Everybody Loves Tila

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This is the exact opposite of what you hear from vets of most reality shows, but Banhart insists his emotions, at least, were almost too genuine. “Tila’s probably one of the coolest girls off-camera—when we just talked and stuff,” he says. “And as it went on, I got more and more attracted to her. I remember asking, ‘Look at me, look right in my eyes—is this real?’ And she says, ‘If you want it to be, it is.’”

He did. And then went right through the looking glass. “When the show was over, when everyone was telling me, ‘This is real, this is your girlfriend’—that’s when I really opened up,” Banhart says. “But then when I could never talk to her, I thought, Well. Maybe she’s not my girlfriend.” Banhart explains that when he found out A Shot at Love was casting a second season as the fifth episode was just airing—well, donkeylike feelings commenced.

Despite that lingering last shot of the bedroom door, Banhart says he and Nguyen never even “sealed the deal.” “I think people automatically assumed that we did. So I have to say: No, we didn’t.”

That may sound surprising for a show whose attractions include S&M dungeons, naked pool parties and a dildo-­constructed chandelier. But Tila Tequila’s career is built more on the promise than the delivery of sex. She maintains she’s real, but she also knows she has to dress up to play the sex icon for the fans she can never afford to lose touch with, even for a moment.

Even now, correspondence with fans is, Nguyen says, “my whole life. Every minute I have off. I post bulletins, there’s a fan number that I call. It’s just cool to have all these people at your fingertips.”

And soon she’ll have even more. A Shot at Love 2 promises to be even crazier, seamier and more violent than the first. (“One of the guys breaks another guy’s jaw,” says Tony DiSanto, head of programming and development for MTV.) “I came in here, brokenhearted,” Nguyen says in the trailer, her voice cracking. “Giving love another shot.” She sniffs, barely able to get the next line out. “And that’s not easy for me.” So now, with the second season wrapped, Blender must ask what millions wonder: Did she find true love this time?

“Well,” she says, coyly. “I definitely … don’t want to give the show away.” Nguyen shifts in her chair, takes another sip of coffee.

“Are you in love yet?” she asks. “It’s been about an hour.”

Blender is definitely in something. Awe. Thrall. Fear. How else to feel about someone so adept at manipulating today’s culture, who has more “friends” than you have brain cells, who can play the media game like a harp and might be more in on the joke than you?

“She’s created this split personality,” says Linda Strawberry. “She’s got this duplicity in her reality—she struggles with the world’s perception of her. I think she could really shed her persona after this show and become in public who she is in private.”

But for the moment, the public persona holds. We ask her about the future, and her answer is unwaveringly on message. “I’d like to find love and stick it out with that one person,” says Nguyen, offering a shrewd sound bite for someone whose love life and career have fused. “I just want to look for someone who’s in it for the long run.

“I know it sounds crazy coming from me.” A Mona Lisa smile fills her tiny face. “But it’s true.”