Be Excellent To Each Other

I was once a stalker and it remains the one thing of which I am most deeply ashamed.

Names are of course changed to protect the innocent.

I first met Betty in 1985 when we were both 12 years old. She and I were in the same second year class and so had virtually all lessons together. She was insanely pretty with gorgeous hazel eyes, a warm velvety voice even at that age and a nose that turned up at the end. I did the usual thing of admitting to friends that I fancied her, she found out, laughed and rejected me (I wasn't the coolest kid in the class by a long shot) and we stayed casual classmates for the rest of that year.

The following school year I'd still see her around, still thought she was one of the most gorgeous women I'd ever met, but contented myself with nursing a secret crush. No need to take any action.

Then the following year at age 14 (this was 1987) my heart went out to her again when I saw her again after the summer holidays. I knew I had to do something to let her know how I feel. So I took one of her friends aside and asked if I could have her address to write to her. Her friend thought that was really sweet of me and so happily handed over the details. That night I wrote a three page letter telling her I was in love with her and how much I liked her and that whilst I knew I wasn't the coolest person to be around, I hoped she'd find some way of responding.

I waited three days for a reaction, but nothing came. I'd see her around and smile at her but she ignored me and breezed past. This was confusing to my adolescent mind. A reciprocation would have been nice, a rejection not too unexpected but still devastating, but no reaction at all? I wrote again a week later and asked her to let me know how she felt. Still exactly the same.

Thus began for me what I now look back on as an incredibly disturbing obsession. I would write to her regularly, at least once a week, telling her how nice she looked and how I was feeling that week. I'd sit in school assemblies and make sure I had line of sight to her so I could look at her and wrap myself up in her beauty. I'd wait around at lunchtimes near where I knew she would be so she would have to walk past me, just to give her the chance to acknowledge me. I sent her presents sometimes, on valentines day sending her a teddy bear in a box thanks to a mail order company that posted them anonymously in exchange for a postal order.

In all this time she never once reacted at all. She must not have even mentioned the extent of my pestering to her friends, as they were all supportive and co-operative when I confided in them of my feelings, saying she probably didn't know how I was feeling etc. One of them even gave me her telephone number although I never dared call her. I just wrote and told her that I knew it, but that I actually respected her privacy and wasn't ever going to call her. To me that sounded reassuring but looking back it must have seemed still rather sinister and scary.

This went on for a full eight months. The whole school knew I fancied her and would spend time hanging around like a lovesick puppy, but clearly nobody knew just what I was putting her through. The truth of the matter finally hit home to me the following spring when one of my own friends made a casual remark about how she had mentioned to one of her own friends about how she "sometimes wonders if he's going to jump out of a bush and rape me." I was utterly horrified and had to go somewhere alone to think. All this time I was trying to make her like me and trying to reach out and communicate with her in the only way I felt secure doing, and in actual fact I must have been scaring the life out of her. I immediately knew I'd done something that could not be undone. My letters and attention stopped. I put Betty out of my head and turned my affections to another girl who acted swiftly to put me in my place.

We had one more year at school together after which she left to stay to college. My only attempt at talking to her in this time was at the end of the final week of school when I was collecting signatures from everyone I knew. I approached her and a friend in the canteen one lunchtime and asked for their scrawl in my book. Her friend obliged and while she was doing so Betty took her leave of the situation without saying a word. My lasting regret was that I never really knew what she made of the whole situation and never really had the means to say sorry. Deep down it was my personal guilty secret.

That would have been the end of that but for the fact that fate threw us together again. I had a holiday job in between university terms working for an accountancy firm in the nearest city. Christmas 1992 I reported for my regular three week stint entering data and nearly died of fright on the spot as Betty walked past to her desk where she was now a secretary. I spent the morning hardly daring to move, even to the coffee machine and had to look her up in the office telephone book to convince myself it was really her.

Somehow I made it to the end of the holiday without having to confront the situation, but on my final afternoon I drew breath and wrote her an email on the internal system. In it I said I was too much of a coward to talk to her properly but then recounted to her what I knew I had done when we were at school together, how I had discovered what it was doing to her, how I had spent four years with it all on my conscience and how bittery, deeply sorry I was for putting her through what for a teenage girl must have been a rather strange and scary situation. I told her I would be back in the office at Easter and hoped we could start afresh from there. I hit the Send button at 5.30pm and ran out of the office without looking back.

Come the following Easter she was still there. No reply or comment was forthcoming and without any real reason to talk to her there was nothing more I could say or do. Time passed. I graduated and the holiday job turned into a full time position as the office computer assistant. Thus I was working with Betty every day and sometimes had to help her out with issues. Over time the atmosphere thawed between us. I could walk up and ask her something without shitting myself, she would ring me with a problem she wanted me to solve and I could even at times banter with her, making a crack about not wanting to be kicked when I had to crawl under her desk to untangle some cables. The only time I ever came close to confronting the past was at the Christmas party one year when we wound up sitting together in a semi-sober state. She initiated a conversation about watching managers make twats of themselves on the dance floor and asked how I was. I told her I was fine and then drunkenly mumbled about how I knew so much shit had gone down in the past but I was very glad I knew her. She seemed to clam up at this point and moved away. Clearly the scars were still there.

I made one last effort to make amends. In early 96, almost ten years since it all happened I was set to leave the office and move on in my career. In my last week I handed over my duties and then approached Betty and suggested that given I'd probably never see her again, how about I take her to lunch to say goodbye. Rather than respond, she groaned and looked at me pleadingly, as if begging me not to make her give an answer. I immediately let her off the hook, told her the offer was there if she wanted to take me up on it but I understood why she might not and assured her I would not ask again. I walked back to my desk slightly crushed, knowing that I would never be able to put the matter to rest.

It is now 20 years since my obsession and from time to time I'm still tormented by the thought of how I behaved. The concept of stalking did not exist back then, but that's what I was doing, trying to attach myself to every aspect I could of a person's life, just to get them to notice me and like me. Part of me wonders just what would have happened if she had told me where to stick it after I had sent the first letter. Maybe I would not have got the message straight away, but after the third time I probably would. This is of course is an attempt to deflect the blame, and I can't really do that.

So there you have it. I was once a stalker and it is for me the darkest stain I have on my character. You might say 20 years is a long time to beat yourself up over something, but I remain haunted by that final conversation when I quit the accountancy job. Even after all that time, even after working alongside me for three and a half years and treating me as a trusted colleague, it seems she was not able to look me in the eye and forgive me for the way I behaved. Without that, I'm not sure I can ever forgive myself either.

What compels a stalker? Do they think, somehow, eventually, that their increasingly insane tactics will ever work?

Actually you just sent it to me as a PM Check your sent box.

Stupid bitch, why the fuck just blank him entirely? Bah.

Maybe because she was fourteen? I was hardly King Tact at that age, either. In fact I asked out the girl I liked even though she was going out with someone. Then I didn't talk to her for two months.

It's also more than possible that she did tell him to fuck off several times, but he simply ignored it through the power of denial. I have friends who have multiple sleazy stalky cockrings who not only can't take a hint, but can't take an explicit, very insulting statement detailing precisely why they should take the hint.

I had to literally run screaming* down the street to get away from one woman I tried to break up with about eight times. And even that didn't put her off. I had to pretty much destroy her heart to get her to move on. Necessary, but christ, if that's not the worst thing I'll ever have to do in my life, I might be better off just jumping in the canal.


*Okay I didn't scream, but I could have.

If I was being stalked by two gay men that'd be quite disturbing.

It's just occurred to me that she used to go around my friends house to play with his Micro Machine. Jesus.

I've never been stalked, but Ange has - by a lesbian couple. I'll leave her to tell you all about it.

But as a tetraplegic they''ll come across as much less sinister.

I can't think of many things less sinister than a stalker who looks like a jellybean.

Fuck that, nobody will make me change my mobile number. I'd rather locate the stalker and gruesomely pull their arms and legs off first, that'd solve the problem and be much less annoying.

Of all the things to (possibly literally) die in a ditch over, changing my mobile number wouldn't be one of them.

Its the principle of the thing chap, you don't negotiate with terrorists.

Its the principle of the thing chap,

you don't negotiate with terrorists.

That's because you change your mobile number about once a month and never tell ANYONE.

But surely in this case it's much more of an irritation than it is a fear for safety. The police was called because she's being a major pain in the arse, not because she's likely to bomb his house.

it pees me off mightily when people say that pay and go means chav. Pay and Go means doesn't feel surgically attached to my mobile phone, in my case...)

I'd have thought the chavs went for contracts, to keep up to date with the latest bling handsets. PAYG here too - I've thought about getting a contract, but I've no real need for one.

I use pay and go because I don't use my mobile