The Doe's founder, Milan Kordestani, shares some of his favorite narratives.

Founder's Picks

I hop in the car, tear off my sweater and slide the window down, letting in the fresh Florida air. The cab drives us away from Miami International Airport and I’m greeted by the driver in a thick Spanish accent. He’s a giant of a man, filling up his entire seat. A tribal tattoo straddles his heaving bicep. A huge hand with two gold rings grips the steering wheel. His mouth is hidden behind a mask. Masks are like underwear now, concealing my favorite part of a man’s face: his lips. 

I greet him back and he looks at me in the rearview mirror, sitting in the backseat with my dark, curly hair hidden beneath a bucket hat, wearing a tight, thin-strap tank, with accents of gold adorning my ears and neck. He looks away quickly and drives in silence for the rest of our 20-minute ride. Is he repulsed by me, or afraid that he’s not?

Later, the tropical sun beats down my neck as I trail along South Beach. I make eyes with a chiseled jogger in tiny purple shorts. In his round eyes and raspberry lips, I see the teenage boys I once knew. Not the white boys who danced around me in the locker room like rabid baboons chanting "faggot," but the Black, Latino and mixed boys I met during quinceañera practices. The boys I taught how to dance, and in doing so, raised their stock with the girls. 

They didn’t avoid me the way grown men did, or look at me with deficiency like my peers. Instead, they warmed to me, offering me respect and a vague sense of protection. I saw another side of masculinity, one that wasn’t tyrannical. After the quinces ended, I fantasized for years about the men they would become. I look for them in the men I’m intimate with. They must all have this compassion living inside of them, I thought. It’s just a matter of finding how it’s triggered and seducing it.

I first saw the power of seduction as a child at Mami’s side during our errands. As a young, curvaceous woman with long, dark curls, Mami stopped men in their tracks. They would open doors for her, give her discounts at the register, offer to help with her bags as if I wasn’t there. Her playfully flirtatious nature and girlish laugh got her out of more than a few speeding tickets. I saw the world blossom for her. I thought if I carried myself the way Mami did, then the world would open up for me too. 

In Miami, all my dating app engagements confirm “no fems.” Some guys will suggest that I not wear earrings or wear masculine clothing. That doesn’t work for me. In adulthood I’ve enjoyed cultivating a feminine atmosphere: form-fitting tops, floral body oils and a physique I maintain through dancing. The desired effect: to feel pleasure just by having it sit across from me. 

The reactions from men are mixed. Back in New York, I’m met with a bit more grace. I feel much freer in expression, and more desirable, even if the man hiding behind a faceless Grindr profile considers himself straight. I’ve played the game of cat and mouse in the past, being the passive mouse who strips away the feminine, takes off all my jewelry, “butch up” my clothing and is happy to consider men a shiny piece of cheese. Usually, the sex is rough and empty. 

I’m most comfortable playing the cat. I command their attention without demanding it. I question no part of myself especially if I’ve invited you into my home; you’ll take me as I come with the promise of satisfaction. One six-foot-two Georgian man from Tinder meets my warm, wistful demeanor with confusion, trying to convince manhood into me by wrestling. I meet him back with force, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling his lips to mine. His muscles relax as he eased into me before finally surrendering—the sex that followed felt deserved. 

Months go by before he reaches out again, this time coming over with chocolates—something he’s never done before. He embraces me and we very quickly make our way to bed, with him having me in every position I knew of, and some I didn’t. The Georgian claims to come for sex, but stays much longer for pillow-talk. 

He doesn’t have to say he missed me for me to feel it. As I rest on his chest, he vents to me about a jealous friend, tells me a bit about Georgian history and, as he’s done in the past, brings up the conversation of gender, as if I’m the American authority on the subject. 

I taught him about the concept of androgyny, a word he’d never heard before. He asks if I would grow out my beard, I keep from telling him I get it lasered. He mentions he’s not been in love before but wants to marry a woman to procreate. “If daddy ever needs a babysitter, you know who to call,” I joke. He swats my cheek with a smile and kisses me. We have sex again. Each time he’s persistent in making sure all the curtains and doors are closed.

One night a torsoed profile reaches out. After exchanging photos I realize his profile reads “masc4masc.” Disappointed but stern, I tell him that I don’t regulate myself on the basis of masculinity, so best of luck. He insists on coming anyway. When he gets to my apartment I’m lounging in baggy, hip-hugging sweatpants and a tight tank top, freshly bathed, my skin slathered in coconut oil. I feel untouchable. 

He’s six-four, Colombian, with prominent lips and bedroom eyes. We exchange a few words before he kisses me, ferociously, as if he’s been bottling up the urge for a while. I grab him by the balls to calm him down and give him an indulgent blowjob. Once it comes to sex, he enters me hard and fast, until I stop him. “Be nice to my body,” I tell him. 

We kiss again, only this time without pretense. So I lay him down and start riding slow, then fast, and on again. After climaxing, we lay side by side, looking up at my ceiling, and to my surprise he initiates pillow-talk. He goes from gym talk to him admitting he’d never been in love before. He grows silent but looks like he has more to say. As he dresses I ask for his number, he tells me he doesn’t do that.

Sliding my underwear on, I give him a quick hug before letting him out. It would be nice to see him again but the chances are unlikely. Oh well. As I look in the mirror to wash my face, I find all my jewelry intact and my lips swollen from kissing. I make a bowl of cereal, light incense and sleep like a kitten that night.

NSFW

I'm Embracing My Femininity in a Masc4Masc World

I got to the square a few minutes early and stood around awkwardly holding my sign. I had scrawled “Black and Palestinian Lives Matter” on a piece of cardboard in thick black ink a few minutes before I left my apartment for the rally, which was to take place in central Tel Aviv.

It was just a few weeks after the death of George Floyd.

Eventually other people showed up, about 50 of them, mostly Americans with an Israeli parent who ended up back in Tel Aviv. The kind of white liberal who talks big about social justice back in the U.S. but blindly shows unwavering support for Israel—the kind of white liberal I was until a couple months ago.

It wasn’t long before I was approached by a white Israeli man and his friends, who wanted to know why I’d added “Palestinian” to the slogan on my sign. After all, this was a show of solidarity for George Floyd, the latest victim of racist police brutality in America. I was taken aback. As an American new to Israel, I felt that I couldn’t ignore the parallel problem of occupation, and the police and military violence against innocent Palestinians. Just a week before this event, Eyad Hallaq was shot dead by Israeli police in East Jerusalem. He was 32 years old and autistic, walking home from his special-needs school. Were these issues not related? Was it wrong to demand that another persecuted group’s lives matter too? The man raised his voice and declared that if he knew I’d be there with that sign, he wouldn’t have come to the rally at all.

To him and many others, America has problems with racist violence but Israel can do no wrong.

I moved to Israel about a year ago as a lost Jewish-American post-grad, with no career opportunities in the States and a burgeoning romance with an open-minded Israeli I met while traveling. Israel literally pays Jews to move here and claims to offer career help and other services in English. So, I fell for the ruse.

I allowed myself—and my alliances—to be bought. At the time, I wasn’t even aware that, while I could get citizenship with just a letter from a Rabbi stating that I’m Jewish, a Palestinian with proof that their parents were born there could not.

As soon as I set foot in the country, I felt a wicked push and pull. I was bombarded at every step with people welcoming me to my “homeland,” or asking me why on earth I would dare move there. Nothing about the place felt like home and every time I had to assert that I belonged there because of my Jewishness, my family has, in a very literal sense, never been from that part of the world. The same goes for most, if not all, of the Ashkenazi inhabitants of Israel today.

Israeli culture is fiercely exclusive in a way that feels wholly intentional, and yet conflicts with the practice of bending over backwards to entice Jews to move there. It’s an exclusive club that keeps people who were born in Israel feeling like a part of something larger than themselves, and inspires them to fight in the army, despite the fact that they have no choice in the matter. The underlying psychology reminds me of a high school clique, where repelling outsiders gives the insiders something to bond over. This extreme nationalism has gone beyond the point of being merely frightening—not to mention hypocritical—as a nation that was founded in part as a response to the horrors of ethnocentric zealotry gone unchecked now weaponizes Holocaust Remembrance Day for its own political benefit.

Furthermore, Israelis love to co-opt American culture, most of which is Black culture to begin with. At the same time, they relish nothing more than to complain about all of America’s problems—its president, its crumbling healthcare system, its addiction to fast food. This obsession with plundering America for all it has to offer, and then turning around and acting utterly superior, mirrors America’s relationship with its Black citizens.

Israelis treat Americans like a necessary nuisance and a political pawn, sweetly luring them out to the Middle East to help them displace more Palestinians, while Americans often treat their Black peers like criminals, turning a blind eye as they are relegated to the fringes of society, provided with systems of housing, healthcare and “justice” that are riddled with often-deadly racism.

The country of Israel is overflowing with hypocrisy—so much so that if you tried to cut it all out, there’d be nothing left. While America, the land of the free that locks kids in cages, is undoubtedly as hypocritical, I’m beginning to understand what makes the Israeli experiment so particularly toxic—and perhaps worse. I think about the liberal college friends who shamed me for moving there in the first place, and how I wrote them off for engaging in an issue far away when America has so many human rights crises underway that could be a higher priority—or at least easier to work on from there.

I finally understand where they’re coming from when I remember the rally I went to, where a proud Israeli man told me he believes that Black lives matter but Palestinian lives don’t.

Justice

Religion

Israel Treats Palestinians How Americans Treat Black People

Autistic spectrum disorder is a social disorder that affects one's ability to take in sensory information and influences how they understand and react to the neurotypical world around them. I was diagnosed with ASD a year and a half ago, at age 16. Since I started school, I have had classes with boys who have ASD (one in 34 boys do), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, or any combination of the above. There was always at least one guy in my year at school who was neuro-diverse (not neurotypical).

But during my education, I have never met a girl who I knew had ASD. That makes sense because only one in every 144 girls is identified with it. Statistically, there were fewer than half of the necessary number of students in my year groups to have even one girl with ASD. Twenty-five percent of boys with ASD are diagnosed before age six, while only eight percent of girls are. By age 11, half of boys with ASD have their diagnosis compared to 20 percent of girls. There are fewer girls than boys with ASD because there are fewer girls than boys diagnosed with it.

For those of us who have been missed (including myself, up until the last year and a half), living without a diagnosis means living without the necessary support.

On a good day, my ASD can feel like a bouncy ball bouncing inside of me, giving me energy and motivation to be hyper about everything. On a bad day, my ASD feels like my brain is made of macaroni and an ant is traveling through tubes making the inside of my head itch. On the worst days, my whole body turns into macaroni tubes full of ants. It's unsettling, stressful and exhausting.

Most of these feelings make it very difficult to learn at school. When I'm in a good mood, I have too much energy to focus on the lesson. When I'm in a bad mood, I don't have enough energy to focus—or even be awake.

My ASD means that my brain runs 24/7. I’m always thinking about something: usually multiple things at once. As a result, I struggle to sleep at night, which means that I have disturbed sleeping patterns, which affects my concentration and energy levels during the day.

On a typical school day, I can only really focus and give my full attention to something for about half an hour before the other thoughts get too loud. That means in the rest of my classes, I am distracted and not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, or else it takes me considerably longer to get through a task than everyone else.

So, long story short: I'm not very productive in classes.

My ASD makes me feel the need to plan everything. On my way to school—on the bus—I'll plan conversations with people I know I'm going to see. If I am given a task at school, I will spend a lot of time planning how to do the task instead of actually doing it. In my German class, that means taking five minutes to just sit and figure out how to approach a textbook exercise before starting. By the time I'm ready to do the exercise, the rest of my class has finished. Because I spend a lot of time on planning, the plan becomes very important and unchangeable to me, so when someone wants to change something—or something comes up that prevents me from fulfilling the plan—that can be really stressful and make me feel stuck.

It can be as little as one of my friends wearing something I've never seen before to finding out I'm getting a new teacher. The former will be distracting for the remainder of the day, but not get in the way of me doing anything, while the latter is extremely stressful and makes me very angry. Significant changes exhaust me and take up all my energy, which prevents me from doing anything else, which can be super problematic when I am at school and have to get things done. Changes can make me want to isolate myself and give me a nasty attitude toward the activities I enjoy and the people I like.

My ASD makes me very set in my ways and very sure of my opinions. This can become challenging when I don't understand or agree with something or someone in class. It’s not that I think the other person or what they are saying is wrong. I just can’t understand, and I become super fixated on digging into the topic until I finally do understand. People can often get frustrated with me because I can come off as argumentative when I'm just trying to work out the differences between what I'm thinking and what they’re thinking.

In terms of schoolwork, if I don't get something, I usually won't bother going through the process of trying to understand it—it can feel like a fight. Consequently, I don't understand parts of my courses.

Socially, I find if someone says something I disagree with, I have trouble accepting it. One time a teacher told me they thought Mozza was better than Pizza Express. I didn't like it, but I was able to move on. Another time a classmate told me they felt uncomfortable about trans people. I struggle to talk to them about anything other than schoolwork now because I find it impossible to accept their stance on the topic.

In every class at school, I have my own chair, and if I don't get to sit in it, or someone else is sitting in it, I can get extraordinarily stressed-out and uncomfortable. I also have routines at school that I keep. Every Friday, I have pizza for lunch with a friend and when others come along, even just once, I get furious. The whole experience becomes horrible for me. It’s not necessarily that I don't like the person, but because I feel like they’re not meant to be there. They’re not usually there, so why are they now? It makes me confused and agitated.

Some of the ways I feel towards certain situations can be confusing for others. They often dismiss the case as not a big deal, and my behavior as childish, immature or unreasonable. Others’ attitudes in situations that I find stressful can often be more stressful than the situation itself. If a teacher doesn't understand how anxiety-inducing I find doing classwork in a group or pair, or if they think I only need to sit in a specific chair because I’m difficult, I feel guilty, self-conscious and angry at myself—on top of the anxiety.

ASD in women isn't a big conversation or portrayed much in the media. As a result, when I talk about my ASD at school to friends, I am met with skeptical comments like, “You don’t seem autistic.” One girl even went behind my back and told my friend she thought I was lying about my diagnosis.

I don't “seem” autistic because of something called masking. If I don't know how to behave in a situation or what to do with myself (most of the time), I subconsciously hide my natural behaviors by imitating others around me, which can make me appear neurotypical.

It doesn't impair my ability to achieve things, particularly in areas that interest me. In fact, if I'm interested in something, I will focus on it until I know everything about it (and I will end up knowing everything about it). Because of my ASD I look at, and engage with, the world around me differently than a neurotypical person, which enables me to ask questions which might not occur to a neurotypical person.

When I was first diagnosed with ASD, it felt isolating and limiting. I really didn't want it. But over the last year and a half, I have realized that my diagnosis explains my reactions and feelings toward a lot of things, which allows me to understand what I am going through and why. Learning about my ASD has also taught me that it’s not limiting—it's empowering.

Education

Insiders

How I Try to Learn With Autism

It’s been ten months since my daughter arrived. Ten months. Yet I am still unable to accept my new life as a parent. There’s no dramatic accidental-unwanted-surprise pregnancy story here, I willingly chose to start trying with my partner, I made up my own mind and it was all planned. Yet still I am unable to accept this new life. It has been so monumentally difficult to accept that my mental health has suffered immensely. I have a history of anxiety and depression, so it might’ve been in the cards—but I never expected to end up in such a hole for so long, without being able to pull myself out of it.

Why can’t I accept it? I’ve reflected on this a lot. I’ve dug deep, there were times when all I could think about was: “Why?” Why has it been so impossible for me to ease into the groove and enjoy being a dad? Why does everything feel like a chore? Why am I grumpy, moody, passive-aggressive, withdrawn and all the variations of simmering, suppressed anger you can imagine?

If you think about something too hard you never get the answer, so it came to me when I least expected it. Like a tragic eureka moment, the lightbulb went off and the realization hit me: Deep down I never wanted this. It was an utterly shame-filled epiphany. I felt immediately disgusted with myself. I felt idiotic, immature, selfish. So many self-descriptive slurs came bubbling up and spilling out of my subconscious. How could I have done this? Is this just an extreme reaction to an intensely difficult and overwhelming life transition? I sat with it. Deep down I never wanted this. Was that my truth?

By this point, I’d been going through repeated cycles of depression, anger, feelings of hopelessness, exhaustion, mental and physical fatigue and every month or so I’d have a meltdown. Our baby arrived in June. By Christmas, I’d referred myself to the therapy services run by my local council. I was way down deep in the blackest of holes and the only way out, it seemed, was to be able to talk to a professional.

I was only given six sessions. It’s not a lot but if you can allow yourself to open up you can make decent progress. In the first session I was afraid, but by the second appointment, the words came out of my mouth, “I wonder if I even really wanted to be a parent?” Before my therapist could reply, I quickly added, “But it’s too late now, I know.”

I still wondered if I was just my panicked mind trying to find a reason for my extreme reaction to this beautiful little newborn baby entering my life. But the truth was there. I knew it was true because every time I thought about it, it made total sense. It felt right. If I think about those words, “I never wanted this,” there’s an inner calm that emanates from my gut.

There was a time when having a child felt like the dream. Four years into a long-term relationship, the decision was made. My partner had always been clear about her ambitions to have a family. I’d already been a father figure to my nephew. From the age of one, I’d been there for him, since his dad wasn’t around. I’d never had a dad either, so I wanted to make sure he didn’t go through what I did.

My liberty is one of the most important things in my life. While my partner dreamed of having a family, my dreams were less concrete and centered around peace, comfort, freedom, relaxation. I imagined a life where I could meditate every day, avoid overworking, come and go as I please, travel, enjoy life to the fullest. I was already doing that to a degree, but I was working toward a time where I could really settle into a wholesome, nourishing lifestyle that allowed me to be as solitary as need be. As an introvert, my lifeblood is alone time: time to reflect, process, generate ideas, read, write, draw, paint, meditate.

When did I change my mind? My partner started to go crazy. Driven by a deep biological need to start our family—but also by a deep psychological trauma relating to financial security—she became a workaholic. Desperate to reach a certain financial status before she could begin to think about her dream, she lost herself in work. In the end, she had a breakdown.

Men are trained from a very young age to bury their feelings. We are experts at it. So that’s what I did. I buried my desire for a quiet life to make her dream a reality. By the time we found out we were pregnant, I was so convinced it was my dream too that I was overjoyed. The pregnancy was a happy nine months. When she arrived though, a few tiny hairline cracks appeared in my jubilant facade. We came home exhausted after an 18-hour labor, slept for 15 minutes and awoke to the door buzzing. The first arrival was downstairs. Within half an hour, we were trying to entertain three family members, barely able to think straight as they fired questions at us, posed with the baby and expected us to feed them.

A few weeks later, I was back at work, but I work from home. This space I’d occupied as my own was now taken up by all of us. This place now became a prison of sorts, where I couldn’t escape my parental responsibilities. The noise, the claustrophobia, the lack of sleep, the lack of space, time, energy. An introvert’s nightmare. My nightmare. My partner’s dream.

So I descended into depression and total disharmony. Every parent goes through it. I’m not a special case. It’s one of the most unsettling transitions anyone can go through. Most parents get through it because they learn to accept it, because it’s what they wanted. But my baseline is a deep aversion: Everything is a chore. Every difficult situation amplified by my need to escape. This is not the life I wanted. In my darkest moments, I’ve wished for death to come and whisk me away, a cowardly wish because I could never end it myself.

I have some coping mechanisms: exercise, going out for walks and so on. I have processed some of the early trauma, too. But I will never be able to escape this life. My dad left me when I was a few weeks old. I can’t let that happen to my daughter. I give her my all because she deserves it. She’d never know I don’t want to be doing this. It’s not her fault. So, my work now is acceptance. It’s all I can do: deal with it.

Being honest with yourself is the first step towards self-healing. I know what the problem is and I’m working toward coping. I hope these words resonate with others who feel similarly. When I searched online and there were very few articles on this subject. It’s taboo. Acknowledging that you’ve made a life-changing choice that you regret is not easy. People will think I’m ungrateful, despicable. How do you tell people? You don’t. You keep it to yourself.

Hopefully others that share my experience will read this and find some solace. You’re not alone.

Mental Health

Tearjerkers

I Regret Having a Baby I Never Wanted

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

I never knew what being bipolar meant. I always associated it with my dad yelling at my mom whenever she was in a bad mood. “Your mom’s bipolar, I swear to God,” he would tell me. 

I have this memory of him telling my mom to “take her happy pills.” As a 12-year-old, I had no idea she was depressed; I assumed the medicine was something to make her laugh when she was having a bad day. OK, so bipolar is when you’re happy one minute and mean the next, got it. Mental health was never talked about in our household. It was swept under the rug, never acknowledged. Even after I was diagnosed with an eating disorder at 18, my parents refused to recognize there was something wrong in my brain. 

Until I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder this past summer.

Bipolar disorder is defined as “a disorder associated with episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.” I found myself exhibiting the behavioral symptoms, which include risk-taking behaviors, excess desire for sex, hyperactivity and impulsivity. I’d have racing thoughts and stumble through sentences. 

I started “sugaring” when I was 22. I heard it was easy money: Go out with an older man for dinner in exchange for a luxurious lifestyle. My experience was a bit different. The first “daddy” I had made sex a large part of our arrangement. He was only five years older, so it felt like having a boyfriend who didn’t care about my day and gave me $400 for taking his cock. I dissociated the first time I slept with him, and I would with every man I met. 

After a while, my job wasn’t “having a sugar daddy” anymore; it was prostitution. I was selling my body for money and disguising it with something people wanted to try. I’d disappear for hours, sometimes days. I let myself get into Ubers with men I didn’t know and go to places I didn’t know. I met strangers in hotel rooms. I acted out rape fantasies. I always said yes until I finally learned to say no. 

I stepped away from that life, but I didn’t know the worst was yet to come.

The pandemic took a major toll on my mental health, but I kept the storm inside me to myself. I felt selfish complaining when the rest of the world was in the same boat. I refused to go to therapy. In my opinion, it's not my place to whine when millions have it much worse. So I self-medicated with drugs, booze, even sex. 

My best friend urged me to go to the ER after a breakdown last August. I kicked and screamed that I was fine, that I didn’t need any help. I finally caved on one condition: I could bring my stuffed giraffe. I’d never been to an emergency room before. I was by myself, lost, looking for someone who could help. I made my way to the nurses’ station, where a nice man asked why I was there. 

“I’m pretty sure I’m bipolar,” I said with tears running down my face.

“We’re gonna get you some help, OK?” he said.

Eventually, I was called back to the “we need to make sure you won’t kill yourself” ward. Every 20 minutes, a new doctor came to my room, and every 20 minutes, I told my story while they took notes with the same stone-cold expression.

It’s no secret that American healthcare sucks. I couldn’t get in with a psychiatrist without a recommendation from a general practitioner, and they couldn’t recommend one until I saw a therapist, no matter how much I cried on the phone, begging someone to help. 

I had to spend nearly $1,000 (with insurance) to talk to someone. I was sick, and no one would help me. I didn’t have a broken arm or terminal illness, so I was shoved to the back of the line. After I finally spoke with a doctor, he recommended switching the medications that my general practitioner—who had little to no psychiatric experience—had prescribed. I stopped those cold turkey, and for five days straight, I threw up and lost control of my thoughts. I wanted to kill someone. If I could have gotten away with it, I would’ve stabbed someone on the street. 

Once the storm settled, I felt myself again, but I knew it was temporary.

Medication hides mental illness; it doesn’t cure it. It can’t take your demons away. It hides them in a closet, where they wait to take you away. I even tried crack. I didn’t even think about it; I just did it. My boyfriend worries I’ll disappear. I honestly don’t even know if I’m gonna be able to finish this piece. So far, I’ve bought a desk, lamp, new table, diet cat food, shampoo and a couch. I’ve cleaned the house twice and snuck the rest of my coke at 9 a.m. And, as of ten minutes ago, I got drunk while dog sitting. 

Mania doesn’t give a warning when it’s coming or tell you how long it’s going to stay. 

I’m spending insane amounts of money on cocaine. It’s an expensive habit, but I crave it every day, and it takes me 30 seconds to get it. I can’t sit still, and I’m five minutes away from texting my dealer because I need to get high. In fact, I’m high on my way to my parents’ house for Easter. 

I want to believe I’ll get better, but optimism only lasts so long. You can have a strong support system, but it can’t fix you. You can have a prescription, but it can’t stop your dark thoughts. You can have vices, but they won’t cure the sadness in your heart. 

It’s on you to try, even when you’ve given up; but then again, when have I ever taken my own advice?

My Bipolar Disorder Pushed Me Into Drugs and Prostitution

Hope is sweet earth shaped like a popcorn-bedazzled wand. Mullein boasts a bouquet of fuzzy floret leaves that dance at its roots and invite the hand to touch her. Seasons before the global pandemic, mullein called to make me her ally. She’d dazzle and entreat me from her summer station on the lawn of my neighbor, a devoted, down-to-earth Nana with a grandchild who also danced like sunshine. Nana gave me permission to harvest whatever I saw coming up. I promised to share the medicine. Mullein follows one of my favorite patterns of the sweet earth: “Everything you need is nearby.” And so she grew on the lawn of this beloved, longtime smoker to teach me about the woman who needed her. The kinds of people who would need her soon. And how to prepare me for the grief that would surely sit atop my lungs like pneumonia. The sweet earth teaches us to read her patterns. 

The sweet earth has a pattern of death. When Brazilian carpenter ants outgrow the forests’ capacity to sustain them, parasitic cordyceps fungi cull the population to maintain the dynamic equilibrium of the forest. That balance is necessary so that one species can’t become too large, as to destroy the ability of the entire system to regulate life. Indigenous people hold sacred the life-death-life cycle. This worldview understands that the death of an excess of carpenter ants will create space for new and diverse life to flourish. This worldview understands the one group of beings does not hold the right to disrupt the homeostasis of the entire ecosystem. The power of disruption is checked by death itself. 

As an ecological activist and rootworker, I dissolve the false separation between the patterns of nature and social behavior. Human beings are shaped and governed by the ecosystems they inhabit even if those ecosystems contain iPhones, concrete and subways. 

All-natural even if our diets are genetically modified. 

Even if we feel separate and enact the violence that flows from our falsehood. 

Our actions set off chains of reactions within the homeostatic ecosystem that is the earth itself. The disease that she experiences is reflected in the fractal of our bodies. Viruses and other bundles of genetic information called exosomes are exuded from bacteria, fungi and multicellular organisms, like pigs, in response to stress. Stress is a call for help, and this genetic information contains a diversity of adaptive genetic resources for the organisms to make use of. 

The coronavirus received these genetic stress signals emerging from the animals, in particular, the massive pig confinement operations and herbicide-soaked fields of Central China and adapted as all beings adapt. As all beings must. And she came to us, with her sacred communication. 

From the Chinese case studies, I learned that older folks had the highest mortality rates and I saw corona as just, especially when it displayed the same patterns in Europe. Old people destroyed the world. Ate excessively and had me inherit this shitshow. I saw the earth grieving. Eastern philosophers remember that grief lives in the lungs. The lungs are the interface between the human body and the world. And so the coronavirus became our disjointed relationship and made her home there. 

The abundance of plants in my world gives me direction as to how much medicine will be called for later. In the early days, I distributed my abundance of mullein medicine to all the elders in my life and friends who knew my game. And I waited until the virus arrived on my side of the world. 

But my side of the world is wounded and scarred. It has a body politic that is shaped by its past conditioning. In yogic philosophy,  past conditioning leaves an imprint or grooves on the subtle body which shape the response of the entire organism. These samskaras, or impressions, are in the words of yogi Dr. Kamini Desai, “Like channels that despite all the potential outcomes we have the ability to create, keep us reincarnating the same results into the reality in repetitive and predictive ways.”

The groves set forth by our racist history came alive during the pandemic and resulted in actual death. The groves of our racist history have impacted the physical redistribution of brown bodies in places where the air is sickened by the shitshow of industrial life. These folks are asked to be the buffer zone between white excess and its ecological repercussion. This grove, this samskara, is known as a zone of sacrifice. 

Seventy-one percent of Black Americans live in counties that violate EPA air quality standards. A Black family making up to $60,000 a year is more likely than a white family making $15,000 per year to live next to a toxic facility. Over 78 percent of Black people live within a 30-mile radius of a coal-fired power plant expelling toxic waste into the air. Black people are three times more likely to die from asthma than any other group. Black people are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than a white person, and the same goes for indigenous people. COVID mortality is directly linked to the air pollution that folks of color are positionally exposed to. According to a study by biostatisticians at Harvard University, even a small increase in long-term exposure to fine particle pollution leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate. Black and indigenous disposability is a part of the cultural and ecological samskaras of this country. 

But hope is sweet earth shaped like a popcorn-bedazzled wand. The institutions created in the samskaras of America’s racist history are ill-equipped to dismantle the structural racism that results in Black and indigenous disease. As our precious communities undergo the pressure of dying under the weight of this empire, our bodies exude adaptive genetic resources in the shape of exomes and viruses, genetic resources that shape-change in the soil and waters surrounding us, that shape-change in the trees and the birds and the insects. Who carry the seeds of our green allies like mullein, so that we can also adapt to live another day here, to become the virus in the chest of this empire and sit our whole weight upon it so that it can die, suffocating under the burden of our grief. 

Environment

Climate Change

Goosebumps

Zones of Sacrifice: Nature Will Defend Itself, Even Against Us

I started playing baseball when I was five years old. When you’re young and living in a small town, especially in the South, parents take sports very seriously. They want all their kids to be athletes. Most of the kids I grew up with either played baseball, football or both. Watch rec games, youth games or high school games down there, and the stadiums are packed with thousands of people just to watch kids play. It’s a way of life. 

That energy fueled me. Some of the best friends I have today as an adult I met through baseball. On travel teams, I befriended kids from the surrounding area and cities 15 to 30 miles away. I traveled to states such as Texas, Colorado, Florida and Georgia throughout the entire summer. I formed relationships that ended up lasting a lifetime. That’s one of the beautiful things the game has given me. 

But my long journey to the professional ranks was an up-and-down experience. In this sport, you’re going to fail way more than you succeed. That’s the other unique aspect of baseball. If you're a Major Leaguer, getting a base hit 30 percent of the time means you’re going to be an all-star. But the sport gives you the ability to accept failure and understand that failure will happen again. It also teaches you how to deal with it.

I grew up a big Atlanta Braves fan. My entire life, I wore No. 10 because of Chipper Jones, the Braves’ Hall of Fame third baseman. He was like a god to me. He was a switch-hitter, and I always wanted to replicate that skill even though I was right-handed. There was something about the way he conducted himself—he always played hard, and he helped the Braves dominate in the ‘90s. They won the 1995 World Series when I was six years old and I became infatuated with them. To this day, if I met Chipper Jones in person, I would freak out. I don’t get starstruck often, but that would qualify.

Having those idols or role models growing up made me want to play the game the right way. I was never the biggest kid or the fastest kid but I was going play my fucking ass off. I was going to play hard. It helped me a lot through high school, and gave me the opportunity to play college ball at one of the best junior college baseball teams to ever exist. We went on to win two national championships while I was there, and even though, personally, it was kind of an up-and-down three years, it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. 

I started as an outfielder, then moved to pitcher and was eventually asked to play shortstop, the position that would get me drafted. My time there was amazing—it was everything I wanted and hoped for. That last year at junior college, I signed a scholarship to go play for the University of Houston, but once the season was over, the Los Angeles Angels selected me to play in their organization. 

I had to make a decision about whether to continue another year in college or go to “The Show.” At that time, being young, I was done with going to school. I wasn’t a hugely academic person and I just wanted to focus on baseball. So I ended up taking the little signing bonus and agreed to become an Angel. It was a surreal experience. I got to meet, play with and compete against guys that I had grown up watching—everyone from Todd Helton to a 19-year-old Mike Trout.

Getting drafted in baseball is an experience unlike any other sport. When you get drafted, you don’t go straight to the big leagues. In fact, it’s almost like you’re starting over. Unless you’re one of those guys who gets drafted in the first or second round, you’re probably going to have a nice Minor League career—there will be ups and downs, promotions and demotions. You’ll stay at the Single-A or Double-A levels for a while. That can be taxing mentally. You wonder when you’re going to get your shot, when you’re going to get your break. 

I got called up once to Single-A. One of the team’s players had been injured and so I took his place for about three or four weeks. It was a good feeling and I was appreciative of the opportunity. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. With the little opportunities that you get, you have to make the best of them or it just kind of fades away. The professional level is a business. It’s not like college or high school, where a group of guys works for one common goal. No, in professional sports, you have to perform or they have to find somebody else who can. If you’re not one of those first- or second-round picks to whom they offer big signing bonuses, the window becomes so much smaller. 

It was challenging. I played for two years and when spring training came around for my third season, I felt like I was going to finally get more opportunities than I had gotten the year before. Near the end of camp, as the season approached, I still remember everything. Usually, during the last day of spring training, you pack your things from the hotel, head to the facility, play an intrasquad game, place your belongings on the bus and fly home for the season. As I woke up for that last day, ready to go and play a full season, it didn’t even cross my mind what I’d be walking into.

Usually, if there’s a sheet of paper on your chair, it means you’re being released. I had seen so many players walk into the locker room and have that happen. As I walked to my locker, that piece of paper was waiting for me. I just stood there for ten seconds, but it felt like an hour. I didn’t know what to do. All the other guys in the locker room know what’s about to happen so they pretend you’re not there. They let you have your moment of reality. I picked up the paper on my chair, and sure enough, there was a note. “See Abe,” it said, referencing our general manager. 

I really appreciate the movie Moneyball. One scene depicts a player being released and it’s authentic to the actual process. In total, it’s a 45-second conversation and it goes something like this: “Hey, go ahead and have a seat,” they’ll start. “We are going to go ahead and release you today. We wanted to thank you for all your hard work, and we’ll have somebody from the front office go ahead and let you know what the flight arrangements are gonna be. But once again, we thank you for your hard work and we wish you the best.” That’s it. You want so much more. You want to have a deeper conversation about it, or maybe do something or say something that’s going to change their mind. But you can’t say anything in that moment. 

“Do you have any questions?” one person asked me.

I remember feeling so defeated. It felt like I got hit with a stun grenade. I had passed up a full ride to play Division I ball at a major university in a major conference. Almost two years had gone by and they were already releasing me. I just didn’t grasp the business side of sports. I went back into the locker room and a couple of guys expressed condolences, gave me a hug and wished me the best. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there because it was embarrassing. I remember packing my stuff as quickly as possible. Usually, they’ll take you on the team bus back to the hotel, but I told them I wanted to walk. It was only about 30 minutes by foot from the facility to the hotel. I packed all my stuff and started walking.

There was a shortcut from Tempe Diablo Stadium. If you walk into a cemetery that cuts through the highway, you can get to the hotel faster. So I took it. Sometimes it’s hard to believe in symbolism, but as I passed through the graveyard, a coyote approached in the distance, stopped and then stared at me for 30 seconds. At this point, I was scared. “Why are you walking through a cemetery?” But that moment made me come back to my senses. “This is going to be the last day you play baseball.” Something came over me. I could have continued to chase it, maybe get signed by another team. I didn't have a sports agent and knew that it was going to be tough. But I just knew that I didn’t love baseball anymore. I wanted to move on to something else. I had no clue at the time what that something was. I was 22 years old and I had invested everything into baseball. I wasn’t good academically and I wasn’t driven to go back to college. But I also knew a lot about myself and that I didn't want to work an office job or a desk job for the rest of my life. I had no clue what I was going to do without baseball. And it scared the shit out of me. 

Because I grew up in project housing, in a single mother household with three older brothers, I felt that being the youngest meant I had the most to accomplish. All my brothers were super successful. My oldest brother turned out to be an amazing architect. The second-oldest played college football and became an amazing graphic designer. The brother just above me played college baseball, too. As the youngest, I always wanted to overachieve. Playing professional baseball was me sticking it to them. But, ultimately, I realized I had a responsibility to my mother, someone who had worked her ass off and took care of four kids and did it with a smile on her face. I owed it to her to give everything that I had to baseball and be successful. I always wanted to buy her a house—I didn’t want her to have to work the rest of her life. 

My decision to stop playing was a big letdown. 

I remember calling her on the flight home and trying my best not to cry. I was fine until I got home and she picked me up at the airport. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. It felt like I had let her down, and I was scared of the future. But I eventually realized that I was a big believer in the universe putting you in the right place at the right time. I knew that it was all going to work out, and that I was going to find something. And I did. I’m now doing something completely different with my life. But baseball’s lessons have taught me to be mentally tough and understand failure and know I’ll always get another at-bat. The most beautiful thing about baseball is there is no shot clock. You always have a chance to turn it around. There’s nothing more beautiful in life than knowing that no matter how bad things are going, you always have a chance.

With so many people out of work, and COVID-19 affecting a good part of this country and the world, a lot of people feel like they have to start over. But somehow, someway, it’s not over. It’s still the bottom of the ninth. We’re down some runs, but we can turn this around. Baseball has afforded me that perspective. I was meant to go through that experience. I was meant to be able to get up in the morning and still push and tough it out. To know that I can still win. 

Athletics

Getting Cut by a Sports Team: MLB, Understanding Failure and Me

It’s 4:14 a.m. in my Brooklyn apartment. As is the case with most New Yorkers, I’ve been woken from a deep slumber, extending my long streak of going without a good night’s sleep. No, I don’t take a trip to the kitchen to get a cup of water. I don’t use the bathroom. Instead, I turn to my phone, wide awake; I feel like I’ve just hit the lottery. I did it, I think to myself. I’ve woken up at just the right moment.

I breeze through all of my notifications—family group text, unwanted Facebook memories, another miserable day in the Jets’ offseason—and I head right to the ATP Tour app. Across the world, Nick Kyrgios and Rafael Nadal are renewing their rivalry at the Australian Open, and the match is tied one set apiece.

No one in their right mind gets excited about something like this: a tennis match, let alone one going on in a country with a 16-hour time difference. Yet here I am in the middle of the night, rolled over on my side so as to not wake my girlfriend, watching on my smartphone. 

This is who I’ve become as a sports fan, and it’s all thanks to sports betting.

Dating back to my college days, when I dreamed of broadening my horizons in competitive sports, I could never find a way to get into a sport like tennis, or soccer, or college football. Without a deep-rooted interest in all three—my parents didn’t go to big sports schools and weren’t huge sports fans—I found it very difficult to follow. Then, around five years ago, I made the executive decision that, for someone working in sports media able to see where the industry was headed, I had better figure out what in the world a “spread” was, or how a “parlay” works. The journey that ensued taught me many valuable lessons about betting, discipline and life in general. But the greatest thing I gained from it was entertainment, and an even deeper love of sports than I never thought would be possible.

That’s the story of many who decide to bet on sports responsibly and recreationally. The casual fan just wants a reason to pay attention to a game and to have a vested interest. Through this lens, you can become a fan of a player, team or an entire sport, just as I did with tennis. While I never religiously watched tennis, I always appreciated the sport and would try to watch the Grand Slams growing up. I was a huge fan of Andy Roddick, and absolutely hated Roger Federer for denying him in so many finals. But aside from taking lessons when I was in elementary school and having a vague recollection of tennis names, I was clueless about how to watch sport. 

One day at work, things had come to a standstill and I decided a great way to pass the time would be placing a wager. The issue? It was the dead of summer, and with no baseball on, my arrogant American self just assumed that there wouldn’t be anything to choose from. Sure enough, I opened up my sportsbook and found some lines for the “ATP Challenger Tour,” whatever that was. The first match I saw, which was starting soon, was some guy named “Rublev.” That kind of sounds like a tennis player I remember, I thought to myself. Rublev…do I know him? Maybe. Whatever. *Click.* I placed my bet and began watching.

I suddenly grew an appreciation for Andrey Rublev, and started doing some research on him. At the time, he was a promising Russian teenager with a huge forehand and an even larger temper. I enjoyed watching him, even though he didn’t cover my set spread. I went back to work. So, now I had one tennis player filed away in my cluttered mind.

Day after day, month after month, this happened over and over again until I started gathering a vast understanding of the players on tour, and who might make a good match. I began following the players on Instagram, keeping tabs on their tournament draws, looking forward to matches between players I knew. Two years later, I decided during a trip to Portugal that I had to drive 30 minutes to watch a small ATP 250 tournament. And, a year after that, I was anticipating matches so much that I began getting up in the dead of the night to watch on a small, five-inch screen.

In betting, I always like to say that it’s never the bet you expect to hit that ends up winning, and the one that looks great for an entire game or match somehow finds a way to lose more often than not. Gambling, much like life, is full of the unexpected. You never know which way it’s going to take you. Similarly, in trying to carve out a niche in the sports industry, I never in a million years would have expected my career to involve sports betting, let alone tennis. Back in college, when my story in the industry began, I had to ask my peers what a “spread” was, and I found myself having a harder time preparing to talk about tennis than just about any sport.

Now, tennis has been a boon to my career, and it’s also something I’ve drawn a great affection for. The volatility around tennis not only makes it great for wagering, it also provides drama, theater and entertainment. Each game in a match has the potential to swing the pendulum one way or another, and the four or five points that build to the business end of a game—or the few games that build to the conclusion of a set—escalate like a great plot. Almost every player’s got a personality; there’s probably a higher rate of action than most sports can offer; and in the end, a player’s efforts to capture victory culminates in a pressure-packed match point.

I’ll be forever grateful that I entered this long, winding journey—not for the career it gave me, but for the beautiful sport it introduced me to.

There are plenty of negative things written about sports wagering, and plenty of ways in which it can go south for you. I’ve experienced plenty of the good and the bad. However, those with discipline who can bet responsibly have the opportunity to open new doors and become fans of sports they never thought would be possible. Sports betting is fun and entertaining, and it creates new fans of sports and teams. It’s the future of how sports will grow, and how fans will be made.

The Future of Fandom Is in Sports Betting

Growing up, I spent a lot of time learning about activism and Black Lives Matter, but nothing that I experienced compared to the explosion of protests around the world following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. I could barely open social media without being forced to relive the realities of many Black people around the world—during the ongoing deadly pandemic. 

It was harder for people who aren’t Black to turn away from these injustices too. Everyone was suddenly getting with the times—dare I say woke—even though it may not have been an authentic stance against police brutality and anti-Blackness, but a personal pat on the back that called for others to view them as an agent of change.

“Pseudo-activism” is when groups show support for a movement or set of beliefs solely because everyone around them is doing so—and not because they actually believe in the message behind the cause. Rather quickly, I noticed that the influx of support for Black Lives Matter was the latest bandwagon that brands were jumping on. The type of violence that Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and countless other Black people have experienced is nothing new, and I felt conflicted seeing the sudden support. On one hand, it was amazing to see so many companies that I’d supported throughout the years releasing statements, but I could never seem to silence that voice in the back of my head that kept asking: What took you so long? Why now? What was so significant about this year that was different from 2012, when Trayvon Martin was murdered?

What I realized is that while many conversations held in 2020 may have been about Black people, we weren’t always the target audience. The public statements that we saw a lot of large companies releasing suggested that after years of silence, they were suddenly deciding to take a stand against anti-Black racism, but they didn’t feel sincere to me. From Microsoft to Adidas, I spent a lot of time reviewing the PR-proofed missives companies released, but what spoke volumes to me was the fact that while these brands were pledging their support for the advancement of Black people and against police brutality, there was a noticeable lack of Black people in positions of power at these same companies—including ones that I’d worked for myself.

It was easy for companies to draft a letter to avoid looking like a company that had stayed silent during a revolution. But many of them failed to acknowledge the anti-Blackness at work in their hiring practices, daily operations and the pay inequalities that exist between Black employees and their white counterparts.

Seeing the problems that other companies have had with diversity is sad, but what impacted me more was being employed by a company that made a statement internally, while also having white employees that were being paid higher salaries than me for the same work. Or seeing white coworkers whose salaries weren’t impacted during the coronavirus pandemic, despite company-wide emails suggesting that all employees had received a reduction. Their performative support hit so close that it crushed my spirit and made me question my career. When you’ve worked hard to be a champion for a company while witnessing the devaluing of Black lives daily, it feels like a slap in the face when you have to carry on as if nothing is happening.

It quickly became clear that companies deciding to speak out or stay silent was more about them than it was about me—and once the news cycle moved on from speaking about Black Lives Matter, the social media campaigns from large companies stopped. Black people are still experiencing the same oppression, but the commitment to dismantle anti-Black racism where it exists seems to have been put on the back burner.

Truth is, the plights that Black people face haven’t changed, nor have they been dismantled. Following the protests that erupted in 2014 after the murder of Michael Brown, six prominent activists involved with them mysteriously died, and police ruled that none of their deaths were suspicious. KJ Brooks has detailed how, after she went viral last year for a video holding members of the Kansas City Police Department accountable, the KCPD followed her to the point that she had to hire a private security team. 

Despite the patterns that take place before our eyes, Black people can’t get the support we need when our lives are in danger, when an act of violence can be prevented. The attention usually only comes once another life has been lost. It’s terrifying, and I wouldn’t wish these experiences on my worst enemy. When we hold white supremacy accountable, our lives are at risk. When we ignore it, our lives are still at risk.

Companies committing to challenging anti-Black racism and police brutality isn’t a one-time deal. 

We need those in positions of power and privilege to do the work as if their lives depended on it. Because my life does, and it’s not the responsibility of those who are oppressed to get rid of oppression that we didn’t create. I hope that the companies that released statements last summer do right by their sentiments, and put in the necessary work within their companies as well as the community. It’s possible. It will take a lot of work, but that’s the point. Committing to change because everyone else is doesn’t solve the problem—it simply delays solutions from taking place. If you are going to stand for Black lives, remember to do the work when the cameras stop rolling and the world is no longer watching.

Black Lives Still Matter When the News Cycle Ends: Where Does BLM Go From Here?

LeBron James and Leonardo DiCaprio are two of the most accomplished, highest-paid members of their respective fields in entertainment. Both have also been vocal champions of progressive causes during the span of their careers. But because these two globally recognized entertainers are represented by two different unions—the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and SAG-AFTRA, respectively—James is walking the progressive talk and DiCaprio is not. As both an enduring NBA fan and a working-class, union actor, let me explain.

This summer, while the NBPA was negotiating with team owners to create a safe healthcare “bubble” for its players and pushing them to advocate for more criminal justice reform, SAG-AFTRA gutted healthcare benefits for its most vulnerable members. 

If you missed hearing about this between the potential collapse of American democracy and the biggest pandemic in 100 years, you can be forgiven.

On August 18th, the same day the NBA celebrated its historic first day of the playoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic, SAG-AFTRA sent an email to members that it would be raising the minimum income requirement from $18,040 annually to $25,950. In addition, premiums would also increase and, most shockingly, members over 65 years old could no longer apply residual income from past projects toward healthcare eligibility. In one fell swoop, the union was making it more difficult for its lowest-paid members to qualify for healthcare, while simultaneously making it nearly impossible for retired senior members to meet the new requirements. And all during a global healthcare crisis in which most members had not worked since March.

We are a union of actors. We are the progressive, liberal, do-gooder types, right?  Surely it was a mistake. But upon digging into the overall dues structure of SAG-AFTRA, I found that my union of free-spirited artists is run more like a Republican think tank. Could the tired Fox News moniker of “Hollywood hypocrisy” actually be true?

Without getting too deep in the weeds, all members of SAG-AFTRA are required to pay an annual fee of $222.96 plus 1.58% of earnings up to $500,000. What about earnings above $500,000? Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Those earnings are totally free and clear from paying dues. So unlike our progressive federal tax code, which taxes the wealthiest Americans at a higher marginal tax rate (44 percent at the peak), the SAG-AFTRA’s dues structure is actually regressive. 

As an example, on the set of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, DiCaprio’s real-life stunt man actually ends up paying a bigger cut of his paycheck in dues than DiCaprio himself or his steely-abbed co-star, Brad Pitt. Mitch McConnell would drool at the opportunity of inverting the American tax code to benefit the rich like this.

What about my favorite entertainment product, the NBA? Is their union set up in this similarly regressive fashion?  Actually, quite the opposite. In the NBA, there is a salary cap on how much the biggest stars in the league can make. In exchange, the union negotiates that team owners pay role players and bench players more. Last season, LeBron James made $37.4 million. That’s a lot, but without a salary cap, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst estimates LeBron would be making closer to $50-60 million annually.  Why does King James take this pay cut? Because in a league where the average career spans only four-and-a-half years, it ensures that “middle class” bench or role players can make enough to live off until they can find another form of employment.

Meanwhile, in the world of Hollywood, our biggest stars—our LeBron James’s if you will—take no such pay cut to help out their fellow actors. In fact, just the opposite. They contribute to dues at a lower percentage of income than the extra whose name won’t even make the end credits. If SAG-AFTRA operated more like the NBA, or hey, even the tax code passed by Trump in 2017, then those megastars would contribute far more in dues and premiums so their less fortunate brethren could be provided the most basic health coverage.

After all, certainly Hollywood’s biggest stars could contribute more. Here’s a list of a few actors who earned more than $40,000,000 on just one film in the last ten years: Robert Downey Jr., Sandra Bullock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Johnny Depp. That’s LeBron James money right there. How much in dues did they pay on $39,500,000 of that? Zero. 

What about the average actor or performer in Hollywood? In 2019, less than 20 percent of union members were earning the $18,040 annual income then required to make healthcare. Certainly, if the biggest A-listers knew they could help keep a retired journeyman actor or an injured stunt woman on their healthcare insurance they would, right?

Now, I suspect most of these highest-paid actors are totally unaware that the dues structure of their union is a regressive, Republican fever-dream. After all, us actors have agents to do all the math for a reason. But hopefully, this might bring it to their attention. Because it’s one thing to bash Trump and other Republicans as cruel and heartless (they are). But it’s another thing to dip into your own wallet to help out a fellow actor who didn’t have a few big breaks go their way.  

And hey, what goes around, comes around. I’d like to think that even if Leonardo loses all of his fortunes to Toby McGuire in an all-night poker game, he too should live in a future where he can still get health insurance from his ongoing Titanic residuals. As things are structured now, he wouldn’t.

Doe Print Value - Goodwill

Doe Print Value - Curiosity

Doe Print Value - Closeness

The NBA Is More Liberal Than Hollywood

These words are forever tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. Every time I close my eyes I’m reminded that I am different. That I’m an African-American pre-op transgender man.

I hear the voice of the person who yelled it to me when I look in the mirror.

It wasn’t some big, country, cis, white male wearing a MAGA hat and driving a Ford with too-big wheels, a cooler of Budweiser in the back and a gun on his hip, like how the media likes to portray bigots. It was the total opposite, someone who is supposed to love me no matter what. My mother. My Black mother.

I had explained to her how President Trump has my vote, and that it was her idiotic beliefs that made her say those words. I left feeling alone; a slap in the face and an empty feeling in my heart, blocked on every social media account because I support a man she thinks is racist.

I turned to my second support system, an LGBTQ+ community group on Facebook. I explained everything and received the same heat. Why? Because I support a man who’s supposedly homophobic? I believe Trump has done more for the LGBTQ+ community than any president ever. I believe Trump cares about Black voices and donates his money to Black charities.

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