April 13, 2012

My First Stalker




I’ve had a few over the years, mostly on line. It’s a bit creepy in a flattering weird sort of way. That was a mixed up sentence.

I was pretty young at the time and he wasn’t really my type, well almost. The brown eyes fit but the blond hair not so much. Nothing against blonds I just wasn’t into blond men even though I dated a few.

Just to give you a mental picture: back then I was tall (5’6”) and skinny, just like now only I had bleach blond long hair. My wardrobe of choice would fit inside a shoebox: short jean shorts, a tube top and Candies.

We’ll change my stalker’s name just in case he’s still out there somewhere looking for me. Surely not. For this story, we’ll call him Greg. 

Greg was a Scorpio; that probably doesn’t matter to most of you but at the time I was deep into astrology and would date or not date based on that information. I later broadened my horizons and didn’t worry so much about star signs but back then it was a big deal. For those of you who care, I’m a Gemini.

He and another guy that looked like the devil and had a foot fetish (that’s a tale for another time) are the only two Scorpios I remember dating and neither one lasted very long.

Greg was a few years older than me, not going to college, lived with his parents and didn’t have a real job. I say real job, he made money but we won’t go into the particulars of that occupation.

For those of you that remember John Denver, this guy was a spitting image of him as a young man. Same long blond hair and round wire frame glasses. Sadly, I was never a fan of John Denver’s music (I don’t like country music) nor did I think he was all that attractive being a blond headed fella and all.

So anyway, he meets me at some party, I think. It’s been a long time so the details of our first encounter are a bit fuzzy for a few reasons most of which I’d rather not go into. As I recall I had gone with another guy I was sort of having an affair with and when we arrive his fiancé was there, making the situation a bit awkward especially since I had no idea she existed. The feeling was mutual.

Rule number 1: make sure all men are unattached before you get into any sort of serious or even semi-serious relationship even if he is your assistant manager and the guy all the girls at work wants to go out with and he chose you over them. (Talk about a rambling sentence.)

So there I am with no date trying to avoid the guy I came with and his fiancé who is giving me the evil eye. I don’t know what she’s so upset about, she’s short and has big boobs which in my mind was the recipe for the perfect woman because I was neither of those things. She was a brunette but so was I underneath the peroxide.

Just to give you a mental picture, the guy I was dating was pretty tall and looked like a blond headed young Patrick Duffy. For you star sign buff, Patrick was a Leo, supposedly a good match.

For the record, after these two blond fellows I never dated another light-headed guy again. Maybe the stalking or cheating thing left a bad taste in my mouth or perhaps I realized they weren’t really my type but just thought I’d mention it.

No wait; there was another blond guy. Crap, I’m totally messing up this story. Meanwhile back at the farm.

So I go outside and sit on this big deck in the backyard looking at a flowering bush, I think it was azaleas. Most everyone else was paired up, making out or arguing as was the case with blond Patrick and his fiancé. I’m thinking I’ll call someone to come get me here in a bit but for now I’ll sit out here, drink a beer and ponder my predicament. So far it didn’t look like future Mrs. Patrick was going to try to kick my ass so things weren’t going too badly… yet.

Greg sits beside me and starts talking about bees, ants and beetles. Not sure how he got on that subject, why he thought it was a good conversation to have with a girl in my situation but there you go. It was a wonderful relief to talk to a guy who wasn’t obsessed with sports which back then was one of my first rules.

If you talked to me about sports you were out, no baseball pun intended. I dated a couple jocks and found them to be mostly lacking in the intelligence department. No offense to sports fans or those that played sports, I’ve since learned that some of you did in fact have some smarts but back then I didn’t meet any.

He did help get my mind off of worrying for my safety (I was a weenie and never fought anyone). Then we moved on from beetles to The Beatles and we discussed bands and taste in music. We got along pretty well, actually, even though I really wasn’t terribly interested in insects. By the way, I heard he later became an exterminator. lol

He ended up taking me home and then the stalking began. Actually, in the beginning I was dating him so he wasn’t technically stalking me but in hindsight I mostly dated him because he kept showing up. You know the saying, “half of life is showing up” well, he took that seriously.

One day he took me to his house, probably hoping to get lucky but he tells me he needs to change clothes. Okay.

We start kissing and I realize he has this weird split on the top of his tongue. It curves way down on top. He tells me that a girl he was dating bit his tongue when he was making love to her.

That did it. I would have been okay with the messed up tongue, I don’t expect people to be perfect but all I could think about was, “What the hell did he do to that poor girl that made her practically bite his tongue off?”

He takes me home and I start avoiding him or at least I tried to. I would come home from a date and he’d be at my house visiting with my mother. I told her not to let him in and stop encouraging him but she thought he was cute and I was being too hard on the guy. I never told her about the tongue story but I doubt it would have made her any difference.

This went on for several months; he would show up everywhere, when I went out, at my job, just watching me. He would lean against a wall with that far away look in his eyes staring. He would drive by my house. He even knocked on my bedroom window one night just to talk. A few times I woke up in the middle of the night with a creepy feeling someone was watching me. I was too scared to get up and look out the window.

He had even charmed my dog so he never barked to let me know he was in my backyard.

If I went into a 7Eleven and saw him playing a video game (he did this a lot) I’d turn around and leave, quickly.

I told him, “You are not my type you need to stop following me around.”

His reply was, “I just want to be your friend,” or “I was just checking on you.”

I finally moved out and he didn’t find out my address or he finally moved on, not sure which but it was a relief to not have to worry about him showing up all the time. For a long time after that I would look for him. If I saw a blond guy with glasses in a crowd I tensed up and got nervous.

Part of me felt guilty and sorry for him but he seemed to lack legal ambition (I was a bit worried about driving around with him and what was in his trunk).

And then there was that fear of the unknown.