Heather Gay Wants You To Forgive Yourself

Heather Gay is ready for you to stop betraying yourself.

The self-styled “bad Mormon” and star of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is back with her second book, Good Time Girl, out now. As in her first, Gay digs into her Mormon roots, tracing a life of betrayals from others and herself, each forming a link to her eventual rebirth as a reality star and international good time girl.

She tells PAPER, while catching up about the book’s release: “I love my Mormon community, and my bad Mormons, and I want them to be able to look at what's really hard for us, to look at our childhood and look at our life.” So much of it, Gay admits, is “seemingly magical and wonderful and safe and structured, but then it really messes us up in the end.” Her ultimate hope? That “people that are in my same shoes are able to look back with nostalgia and affection, and also perspective, and feel seen and forgive themselves.” Through that, perhaps they can realize, like her, “it was good then, but it’s better now, and it’s not betraying them."

Of course, the book also contains plenty of gossip about The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to keep fans of the show satiated, like her final words on the “Reality Von Tease” scandal that made international headlines and was even quoted in Congress. Gay even breaks down the black eye in a subdued chapter on Jen Shah. But don’t expect a tome of exclusive reality TV quotes, as most tidbits come in between letters she wrote as a missionary in France, or anecdotes about her young adulthood and eventual marriage. One particularly stunning chapter concerns a lesbian co-worker she met right out of college, who she only reconnected with post-reality TV star fame. Their friendship saved her, all those years ago, and she mourns the time lost to her religious beliefs and marital commitments.

But this isn’t a book about tragedy, it’s a book about what Gay sees as a triumph: over her fate, over the church lifestyle she was born into, over the outlandish characters she’s been pitted against on television.

Real Housewives is something that is mostly out of your control once it is filmed, but a book is something that you do yourself. Do you find the attention, or the satisfaction, that you get from the book more rewarding than say, a really good season, or quote going viral?

You know, I wish I could say that the book is more rewarding, but it's equally rewarding when the entire world is invested in your life in some way. And Real Housewives does that. That reach is eternal. What's the word? Expansive. It's a thrill for me. Of course, to hear a Real Housewives quote in Congress is a thrill that writing a book can't match, but on a control level, a book is something that they can never take away from me. Writing, of course, feels safer and more accessible.

There is a really memorable letter in the book that you wrote from France when you were on your mission there. I wonder what it was like for you to go back to that old writing of yours now that you're on your second book. Did it feel like a full-circle moment in your journey?

It was absolutely full-circle. And my friend Marjorie — her name has been changed to preserve her identity — when I returned home from my mission, she gave me a scrapbook of all of the letters I had written her, and all of the photos. She put it together in this beautiful scrapbook, and said, “I felt like I was on your mission with you, and I wanted you to have this experience contained.”

It was a treasure to get those letters back, because the letters I wrote in my journal on my mission were me trying to be a perfect missionary, and then the letters I wrote home to my best friend were me just being myself. So for her to give those letters back to me after I've been on Real Housewives, I've gotten divorced, I've gone on television, and to read that and see that this girl's dreams came true? Under the craziest and weirdest of circumstances? It just made me feel like God is real. It's just so ironic, but wherever you go, there you are. I wish I had honored that girl that was honest with her best friend, but was trying to be something that she was never going to succeed at.

That was something that really struck me about the letter. Not only does the voice that I know so well from the Real Housewives shine through in the letter, but to hear that that person got stifled by marriage and religion feels tragic, and then triumphant, because you returned to her.

The way you just said that… I want to write it down. It's absolutely tragic, but it is triumphant that I'm here now, I've survived, and I've got these three daughters that are not going to be hung up the same way I would and are living their best lives. I was holding my breath to see if leaving the church was going to ruin my children’s lives. And it hasn't ruined their lives. In fact, it's created them. We feel like we got out, like we escaped, and we have this new reality. And so that, of course, feels triumphant for me. But I do grieve for the “Eat, Pray, Love” girl that never got to be promiscuous at 21, that never got to dance on tables in New York City at 25, because I think I would have loved that, and I think I would have been really good at it. It’s not as cute when you're 50, and it's a little bit different. But there's some triumph in that my daughters can live that way, and in me getting to experience a second chance.

You get more into your married life in this book. There's one anecdote about your ex-husband leaving your daughter unattended, when she falls off the bed. What does it feel like to write about these things that feel embarrassing or exposing, knowing that your children might read them, knowing that family and friends might read them?

Absolutely. That lens of shame doesn't go away. I'm scared that my ex-husband's gonna sue me for saying he farted in Maui. I mean, that's the level of fear and authority that I still live under. But my daughters are older now, and so I felt safer sharing those stories with them, and they've all read the stories, and they've all read the book, and they all know that that same voice of their dad when they were babies is the same dad they know now. So it's kind of healing. It’s nothing that any of us could have changed. It's not his fault, either. It was just two people in the circumstances that were forced upon them trying to do the best they could, and they're just grateful. I still worry about the community and about the rejection, but much less so because I have financial independence now and emotional independence. And my kids are grown, so I don't have all of those constraints of fitting in and appeasing the world around me.

I was really affected by the chapter where he throws out all of your CDs and jackets because my music collection, my books, those types of things are so special to me. Do you still mourn that? Is there anything in that collection still that you're like, “Fuck, I still wish I had that CD case.”

Dar Williams’ The Honesty Room. I wish I still had that CD. I could cry about it now, because it was such a stripping of my identity, and like it wasn’t even a problem. Dude, you didn’t even know they existed, and you didn’t even realize it was important to me. It was such a metaphor showing nothing about me that made me who I was could be visible or important to him. How can you survive in a marriage like that?

There’s these little links that you collect throughout the book, like Martha, or the trip you took in high school to Mexico, or the letters on your mission, that form a chain to who you are now and your new lease on life. Specifically Martha — what was it like to reconnect with her all these years later, and show up as a reality TV star no less?

It was like not a fucking day had ever passed. She gave zero shits about me being on TV. I'm sending her pictures, I'm sending her links. And she's just like, well, I'm growing my own vegetables in my farmhouse and I teach at Berklee. I’m like, “Well, I'm gonna come to class!” We give each other a really hard time. She's so funny. It was a rainstorm when we had our call, and then we just laughed and cried, and really it was like a day hadn't passed. She still thinks I'm an absolute moron, but she finds me amusing, and I still think she's an absolute icon, and I'm just trying my hardest to impress her. So the dynamic has not changed, but I can see now how gracious and kind and wonderful she was. I realize now, with adult perspective, I never forgot her, not one minute. Talk about tragedy! I lost out on that friendship for three decades. She could have been there for me, and she would have changed my life. She had enough influence to do so.

I grew up in a very repressive religious environment, and I think about the people like Martha that showed me real unconditional love, despite what the religion I was born into said about unconditional love. They were like, here, I’m going to slip you this book, talk to you, not judge you.

That’s exactly how it was. They show us unconditional love and radical acceptance, and it’s just so foreign that I couldn’t even recognize it. It’s like a life rope, and I couldn’t even grab it because I didn’t know where it would lead to.

You crack a joke at the end of the chapter about her telling you to stop getting plastic surgery, which is one of the things about you I think people connect to. You are quite open about it, in a way I feel is counter to most Real Housewives. Do you feel like with being on TV, running Beauty Lab + Laser, you were like: “I can’t be secretive about this?”

It’s my life! Beauty Lab + Laser is my business, and it’s my lifeline, and part of the whole reason for starting the business was to take away the shame and secrecy of the self-care and cosmetic things that women do just to be seen in society. We didn’t make up these rules, the patriarchy did, and so of course I’m going to be open about it. Not only because it’s how I feel, but also I don’t have anything to hide. It’s hard work to maintain the veneer that the world tells you is beautiful. It’s kind of like Ginger Rogers, everything that men do, we do backwards and in heels with meals in our face and diet pills in our back pocket. We still survive and succeed. If I could wear a suit and running shoes every day, I would be three hours more productive. Glam is a time-suck, and so is self-care. But I can’t be on TV without it, and I can’t run a successful business. My customers want it, we want it and we deserve to have access to whatever makes us feel the way we feel on the inside, and to get the response from the people, to be seen by people, in the way we want to be seen. That is our right as women, and that is our job as med spa practitioners.

There was a time when glam was not the priority on Real Housewives. There are people that have opinions about the amount of time that glam takes on these shows, but I think I like it, because it peels back the curtain. You all don't just show up at a costume party in Palm Springs looking the way that you do. Still, do you ever wish you could just film the show and show up?

Yeah, and guess what? I see those episodes play back, where I haven’t done my hair and makeup, and I want to crawl into a hole. I learned quickly, because there is a charm to The Real Housewives of Orange County season one, when everyone’s in sky tops. I don’t have a stylist, I style myself, because I think that’s part of what being a Real Housewife is. But the glam part I get, because if we strip it all away, then we’re just an unscripted soap opera. We’ve got to show what it takes to exist in this world on that level.

I would say the most brutally honest chapter in the book is aboutOozempic, which has become a lightning rod amongst the Real Housewives. How did you approach writing that chapter?

I regretted being public about it, because I felt like such a lightning rod, and it felt like it was kind of clickbait to deny my existence. I love body positivity, but I prefer body neutrality. I've always had to get over what my body looked like. I've always had to apologize for my appearance. I've always had to put aside what I looked like, to compensate with humor and wit and charm and ass-kissing. The second you lose weight, people don't expect you to do that anymore. It blows your mind, like, oh my gosh, me losing 25 pounds really changed the way people treated me, and I had no idea! Somebody should have told me, but even then, I couldn't have lost that 25 pounds if I tried, unless I had medicine and I took the drugs and the drugs were working, and if they hadn't worked, I wouldn't have said a goddamn word, you know?

The chapter about the Monica/Reality Von Tease scandal does feel like a victory lap for The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. It is a bow on an already iconic, genre-defining moment in reality television. But the chapter about Jen Shah and the black eye she gave you does read more subdued, like there's things that you feel are unresolved about that relationship. Does that read true to you, or am I misreading that?

I mean, I don't have a relationship with Jen right now, and the relationship we did have was very toxic. But it was also very, very formative for all of us. You know, we started the show together, and love or hate her, Jen was a big part of that, and I don't have a relationship with her now. And so I think that that chapter is subdued and hopeful. Because, you know, this book is about second chances. This book is about second leases on life. And if anyone's going to be representing that, it'll be Jen.

I see near daily, while TheReal Housewives of Salt Lake City is on, people calling for Andy to personally pardon her from prison and bring her back on your show. Do you feel like there is a world where you would even be amenable to her popping up for a single scene even?

It’s really not up to me. Like I wish her well, and I love the Real Housewives, and I show up and do what I'm told.

There's so much in the Monica chapter that people are probably going to be really interested in, but the moment that stuck out to me was your showrunner actually hearing back the stuff about Monica that you explain in great detail in the book, and saying, “Isn't this what the Real Housewives is all about?”

I knew that Meredith, Lisa and Whitney would understand, and I knew that we knew what it was, and the magic of that episode is that they were able to somehow represent that to the world, why it was so important why there was so much rage, why it was such a moment, and why it kind of changed our relationships forever.

Looking back at that time, and that season, would you have done anything differently?

Obviously, I'm like a true believer, and it all should play out the way it's happened. I mean, my life is evidence of it, and I'm grateful for that night and the way it changed our friendships. And I'm grateful that I got to be part of something that made such a pop culture impact. I don't like to say “make an impact,” because that's kind of ridiculous. But in terms of entertainment, I like being funny. I like being an entertainer. I like that people laugh at my books. I like that they laugh at the show. And so whether they're laughing because they're watching housewives or they're laughing because they're reading the chapters in Good Time Girl, that's really what I think the end goal for me is. Even after these interviews, I’m like, did you like it? Did you laugh? Maybe at the end of the day, I’m still just a people-pleaser.

Photos courtesy of Heather Gay and Getty