Bachelor in Paradise

Bryce was a great guy. I couldn’t believe that Cyndy would do this to him.

He wasn’t like the other guys. He wasn’t a real estate agent, a pilot, a media influencer, an up-and-coming country music singer, a venture capitalist, a retired professional athlete, a lawyer. He was a chromite miner from Montana. Real salt (chromite) of the Earth kinda man. Simple, but honest. Deep down, he was a promise that every man, should he try hard enough, could one day find impossible forever love with a woman like Cyndy.

As I army-crawled further into the damp air trapped in the space between the ornate decking and the soil, I thought about Bryce’s heaving gut. I bet that Thomys, Evyn, Donnye, Vyncenzo, and Hynry probably felt pretty silly every morning, sheepishly wandering around the private outdoor gym to yell encouragement at each other and take turns stretching neon coloured elastics between their hands and feet. “You got this, man,” while hoisting pristinely shaped masses of metal up and down and up again. Leaning themselves along unnatural angles, repeated motions intensively researched in a clean, white laboratory to maximally engage muscles only just discovered--long overlooked due to their historical uselessness, but revolutionary on fitness blogs as “sidelong abs” or “slabs”. Technological development of the elusive “ten-pack”, deemed irresistible and worth it by commentators on YouTube. When I watched them working out, I’d leap off the couch and sidle up next to my television speakers. There, just there, I swore I could hear the rattle in their voices as they hollered, “Get it, Bro!” or “Lift those Jimmies”. The tiny cracks in machismo hinting at an underlying fraud when juxtaposed with man’s man Bryce, whose uniquely bulbous stomach dimensions came from years of swinging a pickaxe, operating heavy machinery, and Arby’s. Not from the host of The Biggest Loser selling you direct-to-mail DVDs on a podcast about celebrity gossip.

I pushed my black duffel bag further into the recesses of dark ahead of me. Directly above me, I heard the dull padding of vulcanized rubber, yoga-mat-soled flip flops, and high heels desperately re-engineered to look like cowboy boots. When the rest of the house exercised, they wore paradoxes. Perfect white t-shirts stuccoed with thoughtful holes and sleeves carefully clipped off alongside most of the sides of the shirts. Drooping armholes exposing unsettling alien landscapes of muscular bumps overdeveloped along rib cages. It reminded me of the inside of an orange segment. Not Bryce, he’d sit on a camping chair on the deck, his giant swollen paw wrapped around a Miller Lite that he’d raise in cheers anytime another contestant felt brave enough to speak to him. The holes in Bryce’s flannel shirt were earned. Sleeves lost in the rigging of dirty industrial drills. Batches of tiny holes dotting his back after getting powerbombed through a barb-wire-wrapped flaming table in the backyard, wrestling with his obese cousin just called, “Hulk”. His belly’s endless girth tugging at the lax space between two buttons to somehow always reveal his belly button, visible as the pocketed absence of hair in the exposed skin.

A flash overhead and I froze. A flashlight? I curled into the fetal position, pulling the toque down over the parts of my face still exposed and playing dead. As I waited, watching for another flicker of white light through the black knit, I imagined Bryce sitting in the breakfast nook somewhere above as recently as three days ago, a full mound of bacon and eggs and hashbrowns piled before him. A stunning contrast to the meals of other contestants, who patiently waited in line for their turn to blend acai and creatine in the only Vitamix supplied on set, idling over to the nearest mirror to double-check their hair and the lines they purposely shaved into their eyebrows while the shrill threshing of the blender bounced around the marble surfaces of the lush kitchen.

Nothing. I rolled my toque back up and wormed onward. I thought about the tenacity of Lyndyn, who just one episode ago pulled Cyndy aside at the cocktail party to voice his concern over whether or not Bryce, “was there for the right reasons”. Lyndyn insisted that Bryce was here for the clout. To become the most famous chromite miner in Montana. Think about it. He’s slovenly. He’s selfish. He’s uncommunicative. Literally. Lyndyn insisted that Bryce was capable of only wet chuckling and an assortment of grunts, which Lyndyn attributed to bodily pains he suspected Bryce to feel regularly.

But Bryce wasn’t here for Lyndyn, he was here for Cyndy. And Cyndy knew that Bryce could communicate when he wanted to. On their one-on-one date, Bryce asked her if she liked beer and if she knew what chromite was. And even though she knew it was an ore mined and processed into stainless steel, he interrupted her to explain that it was actually a rock that was turned into fancy “city tubes”. I imagined that she liked that about him. He made everything seem so much simpler. Easier. And she was pretty convinced that he believed in God, like her.

Yet here, confronted by Lyndyn’s surgically chiseled jaw angles, the wafts of scented pomade radiating off his goatee, so thick that I swore I could see them waver in the air between their lips, Cyndy did not defend Bryce. She simply asked, “do you really think so?” Lyndyn assured her that he did. He went on to posit about the times each morning when he caught Bryce smashing large logs against his temples and chuckling behind the woodshed (I’ll remind you here that everyone has their hobbies) that perhaps the language centres of the brain were located beneath the severely damaged sections of skull. Cyndy thanked Lyndyn for his candor and then they kissed a lot. They were still kissing when Ryoul led Cyndy away to a charcuterie board of cheeses and Xanax he had the crew put together. Left alone on the rattan loveseat, drowning in a sea of decorative cushions, Lyndyn smiled at the camera and said, “I hope that big lovable lug, Bryce, gets the help that he needs.”

Later that episode, Bryce went home without a rose. Filmed bumping along in the backseat of a giant black SUV on his outbound ride to the airport, he cried into the camera. He had felt betrayed. He questioned whether or not he would ever feel worthy enough to find love. I prayed that he would be invited to Bachelor in Paradise in the summer, but I knew he wouldn’t. Not after he had already admitted on camera his penchant for eating sand.

I made it. According to the GPS on my smartphone, I had crawled the entire mansion-length of the Bachelorette compound and now lay prone beneath the decking of a private outdoor nook where I had reason to believe Lyndyn would take Cyndy during tonight’s cocktail party. In between the slats of composite decking above me, I watched the flock of interns begin arranging a series of gaudy velvet curtains, candles, and frosted vases around a pair of gigantic pastel bean bags. They would be coming tonight. My predictions were based on a series of probability projection models I established from data earlier in the season, in which I correlated the different contestants with the rooms and nooks they would steal Cyndy away to during the cocktail party at the end of each week of competition. There was an incredibly reliable machinery to the whole affair. Contestants took turns spiralling in their locations, faithfully rotating across the series of divans, daybeds, loveseats, saunas, jacuzzis, and hammocks. Even the secrets they confided in Cyndy while at these locations appeared to be allotted following simple contingencies. Week after week, Byryn, Kyyle, Arnyld, and lovable Bryce took turns telling Cyndy about his dead mom, dad, dog, and favourite American Gladiator, respectively, while sitting on a pair of pastel bean bags. The same seating just feet above my head.

Tonight was Lyndyn’s turn. He was the next contestant to confess death in the puffy embrace of a bazillion tiny plastic beads. I wonder who he had lost. I had long suspected a preacher or football coach, which would market-test well with the demographics. I imagined the future episode of hometown visits, where Cyndy and Lyndyn would stand hand-in-hand, wrapped in gigantic scarfs and tiny, tight jeans in front of the memorial of whichever hometown hero of his died. He would cry and she would say that’s big of him.

I was here tonight to ensure that night would never come.

I unzipped the duffel and reached down past the shards of plastic and metal and glass. I flipped the switch on the ragtag circuitry at the heart of the bag and the comforting glow of alarm-clock red illuminated the crawlspace. The flick of a second switch behind the clock changed the time to 20 minutes--more than enough time to crawl my way back out.

I had considered that the explosion alone might not be enough. Not only was I unfamiliar with electrical engineering and hobby chemistry, but I also had significant difficulty following the YouTube DIY tutorials, often having to pause and doubleback and try to not get mad when I had to sit through another video advertisement, always for a green-friendly Whopper at Burger King in which the patty contains a significant proportion of ground-down, repurposed brick. In hopes of increasing the damage, I packed the rest of the empty space in the bag with bespoke shrapnel. Crushed cans of Miller Lite, bullet cases, hula girls, expired air fresheners, sand, cut lengths of barbwire, Big Mac wrappers, nails, the ends of hammers, lego, shards of nu-metal CDs, and a handful of steel toes I cut from workboots. The remnants I imagined littered the dashboard of Bryce’s pick-up truck. Masculinity distilled. The folk culture of Homo americana.

Suddenly, a perfect square of decking above me was lifted and a tinny white light flooded my entire world. I panicked, trying to squirm back into the dark behind me, but two pairs of strong hands held me down against the dirt by the shoulders. My eyes adjusted, the blanket of light reduced to just a small circle at its source. At first I had assumed it was a flashlight, but then I noticed the tiny red light just beneath it. A camera. My vision further adapting, I recognized the silhouette of the host, Chrys Harrysyn standing beside the lights. I squinted at him, resolving his clean shave, a lump of perfectly styled hair waving in unison to the left, and a pristine and approachable suit. He floated in the dark behind the light, a wave of his offensive perfume cascading down into the dank space where I lay. I relented to the bodyguards holding me down and smiled up to Chrys. As he squatted down close to me, I saw his veneered smile in return. I saw a warmth in him and, for just a second, I swore he was just about to ask me what I loved about Cyndy. Instead, he cold-cocked me with a faux silver gothic candleholder and everything disappeared.

<3

I came to in a lush alcove, embedded in the soft give of a leather recliner. In front of me, candles flickered inside their cinchy, copper sconces, illuminating the outlines of hearts and words like “hope” and “Gucci” cut in the metal shielding. I struggled, but my hands were bound to the armrests with a tangle of patterned scarves, pantyhose, and beaded bracelets. Despite the apparent tightness of the bindings, which I could see had depressed the wrist of my skin and discoloured the hand beyond them to a faint mauve (what colour is mauve again? blue or purple or?), the ties felt comfortable. Somewhere down the corridor in front of me, a shadow rounded a corner. As they approached, the candlelight lapped their figure and face until the fragments I could see melded into a heavy familiarity. Cyndy stopped in front of my chair.

“I’m sorry.” I heaved out. Embarrassed by my reflexive cowardice, I blushed.

“For what? You shouldn’t be sorry for being yourself.” She smiled. The shine of her veneers defied the photic spectrum of candle lighting, glistening a pure white in the yellows irradiating the room.

Her forgiveness felt wrong--a single pang of hurt since waking up in otherwise perfect ease. I had tried to blow up her and everything she claimed to love. I was mad that she wasn’t. I remembered my cause and gritted my teeth. It wasn’t over. I could still seek the complete annihilation of her extensions, her pasted-on fingernails, the bedazzled crucifix on her necklace, and all they hung onto. My wrists felt raw. My hands dying. I struggled against confinement.

She flashed a scowl before composing herself. “There’s no need to apologize for that.”

I struggled harder. I could break these binds. I would break these binds. I shot wild glances around the room, looking for the heaviest sconce or decorative vase that I could wield once free.

She sighed and wandered up to the wide arm of the chair, taking a seat just beyond my limited reach. As she lowered, a plume of perfume collapsed over my head and nose. Inhale. Floral, botanical, and citric notes mixed with the tinniness of blood inside the cavities of my head. Unable to defy the guttural warmth of the scent, I slowed and stopped my struggle. Inhaling again, I slunk into the leather cushions.

My eyes closed, she wiggled closer to me on the armrest. The oozy borderless calm expanding in my head was cut with the pleasurable scratches of her dress’ bright red sequins against my forearm. I saw jolts of lightning against the insides of my eyelids, cracking through the expanse.

She leaned down and asked into my ear, “What is your five year plan?”

I recoiled into consciousness, disgusted. I immediately recalled Bryce’s response to the same question mere days before--to drink, to party, to collect interesting rocks and sand-eroded glass shards along the shores of the Great Lakes, to finally visit South Dakota, to meet Stone Cold Steve Austin. In my mind, Bryce’s ham hockish arms waved through her fog in a flurry of European uppercuts and Clotheslines from Hell aimed at no one in particular. “Fuck you,” I erupted in response and squirmed anew, pushing my arm against her hip as far as the restraints would let me.

Cyndy was unphased. She sighed. With her slender body now slouched over me, I held my breath and thrashed. I imagined snapping free of the ties, snapping bones, tearing ligaments, rending flesh, plucking apart even the atoms when they dared to still bond. Unafraid, she carefully snaked her arm between the back of my head and the recliner, lowering it until it rested across both of my shoulders.

How could I describe the sensation? The soft, infinite dull pressure. Her arm defined my skin, bones, muscles, pushing down down down, slowly descending into me and the source of my wilderness. She pushed down against the thrashing of my primal heart, down down down until it was squashed beneath the feeble weight of her heavily moisturized forearm, a Q-ray bracelet dangled on its wrist. Quelled again. Returned to perfect ease. I leaned back, resting my head against her arm, turning it side to side to explore the possibilities of contact between our skin.

While I revelled she asked again, “So...what is your five year plan?”

I don’t know where the words came from. A deep rock kicked somewhere on the seabed inside, freeing a handful of bubbles that surged upward for release. “A giant crater. An impossibly deep scoop of material, gone. Sheared from the existential plane. Eviscerated in a bomb, an explosion, a whole fission. A leftover parabola violently excavated, centred around this mansion. In the summer, it will collect the rain and drown out any survivors.”

A pause, but I was too late to stop it. I continued.

“A humble family. 3 kids. I was a middle kid and I just don’t think only children or double children could understand it. I was my mom’s favourite. A wife I truly love to share it all with.” I sunk deeper.

Her soft giggle speckled the haze. “And what, if I may, do you think true love is?” She continued.

I abided instantly, as if the words were written for me. “True love means never having to say you’re sorry. True love means gunpowder and saltpeter. It means going to Disneyland even though you’re just too dang old, because true love means being forever young. True love means uncontrolled demolitions of new housing developments. True love means telling each other about your dead relatives on a yacht, drinking champagne, and watching the fireworks reflect off the waves of a private beach. True love means mass death and a second bomb to kill the rescue crews. It means the one digital picture in ten that gets selected, where no one is blinking, both are smiling, holding branded products. It means standing on the edge of the crater and tobogganing down.”

When I opened my eyes, Cyndy hovered over me, tears piled on her lower eyelids. “That’s beautiful. More beautiful than anything Bryce could’ve imagined.”

I tried to muster revulsion at her besmirching of Bryce, but my anger faltered. She was right. What did Bryce love? He thought true love was fresh cedars, and monster trucks, and helping where you can, and drinking NyQuil when you weren’t sick. What did I see in him?

Without my noticing, at some point Chrys Harryson and a cameraman were standing behind Cyndy. He spoke up, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Cyndy turned and answered him. “Of course not Chrys, I was just catching Ayndy up.” She turned back to me, “Ayndy...we…I mean, I, want you to join the season as a contestant.”

I blinked and raised a hand to comb through my hair. A nervous tic. When had my hands been untied? Was my hair cut? Was this mousse? ...did it look good?

“I guess I could join.”

Cyndy smiled wide and stood, “Amazing! You’re all styled and ready to go. Chrys is going to film your big introduction, if that’s alright.”

Still stunned. This wasn’t my shirt. “...yeah, that’d be amazing.”

Cyndy pouted at my low energy. “Buck up! Are you ready to the damned thing or not?” She laughed too loudly and turned to look into the camera, though it wasn’t on.

“Yeah, I’m ready!” I cleared my throat and sat up. My quads looked great in these jeans.

Cyndy bent over, reaching eye level with me and teasing, “Ready to do what?”

I knew what she wanted. I smiled wide. “I’m ready to do the damned thing!” Where did my beard go?

I watched Cyndy skip off and Chrys Harryson sidle forward to take her place. He grabbed my shoulder gently and flashed a wide smile. I recognized that smile. Thousands of those smiles. Across 84 seasons. Perched on the armrest, still holding my shoulder, he nodded to the cameraman and we began. As if conditioned, the small red light below the lens launched me a straighter posture and a wider smile.

“Hi folks, you may be wondering--who is this handsome devil? Is that the Ayndy we found crawling around beneath the decking? Well you’d be right. And he sure cleans up well, doesn’t he, ladies? Cyndy has finally had a chance to meet Ayndy properly. And her verdict? She sees potential love. And who couldn’t--look at that face! That hair! The tattoos!” I had tattoos? “But will Ayndy agree to come on as our newest contestant mid-season? Well, Ayndy, what do you say?” Chrys turned to me, the boom shifted overhead.

“I’d love to. I think Cyndy is a great girl and...if I may...I just want to say that what I did was really uncool. Fashioning an improvised explosive device, mapping out the coordinates of the Bachelor house, cross-referencing security guard schedules to identity vulnerabilities enabling my undetected trespass, packing the bomb with emotional shrap--” Chrys squeezed my shoulder hard and waved to the crew. The camera lowered, now pointing at the ground.

Chrys turned back to me and, pausing to collect himself, contradicted. “Ayndy...Ayndy….what did Cyndy say when you apologized to her?”

I repeated, “that I don’t have to apologize for being myself?”

Chrys grinned wide and released my shoulder to slap me heartily on the back, “yes, Ayndy! Exactly! You can’t love another if you can’t love yourself. You should be proud of what you’ve done, of what you want to do with your life.”

“Of planning for the complete destruction of the entire production of the Bachelorette?”

Chrys returned his grip to my shoulder, now warming and soft, “...of anything your heart tells you is right.” A glance to the crew and back to me, “we think you might find us much more welcoming of the true Ayndy than you might assume”. The camera returned up and, with it, the red light and our reflexive grins.

“I’d love to, Chrys. I know I just met her, but everything I know about Cyndy suggests she’d make one heck of a wife. Smart, earnest, funny, beautiful. I’m a lucky man.”

And cut.

<3

When I joined the other contestants at the mansion, many of the guys were wary. But as they learned with time that my goals never exceeded beyond their complete deaths, that I would never lie to them, that I believed they all deserved a chance at love, that I found them funny and nice and genuine, they warmed up to me.

I was delighted when I retired to my top bunk on the first evening to find the producer’s welcome basket. Cologne, a bowie knife, minty shampoo, saltpeter, dark chocolate, gun powder, scented talc, small bags of screws and nails held in decorative cellophane, chewing gum, and PVC piping. I felt enabled. Understood.

Fans would never forget me. Terrorist Ayndy from season 85. Each week, families would tune in to watch my countless attempts at Cyndy’s and the other contestants’ lives. Pipe bombs hidden in champagne bottles. Bear traps buried beneath shag rugs on the rooftops of expensive hotels. Crushed glass in styled dinners on one-on-one dates. Almost every time, Cyndy, or Chrys, or another contestant, would catch me red-handed in the act, saving themselves or another in the knick of time. The champagne bottle exploding safely underwater in a nearby jacuzzi. A bear trap intentionally triggered by a giant candle stole from the nearest table. The dinners on one-on-one dates sitting uneaten (total bust--they never eat them). Crew members told me the analytics were good. Real good. We were reaching new demographics.

My only success came upon an unintended target. On the group date in episode 8, where a handful of guys took turns performing 5 minute stand-up comedy acts for Cyndy, Chrys, Fergie, and a washed celebrity who now ran a podcasting empire, I sought to end my set with the tearing off of my blazer and deep vee. Instinctually, the judges cat-called the maneuver, until they sobered up, noticing the suicide vest I had rigged beneath my evening wear. The other contestants on the date rushed the stage and dogpiled on me, wresting the vest off my back and passing it off to the crew. In the scatter, someone accidentally stomped on the detonator. While the guys held me down in a sort of group hug, where they took turns murmuring affirmations about our worth as strong, emotional men, friends, and brethren, an intern explosively dissipated into a billion pieces against the alley and some of the sidewalk outside. In earnest, I don’t even think this counts.

I made it to hometown dates. Cyndy was floored by my one bedroom apartment, lush with weapons of destruction, redecorated by crews visiting ahead of filming with doilies and scarves and quirky glassware draped over sharp blades, spikes, bullets. The smell of machine oil and smoke now cut with sandalwood. When she met my dad she pulled me aside and immediately asked me where my mother was. When I told she had died while I was still a child, she eyed the producer warily. They would do the math later.

It was the optics, she said. She admitted to me that the loss angle garnered a significant slice of viewers’ favour, but that it could not outdo the damage of the complete absence of a maternal presence in the episode. She cited market research comparing social media analytics of pictures of beautiful couples posed morosely around tombstones with those of “complete” families, moms wearing big lockets and droopy winter knitware around the Thanksgiving table, dads in flannel trying to smile. I could never stack up. She insisted that she loved me dearly, but that I would not be receiving a rose or an opportunity to meet her gigantic family in the suburbs. From my final cocktail party, I was loaded into the back of a black SUV and driven to the airport.

Along that drive, a cameraman in the passenger seat filmed my reaction, goading my admissions by asking how I felt every time I got quiet. I told him that I was sad. That I was lonely. I talked about a tank somewhere inside of my body that was full of love. I said someday I hope I can find someone to empty that tank on. I said I deserved to find forever love. The words felt wrong and they couldn’t describe how I felt. I asked the cameraman if I could be the next Bachelor. He laughed. It’s the optics, he said. But he admitted I was a fan favourite and a definite shoe-in for Bachelor in Paradise next summer.

As I triggered the bomb strapped beneath the car and we careened off into the ditch, I wondered when I would get my family. I earned it. I worked hard and was honest and unafraid to be myself. As I dragged myself from the wreckage, saving only the camera from the burning heap, which I agreed to pass onto the editors ahead of time, I thought about Bachelor in Paradise. I wondered if the reefs there had sea urchins. I remember a YouTube tutorial about how to extract their inescapable venom.

<3

Somewhere out there, where I would never look for it, exists a post on a fansite from a supposed intern for Season 85. The post includes a cache of files about me. My threats on the lives of Cyndy and the other contestants on a variety of social media accounts after Bryce’s expulsion. Data tracking and GPS coordinates of my home and friends. Interior shots taken by my Nest thermostat cross-referenced with the dimensions of my bedroom collected from my Roomba’s memory. Engineered and coordinated responses, the intentional shaping of my goals of destruction leading me to plan an attack on the set. Comparisons between the paths they pretended I would crawl beneath the decking and those I actually took. News clippings from a series of bombings at Olive Gardens along the Norther border of the United States 5 years earlier. In the replies, people saying they love me and guessing how I am gonna kill contestants next summer, every Tuesday and Wednesday evening at 8PM EST.