Chapter 1 #2
Jess says nothing, but Puck doesn’t rush to fill the silence.
Never let the inherent desperation of your profession show—it’s a principle all good producers learn early on.
Puck knows they’ll have to make a sales pitch eventually, but Jess should get the objections out of her system first. The more headstrong Homewreckers contestants often need to rage against the machine for a minute before accepting their role as dutiful cogs within it.
“Isn’t that a little un-feminist of you?” Jess asks, after a moment’s consideration. “I mean, aren’t you …”
The girl’s eyes dart up and down Puck’s outfit: a tank top with a rip down one side, black Dickies, and a beat-up pair of Doc Martens they’ve been dutifully re-soling since Pride of 2015.
Their bare arms are covered in blackwork tattoos.
The only way they could be more of a stereotype is if they had a carabiner or a septum piercing, and they’ve been considering the latter.
“Super gay?” Puck says, taking Jess’s thought to its extreme.
It’s fine. They didn’t get to be an openly queer producer on a major reality show by having thin skin.
This is among the least offensive suppositions they’ve withstood at Homewreckers.
Puck once made the mistake of bringing a now ex-girlfriend to set one day and a particularly crude lighting tech asked “who the man was” in the relationship.
He was promptly fired. But for the record, the man was definitely Puck.
Jess hedges when put on the spot. She wasn’t prepared for Puck to make her implication explicit, and it shows in the panic on her face. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it like that … but yeah.”
Is she trying to imply that Puck should be above appealing to the lowest common denominator just because they’re queer?
Principles are nice to ponder when you don’t have to entertain anyone.
If Puck were back at Emory, then sure, they could churn out a term paper about heteronormativity, reality TV, and the limitations of the “male gaze” as a mode of analysis, but this is no time for theory.
Every second the Homewreckers crew spends filming the contestants being idle, the production burns money.
This isn’t Love Island, as Ron often reiterates.
They need something big to happen every episode.
“Look, I’m gay but I’m not stupid,” Puck tells Jess. “And because I’m not stupid, I know what you getting on top of Erica would do to Jason. And I know that it would make amazing television.”
Jess crosses her arms in front of her chest. “And how does that benefit me?”
Puck hopes the PA has had enough time to handle their first request by now, because for their next trick, they want to pull off a flawless no-look assist, just like Sue Bird used to do before she retired from the Seattle Storm. OK, they were being sarcastic before but maybe they are super gay.
“Look at the upstairs bathroom window, Jess,” they instruct.
Puck follows the girl’s eyes up to the second story, and sure enough, Micah is there looking out over the backyard. “Think about what it would do to him,” they emphasize.
Jess has spent her time on Homewreckers so far trying to ensnare Micah, a douchey Buckhead bro she used to meet up with for secret trysts at the W.
But Micah’s girlfriend Alexa has been stuck to his hip, only separating when the junior producers pull them apart like cinnamon rolls.
In that way, Jess and Erica have similar problems, and they haven’t yet realized that the solution might be for them to join forces.
The sad thing about Jess, though, is that, unlike Erica, she doesn’t want any prize money—she actually thinks Micah is her one true love.
It’s tragic, but then again, so is heterosexuality.
“Where’s Alexa?” Jess asks, correctly intuiting that her window of opportunity will be short by design.
“Oh, she was needed out front for an ‘in the moment’ interview. She’ll be back in a few minutes, though,” Puck says, knowingly. “And Micah just got a text letting him know he might see ‘something interesting’ if he ‘went upstairs and took a shower.’”
Less experienced producers might find themselves ceding more ground to the contestants than they want to give up; but Puck always prepackages tempting offers like these, and almost no one wants to leave a good deal on the table.
“Fine,” Jess concedes—and then with a dash of vanity that verges on homophobia, adds “Enjoy the show,” as though Puck were so starved of intimacy that they needed to engineer girl-on-girl situations at work.
If only Jess could see the string of women Puck has brought home from My Sister’s Room the last few nights.
Jess exits the tent and strides across the lawn toward Erica’s chaise while Puck returns to Ron’s side. “Ready?”
Ron looks to be suppressing annoyance. “Have you ever thought about telling me what you’re planning before you start doing it?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Puck checks the monitors as the camera crews move into place before pulling on a pair of wireless headphones to make sure they can hear every word of what’s about to happen.
By the time they’re tuned into the correct audio feed, Jess is standing over Erica, who flips over on her chaise lounge to find out what the other girl wants.
Across the pool, Jason is maintaining his death-tight grip on Monica’s hand, perfectly playing the part of dutiful boyfriend, but Puck knows how fragile that facade can be.
The Homewreckers boys always crack; the only question is how spectacularly.
“I heard you could use a back rub,” Jess says, and Erica, who’s not quite as clever, struggles to piece it together.
“What? Who said that?” Erica asks—but it’s fine; they can edit out this preamble in post.
Jess has to subtly tilt her head toward the video village before Erica understands what’s happening. “Oh, um, yeah,” she says, flipping back over on the chaise and reaching an arm backward to point at a random spot. “I guess I kind of have a knot right … here.”
For all of Jess’s protestations, the girl really leans into the performance now that she knows Micah is watching from on high.
Puck even asked the PA to put a pair of binoculars on the bathroom windowsill in case he wants to get a closer look at the proceedings.
After slowly removing her swim cover-up, Jess climbs onto the chaise and straddles Erica’s butt.
She presses her hands down firmly between Erica’s shoulder blades, kneading her muscles like a cat making biscuits.
It looks like the introduction to some bad lesbian porn, but that’s exactly how Puck wants it to come across.
The streamer did say they needed more boyfriends to watch this season, after reviewing the latest audience demographics. This is one way to do it.
“Here?” Jess asks, pitching her voice down to the exact right level of huskiness, while still making sure she’s speaking loudly enough for Jason to hear.
“Ooh,” Erica purrs. “Can you do it a little harder? I feel really tight.”
Jess applies even more pressure, putting all her weight into her palms, shifting her body suggestively with every press and caress.
Ron shoots Puck a knowing look and whispers, “You’re a genius,” but Puck holds a single finger up to their lips.
“Shhh,” they joke. “I’m trying to enjoy the movie.”
But it’s not a movie. Not really. It’s more like a play with an ensemble cast—dozens of players whom Puck can choreograph blindfolded and with earplugs in, moving them up and downstage at will.
If the PA managed to set everything up correctly, this could be the defining moment of the season—and it’s only week three.
Jess leans over to dig her elbows into Erica’s upper back, pointedly directing her cleavage in Jason’s direction.
Puck checks another monitor: Monica is stone-faced, watching in horror as the two sirens put on a sexy show across the pool.
Jason can’t help but peek, but only for a half second at a time.
His internal battle is pointless. Puck knows he’s not going to be able to keep it up—well, not in that sense anyway.
Meanwhile, on the second story of the mansion, Micah is putting the binoculars to good use, as Puck confirms with a quick upward glance.
The twin lenses might as well be window decals.
“You really know what you’re doing,” Erica says as Jess continues to work her back.
Puck grabs a walkie off a folding table and holds down the button. “We’ll have to blur it in post,” they whisper to the crew, “but I need a zoom on Jason’s swim trunks.”
Across the way, a cameraman obeys, redirecting his lens toward the man’s crotch. An entire monitor in the video village is now taken up by Jason’s growing bulge.
“Is that good for you, baby?” Jess asks Erica, loud enough for the entire backyard to hear, and even Puck thinks that’s probably laying it on too thick.
But based on the tent that pops up in Jason’s swimsuit, it was perfectly calibrated for maximum impact.
Would it be too much to add a boing sound effect in the final cut?
“Houston, we have liftoff,” Puck gleefully announces.
It all happens fast after that, with the cameras springing into action to capture every development: Monica notices Jason’s erection and drops his hand in disgust. She storms around the pool to confront Erica and Jess, who “know exactly what they’re doing,” as she repeatedly insists at ever-increasing volumes, but the girls play dumb.
“Can I not give another girl a massage?” Puck hears Jess say.
Jason, meanwhile, is chasing after Monica, hunched over, stammering out apologies even as he tries to hide his crotch with his hands.
Then Erica stands up and yells right back in Monica’s face, the tension that’s been building between them this season coming to a head.
And finally, an unexpected cherry on top: Erica shoves Monica into the pool, a splash punctuating their shouting match, leaving everyone in stunned silence.
The show’s insurance won’t be happy about that, but the audience will be.
Puck turns to find Ron shaking his head in a mixture of joy and disbelief. He got what he wanted, and then some.
“But wait,” Puck whispers to their boss. “There’s more …”
“More?”
“Yup.”
Puck isn’t sure this coup de grace is going to happen, so they’re going out on a limb with this infomercial-style tease. But then, right on cue, a scream from somewhere inside the house pierces the silence.
Ron looks alarmed. “What was that?”
“Oh, your new PA made sure that Micah was watching from the upstairs bathroom,” Puck says, deigning to nod in the kid’s direction. “And he may have also made sure Alexa caught him peeping. With binoculars, even.”
Ron’s grin goes from satisfied to devilish. “And I’m guessing a crew followed Alexa up there?” he asks.
“You’re a bright bulb,” Puck says. “They should make you an executive producer or something.”
“Cute.”
Puck smiles, reaching over to flick the bill of Ron’s ballcap. “I’ll put in a good word for you before my vacation.”