From time to time I do Google searches for people I used to know – people who I went to elementary school or high school with. Most of the time, these searches come up empty. Sometimes you get pages of hits for others with the same name, which can be very difficult to sort out when you have no idea where the person you knew lives or what they do for a living. Sometimes there will be a writer, politician or other celebrity with the same name, and you’d have 10 pages of hits for that person to sift through like a needle in a hay stack. But sometimes you can find people. But this time I almost wish I hadn’t.
When I was in elementary school, Lenny was one year older and grade ahead of me. He was one of a handful of Jewish kids at my school. I around 4rd grade I became acquainted with him on the playground. I liked hanging around him during recess, since he was not obsessed with sports like most other boys, and seemed very intelligent. He had an advanced vocabulary for his age.
But there were a few things off. One time I visited his house after school. I know absolutely nothing about his father, but I did have the impression he did not live with Lenny. The house was an absolute mess, even by the standards of my own family who were not neat-freaks by any means. I distinctly remember the kitchen floor being completely covered by old overlapping dried-up spills, like a faded Jackson Pollack painting.
After junior high, Lenny went to a different high school that the one I was to go to, so I lost touch of him for a few years. After high school, I somehow learned (I don’t recall how), that Lenny owned his own business that had something to do with computers. My brother and I had recently bought a Commodore computer, and I was having fun learning how to write basic programs to run on it. I looked forward to meeting an old buddy from Jr. High who was also into computers, so my brother and I went to visit him at his office.
At first I was quite impressed that someone only a year older than I had his own office, his own business cards, not to mention his own business, but just like before, there were a few things off.
First of all, he treated my visit for like a sales call than a social call. I wanted to talk about computer – Commodores, Apples, and fun things you could do with them. Every tome I would mention a piece of hardware, he would say “I can get you that!” and start quoting prices at me.
Next, Lenny had put on a bit of weight since 8th grade. This in itself is not so bad, but he was acting like the stereotypical overweight person, tearing open and consuming at least two candy bars during the 20 minutes or so I was there. Then his mother appeared at his desk with a plate of takeout food she had picked up for him. He employed his mother at his business – unusual, but there are plenty of family run businesses. I noticed that the wastebasket next to Lenny desk was filled with old take-out food containers. I wasn’t sure if they were from earlier in the day of from previous days. Either way, it reminded me of the condition of his family’s kitchen.
And speaking of his mother, at one pointed he shouted at his mother, demanded that she bring in his cigarettes from the car. I was taken aback, as I would never shout at my mother like that, especially for something like that.
Well, being put off at being treated more like a sales prospect that a friend, I never contacted or saw Lenny after that. But I did think of him occasionally. In the media I followed the rise and fall of
Barry Minkow, a young entrepreneur who in a few years took a carpet cleaning business he founded in his parents’ basement to Wall Street, and was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey as a role model for young people before that whole thing collapsed Enron-style. Minkow’s youth and confident, aggressive business manner reminded me of Lenny, and I wouldn’t have even been too surprised to learn that Lenny’s business career crash and burn in white collar scandal like Minkow’s did.
But the reality was worse. When I Googled his name a few weeks ago, I saw that one link went to a sex offender database. Naw, that can’t be him I thought. But the mugshot did not leave me convinced that it was not him, especially since the age gave was one year older than me. Another link went to a site called wikisposure.com, a site that exposes the identities of sex offenders active on the Internet. This page included a photo from a MySpace profile that left no doubt in my mind that this was a the same Lenny I knew 20 years ago.
This page contained more disturbing details:
He has two sex offence convictions from California, one for “lewd acts” with a person under 14 years of age.
He is a prolific author of stories about adult men having sex with young boys, posted at various gay sex story archives.
He participated with other pedophiles on the Internet in the production of a series of podcasts with MBLA-type topics of why it is good for young teen boys to have adult boyfriends.
This just blows me away. A smart kid with an aptitude & ambition for business apparently was derailed his sexual tendencies. According to the website I read, he has worked in pest control (although he lost his pest control license in California due to his conviction), and as of this past September, was living homeless in a city outside of California.
Although I’m not gay, I can understand being gay. So for God’s sake, why couldn’t he have stuck with men around his own age? There are lots of men who are gay and live to their full potential. No one should let their sex life fuck up the rest of their life.