Because, you see, I had a stalker, I never wanted his attentions; in fact, they were only "missed" insofar as their absence left me with a disconcerting feeling that he was just cooking something up by which to mess with me even more. When I got flowers last week, my first thought wasn't pleasure at the gift but worry that he'd found me again — and, worse, that he'd managed to keep tabs enough on my life to know the life-event that someone was sending me flowers to commemorate.

That's the mind-set you get into, not, as Amy is, being annoyed that he thinks you wear skirts or your writing was bad or that someone is cuter. Part of me hopes he thinks my writing sucks, that he recognized himself in the first thing I ever wrote about him and is hoping against hope that I'll stop before somebody else does, that he's moved on (although hopefully not onto stalking someone else, I guess, maybe) or gotten into therapy. I hope that I don't have to dread packages on my birthday and letters without return addresses and hang-up phone calls or the buzz of the doorbell when I'm not expecting anybody. Unlike Amy Klein, I could help but feel flattered by his florid and overwrought letters, his gifts and his packages and I never cared if he bad-mouthed me (or to whom) just so long as he stopped trying to me a part of my life.

And, unlike Amy, I don't miss my stalker or his attentions. If I never heard another word from him, if I never got another card or letter or e-mail message, if I never spoke to him again and I found out that he stopped giving a shit about me, the only think I would feel was a profound relief. Because the flowers I got last week? I found them really beautiful... as soon as I read the card and knew that they weren't from him. I would like to be able to appreciate pleasant things without the trepidation that they're from someone trying to control me.

My Very Own Cyberstalker [NY Times]
Cyber Stalking: Anything But A Modern Love Story [Concurring Opinions]

So here is my question: I was a dork in high school. And sure, that probably helped make me a slut, but never the sort of boy crazy sociopath you'd expect, given my degree of social alienation. Why is Being A Nerd In High School so much more damaging to dudes than girls? Is it just that even nerdy girls get hollered at on the street?

Instant Message, Instant Girlfriend [NYT]

Sometimes the dream would be of losing her, or of desperate searches unfulfilled. The breakup argument in the spotless white penthouse apartment. Recriminations, tears. Running down rain-slicked city streets, locked doors, impassive doormen, and always that perfect angelic face; leaving with someone else, or seen in a blank stare through a limousine window .Even the specter of losing Natalie Portman was better than that; even the memory of imaginary heartache is preferable to the slow feeling of turning into a vampire. Perhaps it is the curse of all men; the sad final truth that the male half of the human race might only confide in one another over a few too many beers: you only truly love a woman when she walks out the door.

He is back now. He has a wife and dog. But the extremeness of the putridness of his actual reality empowers ever-grander and more glamorous wishful delusions? Sounds about right. At home with his Xbox, he's either happy or miserable in the realization that he will "never dance the lambada with Natalie Portman" although maybe she'll read his column in the Times and forgive him the whole "lambada" thing because at least he's being honest that he'd probably fuck it up with them anyway, even if he can't yet admit exactly why.

May I Have This Dance? [NY Times]
Related: A Quilt Of Lost Memories [Newsweek]

This was, obviously, a response to his accusation that I seemed "smitten" and wanted a relationship with him, and my assurances that I did not, I just liked making out, and if he didn't believe me he only needed to wait until my workload picked up and I made myself scarce, which is exactly what happened, and, you know, whatever. But I didn't remember how I had become so patient or resigned or how I'd come to enjoy the "Zenlike form of nonattachment" author Marguerite Fields is struggling to perfect because it happened such a goddamn long time ago. And that was depressing; Fuck I am old. (Also depressing: I held my first newspaper job the summer Israel turned fifty.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my little sister Christina, who is a year ahead of Marguerite in college, did not find this week's 'Modern Love' as depressing as I did. (Christina is different from me in that she does things like getting her eyebrows waxed and going to therapy.) And she penned some words of advice for people who did find the column depressing — and aren't too old to change their habits — which I will excerpt here.)

I'm Moe's sister who is about to graduate from college. Moe asked me to comment upon this week's Modern Love column, a piece much more enjoyable and insightful to read than I had expected since Moe usually makes such relentless fun of the Modern Love feature I stopped reading it.

Anyway, as someone who has her fair share of one-night stands and fleeting trainstop encounters, yet is decidedly over my relationship angst, if largely due to the absence of any relationships and the discovery of internet porn.... I would like to give some advice to Marguerite Fields and other women like her. Oh hell we're all like her.

1) Trust your instincts. This is the only thing I learned in therapy. Women have great instincts (the women's intuition!) but we never listen to them. Marguerite Fields, at the end of another unceremonious dumping, writes "[I] tried to remind myself that when we first met I thought he was an arrogant, presumptuous little man." She got bad vibes from the start, and yet Marguerite, a talented and sensitive author who should have known better, proceeded to form a relationship with this man. Why? Because of a little thing I like to term "The Mister Darcy Delusion." I am sure some feminist theorist before me has already coined this term, and if so I apologize, but it's ridiculous that this is your job. The Mister Darcy Delusion is the notion, popularized by the early 19th century author Jane Austen, that the smug asshole who calls you fat at the party is really just a misunderstood studmuffin held in by early 19th century social conventions who will turn into Colin Firth if you give him a chance. Well chicas, Jane Austen died a spinster (thank you, Anne Hathaway) and it's the 21st century, and if he looks like a prick and he talks like a prick and he walks like a prick, well, chances are you've had sex with him.

2) Read "The Rules." It's a stupid book, yes, but it's a reminder that you can take control of your relationships at least partially by a) getting a life b) taking a shower and c) not calling back immediately after he calls and going all crazy on his ass.

3) Only go out for guys that you think are hot. Most women tend to chase after guys that they think are physically unattractive under them is guided assumption that said guy will be so grateful to have scored a Hot Chick that he will be true forever. THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Ugly guys always get laid more, and they are often the biggest assholes about it because they are so insecure that girls keep hooking up with them out of pity. This is a time when our human evolution truly runs counter to our own efficient natural instincts. Ladies, right this wronged system and only chase after guys that you think are LEGIT cute so you don't have to lie to your friends and be like "But he has a really great personality," when what you mean is "It's weird how he makes me feel so terrible about myself when he's the ugly one."

Hahahaha, I found something. It was a crap email I received recently from a particularly exasperating dude. 44.44% FEMALE. Just for fun, I tested the exasperated email I sent him back: 81.16% MALE. Pyhrric victory if there ever motherfucking was one, but still.

Gender Guesser

Holly, 26, met a guy in a bar and, after they'd been seeing each other for two months, found out that he'd been married for three years. Emma, 29, cheated on her boyfriend, Sam, but felt "horribly guilty" about it. Ruth also cheated on her boyfriend and not only felt "terrible" about it, but was "anxious about being caught." Although the article's author, Sadie Nicholas, would have us believe that this posse of women are cocktail-swilling homewreckers, aren't they actually just representative of the rough conditions in any urban dating pool? Since when are married men willing to cheat on their wives victims? And while cheating on a boyfriend isn't ideal behavior, at least the women didn't enter the legally binding contract of marriage and then have an affair. Since the climate around them is such that trust is hard to come by and promises mean little, is it so shocking that these women are a product of their environment? The article's headline asks the questions: "Liberated feminists? Or selfish and deluded?" We think the answer actually "Neither".

Liberated Feminists? Or Selfish and Deluded? Meet the very Modern Mistresses [Daily Mail]

Earlier:
Woman Who Dates Married Men Makes No Apologies But Plenty Of Excuses
Why Do Wives Blame The "Other Woman" For Their Husbands' Wandering Weiners?

• Cosmo EIC Kate White taught us about fudge but appeared uncomfortable with discussions about fudge-packing.
  
• Maybe that's why her cover lines are so tired. She needs a dose of sexual fucking instead of old fashioned erotic sex.
  
• Forget fucking. We wanna see Christina Aguilera play Samantha from Sex and the City over and over again.
  
• It's a sight more entertaining than that crappy SATC trailer.
  
• Or Candace Bushnell's annoyingly needy column.
  
• And anyway, we need some trannie humor after that Modern Love made us hate ourselves.
  
• Let's just watch Fat Camp and be grateful that we still have our hair bows.

So yeah, I wrestled with all this shit and figured that there were five stages of "WTF" you must endure to get to the answer.

1. Accept that you've spent some time hating women.
2. It probably had to do with high school. Women are crueler at younger ages and get nicer as they get older. It's a scientific fact. Men are the other way. Remember how Hitler used to be an art fag? Yeah.
3. Realize that you were too busy empathizing with this woman — because you're a WOMAN! you're naturally empathetic!! — to realize you have nothing in common with her i.e.

I begged off on baby groups when my children were born and haven't been able to bear book clubs, the charity circuit, women's fitness classes or the country club scene.

former goddess turned caricature: too lacquered, too accessorized, too fit.

Oh, and lastly, can you believe there was a time a guy could get excommunicated from his fraternity for date rape? I thought that was, like, an intramural sport at this point.

• I woke up late.
  
• Now I know how I will go about never waking up again. [Telegraph]
  
• Some grooms apparently have vaginas. [Daily Mirror]
  
• Which explains why post-partum depression is so very very tough on them. [ABC News]
  
• Science may have found a way to solve Lindsay Lohan. Or maybe just all those coke-addicted mice out there. [Daily Mail]
  
• A rule of thumb for tipping your sperm child: it should be at least as much as the spank bank paid you for the DNA. [NYT]
  
• This is going to totally shock Lula Mae Broadway but I never saw any of Ingmar Bergman's films [Wash Post]
  
• And I won't see anything until after I see the Simpsons movie everyone else saw while I was attending to my drinking problem. [WSJ]

• Rudy Giuliani says the Dems want a "nanny government", and we'd take a Scarlett Johansson-Fran Drescher ticket over Cheney-Bush ANY DAY. [AP]
• Renting: not just for third world uteruses anymore! [Breitbart]
• "Jesus — at what tax rate are your brains forcibly removed?" LOL. [Wonkette]
• Hillary Clinton writes almost like a Sarah Lawrence student.
• Campral absolutely does not work. We're back on excess.