"miss america"

I said out loud. 

I no longer desire to have cameras follow me, fans stalking me, while living a glamorous life in LA filled with unlimited sex and luxury. 

On the outside, this seems like “who wouldn’t want to live a life of this magnitude?”; especially for those of us from humbled beginnings.

If you grew up below or barely overshadowing America’s poverty line, celebrity worship becomes your God. The culmination of Hollywood, sports, and politics form a monolith of celebrity culture. And from birth, we are enamored with the potential to be on the TV screens watching us watch them. So you spend your days wishing for your big break, wishing to be casted on the street by some agent who will offer you a way out. This way out is the other American Dream, shown to us, but not discussed. 

It’s because this dream is bigger than the latter. The desire for American fame is the slither of a chance that you will be even bigger than a picket fence, 2 kids, and a swimming pool. It is the small chance that you will have so much charisma that you override the corporate ladder, and end up on TV waving to your friends in a small town in Missouri. “It was meant” they will tell you, but was it? 

Celebrity culture is what keeps capitalism enticing. Fame is dangled over our heads like a carrot to a rabbit who hasn’t fucked in months. If only you could catch it, then you get a chance to enjoy capitalism, guilt free.

“Why would I feel guilty, the fans voted for me? You all, the people at the bottom, voted for me to be on top. Right?”

From birth, the American masses are initiated into a lottery for a chance of fame and fortune. 

But once you get a peak behind the curtain, you realize that those you worship, worship other Gods. And your favorite celebrity is just a character in someone else’s play. Our politics, sports, and entertainment are all scripted, conjured even. 

And that’s a tough pill to swallow as a former child actor. I secretly held on to the potential of waving to my folks in small town Missouri. 

“Look I’ve made it” 

But made it where? Into the pits of hell? 

The death of celebrity culture is the straw that will break the camel’s back. Now with social media platforms pouring gasoline on our burning spark, the fire we hold with hopes of it becoming a star, is still attached to this desire.

We have to give up the yearning for understanding and accept the love of all things.

So to this I say…

Let this be a lesson of how the world can quickly slip through your fingers just when you grasp it.

Yesterday was the opening of a new friend’s show at the Royal Academy of Art, Obi Agwam. His work is fabulously telling Black narratives, please do check it out.

I arrived fashionably late after a long day of no food and staring at my screen, designing images that I was later told wasn’t going to be used.

Pissed, pretty, and on an empty stomach, I joined the crowded gallery space. I hadn’t seen that many Black people together in London outside of Boxpark. It was bussing, and I was honored to be there.

My friend Max met me, we were looking forward to a beautiful Black ass night in London. (This doesn’t happen often). I was fully prepared to hear and see art that would make me feel something. Right after this opening, we were headed to see Lancey Foux at lost. And to you this means nothing in a world full of war. But to me, in my little world of creative freelancing, this was the moment. The moment, I missed. So we arrive early, the line is light, everything is feeling right. But for some reason, I wasn’t quite settled. Typically I visualize my future, and I couldn’t quite make out an image of me in the middle of the dance floor, the right amount of drunk, crying to rap music just yet.

And I was right. No phones or footage, just me in a stall trying to remove this spirit from my bloodstream. She didn’t want to leave. Tequila clings to me, happily swallowing me in my own pool of acid.

Tequila on an empty stomach transported me back to a Brooklyn stairwell bent over at age 16.

Tequila, I cursed at her as my partner forced me out the stall into an Uber.

How do I explain that I was at Lost, the night of Lancey Foux, Slawn, and virtually everyone in the underground scene, but I missed it?