09x09 - A Friendship Is Tested

[bunniefuu]

[theme music playing]

[Jamie] This is the true story...

[Matt] ...of seven strangers...

[Melissa] ...picked to live in a mansion...

[Kelley] ...work together...

[Danny] ...and have their lives taped.

[David] To find out what happens...

[Julie] ...when people stop being polite...

[Jamie] ...and start getting real.

-The Real World.
-[Julie] ...New Orleans.

[theme music concludes]

[upbeat music playing]

[Melissa] I told my best friend about you.
I said, "That's Jamie, and I love him."

"And he is a beautiful,
white multi-millionaire,

-and I'm a poor...
-[chuckles]

...brown piece of crap." [chuckles]

I was like,
"And he'll never love me back."

And she said, "But have you tried?"
I was like, "No."

And she goes, "Well, then you're stupid."

Why am I attracted to Jamie,
aside from physical appearance?

[chuckles] Let me think.
I have to give a good answer.

I'm sweating
and fogging up my own glasses.

She was like, "Is it that bad?"
I was like, "It's bad, girl. I love him."

Hmm.

I am attracted to Jamie
because he's fun and spontaneous.

-Ah!
-[giggles]

-[sighs]
-You can tell you don't have girlfriends

'cause, like, people touch your neck

or the back of your ears,
and you're all...

-No. Go, do it.
-That's what girls do.

-[mellow jazz music playing]
-You faker.

[both laugh]

[owl hooting]

[birds chirping]

Melissa, you have to come outside
and throw the ball.

Do I look like I want to throw the ball?

-I don't want to play.
-It doesn't take any skill whatsoever.

I don't want to play. It's hard.

[Jamie] Nature Sensei says
you have to at least throw

ten throws today.

I am her nature sensei.

She views me as, like,
this all-knowing being about the outdoors.

Sensei is, like, when you are
the master of something.

So, when I call Jamie, "Nature Sensei,"
it's because he has mastered nature.

[upbeat music playing]

Wow! That was solid.
You throw better than Kelley does.

-I catch better, too. Fumble.
-[chuckles]

What is this stupid game?
I'm going back in.

-[pants]
-[Jamie] Nature Sensei says, "No!"

[Melissa chuckles] No! You're being mean.

-[chuckles]
-I don't like to play with you.

-You're just a big nasty bully.
-[Jamie] I'm not.

[Melissa] I've got to make Jamie
a new hair appointment

-'cause his hair looks ugly.
-[upbeat music fades]

What's evolved from "Nature Sensei"
is her idea of "Beauty Sensei." [chuckles]

Do you have any appointments
for right now? Thank you. Bye-bye.

Okay, your appointment's
at 10:30. Come on.

You're going to pay 25 dollars,

and then you're going
to tip her five dollars.

-What?
-[Melissa] Yes.

-[Jamie] That's highway robbery.
-[country music playing]

[Melissa] Well, she just fit you in
and your hair is ugly, so you pay.

Is that the outfit you're going to wear?

-No.
-[Melissa] I don't like it.

I am so excited for this day.
I'm so excited for Nature Sensei.

[hairdresser] What prompted the haircut?

-She did.
-[laughs]

Finally, Nature Sensei
takes time out for beauty.

[Jamie] I can definitely say
my relationship with Melissa

is one that I've never experienced before.

It's a very interesting
and weird dynamic but I like it.

[Melissa] And what about Jamie's eyebrows?

When I'm with him,
it's like free therapy. I just let go

and I love him for that.

[upbeat music playing]

-[Jamie] I like my haircut.
-Beauty Sensei would not fail you.

[Jamie in Japanese accent]
I never doubt Beauty Sensei.

[airplane engine revving]

[men cheer, laugh]

[Jamie] Four of my best friends
came into town this weekend.

We really are
an unbelievably tight-knit crew

that has known each other since
we've been little shorties.

[Jamie] Yo, this is my good friend
Melissa. This is Josh and that's Jeff.

[Jeff] Melissa,
it's very nice meeting you.

He has this network
of boys that are his friends

and he's never needed girls, so why now?

I'd like to make a toast. First of all,
for letting us, there's a bunch of us,

letting us stay over.

Love you, guys. Let's have some fun.
Everything's cool. God bless!

[all] Cheers!

[upbeat music playing]

[Melissa] Give me one
of those puddings and a spoon.

[Julie] See, where I come from,
if you told me to do that,

we'd all go, "What color do I look?"

[Melissa] You guys say that at home,
and that's just fine with everyone?

-[Kelley] Say that at home?
-Yeah. Well, if you were to say that,

-it would be no big deal.
-[Melissa] Yeah, but I own my Blackness.

-I'm Black.
-But... [chuckles]

You wouldn't say the *-word.
I don't even like to say the *-word.

But when Black people say the *-word,

I really don't have
that big a problem with it.

[inhales] But when white people
say it... Mm-mm.

Why is it not okay for me to say it

but it is okay for you
to say it? That's all.

There are a lot of things she doesn't know
about other cultures,

about other races...

[inhales] ...because they
are not prevalent where she has grown up.

There's just a lot of things
that I don't know about yet.

Ultimately, that's why I came here,
because I wanted to learn.

-[Melissa] Do you know what I mean?
-Yeah, I know exactly

what you're talking about.
I came in on it.

You have to own your Blackness
in order to use it.

So, do I own my whiteness?

[David] You can say anything
white you want.

This is a good situation.

I've got six wonderful teachers
and mentors for myself.

And don't you think there is a difference
between N-I-G-G-E-R and N-I-G-G-A?

-What's the difference?
-Yeah. "What's the difference?"

I don't want to get you
hot and bothered about the topic

but if there's a difference,
I'm, like, curious.

I mean, what...
Okay, I mean, just know that it's, like,

-both of them, you can't say...
-[Melissa] Both are painful.

Right. I mean,
the second one is more or less

something that's been adapted by
you know, the, um... Black community

as far as communicatory type stuff.
You know what I'm saying?

It's almost like turning
a negative into a positive.

Like saying,
"What's up, my [bleep]? How you livin'?"

You know what I am saying?
But if you came up, "What's up, [bleep]?"

-You know what I'm saying?
-But if I said, "What's up, my [bleep]?"

-Then you'd be offended.
-Yeah, still.

[Melissa] You can't use
the *-word, period,

-because you're white.
-Right. You're cancelled out.

[Melissa] Because when you start doing it,

automatically,
you're no longer just a white girl.

You are now "oppressor"
and people get in attack mode.

What if I don't... What if I want...
Okay, that... All right.

There's a lot
of Black people in this world,

there's a lot of Black people,
and she's known none. None.

TV is about the only exposure
I have to the colored race.

[Melissa speaks indistinctly]

-We do exist.
-[laughs]

-You know what I'm saying?
-We do exist, you know what I'm saying?

[upbeat music continues]

We crossed the road.

[Melissa] That's...

If someone was coming
the other way that was colored,

like a colored person
coming the other way,

like a Black man or something.

That's completely insane to me
that you still use the word "colored."

-Why?
-That is completely archaic.

-That's completely...
-What's "arch..." Why?

-Is it bad?
-"Colored"? That's horrible.

I'm sorry.

My first reaction is to say,
"Oh, my goodness."

"Where have you been living?"

It's very frustrating
to be the one in the house

that's constantly having to...
[breathes deeply]

[hesitates] ...look like an idiot

as I'm exposed to more and more
new things that I don't understand.

I really have an understanding
you really have no clue about Blackness.

I don't know anything... [chuckles]
...about so many things

and I don't understand why.

I'm learning more
in this conversation with you

than I did in four years of high school
and three years of college.

That's disgusting to me.

Damn right. I would be upset too,
if I discovered "Oh, my goodness,

I know nothing."

You're 20 years old, and there are things
that are common knowledge,

that are common American knowledge,

that you have no idea about
because wherever you came from,

or whatever community
you grew up in, shut that out.

But I mean, now that you recognize that,
it's your responsibility now

to reach out and find that information.

-[emotional music playing]
-But I feel like I've been cheated.

I feel like I've been, like, withheld
from things that... It's just not fair.

[Melissa] You have been,
and it isn't fair.

I still don't think I'm closed-minded.
It's not a matter of that.

You've got kids and people in the world

that are very open
about this kind of thing.

But they just don't have... [sobs]

[sobs] It's not fair.

[emotional music fades]

[upbeat music playing]

[birds chirping]

[Julie] What turned you on more,
the girls' soccer team

or the boys' soccer team?

I wasn't thinking about it
at that point, you know?

-[Kelley] You were asexual.
-[Danny] I wasn't asexual either.

You know,
you just went along with the flow.

All the other guys
were all about the girls, so I was too.

Never. Never, ever crossed my mind,
until I got to college, that I was g*y.

You just didn't recognize
that you weren't feeling intensely

'cause you didn't know
what it was like to feel that intensely...

I never experienced being with a guy
or how awesome that was.

[Julie] Danny has totally
helped me open my mind,

I mean, in his lifestyle.
Because that's just something

that I never even would have
even tried to understand before I met him.

She's learning a lot through this.
And hopefully, by the end of this process,

she will be completely just as
comfortable with it as the rest of them.

[groans]

-[screams, giggles]
-[whimsical music playing]

-[Danny] Well, that was fun, kids.
-[Julie] That was fun.

[Julie] Are you going to sleep with me?

[Kelley] Do not let him sleep
with you, Julie, trust me.

-[Danny] Yes.
-[Kelley] He stinks.

Not tonight, though. You're all rank.

-[screams]
-[Danny laughs]

Geez, watch your paws, please.

You're silly. You bad h*m*.

-[laughs]
-[laughs]

-Somebody please sh**t me.
-[Julie laughs]

You love it.
Stop it, you bad h*m*. [laughs]

This is the chastity pillow.

I think that she
is somebody in this house

who truly is open-minded,
who truly came here to grow.

-[Melissa] I want to sit by boys.
-[whoops]

[Jamie] My friends and I
are very similar in that

when we go somewhere,
we really want to experience

and do whatever is local.

We cruise out
to Arthur's Swamp Tour, airboat tours.

[Kelley] This is so Huckleberry Finn.

[Melissa] All I see
is barefoot white children

with Kool-Aid mustaches.

And they're still missing
their two front teeth,

-those b*tches are never coming in.
-[Julie chuckling]

[Jamie] All right, look at this flag.
Look at the flag.

[Melissa] Oh!
See, I knew I shouldn't have come.

There are way too many animals

-in this environment.
-[laughs]

You just think this is all fun and games.

Well, when your a*s falls
in that water and gets tore up...

[Jamie] So, has anyone
ever died from an alligator?

There's been a few bites and stuff.
Very few alligator attacks.

Most of the people that get bit
are people like myself

that fish them and pick up eggs
and doing what I'm doing now.

Things like
we're doing right now. [chuckles]

I would rather have
a Pap smear than do this.

[Julie laughing]

[engine revving]

-[laughs]
-You're crazy!

-It's beautiful! [cheers]
-[cheers]

[crowd laughing]

[Julie] What the hell is going on?

[crowd clamoring]

[speaks indistinctly]

Got the big feet in front,
just like a beaver.

[captain] An alligator swimming
in front of us...

[indistinct chatter]

[Jamie] We're cruising through
the swamp and the captain

is talking about these birds

that were flying
and hovering over the swamp.

And, um, he goes, you know,

"That there... that's
a red-beaked [bleep] stork."

And all of us were, like... [chuckles]
It was like the record stopped, you know?

We're like, "What?"

It's free now. It is so free.
I have been offended. It's [bleep] free.

[tense music playing]

-[Jamie's friend] It was really nice.
-[Jamie] They were really nice.

Yeah, aside from the racial slurs

-they were great.
-[Jamie's friend chuckling]

The swamp guy was a really nice guy
and I don't think it was at all, uh,

directed at anybody.

See, you carry such a bias.
It, like, bothers me sometimes.

Well, maybe it doesn't offend you
that people just throw around [bleep]

on a tour that you pay for,
but it offends me.

He's making
this impossible request for me to...

forget everything I've ever known

about the *-word and just go
with the flow. I cannot do that.

There's no [bleep] excuse
for that type of language,

especially when he's living in a community

where Black people
co-exist with him.

I'm just saying,
don't let it ruin your day. [chuckles]

The fact that he could just
nonchalantly brush it off hurts me.

I don't even want to deal
with him anymore.

[tense music fades]

-We went alligator hunting.
-We went on an airboat tour

and the driver of the boat
was a complete r*cist a*s.

The guy was, like,
"These are the black geese

and people around here,
we call them [bleep] geese,"

or something like that.
And Melissa's like, "What'd he just say?"

"What the... did he say?"
And she was just going crazy.

-Oh, man.
-[Danny] That sucks.

[dramatic music playing]

[Melissa] Everyone should have
been offended by that tour.

Yeah.

I mean, if you've got
a head on your shoulders

and you understand that racism is bad,
there was nothing funny

-about what that man said.
-Yeah.

I looked at Melissa and I saw
that pain and hurt in her eyes,

and I realized that she has to deal
with this all the time,

and it became so real.

This is the stuff
that I never even thought about.

It's just, like...

It's not even the man
so much that bothers me. It's, like,

Jamie's inability to understand
why it's so offensive.

What he did really, really hurt me,

and the fact that he can't
understand it hurts me more.

-[Danny] When you're of the majority...
-[Melissa] I know.

...you cannot understand the minority.

I mean, seriously, like, I can say that
because I've been on both sides now.

You know, earlier in my life,
I was on the lucky side.

I didn't have to deal with [bleep].

And now I've stepped to the minority side
and I totally understand

what it's like on the other side.

[Julie] Flashbacks of things I've said
before I came here,

right now, it just makes me really sick.

The ignorance is inexcusable,

but, like, I have found
that I have had to excuse

so many people in my life, like,
"Well, they just don't know."

-It gets tiring.
-[Julie] Why do you think

ignorance is inexcusable?

I mean, is it someone's fault
that they don't know?

[Danny] I just say "screw 'em,"
'cause I don't have time for ignorance.

That's exactly that mentality

that's never going
to get anybody anywhere.

That's never going to make
a positive difference.

People aren't going to learn

if you're just, like,
"Screw 'em, they don't know."

I don't have time
in my life to fight ignorance

or to change people that are ignorant.
I can't do it. I have tried and tried

and tried with no results,

so when I figure it out
that people that are ignorant...

[Julie] What are you talking about,
"no results"? Look at me.

[Danny] You're one percent
of the population, though.

Yeah, but one person makes a difference.
Don't you understand that?

Look at the influence
that you have on one person.

It's profound.

I still go to bed feeling
like I will never, ever, ever raise

to the standards of whiteness
or raise to the standards of malehood.

I still go to bed feeling
oppressed somehow, some way,

regardless of whether or not
I changed one person's mind.

Ignorance is here to stay.

[birds chirping]

Yesterday, we went
on this swamp tour, right?

-On this airboat?
-[Shorty] Did you like it?

I would have liked it

but this... The man who ran
the swamp tour was r*cist.

-[Shorty] Oh, really?
-Mm-hmm.

I went on the tour and he's like,
"Look over to your left,

that black bird is called a [bleep] bird."
And I was like... [gasps]

[Shorty] That might have been
the bird's name.

[Melissa] That is not
the bird's name, Dad.

-[Shorty] What was the bird's name?
-[Melissa] A black egret, or something.

People in the boat were, like,
"Wow, that was really bad of him to say,"

but they thought it was funny.
There's nothing funny about that.

No matter what color you are,

you should be offended
by that kind of language.

[Shorty] That should be something
for you to just talk to them about that.

At first, I was planning on saying,
you know...

[smacks lips] ..."I can only have fun
with Jamie and he...

has absolutely no way
to discuss negative things."

But then I thought,
"That might be a little unfair,"

so I decided I would approach him.

-[dramatic music fades]
-[gentle music playing]

[Melissa] I thought it was a ridiculous
request for me to just brush it off.

Like, for me, I can't.

And I was just, like, "Gosh, you know,
with Jamie so smart and so well-read,

and I really sometimes believe
he's Black on the inside,

but he can't understand
why I would be upset about this incident."

-I feel really scared right now.
-Why?

[Melissa] For, like,
your response to that.

I mean, I'm sorry if I wasn't,
like, you know...

[sighs] ...compassionate and understanding.

I just didn't... I don't want
to see you sad or angry.

I don't want it to get to you
'cause if it gets to you

and you get pissed off
about the whole thing

and it ruins your time
and ruins your experience.

Then, for me, they won, you know?
The r*cist mind won.

And I understand how you cannot
not be angry about that. I do.

I don't deeply understand it,
but I'm getting there.

The fact of the matter is
I am a white man.

I don't completely, wholly understand
the feeling that a person gets

when they're a minority
and when they're a subject of racism,

but I'm trying.

I really, really like you, you know? And...

I just thought it was asking a lot of me

to please not talk about that
because that is a big part of my life.

-It's a big part of who I am.
-[Jamie] All right.

The whole racial situation
was just a catalyst

for me understanding fully
how Jamie feels about me

and how I feel about him.

I was more disappointed
that it had to come from you.

You know what I mean?
If anybody else would've done that,

it'd be like,
"I don't wanna waste my time anyway."

But it was you and I was,
like, "Ooh, I like him."

[Jamie] I think that she's shown me, like,

people are sad, people are angry,
and people have those feelings

and they're justifiable.

[gentle music fades]

-[Danny] I can't get up right now.
-Savannah.

We'll go out by way of Australia
and then that'll make me happy.

-Go over here.
-[Danny] I really can't get up right now.

-[Kelley] How did that happen?
-[Danny] It just happens,

especially after you eat.

-This is what we're doing.
-[Kelley] You are a teenager.

-[Danny chuckles]
-Okay, sorry.

-Danny really can't get up right now.
-[Julie laughs]

We have to stop talking
about boy soccer teams around him.

-[Danny] And what am I gonna do with it?
-Do something with it.

-I can't.
-Tuck it in or something.

-[laughs]
-What?

Oh, is that why we're sitting?
[groans] I hate boys.

-[Kelley] Dum-de-dum-de-dum.
-[Danny] Okay.

-[all laughing]
-[Danny] We can go now.