Put Down the Gun

Thursday night

I was sitting in a barber chair waiting to get a haircut, talking with my coworker Harriet, who was standing beside me. A mobster that I knew sat in the chair to my left, and I noticed that he had a gun. I said, "Hey, let me see that." I grabbed it from him, and struck a pose which I thought looked pretty cool. I held the gun fairly close to my face, but pointed at the ceiling. I thought it would make a good photo. I said, "Hey, get a picture of this." The gangster was having none of it, and motioned for me to give the gun back to him -- slowly. He was nervous because I wasn't familiar with firearms, and the thing was loaded. Photos were out of the question; he didn't want to draw attention to us, and didn't want any record that that was his gun.

*****

This dream seems to mix several films that I've watched over the last week.

The movie "Rushmore" features a main character named Max who is kicked out of his beloved prep school, and then, for a time, goes to work in his dad's barber shop. Last night my wife and I watched the first half of "Goodfellas," stopping shortly after the scene in which Ray Liotta's character, Henry Hill, pistol-whipped a guy who was bothering Hill's girlfriend, Karen (Lorraine Bracco). Henry asked Karen to hide the blood-spattered gun. She said, "I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide, but I didn't. I got to admit the truth. It turned me on."

Then again, we were also in the mood for some classic James Bond this week, and it occurs to me that my pose with gun in hand closely resembles the DVD cover of "From Russia with Love." (We ended up watching "Goldfinger, but I must have taken that one out and looked at it.)

My dad has often told a story about when he was a young kid, growing up in South Carolina. He was playing cowboy, and came upon a loaded pistol that his father kept in a desk drawer. Dad says he found the gun, and began waving it around, saying, "Bang! Bang!" He pointed it at his grandmother (who was living with his family at that time) and pulled the trigger; it clicked. He pointed it at the floor and squeezed the trigger again. That time the gun went off, scaring everyone in the house to death. Dad pointed out the bullet hole in the floor during a trip to his mother's house some 45 years later. That cautionary tale was enough to make me swear off guns forever.

I shot skeet with a friend's rifle once, but I've never held a handgun, and have no intention of doing so.