One Better

(A fictional narrative in response to the Northern shooting, in trying to understand who, how... and also: how it could be the forth in American schools this week... AN AUDIO VERSION OF THE SAME ON VOCALO)

A gun makes people feel decisions, something like what a waterfall does to a river. Otherwise life just trickles, a dribble of water getting lost in an ocean of names. I'm gonna to set the ocean on fire and clear away some of the traffic, make it easier for who comes after.

It’s like when there's some asshole in front of you, driving all slow, creeping along. There is something to be done. All my Dad ever did was scream at them. Or when he would run into the hardware store to make keys for some new tenant he would yell back at the horns blowing behind him when he double parked.

“F YOU!” he’d yell. “GO AROUND!” And he’d tell me in the same voice that he’d be right back and not to change the radio or touch the mirrors.

I had a dream I beat his ass last night, but I didn’t kill him, didn’t wipe him off the face of the earth, so when I woke-up I wondered why, why I’d been so weak in my dream. I make mistakes over and over in my dreams so I don’t have to keep making them when I’m awake. If I’d a had my gun, I’d a stood behind it and watched his face.

Yelling doesn’t do shit. You can yell at me, yell at broke ass tenants, fucking old coke bottle glass drivers and bitches and they can just yell back. It’s a trade. To win you got to tip the fucking scales.

I seen him try to apologize before. “Don’t touch me,” I should of said, when he did that putting his hand on my head trick, like how he tried to do after the ambulance came and took Mom from her bed. The impression of her head was still in the pillow, and a bright yellow stain where she pissed herself when she died. When my piss is bright yellow I think of that. She just disappeared, trickled away. The ambulance took her and the guy put the empty bottle of pills in his pocket. That’s not the way to go. People will think it’s was your fault you died.

I used to build rockets like the one’s in the back of Boy’s Life. I’d roll paper up into tubes and use my Dad’s paper clips to hold them together. I’d do the cone on the top and then light the bottom but it wouldn’t go nowhere just burn and smoke like hell and set off the fire alarm. My Dad wouldn’t touch me, the coward. I was ready for him too.

“Maybe there’s a club you can join,” he said after smothering the fire on the windowsill with a book.

I looked at him just wishing he would try and touch me again. I had his “club,” a little bat I hid under my bed that said “tire knocker,” on it.

“It might be good for you to join a club. A group of kids," he said and then slunk out of the room.

I didn’t want to be lost in a sea of empty faces. I just wanted the rocket to take off and explode, breaking up in fiery pieces when it smashed through the speed of sound. And I wanted him to go “wow,” and “sorry,” and die before all the pieces fluttered down over the trees and houses.

The group he got me to join was a trick: college. Made out like it was some prize or award for being smart or some shit. Everyone already knew each other, just like high school. And they were just as stupid. And I didn’t need some teacher to tell me I was smart. They told me to call them “professor.” Fuck that, I called them “professor,” but I thought “teacher.” And they were too stupid to know the difference. It was my secret.

Truth is always a secret, like a loaded gun no one knows about but you. The truth is all the things your best at that people need to be shocked to realize. They need to be shocked like a dead heart that’ amped with juice and makes the body flop all over the table.

There’s nothing for me to study at school. I already know what’s important. These are all just lies that people pass around like the right kind of clothes and the right kind of music and the right kind of music and the right kind of clothes.

Chrissy only acts stupid—she’s not. She’s smarter, but needs someone to show her that it’s o.k. to leave them all behind. It’s the way she raises her hand in class, only after everyone else races to be first, and even then it goes up kind of shaking. Today she was called on and her face went bright red. She stammered as she tried to speak. That’s not her voice, I thought. What are they doing to her, I thought. They were taking out her voice and putting a drone one in its place. My teeth were clenched, but he heard me, “Mitochondrial DNA,” I answered for her. Everyone turned to look.

He said, “Thank you Dean, That’s right. But I’d called on—.”

“Who told you you call me by my first name?” I’d put him on notice.

He went on with the lesson like nothing had happened. That’s everyone’s solution, just pretend nothing’s happened. I left, figuring that Chrissy would be safe for the rest of class. People just pretend nothing happens. That’s everyone’s solution, while they are trying to make you small, little, one tiny chip at a time, that’s how they make you disappear.

That’s what they do. And it’s what they’ll keep doing. Thats's the herd. All day everyday pulling pins out of hand grenades one is gonna go off and teach them a lesson. That’s how they learn. You got to set-up barriers that they’ll remember. Boundaries not to cross. It’s that simple. The only thing they’ll understand comes out of the end of a gun. Bang. Breaking the speed of sound. Bang.

rob