Not that You Asked

HOW REALITY TV ATE MY LIFE

AKA INVASION OF THE RED BULL CONQUISTADORS

(A Melodramatic Farce in Twelve Brief Acts)

Act One

In Which I Make the Acquaintance of P. Diddy’s Personal Trainer

A couple of summers ago, a woman named Angela Bosworth sent me an e-mail asking if I would like to appear on a new “documentary style” VH1 show called Totally Obsessed. I’d just written a book called Candyfreak, which was about, among other things, my obsession with candy. Ms. Bosworth had not actually read the book. She had, rather, “read a ton of articles” about the book.

This did not entirely surprise me. I had done a good bit of TV for Candyfreak already, so I was used to people not reading my book. I knew that TV producers came on hot and heavy but rarely followed up. And I knew they had a tendency to exaggerate the length and potential impact of any appearance.

My strangest TV experience to date had been on a show called Cold Pizza, ESPN2’s answer to the Today show. They asked me to come down to their New York studio to discuss Halloween candy. I was booked onto the same show as P. Diddy’s personal trainer, with whom I spent a good half hour in the green room and who, I don’t mind telling you, has absolutely great delts, as well as a stunning grasp of the metabolic effects of a low-carb diet, though I can’t remember his actual name. Let me be blunt: I’m not sure I ever knew it.

He got about twenty minutes on the air, in which he discussed his employer’s upcoming entry into the New York Marathon, his training regimen, his blisters, and other pressing issues within the greater Diddysphere. My appearance lasted five minutes. I was paired with a host whose on-camera persona called to mind a particularly frightening anxiety attack I’d suffered in college. At one point, he stuck his mic inside his mouth so viewers could hear the Pop Rocks he had just inhaled. I know that at least one person saw this segment, because the guy who manages the bar where I go to drink off such experiences told me his wife had seen me. This is what’s known, in the writing game, as fame.

To be clear, then: I had what I want to call a bad feeling about the request from VH1. I was almost certain it would mean a lot of time and effort, and some mild humiliation, that it would only invite stress and disappointment into my already stressed, disappointing life, that, in other words, I should delete the message, pretend it never arrived, and get back to work.

Act Two

The Things We Do for Love

Why, then, did I forward this message to my publicist—knowing that this act alone would essentially require me to appear on Totally Obsessed?

I want to say that I had hope. I want to say that I truly believed appearing on this TV show would lead viewers to seek out my work and that some of them would dig what I was up to and would tell their TV-watching pals, so that, in a sense, eventually, there would be a whole army of viewers awakened to the pleasures of literature. I want to say this. But of course it’s complete bullshit.

My reasons were sadder—more abject and narcissistic. To begin with, I was worried that the VH1 folks would eventually contact my publicist anyway and that he might get angry at me for not passing this message along, which was not what I wanted because I worship the ground my publicist walks on, because he is the only person (other than my mother) who cares passionately about the fate of my books.

That’s really a very small sub-reason, though. The main thing was that I was flattered and star-struck. I enjoyed casually mentioning the VH1 thing to friends of mine, which forced them to ask me what I meant, so I could then say, “They want me to be on this new program, the pilot, whatever. It’s such a drag.”

Yes, they needed to know that I considered the VH1 thing a drag. I was doing it only because my publicist forced me. My friends were remarkably, disturbingly, impressed. Their attitude toward me (generally one of informed skepticism) gave way to something more like awe. They wanted to know what the show was about, what I’d be doing, and especially whether this meant they were going to be on TV.

And all this helped mobilize within me a belief complex familiar to anyone who has attempted to put art into the world. It worked like this: I would appear on the show and be brilliant. I would get famous. Everybody who ever called me a loser, privately or publicly, would suddenly feel like losers themselves. I would actually travel back in time, to my childhood, and enjoy the love and regard of my entire family. All my insecurities would evaporate.

For purposes of brevity, I am excluding the more obvious, quotidian perks of fame, by which I mean the opportunity to ejaculate on Paris Hilton’s face.

Contemplative Interlude I

A Brief Discussion of My Relationship to TV

I have never actually owned a TV, a fact I mention whenever possible, in the hopes that it will make me seem noble and possibly lead to oral sex.

As we all know, TV is a cesspool of mediocrity that sucks precious time and energy from those who fall under its spell. In other words, I am an addict. Anyone who has seen me in the presence of a television knows this.

As children, my brothers and I developed a TV loyalty so fierce as to occasion its own vocabulary. The brother who turned on the set first was said to “emanate.” When another brother entered the room he would immediately ask, “Who emanates?” I should stress that we were using this word from the time we were eight years old, despite the fact that we had no idea what it meant, which, regrettably, is still the case. Most of the 1,739 fights we got into as kids related to some issue of emanation, such as whether the act of fixing oneself a banana with peanut butter constituted a voluntary surrendering of emanation and thus empowered the emanator-designate to assume control. I don’t suppose I need tell you we could have done with a bit more parental supervision.

My point is that I would have suckled the cathode tube, given the chance. I can remember in vivid detail particular sessions of TV watching, as the gourmand might recall an epic meal. At the tail end of the Candyfreak tour, for instance, after five weeks on the road, I lay down on my hotel bed and watched consecutive episodes of a show called, I think, Extreme Blind Dating, in which the girl wears a hidden earpiece so that two of the guy’s ex-girlfriends can, from a remote location, advise her as to the most humiliating things she might say or do during the date. At the end of the program, a limo shows up. If the girl is inside, he gets a second date. If he’s failed the test, his exes are in the limo and they get to jeer at him and, in a gesture that is apparently fixed Extreme Blind Dating protocol, flash him their breasts. As I watched this program I began to believe that it was my duty to contact the producers—I took down the 1-800 number—and audition. I considered which of my exes would agree to be on such a show (none), and what they might tell my date (make him dance), and whether I could muster the necessary poise (probably not), and whether I really wanted to see my exes’ boobs (yes), and which ones (any of them, actually), and would it be possible, in the absence of real exes, to hire fake ones (probably). It was, though I don’t think I’m quite doing it justice, a glorious and deeply tragic afternoon.

Let me say also that TV has—like marijuana—gotten much more powerful over the past thirty years. There is almost always something compelling on, something I truly want to watch, often more than one thing, which is why my older brother Dave, when he gets access to a TV and emanates, actually watches four or five shows simultaneously, till he reaches a point of narrative saturation (i.e. his eye sockets start to bleed). I take it as a fixed law of cable TV that one of the Rocky films is on at all times, most often the fifth and worst Rocky, which I adore.

In short, when it comes to TV I have evolved a hard exoskeleton of moral distress and intellectual snobbery, which is in place to protect the squishy, defenseless flesh below.

Act Three

Introducing the Candy Monkey

You would think launching a show about obsessives would be pretty straightforward. Find the nutbags, turn the camera on. But you would be wrong. Totally Obsessed had an elaborate casting process. I was asked to send videotapes of previous TV appearances. I was asked to send photos. And I began speaking on the phone, nearly every day, with a young woman named Rakeda, whose job it was to “pitch” my segment to the higher-ups. She had a long list of questions: Is candy more important to you than sex? Have you ever fought anyone over candy? If candy ran for president, would you vote for it? She also began to interview my friends and family. I got lots of calls from loved ones, all of whom were terribly excited, but also a little baffled by Rakeda. “What’s the deal?” my brother Mike asked. “Is she mentally handicapped or something?”

No, she was not. She was working toward a particular need: the need to supply her bosses with evidence that I was totally obsessed with candy. The fact that I had written a book about candy didn’t really count. They needed something they could film.

Weirdly, stupidly, my segment was eventually approved, which meant I started getting calls from Simbi, the segment producer, and her assistant, Dana. I liked Simbi right away, because she seemed to recognize that her job was basically absurd and she laughed a lot and because she claimed I was her favorite subject so far. Dana I liked less. She spoke quickly, often incoherently, and tended to call at times that really weren’t appropriate, such as 10 P.M. on a Friday night. When I closed my eyes, I could see her résumé and the words associate producer in a dignified font. It made me very sad.

Simbi told me the show wanted to capture me in my native habitat. I explained to her that my native habitat involved me sitting around in my underwear, avoiding writing. I did throw chocolate parties, and brought candy to poker games, and sometimes, if I was feeling crazy, I brought a few bars to my morning squash game. Simbi tried to sound encouraging about all this, though she clearly had hoped my schedule would involve praying to a large Candy Godhead, bathing in chocolate, and the liberal use of lollipops during sexual high jinks.

She spoke about one of her other subjects, a fellow from New Jersey who was totally obsessed with professional wrestling. “What’s so great about him is that he jumps all over his furniture, kind of like a monkey, imitating all the wrestling moves.”

“How did you find him?” I said.

“He sent in a tape.”

Yes, as it turned out, most subjects had actually applied to get on the show. It was at this point that I should have realized I was out of my league. This was my competition: a guy who jumped on furniture.

But no. Instead, I concluded that there was a way for this to work. I was going to have to camp it up. I was going to have to become The Candy Monkey, a frantic, fraudulent, joyously undignified version of myself. The idea I had was that the smart viewers would embrace my shtick as cleverly ironic. They would recognize that I was actually a deep, thoughtful guy who was just playing a Candy Monkey on TV and they would admire my subversive irreverence. In other words—and here we are coming to a key factor in the ensuing failure—I developed the dangerous fantasy that I could defeat Reality TV.

Act Four

Some Initial Bitchslaps

Based on the phrase “documentary style,” I assumed the crew scheduled to arrive at my apartment in the middle of July would consist of Simbi and a camera person, who would probably have one of those little handheld digital numbers.

I had underestimated Reality TV, rather seriously. The crew numbered six: Simbi, a cameraman (Jay), a sound guy (Derek), a gaffer (Andy), a site coordinator (Charlie), and Simbi’s cell phone (Phone), by which she was in near-constant contact with the home office. We met for a get-to-know-you dinner and they ordered without regard to price, and when I asked Charlie what a site coordinator did exactly, he said, “I’m the one with the Gold Card!” then laughed diabolically.

They’d been on the road for a couple of weeks already, filming other Totally Obsessed people, and displayed the kind of forced camaraderie that derives from spending hours together in hotel rooms and far-flung bars. I liked their vibe—laid-back, eager to party, not terribly attentive. In a word: L.A.

And yet, when they arrived at my place the next morning, what emerged from their van was more like a military unit. The guys, though all impressively hung over, hauled in case after case of equipment, light stands, cameras, tripods, monitors, boom mics, dimmers, extension cords. Charlie was dispatched to fetch coffee and returned with twenty quarts and two dozen Dunkin’ Donuts.

Simbi took me aside to discuss the filming schedule. “Scene one will be the basic interview, then we’ll move to a scene in the kitchen…” I didn’t really get it. Scenes? What had happened to the poker game and the chocolate party? Didn’t they want to capture me in my habitats?

My friend Eve explained this to me later. “When I mentioned your chocolate parties to Dana, she said the only way they would be interested was if you were the only one who ate chocolate. Like, if you invited people over for the party, but you were so obsessed with candy that you wouldn’t let them have any.”

Had I known this a little earlier on, say, before the crew had occupied my home, I would have been given pause. But it was too late. I was seated on a small black chair. The camera was rolling. Simbi was asking me the first of forty-one questions, all of which I’d already been asked many times.

Simbi’s shooting script called for me to provide an extensive tour of my apartment. Fortunately, in the spirit of the Candy Monkey, I’d gone to the trouble of redecorating. I’d put Rocky Roads on the mantle, lined the wainscoting with caramels, filled my cabinets with Smarties and Neccos, taped wrappers to the walls, mounted chocolate porn on the fridge. The pièce de résistance was a thirty-five-pound Chocolate Pagoda, which my friend Karl (an engineer) had spent four hours constructing the night before. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. In short, I had transformed a somewhat grubby bachelor pad into a somewhat grubby Candy Lair.

Act Five

Squeezing Poop

I had assumed (again, stupidly) that filming would be a breeze. But between lighting and sound, it took more than an hour to set up each shot. There was a lot of standing around while Jay and Andy had conversations like this:

JAY:	Squeeze a little more poop on the dimmer.
ANDY:	There?
JAY:	No, now there’s a bounce off the fill.
ANDY:	What do you want, a Gary Coleman?
JAY:	Try a beaverboard, maybe raise the main.
ANDY:	Good?
JAY (checking the monitor):	No, we need a dickhead. Actually, try a buttplug.
ANDY:	You want me to Dutch those barneys?
JAY:	No, just Hollywood it.
ANDY:	There?
JAY:	Yeah, that’s good. We’re speed.

I know you think I’m making this shit up, which, actually, I am. But those guys did use every single word in the above dialogue. It was part of their film production slang, a way of aggrandizing what would otherwise be grindingly dull work. They had a special term for everything. A clothespin was a C-47, or a bullet (a backward clothespin, naturally, was a C-74). The sandbags used to secure equipment were called beach, unless they were over thirty-five pounds, in which case they became ballbusters. One did not take a bathroom break but called for a 10-100 or, in more extreme need, a 10-200. (It will go without saying that I later forced Andy to make me a glossary of terms, which now hangs on my wall.)

I found the whole experience hopelessly cool—for about six hours. When it was time for lunch, Charlie went out in the van and returned with enough deli to feed the Red Army. He’d already gone to the market and brought back copious amounts of fruit, vegetables, nuts, chips, beef jerky, energy bars, soda, water, beer, and, of course, Red Bull. (The production team drank tremendous amounts of Red Bull. I’m not sure I can overstate the amount of Red Bull they drank. Over a two-day period, I would estimate a million cans.) There was about the scene something endearingly profligate.

Between shots I would wander into my kitchen and stare at all the food on my counters, the donuts, the Pringles, the soup and sandwiches, the coolers brimming with Cokes, and I would think: This is free! VH1 paid for this! I wanted to grab someone off the street and hold up each item for him and shout: They bought this! VH1 bought this for me! I am not being had for cheap!

Act Six

Waiter, There’s a Sound Guy in My Shower

Because my bathroom was too small to accommodate more than two people, particularly if one of those people (Jay) was toting a camera the size of a small atomic bomb, Derek had climbed into my tiny shower. He stood under the spigot gamely, trying to ignore the nest of hairs clogging the drain at his feet. His fuzzy boom mic was poking over my white plastic shower curtain, which has been described by more than one friend (in fact, by every single one of my friends) as the ugliest in the short human history of shower curtains.

Let me say: I was embarrassed.

The bathroom was not somewhere I wanted to be filmed. I was concerned that my mother would see the segment and catch sight of the rust-stained toilet bowl and the somewhat bacterial sinktop and that she would weep.

But Simbi had insisted that I give a full tour of the apartment, and this included the bathroom. In my capacity as Candy Monkey, I had stashed some taffy in the medicine cabinet, along with a confection called Lobster Poo, which seemed, at the time, to make sense thematically. Jay called out “Speed” and I began holding forth on the need to “fortify nontraditional candy venues,” a sermon which culminated with my recitation of the couplet on the bag of Lobster Poo:

I went to the Cape and here’s the Scoop!

I came back home with Lobster poop!

It was at this point that the bloom came off the rose. Some more serious version of myself (standing behind the actual, blathering version of myself) whispered into my ear: What in God’s name are you doing?

To which I responded: I am lifting American minds from the muck of ignorance.

Act Seven

My Student, Under Interrogation

I put in eight hours as the Candy Monkey that first day, explaining why I kept candy in my laundry room and demonstrating how I ate M&M’s, while Simbi barked out helpful instructions such as “Can you open your mouth a little wider?”

Again: American minds, lifting, muck of ignorance.

Late in the afternoon, I went to do some errands, and the crew set up to interview a few of my friends. I can remember returning home at dusk and catching sight of a disquieting tableau through my bay window. My former student, a shy, brilliant kid named Simon, was sitting under a harsh bank of lights. The boom mic hovered over him. His pale forehead shone like the surface of an egg. He was sweating and blinking. I wanted, right then, to walk into my house and tell the crew to turn off the lights, let the poor guy go. But I waited until the interview was over and ushered him into my bedroom, which was the only place that wasn’t overrun with equipment.

I kept asking him if he was okay and he kept saying yeah, he was okay, but in a dazed manner, like a boxer taking a standing eight count. We spent a few minutes talking about his writing, his plans after graduation. But the noise from the other rooms was distracting. The crew was breaking down the set, swilling Red Bull, discussing how hammered they hoped to get.

“I should probably go,” Simon said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for coming by and doing this.”

“No problem. It was fun.”

“It didn’t look like too much fun,” I said.

“I don’t think I was what they were really looking for,” he said. “I probably should have made you sound a little crazier.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

A whoop went up from the next room. Simon glanced at me and grinned sheepishly. He was an exceptional young writer, a maker of stories with real human depth. And I could see now that he actually felt guilty. Reality TV had made him feel guilty for failing to be disingenuous enough.

Contemplative Interlude II

On the Nature of Power in Hollywood

It was a given, among the crew, that working for VH1 was strictly a money gig. They all harbored bigger dreams. Simbi had a short film making the rounds at festivals. She was working on a screenplay. So was Derek. So was the rest of Los Angeles County. They talked about all this over lunch, their projects, their writing partners, the nervous chatter of who knew whom.

They knew the fundamental truth of Hollywood: that the big money is made by films and TV shows that are patently stupid, though these products are made by people like Simbi and Derek, who are not patently stupid, and who must therefore exist in a state of creative and moral limbo, justifying their hackwork by perpetually citing higher artistic ambitions.

I came to like Charlie best because he just didn’t give a fuck. He had no grand yearnings, no life plan. He was thirty-five and looked like a cross between a young Martin Sheen and The Dude from The Big Lebowski. He liked to party. He liked to get naked. He liked to spend The Man’s money. He was probably clinically hyperactive. And yet there was this fetchingly maternal aspect to him. Here was a guy who, while the other guys struck the set, cheerfully scrubbed the soy sauce off my kitchen counters and carefully affixed a white plastic garbage bag to my oven door. I thought: This man is going to make someone a hell of a wife someday.

Act Eight

Andy Is in Play

Day Two began with a scene in which I went candy shopping at my local Brooks pharmacy. I had already explained to Simbi a few dozen times that I didn’t shop for candy at my local Brooks, that I didn’t shop for candy at all, really, but that was beside the point. She had a very clear idea of what she needed, and I, your humble Candy Monkey, did my best to oblige her. This meant walking down the candy aisle while Simbi issued directives such as “Fondle the candy like you’re choosing a melon!”

It was, however, genuinely fascinating to see the way the world interacted with Reality TV. They were in awe. Little kids would wander up to the crew and stare at them in wonder. The braver ones would mug for the camera. My haircutter, Linda, whose shop is next to Brooks, came by to watch. Best of all, Andy, the gaffer, when he wasn’t squeezing the poop, went over to ply his charms on the Brooks cashiers.

In contrast to Jay, who was tall, sloe-eyed, undeniably hunky, Andy was ill-kempt and stubby. He looked like a Metallica roadie. But he knew he had the Hollywood mojo on his side, and this, along with being a stranger in a strange town, endowed him with swagger. His rap and the attendant giggling from the heavily mascaraed clerks were far more interesting than anything I was doing. I wanted to turn to Simbi and say, “Listen, you’re missing the action! Andy’s showing that girl his tattoo!”

In watching this drama unfold, I could see precisely how those Girls Gone Wild videos came into being, because everyone in this country shares the same not-very-hidden desire: to be the star, the one who becomes known under the lights. There was no real reason for Reality TV to contrive elaborate plot lines. All they had to do was to head out into public with a camera crew. Was this not the transcendent lesson of Cops? That Americans were so desperate for fame they’d agree to be arrested on TV?

And here it seems worth mentioning an incident that had taken place on Day One. During my initial interview, the woman who lives next door began to scream at her grandkids. This was not unusual. It was, in fact, their central daily activity. The problem was this woman’s voice, which might be compared, favorably in terms of decibel output, to heavy munitions. What struck me was the alacrity with which my landlord, Stephen, who’d been watching my interview, marched outside onto the porch.

“Quiet down!” he bellowed. “We’re trying to film a TV show over here!”

Act Nine

In Which I Am Afforded a Brilliant Opportunity to Forfeit Any and All Legitimacy I Might Ever Earn as an Artist

Now it was late in the afternoon and I was hunched in my bedroom closet where, in my capacity as Candy Monkey, I had stashed candy. We had filmed, to this point, some nine hours of me yakking about candy, fondling candy, gobbling candy on demand. Simbi had one more request. She asked that I seat myself on the bed. The crew fell silent.

“We need to talk about something,” she said quietly. “I didn’t tell you this before, but every segment of Totally Obsessed has what we call the reveal. That’s the part of the show that we tease at the beginning and then, at the end of the show, we do the reveal, okay? So what we need for your segment is to get you on your bed, rolling in candy.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“We need you to roll around in candy on your bed.”

“On my bed?”

“Right.”

“Roll around on my bed?”

“Right.”

“In candy?”

Simbi nodded.

“I don’t really feel comfortable with that,” I said.

“But you told me you rolled around in candy!” Simbi said. “I remember, because that was the exact moment that I said to myself, ‘This guy really is totally obsessed.’”

I should confess that I had told Simbi I rolled around in candy, because when I was a little kid I used to roll around in candy. And she very well may have asked if I still rolled around in candy as an adult, and I very well may have told her yes. If I did so, let that stand as a precise measure of my shamelessness.

But the issue now was whether I was willing to roll around in candy on camera, and my answer was a polite no. It was impossible to fully explain my reluctance to Simbi, but it went something like this: I had written a book, which I believed in, but also feared was gimmicky. Rolling in candy for a national TV audience was only going to reinforce this latter notion, and also, in truth, I already had done my duty as the Candy Monkey, attempting to persuade people to buy this book by flying around the country handing out free candy bars, and I was distressed, in some more fundamental way, at the notion that writers should have to do this sort of shilling at all, particularly on TV, the medium that had done more than anything to kill reading in this country.

Simbi looked at me with real hurt in her eyes. Or maybe the word I want is betrayal. She looked at me like I’d betrayed her. Then she began to argue with me. She argued that I had promised her this, that I would be letting her down if I refused to roll in candy, breaking a personal covenant, and also that I shouldn’t be self-conscious, I should just “let myself go” and have a sense of humor about the whole thing. “That’s what we’re really looking for,” Simbi said, “people who aren’t afraid to just be themselves.” Her voodoo was very powerful.

And because, in my own Vichy way, I was still hoping to collaborate with her in construction of my own supposed fame, I began to waver. Maybe I could do this, lighten up, play along. Then I would conjure an image of myself actually rolling around in candy and think: No fucking way.

Act Ten

In Which Simbi Does Not Accept No for an Answer

“All right,” Simbi said. “Hold on. I need to make a call.” She went outside to contact the Executive Producer. The crew and I could see Simbi marching back and forth in my driveway, speaking urgently into her cell phone. We couldn’t hear her, but I imagine the conversation ran something like this:

“Hi, it’s Simbi. We’re here with the candy guy. Yeah, well, there’s a problem: He won’t roll in candy.”

“What?”

“He says he doesn’t feel comfortable rolling in candy.”

“But he told you he rolled in candy.”

“I know, I told him that. But he got cold feet. He says he’s afraid it will make him look like a fool.”

“So what, he thinks he’s an artist now? He’s too good to roll around in candy?” [Sound of fist smacking desk.] You get in there and convince him! Capiche? I didn’t send you three thousand miles just to film some jackass talking about candy.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Simbi, what’s the name of the show you’re working on?”

“Totally Obsessed.”

“Which of those words don’t you understand? Now you go talk to this punk and get me that reveal!”

Simbi came back inside and announced that she had a plan. I didn’t have to roll my whole body in candy. But maybe I could just show her the kind of candy I liked to roll in; I could roll my arm in candy. So I got a bunch of different kinds of candy and put them on the bed and I offered a brief lecture on candy rolling. Simbi kept saying things like, “Now, doesn’t that just make you want to roll your whole body in that candy? Come on! It’ll be fun!” This went on for an hour.

Eventually, Simbi gave up on the candy rolling thing. But she still needed a reveal, so I agreed to lie on my bed while Jay filmed a close-up of my face as I delivered an earnest monologue, ostensibly to a lover just off camera. “You know how I feel about you,” I said. “You’re special to me, and together, we’re really kind of magic. But I have to tell you, the time has come for us to take this relationship to the next level. I have certain needs, like any man.”

At this point, the shot widened and it became clear that I was addressing a piece of candy, specifically the Valomilk, a chocolate cup with runny marshmallow filling, which I bit into. As the white filling ran down my chin, I grinned and said, “You only eat the ones you love.”

I had hoped this super-quasar of glibness might be enough, but Simbi demanded a second reveal, which consisted of me dispensing pillow talk to an invisible lover—again a Valomilk, this time set atop the pillow next to mine.

Act Eleven

Chicks Dig Scars, They Don’t Dig Grafts

By early evening, the crew had run out of rooms in my apartment, but they needed to film a few more of my friends, so they had taken over my landlord’s place upstairs. They now controlled the entire house. I watched them ferrying equipment up and down the stairs and decided that the most effective way to take over a country was not to bomb them at all, but to send Reality TV crews.

It was close to midnight before the interviews were done. This is when the serious drinking started. Charlie had made a liquor run and come back with enough beer for homecoming at Mississippi State. Jay began mixing Red Bull and Absolut. I kicked in some decent-grade mota and started cranking the tunes. Pretty soon, we were into the chocolate, the good stuff, and things got very sloppy.

Andy pulled a slip of paper out of his back pocket and showed it to me. There, in loopy script, was the name Cristal, and a local phone number.

“Scored it at Brooks,” he said.

“Fuck yes!” Charlie said. “Call her, dude!”

“I already did,” Andy said.

“Well, call her again! Come on, get her over here. You can do her first and I’ll take sloppy seconds.”

“Fuck no,” Andy said. “I got the number. Anyway, I already called her. She was making all these excuses. I’m not calling her again.”

He went to call her again.

Jay began to tell a funny story about Charlie’s last Christmas party, during which Charlie had fed his cats an entire baked ham.

“You know what my favorite thing is?” Charlie asked me. “Jehovah’s Witnesses. This kid came by my house a few weeks ago and he started talking about how Jesus Christ was my only hope of salvation. I said to him, ‘Do you get to have sex as a Jehovah’s Witness?’ He said, ‘Only for the purposes of procreation.’ I said, ‘Dude, they’ve got you brainwashed. You’re a young guy. You should be out there fucking.’ He was trying to get away from me, but I wouldn’t let him go. That’s what I love. I love when phone solicitors call me. They say, ‘Do you have a minute to talk?’ and I say, ‘Oh, listen, I’ve got all day to talk.’”

In the other room, Simbi was crashed out on my couch, listening to Etta James at maximum volume. My pals Boris and Austin were doing shots with Derek and Andy and talking about what guys so often talk about: slang terms for degrading sexual acts.

Charlie began telling me about a motorcycle accident he’d gotten into and pulled up his pants to show me the damage. He grinned down at his leg, which was the color and texture of corned beef hash.

I told him it looked pretty bad.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “Chicks dig scars. They don’t dig grafts.”

Then we all gathered around my coffee table and I cut up a bunch of Lake Champlain Five Star Bars.

The party went on and on, more booze, more chocolate, more pot, more music. Toward the end of the night (which is to say, toward dawn) we all started getting a little sentimental. We took pictures. We vowed to stay in touch. I felt like I’d become an honorary member of the crew. I knew this was mostly bullshit. But there was something real in it, too, the drunken riffs, the music, the fine chocolate on our tongues. It felt wonderful to be a part of such a spontaneous gathering, as if I had finally managed to show them the true dimensions of my life, which would never appear on TV, to be aired and commemorated in syndication, but would live in our collective memory as a wondrous and fleeting human communion.

Act Twelve

The Ax Falls

It began with Dana. It began with Dana and her insufferably frantic phone calls, which beset my life a month later. She wanted to know if I had any more footage of myself. I e-mailed her back a message that said, in essence: What in God’s name are you talking about? I and my friends had already provided some fifteen hours of footage, for a segment that Simbi eventually informed me would run four and one half minutes.

Dana kept calling, demanding “more footage,” so I called Simbi.

“We need shots of you eating candy,” Simbi explained. “What we got is great. Everyone here loves it. But the Executive Producer wants more shots of you actually eating candy.”

“Didn’t we do a lot of that already?”

“Yeah,” Simbi said. “But she wants more.”

“If I say no, does this mean they cut the segment?”

“No, not at all. It would just make what we have stronger. And no one is going to ask you to roll in candy. I promise.”

I had that same bad feeling, like I was Montezuma being asked to invite Cortés back for a nightcap. But I also felt that my publicist and my friends were counting on me. And, of course, some of that same fame panic set in, the dumbshit hunch that I would be perceived as a failure if this fell through. So I told her okay.

Simbi followed up with an e-mail in which she noted, matter-of-factly, that a new crew would arrive in three days, and that they needed to reshoot all of the scenes in my house, along with the scene at Brooks.

In great confusion, I called her.

Simbi explained that the Executive Producer wanted more of a feeling of “us just being a fly on the wall.” She went on for several minutes, until it became clear that she had no idea what the Executive Producer wanted. I told her I’d be available from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. on Sunday, and happy to reshoot anything inside my apartment, but that was all.

Simbi called the next day to tell me the segment had been cut. I had expected she might be apologetic, but she sounded more self-pitying than anything. I don’t suppose I blame her. She was the one, after all, who had to wake up each morning and go to work at Totally Obsessed.

So I was pissed off. But that actually lasted only a minute or two. After that, I was merely relieved. I was so tired of dealing with Reality TV, tired of their tireless manipulation, tired of my own willingness to go along with what had clearly become a bad charade, just plain tired.

Contemplative Interlude III

The central illusion of Reality TV, the notion that the viewer is merely “a fly on the wall” watching life unfold, is, as you have seen, bogus on virtually every level. The people who appear on Reality TV are carefully vetted. The producers put them in artificial situations and goad them to behave in ways they wouldn’t normally. Indeed, the main criterion for those who want to appear on Reality TV is the extent to which they will allow themselves to be humiliated—the Shameless Quotient.

I hadn’t realized it at the time, but throughout the filming of the segment I (and my friends) had been engaged in an unstated power struggle. We hoped to represent my obsession with candy not as a pathology, but as an exaggerated—or perhaps liberated—version of the obsessions that live within all of us. All that is fine and well, but it’s not what Reality TV is about.

So what is Reality TV about? It’s about the careful construction of two central narratives: false actualization and authentic shame. The nubile bachelorette on the brink of true love with one of several men she has known for seven hours. The brazen cad who manipulates his beloved on cue. They need actors who can ignore the contrivances, who can put their tears and howls on public display, who will roll in candy when asked to do so.

The success of the genre is certainly a measure of Hollywood’s imaginative failures. Even more, it reflects our unrequited yearning for the authentic. Americans are drowning in a cesspool of fake emotion, nearly all of it aimed at getting us to buy junk. But we really do want to feel, even if that means indulging in the jury-rigged joy and woe of others. It’s quite a racket, actually, to feel so truly moved, even as we fall farther and farther away from the truth.