1996 PART TWO: Cinco De-BANG!!!

"A man has gun, hey man have fun..."

From "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by Filter

May 4, 1996. Minnetonka, MN

I try to tell myself that things will be different this time, that we have all changed. It’s me, The Italian Stallion and Blondie hurtling down the highway toward Ridgedale again. I’m homeless now, Blondie is living with her grandmother and The Italian Stallion has a gun. A BIG gun. It’s a 44 Bulldog Special. 44s always did the most damage to zombies heads in Resident Evil. But this is 1996. I won’t know about Resident Evil for at least 2 more years.

Blondie is aiming the gun at the floor of the car, a manic gleam in her eyes. I’m freaking out at her. “Don’t you pull that fucking trigger. I WILL FUCK YOU UP!!” Who knows what will happen? We are flying down the freeway at sixty miles per hour. To this day no one has been able to explain to me what would have happened if she blew a hole in the passenger side of that car as we were driving. She eventually passes the gun back to The Stallion who shoves it back in his backpack. He gives me his, “No harm done” smile.

Later that night, we are in a darkened theater, “Leaving Las Vegas” flickering on the screen. During a boring part, I notice that The Stallion has the damn thing in the theater. I roll my eyes again. Does he think we’re going to get held up in Minnetonka? For what god-forsaken reason does he have the damn thing anyway? Another suburban white boy playing gangster.
It’s dark when we get out of the depressing movie and we all want to get drunk. Nothing new for us. Maybe we found the brutal images of Nicholas Cage drinking himself to death particularly inspiring. The Stallion has a fake ID so he scores us a bottle of Bacardi Limon and some of those fruity Jack Daniels things. Where to drink becomes the dilemma. Normally we’d just go hang out in a field somewhere and get “shitty” as we call it. But, this being Minnesota and all, the beginning of May doesn’t necessarily mean warm and balmy. There is a fine mist sifting down. I know my mother is not home at the moment. She goes to her boyfriend’s home up north every weekend. We head to Da Grove and try to break into the home I am not welcome in at the moment. We fail. We eventually end up at the Starlite Motel in Hilltop, a tiny, trailer-park ridden suburb I never knew existed until I opened the dingy curtains and saw the water tower.

May 5, 1996. Cinco DeMayo Hilltop, MN

A few hours later (past midnight), we are drunk as hell and completely out of liquor. The Stallion says that he and I should go back to his Aunt’s house and get his spare bottle of Captain Morgan’s. Blondie should wait at the hotel and we should leave her with the gun to “protect herself”. It makes perfect sense to me, even though this is a sleepy suburb of Minneapolis where you can probably walk down the street naked with hundred dollar bills strapped to your body and the most that will happen is someone will call 911 to send the paddy wagon because they are highly offended.

I try standing as The Stallion loads a fourth hollow point bullet into the hand cannon. He normally keeps three in there, he told me. He adds a fourth in case Blondie needs to use it while we are gone. Then, he reasons, when he comes back, with the dead intruder on the floor minus a face, his trusty Bulldog will have the usual 3 bullets in it and all will be right with the world. Again, it makes total sense to me as I sit cross-legged on the bed across from him. He is showing Blondie how to use it. He aims. He pulls the trigger.

The noise. The smoke. The fire coming from the barrel that just singed me. There is nothing else. My ears are damaged beyond repair because there is some kind of weird warbling hum. MY GOD THE ROOM IS FULL OF FUCKING SMOKE!! FIRE FIRE!! But something else has happened. Pause. Rewind. BANG-fire-smoke-slight jerk in my body-hummmmm... The fire from that gun really burned me. Even through the pillow on my lap. No. Something is wrong. Very wrong.

“Youjustfuckingshotme...”
“No, I didn’t.”

I pull the pillow off my lap and the cotton stretches into the hideous wound just above my knee. Panic, screaming, tears. Oh my god I’m going to fucking DIE!! I just got shot. People DIE when they get shot. It’s all over. The Stallion is talking about leaving and how we shouldn‘t mention his name when the cops get there. I start screaming in rage when I see him giving Blondie a passionate goodbye kiss by the door. Amazingly no one has gone for the phone which is right there. “YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES CALL THE POLICE!!”

Blondie shuts the door and loses it. “Ohmygoddude, ohmygoddude, ohmygodude...”
“BLONDIE GIVE ME THE FUCKING PHONE!!”

I call 911 and explain. Just been shot. Some godforsaken motel in Hilltop. I’m going to die. Please help. No. The guy who did it is gone. Don’t let me die. God it fucking hurts. Jesus, I’m still drunk. Don’t let me die. I’m never going to walk again.

The cops are there in about 30 seconds and they promptly point their guns at me. Shit, they’re here to finish me off, I raise my shaking hands in the air. The cops rush in and Blondie is a blonde blur going out the door. I don’t see her again that night. One big cop sends the other bed flying against the wall with a powerful kick and points his gun at the dust bunnies on the floor beneath it. Another kicks in the bathroom door. They look vaguely disappointed as they come to me and demand that I tell them who did this. I start sobbing and flailing saying that “I don’t know, I don’t know...”

A few seconds later the paramedics arrive and the cops are shooed away. They strap me on some blue plastic thing and carry me out. We’re on the second floor of one of those open air motels. A crowd has gathered down below. They carry me headfirst down the stairs, my bare feet catching the frigid, misty wind. I am at about a 45 degree angle, but I’m strapped in pretty good and these guys are strong. They toss me in an ambulance, strap an oxygen mask over my face to get me high and then ask me what hospital I want to go to. Since I’m still drunk and rapidly becoming woozy and light-headed from the pure oxygen I mumble something about the hospital I was born in. They ignore my request and we go bumping along to Hennepin County Medical Center in the heart of Murderapolis, sirens wailing.

It’s about 3AM when we arrive and there’s a lot going on. People OD-ing, drunks, angry fistfights, one guy comes in covered in blood and has to be tied down by five cops, all the while saying: “Stop-it-stop-it-stop-it-stop-it...” Even when he is sufficiently trussed up and left alone, he continues “Stop-it-stop-it-stop-it-stop-it...” I am shoved into a tiny curtained-off cubicle and left alone.

I’m still drunk. Someone behind the curtain on my left is crying.