Ben Willets

Anonymous

            I title my craigslist ad, “18 y.o. diabetic seeks ‘Blood Sugar’ Daddy to pay for test strips.” I upload a picture:  Jonathan Taylor Thomas from TV’s Home Improvement, circa 1997.  Half an hour later, I have twenty emails from twenty different geezers all wanting to see my package before they commit.  I google a picture of a dick, send it out.  They mail back, “Nice bush, want to meet?”  I sift through the responses, sizing them up like a herd of wildebeest:  Which sounds the most desperate?  the most credulous?  Which has a game leg and would be easiest to run down?  Five minutes later I decide:  some horny old queer from Boston who tells me he owns a rental property; he’ll let me have an apartment for free, but I’d have to pretend to pay every month—legal stuff, you understand.  No, I can’t stay at his place, he’s got a wife.  Perfect, I think.  Maybe if I play my cards right, I can convince him to come out of the closet, tell his family the truth after forty-three years of lies, end his marriage, buy a Ferrari, grow a moustache, clean out his son’s old room for when I get there…

…only I’ll never get there.

            I am the boy who cried, “Wolf!” Loki the trickster, the Puka of Irish legend, and this is how I spend my Saturday night, trolling people stupid enough to believe what they see on the Internet.  If you’re dumb enough you deserve it:  If you post nude photos of yourself, I’ll link them on your mother’s myspace page.  If you leave you leave up unsecured personal data, I’ll have every shop in town deliver pizzas to your apartment.  And if you pollute one of my web forums asking for advice about some petty real-life drama, I’ll pretend to care, to want to help, win your confidence long enough to probe out all your flaws so I can turn around and humiliate you.

            This is how I spend my Saturday night, exposing people for the shallow, cretinous hypocrites they are being their social masks.

            At two a.m. I strike the mother lode: an honest-to-goodness Southern Baptist preacher’s daughter on a free cam site.  She’s lying naked on a four-poster bed in a room covered with wallpaper that looks like something you’d buy at Woolworth’s to line the bottom of your kitchen cabinets.  “If ya’ll want another show, somebody’s gonna have to fork over some credits,” she says, rolling her plump body over to face us, greasy blonde hair stuck to her forehead like spoiled hay.  “I can’t stick around all night fellahs, my husband’s waiting to fuck me good.” 

A minute later she tells someone to please not take the Lord’s name in vain.  I sign in with the handle JesusLovesYou, ask her if her husband knows what she does for money, if she’s proud of being a whore.  She blinks like there’s sand in her eyes, props herself up on two chunky elbows and stares straight into the camera, hog-pink skin glistening with indignation:  “Of course he knows, and he’s proud—I’m proud!”

            I antagonize this Jerry Springer reject a while longer, warning her of the dangers of her degenerative lifestyle; she waxes philosophic about Jesus being a man with a man’s desires.  Since she thinks the Church has lied about so much of what’s in the Bible, I ask, why does she believe any of its true?  She mutes me, and rambles on about the Gnostic Gospels; DiverDude22 asks her if she’s ever read The Da Vinci Code:  “No, I have no, but I’ve seen the movie.”

            Four in the morning—no more mischief.  I try to conjure up that devious mirth but it’s all gone out of me like an old romance.  I’ve passed the point of being tired and entered into that state of waking death where I keep on going for no reason except that the night’s not over yet. 

            In another room, a girl in a bathtub with dyed-black hair is peeling liquid Latex off her body like pieces of a fruit roll-up.  “Argh!  Fucking stuff won’t come off!”  She picks at a patch on her breast, unearths a nipple.  There’s the predictable flood of messages: “omg!” “HAWT”  “niiiice”  I shake my head in disgust:  I’m so much better than these mindless perverts, these stags in rut.  Why can’t women see that?

            I’m about to log off when “Ocean Breathes Salty” starts playing on Latex girl’s stereo.  A glimmer of sentience?!  “Heyyy, nice taste in music,” I type, totally against the flow of conversation and my own better sense.  Without even looking toward the camera she says, “Thank you!” all sing-songy and insincere like it was just another comment about her tits.

            Fuck me, I should have known the song didn’t mean anything—Modest Mouse is pop music nowadays.  I guess maybe she’s not worth knowing after all. 

            The next band on her mix tape confirms my doubts:  Insane Clown Posse.