What a crazy week it’s been. I've been stocking this girl. I know, I know... I'm supposed to say I've been stalking this "woman." But old habits die hard, one supposes.

It’s weird too, when you’re young, if you’re stalking someone, you have all the energy in the world – stand in the rain, run after the street car, but when you get a little bit older, it’s like, "well, can’t I just call and hang up?" "Can’t I just watch ‘The National’ instead?"

But anyway, I bought a chair, the little one you see people at the Jay’s game in, just so I have my own seat. I mean, just because I’m stalking, which by nature is an obsessive and cowardly act, doesn’t mean I can’t have the dignity of my own chair.

So I’m walking my chair to its spot (beside the dumpster) by the backdoor apartment building, and by the way, let me further complain, she’s on the seventh floor! How in God’s green planet are you gonna stock someone on the 7th floor? I can barely see what she’s doing. I’m always looking up. I have to go to the chiropractor all the time because it’s so hard on my neck. He says, "Hey Bruce, what’s wrong with your neck?" His name is Mr. Fugazi (I think the band named themselves after him – you don’t want to know).

So I’m taking my little chair to its sweet spot and there’s another guy there. He’s stalking my girl too. So we get to talking, he’s actually a really nice guy. He starts telling me all these horror stories about how bad his knees are from climbing in "said dumpster" and sifting through her garbage, you know, looking for something with her smell on it…

So we decide that we’re gonna share her. I mean we’re obsessed with her – the way her yoga bag is slung over her shoulder as she exits the apartment, the way she’ll ride her bike and give cab drivers the finger if they cut her off, the way she’ll wolf down all the free samples at Starbucks – you know, the things we like about a woman. I mean we’re obsessive, but, we’re practical.

And then I started feeling like the whole thing wasn’t working. I’d show up late, he’d be reading his Chaucer book and when he'd tell me stuff like, "I think she’s watching 'Survivor,' I can tell by the way her light flickers on her blinds," I just didn’t care.

So this morning, I took matters into my own hands. I decided I had to break up with her. She comes out of work, (she works at a used bookstore), and yes, there is an injunction about me going within 300 feet of the door, and to be honest, I’d kind of nodded off. So she gets on her bike, about 100 feet from me, and I start springing down the street, screaming, "I don’t want to harm you, I just want to break up with you. This isn’t working anymore. It’s over. It’s over."

And just as I get close to the red light, I hear a snap. I thought at first it was this really cool figurine that was bouncing around in my fanny pack, but it was my knee. She took off around the corner and looked back, and our eyes locked. And the moment I was letting her go, I think, is the only moment she ever understood me.