As the year-end lists filter in this month, remember this: Not many people have had a more humiliating year than NBA free agent Kris Humphries. A year ago, Humphries was known as a mediocre pro basketball player who came off a mediocre bench for the mediocre New Jersey Nets. Now, after a 72-day marriage with Kim Kardashian, he is known as a mediocre free agent who was mercilessly used by a family of reality stars to orchestrate a made-for-TV wedding with a $17 million payout.
And we won't even let the guy escape the madness without a gay rumor.
This week, the cover of Star magazine reads "Kim's Bombshell: KRIS IS GAY!" The story alleges that Humphries "stopped being intimate" with Kardashian after their wedding. This poor guy:
"Kim confided to Khloé pretty early on that they hadn't had sex for weeks after they returned home from their Italian honeymoon," an insider reveals. "Kim was really concerned."
[...]
..."[Kim] took it upon herself to try to spice up their love life. One night, she came back to their hotel room in a trench coat," the source reveals. "She lit candles, put on some music and started doing a sexy striptease.
But Kris barely looked up from the TV! He was like, 'Later babe. I'm watching SportsCenter now.'"
Beside herself, Kim turned to her sister Khloé for advice, the source claims—and when she did, Khloé hit her with a bombshell. "She asked Kim if Kris might be gay," the insider says. "At first Kim thought that was ridiculous. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered. There were signs."
The "signs," Star explains, included Humphries's "weekly pedicures and shopping sprees," his expensive suits, and the fact that he once shaved Kourtney Kardashian's husband's armpit on the show.
This poor guy.
Let's ignore the fact that this magazine's construction of the telltale "signs" that a grown man is gay is simplistic to the point of cruelty and get straight to the miserable state of Kris Humphries's life. Yes, I know he's still rich compared to me and you, and that's nice for him. He's also tall and has a nice jawline, and he's a great rebounder.
But even with his jawline intact, Kris Humphries lost too much in this deal. Mostly, he lost a lot of pride. The women who made Keeping Up With The Kardashians as terrible and successful as it is did so by exacting a careful balance of self-awareness amidst their own spectacles. In his appearances on the show, Humphries appeared as a puppet who wasn't aware he had strings. It's not right to call Humphries a poor, stupid guy, but he certainly is a poor guy who got in over his head with the most brilliantly manipulative matriarch in reality television history. (Caroline Manzo is a close second to Kardashi-mom Kris Jenner.) Kris Humphries never stood a chance against Kris Jenner.
And even after all this, the 26-year-old remains without an NBA contract. The Nets are reportedly shopping around for another center to accompany Brook Lopez in the paint, and it's doubtful that they'll feel any compulsion to keep Humphries around this season. The Nets need to sell tickets, almost desperately, and Kris-sans-Kim just doesn't have that effect.
Gay Kris, on the other hand. That'd be something for the show.