“He said, ‘Do that again, I’ll shoot you,’ ” said Harsh Ajmani, the clerk’s son, repeating what he had heard from his mother and sister. The robber took about $580 and left, but evidently he wanted more.
via www.nytimes.com
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July 2010
07/22/2010
Mel, Arthur and Me
I'm watching "Driving Miss Josie", as I imagine the crashed Cadillac and oxygen tank of of Arthur Williams, the lifetime criminal who went out at 120 mph on a Maryland highway, accompanied by a track of a loved-to-be-hated movie star berating his calculating concubine.
Mel Gibson is a have-it-all white guy whose mega-tantrums keep us all wondering about the insidious nature of self-destruction. Gibson's artistic and physical gifts have reaped riches and renown, and he's getting torched on a pyre stoked by booze, hubris and poor mental health. The public likes to guess which factors may be driving him crazy, but our outrage may be a way to ward off some awful identification with the fallen demi-god. I'm glad I can't afford a Russian pop-singer mistress, and thank God, I'm not an angry anti-Semite with an overwhelming enthusiasm for regressive Roman Catholic dogma. I cried on the freeway today, but I've got it better than Mel.
Or Arthur! Wow! This guy brings Mel back into the bell curve. Who tears up I-95 on a robbing spree during their last days? Visiting Mom in Harlem, heading downtown to shoot up a Madison Avenue store, and skipping dialysis -- coming from a man who spent his last year with a loving partner, in a rare spell away from jail. Arthur poses more questions about freedom than Raskolnikov: did emphysema and dialysis seem like an extension of prison? Are snooty Madison Avenue menswear emporiums an icon of class rage so powerful that those guys who wear jumpsuits for most of their life are literally "triggered" into rage upon entering? Do crooks just thrive on mess and chaos? Arthur loved to rob -- he had more than 134 convictions -- and although he said he did so for drugs, it's evident that he robbed in order to dominate and steal, as well. "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" is a homily I've heard. But if you're fatally ill, allotted only a short time that is bordered by tubes and hospitals, the relationship between crime and punishment may be altered. The illnesses provided a guarantee that Arthur had no time to give. Maybe it seemed sensible, and worthwhile, to go for a last blast of adrenaline and misbehavior.
Is any of this stuff crazy? Destructive, ugly and well outside of the social contract that binds (most of) us to cooperative behavior, but insane? What threads do we untangle when we try to understand these guys, and is there anything to learn from their rotten behavior? Some combination: diabetes, emphysema, substance, mood, personality, and even ambition, created these opposing mega-disasters. I am chauffered, by both of these guys, at a frightening speed, in a car I'd like to leave, to an unattractive intersection. One of them is screaming obscenities at me, the other holding a gun and telling me not to look at him, or he'll shoot me, and I'd like to find the code that will send me home.
