We Don't Have a TV

Cashier at the grocery store: You guys watchin' the game tonight?
Us: Oh...haha...no, we don't have a TV.

Friend: Did you watch the debates last night?
Us: Ugh. Like, we wanted to be informed, but we don't have a TV, sooooooo.

Person: Did you see that thing on TV?
Us: No! We missed it because we don't have a TV. Damn...it.

We love to tell people that we don't have a television because it makes us feel cool and better than they are, but no one really cares because that's like more of a 90s, early 2000s thing.

When I was a kid and learned that someone didn't have a TV, I was more shocked than if they'd told me they didn't have a toilet. But how on Earth do you get through the non-day that is Tuesday if you don't know that Full House is waiting for you at the end of it? And how do you know a thing about New York if you don't watch Seinfeld?

These people were cool. They were bad asses. And they were poor.

But in the years I haven't owned a television, television has almost completely taken over my life, and it's so uncool. 

The moment I realized that I couldn't access Netflix in Barcelona happened a nanosecond before I was frantically searching "full episodes" on Youtube. I tried to convince myself that I could live off of reruns of Ellen (the sitcom, not the talk show) for two years.

I'll just learn Spanish, read more and write a book about all the crazy experiences I'll have while I'm not watching television is what I thought. Then my roommate taught me how to pirate shit, so I didn't do any of those things, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Oh the plethora! Oh the cornucopia! Fuck you HBO!

Why doesn't everyone do this? I wondered probably out loud. Not paying people for their work is great as we've seen so many times throughout history. How could this fail?

Two and a half years later, I moved back to the U.S. with a man who comes from an entire country of couldn't-give-a-fuck-lessers, and we eagerly awaited the new season of a show I'm not going to name for legal reasons and because I'm embarrassed to admit that I watch it.

When the blessed day finally came, we downloaded the hell out of every episode  and made it through to the finale. I arrived at work the next day sad that it was over but happy to have been a part of it.

Sitting at the top of my over 2,000 unread messages was a cease and desist email from two companies that would make you shit your pants.

So after I shit my pants, I called Jaime. At that time, he wasn't able to work, and my call roused him from his sweet dreams. He was perturbed and told me I was overreacting. Why would a Fortune 500 (whatever that means) company waste its time with two "beggars" like us?

I'm easily convinced to do nothing, so I was prepared to let it go.

Three minutes later, Jaime called.

"Ummm, hey, babe. So, yeah. I don't think we should do that anymore. Okay?," said the man who'd just shat his pants.

Jaime once excitedly told me there was a pirate convention in town, 

and my equally excited thought bubble was this: 

...but that's not what he meant apparently.

Black Lives Matter

The first thing the white woman standing behind me in the voting line asked me was, "Do you have any black friends!?"

It was one of the neatest conversations I've ever been invited into.

I'm kidding. It was a fucking nightmare.

Everyone around me (mostly African Americans) did not believe me for one cracker of a second when I blurted out, "Yes!"

To this day, I'm not sure why she asked because she wouldn't tell me when I asked her why she asked, but you better believe that I've been obsessing about it for more than a month.

I've finally decided that she is my neighborhood incarnate.

A distant (in time and space) friend once posted on Facebook something like, "If you're white and surrounded by other white people in your neighborhood, you're part of the problem."

Whew! Not me says I! Look! There's a black guy walking home from work! Over yonder in the park is a black family playing on the swings. The charter school directly across the street buses in a greatly diverse student body!

Blessed are the peacemakers (me).

I chose to live in our neighborhood because Jaime didn't know the city. I knew we could walk to locally owned bars and restaurants and hoped maybe (just maybe) Jaime would get a job at the hospital nearby. But mostly I chose it because I knew it was safe. Safe. SaFe. SAFE.

For those of you who have never lived in Kansas City, I'll share a secret with you that everyone who has knows...Kansas City is segregated.  There's a wall that's disguised as street called Troost, and it indisputably separates the city by race. Nearly everyone living to the east of it is black, and I live well to the west.

Of course we've got some neighbors who are black, Latino, Middle Eastern and Asian, but I'm willing to guess that most of my white neighbors, like me, chose to live here because it's "cool," "diverse" and "safe."

Let's face it. Safe means "people like me." I'm comfortable here because most people look like me.

But I don't deserve to feel "safer" than anyone.

How safe did Trayvon Martin feel walking through that gated community? How safe did Ryan Stokes feel in the Power and Light District while conforming to its racist dress code before he was shot in the back running for his life?

This entire fucking country isn't safe for African Americans and other minorities, and I'm tired of pretending it is. I'm tired of defending it. I'm tired of being part of the problem.

Systematic, subconscious and overtly conscious racism has to be stopped now because at its most benign, it makes us the laughing stock of the world, and at its most malignant, people are murdered.

Don't tell racist jokes. Don't laugh at racist jokes. Don't overlook an application with a certain type of name. Don't pretend racism magically disappeared in the 60s. Don't pretend everyone has the same opportunities as you. Don't forget for one second all the privileges you have. Don't accept that this is normal.

Black Lives Matter matters because black lives here have never mattered. White lives, on the other hand, have always mattered and have always held more value in our government and courts, in our media, in our economy, in our education system, in our society. We can't pretend otherwise because to do so would even further diminish the value of all the black lives lost to racism...so far.