So I don’t have evidence this was entrapment or the feds, but there are strong indicators it was.  I was the target of a sex sting in the 1990s.  Alternately, I had some awkward conversations with teenage girls, of which one was too horny for her own good.  But I’m pretty sure it was the former, and if it was, then it had to be the FBI, because the reach of this law enforcement activity crossed state lines.  Here’s how it went.

Internet dating and internet chatrooms were relatively new, and I was on them, trying to get more people in my life than the homies with whom I had repeated moments of disenchantment, and of course, trying to get with the ladies.  On the dating sites I always put the age range of ladies I was willing to get with rather high, but older ladies never went for it.  I was too immature, too broke, too something.  Through the internet dating sites I ended up collecting a number of pen pal gals, and having a few bad dates and bad relationships, but that was mostly after the time in question.

The dragnet that tried to get me was not in the dating sites, but the yahoo chatrooms.  I wasn’t looking for love in those, just trying to have passable conversations about movies and other interests.  Those rooms were terrible, full of baby-talking future facebook moms and bitchy behavior.  Also guys from India or Pakistan that would hit on anything that breathes.  Before I gave up on those places altogether, I got into some kind of discourse with a person that claimed to be a fourteen year old girl.

I don’t remember what we talked about, but I feel like we were busting each other’s chops in a way that could be seen as flirtatious?  Wasn’t meant that way.  But at some point she insisted on introducing me to a friend of hers named Michelle or Mandy or somesuch, who was fifteen.  Michandy engaged in more of the same kind of foolish banter, which somehow segued into exchanging addresses and phone numbers.  I was a lot less wise about sharing my personal info back then.  After all, that Canadian gal I corresponded with sent me nice things by post, and in those days it only took a few days for letters to get where they were addressed to.  Hard to imagine, I know.

So the sting worked in stages, and the next step was a letter in the mail.  Girly handwriting, lined notebook paper, return address in Oklahoma.  I don’t remember how flirtatious it was, but right after receiving it, things advanced to what ended up being the final stage – a phone call.  I was rooming in the attic of a friend’s house and I remember his mom handing me the phone.

On the phone, this supposed child mentioned to me that she liked to sneak out and get sexual at truck stops.  Now, I don’t doubt that some unfortunate girl might actually do that of her own accord.  Traci Lords famously got into sex work at that age.  But here I was, in my early twenties, with a girly voice in my ear talking that kind of shit.

It did not register to me at the time she was faking, and I know some of you will insist that if I believed it was real I should have jumped right on trying to rescue her from herself in some way.  Perhaps I should have.  It caught me off balance.  All I could say was something like, “Girl.  You shouldn’t do that kind of stuff.  Take care of yourself, for real.  What the hell.”

She made some nicety and ended the call.  And/or the girly FBI agent made some nicety and ended the sex sting.  I went back upstairs and told my roommate what had happened.  He was probably the person who had hipped me to the idea it could have been a sting.  Thanks, good to know.

Now how to feel about that?  Offended.  Fuck the police, and fuck entrapment.  If some teen girl comes onto a grown young man like that, like a ton of bricks, at the time in life when he’s most desperate, I don’t believe he’d be a total monster for capitulating.  Well, maybe that exact scenario would be kinda monstrous – traveling over state lines to meet a child for sex after she’s already confessed to being demented from hormones.

But take out some details.  Maybe guy gets idealistic and thinks he can save her from herself by being a steady sweetie.  Maybe guy has developmental delays, or mental health issues that impair his judgment.  Does he deserve to be targeted by cops for life-ruining incarceration?  It’s like cointelpro fuckers buddying up to radicals that want to make the world a better place with pamphlets and stickers, and goading them into planning violence.  The radicals are not the problem there; the pigs are.

Anyway, I passed the test and am not on any registries, tho at least one dude with my legal first-middle-last name combination is, down in Oklahoma.  Hey, Oklahoma again… Maybe he’s alternate history version of Bébé, who took the bait.  Better you than me, bro.  But still.  In this life, watch for snakes.

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