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The Mugging

“It happened so quickly: the choke hold, his heart pounding, the feeling of unreality. Still, if he was objectively watching the events unfolding, he was also subjectively terrified.”

The insomniac overslept today.

He awakes at ten both irritated to be making such a late start, with so much that he wants to do today, and relieved that he had slept so soundly, with little to no work on his part.

“This must be how normal people feel”, he says to himself while brushing his teeth, “You decide to go to bed, you close your eyes, and bam! you’re asleep”. How simple and easy it is for those other people. They do not wander around their rooms at night, exhausted. Their brains do not buzz incessantly at some fever-pitch level.

On any given night, he can barely quiet himself enough to lie down. There is no difference between a buzzing brain in a body that is lying down versus a body that is standing. Sometimes he would lie down to rest his back or eyes, but inevitably he would get up again. Of course, this late night wakefulness was taking its toll on him physically.

He felt that despite his conscious state, his physical exhaustion prevented him from actually making good use of the time thrust upon him. His mind would hum unproductively, like a motor idling. Random thoughts and anxieties would pass through, like that line-up at the police station.

He had been mugged two weeks ago by four men, while walking around his neighborhood late at night. He supposed that he had asked for it, being out at that hour, but does anyone ever really ask for it?

The block he lived on straddled the line between a fairly affluent neighborhood and a not-so-affluent one. Well, the projects. It was the arrival of affluence that attracted these ne’er-do-well types. He himself was far from affluent. But the influx of money to an unaccustomed neighborhood can be a shock to its system. Blame Metropolis, its skyrocketing rent had been pushing everyone into the outer boroughs for years.

One of the men had him in a choke hold. It happened so quickly that he didn’t see his face. At first he thought it was a friend playing a joke, grabbing him like that. But when he saw the other three, it was suddenly no joke. Certainly no one was laughing. He felt half numb, already overtired and now full of adrenaline. He felt his mind disassociating itself, like his head had detached and was now floating around his body, watching objectively while simultaneously averting its eyes.

This instant of unreality is common in a moment of crisis, our minds cannot touch the actual happening. We distinctly remember the second before and the second after, but the event itself remains hazy to us. Our minds cannot be wrapped around such things, the car crashing, the bridge collapsing. Instead it holds onto the shell encasing the Terrible Moment.

It happened so quickly: the choke hold, his heart pounding, the feeling of unreality. Still, if he was objectively watching the events unfolding, he was also subjectively terrified.

One of them had a knife. First they wanted his bag, the strap was wrapped around him messenger-style. Then they changed their collective minds and wanted only his wallet. Aware that he was in no position to make requests, he still mustered the nerve to ask that they just take his cash and credit cards, but leave him his driver’s license and photos.

This was his floating head talking now. He himself, concerned for his welfare, would never, ever deign to ask a mugger to pick and choose. After all, “mugger” and “murderer” starts with the same letters, the difference is only what comes after. These men already had an obvious disregard for morality, as evidenced by the choke hold and the knife to the ribs, as evidenced by them prowling around at 3 in the morning, demanding things of him. At that hour, it’s a hair-thin line between theft and death, and he wasn’t about to push them over it. But his head was doing the talking.

His head, which was supposed to be protecting him, but was not currently attached to his body somehow, and was therefore not overly concerned about it, had chosen a bizarre time to be both ultra-pragmatic (thinking about the long lines at the DMV to replace the license) and shamefully sentimental (thinking of the irreplaceable photos and phone numbers). The rest of him, his body and soul, protested loudly: long lines at the DMV?!?! Try long lines at the morgue, dumbass!

The muggers, being pragmatists themselves apparently, acquiesced and took only his cash ($83) and credit cards (maxed out). Although he had cooperated in full, with the minor exception of his head being picky, they couldn’t just let him go and run away, they had to kick him several times in the gut for good measure. Perhaps so they could walk away at the leisurely pace that they did.

Let it be said that these were some efficient, thorough, and practical thieves. They did not go about their business half-assed.

The whole proceeding took all of five minutes, beating included. He went straight home and called the police. They promised to send someone so he could make a full report. Three hours later, a police officer arrived to argue that he had not been “mugged”, but had rather been “attacked”. He was about to tell the officer that he was in no mood to argue semantics, but the latter was already ushering him into a squad car and they were on their way to the 98th precinct to look at mug shots.

One week later, he took a day off from his shitty job to stand behind a two-way mirror, like he’d seen in movies. He quickly identified one of the men as One of The Men.

There was a young German woman present. Kind of pretty. She had been attacked three weeks before him. She spoke very little English and kept asking the officer to please be repeating his question. Several times she was overheard saying, “Ich weiss nicht!” Poor girl, she looked like an exchange student. Welcome to America, fraulein!

He and the woman had gone past the mirror separately, had in fact been forbidden to speak until after they had both signed some kind of paper. There is something tantalizing about the forbidden. He didn’t speak to her, but shot her some sympathetic glances when he could. One of the officers frowned upon that, as she seemed to feel that this non-verbal communication might be some secret signal. And god forbid that this German girl’s testimony should be tainted  by his lasciviousness.

One of the questions on the paper they had to sign was, “Where did you see this person?” In the space provided he wrote, “I saw this person while his friend was holding a knife to my ribs, and then again as he was kicking me in the gut.” He asked the officer present if that question was really necessary. The officer gave a half-smirk and said, “It’s a formality”.

Right now, he is looking in the mirror at the faint bruises on his stomach. At the time of his “attack” (and not “mugging”), the idea of fighting back had not even occurred to him, even if he hadn’t been a scrawny white guy with glasses. Even if there hadn’t been four of them against one of him (plus a floating head).

He was still angry with his head for endangering them with its stupid request. It was his head’s fault that he’d been out that night anyway, buzzing and restless as it was.

Tonight would be different. Tonight he will try listening to NPR, drinking herbal tea, taking a hot bath, and every other sleep-inducing thing he’d ever heard of. And if all else fails, he’ll drug himself. Two over-the-counter pills, a nice glass of water, and the next thing you know, he’s dreaming about that German girl.

[ Topic Fiction & Snobbery, Short Fiction | No Comments ]

My Own Private Meritocracy

“I want to build a Meritocracy. I want to live in a country where people get what they get based on merit, not tradition. If your actions merit the electric chair, then prepare to have your ass warmed up. “

I gave up politics years ago. At some point you have to decide whether or not the work is for you. You have to decide whether you’ve got what it takes to remember names and kiss babies, and I can’t remember names for the life of me. On top of that, I’ve got a political agenda that has been orbiting frighteningly close to “conservative” for the last few years. The nice way to explain that is to say I’m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. The other way to say it is that I have no tolerance for both the intolerable and for that which passes for “acceptable” anymore.

My running platform has been ready for years, but so far I haven’t found any backers. That’s why I decided to pursue other things in the meantime rather than wait around for slack-jawed backers to show up and finance my play. Besides that, I’ve already said that I can’t remember names, so chances are I just wasn’t meant for politics, and depending on who’s paying attention, that’s either a gift or a travesty for the entertainment industry.

Here’s part one of my platform in no particular order.

1. Kill everyone now
I’ve got a solution to the overcrowded prison system that, with some help from my other proposals, is a sure fire way to solve the problem. Everyone on death row gets the fuckin’ chair tomorrow. Anyone in jail for premeditated murder, rape, or child molestation can then take up the empty seats and then also be promptly done away with.

It’s a very simple concept: we live in a society composed mostly of right-thinking, moral people. I don’t mean bible bangers or tree huggers, what I mean is that we’re a society with a basic moral code by which we all live our lives. One of the basic tenets of this code is that you shouldn’t kill, rape or molest people. For most folks this shouldn’t be a problem, and for those who do have a problem with this, well…there’s an ever growing population on this planet that we have to make room for, so if you can’t live by these simple rules, then we’ve got no fuckin’ space for you.

2. “Legalize the damn stuff, do it today, I’ll be right back after I shoot up” (*)
I’ve got another way to clean up the prisons: Let everyone in there on a drug beef the fuck out. Is there really any question that our current tactics in “the war on drugs” are even remotely effective? We’ve got gangsters and junkies robbing and killing everyone on our quiet city streets either for drugs, or for the money that permeates the drug business. Since we, as a society, have proclaimed such an awful hatred for the perpetrators of the drug business, why is it that we let them rake in all the cash? And we let them take that money home tax free nonetheless! We could be taxing that stuff and making our money back from all the junkies who – despite the facts – refuse to quit. We’d also get the built-in benefit of far less murders over botched drug deals and gang rivalry. And what if those folks still wanna commit murder? See point number one above – we’ve got space for them in our penal system. Remember: Substance abuse is a public health issue and nothing more.

3. No sex is free
Sure, prisons don’t have a bevy of prostitutes cramping up the cells, but every city jail has got ‘em just about every night. Not only is that a waste of space, but just think about how many police hours are wasted jamming up street hookers every night. These are women who’ve consciously decided to make a living selling their bodies. Is there really any question it’s gonna happen anyway? We live in this goddamned puritan society on the surface, but we get home and read the paper to find out that pornographers are filing IPO’s right and left. Sex sells because we buy it. Sex is a commodity, and if that’s really the only way these people can find to make a living, why not let them participate in our little market economy right alongside the dot commers and tobacco companies.

I want to build a Meritocracy. I want to live in a country where people get what they get based on merit, not tradition. If your actions merit the electric chair, then prepare to have your ass warmed up. If your actions merit the key to the city, don’t let me stop you on your way to the mayor’s office. I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by intelligent, trustworthy, and upstanding people in my personal life, so I wonder why we can’t live in a world where we’re all surrounded by these people on a societal level. The blurred laws of karma have said for years that folks will get what’s coming to them, I think it’s time we actually wrote something down on the books that says the same thing.

Tune in next time when we’ll cover gun control, the anti-abortion activists and why they should go to jail, tax exemptions for organized religions (cults), and just how much love I feel for a woman who’s paying drug addicts to have themselves sterilized.

(* Barry Champlain from Talk Radio by Eric Bogosian)

[ Topic Politics | No Comments ]