A few weeks ago, I was given the mindless task of proctoring a History exam during midterms and the test took place in a classroom I’ve never been inside of before. See, my room’s on the top floor of the school and my heels are simply way too high for any aimless wandering to take place so the truth is that there are probably a lot of places in my school I’ve never been. On the day of the test, I did what I needed to do: I passed out booklets and paper to kids I’d never met so they could write some essays and then the time officially started and I realized that I was expected to stare at these strangers unflinchingly for the next two hours. I got tired of looking at them after five minutes; all they were doing was writing and stopping every few minutes to shake out hands that already appeared to be cramping. It was 7:30 in the morning and they were writing essays about Colonialism and, well, I just felt too badly for them to continue to stare. Instead, I started really looking around the room for the first time. Tests during midterms are held in random classrooms and I knew I wasn’t in the room of a History teacher, but I wasn’t actually sure just whose classroom I was in until I saw the person’s name written in what looked like wite-out across a stapler. My first reaction was to roll my eyes and wonder who in the world would write her name on a stapler. My second reaction was to feel a wave of an understanding as to why my staplers always disappear.
What I liked immediately about the room were these gauzy curtains the teacher had draped near the windows along with a bunch of colorful paper lanterns that dangled down from the ceiling. The touches made the room feel homey and they managed to accomplish what I think they were meant to accomplish: to make every student in that room forget they were really there to learn math. Still, the curtain look was working for me and I started to contemplate that maybe I should hang some flowy curtains up in my own classroom and I started to seriously consider which color would best highlight the Taxi Driver, Fight Club, and Pulp Fiction posters on my wall. What hue of curtain goes best with the spatter of cinematic blood?
My minutes-long curtain fantasy faded once I realized that the chances were sky high that I’d never take them down to wash them and they’d probably just wind up gathering mountains of dust, causing students who sat near them to sneeze, blow their noses, and then toss those germ-filled wads of Kleenex into the garbage can that sits right beside my desk. Since I’ve decided that I’m allergic to other peoples’ germs, I officially put the mental kibosh on the Curtain Plan and decided to pass the time instead by checking out the quotations emblazoned on every wall of the room. I’d been in a lot of classrooms that testing week; I’d become pretty accustomed to seeing breezy and optimistic proclamations decorating barren walls. It all made me realize at some point that I don’t have any quotations on the walls of my own room and I was almost sure I should quickly scrawl, “And don’t call me Shirley” on some construction paper, but I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure because maybe I should use a quote from Primal Fear instead and, by the way, does anyone know where I can find some construction paper?
None of the quotes on this Math teacher’s wall came from excellent movies, but they were all sweetly uplifting, especially the one by Plato: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Plato has a very good point, I thought to myself – and I swear that I could almost feel a steel hardness inside of me instantly begin to grow soft as I began to consider how the paths we’re all on are unfamiliar and difficult. But just when I was about to become someone my yoga teacher would be very proud of, my eyes flicked over to the next quote and my burgeoning kindness began to melt.
The other quote actually said, “Life without geometry is pointless.” Now, I’m somewhat positive that there’s an adorable mathematical pun hidden in that quotation, but f*ck if I get the joke. I’ve never been all that big on math humor and along with biblical allusions, those are the connections I probably understand the least. I did try for a moment to imagine what kind of roads I would have had to have taken in my life for that sign to ever hang anywhere on one of my walls, but just the symbolic journey got me immediately lost so I decided to start wondering instead about which Vanderpumper could most associate with the quotation’s meaning. (It’s very worth explaining that I don’t have these people invading my thoughts because they’re fascinating. The reason I think about these people at all is because I write recaps and I’ve never been one to just bang out a “this happened and then this happened” kind of post since it’s more fun for me to weave a little narrative. Also: proctoring is mind numbing and you’ve gotta think about something.) Anyway, the (maybe) hilarious geometry quote wasn’t attributed to anybody – because that person is embarrassed – so I began to wonder if maybe James could have written it. Can’t you just see it happening? Imagine James – obviously wearing a low-cut tank top – surveying the crowds of people dancing blandly to the beats he’s created as the hemisphere’s greatest living DJ and he has a moment of total clarity where he realizes that he’s pathetic and maybe he should quit music and go to college for math. Or maybe it was Kristen who thought up the math message. Perhaps she was out on one of her frequent “walks” – the ones she goes on wearing all black creepy crawling clothing like she’s a Manson Girl. Maybe one evening she was tucked in some nice shrubbery while she separated the bills she’d stolen from Sandoval’s garbage cans and she was calculating how costly Ariana’s life is and she decided right there in that bush that Ariana, like geometry, is pointless. Of course, it could have also been Jax who came up with the quotation, but I’m pretty sure he can’t read or write.
Finding no answers (yet again) to a math problem, I decided to keep the first quote in the forefront of my mind. Maybe, I thought to myself, I should be less snarky about people willing to compromise every aspect of their lives on television in exchange for a little bit of money and a whole lot of infamy. Maybe these are their battles and I shouldn’t judge. And maybe it’s possible that I’ll make it five whole minutes before saying, “f*ck it” and bellowing from the hills that these people are monsters who are both sadistic and masochistic and they will tear apart the very fabric of society if we let them. I mean, for how many years did we all shrug off Donald Trump as harmless?
So as we head into this new recap, please just know that I tried to watch this show as I believe Plato would have – and I even considered inviting the spirit of Socrates to join us, but then I remembered Socrates was blind and he’s already suffered enough.
We begin tonight at Kristen’s apartment, which means being blind makes Socrates one lucky bastard. Kristen’s not home but Stassi is and she loves living there because Kristen rarely shows up because she often forgets her own address. When she does manage to stumble home somewhere around dawn, Kristen finds that she enjoys cleaning as her buzz wears off. Sure, it’s nice having her very own drunk maid, but Stassi’s feeling down. She’s come to realize that many people still hate her – and they really f*cking hate her, even more than they hate the dudes who stuff razorblades into Milky Ways on Halloween. It’s beyond her, this voracious hatred. She just cannot understand why telling all these people to go f*ck themselves over the years has led to them not caring if she’s breathing or not and now we know for sure that you do massively decline in intellect the moment you cross Kristen’s rickety threshold.
And speaking of a person who wants to force-feed Stassi a candy bar sweetened with cyanide, Katie is in her apartment when her new best friend Scheana arrives. Katie’s in a great mood! She’s ready to have a launch party for her blog Pucker & Pout and she’s invited her friends over to help her brainstorm, a sentence that concerns me greatly because the group she’s gathered doesn’t exactly make up a think-tank. She’s got a good goal, though. She wants to get her blog some exposure and I’m gonna go ahead and applaud Katie for having this kind of ambition. Unfortunately, my positive reaction is tempered quickly when she announces that she’s inviting Kristen to the party. Anyone else hear the sound of ominous horns blaring in the distance?
Across town, Max has arrived at a dentist to get his mouth checked out and the images thrown across the screen of his mangled teeth are made exponentially worse by James also being in the frame. Why is James at the dentist with Max and Lisa? Are we not supposed to ask that kind of question and instead try to just focus on asking about the meaning of life, because I swear, I’m not sure I can ask one of those questions without first having to ask the other. At any rate, James is predictably in a tank top and he tells Lisa that her son enjoys banging the older ladies and also that he drunk-texted Kristen last night because he misses her since their relationship was just so awesome.
As for Lala – the recent object of James’ terrifying affection – she’s apparently feeling just desperate and isolated enough to decide to confide in Scheana, a girl who was clearly a town crier who was murdered by the annoyed townspeople in a former life. Lala tells Scheana that she’s furious at James because he sent her a mile-long text in which he called her a whore while she was spending time with a guy she’s been on and off with for a while and Lala shouldn’t have to be confronted by this assh*le’s bullsh*t while she’s busy getting freaky with a guy she actually likes. But James could give a sh*t what Lala thinks or how she feels. The guy is positively glowing with sweaty pride as he shares the texts he sent her with Max and Max’s mother – the one who is James’ boss – while informing them that Lala might have gone to town on someone’s ass the other night. Between this reveal and the one about how Kanye West maybe enjoys some digital penetration, I’ve heard far too much about other peoples’ asses recently.
Scheana tries to explain to sweet, dumb Lala that James is an immature little twat who sucks so badly that he should never be looked at directly, lest the gazer begin to suck too. Even Lisa thinks the guy is a joke and the guy’s presence on this show has become so over the top ridiculous that it’s gotta be an act. Right?
(Also: James insists that his imaginary devoted following is waiting with a hyperventilating bated breath for the CD he’ll never actually release.)