New DIY Documentary Honors AIDS Media Activism, Love, Loss, and Queer Community

Last March, I met filmmaker and scholar Alexandra Juhasz outside the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. She was in the middle of a Film/Video Studio Residency at the Wex, as it’s known as here in Columbus, working closely with an editor on post-production of her experimental documentary Please Hold.

Please Hold, which premiered earlier this March, explores the intersections of activism, memory, and media via a profoundly personal yet communal lens. It is anchored by videos of two of Juhasz’s closest collaborators and late friends in the last stages of their lives. Shot on a mix of consumer-grade recording devices — iPhone, Zoom, VHS camcorder, and Super-8 film — the documentary is an homage to grassroots AIDS mediamaking across decades and its ability to capture intimate, honest communication about hope and loss.

I was profoundly moved that Juhasz invited me into the studio with her to watch a cut of the film. A prolific writer and filmmaker, Juhasz is a Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She produced and acted in the renowned feature documentaries The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996, and its remaster, 2016) and The Owls (Dunye, 2010). For decades, Juhasz has written, directed, and produced her own documentary features and shorts, which have screened widely in feminist, queer, and experimental documentary festivals. She has written extensively on HIV/AIDS, including the recent publications We Are Having this Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production with Ted Kerr and AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, edited with Jih-Fei Cheng and Nishant Shahani.

I first encountered Juhasz’s writing in grad school while studying LGBTQ media, history, and activism. Her book AIDS TV: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video, deeply shaped the way I theorized about LGBTQ local television in my own work. While preparing to begin my dissertation, I emailed Juhasz for advice about how best to write about these topics. I was looking for possibility-models, other scholar-activists who do research in the service of social justice and queer community. Since then, Juhasz has supported my work in many ways, including connecting me with media makers I interviewed for my dissertation.

As we watched the documentary together in the studio at the Wex, I realized that Please Hold honors one of these same media makers: Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, a Black disabled queer feminist media activist who died in 2022. I spoke with Szczepanski years earlier about her work creating AIDS education media for the Audio-Visual Department of the Gay Men Health Crisis in the 1990s, after Juhasz connected us. I hadn’t realized the film would document Szczepanski’s last days. Watching the film next to Juhasz and her editor, I realized we were both holding Szczepanski’s memory, and our connections to her, in different ways. To know Alex Juhasz is to be held in community, a privilege and an honor that connects you to her own deeply felt responsibility to making the world a more livable place for marginalized people.

It was a pleasure to speak with Juhasz more about the film’s production, how it explores grief and loss, her approach to activist media making and distribution, and the importance of LGBTQ communities of care. Our conversation below has been lightly edited and condensed. Please Hold is available to watch for free on the film’s website and you can book a screening of it here.

Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski in “WAVE: Self-Portraits” (The Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise, 1990, VHS).

Lauren: Could tell me about the origins of this project and what inspired you to create it?

Alex: Thank you for asking. This video began because, during the COVID pandemic, my very good friend and a collaborator of mine on AIDS activist media, Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, asked me to shoot video tape of her in the process of dying. She more or less chose the terms of her own death because she stopped receiving dialysis.

I came to videotape her twice in rehab centers in New York. And after that, I made a video that she had wanted from those materials called I Want to Leave a Legacy. When I was making that video, I realized that at a previous moment in my life, another very close person to me had asked me to make a video with him in the late stages of his life. That was my best friend, James Robert Lamb.

I wanted to think about the responsibility of holding those two documents, but also how they produced this very clear arc about some histories of HIV/AIDS in the United States, which is to say, my friend Jim is a sort of poster boy from the first years of the pandemic: gay white man, very pretty, an actor. He died when he was 29 years old. There was no medication, and he had a very painful death. The videotape that I shot of him all those years ago when we were young was very strange actually, because I think his mental state was affected by his impending death.

And then fast forward 30 or so years: Juanita is a Black disabled woman who’s a lifelong AIDS activist, who doesn’t die of HIV, but dies in community that’s been produced around collaborative art making and is really committed to disability justice and dies within the time of COVID and because of health inequalities that were escalated because of COVID.

My responsibility, what I can learn from those tapes, what they tell me about HIV/AIDS, and also what they tell me about living through dying, and making community even as people are dying — that’s what started it.

Lauren: Can you tell me how the film itself explores grief, memory, loss, and those relationships?

Alex: The video wants to think about technologies of memory, various receptacles that hold something of a person that you loved after they die. It could be a trace of them, but it could be work you’ve done together. This is very important to this project. They are people that I engage in art making and activism with. I know that various technologies shape memory and shape grief differently.

So, it really wants to think about how VHS, which is what I shot Jim on, has a different almost metabolism than an iPhone video, which is what I shot Juanita on. While they are both media that are holding traces and memories and conversations and activity with these people, I think that they’re held differently.

I was thinking about those two media to think about material things, like in the case of the film, a sweater and a scarf that emerge. Then I extend that to my own body and I think about the fact that I’ve aged. Grief changes as the body holds it. I think about neighborhoods, so places that one returns to and how they trigger memories, but they change, so they hold memory differently as well.

I think the other thing I would want to say, just from having screened it quite a bit in small groups at this point: It doesn’t work with grief quite like we expect movies to. It’s not triumphant, it’s not organized around catharsis necessarily. It doesn’t have music that tells you when to feel bad or good. It doesn’t have the typical beats that cinema is organized around, but I think it has the typical beats that life is organized around, which is this kind of pulsing.

Sometimes grief feels like celebration. Sometimes grief feels like connection. And sometimes it’s very hard to process. Jim died when I was a girl, and I’ve lived with his death longer than he was alive. My grief for him is very different than my grief for Juanita, who died only a few years ago.

We’re in a time organized by grief and mourning. Even if it’s not for the loss of people, it’s for the loss of our democracy and the loss of structures that made sense to us. It lets you come in where you are and acknowledges that’s changing. It might even change over those 70 minutes of the video.

Lauren: You mentioned that iPhones metabolize grief differently than VHS. I’m wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about the mixed media approach to this film, how you decided to combine all these different types of film making, and why that was important for you.

Alex: What it feels like to make media with different technologies, that’s always for me part of thinking of what medium is. A camcorder is actually heavy, and there’s a kind of commitment that to work with heavy equipment demands. iPhones are very light and they are very easy to use and they’re extremely easy to shoot things with and extremely easy to take that footage and put it somewhere else and distribute it and share it and see it.

And therefore, one of the ways that they’re different is that we’re constantly shooting video that is completely expendable. It’s hard to know the difference between the important things you shoot and the not important things you shoot. It’s interchangeable. So that lightness of the iPhone material, the lightness of social media, and I mean that literally but also metaphorically, is part of what I’m thinking about. When Juanita asked me to come shoot her on her deathbed, she had wanted me to shoot her on a camcorder and she didn’t have the power cord, so I took out my iPhone.

But it’s not just the technology. Watching someone die is a cosmic shift. If someone asks you to be part of that, that’s an incredible responsibility and it’s a heavy responsibility. It’s a beautiful responsibility. So, it’s not just that I had the iPhone. I had made this agreement. She had asked me and I didn’t even know why she had asked me initially. It’s in the footage, she tells me, but she’d asked me to do this. I wanted to mark the heaviness of the weight of it, the beauty of it.

This is where the project is about what it means to be in community and collaboration. It’s a very different kind of relationship to media making. It’s activist media making.

In Please Hold, I use video compositing a lot. I think it’s the visual and media language that defines this moment in history. It’s very desktop-looking on purpose and very collage-y. The collage holds VHS and iPhone videos next to each other, or digital video and iPhone video and then text on top of that. I’m interested in that collage aesthetic that flattens the discrete technologies. Then I work very hard to keep reminding you that they are discrete technologies.

In every shot of video, I tell you what kind of camera it was shot on and when it was shot because, again, I think that the computer screen that you and I are looking at right now equalizes, flattens things. I’m both interested in seeing that as an aesthetic and thinking about what it does.

The film is about grief, it’s about memory, but it’s also about communication. It’s also about me talking to people who have died and me talking about people who are very much alive, who I’m in activist community with. I’m trying to think visually about the sort of flatness of the screen and the depth of the interaction. That’s what that compositing does to me. But that’s also having the Zoom interviews where you see two people, like we’re doing right now, as opposed to a more traditional talking head. You’re constantly aware of the depth, the third dimension of the screen, because the listener produces that.

Lauren: I wanted to ask you about the Zoom interviews. How did you decide to incorporate these conversations with folks that you’re in activist community with?

Alex: Video Remains is the video that I made with my footage from my friend Jim’s and my one hour on the beach together in the last year of his life. It took me a long time to make that video and it’s very important to me. I think it has a place within the history of AIDS media that is a critical place.

This video [Please Hold] is referring to it in many ways and thinking about technological shifts. In Video Remains, I talked to my fellow AIDS activists, they were all women and lesbians, on the phone. That’s cut into the long take footage that Jim had asked that I shoot of him on the beach when he was telling the story of his life.

Fast forward to now, with these new technologies, I’m like, we wouldn’t talk on the phone, we would talk on Zoom. It parallels that method of sharing space and knowledge with collaborators and my activist community. The video that I made now is thinking about how COVID, and our experiences during lockdown in particular, rejiggered our expectations and relationships to communications technology.

It’s a recognition that that’s a new form of media making. I’m an activist media maker. I make things for nothing. I shoot them with whatever is at hand. I distribute them that way. And Zoom is an amazing, inexpensive form of technology to interview people. The interviews look and sound pretty good.

I am also trying to think about these different formats of connection, what it is to live together in a place, what it is to use a phone or Zoom, what it is to be in a place or be with a person who has been, that was recorded and you revisit.

The film really believes that we can continue to collaborate with the people we love after they die, or that I can, because I’m still asking the questions and working on projects and trying to make the changes that were very important to both me and Jim. I’m still committed. I need their voices. I need who they were to me and what they know and what we could make together. I can still use that, even when they’re no longer here, because we made these videos together. I’m so lucky.

Clockwise: James Robert Lamb, Pato Hebert, Alexandra Juhasz, Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski (built from “Video Remains,” Alexandra Juhasz, 2005, Zoom interviews, 2023, and “I Want to Leave a Legacy,” Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, 2022, iPhone).

Lauren: How else has this work impacted your life?

Alex: Right now I’m starting DIY and activist distribution, which I’m doing by myself. I’m trying to get it out in the world, but trying to get out in the world under the terms that seem right for me.

In the book that I wrote with Ted Kerr, [we write about] the idea of “trigger films” or “trigger videos,” [videos] from the early part of the AIDS crisis that you would show, stop the video in the middle of a scene, and then people would talk about it. We use the word “trigger” now differently. We talk about this in the book, but both uses of “trigger” are about setting terms for healthy conversation.

I think that Please Hold is also a trigger film. I think that what it’s best for is to spark conversation. And I think that, like so much on the internet, it shouldn’t be watched alone by yourself, with two other things on your screen. That’s probably true of a lot of art films. But I’m saying, it’s not just any art film. It’s a film that holds the traces of two people who died, who ask to be seen. It takes a lot from us as contemporary media viewers to change the way we’ve been taught to watch to be more human and to be more caring and to be more present.

I’ve tried to put a tiny scrim between getting the film for free, which I’m letting you do, and watching it with more care. You have to fill out a little form that says, “I’m going to watch it by myself. I’m going to watch it with some people. I’m going to set up a screening.” Then I send you the link. I don’t know if that’s going to work. But I’ve never really cared how many people see things that I make. I care about the context in which things are seen. That’s true of activist media more generally.

I want that context to be respectful and contemplative and interpersonal and give people space to talk afterwards, which so little viewing does now, especially when things are digital. The main thing I’m doing is trying to move it in the world and have conversations where I can be present with other people with what it brings up.

Lauren: That’s beautiful. That’s such an interesting way to experiment with distribution. I love that. As you’re talking about care, I was even thinking about your film We Care that I’ve showed in class a number of times, that is also about care and dying, so I can see those through lines in your work.

Alex: I think that the norms of dominant cinema push to the edge a lot of the things that actually can and do happen when we consume media together. One of those is the idea of care. That’s something you could build around screenings.

I think people do it, but you need to think about, in what conditions do you do that? Because the consumption of media now that we’re all on our laptops, it’s just violent and hurtful. It doesn’t matter if you’re consuming something you like. It doesn’t make you feel good. It’s the opposite of care, even if you’re watching something beautiful. The extratextual conditions of making and screening activist media are as important as the piece of media itself. And that’s what I’m doing by building out my own distribution.

The reason I made this was to talk to people about AIDS, and to talk to people about HIV, and to talk to people about memory, and to talk to people about dying, and to talk to people about community, and to talk to people about all the ways we love each other and all the ways we help each other, and how beautiful it is to be in community. I want to have that conversation every time it’s screened.  I hope other people will talk to each other about those things. That’s why we make art, certainly activist art.

What we want from activist media is that you’re transformed, that you feel a transformation and you feel that you can interact, not just consume.

Lauren: That brings me to another question I wanted to ask. Can you tell me about the title Please Hold?

Alex: The first shot of the film — well it’s not the first shot anymore, it’s deeper into the film now — is me riding up an escalator at the Delansancy/Essex Street stop on the Lower East Side, the F train. It’s a long take, and I go up the staircase. I think it’s beautiful. It’s so dirty, and makes all this noise. It’s so industrial and of this other era and it evokes that neighborhood in New York City.

As you get to the top, you see this boy wearing this powder blue sweatshirt, and he’s on his phone, and he’s almost dancing. It’s like choreography. But if you look above him, there’s a LED sign and it’s saying, “Please hold the handrail.”

I was deep into editing the film and I’m like, “Oh my god, that sign says please hold!” If you listen to the film, I talk about holding all the time. The word “hold” is used in it over and over and over again. And I’ve already talked about it like that with you. I’m holding these memories, I’m holding these tapes. A lot of the people in the film help me think about holding things together.

My friend Ted [Kerr] talks about holding a sweatshirt of Jim’s that I had given him. That’s a way for Jim to stay with us, we hold it together. And then holding the Parkside, which is a gay bar, queer bar, and you’re holding that space. Jih-Fei [one of the interviewees in the film] talks about holding spaces when nobody will let you, which is very much about what we’re in right now. What it means to hold the space of trans identity or gender non-conforming identity or a bathroom that’s become dangerous territory, and they say you can’t use it, and you hold it. That is something that political people do.

The Parkside also holds ghosts, it holds porn magazines. So holding just constantly emerged in the process. But then the title was given to me by the Lower East Side. And of course, “please hold” is also what someone says on the phone in a not nice way, so it has that register as well. It makes you wait when you’re not ready to wait.

The film is also about walking as a technology of memory, how the world presents information to you when you’re ready to receive it. Walking can wake you up to take in input that you wouldn’t see. So the fact that the title is there because I’m walking in the neighborhood is very much an idea of the film that the world can help you too, if your body is open.

I’ve had the great luck to stay alive this whole time and my body is so different. There’s a lot of seeing me young and seeing me now in the split screens. There’s a lot seeing Juanita young and seeing Juanita now in split screens. There’s not that of Jim because I only have the images from that one period of his life and he didn’t get to live to be older.

My body at this age, I just turned 60, takes in the world differently than my body did when I was 29. And in a lot of the footage that you see, I’m 29. I actually understand the world differently through this technology. I think in a sexist world in particular, I say this as a cisgender woman, I think I understand the world much better in this body than I did when I was 29, and that’s why there’s so much ageism, especially against women, because people don’t want women to be smart in that way. They want to tell us these bodies are not useful tools and not intelligent receptacles. Quite the opposite, as we age, our bodies become smarter if we’re lucky, or wiser, or deeper, or more sophisticated. I do not need to be the 29 old girl that I see there. I’m very glad that I’m not.

Lauren: Thanks for sharing that. Is there anything else that you want to share, or that you want Autostraddle readers to know?

Alex: One of the things that I love about this movie is how queer it is. It is my definition of queer, everyone can have their own. What I love about it is that the characters that you meet are every kind of different. They’re every kind of deviant. They’re every kind of edge. And sure, you can say they’re lesbian, trans, gay, Jewish, Black, Asian, young, old.

But the movie is not committed to a particular slice of the queer world. It’s expansive about how queer love and queer community, queer analysis, queer ways of living and family and being political and caring and making relationships of care. That has been everything to me. And that’s true in my nuclear family, lesbian family, that’s very extended into other parental roles. It’s true in my queer romance with Jim. We lived together for many years.

It’s true in my very queer friendship with Juanita that crossed race and class and brought us together in an overt analysis that came from the celebration of gay and lesbian life and trans life.  So I want the readers of Autostraddle to behold a feminist queerness that is my community and is me. I love being in this community. I love being seen by this community.

I love speaking to this community. I love the way the film stretches that inclusion and also its limits. That’s the queer lifeworld that I draw from in that video.

Lauren: Since it has been a couple months since Trump’s inauguration, I’m wondering how you feel about the film coming out right now and what you feel the film has to say about this contemporary moment.

Alex: I am as confused and hurt and angry and afraid and uncertain as anybody. I don’t have any answers right now at all. Many of the things that I thought were answers don’t seem to be. That’s super scary.

But what I just said to you about queer community and queer love that is connected to activism — not just who you have sex with or who you want to go to a party with, although that’s part of it, but connected to working together to make the world better for the most disenfranchised, the people who are the most weak and the most threatened at any particular moment. And sometimes, like right now, that is trans people, right now that is people in our world with HIV and AIDS who are truly about to be decimated by the end of PEPFAR and threats to Americans’ access to free medication.

Queer love and queer community that’s organized around wanting to help each other and help the most disenfranchised — that is always a goodness. The minutes you can spend in it or the hours you can spend in it are worldbuilding. They’re being in the world that we want and we deserve and we can make, and even if we can’t right now respond to the huge threats, and even as they will be endangering people we love, or killing people. Killing people in Africa via [the end of] PEPFAR, killing people in Gaza, killing people in the Ukraine, killing people in the Congo, I could go on.

We as humans can make little reprieves, little pockets, little sparks of beauty and dignity and decency. And queer people have always done that. We’ve had to. And so watching the film together, talking together, that’s just an example of knowing that we can make moments of power. It might not be big. We talked about how how many people watch something is not a register that matters to me. Smallness is often what you need to have deep impact. We can be in community and learn with each other. And so we will do that. We can do that. We are doing that. We have done that. And it might not change the badness, but it is itself a goodness.

Lauren Herold: Thank you. That’s a beautiful way to end this conversation and also I feel like I needed to hear that today. So, thank you for saying that.

Alex: But see, this conversation is that, Lauren. It’s like, I see you. I heard what was happening in your life. Thank you for listening to me so much about my film. It’s simple, but we can and should and have to do that for each other all the time right now.

Bodybuilding Icon Bev Francis Reveals Real World Behind ‘Love Lies Bleeding’

With the release of Rose Glass’s new film, Love Lies Bleeding, this month, I think it’s safe to say that female bodybuilding is having a moment. By the mid-1980s, which is when the film is set, female bodybuilding was just beginning to crest the peak of its popularity. Gyms and health clubs were opening up in every corner of the U.S. and competitive bodybuilding federations were finally including women’s competitions. When George Butler’s 1985 documentary Pumping Iron II: The Women premiered at Cannes, it became apparent that the niche sport was becoming a little less niche, at least for a little while.

The film introduced the world to professional female bodybuilding and, in turn, introduced the world to the women — both seasoned professionals and the newcomers to the sport — who compete. One of those newcomers, Australia’s Bev Francis, an accomplished professional powerlifter turned bodybuilder, took the bodybuilding world by storm. Francis, who was the most muscular competitor in the film, had a physique that people weren’t used to seeing in the sport and, subsequently, didn’t know how to handle. Following the release of the film, Francis would become one of the biggest stars in bodybuilding, not because of how many times she won but because of how jacked she was and because of how she kept competing, despite what people thought about her.

As someone who’s obsessed with strength sports and strength sports history, I was immediately enamored with Francis’ athleticism, tenacity, and “Say whatever you want, but I’m doing me” attitude. I reached out to Francis to see if she’d be interested in talking about her career, her involvement in the film, and her future in strength sports, and, thankfully, she agreed.

Our conversation was long and had many diversions — mostly about the excitement of getting stronger! — but here you’ll find the highlights so you can get to know this legend a little better.

Stef: I think our community of readers might be learning about you for the first time, so I think it’s good to start with the basics. You began training in track and field in college, and then you branched out into powerlifting after. And on top of that, you were going to school to be a physical education teacher. How did you get interested in sports in the first place, where did the obsession begin, and what were your early experiences playing sports like?

Bev: I’ve just always loved physical movement. I started with dance, which was the first organized thing I did, because my mom was a dancer when she was young. And my sister, who is my closest sibling in age, but still seven years older than me, was in dance class. My mom used to take me along in the little stroller, and as soon as I could walk, basically, I was dancing on the sidelines, and I obviously loved that. So Mom enrolled me. I was like three and a half, four, that’s when I started dance. It was ballet, classical ballet, tap, and some ethnic dances. We did things like Highland Flings, Irish Jigs, and Polish mazurkas, and all those things. I just loved all that, and I continued doing classes until I was about 15.

Once I was at school, I was playing any sport that was available. I was always good at physical education, I was always a fast runner, I always had really good hand-eye coordination, and I was just good at sports. I was always doing something athletic, physical. And at school, I really loved track and field. I wasn’t fabulous at it, I was fast, but not the fastest. I could throw well, but not the furthest. I was always up there, but not the best at anything. So by the end of school, I had to choose a career. And again, I’m talking graduating in 1972 from high school, so careers for women, if you were going to be out and doing a job, you had to wear stockings, skirts, and heels. That wasn’t me.

So, I chose the only thing I thought I could wear casual clothes doing, and also that I was interested in, and that was physical education teaching. And my family was a bunch of teachers. I mean, Mom had been a dancer, but she taught dancing after she stopped. My father was a teacher, one of my brothers was a teacher, and my sister was a teacher. It just ran in the family. And it was also a way for me to get a tertiary education, because I could get what’s called in Australia a studentship. The education department is run by the state government, and they gave scholarships to do the teacher training, and you had to teach for a certain number of years. We didn’t have enough money for me to go to university, but with that studentship I could.

It was perfect. I got paid to do a course that I wanted to do, and get into a job that I wanted and felt comfortable in. And when I went to university, you did every sport imaginable in your physical education course. Ones that I’d done before, and ones that I hadn’t. And while I was at the university there was a coach, he was a world renowned coach, and I started training with him just for fitness. I told him straight out, “I’m not an athlete.”

Stef: Wow, you were so wrong.

Bev: Yeah. And I wanted to learn from him, because as I said, he was a genius coach. He was the coach for Roger Bannister, the first four-minute miler. Franz Stampfl was his name. And he was the person who saw something in me. He thought that I could be better if I trained specifically for throwing [shot put], and told me to do that, I would have to weight train.

I said, “I’ll do anything that I have to learn.” So he started me off with weight training, and I found my niche. I just got stronger and stronger, and I loved it and just fell in love with the whole idea of strength training and everything that went with it. My throws got further, my sprinting got faster, my jumps got better. I saw that everything was helped by strength, and that flowed into life…your confidence, everything gets better as you get stronger. Strength just became a lifelong love for me.

Stef: I know in your powerlifting career, you broke records. And not only that but you were able to get totals that people are still aspiring to lift right now. You mentioned your coach got you into weightlifting, which I think is kind of common for people who played other sports and then become strength athletes. Can you tell me a little more about that training transition?

Bev: The two main lifts that he regarded as essential for power training, for the throws, were the squat and bench press. They were the two basic movements. And of course, you’ve only got to add deadlift to that, and you’ve got powerlifting. So, it was a little bit later that we did some deadlifting, as well as curls, leg extensions, lat pull downs, and everything else. But the basis of the training was massive amounts of squats and bench press.

Stef:
What drew you to eventually competing in powerlifting in the first place? Can you talk a little bit about your experiences as a female powerlifter in the 1970s and early 1980s?

Bev: It was actually very easy. I didn’t choose powerlifting…powerlifting chose me. My teammates [the other women Stampfl trained alongside Bev] and I were getting strong, and we were breaking shot put, discus, and javelin state and then national records. We were getting publicity in the papers over two years, and one of the things the articles were saying and we said is, “We’re stronger. That’s why we’re breaking records. We’re doing all this lifting.”

It was probably in the end of 1976 or early 1977, the Powerlifting Association in Victoria, that’s the state in Australia where I live, contacted our coach and had seen the articles in the paper, and they were trying to get women’s powerlifting going. They called up our coach and said, “You have some strong girls. Would they like to compete in a powerlifting meet?” They had to explain what a powerlifting meet was. And we thought it sounded like a fun activity to do. The three of us went along, and we all broke the Australian records. And there were no world records ratified at that time, but they informed me that my lifts were the best on record in the world for my weight class. So it was like, “Okay, this sounds like the sport for me.”

After that, I just started winning. I won every contest that I went into, which is kind of nice when you find you can win something. That’s how I got into powerlifting. And I stayed in it until I’d already moved to the U.S. I did my last two contests for Australia while I was living in the US. And then by that stage, I’d done [Pumping Iron II: The Women], and the movie had been released.

I got a couple of injuries, and I’d won six world championships, and this bodybuilding thing was all around me. And people were saying, “You can’t do it.” At the same time, I had all these fans saying, “You’re the best. Come back and do more.” But I felt like I’d conquered the world in powerlifting, and it’s hard on the body to keep going year after year at that level. So bodybuilding, even though it’s hard, it’s hard in a different way. It’s just pain, but it’s not that heavy. It’s pain of reps after reps and the burning and the intensity, but it wasn’t putting that heavy load constantly on my spine. I thought, enough with powerlifting, and let me give my full attention to bodybuilding now, and show all these non-believers that a powerlifter actually can sculpt their body and become the best bodybuilder in the world.

Stef: Your bodybuilding career began with that invitation from George Butler, right?

Bev: Yeah, because I had no intention of getting into bodybuilding. When he asked me to do the movie, they wanted that extreme body to give the movie some punch, and it sure did. I mean, if you’re asked to be in a movie, you do it. I was an amateur athlete! A schoolteacher! A world-class athlete, but still, it’s a very exciting prospect to be asked to be in a movie. And it came at a perfect time because I had partially torn my Achilles tendon, and recovery from Achilles tendon surgery is very long. It’s basically a year. I knew I was going to be out of action from throwing, from running, from even squatting, because I didn’t have the flexibility after the surgery. My ankle was pretty much locked, and I had to gradually get the flexibility back.

My training was completely different. And I had this opportunity, and my coach was like, “Yeah, take it.” So that’s what I did. And as I said, I threw myself fully into it. I had to learn how to diet and everything, because I had no idea how to diet. And also, I had no respect for bodybuilding at the time. Bodybuilding doesn’t take the effort of running, jumping, throwing, lifting. I thought it’s not athletic, it’s just posing. Of course, I soon learned the training for bodybuilding is really, really tough, and especially when you throw in reduced calories. My respect for bodybuilding grew. And as I said, I was coming to this stage where I was getting injured, and it was getting tough on my body. I preferred to retire while I was ahead, while I was a winner.

Stef: You were originally doing both, and then you made the official switch, right?

Bev: That’s what I did. 1983 was when I tore my Achilles tendon and couldn’t do anything. And that’s when the movie came along, so it was perfect timing. I was still able to do the World Powerlifting Championships in 1983, and in 1984, I moved to the US just before the World Powerlifting Championships that year. During that time, in 1983 and 1984, I was doing bodybuilding, and I was doing exhibitions. And after the movie wrapped, I came back to contests in 1986. That’s when I started bodybuilding and no powerlifting.

It took me three years of training to reshape my body, to get that V-taper, to bring my waist in, to bring my back out, to bring my shoulders up, to do the things I had to do for bodybuilding.

Stef: How would you describe your experiences in the bodybuilding community? I’m interested in how it was interacting with other bodybuilders, even your direct competition.

Bev: My track and field group was a family and we still are. And that was one of the genius moves of Franz [Stampfl], creating a group dynamic and to have a group that trains together. But with bodybuilding, I was in my gym, and everybody else was in their own gym. It’s rare to have someone who’s a competitor who’s in the same gym, especially at the professional level, because they’re all over the country. For example, in the movie, Rachel [McLish] and I were cast as direct antagonists, but we’d never met. And, in fact, we did not have a conversation during the time of Pumping Iron II. We never spoke.

However, after the movie we were both called for guest posing, and sometimes we went to the same place. We spoke, and I actually wrote her a letter just to tell her I had nothing but the greatest of admiration for what she’d done for women’s bodybuilding, and that it was certainly not my choice that we were cast as enemies. And she responded very positively to that letter. At one stage over the next couple of years, when I had to go to where she lived in Palm Springs for an exhibition, she had called the Gold’s Gym there and left six messages for when I got in there for me to contact her and her husband. Steve [Bev’s former husband and training partner] and I ended up going and meeting them for lunch, going to their house, and going out with them. And she’d visit our gym in New York.

I also always got along really well with Cory Everson, she was Ms. Olympia when I finally came into Ms. Olympia in 1987. She’s kind of goofy like I am, we both like to goof around and have fun, and she’s very down-to-earth. We just loved each other from the time we met, and we stayed friends. I still have cards that she would send me before the contest saying, “You and me first and second.” Or, “Equal first, let’s beat all the others.” And, “I’ve got an idea, let’s mess around in the posedown.” Which we did. I would jump in front of her and pose, and she’d pick me up and push me aside. The audience loved it. We’re still friends today. Leanne [Bev’s partner] and I went and stayed at her house in LA a couple of years ago on our way to New York.

But as I said, it’s harder in bodybuilding because you don’t have a group that you train with every day who you also compete with. The people I train with every day in the gym are just regular people. Steve was my training partner, and other people in the gym would come to the Olympias and support me.

Stef: I’ve learned a lot about how much sacrifice and hard work it takes. I know you’ve spoken about how much training you had to put into it, and on top of that, being a bodybuilder can be really expensive. Given how much you had to give to the sport, what kept you coming back year after year?

Bev: Well, I mean, it’s pretty simple. I wanted to win. That’s pretty much it, I wanted to be Ms. Olympia. I mean, I was really happy that I won the World Championships, because I was world champion in two sports, that’s pretty cool. World champion powerlifter and world champion bodybuilder. I’m in two Hall of Fames. I’m in the Bodybuilding Hall of Fame and the Powerlifting Hall of Fame, which is pretty cool, too. But yeah, I wanted to win.

I mean, and that was the thing that allowed me to do the part of the training that I didn’t like, the part of changing, becoming more “feminine.” I mean, it’s nice to have someone actually say, “You look pretty.” Or to look at pictures and go, “Wow, you actually look gorgeous in this picture with the makeup.” Because I never used makeup, and I had short nails. I looked like a classic lesbian, even though I wasn’t a lesbian. I was straight as a ruler until just a few years ago.

For years, I tried to make sure that my hairstyle and my makeup appealed to the judges. Even my body, I had to bring it in, I had to lose muscle every year. I had to diet, not only to lose body fat, but to lose some muscle, to bring my body into more feminine lines. Because as it’s been quoted at and many, many times, the rule book states that judges must remember they’re judging a female bodybuilding competition. So I had that thrown at me.

Stef: We’re still having these conversations about what female athletes can and can’t do, and I think that that’s in every sport. People often talk about how you were ahead of your time. How do you feel about that? What does that mean to you?

Bev: I’m very proud of that now. I certainly didn’t go out to change the world. From the time I was a little kid, I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I was a very determined little bugger. I was a difficult child, and I was a complete tomboy, as they called it. I never wanted to be a boy, I wanted to be a girl on my own terms. I wanted to be a strong girl, I wanted to be a brave girl, I wanted to be a smart girl, I wanted to be an achieving girl. And I could see no logical reason why any of that shouldn’t happen, I couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t do anything that any guy could do.

And that’s just how I thought from the time I was little. I mean, I was the perfect client for Franz because he was totally for women being so much better than they were, and he believed that the key to it was women getting strong. He said, “Women are nowhere near their potential, and the one thing they can do to increase their performances is weight train and get strong.” And I didn’t see limits. Just, How strong can I get? There was no limit, and it was very encouraging.

My family was good about it. I had a very traditional family, Dad was a school teacher, Mom was a homemaker. She cooked, sewed, knitted, crocheted, preserved, made jams, all the things that a really traditional housewife would do. And Dad would never let her work, even though we had five kids in the family and were struggling on one salary. Very traditional in that way. And yet, I mean, when I was a kid, always, I wanted to go rabbit hunting with him, shooting. I would go chopping wood with him and help in the backyard when he was doing his concreting and everything. All the boys had to learn how to cook basic meals and iron their shirts. And it’s like, “You’ve got to learn to take care of yourself, and you’ve got to be able to do everything.” When I started lifting and getting strong, Dad was just proud, his strong daughter. And Mom, the only concern Mom had was, “Be careful, make sure you warm up right. Don’t hurt yourself.” That was all. Otherwise, they were proud as punch of me. I had the support of my family, and I was very, very fortunate, because so many people, when they’re going into the world to do what they want to do, they don’t have that.

I guess I was never scared, I was just, “Fuck everybody.” But I had enough support that I could do it. And women should be allowed to look whatever they want to look like, and do whatever they want to do. God’s sake, men do. I just wanted that freedom. I wanted freedom for myself and for me to feel that I’ve helped free other women, or give an example of what you can do and be happy about it. That has made me feel good.

Stef: I think that that’s interesting, especially in terms of something like female bodybuilding, where gender presentation is heavily policed. I can see how you coming in during that time and saying, “No, I’m going to look this way, and I’m still going to compete. And you’re not going to push me out until I say I want to be out.” That is extremely important. I have a feeling that it impacted not just female bodybuilding, but also just female sports in general.

Bev: I hope so. I mean, when I was competing, Martina Navratilova was a very muscular woman, and she was the only other one that I really looked at who looked… Not similar to me, but looked like she didn’t give a fuck what people thought of her. And I liked that. But beyond that, I didn’t have any role models. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do.

Stef: It’s important to just go forward anyway. I imagine that’s how you kind of coach your clients now.

Bev: Oh, yeah. I mean, you’ve got to decide what you want. I tell kids, with social media and everything the way it is these days, I tell them that, if you’re into sport as a career, first of all, make sure you’ve got a backup. Because unless you’re the best in the world, there’s not a lot of money in it. But if you’re into sport as a career, don’t go into it because you think you’re going to be famous or rich, don’t go in it for those reasons. If you are going into it for those reasons, you’ll never be able to put in the work that you need to be the best in the world. The only way you’re going to be able to put in the work that you need, is if you love it. If you’re willing to do that work for nothing, even pay to do the work. If you’re willing to pay to do the training and to go through what you have to do to do your sport, that’s the only way you’ll ever be able to put the effort in to make you the best that you can be. And that’s all you can be, the best you can be. If you don’t love it, if you just like it, but you think you’re going to be famous, then you may as well go get another degree right now. Go for something else, and just do your sport for fun, because you’ll never be on top.

Stef: That’s a really good point. And could be said about a hundred things outside of sports, too.

I’m going to switch gears a little bit. When I first started learning about who you are, I didn’t expect to find out that you’re now in a relationship with another woman. I know you’re not into labels, so I’m not going to use any. But I have to say just personally as a queer person, it’s always a little bit of a relief to find out there are people like you involved in the things you love to do. So, finding out about you, and other strength athletes who are openly queer or trans, like Rob Kearney who is a very famous gay strongman and Laurel Hubbard who is a trans woman who competed in the Olympics for the U.S. lifting team, is helpful in feeling that there’s a place for us in the sport. I know that you just kind of kickstarted your powerlifting career again and technically, you’re not in the kind of profession where you would need to come out. But I’m just wondering how you feel about being a queer athlete. Do you feel proud to be a queer athlete? Does that ever come across in your mind that you are now part of our very small pantheon?

Bev: If it had been 30 years ago, it would’ve been very awkward, because it wasn’t accepted. I hate categories, I don’t like names for things and categories. And it’s just that people are different. And there’s this whole black gray, dark gray, lighter gray, white in both gender and sexual preference. And I don’t know, I don’t like it being chopped up so much. I’m very happy that it’s a much more accepting world. But as I said, personally, I don’t like all the labels, I don’t see a necessity for them. Other people do, and that’s their choice. So what am I? I’m a woman.

Stef: You don’t even have to define that if you don’t want to, I’m not asking that.

Bev: Yeah, no, but I’m happy to. I’m a female who has a girlfriend, has a female lover, and I have had male lovers in the past, and that’s about it.

Stef: Listen, you’re not alone. That’s pretty common.

Bev: Well, that’s just it, I know. And I love the diverse world. Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone was the same?

Stef: Yes, it would be. And yes, it is accepted to a certain degree. I live in the U.S., so I don’t know the differences between the U.S. and Australia. But it is accepted to a certain degree, and there’s a lot more freedom now to a certain degree. But I still think there’s a lot more change that needs to be made, obviously.

Bev: Absolutely. Yeah, I was going to say, it depends what area you’re in, it depends what town you’re in. I do think the LGBTQ community is a fun community to be in because they’re more open and accepting of differences in so many ways. I really like being in that community. I like being queer.

Stef: Yeah, me too. All right, last question. So, like I said, you recently jump started your powerlifting career again in 2022. And you broke records again, because you’re older.

Bev: Yes, it was the age group as well as the weight class.

Stef: So, what’s the future? What’s your plans? Are you going back into that now?

Bev: I think I will. After that year I was feeling good and strong, but the next year, Leanne, my partner, wanted to do the Great Victorian Bike Ride. It’s at the end of the year, and it’s a five-day bicycle ride, and you camp on the way. It’s over hundreds of miles, and you’re riding about 70 miles a day. I had to train for that, because I’m not an endurance athlete, I’m a power athlete. I’ve been a sprinter, a shot putter, a powerlifter, and a bodybuilder. I’m not a long distance runner or a cyclist, so I really had to train for that. You can’t train for bike riding, ride miles and miles, and then come and do a heavy squat workout. So, I lost some of that strength over that year, and I had a couple of bad bouts of bronchitis and COVID, which knocked me around a little bit.

I’m just building back up now. I just turned 69, and I’m hoping I can wait until next year when I’m 70 and go into the younger part of the age division and compete. Try and break maybe some records in that division, also. I really would like to go back and try a little bit of shot putting again, but I have to get a little bit more spring in my legs before I go for that. So yeah, I’m not ready to lie down and die yet.

I had always wanted to do a marathon, and that’s what I said when I was young. I wanted to start training when I was 40, I’d put 10 years, and at 50, run a marathon. But during those years, my knees deteriorated rapidly. I had six arthroscopic surgeries, three on one knee, three on the other, and then finally had two full knee replacements. My legs took a battering in terms of losing strength, losing snap and power. I’ve also had chronic Achilles tendon problems my whole life. And if I run too much, my Achilles pain flares up. I just decided that, unfortunately, that dream probably won’t ever come true. That’s why I was happy to do the bike riding. At least I did the Great Victorian Bike Ride, which was to me quite an accomplishment.

Now, I’d like to go back into more powerlifting events and see what I can do.

See Bev Francis in Pumping Iron II: The Women now available on YouTube. 

“We’re a Surviving Sort of Species”: Venita Blackburn on Grief and How We Live With It

feature image photo of Venita Blackburn by Virginia Barnes

Sometimes someone is like, here, read this novel about grief, and you’re like yeah, I know about grief novels, and you read it, and it’s devastating and heartwarming in all the ways a grief novel purports to be, and you walk away saying yes, it’s all very clear, that was most definitely a grief novel. Other times someone is like, here, read this novel about grief, and you’re like yeah, I know about grief novels, and then that novel is Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn. How to describe this genre-defying, mind-altering, utterly arresting story about complicated families and fierce love and the losses that accumulate over the course of a life? Saeed Jones said, “Your wig is going to fall off no matter what you do,” and that’s just the truth.

Dead in Long Beach, California follows graphic novelist Coral, who thinks she’s stopping by her younger brother’s apartment for a visit and instead finds herself dealing with the aftermath of his suicide. In the haze of grief that settles after his body is taken away, Coral, understandably, finds herself unable to cope — so she takes her brother’s phone and begins to assume his digital presence. I’m talking text his daughter, make plans with his maybe-girlfriend, make the man an Instagram kind of assume his digital presence. This novel is, of course, soul-crushing. It’s also, sometimes, quite funny. It’s the story of one woman’s mental breakdown, it’s a lesbian sci-fi saga, and it’s a tender exploration of how humans struggle to process unimaginable loss. It’s upsetting and absurd and, at times, you don’t know where it’s going to take you, but it always sets you down right where you need to be. It’s a grief novel, sure, but that’s not even the half of it.

Listen, I could go on and on about the rollercoaster that is Dead in Long Beach, California, but this is not a review, and I was lucky enough to sit down with Venita and talk all things debut novel — so I’ll let her tell you the rest herself.

Author’s Note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Daven McQueen: Starting out with a classic first question, what was your inspiration for this book? Where did you come up with the idea?

Venita Blackburn: Well, I had the idea for the interior parts of the book far earlier. The original title was “Lesbian Assassins at the End of the World.” That was sort of the big vision. I was kind of going to do this wild, epic kind of high fantasy sci-fi sort of thing with a small tether to modern existence and set in California in different time periods and all that kind of jazz. But I also tend to look into a lot of my older work and there’s always something that I’m not done with — concepts, characters that are still nagging me and rubbing against my psyche. I have to go back and sort of figure out what it is that’s still bugging me. There’s a few stories from my second collection, How to Wrestle a Girl, about dysfunctional maternal situations and femininity and sexuality, and I carried a little bit of that over into Dead in Long Beach. Then I started to deal with why I was trying to do this high fantasy sci-fi kind of world that is so far away from the things I know. I found it’s because of these profound senses of loss, this world of transformation and this feeling that we cannot go back to what we used to be and to the relationships we used to have.

I wrote most of the book during the pandemic, this huge moment in time — and we’re still in it. We’re still in this transformative state where we have to make a lot of big choices about who we’re going to be and what things we’re going to carry forward from our past into our future. If we’re going to try to cut a lot of them off, what will that mean? Who will we be after that? And there’s also the sense of denial about the nature of our history, about who we are as individuals — capable of terror, great terror, and also great love and compassion. And this idea that we haven’t quite navigated that sense of our own selves in a lot of ways. That’s when I started to go into the real heart of the story, the frame story, that’s set in the real world with a character who’s lost her brother and is unable to psychologically process that. That became what I knew was going to be the biggest story. I did a lot of trimming of the big fantasy in order to make room for what I would call a horror story.

It’s a little funny, but it is a tragedy. It is emotionally taxing to think about it, let alone to have to produce it over and over again on the page. I started to realize that I was distracting myself with the other story because it was fun and weird and sexy. That’s why the story wasn’t coming out.

DM: What you just said, describing the book as a horror — that’s something that really struck me as I was reading. It’s like, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, there’s this sense of claustrophobia. At the same time, like you said, you do have this sci-fi story interwoven throughout and this narrative voice that is non-traditional and extra-human. I’m wondering how you’ve come to think about the genre of this book, if there’s a way that you feel like you define it.

VB: The only kinds of genres I tend to think about is sort of, is it nonfiction? Is it poetry? Is it fiction? How close to reality are we going to get? Within the different breakdowns of fiction, I have no idea what this book is. Is it literary fiction? Is it fantasy? Is it sci-fi? It is this kind of strange anomaly in terms of genre. I would definitely call it a horror story, but that’s just because this is what I would classify as horror. I grew up watching traditional horror movies with my mom when I was a kid, very young, like five or six years old. She was just into it. She loved ghost stories and psychological trauma stories, and now those movies have a sense of comfort for me. Men behaving like monsters, dressed up in costumes, that’s almost cute to me versus, you know, what I think is truly terrifying. The truly terrifying things are the stuff that we can’t see. The stuff that’s going on internally, the breakdown of the mind, the loss of people that you love. The stuff that happens in real life, that’s horrifying.

DM: I’m also a big horror fan, and I’ve been watching them since I was really young, so a lot of the traditional scares feel sort of…

VB: Goofy?

DM: Yeah, goofy!

VB: They’re goofy. They’re silly! And I love that you mentioned claustrophobia as an element of horror and isolation. This particular character is dealing with that kind of internal claustrophobia. The world seems very big to her because of the life she’s living, tangential to fame in Southern California, which has that vast feeling. We don’t do a lot of high rises here, so the landscape is kind of low to the ground, too. You can sort of see the expanse of nature; things feel kind of open. But on the inside, she’s not connected to human beings in a way that she ever will be again. She’s gone through this complete separation and she’s unable to speak it. And that creates that other layer of claustrophobia where she is kind of bound in her own brain. No one else is in there with her except for the voice, which isn’t her own voice. That collective hive, that’s her only comfort.

DM: I do want to talk a little bit more about this hive voice. The first-person plural is so rarely used in fiction, and I’m curious about how you decided to use it.

VB: I love the first-person plural. I think it’s a beautiful voice with a sense of authority over the content. That’s sort of the trick that it brings. Every POV has its own little tricks. The first person is limited to just one person’s brain, comes out of their voice and their perceptions. You can’t go beyond it. You don’t have that sort of god-like aerial view of the world. The first-person plural allows you to get that, but also to have that god-like sense of everything else, because you always have more than one, the “we.” I think it’s just magical, the way that authority immediately happens. I call it the sort of natural sense of peer review built into the voice. It’s also a sense of community and a sense of belonging that’s built into the voice. And that’s exactly the thing that this character has lost, right? Her family is now broken, and her sense of self is broken too. She needs something that’s going to keep her tethered. In this moment, because she is so isolated, all she has is her own brain. This is the voice that she’s actually created for her own artistic purposes, and it’s the one she falls back on in order to navigate her way through this terrifying moment in her own life.

DM: It is really interesting the way that the voice does have this sort of collective feeling. There’s some level of warmth and community there, but we’re looking in on Coral who is so increasingly isolated and inside her own brain. I think that contrast really contributes to the sense of horror.

VB: Yeah, and I tried to create a sense of momentum as well, going forward, where it’s getting worse. You know, she’s got to make progressively worse choices. That’s just the rule. That’s the fiction part of things. Things’ve got to get worse and worse and worse and worse until they can’t anymore. But the voice has a sort of steady attitude about it all. Even if it’s terrible, that voice says, no, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful and horrifying. Let us practice it. Let us, you know, revel in the marvel of this maliciousness. It’s this juxtaposition of all of the good and the bad and the things that make up humanity and make up who we become in these crisis moments, too. The beauty and the violence, the sadness and the celebration.

DM: Because of the voice, as much as the book is really focused on what’s going on inside Coral’s head and this experience of her life unraveling after her brother’s death, there is also this broader unpacking of what people are and why they make the choices they do. There is sort of this sense of doom around that, but at the same time the collective voice is, saying, “Everything’s going to be okay.” You saying you wrote this during the pandemic makes a lot of sense; I can see a lot of those feelings present there. I feel like it’s also really speaking to the present political moments that we’re in and the increasing sense of doom that a lot of people are feeling. But at the same time, the voice is engaging with some level of hope. I’m curious about how you think about that hope-doom balance in the book and how that connects to the world and humanity more broadly.

VB: I don’t believe in hope. But I’m also optimistic. I have that kind of ancient Greek philosophy about hope, that it arrests man’s despair. It makes you stuck. It’s when you’re in a crisis moment, and instead of doing anything, you’re just sort of hoping that things work. It’s also the thing you say to somebody when you’re not going to do absolutely anything to help them. You know, they tell you that they’re sick and you’re like, “Oh, I hope you get better.” I try to remove the word “hope” as much as possible from my lexicon because it has that feeling to me of inaction. I want to encourage people to, if you see something terrible in your life, in your community, that you make an effort to change it. You don’t want hope, you want action. You want reason. You want logic and purpose. You have to have all of those things, no matter what happens in the end.

That’s sort of my personal philosophy of things. And I guess it filters into that voice as well, because technically the end has already happened. People didn’t make it, according to the voice. It’s speaking beyond humanity, and it’s doing so in a way that’s sort of honoring their presence. It’s a child loving their grandparents and honoring their ancestors, even though really, the voice is not even human. They’re just sort of data. And I think that’s kind of connected too to where we are, where the last thing that we might leave is just a record of ourselves, just our data. We’re generating a lot of it all the time, to the point where it becomes so messy and chaotic that we don’t even know how to recognize ourselves amongst all of these little echoes that we’re leaving all over the digital spaces we inhabit. I’m kind of obsessed with that idea, but not that it’s going to destroy us. I don’t think our technology will be the end of us. If anything takes us out, it’s going to be us. But I don’t even think that will happen, you know — I think we will endure. We’re a surviving sort of species. We have thumbs! We keep creating new ways for us to prosper and to survive. But we keep forgetting a lot of things. We almost encourage ourselves to not think about our mistakes in our history. That’s the thing that can keep us from progressing and keep us arrested in our own despair and suffering. Because we don’t even know how we got there, because we forgot, because we didn’t teach it to our children. We didn’t make that record. Human beings are always this way. We always make a mess. We always clean it up. We’re violent to each other. We’re violent to our children, to ourselves. And then we are suddenly capable of such compassion and gifts of love without question. That’s the thing that’s hard to record. We forget that really easily as well, especially in our age of presentation, where if you’re if you’re not online protesting for something, then you don’t believe in it. It’s only real if we see it in these small squares of digital light. That’s not the true human self either. We have to keep reminding ourselves of all the different levels and states of existence that we’re constantly cycling through all the time in order to just be.

I don’t believe in hope. But I’m also optimistic. I have that kind of ancient Greek philosophy about hope, that it arrests man’s despair. It makes you stuck.

DM: I absolutely love that perspective. I think so much of what we’re fed is just this very black and white idea of like, either you have hope for the future and it’s just so misguided or we’re doomed, everyone’s going to die, climate apocalypse in the next, like, 15 years. That, I think, removes humanity from the equation in a way. This book has a sort of reverence for humanity and what we’re capable of that I feel like you don’t see that often. I really saw that kind of undergirding the whole story.

VB: I appreciate that you saw that. And that’s also kind of how I think. I’ve been called chronically unbothered or something along those lines. I don’t know where it comes from; I haven’t always been that way. I’ve gone through my cycles of being humbled by the world, being humbled by personal loss, and having to really build a lot of good habits around self-reflection and things like that. I have a lot of causes that really affect me mentally. Education is one, homelessness is another, violence against women is another. And then all of the other things across the globe that are all connected to those same things, connected to property, to extreme wealth gaps. That all really make me mad. It tends to disturb my unbotheredness because I can see how much suffering trickles down from all of those things. I think about that kind of perpetual nature of it, how we just have these bright moments of enlightenment on occasion, and then they break. You think you have a generation of peace, then you go a little further around the world and realize, oh, there’s an apocalypse happening just there. All that keeps cycling around itself. The only thing that we can really control is ourselves, you know, save who you can save. We have to remember to stop and go talk to each other in real life, in real time and make eye contact and move through the air with each other and walk this planet because that’s the real thing of life. You have that duty to care for yourself and care for your community. That will be the best thing we can never leave behind.

DM: Absolutely. And I think this book is kind of instructive, in a way. Or, well — the issues Coral is dealing with in the aftermath of this loss, the lack of connection and separating herself from the world, we’re seeing in her how things can go wrong and, in some ways, how not to act. As I was reading, there were moments where I was like, oh my god, stop doing that. But at the same time, I was like, I understand how this feels like the only thing that she can control. She’s trying to maintain a hold on anything possible. And…I don’t know if I have a question out of that.

VB: Well, that’s kind of what I was talking about with the juxtaposition of the good and the bad, because it starts off where Coral just needs a little bit more time, right? She’s mad at the world, she’s mad at men, she’s mad at all the things that have put her into this position where she has to clean up for people around her. But then she says, I’m going to make it stop. I want to make everything calm and peaceful and not let anybody suffer for a while. She almost gives people a gift of withholding the trauma of the loss. Then it turns into this act of cruelty where she’s actually setting them up for higher expectations. She’s sort of reaching into their futures and creating the impossible with these different relationships her brother has. And that’s part of the violence. Her anger starts to manifest in other ways. She becomes manipulative, she becomes toxic, she starts to go off into the world in progressively worse ways.

Yes, it is not an instruction manual. There is no instruction manual for grieving. When it hits you, it just hits you, and you’re just going to walk through the way it does. I say in the acknowledgments that this is just one shape of grief. It will take its own form for everyone. It’s an amorphous experience and there’s no right or wrong, truly. People just, you know, we do things that have consequences and all we can manage is what happens in the before and the after. And that’s the reality. There are no solutions offered here. In some of the earlier stages of the editorial process, my editor mentioned that we don’t get a note or anything from Coral’s brother. We don’t really talk about why the suicide happens. And I said, well, that’s not the book. That’s not the point here. This is not a book about how to get over it or prevent these things from happening. These things happen and sometimes we’re here right in the middle of the crack of devastation, the crack of grief, the crack of suffering, and this is what it can look like. That was the only promise I made, that we’re going to be right there. I’m not going to give you any reasons, I’m not going to give you any solutions, but here we are.

DM: And we definitely were right there the whole time. I know your two short story collections also dealt a lot with grief and families grieving. What draws you to write about grief?

VB: You know, there is this phrase — I wonder if it came out of a Disney cartoon or something — but it’s the saying that every story is a love story. It probably is not from a Disney cartoon. But I agree with that. I think every story is a love story, but also every story is a grief story. You know, it’s about loss. It’s about goodbyes and transformation and losing things of the self. I think every story is really invested in all of those things. There are these deep connections, this deep need and desire to feel like you belong and like someone cares about you without question. Every character is trying to find that somehow. But they’re also navigating this sense of deep loss of something. It can be very small, but it’s usually on that bead of grief somewhere. I think this story falls into both. It is both a love story and a grief story. The collective voice, the thing that is holding Coral in place, is profoundly in love with humanity, and that is essential because it’s also a reflection of this deep love Coral has for her family, for her brother, for all of the people that she has been losing. I think that’s just part of my view of people, so all of my stories are going to have that. It’s going to have loss. It’s going to have love. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about people, in my own mind.

But I also write about this weird period of adolescence, when you’re changing into yourself as a person, figuring out your own sexuality and how you’re going to present yourself to the world. I call it adolescence, but a lot of us go through adolescence for like, 30 years. Like, I used to wear really cute, like, body dresses. I had this Victoria’s secret type style; I was a super tall, weird, kind of, you know, gangly thing. Now I dress more like a dad on vacation. I got a grandpa chic sort of thing going. And I’ve never been more myself than I am now. And that’s just the surface level. That’s still part of giving up the thing and losing the thing you thought you had. That too is built into the love and the grief and the goodbyes and the hellos.

DM: I think that’s particularly true of queerness, this idea that when you come out you basically go through a second puberty. We kind of see that with Coral’s character, the ways she’s evolved through time. We see her discovering her sexuality, her first girlfriend and all these relationships, up to the dates she goes on after her brother’s death.

VB: Those are so weird. Oh my god.

DM: Yeah, I was like, oh my god. Leave the bowling alley!

We have to remember to stop and go talk to each other in real life, in real time and make eye contact and move through the air with each other and walk this planet because that’s the real thing of life. You have that duty to care for yourself and care for your community. That will be the best thing we can never leave behind.

VB: The one thing she does that I really love is that she did not order pizza for her coworkers. I was like, I support that. I support you leaving them in this state of hunger and just walking away. Of all the bad choices she made, I did like that one.

DM: I loved that moment. When she sticks her head back in and is like, it’s on the way. There is this uncomfortable delight in all of the ways that she’s making these choices and deceiving people. You’re like, oh, god, but you’re also kind of like, that’s kind of fun.

VB: I like that you saw it that way. I do have to say that when I wrote a lot of these parts, I was not in a good place. I was in the weeds, you know, kind of delirious, tapping into the rhythm of the sounds and the voice, the scenes, and the metaphors and all that kind of stuff, cycling through that sort of writer moment. Then months later, I would go back to read them and I would just crack up. I was like, oh my god, I am insane. It was not funny on the first write through. But once you experience it in a different state, it has this other effect. And I kind of like that. I like that it could be this dark place and this light place.

DM: A lot of your work is really focused on Southern California, and I know you grew up in Compton and in the LA area. I also grew up around LA, so there is a lot of familiarity to me in this book. I’m really curious about the way you portray Los Angeles — you capture a lot of the reality of it, but there’s also this sort of dreamlike quality where it doesn’t it doesn’t feel quite real. It’s like LA in a dream. How were you thinking about the sense of place as you were writing this?

VB: I’ve heard it described that way a lot, the sort of the dreamscape of LA. And I agree with that, because isn’t LA kind of like this dream? It means a lot of things to people, even from around the world. They have this idea of it. And I think that’s more LA than the real thing. The idea that this collective vision of this place is actually much better. People think of LA as a sort of nice, clean place, you know, hopes and dreams or whatever, celebrities and whatnot. But it’s actually really nasty. It’s super old and it can be dangerous, like any big city can be. I remember once I went to a conference in downtown LA, around the Staples Center. It’s got all the usual stuff, all the sort of semi-fancy, semi-pretentious chain restaurants packed with people. The food is just like, whatever, but you know, the sidewalks are clean and it’s bright and there’s palm trees or whatever, and a nice, beautiful breeze comes through so certain times you might even also smell the ocean a little bit. You all have these different kinds of sensory experiences going on and people look stylish, their clothes are bright and colorful. Then I turned a corner and a man was there bleeding out of the side of his body. He had just been stabbed. He had wandered off from close to Skid Row and was sort of yelling, you know, I got stabbed. No one did anything. I think a security guard popped out eventually and ushered him back to that area. And I remember standing there thinking, like, look at this. We think everything is okay, everything is working out. We’ve painted this picture, and then the reality wanders back over and no one does anything. I didn’t do anything. It’s all happening within a very few seconds.

That’s LA to me. It’s a mess. It’s this sort of construction of self, but there’s something gruesome underneath. There’s people just struggling. There’s tons of debt. There’s people trying to pick their dreams off the floor. But there’s still the idea of LA pulsing all the time around them. You’re just going to work and living your life, but it’s still right up against this extreme wealth and possibility for fame.

DM: Zooming out a little bit, there’s a lot going on in this book. The genre is kind of undefinable. There’s so much complexity in the narration and the character and her experiences. What is the process of writing a book like this? How do you keep it all straight in your head and have a sense of where it begins and where it ends?

VB: That is so hard, and this is why I’m just terrified of having to write another novel. I really appreciated those early times when I was writing stories and nobody cared if I was ever going to be a writer. It was sort of just me by myself doing this thing. I could make anything happen. With this book, because it’s so long, I hadn’t written a novel like this since I was a grad student. And even that one, I reduced it down to a few pages and published that. I’m like, ah, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen here. I can’t keep track of everything in my brain the way I’m used to, because in a flash fiction story, it’s two pages. I can look at the top anytime I want to, I can look at the bottom anytime I want to, I can keep track of all the objects that I’m manipulating.

This time, I’ve got so many little pieces all over the place. I felt sort of disoriented a lot of times. That was before I started to do a lot of the revision parts and the cutting and the reducing and sort of finding the things that I really wanted to keep versus the things that I was just sort of writing out of a desperate need to be elsewhere for whatever reason. I think there’s a novelist trick where you don’t think about the beginnings and the ends. All you think about is the task at hand on any given day. So if I’m writing about, you know, depression and ice cream or whatever it is, that’s it. My whole task for the day is to explore those two things for this character in this moment. And I don’t have to leave it. I don’t have to worry about trying to make it match up to anything. I have to trust my outline, trust that it’s going to be fine, and just devote the time to the language there on the page.

DM: Yeah, that’s such a mood. I know this book is just about to come out, but I’m curious what you’re looking to next. What are you writing towards, post this book?

VB: I am working on another novel, gosh darn it. But I’m also writing short stories simultaneously. People are asking me for some of the new stuff, but I’m holding on to them. Kind of seeing what I want to do with it. I’m starting to think more in terms of whole books now than I used to. Kind of the entire shape of a collection, entire shape of a novel before committing to the wholehearted writing of it. I am working on a novel that is going to be sort of historical horror, supernatural fiction. It’s an extension of a story I already wrote, a long, serialized story that came out in the Gagosian. It’s called Memoir of a Poltergeist. It’s about an ancient ghost that possesses this black lesbian in the Reconstruction period of the American South. And it too is a love story. It too is a grief story. But it’s got these different layers of the characters’ psychology. You’ve got the ghost, you’ve got the actual woman, you’ve got the community, there’s a kidnapping and a murder — it’s all crazy.

DM: It really feels like your work occupies its own cinematic universe of like, I don’t even know how it would be defined. But I’m excited for the next installment of it. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you want to say about the book or your process or anything?

VB: I just want to always encourage people to be kind to each other, to have compassion, to choose compassion over violence whenever possible. And it’s going to be hard, and nobody listens to me, but still give it a shot. Do the good work, do the thing, take care of people. Don’t expect anything in return, not a single thing. And now you’re alive.

Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn is out now. 

Alyson Stoner on the Power of Movement and Queer Joy

feature image photo of Alyson Stoner by David Livingston / Contributor via Getty Images

When I was younger, I would sometimes be compared to Alyson Stoner. Not just in looks — athletic, brunette, tomboy fashion — but in personality, too. From what we could at least see on screen, Alyson and I both enjoyed being the center of attention; we were creative, we were confident, and we acted older than we were. Okay, and I choreographed a dance to a Missy Elliot song for my middle school talent show. WHO DIDN’T?

I used to think it was so cool to be compared to Alyson, as if it meant I could be like them when I was older. Well, I’m older, and I recently spent an hour talking with Alyson Stoner. It turns out we are just alike. For those who don’t know what Alyson has been up to too since their days on Step Up, Cheaper by the Dozen, Phineas and Ferb, and being every young millennials’ queer awakening… they’ve been busy. They became a mental health advocate, they wrote a book called MIND BODY PRIDE, they started a podcast called Dear Hollywood where they expose the child star industry, and they co-founded a digital wellness platform, Movement Genius.

I became aware of Movement Genius because of the free workshops they held for queer and trans folks gearing up to face some bullshit at home over the holidays. By bullshit, I of course mean transphobia, homophobia, deadnaming, misgendering… you know the stuff. I wanted to learn more about Alyson and, specifically, what kind of gay things the Disney alum was up to in the wellness industry.

We chatted about inequities in health, honesty, and when we’re allowed to experience queer joy.

Author’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Motti: “Self care” is a term that has changed a lot throughout the past couple of years. I’d love to hear about the measures that you take as a founder and as a programmer to steer away from that.

Alyson: Absolutely. Yes, you’re speaking to an all too common representation of wellness as being a byproduct of materialistic consumption and we would use the term whitewashed. Wellness has notoriously looked a very particular way, typically people who are thin, light skinned or white, non-disabled, and who can afford retreats and $150 serums.

Movement Genius deliberately inverts that entirely. And we say, if you only had your own mind and body and you couldn’t afford anything else, or you weren’t in a space and environment where you could access an outside tool, how can you learn how to feel safe, comfortable and confident in who you are?

So our tools are about understanding the map of your own psyche and nervous system. It’s also about understanding when self regulation reaches its limit, and we have to learn how to coregulate in community as a tool for healing. Essentially, we looked at the wellness market and we saw two glaring discrepancies.

One, mental health is typically segmented with modalities that focus neck up, and so they ignore the stress and anxiety stored in the body, which, when you’re in a heightened threat response, your body is what’s going to be activated and needs to be tended to before you can even reaccess your full cognitive capacity.

And so we thought, well, we absolutely need to address the mind and body together, which scientifically speaking, there’s really no separation. But that’s just the verbage we’ve grown accustomed to with the biomedical framework. You don’t have to put any of this geeky stuff in there.

Motti: I love the geeky stuff.

Alyson: (laughs) Then we can go all day long.

Then, the second is that the products themselves only worked for such a narrow group of people that it actually increased health inequity, because the people who already had tools got more and the people who needed them didn’t have any. So we sought to collaborate with therapists and movement experts, mindfulness coaches who represent the gamut of humanity.

And when I say that, I mean it. Like, every letter of every acronym, we have. Every physical embodiment, every kind of disability — physical, cognitive, visible, invisible, different ranges of mobility — so that our tool kits and content really offered something for as many people as possible. In that case, when people show up to our classes, it’s a really common response for folks to name that they haven’t genuinely felt like they’ve been in a welcoming and warm space in this way, because it’s really human.

In some ways, we’re like the anti-capitalistic wellness company, where we want it to feel like you can truly show up exactly as you are, any energy, any mood, and start there because that’s what your actual self care is going to look like on a daily basis.

That’s the long winded answer.

Motti: That’s a great answer. What’s important to you when you’re deciding who will be hosting these workshops for Movement Genius, and specifically for these Holiday workshops that are geared towards queer folks.

Alyson: There are several things. The first is relationship building. If we’re going to offer a space, we have to trust the people who are facilitating virtual or in person spaces, and that takes time. Often, platforms just rotate new creators or speakers through because of the need for novelty. The vetting is not necessarily as stringent as we like to be, because we feel very protective of our community.

We know that nothing is ever a perfect safe space.There’s always a chance that someone shows up, or is having a certain day and behaves in a way that might cause harm. But we can put a lot of parameters in place, and we do so.

We do deep research on the speakers, their training modalities, even the books that they read. We like to get to know them as humans. So we know what the subliminal concepts they will be sharing in the middle moments where it’s not just their script, but it’s their humanity coming forward,

Second, we look at current events and what’s topically relevant. So, at the moment, for queer folks and collectively, there are so many overlapping crises, and we’re entering winter months as well, which often bring a certain heaviness, density, proneness to isolation, feeling of isolation. So we’re wanting to bring in speakers who can help this particular period.

So, Keanu Jackson (@theblackqueertherapist) and Regina Rocke (@rocke_body) have a very nurturing and nourishing presence. Both of them. As a business, everyone follows the professional parameters and stays within healthy boundaries, interactions, but you don’t have to leave your humanity at the door when you enter.

Motti: We believe in queer professionalism, too. I love working with queer and trans people.

What is the importance for you to offer these workshops accessibly and sometimes free?

Alyson: We do the busy work on the back end to find partners who can help sponsor and offset the expenses, which mainly go to our American Sign Language team, so that deaf and hard of hearing folks can join, too, with more ease. We have transcriptions, but, you know, let’s do better. We can’t, as a small company, afford that for every class quite yet.

There is something I think about not just the financial barrier being removed, but also the social stigma barrier being removed, because you can show up entirely anonymously. It’s also very low risk and potential high reward if you have no reference point for these services and you end up finding something that can change the trajectory of your healing. If it doesn’t resonate, you didn’t invest anything other than, you know, adding your email to this little signup sheet.

I think removing the stigma is helpful, too, because people can watch at their leisure. If you’re someone who is quite introverted or feels a little overwhelmed by social spaces like this, the recording will be in your inbox whenever it feels aligned for you to watch it.

The other thing I’ll add here is that the holiday period is, especially for queer trans folks, particularly sensitive times for a number of reasons. The one top of mind is, if you’re returning home to a space that is transphobic, homophobic, queerphobic, and you don’t have a sense of community… you also maybe feel like you can’t fully express who you are. So, you’re kind of stuffing it down, shutting down, dismissing, rejecting parts of yourself for the duration of the family event, and then you’re left with yourself at night, wondering when your parents will accept you. Or you’re dealing with the icky feeling of being misgendered all day, then the spirals that can happen in terms of our own dysphoria. I think this is sort of like an antidote.

Motti: What are some ways that you personally destress during the holidays?

Alyson: Oh, man. My sister, who is my co-founder, Correy, and I made a commitment that if we were going to start a mental health and wellness company, we would not sacrifice our own wellbeing. It’s a learning curve for both of us. We’ve got some martyrs in the family, that’s for sure. But I have been teaching a lot lately, and I’m finding that those are actually not replacements, but added gifts and opportunities for me to utilize the techniques myself.

Movement comes as no surprise with my background and also training and the company. Somatic movement really has changed my life, particularly in that it helps me be able to survive the experience of being with myself. No matter what happens in the day, I can look to a gentle, steady, movement, and oriented release. And it can be an artistic expression, or it can be like purely practical muscle relaxation.

It might sound like a shameless plug for the company, but the tools that we share are actually the healing tools that Correy and I both needed for our own journeys, including treating trauma, chronic illness, and just everyday stress.

Motti: That’s really great. I think movement is a fantastic tool I should use more.

Alyson: And not fitness, by the way, not “No Pain, No Gain” kind of movement. For some people, that’s helpful, but for me, it has to be more about a holistic, softer landing.

Motti: What does your best self look like?

Alyson: Honesty. Allowing myself to accept and integrate all the parts of who I am into the greater whole and not shy away from truthfulness, self, and honesty with myself.

Motti: That’s great. That’s something I’m trying really hard to do, too.

Alyson: I mean, there’s a lot of deconstruction involved, right? Like you have to deconstruct the whole morality bullshit before it even feels safe enough to admit some of these things. I don’t know if you ever were in a church congregation growing up, but I’ve got the religious structure like, “thou shalt not,” you know. But if I’m being honest, I just want to be a good person for all of it.

Motti: I grew up in the Catholic church and then did the silly thing of, when I was a girl and in college, I joined a sorority where there was a whole new set of rules about how you can and cannot be.

Alyson: Yeah!

Motti: I came out a couple of years ago, and I’m slowly deconstructing. First, it was all the gender constructs. Now, I’m in this sobriety moment and fearless confidence. I’m like, discovering that I have confidence. So, it’s definitely taken a while, but I think at the root of all of it is honesty.

So that speaks to me, and I think it’ll speak to other people, too.

Alyson: I’m also sober. I never started, so the term is not quite the same, but it is a different lifestyle when you’re fully present for all of the experiences. I should say I coped with other substances — it was food for me — but when you stop engaging in certain things and you’re like…I guess I’m sitting here feeling all of the things underneath that.

Motti: Exactly.

Alyson: It’s ultimately liberating, ultimately empowering, and ultimately expansive. When people talk about the trans experience, or queer experience being contagious — like they’re afraid of their child becoming gay or something — I think, “If only you were so lucky!” We would all be liberated.

It’s like a ticket to deconstruct everything that has ever suppressed everyone. Suddenly you’re liberated in all spaces, including you as great as human.

Motti: Yes! They can do it, too!

Alyson: Oh my gosh. If only they knew.

Motti: I know.

Alyson: I feel lucky that I saw love in a woman ten years ago. Change my life.

Motti: Wow. Good for you. Ten years for me, too. I’m not with her now, but she taught me a lot. Would you want to engage in some vapid fluff for Autostraddle?

Alyson: (nods nervously)

Motti: Well, you and Autostraddle have something in common, which is that you’ve both helped so many queer people figure out that they’re queer. I know there’s going be some readers on this article who are going to be so happy to be reading from Alyson Stoner.

Alyson: Ugh, my heart.

Motti: The same people who found the publication a decade ago by Googling “Am I Gay?”

Alyson: Oh, I’ve probably been on it then. I instantly feel like a voluntary sibling to whoever is reading and just wanting to speak to the wonderful, multi-dimensional, expansive human that’s reading this. The thing that comes to mind is, if we’re seeking “truth” about ourselves or the world, we get to ask questions and discover an experiment, and trust that whatever is true will remain and whatever isn’t can fall away.

And I think sometimes, at first, that can be a bit scary, because we’ve held on to beliefs about ourselves or a story about our life, and these new curiosities or realizations might conflict with that original story.

Motti: Mhmm.

Alyson: It’s okay to validate the uncomfortable feelings as well as create space for a new story and to really move at your own pace. One of the most beautiful things, especially in the queer experience, is joy. Queer joy. I used to be kind of militant about the growth curve of it all until someone, maybe it was a therapist, was like… “If you’re seeking joy, you get to feel joy along the way, right?”

You don’t attack joy militantly and then wake up and feel joyful. And so, if you’re seeking wholeness, if you’re seeking joy, if you’re seeking liberation, the beautiful news is that you get to feel pieces of that every step of the way.

Motti: Wow.

Alyson: Those can be really beautiful guides. But move at your own pace and just know that you have a queer sibling somewhere in the world rooting for you.

Movement Genius has over 250 on-demand classes available on their website, the first season of Dear Hollywood is available to listen everywhere, and you can keep up with Alyson’s advocacy work on their Instagram.

Sex Scenes Belong in Novels: An Interview with Author Ruth Madievsky

feature image photo of Ruth Madievsky by Adam F. Phillips

I recently got the opportunity to talk with Ruth Madievsky, author of one of my favorite books of the year, All-Night Pharmacy. Described by Kristen Arnett as, “…rich and boldly dark, slick and queer in all the best ways,” All-Night Pharmacy is a show-stopping novel following a young unnamed narrator living in the shadow of her alluringly chaotic sister Debbie. The two spend their nights traipsing the streets of Los Angeles before ending up at Salvation, a bar full of fellow misfits, chasing highs through a cycle of alcohol, drugs, and risky decisions. One night after a particularly potent cocktail of hard liquor and unidentified pills, our narrator finds herself pushed to an act of violence after which Debbie disappears. Trying to figure out how to exist without her sister’s influence, she takes a job as an Emergency Room receptionist where she steals prescription medications to manage her opioid addiction. While she’s there, she meets her girlfriend Sasha, a self-identified psychic and Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who acts as her spiritual guide. In this relationship, our narrator must learn to navigate her existence alongside questions of sobriety, mysticism, and generational trauma.

Madievsky’s debut poetry collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016), was the winner of the Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series and spent five months on Small Press Distribution’s Poetry Bestsellers list. She’s a founding member of the The Cheburashka Collective, a community of women and nonbinary writers whose identity has been shaped by immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States.

Author’s Note: This interview has been edited, and some conversational threads have been re-organized for clarity. 

Gen: Hey Ruth, how are you?

Ruth: Hi Gen! I’m good — working on an op-ed related to HIV care today. How are you?

Gen: I’m good! Actually, you mentioning your op-ed gives me a nice segue into my first question. Do you mind sharing a bit about your work as a pharmacist and how that work informed All-Night Pharmacy?

Ruth: I didn’t set out to write about anything pharmacy-related, but once it became clear that All-Night Pharmacy was going to be full of grifters and schemers, a scam involving pharmaceuticals felt like one I could speak on! As much as I love books that are clearly heavily researched — I remember being in awe of Rebecca Makkai reading every issue of a Chicago gay periodical on background for writing The Great Believers — I wasn’t interested in spending a thousand years in the archives to think of a scam I couldn’t wrap my head around on my own. And having spent some time in emergency rooms at various points in my training, as well as responding to cardiac and respiratory arrests when I was working as a hospital pharmacist, I was interested in the extremity of the ER. It felt like fertile ground for fiction, especially for the narrator of All-Night Pharmacy, who lives in such extremes.

Gen: I loved the setting of the ER for the narrator as a space where she observes those extremes and lives surrounded by prescriptions. She also got to live my dream of being approached by a hot woman at work who says she can guide her through life.

Ruth: (laughs) Yeah.

Gen: Sasha added a lot to this narrative for me in terms of how I read the narrator’s experience with addiction and obsession. Throughout the novel, readers are able to see her struggles with opioid and benzodiazepine dependence, addictive patterns of behavior, and the difficulties of looking for what lives underneath those patterns. What was your experience like writing into addiction and weaving the narrative threads around it together?

Ruth: It was important to me to not write about addiction as a moral failing, because it’s not. There’s so much stigma there already, and I didn’t want to throw another log in the pile. I was also interested in exploring the way historical traumas can affect those who are several generations removed. It felt to me that there was a connection between the narrator and Debbie putting themselves in peril and their family legacy of Soviet terror and the Holocaust. Not the kind of connection that can be summarized in a pithy thesis, but a connection nonetheless. I wanted to explore how being the descendant of survivors can fuck a person up.

I mean, one could write the math class scene in a way that’s just as erotic as a sex scene, but I digress.

Gen: I really appreciate the ways both your writing and work as a medical provider act in opposition to that stigma. We see this intense almost co-dependence when it comes to our narrator with her sister Debbie and also with her girlfriend Sasha. It had me thinking a lot about what it looks like to try to separate yourself from the people who understand the darkest parts of you and people who you share a history of generational trauma with. Was that a question you were thinking about as you were writing these characters?

Ruth: Totally. The narrator lashes out at Debbie for being such a dominating presence in her life, but really, she wants to be dominated. She’s consumed with unease over how to be a person and craves being told what to do. When Debbie disappears, Sasha becomes a less toxic version of that for our narrator. She helps her hone her own agency and act on her desires. But also, she’s another person telling our narrator what to do.

Gen: I can absolutely see that in her personal life and in her sex life. You have some really powerful sex scenes that exist at the intersection of desire, domination, and violence. Did you have a specific approach or mentality when it came to writing sex for this novel?

Ruth: I’ve always been interested in the interplay between tenderness/desire and violence. It’s so silly to see internet discourse about whether explicit sex scenes are “necessary.” I don’t know, Regina, are nectarines and cough drops and your brother “necessary”? I don’t think sex scenes have to “earn” their place in a book more than any other scene. But I also don’t buy that they don’t function differently on a craft level than other scenes. People pay more attention to them, I think, which means they function differently than a scene where someone is teaching a math class. I mean, one could write the math class scene in a way that’s just as erotic as a sex scene, but I digress. I think it’s easier for a sex scene to fail because we’re primed by our puritanical and sex-obsessed culture to take notice when we see sex on the page. I’m a poet, so I was already going to polish every sentence in the book like a fucking stone. With the sex scenes, I probably took a little extra care, knowing those might be more memorable.

Gen: Absolutely. I’m personally a big believer in including sex scenes when sex and sexuality are part of the narrative. Especially hot bathtub exorcisms.

Ruth: Especially those.

Gen: So important. You mentioned you’re poet which I could definitely feel in the way your sentences were crafted and the fluorescent visuality of the novel. Can you talk a bit about how your work as a poet affected this project?

Ruth: I wrote the novel the way I write poems — no outline, just me staring at a blank page, letting beauty and truth guide the way. I always feel so schmaltzy talking about Beauty and Truth like they’re essential oils in a Ponzi scheme. But it’s been my experience that the only way I can figure out what a piece of writing wants to be is by writing it. As with my poetry: image, voice, and chaotic metaphors were my favorite tools in the box. My obsession with constantly chiseling away at the line level also made it hard to tell sometimes whether a line, paragraph, or chapter etc were serving the book. Sometimes, that shit is a flex and doesn’t actually belong there.

Gen: Going back to essential oils, I’d love to hear a little bit about the setting of LA. Did you always know that was where you wanted this novel to take place?

Ruth: I’ve spent most of my life in LA, and it’s a city I love dearly. The occult is everywhere here. Growing up in a place where every other commercial block has a psychic shop — it felt inevitable that this would be the landscape of my novel, too. LA is so many different cities and is home to types of people you can’t even imagine. People writing screenplays with their gastroenterologist, water witches catching mistakes on your taxes. And also, you know, people living much more “normal” lives within the same margins. You can be anyone here, which means you can also be no one. That felt like the perfect backdrop for these characters.

Gen: It did feel like the perfect setting for this story. Also, if you know any water witches who can help me with my taxes, please send them my way. Can you share a bit about what you’ve been working on?

Ruth: I’ve been working on a new novel which is — you guessed it — about women behaving badly. Or, as my beloved Goodreads prudes will probably think of it: “disgusting women being disgusting.” Put it on my tombstone, bitches.

Author Mac Crane on the Eroticism of Basketball and Writing Queer and Trans Pleasure

feature image photo of Mac Crane by Jerrelle Wilson

There are so many brilliant queer authors putting out work today and I recently got the opportunity to chat with one of my favorites, Mac Crane (they/them). Their debut novel I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself takes place in a surveillance state where people convicted of wrongdoing by The Department of Balance are assigned an extra shadow and become “Shadesters.” These shadows serve a constant as a reminder of their shame as well as an invitation for societal discrimination and harassment. The novel opens with Shadester Kris as she’s handed her newborn daughter who has been assigned an extra shadow for “killing” her mother in childbirth. The story that unfolds is one grief but also of love and community in the face of institutional oppression. You can read more about I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself in Yashwina’s book review, and A+ members can check out the discord transcript from when Mac joined us back in March for Read A Fucking Book Club.

They recently a signed a two-book deal with Dial Press described by Publisher’s Marketplace as, “an untitled coming-of-age novel about obsession, ambition, and the intimate, erotic connection between two teammates, pitched as Call Me By Your Name meets Love & Basketball set at a Pennsylvania high school in the early 2000s; and a story collection centering queer and trans desire, performance, and the distance between who we are and what we want.”

Author’s Note: This interview has been edited, and some conversational threads have been re-organized for clarity. 

Gen: Hey Mac! How are you?

Mac: Hi! I’m good, how are you?

Gen: Oh dude, I’m good! Hyped to get a chance to talk with you.

Mac: I’m so excited to talk to you too. You are the best hype person I could dream of. Any excuse to talk gay and sports stuff.

Gen: Those are actually my two primary conversation genres.

Mac: Very much same.

Gen: Alright well, speaking of gay stuff, I’d love to start by asking you about your badass book I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself. I know this book started from your poem which reads, “If the shadows of everyone you’ve ever hurt followed you around, day in and day out, would you still be so reckless with people’s hearts?” What was the process like going from that poem to writing a full novel?

Mac: Oh man, unplanned. I mean the entire process. I never intended to write a novel about it. I wrote it when I was young and feeling very sad for myself and full of shame. I thought shaming myself into behaving better was a great idea. Like Scarlet Lettering myself. Then I promptly forgot about the poem. I had a lot of growing up to do and a lot of examining my shame and relationship to it. How the shame was what was preventing me from changing, not helping etc.

Gen: How did your mindset around shame evolve before and as you wrote this book?

Mac: I really had been living inside of it for so long. When I was young, I felt a lot of shame around being queer.

Gen: Been there.

Mac: I also felt a lot of shame around hurting people, which only perpetuated the cycle of pain. It felt pretty inescapable for a while, like I was just stuck going round and round and piling the shame on. I felt shame around mental health too, having severe anxiety and depression, not knowing what to do with any of it. But I started to think of shame as the actual issue…not all the things I was ashamed about. Shame was the thing that had to go. And if I couldn’t get rid of it completely, I would at least acknowledge the ways it affected my life, my decisions, my mental health and relationships.

Gen: Your book really helped me shift the ways I related to my own shame. It’s a really hard mindset to change, especially when we live in a world so hyper focused on punitive actions.

Mac: What was your relationship to shame like?

Gen: I have some pretty severe issues related to depression and anxiety which got compounded for a while with shame I felt around queerness. I was not always the best at dealing with it and for a while I just used coping strategies which were ultimately harmful to me and the people who cared about me. I’m entering an era where I’m trying to be more honest about it because I feel like not talking about our problems only adds to that shame pile on.

Mac: Oh absolutely — and thank you for sharing that with me. It’s weird, but I like talking about shame. I guess because it tends to be a thing people shy away from talking about. Even as we start having open conversations about many things related to it. I feel like, at least in my experience, shame is something we often talk around without actually naming it.

Gen: Totally.

Mac: It just got so entwined with everything else that I couldn’t piece any of it apart.

Gen: I could see that. Because this book isn’t just about shame on a personal level; it’s also talking about how corrupt governments utilize shame to further enforce systems of surveillance, marginalization, and punishment.

Mac: Yeah, for sure.

Gen: Did you set out to use the emotional landscape of shame and the genre of dystopia to write an abolitionist text? Or did that come together later?

Mac: I did. I wanted it to be abolitionist in nature, to draw the parallels between and reveal the cruelty of different forms of punishment. Like there are no prisons in the world of my book but they’ve replaced them with another punitive measure that’s inhumane. And if a reader who maybe isn’t sold on abolishing the prison industrial complex reads my book and feels that this shadow system and surveillance society is unjust and horrifying, maybe they can take that next step and realize how horrifying incarceration is.

Gen: How did your views on prison abolition evolve as you wrote this book? Do you have particular resource recommendations?

Mac: I was still very new to it while I was drafting Exoskeletons so I was just immersing myself in everything I could. Reading Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, Andrea J. Ritchie, Derecka Purnell, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and beyond. I think probably in the beginning I was so stoked on the idea of abolition but was limited in my vision or imagination — I couldn’t picture it or see how it would work, but reading all these essential texts really helped me imagine a better future.

Gen: We definitely live in a world that tries to limit our imagination when it comes to the possibility of living free from corrupt institutions. I feel like that actually goes nicely into my next question. I know you’re a parent and you write about parenting really beautifully here. How has parenting gone on to impact your writing?

Mac: Man, I mean it’s impacted my writing in practical ways like I have way less predictable time to sit down and just write at my computer. Parenting has helped me embrace a flexibility that I never really had. I was so rigid, especially with my own schedule. Like, I will get up every day at 5 am and work on whatever and if I don’t then I’m a failure. Then there’s the shame again. Parenting has helped me view everything as writing — which feels corny to say but every time I say it, it feels truer and truer. I slow down and meditate on my writing, on big questions I want my work to interrogate and then you know, it maybe gives me more of that imagination for a better future we were talking about. I have this tiny person in my care who I want so much for.

Gen: I have no doubt you’re an amazing parent and the art you’re putting into the world is making it better. On the topic of art you’re putting into the world, congratulations on your two book deal! What can you share with us about the projects?

Mac: Thank you! So, it’s for a novel and a story collection. Right now, the novel is called A Sharp Endless Need.

Gen: Gay.

Mac: Gay. Very Gay. It’s about two high school queer basketball players in 2004 in bumble Pennsylvania.

Gen: My dreams have come true.

Mac: It’s something that is near and dear to my heart for a million reasons.

Gen: Can you give maybe one or two?

Mac: Well, it’s not autofiction, but it gets at the heart of my adolescence. Before I really realized I was queer, I had a lot of complicated and intense “friendships” with basketball teammates. I didn’t know what was happening, what it meant and it was confusing because it was in this gray area like we weren’t making out but we felt like we were in a relationship and the friendship would be really addictive in many ways and then end in heartbreak. Nowadays, I refer to some of these people as “pre-girlfriends”. Not to their faces, of course. It was a really hard space to navigate and all of that was complicated by playing with these people.

Gen: Wait, I needed this term for myself.

Mac: There were so many pre-girlfriends. Like, examining the connection and chemistry we had on the court, it only heightened the feelings I had off the court. I thought nothing else could compare to doing something I love more than anything with someone I love, but don’t realize I love.

Gen: I will say basketball is one of the hottest sports.

Mac: Basketball is extremely hot, and I wanted that to come through in the book. The eroticism of basketball. Like there’s the surface drama of who will win the game. But really it’s like wow, this is sex.

Gen: Everything I need in a novel! What can you tell us about your collection?

Mac: I can tell you it’s very gay and trans. Right now it’s called PERVERTS, shout out to Venita Blackburn at Sewanee for helping me name it.

Gen: That’s gonna be another preorder from me.

Mac: The stories are very strange, and I sort of hate being like hahaha I’m so bizarre! Because I’m not, but they take on a sort of absurd edge to reveal things about queer and trans desire, identity, and the performances we put on for people within our community and outside of it.

Gen: I feel like the best stories do go for that absurd edge.

Mac: It’s a lot about performance, I’d say and there are some queer and trans reimaginings in there as well. A queer Peter Pan reimagining. Those are very fun for me to write.
The stories, for me, feel like when I’m at my most playful, even as they take on very serious themes.

Gen: Do you mind sharing a bit about your experience putting out queer literature today? Anything from the beautiful to the challenging.

Mac: Oh gosh, you know. It’s such a complicated and beautiful experience. The best part is having queer readers reach out to me and share their experiences of reading it and tell me what’s meaningful to them. Or how it changed them. I mean, it’s literally UNREAL for me to believe that something I wrote changed someone. But it’s incredibly moving to hear nonetheless you know, and then all of this beauty intersecting with book bans and feeling afraid for queer and trans kids who might not be able to go into a library and find the book they need. Not specifically mine, but any queer or trans book that makes them feel seen.

Gen: The cruelty of taking away stories from children who need them is earth-shattering.

Mac: It is so fucking earth-shattering. There’s also an added complication, at least for me personally, to publishing a book that has a lot of queer sex scenes on the page. It’s the only way I know how to write — including queer and trans pleasure and sex and desire — because that’s my life? And I have to deal with people in my immediate world who I think try to shame me for putting so much queer sex on the page, like it’s not palatable. Or like queerness is only palatable if it’s PG-rated, single, close-mouthed kiss. But let’s bring this full circle baby because I refuse to feel ashamed for squirting!

Gen: I’m so grateful to authors and artists doing that work, because there is so much shame around queer sex and queer sexuality. We belong fully on the page and in media, not just the bits people see as “tolerable”.

Mac: For real. I hate the word tolerance. It’s the worst.

Gen: Well, I can honestly say that your work tells tolerance to fuck right off.

Todd Haynes on “May December,” Queer Community, and Making Art in a Vile World

Feature photo of Todd Haynes by Gareth Cattermole via Getty Images for BFI

Todd Haynes has never been limited to one queer aesthetic.

From his bold early shorts to his genre-hopping triptych of a debut, from his radically structured music films to his controlled melodramas, Haynes has reinvented his singular voice again and again. To me, he’s proof that “queer” is a perfectly reasonable response to the question: What kinds of films do you make?

The past decade alone Haynes has directed an archival music documentary, a kids movie, a true story about environmental disaster, and a little movie some of you may have seen called Carol. Now, he’s back with one of his best, May December, a complex combination of tones and ideas worthy of its Ingmar Bergman influence. Whether or not his films have queer characters, they all have queer aesthetics and queer interests. As he said to me over Zoom, queerness is not reducible to sexual practice — it’s attitudinal. That attitude is felt in his entire body of work.

Few filmmakers have been as important to me throughout my life as Todd Haynes. Maybe that’s why I broke two of my interviewer rules: never include compliments in the final piece and limit fangirling. I’m sorry, but if the director of Safe and Velvet Goldmine and Carol compliments your hair, you tell the world.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy our conversation about experimentation, working with new collaborators, moral complexity, and queer community. Sometimes it’s good to meet your heroes!

Drew: Hi! I’m so excited to talk to you.

Todd: You have the best hair.

Drew: Oh! Wow. Thank you.

Todd: (laughs)

Drew: So I just rewatched Poison and I was really struck by how audacious it is as a debut feature. You recently said you still think of yourself as an experimental filmmaker. When making something like May December, how do you decide when to approach an aspect of the filmmaking from a place of realism and when to bring in more experimentation?

Todd: Well, it’s film-by-film. I can’t talk about it as a general process, because it’s completely informed by the film. But in terms of May December?

Drew: Yeah! I mean, even in the sense of directing the actors toward a certain stylization.

Todd: With this film, I didn’t really direct the actors toward a certain stylization. There are moments of excess — little ruptures in what is mostly a naturalistically performed movie — often marked by the music and meant to signal the extremes of these two women. But the tone of the performances are, in my mind, extremely restrained. People have been talking about the movie as camp and that’s not something that occurred to anyone involved in the making of it.

Now, the music has a very different register than the performances. And, in some ways, so does the formality of the frame. The music is extreme and bold and slaps you across the face and the frame is about as restrained and austere as you can get. It’s a combination of very different tones that come together.

And I might say it’s less that I consider myself an experimental filmmaker and more that every film is an experiment. But they’re all fully — even Poison — fully, even hysterically, engaged in narrative form and conventions. Film after film, in different strategies. Sometimes the style of the acting is artificial on purpose — or, rather, stylized, although I love artifice — like in Velvet Goldmine and in Far From Heaven.

Drew: I wonder how much the music in May December is informing people’s — including my own — experience of the movie and leading to a certain read of tone despite the camerawork and even the performances.

Todd: I mean, the camerawork is experimental in the sense that most movies today don’t hold for seven minutes in a static shot where the characters are looking at the lens of the camera like a mirror. I think experimental may actually be a totally apt term compared to today’s rather conventional and timid filmmaking norms. But in the 50s and 60s this kind of thing wasn’t particularly experimental — it was just something that was being explored. I was definitely looking at movies from Bergman. I was very interested in seeing how that kind of distance and uniformity and removal of the camera could work with this material and with this music.

Drew: How different is your approach to directing when you’ve written the script vs. when you’re working with a screenwriter?

Todd: It’s not that different. Once we’re making the movie, it’s about transforming what’s on the page into a visual language and casting actors who can create these characters. That’s always a subtle, mysterious transition. And whether I wrote it or not, you’ve got to leave it behind and move into the world of what you’re making in front of you — with the crew and with actors and with the camera and with the lenses and with the light and with time. It’s completely its own thing.

Drew: When you’re writing a script yourself, do you start to think of those things?

Todd: I do start to think of those things, but they’re never what you think they’ll be. You have to let them go. And my scripts for the most part all draw from existing films and genres. They draw from the ways we tell stories about artists and musicians and they reference other moments in film history. I feel like they’re already completely interpolated and appropriated from cultural language. So I never think of my films — the ones I’ve written and the ones I haven’t — as authentic personal expression. I think they’re interpretations of existing languages. That’s what excites me.

Drew: I know you worked with a new cinematographer on this film.

Todd: Yeah!

Drew: How do you approach working with a new collaborator? Especially when it’s in a position where you’ve been working with the same person for decades.

Todd: On this, I worked with a new DP, Christopher Blauvelt, a new production designer, Sam Lisenco, a new costume designer, April Napier, a new line producer, Jonathan Montepare.

Drew: Wow.

Todd: I’d never worked with Natalie Portman before. It was all new relationships. And we did it for a low-budget and in an incredibly short schedule. At a certain point, I decided the only way to do this was to open up my communication to everybody all at once and bring everybody into what I was thinking. I mean, I do this on other movies too, but this was accelerated. We just had to all be together, in the same space, all the time, talking and communicating, and it made it so fun!

Drew: That’s so cool.

Todd: We didn’t want it to end! It was the most fun I’ve had in such a long time. Well, except cutting The Velvet Underground, because we got to work with all that existing avant-garde cinema and I could get my hands back on the editing machine with Fons and Adam (editors Alfonso Gonçalves and Adam Kurnitz). Because of Covid, we had nothing else to do, and we were quarantined together working on it, so that was really fun too.

But, yeah, May December came at a time in my life when I needed it and it was just great.

Drew: How does your queerness shape your approach to morality? Specifically, when other people tell you that your existence is immoral, how does that shape your approach to a character who you might personally view as immoral? Or, at least, whose actions you might view as immoral?

Todd: I think you have to always hold onto conflicting systems of thought around morality, normalcy, and dominance. Even while still looking out for vulnerable people for whom some moral guidelines and legal guidelines are there to protect.

What’s so interesting to me about this script is the questions about an older person taking advantage of a younger person are persistent throughout the film even though it happened twenty some years ago. She went to jail, served her time, came back, they got married, they raised a family, they stayed together, he’s a devoted father, and the kids seem like they’re going to be okay. You hold all of these moral judgments in check against other realities and other factors and it keeps you completely uncertain.

Drew: What does your personal queer community look like? And how do you think that’s affected your work?

Todd: My connection with gay women is the through-line of my entire life. But my queer community, as a whole, is not reducible to sexual practice. It’s more attitudinal. It’s the way we look at the world and stand outside certain norms.

I have a really special closeness with men who aren’t gay in practice but who were totally formed by queer culture and the queer theory that they studied in college. It feels sort of like how I was informed by feminism. And queer theory and feminism inform each other and postcolonial theory informs both. These are relative discourses we hope keep us on-guard about falling into conventions and pre-set ideas.

But also things are so fucked up these days. The world is vile and things are so terrifying. A lot of the most interesting conversations to do with permutations of sexuality and identity and representation go out the window when you’re looking at Donald Trump or what’s going on right now in the Middle East or the environment. It reduces our complex thinking and our desire and our pleasure into an emergency mode. It’s so extreme we don’t even know we’re going through it because we’re just surviving. The cost is profoundly deep. It’s hard to even see it.

Drew: That leads well into my last question. The past few years, Hollywood has started to turn away from some of their progress in queer storytelling — at least in terms of supporting interesting work, especially interesting work from queer artists.

Your work in the 90’s and the other radical queer work made in the 90’s has always been my personal filmmaking North Star. What do you think the current generation of young queer filmmakers can learn from that time now that more people are having to return to independent cinema and the underground?

Todd: My whole career was forged under the crisis of HIV and AIDS and the panic around queerness and IV drug communities. It put you into that survival mode, but it also created a culture where we questioned and defied everything we were taught to rely on in terms of governments and systems of power.

It’s why I was inspired by writers like Jean Genet who were completely and totally aroused by and made militant by the idea of maintaining a status outside dominant culture. He understood that his very existence represented a direct threat to everything the dominant culture stood for. To me, that was like: RIGHT. YES. YES. The way you might very flatteringly look at the 90’s as an example of something, I looked to writers like Genet. We weren’t telling stories with representations of happy perfect gay people. No way. It was about criminality. It was about queerness as something dangerous that upsets the status quo and keeps people on edge.

I want gay kids to be able to come out and be safe and trans kids to have the space to explore their identities. I want all of those protections. But I also don’t want to yield to the system. It’s tricky because we want to take care of queer people but we also want them to remember the way they threaten those around them is something to be valued. We can learn tremendous amounts from our place as outsiders.

Drew: Yes! Thank you. And really just… Thank you. Your films… You and Almodóvar were the two filmmakers when I was a kid where I could get away with watching your work and be like, “I’m not queer, I’m just artsy.”

Todd: (laughs)

Drew: “I’m just watching art films and that’s why I’m watching gay sex.” So truly thank you.

Todd: (laughs) That’s great. I love that.

May December is now in theatres. It will stream on Netflix December 1.

E.R. Fightmaster on Loving Femmes, James Bond, and Their New EP “Violence”

E.R. Fightmaster feature photo by Chelsea Guglielmino via Getty Images

E.R. Fightmaster is 31 years old, 6’1, has a 10-foot wingspan, and is ready for Violence.

When I used to talk about E.R. Fightmaster, I hardly ever used their name. Instead I’d refer to them as The First Nonbinary Actor to be on Grey’s Anatomy, or as their Instagram handle Genderless_Gap_Ad, or as the witch who played opposite Phoebe Bridgers in Lucy Dacus’ highly anticipated “Night Shift” music video. In a pinch, I could pull out a close up of their left hand and be met with a breathy “Oh, them! Yes, I know them,” and only get a little bit jealous.

After years of admiration, gender envy, and a few am I masc for masc after all? crises, I finally got a chance to chat with the writer-musician-actor-model-comedian-producer about their newly released EP Violence. I was nervous to enter the Zoom call but immediately felt at ease when they smiled at me between dimples and told me that we have some internet friends in common because of the big queer comedy world. They reminded me that I was talking to someone who came up in the comedy space, just like me, and I later learned that it was their experience on stage as a comic that gave them their confidence today. It gave me hope.

We discussed what their transness means to them, their dreams for Violence, and being our own heroes. Now, when I talk about them, I will refer to them as Fightmaster: a name that packs a punch as big as its owner.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Motti: I’m very excited about Violence. I love it a lot. When I first put it on I was transported back to my early queerness: when I first came out in grad school and I got my first girlfriend and was introduced to actually good music. The very first line of the first song reminded me of Alt-J, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Dire Straits vibes.

Fightmaster: (gasps) That’s so funny. I was definitely listening to some Alt-J and Rainbow Kitten while I was writing this album, so that’s an honor.

Motti: I listened to it with my girlfriend, which might have been a mistake on my end.

Fightmaster: (laughing) I told somebody else that was asking who the music was for, “it’s for transmascs to listen to with their femme girlfriends.” That’s who it’s targeted to.

Motti: In “Cowboy Tumbleweed,” when you say, “I got something I think you need,” what did you mean by this?

Fightmaster: “I got something I think you need.” The person I was starting to see at that time was surrounded by a lot of negative energy and so even though I was writing this song in a state of depression, I could tell that when we were together, I was still providing her with a fun, joyful time. I think it’s because that’s how she made me feel, and so we were able to simultaneously dig each other out of these energy holes. That’s what I meant by “something I think you need.”

Motti: That’s a lot less horny than I thought it might be.

Fightmaster: What did you think it was? I have to know.

Motti: I thought maybe the lure and lust of androgyny and especially when it comes to sexual relationships. You hit the nail on the head. I do have a femme girlfriend who was previously with men so of course I know–

Fightmaster: That’s what the fun is! I think of masculinity as a positive thing. Inside of American culturalism we’ve turned masculinity into domination and control and treating others with as much derogatory energy as we can. But, for me, masculinity is the playful part, it’s the swagger. So when I talk about being fun, I was kind of talking about bringing what you’re talking about — that fun, masculine energy — to a place without a lot of the psychological heaviness and toxicity that I think she was used to.

Motti: Yeah, I’m just a little guy.

Fightmaster: I’m just a little guy! I say that all the time.

Motti: If you were to pick one song off of Violence to have featured in a queer movie, what song would it be and in what movie?

Fightmaster: I want to see “Violence” or “Bad Man” in a queer-lead James Bond. That’s what I really want. “Violence” specifically is such a soundtrack piece to me. It really has a nice length to it and a beautiful build. It’s just kind of a hot energy. “Bad Man” is so trans and so queer that I would feel happy to hear it anywhere, as something that was giving energy to a queer story. That’s so cool.

Motti: I really think you should be the next James Bond. You should do it.

Fightmaster: (gasps) I’m honored that you said that because that’s my big dream. I would really love to do that role. If I’m really honest, that’s the only reason I ever stay in shape is because someday, they might call.

Motti: And then you would get to do your own Adele “Skyfall.”

Fightmaster: Biiiiitch. That’s what I want. We’re getting somewhere.

Motti: Which song off of Violence should I not let my femme girlfriend listen to? Let’s say it together on three.

Both: One.

Two.

Three.

“HOT SHAME.”

Fightmaster: Yep. Yeah. You know that’s a song that when I perform it live– you know I pride the album on having as many double entendres as it possibly could just because I’m so fucking horny but also, I want it to have that tricky listenability. And the chorus of “Hot Shame” is the most filthy part of the album. I smile when I sing it.

Motti: My girlfriend’s favorite is “Wild One.”

Fightmaster: Oh that’s fucking rad! I love hearing that because that was the only one that wasn’t released as a single or as a feature track and so it warms my heart a little bit when that one gets the attention I think it’s due.

Motti: Correct me if I’m wrong, but you did everything but play the drums for this EP?

Fightmaster: Mhmm.

Motti: Is that because you knew you’d be too powerful?

Fightmaster: (laughs) You know, with this album I did something that I needed to see very badly. I did not grow up seeing women or queer people being the front men of music spaces, and when they were, they were singers. All of the people I saw, you know, shredding or playing the bass or playing the drums or whatever they were all the same looking white guy and so it does subconsciously just make you feel like that’s not a possibility. Your brain isn’t wired for that. And so I’ve spent years now, truly decades, getting to the place where I can play everything on the album, and I knew that I wanted to do that so that young me could have had me. I want young me to have me, that’s what it is.

I have to give credit to co-producer Riley Geare. He is one of those guys that can play absolutely everything and I think because he’s got that great big dick confidence, he really encouraged me also, to play everything that I could, and that freed me up to let him hop on things that he heard. So we were really in a collaborative, safe environment. I wasn’t surrounded by any men that were telling me, “Have a real bassist do it.” It was a good, queer experience.

Motti: I’m so glad you had that experience.

Fightmaster: Thank you. I’m learning the drums.

Motti: (hangs their head in defeat)

Fightmaster: I’m learning them because I know when the front woman of Haim hops on the drums, I have a spiritual experience and I’m ready to provide my audience with that same feeling.

Motti: So you would say that you’re pretty thirst motivated?

Fightmaster: Bitch, so thirst motivated. I’m trying to give a horny, thirsty experience. I also think that we, as transmasc people, grew up in a culture where we were seeing men get the praise from women that we wanted. I’m trying to kind of recreate that world, like rewire my own brain where I don’t have to be this guy from some fucking Abercrombie & Fitch ad. I’m actually becoming a better version of the guy that I saw, just to be honest.

Motti: And you are and say that.

Fightmaster: And you are. And you are and say that.

Motti: (blushes and laughs) So being transmasc, I’m sure that you’ve dealt with this because you’re wickedly talented but you’re also devilishly handsome. Do you feel the negativity of the sexualization of transmascs or are you kind of like, bring it on?

Fightmaster: Bring it on! I love women! I love femmes. I love little girly boys, I love all the feminine energy I can get, and I think that women throwing thirst a transmacs way means that there are less women throwing thirst to cis men, and as much as they think we have an agenda, our agenda is actually so much more sinister than they realize.

Motti: Have you ever seen that movie with Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell… he’s teaching this guy how to dress cool, act cool, talk to girls, get laid. Would you ever, you know, consider giving that service to young transmascs folks?

Fightmaster: (laughing cynically) I think the thing that’s hot about transmasc people is there’s no encouragement to be transmasc. In order to have our identity, we have to be as in touch with our real selves as possible. To the outside world that comes off as you know, a hyper confidence or a thirsty swagger, but that’s because people who don’t care what other people think, and people that had to overcome violence to be who they are, those people are fucking hot. They don’t need it, they’re absolutely hot the way they are. I’ll just give them some music to fuck to.

Motti: And thank you for that.

Bella Ramsey recently was quoted saying that their nonbinary-ness is one of the least interesting things about them–

Fightmaster: I disagree. I literally think it’s the most interesting thing about a lot of people. I think that the way that we politicize things, and we talk about identity politics, that can be boring. But when you’re talking about people that are choosing their own humanity over gender rules so thickly engraved in our skin that they might as well be tattoos… I actually think that’s the most interesting thing about a lot of us. Because it’s about a mindset and that mindset is fascinating and it bleeds into everything that we do.

Motti: I agree. I respect their perspective of course–

Fightmaster: Absolutely.

Motti: They have their lived experience but I really appreciate that alternative way to look at it because sometimes I think as transmasc people and trans people in general, you’re kind of saying, “Am I talking about this too much?”

Fightmaster: But they want you to feel that way! What I actually think is that transness is euphoria and that’s why we talk so much about trans dysphoria because actually, to be trans is a euphoric state of being. You have to understand how much more important your relationship with self is than an entire society that’s trying to separate you from that self. I think when I’m around people and I make them very comfortable, they start to feel a transness in themselves and that’s because I’m celebrating all the aspects of their identity instead of coming to them to fulfill a role.

Motti: Mhmm.

Fightmaster: And so then they experience comfort and euphoria, and they attach that feeling to me, but I’m not the comfort in euphoria, it’s the transness that we should all be working towards. I don’t know your name before you tell me, so why would I know your pronoun before you told me? It’s actually a hyperfixation with genitals and they are projecting when they call us the perverts. To have to know what someone’s genitals look like so that you may treat them with respect or disrespect, that’s perverted.

Motti: I also wanted to give you the floor if there’s anything you want to say about Violence, not the practice of, but the EP. Unless you want to speak on violence.

Fightmaster: I think that queer people have been indoctrinated with the belief that violence is inherently bad and I think that is a tool to make us bystanders to our own experience of domination. I encourage all queer people to rethink what violence means to them. Does that mean nobody fucks with my friends, nobody fucks with my partners, nobody fucks with my community? ‘Cause that’s what it means to me. It does not mean that I go out in the world trying to dominate others, but it does mean that if anyone tries to dominate the people I love, I’m gonna give them a ride of a lifetime. So that’s violence and that also feels hot.

Motti: And that is hot. It’s received hot. Is that a position you’ve always had since you were young or was it after expressing yourself the way that you currently are with gender expression?

Fightmaster: I don’t know what came first, the chicken or the egg. I grew up with the name Fightmaster and so that is quite a given identity immediately. But my dad is also the best guy on the planet, and was such a firm believer that no one fucks with women and children and no one fucks with his friends. He was the least dominating person I’ve ever met, but I knew he could be violent, and that to me, was the ultimate form of masculinity. I always felt safe around him, but I never felt a weird insecurity where he needed to dominate the men around him. In fact, he was like the funny charmer, and so, I think that I did have a really good role model in that way for seeing what it meant to be masculine and violent without being toxic and abusive.

Motti: That’s brilliant. I feel similarly about like my big Italian dad with a heart of gold. It’s almost the beauty of knowing that they have it, but are choosing to reserve it for when it’s needed.

Fightmaster: Yes! I joke about men but I have a lot of men in my life that I care about. All of the men in my life are big dick sweeties that are working on themselves, and the way they attract women, and the way they are able to surround themselves with queer friendships is because they are practicing a form of masculinity that’s not insecure. I think that is so sexy to people because masculinity plus insecurity is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about that toxicity. But masculinity plus joy, masculinity plus calm, masculinity plus acceptance and community, that’s a really beautiful version of our gender.

Violence is now streaming everywhere. If you’ve somehow made it this long without doing so, you can thirst follow E.R. Fightmaster on Instagram, TikTok, and X.

K-Ming Chang on Queer Horror Novel “Organ Meats” and Feeling at Home in the Monstrous

Sometimes you read a book that is so different from anything you’ve ever read. K-Ming Chang’s new speculative novel Organ Meats sounded unlike anything I had ever read before. The book follows best friends Anita and Rainie, who are bound together by a red string and a linked bloodline with wild dogs. The book is wonderful and disorienting and a little bit unsettling in all of the best ways.

One of my goals is to read outside of the genres I typically read, and this book was a great start. Chang has created such a rich world full of horror, mythology, culture and love. I was lucky enough to sit down and have a chat with Chang about the origin of Organ Meats and how much she enjoys confusing readers with her work.

Sa’iyda: How did the idea for Organ Meats come to you?

K-Ming: It was a journey, definitely, with this book. It was kind of multiple points of inspiration that I then had to connect like a map because I thought I was writing several different things that ended up all being one patchwork thing. But it began initially with being really curious about this breed of dog called the Formosan Mountain Dog.

And when I was doing my initial research, the first source I looked up categorized this dog as being wild rather than being a domesticated dog, which to me was kind of like an oxymoron. I’m like, doesn’t dog mean domesticated? I didn’t know there were wild dogs that still existed. Wouldn’t that just be a wolf?

So contradictory, but that was really fascinating to me learning about the history of these dogs and how they’re kind of now bred with other domesticated species and you can adopt them but many of them come from the stray lineages and they used to hunt alongside Indigenous warriors in Taiwan.

That led me into this rabbit hole of history, but then also being really interested in this creature that is kind of hybrid. There’s so many points of origin, and when I was writing about the girls, I quickly realized their lineages were tied to these dogs. They were filled with a kind of wildness that I think was at odds with the lessons they’ve been taught about what it means to be a daughter, what it means to be a girl. I found that that tension was really fascinating and created this really interesting playground for them to explore their origins, explore what it means to kind of find home within each other.

I love the concept of this dog-human hybrid, but then it’s so specifically tied to womanhood and that experience. How did you make those connections?

What we consider natural versus unnatural is really fascinating to me. In the book, the two girls internalize these messages about, again, what it means to defer one’s own desires or sacrifice your own desires and that being the natural thing to do.

Effacing yourself, giving up yourself in a certain way, never centering your own desires or your own wants. It’s actually so deeply unnatural to learn those things, to believe those things, to be taught those things. And yet, there within the kind of context of the family structures they’re growing up in, it’s coded into how they’re raised and grooming.

It’s like, oh patriarchy is like a form of grooming. Compulsory heterosexuality is a form of grooming. So it’s all about that, and it’s so invisible within these structures. We don’t see it as something unnatural or grooming or predatory. So I wanted to play around with that and always make sure they had this imaginative self that was a refuge for them and the ways that imagination could be a form of trying to liberate themselves from that or trying to look at those things we consider, quote unquote, unnatural and find the origins of that within themselves.

Like you said, compulsory heterosexuality, denying of the urges, I was like, okay, wait, this dog hybrid womanhood, how does this make it sapphic? So did that just kind of come naturally within the story?How did you decide that was going to be an element as well?

I feel like in all of my work, queerness is oftentimes a form of freedom and a form of being able to make a choice or making visible the kinds of choices they have. I feel like if these two girls grew up in an environment where it’s like, oh, you have no choice and you have to learn to bear this condition in a certain condition of choicelessness in a way, or you have to learn to tolerate never realizing your own desires, then queerness is that force that disrupts that and brings them back to themselves and asks the question: What do you want?

That’s a very radical question in the context of the book and in the familial roles they’re learning. And so, I was interested in exploring those sapphic elements in a way that wasn’t necessarily like, oh, it’s something that creates conflict for the girls within the family. It actually in some ways brings them closer to the other women in their family, because the other women in the family are also kind of seeking ways to make choices and to find agency within their lives.

Rather than it being like this is something that makes me totally different from you, there is that sense of like, oh, because I’ve made that choice, I have kind of chosen a different path, but in some ways that sense of queerness and desire is this foundation that all the women in this family stand on. It’s something that kind of realizes, collectively realizes all of their desires.

I love the belief that queerness is freedom because I feel like that’s so true for so many people. I’d love to talk more about culture and how the culture of this family, the culture of the world they’re growing up in, affected the story, but also, as you did your research, how that cultural research formed and shaped what the book was to become.

There were multiple forms of research into dogs, into origin myths, into creation stories, and also thinking about land and water as containing life of its own rather than something that people just kind of enact their own agency upon.

That was definitely part of the research and kind of seeped into the writing of this book and in creating the very animated landscape of the book as well. I think a lot about what kind of stories are erased. What are the kinds of histories I hold so dearly but that in some ways have been either repressed or not given a space or are really not heard in my day to day life or in my public life?

A lot of the book is motivated by wanting to recover matrilineal storytelling — oral histories that are passed down in domestic spaces that aren’t really part of the quote unquote official record of history that we typically consider to be the only form of truth, right? So all forms of gossip and storytelling and voices of people kind of erased from our idea of a patriline. All of those elements were really, really important to me.

I think there is something so precious to the concept of matrilineal storytelling and how women are often the storytellers and those who keep the secrets or keep the things going, even though they’re often shut out. So I’d love to know a little bit more about how the interconnectedness of women and the almost feral quality of these dogs played together in your mind.

I kind of think of it as cascading generations, where each generation is attempting to in some way save the generation that came before it. There’s almost a sense of, like, it’s too late for me to save you or to do something that will completely change your life or the circumstances of your life, but I’m going to try anyway, right?

In some ways, there is a lot of utility in that, and I think there is an element of self-sacrifice to that that is destructive to the characters. But there’s also something incredibly beautiful about it. The commitment of these multiple generations to be accountable for each other. There’s such a deep beauty in this sense of, on one hand, you could consider it a burden, and I think in certain cases for the characters it can be, but on the other hand it’s this sense of responsibility, this sense of ownership in a way where it’s like, ‘I am a part of your life, I’m deeply woven into this history and therefore I feel the sense of responsibility.’ It’s a double-sided thing where it can be so incredibly beautiful and reparative and healing.

And then on the other hand, it can also be dangerous and full of peril. I think the girls are always on the edge of that, where there’s incredible danger in losing themselves and putting themselves in harm’s way, but then also there’s this possibility of choosing each other again and again, committing to each other in a way that is really beautiful and really intimate.

I think the dogs are a kind of collective voice. They’re like a Greek choruswitnessing all of this. I love this idea of this group, this pack of dogs that’s always adapting and mutating and appears as different things to different people and serves different purposes throughout the stories. The dogs become what the girls need them to be. It’s a little bit like a spiritual guardian and then also someone to remind them they are always part of a collective. As much as they are individuals, they’re always part of that bigger tapestry.

What was your favorite thing about writing this really lush world?

I feel like in some ways it is like being in a trance or casting a spell where I get to leave behind the self that I know — the person I am in day-to-day life that I’m very familiar with. All of those anxieties, all of those worries, all of those idiosyncrasies. I get to leave that behind and enter this deeper part of myself.

It’s being in a swimming pool and then the bottom drops. I don’t know, there’s this sense of accessing parts of myself I didn’t even know existed, or were possible, or wanted to say these things. I feel like that’s always such a miracle and such a joy to discover these depths and these desires to tell this story. That’s always a really joyous and pleasurable process of discovery getting to play into a lot of horror elements.

It was very planned that this book would be released in horror season, and hopefully we’ll find readers who enjoy and love that genre, because I just have such a love for the uncanny, the horrible, the monstrous, the abject. And I find that’s where I feel at home. I feel a sense of belonging among things that are terrifying and cause fear and cause chaos.There’s a child part of myself who’s like, Halloween’s my favorite holiday, who just feels such a deep sense of pleasure to get to be a part of this horror season, which I haven’t been before, which is exciting.

Sa’iyda: Last question. What is one thing you hope that readers take away from Organ Meats?

I love when readers are like, ‘I’m so confused and I don’t understand anything that’s going on’. Well, maybe love is a really strong word, but I always find it so interesting when readers are like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to take away from this book.’ I’m like, that’s perfect. Not quite knowing, that is totally fine because I feel like oftentimes people go into a reading experience wanting to learn something or wanting to have this takeaway.

I remember a magazine once called something I’d written a full body experience. It can just be something that kind of embeds itself in your bones and your marrow and cascades over you. I’m perfectly happy with that. I feel like a lot of reading experiences that I love so much are not necessarily books that I’m really articulate about or quite grasp exactly what it is I’m leaving with, but the sensations of it and the place that it transported me to. It’s always so palpable and so tangible. So I hope that readers find a way to kind of enjoy the disorienting experience of it. And can feel in some ways that it’s brought them somewhere new or given them a form of language that they may not have had access to before. If it’s a book that can help you connect with yourself, that’s always exciting for me.

Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang is out now, and a review on Autostraddle is forthcoming.

Maryam Keshavarz on “The Persian Version,” Translating the Iranian American Experience On-Screen, and Cyndi Lauper

Maryam Keshavarz feature image photo by Amanda Edwards via Getty Images

It took approximately 30 seconds after the panel ended for Maryam Keshavarz, writer and director of The Persian Version, to demonstrate what our shared culture’s hospitality is all about. “Are you coming to the afterparty?” she asked me through a thicket of admirers. When my response (“what afterparty?”) proved unsatisfying, Keshavarz didn’t hesitate. “You’re coming. They got me a car, we’ll all get in, you’ve gotta come!”

CUT TO: 10 of us squished inside a studio-sponsored Escalade outside Nasrin’s Kitchen in Manhattan. The restaurant, a new enterprise from an Iranian refugee and her son, had cleared out the dining room after closing to accommodate this Persian version of an afterparty. Keshavarz clambered up the stairs to greet the crowd snacking on bite-sized barbari bread and kuku sabzi, exclaiming with glee and taking selfies with every new person she found. It didn’t matter if she was talking to NYU students, local cousins, fellow filmmakers, or the overwhelmed moderator of a panel she’d met three hours ago. Keshavarz was just thrilled to see us all there, buzzing and beaming, for her most personal film to date.

The Persian Version, which premiered at Sundance in January and is out in wide release November 3, tells the multi-generational story of Iranian-American Leila (Layla Mohammadi), her mother Shireen (Niousha Noor), and grandmother (Bella Warda). Based on Keshavarz’s life, the movie picks up with Leila fresh off a divorce from her wife, grappling with her mother’s enduring disapproval, and unraveling her own feelings towards motherhood. Complicating matters is that she (randomly, hilariously, perfectly) gets pregnant from a one-night stand with a man dressed to the nines in Hedwig and the Angry Inch drag, thus confusing her longtime self-identification as a lesbian.

Embracing comedy as well as drama, The Persian Version marks as much a departure for Keshavarz as it does a culmination of her life’s work to date. She got her start with the documentary The Color of Love, in which she interviewed generations of Iranians about romance and sex. Her 2011 feature Circumstance, a lesbian love story set in Tehran, earned her both admirers in Iran’s black market and a lifetime ban from ever returning to the Islamic Republic. With The Persian Version, a movie Keshavarz says she’s essentially been working on “since birth,” she gets to put all her experiences together and retell her and her family’s stories with heart, humor, and bracing honesty. It’s the kind of movie that I, another bisexual Iranian-American, never expected, and was incredibly moved to see.

A few days after Nasrin’s Kitchen, with Keshavarz back home in San Francisco after a whirlwind weekend of screenings, we reconnected over Zoom to get into translating the Iranian-American experience onscreen, watching the Women Life Freedom protests unfold in Iran from afar and, as I rather inartfully put it, “the gay shit.”

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Caroline Framke: Hello! It’s Caroline, how are you doing?

Maryam Keshavarz: Caroline Darya, right?

Caroline Darya Framke: Yes.

Maryam: I’m just going to call you Darya. You look like a Darya.

Caroline Darya: I know. I think if my mom were naming me all over again, “Darya” probably wouldn’t be my middle name, but here we are. So let’s get into it: what’s your version of why this movie is called The Persian Version? What does that phrase mean to you?

Maryam: I think it has two meanings. One, my name is Maryam, and people are always like, “how do you spell that?” “M-A-R-Y-A-M.” Then they go, “oh that’s so unusual!” and I say, “well, that’s the Persian version.” I don’t know why, but all over the world people laugh at this. Maybe because it rhymes? But it’s always been stuck in my head that everybody laughs. Then it’s also because Persians love to tell tall tales, as you know. There’s always “the Persian version” of a story that’s only partially truthful, but whatever’s the best story wins. In Farsi, it’s “laaf meezanan,” which means “to make it bigger.” So this is the Persian version of my family’s story.

Caroline Darya: It also feels like the Persian version of all the rom-com and family drama conventions you use.

Maryam: Yeah, that too. Even the last song in the movie is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (The Persian Version).” We took Cyndi Lauper, put in Persian instrumentation, and had Niousha Noor sing it. We even changed some of the lines into Persian so it feels familiar, but Persian-ified.

Caroline Darya: Why did you choose that song?

Maryam: Besides the fact that I used to smuggle Cyndi Lauper and many other artists’ tapes into Iran, I personally always loved her. I remember when the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video came out. I’d never seen anything like it. There were people of all different colors and gender expressions, it was so radical at the time. She also didn’t adhere to conventions of feminine beauty. It was just like, “oh my god, this person is living her truth,” whatever that is. It wasn’t even just a typical punk thing; she was feminine, but in her own Cyndi Lauper way. I mean, I was Cyndi Lauper for Halloween in third grade! My hair’s very straight, I couldn’t get it to do all that crazy stuff. But for me, it was very symbolic. So with “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” it felt like a feminist call for arms.

Caroline Darya: It’s funny, I feel like I resisted that song for so long because I was like, (snobby teen voice), “Girls DON’T just wanna have fun, we wanna DO OTHER THINGS.” But maybe now I’ll come back around.

Maryam: (laughs) We wanna do other things, but with fun.

Caroline Darya: Exactly. So you mentioned that song showing you a more nontraditional female expression. That’s something we see a bit of in the movie, with young Leila stomping to the table in her leather jacket going, “I think this is cool, this is what I want to wear.” Was that true to your experience growing up?

Maryam: The thing with my family is that they never knew what would happen when I entered a room, with what I’d look like or what I’d say. I was always finding my own way, always pushing the boundaries to be truthful to what I was exploring at the time. That’s what that scene was about, and the brothers are supportive of her there. My siblings were not the cliché of “the Muslim brothers who are oppressive” at all. They were always very supportive, even with my coming out process. My eldest brother was just like, “well, some people like coffee, some people like tea.”

So I did have that support, but certainly they were constantly confused by my choices. Not because they were homophobic in the traditional sense, but because I myself was exploring what I was. I was very adamant in the beginning of my life that I was gay, and I was married to a woman. Then, obviously, I got pregnant, and that was very confusing even to myself.

So I took my family on my confusion ride. (laughs)

Caroline Darya: How old were you when you came out?

Maryam: I actually had my first relationship when I was in college, but I came out when I met my long-term partner of 12 years. After I graduated and lived in Iran for a year, I came back to Chicago and signed up for the Lesbian Women’s Basketball League. When I got there they were like, “that got canceled, it’s volleyball now.” By the way, I don’t really know how to play volleyball. But I was chatting with a girl and then this woman showed up. It was a warm September afternoon, she was on a Kawasaki Vulcan motorcycle in a leather jacket and shorts, and when she walked in I was like, “oh my god, who is that?” The girl went, “she’s on our volleyball team,” so I said, “oh yeah, I play volleyball.” So that’s how I met her, and early on in our relationship I came out to my family.

Caroline Darya: So you first came out as gay, but —

Maryam: But I was always bisexual. Even in college, I dated a man and a woman at the same time, and they knew about each other. But then I became more political and thought it was important, even though I myself knew I was bisexual, to identify as gay or queer to be really clear in this pursuit of gay rights. I guess in my mind I didn’t want to bring heterosexuality into the space in any way. Now I know that’s biphobia. Life is not that clear; it’s everything in between. But when you’re trying to get your rights, it feels like you have to erase some of the nuances to create something that’s more understandable to the mainstream. Once gay marriage passed and all those things, I think I felt a little differently about it all.

Caroline Darya: I don’t know if you felt similarly but for me, I definitely had some anxiety about coming out as bisexual to my mother because Iranians can be so black and white about everything.

Maryam: Exactly. But it’s not just Iranians, it’s most people. Even in the Q&A audience yesterday there were some jokes about it. It’s funny, because the journey of the film is about me as a confused twenty-something — and now I’m in my forties and I’m still confused in many ways. But I embrace that. There’s this concept of bisexuality that a person is confused and can’t choose. I just think life is confusing. But yeah, I agree with that for sure. It can be easier to say one thing and not “confuse” the issue.

Caroline Darya: Yeah. I can appreciate that you were with a woman you probably thought you’d be with a long time, and that it maybe just didn’t have to come up again.

Maryam: Right, and I was with her for a long time. Our relationship outlived most people’s marriages — but I still feel like a failure! Ha ha.

Caroline Darya: I mean, classic. Something I’ve also been thinking a lot about recently is what a queer Iranian-American experience or community looks like. How has that been for you? What does it look like?

Maryam: I live in San Francisco, which used to have the biggest queer Iranian women’s group in HASHA, and I also used to be part of one in Chicago. Those were so important in the 80’s and 90’s when women came from Iran, to help them settle in and get jobs. They were such a strong, tight community, and it grew. It’s so phenomenal how these 18, 19 year-old girls would help others come from Iran and create their own communities. It was so inspiring. I met them in 1999 when I moved to San Francisco as part of my PhD at Berkeley. I was blown away by that idea that they didn’t have to give up being Iranian just because they were gay. In fact, there was an entire, huge community of queer Iranians.

Now it’s years and years later and they all have kids. The next generation maybe has a different idea of identity, but it was such a dangerous thing in the 80’s and 90’s. It really was. It was so brave of them to create these communities when even in America they still didn’t have rights for gays. It was a sub-subculture. It’s so cool to see that they’re all still friends, and we all know each other even more than 20 years later.

Caroline Darya: Another thing I really appreciated about your movie is that even the circumstance of the pregnancy feels very queer. It’s not just that Leila gets pregnant, but that she gets pregnant with this cis guy who’s dressed as Hedwig, which is why she found him hot.

Maryam: I think thematically it made so much sense. She doesn’t care what the truth is. He’s trying to tell her he’s an actor when she thinks he’s a drag queen and she’s just like, “yeah whatever, you’re ruining my fantasy.” I do play a lot with why she finds him attractive. He looks like a woman with really long legs, the best of both worlds! It’s a playful moment. I’m really playing with all these notions of masculinity, femininity, what it means to be a father.

Caroline Darya: It’s another element of The Persian Version that feels like it could fuel its own whole movie. Your first draft was what, 180 pages?

Maryam: The original, yeah. The brothers and the father were much more prevalent in that script, but everything became sublimated to the women’s story. It all got stripped away. So much of writing is what we omit. Half our job is figuring out the things we don’t include on the page.

Caroline Darya: I know you can no longer go back to Iran after Circumstance. What has it been like to watch all the Women Life Freedom protests happening from here?

Maryam: It’s hard because I feel so connected to the movement, and seeing all these girls get hurt… they’re my daughter’s age. That part of it is difficult. But I think it’s exciting, because when I was in Iran I was part of the protests, and now it’s so massive and not stoppable. The difference now is that we can be their voice abroad. That there’s an idea internationally of supporting these women is very exciting. Having (imprisoned Iranian activist) Narges Mohammadi win the Nobel Peace Prize, that kind of recognition also amplifies so much of our movement.

Caroline Darya: Your movie does a really good job showing why Persian women have always been at the forefront of change in Iran. That’s something that maybe surprised some about the protest movement that’s been going on for a year now, but for us, it was like —

Maryam: “Have you ever met an Iranian woman?!”

Caroline Darya: [laughs] I mean, maybe not! So what would you say to those people who were surprised about Iranian women taking control in this way?

Maryam: Something like this doesn’t come overnight. Iranian women are highly educated; women are more than 50 percent of people at universities, more than 50 percent of doctors there are women. It’s also those women who come here to America and have to fight very difficult circumstances economically and socially. They’re resilient. They create joy for their families. They’re very, very strong individuals, and I don’t think anyone should be surprised. No matter if it’s this regime or the previous regime, Iranian women have always been fighting in very difficult circumstances to achieve those things.

So I think Iranian women are a symbol of resilience. They live in a very patriarchal world and yet they’ve attained so much. That’s because they live with the concept of “mobarezeh,” or fighting against the status quo. It’s very much ingrained in the psyche of Iranian women. They are not passive people. They run the household, they’re very aggressive and intelligent women. That is the history of Iranian women.

The Persian Version is now in theatres. 

Stewart Thorndike on “Bad Things,” Motherhood, and Her Childhood Nightmares

With a top ten placement on Autostraddle’s 25 Scariest Queer Movie Moments, Stewart Thorndike’s first feature already established her horror bona fides. Tight, unsettling, familiar and unique, Lyle was a cry of maternal grief, queer distrust, and female rage.

Nine years later, Thorndike has returned with a second feature that fulfills — and surpasses — the promise of her first. Bad Things is somehow even queerer, even scarier, and even more formally accomplished. Returning to many of the same themes but with a grander palette, Thorndike has confirmed herself as one of the most exciting voices in modern horror.

I was lucky enough to talk to Thorndike about Bad Things, her fascination with motherhood, the nightmares that haunted her childhood, and so much more!

Photo by Araya Doheny/WireImage

Drew: I’m so excited to talk to you! My best friend had you as a professor and raved about your class. Do you feel like teaching has informed your artistic practice in any way?

Stewart: I have to just say that we’re matching.

Drew: Oh look at that! We are!

Stewart: (laughs) Well, I never knew how polarizing I was until I became a teacher.

Drew: Ooo tell me more.

Stewart: I didn’t realize that I was considered so eccentric in my thinking. People’s reactions to me and my work always take me by surprise and teaching taught me to just embrace who I am.

Drew: What do you think makes you controversial?

Stewart: Well, I don’t think I ever really understand what’s going on in the world. I’m confused and scared all the time, which is why I’m drawn to thrillers and psychological horror. So I don’t know if I’ll be the best person to answer why I’m controversial.

But even my attraction to horror has been divisive. When I went to grad school for film, horror was considered low-brow, so I actually rejected it for a little bit. I had to fight my way back to horror and be like, no this is what I love.

Then when I started teaching I was surprised that my students either seemed to be really inspired by what I was saying or felt maybe, like, well, I don’t know what they thought! But people seemed to either love me or hate me.

Drew: That’s interesting. I mean, it suits horror as a genre, because different things scare different people. Different things unsettle and offend different people.

Stewart: Yeah I think that’s true. And I think what’s so cool about new voices taking over horror is that we are getting to see what scares other people. Sometimes the point of horror has been to scare rather than to show we’re scared. In general, I think when straight white boys are telling stories it’s more about scaring and when other voices are telling stories it’s more from the perspective of fear.

Drew: I definitely see that pattern.

Was the gap between Lyle and Bad Things due to the normal Hollywood financing bullshit or did you choose to take a break?

Stewart: Absolutely the first.

Drew: (laughs)

Stewart: I was ready to make The Stay — at the time Bad Things was called The Stay — right away. I had my third film ready to go too! But I’m a queer woman fighting to make films that not everybody immediately understands or feels comfortable with or wants to finance or support. It’s just a battle.

Drew: How did you end up getting the financing together?

Stewart: Shudder. They support so many women making films.

Drew: I love the way you play with references and engage with our cultural texts. Do you start out wanting to respond to these past works or do you get the idea and then find the influences later?

Stewart: It’s definitely the personal idea and then after a lot of work I look at it and realize the connection. I want to be mindful to not talk as a writer because I want to honor the strike and our labor movements. But when I’m directing films, I’m not fully aware of my influences. Of course, I wonder if people are going to think it’s like The Shining. But I don’t plan it out where I’m like these models haunting the hotel are going to look like the twins. Or showing room 237 and 217, that was just a coincidence.

These films are in my bloodstream. They’re like my church. They’re in the culture. I’m responding in some way, but it’s more that I’m compelled toward it rather than anything scientific or deliberate. I’ve never been like, oh I love The Shining, let me see what I can do with it.

Drew: I love how sometimes our influences are just a part of us. How old were you when you first saw The Shining?

Stewart: I think I was pretty old by the time I saw it myself, but when I was 11 my best friend told it to me beat-by-beat.

Drew: (laughs) That’s the best way to experience a horror movie when you’re 11.

Stewart: I saw The Shining, Blue Velvet, and Rosemary’s Baby all first as retold by my nerdy best friend. And she didn’t spare a detail. She was very vivid.

Drew: I think that was my role as a child. I watched all sorts of movies as a kid including The Shining and would definitely tell my friends about them.

Stewart: (laughs) We would sit in a dark room and literally go through every beat.

Drew: Were you not watching it because—

Stewart: I wasn’t allowed! I did manage to see A Clockwork Orange when I was very young and I loved that. I was like, are grown ups allowed to make movies like this?

Drew: I want to talk about casting. Cal and Maddie’s transness was just something that was found through casting those actors, right? You weren’t specifically looking for trans actors?

Stewart: No. I just look for mega talent. I mean, I’m definitely attracted to queerness and transness. I shouldn’t say this, because I have no evidence to believe that it’s true, but I assume all my actors are queer. I just do!

Drew: (laughs) It’s interesting because I feel the transness of the actors in their characters. It feels like you at least created space for them to bring that part of themselves. It’s hard to talk about identity because it’s so ephemeral, but I really felt in the movie like they were playing trans characters even if it wasn’t dwelled upon in a tired way.

Maybe the best way to talk about this is just to discuss your process with them in general. How do you work with actors? And did you talk about transness with them or did you just let them tap into that part of themselves if they wanted to or not?

Stewart: There’s so much room for them to make the characters what feels right for them. They’re all intense artists with really strong ideas. When I’m casting, I know the qualities I need. Like let’s say I’m looking for someone with an expansive energy who can be very charismatic, but also scary and also funny. Not too many people can do that and everybody in my cast can. Because of that I’m otherwise pretty flexible. It’s something I like about how I make art. I believe that when I’m not flexible I’m killing the spirit so I leave a lot of room for everybody. I’m still guiding the ship and I know where it’s headed. But I’m very responsive to location and clothing and the people I’m drawn to work with are as well. I like people with strong opinions.

For instance, Rad turned down the part. At that point Rad was probably the least known of the actors and we were like how are they turning this down? So we had to beg a little and follow up. They had some problems with the script that we ended up talking about. It was such an easy fix! They wanted to change the character’s pronouns to better match their own and it was like of course. Those things are really fluid.

Drew: Does that include improvisation?

Stewart: Well, this movie is kind of a mystery, so we had to stay pretty close to the script. But people think of improving as dialogue, when sometimes it’s just how actors are doing the scene. I always think of this one scene where Ruthie and Fran see each other in the stairwell after they’ve hooked up and Ruthie just wants Fran gone. We talked about them being mad at each other, but instead they were giggling and blushing and I was like what are you doing? You can’t control them. They’re these big artists. Hari is another person who is game to explode and go to so many places. Her secret weapon is her access to pain. She’s so vulnerable but she’s also so funny and smart and dazzling that people don’t see it right away. But yeah it’s a collaboration. It’s a true collaboration.

Drew: I have to imagine working in one location like the hotel creates an added intimacy and feeds into that collaborative process.

Stewart: Yeah and alliances form. The actors felt like they were their own unit sometimes. It was cold and it was fast and we didn’t have a lot of money. It could be uncomfortable and it was rush rush rush during these dramatic, sensitive scenes. And so they formed their own supernatural little unit.

Drew: Were you always drawn to horror? Did it start with your friend describing the plots of movies when you were 11?

Stewart: I didn’t like childhood that much. I was kind of a depressed kid. And I didn’t like cartoons. They made me uncomfortable and antsy. I didn’t like sitcoms either. But I remember the first time I saw an episode of The Twilight Zone. I was by myself and I happened to pass by the TV — I didn’t sit down for the whole episode. I just stood there. I was very confused and drawn to it. I felt a comfort from it.

Alongside horror, I also liked old movies and melodramas. Women in trouble. I really liked that. It scared me, but I felt comforted too. I guess it felt more reflective of life to me. I mean, I’m not depressed now. But I was a heavy, melancholy kid. And I think artistically I’m interested in horror because things aren’t always what they seem so there’s room for seeing things wrong and being more elaborate. Altered spaces. You can visually play. Also I think the world is a frightening, frightening place, so I don’t really understand why every film isn’t a horror film. (laughs)

Drew: (laughs) I love that.

You’re so good at horror set pieces. I’m thinking of the Skype call in Lyle and so many moments in Bad Things. Horror doesn’t often scare me and your work has managed to do that. I want to honor not talking about your writing process, but I’d love to know how you come to your horror visuals.

Stewart: Horror and depression and dread are really intermingled for me. “Scare” almost feels too energetic. But, for example, the breakfast room scene? You know, when you see a stock family picture and they’re all laughing? It just freaks me out. So I really wanted to capture that. Sometimes it just feels like everybody is lying and I’m trying to reveal that. Or I want to find discomfort in the exact place you’re supposed to feel comfortable.

Drew: I want to talk about motherhood.

Stewart: (laughs)

Drew: Why do you think horror is such a common genre for stories about moms?

Stewart: Because it’s the most important relationship on Earth. I collect books on moms. I feel like we haven’t investigated that bond as much as we should. The influence is great. A lot of people approach motherhood in terms of body horror and this leaky, bloody invasion, but I’m more in my head about it. More in the spirit world I think.

I think of it as a first relationship and for a lot of people our first heartbreak. After that it’s like, come on try to hurt me! I’m impenetrable! Nothing else will ever compare. For a lot of us, that relationship is the programmer. And I’d say God! Like if you’re not into a higher power up there then you’re left with Mom.

Drew: Oof. Yeah.

Stewart: (laughs)

Drew: (laughs)

How has that fascination shifted upon becoming a mom yourself?

Stewart: Oh it’s the biggest honor to be a mom. I think it’s so fun. I’ve always loved children and felt really comfortable with them. They don’t have any preconceived ideas about who you are or what you’re going to be or if a tree is friendly. They have their own ideas and I think it’s the best. They have a worldview that’s completely liberated. I love children. It’s easy to be a parent, actually. I love it.

Drew: That’s so nice. It’s not something you hear very often.

Stewart: Well, it does require a lot from you. But it’s so rewarding and fun too.

Drew: How do you think queerness plays into that? Both as a queer mom and a queer daughter of a mom. Is queerness just the only worldview you have or are you conscious about how queerness factors into your questions surrounding motherhood?

Stewart: I liked what you said about queerness as my only perspective. I think that’s what it is. Even as a little kid, I was just thinking a little differently. And sometimes that made me ahead of people and sometimes that made me behind. I remember being in 1st grade and thinking, “Wait. We’re coming back here every day?”

Drew: (laughs)

Stewart: Not that confusion is inherently about queerness. But I think I was just looking at things in more of an unindoctrinated perspective. And as far as being a queer parent, being queer is just natural. My daughter knows I’m queer. I think the more unnatural stuff is what patriarchy, misogyny, and capitalism try to do to us.

Drew: There’s a detail in Bad Things that made me laugh. When Ruthie is cheating, the text from her mom says, “I’m sorry I can’t come.” Like while she’s having sex.

Stewart: (laughs) Your brain! I didn’t even think of that to be honest.

Drew: Oh really??

Stewart: I mean, it suits the story right there for sure.

Drew: Well, it’s fitting that it wasn’t intentional, because people are often acting out their parental relationships through romantic relationships without realizing it. I think especially for queer women not even in an Oedipal way, well, maybe a little in an Oedipal way—

Stewart: (laughs)

Drew: I think about what’s added when that core initial relationship is with a woman and then our later relationships are also with women. I think it deepens that bond and makes it even more fraught sometimes for queer women.

Stewart: That’s interesting. Personally, I don’t think I’ve felt too different in my relationships with men versus my relationships with women. But I know that’s not how everybody feels.

Drew: I mean, I do think people can act out mommy issues through dating men and daddy issues through dating women. Gender is expansive!

Stewart: (laughs)

Drew: Last question. Do you have nightmares?

Stewart: I used to when I was a kid. I had recurring dreams.

Drew: Do you remember any of them?

Stewart: One of them was about these men with green faces. There were three of them. Red crazy hair and beards. Everywhere I went they would be there. And it was always outside in the sun. Everybody else was having a great time and I would see these three creepy men.

And in another one I was a man! It was a black and white film. I remember every detail. It was a melodrama and I was a man and I was really sad. I walk into an office and I look at this woman and she’s the love of my life and I know I’ve betrayed her. She looks at this other room and I feel an intense dread. I walk over to the room and there’s this other woman sitting on the ground with a nightgown on. She’s a terrible woman and she’s been my undoing.

It sounds like Bad Things now that I say it.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors who are currently on strike, films like Bad Things would not be possible, and Autostraddle is grateful for the artists who do this work.

Murray Hill on “Somebody Somewhere” and His Decades-Long Career in Showbiz

Somebody Somewhere feels like a show from another time — the long ago era of the 2010s. With its patient storytelling, deeply felt performances, and focus on character, it’s an outlier in a TV landscape where greedy streaming platforms are scrambling to have bigger — and less inclusive — programming.

One of the greatest joys of this show with many is Murray Hill’s performance as Dr. Fred Rococo. Fred is a soil scientist, a professor, the emcee of the underground cabaret Choir Practice, and the stable friend to the more chaotic leads. Murray has been a staple of night clubs, drag, and many other areas of showbiz and it’s about time he be a series regular on TV. As Fred, and just talking to him, Murray has a light unlike few others around. His joy is infectious, his humor is plentiful, his talent is immense.

I was lucky enough to chat with Murray and experience some of that light. We talked about his childhood, how he’s dealing with the current moment, and, of course, showbiz.

Murray: Hello?

Drew: Hi!

Murray: I’m figuring out how to use this. Still! After all these years.

Drew: Honestly, same — there you are!

Murray: Oh there we go. Drew! Good morning! Where are you?

Drew: Well, I’m in Toronto so it’s more like afternoon.

Murray: Yeah it’s afternoon here too. But basically anything before 8 p.m. is morning to me.

Drew: Well, that makes sense given your career!

Murray: Showbusiness!

Drew: Exactly. Showbusiness.

What I would love to do with this interview — if it’s okay — is walk through your entire life.

Murray: (screams)

Drew: (laughs) Your life, your career. Whatever stories come up. So to start, where did you grow up? What was your childhood like?

Murray: Jesus Christ.

Drew: (laughs)

Murray: I did a show last night with Sasha Velour in Philadelphia and she asked me the same thing. “Tell me something about your childhood.” I was like (various noises I do not know how to recreate with onamonapia).

Drew: (laughs)

Murray: Well, I grew up a long time ago. And I grew up in a very conservative, religious household. The town that I lived in was also pretty conservative. So my home life kind of sucked to keep it simple and going to school and being out in the world in New England as somebody who looked — we didn’t have the language we have now. You were either butch or femme or a faggot.

Drew: (laughs) Sure. An umbrella term.

Murray: Yeah. And people always thought I was a boy. Tomboy was the name. I was always butch, I always looked like a boy, and I always thought I was a boy. There weren’t any problems in my head, it was everybody else that had a problem — and that’s still how I think about it today.

In elementary school, they separated us by gender — home ec and shop class — and for whatever reason they put me in the shop class. I was making stuff with tools and doing that kind of thing. But then in 2nd grade they were like no more of that. So my first couple of years in school, I was hanging out with the boys, I felt more comfortable with the boys, I sat with them at lunch, played with them on the playground, and then all of a sudden I was sitting with the girls and was like what the fuck is going on?

Drew: (laughs)

Murray: It didn’t make any sense! And I wasn’t even out yet as a kid. I didn’t come out until college. But I was still ostracized and made fun of. I was pretty ignorant to it, but I knew that it was bad from the religious part of my upbringing. My immediate family made it clear that I was not a girl the way I needed to be a girl. They wanted me to wear a dress and do my hair a certain way, and I just could never understand it. Why? Why would I wear a dress?

So I was getting a lot of heat at home and getting a lot of heat out in the world. But I’ve always had a lot of energy. I’ve always had a spirit, Drew. No matter how bad things got, that spirit never got squashed. That little candle inside never went out. Liza Minneli has that. Even now she still has that light. My personality and the way I interacted with people was my saving grace. I made people laugh. I was funny. And that was my way of connecting with people. And it was also my way of disarming people. I say this today too. You can’t hate and laugh at the same time. Even today in my act. At first, the audience was like, what the fuck is going on? There’s no frame of reference for me, I’m not a drag queen. It was in London I decided that I’m always going to do a funny song before I start talking. That’s because it gives them a chance to see that I’m this nice, funny guy and it disarms them. I’m like, hey hey we’re all having a good time.

So to take it back, it was my humor and cracking jokes that helped me survive elementary school, high school, and college, and then when I got to New York eventually that coping mechanism became a career.

Drew: How did you first find drag? Was it in New York?

Murray: Actually I was in 7th grade. I had one cool teacher. There’s always one! I had one cool teacher in this very conservative town. It was a media studies class or something and one day on a little TV with a VCR tape, she popped in two movies: Paris is Burning and The Queen. I saw those two things and I can’t even describe the experience. I’d never seen anything like it! There was such joy and happiness and chosen family. Now I didn’t know anything about chosen family — I didn’t even know that was an option — but I could see in those films that these outcasts and misfits were the star of their own show. They were their own parents, they were their own sisters, they were their own brothers, they were their own daddies. So that was my first conscious awareness of drag.

And then in high school, I used to dress up as my subject matter for book reports and shit like that. As I said, I always thought I was a boy, I didn’t dress feminine at all, but this was drag. I dressed as Schneider from One Day at a Time. You know he was like the guy with the mustache and the toolbelt, the handyman. I was doing drag in high school. Also we had opposite sex day — wait, I’m going to show you a photo.

Drew: Please.

Murray: I’ll never forget my art teacher said, “You look much better as a man.”

Drew: (laughs)

Murray: Here it is.

Drew: Ah! That’s incredible.

Murray: This is the fucking 80s, Drew. Look at that! I’m embarrassed about the middle part but…

Drew: No, no, you’ve got to be with the trends.

Murray: Then I went to college in Boston which is also very conservative. Liberal pockets for sure, but conservative. I started taking pictures of drag queens in night clubs and I saw firsthand what I saw in those films. I witnessed these beautiful, loving, funny, positive, upbeat, not-discriminating spaces of drag and gay people and this, that, and the other thing. It was so beautiful and I started photographing them.

Long story short, I got to New York, and I was like okay where are the lesbians? Where are the trans guys? Where are the drag kings? What’s on the other side of this spectrum? So then I stopped taking photos of drag queens and I went to an early drag king pageant. Maybe 1993? It was more like butch women passing as guys. There wasn’t really that camp element. But then I became the subject matter! It went from always thinking I was a boy to seeing drag and trans people on-screen to dressing up as a guy in school to watching drag queens to photographing and documenting drag queens to documenting drag kings and then, finally, I became the subject matter.

Drew: You’ve been an icon for a long time, but I imagine being an icon in underground queer spaces isn’t the most lucrative kind of icon to be. So I would love to talk about your day-to-do in the 90s, the 00s, and the 10s. How much were you able to perform vs. day job stuff? What has the trajectory been throughout those decades?

Murray: I did have a day job. I was a visual artist and my day job was design and coding. I worked for this branding company and I had clients that were Fortune 500 companies like Kodak and fucking IBM and shit like that. I was the creative person making sure everything was on-brand. When the bubble burst the first time it was 2001. I’d been going out every night, doing shows, and then going to work. So when I was laid off, I was like, I’m not going back. That’s it.

I’m from the clubs. Not the comedy clubs. Nightlife. And I was in those clubs every night gigging, doing shows, doing the hustle. I wasn’t making tons of money, but I made enough to live. And the more gigs I did, the more exposure I got. I was really just pounding it. Pounding the boards is the old Vaudeville phrase. I always did shows in the queer community and in the mainstream. And one day Dita Von Teese’s manager saw me at this hole in the wall in Soho and was like “You’re funny! We want to try you out touring with Dita!” And I was skeptical. You know, LA people. “We’ll call you.” Sure, sure. But they did! And the trial went great and I ended up touring all over the world with Dita for ten years.

Drew: Wow!

Murray: And from that, some people with the Sydney Opera House saw me, and I did a couple of big seasons there. So I was in the underground in New York and then expanded out and out. And in the meantime, I’m trying to get on TV, and it’s like no, no, no. Gatekeepers. No, no, no.

I say this a lot, if you don’t see yourself represented, go out and represent yourself. I just created my own shows. I created my own events. I created my own one-man shows. I created songs. I did pageants for the community. The Miss Lez Pageant. The Transman Pageant. I was always making sure that I was represented. Because if I waited, I’d still be waiting. I would have had to go back to work… for the man!

Drew: (laughs) You mention wanting to be on TV and the gatekeepers. So going back to the 90s and the 00s, was being on TV the goal? Even though there wasn’t necessarily a model of someone like you on TV, that was still the ultimate goal? You could still see it happening? You had that vision?

Murray: For me, as far as show business goes, my whole mission statement, what drives me, is equal rights and that also means — and this is a touchy subject — equal rights within our own community. Because we know that’s not equal. So my whole thing was to raise visibility, be at the table, and to represent people like me. And in show business, you reach the most people if you’re on television. I can work in New York in the clubs for twenty years but if I’m on TV for two seconds a lot more people will see me. We didn’t have Instagram back then or any of that stuff so as far as reach went, TV was the goal.

Drew: Speaking of television, you’ve known Bridget Everett for a long time—

Murray: Oh hell yes!

Drew: (laughs) So I assume Somebody Somewhere wasn’t the average audition process. Can you walk us through the experience from first hearing about the show to finding out you got cast to filming?

Murray: Well, even if you’re an old-timer newcomer, most shows you have to audition. That’s just the way it is.

Drew: Of course.

Murray: But I didn’t have to audition for this! And I always say, thank God because everytime I do audition for a show, I don’t get it!

Drew: (laughs)

Murray: So thank fucking God I didn’t have to audition! The show is loosely based on Bridget’s life so the writers knew about me and Fred is loosely based on me. I got a free pass. Bridget called me and I was like, what? You’ve got a show on HBO? I’m going to be on it? I don’t have to audition?? Shit! And, you know, six months later we’re doing table reads and then we shot the pilot. And then after we shot the pilot, they greenlit it. It was a very long process.

Drew: I feel like people who aren’t in showbiz don’t realize how much is just waiting to be told by someone who you would never encounter in the real world whether or not you get to do the thing you love or not.

Murray: It’s pretty nuts.

Drew: So now that you’re on an HBO show and have that mainstream validation, what are your dreams for the future? What’s the dream project?

Murray: Well, Drew, since I was a kid I was very inspired by Johnny Carson. I would sneak down late at night and watch him. I’ve always wanted to have my own talk show and with every project, I’m getting a little closer.

Drew: I see it! I see it so clearly!

Murray: Last Monday, I shot Family Feud with the Drag Me to Dinner cast. And being there with Steve Harvey, on a game show, I felt so close! It’s very exciting. But it’s very subversive to have somebody like me in that kind of space. I was there with six drag queens. It was pretty nuts. It’s going to come out sometime in June to coincide with Drag Me to Dinner.

Drew: I want to shift slightly to talk about the current legislative and cultural backslide against trans people, against us. Witnessing this do you feel like well things used to be so much worse and this is just how it goes or do you feel more like shit we finally got there and now it’s getting bad again. Where are you at emotionally?

Murray: Because I am older, it hasn’t always been rosy. And it does feel like we’re going back to a time when gay and trans people were protesting in the streets. But I struggle on a daily basis to try not to buy into the ruse of it all. I honestly believe that it is a minority of people that feel hatred and want to harm us and want to erase us and take away our rights and healthcare. I do feel it’s a minority. That said, looking at the news today the reality is that things are being passed. It’s real. Laws are getting changed. That’s the scary part. And on a daily basis I have to remind myself to turn anger into action. What can my action be? How can I as a person in the community, as an elder person in the community, be of service? And I really think that my whole thing is — and this kind of goes back to me in elementary school — I want to show people one-on-one or in a group or through Fred or by being a host on a TV show that I’m just a human being. We breathe the same air, we eat the same bad foods, I don’t like to exercise, I’m a human being first.

Cardi B tweeted something like I don’t know what everyone’s problem is, everyone has a gay best friend, everyone has a gay cousin, and if you’re homophobic you’re ugly. Most of the people who are spewing this hate don’t even know any trans people. I want to be the guy that they meet or who they see on TV and they go oh hey this is just a human being, a person with a heart. The same problems, the same issues. I want to build a bridge with my anger. I want to turn it into a handshake.

Drew: Does that ever get exhausting? I know sometimes when I go out into the world, especially in certain places, I can feel this pressure to be super friendly because if I’m the first trans person someone is meeting or the only one they’re going to talk to this month I need to make a good impression. And that can be exhausting. How do you deal with the burden of that?

Murray: I find other things more exhausting. The misgendering. Even when I’m in full drag, in a completely queer space, I’m sometimes still called a girl, people use she and her. I could go on and on. It blows my mind. And that’s in our own community. Then out in the world, forget it. That’s a whole other story. And I’m not necessarily the type of person who is a corrector. I usually have a three strike policy and then I’m like okay time to get the schoolbook out.

But in response to what you’re saying about having to be friendly, this is how I feel: I need to be myself and I actually am a very upbeat, friendly, warm person. My first instinct is actually to dull that. Because enemy! enemy! danger! homophobe! transphobe! So I have to dig deep to remain who I am even in the face of a threat.

Drew: I love that.

Murray: And then most of the time, we can reach some sort of human understanding.

Drew: The last thing I want to ask you is a very broad question.

Murray: Well, I love broads!

Drew: (laughs)

Murray: (laughs)

Drew: What does showbiz mean to you?

Murray: It has many meanings! One example is you’re on tour, you’re doing great, the show starts at 7 o’clock, and then the bus doesn’t show up. And you look at your friend and you’re like, “Showbiz.” Right? Or you’re watching Judy Garland and she’s doing her thing and you’re like, “Showbiz! Now that is showbiz!”

To me, showbiz means the spotlight is on you. And not only is the spotlight on you, but you’re feeling the light. You’re feeling the light and then you’re giving the light. And when you’re feeling the light and giving the light, hey, maybe you share a couple of things that might help somebody else out. But then when things go wrong and you can’t fucking believe it even though showbiz is a pain in the ass most of the time, well, that’s showbiz too.

Caroline Rose Breaks Free

feature image photo by Cristina Fisher

I was first introduced to the music of Caroline Rose by a friend who had posted one of their songs to Instagram. The song, “Jeannie Becomes a Mom”, was pop-y and fresh and made me an instant fan of their work. I quickly dove into the album LONER and kept my eyes peeled for future products. Fans were blessed with another album in 2020, and recently, Rose released their 2023 album, The Art of Forgetting.

Listening to this new album, you can feel how complex this new project is. It feels like Rose is taking more risks and becoming more themself. When I sat down with Rose to talk about this album, we went back to their musical beginnings.

Though currently living in Austin, Rose grew up on Long Island and found a connection to music fairly early.

“Both my parents are artists and always had artists friends coming through, and I have one of my parent’s friends who’s kind of like my fake uncle,” they say. “He would always come through with different instruments and a harmonica. He actually gave me my first guitar. So I’ve kind of always just been noodling around on instruments first. That’s as long as I can remember. But it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started writing music.”

One of my favorite songs lyrically on the new album is “Miami”, the third track. It sets a pretty typical queer scene, a love unraveling despite one or both parties’ best efforts. Its a song about unraveling while trying to stay whole, with lyrics that just scratch an itch for me, especially at the song’s climax:

“This is the hard part
The part that they don’t tell you about
There is the art of loving
This is the art of forgetting how
This is gonna break you
You’re gonna rip your own heart out
There is the art of loving.”

When talking with Rose, they explain to me that they often see colors as a part of their creation process. For me, listening to “Miami”, I see a really bright chartreuse. Like a palm tree lit up by the sun in a way that transforms the green into a different shade. Also, the way the guitar screams as the song ends evokes that color for me.

Rose explains that they see each song as a movie, and when they are writing and producing songs, they wonder: What’s the color palette for this movie? What would the costuming look like? I can only imagine this brings a whole new depth to the sound of the music they make, getting to have fun with the production side in that way.

One thing that comes up a lot in our conversation is the topic of artistic freedom. Rose explains that in previous albums, they made a lot of concessions to bureaucratic forces involved in album making. We don’t get too deep in the weeds here about these people and their roles, but Rose proclaims that they feel The Art of Forgetting is their best album because they refrained from making any of those concessions again.

“I really lost myself making that album [Superstar, 2020], and I just didn’t want that to happen again,” they say. “So I took my time, and I really didn’t put any pressure on myself at all, which I think is why it’s good. There’s no pressure. I didn’t really involve any business people, which is probably the best thing an artist could do — not involve any business people. I didn’t make any concessions on it. No one listened to it until it was done except my, you know, my family and my immediate friends, and I’m really proud of that in a way because it’s surprisingly hard to stay focused on your goal and enough to have a complete final cut over your work. I’m always surprised by how easy it is to let someone infiltrate the process.”

Superstar is a great album, but it’s definitely different than this new one. A song like “The Doldrums” (a personal favorite) wouldn’t have appeared on the last album. But it fits perfectly on The Art of Forgetting.

When I ask Rose if they could do a Song Exploder-style breakdown of one song on the album, they chose “The Doldrums.” It’s one of the shorter songs on the album, but sonically it’s very dense, meaning it contains so much: vocally, lyrically, and instrumentally. It’s a bountiful song, dark and twisted.

The song opens with the lyrics:

“In a dream
There’s someone I hate
A smile creeps across my face
As they burn there at the stake.”

The backing vocals accompanied by the staccato drums in the section that follows give this song a very eerie feel that really captures your attention as a listener. As the story of the song unfolds, Rose asks “If that was me then, then who am I now?”

Rose sings in a way that almost sounds like chanting in this section; it’s visceral and emotional. The lyrics continue with

“There comes a time in every life
where you have to ask what it means to be alive”

and it’s clear that they are wrestling with big questions about humanity, our capacity to love, to be cruel, and so much more. These are things they had attempted to explore in their early songwriting, they tell me, but on this album, they nail it.

The front half of the album definitely dances around in its darkness, but just like in a good poem, of course comes the volta, and we turn to a sort of lightness.

“I think more than anything, I feel more like a storyteller,” they say “And the way that you see tracks is really such an essential part of telling the story. I’m trying to tell the story of just a particular time. I’m just getting through this painful process, making my way through it all. And when you listen to the first half of the album, it’s pretty dark and very emotionally Stark, I think. And then as you listen through to the end there, you can kind of hear these moments of healing. Adding the voicemails is a storytelling device. So yeah, it’s like I’m really thinking a lot about it on every element.”

The voicemails included in between songs from, I’m assuming, family members of Rose’s, are tender and affirming. They really are like arrows directing you toward the healing elements in the album.

My reading of these moments is that the speaker in these songs is someone in this deep state of pining and longing for romantic love, or really just genuine love and connection, and the voicemails serve as a confirmation of love that already exists in the speaker’s life.

But the big song on the album for me is “Love Song for Myself.” It is such a painful yet lovely song that is only amplified by the vocal turn Rose takes on this track. They sing at a higher note with a softer tone here, which strikes me as different than the rest of the album. The song is laden with really stark images: “If I am a doormat, then I am handwoven”/”If I am a hurricane coming to destroy everything then I too am the return of all things beautiful.”

The album is at once playful and heartwrenching, affectionate and brutal, so many seeming contradictions blended together in the most human way. That’s what I love about listening to these songs. Because no one among us hasn’t felt vengeful and also at a loss for love in the same day. It paints such a divine picture of what makes Rose, and the rest of us, human.

The Art of Forgetting is now available for purchase. And available to stream on all platforms. 

Peppermint on Her New Comedy Special, Trans Dating, and the Best of New York Drag

Most drag performers are multi-hyphenates, but few are as successful in their various hyphenates as Peppermint. Since placing second on season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Peppermint has originated a role in the Broadway show Head Over Heels, appeared on multiple TV shows including Pose and God Friended Me, released her second album and four EPs, wrote and starred in a short film based on one of those EPs, co-led the drag competition show Call Me Mother, and now has just released her first comedy special, So-SIGH-ety Effects. Her singing voice — well-suited for both showtunes and sexy, sexy R&B — is matched only by her political voice. Peppermint is an artist who takes her platform seriously, a model of talent and community care.

I was lucky enough to talk to Peppermint about her new special, the ever-exhausting topic of dating while trans, and the many ways Broadway needs to evolve.

Peppermint: I’m so sorry I’m late!

Drew: That’s totally okay. If there are two things I know, it’s LA traffic and working late on a Joey Soloway project so whichever one of those it was is understandable. (laughs)

Peppermint: Both. (laughs)

Drew: So you’re in LA right now rehearsing for the Transparent musical. Where are you at in that process?

Peppermint: Just a few days into rehearsals for the production.

Drew: Oh wow!

Peppermint: The project is obviously inspired by the TV show, and it’s been in the minds of a few folks for years now. They’ve been focusing on this production for about a year, and the past couple of months there have been a few workshops. But we’re only a few days into working with the cast that will be performing it this summer.

Drew: You also originated your role in Head Over Heels. What’s the difference between originating a role and just being cast in a production. Because you have also played Angel in Rent, right?

Peppermint: Yes! I mean, it wasn’t even a regional production. It was a community theatre production that was part of a one-act festival in Wilmington, Delaware. With Aubrey Plaza of all people!

Drew: Oh my God!

Peppermint: Among lots of other fabulous people. Delaware, you know, we have some folks.

But I don’t have that much experience to compare originating vs. not, because doing a show on Broadway and doing a community theatre production are so different in other ways. That said, being able to breathe life into a character that has already been performed before allows a lot of source material and sometimes even inspiration. With something like Rent, I didn’t have to do that much studying for the character. This was back in the 90s, about a year after the show had opened on Broadway, so it was fresh on everybody’s mind. I was a fan of the show. Everybody was.

That’s one of the things originating doesn’t provide. You just have your imagination and whatever the text gives you. But then logistically for theatre, before it can get to Broadway or be professionally produced, it has to go through readings and workshops, which is hours and hours of time, thought, consideration, trial and error, experimentation, rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, and editing. A song has the same music but completely different words, oh we’re putting the words back in but now it’s a rock song. That doesn’t happen if you’re just going to do a guest spot or what they call “the celebrity track” in a Broadway show that’s been running for many years. Also there’s an element that I’ll be associated with, let’s say, Head Over Heels, for a long time even if I’m not doing it.

Drew: Do you have classic Broadway roles that you dream of doing or do you prefer to focus on new work?

Peppermint: No, I don’t have classic Broadway roles I want to do. Of course, there are roles if someone offered me the opportunity and money — money! — to do, I’d consider it. I mean, I love performing on the stage. But I think professional theatre has a lot of catching up to do with the racial and ethical reckoning we’ve had over the past few years. The producers are starting to understand that there’s an adjustment that needs to be made, the casting directors are understanding it. But the gatekeepers are still keeping a lot of the writing out. All we have are these mainstay theatrical productions that never have room for people like me. So I never imagined myself in those shows. And they didn’t imagine me either.

I remember being told by one of my professors in college that I was great but that there was no work for me so I should save myself the trouble and go do something else. And I did. So no, there aren’t any roles I can see myself in or want to see myself in. Because with these older productions that are still hanging around, making somebody money, a lot of them still have problematic content in them. So we have to figure out the casting and we have to figure out the content. And, you know, that producer said a couple years ago that trans people can’t do Broadway because it’s just a gimmick and we shouldn’t rewrite the classics. So if that’s how they feel, then no. I don’t want to bring my energy to a production like that, because a show takes a lot of energy and time and care. I say, let those old relics die.

Drew: I appreciate you bringing up the text as well. Because a lot of the producers who are willing to cast more inclusively aren’t willing to engage with what that casting means for the show or make changes to the text in ways that would service that version. Even if they’re willing to plop certain actors in, which is great from an employment standpoint, it’s not meaningfully changing the work in a way that’s needed.

Peppermint: Or even the music!

Drew: Yeah! That’s real.

Peppermint: The keys. I heard through the grapevine about a popular show that closed last year and one of the administrators said they wanted to cast somebody who is trans but they didn’t want to touch anything about the show. They don’t even want to change the keys. And okay, sure, they want to find somebody who fits the bill, but there’s a reason why some of these things need to change to actually be inclusive. If they wanted to cast somebody who is voluptuous or bigger in a role that’s previously been played by thin people, they’re going to have to change the costume! You can’t just expect somebody to fit in the same thing. So it’s the same with the music and the text.

Drew: Absolutely. Thank you for saying that.

Switching to your special, what was the writing process like for So-SIGH-ety Effects?

Peppermint: It was actually really amazing. It was like a crash course in comedy. As a drag entertainer, I’ve always used comedy in my shows, but I certainly don’t consider myself a comedy act. I don’t think most people would. And while I understand the technical aspects of comedy and that world, doing a comedy special was far down the list of things I was going to propose. So when Comedy Dynamics approached me about it, I was honestly like, me? Really? But the writing was on the wall over the past couple of years that we would be in this moment legislatively with regards to anti-LGBT sentiment and anti-drag sentiment. So I wanted to take the opportunity to tell our stories, tell my story, tell a trans story. And I know that people learn best while laughing. Audiences need more trans comics. There certainly are a handful of well-known trans comics, but we need more. So that was my inspiration.

One of the things that was important to me was being able to tell something that felt authentic. And I believe I did that. I just told some wackadoodle stories about things that have happened to me as a trans person navigating everything from bathrooms to jobs to love to family. There are plenty of stories that can be looked at through a comedic lens, so that’s what we did.

I got together with Kellye Howard who’s a brilliant comic out of Chicago. We actually wrote it together while I was in Canada filming Call Me Mother, and then she met me in New York and we finished it and finetuned it in about a week. That’s very short for a comedy special. Most of the comics we know and love workshop their material for months if not a year. But we didn’t have that kind of time.

I’m really grateful that I was able to do it. It was a great experience. The folks at Comedy Dynamics along with the Producer Entertainment Group were a wonderful bunch to work with. I hope people like it!

Audiences need more trans comics. There certainly are a handful of well-known trans comics, but we need more. So that was my inspiration.

Drew: I think you do a really good job at finding humor in some pretty harsh things. Like the guy who goes full Crying Game vomiting after a hookup. It’s the sort of thing that can inspire pity, and instead you inspire laughs.

Peppermint: Yeah, I mean, these things happen, and many of these stories in the moment feel really depressing. But then, sitting around with my girlfriends, we laugh about it. We’re like, “Girl, can you believe this. You went through it too? Same guy??”

Drew: (laughs)

Peppermint: Then we really have to laugh.

Drew: Speaking of dating, you’ve toured around the world, and you even talk about finding love in Ireland. When you’re on tour are you on the apps in different cities? Have you found that dating as a trans woman varies in different cities and different countries?

Peppermint: Yes. I think the starkest differences are state to state. Even though I’ve obviously been to other countries and enjoyed the wares.

I mean, let’s be real, the message has been sent that the men around are not looking to wife a trans woman. I’m not saying that none of them are, but it’s obvious there are challenges being trans and dating. Even just having to disclose and explain something about your trans existence and how it might fit into their world in terms of dating or even sex. So I go onto the apps with a grain of salt. I’m not looking for no husband if I’m up in Schenectady for two days.

Drew: (laughs) Sure.

Peppermint: (laughs) That being said, I actually met the Irish guy while I was in the States. So it just so happened that I got to a place in my career where I was able to travel the world. And I’ve had a handful of long distance relationships since then. I’m actually in a long distance situationship right now, which we’ll see how that goes. And that’s only because I left New York and am in Los Angeles. Quite temporarily. But it has been a challenge. I know there are some dating apps that have been around for years that are more LGBT friendly. There are a couple of new dating apps that are trans-focused that I’ve used the least for obvious reasons. Or at least obvious for people who are trans. But I do have high hopes, despite what we’re facing. I know the message being sent out by lawmakers probably sends a message to our potential partners that we aren’t desirable sociably. So that’s a bump in the road, but I do think it’s inevitable that we will be fully included and immersed in the world of dating. Then we’ll just be able to deal with the BS cis women deal with — which we already do, of course.

Drew: Do you feel like you’re able to tell the difference between regular challenges of dating and trans-specific challenges? That’s something I’ve struggled with over the years. Trying to learn to not take everything on as related to transness. Trying to let go of that assumption, because sometimes dating just sucks for everybody. I mean, sometimes it’s obviously transphobic because they’ll say. But with the rest, are you able to tell the difference?

Peppermint: I don’t know that I am. I mean, obviously when something is ending all you have is speculation. If you have someone who is well-spoken, emotionally available, and invested in having good communication at all stages of the relationship, then you’ll probably be able to tell the difference. Sadly, I don’t think most cisgender men carry those characteristics very well, so if that’s who you’re dating then you’re left wondering what’s happening and filling in the blanks for your damn self. But I was relieved that my most significant recent breakup, we did break up for what I believe to be normal everyday relationship things. And he and I are still friends to this day. We broke up right before the pandemic and parted ways for a couple years, but now we have a newer friendship. And that’s because, as young as he was, he was really invested in good communication. I can only speak, sadly, as a heterosexual, but hopefully men in this new age — cis or trans — will engage with being better partners.

Drew: I really like what you say in the special about trans people being forced to be more mature. So often in cultural rhetoric, there’s this idea of trans people having a second puberty and being immature. But that’s so focused on the early months and years of transition as if we don’t, hopefully, live long lives after that. I really appreciated you saying that, because I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone say actually because of the shit we have to deal with we’re possibly more mature.

Peppermint: Yeah, I certainly believe it. I mean, I’ve met some immature trans folks and I’m like… girl… honey. But I even think that can sometimes be people projecting how they want to be perceived whether it’s ditzy or just not making good choices. Anyway, there are all sorts of people all around the world, so, of course, I’m generalizing.

Dr. Angela Davis said something that really connects with my feelings about trans people going through certain experiences. I’m paraphrasing, but she says that trans people can show us what it means to live fully in the human experience without being held back by the gender binary, the sex binary, the sexuality binary, that we operate in as a society. That’s the way of the future. Being less constricted by these things. And trans people are already doing that. Not all, but many of us in the movement are. And that gives me hope for the future. There were times where trans people, nonbinary people, gender nonconforming people, were elevated to a point of reverence in cultural and religious circles historically in the Americas, in Europe, in South America, in India, all over. If society was able to see those people as elevated and anointed in a way then maybe society will get back around to that.

Drew: You talk about trans people and you specifically being on high alert for danger. How do you find a balance between being prepared in order to protect yourself while not living in a constant state of anxiety?

Peppermint: I mean, a lot of that probably also connects to me being a New Yorker. (laughs)

Drew: I transitioned while I was in New York and spent my first years there so…

Peppermint: So you get it.

Drew: Yes.

Peppermint: And this actually brings us back to dating in different areas. Because this is where I’m stuck. On the one hand, I do want a progressive, forward-thinking partner. But on the other hand, a good ol’ traditional moment can sometimes be appreciated. Sometimes you meet guys in the midwest or in the south who aren’t prejudiced or discriminatory and want to open the door for their trans partner, are okay going on a date before expecting sex, all of those things that are part of courtship, I’m not saying those things don’t happen in places like LA and New York, but the guys in LA and New York know what they want and know the terminology and oftentimes just want to cut to the chase and get what they’re going to get. So that’s an interesting dichotomy.

In regards to being on high alert, I often speak about and use my platform to shine a light on the violence trans people face globally and in the country, the discrimination that LGBTQ people face. I try my best to use my platform to talk about that in a way that will allow the rest of the society to see how their microaggressions and biases and how society in general perpetuates that discriminatory treatment and violence. It’s important for me to talk about those things. But now that I’ve been on television and have been able to get to a certain point in my career, I’m lucky that I’m not confronted with those things as often as many other people. So even if I’m not on high alert like I used to be, I want to highlight that there are people who are in that situation. I don’t like to focus on medical transition, but that can play a part in how people perceive you especially when mid-medical transition. I certainly experienced that myself. And so even if I’m further along in my journey, it’s important for me to advocate for those who are less far along if they’re going to medical transition or even socially transition in a way that allows other people to judge and discriminate against them. But I’m grateful that now I don’t walk through the streets fearing for my life.

Drew: You open the special with your song “Best Sex” from your 2020 EP, and I wanted to talk about the short film you made to coincide with that EP. I saw April Maxey’s film Work when I was on the Outfest jury last summer and I think she’s so talented. How did the Girl Like Me film come about and what was that collaboration like?

Peppermint: It was written because of the pandemic and how the world became. I knew that I wanted to do some music videos for the EP but we didn’t know how to do that given the moment. Like were we really going to fly back and forth and make videos for all these songs? So we decided to just get everybody together, test them, film in a week, and do it all at once. Because this was 2020.

We were looking for a director and we ended up meeting April through some people on my team and April was wonderful. I loved working with her. We were initially going to have her back for part two but she had to move onto another project and it didn’t work out with scheduling. We are currently fine-tuning and finalizing part two right now though.

Drew: Oh that’s so exciting!

Peppermint: Yeah!

Drew: Before we go, I’m purposefully not asking you any questions about Drag Race or about how Drag Race has evolved in terms of trans performers or why it took so long, because I’ll save that for if I ever talk to RuPaul or any of the execs at World of Wonder. That’s not your business.

Peppermint: Thank you very much.

Drew: But we are talking a few days after Sasha Colby was crowned. And I just, honestly, wanted to thank you, because I do think you being on the show when you were and dealing with all the bullshit that came along with that has allowed the show to be where it is now. So I don’t have any questions about Drag Race, but I did want to just note that for our readers and thank you for putting up with whatever the challenges were of that visibility and that moment in time.

Peppermint: Thank you. I appreciate that. There were some challenges. I’m grateful for my time on the show. I’m so excited and happy for Sasha. She’s obviously very skilled and very professional. She’s definitely my kind of drag entertainer. So I’m really happy for her. And, honestly, I’m really happy for the top four that made it to the finale. I remember how terrifying it was for our group. And I did feel an added pressure being trans on the show, how would the community receive it, how would the world receive it, how would the show handle it. And for the most part, I had an experience that I’m grateful for. And I’m grateful for the things that I’ve been able to do since the show. I hope I made an impact somehow.

Drew: Something I also feel very strongly about is that there’s a whole world of drag outside of RuPaul’s Drag Race. So I did also want to take a moment to ask, are there any drag performers or drag bars that you want to shout out?

Peppermint: Certainly, I believe that people should go to New York City, and even though there’s been all this talk about how the world has changed and New York isn’t the same and this and that, New York is still a wonderful city because it attracts so many different types of people with so many different skill sets. We all mix and mingle with each other, along with our talents, our careers, our conversations, in a way that in other cities you don’t necessarily get to do, because people just drive in or drive out. But in New York, you’re just in really close proximity to people, including in the drag performer scene. I think I had a really singular view of drag performers before I moved to New York City. And then in New York, I met people who were wonderful performers, great vocalists, and I’m talking 20 years ago when the definition of drag was just lip syncing. I also met drag queens who were legit models and didn’t even perform. They wouldn’t go to the stage, they’d just stand and look gorgeous. Obviously Drag Race has touched upon some of the archetypes of drag, but there are so many more.

There are some girls who I’m really loving right now in New York, and they aren’t even the newest girls. But they are New Yorkers. Pixie Aventura is a brilliant drag entertainer in New York. I also love Bootsie Lefaris. She is wildly inappropriate and such a kook and just wrong in every way that’s just right. And then there’s another performer — people might not think she’s a drag entertainer but I would say she is — Narcissister who mixes the worlds of burlesque, performance art, and drag. She’s fantastic. So people should check out those three folks. I’m sure they have stuff online and then when you come to New York you should see them.

Drew: I love how much you love New York. I love it too. Whenever I’m not there, I miss it.

Peppermint: Me too. I’ve only been gone for a few days and I’m already like get me the fuck back there.

Mae Martin on “Sap,” Camping, and Finding Queer Community

Photo by Tommaso Boddi / Stringer via Getty Images

I interviewed Mae Martin for the first time at the end of March 2020. The first season of their show Feel Good had been released as the early days of quarantine were threatening to last much, much longer.

It says a lot about how the world responded to that pandemic and the recent rise of transphobia, that three years later things feel even more challenging. But that’s why Mae’s new standup special, Sap, is such a relief. Netflix has taken a break from their regularly scheduled transphobic comics to make space for someone who is not only trans, but also really, really funny.

Mae’s comedy doesn’t avoid the seriousness of the moment but it does de-prioritize it in a way that feels important. The title of the show alludes to finding the good in a bad situation — Mae’s comedy is some of that good. They talk about gender, but they spend far more time talking about their ex and a moose.

I hope you enjoy my third chat with Mae for Autostaddle where we do not talk about their ex, but we do talk about gender and the moose.

Mae: Hey Drew!

Drew: Hi! You’re in LA now, right?

Mae: I’m in LA! I feel like we should’ve hung out by now?

Drew: Yeah, but now I’m in Toronto.

Mae: Oh fuck! When did that happen?

Drew: I mean, I still live in LA. Sort of. I was in Toronto last summer and now I’m here for the spring. But the plan right now is July I’ll come back to LA and find a new place and then stay for a bit.

Mae: Okay cool. And is this all relationship based?

Drew: (laughs) Yeah.

Mae: (laughs) Okay, okay, okay. Well, it’s so easy to work from anywhere now.

Drew: Yeah. Are you liking LA?

Mae: I’m loving it. But there’s stigma attached to loving LA. Like what does that say about me?

Drew: No, that’s a good thing!

Mae: I’m in the honeymoon phase. The sun, the Mexican food, it’s all good.

Drew: Yeah, I mean, it’s still so cold in Toronto.

Mae: Is it?

Drew: There’s nothing more boring than being in Toronto and complaining about the weather but I’m just like it’s April, I’m ready for it to warm up.

Mae: Yeah, it’s intense.

Drew: Okay, so obviously you’re from here. And your special starts around a campfire and has a woodsy aesthetic on stage. Are you outdoorsy?

Mae: No. (laughs) Well, it’s a complicated answer, Drew. I crave nature. When I’m in it, I love it. But I’m not a good camper. I’m good for the day. Maybe having some drinks by the fire. Then I need to go into a bed and have four strong walls. But when I was a kid I went to summer camp for nine summers in a row and they were the happiest times.

Drew: Oh wow! What kind of summer camp?

Mae: It was a canoe tripping camp. I went on like a twelve day canoe trip where you’re just camping and carrying your canoe on your back sometimes and canoeing all through the Canadian lakes.

Drew: Woah.

Mae: I was a real camp kid.

Drew: I do think as a kid I was better at being crusty than I am now.

Mae: Oh totally. Now I’ve got to wash my face twice a day. I need my products.

Drew: As a kid, did you ever see a moose?

Mae: I did! On those canoe trips I saw a bear and a moose and a lot of beavers. Insert joke there. But moose are fucking massive. They’re huge.

Drew: That’s still on my Canadian to-do list. I would like to see a moose. Obviously not too close. But I’d like to see one at some point.

Mae: They’re really majestic. But moose are kind of like the hippos of the land. They’re aggressive. They run really fast.

Drew: Speaking of moose, how do you construct your standup material? What’s your writing process like for standup?

Mae: It’s always evolving. It depends what I’ve been doing that year. In the past, for instance, I was working on a radio series and some of the writing for that turned into standup. This time a lot of it was from improv.

I finished Feel Good and was really craving light silliness and something slightly less gruelingly personal. So I went on tour doing an improv show, improvised standup, improvising with friends, and then a lot of stuff came out of that. I think this has a lighter feel to it. You can tell I’m having fun.

Drew: Yeah definitely. When approaching the special, what kinds of conversations did you have with director Abbi Jacobson?

Mae: Well, the first thing was just whether she wanted to do it. (laughs)

Drew: (laughs) Sure.

Mae: Then she came to a bunch of previews I did in LA and gave notes on bits that weren’t working. I’d been touring the show for awhile and had gotten a little complacent with it. There was stuff that wasn’t working that I was still doing. It needed a shakeup. I think we reordered some bits.

And on the night, we discussed things like camera positions and worked together designing the forest stage. And with those bookending scenes by the fire, Abbi’s just a great director. We have a really similar taste. And I love that she’s not a standup, so she’s coming at it from more of a storytelling angle.

Drew: That’s interesting.

So I almost decided to do a bit where I didn’t ask you a single question about transness.

Mae: (laughs) That would’ve been a great bit.

Drew: I was like I’m really tired of thinking about it and talking about it, I’m sure Mae is really tired of thinking about it and talking about it. I’m not going to stick to that bit, I’m really sorry, but I will at least keep things a bit meta. So first I want to know, how have the pressures of discussing transness changed since doing press for Feel Good?

Mae: Oh I’d say they’ve amped up tenfold. First of all, I’m further along in that journey. I feel more solidly part of that community. So I feel more qualified to have thoughts about it. But it’s also because of all the legislation and hysteria around it. I’m sure this won’t be the case with Autostraddle, but it’s just been the pull quote of every interview. ¹

So then it looks like I’m obsessed. I mean, I expected it a bit because of the content in the show. But I just keep waving the banner of like it’s just one part of the show and I say pretty much everything I want to say about it in the show.

Drew: Look, I know from talking with you before, and from Feel Good, and you even see it in the special, there’s a begrudging acknowledgment that everyone is waiting for you to talk about this thing.

Mae: Yeah and I’m always interrogating where that reluctance is coming from. But I think it’s mostly because it gets taken out of context. And because I have so much more I want to say. Plus the fear of being pigeon-holed. But like I say in the show, it feels important. And I do appreciate the platform to talk about it.

Drew: One of my favorite storylines in Feel Good is when fictional Mae is trying to decide whether to call out the abusive comic. I think so much of being in the industry is navigating when to speak up and when to just ignore things. And I would imagine it’s similar with comics who aren’t necessarily abusive — well, maybe they’re also abusive —but who are just constantly talking about transness. Trying to decide when to wade into it and point out that what they’re saying is wrong and when to just be like this has nothing to do with me.

Mae: Totally. It’s a lot to navigate. And I liked that storyline, too. It was interesting to me how little press focused on that storyline even though it was a pulsing thread throughout the series. But there was one scene where I talked about being nonbinary and that was the main takeaway.

Drew: (laughs) Of course. In all the years you’ve been doing comedy, was there ever a time where you questioned if there was space for you in the standup world?

Mae: Well, I had no backup plan or other qualifications. So I kind of had to make it work. (laughs) But I always had such amazing comics around me and such an amazing community. It brings me so much joy. I would never have given it up. I’m lucky. I’m sure some people have worse experiences than me and then don’t continue. But I was always able to surround myself with good people and I just love it too much to stop.

Drew: Speaking of, what comics are you loving right now? Who are you really excited to watch and perform with?

Mae: So many! It’s been really nice living in LA and getting to perform with so many people. I do a monthly show at Largo and that venue is amazing. It’s a real hub. I’ve gotten to meet some of my idols. I’ve been performing with Brett Goldstein a lot. And then like Tig Notaro, Sarah Silverman, Fortune Feimster, Zach Galifiknakis. I’ve been doing a lot of improv with Stephanie Allyne and Alana Johnson. Also John Early and Kate Berlant. Meg Stalter. Jes Tom. Who else…

Drew: I’m going to interrupt you because you’re naming all of our faves. But is there anyone queer or trans who is maybe less famous that our readers should know?

Mae: I’m not on the circuit the way I used to be, but definitely Jes Tom, Nori Reed, and Sydnee Washington.

Drew: They’re great!

There’s a moment in the special where you talk about being asked as a kid to pick which Spice Girl you identify with. It made me realize that’s kind of where a lot of conversations around gender have evolved to. Like it’s no longer two options, but it’s still only five options. And that’s the challenge when words and labels change but our cultural attitudes around gender don’t. Like great, we don’t have to just pick between Baby and Sporty. We can be Scary or Posh or Ginger. But what if [we want to be a] sixth Spice Girl or no Spice Girls or multiple Spice Girls.

Mae: Yeah it’s the same old story of labels being important in terms of fighting for legal rights, but being so inadequate in terms of expressing nuances of existing. And as soon as you choose a label it ends up inflating that part of your identity above other parts that are just as important. I hope one day we… I really thought… You know, I think I was slightly naive. And now I’m like it might take a hundred years for this system to be deconstructed.

Drew: I know, I was also feeling pretty good for a while there.

Mae: Yeah. (laughs)

Drew: Okay, but since owning your trans identity and feeling more settled in that part of yourself, do you have more people in your life that are also trans? Because in my experience that is one good thing about labels.

Mae: Yeah, definitely since moving to LA. In London, I had so many amazing friends, but I was very much just in the comedy community. I definitely feel more of queer community here in LA and have more nonbinary and trans friends. It does feel good. It feels reassuring.

Drew: That’s one thing I love about LA. I’ve found such great queer community there.

Mae: I mean, I’m sure it exists in London. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to find it yet. But it’s really nice.

Drew: How do you focus on the sap, so to speak? It’s obviously not the best time to be alive, but how are you finding the balance between staying informed and present while still focusing on the good stuff?

Mae: It’s a daily struggle, but I think scheduling in actual vacation time. Even if it’s just a day to be off my phone, not responding to emails. Be in nature or something. And just focusing on that stupid list I do at the end of the special. Things that make me feel good. I love playing the guitar and making music. I just recorded an album of like, serious music.

Drew: Oh shit!

Mae: Yeah, yeah. But I’m a real workaholic, so just taking enough time off to live a life. Otherwise, you’ve got nothing to write about. And, you know, a low dose of SSRIs and exercise. Exercise is key for me to just stay connected to the ol’ bode. It’s tough. Even though we know how to feel better. We know all these things. We just don’t do them. Everyone knows if they were on their phone less they’d be happier and more fulfilled. But it’s hard. Everything is designed to keep us distracted.

Drew: Yeah I started putting my phone outside my bedroom before like 10pm and it’s so annoying how much better I’m sleeping and how much better I feel.

Mae: Really? Okay I need to do that. I know I need to do that.

Drew: It’s so annoying. I wish it didn’t work.

Mae: I know it’s so annoying.

Drew: Okay one last thing. As far as your family debate goes with the moose, my immediate reaction was that a moose must have jumped over your parents’ car.

Mae: Ohhh interesting.

Drew: Like a big moose — but not the biggest of all time — leaped over and it felt like they just drove under it. That was my read. I don’t know what it says about me.

Mae: That’s a really interesting read. And it would explain the sound of the fur grazing the roof of the car.

Drew: This is my theory.

Mae: I’m going to bring this up to them.

Sap is now streaming on Netflix, you can also read Autostraddle’s review about it here.

1. Author’s Note: Please look at the pull quote I chose for this piece.

Danny Lavery on What It’s Like To Be an Advice Columnist

I’m a lifelong advice column devotee. As a kid I’d “steal” the life section of the newspaper while my dad was reading the sports page, and I’d read two things: the Nancy cartoon, and Dear Abby. As a seven year old, it’s not like I had a ton of my own wisdom to dispense, and my seven year old problems could mostly be solved by “sometimes we gotta do things we don’t wanna do (like homework)” and “sometimes people are dicks but telling them directly to knock it off is usually worth a try.” But over the years, advice columns were an early testing ground; on letters about cheating spouses, ungrateful children, relentless parents, and infuriating coworkers, my baby self could imagine my way into and out of various scrapes. I learned to navigate the space between “what I would tell this person to do” and “what I myself would have done in their shoes” and I tried to close the gap between my own advice and actions.

There are a lot of thoughtful, challenging, and generous advice columns out there that I’ve found myself returning to over and over: Dear Sugar, Captain Awkward, Ask a Manager, Ask Polly, Ask Bear, Ask a Fuck-Up, You Need Help. But among excellent options, the advice column closest to my heart has undoubtedly been Danny Lavery’s tenure at Slate as Dear Prudence (both as columnist and podcast host) and his current podcast project, Big Mood Little Mood. Lavery’s approach is ethically rigorous in a way that gives an outlet to righteous indignation while also finding unexpected and generous depths to problems that might have received superficial answers in less capable hands. I’ve found a lot of wisdom, and a lot of joy, in his approach to conflict, comedy, and compassion, and now, to celebrate the publication of Lavery’s Dear Prudence highlights, Danny and I got to talk shop! In our conversation last week, we talked about stepping into and out of character, the expectations and hopes we bring to advice columns, the questions that advice columns send back over the net to readers, the relationship between perspective and pattern-finding as he reflects on his run as Prudie, and more.

Yashwina: Well, I want to kick things off just by saying that I’m a huge fan. Your work at The Toast, the work with the column, your newsletter The Chatner… You’ve nurtured a charming and wonderful part of the internet, so I really appreciate the community that you’ve built. One of my very best friends, Naomi, and I actually got close because we used to read the letters to each other every week! It was a sacred part of our week!

Danny: Oh my gosh. Would you read them out loud before you’d read the answers?

Yashwina: We would read all the letters out loud. We’d be sitting on the floor of each other’s apartments and reading them out loud to each other, and then we’d thoroughly discuss your advice and our own advice and what we’d do in the letter writer’s situation. There were a lot of hot takes. It was a sporting event for us! Advice is a contact sport!

Danny: Wow. That is delightful!

Yashwina: All this is to say, Naomi gave me this idea for our opening question and she gets all the credit. Are the high camp names like Prudence and Sugar, and the “agony aunt” in general, a kind of queerness encoded in advice columns? What do you think draws queer readers to advice columns specifically?

Danny: Gosh. I can only speak for myself as such a reader, but I would imagine a lot of the same things draw to advice columns that draw everyone, which is just that same impulse to run outside if somebody says there’s a fight. Just the sheer delight in spectacle and other people’s problems, which is not just nosiness or looky-looism, but just, if something’s happening, people want to look at it. And especially if someone says, “Can you help me figure this out?”, people love to come over and try to figure it out, even if they have no idea what to do. I do love that idea of maybe there’s something especially dramatic and campy about pseudonyms. And I think especially, yeah, obviously it’s not in the same category as the Scarlet Pimpernel or Zorro. But anything that involves putting on a little Venetian mask or using a stage name is certainly in the right category to attract a certain type of queer person. So, there’s definitely that element.

I know almost everybody who talks about advice columns usually talks about Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts. But it certainly, I think that one, it goes back a way, just this incredibly frustrated guy taking on this role of helpful, slightly religious spinster while also trying to navigate his own personal life that has a sort of beautiful madcap Fred Flintstone air to it. I don’t know if that answers the question, but it certainly explains a lot of why I’ve always been interested in them.

Yashwina: I love the idea of a Prudie to Zorro pipeline. And I do think that if any advice column-based vigilante justice starts happening, I will be happy to provide you with an alibi.

Danny: I appreciate that immensely, but I am so unqualified for any kind of vigilantism, and that could only end a disaster. I’m glad I confined myself to a few years of suggesting things that strangers might do, but any more than that and I would not feel prepared to take responsibility.

Yashwina: There were a few core tidbits of Prudence. I have so many times thought of the line, “Reconsider the orientation of your heart.” which is a Hall of Fame mic drop. There were so many wonderful little Prudie-isms. I’m just thinking about the kind of things that we go to advice columns for, and what we want out of that exchange. We go to advice columns to ask questions, obviously, and now here I am to ask you questions about those questions.

Danny: Yeah, and I think that bit about that line is really apt. There’s often some sort of desire for pithiness in the advice column, and especially in the figure of Prudence, which was a long-running identity and had been written by both men and women before me. But the idea of Prudence, I think, evokes a sort of slightly no-nonsense maiden aunt. A little bit antiquated, a little bit folksy, not too folksy. And I think every advice columnist has to decide for themselves how folksy they’re willing to get. But yeah, somewhere in between all pith and no-nonsense.

Yashwina: “All pith and no-nonsense” is such a good tagline.

Danny: I wish I had thought of it five and a half years ago, but unfortunately I thought of it now.

Yashwina: But yes, there’s two layers of questions, and I’m actually here in both capacities. Full disclosure, you answered a letter from me on the podcast a few years ago!

Danny: Oh my gosh!

Yashwina: Yes, you were very helpful when my visiting friend stole my vibrator! (TL;DR: A friend from overseas came to visit me in my new city and was already expressing some jealousy in a way that made me feel like she was trying to take over my life, and when I came home from work one day I discovered that she’d gone through my stuff and helped herself to my vibrator, which she tried to hide in the couch cushions right in front of me. I wrote to Danny because I felt pretty thoroughly invaded and had no idea how to address what had happened with my friend, or how to tell her that I no longer felt comfortable hosting her when she asked to visit me again.)

Danny: Oh, wow, I remember that one!

Yashwina: It was the kind of thing where when you’re alone with your own problem, it’s so easy to just keep chewing and spiraling on it until it’s like you’ve said a word so many times that it doesn’t have meaning anymore. That’s why I felt very reassured by your advice, and by the sense not only of guidance, but also there was just a level of justice. It felt nice to be able to turn to someone whose judgment I trust and be like, “That was crazy, right? You saw that? That was weird, right?”

Danny: Yes, and that’s part of that element too, of running out to see if there’s a fight. Running out and being willing not necessarily to help but being on standby if somebody says, “That shouldn’t have happened,” that you can say, “You’re right! It shouldn’t have!”

Yashwina: Absolutely! The whole thing made me think about how we bring all of these questions and all of these hopes to advice columns. But I was wondering: What questions do you think that advice columns pose to us as readers?

Danny: I think that’s useful. I don’t know if I’m the best person to answer it, just because I had such a specific role in my tenure there that thinking outside of that immediate scope was sometimes kind of difficult. But certainly I think it can be useful to readers who are thinking about more general ideas about how they want to conduct themselves or how they want to handle conflict. Or whether or not they think of themselves as being similar to a lot of the letter writers, or different from a lot of the letter writers.

Yashwina: Talking about advice and justice, it brings me back to your remark about the role of being a witness. When you’re answering these questions, how do you balance and move between the roles of witness, counsel, and judge?

Danny: I think that can depend upon the question. You do eventually develop a sense for if someone primarily just wants to know that somebody else has read about or listened to their problem; if they’re really, really totally at sea with absolutely no idea what they’re going to do; or if they seem pretty determined on a particular course of action and they just want somebody else to confirm that that’s an option. But I think it also depends. Sometimes someone’s just reflecting on a lifelong relationship. I think the more longstanding the relationship or the bigger the issue, the less I felt like I might be giving someone advice that will seriously change the trajectory of their life, which actually may or may not be true.

But my sense was if somebody’s asking me about their sibling or a parent or someone that they’ve known all their lives, they’re probably a little bit more likely to do something that they feel capable of and prepared to do, rather than something a stranger told them to do. And if it’s more about somebody they encounter on their commute a few times a month or a brand new acquaintance, they may be a little bit more likely to take my advice because it’s lower stakes. So, sometimes I would feel paradoxically a little bit more responsibility over the new relationships or the smaller scale stuff, because I thought that’s the type of person who’s probably likeliest to carry out whatever I suggest.

Yashwina: Well, I was someone who carried out what you suggested, and I can confirm it worked! I survived initiating conflict, and I survived having a difficult/awkward conversation, and no one has stolen any of my sex toys since. I’d love to talk more about those quirky, weird problems that arise, whether it’s someone who’s annoying on the commute or the houseguest who has decided to be bizarre or the deep family conflict. You organized the book by broad themes and categories you noticed from the letters. But I was also really, really interested when you mentioned observing these unexpected trends like jewels and poisoning!

Danny: Yeah, I was surprised by that one too, but it kind of made sense. When I thought back on the history of the column, I remembered before I was the Dear Prudence reading occasionally about somebody who suspected an in-law of unintentionally or intentionally poisoning their food. And I thought, “Yeah, that happens not infrequently.” Not necessarily that in-laws do it, but that people suspect it. And I suppose it makes sense. They’re the people who are most likely to serve you food, and they’re also the people who are probably most likely to have an ax to grind against you! So they’ve got motive and opportunity! But I had never previously thought that this was something that happened outside of the history of the Borgias.

Yashwina: I found that observation so fascinating, because it made me realize that occupying the Prudie throne gives you this kind of bird’s eye view over people’s problems. When you are looking down from such great heights, like that Postal Service song, what are some of the other patterns that struck you? Were there any other weird themes?

Danny: Gosh, I love the idea of looking down from a great height. I can tell you that’s definitely not what it felt like, checking the inbox on a regular basis, but I appreciate the mental image immensely. Often, it felt less like I was collecting patterns or looking for data and more just a sort of panicked sense of being on a treadmill. “I need to wade through all of the spam and all of the just general opinions or feedback to find the actual problems that people have. And then I need to also be able to read through possibly a 10-paragraph email to figure out what question is nested somewhere within a lot of backstory!” So, I would often not feel a sense of noticing any patterns week-to-week, but occasionally, it was a little bit like the four-minute mile. Once somebody broke that barrier, all of a sudden people were running four-minute miles left and right.

And sometimes if I would answer a question about a brand new problem, I’d start to get questions about that particular type of issue or type of relationship, whereas previously I hadn’t gotten very many. Certainly, once I started transitioning, I got more questions from trans people and about transition more generally. That was probably the most obvious and straightforward pattern. As well as once I became estranged from my own family, I got more questions about family estrangement. But that’s a little bit different because I was already getting quite a lot of those to begin with. So it was simply an increase rather than a brand new trend on that front.

Yashwina: As soon as you mentioned the inbox, I can see how that would really feel like a treadmill or really being in the thick of it. Email inboxes do feel very much like dark, scary fairytale forests sometimes. You weren’t just drawing connections between letters there though; one thing that I found really interesting in the book was the connective tissue that you wrote between the letters you’d gathered to build upon their conclusions and add a layer of behind-the-scenes commentary on your advice-giving process. What was it like to be in conversation with yourself in that way?

Danny: This was something I knew that I wanted to do, since most of the book is anthology and a lot of it is answers that people would have either read in the column or heard on the podcast previously. I didn’t want to just repackage a bunch of little columns and be done. But then there was also a question of “how much do I want to spend time trying to reassess everything versus drawing connections?” And I thought about some of the older advice column anthologies that I had read when I was younger. I always really loved Since You Ask Me, which is an Ann Landers book from the sixties that involved slightly pithy summations, parables, or drawing-together of certain trends that she noticed.

It wasn’t this encyclopedia, and it wasn’t this grand vision of the advice column. But it was just a nice, readable, thoughtful series of problems that she noticed patterns in. And so that was something that I took a lot of my cues from. “What did I notice that I didn’t get a chance to say at the time?” What does it look like to think about these from the vantage point of being done?” That was something that I also really enjoyed getting to do.

Yashwina: It’s really interesting to hear about the other books that you were drawing inspiration from! What other columns did you read or draw inspiration from, and were there any particular responses or letters that you remember that really shaped your approach or stuck with you?

Danny: I do think Since You Ask Me, which I found in a used bookstore when I was in high school, was a big one, as well as the Dear Abby and Ann Landers TV movie from 1999 starring Wendie Malick, which I just loved and should try to rewatch at some point. There’s certainly elements, too, of Marjorie Hillis who wrote a couple of very modern proto-self-help books in the late 1930s. The first was called Live Alone and Like It. It was republished back in 2008, and it’s enjoyed a sort of resurgence in popularity.

Those books were very practical: “Take care of yourself and be as cheerful as possible within reason. And look for the things that you can change to make your life more interesting and enjoyable rather than waiting or complaining about your circumstances.” It’s very bracing and light and effervescent. I loved her style, and I’m always looking for some of her other out-of-print books.

Yashwina: Marjorie Hillis! I remember when those books were republished, and I remember there was a recent biography of her that I enjoyed. I wish they’d bring back the rest of her books! I think there is a really interesting early and mid-20th century sensibility to the advice column.

Danny: So much of it was just really fun, too, because she would tell so much of the book in parable. It would just be like, “Now, Miss C. is a secretary who brings home $30 a week and she has a one-bedroom apartment and she enjoys flower arranging. And here’s something she’s doing wrong.” And I could just eat that stuff up all day! It’s like reading popcorn.

Yashwina: That playfulness also helps alleviate some of the urgency or anxiety that a letter writer’s initial question might have, that sense of  “Oh my gosh, this problem. I am the only person who has ever had this problem in the whole world.”

Danny: I do wonder sometimes if there’s a particular type of person who’s more likely than another to write to an advice columnist. I don’t feel prepared to make any sort of sweeping generalizations on that front. But I do think, at least during my tenure of Prudence, I did notice a common thread of often hearing from people who did not have a history of difficult or painful conversations with people they really cared about. They had avoided that for a variety of reasons, and tended to avoid conflict if they thought that they could.

And again, that wasn’t everybody all the time, but it did pop up quite a lot. So maybe someone who’s inclined to write to an advice column is somebody who is realizing for the first time, in order to maintain a relationship, they’re going to need to choose to have a fight or an argument. And they’re going to have to be the one to bring it up, and they’re not sure what that looks like since it’s new to them. So I think that that’s also a pretty interesting pattern as well.

And there’s also a chapter in the book that is something like, going from being all the way right to only 50% right. One of the more difficult versions of that particular problem is somebody who has mostly avoided conflict for a long time and then eventually got to a breaking point and really, really overreacted. Maybe they had a totally justifiable grievance or complaint, but they went way over the line in how they brought it up or what they said or what they did.

And now they write in the sense of, “I let this go on for a really long time. Then I blew up and said something that I really shouldn’t have. And now I’m in this awful position of having to apologize to somebody I’ve been mad at for seven years.” I want to help people avoid that situation wherever possible, because I think it’s truly one of the most unpleasant emotional scenarios! “I have to apologize to someone who I think has been more wrong than me for a longer time, but now because I did something that was wrong in and of itself, I’ve got to start.” And it’s just unpleasant.

Yashwina: That section in particular was such a difficult needle to thread, where you’re trying to display a lot of sympathy for the backstory, but the backstory has to be kept separate in some ways from what has immediately happened.

Danny: Right. Because you cannot meaningfully apologize for something that you’ve done wrong if you also then try to bring up, “But I’ve been mad about this other thing that you’ve been doing.” It just takes all the spine out of the apology. No one’s ever received an apology that ends with, “But you’ve been doing X, Y, Z!” and felt, “Oh, good. This is a good apology. I feel I really can accept it.” That just gets everyone on the defensive.

Yashwina: So, I’m wondering now, after having been Prudence for a while, how was moving out of that character? Has inhabiting this character role changed the way that you approach advice-giving, just as Danny to your friends?

Danny: Probably like most advice columnists, I don’t have a lot of close friends coming to me asking for my advice because of my work as Dear Prudence. Every once in a while, somebody will lightly ask for input, but in the way that almost anybody would ask a friend for their thoughts, not like, “Hey, you decide what I’m going to do next with my life.” So I don’t think it actually changed all that much. Every once in a while, a newer acquaintance might be slightly likelier to ask for my thoughts on a situation, but again, it’s fairly rare.

I definitely worked hard to cultivate a particular persona that I felt worked for me in that column, and it was a really interesting process. But ending it was pretty easy. I stopped doing it, and I didn’t feel myself waking up in the middle of the night thinking, “I’ve got to advise eight people in the next hour or I’ll lose it!” So it was a very cool and interesting job to get to do, but being done with it was as easy as being done with any other job. It didn’t leave a ghost sort of hanging around.

Yashwina: The idea of being haunted by the spirit of Prudence…

Danny: Yeah, like the end of A River Runs Through It. “I’m haunted by waters.” It was just not really the case!

Yashwina: It’s good to hear that there’s no Prudie poltergeist lingering! Has it changed the way that you seek advice or relate to your own instincts? Do you ever call upon your own Prudieness?

Danny: I do think so! Every once in a while, I find it useful to think of a problem of my own through a Prudence perspective, and that usually proves pretty useful and insightful. I’m afraid I can’t recall a really specific example off the top of my head, but that’s been a useful addition to my mind palace.

Yashwina: It’s nice to be able to access it when you need it! Like Prudie is there to call upon in an advice emergency.

Danny: The Scarlet Pimpernel will always be there when you need him!

Yashwina: My last question as I wrap up an interview is always “What do you recommend I read next after finishing your book?” What should we have for dessert after Dear Prudence?

Danny: I definitely recommend Marjorie Hillis! And, if you enjoy her books, I would recommend trying to get your hands on a copy of New York, Fair or No Fair, which is her 1939 guide to tourists coming to New York City for the World’s Fair. It looks like a lot of fun. I found a copy of it at a library near me, and I’ve put in a request. So hopefully in the next week or two, I’m going to be able to go and give it a read myself.

If you haven’t read Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, I do think that it’s very much worth a read as well. It’s short, so even if you hate it, it’ll be over fairly quickly! But he’s a really compelling writer, and it’s a lot of dour fun, if that makes sense.

Yashwina: I love the idea of following Dear Prudence with some of Prudie’s forebears, and the predecessors of the genre that brought Prudie to where it is today. What a good black hole of reading to fall down!

Danny: My last recommendation, if you just want a general book that makes you think more thoughtfully and carefully about how to live, is always Middlemarch.

Yashwina: Can’t argue with Middlemarch. It’s a banger!

Dear Prudence: Liberating Lessons from Slate.Com’s Beloved Advice Column by Daniel M. Lavery is out now.

Meg Jones Wall on Queer, Expansive Tarot

Interview has been edited for length and clarity. Feature photo by Meg Jones Wall.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Meg Jones Wall about their new book, Finding the Fool: A Tarot Journey to Radical Transformation, which Dani Janae reviewed and which is out now. Meg will also be joining us as our featured author for the A+ Read a Fucking Book Club on May 3rd. We talked our personal histories with Tarot, the nuances and necessities of reading “bad” cards and about divesting from patriarchal Tarot traditions.

Nico: Let’s kick it off by pulling a card. Do you have cards you wanna pull from?

Meg: I have so many. Let’s see. This is the problem; I actually have too many decks. I have reached critical mass.

Nico: Yeah. I was like, what deck will you choose?

Meg: God, there’s so many. It’s out of hand actually. I need to cull them badly. They’re so pretty, and I love them all. And that’s a problem. So what’s your shuffling method? How do you pull?

Nico: I shuffle and set the intentions of the spread and the questions I’m asking as I’m shuffling. But then I will fan them out and I’ll feel for a card. So, I don’t pull from the top.

Meg: Oh, I love that. I love different shuffling methods. I think they’re all so interesting. Like, people do things that are a little bit unexpected or unconventional. I don’t think there should be a “normal” way people shuffle. But I love to see how people decide which card they’re gonna work with. I think it’s really cool.

Nico: How do you do it?

Meg: I do overhand, but I also do bridge style. I generally divide into three, choose the middle stack. I like to put my hands on it and kind of breathe, get into the zone. My partner only reads jumpers. She gets a ton of jumpers in her readings. And it’s very interesting, cause when I’m reading for myself, I don’t get a lot of jumpers, but if I’m reading for her, even if I’m using a deck of mine and not one of hers, the cards will jump for her.

Nico: Interesting! I read mostly with this Thoth deck. It’ll do jumpers for people who aren’t in the reading. Sometimes like, cards will like fly out while people are shuffling and float and then land in front of someone else.

Meg: God, that’s kind of rad.

Nico: It’s a sassy deck. Once I was reading with my sister, and my mom was just like drinking on a chair and getting belligerent. Not super, but you know, inserting herself, and then she got a jumper that floated under her feet, and I was like, “pick it up, pick it up.” It had landed face down. And it was, um, I think it was the eight of swords. In the Thoth deck, it has the message at the bottom on it, right? And it said ‘interference.’

Meg: Just a casual little drag. That’s very funny.

Nico: So what are you asking or what intention are you setting with this pull?

Meg: I think I’m gonna ask what should we be thinking about during this conversation? What’s something we could tap into or what’s something to explore or to keep in mind?

This is the Gentle Tarot. The court cards are seed, root, flower, harvest. And I pulled Harvest of Stones, which ends up translating to the King of Pentacles. The King of Earth. I kind of like that. It gives us some room to grow.

Nico: So what does that tell you then? What are you feeling having drawn that?

Meg: So to me, the suit of Pentacles or the element of earth is this really steady, kind of intentional, responsible, long-term thinking sort of element. It’s like the roots and the things that live underneath our feet and the things that make us feel tangibly physically grounded into a space. I’m also connected to a place in time. I see Kings numerologically as being five. So I see them as card 14 of their suits. So, one plus four brings us to five, and so for me it ties to higher fives and Temperance Energy. Five in numerology is this pivot point, right? It’s the midpoint of the cycle of one to nine. So I see fives as thinking about where we’re coming from, thinking about what boundaries need to be broken, thinking about where freedom and movement is needed to kind of break through friction and where that friction’s gonna bring us.

And so thinking about long-term legacy, what kinds of changes need to be made to create future stability? And doing that in a really earthy, deliberate, careful, thoughtful, responsible and patient way that still keeps in mind ideas like generosity and abundance and community care. As opposed to, you know, the king of Wands, which might be much more bright and dynamic and fast-moving. This is very slow, like, okay, what systems are broken and how can we repair them or rebuild them or leave them behind? And how is that gonna impact not just this generation, but future generations? It feels very grounded, intentional. How are we moving and what does that movement mean, and how does that impact everyone around us? So as a conversation between two Tarot readers in the queer community, that feels kind of cool.

Nico: That’s really interesting.

What does this card sound like? Or what does it taste like? What does the card smell like? What does it feel like to be anchored in this moment with this particular card? I think that can also be a really useful experience when you’re thinking about what this card might mean for you when you pull it out in a reading.

Meg: We’re talking about long-term shifts, and we could be talking about all kinds of things, but thinking about how ideas of Tarot might be shifting or how the conversation around Tarot is shifting. And how queer creators might be part of that conversation. We have pushed it in a certain direction.

Nico: I got, so it’s interesting. Um, different suit, completely different card. Six of Swords.

It’s ‘science.’ Which to me is, you know, it’s about a journey in a lot of ways, and it’s much more intellectual as far as the suit goes, because it’s air. But it’s interesting tying into what you got, because it’s asking questions of, where have we come from? Where are we going? What are we actively cutting away and discarding in the name of pursuing something better? Thinking about how that ties into the work you’ve done with this book and the work that queer people are doing with Tarot and asking, what are the systems that we are sort of saying are antiquated or not working for us? And what kind of new methods can we apply to the Tarot and create for ourselves? I think in the Rider Waite, they are literally in a boat in this card, on a journey.

And it’s, it’s an Aquarius card too, so it’s definitely that sort of fixed that get-through-the-middle part, which is really interesting in when we think we’re talking about, like, this book is finished and complete and it’s like, actually no, the book being finished and complete is the midpoint. So that’s a really interesting revelation.

*laughter*

Meg: It’s a little terrifying. Publishing is so confusing. I just can’t stress that enough. I don’t actually know what comes on the other side. This is a book. Now that it’s in the world, that messy middle, you don’t necessarily know what’s gonna happen on the other side. You just know that it has to be done and to be present.

Nico: It lives and evolves as more people read it and have their experiences and bring their interpretations to it.

Meg: It’s now its own entity. It’s its own thing. It’s gonna go and have its own adventures, and it’s gonna go build relationships of its own. But the people that buy it and work with it…I helped make it, but they’re not having a relationship with you. They’re having a relationship with the book. Or they’re having a relationship with their cards, with support from the book.

Nico: Aw, that’s like the book is its own little Fool.

Meg: Yeah, exactly. It becomes this Fool, and it’s like sending a kid off to college or something. It’s very you’re in, you’re done. Go do your thing.

Nico: That’s so funny. Thank you for that.

As I was reading through the book and experiencing how you’re talking about the cards and also the broader aspects of the text and journal prompts and things like that, it caused me to reflect a lot on how I had learned about Tarot, which started in the 1990s. And of course, the literature at the time was very heteronormative, very white, very ‘some of these cards are going to be blonde people,’ and this card represents ‘a happy, healthy marriage with kids.’ And so a lot of coming to Tarot as a queer person was reading between the lines of a lot of the meanings I had been working with in order to be like, well, what would this kind of energy mean to me?

And then, reading the book was super refreshing because I didn’t have to do that. I could just engage. This caused me to realize I had been doing a lot of something like translating in my head when reading other Tarot texts. And I really loved that about it.

What were your goals for this book, and what did you set out to do? And how do you think that this adds to the canon of new and queer Tarot books that are out there?

Meg: So much of what you’re talking about is actually what I wanted to set out to do. Cause I didn’t pick up my first step until 2016, and I had no idea what I was doing. But I had similar experiences, even though I feel like there were more accessible, inclusive resources. But a lot of the resources that were so often recommended were still really heteronormative. And I had the same experience of, okay, if I can only see this Page as a blonde young man, what does that mean? Is this supposed to be a person that’s in my life?

I mean, court cards are their own confusing thing, I think, but I didn’t really understand how to engage with cards, and I was like, I can read these meanings, but I don’t feel like I’m learning Tarot. I feel like I’m just trying to memorize and internalize what someone is telling me this thing means. If I’m learning to read in this way, then what is the value of me reading for myself if I’m just actually utilizing someone else’s understanding of the cards in my own readings? What’s the point of me reading? Why wouldn’t I just hire a reader to do this? What am I bringing to the cards?

I was missing something. And it took me a long time to figure out where I could live in the experience of reading my own cards. I write about it a lot in the introduction, but this idea that you pick up the cards and you just should know how to read them — I found that really isolating because I didn’t know what to do with them.

I didn’t really know what to do. It just ended up meaning that I was researching all these different meanings and trying to find one that felt like it applied. This can’t be how one reads Tarot. I did feel like I was finding really great resources and slowly piecing together the things that felt supportive for me and learning how to read. I wanted a book that made me feel welcome and made me feel like this could be a tool that was actually for me, not just something I was trying to take and pick apart and translate into my own life. So I think that was kind of where the idea for the book started. And then anything that I started to include in this grand vague idea of what this book would eventually become was all sort of in service of: How can I make sure that anyone reading this feels like they could use this book to help support whatever their Tarot journey is going to be? How can this serve as a companion that’s encouraging and supportive?

So I guess in terms of Tarot canon, it felt to me like a lot of the 101 books had similar information or similar rules or similar structures or similar recommendations. That’s why I was kind of like, okay what if we don’t base the book on these same ideas? What if we think beyond that? What if we make space for, hey, do you not like the Rider Waite Smith either? Cool, let’s talk about that. I wanted to have a resource that existed in that space that felt like it was making room for lots of different kinds of Tarot experiences and lots of different ways to use the cards. A resource that would celebrate that. That’s expansive and making space for things instead of being like, this is the narrow box.

Nico: I think Tarot books treat the Rider Waite Tarot as the default and then everything else is like a reworking or divergence from that as opposed to just maybe accepting that if an artist creates a Tarot deck, that can be its own thing, right?

Meg: Yeah. Because the Rider Waite Smith’s not even that old. But it’s become so definitive. I think that if people like that deck, that’s fine. And I use a lot of decks that are based on that system. We do ourselves a disservice when every time we see a card, the first meanings that come to mind are only based on this one deck. I think it’s easy to get really narrow and like, okay, four swords rest. And nothing else, you know?

Nico: What did you learn about your own practice while writing this book? Did it impact the way you read Tarot as you went through this process?

Meg: I didn’t want the minors to feel small. Some books are the majors and then the minors get a little paragraph or something. When I was trying to figure out what felt like it was missing from the book, I was like, I want to talk about sensory experience and what it feels like, at least for me, to sit in the energy of each card.

And I actually wrote those separately. I wrote it in one big document as: This is a sensory story of what it feels like to move through the Major Arcana and then through each cycle of the minors. And then I split that into sections to put with each card. Having that sensory component as an exploration of the energy of a card and the feeling of the card and the experience of the card felt really important to me. How is sensory stuff and tangible physical experiences, how is that part of my practice? It turns out it’s pretty important to me.

That was a bigger revelation that I think I was expecting, but I think it is a cool aspect of the card descriptions that I’m really proud of. I like that it’s in there.

Nico: There’s a couple things in that that I really like that I really appreciate and also think belong as a divestment from patriarchal norms when it comes to viewing the cards. Because you talked about, for example, the Major Arana being something everyone is really focused on, right? And those are about big, big events or big things happening or big concerns, but the day-to-day is where we live. Why wouldn’t that be just as important as something you can write down in a history book or a newspaper? Why wouldn’t your day-to-day life be really important to you? Disregarding that is really patriarchal.

Meg: What does it feel like in my body to feel like I’m in a Three of Swords place versus a Six of Swords place versus a Nine of Swords place? Your physical experience of that energy, no matter how you interpret the card, is going to be different. I think sometimes we don’t always have language for how a card feels, but we might know how our body feels. If our breath catches, we might have an experience with the card that even if we don’t have the language for it, we might have a sensory experience of it. And I think that can be just as valuable, especially if we’re struggling to find language around it.

What does this card sound like? Or what does it taste like? What does the card smell like? What does it feel like to be anchored in this moment with this particular card? I think that can also be a really useful experience when you’re thinking about what this card might mean for you when you pull it out in a reading.

Nico: So the book is “a Tarot Journey for Radical Transformation,” and I was thinking a lot about radical growth through Tarot and divestment from harmful forces in Tarot. When I first came to Tarot, I was growing up in a Catholic household and, I don’t know how my friend and I were allowed to have this deck.

*laughter*

Meg: Did you have to hide it?

Nico: It was a Greek myth themed deck, so I guess that was okay. So no explanation other than they were just like, ‘yeah, let those nerds have their Greek myth thing.’

Meg: Honestly, that’s incredible.

Nico: It was the 90s, Xena was on, Hercules.

Meg: Kid in the 90s. It’s gonna be Greek Mythology.

Nico: It felt very forbidden, but also it was an interesting tool for starting to crack open the world and look at it from the different angles, angles I wasn’t fed. I know you have an evangelical background, right? I was wondering, what part, if any, the Tarot has played in your growth and healing beyond that, and how you maybe see that as a potential part of the journey for other people, especially queer people?

Meg: I’ve written a few essays about this, but I think I’m still trying to figure some of those things out. I do think there is such joy in having something tangible and tactile you can use as a form of reflection and meditation and introspection, and even personal interrogation and examination. The way I was raised, anything you didn’t know was just like, well, that’s where faith comes in. And so it felt like there was a very neat answer for things. Because if the people I was asking my theological questions didn’t know, they were like, well pray about it.

It often felt really dismissive. We just suppressed the shit out of that. Of course, that did not work out super well for me, and eventually I left and started therapy and got healthier again. I think finding Tarot left a lot of space for, I don’t know, “that’s actually fine.”

It was giving me space to ask similar kinds of questions over and over, getting different answers, and thinking about how the different cards that came up could reveal different aspects of my question or different versions of answers to that question. It gave me all of these new avenues to explore different things. And it’s not necessarily definitive like, yes, this is, this is your question and this is the answer and that’s it. But this is an opportunity to have an ongoing conversation around this topic and to see as I grow and change and experience new facets of myself and learn to understand myself in new ways. It felt like the Tarot could grow with me, instead of restricting or putting a cap on the questions I was allowed to ask.

I think the framework of my personal experience with evangelicalism felt very restrictive. Tarot just continues to feel like, yeah, sure, let’s open that door too. Why not? And that feels very exciting. And also safe in a different way. It doesn’t feel like I can stumble into something I’m not supposed to be looking at, which is how church often felt for me.

Nico: Oh, no.

Meg: Ask the wrong question, and you’re going to hell or something. But with Tarot, it’s like let’s find out. And every new reading has a new opportunity for some different answers, sometimes expected. And it always keeps the conversation going. I don’t usually feel like my cards are like, ‘no.’ They’re like, ‘ah, how about this?’ And that is exciting to me.

Nico: The cards are very deep, right? You can just peel back layer after layer after layer of meaning and esoterica and all of these different things and bring your own meaning and have your own relationship to them. That’s very liberatory, right?

Which takes me to a question I had about your approach to “negative cards.” But you know, the ones we’re all afraid of getting, Ten of Swords or the Tower or, when I first started reading as a kid, I would get The Devil a lot.

I imagine this has been something you’ve really had to develop a healthy relationship with, because I’ve only read for other people a little bit, but people will get scared, right?

Meg: And [to be read for] is such a vulnerable experience, too. How will you sit in this weird, vulnerable, tender moment with me and interpret this tool? I never take that lightly. I always wanna make sure I’m translating with compassion and involving them in the process. And it feels like a very collaborative thing.

There are cards that are universally scary for most people. I think that everyone has a card or two that even if it’s not a traditionally negative card that has negative connotations or has sticky connotations or makes them feel some kind of way when they come up. I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about: What do these cards have to offer? Why are they here? I have had this conversation with people that have asked: Why can’t I just take these scary cards out of my deck? And I was like, oh, really? Sure. But then it’s not a Tarot deck anymore. I would gently invite you to buy an Oracle deck.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to come to the card solely for comfort. But if you’re not prepared for any card to come up in your reading, you should not pull out your cards at that moment. For me, the negative cards just feel like part of the experience of being a person.

The cards are a mirror, not a crystal ball. And sometimes it’s really nice to have the cards be like, Hey, this thing sucks. And to be able to be like, thank you, it does suck. And so I find that often those negative cards or scary cards can actually help me identify what the shitty feeling is.

Do I need to just sit in these feelings and just let myself feel bad? Do I need to take action to walk away from something? Do I need to let myself dream and think about other possibilities? What’s at the heart of what my problem is?

Nico: I think an important part of reading Tarot is like having that healthy relationship to each of the cards.

Another great thing about reading this book for me was that I found some nice moments with cards that I tend to be like, ‘ah, you again.’ I just have been getting The Emperor a lot lately and I’m just like, why is this guy here? What do you want, man?

Meg: In my experience, if a card won’t stop coming forward, it’s like you’re not listening. You’re missing something. Keep going. Keep digging. What layer have you not looked at yet? What conversation have you not had with this card yet? Which can be really annoying, and most people don’t like that answer, but I think, in my experience, that’s what’s generally happening if a card keeps showing up,

Nico: It’s like an exorcism of sorts. You almost have to keep working with it until it’s ready to be released.

Do you remember when you first started reading what cards were recurring for you? What cards have been recurring for you lately?

Meg: Well, the King of Pentacles has come up for me several times. I’ve been getting a lot of kings across suits, but especially, King of Swords and King of Pentacles, which I have mostly been taking as ‘you are well resourced. You are Okay.’

Keep protecting yourself, but also keep moving towards change, keep moving towards expansion, keep questioning what’s happening, but you don’t have to do it quickly. You don’t have to do it immediately. These can be long-term goals.

When I first started reading, Judgment came up a lot. My first deck was the Wild Unknown and in the deck Judgment is this black and white card of doves. It’s less angelic, like it is in the Rider Waite. And it’s much more like doves flying free into a big sky.

And I was like, what the fuck is this, and in retrospect I think I’ve really come to see this card as an awakening card, but also a forgiving the self card. I think it’s very tied to me feeling guilty about leaving the church and wanting something for myself and being afraid to be all in on the Tarot in case it was somehow bad for me. Or if God didn’t want me to be reading the cards. I just had a lot of sticky feelings when I got my first deck and was trying to find myself within it and figure out what it was gonna mean for me. Now in retrospect I’m like, oh yeah, that card’s just trying to affirm my choices. ‘You’re okay. Take the big step. You’re fine. You’ve already done half of it.’

Nico: That card is just like ‘jump, jump, jump.’

Meg: I think it’s actually one of my favorite cards. But at the time, I was like, uh, big scary angels, what’s happening?

Nico: One thing that was really interesting that you talked about in your intro and then that played out through the book was this nonbinary approach to reading the cards. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and how you approached writing about the cards and reading them without talking about the divine feminine, the divine masculine, and this and that.

Meg: Even before I started using they/them pronouns as part of my little personal set of pronouns, very early, within the first year or two of my Tarot practice, I was like, I don’t like all this gender stuff.  I didn’t love it with the court cards, but especially with the majors and especially with some of those challenging really classically patriarchal figures of The Hierophant and The Emperor. I had such a hard time because those cards made me so uncomfortable, these figures that reminded me of every oppressive man.

I was like, I don’t want these in my deck. I can’t build a relationship with these cards if that’s the only lens I have to see these cards through.

What if we just let all of these cards have gender neutral pronouns and we break them free from these gender binaries and let them be every archetype? Gender neutral or nonbinary or gender expansive. As soon as I started doing that, it just made it so much easier for me to feel safe working with them.

Instead of feeling like this card is here to oppress me, this archetype is here to oppress me, it just gave me a lot more room to actually work with a card in a way that felt, I keep coming back to safe, but I think that really is the right word for it. And then once I started doing it with the majors, I was like, why wouldn’t I do this with every card? Why wouldn’t I do this with the court cards? Why can’t I be a King of Swords? Why can’t any of these cards go beyond these genders?

It just gave me a lot more space to engage with the archetypes and the minors and the court cards too as energies and ideas instead. I did not want to be limited in such a narrow version of what this card could be. I wanted to be able to see myself or find aspects of myself in every one of the cards.

Nico: No matter how you identify, drawing The Empress does not mean that I have to be a fertile woman.

Meg: What else could fertility mean if we’re not just talking about physical pregnancy? What about the whole idea of fertility in general? What about abundance in generosity; there’s so many other ways to use that language that can be a lot more constructive and also just a lot more expansive. But it shouldn’t mean that this card feels out of reach. Right? Or an energy you can’t work with. Because every time I’d pull The Emperor, I’d be like, I don’t wanna be in a room with this guy. What would I look like embodying this energy? How would it feel for me to embody this energy? And what would that mean? How would that guide my choices or impact my actions or my decisions or the way that I look at something? That’s a totally different conversation.

Nico: The book contains a lot of awesome prompts for reading for yourself. And I was just wondering if you wanted to share any tips for anyone who wanted to read for a friend or another person. Is there anything you do differently?

Meg: If I’m reading for a friend, I often want it to be a very collaborative process. So especially if I get to do it in person, I’ll invite them to look at the card and be like, how does it feel for you to look at this image? What comes up, what comes to mind immediately? A lot of my friends do read Tarot, and so they might immediately have their own interpretations, which can be fun. But especially if we’re using a deck they’re not familiar with or, or if it’s someone that hasn’t worked with Tarot much at all, getting to see what they observe in the card and what feelings it evokes and what memories it brings up I think is a really powerful tool for thinking about what that card might mean for them in this moment.

I like to have a conversation with them about the card. I might explain different ways to see it. Sometimes it feels like this is the meaning that feels important, and I don’t know how to explain that other than that’s just years of trying to figure out what my intuition is trying to tell me.

I do think it can be really useful to be able to tap into multiple interpretations or ways of reading. To your point again, sometimes the Empress comes up and you’re like, okay, this is a person that just had a hysterectomy and is nonbinary. And me talking about fertility from a lens of physical pregnancy is not gonna be super constructive or useful. But this card is also tied to Venus and values community and the number three and raw expression and not worrying about perfectionism, but instead being really authentic with what is being shared and making something physical that’s been an idea up until now. And sharing that process with other people and collaborating creatively with other people and creating systems of love and care and mutual aid.

There’s so much that can be wrapped into that card. If you have the ability to explore that again with someone, it often turns into a really rich conversation that ends up leading to something that often I find then will come up in later cards in the spread.

What if we just let all of these cards have gender neutral pronouns and we break them free from these gender binaries and let them be every archetype? Gender neutral or nonbinary or gender expansive. As soon as I started doing that, it just made it so much easier for me to feel safe working with them.

Nico: Awesome. So, do you wanna talk about your writing for Autostraddle and how it’s tied into the book or influenced it?

Meg: I started reading Autostraddle in 2016. In 2018, I went to A-Camp and didn’t know anyone. I got put in Heather Hogan’s cabin. A few months after that, we were at a podcast recording in Brooklyn, and we were just chatting after the recording and Heather was like, would you ever consider writing about Tarot for Autostraddle? I was so flattered, and I was so honored.

The first Tarotscopes column was in January 2019 for Aquarius season. Then my Instagram started growing from more exposure and I started getting more people commenting and reading and engaging with Tarot with me on the internet. People kept asking like, how do you read? And how does this work?

Finally, Nanowrimo came up in November, and I had been turning this idea over in my head of the Tarot book I wished I’d had when I started that felt inclusive and expansive and supportive and queer. So I just wrote it for Nanowrimo. Let’s see if I can get 50,000 words out of this. And I did. That was all the same year with the start of Tarotscopes. And that was the first draft of Finding the Fool.

In retrospect, I think it’s really interesting that Tarotscopes and the first draft of Finding the Fool both happened in the same year. It really kind of got the ball rolling mentally. My Instagram had been started as private. It was just a journal for me. And then I had some friends ask if they could look at it, so I was just like, I’ll make this public. No one will ever see it. It’s fine. When I started doing the Tarotcopes, it just got out of hand. It’s great, but there’s a lot of people that follow me now.

Nico: And through that whole process, like getting comments and talking to readers you learned what kind of questions people have.

Meg: Yeah. Totally. We all have our comfort zones and our points from which we like to view the world. It’s just finding that viewpoint. How does this help? What if I adjust a little bit? How do I help? Does this help you see it clearly if you stand right here?

Meg’s Finding the Fool playlist:

Annette Haywood-Carter on “Foxfire,” Filmmaking, and Being a Queer Woman in Hollywood

Annette Haywood-Carter working on the set of Daughter of the Bride.

For the last two years, women have won the Oscar for Best Director. But has the industry changed as much as they’d like us to believe? (Zero women nominated this year doesn’t inspire confidence.) And what does it even mean for the industry to truly change?

For us to look forward, we have to look back. And that’s why I’m so proud to share this interview with writer/director Annette Haywood-Carter. If you’re like me, you know Annette as the director of the 1996 film Foxfire, number 43 on our list of the Best Lesbian Movies of All Time. Adapted from the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire is a singular vision of righteous rebellion and queer girl coming-of-age. Despite starring a young Angelina Jolie in a star-making performance, the film was granted little support upon its release and Annette was granted little support in her career.

Like so many women who made masterful films around that time, Annette was pushed aside and ignored. But she kept working and working — detours and frustrations included — and now she’s back with a new film. She’s ready to move beyond for-hire jobs to direct the personal, artful work she should have been making for decades.

Drew: I want to start from the beginning. Where did you grow up?

Annette: I grew up in the South. I had a unique upbringing because I was raised in faculty housing on college campuses. I started off in Mississippi — it’s where I was born and where my extended family is from — and then we went to New Orleans and then we went to Macon, Georgia. I was raised in this very liberal and tolerant community, but it was a bubble inside of the Deep South. And the family that I came from originally was very conservative. It was a valuable upbringing because I was always conscious of the conversations around me. My dad was very much a Civil Rights advocate and was fighting for the integration of schools. And my mother was the first female lawyer in our city. So all the cultural issues that we were going through in the 60s and 70s were right there in front of me and being discussed in my home. I’ve come to appreciate my upbringing as I’ve gotten older. I don’t think I appreciated it when I was young — I just wanted to get the hell out. (laughs)

Drew: (laughs) Well, I do understand that.

How did you become interested in movies and directing?

Annette: Even though I had that upbringing, movies were not something that was part of my life. Macon only had a small multiplex that played what I consider to be the worst of the Hollywood movies. I mean, there were those special movies that came to town — my mother took us to see The Sound of Music — but it wasn’t common. Then when I was 17 years old I went to college in Asheville, North Carolina and I discovered all sorts of movies at the arthouse theatre there. That’s what made me go, oh my god this is something I understand. It cracked me open in a way nothing else had and started me on this path. One weekend, there was an Ingmar Bergman festival and from Friday morning to Sunday night I watched like all his movies on the big screen. The last one was Persona—

Drew: (gasp)

Annette: And Persona just fucked me up. I don’t know how else to put it. It cracked me open — my mind, my heart, everything I had ever thought about. And I became obsessed with films that took a deep dive on identity — who am I, what am I. That was really the beginning. But it was several years before I acted on that impulse because I didn’t know anything about the industry. I didn’t know how one did that. I had to transition into it.

Drew: Persona is my favorite Bergman movie. That was also the one that blew my mind as a teenager.

Annette: Oh cool!

Drew: So how did you go from this experience seeing Persona to actually acting on the desire to be a filmmaker?

Annette: Well, in the late 70s, I was living in Athens, Georgia and I became friends with The B-52s and started shooting music videos for them. This was right before MTV and then MTV happened and the videos that I was shooting became a big deal. That was the point where I realized that this was actually a career, that being in the entertainment industry was something that people could actually do. The Bs, of course, went on to have this fabulous career, so it kind of normalized something that had never crossed my mind: I can make a living at this. It doesn’t have to be something I just play around with.

Drew: When you were first starting out were you aware of other women directors?

Annette: This is going to sound ridiculous, but I didn’t even think about it. I came up in an era where women didn’t get to do any of the things they wanted to do, so the expectation was that you would just do it anyway. When my mother became a lawyer, she was literally the first female lawyer in our city. It was like, oh okay you just have to work hard for it and prove that you’re good.

I’d always been a tomboy — although that’s not a term I really like because I’ve come to understand my identity in a clearer way now — but I always ran with the boys. And had this expectation that I could do whatever I wanted to do. It really wasn’t until I went to LA — I just got in a car one day and drove across the country — that I discovered there were almost no women directors. I still expected to be able to do it though.

Also it was a time when using gender as the reason for something not working out for you was so not okay. I mean, you could never refer to yourself as a female director and when women started doing that many of us were like, well, I’m not a female director, I’m a director. It’s really only been in the past decade where it can be advantageous to identify that way.

Foxfire (dir. Annette Haywood-Carter, 1996)

Drew: What was the journey from music videos to coming to LA to The Foot Shooting Party to Foxfire?

Annette: I took a lot of dead end roads. I started out thinking that I would work as a cinematographer or in camera because that was my love and passion. But there were no women in camera. And then I thought, okay, well, I’ll be an AD. I didn’t go to film school and I didn’t really understand the different positions, so I just thought an assistant director sounded like a stepping stone into directing. But the women in the AD department were relegated to base camp and weren’t standing by the camera that often. There were a handful who were and I worked with some of the great ones but it wasn’t common. I finally made a calculated decision. The only position that women dominated on set was script supervising so I figured out what that job was and I started doing that. It turned out to be a godsend because I was attached at the hip to the director. I did 28 movies and it was my film school. In addition to learning how to direct from working Hollywood directors — which is really the best way to learn, in my opinion — I made a lot of personal relationships I could use in my career.

While working as a script supervisor, I was writing all the time and my scripts were being circulated. I got a meeting at Disney with a woman who read a script I wrote. She said, “Disney won’t make this movie, because it’s off-brand. But we really liked your writing so we wanted to meet you. And also I wanted to tell you that Jeffrey Katzenberg has initiated this program called the Discretionary Fund for creative execs to find new talent.” It was a grant for $150,000 to make a short film. That sounds like a lot for a short but this was back in the day of film and when Avid took up a whole room. So basically she said, “We’re looking for new talent and your agent tells me you really want to be a director.” I said, “Yes, I’m a director.” I had this screenplay for The Foot Shooting Party in my bag because I was on my way to the post office after this meeting. I was sending it to a company in LA called Chanticleer that was making short films even though it was rare for short films to get made outside of film schools. So I said, “Oh I actually have something right here,” and I gave it to her. It wound up being the first film in this new program. I think they planned to make 22 shorts but canned the program after 12.

That whole experience and what came next was kind of extraordinary. But it was also the result of the work that I had been doing. I’d been script supervising on Amblin films — I’d done Casper and The Flintstones — and the projectionist and the producers at Amblin had seen The Foot Shooting Party. They were just determined that Spielberg would see it, so they asked me to leave the film in the screening room. One day Spielberg came on the set and he walked up to me and said, “Did I see your film last night?” And I said, “I don’t know. What did you see?” And he said, “The Foot Shooting Party.” And I said, “Yes, that’s my film.” And he gave me the biggest hug! And then started firing a bunch of questions at me about my directorial decisions. He told me that he wanted me to direct an episode of Seaquest, this TV series that he was producing for NBC. And that was how I got my break.

I directed the episode of Seaquest and then they offered me to come back and do another one because the lead actor Roy Scheider was very happy with my work. But in the 90s, directors couldn’t go back and forth between television and film like they can now. Film was the A Team and television was the B Team. If you were stuck in television it might be difficult to get to feature films and if you were in feature films you did not want to go to television. And I was also offered Foxfire. So I turned down the second episode to break into features.

Drew: Did you get offered Foxfire through your reps?

Annette: At the time I had a wonderful agent named Lee Keele at the Gersh Agency. She had been working as an assistant for one of the big agents and she was just getting off the desk and able to develop her own client list. Someone introduced us and she started representing me. She was the reason that I got Foxfire.

Drew: When you made Foxfire what was your relationship to your sexuality and identity?

Annette: My relationship to my identity hasn’t changed, but what people have known me to be has changed. When I was in college, I identified as bisexual because that was the only word out there for people who were in relationships with men and women. Then I got into a relationship with a woman that lasted six years — it was a very committed relationship that I really consider to be my first marriage — and during that time I identified as a lesbian. But when I say I identified, I just mean that was the label that I gave myself. The labels never actually ever felt right to me.

And then when I married my husband — who I was with for many years and had two children with — that coincided with my move to LA. I had never been secret about my relationships when I was living in Atlanta and it had been very costly. To be honest, it cost me my family. But when I got to LA, I just didn’t talk about my personal life all that much. People just assumed that I was straight because I had a husband and children.

I was somebody who just never fit in. Even as a child, I didn’t fit in because people thought of me as a tomboy but I really just identified as a boy. I was a boy in girls clothing — that was my identity as a kid. So by the time I made Foxfire I was accustomed to whatever labels people wanted to put on me. They didn’t describe who I was, but I felt like it was kind of a non-issue at the time.

It’s been really interesting to me how my relationship to my queerness and my place in the queer community have evolved.

Drew: Do you want to talk about that evolution?

Annette: Yeah so a couple things happened. I’m going to start at the end of the story and go back.

The end of the story is a year ago the director’s guild started the LGBTQ+ committee and to be on this committee, you had to identify as LGBTQ+. I thought okay well I’m going to do that, but when I went in I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Suddenly, I felt all of this physiological trauma that I realized I’d been carrying with me since I was young and in a relationship with a woman and had lost my family and all of that. It’s like PTSD, where you don’t know that you have something lurking until it’s triggered. I found that to be really, really interesting. Even talking about it now I still shake a little bit. There’s a lot of trauma from those early years. I’m talking ages 17 to 28. It wasn’t just a short period.

But backing up, I moved to LA, I had kids, I made Foxfire. And I did, of course, talk to the actors about my history and I probably talked to the producers about my history when I met for the job. But I remember thinking, oh my God the attitudes are just so out of date. Nobody thinks this way anymore! Hollywood was ten years behind the world as I knew it to be. For instance, there was a kiss in Foxfire that they made me take out. And I was like, really? Are you sure? Then, of course, a few years later they regretted it because lesbian kisses started appearing on national television. But, at the time, it was all from the position of marketing.

Anyway, then things started shifting in my personal life. First, I moved back to the South. I had to leave the industry briefly, because I wasn’t getting enough work to support my family, so I’d gone to teach in Savannah, Georgia. Then, my son at the age of 13 came out to me as gay. My first reaction to that was one of joy because I already knew and I was just really happy that my 13-year-old son felt comfortable enough and safe enough to come to me and tell me this. But then my second reaction was fear. It was just fear. I thought, “He’s going to get killed. He’s going to get murdered.” There had been some high profile murders in the news of gay men around that time and I just completely glommed onto that. And he didn’t want me to tell anyone, because he was in a private school that was very conservative and people just weren’t out in that environment.

After several months, I wound up calling my friend, Bruce Cohen. He’s a producer who did Silver Linings Playbook and Milk — he’s a great great producer. I called him and said, “Bruce, I don’t think I know enough to be a good mother to a gay boy. Would you help me out with this?” And what Bruce said really calmed me down. He said, “First of all, the fact that your 13-year-old son felt safe enough to come and tell you means you’re already doing everything right.” So that was the beginning of just sort of stepping back into that world and back into my queerness. I told my son my own history and it was the first time I shared that with my children. I needed him to know that I understood a lot of what he was experiencing. It’s different for a gay boy and a queer girl, but I understood the social implications and the implications within the family. Like my son never told his grandfather and it impacted their relationship all the way until his grandfather’s death last year.

The next thing that was really impactful happened when I was on a committee for an international boarding school. They were trying to decide policy for their transgender students and it was a really interesting environment. There were 57 countries represented at the school so you’re dealing with a range of different cultural biases. They brought a lot of experts in and it was like a think tank. What do we do as a school to make sure everyone feels like they belong?

This was such an enlightening experience and it inspired me to start writing my script, A Precious Human Life. I felt this real need to make a movie where trans people were just treated as normal. It’s a story about a trans woman and her estranged father finding their way to forgiveness. And I wanted it to have an uplifting conclusion because this was six or seven years ago that I started working on it, and so many movies that had transgender leads ended in murder or suicide. I wanted to write a parent/child story that led with compassion and empathy and ultimately ended with reconciliation.

As a filmmaker, you think, what’s important to you? What do you want to put out in the world? I’ve always been attracted to and related to characters who are vulnerable, because I think any time something really matters to you, it makes you vulnerable. The question is, are you going to step up to that thing? The transgender youth I met were so vulnerable. And I just felt like I wanted to do whatever I could — in my life, in my art — to help them step up.

Around this time my son’s partner who we’d been introduced to as a gay man came to live with us because they weren’t safe in their home environment. I was talking about this script and my son’s partner began indicating that they were interested in transitioning. For my son’s partner to find that space within the confines of our home was very reaffirming for me. My conversations, my dialogue, were landing in the right places for them, which to me meant that I was on the right path.

Drew: It’s interesting because even though you had to cut the kiss from Foxfire, it’s so obviously a queer movie. It’s so intrinsically queer.

Annette: Oh, yes, yes.

Drew: I just think it’s so funny some straight producer being like if we cut a kiss then we’ve done it, then we can deny any sort of queerness to this very gay movie.

Annette: (laughs)

Drew: I also think it’s interesting what you’re talking about as far as labels changing and culture changing. I think about Angelina Jolie coming out as bisexual in the 90s and it very much being dismissed, especially once she had high profile relationships with men. People still forget about it. Her, Drew Barrymore, there are all these people who came out as bisexual and the industry decided to ignore that while still being obsessed with their private lives.

Annette: But if someone gets into a public queer relationship, then that’s who they are forever in a very limited way.

Drew: For sure.

Annette: What you’re really touching on here is the difficulty of labels. I think most of us want a label. We want to say this is what I am, because we live in a world of words defining things. But at the same time finding the right label can be so challenging. It’s only recently that I’ve stopped searching my mind for an answer every time I’m asked how I identify. It wasn’t really until the word queer became a more popular label. Pansexual felt fine except I reached an age where who I was sleeping with was really not what it was about and maybe never was what it was really about. That’s why for me queer is a bigger, more inclusive gestalt.

Drew: And it encompasses gender as well as sexuality. Regardless of whether someone identifies as cis or trans, a lot of people have queer relationships to their gender. There’s an expansiveness there as well.

Annette: Yeah!

Drew: So what was the initial reaction to Foxfire when it came out?

Annette: Well, at the time, the movie Twister was a big hit and they didn’t want to give up the screens for Foxfire. And because MGM was going through bankruptcy, they didn’t have any fighting powers. Foxfire wasn’t packaged with a big movie because MGM didn’t have a big movie. So it was shuttled into arthouse theatres which was not the goal. When I made the film I was very clear who my audience was — high school girls who go to the mall. High school girls who go to the mall do not frequent arthouse theatres. And then they dropped the advertising for it. I had friends from New York who were calling me like, “I thought your movie was opening this week” and I had to tell them the theatres where it was playing.

Interestingly, the only advertising I got — and I wasn’t clever enough to use it — was from Howard Stern. He loved Foxfire. But I kind of loathed Howard Stern because he was so misogynistic. I had a friend who called me and said, “You need to call in! He won’t stop talking about the movie! He keeps saying, ‘Foxfire. The sexiest movie that’s ever been made.’” And I was like I’m not calling in to The Howard Stern Show! Are you kidding? Now I look back on it and if I had been smarter I would’ve called in. Because one week later the theatres dropped it.

There had been reviews, because that’s how the machine worked. But the reviews were all over the map. There were reviews that were very, very complimentary of the movie and of me as a director. But then there were reviews that absolutely panned it. The review in Variety was so bad that a producer at Amblin called my agent and asked if I was this critic’s ex-girlfriend.

Drew: (laughs)

Annette: He said, “I’ve never seen him do this to a director ever.” So the question is if it’s not personal about me then what is it about? And, of course, now we know. It was the queer undercurrent. It was the fact that this was a film about queer girls. It pissed off this straight guy.

Drew: What were your hopes for your career when you were making the movie?

Annette: Well, my expectation was that I would get offers and that I would just be working all the time. Because, again, I didn’t think about things from the standpoint of being a female director. When my mother became a lawyer, she very quickly moved up in the ranks of attorneys. She wasn’t held back. My expectation was that once I broke through I’d have the same experience as my director friends who were male. I didn’t have any director friends who were female and that’s another way the industry has changed. Women are really sticking together now. Back then they were not sticking together. Women saw other women as competition. Plus there was no forum really to meet each other even if we wanted to. So my only reference points were men. I’d have friends who’d graduate from AFI, have a nice student film, and then get a three picture deal at one of the studios. I was so far ahead of them and couldn’t get close to that!

David Gersh at the Gersh Agency said to me, “I’ve seen a lot of first films. This is lightyears ahead of a first film. This is really, really good.” And two or three years later, he said, “I thought it was going to be easy, because you just made this excellent first film. It never occurred to me that people wouldn’t be interested in you because you’re a woman.” So I just found myself crashing and burning to be quite honest and with no understanding of why this was happening. It was a couple years before it happened to pretty much all of the women and we could then start to compare notes and realize, oh women don’t get a second movie.

Drew: So, Leonardo DiCaprio was the lead of The Foot Shooting Party before he became a star. And something I think about a lot are all the very famous male actors who worked with women early in their careers and then never worked with women again.

Ryan Gosling’s second feature was directed by Kari Skogland and then this year’s Barbie will be the first time he’s worked with a director who isn’t a cis straight white man since then. Adam Driver hasn’t worked with a woman director since Girls made him a star. Nicolas Cage’s first lead role was Martha Coolidge’s Valley Girl and he hasn’t worked with a woman since then. And DiCaprio did your short in ‘94 and a feature with Agnieszka Holland in ‘95 and hasn’t worked with a woman since. Do you have thoughts about that?

Annette: Well, it’s interesting, because I don’t necessarily think it’s a reflection on these actors. It’s a reflection on the industry and what’s available. They’re looking for a role that excites them and pushes their career forward. And the industry isn’t offering them as many projects with women at the helm.

I also think about that recent interview with Jennifer Lawrence where she was saying that she wasn’t being brought certain scripts. Her agents just weren’t bringing her indie films. And that’s still where most women filmmakers are relegated. So where I think an actor can use their celebrity and power is to insist that other material be brought to them. Of course, agents would rather their clients do a one hundred million dollar movie than a three million or ten million dollar movie because their ten percent won’t be as much with indies.

But something worth remembering is anyone who comes forward with these kinds of projects is trying to squeeze their idea into say, a three million dollar budget, so they can get it made. Because very few people will make a movie with a woman director that’s thirty-five million. So the conversation needs to be about the budget, the vision, the idea. What’s the right budget for this idea? The right budget for A Precious Human Life is thirty-five million dollars. But I’ll never get that so I have it budgeted at six, nine, and fifteen. And I’m thinking, okay if I get fifteen I’ll be really, really lucky, but even that is less than half of what I actually need. And that’s giving the actors a nice salary but not ten million each, of course. So the actors need to be willing to work within the parameters of those other budgets in terms of their salary. If you’re getting twenty million dollars a movie, you can afford to get $250,000 every couple years. Especially because indie shooting schedules are so short. They’re not going to take you out of the game.

Celebrities could drive this conversation a little bit better. They could ask their managers, if not their agents, to find them the diamond in the rough, that beautiful screenplay that’s being circulated to equity financiers and not to them. But I don’t look at someone like Leonardo DiCaprio and think oh you haven’t been good to women directors. He’s doing the movies that make sense for him as an actor.

Drew: I think that’s a really good point. There are things individuals can do, but ultimately it’s about the industry needing a more comprehensive shift.

Annette: Yeah, it’s structural.

Savannah (dir. Annette Haywood-Carter, 2013)

Drew: So what actually did happen after Foxfire?

Annette: Well, fortunately, I was a writer. And I was able to support my family and keep myself in the game by working as a script doctor. I got hired to do a lot of script rewrites. And occasionally I’d get a directing job — like a Lifetime movie or an episode of a show that nobody has ever heard about. But reality TV was a tsunami that wiped movies of the week off the map for a while and that’s where a lot of my work had been. I lost the ability to support myself and had to leave the industry.

I do like to talk about teaching in a positive way. I teach directing and I absolutely love it. Teaching something makes you better at it. And I have so much joy over the students finding their voices as directors. I also kept writing, and kept writing, and eventually something did work out. But the other thing that’s different for women directors is the kinds of jobs and projects we can get.

If I was offered a bunch of movies, I wouldn’t have chosen Savannah. It’s a very conservative, southern men’s story. I wouldn’t have done that. But I hadn’t been offered anything in eight years at that point, so I certainly wasn’t going to turn it down. I was asked to write the screenplay and I managed to write a screenplay that I actually loved. But one of the things I think is super important for the industry and for readers to understand is if you go to IMDb and you see what a woman has directed, it doesn’t necessarily define that person. Foxfire defined me. Foxfire was the kind of movie I wanted to make. That was my heart and soul, you know? I was this edgy person who had a contemporary style.

As a woman, if you don’t make a film that’s perfect, you won’t get another one. And Savannah had a lot of problems that came from a producing situation where I was forced to change the screenplay. This was after having cast some of the greatest actors out there — like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sam Shepard — who came on board because of the script. But then the script was changed and the film wasn’t good enough. By my standards the film wasn’t good enough. And the industry was like, well you got your second shot — ten years after the first shot mind you — and you didn’t do good enough, so nope you don’t get to do it again.

All I could do was just continue writing. I’ve wanted to direct big movies. That’s always been my goal and what I have always wanted to do. I want all those toys, all those tools. But I have to say I’m not sure I’d be where I am now with this script, A Precious Human Life, if I hadn’t been on this journey.

Drew: Thank you so much for saying all of that. You’re touching upon something I wish we talked about more in the industry.

Someone I think about a lot is Kasi Lemmons. As far as I’m concerned, Eve’s Bayou is one of the greatest movies of all time. It took four years for her second film, The Caveman’s Valentine, to come out. That’s another really unique film that feels squarely in her voice. But then it’s six whole years before she’s back with Talk to Me, which is a fine movie, kind of just a biopic. And then six years after that Black Nativity which feels more in her voice again. That was 2013. The last few years she’s directed Harriet, Self-Made, and the Whitney Houston biopic and I’m so excited she’s getting work! If anyone deserves to get work, it’s her. But these projects feel far more in line with Talk to Me than Eve’s Bayou or even Black Nativity. And I just wonder what kind of work she’d be making if she had the creative freedom granted to the white men who made movies in the 90s, work far less interesting and accomplished than Eve’s Bayou.

It’s great that women are getting directing opportunities, especially women who should’ve been getting them for the last twenty, thirty years. But my question is, what opportunities? From an employment standpoint things are getting better and that’s great. But what about the artistic voices? How often are these artists actually being trusted?

It makes me so angry. Look, I’ve seen Foxfire multiple times and I just rewatched it before this interview. I love it so dearly. To think about the first features that came out in the 90s directed by white men that were so… fine. Bottle Rocket, Hard Eight, Slacker. They show promise for sure, but these directors made names for themselves because they immediately got to make another movie of their choosing right after and then another movie of their choosing right after that. Foxfire is so much better than these other first movies! I want to see what you would’ve made two years after that and what you would’ve made two years after that. And, as you said, what happened to you happened to so many women. All Over Me is another queer teen drama I love and Alex Sichel didn’t get to make another movie until she was on her deathbed two decades later. I mean, Daughters of the Dust!! How does Julie Dash get fewer opportunities than every white man who happened to pick up a camera?

There were so many incredible films from this era that should’ve led to incredible careers. It’s so frustrating to think of all the art that was kept from us.

Annette: Yes.

Annette Haywood-Carter working on the set of Daughter of the Bride.

Drew: Okay so I have a few questions. How did Daughter of the Bride come about? Where are you at with A Precious Human Life? And are you feeling optimistic with where the industry is now? Do you think you’ll be able to not only get work but get the opportunity to make more films that feel really true to your voice?

Annette: These questions really speak to what’s going on right now in the industry. I got Daughter of the Bride because the Directors Guild Women Steering Committee decided that they needed to help mid-career women. There are programs and opportunities out there for first time directors, women early in their career. But there are a bunch of women who have managed to hold on if they’re my age or if they’re younger than me are working but not enough to support themselves and not enough to make choices. I really appreciate that you talked about the filmmaker as an artist. Who are you as a filmmaker and do you get to do projects that reflect your sensibilities and your aesthetics? Ultimately, it is an art.

So the Women Steering Committee formed a subcommittee called The Squad and what they did was take ten women directors at a time and pair them with a mentor, another working director, who then says, “What do you need? What would get your career to the next level?”

I was in the inaugural group and I said, “I need a movie. I just need to direct a movie.” Everyone in the group was directing television, because in the meantime the television renaissance had happened so there’s great quality work out there. But I said I needed to direct a movie because that’s my superpower, that’s my talent. Not that I wouldn’t be happy and have fun making episodes. But when you make a movie, as the director you are the king of the castle. You cast, you crew, you oversee the rewrites, all of the things that make the work yours happens in movies and not as much in television if you’re just hired on for an episode. So my mentor got me into a room at MarVista as a writer/director to discuss projects that I have. And at the end of the meeting, I said, “I really just need a movie. Do you have anything that’s getting ready to shoot that you haven’t hired a director for?” And she was like, “Well, we have this one thing. I don’t know if you’d want to do it because it’s a romcom.” And I said, “I love it. Give me a romcom.”

So Daughter of the Bride happened and it was so much fun! The people that I was working with, the producers were fantastic. You know, I’d say they brought me on to make a movie and then dropped me on a television assembly line. The way they made this movie was like a movie for television. But with the exception that they were very, very respectful of me and my choices. And so it was just a really positive experience.

Look, almost nobody is talking to me about directing projects. No one is calling me about an open directing assignment. And I don’t have a manager or an agent anymore. I let my agent go a few years ago and I was not smart enough to get another one before I left. I’m very honest and didn’t want to go find someone behind their backs and I wound up kind of screwing myself. So right now I’m just kind of pounding the pavement trying to get into meetings.

But what is happening for me is a producer/actress brought me a romcom and really wants me to direct her. I have a reputation for performance and for casting. Both for working with seasoned actors and for working with young actors before they’ve had their break. So she came to me and said, “Can I attach you? Will you direct this?” And she’s really sharp and is getting this project to companies. So I’m hopeful that will work out.

And also I wrote a limited series that a UK producer is taking out and we have some pretty high end interest. It’s a very expensive show and I’m attached to direct all of the episodes. I was very smart about it when the producer came on board and when I agreed to write it. I said I’d only do it if I retained ownership of the screenplay and was attached to direct. And, I mean, this is a two hundred million dollar series. I would never get to direct it, if it was an option for them to hire someone else. So that’s what’s going on in the commercial zone.

The way I’m spending my time is focusing on A Precious Human Life. I finished the script during the pandemic and I got involved with a producer who was taking it to companies. The script is not traditional. To me, this is my Bergman film. (laughs)

Drew: Yesss.

Annette: This is my art film. I became a filmmaker at the age of 17 after seeing Persona. And it’s like I’ve been planning to make this movie for decades now. Finally, I have a script that I’ve written that is that piece. The very first thing I say to people when they come onboard is that the screenplay is locked. If there’s something about it that they don’t think is good then I want them to tell me and if I think they’re right then that’s great. But if I don’t agree with them, I’m not changing it. I went about two or three months with a producer who agreed to that but then backed off that promise when she started talking to people about financing.

So where I am now is I have Hari Nef attached in the lead, and I made the decision that this would have to be done with equity financing, even though I kind of hate making movies with equity financing because then you have to get it distributed and that can take forever. But I finally decided that I had to have creative control. That had to be my priority. And, ultimately, this film is going to live or die on the lead actress. And, I mean, I say Hari is attached but, of course, until you actually have shooting dates and deals in place it’s a soft attachment. But that relationship is critical to this movie working. As is my relationship to a composer, to a visual effects team, and to a sound designer, because I have this thing I call the psychological landscape of this character. The best way to describe it is The Tree of Life. It’s not that, but it’s unconventional in that way. And so I’m just trying to protect my vision for this work of art and protect the relationships. I can’t have someone coming in and telling me who my cast is. I cannot have that.

So that’s where my hopes and dreams lie right now. I’m not sure about my expectations. But my hopes and dreams are that I will get the money that’s necessary to do it well. Because that’s another thing — the way I’ve envisioned this piece, it can’t be done in the world of three million dollars. It can’t be done in the world of no money. If I get to make this movie, I’m going to make something that’s a really high quality piece. I want to work with my composer before pre-production! Because the score is so integral to the emotional landscape. It’s a collaboration, it’s a process. I had several meetings with Hari and getting to know her mind — she’s brilliant, she’s just brilliant — it gave me an idea. There’s this thing in the movie she really connected with that’s the character sitting in a black box talking to the camera. And in the meetings with Hari, I realized we just need to have this black box on the set all the time. And pre-lit wherever we are so that when it either strikes Hari or me, she can go into the black box and start talking. So that’s the kind of film that I want to make and that is so not a Hollywood experience.

But I do think the world is ready for it. I think it can be made at a higher budget and earn its money back because people want a movie like this. I think there might even be a hunger for it. And I feel a responsibility to make this movie with the onslaught of political attacks right now on transgender youth. I don’t usually approach art this way, but I do think there has to be positive messaging out there. There just has to be. And I don’t mind giving away the fact that this movie has a beautiful, positive ending. Because for too long the expectation when we see trans people on-screen, is that it’s going to end in trauma.

Drew: I mean, I think about Foxfire. And, yes, homophobia and sexism led to the response, but I also think specifically it’s because those characters fight back.

It doesn’t have a happy ending per se, but it’s not a traumatic ending. They aren’t punished for their autonomy or for their sexuality or even for their righteous violence. And I think this is all cyclical so maybe where representations of cis queer people were in the 90s, representations of trans people are now. And, yes, there’s historically been too much trauma, but there’s also just been a lack of artfulness. Everything you’re saying is so exciting to me. Sure, about it not ending in trauma. But even more so that it’s capital A Art. I want movies about trans people that are allowed to be more than a teaching tool. Because ultimately I think the better the art, the more it actually does act as a teaching tool, because people are connecting to it emotionally rather than feeling like they’re being lectured.

I really hope you get to make this movie.

Annette: Thank you. I do too. I’m actually submitting it tomorrow to a finance company in New York who I pitched it to so fingers crossed that they want to do it.

Drew: My fingers are crossed!

“I Don’t Want To Be Forgotten”

Black History Month is often focused on prolific members of the Black community throughout history who contributed to the world in the name of betterment, and while they are incredibly important to our community, we often overlook those who are still alive and continuing to make a difference. We know that much of the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation has largely been led by Black members of the community who often don’t get enough credit for their contributions. This year, the Autostraddle team decided to focus our Black History Month coverage on the Black elders who are still here and still doing the work.

We connected with Black elders through a partnership with SAGE, the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ older people. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in New York City, SAGE is a national organization that offers supportive services and consumer resources to LGBTQ+ older people and their caregivers. Autostraddle was honored to talk with five Black LGBTQ+ elders, and we’ll be publishing these interviews throughout the month of February. We welcome our readers to celebrate these members of the Black LGBTQ+ community with us, while they’re still here to be celebrated.

The Autostraddle Black Elders Interview Project — Art by Demetria

Barbara Abrams works towards the betterment of LGBTQIA elders in New York City. Talking to her was like a warm hug. This interview has been edited for clarity.

Sa’iyda: Hi Barbara, thanks for your time today.

Barbara: Thank you so much for considering me for this call.

Sa’iyda: I’d love to know a little bit more about you, as a person. Maybe tell me a little bit about your childhood, your upbringing, and how it led you to the work you do and the person that you are now.

Barbara: My fantasies were television movies, like Annie Oakley. I always liked and was admired by women that fought back. They didn’t let a man push them around. In other stories on TV, the women were always catering to the man, no matter what he said. In reality, my mother was being beaten by men. I just felt like, that is my mother and I am going to save the day. Because I am not going to let this man, who doesn’t even smell right in my world, in my head, come to you. You let him come to you, you let him come in our house. But he’s not kind to you. And you said to me that if I ever get married one day, make sure I look at the man’s shoes. And they should be shiny, and they never should have holes in their socks. But every man she brought home, that’s how he looked.

Sa’iyda: Interesting.

Barbara: I said, “My God. I think she’s trying to save me, but she’s also afraid that I’ll make the wrong choice because she knows her choices are what they are. And she sees me, I’m her firstborn and I’m coming to save you.” I would come at those men with anything that I could find, that I knew would cause some bodily damage. And then that’s when I was just not afraid and saying, “You’re not going to continue to hit my mother the way you were doing. And I saw it, it’s not going to happen.” So I would hurt them. Well, I’d find things and I’d hide my weapons, my arsenal, I’d just hide it. And whenever that kind of situation occurred, I’d come out and the next thing my mother knows is I’m in the room and I’m wailing on someone.

That’s the way that happened, time and time again. And then after seeing that, Annie Oakley wasn’t really making it for me. I tried sitting with Gunsmoke, Miss Kitty was all right, but she wasn’t really doing it for me really. And then along came somebody named Mary Tyler Moore, and she lived in something called an apartment, in this place called New York. And I said, “I like the way this woman seems positive about herself, she knows what she wants and she lives alone. So living alone must be really nice.” So I decided… I was fresh out of high school and my mother and the neighbor next door wanted me somehow to marry the boy next door, which was the neighbor’s son.

I said, “Mommy, you want me to marry this boy next door?” I said, “I will kick his ass.” I cursed and that was a no-no. But that’s what I said. And she said, “You are going to marry that boy. He won’t beat you.” I said, “What? Mommy, who beats who around here?” So she just said, “Get in that house now and put on your good clothes.” Because we were obviously going to some kind of courthouse, because I don’t remember any of this. I was 18 or 19, fresh out of high school. And we did this. And then right after that, was Vietnam.

Sa’iyda: Oh wow, okay.

Barbara: I mean, he went right away, like the next day. In that day and age they drafted you by your first and last name, and his name was Abrams. So is mine. I kept the name. So he was off to the war and he would come back home on anything that was moving back to Florida. And to check on me, he would hide between houses across the street and all of that, to see if anybody was coming by. I couldn’t take the jealousy stuff. I had a dog, he used to kick the dog. I told him, “If you ever do that again… it just won’t be pretty. I don’t want to fight, but I will protect what I love. You know I don’t love you. You know that. You know this was your parent and my parent. This was their idea, it wasn’t mine.”

It just never got right for him. He couldn’t keep a job because he would tell his boss — my uncle told me this and then I eventually got it from him — that his wife was sickly and he had to leave the job because she had to go to the hospital.

Then I found out that he was doing this and I said, “I want to have a discussion with you, but you are not allowed to talk.” And he looked at me and he was getting ready to say something. I said, “If you say one word, you will never see me again and you’ll always wonder why.” So he didn’t say anything and I said, “I am going to leave you. I’m not going to tell you when, but I’m going to leave you. So I thought you should know that. It’s not like somebody abducted me or anything like that. There’s nothing here for me.” And he said, “But I don’t do anything.” I said, “It’s not you, it’s just that I don’t like you and I don’t love you.”

I was very straight up, I always have been. He looked at me like it wasn’t real and he went to work. And when he went to work, driving the car that we had, as soon as I saw the car turn the corner, I pulled my yellow steamer trunk from under the bed. I had purchased the trunk first and then I purchased five articles of new clothing. My mother always said to me, “Always know what you’re doing…” She was a good advisor, but she didn’t live the advice that she gave me. But she was a good advisor. She said, “Always be prepared to live your life for whatever you want.” I didn’t say, “Well, I didn’t want this.” I just said, “Thank you, Mommy.” I bought five articles of clothing, little by little, and put them in the trunk that was under the bed. And I washed my underwear that I had, that I owned, every night. Underwear and socks every day. So that everything was always clean, whenever that day or that moment came.

Sa’iyda: That you needed to go.

Barbara: Yeah. That’s how I live to this very day. If I’m going to do something, I never do it immediately, I think about it first. And then when I feel like I’m certain, no matter what, then I make that decision and I don’t need people to talk to me about anything. Because I’m sure about my life. I’m only talking about my life, doesn’t involve anyone else but me. So I like for people to not try to give me advice. I know who I am. I left, and about six months later, I saw a lawyer here in New York, and had the lawyer send him notifications that I’m asking for a divorce. And my mother gave me his phone number and I told him, “You need to sign those papers because I’m paying for the divorce and you don’t have to pay out of pocket anything.” Then that was that. Because there was never going to be anything different, never ever. And he said, “But I don’t want this, [I don’t want] anybody to think I did anything.” I said, “Listen, I’m telling you what you need to do and that’s it. I’m not going to talk to you long. I know you heard me, sign the papers.” He signed it and he sent them back, and I got a divorce. I still have the papers.

Sa’iyda: Wow.

Barbara: I’m just so excited about that. That’s years and years ago. He’s since died and they tried to get me to take his benefits from his death, as his wife. I said, “I am not your brother’s wife. And I never was. I don’t want things to be more complicated for your young mind. Just accept the fact that I was never his wife. Okay? I know he wanted me to be, but I’m not.” That was the end of it. When I came here [to New York], I asked my mother one day, abruptly to her, “Would you take me to the train station?” She said, “Yes, baby. When?” I said, “Now.” And she said, “Okay.” She didn’t ask me any questions because she knows how I live.

I’m dropped off at the train station, it comes into Penn Station. I see Macy’s when I come up to the street. I know [Mary Tyler Moore] lives around here somewhere. Just because in the movies of course, she threw her hat up—

Sa’iyda: Hat up in the air, right. Yes.

Barbara: So I said, “She lives around here somewhere. But that’s okay, I’ll see her eventually.” My first apartment was 110th Street at Central Park West. It was July of ’69. And that was the junkie era, where people were just bowing down, falling, almost to the street but never really landing. That junkie bow, that’s the name for it on the street. And I went into this building and I immediately asked the super of a building, “Do you have an apartment?” It was like $50 a month or $25 a month at that time. And you were brought up to this little small place and no windows or view or anything, but it didn’t matter. And the super said to me, “Ma’am, close your door young lady.” I said, “Get out of my apartment. You don’t tell me what to do.” Of course when he left and some crazy looking man passed, I might do it… I’m from Florida, we don’t lock anything.

Sa’iyda: You got to lock those doors in New York.

Barbara: I had to learn quick, but I had to learn my way. I saw the evidence that I needed to close that damn door. There was this crazy little man, who looked in at me, and I’m like, “This is my home. You don’t look at my home.” I closed the door, and when I did, I went to pull up the blind to look out the window — all I saw was a cement wall. Like in I Love Lucy or something. So I went out to just kind of figure it all out. Where am I? I sat on the bench at Central Park West and watched yellow taxis go by. I had never seen that many cars.

Sa’iyda: Coming from Florida, that had to be a huge culture shock.

Barbara: It was. But I was enjoying it. That’s the thrill I wanted. “Oh, look at all of these cars. Look at all these taxis. Wow, this is amazing.” And eventually, I found out what the Village was. I knew nothing, I’m just curious to find out about my life. What am I doing? I went to the Village and I used to sit on the street because this was the hippie era.

Sa’iyda: East Village or West Village?

Barbara: It was the West Village between West Village and Sixth Avenue. That side. Sit right there on the street and everybody with their bandanas around their heads, and punky, crazy looking clothes. Because I’m from Florida, everything’s got to be dressed right. I had to get me some jeans and look like everybody else. And start singing folk songs and all of that. So after that era, I went into the super dance era — it was David Mancuso, white guy from Yonkers, that came up with this idea of spinning music all at the same time in his apartment called The Loft. And all of the musical people, Diana Ross, all of these people used to be dancing right next to you. But it wasn’t about fan loving, it was about just dancing.

Sa’iyda: And having a good time.

Barbara: And having a good time. I’ve never been a drug person ever. I drank, I never, ever ordered beverages, I’ve never smoked cigarettes, I’ve never smoked anything. But I was around all of my friends that did smoke and I was the roller. I was the person that used an album cover and a card from a deck of cards, and faced off this big batch of… it looked like weed from a bush. And you rolled it up, crack it up, and used the card until the pieces that you were going to roll up in this tobacco was ready for whoever was going to smoke it to smoke it. I was always in a cloud — like the president [Clinton] said… somebody said he never inhales. But I was in it, so I had to be high to some degree.

Sa’iyda: You were around it, so there’s no way you weren’t.

Barbara: Well, around it because that’s who all of my friends were. Everybody smoked and did some kind of quaalude or something. And I just had fun all the time. Just danced day and night, until I got older. Then you just slow it down and then you go to parties. A friend at the time used to give parties by the World Trade on Sundays. You go there from three o’clock in the afternoon until 11pm that night.

And you just danced. You danced the whole time. Dance was like heaven to me. And then you grow some more, you mature more. I still worked, the job that I had at that time was at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I had a responsible position — I’m proud of myself for doing all this. I didn’t have a college degree. I earned one, my job paid for it in full.

As long as I had an A performance, they paid for it. So I’m just proud of myself because everything I ever did, in terms of living your life and taking care of yourself appropriately and being financially able to sustain your life and your choices, I did that for myself.

Sa’iyda: So when did you figure out or have inklings, or fully understand, that you were gay?

Barbara: Just before I left Florida, the woman I call my best friend, lived down the street. Her sister was gay. She used to come back and forth home, whenever she felt like it. And it’s the way she dressed and the way she walked down the street. People would pull back the curtain, my mother and her sisters, anybody else that was an adult. I’m not allowed to look at what they’re looking at, because I’m a child.

But I saw her and I was impressed with how she carried herself. Because she knew, had to know everybody was peeking. It’s Florida, it’s a neighborhood. You know that’s what people do.

She wouldn’t care. She’d just give a walk, she’d give a performance for the eyes. And she’d just do her walk thing. And I just thought it was so classy and just so elegant. I just said, “I like that.” And one day I’m sitting on the steps, you can call them stoops or you can call them steps, of my home, and she passed by. Because I had moved from my mother’s house, I had my own house. And I’m sitting there, playing with my puppy and she said, “Hi.” And I said, “Hi.” And she said, “Can I come over?” I said, “Of course.” And she came over and she sat on the steps with me. And she just said, “So how long have you been living here?” I said, “Not that long. I always lived with my mother down the street.” We were just doing fly-by-night talk. All of a sudden, she kissed me.

Sa’iyda: Oh!

Barbara: Yes. She just abruptly kissed me. I don’t know, maybe she saw something I didn’t even know yet. And I said, “I think you better go home.” And she said, “Okay.” Her mother had built on the side of their home, an apartment for her just to live her own private life. So I went inside because my mother always preached to me… My mother’s very spiritual, very holy and all of that. And I was just the opposite.

So I went in the house, my home, and I sat on the bed and I looked in the mirror, and I waited for an hour. What I was waiting for was for a fang to fall out of my mouth and I’d become monstrous looking, and not recognize myself as a demon. If you did things like that woman, you become monstrous by God. Gave me one more reason to think God ain’t right. So after waiting an hour, I felt that was sufficient.

I didn’t see any distortions of myself. So I went to this woman’s house and I said, “It’s Barbara.” She opened the door and I did to her what she was doing to me. I don’t know where that came from, but I knew it just felt comfortable and it felt right. And then I said, “Okay, I got to go.” And then the next thing I knew, I was trying it out on another friend, who was married to this guy.

We were talking and we were in her bedroom window. Leaning in the window, both of us, looking at children playing. And it was in the afternoon, late, and she turned… We were very close in body, in this window. And she turned and she looked at me, and I looked at her and we had eye contact. And neither one of us was removing ourselves from that eye contact. So I took the lead because I felt like I’d kissed my best friend’s sister—

Sa’iyda: You already kind of felt comfortable at that point.

Barbara: I felt very comfortable at that moment. I kissed her and she liked it. She told me, she said, “I like the way that felt.” I said, “Oh, you did? You want to do it again?” She said, “I’m scared.” I said, “Well, let me know when you’re not scared.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll leave.” And when I saw her again, she told me she was afraid I’d come back to Florida. She told me she was afraid that she wanted to see me. We had an intimate encounter. And she said she was in love. I’m like, “Oh. You can’t. You can’t be in love. I don’t even know about this part yet. But that can’t be right.” So I said, “Think about it and we’ll talk the next time I come.”

Sa’iyda: You’re exposing them to something they had no idea about.

Barbara: So now I’m back in New York again and I had met two different guys on two different occasions. This one guy, and he looked like a bodybuilder, but when it came time to want to be intimate with me, because he did all the poses and all of that, I’m like, “Oh my God. Look at this guy. There’s no way I could be with him. I just can’t do it.” I could never feel anything toward a man. I could like him as a person, that looked nice and handsome, but I could never… You can’t touch me. So I just accepted the fact that I truly was gay. I had to be gay. That was my acceptance of myself. I made an announcement in my own head that I was a gay woman.

Sa’iyda: And did you have the language and understanding of what that meant, at that time?

Barbara: I knew that it meant I like women. I like the same sex as myself, because that’s the way I explained it to my mother. I had her come to New York, to know where I lived, and to see where I lived, so that she’d know that I was fine. And there was no trouble or reason for her to worry about me taking care of myself. She said, “I want you to have a grandbaby for me. I want a grandbaby.” I said, “Well Mommy, you have to talk to Lamar…” That’s my brother. “About that. Maybe he can have you some grandbabies because I like women.” She says, “Lord, have mercy Jesus. Barbara Jean.”

So I’m just looking at her and I said, “Mommy, what do you think?” She said, “You just can’t go around having sex.” I said, “Do you think that’s what gay is?” And she said, “Isn’t that what it is?” I said, “No, it isn’t. I haven’t even had sex yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. I don’t know what it is. How you really get into it. I don’t know any of that. I just know I like women and I will not be having any children because I will not have an encounter with a man.” And she said, “Lord, have mercy Jesus.”

She just didn’t know how to accept that, but she knew that I made her life comfortable. That’s what she knew for sure. So she just decided to go smoke her cigarette.

Sa’iyda: You put her outside. I love it. So, how did you become an activist and how did you do the work where you speak about your experience?

Barbara: Because I’ve been to many centers where socially, people gather as LGBTQ people, like GRIOT Circle. Once I retired, I knew the woman that started the place called GRIOT Circle, Regina Shavers is her name. She’s deceased. But I felt like I needed to give back by giving my body and time, and energy, and my knowledge about just life in general as a principal status, by being there. I had the time. I didn’t have anything that I had to do, I could be there every day. And because of the type of person that I am, if I’m going to give you my time, I’m going to give you my time a hundred percent. And the people there, where I was a volunteer, saw that. And the next thing I knew, I was having responsibilities. I’m like, “Wait a minute. I shouldn’t be having keys to the office. I shouldn’t be taking money to deposit in the bank. I shouldn’t be having this responsibility. These are employees who have responsibility.” They liked the way I function.

And all those things mattered. If something had to be cleaned, it was cleaned properly. If something was broken, it was fixed properly. Things just had to be right, they could not be shabby. In the beginning, we started with one room, in the YWCA here in Brooklyn. And then we went from there to a big functioning building, to the fifth floor. And that’s where I was spending all of my time, there. So little by little, when people would come in to socially benefit from this senior place, they’d come in with knowledge from anywhere, varying places. And that was also helpful. So whenever I’m anywhere, I talk about the conditions of things that I know, living from this position of how I live my life.

Sa’iyda: Right. And how did you get involved with SAGE?

Barbara: I saw them someplace. I think I was probably working, again, volunteering with GRIOT Circle and SAGE came into place. And then it became a partnership. So therefore, I joined SAGE. And then if something else was around, promoting themselves as LGBTQ+, I joined that too. I join everything. And this way, I’m over here for a minute, I’m over there for a minute, but I’m consistently doing the same thing. I don’t want to be forgotten.

Sa’iyda: Why is it important to you, not only to do these things but to, as you say, not be forgotten?

Barbara: Enough of us don’t promote ourselves because we’re still hung up behind the wall. We hung up behind that curtain. Young people are not, older people still hide.

Sa’iyda: Why do you think that is?

Barbara: Because of society. They don’t want to be judged in a stereotypical way, the way my neighbor asked me, “Are you gay?” And saying, “I didn’t know. I didn’t see you that way.” We deal with politics every day. So you don’t need people that are just like you, in the same manner, to make life rough. We don’t need that. So just be respectful.

Sa’iyda: Yeah. Well, we have been talking for just about an hour, so I am going to let you go on with the rest of your day.

Barbara: It feels like it’s been 10 minutes.

Sa’iyda: I know. I just looked at the time, I was like, “Oh my goodness. We have been talking for almost an hour.” But this has been absolutely lovely and enlightening, and I appreciate your time so very much.

Barbara: Well, it’s been terrific talking to you. Thank you very, very much.

“There’s Nothing I Can’t Do”: Harlem’s Jerrie Johnson on Tye’s Self-Discovery and Breaking the Binary

Photo of Jerrie Johnson by Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb

Jerrie Johnson is very grateful for the opportunity to play Tye on Prime Video’s Harlem, but they know that it wasn’t just luck that got them to where she is. “I manifested this exact thing, and I was so happy and excited that my manifestations met with Tracy’s [Harlem creator Tracy Oliver] manifestations and also the manifestations of the girls all coincided in a way that we can be co-collaborators and co-conspirators in bringing this thing to life,” they told me over Zoom. We talked on a sunny afternoon and Jerrie as always looked flawless in a patterned jacket from their beautiful apartment in New York City.

This is an interview that I’ve been trying to make happen since before the season aired, and I was worried it wouldn’t happen. I met Jerrie last year after Harlem season two was announced and I told them during that time that I would love to interview them for Autostraddle when the time came. Despite playing a queer female character, she shared with me that they had never been interviewed by a queer female interviewer. It isn’t hard to believe, but I knew that I had to use my platform to amplify their voice, because it is a voice that everyone should hear.

With Tye, the go-getter, entrepreneur and all around boss running her own tech company, who doesn’t have time for love but also loves to have sex, Jerrie realizes she has an opportunity to change the television landscape. For so long, Black women in Hollywood haven’t had the chance to evolve how the world views us. But in playing a character like Tye, who is “able to be free and able to be nuanced and able to like, have some of that feminine and a lot of that masculine energy,” they can subvert preconceived notions. “What I love is that we’re dismantling what a leading lady is, what an ingenue can be, especially for Black women,” she explains.
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“No one’s trying to make any commentary on queerness,” they say of Harlem. “It happens because we never see a queer person living so freely as a person on TV. So then people are like, oh my God, I’ve never seen this. We have so many different reflections or depictions from shows like Friends and Sex and the City where not only is there no Black people, there’s no queer people. But this is New York and I’m like, I can’t go to Starbucks without seeing a queer person, let alone a Black queer person.”

There is still a narrow view of what it means to be an out, queer woman in the entertainment industry. Think about many of the queer female actors we can name off the top of our heads. Many of them don’t have the opportunity to present themselves in any kind of range. Jerrie pointed out that many queer male actors are allowed a spectrum of expression that queer female actors haven’t gotten to yet.

“My experience of queer women is, if they’ve presented this feminine thing, then they feel like they have to continue presenting this feminine thing, or they’re only gonna get certain roles and vice versa, right? If I’ve presented this masculine thing, I have to keep this up. And so even in the queerness we see so much binary for women.”

Through their portrayal of Tye, but also in life and how she portrays herself, Jerrie is challenging what it means to be an out queer, Black actor in an industry that doesn’t yet know what to do with people who don’t fit neatly into a box.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna be wearing or who I’m gonna be in the next hour. You know what I mean? And so, I think clothes are an expression of that,” they say. “This binary is so new and so American and so beneficial to the patriarchy and white supremacy, that I feel like it would be a disservice for me and my legacy for me to feed into any type of binary,” she adds.

And as Jerrie continues to carve her own path in this industry, one thing remains clear, they are going to do it their way. “I just hope that we are getting to a place where we allow black actors to be transformative! I’m just asking that I can play the full spectrum of what I have to give. And if there’s something that I don’t know how to do, there’s nothing that I can’t learn how to do, period. I think it’s all about having people out there who are thinking more expansively about how we’re presenting people, how we’re writing things, how we’re casting things so that people can see people like me in more of a nuance across different mediums in the industry.”

Read more of our conversation below.

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Sa’iyda: Let’s just start with a basic overview of Tye’s arc this season.

Jerrie: Tye, this season is in maybe a dark night of the soul. Like there is a person who loves structure… who has benefited from knowing in work, right? Like, if I take this step, it’s gonna lead me here, then if I take this step, it’s gonna lead me here. And there may be some, you know, nuances or some things along the way that lead to maybe that direct thing not happening.

But I can get close. In terms of personal life and love. It’s like, okay, “I don’t understand this because I’m doing this, this, and this, and technically it should leave me here, but I’m not there.” And I think really with the big, moment of reflection was what Brandon said to her in the apartment in season one about her not having love in her life. And I think she spends season two contemplating that, and maybe being in denial about it. There’s like an air of being in denial, but also there’s an air of I can fix this — I can fix things because that’s what I do. I don’t think she’s coming from the most healthy place.

Sa’iyda: Absolutely not.

Jerrie: She’s just grasping at straws. Literally, that’s what the season is about. “Oh, I can try this!” “Oh, I can date this person and then do this.” “Oh, I can find love if I just do this.” And it’s just like, but you have no guides. You have no love guides. There’s nobody that you are conferring with to let you know that these are the steps actually to take for you specifically. Not what you saw somewhere, not what you’ve read in a book, not what your friends are doing, but what you need to do. So I think that is the missing link. So right now she’s just… Trying to make it better. Trying to prove him wrong and yeah, grasp, grasp, grasp, grasp, grasp.

Sa’iyda: I mean I love how naturally it progresses. Especially because Tye being Tye is so like, “I have to do this” and “I have to do this, and this is how it’s gonna go.” Like she decided to go spend the weekend with her married couple friends and was like, “oh God, is this what my life is gonna be like?” Spoiler alert: Honey. Yes. That is exactly what your life is gonna be like.

You could see that she was like, oh no. Oh no. This feels too, too comfortable. I can’t sit in the comfort.

And I think that said a lot about her character. Comfort is not a place that she operates from naturally. So then to see the comfort that she feels with Amy because there’s no pretense — how it creates a very seismic shift in her that doesn’t come off as seismic.

Jerrie: I was gonna say too, she’s benefited in her life from not being comfortable. And her idea of comfort comes from this small town in the South where people aren’t doing anything. You know, people are stuck. And so like, that is what comfort to her means. “Well, if I’m comfortable then I could have stayed home.”

But she sacrificed her home life and sacrificed her comfortability. Now she’s in this maybe unhealthy relationship where she doesn’t identify the need for comfort when it comes. And so it’s like, oh, if it’s not, “go, go, go get, get, get” or chaos or even like easy, because sometimes comfort and easy aren’t the same thing. So if it’s not that, then not only do I not want it — I don’t see it, cause I don’t recognize that I need it or that there is a need for it.

Sa’iyda: Yeah, absolutely. And it was so heartwarming because Tye is not the character to have the meet-cute moment, to have the like, “oh, do you wanna come over and cuddle?” 

So to see that, that’s kind of where she ends up, because she was so determined to find it, and went about it the wrong way… to then have it kind of sneak up on her and give her a one, two sucker punch at the end was really satisfying as a viewer.

Jerrie: I thought it was beautiful, too! Because I feel like, what I love about the writing is that just like in life, everybody gets to experience everything.

So whereas we might assume that Quinn or maybe Angie will have a meet-cute moment, not Tye, Tye gets that [other thing]. And… and we’re satisfied. Just as we might assume that only Tye gets the queer moment and then Quinn gets it and we’re satisfied. Right? Because it shows complexity, it shows dualities. It shows the dichotomies that we aren’t used to seeing, especially in Black storylines, where it’s like, you are serving this purpose.

And if you’re not serving this purpose, then… I mean, a lot of storylines, but specifically Black storylines, we are finally becoming more expansive on a more macro scale and not just like the three shows that have these certain characters where it’s still very hetero.

Sa’iyda: I’d love to talk to you about the relationship between Tye and Brandon.

One of my biggest gripes this season was that they were not more deeply explored. I think there was something so interesting there, because why did what he said to her, send her in this existential spiral if she didn’t care about him as much? There was room for conversations of compulsory heterosexuality, where we kind of live in these spaces. Especially as Black women where queerness isn’t something we see modeled and thusly we can’t conceive of life that way. So we fall into these kind of situations, but then she has to get out of it.

Jerrie: We went from, I mean, they wrote 10 episodes. And then Amazon said sike, it’s eight. Because they have a new comedy order where, you know, all comedies are going down to eight episodes.

Sa’iyda: I hate the eight episode season! It’s not enough to develop.

Jerrie: And the crazy thing is, I’ve revisited the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and I’m like, oh, they had six seasons, but each season was like 22-26 episodes. And it’s like, you really get to see these characters develop.

So I think there’s a part of that, like, I think there was gonna be, some more introduction of other people so that we could explore the Brandon thing more. So I think it all had to happen for Tye in a shorter time, but also as backstory. Because Tye’s love story had to take precedence.

But I feel like Tye loves the life that she has now. It’s a very curated life, though. And so I think there’s something about somebody who may know you more deeply than these people —  who you’ve been through from maybe kindergarten to high school — which is more years than, than you have spent with, with these… this group of people right? That’s 18 years or so.

And so, instead of the thought of like, “what are people back home thinking about me? Are they proud of me, or do they see that I’m killing it?” Where it was just an idea, just a thought. To have that be right there and for it to be like, this is actually what we think. We don’t care about your business. We don’t care about that. We care about if you have love in your life, if people are looking out for you or why did you leave and not have conversations.

And so I feel like there is a little moment of that when he comes to the house… I think for me as an actress, there’s a way that I can get really deep into stuff. But also it’s like they remind you of the comedy too, right?

It’s finding the balance of: this can be a really dramatic moment for me, and I feel like going there with you, so I’m gonna go there. Then let the people [behind the scenes] tell you, okay, well less emotion about this or whatever.

I think, I personally am still trying to find the balance of like, knowing maybe we’ll get that satisfaction, if we get a season three where Tye can really go there, right? I think that’s always the thing that I’m working with, is knowing that we don’t get a lot of on camera time. Having that backstory be present, but also not trying to pour all of it into the times that we do see each other. Especially if it’s not serving what is actually happening now.

Sa’iyda: I think with Tye, we’ve always seen the go, go, go. The busy, busy, busy. My personal favorite was the Puerto Rico trip where she kept trying to reclaim her lost youth, and to disastrous effect.

Jerrie: Give her some drugs!

Sa’iyda: I never tried to chase drugs on vacation, but as a person who is now entering their late thirties, because that’s kind of where the characters are sitting, it felt a little too real. Your body’s like, no, you can’t.

You haven’t gotten there yet! [Jerrie turned 29 in January]

Jerrie: There’s stuff that I — I’ve always really had an old soul, so there’s stuff in college that I was like, I’m not doing it. I didn’t drink until I was 22. Okay? I was like, whatever this rubbing alcohol that y’all poisoning your bodies with, I don’t want it. I’m not doing it. I’m not getting into that habit. So I was never that kind of person. [On vacation] you see people are like, I bought the drinks! Then it’s like after the first night, everybody’s like, yeah, last night was crazy, so we’re just gonna chill. And don’t let somebody be going through a break-up because then they want you up all night.

We see that Tye needs this just as much as Quinn does, right? Because now something also is escaping her. And so to go on this vacation and to expect these girls to also be the same high energy or you know, whatever. It just feels like, oh girl, girl.

We could have talked forever, but all good things must come to an end. Season two of Harlem wrapped this weekend on Prime Video, where you can watch all the episodes.