Trashley: Part Thirteen

The pain in Spain

I was so excited to escape Bakersfield and get back to work because I really thrive when I’m getting paid to be an idiot. I’d been writing and producing the MTV show Ex On The Beach since 2018, and my favorite part was going into production. Season one was shot in Hawaii, while seasons two and three were in Malibu, four had been filmed in New Zealand, and season five would be set in Spain. Ex On the Beach is a Queer dating show, and I would like the record to show that I refuse to work on straight projects ever again. The heteros have had enough time in the spotlight: gay is the new straight. Our cast was composed of pansexuals, gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, trans men and women, and your Mom. We had a lot of the spectrum represented.

Some EOTB cast and crew.

I would be leaving my dog, my plants, and my home to Ashley while I was out of the country for almost six weeks. I had never charged Ashley rent to live there, I had just opened up my life and given her the keys to my kingdom. I trusted her, despite my intuition, to keep my things in good condition, and more importantly, alive while I was gone.

I kissed Perci goodbye and Ubered to the airport.

All of my old co-workers met at a bar by the gate, and we got right down to catching up on our lives since we hadn’t worked together in over a year. LM had rescued an elderly bulldog and was banging a recently released convict who lived in a broken-down truck in Long Beach. Dana’s family’s condo was destroyed in the horrific Miami building collapse, but everyone survived. Keith and his husband were starting a family, and I was dating someone who was most likely lying to me about being a Physicist. Ashley was the talk of the town.

It is me- airport bathroom selfie girl.

LM sat next to me on the twelve-hour flight to Amsterdam and needed the tea. She was an OG reality TV producer and the entire reason Jersey Shore had taken off. Without her, Snooki would’ve never been punched in the face, which would’ve altered the entire course of humanity. LM is a legend in the reality TV world. She has full-body tattoos, regularly joins mosh pits at heavy metal concerts, hates men more than life itself, and is somehow still straight. She can detect bullshit on a level most people can only dream about. It’s what makes her one of the greatest reality producers of all time.

LM said, “You’re dating a sociopathic narcissist, and she’s definitely into some weird shit. I’d bet money she’s pretending to be you while you’re gone. Prepare to be single-white-femaled.” She spoke with the confidence of a doctor telling a cancer patient they had three months to live.

I hoped she was wrong.

KLM gives business class passengers gin-filled Delfts. I’m saving mine for the Apocolypse.

When we arrived in the Canary Islands, we had to quarantine in our hotel rooms for three days. MTV had rented out the entire hotel for our shoot, and I quickly found out the food I’d been looking forward to for the last few months wasn’t happening. I had pictured tapas, fruit, and fresh paella, but we were served food that would’ve made the Fyre Festival look like a Michelin-star restaurant.

Nothing like ice-cold eggs and salmonella-infected chicken.

On top of being hungry and exhausted and internally boiling from the incessant heat, I was also dealing with an Ashley problem at home. Ashley had told me before I left that she wanted to do some decorating in the apartment. Her Mom chimed in, “Ashley has excellent taste, you’re gonna love it. You should’ve seen her apartment in San Francisco.”

​​ “I’m getting rid of your Peloton and your plants,” Ashley said. It was my second day of quarantine. “I hate the coffee table and that wax burner thing you have for your candles. Everything needs to be sleek. I don’t want anything anywhere.”

“What are you talking about? Tell me you’re joking.” I said, but I knew she wasn’t.

“They’re in my way. I want everything out of the bedroom and living room. Your TV is too small, I don’t know how you can even watch anything on that thing. I hate your furniture. And you have too many books.”

Too many books?! Is that even possible?!

Doing hard time in quarantine.

She was referring to my sixty-five-inch TV, which had never been a problem. It looked smaller than it was because my beamed ceilings were fourteen feet tall. My coffee table was a score. I’d paid $600 for it and had white-gloved delivery drivers bring it in and find a perfect place. My stuff represented me. I had put a lot of thought, time, and money into making it a place I’d want to come home to. It was the first place I’d ever lived where I didn’t already have one foot out the door.

It was mine.

“So you just want to get rid of all the things I love? My plants? My Peloton? My… books?”

Oh my god, what had I done?

I went to bed that night sick to my stomach. Who the fuck was living at my place, and what the fuck was she doing? For a person who didn’t pay rent, she was acting awfully entitled. I hated it. I was also worried about Perci. Am I going to have to call the cops? I wondered. I’d barely been gone for three days, and this was already a thing. I texted my neighbors, asking them to let me know how Perci was doing if they saw Ashley walking him. She could get rid of my Peloton and my plants, but if she fucked with Perci, I would become her worst nightmare. I’d go full John Wick for the rest of her life. I had left believing Ashley would take care of Perci with the same care and love that I did, and now I understood, too late, how a parent could hand their child over to Michael Jackson, thinking, “He’s a good person. He would never do anything to harm them.”

They can take away my Peloton, but they can never take away my freedom. -She whispered underneath her mask.

My time in Spain felt like an eternity. I worked long days, long nights, early mornings, and I needed to be at three locations at the same time. This is why people who work in entertainment date people who also work in the business: there’s an understanding about production life. Ashley didn’t get it. Early on, she had been weird to me about showbiz. She even called me a “douche” when she saw a photo of me on set, doing my job. My job. The one that I dreamt about since I was a kid in Alaska. I wasn’t going around calling Physicists douche-bags for looking through a telescope or separating a molecule from an atom, or whatever the fuck she was pretending to be. Ashley had some deep insecurities about herself and the industry.

The first few days of shooting lasted well into the early morning. But no matter how late we worked, once we were dropped off at the hotel, my patio became the unofficial gathering spot for our nightly coven meetings. Everyone I worked with was female and/or queer. If we didn’t talk, vent, and share our days, none of us would be able to sleep. My patio was a safe space.

My patio the night before and the morning after.

Tracey, a field producer who had been brought in for the first time this season was fully invested in my Ashley saga. Tracey was a moody androgynous lesbian who lived with her wife in the woods in the Pacific Northwest. She’d mostly worked on crime shows and murder docs, but took Ex On the Beach for a quick cash grab before retreating back into the forest. “I have a LexisNexis account from working on crime shows. I can look Ashley up and tell you what I find,” Tracey said. “I’m gonna need her full name, birthday, and the names of her family members.”

“I’m in,” I said.

I gave her Ashley’s info, and Tracey retired to her room and started her search. I was scared about what she might find. Within minutes, Tracey found Ashley and her family.

Tracey was on the case.

They’d moved around a lot. Arizona, Santa Clarita, back to Arizona, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Santa Clarita, back to Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, and Bakersfield. What they were running from. That was a lot of moving around for a family that wasn’t in the military.

Don’t trust a person with no socials.

Ashley had told me that she grew up in Pasadena, but we couldn’t find any proof of that. Her family has a string of debt following them: unpaid parking tickets, fines, misdemeanors, collection agencies, utility bills, the IRS.

I also learned that Ashley had used a different last name for most of her life. She’d never mentioned this other alias. Why did she change her last name? Maybe her parents forced her. Or maybe someone was trying to track her down.

Based on Tracey’s findings it looked like Ashley had wiped herself clean, a service you can and should do if your past is haunted. She always joked about having a lot of enemies, people who would love to destroy her, but I thought she was exaggerating like I do when talk about all my haters, when it’s probably just like three to five people.

A ghost, and not the good kind.

Tracey found marriage records, but no divorce records. Maybe she was still married even though her entire family said the marriage ended. Ashley claimed her marriage wasn’t legally recognized because of gay marriage laws. But it didn’t make sense. Marriage laws in the US had been legally recognized longer than she had been married. I tried to do the math in my head: gay marriage became legal in the US in 2012, carry the one, minus seven, nope, it was absolutely legal when they were married five years earlier.

Based on Tracey’s evidence, Ashley was still married. And running from something.

Or someone.

Going down the rabbit hole. Wish me luck.