her I have a magazine and I would love for her to be on the cover. I’d fly to Vegas for a photoshoot and an extended interview. She was like Alright bet I’m so down and then hugged me and introduced me to her family and then I thought the rest would be history. 

At this point I was so excited. I texted the group chat “got Vashti bitches.” Separate text: “secured number and address okkkkkkkk.” Separate text: “and a hug sowwwyyyy.” I was geekin! Of course I had to brag to the homies. 

That night I googled photo studios in Vegas and maybe unsurprisingly they have a bunch of crazy ones there. We get her in a flight attendant uniform in a studio that had the interior of a plane and then title it Vashti Cunningham is Way Up. We put her in a suit and then sit her at the end of a long board room table, stage it like an important business meeting then title it Vashti Cunningham is in Charge. We get this studio that’s set up like a carnival and then dress up Vashti as all the freakshow characters, lion tamer, trapeze artist, bearded lady, I don’t know, and then we title it It’s a One Woman Show. It’s like GQ! Vashti is like Brad Pitt. Zendaya. Robert Pattinson. Those shoots go nuts! We were about to go nuts. 

Vashti is rarely in the media and when she is the story is always the same. Maybe slightly narcissistic of me but I thought I was about to have all the tools to write something fresh and different. I wouldn’t mention a single time that her dad is a retired NFL player who coaches her, wouldn’t really talk about how she was a young phenom and won the World Championships when she was still in high school, wouldn’t mention that she doesn’t jump that much in practice, didn’t want to talk about how she appears mean and cold because it’s a ritual of hers to not speak to anybody before competition, etc. There are only like three stories out there and they’re all the same. The New York Times didn’t care about reproducing what had already been said. High Snobiety didn’t try to be different. Red Bull’s magazine didn’t provide any depth. 

Yawn. Snooze. The only way to do it is to do it fresh. My story would be about Vashti’s creative outlets. Like I said she’d vaguely alluded to her creative projects to me in passing. I remember her posting all these photos with Virgil Abloh the day he died like wtf. I was like Daaaang what is she cooking up! She’s very interested in fashion and is by far the most fashionable person to grace our sport in recent years. She’s modeled a lot. I think that’s how she met Virgil, modeling for Off-White. 

I was trying to plan dates with Vashti to go to Vegas and she said the next few weeks might conflict with her family vacation. She didn’t know where they were going yet, she didn’t know when it would be. But it was looming. I texted her so many times trying to make it work, trying to find just a single day together in Vegas, just a few hours together in Vegas. I blamed my sense of urgency on the magazine deadline. Basically offered her an ultimatum. Vashti if we can’t figure out when to do this in the next week I’m gonna have to go with a backup covergirl or coverboy. She said Ok that’s fine then hit me with the heart emoji. Shattering glass. Car crash. Patio furniture being dragged across the ground. Jarring noises in my mind. Not what I was hoping for. 

I was like Damn maybe we just weren’t vibing like I thought. Maybe she doesn’t really care about my silly little magazine. What’s actually in it for her? But then I started rationalizing based on what I do know about Vashti. She’s elusive. She’s pretty quiet, seems to be fine spending time alone, just doing her thing. She’s kind of cold on the track so maybe she’s just cold toward the sport in general. Who knows? It was mostly speculation. 

I sat on it for a minute but then thought maybe the photoshoot was just too much of a commitment for her. Maybe she’d be down to talk for a bit in Eugene during USAs. I was competing. She was competing. It’d be great. I thought coffee would be the perfect thing but at this point she had me questioning every thought and overanalyzing my behavior toward her so I was nervous about asking to get coffee because she gives off these health girl vibes where she would have this like crusade against coffee. She’s got a Red Bull sponsorship but there’s no way she drinks that shit. She feels like she drinks that concoction of like spices and roots and mushrooms as a caffeine alternative. She won her gold medal and I was in the media zone and I worked up the courage to ask her if she’d be in town the next morning to get coffee and talk about the piece and she said Nope we leave at like 7 a.m., sorry. And then I said Damn quick turnaround and then she said That’s actually later than usual. I almost always leave the same day as the meet. And then I said Damn ok but asked if we could FaceTime later that week and then she smiled and said Yup, let’s do it. 

We even scheduled the call! Scheduling is so sterile, lifeless. Monday at 11 a.m. That’s how it had to be done. Texted her at 11:05, playing it cool obviously, “Ready when you are.” And then she texted me and said she was babysitting! Brooooo. I tried to play it cool again. “Baby’s not gonna watch itself,” I said. “Let’s do tomorrow.” She heart reacted that one.

At this point Vashti is living rent free in mind. I’m literally scheming to try to talk to her for like 10 seconds. And it’s tough because I want to be more direct and try to like plan logistics, double text her, triple text her, maybe call her out of the blue, maybe just start talking to her at the meet. Anything to make something happen. But at the same time that makes me so annoying and that’s the last thing I wanted. If the piece is going to be a banger, I’d have to make sure she doesn’t hate me. She wouldn’t open up and tell me anything worthwhile if she hates me. That’s honestly kind of a universal tension for writers with their subjects. I think a bunch of writers don’t really care. I do though. It’s not about the information that’s presented. It’s about how the information is presented. And you shouldn’t ruin that commitment so early in the process, shouldn’t ruin that commitment at all. 

The next day rolls around and I try to set something up and then she doesn’t text me back. She can’t mean it out of malice, right? Now I’m really like trying to figure it out. There’s got to be some kind of Freudian explanation. Her parents were overbearing in her adolescence and she had no privacy so now she compensates for it? Maybe it was some kind of traumatic incident like she had butt crack out onstage at the elementary school choir recital so now she hates all forms of attention? Maybe somebody learned her secrets and spread that shit like wildfire? So at this point I change my method. A text a day until something happens. I’d add some flare to the messages I send her with the painted nails emoji, the lips emoji. Anything. Trying to keep it cool, keep it casual. Not make it seem businessy, transactional even though that’s what it was becoming.

uncool. The teacher gives Dawn an F and then she begs and begs to redo the test. The teacher is disgusted by Dawn’s shamelessness. Haven’t you got any dignity, Dawn? she says and then assigns Dawn a punishment essay about dignity which she has to recite to the class the next day. Absolutely devastating.  

Dignity is an important quality that everybody should have. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl, man or child, rich or poor, you should never be a grade grubber. Therefore dignity is a quality everybody should have. Thank you. 

I texted Vashti five times in a row and totally crossed the line from dignified to undignified. Dawn Weiner has no dignity and apparently neither do I. Vashti literally made me feel like I’m the mouth-breathing girl everybody calls Weiner Dog. Not even just behind her back. They call her that straight to her face. And now that I have no dignity left to salvage I figured I’d write about Vashti in the only way I can. Sunday at 12:27 p.m. is when I kinda gave up. I sent that final message knowing she wouldn’t respond and at that point I’d already come up with the idea of writing about her in this twisted way. 

I posted a selfie to my Instagram story that said “Vashti text me back” and then I realized that would be a sick title for a little piece like this one. It’s just a big joke at this point. She doesn’t follow me back so she’ll never see it. I tell everybody she’s going to be in my magazine so here she is, in my magazine. Gay Talese won a Pulitzer Prize by writing about Frank Sinatra without ever talking to him so maybe that’s what’s going to happen to me. Maybe one day she’ll text me back and I’ll have some more information straight from the source to substantiate my impulses. But maybe not. Only God and Vashti Cunningham could possibly know.

In that brief conversation we had at USAs she said creativity is her defining trait. Fireworks in my brain. Me too girl, I’d also say creativity is my defining trait. So of course I’m getting all giddy and even acting up a little bit like dang we’re about to vibe when we finally get to talk about this stuff. We’ll talk about our favorite books and movies and music and how it influences how we think about our own work and maybe she’ll say something groundbreaking that’ll change how I think about my own stuff. Whatever. I didn’t want to press her too much then because I didn’t want to stifle what was to come. I didn’t want to start something that we’d have to finish later. Huge mistake! I’ve now learned that if Vashti gives me an ounce of energy I’ve got to pounce on it. It’s like we’re in some 90s movie. I’m the loser nerd in headgear whose main concern is making sure his trombone is in tune and then the coolest girl in school makes three seconds of sustained eye contact and he thinks they’re in love. 

Let me start from the beginning. I went up to her at the Pre Classic in May and told

Tuesday 5:13 p.m. 

> What time is best tomorrow? 

Wednesday 9:10 a.m. 

> Any idea? 

Wednesday 1:32 p.m. 

> I’m literally free any time today 

Friday 9:20 a.m. 

> You available today at all? 

Sunday 12:26 p.m. 

> You around today at allllll? 

There’s this scene in Welcome to the Dollhouse (an edgy 1995 flick that my friends and I all love) where the main character, the insufferable Dawn Weiner, tattles on one of her classmates for trying to copy her test and then the teacher gets mad at Dawn for tattling even though she’s actually the victim. There’s no right and wrong, only cool and uncool, and Dawn is so