On Being Stalked..

I've heard many people say they are being "Stalked" on the Internet.

Even though a semi-scary thing happened to me with an Internet "Stalker", I still snort when I hear this.

Dude, you so don't know what it means unless they have showed up where you work.

It is really easy to get lax about who you are on the Internet. Now when this happened to me I was way more paranoid them I am now.

At the time I didn't think I was being obvious about who I was or giving out any clues for someone to out who I was.

You have no idea how easily someone can do that if they are psychotic enough to pay close attention to everything you say.

It was before I had ever met a single person off the net, and didn't have any pictures up.

The key to his whole finding me deal was my car at the time. It was pink, and I used to joke about the "Barbie Mobile" in chat all the time. I also said where I worked in a round the bout kind of way. I said I built cars. It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out where in Chicago builds cars, considering there is only one place.

Now where I work has a parking lot bigger then say a mall's parking lot. It still isn't exactly hard to drive up and down the isles looking for a pink car, which is exactly what he did.

Most "normal" people wouldn't do this I'm sure, and he definitely wasn't "normal".

He had professed his undying love to me, even though he had never met me, and even though I already had a boyfriend. All I had ever done was just chat with my friends in the room, but I guess that was enough for him to decide we should be together.

So one day while leaving work I notice this car behind me. I kind of got one of those bad feelings I always listen to in the pit of my stomach.

Eh, it was probably someone from work, right? We had all just got out at the same time. None the less, I took a different road then I normally do when going home.

The car stayed right behind me.

So I took a different road, and a different road....He kept following me.

Now my car may have been pink, but it had some punch to it. At this point I decided I needed to loose this ass and get my butt home.

As I sped up the car sped up. I was now in a town where I knew the cops really well, considering the Chief of Police was my nephew's Godfather.

I called them on my cell phone, and told them the situation. Within minutes a cop was pulling him over for speeding, and I got the hell out of dodge.

The chief called me back after I got home, and he said the police asked him if he was following me. The guy had played stupid, but I now knew his name and where he lived.

I got an email that night from a made up hotmail account that said something to the fact of I'd better not call the police on him again, and that he knew what I looked like and where to find me.

Fuck me running.

Now I know there are perfectly legal ways to deal with a situation like this. You can file a restraining order and other things, but I also knew that these things don't mean shit or do shit from past experiences unfortunately.

The next day at work I gathered up some of my teamster buddies and told them what was going on. We took a back way out of the plant, and walked from the back of the parking lot until I spotted that early 1980's piece of shit car that had been following me the day before parked a couple of rows past my car.

They went and had a little "talk" with him while I'll drove out of the parking lot.

Teamsters have a unique way of "talking". That's probably about all I should say about that....

The stalker, by the time he was able to drive, was then met at his apartment by my brother and boyfriend.

That pretty much took care of him, but I was pretty paranoid for awhile after that. He never tried to follow me again, and pretty much stayed out of the chat room I administrated.

Now you all might be thinking that "talking" to this guy was not the right thing to do, and that there are legal steps to follow for these kinds of issues.

As someone who has went through the legal steps for these kinds of issues I only have one thing to say:

Fuck the legal steps to these types of issues. You get a piece of paper that says they have to stay away from you. What are you going to do, throw it at them? I'm sure that'd be a really big help.

You also might be thinking that for someone who has experienced this kind of thing it is rather unusual that I would still write on the Internet and For F*ck's Sake! even have my picture up on my blog.

My answer to this is a two parter.

First of all, if someone is that deranged they will find you no matter how you try to camouflage your true identity. I always was very paranoid about net stuff, and I said way less then most people, but I was still found by some crazy ass. Actually, he probably wasn't all that crazy or a few teamsters, a brother, and a boyfriend wouldn't have stopped him.

Second of all, I will not live my life in fear. I will not let someone take away my basic rights as an American citizen, freedom.

I've been stalked by a real! live! person before this Internet dude, and it is not fun. That very well be the understatement of the year, but I refuse to give it anymore meaning then that. You have no idea what it can do to you, how it affects your life.

This is why when the Internet dude situation came about, I fought back in full force to make sure it would never happen again.

So if someone wishes to stalk me from the Net now, go for it. I will fuck you back ten times harder and fight for my right to live freely.

You will go through ten times more hell then you put me through.

I always say that I'm half tree-hugger half conservative. I guess this is my conservative side saying, "I will fuck you, oh yes I will!"

There is a positive note on this whole experience. I did get two really kick ass ideas for scripts out of the whole deal.

One is a real mind fuck of a horror script that I can't wait to write one day.

Freddy Krugar? Total wimp compared to what I have in mind...