Time to Shine

I am being stalked by a mediocre man. It has made me question whether or not that's worse than a stalker of a higher caliber. Would I appreciate the clever anonymous repartee I might have with a quality stalker, would the house casings contain an element of romantic subterfuge, would I live to tell the story of a Hollywood-level criminal obsession? Alas, bereft of all of this, I am left with a middling fanboy who longs to be the main character in a story that I wrote myself. Little man, I quote you Prince, who famously said when asked his opinion of cover songs, "Write yo own tunes."

Let me tell you about mediocre men. They are all over the Internet, discussed at length on social media, the men who shout from the rooftops, "Why would you pick the bear, you stupid bitch?" They are unkind, self-centered, with an embarrassing inability to introspect or endure responsibility. They are incels and unheroes, men with extrinsic self esteem and egos made of tinsel and trash. They do nothing out of altruism, as the fundamental sign of a mediocre man is that he wants something for everything and also for nothing. Such men will only help at a cost; accept his offer and be forever beholden to him for both rescuing you from a burning building and picking up that nickel that fell out of your coin purse. Mediocre men know their stories are subpar pulp fiction, and when they see a story they like better, they will do everything in their power to claim it as their own, to insert themselves as the protagonist, to steal your plot and your bestselling life.

Self-induced outrage and personal fables are a favorite pastime of the mediocre man. This one, having clearly kept a ledger of points in his head regarding my acquaintance with him, eventually decided that I owed him a personal debt. Furious that I did not behave towards him in the way he thought he deserved, he unleashed on me a barrage of indignation that can be summed up as, you owe me and I expect you to do what I say and treat me the way I want. Shocking? I can see how it might come across that way. But it is a paraphrase of little exaggeration. I recognize the red insult of a mediocre man who thinks he's been disrespected. I've seen it through girlhood and into every decade of womanhood. These men have never changed throughout history. They do not change because they do not have the intellect, selflessness, or strength of character to recognize that they are comedic villains in everyone else's reality.

I've mostly forgotten about this mediocre man, but to my dismay he has tried to draw my friends into his deranged plans for retribution. He's stupid, this much is clear, because in a place like Texas, the falsities he is accusing people of are things that get you shot. The police have already been notified, and are keeping tabs on him, but he continues. He writes ransom notes that he prints carefully from his computer, drives for hundreds of miles to deliver them to my friends to frighten innocent victims, and all the while believes that he is somehow making a difference. Everyone knows it is him, and no one believes him. Why should they? His shattered ego has created a world of make-believe that only he stews in and obsesses over with sad fury and vengeance. He is now sending lies from a fake social media account, and when my friends saw the message, they knew it was him. We saw it and laughed, and yet a small part of me felt sorry for how pitiful he was, how he tried so hard for absolutely no reason at all. If he spent as much effort making himself a better person as he did trying to avenge delusional slights, he'd probably have a Nobel Peace Prize by now.

There's an Aesop fable called "The Fox and the Grapes." In it, a fox longs for a bunch of juicy grapes hanging from a vine that he can't reach. No matter how he tries, he can't reach them, and his tale ends with him saying, "They were probably sour anyway." When I told this mediocre man that he couldn't be a part of my story, that he never would be, that he needed to stop trying to rewrite it, and that I, of all people, do not bend the knee to patriarchal demands, he invented a scenario in which I was a ho. Ladies, the number one indicator that a man is mediocre is when he calls you a whore. The number one indicator that you have made the correct decision in kicking a man to the curb is when he calls you a whore. The number one indicator that a man is a fool is when his insult insinuates that even a whore wouldn't sleep with him. And that part is fabulously funny.

I don't know how long I'll continue to live rent free in this mediocre man's head. While I appreciate the celebrity status I can't say I didn't wish for that head to belong to one of my other male friends who this man has accused and harassed. My male friends who are kind, hilarious, intelligent, and loving. The men who I confide in about this, who empathize with me, who want to fight back but who I gently reassure that it's all wasted effort. I don't waste time on mediocre men, but I do write about them, something this man should relish. He always wanted to be the main character in my story. Now is his time to shine.