He Went Out Like A Wreck'em Ball
For years now, I was certain that the bullshit investigation that has been an ever present part of my life since the summer of 2023 was the doing of the friend who lied to me, stole from me, and used the courts to silence me. But new information has come to light that points at another close friend as the culprit.
Picture it. Capitol Hill. Summer of 2023. My dear friend, (let's call him Daniel) and I were planning a camping trip to Triangle Recreation Center for Labor Day weekend. I was so excited to have been offered a chance to leave the city for a weekend and spend it cruising the woods with my buddy. Daniel had been such a good friend to me, listening so patiently to me whine about Cody's cruelty and disrespectful behavior. He even sat in as moderator after Cody had shut me out of his life around the time of my birthday, and because of him, there was a short-lived peace between us.
I'd met Daniel a year or so before Cody ever came into my world, and we were frequently making the best of our friendship's benefits package, if you get my meaning. It was at one of my sex parties in early 2023, in fact, that I introduced them to one another. It was the first of many fun bedroom adventures the three of us shared. Of the two friendships, mine with Daniel was the one I felt most secure in. I never could have imagined the turn it would take.
Soon after Daniel mediated the peace accord between Cody and me, Cody once again lost his patience with me over my having sent him too many texts trying to get some of his time and attention. By then he'd shifted his reserves of those to his new boyfriend, Jake, who, like most of the people he now calls friend, he also met through one of my sex parties. (Read all about it in my book, The Wall Between Us, available on Amazon.com!)
It was in the aftermath of that particular falling out that Daniel shared with me a text message he'd received from Cody in which he was warning Daniel to stay away from me. I confronted Cody about his meddling, asking him why on earth he thought it was his responsibility to try and chase off my one remaining friend. Cody's reply was cold and self-righteous. He felt Daniel ought to be aware of the potential challenges that spending time with me could bring if he continued being friends with me. The fuck?
Well, I guess Cody's hateful words planted a seed in Daniel's fertile imagination, because I'll be damned if he didn't completely disappear a week later without explanation. As weeks passed with no returned calls from Daniel, I began to fear something terrible had happened to him. I even brought up his absence and my growing concern week after week in therapy, alongside my usual topic of all the shitty things Cody was doing to me that week. Eventually, I had to just accept that my friend, a man whose company I had enjoyed so much, was simply gone from my life without offering a word of closure. It sucked. Hard.
Then all that shit with Cody went down, and by Christmas, my world had shrunken to a singularity of just me, myself, and I. Daniel was gone. Cody had stabbed me hard in both the back and the heart. And all of my other acquaintances, most of whom I had happily introduced to my buddy, Cody, when he was new to the city and wanted to meet new people, chose to distance themselves from me as well. I have spent nearly all of the time since then completely by myself, trying in vain to reach out to old acquaintances only to have my messages met with Cody's "deafening silence".
A year after his disappearance, there came a knock at my window late one Saturday night. It was Daniel, a bit intoxicated after his night at Cumunion, asking if he could come in and talk. I was shocked! As relieved as I was to see him alive and well, I was still a bit miffed that he had chosen to abandon our friendship without giving me his reasons for doing so. I walked him into my apartment, unsure of what to expect, and when he spoke, what he said to me still blows my mind when I think about it!
Daniel launched into what was clearly a rehearsed speech he'd practiced for some time, probably to an audience of who knows how many other guys in the city. He told me first and foremost that he knew I had hacked and stalked him the previous summer, and he told me that part was not open to debate. I beg your pardon? This man walked into my home after a year of letting me wonder what had become of him, of what had happened to our relationship, and the first thing he tells me is that I'm guilty of something I know damned well I didn't do? Oh, HELL nah!
He began saying that even though he was 100% certain I had done that to him, he had come to the realization that even good people can sometimes do bad things, and he hoped I'd be open to restarting our friendship. I stopped him and asked him what kind of friendship he saw us having if he trusted me so little as to believe I would have ever done the things he had just accused me of doing. In what world did he think I would want to start a new friendship with someone who believed something so untrue and so unfair about me and on top of that refused to even allow me a chance to defend myself against it?
Once more, he tried to schmooze me with his scripted line about good people being more than their mistakes, and I just could not even. I looked Daniel in his ketamine-glazed eyes, held him by both arms, and told him he had to leave my home. The look of disbelief in his eyes was incredible. He obviously predicted that with such a well thought out speech, there was no way I could refuse accepting him back into my life with open arms. Surprise, surprise! Somewhere along the way I picked up a modicum of self-respect, and unfortunately for him, it prevented me from accepting other people's disrespect.
Sadly, I stood silently and watched Daniel leave my apartment building in a bewildered state of disbelief. He did secretly pop back by my window later that night to leave a hand-scrawled note telling me he loved me and wishing me well in life. More of his hokum philosophical BS that he offers as his particular brand of enlightened charisma. I wasn't buying it. If Daniel spent less time psychoanalyzing every one and labelling them all narcissists, he might have more opportunity for some self-reflection and come to understand how he hurts the people who love him the most.
He was weird. Weird even for Daniel. He gave me very strict and precise instructions for how he wanted our meeting to go down. First, because he did not trust me, he said he would not be bringing his phone with him, just in case I decided to hack him. (Seriously?) Second, he said he would walk to the center of the park and wait there for only a handful of minutes. If he saw anything that gave him reason to believe I was fucking with him, he said he would bounce, and that I'd never see or hear from him again.
I thought the whole spy-vs-spy shit was ridiculous, but I agreed with just one small amendment to his proposal. Because, as he knew, I still suffered from agoraphobia and venturing out in public for any reason was likely to spawn some intense anxiety for me, I told him I'd go and sit on the bench near the spot where he and I used to sit and people watch. While he didn't exactly confirm he'd accepted my request, he did message me once more to say he was out the door and would see me there. So, I went through the process of psyching myself up enough to make it out the door, and I walked nervously to the park and the bench where I told him I'd wait for him.
Almost immediately, Daniel replied, saying, "Shannon, try to live a more honest live, brother." Then he blocked me as I was trying to type a response asking him what the hell he was talking about. He never saw it, and I doubt it would have earned me an answer even if he had. All I have to say about that whole situation is that I'm better off without a person like Daniel in my life if he can't give me the decency of allowing me to defend my good name against mistakes, misunderstandings, and misrepresentation by others like Cody.
Well, it turns out that when he disappeared in early July 2023, Daniel had come to believe I had hacked into his MacBook one night at my apartment, replaced his desktop background with a static photo of his actual desktop, and somehow planted malware that allowed me to track his location on all his devices wherever he went. While it isn't the first time someone has mistaken my brilliance and my vast knowledge of many things for in-depth hacking skills, it may be the most shocking instance of such a ridiculous accusation.
- First, I know jack shit about how to hack someone's computer, email, network, or phone. Absolutely nothing. It simply doesn't interest me, and I have never felt the need to dig into someone's private lives badly enough to learn how to. So, there's the first problem with his crazy theory.
- Secondly, he was my friend. I trusted him, and I believed he trusted me as well. Anything I wanted to know about Daniel, I knew he would tell me if I simply asked. Ours wasn’t the kind of friendship where secrets were commonly withheld from one another. Or at least that’s how I saw it. Apparently, I was way off the mark there. But if you’re in a relationship with me, one thing you can safely rely on is that I will remain loyal to the friendship for as long as I feel respected and not taken for granted — and probably well beyond the point when I no longer do. Even then, I’m not going to go out and learn a whole new set of sinister skills just so I can see the general area where you are whoring around on a map.
Since Daniel had so little trust in his good pal, Shannon, it seems that instead of confronting me with his suspicions, he chose to take his concerns to the FBI and enlist their help investigating me and putting an end to my reign of digital terror amongst the gadget-loving gays of Capitol Hill. I don't know for sure, but I imagine those first weeks after he vanished, Daniel was spending a lot of time conferring in secret with my still-at-the-time good friend, Cody. Together, I guess they worked with these investigators to try and catch me doing something nefarious.
Well, fellas, I hate to break it to you, but it never happened.
The fucking nerve of these assholes! I have been nothing but honest, generous, kind, and supportive of the people in my life that I call friend. That includes both of these idiots. And in return for my friendship I am repaid with suspicion, doubt, and defamation. It'd make for a great book if it hadn't fucking hurt me so badly. I'm more broken and alone than I have ever been in my life, and these paranoid dimwits are responsible for that.
I wish you both the very best that you deserve. By my estimation, you've definitely earned something special. I hope you find it soon, and I pray when you do it doesn't wreck you as badly as you did me.
