“REAL TEA!” was published in Quarto’s 2021 Spring print edition.
Illustration by Rawan Hayat
content warning for anything you'd find on THE REAL HOUSEWIVES... addiction, drug use, body dysmorphia, slurs, betrayal, misogyny, backstabbing, abuse, suicidal ideations, delusions of grandeur, etc.
there are people that leave you.
or, i mean, who you left.
there are people that you left.
those people who you might get overpriced oat milk lattes with months later and talk about being
childish back then along with all your mistakes but it doesn’t matter because you’re both laughing,
you might even hug when you say goodbye and you might even mean it when you say it but these
people don’t leave, you’ve accepted the way things went and you properly flagellate yourself until
you’re a little bit pink and chapped but you end up hugging and laughing and two months later you
dance near them and you remember a time where you arrived to dance together, when you helped
them glue cartoon-spider-black-lashes onto their face in all the wrong places, but tonight you’ve
arrived separately, 27 minutes after one another and it’s the sharp inhale of dust falling from the
ceiling that reminds you of the impossible ways you used to love them, even if you didn’t actually
love love them but the feeling doesn’t last for long so there’s no harm done.
but then there are those that disappear entirely.
no no not disappear they lurk underneath rivers or across still-water ponds frozen from chill.
and they gutted you,
well, no, they created you to be gutted,
hallowed you out,
and when the time came to show guts
they show yours and call them theirs.
“but those... are my guts, i know my guts when i see them.”
bad dialogue, a disastrous plot line, i confused the “you” for the “i.” i need to get started on the
next season. i look skinny without my guts anyways. i write the ending the way it should have
been, i delete the characters with supporting roles and make sure the final shot of you is blistering:
it’s christmas in berlin, you’re off your face and you find god at the bottom of the spree.
or maybe you take two steps, stop, turn around and say to me (the camera) very clearly:
“watch: i will rip apart from you and i will take more than my fair share.”
you told me, didn’t you? you said here’s the itinerary for what will become of us. i didn’t listen i
didn’t know that i had to, i didn’t think a rip was different than a puff or a line or a shot, because
at that point it had become routine to rip off pieces of each other. fresh baked french baguettes.
red-died Gatorade and Pedialyte.
//
i’m sorry that i never read your stories back then but i’ve read them now.
//
remember when i found a bag of cocaine lying on the ground on manhattan ave and brought it
back to the apartment as a joke but then we ended up doing it all?
//
Speaking of your delusions, stop using material from our relationship for misogynistic tropes in
your trauma-porn-spiral writing. I know we have more interesting lives than you, but you are no
longer allowed access to them, as artistic inspiration or otherwise. I don’t give a shit about your
conveniently deployed excuses that art is art and not indicative of or related to you and your life,
or whatever.
//
you once told me that i’d never find love...
or actually maybe i was the one who told you,
saying, “i don’t think anyone will ever love me.”
either way i remember you silent,
which isn’t to say that you were that
but i remember it that way so maybe that’s what it felt like,
silence,
a ringing that draws a line down the center of the body
something that leaves a mark.
//
Andy Cohen’s presence is an undeniable attachment to the Real Housewives franchise.
Not only does he play a heavy hand in casting and plot-creation, but in hosting all of the
reunions and the episode after-shows (Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live) he serves as the public
representative of the show’s production. As an obnoxiously loud gay man, Cohen’s on-screen
presence serves as a mirror for gay male audience members to see themselves in.
Cohen, in serving as the public producer/creator of the franchise, posits himself as the
controlling, gatekeeping, and policing force, constantly reminding the wives that he has the power
to fire them at his will. The female bodies, the women who embody the Housewives, then become
(in Cohen’s formulation) bodies that are more or less replaceable. There’s an overwhelming sense
that in order for the wives to survive season-to-season they have to stay on Andy’s good side.
And he’ll keep drowning in cash as “has-been” wives file for foreclosure, undergo trauma
therapy and drug rehabilitations after spending seasons in front of the camera. It doesn’t matter if
“wives” have suffered domestic abuse, loss, natural disasters, deaths, scandals, and total
psychiatric breakdown, he’ll keep the camera rolling.
It’s their real lives after all.
//
“I don’t even like her, she’s a fake fucking fake phony. She’s a liar and she’s faking the whole
godamn thing and I’m sick of it. Sick of her pretending to be something she’s not.
— Kim Richards
(Unseen Footage from The Real
Housewives of Beverly Hills)
//
there was a night when we both died. the dancefloor gave way and we fell three floors down and i
crushed you, my fat body mincing your bones, turning them into asbestos ash. but... we gathered
ourselves eventually, deciding that the sunrise would make for a nice show especially because the
Brooklyn bridge was blocks away and the coke would surely wear off as we walked.
//
You aren’t as good at creating masks as you think you are, and I am not as stupid as you think I
am, or stupid at all. I see you very clearly in your writing, and it’s not cute.
//
stages, theaters, shadows, lights, curtains.
did we find each other because we were really that heart sick?
years and years of thirsting for nicotine in the form of lackluster pity applause?
youth theater...
what i’m trying to say is that at the heart of this this whole thing
are two failed actors who tried to revive their career through performance art.
turning our self into some form of performance became a heart-palpitating high.
//
my favorite real housewife is Kim Richards. i like thinking about the reality tv dynasty she
resides within (aunt to paris hilton, close family friend to kim kardashian, sister to kyle who
appears alongside her on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). she’s most famous for doing
meth in bathrooms and her unshakable drug and alcohol issues, so, in other words, she’s reality tv
gold... and i’ve become her before.
specifically, on Halloween in the light of the harvest moon. i know brecht is all about
resisting total trance but i was there, and i was totally her, and it was definitely still hella brechtian.
what did i do to be gifted such brilliant performances? i mean the sheer number of new episodes
bravo gives us on a weekly basis leaves me breathless. if the real housewives franchise was a
supply of crystal meth i’d be tweaked out for weeks... and maybe i am ??? as i went to the
bathroom on that halloween night starring into the face of the self i knew, i could only see her.
kimberly richards. and it wasn’t like my drag had achieved any kind of passing realness to her
image, and yet, if gender is what i feel, then i felt... her.
and as i painted my two front teeth black to appear that i had “done too much meth in the
bathroom” i couldn’t help but wonder...
am i trivializing her pain?
was i rendering her hurt and her trauma for my own faggy Bacchic enjoyment?
after all, isn’t that what the housewives is all about? isn’t this what kim richards signed up
for, what she was paid to perform? why do i see myself in a kim richards? is it because of my
alcoholic mother, or my sister’s proclivity for wineglass throwing blazes of performativity?
or maybe it’s because of you. maybe you’re to blame.
//
REAL TEA is a semi-autobiographic, iconic, television series
following a group of friends at Columbia University who are forced
in front of the watchful eye of the reality TV camera as they do
drugs, lie, scam men, and dance their faces off. Think Gossip Girl
meets Girls with a dash of Unreal — but make it SUPER queer.
Our Two Protagonists:
ELLIOT (19, too tall performative ex-theatre gay who takes
up too much space)
ADELINE (19, hot downtown bitch vibes, thinks being blonde
and doing coke is a personality trait)
//
i think you knew that i was acting and crafting scenes from the very moment you saw me,
but you kept my failed performances in your back pocket to use for later.
//
it’s all fun and games until camille grammar exposes my domestic abuse on national television
which causes my husband to kill himself (or maybe get murdered?) leaving me a single mother
reality tv star forced to film the next season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills instead of
grieving. i’m not a real housewife anymore but i do charge $29.99 on the Cameo app, the lowest
of any of the other ex-Real Housewives. my name is taylor armstrong.
//
there was a night in an east village jazz bar before things got bad, when we were relatively sober
and lighthearted, where we pretended to be A Straight Couple In A Jazz Bar. it was like (by which
i mean it was) a bad improv game taken a step too far. nursing our martinis, we “yes, and”-ed our
way into becoming brad and lola; a couple in their late-20s, flirting with marriage, soho house
memberships, and secret affairs. in mere minutes our bit turned into a reality, and i really did feel
like brad, and i really did love you even though i was totally fucking your best friend jane. our
performances weren’t that convincing, my faggy-sibilant-S prevented me from a full-passing
heterosexual performance, and yet, the tears still came when you told me that you wanted to
breakup. and as i held your hand, promising that i would change for the better, you didn’t believe
me because you were used to men (your father) breaking promises and spitting lies like sunflower
seeds. it was only when the jazz band stopped playing that we realized that hours had passed and
by that point all of our friends had left for the next bar. in silence, we got in a cab going uptown,
letting the weight of brad and lola leave us. i was less so frightened by our performance (we were
incredible actors after all) but confused because when i said i loved you as brad i really meant it
as me and when you said you loved me back i wasn’t sure if it was coming from you or from lola.
//
//
i was addicted to vaping from the ages of 17 to 20 (sad). the entire time we were friends i was
going through a juul pod or two a day, roughly a pack or two’s worth of nicotine. it made me
absolutely sick, turned my gums grey and made me sweat when i didn’t have it. you would make
fun of me because i would always lose my juul, it was smaller than my finger and it would usually
be hiding in plain sight. sometimes i would spend hours trying to find it only to discover i had been
sitting on it. i would hold it up to my mouth to discover that the weight of me had crushed it,
perforated the edges of the pod, and i wouldn’t know until i breathed in that my mouth had filled
with vile liquid.
//
it wasn’t until very recently, going through writings you sent me that i never bothered to read, that
i discovered that you plagiarized my work. it wasn’t word for word plagiarism per-say, but you
wrote about the same things i did, taking on my forced-cynical yet poetical cadence. the last time
i wrote something like this i wrote about you, the way you made me feel disgusting yet shiny, so i
wrote about glitter and cockroaches and the end of the world because that’s how you made me
feel. i shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that you wrote about glitter too, reflected me back to
myself. maybe you knew that i wouldn’t actually read what you sent me so you knew you’d get
away with it in the end.
//
you’d substitute cold brew for meals, a midnight snack of pure black tar caffeine.
it seemed like your heart was going to explode at any moment.
actually, i was waiting for the day, i pictured it so clearly.
has it yet? do you still wake up in the middle of the night to cold sweats?
//
on January 7th, 2020 at 4:56pm @themboslime tweeted:
you’re not “baby” your mother starved you of validation leaving you hungry for
any tit that you could latch onto.
//
you were a better faggot than i was. faggotry became an acceptable substitute for the various
theatres that abandoned you or that you abandoned all on your own. you found faggotry before
you found yourself which i think was my favorite part about you:
theatre —> faggotry —> you
and faggotry really suited you, you had found a better way to perform the very thing that i wanted
to be, and actors know their craft only grows when they work with the best of the best. but we
could never write together because in writing our lives down onto the page we knew we’d undo
ourselves entirely.
you already know that i’ve failed to write you before.
i’ve tried changing your name a thousand different ways,
i thought writing a TV show would give you more time to develop and simmer
because you deserved a 10-episode arc.
but it’s been theatre all along it has to be theatre,
or... whatever this is.
//
you were interested in writing about castles and moats and mirrors and monsters but also in the 2nd
world war and famine and conspiracy. towards the end you’d spend hours watching pirated
youtube documentaries about the third reich and how the Grimm brothers never even wrote a single
word themselves. in your writing, you very clearly try to create a mythology of yourself, less so
making yourself into something ancient, but weaving yourself into the folds of the very idea of
mythology. you mixed up words like mythology and history as equals because you didn’t think
there was any difference between them.
//
"you concluded that you were not real
the image is all
(i turn on a TV, i sees my face repeated) it created you…
all is the image
you took another step
(and another, my face repeated)
you looked around and saw only images
you felt better so, you exist in its image…
you concluded that the way to feel real
is to create the best image
(repeated)
and perform it on the best stage you can improve your inheritance…
you took another step
you looked at your audience
you felt nothing
you concluded that imagery is only a limit if you replace it better…
and falsehood is falsehood
even if the guns are real
you took another step create in its image and you will be
you happened to glance in a mirror rewarded
(repeated, repeated, all the TVs are on)
you felt everything
you concluded what it wanted you to conclude
you concluded that you were it and it was you and that was it
you concluded that you must die - ”
//
feedback:
//
godamn someone should put us on TV.
//
later in our friendship we would always exclaim “drop the bit” as if to remind each other of the
delusions generated from our performance. but towards the end the delusions were the only thing
we had left so we decided to retire that phrase and focus on glitter, holes, and various suicides.
//
you sent me all these words in helvetica,
you created a mess on the page and called it the brainchild of kathy acker
but i didn’t read a word.
never.
and maybe things would’ve have gone different if i had read what you wrote for me.
is it delusional faggotry to think it was all for me?
that i owned every single word?
//
early on in our friendship you made me aware to the ways in which i was living for my writing. i
had gotten so used to rendering my actions into narrative that i was making life choices based on
whether or not they would fit into the story i was crafting of my own existence. this was an
unhealthy and suicidal way to live. as our friendship progressed and you started to become a writer
yourself, you joined me in my addiction to real-time narrativizing. we lived our life in accordance
with the iconography we thirsted after, hot bitches with eating disorders in blonde wigs doing blow
and making a mess of themselves. iconic.
//
It’s clear that we were always just plot devices in your depressive monologue.
//
our (my) biggest dream was to have a reality show of our lives. we were basically already
performing for cameras that didn’t even exist, a special kind of schizophrenia. i wrote a pilot script
called REAL TEA about a group of Columbia University sophomores who go viral on Twitter
leading Andy Cohen to give them their own reality TV show about their iconic lives. it was an
attempt at auto-fiction, a thrusting of ourselves into a future where our iconography could finally
be recognized. it was my narcissistic delusions of grandeur in script form, but i made you into
something you weren’t and i think that’s when you realized what you had known about me all
along, the final acknowledgement of that thing you had been keeping in your back pocket.
//
bury your 30-dollar usb stick into the ground, throw in the 20 dollar four-pack you bought with
it, probably mint flavored. go through your apartment and find each little empty package and used
up vesicle and bury it too. you wake up three weeks later to find that the pods have grown into a
luscious garden, you’ve created a balanced eco-system where you can seek numbness forever...
...where the fuck is my juul?
//
“Fact #65 - I increasingly feel like I am staring at a choice. The world has dealt me my
cards, looked me in the eye, and said, “Lake or boat. Choose.”
Fact #66 - CHOOSE!
Fact #67 - I have always favored the boat, thanks to my proclivity for escapism, but
lately the lake’s call has grown clearer and more seductive. The only true seduction I’ve
ever known, really.”
//
i don’t... i don’t remember the last time i cried... i don’t think i’ve been able to cry about you.
but i want to because it feels like something i should do.
i believe i should speak about you in the past tense
but i’m afraid of eulogizing because this whole thing feels like a funeral for myself anyways.
but i am here and i am present so i am am am am am am am am.
//
me you (???)
//
i don’t think there’s any difference between mythology and history.
//
i want to include a timeline. a timeline is a way to make sense of things over time:
i met you freshman year at a pre-game my impossibly hot lightweight-rower suitemates were
throwing. i was trading off smoking my juul and a weed pen and you were wearing a glittery coat
so i guess we sort of just attracted towards one another. we did coke for fun freshman year and i
was starting to get increasingly addicted to vaping which embarrassed me but was also kind of
funny and possibly even endearing. we lived together in chinatown the summer after our freshman
year. picture us, hot sister sluts sinning in the sweltering summer. more coke, more juul pods.
sophomore year came and we moved to a dorm above a bagel shop. we shared a cursed tiny
bathroom, and we did more and more drugs. you became increasingly more interested in making
your face unintelligible with heavy eye creams as we did more coke with strangers in chinese
restaurants and warehouses in east williamsburg. you met a boy who transitioned into a woman,
you were asexual for a bit but then you realized how much you loved sex. by the end of the
semester, you were scary thin, my lungs were failing me, and you fled for berlin as i went back to
la to work for the production company that makes euphoria, a show about hot queer teen bitches
who do lots of coke. you dropped out of columbia, you moved to bushwick, found god (hilarious),
changed your name to a dead king from a greek myth, and wrote me out of your life.
more than a year has passed and i’m still writing about you.
//
INT. ADELINE’S DORM — NIGHT — FLASHBACK
Adeline lies on their bed. They’re dissociative, drunk, and alone.
The REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS plays in the background. They
breathe in, about to let out a sob.
CUT BACK TO: INT. GALLERY — DAY — SECONDS LATER
Adeline composes a tweet that reads: “Never trust faggots.” They
hit send.
//
oh, is your abusive and gaslighting girlfriend still baking DMT in her oven?
are you still self-medicating with psychedelics?
should i feel bad for you?
are you still alive?
//
you’re right,
this is a depressive monologue,
a trauma-porn writing spiral induced by the covid currently coursing through me.
art is art and it is certainly indicative of and related to my life.
but you’re dead,
or you live in bushwick,
or maybe you’re dead in bushwick.
//
“it’ll (glitter) hit me when I least expect it. just when i think i’ve seen the last of it (glitter), when
i spent so much time getting rid of every little individual fucker (glitter), piece by piece, hand by
hand, it’ll (glitter) show up at the bottom of something, fastened to the wrong place, and i have to
wipe it (glitter) away just like i did with all the rest (glitter)”
//
goddamn someone should put you on TV.
//
what frequency of coke use qualifies a coke addiction?
were you really an addict?
maybe i’m lying about how much coke we did.
am i the phony now?
//
it’s hard to distinguish the mythology we created of ourselves
from the truth of our existence.
//
i don’t actually think we ever watched The Real Housewives together.
// // //
Adam (he/him) is a senior theatre major concentrating in playwriting. His thesis play RIP Andy Cohen had its first reading in April 2021.