Story About A Gun

There are no guns in this story. Oftentimes, a writer will become so frustrated with a character that he or she will put a gun in that character's hand because a gun means power but it also means desperation. Whether or not the gun goes off is unimportant. The writer has just given the character incredible efficacy and the power to do whatever he or she wants. That's what happens when you have a gun.

There could be a gun in this story because there's a gun in your bedroom. You're a twenty-nine year old boy, at best, and you like to shoot things (not animals or people) because you spent ten years of your life drunk and, now that you're sober, you feel like you lost everything you could have had. That boy who couldn't stop drinking, who got a DUI at eighteen and dropped out of college, you're not him anymore but maybe he ruined your life. You separated yourself from him, but you are still shackled to him. You like your gun because of all of the reasons I've already listed. It makes you feel powerful. But that gun stays locked in a case, no one holds it and no one uses it.

We met one long, flat summer and I made you want me. I was purposeful and also very persistent. I wish I could tell you that I knew how I did it, but I don't, I never did. I asked you once when we were at a stoplight what made you want to ask out a girl nine years your junior who had done nothing but tease you mercilessly and make your life more difficult than it had to be but you just laughed and said you didn't know. I hated that. I wanted a full and complete answer as to why I was everything you were looking for and that you thought that maybe you could fall in love with me. You didn't. There is no love in this story.

You taught me how to shoot a gun on our first date but that's not part of the story. There are, as I said, no guns in this story. What is part of the story is that, when you reached around my waist and touched my hipbone, pulling me towards you for only just one second, I went rigid. By the time I realized that I was supposed to be affectionate, you'd stopped pressing your hand against my waist.

On the morning after we first fell asleep in the same bed, you asked me if I had trust issues and I said yes. That 'yes' was an understatement. I never told you about being hit or the times I've cheated. I never told you anything. You saw me cry never. You saw me drunk once. You saw me only barely half naked and you said nothing.

There is no sex in this story; there was never sex at all. The word itself was mentioned twice, once when I said, "We're not going to have sex tonight," and you said you knew, and once in the context of a joke. We were passionless. It was as if nothing ever happened between us, as if I made you all up in my head. We cared little for each other; we talked only when we were very lonely or very bored. I treated you like I treated my imaginary friends. You were a glass, a mirror, something through which to look at myself.

There is no love in this story and there are no guns. It's just a story about us, two people who think that love and guns do the same thing.