interruption - theft : - life intrudes

To Whom It May Concern;
or,
Dear Diary,

On Friday October 9th, at 10:30-ish pm, I was hurrying to catch the #1 uptown subway at 66th street, heading home after a rehearsal. The train approached as I arrived at the turnstiles - I quickly pulled my wallet out of my purse, swiped the metrocard, returned the metrocard to the wallet, looked for a friend I was supposed to meet on the train, didn't see her, and boarded the train. The things that were to fit in my purse - cell phone, wallet, and a book, refused to be neighbours quite properly, and from wrestling with them I remember that I had them all as I boarded the train.
Once on the train, however, the memory of my wallet fades. I presume I put it back in my purse. I read my book, texted on my cell when the train went above ground at 125th street, put the book in my backpack as we approached my stop, and exited at 215th street. I took my time on the platform in case my friend would exit a different car, but none of the approaching people appeared to be her. (I later learned that she had been greatly delayed by a phone-call.) In the meantime, I checked to make sure that I knew where my cell, wallet, and book were. The cell I found, and the book I remembered, but the wallet wasn't in my purse, so I checked my backpack, which has a myriad of compartments. I couldn't find it. I must've rooted through my backpack, purse, and violin case pouch at least five times before finally giving up, and heading to the station attendant (which meant descending two stories, and the ascending two stories on the other side of the tracks) to ask if anyone had turned in the wallet. He gave me a look of, "Really? You think someone would turn in a wallet around here?" He reluctantly also called the further-uptown station attendants for me - 225th street, 231st street, and 242nd street, but none had been the recipient of a turned-in wallet. I hadn't ruled out the possibility that I'd had the wallet on my lap and that it had fallen off my skirt when I left the train (though I thought it would be strange for me not to notice, and for not one person from the handful of people still on the train to say anything). So I followed the attendant's advice and took the next train to 242nd street in the Bronx, the train's last stop, to ask the cleaning crew if anything had turned up. A very nice elderly Indian gentleman of that crew took me under his wing, and took me to check with his the supervisor, and to also find out the number for lost-and-found since nothing had turned up, which was really a charitably optimistic action to take in the situation, and he simultaneously urged me to be very careful about the credit cards, empathizing that he'd had his wallet stolen recently. They put me on the last train going downtown (due to construction, it would've been shuttle-buses after that), leaving at 11:43pm. Once settled, I very thoroughly went through my backpack, purse, and violin case once more, and finally convinced myself fully that the wallet had definitively disappeared.
Luckily, the subway is above ground, and I could use my cell. I called home immediately, gave Mom the bad news, and asked her to call the Canadian Mastercard company. In the meantime, I called my bank, and learned that my debit card had already been charged: $125 at a barbecue restaurant. Mom checked in with a $45 Metrocard-vending-machine charge on the Mastercard. Lastly, after disembarking the train and running home to look up the number, I called my visa company, who also reported a $63 charge at a McDonald's. All of the companies were very helpful with putting a stop to the cards, and talking me through the next steps. Still, in the 10 minutes it took Mastercard to cancel the card, another $12 cab fare had been charged, and what with figuring out what I needed to do about my drivers license, various student IDs, metrocard, Long Island Railroad ten-trip ticket, and library card, and about notifying the credit bureaus in case of identity theft attempts, I finally got to bed at 3am.
The next morning, I had to leave to teach at 9am. My roommate and guest each lent me some cash, and someone let me into the subway (I planned to buy an unlimited metrocard as soon as I could visit my bank). (That help was all very welcome; by contrast, the curbside invitation from a random driver to give me a ride, when he saw me running from the subway to my school with my heavy stuff, was not welcome at all.) In my lunch break, I went to the bank to ask how I could make a withdrawal while waiting for my new bank card to arrive. Oddly enough, while there had been plenty of ways I could identify myself over the telephone to cancel my bank card, it was harder to now identify myself in person. The bank manager wanted a police report, and this was the first I'd heard that I needed it. Still, after he'd asked me the relevant identifying nfo about myself, he made a small withdrawal for me as a courtesy.
The police report turned into a bit of a saga. After I'd finished teaching and rehearsing, I called my precinct and asked them about possible locations of where I could file it. (In New York, it takes at least half an hour to get anywhere that requires a subway ride - with a car it would all be a matter of 5 minutes, but taxis bills add up, and with one's own car one would be looking for a parking spot for at least half an hour at both ends of every trip anyway.) I was so tired that I planned to go take care of the report the following day downtown, when I'd be near one of the precincts. However, when I entered the 59th street subway station at Columbus Circle to take the A train home, I saw several police officers moseying in and out of some doors within the station, and decided that if they were congregating at an office, and I could do it then and there, that would be very convenient.
The officer behind the desk listened to my story, then had me tell the story a couple more times upon calling a the appropriate precinct - seems that he or someone on the other line was suspicious that I would've thought to check my bag for my wallet when leaving the train. He was very kind to me but also took it all much more seriously than I had been expecting. I thought that since my cards had been used and stopped, there would firstly be no chance of recovering them, and secondly no chance of still using them; furthermore, since I had no idea who might've picked up my wallet if I'd dropped it, the possibility of catching the opportunists seemed very slim to me. However, the officer informed me that since my cards had incurred a high amount of fraudulent charges, I was wrapped up in a case of grand larceny, which is a felony. He had me call the credit card companies once more to get the exact dates, times, and locations of the charges, if possible, as well as the numbers of the cards themselves. (This meant calling Mom again too, since Mastercard wouldn't tell me this number over the phone.) I found out from Visa that another attempt had been made to use my card in the morning. Next, the officer told me I'd be taken via police car to the 145th street precinct, which would be the proper one to file the report. I was too tired to be appreciative of changing locations, but I was appreciative of being taken care of, and of the atmosphere of important calm in the face of adversity, which continued to prevail when several officers went out to deal with a sword-wielding nut on one of the trains.
My new officer, Officer Rieu, led me out of the subway precinct, across Broadway, and to a police car on the corner of Central Park. Instead of heading up in my direction the 145th street, he and his partner took me down to the Manhattan Robbery Squad, on E.12th street, where the Haitian Detective Dorvil took over. One of his colleagues offered me a bottle of water, which I declined; I never drink bottled water, for environmental concerns. I think that showing them my reuseable stainless steel water bottle may have inclined them to believe that I am vegetarian as I say I am, and that I would not have authorized use of my cards at a barbecue restaurant, or at a McDonald's. In any case, no-one seemed to doubt my story here. Detective Dorvil ordered Officer Rieu to stay to fill out the police report. Rieu grumbled, but later thanked me for getting him paid overtime. (He still had a more interesting job than his partner, who was stuck waiting in the cruiser, listening to a Yankees game on the radio for well over an hour.)
I told my story again, in as much detail as possible. Dorvil wanted to know about other people on the train. Had it been crowded? How was I sure I had had my wallet with me when I got on? Which subway car had I been in? I remembered two suspicious people from my ride: one, a man who had been staring at me for most of the trip (Dorvil dismissed him with, "Well, you're a beautiful woman!"), and then also the kid sitting on my left. I remembered this maybe-20-year-old, for when I'd boarded the train, he was in the process of sliding over three empty seats. People often do this in order to be closest to the door; however, there was already someone in the seat closest to the door, and he was sliding after people were already boarding the train (usually it happens as people are leaving), which made his action seem strange to me. He'd been respectful of me wanting to sit, though, and slid back to make space for me; I'd smiled "Thank you", and settled in the middle of the three empty seats. But he didn't slide all the way back - instead of sitting in only the seat two seats to the left of me, he also took half of the one next to me. I dismissed it then, since if there's space I too find it more comfortable to sit on the ridge between the seats than in the bucket that is the seat, but I remember it because it's rare that I've seen anyone else do it, and this kid did not fit the "alternative-lifestyle" stereotype. I also remember that my purse had been hanging on my left side (and my violin and backpack first on my lap, then in the seat on my right), so out of anyone on the train, this kid on my left would have had the best chance of accessing my purse. Dorvil asked me for a description, and would I recognize him on any security camera video tapes. I remembered that he was skinny and his general look, but specifics are difficult - Dorvil pressed me, "Race? - Black? Hispanic?"
Dorvil is black, Rieu is hispanic; I ventured "Black-hispanic", which is the best I could guess, and sensed their disappointment behind professionalism. I felt guilty, especially as a white person, to be the one identifying the situation so stereotypically. I wished that the racial description could be as un-charged as the description "black hair brown eyes" might be. In any case, Dorvil and Rieu took it as such, and continued questioning me, sticking to the matter at hand. I said I'd be able to identify someone who looked like him but that I hadn't had a good enough look to definitively exclaim "That's him!"
The office of the Robbery Squad dilapidated. None of the office chairs had padding left on the armrests, and the officers were taking the information down by hand. It was much more time-consuming to file our business than it had been with the more technologically-adept credit card companies. The policemen asked me to hand-write the contents of my lost wallet twice, and finally gave me a sheet of lined paper and to hand-write down my story and sign it. Clearly, detail was important, and you see how long this narrative already is. I maintained that it would be much faster (not to mention clearer) if I could type it - wasn't there some way I could do that? Dorvil let me use one of the aging computers on someone's desk. Of course he was right to trust me, but a motivated and skilled person would have had no trouble at all to hack something or just mess with the system.
As I was typing, he wanted to know - if they caught the perpetrators, would I prosecute? I hesitated. If the kid did it, and if he goes to jail for several months, what does that do? Maybe it gets him into worse things than stolen meals. Maybe it ruins his life. Maybe it means I have an enemy forever, who already knows my name, DOB, and Canadian address. As things stand, I've had something of a hassle, but it's not so bad, why make it worse? How do I know why he felt the need to steal? I answered, "I don't know - it's a big responsibility". Dorvil reminded me that the perpetrators are clearly pros and have probably done this many times, and that they put me through a big hassle. I remembered that they used my historically vegan credit cards to support the factory-farmed meat industry, and I gave him the yes answer he wanted me to come around to. Thinking it through, I'd like to see them sentenced to community service, which might do everyone some good.
When I'd finished typing my story, Dorvil showed me info he'd dug up in the meantime: printouts of locations of the fraudulent transactions of my cards. Suddenly everything made sense. Dinosaur Barbecue is on 131st street - and the location sparked my memory: the kid had gotten out at the earlier stop, 125th, which I remembered for it being one stop before the "City University of New York" stop. I exclaimed, "It was the kid!"
125th street is 15 minutes earlier than my stop, and so explains how he and his friends had eaten their big steaks and bought McDonald's food all before I'd even made it home that night. Presumably one of his female friends posed and signed as "Claudia", and probably they guessed my zip code when buying the metrocard.
It is good to have my memory intact again! I thanked Dorvil heartily for his help with it, and he promised to send me my required police report shortly within a few days.

Rieu and his partner taxied me home. They tell my I'm lucky we were in an old police cruiser, since the new ones have a wall between passengers and driver, which leaves virtually no leg room. I asked them for a funniest on-the-job story. They told of a drunkard they'd asked to leave the subway tunnel, who came back telling that his eye was missing. They didn't believe him until he showed them an empty socket - and realized that the little rubber ball Rieu had found and was bouncing about was the missing fake eye. Though the drunkard wiped it off with a kleenex and popped it back in, apparently he was not amused. I'm sure there are many volumes that could be written from a policeperson's diary. Currently, they are 32 000 understaffed.

Three hours after I'd stopped in, at 12:30am, the officers let me out at my building, and we all wished each other a good night. I hoped I hadn't taken their time from more important duties. And boy was I ready to go to sleep - but as much as it was a hassle, the heavy dose of reality that has drifted my way is in a strange way welcome for being exactly that.

On Subway Tunnels

Like channels of thought
that are inflexible, unchanging, and uni-directional,
they give me a headache.

Philosophy, or poetry - if I must choose I choose poetry.

Once upon a time ...

my love, on paper,

it existed once.


~

Subway Notes II: $11.50 and Counting. I'll be professional yet! April 28, 2009

To Whom It May Concern;
or,
Dear Diary,

It's been over three years since I last played in the subway and wrote about it here. That time, I had spontaneity, self-respect, and joy to share, or at least it appears thus in the rosy glow of the distancing past. Tonight, wilted skill, decrepitude, and eccentricity characterize my role as subway violinist (not too far from the truth, some might exclaim, but if they exclaim so I'll not include it here!). I play a hard-time-befallen needy has-been violinist, or, to put it more acutely in the past, a once-was, in Myriad Production's web-serial Intersection (Season 1, end of episode 12). My character "had it together" once upon a time, as the expression goes, but has been too strongly touched by the misfortunes of life to "make it".
I "got the gig" yesterday, through my last summer's subletter, an aspiring actor/writer who revels in an enormous vocabulary. It doesn't pay; but, being for a web series, "has the potential to be good promotion, and will be with nice people, mind you it's at 10pm downtown, to be after dark, and outdoors." What does a violinist of my sunken position wear? In a flurry of e-mails and phonecalls, we strike upon on mismatches: a scarf wrapped around my head, absurd knee-high socks, dishevelled hair, and, unlike the aspiring and successful Sound of Music's von Trapp kids, un-tailored drapery as a coat-substitute.
My moment of on-screen glory comes just after the lead roles' date falls apart - having bid him adieu, she enters the subway in evasion, then re-emerges from a different exit at my busking-place, and, in a gesture of externalizing her wish for good in the world despite things having gone awry, she places a kindly dollar in my supplicating violin case, and crosses the intersection.
I accordingly selected Kreisler's "Love's Sorrow" as repertoire, playing it many times throughout the shoot (along with whatever came to mind during soundless shots). From my playing, I even earned a little over $2 from those who didn't notice the camera at a distance - but perhaps it wasn't just the playing... Buskers, take note! A new, though immoral-if-planned, technique is at hand. Since each shot of the video-taping was repeated several times, the star returned to my case between filmings to retract her donation. Whereupon, incensed by her audacity, a good-natured biker passerby unscriptedly exhorted her to return it to me, and tossed in two dollars as my recompense, - ere we could convey the reality of our fiction. Of course I was humoured, especially having not intended to collect a paycheck tonight; still, I felt a twinge of chagrin at deceiving my uprighteous, charitable and pitying benefactors, who acted to help right the wronged. Fortunately (or, unfortunately, had I been a true busker) - my location in front of the 23rd street NRW station, at 11pm, was not really suitable for earning a living. Or maybe I just wasn't doing a great job of playing...
In any case, as is New York life, within two hours my state of being transformed, from fakely busking, to having worked (ok, volunteered) with several lovely and talented people, and cruising swiftly home - not in the insufferably "patient" late-night subway, but along the Hudson in a convertible Maserati, (one of only 90 with a Ferrari engine, as its enterprising owner imparts). You see, one of the cameramen/directors worked 'til several years ago as a professional banker ... and since he lives further uptown than I - if Westchester may be considered uptown -, dropping me off barely rerouted his way, and certainly was the ideal transit solution for me. Busking as a downtrodden character in an unkempt costume, as well as experiencing the high life in a convertible's whirlwind along the Hudson, are both more foreign to me than perhaps they should be - yet both were wafts of exciting and exotic adventure, blurring fiction with reality - one creating the other - through empathy and imagination and situation. Donning of characters and roles nearer to us than we think, while never forgetting our own - this is an artist's profession.
There is also something naturally magical about playing Kreisler for any appreciative person who cares to listen, whilst taking in sights and sounds, and enjoying excellent company - and then travelling under open skies on a warm summer's night with the wind in one's hair. And, wondering at the chain of events and interpersonal connections that precipated it all would be never-ending - academically, I expect to conclude with a platitude: "The unexpected is never expected, and that by definition!".
But, in an academic-paper-rhetorical-question-opening style of conclusion: Subway Performance #2, The Sequel - Flat Post-Opening-Night Syndrome? Nope, not at all. I think I'm just getting warmed up - please stay tuned!

Introduction

New York City, as we all know, is a funny place. Specifically, one's location of domicile is an ever-present conversation-piece, and New Yorkers know the ramifications of every answer to the question "Where do you live?" Classical musicians, on the lower end of New York's vast range of wealth, currently live as near to the hubs of the Upper West Side and Lower Manhattan as affordable: in Brooklyn, Queens, and Washington Heights/Inwood. Many of us live in shared apartments. And, inevitably, we spend a good deal of our normal days on the subway - if we could only practise our scales and arpeggios while commuting, being technically in shape would never be an issue!

For the past six years, I have been living this life. The unavoidable routine of the subway - faces with similar expressions at similar times of day with similar sorts of problems each day - gets broken every once in a while; the dipping-below-the-surface-of-the-reality-of-where-we-are-actually-going-in-the-end, sometimes becomes an inextricable part of that reality, for better or for worse.

This blog is dedicated to a few of those moments, that struck me momentous enough to write about at the time. Let's get playing!