Is there already a thread stickied talking about precautions to take in meetups in the Personals section? Because a hookup could be the most amazing experience of your life, or it could be the last experience of your life. And in that that's kind of a huge range to cover, probably ... some ideas people have had?
Obviously one of the best options is to develop a relationship with your ler first. This isn't iron-clad, but if you develop feelings for someone you're more likely to care about them.
In more of a first- or second-meeting hookup situation, I thought of sending a facepic of my top to my inbox at work. Then when we're about to get down to it, calling a theater friend of mine with the address I'm at and the following instructions: I'm hanging out here for awhile. I'm going to text you every hour with the name of someone you've appeared on stage with and their character. If you don't hear from me, or I send you a bogus name or character, call the police. Then I can just relax and enjoy myself, comfortable in the knowledge that if I am murdered there's probably at least some good forensics for them to start with. That also maintains some vague discretion with the sense that someone's looking out for you -- and the ler knows it too.
Naturally, that would be excellent information for a dedicated ler to try to extract using, I dunno, tickling, so you can never be 100 percent safe.
Of course when I'm topping a scene I'm a perfect gentleman. 😉 (there's no way of knowing this, lees, so yeah, elementary precautions).
Finally, none of this is meant to be specific to metalheadgirl's situation, which is heartbreaking, or as any kind of shoulda/coulda/woulda discussion, because that wasn't a theoretical. It was a was. On top of everything else, rape is an egregious and traumatizing violation of trust. It's terrible that it happened and my wishes are for hope and healing and I hope the guy is put away.
I just hoped maybe as a reminder for people -- especially with what Phineas posted -- about doing what you can to keep yourself safe.