I took the pseudonym Pfantazm originally as a way of hiding. When I started writing, I was completely closeted, and living at home. My parents still don't know that I'm gay. Having been inspired to write, I needed some way to be able to publish what I had written without fear of the action coming back to haunt me. I became a phantasm [sic] - a little man who wasn't there.

More recently, the pseudonym has become something different. It is no longer a way to hide my sexual orientation. To everyone but my family, I am as out of the closet as I plan to be: if someone asks, I tell them the truth, if someone finds out, I don't care, and I don't go out of my way to hide the fact that I'm gay. I plan to come out to my family when I visit them over the holidays, and I know what I'm going to do if they don't accept me. So why still hide behind the pseudonym?

The world is becoming more tolerant of people like me. I can enjoy the security of being out because of the time and place in which I live, and thanks to the work and sacrifices of generations before me.

On the other hand, the world is not necessarily safe for people who write porn, however literate.

Currently, this is the only website I've created. I'm quite proud of what I've done with the place, but I can't share it with many people. My current boyfriend knows, my past boyfriends know, and a couple of other people who, really, don't have any good reason to, also know. I would like to be able to put Pfantazm's Haunt on my resume, but I obviously can't. It would close more doors than it would open.

As such, Pfantazm remains one large part of my personality, and one that will probably never be fully integrated into the mild-mannered-reporter side of my life.

Yesterday, however, those two parts got much closer. I received a letter, snail-mail, at my home address, with no corrections on the envelope, with my real name on it, and "Dear Pfantazm" inside.

I have said elsewhere on this site that there is enough of me in the stories and around that if you are not 100% sure that you know who I am, then you don't.

This person became 100% sure.

I also know how he became sure. I'm confident that he has met me.

The part that bothers me is that I could not tell you precisely when. We are members of an organization with a directory of our membership. This is how he got my address. It's there, along with my (out of date) phone number. By extension, I also have his. I just couldn't say for certain which one it is, having several hundred to choose from even after the women have been eliminated.

He knows precisely who I am, and I have no idea who he is.

Because he's found the site, and I can assume he's read any and all of the stories here, he knows personal information about me that no one, except those I was comfortable revealing my secret identity to, is aware of. He knows about my trailers. He knows about my love life. He knows about the suicidal daydream that started me on the road back to health. And still I know little concrete about him.

There's a postmark, indicating he either lives in or works in or visits a particular city, which could almost help, if that city wasn't New York. He probably uses Netscape. He enjoys, or tolerates, speculative fiction, or he'd never have found me on the Nifty Archive in the first place. I could dust the letter for fingerprints if I were desperate enough, but how do you get several hundred people's prints from across the continent to compare with?

He has also revealed that he has a female someone who would be very hurt if she knew that he enjoyed coming to places like this one. Perhaps the separation would be messy, expensive, destructive, or all three. Perhaps there are children who would suffer for no really good reason.

He would like me to post some stories he's written (but has not sent) to Nifty on his behalf because he can find no way to do so himself that is secure enough in his mind. I'd suggest text files on disk, an Internet cafe and a Hotmail account (Lie to them. I did. They don't check.), but I'm willing to oblige him either way.

He is in pretty much the same position I was in three or so years ago when I decided to pick up a pen and write. He, too, will forge a new identity to hide behind. In a sense, he already has, sneaking into Nifty to read. He just needs a name to go with it. How can I help but sympathize?

I do have enough tantalizing, inferred info about this person to wonder who he is, and nothing and no one can help that, but I won't take any steps to discover who he is. In time, he may become secure enough in his position to tell me, but he may not. In fact, it's possible he won't write again, and he will have accomplished nothing more than scaring the bejeezus out of me. If so, so be it.

"I keep my bejeezus numbered for just such an emergency..." and I've recovered now. Do I regret having put so much private information about myself out for public viewing in sufficient quantities that someone did recognize me? No. I don't plan on battening down the hatches, yanking down my pics and bio, quick before someone sees, and hiding again. I'm past that. After all, it couldn't happen again, right? Riiiight.

As for you, whoever you are, I won't call you by the name you used; you deserve an identity of your own. I hope you do write again. I'll do what you thought I might do for you, though I'm not sure I'm qualified. Have courage.

That goes for everyone reading this in What's-his-name's position: have courage. I hope you all can find someone you can talk to.

--Pƒ

He did take my advice and get an anonymous account, and we've been talking back and forth quite a lot. While he's not someone I know intimately well from our mutual organization (the only ones who qualify there are women, single, openly gay, deceased, or some combination thereof), I knew who it was before I got to the signature in the message where he revealed his identity to me.

Turns out yes, he does have a child/children. One visitor said, with regard to the comment I made about this possibility above, that he deserves what he gets for lying to his family about who he truly is. That's one opinion, and one I don't share. Whether you agree with me or with him, though, there's one thing I need to point out: while not allowing him custody of his kids would certainly punish him, deservedly or no, what did they ever do to deserve that? I stand by what I said. There's no reason for the kids to suffer unnecessarily, and that's only the beginning of why I don't think barring a gay father from seeing his children is a good idea.

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