posted by RICK : 2:49 AM
My bedroom. 11am, on December 1st.
Me: Skinny, balding, white male. I was wearing a yellow and blue pair of plaid boxers and a bedspread. I also had sleep in my eyes.
You: Large, black man (think, perhaps, a slightly smaller Ving Rhames), standing in my doorway saying I had "Left the door open," before you turned and left.
I don't know... did we have a moment?
A funny story:I'm laying in bed this morning. It's around 11am. I hear a knock at the door. This is not an unfamiliar sound in our apartment building as we frequently get visits by monthly exterminators or repairmen or supers inquiring about something unimportant. And while, yes, my roommates ceiling is leaking and very well could be expecting someone to repair it, I was tired and goddamn if I was going to get out of bed only to send someone away. The knocking wasn't just my door. It was all 4 doors on our floor (note: each apartment has 2 entries).
The knocking eventually stopping and I attempted to drift back to sleep. This didn't last long as I soon heard a crunching sound. Hmm. Perhaps work was being done in the hallway and the knocking was to just let us know. Flash forward about 3 minutes. My bedroom door open up. A man stands there. I look at him and him at me. He says, "Someone left your door open." "Okay," I said. At this point I still didn't think anything in particular was wrong. Clearly this guy, who wouldn't have been out of place fixing a sink, thought no one was home, came in to do some work, (maybe Paul, out of character, forgot to lock up) and was startled to find me. I got up out of bed. Put some pants on and walked across the apartment to the other entryway. To say that I was mildly shocked to see that the entire door jamb had been ripped from the wall and that the door was open despite the dead-bolt, would probably be right on the money.
Here is where I begin to makes a series of 3 crucial (though not entirely unnecessary mistakes): 1) I look to see if anything is missing. No. Even items such as digital cameras, sitting out in plain sight and right by the door, were still in place. Awesome. Then I called Paul. I mean, he does live her too, right? We had a quick convo where little info was exchanged as, obviously, neither of us really had any. It was suggested I call the cops. So I then, 3) went downstairs to talk to the landlord who wasn't around, but whose wife/girlfriend/live-in female WAS home and who mentioned that someone had knocked on her door and said that his partner was upstairs and he was waiting for him. Apparently, she didn't find this as the flag that others might have felt it was. No worries.
So then I call the cops. They show up moments later and ask why the hell I didn't call immediately after this happened. I have no answer.
My adventure with the policeSince it's rare for someone to actually get a good look at the person who is about to burgle them, I was asked again and again to describe the suspect. I think I did a good job. He was firmly in my mind-- but the catch was that I was thinking of a body type. Things such as specific facial features were a mystery to me as I didn't have my glasses on when I first saw him (I didn't remember this until many hours into the day). That being said I was fairly sure if I saw this person I could ID him. What one finds, after making this statement, is that most humans look exactly alike. Well, not exactly alike, but we're constantly told when we're younger that we are all individual snowflakes and that we're all unique. This is a lie. There's basically about 100 different people on the planet and the rest of us are just a mish-mash of them.
First I sat in the back of a squad can and was driven around the neighborhood asked to see if anyone was recognizable. If you ever want to feel like you're wielding WAY more power than any person should rightfully have: do this. I saw people whose body type was close, but there was no way in hell I was going to say, "Yeah, that's the guy." What if I was wrong? Does that make me a racist? Kinda, right?
Then I went back to the apartment and got into another car, this one unmarked. We drove around some more. I restated the events and the description. We eventually ended up at the 83rd precinct, where I then sat in a small room staring at a screen of 6 random (though filtered) images of people who had been arrested in the area. There was also a "NEXT" button which I could press to look at 6 more photos. I was told to press this button until I found a match, but like I had metioned earlier, I only knew his face shape-- eyes, nose, mouth, things that set people apart was missing for me. Nevertheless I pressed the button. Again. And again. Shortly, the officers that had brought me there left to respond to another call and I was more or less alone, at the police station, and too far away from home to walk. I kept pressing the button. The computer was old, as expected. It took a moment or two for the photos to load after pressing "NEXT." After pressing the button 100 times my mind was fried. Every photo looked exactly alike. No one came and got me. How long was I suppose to press this button? I felt like Desmond. About 2 hours and 276 clicks later I finally broke down and said I couldn't look at another picture. There was no way I was going to spot this guy. I viewed close to 2000 photos of 25-45 year old, black, stocky men. If you want to feel bad about your place in the world, this is how you do it.
Eventually I went home where I found the only good news of this event: a repair guy was there to fix the door and install metal brackets over the jamb that should keep someone from prying open the door. We'll see.
But seriously, how lucky can a guy be? Our apartment was broken into while I was still there. Nothing was taken, and no one got hurt. Frankly, if that's how it has to go down, he might as well come twice a month.
In a related story:
here is an article about an artists co-op across the street. What the article really told me, however, was that I live in a horrible neighborhood. It's funny because this has been the only place I've lived since coming back to New York in January of 2004 and it's never been any worse than a simple annoyance (dirty, mildly irritating building management, shoddy wiring), but to most people-- people who are from New York, who have been around, I live in hell. Don't get me wrong, this isn't like the Baltimore neighborhoods you see on "The Wire." This is a working community. But to many, it is also exceptionally dangerous. I guess I'm just now seeing this.
It's probably time to upgrade.