weirdest week ever

Music: Beth Orton: Daybreaker (2002)

I'm burning my candle at both ends, as they say, and literally overwhelmed with work. I've been working till midnight three days in a row, and looks like I will be doing so through Saturday. I hope to join some friends for camping late Saturday afternoon.

I do not have the time to blog afresh, but I just gotta share this; it's password protected for reasons that will become clear quickly. What follows was originally written to some best buds who all did time, or are from, Minnesota:

Today was the most curious day, perhaps of my career.

I had a (-nother) stalker. Fourth of my career, but this one was different.

It's the kind of story I want to share, but which I cannot share publicly. I'm emailing you as pals who happen to be academics that are familiar with the Midwest. I'm sure an FOIA request could snatch this, but . . . I don't think there's much to worry about with what's coming.

For years, I have been saying that I'm noticing an increase in students with mental health issues, and that we need to be trained to better manage or cope with them as educators. This story falls, however, into the extreme category.

Almost two weeks ago I flew into Fargo, North Dakota to give a talk at North Dakota State University for the English Department. The talk was about Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his infamous National Press Club speech in April, 2008. More about that some other time. The gist is that I had quite a fun time, met some great folks, and enjoyed seeing the snow. I arrived on Friday, dined with a dozen or so graduate students on Friday night, had drinks with half of them after dinner. (The grad student group is actually who brought me in, not the dept.) I gave my talk on Saturday, dined with faculty Saturday night, and joined the graduate students at a pool hall after that. I was in bed both nights by midnight.

This past Thursday I got a strange phone call at 7:30 a.m. I was still in bed (I have a later teaching schedule, and am not a morning person, so I get up at 8 or 8:30-ish these days). Awakened by my 1950s era phones--which are super loud---I went downstairs to play back the answering machine message (thinking that, perhaps, my grandmother had passed or something; she's very ill). Nope. It was a bizarre message from someone who said she was "Katie" and was looking for "Brian." Much of what she said didn't make sense. She said "Katie" was on a bus and should be in Austin by 9:45 (didn't specify morning or evening).

Alarmed, I phoned back and got the voice mail for a student I had met at North Dakota. The number came up on my caller ID as "Brainard, MN."

I emailed the chair of the English dept. at NDSU and explained the strange message. He confirmed that the phone number was from one of their students and that he would get to the bottom of it; with a few exchanges it was made clear I didn't want her to phone and she should not share my unlisted number with anyone.

Thursday I was a little creeped out, but by Friday I had all but forgotten it. As my friend Michael LeVan observed some years ago, I am a "weird shit magnet." Increasingly this stuff doesn't trouble me. I mean, in the past couple of years a woman who was convinced she was possessed by demons contacted me, a man who thought the government was implanting his brain with a chip called me, and so forth. Over the years this sort of stuff has become more amusing than troubling . . . .

On Sunday I was hosting a party for my neighbor, who is moving away this week. I was DJ-ing the thing with my computer, and I received an email from a colleague who noted some concern (the beep from the "you've got mail" on Eudora went out on the PA system, even). Standing there at my DJ rig, I read the message: my colleague said she was working at the office on Sunday, and a strange woman was hovering around the office. She said the woman said that she was a friend of mine, and I was to meet her at my office. I told my colleague of the answering message on Thursday, and immediately forwarded stuff to my chair and the chair at NDSU. My colleague then sent a more detailed message about the encounter, which was very strange (basically, my colleague discerned she was not "right in the head").

Then, I received a bizarre voice mail message to my office phone (school voice mail comes via email to me). That message can be heard here. After hearing it, you'll agree with me it is very weird.

This morning when I got up, I called the office to say that I would not be coming in, and to give them a warning that this strange person was in the office yesterday. "Oh, we've already talked to her," I was told. Apparently the woman was waiting when the staff arrived. She explained she was a prospective student and wanted to meet me. They told her when I was in and teaching, not knowing that she was . . . um, a little nutty. Pulling all the info together, it became clear that this woman had hopped a bus from Fargo three days earlier and came down interested in some sort of romantic encounter . . . but was playing it off differently to staff. She was completely "sane" to the office staff, they thought she was quite pleasant, but the messages she was leaving me were not. She left me another voicemail, again, calling herself "Katie" (which is not her real name) and calling me "Brian" (which is, you know, not my real name).

She had clearly slept in our building overnight. She had a suitcase on wheels. The office staff reported she smelled pretty bad and needed to bathe. This is a rotund lady, 47 years of age, single, taking care of her parents who are in their 80s. I remember from talking with her in Fargo that she could not drive, as she had bad eyesight or something like that, and that she commuted via bus to Brainard.

The office staff let her use a computer and then she left the office. She is extremely friendly, non-threatening, etc.

When I called this morning and we put it all together, we hatched a scheme: I am now out of town. I have canceled my class for tomorrow, and my graduate class on Wednesday has been moved to a different room. The office staff didn't realize what was going on and told her where I was teaching and so forth, so we had to do something. She was using the computer in the front office to check her email, and even sent me an email asking if she could attend my class on Wednesday. I replied (after talking with the office staff) that I was out of town.

I called campus police. My first instinct was to call mental health services, but because she is not a student, they can't touch this. So, phoned the police; a case was opened. Thing was, they couldn't find the lady. The office staff predicted she would be back, however, to check email.

Meanwhile, the chair at NDSU told me the woman's father called looking for her. He said she had been missing for about a week. He was relieved to know where she was. He explained she was bipolar, but "harmless." The father also said that the daughter had something of a history of pursing men who did not want to be pursued, so this was not the "first time." If I saw her, the father wanted me to state firmly I was not interested in a romantic relationship and to encourage her to come back home. She was not answering his calls to her.

We figured out that her cell probably ran out of power; the call I've shared with you was obviously made from someone else's phone she borrowed (which you can hear at the end of her call). So weird.

Well, sure enough, mid-afternoon, she reappeared in the front office. She was told that I was traveling and not in Austin, whereupon she appeared upset and "started to bolt." The office staff told her I said I would reply to her on email, and that she might check that. So she sat down to do that, whereupon campus police were called. They came and talked to her in the conference room. Then, they escorted her out of the building. Technically, she is trespassing and so they could give her a warning for this.

I spoke with the officer handling the case on the phone about an hour after their meeting with her. The officer couldn't give me (for legal reasons, I guess) much detail. He said that she was a grown, 47 year old woman and there was not much they could do. I asked if she was planning to go home. The officer said she explained she only had a "one-way" ticket on the bus, as she didn't know how long she was staying. I asked if I should worry she would come to my home. "That's a distinct possibility," said the officer. He encouraged me to call Austin police and open a case to be safe.

Not long after convo I received a message from the chair at NDSU saying that he had spoke to the woman's mother, and that she was soon to board a bus back to Minnesota. So, I'm hoping that's the case. I've had the curtains drawn all day and have been pretending to be "away." At this hour, I think it's not likely she's going to show up at my home--and that she's on a bus. I did not file a report with Austin police and won't do so, unless I think she's still in town. We won't know until tomorrow. I'm assured she is harmless, and frankly I do believe that.

This is more sad than scary. Still: what does one do?

As y'all know, there's something about my own "weird" personality and approachability that sets crazies off. I'm not sure how to explain this, exactly. I do remember when leaving Fargo I told this person how much I enjoyed meeting her and wished her well in her studies. I probably made eye contact, as I try to do when trying to express appreciation/sincerity. I do not want to change that about myself; I want to be myself around new people. "You're too nice," says one of the office staff.

But really: can one go around being suspicious of the sanity of everyone he meets? No.

What a weird experience this has been. I don't know exactly how to make sense of it, except to say I'm both amused in an odd way (after all, I wrote all of this) and also troubled. And I just needed to write it all out and share it with you. As folks who passed through or are in Minnesota, I figured you would listen. I don't expect a response, just needed to share my weird day/weekend with you.

What to say? I don't know. I do know I'm still so keyed up I'm going to need an Ambien tonight. I'm just feeling the need to blather and get it out.

Thanks for lis/reading.