I have this close friend, Jack, who relayed to me a pretty terrifying tale of something that happened to his friend a long time ago. My mentor, Jack, is now a retired former HR community college guy in his mid- 60's.

Thirty years ago, however, Jack was working as a bartender in a bar in Portland's gay community. That's how Jack met Randy. Randy was a good-looking, well-spoken customer in his mid-20's...pretty attractive 80's preppy type. Randy lived close to Jack, and the two went on a couple of dates for a few weeks. Randy was relatively new to Portland, having moved there a few years ago after his parents in small-town Connecticut flipped out about him being gay and tried to commit him to an institution.

They were dating casually- just hanging out at Jack's apartment, going to brunch at a local cafe, seeing movies together...that type of deal. About a month into this, Jack was shocked when he discovered that this clean-shaven college graduate was working the streets of Portland as a hustler. You see, while we think of Portland as being a hipster haven now, back in the 1980's, there were a lot of seedy elements to the town, and that included the gay underground prostitution scene.

The revelation about Randy's "career" happened this way- Randy called Jack one night and asked him if he could come over. He showed up at Jack's apartment, pretty distressed.

Randy confessed to Jack that he was a prostitute, and then relayed a wild tale about something that had happened to him the night before with a client. He refused to name who it was, but told Jack that it was a very prominent local businessmen- someone that was very high-profile in mid-1980's Portland. The client was into S&M/bondage stuff, and Randy had seen him about once a month for a year. The previous night, after they concluded their scene, the client said to Randy, "I had a fantasy that I kidnapped you and kept you forever." He asked Randy if he wanted to live here with him.

Of course, Randy said,"No way", and the guy got angry. The chauffeur drove Randy home, which was in hindsight a huge mistake. The client now knew where he lived.

Earlier that evening Randy was headed home, but before he got to his apartment, Randy noticed his client's limo parked down the street from his building. Randy noped the fuck of there and ate dinner elsewhere. But when he went home, the limo was still there with the chauffeur sitting in the car.

That's when he decided to go over to Jack's place and confess everything. Randy was completely terrified now- he tried to laugh it off as some dumb joke, but the fact that the chauffeur had spent hours parked in the same spot a few blocks from his apartment building was scary as hell. Randy begged if he could stay in Jack's place for a few days so this could die down. Even though Jack was totally surprised and pretty confused about all this, he let him stay at his place until a few days later Randy called him at work and told Jack he'd decided to go back to his apartment. Randy said he'd call Jack later in the week about a movie they were planning to see that weekend.

Jack never heard from him again.

When Jack went to his apartment building a few days later to check on Randy, the building manager said that Randy had moved out. After that, there wasn't much Jack could do- Randy didn't tell him who the guy was, and he didn't know much about Randy's background except for some vague idea of where he came from. And this was, again, the 1980's- policemen were not going to make a big deal about some male prostitute that went missing.

Jack kept hoping that he'd get a call from Randy at some exotic locale, but as days turned into weeks turned into years turned into a quarter-century, he's stopped expecting that call.

Hopefully, Randy just skipped town...maybe he ran all the back to Connecticut, found some sympathetic family member who helped get him on his feet, and he's put all of this behind him, and he's just some regular 50-something guy now with a regular career and regular concerns.

Or maybe he's not.

And Jack will never know.