1990 | I am 16
On a random afternoon I am home washing dishes. Daddy walks into the kitchen. He stops, faces me, and stands there waiting for me to turn my attention toward him. I turn. He stands relaxed, his eyes meet mine. At his side he holds his 357 revolver.
He wants to frolic in my confusion and potential fear. I know this about father so cheat him of it. Calmly turn my attention back to the dishes and matter-factly inquire about his ongoings as if he is a child holding a toy.
He recognizes my dismissal, my lack of concern annoys him. He snaps out of his flat stance and without any conversation Daddy's lesson begins.
He tells me to dry my hands and gives me the weapon. I accept. I accept without fear or question or confusion. I wrap my full hand around the wooden handle with a conviction of ownership.
He tells me "point at the wall and fire". I ask for basic clarity “shoot-the-wall?” He repeats me with a mild mocking inflection rushing through to the end “yeah,,,, shoot-the-wall.” He stands back and watches.
Damn, this , “thing” I hold is heavy. I always forget how heavy it is until holding it and every time I think to myself “damn, this thing is heavy”.
It is a cannon of a weapon, a “man’s” gun. I fired it once years ago...
I am 12 years old.
My family is visiting extended family in Hartsville South Carolina. In the south, Daddy has more freedom to carry and use guns. He has his big gun with him.
I’ve watched him shoot it a few times at random target practice. I admire how brave he is for being able to harness that noise. It secretly scares me and I never want to hear it fire again. I’m sitting under him because I want him to think I’m interested and I want to be interested but I’m not. I just want his interest.
I don’t let on about my fear or my admiration, just present. He assumes I want to fire the gun because he wants me to fire his gun. When offered I pretend to be brave, pretend I've been waiting for a chance. I pretend in hopes to please my father, that if I can disguise my fear for just a single trigger pull maybe I can earn some of the same genre of admiration I have for him. I want him to know I will become a man, and this is a man's activity.
Daddy hands me the gun while rattling off instructions about aiming, having a tight grip, and pulling the trigger. I half listen, far too nervous about being tossed into the deep end of this scenario. The butterflies in my gut rage and tickle up a nervous smile that drapes uncomfortably on my face.
As the full weight of this weapon rest in my hand for the first time it feels insanely heavy, as in so heavy that I don't understand how it can be a practical weapon. On TV people run with, drop, and throw these things around yet in real life nothing about this monstrosity of metal and remotely suggests that it could be handled with anything but respect and care, I feel I should whisper in its presence.
Daddy tells me to shoot a target at the base of a tree that rests about 8 feet away. My small arm struggles to lift the weapon. I squeeze my eyes closed squinting with my right eye staring down the barrel.
The pending noise on the other side of a trigger pull is terrifying. I want to close both eyes to hide behind the thin skin of lids and just pull the trigger back to relinquish myself from my father’s attention to graduate into something he respects.
I aim and squeeze. The trigger doesn’t move, it feels locked in place. I assume something is wrong and look at my father with confusion. He immediately dismisses my look and tells me to try again.
I squeeze harder and the hammer shivers out of its seated place, floats for a second, my finger gives way to the stress and the hammer slowly sinks back into the gun.
The trigger feels as if it’s asking me “are you sure this is what you want to do???” My silent emotional answer screams “NO!!!” Nothing about this feels as if it's designed with me in mind. I recognize that I lack something in the way of needed masculinity because it's so hard yet he speaks to me with a frustration as if it should be easy. He makes me feel weak. I want to just give it back to him but Daddy's disappointment scares me far more than the noise of this weapon.
Daddy repeats the call for me to try again, he rushes his words with demand "commit and pull harder!" I commit and squeeze harder, no longer caring to aim for a perfect shot, I just point in the general direction. The hammer pivots out of the gun at a healthy distance. There is a sense of accomplishment that the trigger is mov.....
in a blink the hammer vanishes….
tikBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
... the power..........
.......... the power is not like anything I could even imagine, a senseless unmitigated rage of hatred with a recoil that left my marrow saucened.
I understood immediately that firing a weapon was literally me setting off an explosion. The weight of the gun became clear as well. This "monstrosity of metal" contained the explosion and pushed all of its frustation out into one direction. The explosion that I sat off was plenty fine killing me, the gun stopped it.
When opening my eyes I half expected a squirting stump where my hand once lived. I expected that something must have gone terribly wrong because the blast was so abrasive I just couldn't fathom that someone would intentionally involve themselves with such danger. The explosion left my arm numb along with a deafening ringing in my head.
Through some mirical, maybe even a mild state of shock I stand there and fight against the full desire to drop this device of death to the sandy earth and yelp away with my green masculinity tucked between my legs.
My father says something but I am to blown away to care. I'm lost in a calm confusion trying to wrap my head around what exactly did I just experienced and what it means. The commotion of it all branded into my being a respect that will ring through my f-ears forever.
I learned from that one experience that no part of me ever wants to fire Daddy's gun again. Nothing about it feels safe or gives me a sense of power. In fact, that one gun shot churned up more fragilities that now glimmers in depth of my gut. I don't feel more manly, I feel even more delicate, more child than man. I feel like the line of masculinity in the sand was kicked clear and redrawn at an impossible reach.
and..... *back to the kitchen*
... here I am, just a few short years later. Gun in hand ready to fire, still chasing Daddy's approval, and again choosing to suppress grounded fears for his acceptance.
I lift the black heavy metal to the wall and with assured confidence I fully commit to my intention and yank the trigger back. I snatch through the recalled difficulty, I snatch to own it with prejudice. I was loaded with over-compensation to make up for a yesteryear shivering hammer. My hammer will never shiver again. I snatch back to take the respect my father owes me, I am a man!!!!
The hammer blurs out of its seat immediately slamming back with….
“click......”
Uneventful, a whisper of nothing.
I expected more, well, expected something but not in the way of an explosion. In the emotional fine print of my brave approach and trigger snatch I was certain the gun was empty. Nothing in me even prepared for an explosion or recoil. Although Daddy is a smidge crazy he ain’t no gadamn fool.
I listen, follow directions, did what was expected without question, I was brave, I was fully committed, my hammer didn’t shiver, I was strong, I gave him unyielding trust, I am a man, a son that he can be proud of.
I feel a sense of power in unsheathing my manhood by way of holster my fears to please this gatekeeper of masculinity.
I was being tested.
I did it, I passed his test.
As he taught me, I direct the barrel to the floor and cautiously turn the butt toward him. I stand with a chest bloated with pride. I return this hunk of conquered fear to him with indifference coupled with a half-cocked smile to say “that was easy.”
Even before a complete hand-off, Daddy begins with this prepared judgmental talk, that is laced with his earlier annoyance for feeling belittling.
Essentially, he says “do this” followed up with “why did you do that?!?!?” to “don’t do what I told you!!!!” Going on with a list of what-ifs and how I should never trust anyone.
For clarity, this is not a gun-safety lesson. This becomes evident when he never explains what I should have done. He never explains how I should check the gun to see if it's loaded. The gun and this whole performance of "lesson" was nothing more than a prop to attack trust, to attack people, it was a human-safety lesson.
The lesson was “Never trust anyone, ever, not even me.”
Teaching me basic gun safety would be a great lesson and we could've skipped this dumb-ass exercise and just talked. BUT Daddy’s lessons need to have texture and an abstract depth. He dresses up the mundane and skips the needed remedials because the big colorful lesson is the only lesson that matters to him. Quiet lesson don't ring his ears.
I recognize that he needs this talk more for himself, a validation that his genre of teachable moments and life-approach has purpose and place. He takes pride that he is able to stain his lessons on to a life.
I hear his lesson, stand silent waiting for the talk to end, waiting for a dismissal of my attention. Waiting to be abandoned in silence. Soon and yet again I’ll have to make space for disappointment in myself that is born out of his disappointment in me. Yet another reminder that I’m not good enough, never good enough. A perpetual failure even when I succeed.
I listen, not shocked in the least, I know this about father. I know this story, been here far too many times not to recognize the huff and puff of the wolf at my door. He's here to blow my house down again and again and....
He means well but it rarely feels that way. He teaches too many lessons by way of pain, the lessons stick but never in a good way. His lesson leave lesions and the worse ones hide beneath my skin, to many lesions of lessons that never heal and rub raw beneath the shifting fabric of life.
On and on he talks at me as if I'm foolish for not considering his long list of what-ifs, as if I'm foolish for trusting him. He's annoyed with me for not knowing things I don't know, as if it's useless to teach me anything.
With not even a resemblance of a recap or wind down he kinda turns and walks away. I stand in place. I watch his back far longer than I need to. I stand and watch him walk until he turns and vanishes into his bedroom.
Something is, weird,,,, on my insides. I can't explain what I feel because it's a new feeling. There is some kind of organic contemplation that is sprouting and taking root in my consciousness. I don't understand why I watched him but it's what I needed to do, like I really NEEDED to watch him.
I pull myself back to reality and in a half-stunned state make my way back to the sink of dishes with this contemplation lacing the air above my head. I probe the confusion and interrogate why every positive prideful feeling that bloated my chest still,,,,,,,,, remains.
My pride didn’t pop and deflate, as it normally had. I unknowingly still held a dismissive smile. For the first time, I don't feel bad, I have no regrets, not a single one.
The seedling of thought was basic. Before his lesson-prop was tucked back in whatever nook it normally lives I organically promised myself with a complete booming conviction “I will be a far more loving, compassionate, balanced, and understanding human/father/teacher to my children than you can ever be for/to me."
This organic thought is by far the most electric empowering thing that has ever moved through my young reality, my first blood oath to myself.
I find some form of sanctuary in the thought of me out-parenting him. Satisfaction in KNOWING that my eventual children will respect and love and appreciate me in ways I will never love or respect or appreciate him. There was some safe space that came to life in knowing that the love that didn't get from him on the front end I would cultivate and raise in my own.
I knew he was wrong, even in his lesson having merit his approach made him wrong. In understanding he was wrong I gain some budding faculty over my individuality. For the first time, I consider that this man no longer holds the limitations on what I would and wouldn't become. Daddy no longer represents what I felt trapped in becoming. Moreover, this discovered chink in his armor made me question other places he may be wrong or wrong in ways that does not fit the me I want to be.
At 16 years old for the first time I feel sorry for my father. I feel sorry that he lives a life as a guarded war-ready island. At 16, I understand his ways are not ideal. At 16 I stand in one place and happily release him to his victory strut with me no longer swept into his undertow.
I watched him walk away making peace with the understanding I have to now travel my own path absent of him. In that moment he no longer represented the light at the end of manhood's tunnel but was demoted to the surrounding dark space I have to travel through to get to the end, to reach myself.
In South Carolina, that explosion of madness was of death and destruction, this uneventful kitchen-“click” triggered a beautiful silent mushroom cloud of life and the start of freedom. Daddy's lesson lessoned but not in the ways he hoped.