The damage: my little dashboard drawerful of parking-meter change and the actual drawer it was kept in, the more professional of my briefcases (the black one not the orange one), and about 20 cds � the thief or thieves missed the beat-up cigar box in which I also keep them, which was on the floor behind the passenger seat, but they got all my new stuff and all of the greatest hits, the ones I like to keep within arm�s reach because I�m listening to them so often. They left my denim jacket and a few books and of course the cigar box � I should concentrate on being grateful about that � and the contents of the glove compartment, though they did remove my hospital ID badge from there and leave it on the passenger seat, the creepiness factor of which I am trying to do the opposite of concentrating on. They also reclined the passenger seat {1} and that makes me feel angry and violated because, what, it was necessary for the thievery corporation to relax in style while they evaluated my belongings? Were they sitting there making jokes, congratulating each other on what a good haul this was? But that can�t be, because I throw away the plastic cd cases and put the cds and their booklets into little vinyl sleeves that I neurotically make little labels for, after I�ve assimilated them into my system they have no resale value whatsoever. {2} Also my car was right in front of Steve�s house, so this went on maybe fifteen feet from the open bedroom window through which I was breathing night air, sleeping soundly on a stomach full of alcohol and Greek salad and the sense of accomplishment of having done what I could that night to make my bad situation better, the sense of having gotten on some kind of right car-and-driver track.

Most of the cds I can replace. Some of them I can even dupe from friends. I can go back to my pals at Honda of Seattle who last sold me a dashboard knob and buy a new change drawer so I don�t have to look at the gaping puncture wound in my dash and feel like I�m driving around in a white-trashmobile. {3} The briefcase is a slightly more complicated issue that bears examination on at least two levels. One is the practical one � I lost a lot of floppies, including two on which I�ve been storing files related to my applications for various jobs, the labored-over cover letters and the slick custom versions of resumes, and I�m not sure I have all of those files backed up and in any case I�ll have to scrounge around collecting those that are, so that sucks. Also, I had a file of personal papers that I�d meant to look something up in one day last week, and there�s some possibility that there may have been a bank statement in there or a credit card bill in one of them that would have my card number on it, and on one of the floppies there�s my application for the job Lucille got, for which I had to provide my Social Security number for the background checks. Having to worry about identity theft on top of everything else that dissatisfies about My Crap Life, midsummer 2003 would not, in my opinion, be a constituent element of the good life. In that regard the consensus of those I�ve asked is not to worry about it, probably the thieves just fumbled through my briefcase looking for something valuable, a wallet would have been ideal � instead it held the five floppies, some pens and a compact and maybe a lipstick or two, the file of personal papers, some books, a magazine, and the section of the Sunday Times in which appeared the Udovitch article it�s looking less and less likely I�ll get around to writing about here � when they had no luck they threw the whole thing into a Dumpster somewhere. (If you want to weigh in with agreement on this count, please feel free. The rationale is that those who break into cars and those who are into identity theft don�t mix, it�s like community college versus the Ivy League, and this makes some intuitive sense to me. If, however, you cannot sign on and want to sound the trumpet of dire alarm, well, I guess I need to know that too � but could you give me some time to recover, wait until tomorrow maybe? Not that I�d be any less fucked, you understand � if they did want to identity-thieve me, the wheels will already have been put into motion. All right, I�ll bite: your thoughts?) On the non-practical level, here is what I wrote to Steve this morning: "I was mostly thinking about how I need a new hire-me briefcase, how I'll have to waste time going shopping and looking for one and pay at least fifty bucks for some generic item when I loved the old one because I found it for five bucks in a thrift store when I wasn't looking for any such thing, how it was odd and dear and had personality. And then this made me feel maudlin so I was hating myself for it." A new briefcase won�t feel like mine, and every time I look at it, I�ll be reminded of the circumstances by which it came to be a simulacrum, the violation. It will mock me and I won�t want to use it and I�ll try to come up with reasons why I needn�t bother carrying a briefcase around in the first place � it will taint, for me, the entire category of briefcaseness. You may think I�m exaggerating or being a pessimist, but I can tell you that I�m not because on account of the past few years� history of car thefts and their congruent history of loss, that sort of category-tainting has already happened to me, and this is something I�ve never admitted before because it�s too too awful but let it here be known: the already-tainted category is music.

I used to be kind of a music junkie, I guess. I didn�t think of myself that way and I didn�t want to quantify it because I didn�t want to think of it that way either, but I bet I had somewhere around 900 cds. I still had things I�d bought back in high school, because no brag I don�t have any music phases I�m ashamed of and of which I have destroyed the evidence, or then again maybe it�s not an matter of no-brag and is rather one of coherence, the cds as a collection of the diverse and time-scattered and variously impulsive versions of me that had acquired each one, and since I�m all I�ve got my worldview necessarily depends on believing in each version�s validity and worthiness of being included, without judgment, in memory and history. The vessel itself. (I know, I know it�s just a bunch of cds at issue here � but these are the things I think about and the ways I think about them, and I will not apologize for that.) I liked to look at the cds, flip through them in the organizers, because doing so gave me an undeniable sense of reassurance and belonging, if only belonging to myself. When my car was first broken into and the first round of cds stolen, for a moment the act seemed an impossibility, I could not process it � no, it can�t be, they�re *mine*. They did not belong to anyone else, and no one else, surveying my collection, would have selected that particular few dozen for the current greatest-hits slate. This was the currently beating heart of my collection, gone, and even if I�d been able to replace the cds I could not by doing so reanimate what had been shut down. I felt like I�d had something amputated, and it was a long time before I worked up the nerve to browse through my decimated collection and assemble a few things I thought I might want to listen to for the next few weeks or whatever, I was afraid to want to listen to them. Then gradually I psyched myself back to caring and to the validity and necessity of this too, and I put some cds into a thrift-store purse that slid under the passenger seat and did, every time I got out of the car for even five minutes. Last May this system proved no match for an habitu� of the SCCC garage, who would also relieve me of my car stereo, and then last June the kiddie makeup case, even though it was hidden in a paper bag in the trunk under a picnic blanket, would do likewise for the vultures at the auto body shop. (14-something Dexter, the only reason I went there in the first place is that it was at the top of my insurance company�s recommendation list; I smell graft but oh well it�s bygones, and the point is that no matter what they�re calling themselves you must never go there.) By now you�re thinking that I�m a world-class idiot, when will I learn just to take everything with me when I leave my car, and there�s something to that, fine, but it�s not the way I want to have to live, and in each case I took the precautions that I thought were reasonable, each time a little stricter, and I didn�t want to feel like a fucking siege-mentality Republican. I guess I should have at least joined the reserves, and you can bet I�ve learned my lesson now, tonight I am going to clean out my car and take out everything of value or even potential interest and start doing what Steve�s friend Phil does, which is to leave the empty car�s doors unlocked so that if anyone gets the urge to rifle the glove compartment, at least you know he won�t break your window.

Which brings us to another level of analysis (though I still have more to say about the day the music died and I hope I can get back to it at some point). For {1} above, I wanted to type "reclined the passenger seat in that ghetto-styley way I hate" and then I thought better of it, I thought that might sound classist or racist, and I tried to come up with something better that would be descriptive but that would not, could not, call my attitudes into question. Should I maybe leave out the part about my hating the seat that way, is that maybe smug or vicious or judgmental? Reclined the passenger seat in that big-pimpin� way? Um, no. And for {2} I was going to follow the lack of resale value to what I can presume is general indifference, I mean it�s a safe bet, I was going to say, that the car thieves are not into the Mountain Goats and Roger Manning and Cecil Taylor and early short-haired Willie Nelson. What I would have meant was that not only did they not get something valuable, they didn�t even get something that they themselves could enjoy, which for me makes the feeling of violation more bitter, because what was taken from me I genuinely loved. It�s not unreasonable to imagine that the thieves put the seat back � sorry I don�t have a less loaded and Church-Lady-sounding word than "thieves," by the way � and settled in to review what cds were on hand and despite the fact that they must have known they couldn�t get any money for them and they hadn�t heard of or didn�t like the artists represented on them, decided what-the-hell to steal them all anyway. But would you have thought, I worried, that I was implying that it would have been a different story if I�d been packing Jay-Z (thanks) and Missy, that these would have been something I could understand my imagined thieves being excited about? And that�s another thing, there is no way to talk about what I imagine happened without getting all us-and-them, and that is a function of syntax as well as of the fact that, yes, there is an "us" and a "them," there are people who break into cars and boost other people�s shit, and there are those of us who do not and would never and who think that however their opposite cohort would explain themselves � I was drunk, your door was unlocked (it wasn�t), I was poor � it is not an excuse, who can�t fathom how they got the idea that stealing was their entitlement. But when I say that, I know, I sound like a Republican, I sound like that McWhorter fuckwit! Really, all I wish to convey is that it causes me several kinds of pain to have my property invaded and my belongings stolen � why am I so skittish about the prospect of being judged for that? Am I so wrong? Last week while I was sitting on the porch having a beer I overheard Steve�s across-the-street neighbor yelling into his cell phone at his girlfriend, fulminating that she�d taken the money he gave her for an abortion and spent it on Playstation 2 for her kids. I thought this was funny, and at the time I giggled inwardly and looked forward to being able to tease Steve about it, Guess what kind of neighborhood you live in. Does this make me a bad person? Does this make me a racist? And what about {3}, my casual deployment of "white trash"? Is that problematic? Am I problematic? Should I have tried to come up with another word for "entitlement"? When I insist that what I�m angry about is the break-in and the loss and the feeling of violation that they engendered, the way that Steve�s neighborhood and Steve�s apartment and sleeping in Steve�s bed next to the window are no longer entitled to the presumption of innocence with which I had regarded them and now, yes, there�s a part of me that *is* going to feel under siege� well, when I say that, am I to be trusted? Do you trust me? I wish this all hadn�t happened.

(Would it be better � what�s "better"? � if it had happened on Beacon Hill? Would I be beating myself up so hard? If the answer is no, what does this imply?)

Ha ha, when I got in this morning and I told Melissa about the break-in, she said Oh poor thing, you should go home sick. I do not have any sick time, I told her, but I just may go home early miserable. I was thinking noonish, but put me in front of a blank Word doc and whoosh, watch me go. If I leave around 4, I can totally still make a happy hour somewhere � maybe I will call that fabulous freelancer Terry and see if he wants to meet up, is that a good idea?

� Good, fabulous freelancer check. We�ll be getting loaded at the Dragonfish starting about four, if anyone wants to stop by. I know it�s only Thursday, but I have a feeling it�s a bourbon kind of Thursday. I left my bills in the car, stupid me, wrapped up in a Washington Monthly in which in a 1971 snapshot Bill Clinton looks a lot like Julian � I can do them tonight or tomorrow, it�s all right. In her e-mail, addressing the larger issue of Gastro-related depression, Catharine advised that I should be nice to myself and "resist any and all impulses to treat yourself with sternness or judgment" and although Catharine of all people should know that whoa, that kind of resistance is so not my forte, I am going to give the project an honest try. It may take a lot of wine and a lot of Greek salad to get me through the next three weeks and one day and a few hours and I suspect that tonight will not be my last recourse to bourbon either, but honestly, I�ll try.

The music. The thing is, I do not recognize my cd collection anymore. It is not mine, it is not me. The coherence is gone and now it is devoid of its organizing principle and it�s just a bunch of satellites orbiting around an absence. I never flip through my cds anymore because I don�t recognize myself in it, and this depresses me, and if I�m looking to be surprised by something I forgot I had or looking for something I�ve just remembered I had, the experience of the past few years has taught me that both of these are likely to be fruitless. I don�t like music as much as I used to because I don�t like the experience of wanting to listen to music as much as I used to. The wanting has become qualitatively different, with � inescapably � undertones of denial, bitterness, hating myself, that lack of self-recognition, feeling maudlin, and feeling incomplete. I can�t keep facing that, it hurts too much, I can�t keep diving down and hauling up to the surface the carcass of what was, so I think without being aware of my own agenda I�ve taught myself, as a defense mechanism, how to start not caring.

There�s no aspect of the situation that�s good. But that one is the worst.

Bottoms up, Dear Readers!

P.S. one two three four drinkies later � would you even believe me if I reported that whilst Terry and I did booze, someone driving down 7th apparently got too close to my car where it was parked and shattered the driver's-side mirror? Methinks you would not. Steve's group at the 'soft just shippped some product or other and at the celebratory beerage tonight, he called to tell me, they found out that they get tomorrow off as a thanks-team present. Methinks that if he is willing to spend a chunk of it with me, I might get tomorrow off too. Also: Terry is the greatest. Long may he wave! OK bye now from your tipsy friend DSL Girl.