When I'm told by some media talking head or government official that "chatter" from overseas has led someone to warn somebody of something, or that a bureaucrat somewhere has decided to change the color on some threat-level matrix, I take note.
More importantly, I take action. In such times--which, actually, occur less frequently than you'd imagine in Manhattan--I do not ride the subway and have been known to stay inside to the extent that such a posture is practical.
Call me a wuss, a worrywart, or an unsophisticated rube if you like. Alert me to the fact that I'm little more than a naive pawn in G-Dub's game of attention diversion and feel free to label me as some paranoid kook who believes everything he reads. Tell me I shouldn't let a crew of killers halfway around the world (or an administration bent on scaring people like me for political reasons, take your pick) dictate how I live my life. It doesn't bother me in the least. I've heard all the arguments, believe me. And I'm not persuaded. You will not change my thinking on this one, I assure you. When the threat level rises, I'm walking to wherever I need to go. If it's a weekend, I'm renting movies and substituting push-ups in the living room for workouts at the gym downtown.
Nearly everyone I know has challenged me on this seemingly incongruous quirk in what most would consider my otherwise rational and reasonable manner of living.
When asked to explain my extreme stance on the subject, I usually say only the following:
"I don't fuck around with terror alerts."
My thinking is that I don't really owe anyone much more than that.
When prodded with additional questions along the lines of "What do you think is going to happen?" or "What are you afraid of?" I may offer up the word "dying" or retort with a short statement such as "I'm too young to die."
Usually, though, I just tell people that "I don't fuck around with terror alerts" . . . and leave it at that.
In fact, those were the exact words I spoke to a co-worker last Thursday night, just before I set off on a 39-block jaunt home from the office. Fifty-five minutes earlier I had read a Yahoo News headline containing the words "NYC," "Subway," and "Terror," and I decided instantaneously to hoof it home after finishing some last-minute edits for a story I was working on. The walk--which, at a leisurely pace, would take approximately 45 minutes--would be "totally annoying," a twenty-something co-worker warned before scampering out the door to hop a train to Brooklyn. "Plus," she added, "terrorists don't attack at seven o'clock on a Thursday night."
Her second point was sound, but I do not often stray when it comes to things like this.
"It's OK," I replied. "I need the exercise anyway."
On my way home, both my mother and aunt called to make sure things were still cool in the city. Both told me, expressly, and in a tone that if written out and punctuated would've called for an exclamation point, not to take the subway.
"Believe me," I told them both, in conversations that, in retrospect, were remarkably similar, "you don't have to worry about me getting on a subway right now."
That night, I ran a few Google searches to check on the veracity of the threats that led me to forsake public transportation and succumb to an impulse ice cream purchase on 58th Street near the park. I learned very little from the search results, and a visit to cnn.com added no new information to that which I'd already gathered. So I set my alarm for exactly 45 minutes earlier than normal and decided to again rely on my black-sole Clark's to see me through the 39 blocks I needed to traverse.
I decided almost immediately upon exiting my apartment that a walk on the west side of town via 11th Avenue--as opposed to a trip on Broadway--though likely to take a few minutes longer, would be my best overall bet. It would surely be less crowded on 11th--which is only a block or so from the Hudson River, and is almost always devoid of people, aside from some stray factory workers or the occasional jogger--and the dearth of pedestrians, I told myself, would help me to better enjoy the time spent commuting.
The weather had not yet turned, and the seven days of rain we've experienced since last Saturday was still a few days away, so the stroll did indeed start out as a peaceful respite from the hustle and bustle of life in the city. I passed numerous beautiful churches that I had no idea even existed, noticed some cool parks, and walked past the studio where John Stewart et al. film "The Daily Show." Everything was lovely.
Birds chirped. Trees rustled. The sun warmed my face and arms.
Then I noticed the guy in the tossel cap breaking into the Jeep.
That's when everything changed.
I came across the guy right before I reached the stretch of 11th Avenue known as Auto Way. The area gained this moniker thanks to the numerous high-end car dealerships that line four or five of its blocks in midtown. Unfortunately for me, at 9:15 last Friday morning, Auto Way had become "Auto Theft Way"--or, if you so desire, "Auto (theft is) Way (cool)"--and upon seeing a portly, bearded man in an aqua sweater and a bright red tossel cap frantically shoving what appeared to be a hand-bent piece of wire into the base of a Jeep's passenger side window, I couldn't help but think about the guts one must have in order to try to rip off a car in the part of town foremost known for its car sales.
The consummate gawker, I couldn't help but watch from across the street as the guy carried out numerous unsuccessful attempts to plunge the wire into an area near the bottom of the vehicle's window. I also noticed that the Jeep was not that nice. It appeared to be one of those Liberty models the company came out with in 2001 or so, and it was probably two or three years old. The black paint that adorned the Jeep did not have any noticeable defects from my vantage point, but it clearly didn't have that shiny new-car paint job that is unmistakable among recently purchased vehicles. In addition, the bumper, it seemed to me, leaned to the right more than normal.
As I looked around, it became clear that for at least two blocks in either direction there were no other people walking on the sidewalk. I noticed a big blue mailbox about 20 feet away from where I was walking and decided to use it for cover as I ducked down a bit to better witness the Jeep jacking. In retrospect, I wasn't even thinking about what I should do under the circumstances, or whether staring at a dude in a tossel cap stealing a car on an empty street on the far west side of Manhattan was possibly not the smartest use of my pre-work time.
I just watched, in disbelief, as the guy struggled with that wire as though his life depended on it. His lack of success was surely due in large part to the fact that he kept diverting attention from the larcenous task at hand in order to look up and twist his head in every direction imaginable to make sure he would not be caught. His limbs seemed to move in an aggressive, convulsive fashion, and his actions were of the herky-jerky variety.
When he first saw me, it was as though I had been awoken from a dream.
I had gotten a bit too confident in the capacity of the mailbox to act as a shield from the fat future felon, and, without knowing it, popped my head above its surface by a foot or two. His eyes were drawn to the movement, and I was busted.
Immediately, everything about him changed. He quickly looked away, in the other direction, as though he was trying to read an imaginary sign down the block. His flailing, rushed motions slowed down. His posture improved. And, for whatever reason, he snatched the tossel cap off his head and shoved it into his pocket.
I suppose I should've just walked away at that point. But I didn't. I stayed. And, surprisingly, perhaps, I was calm. Maybe it was the fact that I was behind a mailbox, or maybe it was because I was across the street and a good distance away from the guy, but I wasn't scared or worried in the least.
That being said, when, after 30 seconds or so, the guy turned his head back around and glared straight at me while stroking his chin, the mailbox seemed to disappear . . . and I totally freaked.
I initially looked over my shoulder and pretended to peer off into the distance behind me. Then, in a twisting and ungraceful motion, I took off in a full sprint.
I had no idea where I was running to, but I was going fast--real fast. I headed downtown one block and then made a left so as to head over towards the more heavily populated 10th Avenue. Truth be told, I was scared as hell.
I was more than certain that the fat guy was not going to catch me, even if he wanted to do so. But what if the guy had a gun? Or what if he had a partner on lookout duty, and that guy chased after me? And what if that guy had a gun?
My only intent was to get as far away from 11th Avenue, the fat guy, his wire, and that mailbox.
When I came across the police car three-fourths of the way between 10th and 11th avenues, I thought nothing of it. In fact, I booked right passed it. It was only after about 20 additional yards of sprinting that I realized I'd almost ran past the solution that I'd somehow previously overlooked. Rather than running around Manhattan like a crazy person, I could just alert the cops to what was going on and benefit from their protection while foiling the tossel cap guy's plans to abscond with a slightly ratty Jeep Liberty.
Perfect.
Of course, there were no cops in the car.
So I screamed.
I screamed, "Hey." Actually, it was more like, "HEEEEEEEEEEEY!"
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY"
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY"
Over and over again, I screamed "hey." Not "help," or "police," but "hey."
After about 10 frantic "heys," an old-timer came out of the bodega down the block and asked me what the problem was. When I told him something like, "I need the cops," or "I can't find the cops," he informed me that a police officer was purchasing coffee in the deli he'd just exited.
Without thanking him, I ran into that deli, grabbed the policeman--scaring him half to death--and told him that some guy was stealing a car down the block. In response, he started asking me all these questions about what the guy looked like, what type of car it was, and what I was doing on 11th Avenue.
That last one I didn't really get.
"Why does it matter?" I asked. "The guy is there. I'll show you. Let's go."
"OK," he said, resting the recently-purchased coffee on the counter.
He told me to get in the back seat of his car, and we took off down the block . . . in the wrong direction.
"It's back that way," I yelled. "Where are you going? Didn't you hear me? It was on 11th. He's going to be gone. You're going the wrong way."
I was pissed. Of all the cops in New York, I had to find one with a bad sense of direction.
"Sir, calm down," he said. "This is a one way street. We have to go to 10th and then come back around to get to 11th."
He was right, of course, but I couldn't help but think that he had the authority to go the wrong way down a one-way street . . . and could've if he really wanted to.
When we finally reached 11th, the officer hit the sirens.
I couldn't believe it, but when we pulled into the side street where I'd spotted the Jeep and the dude with the wire, he was still standing next to the car . . . pretending to look in the opposite direction.
"That's him," I screamed. "That's the guy."
After asking me again to relax, the cop used the PA system in his car to tell the fat guy to put his hands above his head and kneel on the ground away from the Jeep. By this time, another police car had arrived.
The cop who drove me back to the scene got out of the car and approached the fat man as I waited inside for what seemed like forever. I noticed that the guy took the tossel cap out of his pocket and dropped it to the ground. Then the cop and the fat guy talked for about 10 minutes. During this time, the man appeared to hand the cop his wallet, or some documents. Thereafter, the officer and a policewoman who had been in the backup car, walked around the Jeep and examined it closely. They paused noticeably at the front of the vehicle and seemed to be peering into the car through the window.
After that, the officer who I snatched from the deli came back over to where he had parked.
"Can you get out of the car please, sir?" he asked, in an uber-polite fashion.
Once I did, he explained to me what had happened.
"This is Frank," the cop told me. "He locked the keys inside his Jeep. He wasn't trying to steal the car, sir. It's his car. And you can't steal your own car."
The other cop chuckled at that one. Frank, though, was clearly pissed.
And he was once again glaring right at me.
"We're going to help Frank retrieve his keys," the cop continued. "But, unfortunately, his vehicle is past inspection and he has no insurance papers."
By this point, I was staring at the ground so as to avoid Frank's venomous gaze.
"Thanks a lot, buddy," Frank said in my direction. "You're a real hero. Nice work. You happy now?"
I felt horrible.
"Sorry, man. I didn't know what was going on. I thought you were stealing the car."
At that point, Frank started cursing at me. And it wasn't pretty.
The cop eventually stopped him, but not before he got out a few good "assholes" and "motherfuckers."
"You can go now, son," the cop informed me.
When I got to the office 20 minutes later--45 minutes after I had planned to arrive--the first person I ran into was the co-worker whom I had spoken to breifly before walking home the night before.
"You didn't walk in today, did you?" she asked. "Please tell me you didn't walk all the way here. Did you?"
"Yes," I replied.
"How was it? How was the trek? Was it annoying?"
"Totally annoying," I said, walking away. "But I don't fuck around with terror alerts."
posted by mjxm at 7:09 PM |
Friday, October 07, 2005
I may start writing here again.
I'm not certain. Nothing has been decided. But I may start writing here again.
I have no time to write. I couldn't be more busy. But I feel I owe it to myself to at least think about giving this thing another go.
I don't regret not writing here for the past year or so. Frankly, I've had little to say. And now that I write every day of the work week, I've found that I use up all my best stuff in order to be on point at the magazine. So, writing the type of non-fiction stories I've posted on this website in the past is going to be more of a challenge.
I don't know that I'm up for it. But I may be.
Plus, even though I don't currently regret my yearlong absence from cyberspace, I can envision myself regretting the void if I let it carry on much longer. And if there's one thing I am absolutely certain of, it is the potentially all-encompassing transformative power of regret. As far as i can tell, no emotion or mind-state has the capacity to impact our existence--for better or worse--more than regret. Combine this with the fact that I already have a host of more important things to regret, and the result is the following:
I may start writing here again.
I'm not certain. Nothing has been decided. But I may start writing here again.
posted by mjxm at 6:53 PM |
