John Metcalf carefully sighted Dan Rather's slightly round, just a little bit on the sagging side head between his feet and with a violent clack, crushed that perfect hair-do and everything underneath it. When he spread his feet again, Dan was still blabbing about the state of the world. John cursed under his breath. The alchohol must be messing up his aim.

 While John's aim might not be in it's prime tonight, his mind was in over drive. You see, John had discovered the meaning of life.

 Learning lessons.

 That's what it is all about. Learning lessons so that the next time you come up against a similar problem, you can use what you have learned and maybe you won't fuck up as bad as you did last time.

 And through out your life, you are taught lessons by people that don't even know that they have taken the podium in your own personla class of Problem Solving 101. In spite of their protests, you learn to do as they do, not as they say.

 John glanced at his feet that were resting on the coffee table in front of him. A hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. Exhibit fucking-A. Consider his mother. Any minute now, she is going to come down the stairs, and tell him, as she has countless times over the last twenty-eight years of his life, to remove his feet from the coffee table. She will then go into the kitchen, get a nice cold can of Pepsi from the fridge, come back into the living room and plop down onto the couch. And without fail, and without her noticing, her feet will invariably go up onto that very table. If it wasn't so goddamn annoying, it might even be funny.

 Luck was with him tonight, however. She must have found a longer than average sex scene in one of those sleazy paperback romances she seemed to have become addicted to since her divorce from John's dad.

 Divorce. Whoops. That word wasn't supposed to come nto this thought pattern. Just for that he gets a slap on the wrist and is sent straight to the kitchen for another round of rum and coke. Maybe next time he'll think twice before he uses such language.

 "See, John?" he muttered to himself. "You learned a lesson. It's been a big day for lesson learning, hasn't it?"

 He warns himself to drop it before he gets pissed. John then dropped his feet off of the coffee table and unsteadily pulled himself to his feet. The world revolved around him a little faster for a couple seconds and then settled back into it's usual pace.

 "Easy does it, Johnny." he whispered.

 On the other side of the coffee table his son lay on the floor playing with some robots that were actually cars, but no one wassupposed to know that except for the robots themselves. Billy had carefully explained the whole thing to him before, and it had never occured to John before tonight just how fucking clever it was. Currently, the leader of the good robots was kicking the living bejeezus out of the leader of the bad robots.

 "Hey, Bill-man, don't you think it's about bedtime?" he asked.

 "It's only seven, dad." Billy tells John in a tone that says he has left the wisdom of his youth behind and it won't be much longer until he is ready for a nursing home. John just can't wait til he is a teenager and knows everything.. John looked downat his watch, and dammit, the kid's right. Chalk one up for the boy wonder. It's been a long day.

 He lifted his leg and stepped over Billy and the Transformer universe. Once he got over his son, he stumbled his way into the kitchen. The bottle of 151 rum sat on the counter with a malicious grin spread across it's glassy face.

 "I thought you'd be back, John-boy. You and I have already had quite a few rendevous tonight, haven't we? Fuck, yeah, cause you keep comin' back, just like those crazy motherfuckers on the cereal commercials that won't let anyone or anything stop them from getting back to their cereal just because it's got two scoops of raisins in every box. It's nice seein' you again. How's the wife?"

 John mentally gave the bottle the finger and told it to shut up and put out. It did and he made himself another glass of rum and coke.

 "Oops, you seem to have forgotten the coke there, John."

 Well fuck it! It was too late to turn back now. No protection tonight, babe!

 Back into the living room he went. Watch it, he told himself, you might beat a path in the carpet, and boy, wouldn't that give ma' a reason to bitch.

 "Relax, John, it's just a couple more days 'til you find you and Billy a new place to live."

 In the living room, Billy had changed good ol' Dan Rather to the slightly younger face of Kurt Loder. He was giving the day in rock on Mtv. After seein that there was no music in, Billy hit the mute button on the remote.

 However, John could still hear Kurt's voice. He was saying something about some guy named Vince Neil, and thsi Vince Neil was leaving some band named Motley Crue.

 Then, much to his surprise, a picture of himself popped up over Kurt's shoulder. Amazingly enough, it was his half of his wedding picture.

 "Elsewhere in the news todday, John Metcalf, devoted husband, caring father and self employed carpenter walked in as his wife was apparently being taught the two person back stroke on her boss's desk. John at this point is still denying all allegations of an upcoming divorce, but I think we all know the real truth, don't we? Good luck on that rum, John. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain is back in drug rehab today after he..."

 "Time for a sobriety test, John."

 He quickly added two and two in his head and came up with four. He still wasn't drunk enough. A tilt and a gulp and the alchohol dropped into his stomach like a napalm bomb.

 He once again began the ritual of going to the kitchen for rum. As he got up he started to think about what his good friend Kurt had said on TV. Divorce? Was that where this was going? How could he be considering divorce with Karen, when just this morning he had been thinking about what a great marriage they had?

 Well, it was like Karen had said on the phone earlier. If he hadn't been snooping, they wouldn't be having this problem right now, would they?

 Snooping? Had he been snooping? Last time he had checked, he had been going to pick up his wife to take her to lunch. Jesus, he hadn't even suspected that she was getting regularly fucked by her boss. That was her own little secret. If only he hadn't decided to take that lunch hour away from the site. Maybe then he wouldn't be seeing eight years of his life go round and round as it flushed itself down the shitter.

 But, no, he had decided to surprise his wife and take her to the little cafe on fourth and commercial. But his wife wasn't the one who got surprised, was she?

 John had walked up the short drive-way in front of the law office where Karen was working as a secretary. He had gone right in. Karen wasn't at her desk. John looked at the window for an "OUT TO LUNCH" sign, thinking that perhaps she had already left for lunch by herself. There was only an "OPEN" sign and John could see her car parked across the street.

 He walked past Karen's desk toward the door leading to the main office. He raised his hand to rap on the door. Then he heard the sounds coming from the other side of the door. It was not the sound of a typwriter typing or a lawyer dictating.

 It was the sounds of a hot, passsionate fuck and John would recognize his wife's "Oh, God"s anywhere.

 His hand had lowered toward the knob and a voice inside his head had said, "You don't really want to do that, John. Just turn around, walk out and pretend that you never came here today. She'll come home tonight, you'll have a nice dinner, you might even make love later and everything will be alright."

 But he would know that it was true. He would know that his wife had broken the sacred trust between them. He knew that it could never be the same.

 He grasped the knob and turned it. His foot snaked out slowly and pushed the door in. It swung soundlessly on it's well oiled hinges.

 And there they were. For one absurd moment, John had told himself, "See? You were just being silly. They're wrestling!"

 But people tended to wrestle with clothes on, not with their pants down around their ankles and their skirts hiked up to their hips. At least he had never seen it done that way on the pro wrestling shows that Billy watched on saturday mornings.

 Mr. Lawyer looked up and said, "Who the fuck are you?"

 Karen said something like, "Oh, Jesus, it's John."

 Mr. Lawyer said, "Who?" as he slid off of Karen and his huge oak desk.

 John at this point had lost a small part of his mind and was advancing on Mr. Lawyer. Mr. Lawyer's dick seemed to be doing it's impression of a scared turtle.

 He said, "You touch me and I'll sue your ass!"

 John said, "Sue this!" and slammed a calloused fist into Mr. Lawyer's exposed genitals. Mr. Lawyer just couldn't seem to find the breath to make any more threats. He did in fact promptly pass out.

 Karen had stood there pulling her skirt back down and saying to him over and over again, "Do you know what you've done? Do you have any idea what you have done?"

 John just shook his head in sorrow. "No. No, I don't." he said.

 Then he turned and walked out. He had gone and picked up Billy at school and took him to John's mother's house. His mother and Karen had never gotten along, so when she caught wind of what had happened, he had to sit through eight years worth of I-TOLD-YOU-SO's.

 Karen had called a little earlier and had tried to get him to argue. He just didn't have the heart to fight with her. It's funny, when you lose the one you love, you don't have the heart for anything.

 She had tried to turn it around and make it look like it was all John's fault. She had tossed that "snooping" shit his way and it had raised some intersting questions in John's head. If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? If your wife is bumping uglies with her boss and you're not there to see it, does it actually happen?

 Maybe it was his fault.

 John had ended the phone call by telling her that he needed sometime alone. He hadn't mentioned divorce. Not once. John was living in that state between California and Oregon. Denial.

 So now he and a bottle of rum were holding negotiations on what John was going to do about all of this. And the more he drank, the clearer that answer became. John was going to go into the basement and kiss a monster.

 "What?"

 "Don't you remember the monster, John? It's still down in the basement, waiting for some handsome prince like you to come along and plant your lips on it's cold mouth of steel."

 "I don't need no fucking monster."

 He walked back into the living room, hoping that the voice in his head would remain with the bottle in the kitchen.

 "Hey, Billy, it's eight o'clock. Time to hit the sack. Ask your Grandma to tuck you in."

 Billy starts his nightly protests, but can tell from the look on his dad's face that he's not really in the mood for it. He changes the subject.

 "When do I get to see Mom?"

 He knows how to hit his old man's nail right on the head. John told him that he didn't know and to go get ready for bed.

 Compliance, finally. He almost felt pity for his mom and how she had to raise him.

 As Billy dragged himself up the stairs like a condemned man going to the chair, John dropped his head into his hands. The tears were lapping at the edge of the dam.

 Why had she done it? Had he forgotten to say I love you a couple times. Was this her srtike for freedom after being at home with Billy for five years? Waqs there an excuse valid enough for defiling everything between them. The knowledge of her sin ground into him like a lit cigarette, burning like a motherfucker at first, but fading to a a dulls moldering anger. It wasn't going to get better, there was going to be scars.

 "What am I going to do?" he asked himself as tears poured down his cheeks.

 The voice in his head piped up again. "I'll tell you what you are going to do. You're going to go get real shit-faced and then you're going to go give a monster mouth-to-mouth, caus ethat's the ultimate problem solver isn't it? Your dad taught you a lot of lessons in your life, but that's the one that you will never forget."

 John shook his head and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

 "Sure, you do! Don't you remember that day? You were laying on your bed, lost in the wonderful world of mars with a psychotic named John Carter. And you could hear your parents voices coming up through the floor, raised in anger. Then your mother called you down, just like that guy on the game show. "John Metcalf, c'mon doooown! You're the next contestant on Lessons in Life!" Your dad sat there caressing the monster, that bitch sat right between his legs and your mother said, "Look! Your dad's going to blow his brains out!"

 But you dad didn't have the balls to do it, did he? No way. But that didn't stop them from going and grabbing that bitch out of the basement every time ol' ma' and pa' couldn't agree on something. And it's still down there waiting like some cobra, all coiled, waiting for someone just crazy enough to really do it, or like some huge metal dick with nothing better to do than shoot a wad of lead right down your fuckin' throat. Oh, you remember, all right. You just have to decide, are you the one who is going to finally have the balls to do it?"

 It was out in the open, now. The subject of the rifle had lain in the back of his head all day, just like the rifle lay in the basement. It was an english built .303 that his grandpa had brought back from world war II. It was his grandpa who had originally introduced John to "The Bitch".

 John and his grandpa had spent a lot of time camping in the years between Jhn's sixth and tenth birthday. Grandpa would pack him up in his camper and would take him out to Bum-fucked, Nowhere. They would spend a week or so with nature, drinking water from a stream, pissing in the puckerbrush, and eating whatever Grandpa nailed with his .303.

 Grandpa was a very good shot so he could bring down an out of season deer with no problem at all. He would get John started on cooking it, then he would sit down with a six-pack of beer and go to work cleaning his gun.

 Pretty soon the beer would get the better of him and Grandpa would start to talk.

 John could still see him, just like it was yesterday, sitting there on a log with quite an impressive patch of nose hair, the stripes on his shirt bending around his genorous beer belly, his rifle laying across his lap like a faithful dog. He leaned down close to John, and in a slurred voice he said, "Johnny, a gun's the only thing in this world that you can trust. Women'll go an' fuck around behind your back, your kids grow up and become outlaws. But a gun, you take care of it, and it will take care of you."

 At the time, John had been more appalled by the language then the message behind it. Being ten, he didn't realise that telling his mom what grandpa had said would bring an end to his camping trips.

 So in the July of his tenth year, John's grandpa went camping by himself and neglected to come back. A search party was set up and John was asked to show them where grandpa usually camped. He took them there. Granpa's camper was in it's usual place beneath an old pine tree. But there was no sign of grandpa. The search party spread out through the forest around the camp site, searching for some clue as to where ol' Grandpa Metcalf had gotten off to.

 They found him out there. Two weeks of decay in the hot July sun had withered Grandpa down some, but what had happened was still perfectly clear. He lay on the other side of a half buried log, his rifle clutched in a death grip, his body pulled into a fetal position. A small hole marked the center of his chest, and a gaping wound had replaced his back. Parts of grandpa's heart were found splattered on a tree ten feet behind him. He had tripped, and in the end, his gun had taken care of him. Permanently.

 When the cops turned over Grandpa's possessions, his rifle came with them and took up residence in his parent's basement. It gave John a weird feeling knowing that the gun had been around the world, from England, to India, to the border of China, only to end up in his mothers basement.

 John looked at the door to the basement. It wouldn't hurt to go have a look at it, would it? No, he didn't think so. After all, it was just so much wood and steel held together with more wood and steel. He walked over and reached for the door knob.

 "You sure you want to do that, John? You know how you've been doing with closed doors so far today."

 "I'm sure." he replied. He opened the door and left it ajar so he would have enough light to find the basement light switch. It still took him a couple of seconds of fumbling before he got it on.

 John walked around behind the staircase, ducking under the cobwebs. He squatted down and looked up inside the stairwell. There it was, leaning against the wall next to the hot water heater. It was inside a woolen gun boot, to protect it from scratches. If you want the gun to take care of you, you've got to take care of it. That's the rules. Grandpa's last lesson.

 He reached out with shaking hands and pulled it out of the the dark and into the light. Once again, he stuck his hand back under there and up right above his head. There were two-by-fours in a row, jutting upward to support the stairs above them. Between each one there was a smaller two-by-four nailed in horizontally. It was on these that his hand quested. Then he found it. He pulled out a loaded clip.

 He carried his treasures over to the foot of the staircase and sat down on the bottom step. There was atricky knot on the gun boot but it came loose with a little work. He pulled the rifle from it and watched like a fascinated child as the light danced across it's finely polished walnut stock.

 His right hand moved without his left knowing as it slid the clip into place with a resounding click. His hand fell back against the stock, stroking it like you would a woman's thigh. It came back and grasped the bolt. He plled it back, allowing a cartidge to slip into the chamber. He slid the bolt back into place, seeing the hammer held back with deadly significance.

 John lowered the gun to the floor, letting it's metal butt rest against the cold concrete. He leaned it forward and kissed the monster. He let it slide into his mouth, feeling the sights tickling the roof of his mouth, making it itch. The end of the barrel pressed against his palate, making him want to gag. The scope stared at him like a baleful eye. His hand slid down the barrel, past the dull metal clip, past the trigger guar and onto the trigger itself. He closed his eyes and a tear fell down onto the cold steel. He took one very deep breath and a creak on the staircase behind him stopped him from pressing down on the trigger. He spun around and saw Billy standing on the the landing above. He was wide-eyed, his expression a combination of terror and utter amazement.

 John looked down at the rifle and then up at his son again. He let the gun slip out of his fingers and it landed on the floor with a heavy clatter. What had he done?

 Lesson learned. Class dismissed.
 
 

2-11-93

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