I was living in Los Angeles with a good friend from high school. We were nineteen or twenty years old. I can’t remember exactly. One of my childhood friends was visiting from New Jersey. We were all getting ready to go out on the town. There was a knock on the door. I assumed it was our neighbor and without a thought opened it up. A young man with a backpack pushed his way inside. I yelled something along the lines of “What are you doing?” He grabbed me by the neck and closed the door behind him. He told me he had a gun and a knife in his backpack…