Okay, things go wrong with locks, especially old locks on old frame ghetto dives in the middle of winter. Earlier today, on the blog page, in Killer Babes, I promised to go out and flash my wallet in front of some corner boys on this very night. The corner boys were all in some warm space somewhere, so I ducked in out of the swirling snow and entered a ghetto bar. I found myself surrounded by a dozen middle-aged black dudes, two of their wives, one prostitute—who was sitting with the other white guy—and a mountain man-looking somebody that none of us wanted to claim as a racial coconspirator.
After a few beers, and watching the ancient drunken ho hit the deck face first when she attempted to stand in her high heels with three pounds of earrings on, I headed home to my roommate’s house. Joey and I live in what was originally an orchard house: a large frame house that used to sit in the midst of a vast spread of apple trees, before prohibition killed the market for hard cider.
Over my first three years living in this place—now surrounded by the ghetto—I have had numerous instances in which I was unable to work the deadbolt, from within with my hand, or from without with my key, because of extreme cold or hot weather. My landlord/roommate is a good guy, and old friend. He keeps my rent down and I repay him by not griping about stuff like old locks and by paying my rent two weeks early.
This dude never used to bother locking the door unless he was on vacation. I called this the ‘Tower of Death’, a martial arts fantasy, where I lived with this big karate guy, waiting for some hoodlums to break in so that we could butcher them. Once, when he saw me setting out a meat-hook by the door to my room he said, “If someone breaks in, please give me a chance to take care of it. I’ve been teaching karate for twenty years. I want to find out if this stuff works.”
The purpose of the meat-hooks is to stabilize intruders by hooking their shoulder blade or collar bone with my right hand, so that they may be stabbed and eviscerated with the bowie knife in my left hand.
I left the bar at 11:47, having arrived at 9:45. At 11:53 I hit the pizza joint, which has been purchased from the Greeks by some Pakistanis who are adding soul food to the menu. I bought two beans pies made by black Muslims, and headed home.
It was—and is—a cold empty night in the city. I arrived on the front porch at 12:05 and turned the dead bolt key. The cylinder came out of the lock. I used to get in and out at such times by lifting the sitting room window and ducking in. But since my roommate has acquired female companionship, she has locked the entire place down, ruining our lingering Bruce Lee fantasy. I kicked the wooden door for 15 minutes with my steel-toe boots. The racket, I am certain, could have been heard a half-mile down the street. Joey was obviously sleeping the death-like sleep of the post orgasmic middle-aged man, and would not be awakened. His lady love was most likely unable to hear due to his snoring.
If I continued to make this noise I feared arrest.
If I kicked in any of the front windows this would be an expensive mess.
The back door to the main floor is boarded up—which is a good ghetto bunker idea.
The basement door around back is under cover of an enclosed porch, which, though sealed with a tarp, was easy for me to access, by tearing the covering away from the block and walking through. The basement door is an old four-panel glass type. I grabbed a loose brick and smashed the glass panel on the lower left corner, reached in, and turned the toggle on the dead bolt, opening the door. Within seconds I was clomping up to the third floor in my hard-soled steel-toe curb-stomping footwear. Still unheard by my roommates, I hauled my dinner dishes downstairs and washed them. After three more trips up and down the hard wood stairs in my echoing footwear, I am still not known to be in the house.
This is Friday night.
I usually work on Friday night.
I did not tell my roommate that I would be home tonight, not thinking that the lock might not work. He should be on red alert upon hearing a man tramping around the house.
No neighbor heard me, or if they did, none called the police, or if they did, the police did not bother. A black chick is screaming obscenities on the front lawn at some mumbling homeboy right now—no doubt her witless and ill-fated mating drone. I hear the police chopper in the distance over Overlea, coming this way. It was 12:29 when I broke in. It is 2:18 as I type this sentence. The ho and the hood are a quarter mile off now, her still screaming in the distance. The chopper diverted to North Baltimore. The night is silent again.
In the night, in Harm City, you are alone.
The noise I made kicking the wood frame of that door was much more than if I had just kicked in the window panel. Houses could be stormed by force on nights like this and not one of the nearby twig pigs would even stir to wonder at the fate of their neighbor. These twig pigs would already be wolf chow.
If I were a hood-rat in sneakers, the electronics on the ground floor would already be plugged in back at my baby’s mamma’s crib, and my hommies would be hooking up the X-box.
If I were a home invader or serial killer, there would be two bodies draining across the hall just now while I went through this writer guy’s notes and laughed at his $93 royalty statement.
I am glad to be in out of the cold, and have enjoyed my bean pie quite a bit.
I should talk to Joey in the morning about shoring up his basement and ground floor into a ghetto bunker. But if I do, the next time this happens, I’ll have to haul my fat ass up over the porch roof and climb in onto my bed [a mattress on the floor], fouling my Oscar Madison sheets in the process.
This is a team effort here. I mean, when the Zombie Apocalypse hits Joey will be my wingman. He was a friend before he was my land lord. I’ll give him $20 towards the lock and the window panel in the morning, when I tell him about my break in.
It’s nice to be in out of the cold after being locked out and unheard.
