on Monday, my Walking Disaster notification went off, and I checked the text from Ash.
I’ve got to be in NYC this weekend. Can we meet up?
I stopped and pondered her question. NYC was a long way from Portland. Especially on such short notice.
What’s going on? Business?
Family thing, actually.
Sure. I can swing by wherever you’ll be staying. I’d love to finally meet you.
Actually. I don’t know where I’ll be staying yet . . .
I couldn’t exactly invite her to stay with me since I didn’t have a settled place myself. The housing search had stalled, but I felt the pressure to figure things out. Shane would be home Sunday, and I couldn’t be homeless when he got back. I didn’t want to be at a disadvantage when he’d already shown a willingness to coerce me.
Speaking of my strange online relationships, my private message queue on the site had become untenable. No matter how many times I cleared it out, I’d come back to dozens more. I’d stopped trying to read them and instead skipped over anything with Congratulations in the subject which meant almost everything I read was an invitation to hang out or a request for a favor. Was every single poster going to try to contact me now?
Apparently so.
Most of the messages were innocuous. It wasn’t until mid-morning, after my developer meeting that I received the first private message that really creeped me out.
Subject: Sneaky
I met you at a show in South Bend. I can’t believe we didn’t figure out you were *the* Pumpkin before with that hair. Very sneaky of you. Do you think you’ll be able to get the band to come this way again?
What was going on? How would anyone know what I looked like?
I started scrolling through the forums until I saw a thread titled: Fan Blogger article you guys should see. I’d heard that name recently.
I didn’t bother scanning what was copied in the forum and went straight to the source. The article was titled Rumor Mill. It was dated Friday and had several paragraphs of random gossip about different minor celebrities. I got halfway down the page and saw why it had made it to my forum. Right in the middle of the article were four pictures, side-by-side.
They were photos of me.
A couple of weeks ago, I took a walk through an area of Brooklyn where the band Theater of the Absurd rehearses, trying to get some pics of Noah Kennedy after his girlfriend left him for front man/guitarist Samuel Tucker of Whiplash.
I noticed this girl (see photo #1 below) heading into the rehearsal with Shane. I pegged her for management, agent, sister, groupie, or girlfriend.
No big deal and not noteworthy.
Except.
Curious, I staked out Shane’s apartment, and guess who should emerge? (See photo #2).
But what really sparked my interest was the discovery of a couple of photos an anonymous source sent me from Boston Calling last week. That same redhead can be seen fraternizing with Noah Kennedy. (See photo #3 and #4).
Draw your own conclusions about the relationship status of this apparent groupie, but I can confirm that the redhead in all of these pictures is a certain Layla Beckett of the Rock Paper and newly admitted fan forum admin at a prominent Walking Disaster fan site.
I’d never had to defend my own relationships online, and I understood now why Eden had been so thankful for my protection of her. Objectively, I knew this was just par for the course when dealing with adjacent fame. But Jim Bone—his actual name—had stalked me and exposed me. It made me feel vulnerable, and it hurt. He’d gotten close to the truth, but I hated that everyone always immediately assumed I’d been using Shane, just like he feared.
I thought about my parents reading that, or what few friends I had, or the forum denizens. With no recourse to fight back and deny it, a story like this should have reduced me to tears. Fortunately, I did have experience. I knew that almost nobody paid attention to fan forums except the hardcore fans themselves. I thanked my lucky stars I only had to deal with this backwater bullshit.
Plus, I did have recourse. I had an army at my disposal. And a blog which gave me a voice. I could have fought back if I wanted to. I could have asked my posters to flood this Fan Blogger with angry comments and force him to take it down. I could have contacted him myself and worked out a