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I like to suffer for my art.
Oct. 23rd, 2009 03:26 pmHey! I just remembered this thing I was going to tell you. It happened a week ago, so a lot of the OMFG adrenaline-pumping urgency of it is gone, but still.
It was after nine on a weeknight, last Wednesday or Thursday night, after dark, after visiting hours officially end. I was sitting at my computer, and some of you will remember and some of you will not that my study is more of a receptionist's office than a study; it's the room you walk into when you walk in the front door, two walls touching on the wraparound front porch.
I am reminding you of this so that you'll understand that when someone staggers up onto my porch at nine o'clock at night and starts mumbling to himself and fumbling at the side-porch door, I can really hear it from the study, but more than that, I can feel it, the steps and their faint reverb, and even when there is a big angry dog objecting in the strongest possible terms to the intrusion, it's unnerving.
So this happened. And I leashed up the dog and we walked out on the porch, and there was this man! On my side porch! Fumbling, as I said, at the side door, holy shit! Trying to get into my house! But I was brave or maybe just foolish, and I called out "who's there" the way you do when you're brave or maybe just foolish, and he came around the corner and said this to me: "It's me, I can't make the lock work."
And this is what I said: "Well, good, and if you don't get off my porch in ten seconds I'm calling the police."
And this is what he said: "Hey, that's not nice, it's my house too, lady."
I mean to say, what? It took me a second to come up with a response for this one, but after some more confused back-and-forth, it turned out that he lives in a house divided into apartments and similarly configured to mine (on, it must be said, a whole nother street), and he was so drunk that he'd mistaken my house for his own and mistaken me for his co-tenant, and once we'd sorted it all out I gave him directions to his street and he wandered off (all of this, by the way, taking place over a soundtrack of barking, snarling, lunging Leory). I've seen him once since, drunk again early this week, a down-the-street neighbor more or less dragging him toward the street where I know he lives.
So at first it was scary, that night -- I mean, what would I have done if he was a random housebreaker too strung-out or desperate to care about the possibility of being mauled by a dog? -- and then, of course, it was funny. And it's still both those things, but it's also something else. Over the last week, I've caught myself looking for him, wondering if he gets that drunk on as regular a basis as twice-on-weeknights would seem to imply, and worrying about him, a little, because depending on the rest of the world's benevolence, depending on the kindness of strangers to get you home safely, that is a seriously fucking chancy business. And I hope his luck holds steady, but still, I am worried, a little. I am still looking out of the windows for him.
It was after nine on a weeknight, last Wednesday or Thursday night, after dark, after visiting hours officially end. I was sitting at my computer, and some of you will remember and some of you will not that my study is more of a receptionist's office than a study; it's the room you walk into when you walk in the front door, two walls touching on the wraparound front porch.
I am reminding you of this so that you'll understand that when someone staggers up onto my porch at nine o'clock at night and starts mumbling to himself and fumbling at the side-porch door, I can really hear it from the study, but more than that, I can feel it, the steps and their faint reverb, and even when there is a big angry dog objecting in the strongest possible terms to the intrusion, it's unnerving.
So this happened. And I leashed up the dog and we walked out on the porch, and there was this man! On my side porch! Fumbling, as I said, at the side door, holy shit! Trying to get into my house! But I was brave or maybe just foolish, and I called out "who's there" the way you do when you're brave or maybe just foolish, and he came around the corner and said this to me: "It's me, I can't make the lock work."
And this is what I said: "Well, good, and if you don't get off my porch in ten seconds I'm calling the police."
And this is what he said: "Hey, that's not nice, it's my house too, lady."
I mean to say, what? It took me a second to come up with a response for this one, but after some more confused back-and-forth, it turned out that he lives in a house divided into apartments and similarly configured to mine (on, it must be said, a whole nother street), and he was so drunk that he'd mistaken my house for his own and mistaken me for his co-tenant, and once we'd sorted it all out I gave him directions to his street and he wandered off (all of this, by the way, taking place over a soundtrack of barking, snarling, lunging Leory). I've seen him once since, drunk again early this week, a down-the-street neighbor more or less dragging him toward the street where I know he lives.
So at first it was scary, that night -- I mean, what would I have done if he was a random housebreaker too strung-out or desperate to care about the possibility of being mauled by a dog? -- and then, of course, it was funny. And it's still both those things, but it's also something else. Over the last week, I've caught myself looking for him, wondering if he gets that drunk on as regular a basis as twice-on-weeknights would seem to imply, and worrying about him, a little, because depending on the rest of the world's benevolence, depending on the kindness of strangers to get you home safely, that is a seriously fucking chancy business. And I hope his luck holds steady, but still, I am worried, a little. I am still looking out of the windows for him.
