“How fine you look when dressed in rage.”—Lewis Carroll
For nearly a decade, I have received protection from federal agents and local law enforcement against stalkers who often issue death threats.
I am one of many.
*****
We’ll call him Jay.
An American by birth, he has adopted Great Britain as his home—literary, social, psychic, but he lives in a borough of New York, where he visits bodegas and is moved when cats look at him with affection and come to him “as if they know my thoughts.” Dogs, he has written, over look his physical limits and “get him.” He offers photographs of birds outside his kitchen window, and imagines them as characters in plays “similar to mine,” but there are no published or produced plays to which we can imagine the casting of these birds. He attends a class to repair a speech impediment (“one of my curses”), and claims to need money because he is “attending” a loved one who is ill and awaits, then receives, then recuperates from a “delicate” surgery. He claims to be a playwright with an affiliation to a prominent theatre in London, but they remember him as a student for a short time, part of a study program, years ago. There were readings of his work and critiques. To a federal agent concerned that he might subsequently be of danger to me, the theatre noted "We have never produced a play of his. We have no contact with him other than his emails criticizing our productions.”
Everyone’s a critic.
Don’t tell him this, my federal agent advised. It might upset him.
Adopting the air of someone who has seen so much and is bewildered and bemused by the low standards he must endure, he holds an odd court on X (formerly known as Twitter), posting lines from biographies or reviews and then adding his own thoughts, usually with “This so reminds me…” or “As I recall when I was working in that theatre..”
Jay identifies with Harold Pinter and the Clash, waxes poetic about the death of actors who were “real guys,” brilliant talents who could get down with the “regular, working” members of the theatre. There are a handful of people who like and comment on his X posts, and their names are clearly artificial, often based on literary characters. “They’re all him,” the federal agent told me. “He communicates with himself. It’s common among those we watch.” Jay also impersonates a famous, dead president, and raised funds, via GoFundMe, to attend the Democratic convention where he would comment as this dead president.
To one of his “people,” to himself, he commented that he was astonished that I had not killed myself or “allowed” someone to kill me. “Is there a sadder person?” he asked himself, before getting comments from a man we’ll call Sam, who considers himself an expert on Shakespeare and who founded a theatre company (a living room, a copier, and some Indiegogo fundraisers) and enjoys mocking actors like Denzel Washington, whose Macbeth was not nearly as effective as his. (His Macbeth was done in a cramped rental space and seen by approximately two hundred people. The few reviews this actor has garnished are blistering.) Actors so far on the periphery, running on stringy dreams of a life in the theatre, assure both Sam and Jay that theirs are the great talents, and to keep “elevating the discourse” on social media with their criticisms of those who keep working but not at standards they would demand. The now defunct Shetler Studios is every bit as noble as the National or the houses of Broadway, and they could prove this if only they were seen or their plays were published or produced. “We are the hope of so many,” says Sam, who then adds that he once considered hiring a private detective to follow me around to see “what I was up to,” but he was not the person who hired a detective to wait outside the office of my physician to find out what my health issues were. The person who hired that detective and who also provided my home address to right-wing reporters was later arrested for hanging around my apartment building to “have a word with me.” Another “fan” and follower of Jay and Sam is an actor/director, whom we’ll call Bo, who has a “theatre company” with a name and a mission, but not a copier, so he often asks if there are people who can let him use theirs, and he will provide paper and toner. Married and with a young child, my federal agents claim he is living “on the margin” and finds some comfort in protesting, walking in marches, fomenting against certain political candidates, and “dreaming the dream.” “This guy,” the agent told me, “is so desperate to be part of a group, to be in a club, that he joins in any bashing, any discussion, to find some company.” The we of me. Bo’s followers are virtually identical to those for Jay and Sam—actors whose resumes boast only work in these cramped rooms, rented studios, living rooms, music stands and family and friends in attendance. (I hear the strains of “Eleanor Rigby” when I read the posts of these people.)
Bo is not what is called “personally or actionably” dangerous, but Facebook did have to remove a post about me where Bo said he dreamed of jumping up and down repeatedly on my face. If he managed to do this on certain stages with certain people, he might be able to get back into Actors’ Equity, which, along with my face being stomped, is one of his primary goals.
Bo likes a woman in Massachusetts whom we’ll call Gloria. My agent calls her posts about me like something a spurned lover might write as “revenge ranting” on social media. However, both Gloria and I are gay, but like Sam, the failed Shakespearean actor/scholar and actor/manager in the “vein of” Orson Welles, she lives on disability and rage, currently considering taking all of her furniture and burning it, because it is from Target, and that company no longer supports DEI initiatives and they “have succumbed” to Donald Trump and “should die.” Gloria is also suffering still from withdrawals from a certain antidepressant (“likely Cymbalta,” my agent says), and she gets confused and suffers from pain. Ten years ago, Gloria published some pieces on a feminist website, badly written and read by a negligible audience, but the agent says she “doesn’t track,” (she has no verifiable work or significant social life) and her posts are commented on by a small group of people she knows from a pro-abortion non-profit who are “concerned” with her, and want to “boost her up.”
How do you know this? I asked the agent.
“We contacted them last year when she posted that she was ready to raise some money to have you killed,” he told me.
I never saw that post, I said.
“We did,” he said.
Gloria still posts and still wants me dead, but she peppers the posts with LOLs and liberal use of the word allegedly. Facebook claims—to the agents—that these posts do not violate “community standards,” and that I shouldn’t worry. Her latest rant about me only got one “like” and was viewed by only 41 people.
“Toxic and unimportant,” the agent said, “but we keep an eye on her, because she communicates with Jay and Sam and others who have expressed the desire to harm you, including a guy who writes comic books and who recently alarmed his small corps of fans by announcing that he needed help with his rent. Like Jay, there are health issues, there is sadness, there are pleas for money, and there are pleas for attention, including the desire to kill me or sue me or see me in prison, although, despite their claims and beliefs, I have committed no crimes or perpetrated any frauds.
“They are the frauds,” the agent said. “Elementary stalkers with projection issues,” whom they call “Products of the Project” or POPs. “They are elevated by their hatreds. Envy is their opium. They hope to be seen, and sometimes are, as heroes for calling out enemies of the people.” But I am only an enemy to them, I’m told. Why? I ask. “You have an audience. You share your work. Your work is appreciated. Figure it out.”
All of these people I’ve written about were in communication with the man who issued a specific and credible death threat against me on June 14, 2025, on the Facebook page called FOLLIES OF GOD, which is named for a book I wrote that was vetted and verified, but which has enjoyed a ten-year “whispering campaign” that I fabricated the book or “stole documents” from someone who “actually” knew the people I profile, or that I engage in “psychic” work and talk to dead people. James Merrill had his Ouija board, and I have Satan over and have him ring up William Inge and Kim Stanley. The whispering didn’t work, nor did it uncover any improprieties, so now it has become shouting, rage, petulance, and they even enlisted a director so lacking in talent or employment that he was considering finding another line of employment, but during the pandemic he came up with the idea of having actors and playwrights create videos of monologues. “He saved actors!” one person wrote. “We were crouching in fear, and he put us to work.” “Theatre,” so to speak. It created a sinecure, and he now works, often enlisting actors who are friends of mine and to whom he claims “admiration” for my work, while online he calls me “trash” and thinks I should be “punished” for daring to claim friendship or time spent with his “idols.” He was visited once by an agent, who wrote that he appeared “unbathed, redolent, regretful, sad.” He doesn’t comment as much as he once did, but when others do—either wishing me dead or my work pulped—he can be found providing the emoji for “love.”
Meet my court, my ardent followers. Some will be contacted by federal agents. Some will have their comments removed. But, I am told, I am a reason for them to live, to get up in the morning, to string some words together, to be seen.
Ah, the things I have in abundance.
All works of art by Ivan Albright.