#john finlay

Attributed to John Finlay | Side Chair, 1815–20 | American | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

I just got to the episode of Tiger King where they cover Travis’s death and I can’t put it into proper words of how sad and disappointed I am. This poor young man died so young. Travis didn’t deserve that at all. Travis didn’t deserve to be in such a strange relationship with Joe. Travis didn’t deserve to waste his young adult life trapped in the zoo.

No one is really talking about his death and it absolutely pisses me off. Yeah the show is supposed to be funny or whatever you want to call it, but I am disgusted with the lack of care that was shown. Travis deserves so much better than this. He was a real life person who had thoughts and feelings and was important to lots of people. He got a total of about 20 minutes of screen time surrounding his death. To me that is absolutely terrible. And you know what? Those 20 minutes were absolutely shit. The coverage was so half-assed I can’t help but feel absolutely terrible.

A lot of what was said about Travis was mainly focused around Joe. I don’t know who created this show, but whoever did can piss off; this boy is dead and you have the audacity to make it all focused on Joe. Yes Joe was his husband, but those moments were supposed to be about Travis, not him.

From the first moment that I saw Travis on that screen, I knew he was different. He was a young man who married a guy over twice his age. For gods sake he probably had gotten out of high school less than a year before he got married to this man. And then in later episodes it was revealed that all three of the husbands were addicted to meth.

Meth messes with your head. Just completely breaks your whole life apart. Travis married Joe for the meth. We all know that. He had said before multiple times that he was a straight man. First when he joined the park and several times to other park workers in secret. From the clips that were shown of him throughout the series, I feel as though Travis was trying to convince himself that he loved Joe, but there is no doubt that he mainly loved him for the drugs. The part where Travis hit Joe’s truck with his bare hands really got to me. You could hear in his voice how upset he was that Joe wasn’t treating him fairly. Again, Travis didn’t deserve this. He made the choice to stay with him because of the drugs, in a way it is his fault that he was in this situation, but we have to remind ourselves he was an inexperienced boy. Joe, the zoo, and meth was all that he knew.

Anyways, enough of my rambling. My main purpose of writing this was to shed light onto Travis’s sickening end and why more viewers should care about what happened. If people don’t want to touch on the tragedy, I will. I will keep talking about this until people care. This was an event that I will never forget. Of course I didn’t know Travis personally, but I feel so bad for him that I’m going to make sure everyone is reminded of this memorial every year until I die. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like this.