Police Beat: Lowlife on the Loose

After last night's post, I started to wonder if I had been a bit too melo-dramatic. . . Maybe the incident really was nothing more than just some pissed-drunk stranger accidentally stumbling into the wrong apartment on his way home from soju shots with his Korean buddies. I thought that maybe I had just been too emotional, that I had sensationalized the incident a little too much, and that I was worrying my friends and family back home unnecessarily with strange stories of Peeping Toms and malignant men perpetrating unsuspecting foreign women.

That was, until about 11:00 this morning, when I managed to pry the sleeping mask off of my eyes and face the world. It had been only a little more than 5 hours since nodding off to sleep post-sunup. But I had less than an hour to get cleaned up and dressed and make my way to the school for our daily staff meeting. And after all the drama that had presented itself between my boss and I earlier this week, I wanted to make damn sure I kept things as positive as I could until I was certain the storm had all blown over. (Yesterday's meditation session, by the way, was significant in helping me center and getting things back on a positive track again.)

After rising from bed, I unlocked the sliding glass door leading out to my balcony and stepped onto the damp tile floor to open the blinds. Just the thought of touching the vertical blinds a few hours before had send chills up and down my spine as I thought of the whistling stranger who had been positioned just on the other side. But now, with the coming of a new day and fresh morning sunlight trickling through the narrow gaps between me and the sidewalk running along the length of my balcony, I was ready to emerge from my self-imposed "lockdown."

As I went to adjust the blinds, I couldn't help but notice that something didn't seem quite right. Was something missing? Or was it my imagination? Where had my brand-new black lace bra gone, the one that I had bought in the States just before leaving for Korean, the one that I had hung on the drying rack on my balcony last night? What about the pair of underwear I had left to dry on top of the washing machine? Was it gone too? It was then that I noticed the rather obvious gap towards the eastern end of my window where the blinds had been misaligned by some outside force. Anger shook me as the reality of the incident settled over me: the ill-intending stranger who had stood outside my window for the better part of an hour last night had done more than just stand there. He had reached his ugly hand right up through the bars on my window, knocked my blinds out of the way, and stolen my bra and undies.

I went through the scenario a few times in my mind, hoping that maybe I could come up with another explanation for my missing bra. But no, I was certain, I had hung it out on the laundry rack on my balcony, just as every other Korean family does every single day of the week. I suddenly felt that familiar and entirely unsettling feeling of being both vulnerable and violated seeping into my skin, which reciprocated with an outbreak of tingles and bumps that confirmed to me the worst of my suspicions. And in that moment, it was apparent to me as well that the menacing door-ajar discovery I made at half-past midnight last night was much, much more sinister than a case of mistaken identity.

The lowlife who had stood outside my window and watched me, the same lowlife who had taken my underwear, who had reached inside my balcony just a few short feet from me, had also entered my apartment building, found my room, and deviously attempted to enter without my knowledge. This was beyond what I was prepared to keep my mouth shut about. With the full force of last night's incident weighing on my mind, I proceeded to the school, knowing that I needed to break the news to Harrison.

An hour and a half later, Harrison had all but completely restored my faith in the goodness and helpfulness of the Korean people. He had contacted the police, who came to my apartment with him to take down a report. He had told them that for the next few weeks, it was their obligation to make additional night rounds to look for suspicious characters near my apartment. He had even volunteered to drive by my street on his late-night/early-morning drive home after finishing the last of his TOEFL prep classes at 1:00 AM. He had spoken to many of my neighbors to warn them of the perpetrator and to ask them to keep an eye out for anyone suspicious. He had written, laminated, and hung several posters warning the apartment community that the police were looking for a man who was stealing women's underwear. And he had brought his toolbox and muscled several screws into the mosquito screen outside my balcony, so that there was no way anyone could reach his or her hand inside or out of my balcony window again. Wow, Harrison really came through on this one.

It was amazing the difference in my feelings of overall safety, knowing that so many measures had been taken to ensure a safe living environment for me. I don't know whether the S.O.B. who came around last night had any intentions of returning, but I'm willing to take it to the bank that any plans to stand outside my window again will be quickly discarded when he is shamed into submission by one of Harrison's "Most Wanted" posters!