Monday, May 12, 2008

My Later History With Guns

When I realized how vile and full of shit my family was, I rejected all their values. I threw out the good with the bad. And some of the bad I didn't understand had become who I was. I was foul mouthed, just like my mother. I was sometimes cruel, just like my mother. I chose terribly flawed men, just like...

I gave up gun slinging. But I became a seducer, just like my dad. I lived in denial, just like my dad. I could go on and on, but I'd rather not.

Still the young men liked to take me out to the gun club. I shot skeet. Sometimes I beat them at their own game, sometimes I let them beat me. Then I seduced them and left them in the dust. I might let them fuck me for days on end, but never make a sound. Must have been a bit like fucking a corpse. Still, they professed their love for me. Sometimes I played dumb for awhile, then I ripped their guts out with my razor wit.

I did not want "love." I was dying for love. I killed myself over and over, but never with a gun. I tried to gas myself. I lived, goddamn it. I tried pills, and lived again. Spent some time in the looney bin for that one.

I dated a married man who took me shooting. He saw my talent with a gun and insisted I own my own. We went gun shopping. I bought a Browning semi-automatic, hand gun. Can't remember what caliber--probably a .22. It held a clip. That I remember. The kind of gun you didn't need to be too accurate with. Wave it around and hold the trigger down and you'll kill whatever is in the way. I lived alone. He thought I needed protection. Dumb fucker. One night after I had gone to bed, he came knocking on my door, drunk and sloppy. I told him to leave me alone--"Go home to your wife. I don't like sloppy drunks." I shouted this through the door. When he started begging, I went to my closet and got my gun. I opened the door and pointed the gun at his face. I said, "Get lost! Do not come back. Do we understand one another?" He nodded and left.

I married my boss who was gay. I knew he was gay. That's why I married him. I was nineteen and he was thirty nine. He had never had sex with a woman. I had had too much sex with men. We did not discuss what our relationship would be like. I was the house model in the designer department he bought for. His boss was homophobic. I wasn't. I assumed I'd be cover for him, and I could do what I wanted. It would be just like before, only now I wouldn't have to pay rent, and he would have cover. But he thought he was "in love" with me. We got married, and imagine my surprise that he, too, wanted to fuck me. I did not pull my gun on him, but it was a marriage made in hell for both of us. I stayed a year, like I said I would, and then I took my gun and my great wardrobe, and moved to San Francisco.

It was 1964. I lived above Golden Gate Park, a few blocks from the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. I got a job as the house model for the couture floor at I Magnins. I saved my money and put money down on a one way ticket to Italy on the luxury liner The Michelangelo. I left my gun in San Francisco in early 1965. That was the last gun I ever owned.

19 comments:

E said...

You have had the most interesting life, Utah. Thank you for letting us in on it a little bit.
E

Utah Savage said...

E, sweet woman, aren't you polite. I should have been thinking of you when I wrote this. I would have been less...savage.

Blank said...

I'm with e. You've had a fascinating life, UT.

DivaJood said...

Utah, that sounds like a great song title: I Left My Gun In San Francisco...

It is a colorful story, and where would any of us be without our color? I'm glad you gave up the guns. I'm also glad you were unsuccessful in suicide attempts. I'm also glad you have the wit and wisdom to tell about it.

Vigilante said...

I'm sorry you left your gun in Frisco, Utah.

I have always been turned on by women who 'pack'. Armed and dangerous ladies have always implied the absinthe (not absence) of malice. A pistol-packing girl is always been the ultimate aphrodasiac: all the way from Jane Fonda (Cat Ballou) through Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde), to Jodie Foster (The Brave One). A girl who can use a gun is always a prize, everything else being equal.

Utah Savage said...

I thought you'd go all pissy on me Vig, saying I was off message, or off topic, or whatever it was you gave me shit for in the past. Well, buy me a gun and I'll start packin' again. Sadly now that I am considered officially crazy and everything, I can't buy one legally. But I bet I still know how to shoot. I play pool too--used to have a pool table in the living room of the big house. Made the men swoon when they walked through the front door. I learned to play polo when I was in my early fifties. The fancy horsey kind of polo. All galloping, high priced, well trained, horseflesh and swinging mallets, and wooden ball big enough to kill you if you got hit in the head with one. It was most exhilarating. I used to ski too, till I tore my anterior cruciate. Am I impressing you with my nasty talk, you, the man with the original trophy wife?

Utah Savage said...

Vig, speaking of absinthe, I have a bottle of Pernod in my liquor cabinet, brought back to me from Paris by my Frenchy next door neighbors.

D.K. Raed said...

Oh gawd, Vig HAD to mention Cat Ballou. Now I will spend the rest of the night thinking of my first movie crush, Lee Marvin.

LOL, Diva, "I left my gun in San Francisco"!

Forrest Proper said...

Glad you're here to tell these stories of your life.

Commander Zaius said...

Curiously enough the part I found most interesting about this post was San Franciso in the 60's. I would have loved to visited that city at that time. But to be honest my wife's sister lives there now and have tried to talk my wife into us going ti her house for a visit. It keeps getting shot down, don't know if my sister-in-law does want the redneck neandethal in her house or that the cost to fly ther would be too much.

Faded said...

That read was fast and furious! Loved it!

cathouse teri said...

I've never even shot a gun.

I like the line from Man of La Mancha:
"I've seen to many beds, and known too little rest."

A whore's lament. I relate to it entirely.

Hey, you should watch Chris Titus' DVD. The one called, Norman Rockwell is Bleeding. The story of the gun is great.

cathouse teri said...

(BTW, this Cat loves Cat Ballou. One of my role models growing up! Meow.)

Blogging4Food said...

Well, that's how I imagine Vigilante. Old and decrepit as Lee Marvin's Kid Shaleen - having to pull himself together with glue and duct tape before every gun battle. That's why he wants a girl friend who can tote.
;-)

Ghost Dansing said...

i've chosen this music video because it has interesting gun lyrics and it is a nice song..... and the song and lyrics may have other nuances that i personally do not perceive, not to say that they aren't in fact there....... but much like me who isn't all here..... or there.......

i'll be that girl

Ill be that girl -- and you would be right over
If I were a field, you would be in clover
If I were the sun, you would be in shadow
If I had a gun, there'd be no tomorrow

Its time to kick off your shoes,
Learn how to choose sadness
Its time to throw off those chains,
Addle our brains with madness

cause we've got plenty of time
To grow old and die
But when at last your beauty's faded
You'll be glad that I have waited for you.......

Utah Savage said...

Ghost, lovely, yes, there would be no tomorrow...

Life As I Know It Now said...

That first husband of yours had to be bi to turn like that don't you think ;~)

Utah Savage said...

Lib, I don't think so. I think his feelings for me were an aberration. He still went to gay bars, still hung with his gay friends, only difference in his life was that he expected me to make him "feel like a man." I could not make him feel anything but pissed off that I wasn't the perfect hostess for his gay parties, and i wasn't much of a cook, and I couldn't change the way I felt about mere sex. And I still hung out with friends that he didn't approve of. He was like another daddy who wanted to fuck me and have me wait on him.

He died of aids in the early nineties in San Francisco.

sitenoise said...

God Fucking damnit Fuck.