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Ten p.m. was fashionablytoolate to arrive on Monday night.
Madison, I heard someone shout.
It was a friend and formerNew Yorkcolleague,Claire, waving us over to join her group.
Are You the Onejust wrapped its eighth season.
Helpful, but not entirely, because the beams do not indicatewhichof the pairs the lights represent.
(There are also mechanisms built into the show to make it harder.
If theres a week the group gets no matches correct they lose a quarter of a million dollars.)
I joined Claire and our conversation quickly turned to astrology.
She had a list of all theAYTOcast members signs and was using it to predict their fates.
I told her about Claires list.
Oh, yeah, I found them on Reddit, she said.
I talked to a group of four behind me in line.
Kaitlelyn, 22, and Noelle, 21, identify as bi.
Their other two friends, AJ and Simone, shrugged at the notion of labels.
Later, two other cast members, Justin and Kari, appeared in matching neon-pink ensembles.
The twomightbe a perfect match, but people seemed to think the coordination was a red herring.
(They also said their name is spelled with a q as in queen.)
I wish the show had showed even more, they said.
Have you seenBig Brother?
It would have been great to see a 24-hour livecast.
As the night went on, increasingly drunk cast members revealed plenty that was left on the cutting-room floor.
People started streaming the show on their phones while we waited on the street.
Halfway through the episode, we finally made it to the front of the line and got inside.
I handed $10 to a bouncer who stamped my wrist with a pig.
The place was packed with queer folks.
Its like Christmas in July, except its Pride in September.
A rainbow flag hung next to the stage where the show was being projected.
A muted commercial played while some of the cast members, led by Basit, riffed and spilled tea.
Guess what we ate on the show?
Guess what they fed us?
Basit asked the crowd.
Alcohol, somebody shouted.
Panda Express, Paige, another cast member, mouthed into a mic.
She started to tell a story about a sixsome that never aired.
Wee-woo, wee-woo, Basit wailed.
Im the MTV police here to stop you right there.
Are you doing math?
someone asked, spying my notebook.
The thing aboutATYOis its basically a show about probability.
This season, the contestants took a while to figure anything out but eventually started to crunch the numbers.
(Shouts to Kari and Danny, the human calculators of the group.)
(One couple per week is allowed to enter the booth, but only after winning a challenge.)
Kylie and Amber are not each others match.
My asshole was in my pants [while in the booth], Kylie said onstage.
Basit laughed and asked her where else it would have been.
Despite the hot and packed space, the crowd was friendly.
I met Lauren, a web developer for a sex-toy company, who promptly offered me a discount code.
I told her my college sorority was pretty straight.
Ours was a lot of sisters hooking up, she said.
somebody yelled at the screen as the episode started to wind down and the final match ceremony began.
Were about that queer bedtime, my girlfriend muttered.
I think theyre going to lose.
We [queer people] lose.
We get killed off, Kendall joked.
The crowd was a sea of raised phones, filming as the sixth beam lights up.
The whole game hangs on Amber, who chooses Remy, despite a clear physical attraction to Justin.
Seven beams also means eight beams.
Which means a win.
After a dramatic pause, the beam glows.
Basit, IRL, raised a toast to celebrate us being queer people who win.
Paige, whose perfect match was Jenna, grabbed the microphone from them.
Remys been my boyfriend the entire time, she shouted.
The crowd screamed louder.
The couple has been living together in the East Village since the show wrapped.
(A poorly kept secret, a person named Chris tells me.
He spotted the two looking cozy at an Unter party earlier this month.)
It was 12:15 a.m., and Remy was telling me about all the sex that didnt get aired.
I fucked Danny on night one, he said.
The finale had a shot of Amber and Justin hooking up in the Boom Boom Room.
It was actually a threesome, he said he just got edited out of the scene.
Shes 24 and new to the city.
This is her first time out alone, she said.
I went for a girlfriend and I left with a boyfriend, Paige said when we reached the stage.
Were monogamous but he understands that I just came out … its all about communication.
(Paige came out for the first time in the season premiere, an experience she called humbling.)
I wish Id had a show like this when I was 12, she told me later.
To let me know my experiences were valid.
As we headed out, I spotted Dionne Slay in the overflow room in the back of the bar.
Everyone in this piece is addressed with gender neutral pronouns unless they indicated otherwise.
