‘“The Pearl Handled Grip”’ By Frits Fairhurst

A red-haired gay man in his young thirties had made a solid commitment to care for his Dad. Acquiring a hard drug habit overseas in Okinawa after the Vietnam War ended, his pop knew how devoted his son felt. Angry because his partner spent too much time caring for his Dad his lover Amitri began to argue about his commitment to his drugged out father. They right there and then decided to separate breaking up their monogamous relationship. Tea knew he would return to his home in Kansas eventually to check on his Dad. At present he packed his bags to head to India on a meditative quest. It was in the middle of the Ganges River in India when Tea visualized such vivid recall of his uncle’s accidental suicide. As a young soldier before he married his dad had just finished his term of duty in Vietnam. He was deeply in love with his hometown sweetheart back in Kansas, infamous tornado country. Back on his family’s farm, when he was only nineteen, he had spied a sparkling shiny pistol with a pearl handled grip in the window of his town’s general store. He had to have it. Returning to his family farm he asked his father if he could purchase it. His mother wary about violent weapons interjected on the spot. She said no that there were enough guns around the home. Meanwhile he had already purchased the pistol. At that very moment he held it tightly under his right arm pit. His younger brother asked him what was in the cedar box that he placed on the living room’s coffee table. He told his brother that it was a gun he bought against his parents approval. Being a young rowdy teen, his brother opened the box and started handling it as he sat at the dining room table. His older brother tried to wrangle it away from him. Pointing the pistol directly at the middle of his chest his kid brother pulled the trigger. A bullet hit its target dead-on smack dab in the middle of his heart, bleeding out all over the dining room floor. Grabbing the cedar box with the pistol, he ran out of the house away from his family farm with nothing but the clothes on his back. In Okinawa on the day of his discharge an old Japanese man had sold him a strand of remarkably exquisite pearls. These he gave to his betrothed. Tucked into the box of the pearls were several white packets of strong heroin. His wife knew he had an addiction but remained faithful to her hard working husband for thirty years. Divorced and downtrodden his hard core drug usage nearly killed him when Tea his only son visited him back in Kansas after hus divorce. By dragging his dad’s ass into the cold shower he had saved his life. Over in India Tea began to meditate more and recite Hindu prayers. On his return home he found his old partner waiting for him at his Massachusetts loft space. There at the door his man placed those pearls his father had given to his mom, over his head to adorn his chest. They smiled realizing they never would ever part again. Back in Kansas his father resides at a flea bag motel. Among the cocaine and amphetamines on the dusty kitchen table rested the cedar box holding his abhorrent obsession an attraction that had determined his destiny forevermore. This is the take of …” the gun with the pearl handled grip.

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