Summer House Recap: Flirt Alert
We have a new entry into the inappropriate things that have happened in West and Jesse Solomon’s (always both names) bathroom this summer. We’ve already seen them watching each other poo and watching each other shower; now we have Jesse watching West as he’s about to make a Technicolor yawn into the toilet after a night of hard drinking. Not only is he watching, he’s filming. Is he going to post West puking? Is that something we’re going to have to look at? Also, poor West. He was so hung-over he couldn’t sit up at Lindsay’s birthday brunch, and he couldn’t even make it upstairs to pass out in his bed after brunch, having to listen to Paige comically slam her suitcase on every single step as she tried to leave the house. He’s this hard up, and his bestie is there with a camera and a smile. Sorry, it couldn’t be me. Dare I say, it was totally wrong.
Yes, this is the episode where Jesse Solomon is totally wrong. As wrong as Lindsay was for going after Carl in the last episode, that’s how wrong Jesse is in this episode. It starts when Jesse and Lexi get home from the club after an entire day of drinking, and we see a continuation of a fight that started in the Uber. Jesse says that what he saw with Lexi and West happening at the club pales in comparison to him getting his toe sucked a few weekends back. Lexi says that she was physically holding West up because he was so drunk and that she wasn’t flirting with him. Drunken Jesse seems to be drawing some kind of parallel between how he behaves with Ciara, which he doesn’t think is that bad, and how Lexi behaves with West, which he also doesn’t see as that bad but also annoyed him enough that he felt like he had to mention it. As all of the girls pointed out after the toe-sucking incident, if Lexi was in a room with two dudes and got her toe sucked, Jesse wouldn’t think it was the hilarious joke that he’s claiming it was. As Lexi says, “It’s the hypocrisy and jealousy that’s mind-blowing.”
However, this all changes when Jesse, in confessional, says that West was massaging Lexi’s shoulders and dancing all up on her at the club, which was too much for him. Dude, you don’t have a Lexi problem; you have a West problem. It sounds like West was getting a little closer with Lexi than Jesse was comfortable with. I do not think that West has designs on Lexi. I’m not even sure West was actively flirting with her. That just seems like the guy West is, but Jesse needs to realize which direction the flirting is coming from, and that is the person at fault. In all of the examples Jesse gives us, there isn’t one of Lexi doing anything.
This also comes up when Jesse enlists the cast for their “most wholesome activity” of all time and takes them to serve dinner at a house for cancer patients who come to New York City for treatment. He’s in the kitchen joking with Ciara, and she touches his arm. He yanks his arm back and says she can’t touch him because he got yelled at for flirting with Ciara. Exactly! What he got in trouble for was not Ciara’s behavior but his own. Ciara was by no means out of bounds, especially when we see the flashback to Jesse on the pool float giving her a smothering, full-body hug while they’re both wearing next to nothing. If Ciara wants to touch his arm, that’s no big deal; what he got yelled at was for something he did. If Ciara giving him a friendly gesture is going to brick him up so hard that he can’t help but flirt with her, then, yes, maybe she shouldn’t be touching him, and he should draw this boundary.
While all of this is wrong, it’s something that happens that drunken night in bed with Lexi that’s the wrongest. After their spat, Jesse tells her that he loves her and then tells her to say she loves him back. In confessional, Lexi says that Jesse first told her that he loved her 11 days into their relationship. Okay, it’s one thing when he’s in the car with the guys and is like, “I love her,” in a joking, hyperbolic way. But to tell Lexi he loves her that quickly, well, that is a flag redder than Rudolph’s nose. The way he says, “Say it back,” is creepy and, dare I say, a little bit manipulative. Yes, it was odd that Lexi blackmailed Jesse into meeting his family, but dropping the L-word (no, not the lesbian drama) after less than two weeks is stranger still.
Also wrong in this episode is Imrul. The man brought his fifth woman of the summer to the house, and it is possibly the same woman as before, but we don’t know because Imrul now has his M.O. down pat: Don’t sign a release, cover up the camera, send her home in the morning through the world’s stickiest front door. This time, it’s a little bit different, however, because Paige is sleeping in Gabby’s vacant room, which shares a wall with Imrul. She wakes up in the middle of the night to them pounding and the woman’s fake moans. How does Paige know the moans are fake? Oh, I think that every straight woman in the world knows the difference between a real moan and a fake moan. Know what I’m sayin’, sisters? High five!
The audio we get from Imrul’s encounter is what makes me upset about this whole thing. When the woman asks if it’s all right to make noise, he tells her to make all the noise she wants. Really? In a house full of people, including a pregnant woman who is also a birthday girl? Just make as much noise as you want as if no one is there? Uh-uh. No way. Have a bit of class and decency. I spent a decade in a Fire Island house where hooking up was not only customary but encouraged, and still, we knew to keep all of that activity within the confines of four walls (or the hot tub or on the beach or in the Meat Rack or in the bathroom at the Sip ’N’ Twirl or …).
In the morning, Paige is pissed about it and rightfully tells everyone who will listen. When he comes into the kitchen in his skivvies, Paige says to him, “You need an STD check. No, seriously.” You already read my rant about how promiscuity doesn’t necessarily mean disease, so I don’t need to say it again. Also, Imrul said that he uses condoms, so it’s good that he has everyone’s safety in mind.
I think the way Paige goes about this is wrong because she makes it about sex. This is not a sex problem, it is a respect problem. Ciara asks the boys collectively if he brings people home like this into his own home. I’m sure he does, but that’s the thing. It’s his own home. He doesn’t have to share it with anyone. This is a shared environment, and not everyone might be cool with him parading strangers through their house. If it happens once or twice, okay, fine. But this happens every weekend he’s there. It’s his thing, and they all have to deal with it whether they like it or not. And if it’s waking people up and causing them to lose sleep, he either needs to cut it out or find a Hamptons house by himself where he won’t inconvenience anyone.
Ciara is sitting outside with Carl, Jesse, and Kyle when she confronts him about it, saying it’s about what he’s bringing into the house. Imrul asks if everyone feels that way, and Ciara says these are her feelings. Then Carl says that they have never experienced this type of volume before. Jesse says that once in a while, it is okay, and maybe he can benefit from an “away game.” This is a conversation that Imrul should have had a while ago. If he knew he would be bringing people back all the time, he should have asked if that was cool instead of waiting until everyone got annoyed with him to bring it up. As Jesse points out, he had good relationships with everyone in the house before he brought a girl home one time.
Yes, that is the vibe. The vibe is about togetherness and hanging with your friends. For Imrul, the vibe is about getting laid like a tile floor, repeatedly and with staggering precision. That’s great. Go for it. I love sluts. But that is not the point of being in the house and the show. What’s even worse is that Imrul doesn’t like the nickname “orgy beast,” and he says in his confessional that he doesn’t want sex to be all that he’s known for. But that is all he’s giving to the crew and the audience. If those things are really true, maybe he should try to mix it up a little bit.
Speaking of wrong and disrespectful, here is a light tsk tsk for Kyle and West, who come home at 5:30 a.m. when everyone else settled into their beds to FaceTime each other across the house at 11:11 p.m. (make a wish!). They get home and can’t open that stupid front door. Can we start a GoFundMe for the owner of this home so that we never have to see that front door stick again? Kyle and West pound on it so hard that they wake up Lindsay — yes, Lindsay, the pregnant birthday girl — who has to let them in. At least West is sweet about it and hugs her. I also love that we’re to the point that when Amanda wakes Kyle up with a finger in the mouth in the morning when he’s passed out in the living room that she doesn’t even have to yell at him. He knows what he did was wrong, and he can stew in his own guilt.
West and Kyle pass out with all their clothes on outside of their own beds. Same with Paige, but that’s because she couldn’t sleep because she was racked with anxiety after the conversation she had with Ciara in the last episode, where she talked about Craig not being as supportive as she’d like. It is an interesting look into the mind of a practitioner of the reality television arts and sciences. She is anxious, not just about her relationship, but about how Craig will feel when he inevitably sees the very honest conversation that she had with Ciara. Even Ciara is worried that Craig is going to hate her after that.
I feel for Paige during her long night of tossing and turning. As anyone who suffers from anxiety knows, those are the worst nights: sitting up questioning every decision you’ve ever made, hating everything about your love, and thinking negatively about your partner, your career, your friends, and your apartment. And then feeling guilty for thinking negatively because those things bring you so much joy … but then you also feel terrible that if your life is filled with so many good things, why do you also feel so terrible and like you want to puke your guts out and also crawl under the mattress at the same time? Those are horrible nights, soundtracked by the pounding of your own thoughts, which can’t be entirely trusted, which you know are illogical but also seem real, too real, more real than just about anything except the pounding on your wall and the mock moans that possibly drown out your very real ones.