freestyle parking

the next time i come home late and can't find a nearby parking spot, i think i'll just park in the middle of the street. tuesday night when i had that exact problem, and parked far enough away that i felt compelled to get a friend on the phone for the walk, so he could call 911 should anything untoward happen to me, there was a white sedan parked at the corner, right in the street. it's pulled near the curb, but there's no parking on that side of the street, so it leaves maybe two or three feet of room between it and the divider line. i sat out on the balcony for several hours that night, just waiting to see someone smash into it in the dark, after the bars closed. during those hours i watched as two different cop cars, no doubt coming from the robbery scene a block away at the chinese restaurant, pulled up behind it, shined their lights inside, walked around it, and drove away. i assumed a tow truck would be along shortly. now here it is, thursday evening, and yet another cop car is sitting behind it with his lights on. i think he just put a ticket on the windshield. i noticed when i came home today that the car has a flat tire, but that's no barrier to towing it. maybe it's just the universe poking at my sore spot, reminding me of south philly, where folks park anywhere they see a few feet of blacktop, courtesy and safety be damned. speaking of safety (and my psychological disfunctions), i am writing this outside, meaning the laptop has made only its third appearance on the balcony since the break-in. i've been paranoid about "inviting" my robbers to come back and get it, while i'm here... the first time i took it out, it was only briefly, around 4 am, after biker boy had been here, parked out front in his emergency vehicle, for several hours. he was gone by the time i brought it out, but his presence made me feel somehow safer (or at least braver). the second time, it was also super late (or early), and i was a little drunk. today is the first daylight appearance. yes, there's a cop sitting out front, but some of the shady lurky guys are also out on the corner. fingers crossed that i don't wake up to find it being carted out the window. i still have the "ringer" on the coffeetable, though i've gotten sloppy about hiding this one when i go to sleep. (still vigilant when i leave for more than an hour or so.) speaking of biker boy, just learned last night that he's being sent to new orleans, for what i assume is an indefinite time. yet another sign that it's time to find a new pseudo-obsession... and no, i am not so self-absorbed that my only frame of reference to katrina is that i'll be inconvenienced by the absence of some boy i barely know... i just absolutely cannot bring myself to write about it here. i know you're all doing what you can, and i applaud you and encourage you to continue, especially after the media finds something else to fixate on. remember after 9/11, when the "excitement" wore off, and people stopped donating blood and money? this is bigger. and worse. and will take longer to fix. believe that. and act on it.