I'm not sure when I agree to let her shoot me.

We are drinking again.   It's the only time we ever have serious conversations anymore.   Drinking.   For once we aren't down some rat hole about who is going to leave who, whose love is deeper, more true.   It starts out as an innocent conversation.   Really.    We are talking about movies.   Our favorite ones.   Actors too.   I'm off on my soapbox tangent about the so called non-glamorous actresses, the ones I have big crushes on, how they are more glamorous, more beautiful, more sexy than a million blonde Barbie doll Claudia Shiffers or statuesque Cindy Crawfords, because they are real you know?   They feel obtainable.   Like you could meet them on a bus, in a coffee shop.   Like they might get drunk with you.   Might argue with you over stupid shit, like politics, or if motorcycles belong in the Guggenheim.   You could never bum a smoke off a Claudia Shiffer, but you sure as fuck could off Lili Taylor, or Janeane Garofalo.   They'd shake one out of the pack and hand it to you.   Offer their already burning cig as a light, without even breaking up the conversation.

It's in the middle of this that she turns to me and says, "SCUM."

I'm not paying attention, so she repeats, "SCUM.   Wasn't that the name of that book?   From the Lili Taylor movie?   You know the one . . . about that Valerie girl . . . the crazy one who shot Andy Warhol?"

It takes a second for my eyes to focus.   "Manifesto.   It was the S.C.U.M. Manifesto.   Society for Cutting Up Men."   Why do I have to pretend to know everything?    "Yeah, she was pretty fucked up. But Lili was great in that movie, don't you think? She made her into a sympathetic character.   The crazy bitch who shot Andy.   Sympathetic.   I mean she was just a junky right?   Well, crazy, angry, lesbian junky.   I remember reading how Henry Miller met her all fucked up one night offering to shoot a man . . . any man.    Supposedly he told someone.   The people who ran the Chelsea I think.   They ignored him.    Then she goes and shoots Andy Warhol.   But in the movie, she's almost an anti-hero.   Lili makes you feel for her.   I remember after it came out, they started selling that S.C.U.M. Manifesto down at the bookstore.   Crazy."

She looks at me all funny.   I'm sure we're about to get into it.   "Maybe she was a sympathetic character."

Yeah, into it.   "What?!   What do you mean by that?   She hated men . . . enough to want to shoot them . . . then she went around and advertised it, and when no one was interested, she got a gun, and shot Andy fucking Warhol.   No real reason.   It's not like he did anything to her.   She just shot him. . . ."

She smiles.   "Sounds pretty proactive to me.   Kinda like therapy."

I just stare at her.

"Seriously.   Hear me out.   She's all filled up with rage, right?   She doesn't know how to channel it.   Who could fucking know?   She's so angry, it makes her sick inside.    Men'll do that.   Every woman has to understand that.   Helplessness.   Rage.   Makes you feel sick.   Every woman.   And she's a lesbian for Christ sake.   She shouldn't even have to worry about men, but she can't get away from them."   She stares off down the bar.   I'm even not sure she knows what she's looking at.   "So, she fixates on this idea.   Such a great idea.  A Camille Paglia idea.   A fucking statement.   Symbolic.   She's gonna take a gun right?   The source of all that patrilineal power.   This fucking male thing.   And she's gonna penetrate some man with it.   She's gonna fuck him with his own gun.   She's gonna own it.    Make it her own.   Take the power away, right?   Ritual.   Catharsis.   I mean how fucking brilliant is that?"

I always know the right thing to say to defuse her, "What the fuck are you talking about?!   She's a fucking criminal!   She fucking shot Andy Warhol!   She was insane!   It wasn't a fucking ritual.   It was random senseless violence, not a goddamned statement!"

She looks at me, and I see something stirring behind her eyes.   "Yeah, but that's because she didn't do it right.   She didn't give it a ritualistic space.   She didn't perform the act properly.   She was too angry to see the beauty in the act.   The symbolism.   She needed a willing collaborator.   A partner in crime.   She needed a target.   Someone who wanted to be shot."

Later on, after we get home, and we're fucking, when she's pushing down hard into me, grinding her hips like she's the one with the cock, it sinks in.   A "willing collaborator."    Someone who "wants to be shot."   She means me.   She's going to shoot me.

I never say yes, but it doesn't matter.   From that moment on, momentum starts to build up.   All those sticky laws of thermodynamics.   Which is the one about an object in motion wanting to stay in motion until it hits warm, wet, red flesh?

We go to the library.   She checks out anatomy texts.   Medical journals.

I read up on Andy.   I feel some crazy kinship with him.   I read about his childhood, the Factory, Studio 54, all of it.   He didn't die after Valerie shot him, you know?   He lived for years after that.

I think, Andy, I'm with you dude, but I ain't going out like that.   Right now, my girlfriend is leafing through Gray's Anatomy.   Oh no, I ain't going out like that.

Suddenly, I feel physically ill.   Like at the very pit of my stomach.   Deep down.    Like I'm going to vomit.   Like everything inside me going to come out.   Like I'm going to turn inside out from it.

I leave her there thumbing through all those books.   Leave her there and walk out into the sunlight.   For some reason it's the nicest, most beautiful day I've ever seen.

The thing that takes longest is getting the gun.   She figures out where she's going to shoot me early on.   I can tell because she tapes up a page ripped out of a medical book, a picture of a guy standing there sans skin like he's wearing some scarlet body suit.   There's a little circle with an X in it drawn on his side.   Precise.   Mathematical.   Like an equation.

She walks by and says, "X marks the spot."   She smiles and pats my ass.

I'm queasy again.   I'm doing that a lot lately.

She figures out where, but the how takes weeks.

We fuck a lot in those weeks.   Sometimes two, sometimes three times a day.   I get sore, bruised.   She can't get enough.   It's the best sex we've ever had.   I never have to ask her.   She's the one who initiates every time.   And we never argue any more.   Sometimes she gets really rough.   Sometimes it's like she's going to break me.   Like, I'm made out of glass.

When the gun comes, I can feel it.   When I get home from work the whole apartment is spotless.   There is a tablecloth on our little dining room card table.   Candles.   Real silverware and plates.   She must have borrowed them from a neighbor.

She makes this amazing meal.   It's the first time she's ever cooked like this.   I didn't even know she could.   I get sick to my stomach and just pick at it.   She keeps pouring wine into my glass.   I do my best, but I can't get drunk.   She doesn't notice.

Finally she stands, reaches down to me, takes my hand.   I feel like a kid.   She leads me into the bedroom.   Our bed's pushed up against the wall.   There is a video camera in the corner on a tripod.   She's tacked up a big sheet of plastic on the wall.   The clear kind.   She rolls it out on to the floor, and I feel numb.   She looks at me, and I instinctively start to take my clothes off.   The whole time, all I think is, "I wish I looked like that guy on the fridge.    He has such a nice body.   I feel fat.   I don't want everyone seeing me look so fat."   I step onto the plastic and stand there with my back to her.   I feel really self-conscious.   I hear her behind me puttering around.   She puts her hand on my shoulder.

"You have to sign this."

I turn.   I don't even see the paper that I'm signing.   I don't know what it is, maybe a release form?   She draws a circle on my side, an X inside it, with a sharpie.   I see the red light on the camera.   She's right in front of me, something wrapped in brown paper in her hands.   She fumbles with it, with the paper, unwrapping the gun.   I remember the first time we made love, all that trouble I had with the condom wrapper.   I was drunk.

Suddenly it's in her hand.   Silver.   Shining.   Twinkling.   It seems too big for her.    Too big for anyone.   I worry about the kick.   I hope she won't hurt herself.   She swings it around, testing it.   Points it at me, and the whole room gets sucked into the black hole of the barrel.

All I can think to say is, "Did you ever even read that book?"

That's when she pulls the trigger.

Author Bio

Jason Nunes is an Art Director and User Experience designer working for the BBC in New York City.  In his copious free time, he publishes and edits TenThousandMonkeys.com - an art and lit webzine that focuses on publishing experimental works of fiction and artwork by new and unpublished authors.