Deeper & Deeper

I stayed with my soon to be ex-girlfriend that night and woke to the feeling of complete despair. What the hell was I to do now? My problems hadn’t disappeared and I wondered if bonding out was the best idea. In jail at least I had a roof over my head and free meals. My girlfriend was lactose intolerant, allergic to wheat products, and a vegetarian. She had blown more than one high of mine with her non-Texan fare and I couldn’t stay there for long with her parents around.

I had spoken with my mother that morning and she conveyed to me that there was little she could do to immediately assist me. I was told to sit tight and give her a few days to work something out in the way of providing me with a place to stay. Didn’t she understand what being homeless entailed? Hadn’t I learned yet to listen to her?

Cash still padded my pockets and I settled on finding another cheap motel to set up shop in. My mind always raced in those years and I was rarely content with sitting and waiting for something to happen. Patience remains new to me even now.

Boulder, for those of you unfamiliar with its demographic, was blanketed with wealth and a youthful, trusting, and almost inviting community — neohippie wannabe Rastafarian republicans. Crazy, I know. And if you didn’t follow that…picture kids pulling up at school in Audi’s, BMW’s, and Benz’s, only to emerge from their 50 thousand dollar daddy sponsored interiors with dreadlocks and snow-dirtied jeans. Boulder was one big oxymoron.

A crime spree can have many influences to its initiation I imagine. Almost all of them somehow point back to money though. Addictions are never cheap, bills need to be paid, and some perpetrators are just fucking greedy. I don’t know where I fit into all of that, but I started my own spree and was packing my hotel room full with the spoils of my idiocy. I had never burglarized a home before and none of the homes I entered in this spree were forced-entry cases.

This was my modus operandi: Park in the driveway, knock on the door, smile innocently for the eventual peep-hole viewing, and should someone answer, ask for a random girl by name with a claim of having arranged to take her to school. “Oh, so Vanessa doesn’t live here? Wow. Well, do you know of a girl, say, about this tall, with brown hair and blue eyes that might live on this street? I was almost sure this was it. No bother! Thanks and sorry.” Looking in the mirror now, ten years later, it’s hard to tag myself as either an unsavory or threatening looking person. I worked that to my advantage and never raised any suspicions.

If the door wasn’t answered, I’d wait for a comfortable amount of time, maybe knock twice or a third time, and then simply check the door to see if it was locked. Nine times out of ten the front doors were unlocked as if waiting for me, and this resulted in easy, quick, and numerous burglaries. It was all so easy! I’d have enough loot to get my own apartment and furnish the damn thing without any help from my mother. That was precisely the plan, though it happened organically. I just started and it worked.

Two particular burglaries stood out. The first involved a home in which I let myself in and actually opened the garage door of the home and parked my car inside of it. There were plenty of goodies inside and though I was doing my best to only steal cash, jewelry, and items that were easy to get rid of and untraceable, there were some pretty fine accessories there that might have spruced up my eventual apartment and loading them in broad daylight into the trunk of my car was not wise.

I worked on the bottom floor before I headed upstairs to see what my hosts had to offer. The last room I chose to enter was the master bedroom. Upon opening the door I was greeted by a large dog. Who left a dog at home with free range of their bedroom while they were at work all day? Someone with some valuable shit in their bedroom, that’s who! The dog was a bit of an issue though. His tail wagged, but a sneer accompanied it. I tried to go all Caesar Milan on the confused pup and, just when I thought he was going to back down and let me enter the room, he lunged for the crack in the door. I instinctively slammed the door and an angry squeal resulted as the gaping maw of the dog was forced back into the bedroom. I felt terrible. One thing I am not is animal abuser.

The second instance in my spree which stands out occurred when I entered a neighborhood scoping for my next mark. As I drove down the street I passed a woman with a twin-stroller and its precious cargo. A mile or so further down the road I selected a house and pulled confidently into its driveway. I knocked once, twice, and when no one answered I let myself in. Didn’t anyone lock their fucking doors?

As I stepped around the door, closing it behind me, I noticed on the console table in the foyer a silver-framed picture. It was the woman I had passed in the street and she was holding her twins, staring me down with a knowing smile. I believe I might have blacked out, but know I left the house empty handed without looking back. Looking back can sometimes scare the hell out of you.

Tagged as: Autobiography, blog, crime, writing