Aging Disgracefully

To be fair, the ominous vibes weren't all about the kind of Fear and Loathing the Good Doctor first chronicled. The fact that it was 34 degrees and slightly windy probably had something to do with it. I'm not sure what it is about the South (maybe it's the water, perhaps contaminated by some awful effluent that is a by-product of NASCAR), but cold temperatures just seem colder below the Mason-Dixon line. 34 degrees and slightly windy in Raleigh, North Carolina feels like 11 degrees and gale-force winds in Albany, New York. I'm sure there's some algorithm so translating temperatures, probably developed by some NC State geek in the spare minutes when he wasn't complaining about Duke and Carolina.

After a few minutes in line we spied out friend and neighbor "Dirt Nap" Dan. I call him "Dirt Nap" because every time I hang around with him my odds of taking one increase by 47 percent (for instance, he had the rocks to cut ahead to us in front of this heavily armed crowd). He was forlornly clutching a box of spent brass and mumbling something about saving a buck or two from the entrance fee by carrying it.

I started to survey the line again. Perhaps one third of the men were carrying weapons. Were they planning to sell or trade them? Were they carrying them to gain some sort of psychological edge on the drive home? In the American South it's tough to tell.

The weapons they were carrying were also sort of interesting. They can be placed into two categories: those used to drive back Sherman and those damned Yankees (ie very historical -by which I sometimes mean ratty- looking pieces) and those that could be used to drive back the North Korean army (ie better not let the ATF agents inside get a close look at them).

We finally reached the ticket booth after your typical episode of Southern Efficiency (it only took 94 minutes for two ticket sellers to collect $8 from each of the 41 people in line ahead of us). Now, in my life I have never heard a persuasive argument against the 2nd Amendment. But at the ticket booth I think I finally saw one: the 300+ pound ticket seller in hot pink pants wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed "Gun Show Girl". She smiled at me and winked. Her teeth reminded me of a piranha while the rest of her evoked a kind of down-market Mama Cass, had she lived. Looking at her, I suddenly understood that a noble concept had somehow gone horribly awry across the time and space separating Federal Hall in New York City in 1789 from Raleigh, North Carolina on this gray morning in 2007.

Having gotten through this first circle of hell, we entered the hall where the line broke up into two streams: those who could proceed directly into the convention hall at the Gov. Jim Hunt building and those who needed to have their weapons flexi-cuffed to render them in-operational (after all, we're always been all about safety in North Carolina). As we reached the threshold of the hall things looked promising: roughly two football fields worth of tables that appeared to be devoted to all manner of weaponry. I watched a father and his young sons shuffle in ahead of me and was suddenly seized by a kind of melancholy: I lost out on so much by growing up in Mario Cuomo's New York. I'm sure Proust expressed similar sentiments.

But enough tears, goddamit. This was clearly going to be a savage kind of experience, and I had to gather myself. I had several objectives:

1. A tricked-out kalashnikov. I wanted one with all the bells and whistles: night vision, tactical grips, laser sites, cup holder, cigar cutter. This is, after all, essential equipment for any serious Man of Letters.

2. Accessories for my Springfield Operator.

3. Perhaps a Kimber Warrior.

Unfortunately, I failed at all three. It's not really my fault: contrary to the occasional report in the blogosphere by a bio-diesel drivin', Dennis Kucinich supportin' pocket mulcher who visits one of these things with the expressed purpose of documenting our "disturbing" (an old stand-by word when seized of intellectual constipation consternation) gun culture, the truth is that for people like me (the seriously disturbed) gun shows are often a mighty let down. And this was no exception.

To begin with, the pistol selection was just terrible. Many were older models that looked like they had accompanied John Wayne to "The Sands of Iwo Jima" and been last cleaned shortly thereafter. There were tons of Glocks (the pistol industry's answer to Microsoft) and some other stuff, but few really great tactical pistols (particularly at my preferred caliber, 45ACP). I was looking for the kind of thing that would help me out in a Dallas SWAT kind of situation, whichever side I happened to be on. But it was not to be. And there were no decent accessories for my Springfield Operator.

The Kalashnikovs were pretty uninspiring as well. Particularly when you consider that the Kalashnikov has been subjected to about 3500 variations, the selection at the gun show was pretty narrow. Basically every table had the same three to four variants and, unlike Goldilocks, I was unable to find among them one that was "just right".

The lack of variety also had something to do with the fact that only a minority of the vendors were actually selling firearms. Many were, in fact, selling the kind of junk that floats just below the market niche of your typical Army-Navy store: crappy Nazi and Confederate memorabilia (who buys broken old SS ashtrays and alarm clocks?? James Longstreet beer can holders???); ancient WWI dough-boy helmets; stained and fraying surplus unit patches for the 101st Airborne, 3rd Marine Division; Duluth Animal Control, etc.; rusted Imperial Japanese bayonets; etc. etc.

There seems to be a whole economy based on selling this kind of junk, which most self-respecting soldiers wouldn't even loot off the enemy dead. I can't really understand what drives these people and, more importantly, what they use for fuel. How do they support themselves? They never seem to actually sell anything (if you don't believe me, visit a gun show sometime and watch one of these vendors for a while). Are double-wides outside of Tallahassee really that inexpensive? And what draws them to this life? That's probably a question I'll never be able to answer. My anthropological context is just too different. But I do feel fairly confident that these are the kind of people that think Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby is a drama.

My wife being there also had something to do with my abject failure, particularly in terms of objective 1. Men at gun shows often lament the failure of their wives or girlfriends to "understand them". They don't seem to understand themselves that it is far worse to have a significant other who, like my wife, actually embraces the gun culture.

The problem is that it turns out that women shop for guns like they do for everything else. Sampling the kalashnikovs, my wife rejected one after the other: too heavy; too light; grips too rough; grips too smooth; etc.. Then there are the bizarre aesthetic ("the flow of that receiver does not really go with the motif of the barrel") and sartorial ("I don't have any shoes that match this synthetic stock") reasons.

The customers were an interesting bunch. As devoted as I am to the 2nd Amendment, I must admit that the idea of some of these people being armed does give me pause. Aside from the four varieties in line, I noticed a number of over-buffed faux tough-guy metrosexuals who looked like they had just left NJGuido.com. I saw one lean, urbane, bookish looking twenty-something who looked like he had just stepped off the set of Grey's Anatomy...with one wicked looking Springfield So-Com II slung over his shoulder. Most fascinating to me were the heavily armed and handicapped: people moving around in wheel chairs with machine guns and pistols in their laps. The physics of their setup fascinates me: wouldn't the fierce kick from, for instance, a Galil (which one of them had) make it impossible to fire and remain stationary?? One small man with a walker clutched a Desert Eagle (which, for the uninitiated, is a pistol so fierce I have difficulty firing it with both hands). How does he shoot it without tipping over?? In any case, think hard before you park in a handicap spot.

As the hours wore on (gun shows are huge, and so require time and enormous stamina) I noticed more and more women in the hall. They ranged from the sort that looked like they had just jumped off the pages of "Elle" to those who looked like they...well, hadn't. I wonder what kind of guns elegant and sophisticated women favor. If their sleek cell phones are any guide to the kind of look they were seeking, they were going to be as disappointed as me.

Then there are the athletic types: they shoot like they are riding a mountain bike on a tough trail. I remember visiting an indoor range a few years ago and watching with increasing amazement as a young woman, athletic in a Mia Hamm kind of way, went through her shooting routine with the steely determination and total aerobic control of a spinning class instructor. She must have fired 1000 rounds in fairly short, crisp and efficient order, carefully and quickly retrieving and documenting each target as she did so. If only to chart her progress over time in Excel.

Finally, there are what I call the Bernice Goetz type in honor of Bernhard Goetz, the iconic subway gunman from New York City. Superficially submissive in posture, you get the feeling that one day they will snap and waste the entire office flow chart above them if their boss touches their ass one more time.

Among the vendor tables, I noticed that the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) had set up a booth. Aside from the shakes I get thinking about their organizational mission (to undermine the Constitution), there is something about the look of the agents they put on display at events like this that really un-nerves me. At the ATF, the heavy lifting is done by a bunch of grizzled mountain men. But the "public face" of the ATF is a bunch of clean cut, sharply dressed white-as-Wonderbread young people who somehow come across as a hybrid between cheery (in a sociopathic kind of way) kids from the plain clothes division of the Hitler Youth and the Mormon kids you see proselytizing on UNC's campus. And they always seem to sport a kind of crazed and spacey smile that evokes the devotees of some kind of strange desert cult hopped up on Qualudes all the time.

I wish I had some pics of a new toy, but I don't. Eventually, I gave up hope. I was tired and my eyes were irritated by stealth smoke (a universal truth of gun shows is that you can always smell cigarette smoke but never spot anyone smoking). It was time to re-group and grab some Pho for lunch. Afterward, the wife and I visited Costco where some degree of redemption occurred: they had 2002 Niebaum-Coppola Rubicon. I snatched three bottles.

I hope the May gun show is better: Nancy Pelosi's maniacal grin seems to grow bigger by the day.