Reflections On My Confusing Exit From Surviving Barstool

If one more person texts, DMs, tweets, or flies an airplane towing a banner telling me "you should have played your idol," I'm going to headbutt two protruding flathead screwdrivers to blind myself from you backseat driving, hindsight 20/20-having morons.

Will Compton, I'm looking at you specifically. You have texted me after each episode of this God-forsaken show to teach me the correct moves I could have made. It's truly enraging to be fed such clairvoyant vision from a man whose eyes are so unnaturally small on his face. You look like a snowman made entirely of buttons. In a wintry world devoid of coal, pine cones, rocks, and carrots, a child forged all of your facial features with the tiny fasteners used to secure a shawl cardigan.  

Let me save you all the trouble: I know now, as I knew five seconds after the votes were read, that I should have played my idol. I trust too easily. I believe in the best of people. I am naïve, idealistic, and stupidly hopeful—all traits that served as vulnerabilities for my calculating competitors to easily exploit. I told Ria seconds before we marched to the counsel that I was going to play my idol, she firmly and steadfastly told me not to waste it, and I believed her. This morning, I woke to legitimately hundreds of messages and tweets mocking me for acquiescing to Ria's duplicitous advice. Yet I can say with certainty that some 90% of those messages came from men who would castrate themselves with the thumb-pressed hole of a shotgunned Bud Light can if Ria told them to. They'd even hand her the severed scrotum as some sacrificial gift before bleeding out with smiles on their faces, believing they were heading to their deaths with the Queen Bee's gratitude. 

Oh, need I remind you all that I was concussed? Trace the trajectory of my thought process in the game as before the concussion and after. There is a MARKED change: before, I had some semblance of strategy, confidence, and cunning. After, I was an eggplant casserole doing everything I could to keep my own saliva inside my mouth. Look at this:

Does that look like the face of a killer? Of someone who would sniff out the machinations being spun against him? I am fucking gone, girl. Frankly, anything that takes me out from this point is a mercy killing. Just unplug my feeding tube and gently kiss my forehead; let your tears gather in the cavities of my properly-sized eyes. I only wish I'd written a better will that would allocate my one worldly possession to the proper, deserving recipient: my dear friend Rone. 

I'm talking, of course, of my immunity idol. Looking back, that thing undid me. It was too hot for me to handle. Like Smiegol finding the ring, I descended into darkness as soon as it touched my fingers, crawling on all fours and biting holes in Uncrustables to siphon their jammy entrails before discarding the calorically-punitive shell in the trash, consumed by one thought and one thought only: the Idol is mine. 

Then someone went through my bag, where I was hiding it. Immediately after, Big Cat told me definitively he knew I had an Idol as some "shot-in-the-dark" effort to suss out intel, which I gave him. Then I told Dave because, even though he was my teammate, he's still my boss and I wanted to know if there were any rules to what we coworkers could actually do to each other in this contest. From there, the power players contrived to set a three-way tie in the vote, using Moobs as their patsy, and ensuring their continued control of the game. 

In a million fucking years, I couldn't have put that shit together. Everything that was happening in that counsel was a BRAND NEW EXPERIENCE for me. I don't even know if I knew what happens if there's a tie! Why? Because, for the hundredth fucking time, I don't watch Survivor. 

Now, if you're mad at me for not watching Survivor to prepare for this show, congratulations: you and Klemmer have a lot in common. For when I was sent to the house after being voted off, I was immediately and thoroughly berated over the course of many hours by Klemmer for my poor decisions and gameplay. He was legitimately furious with me for not watching multiple seasons of Survivor to prepare for the show. Do you have any idea what it's like to be screeched at by a human razor clam for not sharing his enthusiasm for a network television gameshow in its 47th season? He, like so many of you, could not fathom how I had not prepared more for this. 

I don't watch Survivor because I don't like gameshows or reality TV. The division of opinions on what happened in the tribal counsel seem to fall into two camps: those who watch Survivor religiously can't believe I misinterpreted Jeff's rule and think I'm a blundering fool. Those who don't watch Survivor feel I was screwed. But were we playing by proper Survivor rules? Was it on me to phrase my question better, or on Jeff to phrase his response more clearly? Can you pass an idol to someone after votes have been cast? Who should be the ultimate decider of a ruling in the show? Should I have learned the rules before playing? 

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There is no point in answering a single one of those questions. Because there is another episode tonight. And another seven or so coming after that. And none of you will care about this in a matter of hours. 

Which brings me to WHY I played Surviving Barstool, and what my goals were. Uniquely among the contestants (I suspect), I went into this show with ZERO expectation of winning. The money was so far-fetched, so unrealistic to me, that I played with an entirely different set of goals: compete hard in the challenges, keep the lid on my own psychopathy when inevitably things go wrong, enjoy hanging with a bunch of former professional athletes I admire, and try to be funny/entertaining. Maybe you'd call that a defeatist attitude; I call it a personal sanity hedge, implemented for self-preservation after my fireworks explosion on Barstool's Most Dangerous Game Show. 

Most importantly, I played because… Dave asked me to. Hell, I was barely invited, only making it off the bubble when Stu dropped. And I've learned the hard way (see: Dunkin) that it's a far better choice to do the things Dave asks you to do around these parts. 

It paid off. There is an amazing moment that you might have missed, but that crystallizes in one second the autopilot that I installed to prevent my own nuclear meltdown: 

I'm arguing my case, my pulse is pounding, I'm scrambling for my life, and I'm unbelievably confused by what Jeff has said and is now saying. I see that Dave, Ria, Jeff, our producer Rob, and even Tommy Smokes are starting to smirk, counting down the pending detonation, waiting, wanting the eruption, buttering their popcorn for the very self-immolation that has become a trademark in this company's multi-decade run. 

But something deep within me whispered, "go." Perhaps it was the voice of some ancient Native American ancestor, carried across the planes of time a lesson etched in the blood of betrayal and injustice. I can tell you that in a year that was quite hard for me personally, this is a moment of which I am proud. It is grace and growth, all the woo-woo shit wrapped up in a California handroll of composure. It is the reverberating hum of a Japanese gong struck atop a mountain; the gentle exhale of a perfectly balanced hybrid joint; the deep, shuddering sigh that follows the full-hilt burying of a creampie inside a loving partner who takes their birth control at precisely the same time each day. 

In the end, people will argue the semantics of Jeff's wording. But to me it, it's irrelevant; I was going home regardless. I suppose the only thing I'd have done differently had I understood the rule would be to give my idol to Rone instead, to play if he needed it. But I can't take issue with how it went because, frankly, it's more entertaining this way. 

And that's all I really wanted to be in this game—entertaining. I'm totally happy with my performance and will enjoy watching the show play out as an audience member and fan from here on. To close, a quote I've tailored for personal application: 

"Don't cry because it's over; smile because you don't need the money anyway."