13. The Sysop

I was doing social media before you were born…

He was a pockmarked old fag wearing a red sweater.

At least that's how I remember him.

Personal Computers were pretty new, and expensive, and it wasn't clear just what you'd do with one when you got it home. But my friends had rich families, so they all had a computer of some sort. Commodore, Apple II, that sort of thing. Being poor I didn't have a computer, but I did spend all my time at their houses.

We played computer games, of course, the very early ones. And we programmed in BASIC. And we downloaded pirated software and traveled to each other's houses to copy it. Without knowing it we were preparing ourselves to be the future employees of Microsoft and Apple and Amazon, which is pretty much what happened.

Microsoft was the scrappy upstart company in our area, with Bill Gates writing memos to geeks, squeaking that they shouldn't steal software. One night we did a raid on Microsoft, driving up to a dumpster and grabbing what we could. We found a phone directory of everyone in the company. But we were too shy to do anything with it.

And then one of us bought a modem, and everything changed.

The modem squawked and made line noise, then hooked up to a mysterious location on the other end. At least six of us hung around the Apple II, waiting to see what would happen. We called a radio station bulletin board (a bulletin board—BBS—was...well, a web site that you would call, long before web sites existed). We posted wacky passages from the Illuminatus books on the radio station forums, thinking ourselves clever. Then some text appeared on the screen.

"...hello?..."

Holy crap! A person! We chatted with him. He turned out to be the janitor at the radio station. We were thrilled, as if we'd contacted alien life rather than a janitor whom we could have simply called on the phone. This was the moment, some ten years before everyone else, where we discovered what was going to happen to the rest of the world.

BBSs became a part of our life. We began reaching out and touching other people in the world, an incomprehensible concept for complete nerds.

Every BBS had a Sysop—System Operator—who had set up the BBS and was the local god, in complete control. One of the more intriguing BBSs was run by a suspiciously old guy. Maybe even 50.

He used the name Cig, short for cigarette. It was appropriate for obvious reasons.

His BBS was more mature and encouraged more adult conversation than most. I wrote a moving post about my writing friend's medical problem that had inspired him to add me to his will. Cig liked it, and contacted me.

I got my friends to join the board, and before long we were all friends with Cig. He told me he wanted to have a party and asked me to invite my friends. So for the first time we would meet someone in person whom we'd first met online.

It was too early in the process for parents to be worried about their kids going to some old guy they'd met on the Internet. And one look at Cig and they would have definitely understood why they should be concerned.

He was a pockmarked old fag wearing a sweater, inviting a bunch of young boys to his house for the evening. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I assume he was retired. He seemed to have money and do nothing but run his BBS. He asked me to arrive hours before the party to help him prepare. When I arrived he was rushing around in a semi-manic state and he suddenly decided if he was having a party he needed a stereo system. So we were off to the electronics store to buy an expensive stereo.

He chose about the most expensive thing he could find, then we set it up in his living room and he started blaring music. My friends showed up and we messed around on his computers and chatted and generally screwed around. Throughout the evening, Cig would drink beer, then set down his half-finished beer can in a random location and pop open another.

He talked a lot. He talked about meeting Timothy Leary at the local computer store where Leary was hawking some software written in his name. Cig asked Leary to come to his home and see his BBS, and Leary immediately started following Cig out the door, until the suits grabbed him and put him back on his itinerary.

Throughout my interactions with Cig before this night, and certainly during this party, I did sense something a bit odd. An expectation. An understanding. He seemed to see into me, and though it should have been obvious, it wasn't until later that I realized the entire evening had been set up so he could meet me.

The music was loud, and eventually the cops showed up, responding to a noise complaint. They walked through the house and noted the random beer cans sitting in front of underage teenagers. "But that's not ours," we said, ludicrously.

"Yeah," said one of the cops, "don't sell us any bridges."

But we were nerds, only capable of telling truth. Not a single one of us had drank a drop. It was all Cig.

The cops decided not to hassle us and left after insisting that the music be turned down. A while later my friends starting leaving, until it was just Cig and me.

"So," he said.

I was naive, but not completely oblivious. I understood that something was going on here, even if not exactly what. But I had recently had sex with my writing friend, and felt loyalty to that relationship, so I wasn't going to let anything happen here.

"So," I said.

There was small talk. I indicated that I needed to get home. He asked if I really needed to leave.

"Yes," I said.

Awkward silence. I put on my jacket and went to the door.

He stared at me, perplexed, as I stepped out the door.

"You're a strange kid," he said.