InStealthMode

Apart from the occasional tourist looking for a more enjoyable vacation, Nowheresvillem4m was mostly filled with the same desperate whores every day. Not that I was a desperate whore or anything. I'm just saying.

There was TommyIsAWhore, RandomProvincetownSlut, AlwaysOnEBoy, and VinnyTheStylist. They were like a background image. I always noticed them but rarely engaged them in conversation. After all, I'd already hooked up with, or rejected all of them. Isn't that what whores are supposed to do?

I'd never met up with VinnyTheStylist. Even via AOL, I sort of sensed there was something not quite right about him. We'd never IMed, but he would often scroll his sexual frustrations throughout the chat room. And who wants to fuck a whiny AOL scrollmonster?

One day I was IMing with Tommy (he was the one person I had no desire to ignore, even if we didn't plan on hooking up again) when I got a deluge of IMs from people in the chatroom. I answered them all with the appropriate responses. Most quickly got Xed out and forgotten, but one of the conversations seemed to be going pretty well. I was being my usually charming hysterical self and he was finding me amusing. We were several minutes into the conversation when I noticed that it was VinnieTheStylist.

Some times your first impressions of people are wrong, so I decided not to begrudge his scrolling habits, and continued the conversation.

He seemed really sweet. After about a half an hour, he suggested we meet at a local hotel for drinks. We wouldn't hook-up that day, but we'd hang out and see what happened. He didn't have a pic to send me, so I declined to send him my own.

I got to the hotel about fifteen minutes early. I ordered myself an amaretto sour, and watched golf on the hotel lounge's obscenely large television. About five minutes later an incredibly disheveled (and not in a cute way), wild-haired, junkie-looking guy shuffled in. He looked the way William S. Burroughs should have looked when he was about forty. I had a disturbing feeling that this was VinnyTheStylist.

He sat down and ordered a Bud. The bartender flat out refused to serve him. For the first time in my life, I became completely engrossed in the PGA on ABC.

The person I assumed to be Vinnie ordered a Coke. The bartender gave it to him. Reluctantly. Vinnie downed his Coke, and got on his cell phone. "Hey, Mom? Yea, I'm not gonna be able to make it for dinner tonight. I've got a date. Huh? No. I'm clean. Just a little nervous about my date, that's all." He rubbed at his nose, which I noticed was crusted with blood. Birdie, par, drive, nice lie, to the pin, fairway, please don't let this be VinnieTheStylist, chip, water hazard, sploosh.

"Hey." he turned to me, as he hung up his phone. "Are you AliasUsed?"

John Daley is in the rough. "Sorry?"

"I'm Vinnie. You're AliasUsed, right?"

"No. Sorry."

"Oh." Tiger Woods. Greg Norman. From the tee.

I watched golf for a half hour while Vinnie preened, picked up, then returned his cell phone to his pocket, drank four or five more overpriced Cokes, then went to the bathroom.

This was my opportunity. I paid for my one, well-nursed drink, and walked out to my car. As I climbed into my car, I heard Vinnie call out the alias (not Insafemode) that I had given him. I closed the door, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out of the parking lot.

I was getting ready to turn onto the highway onramp when a jeep swerved alongside me. Vinnie was inside. He was shouting something I couldn't make out in my direction. I turned onto the onramp. He cut off a tractor trailer truck, nearly getting himself killed, in order to follow me. Shit.

Rather than try any fancy driving or speeding, I drove as if I wasn't being pursued by a coked-up online whore reject. He rode my ass, flashed his lights, beeped his horn, pulled alongside me and made the roll-down-the-window pantomime. Since he didn't appear to have a gun, I obliged.

"I know who you are. Pull over. Let's talk."

"Go away." I rolled my window up. He swerved really quickly in front of me, and slowed down. I fucken hate crazy people. I tried to get around him, but he kept swerving in front of me.

The next exit was mine. I hoped that he would continue swerving in front of me, so I could quickly veer off the highway and drive home.

No such luck.

He pulled in behind me, and started riding my ass again.

There were very few times that I was pleased to live near a police station. This was one of them. I pulled into the parking lot. He did not follow me in.

I sat in the lot, destressing for about five minutes. There was nowhere, excepting people's driveways, for Vinnie to park and have a view of the police station. I pulled out, looking intently both ways. Nothing. I breathed. I took a right into my condo complex. No Vinnie. I parked next to a massive SUV (I knew they were good for something), and trembled to my apartment.

I decided this was a perfect time to end Whore Month. I signed onto my AOL screenname, went InStealthMode, and blocked VinnieTheStylist from IMing or e-mailing me, and signed off. Then, because I was more horny than enlightened, I signed in under a different screenname.