Sometimes people ask me, “have you ever had a stalker?”
The answer is Yes. To me this is surprising: having a regular listener astonishes me, let alone a stalker.
My first ever stalker came when Dan and I were doing our weeknight radio show in Perth. I arrived at work before Dan to find this envelope in our pigeon hole:
First of all the envelope is addressed incorrectly. It’s “Action Battle Team” not “. Action Battle .” I know it’s a ridiculous name for a radio show but get it right. In retrospect I should have been impressed that the author of the envelope managed to get that much right.
Inside the envelope was a DVD and this poorly expressed letter.
I think the vibe of the letter is “thank you for providing me with hours of entertainment, here is a small amount of entertainment in return.” Oh Lesley… you have provided me with a lifetime of entertainment with the contents of that DVD.
When Dan finally arrived at work, we huddled around the jock’s room computer and watched the video spring to life. The first shot is a standard suburban living room. The walls are painted greenish, an open glass sliding door is to the right of frame and a blockmounted picture of ‘generic waterfall’ hangs proudly. The only other thing to see is a stereo sitting atop a TV, pumping out the radio station I work for.
Next a person, who I assume is ‘Lesley’, enters the left of frame. Lesley is wearing mismatching underwear and eating a chocolate bar. Lesley begins to dance. Lesley does not stop dancing for the next 45 minutes except to run her hands through her long hair and stare distantly at generic waterfall. Her dancing consists of a lot of sweating and rubbing. Lesley really, really loves to rub. I can only assume she is on a pill, because as the movie progresses the sweat gets heavier and the rubbing more furious. She loves the sound of her bangles in her ears and to shout “ABT!” over the sick tunes. Every time she leans forward her pointy face casts eerie shadows and her wobbly gut hangs freely.
Want to see it? Here is the first 2 and a half minutes of the video.
The only variation to the above is at about the 28 minute mark where Lesley inexplicably undergoes a costume change. Her garments change from red bra and mismatching black underwear, to red bra and mismatching turquoise underwear. And yes, thankfully this costume change does happen off camera.
Four things concern me about this entire affair:
- The whole putrid rave occurred in daylight hours.
- At times there appears to be some sort of dog outside the glass door. This means, this woman is in charge of a living creature.
- This lady is alone recording her semi-naked self unsupervised. Is she crazy? Maybe she has a day job? Maybe she is the office weirdo? Maybe she is just ‘kooky Lesley’ to her friends – that ‘chick who always does crazy shit on a Tuesday’.
- She mailed this letter to me.
Now I occasionally suffer from non-sobriety and have done some messed up things because of it. However, I have never obtained a video camera, recorded myself for an hour, burnt that video to a DVD, written a letter, printed the letter, obtained an evelope, found the address for Nova, addressed the envelope and posted the whole package completely fucked up without once thinking ‘maybe I’ll regret this in the morning?’
The whole thing is mesmerising. I’ve only seen it start to finish once, so I can confirm there is no nudity or other clues to her personality outside of sweating and rubbing. If you want to see the rest, come over some time and I’ll show it to you.
