Wonderland or Not

I was at my office Satur­day for a few hours of focu­sed work. Sum­mer wee­kends find the office buil­ding, with it’s power saving par­tially lit hall­ways, in rela­tive peace. Cus­to­ma­rily no sup­port staff work on wee­kends. There’s an open second floor library with a lone libra­rian, and one lobby/desk secu­rity per­son. I came across only a ran­dom analyst, acti­vist, and attor­ney. One of these wee­kend warriors mis­took me for the per­son who retrie­ves infor­ma­tion from the library and copies it for him. I wasn’t sure what those peo­ple were called, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t “coo­per”, and I told him so.

Having been infor­med of his mis­take, the offen­der admit­ted to having had doubts, espe­cially upon noti­cing I was wea­ring Yoga pants, something he “doub­ted sup­port staff would dare do, even on a wee­kend”. He bab­bled tri­via­li­ties. I con­tem­pla­ted how creepy/odd it was that he knew what I was wea­ring were “Yoga” pants, and that he had loo­ked close enough, in such a dimly lit corri­dor, to ascer­tain that to be the case.

Some time later, while dili­gently revie­wing research for regio­nal envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­ti­ves, there was a knock on my office door. It was the I know you are wea­ring Yoga pants guy. Appea­ring rela­ti­vely inno­cuous, he pre­sen­ted me with my favo­rite Café con leche, then quickly depar­ted. The appa­rent inno­cence of the act not­withs­tan­ding, an inaus­pi­cious ambiance ente­red with him, and lin­ge­red momen­ta­rily upon his exit.

As Poe is my wit­ness, this man had brought me my sig­na­ture drink from a small Cuban cafe close to my resi­dence, a cafe I patro­nize with dis­tinct regu­la­rity. This cafe is a sig­ni­fi­cant dis­tance from our office — by beve­rage acqui­ring stan­dards any­way. It’s unli­kely that someone without pre­vious stal­king tenan­cies toward me would be likely to know I favo­red the refresh­ment or the esta­blish­ment. It bothe­red me that this stran­ger (and believe me, I’ve never noti­ced this khaki clad cross bet­ween Chad Lowe and Tuc­ker Carl­son before), would bring me a drink I loved, from a place I fre­quent; far worse, that he did this on a Satur­day in a pre­do­mi­nantly empty office buil­ding. This was far too Play Misty For Me, for me.

My work day was shot. I couldn’t con­cen­trate. I had to get out of the buil­ding. Coin­ci­den­tally, this man left at the same time.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. This irra­tio­nal para­noia is likely the result of my prea­do­les­cence foray into Lovec­raft, King, Jack­son and Brad­bury. Some had war­ned against taking that path pre­ma­tu­rely, but as they say “Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn“[1].

On a rela­ted but somewhat ligh­ter note:

During polite din­ner con­ver­sa­tion Every Breath You Take is often desig­na­ted the num­ber one stal­ker song of all time. We all have our sec­ret favo­ri­tes though. In con­ten­tion for me is Run For Your Life, an old Beat­les tune sent to me repea­tedly by a loose canon of a boy­friend after we went our sepa­rate ways.

In the end it’s about con­no­ta­tions. Anyone who recalls the late, great, Den­nis Hopper’s cha­rac­ter in Blue Vel­vet, and the “candy colo­red clown” scene, with Dean Stock­well as the thea­tri­cally inc­li­ned, “In Dreams” croo­ning Ben (replete with vile pre­di­lec­tions), will have a strong stal­ker asso­cia­tion when hea­ring Roy Orbison’s In Dreams.

What’s your favo­rite stal­ker song?

[1] Del­more Shwartz, Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day