Twice in my life I‘ve had a loaded gun aimed point blank at me with great malice. Since I’m obviously still alive, I think we all know how that turned out.
Each time it happened so quickly I didn’t really have time to register what was happening until it was too late. Not that I could have done anything to stop it anyway. It’s a weird feeling – like everything stops and time slows down. Both times I remember feeling eerily calm, like “let’s take this nice and slow,” as if I somehow innately knew my best chance for survival was to be cool and figure out what they wanted so I could quietly give it to them.
The first time I was probably about 16 and had been smoking pot and drinking with two attractive (at least I thought so at the time) biker chick sisters in the middle of the day, and we had fallen asleep on their waterbed (if you’re young and reading this wondering WTF a waterbed is, here you go). I honestly have no idea who they were or how I met them and ended up at their place – I had never seen them before and would certainly never see them again. Nothing sexual had transpired, but for the purposes of our little story that was an unimportant detail. We were too fucked up to do anything anyway. What can I say – I admit I was street trash at the time. Don’t judge me. I was just young and lost and trying to find my way out.
Anyway, the older sister’s biker boyfriend came home and found this long haired punk asleep on his waterbed bed with his chick – and her goddamn sister no less! If that’s not time for some gunplay, I don’t know what is. Somehow I was able to talk my way out of this very uncomfortable situation, but not before I was rudely woken up with a cocked .38 caliber pistol pressed firmly to my temple by an enraged biker. How I pulled that one off is lost in the fog of time, but suffice to say pull it off I did. File that under a mistake I won’t make twice.
Once I got out of there I probably enjoyed the adrenaline rush for a bit and then just went about my business. At the time it just another intense moment in a young life filled with them.
I didn’t know enough to realize how much danger I was in.
That being the story of my youth you can begin to see why I have a natural sense of gratitude for my life now.