It Don't Matter If You're Black or White

I ran down to the bank in Chinatown so that I could grab my rent money for the month... nineteen days overdue, but what can you do? Living in DC has made me nearly blind, as people are nothing more than obstacles on the sidewalk that I'm trying to dodge while getting to my destination as quickly as possible. I rounded corner, passing under the Chinatown gate, and I always take a minute to look up at it: it's design is so ornate and colorful--nothing like the rest of the city. About a block down, I walked into the BB&T, wiping my face of the 99 degree sweat from outside.
As I stood in line, I was texting my roommate, begging him and his friend to come have lunch with me because no one came into work today, and then it happened. This man turned around and asked me, "What's it like to walk into the bank and not be profiled?" I looked up and there he stood, an African-American, about my height and approximately 300 pounds. I knew what he said, but I wanted to make sure. "Excuse me?" So, he repeated the question, and I couldn't come up with any kind of answer. I felt my stomach drop to my shoes. I looked to the teller ahead for some kind of answer, and she just shook her head at me. She, too, was African American. I looked around, and there wasn't a single other white person in the entire bank; it was as if the public statement of white America had suddenly been laid on my shoulders. As someone in the public relations industry, I assumed that I would be able to handle such a feat, but instead, I broke the most important rule of the trade. I had nothing to say, so I just stared.
He decided to continue without me, "I walk into this bank, and they act like I'm going to rob the place. Last week, I brought a 6,000 check in here, and they looked at me like I had stolen it. They act like they're scared of me." I glanced at the bank teller as she closed her eyes, "It's not right, man." I looked at him and felt my mouth drying out. The television in the corner was reporting on the Trayvon Martin case when I responded, "I agree. It's not right. I hope that one day we live in a world where it's not this way." He stared at me like what I had said was not enough, like there should be something else more qualifying in my words. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I know what racism looks like. I've seen women back home in Tennessee clutch their purses as a suited black man walks into a restaurant. I get it; I know that it's real. But for me, it's not how I live my life. I never thought he was going to rob the bank. I barely even noticed he was standing there. Before I proceeded to the next teller, I looked at him and said, "I'm so sorry," but I wasn't sure what for. Apologizing for the racism of white people when it didn't seem clear that there had been any racism exacted? Apologizing for privilege I never asked for?
And the privilege is complicated because it only carries over until something else takes precedence. Today, I'm wearing a bright purple polo, with matching Chuck Taylors. My voice opened up to the teller to reveal the slightly high-pitch tone that didn't quite fully mature through puberty. My usual demeanor, enthusiastic, is ever present, and on days like this: with the matching outfits and the voice and the demeanor, it's easy to assume the stereotype--he's a homosexual. It's a common assumption I've dealt with my whole life, and one that has, at times, had an effect on the way I was treated. But Abu at BB&T didn't seem to take offense, nor did he seem to offer support or condolences. He simply gave me my rent money, and I left on my way. But this morning, when I stopped to grab a pack of cigarettes, I walked up the counter smiling, and the cashier looked me up and down and pursed her lips together. Afterward, she barely made eye contact. Could I assume what she was thinking? Sure. Will I ever know for certain? No.
I turned on my computer once I had gotten back to my office, and Facebook was pulled up. A friend had posted an article entitled, "What Should Trayvon Martin Have Done?" And my retort to that would be, "what should any of us do?" It's complicated and complex and nearly depressing if you think about it too much. I had this unconscious flow of emotion as this man asked me about my privilege at the bank. It automatically began with guilt, though I had done nothing wrong. I wanted to offer some kind of resolution or apology, without proper evidence that an infraction had been committed. And then it turned to nervousness, similar to when an entire class gets in trouble for one student's actions. I know that there's wrong in the world, but it was me who was having to provide an answer for it. And then, it turned to a confusing mixture of sadness and anger. The anger stems from the fact that someone can look at me and see exactly what he or she wants to see; in this case, a tall, white man. It was assumed from those three identifiers that I had never been profiled. Not for my socioeconomic status or religion or sexuality. It was assumed that I was living the white man's fantasy. But the sadness is even worse because it's the startling realization that the progress we're making toward equality is incredibly slow. We spend so much of our time comparing our circumstances to one another that we get lost in the semantics. We fail to recognize that not a single one of us should take importance over the other.
I wish I had an answer for that man, because other than his painfully abrupt sociological discourse in line at the bank, he seemed like a very nice guy. I wish I had an answer for the Trayvon Martin case, a nauseatingly complex case full of details we've overlooked in pursuit of some kind of racial reasoning. I wish that we didn't judge people based on their race or gender or sexuality or religion or anything else. There's a lot of things I wish for the world because I believe we would better for it. Instead, I just do what I can. As I entered my building, I could feel someone behind me, so I walked in first, held the door for him or her, and closed my eyes. Why? Because it shouldn't matter who you were doing it for; it's a person, and that's reason enough.

One Year Out

Last night, I went on a date that I, honestly, had invested way too much in before it even happened. We had been talking via text for about three days, and--if I can be candid--I thought this was going to be one that I took home to the parents. Essentially, I was Ginnifer Goodwin in He's Just Not That Into You, and it played out exactly how the movie title reads: not. that. into. you. After the date, we had a brief discussion about how I wasn't relationship material, and then I came home and drank a bottle of wine... because that's how you handle rejection. I had never done this on a date before... putting that much pressure on a first meeting. I blame my recent trip home, where I met all my friends from home who are either married, engaged, or about to be engaged: going to Tennessee is essentially the equivalent of visiting a group of 16 year old traditional Indian girls... everyone is getting married off. But, as I was consuming my entire bottle of 3.99 wine on a Saturday night, I thought to myself, What is your life? Look at your decisions. And then I was hungover for work, and that's never cool.

It's been 14 months since I graduated undergrad, 13 months since I started this blog, 11 months since I moved to Washington D.C., and 12 minutes since I last ate an entire sleeve of Oreos. Not to be cliche, but time goes by incredibly fast. I'm not saying that I feel like the past year has aged me immensely, but I will say that I saw a guy in front of me at 7-11 the other day with a pint of Ben and Jerry's "Strawberry Shortcake" and a Coke Zero and thought to myself, "Damn. That looks like a good night. I wonder if he'd want to be friends." The past year has been exhausting, and I had a ton of people tell me that it would be the hardest year of my life that I've faced thus far, and it was.
But there's a caveat to that--it absolutely was the most trying 365 days I've faced in my life, and in the same breath, it was also the most amazing days that I've ever seen. I suppose in comparison to a lot of people I went to school with, the journey that I've taken has been a little bit different. I decided to move to a new place with new people, and with all of that being said--it hasn't gone half bad. On the outside, it looks pretty good, and by most standards, I'm doing okay for a 23 year old: good job, decent friends, solid school record... but below the surface, there's all these questions and issues that you can't know about--the things that we just don't talk about.
But this is not a place where we keep secrets: we established that a year ago. This is a place I come to share with the rest of the world all the things that make us nervous and scared and a little embarrassed. In public relations, we're told about the value of the infographic: a way of conveying data to people that makes them more receptive to actually taking it in. So after I found out that I would be alone at home tonight because my roommates had actual dates, I started an infographic at work. Even I need a picture to describe what's going on in my life. So I jumped in and reflected on 2013, because tackling the entire past year was just too hard for my heart to handle. This is what I found.

And what we can learn from this graph, other than the fact that I turn to pizza when I'm lonely, and that I am a raging chain smoker/wino, is that we shouldn't be ashamed of the things that make us a little less than perfect. The dates and the pizza and the singing and the wine: well, it makes us human. I once thought that I knew exactly what my life would look like once I was at this age, and it doesn't look like that at all. Life is a little bit of a complexity: it can be a tragedy or a comedy, all depending on the way that you look at it. A year ago, if you asked me how I would feel about living with three sports buffs, remaining single, and ordering approximately two Dominos pizzas a week... I probably would have been pretty sad about it. But when you put it in perspective, it's a pretty funny life--mostly because it's the last thing I would have planned.

I think we all try and prepare for things so that we can do our best at outsmarting life. We follow an unspoken syllabus because we think that's what will make us happy. I see it done every day: by people back home, by people in DC, by people everywhere really. But it's pointless because your life is yours, and if you want to go and get a pint of Ben and Jerry's with a Diet Coke... well then damn it, you should. And it shouldn't matter that it makes you feel old or lame or socially awkward because that's your life, and honestly... no one else has any more idea of what's going on than you do. So, for 

you seven year olds that read my blog, my advice is to plan your future very loosely. Know where you're going, but don't Google Maps the directions or anything... because inevitably, you're going to miss a turn or take the exit two before the one you were supposed to take. And for everyone else, myself included, we know the big secret to life: there's absolutely no controlling it, and even more than that, there's absolutely no stopping it. Because very similarly to my car, when you have it figured it out and fixed, something else is inevitably going to break down. And that's okay because we're a resilient species. We do what it takes to make things work.

So, since I've started this blog tonight, I'm about four beers deep, a couple cigarettes in, and about to pee on myself because I haven't taken a bathroom break. It's been almost a month since I submitted my last entry, and even though it's almost 3:00am, and I'm about to pee on myself--there's a satisfaction that comes with writing another post. It's an idea that's sat in my head for weeks, and originally, I anticipated that it would be filled with wisdom and insight, when in reality--it was more of a display of the embarrassing things I do on a daily and/or monthly basis. But that's the point: no one is wise. This world isn't particularly about being smart--it's partially about luck and partially about determination. You have to be at the right place at the right time, but most of all, you have to be determined enough to keep going so that you eventually hit that string of luck. And in the mean time, you can always run down to 7-11 for a bottle of wine.

Why Don't You Sleep, Child?

Lately, I've been walking around in a daze. After finding a lump a couple weeks ago, I had convinced myself that I had cancer, and I spent the entire week in a complete frenzy wondering exactly what stage it was going to be in... in case you didn't read the last posting, I didn't have cancer. But, since then, I've walked around completely lifeless, and at times, I get dizzy, and I'm always exhausted. Naturally, I've tried to self-diagnose and some of the potential culprits have included, but are not limited to: lupus, anemia, Kawasaki Disease (thanks, Grey's Anatomy), early onset dementia, and more. But after some consideration, I've decided that maybe it's not any of those things.
I keep a constant stress level of about a 7 out of 10, and most nights, I don't actually lay down to go to sleep until about three in the morning--the concept is foreign to me. My life has consisted of waking up, mulling about my day, finally catching my stride around 4pm, doing homework/housework/or workwork until about 10, then socializing after. When I spoke to my roommate, Andrew, and my life-coach, Kasi, they both recommended that I just needed to go to bed earlier, and I don't even know how. Maybe lay in bed and softly sing myself a lullaby? Something melodic, but topical like No Scrub by TLC? I'm not sure.
But all the best things happen once the sun goes down, and I'm not really sure what my life would look like if I chose to miss all of those things just so that I don't feel like passing out all day long. If I could take caffeine pills, I would, but I already worry enough--I don't want to be so excited, so excited, and then so scared. It just doesn't seem worth it. So, I have to make the choice: give up three of the most socially active hours of my day, or perhaps, try and go to bed before midnight every night. It really is quite the conundrum, especially when I go back and reflect on all the great things that have happened between the hours of 11:00pm and 3:00am. Last week, for instance, I avoided going to bed for some odd reason, so instead, I got on one of the three dating apps that I have on my phone (I'm lonely, okay? Just let me have this). I had been talking to someone for a couple weeks who seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint it. We talked a little more, and we realized that we had ran into each other at Einstein Bagels a couple weeks earlier--we flirted for a little bit, and then I didn't get charged for my cream cheese. Once we established that, we figured out that we live thirty seconds walking from each other, and we took a walk at 2:00am and kissed in the woods. If I don't stay up until 2:00am, then when am I supposed to have my Generation Y, rom-com-esque moments with people that I've met in Einstein Bagels/through online dating apps? It truly is a mystery.
But the problem with that lifestyle is that it comes with a price. While I was looking through pictures tonight from a year or two ago, I noticed that I looked so much more alive and fresh at 21 than I do now. I also shaved my translucent beard more often, which was also a plus. And now, as happy as I am in my pictures, I've started noticing the most difference in my eyes. They're not as open as they used to be, and they have these pockets around them, which either means that Zak Bednar farted on my pillow again (see Did You Fart on My Pillow?) or maybe, just maybe, all those hours I spent up and about during college are finally catching up to my still gorgeous, but feeble twenty-three year old body. I don't understand exactly when it happens to a person, but much like a baby or most of the kittens my mom wouldn't let me play with as a child, things need sleep.
College was a different story though--college was a time when no one slept, and looking back, that was always kind of our choice. We blamed exams and tests and papers and (a Maryville College student's favorite excuse) thesis, but in reality, we could have all been asleep by midnight every night if we had wanted to be. But instead, Nam and I would make our way down to the Carnegie parlor and take the community recliners and make small homework cots where we would spend hours on Facebook and Twitter, when we weren't talking to each other. And when that would become too monotonous, we would go outside and listen to sophomores and juniors talk about the superiority of Pokemon Red and Blue to Pokemon Silver (which, if you're asking me, nothing could trump Pokemon Yellow, but that's neither here nor there). Simply put, the nighttime was our time, and it was a moment that we could come together and share stories and stupid opinions and other aspects of life that didn't matter when the sun was up--things that the daylight deemed too trivial for its presence.
It was those nights that I saw some of my friends go through the greatest transformations that I've ever seen a person go through in his or her life. You don't sit down over lunch at 1:00pm and casually discuss what it means to lose one of your best friends to an untimely death or how it feels to question the message of God that you've been fed your entire life. Those kind of things happen when everything else in the world gets quiet, and you're left with the noise of the voice in your head, the crackle of your fourth cigarette smoldering, and the words of the person sitting next to you, if they choose to even speak at all. That's the power of the nighttime--it has the strength to break you down to the core of who you are while retaining the levity to bring you back up again, and you don't get that unless you've spent a good deal of your life living as much in the nighttime as you do in the day.
But in a way, that part of the nighttime is a chapter. Andrew is in bed, and so is our other roommate, Matt. The third roommate, Ben, is not coming home for the night, so that leaves me, up again past midnight typing all of the considerations I used to have in forum, into an appropriate-length blog post for the world to consider on its own. And I guess it's good to come to the realization that everyone, myself included, needs sleep. A year out of college does a lot--just a few Fridays ago, I was standing behind a young guy at 7-11 who had a pint of Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake and a Coke Zero, and I thought to myself, Damn, that looks like a good night. I wonder if he'd want to be friends. Obviously, it wouldn't hurt to get some rest--so that's what I plan on doing, as soon as I'm done. But no matter how many nights I choose healthy sleep over the alternative, I will always look to the night with the deepest respect, and I'm sure that there will be plenty of evenings where that special presence of the night will resurface again. It will always be there waiting--holding all of the vulnerabilities and adventures that the daylight can only dream of.

Didn't We Almost Have It All?

I like to split my life into semesters because it's the easiest way I know how to turn my life into a television show. Each semester is representative of a season, and the breaks between class used to give me a break between each season, similar to the summer hiatus more television programs take. My life hardly fits into the semesterly format anymore, and in a year's time, semesters will cease to exist entirely. I have no idea how you split normal, everyday time into television seasons, but I'm sure once I'm faced with the issue, I'll find a way around it.
But in my television show, I alter the way I see things--no matter how boring or frustrating my life may get, I find a way to make it more entertaining or more dramatic in my mind. I make the frustrations mean something, even if they don't actually mean anything at all in reality. Some people would call that neurosis, but I tend to think it's just my way of constantly writing. I tend to make my life something I would rather see than what may actually be in front of me and because of that, I find no boredom in my life--every day is worth living to the fullest. The only problem with my method is when the lines between reality and my reality get blurred. And it happens to the best of us... the blurriness that is. It may not be a TV show in your mind, but we all have the things that we come to believe are true and they don't happen to particularly align with reality.

---

One of my favorite, most recent scenes that I play in my head happens every morning on the way to work. I recently found the song Underneath Your Beautiful, and I start it once I get off the escalator at the Metro Center subway stop.
If Shonda Rhimes has taught us anything about modern day television, it's that every powerful scene is best if accompanied by an equally powerful song. But as I transfer from Metro Center to Chinatown, the song grows in intensity, and once I get off the train and exit the turn stall and approach the summit of the final escalator, the song crescendos then grows silent. Sometimes I stop and watch the characters, slightly positioned cater-corner from the metro. There's the guy, and he says to the girl, I don't want to be your choice because you're not my choice. A choice means you have options--that there's a selection to choose from. A choice means that someone else matters enough to be considered. You're the only thing that matters to me. You were never just an option. And then he pauses, and they look into each other's eyes. I don't want to be your choice. And then I realize that I'm blocking the metro exit, and I wish that I knew how to screen write because that's good stuff. But I don't know how, and I'm now running forty-five seconds behind, so I walk on to work.

---

And that's when the perception is over. I may be the guy who has come up with multiple seasons of a fictional television dramedy, but I do understand when it's time to come back to the real world, and at times, it's a refreshing feeling. The image of the fake couple at the metro is perfect and eloquent and sweet, but it's just an image--at least for now. And when you can realize that it's just an image, it's almost as rewarding to be able to come back to reality and respect that story and that scene and those characters for what they were in the moment. It's similar to falling in love, or rather, falling out of it.

A little over a year ago, I was in love with being in love. I've come to believe it's a college senior year phenomenon as life is about to make a giant change, and if you can find something to place you in the moment, it may take your mind out of the future for a while. And it did, because for a while, I loved everything I was doing. I loved having someone to make out with, and I loved having someone to talk to. We had a song and inside jokes and mornings where we'd wake up in the same twin-sized college bed, and it really was amazing. And then it wasn't.

I've never been good at lying about important things, and once the new wore off, it became increasingly evident that the fairy tale I had produced in my mind was not what the reality seemed to be. But in too many cases, we waste time because we would rather believe that what we have is what we've come to perceive it as. So in the months before graduation, I tried to make it as fantastic as I wanted it to be. I knew what I wanted it to be, and more than that, I knew that I was the only one that wanted it that way. I was reaching for something that simply wasn't, and in a way, that's more painful than the whole thing being over. But then after too many walks and long conversations and disagreements about what the future might look like, I ended up sitting outside on a windy April unsure of exactly what I wanted to do. The conversation just wasn't happening--like, literally--it wasn't happening. So we sat there in silence for a while, and finally I said, I don't think we need to do this anymore. And there were tears, but for once, they weren't from me. I closed my eyes and leaned in for a final kiss because that's how all the best romances end, but when I opened them, I didn't really recognize the person that was sitting in front of me. And that was when I realized that I had fallen out of love. Or maybe more accurately, I had fallen out of love with trying to be in love. Like the image I see some mornings outside the metro, the love I had so strongly believed in had suddenly vanished once I realized how truly not there it was. It didn't mean that I didn't love the idea of it or love what I once believed was there. It was just the moment when you come to realize that a mirage is simply not tangible.
One of our greatest flaws as humans is the notion that we've ever understood what we need. In terms of the basics, I suppose we've gotten that down: the food, the water, the shelter bit. All of that seems pretty obvious. But where it gets complicated is when we try to figure out what will make us complete--you know, after the basics. It honestly doesn't take a lot to keep a human alive, but the struggle comes when we try and figure out what makes a human feel alive. And that's where we step in with our notions and presuppositions. It's just our normal reaction, even sometimes going so far as to try and make those decisions for others: an issue I had a year ago, and one that I've essentially imposed on a ton of fictitious characters. We try and make life what we think it should be with little regard to the idea that maybe life works itself out without our imposing hand.
But the learning process is difficult, so I stick with primarily forcing life decision on to the people who live in my head instead of the people who live... well... with me. I think, at least for me, part of it has to do with being impatient and the other part has to do with having control over something. Television is planned out beautifully, almost to the point that it's predictable. You have the season opener, then November sweeps, then February sweeps, and then the finale. You may not know exactly what's going to happen, but you have a pretty good feeling when it will happen. You have character development, and on the up and up, everyone can fall in love and experience the depths of life (with the aforementioned musical background). And as for my life? There's hardly anything scripted about it--it's about as close to reality TV as you can get. And when it doesn't follow script, all you can do is wait for the next scene and look back and say, Maybe it was never supposed to go that way at all.

Why You Mad?

I grew up in a very loving home, but to be fair, you could insert any emotion into the sentence "I grew up in a very ________ home," and it would probably be applicable. I come from a people of strong reactions, and I've learned the hard way that the rest of the world just doesn't quite function the same way that my family does. Last week, as Kellie Pickler won the mirrorball trophy on the 16th season of Dancing with the Stars, I sat on the couch counting the number of times I had touched each pillow (5) as they announced the results. Partially obsessive-compulsive charged, partially emotionally charged, I needed to do whatever I could to see Kellie win. And I'm not sure that my persistent touching had anything to do with her victory, but when they announced it, I let out a throaty yell from the couch lifting myself from the cushions. My roommate Ben recorded it, and it hit me, I must be like an animal to these people. All the tears and yells and laughter... they don't even know what it means.
And that's always been the problem--getting people to understand. It's not so much that you need someone to talk to after the fact as much as you need someone to just kind of get what's going on when it's happening. When I come in with a 6 pack of beer, My Best Friend's Wedding, and a pint of ice cream, I want someone to be able to look at me and say: hm, the movie means he's sad about relationships, the ice cream means he doesn't think it's going to get any better, and the 6 pack is because he doesn't care. That's a complicated puzzle, and it's hard to expect anyone to ever get it--not without a solid 5-10 years of experience with you--but when you find those people, it's more important than you know that you hold on to them--especially when the uglier emotions come out.
And that leads me back to sophomore year of college--a year that has provided me with some of the most absurd stories I've ever written. If you wanted to shine as a student in campus affairs, you were a resident assistant. Because our class was super competitive, we had a list our freshman year of who we thought would get hired--naturally, I was a shoo in. Before my first year, if you were an RA, you were pretty much set in a position to be an RA until you graduated. However, when it came time to be placed in your next building, we were shocked: we all had to reapply. I dove into my presentation and application to distract myself from what had been on my mind for months--the fruitless crush that I had based the latter half of my sophomore year on. I could control this application. I could control the accompanying presentation--or so I thought.
When we signed up for interview times, I went for the earliest spot that I could find: third. I didn't realize who had signed up before me though. Being an overachiever, I got there early and what did I see? The love interest... and the other man. About a month before the interview, I knew that I was out of the weak link of the love triangle, so I had avoided the situation entirely. That was the only way I knew how to deal with it--avoid it. But there they were sitting and enjoying spots 1 and 2, and there I was... number 3, which seemed oddly appropriate. The other man was spot 1, so we were sitting together waiting on the first interview to wrap up. Once it was over, the other man came and sat next to me, and I said, "Isn't your interview over? Why are you still hanging around?" He responded, "Oh, I just thought I'd wait until this one is over... you know, for support." And then he smiled. Instantly, I felt my stomach start to fall, almost so fast that it could have broken the chair I was sitting in. To anyone else, it would have been annoying, but to me... it was devastating. It was exactly what I needed to break me before I went in for my interview, and it worked like a charm.
I stepped into my interview with my literary themed presentation with fun little titles like "I Know Why the Caged RA Sings," and other things like that, but my performance was lost. I walked into the room in a daze--the year before, the whole interview felt like a conversation, even when I was getting hit with really hard questions. This interview though was more like a train wreck happening at seven miles an hour. I went through each slide and unconsciously read directly off every one. All of my moves were awkward, and when I asked for questions at the end, the panel sat in front of me with the most confused faces without a single word to say. I walked out of the room devastated--for more reasons than one.
I knew exactly what I needed to do, or more so, exactly who I needed to go to. I got in my car and drove directly home--to the people who taught me to react the very way I've come to call normal. I drove thirty minutes home and hopped out of my car, slamming the door behind me. I walked inside and saw my dad. I need a gun. Without saying anything else he said, Which one? I responded, The .45. My dad walked to the gun cabinet and got it out with two clips, and turned around and asked, Animal or human target? I just stared at him for a moment with my pissed off expression, and he said, Human target it is. And then we walked outside, I put on the earphones and shot 10 rounds into the target, unloaded the clip, reloaded the next one, and fired 10 more shots. I took the earphones off, and he asked, Alright, are you ready to talk about what happened? And then we went in and I explained everything: the crush, the other man, the interview... all of it.
For clarification, I don't shoot other people when I get angry. This isn't Bad Boys or anything. And when I was shooting the target, it's not like I was imagining anybody's face on it. But there's something special about being able to walk into your house and ask for a gun and not have anyone asking what you're going to do with it. It's a side effect of someone knowing you well enough that they just get it. So my response happens to be shooting inanimate objects, touching things obsessive-compulsively, and celebrating a little bit more outwardly than the next guy. For other people, it may consist of being completely reserved to pretty much every emotion across the board. Doesn't matter how you handle it really as long as there's someone around that understands how you react and why you do it.

Super Dollar Magic Kingdom: A Folklore

Today, I went to the doctor because I found a lump when I was taking a shower. I found the lump on Sunday, so for four days, I feared for the worst. Through my own examination and web research, the signs all pointed to cancer--and not in the way that you say, "I have a headache," then go to WebMD and self-diagnose that you have a brain tumor. (Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. We're all freaks.) This was one of those situations where it really seemed like it could be cancer. I decided to limit the people I talked to about it--I didn't want the sympathy. I was mad. I was scared and I was mad and I was hurt and most of all, I didn't want to die. I didn't want to fight it either--I just didn't want it to be.
Today, I met Alex Trebek, and if I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times--This. Is. Jeopardy. And I could barely enjoy it because I was sitting there, engrossed in potential-cancer land (not to be confused with the much more lively children's game Candy Land), and all I could think was, "Yeah, that's right motherf----r. This is Jeopardy. You don't even know." And all I wanted was someone to accompany me to the doctor--someone to tell me that I was being overreactive, someone to tell me that it was okay if they told me it was cancer, or someone to joke with once we found out it wasn't. But that's not what happened. I sat in Dr. Nguyen's office thumbing through a People Magazine, probably wrinkled from the humidity in the room. The office was sticky and lonely and lingering with all the frustration and worries from everyone before it. I couldn't control my hands, and I dropped my keys when I gave my insurance card to the receptionist because I was so nervous. And all I wanted was to be back--back at Super Dollar Magic Kingdom.

***

Freshman year of college is weird. Weird and hard. You're trying to figure out all these things about what it means to actually be in college, and there's always a wrench that gets thrown in there. For the most part, it was easy. Just the basics of being a college freshman, but as the end of the Spring semester approached, the wrench happened. Things weren't right at home, and because of that, I didn't go back that often. I removed myself from the situation because the energy wasn't the same: it didn't feel like the place full of love that I left. My parents were arguing more, and it was weird because my parents always loved each other. They still do to this day. But at that point, it didn't feel like it, and soon after the arguing started, they would call me. The conversations were always ambiguous, but it always led to the same conclusion: things weren't going so hot for my parents.

So one night, I grabbed my friend Kasi, and we went to Pearsons: the dining hall/run-down dorm that no one lives in anymore. There were couches in the lobby, and we went there because we knew no one else would be there at midnight in March. I immediately bought myself a Coke because... Coke cures most ailments, and I lost it. I cried and I yelled and I cried some more, but it was interrupted--we heard the sound of a malfunctioning machine, and as we looked over, we saw a dollar bill floating gently to the floor. Jesus once cured with leprosy, Moses parted the Red Sea--and on a cool March evening, a Coca Cola machine gave me back my dollar. 

And like all good things, it completely went to our heads. Kasi and I looked at each other in amazement. Could it be? Could one of the main sources of non-human dollar thievery actually be giving us our money back? It was the vigilante of Coke machines, and we didn't care--we took advantage of its kindness. We figured out that the machine would spit the dollar back out every ten minutes, and it wasn't long until our friends became suspicious of why we would come back to our dorm with six cokes in hand. 

We made an agreement: we would tell two other people, one apiece, about our treasure trove. We would invite them into our ranks, and they too would experience the beauty that was what we had titled "Super Dollar Magic Kingdom." So, I told my friend Ellison, and she told Bridget. Soon after we decided that to clear up roommate issues, they had to tell their roommates, so then it was the six of us--we would take turns with the machine, inserting the same dollar in every ten minutes, and over the course of a month, we cleared out the Coke machine twice. But after a while, it became more than a Coke machine. We talked about our business there: the stuff that didn't matter and the stuff that did. And at the end of the night, we would sneak back into Copeland Hall with backpacks full of drinks just because we could. And when people would ask us where we got all the Diet Cokes from, well, we'd just lie.
The fateful day finally happened that we returned to Super Dollar Magic Kingdom, and the machine had been replaced. Apparently, after about 110 beverages missing, the Coca Cola company finally got the picture and decided to start charging again. And with that, the saga of Super Dollar Magic Kingdom came to a close. In college, we all grew apart and together and apart and together, but when we reached our senior year, we were celebrating the final 100 days until graduation with the rest of our class, and we all ended up back at the same table. Sadly, there were no free cokes, but there was free champagne, and that's pretty much all you can ask for in life. I don't know if they remembered it, or most of the stuff we had been through, but when I looked around at that table, I saw the people that had gotten me through college--all at the expense of the Coca-Cola company.

***

I was a mess waiting for the doctor to arrive. He asked me the basics: allergies, family history, smoking and drinking habits. I didn't understand why we couldn't get straight to the real issue. But when he finally mentioned the lump, I felt dizzy. I had been swallowing all this for nearly a week, begging someone to give me an answer that only a doctor really could. He inspected it, and then quickly responded, "Justin, that's not cancer. You're fine." And then, naturally, as an entitled grad student I tried to explain how many things it had in common with cancer, and then he explained how many things the lump didn't. He said, sometimes, things just grow--we don't know why, but it's a cyst. And it will probably go away.

Then it was over. All the worry and panic and stuff was just simply over like that, but it was the four days waiting that was harder than the actual visit. I wanted to be back in Pearsons on the nasty couches. Not because I want my college life back or because I can't let go. It had nothing to do with that. It has to do with the five other people I was sitting with. We need people, and we need that support. We get through and manage life when we lean on each other--and the fact that anything can be solved over a Coke, regardless of all that carcinogenic aspartame. 

Our Favorite Sins

My friend Anna and I were in her bed watching Grey's Anatomy one night during my junior year. Callie's mother told her that she would not be attending her wedding to Arizona because she couldn't stand the thought of her daughter marrying a woman--she couldn't stand the thought of her daughter, who she loved, spending the rest of her life in Hell. I immediately became disgusted, while Anna literally cheered the mother on. Immediately, I turned around and looked at Anna as if she had slapped me across the face. Anna is one of my best friends, but there she sat, cheering on a fictional mother as she told her fictional daughter that she would be spending her eternity in Hell for... marrying a woman. Anna and I immediately got into discourse with Anna's greatest defense being the morality of the Christian religion, her upbringing, the book of Leviticus, and the very limited references made in the New Testament (let it be noted, none were said by Jesus). I, in response, quoted a theme that occurs repeatedly over the course of both the Old and New Testaments: judgement. We'll discuss the aftermath of that conversation later.

This week, Jason Collins of the Wizards, formerly the Celtics, made the very bold announcement that he is gay--the first athlete of America's four biggest professional sports. I wasn't going to put much commentary in the conversation because I had already tried to state my position last year during the whole Chick-Fil-A debacle (oh, you didn't read What a Waste of Waffle Fries?!). I actually defended the idea of purchasing food from Chick-Fil-A. But what inspires me to address this Jason Collins issue is the comparisons that have been drawn throughout this week. I hear about how Tim Tebow has been persecuted for being a Christian and how terribly he has been bashed as a Christian player, while Collins is being revered for being an openly gay athlete--and that's where my issue comes up. Tebow, a Christian, has been bashed? As a child, I used to try and make the case about what it was like to be white or to be a boy or to even be a Christian. There's a lot of prejudice in the world, and I'm not saying that there's not prejudice against white people or men or Christians, because there is. There truly is. But in my twenty-three years of life, I can say that I've never been told that being any of those things was wrong, and I was surely never told that I would go to Hell for them. My eternal damnation was never on the line because of my race or gender or religion. And I dare say, this is not the Crusades anymore. Christians are not blamed for blowing up buildings; Christians were not gassed or burned in small confined spaces. If the Christian religion's biggest current hurdle is being criticized on MSNBC, then I think we're doing okay.

Posted the morning after the Collins
announcement

And I say we because I, myself, am a Christian. I find my religion to be immensely personal and not the topic of frequent conversation. My prayers are mine and God's, my beliefs are only applicable to me because I don't think it's my place to determine the rights and wrongs of others. I struggle enough doing right on my own. But I find it hard to explain to agnostics, atheists, non-believers what our message is and who we want to be when in the midst of our own "persecution," we use announcements like Collins as a "general reminder" that homosexuality is a damning sin. 
I don't write this to defend the followers of my religion or to convince others whether homosexuality is a sin or not. And I definitely don't write this because I'm a lover of sports. I'm an atypical cookie cutter man--I find very little interest in sports. I recently joined a volleyball league in DC, and it's practically a miracle that I did that because sports were the source of my unhappiness for the longest time. When I tried the whole sports thing in elementary school, that was the first time someone called me a girl. Toward the end of elementary school, when I wasn't coordinated enough, that was the first time I was called gay. When I moved to middle school, that changed to faggot. I wanted nothing to do with sports because when you weren't good enough, that's the kind of thing you became: a joke, a mockery, what others observed as a second rate human--and then after getting called that long enough in the sports setting, it began to stick. I was called those things outside of the game, and then it was my eternity that was in question. I went from not being good at sports to being eternally damned.
So when I saw the story of Jason Collins this week, I nearly cried reading it. He spoke of why he kept his sexuality a secret for so very long. He talked about how no one had done this in a major sport before him. He brought up the way that gay people have been viewed in the sports community, and then just for a paragraph or so, he talked about his faith. He spoke about his religious roots and how he still holds on to those things he learned, and he spoke about judgement. But when I think about Collins' proclamation to the world, I don't see it as some giant thing for the professional sports world--though it is. I don't expect a string of players to come forth and announce their homosexuality. I do, however, anticipate that this is the beginning of a new normal--where it's no longer okay to call someone a faggot on the playground because he doesn't know how to properly throw a football. Because calling someone  gay should not be an insult. And for the gay kid that does know how to throw a football (please teach me--I can't throw a spiral to save my life), I imagine that this is the beginning of a time when we'll evaluate his skills and not his personal life.
So, back to Anna. I left Anna's room that night out of frustration. We didn't go back to discuss the conversation because there was no way I could convince her and no way she could convince me. We didn't even mention the topic for months. And then one night, she sat with me on the porch of our dorm and she began to cry. She told me that everything she had ever known had been turned upside down. She explained to me the gay people that she had met and how great of people they are. She told me, If you ever told me you were gay, I just couldn't believe that alone would send you to Hell forever. I just can't believe that, and it doesn't make sense to me anymore. I don't look at that conversation as a victory--like I had beaten her or something. I did, however, look at it as a victory because her world had been challenged and for once, the idea that one sin could damn someone to Hell forever became incomprehensible to her.
And that's what I urge the world to do--to quit putting weight on your favorite sin, or any sin for that matter. Worry about yourself and quit trying to interpret what God views as okay or not okay in other people. Do not use the triumph of humanity as a crutch for an unrelated agenda. We did not tell the world this week whether or not it's moral to be gay--that's honestly not a question that anyone should be discussing in a public forum. But with it being such a point of contention, ask yourself if you are moral--in every sense of the word. Ask yourself if you've sinned, and then cite James 2:10. I do not see homosexuality as a sin, but I do see the persecution of others in the vanity of your own beliefs to be. We moved forward this week--we're one step closer to eradicating the terrible stigma that comes with "being different." And I don't think Jesus could be happier about it--his words in The Bible are meant to push our humanity forward. It's surely not meant to be used as a roadblock to keep us further separated.