Dearest reader, let’s go back in time for this “Intimately Hommes” thing, cuz it all started approximately 2 months ago and I think you can only understand it properly if you follow me from the beginning.

Around the time the grey and cold of February passed into the grey and cold (and wet) of March I was contacted by a guy (Geramie Buscaylet, a total stranger to me) liking my Second Life®-Photography.
Liking it so much, in fact, he asked me if I was interested in starting up a magazine with him focused on Artistic Male Nudity in Second Life®, which he planned on calling Intimately Hommes.
He even told me that I would recieve 50% of whatever the magazine made on advertising (since magazines are dispensed free, L$ are made out of ads).

Now, I often had the idea of doing something magazine-ish, focusing more on SL-Photography then what the majority of Second Life®-magazines focus on (fashion).
Of couse, I had never actually executed that idea because I knew it would be impossible to do it alone and only knew 1 or 2 people who might be interested enough to put their time in it and joining me in that adventure, but wasn’t sure if I should ask them since it is a rather big decision to make, and comes with resposibility.
And now, here was the opportunity to (in a way) start with an idea that had been poking my little grey cells since erm… well the SL4B-weeks, with me being “2nd-in-command” (I don’t like being “1st-in-command”, prefer to leave that to others).

I was sceptic about it.
I had checked out his profile and noticed his avatar was quite new, and after some questions he said he had been in SL® for a while but wanted a fresh start, and created a new avatar.
I had to think on it for a couple days, since I knew hardly anything about his previous avatars life… but since I believe in second chances for everybody, I eventually scraped up my guts and accepted his offer.

The following couple weeks I took a couple pictures of him and me (yes, Male Nudity pictures) and showed what pictures I had already made that might be good to put in the magazine too.
He kept himself busy with searching people with shops willing to place an ad, I investigated on how to distribute the magazine, he tried out which scripted “books” in Second Life® worked best, we talked about plans for an HQ, a publication date, extra staff members for interviews / scouting (which he wasn’t too interested in actually)… pretty much anything you can think of that comes with starting up a magazine.

After a few days he found a couple people willing to place an ad, which paid their cash to him, and of which he gave me 50%.
That 50% I used to purchase (very good) full perm sculpted letters I wanted to use for a dispenser and to get the Kiosk script (which after a couple days of investigating turned out to be pretty much the type of script we needed, and was costly, but worth it’s price).
Getting just those 2 things took away about 1/3 of the 50% he gave me, so, I see that as an investment.

Anyway, I had been scetching out magazine stand shapes for some days (while I was on the train to or from my Real Life work) and came up with a design I thought was a pretty nice, without too much prims and built it in a couple forms (of which I liked 2 enough to keep, watch the top picture).
I added the sculpted letters and after reading the instruction several times I installed the Kiosk scripts.

Geramie was thrilled about the magazine stands, and so was I.

With the Male Artistic Nudity pictures finished, and the Kiosk built, textured and scripted, I was ready to go for it.

In the meanwhile, Geramie had attempted to build an HQ, which he was quite happy with, but figured could use some improvements by the time he got land to put it on.
And he and myself had been trying to find places to put the magazine stand and find more people willing to advertise.
We still needed a bit more ads and try to write some sort of Bio of ourselves, to make sure the magazine would be interesting enough.

At a certain point he asked if I could lend him some cash, since he finished his 50% on getting a couple diffirent types of scripted “books” in Second Life®, uploading textures, starting a group for the magazine, couple other things… and a decent skin, hair, clothes and accesoires for his brandnew avatar.
Shortly after that I think he repaid me since he found a new person interested to advertise and gave me 50% on that too (I assume he added the money I gave him on top of that 50%, but I’m not too certain)

Then… nothing.

Geramie was MIA… he hasn’t logged in since March 26th 2008…
Oh I did try to contact him alright, with several IMs and notecards, none were replied…

Seeing as that will be an absence of exactly 1 month tomorrow, I’m facing the facts and am considering myself conned.

I’m not happy about all this, and I don’t exactly get mad easy.

For the last couple weeks I’ve been trying to think positive, but now the negative thoughts have taken over completely: what if the people who gave him cash will come after me and ask me where the hell the magazine is?
I mean, they will feel conned too if they don’t see any sort of magazine pop up here and there. Will they claim their money back? I can understand if they would ask it, but I can’t exactly refund them since I only got 50% of it, which I invested in stuff.
And, I can tell you guys that that 50% were amounts that made me blink twice, together it was the same amount of L$ I ever had as a total amount at 1 time in my Second Life®… advertising is big business…

Right now I’m trying to think what to do, since I don’t know who paid Geramie even, all I know is what I got as “my 50%”‘…

I’ve been wondering if I should continue with a magazine by myself (and a couple friends I know I can trust) but if I’ll find the time for it is an issue still… the only thing I still need is a “book”, the rest I already got.

The worst part about all this is that it left me feeling dumb, stupid, trusting too much in the goodness of humanity on one side, and worried about when the people who gave ad-money will start contacting me about all this, cuz my name is in Geramies profile…

I’m not happy…

And what to do with the pics???

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