Wall-eyed - persecution through graffiti; contrast between the sociology of graffitti in New York, New York and Los Angeles, California - Column

In Los Angeles, no one can hear you scream," says a paranoid friend of mine. Living in a free-standing house in one of that city's semi-suburban quasi-neighborhoods, she has always felt unnerved by the distance between her and her neighbors. Whereas in New York paranoia feeds on proximity, which is, I think, the reason I have been feeling paranoid lately. Specifically, it's the obscene graffiti that have begun appearing about me on some pleasant residential side streets of the Upper West Side.

It was the first day of Shavuot, the Jewish festival that commemorates the giving of the Torah by God at Mount Sinai. On Shavuot, after an all-night session of lectures by rabbis, Scriptural verses are chanted narrating the most awesome event in the Bible: from a pillar of fire, the voice of God was heard by 12 tribes' worth of very much alarmed Israelites. On two stone tablets God then inscribed ten basic moral obligations and handed these to Moses.

Someone had inscribed a commandment on the stone wall next to the stoop at 238 West 74th Street, but it wasn't God. The time was 7:30 in the morning, and, sleepy as I was, I had to look twice to make sure I wasn't seeing visions. My name was printed clearly enough in block letters, preceded by a dash. Above was an obscene sentence, in crisp Anglo-Saxon, which delicacy prevents from being reproduced here. The effect was like a quotation drawn from a book, maybe Bartlett's.

For a long time I stared at the writing on that wall. Then I went home and looked for other people in the white pages with my first and last name. But I had conducted this search before - embarrassing to admit, but hasn't everyone? - and knew I was the only me in Manhattan. In the next few days I brought friends to see the graffiti. As we sat on the stoop, speculating, residents of the nondescript brownstone came in and out. I asked an Asian couple when the words had first appeared: one morning a week and a half ago, they said. No one had seen the author.

Maybe this person was simply drunk after an evening of booze-pounding on Columbus Avenue, and spontaneously wrote out the first words that came to mind. However, the fact that the graffitist had an unusually fat magic marker to work with seemed to argue against an unplanned act of vandalism. Could it perhaps be one of the couple of women I'd dated since the beginning of the year? Feeling unjustly scorned, had she decided to teach me a lesson? But, sadly, in both cases I had been the one unjustly scorned.

Then could it be a writer who had sent his unsolicited manuscript to me at work, whom I'd replied to with an impersonal "Dear Mr. Blah-blah, Your submission does not meet our editorial needs at this time"? Could it be the not quite well-known author whose novel I had panned in a small-circulation arts review? It would almost be flattering to think anything I had written could provoke such strong feelings, but this seemed doubtful. No, the insult on the stoop lacked a suggestion of aggrieved professional pride. Clearly the graffitist felt a deeply personal irritation. I couldn't think of anyone.

Then, walking home from a jog in Central Park, I found more graffiti: the same words, on the side of a more elegant Beaux Arts townhouse on West 77th, between Columbus and Amsterdam. A few days later there appeared more, at 76th and Riverside, and 76th and West End, across the street from my own apartment. And still more: on 75th between West End and Riverside. Same thing. Even the punctuation was identical.

The most disturbing thing about the whole business is the impenetrable anonymity of the writer. It's often said, mostly by out-of-towners, that New York is an anonymous city, by which it's meant that you can disappear into crowds, never be recognized, never meet your neighbors. I understand now that that's true in one sense, and not in another.

Before I get the chance to spray paint over my name on those various brownstone and brick facades (I haven't yet), hundreds of people will walk by, and maybe read the graffiti (since, unlike most graffiti, these are neither illegible nor rendered in youth-gang jargon). A few of those pedestrians will know me, and wonder how well they know me. Anonymity in such a crowded city is impossible. In Los Angeles, this would never be a concern. The chance that an item of graffiti written about John Smith, near his house in Santa Monica, will be read by his acquaintance Jack Sprat, who lives in Westwood, is virtually nonexistent. In this sense, L.A. is the ultimate anonymous city: except when you choose not to be, you are generally alone.

New Yorkers are never alone. It's surprising that street crime happens here at all, since muggings and rapes require solitude for the proper intimacy between criminal and victim, and in New York you have to go looking for a genuinely deserted block of street. Furthermore, whereas at night it can get dark in some parts of L.A., New Yorkers are never without light, at least the artificial kind. Outside my windows on West End Avenue, with street lamps and oncoming headlights, the scene is always brightly lit.