Fatal Attraction

Before you decide if you're in love with someone, it's extremely important to know if you're pursuing said person, or merely stalking them. One of these options is all charming, and makes your tummy flutter, while the other is pretty scary, and makes your tummy drop to that lower part of your spine reserved solely for your kidneys.

Now there is definitely a fine line... Some might consider Romeo a stalker, and he sure has hell had some stalkeresque qualities, but there was a mutual attraction there, and sometimes, that's the bottom line. If the love/lust, goes both ways, dive right in and go for it. If it doesn't, it might be time to reevaluate the way you approach your love, and decide if you've passed the dreamy boundary right into the creepy zone.

A checklist, If you will:

THE PHONE

The lover calls you to find out how your day went. He called to make sure your dentist appointment went OK. To see if you got the little note he slipped you. He calls to tell you that he misses you and thought about you during the day, and uh, by-the-way-have-you-lost-weight?

The stalker calls to find out if you saw him watching you today. He calls to find out why you didn't TELL him you had a dentist appointment and why you didn't ask for his opinion on a good dentist because he knows an excellent one and that's why you should marry him and have his babies...he calls to ask if you got the 5 letters that he left for you and the four he gave to your sister to give to you and the other three that he put on your windshield and the one that he left in your coat pocket...(how the hell did he get a note in your coat pocket?), he calls to tell you that he misses you and thought about you during the day, and uh, by-the-way-are-we-losing-each-other?

YOUR EMAIL

A lover sends you an email to say hi, honey. Miss you. On my way to the store? Need anything? love ya. xoxo

The stalker sends you an email to say, HI HONEY, MISS YOU!!! :( On my way to the bridge...will you stop me? I LOVE YOU!! XOXOXOXOXO!!!!!

THE MUSIC

The lover sends you music and will occasionally write you a song or two that's pretty awful, but you love it regardless...because you can hear his voice wobble just a little when he gets to the part about sleeping warm and nestled in your arms.

The stalker will compose hand-written lyrics and tape them to your front door...some that he made up and others he scraped together from somewhere else. He'll write you songs, too, and you hear his voice wobble a little bit too, when he gets to the part about breathing in your last breath...

The lover's music selections for you are probably going to be "Everlong" by Foo Fighters, "So Happy Together by The Turtles and Crazy for You by Madonna.

The stalker's selection will be: No one Else by Weezer, Walking after you, by Foo Fighters, and Right here Waiting by Richard Marx.


YOUR FAMILY

The Lover is genuinely interested in your family and is nice and respectful when he meets them. They ask about him when he's not around and ask how he's doing.

The stalker is interested in an invitation to the next family picnic or reunion. They ask about when said person is talking them to Six Flags again.

THE DOORBELL

The lover: One ring

The stalker: Thirteen. Just to make sure you hear him.


YOUR EXES

The lover puffs up just a bit around exes, and makes sure that it's known that he's the head man in town. He threatens (but only in private) that he should kick their asses for what they did to you in the past.

The stalker kills ex and leaves his rotten carcass lying on your front porch like a cat leaves its kill. He's sitting next to him, all puffed up, looks up with bulging (but loving) eyes, and says,"Who wants a picnic?"


THE NICKNAMES

The lover calls you "Honey," "Sweetie," "Baby." or "Cutie."

The stalker calls you "Eternal Love," "Princess of my Underworld," "Master of my Dementia," or my personal favorite "Miss-Never-Call-Me-Back."


THEIR EXES

The lover refers to his ex-girlfriends as "Her," "The last one," or most of the time sometimes even "bitch."

The stalker refers to his ex-girlfriend(s) as "The one that got away," "The girl from Canada," or "Little Miss Runs Real Fast."



Please people. Don't be stalkers. Please. Don't encourage stalkers. If you stand outside the door and go,"I fucking mean it! Stop it! I'm gonna tell my new boyfriend and he'll be really, really mad....did I mention I'm gay?"(that's encouragement) Just tell him to scram then ignore him...trust me. They'll keep coming back just at the slightest touch of weakness. If you even look like you could be softening up because you feel bad for him and/or, you secretly kind of like the attention, you're only getting what you deserve.

Love is a very beautiful thing, and if done properly, the wooing process is the stuff that the best stories are made of. Stalker stories are only fun to tell during late night sleep overs, cookie dough sessions, campfires, or to get some guy to get the stalker off of your back.

Now, Simply Curious Girl, you ask, what on earth prompted this story? I'll tell you. Not that I haven't had my fair share of stalkers, because believe me...I have, but I watched the stupid, silly-ass movie, Play Misty for Me, last night, and I swear Clint Eastwood should've seen that bitch's stalkin' ass coming a mile away, and I don't want to perpetuate that kind of behavior.

I didn't Escape. I Have a Day pass!

I used to have this really cool boyfriend. When I say cool, I mean, willing to experiment. Not only willing to experiment, but willing to do pretty much what I asked for or needed.

I'm not quite sure what made my our hearts desire this special book I'm about to tell you about, but we ended up with it, anyway. The first page of the book warns that if you're absolutely satisfied in your love life, than then this book wasn't for you. I wish I had known that a little earlier, but since the book was sealed when I bought it, there was no going back.



The book came with a series of sealed envelopes. Half of the envelopes "For Her Eyes Only" and the other half "For His Eyes Only." You're supposed to sit together and pick an envelope every week to later be opened in private. This was you knew at some point during the week, you'd be surprised with some random, romantic, sex act.

My first envelope was called "Fantasies of the Orient" and involved honey and tea. Strictly following the instructions, I made a pot of green tea with a hint of ginseng (supposed to be an aphrodisiac?), draped a black blanket over our futon, and made my boyfriend take off all of his clothes. Acting like I wasn't allowed to utter a word, I pushed him back on to the blanket, poured honey on the inside of his leg, and the proceeded to lick it off. Then I was supposed to put the tea into my mouth and let it hit his skin through my lips as I kissed him. Yes, it's as hard and complicated as it sounds. First I scalded his neck and then I burned the inside of his elbow. Soon my tongue was aching terribly from the near boiling liquid, but since I wasn't allowed to speak, I just quietly sobbed on his stomach as I got sick from too much honey, and I couldn't eat anything for the next two days or so.

We decided it was just a bunk envelope and admittedly, as well as embarrassingly, tried again. The next envelope was called "Treasure Trail" (shut up) and it instructed me to cut out paper outlines of my feet to make a trail from the door to my chosen "hiding place," where I was supposed to "pounce" on my "mate."

Just a quick note: the only time you ever hear hear a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife, described as a "mate" is when you're reading some kind of sex-help book, or listening to Doctor Ruth on the radio. Mate has to be one of the most un-fucking-sexy words. Besides tuna. Well, tuna, and uvula. Those are the three unsexiest words. But the last two are hardly found tucked away neatly in the pages of Cosmo or Playboy, now are they?

While making the little cutouts, the little voice inside of me muttered, What the hell are you doing here? How old are you? I used my special glitter crayons to make the feet sparkle and say funny things. It really does take a long time to trace, cut, and color little cutesy feet to tape all the way from your front door to your hiding spot. Plus the card said I should make them go in and out of several rooms in the house...We had a two bedroom apartment, so I had the feet go into the bathroom, out of the bathroom, into one of the bedrooms (a storage room/office), out of that room, up the wall and around the corner on the ceiling, down into the closet. Just a little Lionel Ritchie in there to get him motivated.


So I'm sitting in the closet, waiting for my dumb, damn darling, boyfriend to get home from work, and I'm thinking, Fuck, I hope he doesn't go out for a drink after work or something. He better just come home on time. I wonder what kind of idiot I look like in here. Ow. Shit. I'm sitting on a high heel. (Maybe I should be wearing these.) I'm thirsty. Maybe I'll just run and grab something to drink. No, no. I can't go out there, because what if he comes home and sees that I'm standing in a trail of my own damn glittery toes? This just isn't sexy. This. Isn't. Even. Cute. This, my friends, was solitary confinement.


He did come home. Late. Of course. And apparently he didn't even notice the new sparkly trail of feet installed on our almost white carpeting. I heard him call out,"Hello? Baby? Where are you?" I didn't know if I was supposed to answer or not. The book didn't leave me instructions for when if he missed the giant clues that were as bright as those flashing arrows that led to strip joints. Shouldn't these special circumstances for stupid special couples such as us, be covered? I heard the refrigerator door open and close. The TV snapped on and the sounds of a basketball game filled the apartment. Unbelievable. He wasn't even going to notice. What if in three or four hours he finally decided to do something about it? What would I do if he called the police to file a missing person report or something, and they came in, followed the purple paper trail, and found me asleep in the closet cradling a tin of Altoids, and an empty bottle of water, wearing nothing but my panties?

I panicked a little, making noises that were a combination of whimpers and shrieks until I heard him get off of the couch. When he finally found me, seven minutes and 37 seconds later, he looked at me with a face that read,"Hello. Did you get lost or something? Do I need to call a psychiatric ward ambulance? Do you still understand English?" Then he smirked and laughed through his nose, before bursting into full-on laughter, and then it hit me that this book was making a complete and utter moron out of me.

His assignment that week focused on kissing. That was fun.

I pulled out my third assignment. I was supposed to make a sex game creating two sets of cards. One with body parts listed on them and the other with verbs. I tried all week, but I just kept wondering what would happen if he pulled the two cards that said "Thrust!" and "Ear!"

I absolutely refused to do my next assignment as well, where I had to "innocently" take him to a miniature golf course (because we put-put all the time?). I was supposed to go to the bathroom, take off my panties, wrap them around the golf ball, and hand them to him. Can you imagine that?!? I'm sure he'd say,"Uh...S, what the hell...?"(in a nice loud tone) And everyone would look up to see my panties on hole nine. Besides, there are fucking kids on these mini golf courses, mostly due to the fact that miniature golf is supposed to be for eight and nine year olds.

The only thing I liked about this book was while planning the fucking ridiculous things, I thought about my boyfriend. I liked thinking that week that there was going to be some kind of special surprise for me. But in general, the two of us could be a hell of a lot more creative than that book, which still sits in my bedroom by the way. Mocking me. Feeling like a dork is a really, really bad way to spice up your sex life. And come on, do you really want me showing my naked ass to innocent children, golfing? Put, put, put.

Happy Valentines Day, kiddies!

Infinite X's and O's,

Simply Curious Girl

Would she go Down on you in a Theater?

I had wasted so much fucking time. There wasn't anything wrong with me. He just didn't know how to love me...I suppose I'd already known the truth for some time, but I was unable to admit it to myself. Today I held a box in my hands; an early Christmas present, and it hit me. I was free.

I threw away the box, unopened, shredded the card in two. We broke up a long time ago, but it's finally real in my mind. I can finally, openly, honestly say, I have no more feelings for him, and it feels fucking awesome and it's so, so liberating.


Relationships are really, very difficult. Someone once told me, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." That's bullshit. In love you're apologizing all the Fucking time. Constantly finding things to say you're sorry for. How people change and grow with each other over the years, blows me away. In time, you're finishing each other's sentences. You know who turns the light off at night before bed and who's going to smack the alarm clock and hit snooze in the morning. You have your side of the bed and he has that special pillow he sleeps with. Nights of passionate love making, turn into, "Baby stop, I'm tired.." Nights of sleeping in each other's arms, naked, turn into sleeping back to back, and being annoyed he won't stop snoring. You'd love to smother him with that favorite pillow he holds on to for dear life, instead of you every night. People change so much and sometimes you find that that you aren't the team you once were. And no matter how much the two of you are in love, you just can't get things to feel the same anymore. It just stops working.

We broke up. We're separated. We're on a break. We call it a lot of different things to cover up the pain that he's not here anymore, every day, reaching out a hand or stroking my forehead when he passes through the living room on his way to the kitchen.

There was once a boy. There was once a girl. They once created a life together. They decided to step back from that life when it just wasn't fun anymore. It just didn't make them happy anymore. They loved each other so very much, that they just couldn't stand making each other miserable anymore. That's life. That's what happens to people. We can trace a line of events, but we can't follow a series of emotions. Things change. People change. Life changes. Times change. It's very possible to love someone so much and still be unable to make him or her smile.

Sometimes the best gift you can give someone is their freedom, and space. That's what he did.

Merry Christmas. Now go away.

I may talk a good game, but I seriously have no idea what I'm doing, what I'm going to do, what I'm supposed to do, or what I should've done. I'm just here, like any of you, trying to figure it all out.

It's hard to let everyone know you're absolutely terrified.