The Robbery

The following story is an excerpt from the essay Twenty-Six,

a longer article with photos that chronicles my first full year in New York City.

I never had enough funds to fully finance my constant need for film and supplies, tuition at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) or many other desires, despite working, through temporary agencies, at various companies in Manhattan. More than once, I obtained a part-time job in the evening to earn extra money. Working during the day and on several evenings, as well as taking photography courses whenever I could on any other evenings or on weekends, meant long days and nights. In the meantime, I continued exercising at the YMCA, driven by my desire to stay in shape.

One of the jobs that I took involved basic clerical work at an office near Grand Central Terminal. My boss was Ross, a British woman, with whom I was often working alone in a single large room. We began to have casual conversations that soon evolved into a situation where Ross was being flirtatious with me, a young black man (with an Afro) who wore the styles of the day that included tight jeans and shirts over a slim, healthy physique.

The way Ross talked to me involved increasingly open, sexually suggestive remarks. I didn't necessarily encourage our conversations but I didn't try too hard to discourage her. I simply tried not to take it too seriously. She was the boss and even though I was not interested in having sex with her, it became clear that she wouldn't have minded having sex with me. After a while, it seemed as though she was testing me, trying to figure me out, particularly my interest in women and what, exactly, was my sexuality. From her perspective, she was a decently attractive young woman in her thirties and I should normally have been interested in her if I was a red-blooded American (black) male. During one of our talks, she joked that "I didn't hire you for your typing skills."

I let Ross know more about me by showing her my photographs which made it more understandable why I was in New York and what my career efforts were aimed at. She saw my portfolio which contained samples of photojournalism, architecture/cityscapes/nature/conceptual, and especially portraits. She liked what she saw and thought I was a skilled photographer. Eventually, I photographed Ross by a window in the office. She told me that she loved the pictures, which featured soft lighting and captured her loveliness.

This made me more fascinating to her but she remained interested as to why I was not jumping at the possibility of sex with her. She liked me and was attracted to me physically, although not actually in a romantic sense that would lead to a relationship. Instead, she could be described as wanting a version of today's FWB or "friends with benefits".

Ross lived in an exceptional apartment complex, 860-870 United Nations Plaza, which was located directly north of the United Nations and which overlooked the entire UN complex. It may have been provided to her by the UK government, or a corporation or other entity affiliated with the UK. I didn't think she owned or could have occupied the apartment on her own but I don't remember any information she may have told me about her residency there. Although she could walk from the office on 42nd Street to her apartment, she usually took a taxi since it was always dark when we stopped working. Ever the gentleman who was the concerned about the safety of females, I tried to make sure that she got home okay.

One evening in July of 1979, after we left the office, Ross and I may have stopped briefly to get something to eat. Afterward, we took a taxi to her apartment in the United Nations Plaza apartments on East 48th Street. I paid the taxi driver and asked him to wait while I walked her to the front door of the building. I told him that I was going to come right back to take the taxi further. My camera and my portfolio where in the back seat.

Suddenly, the taxi driver gunned the accelerator and fled with my Canon FTb 35mm SLR inside my camera case, along with many of my best photographs that were even more critical and priceless to me. He didn’t care. He saw the opportunity to steal what was, to him, likely a camera in my bag. He almost ran a light in his haste, doing everything he could to get away with something that was valuable. I ran behind the taxi but could not catch him. Ross saw what happened and felt bad, as though it was partially her fault. But there was nothing either of us could do. I called the police but they were entirely unwilling to take a report. They didn’t care.

I learned valuable lesson that night. I never again trusted anyone for even a second with my cameras or equipment. I never allowed any luggage containing anything valuable to be in the trunk of a taxi cab. Any important possession since then has to rest with me alone in a taxi or anywhere else. Where I go, my equipment and electronics go, at times as if they were surgically attached to me.

I basically stopped working with Ross although I didn't blame her for what had happened. I just needed to find a way to recover and move quickly on to figuring out how to buy a new camera which I really couldn't afford. I managed to scrape together the money in about three weeks, which was a miracle.

But my irreplaceable photos were lost forever, likely thrown away by the taxi driver. Anyone who saw my portfolio would have realized just how destructive his crime had been to my life and career. I have always believed that when someone does such an awful thing to another person, life will somehow find a way to punish them ten times over for what they did, and it will be in an unavoidably related manner. The taxi driver, then, may have eventually reaped what he sowed, and experienced an extreme loss of something that was overwhelmingly important to him. Unfortunately, I will never know, but I trust that the universe sentenced him in a way that he would never forget.