By Bradley Snipes | Entertainment & Pop Culture Correspondent, IRREVERENT Magazine
LAX — I want to start by saying that I had my passport. I had it. I had it in Vienna, I had it at the Wiener Stadthalle VIP area during the Eurovision Grand Final, and I definitely had it at some point during the after-after-party at that bar whose name I cannot pronounce, where a very prominent Eurovision-adjacent person and I had a profound emotional moment over a shared bowl of Käsespätzle at four in the morning that she would absolutely remember if she saw me again.
The point is I had a passport and now I do not.
This realization arrived at the exact worst moment possible: standing in the US Customs line at LAX, one hand gripping an Aperol Spritz in a to-go cup I had somehow carried off the plane, the other hand digging through a Bottega tote containing: one sequined forest creature costume (partially removed), seventeen ibuprofen rolling loose in the lining, a piece of schnitzel wrapped in a cocktail napkin "for later," and absolutely zero passports.
"Sir." The customs agent said it the way people say sir when they mean something significantly less respectful.
I texted Timothée. I texted him a question mark because I feel that our relationship — or, fine, my relationship to his public Instagram Story, which I have replied to twice — operates on a frequency beyond language. He has not responded. This is, in fact, the nature of our connection: one-sided, unrequited, and more romantic for it.
I was escorted to a small beige room that smelled like carpet cleaner and consequences.
SCENE ONE: FRANK DOESN'T CARE ABOUT YOUR CREDENTIALS
By the time they let me go — temporary entry stamp, a lecture I received with great grace — it was eleven PM Los Angeles time, which my body was computing as seven AM Vienna time, filtered through six hours of altitude-assisted sleep and something the Austrian duty-free called "premium schnapps."
My building manager's name is Frank. Frank has never in three years smiled at me. Frank looked at me the way Mount Rushmore looks at tourists.
"I need my keys, Frank. Lost my ID. My passport. It's in Vienna."
"Can't let you in without ID."
"Frank. I live here. I have this." I held up my phone showing a photo from my own housewarming party — me, the apartment, a signed Lana Del Rey poster, a half-finished bottle of Clase Azul.
"That's a photo."
I tried a different approach. I name-dropped my landlord, who I have met once. I name-dropped my neighbor Deja, a music supervisor whose credits I have memorized and recite whenever she enters the elevator. I may have mentioned, with more confidence than the situation warranted, that I was close personal friends with Janelle Monáe — we have been in the same room twice, once at a SAG afterparty and once in a Rite Aid on Santa Monica, and I feel that counts.
Frank blinked. Frank does not care about Janelle Monáe, which tells you everything.
I sat on my stoop with my sequined animal costume. My phone showed three unread texts, none of them from Timothée. One from my mother. Two from PR listservs.
I scrolled to the second one.
GROUNDED™ invites select media to a three-day sober-curious wellness immersion in Joshua Tree. Communal healing. Sound journeys. Breathwork. Celery Communion at sunrise. Reply to confirm by Friday.
It was Saturday. I replied anyway. They responded in four minutes: "We'd love to host you! We feel your energy already!"
Reader, they should not have.
SCENE TWO: $24 CELERY AND THE GRANDMOTHER
Joshua Tree is two hours from Los Angeles, or four hours if you are driving Deja's borrowed Kia Sportage at dawn, stopping every forty minutes because you think the billboards are saying something personal at you.
GROUNDED™ was hosted on a property that looked like what happens when someone with a trust fund reads one too many issues of Kinfolk: adobe-adjacent structures around a central fire pit, artistically placed desert rocks, and a hand-painted sign reading YOU ARE WHERE YOU ARE MEANT TO BE. There was a merch table.
The founder greeted me. Her name card said Solène. She said Solène with a faint Chicago accent that occasionally broke through the serenity. I later heard someone call her Stacy and the name landed in her body like a small stone.
"Bradley," she said, taking both my hands. "We've been waiting for you."
"I was in Austria," I said.
Celery Communion was $24 and tasted exactly like celery pressed aggressively into a small glass that could have been a shot glass if anyone had the honesty to call it that. I stood in a circle of eight humans who had driven to a desert at great inconvenience to drink vegetable juice and stare at a rock formation someone had named "The Grandmother."
I pulled out my flask and added it to the celery juice. Not much. Just enough to recognize myself in the mirror.
SCENE THREE: BREATHWORK AND THE BRADLEY PARADOX
The afternoon session was led by Sage Bellamy, who has 2.3 million TikTok followers and a voice that sounds like it was trained by an app called something like Serene. We were on yoga mats on the desert floor. A hawk circled overhead in what I immediately felt was a professional manner.
"We're going to begin with box breathing," Sage said. "Four counts in. Four counts hold. Four counts out."
I did this correctly for approximately forty seconds.
"Now we're going to deepen the practice," she said. "Surrendering control of the breath."
"Quick question," I said. "Can we do one round of — hear me out — tequila breathwork? Where you breathe in the agave notes, let the warmth expand in the chest—"
"Bradley." Sage's voice did not waver. She had clearly dealt with a Bradley before.
"I have Patrón Reposado. I think the terroir is actually extremely — it's a wellness product, if you think about it—"
"This is a sober-curious space."
"Right, but sober-curious implies—"
"Sober curious," said the woman next to me, without opening her eyes.
I put the Patrón away. I breathed. In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Here is the thing about breathwork that no one who sells breathwork tells you upfront: if you actually do it, if you actually surrender to the rhythm of it with your whole depleted jet-lagged body on the desert floor, something happens. Not a spiritual thing, necessarily. More like a window getting cleaned. Like something you've been looking through for so long you forgot it was dirty suddenly going clear.
I breathed and I thought about the VIP bathroom at the Wiener Stadthalle where I was convinced I was having a panic attack because a sequined woodland creature in the mirror turned out to be me. I thought about the text I sent Timothée. I thought about every party I was almost supposed to be at and wasn't. Every room I almost got into.
And I thought: I have been performing access to a life I am not actually inside of for so long I've lost the map back to anything real. Not sad, exactly. Just — documented. I am a man lying on a yoga mat in a desert, locked out of my own apartment, four days removed from a continent, DMing celebrities who do not know my middle name. And the terrifying part is not that I am this person. The terrifying part is that I thought I was fine.
Then I reached for the Patrón again. The feelings were taking up too much room.
SCENE FOUR: THE COMMUNAL RESONANCE CHECK
The Communal Resonance Check happened at the fire pit at dusk. Solène explained it was a space for "authentic relational feedback." In English: everyone votes on whether you should stay.
They went around the circle. Indigo released her story about stillness. Hudson Verlaine — in content, he mentioned twice before the circle started — felt seen and safe. Petra, who I'd barely noticed, said she'd "done a lot of work" in a voice that made me think she meant actual internal excavation.
Then they got to me.
"Bradley," said Sage Bellamy, who had been waiting for this. "The group would like to share some relational truth."
"I love relational truth," I said.
"We feel your energy, while vibrant—"
"Thank you—"
"—has been disruptive to the collective container." She looked at her notes. "The breathwork session. The tequila breathwork proposal. The Celery Communion, when you asked if there was 'a mixer for this.' And this morning during the sound bath when you said, quote, 'can we layer in some Dua Lipa?'"
Silence. The desert does silence the way a therapist does silence: patiently, without mercy.
"Dua Lipa is a healer," I said.
"We'd like to offer you a loving release from the retreat."
They gave me a GROUNDED™ hoodie — $180 retail, the softest thing I have ever touched. I accepted it with dignity. I hugged Indigo, who hugged me back with surprising warmth. Solène née Stacy watched me walk to Deja's Kia with the serene expression of someone who will discuss this on her podcast next week.
The hawk was back. I chose to interpret this as a sign.
SCENE FIVE: RALPH'S PARKING LOT SUNRISE
I drove back to West Hollywood in the dark, which became pre-dawn, which became the specific gray-pink of a Los Angeles morning trying hard to be beautiful and mostly getting there.
I parked at the Ralph's on Santa Monica because it was open and because I needed somewhere unambiguously real. Grocery stores at 5 AM are the most honest places in the city. No performance. Just a man in Birkenstocks buying Smart Water and a woman in scrubs considering the yogurt with the focused desperation of someone who earned this yogurt.
I sat on the hood of Deja's car in my GROUNDED™ hoodie.
I still can't get into my apartment. Frank is inside. I am outside. The bougainvillea is blooming over the gate in the specific way beautiful things bloom: indifferently, without permission, regardless of what is happening to you.
My passport is somewhere in Vienna. Possibly in the VIP bathroom at the Wiener Stadthalle. Possibly in the hands of someone in a sequined woodland creature costume who is living my life better than I was. Possibly. But I'm pretty sure I had it at the customs desk or they wouldn't have let me on the plane.
I have one outgoing text to Timothée, unsent: are you awake
I am going to send it. Not today. Maybe not ever. But the option is there, and right now, that's enough.
Bradley Snipes is the Entertainment & Pop Culture Correspondent for IRREVERENT Magazine. He is currently, technically, unsheltered. His passport will turn up. Things do.
See you at the afterparty. I'll be the one in the Ralph's parking lot, wearing a hoodie I didn't earn, waiting for my passport to turn up.