Back in June, I encountered bARTender on BDSMsite, a kinky starving artist/bartender who freaked out and declined to meet me once he realized that we had mutual friends. After he took flight, I quickly put him out of my mind. So when he showed up at a party I threw recently, I didn't even realize it was him.

Here's how it went. Our mutual friend, John, was invited to a party I was throwing. When he arrived mid-party and introduced his friend, I (and many of the other guests) just assumed the man accompanying John was his date. I'm not close enough to John to be kept abreast of his breakups and new beaus, so I just assumed this was the flavor-of-the month. bARTender looks to be about the same general size, age, style, and attractiveness-level of men that John usually dates, so we all just assumed bARTender was his date (and therefore gay). It didn't even occur to me that his 'date' was actually the same bARTender I'd encountered online some months earlier - the photos he'd shared were a bit fuzzy, and frankly, he looked nothing like what I pictured from the photos I'd seen.

( Read on to see what happened... )

Recently I posted about bARTender, the guy who's been chatting me up from BDSMsite whose art, when I looked at it on Facebook was of very poor quality. Well, a couple of days later, as I was perusing my Facebook newstream, I was reading a funny post of my friend John's, and saw a comment by... none other than bARTender. Whoa! I clicked on his profile and looked for mutual friends, and is it turns out, we know TWO of the same people! I emailed them both and asked about bARTender... not for personal details, but just to say "hey, this friend of yours has been chatting me up from an online dating site, and I wanted to find out if he's creepy or not before meeting him." Both, as it turns out, had nothing but pleasant things to say about him. Nothing glowing or anything, but certainly nothing negative, they both said he's a good guy.

You'd think this would have been GOOD news to bARTender. Not so much. When I told him about it, his reaction was SO negative and freaked out that it gave the impression this guy has a lot to hide and I'm best off NOT meeting him.

( Read on for the chat log... )

I've been chatting for the past few weeks with a guy from BDSMSite who is, depending on how you look at it, an artist who supports himself by bartending, or a bartender with an artistic streak. Maybe I should call him bARTender. I've been hearing about his artwork and about him working on his art for a while now. Well, we were chatting today and he said that he was uploading a bunch of photos of his art to facebook. Ahh, at last, I can see this fabled artwork, and see what kind of hot talent comes out of his twisted mind.

( Read on about the fantastic arty goodness... )