The Stalkers
It wasn’t until a close friend of mine told me about her team of over-eager fans that I became so intimately familiar with the term “stalker”. Like many of my generation, I often bat the phrase around lightly, describing the ex who lingers, or the guy who calls a bit too much. Unlike most people my age, I have had real, actual, you-need-to-seek-medical-help stalkers. Some of them were dangerous, most of them just creepy. And it’s surprising how light the laws are where this personal safety issue is concerned: basically the police can do little more than help you enforce restraining orders until someone does you physical harm. On one level it makes sense – we have freedom of assembly, a person can be anywhere at any time with any group of people as long as they aren’t hurting anyone. On another level, it’s a shame to me that we can’t make the obvious distinction between a person exercising their pursuit of happiness with free assembly, and a person who is seriously infringing upon mine. I mean, we have laws to get creditors to stop calling – people who are legally entitled to our money, whether or not we have it at the time. But we don’t have much more than caller block to make someone stop calling us. Right now, I’m dealing with two stalkers. One is my ex. To say he’s apeshit over losing me would be to put it mildly. Maybe it’s vain and arrogant to say