Man found not guilty of sexual swordplay

There are times when the lead paragraph of a news story is just too good to pass up. For example, this Chronicle article about a trial involving a weird online meeting:

A jury deliberated little more than an hour Wednesday before finding a Houston man not guilty of aggravated sexual assault in a bizarre case that involved a gay Internet date and a 25-inch sword.

Are you finished making inappropriate jokes? Good. The indicent happened Oct. 3, when 27-year-old Zachary Charles Alexander decided to meet a 50-year-old man with whom he'd been chatting on the Internet. The man drove to Alexander's house and said Alexander looked nothing like the photo he'd posted in his online ad, so he tried to leave. But at that point, he said Alexander blocked the door, whipped out his 25-inch sword — no, a real sword — and forced him to perform oral sex. Afterward, he said Alexander let him go. Not much of a "date," we'd say.

Alexander told jurors yesterday that he didn't threaten the older man or force him to do anything. He said the oral sex was consensual, but Alexander did ask the man to leave his house after he left the room and returned to find the man doing drugs. "I was afraid he would go loony because [the drugs had] a really strong smell," Alexander testified.