my family—that I wasn’t going to continue down a path that would lead me to Hell and destruction. I would pray, and the Lord would help me. I would be vigilant. I would stay close to home. I would avoid going anywhere alone. I would keep my distance from anyone who could trip me up.
I would be safe.
* * *
My phone vibrated briefly and played the already-familiar trill of the Words With Friends tone. I glanced at the screen and read the notification, though I knew what it said:
“Your move!”
It’s vaguely suggestive, which I noted and then pretended I hadn’t—as I had every day for the past week we’d been playing. It happened the same way each day: there was no play during the daylight hours, and then at some point in the evening, he’d make a move in the game and we’d start to chat. He’d question me about theology, ask me to explain more about the pickets and verses I’d posted on Twitter that day, and make vague references to his life as a “country lawyer.” I’d answer his questions, describe Westboro’s history and doctrines, and tell him about walking out of the Kansas City premiere of Kevin Smith’s film Red State. (Smith had taken to Twitter to invite me to review the Westboro-inspired film onstage after the showing, and my parents had agreed to allow it. But when we caught sight of two former church members—including my brother Josh, whom I hadn’t seen in seven years—my mom sensed a setup and the whole group of us bailed.) We made our moves so quickly that we’d get through an entire game each night, and then begin again with a new game the next evening.
In all our conversations, I was careful to maintain propriety; I still knew absolutely nothing for certain about this man—including whether he even was a man. I was hyper-aware that he could be a journalist or otherwise trying to entrap me, to trick me into revealing some titillating piece of information about “The Most Hated Family in America.” I wasn’t terribly worried about this possibility, though; I wrote everything with the assumption that it could be published in a newspaper—exactly as I would respond on Twitter, but without the 140-character limit. “If you ever have a question about whether it’s appropriate to say something,” my mother always said, “just add the word judge to the end of it—as if you were addressing a judge in the middle of a courtroom.” I took my mom’s advice to heart, but I was still amazed at how quickly I had fallen into this pattern with my anonymous friend—and in complete denial about how much I was coming to crave my interactions with him.
There was also something illusory about talking with a person who was faceless and (presumably) far away. Before Twitter, friendship with outsiders had always been easy to avoid; I’d chat with classmates during school, but since there was no interaction outside of that, the relationships always fizzled. All I’d ever had to do was keep a little distance from them, and outsiders would always be at arm’s length, never close enough to hurt me. And when physical separation failed, like at the salesman’s apartment that summer day, I was still mostly protected; as a child, I had donned guilt, shame, and fear—of God, of Hell, of the church—and I wore them like an impenetrable cloak that could never be shed.
But this was not like that. It felt different. Is it even real when half of the conversation comes from a person completely shrouded in shadow? Is it real when the words themselves and all evidence of their existence disappear forever after just a few hours? Lying prone on my bed in my pajamas, perched on my elbows with phone in hand, it was easy to believe that it was not—that the vast distance between us made me safe.
Distance, as I would come to learn, is a relative concept in matters of the heart.
* * *
“You’re too much.”
It became a frequent refrain of his, and one that I adored (vastly superior to the other expression he was so fond of: “You’re okay.”). After playing and chatting for a few weeks, I understood this saying to mean that my attention to detail and ridiculous enthusiasm at the most insignificant of occurrences were a joy to him—or, as he’d put it himself a few times, “I love the way your mind works.” This was a shock, and touched me