Past: High and Mighty

He was a sales representative. Well, at least that's what he told me. How do you know for sure if they're telling the truth anyway? A bloke could come up to you in the street and say he's an orthodontist and apart from following him to work and seeing if his name's on a gold plaque next to the door (if indeed he has told you his real name), how on Earth would you know if he was lying? He could be Mr. Sanderson DMD, or he could just be Joe Bloggs going to get his teeth fixed. I went out with a guy once who swore blind he worked for MI5. How the hell do you deal with that? When you've just met the person, you can't shake your head and say 'Wrong, try again'. For all I knew, he could have worked for MI5. The fact that I had met him in a Croydon nightclub, he was 22 and dressed like an estate agent could all have been an elaborate cover-up. He didn't bloody work for MI5, though, did he. Let's face it. And once you've lied like that, it's doomed from the start. I went along with it, but eventually he stopped calling and I was rather relieved. There's only so much you can talk about with a guy who answers every enquiry about his day with 'That's classified information'.

My point is, you can never really know somebody. Not really. And especially not after having chatted with them for just an hour. The whole 'love at first sight' thing must only work for people who have mutually low expectations. It's very easy, when taking part in any of these internet dating things or speeddating events or anything like that, to get caught up in your perception of the person you have fixed your sights on, rather than the person as they really are. It's very easy to get lulled into a false sense of familiarity when chatting with this new person, to convince yourself that you have really got to know them, when in fact you have barely skimmed the surface. That's why, when internet dating, it can be wise not to message too much before meeting as it means that neither party has many expectations or preconceptions ready to be crushed spectacularly throughout the course of the date. I actually didn't meet up with the guy that I am about to tell you about, and I consider it to be a lucky escape. The internet, although miraculous, has a lot to answer for when used inappropriately.

Like I said, he told me he was a sales rep. He had sent me a message on the speeddating website that I was on, and we struck up a conversation through this medium. I was hesitant at first to reply to his messages because although he seemed like a nice guy, after looking at his photographs I had decided that he was not somebody that I would be attracted to. He was fat, for a start. OK, that's a little harsh. He seemed like a 'big guy'. The sort of man who shopped at High and Mighty. 7ft tall and 5ft wide. That kind of bloke. Not a bad face- Sort of... pleasant. Like a young Santa without the beard. A kind face. We messaged quite a lot, actually- just average, pleasant exchanges about work and how the day was going, plans for the weekend, things like that. No double-entendres, no saucy implications (I would not have continued to contact him if this had been the tone. Dear me, no) All very 'normal' and pleasant.

He kept asking me out for a drink. I kept avoiding the question. I wasn't sure at this stage if I wanted to meet him. Looking back, I don't know why, actually. Even if I'd decided 'friends' was a good option, why wouldn't I meet him for a drink? Perhaps it was some kind of bizarre dating intuition. For some reason, I wasn't sure. He was a little too nice, a little too normal. He moved on from the drink suggestion to a suggestion that we chat on msn. I was hesistant again, but eventually gave in. The hotmail address I would use wouldn't give my full name, it was pretty much the same as an Email exchange, so I agreed.

At the time, I was working as a receptionist in Mayfair. It was a standard reception set-up: A desk in the lobby of the building with a computer on it. It wasn't lonely because the smokers were coming down in shifts to stand outside in the cold, and visitors were frequently coming or going. And couriers. And engineers. You get the idea. A busy reception. It was a Tuesday morning and I was a little bored. High and Mighty logged in to msn. We started to chat.

It started out as relatively innocent, in the same vein as the previous messages.

Then he asked me what I was wearing.

Ah, the old cliché, I thought. Funny guy. The chat continued. He told me about a couple of new shirts that he'd bought and was deliberating about which one to wear for an office do. All very normal.
Then suddenly he started to type messages that had a completely different tone to his previous writings. I was a little surprised. It was a lot more... flirty. And urgent. Urgently flirty. It was quite funny, really.

Then he asked me to click on webcam.

I said I didn't have a webcam, so no. 'No no', he said, 'click on webcam on the msn screen.' I asked him why. He said he wanted to show me something. Now, anybody reading this will be saying 'Ooooh no. No, no. I know what's happening here.' Reader, I would not consider myself to be naïve. But at the time, at 11am on a Tuesday, my first thought was that he wanted to show me his new shirt. I'm serious. That is honestly what I thought he wanted to show me. After his third, and urgent request, a group of Chinese businessmen walked in to reception.

Just as I clicked on webcam.

He was wanking off. He was there, naked, in all his tubby glory, wanking off in front of his laptop. At 11am on a Tuesday. Online with a girl he'd never met. A girl who was at work, sat in reception, beetroot-red in the face, deperately trying to find the 'OFF' button on the bloody webcam while the one man in the group of Chinese businessmen who could see the screen looked on in horror at the action unfolding. It must only have lasted a few seconds but by God it felt like a lifetime.

Eventually I managed to get rid of it. I stood up, composed myself, and politely asked the businessmen to sign in. The man must have questioned his own sanity. I actually think he convinced himself that he had been seeing things. None of his colleagues had seen it. So what was he going to do, get in the lift and say 'Hey, did you see that bloke wanking off on the receptionist's computer? Awesome'. It was a lucky escape.

As soon as the visitors had gone, I deleted High and Mighty from my msn contacts. And blocked him.
I was quite shaken up. And a little angry. Angry at myself for being so naïve as to click on the bloody thing, but also angry that a perfect stranger felt he had the right to show me such a graphic representation of self-gratification. At 11am on a Tuesday.
He knew I was at work; what did he think I was going to do, join in!?
And why on Earth wasn't he at work?
And how had he managed to type so accurately with one hand?
So many questions that would never be answered.

The disturbing thing was, he probably did it to a lot of people. And that was a little unsettling. I decided to contact the speeddating website to report him. But he had been very clever. Remember I said that the messages that he'd sent via the site had all been very 'nice' and 'normal'? It meant that they had no proof. No evidence that he had been up to anything other than innocent, pleasant Emails. So the dirty litle bugger is probably continuing his Tuesday morning antics. Until someone invents a link next to 'Webcam' that says 'Bobbitt'...