The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Please, Drew Barrymore, don't do a dating reality show! Plus: Christmas at 30 Rock, another Gossip Girl couple, and since when is Elisha Cuthbert 'sloppy seconds'?
I should have known
that no good would come of something called Ladie's Night. (I think
it was supposed to be "ladies'
night," but that's not what the sign said.) The setting was some awful suits
bar on the Bowery. The drinks were free, so I was there. I
was sitting
with
my friends Augen, Becky and Lili, dissecting this orange-skinned girl who'd
cut in front of Augen at the bar, when another woman marched up to
us, all sugary voice and thick blond cornrows. "I'm Tricia," she announced.
"And you girls are adorable. I'm
a recruiter for Blind
Date.
How'd you like to do a taping?"
promotion
Blind
Date,
hosted by the fantastically smarmy Rodger Lodge, is the Grand Prix of reality
dating shows, infinitely mindless and equally seductive. I consider the
show a guilty pleasure, but my guilt and pleasure don’t come from a sense
that the show is trash, but
rather my conviction that I Am
Cooler Than These People, who speak in romantic idioms like they're
laying out bearskin rugs at the fireplaces of their respective souls. (Everyone
says they're "looking
for someone with a sense of humor." Who isn't?) During the show, thought
bubbles and animated
characters
pop up onscreen to mock each hapless couple (“Love
the way she massages that meat,” reads a caption near one man’s
head
as
his date makes a hamburger), and I sit on my couch eating pistachios and congratulating
myself on not being them.
"What do you say, girls?" asked Tricia. "Nope," said Lili.
Becky rolled her eyes.
Augen said, "Only if I get to fuck Rodger Lodge on camera."
I hesitated. It could be pretty funny.
I could smell the Drakkar Noir from
across
the room.
" Oh, look at you! You know you want to," gushed Tricia. "Listen, I know
what you're thinking about the kind of people who go on Blind Date. They're ditzy and plastic and . . . yeah. But that's L.A. We want to do it New York-style, all edgy."
Edgy. Right. All of a sudden I thought, yeah, wouldn't
it be hysterical if I went on Blind Date and gave them their edgy, like
if I spat a lot or spoke in Latin for the
whole
date?
And don't you get something like $500 every time they show the episode?
I made an appointment for an on-camera interview the
next day.
In the morning, I rousted Lili from bed so she could
help me pick an outfit. She approved silver stiletto heels, tight black jeans
and a grey silk camisole.
"But is it edgy?" I asked. "I need it to be edgy."
"When you say edgy, do you mean slutty? Because it’s
slutty."
Satisfied, I caught the train uptown and wandered around
Penn Plaza, listening
to
Kylie Minogue on headphones, trying to make myself feel pumped-up and whorish.
(She's
great for that.) When I found the Blind Date office, I was put in a
dingy waiting room with a couple of hair-gelled thicknecks and a woman who was
probably about thirty-five but had total leatherface. She wore a blue vinyl
minidress and white heels, and fretted noisily to the receptionist that the camera
would add weight. I was so in.
The receptionist handed me a questionnaire. I completed
it
as
I
thought an edgy, whiskey-drinking, fuck-and-run type would. Do
you smoke? Only when I drink. How often do you drink? More often
than I should. How
many one-night stands have you had? Depends does it count if I didn't
spend the night? What
would you like people to know about you? I list my SAT scores ha ha. Who
would your ideal date be?
I was stuck. I looked over at the thicknecks.
They weren't my type, that was for sure. I could smell the Drakkar Noir from
across
the room.
Visions danced through my head: Me, being pawed
in a Jacuzzi. Multilevel dance club madness. Kayaking — then trying to
make small talk about kayaking — with a frat-boy-turned-banker. Shit. Was there
any way I could request being set up with someone else who was doing this as
a joke?
In a moment of inspiration, I wrote a poem to describe
my ideal date:
Adrian Brody
You are not grody
Rather, you are hot.
Come on Blind Date
It will be great
And sad if you do not.
After handing my questionnaire
to the receptionist, I was shown to the "taping room." There, my troubles began.
Before we go further, let me explain something. I am
deathly afraid of TV cameras. When confronted by them, all poise and capacity
for
blithe
conversation
disappears, and I desperately say whatever pops into my head.
He stuck his hand up my shirt and clipped a microphone to my nipple.
The taping room was a tiny soundproof closet full of
machines. A young guy with curly hair was adjusting lights and pulleys, totally
oblivious to my presence. Finally, he came over, stuck his hand
up
my
shirt and clipped a microphone to my nipple.
I yelped.
"Sorry," he said. He adjusted the mike and left me standing
in the crossfire of two blinding white lights. A very clean woman swept into
the room holding a clipboard. She looked me up and down, then leaned in until
she was about an inch from my face. "You have young skin. You won't need make-up," she
pronounced.
"Thank you," I whispered, genuinely grateful for this
crumb of approval. (Now that I was speaking instead of writing, funny and careless
were a lot more difficult.) The woman retreated, sat on a stool across from me
and introduced herself as Deena. With the spotlights in my eyes, I could barely
see her. "Stand up straight," she said. My control of the situation was slipping
even further. I wanted needed to please her. "Now, I'm going to ask you some questions," Deena said. "There
are no right answers, but please speak in full sentences."
This, I think, was the exact moment my brain disconnected
from my mouth.
"So, Carrie, what kind of guys do you usually date?"
Planned answer: I date young New York pseudo-bohemian eye candy.
"They wear hats," I said. I don't know what I was
thinking.
"Hats?" Deena asked.
"Like, bohemian hats." Deena raised her eyebrow. "I date guys with hats," I stammered. " I mean — they're
scruffy. They're pale and scruffy. And they have hats."
"Right. So, you want something a bit different?"
Correct answer: I'm looking for someone different from the guys I usually date.
"Yeah. Hats are crap. Unless it's winter. I mean, if
he wore a hat in winter, that wouldn't really be his fault. But I don't want
to date someone too clean."
"Clean?"
"Yeah. If someone's too clean, they're like a stockbroker,
and I can't handle stockbrokers." I didn't know the first thing about stockbrokers.
But
I was trying to get on the show, and I thought
edgy
girls did
not
date
stockbrokers.
"I enjoy getting thrown against wall and fucked." Did
I say that out loud?
She smiled. "Well, who can?" Approval. Thank God. I was about to cry. Deena,
love me! She flipped through my questionnaire. "So do you like to go out
and party and do outrageous things?"
Correct answer: I really like to go out and party
and do outrageous things. This was all I needed to say, and Deena would
love
me forever. But my brain was all over the place."I'm, uh, fully
enjoying
the
fruition of my youth."
An annoyed pause from Deena. "So you're a writer."
"Yes." Eyebrow. "I mean, I'm a writer?"
"What do you write about?"
"Sex." Eyebrow. "I mean, I write about sex?"
"So you like sex?"
Yes." Eyebrow. "I like sex?"
Could they actually use that as a soundbyte? "I like
sex?" Oh
my God. I was going to be the girl on Blind Date who says, "I like sex" in
her testimonial. This was not how things were supposed to happen. I was supposed
to make them look stupid. My palms were actually sweating.
"So you like sex. What's your favorite position?" What? But
I had to answer. I wanted Deena to like me, I wanted Deena to want me
on
the
show,
I wanted Deena to think I was the sort of edgy chick who likes . . .
"I like to be on top!" I blurted. The vision I had then
was
far
worse than Jacuzzis or nightclubs or kayaks. It was me, on a television screen,
walking alongside one of the thicknecks from the waiting room. A little bubble
graphic would appear near my head. Fun Carrie fact: She likes to be on top
during
sex. It would be accompanied by a little cartoon cowgirl, maybe with a lasso.
"So you like to be in charge?"
Correct answer: Yes, Deena, during sex, I like to
be in charge. Doesn't have to be true . . . but at that point, I'd never
felt less in
charge. I was trying to give Deena an answer she would buy, but I didn't know
what that
was anymore. "Well, I mean, it's good to mix things up," I said. "You're
placing a pretty
simplistic dichotomy on a really fluid dynamic,
you know?"
"Right . . . so, I see here . . . "
"I mean I enjoy getting thrown against a wall and fucked." Did
I say that out loud? Oh, God not only was it out loud, but I considered it
an important enough piece of information to warrant interrupting Deena.
Could they put that in a thought bubble?
"Uh huh," she said. "So what turns you on?" That
one
was
from
the
questionnaire.
I remembered what I wrote. Deena just wanted me to parrot that back, to tell
her that I liked dirty rough-edged types, guys who had scars from bar fights
. . . and I got ready to, and I said . . .
"Scars."
"Just scars?"
"Bar fights. I mean, not bar fights. I mean Southern
accents?"
"Scars and southern accents? And please, Carrie, full
sentences."
"Well . . . I don't know . . . a sense of humor?"
Deena sighed audibly. "So why is a sense of humor a turn-on?"
Okay. I could do this. "I mean, sex is funny. And if you can't laugh about it, it's painful. I mean, not physically painful though it can be, sometimes but
that's not what I'm talking about. It's like, if you're in bed with someone,
and they can't laugh, it's like, is there something wrong with you, do you have
some sort of mental infirmit . . . "
I'd
been trying to give her what she wanted because I did want
to be on the show — FINE.
"
Hm. I see you did well on your SATs."
"That was a joke," I said.
"Oh, it's funny?"
"Yes . . . "
"So is that not your real score?"
"It is."
"So do you think you're smart?" I can't do anything
but blink. "Right. Do you have any tattoos?" That was a nice question. She was
trying to give me something I couldn't fuck up, and I appreciated it. I even
remembered
to
speak in a full sentence.
"I have a tattoo of a snowflake."
"Can I see it?"
"What? It's on my thigh."
"Can I see it?"
"It's on my thigh."
"Can I see it?"
"Thigh."
"Can I see it?"
"It's on my thigh. I'm wearing pants."
"Can I see it?"
Then I understood her. And all of a sudden, I thought, Fuck,
no!
Who
does
she think I am? I'm not stripping. I could actually feel my personality
returning. Deena was trying to turn me into a representative of The Edgy Demographic,
and
I'd been trying to give her what she wanted because I did want to be on the show — FINE
— and there I was in that bizarro interrogation chamber, all my standard sources
of
validation
a million miles away, and all I had was Deena and her casting procedure,
but
still, I was just one wiseass and they had whole production machines to turn
you into the silly slut they wanted you to be, so I couldn't really win and besides,
edgy's a stupid word and it means nothing and I didn't have the patience or the
energy to play along, that is, it wasn't really shyness or moral compunction
getting in my way but the knowledge that no matter how funny a story it would
make. And
I didn't want to play this game unless we used my rules.
"Okay, why a snowflake?" Deena asked patiently.
"Oh." Extra-earnest expression, smile at camera. "I really
like cocaine." Ha ha, Deena. Wouldn't it be funny if I actually
said that in the testimonial part of the show? Wouldn't it?
Total silence. I was exhausted. I wanted it to be over.
And then it was.
"Well, thanks so much, Carrie," smiled Deena."Give us a call in a couple of weeks." She
shook my hand, and I stumbled through the office back into the summer sunlight.
I called back in a couple of weeks. Tricia answered the
phone. After her "Hi, honey! How are you?" spiel, she politely explained that
they "hadn't
found a match" for me. Of course not. A match for me would apparently be a coked-up,
hatless self-conscious submissive.
When I got home,
I
watched Blind
Date. It was an episode I'd seen before. Not that it mattered.
I was in a bad mood for the rest of that morning. I worked slowly; when my mom
called, I
snapped
at her. By way of apology, I explained what had happened: it wasn't
that
I wanted to get Blind Date; I just wanted to know that I could.
Losing sucks, even when you don't value the prize that much, and it especially
sucked
to
feel
like
I
wasn't
a
step
ahead
of
this particular game.
"Well, it was silly of you to do it," my mother said. "You
shouldn't waste your time on things that aren't worth your emotional involvement,
because you're going to end up emotionally involved anyway."
I thought about this, and when I got home that night,
I
watched Blind
Date. It was an episode I'd seen before, not that it mattered. Couples were
kayaking, nightclubbing, Jacuzzi-ing. One girl was plain but kind-looking; she
wore a sparkly shirt shaped like a butterfly. Her date was clumsy
and sweet in a flowers-and-chocolate way. The two of them were having a painfully
sparkless
evening, and, as is the case on Blind Date, their presumed thoughts
were presented in graphics above their heads: "That's as lucky as you're getting,
buddy," "Bet she doesn't know kayaking's an aphrodisiac," and so on. They got
drunker and friendlier as the date went on. It ended with a kiss and a fade to
black. Rodger Lodge made a few snickering quips, and the post-date testimonials
followed: "She's
all right," "He's all right," "Not my type," "We'll see." It seemed feeble and
sleazy, not the part of yourself you want exposed to millions of viewers, even
for $500 an episode. I felt better. I've accumulated enough shitty-date
stories without the help of reality television.n°
Carrie
Hill Wilner is a Manhattanite by birth and breeding. Still, she has lived in a
lot of places and done a lot of things, and will probably live in others and
do more. She is pretty sure she graduated from Columbia, but they never
sent her a diploma.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
