The living room was shrouded in pot smoke. People stared, fixated on the forty-two inch television. The screen displayed an actor with a long, rigid nose. He was tall, lanky, and sickly with long dark hair. His name is Adrien Brody. He played the distraught middle brother in a group of three. At that particular moment, the actor was in the desert. Sand covered his grey suit and red tie. Lips contorted, eyes bent: Feigning disappointment seemed preternatural to him.
I sat in a hazy corner of the room, transfixed. And my meaty, red hand scratched the red hairs on my face.
Swirling the arid smoke like cotton candy mist in the light, the fan moved slower than time its self. Indignant, decaying, wooden panels unsteadily fluttered outward in no real direction. The air’s swish-and-sway spread the skunky, sweet aroma up my nose and mouth and into my eyes.
Jon’s one-bedroom apartment was unusually serene that night. The beer bottles that typically littered the floor had been disposed of earlier that evening—courtesy of me: Taylor. And the ashtray that always rested on the center rug had less than a full 20 pack of cigarette butts in it. From the opened window, I could vaguely hear the voices of single mothers calling their children in for bed and an occasional siren passing by. They coalesced with the sounds of the television every time the blunt was passed around the room—every time I took a long, thick hit. The cool autumn air slid down my neck and nestled deep into the small of my back as it breezed its way through the window. But when the clock read 11:13 pm, when the movie stopped, when all of the children went to bed, when we were all high beyond belief, odd notions and ludicrous acts came into fruition.
Zachum made a quick walk to his car, in order to grab his guitar and mandolin. Within the five or ten minutes Zachum was gone, I managed to find a series of markers and an empty pizza box that I had forgotten to throw away. When he returned with cases for both instruments in hand, I had already covered half of the box in dicks and vaginas. Each was drawn in a different style. Some were more fluid and comical, while others were more realistic and glorified. When these depraved drawings caught Zachum’s eye, he decided to join in momentarily, grabbing a purple marker and drawing pubic hairs for the genitalia he seemed to favor—typically the more realistic penises.
After a while, Zachum seemed to lose interest with my drawings of the human anatomy and he liberated his guitar from its case. I just kept on drawing. I drew until I covered the entire box with boobs, butts, and everything on a person’s body that most people would deem inappropriate. I wanted to laugh at my creations—my escape from reality. But an old friend of Jon’s from his high school days was over: Chris.
He always wore his dog tags. He wore shirts with sleeves just short enough to show the flaming heart tattoo with swords going through it on his right arm and the tattoo depicting Dante’s 3rd level of hell on his left. His hair was always perfectly smoothed out with the front converging at a tip. But none of that really bothered me about Chris. I didn’t mind him and Jon playing cards together on the floor. It was a game that they played every time that he was over—bet drinks with the dealer on whether one card falls between the two revealed to the guesser. This time Jon was the dealer. A Suicide King and an Ace of Spades were outstretched. Naturally, Chris declined any sort of gamble and passed on the round. He wasn’t that dumb.
What made my eyes widen and my throat tighten up wasn’t Chris at all. It was the Glock 22 that he bore constantly on his right side. And his shirt that night, like every night, was trimmed just low enough so you could see two/thirds of the holstered gun dangling. Unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t stoned. But he was certainly tipsy off of the Budweiser he was drinking.
When I looked up from the pizza box, there were now eight cans on the floor. And there were certainly over twenty cigarettes in the ashtray by now. He reached for another red, making amiable eye contact with me as I faced the room. He even complimented me on the great job I did of cleaning up Jon’s apartment. I returned the thank you and reminded him that Jon had been a friend of mine as well. Jon, goofy and anxious, said little and none of it made any sense whatsoever. Naturally, Chris made a ludicrous connection to Jon’s incoherent mumbling and some crazy story about drinking cough syrup and going to the zoo when they were seventeen. I nodded and grinned, trying my best to feign attention. I even said things like: “Yeah?!” “That’s Awesome!” and “Dude…what the fuck…that’s fucking crazy!” When the story was done, Chris lost himself in the game once again and I turned around to watch Zachum play guitar.
His longer fingers formed the shape of a C-Major chord. And he began to strum loudly and sing softly. “Holland 1945” by Neutral Milk Hotel spilled forth from Zachum’s wooden pet and wide-open mouth. For a moment, he made eye contact with me, halted his strumming, and then burst forth with increased energy and a more audible, brave voice. I tried to sing along, but the words formed on my lips too slowly. Every other line was murmured, until the chorus came which I knew by heart. For a few moments we harmonized. I played off of Zachum’s music and Zachum played off of my energy. Soon, Jon joined in with the song as well. And Chris was left to flicking cards in various directions of the room in an inebriated stupor.
No sooner did we chant, “But now we must pick up every piece of the life we used to love,” than a huge series of thuds sounded on Jon’s front door. These were the thus of heavy hands: likely law enforcement. Immediately, Jon stood up and began pacing. Chris lit another cigarette and rubbed that terrifying murder tool on his hip. Zachum struck a muted chord and began running his finger up the fret board playing various notes on the High-E. And I asked a question.
I was under no circumstances allowed to go to the door. Chris would handle everything and that was that. Or at least, that’s what Chris said. Jon didn’t say much of anything beyond, “I’m so fucked right now. I’m so fucked right now. If they find out we’re smoking in here, I’ll get a charge and I won’t be a tenant and I won’t have a job anymore.” He shifted back and forth across the room, pacing in sporadic panic. His nervous feet trampled a Pabst can, spilling beer across the floor. And his fingers snapped in no particular time signature—the closest might have been sixteenths if he wasn’t such a wreck.
Chris grabbed Jon by the shoulders and stopped him mid-pace. With a brief, yet stern shake, he reassured Jon that the situation would be okay. He said that he would eliminate any threat outside. I tried to interrupt for a moment and speak logic. Chris told me to shut up and flicked the last card in his hand—a two of clubs. It grazed my ear and landed on Zachum’s shoe. Zachum picked up the card and flicked it back at Chris in laughter.
“I’ll break your fucking guitar and your mandolin if you don’t stop dicking around right now,” he said. Chris was in not in the same good humor.
I turned to Zachum. Our eyes met and I could sense fear in his glazed over stare. He turned to assess the situation again. But his eyes weren’t looking at Chris head-level. They were looking lower, but not too low. They were looking at the Glock dangling in its holster that rested on Chris’s hip. They were looking at Chris’s powerful right fist as it grazed over the holster. I only studied Zachum for a moment. My eyes were turned to Chris now too. But I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was staring at the same thing as I. That look of mutual fear, the way he stopped hitting notes on the high-E, the volume of Chris’s voice raising: we sat motionless.
“Look, um, Chris it’s pr-probably the p-police. You can’t ju-just wave your f-f-f-fucking gun like that. Just let me--” Jon stuttered.
“Bullshit, Jon! If they were police officers they would have said so. I know law enforcement. I’m in the Air Force. I know a citizen’s rights, goddamnit! They’re obligated to announce their presence.”
Zachum finally got up from where he was seated. Without saying a word, he made his way to the door. But before he could look in through the peephole, Chris grabbed him by the back of the shirt collar, yanked him, and told him to sit the fuck down. Zachum did as he was told. Without apology, Chris continued to rant about how similar things occurred in “neighborhoods such as these,” and through personal experience “it’s always an intruder.”
Zachum faded into the sound of a soft A-minor chord, trying his very best to block out the altercation—the one that I could not take eyes and ears away from. With each reproach that Chris offered to Jon, Zachum’s A-minor grew louder and louder. I was the only person in the room that noticed. The blaring chord grew more frenetic and crazed with each strike of the pick. And when Chris drew his gun, took a fresh magazine of hollow point bullets from his pocket, and shoved it into the handle, Zachum dropped the pick, raking the chord with his fingers until it sounded like an A-Minor no longer. All that could be discerned was violent noise.
“Chris! Put the fucking gun away!” I heard myself shout without thinking.
“Up yours, you fat piece of shit.” Chris said, waving the gun. “I’m going to save your life and I don’t even get a thank you.”
“Y-you know, Chris, maybe he’s right. The gun is probably unnecessary. J-just luh-look through the peephole…you know. Find out who’s there.” Jon remarked nervously.
“Jon! Quit being such a fucking bitch.” Chris said, shoving our friend. “I know what I’m doing. As long as I don’t point the gun at the person or make any threat, then we’re fine.”
For an inexplicable reason, I lost it. My voice formulated words that I could not control. “Hey. GI-Joe,” I stood shaking, “Do you want to know the truth?! You’re a paranoid fucking nut. This isn’t Iraq and this isn’t the ghetto.”
Chris stared at me with livid intensity, his fingers gripping the cool handle more tightly. “And you look like a little bitch that’s compensating for something with that thing dangling around your waist all the time,” I continued. “What are you lacking? Do you have a small dick? Is that what it is?”
I could feel the blood pulsating through my face, just as quickly as I could feel it withdraw itself, just as quickly as my face turned white, just as quickly as Chris pointed the gun at my head.
“Say another fucking word and I will end you.” He replied. His eyes turned to narrow slits and they did not relent.
Not a second later, I saw a dark blur. I heard the mock A-Minor stop. I felt some of the blood return to my face. Jon had Chris on the ground. He wailed on the behemoth with his small bony fists relentlessly, cursing him with every word that he could imagine. The gun fell from Chris’s hand and slid across the living room floor. It landed by Zachum’s shoe. He kicked it over to me and told me to hide it. Chris was beginning to wrestle his way out of Jon’s assault. Zachum noticed this and restrained Chris, before he could do anything drastic.
I stood with the gun in hand, watching the brawl. Chris squirmed out of Zachum’s headlock and kneed him in the gut. He fell to the ground, coughing violently, his ribcage pulsated inward and outward. Jon tried to fight more but to no avail. Chris merely grabbed him and tossed him to the floor.
“Jon, dude, I fucking love you like a brother,” Chris said sternly, pointing down. “But if you get up, I will stomp you.”
He made his way towards me. I pulled the chamber to make sure a bullet was engaged and without thinking pointed the gun squarely to his sternum.
“Take one more step,” I said with cool confidence, “and I will make sure your mother and father see you for what you really are—a corpse of a man with a hole planted squarely in the center of his heart.”
Chris blinked and flinched. He was unable to say a word. “I wonder, do they give military burials to fucking grunt reserves that died because they thought they were fucking big shots?” For the first time all night, a smile crossed my face. And I saw something scarier than Chris angry. A tear welled up in his left eye and he begged me softly, futilely like a woman or a child to put the gun away.
All of the sudden, Zachum’s phone rang. He crept towards the couch and picked it up. It was Pizza Palace. They called to apologize for not being able to make their delivery, but the driver heard an altercation and she felt it best to leave.
Jon struggled to get to his feet and asked when he had ordered a pizza. Zachum had called while outside grabbing his guitar and mandolin. Neither of them seemed to pay attention to Chris and I. They merely sat down.
Chris hadn’t said a word during the few moments that passed. And the tears in his eyes were sliding down both of his cheeks at rapid pace. There were no sobs—just tears. Slowly, I looked around the room. Both Zachum and Jon began to watch the situation play out. I could not discern any real emotion on their faces. But the silence spoke like the voice of a meek child, “Please, please stop.”
I slid the bullet out of the chamber, unloaded the magazine, and dropped Chris’s precious belongings on the floor.
With slow shifts of our heads, we all stared into one another’s eyes. Each of us had an expression of tiresome fear wrought about them. They were alert, wide open. Yet, every mouth was shut tight. When the clock read 1:45 AM, words of little significance, small talk, began to formulate between us. A word was never spoken of the event after that night. For the first time in our young adult lives, we knew what it meant to be human: all of us the victimizers, all of us the victimized.
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