The Namesake

Gold Chains. I'm in a mood.
New bath product. Where to start?

Or, anything from my wish list.

Mama Needs a New Laptop
Or, how many times can a single person get robbed?

That's right. You read it correctly. I walked into my place this morning and realized that in the middle of the night, the bedroom window had been carefully picked open and all my dvds, electronics, jewelry AND my BRAND NEW iBook had been stolen.

But Jocelyn, you say, how many times can a single person get robbed in a three year period? And I will tell you that apparently it is possible for a person to get robbed five times in that time frame. You may recall the first time when the Pierce Street property got broken into and all the electronics got stolen. You may recall the second time, at the same property, when all of my jewelry got stolen. You may recall the third time, yes, still at the same property, when my $4000 road bike got stolen. Then you may recall earlier this year when my car was stolen from here in Vegas. And now this, which we will itemize in a minute. And really, if you want to be a stickler about stuff, a bunch of boxes and two bikes were stolen from the garage space at the Sacramento Street property in SF, but I don't even really count that since we were mostly just upset about one of the two bikes.

This time, I'm pretty upset, and if you bear with me while I bitch about all the wonderful things that are now GONE from me, you can then hear me elaborate on how I've finally reached the point where I felt the shift happen and have now officially become the kind of person I hoped never to be. But first, let's share in my tears of loss.

- The laptop. Here's the good news. Since that laptop is only TWO MONTHS OLD, I'm really only losing two months of work since I have a hard drive burn from right before I got the new iBook. I think. If I can find the disk. The bad news is that in the process of getting the new iBook set up, I had accidentally forgotten to back my stuff up for two months. So, I have lost two solid months worth of work data (FANTASTIC), which I will now have to spend 30+ hours recreating, not to mention everything Kari and I had started, not to mention...oh, I'm sorry, did I not mention all that work data? I mean, and even beyond that, my entire life was on that laptop. My stickie notes, my calendar, stuff for K-Yo's wedding. I'm usually a religious backer upper, but just with the transition to the new machine, things slipped. It's the only thing I lost that made me cry. My whole life was on there, people. Assume, at this moment, as you read this, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be working on for the next however many days because I'm lost without my to-do list. I can't even talk about this any more.

- Jewelry. I don't have a ton, but what I do have is valuable both in monetary and emotional value. So, let's enumerate. One silver and amber bracelet bought in Sedona the weekend of Daphne's 30th birthday. I thought of her and that weekend every time I wore it. One silver infinity bracelet given to me by Daphne for my birthday. I thought of her every time I wore it. One amber and white gold ring and one gold and ruby pinky ring with a heart given to me by my neighbor as heirloom gifts. Two necklaces bought at my favorite store in San Francisco. The store was called Sugar Poppy and it doesn't even exist any more and every time I wore the necklaces I felt like I was back home in SF. They were one of the last pieces of that place I could carry with me. Gone. My lucky jade ring which almost always really was lucky. I can't do this anymore.

- Two dvd players, which I can deal with. Two stereos, which I can also deal with. My Gamecube, which I cannot deal with because it's the same Gamecube Paul and I played on together when we lived together and I think about him everytime I use it. It looks like my most likely young friends got interuppted before they got to the televisions. We assume they got interupted because my stereo was actually broken on the patio along with a bag of stuff they didn't make off with.

- Oh, I just noticed, my luggage. My luggage is all gone.

- All but one of my DVDs, and this is funny. They took every single one of my dvds including my much-loved SportsNight dvds, my Northern Exposure dvds, all of my Peanuts holiday dvds, "Miracle," "The Rookie," and "Mystery, Alaska," -- "Love Me If You Dare" and "Million Dollar Hotel," which I suspect will not get much dollar play on the blackmarket. Know what dvd they didn't take? "NYPD Blue: Season One."

- My Legend of Zelda and Windwaker games. I know, my stomach dropped, too.

In other randomness, they took a bottle of fabric softener, a totally old bottle of creme de menthe and two vibrators. What the hell?

But do you know what makes me the angriest? I mean, it all makes me angry, don't get me wrong, and I've been in and out of being upset beyond belief because, while I'm not, you know, scraping for food money or anything, it's not like it works out fantastically for me to have to go drop two grand on ANOTHER new laptop. But I'll live and work a couple extra hours to make up for it. Anyway, what makes me angriest is that when they took the laptop, they took the time to put it in my purple backpack to take it with them. My FAVORITE purple backpack with all of my FAVORITE things in it. It's the backpack I took to Budapest, Mexico, Hawaii and Peru. It had a random mate de coco teabag in it from Peru that I had just never taken out. It had my favorite tube of Anna Sui lipstick in it. It had my favorite gin and tonic scented body spray in it. It had my Rosebud lip salve in it that I think of Shadee whenever I use. It had the baby shower present I spent three months making for Hil and Dave in it that I was going to mail this week, and now I'll have to start all over and it will never be as good. It had one of my favorite tarot decks, the one with the Cat People, and my fairy notebook that had a poem started in it and...I can't even talk about this.

For kicks, a list of things not taken:

- My cd's. Apparently my taste in music sucks and nobody wants to steal my Bon Jovi box set and all the Hanson albums.

- The VCRs. Apparently so passe.

- Pottery and artwork. Who needs that?

- Oh, strangely, two fun and kicky pairs of Betsey Johnson shoes were gone, but over $900 in running shoes were left, so I guess I'm lucky there.

I mean, in the end, I understand that it could have been much worse.

But here's what broke today. I really am finally going to make the move into affluent white suburbia, and it makes me sad not only that I'm doing that, and that I feel like I have to do it, but that I think I've finally stopped believing that you can make community anywhere. You know, I have no problem with the fences and monotony and cookie cutter aspects of the suburbs. I really don't. I find a type of peace in that, but I've spent my life making these really conscious choices to live in more marginal neighborhoods because I honestly didn't want to be the kind of relatively affluent white person who said, "Oh, I would never live there, those people can't be trusted." But that's where I am right now in my mental process, and that's a new one for me. Part of me is so, so, so, so grateful I managed to make it 31 years actually believing that people will respond to kindness and respect in a community by reciprocating it. But I'm done now. Green Valley here I come. I mean, enough already. How many times does it have to hit me in the face before I have to accept that white women with slightly above average incomes will be taken advantage of if they live in a certain type of neighborhood? Apparently for me it basically took five times and probably in the end well over $10000 in stuff being stolen (I mean, the road bike and the laptop alone come to $6000). But this time they got my laptop and my backpack and my amber bracelet, and that's enough.

I love that my neighbors let me practice my Spanish with them, that there's always a barbeque going on, that the kids in the neighborhood ask me to help them with their homework. And just like all of the other places, I would have given more here than I got, probably. But enough is e-fucking-nough already.

Said the cop, "If they try to pawn that jewelery, we'll probably find it, it's a pretty specific description."

Said the cop, "Yeah, they clearly had been casing you for a long time. They brought the right tools to bust that window and knew which night you were likely to not be here."

Said the cop, "It's weird. This is a pretty quiet neighborhood. I don't even think I've ever been here on a complaint before. You poor thing. Are you going to cry again?"

I keep reminding myself that the physical loss could have been more. But it really is true that today was the day I stopped believing that I would never be the kind of semi-affluent white person who looked suspiciously at anybody who wasn't like me. Sucks. Do you even know how much that sucks and shakes at my whole sense of self-identification? Even after the car got stolen, I was ready to cut those kids a break because I felt badly for they hand they'd gotten dealt. I don't feel that way anymore.

What's weirdest of all is that I wrote this coming home from Pittsburgh. I was having this sense of wondering why I was coming back to a place that was changing me in ways I wasn't necessarily comfortable with (though, you know, the reasons why I'm here are obvious and not debatable at this point). But it was more like an abstract sense that I was slowly becoming less idealistic in the last eight or nine months and I didn't know how to stop it. Now it seems a little precient, don't you think?

I have to go. My packing boxes await my attention, as does a nice solid Jack and Coke. Send me email. I need the upper.