Once upon a time, last night at about midnight, I woke to hear a pounding on my door. It went knock knock. Then it went pound pound. Then the handle turned and someone tried to come in. So after laying in bed for five minutes waiting for whoever it was to go away, I decided to get up and check it out. Through my peephole I saw a skinny, pale girl crying. My first thought, the good guy that I am, was that this girl might have been attacked or raped or something and might need help. I opened the door.

Through vacant eyes she told me she thought this was her apartment. I told her no, this is my apartment. I was fairly certain about this since all my stuff is in it, and I was sleeping there. She wasn’t convinced. After an uncomfortable pause during which she tried to find words, she asked if this was the apartment that I had been assigned. I think she confused apartments with parking spaces. After I told her that I guess I was “assigned” this apartment (meaning I came here an signed a lease for this apartment), there was another silence. At this point I began to become aware that this girl was holding herself uncomfortably, and the thought occurred to me that she was probably on drugs, and something harder than weed. She had been knocking and looking scared and crying because her dealer wasn’t opening the door to give her her next fix. She was coming down.

Last week after the Avett Brothers show I shared an elevator ride with a couple who I’m pretty sure were going to my floor for drugs. The girl in the elevator had the same look – sunken eyes, thin, green tinted skin. They asked me if I was going to Cole’s (which I took as Kohl’s, and subsequently wondered why I’d be going to Kohl’s at 12:30am and why these people would pick that store to ask me about). After I looked at them with a puzzled expression, they said “Oh, do you live here?” That was the first time I started to wonder if I had a drug dealer around the corner.

Anyway, last night, after several questions that seemed aimed at getting me to admit I was a dealer, the tweaker girl apologized for bothering me and wandered off. I laid in bed wide awake, my heart pounding. When the handle on the door turns and someone tries to come in when the door’s locked, the door still moves. The way everything in the apartment is so cheaply made, it’s not hard for me to imagine that if someone really shoved to get in, they could bust through. And if I’m going to have coke heads and tweakers stopping by in a rage as they come down, that’s not that hard to imagine happening. I’ve stationed golf clubs around the apartment to use to bust some heads if someone comes in, but I doubt my flabby golf club swings will do much to stop a raging meth head.

Just as I was drifting back to sleep, I heard the doorknob turn and someone try to shoulder her way into my apartment again. Then it was quiet. If this happens again, I’m asking to be released from my lease so I can go live somewhere that actually cares about the safety of its tenants.

Real quick, Arizona. Really? I agree that something needs to be done about illegal immigrants, especially down there (I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, it’s not pretty). But giving cops the license to harass anyone who doesn’t look like they just came back from the local KKK meeting is not the way to do it. Cops are terrible people. The last thing these power tripping megalomaniacs needs is license to discriminate against anyone they want to without any cause other than “suspicious behavior.”