Being From The Planet Psycho

He stares at me as if in a trance, from the corner of my eye I can see him still as a rock,eyes glued on me. There are moments when I walk past him and I can feel his eyes trained on me, the back of my head might as well burst into flames. He stares at me constantly, at times I think he doesn’t notice that he is doing it, it has become quite a habit. He offers me food, and leaves me little knick-knacks that other people may think is a thoughtful gesture. He cannot refuse my requests and seems to lose his train of thought when I speak to him. I notice him starting at me again for the umpteenth time – I suppose I should be flattered, but truthfully I’m not.

Like some maiden in a harlequin novel, being pursued by a young man is the idyllic set-up for a romantic tale. To be desired, wooed, and in some way – worshiped would be any female’s dream. To be the object of someone’s undying - obsession -affection and devotion, what else can a girl ask for right?

Regretfully, I have to take a pin and quickly burst that notion, because this is not a harlequin novel, and if it was, the man who the readers assume to be the dashing love of the fair maiden, is actually the despicable villain of the tale.

Upon further reflection, you will realize that he was forward enough to presume that the maiden was returning his rather improper advances. Read between the lines, and you will notice the maiden quickly averting her eyes when he arrives, not for fear of blushing as he stares at her longingly, she does this to avoid meeting those lecherous and maniacal eyes. She quells the urge to shiver, not from pleasure mind you, but from unease.

Usually as the tale progresses the villain goes too far, and becomes a threat to the life of the maiden. He becomes consumed with the desire to posses her, which would be the apt moment for the maiden’s dashing love to come barreling in with his saber unsheathed to defend the maiden’s honor from being impugned by that dastardly cretin.

Ideally that’s what happens in harlequin novels, although that would be much appreciated (having a male come to your rescue and what not), in this century, some maidens can defend their honor well enough to take up their own saber and hack the villain to pieces.

I’m fairly certain that I am in no danger from the “villain”; I believe he’s just an over zealous if not over-friendly individual in a sense that his craziness“friendliness” came in the form of the overwhelming onslaught of his presence, with his desire to strike up inane tête-à-tête’s and what I assumed were friendly offerings of snacks. That’s what I thought at first, “he’s just too friendly” but then with the constant personal space invasion, prolonged ogling fests, and pseudo-anonymous offerings of food (which I sometimes feared were laced with some voodoo love charm) – friendliness warped into some miniscule form of harassment.

As much as possible, I eschew from thinking the worst of people. Like Clark Kent in Smallville, I have the exasperating ability to make excuses for people, and pardon them from what ever minor grievances that they commit., which has more or less become a detriment to my compos mentis. However, this nature of mine has an expiration period, and when that happens, those past grievances bubble up to the surface, which I use to feed my rage.

I handled the staring quite well (with some minor difficulty masking my disgust over being gawked at like a piece of meat on display). I entertain him when he gathers the nerve to talk to me, which I really do not mind at all, I do occasionally enjoy swapping stories with people, but sometimes he can be very impertinent and annoying.- I think he has no clear concept of “personal space”. Or even propriety. I accept his “gifts” graciously, even if I think it’s weird sometimes. I even tolerate the teasing from other people over his antics where I am concerned.

Taking all that into consideration, I have indulged this little act of mini-harassment err… over friendliness of his, but then he went and abused my good nature. One day I innocently spied pictures on his personal laptop which contained my personal pictures, I assumed that it was a website, I didn’t get a clear look at the lay out. I dismissed this as paranoia on my part, but couldn’t help but feel oddly discomfited.

Just the other day, upon borrowing my USB for some file transfer that I needed, he made some innocent remark about using his own USB because I had pictures in mine. It would seems innocent enough, true, I did have pictures in my USB in the folder labeled “Pictures”, any one who borrowed it would see the folder. Like I said, it seemed innocent enough, were it not for the odd gleam in his eye. Belatedly when the thought wedged itself in my mind, a chain of events caused the synapses in my brain to fire rapidly, which signaled a major light bulb moment A sick feeling seized me, those pictures that I saw on his laptop were copied from my USB. The creep copied my pictures!!!!

Common decency would have made other people simply add the files that I asked for to my USB, and eschew doing an Indiana Jones with my personal files. Decent human beings would ask permission to copy files; come to think of it, decent human beings would not want to copy personal pictures of other people.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury what else is there left to conclude, other that the fact that the person that I am dealing with has no sense of decency and is ergo not a normal human being. He is a being from the planet Psycho, a citizen of Creepy Ville, and an apt poster boy for the United Nations of budding stalkers.

Yes, some girls might (emphasis on might) become flattered by all this attention, but honestly if this were to spiral into something horrible, people might find my pictures on lamp posts and police stations bearing the message “Missing: have you seen this girl?”. I would probably be found in a hidden room in creepy guy’s basement, and most likely I’d be chained to the wall. – But I don’t see things going that way (one would hope so).

Again, I’m just exaggerating. Still, what he did was out of line and downright creepy.

I actually like confident men, but there is a difference to being confident and being too damn forward and shameless. A confident man who gets rejected by a girl can sheepishly grin and go back to his buddies to have a good laugh. A shameless creep who can somehow pass himself off as “confident” does not have the word “reject” in his dictionary. The word “reject” to him means, keep coming back for more, till she caves in.

Men like him think “No” actually means “Yes” and “Go away” means “Take me I’m yours”.

God save the women who fall prey to these lusty Lotharios. God help the women who actually buy their act.

I do not know if I am to blame for his atrocity or if it is a case of bad luck and poor judgment calls. If I look at this objectively I can honestly say that I was perhaps too lenient and should have put up a you-do-not-want-to-mess-with-me aura. I should have put up a stronger front instead of being overly charitable. Clark Kent and I may share the good nature, unfortunately, I have no super powers. Although, if I had his powers, considering my rage, I would not hesitate to super punch Mc Creepo back to his planet.

This is definitely something to add to my future manual for “How-to-detect-creeps for dummies”.

Note to self, and to other concerned females. A normal guy enjoys the view, but politely stops when it is no longer deemed proper, like say, short of burning a hole on your face from staring too damn long. A normal guy takes the hint when told “No” and graciously leaves you be, he does not pester you any more unless you initiate contact. Unless you reciprocate his feelings, welcome his advances, or tell him directly that you are into him, a normal guy does not assume that you like him when you smile at him, nor does he interpret that you are madly in love with him if you ignore him if he’s being a jerk. A normal guy may life to acquire your picture if you are so inclined as to bestow him the honor of keeping it, he does not however copy pictures from a social networking website and plaster it all over his walls. Big tip: normal guys may keep one, two or say, five pictures of you, the crazies make your picture their wallpaper (and I don’t mean for the phone or the computer).

The list goes on and on, I should take notes from Mariah Carey and write a song, how did her song go again?

Finally found a girl that you couldn't impress
Last man on the earth- still couldn't get this

You're delusional, you're delusional
Boy you're losing your mind
It's confusin yo', you're confused you know
Why you wasting your time?

Got you all fired up with your Napoleon complex
See right through you like you're bathin' in windex
Ooh Ohh Ohh boy why you so obsessed with me?