December 26, 2004

On Christmas Eve morning, E.S. and I drove to his parents’ house in New Jersey. Once there, we went grocery shopping and got the ingredients for oatmeal raisin cookies and non-stepped-on peach pie (these being the favorite desserts of E.S.’s mother and father, respectively); then we had some lunch.

Then E.S.’s father took us to the shooting range and we shot guns.

For those of you who may be hoping against hope that you read this wrong, as well as for those of you who are cowering in fear at the thought of me with a loaded firearm, let me be clear: this was not, as on a previous visit, simply a case of giving me an empty gun and explaining to me how one might shoot it safely; someone actually thought it was a good idea to put a nine-millimeter gun and ammunition in my hands and show me how to use it to kill things.

I would make a list here of all the fantasies that ran through my mind about who I would go after–it was sort of like Gilbert and Sullivan’s “A More Humane Mikado” (“My object all sublime/I shall achieve in time:/To let the punishment fit the crime”), except that everybody’s punishment was to have me blow their heads off–but I have to teach aerobics tomorrow morning and I don’t think I’d be finished by then.

In any case, I started off with a target very roughly the size and shape of a human torso (with head), set up about twenty feet away. I was absolutely terrified to shoot the gun; in fact, I was so scared I almost cried. But then E.S. gave me an encouraging pat on the back, and I fired.

And hit the target in the heart.

My next shot took it right in the center of the chest.

I do not have to tell you that I was loving this.

After another dozen or so shots–all fatal–at the vaguely-human-torso-sized-and-shaped target, I felt I was ready for more advanced violence, so we asked the people running the range for something else to shoot at.

Here is what they gave us, after I was done with it.

I really should call the Department of Homeland Security and tell them that I can take care of their little terrorist problem for them. Though I suspect that our respective definitions of “terrorist” would be very, very different. And I would be the one holding the gun.

Anyway, after we were done at the shooting range, we went back to E.S.’s parents’ house, where I baked a peach pie and oatmeal raisin cookies and also cooked some cranberry sauce for the next day’s Christmas dinner; while the pie was baking, I worked on my knitting. Then, after the cookies were out of the oven, I practiced the new combination for my step class and went roller blading on the pair of roller blades E.S. had given me for Christmas, secure in the knowledge that, just hours before, I had been an implacable killing machine.

So you better not try anything.

Because I may be a big fag, but I am now a big fag who can fuck you up.