There was a prank war and the girls decided to fuck with the boys' food and there was much spitting and sputtering out of milk and cereal and suspicious chicken. (My new detective-themed restaurant idea: Dr. Mystery's Suspicion Chicken. Investors?) Naturally, the boys had to freak out and blow things wayyyy out of proportion until JD had another crazy blowdown and got all ups in Sara's face, yelling at her like she hadn't jumped through the hoop or waved her sad little flipper at the money-paying Seaquarium guests well enough. So it suddenly became embarrassing. As Ryan raged and said hateful things and JD stormed around with a shotgun, picking off anyone he could find.

In the morning, though, on their last day... Everything was peaceful and forgotten. You really got a sense that the girls had bonded. So that was nice. Everyone said their goodbyes and MTV orchestrated their always-cruel-but-soaring-and-poetic one roommate leaves at time thing and there were tears and sad, hopeful songs about growing and experience and you think, because you've had a gallon of wines to drink the night before and here you are in your pajamas in Brooklyn eating toast, you think... This is why people are alive! To miss each other.

Not much else really happened in the final outing. Pranks were pulled, voices were raised, quiet and burning loves were shuttered up and sheet covered, like old summer houses. (I had a writing teacher in college who would kill me right now for using all those passives, but evs! I ain't in college no more!)

Indeed no one is in college no more. Scott and Devyn and Baya all decided that they wanted to stay in New York and that they love each other more than the stars and the moon and the planets and the heavens so they'd like to marry and live together in a beautiful New York City apartment. And they found one! These crazy youngsters. They pooled together all their wrinkled dollar bills in an old top hat and set off, skipping and dancing like some street-wise urchins in a musical, to conquer that great Big Apple. Worms! They were worms! And they found a place. A little corner. A little ground to stake a claim. A piece of the pie. Where? "On fifteenth and first street," was what Scott said. Which. Hah. That doesn't exist, Scott. There is no 15th Avenue. I wish there was! It'd be a party every day on 15th Avenue, where the girls are pretty and the boys don't come back from war in pieces and there's always bossa nova playing and we all wear hats, on 15th Avenue! On 15th Avenue you'll find the love of your life and days won't be soggy and full of worry anymore, and sometimes there will be ice cream. All the kids play baseball and the old-timers die together, here on the one five.

So that's where they're going. Katelynn will disappear into the occluding dusk of Montana, where she will do computers and various men, her soft, horsey hair billowing in the stiff mountainy air. Almost to Canada!, it will seem to say as it reaches North. Sara will continue her bumbling days over in cloudy San Francisco, a city of hills and bridges, of tunnels and turnarounds. A place where you don't have to be gay if you don't wanna be, but man oh man does it sure ever help. JD will go on to feed fish to more squiggly, waterlogged mammals. And when he's not dating, he'll work with dolphins.

Chet will still be hopelessly in love with Ryan. The final episode was just jam-packed with tearful declarations of boy love for one another, all thumpy embraces and gay panic jokes. And while Ryan—who as a military vet has seen his fair share of tough times bromancery—can easily laugh it off, something small and true and hard has lumped in Chet's ribcage. Something's come loose and is rattling around that body, which Chet tries to keep all tight and orderly and contained with his skinny jeans and form-fitting T-shirts. But passion and desire are inescapable witches, dear Chet. Even for someone who's been blessed by the angel Moroni. What sad ephemeral lives we lead! Chet, seize the day. Just kiss him. Just to see what it feels like.

And Ryan. So, OK. There was a reunion special after the finale? And everyone showed up? Including Ryan? In short hair and fatigues? And swoon? It was terrific. That wicked dancing minx Baya has apparently snatched him up. See RyRy and Bella broke up, because she ran off with a vampire. But Ryan has been visiting his friends a lot in NYC and one thing led to another and now he and Baya are bumpin' uglies like no two roommates ever should. Ryan ships out back to Iraq two weeks from yesterday. Scary.

Also on the reunion: JD is still crazy, Katelynn still likes to talk in blackspeak, and Chet doesn't like it when you make fun of Jesus. Because Jesus is a real-life space angel who talks to people in Utah and tells them to send money to a place a few states over where two loving, committed people are trying to get married. And you need to send that money so you can stop them. Because if you don't, then Jesus Space-Angel is going to get mad and he won't send you any more nourishing Moon Rays or Calamity Pies. So that's that. Don't make fun of that hallowed and precious religions, Sara.

These are the extremely hungover ramblings of a crazy person at this point. So I'm going to wrap it up. But before we go, before we fritter off into the remains of this spring day, lost and alone as always, let's ask ourselves: What did we learn? How did we grow from watching this curious, muted, issue-y, reinvigorating, possibly game-changing, but more possibly just plain dull season of The Real World?

We learned that love is a universal language. That everyone can speak it, and that anyone, if they want to, can understand it. And no barrier—political, ideological, or otherwise—should ever come between that. We learned that being an ex-lesbian hippie punker chick from SanFran doesn't make you automatically cool. We learned that dolphin trainers have the shortest tempers, because theirs is a dangerous, yet terribly, terribly necessary, profession. We learned that people who don't know how to spell the names Devin and Caitlin correctly will often yak your ear off with little to no point. We learned that beefy boys from New England are basically like beefy boys from anywhere else, just with funny accents. We learned that Dance (and groove) is in the heart. But if it's not also in the feet, you won't make it as a professional (sick beats!). We learned that TRL was canceled.

And we learned that war is tough, and that war sucks, and that war is what old people wage on the young because they are cruel and jealous and drunk with meaningless power. We learned that war swallows up not just those it kills, but those who survive it. We learned that Change doesn't always come immediately.

We learned that the name of Brooklyn is best not whispered in whitey cafes, but rather chanted and yelled by choruses of African Americans. We learned that Red Hook is perched atop a beautiful, glittering sea. We learned that the world is neither real nor made-up, but is absolutely worth being a part of. We learned that Wednesday nights could definitely have been spent better. But they also could have been spent worse.

And we learned the word "blowdown." And that, I think, is the most important thing.

Until next time! Until Cancun! Mexico!

Ryan was still reeling from finding out that he'd been recalled, but he was hesitant to tell the roommates. Chet was concerned. He knew something was wrong. "I sleep next to him every night..." he said, with a hint of wistfulness that whispered at a terrible, secret longing. A cold wind blew in from the Atlantic. A dog ran sheepishly down the street. Chet stared out at the flickering horizon. Sigh.

Ryan told the girls during their ladies poker game and they were all "Oh you're not actually going to go... Obama's in office!" Ryan ships out next month. On April 15th. Death and taxes. Go figure.

So everyone remained boggled about this big, unwieldy thing. Unsure what else to do, they baked an American-flag cake decided to get a puppy! Devyn figured that the dog would teach her how to be patient and responsible and invested in something other than herself. Good luck, dog. The creature is a little yippers Yorky that Sara, correctly, asserted is not actually a real dog. Whatever. Devyn bought some teeny tiny sweaters for it and Baya said that the dog was having a sexual identity crisis and Katelynn just smiled awkwardly and everyone kinda just looked down at the floor and made little circles with their feet and yikes.

Because the dog was not enough to assuage the mope-ish-ness of the household, the gang rented a bus to take them down to the Borgata in Atlantic City. Chet made awkward jokes about "twenties and hundies" and Ryan just smirked at him. Chet mistook it for a flirtatious grin. That old sheepish dog came back, poking its head around the corner. The sky gleamed again. Chet blinked back hopeful tears. Sigh.

When they checked into their big coffee-colored suite they all hooted and hollered the way every reality show star must when they enter a comped suite, as per some sort of implicit agreement with the owners of the hotel. So that was that and they gorged themselves on free food and Chet made an embarrassing toast to Ryan (they said his last name!), who was wearing a big floppy cowboy hat in honor of the occasion. Then er'body went gambling, except for Devyn who is too young and Katelynn who is too broke. But Kate is desperate to feed the wicked Gamblor that lives inside her, so after about an hour of pretending she wouldn't, she hit the tables. She was doing well ("six up"), but... Scott seemed a little less than happy that she was gambling with what is, essentially, his money. Sigh.

Ryan sat in the hottub in his big floppy hat.

They all went clurb dancin' and apparently JD won a ton of money so he made it raiiiinnn y'all. Meanwhile Katelynn was anchored to the Blackjack tables. Her reasoning was that she wanted to pay Scott back. And that's young America everybody! What with their unearned American Idol outlets to fame and whatnot. Katelynn didn't dare want to save and work and do it the old fashioned way. Nah, everything had to be quick and easy for ol' Katez.

Poor Devyn. She couldn't waste her money, so she was just sulking in her room, sleeping in the nude. Twinges of Tami and David in Lost Angeles came lilting in as Chet pulled the covers off and saw exposed ladyparts! It was the first naked lady he'd ever seen, like in the flesh! Ohhh he was so excited and Ryan cackled and said "I don't know why Chet does these things, but I'm glad he does", because Chet is just so ridiculous to laugh at. Chet then apologized to Devyn and she said "I"m not naked, I'm wearing underpants." And he was like "Oh... frig."

The ratty old dog trotted down the boardwalk, a distant bolt of lightning flashing in the pearly sky. Chet stared out the huge picture window in this lovely suite in this gritty city. Sigh.

Katelynn was making jokes about losing all that money and Scott just grumbled. Everyone was super stressed so they went to get sensual massages. Chet was suuuuuuuper excited because a lady got to touch him. He looked at Ryan's hands. They were soft enough. Small enough. He'd imagine the masseuse's hands were his. Alas, he got the ugly old mom lady, not the hot one, to rub his "smelly" feet. So Chet didn't get what he wanted, but he never does.

Sigh.

It was time to leave the rainy Borgata and everyone bemoaned their losses. Katelynn most of all. "Just another hour on the tables..." she begged of big, fleeting Time. But to no avail. The roommates arrived home to a smelly refrigerator. Fitting, in some small poetic way. JD, who apparently won $3,000!!, told Scott that Katelynn was basically never going to pay him back. Scott shrugged his shoulders and said "Sometimes people have to do things their own way."

Ryan decided not to tell his PA ladyfriend that he was going back to the war, because she had worries with school and whatnot. That was sort of sad. Then it was time for Scott to help get Ryan back in fighting shape, so there was a sweaty montage of squat thrusts and chin-ups and curled biceps and somewhere Chet's glasses went "sproiiinngggg" and his hair stood on end.

That old dog that used to live around here, where did he go? He left one rainy day, we saw that last swish of his tail and heard the scatter of his paws on the cement before he disappeared. Maybe he's in mountains now, or paddling some river. Maybe he's lying still somewhere forever, his last great doggy sigh long gone. Maybe he's lost and lonely in some windy desert, that same big sky a tent, a blue umbrella.

Maybe he's used some small bit of magic and become a man. He's curled up somewhere, in dreams, beside a blonde-haired boy. The lazy day surrounding them, the calm hush of breath and bodies their musical score. A swell of strings, of skin taut like drums. Peace, like peace has never been. And then a lick, a quick dart here, and damp slap there. And Chet wakes up. It's Devyn's damn puppy. And he's fallen asleep on the couch. Ryan's off somewhere, in that big floppy cowboy hat. But he'll be back tonight. He's not left just yet. There's still a chance.

So Chet will sit and wait, and watch for him in the window, eager as ever, fascinated by every car. And then he'll realize, like a sudden storm, "Wait... it's me. That old dog is me."

Sigh.

Everyone was Hope-Hope-Hopey about Election Day. Devyn gave us an important lecture on what black people are, while Chet motorboated a picture of Mitt Romney and said something about the economy. You know what Mitt Romney is qualified to do? Enter a Square Jaw contest at the annual Provo Tabernacle Picnic. And come in third. That's what Mitt Romney is qualified for. Ryan the veteran was an Obama supporter, like everyone else in the house, except for Chet and the dimbulb Scott, who was a Republican because he likes sandwiches (his reasoning made exactly that much sense). So election fever was blooming, the perfect opportunity for MTV to train its wobbly cameras on worried, scared Ryan—suffering as he is from some unseen war wound, a black hole or a pin prick, slowly hemorrhaging.

He made a student film about being in black & white and drinking beer while the 'Moonlight Sonata' plays and somewhere an Italian woman dances across a pristine ballroom in a long black gown and a rose petal falls and baby hand touches a big adult hand and then a snowglobe shatters and in the rubble we read... 'Mr. Plow.' Some people laughed when Ryan drank beer in the movie while brushing his teeth, but Ryan was upset because the movie was supposed to be deep. When it had reached its inexorable Fin, Chet squirmed in his pants, more aroused than he'd been since he saw Mitt Romney doing sexy calisthenics at the BYU Y. The Buoy they call it, on account of all the sailor-like behavior. He really dug the film and felt that Ryan was a beautiful, terrific genius and that such a mastermind of cinema must surely have something wicked and wonderful twixt his leg bones—a chalice, a serpent, a flaming apple pie. He desired it so.

Back at home, Ryan showed the gals some pictures of Iraq. Sara tried to be all self-important about it, of course. "Mm... Mmm..." she cooed. "He was really there," she gurgled to the confessional cameras. Thank you for explaining military service to us, Sara.

Ryan and Scott (who would totally be in the army if it wasn't for his murdeling, like totally) went to hear Anthony Swofford speak at a veterans' organization. So that was nice. Then Ryan's brother was in town, and Chet ogled him strangely and asked coyly "Were you in the military tooo....?" The brother said yes, and a whole host of furtive, squirming fantasies flashed through Chet's head. Later Chet went to the Fairway supermercato and had a life-size cutout of himself made. It was a lifelong dream he said. Of course it was. "You can put it near the girls' beds," said the (young!) owner of Fairway. Chet's face darkened. "I have lots of ideas of what I can do with this..." It was ominous and peculiar. Deep and strange. Like all of Chet's quiet, lonely longings.

Then it was Election Day! Ryan was dressed as Uncle Sam. Everyone was super awesomely excited because Marbeck Barama was winning the trophy. Scott was saying "You should not celebrate elections. Everyone wins, you're still an American." Chet said "It's just not functional to have Democrats running everything. You need to have opposing sides, or things just get skewed." Or they stall forever and nothing ever gets done, Chetterz. Katelynn mumblemurmured something about being happy and a nation turned its weary, thrilled, tear-stained face to her and said, urgently, "Please, shut up."

When they got home, Chet had hung himself. No! Hahahahaha, he wasn't dead. (Not yet...). He put the life-size cutout really high up on the wall with a quote bubble saying "Chet is so cool!" The roommates, still drunk and giddy and Changey, put Sarlack Morgana's face over Cheese's crotch, as means of a prank. Then Ryan painted Scott's finguhnails red. Haha, jokes are jokes. In the morning Chet was really mad, because the cutout that he'd hung up on the wall was ART! Paging Yasmina Reza! It was art! Because he stood really hard and had his picture taken really hard and then carried it all the way home. So how dare the roommates deface it. Chet = Dingus. Capital D Dingus. The thing is, I can see getting pissed that my new life-size cutout was defaced. But if you get pissed, then you're an arrogant dingus. So it's a Catch 22. You lose either way. Much like Mormons, who lose in this life and in the afterlife.

Then it was time for Ryan's sad, sparse-clapping Veterans Day parade. Of course the roommates made a gaudy show of hooting and hollering when he came trundling by and it was awkward. But it was nice to see people in New York, who I think outlanders think can be cold and angular and unfriendly toward the idea of the military, come and cheer some forgotten folks. Afterward they went for sad, boozy drinks and told sad, boozy stories about the war, about people who'd died. One of Ryan's Army pals talked to the roommates about the medals that Ryan had won and stuff and Chet got that same primal geyser feeling in his nethers, that underwear privates swoon. "We're in the presence of greatness," he declared. Was he talking about Ryan? Or was he referring to that which suddenly stood beneath his magic undergarments? We may never know.

At the wicked Junovivanti Coporation, where Devyn works as an assassin/receptionist, Katelynn got to wear a fancy ballgown for Ryan's big Veterans gala. So Katelynn was happy to be in a dress. That's good. Ryan in a suit and a funny patterned tie looked like an awkward 8th grader at an old relative's funeral. How sad for Aunt Bertha. But also how sad to not be home, playing Final Fantasy. Ryan looked at all the roommates sitting at a table and said "When was the last time we were all together? Gettysburg?" And it was like a Civil War reunion there for a second, with JD as a swaying, Latino, drunken Ulysses S. Grant.

Back at home, everyone was excited and happy and still reeling from Morlock Carama becoming our 7th Prime Minister. And then Ryan got the phone call. It was his brother, clearly upset, and he said that Ryan had been recalled for active duty. Obviously, Ryan was boggled. There were tears and whatnot and Scotty came out and offered the strange, faraway, manly comfort that dudes give to each other and ugh. What a shitty, rotten, sandy fucking mess that is over there and what a shitty, rotten, shrubby disgrace it is that the avatar of this great crime done to our young men and women is just sitting back and farting and smoking cigars in some ugly part of East Texas, with complete impunity.

Anyway, that's how the episode ended. Not exactly an upper.

Can't they send Chet's cutout instead?

See what had happened was, Katelynn was broke. Broke as a joke. She had to pay her car payments and her 'storage unit' and plus she had a really huge tab to settle with the Teeny Tiny Underpants Depot. So what could she do? Well, there aren't any restaurants in New York, so waiting tables is out. And there aren't any stores or anything, so retail is a no go. Hey! Speaking of go! What about go-go dancing in a cage, twirling high above a pile of gays and other strange-os?? Sounds teriff! So that's what Katelynn did, 'cause she knew a guy who knew a guy who got her a sweet gig at the Chicken Coop or whatever the name of the clurrb was.

So good. Episode over, right? Katelynn had a money issue, and she solved it in the most reasonable way possible. BUT NO! Just when you thought you'd get to go to bed at 10:15 last night, MTV threw you a dilly of a curve ball. Not everyone was happy that Katelynn was go-go dancing. Specifically, pretty pretty pink pucker-lipped wannabe models named Scott who are having a big fun birthday party. Scotty had a party and no one came. Well, OK, his clam and lobster scented brood from the northern wilds of New England came, but certain transsexuals were too busy go-go dancing in cages while wearing their teeny-tiny underpants to attend the most important party that New York City has seen since 4th grader Mitzi Kleinman's Central Park petting zoo gala last weekend.

But really their two-hander production of Pinter's The Birthday Party wasn't the root cause of the Katelynn/Scott blowdown. It was dishes. Tall dishes, short dishes, even dishes with chicken pox. Katelynn never, ever cleans. Scott is always cleaned and waxed and polished, so it's really aggravating to him. Rather than confront the problem head-on, he prefers to passive-aggressively yodel things in the Great Room, while Katelynn stands on the sidelines, muttering in her blackspeak. Shockingly, this is not an effective method of roommate communication. So Scott decided to pull pranks and put furniture in Katelynn's room. Didn't work. Then he put a lock on the cabinets where all the dishes were. Triumphantly, Katelynn tried to research how to crack a combination lock. Like she was in The Italian Job or something. Amazingly she was unable to do it. But she got a prank in one better! She put the pool balls in a bag and then put that bag in the TV cabinet. Nefarious, Professor Moriarty!

So, of course, there was another blowdown and Katelynn started yelling about things being childish, and Scotty yelled about things being about respect and really important birthday parties. Scott was wearing a pretty jacket with a fur collar at this point, so I just chucklewept and thought about cheeseburgers. Katelynn returned the pool balls, and Scott unlocked the cabinets and set the dishes free. They cheered and clapped and the side dish ran away with the spoon to get married and the saucer and the teapot made slow, careful love to each other while Devyn watched, beguiled. (Earlier, Devyn stormed out of her lair, the phone room, to throw herself into the Scott/Katelynn blowabout. As she yelled and yelled and yelled about something she had nothing to do with, she called Scott a bully. A tip of the hat, Devyn!)

Also happening in this episode was a story about AIDS. Pedro AIDS, to be exact. Pedro was a cast member on the Real World: San Francisco. He was living with the disease on the show, got married on the show, then died after the show was over. It was landmark television in the same way that MTV has ever been landmark television. But it was important. Anyway, MTV made a movie about it and it looked terrible. But the house kids had to put together a screening for the movie so young people could see it and learn about AIDS and being on TV. Chet really wanted to host the whole thing, because hosting is his dreeeeeam guys, but the other roommates figured that if you've never done the nasty, and don't plan on doing the nasty until you're married and it won't actually be The Nasty then anyway, it'll be The Upstanding, then you probably shouldn't lead a panel discussion about doing the nasty safely. Sigh. It didn't really matter who hosted anyway, because young people forgot how to do real work about twenty years ago (I'm currently writing, in bed, about the Real World), so the cast members could only muster the motivation to wrangle about 15 people to show up for the sad little event. 13 of those people were just there for the free Subway sangawiches.

When they all came home, defeated, Katelynn learned that her cage dancing job had flown the coop. The DJ who was paying her (hadn't actually paid her yet) stopped showing up to the niteclurb. There fleeted, on the winds of disappointment, her job prospects. So she decided to pack it all in and go back to Montana, where the money flows like wine. Everyone was sort of not really sad and then Scott came flaming in, like a burning model knight, to rescue the damsel in teeny tiny unperpanted distress. He gave her the $1500 she needed to pay for her unit's storage, and wrote "To Be a Voice" on the memo section. (Somewhere, a bank employee looked at the deposited check and was like "The fuck does that mean?") Devyn said it was a good thing, because what if Pedro had decided to leave his season of the Real World because of poverty or AIDS or something? Then there would be no more AIDS. Wait. I mean there would be more AIDS. Wait.

So Katelynn tired to act like she wasn't going to take the check, but no one in this country is really in a position to turn down free lunch (just ask those 13 people), so she took it and hugged Scott and he suddenly realized that he was being hugged by a transsexual who owed him $1500 in front of a camera crew. Pedro's dream. No longer raisined or deferred. Realized.

At the very end of the episode, an old witch broke into the house and devoured Baya. No one noticed for three days.

No doubt much bloggie ink will be spilled discussing dramatic centerpiece Katelynn, a surprisingly well-adjusted, recently post-op transgender ("My brother went to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery and all I got was this lousy etc etc..."). While she flies under the radar of fitness model housemate Scott at the airport, Iraq War vet Ryan's highly attuned trannydar quickly clues in to the fact that Katelynn might be harboring a bepenised past. Someone needs to crack out the Jäger bottle, fire up the hot tub, and get this pansexual fuckfest going already.

Some more gay-themed clips follow from the rainbowiest season of Real World ever:

• Real World: Brooklyn [MTV]