Tammy

I was a big poster on Message Boards. I posted all the time on boards about my most favorite musician Brian Wilson. I just love old music from the 50's and 60's. The Beach Boys are my favorite. I posted on the official Brian Wilson message board everyday, had made many pen-pals. I loved it. I was part of a community that meant so much to me. Brian Wilson would post on that board himself so they said, and he would post to me too, and I felt so special.

My internet experiences were never started with the intentions of "falling
in love" or "finding love". Although I was a very lonely woman, I just
wanted to post about the music that I loved and have fun making friends all over the world. My first pen-pal came from Texas. Then one came from California. Then came one who was a nice but firm man from The Netherlands who asked me not to talk of Brian Wilson's abusive father on message boards. He didn't want to see BW read this information and get hurt by it. I was touched by this mans sweetness to our hero's feelings, and agreed to do so. To this day I don't speak about Brian Wilson and his father because of this man. The man's name was Ton, and we became fast friends. I had no romantic feelings for this man, just enjoying talking to someone via the internet. It was awesome to me to be speaking to someone across the world!

My first taste of how people who are not sane can come across the internet came on one of the Brian Wilson Message Boards. A woman who was writing me also realized Ton and I became friends and became jealous, and started to harass me on all of the message boards. In those days I had a temper. and I would get on the boards and give as good as I got. I got deleted a couple of times, and I am afraid I gave off the reputation of a flake myself. I didn't mean to, but this woman would make me so angry, and at the time I had no idea how to handle my anger. Barbara Ann and I had many ups and downs and she was eventually kicked off the board for threatening another poster, and I stayed.

I had started my own yahoo group, I can't even remember the name of it now, but Barbara Ann just tore me up over my little group. It wasn't popular, but it was good, and I enjoyed having it. It was my own little tribute to Brian Wilson, and I was proud of it. But I took so much ribbing by this woman, and one day out of anger I just deleted the club. I was devastated. Well, my friend Ton, being as sweet as he was, told me, "You are upset over stupid
little club, I will make you a site to be truly proud of." He bought our
domain and opened up "BrianWilson-fans.com" complete with our very own message board that I was to administer over. I have never been so proud. We started that board and built it up slowly into a popular board. It was a truly magnificent board, born out of the most special friendship of my life. A person all the way overseas, was my very best friend.

I was enamored with the internet and a little bit confused by my feelings
for my internet pen-pal from California. I had feelings for him, but it still
never entered my mind that a real romance could happen from the internet. And what little I had heard, you just didn't do such things. People had been murdered trying this stuff out. And then he informs me he is married. That cut that out. Well, that wasn't to be all of it, but nothing ever came of it.

I began work in earnest on our new website. I loved it. Ton and I grew
closer and I loved doing my board. We had regular members who were posting on the board, and I was still posting on other boards as well, and I was happy with my life. Then one day one of my favorite members, Jack, that I really liked, needed some info transferred on a thread, I IM'ed him being he was on AOL, to let him know I had gone in under his name to transfer the information for him. I wanted to do that so he wouldn't have to retype the info. And I wanted to let him know that I had done it so he wouldn't think I would just go in and use his name at my whim. I was doing him a favor. We hit it off right away. We became fast friends too, and starting talking via instant messaging a lot. Then one day, he asks if he can call me. I was nervous as all get out, but I agreed. I really liked talking to him. And when he called, I really enjoyed talking to him. A romance kind of flourished, and I found out what a internet relationship was about to be
like.

At the same time, I began pen-paling with a guy off the Brian Wilson board
from England named Aiden, who I had been talking to for quite a while. I
had been writing with him for a while, checking on him, because he had told me his wife had left him. He had no idea why or what, but she had left him with his two daughters for another man. He had never seen it coming. It was true, because he didn't start the relationship with me until long after this happened. I had just emailed him every so often with little messages like, "someone out there is thinking about you and cares" and "I am thinking about you and hope you are alright".. Always told him he didn't have to answer them, just wanted him to know that I cared. He had been nice to me and done basically the same thing when my brother was in the hospital sick. Then one day about 8 or 9 months after all that happened, I had emailed him and said I hoped he was doing fine. I didn't think anything of him, I had a "thing" going on with Jack, and was not aware of what was about to happened. Aiden blew me away.

He said he wanted to talk to me on the yahoo instant message. He made me swoon. He said he would be looking forward to our conversation "as is if his very last breath of life depended on it"... Uh, huh? Jack who? I was blown away. It lasted a month. Between Jack and Aiden they would teach me exactly what cyber sex was all about. Aiden was romantic, all that I dared to dream about in "love".... Jack was down to earth, "Hey I want you".. I went back and forth between the two, flighty and erratic, eventually turning Jack off. I didn't mind though, I still had my Corky as I began to call Aiden. Although it made me uncomfortable at me doing it and I wouldn't do it myself, I enjoyed and really got turned on at the sexual conversations.

They were intense, and we began to call each other. He called me more than I called him. Thus began the phone sex. He did it, not me. I couldn't. I just didn't feel comfortable. But the thought that I could make a guy do that, gave me a sense of power and I loved it.

It died as fast as it started. It was intense, the most intensity I have
ever known, and then it just stopped. Talks of coming here stopped. His
emails stopped. His calls stopped. He wasn't showing up for instant messages anymore. No explanation, no reasoning behind it. I was confused and so hurt. I was left wondering, was it really real? Did I have that right to feel this upset like I had really been dumped, or is internet stuff really real? What do I do? What do I say? Do I have the right to be hurt? Later I would find out, that it was just that he lost interest. Maybe he moved on to someone else, who knows? But I was really turned off of love at that point. I wanted it, but I wasn't interested. I was still too confused. Jack was gone, and Aiden was gone. I thought I might try to get Jack re-interested later on.

I was living a life on a computer. I didn't see it as such then, but I can
see that now. My whole existence had became based on a computer.

I started back into the message board and posting again with fervor. I
decided to go for it and have fun. I wanted to get my mind off things. New
posters were showing up on the boards all the time. I liked some of the new ones on the BW board a lot. One was a guy named Brian Jones. I liked him, he seemed to have such a great sense of humor. He and I became joking friends, ribbing each other on the board all the time. It was fun, nothing romantic, just fun. There was another Brian who had started posting too, that Brian J. became friends with. This guy seemed a little silly to me. He was very enthusiastic, talked about his music which he was doing, and wanted everybody to listen, and loved the music. I liked him despite his goofiness. I would think one time about writing him and saying hello, but decided not to, because I had more pen-pals than I could keep up with.

But Brian J was writing to me, and would often write me and this other Brian at the same time. My emails were often addressed to me with also being addressed to him next to my name. So he was sending us both the same emails.   I thought that was interesting, but still didn't pursue it. I had like 40 some pen-pals. I didn't need anymore. I had a board to run too. I had more than enough to do on the internet and I didn't want it to take up MORE of my life.

Well one day, this other Brian emails me, and says "hello". He figures being we are both being emailed by Brian J, that he would just go ahead and say hello. I wrote him back to be nice. My life was about to change forever, and I had no clue it was coming. He writes back and tells me he makes his own music and asks if I would go to his mp3 site and listen. I do. And I am knocked out. He sounded like Brian Wilson! I am like WOW! and the song is good, like old BW music. He is good at making that kind of music. I was so moved by the song I listened to that I wrote him a most heartfelt note. The song I listened to was amazing and I thought to be so romantic at the time. He sang of a girl that he could find, "Only In My Dreams". It was such a sweet song I thought. Again I say, I thought.

Well, Brian Stark and I started to email and instant message like crazy. I really liked him a lot. He felt the same way about things as I did. He liked what I did and disliked what I did. We loved the same music, and then one day he sends me HIS CD. It is called "In My Room". A kind of dedication to Brian Wilson of the old Beach Boys song, "In My Room". I was just knocked out. It was great music and I got stuck on it. I loved it. I loved his voice, and the romantic songs that he sang. I'll Keep Loving you, Only In My Dreams... I thought it was all so awesome I was just carried away.

We had found out that Brian Wilson was going to be in Washington DC in July of that year, and he and his fiancé were going to go to the concert as their honeymoon. They asked if I wanted to go too. After all, I was their friend. I was beside myself, thinking I would be going to see Brian Wilson, and with a friend that loved him as much as I did.

Then one day I had to go to the hospital to spend the night, for a sleep
study. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay and talk to him all evening as
I usually did now. It tore me up and as I lay in the hospital bed, it
occurred to me, "well Tammy, you might just have those internet feelings
again". He got up out of bed early those days and I got home at 4:30am that morning, all excited because he got up at 5:00am and I could talk to him. I told myself that this wasn't right because of the fact that he was engaged to another woman. So I tried to tame myself down a little. I talked to him for a bit, and then went to lay down until my children woke up. I tried telling myself as I lay down to go to sleep.. Forget this. Let it go.

The day went by so fast. That night he told me he wanted to talk to me, but
he had to wait until his fiancé went to work as she worked third shift. We
talked, and I wondered what he had to say but I didn't push it. Finally the
moment came where he told me to hold on while he said goodnight to his
fiancé. I waited with baited breath. I think part of me knew something was
up, but was in denial too. Well, he came back. And the first thing he types
is: "Tammy, I think there is something going on between us". I stared at the computer. I couldn't believe it, I was in shock. Then I panicked. I started to deny it. But I couldn't help myself either, I just kind of played it out to see exactly what HE felt. Ego. Mine.

I went to bed that night confused. And the days droned out. He told me loved me and then he told me he loved me more than music, all within days of meeting him, ON the net. He asked me to marry him not a month after we met. He told me of how his life was there. I felt so guilty because he was promised to another woman, but he told me that she was mean to him. He told me she yelled constantly at him and was a very mean woman. He was stuck there for nothing else to do and nowhere to go. He had asked her to marry him only because he felt obligated because she had bought him the music equipment for him to start his career again. He seemed so genuine, and just heartbroken that things were not working out for him and the fiancé.

I should not have let things go on, never should have let them start to begin with, but I did. It will always be one of my biggest regrets in life, although later on it would work out better for all concerned.

Then came the day that we had decided to meet. May 14th, 2001. I was to go to his house. I was scared to death, nervous. He showered me with so much attention on the internet, when he saw me would he still do that? I was a very lonely woman, had not been with a man in 7 years, and liked it. I wouldn't tell him I loved him, but I liked it and I felt guilty as hell about it. But I went to meet him. This is when I met his fiance Katie, too. She was a nice little lady with blonde hair and a sweet disposition. She seemed to be so happy and kind. I saw here there, but I didn't see her there. My eyes were on him, and I set myself up to go into denial. I looked for a sour look from her to him. I looked for bad words to pass. I looked to find any signs that would show me that they were not happy together. But I didn't find any, so I made it that way. I convinced myself that they were wrong together and not meant to be. Oh, God, that just kills me that I behaved this way.

But with him, I was enamored to say the least. He was comical, funny, goofy and very likeable. He wasn't the best looking thing in the world, but I liked him. I was already falling in love with the man. I knew it, and he must have sensed it too. He treated me very nicely, later to find out because he thought I had some "pull" in the musical world of Brian Wilson, because I was an administrator at a website. I was just a fan! Ton and I worked on the website. It was HIS domain and he put that board up for me. That was it and all of it! But he didn't know that.

When I was leaving and getting into the car, he ran up to me reminding me of a little boy, saying, "your pretty". He told me that because I was so concerned as to what he would think of me. I got home and practically THREW my kids in bed. I ran straight to the computer, so I could get on and talk to him. I knew he would be waiting for me and he was. What ensued was a long and mushy conversation, heartfelt on my part, as I was convinced that his Katie didn't love him, and that I was the woman for him.

We talked of when we could meet again, alone. He came to me, and I had to figure out how to get him there without meeting my parents. I lived with my parents at the time. So I called one of my best friends, and begged her to let me and him and my kids come to her house. I didn't trust my mother and what and how she would react. Mother never reacted in a way I could expect, and never in a way that I could appreciate and I knew she wouldn't approve. Later she would call me his groupie. I didn't know it at the time, but I was. I was falling in love with a part of him, but not the right part, I was falling in love with his music. I wanted to be that girl that was only in his dreams.

He was as sweet as anything I had ever known. There was 14 years age difference between us, and he would tell me that he couldn't believe someone as young, hot and sexy would be interested in him. He made me feel like a woman again after eight years of being divorced and never dating.I was scared of getting involved because my first husband had beat me, and I never wanted to go through that again. I told him of my deepest fears and told him I would never go through that again. I tried to chase him away, and he wouldn't have any of that. I told him my "dirty little secret" that I had been sexually abused by a family member as a child. It was to be one of the biggest regrets that I have ever had.

Finally he talked me into moving into his town. I didn't want to, because I didn't know what would happen. But he turned my best friend Ton into helping him knowing it would be good to get away from my parents. Both were jerks. My boys and I lived with them at the time. So I moved.

One day we were sitting on the bed and he was telling me AGAIN that more than I was admitting to him happened about my past sexual abuse than I was letting on to him. I had told him a thousand times he was wrong that nothing like that ever happened. But I was telling him again that it was nothing more than "groping" when something that I will never ever forget in my whole life happened to me. For one or two moments I was taken back in time to when I was nine years old and being raped. It was later I would find out that that moment was a flashback. Turns out the jerk was right. More did happen but I had blocked it out. I had post traumatic stress disorder. I started seeing a psychiatrist and went on meds and started recovering my life that I didn't even know about. I know that sounds crazy, but believe it. I disassociated most of my childhood.

We spent about a good month there at my new apartment talking all the time. Well, he talked all the time. He had this one little quirk about him I couldn't seem to get used to. He talked nonstop. He would talk over me, interrupt me, never let me get in a word edgewise over anything. He would have a conversation with me, and answer for me, assuming what I wanted to say. Being a quiet, shy person, I let him. Oh every once in a while I would get adament and talk over top of him, but he would immediately basically ignore what I said and then go back to what he wanted to talk about, which was pretty much HIM.   When I moved here, he was living with Katie still. But as time moved on in this month, he slowly started spending more time with me at my place than being at Katie's working on the music and living with his "fiancé". He told me that she was fine with the situation as he spent more and more time, but she would still get terribly mean and he liked being with me and my boys, where he knew he was loved and welcome.

He told me of his past love life. He had been married three times and all wives had left him or hadn't treated him right. He was a good guy who only wanted true love in his life, just like me, but all 3 of them didn't want the same thing he did and just left him. So did three other girlfriends who he had loved so much and put his whole heart into. Wife number one, named Karen, had cheated on him with the drummer of his band. He had came in one night after doing something and there was his wife on the kitchen table with the drummer. He checked himself into the psych ward for twenty four hours because he knew he would kill them or himself. Wife number two was crazy. He tried to get along with her, and he loved her so much, but one night in a rage she had waved a knife at him trying to kill him. He says that was the only time that he ever hit a woman and that was to save his own life. she eventually went off because he had moved around her figurines to clean a book case and forgot to put one back where it went. She threw rotten tomatoes at him and beat him up and he had to leave. He didn't have any choice. She was going to kill him!

Wife number three is very interesting. They were married the longest. The others were just MONTHS before they separated. But these guys stayed married the longest. He was a good husband but she would go to work and come home and go to bed. She would stay there until the next morning when she had to get up again. He had to celebrate his birthdays alone. He even showed me pictures of snapshots he took of himself with little posters in his hand, saying "40th birthday and still alone".. The man had the most extensive photo history of himself. He had had pictures of just about every incident in his life, including being out and asking people to take pictures of himself!!!   He said that he and Linda never had sex. Linda was overweight and unattractive he said, and he had been honest with her and told her that he didn't want to be with her sexually.

Well they were married for a couple of years, and then she just up and told him she didn't want to be married to him anymore, and she moved out and left him everything. The ONLY wife he ever had anything good to say about, because she let him have everything.

Then he went for a little while with no one, but he found the computer. He met on the internet and fell in love with a woman named Shirley from England. He sold off some of his music equipment to bring her to America. They were together about a month when she told him her mother was very sick and needed an operation. She wanted to go see some friends in another part of California somewhere I think and he sold a bunch of stuff for her to do that, and he sold more to get her mother the operation, and waited for her to return to him before she left to go back to England to her mother. She went off to the other parts of California and never returned, taking all that money with her when she went.

He then decided to try love again and met up with the woman that I admire most in this sordid story of lies. But here is his version of the story.. Phyllis. They met on the internet and she was trying to give him the key to her house on the first date. She wasn't pretty but he liked her. They worked out a deal where he would pay her rent and take care of her house for her. She was well off, and could afford a maid. But at HER insistence a romance started.

They lived together for one month and it was a "terrible" relationship. She insisted that he start his music again, and wanted to buy him a studio because just like every other woman in his life who heard his outstanding music and realized that he had talent, they wanted to "feed off of him". He would be drug by her into music stores, and she would tell him, "Either you pick it out or I will and I don't know what I am doing." So what was he to do? He went ahead and got the stuff and went on about making some music. Only thing was Phyllis was terribly mean to him. And one night they got into a terrible argument and she beat him up and then he went to bed and she disappeared. She left and the cops were knocking on the door, with a protective order, and telling him he had to leave Phyllis's premises. He didn't know what was going on. He hadn't done anything and she told a bunch of lies about him on the protective order! He hadn't done anything to her that she said he did!

He showed me the protective order. It said these atrocious things, that he had threatened to kill her family, he knew people in the mafia who would do it for him, told her to leave the house for a couple of days because he was going to hurt her if she didn't. She and her family were Jewish and he had made many anti-semetic remarks to her about her religion, he had slapped her and tried to throw her down the steps of her house, had told her she had better go to her parents and get $5,000 from them so he could pack up all the music equipment and he was leaving.

What a terrible life this man I was so in love with had been through! These women who lied about him, and treated him so horribly! And he was SOOOO good a musician, that in his earlier life in the 70's that he had had two MAJOR record deals with his band, but his little brother who was in the band always got too high headed and making demands, and they would lose the contracts. This man had a hard luck story, even down to telling me how he had lived in a mansion due to the record contracts and had ended up living at a dumpster due to his brother's evil ways.

He himself never did any wrong. He just wanted to do his music and have true love. But, because of the people around him, he had had some really hard luck. He was an inspiration to us all he would say. He should write a book about his life. Of course I agreed, because I was so in love and so touched by what had happened to him.

But, he wanted to get married and we sat the date. We planned it before the day that we were to go away with some friends to a Brian Wilson concert where we won a contest to meet our mutual musical hero: Brian Wilson. I got to meet my hero, one of the very good things that came out of that relationship!!!!!

Well we got hitched, and met Brian Wilson.