USM grad goes from behind bars to ‘The Real World’

Adam Royer’s life has seen a lot of changes over the years. Five years ago Royer was in jail for a robbery in which a rival drug dealer was shot. Last year he had graduated USM and was planning on going to law school. Now he’s about to be viewed by millions of people as a member of the cast of the 25th season of MTV’s “The Real World.”

Royer graduated last spring with a double major in criminology and political science. “Last year I just had an average life, an average girlfriend, just a senior at USM,” said Royer, 22. “I was just an average Joe.”

But then Royer and some friends heard there was a casting call for “The Real World” at Binga’s Stadium in Portland and decided on a whim try out.

Royer and his friends almost left as soon as they got there because the wait was so long. “Why would we wait that long to audition?” he said. “I mean we were never gonna make it.” Instead, they cut the line and made it into the interview room despite people behind them loudly complaining. “We started a whole bunch of drama right there and then, which I think is part of the reason why I made it on the show,” he said.

Royer was asked to come back the next day for another interview, followed by a series of interviews in Boston and Los Angeles. Finally, in September he was told he had been accepted for the show.

Royer said from that moment on his life was completely different. “This time last year I thought it was crazy that I had a girlfriend who danced for the Red Claws,” he said. “Now I’m chilling with people from ‘Jersey Shore,’ getting free bottles in every club I go to.”

Royer said he thinks he was able to successfully navigate the application process by being honest about himself. He said other interviewees might lie or exaggerate about themselves, while he said he simply told the truth. “They weren’t looking for someone trying to be someone they’re not,” Royer said. “I just told them ‘I don’t party a lot, but I do party. I don’t get every girl I want, but I do get a lot of girls.'”

Royer also said he thinks the robbery and his time in juvenile detention helped him get on the show.

A self-described “loser” in elementary and middle school, Royer said he never excelled at sports or music, and dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder often made it difficult for him academically.

In high school Royer started smoking marijuana and was soon selling drugs. “It’s not hard to be the best at doing drugs, you just gotta do it a lot,” he said.

Royer said he found that when he sold drugs, people began seeking him out. “Everyone wanted to be my friend ’cause I could hook them up,” he said.

According to Royer, he started robbing other dealers for their goods and selling them himself. He owned two guns, a handgun and a shotgun, and had the protection of a rough crowd of friends. “I was rolling with a crew who were known around southern Maine as people you don’t f— with,” he said.

When he was 16, Royer said he and two friends went to the house of a drug dealer they knew in Buxton with a plan of robbing him of his drugs at gunpoint.

“We busted down the door, shot it in with a shotgun and the guy pulls a gun,” Royer said. “My boy ended up shooting him.” Royer didn’t pull the trigger, but the gun was his, and he had loaded it.

The man survived the shooting, and the next day Royer said the police surrounded his house, and although he wasn’t there, they eventually tracked him down, arresting him on several drug and gun charges.

Royer was a juvenile, so he received a relatively light sentence of three years at Long Creek Youth Development Center, a juvenile detention facility in South Portland. He said most of the others who were involved with the robbery are still in prison.

Royer said that spending three years of his adolescence incarcerated left him without many of the experiences other kids his age were having. He didn’t go to prom, and he didn’t drink at all, which he said has made it difficult sometimes to practice moderation. “I missed out on all those key years of partying and drinking,” Royer said. “So when I go out I kinda let go and go crazy.”

It was at Long Creek that Adam began to think about his future. At first he said his plan was just to wait out his sentence and begin selling drugs again when he was released.

But Royer also showed promise, according to his tutor at Long Creek who asked not to be named due to issues of privacy. “He was incredibly smart and learned well one-on-one,” she said in an e-mail. Royer’s tutor helped him prepare for the SATs and attain the right to leave the facility in order to take the test.

She said that not only was Royer dedicated to his own studies, but he also dragged other inmates into tutoring sessions, hoping to convince them to go to college.

After getting his GED, Royer began attending USM part time while still incarcerated, being dropped off for class by a guard and picked up again afterward. When Royer was released from Long Creek at 19, he started going to USM full time, throwing himself into the community and getting involved with athletics and student government.

Royer’s tutor said she has observed in him a tendency to try to be “the best” at whatever he is involved in. At Long Creek, she said, this manifested itself with him being very polite and well-mannered, and getting into college. But she also said she believes this tendency was what got him into trouble, and she said “The Real World” probably didn’t help.

“Prior to his incarceration at Long Creek , Adam strove to be ‘the best’ bad-ass drug dealer around,” she said. “It’s possible that in Las Vegas he tried to be ‘the best’  zany, wild, out-of-control character on the show.”