Earlier, I was doing last-minute packing-slash-throwing-things-together-slash-cleaning, and dug out an old driver’s license. What’s unusual about this driver’s license, is that it’s not mine. It belongs to a guy who wooed me back in the BBS days. I had just been thinking about him yesterday morning, too.

What triggered the thinking was a morning talk radio show that I listen to while driving to work. The on-air personalities of this particular program are huge fans of the TV show “To Catch a Predator.” I’ve never caught one episode of this show, but I understand it to be a “Cops”-style reality show in which decoys posing as underaged online chat users get into an online rapport with adult men who hook up with minors they meet online. Then a meeting is planned, and upon his arrival to the meeting site the adult sexual predator is “surprised” by the host of the show, who reveals that the predator has been caught red-handed, then corners the predator with a “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know we all know what you’ve done? Do you know how much trouble you’re in?” type interview. The predator, after denying things and playing dumb, eventually gets arrested.
So anyway, the morning program was interviewing the host of the show, and they got into the different types of sexual predators. The host says they’re pretty careful about misuse of the word “pedophile” because some of these predators would never go after underage kids if they were not on the online chat forum. Maybe this is their first underage attraction and it’s an “exception” to their rule. And then there are the types who would consistently pursue naive young kids on and offline, loiter around schools and playgrounds, and the internet is just one of their tools. “Ick,” I thought, “How can these victim kids not know adult contact like this is improper?” And then I gasped. I was one of those kids!

I’ve already blogged before about my BBS addiction when I was 16, 17. Now I thought about some of the guys who pursued me through that venue. Boys my age didn’t tend to like me (my mom said it’s because boys my age back then went for looks and it’s the older men, people I would meet as I got older, who would appreciate me because of my personality and other strong points), and the chat board was pretty much my only social exposure to other age groups. One guy head-over-heels was 21. John lived up in Northern Cal somewhere and worked in the tech industry. He was nice, and we’d chat online and on the phone a lot, but he wouldn’t ever send photos. Later that summer (between junior and senior year) he decided to drive through the nite to meet me. That did not go well. That was the origin of my still-present fear of tall skinny men. But that’s another story. Anyway, it was his license I found. He actually whipped it out and slid it across the table to me, saying, “Oh, I DO have a picture of myself! Here, you can have this license. It just expired.” I’ll bet he didn’t know I’m such a pack-rat. But 4 years’ age difference isn’t that big of a deal.

And then there was the 25 year-old later that summer, Phil. He lived closer, in Orange, and we also chatted on the phone a lot. I was more careful to stay reserved until I saw what he looked like in person, after my last experience. And I was surprised to find myself minisculy attracted to someone 8 years older than me. My mom was thrilled. 8 was the magic number to her. “He’s old enough to be mature and established, and he’d take care of you and not sweat the small stuff about you,” she said. I think she was just happy that he was Asian. He was also in the tech industry, and eventually also relocated up to Northern Cal due to his work. Silicon Valley, ya know. Chat boards were not mainstream back then, so most of the adults who’d know about them are in the industry. It was okay he moved away, because I was starting to feel the age difference. Prom, hip hop, school club affairs, that was all way removed for a 25-year-old. His world was work and grownups. Besides, there was this one night when he burped from 15 feet behind me and I smelled it a few seconds later. Ew. That’s more than sufficient to turn a 17 year-old off to the point where I requested that he take me home…and he refused. So I was stranded alone with him in his house for longer than I’d wanted. But that’s another story. But 8 years isn’t even the largest gap.

There was the 28-year-old who, unlike the previous two guys, was just plainly sexually attracted to me. I believe the “younger” two, after investing time into getting to know me, actually liked me for me. But Tony, he had a live-in girlfriend who I believe he was engaged to at some point. He had a very young son from a prior relationship or marriage. He’d tell me about his Asian fetish (altho both his prior relationships were with white women approximately his age), about how “you Asian girls’ skin is soooo soft” which he’d discovered while stationed in Asia with the armed forces earlier in life, and asked if he could be my “first.” Although I knew he was physically attracted to me from the way he talked to me and from the way he’d hug me too long in greeting and rub my back too sensuously during these unnecessarily long hugs to be platonic, I knew that when he wasn’t with me, he didn’t think about me, and had his eye on other pursuits as well. I never took him seriously. He ended up breaking up with his live-in 27-year-old girlfriend and getting together with a 17-year-old white girl, also from the BBS. I asked his ex how things have been for them, were they civil? She said they’re okay, and apparently the new girlfriends’ parents, despite having caught them making out in their backyard spa (obviously the girl lived at home w/her parents still), “are thrilled to have a 28-year-old dating their daughter. Go figure.”

I didn’t understand it then, but fast-forward to present-day. Last week while Mr. W and I were on our way to dinner with Mr. W’s neighbor (who’s a high school teacher), the neighbor was saying he didn’t get how adults could be attracted to high school students. To him, these kids were immature kids. “Maybe it’s because I have a daughter, it’s just disgusting to me,” he said.
Ever wielding the cattleprod, I asked, “So you’d be upset if your minor daughter dated an adult?”
“Oh, I’d be furious,” he said passionately.
“So you wouldn’t approve if your daughter were dating someone 14 years older than her?”
“No I wouldn’t approve! I’d MURDER him! That is SICK!” the neighbor exclaimed.
Mr. W turned around from the front passenger seat to take a side-glance at me in the backseat. “You’re NOT a minor!” he said.