Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman When You Scorn “The Bachelor”
You allow her to handcuff you to the couch on Monday nights. She wants you to watch “The Bachelor” with her; you just want to get in her pants. She is classy enough to give you a choice: fuzzy pink handcuffs or police-issued. You shush the little voice that asks how she came to own what appear to be real handcuffs.
In the background, the sound of twenty women squealing over one guy on the TV has you nauseated and groping for the remote. She bats the remote from your shackled hands. The soundtrack of Monday nights will continue with excited women in exotic locales until ads for fairy-tale vacations and liposuction intervene.
During commercials she mutes the TV. She plays “Sympathy for the Devil” on repeat until Jesse Palmer—the insipid replacement host with the hollow eyes—reappears on screen. She explains that the Stones make her hot and grinds herself on your leg. That’s mildly irritating. What’s painful is her maintaining eye contact so strong it threatens to fry your retinas.
Next Monday, you pre-emptively bring out your own handcuffs, a chain of faded red and green construction paper left over from Christmas, as the women on screen frolic in a hayfield, swinging scythes and wearing nothing but plaid.
She says she loves that you recycle.
You say you love “The Bachelor.”
You are both lying.
You plug in the revolving wheel of Christmas-colored lights you found in your grandparents’ attic. You’re hoping the light show will put her in the mood to move like Jagger. The red, green, and blue lights spark across her eggshell white wall like fireworks. Or a retro disco. Best you can do on a tight budget.
She oohs and aahs at the ever-changing lights and rakes her long, red nails through your hair. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt.
The next, next Monday, the contestants go on a group date in the Rocky Mountains. They wear parkas and look like snow bunnies. She turns to you, eyes dewy. Are you here for the right reasons?
You strap on mirrored ski goggles, the type where she can’t see your eyes. You know you are on-point. She likes cold weather and dangerous men. I’m not here to make friends.
She yanks off your ski goggles, along with several strands of hair, then reaches behind a couch cushion. She draws out ski masks for both of you. Together you pull them on and kiss through the slit in the neoprene. You feel heat leaping from the tip of her forked tongue. You are surprised by a sudden flicking motion, but not surprised enough to stop kissing.
The next, next, next Monday, she opens the door wearing a long, maroon cape and whips a rose from behind her back. Will you accept this rose? Your hand strikes out on its own, seemingly disembodied. You grab the rose. She has not stripped the thorns. You bleed. She sucks your thumb. Is puncturing your flesh her way of taking the relationship to the next level?
The next, next, next, next Monday, you wonder if she is The One. Even though you don’t like brunettes and you don’t like role-playing and you most certainly don’t like “The Bachelor”, somehow you are increasingly compelled to watch the show with her. You no longer need handcuffs to tether you to the couch. While you settle into the fire engine red leather, her arms snake around you. You are reminded of the boa constrictor in Costa Rica that sent one of the contestants to the hospital.
On the screen is an Overnight Date in the Fantasy Suite. On the couch, you sniff her hair. It smells like sulfur. You both watch the awkward mannequins making out on a bed strewn with rose petals. For the first time, you’re actually rooting for the Bachelor to find love. At the exact moment of that very thought, you feel the earth move. When the door closes on the Fantasy Suite, real sparks shoot from the TV.
A puff of smoke. More sulfur. Your Host, Chris Harrison, the defrocked emcee from seasons of yore, rises from the smoke to stand in front of you. On the screen, Jesse Palmer’s mouth moves but no sound emerges. You realize he is a hand puppet for the Dark Lord.
Chris Harrison is even more debonair in person than he ever was on the TV. His chiseled jaw barely moves when he bends over and whispers in your ear, Now that you’re ready, the final rose.
In your other ear, she cackles, My greatest fear was that I’d be alone at the end of this.
She clicks the handcuffs onto your wrists. The TV screen goes dark. A message in Demon font scrolls over the black surface before you lose consciousness.
A NOTE FROM THE PRODUCERS: If someone you know would make the perfect Bachelor, send us an email. At the end of his season when he leaves broken-hearted, sobbing in the back of the limo, his soul will be yours.
Bliss Goldstein has been published in HuffPost, the LA Times, and CALYX Journal, where she was the 2022 winner of the Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. She’s working on a book of essays “How Not To Be An Asshole.” More bliss at blissgoldstein.com.