Yesterday and today, Old Boyfriend has called at 9 AM and again at 11. Doesn’t he have a job? Something else to do besides harass young ladies who are old/young enough to be his granddaughter? Maybe I’m just sick of American men (okay, I am), but what is it with these losers that keep popping up? Why is it that our men refuse to grow up and get decent jobs and support themselves and be, well, men? I do believe in trying to fulfill your dreams and keeping the magic and youth alive, but there also comes a point where you have to start being an adult and balancing your life with taking care of yourself, paying your bills, and just growing and being an adult in general. The guys I’ve met just can’t seem to get this.
Anyway, I was still in bed at 9, so I didn’t get the phone, but I knew it was him. No one else calls me on Sunday mornings because I’m either asleep or doing other things that don’t warrant interruption. Just now I was on the computer doing stuff and the phone rang again, and by simply looking at the clock I knew who it was. I was beginning to think that if I still didn’t answer, he was going to start calling every hour. So I picked up the phone and stepped into the kitchen (because I was blasting Abba in the other room — oh shut up), pressed the talk button and just growled, “You need to stop calling me.” And hung up. No room for argument. It’s my phone, my life he’s interrupting and disrupting, so I have every right to just say those few words and hang up. Thankfully, he didn’t call back, but I would have just ignored it anyway.
This throws a wrench into my plans, though. It’s not raining, and the clouds actually appear to be breaking up for what might be a lovely but cold Sunday afternoon. A little break before the rain comes back tomorrow. I was going to go in and work a bit by myself, but because he just keeps calling, I can’t. I know he’s calling because I haven’t been out for over a week, because the incessant calls started after last weekend, my last time out there. I don’t know if he works Sunday, I actually have no idea what his schedule is, so I don’t know what days are safe. Yes, I could just sneak out and hang around some of the guys I know, but I also need to be making a certain amount of money to be worth my while, and there’s still the walk back to the car alone. He’s accosted me before during that short solo walk, so even that’s too much of a risk. So . . . *sigh* I guess I’ll just have to wait until next weekend, when Catwoman’s available for carpooling and the weather’s a bit better.
Dammit.
I don’t like to be serious very often, especially on here, because life is just too short and too strange to take everything seriously. But there are some things worth putting on a straight face for, and this is one of them.
Ladies, stalkers are not cute. They’re not charming, they’re not endearing, they’re never your soulmate or even a good date. They’re not what TV and most Lifetime movies make them out to be: adorable, slightly geeky guys who are just too shy to woo you straight up. In real life, they’re always socially retarded creeps who have never had a date, let alone any sort of sexual contact with a woman, and think that by following you everywhere, calling every day, eavesdropping on your conversations and just assuming they’re the perfect man for you, that they are in fact “nice guy”s and just misunderstood. They usually have hygiene problems, social problems, and mental problems, and once you’ve had to stop being nice and tell them no firmly, they turn against you in nearly violent ways. It’s a nightmare. If you can, just cut them off the second they first approach you, and save yourself a lot of headaches. America’s stalker laws, especially involving cyberstalking, are woefully inadequate and at least 15 years behind the times, and won’t protect you. (Trust me on this: I’ve had to contact law enforcement about this, and it’s a tangle of state jurisdictions and IP servers’ whimsy.)
I’m giving you this warning and telling you to just not deal with these freakazoids in the first place because I’ve been there too often and I’m tired of it. I try to be nice to everyone, even the weird ones, and it always bites me in the ass. You can always tell the ones who get too attached, so just calmly disentangle yourself from any and all contact with them and consider yourself lucky.
Old Boyfriend has called every day now, and while I never answer because I don’t want to do that crap over the phone, I’ve had it. I have never given him any encouragement, never given him any reason to even start to think that yeah, I’d like a relationship with a guy at least ten years older than my father, and even now, most guys start thinking, “Okay, I’ve called four days in a row and she’s never answered or called me back. That must mean something.” As in, she’s not interested. But now I’m going to have to watch my back and not be alone the next time I do work, because the creeps always have a way of hiding until you’re alone or cornered and then getting belligerent when you tell them that they’re freaking you out and being too pushy.
And then there’s the added awkwardness of still being around each other because he works there and I work around there. Yes, I can just stay away from the Chinese Theatre for a bit, but there’s no invisible tether tying him to that spot. He can follow me around and yell insults all day if he wants, and as long as he stays on the public half of the sidewalk, I can’t really do much. If he does it on the clock and a supervisor catches him, sure, he could get reprimanded, but having some chick in a Batgirl costume complaining about an unbalanced guy isn’t exactly the best built-in defense. All of the drivers like us and most have talked to me and like me, but that may not have enough sway. And do I really have to get a guy fired to have some safety and peace? He’s done this to other female characters, but that doesn’t make me feel any better
See what a headache this becomes if you try to be nice and not hurt feelings? All it takes is one clueless fucktard to ruin it for everyone.
1/24/09 – And ladies, any guy you don’t know who calls you before 9 AM on a Saturday morning is not your friend and is also an inconsiderate jackass. Unless someone you know is on fire and he took it upon himself to call you, cut that mofo off at the knees. I just found out that my service provider, Verizon, doesn’t let you block numbers, which is beyond stupid. I’d love to just turn my phone off for a bit and shoot him straight to voicemail, but my sister is having a baby any time now and I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss that call because of this jackass. If it keeps raining and I can’t go in at all this weekend, then the next time he calls, I’m just going to yell “Quit calling me!” and hang up. I still don’t want an ugly confrontation over the phone, but seriously, this is unacceptable. If I have to take the sleazy way and tell him off over the phone (which, seriously, is a cop out, almost on par with dumping someone in an email, or through MySpace. Don’t do it if you want to have any class whatsoever), I will, but creeps like that tend to have the message stick a little better when they see your angry face and some of your good friends standing discreetly in the background, cracking their knuckles. You get me?
