Through A Cam: Darkly

This post originally appeared on another site in a slightly different format. 

Three years ago I discovered the video chatting rabbit hole known as ICU2.  Nowadays, sites that don’t offer video chat are archaic. If you are a paid member, NKP has a very fine one. ICU2’s home page touts it as being ‘the 24-hour party that never ends’. At times I’ve regarded it as ‘the 24-hour party that you can’t escape. 

Despite my flawed time management skills, I have enjoyed camaraderie, pun intended, with many of the hot men since day 1. I see ICU2 as a fraternity of super studly, generally friendly and highly intelligent men-if not lacking common sense with hobbies of pipes and darts.  One ‘good old boy’, who’s sexy yet funny slam vids I drooled over on the old Ning site, was a regular and he lived in this half of the West. He needed tutoring in basic and advanced Skype and Oovoo. I provided lessons pro-bono, hoping he might fly down to Hollywood and thank me, ‘bono’ in hand.  Alas he wasn’t a quick study with my subtext or subjects; and we repeated the lessons about 5 times. And he could never remember how he knew me.

Much like the old studio star system, our cam personas : dom, sub, verbal, silent,  dark, daffy, delirious, self-promoting or tragically self-destructive are often at extreme cross purposes with the face we present to or hide from the rest of the world. At times, and with so much chemical osmosis about, the lines between real and camera blur, combine or even trade places. It’s difficult to be in an altered state and question your judgment, eyesight and sanity.

Last January, on what would be our last video conference, I did just that. The screen name was his, but the easy going, lovable ‘good ol' boy’  appeared on the monitor. Something not quite human, but hyper-masculin creature was standing stout in the shadows. It ranted about thefts of personal property, betrayal by friends and  countless relationships destroyed.
I listened, but there could be never enough apologies or amends for him. A few days later, channeling my cyber-Nancy Drew, I compared his early videos to the latter day pictures and vids. I still don’t know what it was I saw on Oovoo that night.

It’s a small chem, cam and slam club and most of us are 3-4 degrees of separation from each other. Last week, I received a link that saddened but did not shock me.  My cyber-friend had been arrested--and this was not a jaywalking charge. He was accused of committing numerous, and truly heinous crimes.
His local paper broke the biased story and may as well have printed that a lynching would save the state money. As a journalist and an American, I am ashamed at such unfair reporting. I pray that healing and reconciliation can begin for my friend, whose real name, screen names and city I decline to reveal.  I cannot and will not denounce him, and although we never met face to face. I don’t expect we will.

You might find my support odd, and those who know him have contacted me, replacng ‘odd’ with adjectives that I’d prefer not to repeat. Given the accusations, if convicted and imprisoned, he will not survive.  Where did this party take such a nasty turn?

Once upon a time, in a chat room long ago, I saw a man: fun, festive and a lot like you and me.  In talking with him,he became real, not just a potential screenshot.  Some will say he is entirely innocent, blaming his crimes on the substances he used: bestowing mystical powers these concoctions do not possess- nor ever will.  

 

Humans make mistakes.  And we must never forget that we are human.