The Stalker of Sacre Coure

At the end of our trip, Lisa and I rented an apartment in Paris for a month. It was a tiny studio in Mont Marte with a living room that transformed into a bedroom when you lowered the bed from the ceiling and a schawarma stand conveniently located next door. Mont Marte is famous for the Sacre Coeur Basilica, which is a beautiful church on top of a giant hill with a view of the entire city.

One day, Lisa had a date with the tall, dark, and French Tibo; as I've mentioned before, she is an international lover. I didn't want to stay cooped up in our apartment all day so I took my journal and walked to the Sacre Coeur to write.

At the bottom of the hill, there are always dark men selling bracelets (the kind you braid when you're in 3rd grade), but mostly harassing female tourists. I am pretty outspoken and not the kind of person who likes to be touched, especially by dirty French peddlers, so I yelled at one of them not to touch me. At this point (and many other times throughout that trip), they began to call me an ugly, ugly, mean girl and telling me to watch out.

I continued walking, not caring all that much, when I noticed that a 50ish-year-old dark man was following me. I started walking faster, hoping I was wrong, but when I sat down at a bench, he sat down next to me. I smiled to be nice but got up and started walking away. A few steps later, he was continuing to follow me up the hill. At this point, I was convinced that the bracelet peddlers sent him to stalk and kill me so I ran up the rest of the hill and straight into the church. I figured I was safe in there. This man was clearly not Catholic and I couldn't imagine somebody continuing to stalk you in God's house, either way. I. WAS. WRONG. He found me while I was in the gift shop buying Simon a rosary. Then he found me praying in front of a statue of Jesus. I was terrified at this point and sat down next to a family for protection.

He sat down right next to my fake family and me. This is the point when I realized that he stunk like he hadn't showered in a year, ran around wearing used garbage bags on 90-degree days, and got skunked regularly.  Finally, I did exactly what I learned in my female self-defense seminar, I looked him straight in the eye and told him "Leave me alone, I don't want any problems". Apparently he skipped that day in English class because he started asking my name and where I live. I didn't know what to do at this point, I was trapped in a church between a family and the stinky stalker, I didn't have a phone and even if I did, I didn't know the number to the police in France... So I hopped over the pew and ran all the way home crying; only falling down the hill once.

I'm still alive, so I'm guessing he wasn't fast enough to follow me to my apartment, but I must say that this may have been the scariest day of my life.