[summer_gphib]

Yes, oh dear God yes. I'd just been through a very, very bad break-up, and was rather depressed. I met a guy on our campus "chat" program (this was in the mid 90's) and after talking to him a few weeks, realized that we had some friends in common. I worked at a campus computer lab, so I was always on our chat program at work. I was so naive. I had been in the broken relationship for a long time, and didn't realize that this wasn't the small town I grew up in. I didn't really bother to ask our friends in common about him. But that's before there was a lot out there about internet creeps, so live and learn.

Anyway I had him come over to my apartment (where I lived alone), and boy was that a mistake. He had told me that he was about 5'8'' and 200 lbs. I had been dating with someone who was 6'2'' and about 225, so I figured he would look nice. I'm not into superficiality, and lord knows I'm not a size 2, but I've always been active, and at the time I was pretty athletic.

He was, no kidding about 400 lbs. He was so large that when he sat on my sofa it literally broke a spring. I felt bad for him, but he was not my type at all. I tried to be nice, and we watched a movie and hung out a bit, but I knew this wasn't at all going to work. I tried to let him down gently, but he began to stalk me. He would be outside my apartment building some times in the parking lot. Again, in the mid-90's there weren't the stalking laws there were today. I had my bff come and stay with me for a week, I got so freaked out. He was kind of a computer genius, and he called a couple of times, and once the caller ID actually read "Help Me". I swear, I called the phone company who said this was impossible, blah blah blah, but it happened. I think I slept with a knife under my mattress for a month.

I finally woke up one night, a month or so after my bff went back to the dorm, and heard someone in my apartment. It was very late, around 3 am, and I heard the door open and shut, and me, still being a naive idiot, was bad about forgetting to lock the door. Luckily whoever it was, didn't do anything to me, but I couldn't manage to sleep there for a long time. I crashed a lot in the dorm then. Lessons were definitely learned. I called the cops, but again, nothing could be done.