You’ve probably heard about those things. I’d heard about them in my original world—but they got sorted into the big box of “Horrible Shit That’s Not My Problem.” We’ve all got that box, whether we want to admit it or not. In this world, though, they weren’t just acts against people I didn’t know in places I’d never been. They were attacks on me. I was tortured. I was beaten. I was gunned down. It didn’t matter that some of it happened before I was born—it was still me. Because when you’re gay, every cowardly homophobic act you see is an act against you.

The Pulse nightclub and Matthew Shepard. Yeah, unless you’re living under a deeper rock than I was, you’ve heard of them. But I’ll bet you didn’t know about Arthur Warren, who was kicked to death. Or Ruby Ordeñana, who was strangled, or August Provost, who was shot then burned, or Blaze Bernstein, who was stabbed more than twenty times, or the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of murders, beatings, and attacks that happen every day of every year in every country on this sorry planet, targeting people because they’re gay, or transgender, or queer in any way. But a lot of people don’t see those stories, because our news feeds send us things we’re more likely to click on.

There are plenty of survivors who speak out, and families of those who’ve been murdered who take on the fight—and it’s a fight not just for justice, but for our attention. Struggling to make us see—and care—about what’s happening right here on our doorstep.

Those people have more to say than I do. They have more of a right, and they are more eloquent.

But the cameras were now on me, and, like Jarvis Burke said, I had to use them. I had, for this one moment, taken the bully pulpit away from the bullies. I couldn’t squander it.

The questions they asked were ones they already knew the answers to—but they wanted to hear me say them. Yes, I was attacked in an alley. No, my injuries were not extensive. No, I wouldn’t be able to pick out my assailants in a lineup—because they wouldn’t be in any lineup in this world, although I didn’t tell them that part.

“You made an illegal tackle today,” one of them had to mention. “Do you think the attack on you affected your game today?”

“Yeah, I kinda lost my mojo,” I admitted. “But really, I was just trying to bounce the guy into another dimension.”

And everyone laughed. Like Paul once pointed out, it’s easy to speak the truth when everyone thinks you’re joking.