Finale

Here we go…finally done with this after trying to finish it for a year. We're packing. I hate packing. It's so depressing. I did NOT want to leave. I really didn't. I was feeling good about my house, my roommates, the incredible weather. I was used to it all, and I had no summer plans. Did NOT want to leave.

The whole Miz stuff again…I don't need to talk about that right now. He gets a cute little figurine of a wrestler from Kevin. That was sweet of Kevin.

Here's the scene with Mike and Coral going out to dinner. I didn't know too much about this at the time. I thought it was so great when I heard about it. Coral and Mike had been getting along for a month, since Nicole's meeting on the roof, and especially after the Coco Loco/Teriyaki Terror/Miz match. So, I'm not surprised that they went out, but again, it was nice. They had gone through so much. It was a matter of two very different people from two very different places breaking through barriers. It took them some time, but they did it. I was really proud of them. Coral doesn't waste time on people who make her unhappy, and Mike had done that for her. It was great that she was able to see Mike for who is he, which is such an amazing person that it feels fortunate to be his friend. And I'm glad Mike learned how sweet Coral is. Sometimes I felt like I was the only one who knew that she had the greatest heart in the world. I'm glad the world finally saw her the way I saw her. I hate those flashbacks of them fighting. Such a miserable time. I don't like reminiscing it very much. The house was dark and cold during those weeks.

What's strange is Nicole and Kevin went out for lunch too, just like Coral and Mike did. When I heard about it, I was so excited. I cannot believe that didn't make the show. You think it would. At least a mention of it.
Rachel and Stubu with the Miz belt. There's more to this story. This is the last week or so that you're seeing. Those pictures of that skinny kid in the belt were not the only pictures taken. Some of the crew members took pictures of themselves posing in the belt as well. Now, THOSE were fucking funny, especially because those crew members were the strict ones that never really broke the rules.

When Mike threw Rachel in the shower, it was pure comedic genius. SO DAMN FUNNY. I was very proud of him, very sad that I didn't witness that shit in person. She so deserved it. Anyone who fucks with the belt better be ready for anything. I'm glad she laughed it off.

YES, KEGGER DAY!! Okay, there's a whole story behind this, and I don't remember if I wrote about it before. The last day we were in the Hamptons, Nicole realized that we had exactly seven days left in the house. She suggested that each day be dedicated to one roommate. (I think I did write about this.) Well, on your day, you were the kind/queen. This means you never had to answer the bat phone, since it was way up in the kitchen. When you want something, someone has to get it for you. Basically, you come up with a plan or a theme, and we all celebrate it. Such a great idea. We pulled the names from hat. Coral's day was first. Sadly, we had no time to develop a theme, but we were at Arista, we put on her music, and we danced around her. Cute and fun. Would have sworn it would have made the show. I can't really remember what we did for all the other days, they were fun, but not well planned. The planned day was Kegger Kevin Friday. We got a keg from the deli downstairs, and planned on getting wasted all day, ONLY roommates drinking the beer.

Mike and I were the true college kids who were ready for all the games. We were actually pissed the keg wasn't there before 2pm. When it got there - OH, was it fun. Mike did keg stands. I think all the boys did. We then played two-on-two ultimate flip cup. Me and Kevin against Mike and Malik. There were five cups on each side. You'd drink the cup, flip it, then while your partner did the next cup, you ran to the other side and got ready to do the third. We played five games. Kevin and I won each and every game. YES, we fucking KILLED the Miz that day. Kevin and I being sarcastic assholes had a LOT of fun giving Mike serious shit for losing. It was a grand victory for me.

We played some beer pong, and we harassed the crew members. The crew boy I liked at the time was outside on the street running errands, and we hung out the window yelling at him and teasing him. We started singing the Kegger Theme song we made up.

Kegger Day is the day for meeee…
Kegger Day, are you with meee…
Kegger Day, I'm gonna have to peee…

(Mike sorta raps) and we chant "RIGHT NOW", but sadly, I can't remember exactly what he says that we respond Right Now to.

Anyway, we got really goofy. I'm running around the lights on the pool table, Mike's all wasted, Coral's singing. All those pics on this site with me in the pink wife beater and the high pigtails are from Kegger Day. So, check those out.

Being a light-weight, I passed out very early. Got really really drunk. Actually, here's something funny. You know the main page of this site where it's my eyes in the background? That's cut from a picture Coral took of me on Kegger Day. I was leaning towards the camera, she took the picture, and I have absolutely no recognition of that happening.

The day was very Five-Musketeers. It was really just the boys, me, and Coral that day. Nicole and Rachel weren't drinking. I don't even know what Nicole did that day, but Rachel went out with her friends as she usually did.

So, then there's the atomic wedgy scene. Sorry, but I wasn't there. I was passed out drunk for a little bit in my bed. I got up when it was just over, and it sounded funny, and looked funny when I watched it. Good for Miz. I really like how Mike's doing a confessional at the time. I like it because you can see how that works, where the confessional is, and how fucking small it is in there. I like when production shit gets on the show, because it makes it more real for us to watch, since that's our experience. I like Mike's face when he sees the dude with his belt. So great.

So, now we're packing. Sucked so bad. It was just sad and lame. However, you must realize that this day we're packing and cleaning is NOT the day we leave each other. Yes, same clothes and hair, but NOT the same day. Why? This is the beginning of a very long production week. We were asked to look the same day we clean out and the same day we actually leave. This dinner we're having together…it's the last time we're living in the house, but we don't say goodbye to each other for another week. The house soon becomes a set for magazines and interviews and photo shoots. I'll go into this more in a bit.

The dinner was nice. Everyone contributed. I brought the wine (shock). Mike makes those cute shirts for us. Yes, we got emotional. Rachel cried, I cried. I loved that place, I didn't want to go. It's funny that they show that short scene out of order. He hands out the shirts and I already have mine over my shoulder, and THEN he hands me mine. Weird. Why didn't they just show it in order? Whatever.

So, SO much more happened here than you saw. Let me explain to you a little Real World history…
You remember the first Real World (NYC) when Julie, Eric, and rest of the original cast all broke into the control room? Well, since then, I don't believe there was a true break-in. The crew arranges a little game where you learn the code to their door and you come in and meet the crew and see the control room for the first time. Well, we knew we had the arranged break-in the next day, but we wanted to REALLY break in. So, Nicole, of all people, starts chanting at the dinner table, "Break in! Break in!" Out of no where, we all sprint to the control room door and start banging on it, screaming for them to let us in. They're yelling at us through the door to stop it and go away, but we refuse. We keep playing with the codes trying to figure it out.

Kevin has a plan. Apparently, two days before, Kevin, Rachel, Malik, and Mike (I believe) stole the crew van for a little while. I think inside was a text pager that had the numbers for other crew pagers, and Kevin programmed them into his text pager. Kevin paged a sweet, maybe slightly more naïve crew member that he had forgotten the new code on the batroom door, and Kevin signed it with a directors name. The poor boy, home in his apartment, pages back the code thinking it's the director. Turns out the code was wrong, but only off in order. So, it's only Coral, me, Mike, Kevin, and Malik standing in the hallway, and Coral tries a variation of the code given to us by the other crew member. All of a sudden, the door swings open. A crew member standing behind it shakes in horror as he realizes we figured it out, and we all start screaming at the top of our lungs. Rachel and Nicole race down to join us as the war begins. All seven of us are fighting, swinging, climbing, screaming at these crew members. The camera crew behind us fucking drops their equipment and starts grabbing us by our legs, pulling us away. A few of the boys pick me and literally try throwing me over the rest of our cast and the heads of the some crew. One guys puts his hand in my face to push me back. Soon, I get tackled by this guy, who tears the microphone clip through my shirt. So pissed, it was a brand new shirt. It's hard to describe the chaos that broke out. Finally, our producer says we're hurting his neck (he had seriously injured it early on in the season), so we stopped, but Coral DID get in, and we DID win. I considered it a victory.

Well, we eventually went to bed. I don't remember much else we had done that night. The whole week was fun, and some of it is on the Real World You Never Saw video, like Real World the Musical. Coral and I put on a whole bunch of shows for the crew when we were bored. We liked making them laugh.

Anyway, the day we move out of living there and into a hotel is the day we have the arranged "break-in" and we meet the crew. Very moving. Finally get to look at these people in the eye, smile at them, have them smile back and talk to you. I mean, they know SO much about you, they witnessed so much of your lives, and this is the first time you get to be peers with them. I got to hug the crew member I had liked the whole time, which was so strange and thrilling for me at the time. I wanted to talk to him all day. Didn't even know the dude.

Matt from New Orleans cast showed up. Coincidentally was in town and stopped by to see the crew, and we got to meet him. I gave him a tour of the house. Such a nice guy. It was so exciting for us. Our first taste of being a part of this family.

Okay, so we move out. Here we go…this is a whole other thing now. We moved into the Time Hotel. REALLY nice place. Our producer hooked us up with rooms that matched the rooms we lived in the house. So sweet. Well, Coral and I finally got to lie around and watch TV like NORMAL friends do. That was the coolest part. However, fighting still was going on. Coral was fed up with Rachel and this point, and Nicole was still sort of arguing a bit. She and Rachel got into this huge fight one night that week and Rachel TOTALLY stood up for herself, for the FIRST TIME, and of course, no more cameras. I was literally sitting between them and started crying silently because of the stress. I was so fed up with bickering that I just streamed tears until they were done.

Anyway, that night we got to watch the casting special and the first episode. HOLY SHIT were we excited. I couldn't wait. We went to the MTVi building and there was all this food set up with all this wine and beer. It was the cast, the directors, and Mary-Ellis and Jon. We were psyched because it was three hours of TV that would be the most exhilarating shit we've ever watched. On TV for the first time, about to see what we look like, what we sound like, what the interviews look like, what our opening was like. The casting special was great. We laughed our ASSES off. It was funny watching them discuss that dynamic between me and Kevin, Mike and Coral, and Nicole and Malik. It was this giant foreshadowing and we knew what was ahead of us, and I think we were ready. We were cracking up at the "Kiss my baby ass" thing, we were laughing at Segun. God, it was great. We were YELLING at the top of our lungs, laughing with our whole bodies, enjoying and loving each other completely. Coral kept filling my glass up with wine. This was bad. By the time our first episode was airing, I was wasted, and didn't even know it because of the adrenaline pumping through me.

Real World episode 1 started. Oh, what a great time. After the opening, we made Mary-Ellis rewind it three times. We just couldn't believe it was us. We couldn't believe we were Real Worlders after nine years of watching that show, and he's OUR goddamn faces saying that famous opening line. There's OUR names in that white print. It was so exhilarating. It was like a rollercoaster. We laughed about how silly I looked with Kevin. We laughed at every little detail. We loved it. We loved our lives. We loved every damn thing there was to love. Unfortunately, Coral loved to keep refilling my glass of wine while I was not paying attention. So high on adrenaline, I couldn't even feel the alcohol. However, when it was all over, so was I. Completely, totally, irresponsibly, unnecessarily wasted. It was an accident. I did not intend to drink that much. Apparently, in my drunken stupor, I grabbed Kevin in the hallway and shoved my tongue down his throat. Apparently, we made out for only a second or two, but made out nonetheless. Jumping ahead in time, later that week in the hotel, we were sitting around talking, and Kevin made a comment about our kissing. I thought he was kidding and made a joke. He laughed, but then looked at me funny and confused. "What?" I said, "You're kidding, right?"
"No…what do you mean that I'm kidding?" he replied. He then reminded me that I kissed him in the hall. Whaps.
"I'm sorry, Kevin, I forgot." He had that funny hurt look, and we laughed it off. Careful when pouring wine, kids.

Okay, so back to that night. We had to talk to MTV publicist, and I could barely stand straight. Coral kept punching my arm and slapping me when the publicist wasn't looking. "Up, UP!" After a failed attempt to look sober, I walked out into the rain and sat down in the middle of the street. Our producer came out and dragged me over to the side of the road. Somehow we got home, and I was already not feeling too hot. We all drank a little, so Coral wasn't feeling that great either, but she was better than me. I was trying to go to bed, but I couldn't get there. I was lying on the bathroom floor watching the earth spin uncontrollably as I shoved my fingers down my throat trying to regurgitate the wine already becoming vinegar in my stomach. I never puked, but I felt like death. Coral and I tried to sleep, but by 4am, I said, "Coral, are you awake?"

"Yup."

We were starving, and as it turns out, the hotel concierge at the Time Hotel in New York will walk down to the McDonalds in Time Square to get you whatever you want. So, I had him pick me up a number 2 meal, I don't remember what Coral got. We finally passed out at about 6am, I'd say, and woke up from the evil phone ringing maybe an hour later. It was the beginning of press week, and that first day was 12 hours of interviews with all different newspapers, magazines, and TV channels such as TV Guide Channel and their magazine, Seventeen, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly. The list goes on. I was so hungover I wanted to die, and I didn't even realize what it would be like that day, so my hair wasn't even blown dry. Sucked.
It was a long, hard week. I never worked so hard. I don't know how real celebrities do that, it took a lot out of me. It was an experience though, and I appreciated it. The best part was being able to just hang out with my roommates without cameras. It was nice to just feel like normal people.

By the end of the week, we had to "move out of the house" though we hadn't lived there for a week. Still, this was saying goodbye for real, we were actually flying away from each other to all points of the country. It was hard to deal with, even though the world didn't get to see how close we really got. However, let's not pretend that we were a group of 7 best friends. We weren't. In a few ways, it was a good thing we were separating. You can't make people be friends when there are too many differences. Coral and Rachel were tired of each other. I THINK Rachel and Nicole were still bickering here and there. Nicole really seemed ready to get going with her life. I think she appreciated us, but she missed her friends, and she was quite brutally frank in many of her interviews during press week about not feeling like she made really close friends. She spoke very openly about that in the book too. The way we said goodbye that last day, anyone could see that she had drifted away from the group and was glad about that, but thanks to good 'ol editing, the audience is not aware of what was really going on in the house.

Anyway, we sat in the living and counted down to our goodbyes that were timed and organized by production. When you see us all swollen and red from crying, that was started not from each other, but from the crew. The entire crew came upstairs for a last goodbye to us. Before we even got close enough to hug, we started to cry. We had been looking at these faces for as long as we had been looking at each other as a cast. The crew is just as much a part of the experience as anything else, and saying goodbye to them hurt much more than we had expected it would. I remember at one point looking up at a crew member after the wall had risen for the last time. He was a floor above us, and when I looked at him, he moved his camera and gave me a smile goodbye. I think I lost it completely at that point.

The cast filed down to the street and began our goodbyes. Rachel went first. I cried. I spent a lot of time with her over the past four months, and we had gotten really close. Though the last month I never really saw her, it was strange to see her go.

Next was Nicole. We all said goodbye, but it wasn't some enormous moment. We smiled and hugged, but once again - she seemed happy to get away.

I was next. Only a minute or two passed before my van came to get me, and as soon as it pulled up, Coral leapt at me, and held me to her sobbing into my shoulder. I, obviously, sobbed with her. Since the storyboard doesn't seem to give a shit about our show or our relationships, the viewers don't really get to see the significance of this goodbye. We held onto each other for a while, cried quite a bit. I promised to visit her soon. The five of us all held each other pretty close. We had spent so much time together that last month once Nicole and Rachel distanced themselves. When I finally got into the car, we were only half a block away before I stuck my head out the window and yelled, "Did you guys see me put my wallet in my bag?"
Coral yells, "She's been gone for under a minute and she already needs me." It was adorable and sad. Did you see it? No, of course not. Why? Say it with me, kids: Storyboard SUCKS. BMP had given up on our cast a few weeks into filming Chicago.

I wasn't thrilled that the show ended on the Miz. The Miz was a small detail in my experience of the house, so to see the show conclude on the Miz as if it were the theme to our lives…it felt…stupid. There, I said it. I love Mike to death, I worship Mike. I'm just really not good friends with the Miz. He knows that.

That was it. I have more to say about the show, but I think I've gotten more and more bitter, which is a shame. It's not the kind of bitter where it bothers me regularly. I just have to think about it enough, and then I get upset about it. It's just that I know that if I edited the show, it would have been rich with relationships. I mean, Nicole and Coral were not evil - they had a lot of good laughs that you don't see. We all had funny moments, different opinions, lots of laughs. I mean, Mike had a relationship with this pretty girl they could have shown. Rachel had a shitload of hook-ups. Kevin and Rachel were close. So much could have happened that made the show nice, relatable, entertaining. They made my show boring. We had a boring finale - half hour long, no reunion. It feels like a personal insult to me and my friends of my cast to make this big deal out of New Orleans finale, and then a big deal out of Chicago finale, and shitting on us in between.

I love my cast, and I wouldn't change it, but from a caster's perspective, I don't think it was a great idea. We were too different. Sometimes, we were so different that people didn't even feel the effort to make friendships work, they'd rather just ignore them until the go away. You need people that love each other, so when they fight, they want to fix it, no matter how difficult it is to do so.

I feel badly being negative. I feel spoiled, and I didn't want to complain like all RW people do after their show, but it's hard not to. So much effort and time into something just to be dissatisfied with the final result. It's just a shame.

Nonetheless, I'm lucky, and I know it. I love the friends I made, and I love the people I met by being a part of this unique and bizarre RW family. Everything happens for a reason, and that becomes clearer and clearer to me as time goes on.