America, You Sexy Bitch (6 page)

The boys carefully pack up all the guns into hard plastic cases and a big green rucksack left over from Jimmy’s Iraq deployment.

Stenciled on the flap are Jimmy’s name and blood type and the words NO PREF.

“What does ‘no pref’ mean?” asks Stephie when we get out to the range.

“It means I don’t have a preference which religion reads me my last rites,” Jimmy says.

It’s going to be hot out there in the sun, so Jimmy gives me a black cowboy hat to wear. I slide it on as smoothly as I can. I touch the brim and let it rest low on my head. For the first time, I start to feel a little bit cool, at least until he tells me that I have it on backwards, sir.

We drive a couple of giant pickups over bumpy dirt roads until we get to state land, where it’s legal to shoot. We pull up in front of a small hill. One of the women drags an old wooden target from behind some brush while the guys unload the truck. I offer to help but they politely don’t trust me to touch anything.

Jimmy hands me a holster with a big .357 in it. The gun hangs low off my linen pants. As inconspicuously as I can, I make the first move towards drawing the gun from the holster and realize I have no idea how to get it out in a crisp way. If we have a gunfight out here, I am going to die.

Tough-As-Nails Jackie gives us a stern speech about gun safety before we head to the range. She’s serious. There is no screwing around with Jackie and guns. “Only one firearm is allowed to be on the range at a time. Keep your finger out of the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot. Never point your gun at anything you do not intend to kill.”

Damn right. I am going to kill that target. Kill it dead.

They start me off with a .44–40 “mare’s leg,” which they also call the “zombie killer,” because it’s the gun Woody Harrelson used in the movie
Zombieland.
Republicans clearly do not understand that zombies are not real. It’s a cool-looking gun, first designed for a Steve McQueen TV show called
Wanted: Dead or Alive.
Jimmy shows me how to use it: swinging the barrel up to his waist, he cocks and fires all in one smooth motion. Fifty yards away, a big black hole appears in the target. He hands the gun to me and teaches me to sight the target. I swing it up to my waist like Jimmy did, cock the hammer, and pull the trigger. A clod of dirt explodes somewhere in the distance. I have not come anywhere near the target. I try lifting the gun closer to my shoulder, using two hands to support it instead of one like Jimmy. I fire. Miss. God, I feel stupid, standing here among these professional soldiers. Five more times I shoot the zombie killer, five more times I miss the target. Finally, shame-faced, I surrender my weapon.

 

Meghan:
In all my time around guns and people shooting them, I have never seen anyone shoot anything in the middle of the Arizona desert wearing Crocs and linen pants, with one of my brother’s cowboy hats on his head and a Colt .45 in a holster around his waist. The most surprising thing about Michael’s outfit is how good he looks in a cowboy hat and how weirdly comfortable he seems with a gun slung around his waist. Although I am somewhat biased and think most men look good in a cowboy hat, what can I say, Michael is pulling it off. Just avoid the Crocs.

I cannot believe Michael doesn’t start shaking or crying or something. I have seen people freak out at shooting ranges before, especially
first-time shooters, but Michael takes to it like a fish to water, and one after another my brother brings several guns for Michael to shoot. I lean over to my sister and say, “I can’t believe he’s this much of a natural,” and she says, “I know, he doesn’t really seem like a guy that would be.”

I marvel at Michael’s ease as Jimmy hands him guns, saying, “This is the gun that Woody Harrelson uses to kill zombies in
Zombieland
. We nicknamed this one the ‘noisy cricket’ because it’s so small but so strong, like the noisy cricket in the movie
Men in Black
. This is the kind of rifle we carried around while we were on patrol in Iraq.” Michael tries every firearm he is handed and seems to enjoy every single one. When he finally turns around long enough for me to see the expression on his face, he looks giddy.

I yell, “It’s like the first time you got to second base, right?”

“Yeah, kind of,” he yells back.

Stephie, on the other hand, does not love her turn at all, and we break soon after to give her an out. I’m thrilled that I get to hold Michael making it to second base with a Colt .45 over him the rest of his life, but equally okay with Stephie not even wanting to unbutton its shirt. Stephie keeps the gun-loathing perspective in check and balances out Michael, our newest convert.

 

Michael:
After shooting, we drive back to Jackie’s for a late lunch of homemade enchiladas and beef red chili before heading out to the Prescott Rodeo, “The World’s Oldest Rodeo,” dating from way back to 1888. Of course, when you do a cursory check on Google to find out the date and location of the world’s oldest rodeo, Prescott does not even make the list. Depending on which civic organization you choose to believe, the world’s first rodeo was either in Payson, Arizona, in 1884, Pecos, Texas, in 1883, or Deer Trail, Colorado, in 1869. But I’m not going to quibble with the residents of Prescott because I am a guest in their town and because they all have guns.

While we’re cleaning up after lunch, the conversation turns to health care, or specifically “Obamacare,” which Jackie hates. Jackie hates Obama generally and his new health care law specifically.

Even Jackie, hard ass Jackie, is willing to concede that there are parts of the Obama health care plan she likes. The preexisting condition stuff, for example. But she worries that our health care system, “the finest in the world,” will become like Mexico’s. Or Canada’s. Jackie doesn’t seem to think the people she sees in her ER night after night—the illegals, the meth heads, the wife beaters—are going to purchase health insurance just because the government says they have to. If they don’t have insurance, well that’s just too damned bad. She doesn’t want our entire system brought down by those people.

“But what about the coal miners in West Virginia who lost their jobs?” I ask. “What about Detroit autoworkers? What about students? What about people in the creative community? Should they be lumped in with the meth heads?”

“No,” she tells me. “Everybody should be given a helping hand until they get back on their feet.”

Except that these days a lot of people will never get back on their feet, I want to say. These days a lot of people are just good and forever fucked.

But I don’t say it.

One of the things I’ve noticed among the Republicans with whom I’ve been hanging out is that there seems to be an underlying resentment towards some amorphous group of their fellow Americans who, they believe, are gaming the system. Jackie calls them the “pimps and gangsters in New York City.” Having lived in New York City for ten years, I cannot recall too many run-ins with either pimps or gangsters committing Medicare fraud. I can, however, recall some Wall Street types raping the entire American treasury.

It’s hard to argue with somebody against protecting what’s theirs. The question is, are there really hordes of gangsters, pimps, meth heads, and welfare queens lying in wait to steal our stuff and shoot us dead? I didn’t think so.

That said, I’m not willfully naive either. Jackie told us a story about a rancher to the south of her place who was shot to death near the border while riding his ATV.

“When they found him he was dead, the dog was dead. The ATV was still there, so they must’ve shot him from a good distance away. Fifteen hundred people came to that funeral.”

How do you discount that experience? How do you persuade somebody that tragic things happen to everybody across all fifty states but that events like those, while horrible, are extremely rare? Or maybe they’re not. Maybe I’m the naive one. But then how have I gotten through my first forty years without needing to fire a gun?

A little while later, some bad news. There is no rodeo tonight. It ended the night before, on the third. Everybody apologizes to us profusely, and I’m disappointed because I wanted to see some guys get thrown off some bulls.

 

Meghan:
There is no apologizing for America. We’re the greatest country in the world and, although we have our issues, overall it is not a country that needs a huge amount of changing. That’s how I feel; that is what I believe. Michael and I apparently have different takes on this.

First rule of attempting to make any kind of logical argument politically with someone, especially when it’s concerning your thoughts on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is don’t do it when either of you is drinking on the Fourth of July.

Since the rodeo is cancelled, we decide to take Michael to Whisky Row, a quaint, all-American strip of bars surrounded by small restaurants, ice cream shops, a classic bandstand (with the bunting and everything), and a giant courthouse, complete with clock tower.

We walk into the first cowboy bar, which is blasting Kid Rock’s “Born Free,” one of my favorite songs. Holly and I go to the bar and order a round of Jack and Cokes, plus shots of tequila for the whole motley crew—Jimmy, Mom, Michael, Kyle, and Mike. Everyone is wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots except for Michael and me. We start drinking, shooting the shit, and having the kind of good time you would imagine having in northern Arizona at an old school town with a row of bars.

I’m dancing, playing pool, gossiping with Holly about my dating life and how things are going with Jimmy since they moved to Texas, ordering more shots, laughing, dancing, repeat. We all sort of mingle in and out of various bars, and somewhere towards the end of the night everyone reassembles at one of the last bars on the strip. Michael and I start talking about the military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Something tells me that drinking and talking politics do not mix, but people in America do have these discussions while not sober.

I don’t know exactly how the conversation starts, but pretty quickly I am furious at Michael. He doesn’t agree with either of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, even though pretty much his only exposure to anything military was when he dressed up as a Ninja Turtle and toured the country as a teenager. I, on the other hand, well, if you paid any attention to my father’s career at all you would know the whole bit: my great-grandfather and grandfather were both admirals in the navy; my great-grandfather played a major role in the ending of World War II, and subsequently died of a heart attack a week after the war ended while standing drinking a glass of whiskey. My father was tortured for five and a half years in a filthy Vietnam prison. Both my brothers joined the military as teenagers. I love the military and support the men and women who fight so courageously for our country so I can be here at home and write a book with an alternative comedian who is making my blood boil with his “give peace a chance” hippie attitude.

Obviously, everyone knows that there was false information given to the American public to sell us on the war in Iraq. I’m sorry; it makes no difference at this point. We were there and we needed to fight the good fight. I am not going to go into the extremely specific and intense details of the wars or war strategy or why I think General Petraeus is a genius. I generally react badly to anyone criticizing the military or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when they have absolutely no exposure to any men and women who have served, and when most likely the only exposure they have had to any of this is listening to people like Keith Olbermann.

As I try to listen to Michael’s argument, I feel like he really doesn’t get it, like maybe he’s just another delusional, elitist, liberal—and possibly a jerk. At some point I stop his stream of pacifist rhetoric and say, “Listen Michael, freedom doesn’t come free.”

He laughs.

Now, if you have known me for fifteen minutes, you would know these words are dear to me, as they are to most people who have a deep love for the military. I know this is a slogan, much like “These colors don’t run” and “Live free or die,” but I never say it lightly, and never to evoke laughter. Those mantras really do mean something to me.

When Jimmy was deployed the first time, I stood with tears streaming down my face thinking that he was fighting for my freedom and this was a sacrifice:
freedom doesn’t come free
. I understand that it is a simplistic way to describe something that is much larger and deeply rooted in extreme patriotism, but I don’t see how anyone could be blind to the truth behind the sentiment. I’m shocked by Michael’s disdain for the blood that has been spilt for this country, regardless of the shoddy intelligence that got us over there. At the time that the intelligence was put forward, it wasn’t a matter of questioning it and risking it being
right.
God forbid someone like Michael take a moment to contemplate the outcome of that path. It’s far easier to point a finger and say, “You were wrong to do that,” than to say, “What if we hadn’t done it, and we were wrong?”

I look at Michael’s smirking face and cross my arms. “Why did I agree to do this?” I sort of half yell in his face, because I feel like not only is he not understanding what I am saying, but because I feel he is possibly judging me. I sit forward and realize that maybe this conversation would be better continued without the whiskey, so I say, “A good general rule about me is never laugh when I say the word freedom.” Because like it or not, Michael’s freedom as an American, to have this conversation in this bar, with these war heroes around us, has
not
come free.

 

Michael
: Meghan and I get into our first fight. It’s about Iraq and at one point she yells at me, “Freedom doesn’t come free,” which is so trite that I have to laugh, which only pisses her off more. Cindy gently interjects on behalf of her daughter who storms away, and it’s then that I realize maybe Meghan and I should get to know each other better before we really get into this debate.