As part of our 25th anniversary, I should talk about what things were like when I first started Men For Men. When I bring it up in public, some people look at me like a deer in headlights, but it is a pretty important part of gay culture – especially the gay geek culture.
Back before the Internet became accessible to everyone, when there was no Scruff, Grindr, Bing or Google, it was not very easy to find things about being gay as a teen. Growing up, going through the Calgary Catholic School System, I knew from experience to stay away from talking about it. It was bad enough to be teased by students in junior high who suspected that you were gay, but when I talked to the school counselor about being teased, he just told me to lift weights. Since I did not have weights, he suggested weight lifting buckets of water. Yah, that did not happen. I knew that I was attracted to guys in grade 7, but outside of that, I knew very little about it.
Instead of worrying about getting teased and bullied, I concentrated on computers. There was no such thing as GSAs back then; the books in the school library did not offer anything positive about being gay. So, sitting in the computer lab, being a geek and learning everything there was to know about computers, was a great way to avoid the bullies and learn things for which, in the end, the bullies would come to you for help. I had my own key to the computer room for all of junior high. I would stay in the lab so late that the janitors would need to let me know they were leaving, and about to alarm the school for the night.
As I was exploring what you could do with computers back then, I came across this wonderful world of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). My parents got me a modem for my Atari 8-bit computer and it was like a huge door opened for me. BBSs were run by computer stores, libraries, computer groups or home computer hobbyists. They allowed people who could understand how to use the software and the technology to send messages to others on the system, download public domain software, get drivers or software updates, or play online games.
Throughout high school I continued to hide away in the computer lab but, on evenings and weekends, I got a job working computer retail in Chinook Centre. Working in the store expanded my computer knowledge exponentially. The store had a BBS at one point – 68000 Mice, which ran on an Atari ST computer – and I volunteered to get it back up and running. I wanted to see what it was like on the other side of the system.
While running 68000 Mice, I started meeting other people that ran BBS. They were called SysOps which was short for System Operators. These people were like the early Web developers. I did not find anything local for gay BBS, but as phone number lists were being created, I noticed that there were some gay BBS in the U.S. That is when I started to explore being gay using computer tech.
Exploring my sexuality this way was much easier and less embarrassing than going to the Calgary Public Library, which I was also doing, but taking out the books and returning them was a challenge. Hiding the books from my family was not easy either. I was not over 18 and accessing adult material; but when you are in a world where Sears catalogs were not enough, and you could not buy material from a bookstore or a magazine shop, you really had no choice. I couldn’t afford expensive phone bills for calls to U.S. chat lines.
Digital cameras did not exist at that point, so people were not swapping personal photos on BBS. But I did get to read things about the gay community, leave messages about my sexuality, and download scans of gay porn magazine spreads. One of the BBS that I frequented was Studs Net out of San Francisco.
People that were on BBS had handles and never used real names on most of them. My handle was Scourge, which I still sometimes use online. I know it is a weird handle, but being a young gay geek, it was from the Transformers Movies and TV show. Scourge is a Decepticon, which is one of the bad guys. But the out of all the transformers, he had a goatee and the Decepticons seemed to have a what I figured out years later, more leather rough and tumble/daddy/S&M/bondage type feel, where the Autobots were your more typical gay man.
Over a couple of years, more local BBS started running. When a person ran one, you had to worry about the cost of the additional phone line you needed to be dedicated to the system, which was at least $35 per month for residential. Today, that would be worth about $58 per month. So, it was something the SysOp needed to factor in alongside of a dedicated computer.
After I turned 18 I noticed there were BBS in Calgary for the Gay Community: there was Tiger BBS, run by DJ Krazay Steve off his Mac; The Rainbow Connection BBS, run by J. Steve Mayo and Brent Rector, on a PC; Upper Echelons BBS, run by Chris McBrien, also on a PC. There was also a BBS in Red Deer called Eridu BBS, run by James Heggie, on PC.
I decided I would join them with Men For Men BBS in 1992, running on my Amiga computer. Since the computer could multitask, I could run the system easily in the background while using the computer for other stuff. While running 68000 Mice, I had started to create a list of BBS in Calgary, and adding to it Men For Men BBS and these other gay BBS was my way of finding out if customers in the store were gay or bi.
When I had started Men For Men, I had not stepped foot into a gay bar or met in person local gay people whom I knew were openly gay. I was not out of the closet other than to a couple of close friends. Working in the store is when I met DJ Krazay Steve, whom was the first openly gay person I met. Men For Men let me, as a shy gay geek, finally start interacting directly with gay men.
As I handed out the list to the customers, it also let me know which customers were homophobes, by the comments they made when they saw Men For Men listed. It also let me know who was gay friendly, which helped me come out of the closet to some close customers. Since guys were required to use their real name to get adult access, and send in a photo copy of their driver’s license, I also came across guys I had gone to school with, teachers and school counselors who had become part of the BBS. It was an eye-opening experience; I would have never guessed that these guys were gay or too scared to come out when we were in school.
The BBS also had a lot of closeted married guys on it. When I spoke to them, it was pretty much the same story: they felt parents and society put them in a position where they were forced to hide their sexuality and follow a straight, married lifestyle. A lot of them had children, and the thought of divorce to break up the family was not an option. They were happy that the system existed; that they could interact with other guys without outing themselves.
As Men for Men picked up in popularity, I needed to add phonelines. I had to change over to business lines to be able to get a series that would automatically move callers to a line that was not busy. That is when Men For Men got the phone number 403-543-6969. GayCalgary’s voice line is 403-543-6960, which was originally one of the numbers that modem callers would call. Each phoneline was, back then, $65 per month. Now that would be $95 per month, and I had four lines! Studs Net BBS, which was the largest gay BBS in the world, boasted 24 phonelines and over 50,000 members. I can’t remember how many members I had in the end. I would have never expected that I would be writing about the system in a magazine.
Alongside chatting with other guys on the system and playing the online games, the x-rated photo galleries were very popular. Hard drives were not cheap back then. I remember selling a brand-new Quantum Empire 1GB drive for $1000. Now it would be worth about $1500. So, to help the BBS get around hard drive space limitations, we used a six CD Disc Changer from Pioneer. We could load the CD caddy with six CDs filled with either shareware or freeware downloads or x-rated images of guys on a 650MB CD. Only one CD could be accessed as a time, so the BBS was set up to automatically swap the CD out and copy the specific file temporarily to the hard drive for the user to download. I knew BBS that had several of these changers. Nowadays, you can get a 10TB drive for less than $800!
To get the four phone lines, I needed to move the system from home down to Boyztown and the Rekroom. The BBS ran out of the Rekroom office, eventually hanging from the ceiling on chains. Having the system there made it easy to set up standalone computers throughout the bar: two for the Rekroom and two for Boyztown. They could not connect to anything but the Men For Men System and the computers were all running off of 3.5" floppy drives.
Even with the BBS running out of home, I would still find myself in front of the computer when I was not at my job. I would be there when the staff would arrive first thing the in the morning, and leave at the end of the night. People could be drinking and partying away in the bar, where I would be doing updates on the BBS or adding new content. The only time I would be out in the open was to use the restroom or grab a drink from the bar.
Users from the system who wanted to pay for access to additional features, which helped cover some of the costs of running the system, could also pay in the Rekroom. This way I did not need their ID; they would already need to be over 18 to get into the bar. Men For Men "trick" cards were placed throughout the bar, so guys could write down contact information of guys they want to hook up with. Men For Men Fridays became a weekly event to help bring those guys out from behind their keyboards to finally meet face to face for a drink. Everyone used handles online; it took a while to learn everyone’s names. Most of the time, guys were still using their handles while talking to one another. These events helped me become a little bit more social.
Internet access was still pretty new, but dial up connections started being possible, so guys were finally able to access Internet Explorer or Netscape. For the system to get a dedicated connection, I needed to get an ADSL connection with Cadvision, which required a year payment upfront. Once I had a connection up and running, I added access to the BBS to allow users to come in using an internet feature called Telnet. That is also when the Men For Men, Rekroom.com and GayCalgary website were set up as portals to access the BBS.
Eventually everything, terminals included, was converted over to be Internet only and the BBS was turned off. I could have continued pushing the gay dating hook-up features of the BBS, but didn’t have the time or the energy; larger companies from the U.S. were coming into play. I was also happy that Men For Men/GayCalgary was becoming more a resource and community portal.
When I started Men For Men, it was supposed to be a hobby, with the additional bonus of learning more about computer and technology while exploring the gay lifestyle. I did not think it would have become what it is today. BBS pretty much disappeared in the late ’90s, though the software I was using was still being developed until 2006. There are even some underground BBS still available on Telnet. I have had requests to get the system back up and running: I have everything so it is possible to pop it online and see how it would work with today’s tech.
It is also interesting to see how apps like Grindr, Scruff, Growlr or websites like Squirt and Manhunt, have overtaken gay bars in terms of meet ups. I always tried to get both sides to connect – to give those who were shy and in the closet a reason to make it out to the bars to meet others on the site. It is good to see apps like Scruff sponsoring events the same way, getting users out to events.
With Bing and Google, GSAs in schools, lots of support services and books geared toward helping queer youth, things are getting better for teens. As a gay geek, at least I had technology to help figure things out. Do I wish I had the same access to resources as gay youth do today? I don’t think so. I doubt that I would have been able to become the person I am today and also have created a legacy like GayCalgary.
Related Articles
Contributor Steve Polyak |
Locale Calgary |
Topic History | Publisher's Column | Technology |
