Ich bin ein Stälker

One night after finishing my shift bartending at a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, I went out to a local bar with some coworkers. I saw a cute guy standing at the bar with a couple of his friends and gave him the eye. A few minutes later we locked eyes again so I decided to say hello. I was laying it on pretty thick so he decided to ditch his friends and come hang out with me and mine at the bar next door. We chatted it up and I found out he was 29, single and from Germany and visiting NY for the week. He proceeded to tell me I was a “very aggressive American woman” and asked me to step outside with him. Then he became the aggressor and pinned me up against the wall as we made out passionately. (For the record, I wasn’t complaining or resisting). We were all over each other that night and when it came time for us to part ways I made a quick Irish exit and hopped in a cab, without giving him any contact information. I figured I had had my fun with him and he was only in town for a week and didn’t think twice about it.

The next night, I’m closing up the bar and chatting with my two friends at work when in walks my German suitor. My mouth was agape as he approached the bar and I realized that in my drunken stupor last night I must have mentioned where I worked. My friends could feel the tangible awkwardness of the situation (they had been out with us the night before) and said “Yeeaaa, we’re gonna go.” He stayed at the bar enjoying drinks (which I later learned he had no intention of paying for) and giving me the eye as I closed up the bar. I figured he wasn’t just gonna leave when I did last call. He waited for me to lock up the cash in the office and assumed we were hanging out after my shift. As we walked around the village he would stop me and passionately kiss me in the middle of the street, to which I would respond “What the hell are you doing?” prompting laughter from the man in earshot who was walking his dog. I tried to relax a little and live in the moment and we end up hanging out over pizza and beer and getting to know each other. He told me the reason he was in NY was because he’s in law school in Germany and part of his program involves an international internship which could be done in NY so he wanted to check it out. At the end of the night he asked me if he could please see me again before he left. I told him I would call him when I got home from class at 10 the following night and then I would come to the city.

Cut to 10:00 on the dot the following night. My phone rings and it’s this guy telling me he’s in Queens and asks how he gets to me. Flabbergasted I told him to take a cab to a café near my place (there was no way I was letting this guy come into my home). When I get to the café I notice he’s in a shitty mood and I immediately regretted my decision to meet up with this guy. I reluctantly asked what was the matter and he said he was very upset that he was leaving “not knowing where this was going.” I looked at him inquisitively and asked what he was talking about. He said he didn’t know if this was just an affair or if maybe we could end up together in the future. He told me that when he was visiting my borough today and saw lots of nice houses and imagined us living together in one someday. Why I didn’t sprint out the door at this point is a question I ask myself to this day. A map would’ve come in handy for my rebuttal as I pointed out that we had only been hanging out a few days and I live in NY and he lives in Germany with an entire ocean in between us. He asked if we could please stay in touch and I said OK thinking that meant exchange an email once every few months.

The call is coming from inside the house.

Over the next few weeks he proceeded to call me on Skype every few days and in a sick way I kind of started to think he was sweet and funny and worth staying in touch with. He invited me to Germany which I considered because I love to travel. I then told him that I was going to Miami with my girlfriends for a few days and I would speak to him when I got back because I was going to be busy and I wouldn’t have my computer. He called me on my second day there and was angry because he hadn’t heard from me and wanted to know if I was alive. I reminded him that I told him I would speak to him when I got back to NY and ended the conversation as my friends looked at me like “Who the EFF was that??” Over the next month our conversations became fewer and further between and I thought I was finally closing the chapter on this guy.

Two months later I was bartending at the rooftop bar of the same restaurant. A guy I was seeing was there having a drink before he had to go to work. I was closing a check on the computer but sensed that a customer had come in and was waiting for me to serve them a drink. I turned around and it was my German stalker in the flesh. I literally turned white as a ghost and I asked him what he was doing here. “I came to surprise you,” he said. Clearly my reaction wasn’t what he was hoping for and he then added that he “may have an interview for an internship on Monday as well.” He ended up staying the rest of my shift, just a couple seats down from the guy I was seeing. I was on the verge of a heart attack because I was worried that the German might throw the other guy off the roof if he got an inkling we were dating. My friend who I was bartending with knew what was going on and asked me if he wanted him to kick the German out. I said no because now I was thinking that I must’ve lead this guy on and now he flew all the way to NY for me and I had no desire to see him.

Feeling this guilt, I hung out with him that night after my shift and made arrangements to get my shift covered on Monday so we could spend the day together (still asking myself why I did this). On Monday I met up with him and took him out to lunch (still feeling guilty) and then we spent most of the day together. I honestly don’t remember much of the conversation because in my head I was flipping out about him being there in the first place and I was trying to figure out a way to end things with him that wouldn’t cause a psychotic reaction. We went to a bar and I decided this would be a good place to end things as there were witnesses around if he tried to attack me. I told him that coming here this weekend was a very sweet gesture but it was totally out of the blue and he should’ve checked with me before doing that. I said I thought he was reading into our “relationship” a bit too much and shouldn’t have done something so grandiose. He insisted he really came for his interview but the guy cancelled last minute. (I’m sorry but you don’t cancel on a student who flew internationally to be there so I knew that interview was fictitious). I kept trying to get this guy to see that he was taking this whole thing with me too seriously when I wasn’t really interested. He kept saying I was misunderstanding him so finally I said “Listen, I think you like me a LOT more than I like you.” After my "It's not me, it's you" speech, he still didn’t get it so we said goodbye and that’s the last I spoke to him.

Are you sure you want to block this person? Damn sure, Facebook!

 

That was not however, the last time he spoke to me. He preceded to call, text, Skype, email and Facebook me for months. I stopped picking up my phone when I saw an international number, blocked him on Skype and on Facebook but he would still try to text me for YEARS. This whole thing went down in the Spring of 2009 and I got a text from him just a few months ago. There’s seriously something wrong with this guy. At least it made for an interesting story.