no-fi "magazine presents
Dead Rabbits Are Not Acceptable Gifts
and Other True Tales of Secret Admirers Gone Wrong
written by Elana Bean / illustrations by Chris Beyond
For most girls, the idea of a secret admirer conjures images of flowers showing up with no cards, or small letters of unrequited love, you know... cute stuff. However, there are those attempts at secret contact that go beyond the realm of cute and into dark territory, areas that may require up to five years of therapy.
As a girl who developed early and at some point in her life was implanted with a chip that attracts the crazies, my stories of secret admirers are usually best kept swept under the rug, or only brought up when trying to top a girlfriend's story of bizarre attempts at secret contact. However, I am willing to uncover those routinely forgotten, i.e. repressed, memories to share with you, our No-Fi readers, so that when you are sitting alone on Valentine's Day this year instead of pining for love, you can say with a sigh of relief, "Whew, thank god I'm not going through that shit."
My first experience with having a secret admirer started the ball rolling to what would eventually be a long journey of hurried steps, peaking through blinds, over the shoulder glances, and walking to my car at night with my keys protruding between my clenched fist. In fifth grade I started receiving small pink cards scribbled with red magic marker informing me that someone had a 
crush on me. Was I flattered? Well, yes of course. What young girl wouldn't be pleased about getting scores of notes stating just how awesome she is. It's concrete; it's on paper. Anyway, this went on for maybe a week and then little trinkets started showing up on my desk (I went to a parochial school where you had one desk you pretty much sat at all day). And then I received a bunch of roses. Which was nice and ordinary except that I had noticed that the guy had gone through the trouble of shaving off all the thorns from the stems. Bizarre right? And not only had he shaved those off, he had gone to the trouble of cutting the sharp little edges on the leaves. I guess he was really concerned that I was an idiot and was really going to hurt myself on these flowers.
I've learned that sometimes secret admires like to customize their gifts to really make them personal to you. For example, sending back articles of clothing you hadn't noticed were missing from your closet, listing the current and former addresses of your distant relatives, or my personal favorite- sending you dolls and "art" made from hair. The hair that once belonged attached to the top of my head. This one creeps me out on so many levels, even more than the dead animal I will get to in the next paragraph (please don't jump ahead!). They weren't very detailed objects, mainly loops for the head and appendages. I will admit that my hair sheds more than your average house cat, but the amount that this person accumulated was hard to comprehend. Oh, and I must mention the fact that also collected in there were various colors that my hair had been over probably a 14 month period. This guy I guess was trying to show me how hard he was working to gain my attention, obviously I should fall in love with him if I can prove he has goals and can stick to them.
Ok, so the dead animal and name for which this article was inspired by: Dead Rabbits are not acceptable gifts. That still rings true. They don't. Maybe because I was in the "Fine Arts" division of my college, and performance art was an acceptable major, that someone coming from this department would try to one-up former admires and come up with truly the most unique gift I would have ever received. Congratulations, it's pretty unique, however you've now made me 
vomit on myself, and that's not cool. I'm guessing this had come about due to me exclaiming within earshot of this person that I hate rabbits. This due to a pet bunny I had that furiously shat so much all over my carpet at my house in one go that I was still finding pellets three years later when I moved out. They may be small, but it's no picnic stepping on something that goes "squish" between your toes and smells foul. Anyways, within days of proclaiming this I receive a box AT MY HOUSE. It was actually wrapped up real pretty: deep red paper and bow, but perhaps this was to mask the small pool of dried blood coming from the corpse of a GODDAMN RABBIT. Let me emphasize corpse, as in once living, breathing organism. Out of shock I tossed box and dead rabbit off the side of my porch into the brush pile (we lived out in the middle of the woods) and tried to stop my gagging. One of the neighborhood dogs or a deer or something came along and ate it because it was not there the following day. The next day at school however I made the effort to post up a couple of signs in 
my department stating, once again that: Dead Rabbits are NOT acceptable gifts. The point seemed to have gotten across that I was not pleased since I have not received any further forms of decaying beings in the mail. I will apologize in advance to my editor if anything decaying does in fact show up at No-Fi HQ. Sorry.
To wrap this woeful trip through my past up, I'll conclude with some minor, but still not tolerated offensives.
Before I obtained that wonderful contraption The Automobile, I had to bus it everywhere. When I was in my awkward early teen years, there was a man (a much, much OLDER man mind you, who could pass for an old dad, or maybe my grandfather) who would get off at my stop and noticeably follow me to my mother's place of work. I didn't find this odd until I noticed he was getting back on the bus at the next stop. It doesn't go in the Totally Creepy list due to nothing happening and it only lasting for maybe a month. But still, ewww. Another time, I found out that an employee at a former job had broken into the personal files so that he could find my address. Fortunately he was caught by a supervisor. This case could have gone from creepy secret admirer to just plain scary stalker.
Alright, time to box these memories back up. Thanks for reading.
(Elana Bean is a new contributing writer to No-Fi "Magazine"
and will be taking a vacation to go wabbit snuggling with Mr. Jonathan)
Also we do not in any way advocate violence towards bunnies or any animal.
If you like hurting animals for fun, please jump off a bridge.
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