I’ve had one of those generic lousy mornings, complete with the shitty night’s sleep, the late to work action, the forgotten lunch on the kitchen counter and the misplaced cash. So, exhausted, tired and lost amidst wires, ink, chaos and a vague, general malaise, I broke my usual dietary rules and ate a doughnut. Glazed. Two of them, actually. Shh, don’t tell.

I gave up about 90% of the sugar from my diet about five months ago. I stopped putting it in my coffee in the morning. No more candy, except for the occasional piece of dark chocolate. No ice cream, cookies, nothing. Over time, I’ve allowed the occasional exceptions, but for the most part, I’ve been really good about abstaining. It helps that since I’ve cut so much sugar out, my tolerance has dramatically dropped. A few bites of chocolate has me OD’d, sweating, dizzy and feeling I like just did time in a wind tunnel filled with airplane glue. Those days as a child, when I would devour ten to twelve candy bars for a post Halloween breakfast seem like a distant and hazy mirage. I am now a sugar wimp. Call me Mr. Goodbar’s bitch.

So now I’m sitting in my Cubicle of Doom, desperately fighting the effects of two oversized glazed doughnuts, wondering what the hell I could have been thinking to do this to myself. I’m standing square at the crossroads between blowing chunks all over my monitor and passing out, face-down on the keyboard. My brain is contemplating hanging itself from my spinal cord with a suicide note taped to the medulla oblongata. My eyes are fighting a cage match against each other to see who can hold the monitor in focus the longest. For every word my left hand picks out on the keyboard, my right hand’s on the backspace acting like Godzilla in the streets of Tokyo, breathing fire and laying waste to whole sentences of gibberish and half-formed, semi-drooling thoughts. It’s kind of sad to see.

However pathetic my current situation may be, it can’t hold a candle to last night’s experiment with Kava Kava.

Some time ago, when quitting cigarettes and hitting that frenzied state of withdrawal where you want to rip your skin off, staple your eyeballs backwards and dance the tarantella till you die or someone says it’s okay for you to smoke, I’d tried using Kava Kava to quell or at least lessen the suffering. I picked up a bottle at a health food store and popped something like four or five of the capsules. It helped, I think. Or if it didn’t, I was at the very least too fucking high to notice the difference.

Last night, on a whim, I popped three capsules and sat down to yet another Zatoichi film (someday, somehow, I will have watched them all, dammit) to see if anything would happen.

Very shortly after, I found myself high as fucking hell, head cocked at three o’ clock, with the beginnings of a decent drool as little leprechauns goose-stepped back and forth in my stomach. I had the schizoid desire to jump up and do massive manic jumping-jacks while simultaneously taking a nap. While it was not entirely unpleasant, it was more than a little unnerving and in my advanced age and much more pasteurized lifestyle, I’ll probably refrain from taking it again.

After much toiling, bleeding and quiet, nervous talks with the cracks in the ceiling, I have finally vacated that black hole from Hell that I’ve had the unfortunate karma to call home for the past year and a half.

On Saturday, tired, hung-over and bleary after passing out fully clothed and with shoes on after getting a shade more than slightly pasted at a bar, I dragged my aged ass out of bed and started shuffling boxes down the street. It was absolutely fucking horrible, but worth it just to be rid of the place.

By Sunday, I was able to wrap things up and lock the doors for the very last time by around noon. Turning that key for the final time, I should have at least hired a mariachi band and some confetti throwers to mark the occasion but whatever. It’s over and done with. Some other Caucasian twenty-something who makes too much money and is willing to live in a pit will move in and the cycle will continue. Such is the power of New York real estate gentrification.

I for one am slowly and surely becoming fully fucking sick of the New York renting game. For years now, I’ve opted to live in the ghetto in exchange for square-footage and proximity to things that are “cool”. I spent one year in Queens, in a quiet little residential neighborhood where nothing ever happened, far away from anything that mattered and that experience taught me one thing–that I moved to NYC to be near and to do things that I consider to be “cool”. I want to walk out of my door and within minutes be frolicking in various states of lucidity amongst the things that I find “neato”, “keen” and “boss”. Possibly along with things that are “peachy” as well.

This desire has seen me live in some fucked up situations, this last being particularly trying upon my withered and trodden-upon soul. Two robberies and one mugging with a healthy slice of beat-down is just not worth it to me. Fuck cheaping it out, the next time I move, I’m hiring some guys to do the work for me and I’m going to relocate someplace nice so when I’m mugged, stabbed and left to die, slowly bleeding out onto the pavement as my neighbors dispassionately watch, I can go to the great beyond with some lovely Brooklyn scenery about my body and the knowledge that I leave behind a decent apartment.

My neighborhood is incapable of shutting up. I live on the 3rd floor of an apartment building that while I have the fortune of quiet neighbors, is located on a street that is constantly visited by heavy traffic, booming car stereos, loud drunks and screaming ghetto drama. Ah, the motherfucking ‘hood.

In my last apartment, I lived above a person of some stature in a religious cult that I think is unique to New York, called the Black Zionists. African American men who claim to be the true Jews, chosen by God (you Ashkenazi and Sephardics are full-on fakers, don’t lie now). They were nice enough, I mean, they hated me and my white ass, but they were polite and while they didn’t respond to my hellos, good mornings or the occasional nod in the hallway, they left me to my heathen life, which is enough for me. In some ways I liked the uniqueness that I could claim due to my odd neighbors. Nothing like coming home on a Saturday morning to interrupt a prayer meeting in your stairwell or a conversation along the lines of “After we’ve taken over and crushed all the white people…” I’d squeeze by some huge robed guy wearing a scarf over his face, trying not to trip on the huge staffs covered in duct tape they’d carry around and zip my hungover, sinning devil self up the stairs to my Apartment of Doom. It was a nice little balance, me the White Devil, high all the time, leaving a stench of sin in the hallways with my passing juxtaposed against the holiest of underdogs, the Black Jews. Together, we did our parts in keeping it real in Brooklyn. My only complaint was the damn chanting.

Every weekend my days and nights would be spent with headphones, securely clamped over my ears blasting something, anything to drown out my neighbors. Drums, chanting of nonsense Hebrew, screaming, yelling, stomping over and over in an endless loop on the tape deck from Hell. My favorite was “talent night”, when everyone, young and old would entertain each other with a cappela performances from such greats as Mariah Carey, Led Zeppelin, Usher and Pink Floyd at the tops of their lungs. After two or three days of this God-vaudeville, the headphones would come off and I could expect relative peace for the rest of the week.

Now, living in my new arrangements, I am adjusting to the 24-7 noise pollution variety. I get it from both ends now. The window next to where I sit typing, looks out onto Washington Ave. and it’s non-stop drama. There’s a bar across the street with a gaggle of smokers out front who by virtue of the liberating effects of alcohol, find it necessary to shout every stupid thing that pops into the grey slurpee that’s their brains. Somewhere close by, is an all-night Caribbean dance fest, which in truth, is most likely some old dude with a boombox and a couple of Coronas, but it’s loud enough to be one. Soon there will be the inevitable pseudo fight, where the whole family, from grandfather to toddler will crowd the sidewalk screaming to the whole block everything you’d ever want to know about their drama and who is whom’s babydaddy. I give thanks daily that it’s not me. Since every good pseudo fight deserves a backbeat just as every superhero deserves his own anthem, you never have to look far on my street for the obligatory double parked car, doors wide and stereo blasting with bass powerful enough to loosen fillings and sterilize small animals. Add on top of that the traffic and the busy fire station around the corner, the occasional gunshot/firecracker and a hodgepodge of random screaming and yelling and you’ve got the average evening on Washington Ave. Seven fucking days a week.

My bedroom is at the opposite end of the apartment, far from the street and all the previously detailed noise. However, a nice, quiet little fortress of solitude it is not. The one window in the bedroom looks out into a cul de sac that acts as a natural amplifier for all the apartments in my and the surrounding buildings. With this wonder of acoustical science, I get such classic hits as the lady that screeches gospel hymns in french at the crack of dawn. The person who chants fervently, usually starting around two or three in the morning. Then there’s my neighbor upstairs who is in the habit of what sounds like furniture rearrangement in in the middle of the night. It’s a never ending party.

Still, it’s nothing. I once lived in Williamsburg, in a fourth floor loft on Broadway, with my bedroom window about fifteen feet away from the elevated JMZ line. My eardrums, my bed and everything else rumbled and shook every five to fifteen minutes during the day, blessedly slowing down to every half hour to hour in the evening. On top of this, I had the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway next to me. I learned to sleep like the dead.

Sometimes I think to myself, will it ever stop? Will I find peace in Brooklyn at least once before I die? Then, as if in answer, a car alarm begins it’s blaring and I know…Never, motherfucker. You’re in the ‘hood and I ain’t ya babydaddy.

Last night, some asshole tried to mug me and ended up beating the shit out of me instead. I was walking down the street that I live on in Prospect Heights around eleven at night. Halfway down the block, I noticed this big black guy was walking towards me. I moved to the side, towards a metal fence to give him room to pass and it was a big mistake because he zeroed in and cornered me against the fence and whispered “Gimme your wallet”. Had I chosen the other side of the sidewalk to give way to, I would have had a chance to run into the street, but I’d boxed myself.

It all happened so suddenly and quietly that what was happening didn’t register. Instead of the little voice in my head telling me, “Dave, you’re getting mugged, give up your wallet before you get killed”, all I understood was that someone was fucking with me and I needed to get out of being stuck up against the fence. I tried to move out of the way, but the guy grabbed me by my shirt and proceeded to pound the shit out of me. I knew I was being punched in the face and around the head, but I didn’t feel any pain at all. I can’t remember if I hit him back. I’m inclined to think I didn’t because my knuckles seem unmarked. I do know that I did a lot of struggling and yelling.

Somehow I ended up on the ground with a couple of feet between me and the guy, enough for me to get my footing and tear off down the street. As I got up, someone in the building next to me turned on a light and yelled out the window and the mugger moved off in the opposite direction from me. It’s not like I stopped to watch him go, I was too busy running for my life, but I think he just walked off, probably into an apartment building nearby. There’s a lot of thug motherfuckers that live on my street, spending their days smoking blunts, playing dominoes and acting like badasses. I’m pretty sure he was from that crowd which basically means I’m fucked. I got away with my wallet and everything else except my glasses, which were likely sent flying with the first punch.

I made it inside and checked myself out. There was a good amount of blood coming out of me, most of it from my mouth and hands. I had two fat lips with the top lip split in two places, a fat bump on my forehead and a shitload of cuts and scrapes all over with the worst on my hands and my right knee. The thumbnail on my right hand had been torn off. My shirt was torn up. I was a fucking mess.

I called 911, but the cops don’t give a shit. So, after many icepacks and hydrogen peroxide baths, I tried, unsuccessfully to sleep. As I lay there, trying not to bleed on the sheets, I couldn’t get my mind off that guy. I ran through all the possible scenarios and as much as I would have wanted otherwise, I realize that I was in way over my head and that I’m lucky to be alive or not in the hospital. It’s not a good feeling. I’ve practiced Aikido for about ten years and before that, Karate. None of that meant shit. All of it went completely out the window because my guard was down. Once it was down, there was no chance of getting it back. Even so, I should have just handed over my wallet. I can’t explain why I didn’t other than it all was too fast. If he’d had a knife or a gun, I have no doubt whatsoever that I would be dead or at the very least, severely injured. It’s not a good feeling.

I’ve lived in this neighborhood for about a year and three months. During that time, I have been the victim of three crimes, one, last night, being violent and almost getting me killed. My head is aching and there’s a big part of me that’s keenly interested in getting my ass on the next train back to Vermont. That’s not likely to happen though. I feel guilty about it, but I hate the people that live there. I just do. I’ve been robbed, beaten, threatened, called a “Cracker” one too many fucking times. Walking down my street, it feels often like I have a fat red and white target painted on my back what with the way people look at me. I don’t like the anger that I have and I realize that a part of it is irrational, but I also realize that a large part of it is grounded in reality. I’m polite. I keep to myself and yet all I get is abuse in one form or another from a bunch of angry racist fuckheads who, en masse, find it perfectly acceptable to take their aggressions, in whatever form it may be, out on the nearest unassuming white male. I don’t know what to do with it. It doesn’t feel good, but I never did anything to deserve this bullshit. It’s a very shameful feeling, but it’s still hate. I wish I didn’t feel it, I wish I could compartmentalize and rationalize it better, but I also wish my forehead wasn’t throbbing and I wasn’t required to eat through a straw.

For the second time in a year, I have come home to find that someone broke into my apartment. The window in my bedroom was completely busted out and broken glass was all over the floor. This time, however it looks like the thieves were scared off. While the window was broken, it was still locked and it seems nothing has been taken. There was a moment last night when I came home for about fifteen minutes and when, on opening the door, I thlought I heard a noise. But as loud as my neighbors can be and as paranoid as I am, I didn’t think anything of it. I never went into my bedroom, so it’s possible I’d scared them off or at it had at least already happened. I didn’t notice the window until this morning.

So, that makes it the sixth time in the past 2 years (two occuring while I lived here) that my apartment has been robbed. Who knew I’d be so popular? I’ve called the police, who can do nothing and the landlord isn’t returning calls. My building’s super tells me I likely won’t see anything fixed for a few days, as it’s a holiday weekend, so I’m essentially trapped indoors till this is resolved. I have a huge gaping hole in my bedroom. This is Brooklyn, I’m not going anywhere.