On the Top Shelf

That morning you opened the fridge and saw a tomato sitting on the top shelf, at the front.

Something brushed across your mind about that tomato. But you shook it off, and bent down to get the almond milk.

Two more times that morning that tomato was there, right in front of you, and you felt troubled. But only for a moment.

Then, towards noon, you found yourself checking the clock regularly.

When you saw that the time had passed 12, you were sitting cross-legged on the couch in the living room and you realized there was something you had to do. "Just after I finish this important email," you told yourself. But you found your body standing up by itself. "Ok, I guess this is happening."

As you walked to the kitchen, your brain let you remember what I whispered in your ear last night, in bed, when you were deep in trance: That at noon, you would be compelled to go to the fridge and eat an entire raw tomato.

Knowing this, you tried to stop your body. You tried to turn around. But you were in the grip of a compulsion. You could feel how helpless you were compared to its power, like a giant powerful hand was moving your limbs.

You opened the fridge again and took out the tomato. Your heart was pounding. The first bite was the worst. Cold and squishy. But every other bite was also the worst.

"He didn't make me like raw tomatoes," you thought. "He didn't make it taste like something else." Instead, there was your arm, your jaw, your tongue, your swallowing muscles, all of them under my remote hypnotic control, forcing you to keep eating that tomato.

When did you start crying? Was it when you realized you were only halfway through, and there was so many more bites left?

Or was it when you thought you were finished - it was gone - but the compulsion riding in your head, that I put there, made you look at your fingers, see the pulp and seeds left on them, and lick them off.

Then it was over. Your muscles were back under your control.

You were a mess. You still had the taste in your mouth, even after rinsing it with water.

You messaged me on Whatsapp. You told me how much it sucked, and how wet it made you.

And I got a boner at work.

The Two Faces of Creepy Weird Guys

“Please, just block him. Or at least unfollow. This is not healthy.”

“No, I can’t.” she says, “It’s like my thing with spiders. I have to know where it is.”

There’s a new creepy weird guy in the Boston scene, and unfortunately my wife got on his radar, for a little while anyway. He went to a munch and afterwards messaged every person who he exchanged even one word with, including her, asking them to come to his new year’s party, which will take place in a motel room. “I just want to have a good new year’s!” he wrote.

When I say weird, I mean socially “off”, awkward, uncomfortable - which also describes half my favourite people. But then there’s the creepy part: acting like they are entitled to women’s attention, appearing to not see them as people, being very persistent and not taking implicit and explicit “no"s - or if they do respond, responding badly.

Of course many creeps don’t seem weird, in fact have great social skills, and they are the truly dangerous ones perhaps. But there’s always a few seriously creepy and weird guys floating around the scene - including a really bad one with the initials JC a couple years ago - and there’s something most of them share that I find particularly unsettling.

That aspect is these statements of, "I’m here to make friends!!” and “I’m all about love and positivity!” and “I just want to be nice to everyone!” Complete with lots of smileys. Many hopeful and positive messages on many groups, and under many women’s pictures.

But then as soon as things don’t go their way, it flips around, like the face of the mayor in Halloweentown, and they dump rage and self pity everywhere. Suddenly everyone is cruel and against them. Everyone is spreading lies.

My wife and her friend notified the munch organizers of the private messages, resulting in a gentle warning to this guy. Who responded with four long, butthurt paragraphs posted separately within minutes of each other on the munch thread.

What makes me unhealthily fascinated with these guys is that they do what I do, just really badly. That is, they cover up their yearnings and lusts and craving for affirmation with a happy social face. And they get disappointed and frustrated, when people don’t behave as they want. The difference is, I recognize that other people are just as real as me, and that the possibility of disappointment is part of that. And my social persona is way more convincing, and my disappointments and frustrations way better hidden. Reading their creepy timelines is close to comedy, and it’s close to horror - two genres that let us externalize our churning, unacceptable inner urges.

Of course it’s not funny, because there’s a threat: at the least, a threat of more creepy private messages, and maybe an escalation of bothering people at public munches, or at creepy events they create that naive people might respond to.

And when the tone of their posts begins to trend towards rage and grievance, the second face taking over, me and my wife both see the possibility of a much greater threat. I keep reminding her that the likelihood of violence is very small (even in America!). But on the rare occasions when something horrible does happen, I bet this is the pattern we see leading up to it.

This guy hasn’t yet done anything bannable according to the rules of the munch! And yet I find this pattern, of raging out immediately when things don’t go his way, to be such an enormous, frightening red flag.

Can you really ban people just for red flags? I don’t know. But if you don’t react well to criticism, especially the specific criticism that you’re creeping people out, you belong at the top of the list of people to watch very carefully.