Too Hot to Handle

Absurd fiction. The story of a reluctant reality TV star.

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Due to a case of mistaken identity, Derek Fish, a thirty-seven-year-old nobody, was abducted by the producers of the hit reality show Too Hot to Handle. The rest, as they say, is history, though they don’t call it that anymore. 

The kidnapping occurred while Derek was sulking at a Balinese bus stop. He had just discovered his final destination–an experimental sleep apnea clinic on a small Pacific Island–was closed due to safety concerns. Allegedly, a civil war had erupted. The terrible news hit Derk like a machete; he feared sleep might never come.

The Too Hot to Handle crew later argued they mistook Derek’s emotional state for influencer-type behaviour. The Hawaiian-shirted man was on his knees, they claimed, arms stretched out, ‘lustful’ tears in his eyes… But that didn’t wash with the studio executives; they were ruthless, not dumb. In truth, Derek Fish appeared to the producers as a blurry pineapple. Only two days prior, the entire crew (and the van driver) had cashed in on a group Lasik eye surgery deal in Bali’s medical district; they were all temporarily blind. That’s why their eyes were covered with plastic colanders and tape. And that’s why, when the van door slid open, the crunch of its metal railing lost to the mad sound of bikes and horns, that Derek assumed the worst and fled. Why the producers pursued the fearful man, mowing down all those pedestrians in the process, remains unknown. 

‘Atypical’ is how a generous critic might describe Derek’s appearance on that season of Too Hot to Handle. Unlike the usual contestants, Derek was a middle-aged man with a hairy torso, bloated face, and rampant sleep apnea–he was no Netflix thumbnail. His unfashionable political beliefs also seemed to isolate him from the others. He mostly ate and drank alone. It would be wrong, however, to say that Derek and the real cast did not share anything in common, because they did: they were all subject to a lie.

The young people on Too Hot to Handle had signed up for a holiday of unbridled sexual hedonism. They thought they were there to make love–to put it mildly. But this was a mistaken belief. There would be no sex, nor even a kiss; that’s the show’s premise, which the viewer knows. Well, Derek was also subject to his own less-than-helpful lie: he believed he was the prisoner of a bug-eyed insect cult and would soon be gang raped. 

For that reason, Derek entered the resort more like a UFC fighter than a sex maniac. With raised fists and a furrowed brow, he lumbered across the beach; he shadowboxed. The music, through sultry guitar licks and bass runs, tried (and failed) to make his aggressive approach seem hot, too hot. The narrator played her part: ‘Oh, look at this intense Australian hunk of meat,’ she said. While the contestants, as blinded by disbelief as the producers were by surgery, felt for the first time unaroused. Their dry retching was muted in post-production, along with Derek’s dog barks, racial slurs. Instead, the chips were placed on Derek’s voiceover, recorded while he was chained to a bedpost in a pitch-black room, fearing the end, unable to make sense of it all–this short life. 

‘I’m Derek,’ he began. ‘I suffocate in my sleep. I run accounts at a foot fungus cream company. But know this: I will never surrender to your demands. The only way you’ll touch my asshole is if you slit my throat.’ 

First impressions count. For the viewers (and voters) back in Australia, all Derek’s subsequent actions were framed by that beach-walk introduction. To many on social media (three), he was reminiscent of Maximus Decimus Meridius defying the evil emperor of Rome. His later drunken rant about how they would all die together came across as a celebration of mortality, not a melodramatic outburst. His refusal to shower (to ward off unwanted sexual advances) became a defence of the masculine scent. He couldn’t miss. Even how he behaved on that final day in the resort was later defended, lauded, and unfortunately replicated en masse. 

That final day, the contestants had gathered around Lana, the talking AI cone. She informed the house that Jasmin and Axel had kissed again, and that the infraction would lower the prize pool by six thousand dollars. Straight away Hazel burst into tears (she loved Axel), and Derek, who now understood the show, had seen enough.

He had warned Jasmin and Axel before, and unlike Barack Obama (his words), a red line meant something to Derek Fish. It was for that reason–call it justice–that he masturbated seventeen times in the next ninety minutes. He launched Fish sperm like the return strike of a defeated nuclear power (M.A.D. in practice). Not only did this frenzy completely flatten the prize pool, it also sent the contestants into debt. They now had to pay just to get home. Sadly, two never left, and yet somehow Derek Fish–smoking, sweaty, naked–came out as an icon. T-shirts were made. He inspired hope, change. He returned to Australia a hero.    

Watch any David Attenborough documentary to get a sense of the strangeness of life–from its mere existence to the myriad forms and strange twists it takes. Yes, evolution is the outcome of a trillion dice games, but the same is true for an individual’s fate. Heads or tails–it’s a game of chance. A tyrannosaurus rex turns left instead of right by the wood’s edge and a whole bloodline of triceratops survives… for a time. 

After Too Hot to Handle, Derek Fish was seduced into the longest standing and highest paying of all reality shows: federal politics. His team ‘leveraged’ his stint as a reality star in the same way a teenager writes ‘daily chores’ on their first resumé. Fish understands people, they claimed. But the pundits and SportsBet figured he was doomed. ‘Fish will Drown’ was one clever headline. Unfortunately, these insiders from ANU and Melbourne Uni failed to understand politics in the Victorian seat of Grelnarington. The residents there saw in Derek Fish–hardhat, hi-vis, arm around a cow’s neck–someone they could trust, a representative.   

‘I know Canberra,’ cried Fish into the microphones, ‘and I will never surrender to their demands!’ 

Early in his political career, the Honourable Derek Fish, MP was endlessly mocked. The masturbation footage played on loop wherever he went. The size of his pixelated penis was used to infer the size of his brain. He was a joke. Even his own party restricted him to the role of attack dog. ‘The issue of immigration is simply too hot for this government to handle,’ was the kind of thing he was allowed to say, if anything. 

But then many tyrannosaurus rexes took many right turns. Power changed hands, red to blue. Time, like water, filtered the voter base and it forgot. The Honourable Derek Fish, MP, led a small but successful cyberbullying reform. He was promoted to the foreign affairs portfolio for his troubles. The grey-haired cabinet minister now oversaw trade agreements, foreign aid, and war. (‘This three-decade war in the Pacific islands is simply–and I fuggen hate to say it, Madam Spoika–too hot to handle!’ Hear, hear! Go Fish!) Then, one afternoon, came a fateful chicane: the Prime Minister died from a rotten nanobot sandwich (a common cause of death in the ‘60s), the Deputy PM hit a tree while nanoskiing, and a world war erupted. So it happened that, when it all went to shit, the country was being run by a Fish.   

There is little a Fish can do in apocalyptic days, so Derek watched the looting and violence on nanobot monitors in the Prime Ministerial bunker somewhere under Neo-Canberra. He was taking a nap when Australia turned dark, when the water dried up, and the fuel stopped. He was there, too, when the people’s love for one another–a resource many believed renewable–also ran out. Fear now reigned, unopposed. Overnight, the whole country turned Wolf Creek, though can it even be called a country once there is no love?

Surrounded by analysts in the underground boardroom, Derek pondered this question until he was distracted by his own reflection on a hologram monitor. In his seventies, he looked younger and more handsome than he did decades ago. His thinning hair had been bolstered (in Turkey), his face lifted (in Bali), teeth perfected (Mali), DNA cleansed (Raleigh). Thanks to nanobot treatments, he now had a six pack, a tan, and a huge penis. He had become a true man of his generation: virile and ageless–hot. But then the hologram cut to Sydney–the rubble and death masking his face–and Derek was ironically reminded of his own vanity, his self-centeredness, his ineptitude, his loss, his guilt and his shame. The world had collapsed, died–on his watch. 

‘How did I get here?’ he asked his chief of staff. 

‘It started when the global reserve currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, went analog,’ said one AI analyst. 

‘Complexity theory, Sir,’ said another. ‘A respiratory facility in the Pacific years ago–a civil war.’   

‘We believe Barbados or the Cook Islands hit Sydney–definitely one of the BRIC nations, though Iceland and Cuba deny any involvement.’ 

Derek shook his head. ‘Siri, stop. Not what I meant, you idiots. For your amazing analysis this… this wasteland full of cannibals owes you a great debt of nothing.’  

 ‘Now, now, don’t be so defeatist,’ said the chief of staff. She was massaging Derek’s tense neck. ‘What this wasteland full of cannibals needs now is hope. You should film an address. If by some miracle power is restored, then the uneaten people might want… well, they might want the truth, according to a Fish.’  

Maybe one day, when the radiated yellow fungi clears and the roads, cracked and overgrown, become used once more, maybe then humanity will return to the level of sophistication required to play video recordings and decode ancient languages. Fortunately there is a trace of English in whatever they speak now, so they’ve got a head start. For example, the guttural ‘coin, coin’ is used across the southern wastelands to denote ‘trade.’ To inhabitants, the term can mean the trade of goods–animals, people, and things–but also the trade of words. Dialogue is of significant worth to these neo-humans. Their words carry value, weight. They never lie. They think before speaking. Their honesty, the truth matters. They are perhaps on a brighter path. 

But paths are a mixture of rights and lefts, so hopefully these neo-humans can find the bunker recordings of the now-ancient Derek Fish and heed his final words. Hopefully they can look past the footage of a spite-driven Fish mercilessly masturbating in a beach resort. Hopefully they can ignore the phoney parliamentary addresses, the PR stunts, the hard-hat visits to work sites, the poems on growth and jobs, the Q&A appearances, and the Waleed Aly exclusives. Hopefully, unlike us, their chains of logic and reason do not leave wisdom just beyond reach. Hopefully, they can both listen and hear.  

‘Hi there. I hope you can see my screen,’ began the ancient man. 

One day this footage may be a prized relic, like something from a Pharaoh's tomb. Neo-humans will travel from afar just to glimpse the king of the ancients. In the museum, the guides will explain the footage: the king’s skin was pulled taut like a balloon to signify his social standing; self-mutilation was a deep cultural tradition for the ancients. Experts believe it signified dignity. Why else would some ancient women make their behinds as wide as a tractor? Given the king’s hair and teeth and skin and face and eyeballs, there is little doubt he was the most revered and intelligent of all ancients, and when he talks, it is easy to understand why. 

‘Apologies to whoever sees this for the state of the world. We, umm… we botched it. I think what happened, right, is that we were too busy live, laugh, loving, and we forgot to keep watch. We were popping champagne, sexing it up, arguing for sport, because deep down we all believed this would never end. Well, we were wrong–it was a lie. The truth, spoken to us by an AI cone, was that our world was Too Hot to Handle.’

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Short stories, fiction. Original absurd, satire and humour writing. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Adams, and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO).