To my constant chagrin I possess an air of extreme approachability. "Come forth," my aura twinkles to passerby. "Pour all your troubles into my ear and poke me in the belly like Poppin' Fresh for good measure. Oh, and sneak up behind me in bars and blow softly on the top of my hair. Cause that's sexy."

As of yesterday night, my all-time favorite stalkers list read:

1.) The man reeking of alcohol who tried to tickle me on the El.

2.) The man who randomly stopped me under a bridge to ask me out to dinner...then seemed vaguely annoyed that I thought my being married meant I couldn't take him up on his offer.

3.) The guy in the anime aisle--I got the feeling he haunted it like the Ancient Mariner, closeting customer after customer against the shelf to lecture them about how subtitles are better than dubbing--who was so delighted that I knew what the Castle of Cagliostro was that, yes, he immediately asked me out. With mr rampy not two aisles away and my ring in plain sight on my hand.

This is leaving out entirely all the hours I spent in bars as a singleton rampy listening to married men who complained about their wives and tried to sneak their hands up my leg.

So after all of that, I get a little tense when people invade my space. This year especially I have found myself being more and more brusque when people impose on me or enter my body buffer zone.

The sandwich shop where I usually have lunch has benches built all along one wall with a row of tiny tables lined up in front of them. Each table theoretically seats four, but the majority of the time the place is filled with lone diners reading books or the newspaper. If it's really crowded, I just take my lunch to go and hide out in a corner of my office.

Today I got the last table, and I had barely unwrapped my sandwich when suddenly this guy was looming over me. To be fair, he was perfectly polite about the situation, but jeezy kreezy, out of all the tables in there, he picks mine to be all german beer-hall and "let's share" on. And he hadn't even brought any reading material, the freak. He just stared at me while I read and ate.

Then he left, and I had relaxed and started savoring the last few minutes of my lunchtime when suddenly a girl was looming over me. My first impulse was to be violently irritated, because by now there were at least three tables open and I couldn't believe that my golden child-ness was in such overdrive today that she just HAD TO SIT WITH ME.

"Are you a graphic designer?" She smiled.

"Uh, no." I said, and told her what I do. For a second I had this wild thought that she was one of those journalists who do magazine spreads on young up-and-comers, and that I had finally been discovered.

In a way I was right. It turned out that she was a recruiter, and that when she spotted me she noticed how "put together" I was and immediately wanted to hire me away for her company. I said no, and explained that I am genuinely happy with my current position, and we parted on good terms, so apparently there is an ego-boosting side to being accosted as well as the familiar frisson of annoyance and creeped-outness.

Had she only known that under the "put together" facade of my black cashmere overcoat and business boots I was wearing beat-up tan corduroy overalls, a turtleneck shirt I slept in a couple nights ago, and my underwear inside-out. Actually, at this point of the day I didn't know that last part myself.

Put together = no

Possessed of some pheremone that draws people, bearing gifts no less, from near and far to me = yes