An Open Letter to Miley Cyrus

Hey girl,

So, I missed your original live performance on the VMA awards tonight because I was at a Fantasy Football draft party--I know, I don't know what I was doing either. But I saw Twitter blowing up over everything you did tonight... the tongue, the bears, the foam finger, so I stayed up to see the encore performance. I want you to know I'm not mad. I, too, have had some questionable nights with a foam finger; I think that all of us can say that we've been there before. But to quote you, it's about "the climb." I'm not sure where exactly, or what exactly, you're climbing up, but I think it's time that we had a conversation that's been coming for a while. Let's rewind for a second.
We're not so different, Miley. I know what it's like to follow in the footsteps of a man who once wore very large cowboy boots. There's a bit of a shadow that you have to escape, and it's not the easiest in the world. We hail from Tennessee, a land full of talk drinks of water. But look at where you've come from! Look at what you've done! At 12 years old, you were already breaking away. You became Hannah Montana. Do you know what I was doing at 12 years old? Hiding from people in the locker room because I was scared of athletic activities and the prospect of "teabagging." But you weren't. You owned that wig and that painfully caricatured accent because it's what Disney wanted you to do. You knew who you needed to please, and you did, and good at you for it. In the midst of it all, I don't feel like you ever lost sight of who you were. Hannah was a moment, but Miley... well, she's a lifetime. Plenty of other Disney stars have ended up in much worse positions than you are at now. As you would say, "We run things [Disney], things don't run we." At the height of it all, you broke free. Remember that, Miley?
People critiqued you for that... for wanting to be your own person. You wanted to be something outside of Hannah. And even with the haters screaming about how you were rising above your means, you stuck to your guns. Your best friend Leslie said it best, "She's just being Miley." That's why I come to you today, stripped of all the bear onesies and the blonde wigs. Are you still just being Miley or are you a girl who forgot what's waiting on the other side? You have inspired a nation with your lyrical genius. You acted in a Nicholas Sparks movie that made over four times its budget, and guess what? You were nominated for stuff because of it. Granted, one of those was for Worst Actress, but like we've discussed before: off with the haters. You had hair for days, and people LOVED that about you. You were the common girl's girl, and every night as those young girls went to bed, they thought to themselves, Maybe, just maybe, I too could be Miley.

I think where things have always been a little shaky is that you repeatedly keep telling us that you're not Hannah. Listen, pumpkin. We haven't thought of you as Hannah for years. The first outburst was a little uncomfortable, but nothing we couldn't shake off. You screamed at us and told us that you couldn't be tamed, but what I think you were missing is that none of us were trying to tame you. I'm going to get a little harsh with you right now, but you came out of that bird nest in "Can't Be Tamed" like a possessed Natalie Portman with a chip on your shoulder. We didn't want that. We wanted you to release that mane of hair and do you. You do you, Miley. There's no need for you to get angry; plenty of female stars have come before you and shed the skin of their past lives. I know that I never expected you to be stagnant. You're Miley for God's sake.

But you persisted onward and now look where we're at. You've lost all sense of fashion, you have this odd fascination with teddy bears, and you cut all of your hair off. My sophomore year of college, I got really mad at my parents and cut my hair into a mohawk, but you know what? I let it grow back because that's what you do when you're an adult. You tame yourself because sometimes, that's what it takes to remember exactly who you are. As I watched you caress Robin Thicke's penis tonight with a foam finger and then stick that foam finger in your mouth, I saw a piece of myself. Well, not exactly. Actually, on a strictly literal basis, I didn't see any of myself in you, but that's probably because I have an unprecedented fear of sexually transmitted diseases, but that's neither here nor there. What I'm trying to say, Miley, is that we've all been troubled. We've all been lost at one time or another in our lives. Hearts have been broken before and identities put into question, but most of us do something like get a small tattoo or make the unfortunate decision of posting poetry on Facebook. Granted, we don't have a national stage, but I dare to say that we would do anything like you did tonight. It was a lot, babe. Watching you motorboat that woman's tiger printed bottom filled me with concern and worry. I've never been mad at you. All of this concern is coming from a place of love.
You used to be this force--a young woman who exemplified what it meant to come into her own. You provided enough angst for us to fight through our issues, but not so much that we would get grounded. It was you who helped us come into our own, and now we, collectively as a nation, want to do the same for you. I'm not sure where you're headed tonight after the VMAs; I'm assuming you'll be going to some swanky party with a lot of alcohol, sexual tension, and possibly some molly, or "Miley" to your younger audiences. But I think after that, you need to go home for a bit. Let that hair grow out. Again, not to be mean, but you looked like Cynthia from The Rugrats tonight. Go hang out with Billy Ray and do more songs in your backyard. That was nice. And when you get back on a plane to LAX, take your dream and your cardigan and keep them close. As my mother would say to some of my more adventurous friends, "Leave a little bit to the imagination." Whatever you're going through right now, whatever might be troubling you heart, is not bigger than you, Miley. This is just a hiccup: an instance where making out with a doll in a pool seemed like the perfect idea at the time, but may be a little weird to look at in five years or so. We believe in you and everything you do. Now it's time for you to believe in yourself. Let all those butterflies fly away.

With love,
America

Don't Even Look at Me, Peyton Manning

Today, for the first time in my existence, I got invited to join a fantasy football league. Sure, it was a pretty glorious moment, but in the same breath, it was a moment filled with complete and utter anxiety because I do not follow professional sports at all. I keep up with the SEC because it's part of the contract I signed as a Tennessee resident 23 years ago, but other than that, I don't really dabble in the sports community. There's a whole lot of suppressed memories that remind me that's not the world that I belong in, and I'm okay with that--it's similar to how I feel about not being welcomed in Anacostia, or most restaurants with vegan options. When asked by my roommate about how competitive I was going to be about it, I explained that I really didn't care if I won or I lost because I was mostly in it because of a heightened sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and the prospect of delicious hot wings. But obviously, I was going to need some help getting started.
I asked my friend Mark who invited me if he could offer some assistance, and he pretty much told me that this is not an aspect of life where people help each other: this is a part of life where people win. I respect that, but I also respect my dad, Wendell's, advice that he gave to me a long time ago, "If at first you don't succeed, find something you're good at." So, I pretty much gave up on it immediately. I don't care enough to actually learn about the players... that would cut in to the amount of time I have looking up Jennifer Lawrence GIFs and inside information about the 10th season of Grey's Anatomy (speaking of, let's all take a moment of silence for Sandra Oh's departure in nine very short months). I had no interest in learning, let alone mastering, the art of fake football--if I were going to do that, I would have just played. People throughout my life always said, "I'm kind of surprised you didn't play football," which is a nice way of saying, "Hey, I think you're kind of fat, but in a useful way." In fact, I played a couple of sports growing up, but none ever panned out: too many yellow cards in soccer for running into people as hard as I could, never placed on the actual volleyball team because I threw volleyballs really hard at practice, and constant benching in softball because I got bored and sat down in the outfield. Some people would say that it all comes down to the fact that I'm not patient or disciplined enough to be an athlete, but I think what, or whom, it actually comes down to is Peyton Manning.
One day in first grade, it was announced that we would have a special guest coming to class... a friend of one of our classmate's families. Mrs. Ellis could barely get the name out without shuddering in his woven-knit UT orange teacher vest. Peyton Manning would be making an appearance, and most everyone in class continued to pick their noses or playing with their toys, but I remember being so excited. As someone who ingested as much culture as he could from an early age, I knew who Peyton was. So, I went home and told my parents--my dad said UT football was stupid, and the whole thing was rigged, which also reflected his opinion on every Presidential election leading back to Reagan, and the outcome of any given season of American Idol. But my mom understood where I was coming from, so we drove down to Wal-Mart so that I could pick myself up a disposable camera. There was going to be picture evidence of how good of friends Peyton and I would be. I imagined that he would teach me about football, give me piggy back rides, and eventually, we'd go hang out in Neyland Stadium... I could hardly sleep the night before, I was so excited.
But the day came, and naturally some overbearing parents who caught wind of the Peyton-sighting showed up to class. Finally, the time was approaching for me to meet Peyton, aka MAH BEST FRIEND, aka my future personal-Judas. I stepped up to the desk he was sitting at with shaky hands, unsure of what I should do with the camera and the piece of paper and all the emotion. He didn't look as big as I imagined, which is probably because I envisioned him to be a giant. He didn't say hi, he just reached and got my paper and signed it. I stood there nervously and asked if he would take a picture with me, and all I heard was "No." Mrs. Ellis, in her totally baffled state, ushered me away from the table.
I took the autograph to the back of the room by me and stood with a giant knot in my throat. Peyton, why had you forsaken me? I couldn't even bare to be in the same room, which should have been a tell tell sign that I would go on to have a lot of resentment and boundary issues in my life. I didn't want to look at him because he had betrayed me. We were supposed to be best friends. He was going to be like the big brother I never had, notwithstanding the older brother I already had. I looked down at the signature, which proved that he had taken absolutely NO time to practice cursive in elementary school, and I ripped it up. I threw it in the garbage, and I never looked back. I went home that night and threw the camera on the couch, and said I wanted nothing more to do with Peyton Manning or football, which was not too much of a stretch because I didn't have a lot to do with it before. I refused to root for him, and when they won the title in 1998, I made a conscious decision not to eat Tostitos for a solid chunk of time. (Okay, probably for like, two weeks, but I really love salsa. Get off my back).
Many-a-Peyton-fan along the way has tried to make excuses for him: he was probably just flustered or he wasn't allowed to take pictures or maybe I'm just telling the story wrong. Regardless, Kathy bought me a five dollar disposable camera, and he really didn't have to be such a twat waffle about the whole situation. I'm sure he has no recollection of me--though we may never know exactly how (other than reputable athletic ability and an unprecedented presence at the University of Tennessee), he's seemed to make a career out of the sport and has probably met too many people to count. But when people watch his Saturday Night Live skit of him working with United Way and a bunch of children, only to physically and verbally abuse them, people giggle because they think, Oh Peyton, you would never talk to children that way. Well guys... Peyton would... Peyton did.
So, I eventually decided to do the fantasy football league. My team's name is "Peyton Manning Sucks," and I plan on filling the necessary positions with people that have really cool names. But most of all, I want this fantasy league to be vindication. I do care about winning... not over the other participants, but over Peyton and the ghost of that seven year old who was totally screwed over by one of the most inflated egos to ever grace the beautiful green grass of Neyland Stadium. I wanted a hero, and I got Mr. Manning. I would have even taken that alcoholic, Tyler Bray as a class visitor before Peyton Manning. From that point on, I focused on heroes that exemplified the skills that I wanted to emulate, like Tina Wesson from Survivor (I will tell you the much more gracious, heartwarming story about meeting her later), or David Sedaris.

The Taking of WMATA 123

I just wanted to go home.

I could see them eyeing me from across the car, one of the most unfortunate times to be a bigger guy. I was a meal--a Thanksgiving feast to all these drunkards, and in the midst of all their McDonalds munchies, I looked like a combination Big Mac, Supersize Fry, 20 piece nugget, Diet Coke smorgasbord. The white people were, officially, out of control. I had always wondered what it would be like to be in this moment--the day that people reverted back to their animalistic ways. And all I could do was sit there and think, How did I get here? What led me to this moment? Let me tell you.

***

About six hours earlier, my roommate and I decided to go into the city for a Beerlympics competition. Sure, it seemed a little college-y, but I'm an addict for competition. Shortly after we arrived, we were sorted into teams, and the games began. After a handful of beers, we decided to go and meet some friends in another part of the city. After navigating the crowded floor of Cafe Citron via a combination of walking/salsa-ing to Jennifer Lopez hits, we finally found our group. As a classic group of 20-somethings, we danced awkwardly in a circle for approximately 20 minutes, fist pumped, and then decided to leave. No one was inebriated beyond help or anything, but it was obvious that we wouldn't be driving--there were only a couple options left and, sadly, one of those was taking the metro back toward home.

The Saturday night metro isn't really a place that you ever want to be because it's a completely mixed bag. Sometimes people throw up; sometimes people are making out; sometimes you don't even want to know what happens. So before we got on the metro, I called our other roommate, our last hope, before we got on the train headed toward our apartment. Normally, I would have given up after one call, but the mixture of competition and low-grade beer made me more optimistic than usual. Five calls later, there was finally an answer: a groggy roommate who was not going to pick us up. The moment had come to face what would be the most absurd and slightly dangerous Saturday night metro yet. Most of the time, if you just keep to yourself everything turns out fine. I mean, sure, you might get awkwardly approached by someone, but it's a relatively painless process because the metro runs on a timetable, or at least that's what we like to believe. We transferred over from the red line over to the orange, and it seemed as if the ride was going to be relatively patient, until the next to the last stop. On the way to the station we needed to get off at, the train came to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, and we were stranded in the car with a train full of people and a faulty speaker.

Whenever the train stops in the tunnel, I immediately imagine that we're under the Potomac, even if we're not. I imagine that the walls are going to cave in, and then I'm going to have to swim out of the tunnel Fear Factor style--and then I immediately regret smoking because I'm going to lose and then there's not going to be any trained swimmers to save me. And then something happened on the metro, as if everyone else was also thinking that the walls might cave in to. Essentially, everyone went bat shit crazy. It all started when two large women got up from their seats and addressed the young men who kept staring at them. They had green and purple tubes coming out of their hair, kind of like The Hunger Games, but without any regard to trying to look glamorous. This only caused the guys to egg them on more, which caused the one with green tubes and suspenders to get up and start grinding on the pole, which in turn caused everyone to pull out their cameras and start videoing the entire thing. I, too, pulled out my camera because I knew that if I made it out of that godforsaken train car, I wanted to write about it--our fear and our pain. 

My friend Samantha sat their, her eyes full of worry. We've gotten close, but none of us wanted to go out like this, and under the influence of alcohol, it seemed all too real that this could really be it. Suddenly, one of the guys next to us announced, "Maybe we need to start voting people out." This seemed like my moment, so I began working with the gay guy and his overbearing friend next to us. If I've learned anything this summer from watching Big Brother, it's that America LOVES the gays, so that's a good addition to my alliance. We also decided to include the girl who was passed out in the seat in front of them because, well, God only knows what would happen to her if we didn't... but it was at that moment that we heard screams from the other side of the metro, and we looked down  the car to see that the two large women were pulling away from each other and saying, "We'll give you something to take pictures of!!" and then they started making out again. The guy they were with who was wearing a Juggalo shirt stood propped up against the door nodding his head, and someone screamed, "Let's eat someone! Let's eat someone!"

It was at that moment that I realized that we weren't on Big Brother, nor were we in a metro car anymore... this was Lord of the Flies kind of stuff. Over the course of 20 minutes, we had progressed from a normal, semi-unstable Saturday night metro train to an island full of one-time-young-professionals contemplating who to kill for food. I worried first and foremost about the girl who was passed out. Being a young female passed out in an urban setting is already dangerous enough, but being in this urban setting only made the situation more pressing. I knew the obvious choice was probably the outlandish lesbians, but I couldn't help to feel paranoid: I was one of the meatiest options. I would provide the most nutrition--I could sustain at least half the car for at least thirty minutes. I thought about the future and what it could have been, and I began to actually wonder if that train car was where it would all end. In the mean time, everyone was screaming, begging the metro car to start moving, and the speaker would occasionally erupt into a loud noise that mostly sounded like, "Passengers...time...sorry...thanks."

And then the train surged forward. All the lesbians, alliances, and Juggalos couldn't keep me from the excitement I had in my heart. It was as if I had been saved, and once the doors opened, I hugged Samantha goodbye and ran out the doors with my roommate. One young man stopped to tell a metro worker that he was an "inbred piece of..." well, you get the idea, and in a last moment attempt to restore civility to the world, I yelled, "Everyone has lost their damn minds. Go home. Everyone go home," and people started moving toward the escalators. You never know what the future holds, but when you're stuck on a metro of potential-cannibals, you do learn to appreciate whatever is ahead. Again, I survived the Saturday night metro, but as for the next one... you can never be sure.

Suspension

On Friday, I didn't go to work--I wasn't feeling well, and I already woke up late, so I texted my boss to let her know that I would be about 30 minutes late, and then she told me that she thought it would be good if I took a day to myself. I just finished up finals for my summer class, and I've been relatively busy, so I took her up on it. I went over to our apartment's pool because I hadn't gone swimming all summer--there was always something more important to do. The lifeguard looked like he could care less about pool safety, and the kids at the pool were on the shallow side, so I took my shirt off, and I jumped. And down there in the deep end, I let out as much breath as I could, and I floated down toward the bottom... gently abandoning the air above for whatever was resting down there, but I couldn't completely hit the concrete. I could feel my stopping point just inches below me, but I couldn't quite get down there: I was suspended--stuck somewhere between the top and the bottom.

And outside of being in the water, being suspended is one of the worst places in the world to be. My favorite definition, according to The Free Dictionary, of suspension is: a postponement as of a judgment, opinion, or decision. See pause. It reminds me of one of the most humanizing days of my life. The first time I ever watched someone die was the first time that I really ever understood what the definition of suspension was. Because as my friend and I took turns diving in to the Little River looking for this man neither of us knew, I would take these moments to just exist in the middle of the water--mostly because I was afraid of what would happen if I found him. We were diving to the bottom, stirring up all of the silt and the algae, so the water was thicker than smoke. I would dive and search, mostly feeling around for a stray hand or perhaps a foot... maybe a head, but to keep my sanity about me, I would also just wait. I would stop in the midst of the silt and pray that the river might pull me away... to someplace where someone wasn't dead, I guess. I suspended myself from life, and for the few seconds I did, I didn't have to be apart of a world that I didn't want to. But the last time that I dove in, I paused for too long; I found myself at the bottom of the riverbed without a single breath of air left in me, and I looked up to the top of the water, and I could see the blurriness of the sky. I grabbed at my throat and pushed as hard as I could toward the top, unsure if I would make it or not, and inside the goggles I could feel tears start to scorch the corners of my eyes. I had paused too long. I was caught in a point of suspension. I began to feel my throat close, but I wouldn't open my mouth--I refused to be the second body we were searching for, and once I finally made it to the top, I pulled the goggles off, and I said that I couldn't search anymore.
Within a minute, we found the body, and once it was pulled to the surface, I was the one who pulled him out. And that's when I watched him die--suspension was over. I think we knew that he was going to be dead within the first couple minutes of searching, but it's nothing that anyone wanted to say. And even in the less extreme cases, it seems that's the way it goes. We find ourselves suspended in every stretch and aspect of life, but it's never something we want to admit because we would rather live in the comfortable hysteria of life instead of figuring out a way to potentially deal with it. But for me, the only place that I can comfortably be suspended is, in fact, in the water. I sat there in the middle of the pool, letting all of my air out and waiting for my body to respond to what it wasn't getting--and that sounds morbid. It's morbid, isn't it? I wouldn't dare tell that to someone outright because I'm sure it sounds like I'm trying to off myself or something, but I feel like it's the opposite. I think the reason I let myself float in the middle of the pool, as what little air in my lungs decreases and decreases, is because I want to remember what it's like to value life so much. I want to be reminded of how scared I was to stop living because, as of late, I've been stuck in that metaphorical suspension--I've forgotten what it's like to want to live for something bigger.
I suppose it's something that happens to all of us from time to time, but for some reason, I've become so self-aware of it. I'm not the most conventional Christian that's ever existed, but at one point, I went to church every Sunday, and the only sermon that I remember is one about being comfortable. Our pastor, Corey, told us about how dangerous it is to be comfortable, and whenever you become comfortable with your life, you should take a moment to enjoy it, and then find a way to make yourself uncomfortable again because nothing gets done when you're comfortable. And I'm going to take a moment to step away from the Millennial stereotype and respond to all the people who are saying, What do you have to complain about? You're in a giant city with a great education and a job. And to that I would say, you're absolutely correct. By all standards, I have nothing to complain about because there are people in the world that have barely any of their needs met.
But no matter where you're at in life, we all have needs: we need to feel like we're alive or that we're working toward something with greater meaning than we understand now. For most of my peers, that's a spouse... or at least someone to share their lives with. And I respect that, and I guess I want it too, but not now. That's what makes the feeling of suspension more terrifying. When you're suspended with company, you don't feel as compelled to move--we're a species who loves company. That's why we throw dinner parties and call our friends when we're drunk. But when you're suspended, as if you can't breathe with everyone else, and their oxygen comes in the form of intimate relationships, you feel even lonelier. You have to make a choice: acquiesce to what is normal, or rather, should be normal... or you rise above the suspension. You find the bottom of the river or the pool or what-have-you, and you push harder than you ever have before... because you want to find the happiness you're searching for within yourself. If you can get to the top, there's got to be some other people up there who feel the same. They want to be excited about life; they want to work to achieve something bigger than they had ever imagined. And what makes us so essential to each other is that we want something that everyone else seems to be desperately trying to escape from: most of us like people, but right now, in this body of water and confusion, we want to find the answers we want inside of ourselves.
As I semi-drowned myself in the pool, the lifeguard who didn't originally look that interested in saving lives started taking notice of me. He eventually asked me to come out of the pool to show him my pool pass, which I think was his way of saying, Listen, I'm really not up for pulling your body out of the pool, so I'm going to need you to cut the shit. I didn't try and explain what I was doing to him because I don't feel like he would really get it: I wasn't trying to kill myself; I was just trying to remember exactly what it was like to be alive. I think we need to be reminded what it's like to be alive sometimes because if we aren't, we're just going to waste it. And the light at the top of the water may be the only light we see--we can't be sure that there's anything bright and shiny on the other side, but in my final moments as my respiratory system starts to seize and my brain begins to shut down and I float into that place where your body calms itself to pass peacefully, I want to know that I was reaching for that light. I want to know that the person I share the rest of my life with was right there, pushing for something more as well. I want to go out fighting.