To his surprise, he found nothing other than sugary-sweet comments and private messages about math class or the latest movie they’d seen. In fact, Kyle’s private messages would have been nonexistent if dorky Lev Godwin hadn’t sent messages about math or movies. The text messages Kyle shared with Lev were more of the same dull content. Elroy even checked Kyle’s photos to see if he’d taken pictures of his dick and found nothing.
This was all in direct contrast to the way Elroy treated social media, e-mail, and texting. He’d “sexted” so many men he’d lost track of who they were. Sometimes he sent photos of his dick to virtual strangers he’d met online just to get a reaction from them. He was always sending nude photos and sexually verbal texts to Ricky. Ricky told him that when they weren’t together he would stare at the photos, read the messages, and jack off thinking about him. This made Elroy smile; it made him feel in control. While he was doing all this with Ricky in text form, he was still sending nude photos through private messages to guys he’d never even met in person on Facebook. The public photos he posted on Facebook were usually shirtless, or something sexually provocative. He didn’t take it seriously and he enjoyed the attention. The older gay men on Facebook were extremely thankful for the slightest hint of nudity. Some offered to send him money for more detailed photos, and one actually said he’d pay fifty bucks for a pair of Elroy’s used sweat socks.
Although Kyle refused to be Elroy’s Facebook friend because he didn’t like the provocative photos Elroy posted all the time (sometimes Elroy made Kyle take photos of him in his underwear for Facebook), Elroy found a way around this by inventing fake online identities. He created trumped-up profiles for both Twitter and Facebook and he sent Kyle friend requests so he could see what was going on with Kyle’s online identity all the time.
It always worked out the same way. He would send a request with a fake identity and Kyle would respond with this message: “Do I know you?” Elroy would respond with the fake name and say, “Not personally, but I go to Harvard. I’m a really nice guy.” In this regard, Kyle seemed to be more trusting than Elroy would have been. He would not only accept the friend request, he would thank the fake identity in writing, on the fake’s timeline. It was all very entertaining and amusing for a while. But then something happened that caused Kyle to rethink his decision to accept friend requests from guys he didn’t know.
It happened on a cold Friday night in November. Most of the leaves had fallen by then and Kyle had a big math exam on Monday. Elroy told him he was meeting Ricky at a hotel that night and didn’t know what time he would be home. Kyle responded the way he usually did: “Have fun with the married man.”
But instead of meeting Ricky, Elroy went to a cafein Boston and found a private table in a corner against a brick wall. He knew Kyle studied with his laptop at his side all the time, and he knew he constantly checked his social media accounts for activity. By this time Elroy had sent Kyle three friend requests with fake accounts. They were all handsome young men with photos Elroy had pilfered from stock photos on the Internet. They all went to Harvard and they all pretended to be as sweet and innocent as Kyle. Elroy wanted to see how Kyle would respond to a provocative comment on Facebook, so he ordered a latte and logged into one of his fake Facebook accounts.
When he was logged in to the fake account, he went directly to Kyle’s timeline and found one of Kyle’s typical status updates. He usually posted a deep heartfelt quote or a cheesy photo with an emotional saying a few times each day. On that particular night, Kyle had posted a photo of a deep green field with an elegant tree in the background. The saying read, “Always follow your dreams.”
After Elroy gagged at the trite saying, he left a comment on Kyle’s status update that said, “I’ve been dreaming a lot about you, handsome. We should get to know each other better.” Then he sat back and laughed so hard the other people in the bodega sent him stares.
He waited over a half hour and saw no response from Kyle. He knew this was unusual; he knew Kyle was logged into Facebook because he’d seen him click “like” to someone else’s status update. Kyle was one of those who always replied to comments on his updates. Elroy had posted comments on other status updates with his fake names and Kyle either commented immediately or clicked “like.”
So Elroy logged out of that fake account and logged into another fake account and left the next comment beneath the first one he’d left: “Hey, baby. Forget about this guy. Let’s hook up tonight, dude. PM me. You send me pics and I’ll send mine.” Then he sat back and waited fifteen minutes to see if Kyle would respond to either of the comments from the fake identities.
Fifteen minutes later, nothing happened. So he logged out of that fake account and logged back into the first fake account. He figured sockpuppeting with both fake names might get a response out of Kyle. This time he left a comment on the same thread that said, “Back off, dude. He’s interested in me, not you.” He laughed harder and logged out of that account, and then returned to the second fake account and left this comment in reply, “Get a life, asswipe. He’s not interested in you, he’s interested in me. Send me pics, dude. I’m waiting.”
This time Elroy sat back and laughed so hard the manager of the bodega sneered at him. When Elroy pictured the stunned expression on Kyle’s face as he watched these two fake guys argue over him, it brought tears to his eyes.
But he stopped laughing three minutes later when Kyle left this comment on the same thread: “Knock it off with the sockpuppets, Elroy, you big idiot. I’m trying to study.”
Elroy pressed his palm to his stomach and blinked at the screen. Then he smiled and wrote, “Do you still love me?” There was no point in denying the fake names anymore. He wondered how long Kyle had known about them. He’d underestimated him.
A minute later, Kyle typed, “Unfortunately, yes. You’re very amusing in a droll way. Now leave me alone so I can study.”
Chapter Sixteen
By the first week in December, Elroy had reached his limit with Lev Godwin. People in general usually didn’t annoy Elroy; he never paid much attention to most people anyway. But every once in a while someone would come along whom he just couldn’t stand. He couldn’t give exact reasons for feeling this way. It wasn’t always completely focused on the way they wore their hair, or dressed, or spoke. This feeling of intense dislike depended more on a generalized, though often invisible aspect, not anything specific. And when it happened, Elroy found it difficult to control his vindictive urges.