Nantucket, where I went later that summer. “Um, is that . . . real ?”
“Yup!”
“Wait . . . like, permanent?”
“Uh-huh!” Yeah, that’s usually how it works, Muffies.
I didn’t get it to shock the preppies and separate the wheat from the edgy chaff, but it doesn’t suck to sort through the varied reactions. Some of the most librarian stick-up-the-ass girls are the first to admit they’ve always wanted one. Others, of course, recoil in horrified disapproval, saying, “What will you do when your daughters want one?” And I tell them what I told my kids: “Get whatever you want. When you’re thirty-five.”
There will be no ankle butterfly or Grateful Dead bear on hip because I have made it clear that I changed as a person from teenhood and so will they. So knock yourself out! Once you’re married with kids and know who you are. Sort of.
And, by the way, my kids dig it and Sadie even wanted my wrist for show and tell at school. I feared at first some of the yummy mummies would be mortified that I got it, but little by little foot vines and suns on hips were revealed to me, badges of a former life when they were following bands instead of applying Band-Aids.
But then the final symptom of what I now real
In my asexual bathrobe I call Grover because it looks not unlike skinned Muppet hide, I logged on to the West Side Pistol website. I filed for a background check, which obviously was spotless, perfect mommy angel that I am. I went in for my first lesson and fit in nicely, as my instructor John was sleeved in tats. I felt my wrist gave me street cred with the pistol-packin’ posse. He took me in a back room, where he gave me the tour of the gun and gave me my “eyes and ears”—i.e., goggles for protection from flying shrapnel shards and giant noise-canceling muffs for the bang-bangage.
I reeled the target out to its beginner spot. BAM BAM BAM! I felt like I needed vintage Batman-style starbursts with the exclamations in primary-colored bubble-font blasts. BAM! KA-POW! SHAZZAM BAM!
Sorry for the self-horn-tootage, but I must brag . . . I rocked it. It was me and tons of older cops and I blasted that target like it was everything bothering me: diapers, Momzillas, pressure, deadlines, cleanup, wrinkles, boobs at half-mast. BAM! Spilled wine. BAM! Crowded subway. BAM! BAM! Beeyotch on the school steps who told me I “look exhausted.” BAM! BAM! BAM!
I felt like a million bucks. For the first time in as long as I could remember (or rather, since my friends Josh and Shoshanna’s 1980s theme party), I felt high. I knew this was for me, and finally I had a sport I was good at. I was the shittiest athlete my whole life and now I finally aced something. Target after target was smithereens. One was a total 1970s-looking thug with too-tight trousers with a bulge in them, and he looked really rapisty. Well, I shot his ween clean off. No pinball-machine ravaging for me! Fuck you, asshole, BAM! Twenty holes marked where his paper dick once was.
I filed for my handgun license in New York City, which, BTW, is no small deal. Four visits to Police Plaza and laser fingerprinting, an investigator, the works. I bought a charcoal-gray Glock bag and my own eyes and ears.
It’s not like I’d been wearing Saturday Night Live pleat-front Mom Jeans and JC Penney pastel-threaded tapestry vests, but for the first time in ages, I felt sexy and cool, not a mom but a badass with a killer shot. People still don’t quite get why I do it, but to each her own. Some do Pilates; some go boxing at Punch; I pull the trigger, pulling myself to a calmer place as I do it. And somehow, as thirty-six dawns while I type this, I feel a little—just a little—bit more centered. Somehow all the changes of the past year have sharpened who I am, helping cement what I want to do in my limited spare time, helping me be happy, helping me hit the target of adulthood.
16
While firing guns does make me feel like La Femme
“Yup!”
“Wait . . . like, permanent?”
“Uh-huh!” Yeah, that’s usually how it works, Muffies.
I didn’t get it to shock the preppies and separate the wheat from the edgy chaff, but it doesn’t suck to sort through the varied reactions. Some of the most librarian stick-up-the-ass girls are the first to admit they’ve always wanted one. Others, of course, recoil in horrified disapproval, saying, “What will you do when your daughters want one?” And I tell them what I told my kids: “Get whatever you want. When you’re thirty-five.”
There will be no ankle butterfly or Grateful Dead bear on hip because I have made it clear that I changed as a person from teenhood and so will they. So knock yourself out! Once you’re married with kids and know who you are. Sort of.
And, by the way, my kids dig it and Sadie even wanted my wrist for show and tell at school. I feared at first some of the yummy mummies would be mortified that I got it, but little by little foot vines and suns on hips were revealed to me, badges of a former life when they were following bands instead of applying Band-Aids.
But then the final symptom of what I now real
In my asexual bathrobe I call Grover because it looks not unlike skinned Muppet hide, I logged on to the West Side Pistol website. I filed for a background check, which obviously was spotless, perfect mommy angel that I am. I went in for my first lesson and fit in nicely, as my instructor John was sleeved in tats. I felt my wrist gave me street cred with the pistol-packin’ posse. He took me in a back room, where he gave me the tour of the gun and gave me my “eyes and ears”—i.e., goggles for protection from flying shrapnel shards and giant noise-canceling muffs for the bang-bangage.
I reeled the target out to its beginner spot. BAM BAM BAM! I felt like I needed vintage Batman-style starbursts with the exclamations in primary-colored bubble-font blasts. BAM! KA-POW! SHAZZAM BAM!
Sorry for the self-horn-tootage, but I must brag . . . I rocked it. It was me and tons of older cops and I blasted that target like it was everything bothering me: diapers, Momzillas, pressure, deadlines, cleanup, wrinkles, boobs at half-mast. BAM! Spilled wine. BAM! Crowded subway. BAM! BAM! Beeyotch on the school steps who told me I “look exhausted.” BAM! BAM! BAM!
I felt like a million bucks. For the first time in as long as I could remember (or rather, since my friends Josh and Shoshanna’s 1980s theme party), I felt high. I knew this was for me, and finally I had a sport I was good at. I was the shittiest athlete my whole life and now I finally aced something. Target after target was smithereens. One was a total 1970s-looking thug with too-tight trousers with a bulge in them, and he looked really rapisty. Well, I shot his ween clean off. No pinball-machine ravaging for me! Fuck you, asshole, BAM! Twenty holes marked where his paper dick once was.
I filed for my handgun license in New York City, which, BTW, is no small deal. Four visits to Police Plaza and laser fingerprinting, an investigator, the works. I bought a charcoal-gray Glock bag and my own eyes and ears.
It’s not like I’d been wearing Saturday Night Live pleat-front Mom Jeans and JC Penney pastel-threaded tapestry vests, but for the first time in ages, I felt sexy and cool, not a mom but a badass with a killer shot. People still don’t quite get why I do it, but to each her own. Some do Pilates; some go boxing at Punch; I pull the trigger, pulling myself to a calmer place as I do it. And somehow, as thirty-six dawns while I type this, I feel a little—just a little—bit more centered. Somehow all the changes of the past year have sharpened who I am, helping cement what I want to do in my limited spare time, helping me be happy, helping me hit the target of adulthood.
16
While firing guns does make me feel like La Femme
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