Reality Matters_ 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching - Anna David [39]
And then the miracle happened. “Guess what?” Aaron said one day. “I just talked to the Real World producers and they’re doing a San Francisco version. They’re having trouble finding the right people. So I told them, ‘I know this girl who would be perfect.’”
My heart raced. The sun shone. Someone Who’d Been Told by the World That He Was Worth Televising had decided to pass the baton on to me. And I hadn’t even dropped any hints! He saw that I was worthy of being picked to live in a house and have my life taped and I felt as honored as I would have if someone from the Pulitzer committee had called to say that my piece on the cracked nipples of breastfeeding moms had been declared a winner.
Aaron told me who to contact and explained that, since they were in the final round of casting, I wouldn’t have to go to one of the cattle call auditions or send in a video. There was no way, I was certain, that this could all be a coincidence—my meeting Aaron, The Real World moving to my hometown, his belief that I was “perfect” for the show, the fact that I was now clutching the phone number of the Person Who Could Make It All Happen for Me. I was meant to join the real world at last.
Except, of course, the folks at Bunim/Murray Productions didn’t think so. Was I too crazy? Not crazy enough? Who knows? I remember the questionnaire I filled out only vaguely: there were queries about my relationship with my parents and friends and what I did for fun, and I recall thinking that my answers were good—or, more accurately, right. Once they turned the video camera on and I began talking, however, it did occur to me at one point that perhaps I wasn’t as riveting a person as I’d always theorized I was.
Soon, however, that taste of potential specialness—of wannabe fame—either lodged its way into my DNA or was awakened from its lifelong dormancy. So when a friend who wrote for Entertainment Weekly asked if she could interview me for an article she was writing about people who’d been rejected by The Real World, I signed on eagerly. A photographer was dispatched to snap my rebuffed visage, and after the piece came out I started receiving letters from men who’d seen my photo and wanted to meet me. While I couldn’t admit it at the time, I was actually far more excited by that attention than I was disturbed by the inherent creepiness of it. And then there was more press! My brother’s friend, who wrote for the San Francisco Examiner, decided that Real World also-rans would make a fine story for her paper, too. With another photo shoot and interview in my pocket, I began to get acclimated to Life as Someone Worth Documenting, oddly convinced that this would all lead to something bigger.
And it did. More letters began arriving at Parenting magazine—first from nice-sounding but clearly desperate men, then from the mentally unstable. A guy who identified himself only as Bobby and wrote me long, barely legible letters about how he fantasized about killing his sister, who he was in love with and I happened to resemble, arrived from a jail somewhere in the South—prison stamp intact. And while I was as perturbed by this as anyone would be, I was also unmistakably thrilled by the exciting turn my life had taken. My conversations were suddenly peppered with references to restraining orders I was considering taking out and numbers I would surely have to get unlisted instead of the usual is-the-office-coffee-drinkable-today chitchat. As a lifelong chronic confessionalist addicted to drama—qualities that, I have to admit, would have made me an ideal Real World castmate—I told anyone who would listen about Scary Bobby, the incarcerated lunatic who became obsessed with me after seeing my picture and was obviously going to show up at the Parenting magazine office just as soon as he was released.
And then one day, Bobby came to visit. Sort of.
Here’s what actually happened: I got a call from the receptionist, who said Bobby was there to see me. What? My heart thudded. She insisted it was true. I rose from my cubicle and walked through the Xerox room to the front