The Perv: A legion of 10,000, you say? Bring it.

The Perv responded to my latest ad (I’m skipping ahead for this one) on Halloween. He didn’t offer much info, and I got an overall creepy vibe from him, much of which I attributed to him sharing a first name with this guy and my overactive imagination. (I should trust my gut more.) The Perv asked me out (well, more accurately, asked me to come to his house) in his first or second e-mail and in almost every one thereafter. These were one- or two-line messages, for the most part, and, like I said, he’d creeped me out, although I can’t pinpoint exactly why. He was pressing for a meeting yesterday or today.

I finally told him I wasn’t inclined to go out with guys who wouldn’t tell me anything about themselves. He wrote back that he had a boat, a house, two cars, a dog and a cat, and that he has “it goin’ on.”

--- Let me pause at this point to say it’s pretty much a given that anyone who uses that phrase to describe himself does not, in fact, “have it goin’ on.” ---

Attached at the bottom of his next message, which just asked when we could meet for a drink, perhaps him cooking dinner for me (another supposed chef), there was a photo attached. In the picture, The Perv is standing in a shower, drinking a beer (Q: Who drinks beer in the shower while having his picture taken? A: A perv. Q: And, if you’re going to go to all that trouble, why would you be drinking shitty beer? A: Because you’re a perv with shite taste in beer, which only reinforces your pervi-ness*). The picture is from his pelvis up, so none of his nether regions are visible (yes, there is something redeeming in this, after all; I didn’t have to see a picture of this perv’s penis!).

Anyhow, when I saw the photo, I responded with this:

Did you just send me a picture of you in the shower drinking a beer?
No. We will never meet. Don't send me any more messages.

Perhaps I didn’t express what I was really feeling well enough, which was not that the beer offended me, but that I couldn’t fathom why The Perv thought it appropriate to send me this particular photo while asking me out. If, say, one of my friends from college sent me a similar photo, I probably would’ve laughed and made endless fun of him for the rest of our lives. But this guy on the Internet sending it to me gave me one crystal-clear message: RUN! (Unfortunately, my knee-jerk reaction was to erase all traces of The Perv, so I deleted his wonderful photo, or I definitely would’ve posted it here so you could laugh along with me.)

This is what he sent in return:

yes i was in shower and it was a g rated picture, how old are you?
think about your age and look at picture, all you can see is a beer.
be an adult, stop with the mommie shit, u wanna see how bad this gets?

Did you catch that threat at the end? So we went from “I wanna put you on the moon” (yes, he actually wrote that. It baffled me, in so many ways) to “u wanna see how bad this gets?” in a matter of a couple hours. (I didn’t respond to this message. We do not negotiate with terrorists.)

A few hours later, he sent this:

If you get this message i sent your email too 10000 perverts, time for you to grow the fuck up.

NEWS BULLETIN: Perverts have a network, kiddies! Apparently, they’ve got mailing lists and newsletters and monthly support meetings and spring retreats. Oh, wait…

I wasn’t too worried. I use a junk account that doesn’t have my name or anything remotely close to identifying me for most of my Internet dealings. I do so for this specific reason. Yeah, so aside from a little early-morning shower plotting on the off chance that my inbox was deluged with messages from perverts, I didn’t think much about it. Has my e-mail been accosted by 10,000 perverts? No. Just the one.

But the plot? It’s grand, if I do say so myself. If I do start getting messages, I’ll wait three months (thanks, JW!) and then use The Perv’s e-mail address (which is connected to a name, though I can’t be certain it’s a real one) to sign up for every conservative, religious group I can find. Mailing lists, newsletters, prayer chains, you name it. Then I’ll tap into my gay friends’ collective pool of knowledge (or willingness to help me get revenge) and sign him up for every gay mailing list and dildo-touting Web site I can find. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that he’s into that sort of thing, but I’m fairly certain the religious stuff would be about the right equivalent for him.) And if I could somehow be certain that this particular perv is in fact the same guy I found an address and phone number for this morning, I'd put him on the Focus on the Family and American Family Association mailing lists, along with any others I could come up with, so he'd have to deal with that garbage, too.

In the meantime, someone has suggested I report his ass to MSN for e-mail abuse. This was, after all, a threat. Thoughts on that, anyone?

* I make no claims that this is a logical argument, kids.