22-year-old Evan Flanary, who "disappeared" on June 19 all because his mother couldn't reach him and he took a break from Facebook, turns out not really to have been missing. He was just having a passionate week-long romance in the way of 22-year-olds, with a broken cell phone that wouldn't take a charge.
The Chron and Flanary's mom are still calling the venue on which Flanary found his new boyfriend "a social-networking app." But since he's too twinky for Scruff we're going to go with Grindr, though we'll say OKCupid is also a possibility, since rather than spending a mere 30 minutes with his new paramour, he spent the better part of seven days (!) without managing to charge his cell phone or contact any of his friends or family.
A new Facebook post from Flanary's mom, Deborah Berlingeri, explains how he called her just as she was about to go on the air with another television interview, since the story had started to go national by yesterday. (National gay-news site Towleroad picked up the story yesterday, too.) Berlingeri sparked this local panic when she posted an attractive picture of Evan on the internet and had a missing-persons website built, insisting he was missing all because he hadn't been heard from in two days (as of June 21) and his phone was dead:
He was SO SO SO apologetic that he worried about us. He had met a person, they hit it off fabulously, they were down town enjoying all the week's festivities. The battery in his cell phone died and although he had a charger, it just wouldn't take the charge. He never noticed the flyers, but (Monday) he saw his image on a television screen and could NOT believe it. He called me just minutes before the KNTV interview was scheduled to begin, so instead of crying I was grinning like the village idiot!! I love that boy.
We like how she doesn't want to broadcast his sexuality, using the gender-non-specific pronouns, despite referring to "the week's [gay pride] festivities." As one friend succinctly put it: "Most embarrassing Grindr fail ever."