I was 16 when I first met Caitlain, who we called Cathy for short, on a forum aimed at teenagers. This forum had a specific area for sex talk and I joined because I was about to lose my virginity to my boyfriend and was looking for information.
Almost immediately, Cathy had caught my attention and admiration. I was amazed at how sexually confident this woman was, and she was only 20! I definitely had a bit of a crush on Cathy and would read all of her posts on the forum. She also had a journal thing with all sorts of tips about how to seduce someone, which I lapped up eagerly (I was 16 and curious after all). A few months later, she was banned from the forums for being too explicit (from what I recall).
I was extremely disappointed. I'd spoken to her only briefly in the forums but the times she had spoken to me, she was flirtatious and complimented a picture I had posted and I was extremely flattered. After she left, I got a message from her with a link to her new website – Caitlain's Corner. I joined this forum and got even closer to Cathy (at this point I was 17).
On the forum, there was a specific few threads for posting pictures of your breasts and ass and more general ones for just pictures of yourself. Complete nudity was NOT permitted but this basically meant that if you posted a picture of your breasts with just your hand covering your nipples, you were fine. Even if you were a minor. She would encourage me when I expressed nervousness about posting a photograph of myself in just that position – I was 17. I posted the picture, and was extremely flattered by the response especially from Cathy. Most of the other members were as far as I know, under 18 or under 21 at least. I did notice that older members of the forum did not tend to use the picture threads, probably because they knew there was something going on that wasn't quite legal!
Along with the picture threads I mentioned before, there was also a hidden picture area where you could post pretty much whatever you wanted. Nudity, sex acts, basically porn. You could post pictures you found anywhere of hot stuff, and even pictures of yourself. Only a handful of “trusted” members were allowed access to this area and it felt very safe.
I have to point out that there were very specific rules that if you were under 18, you were NOT allowed to post pictures of yourself showing your nipples or genitals. However like before, minors posted photos of themselves covering these parts with their hands and nothing more and it was met with praise by Cathy. We felt safe here. We felt that we were all peers and we were all who we said we were. I had no reason to think that it was illegal as long as the minor's genitals were not visible – I just didn't know better. It makes me sick thinking that I did not say something about this sooner.
Cathy had previously shown me pictures of herself in private messages and I did not think anything was amiss here. It was not til a year or so later that I found a picture of “her” on my ex boyfriend's computer! I did some googling and found out about Princess Blueyez, where the pics were from. I asked Cathy about it and she was very honest-sounding, and explained that yes those were her sites. She gave very convincing 'evidence' that the girl in the photos was indeed her so I believed her at first.
After some months, and I was 18 and had posted many more photos of myself in sexual situations in the forum, I began to doubt Cathy's pictures. I stopped posting photos and mostly stopped going into the picture threads because I started to think that maybe this wasn't so legal. Not long after, I got a message from Cathy saying this:
I thought you mike like to be aware that when I move to San Francisco, I'll be doing something new:
http://www.alexadicarlo.com/
;-)
I looked over the site and gave my impression of it and suggested how it could look better. I also asked a lot of questions because wow, this sounded pretty racy! At this point, I did not believe the pictures were of her but this didn't bother me so much. I still assumed that she was basically who she said she was, but had reasons to not show her actual face.
As time went on, and her whoring stories because wilder and wilder, I began to withdraw from the forums and finally stopped going back. I had lost trust in Cathy and did not feel safe in that environment any more. I did my best to erase the photographs I had put in the forum (some however were probably saved by Cathy somewhere no doubt). I began to think she was probably just an average looking, maybe overweight girl who liked writing erotica while she was in college. I had no reason to think she did not live in San Francisco, that she was not studying sexuality (she knew so much about it all!! I completely had faith in her intelligence and qualifications!). However, I had lost interest and soon drifted into inactivity and stopped going.
It took possibly a year for the Alexa-is-a-fake stories to come up after this, and now this revelation that Cathy is actually a 45 year old man. I have been reading everything I can about this, hoping against hope that it is NOT true, but the more I read the more obvious it becomes. Especially telling is Pat's post on “The PSE Blog”.
Everything fits. Nearly every sexual preference he has listed in there, Cathy has said at one point or another. There are also other things that prove to me Cathy is really Pat. I did some of my own investigating on Facebook and found Pat's wife's profile (I feel awful about her in this, I'm sorry) and she has her interests listed: Rabbits. Bugle marching band. Yellowstone National Park. Cathy has posted pictures of her rabbits and pictures from her national park vacations. She LOVED her rabbits! I think Pat was using his wife as part of a model for his feminine persona.
The thing that sickens me is that we all gave him our pictures willingly. We believed that this person was our peer and our friend. One of us, so to speak, in our little private world away from "old adults". We believed this person was our age, a student like us, in similar situations like us, non threatening and most of us genuinely liked this person. I for one even had a crush on this person at one stage!! To think that the pretty young woman to whom I sent pictures of myself was actually a 40 year old man with nothing but sex on his mind actually hurts. It revolts me that maybe he was masturbating over my pictures? I have not only come out of this filled with shame and regret, but I'm also mourning the loss of a friend who never really existed in the first place. But goddamn am I ashamed. I am posting this anonymously because I feel so fucking stupid and guilty for not speaking out sooner!
I once felt that Cathy's forums was a huge part of my understanding of my own sexuality, and Cathy herself an orchestrator of how I felt about myself. I was confident and happy and felt safe about showing my body to my friends on this forum. Now I know that the one person I thought of as the safest of all was the one lying about everything – well, I no longer feel very happy with myself. I feel sick and ashamed and terrified that these incredibly intimate, private photos are out there somewhere. I will never again have the confidence in my own sexuality that I once had because of this man, and my trust in people is shattered. I used to want to be like Cathy and tried to feel as sexually liberated as she did. Well now I feel the least interested in sex I have ever felt, because I've lost my own understanding of how I felt about it.
I thought after knowing my friend for five years that I was safe, but I was not. Thanks a fucking bunch, Cathy/Pat. I TRUSTED you, I was a naïve little teenager and I felt SAFE around you and now I will never feel safe on the internet again (probably a good wakeup call then). If your reading this, I want you to know that you're a cunt.
