The events of this post took place back in August of 2006. Earlier that winter, I got a serious lower-back injury while playing ice hockey. Although some physio did help the injury, my back still hurt. I wanted to stay active, so that summer I took up swimming at my university's pool. Swimming is a good low-impact exercise for the bones and joints, so it's a good bet for those who are out of shape or injured.
My afternoon routine went normally, that day. I take the train to downtown and walk to the athletics building. I change in the pool locker room, do a few prep-stretches for my back and then I head over to the main pool room.
I jump into a lane, do some warm-up laps, do a few more stretches and then do 30 minutes of swimming. After that, I head back to the locker room to use the showers, do some final stretches under the stream of warm water and then dry up, change and leave.
Instead of heading straight back for my train that day, I needed to pick-up a book to help me choose my courses for the fall and winter semesters. So I make the 10-15 minute walk to the building where I can get the listing. I walk into the particular building, find the course book right near the entrance door, pick it and turn around.
As I turn around, I'm surprised by this guy in his 50s standing right behind me. I hadn't heard or noticed him so I made a little jump. The man didn't seem to think anything of it, as he looks directly at me and says:
"You dropped this piece of paper."
I put out my hand to take the piece of paper, while thinking "I didn't have any paper on me."
Before I can look over the paper, the man turns around and literally runs out the door.
The paper turns out to be a corner, ripped from some university magazine. Some quickly-written words are on the note:
I think you're cute - do you want a massage?, with an email on the backside.
In an instant, I recall where I saw that guy before. When I walked into the pool room, he was standing at the end of one of the swimming lanes, looking at me. When I was back in the single stall showers, after my swim, I recognized seeing the top of his head as he switched from one shower to the another, which where both on either side of mine. I also recognize him when I was changing in the locker room.
So this guy had noticed me at the pool, was around me in the showers and had followed me for the 10-15 minutes walk to go get my course listing...
Having no idea how to react to this, I start laughing out loud.
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Back home, I thought about how to respond to this situation.
Obviously, being followed by some stranger out of my university's pool is creepy. I wasn't scared or anything, since the guy seemed afraid of my potential reaction, and a part of me did find it pretty funny, since he ran away, but this isn't something I would want occurring again. Knowing what he looks like, it was a little shocking that I could suddenly recall him being around me without me consciously having noticed him at the time. Of course, we're surrounded by people, that we give no notice to, all the time so maybe this isn't odd at all.
The note did create a practical problem: if he's at my university's pool, then he probably has a membership and goes regularly. Therefore, there's a high probability of me running into him again. I don't want to have to see this guy and have him potential ask about this "massage offer". Also, I'm not about to change my schedule just to avoid him.
In all honesty, though, if he had been my age and hot I might just have ignored the message and maybe even spoken to him at the pool, if I ever saw him again. But this is just here-say.
In the end, it seemed like the best thing for me to do was to send a message to stalker-guy's email, provided on the note, saying I'm not interested. That way if he's ever back at the pool at the same time as me, he'll leave me alone.
So I use my normal email to send the following message:
"Thanks for the compliment, but I'm not interested. :) "
That same evening, the emails began.
Let me first preface the rest of this post by saying I now know I made 2 obvious mistakes when responding to his note: First, I was too kind. I should have said "Leave me the fuck alone", but I didn't want to be unnecessarily mean. Second, I should have never used the :) symbol. That was just pure stupidity on my part. The smiley face just leads to trouble.
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Over the next day, I would receive 3 emails from my pool-stalker, named Todd. He would confirm that he's actually just a guy on vacation in Montreal. So he's not a regular pool user, although I assume he goes there for the university eye-candy.
Although creepy, the emails are actually really amazing and funny to read. The previous teaser post is the exact copy of the first email. The email gives the feel of looking into an unfiltered stream of consciousness. I do honestly find it really funny that he's addressing me as a straight guy and trying to get me interested in an "innocent" massage, which according to him at least one other straight guy has really enjoyed and it will not turn into anything gay. What are the chances that he would end up handing the note to a gay guy? Haha, oh random world we live in.
The detail of him noticing my stretching is, again, creepy.
The second email he sent was a general rehashing of the first email. Todd says he was afraid the first didn't get through, so he decided to send the second one just in case. Yup, that's a bit too obsessed, but anyway...
I'm not going to paste the whole copy of the third email here, but you should all know that this is when it gets hilarious. My friends, by far, love this email the most. Anything that begins with "I have been thinking for the last two hours or so about this. If you don't mind, I'd like to just write down my thoughts?" has to be good. The third email comes out to about 2 pages, single-spaced, standard text size, in Microsoft Word. He indeed put a lot of thought into it.
Todd describes a series of situations where it would be OK for a straight guy to receive a massage from another guy. Situation 1 includes me, the straight guy, going to see my girlfriend, named Sara. It turns out she's not home, but her older brother, coincidentally named Todd, is there so we hang out. Todd ends up wanting to practice his massage skills on me so I let him. Based on this, I should let him massage me in real life - because it's just simple heterosexual male bonding. The second situation is a variant of the first one, but with a close friend. The third situation is suggestion that he would then owe me a favor, for letting him massage me. His example of the favor would be that he would then have to get me ice cream. I don't know why he thinks it would be a good idea to bribe me with ice cream, but anyway...
Todd's fantasyIncluded in this email are some hilarious, not-so-subtle lines regarding what he would love to actually do to me. I think he's now assuming I'm straight, but ever so slightly bi-curious, so maybe being honest would convince me to say yes:
"...or how can I convince you into trying?...You have always wanted to have your feet licked and this might be the opportunity to try it? ok, that might be gross to you .. umm .. "
"I think it's a good offer .. not like you would do anything, just receive .. might be a better idea and relaxing late at night."
This is by far the best quote though. After 1 page of him downplaying the homoerotic nature of the potential massage, he throws out this doozy:
"You might have the idea that .. well he offered me a massage, and maybe I am slightly interested now, on second thought .. he does seem nice enough .. but does he really want to massage my private parts or give me head in addition? Well, honestly, yes, but, again, if you do take me up on the offer, I would just go with your rules. I am happy to just massage your back and neck for say an hour, and have you leave your shorts on."
Now, maybe a sane person would have kept ignoring the emails. You should realize I'm not too normal in the head, so I obviously didn't. I emailed him back. You readers will, however, have to wait for my next post to find out what I said and what happened.
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