Euro-Stalker

This is the true life story of the victimization of your author in the early 1990's...

 

It may have been 1990, but that’s not that important. I may have been wearing a pair of Z. Cavaricci pants and a muscle shirt, and although embarrassing, it’s not of any great consequence either. What is important is that I was 23 years old, which meant two things: I knew next to nothing and I had the freedom to prove that fact to the world.

 

My friend Marius picked me up in his cherry red, decade-plus old Chevy Camaro. We were heading to a popular nightspot in Miami. Because his car ran at about one mile for every three gallons of gas, we would only need to refuel two times to make it to our destination, Club Façade.

 

Thanks to the show Miami Vice, Marius and I were confident that we lived in the cultural center of the universe. We were close in age, so the testosterone level in the car was off the charts. This of course forced Marius to drive with an aggressiveness that neither conformed to any applicable traffic laws.

 

Club Façade was one of a dozen or so discothèque-styled clubs that consisted of a mammoth warehouse decorated with curtains and iambic columns to make it look like we were living in some sort of modern day Italian Renaissance.  To the discerning eye of a 23-year-old, it was the height of good taste. To anyone that had any life experience, it had the ambience of a Long John Silver’s. We wouldn’t have cared if the club were decorated with newspapers from the bottom of a hamster habitat. We were looking for women. Or more likely a woman. The odds of us both meeting women were astronomically against us.

 

It was a slow night at the club. Or possibly Marius and I had annoyed so many women on our previous excursions that they had simply moved on and didn’t bother to let us know. Either way, we wouldn’t be there long. In those days, clubbing was like a war of attrition. We would stand around for about fifteen minutes projecting our lack of confidence and ogling any woman in the club who was slightly more attractive than Bea Arthur. In our minds, we were trying to determine which women were already accompanied, and then we would start our work in earnest. In reality, we were highly localized stalkers.

           

It essentially went like this: Marius and I would position ourselves approximately twelve feet apart and, in the desperate hope that one would respond favorably, begin propositioning every woman in the bar.

"Buy you a drink?"
"Would you like to dance?"  I couldn't dance.
"Buy you a drink would you like to dance?" 
 Right down the line...

 

After about thirty minutes of this, we would reassemble at our original spot and talk about what we could do in the future to improve our performance. Often the suggestions were: “Let’s just dance up on some girls,” or “Let’s sing ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ like in Top Gun.”

 

On this particular night, it just so happened that we had missed one woman in the bar, and she was standing by the staircase. I was never able to date the supermodel types, but she was attractive in the classic sense: Brunette, blue eyes, fair and voluptuous without being too pneumatic. She was wearing a classic little black dress.

 

I decided to be really clever and told Marius, “Watch this.”

 

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to stare, but you are on a staircase.” Slam dunk!

 

“I am sorry. My English is not too good.” That’s even better. “My name is Carina,” and she extended her hand. Her accent was thick and her diction was difficult to understand over the sounds of Deee-Lite and her annoying slide whistle music. Actually, I’m not sure if that was what was playing, but it is the only song I can remember from that time. The important thing is that I had achieved physical contact with an actual woman. In ancient times, I would have sacrificed an ox to the gods in thanks. I thought about doing it anyway.

 

Fortunately, her cultural differences allowed her to look past my sophomoric advances. I learned that she was from the country of Yugoslavia, worked in a souvenir shop on the beach, and took the bus everywhere. Not one of these facts was of the slightest interest to me. What was interesting is that a more-than-a-little attractive woman was talking to me at this club.

 

One point of clarification. I had dated before. It wasn’t as though I had never talked to a girl, but my social skills were, and still are, somewhat awkward. I was constantly trying to come up with new moves to fake out the opposite sex. So this was going extremely well.

 

We offered to give her a ride back to her hotel, which she reluctantly accepted. Of course, this would mean that I would owe Marius several tanks of gas, but it didn’t matter to me. Gas was less than a dollar a gallon and she was pretty attractive. Marius also made the suggestion that she would be more comfortable sitting on my lap. She acquiesced. Good one, Marius. A wingman is born.

 

When we dropped her off at her extended stay hotel, I gave her a copy of my business card with my pager number written on the back. In 1990, you weren’t anybody unless you had a nice, compact Motorola pager. I, of course, still have one, because I know the minute that I throw it out, there will be a huge retro fad and people will be decorating their belts with pagers like gun magazines on a bandolier. “Hey, Mike. Where are all of your pagers? You can’t go out looking like that, all pagerless!”

 

She gave me the phone number and room of the hotel. We made plans to go out on the following Wednesday. I would drive down to South Beach and take her to a restaurant of her choice. Fortune smiled upon me when she chose a little inexpensive Chinese place that was in the basement of a hotel.

 

Almost immediately things got weird. She had recently “won” some sort of promotional package at a South Beach Club. In case you don’t know what I am talking about, this is where a club or bar has you fill out a small card for a drawing. In the next day or so, they call everyone who filled out a card and tell them that they won a free party for ten. Admission and drinks are free for the first hour or so. The idea of course is that you stay and keep spending money. I knew this for the obvious scam that it was, but she seemed too excited for me to want to ruin her fun. However, when she suggested that I bring eight of my friends to her party, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Despite the fact that I had zero intuition when it comes to the opposite sex, this was not jiving well with my hormonal agenda. What was the need to get all of my friends involved? How is that hot or sexual? However, “Sounds great,” was my reply. I am such a coward.

 

The rest of the evening was a pretty vanilla date. Go for a walk, stop for a drink, decent kiss goodnight, and a long drive home. As my prospects were somewhat grim, I had committed to a second date.

 

When I got the second page on the old Bravo, I was less than enthused about meeting up again. She was very pretty and refreshingly nice, but I knew she was looking for a boyfriend. Well, I was tired of being a boyfriend. I wanted to be used. I wanted her to think that I was so damned attractive that she knew that she shouldn’t go out with me but just not be able to help herself. I knew she saw me as a nice kid that she could take home to Mom. Of course, Mom lived in an unstable country on the opposite side of the world, but you get the idea.

 

She agreed to let me pick her up at her room, which was apparently a big deal to her. When I arrived at the cheap motel room, I didn’t see any place to sit other than the edge of a small twin bed. To accomplish this end, I had to remove a large, white, stuffed cat. When I picked it up, I think she thought that I was going to admire it or something, because she immediately looked pleased. When I tossed it over to the other edge, causing it to fall to the floor, she shrieked in horror, “No, that’s Meow Meow Kitty,” or some such nonsense.

           

“Oh, sorry.” I hadn’t realized that anyone could develop that kind of attachment to something that didn’t have a pulse. She made me pick up the stuffed animal and, as ashamed as I am to write this, apologize to the toy. “Sorry, Meow Meow, Kitty.” All right, let’s just move on.

 

She immediately resumed her composure and produced a small, wrapped gift for me. I began to open the paper, but she told me to wait. She walked over to an old        50s-style turntable. She then started to play Don McLean’s “Vincent.” Incidentally, there are only two Don McLean songs of any consequence and only one is any good. The other is “Vincent.”

 

As the creepy music expanded through the air, I continued to unwrap the gift. It was a clear snow globe paperweight, but instead of little specks of snow, there were dozens of small plastic fish swimming through the water. Mounted in the center of this aquatic tomb was a little boy with his arms stretched wide holding a fishing pole. The caption below his feet read, “I love you this much.”

 

My gut reaction was to get the hell out of that room, but remembering that I really didn’t have any other prospects, I decided to power blast my way through the date. As the evening wore on, a few glasses of wine relaxed me to the point where I wasn’t constantly thinking of the fisher boy in the snow globe. When I walked her back to her place, we exchanged some small intimacy in her room without coming to a satisfying conclusion for either of the parties involved.

           

On my way home, I callously tossed the snow globe in the back seat. I knew that I wouldn’t be seeing her again. It wasn’t just her odd behavior. It was more me. I was foolish enough to believe that there was only one person in the world that I could be with, and that one person was always the last person with whom I had been involved. Consequently, I was never ready for whomever I was currently dating. Snow globes and stuffed cats were not what it was going to take to shake me from this emotional conundrum.

 

I had one bit of business to wrap up before I could move on. Carina had invited me to dinner and a club for Halloween. I had agreed over the phone prior to the second date. Lack of sex tends to make one overly optimistic, so I had lined up two dates rather than taking them in a progression. I would call and let her know that the date was off tomorrow. How brave of me.

 

The phone call was cinematic in its dramatic range. She cried. She screamed. She acted as thought I murdered a member of her family, or even Meow Meow Kitty. With each of her protests, I was reassured that I had made the right move. What would this be like if I had dated her for a few months or I had done this in person?

 

It was on a Wednesday. Halloween Wednesday. I was working at my office as a mortgage broker, not making any money. I was on commission, but hadn’t made a sale in months. The office was in an eyesore of a gray, three-story building. I was in the anteroom toward the front when I heard a knock at the door. This was a bit unusual since it was customary for people to walk into the outer door to see the receptionist.

 

Since I was close, I opened the door. Of course it was Carina, standing there in a white strapless dress. It was the kind of dress that hugged the body all the way down to the calves with a slit down the side. It showed all of her curves. In addition to her 1940s Rita Hayworth dress, she had on a pair of matching, elbow length gloves, as though someone might be handing out Oscars at A-1 Financial Mortgage Brokers. They weren’t.

 

I am no Nostradamus - or Kreskin, for that matter - but I knew that this was going to be an emotional bloodbath. I decided to slide outside and be butchered in the hallway rather than allow my coworkers to notice me being eviscerated. Hey, Mike. Nice large intestines. Die much? I have never worked with a truly funny person. Usually they are just patient and cruel and waiting for some part of your personal life to surface and expose you for the buffoon that they know you are. Jackpot.

           

I walked out into the narrow hall, took her by the hand, and led her to the elevator. I hoped that she did not take the gesture for affection. Carina had been holding the twine handles of a brown paper shopping bag in her other hand, probably loaded with C-4 explosives. Or maybe one of the other Cs. I have no idea about plastic explosives except for what I’ve seen in the movies. I like when they call it “plastique.” I think that explodes in a fancier fashion than plain plastic.

 

However, as ridiculously inappropriate as her garb was and as nervous as I was that she was concealing a weapon somewhere, I tossed around the idea of making a move on the elevator. She looked good and I wasn’t accustomed to this level of sophistication. She would have fit in nicely at a ball or perhaps a coronation, but not in Suite 201 of the Pembroke Pines Medical and Professional Building.

 

“I have brought you presents.” She spat it out at me so I could not mistake the fact that these presents were delivered in anger.

 

“You shouldn’t have come down here. This is my place of business.” In truth, I was a horrible mortgage broker, and me calling that office a place of business was like a prostitute calling her trailer a house of God because she occasionally prayed inside.  

 

“I need to give you something.”

 

“Okay,” sighing. “What do you have for me?”

 

Here is a list of the items that she brought to me with her explanation of each:

           

A ten-inch statue of the little boy from the snow globe. In his larger state, he was free from the watery confines and tastefully mounted to a piece of driftwood. This was for me in case I had missed the subtlety of the snow globe.

           

A plastic flamingo that was also mounted to a piece of driftwood. This was for my mother for bringing such a wonderful son into the world. That would be me. Her reasoning, not mine, but we all know that mother’s live to be recognized with plastic effigies of aquatic foul.

 

My laminated card with my pager number outlined with magic marker underneath the clear plastic.

 

Meow Meow Kitty. This was inexplicable to me since I had shown absolutely no interest in the stuffed cat. I swear.

           

“Why are you giving me your cat?”

           

“Because you loved it.”

 

“Ummm, no, I didn’t. Is that cab for you?”

 

“Yes. And the $100 that I spent on cab fare was supposed to be for us to go out tonight.”

 

“Sorry,” I said weakly.

 

I just stood there holding my cache of souvenir shop booty thinking, “Well, thank God that’s over.”

 

On Christmas night I was visiting a friend when my pager went off. I didn’t recognize the number so I called it back. I can’t say that I initially recognized the voice, but it was a woman’s voice crying uncontrollably.

 

After a few seconds, I knew who it was.

           

“How are you, Carina?” A stupid question, but I had to interrupt her wailing lamentations.

 

“How am I? You don’t know…you don’t know what it’s like to be in the hospital emergency room with the power flickering on and off and the doctor standing between your legs…”

 

“What are you talking about?” She was right. I really didn’t know.

           

“I got an abortion!” This would have been a devastating piece of news for me under normal circumstances. However, a few red herrings gave me a modicum of comfort:

 

People generally don’t get abortions in hospital emergency rooms.

 

We had not achieved anything close to the sort of exchange of fluids required to make such a procedure necessary.

 

Even if there was a bad storm, which there hadn’t been in several weeks, hospitals have their own generators.

 

“Do you even remember what we did?” Thinking that her abortion must have been a scene from a movie.

           

After a long pause, I heard a sigh. “Look at us, Mike. We are like two people that have been married for years.”

 

“Merry Christmas, Carina.”

 

http://www.myspace.com/chanceransom

Author's Note

I need help with grammar, but not content. It is a true story so my hands are a bit tied.

Reviews

[Yvonne Heidt]

A wingman born...

LOVED IT.

I was foolish enough to believe that there was only one person in the world that I could be with, and that one person was always the last person with whom I had been involved...

This is like a watching a train wreck. I love your storytelling ability! Sorry it took me so long to get here...

How long did she stalk you? As sensitive as this subject is - I am still LOL.

Thanks to the show Miami Vice, Marius and I were confident that we lived in the cultural center of the universe...

It's lines like the one above that make your writing good. It is so image provoking that I was instantly there.

Excellent job, as always.

[Tamme]

Ha. What interesting roles minor characters in our lives sometimes play. Reminds me of the frat boy I went out with for "fun" who was then professing his undying love at the beginning of third date. I enjoyed reading this.

[Mark Leone]

Knowing you personally I can place the face and attitude with the story..... I enjoyed this one. There are also so many other stories that people will not believe either. WWCRD ?

[Jadarae]

Wow... she was definitely a character. :-) Awesome story. Kept me glued to this computer from start to finish. :-)

[Beautifully Tragic xPoe..]

Strange woman. I know how it is to be stalked. I was being stalked last year. I still get the guy on my phone every once in a while.


Great story

[Carole]

Well, you definitely keep a readers attention from start to finish. I agree with Lydia. It's a good thing you got out of this one when you did. Strange woman. Bet you learned a lesson...LOL Like Forest says, "Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get..." ***Smiles***

[TL Boehm]

wow this is truly bizarre - which really gives it appeal as I read it. the 'bizarreness actually works in this one. such an odd character Carina is...I cracked up over your attention to detail, like Club Facade, and Dee lite -w ell done.

[TL Boehm]

wow this is truly bizarre - which really gives it appeal as I read it. the 'bizarreness actually works in this one. such an odd character Carina is...I cracked up over your attention to detail, like Club Facade, and Dee lite -w ell done.

[Lydia Shutter]

You got out just in the nick of time it seems! My goodness, this lady sounds scarey! I loved that you compared her to Bea Arthur...comparing her to the the Maude/Golden Girls star says it all! Although I'm sure it was not funny while you were going through it, your added humor here made the story an enjoyable one. I'm so glad Nuala sent me the link to this! Great work. Lydia

[Diana Owen Busy with Li..]

this is a great read you have done an amazing job