When we would go to her place to pick her up, I'd let him head down to her bedroom to get her, and I'd sit in the living room and talk to her roommate. She was very quiet, shy, and withdrawn, but after I'd been there a few times, she warmed up and was able to chat with me while I waited. We invited her along a few times, but she never wanted to go.

Well, it turns out I may well have been the only guy who was ever nice to her. I honestly don't know any of the details, but the transition was abrupt and frightening.

I came home one night after an evening at the pub. Two of our roommates were asleep, so I was making an effort to be as quiet as possible. I went into my bedroom, got undressed, and climbed into bed. I didn't even turn on the light.

My first thought was that the bed was surprisingly warm. then, it was that the blanket was kind of hanging off me strangely.

Then a hand grabbed my... yeah.

I screamed. Literally screamed, and lept out of bed. I hit the light, and there was the girlfriend's roommate, buck naked in my bed.

I don't remember what I told her, I stammered something about how I barely knew her, and I really needed my sleep, and I was flattered but... etc etc. Whatever I said, apparently it worked eventually, and she got dressed and headed home.

I passed it off as a bit weird, but pretty well harmless. My friends all had a good laugh at my expense, saying they wanted a naked girl to just show up in their bed. Ha, ha, very funny. It was seriously frightening. My door had been locked. She broke in.

Aside from a bit of ribbing and a few inside jokes, I didn't think much of it. Then I started getting notes on my car. It was quite a distinctive car, so I wasn't surprised when I'd get them all over town. But then I started getting a lot of them. And they'd all read something like, "Call Me. - You Know Who" with a big heart. Then they read, "Is it a good time yet?" I thought a friend was making fun of me, but they all feverishly denied it, saying that would be too mean even for them.

Then it got worse. I came out of class, and she'd be sitting there, waiting. But she wouldn't want to talk, she'd just make eye contact, wave, then walk away. I'd go to a pub, she'd be sitting at a table, by herself, staring at me. I'd go shopping, I'd see her nearby every few minutes.

For the longest time, she didn't do anything. But everywhere I went, she was there, just watching. She wouldn't talk to me, and if I tried to talk to her, she'd retreat again to a safe distance, and resume watching me.

I started getting notes on my door. I found a note in one of my textbooks -- no idea how it got there. More notes on my car. A note on the whiteboard on the front door of my dorm suite. Messages on ICQ (yes, I'm dating myself there). Emails. Texts on my cellphone.

And then, for a week, every night I'd come home to find her lying in my bed, again. After two nights, she started getting insistent. Telling me, in graphic terms, that she wasn't leaving until I had sex with her. I tried stubbornness, I tried dealing, I tried bargaining, I tried reasoning, and each night, eventually, I got her to leave. Now, I'm a big guy, and I'm sure if I had wanted to, I could have simply made her leave. But when you're dealing with someone who's not quite stable, the last thing I wanted was for there to be some sort of bruise as a result. Because really, if it came down to it, which of us are the police going to believe? The big guy with no bruises, or the small girl with bruises. She's the one with evidence.

So on the second night of this, after I got her away from my room, I went down to Campus Security to file a report.

They laughed at me, and told me I should just "fuck her an' get it over with". I told them I wasn't joking, this was getting scary. They said they wished they had some hot chick stalking them. They were more concerned with what size her breasts were than with actually helping me.

Finally, they eventually, reluctantly, allowed me to file a complaint, but said that they hoped I understood that there wasn't much they could do about it.

The next night, having filed that report, I called security when she showed up in my bed again. Security told me, "Very funny, fuck off."

So after a few nights, I got the girls across the hall to help me out. They kept a watch on my front door to see how she was breaking in to the suite, and my roommate hid in our storage room to see how she was breaking into my bedroom. By this point, I was too creeped out to be there.

Turns out she had somehow managed to steal a dorm master key from the housing office, and had made herself a copy. That was enough to get her kicked out of the residences, and her stalking stopped almost entirely, but still, every few years or so, i'll get a phone call, an email, a text message, and it all comes flooding back again.

Stalking is scary, it's unpleasant, it's intimidating, it's just plain awful... and it's not taken seriously enough at all.

 Reply

the unit was started after tv starlet rebecca shaeffer was murdered in the late 80's. yes her death was tragic, as was that of my childhood hero john lennon's, but what about the rest of us not blessed with fame, talent, and in some cases, beauty?

[i do feel for celebrities when they are stalked, especially ones with kids, but c'mon, the ass-sucking favoritism by the city to those already blessed with an excess of resources, when others experience the same thing, is beyond the beyond.]

 Reply