DURING THE ROSE CEREMONY, Ben picked Emily last to teach her a lesson, I guess, and dumped Monica. I was relieved that one of the Pink Ladies was sent packing. She was a huge troublemaker and started a lot of drama behind the scenes. At the same time I was hurt that Ben chose to keep Emily after she insulted me directly to him and said I had a personality disorder.
In the champagne toast right after, Ben announced that we were going to Puerto Rico. He asked all of us if we’d ever been there before and I said that I’d just been there. We all had a normal conversation about it. But here’s how it looked on-air:
Ben: “We are headed to the exotic island of Vieques, Puerto Rico!”
Courtney: “I was just there two months ago.”
Silent angry stares from the girls, taken out of context.
After the cameras were gone, I was walking down the hallway back to my room when Emily snuck up right behind me.
“You’re such a fake bitch, with your fake hair and fake boobs,” she whispered menacingly.
Emily had fake boobs, too.
I thought about turning around and smacking her. Instead, I yelled, “You better check yourself, bitch!” suddenly as O.G. as 2 Chainz. “No wonder your boyfriend dumped you!”
It was the meanest thing I’d ever said to anyone in my life.
7
DOODY & DIPPING
When we landed in Vieques, there were still eleven girls left, but only five (me, Nicki, Lindzi, Kacie B, and Jennifer) who I took seriously as a future wife for Ben. I refused to acknowledge that Emily was a contender. My BFF, Casey, was clearly not into Ben, but I had a hunch he was keeping her around just to keep me happy. Rachel was so nervous in front of Ben that they didn’t have any real chemistry. Jamie and Elyse had basically morphed into Snooki and Deena. Blakeley was an unknown wild card. And drunk a lot, too.
Honestly, I was getting kind of bored with Ben. Because we hadn’t had a real date in weeks, the short bursts of time we’d had together were really just subdued, earnest talks about our relationship, which weren’t really that deep. We had ten-minute Hallmark card conversations with weird girls peeping around the corner at us. We were still the Pecking Pirates and his excruciatingly slow, closed-mouth kisses were getting old. I might as well have been kissing Brittney’s grandmother.
I was dying to have a little fun and wanted to see if Ben had a spontaneous side. But first, I created a little excitement of my own. On that first afternoon in PR, my Duralax arrived. Hallelujah! At about 3:00 P.M., Casey and I met in my room to take the laxatives. The directions said it’d take about eight hours to kick in.
Later that night producers gathered us on a U-shaper to announce the next day’s group date card. Oh crap. Literally. I forgot about the group date! If it was something active, and I was on that card, I was in serious trouble. Jennifer read it out loud:
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”
In the episode, you can see Casey and I look at each other and giggle nervously when our names were called. We prayed that the date would have something to do with jewelry but were mortified to find out we’d be taking a long bus ride, then a little puddle jumper plane to San Juan to play baseball in hundred-degree humidity. This was not good for my hair or my intestines.
That night while we were sleeping, exactly eight hours after we took the laxatives, Casey and I each had our own private nightmares. How can I put this politely? Okay, combine the toilet scene in Dumb and Dumber with the wedding dress shop scene in Bridesmaids and multiply it by infinity. I was sharing a bed with Rachel when all of a sudden I broke out in a cold sweat and my stomach started gurgling uncontrollably—like a geyser about to blow. I didn’t want to gross out Rachel by going in the loo in our room, so I ran like a maniac across the hotel suite with my butt cheeks squeezed to find the most private bathroom. My rear end was making such crazy loud noises I was dying laughing and crying out in pain at the same time. I went back and forth to the bathroom so many times during the night I kept apologizing to my poor bedmate, Rachel. At least now she knew what it felt like to be kept up all night.
The next morning, when I saw Casey, she just shook her head slowly. No words.
“I think I know what childbirth is like now,” I mumbled like a zombie.
As we got ready to play baseball in the sticky, blazing Caribbean sun, I kept dashing off to the bathroom. Every time I went I thought, There cannot be anything else left in there! But there was. I was terrified that I was going to have an accident in front of Ben diving for a fly ball or running to first base. Once, in junior high, my old boyfriend Ryan was so sick during a baseball game he pooped his white pants in center field. He didn’t show up to school for three days after that. What if I pooped my shorts on The Bachelor in front of 8 million viewers? I’d have to move to Antarctica and live with the penguins.
The long commute turned out to be a godsend because by the time we arrived at the baseball stadium, home of the Carolina Gigantes, everything seemed to be out of my system. Chris Harrison chose Blakeley and me to be team captains, and then we had to pick players schoolyard style. Since we had an odd number, it made sense that Swiss cheeseball Lindzi would play for both teams. I chose Kacie B—she walked like a football player so I assumed she’d be athletic—Casey, and Jamie. Blakeley got Emily, Jennifer, and, last but not least, Rachel. Unfortunately, she just didn’t strike me as Sporty Spice. I’m pretty sure if you asked her to haul ass it would take two trips. I felt bad that I didn’t pick my friend but I really wanted to win. The reward was a team group date with Ben. It may have contributed to the demise of our friendship, which was already on shaky ground. Rachel had been very grouchy from PMS and was starting to pull away from all the girls in the house.
Anyway, there’s no crying—or talking about menstruation—in baseball! Game on!
Though Kacie B was bossy, she was a great athlete and an excellent draft pick. We got along the best we ever had. She even put eye black on my cheeks so we’d look like real baseball players. Casey was still feeling the laxatives and had to be escorted to the bathroom several times during the game. I played third base on purpose so I could stare at Ben’s butt while he pitched. He looked really cute in his uniform.
The game was super close and super competitive, and I was surprised at how athletic Blakeley turned out to be. She kept catching my balls and getting me out. She plowed into me when I was trying to run to second base and elbowed me a few times. But in the end, after Jennifer struck out, we prevailed 10–9. The other team burst into tears and I admit I was not very sympathetic. I believe I called them crybabies? Then, in a follow-up confessional, in which producers asked us to put back on our smelly uniforms and reapply the eye black, Blakeley’s all-star performance led me to say, “Who knew strippers could play baseball?” I’ll take responsibility for that one. Nobody put a gun to my head and forced me to say it. If you think about it, though, half of the sentence was a huge compliment. She was a terrific ballplayer!
Listen, Blakeley and I didn’t hate each other. In fact, we had a really nice conversation in Puerto Rico about her trying to break into modeling when she returned home to North Carolina. I told her she was really pretty and I meant it. She said she’d met with agencies there but had been rejected. I promised to make a few calls for her when this was all over. I never did, but still, I offered and would still do it today.
As soon as the game ended, Kacie B and I were definitely no longer on the same team. We were back to competing for Ben’s love. During the group date on the beach, I decided to give Ben a pop quiz to see if he was daring or a total drip.
I whispered to him that I’d love to go skinny-dipping.
“I’ll go right now!” he whispered back eagerly, his eyes lighting up.
“No, the girls are watching!” I wouldn’t even kiss him in front of them. I sure as hell wasn’t going to get naked with him in front of them.
While I was lost in space fantasizing about Ben and me frolicking nude in the sea, he gave Kacie
B the rose. My stomach pain may have subsided but my verbal diarrhea was on full blast in my next ITM. Bitter about Kacie B, and thinking about her in the baseball uniform, I blurted out, “She’s just like a little girl in a little boy’s body.” At this point, I didn’t know she’d overcome a serious eating disorder. If I did, I would never have said that.
Not my best moment but you have to understand, I hadn’t had a one-on-one date with Ben since Sonoma. I’d been stuck in these group dates with women who despised me for weeks and I was frustrated. I knew the rules of the game—I knew the drill—but I was impatient and confused. Could Ben possibly like these other girls? Or was he just going through the motions? I needed to know.
I got one small clue at the end of the group date. Ben confided to me that his one-on-one date with Elyse tomorrow would be “short.” Ben’s hint seemed like a challenge to me: Feeling like I had nothing to lose, I went to the producers and told them I wanted to set up a secret rendezvous with Ben after his date with Elyse. They loved the idea. They were all for it, and set the wheels in motion for a secret operation dubbed Team Romance.
That night, while Ben was dumping poor Elyse, I took a shower, put on the sexy lingerie I’d brought, and covered it up with a robe from the hotel. As I sat on the couch listening to the girls obliviously answering Scruples questions posed by Kacie B, the front door swung open dramatically and a bellhop yanked Elyse’s Guess rolling suitcase into the abyss. I made another bad joke that went over like a lead balloon. “Maybe she got drunk and the Jersey Shore came out!” The girls were shocked but I didn’t care. I was about to launch the most epic, diabolical plot right under their noses.
Finally, I got my cue. I went to the stairwell outside of Ben’s room. Ben had no idea I was coming. Although in a confessional, I did say “I hope I’m a sight for sore eyes because after the date with Elyse, his eyes are pretty sore!” I actually liked Elyse a lot. She was one of the few who wasn’t that mean to me, and she was always giving me great workout tips to make the most of our thirty-minute Yard Time. So I do feel bad about saying that.
So, Ben comes home, I whistle at him, and he sees me sitting there in the stairwell wearing a robe, a mischievous grin, and not much else. I think he was shocked and a little petrified. We grabbed some wine and headed down to the beach. This was the moment of truth. I wanted to make sure Ben was spontaneous and fun. I need to be honest here: I also wanted to check out the equipment. They say it’s not the size of the boat; it’s the motion of the ocean. But “they” wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives with a little dinghy. Know what I mean?
“Should I take off my robe?” I teased.
“Are you going full nude?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.
“We can go in our underwear if you want,” I said. He could tell I’d think he was wimpy if he wouldn’t go full monty.
We stripped down to our birthday suits and ran into the water holding hands. We went out as far as we could, thinking the cameras were far enough away that they couldn’t really see us (duh, zoom lens).
So, let’s get to the good part. To answer your question, yes, Ben and I did have sex in the ocean. On-camera. It was immediate but it was only for about twenty seconds and, um, it was just the tip. We’d gone too deep (in the water, get your mind out of the gutter), and the current was so strong we couldn’t get our footing. We kept getting pulled apart, and waves kept crashing on us and knocking us over.
Ben and I may have made sweet (succinct) love but we also took advantage of not being miked up and had a heartfelt, though brief, conversation that night in the ocean. He told me he was listening to “our song”—“Sleepwalking” by Mariachi El Bronx—over and over and that he thought about me all the time. “I can’t believe I feel this way already, so soon,” he said.
I told him I couldn’t stop thinking about him either, and for the first time I told him, “I like you love you.” It was basically a coward’s way of saying I liked him so much I was on my way to loving him. We briefly touched on the situation with the girls but I made a point to say I didn’t want to talk about them when I was with him. He did hint to me that he didn’t like Emily. I was relieved.
We didn’t want to get out of the water, but we couldn’t stay in there forever. As we waded to the shore, I pointed at Ben’s loins and joked, “I could marry that!” After, in my ITM, I wouldn’t confirm or deny that we’d done the deed.
When I returned to the hotel, a producer let me blow-dry my hair in her room before I went back to the suite glowing. The girls were in the middle of a wild dance party. My roomies were jumping up and down on couches, going absolutely apeshit to a Justin Timberlake song. It was the first time they’d heard music in weeks and it was like they were possessed.
They had no clue where I’d been and they didn’t care. They were euphoric.
Everyone was still on a high the next day, when we were getting ready for the Rose Ceremony. I even had a rare special moment with Nicki. My dress was really wrinkled and I didn’t know what to do.
“Kacie B has a mini steamer,” she said. “I’ll get it for you.”
Nicki knew I wouldn’t ask Kacie B for a glass of water if I were on fire. She also knew if Kacie B found out she borrowed the steamer for me, it’d cause some drama. But she went out on a limb for me anyway and I thought that was pretty cool. She got the steamer, I ironed my dress as fast as humanly possible, Nicki returned it, and Kacie B never had a clue.
During the cocktail party, the producers gathered us on the couch for a game of twenty questions. Magically Jennifer asked out of the blue if any of us had ever gone skinny-dipping. I raised my hand, quite self-satisfied.
I was also feeling self-satisfied that Ben would finally get rid of Emily because of our talk. Once again, in her one-on-one time, she bad-mouthed me, saying I was “weird.” Ben told her to drop it and to tread carefully but the warning fell on deaf ears. I had pushed Emily’s buttons so hard she was obsessed with ruining my life. Instead, she was ruining her relationship with Ben. Mwah.
But Emily would get yet another lucky break. Jennifer, unaware that Ben was now completely whipped by me after our dip in the ocean, made the mistake of being the first to tell him during her private time that she loved him, which totally wigged him out.
She got the hook.
By the way, Lindzi got the first rose during the ceremony, which was kind of a slap in the face, considering Ben had had his penis inside of me less than twenty-four hours before.
I cried the entire way to our next destination—Panama.
Oh, I didn’t cry because I was upset about Lindzi. I was in pain: my whole body—including my vajayjay—had been bitten by some sort of little water bugs or mosquitoes while I was cavorting in the water with Ben. I was having an allergic reaction, itching like crazy and covered in a huge rash.
I hoped Ben wasn’t in this much pain and prayed we wouldn’t run into him in the airport. If the girls saw both of us looking like giant red tomatoes, there’d be a lot of ’splaining to do.
As soon as we arrived in Central America, a paramedic gave me a shot in the ass and some antihistamine pills and I was cured within twenty seconds. I was relieved. That meant Ben was probably okay, too.
Because I’d been so sick, producers gave me my own room at the exclusive Trump Ocean Club. I was the only one who didn’t have to share so I was ecstatic about the privacy—and the clawed bathtub with a privacy curtain around it, smack dab in the middle of the room. I wanted Calgon to take me away, hint hint. After being sexually dormant for the last month, the skinny-dipping incident reignited my libido. Oh my God, this is definitely happening, I thought as I stared at the spigot. I tried a few times but failed miserably. I was too paranoid someone would come in and see my shadow through the curtain, my legs in the air.
I also started plotting a way to sneak Ben into my room for secret tryst number two. I was right next to the elevator; he could have snuck in and out so easily. I wasn’t planning on mor
e sex. I really just wanted a little affection or a snuggle.
As happy as I was about my luxurious accommodations, I had a complete freak-out when my second bag didn’t arrive in Panama and I had absolutely nothing to wear. I had designated the first suitcase for all the clothes I’d already worn a million times and were worn out and dirty, like the H&M maxi dress you saw me in like five hundred times. Doing laundry on this journey was a major operation and hard to organize. You couldn’t just do it whenever you needed it. We had to be in a location where it was doable for a PA who didn’t have a million other things to do. Then we all had to give them our stinky clothes and they mixed them all together. Blech. And it wasn’t like you could borrow clothes from the other girls. Not only were we all running out of new options, you couldn’t be seen on-camera in something another girl had worn.
* * *
KEEPING IT REAL
Casey Shteamer’s Best-Dressed Awards
My BFF may not have given a shit about Ben, but she definitely cared about what we were all wearing. Here, the cast’s fashion guru (and editor of ImperfectWonder.com) gives out roses for the most gorgeous gowns.
1.I remember seeing Jenna the very first night and thinking, This girl knows how to dress. Her white, loose-fitting sequined dress, paired with black strappy heels, could have looked dated if it had been formfitting. This look was ahead of its time, and I love that.
2.Samantha won week two in her LBD. Rarely does a little black dress catch my attention. However, this gown by Pleasure Doing Business has such great thick material and is structured so well that when I saw it I put it on my “need to have” list.
3.In week three, Jennifer nailed it with her color-blocking red-and-pink number. Ever since I saw Sarah Jessica Parker wearing this combo (perfection in my eyes), I’d filed it away in my mind to re-create her look. Jennifer beat me to it and did it effortlessly.
4.Jaclyn’s orange “Women Tell All” Ani Lee dress with the daringly deep V cutout had me at hello. I love things that not everyone is brave enough to wear. It is also fabulously flattering.
I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality Show Villain Page 12