So early this morning, in a semi-drunken haze as we wandered out of the 7/11, me and Y get held up at gunpoint. (Y still maintains that the gun wasn’t real, and while I do have a latent death wish, I didn’t really want to find out. Although I had a feeling that even if they did shoot us, they wouldn’t have been shooting to kill. Which means that we would’ve had to go to the trauma center, and would’ve had to be subjected to “the finger in the hole.” But this is wander far afield.)

They got my phone, my beloved camera, and $25. Unfortunately, they got Y’s wallet, and his watch.

And while it sucks, and a small, stupid part of me is incensed, wishing that I should’ve just said fuck-it-all and tried to take the dude down, bullet in the head or no, it is just stuff. (I suppose I can say this because I didn’t get my wallet stolen, and I don’t have to deal with calling every single dummy bank corporation in Delaware and tell them that my cards were stolen. Fuck. What a pain in the ass. I feel bad for Y.)

Whatever.

I find it ironic, though, that me and A had just been debating the merits of an urban environment, and how I really dig it, and, no, this incident hasn’t really changed how I feel. This shit is bound to happen. At least I didn’t get shot, I suppose.

It also does illustrate the false sense of security you get from living in a recently gentrified area. (Another example is R’s story of living in Echo Park/Silver Lake and having a dude on crack bash through her front door. Yes, there are artist galleries, eclectic clothing stores, quirky coffee shops. Yes, despite their extreme violation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Rampart Division cops did clean up the neighborhood by killing a lot of drug dealers and, ahem, suspected drug dealers. But, well, as I’ve been maintaining all along, security is an illusion at best. People, in the end, are animals.) But thems is the breaks. It’s not like you can’t get killed in an armed robbery of your house in the suburbs.

Oh well. Whatever.

It is interesting though. Maybe the waning effects of alcohol were making me portentious at the time, but, you know, when it’s not your time, it’s not your time. (Hence, the greater part of my fear was getting shot and surviving. For some foolish reason, I wasn’t really worried about the Big Sleep.)

Oh, and by the way, when you’re not a perp (or, ah, an alleged perp), the officers of the Chicago Police Department are pretty nice guys.