Kitty Myers: MANDY PATINKIN, OLDER BAREFOOT GENTS & ME

Back in 2005, I wrote a story called Stuck In An Elevator With Mandy Patinkin and posted it in a book of short stories I blogged called Briefs and Other Unmentionables. Even though I didn’t promote the book-blog, I still got a hit or two a day. Occasionally, I’d check my link stats to see where, if anywhere in particular, the hits were coming from. One day I noticed a number of referrals for the Mandy story coming from an MSN group called Older Barefoot Gents. I checked it out and discovered it's some sort of adult group to which you had to belong.

I screwed up my courage and applied for membership in the group. I had to state why I wanted to join, so I was honest and explained that I wanted to know how and why the group was checking out my Mandy Patinkin story. It wasn't long before I received a reply from the group moderator, "Bald Marco."

Thanks for letting me know about this. One of our group members linked your blog to my site, which is a sexually based group. I can imagine you are not too thrilled about this. As the groups moderator, I was unaware of this addition to the links page and have removed it. When investigating the link, I did read your story and it's certainly delightful... but also non-sexual and I certainly hope no member of the group write anything inappropriate or offensive to you.

As you might have guessed, Older Barefoot Gents is a group for men who have an interest in the bare feet of other men. We have a large archive of barefoot male celebrities, as well as more pornographic imagery as well. I haven't approved your membership for that reason, but if your interested I certainly will. I appreciate your kind words. And again, I hope the interest from my members hasn't been an intrusion. It's certainly odd to try to explain the group to someone who hasn't a similar interest!

Even though I assured Marco I had no problem with the story being linked on their group's site, the hits from OBG stopped. I declined Marco's offer to join his group. Btw, the group now has a blog full of naughty bits, so be warned.

In 2006, the scifi site Escape Pod recorded my Mandy story and paid me $5.

Today I discovered it's available as a free MP3 download: