Having Somebodys

I have somebody who might be interested in renting your apartment.

As far as I’m concerned those are pretty much famous last words by this point, but any time somebody says that I have no choice but to ask who.

Typically it’s the friend of a friend who just moved into town, or somebody who is in some unique situation. I know everybody means well but it’s the way the news is delivered that makes it so misleading

I HAVE somebody who etc.

They have, only them. It’s like every one of my friends suddenly became a broker. They are always so confident that they have fixed solution. They’ve done it; they figured it out, case closed.

I HAVE somebody who is interested in renting your apartment; she’s got an internship in the city for 3 months.

That’s awesome for her, congratulations and all, but unless she’s going to have 4 consecutive internships that pay her the salary of a real employee I don’t think you really have somebody for me.

Once in a while I’ll get the semi-brazen friend who declares:

I think I rented your apartment for you.

Everybody is so excited to jump right to the end. Just because you have somebody who really wants an apartment and says a bunch of things, doesn’t mean they will pass a background check, and a credit check, and will actually come through.

You can’t take everybody at his or her word. After all, this is the city where the phrase “voted best pizza” exists on half the pizza places in the city.

Oh yea? Voted by whom? Your mom?

So you could understand how I might be slightly less than eager to jump when somebody says they have somebody to rent my apartment. But nonetheless, I must continue to jump.

Like last week.

A colleague of mine told me they had somebody.

“My wife knows him but he’s Italian and doesn’t speak great English and wants to communicate via text.”

I thought about making some hilarious stereotype joke about it being impossible to talk with your hands via text message but deferred and texted him anyway.

What follows is not an exaggeration. All punctuation actually happened. The name has been changed to protect the ridiculous.

Hi Luigi this is Rich I hear you were interested in my apt. You can email me at ______.

One minute later he responded.

We can txt????

I figured what he meant to say can we text, but the typical Italian language format made him confuse his statements with his questions. That really didn’t bother me. Though haven’t somebody who’s English was that poor could potentially make for some really awkward landlord conversations.

What if a pipe burst or there was an emergency, was I going to have to text him to figure out what the hell was going on. But I was getting ahead of myself.

I was more concerned about the amount of question marks he used. Was he really that inquisitive? Maybe. I just conceded realizing this conversation would probably be easier (barely) over text message. I wrote back.

Sure.

Two minutes later Luigi responded.

Okok yes I m interest of your apt!!!! When can I see u to talk about it!!!! Please let me know

At this point I realize this guy not only overuses punctuation but he has no idea how to use punctuation. He’s mistaking exclamation points (which he uses far too many of) for questions marks, and disregarding periods all together. I mean 8 exclamation points in two sentences.

I once had a writing teacher who told me for the entire semester we got 3 exclamation points.

I think by this point my teacher would have thrown his phone out the window.

I also realize that I am not going to just invite this import over to look at my apartment unless he meets the bare minimum criteria I have for renters. So I decide to check something quickly with him.

Can you answer a couple questions for me? Do you know what your credit rating is?

As soon as I send the text I realize there is no way this guy knows what a credit rating is, and even if he does, he probably doesn’t have one.

Two minutes later my suspicions are confirmed.

Im sorry about I just come here!!!! I have

New text message

I have few months here but I really iterest in ur apt!!! Im a good guy !!! U gonna have the rent on time trust me

How the hell is this guy really iterest in my apartment? All he knows is that I have an apartment and by that logic he would be iterest in every person in New York’s apartment. As far as I’m concerned I’m not that special to this guy.

I feel cheap.

U gonna have the rent on time? TRUST ME? This guy could not be more of a stereotype if he tried. I know he only has few months here but is this guy negotiating everything like this?

Is he buying mozzarella at the market with a post dated check and saying:

You gonna cash this check on Tuesday and it gonna work. Trust me.

 I call on the depths of my Italian heritage and my College minor in the language itself but still cannot remember the word for “balls.”

I call Luigi on his bluff.

What is your salary?

Two minutes later…

2000 dollars a month!!!! But we r 3 persons so I don’t think that we gonna have anyproblem

One minute later…

What do u think about it????

What do I think about it? I think you have some serious issues conceptualizing the New York City housing market to start. I also think your punctuation use is driving me batshit. And last but not least I think you are out of your damn mind if you think that you can survive in this city on 24,000 dollars a year.

Just to confirm, you want a one bedroom apartment for three people?

Two minutes later…

Actually we are two guys only!!! But my friend just came to visit me!!!!

Now I’m positive I don’t want this human anywhere near my apartment. So I just text him back to get rid of him.

 I need a tenant who makes at least 60,000 a year

Fourteen minutes later he responds.

Thanks so much im not the right persone!! I just came!!! I don’t make that money yet!!!!!

(Side note: He used 5 exclamation points for this statement, the most of any of his sentences which I thought appropriate considering I felt it really was the most important of all his texts.)

I hope u find some one !!! If u don’t find  no body let me know!!

!! Thanks have a great day

I did have a great day. And I really hope I don’t find no body soon.

The Housing Crisis - Part 2

I am waiting at my apartment for this brain genius rocket propulsion human species wizard home inspector to show up at my apartment to tell me what apartment is worth.

I am waiting, and he is ten minutes late.

I call him but he doesn’t answer, so I leave a voicemail. He calls me back.

Oh geez I gotta tell you I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve been here for 25 minutes, there is just nowhere to park, I mean I can keep trying but I just don’t know we might have to reschedule this.

First of all, we are not rescheduling. I don’t care if I have to drag his car up to the roof with a rope made of spit and licorice rope I will make sure this idiot gets into my apartment.

Second of all, we are not rescheduling.

I will keep trying. That’s what he said. Trying. Trying is not a word one uses to describe finding a parking spot. Looking is more like it. Basically he was just driving around the block with his eyes open, which is how almost all people drive.

Ten minutes later he arrives at my door having apparently managed to find a spot.

I open the door and see before me a kindly old gentleman which makes all of the hate and anger I have saved up for him hard to apply.

He walks into my apartment and starts asking me questions which I am trying to answer as best as I can because this guy apparently holds the key to whether or not my apartment is worth what its supposed to be worth which shouldn’t even be a question because I own it.

Bah.

Would you call this a living room slash dining room?

Dude, I would call this a living room slash dining room slash Turkish bath house slash discotecca if I thought it would help me refinance my mortgage faster. So yes, call it whatever you’d slash like.

How many square feet would you say this is?

Um, 27,000. He fathoms a guess but I raise his estimate.

Yea, I can’t check because I don’t have my measuring stick.

Measuring stick? You were going to get the square footage of my apartment with a 3 foot piece of reject wood? It’s no wonder this guy only works 10 hours a week, if I only had a stick to measure with I wouldn’t want to work more than 10 hours a week either.

I maintain a pleasant demeanor though because again, I don’t want him to leave and tell the bank that my apartment is worth 14 dollars. After five minutes he is gone. As he leaves he tells me he will send the documents to the appropriate people, which, I don’t even know who that is anymore since I am dealing with so many different idiots.

Like the guy at the bank who was processing my refinance who calls me and says:

Hey Rich we need you to send in those forms.

What do you mean? I sent them in last week.

You did? You sent them here?

Yes, I sent them where you told me to send them.

Oh Ok, my partner didn’t tell me. No problem.

Well, not no problem entirely but why don’t you go ahead and take your partner out for a coffee or something and get your shit together because if you come back and tell me the refinancing of my motorcycle went through I’m going to walk into the bank and just start doing karate.

And I don’t even know karate.

But amazingly the process continues on to the next step where I have to get the board of my condo to approve my refinance. Because that makes sense. The building in which I own an apartment needs to approve of me spending less money every month. I don’t even know how to get in touch with my board so I call my broker; another space genius prodigy mind-winning superhero.

I ask him how to get in touch with the board. He tells me to email the management company. I email them. What follows is the EXACT email conversation that took place.

           

I really wish this were an exaggeration.

Dear Bob and Joe,

Gentlemen, I am currently refinancing my mortgage and need to send over the paperwork to be approved by the board. Can you let me know where I need to send it? I have it ready.

Thank you.

Best 

Richard

One minute later

??? What property is this for?

The so and so apartment building in Queens

Send it in

Please tell me where to send it.

Here

Bob I don't have the address please send me the address where you would like me to send this.

Joe please deal with this request thanks.

Can either of you please tell me the address of your company so I can send this in? I'm not sure what the issue is here.

They don’t respond. So later that day.

Bob and Joe,

Please give me the address of where to send in my paperwork for my apartment so the board can sign off on it. I am concerned at this point at the lack of professionalism in responding to this email. Can you explain to me what the issue is?

By the time the conversation ends I am in such disbelief I am looking around my office like I am on candid camera. I feel like annoying 14-year-old girls from the valley runs my apartment complex.

I want to quit my apartment and the process. I want to buy an RV with cash and park it on a deserted beach outside of Tijuana. I cannot believe that other people have managed to successfully refinance their apartment without ending up in a homicide trial.

I become convinced everybody I have encountered in the process is a complete and total moron. I want to pick them in a room filled with one way mirrors and watch them interact like baboons, which aside from the ones I've met, I am not sure they aren’t.

When I began the process I stupidly hoped I could get it done in a couple of weeks. I was mind blown when they told me it would be many many weeks.

The process is still not done though I am pretty sure the end is near. Either the end of this process or just the apocalypse is looming. Either way I am never refinancing again.

The Housing Crisis - Part 1

Renting out one's apartment is an awful, tiresome, and frustrating task.

Refinancing one's mortgage is a process so convoluted, confusing, and frustrating that it should be reserved as a punishment for war criminals.

In April of 2012 I decided to try and rent out my apartment and refinance my apartment at the same time.

This was a poor decision.

I started by trying to sell my apartment. Or I thought I was going to sell my apartment. I had a broker come in and take a look at it, he said I could get my money back for what I paid for it. He said he'd call me to start the process.

I never heard from him again.

I invited another broker to look at my apartment, he was not as optimistic about me getting my money back... Because he wasn’t lying to me.

When I asked him how much he thought I could get for it he made what some people would call "a poop face" and started telling me about the real estate market.

It was at that point that I realized I would not be getting my money back.

Real estate broker suggested I rent out my apartment. After some thought and private counsel with my trusted board of advisers, or as I call them: mom, I decided to go ahead and try to rent my place.

My broker was excited. "great" he said. "when can you be out and have it painted?"

Ummm after you rent it for me?

Apparently my profound confidence, snappy dress, and impeccable grammar led apartment broker to think I was some sort of Vanderbilt who could afford to keep several homes around the city in which to stay in when I become bored with any of the others.

I told him he would have to rent my apartment with my stuff in it.

Well, its gonna be a lot harder to rent if its not empty.

Well, that's why I am not doing it. That's why I have you apartment broker. I didn't say you had to rent my apartment to a gnome, a red head, or Australian royalty, I just said rent it. I don't care how hard it is, just make it happen. When I go to a restaurant and I order a dish the chef doesn't come out and tell me how hard it is to make.

So apartment broker begins the process. He complains that it’s tough showing the apartment only at night and he could show it more if he had the keys. And there is nothing I love more than giving strangers keys to my apartment.

Regardless, I give him my keys.

Apartment broker complains that what I am asking in rent will be too high and we should lower the price. I tell him I NEED to get that rental price to cover my mortgage which I acquired in the spring of 2008 when the mortgage rate was just under 437 percent.

I realize I need to save some money somehow.

So now I go to see a new broker. Mortgage broker. He explains to me I can save a considerable amount every month by refinancing my mortgage. All I need to do is fax in several documents and forms to begin the process. I am excited. I begin the process.

Meanwhile every time I talk to apartment broker he tells me how my kitchen is too small and before they rented out a similar apartment they had to show it 35 times.

First of all, I start to loathe him.

Second of all I want to scream at him that I don’t care if he has to show it 100 times. You have the keys. That's why I gave you the keys, so I wouldn't have to care. Again, the chef doesn't come out of the kitchen and go

Oh geez guys sorry but I am having a hell of a time chopping this onion

No! He chops the fucking onion and makes me my dinner. You on the other hand insist on telling me all the minute intricacies of apartment renting that I have never once cared about until now. And looking at it now, I still don’t care about them.

Every time I get on the phone with him he wants to tell me everything about every prospective person. I ask him how its going and it’s like he hears me say “Hey, ramble for five minutes.” Every conversation sounds like this:

Ya know its tough we got a lot of traffic in the office and then we post ya know but we gotta make sure we get the right people because and then ya know I gotta deal with the board and you don't even wanna know what I gotta deal with.

You’re right. So please shut up and just rent my apartment.

Meanwhile after faxing in my forms, my mortgage broker explains to me that I have to have somebody assess my apartment to tell me what it's worth.

Good. I was hoping I could invite a stranger into my home to place a value on the thing that I own but no longer want to so must rent except at a lower cost than what I am currently paying now so that I could potentially lose money to not live in the place where I live.

Getting in touch with the, I don’t even know what to call him, apartment assessor, is like trying to track down a missing child but I finally succeed. This bozo calls me back and asks if he can come by my apartment at noon the following day. I tell him no because I have a job, like other adults. I ask him what times he works. He says

Monday to Friday 10 to 12.

Oh. Good. I was thinking this might be a challenging experience but if you work ten whole hours a week this should be a piece of cake.

Naturally, I should have anticipated what would happen when he showed up at my apartment.

To be continued…

A New York Story

It was a Saturday. My friends started showing up a little before 6:30 pm. They were gathering at my apartment to do a reading for the web series I’ve been working on. After almost a year of delays we were getting the cast back together, along with some new additions, and I was very excited.

It’s the kind of gathering that drives my soul. Take one part creativity, five parts friends, three parts wine, and you have a tremendous evening on your hands.

As I opened the door to let my friends into my apartment I noticed there seemed to be a scent of bad cooking in the air. I am very fortunate to live above somebody who frequently cooks delicious smelling meals. However, every once in a while they have a miss and what they prepare smells less than extraordinary. I though it unfortunate that it should coincide with my reading but once in the apartment we couldn’t smell it anymore.

The reading goes tremendously. There is laughter and stories and more laughter. A couple of people take off early but we sit around drinking and talking.

At around 10:30 my buzzer rings. Through the peephole I can see police officers. I am confused because we aren’t being that loud at all. I open the door and the officer asks me if I know the person in the apartment across the hall. They point to the apartment of the guy who I’ve seen maybe twice. The guy who plays his TV way too loud.

No I say, I don’t.

He says my neighbor called them because there was an awful smell coming from his apartment. He tells me that heard us talking in my apartment and wanted to see if we knew anything. I tell him no and he wishes me a good evening.

The evening continues. We joke about the smell. We make extremely lewd jokes about it. The jokes continue as everybody files out and heads home.

The next morning, slightly hungover, but extremely satiated from wonderful time with my friends I am awoken to the sound of drilling.

I make my way to my door and look through the peephole to see my two Supers drilling into the apartment across the hall.

It is at this point that I realize the smell is much stronger than the previous night and has infiltrated my entire apartment. It’s not just bad it’s excessive. Somewhat like rotting fish but far more significant, as though this smell has the ability to reach more corners of my nose.

On my way out to get a bagel I ask my Supers what’s going on but they don’t respond, caught up in their seemingly amateur approach to opening this door. Why don’t they just call a locksmith? Wouldn’t that be simpler?

As I walk out of the building I pass my neighbor who called the police. I ask him what’s going on.

The smell is awful, it’s gotten into our kitchen, and it stinks.

Well, I’m glad you called the police then.

And then I am off to get my bagel.

I return about 90 minutes later. And since I have recommitted myself to living a healthier lifestyle, I climb the six flights of stairs to my apartment. By the time I get to my floor the smell is just as bad if not worse, and my supers are still there however they have stopped working.

Their tools are on the ground.

The lock has been pushed through the door leaving a hole no more than three inches in its place. And Raul, in his mangled English, calls to me.

Richie, look. Look here.

He points to the hole in the door. He gestures the way you might tell a child to look into a bird’s nest to see the new eggs. I lean over slightly to look through it. He urges me on again.

Look, look!

Hesitant I inch closer, feeling slightly like this is some sort of antique peep show where you pay a quarter to look at a strange picture inside of a box.

Bending over to peer through a tiny hole, which leads to the location of an unbearable scent makes me physically, visibly nervous. I hesitate again before getting closer, not sure what to anticipate.

But I do get closer. I bring my eyes to the level of the hole in the door. And I see it.

A body.

Lying on it’s back, visible from knees to chest, belly protruding from the shirt.

Dead.

He dead Richy.

And then it hits me; the worst fear of some of my friends, something that we laugh at it when we see it in movies has come true.

Suppose nothing happens to you? Suppose you live there your whole life and nothing happens? You never meet anybody, you never become anything and finally you die one of those New York deaths where nobody notices for two weeks until the smell drifts into the hallway.

-Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally

I’m suddenly part of an urban legend, the plot line of an episode of Law and Order. Overheard in the city. All of that. Except real. Realer than I could ever imagine.

I move quickly back into my apartment. Trembling. Shaking. I call one friend, I text another. I chat with others online. Somebody contextualize what this means. Somebody explain this.

The smell is no longer just bad it has taken on a whole new level. It haunts me. It makes me over think things. I am spooked. I am disgusted. I am terrified.

I light candles. One, two, five. I spread them around the room. They don’t mask the smell with it. They mix with it. Infuse it. I try to sit next to the window. I make phone calls. I try to distract myself.

There is nothing on the planet powerful enough to distract me from the smell of a dead body. Words flash through my head.

Rotting.

Corpse.

How long was he there? How long had he been dead? Was it drugs? Alcohol? Certainly not foul play since the door was still locked. It takes the coroner 7 hours to finally remove the body from the apartment.

In that time no less than 3 different detectives and police officers ring my bell. Two different ones ask me questions; one asks to use my toilet.

They ask me if I knew anything about my neighbor. I tell them all the same thing, only that I never saw him but he played his TV loud all the time.

And that’s when it strikes me. Of all my neighbors he was the only one I thought about every morning when I left for work and every night when I got home.

What is he watching? Why is it so loud? Why is he watching TV so early? Every day, never a change.

His body leaves and eventually so does the scent, replaced with a broken door with a duck taped over hole, and a green sticker that seals the door and reminds me that where I live, yet again, will never be the same.

The Year of Incredible Focus

There is a box of mismatched Legos sitting on the second shelf of the entertainment center in my apartment, they are the ashes of my childhood, pieces of my life leftover, significant but otherwise unused.

When I first moved into my apartment, while I waited for my furniture to be delivered I came across them. As I wiled away the hours and hours waiting for the furniture delivery guy to never show up I played with those Legos, making vehicles and forts, building the same way I did when I was a child.

When it came time to put them somewhere I couldn't bring myself to throw them out so I just put them in a sealed box on my shelf. Once in a while I peek in there to take a look at them, check up on them I guess. But otherwise there they sit, undisturbed.

One of the first blogs I wrote, the fourth one to be exact, was about how I had inherited all of my parents dishes, bowls, cutlery and glassware. As a single man living by myself it was far too much for one person. Nearly 4 years later it is still too much for one person. I have more glasses than I have friends. That might concern me if I didn't have enough glasses to break one every single day for the next 2 months and still have enough for a house party.

When I first moved in to my apartment the goal was stuff. Get stuff. Acquire stuff. Display stuff. And that I succeeded at. My apartment quickly went from barren to overstuffed. It's embarrassing to note that it was two months after my apartment was robbed before I realized my sunglasses had been one of the things stolen.

And speaking of, it is just over a year since my apartment was robbed. Looking back now it is very easy for me to say how lucky I was. I was not home, I was not harmed, I lost many material possessions but nothing that I couldn't ultimately get over. Between the insurance payments and an incredibly superfluous outpouring of generosity from my coworkers, I was able to continue leading my life, continue with my trip to Fiji and move on.

The toll the robbery took on my psyche was much greater. I bought a security gate for my window. I used to laugh when somebody would come into my apartment and immediately lock the door behind them. Now I do that every time. The unique creaks and noises of my apartment that used to endear the building to me now reminded me of the robbery. Every time the trees outside brushed against the fire escape, or the people in the apartments next to mine made the floor creak, my heart momentarily stops. I realize I will never feel as safe as I did before my apartment was robbed.

After the robbery I felt angry at myself for being so connected to my material possessions. Did I really need so many watches? Did I really just say I "loved" that watch? How did I let myself get so... materialistic?

I know it wasn't intentional. When I left college with no real idea of what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be, I concentrated on the only truly tangible goal I had, having my own apartment.

So the two years I spent working two jobs to get my place were spent daydreaming of the kinds of things I would fill it with; the art, the books, the dishes. The sheer amount of time I spent thinking about dishware at 23 should have let me know it was time to find some new goals... or at least a hobby.

It was an easy, specific, tangible goal. Get enough stuff to fill my apartment and then I would feel whole.

Having had a year to think about the events of that night, the things I lost, and how it all affected me I realize that the sheer idea of having my personal space violated by a stranger has done far worse things to me than losing any of that stuff. And while I'm sure the robbery's effects on me will never entirely go away (though I can hope) I do have control over something else: my attachment to my stuff.

I am not about to make a claim that I am going to give up all of my stuff and live a monastic life. I love having nice things. But I can limit their importance in my life.

On the verge of a brand new year, and a year in which I will be closer to 30 than ever before, and following a year that rocked me in so many ways I could never have expected, I am suddenly aware of how scattered my lifestyle has been.

I have spent my days chasing new projects, new distractions, new experiences, things that are better, more unique or exciting, all without any real thought with how they were contributing to my overall story. As a writer I am also aware of how exhausting it can be trying to tell 9 different stories at the same time. And I have been focused too heavily on cramming my life full of stories, events, and experiences, that I have paid little attention to the story I was actually trying to tell.

I do know that I don't want my story to be the one of the guy who acquired too many things and had a bunch of experiences but never really ended up where he wanted to be. Now I know it's impossible to know exactly where you will end up when you begin, writing has taught me that too. And I'm not trying to do that either.

I simply seek to reduce my life down to more elemental things. Fewer, quality pieces. More significant relevant interactions with friends. And more focus when it comes to the things I want to do. While it was fun to write a huge play that I never produced, then write 6 episodes of a web series that got put on hold, and then write and shoot a short film that ended up in limbo, and then write and direct a play which actually went up, I always felt like I was at the whim of my life experiences and my own boredom. And the combination of the two was exhausting.

So in the next year I seek to do the following:

• To clean out my apartment of those things that are not extremely necessary to who I am and the life I want to lead.
• To limit the amount of things I do merely to distract myself, even if that means subjecting myself to sitting still and thinking about my life... my least favorite thing.
• To focus my attention on the projects that I am in love with. To stop trying to do everything, all the time, in the fear that not doing means I am wasting away.

And those Legos on my shelf? Well, I will package them up nicely and donate them. Maybe the ashes of my childhood will become the seeds of somebody else's.

Play Time

I was 25. I had been living on my own for about a year. And my social life was anything but bustling. “Going out” typically meant drinking beers and eating fancy pizza with my friend Andrea whom I had done theater with in high school.

Andrea mentioned to me that our high school theater teacher who was a huge mentor for me, was putting on a play in Manhattan and she was going to get tickets. She asked if I wanted to go. I readily agreed.

As we took the elevator the 4th floor of a sliver of a building just off Broadway, and walked down a narrow hallway past a meeting of some very large, bearded, individuals meeting for a support group, I wondered if this was indeed the best use of our time.

The play went well and afterwards my mentor told me had a small part in a play for me.

Seeing as I was not an actor and hadn’t been in a play since I was 17 and was now an “adult” with a full time job and my own apartment, I was a bit surprised and not really sure I should be in a play. But on second thought I really had nothing else going on in my life, so why the hell not?

As it turns out there was a part for Andrea as well

It wasn’t really difficult acting that I was required to do. I had a handful of lines and basically my role was to run around the stage and portray the life of an 8 year old who was up to mischief in the woods.

A tony deserving performance it was not.

The show only went up for two nights and it was sparsely attended. And it made me realize a couple of things.

The first was that I find acting to be extremely boring! The performing part of it is fun and something I enjoy, but the sitting still in rehearsals, not talking, having to stay in one place while things get set up around you, oh man was that boring. It was about the worst thing in the world for my ADD.

But after the show was over I realized something else. I too could write a short play that not many people come to see!

So that’s what I did. While waiting for my turn to speak at a job function I was attending, I wrote 3 pages of dialogue in red pen on the back of my notes. Those pages became the foundation of dialogue of my first play; Disengaged.

I convinced Andrea this was something we should do and she agreed, or maybe I just hung up on her before she could disagree.

Either way she was in.

I wrote a companion piece, we booked a theater, and put on our first show. It was one of the most incredible experiences watching the words I wrote come out of other people’s mouths and see an audience react to them.

I was immediately hooked.

I took a couple of weeks off after the show but I started writing again, and nine months later we mounted our second show Safety and Desire.

It was different than anything I had ever done before in that it was more grounded in real life conversations and there was poetry in it, my own.

We actually oversold the show and by all accounts it was a great success. But afterwards I felt like something was missing.

And the more I thought about it, I realized it was because it went so quickly. I had spent months working on the script. And then more months planning, looking for theaters, casting, marketing and countless hours with Andrea discussing every minute aspect of the show.

And then for six weeks we rehearsed. Nearly every single day we spent several hours with the actors running lines, blocking scenes, and getting ready to put this thing on. I was still bartending at the time too.

So I would work from 9 to 5, then go to rehearsal from 6 to 10, and then rehearse all weekend and then bartend on Sundays from 4 to 10.

And for as crazy bone tired as that made me, I never didn’t want to do it. I was in love with it the whole time. Sure I had no time to do anything else and kept running out of clean underwear and cutlery, but it was worth it.

So when both performances of the show were over it felt kind of like… that’s it? I wanted more. I didn’t feel purged of the show. I felt like I wanted it to go on longer, to share it with more people, and prolong its life.

And I think a part of me was also hoping for the show to save me. I don’t know how that would have happened or what it would have meant.  But I think I just was expecting some kind of reaction or response or something more significant.

So I made a promise to myself, the next time I did a show it would be for longer.

Well guess what… that time is here!

My next play is coming December 7th – 10th in Manhattan! So if you are going to be even close to the area I’d love to see you there. It’s called Ripped at the Seems and you can buy tickets at www.ripped.eventbrite.com.



It’s a show about a lot of things, but more than anything it’s about the things we think but never say. It’s about the conversations that Andrea and I have after rehearsals or when we’ve had too much wine (which isn’t an infrequent occurrence).

I am so excited to put this show on for twice as many nights as any show I’ve done but I’m also excited because I’ve made another promise to myself.

And that promise is that this show won’t save me. Whatever hopes and dreams I have for after the show, I’ve let go of.

Well, almost let go of. I’m close. Really close.

But the goal is just to enjoy the process, because it’s all process. We all spend too much time on this for it to be just about what happens during 4 days in December. I have made a commitment to just love every minute of this.

And hopefully it shows.

Until then, enjoy the trailer!

Sounds Like Home

The house I grew up in made a variety of sounds. They were the natural creaks, and groans, expansions and contractions, flexes and bends that a house makes. I got pretty good at knowing which step would make a squeak, or how far I could open a door before it would make a noise.

Living in a house with three other people you also get used to the noises they make. Which sneeze belongs to whom, who lumbers up the stairs versus who runs, and tons of other inconsequential other sounds that you never really pay attention to.

All of that stuff pretty much left the forefront of my mind as soon as I moved into my own place. My new apartment was a host of new sounds. I had a really squeaky floor before I got any furniture. My heating hissed at me like a disapproving audience. And every door had its own signature alert when opened or closed.

But shortly after moving in I was lying in bed not yet asleep when somebody in the apartment next to me or below me coughed loud enough that I could hear it.

My first thought was:

Oh Dad must still be awake.

But then I realized that wasn’t my dad coughing, it was just… a stranger. It threw me for a second. It was a surreal moment. I didn't know any of the people who would be making sounds around me.

I quickly learned the people to the right of me really like explosiony action movies. The woman to the left of me really liked vacuuming… a lot. She also liked Barry White. And sometimes she liked vacuuming TO Barry White.

Not too long ago I came home and noticed my neighbor had the “Ab Rocket” delivered to her.

For those of you who may not know, the Ab Rocket is NOT a piece of combustible military weaponry. The Ab Rocket actually combines what you love about rocking chairs with what you hate about crunches to create the ultimate ab toning experience.

I didn’t think too much of it, merely happiness that my neighbor was making a commitment to fitness. I myself had just purchased the Iron Gym, which is a combination pushup/pull-up bar that you can secure into your door frame without any hardware. You can then do as many pull-ups as you’d like until the 24-dollar thing falls apart and you fall and break your ass.

But that hasn’t happened yet (I also haven’t used it in 6 months) so I won’t worry about it.

One day I was in the bathroom… well, ya know, being there, when I heard a very rapid squeaking sound.


SqueakSqueakSqueakSqueak

It didn’t stop, it just repeated itself over and over again. I strained my ears to see if I could tell what it was. Was my building moving? Was somebody doing construction? Was somebody slowly cutting a hole into my apartment through the bathroom wall? I chalked it up to one or all.

But then I heard it the next day, and the next. Every day at the same time. Always first thing in the morning. And it sounded like it was coming from just the other side of my bathroom wall.

And then it hit me; it must be the Ab Rocket. My neighbor was Ab Rocketing first thing in the morning every morning. I was relieved at my revelation. At least nobody was burrowing into my apartment.

Discovering new activities from my neighbors around me was part of the experience. The new sounds kind of plateaued after a while as I settled in as a permanent resident of my building.

Until one specific night.

I was lying in bed reading when I heard it from the apartment below me:

YeOOOOOOOO

It sounded like a howl, or somebody celebrating. It happened several times and the look on my face was that of “What the…”

I sat up straight in my bed with my brow furrowed as I tried to figure out the sound. But I could do no such thing.

A couple of weeks later I heard it again. It was definitely a man. Was he celebrating a sports team? Couldn’t be, it was too late in the evening. It happened, several times. It still sounded like a shout of joy like maybe he was celebrating… something else…

The beginning of it almost sounded like a slap… like somebody was slapping him and he was screaming. Was he being hazed? Did I live above a private fraternity? Was I just making shit up now?

Quite possibly.

Every so often I would hear it again. The shouts coming in twos, fives, and more. Over and over again I would hear this sound for a short while. Every time I would stop what I was doing and try to use my crap powers of deduction to understand what was going on.

A couple of weeks ago I heard it again. This time there were more shouts than ever. There had to be at least 15 of them. If I wasn’t so terrified of life I might have gone downstairs to knock on his door and ask him if he was OK. But I didn’t because

A.    I rarely speak to people in my building
B.    I was not really sure I wanted an answer.

But I heard it again last week. And I was sick of it! What the hell was going on? Was it spanking? Because really that’s what I thought it was, and I couldn’t think of anything that made more sense. I lived above a guy who was getting spanked in rapid succession at random times throughout the year almost always before bedtime.

I jumped out of my bed and squatted closer to the floor. The sound was closer and seemed more familiar.

I then sprawled out completely flat and put my ear on the floor. I was shocked at how clear the sound became. It was almost like I was in the apartment with the stranger below me.

And that’s how I figured out:

He was sneezing.

Frigging SNEEZING! All this time and all my conspiracy theories and all it turns out to be is a sneeze. I actually was relieved, if only for the fact that I no longer had to expend brainpower to figure this out. The knowledge was mine.

However, it was also at that point when lying flat on the floor with my ear pressed up against the wooden panels that I realized:


I need to dust under my bed.

The Most Signs of the Most Times

Let’s get right down to it shall we?

It continues to happen. I continue to stumble across signs, labels, and symbols meant to convey a message that do more to confuse than anything else.

I would suggest some sort of common sense police but I know that would get shot down before I could… you’ve already shot it down haven’t you?

Damn it.

Well regardless, I was up in Boston visiting my sister recently when I realized I had no money. Since I stopped bartending this happens frequently. My pocket is physically much emptier since I stopped giving alcohol to strangers.

So I decided to visit an ATM to get some cash, which is the reason I visit ATMs in the first place. And I saw this sign.



Ohhh OK. Cash only. So wait… you mean this ATM doesn’t make pancakes? Here I am, walking around Boston thinking that I can stop at an ATM and get some cash and pancakes, and I come across this frigging thing that does not make OR sell pancakes. How am I supposed to deal with this?

What has this city come to?

Does anybody use the ATM for anything else aside from taking out cash? I do know that that there are far too many options in the ATM screen. As soon as you put in your pin, it is suddenly asking you if you would like to:

Make a withdrawal
Make a deposit
Check your balance
Transfer funds
Call your mother in law
Share a milkshake

I mean ENOUGH already ATM machine. Just be yourself. Nobody expects anything else from you.

Something else I don’t expect a lot from is my conditioner. But apparently my conditioner expects a lot from me, like loyalty.



Official supplier to men? What men? I don't recall signing a contract. I know I don't represent all men or even some men but shouldn't I get a say? Have I been breaking some code up until now?

I don’t know if I’m going to get in trouble here but I have definitely used other conditioners, and those conditioners were not all specifically for men. Actually, some of them were made specifically for women. I’m not sure if they were the official supplier to women, but they definitely had a contract.

Does that make me a woman?

Don’t answer that.

There should be a law about putting statements on products that can’t possibly be proved true or false. Anything in the realm of:


Official Cola of Extra Terrestrials
#1 Choice of People Who Are Picky
Official Supplier to People Who Buy Stuff

And even if it WAS the official supplier to men, who made that decision? I want to make sure I get to vote for our representative. I would vote for somebody with a name like… Burly Von Steeleater.

And speaking of manly things, I own a paper shredder. It’s pretty much the closest thing to a power tool that I own.

I have been using for about a year before I actually looked at the instructions on the top. I noticed there were some symbols there to caution silly people. One symbol said don’t put paper clips in. One symbol says do not try to shred your own hand. But there was one I didn’t understand.

Do you know which one I am talking about?



Yep you guessed it. Second from the left, no shredding of gingerbread men.

Does this apply to all cookies or specifically to gingerbread men? Is there something specific about gingerbread men that makes them a bad idea to shred? What about ginger snaps? Or snicker doodles? I mean shredding an Oreo (in addition to being a sin) also just seems impractical.

But why cookies? Is this a call the company regularly gets?

Hi is this shredder support?
Yes it is, how can I help you?
Well, I had a box of chocolate chip cookies that I meant to put in the cupboard but I accidentally jammed them into the shredder. Can you help me with that?

And it’s only cookies. No vegetables, meats, or dairy symbols.

But at least the shredder company was putting forth the effort to prevent any issues in the future. They were expending effort, whereas one of the tenants in my building proved just how lazy and inefficient that person is.

Upon leaving my building last week I saw what appeared to be a note taped to my super’s office door. Apparently somebody in my building had something to say to him before he reported for duty.



Let’s just skip over the passive aggression, because that is obvious enough. Because obviously the super of my building is controlling the individual heat going to every single apartment in the building and directing rage at him is a good choice. We all know that.

I was more confused about the whole package of the note, specifically the order of sentences.

I actually think “I can’t breathe” would have made a better lead. Because heck, by the time you get to the end of the paragraph this person just sounds whiny. But if you as the writer kick it off with your inability to process oxygen, wow! I mean if I were a super I would be like,

Hrmm should I fix that leaky pipe in 2D or the woman in 5F who won’t make it to sunup. 5F it is!

It seems like it makes the process easier.

And I’m not sure you can see this, but that note was actually written on an envelope. A blank envelope.

Which makes me think this is a person who has envelopes but no paper and they would rather waste an envelope than an actual slice of paper. I mean if you are going to write a threat, or a complaint, at least write it on an actual paper. An envelope looks like it was a mailman complaining.

Not that a mailman’s complaints are any less important than a regular person’s. Unless of course that person is Burly Von Steeleater.

That guy always comes first.

Nature vs. Boehmcke

Nature is trying to kill me.

Well not nature per say, but the animals from nature. The wild beasts that roam the urban jungle that is New York City. They may be tiny, and really dirty, but they are also deadly-ish. Just go with me on this one. I will prove to you, how these creatures are after me.

Incident #1: The Squirrel Assassin

My bedroom has 2 windows next to each other. In one window is my air conditioner, a big honking piece of metal that sits half in my room, and half outside. For the first 6 months that it was in there I had high blood pressure worrying that it would fall out and drop 7 stories to smash on the ground. But so far, so good. The window next to the one with the air conditioner is unobstructed except for a child safety gate bolted over the outside of the window.

I do not have a child, but it was there when I moved in. And since I am lazy, and sometimes get out of bed in my sleep, I thought it best to leave it there just in case.

If you look closely at it you can see it really is just like a small metal ladder.

I woke up recently to the sound of a tree scratching against my window. Since it had been quite windy recently I figured the tree was just swaying wildly and therefore bumping against my window. It kept rattling my window so I opened my eyes to see.

And do I see a tree? No. Not four feet from my bed, I see a squirrel on the safety gate, tiny appendages spread wide, with his feet on the bottom rung, and his paws on the top, SHAKING it.

I don't speak squirrel but I'm pretty sure he was also saying:

Open this thing you bastard. I'm here to kill you.

This tiny grey sonofabitch didn't even flinch when I walked over and tried to shoo him away. Perhaps it was the fact that I was trying to "shoo him away" like some kind of yenta. He just clung there, steely eyed and fearless.

Incident #2: The Bird Stakeout

Two days after I rid myself of my assassin. I woke up to a scratching sound.

Fully expecting to see the squirrel again I opened my eyes quickly but saw nothing. It was really quite sad at the relief I felt that it wasn’t another squirrel. The scratching I was hearing this time was probably actually a tree.

But after another 10 minutes of scratching I realized it didn’t have the rhythmic scratching that a tree branch blowing in the wind might. So I stood up and pulled open the shade over my air conditioner. And there I saw a brazen pigeon perched on the outside of my air conditioner.

I don’t speak pigeon but I’m pretty sure he was saying:

Hello Richard. Today, I kill you.

He had scratched a considerable amount of paint off the surface of my air conditioner and had created the beginnings of a nest right up against the window. That winged rat was building a bunker and trying to dig his way into my apartment Alcatraz style.

I banged on the window but the Jurassic germ carrier hung out. He and the squirrel had received the same training. I could intimidate neither of them.

Incident #3: Eau de Rat

At a job that I no longer work at, these ninja-like critters tried a different tactic. Calling upon a new enemy to take a new approach to ruining my life.

 

I was at said job, doing a really really extra good job (as usual) when I noticed a certain odor. As usual my mind thought it was somebody's foul lunch. But upon second appraisal this was not a scent of food.

Oh wait a minute... they are good. They were doing a sneak attack.

You see in this office we had a bit of a rodent problem, normally to be combated by sticky rat traps around the office. Well the rats got smart to this and started going through the heating and ventilation system. And this particular rat was no different.

The rat had been sneaking through the office, trying to sneak up on me when it got stuck in the heater and... well... baked.

I suggested that my coworkers pour some olive oil on the rat to help improve the smell.

They did not heed my suggestion.

The next day came, with another dead rat. These tiny bastards had discovered that the smell of their roasted rotting corpse was beyond awful, bordering on noxious.

Day 3 and a 3rd rat casserole.

Luckily I left that job before they could finish the job.

Incident #4: Leaping Squirrel

Not too long ago I was at the park getting a hamburger for lunch when I saw a squirrel climb to the top of a garbage can, and fall in.

I laughed my ass off. I couldn’t stop giggling about it. Serves him right, I thought.

I ran over to see what happened to the stupid little squirrel and when I had just about reached the trash can and was about to lean over to look in the thing leapt out of the trash like we was shot out of a circus cannon.

He popped up onto the ledge of the trashcan and scared me half to death. He perched on the edge and I’m pretty sure he said:

HaHA! I am winner!

And then he scurried away to go tell his friends what a sissy I am.

Bastard.

How to Become Your Mother in 5 Easy Steps

I do many things that I am not aware of.  And many of these things aren’t normal things to do. They aren’t big things, in fact they are small things, almost inconsequential. And they are things that probably would otherwise go unnoticed were it not for the fact that people regularly point them out to me.

And when I try to consider why I do them, all I know is they have something to do with my mother.

I will be doing something that I do regularly when somebody will say, hey Rich, why are you doing that? And then I will freeze… because I don’t have an answer.

The answer is of course that my mom did this thing, and hence, now I do it. And god willing, one day my children will absorb the same thing through osmosis.

I now present you 5 ways in which I have become my mother. (And you can too if you’d like.)

5. Candles in my apartment.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that my mother had a smelly teenage boy in the house, or maybe it was just her affinity for the combination of wax and flame, but our home always had many candles. And we often burned several of those candles in our house at the same time.

It was kind of well known amongst friends that our house smelled so good. In fact I had one friend who used to ring my doorbell just so that she could stick her face in the door and smell my house when I answered.

Naturally I now posses candles. I have a candle for my living room, 2 for my bedroom, 1 for my bathroom, and a whole bag of votives. If you didn’t know any better you might think I was well set for a séance or an exorcism.

But usually I only light them all when I have people over for a party, which is kind of like an exorcism… of sobriety.

4. Wiping down the shower walls.

I am fortunate enough that I have many friends who let me stay at their apartment either because I am visiting them or I am too lazy to go home. But in all of those apartments that I have stayed, and all of their showers that I have used, I have never in my life, seen a shower squeegee.

The shower squeegee was a staple in my bathroom growing up. When you are done showering, you wipe down the walls. Its just what  you do. I have had people staying at my apartment hear me wiping down the walls and wonder aloud:

What are you doing in there?

I’m wiping down the walls.

Why?

Um, well, because my mom told me to when I was 7 and, and I just haven’t stopped.

I believe the appropriate answer is to prevent shower mold but this apparently was not of a concern to any of my friends’ families growing up. Was shower mold something that only affected the Boehmcke household? Can’t be… right?

3. The toilet paper roll.

Now this is the most trivial of items. This is so trivial that I feel almost embarrassed to mention it. Apparently when you replace an empty roll of toilet paper (and you do replace empty rolls when its your turn don’t you? You better… you shlub you.) with a new one. It is imperative that you replace it in a manner that makes the toilet paper come over the top of the roll, and not under it.

Why, you ask? Well the easy answer is:

I have no god damn idea.

But that is the way it was done in my house, and that is what my mother told me was right. So naturally, when somebody visits my apartment and replaces the toilet paper upside down, I am compelled to replace it correctly.

It is not because I am anal about the way my apartment is, or I am OCD. I am neither of those things. But something about an upside down roll of toilet paper just screams transgression to me and I cannot find peace (which is an important thing for me to be able to find in the bathroom of my own home) until that toilet paper violation has been rectified.

2. Jellies in the Fridge

So generally my fridge is pretty empty. Not because I don’t eat – I do, and quite regularly – but because I have no idea how to keep food in that fridge. As I have chronicled here, I have had issues grocery shopping and choosing food items to possess.

Growing up my mother always had no less than 3 different kinds of jellies in the fridge, often including the crazy party cousin of jellies, the marmalade.

Surely one jelly would have been enough, and would be enough for most people. Well not for my family. And it was something I regularly made fun of my mother for.

Well jump to today and my fridge will often be empty except for several different varieties of jelly hanging out on the door.

It’s not even that I am so in love with jelly, I mean I liked it growing up. But the amount of time I spend in the jelly aisle of the grocery store rivals the time most people spend purchasing their first home.

I have opened my fridge and felt disappointment, ACTUAL disappointment that I have only one jelly. I don’t know why I do it, all I can say is it just feels right.

1. Cleaning and then dimming the lights

It constantly confused me growing up, that when my parents were getting ready to entertain and have people over, we would have to spend the whole day cleaning the house, only to have them close the doors to our rooms and then dim the lights to the rest of the house before the guests arrived.

Well hell, if we were going to close the doors and dim the lights, why the hell did I spend 4 hours cleaning my room in the first place? I mean we could have just left things as they were and lit a couple candles and nobody would have known the difference.

And yet, when I had people over recently, I spent a day and a half cleaning my apartment only to dim the lights, replace the toilet paper roll, and light candles before my guests arrived.

But I have a feeling I am too deep into these routines to cease them. So it looks like I am bound to keep buying jellies 3 at a time and wiping down my shower walls. And even if I find out that does not prevent shower mold at all… good luck trying to stop me.

...But They Can Take It From You

I open my eyes. I am still on the couch. The fire alarm has stopped. The sun is up. I look at my clock on the wall.

The time is 9:30 am on Friday morning.

I feel grateful I have slept, if only for a little while. My soul is numb but I feel OK, which is to say I don’t really feel anything at all. I sit up. I put my feet on the floor and it comes back quickly. I am in my apartment. My apartment that has been robbed.

What now?

I check my phone. Missed calls. Missed text messages.

What happened? Did they ever come? Are you OK?

I don’t know. Yes. I don’t know.

I walk around my apartment. I look at the mess I have barely touched. The idea of cleaning up a crime scene exhausts me. It seems impossible. Though it is just a messy apartment the task seems absolutely insurmountable. My heart sags in my chest.

I walk into my bedroom and stare at my window. An activity that will quickly become ritual over the next several days. My heart speeds up slightly as I turn the corner to see it. Every time.

I think about breakfast but I don't eat. My appetite for my life is nil.

I look at the footprints on the floor. Made in the dust from the cops’ fingerprinting efforts.

I stare at the fingerprint dust and digest how I never imagined seeing that in my apartment. I try to understand what it means to clean it up, try to understand if that is supposed to be a good thing.

But then I spend hours trying to get that dust out from under my fingernails. Because it’s everywhere. The windows, the floor, shelves. I don’t even see it. It just appears on my hands, my knuckles, and under my nails.

I clean up my apartment but not enough. I try to wipe up the footprints made of fingerprint dust in my bedroom. But that just makes it worse. Spreads it around into a bigger mess, a metaphor. I use paper towel after paper towel. There is still more than a trace of it. I still don't eat.

I call my insurance. I file a claim. The woman is apologetic and sincere. I appreciate her sincerity. She tells me somebody will get back to me in 24 hours. At some point I stop stepping over things and start picking them up.

I refold shirts, blankets. I put extra pillows back in my closet that don't fit. How did these go? I can't remember it seems so trivial and stupid but still it bothers me that I can't remember. I am awake for hours but I accomplish nothing. I lie down on my couch and take a nap. I sleep for hours.

I wake up somewhat more rested but still otherwise depleted. The insurance person calls me, a different woman. She is also sincere. Honest. She asks me if she can record the conversation. I agree.  I tell her what happened from the beginning. She tells me they can cover a fraction of the cash. The rest is gone. They can't cover the cost of all my watches and cufflinks, less than half of it.

I think I am beyond things. I think I have moved on. But then out of nowhere, it grabs me. And I cry. It happens fast. A flash flood from my heart. That lack of control scares me. But then again there was never any real control to begin with. I feel pathetic.

I know I have things I need to do but I fear leaving my apartment.

I fear coming back.

I talk to my super who speaks broken English. We watch 14 hours of security video in 30 minutes. We see nothing. He tells me in his broken English that I should put bars on my windows. I nod.

I leave him without feeling better about what happened.

I go to one of my banks to open a new account. An Asian banker who speaks broken English and ends every sentence with “my dear” sits with me and helps me through the process. She is sweet and polite to a fault. She asks me why I am opening a new account. I tell her. She tells me in broken English that it usually happens through the fire escape. I nod.

I leave her without feeling better about what happened.

I got to my other bank to do the same things. A polish banker who speaks broken English and is incredibly helpful sits with me and helps me through the process. She asks me questions about the robbery. She asks me if I have an alarm. I tell her no. She tells me that is why it happened, and I should have an alarm. I nod.

I leave her without feeling better about what happened.

I see people on the street wearing hooded sweatshirts and wonder if it was them. I realize safety is an illusion. I wonder if I should have kept my shades down more often. I doubt every single thing I've ever done in my apartment.

The phrase “scene of the crime” burns in my brain like a campfire that refuses to die.

I start to understand how other victims have trouble moving on with their lives. How they have trouble trusting. I feel withdrawn. Antisocial. I have no desire to see anybody.

From time to time I remember something new I lost. The watch my parents bought me for graduation. The tiffany cufflinks my sister got me. The Indian head penny I had since I was a child. Silly cheap jewelry I exchanged with girls I thought I loved when I was young and naive.

Jewelry I had never planned to get rid of.

I feel detached. I feel so uninterested in being around people I know. I don't feel like talking. I feel like sitting. Like not moving. Like forgetting.

It is nearly 6 pm. For the first time today. I get something to eat. I look around at the buildings as I walk. All of the buildings. So many. An impossible amount. Why me? Was mine just the easiest? Who knows that? Who knew that? I am so distraught one moment but sheepish at others.

Really it was just watches and cufflinks and a camera and cash. My first inkling isn't to replace those items. Whatever the insurance pays, when that check comes I won’t replace them.

I don't want to replace them. Part of me wants to forget them, or at least move on. I have a hard time rationalizing new stuff. New watches. New things that could be taken from me. Ephemeral. All of it.

Even if the rest of my life goes on undisturbed. Even if nothing ever happens to me and I am never stolen from again I imagine myself still feeling angry that I had to lose all of this to figure that out. That this had to happen. I will always be minus one. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't much, but the closest things I had to family heirlooms. My Father's cufflinks. The pocket watch I bought myself after I directed my first play. They aren’t items, they are events.

Friday night I don’t sleep in my apartment.

It frustrates me that there is no consolation. All I have is it could have been worse. And I know that. I know they could have taken my computer or my files or the art. But it doesn't change the fact that took MY shit. It wasn't theirs to take. They pulled my clothes out of the closet. My closet. In my apartment.

The one place that I rave about.

Oh I love living alone. Oh it’s such a safe neighborhood. Oh it’s so quiet in my corner of the building.

Yea I’m sure they realized that.

I am angry that I am not able to take my home for granted. It pisses me off to no end. I want to curl up in a ball in my bed. I want to feel safe. But I don't. I can't.

Saturday night I sleep on my couch again.

I want to move on and become a minimalist and forget those silly watches and believe that cash meant nothing. But I can't. I want to derive some renewed look on life and approach a scenario where the things I lost will pale in comparison to the things I will gain. But I worry that won't happen.

I worry that I will never get over this. I think about therapy. I worry about therapy. I worry about becoming the guy who turns this into a soapbox.

I don't want to teach every single person about fire escape protection. I don't want to always have something to say about homeowners insurance. I don't want to be any of that. I want to be done with this. But I don't know when I will be.

But they, he, it, touched my stuff. Turned the one place I felt safest into the one place I can’t trust. That window is now a gaping hole in my comfort. I can't walk into my apt without checking that window. Every creak and groan that my apt makes that I used to love now puts me on edge. I twitch and flinch with one feeling behind it all.

What if they come back?

It was easier when the sun was up. Nighttime puts me on edge. Even though it could have very well been day when my apartment was robbed, the night brings a fear. I don't know anything anymore.

Sunday night comes.

I will sleep in my bed tonight, or at least I will try. I pull down the covers. I climb in. I look at the window. A mixture of fear, paranoia, and hatred I try to ignore.

Futile.

I set my alarm to wake up for work. To try and return to normal. To start again. I go to turn off my lamp when I notice it on my hand.

Fingerprint dust. Again.

I wonder if I can ever get it all.