But it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns. In one line of general discussion, people lamented the ability, in the age of social media, for any “disgruntled” or “unhinged” woman to say “anything she wants” about any “innocent man,” thereby unjustifiably ruining his life, without due process. Fair enough. I think, generally speaking, we can all agree that’s a true statement, in concept. But, when people went so far as to specifically call Katrina, Penny, and me “fame-seekers,” “opportunists,” and “liars,” that pissed me off.
A former player of Gates’, a guy who went on to play in the NFL, posted his support for Gates on Instagram with the hashtags #innocentuntilprovenguilty and #myhero. Again, fair enough. I totally understood his point, in concept. Gates is innocent until proven guilty, in terms of the legal system. But to me, he’s not a hero. He’s the man who shoved his tongue down my throat and his fingers up my vagina, forcibly. The man who literally ripped my shirt as I tore myself away from his terrifying grasp. He’s the man who made me hide, trembling, in bathrooms whenever I saw him across campus. The man who, to this day, occasionally visits me in nightmares that always cause me to break out in a cold sweat.
But that whirlwind is what happened on Monday. Day one. On day two, I opened a can of whoop-ass on not only Gates, and his two enablers, but also on the online trolls and detractors who said Katrina, Penny, and I are liars. That morning, I did my interview on Good Morning America, with one of my all-time idols, by the way, so, that was a personal thrill. And, thankfully, the TV interview went even better than the radio interview. So much so, by the time Reed, CeeCee, Jane, and I walked out of the studio and into the sunshine on 44th Street, the “high school football coach scandal” had indisputably become a viral story.
Within an hour of my TV interview, both my name and Gates’ were trending on Twitter. Gates’ name, mostly, because people wanted his head. My name, mostly, because people were supporting me for all the right reasons. But, also, because a popular dude on Twitter had posted a screen shot of me, taken during my TV interview, that captured me looking like a goddamned fire-breathing dragon. Apparently, the Twitter guy decided that particular angry shot of me was incredibly hot. His actual hashtag was #hotwhenangry. And, apparently, a massive amount of his followers wholeheartedly agreed with him.
After that first Twitter guy did his thing, a second Twitter guy, someone with the handle @AngelinaFan, picked up on the thread and expanded upon it. Even though @AngelinaFan agreed I was, indeed, “hot when angry,” he also felt it vitally important to note I looked uncannily like a young Angelina Jolie—which then, bizarrely, inspired him to start tweeting out all sorts of photoshopped images of me soundly kicking Gates’ ass, using screen grabs from the movie Tomb Raiders as his starting point.
Along with my actual name in his hashtags, and the other guy’s hashtag #hotwhenangry, as well as #TombRaiderRebootPlease, @AngelinaFan also transformed me into some sort of Georgina action hero with his additional, numerous hashtags. Stuff like #DoNotFuckWithGeorgina and #GeorginaSaysNotTodayGates and #BadassHotChickGeorgina. So stupid. Did he not understand the point of my article was to push back against exactly that kind of objectification?
But, whatever. In truth, I liked all those images of me kicking Gates’ ass, as well as that first screen shot of me looking like a fire-breathing dragon. Because, truth be told, those two Twitter dudes, every bit as much as the radio and TV interviews, are what pushed my article into The Viral Stratosphere.
By the time Tuesday afternoon rolled around, all hell broke loose, in the best possible way. Leonard called to tell us that a young woman had come forward to accuse Gates of kissing and groping her when she was sixteen. The following morning, another young woman said Gates had forced her to give him a blowjob when she was fifteen, and also that she’d been paid off by none other than Steven Price to keep her mouth shut about it.
Well, that was when shit got real—when the story no longer lived in the world of Twitter or TV or radio—but, instead, started having real-world implications. Leonard called to tell me Gates and the principal had been put on leave by the school district, pending an internal investigation. Two hours after that, he called again to say authorities in Los Angeles had just announced—in a freaking press conference, attended by national media!—that they’d opened a criminal investigation into Gates and the principal. And then, shortly after that, Leonard called to report that Steven Price, the father of Brody, Brendan, and Benjamin, had lawyered up.
“I’m not sure what the charges against Price will be,” Leonard told Reed and me. “My guess is money laundering and/or tax evasion. Maybe obstruction of justice.”