I realize, of course, that very few people are drawn to Are You the One? because of the mathematical strategies that must be employed for twenty-two people to have a shot at splitting a million dollars, but for those who are interested, the statistics at this point are as follows:
• 3 beams of light were nabbed in 2 consecutive ceremonies.
• 0 matches were made from 2 sojourns into the Truth Booth.
• 1 guy received head from Kenya during a luau.
• 1 girl named Lauren has received approximately 36 seconds of screen time.
• 7 blowups have gone down courtesy of Bria and 4 of them required she be physically restrained.
• And the number of women still convinced something real and true exists beneath Zak’s staggering and smelly layers of douchiness? Well, that number would probably measure somewhere near infinity.
A few of the men I’ve dated have had some flaws. One had severe commitment issues. One’s favorite hobby was telling me complicated lies. One thought it would be totally normal if we eventually had separate bedrooms. And one was a clinical narcissist who should really be studied by a team of very brave experts who do not scare easy. But not one of them ever grabbed a phone out of my hands when a male friend called and blubbered, “Who is this?” in a manner that required both subtitles and a straightjacket.
I used to fall asleep without praying. For decades, I would crawl into bed, arrange my pillows into a fluffy mountain to keep my head elevated all night, turn immediately onto my side with my legs curled in sort of a tree pose, and drift off to a choppy dreamland often marked by sugarplum dreams dosed slightly with acid. There was something comforting about getting into bed and just being done. Though my mind would often spin with unanswered questions and unrequited longings, those thoughts were never linear and they certainly weren’t planned out and there was a freedom to my nighttime ritual I wish I could reclaim. Because the thing is, I don’t quite know what happened or even when it happened, but I pray every single night now and it takes me a while to do and, rather than feeling quieted by my prayers, they cause nocturnal anxiety. I think it’s probably that my prayers, though coated with gratitude, are also motivated by fears I spend all day pretending are not there. I speak of my family and my wishes for them and I ask for safety and protection for all of us and I pepper my words with a request that those I care about will be alleviated from whatever ails them. I pray that those I loved who have passed on are at peace and that they are together in a spiritual stratosphere I’m not even sure I believe exists, and I end with thoughts of appreciation. All of it is done in my head; I do it whether I’m alone in my bed or not, and I never really talk about it with anyone – about how I feel like I have to do it now, about the way it’s almost become a superstition, about how I’m not even sure it helps anything, about the way I’ve convinced myself it cannot possibly hurt.
If I prayed for you at one point, you probably remain in my nightly thoughts. I’ve never been all that good at the process of elimination.
A sweet reader of my recaps remarked last week that Bria’s crazed behavior — you know, the kind she exhibited each of the five times she flew into a rage during the premiere episode because a guy she’d known for all of forty-eight hours was speaking with other girls during a DATING SHOW — would lead to producers tossing her from the villa for good. There’s a true sense of logic behind that kind of rational mindset, but my response was that I guessed that not only would Bria never be thrown off this show, but she would instead become the newest face of MTV and eventually appear on every single one of the network’s shows. The girl has chosen to present herself as an unstable hellion who experiences only the briefest pangs of retrospective regret and that, of course, means two things: 1) She is a casting director’s fever dream come true and 2) Anyone who questions if this girl should be anywhere but on a therapist’s couch is someone I would probably choose as a lifelong friend.
Are You the One? is back for another season, and if you thought there couldn’t possibly be enough people willing to brawl on national television while ostensibly searching for an MTV-sanctioned soul mate, well, you clearly have no idea how much pocket money can be earned shilling teas that will cause you to shit out your spleen on Instagram. But there’s no denying this show is poppy escapism, so let’s just go ahead and pretend. Let’s pretend the participants are truly invested in finding love and not in parlaying their appearances into careers in the Reality Arts. Let’s pretend being followed by cameras is totally conducive to forming healthy relationships. And let’s also pretend a few of these contestants will feel just a teensy bit of internal shame for what we’ll all eventually be exposed to when they stumble into a location actually named “The Boom-Boom Room.”
Remember that episode of Friends when Phoebe changed her name to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock? Well you guys, sometimes-fictional stories morph scarily into real life. That’s right – it’s time to meet GatorJay231SouthsideGawd! To be clear, this is a name a grown man chose for himself.
Full disclosure: I do not follow the reality show people I write about on social media. (Well, there is one. I’m Twitter buds with Ariana from Vanderpump Rules, but that’s because 1) She followed me first and 2) I’m pretty sure she’s fucking normal.) But the rest of them? Nope. It’s nothing personal, but I figure my job is to write exclusively about the lives they so willingly portray on these shows and I see no need to cloud my recaps with outside stuff. And it is because of this intentional blissful ignorance of mine that I had no idea how correct my first impressions have been of Logan, Kortni’s terrifying boyfriend. Last week I mentioned the way the guy causes my insides to freeze. Then I searched online for a picture of him to accompany the post on my site and it turned out that Googling “Logan Floribama Shore” led me to all sorts of scary articles you can check out yourself if you’re interested in what I guess I’d call “tragic spoilers.”
I used to do yoga. Once a week, one of my best friends from high school — a certified instructor who still smells comfortingly of patchouli — would show up at my house. I’d unroll my yoga mat (it was green and began to absorb the scent of my feet more and more every week) and she would unroll her purple one that never seemed to smell at all. She’d guide my breathing and force me into positions I was initially certain my body was never meant to bend into and my dog would lay beside my mat and yawn, occasionally standing up to do a downward facing dog that put mine to shame every single time.
The season finale of Billions ended with Bobby Axelrod standing at a very unexpected doorway and then — even more unexpectedly — being invited inside by a person who was (REALLY unexpectedly) quite pleased to see him. That ending was a shocker. Know what’s never a shocker? When an episode of Floribama Shore ends in a brawl outside of a bar or with two unappealing human beings fucking in a shower that they’ll probably then piss in during a moment of postcoital bonding.
One taught me how to grill vegetables inside a tent made out of aluminum foil. Just some zesty salad dressing for a marinade, he told me. If you can chop and turn on a grill, you can cook.
