As she was leaving the ice after her gold-medal winning performance this week, figure skater Alysa Liu turned to the camera that was inches from her face and, beaming, yelled "That's what I'm fucking talking about." It was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. The joy of accepting who you truly are, of no longer conforming to the boundaries that have constrained you. The joy of being free.

Liu's story has been told so many times now that I probably don't need to repeat it here, but the short version is that was one of the best figure skaters in the world as a child and at just 16 she shocked the skating world by announcing her retirement from the sport. She wasn't happy, she was burnt out, she was done. A few years later she came back to competitive skating, but she came back transformed: hair dyed, face pierced, and completely out of fucks to give. Her performance at the Olympics was a culmination and a celebration and a reminder that, as poet Toi Derricotte once wrote, "joy is an act of resistance."

I'm not an ice skating guy—in fact I'm pretty sure my last time in skates was on a date when I was 22 and I slipped so hard that I split open the entire inseam of my pants. I do not know a triple lux from a double whatever. But I know what joy is. I know what it feels like to put it all out there and leave nothing behind. I know what it means to see the path you're supposed to walk and to walk another way. I know what it means to be free.

This wasn't the first time this month that we got to see something this radically joyful, performed in front of millions.

Continue reading →