geoswan's Journal: What it is like being stalked.

Recently a young slashdotter wrote about her concern that she was being stalked. Here is my story of what it is like to be stalked.

My stalker was a gay man. A stealth gay man. He didn't look gay. He didn't act gay. I didn't know he was gay. What I initially interpreted as a death threat was probably just a threat of sodomy.

My first contact with him was when he knocked on my doot to borrow a cup of sugar.

Then he started to leave weird anonymous phone messages on my answering machine. It was when call answer was new, so I figured he didn't know who was leaving the messages; that I knew his apartment was right below mine.

Those messages got more weird. He would play violent heavy metal music on them. And they became more frequest.

I asked the General Manager of my building for advice. He was going on his summer vacation. But, he told me, if I got any more calls, he would speak to the guy when he got back.

Well, I didn't get to wait that long. That night he phoned five times. He made sure I knew who he was. I disconnected my phone. His final message to me was "You asshole! I am going to get you, and I don't care how long it takes!" Followed by a couple of minutes of violent heavy metal music with the refrain, "...gonna cut off his head ... don't care what happens..." About one minute after leaving this message, at 5:30am, he set off the building's fire alarm system by banging on his ceiling, my floor. Well, my building's President, and Membership Secretary encouraged me to see this as a "cry for help" -- not a real death threat. The guy was "troubled". We could deal with this within our own resources, without calling in the Police. His brother lived in the building. They were sure he would help out, make sure Keith got counselling. I let them talk me into trying this approach.

Big mistake.

I talked to his brother, about a week later. He assured me his brother was harmless. But he hadn't heard anything about the threat.

Well, when Keith left another message, about three weeks later, I felt I was released from my promise not to contact the Police

So, I went to the Police Station. I told the grizzled desk sergeant the bare details of my story. She typed some stuff into the computer, and then got really curt with me. What did I expect them to do about it? I asked if they could talk to him.

Nope. They didn't do that. If I wasn't prepared to lay a charge against him, I should go home.

So I said I would lay a charge.

Well, I would have to wait. She didn't have a constable to take my statement.

I waited over three hours, on a tiny wooden bench, in a bare waiting room, with no reading material, or even a window.

Finally, at the shift change, she sent this 20 year old constable to talk to me. After hearing the bare details of my story he asked me, "Well, do you want us to talk to him?"

The desk sergeant must have been eavesdropping. She yelled for the young constable to come there. When he came back he told me she had chewed him out.

I am still pissed off at my neighbours. Because of the request from my building's President I didn't tell a lot of my neighbours about this incident. But I had told a few of them. No one told me he was gay -- which would have saved me a lot of trouble.

People who had lived there a long time all knew this. He had lived with a lover. They had started a serious fire, through an accident smoking Crack. So everyone who lived here then knew he was gay.

I think the desk sergeant's hostility was due to misplaced homophobia. She looked up my neighbour's record, saw he was a gay man, and assumed that my legitimate complaint was some kind of weird lover's tiff; that I was this guy's lover, and that harrassing one another through the Police was something we did. But I barely knew that guy. I had only had one live and in person conversation with this guy, when he asked me if he could borrow that cup of sugar.

Well when I finally learned he was gay, I relaxed. "You asshole! I am going to get you -- and I don't care how long it takes!" -- this was not a death threat. I think it was a threat of sodomy.

He was taller than I was. But I was heavier. He looked like he was 60+ years old. In fact he was only a year or two older than I was. I was told that he had lost about fifty pounds, before he got ill.

I think he had AIDS. I think he was suffering from AIDS dementia. He stopped phoning. But he started trying to chat me up, when he saw me in the elevator, or when we had events, like pot-luck dinners, in the rec-room. The guy was dying of AIDS, so I wasn't going to just ignore him. But I didn't want to encourage him. So I didn't make eye contact when I gave his entreaties short answers.

Why didn't he take the hint? It was pretty creepy that he didn't. But, I realized, that this is not uncommon. Gals go through this all the time -- the unwanted admirer who doesn't know how to take a hint.

Guys, if you try to chat someone up. And it seems to you that they are being shy, or acting coy, and just need drawing out? Well, consider the other possibility, that they have already decided they don't want to have anything to do with you.

I think us guys make this mistake all the time. I think I sometimes made this mistake before I went through the flip side. It has been character building for me.

I see my male peers now, acting creepy. Some guys think that open admiration -- okay leering -- is okay. I think they think they would know when they were approaching the point where their attentions became offensive. I think they think they will know when to stop short of the point of being offensive. I think they think they are far short of the point of being offensive, because the gal in question hasn't even seemed to notice them.

Well, trust me -- having experienced the flip side -- you have to consider that it is not that they haven't noticed you. You have to consider that they already noticed you. And that you already went through, and went past the point of being offensive. I think you have to consider that what looks like you haven't been noticed is really someone who is ignoring you, and hoping you will just go away.

What happened in my case?

Over the next few years he lost a lot more weight, and grew more obviously feeble. I stopped having to deal with his overtures. His mother started coming over, once a week, to leave meals for him to nuke. And then he died. Tuberculosis was the cause of death his family acknowledged. TB is an opportunistic infection AIDS sufferers get.

Wow

[Epona]

That's a really scary and depressing story (in more ways than one). You are right on when you say that a lot of guys can be very overbearing, and a lot of times it might not be intentional- but it sure scares the hell out of the girls (or guys, as the case may be) that are on the recieving end, because oftentimes, as is my case, guys tend to have at least a good 50lbs on them.

It's really screwed up what the police did (or didn't do) - but unfortunately it is often the case among gay couples, at least amon

Any sign

[geoswan]

Thanks for your comments.

Is the coast still clear?

Re:Any sign

[Epona]

yeah everything has been OK so far- I told everyone else in the house about the problem and my brother and mom have agreed not to answer the door after dark unless they're expecting someone.

oh and...

[Epona]

you got the link in the JE wrong, btw :)

this is the right one [slashdot.org]

Flip side to how we make our own intentions clear

[Ra5pu7in]

Actually it is interesting the measures we think, are even taught, will convince the other party we are not interested: no eye contact, short and abrupt answers, simple "no, thank you", and the like. The idea of looking someone in the eye and saying "No, thank you. I am not at all interested. I do not want any further attention from you and will consider any future efforts offensive." goes directly against our ingrained polite streak. But, sometimes, this is what it takes. (Of course, there are those

Re:Flip side to how we make our own intentions cle

[Epona]

heh how true- even when the other person is cleary being rude and making them feel nervous/uncomfortable/whatever, most people are too polite and sensitive to their feelings to just be blunt and straightforward