Tina, at the Alcoa Chili's

Some people say don't meet your heroes, but I don't think it's because of this.

Alexa, plays Reba McEntire’s “I’m a Survivor,” because I would also like to be a Survivor.

My favorite fun fact about my boss is that his wife competed on Survivor. To the real ones, they know her as Sally “Socks” Schumann. A real hard ass who ended up on the wrong side of the numbers on her season, as the best ones do. But even on her exit, her final vote was a real middle finger to the majority. Like, c’mon. The first time I met her, I had to keep my shit together because this is my editor’s-in-chief wife. And media isn’t a place where you want to be uncool and unkempt. Being an outsider in an industry that caters, largely, to wealthier people is something I already struggle to traverse. Fan-girling over my boss’s wife is, undoubtedly, a tell-tale sign that I don’t belong.

But the thing about Michael and Sally is that they don’t seem like the wealthy elite. That’s the kind of vibe that magazine culture thrives on, but Michael is the kind of guy who seems like the everyman who reads Esquire, who happened to ascend the ranks, wear the Chukka boot, and inform the aspirational readers of Esquire that they, too, can be among the fancified. That’s something I respect. But I still kept my cool, because I’m not sure I’m at that place where I can be both. But the second time I met Sally, two gin and tonics deep at a birthday party, I let it all out—you were an icon in your season. Your exit statement? Aspirational.

That should be the apex of my Survivor embarrassment, but I haven’t told you about meeting Tina Wesson during a St. Jude’s fundraiser at an East Tennessee Chili’s. Before I get to that though, I need to give you context. Tina Wesson won the second season of Survivor, and by the start of the second season, I was a superfan. We watched the first season in our single wide, hunkered in front of this giant 1970s freestanding TV. Richard Hatch stole the season from Kelly Wigglesworth and I was heartbroken. But then we moved out of that trailer, scaling up to a doublewide modular home in its place. The moving dates coincided with the new season of Survivor debuting, and I was adamant that enough things be in place that we could watch it. Imagine us, sitting cross-legged in our living room, pieces of carpet freshly adjoined in the middle of both pieces of our movable house, with only that old ass TV in our living room. No furniture, or even beds in place. Just that old TV, connected to cable wires hanging out of the wall. We had an agreement in our house when it came to these types of shows—you choose your winner in the first episode. Mom chose someone random. Dad chose Colby Donaldson. I chose hometown hero, Knoxville-girl, Tina Wesson.

Months later, the day after Survivor: The Australian Outback’s finale, I was supposed to go with my safety patrol troop to Washington D.C. I had never left home. Not for a sleepover. Not for camp. Nothing. But this tripe was the whole reason for being in safety patrol. My parents paid the dues, but as the day got closer, I was sick with the prospect that I’d actually have to go. I decided on the night of the Survivor finale that if Tina Wesson, Knoxville RN and working mother, could use her savvy and manage her way to a win in Survivor, I could do this. I could be alone for four days in Washington DC with my classmates. Tina won in a vote of 4-3 and I cried. Half because I was excited. Half because this meant I was going to Washington D.C, officially.

I had this special edition of People magazine that profiled each contestant. Survivor was hot shit back then. Enough so to warrant its own version of People magazine. At 6 am, I thumbed through its pages on an aisle seat of a charter bus. I couldn’t stand to be at a window, looking at my parents as they waved us off. From moment go, I was terrified about this trip. Hell, there were eight graders going from other schools. I had to be in the game, and by game, I mean the trip to Washington that was supposed to be fun. And to be clear, I had the worst fucking time. The worst. Passed out from dehydration because I couldn’t eat or drink the entire time I was there. In four days, I lost nine pounds. Tina couldn’t save me from my homesickness, and I was hopeless. But it never changed how much I loved Tina because Tina was my world. Proof that, in the right headspace, you could be anything you wanted. I wrote a book report on her later on in school, and to this day, even with all the celebrities I’ve interviewed, she’s the only person I’m not sure I could face in person.

I know this because in college, I met her. St. Jude’s used to do these charity nights in our college town, where a restaurant would commit a certain percentage of profits to St. Jude’s research. That was an invitation for me to funnel margaritas directly into my face, for the good of humanity. So imagine me with a group of friends, my junior year of college, ordering más fajitas and even más margaritas, living our truth thriving on this gringo Tex-mex.

Enter: Tina Wesson and her husband, plopping down two booths away. I asked our waitress if she would go over and ask if the woman at that table was named Tina. My friends, knowing how absurd I was, told me to stop, but I couldn’t. There was no way, right? Can your hero serendipitously walk into your local Chili’s and order drinks, like a commoner? The waitress came back and confirmed that her name was Tina. I couldn’t look over there. I asked the waitress to go back and ask, specifically, “Are you Tina Wesson, from the second season of Survivor?” Again, she obliged. For the record, that waitress is a saint, and we undoubtedly did not tip her enough. The woman at the table was the Tina Wesson from the second season of Survivor.

Drunk on margaritas, my table of friends told me I had to go speak to her. But I couldn’t. How do you talk to your hero? How do you have that conversation? For better or worse, I saw Tina as my guiding light. So much of my life was supposed to be about settling, you know? I think I came to realize, even as a kid, that certain types of people had a certain place in the world. People in trailers didn’t go to college. We certainly didn’t move our of our home towns. And beyond this specific moment, gay boys from the South stayed in the closet. East Tennesseans usually don’t leave the state. I had this whole list of things in my mind that relegated me to a particular kind of life, but Tina Wesson—the sweet, middle-aged RN from Tennessee—bucked up against that. I made her my hero because she wasn’t supposed to win Survivor. Too frail. Too kind. Too… Tina, you know?

But I walked up to her table, visibly shaken. I clenched my fists by my side and she looked up and said, “Hello,” and I said, without making eye contact:

Hi Ms. Wesson. My name is Justin Kirkland, and I just want to tell you that I watched you on your season of Survivor and you were my hero. I wrote a book report on you once, and I just wanted to tell you that. Thank you so much.

Silence.

My God.

She finally said, “Thank you so much, honey. How old were you?”

Eight years old, Ms. Wesson.

Lies. I was 11. But I panicked. She thanked me for my kind words, and then I said, “Ok, thank you, too.” And then I immediately waked outside and I cried. And then I smoked a cigarette outside of that Chili’s. And then, fearful that she would somehow finish her meal in record time and see me chain smoking, I went to the back of that Chili’s and smoked another cigarette so that she wouldn’t see me.

I have watched all 40 seasons of Survivor at this point. It helped me deal with the pandemic, in an unexpected way. But after 40 seasons, Tina Wesson is still my hero because she made me feel, at one point, that I was… invincible? That someone ordinary could be remarkable. Not because they had traversed the odds and become remarkable but because they had done something to make people realize that they were something that no one had ever seen them as. A person no one had ever anticipated they could be despite that being the person they were all along.

I don’t know if I’ve had that moment yet. But I do think I’m remarkable. I think I’m—I don’t know—the unremarkable thing that’s abnormal. Or maybe I’ve had too many of my own Chili’s margaritas, as I write this. But could you imagine? Being extraordinary? Abnormal? Interesting enough to change the way someone else sees themselves?

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In terms of what I’ve written this week, I’ve watched this whole series called Q-Force, and it’s made me rethink a lot of the ways I see myself, so I wrote about it here.

Ok, I love you all. Thank you for reading because I know you have other shit to do. Keep faith.