Real World Cancun: Wristcutters, A Hate Story
Everyone was terrible this week on The Real World. Everyone said and did awful things, spurred on by the white studio lights of their "house" and the ever-prodding cameras. This was a total head-in-hands episode of the ol' RW.
There's a war afoot between Ayiiia and some of the boys. See, Ayiiia gets really drunk and says mean things and does dumb things. She doesn't really have any filter or off switch, she just sort of barrels along without a thought of the consequences. She's sort of a child that way, or a curious cat. She picks at scabs and thrusts her paws at electrical sockets and then cries and howls and when she gets hurt. She makes herself a victim! And she loves it.
Joey is just a purposeless antagonizer. He's got that dumb schoolyard thing that certain misanthropic boys have where he'll do some mean thing that he thinks is funny, over and over and over again, even though everyone else has long ago lost interest. He thinks people crying is funny. He thinks pasting signs all over a hotel suite in Mexico saying "Go Home, Ayiiia. Nobody likes you." is an intelligent, witty, grownup sort of thing to do.
So you can see how these two wouldn't get along. She attacks quickly, then runs away, and he relentlessly bounders after her, barking and barking and barking. Most of the roommates hate this about him. Except CJ. CJ is a big dumb turnip of a man, with a stupid shock of puffy hair and an ugly, meaty physique. He's also secretly a total trashbucket, slipping and saying "ain'ts" here and there, little breadcrumbs leading back to some dilapidated apartment building. Some squeaky black fake leather couch. Some blank, dirty white walls. Some sad soiled king sized mattress lying forlornly on the floor, without box spring or frame. Just there. Sitting on browning teal wall-to-wall, the thrum of a leaky air conditioner singing the scene a dirge.
So CJ profoundly sucks, we know this. It was proven further still when he just tittered and chuckled and called the not funny (not because they were mean, but because they just weren't funny) things that Joey was saying "awesome" or "classic," his rusting Isuzu Rodeo flashing quickly through his head.
Now, CJ did have a reason to be mad at first. Ayiiia came home all sloppy and drunk one night while CJ was trying to coax his way into some chippy named Amanda Hugginkiss' pants. (Ughhahsdfa;ldsfkjasdf... so gross. He's so gross.) The sad, embarrassing thing was that he was completely naked, flopping on top of her, while she was fully clothed. She didn't seem all that into it, and was very excited and relieved when she heard the clicking and stumbling of people trundling down the hall. "Put your clothes back on..." she hissed joyfully. CJ didn't want to. "They ain't comin' in here." But CJ! They is! They is comin' in there! Well, Emileee be, at least. She ran into the darkened room and shrieked because CJ was naked and grinding up on some girl and that is gross. But then Ayiiia started yelling things. See, the girls (or maybe just Ayiiia) call CJ's... um... male business "Piglet." "Where's your piglet," Ayiiia drunkenly slurred. After I had fallen over dead and was successfully revived by my helper monkey, I was forced to watch as CJ stormed out of his bedroom in the nude, Piglet windswept and eager, to yell at Ayiiia. He was so mad! He was finally going to get to have sex (no you weren't, CJ) and Ayiiia had ruined it! Just ruined it!! Ayiiia was sloshing around the hottub, and the scene just got yellier and yellier and yellier. Joey got involved too, because why the fuck not, he smelled blood in the jacuzzi, and it's fun to make already crazy girls even crazier by yelling at them for no reason.
(All the while I wondered: What happened to Amanda? The cameras didn't show her slinking off, shoes in hand, desperate to get to the elevator so she could leave this whole sorry scene behind her forever. What had she been thinking? Just what the hell had she been thinking exactly? "Oh, I'll just go work in Cancun for a while. That'll be fun." Jesus. Her dad was right, it was a huge mistake. All she wanted was to get on a plane back to St. Paul and forget this ever happened. God, she left Macalester for this! How dumb she'd been. She'd go back to school, get her degree, and go visit Jane in Berlin for a few weeks. Clear her head, then come back and start applying for jobs. Cancun?? Seriously?! What a fiasco. Ugh, where is this elevator?)
Anyway, the whole thing culminated in Ayiiia weeping and running around in her bra and underpants, sobbing to any of the girls who would listen about how she did nothing, Nothing!!!, to deserve this (except to disturb CJ while he was trying to bone and yelling about his teeny tiny Piggly Wiggly in front of dear, horrified Amanda). So it all seemed silly and overdone and oh won't you just shut up please Ayiiia... Until. Well, until Ayiiia went into the bathroom and cut herself. Ayiiia, I guess, has had a problem with cutting for a long while and she thought she was better. But. She wasn't. I mean... who could have predicted that?? Who could have predicted that someone with severe emotional issues would buckle and crack under the pressure of living on a TV show in a foreign country with a bunch of self-obsessed strangers? I mean that situation just sounds so safe! I'd be perfectly comfortable with both Mischa Barton and Margot Kidder doing this show. It's that stable an environment. Hell, throw in Brian Wilson for good measure. Why not! More the merrier!
So. That's that. That is that and Emileee dumbly chose to make Joey aware of the cutting, in the vain hopes that it would get him to ease off. Which, of course, it didn't. Because he is dumb and stubborn and unlikable, he started making fun of her cutting right to her face. Right in the kisser. She mostly shrugged it off, but after a while, she couldn't. Joey had left the aforementioned signs all over the house, in his quest to get Ayiiia to choose to leave the show, and this was her final straw. She threw something (maybe her foot) through a glass closet (Anderson, are you OK? Are you hurt?) and then wandered out to the patio to smoke cigarettes and bleed everywhere. Sagely, Jasmine the Brave went out there to try and calm her down. She told Emileee she was terrified about what Ayiiia might do next, and so was I. She's really unstable and should go home. Not because Joey is an ass, which he is. But because why stay? What do you have to gain, y'know?
Ah well. Nothing was really resolved with that whole thing in the end except that Ayiiia didn't kill anyone, and Joey and CJ laughed in their empty, girl-less beds. (Earlier, CJ said: "I'm not here just trying to bone [he really said bone] every chick on Spring Break. But if that happens... it happens." Because, yes, CJ. It's likely that you'll bone every chick on Spring Break. Every single one. Even Marjorie, who nobody likes because she's weird and smells like onions. You will even bone lonely Marjorie.) We'll just have to wait and see if any more blowdowns happen.
Some of the other roommates are getting short shrift because of all the dramz. Bronne, for example. Bronne's contribution to this episode was walking around in the middle of these crazy scenes and asking really dumb, obvious questions.
BRONNE: Ayiiia, are you crying? (Yes, Bronne. She's been doing this for like an hour. She's literally shrieking and wailing and inadvertently throwing Jasmine into a fucking wall, you noob.)
BRONNE: Is that blood? (Yes, Bronne. Ayiiia shattered part of a glass closet [Ryan, hon, you all right?] and has left smears of blood all over the house. Remember when Ayiiia did that with the glass, literally three minutes ago, you buffoon?)
So that was that. Also in this episode was Jasmine's love affair with the skinnyminny named something I can't remember. Oh! Pat! Patrick. Nice. Well remembered, me. Anyway, Patrick is cute and Jasmine is cute with him but something's a little off... See, he takes her to do fun things like bowl (there's bowling in Cancun? Who uses the cosmic bowling alley in Cancun? Weird old Marjorie, that's who. "Lane for one please," she wheezes) and cliff diving (she was so scared! but she did it! plunged into the blue, Patrick holding her hand!) but then he's also sorta distant and unaffectionate. Plus there was a rumor floating around that Patrick had boned... Amanda! Yes, our Amanda! Amanda from Minnesota (go Bears!). So Jasmine just doesn't know what the eff to do. Joey tells her to leave it be. ("He's playing you. Trust me. I'm that guy." No you're not, you poltroon. You're just some fake punk kid ON THE FUCKING REAL WORLD, you dink.) Bleerrrrghh. Patrick is so cute though! So after learning from oily, disgusting CJ that Patrick had not, in fact, been to any of Amanda's ten thousand lakes, Jasmine screwed her courage to the sticking place and is going to go for it.
Like cliff diving!
At the end of the episode a great storm, a hurricane, came rushing up the coast and washed everything away. All of the mean words and bad things and shattered glass and turned over boozy cups and gross CJ wiglets and every terrible thing that's ever been done in that wasted hellhole of a place. All of it disappeared into the water and winds forever. And in a hundred years, once the lands and the jungles have reclaimed this expanse, the brown boys and girls will scramble up to the top of the vine-covered hotel ruins and they will spread their brave arms and point their small feet and go sailing into the sky. Nothing to catch them but limitless ocean, stretching out, blue and glowing, farther than the eye can see. And the world will be better because of it. The world will be a more beautiful place.
The world will finally be real again.