A FLING WITH SHOPLIFTING

When I was loitering around San Francisco State University selling weak joints and taking Afro-Haitian dancing, my roommate and fellow student Bronski dragged me to the front of the school bookstore one day, and purred into my ear in his thick Leningrad accent, “Ceentra, look. There is no security here.” And by golly, he was right — there were some 7-foot black rectangular boxes sitting menacingly around the cash registers with squares of reflective silver tape on them, which might have looked like a hi-tech security apparatus if you’d never seen black paint or reflective tape before, and you failed to notice that there was no wiring of any kind.

“They aren’t hooked up to anything. Those boxes are empty,” said Bronski, with a pirate laugh. “It’s security theater.”

From that moment on, Bronski would steal the bookstore blind and then return all the books for cash. He had other such scams running in department stores downtown; some mildly sophisticated short con he ran with a female performance artist we knew. Bronski — a swarthy black Russian bon vivant, was one of my closest friends. He acted like a brother toward me. He had taken me under his wing and I was grateful to him. He was in his early twenties; I was barely 18. He took a chance on me as a roommate and had to utterly housebreak me into being an acceptable co-habitating adult, since my parents had failed at it. Bronski had a technique when it came to shoplifting: he would pay for his vegetables but steal all his meat, which gave me ideas. In any case, due to Bronski’s criminal appeal, shoplifting started to look like a good idea.

I had never been a thief, even in my earlier teens. I stole a little steel one-hole paper puncher from my saintly grandmother when I was three or four and the guilt positively ate me alive. I went through Dostoyevskian dark nights of the soul under my blankie. After a couple of years of intense pangs of spiritual suffering I finally tearfully confessed the whole thing to my grandmother when I was 6. She was puzzled by my dramatics, and had not remembered the theft event I’d been eating my liver out over, night after night. I was forgiven by her, but I had torn my own ass out so hard I decided that thievery was clearly not my calling, and just never did it again.

I’ve always considered ripping anyone off to be the utterly disgraceful habit of IV drug users. That said, I’ve found money on the ground I just quickly pocketed without hollering around to find out whose it really was. I was always desperate for money, operating on about $4 a day. I had no financial help from my family whatsoever. Desperation trumped morality and I considered such strokes of fortune gifts from God as I scuttled out of the café. Such was the extent of my criminal malfeasance, until Bronski argued it so well just by pulling bacon out of his pants it almost seemed to be our responsibility.

”HANUMAN,” oil on canvas, Cintra Wilson 2022. FOR SALE.

After reading a few pamphlets on revolutionary socialism, I somehow rationalized not paying for more expensive things. Not super-expensive things, just stuff I felt was really necessary that I couldn’t afford, like apricot facial scrub. I felt it was a grey area.

Capitalism convinced me I needed it, and didn’t give me the means to get it. Besides, I didn’t give a shit about the Key Foods on 23rd and South Van Ness. It was a horribly lit ghetto supermarket with wilty brown produce; a place of no pride.

Key Foods was the only grocery store in the dirty, ugly neighborhood and I had lived all over in various group apartments in damp, unkempt victorians for years — 22nd and South Van Ness, 23rd and South Van Ness, 24th and South Van Ness, 25th and South Van Ness. This was back when the Mission District was mainly Hispanic, and white hipster kids after cheap rents were the invading culture. The sky was always cold and grey and the whole atmosphere was saturated with black bus soot thick enough to write on, coating all the unloved 4 story, residential buildings. It was an inherently depressing place, and the Key Foods was no exception with its klieg lights and dusty plastic bags of expired Mexican spices.

At a certain point, I became so deft and natural at shoplifting, I thought I was invisible. I had gotten away with so much casual theft that I no longer took any precautions whatsoever — I didn’t look around for employees, I didn’t look for mirrors. These objects simply belonged to me, and I was taking them.

This was my state of mind as I strolled into Key Foods early one morning to buy some bruised fruit and steal a tube of apricot facial scrub. I was deeply hungover, wearing a large overcoat and a kind of Moroccan velvet fez. My vintage 1940’s heels were unbuckled and the straps were swinging. This detail was perhaps my downfall.

A second after I had been through the checkout line, I heard an “Excuse me, Ma’am,” and I knew the jig was up. I had never been caught before so I started babbling. “I’m so sorry! I do this all the time. I am a kleptomaniac,” I said, thinking the insanity defense might work. It didn’t. The security guard dragged me to the last checkout counter, handcuffed me to it, and left me there until the police came. I made sure to lean against my hands so it wasn’t readily apparent to other customers that I was a scumbag.

This is perhaps why a young man walked up and started talking to me about how he liked my style. I thanked him. We chatted for a few minutes, and finally he asked me to write down my phone number (this was a pre-cellular world, if such a thing is still imaginable.)

“Well, I’d like to, but I’m a little tied up at the moment,” I said, moving aside from the handcuffs and giving the chain a nice punctuational click. The young man evaporated.

I told the cops I was a kleptomaniac, and for some reason, they let me go.

My brain lies to me as much as anyone else’s, but as far as my memory serves: I never stole anything again.

Well, maybe one or two things. But mostly, I’m honest.

Unless Amazon accidentally refunds me twice. I figure anything I can swindle out of Amazon is a small victory. Fuck Amazon.

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