truth be told, i haven't thought about marcus in awhile--there's pain wrapped up in that particular recollection--but recent events in the gay blogosphere (plus a few cocktails) have brought it all back, and prompted me to tell his story tonight.
see, marcus was a young friend of mine who died a few years ago.
we met in one of the various "men 4 older men" aol chatrooms in maybe 2003. back then, i was fairly new to the whole online thing and would lurk in one chatroom or another while i did other things and wait for people to come to me. and while i never participated in the chat in any of these rooms (most of the time it was boring as hell), i'd keep an eye out for flurries of interest.
and increasingly, i came to notice the presence of this pale, cute, overly-skinny 16-year-old english kid (as per his profile and picture--for the life of me i can no longer remember his screen name) who started to dominate the chatrooms through his sheer audacity and quick wit. he'd come in, guys would hit on him, he'd dispatch 'em left and right with quick, cruel indifference--it was fun to watch.
and then one night he IM'd me--something like: "i've seen you around forever--why haven't you ever hit me up?"
i thought a second, fired back, and the game was on.
i love power-IM'ing as much as i love anything in life--that quick back-and-forth is perfectly suited to my skills and sensibilities, and i'm good at it; in fact, you'll seldom find me happier than when i'm shitfaced and have three or four simultaneous shotgun-chats going, each of 'em thinking they've got my full attention (what can i say, it's my idea of the perfect video game).
and marcus--even though he was young, he was up to the challenge like no one i've ever met, regardless of age; his mind was so facile and quick (my god, we had some great chats--i only wish i'd saved 'em). and thus, we became fast friends.
and after awhile, it became more personal--he gradually dropped the clever, hard-shell persona and let me in on what was really happening in his life--the pace slowed, and the IM's became emails.
and that's when i started to care.
over time, in torturous bits and pieces, he told me about his life--he lived in an upscale neighborhood in kent, outside of london. his father was indifferent, his mother was preoccupied with his two younger siblings, and he himself was sick--really sick. marcus wasn't sure if he was gay or not, but apparently the decision had been made for him--a teacher at his school had started molesting him when he was 12, and now he was not only HIV+ but had full-blown AIDS.
and it wasn't like his was of the drug-resistant variety--it was more like, he wouldn't take his fucking meds when he was supposed to. and he did other stupid, impulsive, self-destructive things he'd describe to me in detail--because, like any kid, he thought he'd live forever. which, of course, enraged me--i would rail and lecture him and demand that he stay home and not go to raves and quit fucking around.
and this went on for awhile, and of course he didn't listen--and he got sicker and sicker.
and i got more and more worried--hell, i even entertained idle fantasies of flying over there and slapping sense into him. but it never came to that.
because, in late august 2005, marcus died. and his death affected me in a way i'd never been affected before.
see, here's the deal with me: i have what are in the pop-psych vernacular referred to as "intimacy issues." for whatever reason, it's somehow easier for me to get close to someone who's safely half a world away than focus on the real flesh-and-blood relationships in my life--and i guess i'd gotten closer to marcus than i'd realized. and when he ceased to exist, it wasn't simple grief i felt; it was more of a new (for me, anyway) hybrid emotion composed of loss and anger--and lots of it.
because marcus didn't die the way you think--unless, of course, you're way ahead of me already.
no, he died when one of his friends emailed me with the bombshell that "marcus" was in actuality a 20-year-old transgendered female who resided not in london, but in seattle--and i, among several others, had been very effectively played for over two years.
later when i calmed down, i emailed "marcus" and asked him/her why he/she had felt the need to carry out and maintain such an elaborate charade for so long. and i never got a satisfactory answer; what i did get was an apology and a light-hearted request to let bygones be bygones, and to allow our friendship to continue.
and even though i sensed the pain and the need behind her breezy tone--by then i knew her well, even though i didn't--i had to decline; i couldn't get past the betrayal of trust (or, truth be told, my bruised ego).
the irony, of course, was that had she been upfront in the beginning, we could have been such great friends then and now--regardless of external gender, she was still the sharp, sweet, quick-witted soul i had been so taken by and had come to care so much about.
and even three years later, i sometimes think back on those chats (and the dark, intimate pain of those emails)--and i wonder how he/she is faring in this world.
* * * * *
so what brought this post on, you ask?
because apparently this wasn't an isolated incident--you want a fascinating study in human pathology, go read joe's, father tony's and will's (7/27/08) recent accounts and recollections of nicky cooper, the young, handsome forest ranger/firefighter/adoptive father who sucked in untold multitudes via "his" sensitively-written, ethereally beautiful blog. seriously--it's more than a little mind-blowing.
and it makes me wonder just how many more nickys and marcuses there are out there.
[and in closing: even though i know that at times mkf may seem too good to be true to you mere mortals, trust me--all this is real (like, if even a monkey with a typewriter was making this shit up he couldn't come up with something better).]
9 comments:
So, you experienced the same thing--a woman taking on the identity of a young gay man and then involving other men in "his" life.
The psychology of this fascinates me, just as did the haydays of the 24-hour webcams, through which guys lived their entire lives, including their sex lives, on line (YEARS before "The Truman Show" movie, by the way).
It does indeed seem a betrayal to me, even if one doesn't go to the lengths Patrick went to, traveling thousands of miles to be with the object of one's internet romance. I think it shows a monumental indifference to the feelings and emotional involvement of the people the fraudmeister pulls in.
Personally, I am far more resentful of the loss of "Nicky" himself, the sweet, caring and loving man who enfolded those two little lives into his own, than I am about the possibility that any part of my story of raising my two daughters as a single gay father might have been appropriated into the deception.
don't know. I was effected by this confession. Firstly, when I started this blogging experiment I did it anonymously - using an alias and going as far as fake fotos of some poor sap I found online. I was so appauled at the life I was living that there was no other way. But the pic I used - that is what gained my 15 minutes of fame with this damned thing! And eventually with an inflated literary ego - I "came out" to loyal readers and posted my real pic. Poof! 90% dissapeared. Actually I got some down right hate mail. I guess blowing this fantasy of some hot blonde twink living the kerouac/burroughs gimmick upset a lot of fags. Instead they got some average joe motherfucker - a ver. I'm rambling - the way your post moved me was yes there are A LOT of guys (albiet guys or transgenders)out there that know that as themselves they have no chance (through thier own insecurities.) to meet or talk with any one. So they create 'other selves' to combat this brutal and overly opinionated gay life. Though I respect you very much,MKF, I seriously doubt in the begining that you had known it was a pre-op tranny from seattle instead of a doe eyed waif from London you would have not associated with him/her. However, high marks to you that after the fact of finding out - you did. With your friend from seattle and with myself - you follow me?
will: as you can imagine, i know exactly how you feel.
and i wonder if it really is indifference to the feelings of others that allows people like this to mount such shams, or if maybe it's more of an head-in-the-sand ability to compartmentalize, and focus only on their side of things and not think of the damage they're doing.
either way, it's not something i wanna go through again.
luis: ah yes, i remember you back when you were a twink ;)
and having stuck with you through your transition from fantasy-boy to real-life guy, i always came back for the writing--and i've watched it evolve and improve as you've chosen to put more and more of your real self out there, warts and all. it takes a rare kind of courage to do that, and there aren't very many who have it--and who knows, i may drop the anonymity and join that little club one day (like the world is breathlessly awaiting that development).
as far as your other point goes, here's the deal: while it didn't hurt that "marcus" presented him/herself to me in the form of a cute boy, it wouldn't have really mattered either way--i mean, finding people to fuck is easy, whereas finding people online who can not only keep up with me but keep me interested is much, much harder. so if you can pull that trick off--oh, and if you get the pedophile joke--then i really don't care about such trivialities as age or gender.
Marcus , last I checked , was doing alright . I think she got over her transgendered phase and is now a female again with a boyfriend . I was wrong , she didn't have a child , the child is actually the spawn of her friend Vincent who also seems to be a burnt out tranny . You can still find her smoking marijuana if you want to see pictures .
By the way .
You aren't answering your phone .
Ass .
Maybe I'm just jealous that you wrote about her . I was and am much more interesting than that slut of an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend whatever of mine .
Byzantine boy...you have been missed.
As for guttermorality, as someone who has known you for a while, I can say your blog (sadly) is all too true.
Why do people make shit up? Luis may be on to something.
Truth be told, it is too common to find bloggers or anyone else out there selling pieces of ourselves that are more appealing than others.
That's why I find most blogs so boring. They are usually sales jobs which to me are really con jobs.
That's what I like about guttermorality. At its best, it is a celebration of human fecklessness. This is a topic I love.
To me, I find my own faults and the faults of others much more interesting. They are so much more real because they are so often given up only reluctantly.
And, my view is that people hold on to the good stuff because it is valuable -- whether they are aware of it or not.
As I sit around at 40, I can say that for me life is about embracing who you are, not some fantasy of who you are or what you want to be -- or even who you were 10 years ago at 30.
There is dignity and nobility in just being an ordinary guy who has his feet on the ground and knows that.
At least that is the way I think being from the Midwest.
to the curious among you: byzantine boy up there is indeed the one who clued me in on the true nature of marcus--and a most exceptional young man he is in many ways.
in fact, from that most inauspicious beginning sprung an unlikely friendship that i have always valued; his regard for me, conversely, is much more variable, depending mostly upon the degree of loathing for homosexuality (his own and others')--he happens to wake up with on any given day. our last conversation took place some time ago, didn't go well at all, and i haven't forgotten it.
there, i've written about you--happy now?
noblesavage: you, my friend, get wiser as you get older--oh, and see my current post.
Your post went *poof* as things tend to do on blogs.
I was a 4. I wholeheartedly put myself out there.
And paid for it, big time.
I almost lost those most important to me--my family, as I couldn't shut up and not write about them when I should have been sucking it up and keeping quiet. The web's really not all that private, yanno?
It was an incredibly personal blog, my first one. I am extremely grateful that I had been able to write as freely as I did for as long as I did and about the subject matter (nothing was taboo--not my BDSM lifestyle/experiences, my family, friends, real boyfriends, my descent into the hell that is bipolar disorder--nothing).
I paid for it dearly, and have learned a little restraint.
And by little, I mean I put that shit on myspace and privatized the page...and I no longer discuss my family in any way that's obvious.
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