LAST EDITED ON 08-01-05 AT 09:48 AM (EST)LAST EDITED ON 07-31-05 AT 10:46 PM (EST)
<<Please feel free to read this short story. However, if you are going to be voting this week, please read my other short story "Moses in the River" first, since I feel that it is a better story. Thank you.>>
Tony Stockton wanted - no needed - people to like him. He would do or say just about anything if he thought it would make someone think of him as funny or cool or caring or smart.
Although he left it off of the application and dodged any related questions during his interviews, the divorce of his parents three years ago had left him severely damaged to an extent that he himself could not recognize. As a result, he desperately needed to be reassured that the people around him liked him.
So when he was eliminated from the contest, he was secretly devastated. He did an admirable job hiding it because he did not want anyone to think that he was not tough. People don’t like you if they think you’re not tough. So he had to pretend that he didn’t care. In the “guest apartments” he regularly joked with the others who had been cast out about how lame the competition was, or how the producers rigged it so that a certain pretty boy would win. He did more than his share to make other contestants look like back-stabbing cheaters.
In the seclusion of his room, though, Tony cried every night. He looked into the mirror and spewed hatred at the young man he saw there.
“Why would anyone want to keep you around?” he would ask. “You’re so pathetic and stupid that your own parents have to argue to see which of them is stuck with you. I hate you. And the producers hate you. Jenny? Give me a break; don’t even think about it. She thinks you’re a fag who’s nowhere near as strong as Steve. Or as cute as Jeremy. God she was fucking drooling over Jeremy. There’s no way she would like you. And Tammi? She’s not as hot as Jenny, but she doesn’t like you either. She’s another one who couldn’t wait until Jeremy could hop into bed with her. No one wanted you to win. And you‘re such a piece of ##### that you didn‘t even come close.” Every night, he would go to bed cursing himself.
On the night where the competition was supposed to be cut down to three people, Tony got the worst news he could possibly get. It came during dinner at the “guest apartments”. He was sitting across from Michael and Rochelle when the latest loser was supposed to come in. The door to the dining room opened and in walked Jenny. After the initial comments of surprise and disappointment were expressed around the room, Rochelle invited her former room-mate to join them.
“So, who did you lose to in the challenge?” Michael asked.
“Steve, of course,” Jenny answered laughing. “He is such a dork.”
Tony’s heart fluttered and a smile broke out onto his face
“He thinks he’s got to tell everyone in every challenge that he’s going to ‘take them down’” Jenny said with the best imitation she could muster.
“I know, I hated that,” Rochelle agreed. “Right before he knocked me out of the game, he said that and I was like ‘shut up you steroid-enhanced freak. Your testicles are smaller than my pet hamster’s right now so you’ve gotten nothing to be proud of.’”
They all laughed and Tony saw a perfect opportunity to score some points.
“Did you notice that Steve would always want to challenge one of the girls?” he asked.
Rochelle immediately agreed, to Tony’s delight. He wanted to get people on his side so that he could make Jenny think that he was a nicer guy than the others.
“Oh, of course he did. He’s one of those muscle-bound freaks that can only feel secure when he’s got control over someone who happens to be physically weaker than him,” Rochelle raised her hands as she spoke to show how disgusted she was with people like that.
Tony decided to push it and see what Jenny thought of Jeremy.
“You know, Jeremy’s just the same,” he said in a knowing tone. “He just wants to see how many women he can take advantage of while winning the contest.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’s like that at all,” Jenny replied in a mildly reprimanding tone. “He’s pretty nice, actually.”
“And he has a great butt,” Rochelle added with a laugh. Jenny also laughed.
Tony was not laughing. He wished Rochelle would shut her damn mouth. Meanwhile, he pressed on to try to make up the ground he had just lost.
“Well, he probably didn’t say the things around you that he would say around the guys. He got kinda raunchy a couple of times,” he said as he looked meaningfully at Jenny.
“Unless they got him on tape, then it’s just hearsay.” Jenny then broke Tony into tiny pieces. “Unlike you. You know I’ve heard that they’re going to make you look like one of the villains for this show.”
“What?!” Tony yelled so loudly that everyone in the room stopped their conversation and turned toward him. “How can they make me look like a bad guy?”
“Well, for one thing, there was that comment you made about homosexuals.”
Tony occasionally made jokes about gay men. He didn’t really think of himself as a homophobe, but they were always just such an easy target to draw negative attention away from himself.
“Well, whatever I said, it was just a joke. People laughed.”
“It still wasn’t nice,” Jenny answered. With every word that
came out of her mouth, she was cutting Tony deeper than she could know. “Plus, when you helped Lisa beat Vic you were so obviously cheating, I’m sure they caught it on tape.”
Vic was a bastard and Lisa had huge boobs. Of course Tony was going to help her. Why should that be made into some issue where he was the bad guy? Didn’t everyone know that this was a game? In a game everyone did what they had to do to win. Or so Tony believed.
“That’s stupid,” Tony said as he got up. He was going to find someone from the show right now and clear things up. He was not a bad guy and they just couldn’t make him look like one on national TV. His mom and dad would be even more disappointed in him.
“Are you calling me stupid?” Jenny glared at him. “Because I think that’s pretty funny coming from you. You’re like the youngest one here and you obviously don’t know how to think things through.”
Out of frustration, Tony lashed out. “Shut up, bitch.”
As Jenny and Rochelle cussed him out, he turned his back on them physically and emotionally. They’re probably sluts anyway, he thought to himself. Out in the hall, he found a junior member of the production staff.
“Who would I talk to about the editing?” he asked.
For a brief moment, the woman just looked at him with a slightly puzzled expression.
“You can’t talk to anyone who does that,” she replied.
“Well, I have to talk to someone. I’ve been told that they’re going to slander me.”
“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but they don’t slander anyone. They take what they have on film and they work it to get the most information out on each of you.”
“That’s bullshit,” Tony said. “They always go out of their way to make someone look bad and I don’t want it to be me.”
The woman turned to face him and said, “Look, you’re going to have to calm down. You signed a contract to appear on a reality show. That contract didn’t say anything about making you look good or bad or whatever. You participated in a contest and they‘re going to show whatever you did. They can‘t create stuff. If you acted like a jerk, you‘re going to look like a jerk. If you didn‘t act like a jerk, then you have nothing to worry about.”
Tony went to his room and sat on his bed. For hours that night he went over everything he could remember saying or doing and in every way possible he thought about what was wrong with what he did. He only slept a few hours before the morning brought him back to his morose reality. When the show was over, he didn’t even care who won. He sat at one end of the table at the final dinner. While everyone else was congratulating the winner and laughing about what they had all done, Tony stared at the food he barely touched and wished that he could just leave and never talk to anyone again. The problem was, he didn’t know where he would go. The show was supposed to air a couple of months later and he did not want to be around anyone when they saw what an asshole he could be. Eventually, he did go home to his mom’s house. When the show aired he was usually at his dad’s house. He couldn’t be in the house when it was on and for months afterward he felt like his father was disgusted by him.
The funny thing is that in his final testimonial video, Tony had said that he really appreciated the opportunity to participate in the contest and how he felt that even though he hadn’t won, he felt like he had become a better person. That was the part of the show that Tony wished to edit out more than anything else. He didn’t feel like he had become a better person, he felt like people had even more reason to hate him. He had wanted to change his life by winning some money, maybe meet a nice girl and have everyone see on their own TVs what a great guy he was. Maybe, just maybe, his parents would agree on one thing - how well they had raised their son. Instead, the newspapers and talk shows and internet junkies said he was a horrible person and his parents never disagreed with what everyone was saying.
Tony’s life changed all right, but not the way he had hoped. Reality TV ruined his life and no one seemed to care.
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