How My Troubles Began

I was going through some files on my computer and I discovered something I thought I'd lost: the first part to the story of how I came to be robbed (and all the craziness that led up to it, and the fall out) -the narrative that makes up the bulk of these blog postings so far

it was originally sent out as a group email to a select few who I thought might find it amusing/interesting

Then I mislaid the file, so when I started the blog I began mis-en-scene

So now, for the sake of completeness -and for any late comers- I thought i'd post the original email

I'm a so-called writer, so I couldn't resist giving it a re-draft

Plus I put a picture in there -and some more all-important footnotes!

(Readers of this blog will know i'm crazy for footnotes)¹

It was originally called “The Day I Lost It”

And here it is:

Hello

I’d like to tell you a story

Seeing as I am a so-called writer, it’s about time, ya?

This story is about how new york has had an effect on me in hitherto unimaginable ways

And how events can spiral out of control into a totally crazy situation that is (at the time of writing) still ongoing. All this shit is 100% true.

OK

New Yorkers are funny folk

They are the kindest, friendliest, most confident people in the world

I’ve lost count of the number of random acts of kindness and generosity I’ve witnessed

But if you cross them they will FUCK YOU UP

And the switch from nice to nasty happens like –that!

New Yorkers can say “thank you” and “fuck you” with the same breath

So far I have been affected by the positive side

But yesterday I found my new york darkside

Here’s what happened:

There is this guy I worked and shared a room with, Jayson.

Here is a picture of Jayson:

He is a fucking, pardon my French, douchebag, pardon my American. Here are some examples of what an FD this guy is:

1. he kidnaps my DS, and works through my games. He even changed my username to his name! (now I don’t really give a fuck, it’s a videogame, right? I am 30, not 13. But still)

2. He hit on the girl I was seeing, Kim, when I introduced her to my hostel friends WHILE I WAS THERE. Totally creeped her out. I couldn’t believe it –who DOES that?²

3. He fucked things up for my best friend here, Coco, with a girl he (Coco) had already scored with (and who he really liked/likes) by sharking her while coco was at work. Coco was sharing our room but he switched after that. Wish I’d joined him.

4. This is the doozy. This jerk asked me to build a joint (I make em quite well, a legacy of my misspent youth) but then wanted to charge people to smoke it. Charge dudes to smoke a blunt? WTF? Never, in the ten years or so I spent being a pothead have I ever experienced, or even heard of, someone who charges for tokes on a jay. Rule #1 is you share the love. Jesus Christ.

There are other instances³, but whatever. Let’s just say I was primed for what happened.

So, I’m working in the café bar. Making sandwiches, grooving to some tunes. I happen to look up, and I do a double take.

Jayson is wearing a set of headphones –nice ones, sonys, $70- that do not belong to him. They do not belong to me either –they belong to Kim, and she only lent me them under the specific proviso that I don’t let anyone, ANYONE, else use them.

She made me promise and everything. And a week or two before Jayson had asked if he could borrow them, and I explained that to him. And now I see him wearing them, not even asking permission, walking past the check in desk and out the hostel.

I’m flabbergasted.

But then I think I’ve made a mistake. But I go and check the room we share and kim’s headphones are not there.

Now I’m fucked off. If they’d been my phones I would have been annoyed, sure, but WTF, they’re just headphones right? Good ones, yeah, but you know me –I’m not exactly a materialist.

But he’s made me break a promise to someone I care(d) about –and I take my promises seriously. Plus, he obviously has no respect for my property because he took something of mine which I specifically told him he could not have; borderline thievery, you might say. This is obviously a person I cannot share my personal space with, so I high tail it to the check in desk to get my room changed ASAP.

When I get there guess, who’s back?

I nearly pull off his ears ripping the phones from his head:

“Jayson –these do not belong to you! These are kim’s fucking headphones, I told you you could not borrow. You’ve fucked me off man.”

And then I go back to the café bar to work, start chopping tomatoes again.

Man, I am fucked off, probably as fucked off as I’ve ever been, but then something weird happens.

It’s like there’s a new level of rage has opened up above me, somewhere I’ve never been. And I’m on the penultimate step. All it will take is a couple more shoves.

I’m chopping tomatoes, praying he won’t come over. But, sure enough, he comes over. He wants to talk, but I am too angry to do so and I tell him:

“Jayson, I am too angry to speak now. Let me cool off, do some work, you go away, come back in a couple of hours and we talk.”

But he’s not listening.

I am suddenly very aware that I have been chopping tomatoes with a 9 inch butcher knife.

Now, if this was a movie, it would freeze frame at this point and some narration would kick in:

This was the pivotal moment that started a chain reaction of cause and effect. One of us had to back down. Either jayson had to walk away, or I had to control my temper.

I’ve always thought the onus was on jayson because he was the transgressor. But now I think, maybe I should have kept calm. I’m older. Mature, supposedly. Whatever. The problem is neither of us did.

Action: I drop the knife, all the while telling jayson I’m gonna lose it if he doesn’t go away.

He’s not listening. And now he’s actually coming around behind the café bar where I am.

This is the moment I go into the redzone:

“Jayson, get the fuck away from me you fucking thief! Get the fuck away from me, or I’m gonna get your fucking ass fired for this shit! You fucking take my fucking stuff that makes you a fucking thief-”

I could go on, but you get the idea.

(I was like a little jack russell snapping at a grizzly bear. Yappayappayappayap!)

Still, he comes.

I retreat into the storage room behind the bar. Coco has heard something is up now, and he comes back there with me, tries to calm me down.

(I don’t think I’ve ever been that angry. My hands were shaking like I had the DTs. You know that cliché “incandescent with rage”? That was me.)

I’m telling coco he needs to get jayson away from me, otherwise I don’t know what’s going to happen.⁴

So with me telling jayson to fuck off and coco telling him to leave you think he’d get the picture, right?

Oh no no no. Not jayson; now he tries to come back into the storeroom. Coco body blocks him.

I escape out the rear storeroom door, all the time telling him to get the fuck away from me, does he speak English etc etc

I’m in the ground floor dorm corridor now –and still jayson comes. This guy will not stop. He’s the fucking terminator or something. The only way I can get away is to go down to the basement, and up the steps the other side.

He’s still following me! This is keystone kops!

Now I talk to bobby on the front desk. There are a couple of guests there too:

“Bobby –what the fuck am I supposed to do? He won’t leave me alone! I don’t know what will happen if he gets too close. Can lock me a room or something where he can’t get to me?”

Then I realize how farcical the situation is –if he won’t go, then I’ll have to go. Even though I’m supposed to be working and my manger, elsie, is out getting supplies for the café bar which I need to help her unload.

And I was swearing my head off in from of guests: I’m so fired.

I’m only wearing my work gear –jazz t-shirt and pajama bottoms, hat. I put on my boots, grab my greatcoat, apologize to my colleague valentina and head for the door.

On the way out I hear Jayson call after me and then I’m running, running, running into the wind, snow falling, my coat snapping my heels….

TO BE CONTINUED….⁵

1You see? I love em!

2Actually American guys hit on women any time, any situation. An english girl told me she was hit on in the space of one day by: a taxi driver, a guy on the subway, a guy on the staten island ferry, a fruit vendor… and a cop. The American male is always on alert for tail!

3Since the time of writing I also found out the following. We made friends with a sweet little french girl, of Martinique descent, called sabrina, who'd stayed in new york, in the hostel, earlier in the year. In the course of a conversation she mentioned that the last time she was in NY she spent $2000... in ten days. I was like, what the fuck? Did you buy up the city? And she tells me: jayson. Over the course of those 10 days she spend 4 with jayson as he “showed her the city”. What he would do was look up restaurants and clubs, take her to them -and then make excuses about money, so she had to pick up the check every time! Grrrr it makes me angry just writing about it. And at the same time, of course, he was trying to get into her panties. And I also heard, and I don't know how true it is, that he's been saying the falling out we had was “a race thing”. Despite the fact that my best fucking friend is BLACK. I know he's played the race card before, unwarranted, on a danish girl who used to work at jazz. Folks who play the race/anti-semite/gay/sex/whatever card really piss me off. So as I say: A fucking douchebag.

4This is the infamous red mist. It really is kind of a redness in your peripheral vision, not sure what causes it –dilating capillaries in the eye? It’s scary though –you really do lose control.

5The story continues in the post From Bad To Worse. The next part of the “current” story -of the robbery and my colombo-esque sluething- is very nearly done. I'm just struggling to get a picture of the prime suspect off my phone. I'll work it out!