A few months ago, I met a guy while swimming at the health club. We had a nice chat about travel and music and stuff, and he seemed relatively normal…well, except for his dogged insistence that I should borrow some of his Christian music and listen to it until we could meet again for coffee or something.
Well, I’m a huge music nut, but I’m no Christian; in fact I’m a Jewish agnostic. I told him that due to my zillion years singing in choirs, I’ve certainly sung my share of religious music, and I have no issue with doing so – in fact, I go Christmas caroling with friends most years, because I love the warm fuzzies that go with sharing music with others. But well, there’s Christian music like carols and Bach oratorios, and then there’s, well, Christian music like what he lent me, and I’m not at all a fan of the latter.
So against my better judgment, I accepted the loan of 3 CDs, gave him my cell phone number (thankfully not my home number, for reasons which will shortly become apparent), and went on my merry way. I told him that because I was up to my neck in work, after which I would be leaving the country for a couple of weeks, after which the holidays would be upon us, I might not get to return his CDs right away, nor would I probably have any time at all to talk to him until I got back into the U.S.
Well, in the intervening 4 days until I left the country, the guy must have left me 8 voice mails. It kind of freaked me out; they really sounded quite pitiful, especially after I had already told him I wasn’t going to have any time to talk to him for at least a couple of weeks. Does the word “boundaries” mean anything to you, dude? I didn’t call him back, because frankly I didn’t have the time or the interest, as well as because well, his behavior was verging on stalking.
I did finally call him back later, on Christmas, to apologize for not having called sooner, but well, as I’d mentioned I’d been unavailable, but I did want to return his CDs to him somehow. The next day, I got a voice mail from him that he was really missing his CDs, and could I get them back to him? I thought yippee, he’s finally gotten a clue. So I called him back to try and arrange a time to meet him at the health club and return the CDs. I got his voice mail.
Then I didn’t hear back from him for a month, and he acted like the whole stalking thing never happened, and asked when I was going to be back at the club. At the time I had bronchitis, so I told him definitely not right away, and I couldn’t say for sure when. He called again a couple times after that, again acting chatty and like nothing weird had ever happened, asking when he was going to see me again.
I’ve kept blowing him off, but I honestly just want to get rid of the CDs and have my peace and quiet back. If possible, I’d like to return the CDs without seeing him in person, and without him knowing where I live. Any ideas? I never wanted the damn things to begin with, and honestly intended to return them ages ago, but the guy subsequently completely creeped me out.