One Glance of His Eye

What would you give for Milo to look at you in this way? To judge from the way the members of Milo’s Finishing School talk about him, if you are a fan, everything. (To enroll, go to his Telegram channel and wait for the invite link. Applications are accepted in the same spirit in which instruction is offered: cruelly and unpredictably.)

We have had quite the lively past few weeks, with everyone in the chat jockeying for Milo’s attention. Some have made memes. Others have written poems. Others have attempted to troll the chat with descriptions of their sexual proclivities (real or feigned). Others—okay, only one—have had sex with food. (We think. There are videos, but the soundtracks are ambiguous to my ear, and the grapefruit, pumpkin pie, and oatmeal aren’t talking.) Others outright beg: “Milo, pay attention to me!” I, of course, keep writing about him on my blog.

Sometimes it works, and Milo will respond: “Angel.” “You’re my favorite.” “Nobody understands me but you.” Occasionally, if the speakers are women, he will grant remission from Sharia Tuesday, although given that every woman granted such license has, in effect, taken over the chat on that day, not anymore. (I say this now, but the rules are his. I am just the chronicler here!) But then they will make some infraction of the rules—women posting on Tuesdays, furries posting fur on days other than Friday, anybody posting in Spanish or “other terrorist languages, like Irish, or those weird squiggles”—and the admins will issue a gag.

Gagged members can see the chat but not post in it for a certain number of days (respectively, 6, 3, or 3). Like monks living under the Benedictine Rule, they are excommunicated, visibly present in their absence, obliged to lie prostrate before the door of the church (metaphorically) while the other monks go in to sing praises to God. Some cannot take it and immediately leave. Others write to me, begging for me to intercede with Milo or the admins to let them back in. Others go to alternative fan chats and complain about how Milo hates women.

It is, according to those who have suffered the penalty, excruciatingly painful.

They’re right.

It is.

I know.

Been there, done that, cut the t-shirt to shreds.*

Not, to be sure, in the context of the chat. There, I am Queen Mother a.k.a. the Professor, and the admins do not have the power to silence me. If I make an infraction—as, for example, on the eve of New Year’s Eve, when I was leading a group of several other women in a spirited rendition of “The Time Warp,” and we wandered into New Year’s Eve on Milo Time—I have to discipline myself and/or pay the indulgence.

But more times than I care to count in the past.

Again, not because Milo ever gave anybody the power to silence me. But because I was left, for the moment, on the outside looking in.

And could see him looking at others.

In that way.

Who weren’t me.

You think it was hard standing for Milo through all of the insults that were thrown at him over the past four years—and at me for standing for him? Try looking at one of these photos and wishing you were there with him. Wishing he would look at you in that way, and say,

“Angel.” 

“You’re my favorite.” 

“Nobody understands me but you.” 

There have been tears. Long phone conversations with girlfriends. Much anguished note-taking. Even more sitting on my hands not writing to him. 

Milo knows this; he always knows what women are thinking, somehow. It is a gift—and a curse. It is also why I sit on my hands.

Because this is the Real Test. The Love Test. The one that God sets, over and over and over again.

This is the way Marguerite Porete described it in her Mirror of Simple Souls for which she was burned at the stake.** It is the Soul who speaks, wondering how she could tolerate not having the “pure love” which God had for her “of Himself, from His pure goodness, from His will alone, as a lover has for his beloved.”

What if, the Soul asked herself, God put her love for Him to the test?

And afterward, I considered in my pondering, as if He Himself were asking me, how I would fare if I knew that He could be better pleased that I should love another better than Him. At this my sense failed me, and I knew not how to answer, nor what to will, nor what to deny; but I responded that I would ponder it.

And then He asked me how I would fare if it could be that He could love another better than me. And at this my sense failed me, and I knew not what to answer, or will, or deny.

Yet again, He asked me what I would do and how I would fare if it could be that He would will that someone other love me better than He. And again my sense failed, and I knew not what to respond, no more than before, but still I said that I would ponder it.

And this I did, and I told him of my thoughts. I told Him that these three things were far more difficult than what had been said before. And I was in distress of thinking how it could happen that I might love another better than Him, that He might love another better than me, that another might love me better than He.

And there I fainted. For I could respond nothing to these three things, nor refuse, nor deny.

Again and again He assailed me for a response. For as long as I was at ease and loved my self along “with” Him, there was nothing I could do for myself, nor could I have calm in myself. I was held in bondage, and I could not move.

No one knows this if he has not been tested in this way. So I could have no peace until He had my response. I loved myself so much along “with” Him that thus I could not respond from loyalty. If I had not loved being “with” Him, my answer would have been immediate and loyal. 

And suddenly He demanded my answer, if I did not wish to lose both myself and Him, on account of which my heart suffered great distress. 

I have witnessed Milo’s fans going through this test in the chat over and over and over again. “He hates me,” they write to me. “I love him so much, and he does not answer my messages.” “I made him mad,” they worry, hoping he was paying attention. “What should I do?” “I would do anything for him,” they promise me, with the corollary when he does not respond in the time frame they want of him: “I hate him.”

“A young fan looks lovingly at his hero”

Milo himself has borne the brunt of this test more times than he can count. He has mentioned the women who died (literally) after having sex with him—not because they had sex with him, mind you. At least, not directly. It is one of the reasons, he says, he is better off being gay: “I couldn’t take the body count.”

But then there is Kassy Dillon, who claimed this past summer that she is now “haunted” by a photo she had taken with Milo when he was helping her launch her career. And there is Lucian Wintrich, who sabotaged Free Speech Week 2017 after Milo offered to mentor him. And then there is Caolan Robertson, who made sure that Hope not Hate and the Guardian became aware of a bundle of documents purporting to be an accurate record of Milo’s interactions with his erstwhile Australian tour operators, but which were, in fact, “a blend of real emails and forgeries, designed [in Milo’s words] to humiliate me and damage my business.” Why did the Guardian believe Caolan? Because Milo had helped promote his career, too.

What had Milo done that these former fans and mentees should turn on him? Why did their adoration and love turn to hate? Clearly, they failed the test. But why? Was it too painful for them watching when Milo paid attention to someone else? Or, as with Lucian, was it too painful when Milo paid attention to them? How could their initial attraction to Milo turn so rapidly to hate, so much hate that they would go out of their way to hurt him and his career? To the best of my knowledge, Lucian was never asked to fornicate with fruit, but he did do some cringe-worthy posts about mayonnaise. Something else must have happened for him to fail.

I think I know part of it. Milo is just a man, but his followers see him as something more. His attention is so valuable to them that they will spend hours and hours and hours in the Telegram chat hoping against hope that he will appear and notice them. When he does—trust me, I’ve been there—they are over the moon, anxious to do anything (they say) just to please him. They have been watching his videos or reading his books, and then suddenly he is talking to them. Perhaps even praising them for a picture they did or a comment they made. Or—hope beyond dreaming—he sees something so remarkable in them that he invites them to come on his show.

“Senpai noticed me!” has nothing on “Milo shared my post on his channel!”

But then the tests begin. “Choose between being in the chat and your pride.” “I give N. the power to silence someone from the chat once a month for being ugly.” “With Thot-Be-Gone you can pay to have someone else silenced in the chat according to the following tariffs.”

“But I was such a loyal fan,” someone will say. “How can you silence me?” “Why does she get to choose who is ugly? What has she ever done?” “He does nothing but troll everyone in the chat. How can Milo like him better than me?” All with the undercurrent: “Pay attention to me!”

Consider the tests that God gave the Soul in Marguerite’s Mirror:

1. Love another better than Him. 
2. Know that He loved another better than her. 
3. Be loved by another better than Him.

Why should God set the Soul these tests? Back in the beginning of this blog twelve years ago, I set myself a similar test. “Exercise for the Day,” I called it: “Trust that God loves you.” And then, when I was received into the Church three years ago this coming Easter, I wrote about the sermon that our priest gave on the day I and the other candidates for confirmation went to the cathedral to be received: “Trust in me.” 

Over and over and over again since I first wrote to Milo and he wrote back to me, I have been challenged to trust him, that he would not lie to me about his interest in what I was sharing with him (he hasn’t, I am certain of this); and myself, that I would not use my friendship with him as a stepping-stone for my own career. (I know—just think who I could become!) When I started getting interviews on YouTube and other media, I gave myself the discipline of always mentioning him, never censoring the fact that he and I were friends out of fear that my interview might not be published. (It was a close run thing in at least one instance, but for the most part has never been an issue—so much for self-censoring!) And when he did not write back to me as quickly as I might hope, I would sit on my hands, sometimes for days on end, reminding myself that my own sense of urgency was not his, practicing trusting that he would get back to me when he was able to give my thoughts his attention.

“He hates me,” I would write to my girlfriends, knowing it was nonsense, but aching for his attention nevertheless. Meanwhile, Milo would keep telling me: “Get back to your research.” As if to say: “Love another better than me.” And posting photographs of himself with other people, as if to say: “Know that I love others as well as you.” (He even calls some of them “mom,” too! Those were hard.) And: “What a waste of you it would be if you devoted yourself entirely to me.” Okay, that is not exactly what he said. What he said was: “You still have to do the Real Work [he means my scholarship] and still spend most of your time on the Real Work.” As if to say: “Be loved for something other than what you have written about me.”

These have not been easy tests. I fight myself every day over how much time I spend in the Telegram chat along with the others, waiting for him to arrive. I set my timer to make myself read something about the medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary, only to find my attention wandering yet again to him. Has he seen my latest messages to him? (Nope.) Is he perhaps doing something in the chat without checking his DMs? (I shouldn’t look.) I wonder what he is working on now. Has anything I sent him recently been of help? (He is still not there.)

What if—just think—I spent my days longing in this way for the attention of God? Here I was, back in 2016, finishing a book on the medieval devotion to the Mother of God, praying to be given the understanding of what it meant to see her through the psalms, and God (or his Mother) dropped Milo into my life—and me into his—almost as if in answer to my prayer. Either God is a great joker—okay, I think He is—or He and His Mother are trying to teach me something through Milo—and maybe Milo through me. He and I have talked about it, what we are doing in the chat, what he is trying to accomplish now with the attention people give him.

I have been saying something like this all along: that Milo is modeling himself on Christ, but that the lessons he is teaching are as much lessons for himself as for his fans. One of them wrote something into the chat last night that gives me hope that perhaps my imagining is not entirely off of the mark. We had a lively discussion about the meaning of sex, which resulted in a number of the younger men declaring themselves greatly relieved to hear that virtue was, in fact, still a good thing, although they found it a struggle to surrender to Christ.

One of the women responded (I think she has been reading my blog):

That’s why many of us are here. We put on “masks” to help us in this pursuit. We have this game we play. But it’s a very serious game. The kind CS Lewis talks about. Milo is Sovereign. Rachel is the Queen Mother. And we are the court and children. We learn to love Christ by loving Milo. We learn obedience to Christ by being obedient to Milo. Rachel, like Mary—Christ’s Mother, helps us mightily. She know Milo inside and out, just like Mary does Christ. It’s as Scripture says, we love God by loving one another. Here we don our “masks” and live, play, and act out that Divine-human romantic drama to the best grace permits.

“We learn to love Christ by loving Milo.” It sounds easy, right? Focus utterly on Milo and learn from that exercise what it means to focus on Christ.

Easy, that is, until Milo sets you the first test:“Love Another better than me.”

Photo of me speaking at the Touchstone Conference, October 2018, taken by Milo

*It was one of the early ones, with some caption on it about freedom of speech. Lavender-colored, I believe. Who am I kidding? I remember everything about it vividly—except for why I was mad.

**Uniquely, by the by. Marguerite is the only medieval author known to have been burned for a book. Trans. by Ellen Babinsky for Paulist Press (New York, 1993). The Love Test as quoted above appears at pp. 213-14.

Thankfully, I am unlikely to be burned for writing about the love tests I endured in 2016-2019 for Milo, now available in hardcover from Amazon and direct from the publisher at Castalia House.

For Milo’s and my continuing lessons in virtue, see The MILO Chronicles. 

For my talk at the 2018 Touchstone Conference on Patriarchy, you will need to subscribe. NB who asks the first question!

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IMAGE KEY

1. Milo as Lord Poseidon (Athens) looking at me as Lady Wisdom (Jerusalem). 3KS Real Life Symposium with Milo Yiannopoulos, August 10, 2018, Tampa.

2. Milo as Rationality looking at Joy Villa, Scientologist. November 12, 2017, Miami.

3. Milo as Sensuality looking at Mrs. Wilkes, Based Tranny. December 27, 2019, New York City.

4. Milo as Christian Philosophy looking at Barry Jacobs, Conservative Catholic Native American Lawyer (and my based friend since high school). 3KS Real Life Symposium with Milo Yiannopoulos. August 10, 2018, Tampa.

5. Milo Veiled, looking at me on our day out with the boys. July 10, 2017, Chicago.

6. Milo Revealed. He sent me this photo to let me know he had arrived for our Real Life Symposium—he was the Surprise. August 10, 2018, Tampa.

7. Milo as Everyman, selfie posted in his Telegram chat. January 15, 2020.

8. Lucian Wintrich looking at Milo, before his betrayal of Milo. Published in Milo Yiannopoulos,“Lucian Wintrich, Sacked, Is Now Retweeting Mayonnaise Recipes,” Dangerous (now MILO), August 13, 2018.

9. Milo looking to God. Cover shoot for Diabolical: How Pope Francis Has Betrayed Clerical Abuse Victims Like Me—and Why He Has to Go, with Foreword by Rachel Fulton Brown (Bombadier Books, 2018). October 8, 2018.

10. Me giving a talk on God the Father, with Christ (as icon) looking at me. Photo taken by Milo Yiannopoulos, 2018 Touchstone Conference. October 11, 2018, Deerfield, Illinois.