![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cpolkThe police weren't looking for a suspect when they pounded on my door Tuesday night.
They were looking for someone who knew the man who lived next door to me well enough to identify him. I wasn't that person.
I think I'd seen him once, and had described him as best I could - a little taller than me, brown hair, bit of a beard, skinny. I said he stayed home a lot, and i knew this because he propped his door open to get the air circulating through.
He left that door propped open even in the middle of the night, even when he was likely to be asleep. That may seem crazy to a lot of you, but we're secure in knowing that you can't live here unless you've been carefully screened, interviewed, referred and approved. When I told my psychiatrist about the day when I opened my door and saw that my neighbors on either side and the neighbor across from me were all in the hall, and all men, he understood even before I told him that I went back into my apartment, closed the door, locked it, and hung up my coat for the day.
He asked me, then, to talk about the process I went through to gain approval to live there, and what that meant about my neighbors. He sat there while I reasoned for myself that if they were my neighbors, if they lived there too, that they'd had to go through the same thing I did, and that meant they probably wouldn't be interested in harming me.
I trusted my building a little more.
And by that propped open door at 3 am, so did my neighbor.
I didn't know Mark Deveaux. I never spoke to him, never found out his name until I read it in the paper, two days after it was too late to ask him.
But I knew he was there, and that he was comfortable enough to sleep in his apartment with the door open for comfort. He trusted his neighbors that much, and in spite of the senseless, horrible way he died, I respect his opinion.
They were looking for someone who knew the man who lived next door to me well enough to identify him. I wasn't that person.
I think I'd seen him once, and had described him as best I could - a little taller than me, brown hair, bit of a beard, skinny. I said he stayed home a lot, and i knew this because he propped his door open to get the air circulating through.
He left that door propped open even in the middle of the night, even when he was likely to be asleep. That may seem crazy to a lot of you, but we're secure in knowing that you can't live here unless you've been carefully screened, interviewed, referred and approved. When I told my psychiatrist about the day when I opened my door and saw that my neighbors on either side and the neighbor across from me were all in the hall, and all men, he understood even before I told him that I went back into my apartment, closed the door, locked it, and hung up my coat for the day.
He asked me, then, to talk about the process I went through to gain approval to live there, and what that meant about my neighbors. He sat there while I reasoned for myself that if they were my neighbors, if they lived there too, that they'd had to go through the same thing I did, and that meant they probably wouldn't be interested in harming me.
I trusted my building a little more.
And by that propped open door at 3 am, so did my neighbor.
I didn't know Mark Deveaux. I never spoke to him, never found out his name until I read it in the paper, two days after it was too late to ask him.
But I knew he was there, and that he was comfortable enough to sleep in his apartment with the door open for comfort. He trusted his neighbors that much, and in spite of the senseless, horrible way he died, I respect his opinion.