Real Encounters

*It's been over 15 years. AND you're married. Dafuq?*

Tonight I got yet another friend request and message from Jim. According to my block list, this is the fourth FB account he's made that I've had to block.

It started when I was all of 15, so 20 years ago. He was 25 at the time (as if that's not creepy enough right there).

I was a geek, and played Vampire: the Masquerade every Friday night out in the plaza of a shopping center in a neighboring town. We'd wander outside pretending to be vampires who were pretending to be people, occasionally going into the Barnes and Noble to get our coffee on. After midnight we'd adjourn to the local Denny's knockoff restaurant for more coffee, though there were enough adults with jobs to make sure the waitresses at least got decent tips during our weekly invasion. Most of the adults actually liked all the kids hanging around (in a non-creepy way), and it kept us from experimenting with drugs harder than caffeine until we went to college.

When the guy I was dating and I split up, this dude Jim befriended me. He kept telling me I was hot, and seemed to think my eyes were in my breasts, but I didn't take him seriously until he sent flowers to my house. I told him I was way too young for him, and he backed off somewhat, though still hung around the games.

I got back with my ex, and a few years later during my freshman year of college we split up again. I wasn't going to the games anymore, but made a trip back home to go to the local sci-fi/fantasy convention. Jim was there, and at least I was finally 18. Being on the rebound made me a pretty easy target, and we started dating. It was long distance for the rest of that semester, though he drove down to see me every weekend. When the semester ended and I came home for the summer, he begged me to move in with him. He was living out in BFE, without Internet access. I still didn't have my driver's license. But the part of BFE he was in was within walking distance of some relatives, and I didn't relish living under my mother's roof after a year away from parental supervision. So I moved in with him.

At first, it seemed a little sweet. He didn't want me to get a job, even though there was a day-shift opening at the Podunk gas station in town. He brought home flowers at least twice a week. He acted like getting to touch me made him the luckiest man in the world.

But I'd always had close friends, even though I knew most of them from the local BBSes (precursor to the Internet for you young whippersnappers). With no way to get online, I started to go a bit stir-crazy. I also had a very dear friend who was like a second mother to me -- had known her since I was five, and she went to school with my mother. Every week she held a class/workshop about Paganism at her house, which was always fun. She knew Jim from the Society for Creative Alcoholics and didn't like him very much. She knew better than to say anything about it to me, since nothing fuels young love like adult disapproval, but Jim was convinced she would try to break us up.

After a month of complete social isolation and excuses for not taking me into town to see her, I got fed up and demanded to go. I told him I didn't care that she didn't like him, and expressed frustration that he didn't seem to trust my feelings enough and thought someone else could influence them. He finally gave in and agreed to take me, but said that if I went to see her, he was going to go to the titty bar.

By that point in the argument he'd pretty much proved her case against him all by himself, and it presented too good of an opportunity for a comeback. I said "Good, because you aren't seeing these titties again." (To this day, he still thinks I dumped him because I didn't want him to go to a strip club. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.) He begged and pleaded for one last roll in the hay, but I was done. Packed up all my stuff while he sulked, slept on the couch that night, and he grudgingly took me back to my mother's the next day.

For three weeks, flowers showed up every single day -- and the arrangements kept getting more ornate. When I'd call one florist to ask them to please just keep his money and NOT deliver the flowers, they didn't seem to get it and would refuse his order, so he'd find another. The last bouquet before he either got the hint (doubtful) or got on the last florist in the area's blacklist (far more likely) was three dozen white roses -- which had been my favorite flower until then.

Then he started showing up at my doorstep when my mother wasn't home. At first I just tried to pretend I wasn't home either, but finally put a note on the front door that said if he showed up again I would call the cops. He seemed to finally get the hint, but for another decade he messaged me every time I had to reinstall ICQ and forgot to block him immediately upon installation. I considered starting a new account, but I had a really low number that was easy to remember and I didn't want to give it up.

I moved to another town, but one time when I came back to visit that friend who was like a second mother, she had a story for me. She'd run into him at an SCA event with his new girlfriend. Somehow my name got mentioned and he started going on and on about how I was the "perfect woman" and "the one who got away", how threatening to go to a strip club was the worst mistake he'd ever made, etc. In front of his new girl. Somehow I doubt that relationship lasted much longer.

Since 2009 when I got a Facebook account, all he's done has been to make new accounts to message me after blocks. He lives in another state and is married. I still keep my number unlisted and check every so often to make sure my address isn't available online. Just in case.