Guns (Kindle Single)

immediacy (except perhaps in dreams, where even old men and women find
themselves taking tests they have not studied for with no clothes on). The
violent actions and emotions portrayed in Rage were drawn directly from
the high school life I was living five days a week, nine months of the year.
The book told unpleasant truths, and anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret
at throwing a blanket over the truth is an asshole with no conscience.
    As far as I’m concerned, high school sucked when I went, and
probably sucks now. I tend to regard people who remember it as the best four
years of their lives with caution and a degree of pity. For most kids, it’s a
time of doubt, stress, painful self-consciousness, and unhappiness. They’re
actually the lucky ones. For the bullied underclass — the wimps, the shrimps,
and the girls who are routinely referred to as scags, bags, or hos — it’s four
years of misery and two kinds of hate: the kind you feel for yourself and the
kind you feel for the jackwads who bump you in the halls, pull down your shorts
in gym class, and pick out some charming nickname like Queerboy or Frogface
that sticks to you like glue. In Iroquois rituals of manhood, naked warriors
were sent running down a gantlet of braves swinging clubs and jabbing with the
butt ends of spears. In high school, the goal is Graduation Day instead of a
manhood feather, but I imagine the feelings are about the same.
    I had friends in high school — including a girlfriend who
stood up for me when I needed standing-up for, God bless her — and I possessed
a certain sophomoric wit that gained me respect (also a few detentions, which
were a very acceptable trade-off). Those things got me through. Even so, I
couldn’t wait to put high school behind me and meet people who did not consider
giving wedgies to losers a valid part of social interaction.
    If that was how it was for me, a more or less regular dude,
how must it be for kids like Jeff Cox, Dustin Pierce, Barry Loukaitis, or
Michael Carneal? Is it really so surprising that they would find a soul brother
in the fictional Charlie Decker? But that doesn’t mean we excuse them, or give
them blueprints to express their hate and fear. Charlie had to go.
    He was dangerous. And in more ways than one.

III. Drunks in a Barroom
    If I could wave a magic wand and have one wish granted, I’d
wish for an end to world hunger; the small shit could wait in line. If,
however, the god or genie who bestowed the magic wand told me my one wish had
to do with American politics, I think I’d wave it and make the following
proclamation: “Every liberal in the country must watch Fox News for one year,
and every conservative in the country must watch MSNBC for one year.”
(Middle-of-the-roaders could stick with CSI .)
    Can you imagine what that would be like? For the first month,
the screams of “ What IS this shit ???” would echo high to the heavens.
For the next three, there would be a period of grumbling readjustment as both
sides of the political spectrum realized that, loathsome politics aside, they
were still getting the weather, the sports scores, the hard news, and the Geico
Gecko. During the next four months, viewers might begin seeing different
anchors and commentators, as each news network’s fringe bellowers attracted
increasing flak from their new captive audiences. Adamantly shrill editorial
stances would begin to modify as a result of tweets and emails saying, “Oh,
wait a minute, Slick, that’s fucking ridiculous.” Finally, the viewers
themselves might change. Not a lot; just a slide-step or two away from the
kumbayah socialists of the left and the Tea Partiers of the right. I’m not
saying they’d re-colonize the all-but-deserted middle (lot of cheap real estate
there, my brothers and sisters), but they might close in on it a trifle.
    Isn’t that a lovely dream? Not up there with the dream of my
soul uncle, Martin Luther King, but still lovely. Think of the quiet that might
ensue if all that shrill rhetoric were turned down a few notches! Think of the
dinner table arguments that might not happen! There might even be (o lost and
shining city) a resumption of actual dialogue.
    There’s sure none now. American politics has managed to
catch itself in one of those fiendish Chinese finger pullers we used to buy in
the dime store when we were kids, and as a result, two muscular and capable
hands can do no work. The wrangle over American fiscal policy is one