Scandoval is over and New York is on fire. Less on fire, actually, and more cradled by smoke. Wildfires from Canada have sent choking clouds and orange skies as far south as North Carolina. New York City became Los Angeles in less than an hour. Ash gust through the streets of Manhattan; selfies of chic gays in Brooklyn wearing N95 and gas masks on their walks to the L train. Apocalyptic faggotry. And then came the most beautiful photo I’ve seen: Ramona Singer holding a napkin up to her face under a Mars-like sky, braving the morning rush with her fellow, weary New Yorkers.
People in California, and Washington, and Oregon— still marinating in trauma from the grisly fire season of 2020—scolded New Yorkers on Twitter for complaining, lamenting our nation’s East Coast-centric media. We had it too! Where were you all then?! This is the way the world ends: gatekeeping climate disaster on social media.
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Vanderpump Rules completed its victory lap last night, with the third part of the now-mythic season ten reunion. I wanted to feel something more than disappointment after it ended, which I usually feel with any reality show reunion, regardless of how good the season was. They’re always this strange, exhausting slog of interruptions and and politician word salad inside what looks like a military hangar with bad rugs. Reunions are usually an unfortunate showcase of how little charisma a lot of these reality stars possess when they’re not being edited.
We were mostly spared that during this three week run. The players were assembled into typical, war-like seating: Ariana in her red Leeloo Dallas revenge dress, bending gravity with her rage. She sat parallel to Lisa Vanderpump, who seemed, for the first time, fully aware of time and her own displacement in this cast. Within minutes, she was forgotten—a gorgeous nana-ghost floating around the place between earth and the heavens.
“These young people!” She yelled to Ken on speaker in the car ride home.
Next to Lisa, Ariana’s boogeyman of an ex, who kept his eyes mostly to the ground, legs and arms crossed like a surly kindergartner, whipping his head up occasionally to mutter a sloppy dig or to pretend-cry.
The rest of the cast rounded them out: Lala and James continued their slow but sure morphing into a single, gorgeous mass of skin and teeth, gnashing their agendas into the air, not letting anyone get a word in. Katie was quiet in her personal devastation, but mostly confident in her dominance over her failson ex-husband, who barely uttered a declarative sentence in three weeks. And finally Scheana Marie, the Joan of Arc of Marina del Rey, riding into battle with her can of White Claw lifted above her to catch God’s sunglare.
“For France!” she shouted as she was exiled to her trailer, one-hundred yards away.
And after three months, we got what we came to see: Scheana’s ex-best friend Raquel, looking like Lady Liberty herself in a mint green, off-the shoulder kaftan gown, clip-clopping her way onto the sound stage.
Aside from bleating out some non-defenses, and wince-worthy attempts at arguing with Lala, her cosmic nemesis, Raquel sat in silence as she and Tom took their rightful lashing together. She looked less uncaring to me, as it would seem, and more like she was in a trance—mesmerized by this violent scene she helped make. You could see her realizing that she was alone. Truly alone. She never had Tom. And she knew he wouldn’t vouch her as she was lowered onto the pyre, ready to be offered up for the summer harvest. He would slip into the jeering crowd and hide somewhere cold and dark.
And then, right as the torch was thrown to her feet, a final moment of absolution: Raquel confessed to a producer sitting just off screen, goading her with CIA-levels of gay persistence.
Raquel rejected the timeline she and Tom had agreed on, the lies Tom had sworn her to protect. Raquel confirmed just how long and frequent she and that wet bag of a man were inside each other. And she didn’t just tell it, she sang it. She heaved and sobbed and shouted. She looked euphoric. For the first time in her life, she was honest and alone, and it felt perfect. Raquel finally knew the secrets of the universe, the agony and ecstasy. She looked up at the sky and cried out in joy as the flames began to engulf her.
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stunnin'
a victory for Rock ✊