Losing My Stalkee Virginity

Stalker Alert Level: Dark Orange (Or even Red maybe)

Hilarity Level: If you think being scared is funny in retrospect....

I BURST INTO THE SMALL TAILOR SHOP, and a handful of startled and conservative women gaze up at me. I've got a vocabulary of about 50 words in Turkish on this occasion, most of them curses or sweet talk (yeah, go figure). But I'm not even going to try and explain this one. This is serious, and I must stay in here until he loses my scent and wanders off in the wrong direction.

The guy had actually chased me!

See, I've been in Istanbul for less than 24 hours at this exact moment, and within an hour of leaving my friend's apartment, out into the streets for the first time, I was peering through a window, hiding as though waiting for the Russians to drop another bomb on Berlin.

I made a grave mistake on my first visit to Turkey in 2006 at the ripe age of 22: I acted just as I would in America. The moment I hit the narrow cobblestone path outside the aged apartment building, I came face-to-face with a Turkish man about my age, average looking, with clean clothes, a friendly smile, and a smidgen of English. He saw me gazing up, over, around, beneath, and behind myself in utter bewilderment and decided to approach this blonde wanderer with the big black combat boots and screwed up hairdo.

"Hello," he introduced himself.

"Hi," I smiled back in that totally naive I'm-so-excited-to-be-here sort of way.

"Do you need directions?" he asked.

"Ah, no. I'm just wandering, checking things out," I gasped again, still swept away by the breath-taking beauty of the city and all the foreign-ness that I couldn't even process yet.

"Well, I can help show you around the city if you want," he offers.

Then I did what no foreign woman has ever lived to not regret, what every foreign woman has probably done at least once, then never did again. I said, "Sure."

Now, for those of you who have never been to a stalker laden country (just throw a net over the whole Middle East and the Mediterranean region), you are wondering what the heck is wrong here. The guy is nice, friendly, and offering help. No. No. If you are one of my readers who has been to a stalker hub, then you know I'm about 48 hours away from a marriage proposal right now.

We walk off randomly in whatever direction. I'm in Kadikoy, for those of you Istanbulians who know what that means. After some idle chit chat, the guy seems utterly harmless and kind. Then he asks if I want to try some Turkish coffee or hookah. Yay! I totally do.

I follow him through some more windy paths, glancing behind myself frequently to acknowledge semi-helplessly that I have no idea how to get back to where I came from now. Everything is curvy, crumbling, and weird looking. There are guys selling stinky fish in open air, other guys jumping in my face with fake designer jeans for 10 lira, and about a dozen sets of dark eyes on me at all times. Smoke rises around me in all directions, even from the cigarettes of nine year old boys.

We have coffee. We chat. I still have no idea how much trouble I am in. I spend most of the conversation trying to convince him that I have a husband, so No I would not like to date you. I still haven't caught on. I totally don't get it. He teaches me the word inanmiyorum, which means I don't believe you. He's talking about the husband. (I need a new excuse, right?)

Then I want to leave. Go away. To my own place. I collect his email, like I'll shoot him a hello once in awhile, nice to meet you kinda stuff.

Yeah, right. I was dreaming.

He follows me out the door. Follows me as I try to unlost myself. When I say goodbye, he follows some more and grabs my arm and interlaces it with his. I pull away in total shock. Now it is starting to sink in. I get a little more firm, tell him I want to go now and I will send him an email sometime, thanks for everything, take care.

He follows.

He follows.

I turn a sharp corner and start running while he is unable to see me, cause I've made a distance between us.

Then I turn another corner and speed walk. I look behind me. He's not there.

BAM! He had taken a f&*#$&*#($@#$@G SHORTCUT so that he could INTERCEPT me when I went around the next corner. I come face-to-face with him the instant I come around the building, and he's got this big accomplished smile on his face, like, "You didn't think you could get away that easily, did you? You coy little doe you!"

I nearly faint in shock. I feel like Jason Bourne. Shit. Yeah, cursing time. I turn about face and storm in the other direction swiftly. He follows.

He follows.

He follows.

So I pick up the pace and come around yet another corner. HE'S THERE!!!!!!!! He did it AGAIN!!!! He took a short-cut and wound up right in my path AGAIN!!!!!

I reverse back around the corner and fly like a panicked bird into the first door I see: it's a tailor shop with a handful of startled and conservative women gazing up at me.

By the way, this happened again the next day. He apparently followed me home without me knowing it and was there when I left the apartment the next morning. I was so terrified after that that I didn't leave the apartment for two days in a row after my second encounter with him--not even to get food, not for anything. I refused to go outside.