what bothers me

this has bothered me all afternoon. after church this morning I stopped at a grocery where I knew I could buy a sunday new york times. I'd stepped in and picked up a copy and was in the process of joining the line to pay for it when something happening just a few yards to the left of me caught my attention.

a cashier had apparently caught a young boy of about 10 or 12 shoplifting, or failing at shoplifting, and caught up with him outside and walked him in a few moments behind me. she wasn't berating him badly or being abusive. she was the only one talking loud enough of the 2 of them for me to hear and I caught her saying, "I know you're heading for the register, I'm heading with you to the register," and "do you have enough money to pay for that? so you are going to pay for it?" I couldn't see what the "it" was, but from the way she held it in her hand I figure it was a small can of soda or maybe a candy bar.

I left before the drama played itself out--she was calling for someone to come over to the register as I paid and stepped back out--and there wasn't a reason I needed to see the kid humiliated. as a person who has done his share of theft, including shoplifting, I'm not anyone to have proferred advice in the situation. except perhaps to tell the kid you don't wear a black hoodie with the hood up if you're a tween planning a snatch & grab--you might as well wear a sign around your neck saying, "gonna do something, here."

here's what bothers me. the area around there is a mix of housing projects and typical suburban houses. I was in bloomington, mn, which is 1 of those odd quickly-building suburbs in the hub that was farmland in recent memory--the church where I am finishing my internship was a seed congregation only 30-some years ago made up primarily of commuters from minneapolis. the place is filling in more quickly than a community ought to and so everyone, middle and lower class and a few upper middle class, live cheek by jowl. so the kid could have been shoplifting for 1 of 2 reasons: he was a stereotypical middle class white kid (and he was white) looking for thrills or he was making a grab at something he couldn't afford (I never heard the outcome to whether he had the money to pay for "it").

what bothers me is that my reaction changes depending on which kid he is. if he's able to afford it, I say good on the cashier: he's taking part in a traditional attempt of kids to test their boundaries and he's not getting away with it and the humiliation of being caught and marched back inside and made to pay might be enough to keep him on the straight and narrow later. who knows, had this happened with ken lay decades ago enron might have had a different ending.

but if he's not able to afford it my reaction's different. I've lifted because of inability to pay for the food I wanted to eat--admittedly, with greater finesse--and I ask myself, if I'd known the kid couldn't pay, would I step forward and offer to pay for him? the answer is yes, and that is what bothers me. is it right that my response depends on the kid's situation? shouldn't theft be theft, no matter the circumstances? if I'd been caught, there would not have been anyone to step forward to pay for me, and I'd have been lucky to only have been humiliated. is it different because he's a kid? am I more lenient because I'm not a kid?

this is a hopelessly complicated reaction to an event that took only a few moments time and to which I don't know much more than the middle. but I think it's in entertaining these complications and rounding back on ourselves to try to examine them more closely that we participate in humanity, having a relationship even with cashiers and kids we never meet.

my short thieving life

"Darling is asleep at the foot of the wall. Sleep, Darling, stealer of nothing, stealer of books, of bell ropes, of horses' manes and tails, of bikes, of fancy dogs. Darling, tricky Darling..."

--from Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet

I often stole library books, and while I sometimes did it the old-fashioned way, this is the way I generally did it. now, you must keep in mind this was 3 decades ago and longer, when there was less communication between systems or even between libraries in the same system, when no one had computerized cards or barcodes.

it was almost disparingly simple. back then you could go to your library and get a card by submitting a bill with your name and address, and most libraries waived the bill and would accept any envelope with a canceled stamp and your name and address. I would mail myself an envelope, white-out my original name or just some letters of it and the street address, and then retype a new name and street address. I would then present this to the library, usually pretending to have an accent because it made it all the more interesting and because people back then were more likely to help a new citizen and to chalk up any discrepencies to his unfamiliarity with the country, and then check out any number of books I wanted, and simply never return them. I made certain as well as I could that there wasn't anyone with the name I'd submitted at that address because I didn't want to give him the bill.

my excuse, so far as I needed one, was that this was the government I was defrauding--and I realized that's what it was, and misusing the mails too--and as the government then was headed by republicans and specifically the bastard ronald reagan, this was to the good so far as I was concerned. I was all about taking advantage of the system back then, going so far as to attach return magazine and corporate postcards to city phone books and mailing them back, the whole industrial complex being one construct in my mind. or affixing stamps sideways to envelopes which would stop the automated system so someone would need to reach in and do it by hand (or so I'd been told, I don't honestly know if it was that much of a bother or if the machines had already been programmed to compensate for this).

I think often it's this sense of passive-aggressive revolt that attracts me to books like basbanes' a gentle madness and raynor's the blue suit or the novels about book scouts like reverte's club dumas or the cliff janeway mysteries by dunning. I knew even as I was doing it that these books were worth nothing monetarily--they were library copies with all the wear and tear and defacement such books are heir to--but they were worth something to me, and one of the things I told myself, and I'm certain I was at least partly right about this, was that my stealing them gave them some use since they would otherwise have languished on shelves for decades before being culled from the system for the crime of not having been checked out. I am reinforced in that belief any time I go to a library sale where there are thousands of bad books and maybe a dozen that I'm interested in, all of them marked by a large red "withdrawn" on the textblock.

so it wasn't for financial gain, although I guess in a sense it was since stealing books freed me from having to buy them and I could spend my money on other things (since I am like erasmus in that regard). I'm sure there's a hierarchy of thieves and on that grid I'm sure book thieves rank perilously low. but there was an element of excitment to it even if I was certain of not being caught--the sense of striking some kind of blow against a huge system, the delicious and nearly sexual thrill of breaking a commandment and the law, the swoon of fooling people into thinking I was someone I was not and their eagerness sometimes to help me. one librarian was so helpful that as I was checking out it took all I could do not to say "you know I'm not bringing these back, don't you?"

my short thieving life 3

lapel buttons were among the easiest things to cadge. generally they were kept on cardboard displays by the register in stores but it was simple to palm one while looking at the display and then leisurely slip it on your jacket while wandering around the store. that must be why they were so cheap but there was a certain elan I felt wearing one I'd picked up.

my short thieving life 2

one of my favorite places to read was the vista room at sojourner truth library on the suny new paltz campus. there are huge windows there that look out on the shawangunks to the south and catch the sunset, and big cushy chairs where you could put your feet up on the windowsills and feel the heat of the day through your soles. in a stunning example of shitting where I eat, I decided to steal books from there.

it wasn't really an intent for any particular books, it was more a case of whether I could do it. there was a study room on the second floor where about 20 chairs with desks attached had been stored, and I decided to settle in there about an hour before closing time. that was pretty easy; once I was settled in I actually took a nap and woke up just before they turned out the main overhead lights. I gave myself another 20 minutes to be certain everyone was out and then crawled carefully out of the stacks of chairs with my bag.

I'd attended classes and lived in town for nearly a decade by then and I knew that library intimately. the library was built on three floors, 2 of them below ground, connected by a central staircase with wide landings; the 2nd floor was a good place to start since it was nonfiction. I'd make my way down to the 3rd floor, fiction, and then back up the stairs to the main area.

I wandered pretty freely and it was an odd sensation, seeing all those books by the ghostly light of the moon. I hadn't thought to bring a flashlight, so I was limited in my choices to books I could see by moonlight. the stacks were terribly familiar to me but in the dark they were less rows of books and more like walls of bricks.

I'd collected maybe 5 books before the lights suddenly came on.

there'd been no "click" I'd heard, no sound of footsteps from the staircase. I dropped to the floor like I'd been shot, expecting at any moment to hear some armed guard shouting, "freeze!" in my rational mind I knew there was no armed guard--new paltz couldn't have afforded one, and what would have been the point?--but had ratiionality been my strong suit I probably wouldn't have been there in the 1st place. I cursed myself suddenly for not opting to dress in black clothes and having gone there instead in cut-off jeans and sneakers with no socks and a white tee shirt. I might as well have worn blaze orange, I thought.

there was no threatening "stay there!", no menacing click of a revolver. in fact, there was no new sound at all since the lights had come on and I began to wonder if they were on a timer for some reason, maybe to discourage situations like mine. I began to creep slowly back to my hiding place with my bag when I heard voices in the stairwell. they were speaking something asian and as I jumped up and grabbed my bag and got out of sight into the storage room just before they reached the 2nd floor landing, I realized I'd heard the arrival of the cleaning crew.

I dove back under the chair stacks to reevaluate my situation. I had no idea how long they would be there but I was pretty certain I was safe in the storage room--who cleans storage rooms? that proved to be right and I ended up laying on the floor in comparatively full view of the crew--composed of a man and 2 women, all of them middleaged and probably vietnamese--and watching them go about vacuuming the carpets and washing the landing. they spent at least an hour on that floor--I didn't have a watch and couldn't see a clock but I did end up napping for a little bit while one woman sloshed a mop about 10 feet from my nose--before heading down the stairs for the fiction section.

I decided it was time to cut my losses--which weren't really losses at all since I had some books I hadn't had before--and not press my luck any further and head out. I waited until I could hear the fading echo of their voices before leaving the storage room, which was only a couple yards from the landing, and heading up the stairs. on my way I glanced over the bannister and saw the kerchiefed head of one of the women mopping the landing below me. had she glanced up she would have seen me against the railing or between the gaps of the steps.

but she didn't and I crept up the stone steps very, very quietly, to the main floor. I knew there was a rudimentary alarm system that covered the length of the exit from the main library but I didn't know if it was turned off at night. I opted not to chance it and slithered over the checkout counter. I grabbed another couple books from the other side of the counter, not caring what they were, just feeding my sudden chagrin at not having had time to get to fiction, and then dropped first my bag and then myself in the area between the white column of the alarm and the wall. it was snug but I fit. I shimmied through and I was past the alarm.

there was only one more thing to do, which was to leave. I'd figured on going out through the main doors of the library on the first floor, but the cleaning crew had turned on the lights there too. there were 2 sets of glass doors to get through that way and I had no idea if there were any other members of the crew outside smoking or cleaning the front walk or if the armed guard I feared was posted there. there was a 2nd floor exit down another set of steps and under the main entrance where there was only a single door. but for all I knew that had an alarm.

I chanced it. the door was locked but had a pushbar that unlocked it from the inside. I pressed that, expecting to hear a siren at any moment, and shoved the door open and myself outside, where I knew I would be a sitting duck for anyone out there. that exit was in a tunnel under the main floor hallway with cement walls on both sides until the walls gave way to sweeping lawn. I headed not for the lawn but for another set of steps, figuring anyone out there would be more likely nearer the lawn. but there was no one anywhere and I never heard the expected siren and I ran like a fool hugging my swag like a lover all the way into town.

I've only read 2 of the books I took that night but I still have the others.

my short thieving life 1

I suspect every postmodern outlaw considers himself some variation on jean genet (with the exception of patti smith whose reprobate-of-choice is arthur rimbaud) and I was certainly no exception. having read our lady of the flowers and a book of his letters, I set out in the mid-80s to remake myself as a thief.

I was going to say I was a very bad thief because I never made any money at it, but in retrospect I must have been a pretty good one--better even than genet--because I was never caught. in some twisted way I can claim my thievery was sort of benign since I never stole anything I couldn't use--food, primarily, sometimes clothes. but mostly I stole books.

when I was living in my car I picked up on the ways to shoplift, especially from large stores, pretty easily and quickly. the first time I did it, though, I wasn't homeless yet, just drunk, and I was in the market in new paltz around 2 in the morning after a night of wandering and drinking aimlessly. I was with shelley, I think, or it may have been denise. it was a woman, I'm certain of that. I wanted some ice cream and had just enough money to pay for it. but I also wanted something else, a slim jim or a pack of peanut butter crackers, and I wasn't exactly hungry for it, just wanted it. I slid it up the sleeve of my jacket and went to the register and paid for the ice cream and went out to the car.

hence was born in me a realization that it was easy to steal something if you were paying for something else, a sort of slight of hand. here is where I don't think I was very good at it because what I stole was almost invariably less expensive than what I chose to pay for. but no one ever confronted me.

when I was on the road my usual target was convenience stores and larger groceries where I'd wander the aisles, picking up and setting down things, then choose a jar of peanut butter (this was my staple on the road, no food is better for it--it's nutritious, delicious, doesn't need refrigeration or any packaging other than the jar it comes in, and travels well) and then at some point would slip a package of crackers or a loaf of bread or a packet of pitas under my jacket or my shirt and walk calmly and with a smiling face to the register, pay for my jar, flirt a little with the cashier, and walk out.

it's now a point of pride for me, many years on, that sometimes I have the opportunity to do these things again but now I have the means to pay for what I want, and so I do. it was a part of that whole genet-think I had that allowed me to do this in the past. but now I will even draw attention to myself as someone who is waiting to pay for an item, ringing the bell on a counter after waiting 30 seconds rather than simply walking through the doors, that distinguishes me now from then.