Episode 8: Crab Mentality

The Hookup is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Blumhouse Television and Ember twenty. Listener discretion is totally advised. Yes, you're not Wade?

Correct?

Is Wade? Wade?

What is someone here? Damien?

Hide?

Wade?

Do you have a minute to talk?

Hello? Shirtless guy in the room. Does it look like Wade has a minute to talk to you? Right?

Yeah, I'll just come back later, Damien.

Hold on, Damn it so close, Tanner. I'm sorry to do this, but can we take a rain check? Seriously?

Nice to meet you, Tanner. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to interrupt anything.

It's fine. I was having buyer's remorse anyway. Tanner's just some metal guy.

Oh I thought I recognized him.

You're on metal? Why haven't I ever seen you? Fuck?

I mean for sure, not because I blocked you or anything like that. No, chalk it up to the algorithm.

Huh.

Yeah, metal is kind of mystifying. I've been on the app a few months now and I still can't get a handle on how it functions. What do you mean, Well, it's not like Tinder, where you have to swipe right with someone to match and start talking. But it's also not like the other hookup apps where profiles are displayed solely by proximity.

Wait, yeah, he's right. I can browse profiles in the general area, but they don't ever seem to be sorted by any kind of human logic. The metal algorithm is an enema like that.

Ah shit, what Tanner left his fanny pack behind?

That guy brought a fanny pack to a hookup.

Yeah, I'm sure he'll be back for it anyway. Hi, I haven't seen you in a minute.

Yeah, I guess I have just been feeling kind of bad about how everything went down between us last year.

And do you do you want something to drink?

Yes?

No, no, no, I just I need to get this out, Wade. I'm really sorry for outing you. There's no excuse for that, and it was unfair that you didn't get to come out on your own terms. And I'm sorry.

Thanks accept your apology.

You do.

Sure, you're right, there is no excuse for what you did. But I'd be lying if I said some people didn't already know that about me. Really well, all the other guys I was hooking up, we sure did, and there were quite a few. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that.

Yeah, all good.

So was there anything else?

Uh? I mean, I guess, not specifically. I don't know. It's just all the times I imagine this conversation in my head. It didn't play so smoothly.

You know.

I always thought we'd really get into it. Get into it, yeah, you know, like arguing about all the stuff between us back then and the mistakes we both made that led.

Up to the mistakes we both made. I'm confused. Did I out you too? No?

But you weren't completely blameless either, blameless in what now?

This is more like I imagined.

The entire thing, Wade, How you treated me, the way I had to keep your secret, and it isolated me from everyone the time we finally had sex.

If it was so isolating, why did you keep seeing me? I don't recall anyone forcing you to reply to my texts?

You mean a text's giving me a six hour window to be on standby for a quickie in case your roommate's left. I've seen appliance delivery men give a narrower time I'm window than you.

Did you? Did you have feelings for me last year?

Like positive ones?

Damien? I don't want to be pulled back into all this negativity. I've done a lot of healing and growing since then.

I've seen your growth. Every time you run a campus fundraiser for LGBTQ health services, I see it. And every time you hold a telethon for gay puppies on hospice care, I see it. Anytime, Wade there's a reminder that you've become a paragon of gay sainthood. Believe me, I see it.

What does that even mean? Are you angry that I learned to love myself?

Yes, yes I am, because I don't get to love myself. I've had to work so hard to not feel like a used condom on the side of the road because that's how you treated me.

Oh, come on, that is such crab mentality.

What the fuck is that?

Stop? Damien? Just I accept your apology. Can we just leave it at that?

Oh?

I get it. You didn't really come here to offer an apology. You came to solicit one.

No, I just I came to boil the centipede?

Is that? Did you just reference those centipedes that you have to boil or else they attract more.

It's like every time I've tried to write off or justify what I did to you last year, it just felt like I was squshing my problems, you know, pushing them down, but in doing so, releasing pheromones to attract even more problems.

So you came to boil the hatchet once and for all.

Wow, you picked up on that metaphor fast. It took my psychiatrist like three sessions to get on board.

May I there was this guy that I knew last year in a biblical sense, yes, but it wasn't just that. He was the first guy that I ever developed actual feelings for. And when I think about those days and the way I treated people, because you're not completely wrong, I could be kind of a dick. I think a lot of it came from the pain of knowing this guy didn't reciprocate my feelings and hating myself for thinking that he ever would. I only bring him up because the centipede thing reminded me.

Why was was he a bug?

What?

No? What he was? He was the one who told me about it.

Wait, no, no way, there is no way.

The only reason I still remember about the stupid centipede is because he read about it in the nat geo he was holding when he broke it off with me.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Is he talking?

I mean he can't be talked talking about There's no way Santy and Wade were Oh, because if that were the case, and Santy did end things with Wade, which Wade himself just admitted turned him into an angry person, could that mean and there it is who remembers the word of the day Mony.

I can't handle it all at once.

It needs to stay separate Santy Popper's drama over there and wade drama over here. I mean, even if we sholve the immense jagged pain I feel at the thought of Santy and Wade together, it had never occurred to me that Wade could be involved in any of this, Damien. And that's not even taking into account Elias's damning testimony that Santy may actually have been producing the hookup himself. If that does turn out to be the case, Wade's association with Santy makes him doubles us.

Hey you okay.

Moreover, since I blocked him on Metal, Wade could be on there pedaling the hookup with reckless abandon and I'd have no way of seeing.

And if Wade did kidnap.

Or kill Santy, not to mention running a conversion popper scheme, that would totally be a worse crime than me outing him, Damien. If Wade is the mastermind and I can prove it that I was never in the wrong with him, fuck yeah, emotional maturity.

Are you all right, dude?

Sorry? Yeah, just fill in Migraine. Coming on, Actually, do you do you have the advilla or anything?

Sure in the bathroom under the sink?

Could you get it for me?

Okay?

Thanks?

Hi, Damien, Chair chair chair Chair, Damian, What the fuck are you doing?

Kind of an extreme reaction, I know, but there's no time to play the long con with Wade. If he's up to something sinister, I want to know now, Okay, if I was a murderer and or bioterrorist, where would I keep my incriminating clues?

Damien?

If you don't let me out, you're gonna what kill me? Oh?

Damian?

What are you doing looking under your mattress for clues? Goodbye pillows, goodbye fanny pack. M I had high hopes about that, Woof. I was so taken by the possibility of Wade's guilt that I perhaps didn't think through the scenario in which I lock him in the bathroom and don't find any damning evidence. Ooh, Damien, you dunce way to jump to conclusions. There's no way that Wade is.

Damien. Are you still there?

Under the desk right beside Wade's bed, I spot it, even amidst the tornado of papers and debris I've created in my search. That stout little cylinder is unmistakable a popper bottle, a hookup bottle that's not gonna hold much longer. And I don't want to be here when Wade gets free.

I've seen what I needed too. Could Wade really do all this?

I'm here? What the fuck of me?

Oh?

My entire face stings. It's happening so fast I can't see. All I can make out are the colors, big blotches of pink and mustard, my stalker, Oh the fuck you love me? That punch pulls me back, and my vision sets clearly on my aggressor.

Oh yeah, that's the crustic bad mitten hoodie.

All right, I sprangle my left arm free and yank down his hood to no avail. His face is concealed under one of those black one way elastic masks. What do you do.

This? Episode is also brought to you by Chock full of Nuts, your one stop shop for all things risky. Located in scenic Ludlow Hills, this mom and pop adult supply boutique is show and knock your socks off and get your rocks off. Remember at Chalk full of Nuts, the customer comes first.

Have you ever been choked?

Not in a sex way, although I mean I do have questions about that too, but no, I'm talking like, full on I am going to murder you suffocation. My situation right now isn't exactly that. I mean, I could breathe in through my nose if I wanted to, but that's not really an option, not when I know what will happen to me if I do so. I start to feel lightheaded, woozy, disconnected, like I'm drifting away. But in this moment everything feels weirdly transparent, like I can

Metal.

Still you hold your phone low and open up Metal, the hookup app currently in vogue. I can browse profiles in this general area, but they don't ever seem to be sordid by any kind of human logic.

About two days after inhalation, the blackout started. I suddenly come to with no recollection of the past hour or afternoon, or even a full day.

But the notification tone rattles me to my court. It's just so grated.

I heard the metal alert sound plays on an uncharted frequency.

Get the fuck out of here. Wait, dude, are you okay? Who the fuck was that?

We have to stop him?

Which way did he You don't think you're stopping anything right now except maybe breathing anyway, he's gone. Shit. You need to tell me what's going on right fucking now?

Hello, There on the floor over by your bed.

This little bottle the hook up? Or are these poppers?

Why do you have that?

I don't, I mean it's not mine. Yeah, look I think it fell from Tanner's fanny pack while you were tearing apart my room.

I mean, if Tanner is a hive mind hookup goon. It would explain how the stalker knew I was here.

What exactly is it you think I did? Is this about Santi? Thought? So you got all weird when I talked about him earlier, I.

Was being weird. You're the one hiding a secret history with a missing person.

I wasn't hiding anything. I spoke to the police right after Santi disappeared and told him everything I know.

Ugh, okay, but still, let's be one hundred percent sure before clearing Wade's name. I feel like I was on the verge of something back there, you know, when I was being choked something about Metal and the night when Big Top and p and Peter attacked me, I was struggling.

Ah, take a big with my.

Bra and then I got a Metal alert? Well what just what is what is going on?

Who are you guys while you're my.

And that's when they became lucid and like snapped out of the hookup trance. I can't put my finger on how metal and the hookup are connected, but I'd wager that the alert tone insight some sort of temporary reaction from people under the Hive Mind's influence, which means there's a very easy way to test if weight is one of them.

What are you doing?

Okay, let's see who's online? Hmmm, oh this guy should do. He's a forty year old commercial airline captain and his username is backdoor Pilot.

Nice.

Hey there, how's it hanging?

Now? We wait?

Are you on metal right now? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Damien?

You come over here unannounced in search of some misguided come up, and and when you don't get it, you lock me in a bathroom and start tearing my place apart. Then after I rescue you from being fucking attacked, you start browsing at dating app.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean when you put it like that, I really must seem.

What now you're not going to check that? A?

How do you feel?

How do I? How do I feel? Oh? You know? Can't complain? Oh wait, yes I fucking can. What the fuck is happening?

So you're like Lucid?

Unfortunately? Yes, dear god, I'm still very much present for this conversation.

Alrighty, guess I misjudged Wade about being like hook up evil. I was definitely right about him being a dick. She'sh backdoor Pilot. Give it a rest. Oh, it's just another ad for that sex shop on Metal? Yeah? Why is that? Is that weird?

No? I guess not. I've just never seen ads on there before.

Hmm up until today, neither had I. So so if we follow this thread of metal intervention, what does it mean that the app has been showing pap up ads to me but not to Wade. The only explanation that comes to mind is that they're not ads at all, they're messages shock full of nuts there it is an adult supply boutique on Locust Avenue? Is this where people are buying the.

Hookup directions to a sex shop? Are you in heat?

Trust me, Wade? It is so in your best interest to leave this alone.

This is about those paupers, isn't it? The hookup? Dude? You're so easy to read. Finding the bottle in my room is what made you think I'm dangerous? And that guy who attacked you, he wasn't even covering your nose. It was like he wasn't actually trying to hurt you. He just wanted you to inhale the paupers.

This seriously doesn't concern you. Just go home and then lock your door.

Right because that puts me at So there's got to be something the faries about those paupers, and now you're going to a sex shop to what investigate. I'm curious, so how Sunthy fits into all this?

Yeah, take a number.

But if whatever you're doing right now is about Sunthy, then I am coming with you.

Oh my god, stop leave me alone. I preferred to it when you were only metaphorically haunting me. You don't know anything about what's going on here.

I know you're in trouble, and I know that, whether or not it was my fault, I caused you a lot of pain last year.

Oh that was a very vander Pump apology.

Wasn't an apology, just an acknowledgment, Okay, And I'd like to make it up to you.

Well, unless you can return my virginity, don't bother fuck. I said that out loud. I can't handle this. Which thing you being nice to me? I imagine today going like a thousand different ways. But the one constant in all those scenarios was that you hated me.

Well, sorry to disappoint, but I don't hate you.

Well that's stupid. Where are you going to?

Chock full of nuts?

Still?

Whatever you're involved in is obviously dangerous, and don't take this the wrong way, but I'm dubious that you're equipped to handle it alone.

He's not completely wrong.

I mean, if Chok full of Nuts really is distributing the hook up, then I'd be walking directly into the belly.

Of the beast.

It could be who of me to bring back up.

Plus, you don't have to worry about me getting hurt because you don't even like me.

I mean, when you put it like that, like, I guess, if you insist on following me, I can't stop you.

Do you remember the last time we took a walk through campus together? That night I found you at the library.

Of course, incidentally, that was also the last time I saw you left.

What no way? We hung out a bunch of times after.

That, Yeah, but you didn't laugh anymore. After you and I hooked up on the baseball field that night, you became a different person.

I did. Mm hm.

I used to rack my brain about that night, trying to figure out what I did that was so off putting or unsexy. Eventually I came to wonder if I just reminded you of what you were running away from, and you resented me for it.

You had me all figured out?

Huh, I thought, so.

What?

Oh, nothing is I was just remembering that night. You're one hell at the third baseman.

Mama always used to say God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. Uh, can we forget? I said that?

Absolutely? So something really didn't tell you he and I were hooking up?

Well, he and I weren't exclusive at the beginning, so I mean, I guess he didn't have to tell me.

But it still hurts that all that time you thought he was yours he was also.

That's right, I'm not the only one reeling from the revelation that Santy had other toys wades in the exact same boat. Did Santi tell you he was also hooking up with me?

Must have slipped his mind there.

I was thinking you were the other guy, but to you, I was the other guy. I guess we're all the other guy to other guys. Hey, what did you mean before when you said I had crab mentality?

Ah?

That?

Have you ever seen a bunch of crabs in a bucket?

Not lately?

No, it's kind of crazy, even though a handful of them could probably climb atop the others and escape. No crab ever makes it out of the bucket. Why not, Well, because the others won't let them. Even though the escape of Crab A has no effect on the fate of crab B, crab still sabotages Crab A's efforts. And it's like, it's like, if I can't escape, no one will.

That's petty as fuck. Oh oh, so, so your point was that it's messed up for me to begrudge your new found happiness just because I haven't found mine. Fuck, I'm such a crab b.

We've all got a little crab b, you knows. I guess that's why there's a term for it.

Man, If that's for anyone else but Wade, these crustacean metaphors would really.

Have me going, what now you're looking at me? Weirdly?

Sorry, spaced out, Honestly, I was just thinking about how crabs always walk sideways, and then trying to make a joke about getting dick so good I can't walk straight. Yeh shit. What we were like having an actual conversation about about actual stuff and I made a joke, so whole big thing. It's it's a problem I have.

Who said it's a problem.

Like most people in my life.

H I disagree for real five reel And all those people who told you it was a problem probably just punishing you because they don't possess such refined wit. Say, is there a term for that? Ah? Shit?

We're here?

Damn When did sex shops start looking like apple stores?

Wade seems almost excited by this megalith of pleasure, But I hang back a sec. I mean, at what point did I stop hating him, that dumb little fire in my chest reminding me just how hard I detest this boy. It's kind of extinguished, which is as far as it's going to go. I will not myself forgive him or get attached because there's something I didn't have the heart to tell Wade about his little crab mentality spiel earlier.

See, there's a flaw.

In the conclusion being drawn from this Crabs in the Bucket experiment. Sure, the escape of Crab A won't directly mean anything bad for Crab B. But if enough crabs escape, the crab level in the bucket would eventually fall too low for any more to reach the top. At a certain point, stopping other crabs from escaping does preserve one's own chance of survival. So it's not really correct to