It's your guilty pleasure, your Tuesday night fix. It is MTV's The Real World, and in its 16th season, the show has mastered sucking in audiences to follow the famed "seven strangers" -- seven strangers who must be interesting if you're willing to watch them get wasted week after week, right?
In response to this burning question, Street caught up with Wes, the strawberry-blond from The Real World: Austin, who stopped by Tiki Bob's Cantina in Northern Liberties last week. Judging by Wes's frat-boy persona on the show, it's no surprise that he's hosting a bikini contest. He comes in by himself, and in his Abercrombie-esque "Beer Pong King" t-shirt, looks underdressed compared to everyone else in the bar.
Wes was just your typical college sophomore at Arizona State before jokingly trying out for The Real World last year. "To be perfectly honest, I was trying to hook up with a girl, and I followed her to the tryouts. From that point on, she got sent home and I was there, and the rest is history," he explains. Yet spending five months in a new city has its drawbacks. "It's hard to keep in contact with people. But for the most part for every friend that may or may not be understanding of my situation, there's another one that is."
Millions of people have now seen Wes and his roommates party it up in Austin, and judging by the fact that he once invited girls to the Real World house based on their pictures on the University of Texas cheerleading website, a lot of them probably think he's a douche. Wes admits, "We're just assholes because we're on TV. Girls are hitting on us." Then he almost gets philosophical. "That was the justifying moment that people, especially girls, are extremely shallow." So what then about fire-starting roommate Nehemiah's charge that Wes wasn't attractive? "You're right, I'm not attractive. But all I have to say is: Nehemiah, I just got play and you hardly got any the entire time you were there."
But now that the show is done filming and he's busy planning a night club in Scottsdale, Arizona, it's clear that he's a really normal person ... almost too normal. The only thing that would make you notice him in a crowd is that he's double-fisting two Coronas. But, then again, I guess that does make him cool.
Catch Wes every Tuesday at 10 p.m. on The Real World: Austin on MTV.
