CHAPTER TWENTY: Deep Focus“Cameras are off, nobody’s recording. I’m assuming you want me to call you Bradley, he/him?”

  “Yes, please, Ms. Winston.”

  “You can call me Sheri, if you like.”

  Bradley liked how Sheri had the private consultation area set up. Natural light, lots of greenery. And while lots of psychologists offices had couches or a chaise lounge, he was really digging the Mexican aesthetic of being psychoanalyzed in a hammock.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me even after I dropped out of the game. You don’t think I’m weak for dropping out so soon, do you?”

  “No, Bradley, I don’t. In fact, I think you did something that required a great amount of strength.”

  Bradley thought about this for a moment.

  “It wasn’t my strength.”

  Sheri remained silent. When a patient says something like that, no follow up questions are necessary.

  “It was Rafael’s. It’s okay to use ‘Rafael’, right? I think Rafael prefers ‘Rafael’.”

  “Rafael absolutely prefers ‘Rafael’, for the same reason you prefer ‘Bradley’.” she said.

  “Right. So, when I first heard Rafael say the word ‘codependent’ I thought to myself, ‘that’s ridiculous’. Jett and I are in love, not codependency. He cares about me. And then I look over to him and he just doesn’t give a shit about me. Like, at all. I was in real pain. Obvious pain. He’s not even noticing. Jett… that fucking… can I say fucking?”

  “If you feel like saying ‘fucking’, fucking say it. This is a therapy session. Cursing can be therapeutic.”

  Bradley sighed. “Fucking asshole.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, and I’m hoping you don’t, because, you know, therapist, how did you end up with that ‘fucking asshole’ in the first pce?”

  Bradley looked over at Sheri, a bit confused. Sheri crified, with a shit-eating grin.

  “I’m just using the term you provided,” she said.

  This was true, but it was clear Sheri loved using that term for Jett.

  Bradley snort-ughed a little.

  “Well, to keep it short, Canadian Dad fucked off, American Mom got big into religion, and I figured out I’m gay. I go to L.A. because L.A.’s L.A., and it’s sunny and warm and everything British Columbia isn’t, and well, Jett… made me feel… loved. And I guess I was vulnerable, and… oh my god, saying it out loud I can’t believe how stupid I am.”

  “You’re not stupid,” she reassured.

  “This is like the plot of every Lifetime movie not made by Hallmark about Christmas.”

  “There’s a reason that those stories resonate with a lot of people, you know,” she said. “You are not the first person to be in a vulnerable pce, desperately needing some human connection, and falling into someone who was just using you, and you’re not going to be the st.”

  Bradley looked at the ceiling for a moment, sighed, closed his eyes.

  “God, I’ve fucked my life. I’m going to have to move out of our– of Jett’s apartment, find something else. I’ve humiliated myself on national television. And I’m back where I started. Alone.”

  “Are you alone, though?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Sheri looked around for something soft to hit Bradley with, but couldn’t find anything.

  “Okay, if I had a pillow here, I would hit you with it, because you’re bullshitting yourself,” said Sheri. “I’ll let you say whatever you actually feel, but don’t bullshit yourself. You really think Rafael is going to stop being your friend? That Leonard and Ethan, and Jacob, and… hell. You came onto a reality television show and made friends. That’s extraordinary.”

  “Yeah, but that’s here. What happens when I go back to L.A.?”

  “That’s up to you, isn’t it? I suspect most of the others are going to want to keep in touch, no? Not Jett, of course, but… I don’t think the others like him much either.”

  Bradley sighed.

  “Can we change the subject for a little bit? Because I don’t understand why this dys– dys–”

  “Dysphoria?”

  “That’s the word,” he said. “Why did it hit me first, and hardest? From what I gathered, Zolodex shouldn’t be doing this…”

  “Well, I think I may be able to expin that,” said Sheri. “You know I’m trans, Erin’s trans, Jamie’s trans, all of us have pretty strong gender identities that are very feminine. Rafael’s trans too, and his gender identity is very masculine. The point is, we have such strong gender identities that we’ve taken steps towards becoming the people we feel we need to be. I think that describes you too. You’re not trans. You’re cisgender. Very cisgender, as it turns out. You have a very, very strong sense of gender identity, that fortunately, happens to match your assigned gender. Messing with that? Not even hormonally, but just socially, being out in public, presenting as feminine? It’s just not something you can do.”

  “But Jett does it all the time,” he said. “He wears women’s clothing, and does drag shows…”

  Sheri shrugged. “Well, I would not look at Jett as a model of stability. But when it comes to presentation, at least, Jett’s more flexible with gender than you are. But that’s not you. That’s very not you. You, Bradley, are a man who needs to be a man. Gender may be a spectrum, but you are very much on the masculine end of it.”

  “I mean, I did just fail horribly at trying to be a woman,” he pointed out.

  “And don’t discount your bravery at trying something that had to have been terrifying for you. But now you know something more about yourself than you didn’t before. And at least you’re not trapped in a retionship where you’re being used.”

  “Amen to that.”

  ***

  Sam and Jamie were in Sam’s room, on speakerphone with Daria back at Garden HQ, with Jamie’s feet soaking in a foot bath.

  “So, we have a dropout already?” Daria asked.

  “Yeah, Bradley. The one with the beard,” said Sam.

  “With the annoying boyfriend?”

  “That’s the one,” said Jamie. “And let me tell you, nobody likes the boyfriend. I don’t like him. And I get along with pretty much everybody. Except maybe Roen. And it’s not that I hate Roen, he’s not a bad guy, it’s just a big personality conflict thing.”

  “Ms. Howard, I’m sitting right here,” said Christopher Roen, from the other end of the phone line. “And I appreciate that you don’t think I’m a ‘bad guy.’ As well as your candor.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that, I had you both on speaker,” expined Daria.

  Jamie sighed. “Daria, is there anyone else in the room we should know about?”

  “Yo,” said Daryl.

  Sam rolled her eyes, and Daria continued.

  “Well, it’s good to know things are proceeding well with the production. I can’t wait for the two of you to get back to L.A., I have an idea for another show. Obviously you’re busy with ‘Woman Up!’ but I could use a sanity check on it.”

  “Then why are you asking us?” said Jamie. “I think if nothing else, this production proves we are masters at taking a weird idea too far.”

  “You’re currently making it work,” said Daria, “so, I think you can take weird ideas and turn them into content.”

  “Honestly, Daria,” said Sam. “I just want to get through this one.”

  “Well, we can catch up when you get to L.A. for the first break. Good luck.”

  “Same to you, Daria. We’ll do girls’ night when we get back. Ta!” Sam said, then hung up the phone.

  Jamie’s eyebrow perked up, and Sam immediately noticed.

  “Jamie?”

  “Uh, I, um…” Jamie hesitated and stumbled. “That is, er, that ‘girls’ night’ you’re talking about. I mean, I know I’m not, uh, very girly yet, and it’s going to take a while, and I still… I mean, I know that I still have a lot of masculine habits to unlearn and, uh, I would totally understand if you were uncomfortable with it–”

  “Jamie. Jamie. Jamie! Stop right there. Calm down.” Sam sat next to Jamie on the bed. “Yes, Jamie, you can come to girls’ night.”

  “Because I’m a girl?”

  “Because you’re a girl.”

  Jamie smiled from ear to ear. And then furrowed her brow, though that didn’t get rid of the smile.

  “Ooh. Is this that euphoria thing that Sheri talks about? Oh, I think I like it! More of this please!”

  There was a knock on Sam’s door.

  “Who is it?” asked Sam.

  The person behind the door answered. “Uh, it’s me, Eine. Can I talk to you for a second?”

  “Sure thing,” said Sam, opening the door. True enough, there was Eine, standing there, still in the makeup from the challenge earlier that day, clearly excited about something.

  “Hey, Ms. Culver. Um, I was talking to Leia, and Jane, and Gucci, and then we brought in Victoria, and Rafael, and even Mara seemed to be down with the idea, and…”

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Sam. “Calm down. What’s going on?”

  “We’d like to py a prank on Diana, and do something nice for Bradley.”

  “What kind of a prank?” Sam asked.

  “Is there anything in the rules that says that pyers can’t trick other pyers into thinking that they’re in a challenge when they’re not?” asked Eine.

  Sam looked back into the room at Jamie, and Jamie looked back at Sam with a shrug.

  “What exactly did you have in mind?”

  ***

  Diana sat in a huff on the chair in her room - now a singleton, as the staff had, at Bradley’s request, moved all of his stuff out already.

  How dare Bradley leave her! On television, no less. What a moron! Well, he can say goodbye to Diana’s great ass and toned abs if he wants to, boy-toys like Bradley were a dime a dozen, and it wouldn’t be long until he found another. Maybe Victoria might like to fool around a little.

  Diana’s phone beeped. It was a text from Victoria. Speak of the devil.

  “Hey Diana,” the text read. “We’re just wondering, have you found all the clues yet in your room?”

  “Wait, what clues?” Diana texted back.

  “You know. The clues. The hidden clues? Mara and I have already found all of ours for the challenge tomorrow.”

  “What challenge?”

  “Was there not an envelope under your door when you got back from the Galería?”

  Diana quickly looked over to the door, and yes, there was a piece of paper there that she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Oh, I see it,” she texted, heading over to it. She opened it and read it aloud “There are five clues in your room that will help you with the next challenge. Good luck.”

  “Yeah, I see it,” Diana texted. “Thanks, Victoria, I would have missed it if you hadn’t called me.”

  “Happy to be of service. Happy hunting. Bye.”

  “Bye.” Diana put down the phone, and started a frantic search through her room.

  ***

  Michae: Mar & Le?a was a local favorite in Mèrida, a wood-fired kitchen and oyster bar. It was named after Michae Tusa, whose cookbook from the te 19th century caught Muerello’s eye, especially after he found out that Michae was the daughter of one of only two sves out of one hundred and twenty-five, who survived an escape from Pntation Whitney in New Orleans in 1811.

  At the age of 13, Michae Tusa’s father died, and her mother could not afford to keep her. The custom in that time was to marry her off to an older man; but she rebelled against that and took a train out of town to a small pueblo in Southern Mexico. There she found her way to the matriarch of the town, who brought her in and taught her to cook. She would eventually write her recipes in her diary, and the founders of the restaurant found that book over a hundred years ter, in 2015.

  It seemed an appropriate pce to celebrate a more domestic type of liberation, and while Diana was frantically searching her room for clues that didn’t exist, Sheri, Pranav, Sam, Erin, and Jamie had rounded up the other contestants, and took them to the restaurant to enjoy a nice meal there, completely away from the cameras.

  “To the man of the hour,” said Jamie, holding up her gss of mezcal, “and what a man he is. Bradley Ewart.”

  Cheers around the table.

  “Not going to be the same without you, Bradley,” said Jane.

  “You know,” said Sam, “You’re more than welcome to stay with us at the Casa until the end of the first three weeks,” said Sam. “And we almost have the hot tub fixed.”

  “Wait. We have a hot tub?” asked Leia.

  “It’s being fixed,” said Sam. “But eventually, yes.”

  “Thank you, everyone,” said Bradley. “But, I really do kind of need a clean break. Plus, it’ll be easier if I get home and start packing, so that by the time Jett comes home, I’ll already be gone.”

  If the other contestants were jealous that Bradley was no longer bound by the rules of the GenderBuzzer?, they kept it to themselves.

  “Hunh,” said Mara, looking over the menu.

  “What is it?” asked Eine, seated next to him.

  “It’s this blurb on the menu, talking about the head chef,” said Mara.

  On the back page of the menu was the story of the restaurant, including not just the story of Michae, but also how it’s owner and manager, Chef Vidal Elias Muerello, used to be head chef of Houston’s best seafood restaurant, ‘La Fisheria’, but decided to move back to Mexico back when the ex-president was elected, knowing that many wealthy Mexican immigrants in the area were making the same move, and thus, his clientele was drying up.

  “Just seems weird to me,” said Mara. “I mean, if you were successful in Houston, why move back to Merida?”

  “Wait. You seriously wouldn’t understand why a Mexican-American with means would take the option to return to Mexico when that jerk was elected?” said Leia.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, doesn’t everyone want to be in America?” asked Mara, sincerely.

  Sam ughed. “Are you kidding? Mara, don’t get me wrong, I moved to America because it’s really the only pce where Hollywood exists, but if it wasn’t for the fact that I chose television production as my career, I wouldn’t bother with the pce, I’d be back in the U.K. Sure, we British have our problems, and the weather’s awful, but honestly, we look out for each other more.”

  “You really do love London, don’t you?” said Jamie, a little sadly. Sam didn’t pick up on it though.

  “I get it,” said Sheri. “It’s New York without the trash, L.A. without the traffic, and Paris without the rudeness. If it wasn’t for the rampant institutionalized transphobia, I might want to live there myself.”

  “Every pce has something,” Gucci said, as the ptes started to arrive. “The question is finding what kind of suck you can live with.”

  “Hmm, I can’t say I agree with that, Gucci,” said Leia. “I mean, yeah, that’s a part of it, but I think good friends can help you deal with bad governmental policies.”

  “Well, at least until there’s a threshold where the bad governmental policies threaten your ability to survive. I mean, bad governments can get really bad,” said Eine. “And of course, one’s own socioeconomic status may also mitigate or exacerbate these problems. For example, Sheri mentioned that the NHS discriminates against trans people, but if one had enough money to engage in medical tourism or to hire private physicians then… then I’m infodumping again, aren’t I?”

  “Hey! You caught yourself this time!” said Leia. “Atta– Attaperson!”

  “Oh,” said Bradley. “That reminds me. Turns out that you can still call and keep in contact with me on the contestant app.”

  “Really?” asked Rose.

  “Really. I mean, why would they turn off that access? Although I’ll admit, I’ve already deleted Jett’s number.”

  “That’s great,” said Rose. “I mean, I really think you leaving was absolutely the right move for you, but I don’t know if I would be able to go much further without having someone to talk to about things.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Victoria, “we all know you’re smitten, Rose.”

  Rose gave Victoria a death gre. It was the kind of gre that could kill a small goat with mere psychic energy.

  “It’s true,” said Bradley. “Even me. I did notice. You’re not exactly… subtle. Which, uh, yeah, I’m… uh, I think you’re very nice, too. And cute. You know, in a gay way.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. But, Rafael, I literally just got out of a bad retionship. Now’s not the time for me to be jumping into a new one. Give me some time?”

  “Yeah, that’s… wow.” Rose started to get dizzy from the mood whipsh. “Thank you. Time. Yes.”

  “Hold on. I think Rose needs a reboot,” said Leia. “Bradley, can you fart and then make a muscle?”

  “Why?”

  “To turn Rose off, and then on again.”

  Rose groaned.

  ***

  By this time, Diana had spent an hour and a half turning her room inside out looking for clues, and thought about running to the kitchen to grab a knife and cut open the pillows.

  And then… Diana looked back at the letter which had started this scavenger hunt. It was not signed by the production team. It was not on official ‘Woman Up!’ or Garden letterhead. And it could have been slipped under the door by anyone.

  After ninety minutes of fruitless searching for them, Diana finally got a clue.

  “Those fuckers!”

  ***

  All good things have to come to an end, and all oyster bars have to close for the night, so Bradley said his ‘goodbye for nows,’ and when he got back to the Casa, headed to bed early in one of the spare rooms.

  The next morning, Erin, Bradley, and Sam got up before sunrise. Part of that was because Bradley wanted to get going as soon as possible, another part was that Sam liked the idea of being able to do the exit interview at the morning golden hour.

  So, Sam ran them through the process for when the cameras started rolling. Erin would be standing, Bradley would come in from stage left, they’d handshake (hug was an option, but Bradley opted for handshake), then Erin would sit on the provided chair, and Bradley on a small loveseat.

  Much of what they talked about was the sanitized, not personal version of what Bradley had discussed with Sheri: that Bradley really didn’t realize how uncomfortable he was being a woman in public, and how he had mainly joined up because he wanted to support his boyfriend - who wasn’t worth supporting.

  At the end, Erin presented him with a novelty-sized check for 3,501, gave him a hug (which Bradley did opt for), and then all there was left to do was to get the shot of him with his carry on bag, leaving Casa Del Garden.

  ***

  By the time everyone gathered for breakfast, Bradley was flying back to L.A. And it was very clear that Diana was persona non-grata at the breakfast table where the #Alliance, Mara, Victoria, and Rose had merged.

  So Diana headed over to the ‘adults’ table, with Sam, Sheri, Pranav, and Jamie.

  “Sam, Jamie, I have a compint.”

  “Uh huh. You do?” said Jamie. Jamie, who had his back to Diana, winked at Sam, who was desperately trying to hold a poker face.

  “I do. Last night, someone slipped this under my door.” Diana handed Jamie the note. “I spent ninety minutes searching for clues that aren’t there.”

  “You did?” said Jamie, feigning ignorance, looking over the note with a cursory gnce, then handing it off to Sam.

  “Yes. Isn’t there a rule against this or something?”

  “Well, you have a copy of the game handbook. If you can find a rule that applies, feel free to come back with it. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s anything in the rulebook that prohibits mindgames. Heck, that’s 90% of why people watch reality TV,” said Sam.

  “Tell you what, we could have you get in contact with Garden’s wyer, if you want,” said Jamie.

  “Jamie, No!” said Sam.

  “Jamie, Yes!” said Jamie, rubbing her hands together, gleefully, imagining getting her least favorite contestant together with her least favorite co-worker.

  Diana rolled her eyes. “Pssh, whatever,” and walked away. If they wanted to py mind games, Diana was more than capable of holding her own.

  ***

  “I’m a bit surprised you wanted to see me,” said Sheri.

  “Yeah, well… I’ve got a lot on my mind. About Bradley. About Rose. About you and Jamie, about Diana. This is a neat hammock, by the way, did this come with the pce or did you have it specially installed?”

  “It was here, but I decided not to remove it when they were renovating,” said Sheri. “Go on, though. What’s on your mind, Mara?”

  The arch-conservative thought about where to start.

  “Well, quite frankly, I don’t know what to tell my friends when I get back home for the upcoming break. I’m almost certain that it would take me a long time to expin things here.”

  “Okay. For example?”

  “The whole concept of ‘gender dysphoria’. I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I mean, I felt it a little bit when we were out there doing the Galería challenge. But I didn’t get why it affected Bradley so badly. And I really don’t get why it affected Rose at all.”

  Sheri really wanted to hit Mara sometimes when Mara talked. But they simply didn’t make a throw pillow big enough.

  “When I agreed to do this show, I thought trans women were all, you know, faking it. That it was something anyone could do. No offense.”

  “Mmm,” said Sheri. She noticeably did not say ‘none taken.’

  “But I mean, I’ve learned since then that some people can’t do it. Bradley couldn’t. Clearly.”

  “Do you still think you could?” asked Sheri. Mara wouldn’t be the first ‘spiky egg’ she had encountered in her career, if that indeed was what Mara was. But Mara could also just be a spiky… what’s the opposite of egg? Rock. Spiky rock.

  “Well, I guess I’ll keep trying. I’ve already decided to come back next month to try the estrogen treatments, see how that’s going to affect me. But it’s different now.”

  “How so?”

  “I kinda came on this show originally to prove a point. Well, several actually. I kinda wanted to show people what normal, ordinary Americans are like. That we’re not… oh, what do they call us, ‘a basket of deplorables’ or ‘garbage’ or whatever. We’re just normal people. But then when I found out the premise, I was like, well, I could show the world that trans people were faking. Protect women, you know, from perverts trying to get into bathrooms and locker rooms. And now I’m not so sure that they’re faking. Not all of them, anyway. I mean, you don’t give me the impression that you’re faking.”

  “Mmm,” Sheri said. She said this because ‘mmm’ was the APA’s recommended way for a psychologist to say, ‘it would be against professional ethics to strangle this patient but I really want to, God help me, I really, really, want to.’ (And if it wasn’t, thought Sheri, god damn it, it should be.)

  “Do you think Jamie or Erin are faking?”

  “Erin… no? Jamie, maybe? I mean, it’s a bit suspicious that she was kinda… ‘used-to-be’ famous before doing this whole thing, and then she comes out on Zimmel and she’s back in the limelight again? Even put herself on her own TV show. She’d have a motive.”

  Mara sighed and continued. “Point is this: How do I hold on to my core beliefs, the thing that makes me, well, me, when everyone I talk to seems to think that I’ve built my life on a house of cards? That I’ve got my entire view of the universe wrong?”

  There were a lot of questions that Sheri could ask. Like, for example, ‘What if you’re wrong?’ or ‘why do you hold these beliefs so strongly?’ But, sadly, she knew better than that. Maybe Mara was or wasn’t a spiky egg, but she sure as shooting had some sort of spiky shell around her that she’d be better off cracking, and that wasn’t going to happen with direct confrontation.

  “What would happen, do you think, to you, if, hypothetically, you did have your perception of the world fundamentally altered? If someone or something did knock down your belief system? How do you think you’d react to that?”

  That got Mara thinking. “You know, I honestly don’t know. Has that ever happened to one of your patients? That their whole world got flipped upside down?”

  “Like, for example, if one of my patients thought they were one gender their entire life and then realized they weren’t?”

  “I see where you’re going with this, but I’m a guy through and through, despite the rules of the game that we have to refer to ourselves as women. Mara’s just a nickname.”

  “Well, I wasn’t talking about your gender. Your ideology can be just as innate, and just as firmly held, though. Most people don’t put that much stock in their political beliefs, but some people do. For others, it could be religion, or social status, or even a sports team. Point is: Yes. Losing these things and having to rebuild your sense of self is hard. And it hurts like hell. But when you find yourself in these situations, the trick is to rebuild stronger, on better foundations. You are never weakened by learning new things and seeing things from a different perspective.”

  Mara scrunched up her face in deep focus.

  “Wait, are you sure about that st one?”

  “What st one?”

  “That you’re never weakened by learning new things or seeing things from a different perspective.”

  “I’m sure as I can be, Mara. Why?”

  “Well, isn’t that the whole argument against everything going ‘woke’? Like… that when you show off a perspective that isn’t normal, you risk people believing the perspective is normal, skewing their sense of reality?”

  “That’s a good question,” said Sheri. “But consider this, if the other perspective is wrong, shouldn’t there be value in showing that perspective? If only to illustrate how it must, logically, be wrong? Like Johnathan Swift talking about eating Irish babies. Are you familiar with ‘A Modest Proposal?’”

  Mara nodded. Sheri continued.

  “He gets you to reject the idea that the British aristocracy should literally eat the Irish, a wrongful idea. And by illustrating how it is wrong, he then uses that to make the argument that the same wrongness existed in real British policy towards the Irish.”

  “Ooh… yeah. I can see that. I mean, that was kind of what I was trying to do - to basically say ‘see, you’ve got it all wrong, transness is not innate.’ And then once you prove that, then you can take the same idea and apply it to other ideas that don’t hold up under scrutiny.”

  “Which of course, falls apart if the experiment shows that gender and transness are innate,” said Sheri. “Which, well, I believe that they are, based on my experience, and you obviously believe they aren’t, but isn’t that the point of this whole experiment?”

  “Maybe,” said Mara, stewing on that.

  “Let me ask you something. What do you think of the ft-earthers?”

  “Dumb as rocks.”

  “I saw a documentary once about how the ft-earthers crowdfunded money to conduct an experiment to show that the earth was ft. And then they ran that experiment, with scientific rigor and accuracy. And the experiment proved that the Earth was round.”

  “I would be surprised if it didn’t,” said Mara.

  “Point is,” Sheri continued, “that none of the ft-earthers changed their mind. They held true to what they felt even though the facts were different.”

  “And famously, facts don’t care about feelings,” said Mara.

  “They do not,” said Sheri. “But that doesn’t seem like strength to me, do you?”

  Sheri thought a bit about how to proceed before doing so. “I think you’re a smart person, Mara. I really do. And I think you can figure things out. Just - if you ever have a situation where your presuppositions and ideology suggest one thing, and your observations and logic suggest another thing, don’t be a ft-earther. Because you can change your perspective and be true to yourself both before and after, but you can’t change facts without lying to yourself.”

  “Good point. Good point,” conceded Mara.

  ***

  At the end of the three-week period, the contestants returned home to their families, as did the cast and crew. For the moment at least, everyone returned to their old lives.

  ***

  “Renata, dear, how are you?” said Rafael’s mom, picking him up from the airport.

  “Ugh,” said Rafael, who, naturally, was already starting to feel awful without his testosterone for a whole month. “It was a long flight. I kinda just want to go home and rest.”

  “Did you win?” asked Rafael’s dad.

  “It’s a year-long thing. Nobody won yet. Well, except for Bradley. He kind of won.”

  “Bradley?”

  “Yeah, he’s… he was dating this really toxic idiot, and the experience made him realize how toxic the idiot was, so he left the game, and the idiot,” Rafael expined. “Sadly, the idiot is still in the game. Bradley’s local, so I’m sure we’ll hang out eventually, but I already kinda miss him.”

  “So, how does the game work from now, you’re with us for a week, and then back to Mexico?” asked his father.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Looking forward to it?” asked his mother.

  “Why would I?” said Rafael. “Although I have to admit, it’s a nice pce. And we had some good times. But… yeah, I’m only sticking this out as long as I can, and no longer. It’s already really hard. And it’s only going to get harder.”

  “Well, we’re proud of you for doing this, honey,” said Rafael’s father.

  Rafael just sighed.

  ***

  Leonard parked in one of the avaible parking spots, headed up the flight of stairs, and knocked on the door gently before unlocking it with his keys. He stepped in, to find his mother passed out on the couch, in front of a TV with the volume very low, tuned into the game show network.

  On the table in front of her, she had cut out articles about the show - specifically anything that mentioned Leonard - from various magazines and was apparently in the middle of assembling them into a scrapbook.

  Leonard smiled, grabbed a nearby yellow and white bnket - a family treasure, it was made by his great aunt with love - and put it over his mother, kissing her gently on the forehead without waking her up.

  “Best mom in the world,” Leonard said, whispering to himself.

  ***

  “I have to say, it wasn’t what I expected,” said Oscar.

  “What do you mean,” said Reg, who was turning on the TV to tune into the L.A. Rams game, while Oscar and Harry hung out on the couch.

  “Well, I went in there thinking that anyone could just do what trans women do to get into women’s spaces, right? But here’s the crazy thing. There was a guy there, Bradley, and he was freaking out about wearing a dress in public to the point where he couldn’t function.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Harry, grabbing a handful of chips. “I’d probably freak out if you made me wear a dress in public, too.”

  “No, no, you don’t get it. Like… god, I don’t even have the words to describe it.” Oscar searched his head, but the right thing to say wasn’t coming to him. He moved on.

  “I mean, parts of it were fun. Danced up a storm in a shopping mall. Kinda hated it, but some of it was fun, too. Just as a goof, you know? Here’s the thing, like, the host is a trans woman, the on staff psychologist is a trans woman, both of them are nice, by the way, like not weird or perverted, just nice normal people.”

  “Well, they can’t be normal,” said Reg. “They’re crossdressing pervs.”

  “No, no, that’s what I mean, like, they’re not pervs. Crossdressers, maybe. But Sheri’s genuinely nice. I don’t get the pervert vibe from her at all. Nor from Jamie. I mean, she might be genuine or he might be doing it for the ratings, but honestly, he just seems like, well, like a normal person.”

  “Jesus, I mean, I don’t know how you can do it, Oscar. I think if you put me in a room with that pervert Jimmy Howard, I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to bash his head in with a shovel,” said Reg.

  Oscar was shocked.

  “Reg, that’s fucked up,” said Oscar. “Even if the guy’s bent, he’s just a game show host, you know?”

  “Yeah, but you know what kind of game show he used to host, right? ‘Rotten Eggs.’ Kids show. Bet he had his filthy pedo hands all over them,” said Reg.

  “Dude.” said Oscar. “Not cool. Harry, you’re hearing this right?”

  Harry shrugged. “I’m with Reg on this one. What was that documentary, ‘Quiet on Set’ or something like that? And that British guy, Saville? Jimmy Saville? God, why are all the pervs named ‘Jimmy’?”

  “Well, he, she, they, whatever, they seem fine to me,” said Oscar.

  “You know what I would do, Oscar?” said Reg. “Like, just wait for some gun violence to break out nearby and just, you know… push him out into the crossfire.”

  Oscar sat and thought about this for a second, and decided that as fucked up as this clearly was, it was really just locker room talk. You know, like guys do.

  He didn’t feel great about it though.

  “Right, well, forget about the game show for right now.” he said. “Toss me a Sam Adams, Harry?”

  ***

  Victor headed home to his apartment. He opened the door, gathered up the three weeks worth of mail that had accrued, and set it on the counter. He’d deal with it ter.

  He sat on his bed in his studio apartment. It seemed colder. Less… activity. Boring.

  It struck him as odd that he was so dedicated to drama and excitement and… looking around now, he thought about how he lived. One bed. One desk with a ptop, with one chair. Most of it was bought from IKEA.

  And wasn’t it strange that he was only noticing it now, now that he had spent three weeks in a high stakes game with eight other contestants, all hanging out, eating together, scheming with and against each other, ughing and sharing breakfast, and… it all just seemed so… empty, now that he was home.

  It was a pleasant seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit in Los Angeles.

  Victor shivered.

  ***

  “I had a great time, Kay,” said Ethan. “Can’t wait to go back.”

  “Wait. You mean you made it past the first round?” Kay said, incredulous that Ethan would make it that far in a macho-man contest. “Who’d you beat, Michael Cera’s wimpier younger brother?”

  Ethan shrugged and showed her a picture of Bradley, the picture of masculinity, with a massive barrel chest, huge muscles, and incredibly cared for beard, on his phone.

  “What, did you vote the strongest contender off first?” asked Kay.

  “It’s not that type of show. There’s no voting. It’s a meritocracy.”

  Kay’s eye twitched.

  ***

  “So, Erin,” asked Julia. “I need to check the shooting schedule, but your next break is four weeks from now?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I have a date.”

  “You have… a date.” said Erin, incredulously.

  “Yes. Finally,” said Julia.

  Erin stopped and looked into her wife’s eyes. “Is this… isn’t this something we should have discussed beforehand?”

  “Well, an opening came up, and, you know, I’ve wanted this more than anything, and I thought you wouldn’t mind if I went ahead and went for it. God, I’m so excited!”

  “I… I honestly don’t know if I mind,” said Erin.

  “Well, why would you?”

  “Because, I mean, we, I… I never thought about it. I mean, you know I only want what makes you happy, but… I’ve… I mean, what if I get jealous?” asked Erin, brushing Julia’s hair out of her eyes.

  “Then I guess you’ll have to give up on your dreams of becoming a celebrity and join me.”

  “Join you?”

  “Though I don’t know why.”

  “Though you don’t know why?”

  “Erin, I thought you’d be happy for me…” frowned Julia.

  “I mean, I’m not, not happy for you. But this is all kind of sudden.”

  “Sudden? Erin, I’ve been working towards this for years!”

  “You have?”

  “Yes.”

  A pause, then Julia said: “Wait, what did you think I was talking about?”

  “Polyamory.”

  “What!?!?” said Julia. And Erin felt every st punctuation mark.

  “You’re… not… going on a date?”

  “Erin! I’ve been offered a date for my thesis defense, but I need to check if you’re going to be there that day, or if you’re off filming in Mexico. I want the first y-person to call me Dr. Cochran to be you, Mrs. Cochran.”

  “Oh. Well, yeah, I’m sure we can get things moved around.” said Erin.

  “You really thought I was bringing up starting a polycule? Here? Now? In bed? When we’re cuddling? Naked?”

  “When is the appropriate time to bring up starting a polycule?” asked Erin.

  “Wait, were you thinking of…?” asked Julia.

  “No. Unless you were…” Erin said.

  “No, no,” insisted Julia.

  And the two held each other, tenderly.

  “But if I were, we both know it’d be Daria, right?” said Julia.

  “Oh yeah,” said Erin. “She’s a total hottie.”

  “But we’re not.”

  “No.”

  “Because that would just be too much complexity in our lives right now.”

  “Threesomes can wait until after I get my second hosting gig and you get tenure."

  ***

  After a well deserved day off, Sam and Jamie headed off to the Garden L.A. office in Culver City to meet with the corporate team. Jamie even wore a skirt and blouse this time.

  Over blue jeans.

  Baby steps.

  Daryl and Daria met them at the door. Instead of having the meeting in a stuffy office, they decided to all go to lunch together and have a lunch meeting at Isnds, a west-coast restaurant chain.

  Small talk and banter and general inquiries about ‘Woman Up!’s progress, and whether they were staying under budget (they were, barely) and whether they felt there were any obstacles that Garden HQ could clear up, (not at this time, thank you), and then Daria came forward with her idea.

  “So, Sheri, of all people, out of left field, came up with a pitch for a reality show. And it was better than most of the stuff I get in my inbox.”

  “Wait, you want Sheri to be a showrunner?” asked Jamie.

  “No, I don’t think she’d want to be, and being a showrunner is a different skill set than coming up with creative ideas. No, I wanted to know, do you think it would be viable to invert the reality show formu?”

  “Uh, how?” asked Sam.

  “We take people with good ideas but no experience at running a show. And we train them to put those ideas into practice. Even run pilots? And if the ideas are really good, we greenlight the best ones for a full series.”

  “You want to make a reality television show, about making a television show,” said Sam, incredulously. “Isn’t that really inside baseball?”

  “Maybe. But Hollywood has a problem - there’s too much money at stake. Studios aren’t willing to bank on anything that’s not a surefire hit. Think about how much trouble you had getting ‘Sabotage’ off the ground, after how many pitches? Even with Jamie’s star-power behind it,” said Daria. “Point is, what gets greenlit? Is there a game show that made it to air in the past decade that wasn’t an adaptation of a much smaller budget game show overseas? Even ‘The Martinet’ was an adaptation of a British hit, no? And NBC couldn’t just create a new reality TV game show, they had to create ‘Deal or No Deal Isnd.’ It goes to movies, video games. Even Broadway is half “Lion King: The Musical,” “Back To The Future: The Musical,” “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark”. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past Disney to try to get Lin-Manuel Miranda to write “Hamilton 2: Hamil-harder.” Everything’s a franchise, a sequel, or a reboot. Maybe if you’re lucky, you get a spiritual successor.”

  Daryl looked out the window, a little guilty.

  “I’m not going to say that it’s my fault, you understand. It was an industry trend, but I did get caught up in it. It used to be in Hollywood that you did one for the money, one for the art. Then it became two for the money, one for the art, you know? Then it was all - hits, hits, hits. And I was part of that decision making process. I don’t know if I could have chosen differently - if I had, would I have just been let go? But the point is today, nobody could make a ‘Star Wars’ today because nobody would give an auteur like Lucas a small budget and a film crew.”

  “But,” said Daria. “What if we can promise the retively safe bet of a reality television format, and use it as a breeding ground for creativity?”

  “Why are you coming to us with this?” asked Sam.

  “Because you had a brilliant, sure-fire hit. It had everything that we should have wanted: low budget, star power, high return. Clever enough to keep people’s interest. Not too clever to alienate people. Drama, intrigue. And with Jamie hosting, a bit of comedy too.”

  “Should I take offense to that?” asked Jamie, genuinely.

  “Not at all, Jamie,” Daria continued. “But you did everything right, and we still ended up going with the idea you created specifically to be something we would hate, and that’s the pitch that we loved.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Daryl. “What are we talking about?”

  Daria then realized she never told Daryl that ‘Woman Up!’ was the throwaway pitch.

  “Oops.” said Daria.

  “What do you mean, oops?” asked Daryl.

  “It’s my fault, Daryl,” said Sam.

  “No, it’s really mine,” said Jamie.

  “It’s kind of both our faults?” said Sam. “We never intended for ‘Woman Up!’ to be the pitch. It was the throwaway pitch. ‘Sabotage’ was the main pitch.”

  Daryl blinked, going over the past few months in his head.

  “Wait a minute, so when you came in pitching ‘Sabotage,’ you weren’t just pying coy?” said Daryl.

  Sam and Jamie shook their heads.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Daryl.

  “Anyway,” said Daria, “I’m bringing it to the two of you as a sanity check. Even if you hate the idea now, do you think a competent production team could pull it off.”

  “I hate the idea that we are your rubric for ‘production team competency’,” said Jamie. “I don’t know Sam. What do you think?”

  Sam shrugged. “Maybe? I think it could be done. With the right team, you understand.”

  “Not us, though. We’re a little busy. Plus, I don’t know if you’ve heard but I’m kinda going through something personal right now,” said Jamie. “Might want to take some time off after this project to examine that more.”

  ***

  “So,” asked Gooch, now that the pressure was off, and they could just rex for a moment. “You doing next month? With the estrogen shots?”

  “Yeah,” said Jacob, “but just that. Just to say I tried it, you know? And if I don’t like it, eh, no harm no foul, if I stop after just a couple doses. You?”

  “Yeah. One more month. Then we’ll see. How much did they say each estro-shot was worth?”

  “One thousand. Per shot. Per contestant. Four shots next month. That’s 32,000 if everyone goes through with it. Adds another 2000 to our totals if we cash out after that. More if someone drops out before us. Plus whatever challenge money is earned.”

  “Heh. Wouldn’t it be funny if one of us actually liked it?” said Gooch.

  “Best of luck to them,” said Jacob. “Hell of a way for someone to find out they’re trans, though. ‘Gee, I started on estrogen for cash and prizes but it was so much fun I got addicted to the stuff.’”

  “You know, if anyone, I bet it’d be Oscar,” said Gooch. “That boy has repression practically written on his face.”

  “Might be on his forehead. That’s why he has to wear that stupid red cap,” said Jacob.

  “He’s not as bad as I thought though,” said Gooch. “Which, of course, is still pretty bad, but the fucker’s got good points.”

  “At least he’s no Jett. God, I am not looking forward to seeing Jett again. What a dumpster fire of a human being.”

  ***

  Jett looked around his apartment, saw that everything that was Bradley’s was already gone, and sighed. Que sera. He flopped down onto the bed and slept like a baby, unbothered by conscience or remorse.