Let's Not Meet Again

Pornstar

A few years ago our local newspaper posted an article about prostitutes in our town, interviewing them and having them talk about their thoughts and feelings on prostitution. I live somewhere where this issue is very often up for discussion. Either way, this story is linked to that. Because one of those prostitutes sounded a lot like me. By the way I'm wording this, I'm sure it's obvious that it wasn't me, and I've never worked as a prostitute.

At the time I was a student, doing things that students do. Hanging at pubs and being hungover at lectures. Having had a hard time through high school, college was like a fresh breeze for me. I met my kind of people, got to choose the classes that I liked, and I felt for the first time that my life was going somewhere. For a twenty-something girl with a pretty uneventful life it was a good experience.

As students do, I made a lot of new friends and started volunteering in organizations. In particular, there was this bar where I used to hang out where I eventually started doing volunteer shifts. I liked the idea of a bar driven by students on a daily basis, and even though I didn't get any money for working there, the alcohol was cheap and the community was great. I absolutely adored it there.

A few months into this, there was this guy. He kept coming back, and he seemed to have taken a special interest in me. I didn't put too much into it at first. As you should be when working in a bar I was always nice and polite, greeted him and we did some smalltalk while I went around cleaning tables. After a while it seemed like he always was there. He found me on Facebook, added me, and started chatting with me on a regular basis. Initially there was nothing weird with the conversations, except a few jokes that seemed a little off. Like when he asked me what I did for a living, and I told him the place where I worked my part-time job (and actually made money), he joked about it being an escort service. I didn't know him very well, so it made me a little uncomfortable, but I wrote back a "haha, no it's not", and the conversation ended there.

Over the next few months, things escalated. I didn't have shifts at the bar for a while, so I spent most of my days on the other end of the bar, being served beer instead of serving it. Again: the community was pretty great, so I usually came in at ten in the morning, got some work done before classes or after classes, and spent all my free time hanging out with my friends at the pub. We were all pretty tight-knit, and I still talk to most of them to this day.

Since I was now the one getting drunk, he seemed to be coming around more often. Most of his days seemed to consist of sitting alone and staring at us. Now, when I say staring I don't mean "looking at us". I'm talking about intense stares to the degree of which you can feel it even when you can't see them. I started feeling bad for him. I suggested to my friends that we should invite him over, but one of the older regulars objected pretty harshly. She then proceeded to show me a website which allegedly was run by him. It was porn. At this time I was very pronounced as a anti-porn activist, but I'm also generally very shy of conflict, so I just shrugged it off. Though I did decide not to invite him over to avoid conflict with the others, as they didn't seem to keen.

He kept making smalltalk with me on a regular basis whenever he'd see me there, and my friends kept telling me to stay away from him. I had to admit that the way he was always around and seemed to take a very special interest in me was getting slightly creepy, but no more than I could handle. I was sure he was just socially awkward - after all, he was in his thirties and hanging out an awful lot in a place filled with what was mostly twenty year olds. Most of the time he seemed to be alone, as well.

After months of this, I started getting annoyed and a little bit scared. I was drunk and outside smoking, and he followed me outside. So we started talking, and I mentioned this whole thing about porn and my friends not being too fond of him. It turned out that the site was run by him, and he gave me a long rant about freedom of speech, and porn being a legal business. Even though I never really objected to anything (still very shy of conflict), I could tell he was really angry. To the point where he was shaking, and for a few seconds I was scared he'd actually punch me. We got into a political discussion that did not end well, and eventually he threatened to sue both me and my friends for slander. He deleted me off his social media profiles, and for me that was the end of that. I didn't see him around for a while, and honestly he wasn't really a face I would miss.

Now this is where the start of my story actually becomes relevant. A few weeks later a friend of mine sends me a picture of things that had been posted on this guys Facebook account after the fight. There were long rants with my name in them, links to the article I mentioned previously about the prostitute that sounded an awful lot like me with my full name. He wrote that he had slept with me (as a prostitute), that I was "not worth the money spent", and that I was a disgrace to the entire "sex-profession". These posts went weeks back, and the last post had been made the day my friend sent me this. There were approximately 5-6 post a day with my name in them. At this point I started getting scared, so I alerted the board at my college, and they said they'd look into it.

Considering what happened next, my guess is the meeting didn't go very well. About a month later a friend of mine pulled me aside at the pub. She said she had to show me something, and pulled up his website. He had made a picture slideshow with manipulated, pornographic pictures with my face on them. I'd heard about revenge porn before, but I never really thought I'd be a victim of it, especially not after what had to me just been a small political discussion while having a cigarette at a pub with someone who had been a regular for almost a year. I was devastated, and immediately contacted the cops who made him take the pictures down, and I filed a restraining order.

I haven't heard from him since. Hopefully I won't.