Story time with Billy

I wonder if Billy will ever know that Nick forwards me his emails and then I proceed to post them on the internet? Ah, well...read on:

-----Original Message-----
From: William REDACTED
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 1:38 PM
To: REDACTED, Nicholas H.
Subject: Fwd: I showed you my ID

Mediocre story time. Had to share this with someone.

We're watching Joe's dog Lexi, and I just took her for a walk. And this
happened.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: William REDACTED
Date: Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 1:31 PM
Subject: I showed you my ID
To: "Elinor REDACTED"


Had an interesting exchange with a bonafide crazy Lady at the dog run.
I'm wondering if she's not the same person you met this morning. Blue
dress, brown hair, sunglasses, late-twenties to thirties, definitely a
Sex in the City wannabe. Two dogs, one a german shepherd the other a
kind of mottled black, gray, brown mutt-type dog.

She lurked around by the gate for a while and then finally called me
over to explain that she'd just become a member and didn't have a key.
Also, she'd forgotten her code. And anyway could I please just let her
in? Oh, she also showed an ID to demonstrate that she *lived in the
neighborhood.* (She knew the secret neighborhood handshake?)

I said sorry lady I'm just a dog sitter and they told me not to let
anyone in.

At this point some natural instinctive con artist instinct must have
kicked in, because she ran through an elaborate routine, a mix of veiled
threats and attempts at ingratiation. But she ran through the routine
too quickly.

"That's the same dog from last night. What's her name?" (Ok, I'm not
telling you the dogs name so you can pretend you've met before.) Hi
whatsyourname. I live in the neighborhood. I showed you my ID. Any
impulse I might have had toward charity was overridden by the sense that
she was obviously lying.

She must have quickly decided the good-cop routine wouldn't work,
because she rapidly switched gears, going so far as to flash a small
police badge in a little leather section of her wallet and to announce,
in the sternest possible tones, "Look, dude. I'm a cop's sister." Then:
crazy, crazy, crazy. "What's your address. I'll have you evicted."

It was unclear to me what I was going to be evicted from (my house?
the dog run? the Village? My entire Meatpacking District privileges
revoked?) but I knew I didn't want to mess with this well connected
cop-sister anymore. I also knew there was no way in hell I was letting
her into the dog run, or even venturing outside myself as long as she
was standing there, so I went back in, and when there were two gates
between me and her I felt a little safer and I resumed having a catch
with Lexie.

Five or ten minutes elapse peacefully. .

At some point I noticed, rather ominously in retrospect, that Lexi was
spending a lot of time looking off at the entrance and that the Lady and
her two pets must have not given up. She crossed the street at one point
and I thought: maybe we're safe. She was on her cell phone maybe?
Calling in political favors?

Finally the door opens up. I can here it but I dare not turn around and
look. I stand there in the middle of the run throwing the ball at the
wall while Lexi, who has totally given up at this point, stares behind
me, and I wait half expecting to get stabbed in the back with a steak
knife.

Finally a figure emerges in my peripheral vision. She's standing off to
the left of me, about twenty feet away, just barely within range of my
peripheral vision.

Taking a picture of me with her iPhone.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to have you evicted. I know you and I know that dog. You
don't even live here."

"What are you going to have me evicted from?"

"What's your address? I showed you my ID. You're just a dog walker,
right. You don't even live here. That's not even your dog. You're just a
fat guy. Look at your cankles. You should go for a run down by the
river. You're just a fat DOG WALKER."

This remark about my calves stung a bit. Also, I was a little annoyed
that she had managed to best me in my attempts to keep her out of the
dog run. But I think I kept my composure.

"Look, I'm just dog sitting," I said. "All I know is they told me not to
let anybody in here."

"I'm going to have you evicted. My sister started this organization
twelve years ago. And it's only for people in the neighborhood, and
you're not from the neighborhood. What's your address?" I showed you my
ID.

"You're kind of crazy, aren't you?" I said.

"You're right I'm crazy. What's your address? I'm going to have you
evicted."

Meanwhile, I'm trying to mobilize and stage a tactical retreat. But Lexi
is not cooperating. An excruciating, awkward interval ensues where Lexi
kind of half pees (I think mostly out of stress or
sympathy) in the middle of the run and I have to walk over and haul the
hose out and hose it down. Finally I manage to corall Lexi toward the
air-lock.

"You shouldn't call people fat," I said. "You'll give someone an eating
disorder."

"Good," she said. "You need one."

As I'm putting Lexi's collar on, she says and this is the line I've
found most haunting. "Pay it forward buddy."

Was she being ironic? Is this something people actually say or just
people people in Recovery with alcohol and drug issues? Did she know I
was going to be writing this email? Was she really citing that terrible
movie with Haley Joel Osmet? Was that ironic too? Too, too complex.

"Pay what forward?," I said. "My eating disorder?"

And then I left.

Anyway. I hope I did the right thing and behaved as a Gentleman at all
times. I have a natural sympathy for crazy people as you well know, and
I'm as interested in helping the less fortunate as the next person. But
it's not like she was sitting by the roadside with a wooden bowl her
only earthly possession and bleeding eyes. She wanted to use the dog
run.

It was helpful that her appeals to my Robin Hood instincts were always
tempered by an ingrained, reflexive elitism and status obsession. So I
think I'm safe on the moral front. But I might have bigger problems.

There's a very well connected Lady out there somewhere with a fake
police badge, a brother who's a cop, and a sister who's a seminal figure
in the East Village dog run scene, and she wants to have me evicted.