Stalking Beds

I am sick. Sick in the head. I'm engaged in a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior and have no idea how to make myself stop. What is it? Don't get too concerned yet. I don't drink too much. I have no experience with hard drugs. As far as I'm concerned, barebacking is something you do on a horse. So what's my problem?

I stalk my boyfriend's exes online.

I stalk them on Facebook. On MySpace. On Friendster. On Donner! On Blitzen! Anywhere. You all know that I absolutely hate running into guys my boyfriend's messed around with and that it happens all the time. Considering that nothing puts me in a worse mood, you'd think that I wouldn't voluntarily spend hours these boys down on social networking sights. But I do. I have a problem.

There are a number of things that one can do to kill time during a given work day. Working is an option, but only as a last resort. Some people play online crossword puzzles. Others follow news on CNN. Those people are sane. I am not. If I have an hour to kill at work, I will find myself poring over the profiles of guys from my boyfriend's past. I don't really want to do this, and get no benefit from it. I think I go into some kind of trance. It's like the old "I was sleepwalking" crime defense. But instead of waking up in my mother-in-law's room with a bloody candlestick, I come to in front of a complete stranger's Friendster page, looking through everyone of their photos to get a sense of their personality.

What's worse is when I find myself playing detective. If all I know of one of these exes is that his name starts with "L" and we have a particular friend in common," then you can bet I'm looking through all of that friend's friends until I find the exact "L" that I'm looking for. If my boyfriend was to tell me that he once made out with a brown-haired guy at JR's, then goddamnit I'm looking through the facebook profile every brown-haired gay boy in DC. Then I check their photo albums to see if they frequent JR's. And if that takes all night? Good. My compulsive side likes a challenge.

As someone who likes to torture himself over things he can't do anything about, Facebook is a goldmine. Whereas before I could only see my boyfriend's exes on the street and guess what they were like based on things like posture and fashion sense, Facebook opens up a whole world of information that I didn't need to know. Where do they work? How old are they? This information is now just a mouse-click away.

Perhaps its because I don't have any extensive sexual past in DC, but I'm pretty sure that I care more about these guys (and keep better track of them,) than my boyfriend does. To him, they're exactly what they should be: figures from his past that have little bearing on his present life. But for me, they're everything. I remember their names (sometimes better than he does,) I know where they're from and how old they are and when my boyfriend knew them. Some of this info my boyfriend has supplied. The rest I've pried out of him, or gleaned online.

Whatever it's origins, the basic purpose for this sleuthing remains the same: Being confronted with my boyfriend's exes is like a miniature assault- it comes out of nowhere, I'm wholly unprepared for it and it leaves me in a kind of pain. Ergo, knowing your enemy is the only available defense. If I'm going to run into someone every time I go out, it makes sense to research them. That way I can confront their image on my own terms, learn a little more about them and hopefully realize that no living person is worth the kind of worry that I constantly inflict upon myself in their name.