Watch Me
Yasi Salek
Sometimes I miss my stalker. At night I have dreams about being held by faceless men. Other people have sex dreams, but me, I dream about long embraces. Hugs! It’s pathetic. I could be more pathetic in my waking life if we’re being honest. It’s called vulnerability. Look it up. Love is kind of pathetic, in a good way, isn’t it? I never hugged my stalker, or touched him at all. I feel kind of bad about that.
He brought me an individual slice of cake and a rose once, which was nice. I threw the cake in the trash because he was maybe dangerous but I kept the rose. It hung dried up and upside down in my room for a long time. I think he was a baker. The other girls at the market I worked at were scared of him and I was too, but less. I liked that he wouldn’t leave me alone, wouldn’t stop coming in to linger around my checkstand where I was trapped, a sitting duck, a prize on display. He was older but I couldn’t tell how much because I was 19 and every age over 25 blurs together when you’re 19 and slippery and coltish and free. He wore a scarf. I wore cropped little sweaters and Diesel jeans with frayed sides and a lot of eyeliner. I thought I was fat, all the time. I ate peach rings that I stole from the bins of candy in the corner and sipped Jack Daniels and Diet Coke from an extra-large red fountain soda cup with a straw, all night long.
My stalker knew something about romance. He wrote me letters in the smallest handwriting I had ever seen. It was really something. Pristine and perfect. He really made the most of every page, and there were a lot of pages. Ten at a time, at least. The content wasn’t great. But think about him, hunched over, pressing his pen hard into sheets and sheets of paper for hours, all for me. Really think about that. It’s beautiful isn’t it? The process can be one thing and the outcome another. Now I have no stalkers, only reply guys. They’re so much less elegant, less committed.
What if I blew it with him all those years ago? Most of my best choices felt like terrible mistakes at first. Things are only creepy in proportion to how much you want or don’t want them. It’s a sliding scale, babe. It’s case by case. You are the prism. Nobody really likes this and that’s fair enough.
Some people say that one-sided love isn’t really love, but I think they’re wrong. It’s different, that’s all. My stalker thought he loved me, and I won’t take that away from him. I don’t want to. Everyone got too healthy, read too many books about boundaries. We’re so bloodless now. There are all kinds of love, and not all of them are pretty. I loved a man I had only seen once. I saw him playing a piano at a thrift store. He was brunette and handsome and his sleeves were too long, the frayed hems dusting his knuckles while he played. I didn’t say anything that day, just watched and watched. I still think about him.
No one writes letters anymore, not even stalkers. You have to humiliate yourself for lukewarm DMs. It’s artless. I wonder where he is now, the baker. Would he even like me anymore, who I’ve become? What about the time I let a guy I loved hit me, in the face? What about how I liked it? Afterward I told people it was traumatic but I don’t lie at parties anymore. I do miss the girl who got hit, the girl who got stalked. The girl who laid in the street and wanted to die, but only 90%. It has to be 100% for it to work. I wanted to be the difficult one for once. I still do. Are these ugly thoughts? So what. Nobody’s watching anymore.