M. Night Shyamalan's - A Knock, Knock Joke

Knock. Knock.

Two knocks at my door. One right after the other. They came in a pair which isn't odd. Today was my birthday in another lifetime. But no time to celebrate now. I had a mystery to solve. Someone was knocking at my door, and I was determined to know who.

"Who's there?"

I said as heartily as I could muster to detract from my suspicion. The door creaked open. This was taking too long. One leg draped in a crimson red dress sexily slid through the small opening. I could tell whoever it was likes to make an entrance. The rest of her body quickly followed her leg as most attached bodies do. She was tall. But not too tall. Just tall enough for her height. I couldn't help but stare at her with my eyes which I kept open for a suspiciously long time without blinking. She had to be the one that knocked on the door. Another case closed. She moved toward me at an intriguing pace. Not too fast, but just fast enough for me to think this thought. I could tell she was thinking the same thing. She sat down in a chair in front of me. I leaned back, stoically resting my hand on my chin to hide my enthusiasm. I love opportunities to appear mysterious. Time to play the waiting game.

I won.

"Do you have a light?"

"We all have a little light inside us. Some brighter than others."

I read that on a mug somewhere. I knew it was a lie.

"I meant for a smoke."

She pulled out a cigarette. That's when I put it together. She wanted a lighter.

"Of course. My apologies. You want a lighter."

Nothing gets past me.

"Nothing gets past you."

Don't I know it. Her eyes met mine and we looked at each other.

"So you're a detective?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"I'm a curious girl."

I could tell she was telling the truth.

"I am a detective. The name's Don DiMaggio. "

"The legendary, Don DiMaggio? They say you've solved every case that's come across your desk."

"Who's saying that?"

"People."

"I guess that's another case closed."

"Impressive. You passed the test. My name's Tracy."

"I know. That's what you just said."

"Someone is trying to kill me."

"It's not me."

"If I thought it was you, would I be here asking for your help?"

"It's hard to say. We just met."

Which wasn't true. We had met once before when we didn't know each other. It was a movie set. I was undercover on a drug bust for a casting studio run by the cartel. It was an audition for Irish Spring scented fabric softener. She was an actress reading lies. She was good. Too good. She knew how to dominate the room. But I would never cast her. It's hard to trust someone that can convince you your sheets are soft when you know the truth. I never slept again without a gun under my pillow.

"I like your office. It looks like the perfect place to passionately have sex with someone you just met."

"I guess I should fire my decorator. It's supposed to look like an office."

"Maybe I misread you, detective. I assumed we'd bonded over enjoying lives that are a little more adventurous."

"What makes you think that?"

"The holes worn in your leather jacket. The motorcycle helmet resting on the mantle place. The excitement in your eyes when I walked in, and the fact that you haven't taken them off my body. Am I supposed to believe you’re just an upstanding pillar of society, or are your secrets as dirty as mine? My eyes are up here, detective."

I looked up at her eyes. She was right. She was right about a lot of things. Maybe there was a time I hungered for the spotlight of danger. Every man has his limits. I spent too many long lonely nights hopped up on hops in underground beer-pong dens, gulping my self destruction, and staring down God’s mockery at the bottom of every cup. No matter how hard I tried to fight it, I'd always be flying solo.

"How do you know someone is trying to murder you?"

"After I performed last night, I found this note in my dressing room at the theater."

She reached down in between her breast, and began searching around. Her other hand reached into her purse, and pulled out a piece of paper. I read it out loud. I read everything out loud.

"I'm going to kill you tomorrow.'

At the bottom was a picture of two stick figures. There was one that had scribbled long hair, and a bloody hatchet sticking out of the head, which was supposed to be Tracy. The resemblance was uncanny. The other figure has a bald head, and beady eyes, but I didn't recognize him.

"This could be a bogus threat. Maybe someone's just trying to scare you."

"I guess you could always wait until I’m dead to find out."

She was smart. You could tell she'd been around the block a few times. Women tend to get lost easily.

"So you'll take the case?"

I wanted to answer with something sarcastic, but I could tell she had been through enough already.

"I'll do what I can."

"How can I ever repay you?"

"With money."

She giggled. It wasn't a joke. I actually wanted her to pay me with cash.

"Maybe there's something else I can do for you?"

I've done this dance a million times, and it never goes well. There's just no easy way to kindly tell someone you're super gay without coming out to their face. I hate you, Dad.

"Maybe some other time."

She energetically leaned in over the desk, and delivered a warm kiss on my cheek. My eye started spazzing out of control. It was over. I was still gay. I guess you were wrong, Dad.

"Thank you, Detective. I feel so much safer with my life in your hands."

"Just doing my job."

"Do you think you'll be able to solve it in time?"

"I one hundred percent guarantee I will figure out who is going to murder you. "

I reached into my desk, and pulled out my pistol. I aimed it at Tracy, and shot her. Now I knew for certain, without a doubt in my mind, I was the murderer.

Case closed.

The Mugging

If you’re a fan of the movie Fight Club, you know you can never really know who you are unless you've been in a fight. I'm a non-violent person. I'm very intellectual and logical with how I handle disagreements, so things around me have never gotten physical, which means I’ve never had the soul-searching privilege of throwing down with some fisticuffs. This has left sort of an open gap in my life that I'm not necessarily looking to fill, but I do have serious aspirations of trying to fight dangerous animals. Once I took my friend Emma night-hiking (which I’ve been told is not safe) and was explaining to her how I had been so frustrated that week because I had been trying to get a coyote to fight me, but none of them would do it. I'm going to add that we didn't even really know each other that long at this point. One night down the road, we were hanging out, and she told this story back to me. I said,

"Wow, when you put it that way, I sound like a fucking crazy person."

And that's when it hit me. No one has wanted to fight me, because I'm the crazy person. What seems very logical to me, is in fact, a very detached, very delusional perception of reality. That was my answer. And that was proven true one night when I finally had my first experience being mugged. Well, “attempted mugging.”

It was a night in early October of 2010, and I was on my way to my friend Negin's birthday party. I was walking with my friend Aaron who I had just met a few months before. We were still very much in the blissful honeymoon phase of our friendship. Now, something you should know about Aaron and I: we’re talkers. The two of us cannot tell a story under 800 words. We are very into the details and love, love, LOVE being specific about things. For example, my answer to the question, "Are you tired?" is often a diatribe about what the actual effects and symptoms of what exhaustion even means. Are you talking about my brain? My body? Does my head feel tired? I mean it does, but it's not slowing down my functioning. And if that's the case, can you even call that being tired? It's annoying.

Anyway, we are walking in this super safe, very chill part of West Hollywood just wasting time so we don't show up too early. We start walking down this side street, and I'm going on, and on about some nonsense, and I realize Aaron's not next to me anymore. So I turn around, and I see Aaron in the middle of these four guys that all have hoodies up. (very stereotypical mugging uniforms) They're all standing around him, and they're are saying,

“Give me everything in your pockets!”

This is approximately where reality splits for me.  Aaron seems to be very present, and extremely aware of the fact that we are being mugged. The only thing my brain can seem to muster is:

"Come on! This can't be happening. This is hilarious!"

I mean they’re dressed as muggers. This can't be a real thing. So I'm watching this scene unfold. They keep saying to Aaron,

"Give me everything in your pockets!"

And Aaron is saying "Ok. Ok." And he starts reaching into his pockets. He's put together, but he definitely looks a little scared, exactly as he should be. For me, none of this registers. His reaction, the hoodies, the mugging, none of it. I still think this is an extremely elaborate joke. Some people just have too much time on their hands. The guys make their way over to me and they say the same thing.

"Hey, give me everything in your pockets!"

And I look at him almost confused by what he's asking me and I say,

"No. No, I'm not going to do that." Very plainly as if he was asking me,

'Would you like me to freshen up your coffee?"

"No, I'm good. I'm good with the coffee I have. Thank you."

So he tells me again "Give me everything in your pockets."

I politely decline, then I very casually escort myself through their bodies, grab Aaron by the arm, and we start walking down the sidewalk. Then the main mugging gentleman holds up his hand inside his hoodie pocket to show he has some sort of gun, or something, I don't know, I didn't ask. He says,

"Man, I will light you up! Give me everything in your pockets."

Light me up?! I assume that’s a threat, but I’m honestly not popular enough to know the new street lingo. I start to become a little more conscious of the scenario, so I do a little internal check in. (This is not an exaggeration. This is the actual thought  process I went through in this moment while someone was threatening to light me up.) What do I actually have in my pockets? Well I've got my wallet. I don't want to lose that. I'd have to replace my license, and call and cancel my credit cards. I've got my phone which I also really like. In fact, it's my first smart phone, and I am loving the fact that I can get my emails literally anywhere. I don't want to lose that! Which then leads me to the very logical conclusion that giving him everything in my pockets would be horribly inconvenient, and I'm not getting anything out of this. All in all this sounds like a bad deal. (You can tell I really thought this situation through very thoroughly.) So again, I very graciously decline his offer, and continue walking with Aaron. Now these guys are fucking confused at this point. You can tell because they keep stopping, and giving each other looks like,

"What the fuck do we do now? This guy is completely unaware of the fact that we are mugging him."

Which isn't entirely true. I just think I didn't WANT to be mugged. At this point the only thing I wanted to do was to keep walking, and get us out of here, because this is starting to get awkward for everybody. Finally, these guys get pissed. We are almost at the corner of the street when that main guy grabs me by the shoulder, turns me around, and he says,

"Hey man, I'm serious! You better give me everything in your pockets!"

And that just makes me SNAP! You don't just touch people. That's rude. I flip around, and I look him dead in the eye, and I say,

"No, I'm serious. I'm not going to give you anything. Ok? OK?!"

He just kind of stands there in a little bit of shock, and says,

"Ok..."

To which I fire back with a very stern,

"Good."

That was the end of it. All of a sudden this white car pulls up, and these guys all hop in and then take off. Aaron and I keep walking for a little bit. We continue on down to the next intersection not saying anything. Aaron finally breaks the silence, and says,

"What the hell was that?!"

"...I have no idea."

This conversation sucks me out of delusional sociopath mode, and I step back into reality. Now we're back on track. We've got our wits about us. We decide we should call the police. Good thing I didn't give them my phone. The police show up. Apparently these guys have been robbing people all night and the police have already been in pursuit. They start asking us questions. Now remember, Aaron and I are the worst people to interrogate because we're both talkers. We got interrogated five times by five different cops, and each time that we were jumped through these hoops, I couldn't stop laughing in my head. I could see how intensely aggravated each of these cops were getting with us, but we just couldn’t help ourselves. We’re not helpful.  All the interviews went like this:

"So you said they got into a car?"

"Yes."

"What color was it?"

"White."

“What kind of car was it?”

"Well, you know what's funny? I'm not really good with cars. It's a really weird thing for me. I mean I get that most people can identify cars, but for whatever reason it doesn't really seem to stick in my memory which is bizarre because I could talk to you forever about quantum physics, but cars just don't seem to -"

"Ok. Ok."

So now he asks Aaron, "What kind of car was it?"

"Well, it kind of looked like this Toyota I had in college. That doesn't mean that I'm saying it's a Toyota, but they do have a similar cube-like structure to them. It's definitely some sort of four-door sedan, but it's really hard to say because they all start getting so similar depending on what year it was made."

You could just see this guy cursing in his brain as we're talking. So then they turn to Aaron, and again, this happened FIVE times with five very patient officers. They say,

"What did they take?"

"Well, they took my phone, my wallet, and uh....and a pack of gum. Ummm it was Orbitz. I think it was the blue kind. There were like two pieces left. I think..."

The officer would very politely say "Ok..."

Then they would turn to me and say,

"So what did they take from you?"

"Ummm, nothing."

“Did they threaten you?”

"Yes, they did."

"So what happened?"

"Well, they said give me everything in your pockets, and I said… ‘No.’"

"You know you shouldn't do that, right? Just give them what they're asking for."

"Oh, I hear you. That's just not what I did."

"Well next time just give them everything. It's not worth losing your life over."

The officers continued to lecture me over about what I should have done. These were all good points. I totally agree. I hear what they're saying. I want to say in the future I'll do something different, but to be honest, I didn't know I was going to do it the first time. Anyway, the officers start freaking out because they hear over the radio that they got 'em. One of the officers comes over to us, and says,

"Hop in the car!"

They are going to rush us off, and we are going to identify them! So we say, “Fuck it!” We have a case to solve. We're crime fighter now! We jump into the back of this police car, and speed off to serve up some justice. I can sense from the cops that are driving us there that they immediately regret asking to take us. We're in the back seat just geeking out, having the time of our lives, asking them all sorts of questions, and making asinine statements like,

"Man, these seats are really uncomfortable. I'm glad I don't often get arrested."

They're made out of just solid plastic for those of you that have never been in a squad car. During our meandering debate about the comfort of escorting a criminal, we learn the seats are plastic, so that they can hose down the seats when people throw up, and/or shit themselves, which also leads us to the conclusion that these seats are now uncomfortable, and gross. We pull up to this gas station, which the police have now decked out to be this fortress with a horde of over nine police cars creating a massive perimeter around the station. Apparently, we were a part of the only crime being committed in LA, or this crime goes far deeper than we could have ever imagined. We see the white car in front of us. To me, it looks like any white car… because I don't know the difference. They come over to us, and say that they are going to separate us into two cars, so we can separately identify these guys that mugged/attempted mugged us. They grab Aaron, and put him in another car across from me. Then the cop asks,

"Are you ready?"

"Oh yeah! This is awesome!"

It immediately became not awesome. See, there is something I didn't mention earlier because I don't believe in racial profiling. Yes, the group of gentlemen that attempted to mug us were African-American. Not a fact that I believe is relevant until we arrived at this impasse. The police pull out this group of extremely nicely dressed, very confused, African-American kids who were clearly out on the town just trying to enjoy themselves. Now they are being blinded with police spotlights, being shoved into the car with handcuffs, and they all look like they are very unhappy. I start freaking out because now I am a part of racism. Aaron and I look over at each other, his eyes are just as huge as mine are, because we have just been cast as the two hipstery white guys pointing fingers at a bunch of black kids in a line up. The officer finally opens my door, and says,

"So, is it them?"

"No man, let them go. They're just a bunch of kids trying to have a good time."

"Are you sure? A lot of the times they just change clothes so they look different."

The only thing I really wanted to say was,

"No, they don't all look the same man. That's racist!"

Finally, after asking us a million times, they decide that maybe these in fact weren't the kids. The night is not over. We have one more thing to do in their official police procedure. We have to go back to the scene of the crime. That seems reasonable. We need to tell them what happened in the space where it all went down. I get that. But this is the weird thing about their "police procedure." They shake our hands, say they will be in touch, and then they drive away. They leave us in the exact spot where we had just gotten mugged. Now, I'm not in any way traumatized by this situation. But were I to be someone that were mugged, assaulted, or raped the last place I would want to be alone now four hours later in the evening, is right here where I just got mugged, assaulted, or raped. I'm just saying there's a flaw in the system.

So that was it. Aaron and I start the ten block walk back to our car at 2:30 in the morning, hoping to not get mugged again. We're walking and talking about the night. He was obviously bummed because he had lost his phone, his wallet, and his pack of gum. I kept telling him he did the right thing, that I was an idiot. Then he said,

"Yeah, but you still have all your stuff."

Which is true. I did. Did I do the right thing? I don't really know. Am I crazy? It's a possibility. I guess I'll never really know until I get into an actual fight.