by Leila Sales
But she didn’t succeed in dying. She got treated in a psychiatric ward and went on antidepressants, and she wasn’t suicidal anymore, but she still didn’t like herself. And then her parents found out about Revibe. “So they sent me here,” Jazmyn concluded. “They sent their idiot, screwed-up, slut daughter here, because they don’t know what to do about me, either. They would never say it, obviously, but they probably wish I’d succeeded in killing myself. Everyone looks better once they’re gone. At least then my parents could get some sympathy.”
* * *
Next up was Marco, a handsome man in his forties or fifties with wavy hair, off-puttingly white teeth, and a lilting Southern accent. It did not surprise me to learn that he was a politician. Specifically, he was the mayor of a city in Georgia.
Or he had been.
“I have a beautiful, supportive wife and a wonderful little daughter. There’s nothing wrong with them at all. They’re perfect. I’m not.”
He’d cheated on his wife once, early on in their relationship, with a man who’d fixed his computer. She found out almost immediately and was furious and hurt, and she almost left him right then, except that he swore up and down it was only that one time and it would never happen again. So she stayed with him, and for ten years, he stayed true to his word.
“Then I came across this app,” he said, his face turning red. “Called, uh, Thrust.”
It was for men who wanted to hook up with other men. Which described Marco perfectly, even though, he was quick to add, he had not for a second believed he would act on that want. “We all want things, all the time, that we don’t do,” he pointed out. “You want another slice of cake, or you want to yell at that driver who cut you off, or you want to sleep an extra hour and blow off your nine a.m. meeting, but you don’t do any of that because those are the wrong things to do. And we’re not animals. We can and should act in our long-term best interests, even if that’s not what we feel like doing in the moment.”
He signed up for Thrust with every intention of being a lurker. He looked at other men’s profiles but never reached out to any of them. “That seemed safe,” he said, “to imagine myself making a connection with these men without actually doing it.” Some of the other users messaged him, but they were easy to ignore. Until there was one who wasn’t.
“He was smart and witty and compassionate,” Marco said. “He didn’t put any pressure on the situation. He just seemed to enjoy talking to me, and I enjoyed talking to him, too. We wrote back and forth every day. And still I thought, Well, this isn’t betraying my wife. This isn’t hurting anybody. This is just a friendship.”
Eventually their e-mails turned into phone calls, which turned into video calls, which led to them finally meeting in person. And after their first meeting, Marco did start cheating on his wife. “I felt guilty,” he said, “but I also felt happier and more full of life and hope than I had in years. And I felt guilty about feeling happy, but, well, there you are.
“I never considered divorce. I know my actions make this statement hard to believe, but I loved my wife. I still do. She loved me. We’d built a good life. Raising our daughter together was important to us. Then there were our extended families, who believe that both homosexuality and divorce are sins. Frankly, I agree. I’m a sinner, and I didn’t want everyone to know that about me, and I didn’t want to drag my family into this pit of sin with me.”
And then, of course, there were his constituents. It didn’t take a political genius to intuit that most voters don’t like politicians who are cheaters, liars, or sinners.
After a couple months of intense happiness, guilt, and fear, Marco broke things off with the man he was seeing. “I did a lot of soul-searching, and I knew it wasn’t right to jeopardize my entire family and career and moral code for this.” He thought that was the end of all of it.
But then Thrust got hacked. The e-mail addresses for all the users were posted online for the world to see. And Marco had made a critical mistake: he’d used his government e-mail address to create his account.
It took no time for the local news to notice that their mayor was a Thrust user. The fact that he hadn’t logged on in four months meant nothing to them. Gleeful articles were written about this by the left-wing media, who had wanted him out of power in the first place. The right-wing media accused him of being a disgrace to the party. Both sides called him untrustworthy, immoral, and power-drunk. His colleagues immediately distanced themselves from him; the city legislators acted as though he didn’t exist, except to release damning statements about him.
His wife stuck by him in public, standing behind him in a conservative dress and pearls as he gave an apology speech. In private, though, she cried and cried. She took their daughter and went to stay at her parents’ house in the countryside.
“She’d forgiven me that first time,” Marco said, “so I guess on some level I’d thought she’d forgive me this time, too. She didn’t. Even someone as tolerant as my wife reaches her limit.”
He muddled through his job for another few weeks, but when it became clear that he was going to be brought to trial over misuse of government resources, he resigned. His wife and daughter never moved back home. Eighteen months had passed since then, and he had no new job. He’d tried to establish himself as a consultant, but nobody would hire him. “I spent my whole life immersing myself in public policy and working on campaigns and building connections, all so I could succeed in politics. That and my family were the foundation of my life. Now that’s all gone. So what do I do?”
* * *
I recognized Kisha on sight. She’d been one of the stars of a Disney show called Sense That! about a mystery-solving team of kids with ESP. I’d watched it when I was a kid—okay, I kept watching reruns into high school, even though I’d clearly aged out of its target audience. Kisha’s character was named Charisma, and her power was getting flashes of insight into the future. I had never in a million years imagined I’d ever be sitting across from a TV star, yet here we were.
Kisha was twenty-one now, and the past couple years had shown her decline into post-child-star infamy. I didn’t follow celebrity gossip, but even I knew some of the high points: speeding tickets, candid photos of her dress riding up her thighs at Hollywood parties, minor shoplifting charges, Twitter feuds.
“I don’t know why I did any of it,” she said, and I was surprised that she still had the bubbly, precocious voice I remembered from Sense That! “I didn’t have one good reason, like Jazmyn wanting to get into a band. It’s just that when the show stopped shooting, I was fifteen years old and had no idea what to do with myself. I had lots of money and lots of fans and no idea how the real world worked. I’d been a full-time actress since I was a kid, and I had no perspective on anything. I hadn’t been to real school in years. My first kiss was with a Swedish model who was six years older than me, and it was on-screen. My parents divorced—in large part because of my career and my needs—and in the divorce proceedings I actually had to hire my own lawyer because neither one of them was looking out for my best interests.
“I’m not trying to make excuses for what I’ve done,” she added. “I’m not trying to blame my parents or the network or anything. I did it. I made my choices. I just wanted to give a little context, I guess. The rest of the Sense That! kids came out of it fine, so it’s not like being a child actor necessarily screws you up. I guess they’re all just naturally more responsible than I am. Or luckier, maybe. Or both.
“A lot of teenagers do the same dumb stuff I did,” she went on. “But when I did that dumb stuff, thousands of strangers cared.”
At first I wasn’t sure I agreed with her. I was a teenager, and I’d never accidentally flashed my nipple while eating lunch. But, you know, I was a good girl. Emerson had gotten speeding tickets. I’d seen plenty of embarrassing photos of Brianna over the years. Mackler was not above a heated Twitter debate. I understood Kisha’s point.
“Parents wrote to me that I should be ashamed of
myself, because I’d been such a role model and now they wouldn’t even let their kids watch Sense That! anymore. What was even worse was when I got notes from kids themselves, telling me that I’d betrayed them, that Charisma never would do the terrible things I was doing.
“I haven’t been able to find work for a year now. Not even voice-overs or commercials or modeling. Nobody wants to be associated with me. The last brand that I did a campaign for was Lucky Brand jeans, and they stopped using me after five thousand people signed an online petition saying they wouldn’t buy anything from Lucky as long as I was associated with them.
“And as for serious acting—movies, another TV show—forget it. They won’t say why they’re not offering me parts. Just that I’m ‘not a good fit.’ Even my agent has basically given up on me. The one time he’s called me in the past three months was to recommend that I sign up for Revibe.”
Part of the shaming, she went on, was related to her race. “There were essays and posts and letters to me and about me saying that I was making black people everywhere look bad. Here I was, a famous young African American, so I had the opportunity to represent my race well to the entire world. And I blew it. I’d confirmed every stereotype—that we’re aggressive, irresponsible, criminal—and I’d single-handedly set back the fight for racial equality by, like, fifty years. That’s what they said.
“And that made me feel so guilty, obviously. And I desperately wanted them to be wrong. I don’t want my dumb choices to reflect on anyone other than me. But it doesn’t work that way, and I got plenty of messages saying, ‘This is just the sort of antisocial behavior I’d expect from you people.’
“So that’s why I’m here. I’m not trying to be all poor-little-rich-girl about it, but I really don’t have anywhere else to go.”
* * *
Zeke was barely sixteen, and I tried to tell myself I shouldn’t be physically attracted to someone who was both younger than me and possibly even more screwed up than me, but it was hard, because he oozed a confidence that was undeniably sexy. He sat with his legs splayed and his clearly pricey jeans slung low on his hips. I tried not to look at him because he made me uncomfortable, but I also tried not to let on that I wasn’t looking at him, because that would also be uncomfortable.
Zeke the Hottie had grown up in an apartment building in Manhattan. Ms. Candela, the gray-haired woman in the apartment below his, loathed him. By the time he was old enough to understand his surroundings and the fact that there were people in the world other than him, she had already sworn a lifelong vendetta against him. “I used to stomp around and jump up and down,” he said, “and bang pots and pans and cry at night and, I don’t know, kid stuff. It drove her nuts. She’d come upstairs and scream at me. I was six and she was sixty, and she’d scream right in my face. When I had some friends over for my thirteenth birthday party, she literally filed a noise complaint with the police. The cops showed up and they just found a dozen kids eating pizza and playing Spin the Bottle in the living room. I’m pretty sure that’s not what we have a police force for.”
As much as Ms. Candela hated Zeke, she loved her cat, Dante. “Dante got deluxe cat food that stunk up the whole building. Dante went on walks around Central Park on a leash. I kid you not. One time Dante bit me and I had to get a tetanus shot.”
What had been a standard feud between neighbors blew up a few months ago. “I was leaving the house for soccer practice,” Zeke said, “when I saw Dante out in the hallway. He’d gotten out of Ms. Candela’s apartment—he did that sometimes, probably because he wanted to escape her, that crazy witch. I could have tried to bring him back to her. I could have even just left him there, I guess. But I was so mad, and, I don’t really know how to explain it, but it was like this rage boiled up inside me, and I grabbed him by the nape of the neck and tossed him down the garbage chute.”
Zeke went on to soccer practice. He didn’t want to be late. But he had trouble focusing on the exercises. Once the rage subsided, he felt kind of worried about Dante. Or, if not worried about Dante himself, Zeke at least felt guilty. He got through all of practice, telling himself that cats always landed on their feet and everything was fine. He even went out to the diner with his friends after practice to prove to himself just how fine it was. But he wasn’t hungry and wasn’t listening to the conversation, and soon he made his excuses and jogged home to look for Dante.
Zeke found Dante in the basement, bloodied and broken, barely conscious. So Zeke picked him up, tucked him in his gym bag, and brought him up to Mrs. Candela’s floor. He set the cat down on Mrs. Candela’s welcome mat, rang the doorbell, and bolted.
“I thought everything would be fine,” he said. “Her dumb cat was alive, and she could take it to the vet and get it fixed. No harm, no foul.”
But that was when Zeke’s real trouble began. Ms. Candela insisted on reviewing the apartment building’s security tapes so she could figure out what had happened to her beloved pet. And the tape clearly showed Zeke picking up the tabby cat, glancing around surreptitiously, and then tossing him.
Ms. Candela didn’t know what to do with this tape except be spitting mad, but her nephew was more resourceful: he posted the video online, along with a description about what had happened, how much his aunt loved her cat, and photos of Dante’s broken, distorted body lying in Ms. Candela’s arms. He started a fund-raising campaign for people who wanted to contribute to Dante’s veterinary bills and raised more than ten thousand dollars in less than a day. And he posted Zeke’s full name and contact information online, in case anyone wanted to let him know what they thought of him.
As it turned out, hundreds and hundreds of people wanted to let Zeke know what they thought of him. He was a sociopath and a would-be murderer. He was soulless and spoiled rotten. He would grow up to abuse and kill more animals, and, someday soon, people as well. It would be better for the world if he just died now, before he got the chance.
The building management pressured Zeke’s family to leave. Zeke’s parents owned their apartment and had lived there for twenty years, so at first they refused, but then the management company threatened to sue. Zeke’s parents had sent him to Revibe as a last-ditch attempt to keep their home. If he could show that he’d changed, really changed, then maybe they would be able to stay.
“I brought Dante back,” Zeke reminded us now. “I could have just left him down there and Ms. Candela never would have found him, but I didn’t. I brought him home, and he lived. Why doesn’t anyone give me credit for that part?”
I didn’t find Zeke that hot anymore. So that was a relief.
* * *
“I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Tabitha, and she’s the love of my life,” began Richard. “I would do anything for her.”
From what I could tell, Richard was in his thirties. His unwrinkled skin and thick hair made him look younger, but his eyes made him look much, much older. “Her mom took off when Tab was a few months old. She had a drug problem. She was clean the whole time she was pregnant, and I guess I thought she’d stay that way for the sake of our baby, but she didn’t, or couldn’t. That’s life, right? Since then, it’s just been me and Tab, and I’ve always told her that no matter what else happens, I’ll always be there for her. Daddy’s not going anywhere, I told her.”
Richard rearranged his work schedule so he could be home with his daughter as much as possible. He played with her and read to her and took her to the local zoo and playground. He made her baby food from scratch and never let her ride in anyone’s car but his own. “I didn’t want anyone—least of all her—to think that having just a dad wasn’t enough for her. And I wouldn’t risk losing her for anything.”
One evening Tabitha was playing in the backyard when a tiger loped in from the woods. “I didn’t know what it was at the time,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was a tiger, because that didn’t make any sense. I heard her scream, so I came running outside—I had only stepped into the house for a minute. And all I saw immediately w
as this enormous animal—he must have been ten times my daughter’s size—and he was coming for my baby.”
Richard didn’t panic. He swung into action, as though he’d been training for this encounter his entire life. He ran inside, grabbed his shotgun from the gun case, ran back out, and shot the tiger. That was all it took—one shot—and the animal fell down dead. “I’d been doing riflery and hunting since I was a boy,” he told us, “and that was hands down the cleanest shot I ever made.”
Tabitha, of course, was confused and scared and crying. He bustled her into the house, then called 911 to let them know there was a large animal carcass in his yard. And that was when he found out what had happened.
The tiger was named Boxer and had escaped from the nearby zoo—which made sense, as there was no other reason for it to be roaming free. But Boxer wasn’t just any tiger (if there is such a thing as “just any tiger”). He was a South China tiger, one of only a couple dozen of his species left in the world. South China tigers were functionally extinct, meaning they lived in zoos, but nowhere in the wild anymore. And now, thanks to Richard, one of these extremely rare and critically endangered beasts was dead.
“The story ran in the local newspaper, and then the animal rights activists came out in force,” Richard said. “They called themselves Team Boxer. I don’t blame them, exactly. It’s true that no one should go around hunting endangered species. But, you know, that’s not what I was doing.”
The activists threw red paint on his porch, on his car, and even at him on the first day that he tried to return to work. The gun control activists got loudly involved, too. “Why did he own a gun if not to use it?” they demanded. “If he hadn’t had the gun in the first place, no one could have gotten shot.”
“I own my gun for sport,” Richard told us now, “and for self-defense. And that’s what this was. I was defending my baby against a wild animal. The critics demanded to know why I didn’t grab her and run inside. Why did I shoot the animal instead of shooting a warning shot? I don’t know what to tell you except that I wasn’t taking any risks with my Tab’s life. She needed her daddy to protect her, and that’s what I did.”