Good, Bad and Beyond the Pale

I'm surprised at how fun and relatively easy my experiment with on-line dating has been lately. Nothing serious yet, just a few casual daytime meetings, ranging from charmingly engaging to slightly awkward,but none of them have been at all unpleasant. I have a strong favorite and I hope it is mutual, but it is far too soon to speculate on such things. I think taking a slower, wider-ranging approach may be the best way to go about finding a mate, but that theory is still hypothetical.

One thing that has been consistent are the tales of male misbehavior that my dates have related to me. There was an eerie sameness to each woman's experiences, it was like listening to totally different witnesses give the same account of a UFO sighting...the first time you hear it, you wonder if it can be true, but then you hear the very similar  details again and again and hey, waddy ya know? Men are creepy as fuck.

Dude Advice:

- Don't email pictures of your junk to anyone. Ever

-If a woman turns you down, don't write a nasty and insulting note back, calling her "a stuck-up bitch" and worse. That is not going to change her mind.

- Don't put up old pictures of yourself...like 5, 10 or 15 years old. You don't look like that anymore and as soon as your date sees the "real" you, they'll immediately distrust everything you say.

- Don't invite your date to eat guacamole out of your butt. ( True...she showed me the email.)

- And don't make a website where you post the names, emails and identifying information of the women that you are currently stalking. Not only is that uber-creepy, but it is probably illegal.

I probably shouldn't be giving free advice like that. After all, those guys are the competition.

In any case, I see a lot of potential in the future. The past, on the other hand, has ambushed me in a way that I didn't exactly want to bring up on a first date. And it isn't exactly suited for parties or  Facebook either.

Last week, I got a call from an old friend who said he had bad news about a mutual friend, a guy that had been one of my best friends in 12th grade and a member of my first ever band. We had been very close but drifted apart over the years. He had moved away, married and settled down and it all seemed pretty much good with him...until the call.

My first assumption was that my old pal had died, but when I heard what had really happened, I wished that he had died instead.

My dear old friend had been convicted -plead guilty- to at least eleven charges, all of them involving child pornography and the 'grooming' of teen-age boys via internet sex acts. It was an excruciating new article to read and I'm not sharing it here, but there was a full-color mugshot of my old friend, his face bloated, his eyes dead and cold, but still...that was him.

Most things can be forgiven. This has to be so, for if it were otherwise, life itself would become nothing but a constant torment of  grudges, resentments and retribution, an endless hell of paybacks and  vengeful scorekeeping - but there are some things that I do not believe can ever be forgiven, nor can the people who do those things be rehabilitated or 'cured' from their moral affliction- and child molestation is one of those things. You cross a certain line and you don't come back, ever. You will remain on that side of the line for the rest of your life. Which will be much shorter in prison than outside of it.

He had a choice. He knew that what he was doing was wrong and he did it anyway and in the end a suspicious mother found the evidence that led to his arrest and conviction. I'm glad that particular child had a parent who was paying attention, but not all kids have that luxury.

One of the few happy memories I have out of my own not-so-easy childhood was that of playing in the band with my friend. Everything was new and exciting, punk rock was hot and we were gonna tear the scene up...until we moved apart and years went by and we lost touch. It was only within the last few years that I had re-established contact with him via Facebook.

Now all of those memories have a stain on them, a taint that can't be removed and I have lost another friend forever.

You bastard. You sick, disgusting bastard. How could you do this?

How?

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