It’s probably still The Initial Coming, as my first blog foray came to naught. I got tied up with self-publishing and then launching SEVEN PATHS TO POVERTY with my co-author Gary Byrne, learning more about the Expresso Machine, a UCLA teaching assignment, stumbling through some investments, falling off my bike, getting back on my bike, going to Spain, failing to fix the leak in my car’s windshield washer tank, worrying about my tomatoes, harvesting my Japanese eggplants, visiting family, hosting friends, playing poker, a new wine project, trying to win the New Yorker cartoon caption contest, avoiding golf, and writing.
Hmmm. First week of November already. Who had a fun Halloween? I was sitting at my dining table about 9:30 PM and a naked man walked through my front door. Not joking. He was about 6’1″, dark curly hair, nude as a nickel. I was surprised, then agitated, then frightened, then angry. He mumbled and bumbled, just inside the door. He acted drunk. He apologized clumsily and ineptly, turned, and left. I flew out the door after him, momentarily regretting my antipathy toward firearms. He made a sloppy turn to the left (on foot), then up the walkway of my next door neighbors. They were no more enamored with the visitor than I was. He adjusted his course once more and ended up entering a side door of the house at the end of the cul-de-sac.
The next day, a Monday, I investigated. Man B, a resident of the main house, said Man A, the naked guy, lived in a rented room in the house. He wasn’t home; why was I asking. “He walked into my house last night naked as a jaybird and I’d like to have a word with him without going to the police.” Man B told me the police had come by the previous midnight. I knocked on the side door; no reply.
I returned on Tuesday, intent on enlightenment. Man A was there. So was his mother. Man A was only half naked – the upper half. His mother didn’t want me to talk to him. I didn’t want to call the police, but I didn’t want to leave without an explanation and, perhaps, an apology. This is what I got, paraphrased for decipherability:
“I was sleeping in my room naked when some robbers came in and tried to steal things from me. That’s why I was acting drunk. I didn’t know them, but I chased them down the street and they knocked me down and fractured my skull. That’s really why I was acting drunk. I called the police myself. It won’t happen again.”
This is a low-crime town. I’ve lived on this street for 35 years and have never been burgled. A middle-class, dead-end street on a steep hill–one way in, one way out. That’s why burglars don’t come. They either have to climb 100 feet up a hill through weeds and brush, and then back down with the 40″ TV, or they have to drive in and get caught driving out. And why would they rob a disheveled little rented room when there are houses worth stealing stuff from? If his skull was fractured, why was he standing up in the yard talking (lying) to me?
No good deed goes unpunished. You try to help someone out by not going to the cops, and get an uninterrupted string of lies and a phony apology. Now I have to decide: Glock? Colt? Walther PPK?