I was on all fours in our kitchen yesterday. Not, as you might expect, reprising my erstwhile role as CharmingVille’s sauciest homemaker. I was arse-up, commando-crawling the underbelly of our jerry-built-ins to find the source of our interminable ant infestation and rout the little fuckers with extreme prejudice. This mission remains unaccomplished. Because instead I found a 15-inch steel bayonet in our Tupperware drawer. Maybe I watch too much History Channel but I knew straight away it was a sword-like stabbing blade, usually affixed to a rifle and intended to kill or maim during close-quarter combat, and not Björt, the elegant Starckian apple corer I threw in the trolley seven years ago while on a pear schnapps bender at IKEA Minsk. Disturbingly, one of these objects has been used, and we all know it wasn’t Björt. No one ever uses Björt.
Like every armchair rubbernecker, I read The Police Blotter. My first reaction was: ‘Holy shit I know I’m a battle-axe but this time I’ve pushed Hubster to the brink of emotional extinction with my relentless barb ‘n’ spat and now he’s going to extinct me for real with a couple of decisive pokes from a circa 1966 China-made pig sticker.’ Unsettled, I took a picture and Vibered him at work to see if this was on the cards. A rookie mistake, if one is to successfully elude a tether-end spouse with a massive shiv in his hand and murder on his mind. But still. A few tense seconds later he replied: “No. I heart you,” followed disconcertingly by one of those winky smiley faces. I remain alert.
Back in my antipodean motherland it’s not everyday you’re this close quarters with such offensive ordnance. Apart from youthful farmyard shenanigans with grandpa’s air rifle and the side of a barn, my brush with guns ‘n’ ammo has been mainly limited to winning a hideous octopus plushie at the 1992 Royal Show shooting gallery and watching my nephew play GTA5. Just the once I was instructed by an overseas teacher friend to dispose of something in a toolbox he’d asked me to store. He couldn’t tell me what it was over the phone. In my innocence I thought it might be exam answers or an embarrassing poem. It turned out to be a 9mm Ruger handgun loaded with a full clip but one. I squeaked with fear when it dropped out of its cloth wrapper and landed in my lap. As you would. I sat there for stunned minutes, frightened to move in case it went off. It took me eons to empty the bullets and carefully place them in separate saucepans, terrified they would somehow spontaneously explode. Unimaginatively I put the gun in my underwear drawer. Later in an empty VHS case. Still later in a shoe. And eventually in the hands of an officer of the law.
But here in the Bodes guns and shit are everywhere in plain sight. And not just with the Keystones on the corner or our TMNT mates bivouacked in Victory Park.
A few years ago a colleague returned the company Camry to the car park after a weekend down the coast. Knowing our workmate as we did, it surprised no one that the boot was aromatic with durian stink and the ashtray stuffed with well-sucked hand-rolled filters. There were lusty footprints on the ceiling. However, there was a bullet hole in the rear passenger pillar, which did raise a few eyebrows. I won’t go into that now.
And just last week, stuck in a schools-out mid-afternoon snarl in BKK1, I watched a spanking new black Lexus barge and honk and bully its way to the head of the line, ahead of patient parents and spit-polished kiddies. The lone passenger was a gormless pre-teen nose-miner. The plateless vehicle was flanked by four fat, black-safari-suited bodyguards, two to a moto like pigs on a circus trike. No one wore a joke ruffle, but one of them did have builder’s crack and two of them sported those laughable heelless slip-ons with the turned-up toes. I wanted to point and smirk. But I could only sneer on the inside. Because all four of them accessorised their ample muffin tops with chunky pistols poking grip out. That part wasn’t funny at all.
Even less funny is that the Type 56 fold-away bayonet sitting on my countertop is available on Amazon for $21.95. Luckily there is one less drunk tuk tuk driver in possession thereof, thanks to my bloke who brought it home for safety’s sake. Or so he says. As far as the gun it’s made for, everyman and his running dog has one in this neck of the woods. Blessed are the peacemakers.