Banana Speaks Out

(originally written & performed for The Paper Machete in Chicago, July 31, 2021)

I’m sure most of you recognize me, but for the few of you who may not, I am the albino Burmese python who co-starred with Britney Spears at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. Most people know me as “Britney Spears’ albino python from the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards—but my closest friends know me as...Banana.

I came here today to announce that I am joining the fight, to emancipate Ms. Spears from the cruel and unusual conservatorship she’s been under for the past 13 years, as the newest member of her legal team. I recently slithered over the California bar and feel I have an extremely strong grasp that some might refer to as a “strangle hold” on Ms. Spear’s unusual legal situation and history. I also serve as a character witness since Ms. Spears and I have known each other for 20 years and...we have a lot in common.

We’re both female.
We’re both white.
We’ve both been thought of as “southern invasive species”.

Britney and I met in 2001 when she rescued me from the wrong side of the Everglades by asking me to collaborate on the now iconic live performance of her song, Slave 4 U. I was only a year old and about 20-30 pounds at the time, I had no idea how fame would affect us both. I came from nothing. Hatched in a nest with 37 brothers and sisters, I was forced to compete for the love of a mother who didn’t give a damn about me. My father disappeared shortly after fertilization, for all I know, our mother ate him. I had to fight for every moment of my youth, for every bird, rabbit, rat, mouse, and small reptile I was able to catch and kill in order to survive.

Although she was completely terrified of me when we first met, Britney treated me with respect and kindness. After just a few short hours, she was cradling me in her arms, singing and dancing with me around the stage, proclaiming her absolute devotion to me. Me—an adolescent snake from the middle of nowhere in Florida who had ridden to the VMAs on the New York City subway in a goddamn Coleman cooler bag. My heart may regularly expand to 40% more than its original size in order to pump more blood to my stomach when I’m digesting extremely large prey, but on that day—it was because of Britney.

Snakes have a bad reputation in the media, fueled by the likes of the Anaconda movies, the Old Testament, and those quote, “Muthafuckin snakes on that muthafuckin plane”. No offense to Samuel L. Jackson, I’m sure he needed the money. Britney had wanted to change all that. She made us approachable, lovable, hip. I’ve never wished harder for tear ducts that are evolutionarily capable of expelling liquid due to emotions or the eyelids with which to blink those tears away, until in 2007 when bleach-blond teen YouTuber Cara Cunningham hysterically pleaded for everyone to “Leave. Britney. Alone.”

I stand coiled here before you as someone who understands exactly who Britney Spears is. I too know what it’s like to feel unloved. To be an outcast. A freak, who thinks their only value is in entertaining the people who come to gawk at them. Someone who, to the untrained eye, seems dangerous, unpredictable, untamable. I too know what it’s like to feel confined, caged, trapped, owned. A being who only wants to be free. Free to do whatever their heart desires, whether that’s controlling their own reproductive choices or swallowing an entire pet toy poodle for lunch.

So the next time you think about making Britney Spears the punchline to a joke or laughing at something seemingly crazy she posts on social media just remember: she is deserving of love and understanding, just like the reptiles you think of as evil, slimy, predators who star in some of your favorite films, eat your garden pests, and teach lonely, misunderstood weird teen girls to feel something, for the first time, for a creature other than themselves.