Rating: NNNNN
Fuck being nice. When it comes to catching a cheating, lying boyfriend, all’s fair. This is a story of intrigue, jealousy, paranoia and betrayal. It’s not a pretty story, but I’m hoping you’ll get past the pathetic nature of it all and see the humour in it. One thing I found out early in my relationship with my new boyfriend that caught my attention: Ken is very much into the Internet and spends a lot of time on gay Web sites talking to guys. One night he showed me his profile and photograph. It said he was single and looking for sex, and had a picture of him from the neck down, nude with a hard-on.
After we’d been dating for a while, he changed the profile to say that he had a boyfriend and was no longer looking for sex. But I discovered the ad had a link to another site with another ad that said the total opposite – that he was single and looking for guys to have sex with.
By this point we were supposed to be in a serious, exclusive relationship by mutual agreement, and honesty and truth are what’s important to me.
I wasn’t sure what I should do next, so I consulted my friend Matt. “Very suspicious,” he told me. “There’s only one reason to have an ad like that and be on the Net.”
Reluctantly, I had to admit I agreed with him. “What should I do?” I asked.
“I have an idea,” he said. “I’ll get back to you when I have something for you.” And thus a plot was hatched.
Matt went onto the Web sites Ken was on, tracked his activity and solicited him for sex to see what he would do. It wasn’t very nice of me I was complicit. Matt had some very interesting things to tell me in his reports over the next couple of weeks.
He told me Ken wasn’t logging on to his “chat board” under the profile that said he had a boyfriend, that he must be using another user name, one that probably said he was single and used the photo I had seen. He also told me Ken was logging onto sex sites regularly, and if the other site was supposedly just for talking, there was only one reason to log onto the other account.
Matt’s reports were upsetting me. I thought Ken was not only cheating, but lying about it as well. The issue simmered below the surface, and it showed. I was often irritable and impatient with Ken. Finally, one night, I decided to bring up the subject of the Net.
I didn’t tell Ken what I knew. I just told him his use of the Net was bothering me and that it looked bad. He got angry. “We’ve been over this,” he snapped. “I’m not doing anything but talking to my friends.”
This was my lover. I felt I knew him fairly well, and he seemed sincere about his activities. Yet Matt was telling me otherwise. I didn’t know what to do.
Then Matt had more news for me. He said a man matching Ken’s exact description and stats had been talking to him on the Net and was looking to hook up for sex. “And,” he added, “he says he has to be discreet because he has a jealous boyfriend he has to hide from.” It looked very bad for Ken at that point. But then I asked Matt for one more detail.
“When did you have this conversation?” I asked. He hesitated and then gave me a day and time. I said nothing, but I knew I’d been with Ken at the time and he wasn’t on the Net that night. That little voice in the back of my head started to whisper something to me.
Even though I really am bad with the Net, I decided to double-check a few things for myself. I went onto Ken’s sites and found the log records. Ken had not, in fact, been logging on to the sex site at all he had used the correct profile when he was logging onto the chat board. And the user who Matt said matched Ken’s description did not match it in very important ways. The lights finally went on.
The good news is that my boyfriend is innocent and not a cheating, lying S.O.B. The bad news is that my best friend is. He tried to set Ken up so that we would break up. My scheming came damn close to biting me in the ass and costing me my boyfriend, and I probably would have deserved it if it had. I went looking for betrayal. I didn’t find it in my lover, but I did in my best friend.
