Chapter 26 : I went to a serial killer's lair (Part 1)

Here is a story I have never told anyone, partly because elements of the story are just not appropriate in most social situations. As a result, I've locked this away in my memory, and I rarely think about it.

Fair warning, this story does involve some sketchy sexual situations, but does not describe any actual sexual acts.

And as another disclaimer, I am completely aware that this story involves me being very stupid and careless. I'm not going to inject these acknowledgements into the story, but rest assured that in hindsight I am aware of the foolishness that took place, and I don't need to be chided on that topic.

Now, where to begin....

The year was approximately 1998-1999. I was a young gay man in my early 20s, living in a medium-sized city in the Midwestern U.S. This was sort of an in-between, transitional time for gay people, where in most populous areas we had enough respect to live openly but there were still plenty of people who did not like us.

It was well before the invention of smart phones, and the internet was still in the early stages of mass adoption. There were large communities online, but it was not yet at the point where "most" Americans were online. Online socialization consisted of chat rooms, hosted by various services like AOL, Yahoo, or IRC servers, and message boards were still in use by large numbers of people. For gay men at that time, it was nothing short of revolutionary. Prior to the internet, and to the broader cultural changes, gay men had been stuck looking for "fun" in secretive and/or shady places due to the inability to freely express ourselves. In the 90s it was still somewhat risky, but the internet offered a way to talk freely and relatively anonymously, without the risk of being outed or worse. For this reason it really took off in the gay communities, and gay men were a very large part of the userbases for these social platforms. It was suddenly very easy and (relatively) safe to find dates, friends, or just sex, and it quickly became the norm for a lot of gay men.

On the other hand, being such a new communication tool for most people, we were sometimes blind to the risks....

Being an attractive young man in my prime, I made liberal use of online communities to find "dates." That is to say, I had plenty of hookups. My city had a decent number of chat rooms and personals message boards, and I had mostly great experiences. I met the typical assortment of good guys, closet cases, and weirdos that you'd expect. I wasn't an absolute "ho" by most standards, but suffice to say that a cute gay gay at that time could generally have a lot more "dates" than your typical straight person, lol.

At some point during this time, I'd had some brief chat on a message board with a guy from my city, I forget his screen name (it's been over 20 years) so let's call him... SlimGuy65. This back-and-forth had happened on a general thread in the gay section, not in private messages, so it was visible to anyone who chose to read that thread. Nothing had come of it, but about a week later, I received an email from an unrecognized address. The email basically said, "hey I'm not gay, and I don't agree with the gay lifestyle. I'm here because my friend met this SlimGuy65 person from this message board, and the guy really hurt him. I don't want this to happen to anyone else. My friend tried to tell the police but they wouldn't do anything. I see you were talking to SlimGuy65 so just be careful and stay away from him."

OK. That's strange. What does this person mean by "really hurt him?" Was his heart broken? Did he get beaten up or verbally abused or what? I responded to the email asking for clarification on what exactly happened. I never recieved a response. I was slightly weirded out by it, but on the other hand it's an anonymous email from someone who doesn't respond and is vague about their warning. This could be anything. It could be some disgruntled ex trying to mess with the guy, it could be a real warning about someone gay bashing, it could be someone trolling who doesn't have anything to do with anyone. I kept it in the back of my mind but pretty much shrugged it off.