Tarento

One of the individuals in particular was a guy in his early 30's (to my recollection), and early on following our introduction I noticed him very obviously staring and smirking at me during classes, pretty much deliberately following me at all intervals in between, and trying to get my attention at every possible opportunity, even butting into conversations I was having with other people which he wasn't a part of. (The lady near me noticed to an extent and mentioned it to me too.) The intensity and frequency of this behaviour escalated so fast that I became uncomfortable just being within distance of him, so I avoided him as politely as possible. Still, I would constantly sense his eyes on me, and noticed he always seemed to stalk my movements and location in some attempt to 'lock me down' and corner me into interaction with him, which seriously put my hackles up.

The clincher came when I was absent for the last two days of one week prior to the weekend, and I made my reasons known to our trainer which in my mind was my only obligation- not knowing each other very personally I wouldn't expect much concern from the class members. But during the weekend I unexpectedly got a friend request message on Facebook, which took me a minute to figure out because I didn't even know the full name and the picture was kind of ambiguous, but I realised it was the guy. Alarm bells started ringing as I hadn't actually given out my surname or had it mentioned at any point, so how he knew it is beyond me. The other explanation would be that he simply searched based on my first name and town, and singled out the profile which looked like me. Being a very private user of FB that was a step too far for someone who had already put up my guard and I also barely knew enough about to pick out among a whole class of people.

So I ignored his request, and on the monday carried on as usual, when he approached me and mentioned how he wondered where I'd been, and that he had sent me a message on Facebook hoping I'd see it. I firmly deflected him with the explanation that I rarely used the site, and that I honestly hadn't seen any message. But once I got home and looked for unread messages not in my contacts inbox, lo and behold there was one from him. It said:

He seemed to go quiet for a minute, then actually brought up again the fact that he tried to add me. When I didn't respond he went off on a (slightly too close to anger) rant about the fact he knew it was definitely me because he looked through until he found the picture that was unmistakable, and 'amazing' - carried on describing the exact picture I had for my background (some holly leaves) and how it was clearly the same as a doodle I'd drawn on my coursebook, and again about the message he'd sent; 'but I guess you didn't get it, haha oh well.' I simply straightened up in my seat and bluntly said 'Right. Well, okay then' and asked the trainer 'Is it alright if I leave now?' I think he could tell by my tone and expression, and the fact I'd already stood up and started putting my coat on that I was about to walk out anyway, so he came over to say bye and I waved to the others before getting the hell out of there.