The Forty Days

As I walk into the room, I see her leaning against the wall.  I am immediately drawn to her.  She comes to me.  We go outside.  I pick her up and hold her in my hands.  She feels . . . heavy and awkward.  But soon she feels comfortable in my hands.  I feel like more of a man holding her.  I call her Charlene.  After some conversation, her and I are truly ready for all that she will show me.  I nervously insert my round into her chamber, pick her up higher, and slowly wrap my finger around her trigger.  I pull my finger back, and she explodes.  I feel exhilarated.  Is Charlene what I have been missing all my life?  (If you haven’t figured it out by now, Charlene is a shotgun–I would never leave the intelligent, beautiful, supportive, and amazing woman that is my wife.)

I am a good Jewish boy from Dallas, Texas.  Good Jewish boys from Dallas, Texas, do not ordinarily own or shoot guns.  But Jewish girls from Choctaw, Oklahoma, do.  Mary Kay, who I recently met at a happy hour and agreed to teach me how to shoot skeet, is one of the baddest-ass chicks I now know.  Not only did she grow up hunting and shooting, she now shoots skeet competitively.  And she is damn good, as I watch her knock down those pesky clay pigeons with the greatest of ease at Capitol City Trap and Skeet Club.

Having been a vegetarian for thirteen years, and having assumed for many years that I am not the type of person who should be firing, holding, or even standing in the general vicinity of a firearm, I am very excited for my skeet shooting lesson.  Mary Kay almost immediately says two things about skeet shooting that blow my mind.  First she says, “It’s totally Zen.”  Zen?  Shooting guns?  I’ve always thought being Zen involved sitting for hours, meditating on life and our connectedness to the world, and maybe eating some tofu afterward.  But shooting?  Ok.  Second, she says that shooting skeet is a lot like golf.  Golf?  You mean the “golf” where upper-class men and women dress up in funny clothes, ride around in a little cart, and spend four hours yelling at a tiny white ball.  That golf?  I demand an explanation.  Ok, she says, it’s golf with an attitude–but both are about making contact with a target, consistency, body organics, your swing, and both are mental games.  As I used to play golf, I recognize the veracity of this statement.

After some instruction on skeet shooting, body positioning, and gun safety, Mary Kay hands me the gun and some ammo.  Did someone just hand me some ammo?  Awe.  Some.  I load the shotgun, position it against my shoulder, and yell, “PULL!”  A little disc flies out across my field of vision, and I shoot at it.  Boom!  That is the sound of the gun firing, not the sound of me hitting the disc, but that doesn’t matter.  I just fired a shotgun at something!  I feel like a man–much more so than on my Bar Mitzvah day, when I allegedly became a man.  This is my true rite of passage into manhood–my Gun Mitzvah.

We rotate around the stations, shooting the skeet from different angles.  After about fifteen shots, I have yet to come close to even hitting a disc, while Mary Kay knocks them out of the sky one after another.  I inquire as to whether I’m on the short bus to skeet-shooting school.  But then it happens.  After about twenty shots, I pierce my bullet straight through the heart of that clay disc!  Three words–Better.  Than.  Sex.  I explode with a scream of joy, feeling the rush of hitting my first moving target.  I now feel like a true bad-ass.  Do I not look like a bad-ass, at the very least?

We shoot another round, and I start to miss again.  But now I’m hooked.  I’m like a drug addict trying desperately to recapture the rush of now-faded momentary bliss.  I want another hit.  I need another hit.  After about twenty more shots, Charlene’s discharge rips through another disc.  Boom shaka-laka!  My heart explodes with happiness.  And within the next couple of shots, I hit two more.

Skeet shooting is some serious, serious fun, especially when you blow those clay discs to smithereens, sending them back to their maker.  As I leave, I wonder when I will see and caress my other woman again–my steely, black Charlene.  I feel great for the rest of the day.

The Beatles were right.  Happiness is a warm gun.  Bang.  Bang.  Shoot.  Shoot.  And when I feel my finger on your trigger, I know nobody can do me no harm.  But that song was about heroin . . . or sex.  Doesn’t matter.  Are you gonna disagree with me?  Bad idea.

Note #1:  If you are interested in some instruction on skeet shooting or other shooting sports, Mary Kay has a friend who is a certified instructor.  Her name is Kate Haas.  You can contact her at 512-573-0841.

Note #2:  The Forty Days was recently on the front page of the Austin American-Statesman.  To read the article, click here.