I Would Make a Terrible Assassin

And it has nothing to do with the fact that I hate guns. And violence. And dead bodies.

Bored by all of my TV choices over a recent “weekend,” whatever that even means anymore, I finally rented and watched John Wick for the first time. I’d long known about The Thing that happens early on, so when I could see it was coming, I pulled the covers up over my head and drowned out any potential yelping noise with my own desperate pleas of “No no no no no no no no fuuuuuuuuck no no no no no no no nooooooooo!!!”

Forever impatient, I looked up too soon and saw poor Keanu, badly beaten, crying with his bloody face up to that of his dead puppy. His dead puppy that his dead wife had given his posthumously. So, yeah, what the fuck, movie?

My Fitbit tells me my heart rate is at 96 even though I am laying down horizontally. I am full of adrenaline and ready for some cold, hard vengeance. I’m talking blood. I wanted to see SOME SERIOUS BLOOD. And wow, you guys, I did see some serious blood, which is honestly so gross but also satisfying in the right context!

I got to thinking about if I could undertake this mission. Sure, if a brigade of spoiled Russian assassins beat my dead wife’s posthumously gifted puppy to death, UHHH YEAH, I would absolutely do everything in my power to see that they all suffered in a proportionate way, and by proportionate way I do mean a righteous revenge killing. Like, duh.

But…could I do it myself? Could I BE an assassin? HAHAHAHAHAHA NO. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I hate guns. And violence. And dead bodies.

Excuse me, but where are the snacks?

No, really. When does he eat? Not once does Keanu nourish himself with even a morsel of sustenance. Okay look, maybe we’re just supposed to believe that he eats in the moments that aren’t being captured as a part of this vengeance tale, but I’m not buying it. Dude is sustained by grief and anger alone and while that is super relatable, I also like to throw carbs into the mix. Need to use a sledge hammer to demolish the concrete floors in my basement where I keep my guns and the currency of my bizarre members-only assassin hotel chain?

Not without making a bagel first, and that is going to take some time.

First, I have to find the serrated knife to cut the bagel. Then I need to toast the bagel to achieve that golden brown crunch, locate a clean butter knife, and pull the cream cheese out of the fridge. Generous and equal cream cheese distribution is important to me and my lifestyle, so this next part is not something I’m willing to do quickly. Once the bagel passes inspection, I have to take a single bite while I’m still standing because that’s how making a bagel works. But I cannot eat my entire meal while I stand and stare at a fucking wall, so I’m obviously going to need to find a show to put on for simultaneous comfort and nourishment.

Some people go to church, some people watch Frasier on a loop for all of time until they perish. I am in the latter camp. I finish my bagel, and likely the episode of Frasier where it’s Daphne’s wedding and Niles finally tells her how he feels about her and they’re in that insane round room where like everyone in the entire family, including her fiance, keep walking into while they’re having this heart wrenching exchange that’s seven years in the making (why didn’t they go outside to the balcony to begin with???).

I’m finally ready to go down to the basement where I swing a 20-lb. sledge hammer up and down, for an hour, with a level of vigor that can only be matched by Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston trying to break down the castle door, fueled by unrivaled misogyny and dozens of raw eggs. Concrete is flying everywhere.

At long last, I’ve reached the box containing all remnants of my dark and dangerous past life, but I’ve sweat through my linen joggers and my hands have cramped and frozen in a terrifying, inoperable position. It immediately occurs to me that I need potassium, so I head back upstairs for a banana. But a banana by itself doesn’t sound that appetizing and there’s just enough peanut butter left to put a little dollop on each bite of banana. I stretch my stiff, weary fingers until they’re able to retrieve the butter knife from earlier out of the sink; I wash it and carry it to the couch along with the almost-empty peanut butter jar and my banana.

I see there’s a new episode of Law & Order: SVU on Hulu. I fall asleep halfway through, rogue peanut butter dried to my chin. It has been three hours and I have not killed anyone.

Speaking of sleeping, I do it way too well.

Sleeping as an assassin seems fraught at best and deadly at worst. From what I’ve garnered, the ability to sense a threat coming while you sleep is paramount to staying alive long enough to see that your work is done. Keanu can barely shut those big brown eyes to recover from his last gunshot wound before he’s back up strangling a Hot Lady Assassin in self-defense.

I am not ashamed to admit that I need a solid 8–9 hours of sleep each night and I don’t feel particularly motivated to compromise on that no matter how hot my enemies are. These days, I’m out by 11:30 and up around 7:30. This is an EXTREMELY wide and generous window for someone to exact their revenge plot.

Around 11 each night, I gingerly spritz my lavender mood spray. I fill my water bottle one last time. And I heave the weighted blanket up to my chin. I enjoy an episode of Bob’s Burgers while I drift off and then, I sleep. I sleep long. I sleep hard. I sleep as if there’s an impenetrable, soundproof bubble encapsulating my overpriced hybrid mattress.

I’m what some would call a, uh, deep sleeper. Like a rock if a rock often woke up at the foot of the bed fully entangled with the fitted sheet, every pillow on the floor, and no memory of what went down. Past boyfriends have described my sleeping style as “deeply disturbing,” “like a manic bear in hibernation” and “sometimes I check your pulse to see if you’re still alive.”

For reference, here is a non-exhaustive list of events that I have slept through:

• A hard-wired fire alarm going off for hours. Above my head. On the same wall I slept against.
• 15 alarms, making me two hours late for school. As the teacher.
• Hail storms.
• Hurricanes.
• Another 15 alarms, making me miss a cross-country flight. On more than one occasion.

You can see what I mean, I’m sure. If Hot Lady Assassin was ever intent on ending me in my luxury assassins-only hotel room, my only line of defense would be a mouth guard that wobbles back and forth precariously in my mouth because my old dentist never got the fitting right and then I waited too long to go back and tell him before my insurance network no longer included him as a provider.

(Do not make me admit that I am not strong enough to lob my weighted blanket at anyone with any sort of force; I am barely able to carry it to the washing machine…which is why I’ve only washed it once in two years.)

Anyways, I’m no forensic scientist, but I highly doubt that there have been many cases where any of these sleep accoutrements have stopped a bullet and if I’m being honest, lavender mood spray is far too expensive to waste making futile attempts to blind an enemy.

The only real thing I can take any comfort in is the knowledge that my transition from sleep to death would be seamless.

I have to pee all of the time. Like, all of the time. All of the time.

One life event that I seemingly cannot sleep through is a full bladder. It’s fairly routine for me to make a 3am trip to the bathroom because 1. Hydration is life and 2. My bladder is a tender-yet-demanding vessel, and in that way, I like to think it’s the organ that most closely aligns with my general personality. What if my enemy forced their way inside at the exact time I awoke to pee, but before I could relieve myself? Game over right there.

One time, I took an hour-long — yes, a single hour — plane ride from Panama City to the Darien Gap and by the time we arrived, my bladder was in such excruciating pain that I couldn’t even stand up straight. We’d landed on a rudimentary cement strip in the middle of the jungle and were greeted by men in fatigues wielding machetes and AK-47s, so naturally I started crying, “Baño, por favor! Baño, por favor! Baño, por favor!!!”

Hunched over and cradling my lower abdomen, I was far too weak to stand much less act deferential to automatic weaponry. This was, as I was later told, an incredibly dangerous move on my part, though my request did disarm them — emotionally, not literally — because they eventually let a very young indigenous boy take me past the barbed wire fence, through a maze of thatched-roof huts, and to a latrine where I saw so many maggots that I almost died from the sheer horror of it all. (Please add maggots to the list of weapons that could easily be used to kill me.)

Keanu doesn’t use the restroom ONCE. How? How are we supposed to believe this? HOW??? He consumes liquids, no? Preposterous! Does he have a synthetic bladder sewn into his lower abdomen? Is that like part of the assassin life? Is he wearing a catheter at all times?

Please make it make some sense because, with my bladder, I’d have the perfect shot — large cold brew with light almond milk in my left hand, glock (that’s a gun, yeah?) in my right hand — and then it’d hit me. I’d frantically tuck my very cool gun into the back of my black Gap jeans (look, in my fantasy, the custom suit shop is just a Gap store that carries all of my favorite discontinued jeans) and approach my target.

“Oh, hi there! Do you, like, work here? Ha, oh, sorry. I just got a little turned around, heh. Do you, ummm, do you happen to know where the nearest restroom is? Coffee, am I right?? Heh…”

Hot Lady Assassin laughs in a way that should make her look ugly but no, she still looks hot, and fires a single shot into my neck. I fall to the ground, still clutching my $6 cup of cold brew, relieve myself one more time, and sputter out one last sentence through a mouth full of my own blood, “c-c-can you ma-a-a-ake me a…b-b-bagel?”