My tale, and the guilt that follows
My first ever b3ta post, after I registered specifically so I could tell this tale.

I was once a stalker and it remains the one thing of which I am most deeply ashamed.

Names are of course changed to protect the innocent.

I first met Betty in 1985 when we were both 12 years old. She and I were in the same second year class and so had virtually all lessons together. She was insanely pretty with gorgeous hazel eyes, a warm velvety voice even at that age and a nose that turned up at the end. I did the usual thing of admitting to friends that I fancied her, she found out, laughed and rejected me (I wasn't the coolest kid in the class by a long shot) and we stayed casual classmates for the rest of that year.

The following school year I'd still see her around, still thought she was one of the most gorgeous women I'd ever met, but contented myself with nursing a secret crush. No need to take any action.

Then the following year at age 14 (this was 1987) my heart went out to her again when I saw her again after the summer holidays. I knew I had to do something to let her know how I feel. So I took one of her friends aside and asked if I could have her address to write to her. Her friend thought that was really sweet of me and so happily handed over the details. That night I wrote a three page letter telling her I was in love with her and how much I liked her and that whilst I knew I wasn't the coolest person to be around, I hoped she'd find some way of responding.

I waited three days for a reaction, but nothing came. I'd see her around and smile at her but she ignored me and breezed past. This was confusing to my adolescent mind. A reciprocation would have been nice, a rejection not too unexpected but still devastating, but no reaction at all? I wrote again a week later and asked her to let me know how she felt. Still exactly the same.

Thus began for me what I now look back on as an incredibly disturbing obsession. I would write to her regularly, at least once a week, telling her how nice she looked and how I was feeling that week. I'd sit in school assemblies and make sure I had line of sight to her so I could look at her and wrap myself up in her beauty. I'd wait around at lunchtimes near where I knew she would be so she would have to walk past me, just to give her the chance to acknowledge me. I sent her presents sometimes, on valentines day sending her a teddy bear in a box thanks to a mail order company that posted them anonymously in exchange for a postal order.

In all this time she never once reacted at all. She must not have even mentioned the extent of my pestering to her friends, as they were all supportive and co-operative when I confided in them of my feelings, saying she probably didn't know how I was feeling etc. One of them even gave me her telephone number although I never dared call her. I just wrote and told her that I knew it, but that I actually respected her privacy and wasn't ever going to call her. To me that sounded reassuring but looking back it must have seemed still rather sinister and scary.

This went on for a full eight months. The whole school knew I fancied her and would spend time hanging around like a lovesick puppy, but clearly nobody knew just what I was putting her through. The truth of the matter finally hit home to me the following spring when one of my own friends made a casual remark about how she had mentioned to one of her own friends about how she "sometimes wonders if he's going to jump out of a bush and rape me." I was utterly horrified and had to go somewhere alone to think. All this time I was trying to make her like me and trying to reach out and communicate with her in the only way I felt secure doing, and in actual fact I must have been scaring the life out of her. I immediately knew I'd done something that could not be undone. My letters and attention stopped. I put Betty out of my head and turned my affections to another girl who acted swiftly to put me in my place.

We had one more year at school together after which she left to stay to college. My only attempt at talking to her in this time was at the end of the final week of school when I was collecting signatures from everyone I knew. I approached her and a friend in the canteen one lunchtime and asked for their scrawl in my book. Her friend obliged and while she was doing so Betty took her leave of the situation without saying a word. My lasting regret was that I never really knew what she made of the whole situation and never really had the means to say sorry. Deep down it was my personal guilty secret.

That would have been the end of that but for the fact that fate threw us together again. I had a holiday job in between university terms working for an accountancy firm in the nearest city. Christmas 1992 I reported for my regular three week stint entering data and nearly died of fright on the spot as Betty walked past to her desk where she was now a secretary. I spent the morning hardly daring to move, even to the coffee machine and had to look her up in the office telephone book to convince myself it was really her.

Somehow I made it to the end of the holiday without having to confront the situation, but on my final afternoon I drew breath and wrote her an email on the internal system. In it I said I was too much of a coward to talk to her properly but then recounted to her what I knew I had done when we were at school together, how I had discovered what it was doing to her, how I had spent four years with it all on my conscience and how bittery, deeply sorry I was for putting her through what for a teenage girl must have been a rather strange and scary situation. I told her I would be back in the office at Easter and hoped we could start afresh from there. I hit the Send button at 5.30pm and ran out of the office without looking back.

Come the following Easter she was still there. No reply or comment was forthcoming and without any real reason to talk to her there was nothing more I could say or do. Time passed. I graduated and the holiday job turned into a full time position as the office computer assistant. Thus I was working with Betty every day and sometimes had to help her out with issues. Over time the atmosphere thawed between us. I could walk up and ask her something without shitting myself, she would ring me with a problem she wanted me to solve and I could even at times banter with her, making a crack about not wanting to be kicked when I had to crawl under her desk to untangle some cables. The only time I ever came close to confronting the past was at the Christmas party one year when we wound up sitting together in a semi-sober state. She initiated a conversation about watching managers make twats of themselves on the dance floor and asked how I was. I told her I was fine and then drunkenly mumbled about how I knew so much shit had gone down in the past but I was very glad I knew her. She seemed to clam up at this point and moved away. Clearly the scars were still there.

I made one last effort to make amends. In early 96, almost ten years since it all happened I was set to leave the office and move on in my career. In my last week I handed over my duties and then approached Betty and suggested that given I'd probably never see her again, how about I take her to lunch to say goodbye. Rather than respond, she groaned and looked at me pleadingly, as if begging me not to make her give an answer. I immediately let her off the hook, told her the offer was there if she wanted to take me up on it but I understood why she might not and assured her I would not ask again. I walked back to my desk slightly crushed, knowing that I would never be able to put the matter to rest.

It is now 20 years since my obsession and from time to time I'm still tormented by the thought of how I behaved. The concept of stalking did not exist back then, but that's what I was doing, trying to attach myself to every aspect I could of a person's life, just to get them to notice me and like me. Part of me wonders just what would have happened if she had told me where to stick it after I had sent the first letter. Maybe I would not have got the message straight away, but after the third time I probably would. This is of course is an attempt to deflect the blame, and I can't really do that.

So there you have it. I was once a stalker and it is for me the darkest stain I have on my character. You might say 20 years is a long time to beat yourself up over something, but I remain haunted by that final conversation when I quit the accountancy job. Even after all that time, even after working alongside me for three and a half years and treating me as a trusted colleague, it seems she was not able to look me in the eye and forgive me for the way I behaved. Without that, I'm not sure I can ever forgive myself either.

Usual length comments apply, but I hope you see why I had to tell it all.
(TalkbackStuck making obscene phonecalls since, Tue 5 Feb 2008, 16:26, 22 replies)

I still have no idea
how Yowl managed to get into ANY university, even one as lax and mediocre as the median of my three alma matae. He was not a bless-ed boy, neither in brains, wit, nor common sense, and he was so exceptionally gullible that he believed just about anything (and I mean ANYTHING) he was told. He jostles with a scant few others for the title of "the biggest numpty I have ever met".

I knew him through two of my friends, Geordie and Joizi, who were members of the pool club - of which Yowl was captain - and they had been playing against him for a few months. Living in one of the smallest university towns in britain, with almost no amenities, was a drain on all our spirits, and in an attempt to alleviate the mind-numbing tedium of life in said town, said brace of acquaintances decided to victimise said gullible ϝυcκτard.

Their method was neither complex, nor sophisticated - one day, Geordie went to Yowl's room in the halls block adjacent to our own, and pushed a note reading something along the lines of "This is Joizi/ I am gay/ Let's commit acts of man-love. PS I love you" under the door.

Yowl, not being too bright, responded to this, not by talking to Joizi himself, but instead by talking to one of his close friends. As they played pool together, he chose Geordie, who promptly confirmed the whole story as true, with the result that Yowl now backed against the wall whenever Joizi entered the same room.

As with all japes, Geordie gave it a couple of days and then circulated it amongst our circle of friends, telling all (including Joizi), and as a result we had a jolly old gaffaw. Joizi, wanting some form of revenge, returned the favour, slipping his own note under Yowl's door, which read along the lines of "This is Geordie/ I am gay / I love you/ I wrote the last note, to drive us together".

I will freely concede this is all very puerile, but we were puerile folk, bored beyond belief with only cruelty to keep us sane. Each of the protagonists continued to send notes purporting to be from the other, and declaring undying love, in a roughly alternating sequence. Eventually, Yowl became convinced all the notes originated with Joizi, despite being in two distinct hands, as Geordie didn't have the habit of jokingly touching up other men when drunk, while Joizi did. Subsequently, Geordie built Yowl's paranoia to a fever pitch, the gullible bastard swallowing every last bogus word.

One night at the end of the year, we had been out for a few drinks. Once the pub had closed, some of us advocated a return home with cans, while others favoured a journey to the town's one late bar. As we could not reach concord, we split into two groups, and while Joizi and Trotter went to the late bar, the remaining half-a-dozen or so of us (including myself and Geordie) strolled home, spar lager in hand. Somewhere, somehow en route to our place, we 'acquired' Yowl.

It started off jovially enough, swigging our budget piss-water while various members of our company exchanged 'exotic cigarettes'. The conversation between Geordie and Yowl inevitably turned to the notes 'Joizi' had been sending. Suddenly, another of my housemates, Dod, intervened.

"Notes? Under the door? He sent them to you too?", Dod asked.

Yowl nodded. Dod immediately launched into an entirely fictitious five minute, off-the-cuff monologue, cataloguing the entirely made-up details of a non-existent three month campaign of "sexual harassment" that Dod claimed Joizi had waged upon him. There had been attempts to "watch him in the shower", he had "picked the lock on his door and got in his bed naked", undertaken episodes of "drunken, crying pleading", "pushed notes under the door", and the net result was that "Dod only dated his girlfriend to let Joizi know he was unavailable and straight".

The Dod let out the 'big secret'.

"You know Joizi's american? His cousin's in the CIA..."
"Really?", gawped Yowl.
"Yeah - he's sent him all these gadgets, classified stuff. I mean, the CIA can do what they like. *looks over each shoulder* He sent him a set of goggles that can see through walls...."

Yowl sat in appalled silence.

"You know those bushes out the front of your block?", continued Dod, "Have you ever seen them move?"

Yowl nodded slowly.

"That's him. He can see through the curtains, through the wall. That's when he's watching you....."

Yowl visibly blanched, began to tremble. All that time, he thought, he had watched him. He had watched him eat, sleep, undress and masturbate. He hadn't realised, thought there was another cause. How stupid he felt now. After a minute or so of shocked disbelief he stammeringly blurted his 'folly'.

"I....I.... I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE WIND!"
_{Which was, of course, correct.}

Three of us where, by this point, visibly biting our own fists, so as not to laugh, and I sincerely expected him to wet himself. When I thought I could hold my chuckles no more and would give the game up, my salvation came in the form of the uncannily well timed return of Joizi and Trotter, drunk as lords.

Bursting into the kitchen, Trotter pointed at Joizi and bellowed,

"THAT DIRTY BASTARD TRIED TOUCHING ME UP ALL THE WAY HOME!"

Joizi strolled in just behind him.

Yowl stared at him.

Joizi noticed, and flashed back a camp, almost dainty wave.


I have never seen anyone run as fast as Yowl did at that moment before or since.


He didn't visit us again....
(cs1ca, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 2:32, 8 replies)

Hey, it actually fits! Here's one I prepared earlier.
This post is not suitable for children or the short of attention span. It contains scenes of a sexually raunchy nature, literary and cultural allusions, one mild drug reference, foreign words and is free from all apologies for length.

It may, however, contain nuts.

* * * * *

“On va au cinoche ce soir?” someone asked. We were sitting around in Nass’s room, fat-chewing and breeze-shooting in a Banlieu-stylee.

Nass was my best friend at that time; we’d met the previous summer in Nice, travelled back up North to Paris together, where I’d stayed a week or so at her place in Colombes, then back to London where she stayed with me for a week or so, before we went off grape picking together in the Langeudoc region. When we’d met first in July, I spoke passable French, could ‘get by’ and even follow part of a conversation between French people, but as Nass didn’t speak a word of English and liked to talk, by the time we separated after the grape picking in late September, I was not only fluent, but had picked up a fair amount of Parisian argot – that’s slang to you lot – as well as a distinct Parisian accent. I was a born again Francophile, listening to Renaud, reading Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in the original…I was starting to think things to myself and even dream in French.

But this was the following spring, and I’d taken a long weekend break from temping in London and was staying with Nass. She was great; about 4’ 11” high, stylish in an ethnic, artless shabby-chic kind of way, Algerian parents, John Lennon glasses, teeth like a young Shane MacGowan but a smile like sunshine breaking through clouds. She was talkative and opinionated and fun and could become serious but was hardly ever moody. She was full of life and game for a laugh and she was my copine, my frangine. Of all my ‘friends of the opposite sex’, she was the bestest friend and as neither of us remotely fancied the other, we could safely share a tent without the least problem. I loved her like a sister and would have defended her to the death.

Anyway, back to the day in question. “Alors, qu’est-ce q’on fait ce soir?” There was a bunch of us sat around, and there’s no way I can remember them all but Nass’s best friend Titine (that’s Christine) was there and Gilles, who was a conscientious objector. Not sure exactly how conscientious he was exactly, bearing in mind his fondness all things cannabis related, but he was definitely an objector: he had opted for the ambulance service rather than going into the army for his national service. I seem to remember that this was no soft option – may have meant serving twice as long or something – but it did mean he didn’t have to cut his hair, which seemed important – though choosing not to wash it either was less understandable.

Nass was living in a ‘foyer’, and by this I don’t mean she crashed out where the doorman and the lifts were. It was a kind of hostel; the best way to describe it would be to say that it was a hall of residence for young people that weren’t students. Brilliant idea, don’t know why we don’t do it here. Post-18, can’t/don’t want to live with your folks, can’t afford your own flat, want the company of like-situated people, want a canteen and laundry on hand, don’t need much personal space, willing to share a bathroom with a few others? All this and the support of tres sympa social worker type wardens on hand to help you out with personal problems looking for work, claiming benefits, etc. etc. This is why I can’t remember who else was there, people came and went all the time.

So, the cinoche – what’s on? When I heard that ‘Brazil’ was playing, I convinced the gang to go see it. Now, being good b3tans, I’m sure you’re all familiar with it, but this was Paris in the spring of 1985, and the film had only come out the year before in the UK. I remember seeing it for the first time, shortly after sitting through the much anticipated version of Orwell’s ‘1984’ with John Hurt and Richard Burton and thinking how very much better ‘Brazil’ was at portraying an alternative present dystopia. Anyway, I talked them into it and we trooped off into the heart of Paris on the French version of Network SouthEast, Colombes being outside the reach of the Metro. There must have been between half a dozen and a dozen of us I suppose, all talking 19 to the dozen as young people everywhere tend to do.

We were a bit early for the film so went to a café for beer or coffee or whatever and a cigarette of course – Paris, café, coffee, ciggie – I was smoking Gaulois Blonde probably, a very fair substitute for Camels at a quarter of the price and in a nice blue packet. We chatted away about this and that; I don’t know about Ireland, not having been there, but I always found in France that the craic was good.

On to the film. We shambled in with much noise, laughter, pushing and shoving and I settled down for a couple of hours of English language (with French sub-titles). I don’t know about you at the cinema, but I like to have my elbows on the arms of the seat and will usually fight for my rights. This time, although I’d bagged them as soon as I sat down, the girl sat on my left insisted on insinuating her elbow onto the same arm-rest, bad form or what? It was very uncomfortable so I gave way gracefully and settled down to watch the film and was soon lost in Gilliam’s wonderful creation. The only annoyance being constant shifting from the girl in the next seat who couldn’t seem to get comfortable.

Film over, we all trooped off back to the train and headed for home. When we sat down I found myself opposite, and thereby almost knee to knee with the annoying girl from the cinema, although, in the light, I realised that woman was a better description. She started chatting to me about this and that, and she managed to keep my attention despite the fact that she was wearing a vest t-shirt under her open jacket which gave me a pretty good idea of the hilly landscape which lay beneath, especially as there was a goodly amount of cleavage on show. Thinking back, I’m pretty certain she was leaning forward and may have had her arms closer together than normal too. In fact, although I can remember the view of her chest, I can’t actually remember any of the conversation…funny that.

It transpired that Therese – for that’s what I’ll call her – was actually the warden for the hostel, or one of the team anyway, and when we got back, we all went to her room. This was a bit bigger than the others and it also had its own bathroom en suite. We were squashed in next to each other, along with about three other people on a low futon-type sofa. I was plied with vin rouge and the next thing I remember is Therese leaning in very close to me and asking huskily, right in my ear, if I wanted to take a shower.

Now, you lot know me – I’m no genius, but I’m no thickie either, but for some reason, I was being very slow on the uptake that day. I’ve had a few years to think about this and can only put it down to the fact that at that time, I would have considered anyone over the age of, say, 25 as ‘above the radar’ if you know what I mean. Now you can argue about age difference all you like and what’s old and what’s young, but at that time I was 21 and Therese was 30. By my reckoning that made her 50% older than me, or to put it another way, an ‘older woman’. Anyway, eventually, I cottoned on; I didn’t take a shower but I did consent to a one-to-one practical tutorial in French Kissing – Advanced Level. I believe that around that time, the room emptied as our guests filed off to someone else’s room.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Therese got me to help her turn the sofa into a bed and then pulled me down onto it. I managed to get my DMs off in the time it took her to completely disrobe and then she began helping me off with my clothes while kissing me in some pretty intimate places. Her breasts were revealed to be as fulsome and lovely as I had imagined, her figure was trim, her ardour was high, we became acquainted. Pretty soon, she assumed what I was to learn was her favourite position: lying on her back with her knees spread wide, but with her feet somehow tucked under her bum, thereby raising her hips up a little, presenting Little Che – who, belying his moniker, was vastly engorged, rigid as a pool cue and, if I’m not much mistaken, giving off a low hum as he twitched playfully in time to my racing pulse – a clear target to aim at. Still, I hesitated.

“Baise-moi” she breathed, as her fingers reached down to part her lips for me, looking for all the world like an Egon Schiele painting come to life. I didn’t need asking twice so, after positioning Little Che for the ‘off’, I propped myself up on fully extended arms, the better to enjoy the view, then set the Little fella to work, teasingly slowly at first, not too deep, feeling his way, savouring every sensation, easing him into the warm, wetness, deeper with each forward movement, as her intoxicating scent arose, mixing with my own sweatiness. Once I’d ‘pulled up to the bumper’, I slowly increased the speed, still teasing, but when her encouragement became urging I fell to with a will, and we began the journey towards that distant goal in earnest. My arms began to ache so I lowered myself onto my elbows for a second wind, pumping and then thrashing, as if riding towards the finish line, five furlongs out…and as the crowd roared us home, I passed the post just ahead of her then slowed to a canter, a walk and finally stopped, smiled down at her smile, kissed her gently, withdrew, kissing her breasts before rolling off, sweating, dripping and spent.

We sat up with a sheet pulled up to cover our cooling bodies and enjoyed a post-coital smoke and a glass of wine. The second time was as good as the first. Little Che and the bollock brothers rose manfully to the occasion and, if it was a 2.5 mile-er rather than a straight mile sprint, it was a close enough finish to please the crowd. I’d had an each-way bet on myself so was happy enough to come in second place by a length.

The next thing I knew, it was morning. I was lying curled up on my left side, with Therese curled behind me, her warm breasts pressed against my back, her right arm draped over me and her gentle fingers exploring and encouraging Little Che’s ‘salute to the sun’.

“Bonjour,” I said, turning onto my back and half sitting up against the pillows. I pulled Therese towards me for a cuddle but quick as a flash she threw her right leg over me and straddled my thighs. Then, steadying herself on my shoulders, she sat up and forwards and as smoothly as a spaceship manoeuvre, located the capsule in the mother-ship’s docking station before sinking back down and fully engaging.

This time, I let her do all the work, while I played with her marvellous tits, making her nipples stand out hard and proud, lifting them up and flicking my tongue across them, but after a while I became distracted by the action down below and gave it my full attention, even assisting a little by reaching behind her, grasping her arse and bucking up and down against her thrusts. After, I held her close while Little Che slowly softened inside her and she sighed deeply and told me that I’d really better take that shower now.

Off I sauntered to the en suite. As I turned on the light and caught sight of myself in the mirror over the sink, I gave myself a mischievous wink and a grin, before turning on the shower taps and stepping into for a good old rinse off, making sure I got all the gunk out of my nether hairy region. Poor old Little Che thought that round four was on the cards, especially as I vigorously dried the old chap, but though he swung jauntily as I made my way back into the bedroom, and I could see Therese contemplating a return match, I safely reached my black cotton briefs, pulled them on and up, tucking the lad away with mingled regret and relief. On went 501s, t-shirt, socks and DMs, I picked up my jacket and with a brief kiss, I was off with a promise to meet up in the cafeteria in 15 minutes.

I was only a tiny bit sheepish as I knocked on Nass’ door, but I needn’t have worried. As I pulled on a fresh t-shirt she explained to me what had happened the previous afternoon. Therese had asked her if the two of us were an item, when Nass said ‘no’, she’d asked if I was attached, when Nass said ‘no’, she asked if Nass would mind is she made a move on me. Nass said ‘be my guest’. She passed the word around everyone except me and we were thus shoved together at the cinema, train, sofa etc. I wasn’t sure what to think.

We went down to breakfast and when Therese came in, fresh as a lily, she monopolised me, asking what my plans for the day were. I didn’t have any, “Can you meet me at 1pm in front of the Pompidou Centre?”

“Yes,”

“I’m not on duty tonight, so I’ll have to go back home [chez moi] this evening.”

“Oh,” I said naively, “do you live with your parents?”

Her face went through several unreadable emotions and then she laughed, “No! I live with my boyfriend.”

* * * * *

We met that afternoon and Therese took me to a small hotel in the centre of Paris. As we walked along, she put her arm around my waist and I noticed how petite she was – no more than 5’ 1” and how terribly French somehow, with her bobbed hair, casually smart clothes, careful make-up, cigarette, firm round bum. At the hotel, she paid for a room and we performed the now familiar ballet, though this time with her lying across the still-made bed, her head hanging over the edge, showing off her magnificent boobs to their best advantage.

We probably went somewhere for a coffee afterwards, and she probably gazed adoringly into my eyes as I lit her cigarette with my zippo, then probably held my hands and promised to write.

I left Paris early the next day with promises to return and went back home to London and a series of undemanding, underpaid, unskilled temping jobs. I think it’s fair to say I was feeling pretty smug and I was certainly in credit at the wank bank for a change. Therese wrote; she sent me a card which said ‘Je craque sans toi’ on the front and had words of endearment inside. She also suggested a trip to Berlin in the summer.

This was looking promising. I was still getting letters from Ursula [see: ‘beautiful but bonkers’] and there was also another girl in Tubingen that I was quite keen to see again thanks to the best one-night-stand of my life the previous year. If I played my cards carefully, I could bonk my merry way across Germany in the summer.

* * * * *

Woody Allen said once: “How do you make God laugh? Answer: Tell him your plans for the future.” Little did I know that during a temp placement as a filing clerk at a family planning clinic, Cupid would be lying in wait for me, and rather than the usual cute little bow and arrow, he’d borrowed Detritus’ crossbow. I’m still – 23 years on – reeling from the blow and will possibly never recover.

* * * * *

I’d already agreed with a friend to spend another weekend in Paris – he had friends there too – so off we went, though I probably bored him to tears with talk of Xena (the future Mrs Grimsdale) on the overnight ferry journey. I’d only had three days work at the clinic and had only managed to meet up with her once since then but I was walking on air none-the-less.

Predictably, as soon as I stepped over the threshold, Therese dragged me off to an unoccupied room and proceeded to give me an appetite for breakfast. Being perceptive, she could tell that, although one of my organs was fully engaged in proceedings, my heart was clearly not in it at all. Over breakfast she got the full story from me. I told her that I couldn’t come to Berlin, that I couldn’t write to her any more, that I couldn’t see her again – and total unfeeling selfish bastard that I was, I have no idea now how she took it.

I returned home and began my serious pursuit of Xena. My supporting role in a minor French farce was over and memories of Therese faded from my mind like morning mist in the sunshine.

- FIN –

* * * * *
EPILOGUE

I know you lot like a happy ending, and may be feeling a little let down just now. Sorry, but it doesn’t always work out that way, though if anyone were to ask “So, Che, how was it for you?” I can safely reply “Great. It was really great.” I only hope that Therese’s memories of those few months are as fond as mine are; I do know that they will be very, very different.

What I can also say is that with age comes wisdom of a kind. Although I enjoyed telling that story, and I hope, you enjoyed reading it, what I now realise is that the story I really want to read is Therese’s story. As I never asked her a single question about herself, her life, her boyfriend, her family, her hopes and dreams and fears, I’ll never know if I was a revenge fuck, just one in a long series of flings, the one true love of her life, all of the above or none of the above.

If any of you talented lady posters wish to take up the challenge to tell “Therese’s Story”, then I for one would very much like to read it [are you there Chickenlady?].

…and now dear b3tans, I will roll away from this post, sweating, dripping and totally spent.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Thu 31 Jan 2008, 15:51, 20 replies)

clingy
Im being stalked by a dog. No, thats not derogatory, a proper dog with 4 legs and fur.
I found her living rough and starving near my sisters house. I went back and gave her some dog food, so she followed me home.
I never let her in the house, but she refused to leave, just sitting in the garden staring at me through the glass door.
She didnt move for 2 whole days, sleeping in the garden at night and spending all day looking through the door.
I gave her more food and water while she was there, but didnt let her in the house untill it started raining. She just sat there in the pouring rain, looking even more miserable. Im a sucker for animals so had to let her in. She was overjoyed. The intention was to feed her up a bit and find a new home for her.

Four months later, she isnt officially "my dog", but I am definately "her master" whether I want to be or not. She refuses to let me out of her sight, and when I put her outside she sits against the door shivering with anxiety untill either I let her in or go outside too.
Being in the same house isnt enough for her though, she has to be in the same room as me. Even going for a crap means having to leave the door open. If I close it, she leans against it and makes it rattle with her shivering untill i open it again.

I am currently away on business, so left her at my sisters house, where she had a very anxious day when I left, and seemingly she just spends all day lying on her blanket in a deep miserable sulk.

I like dogs, so having one is fine, and I guess Im stuck with her now, I just like to be able to choose my dog though, not the other way round!



Need to work on the separation anxiety issues though.
(dave likes cheese, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 9:25, 14 replies)

Not intentionally but......
......I have had an issue recently where a series of unfortunate coincidences came together to make me look like a top grade loon. Before I start, I need to state that me and Mrs Hatred have been together for seven years and I'm a happy camper

My commute is a lengthy one starting as it does in Buckinghamshire and winding up near London Bridge. As I am not consistently office based, it has evolved into a tortuous affair where I drive down the M1 to near Stanmore station and take the long tube journey in from there. It takes an age but means I don't pay for when I don't use it.

Now it is not unusual day to day to see the same people getting on and off at various stations as is the case with any commute. Even though tubes are not timetabled as such, they are fairly consistent so naturally you see the same people. However in the case of one of my fellow passengers, it went a bit beyond the normal. I have no idea of her name to this day but she gets on at Westminster but instead of getting off at a more central station like the majority of passengers goes all the way up to Canon's Park in the same manner I do. She then gets picked up by car whilst I wander off into suburbia to pick up my car and do battle with the M1. This should not be a problem under normal circumstances but towards the end of last year for seven working days on the bounce, she boarded her tube and found me sat there. The odds are slightly long on that but not outrageously so. Nonetheless, I was concious that she gave me some funny looks and made an effort to sit further away. It was the eighth day where things went completely snafu.

I had a distributor over from abroad for some training and this went on beyond the normal finish of the day and it was gone 6.30 before I went to London Bridge to get a tube. "At least" thought I "I will not be sat waiting in a faintly menacing fashion for that girl." I boarded the first Stanmore train and realised I had left my book on my desk and the tube was abnormally free of tatty free papers so would be reduced to the iPod. I could scarcely believe as the tube pulled into Westminster that she was standing there ready to board the train. Maybe she had merely worked late, or maybe she had decided to not travel at the same time as the bloke who was always there waiting for her. Instead, here he was, an hour later, sat there without even a book to distract him. I sat very still and tried to find something remotely interesting in my bag. The 40 minutes to get to Canon's Park seemed very slow that night. I noticed she was anxious to get on her phone, the moment the tube got above ground.

Worse was to follow.

At Canons Park, we both get off and more for the desperate desire to part company, I nip off to the toilet, freshen up, and leave. I exit through the barrier and stroll briskly towards my car. There is a figure a few hundred yards ahead but I think nothing of it until I get a little closer. Of course it is may accidental stalking target walking into the maze of streets where my car is parked- she glances back as she turns a corner and of course sees me following. Now what do I do? Do I hang back and try not to look threatening or do I powerwalk past? I figure the last thing she wants to see is me accelerating behind her so I hang back and try and look happy and unthreatening. "Besides", I figure, "there are hundreds of houses here, she will go her way and I will go mine. Except of course she doesn't. Her path is exactly that of mine as she heads towards a house in a particular street.

Where my car sits parked outside.

Rarely have I seen another member of public look at me with the level of abject terror as I get in and drive away as quickly as I can. On the drive home I figure the best thing I can do is take the train the next day and reduce the chances of us meeting again to as near zero as possible. I even told Mrs Hatred what had happened lest her Majesty's finest popped by for a chat. Thankfully the following day passed without incident. The following week I was abroad and our fateful pairing came to an end.

This may sound a bit odd (and thankfully comparitively tame compared to some of the tales here) but I felt like an utter bastard for some time afterwards. This was worse when she boarded the tube just before Christmas visibly pregant. Anxious as I am to avoid being labelled a filthy stalker, I now go home a bit later and use a different carriage on the tube.

Length?- nowhere near as long as that journey felt.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 12:57, 6 replies)

Paranoid
Not quite on topic, but as Che says, it's nearly Thursday....

I had a call a couple of weeks ago from a bloke called Gordon, who said he represented the local self-help association for sufferers of paranoia. They were holding a function to raise money for the association and wanted a band to play at it, hence the call to me. I said I'd check with the boys in the band and asked him to call back in a day or two.

A couple of days later, the drummer happened to be round at my house, and I was telling him about the gig, when the phone went. I answered it.

"Hello, this is Gordon from the paranoia association", said the caller.

"Oh, hi Gordon", I replied, "We were just talking about you."

He put the phone down.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 6 Feb 2008, 15:13, 8 replies)

Agent Steve
Once upon a time, I was a naive fourteen year old. Myspace had just started, and I was one of the first to sign up. I, of course, thought I was unbelievably cool at finding it, and used it mostly to look at band's profiles.

Then, one day, I got a message from a guy in his late twenties to early thirties, saying he really loved my music taste. I was flattered as hell, because at fourteen getting any attention from anyone older than you is pretty unheard of (at least then.) So we sent quite a few messages, discussing the cure and such, and exchanging views. At the time I was very easy to win over - if you could type halfway coherently, I liked you, since aged fourteen everyone my age typed like they'd fallen face first onto a keyboard.

About a fortnight after we'd been messaging each other, he asked for my msn. I did stop and think then, but since this was in the day when people didn't really realise the dangers of kids + internet = bad things, I didn't think for too long. He seemed like a nice bloke, and I decided I could block him if he got annoying and/or creepy.

So we carried on talking for ages, then one day he announced that he was in a band and that he'd appreciate my opinion of it. Of course, I was a sucker for that, since the idea of anyone appreciating my musical taste aged fourteen was unheard of. I clicked on the link, and lo and behold, it was not a band's website. In fact it was a rather different type of website.

I freaked and asked him, trying to be calm, if he was sure that was the right link. Cue mister "I care about your musical opinion" turning into the biggest creep around, asking me about how it made me feel. I blocked him and deleted him from my friend's list on myspace.

Except it turns out people can have more than one email address? Who knew?!

He added me with about twenty of them, asking me for my address because he wanted to meet up with me, and he kept sending me stuff via myspace. I'd made the mistake of telling him my general location and I was scared as hell he'd find out where I lived and went to school, especially as my friend's myspaces weren't on private and they had our school info up. He followed me onto sites, and kept threatening to turn up on my doorstep, and generally followed me around the internet, tracking me via my username that I then used everywhere.

This went on for about another fortnight before I decided to get a photo of my brother who is seven years older than me and who had a beard, and changed the photos of a fourteen year old girl to one of a twenty one year old guy with a beard. I told him I'd been lying and that I was named Agent Steve with the FBI.

The idiot bought it and started apologising, saying he was only fourteen too, and that he'd lied about his age because he thought girls liked older guys.

Every time after that anyone tried perving on me via myspace, out came Agent Steve.
Worked a charm.

Length? I dunno, seems a bit of a personal question to ask someone from the FBI.
(stopmakingmeexplode, Tue 5 Feb 2008, 0:18, 7 replies)

Well, they seemed alright
We met a couple on holiday, and for the first couple of days they seemed quite nice. He was a bit of a "fiveskin" but she seemed really pleasant. Easy to talk to, asked lots of questions. Good company.

Until they started "joining" us in restaurants and bars, whether we liked it or not. Turned up everywhere we went, ate the same food, and drank the same beer. Bit pushy, we thought.

Got down to the pool late one morning and they've kept us sunbeds, right beside them. Okay, thanks. Where are we going tonight, they wanted to know. We haven't decided yet. We'll wait in reception for you, then. Oh dear.

We hung about in our room for hours, hoping they'd get fed up and go out by themselves. No such luck. We finally appeared four hours after leaving the pool, and there they were. All gussied up for the night out. Smiling bleakly at each other, we put up with them. For the next ten days, everywhere we went, they were right behind us.

We could not shake this couple off. We tried saying we fancied a quiet, romantic meal. For two. They still waited in reception. We tried going out really, really early, but they still managed to be waiting for us. The person I am now wouldn't put up with it, but this was our first time abroad, we were young and didn't want to be rude.

Our tolerance lasted until the final night. Sitting at the table, nice meal inside us, a few beers have gone down. Then fiveskin asks his question.

"Fancy coming back to our room for a foursome, then?"

I choked on my beer, and couldn't say a word. Mr Witch had no such problem and suggested that they fcuk right off. There and then. Before he got angry. They wisely decided that was the best idea. Thankfully, they were with a different tour company and going to a different airport, so we never saw them again.

Some of you may be wondering why we kept wanting to be alone and reacted with horror at the suggestion of a foursome. More likely you couldn't care less, but I'm telling you anyway! Aside from the fact that we don't share.....

This was our honeymoon!
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 31 Jan 2008, 16:07, 3 replies)

The Pied Piper
Tonight, picking up my little girl from her school disco, the DJ decided to finish it with the conga just as all the parents arrive to collect their kids.

So a big snake-line forms across the dance floor as all the little darlings follow the kiddie in front of them with the DJ leading them all. The DJ in his infinite wisdom decides to venture off the dance floor and weave his way all around the chairs, loads of ankle biters still hot in pursuit.

Until....

1 little lad, 1/2 way down the line sees his Mum standing there with his coat, all ready to leave. He does what any 4 year old does and runs over to his Mum, puts his coat on and follows her out of the door.

What she didn't realise is that all the kids behind think that this is all still part of the conga line and keep on following. Cue absolute chaos as parents see their beloved children legging it outside following the fabled Pied Piper of Stockport.

I know it's not strictly on topic, but I haven't got anything else this week.
(brocky, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 20:47, 2 replies)

It seemed clever at the time
I had a real nut-case stalking me for a good six months a couple of years ago. She would 'accidentally' bump into me while I was out with friends, managed to get the phone numbers of those close to me and harangue them, invited herself over to family dinners and of course rang and messaged me daily for months and months. Eventually I thought the only way to really shake her was to die. So I made an even more concerted effort to stay away from her for a couple of weeks, then got some friends to send her distraught messages, and even took out obituaries in the two main Melbourne newspapers.

Bad move - the outpouring of grief was immense. My parents were flooded with flowers for three weeks, two local chaplains offered their services for funerals, long lost friends came out of the woodwork, ex-girlfriends tried calling home in tears - the whole shebang. All the while, I'm sat at home, quite alive, trying to figure out how to fix all of this.

These days there are still people who won't talk to me because of what I did. The worst thing is I don't think the stalker even realized - she still pops up occasionally, and is still just as scary as back then.
(dialagranny, Sat 2 Feb 2008, 0:59, 3 replies)

Next weeks question...

Rape!
Have you ever been raped? Or perhaps you were the one doing the raping? Is that you in the bushes with your dick out?

Sponsored by the metropolitan police
(spac3d hunts kittens for sport, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 18:05, 2 replies)

Desperation is a terrible thing
Righto, so, let's get this over with.

*pop*

I had just broken up with my girlfriend of 2 and a half years. It was a relationship I was ultimately glad to get out of, but at the time I was left me emotionally vunerable (my depression and bulimia didn't help), lonely, and desperate. As you can imagine, my standards had been lowered. I would have humped a dead horse if it meant one night less alone. So, when a pervious aquaintance from school walked into my work, I actually acknowledged her existance, as opposed to my pretend-not-to-remember-them act I usually use on people I knew in school. We had a short chat, she paid for her goods, and left.

I come in the next day to find that she had returned later in the day, after I had finished my shift, and left her number with one of the other staff. Brill, thinks I, but as not to seem too desperate, I decide to leave it a few days before I text/call her.

Fortunately (or so I thought at the time), I didn't need to worry about not seeming too desperate - she returned that second day day (once more missing me by minutes), and leaves her number again, worried she might have gotten it wrong the first time around, because I had failed to text her. Faint warning bells should have sounded when she returned a 3rd time after that, again to make sure she had left her number correctly, as I still hadn't texted her.

They did not sound, however. Not even the slightest tinkling - like I said, I was far too desperate. I eventually texted her on the 3rd day. We meet up in a pub, both accompanied by mutual friends. After a couple of hours, and a few too many drinks on my part, she frankly asks, "So, want to be my boyfriend then?". Me, being slightly drunk, say, "sure, why not?", and she proceeds to "kiss" me with cigarette-tainted breathe, slimey tongue, and slightly black front teeth. And they say romance is dead.

At the end of the evening - bordering on leglessness - I offer to walk her home. "It's not that far!", says she. It takes 3 hours. But what was more worrying was the conversation we had along the way. It started off innocent enough. So what have you been doing? Do you still live at home? Stil see many people from school? Etc, etc, etc. She reveals she works at a nursery, which allows her to bring up the subject of how much she loves her kids, what she'd want to call her own kids, and whether I wanted to have kids in the future, and whether I wanted to have them with her... Being the drunken fool I am, I just agreed and nodded and smiled. My mind was more preoccupied with getting some, and if I had to pander to this girl's want of commitment, so be it.

So we get to her's, engage in some fumbling, only for her parents to start moving around upstairs (she had jumped me on the living room sofa), and for me to skeedaddle as quickly as my bony legs could carry me. Thank God, too - let's just say this girl was a tad... inept.

Did I also mention she had been in a fire as a child? Hence the damaged teeth, and the slight scarring. It was slightly off-putting, let's say. Didn't exactly help mini-matoosh come out of hiding and stand to attention. Furthermore, could this traumatic experience of her's account for what happened in the following fortnight? Some sort of left over emotional scar? Some deep mental damage left untreated?... No. She had no excuses. She was, simply, batshit insane.

Over the following week she'd be at my house after she finished work. Every day. "I have stuff to do, I'm sorry, can I see you tomorrow?" I'd plead. "I'll just stay for a cup of tea and then be off!", she'd reply, and I'd take her at the value of her word. This 'cup of tea' would usually end up lasting for 3 or 4 hours, with her throwing a tantrum and crying when I finally asked her to leave. Sometimes she'd persuade (see: guilt) me into accompanying her home (a 2-hour-round bus trip). Matters were made worse by this girls borderline nymphomania. She was constantly in need of sex, which, usually, would be a man's dream. But no. In this case it wasn't. As I stated, she was... "inept". Untalented. Rubbish. Furthermore, in order to be "prepared" for the act, she would demand about 10-15 minutes of tongue-time from me. She had hygiene issues. I reguarly felt like vomiting. I few times I almost did. But being the depressive, low-self-esteem, pushover I am, I put up with this.

Yet, 7 days later, even I, an incredibly submissive, non-complaining type, willing to put up with all sorts of shite, snapped.
"This isn't working out," said I, "I'm sorry. It's not you - it's me. I'm too ill at the minute to be with any one. My depression simply won't allow it."
Obviously I padded it out a little more than this, but you get the jist. I did it with as much sympathy and sensitivity as I could. I hugged her, held her hands, etc, while telling her, effectively, that it was over. And what did she do? She climbed out of my window and onto the roof of my house, threatening to jump. She said she loved me, more than any one she had ever loved in her entire life. She could not live without me.

Oh christ, what have I got myself into, think I?

I eventually coax her back in, mainly by agreeing that I'll give it a week's thought. And, I genuinely did, weighing up all the pros and cons. She really did not help her case, however. 20+ missed calls, multiple texts, coming over after work, and continually knocking on the door even when I pretended not to be in, staying way passed her welcome if I ever did let her in, giving me presents (a belt, Beatles album, a disney stuffed toy (I fucking hate disney, ffs)), etc, etc, etc. Thus, on a Friday, I once more tell her, "I'm sorry, I'm sticking with my decision." She proceeds to throw a tantrum, bangs her head on the floor for half-an-hour. I eventually have to escape, and have my Mum - being a caring female person - go up and talk to her. After another hour or so, she's calmed down, and gets her parents to pick her up.

The next day, Saturday, she miss-calls me dozens of times. Leaves messages. Insists she has stuff she left at mine to pick up. I eventually reply, telling her that she's scaring me. She continues. I again eventually reply, telling her to have no more contact with me - by this point I was shaking violently, sitting in a cupboard. Yet, shockingly (or not-very-shockingly, given what we've established so far) she still comes over. She knocks on the door for an hour, until I eventually open it. She asks to come in, I refuse, and just shove the items she left at my house into her hands, and slam the door. After another five minutes of knocking, her parents call her back into the car, and she leaves. The rest of the day is spent ignoring my phone, ignoring the further dozens of texts and calls. She tries knocking again in the evening, I ignore it, she eventually leaves.

Is it over, I think? Is it.. finally over? Silly, silly me.

The next day, Sunday, 11am. I'm asleep in my room, having come down with a terrible cold, probably due to stress. Depression acting up. Can't keep my food down. She knocks on the door, my mum answers and, being aware of the situation, politely talks to her, telling her that I'm too ill to see her any more, and that it would be best for all party's concerned if she just left me be for a few weeks, and then maybe me and her could reestablish contact on a friends-only-level. She agrees and leaves.

Or at least that's what my Mum thinks.

The girl must have been waiting around the corner, for, 2 hours later, my mum leaves the house, off to do some shopping. Within minutes, the girl is back at the door, hammering away. I was not aware of her earlier visit, and so go to open it. I see her through the frosted glass. I scream, fall back, get up, and stumble into the dining room, out of sight. The girl proceeds to knock, unstopping, for an hour. I think I'm going mad. My lodger at the time eventually comes downstairs and asks wtf is going on. I explain. Me and her discuss various plans, but a further half-hour later I decide the only possible action is to answer the door and tell her to, simply, fuck off out of my life.

So, I go to the door. I open it a crack. Fast as lightning, she has her foot in the door, so I can't close it. She begs to come in, begs for me to reconsider, to take her back. Please, she begs, please. I refuse, I use all my strength to stop her pushing open the door. But her foot won't move! I can't close the effing door!
"PLEASE, LET ME IN" she wails. An idea occurs. "Okay," says I, "I'll let you in, but the chain is on, I can't get it off if you don't move your foot."
"Oh.." she sounds confused, as she can't see a chain on, but would the love of her life really lie to her? No, she thinks, he wouldn't. So she takes her foot away. Problem is, she's still too close to the door.
"Take a step back," says I, and she does. Still too close.
"And another," and she does. Suddenly it dawns on her.
"You're not going to close the door on me? Are you? ARE YOU? DON'T CLO-" and I slam it, hard, just as she attempts to barrell it open. She's struck in the face. The knocking begins again. Another half-an-hour of knocking. She screams through the letter box. She wails. Cries. Screams more. Beats on the door. Tries to break the glass. I sit in the dining room, shaking.

Eventually mum returns, finds this wreck at the door. Talks to her calmly, like a wild animal - I hear it all. After 5 minutes my mum comes in, using her key, and explains she's taken the monster to the bus stop. I breathe a sigh of a relief, Thank God for th-.. *knock*. No! Wait. She's back. Sod. I hide in the cupboard, shaking so violently I can barely stand. My mum goes to the door, and in no uncertain terms threatens her with police intervention. This seems to work, as if she has a criminal record, she'd be fired from her current job.

And she leaves. Finally.

And that was almost the end of it. Had a few texts from her over the next few weeks. All I ignored, and they petered out. I haven't heard from her in about half a year - although she still asks about me. A friend of mine who attended the same school was unfortunate enough to bump into her in a local pub.
"How's Matoosh?" she asked, "where's he working now? Has he got a different mobile number? Do you have it?" My friend, to his credit, downed his pint, made his excuses, and left.

Despite the good many months I've had to recover, I still shake. I still shake when I hear someone knock on the door. Especially if it's the girl's signature 3 successive knocks.

We have a real chain on the door now. It's locked every night.

Alas.

Length? It shrivels at the thought.

Edit: And, just to reiterate one point from the story: this girl works with CHILDREN. She has a collection of picutres of all of them, on her mobile, printed out to keep in her wallet, on the walls of her room... I fear for their futures.
( Matoosh would rather like a biscuit, Wed 6 Feb 2008, 18:49, 12 replies)

The terrorist
First, the backstory. I happened to be doing some volunteer work in a hospital in the occupied territories. Not glamorous stuff, just supporting the IT guy who had flown in earlier and needed an extra hand. The nature of the work meant that in the evenings my fellow Englishman and I could ooze around the hospital chatting to the various shrapnel filled Palestinians. And, cliched though it is, I've never met a friendlier bunch of people. They all, without fail, complimented me on my long eyelashes and big eyes, both features which I detest because they result in my being seen in the eyes of the world not as a macho leader of men, but more of a Bambi type. Grr. Anyway, Arabs love these eyes. "Camel eyes" they call them.

So, I settle into the hospital with my camel eyes fluttering hither and thither, and one young bullet sponge really takes a shine to them. Oh yes. Mohammed, I shall call him (name changed, naturally), loved these ridiculous eyes of mine, and the head that housed them, and the body that supported that head. Oh, and he particularly liked my arse.

Mohammed was a twenty-something lad, walking on crutches as a result of being hit in the leg with an IDF bullet when he was chucking stones one day. He was a patient at the hospital. Walking on crutches gave him a superhuman like strength in his arms, which were abominably hairy and made his resemblance to a gorilla in a fez rather striking. He made it his life's mission to grab my bottom (with a vice-like grip) as much as possible. It came to the extent that I'd have to poke my head round corners to see if he were at large before walking into a room. If he spotted me he'd give an unearthly shriek and hobble towards me like some kind of terrifying, rubbish cyborg.

I was stalked by a gay crippled terrorist.
(I grew it myself, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 5:02, 7 replies)

Anyone who knows me offline, or gazzed me for the And That Was The Thanks I Got QOTW
will know the ins and outs of this already, as this is something I refused to post last year. Now that it seems it's all done and dusted, and we are indeed no longer even pretending to be friends, I have no qualms about sharing it.

So, I give you:

The Tale of Stalker Girl

This particular scariness originates from a girl in a seminar I took in my first year of uni, who I initially got chatting to about something random; she added me to her MSN, and introduced me to her crazy love life, which, as it turned out, featured a guy from her corridor who, apparently, treated her terribly - he would sleep with her, then ignore her till he wanted to sleep with her again.

In between these events she would whine, cry, stress, listen to depressing music and send him bitchy emails demanding an explanation as to why he was ignoring her. The part I couldn't understand at first was why she *kept* going back to him when she knew what was going to happen. I now realise that she just likes to be miserable, and likes to cause as much drama as possible. And Gods help you if you're happy in her presence when she's "upset"...

Anyway, one by one her friends got rather sick of mopping her up because he was ignoring her, and so they told her that in future it was her funeral and if she wouldn't listen to good advice then they never wanted to hear another word about the whole thing. Eventually this number came down to one person... me, and I was too polite to say no.

Unfortunately because of the size of our campus, I have a few friends who know him, or know someone who does. Naturally some of my friends were a bit perturbed by the random girl crying over someone who clearly didn't care about her, and some of them have as a result stopped speaking to me because they think I must be the same. A friend of a friend was around, saw she was with me and said "Oh, I know you, you were on *****'s corridor last year!" "Oh yes, I know him! He does drama! We're friends... more than friends!" "Ah - that's not what he says. He's told everyone he knows you're stalking him."

What followed was more drama than a Myspace flame war, and this went on for the next year. She confronted him about the rumours, and ... slept with him. The cycle of the previous year continued, until... OH NOES! He got a proper girlfriend after telling her he didn't want a relationship (who, incidentally, he is still with, and while I don't know the guy other than by sight, good on him). The people she's whining to tell her "aren't you over that yet?" and tell her to shut up, she gets more upset and continues threatening to drop out, and saying she'll never talk to any of those people ever again, especially as more and more of them tell her they believe his side of the story. Again, leaving just me (she kept trying to get me to glare at him and shout at him "I hope you're satisfied!" and things like that if I saw him when the poor guy clearly didn't know me from Adam and cared less). Needless to say, I never did.

Anyway, she was sent to the same university as me for the first half of my Erasmus year. There were six or so of us there from our uni, as well as lots of Americans and some Aussies, and generally all the English-speakers kind of clumped together and talked. Not her, though. Oh no. In between telling me stories about how she knew they didn't want "us" around as there was no room made for us, and how we could only trust one another (remind you of anyone?), and telling anyone who invited us to come and sit them "no, we have things to talk about". She would start conversations like "I get randomly jealous..." "of what?" "Oh, forget I said anything..." "oh FFS..." and then never continue them until the next day, when she would come marching up to me "YOU IGNORED ME YESTERDAY!" and then stamp off.

She refused to go on all the nights out that were organised and the moment there was even a sniff of one "Oh I'm so tired, I feel so ill, I think I'll give this one a miss..." and then expect me to either do the same, or she would come out anyway but whine all evening about how "unfair" it was that she had to socialise and how if she didn't come everyone would bitch about her and say how she was faking it and being boring and ultimately would expect me to accompany her home when she got bored after an hour "in case she got raped" (a rather worrying obsession of hers), meaning that to all intents and purposes I wasn't able to have a life of my own. It got to the point where some people would be surprised to see me on my own and ask me where she was.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: There's more to this, that I completely forgot about. For starters, one day during lunch we were sitting with some twin girls from Iran, and discussing the relative merits of siblinghood (stalker girl and I are both only children). Stalker girl pipes up "I don't need a sister, I have Maladicta... she follows me like a shadow!" and grinned psychotically. This was one of the few times I told her she was being a nutcase, and said quietly "Would you mind going back to where Mariam and Zahra are sitting and telling them you just made that up?" to be confronted with the mother of all shitfits: "OH COME ON! IT WAS A JOKE!" and then stamping off in her usual manner, one reminiscent of a pissed off duck.

Also, in keeping with her "not-sharing-Maladicta-with-anyone-they-might-steal-her" policy, another time we were assigned to do some sort of presentation with two girls from India. Stalker girl takes an immediate dislike to one of them, claiming she thinks the girl fancies her (for someone who was bi one minute and not the next, this is a little hypocritical), and makes a fuss about working with them. As it happened, they lived in the same halls as us, and so we arranged to meet up one Saturday night to go over what we had. After knocking and waiting for about five seconds, stalker girl says "Oh, they're not in" and insists we return to her lair to carry on watching Red Dwarf or something. Three hours later, I am still sat on her bed and feeling incredibly fidgety (she also tried to take my keys off me so I couldn't go back to my own room by pretending to be interested in the keyring I was using, despite thinking having one shaped like handcuffs would "give people the wrong idea" for the same reason she was allowed to wear short skirts (and she was not what anyone would call suited to them) because I would "get a reputation as a slut"*). I digress. There's a knock at the door and on opening it, the two girls are there apologising for not being in as they'd been to Germany for the day. Stalker girl says "fair enough, don't worry about it, we've done our part" and shuts the door. She scowls and what she said next will haunt me for the rest of my life:

"You know what I should have done?"
"No."
"I should have got into my underwear, put my dressing gown on, opened the door a crack with my vibrator** in my hand and said 'do you mind? Me and Maladicta are shagging.'" That was the day I mentally ran screaming out of her room, but in reality I simply got up and said I needed to go home (and even then she'd walk me halfway back to my corridor in case I went visiting someone else).

The worst thing I can think of that she did was completely ruin my 21st birthday. The night before she came round claiming to be "pissing blood" (she regularly fakes being ill, she's had warts, chlamydia and various other ladies' problems according to her, and it's always something that isn't immediately obvious so you can't be 100% sure she's faking, so you can understand why I just said "well okay, see how you are tomorrow.").

True to her word she dragged me out of my last lecture of the day the next day "it's happening again..." (after no mention of it all day) and straight to A&E, where we stayed for three hours (I opened my birthday cards there), where she was examined (I wasn't in the room, so I don't know for sure if the doctor really did say she had the kidney stone she claimed to have), and she constantly whining "I've ruined your birthday, you should just go..." so in the end I said "Bye, then" and went home to have fun with the friends she'd been trying to prevent me from having a party with. We have wine and pizza and generally have fun till about 11pm, when she returns from the hospital, claiming to have absolutely nothing visibly wrong with her. And the next day, having been in agony yesterday with the most painful thing known to man, is able to stamp about in my kitchen like a spoilt duckling with pigtails when she is unable to make the perfect pancake, yelling "I'm so stupid!" over and over before running off in tears.

What did she get me for my birthday, I hear you cry? A set of admittedly very pretty underwear from La Senza I had mentioned liking in passing, plus as we'd been clothes shopping together a few times she knew my sizes. I pretend to this day they were from my then boyfriend.

Speaking of whom, around this time I met him through QOTW (we're still friends), and made the mistake of telling her (well, she saw me type "I love you" on MSN, I had no choice but to tell her). She spent the whole day calling me a "selfish cow" and how she "liked having a single friend", and how she was going to "go home and play with knives" and "would it kill me to spend some time with her", and all the usual empty threats. For once I argued back and told her it was my business and I would continue to see him for as long as I wanted, not as long as she wanted. This led to endless needling about how "internet relationships aren't real" (she had had one not too long before this, which ended when he "tried to rape her" in some random layby near to the pikey hell she lives in) and comments about "if I find out you're having an evening in with him I'll interrupt you pretending to be upset". She also pretended to be "worried" about me and hoped this would incite me to dump the poor bloke, but I'm pleased to say this failed miserably.

This eventually led to me feeling like I was being constantly watched: as well as doing everything in her power to keep me away from MSN and my emails, so I wouldn't talk to him, and constantly telling me he was "a rapist", she threatened to kill herself when I told her I wanted to cook on my own of an evening and spend time with people who weren't her "I nearly SLIT MY WRISTS LAST NIGHT and you JUST DON'T CARE!", telling me it was "unfair" to see mutual friends without her, and generally behaving like a spoilt brat.

Relieved I was finally seeing the real Brian (for that blatantly is not her name), I finally snapped (this is quite hard to make me do, and is reserved only for people who really, really cross the line). Looking back, it was only because so many others believed me and understood why exactly she was driving me so nuts that I survived it all, although knowing I had support made me a lot more gung-ho about telling her to shut the fuck up when it was needed and finally gave me the backbone to tell her where to stick her clinginess. I repeatedly told her to fuck off and leave me alone, and acted as I do to Stalker Boy, to no avail as she denied all knowledge of her behaviour "Why are you snapping at me? All I'm doing is being friendly..." and would complain to anyone who'd listen that "the girl I thought was my best friend doesn't want to spend time with me, we never do anything together any more" (please note, I'd not even been able to go to the toilet without her coming before this, in case I bitched about her to the toilet roll dispenser).

As a result of this, she uninvited me to her own birthday, as I was "constantly snapping at me, and I don't want you spoiling my day", then seemed to have forgotten about it the next day and reinvited me, then was surprised when I'd made other arrangements. Fortunately, a week later she went home for the holidays and I left Switzerland a week after that. And I have had minimal contact with her since, as it seems that 10 months of ignoring someone is enough for anyone to get the message. She does periodically read b3ta, so if she didn't know before she will now, I think.

Click "I like this" if you think I've had more than my fair share of stalkers.

And length? I had to hear about that, and the girth, and what he did with it, far too many times. It's a wonder I don't like girls.


* Meanwhile, I have to hear all the details of her fucked-up sex life (rape fantasies, anyone?) and how she is simply dying for a full bondage kit to play with. OH GOD THE IMAGES.
** Not to mention regularly hear about how many vibrators she had, and know exactly where she kept them and how often she used them.
( Maladicta, Thu 31 Jan 2008, 21:14, 8 replies)

Oh come on...
It's not stalking when it's true love and you're meant to be together...
(beatpig understands subliminalesbianmessagaying., Sun 3 Feb 2008, 21:59, 3 replies)

Famous person off the telly
A female friend of mine who strikes me, these days, as being quite, quite normal, confessed to going through a most excellent secret stalking phase.

She was a student, in north London. Being a student, she had time on her hands. One day she spotted a certain stand-up comedian pass her in the street, which was close to where she lived. These days you'd know him off a certain comedy panel quiz show.

As it happened, she fancied him. So she followed him and worked out which was his house.

Then she began her project. She printed up a note offering her services as a cleaner, and at a competitive (but plausible) price at that. Every few days she popped one through his front door, hopefully giving the impression that it was going through every door in the street.

It worked, he rang her, and hired her. So she was in his life; free to roam his home, peek at his diary (actually I'm theorising that bit - she didn't mention it), and generally see inside the glamorous world of an up-and-coming celebrity.

And guess what? It turned out that he was an arrogant, coke-addled twat. He was rude, self-obsessed and generally obnoxious.

She decided she didn't like him after all, and jacked in the job, forever cured of her stalking inclinations.

He never even knew he had a stalker.
(Bowens, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 10:52, 15 replies)

I once...
Had a friend called Chris Kerr, we used to get on really well, I'd stay over his at weekends, we'd go out and play football, make bases, all the kinds of things you do when you're a kid.

His mum was always grateful that I was his friend, as he had a genetic disease which made him abnormally tall, although I never was his friend because of charity, he was a good bloke.

Fast forward 8 years to when we were both 18, we were running to his house from the local park to meet up with some other friend we'd acquired over the years, he tripped over a kerb stone and fell into the path of an oncoming car, he was promptly taken to hospital and was in a coma for 3 weeks, I stayed with him a few nights, talked to him, did everything I could to try and make my dear friend wake up. but we finally realised he wouldn't pull through so his parents decided to let him rest in peace. My best friends life ended by turning off a machine.

The funeral arrangements were made, however, we had a problem, due to his genetic condition we couldn't fit him in a standard sized coffin. During the years I had decided I would like to be a carpenter, so the parents turned to me to fashion him a coffin.

I was flattered and set about work straight away, thinking of the best tribute I could pay to my compadre.

Yes, it was me who was to decide how best to store Kerr.
(WittyUsernameHere, Thu 31 Jan 2008, 17:37, 10 replies)

Therese's Version - the reply to Che Grimsdale
This is not strictly speaking a Stalker story, more perhaps about someone wanting control. It is entirely fictional and has been written on request as a reply to Che Grimsdale's (true) story which appears on page 1. So for that reason if you prefer to read only true stories avoid this as I can't be bothered to deal with the flaming!


I will also point out that a number of terms have been included on the request of various people...and therefore this is an erotic story - those of you of a nervous disposition may want to skip it or leave it until you get home....


*******************

I was thirty and I know I should have known better. I was bored with my life – when I was a student I had started dating my tutor, he was twenty years older than me, smoked Gitanes and we discussed Sartre in pavement cafes. I moved into his apartment in the 18th arrondissement -quiet during the day when he liked to write and surrounded by strip joints at night. At first we would wander around at night laughing at the painted ladies and then before the English boy came we would go into the dark dingy clubs and watch the ‘live’ shows – anything to excite my boyfriend’s jaded passion.

I completed my studies and began to work as a research assistant at the Sorbonne during the day and sometimes at night I got work as a warden at a Foyer. The work at the Foyer was fun – I got to hang out with some of the students I knew from the Sorbonne and others who, like me, just wanted to live – drink espresso, smoke and talk about the argument between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, dance, roll into bed with each other and watch Tarkovsky films. My boyfriend encouraged me to find other bedmates – “Therese, you are young and firm, go enjoy it while it lasts”

That weekend, the weekend it all began and ended I was working on the Saturday afternoon at the Foyer. I’d left the apartment where my aging boyfriend had sat gazing out of the window looking over the roofs to the Sacré-Coeur. Through a haze of Gitanes he shook his head and told me I tasted of the sea.

When I arrived the usual crowd were hanging out, I wandered over and said hello. One of the girls, Nass, had a boy with her – he wasn’t dressed like the other boys there and his accent was a little strange – English I thought. He had dark hair that trailed into his brown eyes and he was beautiful in the way that only boys on the brink of manhood can be. I think he was around twenty. Smooth skinned and soft-featured – untouched yet by the harsh realities of life – he hadn’t yet been disappointed or left broken-hearted by a feckless lover. He and Nass had an easy way with each other – they touched and smiled a great deal – he had come to see her. The rest of the crowd were faceless. All I could see was this beautiful boy and Nass. He got up and wandered off for a few moments, I took my opportunity to speak to her. “Qu’est-ce qui se passe entre vous deux?”
“Rien”
They were friends. “Is it okay if I….He’s…..” I felt the blush creep up my face – my cool exterior warmed with my desire for her beautiful boy. She laughed, “Of course. He’ll have good memories of Paris.” So it was organised.

We went to the cinema – I don’t remember the film we saw, only that I sat next to him. I brushed my hand against his leg. I brushed my hand against his arm. I looked at him in the flickering light from the giant screen. He was beautiful.

We went back to my room at the Foyer. The others quickly left us. He was innocent, even a little gauche. For the first time I was in charge. I was making all the moves. He was my prey. I trailed my fingertips along his arm and then leant in to brush my lips against his. At first his kisses were gentle like blossom petals falling on my lips, then as the small room with its constant traffic of kids outside began to fade and the crumpled bed became our only world, so our kisses became deeper, wetter, feverish. His mouth moved to my neck, I gasped. His hand slid to my breast, I arched my back and whispered to him “I want you now.” I pulled away, stood up and peeled my t-shirt off – his breathing was ragged. He tugged at his jeans, his t-shirt, boots, socks until he lay on my bed smooth skinned and bare – skin pale and creamy as warm milk, chest hairless until his belly where a dark line began and led to the dark thatch where his cock stood waiting, twitching, for my wetness. Hunger. He stood and went to help me remove my trousers, I stepped back, not allowing him to touch me. I slipped the trousers down my thighs and stepped out of them and my silk panties. I ran one finger down his smooth torso and along the length of his rigid cock – he shivered. I knelt on the edge of the bed and flicked my tongue over the pink glistening head of his throbbing member. It was his turn to gasp. Slowly I leaned back, my feet tucked under me, my knees wide and my wet pussy open, ready. He looked a little fearful, unsure of himself. I sucked my finger and then slipped it down between my moist lips, holding them open, playing with myself for him to see.

For too long I had suffered an aging man with a soft, skinny dick and belly that simply heaved and puffed over me, working himself into a slimy sweat while I tried so hard to even feel turned on by him. Now I had a hard young body, a beautiful boy who fucked fast and furiously and did exactly as I told him – he was my ingénue.

That night I made love to him again and again – at last a man who could satisfy me and keep up with me. The following day I took him to a little hotel near the Pompidou centre where the room smelled of cheap sex and cigarettes. I rode him until he was spent then I ordered him onto his knees and he lapped at our juices as they trickled out from my swollen pussy.

Afterwards I bought him coffee and pain au chocolat as I smoked Gitanes and under the table rubbed his cock back to life through his jeans. He followed me through the streets and I pulled him into darkened doorways where I pushed his hand under my skirt and between my legs so he could feel my wetness, then I sucked his fingers yet would not touch his throbbing hardness in return. On the metro as I took him back to the Foyer I slid my hand down between us in the crush and caressed his growing erection – I thought he might come there and then in the crowd in front of the Parisian businessmen returning to their wives in the suburbs with the taste of their mistresses in their mouths.

He was mine, utterly mine.

He returned to England for a few weeks but he could not bear to be parted from me – his cock needed to return to its natural home in the moist cleft between my legs. We made plans to go to Berlin together later in the summer – my boyfriend would be teaching summer school to dull French peasants and I would be bored, my pussy dried up and sulking because of its enforced diet of soft, white, gelatinous old man. I needed the oasis of a hot spunking young cock that my beautiful English boy would give me as he plunged into me again and again.

But then he came to see me – I took a room again in the same little hotel and rode him hard amongst the ghosts of Gauloise, Gitanes, sweat and sex left behind by a hundred other young lovers. As we lay on the sagging bed he traced rings around my nipples and stared intently at my heaving breasts as he spoke to me, “Therese, I can’t go with you to Berlin. There is someone else….a girl….in England”
I replied with a kiss, “Come back and see me when you are married and ready for your first mistress just like all good Frenchmen.” The boy was English to the last – he shook his head sadly and told me about his love for this warrior princess he had found in England and how his heart would always be hers. “But my beautiful boy, I don’t want your heart.” He shook his head again,
“I’m hers now.”


I continued to work at the Foyer at weekends or between academic jobs, I left my boyfriend and went through a series of hard young men. All were French: the English were too difficult for me to understand. The coolness, the English Stiff Upper Lip - it hides their true nature – that of passion and a hard rawness. At least with the French I knew what to expect – they would marry a good Catholic girl from the countryside who would bear them children and they would return to me in the city and we would drink wine, discuss philosophy and fuck in a haze of cigarette smoke and expensive perfume. Love would not come into it.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 4 Feb 2008, 19:39, 15 replies)

nutella
On the first day after the cold winter, as I felt the sun make me lithe in my skin, it started. Some graffiti on the wall by my flat. “My name” it said. It just said “My name” and when, a couple of days later she wrote her name underneath it, I viewed it with a mixture of boredom and resignation. “Oh, her” I thought, more interested in my hangover, and how the sun flecked through my fringe. A sigh between the steps on the way out in the mornings. Restless, the gifts arrived. The letters under the front door at midnight, the presents left with the concierge with the awkward smile. Whisky, gin, vodka, cigars, a video cassette, a book, some paper flecked dark red, and some photographs she’d hopefully developed herself. I drank what I could, and I burnt the unopened letters with the cigars.

Then my mother, so far away that the sky above us had different star flecked nights, started getting phone calls. She was bemused – from a telephone exchange on the hot, dusty city, the voice pulsed its way to her receiver, where she would listen as she watched Corrie as the rain fell angry on the window.

“He’s not worth it, dear” she said she said. And I didn’t blame her. For a start she was right.

The woman sat right in front of my desk and every time I tried to joke about the Present Perfect she would open her legs. As the other students talked about the people they’d scammed or the exams they’d failed, she’d look at me and just for a second, just for a second, I would think about losing myself in her soft brown eyes, or in the softness between the legs. But then I would think about the graffiti, and the letters and the presents and I would put “must try harder” on her flawless homework.

Her skirt got shorter and the space behind her eyes got blacker, but the sun withered my concern to scorn. The graffiti on the wall got bigger, and cruder and one day she wrote that she loved me with lipstick on my windows. The neighbours talked, probably, but I wouldn’t have understood them.

The presents got more elaborate – a pen with a gold nib, a cat, a lock of her hair. Sometimes, as I stared at the dirt on the ceilings, lying to myself in my dirty bed, I would think of calling her, of starting it. But I never did.

When I told her I was leaving the country, she told me she would cut her throat if I did. I tried to doubt her. The night before I left, Kev got a phone call. Kev said it was her brother, and that, basically, I was dead. The way he didn’t smile made me think I’d taken too much speed. That’s how I came to be hiding in the bushes in the garden of the restaurant opposite my flat at 4am, waiting for the taxi to the airport with my bags hidden behind the car parked crazily up the road. Everytime I heard a car, I didn’t know whether to jump out and hope it was the taxi, or hide further hoping I didn’t end up cleavered in the street. A car did pull up and a man I did not recognise did get out and he went up the steps, past the graffiti into my flat. The taxi came and I was gone before he came out. And, as I never spoke to Kev again, I never did find out whether it was her brother. But my mother got no more phone calls.
(sirolimus, Mon 4 Feb 2008, 13:10, 10 replies)

Cheeky Scouser James.
Cheeky Scouser James attends the same school as me. He sits next to me but one in maths and in front of me in physics. Cheeky Scouser James, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. I may seem like your average, run-of-the-mill schoolfriend, I am not. I'm the phantom texter you threatened with police action.

I don't know where it came from, or why I did it. It just washed over me. This urge, this unstoppable desire to send you a scary text, and I swear at first I only intended it to be the one. I got your number from Bad Drunk Lisa, and sent you it. It was fairly innocent, that first text, odd, but not particularly meaningful.

"Would you still love me if I was in a wheelchair?" it asked.

"Who is this?" you replied, almost instantly.

I didn't answer.

Only Bad Drunk Lisa, Handsome Devil Wilson and myself were in on it, and we all found it so funny that we thought I should text you every day.

Text number two was less scay and more daft than the first, though I can see why two of these odd texts in as many days might have started to worry you.

"I saw a dolphin today, and thought of you."
Your reply was predictable.
"I think you have the wrong number." I didn't.

And so I became pavlovian in my texting, every day I would come home from school, make myself a coffee, grab the phone and text away.
I wish I'd saved all of our correspondance, so I could apologise for every one of my poetic messages.
The sexual ones ("My fallopian tubes ache with the memories of your juices") were a burden on my sexuality, and I'm sorry for lying. I don't have any fallopian tubes.

As your replies got more and more hostile, our correspondance began to way heavier and heavier upon my conscience, but before guilt could put an end to my morally shaky (and possibly felonious) ways, my lack of credit did.

Yes, Cheeky Scouser James, I felt bad when you announced that you were suicidal and started punching the fridge at that party on saturday, but I'm toping my phone up tommorow, and I just don't know what to do...
(Tip-Top Tomcat but you can call me Tommo, Thu 31 Jan 2008, 20:57, Reply)

je m'appelle Therese
i live in ... well ... it does not matter where i live. this year i shall be 53 years old. shit. okay. i live in a small town near bordeaux. during the day, i work in the magasin of a local vineyard. no one comes in winter. in summer we have english and germans buying our wine by the case. some is okay, some is not. we are not a grand cru of any classification. some is okay. i get a case a month to take home. i live alone. no man. no children. people ask me now why and i do not know what to say. sure, there were guys, but no marriage. when i was young, i had fun. the late '70s, a little drugs, le punk rock, paris, nothing serious. but then i stayed in that life. other girls from school, they married. weddings with the local priest in small towns, but not me. i kept living like i was still 19. maybe for too long. i remember even now the year i was 30: 1985. maybe it should have changed that year. i worked in a foyer, it was easy. be a friend for the kids, clean up a little, make sure things never got crazy. sometimes i was bored. sometime i liked it. i was old, but not too old. some of the kids i lived with were maybe 22, 23. one night i remember a girl saying, 'let's go to the cinema.' i had nothing to do. i went. she had this english guy with her. he was different to the french students i met. he made me laugh. the movie was his idea and it was some crazy english thing about fascists and plumbers and i do not know what. crazy. i did not have energy to concentrate so i looked at him sometimes. he made me laugh. he laughed when i did not expect. i laughed too but i do not think he saw.
it was 1985 and many people were worried about the cold war. reagan was elected again. madam thatcher was in england. they argued with the russians. i was 30 and i lived with kids who did not think they would be 40 because there would be a war. the english guy made me laugh. i thought, why not? i kissed him later, then we fucked. more than one time. sure, i had a boyfriend but it was not serious. we did not love. with the english guy it was also not love, but it was different. my first time with a foreign guy. different.
he went to london, but when he came back he was in love, for real, with an english woman. i did not know how i felt. we tried to fuck but it was not the same. he left. i never saw him again.
i stayed at that foyer for six years more, then i thought i was getting too old to talk to kids about drugs and flics. too old for paris maybe. i went to my small town near bordeaux. there were no interesting guys. maybe one or two, in time, but nothing true. i am okay now. i have my apartment and my work at the vineyard. sometimes i think of the english guy from '85. he was different.
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Mon 4 Feb 2008, 20:36, 10 replies)

Creepy fisherman stalker
3 weeks ago, I had a nasty accident while fileting a trout. Filet knives are very very sharp and the result was 36 stitches in my arm.
The day after the accident, but completely unrelated, my husband and I decided to call it quits and two weeks ago I moved into my own apartment. Now, when you only have the use of one arm because you can't feel or move the other one, moving house becomes a bit of a logistical problem.

My friends rallied round, and more so did the members of my fishing team and they all moved me in within the weekend - including going out and buying furniture for me and putting it together etc. All I had to do was provide the alcohol, money and shopping lists.

One guy, who wants to be on the Team, was also very helpful - he figured if he does this then maybe those in charge will let him join us. Every fucking day he calls and emails me now, asking if I need anything, do I need my dressings changed, do I need help with physical therapy. It sounds nice, but I just broke up with my husband, this kid is only 19 (I'm 33) and he talks about us as if we're a couple and as if he's going to spend the rest of his life with me!
I'm allowed to start fishing again next weekend and my team are organizing a "welcome back" bbq at the lake. This kid has not been invited, so now he's calling the lake managers asking to be put on the list because he's worried about how I'll manage and he doesn't think I'm ready to be doing it!

He just called while I was writing this 'cos he was pissed I didn't invite him to my housewarming last night!

Length? 3 1/2 inches wide and cut down to the muscle. Pictures are available upon request. Picture in the reply
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 18:13, 9 replies)

Stalked at a work party.
Although this episode of stalking was brief I feel it needs to be told.

My company threw a big party at a country house to celebrate how well we had done in the last year. Amongst the people there was a guy who I shall call Brian. He loved my knockers and not really caring as I'd had several pints I let him stare at them. Sadly I didn't realise what I'd let myself in for.

Everytime I went out to the portaloos I had to look around nervously in case he appeared as he was doing everything in his power to cop a feel. I could sense his presence, I knew he was watching me waiting to strike.

A few drinks later and I let my guard down. Brian leapt out from behind a group of people in the style of a ninja assassin, stuck his face down my top and made a noise I can only describe as "BRRRRRRBLLLBBB-BLLLLBBBLLRRRRRRRR!" then leapt off back into the crowd.

I still hear that sound in my nightmares.
(chakaflange, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 0:02, 5 replies)

Karma
I was walking home through Victoria Park in Manchester late at night, which is never the most sensible of things to do. I fell into step behind a young woman, and being a young and naive prick, I was amused to think that she may perceive me to be a stalker/mugger/nasty piece of work, so I didn't cross over the road or overtake her,or do any of the courteous things one might do to reassure someone in that situation. I got a perverse sensation of power from it too, and I could sense her anxiety. Well anyway, she escaped when I eventually turned off to walk up another road.
I turned into an alleyway to take a shortcut and was promptly mugged by two guys with knives. I've never heard of someone deserving to be mugged before, but I certainly did.
( ZoomZoom, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 10:25, 3 replies)

Nylon-clad buttocks
I watched her from a safe distance. I could feel my eyes bulging as they reached into the darkness, trying to get closer, closer to her nylon-clad buttocks and shaven head. Like a little mouse, that head. But bigger, and less fond of cheese. Nevertheless, I whispered to myself, “Mousehead. Mousehead. Cheese-hungry, bewhiskered mousehead.” And with every breathy utterance I could feel a minuscule stirring in my glans, like the first small bubble to appear in a vast pan of amorous soup. My loins were full of soup - metaphorical soup - yet it burned the tongue of my lust and blistered the gums of my self-control.

She turned away from the shop window and I ducked behind the stray St. Bernard that had approached to admire my trousers. I hid behind its meaty hind leg and, brushing aside its heavy scrotum with the back of my hand, I peered again at the willowy Aphrodite that stood some fifty yards ahead. She hadn’t seen me. That was quite clear as she turned the corner at the end of the street. The pursuit was on.

I doffed my hat to the great hound. Our eyes met, we shared a brief but intimate kiss and vowed to remain firm friends. I went on my way, leaving Tony (for that was his name) behind me. As I turned the corner myself, I was surprised to see that my prey had seated herself on a bench at the edge of the park. The moonlight accentuated her pale complexion, her eyes shining like hard sapphires beneath her white, ceramic forehead. The strange angle of the forehead reflected a shaft of the moon’s silver light upon me. With the shaft in my face I was illuminated like a rampant sexual beacon. My game was surely up. She noticed me, but didn’t seem to mind my presence. Indeed, she seemed pleased and was entranced by my trousers. I approached slowly so as not to startle or worry her, and my shuffling motion, left leg in front of right at all times, arms folded with my head moving from side to side, seemed to soothe her further. She thanked me and returned the way she had come.

I sat down for a moment, flustered, trying to recover from my brief panic. My strength was somewhat diminished, but my will remained strong, and so did my erection. When I had regained my breath I stood up, ready to pursue her once more. Suddenly, Tony the St. Bernard sprang from behind a Jersey cow that had been put in the park by the local council to graze. I was delighted to see him again, but this delight turned to horror as I saw him coming straight at me. His head lolled to one side and fell away as his chest opened up. Gary Coleman leapt from Tony’s torso and locked his small brown thighs around my throat.
“What didst thou do to Tony?” I gargled as I fell to the floor.
“There was no Tony, sucker!” he spat. “That was just my stalking suit.”
My head swam for a moment as my brain screamed for oxygen.
“What about our kiss?” I croaked. “Was it no more than a ploy? A mere ruse employed by an ill-grown prankster of a whore?”
“That’s right, beeatch!” he chirruped in response. "I been stalkin' yo sorry ass for five whole months. Remember the swan you nursed back to health? That was me. Remember the girl in the cinema with the pierced nipples? That was me too. You are one gullible white mutha!"
I turned my head as the life drained from my limbs, and saw the Jersey cow rear up onto its hind legs and swagger over. Again, in a moment of dreamlike wonder, this mammal split in two, straight down the middle, and from it stepped Culkin, his hands clasped to his cheeks. Coleman hadn’t noticed, and Culkin advanced confidently before swiping him away with a mighty backhand. I was obviously impressed by his sheer power.
“Pesci taught me that move on the set of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” he bleated proudly. “But Stern couldn’t get the hang of it and he sulked through the entire shoot.”
Culkin's untimely boast left him open to assault, and Coleman came at him, naked and enraged like a baby rhino at a cheerleader, dealing him a blow that would have killed an ordinary man. But Culkin took it like the man of bronze he was, and they wrestled on the floor for three hours. I tired of their homoerotic grapplings after a while and, donning the Tony suit, went in pursuit of my quarry.

Coleman and Culkin’s ongoing battle has since been documented, dramatised and adapted somewhat, and can currently be seen in cinemas under the title Alien Vs Predator: Requiem.
(stusut79, Fri 1 Feb 2008, 15:51, 11 replies)

Only one
But he scared the crap out of me. Mostly I'd meet a guy, he'd take my number, we'd go for a few dates, I'd decided that it's not meant to be (and informed them of this), and then spend months avoiding his calls (I have quite a few "do not answer!" numbers on my phone).

One, however, was quite scary. I was in halls in Camberwell, and our saturday nights tended to be spent at "RedStar", a dodgy club on Camberwell Green. It was a good place to get wasted, dance to cheese and glam rock tunes, grab a kebab and then meander back to halls. Until Freakboy. Freakboy wandered up, asked my name, and then simply grabbed hold of my norks and refused to let go. He had to be pried off by a couple of friends, who told him to piss off. Half an hour later, he came back for more, but I screamed at him to leave me alone, I wasn't interested. The bouncers saw that he was giving us a bit of trouble, and told him he'd better go home and sleep it off. So meekly he stumbled out of the club, and we thought that would be the last of it.

It wasn't.

He simply went and sat in the 24-hour cafe opposite the club, waiting until we left. He then followed us back to halls. We weren't aware of this until he tried to sneak in behind us at the gates, but was asked for his ID card. So he started screaming "BobFossil! BobFossil! I wants ya!", at which point we realised that (a) he'd followed us, (b) he was more of a psycho than we originally thought, and (c) he now knew where I lived. Bugger.

However, worse was to come. Another group of people came along after us, and found him still at the gate, muttering incoherently. Amongst this group of people was Ben, a scheming, malicious, thieving twat of the highest order. He didn't like me, I didn't like him. There was no particular reason, but we just didn't click. Like the fucked-up git that he is, he gave Freakboy my number. "Just for a laugh", apparently.

So I got a call that night, from Freakboy in a sobbing rage. "BobFossil! I've got to have you! I loooove you! Please come down and let me in!". Erm, no way. The following day I got a bunch of texts, escalating in tone, none of which I replied to. They declared his love for me, then called me a cock-teasing bitch, then he loved me again and was sorry for the previous text, then said he was going to hurt me, and the final one said he was going to kill myself. All the while, I was freaking out, scared to leave halls, and thinking of ways to kill Ben.

After another few days of texts like those, and random phone calls in the middle of the night (and friends reporting seeing him hanging around the entrance to the halls), I texted him to say that I was reporting him to the police, and changed my number. No more texts or calls, thankfully, but I still had to leave and return to halls with a bunch of other people, as he was still hanging around in the evenings. I was a complete nervous wreck, and hadn't been able to sleep properly for nearly a week. Eventually the halls security people called the police on him, as they were sick and tired of him banging on the door trying to get in. Turns out this wasn't the first time he'd tried it on with women living locally, but it was the most persistent he'd been. However, I haven't been back to RedStar, and I still feel nervous when in Camberwell (7 years later).

Although he only actually stalked me for a month at the most, he ruined my experience of living in hall. I hate him for making me such a nervous wreck, and for men (and women) like him who persist in terrorising people, having deluded themselves that they're meant to be together forever. /rant over.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 31 Jan 2008, 16:44, 9 replies)

Motorway madness
First post and it's only little,
Driving down any motorway and getting stuck in any large jam involves boredom, lots of BoreDOM. So take out your trusty mobile telphonic and call / text any number written on the side of any van in site ..."I'm watching you, I know where you are". If you can see the driver as he/she checks mobile 'tis most amusing.
(godisdove I like cheese, Wed 6 Feb 2008, 0:07, Reply)

everyone has an ex they really, really regret
I think I was just a bit ahead of the game with it being my first real boyfriend. Physical violence, mental, verbal and sexual abuse, a total psychopath. My teenage self didn't have the mental toolkit to deal with it. Eventually, I managed to break it off with him, although it cost me a lot including having to drop out of my A levels (when we'd taken our sixth form options, he'd changed his to match mine so he could 'keep an eye on me'. Everyone thought this was 'sweet').

Anyway, after breaking it off, I'd managed to get into a parallel class for one of my A levels, and in that class I made some new friends. He wasn't having this. He cut his own class in order to hang around at the school where my new class was and wait for me, and started following me from place to place.

I'd told my new friends he was my ex and I didn't want to speak to him, but I was too embarassed to tell them the full story. I don't know if he'd guessed that or not, but when he realised I wouldn't give him a hearing, he started being really nice to my new friends, with the result that more than one of them told me I should go out with him again, give him another chance.

The real fear came when he turned up at the flat where my new mates and I would get together outside school (one of our number was family-less and in a council flat which is exciting when you're 17). Someone let him in and he sat there chatting to everybody... I was terrified. Eventually he left and I finally told everyone the full story. We closed ranks and I thought that was an end of it.

A few days later he must have realised something was amiss because that's when the letters started. The first one, we didn't realise was from him until I'd read it. The next one, I had a suspicion it was from him but read it anyway, which was a stupid thing to do. After that, my Mum suggested to me that there was no point me reading the letters, as they served no purpose but to upset me. We agreed that I would no longer pick up any post from the doormat and that if a letter from him arrived, I didn't even have to know.

He eventually somehow realised that I wasn't reading his letters, and either guessed or found out that (unknown to me) my mother was reading them. So he started writing letters addressed to me but for my mother's benefit, in which he described various nefarious activities that he knew would worry her and make her suspicious of my mates (eg "I'm really worried about you hanging around with [name]. I was watching the two of you taking drugs while you were waiting outside the probation office for [another name] and I think you're getting in over your head..."). Happily my mother trusted me enough, and was getting to know my friends well enough, to realise this was utter bollocks.

You know what's really pathetic? The way it stopped. Given the level of violence I had known him to be capable of, I was terrified of getting the police involved in case he followed through on previous threats of what he'd do to me if I told anyone. I looked at him and saw a strong, scary and unpredictable nutter.

My Mum, on the other hand, looked at him and saw an overgrown little boy trying to act big by pushing other people around, including her precious daughter. So she acted in an incredibly parent-y way.

She phoned his dad.

His dad was both bigger and stronger than he was. It worked.
( Batsgirl, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 22:12, 6 replies)

Lunatic! Key Loss! Near Death! Arse-shagging!
When I was at University I was what is known as a Senior Resident. This meant that I had responsibility for the welfare of 134 first year students and was supposed to look after them; if they were homesick, lost their keys, needed referring to a university body for help, that sort of thing.

What I actually did was use this as a front for selling cannabis and ecstasy (and other substances to make the evening sparkle). Naturally this sort of behaviour introduces you to a wide circle of people, a number of who are pretty nutty.

Liz was such a one. Pretty enough (bar the brown teeth), nice and lucid (on the surface), and a little naive. Or so I thought. I thought her dim questions and nonsensical chatter were genuine, and enjoyed being seen as the fount of all knowledge (it doesn't happen often, sadly). Gradually though, it got wearing, and I began to tire of her company, selling to her then fucking her off without ceremony.

With hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have been so mean as I now began to be seen as not only a funny drug-dealing older guy (by 3 years!), but as a funny drug dealing bastard. Apparently these are even more attractive. I banned her from my house after she kept "dropping in for a spliff", and then it really started.

Her keys began to get "lost" almost daily, and I would have to let her into her flat. She was increasingly touchy-feely in her thank you's and gradually got more and more frightening. I'd begun to suss she fancied me and that her keys were actually in her bag each time she reported them lost.

I told her I wouldn't let her in again, and then she began appearing in all my haunts. I like some iffy pubs, not 18 year old giggly student fare, but she kept appearing, like piles, but more irritating. She would come and sit with me, and try and chat to my friends and colleagues, oblivious to being told to fuck off. This couldn't continue, so I came up with a cunning plan.

Liz always wanted to come pout with us on a big one, so we let her. I knew she'd get overly fucked up on pills (as she'd try to keep up with us despite being a novice) and hoped the subsequent embarrassment would allow me to fob her off onto someone else. Those of you who know me will not be too surprised to hear that things didn't go entirely to plan.

She began by coming up hard, and puking all over Dan's bedroom. Then she began to dance, and knocked over his plant pot. She was a nightmare in Insomniacz, then in the Howard she inadvertently got her tits out while taking off her jumper and left them exposed for a good ten minutes. Then she collapsed.

At this point, panic set in amongst the gang and they all turned to me. Ok, I thought, I sold the pills, I better sort her out. I revived her (one of my skills is rescuing the lives of fucked up punters), then, to teach her a lesson and wake her up (and for fun!), gave her a resounding slap across the face. She woke, rapidly, and stumbled home.

Problem solved, I thought, but no. Now I'd saved her fucking life, it seemed her devotion knew no bounds, and I had to shake her off, as you would a horny puppy. Eventually my mate Neil, seeing my distress, stepped into the breach. He somehow got chatting to her, then got her into bed and fucked her six ways from Sunday. Then over the next few weeks she started to pursue him with similar vigour...

Eventually, to end things, he took some photos while shagging her up the bum, and threatened to post them round Uni if she didn't fuck off. Finally, we were free of Liz...
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Fri 1 Feb 2008, 12:25, 40 replies)

i suffer from insomnia
and like to go for late-night walks to tire myself out.

one night, i was about half a mile from home, when i noticed there was a guy following me. i crossed the road several times, doubled back on myself, all the old tricks. he was still following me.

i'd been walking in well-lit areas up till now, but the last street before my block had broken streetlights and dark alleys. i didn't want him following me down there, he could have attacked me without anyone seeing.

i walked around the corner about 10 seconds before him and waited.

as he walked around the corner, he jumped, seemingly startled to find me there. he stopped as, conjuring up the weirdest "smile" i could muster, i leaned towards him and said "i like the vans without the windows".

it worked! suitably freaked out, he turned around and hurriedly set off back the way we had come. i waited until he had gone a couple of hundred yards, then ran the rest of the way home. it was only once i was safely inside that i realised just how lucky i had been. i wouldn't suggest to anyone that they adopt this approach, it might very well get them killed.

i never go for night-time walks these days without some kind of weapon.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 31 Jan 2008, 16:33, 8 replies)