“Oh hell nah. I’m not doing it. Consider this a firm no for that meeting, even if it is only an informational one.”
“Oh come on, Ivy. What are the odds that you’d be in Chicago around the time they kick off the series? It’s like it was destiny for you to be here with me. We always said we were going to try out for The Real World and never did. Here’s our chance.” She pulled me off the main sidewalk and dug in her purse. “Here’s the flyer. It’s pretty vague, but maybe this will give you a better idea of what it is.”
Before I even had a chance to read through the flyer, I was already shaking my head at the headline. “Are you ready for the next social experiment?” I groaned, not believing that Layla would sign me up for this shit, but not surprised at the same time.
“Prepare to be embarrassed,” I read aloud. “Are you ready to lose your inhibitions?” I scrolled a little more. “Privacy is a thing of the past?” I glanced at Layla in disbelief. “Layla, seriously? How can you be on board with participating in something that will require us to put ourselves on blast to be ridiculed by the world?”
“That’s because you’re only thinking about the bad shit that could happen,” she said. “Remember my friend Meeka?”
“Yeah, how could I forget her. You took us out when I visited last year and she was cool as hell, but a little out there. Wait,” my eyes widened, “she did this experiment too?”
“Sort of. She works for the network and did it from an employee standpoint to kick off the series. I think I sent you the link when her segment aired.”
I thought back to all the links Layla had sent me because homegirl tended to send a lot of them. Suddenly, the segment she was referring to popped into my mind. “Oh nah, please tell me you’re not referring to the segment Meeka did on her exes?”
Layla shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? She had to blast her dating history to the world. That shit was insane. Tell me again, why would we do this?”
“What about the opportunities it may bring?” Layla asked.
“Like what? We already have good careers. And I don’t know about you, but I gave up that dream of being on TV a long ass time ago. We’re adults now. No time for pipe dreams.”
“That may be the case, but I need this, Ivy. Please, can you do it for me?” Layla pleaded, her voice vulnerable. “I know it’s not your thing, but I need this. I need to get outside of my headspace and do something different from my norm. And who better to do something like this with than my best friend? If we both get chosen, it will be an adventure we’d never forget.”
Damn. The girl knew how to pull at my heart strings. Don’t forget. You were just thinking that you needed to do something unexpected. Change up your routine. Make time for something other than work.
“It’s gonna require us to step outside our comfort zone,” Layla continued. “Don’t you want something to push us toward doing that?”
I sighed, letting her words sink in. “You’re right, sis. No harm in checking out the meeting to see what it’s all about.”
Layla squealed again and started dancing. “That’s my bitch. I knew you’d eventually say yes. Oh my god, we have to figure out what we’re wearing to our in-person candidate interviews. Ahh, I’m too geeked.”
Laughing at her contagious, overly enthusiastic personality, I started dancing along with her. I was always down to support my bestie. Besides, Layla and I never won anything, so chances were, we’d never get chosen for this YouTube series in a million years.
Even though I worked in the pornography industry, I knew what the regular reality companies looked for. They wanted folks who were interesting with a little special something that would raise their ratings because other people would enjoy watching them.
To me, Layla and I were the shit, but not reality TV-ish. Yeah, we could be extra sometimes. True, we could dance our asses off. And we could down two bottles of wine in ten minutes—which, to us, was something to be damn proud of—but there was no way in hell we’d even make it to the second round of these candidate interviews. At least I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t see it happening. And, when it came to stuff like this, I tended to be right.
Chapter 2
“Behind every successful woman is a best friend talking her into doing some crazy shit.”
~ Layla ~
IVY
Being single sucked donkey balls. As in, I might as well just stick my entire head in that ass and take a long, big whiff because nothing sucked more than my current predicament. Which I wouldn’t even be in if I weren’t single. Hence, why under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t care about my relationship status, but today? Today I loathed it.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
The casting associate rolled his eyes at me for the fifth time. “Sweetie, all I did was introduce myself to you, but I’ll go ahead and start that over.” He cleared his throat. “Hello, my name is Tyler and I’m the casting associate who has been assigned to you for your social experiment.”
I swallowed my nerves. “Nice to meet you, Tyler.”
“You too.” He flipped over the first page of the packet in front of him that was identical to the packet he’d handed me when I walked into the room for our one-on-one meeting. “Okay, so first off … congrats on being chosen for the latest social experiment craze. I’m sure the world is waiting to meet you.”
“The world?” My body jerked at his statement. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
His eyes widened. “Honey, I’m doing this gig on the side because it sounded like a good time and my boss is currently here on business and brought me along. But I’ll tell you right now, they don’t pay me enough to clean up some damn throw up. So how about you tightly close that little mouth of yours and skedaddle to the bathroom before you ruin the dollar-store carpet they got in this stuffy conference room.”
I wasn’t sure if it was part of his plan to loosen me up, but I laughed at his bluntness. “You remind me of my brother,” I told him.
Tyler winked. “He must be a fabulous man.”
“He is,” I said with another laugh. And if I wasn’t mistaken, Tyler and my older brother, would probably get along great. He was just his type. “You mentioned your boss is here on business. Who do you work for?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You a nosey little thing, aren’t you?” I just shrugged, thinking he was going to ignore my question when he told me, “I work for artist and sculptor, Malakai Madden. I’m his personal assistant and I do a damn good job at it, if I do say so myself. Plus, he’s a great boss, so it’s easy since I’ve been doing it for a while.”
I nodded. “It’s great when you do something you enjoy.”
“Yep,” he replied, slightly lifting his chin. “And like I said, I’m damn good at it.”
“You have a lot of personality,” I mentioned. “Are you sure you’re just helping out as a casting associate and not gonna be on the show yourself?”
“Girl, they don’t want all of this on their YouTube show.” He stood from his seat and did a twirl around the room. “Besides, a bitch needs to be behind the scenes. Give me a little national spotlight and my ego would be bigger than this whole damn city. You wouldn’t be able to tell my ass nothing.”
I would have laughed again if he hadn’t mentioned the word … “National? Did you say national? How many people tune into this channel? I was thinking it was definitely under one-hundred thousand. I’m not sure where I got that number, but if there are thousands more, I’m not sure I can do it. I mean, who just opens up their life to get ridiculed by a bunch of strangers?”
Tyler gave me a blank stare before mumbling something under his breath that sounded a lot like me needing a Xanax.
“I can’t say that you won’t be judged, because you will,” he said. “I’ve only been on the team for a few days, but I’ve been a fan since the show first aired. The show changes every season, and with that, each season has a different name. However, the brain child behind the show is a bri
lliant woman who only few people have had the pleasure to meet. Since I assume you’ve never followed any of the shows before, I’ll give you a run down.”
He pulled out his phone and typed in a few words before showing me the YouTube channel home page. “The YouTube channel is called The Social Experiment Network and even though the creator is a mystery, we call her Madame Social.”
“Clever,” I said with a slight laugh.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Personally, I would love to come up with something better, but I’ll wait until I’ve been here longer than a handful of days to start giving my suggestions.” He clicked on the featured video, while I mentally slapped my forehead for not doing more research before I’d agreed to go with Layla.
“For this year, she’s asking a bit more from participants,” he explained. “Last year, she focused her attention on married couples whose relationships were in jeopardy in a series called Marriage Sexting. For that segment, each couple chosen had to complete a series of steps and basically work on their relationship in front of the camera. For an added twist, the last couple days of communication had to be via text only. The year before, she challenged individuals of her show to be dare devils and called that series Why Not? The more adventurous they were, the better.
“The year prior to that, strangers who had never met one another before and had never traveled outside of the state they lived in, embarked on a journey around to world together to experience life. She called that one Jet Lag Is For Amateurs with the pun being that they all were indeed amateurs. No matter what the experiment, her goal is always the same. To join one of Madame Social’s experiments means one must face the truth about themselves, whatever that truth may be.”
I began chewing the inside of my cheek—a bad habit that I wished I could break, but it was times like these that my teeth got to gnawing double time. “Sounds like these challenges are pretty intense.”
“They are.” He put down his phone and pointed to a section on the packet. “This year, the theme is surrounded by the idea that people are just too damn scared to excel in life and be great. We’re not living to our fullest potential. We aren’t conquering our fears. We aren’t chasing our dreams like we should. And, for most folks, that’s standing in the way of them moving onto the next stage in their life.”
He flipped a page of the packet. “Our participants usually fall into two major categories. For some, that next stage focuses on their career, business, or financial situation. For others, it’s about love, sex, and relationships. No matter the stage, she wants participants to dig deep within themselves to try and do something they have never tried or done but wanted to. So, this is the year of no excuses and the series is being called Do You Dare?”
He pointed to the bottom of the page. “If you accept your experiment, participants are given five-thousand dollars. In addition, throughout the experiment, participants will get challenged to fulfill a task directly related to their individual experiment. By performing this challenge, you’ll earn bonus dollars.”
I skimmed ahead to the next section. “How many times do we have to record ourselves?”
“It depends on your journey. Each participant is required to upload their recorded video to our server at least four times during their two-week experiment, but if you have more videos, that’s even better. For some experiments, more time may be given, but we take that on a case by case basis. We will keep the footage as raw as possible, but we will edit your work and compile your videos into five to ten-minute video segments that will air after your experiment is complete.”
Unbelievable. Of course, I watched a ton of videos on YouTube, but I didn’t know stuff like this even existed. Listening to Tyler was changing my entire perception of video sharing and going viral.
“Although working with others to achieve your goals is accepted, and necessary in some cases, this is an individual challenge,” he explained. “If you can avoid it, you must not tell anyone that you have been chosen for this experiment. We want there to be a level of surprise regarding participants. That’s not always the case with past seasons, but it is for this one.”
Tyler opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a couple items. “You will be given a microphone for vocal notes and a cell phone for these recordings, but if you choose not to accept our phone, we will need access to yours to add our security and coding. Also, we will need temporary access to your social media pages.”
My eyes widened, but I was sure Tyler was used to my why-the-hell-am-I-entertaining-this-craziness look by now. “You can’t be serious? You basically need access to my entire life? Who would agree to that?”
“Lots of people,” he said with a smile. “If it makes you feel better, since I’m your casting associate, I will be the main person monitoring that stuff. And trust me, hunny, you don’t strike me as the type to have any shit going on that I haven’t already seen.”
I don’t know whether I should tell him thanks, or be offended. I told myself to just let the shit go, but instead of keeping my mouth shut, I found myself asking, “Why do you assume I’m not interesting and don’t have anything going on?”
“I didn’t say you weren’t interesting,” he answered with a shrug. “Just … predictable, based off our assessment of you today. No offense, but although I just started this side job, I’ve seen a certain type of person come through these doors. You don’t seem like an actress looking for her big break or a reality star groupie. You don’t even seem like the type who has time to watch too many YouTube series.”
Leaning back in his desk chair, he squinted his eyes, as if observing me even more. “You seem like you have your shit together, and although I’m dying to know more about your occupation in adult entertainment, I can peep a thirsty chick from a mile away, and you ain’t that.”
Damn. I didn’t like folks assuming anything about me, but he was pretty spot on considering he barely knew me. “You cleaned that up nicely.”
He winked. “It’s what I do. Clean shit up.”
I smiled, but my mind was racing a mile a minute.
Tyler must have sensed my hesitance because his voice was a lot more understanding when he assured me, “You’ll do fine if you choose to move forward with this experiment. It may seem scary at first, but I think it’s worth a try. Especially if you want to do something a little different. Would you mind if I tell you a little more for better clarity?”
I nodded my head, although I probably should have said “no thanks” and walked out of there.
While Tyler dove into the experiment even more, I could already feel a headache coming on. Granted, I hadn’t signed the contract yet, but I figured my stomach was in knots because truth was, I wanted to sign up for this. I wanted to take a chance on this experiment. I wanted to get outside of my comfort zone.
True, I wasn’t looking forward to having a bunch of strangers watch me, but my gut was telling me that as crazy as it was, I needed to do this. I had to try something to get me out of the lonely bubble I’d become accustomed to living in. So when Tyler got to the last page of the contract and asked me, “Are you ready for this journey?” I took the pen he’d offered and signed on the dotted line before I changed my mind.
Ten minutes later, Layla was waiting for me in the lobby. “Can you believe it?” she asked, looking as shell-shocked as I felt. “Can you believe we’re both doing the experiment?”
“Aren’t we supposed to keep it to ourselves?” I asked, glancing around the lobby of the building.
She waved off my comment. “Girl, we just signed the contracts in rooms next to each other. And we showed up today together. They know we’re friends.”
As we walked out of the building, I noticed that Layla didn’t seem as excited as she was when we’d initially gotten to the audition. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she replied with a shrug. “I’m just nervous as hell about doing this.”
“Hold up.” I gently grabbed her arm to stop her from walking. “Are you serious
ly telling me you’re nervous after begging me to do this? What happened to all that talk you did earlier about this being a once in a lifetime opportunity?”
“It is,” she said. “But it’s also terrifying to put ourselves out there.”
I shook my head. “I can’t with you. You’re supposed to be the brave one here.”
Layla glanced down the block. “There’s a great restaurant down the street. Maybe I’ll be good after we eat. You hungry?”
I glanced at my watch. “I wish we could, but we have a meeting to see that tattoo shop out South for a possible location for the video in twenty-minutes.”
“I’ll get us there on time,” Layla said, pulling out her keys.
Although I was glad I’d signed up, I was already questioning if I’d made the right decision. Especially since Tyler had informed me that a few of the other local casting associates were the most excited for my experiment.
Layla and I were quiet during the entire car ride, both of us thinking about what was in store for us.
“Maybe I need to contact them and tell them I’m rethinking my experiment,” I said when we parked outside of our destination.
“Girl, whatever you agreed to do can’t be worse than what I agreed to do.”
I perked up in my seat. “What did you agree to do?”
Layla crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not telling. Still trying to wrap my head around it.” I knew that tone in her voice. She was more nervous than I thought, but knowing Layla, when she was ready, she would tell me.
“Layla, I’m in deep shit,” I told her. “Like, I don’t know what the heck I was thinking by telling them that I would do this.”
Layla waved off my statement. “Sis, please. You’ve never done anything out of the ordinary for the whole time we’ve been friends and we go way back to the sand box. Hell, I think most of the time you do reckless shit, I’m the one talking you into doing it. The craziest thing you’ve done in life is taking the job at Black Lush Entertainment.”
Bad Decisions Good Regrets (Social Experiment #2) Page 2