At the time I hadn’t spoken to Dad in a little bit under a year. I was working on forgiving him for not being who I needed him to be, but I was in a stage of loving him from afar. He was loving me from afar as well, so when my younger brother Malick showed him what he’d read on Facebook—that I had died of an asthma attack—Dad called me. He said that he’d read something that hurt him very deeply because I was his daughter and he loved me. Somehow we still ended our conversation in a fight. Okay, so maybe I haven’t forgiven him completely. We’ll get there. It’s complicated. I called my mom after we hung up and told her about the article, the multiplying rumors of my death, and the call from Dad. She laughed and agreed that people will believe anything. We laughed and we laughed and then she must’ve forgotten all about it.
A week later she called me at eight in the morning and left a message.
“Hi, Gabby. This is Mom. Aunt Mildred just called me and said that she heard on the Internet that you had an asthma attack . . . either last night or this morning . . . and um . . . I’m calling to find out if you are okay. Give me a call as soon as you get this message and let me know. Or if anybody is on your phone, please call and let me know what’s going on . . . I’ll be waiting for your call. Talk to you later.”
Aunt Mildred had fallen victim to the same hoax and now so had my mom. Both my parents had called worried that I had died of an asthma attack, and neither of them had considered the fact that I don’t actually have asthma. I had to call Mom back as soon as I was awake and remind her that there was a death rumor going around. It wasn’t funny anymore. Maybe now was a good time to release a statement.
I went right back to where it all started. Social media. I tweeted again that I was alive. “So many people have tweeted me that I’m dead. Maybe I am. Perhaps my version of hell is people believing poorly written articles about me.” That tweet spawned other articles about how the Internet thought I had died but that I was actually alive. A story was created out of something that was never real in the first place. I think that’s how journalism works now.
Fuck Twitter yo. I hate Twitter. I love Twitter. I need it to get through a day, but it is also systematically messing with my health and sanity. (At this point in the book, you know how little sanity I actually have left.) I’m constantly on Twitter. I hate the word twitter. It’s disgusting. It’s my best friend. Ugh, FUCK TWITTER! Here’s the thing. When Twitter started becoming popular, I refused to join. All of my friends were on it, tweeting away and following celebrity beefs. I thought it was weird that people were tweeting and getting into fights with one another that way. I knew I was missing out on entertaining stuff, but I still thought it was stupid. This one time, I was talking to a rapper (you wouldn’t know him) who wanted me to follow him on Twitter so he could follow me back. I said, “Oh, I don’t think I’d have anything interesting to say on Twitter. The public doesn’t need to know my every single thought. No one is that interesting.” The rapper felt insulted and walked away. Whatever. He doesn’t get me. Anyway, I just thought that it was kind of vain to think that people want to know everything you’re thinking all the time. I could think of maybe two people whose thoughts I’d be open to reading all the time. One guy was a dude I wanted to bone, for obvious reasons (maybe he’d tweet something that would give me clues to help me figure out how to bone him!), and the other guy was my ex-boyfriend, who I wanted to make sure was still terrible so I could constantly give myself a thumbs-up about my decision to break up with him. That’s it! Oh! Also Beyoncé. Duh! Other than those three people, I wasn’t really interested in Twitter. But lots of my friends thought Twitter was perfect for me. A director I’m close friends with said she was just waiting on me to come around and see that Twitter was the perfect place for my short and sharp wit that would fit nicely into 140 characters. I thought, True. I am amazing. But what about the people who don’t think I’m amazing? Wouldn’t they be mean to me on Twitter? I’m sensitive, and I can’t really take people being mean to me. I wasn’t convinced Twitter was something I needed in my life.
On the set of American Horror Story, I got to work with some amazing actors and actresses. Emphasis on actresses. There were only two men in the cast full-time, so for the bulk of the season, I worked with women. We also hung out together quite a bit. We were constantly around one another. I loved and admired each of those women, but because we are, in fact, women, someone wasn’t buying the love. There was a rumor that I was feuding with one of my castmates, Emma Roberts. Reports said that Emma was being a brat on set. That she was rude to everyone and that the cast and crew hated her. The report went on to say that I wasn’t having any of that shit so I chewed Emma out in front of everyone and now the two of us were in a fight. But on the brighter side, Emma was being nicer to the crew. This is a story that is 100 percent made-up! First, Emma is lovely. She’s also a nerd. She reads books on set. She always has her nose in a book; I don’t see how she would find the time to be mean to anyone. Second, I wouldn’t yell at someone in front of people. I’ve been there and it’s embarrassing. Third, there were way more interesting things happening on that set than some dumb cat fight, and fourth, I’m super into minding my own damn business. I’m the last one who would say something to someone about the way they act. None of that mattered because the story was more interesting than the truth. It went viral, and people on set started thanking me for getting Emma together. I felt bad that people were thinking that this sweet girl was actually a brat and congratulating me for yelling at her. I decided that I had to do something about it. I had to dispel the rumor.