The Lightning Room With Lisa Nikolidakis

Learn about danger and Bullshit from Lisa Nikolidakis (Read her How to Date a Stalker in the Jan. edition).

1) If you met a stranger who confided in you that an ex was terrorizing them by stalking, what is a question you would ask them?

I’ve had this happen. Tending bar, people tell you all the things. First: Are you in danger? If yes, get thee to the police ASAP. If not, have you made your intentions to be left alone plain as can be? Second: Do you have a therapist?

2) Was it the Safe Horizons pamphlet that inspired this list form or did you find the pamphlet while researching?

The stalker pamphlet as a part of this came from a suggestion by the friend who originally gave it to me–many drafts into this. I had the title first, and I think it inspired the list form. 

3) In movies stalkers are evil strangers some hero cop will save the woman from, but in life you’re more likely to be hunted by someone you know. Why do you think that it’s not discussed more often?

A number of films do hit the someone-you-know note, like The Crush, Fatal Attraction, Single White Female, Cape Fear–I’m sure there are others. But the horror we’re often sold in films is of The Other–the unknown thing you don’t know you should be scared of, right? Aliens, ghosts, rednecks with chainsaws, stalkers, whatever lurks Out There. On the other end of story, we–especially women–are repeatedly sold heroes. And that’s some old, gendered nonsense.

4) Do you know if there is an organization who offers help for the stalkers themselves? (Not to help them stalk, like facebook, but to help them stop.)

I don’t, actually. Therapy couldn’t hurt, though.

5) Who are you reading right now? And how do you feel about their book? 

My summer reading is all about catching up on the books I should have read by now but have somehow missed so I can stop BSing at parties. I’m deep in The Virgin Suicides, and it is, of course, gorgeous. Eugenides kills it. And that first-person plural? Dang. I know, I know. I’m late to that game.

6) You just wrote a memoir. That is a very hard thing to do. Tell us about it, the writing of it, and/or what you did to celebrate the finishing of it.

Oh boy. Well, in 2003, my father murdered his live-in girlfriend, her daughter, and committed suicide. The book is about the consequences of that kind of trauma and tragedy and my going to Greece to find my estranged family where I found myself unable to tell them the truth (that complication is a huge part of the work). There are also half a dozen vignettes that flank the chapters and cover some of the abuses of my childhood. Writing it was not fun; staying steeped in that material kept me in a pretty dark space. I celebrated with a bottle of Prisoner, one of my favorite wines, and dancing with my badass friends who stuck with me through that bleak writing experience. Thank goodness the book I’m working on now is funny!