I STILL Think Uma Thurman's Stalker is Kind of a Cool Guy

What does it say about me that I think Jack Jordan, a.k.a "The Uma Thurman Stalker," is kind of a cool guy?

I first met Jack Jordan in 1991, when we were both students at the University of Chicago. We had a few acquaintances in common and bumped into each other on the quads or in a coffee shop or at a party. He was a laconic English major who smiled suspiciously at jokes, particularly the kind of jokes that a small group of self-styled insiders would pass around like a jazz improvisation. I never knew if he thought the original jokes were funny or not, so when it was my turn I'd often crank up my riff. I figured if he thought we were all being asses, then I was going to be the biggest ass.

The last time I saw the guy was at a party in 1995. At the time I had given up any idea of being anything other than a "financial analyst" and resigned myself to a job making various reports, charts, & graphs for a telecommunications company while taking business classes at night. I figured he, like nearly everyone else I knew still kicking around in Chicago, had made a similar compromise. Instead, I found out that he was part of a group that started a non-profit called Go Trek, which took socio-economically diverse groups of young people on long hikes through different parts of the world, testing their physical & foreign language limits while exposing them to different people and items of cultural significance. I came back from getting a beer and found him saying something to my wife that made her laugh out loud. I felt jealous.

I didn't think of the guy again for several years, until I bumped into a mutual acquaintance at a wedding. During a conversational lull, I asked about Jack and the acquaintance gave a glib reply and went for a fresh drink.

Jack was probably due to vanish from my mind, like a junior high classmate or a fellow former fast food employee, but then last week the abstract of "Uma Thurman's Stalker" became real. The New York Times article I was reading began "Jack Jordan, a University of Chicago graduate turned drifter who lived in his car..." and I had to stop because I got all queasy.

I thought I reached the point where I stopped hating on fellow University of Chicago alumni, those various charmless, narcissistic, annoying fellow classmates and friends-of-roommates/roommates-of-friends who are now tenured professors, hedge fund managers, film directors, op-ed columnists, and noted humanitarians, but this brought up the same sort of feelings, albeit in doppelganger form.

I spent the next couple of days romanticizing the idea that ten years ago I could have chosen a similar path, but somehow found myself foregoing the vegan/pool cleaner/schizophrenic/stalker route and doing that husband/homeowner/father/stay-at-home dad thing and that these moorings saved me from his fate. Fellow alumni would email and I joked that Jack was another victim of the perverse narcissism of a University of Chicago alumni, who no longer content with merely using Greek philosophers as a punchline, decided to believe their desperate rants would be seen as challices of brilliant allusions and metaphors. I asked my wife if she remembered that one party back in 1995 with a series of increasingly frantic triggers - Remember? At that one guys loft apartment? So and so was there? The dj had that one film on a loop? It was on Lake street? - until it was clear she wasn't going to remember a damn thing. I thought about writing a letter to his folks, googled his name, read the user comments on tmz.com and got angry enough to start writing something similar to this post, but then deleted it.

What does it say about me that I think Jack Jordan is kind of a cool guy?

It probably means we shouldn't be judged by the worst thing that we do.