Last week I realised I had a stalker. Sunday arvo, a NO CALLER ID call comes through. I pick it up. The voice says, ‘Hello, Mandy, it’s Rob!’ I didn’t have a clue who Rob was, but here’s a little secret about me. I pretend to know people long enough until I remember who they are or where I met them. It seems disingenuous but I do manage to bridge that gap and go from faking to recognition about 50 per cent of the time. Sometimes I just keep faking.
My good mate ‘Rob’ says: I just wanted to know where you are performing next? I say ’Where are you?’ He pauses and then says, ‘Melbourne’. I hit him with the ‘I’m at the Melbourne Comedy Festival; if you go to the website you’ll find the show’. Like Rob gives a shit. He’s already jerking off. I just think he sounds ‘enthusiastic’ about wanting to see my show.
Then Rob informs me that he saw me at The Taste of Love Festival where I ran the Sex and Humour Workshop probably 18 months ago. I clearly pulled Rob’s chain a little harder than I meant to. The penny drops. It’s that guy again. The one that has been ringing me for six months or more inviting me to his New Age orgies, or ‘play’ parties.
At first I found it bemusing. Even though I don’t want to go to a group-sex love-in, it’s nice to be asked. In the first call I remember his surprise when I said No. He said, ‘So you’re not into polyamory?’ I said No. I barely get to spend time with the one man I already have. I’m not in the business of servicing groups. He said, ‘You can bring your husband’.
I felt uncomfortable and kind of prudish but said, ‘Look, I am very busy, I honestly don’t have time to be attending genital-stimulating encounter groups.’ They take the whole sharing vibe of the ‘bring a plate’ thing just a bit too far for me. I became uncomfortable with his persistence and hung up. He rings me back about six times. Same conversation about my attending sex parties. I don’t know why you’d keep asking someone to a sex party if they’ve made it clear they have no intention of coming. (Please pardon the pun.)
So I block the call. Took me half an hour to find it in my settings. I thought I was free. Then I started getting calls from the same bloke from NO CALLER ID. I’d just say, ‘Can’t talk,’ and hang up. Or ‘driving’ and hang up. I have kids, I have to answer NO CALLER ID because very often it’s them calling from someone else’s phone.
My sex-party man hadn’t called me for ages. So that’s why he caught me out on Sunday and managed to engage me for so long. This time he had a more developed story. He told me he was a good friend of Marion, the person who ran Taste of Love Festival; in fact he was her business partner and they were putting on another event in Melbourne and would I mind running another workshop. He then started on about my going to the Play parties again and encouraging me to participate in group sex.
Then it clicked. The guy’s a weirdo. I contacted Marion. She’d never heard of him. And there was no Melbourne event. Creepy. Living around here I just thought he was an enthusiastic German bloke keen on Catholic Girl conversions. It didn’t occur to me that he was stalking as some weird sexual perversion.
I started freaking. What if he knows where I live? Who is he? Is he on my Facebook? Do I know him? So I post something on Facebook wondering if he’ll identify himself. Then Ellen, dear friend, fellow comedian and the other half of Women Like Us, reveals herself as a bit of a private dick (as opposed to stalker who is a public dick).
She takes the blocked number, searches it on the internet and within ten minutes she identifies the calls are coming from South Africa and she has a name. So he’s South African, not German. It’s getting creepier. She googles the name and the first story that pops up mentions this person’s arrest and conviction in 2001 as a sex pest who had rung hundreds of women, namely journalists, celebrities and beauty queens.
Mr Creepy pretends to be someone they know and invites them to spa bath parties and orgies. Wow, I’m clearly more successful than I thought. But it is 15 years on. He’s become less ambitious about whom he targets.
Mullumbimby-based standup comedians who put their personal contact details on their website are easy pickings for South African sex pests. I report him to the police. We have a laugh. And now I sit and wait for his next call. Actually, bugger waiting. I am going to call him. Does anyone else want his number?
Just one thing, how can your friend locate a phone number from the NO CALLER ID?
I’d love to know that trick.
Jon she didn’t locate the number from no caller ID, she located it from the number that she blocked prior to him calling with no caller ID. Thats how I read in anyway.