Things sting. Like T.O. told ESPN about being razzed by fellow Eagles when he was down 'n' out: "I'm a human being and I have feelings."

Hurtful things take time to sink in.

Take the letters that Heidi Bressler — Philly's feisty, foul-mouthed Season 1 Apprentice — wrote me over the summer.

Maybe I hurt her first, snarky me. In Icepack, I wished her nearly dead at June's Continental Mid-town Poker Party. Weeks later, I blew chunks after seeing her at a Maxim mag party at the Borgata: "Seeing a loosely bloused Heidi Bressler (Philly's reality-show answer to a question never asked) after Carmen Electra rolled by was like watching a pig following a butterfly. That's no metaphor."

Bressler didn't take kindly to my critiques:

Is this writer on crack or does he just write like he is? His article was about as intelligent as omarosa iq. Tell ad he needs to get a life or get laid. either way he is an awfule writer and seems to be one fry short of a happy meal

Warm Regards,
Heidi

As much as I feel for you..(you write for a free paper) I did want to correct you since you have no clue what fashion is. I was a wearing a dress last week and with all due respect I know who are and you have the audacity to write shit about me? LOLOL. Do you look in the mirror? I actually love it. Keep writing.. I am laughing all the way to the bank … yours truly HEIDI:)

Blouse? Dress? I couldn't bear to look down. This sallow, hawkish woman.

Still. I felt bad.

She's serious. She does work for cancer awareness. I held on to the Valentine's issue of Philadelphia One with her on the cover. There she is, laughing on her way to the bank. All I could count was her single stringy hairs, and then make sport.

Reality stars have been made into all sorts of stupid, sexy fodder. Like those undressed Maxim spreads featuring "The Girls of The Apprentice": women with real high-power careers, peeled like grapes. Look, no one untraditionally foxy gets into Maxim, let alone Bressler. (Then again, even the monstrous "Pamela" got in.)

As a telecommunications salesperson with a masters degree in criminology and a job at a local real estate agency, Bressler doesn't need to be the glamorous type she isn't.

Still. It's nice to be asked.

This fall another klatch of Philadelphians allow themselves the indignity indigenous to reality TV, the soullessness of being torn down by competitive grandstanding. (To be followed by a post-15-minutes vortex resembling Dante's Inferno crossed with Celebrity Fitness Club.)

"Chuck" and "Jim," the first-name-only area interior designer and advertising executive, respectively, taking part in The Apprentice: Martha Stewart (starting Sept. 21) join a group of spiritually dead Philadelphians including The Bachelor's Gwen Gioia and Helene Eksterowicz, The Apprentice's Erin Elmore, For Love or Money's Andrea Langi and, our first reality scion, Gervase Petersen, the Survivor whose desperation can be tracked from small (Grape Street's annual Gervase Bowl) to smaller (hosting Quizzo at Finn McCool's) to positively abstract (Son of the Beach).

For the women, it's dewy sexuality that allows Marlton's Langi to star in upcoming D movie fare, The Shore and Shadow: Dead Riot; Gioia and Eksterowicz to pen the ditzy Nobody's Perfect: What to Do When You've Fallen for a Jerk but You Want to Make It Work; and Elmore, a model for the mystery Aquamatrix agency, to wriggle through an upcoming Women of The Apprentice calendar benefiting Dress For Success.

Philly can be proud of its cheesecake.

We don't know if Bressler's ever been asked to pen lovelorn bon mots or undress for cameras. (Aww see, I'm nauseous again. This is so Clockwork Orange. )

But Heidi doesn't need it. I reread her letters and her detailed, way-serious Web site (www.heidiabressler.com) not so much from the perspective of a woman scorned — despite the look of her makeup — but one of purpose. I saw her as spiritual cousin to the powerful Heidi Holland in Wendy Wasserstein's sassy-gal play of the late '80s, The Heidi Chronicles: a woman who raises feminist consciousness by any means necessary.

She don't need no stinking men's mag. She was in Tony and Tina's Wedding.

She's got Battle of the Network Reality Stars — Bravo's rotten new mirror-image to those rat-tailed 1970s combats: Lynda Carter and Heather Locklear pulling wet T-shirt nippleage during swim meets; the cast of Soap lolling and gagging in tank tops.

Bressler didn't have to show nip to play the mechanical bull and the three-legged race. After all, who am I to question the seriousness of a sack race?

Starting Sept. 26, the serious Bressler — whom you can book for your event or hostessing needs — can be found on The Apprentice Legend Cruise, where she promises an "unforgettable" eight days of Texas Hold'em and karaoke with Apprentices like Raj Bhakta and Jennifer Crisafulli (damn it, she was in Maxim. Why isn't she more serious?!) while sailing through the ports of San Juan, St. Thomas and Tortola (www.expediavoyages.com/heidi).

Maybe just this once Bressler'll set that seriousness aside and let down her hair.

Oops, it's Clockwork Orange time again. Excuse me.