23 April 2002 ~ Crazy man...

A good day: sunny and full of adventures.

Got some work doen last night on my book. Have taken conscious note of some rituals that help me write better, most notably listening to music, then forcing myself into absolute silence, and making sure to have bandaids on hand. I don't know WHY, but I always end up fucking BLEEDING when I'm writing something important.

Now, there are two things that tell me when it's time to pack up for the night and go home... One of them is bleeding and not having a bandaid. The other is when I get distracted by some bizarre religious question and INSIST on having it answered at THAT moment. That's a signal that it's time to wrap up.

Anyway, this entry is not about bleeding. This entry is to tell you that I'm pissed off. I'm NOT actually pissed off, nor am I particularly worried, because it's been a lovely, sunny day, but I've been given plenty of REASONS to feel pissed off and worried. So! We're going to talk about that now. And this is important, so seriously, all of you guys listen up...

So I already admitted (with no small amount of shame) that I posted a personal ad online. And I mentioned that the folks who'd emailed me back where mostly pretty lame. Right? Yes, we've gotten that far. Well, the very last of the lot -- the ONLY one who didn't sound like a complete moron -- started going kind of weird on me...

At first, it was an email asking: "where ARE you???" What the hell? I'd been in Seattle for two days, and I hadn't checked my email at all. Moreover, I'm ninety percent sure I'd TOLD him that. And if I HADN'T told him that, I'm ninety percent sure I told this journal that, and this kid HAS my stupid website address. Who the hell gets angry or frustrated or neurotic, or WHATEVER, after TWO days of having their email go unanswered? Dude... Two days is NOT a long wait. Obviously, our friend here was not a very patient person. So I emailed him back, casually telling him that I'd been in Seattle, and that he fucking KNEW that, and why was he bothering to ask why I hadn't emailed him back?

He said something about his computer had crashed, and he didn't know if his emails were getting through to me. Somehow, that just seems fishy. It just doesn't sound right. If you're worried your emails aren't going through, you email somebody and say, "if you get this message, please email me back so I know my account is working," not "WHERE ARE YOU?"

Then he emailed me a message that said merely: "God loves you!"

What the fuck? This kid proclaims that he's read two years' worth of my journal, and if he's done anything of the sort, he ought to fucking know that I'm not a big believer in "God" in the dogmatic "God loves you" sense. I mean, you guys all KNOW that, right? It's not that I don't believe in Higher Powers; I just think it's kind of arrogant to assume we know anything about them, or to try to name them, categorize them, or speak for them. You get me? And if the kid was making some sort of a wise-ass joke, which I'm pretty sure he WASN'T, then it just wasn't funny. I mean, if a very good friend of mine emailed me the same thing, I might giggle, but I don't even KNOW this guy...

Anyway, so I emailed him back and asked him what the hell was wrong with him, to which he didn't give a conclusive answer.

I was willing to forgive all of this. Really. Perhaps he really had had computer troubles and just wanted me to email him back to be sure his messages were getting through. Perhaps the "God loves you" email was just... I don't know. Perhaps he was just bored and felt like typing whatever came into his head and sending it to me.

But then he started going really fucking weird. He said "I kept trying to find you all day today, but I really don't know what you look like."

Now, pardon me, but if I wanted this guy to "FIND" me, I'd give him, you know, my address and phone number. And if he really wanted to get together, to meet me in person, the easiest way is to say: "Can I have your number?" Or: "Do you want to go get something to eat sometime this weekend?" He was trying to "find" me. If you've got to be that fucking sneaky about it, there's seriously got to be something wrong with you. You want to hang out, you want to see what somebody looks like, then you fucking ASK THEM TO HANG OUT. You don't get all sneaky about it. That's just fucking creepy.

He said, in the same email, that he'd gone downtown that day -- no, not for the festivities of the Olympia Arts Walk, because he probably wouldn't have gone to that if he'd remembered about it. No, he was downtown, having a cup of coffee at Otto's, and "scoping out" my "man." This random anonymous stranger who met me on the goddamned INTERNET, through a PERSONALS AD in a paper called THE STRANGER (how fitting), was going to my favorite coffeehouse to LOOK at the person I've been slowly developing a kind of crush on? What the motherfuck? THAT isn't cool at ALL. That's just so, so, SO not cool.

I can understand these things a little bit, you know... Little displays of stalker-ishness. I mean, a year and a half ago, lots of people dropped by my workplace to get a look at me when they discovered my journal after that dumb newspaper article ran. Some of them quietly asked, "Are you Helena?" Some of them didn't say anything, but they'd just stare. Fine. If they like my journal, and they live near me, and they want to look at me but don't have the nerve to say hello, fine. It's stupid and it's rude, but I can understand it.

But going to this coffeehouse to "SCOPE OUT" my FRIEND? What the fuck? Why would somebody DO that? That's just ugly. If you've got a little crush on me or whatever, even though you've never met me, and you want to kind of follow after me and look into what I actually do all day, then fine. It's creepy if you're following me, and it's creepy if you're looking up my class schedules or whatever, but it's still ALMOST acceptable. But to look for my FRIENDS??? And Matthew, at Otto's, is hardly what I'd call a close friend. Sure, he's very interesting. Sure, I find him ridiculously attractive. But it hasn't gotten much past the stage of friendly chatting. I don't know his last name. I don't know where he lives or how old he is, or what his sign is. We're NOT close friends yet. Why is some fucking anonymous stranger "scoping" him out? FUCK that shit. That's not acceptable, and there's NO fucking excuse for that.

(I have this horrible scenario in my head of some freaky fellow staring at Matthew for hours on end, and Matthew asking me, "Hey, I wonder why that guy is staring over here?" And I'd have to say, "Uh... that's this guy from the internet who I think is kind of interested in me sort of, or wants to be my friend, or something, and he's staring at you because he knows I have a big crush on you..." Holy fucken shit. I'm NOT going through THAT...)

Worst of all, Creepy Anonymous Boy mentioned that he'd been at Otto's at 5.30. Well... so was I. And so was Matthew. As a matter of fact, Matthew and I were having lunch together. At 5.30, at Otto's. I didn't see anybody staring at me except this 18-year-old kid named Ian to whom I bummed a cigarette once. (Ian and I talked about cars. I think he was impressed to meet a girl who talked about cars. Funny thing is, I don't know jack about cars; I've just been in a lot of ones that have broken down, and I remember what makes they were...) Was Creepy Anonymous Boy there? Did he SEE me? And if he did, did he know it was me?

Stupid Helena -- what were you thinking? You've probably given a few descriptions of yourself in this journal, and you've posted a couple of pictures of yourself from time to time, but good gahd, what were you thinking, describing people other than yourself? What the fuck were you thinking? Now everybody knows what my not-so-close friend Matthew looks like. What the fuck? I may as well have posted a stupid PICTURE of him. As a matter of fact, I've put WAY too many specifics in this journal. Really, I have. No names -- or very few real names, anyway -- but if you wanted, if you're a careful observer, no matter where you are in the whole world, you could get to my room. I mean, you already know what state and city I live in. You know I'm living in the dorms. From there, it's pretty damned easy, from context clues and such. You could make your way right to my door without asking a SOUL if they know where I live. Stupid Helena. What were you thinking? What if this kid is really some kind of crazed stalker? And he sure as hell did come OFF as a crazed stalker...

I told him off after that email telling me he'd been trying to "find" me, and that he'd been "scoping out" my friend. I told him that that was WAY too creepy for my tastes, and that he could just take his creepiness and shove it up his ass. I said it in NO uncertain terms. I'm sorry, kids, but if you want to talk to me, you talk to my email account, or you talk to me face to face -- ON MY TERMS. Does that make me paranoid? No, that makes me SAFE. It makes me NOT DEAD. So whatever; this guy could just go to hell. I told him so, pretty much in so many words. Just before I send him the "stay the fuck away from me; you're really creepy" email, I read it allowed to Louise, who agreed that it was harsh, but probably justified.

Now, there are three ways Dude could have responded. The first would be to think, "well, Helena doesn't want to talk to me, and she was really forceful about saying so, and she's probably a bitch anyway, so I just won't write her back." That would be too easy. The second would be to write back and say: "Whoa, you're a real bitch; I'm not going to write to you anymore." That would be too easy. The third, and probably most logical, would be to email me and say "listen, you've got some things wrong about me, and I want to explain myself so you know I'm not the kind of person you're thinking I am."

That would be pretty easy, right? No, Creepy Anonymous Dude couldn't do any of those things. Creepy Anonymous Dude decided to get a hundred times creepier, and write back telling me he had NO idea what I was talking about. He swore he'd never said anything about "trying to scope out" my friend. He SWORE he hadn't said anything about trying to "find" me. He swore up and down that he had NO idea where I'd gotten these ideas from. Uh... maybe from the email where he'd SAID THEM? Which was in FRONT of me? I emailed him back, told him he was a fucking psycho, and forwarded him a copy of his creepy stalker-ish email. I also informed him that I was blocking his email address from sending me further messages.

Now, that's REALLY the end of the end, RIGHT? Nope. Of course not. Helena, when will you learn that psychos NEVER give up. Not until you're bleeding, at least.

He sent me this:

"too bad that i cant contact you anymore. I save all my email so I know what I sent. GOD BLESS YOUR SOUL. 666"

...from another email address.

A few hours later, he emails me this COMPLETELY incoherent story about cops, some downtown bar, America's Most Wanted, and getting high with some friend. I swear I read it like seventeen times and I still have no idea what the fuck it means. This from yet another email account.

The same day: "You are still a lovely person..."

What the fuck? What the fuck... God bless my soul, 666, and yet I'm still a lovely person? And in between all that, he goes completely nuts and starts babbling shit that I can't even understand? (And I'm pretty good at deciphering meaning in less-than-sane messages...) I mean, pardon my paranoia, but is this not the kind of behavior one might expect from a crazy wife-beater on a Lifetime movie? First the dude is damning me to hell, and then he's telling me I'm a lovely person? I'd made it fucking CLEAR I didn't want to talk to him, and then he's got THREE more messages he has to get across before he hits the road?

So, to make it all ABUNDANTLY clear, I emailed him ONE more time to say this:

You can keep getting all the goddamned email addresses you'd like in order to fuck with me, but they're all going to get deleted, and blocked, one by one. You're really, really creepy, you know that? When somebody says, "I don't want to talk to you," that means they DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU. Go to hell, buddy.

But I forgot to block the email addresses. I honestly forgot. Or had to go to class, or some such thing. I had EVERY intention of blocking him from sending me anything further. Three more emails since then. He called me a psycho. He said something rude about Norman, whom he'd read about in this journal (and thank the fucking higher powers I don't use real names in this damned thing...). He said it's no wonder I don't have any friends. He said I hadn't given him much of a chance, and proceeded to describe himself in great detail, as if knowing he's tall and has blue eyes is going to change the fact that he's been emailing me fucking COMPULSIVELY, at LEAST once a day to either tell me what a twatrag I am, or to tell me what a "lovely" person I am, or to damn me to hell, or to comment on... Jesus fucking Christ; I just don't want to TALK to him. I don't want to hear from him. I want him to go the fuck away! I really just want him gone. He won't go away. In the time it's taken me to write this entry so far, he's sent me an email. I had him blocked from sending me anything at all, but then I went to check and see if I'd blocked him, and I think I unblocked him. Who KNOWS how many emails bounced back to him in that time...? Also, I DID delete all those emails, but at the last minute, realized I might need them, and stuck them in a folder marked "Asshole." One or two of the early ones disappeared, I think, but I've got the majority still.

Here's a question for you sane people... (I'm not saying that's ALL of you, but at least one of two of you must be?) So you "meet" somebody online, and you say something that makes you come off as a creep. Your new Potential Friend tells you to fuck off and not to talk to her anymore. Now, do you email her EIGHT MORE TIMES???

This is not fucking normal. This is not fucking normal AT ALL. This is NOT a stable individual. Somebody wants nothing to do with you, you maybe try to redeem yourself, explain yourself, whatever. And if that doesn't work, then you BACK THE HELL OFF!? RIGHT??? I do NOT like this dude. I do not like knowing that he's probably not too far away from me RIGHT NOW. I do not like the fact that I was stupid enough to allow him access to my online journal. I do not like the fact that he's already tried to "find" me once (and I SWEAR those were his words! He was trying to "FIND" me), and that he's got easy access to finding out the times and places of my classes and where I live.

I've spoken to one of my faculty members already, told her not to give out ANY information about me. I'm emailing my other faculty member now. And tomorrow sometime, I'll be in the computer lab printing out all these creepy messages sent to me by this guy. THEN, I'm going to the cops. I don't expect they'll do much of anything. But I'll be damned: this guy better pray for my health and safety, because if anything happens to me, they're ALL coming for him.

Bear witness, guys: if anything happens to me, you're looking for a kid who probably goes here to Evergreen, whose name is probably Lance. He's probably tall with blue eyes. There are excerpts of his emails above, none of which are taken (very far) out of context. If anything happens to me, that's who you're looking for, and that's who the cops will be looking for. I don't think I'm being overly paranoid here. I think I'm a woman, and I think I'm kind of small, and I think I don't want to be unsafe. And I'm thinking that this is not, in any way, shape, or form, a stable individual. I'm thinking that I'm going to begin utilizing the campus escort service regularly. Or at very least, carrying a lit cigarette at ALL times outside.

This is all just WAY too much like a "based-on-a-true-story!" Lifetime movie about stalkers.

There you go, Lance... I've had almost 60 hits a day to this website for the past two days... How do you like being famous? Now that everybody knows you won't leave me alone, are you going to leave me the fuck alone? Now that you know I'm going to the cops, are you going to leave me alone? Now that you know everybody's eyes are on you, and that *I* am the one with the upper hand, and that everybody's watching out for me, are you going to leave me alone? I'm NOT going to be intimidated by you, you fucker. I don't CARE what you think of me, because I think you're insane, and I think you belong in a hospital or something. I don't care how many times you email me: words will rarely hurt me. And I can delete any old thing I want. And if you try anything outside of the virtual world, everybody KNOWS already what kind of crap you're giving me NOW, and everybody will know it's you if anything happens. How do you like that!?

Now. Is this the end of the conversation?

Thank you.

~Helena Thomas*