When I was 17 years old, I was interrogated by the United States Secret Service.
I’ve previously mentioned some of my greatest influences that inspired me to take up writing and eventually start this website. From Maddox to Thilo to Ask Peeves to my 9th grade English teacher Mr. Palaia, I had many people who inspired me to pursue my passion and continually step up my writing game.
There were also some events that heavily influenced the direction my early writing took. One of those events was an incident in high school that led to me receiving a visit from the United States Secret Service over some internet posts and a drawing.
I may have mentioned this incident in passing once or twice, but I’ve never publicly shared the full story before. This incident happened 20 years ago, and today I can sit back and laugh at it, but when it originally happened it was pretty fucking scary. I was almost expelled from school in my senior year, and could have very easily wound up being arrested, prosecuted, and even jailed over it.
The entire thing started on a semi-abandoned internet message board called The Underground. What was The Underground? To this day I still have no fucking idea what the site was actually for, but it was an unmoderated forum that me and my friends Pyri (RIP) and Jeff could post all kinds of crazy shit on. The best part was we didn’t even have to create accounts, so we’d routinely post confessions of homosexuality using each other’s real names. It became a contest to see who could post the grossest over-the-top shit about one another (I of course won this handily). Most of our lunch periods would be spent in the school computer lab trying to “out-gay” each other. Looking back on this 20 years later with the eyes of an adult, it was kind of lame and we probably could have found better things to do with our free time.
In school, there was a girl I liked named Kathleen. Kathleen was cute, liked a lot of the same stuff I did, and even lived on the same street as some of my friends. This should have been an easy win for me, right?
Enter Kayla, Kathleen’s friend.
Unlike Kathleen, Kayla was fat, dumpy, obnoxious, and arrogant. She also had major jealousy issues, especially when it came to guys who liked Kathleen. Normally when you look like Kayla, your only hope for anyone to like you is to be as nice, humble, and cool as possible. I won’t deny it, I’ve dated a few fat chicks over the years because they had great personalities and were nice and genuinely fun to be around. Unfortunately for Kayla, she never got this memo. Instead, she behaved like a conceited cockblocking bitch at every possible turn, going out of her way to harass me and try to stop me from getting with Kathleen.
Obviously Kathleen wasn’t into me, and that was fine, I eventually got the message and moved on. But Kayla didn’t, and instead kept harassing me on AOL Instant Messenger (good lord, remember that program?), and even got my home phone number from a mutual friend and proceeded to prank call my house several times.
Being a dumb high schooler, I decided the appropriate response was to escalate the situation by getting together with Pyri and Jeff and making more posts on The Underground, this time using Kayla’s real name. We also used Kathleen’s real name too, because why the hell not?
For some reason, I also felt the need to make posts about what school we went to and our teachers, including one post where I put up pictures of the entire faculty, stolen straight from the school’s website.
I’m still not 100% certain how Kayla found out about The Underground (I think someone told me she looked over my friend’s shoulder one day while he was posting something), but she did. That’s when all hell broke loose.
One day while walking home from school, I noticed Kayla and Kathleen also walking on the other side of the street. I knew where they lived (like I said, they lived on the same street as a friend of mine), so I wasn’t sure why they were going this way. Rather than put two and two together and realize I was being tailed, I simply shrugged it off and walked right into my house.
Three days later, on a Friday night, I’m in my room when I hear a knock at the front door, followed by my parents letting someone in, followed by a familiar voice in tears, followed by my mother screaming my name in anger. I came downstairs to Kayla and her parents, who had printouts of everything we had posted on The Underground. Her parents said they were ready to contact the district attorney’s office and press charges, but they wanted to see if the problem could be resolved through talking first. After a long discussion, they agreed not to press charges and I agreed to leave her alone (my protests that Kayla had been the one to initiate the entire thing were of course ignored by all parties).
You’re probably wondering why I just shared that seemingly irrelevant story about Kayla when this article is supposed to be about the Secret Service interrogating me. Just trust me and keep reading.
A couple of weeks later, I was sitting in class when the disciplinarian, an overzealous bald guy we’ll call Mr. Clean, came in and told me to come with him. As we walked through the halls I asked what this was about. Mr. Clean simply scoffed at me and said something to the effect of “I think you already know”. I didn’t know, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked. We arrived at a seemingly random classroom, where Mr. Clean pulled Jeff from class. Now I had an idea what was going on, this was obviously related to the Kayla bullshit. But that had been resolved already, right? So why were we being hassled by the dean now?
Pyri had gotten into a fight the previous day and was on suspension, so he didn’t join me and Jeff as we were brought to a conference table where the principal, who we’ll call Mr. Dipshit, was waiting. We were told to empty our bookbags. Jeff complied, but I refused, telling them they weren’t cops and had no legal right to search me. Mr. Clean yanked the bag from my hands and dumped my books onto the desk. Mr. Dipshit began pawing through my notebooks as if trying to find something.
Still without a real answer, I again asked what this was about. Again Mr. Clean tried to get tough with me and insisted that I knew why I was there. At this point I felt I had nothing to lose and outright told him “No you fucking retard, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be asking if I knew.” Principal Dipshit sent Mr. Clean away with Jeff, then explained to me that I was there because of the posts made on The Underground. I told him that Kayla’s family had already came to my house and the problem had been resolved. Apparently during that time Kayla’s family had also filed a complaint with the school, and the school was following up on it weeks later. On top of that, because I had also posted the pictures of the faculty, it was being treated as a serious threat. It didn’t matter that Kayla’s family had already considered the matter resolved, the school still didn’t.
Principal Dipshit said he was looking through my books to find evidence, and that I faced expulsion from the school for my posts. I’m not sure exactly what evidence he hoped to find in my notebooks, considering that the posts were made online, but he did find something, something way worse than anything related to the posts on The Underground.
The principal found a drawing I made of myself pointing a gun at then-president George W. Bush.
My artistic skills were only one step above those of Chris-Chan, and because of this I had felt the need to label the people in the drawing as “Me” and “President Bush”. Any chance of me trying to pass the drawing off as something else was non-existent. The principal took the drawing and scurried off. I’d later find out that he ran off to literally call the police, who told him to call the FBI. The FBI in turn told him to call the United States Secret Service. I knew none of this until he brought me into his office to call my father at work. A meeting was scheduled between Principal Dipshit, Mr. Clean, my parents, and myself for the following morning.
Needless to say my parents were pissed at me, but they were also pissed that the principal took it upon himself to contact law enforcement before contacting them. My father also took issue with Mr. Clean dumping my book bag, and the ensuing argument may have actually came to blows had the principal not told Mr. Clean to just leave the meeting.
The principal’s office was situated next to the parking lot, with a nice window view of everyone coming and going from the school. While the principal was talking, I glanced past him and saw two men in black suits and sun glasses walking up to the school. I guess my father saw them too, because we both gave each other a look that said “Oh fuck”.
So the meeting finally ended (without me getting expelled), and Principal Dipshit says “Oh, and a couple of gentlemen are here from the Secret Service to speak to your son.” After parading us around the entire school office, Dipshit relents and tells the Secret Service that they can use his office for the interview, then fucks off to go be a dipshit somewhere else.
In the meantime, I’m now shitting bricks at the two literal men in black who begin questioning me, first about the drawing then about my general beliefs and state of mind. My parents are also there (legally required because I was under 18), and at this point they’re beside themselves at the fact that the principal called the feds on their son without even talking to them first. My father is doing everything in his power to not storm out of the room and choke Principal Dipshit out, and my mom probably wouldn’t have tried to stop him.
You’re probably expecting me to bash the Secret Service agents here, call them fascist pigs, and accuse them of intimidating a teenager. The two agents that interviewed me were by far some of the most professional law enforcement figures I’ve ever encountered in my life. They didn’t come in guns blazing fists swinging, there was no “good cop bad cop” shit. During the entire interview, the agents remained professional and courteous, I never felt like they mistreated me in any way. I commend these two agents (whose names I forgot) for their demeanor, and hope they went on to have successful careers.
I was mostly asked about my political beliefs and online activity (which hadn’t included this website yet), and I think they realized almost right away that I was just a stupid teenager in over his head. I’m also pretty certain they felt that the principal was wasting their time by getting them involved over a drawing. The lead agent must have told us twenty different times “We have to investigate everything reported to us”.
After the meeting at the school, they followed us back to my house and did what was probably the laziest search in law enforcement history. The most exciting thing they found was a porn mag under my mattress. They also took the family computer for six months to analyze it. The most they found on that were some gore pictures I had saved, which I was using to make a Flash video with “What a Wonderful World” dubbed over it. They took my photo for their records, recommended I get counseling, and went on their way. I think they called one more time a year later to check up on me when the president came to town, but that was it. No charges, no jail time, no expulsion, nothing. How anticlimactic, right?
On the bright side, the story spread around the school, but got so distorted that by the end of it I was known as the kid who was so badass that the CIA came after me. After a couple of half-hearted attempts I stopped trying to correct people about the matter and accepted my new reputation as the guy who was arrested by the CIA.
You’ll be happy to know that karma caught up to Kayla eventually. After all, she was pretty fat, so it’s not like she could run for very long.
Years later Kayla was trying to get with a friend of mine, sending him the most disgusting nudes I’ve ever seen in my life (she looked like she had three pairs of tits). She tried to add me on Facebook. I rejected it, but she tried again, this time including a message saying “yo it’s Kayla add me”. I again rejected it and sent a message of my own: “fuck off cunt, I don’t like you”. She bitched at my friend for this, and he laughed her off and told her to get lost. Her family also kicked out of their house for failure to pay their rent, and she was alone, fat, and bitter. Serves you right, bitch.
As far as Principal Dipshit and Mr. Clean go, Dipshit retired at some point and currently claims to offer vocational consulting services. Mr. Clean is still the dean, and according to several of my friends who still talk to him he becomes cool with students after they graduate. Don’t know, don’t care, fuck him.
I guess the moral of this story is, teenagers are dumb, but adults can be dumber. There was no reason the Secret Service had to get involved over a drawing, and I’m glad they had the sense to realize that I was just a dumb angsty edgelord teenager and not an actual threat to the president. The entire incident could have gone south very quickly, but thanks to the professionalism exercised by the agents it didn’t, and the worst I got out of it was being sent to therapy.
Wherever you two Secret Service agents are, thanks for not ruining my life over a shitty drawing. Wherever Kayla is, she can go fuck herself.
Señor Juan