Lessons in Accidental Voyeurism

from The Judgement of Paris

The Judgement of Paris

Once, while on a weekend trip to play a couple shows on the other side of the state, we found ourselves severely hungover at a run-down dump of a mall. It was devoid of any major stores or restaurants, people were walking their dogs though it, the walls were stained and the paint was peeling, there were makeshift stands in the middle of the mall where they were selling various collectibles… Everything about the mall should have been an obvious indication that we should have been someplace else.

Spontaneously, we all had to use the bathroom and managed to find one that was large enough to accommodate all of us. Our bassist and myself each found a stall and started to do our business. One of the guys thought it would be a great opportunity to have a little photo-shoot. After all, what could be funnier than a picture on our FaceBook page of us taking a shit? Seemed harmless enough.

Our other guitarist, Kotie, stuck his cell-phone over the front of our bassist’s stall and snapped a picture. He then moved over to mine and took another one. Proceeding to the stall next to me, he took another picture. It definitely was NOT one of us.

It was an old spiteful man in his mid 40’s, who started yelling and getting furious. The rest of the guys scattered, but me and the bassist were stuck on the can. We hurried up as best as we could to finish our business and get out of there, but he still managed to spot me. After failing to convince him that I hadn’t done anything and that he needed to calm down, he started to call the police. So naturally, I got the hell out of there.

As I got to the parking lot, I glanced over my shoulder, only to see that old man trailing behind me. I didn’t want him to get my license plate number, so I thought that I might lose him by walking as far as I could in a random direction. He was kind of heavyset, so he gave up the chase on foot pretty quickly.

As I was calling the rest of the guys to pick me up, I discovered that he was now following me in his car. The ass-hole followed me for a good mile and a half before I lost him in a neighborhood. After waiting it out, a couple of my band mates showed up on foot. We started heading back towards the mall. The stalker had camped out in the parking lot of a Chili’s and snapped pictures of us on his cell phone as we walked past, which he told us he planned on giving to the mall security.

He followed us back to the mall, but we managed to lose him in the parking lot. We made it to our cars and took off. We were going to regroup near the highway, and get back on the road. I was extremely paranoid driving to meet up with the rest of the guys; somehow everybody in the town we were at drove a black SUV like my stalker. We managed to meet up and as we were merging onto the highway, we saw him drive past. He didn’t notice us, thankfully.

Lesson learned: Don’t take pictures in public restrooms. Especially of people you don’t know.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 11:06 am and is filed under Horror Stories, The Unexpected, Tour Yarns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.