We got married a year and a half after the proposal, in July, at my parents’ cabin a few hours outside of Seattle. Even though I believe that death is a hard return, I can always feel my dad at the cabin. It was his favorite place. I walked down the aisle to a recording of him playing “Someone to Watch Over Me” on the piano; Aham wore a blue plaid suit; a bald eagle flapped over the ceremony; someone spilled red wine on one of the beds and my mom was in a good enough mood to forgive them; I got my fucking period (will you never leave me be, fell ghoul!?); it poured down rain after a month of uninterrupted sunshine, then abruptly stopped just as we emerged from the tent to dance; Meagan killed everyone with a toast about how Great-Aunt Eleanor died believing Meagan and I were lesbian lovers; a friend of mine, post-late-night-hot-tubbing, got confused about the route to the bathroom and walked into my mom’s bedroom naked. Oh, and Aham’s one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother had a stroke on the way to the wedding, went to the hospital, got better, and still came and partied. It was a gorgeous, chaotic, loving, perfect day.
We scribbled our vows five minutes before the ceremony.
Aham’s read:
You know that thing that I do that you hate? That thing where I talk about how years ago when we were friends and I always wanted to hang out with you and I would always text you, and I would see you and be like, “We should hang out!” and then you’d always cancel on me? I’m never going to stop bringing that thing up, because I like being right. And all those times that I tried so hard to get you to hang out with me, and I just wanted to be around you so much, I’ve never been more right about anything in my life. The only way I can think to say it is that you are better than I thought people could be.
I am happier than I thought people could be.
Slaying the Troll
One ordinary midsummer afternoon in 2013, I got a message from my dead dad. I don’t remember what it said, exactly, and I didn’t keep a copy for my scrapbook, but it was mean. My dad was never mean. It couldn’t really be from him. Also, he was dead—just eighteen months earlier, I’d watched him turn gray and drown in his own magnificent lungs, so I was like 80 percent sure—and I don’t believe in heaven, and even if I did I’d hope to nonexistent-god they don’t have fucking Twitter there. It’s heaven! Go play chocolate badminton on a cloud with Jerry Orbach and your childhood cat.
But there it was. This message.
It was well into the Rape Joke Summer and my armor was thick. I was eating thirty rape threats for breakfast at that point (or, more accurately, “you’re fatter than the girls I usually rape” threats), and I felt fortified and righteous. No one could touch me anymore. There was nothing remarkable about this particular tweet—oh, some white dude thinks I’m ugly/fat/stupid/humorless/boring? Does the Pope fart in Latin?—and by all conceivable logic it shouldn’t have even registered. It certainly shouldn’t have hurt.
The account was called “Paw West Donezo” (Paw West because his name was Paul West, and donezo because he was done being alive, done making up funny songs, done doing crossword puzzles, done not being able to get the printer to work, done getting annoyingly obsessed with certain kinds of Popsicles, done being so strong, done being my dad).
“Embarrassed father of an idiot,” the bio read. “Other two kids are fine though.”
His location: “Dirt hole in Seattle.”
The profile photo was a familiar picture of him. He’s sitting at his piano, smiling, in the living room of the house where I grew up. Some of the keys on that piano still have gray smudges worked into the grain, the ghost of old graphite where he’d penciled in the names of the notes for me when I was small. I never practiced enough; he always pretended not to be disappointed. The day they sold that house, when I was twenty-five, I sat on the stairs and sobbed harder than I ever had, because a place is kind of like a person, you know? It felt like a death, I thought. My family was broken, I thought. I wouldn’t cry that hard again until December 12, 2011, when I learned that a place is not like a person at all. Only a person is a person. Only a death is really a death.
Watching someone die in real life isn’t like in the movies, because you can’t make a movie that’s four days long where the entire “plot” is just three women crying and eating candy while a brusque nurse absentmindedly adjusts a catheter bag and tries to comfort them with cups of room-temperature water.
Saturday afternoon, when we could feel his lucidity slipping, we called my brother in Boston. My dad’s firstborn. “You were such a special little boy,” he said. “I love you very much.” He didn’t say very many things after that.
I would give anything for one more sentence. I would give anything for 140 more characters.
The person who made the “Paw West Donezo” account clearly put some time into it. He researched my father and my family. He found out his name, and then he figured out which Paul West he was among all the thousands of Paul Wests on the Internet. He must have read the obituary, which I wrote two days after my dad’s lungs finally gave out. He knew that Dad died of prostate cancer and that he was treated at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. He knew that I have a brother and a sister. And if he knew all that, he must have known how recently we lost him.
My armor wasn’t strong enough for that.
What was my recourse? What could I do? This was before Twitter had a “report” function (which, as far as I can tell, is just a pretty placebo anyway), and it’s not illegal to reach elbow-deep into someone’s safest, sweetest memories and touch them and twist them and weaponize them to impress the ghost of Lenny Bruce or what-the-fuck-ever. Hell, not only is it not illegal, I’m told it’s a victory for free speech and liberty. It’s just how the Internet works. It’s natural. It’s inevitable. Grow a thicker skin, piggy.
“Location: Dirt hole in Seattle.”
All I could do was ignore it. Hit “block” and move on, knowing that that account was still out there, hidden behind a few gossamer lines of code. “Paw West Donezo” was still putting words in my dead father’s mouth, still touching his memory, still parading his corpse around like a puppet to punish me for… something. I didn’t even know what.
I’m supposed to feel okay just because I can’t see it?
Yes. You’re supposed to feel okay just because you can’t see it. There’s no other way, we’re told. We couldn’t possibly change the culture, we’re told.
There’s no “winning” when it comes to dealing with Internet trolls. Conventional wisdom says, “Don’t engage. It’s what they want.” Is it? Are you sure our silence isn’t what they want? Are you sure they care what we do at all? From where I’m sitting, if I respond, I’m a sucker for taking the bait. If I don’t respond, I’m a punching bag. I’m the idiot daughter of an embarrassed dead guy. On the record. Forever.
Faced with a lose-lose like that, what do you do? Ignoring “PawWestDonezo” wasn’t going to chasten him, or make me feel better, or bring my dad back.
So I talked back. I talked back because my mental health—not some troll’s personal satisfaction—is my priority. I talked back because it emboldens other women to talk back online and in real life, and I talked back because women have told me that my responses give them a script for dealing with monsters in their own lives. Most importantly, I talked back because Internet trolls are not, in fact, monsters. They are human beings who’ve lost their way, and they just want other people to flounder too—and I don’t believe that their attempts to dehumanize me can be counteracted by dehumanizing them.
The week after it happened, I wrote about PawWest Donezo in a Jezebel article about trolling. I wrote sadly, candidly, angrily, with obvious pain.
A few hours after the post went up, I got an e-mail:
Hey Lindy,
I don’t know why or even when I started trolling you. It wasn’t because of your stance on rape jokes. I don’t find them funny either.
I think my anger towards you stems from your happiness with your own being. It offended me because it served to highlight my unhappiness with my own self.
I have e-mailed you through 2 other gmail accounts just to send you idiotic insults.
I apologize for that.
I created the [email protected] account & Twitter account. (I have deleted both)
I can’t say sorry enough.
It was the lowest thing I had ever done. When you included it in your latest Jezebel article it finally hit me. There is a living, breathing human being who is reading this shit. I am attacking someone who never harmed me in any way. And for no reason whatsoever.
I’m done being a troll.
Again I apologize.
I made donation in memory to your dad.
I wish you the best.