Bandaid

December 2018

My name is Marco, everyone calls me that as a nickname. In December of 2018 I was just your average curious gay teen that wanted to see how the world of online dating apps worked. Keep in mind that I am 16 at the time and I knew that these apps were not meant for a person of my age. Even knowing its wrong I decided to continue on using an alias name instead of my real name. My name online was Andres. On the app I received many messages from older men asking to meet up with them. I declined of course. However, one particular day on December 17, 2018. I received a message from a guy named Alex who was 18 at this time. He said "Hey" and so I responded with "Hey" back. Right off the bat, the way he spoke to me was so similar to my personality and I felt an instant connection with him. I liked him. The way he expressed his words to me using emoticons and stuff. When I had the app on my phone my notifications were turned off so I wouldn't see if I got any messages unless if I were to open the app first. I would respond late. Usually in these cases to avoid being a catfish I made a fake snapchat so when people would ask I would give it to them. Alex asked if I had one and I said yes as I gave him my fake account. We talked more on there. Unfortunately I can't use two snapchats on my phone at the same time (my real and my fake) so I had to log in and log out of it all the time. This of course would result in the same delayed responses I would send to him when he would messaged me. Eventually at this point I personally wanted to continue talking to him so he asked me for my phone number. And well now that he had my number we could text faster. He would text me with every energy he had. He was so sweet and nice to me and he would make me laugh even in the littlest ways. He drew me pictures and he sang me songs even though he thought he was bad at singing he wasn't bad at all. I got to know Alex more, and the more I time I talked to him, the more I grew interested. I eventually fell in love with him. And I could tell that he was also interested in me.