Safe Cleaning Procedures for a Glock
by hurricanejessica
Steps for Disassembling
1. Depress the magazine release button located on the left side above the grip. This will eject the magazine from the weapon.
The day I met him, I recognized his voice without ever having heard it.
This is probably because I had been listening to him for so long.
2. While pointing the gun downward, pull the slide back to eject any live rounds in the chamber.
The night we first kissed, that’s just how it happened. WE kissed. I didn’t kiss him. He didn’t kiss me. We just launched ourselves at each other as if we were playing a game of chicken that we both won or both lost. That night made it feel like the former. The way things have progressed, the latter is probably more accurate.
3. With the gun still pointing downward, depress the slide release lever located on left side of frame.
The first time I slid into the booth across from him and there was a Diet Coke already waiting for me, I felt as if he had handed me a kitten, or a small bag of uncut diamonds. I pictured him telling the waitress, “She’ll have a Diet Coke,” and suddenly his hair was made of pillow-soft petals. His eyes were sparklers. I could have chugged the entire drink to show my appreciation. I could have thrown the table aside and leapt in to his lap. But instead I just stared at him. His face was made of light. Each of his teeth was a polished pearl. He was perfect. He had been waiting for me. He was ready. What an amazing gift.
4. With the slide-disassembling levers depressed, pull the trigger to remove the slide from the frame.
Sometimes, he says he loves me like he is whispering it into the ear of a sleeping monster. Sometimes, he says it boldly to my face, daring me to defy him.
Occasionally, he says it as if relinquishing something precious: carefully, his eyes begging me not to drop it.
Most of the time, when he says it, he is a doctor giving bad news.
I recognize the look in his eyes. I saw it a week before my father died.
5. Remove the recoil spring from the slide assembly.
He might have slapped me the day he told me that what I wrote made him uncomfortable. Or eaten my last french fry. “I’m not good at romance,” he said. “It makes me squirm.”
I had mulled over every word so thoroughly that even the “thes” and the “ands” I knew by name.
I had tied them to the ankles of a hundred doves with the greatest of care
and released them only to find that each and every one had met an untimely demise.
They had slammed into his closed window.
They had fallen lifeless to the ground.
6. Remove the barrel from the slide (within the slide).
Now, after several months of hearing that voice, I no longer recognize it. It echos strangely, things he’d never say, over and over.
And when we meet and I get there first, I have no idea what what drink to order for him.
He always wants something different.
What is there to give?
The disassembly is now complete.
