» Stalked

Ugh
When I was the tender age of 18, I was decidedly unpopular with the boys. All my friends seemed to be able to merely sniff in the direction of a young man and he'd come running. Not so poor Vesty, I seemed forever confined to the "You're a great mate, but...." pit that every teenager dreads. I had a great bunch of mates though, but as happens when you're young, a large amount of your sense of self-worth hangs on whether you have someone to hold hands with in the college refectory.

Shock horror though, one evening a lovely long-haired youth with similar grungy musical tastes to my own wanders in to the pub were I work, as his friend fancies one of the other barmaids. We get talking, and hey presto, Vesty has a boyfriend. Wahey! Things don't work out unfortunately and due to my lack of eagerness to shag him within the space of a week or so, I find out he's biffing an ex of his (lovingly referred to as Sticky Vicky by his mates) so become rather upset and dump him, all my teenage romantic notions in tatters. His mate who was in the pub with him the first time pays me a lot of attention after getting short shrift from the other barmaid and for some reason (I still don't really know why over 10 years later) I agree to go out with him. Once. He's 10 years older than me, is divorced with 2 kids (by 2 different mothers), a car salesman and, to be honest, a chav. Likes to flash a lot of cash around, likes gold jewellery, borrows Ford Escorts from his work and pretends they're his. After one date, he decides we're in love and I'll never leave his side. Oh, why wasn't I more attuned to the favourite refrain of the unstable person back then?
He openly laughs at the clothes I wear, which are your typical late 90's grunge-girl style clothes. Torn shorts and jumpers, stripy tights, para boots. Whilst he's in his best Lacoste abomination. Still, I put up with it. I don't have much self esteem these days, but I must have been seriously in the minus figures back then. He repeatedly calls me stupid in front of his mates, drinks before driving his car, is jealous of any of my male friends, badgers me constantly to have sex with him without a condom, refuses to speak to a friend of mine who is gay (because it's just wrong, according to his tiny brain) and is just a twat, really. After about a month I've had enough and give him the elbow. Only it's not that simple. He refuses to let me out of his car when I announce my wish to terminate our 'relationship', driving to an industrial estate several miles from my house and ranting at me for several hours, holding both my wrists with one hand to prevent me from getting out and running like Flo Jo. Every time I repeat that I no longer wish to be his girlfriend, he simply says "no." I explain that's not how it works, but to no avail. Eventually I placate him with a promise to talk the next day and am freed and driven home. Terrified, I plan never to see him again.

He starts sending flowers. Every day. To my house, to my 6th form college, to my Saturday job, to the pub I work in. Everywhere I go, flowers. He sends my mother cards thanking her for having "such a lovely daughter". He tells people at the pub where I work how awful I've been to him, meaning that I get it in the neck during my shifts there, despite my protestations that he is a loony and a nob jockey. One Sunday afternoon he turns up in the pub and asks if we can be friends. I stupidly feel sorry for him with everyone watching and say yes. Upon arriving for work that evening I receive a phone call from the hospital, were he's been taken after taking an overdose of paracetamol. Calculating bastard knew where I'd be, gave the phone number of the pub to the nurses, didn't ask them to inform any of his family. So I went to see his brother and let him sort it out.

Over the next few weeks my Mum finds someone in our back garden at night who runs away. She thinks it's him. I get a very accusatory phone call from him as he's lost his shitty car sales job because he's always late if he turns up at all, and just plays solitaire on the computer when he is there. This is my fault, as he can't work due to his broken heart.

Thankfully by this time I am due to leave and go to University. Many, many miles away. He finds out through various channels the City at which I'm studying. And drives up there, asking about areas that students live in until he one day finds my car. Being young and naive, even after everything else that's happened, I'm still stupid enough to let him in to my flat. He doesn't leave. In later weeks I find out that he quizzes my fellow flatmates for hours about who I spend time with, people at Uni I fancy, etc. That's the worst part of this whole sorry tale, those girls were as scared of him as I was. I study sound engineering at Uni, meaning I have to book the use of recording studios. Sometimes late at night, or even in the early hours of the morning. He forbids this, despite the stupidity and futility of attempting to do so. When I go anyway he waits outside the building until I'm finished, and gets me a pager so he can contact me whenever he wants. He also wakes me up every half an hour during the night asking who I was in the session with, do they have girlfriends, do I like them? The same questions, every half an hour. Eventually I'm in tears and just want to beat the crap out of the fat idiot.

A few weeks into term I'm invited to work on a project with some older students, which is a good opportunity for me to learn stuff. However, he REALLY doesn't like this, and finds their phone numbers written on a bit of paper in my jeans pocket and proceeds to phone their houses every half an hour demanding to know where I am. Their housemates (who have never even met me) are understandably not impressed.

One day whilst snooping in my stuff he finds a video taken during one of my studio sessions with the older students in which I slag him off royally for a long period of time. After getting any of my flatmates he can find in to watch it and express their (mock) outrage, he confronts me and then leaves. Hooray!

He then proceeds to page me constantly at all hours of the day and night, literally every 10 minutes or so. I take the battery out of the pager.

A week later he's outside the gates of my Uni building, with his brother's dog that he has dragged hundreds of miles in an attempt to woo me back, telling me he has testicular cancer. When I ignore him he starts shouting abuse and throwing various possessions at me, and is luckily chased off by a bunch of workmen I run past as I try to flee to my halls.

After a while I though things ahd calmed down a bit. Then I started receiving letters at my halls from his ex-wife, telling me that I was stupid, and she wished she could get back together with him. He also gave letters to any of my friends who were still at home, stating that he loved me more than his children (ugh!) and I'd said I loved him too. It's true, I did. But it was half out of fear, and meant in that 19-year-old way that just kinda means "I think you're ok".

One of the girls I shared halls with sang in a Soul band near where I come from, so I ended up being their sound engineer at the weekends for some extra cash. On one weekend her Mum drove me from her house round to my parents, completely on the spur of the moment. He was parked outside my parents house, with his kids in the car. He had his kids for the day and just sat them in the car outside my parent's house all f*cking day on the offchance I'd be there.

On return to Uni later that night I called the police, something I should have done a long time before that incident. But I was very young, and very, very scared. Thankfully he mainly left me alone after the police had a word with him. And I'm very good at spotting potential psycho boyfriends for mates now. Luckily for me all my subsequent beaus have been lovely chaps who I'm still friends with.

I don't live in the same town anymore (Nuneaton if anyone's interested, as I see the wonderful scummy inbred residents of the place have already had mention in this QOTW), but friends of mine still see him occasionally and he still follows them for half an hour or so if he notices them. I also know that he's still preying on 18/19 year-old girls who I'm guessing, like me, are too impressionable to put up much of a fight to his behaviour, sick twat. As for his poor kids, I only hope now they're older they have the sense not to see their Dad any more. He treated them worse than pets when he saw them, shoving McDonalds down their throats to keep them quiet then plonking them in front of a video while he would 'seduce' me.
(Fri 1st Feb 2008, 12:22, More)

» Bastard Colleagues

The compulsive liar
I sympathise with other posters who have had the misfortune of working in higher education with utter useless cockmunches about whom nothing is ever done.
Several years ago, I had the pleasure of working as part of a 2-person team of techies supporting a degree programme. The guy I worked with at first seemed like quite a jovial chap, although when I went in for a 'taster day' a few weeks before starting my job and got trapped in his office for over an hour listening to him ramble on about nothing alarm bells should have started to ring.

During my first week, someone popped in to our office to have a chat with my fellow techie. I was on my way out to do a job somewhere, and when I informed the other guy where I was going, he suddenly started to refer to me as 'sweets' and 'toots' and other such delightful names, presumably to impress his friend with his new female lacky. Things went rapidly downhill from there.

He never came in to work before 10am, usually around 10.30. His reason was that he stayed later in the evenings. He probably did, but not in the office or any of the areas he should have been working in.

The 'stories'. He'd have an anecdote for every situation, ever. Never funny, never interesting, always long. A lot of our students were under the impression he'd been Whitesnake's lighting designer. None of them semed to question why he'd choose a low-paid technician's post in HE over such a rock'n'roll lifestyle.

He would disappear for hours, literally. Having worked on his own for years he'd got used to doing whatever the hell he liked, and never really had to face the consequences as he was rarely in the office. I would frequently be confronted by people who had been promised stuff by him; lab setups for lectures, software installs, equipment loans. They were understandably unhappy at these things not having been done, and I'd have top try to placate them whilst sorting stuff out. When I was knew and didn't really know where stuff was kept this was particularly frantic.

I started trying to organise things, making equipment loan out at certain times, keeping a record of who had borrowed what, keeping everything in one place, and throwing out loads of old useless crap that made our office a veritable obstacle course to walk through. My line manager and I hired a skip once and chucked a load of stuff in it. My colleague got most of it back out again, stating he could use it at home. It then sat in the office for another year or two. He'd just let people take equipment away, sometimes scribbling their name on a bit of paper, most often not bothering even to do that. The department had been losing stuff left, right and centre and this continued.

After I'd been there a year or so (and had grown to hate his fat, lazy presence with a passion) he started to have personal problems. Unsurprising, if he acted at home in any way like he did at work. He started taking lots and lots of time off. He started to come in even later, except now it was because he had to take his kid to school apparently, and couldn't afford childcare, although he never left early to pick the kid up. So I was left more and more in the lurch with no notice. The later he got at coming in, the more bizarre the excuses became. A bird got into his house, his next door neighbour's washing machine flooded, the exhaust had fallen off his car (this one happened every week it seemed, as well as many many dentist visits) He couldn't just say that he'd fucked up and got up late or something. That's what really got to me. The lying. He had to lie. Not just to me, but to everyone. If someone managed to catch him in the office and ask him why he hadn't done something he'd make some shit up on the spot, tell them he'd do it right away and then disappear for a long period of time, ensuring his absence when they returned. I swear he believed what he told me and everyone else, no matter how far-fetched.

Now during this period I had an awesome line manager. He knew what was going on, and tried every way he could to get rid of this guy, but to no avail. Eventually things came to a head when this bloke used my computer while I was out of the office, and found a thread on a forum where I'd been whinging about him to some people I know. He printed it all out, highlighted all the stuff about him and sent it to the Faculty Manager. It was probably the most work he'd done since I started there. I got a telling-off for 'calling a fellow member of staff a fucking twat on the internet', but he really got it in the neck. They knew I'd reached a stage of desperation and he was told in no uncertain terms to sort himself out, and stop using the fact that he was single parent as an excuse for never doing anything.

Not much changed though, although I caught him trying to look on my computer a few more times. The relationship had completely broken down. He hated me for disturbing his nice habit of doing fuck all, and I resented him for making me do the work of 2 people for the last 2 years. He didn't stop coming in late or lying about why he was late and I really stopped caring. In the end he was moved to another department on the same pay and I got a new colleague for the next 3 years, who is still to this day a very good mate. On his first day though, my old colleague asked him what he thought of "The Alpha Female" as he'd termed me. I often wonder how much of his shit was down to the fact that I was female, younger than him, and wouldn't be patronised by a big fat know-nothing.

Sorry for all that. It's good to vent though :o)
(Mon 28th Jan 2008, 11:45, More)

» Mix Tapes

A soppy one
Probably the best ever mix cd ever was made for me by Mr VP.

Travel back through the mists of time with me to 2001. Myself and Mr VP are in the fledgling days of our relationship. I'm living and working for a certain breakfast tv company down in London, while he's up in Warwick. I spend most weekends coming up to visit him, arriving on the train in a knackered state on a Friday evening after having started work at 4am.

After we've been together a few months, he picks me up from the station as per usual and we head back to his house. He stays downstairs on his computer while I head up to his room to get vrid of my bag. I go in to his room.....and it's very, very tidy. And what's this? There's something sitting on the clean and freshly-made bed. It's a CD case! So I pick it up and have a looky. It's entitled "10 reasons why you rock" and the cover has been lovingly crafted from a series of geeky pictures. There's 10 songs on the CD, and on the back of the case instead of the track names is a reason why that song makes him think of me. But it doesn't stop there. The booklet inside the CD is also filled with 2 pages of reasons why I rock. Awwwwwww.

Not very amusing I'm afraid, but to this day it's still the best present I've ever had. He's a lovely bloke :o)
(Fri 8th Feb 2008, 8:28, More)

» Terrible Parenting

It's all my fault....
My mother likes to proudly tell me that she gave up smoking the day I was born. Never mind the previous 9 months, eh?

When I was about 3, my Mum was so busy talking to someone whilst shopping she walked off and left me in a busy city centre. I had those hideous reins to stop me running off as well, she just let go of them to do something and forgot to pick them up again. Luckily the person who found me crying at a kerb because I'd been told not to cross the road alone wasn't a peado and took me to the police station where I was found and severely berated for 'running off' by my mother several hours later.

A few years later she didn't come to collect me from Brownies. After waiting until everyone else had been gone for ages I decided to walk home (it was only about 10 minutes) I was told off for being very naughty and walking on my own, despite the fact my mother had forgotten to collect me and I was scared standing outside the school on my own.

I was shut in the back garden one afternoon and evening when I was about 7 for not wanting to play with my 3 year old cousin who was visiting, thus embarrassing my mother in front of my Auntie. I went back inside the house at one point only to be physically picked up and dropped back on the lawn, and the door locked. I was let back in after everyone else had had tea, and was then smacked and sent to bed for not apologising to my mother for my behaviour.

From the age of about 16, I suffered from vertigo, excessive tiredness, dizzy spells and nausea. I was told it was all in my head and I was attention seeking, and that the doctor would tell me off for wasting his time. Turns out I have Multiple Sclerosis.

My mother is also very manipulative (even for a mother) and her favourite form of punishment when I was a teenager would be to complain that I spent more time with my friends than I did at home, wonder aloud why I treated her so badly, tell me that the way I dressed embarrassed her as I was so unladylike and then cry hysterically for hours after I'd gone to bed at night.

I still love her though, despite the many emotional issues she's lumbered me with. Probably because I never spend more than a few hours at a time with her any more, and recognise her guilt trips and manipulative behaviour for what they are.

My father on the other hand is a well balanced person whom I admire greatly. Pity he spent a lot of my childhood working out of the country. How the hell he's put up with my mother's behaviour all these years still escapes me.
(Fri 17th Aug 2007, 17:10, More)

» I hurt my rude bits

Clumsy gardening
In addition to shaving/waxing etc I also like to keep the remaining hair on my privates nice and trim. To do this I used to (unwisely) use a small pair of scissors. On the last occasion of doing this I misjudged slightly and cut a little triangle into my clitoris.

It didn't hurt too much really, although there was large amount of nausia and wobbly-leggedness involved immediately afterwards at the thought of what I'd just done. Didn't bleed much either, but I was rather tender and bruised for a few days! Any pressure at all felt like needles in my most treasured area, which made pretty much any perambulatory movement at all somewhat challenging. I'd been "tidying up" down there in readiness for a weekend away with Mr Pance, who to this day still forbids me to talk about it in his presence as it makes him all queasy. Needless to say, there wasn't much action that weekend.

I now use one of them fancy electronic clipper jobbies for ladies.
(Wed 19th Jul 2006, 22:17, More)