At 12:30 this afternoon I was 11 pages from completing my proof of Planet Buzzkill; in writing mode, not wanting to be interrupted by the help here on the plantation. As luck would have it a security concern arose while my overseer was away on some errand—it is just so tediously impossible to keep track of these people!

My overseer’s wench burst through the door to my study and blurted, “Sorry. There is a guy in the yard, a guy in the yard. He’s walking next door, he’s circling the house. He was just on the side—he’s black! I’m freaked out. I need you to do something.”

I stood up, ready to spring into action, and something felt kind of strange below the waist. We looked down and I said, “How about I start with pants.”

Look, I’m a well-to-do writer and am permitted my eccentricities, and I assure you, that I have a pair of shorts on as I write this.

I hopped into my shorts, and realizing that this was probably an overreaction, decided to play it cool. I grabbed the trash bag out of my oak gargoyle trashcan next to this desk, and headed downstairs as she jabbered, “He was next door talking to the Mexican guy that was working on the vacant house. He’s just looking around casing the place. I need him to know a man lives here!”

The last thing I want is a confrontation, even if he is casing the place. I need to measure him, and he needs to know that I’m just normally out and about the house, not that I only appear when the wench cries ‘negro!’

Of course, not only did she not lock the door, she had not even closed it. This chick doesn’t last long in a horror movie.

I walked out onto the veranda and down the front walk to the trashcan as he was walking back past the plantation gate from the vacant next door. He had picked up a small envelope from on top of the trashcan and was opening it as he walked by me. I looked up to make respectful eye-contact, not hard-balling him, and he declined. He was a shy kid, about 16. A good looking lightweight I’d say.

It turns out that his mother lives two doors up in the large block rental where Peanut bags up his redcap and yellow cap and blue cap, and has the retarded kid sell it down by the gas station. She was going to be at work and wanted her estranged son to get his bus money—no info on why they are not cohabitating. Obviously she cannot trust her roommates. She did think she could trust the Mexican, so told him that she was leaving the envelope on one of the trashcans in front of the vacant for her son.

Interestingly enough the black lady next door was eying him suspiciously as well. This visual vigilance on the part of females is good. The problem is it has no teeth. In an urban environment on side streets it is good policy for the man to make himself visible, and visibly aware, while remaining respectful to passersby, not hostile or over friendly.

You do not want to seem to appear at the woman’s call, or else, if this is someone casing the house, she becomes the first thing to get neutralized because she is the alarm system. You should just ask her nosey self to keep an eye out and then discretely let you know that someone is walking by—a male who appears fit enough to be a combatant—so that you can be noted as casually and unpredictably present and alert.

In this instance an automobile is a disadvantage. As soon as guys see me walk to and from the house they know that they will never be able to predict my presence unless they just saw me come or go. The vehicle pins you down. My roommate likes this about me, that even though he might be out on a business call that I might always be around. It seems like a small thing, but as with a large vigilant dog, just having a man visibly around takes the property way down to the bottom of the crime target list.

Most urban houses have no man. If you make yourself alertly and confidently visible on some of the occasions that young men are known to walk by, or when they appear suspiciously, you have done more to secure your property than getting an alarm system installed. Above all be cool and polite, not gregarious, not a rubbernecker, not insulting to the decent guys, which will be most who walk by, but just a man who seems with it enough to buy your dependents enough time to make that 911 call. It is not enough to deter. You must not also insult, which could invite reprisals that are far worse than a simple property crime and more like what my female roommate, a suburban girl, feared. This kid had gang tattoos. There was nothing to be gained by showing him fear or disrespect, and much to be risked.

Awareness.

Presence.

Vigilance.

Poise.

Those four elements comprise most of the urban survival code that I have lived by since I came to Baltimore in 1981.