How to get your own girl “stalker”: Part One

I don’t wish to diminish the horror a real stalking victim endures by assigning that word to my experience, so please bear with my use of quotation marks.

Senior year of college was all about the drama.  I lived with three other women who I lovingly referred to as “the last three virgins on campus.”  An exaggeration, certainly, as there were likely dozens if not hundreds of virgins walking amongst us on our conservative campus.  One roommate’s broken engagement  at the very beginning of the school year was the start of the drama, and looking back, we cultivated high drama day in and day out.  

One peculiar (and embarrassing) development illustrates how highly orchestrated this drama could be:  After I got all my roommates hooked on the daytime soap Guiding Light , Kelly, the recently disengaged roommate, assigned us GL alter-egos based partly on personality, but mostly on physical characteristics.  We played along in fun, and at times, I’d return home one afternoon to find one of my roommates “mad” at me for something my GL character had done.  (I was Dinah Marler, for those familiar with late ‘90s GL.  Boy was she a slag.)   

After a while, Kelly developed a GL family tree and we began assigning our friends and neighbors GL identities.  It was our ridiculous little secret.  Whenever real life got too boring or overwhelming, we could check into our Guiding Light parallel universe where even the virgins got to sleep around.   

My real life was good:  I was on track to finish my degree with no problem, taking classes I loved, and completely ignoring the fact that come June, I was no longer on daddy’s dime. 

I had just returned from a summer in Mexico where I’d gained an immense amount of confidence from mastering a language I quite frankly sucked at prior to my trip.  I also lost a ridiculous amount of weight while there.  I felt weak and sick and held every intention to gain most of the weight back, but the compliments and attention went to my head and I found myself watching my food intake and running daily trying in vain to keep it off.   

The attention was both positive and negative.  I had exes coming out of the woodwork and guys I’d never met jockeying for position to hang out with me at parties.  Talk about a confidence booster.  I was an RA that year, and both my student “supervisor” and my faculty supervisor pulled me aside and asked me if I was OK.  I came to find out there were rumors around campus that I might have an eating disorder.  This was news to me and the thought that people were talking about how skinny I was behind my back was a never-ending source of righteous indignation for me and the root of the persecution complex I developed over the course of that year.   

All this attention also gave me many options for “hooking up” on campus.  It should be stated that high school boyfriend-girlfriend relationships were hardly the norm at Davidson during my tenure there.  “Hooking up,” which ranged from casual, drunken dry humping to casual sex, was the catch-all verb for defining most relationships:  

“Oh, so I heard you and Mike were hanging out…” 

“Nah, we’re just hooking up.”   

It was the first time in my Davidson career I felt I had a lot of options with regards to men.  Given my limited time on campus and residual Catholic guilt, I was hoping for something casual but monogamous. 

Bil, a townie that I’d met through friends, was the first person to draw me in.  We had hot chemistry.  Long gazes, close talking, heavy flirting for weeks before we finally kissed type of chemistry.  He had some pretty rigid rules though: he wouldn’t have sex with anyone who wasn’t his girlfriend and I tired quickly of jumping through the hoops that would require.  The negotiation process was absurd to me.  Here I was trying to talk him into having casual sex with me and he was figuring out reasons not to hop in the sack.  I’d give up and blow him off and a few weeks later, he’d come chasing after me.  Lather, rinse, repeat.   

Toward the end of first semester, a long standing crush of mine presented himself as a possibility.  Aidan had come to college with a hometown honey, and I never seemed to get the memo in time to make a move when their on-again/off-again relationship was off-again.  He’d spent half of junior year off campus and the other half abroad.  We had gotten together briefly before he left to go abroad, but never followed up upon his return, even though we lived in the same building senior year.   

Aidan couldn’t have been clearer about his intentions:  he liked me, he enjoyed hanging out with me and making out with me, but he liked a lot of women, including some of my friends.  He had a few months of college left and he had no intention of getting tied down.   

We were hooking up before Christmas break, and soon after the start of second semester, we started having sex.  My idea.   I got a call from him soon after we started sleeping together. 

“Come over.  We’re going to climb the radio tower.”

“What?  What are you talking about, Aidan?”

“Go outside on your porch.”

“Now?”

“Yes!  Go!”

“Ok, I’m on my porch.  It’s fucking freezing out here.”

“You’re a baby, baby.  Just go over to your balcony and look left.  You see that blinking light?”

“Yeah.”

“OK, we’re going up there.  Dress in layers and meet me at my place in 5.”

I did.  I have no doubt that his intention was to climb that radio tower with me, but we got distracted. We left a trail of our layers starting in his living room all the way into his bedroom.  Unbeknownst to either of us, that evening marked the abrupt end of our physical intimacy and ironically, led to the start of our emotional intimacy.

The next afternoon, I called Aidan to see if he wanted to come with me to a chili cook-off on campus that evening. 

“Aw, love, I can’t.  I promised Greg I’d go to that Rusk date function with one of his girlfriend’s friends.”

He sounded disappointed to be going to what amounted to a sorority casual event on a blind date, so I didn’t get too wound up about it.

“Oh, you’ll have fun.  Just make sure Greg doesn’t get too drunk and start throwing furniture off your balcony again.” 

I’d been called to the carpet as an RA because  his roommate Greg had gotten belligerant one night and caused quite a ruckus in our building. 

“It’s going to suck, I’ll probably be back early.  Maybe I’ll see you….”

“Yeah, maybe…well, have fun, Aidan!”  I said, in a lame attempt to be chipper. 

I did see him that night, but he didn’t see me.  I had come back early from a party, in hopes that I might run into Aidan.  Then I hung out in my apartment, harboring the secret hope that Aidan would stop by or call.  Fed up, I decided to go back out to see if any of the fraternity parties were still hopping.  On my way out, I saw them. She was slender and tall, taller than Aidan, with short hair.  Very pretty.  They were holding hands and laughing as they walked toward his apartment.  I managed to get past them without Aidan noticing me and I burst into tears as soon as they were out of earshot. 

I returned to my beloved roommates who were enjoying their weekend ritual of late night mudslides.   Those girls and their blender drinks were so adorable.  I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Me:  Boo hoo hoo, I just saw Aidan holding hands with some girl.  They were going back to his apartment and they’re probably hooking up RIGHT NOW!  I can’t believe he’s doing this to me.  Boo Hoo!

Kelly:  He stinks.  I can’t believe him.  Don’t worry, we’ll all give him dirty looks when we see him.

Gemma (lovely, gentle, kind and wise roomie):  Aw, hon.  I’m sorry you’re hurting.

Maddy (Practical science major in a household of melodramatic English majors):  Listen, I get that you’re upset, but if you like Aidan so much, why were you out with Bil two nights ago? 

Me:  I don’t know, that was dumb, I don’t even like Bil.  But what does that have to do with Aidan?

Maddy:  Well, you making out with Bil at the Deli on Thursday night didn’t really indicate your undying love for Aidan.

Me:  (Heart dropping to my feet)  No.  Aidan wasn’t there.  Was he?

Maddy:  Yes, he was there!  He was looking right at you when you and Bil were making goo-goo eyes at each other!  Don’t think for a second that he didn’t see what was going on with you two.

Me:  NOOOOOOOO!  But I don’t even like Bil!

Maddy:  I don’t know what to say.

I didn’t know either.  I did know that I wasn’t giving up on Aidan without a fight.

Continued here

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