My ears perked up.
It's a strange thing when that primal part of ourselves kicks in and we suddenly are alert.
I was operating on some out of body sense-in one graceful move I picked up the 9 inch chefs knife I kept by the bed and padded silently and quite naked, into the hall and on to the living room.
It takes a second or two for the eyes to connect to the brain and understand what you are seeing.
There was a young man who had squeezed in through a sliding window now trying to figure out how to open the lock on the sliding glass door to make an easier exit for himself.
Drawing myself up to my full 6 foot two and in my best naked man monster voice I invited him to leave the premises - immediately...
For a second or two I actually felt a little sorry for the dumb sucker---he thought he was doing an easy, weekday morning BnE-a rear apartment with a convenient patio hidden from any pesky nosy neighbors and any view from the street and now there he was-trapped empty handed and weaponless between a locked slider and a BIG naked man with a loud voice and a very large KNIFE.
In a moment of sanity I retreated and grabbed a robe, returning to the living room I was just in time to see his skinny ass disappearing out the window he entered through.
I continued across the living room and dialed 911.
I would love to have a tape of that call-the woman wanted to debate the semantics of being
robbed versus burglarized however she did mobilize the police-I found pants, shirt and shoes-
and there was a knock at the door and that lovely sound of a deep voice announcing, "POLICE"...
They already had him I was told-so into the police car I went and they drove me via shadows so I couldn't be seen to the local mall where my ROBBER (I know he was actually my burglar but that's harder to say than ROBBER) was up against a patrol car wearing the most stylish bracelets...
I realized how amazingly photographic our brains are under duress-I had perfectly described his hair, pants and the crooked tooth he had in front but he had changed his shirt-I heard "he changed his shirt?" come out of my mouth.
Apparently he thought that would throw off the man hunt-the other shirt was found in the space between my apartment building and the house next door-he had been carrying a stack of jeans, neatly folded as if they had been "removed from someones drawer" (not mine, wrong size).
SO...that was that...I was returned to my home, there was a parade of various investigators and detectives, fingerprint powder everywhere-
Just inside the window he came through was a white macrame plant hanger which held a large, shiny, YELLOW pot with a lush fern.
No comments, it was the early 80's that was very chic...
Said shiny, yellow pot had a perfect hand print where he had gently pushed it aside to get in.
That evening I slept on the COUCH with the knife and a pistol provided by a neighbor...the next day every window was drilled and pegged so they wouldn't slide open without removing the peg stops...new poles in the slider door tracks...deadbolts.
How violated, creepy and vulnerable one feels after such an event can hardly be described.
We think that walls and windows and doors offer us enough protection sheathed as we are in our false sense of security...
I had to testify against the little bastard in court where his red neck father and trailer park girl friend glared at me from the audience area and hissed epithets at me as I left the courtroom-as if I had done something to them...obviously he wasn't a felon he had stopped in for a humanitarian purpose...moronic
That proceeding, of course, acerbated the anxiety which was just diminishing after about 6 weeks...there is always the chance that they will get off on a technicality...
As it happens I was Burglarized twice more at that address-by the third episode I had added an alarm-I had closed in the patio with lattice---useless, obviously in that case they had sent in a child to open the door from the inside via a break in the lattice work.
In neither of the other cases had I actually confronted the perpetrator as I had in the first event...
By the way that first burglary was not the first of my life I had been hit at least twice in the early 70's when I lived in Hollywood and I had been mugged (at knife point) a block from my apartment at twilight.
In the 90's the van we used to do art fairs and shows was literally broken into via a wind wing (remember those? don't see them much anymore) and they took the brand new sound system that had been installed to make the long trips less tedious...it was parked in front of the house in Burbank.
This morning I read a very sad, upsetting angry post on Facebook...a friend in Oklahoma was burglarized...obviously she was shaken...its a terrible. impotent feeling...you want someone to hit or slowly torture...I think we lose our civilized selves and go to that primal place where the old programmed genetics that govern "run, hide, protect, defend." still exist.
For most of us who aren't wealthy film moguls or oil barons, robbers seldom get anything of particular value...they take stuff that they think they can sell off for some money to get their next fix or whatever...I guess its stuff they snort now-meth-amphetamine...the drug du jour.
When they do get something important it is only important to us at a heart ache level and is irreplaceable ...something from a friend or treasured relative...
One of my robberies they took two hundred dollars in cash, the insult was they took the Godiva Box I kept it in...
That box was worth more to me than the Mona Lisa...it came from a friend who had passed on, it had been given for a special occasion...
A friend said to me that they couldn't steal the memories...yeah, well...I want my Godiva Box back because there was something written in the lid...it was just a paper box...it meant nothing to the drug addict who pushed it into a pocket and moved on...
That person wanted the 2 hundred bucks and the GODIVA chocolate box was a symbol of rich stuff-if I could afford Godiva I could afford to lose 2 hundred bucks...they apparently make up reasons that justify what they do.
Take the money, leave the box...
I don't care how much tough love, scared straight, well meaning ex-con therapy they hand out in prisons there will always be some smart assed punk who runs laughing through someones home, believing they are Robin Hood grabbing bits of this and that and then breaking the stuff they couldn't carry just for meanness.
They don't care that they grabbed things that were mementos of long dead friends, reletives, moments of our lives that only have meaning to
us.
For quite a few years I have had am old fashioned hat stand in my living room-it came from my friend Chuck who was my friend, vocal coach and accompanist for many years...one of the dear ones I buried in those horrible years of the plague.
On the hooks where hats should hang I display things that I love to look at as I walk by---little bits of art and junk that are treasures to me.
One was a bright yellow, hand painted tie from the 1940's...it belonged to my dad.
I was very, very sad that Dad was not buried in a yellow shirt...he loved yellow shirts-we always bought him yellow shirts for every occasion-it was a thing...my Mother in some grieving widow moment decided to bury him wearing the tie his BOSS had given him (instead of a decent salary or a bonus).
My Dad hated to wear a TIE...what he loved was a yellow shirt...
I had that yellow tie...it was so him...it was vintage, it was so me...we weren't connected by blood but we were connected by his love...
What could that stupid tie have meant to anyone but HIM... and me?
So...it was stolen...by some random person that came through my house...it's gone forever...
A burglary happened in Oklahoma, they took things of sentimental value, broke a window...
But here in California its the 1970's and once again I am a violated, young, naked man with a knife and I want to punish that selfish punk and ALL the selfish punks who steal our memories and our security...
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