is made with the intention of having it warp a bit. Like making a cotton shirt too big because they know it'll shrink."
"So there's no problem with buying a used gun?" I asked. Amy was still looking at knives. The Taco Bell cup guy was looking over at me now.
"As long as the gun is maintained and there's no defects. And trust me, I maintain all these guns like they were babies."
Sure, grease them down and scrape out the soot. Just like a baby.
"So..." I started, trying to shift back into the smooth guy who talked my way into renting a handgun while underage. "Could I buy this one?"
He frowned. "Did you happen to turn 18 in the last two hours?"
I frowned too, "Even if I pay with a lot of twenties?"
He laughed, "I'd love to, kid, but there's no way. The age limit for using the range is just a rule here, but the age limit for buying is the law. As lax as the gun laws are here in Virginia, I could still lose my store license or go to jail. Not happening. Shame too, because I have a bunch of accessories for this gun that're on sale this week."
Well, I hate to pass up a sale. I thought, maybe Amy was 18 now and I could give her the money and she could buy it. I called her over and asked if she was 18 yet.
"No.." she started.
"You're 17 still? Damn." It was a really pretty gun.
"Actually, no. I'm 16 still," she said a bit sheepishly.
"You're sixteen?" I said a bit too loud, then quieted down. "How are you a senior, then?"
Amy sighed, "My birthday was like the day before the cutoff and when I changed school districts in 7th grade I'd already had a bunch of classes from the 7th grade here, so they put me in 8th."
Huh.
The store owner looked a bit annoyed by now. I shrugged at him, and headed for the door with my rolled up paper target. "We can take these, right?" I asked as I was walking out the door.
"No matter how old you are," he said with a grin.
In the parking lot, we both walked toward my car when over my shoulder I heard someone call, "Hey, kid." It was the guy with the orange hunting jacket, he'd replaced his Taco Bell cup with a lit cigarette he was puffing ably from. Amy and I stopped, without thinking I moved my arm around her waist and edged her around so she was behind me. "What?" I said.
"You said you wanted to buy a used H&K?" he said, then gestured with his head over to his beat-up pickup. I handed Amy my keys and our rolled up target sheets and told her to put them in my car. She looked up at me with concerned eyes for a moment, then took the items from my hands and backed toward my car.
I crossed the parking lot toward the orange jacket guy and when I was close enough said, "Yeah, why? Are you selling one?"
He smiled, "As it happens, I am. I have a USP about two years old that I was going to try to sell here, but he told me he wasn't buying any because he had one already and didn't think it'd sell. I was hoping you were going to buy it in there so he'd take mine finally, but I figure if you want one so bad you could buy mine."
He opened the drivers side door of his truck and pulled a metal case from under his seat and unlocked it with a key from his chain. In it was a retail box with an all-black USP printed on the lid.
"It's black?" I asked, trying to keep myself positioned so I could run or kick this guy in the gizmos if he did anything weird.
"Yeah, black so it doesn't catch the light if you're trying to be sneaky, I guess," he said, took a drag from his smoke, and said, "but I just used it for target practice, of course. Cleaned and oiled it regularly. Great gun still, I just don't use it very much because I like Sigs and wanted to trade it in for a P226."
He took it from the foam fitted box and handed it to me, unloaded. I looked it over, it was just as slippery as the one I'd used. The sights were in fine condition, and there was no rust under the slide. I dropped out the magazine and pulled the trigger, it clicked normally. The serial number wasn't scratched off either.
"Hasn't been used in any shootings?" I asked.
He laughed and said, "Nope. I told you, I'm a Sig man."
It felt the same as the gun I'd just fell in love with, it just didn't have the movie-riffic silver slide.
"How much?" I asked, trying to imagine how much cash was in my wallet.
"How much was the one inside?" He asked, looking at the store's door.
"Four eighty," I lied.
"Then how's four fifty sound? He was only going to give me $400 for the trade in anyway."
"Does it need a registration or permit or anything?" I asked, hesitating.
"No, man. This is Virginia. Don't need a permit to carry, a license to own, or a registration to buy. Just need a concealed weapons permit if you intend to walk around with it tucked in your pants or something." What a great state, I thought.
I paid him, took the gun back to my car and avoided all of Amy's questions, then walked back into the gun store as the truck was pulling out.
The door chimed behind me as it closed, the owner behind the counter looked annoyed again to see me.
"You said you have USP accessories on sale now? How about I buy some while they're on sale, and when I come back next month when I'm 18 I'll be all set."
Ten minutes later I walked back to my car with a plastic bag filled with five boxes of low velocity hallow points, three extra clips, a cleaning kit, and the graphite-handled five inch pocket knife Amy had been looking at, for the hell of it.
I killed the silhouette guy at least 10 times.
"There's something I should probably tell you about myself," I said as Amy came back into the range.
"What?" she asked in stride, pulling one of the ear cups from away from her ear.
I looked at her flatly and calmly for a moment.
"I'm Batman," I said in all seriousness.
Amy made a face, "I thought you were a ninja."
I turned and looked at my perforated paper target, "Ninjas don't use guns," I said.
"Neither does Batman," Amy said while poking a fresh box of ammo into my chest.
"Oh yeah," I said after trying to keep my fictional vigilante ducks in a row, "well he should, they're freakin' sweet."
I moved Amy's free ear muff back to her ear and let off three more shots, this time with one hand.
She pulled one of my earmuffs away and said, "I think he got a bit turned off on them after his parents were shot in front of him." Then she let go of the earmuff and it sprung together and cupped my ear. Ouch.
"Ah yes," I said loud enough to breach our ear protection. "Dead parents, the great call to action."
Three more shots.
After about two hours altogether Amy had enough shooting, and by the male-female transitive property so had I. We went back into the store and returned the eye and ear protection, and set two emptied handguns on the counter.
"How was it?" the guy asked me. He was a portly guy, had a big gut squeezing between his two suspenders. Fifty, balding, uneducated.
"It was... the same as usual," I said when I remembered that I'd told him before that I went shooting all the time. Keep your lies straight.
"No, I mean the USP. It's a clean shot, isn't it?" His accent was a bit thick, didn't sound like Virginia. Georgian, if I had to guess. The state, not the country.
"Oh," I said, "Yeah, I took right to it." Amy smiled and walked past me to go look at the pocket knives. There was another customer, a guy wearing an orange camo hunting coat, looking at the knives as well, between squeaky drags through the straw of his Taco Bell cup.
The store owner wiped the gun I was using down with a rag, oiled the slide and cleaned the barrel, then affixed a metal trigger lock and placed the gun back in the glass case behind a tag that said,
USED
H&K USP
$580
"Is that cheap?" I asked the guy.
"Hell yes," he said in a snort, "new ones go for over a grand." I stepped over to look at the unused handguns and verified that.
"Why are used ones so cheap?" I asked, "Do they wear down or something?"
"Naw," the guy said with a wave of his hand, "People think they gotta buy new so it'll still be 'pristine' or whatever. That's bunk, though. It's just like buying cars. You buy a new car just so you can say nobody's driven it before, but a used car'll be broken in a bit. A brand new gun won't shoot as good as it could, it doesn't have the grease worked in and the barrel hasn't been set from the heat yet."
"Set?" I said, looking down at the used USP I was using. I wanted that gun.
"Yeah, set. The heat from cartridges firing will make the metal warp a bit, so a new gun is made with the intention of having it warp a bit. Like making a cotton shirt too big because they know it'll shrink."
"So there's no problem with buying a used gun?" I asked. Amy was still looking at knives. The Taco Bell cup guy was looking over at me now.
"As long as the gun is maintained and there's no defects. And trust me, I maintain all these guns like they were babies."
Sure, grease them down and scrape out the soot. Just like a baby.
"So..." I started, trying to shift back into the smooth guy who talked my way into renting a handgun while underage. "Could I buy this one?"
He frowned. "Did you happen to turn 18 in the last two hours?"
I frowned too, "Even if I pay with a lot of twenties?"
He laughed, "I'd love to, kid, but there's no way. The age limit for using the range is just a rule here, but the age limit for buying is the law. As lax as the gun laws are here in Virginia, I could still lose my store license or go to jail. Not happening. Shame too, because I have a bunch of accessories for this gun that're on sale this week."
Well, I hate to pass up a sale. I thought, maybe Amy was 18 now and I could give her the money and she could buy it. I called her over and asked if she was 18 yet.
"No.." she started.
"You're 17 still? Damn." It was a really pretty gun.
"Actually, no. I'm 16 still," she said a bit sheepishly.
"You're sixteen?" I said a bit too loud, then quieted down. "How are you a senior, then?"
Amy sighed, "My birthday was like the day before the cutoff and when I changed school districts in 7th grade I'd already had a bunch of classes from the 7th grade here, so they put me in 8th."
Huh.
The store owner looked a bit annoyed by now. I shrugged at him, and headed for the door with my rolled up paper target. "We can take these, right?" I asked as I was walking out the door.
"No matter how old you are," he said with a grin.
In the parking lot, we both walked toward my car when over my shoulder I heard someone call, "Hey, kid." It was the guy with the orange hunting jacket, he'd replaced his Taco Bell cup with a lit cigarette he was puffing ably from. Amy and I stopped, without thinking I moved my arm around her waist and edged her around so she was behind me. "What?" I said.
"You said you wanted to buy a used H&K?" he said, then gestured with his head over to his beat-up pickup. I handed Amy my keys and our rolled up target sheets and told her to put them in my car. She looked up at me with concerned eyes for a moment, then took the items from my hands and backed toward my car.
I crossed the parking lot toward the orange jacket guy and when I was close enough said, "Yeah, why? Are you selling one?"
He smiled, "As it happens, I am. I have a USP about two years old that I was going to try to sell here, but he told me he wasn't buying any because he had one already and didn't think it'd sell. I was hoping you were going to buy it in there so he'd take mine finally, but I figure if you want one so bad you could buy mine."
He opened the drivers side door of his truck and pulled a metal case from under his seat and unlocked it with a key from his chain. In it was a retail box with an all-black USP printed on the lid.
"It's black?" I asked, trying to keep myself positioned so I could run or kick this guy in the gizmos if he did anything weird.
"Yeah, black so it doesn't catch the light if you're trying to be sneaky, I guess," he said, took a drag from his smoke, and said, "but I just used it for target practice, of course. Cleaned and oiled it regularly. Great gun still, I just don't use it very much because I like Sigs and wanted to trade it in for a P226."
He took it from the foam fitted box and handed it to me, unloaded. I looked it over, it was just as slippery as the one I'd used. The sights were in fine condition, and there was no rust under the slide. I dropped out the magazine and pulled the trigger, it clicked normally. The serial number wasn't scratched off either.
"Hasn't been used in any shootings?" I asked.
He laughed and said, "Nope. I told you, I'm a Sig man."
It felt the same as the gun I'd just fell in love with, it just didn't have the movie-riffic silver slide.
"How much?" I asked, trying to imagine how much cash was in my wallet.
"How much was the one inside?" He asked, looking at the store's door.
"Four eighty," I lied.
"Then how's four fifty sound? He was only going to give me $400 for the trade in anyway."
"Does it need a registration or permit or anything?" I asked, hesitating.
"No, man. This is Virginia. Don't need a permit to carry, a license to own, or a registration to buy. Just need a concealed weapons permit if you intend to walk around with it tucked in your pants or something." What a great state, I thought.
I paid him, took the gun back to my car and avoided all of Amy's questions, then walked back into the gun store as the truck was pulling out.
The door chimed behind me as it closed, the owner behind the counter looked annoyed again to see me.
"You said you have USP accessories on sale now? How about I buy some while they're on sale, and when I come back next month when I'm 18 I'll be all set."
Ten minutes later I walked back to my car with a plastic bag filled with five boxes of low velocity hallow points, three extra clips, a cleaning kit, and the graphite-handled five inch pocket knife Amy had been looking at, for the hell of it.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Lucky Shot
I'm leaning over a glass counter, the edge is digging into my stomach. Amy is standing next to me, watching expectantly over my shoulder. A salesman stands behind the counter, each hand hovering a few inches from the two selections my eyes are darting between. I like the silver one; Amy had her eye on it since the beginning. The other was silver and graphite with clean lines; the light hit it beautifully. There was a gold piece down in the case that actually looked kind of nice, but was way -- way too tacky. I scratched my chin, they were both so expensive. I shifted my weight between my feet and sighed, then pointed at the one on the right; the silver and graphite one. "This one," I said to the store keeper, "the H&K. I'll try this one."
"Ok, sure," the man said. "How many boxes of ammo do you want?"
Umm...
Amy's big idea for Saturday was to go shooting. She'd gone online and found a gun store with a pistol range in Lorton that would let you rent their guns for the range. We drove my white '99 Honda Civic, it took about 50 minutes on I-95 which took us right through Quantico. From the highway all you could see of Quantico was the dense woods of the USMC base on either side of the road but somehow it still felt creepy to me. Somewhere behind those trees was a University with a lab that my Dad worked in for over 25 years and I'd never even been there. I kept driving, but I knew somewhere beyond the forest and brick there were probably answers to questions I haven't gotten around to asking yet.
When we got to Lorton we stopped at a branch of the bank where most of my money was and I withdrew a few hundred dollars, all in hundred dollar bills, so when the man at the gun store told us that we had to be 18 years old to use the range I could hold up a few hundreds and say, "even if I pay with twenties?" That worked, well enough, and now all I have to do is choose a gun when I know nothing about them. Amy picked hers in a snap; she'd told me her dad was in the Corps when he was younger and that he had a Beretta 92 that he let Amy shoot a few times, so she was the resident expert. I just picked the one that looked the coolest, which was apparently a Heckler & Koch USP with a silver slide.
"It's a choice weapon," the shop guy had said, "they made them especially for the US Special Ops."
"Neat," I said, feeling kind of silly.
Amy wanted us, or me specifically, to go shooting because she figured that if I am indeed able to fight unusually well -- maybe I'm also able to shoot unusually well. Short of picking random fights, there's no easy way to test my fight skills again, but testing my firearm skills is only a rental away. It all seemed kind of dumb to me. I grabbed the gun I picked and a box of .45 ammo and sauntered into the shooting range with stupid huge earmuff things on my head. Amy followed behind me with two paper sheets with plain-looking black silhouettes. The indoor range was otherwise empty, with about 15 firing positions all in a row. I set my gun down on the platform inside one of the positions and Amy set up in the one next to it. I figured out how to attach the target sheet onto the metal clips and sent it back a few feet with a rickety-sounding electronic pully. Amy slid bullets into the clip of her gun in silence, and I tried to emulate her as if I knew what I was doing. After about eight rounds, the resistance of the spring was making it near impossible to slide any more bullets into the clip; I figured they must use machines to load them to capacity, or maybe it was just because my hands were shaking. I was holding little explosives in my hand, lead and steel wrapped around explosive powder. I wasn't even holding the gun but I was sure I was going to somehow make these bullets explode on their own and take my hand off. The earmuffs made my quickened pulse echo back into my ears. I gave up on loading more rounds and slid the half-full clip into the gun to a satisfying click. Amy was just watching me with a half smirk on her face.
I set the gun back down and gestured to Amy for her to go first. She didn't understand, and pulled the muff away from one ear and said "What?" which barely made it through my own ear protection. I freed one of my own ears and said, "You take a few shots first." I hoped my nervousness wasn't showing.
She smiled, and stepped back into her firing position. I had to step out of mine to see what she was doing. She pulled back on her gun's slide, held the gun straight forward with both hands, held her breath, and pulled. A loud bang tore through the concrete room and a lead bullet tore through the paper hanging about 6 feet away from her. Mister black target man had a fresh hole in his shoulder. Looked easy enough.
I went back to my partition and picked up my gun. It felt heavy now, the cold metal sucked the heat from my hand. I was holding a lethal weapon. I could freaking kill someone. It's a creepy feeling.
I held up the gun as Amy had, pulled the slide back as Amy had, and pulled the trigger as Amy had. Nothing. Stupid safety.
I flicked the switch on the side of the gun from a white S to a red F and readied again. I held my breath, aimed at the middle of the target's featureless face, and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked loudly in my hand and the empty cartridge sprung out as the slide kicked back; the cartridge spun through the air, bounced off the partition wall to my right, and popped me right in the cheek. It was hot, as if it just been party to a controlled explosion of magnesium and sulfur. I screamed and swiped at my cheek, it scared the hell out of me. Nobody ever seems to talk about the flying cartridges or show them in movies. Those little buggers have a mind of their own. Through the muffs I could hear Amy laughing, I turned around and saw her behind me covering her mouth and giggling, but she wasn't looking at me. I followed her eyeline over to my paper target which dangled happily from the clips in perfect health. I hadn't even hit the paper. What the heck?
"What the heck?" I said, pulling down my ear protection. "How did I miss? How could it be that complicated? You point and shoot."
Amy shrugged, still giggling, and went back into her position and began popping more rounds into her target.
I growled and picked my gun up, fired through five more rounds. A few of them hit the paper, one actually hit the target... in the arm. This was surprising. It seems like if you aim at something and shoot, you should hit where you aim. There shouldn't be too much more to it. Sure, it should be hard to be super-accurate or to shoot with one hand, but the bullet should go in the general area of where I point.
I finished my rounds and dropped the clip out, angrily sliding more bullets into the clip. I went through all of those, and another clip, and another. My box of ammo was half spent. I dropped the gun and stepped back. Amy was having a blast, it seemed.
"I guess that answers you question," I said once she'd stopped and taken off her earmuffs. "I'm not Jason Bourne."
"Yeah, you don't have the shoulders," she said.
I pointed at my depressing target, "Or the weapons training."
"Well," she said in deep thought, "when you got in that fight, were you thinking about what you were doing or just doing it?" She was holding the gun still, down at her side.
"I didn't think about it, I was too freaked out by the guy about to smash my face in. It was like an instinct. Like watching a bunch of action movies was just burying all those fight scenes into my subconscious."
"You've seen enough gun fights, too. Maybe they're down in your subconscious," she paused for a second. "So don't think about shooting, just pick up the gun and shoot. Don't think about your arms or aiming. Close your eyes, take a breath, open them, and shoot."
So I got back in my firing position and slid my ear covers on. I slid a newly-loaded clip into the gun, and set it down on the platform in front of me. What a waste of time.
I looked up at the target, the lifeless outline of a man was mocking me. Don't think, just shoot. That's what they told soldiers in World War 2 so they wouldn't have to consider the fact that they were going to be killing human beings. Just shoot. Shoot the damn gun.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, as Amy suggested. Eyes still closed, I took some more deep breaths and visualized the target hanging in front of me. I imagined he was that Mexican kid, about to punch me -- no, about to shoot me. He tracked me down and brought a gun, he was going to shoot me right in the face. He was going to shoot me then shoot Amy -- just like he shot my dad. I could see the stupid little grin and stupid little pesudo-mustache so popular among people in the midst of puberty. He shot my dad. He killed my dad and he's going to kill me.
I opened my eyes, picked up the gun and slowly let out my breath as I unloaded three shots in rapid succession. Three cartridges fell gracefully to the ground and danced around my feet. I put the gun down, felt my arm pulsing. I looked up at my target, finally, and there they were. Three holes, in a straight line, from the heart up to the base of the throat, all equally spaced. He didn't look so happy anymore.
I turned around to Amy who was staring, mouth open, past me and at the target. I pulled off my ear muffs and said, "Can you go get me some more ammo?"
"Ok, sure," the man said. "How many boxes of ammo do you want?"
Umm...
Amy's big idea for Saturday was to go shooting. She'd gone online and found a gun store with a pistol range in Lorton that would let you rent their guns for the range. We drove my white '99 Honda Civic, it took about 50 minutes on I-95 which took us right through Quantico. From the highway all you could see of Quantico was the dense woods of the USMC base on either side of the road but somehow it still felt creepy to me. Somewhere behind those trees was a University with a lab that my Dad worked in for over 25 years and I'd never even been there. I kept driving, but I knew somewhere beyond the forest and brick there were probably answers to questions I haven't gotten around to asking yet.
When we got to Lorton we stopped at a branch of the bank where most of my money was and I withdrew a few hundred dollars, all in hundred dollar bills, so when the man at the gun store told us that we had to be 18 years old to use the range I could hold up a few hundreds and say, "even if I pay with twenties?" That worked, well enough, and now all I have to do is choose a gun when I know nothing about them. Amy picked hers in a snap; she'd told me her dad was in the Corps when he was younger and that he had a Beretta 92 that he let Amy shoot a few times, so she was the resident expert. I just picked the one that looked the coolest, which was apparently a Heckler & Koch USP with a silver slide.
"It's a choice weapon," the shop guy had said, "they made them especially for the US Special Ops."
"Neat," I said, feeling kind of silly.
Amy wanted us, or me specifically, to go shooting because she figured that if I am indeed able to fight unusually well -- maybe I'm also able to shoot unusually well. Short of picking random fights, there's no easy way to test my fight skills again, but testing my firearm skills is only a rental away. It all seemed kind of dumb to me. I grabbed the gun I picked and a box of .45 ammo and sauntered into the shooting range with stupid huge earmuff things on my head. Amy followed behind me with two paper sheets with plain-looking black silhouettes. The indoor range was otherwise empty, with about 15 firing positions all in a row. I set my gun down on the platform inside one of the positions and Amy set up in the one next to it. I figured out how to attach the target sheet onto the metal clips and sent it back a few feet with a rickety-sounding electronic pully. Amy slid bullets into the clip of her gun in silence, and I tried to emulate her as if I knew what I was doing. After about eight rounds, the resistance of the spring was making it near impossible to slide any more bullets into the clip; I figured they must use machines to load them to capacity, or maybe it was just because my hands were shaking. I was holding little explosives in my hand, lead and steel wrapped around explosive powder. I wasn't even holding the gun but I was sure I was going to somehow make these bullets explode on their own and take my hand off. The earmuffs made my quickened pulse echo back into my ears. I gave up on loading more rounds and slid the half-full clip into the gun to a satisfying click. Amy was just watching me with a half smirk on her face.
I set the gun back down and gestured to Amy for her to go first. She didn't understand, and pulled the muff away from one ear and said "What?" which barely made it through my own ear protection. I freed one of my own ears and said, "You take a few shots first." I hoped my nervousness wasn't showing.
She smiled, and stepped back into her firing position. I had to step out of mine to see what she was doing. She pulled back on her gun's slide, held the gun straight forward with both hands, held her breath, and pulled. A loud bang tore through the concrete room and a lead bullet tore through the paper hanging about 6 feet away from her. Mister black target man had a fresh hole in his shoulder. Looked easy enough.
I went back to my partition and picked up my gun. It felt heavy now, the cold metal sucked the heat from my hand. I was holding a lethal weapon. I could freaking kill someone. It's a creepy feeling.
I held up the gun as Amy had, pulled the slide back as Amy had, and pulled the trigger as Amy had. Nothing. Stupid safety.
I flicked the switch on the side of the gun from a white S to a red F and readied again. I held my breath, aimed at the middle of the target's featureless face, and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked loudly in my hand and the empty cartridge sprung out as the slide kicked back; the cartridge spun through the air, bounced off the partition wall to my right, and popped me right in the cheek. It was hot, as if it just been party to a controlled explosion of magnesium and sulfur. I screamed and swiped at my cheek, it scared the hell out of me. Nobody ever seems to talk about the flying cartridges or show them in movies. Those little buggers have a mind of their own. Through the muffs I could hear Amy laughing, I turned around and saw her behind me covering her mouth and giggling, but she wasn't looking at me. I followed her eyeline over to my paper target which dangled happily from the clips in perfect health. I hadn't even hit the paper. What the heck?
"What the heck?" I said, pulling down my ear protection. "How did I miss? How could it be that complicated? You point and shoot."
Amy shrugged, still giggling, and went back into her position and began popping more rounds into her target.
I growled and picked my gun up, fired through five more rounds. A few of them hit the paper, one actually hit the target... in the arm. This was surprising. It seems like if you aim at something and shoot, you should hit where you aim. There shouldn't be too much more to it. Sure, it should be hard to be super-accurate or to shoot with one hand, but the bullet should go in the general area of where I point.
I finished my rounds and dropped the clip out, angrily sliding more bullets into the clip. I went through all of those, and another clip, and another. My box of ammo was half spent. I dropped the gun and stepped back. Amy was having a blast, it seemed.
"I guess that answers you question," I said once she'd stopped and taken off her earmuffs. "I'm not Jason Bourne."
"Yeah, you don't have the shoulders," she said.
I pointed at my depressing target, "Or the weapons training."
"Well," she said in deep thought, "when you got in that fight, were you thinking about what you were doing or just doing it?" She was holding the gun still, down at her side.
"I didn't think about it, I was too freaked out by the guy about to smash my face in. It was like an instinct. Like watching a bunch of action movies was just burying all those fight scenes into my subconscious."
"You've seen enough gun fights, too. Maybe they're down in your subconscious," she paused for a second. "So don't think about shooting, just pick up the gun and shoot. Don't think about your arms or aiming. Close your eyes, take a breath, open them, and shoot."
So I got back in my firing position and slid my ear covers on. I slid a newly-loaded clip into the gun, and set it down on the platform in front of me. What a waste of time.
I looked up at the target, the lifeless outline of a man was mocking me. Don't think, just shoot. That's what they told soldiers in World War 2 so they wouldn't have to consider the fact that they were going to be killing human beings. Just shoot. Shoot the damn gun.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, as Amy suggested. Eyes still closed, I took some more deep breaths and visualized the target hanging in front of me. I imagined he was that Mexican kid, about to punch me -- no, about to shoot me. He tracked me down and brought a gun, he was going to shoot me right in the face. He was going to shoot me then shoot Amy -- just like he shot my dad. I could see the stupid little grin and stupid little pesudo-mustache so popular among people in the midst of puberty. He shot my dad. He killed my dad and he's going to kill me.
I opened my eyes, picked up the gun and slowly let out my breath as I unloaded three shots in rapid succession. Three cartridges fell gracefully to the ground and danced around my feet. I put the gun down, felt my arm pulsing. I looked up at my target, finally, and there they were. Three holes, in a straight line, from the heart up to the base of the throat, all equally spaced. He didn't look so happy anymore.
I turned around to Amy who was staring, mouth open, past me and at the target. I pulled off my ear muffs and said, "Can you go get me some more ammo?"
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