Yesterday began as a normal day. I wish it had stayed that way. I was minding my own business when the doorbell rang. During the day, it's always Jehovah's Witnesses or the UPS man, so my guard was down.

When I opened the door, a well-dressed, plain-faced man in his thirties was standing there. With a big grin, he said "Hey, babe, I'm here for a blow job."

It took a second for that to register but as soon as it did, I slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt. I planned to go call the police to inform them there was a crazed perv wandering the neighborhood. This plan was interrupted when I turned on my heel to find said perv was now standing inside my house, blocking my exit from the front hall.

I have never been confronted with the impossible before, and this was impossible. I had seen him a split second before, on the other side of a now-locked door. While most of me panicked, some small part of my brain looked for an explanation. For a short while, I thought it was a pair of deviant, identical twins, and one had come in a back window while the other distracted me at the front. Then I decided if he came one step closer to me, I was going to chew through his jugular vein, no matter how many of him there were and how he got in. I located a good soft spot on his neck, in case this became necessary.

Meanwhile, I just plastered myself against the door and made choked, gasping sounds.

"So, how about it?" he asked, cheerfully.

"Gugggguh..." I said, diplomatically. I was trying to inconspicuously work my hand back up to the deadbolt, so I could throw open the door, trample his twin, and run out into the blessedly-public street, screaming.

"If you're not into that, I guess I could try the normal way. It's just I've heard the other is better." He seemed to want to be helpful.

This time, I remembered how to speak English. "No, thank you," I said. "Would you please leave?"

"No, I want sex. Your planet seems obsessed with the subject, so I've taken the trouble to become corporeal so I can try it. I've studied your customs. I could arrange for flowers, if that's the problem."

Gosh. Not just a home-invading, would-be rapist, but a completely reality-detached one. I cheered up a little when it occurred to me he could only have recently escaped, and surely there were good people with competent nets out looking for him, even as we spoke.

"It's not all it's cracked up to be." I told him. "If you want to sample the real thrills of Earth, try Disneyland. That's south about four hundred miles. Have a nice trip."

I opened the front door again, as this seemed a graceful point in the conversation to do so. His twin was gone, so I smiled brightly at the stranger, then bolted for the sidewalk. Instead of open air, I hit what felt like an invisible brick wall. I bounced off nothing I could see, landed on my butt on the hallway floor, then spent a quiet moment deciding if my nose or my rump hurt more.

"Is this part of foreplay?" he asked. "I've heard chase and pursuit is traditional."

"Only if you're Mike Tyson." Here I was, my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest and with a bruised behind. There he was, standing over me amused and slightly curious. From one heartbeat to the next, my fear clicked to anger. I was glad. I will say or do anything when I am angry. Normally, that's totally inappropriate but I felt I had at last found the situation where my gift for idiotic recklessness was going to help. I was wrong.

"Get out. Just get out, right now. If you don't, you will be sorry." I have come up with better threats and I felt delivering my speech from the floor probably detracted from its menace but I had sincerity going for me. I screamed two or three times as a closer, in hopes the neighbors would hear. He patiently waited for me to finish.

"I don't understand the problem. I am male, you are female. I chose the most conventional possible pairing. You are not engaged in a marriage, so you may breed freely. I'm attractive. Are you what they mean in the books when they say 'coy'?"

"You are saying you are an extraterrestrial?" Little did he know but as I said this, I was targeting his crotch from below with plans to hit his testicles hard enough he'd have to swallow to get 'em back into place. I held this option in reserve because I've heard if it doesn't work, the man you attacked gets very, very upset about the attempt.

"Yes," he replied, still perfectly at ease.

"You have somehow studied the ways of our species from afar, made yourself a human body, beamed yourself down here from impossible light-years away, then defied the laws of physics to teleport from one side of my front door to the other and you did that all for...sex?"

"Well, the order isn't exactly correct, and time is not the same to me as it is to you, and it didn't take long to study the ways of your species, so I'm not bragging, but yes." He looked smug. I didn't like that.

"You are a complete moron."

"How so?" At last, I seemed to have his focused attention. He'd stopped grinning, anyway.

"Let me count the ways. First, let's just say your fantasy is true. It isn't but nice people with fun drugs and electro-shock tools will be explaining that to you eventually. I won't bother."

"It's nice of you to grant that the truth is the truth," he said.

"Thank you. After all that trouble, if you chose me for your experiment, you must be daft. I got a C- in Physical Education every year they made me take it. I get winded on the way to the mailbox. I have never, ever had a man hit on me by asking, 'Are you a model?' Come to think of it, I have a horrible, communicable venereal disease that is so contagious, you are probably at risk of catching it as long as you're here. Was your choice totally random or something?"

"Of course it was." He wasn't apologetic. "There's not enough difference between you to matter one way or the other. And you don't have any contagious diseases. Does telling out-and-out lies really work on another human?"

"Usually. Let me steer you straight, and this is the truth. There are people who will have sex for you in exchange for money. You must have missed that in your omniscient studies. It's not considered nice but you're not nice so I don't think that will bother you. If you have enough money, you can find someone who is very, very good at having sex and who will even tell you she likes you. Good luck to her. I would try Vegas. Disneyland is notoriously short on that kind of action." I crawled out of the front doorway and slumped against a wall instead, so as not to impede his exit.

"So you're saying if I paid you, you would have sex with me?"

"We're back to the part about you being a complete moron, aren't we?" Since I was now to his side, it was going to be tough to go for his crotch, so I decided I would break his kneecap with a sharp sidekick if he attacked. It's hard for someone to chase you when one of his legs has just been separated into two unjoined pieces.

Uhoh. I have to stop writing now. The sun's coming up and I suspect this desert gets hot when it does. Two of the moons have set and it's still bright from the one remaining. There are no plants and I've seen no signs of water. Just dust and rock. It could only be a matter of hours before I broil in full day. If not, I'll continue my journal for as long as I can. I never thought I would miss the noise of Earth but I would give anything to hear a car horn about now. There is absolutely no sound here except the wind. If I don't make it, I hope as I go I remember my pride seemed worth it. Yesterday, anyway.