MVWD wasn’t so much a specific date as a two-and-a-half year flirtation that began my freshman year of college and ended (awkwardly) during the beginning of junior year. B lived down the hall from me and I knew he had a crush on me. He was a self-proclaimed nerd and I probably had a good 20 pounds on him, so I never really saw him as more than a goofy friend.

During the rest of the year and sophomore year, we saw each other sometimes and were friendly-bordering-on-flirty. Junior year, I realized that B had grown into his skinny frame a little bit and was actually on his way to becoming cuter.

We hung out one night and were joking around and somehow started talking about physical attractiveness. He said, “You know, you should know that you’re actually…like, pretty. You’re probably a 7.”

I knew him well enough to know that this was his own weird way of complimenting me, so I thanked him. I’m no bombshell, but I’m decently cute, so I figured being a “7″ was fairly accurate. Then I asked, “So who’s a 10, then?” expecting him to name some beautiful celebrity or something. Instead, he named a girl we both knew–a girl who resembled a slightly taller, more preppy version of me.

“I feel like she and I sort of look alike,” I said, setting myself up for disaster.

“OH no. No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head with unnecessary enthusiasm. “Not at all.”

“Okay,” I replied, “Why not?”

“Well,” he said. “She dresses better. And she’s athletic.”

“What!” I laughed. “She plays volleyball! I run marathons and I swam in high school!”

“Yeah, but volleyball is a sport that makes you SKINNY,” he answered.

I don’t remember what else happened that night, but I stupidly forgave him for his weird ways and decided to hang out with him again. A few months later, we ended up making out and I thought we were on to something. Unfortunately, I had misjudged his potential (or maybe my freshman self was right about him all along.)The day before Thanksgiving break we went out to coffee, and he spent the entire time quoting “Family Guy” and explaining in great detail which states had the lowest pot prices.

MVWD happened a long time ago when I had just left home aged 19 and was living in another city.

A fellow student, I’ll call him Mike, approached me and asked me out for dinner. I’d only known him socially prior to this. Mike was from overseas and had only been in the country for about four months but spoke very good English and seemed to have made some friends with a few people, none of whom had made any comments about any bizarre behaviour. I accepted his offer and we agreed where and when. At first he appeared to be a charming guy (don’t they all!). He was a moderately good looking young man, attentive, said flattering things about me and seemed genuine enough.

Being only 19 and from a somewhat sheltered upbringing, I hadn’t dated much at this point in my life so didn’t have any other really comparable experiences. Boy, did his presentation rapidly change. He ordered my food for me, which I found a little annoying but I’d been brought up not to be confrontational, so I let it slide. He then chose the wine as well. He then starts to literally interrogate me about my dating history by asking how many previous boyfriends, what did my sisters do, did they have boyfriends and if they “were they good girls as well.” With hindsight I’m surprised he didn’t come right out and ask if I was still a virgin! By dessert he was asking me if I would write to his mother to invite her to our wedding! He was absolutely serious about this! I try to deflect the question with some small talk and dinners ends.

Outside the restaurant, Mike then again asked me what wedding date I’m going to set with him so that we can tell his mother! At this point I’d more than had enough, said I was tired and needed to go home to sleep as I had to work the next day–luckily I was not far from where I lived so could walk home easily. This answer apparently wasn’t good enough for him–he then proceeded to take a knife out of his back pocket and hold the blade to his wrist. He then asked. “Do you want me to kill myself?” Somehow I managed to stay calm, walked back into the restaurant and asked the waiter to call the police. When Mike saw this, he took off.

Sadly that wasn’t the last I heard from him–for months after he would turn up at parties, etc, and stare at me. He also showed up a few times late at night where I lived and banged on the door, shouting my name (luckily I had advised my roommates of the situation so they never let him in). He also gave my address to his mother who sent a letter a few months after our one date saying how happy she was her son had found a girlfriend! He eventually stopped when a male friend of mine made it clear I would go the police if he harassed me any further.

I met Johnny at a fraternity mixer in college. I wasn’t super attracted to him, but I had been single for a while. He told me he was my age (20). When I told him I lived in an apartment that is known for parties, we found out he was friends with my neighbors who I didn’t get along with.

He knocked on my door a few days later, and wanted to hang out. I was busy so we made a plan to hang out a different night. When that night came around, he didn’t want to do much of anything. We watched my roommate’s oh-so-romantic DVD, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, over forced conversation. The whole time he kept making really immature and condescending comments. For example, he didn’t get along with his parents so he ran out and got a tongue ring to spite them. He expected this to impress me. I got bored so I decided to take us to McDonald’s. While there, he tried to tell me some long story about how he would make millions of dollars selling security systems. Cue smile and nod.

After we got back to my apartment, he wanted to go to the party that was going on at my neighbors’ (the ones I didn’t get along with). I wasn’t at all impressed with him but I was pretty naïve at this age so I went along with it. After smoking a joint and talking about how he had sex with some girl, I ready to leave, but he convinced me to go “adventuring with him” to a party he knew. We got into the car with some other girls that I was acquainted with (and he was apparently best friends with) and drove to a really nice neighborhood. It seemed too nice for a college student.

It was–he had taken us to a sixteen-year-old’s kegger party, thinking this was cool. The teenagers looked at me and the few other college kids like we were aliens. I quickly got bored  so I sat out on the back porch with one of the girls we came with and my neighbor and smoked. They told me three things that today would have made me go kick the guy in the nuts:

1. The hated Johnny and only hang out with him to find out about parties because he’s a loser.

2. He was really 18, not 20.

3. He liked to corrupt “innocent” girls. CREEPY! I looked very young myself.

Johnny had been practically ignoring me the whole time at this party. Finally, he started to realize that he looked like a jerk. The girl drove us away from the party, drunk, even though she already had a DUI. We went to Waffle House, where they all bickered the whole time about god knows what. I thought I’d never get home.

Johnny texted me a few times afterwards trying to get me to go to parties. He even begged me to tell him what the problem and why I wasn’t interested. He bothered me until I told him off and told him I liked someone else.

MVWD came in college, with a girl I had met through a campus tour guide organization. She was perky and fun, and we had already gotten together a few times and hit it off well. There was one thing that bothered me about her, though, and that was the weatherman.

She was flat-out obsessed with one of the weathermen for a local news station. She had met him before through a mutual friend (which made it only a little less creepy) but she and the mutual friend had since had a falling out, so she never saw the weatherman anymore. Since then, she would watch him every time he was on the news, and tell everyone about how adorably awkward he was or what kind of tie he was wearing last night. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone—all the tour guides, our bosses and even tour groups. She literally never shut up about him.

Somehow failing to see the flagrant weirdness here, I asked her out for coffee on a Saturday afternoon, and she said OK. That morning, she texts me and asks if she can do a load of laundry at my place, so she doesn’t have to pay for it at her apartment. I said sure, why not? She responds with “I’ll make it up to you! I’ll take you grocery shopping!” (I never really quite understood this exchange; she certainly wasn’t buying me groceries.) Oh, and she had also decided that she was hungry and that she wanted lunch, so a simple coffee date had somehow erupted into laundry, lunch, coffee, and grocery shopping.

Now, all this time, she’s talking about the weatherman non-stop. As we’re leaving the grocery store, I mention that for all she’s said about him, I haven’t actually watched him because I don’t have a TV at my place. She’s like “Oh my gosh! It’s almost 6! We should totally go over to my apartment and watch him!” (Mind you, it was 5.15 at this point. We had initially met up at 12.30. Five hours and counting…) Since I didn’t have a car at the time, she was my ride home, so I had no choice…

So, to her apartment we went. She introduced me to her stuffed animals on the couch by name, and we waited for the news to come on. At the end of the broadcast, when the weatherman finally appears, she screams with glee like a 13-year-old, and then immediately gets to criticizing his tie. She’s from a relatively remote part of the US, far away from where we were, but on the national weather map he happened to mention her state, which made her VERY excited. She thought he was trying to send some kind of message to her by mentioning the place she was from in his report! Yeah, right.

We watched the ENTIRE local news, and then the ENTIRE national news. Having had far too much of this girl for one day, I would have just gone home at this point, but her laundry was still at my place. She asks me what I’m doing for dinner, and I say I’ll probably just have leftovers since all my housemates are away. She took this as an invitation for her to come over and “keep me company,” so that’s exactly what she did.

We went home, and I ate my leftovers while she ate a pasta salad she had brought from her apartment. Having completely run out of things to talk about, I just let her gush about the weatherman some more. She ended up sticking around until 10:30, which meant that I wasted TEN HOURS of my life listening to her talk about the goddamn weatherman.

The true coup de grâce of this story came several months later, when a friend’s boss was complaining one of his neighbors. Turns out, it was the weatherman, and my friend’s boss reported that when the weather doesn’t go as he predicted, the weatherman will go outside in the middle of the night and shout at the sky in anger, waking up the entire neighborhood. Maybe my date and the weatherman wouldn’t have been so bad for each other…

During my freshman years, a majority of my friends were guys, and that was how I met R. R was a suitemate of two of my friends and we got to talking one night. He invited me over for movie night the next day, and then the next. For three days, we hung out and he finally decided he wanted to take me out to a nice dinner. I was pretty ecstatic because my dating life up to this point was very subpar. Anyways, R invited me to dinner that following Friday. In my giddy naive youth, I even went out and bought a new outfit because I wanted to look my best. I even giggled about my upcoming date to my roommate and best friend.

Friday night rolls around and R had called me the day before to inform me that he would pick me up at 7pm. Around 7:20pm I called his room and his suitemate picked up (also my friend). I asked him where R was and he told me he was at the basketball game. WTF? When I told my friend what was up, he was pretty pissed, as was I. Determined to not have spent my hard-earned money on a new outfit for nothing–and pissed at being stood up–I marched over to the gym, found R in the stands and asked him if he was going to take me on that date or not.

Since he was in front of his friends (and a few of mine) he sheepishly agreed and took me to dinner. He never offered an explaination for why he attempted to stand me up. Nor did he apologize. When he dropped me off, I simply got out of his car, walked to my dorm and never spoke to him again. Heh, maybe it was his worst date.

It was my freshman year. I was on the lookout for guys from day one. I had fantastic experiences in HS and I was eager to continue my, ahem, education. I was thrilled when a guy a few floors down chatted with me on AIM. Since school had just started, we hadn’t had much free time to get together. At the end of the first month we were chatting again when he said “Why don’t we meet at my room and then go out and do something?” It sounded good. Although his Facebook profile didn’t have many pictures, those that were there seemed okay. We had similar interests. I changed into a low-cut top and headed down.

The person who answered the door was not who I was expecting. DM was the palest kid I had ever seen. He had enormous glasses and fuzzy brown hair. He called it his “Jew-Fro.” He reminded me of a mad scientist. Worst of all? The Crocs he was wearing. Bright orange Crocs with socks. Alright, I thought to myself. He is NOT a looker. However, I had always prided myself on not judging based on appearance. I went into DM’s room, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He liked bad jazz. He played it for me on his iTunes. I asked if we were going to go out. “In a minute, in a minute. I HAVE to show you this song…”

I made plans to leave. I gathered my things and started toward the door. But wait, he could tell I didn’t like his jazz. Wouldn’t I stay for a minute and have a glass of wine before going out? As a freshman, free alcohol was not a thing to be passed up. We sat side by side on his bed and had a glass.

After some decent conversation we had finally finished our wine. I was buzzed, but not enough to impair my judgment. He turned the lights lower. I beg you not to judge me for what follows. I was a poor freshman who had not had any action for months. What was the harm in a little kissing and fondling?

His tongue was slimy in my mouth and he fogged up his giant glasses with his heavy breathing. He put his hand, shaking, down my pants and put his finger in the crevice where my leg met my crotch. Um, what? He was giving my leg crevice a finger bang. He thought it was my vag. I almost laughed out loud. “What are you doing?”, I asked. “Uhh..uh…pleasuring you?” he stammered. I pushed him away and told him I did not want to see him again. “But, what about us?” Us? What us? Did he think we were dating? What a whakadoo.

I never spoke to him again, but did find out that he had bragged about his “action” to his friends. By senior year he was dating this hot Japanese exchange student. I don’t understand.

P and I lived on the same floor during my freshman year of college. We were merely acquaintances. One day, he comes over to my dorm room and asks, “if I wanted to go have tea sometime.” What a fresh date idea, I think and agree.

He comes by my room to pick me up. I just finished making up my face and arranging my hair when he says, “We’re taking the moped.”

We are taking the what?! And I have to wear the only helmet you own?

Blindsided and terrified, I cling to his torso on the back of a Vespa, the wind making my hair and makeup jobs irrelevant. As we are having tea, he starts reading to me from a binder full of love poetry he wrote for one of his professors, who is beautiful, smart, older, cultured, and European; I obviously cannot compete. And after an hour of listening to this drivel, he’s obsessing over Ireland and soccer (or “real football”).

Finally, I convince him that I have to be up early (crafty!), we drive back on the moped with my heart fluttering in the most unromantic context, and he follows me to my room. He spies my preppy roommate’s first-season DVDs from “The O.C.” and says, “We. Have. To. Watch. This.” I manage to avoid standing up for myself and kicking him out, and we watch three mind-numbing episodes. After each one, he asks, “So, have I converted you yet?”

I was a convert neither to The O.C. nor to his creepy, projected romantic stylings and dubious method of transportation, so I decline his request for a second date a week later. I recommend that he check his sexy professor’s availability.

MVWD happened when I was a senior in college. The school was planning to host some valedictorians from area high schools, and I was one of the students who volunteered to show them around.

I was assigned two young men, one of whom was B.

The whole day, as I’m showing the guys around, B is going on about how he doesn’t belong, he’s really not as good as we probably think he is, the other kids at his school make fun of him…like that.

So I tell him we wouldn’t have invited him if we didn’t want him; not everyone who goes to the college was a high-school valedictorian, so even if he doesn’t wind up being the smartest guy on campus, he’d still fit right in; many really intelligent people have trouble in high school…

It seems to mollify him a bit.

A few weeks later, I start getting mail from him. Love letters. Creepy, desperate, love letters.

I call the college staff. How’d he get my full name and address? “Oh, he was so mournful, and so sincere-sounding, and he said he was your friend…I knew we weren’t *supposed* to give out your information, but he’s just a kid…”

I call B (he’s of course included his number in the letters) and tell him sorry if he misinterpreted my actions, but I’m not interested.

The letters continue.

I call him again. I tell him to stop. Writing. Me. Please.

He cries. He begs me to at least be his friend, that I’m the only person who’s ever been nice to him.

I’m naïve.

I feel sorry for him.

I tell him fine.

By this point it’s summer and I’m home with my family. He asks if we can hang out. I agree. We decide to meet at my house and walk to a local pizzeria…with my brother.

When my mom opens the door for him, he’s got a dozen roses in hand. His parents (who had to drive him—he’s not old enough to drive (or vote. Or drink. Or even see R-rated movies! God!!)) launch themselves at my mom, hugging her and telling her they’re so glad their son met someone, and isn’t it great we’re dating, and aren’t we a cute couple?!?

Dad says um, why don’t you have a seat, we’ll fix you a nice drink and have a niiiice talk.

Believe it or not, that still doesn’t end things.

B keeps calling and writing me when his parents aren’t around. One day I tell him he really has to get out in the world and talk to other people—people his own age. “You have to express yourself,” I tell him.

He says, “Really? Oh! I can do that!” And gleefully lets loose a string of profanity at the top of his lungs, calling me every foul name he can think of, telling me he’d like to do nasty sexual things with me, on and on AS LOUD AS HE CAN.

When he pauses for a breath, I tell him—very quietly—if he ever comes near me or calls again, I will tear him limb from limb and stuff the parts down his throat.

THAT finally ends it.

In the Fall of 1990, I was a new graduate student in a town where I knew nobody. I was also a lesbian, and looked like one. So anyway, I was in the library and this guy stopped me to ask me an innocuous question. After I answered, he said he had a terrible stutter (which was obvious), and his speech therapist recommended that he talk with strangers regularly. Would I, he asked, be willing to meet him for an hour to chat? I reluctantly agreed, because I had known other people with bad stutters and was used to talking to them, and gave him my phone number.

When he called, he wanted to meet for Thai food. This seemed odd, but people have to eat, so, whatever. There, he insisted on ordering everything. This was excruciating because he was spitting at me, at the waitress, on the table, etc., but the waitress was very smiley and patient and I tried to remain expressionless. Then the food came. And oh my god. He ate and talked, spitting food constantly. It was on my plate, in my hair, on the table, in my water glass. After about a half-hour of this misery, I paid my part of the check and fled.

And then he called. And called. And called. I was too scared to tell him I was a lesbian, in case he was crazy and stalked me in a town where I didn’t know a soul, so I made up excuse after excuse. Finally, he asked if it was his stutter that made me not want to date him. No, I said, as kindly as I could: it’s that you lied about it and pretended you wanted help, when all you wanted was a date. I didn’t mention the spitting.

MVWD happened at the beginning of my sophomore year in college with a follow up at the end of summer, right before junior year. I met “Adam” online, though after realizing that I actually had met him in-real-life through a friend, it seemed less creepy. Young and foolish as I was, I decided to visit him at his school. Despite not living at home, I told my parents I was going there with a friend, when I should have said nothing at all.

The weekend went pretty horribly. The first night we went to an OK party, but ended up having to drive his drunk frat bros around the entire next day), we weren’t at all a good match (he made my religious and political views into a little joke in my first hour of being there), and I ended up hanging out with my other friends from that school after he had ditched me on the second night (secret frat pledge thing). We overslept the next day, and I ended up having to come clean to my furious parents after they had called my dorm room and got no answer and I had stopped answering my phone. When it came time for me to go, I realized he never gave me the promised gas money and had to ask my friend for cash so I could get home. I’m pretty sure he only texted once, to let me know that he didn’t really think anything was going to happen.

Almost a year later, he called me. He wanted to take me out to dinner to apologize, and so much time had past, so I said sure. He said he’d done a lot of thinking and felt bad for how he had acted. He picked me up, and then told me I looked nice–and that it should be OK for where we were going. I was excited, a nice restaurant, maybe he had reformed. Turned out dinner was with his parents, who thought “Adam” and I were a couple. He didn’t really correct this assumption.

I never talked to him again.