"If you are lucky enough to have lived in New York as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for New York is a moveable feast." -Ernest Hemingway (updated for the 21st century)

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Mindgames

I know it's been a while since I last posted
But there have been, ahem, extenuating circumstances:

#1 The Metropolitan Museum of Art (AKA “The Met”) killed my laptop –but that’s another story[1]

#2 The whole dog thing has been going crazy-loopy; and Kathi has had her day in court –but that’s another story[2]

#3 I have been visually compromised: a dog ate my glasses –but that, too, is another story[3]

#4 I HAVE been posting –but on another blog![4]

(The political situation over here [ie. the democrat internecine warfare that is threatening to tear the party apart and hand the election to the republicans] has been stoking my ire
I want to leave politics out of my blog so i've been venting my spleen on my namesake dan(ielle)'s blog
so take a look there if you want to read a good rant
and they are rants: i now realize I could never go into mainstream politics -my chequered past notwithstanding- in the heat of the moment I wouldn't be able to stop myself from calling my opponent a “fuckwit” or something)

#5 (and this is hot off the press and is STILL ongoing) Kathi and I have had a huge -and I mean HUGE- falling out. To the extent that in the space of three days -THREE DAYS!- we have gone from being close friends and colleagues… to her threatening to have me deported! Holy fucking shit in a basket. But that’s another story, that like I said is still ongoing, and deserves a thread of it’s own -watch this space!

In the meantime, i'd better take this bitch to the river, it's starting to bore even me!
Where were we?

Oh yes

The Story So Far....[5]

Dan has worked out who stole the 200 bucks from him. Only problem is he has no way of proving it. What to do? Revenge can take many forms, but as the Bard says, it's “a dish best served cold”....

We're playin' those mindgaaaaaammmmmmes
Together
Pushing the barriers
Planting seeds....

Ah John Lennon, your spirit lives on
(Even though fascistic manhattan landlords have pushed up the rent on La Fortuna [one of John and Yoko's favourite haunts on columbus] so much that it's going to close down
Motherfuckers! And a breed I will shortly be dealing with as I hunt for an apt….)

So Christian, the guy who took my money, kept a pretty low profile over the next few days
But I took the opportunity to mindgame him whenever I could
like, for example, he'd be outside smoking one of his new-found cigarettes[6] so i'd go out there with chris/coco/bobby and be like:
“I don't know who took that money, but if I was the thief i'd be real fucking nervous right now. Real fucking nervous. Because not only has this person fucked with me, they were prepared to let darryl take the fall for it. Man, if darryl ever finds out who that person is, I wouldn't like to be in their shoes. He'll probably start by karate chopping them to the throat, then he'd....”
or
“What kind of person steals from someone when they're asleep? I bet you'd have to have no morals at all. Or if you did, and you see the person you stole from every day, the burden of guilt must be terrible.”
or
“Well, I believe in karma. That person will get theirs sooner or later. Maybe not today, maybe not for weeks, months -but something bad WILL happen. And when it does, one of the questions they'll ask themselves is if the bad thing would've happened if they hadn't stolen the money.”

Stuff like that.
It amused me and my friends.
Christian never got involved in these conversations except for one, and this was the piece de la resistance
Allow me set the scene:

Me, coco, and bobby are down in the staff basement -coco [the handyman] was down there to change a lightbulb in the bedroom where I was robbed: the scene of the crime!
So we're there, shooting the shit, when from out of one of the other bedrooms comes Christian -with just a towel round his waist. Urgh!
He goes to the bathroom. When he comes out again, i'm banging pots and pans in the kitchen, opening cupboards, the microwave and talking loudly:

“Maybe the thief's had an attack of conscience. They could have put the money in here to be 'found' -assuming they haven't already SPENT IT. Or they could put back what's left. That's a get out for them. Hmm, can't see it here, can't see it here....”

Christian goes back to his room.
Then inspiration strikes
I say to bobby, “watch me mindgame this cocksucker.”
I walk over to the bookshelf in the lounge area -i noticed when I was in the basement before (because I tend to be a nosy parker where other people's bookshelves are concerned) that it was groaning with Christian books -mainly modern Christian theology
I guessed they were christian's and/or darryl's
(Christian, lest we forget is a Christian. And it should be easy enough to remember the clue's in the frickin name)
I pick one up at random -it's called 'Extreme Righteousness'
I walk slowly past christian's room, reading out loud from the jacket
Sure enough, he comes out
The conversation we have goes something like this:[7]

Me: “This is your book?”
Him: “Yeah, that’s one of mine.”
“‘Extreme Righteousness’, huh? What’s all that about?”
“Well, it’s a kind of Christianity taken to extremes. People who take scripture and take it to, y’know, extreme levels.”
“Scripture? That’s like the Bible, right? Old Testament? The Ten Commandments? Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not STEAL? That kind of thing?”
“That’s right.”
“And you believe in this?”
“No, but I find it interesting.”
“I find it interesting too. Very interesting. Y’know, I don’t think I could list the Ten Commandments. How godless am I! What’ve we got, er, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not STEAL –wait I already said that one. So you follow scripture, the Ten Commandments and so on?”
“No.”
“No? I thought that was kind of mandatory if you were a Christian.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Really? That IS interesting. So what exactly do you believe?”
“Well, it’s complicated-“
“I bet it is!”
“But basically, we –we being my church[8]- believe that you’re going to get into heaven anyway.”
“You mean regardless of what you do in life.”
“Exactly.”
“Amazing. Wow, you really believe that?”
“Yes I do.”
“That’s a sweet belief system you got there. Me, I believe in karma –you know, how you’ll be repaid for the actions you take.”
“You mean Buddhism-“
“No, it’s a kind of secular karma. And you get paid back –good or bad- in this life, not the next. Anyway, let’s hope we’re both right, huh? I gotta go. You have a nice day now, Christian.”

And that was that
As well as being amusing to me (and bobby), I also found it very illuminating
This guy has follows a moral code that means you can do whatever you like in this life and still get into heaven
In other words, a licence to do anything
I guess if you’re gay, and a Christian, following scripture DOES become problematic
(God being particularly wrathful towards Sodom and Gomorrah; even turning Job’s wife into a pillar of salt for merely looking back at the destruction)
But it also means you are cut adrift from the moral code that underpins Christianity: the Ten Commandments
(not that that has ever stopped Christians from breaking them willy-nilly, as history has proved, but there you go)

So that was the best piece of mind gaming I pulled on Christian
But that whole thing of emphasising the word STEAL gave me an idea for the ultimate game
There had been other pieces of thievery going on at the hostel -my roommate heather had her wallet stolen from the cafĂ© bar, another guest had money taken out of his- so I went to see the management to suggest that there should be a mandatory staff meeting about it, because in my experience hostellers don’t steal from each other, staff steal from hostellers.
But of course I had my own agenda
In this meeting I was going to say that I knew who took my money -but because I couldn’t prove it I wasn’t going to accuse anyone.
But then, in the course of this little speech, I was going to see how many times I could say the word CHRISTIAN.
As in: “at first I thought it was Darryl, but Darryl is a good CHRISTIAN, and wouldn’t have done that.”
And: “I decided to do the CHRISTIAN thing and give the thief the opportunity to return the money anonymously.”
I had it all rehearsed in my head
It would have been beauuuuuutiful

But, alas, that wasn’t to be….

Why not? Find out next time in the final instalment of: The-story-of-how-an-argument-over-a-pair-of-headphones-ended-up-with-me-getting-robbed-in-my-sleep-as-I-shared-a-bed-with-two-girls AKA “The Headphones Saga”

TO BE CONTINUED….




[1] The irony here is that my laptop is/was decorated with a decal of one of Raphael’s famous cherubs.


[2] Her case was dismissed. So now she is perusing her civil action. It’s not really my business to say how much she is suing the city for. But think of a number between 1 and 10. Then multiply it by a million dollars. You can find out what happened to her by reading the posts labeled “Kathi vs The Central Park Fascists”


[3] No, really. I swear to god. A motherfucking dog ATE my motherfucking glasses. Why do these things HAPPEN to ME? Why am I fortune’s fool???


[4] www.abetterworldview.blogspot.com


[5] I’ve labeled these posts now. The story-of-how-an-argument-over-a-pair-of-headphones-ended-up-with-me-getting-robbed-in-my-sleep-as-i-shared-a-bed-with-two-girls I have pithily called “The Headphones Saga”. All the pieces are in sequence except the first: How My Troubles Began. Start there and proceed chronologically, if you’d like to catch up!


[6] Of course, when I asked him for one, he said that he’d got it from someone else. Pfffft….


[7] Again, this is from memory. And my memory is not so hot. But there are no wild embellishments -though you might be tempted to think i'm making it up, I swear I’m not.


[8] Christian, before all this stuff kicked off, told me about his church. It sounded interesting -not least because they hold their services in a bar and provide beer. And that sermons are sometimes conducted by transvestites and bikers. I was going to go check it out -I’m glad I didn’t; I might be in a cult by now!