"...My Life of Crime"

I wrote this story perhaps 20 years ago to perform on my radio program. I don't recall if I ever posted it here. It's a fairly short story.

If you like read when you have the time.

I should say that I had forgotten these events for the entirety of my adult life. It's memory as so much else was triggered by a dream.

"Once Upon a Time..."

I was breaking, and entering. Well not "breaking", but most certainly entering. Back in the old days getting into a house was as easy as opening a window,...which I did.

When I was a little boy I several times "entered" other peoples homes. As with all crime this was motivated by want. I wanted to know how other people lived. What were their worlds like. I never took anything on these adventures.

My search was inspired by more primal needs.

I was an Other, and I was searching for other "Others".

Mind you I could never have explained any of this to my folks or the cops. I just knew I had to know.

To the adventure.

I chose my homes almost randomly. Hey I was a ten year old kid not a for real cat burglar. The treasure I sought was intangible. The only vague precaution was making sure the houses were empty.

This was the early 1960's everyone had a job. ...imagine.

They being out the whole neighborhood was fair game.

Block after block of doll houses to explore.

I left the homes of friends alone. The houses of strangers were my object. The unfamiliar the mysterious. Places of different light touch, and smells. Every structure a new world discovered.

Oh the moral obliviousness of the very young or as J.M. Barrie put's it at the end of "Peter Pan".

"When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless."

Yep that was me alright.

You too so cut me some slack.

Oh dreams dreams, and fantasies.

To the Heart of the Matter.

Family albums. After a time my hunts focused on these. The photos told me in quick detail what I needed to know about who lived in whatever house I was "visiting". The who what, but sadly never the why of these lives I was searching through.

The albums I found were generally stored in the same place in house after house. The bedroom closet or close by.

So there I would sit on a stranger's bed studying their histories looking for my tribe.

Again I couldn't begin to explain to anyone why I was doing this. It was an instinctual exploration for un-namable things that I needed. That I was in desperate want of.

The pictures.

I was surprised at how similar they all were. Grandma auntie babies somebody in the Army the beach, and birthday parties.

These albums were all just like mine.

However on occasion there 'was' a surprise.

One time I unknowingly entered the house of a nudist family.

I started through their album, and ...!!!!!!

Good bleeping grief!

I literally at that point in my life had Never! I mean never seen the like! There they all was,...auntie mom dad, and all the kids Nekkid as hell!!

These folks was "Other", but not what I was looking for,...I think.

Close calls.

One time I'm on my way to a bedroom to peek through their family album when I hear the front door open.

I'm fucked.

I'm going to the Chair.

I'm going to Juvie Hall.

I'm going to be forced at gun point to eat my greens.

My heart is pounding through my Mighty Mouse t-shirt.

My lunch is coming out'a my nose, and I wanna wet myself.

Damn!

Some lady, and her kid just came home, and was headed for the kitchen with it's open window through which I just came.

This was rapidly turning into a nightmare version of "Mayberry RFD". One where Deputy Barney Fife in Klan robes kicks the living crap out of a Negro in the holding cell.

Hey I was ten, but I knew the real score.

Looking back my only hope was that the lady was a Liberal Sociology Professor who would understand my quest, and ask Deputy Fife not to kill me.

More likely she was married to a corrupt Teamster with a drinking, and violence problem.

My odds didn't look good.

My heart pounding, and ex-Pepsi running down my legs.

I quickly hid behind an old 1930's screen room divider.

They was all the rage once...Google them.

...they walked right past me.

"????!!!"

Oh the perceived safety of the home.

No one expects danger or ten year old boys hiding behind old furniture. They went to the kitchen, and I went to the front door, and ran for my life.

To this day that kid must be telling his grand kids about the time he, and their great grandma surprised a deranged burglar in their house. Of such are family legends born.

After this shattering event I laid low.

However being stupid though full of grace, and innocence. I went out again. A few times in fact. I think I "visited" 6 or 7 homes during my life of confused, but sincere explorations.

In all these visitations I never found my Others.

I didn't really know who or what I was looking for.

However I would have known them when I found them.

Don't know what I would have done if I had though.

Didn't think that far ahead.

...ask to be adopted?

These outings ended on an ethereal note.

This time it was in the Oort Cloud of my neighborhood.

You know that the part of your 'hood that borders the unknown regions. If you were a kid there alone you'd be lost.

This one was a very old frame house.

Perhaps a surviving farm house. Brooklyn was farms before the turn of the 20th century.

No kitchen window this time.

I entered through the back door which was unlocked. It was like stepping into an old print. The light was amber...dim. Peeling wall paper. Pictures on the wall of people dressed as folks did long ago.

Dust, years of it covering dark furniture. There was no one home. No one had been home maybe since before I was born. The house wasn't abandoned not in the 21st century sense.

It was owned...one could tell, but not lived in.

It was also cold in that place. I had a chilled tingled feeling standing in there. Much as I, and a friend from school had when we stumbled on an old grave yard in the Park.

When Fredrick Olmsted graded, and arraigned the Prospect Park he left certain historical sites intact. A Colonial graveyard being one of them. I knew nothing about it.

Most still don't, but we stumbled into it. Stumbled in, and got the same feeling I had in that old house, "...Leave". I'd say it was spirits. What some think are impressions left on physical objects by the dying. This could explain what are thought to be ghosts.

...maybe

Anyway the Spirits were saying "Don't Disturb".

I didn't. I left.

So ended my short life of Crime.

I never did find my family of Pacifist Beatniks. Who would adopt me, and teach me to compose haikus. However several years later....

'But that's another story for another time.

The End,...mostly