Please Mister, Don’t Draw Your Gun

Timothy Snyder and Navigating America's Carceral State - I Had a Bad Night!

“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Do not fall for it.”

—Timothy Snyder, writing on the next terrorist attack

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Snyder has written one of his trademark brainy pieces about steeling oneself against catastrophe. However, unlike most of his essays, which set me into an educated if fatalist fugue-state, today Tim has CHEERED ME UP.

© Joel Levine, 1975. Los Angeles, from another time of guns amok. Our friends’ homes got hit.

I’ll tell you why.

Yesterday, I was held up by a gun-brandishing guy with a badge who intended to “frisk” me. I will explain the bizarre details in a minute, but it’s the big picture I want to talk about.

And spoiler: I’m fine. It’s over.

I felt like shit about my “bad event” yesterday. The usual blaming myself, feeling like I have a target on my back. “Why didn’t I do X? How could I fail to do Y?”

But when I read Snyder's article about resisting totalitarian mind games, I realized I'd done some things right. Like standing down bullies—it works for individual acts of intimidation just as well as societal breakdown.

If you've ever been mugged, on the small or large scale (of course you have), I recommend Timothy Snyder.

But let’s get into it:

The Weird Incident

No, I didn’t have a police incident or a mugging. The asshole who threatened me was a phony “security guard” and his workmates. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. —A little “misunderstanding” with a lot of bullshit attached to it.

What happened was, around 10am, I walked to pick up a city share e-bike at a supposed motel parking lot. The motel is labelled on the City’s bike app as a place you can leave and pick up bicycles.

I’ve done the city-share-bike-thing a hundred times before. You go to a spot, you turn on the app and unlock an e-bike, ride it around, and park it at another official hub when you’re done.

No biggie.

Well, I've seen this same suburban hotel before on previous trips to New York. It actually WAS a functioning hotel back then. I’ve had friends who stayed there.

But something was weird this time. A couple people wandering in the parking lot looked like a thousand miles of bad road. Not just your usual “morning wake up bad,” but real bad. —Like the extras in the trap house scene in “Tangerine.” Well, none of my business, right?

I couldn’t find any bikes in the lot. Weird, the app said there was at least one here. I suppose I should have turned around then, but I’m a curious bitch.

I went to the reception desk, to ask where they keep the bikes. They treated me like an incoming bomb. They had an over-zealous security “guard” and a desk staff who looked ready to go ballistic. The manager looks like Ma Barker. As soon as the automatic front door opened, the guard grabbed his gun in its holster and his “baton wand” and jumped up to grab me.

Fuck that! I backed out of his immediate reach, behind one of the glass doors.

“Where are the bikes?”

Ma Barker started yelling. Her three underlings looked frozen in fear. The guard was unsure whether to get more aggressive — thank god he was scared too.

“THERE ARE NO BIKES. NO BIKES! THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN ANY BIKES.”

Okay, Jan!

I had my hands in the air, like you do when someone points a weapon at you. It was not easy to talk the guard or his posse down. I don’t why I was so insistent in the moment; afterward I was shook. Why were they so defensive and denying the bike program’s existence?

I walked away from the “hotel”—I’m fine. Mentally, wobbly. I had a few flashbacks to the last times anyone pulled a gun on me. That was a long time ago. Much more serious. But I won’t be gaslit about it.

What I Did After

The good thing I did after: I didn’t let it go.

I called the the City Share Bike program, and after reassuring them that I’m a supporter, not a crank, the director confided to me that this place isn’t a hotel anymore, it’s a halfway house for drug crime parolees. Under a lot of heavy supervision. And, not unreasonably, they’re able to use the bikes on their allotted time out.

“Yeah, that’s fine, that’s a city-needs thing. Duh! But this place, this place has a sign that says MOTEL, like a chain-brand hotel, on the highway!”

Do their neighbors know? Who else gets to find out the hard way?

There is no way anyone could check-in here, as a traveler, let alone a bicyclist. Who gets frisked with a gun when they’ve booked a double queen? This is bullshit.

I think the jailers are under the impression no rube like me is going to end up in their lot, but I’m sure I won’t be the last.

Anyway, things are going to change around here— stuff has been set in motion. There’s no hotel staff, these people are prison employees. They’re loaded for carceral bear. God knows what their “tenants” are going through. I just pulled one tiny thread. The owner is lying about what they’re running and how they’re doing it. This will not stand, as the Dude would say.

Another good thing I did:

I told my friends, my hosts. Everyone galvanized. Then I ordered an anti-trauma Hawaiian pizza and my best pal came over. I calmed, holding her hand and laying my head on her shoulder, while she talked traveling in her youth. She had an amazing adventure hitching a ride on a tomato truck in Senegal, back when borders were easier.

America these days is marked by mass casualty events, the carceral continuum, people ready to draw a gun over nothing. The deny-everything enforcers, the sadistic. It’s always been there. There’s no hiding. Bigger now.

My little incident was so petty, just a mindless tick in the warp. We’re unspooling! —As if the Fates have abandoned their posts. Remember? The three Fates of Greek legend, had a thread for every human being’s life, and only they knew when it would be cut. Short, long, thin and thick. And now, we’re all getting a whack. A big one. Damn it, I won’t accept the premise.

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More

• Timothy Snyder's book "On Tyranny"

• "Tangerine" film - my favorite of Sean Baker’s

• The Big Lebowski reference ("This will not stand")

• The Three Fates

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