Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Cleveland rocks


decomposition, originally uploaded by pwilnyc.


So they've found out that the VA Tech psycho was a 23-year-old South Korean resident alien. Not exactly what I was expecting - especially that he was an English major, what the hell, how many English majors do you know who can shoot guns? But I still get it.

When I was at Case, I had me a little stalker once. A kid from Syria who lived in my dorm, or had a class with me or something. Maybe he played soccer on our intramural team or was a friend of Samir's. The fact that I have no idea how I knew him speaks to the whole process. Anyway, he was a casual acquaintance that I acknowledged when we passed in the cafeteria.

And, you know, time passes. With no further basis for our acquaintance, I guess I stopped nodding to him. Also, I had something of a nervous breakdown, stayed in my dorm room for about 3 months, didn't speak to anyone, stole loaves of bread out of the dining hall to sustain myself - so with all that going on I might have walked past him a time or two without acknowledgment.

So I started getting these phone calls, a male voice telling me what a bitch and a slut and a tease I was. I was kind of flummoxed. In that state of mind I was perfectly willing to accept that I was all those things, but I didn't know who was so mad at me. I kept demanding, "Who IS this?" and he kept saying, "You know who I am." I would hang up on him, but I really wanted to know who he was and what I had done. His accent was thick, and he was always angry and possibly drunk when he called, so I had trouble understanding what he did say... which, kind of laughably, made me feel even worse. Not only was I a slutty bitch tease, I was a culturally insensitive one!

So eventually he called and said he was coming over to teach me a lesson once and for all, and I picked up the phone for the first time in weeks and called my friends, who showed up with nunchaku and clenched jaws, and they talked the guy down.

I honestly don't recall what else transpired. I know it blew over, and I do remember that he didn't come back the next semester. But college is such a fraught time - you actually have enemies, and jilted lovers, and people cheat on each other, and roommates sleep with each other's crushes - being threatened was just kind of another inexplicable float passing by in the Halloween parade of college emotional experience.

Sooooo... yeah I have a pretty good picture of what could have happened at VA Tech. First victims were a girl in her dorm room and an RA. You get that bitch slut tease girl taken care of and after that clean up everyone else who didn't understand your accent, didn't invite you to sit with them in the dining hall, all those stupid American children living their American soap opera college lives.

UPDATE: Ok he's been in the US 15 years. So... back to the original picture - a boy with a head full of dust and weevils.

4 comments:

  1. I was an English major and was/am also a gun owner. My stalker inspired me to be prepared for the worst.

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  2. I thought I read that he'd been living stateside since the early nineties. If he was 23, that means he'd been living here since he was pretty young. So I guess while some of the alien factor might apply, I don't know if that would cover it all. I also read that he made a lot of comments about the 'spoiled rich kids' at VTech, and various similar sentiments -- which is really just another version of the alien situation. :(

    And I think AH is totally the exception to the English majors with guns rule. ;) I was an English major too, and the only thing I know how to shoot is that gun from Duck Hunter on the Nintendo.

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  3. When is AH *not* the exception to the rule?

    Yeah him being here 15 years makes him sound more like my initial picture of who would do such a thing, and less like the charming Wa'el.

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  4. P:

    I will have to e-mail you privately when I get a chance, but I always check your blog in the a.m.

    I met the girl that was killed first in the dorm a number of years ago at a wedding, and have met her parents and grandparents on several occasions. Her Mom is a lovely, lively, and friendly person. I can only imagine their unspeakable grief at this time.

    The girl's uncle and aunt are friends of ours....all completely devastated.

    I'm trying to imagine a plausible connection b/n the shooter and the girl, given what has come to light in the press about the two personalities. I think Emily was a very friendly, vibrant person, and the boy was a quiet loner with some very dark sensibilities which were expressed in his writing. Perhaps it was a situation similar to the one that you experienced in college, but we don't know yet...very little has been said about it in the press. What I have heard refers to an ex-boyfriend, domestic dispute, etc.

    You know, these stalker stories are rather common. I had one is HS...he harassed me for 4 years after I turned down his offer for going to the Homecoming Dance. In the end, he stole my senior yearbook and scrawled over two entire pages about what a stuck-up slut/bitch/you name it I was. My sister-in-law had a nearly identical stalker situation as yours in grad schoool. Once again, she was friendly with a Middle Eastern guy, but only in a kind way that she was with everyone. He had a nervous breakdown when she turned down his offer for a date, locked himself in his office, woulnd't come out....promptly left the program.

    Hope all is well. I'm having a hard time adjusting to life back from Spring Break.

    -A

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