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!

Real Life Colombo (pt 2)

Look at this man:




Look at him!
This man is a god to me.

It is, of course, Peter Falk as Colombo -one of my all time heroes, and one of my all time favorite TV shows.
I used to skip lectures at uni, just to watch it
And i've attracted a fair bit of stick over the years for my obsession with the man in the mack.

Why do i like it so much?

I know WHY I like it: that you see how the murder was committed; the 70's styling and music; the celeb murderers (william shatner, leonard nimoy, donald pleasance -even Johnny Cash!¹); the directors who cut their teeth on the show (steven spielburg directed an episode); and, of course, Peter Falk.

Sure, I understand why I like it -but why do I like it SO MUCH?

Why do train spotters love trains? Why do girls love sex and the city? Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

It's a mystery

like the changing of the seasons and tides of the sea²

Anyway, it turns out that all those hours watching colombo weren't such a waste of time after all

You will recall, last time, i'd been robbed -$200, cash, taken from my wallet as I slept- and i'd bluffed phoning the cops in order to try and get a reaction from whomever took the money

And one person was definitely acting weird

But before we point the finger: an elementary lesson in detective work

Anyone who is a fan of colombo -or any of these old school detective/murder mystery tv shows- will know that the sleuth typically operates using the time-honored triumvirate of detection: Means, Motive and Opportunity

Let's use Darryl as an example, now he has been eliminated as a suspect:

Darryl had the MEANS: he knew, because of what had happened earlier that evening³ that I had circa $200 in my wallet.

He had the MOTIVE: he'd “caught” me in bed with his girl.

And he had OPPORTUNITY: he lives in the staff basement, and so could have sneaked into the room anytime when we were all passed out

So that didn't look too good -that's why I needed to force the confrontation.

However Means, Motive and Opportunity are not enough -you need proof⁴

In fact, the police in our modern age -in this time of DNA fingerprinting and “motiveless” crime- usually dispense with old triumvirate of detection altogether and proceed directly to the triumvirate of conviction: Physical Evidence, Witnesses, Confession (with the first two having primacy; the latter to circumnavigate the courtroom)

Let's apply the triumvirate of conviction to my case, shall we?

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: It was money that was stolen and, unless the money was marked (which it wasn't), completely untraceable.

WITNESSES: The crime happened in the middle of the night and we were all asleep; no witnesses.

CONFESSION: Means nothing without at least one (or preferably both) of the above.⁵

This is why going to the police was not an option -was never an option- as the crime was totally unprovable.

However, just because you can't prove something, doesn't mean you can't work out who did the crime: Means, Motive and Opportunity, remember...

It's time to don my dirty mac, light a cigar and ask “Ah... just one more thing...”⁶

TO BE CONTINUED....

1Swan Song -the holy grail of colombo episodes. A friend actually bought me it on DVD for my birthday so I could see it. Cheers tiggy!

2But here's the one that's driving me berserk/why do only fools and horses work? Na na na na nah na na na na nah etc etc

3See post "From Worse to, um, Worser" for a refresher, bitches

4Or in the case of colombo, because the murderers are so darstedly, an extremely clever (and judicially dubious) piece of entrapment.

5This is not to say I wasn't tempted to get one or two of my more, ahem, ghetto friends to “lean” on the person in question. But that really isn't my style.

6I still can't believe I actually got to “be” colombo for a few days. Talk about dreams coming true! It was almost worth being robbed for. Almost.

Finally, A Brush With Fame

OK, I was going to post the next part of my detective story (not that I know if anyone cares)

But the day before yesterday something mildly interesting happened to me-

Everyone tells me new york is teeming with celebrities

All the movie stars have apartments in manhattan¹

Loads (apparently) on the Upper West Side, where all mine and kathi's dogwalking clients are.

She is always like “dustin hoffman has an apartment in this building; harrison ford has an apartment in that building”

I have never seen any of these people²

In fact my brushes with celebrity have so far been pretty piss poor:

I stood next to Erykah Badu in a bar -without realizing it was her³

I've seen Ally Sheedy⁴ walking her dog -a greyhound- in central park

I've had a conversation with Ingrid Rossalini (sister of Isabella), also dogwalking

One of our clients used to know, and was the mentee of, the Bronx judge Tom Wolfe based the Judge Kovistzky character on in The Bonfire of the Vanities.⁵

However, yesterday that changed

One of the dogs I walk lives at The Majestic, on 72nd and Central Park West

It's opposite the Dakota building⁵

The people who live there are riiiiiiiich, bitches!⁶

Man, some of those apartments! With south east facing views of central park, huge windows filling huge spaces with sunlight....

The views!

Wish I could take pictures

Anyway, I'd just finished giving charlie (that's the dog) her -it's a she- evening walk

As I walk back into the building, I pass Conan O' Brien talking to one of the doormen

Now, none-American readers might not know who Conan O'Brien is

I was tempted -for the benefit of British readers- to liken him to an American Jonathan Ross

But this would be denigrating to Conan

He does host a chatshow similar in format to Friday Night with Jonathan Ross -Late Night with Conan O'Brien

I knew of the show before I came to the US because I love one of the regular skits on the show: Triumph The Insult Comic Dog⁷

But Conan is a hero to me because he used to be a writer on The Simpsons during its “Golden Age” (circa season 3 to season 9)

And he wrote (or was the principal writer of, no Simpsons episode is ever written by one person alone) one of my favorite episodes -the monorail one (Marge Vs The Monorail)

And he's IN a episode of the Simpsons too -the one where Bart becomes (briefly) famous for a spurious catchphrase (“I didn't do it”)

Anyway, he's pretty famous in america -not 'A' list, but certainly B+

Here's a picture of him at work, interviewing Jessica Alba:⁸

So I pass him, and I think: “Wow, that's Conan O'Brien”

I was also disappointed that he'd shaved off his beard -i like a nice beard!

So I take charlie to the elevator -she lives on the 29^th floor- and just as the elevator doors are about to close, Conan hops in

These elevators at the majestic are not big

There is just about enough room for the elevator man⁹ and three others

So there is the elevator man, conan, charlie and me

You're so close together, it's almost rude NOT to talk

Now I could either do the whole “wow, you're so great, I love your show blah blah”

Or I could keep my head and play it cool

(This is where having a dog by your side -especially a charming, well behaved dog like charlie- is handy as an ice breaker)

Here's how the conversation goes:¹⁰

CONAN (petting charlie): This one's a cutie.

ME: Her name's Charlie

CONAN: Oh, it's a she?

ME: Just to confuse people.

[pause]

Y'know, I think you and I have a mutual acquaintance.

CONAN (looking at me like there is no way on earth we could have a shared acquaintance):

Really?

ME: Yeah, Kathi? She used to do some walking for you I believe.¹¹

CONAN: Oh, you know Kathi? She used to walk our dog, Hudson.

ME: Yeah, she told me.

CONAN: He died.

[pause]

That was really rough.

ME (stumbling because I realise i've just inadvertently reminded him of the death of a much loved pet)

Oh, yeah, I know... that's the hardest, losing a pet... when your dog dies. Harsh.

We get to his floor.

CONAN: Good night. Have a nice evening

ME: You too, man.

And he leaves.

(Actually I'm not totally mortified by my faux pas -after all, just the fact of charlie being there would have reminded him of Hudson)

So that was my brush with celebrity

I walk charlie twice a day, so I may bump into him again

Who knows? Maybe we'll strike up a friendship and he'll relocate me to LA to be dogwalker to his new dog, and through that i'll network with hollywood types who'll fix me up with some incredibly well paid writing job in the movies

I'm kidding, of course

But in this country, you never know ;-)

(I'll continue the story of skulduggery at the hostel next time, i promise)

1Including, of course, the late heath ledger. I only mention him because I happened to be watching CNN as the news was breaking that his body had been found -it was a strange feeling that something you knew was going to be plastered over every news channel and newspaper in the western world was happening RIGHT NOW just mile or two down the road. I also mention it because it gave me a (fresh) insight into how the press just make shit up: I was talking to a friend in the UK a couple of days after ledger died, and she said that in the UK it was being reported that Manhattan was “united in grief.” Well, I live in Manhattan and let me tell you, there was no “unity of grief”. 28 year old movie star ODs? Hmm, well, there you go, the price of fame. United in “mild shock, disappointment and curiosity” would be nearer the mark. I'm sympathetic, of course -unless they prove it was suicide. Then my sympathy flies out the window. The dude had a 2-year old daughter. You don't kill yourself and leave behind a 2 year old child fatherless. No way. Once you got kids, suicide as a solution to your problems is off the menu.

2Not that I am a celebrity-whore. But these people are MOVIE STARS. Not like the ne'er do wells from Corrie and Hollyoaks you see skulking round Manchester.

3Despite lots of people taking pictures of her. I just thought it was because she was cool looking. Which she is. And sexy, mesmeric, stunning, gorgeous, beguiling, beautiful -Oh Erykah!

4Principally famous for playing the “kooky” girl in The Breakfast Club (and who, it is generally agreed, was much more interesting and sexy before the “princess” makeover at the end of the movie).

5Although this is the encounter that is furthest distance from fame, it's also the one that gave me the biggest thrill. The Judge is the best character in that book! The client in question works for the DA's office in the Bronx (aka “Gibraltar”). She says she will take me on a tour. Can't wait!

5Consequently, I walk past the spot where john lennon was shot about 4 times a day. It makes me feel a bit funny inside.

6But not as rich as the people who live on the Upper EAST Side. That is where the super-duper wealthy park avenue millionaires and billionaires keep their cribs. To give a street-level example: if your dog shits in that neighborhood, and you don't clean it up, you get fined $25,000. Yes, 25 grand for not picking up dogshit. I kid you not.

7A dog puppet that goes out and blazes -really BLAZES- those who deserve to be blazed (michael jackson fans; pop idol contestants; bon jovi). The funniest is when he takes down star wars geeks queuing to see Attack Of The Clones. There's a link to it in the Other Stuff section of the blog.

8This picture does partial justice to how tall he is. He's a giant!

9I told you these people were rich!

10 Again this is from memory, and mine sucks.

11 This was the other handy piece of info to know -Kathi used to walk Conan's dog, Hudson, before he (Hudson) died of cancer.