I actually found enough anger to interrupt here. “And you just assume because humans are terrible that other species are terrible too?”

“April, I don’t think humans are terrible—”

I broke in, “You just—”

He cut me off in return. “If you’d let me finish . . . I don’t think humans are terrible, I think we are strong and resourceful and if anyone can fight this fight and survive it, it’s us.”

April: There is no fight to fight! You’re inventing it, I don’t even know why! Why do you spend your time scaring all these people?

Peter: You really do think we’re afraid. It’s like you and I live in different countries, April May.”

April: Of course you’re afraid, that’s all you ever talk about, you—

Peter: All we’re asking for is a little common sense, and you come out and attack me! It’s the same story over and over, regular people ask to slow down and exercise care and then suddenly we’re “xenophobic” or “exophobic” or whatever other word you invented last week to help sell books.

I’d heard all this before, but I also knew that this line of argument worked. If you tell people that they’re being attacked for their beliefs, then suddenly they want to defend their beliefs, even if they didn’t really believe them before. It’s pretty amazing, really.

I had a thought for defusing the situation that I wanted to try. It was vital that I didn’t get sucked into defending myself from his last little quip and, instead, go for the root of what he was getting at, which was that there is a clear logical perspective and that it was his.

April: Peter, you invoke the common sense of regular people, but there are lots of regular people who disagree with you, and they also think they’re invoking common sense. We’re all regular people, when it comes down to it.

Peter: Not with your lifestyle.

I wasn’t ready for that at all. I’d offered an olive branch and he just whacked me with it.

April: What?

Peter: April, I don’t think it’s any secret that the life you lead isn’t a common lifestyle.

April: I mean, nor you, right? We have weird lives, we’re on TV, there are millions of people watching. None of this is normal.

Peter: Well, if you’re going to be intentionally obtuse.

April: Are you talking about the fact that I’m a lesbian?

Peter: You say that, but you seem to only be a lesbian sometimes. Other times, not so much.

April: What? Why is this a topic of conversation?

The presenter, who was equally baffled, finally stepped in, “I have to agree . . .”

And then, thinking that I would have to do this at some point anyway, I did the dumbest thing possible. I stayed on Peter Petrawicki’s talking point instead of moving to my own.

April: No, it’s fine, he’s right. This has absolutely nothing to do with this conversation, but I’m bisexual and that’s just as regular as being gay or straight. A person’s gender has never been a thing that influences whether I’m attracted to them and that’s just as regular as being gay or straight.

Peter: Then why have you been lying about it for the last year?

The extent to which I had lost control of this conversation baffled me. Here are a list of thoughts I had in the space of five seconds:

           Sexuality is complicated and fluid (deeply off topic)

       Being bi is normal, but . . . you know . . . (they don’t know)

       I lied because people like you are terrible! (accusatory)

       It’s only been six months, not a year! (not useful)

       I lied because it was better for my career? (bad)

       My agent told me to lie, it wasn’t my idea! (only a little better)

But by far the most overwhelming thought, the one that kept me from mounting any useful reply was: You walked right the fuck into his trap, you damned idiot.

There were so many things that I might say, that I wanted to say, and then there was the overwhelming knowledge that I had fucked up almost comically, and all those things competing for my attention were like a flash-bang going off in my brain. It was so overwhelming that, to the outside observer, I appeared almost catatonic.

The most forgiving perspective—which, to be fair, lots of people had—was that I was a kid who had gotten in way over her head and that a bully had used that opportunity to take me down several notches. That outlook didn’t make Peter look good, but it didn’t really make me look great either. I wasn’t on TV to gather sympathy; I was here to impress and change minds. Instead, my greatest victory of the day is that I didn’t break down crying right then and there. I might have, but I was too shocked by my own incompetence.

The presenter mercifully pushed us to a commercial break, during which I walked out of the building without talking to a single person. I made it to the sidewalk before I started to cry, which was a feat of marvelous strength.

That interview aired on July 12, so I guess we all know what the next chapter’s going to be about. Though I’ve got a juicy detail about that day that I’ve never told anyone, so if you’re thinking of skipping, rethink.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I try not to regret any of what has happened to me in the last few years. I don’t know if I’d be happier or if the world would be a better place if I hadn’t involved myself (or the universe hadn’t involved me), but that’s OK. What I do regret is how I engaged with the Defenders. In the weeks and months before July 13, I distilled a diverse group of individuals down to a few of their beliefs. Those beliefs were based on fear, and so all my arguments began and ended with the same thought: You’re all cowards. I didn’t say those exact words out loud, but they heard them anyway. The people who supported Carl and supported me heard it too, and they loved it. They wanted me to say it all the time. Reasoned, caring conversations that considered the complexity of other perspectives didn’t get views. Rants did. Outrage did. Simplicity did. So, simple, outraged rants is what I gave people.

Putnam couldn’t have been happier, though of course she acted like she was miserable that I’d been dragged through the mud on cable TV. She told me that in the end it was good for me, because it created sympathy and made PP, as it was easier to think of him, look like a bully. No one else tried to spin the interview, though. Robin, Andy, Miranda, even my parents just told me that they loved me and that they agreed it was awful and that I would be OK and to just let them know if I wanted foot rubs or giant sugary coffee drinks.

But I didn’t want love; I wanted to tear the Defenders apart. When I look back on that period before that abbreviated “debate” with Peter (if you could even call it that), I see a trajectory that, thank god, the universe did not allow me to follow. But I can imagine a reality in which the rest of this book never happened and I spent my whole life (or at least the next few years of my life) as a bitter, angry pundit arguing professionally with professional arguers.

Not that I wasn’t also having fun. Ripping the Defenders’ arguments to shreds and then reading all the comments agreeing passionately with me and electronically patting me on my cybershoulders was thrilling. It’s so much harder to actually define yourself and work to imagine the best possible future than it is to tear down others’ ideas. So I defined myself and my vision of Carl in opposition to the Defenders’. My path forward was the opposite of theirs and theirs was the opposite of mine. It distilled itself down until all that was left was the argument. And maybe, lurking just beneath that, the hatred.

It’s so much easier for people to get excited about disliking something than agreeing to like it. The circle jerk of mockery and self-congratulation was so intense I didn’t even notice I was at its center. It was so easy to get people to follow me, and in the end, that’s what I wanted. It took no time at all for me to be just as bad as Peter Petrawicki.

I shouldn’t have been so surprised when things started escalating. I mean, I knew people hated me. It was a real thing. Being recognized by fans is very different from checking out at the corner store and not knowing if the clerk is a Defender thinking about what a dirty traitor you are. I thought that I could only either run away from that or fight it, so I fought it. Fear is an even better fuel than anger. Also, it is even more destructive. Their constant attacks meant I never had to doubt my message. It must be right, because the people who disagreed with me were sooooo awful. The Carls were the perfect vector for disagreement because, through all of this, we still knew practically nothing about them. Governments were accused of hiding things because people just couldn’t accept that those in power were exactly as lost as the rest of us. Human beings are terrible at accepting uncertainty, so when we’re ignorant, we make assumptions based on how we imagine the world. And our guess is so obviously correct that other guesses seem, at best, willful ignorance—at worst, an attack.

Here’s a quick overview of what happens when groups of passionate believers start to define themselves in opposition to others:

           A simple message seems obvious to a large population, and those people can’t understand what the opposition could possibly be thinking. They never or almost never engage with someone who holds those different beliefs, and if they do, it’s in the context of the discussion, not in the context of, like, also being a human.