He Googled My Name

The vigilance gets applied evenly.

Photo from RDNE Stock project on Pexels

I’m on the elliptical warming up before I head downstairs to work out. Here on the second floor, I have a panoramic view of the cafe, the front desk, and the machines. My heart skips when I see his dark gray head bobbing, coffee cup to his lips.

Why is he always here?

Yes, I’m talking about Gym Guy — the same man from “The Invisible Woman,” the piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago. If I can see him, I conclude he can see me should he look up.

Please don’t look up.

Too late.

I look away and cast my eyes down, hoping against hope that I don’t have to speak to him later.

To deter men, especially Gym Guy, from talking to me, I’ve started wearing light-blue colored headphones. What says “don’t talk to me” more than noise-cancelling cans on your ears?

These prove no obstacle for Gym Guy. He has finished his coffee and finds me at the leg press — again — and comes near. I take my time sliding the headphones off. He’s patient, then gushes.

“I googled your name. I found out some interesting things. How do you spell it?”

“It’s spelled with an ‘I.’” My voice is flat, bored.

No one can ever pronounce “Ilona,” let alone remember it. I’m filled with dread that he thought of me outside of our brief interactions, that he remembered my name and typed the closest facsimile into his phone.

With that, I put the headphones back on. He leaves and then turns around, quizzically. I pull at the headphones as if they’re too heavy to take off.

“I can always tell people who are highly educated. You must have an advanced degree.”

I confess I do, and he is pleased. Very pleased.

“Yes, I knew it!”

My headphones go back on. I need to escape ASAP and move somewhere remote, far enough away without sacrificing why I’m here. There’s an overheated space at the gym’s edge with only benches and free weights and, more importantly, no people.

He doesn’t follow me.

By myself, I find my breath. Gym Guy does not know that googling someone’s name — and then telling them you did — is stepping further over a line. He doesn’t know that calling out someone’s credentials is also overreach.

Where will this end?

I know from experience that these guys don’t suddenly get religion and back off. You can’t insult them, and directness can inflame.

This experience isn’t the first on a list of violations I could recite, and it won’t be the last.

Start with my daughter. When she commuted to her first job out of college, a forty-year-old man stalked her. He would greet her and chat her up every morning, no matter which train car she tried to hide in. Then at night he would find her again and walk her to her car. She was polite. She engaged in small talk because she was too scared not to.

My advice was to take an earlier train or drive to a different train station. The problem went only away when she moved from the suburbs into a city apartment.

I’ve had a man expose himself to me on a subway. I’ve received an angry, X-rated letter from a guy I rebuffed. I’ve had a man follow me when I used to walk the dog in the neighborhood.

I could go on.

That’s the part that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. It isn’t one rotten morning. It’s a ledger so long that the entries stop being able to hold their own weight. I recite them without emotion because outrage, every single time, is its own full-time job, and I ran out of that energy a long time ago.

I’m disgusted with the situation I find myself in with Gym Guy.

I don’t want to change gyms, or the time I go. Yesterday I saw him again at the cafe, sipping his coffee. I held my breath the whole time I was there, knowing my headphones refuse the work I needed them to do.

Miraculously, he didn’t seek me out. He was still sitting there when I left, an hour later.

I consider I might be over-reacting. He’s probably lonely. I’ve heard about the male loneliness epidemic, but fixing it was never going to be my job.

Where he lands—overly interested, creep, or full-fledged stalker—I couldn’t tell you. Sorting him out isn’t supposed to be my job. And yet here I am doing it anyway. Clocking him from the elliptical, cataloging what he says, deciding day to day whether today’s the day he doesn’t take the hint.

That’s the part that makes me tired.

I’ve learned this much: the vigilance gets applied evenly, to all of them, because from where I’m standing there’s no way to tell the harmless ones from the ones who go looking. If you’re lonely, I’m not here to fix that for you. I’m just trying to keep myself safe.

What would you do? Help me with your comments.

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Next week, I’m back to doing my Substack Lives. On Thursday, September 24th at 11 a.m. ET, I will chat with Monica Hebert of the Daily Rewire. She writes for women who are done playing by the old rules and are ready to dream again. Monica’s deepest desire is for you to be remember who you were before the world got its hands on you.

Sound familiar?

We are definitely vibing. It’s going to be a great conversation, so mark you calendar!

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