Terrell Owens Bukkake And The Infinite Sadness

"In depression, this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come - not in a day, an hour, a month or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying - or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity - but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attracted to it wherever one goes."
- William Styron, "Darkness Visible"

In the immediate aftermath of T.O.'s suicide attempt, a collective incredulous cry went up from the football blogosphere wondering how someone so physically gifted, so exorbitantly paid, so thoroughly in a Drew Rosenhaus-imposed fugue could do ill unto himself. I'm no psycho-pharmacologist, but the wiring in Terrell Owens' brain is a tangled, jumbled skein of black licorice Twizzlers that no amount of driveway sit-ups can set right. Even Joey Porter worries for this guy. That's why he's lending him his dog's bumblebee toy as soon as Owens leaves the hospital, unless Parker Posey takes it first.

The extent of his sickness is immediately clear; famous ballplayers don't reveal deep-seated psychological issues by attempting suicide. They sloppily hit on sideline reporters or not-so-sloppily hit their significant others. Bad form, T.O., bad form.

Beyond the camera mugging and the overbearing narcissism, the warning signs ran deeper. At the time it seemed the bumptious demand of a prissy prima donna receiver, but now, we know for certain why T.O. refused to play for the Baltimore Ravens. Why would anyone, facing the demons he does, want to playwith that loser Kyle Boller and the Ravens' inept offense? under the spectre of a team named for a purveyor of the macabre whose own death is marked by mystery and opprobrium?

This is a clarion call not only to the NFL and its fans, but humanity at large, and maybe even a few species of animal. In the coming days, weeks and months, as suicide denials are issued, passes are dropped, and Cowboys losses are piled high, it is incumbent on us to give this man our rapt, breathless, unwavering attention. Wars, elections, poverty, racism and porn, you say? T. O., T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., say we. One wandering thought, one straying eyeball could drive this man over the edge. You want that on your conscience?