So this is why I haven't updated in a while. I don't like writing in my room at night anymore....

Your roommates are both out of town, so you have the whole house to yourself and you do the kind of things you are supposed to do when your roommates are out of town: play your music loud in the early morning, pee with the door open, take a long bath and hang out in your room in a towel.

Except.

When you are at your desk checking your email at 10:30 on a Wednesday night, you hear a man outside your bedroom window shout something unintelligible. There is a gap in the curtains, showing a crack of the black night outside, showing your barely-towel-covered self to the world, and this chills you. You get dressed. Fast.

The cats are freaking out -- they keep looking out your bedroom window, getting spooked and running to the kitchen. Their eyes are huge yellow orbs, looking at you like you're a stranger. Your tongue suddenly tastes like metal.

You turn off the lights in your bedroom, push a corner of the curtain aside and take a peek. There's a man on the wall between your house and the apartment building next door. He's doing something weird, so you keep watching him, but sporadically because he keeps looking at your window and even though he is a good ten feet away, you are afraid he can see you. At a certain point, you realize he is removing his clothes and rubbing baby oil all over his body. And then you realize, as he stands there silhouetted in the yellow light, that he is completely naked and has a huge erection.

How fucking bizarre, is all you can think. He seems remote and strange, not really a threat, but you go to the living room and call the police because it seems like the smart thing to do. There's a naked man outside my bedroom window, masturbating, you say to the 911 operator and you can't believe these words are coming out of your mouth. They tell you the police are on their way, so you call Rob while you wait.

Rob is creeped out and scared too, you can tell, but he says things that make you laugh and the laughter pushes the fear out of your throat. One police car passes the house, but doesn't stop. It's been five minutes. You hear something bang against the side of the house. Shit. You walk into your dark room and peek out -- he's still there, touching himself, now staring directly at your window. At you. You rush out of the room and sit in the middle of the dining room floor. Your fingers are tingling. Rob tells you it's going to be okay, the police are coming.

Another police car passes and doesn't stop.

You see him pass by the living room window, now dressed in a green jersey and jeans, green baseball cap. He looks weirdly normal. He is crossing the street and you almost feel disappointed; you wanted to see the police wrestle him to the ground or arrest him or something. But he is loitering, peeking into the lit windows across the street, hanging out in the bushes, so there is still time.

The police still aren't here.

You watch him and tell Rob what he is wearing, what he looks like, to cement it in your memory. He doesn't find anything of interest across the street and starts walking back toward your house, so you run and hide around the corner. But after a minute, when you emerge, you realize that you don't know where he is now, he could be at any of the windows, and this is impossibly creepy.

He's outside your bedroom window again.

He's naked again and staring right at you.

Your heart is hammering some crazy nails into your ribs.

The police drive by once, twice, shine a little spotlight down the side of your house. They finally park and get out. But of course by now he's gone.

"He's gone," they tell you. No shit, you think. It's because you took so long to get here and when you got here, you didn't jump out of the car and tackle him like you should have. But mostly you are just happy they are here. They go outside, spot the path through the long grass where he ran and jumped over a fence. "Cut your grass," they tell you. "Call from a landline next time." You nod dutifully. They leave.

You spend the night elsewhere until Saturday.

Part Two coming soon...

You decide to spend the night at home on Saturday night even though your roommates are not back yet. You'll be at a party at the time he was around on Wednesday. Your roommates are due back the next day. It doesn't seem scary anymore.

You go to bed at 3:30 AM that night.

At 5 AM, the cats are scratching at your door and through your sleep haze you think, That's weird, they usually don't bug me until it's light out, and immediately fall back asleep.

At 5:30 AM, you hear someone talking to you. Outside your window. It's a man. Your dreams burst like a gum bubble over your face and you pull the sticky bits from your eyes, trying to figure out what boy you know would appear outside your window at this time. You almost call out a name. But then.

Of course.

Oh no, of course.

"Honey," you hear him say. He's telling you goodbye and there is something plaintive in his voice, like somehow you have disappointed him or maybe he is just sad to go. "More more more," you hear him say and everything after that is muffled. His footsteps crunch away.

Your beating heart is actually lifting your shirt away from your chest.

You should call the police, you know. But you're paralyzed -- your limbs will not obey the will of your brain. You're afraid that he'll hear the sheets rustling, that he'll know you're there, that he'll come in, he'll rape you, he'll slit your throat.

He was talking to you like you are his fucking girlfriend.

So you don't call the police, not until that afternoon after your trip to the farmers' market and Trader Joe's (during which you try to pretend that everything is normal, but you will look at the faces of the TJ's employees and have the urge to tell them what is going on and ask, Can't you do something?? because Trader Joe's employees look somehow safe and comforting, like they can solve most problems) and you file a trespassing report, which makes you feel a little better. He'll be arrested if they ever catch him. IF they ever catch him.

But you don't call the police in the morning. You lie in bed while your pulse pole-vaults and after awhile you call Rob, but he doesn't answer his phone, so you leave a couple voicemails that you imagine sound kind of frightening, so sad and scared. Your voice doesn't sound like yours.

Your roommates don't come home that day. You spend another night on someone else's couch. But what a lovely couch it is.

Postscript: It's been two weeks to the day since the first incident and he hasn't been back (to my knowledge). My housemate is supposed to be getting motion-sensor lights and fixing the front gate. And I've been peering at the face of every guy I pass on the street....

We bought the yarn together a couple days before New Year's, from a craft store in Massachusetts where we were visiting your family. I had just taught myself to knit from a book and your mom was impressed. She kept pressuring you to take me to a "yahn store," so we finally went. You couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about, I could tell, as I pored over the yarns and tried to make up my mind. I told you my first project was going to be a scarf for you and this made you happy. You were a little more helpful then and we picked one out together, a chunky blue variegated wool.

You paid for it. This was somewhat embarrassing to me, but I had no money on that trip and all the coffees and T fares and (once) cute kneesocks you bought were kind of an extended Christmas gift to me. The yarn was $10 a skein and this blew your mind. It's not even a scarf yet, you said as we walked out the door.

The car didn't start, so we got a jump from a very chubby, very friendly guy in the parking lot and were almost late to the dinner date we had with your family. I sat across from your dad and watched your parents laugh together. I could imagine exactly what it would be like for us in ten years, married and happy and sitting around a table with kids of our own.

The yarn we picked knitted up beautifully -- textured and interesting. I worked on it through most of the plane ride home, even though my hands were sweaty the way they always get on planes and the 14-inch needles knocked annoyingly against the armrests. When we got home, I got caught up in the dizzying pace of work, school, commute and didn't work on the scarf for weeks.

Then: it was over.

And I didn't work on it the night I told you I was moving out. I didn't work on it the day after I told you I wanted to try again. I didn't work on it the week you left for Japan or the week that you came back. I didn't work on it during the time that we were crying all the time, crying or laughing, our noses running like broken playground water fountains.

I picked it up again the week you were showing the place to new roommates, so I could sit on the couch and listen without seeming obvious. I asked if you were still going to want the scarf when it was done. You said yes. The yarn was expensive.

But I put it down again.

I didn't work on it the night I stayed at my new place for the first time, when my stomach hurt so bad but I couldn't eat, when all I could do was curl up in a ball and cry and sleep. I didn't work on it the day I went to visit you and we hugged and I remembered in a sudden rush how good you felt. And I didn't work on it all those nights I wasn't sorry to be away from you or on the mornings when I woke up and was happy to be alone.

But I'm working on it now.

For the last week I've been spending at least half an hour on it every night, sometimes more. I'm going to finish it this time, going to send it to you, show you that I haven't forgotten, that I still care. Maybe you'll just throw it in your closet. Maybe you'll give it away. But as I sit working on it, stitch by stitch, row by row, I somehow know it won't be lost on you.

Tonight I made these chocolate chip cookies for the party my writing class is having tomorrow. The theme is Advanced Food. (It's an advanced writing class.) And I believe these cookies are the most advanced achievement in chocolate-chip-cookie technology.

Incidentally, you may remember this from the last writing class party. Someone brought it up last week. Awful.

My roommate is a chocoholic. I have taken to hiding my choco-treats in my closet for fear of late-night raids.