the frigid north: guns
i’m housesitting again out in chugiak. another pretty wood cabin-style house not more than a street or two from the other house. this one has a loft-style master bedroom and a smaller more accommodating dog named lizzie. lizzie sleeps on the bed with us (but only if you lift her and help her up.)
guns
yesterday i watched the movie elephant for the first time (it came out in 2003). i’d heard about it quite a bit on because it was shot in portland, and apparently there are a lot of indiefucks in oregon.
i’m the type of person who can’t just watch a movie that is controversial in any way without subsequently researching all there is to know about the subject/event/context the movie is submerged in. so when i watched elephant i spent the next hour looking up columbine.
back in 2000 i was at columbine high school. my family and my then-boyfriend, “rocky” of two years went on a road trip together down to the grand canyon. on the way back up we went through the rocky mountain states, including (predominately, colorado). my mother, brother, sister, and i gave in to morbid curiosity and since we were there, we stopped by columbine high school. looking back, it was tacky of us, but then again, if you were there…would you have?
the high school is enormous. it is the biggest high school i’ve ever seen in my life. and it directly across the street from a gigantic suburb of medium-extremely wealthy houses. by the time we were there, they had taken down the memorial crosses on the hill that were there to represent the 13 victims. i felt like a foreigner standing there on their baseball field looking at the hill were the crosses had once been. we saw one student traversing campus by her self. she was probably used to seeing tourists, though it most likely annoyed her. they were well into the stage of moving on. there were motivational quotations painted everywhere. the columbine memorial ribbon was painted on the side of a official school vehicle. we didn’t stay long.
the weirdness of the whole thing, the movie, and reading about the event stayed with me well into last night where mr. a and i lay in bed with conan on, both of us reading mcmanus books. i thought about “gunmen”, and “shooters”.
this morning i was ready to lounge in the house. i feel more comfortable there than in the other house, but mr. a was ready to go. so i got ready and got my stuff together. mr. a found an airgun behind the couch and was disappointed when he found it was “fake” (i.e. not a real gun). i went up to the loft for the last of my things while he figured out how to make it work.
he did make it work. i saw him aim it and pull the trigger. “did you just shoot that in the house?!” i yelled. he looked at me. “what did you shoot at?!” he looked at my overnight bag. “is there a hole in it?!!” he looked back at me sheepishly. i stormed down the stairs and inspected my bag. sure enough, there was a hole through the thick canvas fabric. i pulled my jeans out of the bag. i saw a dent where the pellet hit the jeans but no hole (thankfully). i was too mad to check the rest of my clothes. i punched mr. a in the arm the way i hit my brother. as hard as i can with minimal effort. tears came to my eyes. i was really mad. mr. a made a brief apology but i barely heard him. “why don’t you shoot at your own shit!?” i grabbed my stuff and went out towards the car. on the way home he tried to make small talk, but i ignored him at first.
all i could think about was getting away from him. he made no effort to apologize in the car. he only baited me with a trip to ihop. at the restaurant he asked me if i was still mad at him. i told him i was, and that he was stupid, and that was stupid, and even my brother doesn’t shoot guns in the house.
he said “yeah he would”.
i said “even if he did, would you like to be just like my brother?”
“yeah i think your brother is a cool guy.” he said. then he smiled.
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