What if I accidentally shot you?

Now, I’m speaking from a theoretical standpoint here. I am by no means thinking about doing this. But I’ve been kind of thinking about what would happen if I shot you. Accidentally.

I feel it’s important for me to stress accidentally, because I’m not trying to freak you out. We’ve known each other a long time, and I feel our friendship is really important. I mean, I don’t want you to think I have one of those little chick handguns up my sleeve or anything. Hey, don’t look up there!

Like I said, we’ve known each other for a long time. How long has it been? Probably eight years or so. Gosh, how we’ve changed! It seems like we met just yesterday. I remember making out with you behind the dumpster at work just a couple of weeks after you started. We were both smoking cigarettes and then suddenly you were up on me. Good times. I was so taken with you that I broke up with my girlfriend of two years to be with you. But then I realized that our sexual appetites were too different, and that I couldn’t seem to maintain an erection with a knife to my throat. Go figure! And maybe I never said so, but for the record, I’m very sorry about breaking your arm; I just didn’t want your fist up there! Sorry!

After weeks and weeks of discussion with my ex, we finally reconciled. I was on the path to a healthy life once again. You and I had agreed to not hang out for a little while so I could get my life together. We spent a couple of weeks not talking, and when I saw you next, you were married! Holy shit! I remember you coming over to give me the news. I couldn’t believe the words coming out of your mouth! So then you told me with your vagina, citing the old Texan proverb, “A man hath not ears to hear what only a vagina can say.” When I protested, you cited an old gypsy proverb, “Doin’ it once with somebody you’re not married to is okay; just don’t get knocked up.” I’ve always had a deep respect for gypsy culture; their knowledge really cuts right to the heart of the human experience.

And so we resumed our friendship. Things were tense sometimes, mainly because my girlfriend was mistrustful of you for some weird reason, but I mostly recall those days in a positive light. You had reconnected with your childhood religion, joining the Church of the Most Unholy Mean and Conniving Lower Demon Who’s Hoping to be Promoted Soon, Even if it Means I Have to Transfer, Which I’d Like to Avoid if at All Possible, But What Can You Do? I was really happy for you. It’s always nice to see a friend find something meaningful to throw themselves into.

You moved with more purpose, for sure. Wednesdays were animal sacrifice days; I remember stepping out onto my front porch in the morning with my coffee just to watch you spray chicken blood (or squirrel blood, if there were no available chickens) on my lawn, making whatever sacred symbol you had learned in church the day before. They all looked a lot like someone flipping the bird to me, but you always took the time to explain the intricacies of the symbols, how the “Is this loud enough? Let me turn it up!” symbol was very different from “Read between the lines” and “Jack-in-the-Box,” and how each one was used in a very specific way to wish me very specific harm. But it was your determination as you ripped the chicken’s (or squirrel’s) throat open with you teeth that got to me. Such purpose! I admit now that it made me a little jealous! As time went on, your enthusiasm for the rituals never waned; in fact, it seemed to grow. And when you started breaking my windows and spray painting “No dick!” on my house, I was truly amazed. Such tenacity, such devotion to your belief in chaos and harm! I hoped that I would find something I believed in so much.

And then we started our band.

I remember that we argued a lot about what the name of the band would be. After much bickering, we decided upon The We Don’t Want To Do Each Other At Alls. I remember thinking it would look really shitty on a t-shirt, and that if we released any CDs, we’d have a hard time getting anything besides the band’s name on it. But it was better than our other name finalists: The Desperately Not Committed To Our Significant Others, The Somewhat Tone-Deaf, and Batteries Not Included. I would still argue that if we had chosen Batteries Not Included, we could have made it like the title of that movie of the same name and spelled it all lower case with an asterisk in front of it, like so: *batteries not included. And then we could have made t-shirts with just an asterisk on them and it would have been, like, our logo. It would have been crazy post-modern. But I digress.

We almost had enough music for an album. My favorites were my songs “This Song Isn’t About You” and its follow-up, “Okay, But For Real, This Song Isn’t About You.” Your songs “Batshit Crazy” and “Holy Fuck Do I Hate Myself, And, By Inference, You” were pretty good, too. Practicing was always intense. I think your religion made you gravitate toward ritual in everyday life, as you liked to start each practice with ten minutes of glue-sniffing (”to hold the soul together,” you said), and then ten minutes of berating me at the top of your lungs. And despite that tension, I felt like we had a pretty good thing going. Our playing was pretty tight, and I felt like we had good stage presence. My favorite parts where when we would both get really into it and would rub my guitar against your bass like the gayest of gay frottage.

But we only performed once, and that was it. We had had so many conversations about what was appropriate for performance. I was all for having some crazy shit going on so as to enchance our stage presence. After all, live music is a visual experience in addition to an aural experience. But I had laid out a couple of very specific guidelines: no making out with me on stage, and NO HUMAN SACRIFICE! And you violated not just one, but both! I was so mad! You started shoving your tongue in my mouth during the first song, and wouldn’t stop. Every time I tried to sing, you were trying to clean my tonsils. And then when my girlfriend tried to intervene, you bashed her over the head with your bass! Not cool. And then you drank her blood. I was not happy about it at all, but the crowd seemed to eat it up, so I went along. But let me be honest with you here: I was pretty sad about you killing my girlfriend and drinking her blood. Wow, it feels good to say that.

But listen to me, rambling on about the past! I asked you a question. Let’s say I . . . oh, hey, what’s that over there? Look!