Have you ever received a death threat? I have. I’ve received three.

The first came from a visitor to my (long since abandon) website God Hates Globes. The site was meant to be a satirical spoof on a website with a similar name. The visitor didn’t get the joke and gave us some spirited feedback. He was convinced that we believed the world was flat (and that Jonathan Swift actually wanted to eat babies). He wanted to rid the country of us close minded superstitious yokels. That time it was funny.

The second threat was written in lipstick on my bathroom mirror (see photo above). It read, “YOU SHOULD HAVE LOCKED YOUR DOOR.” The piece on the mirror was accompanied by a set of knives driven into every pillow in the apartment. Turns out, this was a prank by the girl I was seeing at the time. A prank she tried to pin on another girl, you know like you do. That time it was still kind of funny.

The third death threat was serious. It came in an envelope with no return address. My address had been stamped in red ink that bled down the paper. The contents of the envelope were a photograph and a note. The photo was taken from the dashboard of car following another car. It was too blurry to tell who was inside that other car. It might have been me. The note had been typed on an old fashioned typewriter. The print was jagged. There were signs that the author had to go back and retype some of his letters to correct his mistakes. The note was vague, filled with abstract poetic language. The author wanted me to believe that I was cut from the same creepy cloth that he was. The only difference, he felt, was that I got away with it. He wanted to show me for what I was. He was willing to go to whatever extremes he had to accomplish this.

I had a strong hunch who the culprit was. He was a regular creeper at one of my frequent haunts. He would go from table to table hitting on the girls while they tried to study. I had called him out on this. He wanted to let me know how that made him feel.

Now this guy already had himself a reputation. He was a misogynist and a bully. So when I told people what was going on, my own reputation grew. Things escalated fast.

The following piece is about that experience. The meta tag for this file says it was written in 2006. I would have been 25.

Our Little Davey

The police will send you away
with no more than a “nobody likes a tattle tale”
then every man and their uncle
will have a street wise vigilantly group to refer you to
people who know people
who know some shit
they’ll tell you something is already in place
that the hammer is about to drop

They’ll tell you that
this is the only way to get justice

What should be a game of chicken
will become a game of tug of war
what should be a battle of wits
will become a battle of networking skills
What should be a fair trial
will become a class action lawsuit
what should be a rush for the throne
will become a PR campaign

You won’t be able to take a piss
without somebody watching your back
you’ll walk down the street
as people nod to you like a mob don
everyone is so proud of their little Davey
with his sling shot in his back pocket
there’s a giant ego that needs slaying
and you’re just their boy to do it

Self appointed private eyes will call you
in the middle of the night
to tell you Goliath’s home address
to tell you the make and model of his car
urban profilers will slip envelopes
underneath your front door
papers from the public archives
teaming with Goliath’s criminal history

Your father will fit you with a hernia belt
that happens to have a velcro holster
he’ll put something in your hand
and ask you how the weight feels

You’ll count the exists as you enter rooms
You’ll cut peep holes in the bathroom door
You’ll watch everybody in your blind spot
You’ll sit with your back against the wall