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For instance I am physically incapable (or else perhaps it is mentally, or emotionally, or very much so, at the risk of sounding sophistic, perhaps psychologically incapable, probably) of sleeping without both of my apartment doors locked with the dead-bolt for fear of a stranger coming inside the apartment and causing me some physical harm (perhaps some sort of sustained torture) or even death. This happened once, I mean possibly would have, I think, had the door not been bolted—I once heard the rattle of the knob by the hand of some stranger, and thought to myself, Had the door been unlocked...what then. It’s true I am afraid of the dark, though I am also convinced that everyone is a bit achluophobic, this being only logical as stemming from the overarching fear from which everyone no doubt suffers, the fear of the unknown, for which I am unaware of the clinical term, or whether such term exists, it being so primary and elemental and basic a fear. It all must stem, I’m speaking of myself here, personally now, I suppose from a deep mistrust for my fellow man, though I imagine myself someone who does trust other people, in general. You may recall the adage, “It only takes one bad egg to spoil the whole bunch,” which phrase I’m not even sure is correct, the idea however being that while you might think the human race a bunch of “good eggs,” as it were, in general, it would take but a single individual to commit something very horrific and violent and debase as to betray this trust. This is what I’m often telling myself, walking home from the theatre on 3rd Ave. if it happens to be past nightfall, the theatre being where I usually “hang out,” or else just walking to or from anywhere else, in the dark, that while it may seem ridiculous or that I may be exhibiting characteristics of a paranoiac, i.e., “Really though, what are the chances of something happening to me tonight, e.g. being jumped or attacked or, basically, subdued or murdered,” the assumption being that the chances are, obviously, fairly low, though I have no real way of substantiating this presumption, statistically. No matter, the chances may be whatever the chances may be—high, low; inconsequential, as it takes only the one time, what I’m getting at being perhaps the single most elemental truism of our (human) existence, that “Death is Final.” Thusly I design my endeavors during a given 24-hour period, around the consideration, “Will I have to be outside much or at all, and specifically will I have to walk anywhere, alone, for any extended distance, (this being perhaps half a mile or so, or about six blocks or more) after night falls.” I’m not aware of having any fear of open spaces (i.e. I’m no agoraphobic) though, like most people, I can exhibit some of the characteristics of a claustrophobic when presented with the right stimuli, such as being zipped all the way up, above my head, into a sleeping bag and being forced or else forcing myself to lie on my back until I can’t stand it any longer, or even being on my back on the couch with a large pillow or blanket or cushion atop me, so that it is dark, which position I assumed once and, having “let my mind wander,” conceived that possibly the most torturous demise (or, death) I could imagine would be you are in a metal box that is just big enough for you to fit in although you can’t move but only squirm a bit. The metal box is slowly squeezing you in, just snug at first, but squeezing you in nonetheless, and at such slight increments as to be virtually indiscernible, like the hour hand on a clock. Eventually you die by being crushed—it might take months. Of course there are details which here need not be elucidated, such as starvation and asphyxiation, which just wouldn’t happen given my stated conditions. Coming into contact with someone whilst “strolling” home in the dark, which course of action is ofttimes simply inescapable, is a lurid possibility; sometimes I find myself crossing the street or taking a circuitous route in order to avoid such contact. A group of individuals once approached me as I walked home one night, their approach being their walking in my direction, and it seemed one of them lurched a bit toward me upon passing—my heart was racing already—though they seemed gregarious enough, if a bit tattooed and dressed in punk music clothing, and I suppose I may have been thinking a bit irrationally at the time. People who are white-skinned, as these people happened to be, incidentally, are less frightening to me, it’s true, though I maintain this is not a racist sensibility but merely a recognition of the fact that our society is constructed in such a way as to present a number of disadvantages to those who are what you might call “of color,” which disadvantages lend them a proclivity toward criminal undertakings and such, since it’s a quick way to make a buck, as the saying goes. A friend of mine just last week had his car windshield smashed with what appeared from the mark, (“the scar,” he called it, somewhat jokingly) to be a brick. So when I pictured the perpetrator in my head he was a black male, which I’ll admit is, indeed, a bit racist, so I did my best to shut that image out of my head, and overcompensated by calling my friend a racist when he said, “Probably some hoodlum did it.” He assured me however that a hoodlum can refer to a white person as well as a black person or a person of any race whatever, as long as that person is causing trouble or engaging in some mischief of a usually violent stripe. When I picture a hoodlum, I imagine someone wearing a hooded sweatshirt, call me crazy. A man was shot a while back just a few blocks from my apartment, purportedly for brandishing a firearm in a public place and later aiming it at the policeman whom a “civilian” had “called to the scene.” There are varying reports as to how many times the man was shot—I didn’t hear the shots but certainly would have had I left home a few minutes earlier. I did see a woman run and hide behind a building, much like you’d “see in the movies” and another young woman on the corner where I stood told me what was “going on” was that there had been, meaning she had heard, some “shots fired.” (I only read about the details such as the policeman, etc. on the internet the following morning and thus had, at the time, no idea what to think, besides maybe gang violence, which is admittedly scarce in my neighborhood.) I was anyway headed to a movie at the 3rd Ave. theatre, all this occurring around seven in the evening, meaning, of course, I would have to find a way home through the dark streets; I skipped the movie, being too frightened to walk around now even while it was light (albeit waning), and was depressed and fairly frightened of my neighborhood and the city in general for about two weeks. Other violent things that have occurred hereabouts are myriad and scattered by time (say several years) and distance—maybe the surrounding neighborhoods plus my own, let’s say a radius of about, what, twenty-five miles, such as a mass-murder/suicide at a party early one morning. Other areas in the city can be classified as indeed safer, statistically speaking, which fact I’ve concluded by “keeping a close eye on the papers,” which eye, I’ll admit, isn’t really that close at all, and the last time I read anything concerning violent goings on was immediately after the aforementioned incident where the man was shot. It was these reports (I read two of them on the internet from two different news sites, one of them being, I believe, CNN.com) wherein I learned about the discrepancy in the number of times the police shot the man, who was, if I remember correctly, only maybe nineteen years old. I also read, in the local city “rag,” or weekly paper, though this was several months later, about an apartment complex nearby which was basically a drug harborage or cloister, the landlady being an ostensible dealer and dating an ex-(?)meth addict. People, that is tenants, would find needles and things—hypodermic needles I mean—in the bushes around the building, and I think she (she being the landlady) was giving out duplicate keys so that her friends could come inside the building and score/do some dope, or maybe have sexual relations with her, I’m guessing, or probably just “chill out” and have a bit of reprieve from the outside world, which is often a strong motivation for drug use in the first place, speaking from a statistical point of view. One otherwise homeless “gentleman” was even found living in the basement, which discovery would certainly make me think twice about staying put, meaning continuing to live in that particular apartment complex, had I been living there, of course, and had I been the one to make such a discovery, or even had I not been. I’ll admit that it’s a well-known fact that statistically the homeless are not a violent type of people. On the other hand, narcotics in general are a definite source of fear for me, since I’ve read a number of accounts of violence being perpetrated by individuals “under the influence,” including a Joyce Carol Oates novella called Rape: A Love Story, in which a group of young men sexually assault a young woman whom they accuse of “dressing provocatively” and beat her almost to death, though she survives and spends a lot of time in the hospital, recovering. I think one of the themes was sure, she lived, but is that even a good thing; several times she mentioned “wishing she would have died back there in that boathouse,” though she did have a daughter (who was with her at the time of the assault but managed to squiggle away from the men and hide somewhere, most definitely within earshot, incidentally, of the attack.) which (that is, again, having a daughter) was, perhaps, something to live for. All these men anyway were “high” on meth. So now, when I hear of some violent occurrence somewhere in the city, I think to myself, “They must have been using meth beforehand,” such as the incident wherein a man muscled his way, after a concert, into a van of one of the groups, punched a large security guard or maybe kicked him in the face and then actually stabbed one of the band members when he (the band member) tried to either help the bodyguard or else keep the man from stealing some of his equipment, like an amplifier, e.g. The man then ran away screaming something like “Welcome to the city, you fuckers!” which is fairly senseless, especially since he didn’t end up stealing anything at all, though this is, I suppose, also a good thing from the band’s perspective. Anyway the link from drug use, especially “speed” and such, to senseless violence, is neither new nor convoluted. On the street people with dogs are less frightening, because they’d ostensibly have to abandon the dog in order to efficiently attack me, and the thought of a man actually using his dog to assist him in subduing another man is downright ridiculous, in my mind. Ofttimes when I’m walking home at night I’ll think of what I would do were I indeed finally attacked, or “jumped” as the act is sometimes referred to, and the conclusion at which I usually find myself arriving is that I’d probably think the situation too clichÈ to really believe in, or else too terrifying to believe in, as when I sometimes see someone walking toward me and my heart begins to race and I’m fairly powerless to do anything besides keep walking, there existing as well the fear of making myself look silly or else frightened by, say, turning around and walking the other way upon sighting this individual who’s most likely just walking home himself, though, as I mentioned, I’ll often overcome this lesser fear and switch to the other side of the street or, as I also mentioned, take the circuitous route home if necessary. It is however impossible to tell how I will react until it actually happens. If I had a bike perhaps I could get home more quickly and avoid such things as all this. I’m constantly having violent dreams in which I’m attacked—stabbed or else somehow subdued—by men in masks or some such garb, or indeed no garb at all out of the ordinary, while I’m just walking home alone or with acquaintances, day or night, or else in some everyday situation. The distinction between paranoia and fear being that paranoia tends to be a bit illogical by nature, such as you know there’s nothing really there but you keep looking anyway. It is true though, I’ll admit, shadows are suggestive, reflections in surfaces such as mirrors make me think to myself, “What is/was that,” and so forth.
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On Violence & Fear