No Man’s Land; or On Gender Profiling

BY DAVID H.

It’s taken years to discover that there is an entire subculture of people who were (and are) as obsessed with the show Unsolved Mysteries as I was (and am). Possibly due to my UFO sighting as a 5th grader, I always preferred the segments featuring the supernatural, but my love for the show might have also been out of a base fear of and morbid interest in unresolved murder stories. The violation of knowing that some grisly and sordid tale ends in nothing but questions scares the crap out of me. These tales still haunt me, but only now because of remembering the way it was so truly crippling as a young boy in Tennessee.

Tennessee seems like one of those places where anything can happen. Those who intend to do evil in Tennessee don’t pursue it with the sly cunning of city thugs, or the slickness of gangsters. Tennessee is no man’s land, where any random backwoods lunatic could randomly get trashed with a bottle of George Dickel whiskey, shoot you with a shotgun without rhyme or reason, drive home to his family and wonder the next day what he even did that night. All he remembers is playing darts in his shed, after that it’s a haze.

This concrete image paralyzed me anytime my dad asked me to take the garbage out the night before trash day (I sprinted to the end of my driveway with the trash can in tow during this dreadful chore). Going downstairs for a late-night drink of water was nearly impossible, considering the large window in our kitchen where I knew, at any moment, a ghastly face would appear…with a shotgun, of course. And George Dickel.

My dad once told me to go grab some firewood from under our back porch to keep the blaze in our fireplace going one fall night. I cautiously but swiftly maneuvered down the stairs towards the cords of logs we had stored. Just as I was grabbing my third log, something foreign darted out from behind the pile. Having been already expecting danger, I dropped my armful of wood. One of the logs hit my toe, but fighting for my life through the pain, I sprinted back up the stairs, stumbling and gasping, only to realize that the intruder was an opossum that clambered to the nearest tree. Heart still racing, but head hung low, I went back to collect the firewood off the ground.

I have always contended, however, that my fright was justified, seeing as how the opossum could have possibly bitten me, infecting me with rabies, at which time I would die a slow and unfortunate death, all due to my father’s insistence that I do chores after sunset.

This run-in with peril was tried for pole position in terms of personal fright stories years later, as a Junior in college. On this particular night, I had stayed out very late watching a movie with some friends of mine, very attractive girls who somehow didn’t mind that I was still at their apartment after 2am. When I decided I needed to go home to get some beer for us, they made me assure that I’d be back soon. My house was just half a mile away, so I told them it could be no longer than 5-10 minutes.

I hopped in my Jeep and I remember speeding on that quiet Tennessee road to get the six-pack that was cooling in my refrigerator at the apartment that I shared with a classmate. I should stop here to mention that this place was really trashy. It probably tells you everything you need to know when I say that we were paying a grand total of $250 a month for this apartment, which is cheap even by Tennessee standards…and that included water. Granted, the place was small, it was in a really bad part of town, and the kitchen door had a handle that was only locked from the outside if you turned it to the left. We had, however, found ways to accommodate these small inconveniences.; for instance, the kitchen door had a chain (so what if it was way too long? $250!), and we also figured that we had a 50% chance that someone attempting to break in would think the door was locked tight. Robbers need only turn it to the left, and the place was as secure as any.

We ended up shoving our kitchen table against the door for good measure.

Knowing my roommate was out of town for the weekend, I figured I wouldn’t wake him up showing up this late only for beer. As I pulled into the parking lot, however, I saw through the window that the light was on in the bedroom (the middle of our 3-room apartment). I certainly didn’t recall leaving that light on, so I figured he had come home early from his trip. I made my way hurriedly to the living room door, let myself in, and started to go towards the bedroom and through to the kitchen. “Todd?” I faintly asked the empty apartment.

It was as I had to push open the normally opened bedroom door that I began to think something was amiss. It was when I saw a figure dart past the doorway into the kitchen that I knew something was.

I’m not sure what possessed me to continue into the kitchen. I think back on it and know that today, I would turn right back around and let whoever it was just have their little time in there and leave before I tried going back. What possessed me to stay was probably the same thing that made me forget to grab, as a means of safety, the baseball bat that was propped up right next to my bed: utter stupidity. I walked right past my bat and into a dark kitchen where two unknown figures stood huddled at the door, turning the doorknob the wrong way in their efforts to escape my inadvertent bust up of their robbery. Realizing the door now would not open for them, they stood with their faces away from me.

I remember thinking about how glad I was that the table was right there, hiding my violently shaking knees from their view. Somehow, my torso and face seemed to convey a confidence, a strength, a righteous anger. Morphing from fear to fury, I bellowed out the first question that popped into my head.

“What are you doing?”

I waited. This question was in no way rhetorical — I wanted an answer. They didn’t seem to be willing to provide one, so I prompted them once more. With more insistence, I repeated the question.

“What are you doing?”
“Trying to get out,” they answered too rationally for my taste.

I paused, unsure where to go from here. I had actually gotten an answer, but it wasn’t a remorseful, “I don’t know…we’re just confused and hungry. The streets made us this way, honest.” It was just a blunt, practical answer. We were clearly at a stalemate.

They had backpacks on their shoulders, one of which was mine, loaded with things that I assumed were also mine. I decided to counter with a bargain. Still angry, I suggested, “Well, why don’t you put my stuff down first, and then I’ll let you out.”

Again, I was met with silence and had to repeat my question. This time, one of them asked me if I was serious. I assured them both that I was, and they finally turned around to begin setting things on my kitchen table. Now, I’ll be honest, I try not to engage in too much profiling of people, or make assumptions about people I don’t know, but this pair of crooks was certainly not what I was expecting. I was facing two women. One of them was a young Asian girl, probably 20 years old. The other was a Caucasian women who had to be pushing 60. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so I tried to hide my surprise, as though I routinely stopped bi-racial grandmother-granddaugher crook teams from stealing my stuff.

But as I began pulling things out of their bags, and as I saw the growing pile of CDs and DVDs I almost lost, the laptop with documents I needed, and the other odds and ends that seemed too strange to steal, another wave of anger began to flood me. What I unleashed was an unholy terror of a rant that I really had no clue I was even capable of piecing together on the fly like that. Words such as “responsibility,” “personal property,” “ownership,” “criminal activity,” and “entitlement to assurances” cascaded from my lips. After five minutes of intermittent unpacking and tirading, I realized most, if not all, of it was falling on deaf ears. I gave up and began concentrating on getting my possessions out of their oddly shaped bags as efficiently as possible.

As I took a handful of DVDs out of a bag, I unearthed what was making the backpack so bulky. The robbers had packed up my six-pack of beer.

I immediately stopped and looked at them disapprovingly; they looked down. I really was at a loss for words at this point, and had to examine the practicality of this situation: if you’re going to break into a home and steal, and then I assume make a run for it, do you really want six bottles of alcohol weighing you down? And besides, after all that running, they would be too fizzy to drink and would probably just spray all over you. It would be pretty amazing to be able to identify criminals based on which suspect was soaking in beer. I imagine that’s not a normal day for a detective, and I possibly had just ruined a first for someone out there.

Sarcastically, I asked them if they’d like one. They declined, out of concern for “being stopped for public intoxication.”

Refusing to point out the irony in that, I continued my task, even coming across a few of their personal belongings (among them, a small amount of marijuana) in the bag, which they helped in distinguishing with a clearly categorizing, ” ‘at’s mine!” After finding myself content with my recovery, I ushered them out of the kitchen door, taking a moment in turning the knob the right way so they saw how simple their escape could have been. I still felt slightly empty as they walked out, as though my anger hadn’t gotten through to them. Sensing it was too late, I foolishly opted again for sarcasm, asking if they’d prefer one of the wine coolers in my fridge. As though she had been regretting her rash decision earlier, the older woman spoke up and said yes, that that’d be fine. I shook my head and turned around to grab one, but as I turned back around, the younger girl was whispering to the elder, after which she changed her mind and began to walk off.

“Well, thanks for coming, guys,” I said with every last hint of facetiousness I could muster. In sing-song unison they responded, “You’re welcome.” I slammed my door and collapsed into the closest chair.

I called the police immediately, describing to a T the two perpetrators. How could I not after spending the last 15-20 minutes steeped in conversation with them? The 911 operator seemed impressed with my ability to offer such a fine, detailed description.

I called my friends, to explain that I would not be over for a while, seeing as I had to wait for the police to come with a report. Hanging on my every word, they were shocked by my tale of courage and offered to come over and keep me company. I said yes, that that’d be fine.

I called a strong friend of mine, who looked menacing with his bald head and goatee, in case these girl-criminals came back with less easily intimidated boyfriends who might have weapons. He said he was on the way.

I called my parents, just because the attention was becoming kind of fun.

And then, not 5 minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I was still alone, and thought wildly that the boyfriends had actually beaten everyone to the punch. I cracked the door and peered out. A policeman stood there, and relieved I opened it the rest of the way, at which point he told me they had the suspects already in the car and asked whether I minded going out to ID them. Thinking this unwise, as I didn’t want to make them any angrier with me, I asked if it’d be okay to just ID them through the window. I looked out and could see them sitting together talking in the back of the car. I turned to the cop and commented on how quickly he’d managed to apprehend the criminals. If I remember correctly, he commented on how precise the description had been. In the sense of pride that swept over me at that moment, I agreed to go outside to fill out the police report.

As I stepped into the still warm summer night, the policeman motioned for me to come closer to the car to fill out the paperwork. He was going to have me fill out the report on the hood of the car that the ladies were sitting in. No longer proud, but rather embarrassed and fearful of the future, I shuffled over to the car and tried not to look up. Illuminated by the headlights of the policecar, I scribbled furiously, hoping I could write quickly enough that they might not memorize my address, or my own physical description. But the pressure of curiosity mounted as I filled out numerous blanks. I vaguely recall the cop telling me they’d found the pot on the girls, and so they had several problems on top of this breaking-and-entering charge. I just kept wondering if they were looking at me.

Finally, I decided to hazard a quick glance up into the back of the car. Surely, they wouldn’t be looking at me. Surely.

Shit. Sure enough, there they were, glaring at me as they had obviously been doing for the last 3 minutes. I was as good as dead. My head shot right back down, cursing at myself under my breath for showing them my face again. I knew their one call from jail was going to be placed to some dangerous ex-boyfriend who would be out looking for revenge. I finished my paperwork and walked inside like a man taking his last stroll to the electric chair. “So this is where I die,” I mused.

After recounting my story numerous times to my horrified friends who began appearing, whether called or not, over the next hour, I finally went to bed, never falling asleep. I knew as soon as my light went off, a window would be shattered, the brick or fist followed by a 250-pound thug. After somehow surviving the night, I went to the realty company that Monday to get out of my lease. Citing the long chain in the kitchen and the broken doorknob, I began building my case for the danger that they, the realty company, had put me in. Not one to back down, the woman who was hearing my side of the story offered a few barbed attempts to shame me into remaining in the lease.

“Now, what I heard, what I was so surprised to hear, was that it was just a couple of ladies in your house.”

There was a pretty obvious insinuation being made, of course. In my head, I was asking her, “Oh, do women stab you any less painfully when they have a knife and are on speed?” or “Oh, ladies’ guns don’t shoot as hard?” I bit my tongue and just stared at her. I stared her down, and she quietly and dismissively reached for the form that let me out of my lease.

What I knew I couldn’t tell her was that it wasn’t the ladies who scared me. It was the prospect of, at the hands of their armed lovers, winding up on Unsolved Mysteries. She just didn’t strike me as a Robert Stack fan. I knew there was no way she’d understand.