“I let him hit because he stans Karen Huger”: On the sex appeal of giving a shit

10pm. On a work trip. Unreciprocated head from a stranger sounded more appealing than watching whatever Guy Fieri bullshit was on to avoid thinking about work. 

Gay guys are really into that for some reason: the come-over-let-me-suck-you-off-and-get-nothing-in-return thing. “Servicing,” they call it, which feels about as mechanical as it is. But I digress.

I went over to this guy’s place, and for a while followed all the usual plot points: I walked to the address, messaged him “hereee,” waited for him to buzz me in and give me the apartment number, went in when buzzed and approached said number, waited at the apartment door, etc. When he let me in, I removed my shoes and clothes, as per the unspoken ritual, soundtracked by the typical ambient television noise. (These service types like to watch bullshit beyond my comprehension, as a rule).

I quickly realized that this was not, in fact, ambient noise. It was canon. My Servicer was playing The Real Housewives of Potomac.

Owing to my carnal insatiability, which had already set in upon the promise of a no-stakes blowjob, I decided not to comment, lest we belabor getting down to business. The head was fine, I think, or at the very least I came. But the episode was from season four, and it was a scene from Katie Rost’s gloriously mercurial run as a “friend of”—not the one where she called Ashley Darby “dumb,” but something similarly acerbic. 

Naturally, all else fell away.

I tried to make small talk about the elephant in the room as I reclothed myself—it was the least I could do, after all, given the man made me come for the sheer satisfaction of doing so. He offered some notional stances on the show which momentarily satisfied me, or at least lasted long enough for me to ensure I was in order before going on my merry way.

The holy church of histrionics and Housewives

Obviously, I found this man completely unremarkable. It’s not his fault; I tend to find many men unremarkable. But this instance felt a bit different; it wasn’t the typical nondescript boredom I expect from the men I meet. Well, it was, but it was also a striking case of missed opportunity. 

He’d gotten closer than most—Housewives was on, and Potomac at that. Perhaps this man knew ball!… until he choked in the bottom of the ninth. Or whatever. I don’t know. My thing is Housewives not sports! The problem was that, while Housewives was indeed on, he had nothing at all to say about it.

In his Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style, Tim Gunn declares that “few things are as attractive as passionate interest.” Which, I suppose, is effectively the thesis for whatever this is. Sorry to blow my load so early. (I suppose I haven’t yet been serviced).

My servicer’s mortal sin was a lack of passionate interest in a subject that everyone I encounter has postgrad-level expertise in. To evoke another housewife, Amanda Frances (I am as surprised as you are to paraphrase her, of all people), everyone in my world is fluent in at least some form of reality television exegesis, most typically Housewives.

What’s more, perhaps the greater fall from grace was the fact that, after our brief flirtation with a common ground, my bible was revealed to be nothing more than his window dressing. This felt like sacrilege more than the ignorance of a non-believer. 

There is an alternate version of this essay that makes an argument for the Real Housewives as the ultimate barometer for compatibility. For my part, I tend to view the series as a sacred pantheon, a lens through which to try and pull a little sense out of this chaos we call life. What I would have told my servicer, if only he’d cared to ask, is that I take seriously the following central tenets of my belief system:

• The marker of a great housewife is her second season. This is foundational knowledge which I assume everyone holds.
• If you watch more than one Housewives show, and neither is Atlanta or Potomac, we are not fucking.
• If you only watch Salt Lake City and nothing else, we are not fucking.
• A baseline level of respect, however begrudging, for the work of Kenya Moore is an expectation.
• Any prospective partner should exude radical empathy for no fewer than two (2) but no more than five (5) cast members across all cities. We can empathize with any number of these women, but we must be selective in our radical empathy, lest we bleed ourselves dry. (After all, if I am considering a partner, there must be love left over for me).
• Do not tell me which of the ladies is a Republican or otherwise a nightmare; I already know and have processed the information accordingly.
• Housewives is Shakespeare. An actor once told me about a professor of theirs who pointed to Vicki Gunvalson as a model for embodying Shakespearean emotion. These women’s stories should be treated as such. 

Beyond Bravo

Your passionate interest need not be the Real Housewives. Perhaps you light up when you talk about interior design (I retained one other detail about my servicer, which is that his apartment was absolutely barren). Perhaps you are deeply involved in local politics. Perhaps you are one of those odd queer people who is really into traditional sports!

Whatever the case may be, caring about something—anything!—is the most potent of aphrodisiacs. In our increasingly algorithmic world, which tells us that we apparently need ChatGPT to order Starbucks, everything has this alarming tendency toward flatness, impersonality, and nonchalance. We’re all consuming more than ever, and we may even share similar lexicons (back to Housewives, I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve had that are strictly memetic, people quoting lines at each other, sent into a frenzy of shared reference). But whether or not the passion is shared, it feels so precious, so rare, so deeply alluring to watch someone’s eyes light up over something, even if that something does nothing for me personally.

How many times have I come away from a date without a single defining trait or spark of passion to latch onto? Is it too much to ask to be able to playfully label someone “the [XYZ] guy” for the foreseeable future? Amidst a crisis of individuality, the opportunities seem fewer and farther between. 

I often wonder if it is my fate to be forever bored by others. An unluckiness in love is, in fairness, a definitive feature of The Diva. But must it be this way? Must I shrink myself to meet the banal masses?

Over the years, I’ve assigned less fault to the people I find boring for being boring. Developing hobbies and interests is such a Sisyphean task these days, with all the might of capitalism and the algorithm imploring you to do anything but be an individual with your own personality. The fact remains, however, that these people do bore me (and, I would imagine, they bore others too)—an entirely fixable problem!

Not only fixable, but I’d argue that in fact it is our moral duty to find a spark and chase it. The powers that be would love nothing more than to flatten us, beat us into submission, render us complacent and palatable. A lot of things are easier that way, without all the friction that comes with hardline stances and personal investment. But I don’t particularly care to engage with facsimiles of humans, and I certainly don’t care to fuck them, let alone date them.

All of this is to say, I do not believe it is too much to ask that others care about things. Anything at all, really. 

And if you have complicated opinions about Karen Huger’s return to reality television, call me.

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