Rick may seem like a violent, crazy old psychopath, but in truth he's a very docile individual. Rather than scream and shout, he will just casually murder you and get back to work. The near stabbing incident I described earlier was more of an anomaly frankly, because I damn well guarantee he’s packing at least two guns at all times. In fact, I think you could make a pretty good case he was comparatively civil with those kids.
Now here’s the great thing about Rick, or at least another on the laundry list. I know people who have a conceal/carry permit, and by-and-large these people do it because they want something bigger than their penis strapped to their waist. No really, sorry guys, that’s what’s going on. I have several friends who carry guns around, and if you bother to ask why a person living in a medium sized, perfectly safe city would do such a thing when they are going to pick up their kids from a private school, you invariably get the following line of logic:
Me: Dude, honestly—why the hell do you need to carry a gun around?
Tex-ass: Because I can.
Me: What!?! That’s fucking crazy. Do you really think something’s going to happen to you this close to the country club?
Tex-ass: Honestly, no. I just like the way it feels to have a gun on me. Deep down, I know I'm just a little bit more safe.
Me: But you just said you didn't feel unsafe...
It kind of trails off from there, mostly because I think, maybe, even a gorilla can see the logical flaw in that.
And that is precisely the difference in the way Rick sees a gun and the way most of the rest of the universe sees a gun. See, if you ask most of the above people about ever having to use a gun, they claim they will pull that thing out and use it as a deterrent if the situation arises. A deterrent. Rick doesn’t deter people that poke him with the stick of their annoying personality because he’d rather they just be dead so he can get back to his corned beef sandwich. In fact, he hates everyone else so much his hatred has blurred into a vast freeway of callous background noise that makes him fundamentally impervious to other people’s humanity. It's almost a superpower. Rick sits under the Bodhi tree of sociopathic indifference, finger touching the ground, informing all the hippies and teenagers of the world that from this spot he simply will not be moved. Rick is Gautham Siddhartha. Rick is the hate Buddha.
In contrast, here is the next part of the conversation I usually have with my conceal/carry friends:
Me: So what do you plan on doing with that thing if a situation arises?
Tex-ass: What, like if I had to use it? Well, if the situation escalated I’d step back, draw down, and drop a bead center of mass.
Me: Uh huh…
Tex-ass: Then I’d tell them to step back, put their hands behind their head with fingers interlocked, get down on both knees, and I’d slowly back away until I could leave the situation.
Me: Yeah, I saw that episode of Law and Order.
Tex-ass: And if they refused to respond to my orders and moved in, I’d drop two shots center of mass.
Me: (laughing) Dude, why not just shoot them in the head?
Tex-ass: Nope. Center of mass. If you aim for their head or try to shoot the weapon out of their hand, a lawyer might be able to convince a jury you weren’t acting in self defense. Two shots center of mass is police procedure.
Me: Jesus Christ. You douche.
As you can plainly see, this is the same kind of fantasyland lived in as the guy I passed when I was running yesterday who was standing next to a bus stop practicing fake katas in a black leather trenchcoat on a public sidewalk because he thinks he is a martial arts expert. Rather, he wants other people to think he is a martial arts expert because he is insecure in a large world of successes and failures that requires us to accept our limitations. He even did the Qui-Gon Jin thing when I ran past where he put his hands together like he was praying and stared peacefully through me. That’s when the humor evaporated and I just felt sorry for the young kid. I wanted to take him aside and explain that you have to be willing to go to school and develop a career over time. There are only four Ninja Turtles and you aren’t one of them, but if you work hard, there’s a good chance Raphael and his stupid sais is going to die some day because he has the dumbest weapon and everyone knows it. If you’ve worked hard, when that day comes maybe you’ll get a job.
Then again, I can only speak from my own experience. My years in boxing gyms taught me a very important lesson about visualizing a fight: after about four seconds, all that planning shit goes straight out the window, and all those skills you honed in the gym become nothing more than a means of trying to take slightly fewer punches than you dish out. Everybody, and I mean everybody, gets hit in a fight. Even in Anime. Actually, especially in Anime.
Rick, likely from too many too many tours in Vietnam according to everyone else, and too few according to him, understands this implicitly. I know this because of the following conversation I was privileged—no, blessed—to be party to.
Rick: Look at me boy. Look at me now, and listen good because I’m only saying this once. I do not leave the house without my guns, you hear me?
(This statement came out of nowhere. He walked up to me, looked me right in the face, and just outed with it. I don’t know what pissed him off that day, but it must have been between twelve and seventeen and not wearing deodorant)
Me: Wait, guns…plural?
Rick: Yeah skinny, I said gun..ZZZ. You deaf? All that time in Nam with shells exploding and even I hear better than your dumb ass.
Me: Um, why do you need one, much less two guns in a museum?
Rick: Jesus christ boy, how long did your mama make you suck curds from her tit? Don’t you know shit about anything? You got to have at least two just in case one of ‘em don’t work right.
Me: Maybe I should rephrase that.
Rick: Damn right you should. I’d hate for a Marine to have heard you say something so goddamned idiotic in public. He'd beat your ass, and I'd be obliged to hold you down on principle.
Me: I guess I didn’t realize gun failure was an issue. Besides, wouldn’t just having a gun be deterrent enough?
Rick: (sighing) Oh my god, what the hell did your daddy teach you, son? Sit your delicate little corn hole down a minute and let me learn you something. I see a lot of these dip-plug-havin, baggy-pants-wearing gang bangin’ idiot shit little kids walking around wavin’ a gun all over the place talking about how they’re gonna shoot the next person who rubs them the wrong way. Those skin-wastes are gonna get themselves killed because they don’t have the first clue about real guns and killing people, and they don’t know their ass from page nine anyhow. Now me? When I shoot someone, he’s only going to know I’ve got a gun in the split second between when he hears the sound and the bullet smacks him in the belly.
Me: What, are you that fast?
Rick: (rolling his eyes and looking at me like I don’t know what to do with my own penis) Oh my god, what have you been listening to on the hippy, pussy-havin’ easy listening radio station all your life, you dummy. Fast ain’t got nothing to do with it.
Listen, you can’t be waving a gun around in public like that. How the hell are you going to walk away after you kill a guy? Listen, I keep one gun under my shirt right next to each pocket. Then, if some guy starts giving me shit, I smile and nod, looking pleasant as daisy. And as he’s flappin’ his gums like a goddamned horse lickin’ peanut butter off the roof of its mouth, I slowly reach inside my pocket all calm and casual and BOOM. All I got to do is tilt those little bad boys up and it’s good night. Game over and nobody even knows what happened until I’m long gone. Nobody sees nothin’. Least of all the poor SOB on the snub end of that bullet. When I decide to kill a man, he ain’t gonna know about it from my face until it’s too late for him to do anything about it. You got to be calm and in control.
Me: Wow. Listen Rick, I’m getting some coffee. Can I get you a cup?
Rick: Naw, I gave that shit up a long time ago. My weak ticker can’t take that much jittering. Besides, I’ll probably piss myself with this weak bladder.
Me: Wait…you…no way…
Rick: Speakin’ of which, I gotta go drain the lizard. Let me know if any big asses walk by here while I’m gone, OK sonny? Just 'cause it only goes to half mast any more don't mean someone's dead.
Me: I. Will. Do. That. For. You. Sir.
Rick: Big tits too. I don’t care which end the meat’s on as long as it jiggles right.
Other Pieces in tHe Series
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—Prologue
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt 1: Rick
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt 2: Owen
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt. 3: Owen Eats Habaneros for Breakfast
Literature, Humor: Sins of the Flesch: The Vice of Extramusical Dalliance—The Security Guard Years pt. 4: Rick Explains how to Kill People