I don’t know why they always circle back but they do. I file them under finished business and forget about them. And then they they pop up out of nowhere weeks, months, sometimes years later.

And they’re just a tiny bit resentful for having been thinking of me. They expect me to have been holding my breath and thinking about them, maybe wringing my hands a bit. And 99.9% of the time, I haven’t. Half the time I don’t have their numbers stored in my phone and I have to ask them who they are.

It’s not that I didn’t like them. I liked almost every one of them. But I didn’t make it a thing. And that is my unforgivable sin. Even when they never had any long term plans for me, which they never do. Even the deep ones with the good hair and and the big thoughts. But I’m the one to blame for not believing they could have been more.

And what do they want? Well, sex, sometimes. Though that they can get anywhere. Sometimes it’s to ask about my exploits. They want me to have written them into a story. They know and I know that my stories veer towards the unusual and special and they like the idea of making the cut. But only sometimes.

From me they want my brain. It’s the playground in which they like to frolic. I amuse them. That’s why they contact me from thousands of miles away with no intention of seeing me in person.

I intimidate smart men. These are guys who have spent half their lives playing games with lesser beings because they haven’t met their match. So very cryptic and slippery. So when I come around, with fancy words and compound thoughts, they finally find someone who doesn’t let them get away with murder. I’ve had men tell me that I intimidate them so much that they get drunk around me. And they try to get me drunk to get us on an even playing field. But I don’t get drunk.

Anyway, I’ve stopped being surprised by their reappearances and started just trying to be kind. They don’t really want me. They just like the idea of being wanted by someone like me. I guess it’s flattering. And since it takes so very, little effort to be kind, well, I’m happy to oblige. The moment I feel the least bit owned, though, I’m out. The moment I feel the tiniest be exploited or abused, I’m out.

Women–strong, steeled, ball-busting women–are never more vulnerable than the day after having sex with someone for the first time. Not just me. Even if he’s a bad kisser, or unsatisfying in other ways, or just generally unpleasant. We want to know that he’s thinking of us and wants more. Even if we never do.

We social media stalk when we feel bad about ourselves. We look at pictures and try to divine from photographs if they’re happy. It’s the absolute worst punishment we can inflict.

That is our damage. Everyone knows this.

But guys! They lurk for different reasons. They want to feel missed. They want validation. They stalk too. How do I know? I’ll notice the counters of several Insta videos from over 20 weeks ago start jumping. The number of Google searches for my name goes up. And the telltale sign that rarely happens but is definitively not coincidental? Seeing that my blog is accessed from a certain country right after I’ve dated someone who lived in that country.

Two Fridays ago, I went out with a cute British boy who lives in Copenhagen. He checked a lot of the boxes and the date was a dream up until it got physical. Something weird happened between dark and light and I am a shitty person in the morning anyway. Homeboy was unhappy about something. I was just disappointed by how he kept saying I was pretty and being polite.

He didn’t write. Or call. I wrote him on Tinder and said I was disappointed that he turned out to be a ghoster. He unmatched me. Whatever, it happens. I’m not gonna fret.

And then that Monday, there it is. Two hits on my name from Google on my blog. From Denmark. Now it could have been a coincidence. A bot. A blip. But I know better. It was Simon. He wasn’t going to contact me. But he would cyber stalk me. And for his curiosity, he was rewarded with a post where I said he was too nice.

Bollocks to him. I only have so much psychic energy. He’ll get his due when, in six to eight months, he’s contemplating coming back to NYC and he hits me up pretending everything was great.

It never fails. But the men do. Big time.