A Love Letter to Justin Bieber

This fall has been a season of rapid change for me. A new city, a new job, pretending to be an adult, pretending I like meeting new people, a second cat. But one of the most tremendous changes in my life has been something I’ve been hesitant to speak of, something I’ve kept close to my young heart: I like Justin Bieber now.

And I know what you’re thinking and no, it’s not in a creepy way. It’s not like I’ve been watching him grow and progress for several years and I feel sincerely invested in the success of his career. It’s very new and completely sexual. To put it gently, I want to whip up a Bieber schmear and spread it on a sex cracker. I want to call a BÜber and forget my iPhone 6 in the backseat. I want to sit down in History 355 on the first day of the semester and when the professor says, “So, how was everyone’s summer?” I want jump up onto my rickety, wooden lecture hall seat and yell, “I really want to fuck Justin Bieber!” And then the professor jumps up on her podium and screams, “And that’s gonna be on the final, you bitches!” and she doesn’t even care that I’m not technically in the class or enrolled in the university at all when it comes down to it. Do you see? It’s nothing weird.

Okay, let’s break it down. What are the components of the jet fuel being thrown onto the white-hot, proverbial fire of my sexual renaissance? The thrill of watching a good boy go bad? Of course. The pleasing nasal quality to his voice? Absolutely. His hair, dyed Albino German Blond? Ja! The way most of his recent music videos are shot like videos from the For Women category on Porn Hub? Amazing. His fuzzy little mustache? No, I don’t like that. His diaper pants? Still no, actually. His god-awful tattoos? Kind of. The fact that he looks like a butch 20-something lesbian who’s super into rugby and going down on her girlfriend? Fuck yes.

And obviously, if we’re looking at Justin Bieber as a real person, there are some glaring issues. Yes, it would be fair to call him an idiot savant and just an asshole in the most general sense of the word. Yes, he abandoned a monkey in Germany, a country known for their love of monkey spätzle and monkey strudel and monkey-flavored hefeweizen. Yes, he peed in mop bucket and told Bill Clinton he could go sit on a big pile of dick-shaped lemons. (I think? Someone fact check that for me.) But this is a person who had millions of people telling him, “Yes. You are fucking awesome. Change nothing. You are a god,” the entire time he traversed the dangerous and rocky slopes of puberty. Of course he’s going to ditch a couple monkeys here and there. Let’s cut him some slack. All of us turned out like assholes and we only had our own parents to feed us that lie.

But none of us are perfect and when it comes down to it, I think that is the most magnetizing aspect of the Justin Bieber experience. Because yes, I am 23 and I don’t know how to do my own taxes, I get eczema all over my body all year round, I still haven’t perfected prolonged eye contact with people I haven’t know for more than two years, I like cats too much in a way that I originally thought I was doing ironically and I am now slowly realizing is very real and, as it turns out, verging on disturbing; but when I’m riding through the city and I hear Justin Bieber’s silky and sensual vocals cascading through my ear buds and into my head, I think, “Wow… I really am special after all.” And then I get too worked up and I hit all the potholes on purpose with my bike until I get to work.