WARNING: This post contains sexually explicit language. Please read on at your own discretion.
I had just returned from getting a world-class blowjob from this oral fanatic I know (seriously, he could teach classes, Harvard-level) when I found four texts from The Producer, who was anxious to talk to me. Some things never change. I'm like a guy juggler, except that The Producer isn't a boyfriend or a hookup or anything; he's the guy who turned my blog into a Web series and essentially televised my life. Well, part of it, anyway.
The show is called Hunting Season, and, well, it's been wild. The Producer was texting me because people had been all over him about hearing what I thought of the show, and he wanted me to write about my reaction to it. He'd actually asked me to do this a week or two earlier, and I'd texted back that I'd do it, but then I never did. The story of my life. But now that the show had almost run its course, he really wanted my feedback.
"Totally honest feedback?" I texted.
"HONESTY is the byword of this project," he texted back. He went on to write, "If you put anything to paper don't hold back."
You don't know the definition of "all-out, mind-fucking-blowing weird" until you've sat in a packed movie theater and watched an actor have sex while pretending to be you. "Batshit insane" is more like it. But let me step back for a second.
Once upon a time, in a little village called Manhattan... No, I'm just kidding. No story about my life starts like a G-rated fairy tale. Let's start again: The Producer had been a big fan of the blog for years and had been bugging me about letting him make it into a movie or a Web series or something. It seemed like a cool idea as an abstract concept. I never thought about how surreal it would be to have someone interpret my life and that of my friends and put it onscreen. I had stopped updating the blog a while earlier, and nothing else was going on with it, so I told him to have at it.
He decided to film it here in New York, and he invited me to come to the set. I didn't go. When friends asked me why I hadn't gone, I offered a number of reasons. I was confused about how I felt about the whole endeavor, but most honestly, I think I was scared. I just couldn't imagine watching some guy pretend to be me. I knew I wouldn't like it no matter how good it was. I knew I'd be like, "Dude, I'd never fucking do that!" or, "That's not how you give good head! What are you? Straight?" or, "I'd never wear that!" or, "Mr. Whomever didn't look anything like that actor," and on and on. So I stayed away and put it out of my mind, the thought of it becoming a reality still pretty inconceivable. Besides, avoidance has always been one of my best ways of dealing with potentially stressful situations.
I got my first glimpse of the series this summer during NewFest, which is basically New York's gay and lesbian film festival. I was nervous as all hell, with butterflies in my stomach as riotous as Honey Boo Boo's family on a drunken night. I went with Tommy, and we smoked a blunt first (to ease the nerves, you know?). It started, and the intro was cool, and there was music and a cool montage of shots of New York nightlife, and then we got to Alex's apartment. "Wait, what?" I thought. "I would never live in that deranged-lesbian-decorated place!" And then there was Alex: pretty cute but kind of short. I was thinking, "I'm taller than that!" when Tommy leaned over and said, "Dude, you're way taller than that." I was about to tell him that I agreed and ask him if he thought the guy playing me was cute (nonsensical, I know), but he beat me to the punch: "That dude with the hair better not be playing me. Wait. He's playing me? What the fuck?!" And then he announced the most offensive thing about the character: "Like I'd ever want to, or even charity offer to, tag-team Reese with you! Is this producer dude fucking crazy?"
I told him to calm down and "shush" so that I could pay attention, and we finished watching the episode, but I could tell he wasn't happy. It was actually good that he reacted that way, because it helped me put everything in perspective. For instance, Alex isn't as tall as me, but the actor has way better abs, and the apartment is pretty tacky, and I wouldn't say some of the corny stuff that comes out of his mouth, and so on and so on. But I had to remember that this wasn't me on the screen, or Tommy; it was several people's interpretations of what I'd written. The fact that anyone thought our average lives were cool enough to make into a Web series that people were actually going to watch was pretty damn awesome.
After the episode had finished, Tommy and I escaped to a straight bar and downed a few drinks. We talked out what we'd seen, and despite his bitching about how he'd been portrayed, I could tell that his mind was wandering toward his desire -- or his need, really -- to fuck the actor playing him. By the time we left the bar, after several drinks, Tommy was saying that he was going to find the actor and donkey-punch his ass until he was "begging for the real Tommy to give his ass a break."
Initially I wasn't in love with the guy playing Tommy, either, but as I watched more episodes I realized that he really was pretty hot, and he was also pretty good at getting Tommy's asshole-you-kind-of-love personality down. That's true acting, I guess, unless he's an asshole in real life, which I doubt.
So now the episodes have been airing for a few months, and it's been written about everywhere from Entertainment Weekly to Manhunt, so avoidance is no longer an option. Despite any misgivings I may have had, or the occasional cringe when the guy playing me says something I'd never say, or when the actors are put in clothes that I wouldn't even don if naked in Antarctica, I'm really starting to get into it. And it's not lost on me (or on Tommy, for that matter) how supremely cool it is that our little oversexed lives have been made into an incredibly well-received series watched by more than 50,000 people every week.
XO,
Alex