accidental stalker
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Today I got into one of those unfortunate urban circumstances that happens (and gets made into short movies). I was walking down a side street in my neighbourhood, and crossed the street to find myself walking about four or five metres behind a young woman. Nothing unusual so far.
I saw from our relative paces overtake her. This is generally a good thing, because I hate it when you get into that situation where, as a tall man, you slowly catch up on people and it gets them jumpy and flustered and snapping at you or stopping to stare at you wild-eyed. The only thing that could interfere was the intersection coming up, where I intended to turn.
Then she turned the corner exactly where I was intending to do. Inevitably, I turned too. And predictably, she tensed and picked up the pace. So much for casually overtaking her. Now I was lumbering along, 195cm tall and 95 kg in weight, behind a girl 40cm shorter and probably 2/3 my weight at the outside, and it was 90 minutes past sunset and she was laden with bags and clacking along at what must have been an uncomfortable pace to keep ahead of me.
So I eased off a bit, and hoped that she would turn into the large apartment building next to our small building. No such luck. Instead, she turned into the lane leading to our building. Cursing to myself, I pulled out my keys to make sure that she could hear clearly that a) I was heading that way too, and not stalking her and b) had keys and was in fact a resident and - as I say - not stalking her.
Upon climbing the stairs, she paused, as if unfamiliar with the building. This brought me right up behind her. Sure enough, she headed for my wing. At this I spoke, offering to get the door. She stammered out that her bags were not heavy, and opened the door.
I ducked in after her, and while she frantically combed the directory looking for who knows what, I opened the inner door, and looked back, holding it open for her. She threw me the wild look I'd known was coming from the second she turned down my street, and quickly shook her head.
I let the door go, and went in, vowing that I was going to write this up. And at the top of the stairs, ran into my girlfriend, who asked "What's up?" when she saw the look on my face.
Ah, well.