Taser Laser

I’m not normally one to complain about other people’s loud music. I like my music loud too, and some tunes are simply meant to be played at ear-splitting volumes: Ozzy, Jane’s, Metallica, … Chris Isaac.

I do, however, hold a certain angry, intense contempt in my heart for static: and on that note, a stereo went off the other night at 2am.

At the time I was sleeping in a tent on my parent’s property, in the garden area above the gnarled slab which once held their house before it burned down in the Tea Fire. The next-door neighbor’s outdoor speakers started blaring at about 800 decibels, spewing forth a brain-splitting mess of static, country and jazz. It was a noise that made me want to pull my hair out.

I waited two minutes, thinking it was so loud how could the people in the house ignore it? Finally my eyes began to bleed. It was still on, and the stations began to waver, as if someone were fiddling with a shortwave radio, adjusting it so it was incredibly wrong.

I walked the short distance up the shared driveway toward the neighbor’s driveway, and noticed the house sitter’s Jeep. Good, so someone was home.

I rang the doorbell, and two little dropkick dogs started barking inside. Okay, progress. I rang the bell every 20 seconds to be polite, for about two minutes. Nothing happened, but I did notice a light go on upstairs. Finally I couldn’t take the noise anymore, the outdoor speakers were blaring, like the foreboding moments in a horror movie when things get possessed and you know someone’s about to get decapitated.

I rang the doorbell incessantly—DINGDINGADINGADINGA—still nobody answered the door.

Consumed by the knowledge there was someone inside not answering the door and wanting to pull my face off as the noise continued to fry my brain, I pounded on the door with both fists. No answer.

I went back down, got my flashlight, and walked back up, through the gardener’s gate, up the front patio steps, and into the unlocked kitchen side door. I was in the house.

“HELLO?” I bellowed. “I am in your house. I am downstairs in your kitchen … I am going to turn off your fucking stereo.”

On the wall across the great room (or whatever you’d call it) was a flatscreen command center console for controlling the whole house. The little Jujube sized buttons read: kitchen, garage, music, … Barbie’s. (I’ll let you wonder about that last.)

I pushed music, found the radio, and for some reason changing the station turned the godamn noise off. I went back down to my tent. Ten minutes later Montecito was lit up by the sound of two cop cars doing 100 miles an hour across the early morning streets. The sirens, the screeches, the revving engines, until finally they were idling on my driveway, the radios squawking unintelligibly.

I knew they were there for me, so I grabbed my flashlight—a tall, trigger-handled shop light powered by a cordless drill battery—and walked out to the driveway with my arms held wide and waggling the light.

“Gentlemen,” I said, letting them know where I was.

“It’s the sheriffs!” the designated talker informed me. The one in charge of the flashlight immediately lit me up.

“No shit,” I said. “You’ve got two cars, a dog, and three cops, and you just woke up the rest of the neighborhood. It’s fairly obvious you are here to represent the law.”

I continued to walk toward them, up the slope of the driveway, two car lengths worth, and they were about ten feet beyond the last car. My arms were held wide the whole time, and I stopped just at the hood of the foremost car.

“Sir, you need to put your light down.”

They put their cop light right in my eyes.

“You put your light down,” I said, pointing mine right back at them. “You’re on my driveway, and I have done no wrong.”

“Sir. Remove the light. We received a call about an intruder.”

“Yeah. I’m who you’re looking for. Seriously, get your fucking light out of my face. Put it on my chest. What do you think, I’ve got projectiles coming out my face? The neighbor’s godamn stereo came on. I made an effort to contact the housesitter, and after no response, I went into the house to shut the fucking thing off.”

“Sir, I need to inform you that you have a gun trained on you.”

I looked down to see two wavering laser lights directed at my solar plexus.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve got a flashlight. Get your fucking gun off me. Fuck you.”

“Sir, it’s a taser, not a gun.”

“Oh, so you’re going to electrocute me with 50,000 megawatts of electricity, liquefy my muscles and watch me do a header into the pavement as I fall over backwards? Get them off or fucking shoot me. Come on. Do it.”

“Sir, sit down.”

“Fuck you. You sit down.”

I pushed them to the limit, and finally kneeled, setting the light down, and put my hands laced over my head.

“Get it over with. Shoot me or search me.”

After they had me leaning against the cop car, their flashlight still on me but out of my godamn face, their tasers reholstered, they asked me:

“So you said you broke in to this man’s house, then left when you heard the silent alarm?”

“Did you hear what you just said? YOU heard the silent alarm. Not me. And I didn’t break in, the door was unlocked.”

“Sir, in the future, you need to call us. We can cite them for a noise ordinance or something like that.”

“Yeah, you guys are doing a great job. I’ll put you on my Favorite’s list.”

They finally let me go after calling my name in.

I walked back down to the tent and sat on a bench until I started freezing to calm myself down. This is the second time cops have responded to my presence on my own driveway and treated me like a common criminal. My mom the next day said I could have been shot, either from somebody in the house or by the cops themselves. When I tell this story, most people love it—fuck the cops, and all that—but a few people think I was really stupid to enter the house. I don’t deny that. The neighbors are definitely packing, it’s just not guns that they’re packing, if you know what I mean.