Stalking by mixed tape

This talk of mixed tapes puts me in mind of weird experience I had when I first started working here. I think everyone in the squad, save Beth, will be too young to remember this, and few actually know about it.

I started working here in 1993, and very soon after that wrote a column -- my first real story for TRT -- about what a drag it was to have a masters degree and still need three jobs to get by. A day later, I got a vaguely threatening message on my answering machine at home in a distorted voice.

I promptly changed my phone number and made it unlisted.

A few weeks after that, I got an obscure padded envelope in the mail. It was a mixed tape, a Maxell full of 90-minutes worth of songs of which I can't remember a single title. It wasn't awful. There was no identifying information, but I listened to the tape out of curiosity to see if there was something on it that might indicate who it was from.

Near the end of the first side, I think, there was an interruption by a voice that resembled, more than anything else, that of Cookie Monster. The voice said, almost like a chant, "Lisa, Lisa, who's your boyfriend now?"

Creepy.

Soon after that, I got a call from a woman who lived in Raleigh Court named Lisa, who happened to work in the backshop at the paper. This was in the days when we had a backshop and still put the paper together with Exacto knives and hot wax. She wanted to know why I had sent her some weird mixed tape. She had received a package like mine, with my name and home address as the return address. (I'm not sure, but I think mine may have had her address, too.)

We talked, she trusted that I hadn't in fact sent the tape, and the only connection we could make was that we both worked at the paper.

It remained a mystery. Some other things happened. I got some more weird mail that was usually about people who worked at the paper. I remember one reference to then-Editor Frosty Landon as a "menacing troll."

As it turned out, I wasn't the only one being harassed. The others were mainly women, at least one of whom still works here in the news department. Unbeknownst to me, they had complained of weird behavior by a certain Manpower employee who worked in the backshop. His name was Scott. That triggered an investigation, and one day the guy, whom I recognized instantly, was escorted from the building.

Thus ended my initiation into the weirdness that working for a newspaper invites.

--Matt