by BJW Nashe
The former wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy was recently arrested after a bizarre altercation with her current male companion. Reports indicate that Jennifer McCarthy allegedly pulled a gun from her vagina and threatened her boyfriend with it after a dispute over space aliens. She has been charged with aggravated assault on a household member.
When I first noticed this story, my first thought was, “Wow, I wonder if Jenny McCarthy will get fired from ‘The View’ for this.” Then I realized that the big-boobed airhead from the TV show (who thinks vaccinations cause autism) is not the same Jennifer McCarthy who was once married to Cormac, and who is now evidently fond of stuffing guns into her vagina. It’s a weird world, folks. Sometimes things get complicated.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Smoking Gun, Ms. McCarthy, 48, got into a heated argument with her 53 year-old lover, whose identity was kept confidential. The subject of the argument was space aliens. Couples will fight over the damnedest things. On Saturday morning, January 4, Ms. McCarthy broke off the argument and left her Santa Fe residence for a while. Then she returned home and changed into some lingerie. After that, things got a little strange.
Ms. McCarthy’s boyfriend told investigators that he discovered she had placed a silver handgun in her vagina, and that she proceeded to have “inner course [sic] with the gun,” according to the affidavit.
I am well aware that gun fetishism is quite prevalent in American society, but this incident takes us to a whole other level. We might expect this kind of story to come out of Florida — the Gunshine State. But for New Mexico, it is fairly shocking. Thus, a number of questions arise. First of all, the argument-about-aliens angle is intriguing. One wonders what the big disagreement was. A sighting? An abduction? Space vampire invasion? As it stands, we simply do not know, which is frustrating. Secondly, certain logistics pertaining to the gun play are puzzling. How, exactly, was the gun placed “inside” her vagina? Was only the barrel inserted? Or just the handle? The whole damn gun? Is such a thing even possible? Was the gun loaded at the time? Does Ms. McCarthy have a “conceal and carry” permit? What exactly did the boyfriend mean when he said she was having “inner course” with the gun? And why was the individual who prepared the affadavit at the Santa Fe sheriff’s office — Deputy Chris Zook — unable to spell the word “intercourse” correctly?
None of these questions have been adequately dealt with in any of the news reports I have seen concerning Ms. McCarthy’s arrest. The episode remains shrouded in mystery. Which is too bad, because in a case such as this, the devil most definitely is in the graphic details. In any case, I get the sense that liquor and/or meth just might have been a factor here.
According to the boyfriend, as the lingerie-clad Ms. McCarthy was using the gun as a sex toy, she asked him point blank, “Who is crazy, you or me?” The affadavit does not indicate whether the boyfriend dared to answer her. Perhaps it was no more than a rhetorical question — or something blurted out in the heat of the moment. Maybe the answer was all too apparent.
Investigators allege that Ms. McCarthy eventually removed the gun from it’s “vagina holster” and pointed it at her boyfriend’s head. Fearing for his life, the boyfriend managed to seize the weapon and put it in the toilet. It is unclear how much of a struggle was involved in this. I would prefer to not have to use my imagination. After things calmed down a bit, the boyfriend removed the gun from the toilet and tossed it into a trash can outside. At some point he decided he better call the police. Deputy Zook stated that he recovered “a silver Smith and Wesson in the outside trash can.” The gun is reportedly doing fine, and is expected to make a full recovery from the traumatic event it was involved in.
Ms. McCarthy was arrested on a felony charge of aggravated assault on a household member. She was booked into the county jail, from which she was released on Sunday after posting $5000 bond.
Cormac McCarthy, acclaimed author of The Border Trilogy, No Country for Old Men, and The Road, and screenwriter for the recent film The Counselor, married Jennifer McCarthy in Nevada in 1998. The couple, who have a teenage son together, were divorced in Texas in 2006. The notoriously publicity shy novelist has offered no comment on the arrest of his ex-wife following the space-alien-gun-vagina dispute. Perhaps he will be able to work the scene into an upcoming sexploitation script or trigger-happy western.
By far the most literary account of this crime story is Tom Scocca’s write-up in Gawker, which is done as a parody of Cormac McCarthy’s highly distinctive Faulkner-goes-wild-west style. Here is a sample:
“The gun now lost in the depths. No. Not lost. A swift turn of her wrist and there was the whole of it, winking back into the airy world and rising to fix on him. The shining shaft foreshortened into the lightless eye of an ancient uncaring deity, hollow gaze falling on his own fearstruck eyes.”
J
ennifer McCarthy has since released a recording from the 911 phone call she made on January 4, along with a statement in which she asserts that she was the true victim in the incident. She claims she called 911 “after having been choked, pushed to the floor and hit in the face by a drunken Mark Paleologo on Saturday morning following a silly argument the evening before.” Ms. McCarthy’s statement attempts to explain the discrepancy between her version of events and her boyfriend’s:
“My call to 911 obviously de-escalated the situation and at that point I thought the matter was resolved and did not require further law enforcement attention. Consequently, I tried to protect Mr. Paleologo and minimized the attack to the officer.
At no time did I point a gun at Mr. Paleologo. At no time did I place a gun or any weapon anywhere in my body.
Unfortunately, Mark’s preposterous version of events was repeated in the complaint and resulted in my arrest.”
Either Jennifer McCarthy is in need of drug or alcohol rehabilitation and/or psychotherapy, or she has been the victim of domestic abuse and the police made a mistake by arresting her. Maybe the outlandish gun-in-the-vagina story so widely reported is untrue. Or perhaps just about everything reported on this bizarre story is to some extent true. The argument about aliens, the abuse, the lingerie, the gun play, the threats — in deeply troubled relationships, these sorts of things happen.
We can only hope that Ms. McCarthy’s criminal case will result in her getting the help she needs to heal her mind, leave the boyfriend, and drop the disastrous gun fetish. Then again, she can always simply re-locate to Florida.