The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Sixteen

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This series is dedicated to my friend ‘The Pieman’ who hosted ‘THE P.I.T.S’ BBS in New York City and sadly passed away in 2016. I know his son ‘Blake’ will be reading this sequence of stories with anticipation.

We will never forget you man, you were one of a kind.

Also I would like to say a big thank you to Fabulous Furlough, ex-leader of ‘The Humble Guys’ who helps me fill in the gaps of what happened almost 30 years ago, The Slavelord who has given me a plethora of memories from the early days and to Suicidal Tendencies (@trolleydave) who remembers more about the UK scene than me.

The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) is a continuation of my previous series, The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops.

I was once known as 'Bryn Rogers', a member of THG (The Humble Guys).

Other articles in this series:
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Two
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Three
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Four
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Five
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Six
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Seven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eight
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Nine
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Ten
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eleven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twelve
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Thirteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fourteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fifteen

August 1992

The road trip to Los Angeles was something we as Brits were not prepared for. A 6-hour journey by car may seem peanuts to the average American traveller but our little island is simply not that big!

Just west of Phoenix, beyond the city outer limits, we noticed a sign, ‘Do not pick up Hitch-hikers, State Prison’. I guess they build these prisons in the most hostile places with malicious intent.

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...‘Escape and you will die a horrible death due to dehydration’...

Considering it was August I figured we would not be seeing any Hitch-hikers during our journey.

It was around 6pm when were entered the concrete jungle freeways of Los Angeles and struggled to find our way to The Bitch’s house which was in the northern suburb of Thousand Oaks.

Thousand Oaks was considered in 2002 as one of the safest cities in the U.S. based on consistent FBI reporting. It was ranked the fourth-safest among cities with a population greater than 100,000 in the United States by the FBI's 2013 Uniform Crime Reports.

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...'Thousand Oaks, California. Not at all how I remembered it.'...

We had no idea if this was gangland, heaven or another Compton at the time.

BBS people were a different bunch and I had met the Bitch probably by logging on to her BBS due to the ‘interesting’ name she had picked for herself.

In terms of scene stature, she was nobody as far as I remember but like many American hosts was quite ecstatic when I logged on to her BBS and applied for access. She was watching me and I was on right away.

I can’t remember her BBS name, or affiliation through she must have had some exposure for me to find it. After a sysop chat and her discovering that we were planning a US trip, she pretty much told us to give her a visit when in the area.

What was impressive was a few days later she logged on to The Demon’s Forge. That must have cost a pretty penny. Rare was it to see Americans using their own money on LD calls.

By 1992, BlueBoxing was gone for them. They were restricted to local calls, and most BBS’s stated, ‘no local lamers’.

Despite the reputation of Los Angeles being a dangerous city and us knowing nobody else in the area I tentatively agreed.

I think The Mustang who ran The Eclipse was somewhere on the west coast but he never seemed to be around and his legendary BBS appeared to run by itself. Now that would have proved a better person to meet.

HootMon was giving me directions and I was driving around these leafy streets trying to find the house of The Bitch. Thousand Oaks may be a ‘safe area' but what we found didn't look too appealing.

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...'The Bitch's House wasn't quite as bad as this one, but it didn't exactly have 'Come In' plastered on the door and walls.'...

The memory is not exactly fresh in my head so I will try and give you an approximate pictorial view of what’s left in my brain for you to see.

We rapped on the door and a woman of the wrong side of 40 answered the door, screaming to someone else in the house to ‘Clean the fucking dishes or you’re grounded for a week’.

We looked at each other. Just what the fuck had we got ourselves into?

We never did see anyone else in Bitch’s house during the hour or so we stayed. The first thing we heard was...., ‘Come in, wanna beer?’

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...'After careful consideration and a thorough evaluation of my 'shagging standards' benchmark of 1992, the summary was that I could not allow 'The Bitch' to jump on my bones.'...

A toothy grin was shown to both of us and I couldn’t help but notice a plethora of tattoos on various parts of her body, bad teeth and at least one missing tooth in a prominent area.

...'While tattoo’s on women are now commonplace, they were not in 1992 and usually were reserved for 'hard blokes' in the Navy or Army.'...

During our uneasy conversation in which I pretended to be anything other than that, The Bitch told us about her ‘boyfriend’, that she liked to frequent Malibu Beach regularly going naked, that she liked my accent and would like to ‘jump on my bones’.

HootMon was feeling a little left out, but I would have gladly passed him the mantle if he would have just asked. This was all little surreal for me.

We left with promises that we would duly call tomorrow and accompany her and ‘boyfriend’ to Malibu Beach and that we would bare all. This may involve group sex and other gang bang related activities (though this part was unconfirmed).

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I might have been up for something as adventurous as this but she was hardly a spring chicken, good looking, curvaceous or remotely desirable, and what of the mysterious ‘boyfriend’?

Was I to be the recipient of a large axe to the head wielded by a mad jealous rebutted lover while helplessly running in circles on a crowded beach?

It didn't feel right, and my gut is something I'm very pally with in these kinds of situations.

Avoiding the copious cockroaches, we left The Bitch’s house both thinking the same thing.

...‘Let’s just throw away that scribble of a telephone number and never make contact again.’...

To be continued...

All images have been cited and are under the category 'Labelled for Reuse' or are in the public domain.

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.NFO files courtesy of the .NFO libraries at https://defacto2.net

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