Finding Robert Pattinson: One Intern’s Quest for Love & A Restaining Order

BlackBook has a famous lineage of interns; we've yet again found another one amongst our unpaid ranks whose existence and presence has shocked, shaken, and amazed the staff in ways we didn't think our interns were capable of doing. This one, like all the others, has a very special secret: her life's ambition. No, it's not a career in publishing. It's finding and ravishing the man of her dreams (and those of every other girl aged 14 through 40): actor Robert Pattinson. While we simply talked to her about her obsession before, we've now given her time to explore it.

I enjoy a nice lunch in Washington Square Park and he just happens to be feet from my favorite bench in the park. I show up in NoLita for a late afternoon stroll and a blood orange gelato and there he is again with his posse of Schwarzenegger-esque guards. He goes to the same bars I go to. He hangs out in the same hotel lobbies I hang out in. And, no doubt, he finds himself wishing he could constantly be surrounded by talented British men. There is nothing blasé about it, but Robert Pattinson is stalking me.

Upon my arrival in Nolita this past Wednesday (June 24), for a lunch meeting/stalking session, I stumbled upon the Remember Me set. I found that the crowds had grown substantially from the first few days of filming. And so had the security—all a ploy for Robert to prove that they were there first. I wasn’t convinced. The crowds were all too cliché; The throbbing hearts of the Tiger-Beat-era, the “I’m too good for this” 20somethings that repeat they’re “over it” but still continue to camera-rape Robert, and the pushy moms that force their children to lie across a filthy New York cab that Robert touched in order to pose for a picture. I wasn’t buying it.

Of course, working for a magazine, I felt it my duty to examine the scene closer. Unknown to the crowds around me, I am the “Robert Pattinson Stalker” or BlackBook intern with an obsessive goal to ravish RPattz by summer’s end. I decide that the best route to keep the creepy, stalker vibe from surfacing is to play dumb. I ask those around me what is going on, and what all the fuss is about.  The 12-year-old standing next to me looks up dumbfounded. My co-intern looks at me like I’m crazy. This totally makes me appear less creepy, or so I think. I blink stupidly and search around for Robert ... pretending I don’t know what he looks like.

It’s at this moment that Robert’s eyes graze the crowd. He pretends not to see me (as if he didn’t know I would be there). Yes, the tween next to me probably thinks he was looking for her, but I know the truth. I quickly turn into one of those 20somethings in order to avoid his wanting glance. “I’m so over this scene” I tell my friend and insist that Robert is working and all the people there disgust me by disturbing this poor actor who is just trying to do his job. I have to get to my “lunch meeting” anyway. I check my watch and realize I have five minutes to get from Nolita to Gramercy. A lunch break is not sufficient time for a meeting in Nolita.

As I scramble to catch the train, I mull over why I don’t just run up and grab him when I have the chance. Being a Robert Pattinson stalker, this would be the appropriate move according to many. The truth is I don’t want to be that crazy fan with the Twilight bag and the Fraybans. Maybe there is that small glimmer of hope my dream will come true—that I will meet him in a intimate bar, he’ll find me intriguing for who I am, and in return I’ll fulfill all his wildest fantasies. But in the meantime, I’ll probably frequent my favorite spot, Black & White, or perhaps I’ll catch up with a few friends at the Bowery Bar. I mean, with my current record, Robert will more than likely turn up where I am in a day or two. After all, he is stalking me.