Superimposition

Story Sent in by Mira:

Before dinner on our first date, Tom and I walked through a local college campus. It was a nice, early autumn night. He said, "You look really great. Do you mind if I take your picture?" It was an unusual request, but I felt pretty comfortable with him, so I told him that he could. He snapped a shot with his smartphone after posing me, and we continued on to dinner. We had a long talk afterward and at the end of the date, we kissed goodnight. All seemed well.

The next morning, I woke up to a dozen, literally a dozen, emails from him. All had subjects that read, "What do you think of this one?" "How about this?" "This one's my fav!" "I like this one" and so on. Each email had a photo attached, and each photo was an image of my head messily superimposed onto a naked woman.

I didn't know whether to be frightened, shocked, or to laugh: two of the photos (subject lines: "Skin so smooth?" and "I love this blend") featured my head on black women (I'm white). One of the photos (subject line: "SPOOOOOOOOGE!") had my head superimposed onto a photo of a woman, taken from behind, so that it looked like my head faced backwards.

No messages were written in the emails. Just the photos were attached. He hadn't at all hinted, during the date, that he was planning something like this, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. I did, however, decide that I likely wouldn't see him again.

He left me two voicemails in the ensuing week. One was friendly and didn't at all mention the photos. It was a simple, "Hi, how are you, let's hang out again soon" message.

The second one said, "Hey, Mira. It's Tom. I haven't heard from you. Is this about the photos? 'Cause if it is, then, uh, I mean, I can't see why you wouldn't contact me. So, yeah, I mean, just give me a call back. I can make some... I guess I'll just make some more and send them until I hear back from you, so yeah..."

He sent two more, but they paled in comparison to the first batch. Haven't heard from him since.