Mentally Oddcast Transcript: Author Sumiko Saulson
Sumiko Saulson is a Bram Stoker Award® Finalist for Poetry for The Rat King (2022, Dooky Zines) and Melancholia (2024, Bludgeoned Girls Press). Elgin Award Nominee (2022). 2018 Afrosurrealist Writers Award, and 2021 Ladies of Horror Readers Choice Award winner. Their novel Somnalia: The Metamorphoses of Flynn Keahi is available on Mocha Memoirs Press.
An audio version of this episode can be found here.
00:01:46.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are listening to the Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday, leave Friday, and we are brought to you by Sometimes Hilarious Horror. This week, we are speaking with Sumiko Salson, and I have really been looking forward to this.
00:02:00.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Now, um they are an award-winning author of ah okay, this is a word I was not familiar with, Afro-surrealist and multicultural sci-fi and horror. So we're going to get into that a little bit.
00:02:13.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Their latest novel is Happiness and Other Diseases, and it is available from Mocha Memoirs Press. There's a bunch of credits here because, oh my god, they have done so much stuff.
00:02:25.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
HWA scholarships and awards, ah Bram Stoker finalists. We're going to have all this stuff in the description so you can look at their illustrious career. Stamiko. Thanks so much for being here.
00:02:38.38
Sumiko Saulson
Oh hey, how you doing? You know what? The sequel to Happiness and Other Diseases, um Somnalia, the metamorphosis of Flynn K, he is actually out now on Mocha Memoirs Press, so Yeah I mean, and it's been out for about a year now Yeah
00:02:50.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow. Has it been that long since before you told me this info and we actually sat down to record? My goodness.
00:03:00.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow. Okay, cool. Okay. Well, all right. um We generally start by asking guests to tell us the story of the first horror movie that they remember seeing, and I would love to hear yours.
00:03:15.93
Sumiko Saulson
Um, so yeah, my parents took us to see horror movies when we were really, really, really little. Um, and I remember ah being, um, probably about five years old and, um, you know, it was the seventies. So drive-ins were big. So we were at the drive-in theater and me and my little brother were playing on the swings and and stuff at the playground because they have at playground at the drive-in.
00:03:44.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
great Right, right.
00:03:46.91
Sumiko Saulson
in I look up, and this person's giving birth to this baby that jumps out with these really sharp teeth and starts, you know, tearing up on the doctor's neck.
00:04:01.00
Sumiko Saulson
um So it was this movie called, um I think was called It's Alive or something like that.
00:04:01.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:04:08.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, actually, I wasn't sure if you were going to say Basket Case, because those are like the films from that era where that kind of thing goes down.
00:04:09.32
Sumiko Saulson
It's interesting.
00:04:16.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
But yeah, it's alive, definitely.
00:04:16.31
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, think Basket Case was was maybe was was older because it was like 1974. Yeah, 57.
00:04:23.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so we're about the same age then.
00:04:24.80
Sumiko Saulson
um Yeah, so
00:04:29.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, yeah, I'm 54. Okay.
00:04:32.05
Sumiko Saulson
yeah so i'm i a little older than you. So yeah, It's Alive came out in 74. And I think Basket Case maybe, yeah, it was a definitely a similar thing.
00:04:47.27
Sumiko Saulson
um too It's alive um But yeah, that's the first one that I remember um seeing And like, yeah, Basket Case came out in like 82 So yeah, that was the new one for a younger generation ah oh oh But yeah, that's the first one I remember seeing um It's not the first movie that I remember scaring me though um Because the first movie that really scared me was Planet of the Apes.
00:05:17.94
Sumiko Saulson
Because ah i was at home watching that. And we got to the end part where the Statue of Liberty is there.
00:05:28.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Spoiler alert.
00:05:28.95
Sumiko Saulson
And they realize that it's actually Earth.
00:05:32.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:05:32.40
Sumiko Saulson
And for some reason, this created a terror of an extinction-level event that you know, humanity experiencing extinction happened.
00:05:45.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:05:47.38
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I realized I would have been six in 1974, so I think I must have been six when I watched It's Alive. And I think I was maybe about a year younger than that when we saw Planet of the Apes on TV. It was really scary.
00:06:04.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:06:06.07
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:06:07.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now, it's interesting because um I also had parents that let me watch most horror movies.
00:06:07.44
Sumiko Saulson
In the
00:06:12.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think Faces of Death was the first thing that they said, no, you shouldn't watch this because it's real. I'm like, oh, it is?
00:06:18.67
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:06:18.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow. And then, you know, turned out to not be so real. But what what are your thoughts on that about parents that let their kids watch horror really, really young? Do you think that that's an okay idea or something maybe we should get away from?
00:06:35.01
Sumiko Saulson
I mean, first of all, I don't have children and I really am loathe to tell.
00:06:38.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Me neither. That's why I love to discuss it.
00:06:40.38
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I'm loathe to tell other people how to parent their children.
00:06:44.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure.
00:06:44.52
Sumiko Saulson
the in the seventy s It was normal for people to actually you do something like that. And when they first started having rated movies, um but well, I mean, no, they probably had rated movies way back then. But when we first started going to like,
00:07:03.86
Sumiko Saulson
oh not drive-ins, but like, um you know, movie theaters, um I remember that in the 70s, my ah mom could go up to the theater with me and buy the ticket and send me in there and didn't have to sit in the movie.
00:07:23.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Yep.
00:07:25.08
Sumiko Saulson
um So the attitudes have changed and now um they do make it so that ah parents have to accompany children into the movie theater. um But they still are not actually saying that you can't have your kid in the theater.
00:07:40.14
Sumiko Saulson
They're saying that you have to accompany the child. So um they're making it so that the parent is responsible for explaining to the child what's going on in the movie.
00:07:42.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:07:50.85
Sumiko Saulson
um So it becomes the parent's responsibility. um I do think that, um you know, it's sort of a first world problem, honestly.
00:08:04.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:08:05.37
Sumiko Saulson
Um, yeah, because, you know, um,
00:08:13.18
Sumiko Saulson
when, you know, let me put it this way. We live in a place where a lot of people's children are pretty sheltered.
00:08:24.10
Sumiko Saulson
Um, not all people's children are sheltered. And, um, um, even within my own family, um, I'm, uh,
00:08:35.55
Sumiko Saulson
biracial person who's African-American ah and Ashkenazi Jewish. And for me as an African-American, um there have been um deaths by gun violence and a lot of really bad things that have happened to people that were directly related to me.
00:08:57.60
Sumiko Saulson
um So I think that The idea that people are going to become traumatized by the content that they watch is um maybe also, you know, based on the idea that we can protect children from um scary things.
00:09:19.61
Sumiko Saulson
And that's based on the idea that we're going to be able to protect them. I mean, a lot of kids are dealing with things that are really horrible um in their regular life and not just movies.
00:09:31.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:09:31.59
Sumiko Saulson
I think it's up to the parents if they want to take their kids to a scary movie. Honestly, um, I don't think that kids are, um, going to, um, I mean, there's certain things that probably wouldn't take a little kid to see, but I don't think that a kid's necessarily going to be traumatized for life by a scary movie. I think that, um, like my cousin, who's about, um,
00:09:59.40
Sumiko Saulson
who was born when I was 12, so she's like 12 years older than twelve years younger than me. We took her to see like Friday the 13th, and she just looked at it, and she looked at us, and she said, this is fake.
00:10:09.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh
00:10:13.12
Sumiko Saulson
This isn't real.
00:10:14.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
wow.
00:10:14.14
Sumiko Saulson
This is hilarious. She knew it wasn't real. was really smart kid. um That said, ah people don't have to take their kids to scary movies.
00:10:27.40
Sumiko Saulson
People can opt out of it. People can protect them their kids from that. I have people that are raising their their children not to be on screens so they don't have televisions in their home and they have people you know turn their um cell phones upside down and not look at their cell phones anywhere and near the kids because they don't want the kids exposed to screens, right?
00:10:35.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah wow
00:10:49.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
wow
00:10:50.80
Sumiko Saulson
That's a choice that the parents can make. And I think it's always been that way too. I think that there were hippie parents when um I was growing up who didn't want their kids to watch TV. So I think that these are kind of like individual choices for parents to make based on their personal value system.
00:11:11.17
Sumiko Saulson
And I don't believe that um I personally want to police parents' choices about things like that. don't. ah was an advanced reader, so I was also reading a really young age.
00:11:27.37
Sumiko Saulson
And so by the time I was in fifth grade, I was reading horror novels as well.
00:11:31.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah. We read a lot of V.C. Andrews at that age, and then, you know, Stephen King, obviously, but V.C. Andrews, not horror per se, but not kid-appropriate by any means.
00:11:47.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Those books were real incesty. Yeah.
00:11:50.16
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, the first horror novel that I read when I was in fifth grade was Peter Straub's Ghost Story.
00:11:59.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh nice, nice.
00:12:00.76
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, and since I was a fan of his when I was a little older, when I was 12, I picked up The Talisman with tim and peter him and Stephen King, so that was the first Stephen King novel.
00:12:15.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:12:19.60
Sumiko Saulson
that I read and I was reading a lot of Stephen King. um i was bored with V.C. Andrews. I read it. I didn't really like, I mean, and it was incesty, but um I think I didn't really, it was incesty, but I think that I had been reading a whole bunch of, like when I was in fifth grade,
00:12:46.72
Sumiko Saulson
um things like mythologies, like Greek, Roman, um Norse mythologies.
00:12:54.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:12:54.95
Sumiko Saulson
And there was a lot of weird stuff going was a weird incestity stuff going on ah in the mythologies too.
00:12:58.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:13:04.89
Sumiko Saulson
and
00:13:05.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
00:13:06.25
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I think that's where we get things like Oedipus Complex from. so Maybe because i already read that stuff. I read this and I was like, wow, this is like weird.
00:13:18.43
Sumiko Saulson
This is like weird.
00:13:18.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, that I would say the incest wasn't so much the selling point for me with the V.C. Andrews. It was very much trapped in a house of horrors and you're a kid, so you can't do anything about it.
00:13:30.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, that was the the thrust of it for me, and yikes.
00:13:34.70
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. I did notice the incest and I thought it was weird.
00:13:39.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, because all of those books have ah like all the different stories because there's the Dallenganger one, which is, you know, flowers in the attic and all that there.
00:13:39.73
Sumiko Saulson
And yeah. Yeah.
00:13:48.17
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:13:48.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the Heaven Castile books. And they're all just like they're different and different kind of plots, but they all have to do with extreme, like obscene wealth and incest is just everywhere in those things.
00:14:02.64
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, Flowers in the Attic is the one that I read.
00:14:02.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
And.
00:14:05.84
Sumiko Saulson
and did read that one. And at that time, I was reading like every like horror novel that my dad had that he cast aside.
00:14:17.72
Sumiko Saulson
And I read some book called Mantis, which is um later got like um a reputation as being like the worst horror novel ever.
00:14:30.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no!
00:14:33.64
Sumiko Saulson
It's a book about these ginormous praying mantises that attack and kill people. But for some reason, the praying mantises really want to chop off um like women's titties and eat them.
00:14:53.23
Sumiko Saulson
like There's no really good reason for this. I mean, I guess they're soft and fatty. I don't really know. It's dumb, but it keeps happening over and over in this book.
00:15:04.08
Sumiko Saulson
And that's just part of the reason why it's not really not real.
00:15:08.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
That is a very specific fetish.
00:15:11.91
Sumiko Saulson
It is, and I mean, I was 12. I don't think I should have been reading that.
00:15:16.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Probably not.
00:15:16.79
Sumiko Saulson
oh
00:15:17.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
no
00:15:18.24
Sumiko Saulson
But, yeah, my dad had a copy of The Joy of Sex. I read that, which at least that was informative, you know?
00:15:24.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
See, I read the other one. i read the one that's called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask. Which is, I think, more the more sarcastic version of of Joy of Sex.
00:15:31.61
Sumiko Saulson
Okay.
00:15:36.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because it wasn't so much joyful as like, hey, what do you know about prostitutes?
00:15:37.27
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:41.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Here's some stuff. So it's... Yeah...
00:15:44.59
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, and then when was 12 and a half, and I had my period, at that time I was living with my father as a single parent, and he decided to send me to this, like, hippie camp thing that was a camp that was about what it meant to go through puberty.
00:15:45.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
no
00:16:05.08
Sumiko Saulson
So, you know, we went over there, it was a puberty camp, and they're like, well, you know, this is your period, this is why it happens, this is what it means, and it's okay to call it your period, but don't call it the curse because that's bad for this reason.
00:16:26.17
Sumiko Saulson
And then they taught their abstinence theory, which was very hippy-dippy, so it was all based on the idea that masturbation was great.
00:16:37.82
Sumiko Saulson
and we should all know about it and do that and not sex. So that was
00:16:43.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:16:44.85
Sumiko Saulson
that was that time. That was what it what happened. And also, that was a time when, that was like 1980, that was a time when the government decided that sex education in school was good and not bad.
00:17:00.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, we were really close to having federal sex ed standards at that time.
00:17:00.75
Sumiko Saulson
So then we went to
00:17:04.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
We don't have them now, but they were really close to having them.
00:17:08.40
Sumiko Saulson
I know. So we went to school and they taught us how to put a condom on a banana. but
00:17:16.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:17:17.82
Sumiko Saulson
So we were learning about sex and stuff like that. And I mean, I do think that when people go to puber go through puberty, they need to know about it because otherwise people are going through puberty and their body is sending them messages and they, you know, need to understand what the hell is going on.
00:17:35.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, no, it's interesting because having a single dad, I'm sure he felt way out of his element. But as someone who grew up with their mom, I'm here to tell you that having a mom doesn't necessarily mean the talk is going to go well.
00:17:50.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:17:50.91
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, my mom was around um until like I was 11 and a half. And the only conversation she had with me was about how about toxic shock syndrome had just happened.
00:18:06.82
Sumiko Saulson
So she had a conversation with me about relied tampons and about the dangers of tampons and why might want to use pads.
00:18:07.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, right. Okay.
00:18:15.33
Sumiko Saulson
So she explained to me that I was going to have a period. And that, so I had that conversation with her. So when I had my period, I knew what it was and I was embarrassed to buy pads.
00:18:27.25
Sumiko Saulson
So I went right up to my dad and and asked him to like, I mean, i don't want to like trauma dump and overshare, but why not? It's not exactly a secret.
00:18:35.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, that's what we do here.
00:18:37.33
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. um So um this is a long story, but my mom was in jail in a foreign country. um, be time between the time I was 12 and the time I was 18.
00:18:50.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
00:18:51.18
Sumiko Saulson
my father, uh, was, uh, my parents were divorced and my mother was bipolar and bipolar also. And my father, yeah.
00:19:00.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, me too.
00:19:02.73
Sumiko Saulson
And my father was an addict. So, um, when, um, so my, my mother's mother got cancer and when she was, um,
00:19:15.18
Sumiko Saulson
dying of cancer. um My grandparents, my two grandmothers decided that the thing to do would be to get her back together with my dad so she would be more mentally stable because of her bipolar disorder.
00:19:31.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:19:32.21
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, the problem was that my father had a full-fledged heroin addiction, so they got her back together with my dad.
00:19:37.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and then mental health doesn't work that way.
00:19:40.01
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. yeah
00:19:41.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yikes.
00:19:42.32
Sumiko Saulson
and And my dad took us all to Thailand, which, you know, my mom thought initially was something like a second honeymoon. But then we got there and my dad started having heroin withdrawals.
00:19:56.37
Sumiko Saulson
um He sent my 11-year-old brother out on a moped to go, or 10-year-old brother, because mean, yeah, he wasn't even 11 yet, out on a moped to go score him some dope in like Chiang Mai.
00:20:11.46
Sumiko Saulson
And um
00:20:13.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:20:13.35
Sumiko Saulson
They got a giant teddy bear and um i was like, oh, this is cool. they got They got us a giant teddy bear. And then they took, then my mom cut the seams and then they just started shoving heroin in this teddy bear and sewed it back up.
00:20:31.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
00:20:31.56
Sumiko Saulson
So, yeah, so we were both, me and my brother were there. And so we started going back to the United States and with And my dad's carrying the giant teddy bear, and he's looking nervous and anxious as hell, and he's just sweating, like, really bad. And I told my brother that I thought my dad was going to get caught, so me and my brother took the teddy bear and started laughing and playing with it, and we took it through the thing, because I was, like, 11 and a half, and I thought that it was less likely we'd get busted. We didn't get busted, but, um like,
00:21:11.47
Sumiko Saulson
I, you know, peed in the bed until I was seven or eight, and then I stopped peeing in the bed. But after we did that, I started peeing in the bed again.
00:21:21.99
Sumiko Saulson
I peed in the bed on the airplane. don't even know if I can swear on it.
00:21:26.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, I mean, that's that's terrifying. that's I don't even know what to say.
00:21:32.10
Sumiko Saulson
It's, it, it.
00:21:33.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
No wonder horror movies didn't mess you up.
00:21:34.29
Sumiko Saulson
know what?
00:21:36.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:21:36.56
Sumiko Saulson
I mean, yeah, that's why like, V.C. Andrews probably didn't mess me up. i I had a very traumatic childhood. I mean, I had a very traumatic childhood. And, you know, I loved my parents so much. I still love them. I love my parents so much.
00:21:56.15
Sumiko Saulson
They were really flawed, but I love them so much.
00:21:58.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it sounds like ah there was some struggle there for sure.
00:22:01.66
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I love both of my parents very much, but
00:22:04.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but you it sounds like you and your siblings were never like taken away.
00:22:06.28
Sumiko Saulson
No,
00:22:09.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
that You always had at least one of your parents.
00:22:10.08
Sumiko Saulson
no, no. no um So this is what happened. um So when we were really little, um you know, my parents were married and they were fighting a lot.
00:22:25.59
Sumiko Saulson
um There were things going on and I didn't know what was going on because I was really small. um But what was going on was like, okay, my mom, she was um my dad was a jewish dude and my mom was um black and they met in in college right like he uh sat behind her in class and he decided that he had a crush on her and one day her car broke down and he said um you know he would give her ride home and then he said i need to stop and pick something up from my mom's house um well
00:22:42.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:22:53.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:22:59.06
Sumiko Saulson
on the way and my mom said sure and then he took her in there and he said mom this is the girl i'm gonna marry so which was news to so he was yeah he was older than my mother like i think that um when they got married i think that she was 19 and he was um 24 and she turned 20 like a month before i was born um and my dad turned
00:23:06.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
um my wow
00:23:28.34
Sumiko Saulson
I think he was turned 26, like three months after I was born. So, you know, my mom was from like
00:23:43.34
Sumiko Saulson
Watts, honestly, or later, later they moved to Compton.
00:23:48.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:23:48.86
Sumiko Saulson
And my dad was like, he grew, he went to Hollywood High and went to Venice High.
00:23:49.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:23:53.55
Sumiko Saulson
So they're from different economic backgrounds. And, It was always like people were acting like my dad was going to save my mom, but my dad was this tremendous fuck up.
00:24:05.35
Sumiko Saulson
So, um, yeah, he was one of the, he went to, he was not, you know, he wasn't serving in the military during Vietnam.
00:24:05.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:24:14.36
Sumiko Saulson
He went be like, he served between 60 and 64.
00:24:20.00
Sumiko Saulson
um But he still was one of these people who, after the war, came back and started developing drug habits. That was kind of like um a theme um with wi him and some of his siblings.
00:24:35.75
Sumiko Saulson
And I'm not going to get into what happened with his siblings because, you know.
00:24:38.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but that's so popular. i don't want to use the word popular, but it's such a common problem with soldiers because they just don't get the mental health care that they need. And it fucking sucks because you still have to function in the world.
00:24:48.53
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
00:24:53.14
Sumiko Saulson
Exactly. So my dad was dealing with all that. And then my mother, um she was bipolar. Her father um was diagnosed with schizophrenia um when she was like 12.
00:25:05.88
Sumiko Saulson
twelve And then she became the person who really had to help her mother raise, you know, six children. So she very much had a ah parentified child um syndrome.
00:25:19.88
Sumiko Saulson
and she was responsible for her younger siblings and her, her mother, you know, probably had bipolar disorder. Um, her father definitely had schizophrenia and my mother was diagnosed with bipolar.
00:25:33.94
Sumiko Saulson
Um, I'm bipolar, my brother's bipolar. Um, it's so you know, when we were little, um, you know,
00:25:46.13
Sumiko Saulson
my dad was doing things like cheating on my mother and getting high.
00:25:50.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, dang.
00:25:51.66
Sumiko Saulson
And, you know, he started cheating on her when she was pregnant with me.
00:25:57.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yikes.
00:25:57.96
Sumiko Saulson
And so he was doing a lot of mess. And my mother um was someone who um was hitting my dad. I mean, people don't really talk about domestic violence where,
00:26:12.86
Sumiko Saulson
the man is the is is is the one who's who's getting hit. But my mom, ah she would snap. And um one day she knocked my dad through, um like there a sliding glass door and she knocked him right through it.
00:26:26.22
Sumiko Saulson
And I said, I'm like, I was a little kid, but I looked right at him and I said, I feel like you guys should get a divorce rather than to be fighting as much as you do.
00:26:37.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:26:37.77
Sumiko Saulson
and so they separated when I was like seven. So when I was little, um I remember my mom, like it wasn't like she was hitting me all the time, but every once a while she'd snap and hit me. So one time she hit me so hard, I flew up against the wall and fell down.
00:26:55.80
Sumiko Saulson
It didn't happen all the time, right? There maybe 10 or 12 incidents throughout the whole time of me growing up.
00:27:07.93
Sumiko Saulson
when I remember something like that happening, so it didn't happen all the time, but she would get stressed and lose control and she would hit me.
00:27:14.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well...
00:27:18.75
Sumiko Saulson
um And one time she, like one time when I was like 11, she went to take a taxi and she didn't have money. And then she went to, wanted to go to,
00:27:32.20
Sumiko Saulson
get the taxi to go buy a Versateller so she could get the money. And I'm blurted out something about her not having money because I'm a little kid. And this ended up in a thing where she was yelling at me in the bathroom and I started crying. And then when I started crying, people acted like she was being abusive.
00:27:48.83
Sumiko Saulson
So she responded to that by hitting me and knocking me down a short flight of stairs. And I got a black eye. Things like that happened.
00:27:58.68
Sumiko Saulson
A lot of things happened.
00:28:01.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's awful.
00:28:01.43
Sumiko Saulson
Um, A lot of things happened.
00:28:02.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean...
00:28:05.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
I actually want to touch on something that you said, because what you had said, your i forget the exact phrasing, but that she had lost control.
00:28:05.79
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:28:12.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
She was not in control of herself. And normally people say that without really considering that, like, that doesn't happen in school. It doesn't happen in front of teachers. It doesn't happen.
00:28:26.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
But I mean, what you're describing, actually, because usually that's the case. We say, oh, the abuser lost control, but they only seem to lose control in the home with the family. You know, they're not losing control on their boss or their neighbor or, but, but somehow they lose control on the family.
00:28:47.29
Sumiko Saulson
It's not true that my mom didn't snap in public. It's untrue, okay?
00:28:54.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's yeah, you actually, but that's the thing, like what what you just described, yeah, because my experience was very, like my mom and I are both bipolar, I'm bipolar one.
00:28:54.46
Sumiko Saulson
My mom was bipolar. Yeah, she was bipolar.
00:29:02.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:29:02.73
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:29:03.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
and and that was my experience. So I tend to see through that lens, but it's interesting what you're describing, which is that she hit you right in front of other people in a public place.
00:29:14.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like that is, that's way outside my experience.
00:29:15.92
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I think that, yeah, I mean, I honestly think that it's not um unfortunate. I mean, I hate talking about this about the black community, but I do think it's not an uncommon thing in the black community.
00:29:31.24
Sumiko Saulson
ah think that my mom, she got beat as a child. She was responsible for a whole bunch of people. She had, um like, her mom, like, if she she would, her mom would be combing her hair with a hot comb.
00:29:43.80
Sumiko Saulson
And if she moved or she burnt her ear or mom got mad, her mom would hit her in the head. My grandma was throwing objects at people, you know.
00:29:52.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, gee.
00:29:52.78
Sumiko Saulson
So my my grandma was um hitting people. And the thing is, that like, we came out of slavery and then ah got indoctrinated into, like, a version of Christianity that was heavy on things like spare the rod, spoil the child.
00:30:09.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:30:10.30
Sumiko Saulson
Because honestly, the version of Christianity that was being taught to black people was one that was um being used to control us as a race um because of slavery. And then later after slavery, just to keep us in line um because of the social oppression.
00:30:33.02
Sumiko Saulson
And, you know, to this day, you have black people who think that hitting their kids is going to make it so that their kids um stay in line and don't act up and don't get in trouble with authorities and don't get in trouble with the police.
00:30:47.73
Sumiko Saulson
But I mean, studies show that hitting your kids actually makes your kids more likely to get into legal trouble because your kids are more likely to become violent because you've been hitting them.
00:30:53.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yep. Yep.
00:30:57.71
Sumiko Saulson
So, you know, it's a vicious cycle. But ah think that, yeah, my mom, she would get very angry. You know, she would get very angry And sometimes when she was getting, she would get very angry. She would fight with people.
00:31:17.49
Sumiko Saulson
And, um you know, yeah. um She fought in school. I feel horrible because I'm talking about my mom. I i love my mom.
00:31:31.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it doesn't sound like you're saying anything that's not true, so...
00:31:34.44
Sumiko Saulson
It's true. you know, I love my mom, but yeah. When she was in high school, they called her bruiser. So she was somebody that was getting into fistfights and stuff.
00:31:41.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh my gosh! So she had a reputation for it, my goodness.
00:31:46.04
Sumiko Saulson
She did. And when she was really little, like ah like um two years old, they called her Snap because she was biting people.
00:31:57.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh man!
00:31:58.70
Sumiko Saulson
So she she she had to fight to stay safe. And she was just hypervigilant
00:32:10.97
Sumiko Saulson
her her whole life. And the period of time when she was really, really, really, really really really not doing any of these things, because there was a whole period of time where that wasn't happening.
00:32:26.43
Sumiko Saulson
you know um Yeah, she she came back from Thailand.
00:32:28.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:32:34.62
Sumiko Saulson
Like just before I turned 18.
00:32:39.20
Sumiko Saulson
And I really wanted to have a relationship with her, but I didn't want her to have any authority over me.
00:32:45.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:32:46.47
Sumiko Saulson
And I knew i was going to be 18 really soon.
00:32:46.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
That makes sense.
00:32:49.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:32:50.36
Sumiko Saulson
um So i went out and met her right after I turned 18. Because,
00:33:01.34
Sumiko Saulson
you know,
00:33:02.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
00:33:03.45
Sumiko Saulson
and She had been through so much. She had a like a stroke or something when she was in jail. in like Part of her face wasn't moving when she first came back.
00:33:11.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh
00:33:17.31
Sumiko Saulson
like It healed over time. like It kept getting better and better. But that was the first thing I remember when I saw her. um
00:33:29.95
Sumiko Saulson
I feel like she didn't She did not deserve what happened to her at all.
00:33:37.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure, yeah. yeah
00:33:39.34
Sumiko Saulson
I feel like she i was 12 when she went to jail. she wo She went to jail just before I turned 12, like maybe three months before I turned 12. And I felt guilty when she went to jail because she was hitting me more and more when I started going through puberty.
00:33:58.96
Sumiko Saulson
Like,
00:34:01.62
Sumiko Saulson
When I started going through puberty, she was hitting me more frequently. And I was over there kind of praying that she would stop hitting me and stuff.
00:34:12.55
Sumiko Saulson
So I felt like it was somehow my fault that she went to jail because I was praying for her to stop hitting me. And of course, it's not true.
00:34:19.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, no, but as a kid, it's all about how it feels and not how it is.
00:34:24.12
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, it just felt that way. And then my father... um Decided that he was going to quit using heroin because he got custody of us.
00:34:37.19
Sumiko Saulson
So he was actively kicking heroin. And I was over there bringing him.
00:34:43.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Did that take? Did he really kick it?
00:34:45.35
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, he did.
00:34:46.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
awesome Oh no!
00:34:46.42
Sumiko Saulson
he kicked heroin. he he He kicked heroin so he could raise me and my brother. and then as soon as, like, my mom came back from Thailand and me and my brother Like, um yeah, like as soon as I turned 18 and my mom came back from Thailand, my dad just started getting high again.
00:35:05.90
Sumiko Saulson
Like he just decided, oh, we were adults and he raised us. He could just go right back to Maryland.
00:35:10.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
00:35:14.57
Sumiko Saulson
yeah
00:35:15.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
That is wild.
00:35:15.56
Sumiko Saulson
yeah, he did. I mean, to his credit, he did. He did quit so that he could raise us. But then, you know, I guess he filled like felt like he had raised us so he could just go back to getting high.
00:35:26.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I'll tell you what.
00:35:27.03
Sumiko Saulson
And then he... Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:28.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
A lot of people that I met in in various like rehab situations were not there to get
00:35:33.24
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:35:35.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
get clean for themselves. They were there to get clean for other reasons. And the, the counselors and stuff, they kind of treat it like it's all the same.
00:35:39.75
Sumiko Saulson
yeah
00:35:43.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, Oh, it doesn't matter as long as you get clean. Well, that that's bullshit because if you are getting clean for a specific situation and then that situation ends, that's really common, you know?
00:35:46.94
Sumiko Saulson
yeah
00:35:57.46
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:35:57.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
because wow
00:36:00.03
Sumiko Saulson
and That's exactly what happened with him. Like as soon as we became adults, he went back to getting high and he quit get his, he quit heroin again when, um, uh, when my, um, oldest grand, ah my, I mean, his oldest grandchild, my, my oldest niece was about, um, three or four.
00:36:23.54
Sumiko Saulson
Uh, and But then the second time he quit, he had to get on methadone to do it. The first time he quit cold Turkey and he was up in his room sick as hell.
00:36:30.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my gosh.
00:36:33.18
Sumiko Saulson
So I remember going in there and bringing him carnage and breakfast bars because it was all he could eat. And then, you know, it was, it was summer. I wasn't in school yet. So i was just sitting in there watching like Dr. Who with my dad who was sick because he was trying for heroin.
00:36:50.50
Sumiko Saulson
in And then, and I was, um, oh regressing you know i was upset i was in a regressive state i had them buy me all these like barbie toys and then i snuck out to a um a a pet shop and bought some mice and then had my mice playing with the barbie stuff furniture
00:36:56.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure.
00:37:16.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that that is delightful. I love that.
00:37:19.38
Sumiko Saulson
if
00:37:22.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, if we can change gears a little bit, I do want to discuss the term Afro-surrealist.
00:37:25.12
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:37:28.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now, how is that different from your garden variety surrealism?
00:37:34.66
Sumiko Saulson
um So Afro-surrealism is um surrealism that involves the African diaspora.
00:37:45.95
Sumiko Saulson
um And you know lately there's been a lot of conversation about Afro versus African because if it was African surrealism, then it would be um specific to the continent of Africa, but this is African diaspora.
00:37:58.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
00:38:02.62
Sumiko Saulson
Toni Morrison is the most famous Afro-surrealist in literature. And um a lot of um what would be considered to be Afro-surrealism, there's crossovers with that in magical realism.
00:38:21.01
Sumiko Saulson
um
00:38:21.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:38:22.19
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, but... with magical realism, it most often is, um, really, um, very directly tied into, um, things like mythologies and things like that.
00:38:35.64
Sumiko Saulson
Um, and with Afro-surrealism, that's not necessary necessarily the case. It may be, but it's not necessarily the case. And it obviously comes from surrealism as an art movement and surrealism in general.
00:38:49.86
Sumiko Saulson
But when you think about something like, um, Toni Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, i mean, that is a terrifying story.
00:39:02.81
Sumiko Saulson
That is it a story about a lot of childhood trauma, hu childhood trauma writ large.
00:39:08.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
00:39:09.77
Sumiko Saulson
um And it is ah story where um it's hard to really tell what's really happening and what's hallucinations because you have a very, very unreliable narrative.
00:39:25.01
Sumiko Saulson
um And so, um again, these are really stories that are rooted in the experiences of people in the African diaspora. So that's how they differ from surrealism in general.
00:39:40.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
I see.
00:39:40.99
Sumiko Saulson
But it is definitely a subset of surrealism as a genre.
00:39:44.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, now you've actually mentioned mythology a couple of times. I want to ask if you're familiar with a particular book called The Goddesses in Every Woman. It's by Jean Shinoda Bolin.
00:39:57.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's actually, it's her, the book is her master's thesis.
00:39:58.19
Sumiko Saulson
Nope.
00:40:01.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
And she goes through the different goddess archetypes and applies them to different types and scenarios of of women and family ah structures.
00:40:15.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
So like if you are in Athena and you are active and aggressive and assertive, you know, assertive, How does that manifest itself if you have a family that supports that versus if you have one that doesn't support that?
00:40:28.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it just, it goes through all the major archetypes. It's pretty swell, actually. I'll ah i'll send you a link. um
00:40:34.10
Sumiko Saulson
Okay.
00:40:35.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I do love mythology as psychology. That's like a hot topic for me. You know, just like magic as psychology.
00:40:41.55
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:40:43.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Just the whole, why did we do that? how does How does that all fit together with like, you know, why is it still relevant now? That sort of thing.
00:40:51.77
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. Yeah, i feel you. I'm going to say that I tend to veer away from all kinds of pop psychology for a lot of reasons, but let me say that my mother had a degree in psychology it
00:41:04.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
00:41:06.12
Sumiko Saulson
And ah was very involved with a lot of things like that. So a lot of times I see these things and they're little triggery for me, so I don't get as involved as other people.
00:41:18.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, my goodness. i'm I'm just floored by the idea of a psychologist that didn't get to the lesson on why it's bad to hit children or or anyone, really, because the what the thing that always makes me laugh is when people say, I respected my parents because they hit me.
00:41:35.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
And i I can't think of a time ever in my life when I respected someone more because they hit me. I mean, yeah, I would have been afraid of them or dislike them.
00:41:46.90
Sumiko Saulson
Right, yeah.
00:41:47.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Or, yeah, I mean, I can remember being five years old and wishing my mom would die. And.
00:41:53.44
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I never wished my parents would die. um Well, I think that, like, um I tried to run away, though. um
00:42:03.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:42:03.83
Sumiko Saulson
So I did try to run away, and and then I ended up coming right back. um I didn't, like, I mean, yeah, fear isn't the same as respect.
00:42:14.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:42:14.26
Sumiko Saulson
And I was afraid of my mom when she was, um you know, would do things like hitting me.
00:42:14.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:42:19.97
Sumiko Saulson
And then, you know, my mom was a fun mom. I mean, both of my parents were fun parents. Like when my mom wasn't acting like that, she was a fun mom.
00:42:27.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
e
00:42:27.74
Sumiko Saulson
She would take us on adventures. She would did all these cool things. We did all these cool things with both of my parents, but you know, there was the one um nodding out negligent parent and the other, you know, might snap and get violent parents.
00:42:42.48
Sumiko Saulson
So, um,
00:42:43.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and that's the thing, that if you have parents that are just bad and you know you can't trust them, you can't confide in them, you shouldn't, you know, trust them at all.
00:42:44.79
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:42:52.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
That is in some ways easier than dealing with the parent that sometimes they're awesome and sometimes they're just a hell beast and you don't know which one and you're going to get because it's a skill.
00:43:03.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, I imagine you have this skill just like I do. The skill to be able to tell when someone is going to get angry or when a situation is about to go off. Like you develop all those senses as a kid.
00:43:15.66
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, you have to develop those skills. And, I mean, I don't know if it's better or worse because I never had the other kind of parent, so I didn't make a taste of comparison kind of thing.
00:43:22.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, right, like how would you know? oh yeah
00:43:26.50
Sumiko Saulson
Never went through that. um I will say that, um you know, it italy it leaves you with a lot to unpack, honestly.
00:43:39.35
Sumiko Saulson
um Yeah, I feel like um me and my mother were super codependent. And then I couldn't like fully like start some portions of my adult life until after my mom passed away because we were so codependent.
00:43:57.90
Sumiko Saulson
And maybe if my mom had been just like a horrible person that I wanted to cut off completely, ah wouldn't have spent as many years in a codependent relationship with her ah did You know, but there was always that side of my mother that I really loved.
00:44:12.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's understandable.
00:44:16.52
Sumiko Saulson
And we were really close too. um And, you know, stuff. But, yeah, um I think she she she became a psychologist because she had a mental illness and because her father had a mental illness and she wanted to understand herself better.
00:44:31.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:44:33.88
Sumiko Saulson
So she tried to understand herself better. But, you know, part of codependency the issue or problem of people that are codependent is they'll go and they'll study all that stuff that they're supposed to be using to help themselves.
00:44:48.68
Sumiko Saulson
And then they'll be trying to fix everyone around them and not fix themselves because they're codependent.
00:44:51.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:54.05
Sumiko Saulson
Right. now So it's, the it's always the other people. Yeah.
00:44:59.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:45:00.44
Sumiko Saulson
And, and, and that's why i have like, I take all that kind of pop psychology stuff with, with a grain of salt because, um, I see all kinds of flavors of it in the world with people that are not necessarily out there being like, um like there's there's there's there's, there's, there's, there's a, there's lighter, lightweight flavors of it.
00:45:23.93
Sumiko Saulson
Like um people, there there are, there are way too many people that are just using pop psychology to come up with like reasons why all of their exes are toxic and messed up.
00:45:24.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Live, laugh, love. ah
00:45:37.13
Sumiko Saulson
And like, whenever people say that, I'm like, do you know what codependency is?
00:45:37.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Yep.
00:45:42.26
Sumiko Saulson
Have you looked at your actual personal, you know, like what's going on with your side of it?
00:45:46.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well... Anybody can fall for an abuser's shenanigans, but if all of your exes are crazy, if everyone in your life is, you know, some kind of abuser and and you're the only one that's blameless, yeah, that definitely time to take a look at that and see if...
00:46:04.84
Sumiko Saulson
I mean, anyone can fall for an abusive shenanigans, but at the same time, if you have a history of, you know, growing up with the kind of stuff that you grew up with or i grew up with, then learning how to protect yourself
00:46:23.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:46:30.84
Sumiko Saulson
is a good idea.
00:46:33.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh yeah
00:46:33.38
Sumiko Saulson
like That's not blaming you. It's not victim blaming. It's not saying that it's your fault that bad things happen to you. It's just saying that developing some like life skills to try to protect yourself is something you can control because you can can't control these other people.
00:46:55.10
Sumiko Saulson
You can't fix them. Trying to fix them is definitely a mistake. You're not going to fix these people.
00:46:59.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:47:01.00
Sumiko Saulson
They're not going to get fixed by you. The only way they're going to get fixed is because they decide to fix themselves and go out there and fix themselves.
00:47:07.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:47:08.66
Sumiko Saulson
We cannot fix these people. And when you try to fix them, then you just end up, you know, that then, you know, like for me, at least, you know, um I couldn't fix my parents.
00:47:19.61
Sumiko Saulson
Okay. I was not going to fix my parents and I'm not going to fix someone else that I'm in a relationship with. It's never going to happen. And that's just going to be the glue that holds this dysfunctional relationship together as you're in here trying to fix this person.
00:47:35.70
Sumiko Saulson
And I think that, I mean, there's nothing really wrong with the psychology, the pop psychology, as long as you're not, as long as you know it's pop psychology and you're not taking it like too seriously because it's like people's astrological signs, you know, like,
00:47:50.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, right.
00:47:55.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Yep.
00:47:57.97
Sumiko Saulson
partner princess is a cancer and every time I read or see a thing about cancers it's like princess is a stereotype of everything they say about cancers and my dad was a cancer and it's not exactly the same with my dad but I can sort of see it but it's not exactly the same but it just happens that princess is very much like all these things they say about cancers right but
00:48:10.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:48:25.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. But that's the thing about sun signs is that there's 12 of them. There's a lot of people. So it does get ah a lot more...
00:48:31.83
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
00:48:33.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because sometimes someone's sun sign does not make any sense. And then you look at the full chart and it's like, oh, okay.
00:48:39.83
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
00:48:40.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:48:41.54
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. And like, I just have a healthy amount of disbelief on all these things. I mean, I'm not going to tell people not to believe in them, but I'm always looking at them with just a layer. There's an overlay of this might not be at all true.
00:49:00.33
Sumiko Saulson
And,
00:49:00.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
but if you If you look at psychology the same with with the same type of of lens that you look at physical health and and physical medicine, you wouldn't read a book and then use that to treat yourself physically.
00:49:02.24
Sumiko Saulson
from me
00:49:17.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know You would ask a doctor. But with psychology, a lot of people seem to think that you know any anying kind of like psychotherapy or bad medication, like all that there... People want to just reason their way through it, and it doesn't work that way.
00:49:32.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
You can't think your way through it.
00:49:33.09
Sumiko Saulson
yeah when you go to see Yeah, when you go to see a doctor, you have somebody whose job is to try to help you figure these things out. And when you're doing it yourself, you don't have that guidance.
00:49:50.58
Sumiko Saulson
But I also think that um psychology as a practice is different than pop psychology. Pop psychology, i mean, people...
00:49:59.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:50:02.92
Sumiko Saulson
have a hard time understanding that pop science is not the same thing as science practices that are not the pop culture variant. Like, people are super duper, duper, duper. Like, usually what happens with pop psychology is people read a blog.
00:50:24.99
Sumiko Saulson
They don't read books.
00:50:27.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
o
00:50:27.77
Sumiko Saulson
Sometimes they read books, but a lot of times they're just reading a blog. Like, When people talk about generational theory, right, um a very, very minuscule percentage of the people talking about generational theory have ever read a book on generational theory.
00:50:49.29
Sumiko Saulson
But they're talking about it with a lot of authority.
00:50:52.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, because they know a few things about it.
00:50:52.68
Sumiko Saulson
And that's what I'm saying.
00:50:54.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, I think i think that's absolutely true. you're You're definitely onto something there.
00:50:56.83
Sumiko Saulson
yeah but Yeah, they know ah very few things about it
00:50:59.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
And...
00:51:02.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and the the internet just makes that rampant. It's like, well, I read a thousand words on it. What do you mean I don't know as much as a doctor? Like, well... Right, well...
00:51:11.36
Sumiko Saulson
100% right. I read a WebMD article. I read a blog.
00:51:17.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
right
00:51:18.28
Sumiko Saulson
I saw a podcast.
00:51:18.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
well And that that's the thing is that, like, if you're a doctor, that has got to be infuriating to have people coming in all the time pretending that they know more than you do because they have a little bit of information that they got from a source that may be reliable, may not, you know, because that's such a huge problem right now with information that people believe nonsense because they don't know how to tell the difference.
00:51:20.30
Sumiko Saulson
You know?
00:51:46.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it is terrifying. um
00:51:48.81
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I mean, it's i would say that some of these things, I wouldn't classify things like that are... um i want to try to not use the wrong phrase for these things because it's not exactly pseudoscience.
00:52:10.45
Sumiko Saulson
It's little bits of science that are mixed together with a whole bunch of things. that are basically mythology and are not scientific. there
00:52:21.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's almost like memes as a science.
00:52:21.26
Sumiko Saulson
They're like like religion.
00:52:23.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's like, let's distill this extremely complex thing down to three sentences, make it digestible for everyone, and then teach it as a life philosophy. Well, no, it doesn't work that way.
00:52:35.27
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:52:36.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
That doesn't help individual people get better with the things that they're struggling with. But it's...
00:52:41.39
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I think also people don't know when things are a religion. Astrology is a religion. It's an ancient religion. It literally is a religion. That's what it is.
00:52:50.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
<unk>
00:52:51.12
Sumiko Saulson
It's not psychology and it is a religion. So um I'm not saying that people shouldn't practice astrology. People practice all kinds of religions.
00:53:03.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
But practice it as a religion and not say a science.
00:53:06.71
Sumiko Saulson
Right. It is a religion. There's nothing scientific about it. It is literally a religion. That's what it is. So, um yeah.
00:53:18.44
Sumiko Saulson
And, you know, um and and it's okay for people to have spiritual or religious practices. But people are, um I think a lot of people are confused and they don't really, am I still here? Yeah.
00:53:33.34
Sumiko Saulson
They don't really know the difference. So that's my opinion on that.
00:53:36.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that's because people want to teach their religion in school like it's history class, and that's... Oh gosh, don't get me started on that, please.
00:53:45.23
Sumiko Saulson
Oh, my God. I feel like, you know, when I was in school, we learned about mythologies. And I think that people feel like their own religions aren't mythologies, like they're only mythologies when other cultures are practicing them.
00:53:59.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:54:05.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, I remember being on a date once.
00:54:06.91
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
00:54:08.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was dating, actually I was dating my boss at the phone sex company.
00:54:10.21
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
00:54:12.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so it was already kind of a weird situation. And I happened to use the phrase Christian mythology in front of him.
00:54:19.96
Sumiko Saulson
bra ah Yeah, I know.
00:54:20.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, actually, wait, it wasn't even that. I said something. I referred to mythology and he scoffed at mythology. And I was like, oh, well, I'm talking about pagan mythology as opposed to Christian mythology.
00:54:32.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
And he was so upset that I would use the term Christian mythology. And he started lecturing me on how it was true. And it was so important. And the Bible was so important. And again, it's my boss at the phone sex company. so Right.
00:54:48.51
Sumiko Saulson
I know. I feel like, yeah, Christians are very touchy. I think it's really obvious that, like, Samson and Delilah is is a mythology that's a myth.
00:54:58.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
o
00:54:59.02
Sumiko Saulson
that You know, that's a myth just like, um you know, the story of um Psyche and Eros is a myth.
00:55:08.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
right
00:55:08.20
Sumiko Saulson
and And, I mean, you know, some people can't really deal with things like that the Arthurian legends are myths.
00:55:16.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
right Well, if Orfeo and Euridus had a talking snake in it, people would, you know, they would recognize that as a myth.
00:55:16.61
Sumiko Saulson
Like, Yeah.
00:55:24.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
And yet, when you've got a talking snake in the Bible, somehow it's like, oh, well, but obviously, in you know, I won't pretend to
00:55:25.18
Sumiko Saulson
Right, exactly.
00:55:32.34
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, it's literal.
00:55:33.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
I won't pretend to understand Christian literalism. Like my husband is Christian and he's the kind of Christian that uses the words of Jesus to help him make decisions that make him a better person.
00:55:39.79
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
00:55:47.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like that's, that's who he is. And that's why his religion works for him.
00:55:50.47
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
00:55:53.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's, you know, why I find it tolerable, because i don't want to say like, I don't like hanging out with Christians, but I don't like hanging out with fundamentalist Christians who make their Christianity everybody else's problem.
00:56:07.41
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, i would say I'm very lapsed as a Christian and that I've been going to Jewish religious services lately, but I'm not really a Jew. um Maybe I sort of am because I'm half Jewish and I'm going to Jewish religious services.
00:56:23.29
Sumiko Saulson
But then there's like an overlap in a bunch of those mythologies because they we share some religious texts there. um But, you know, um yeah, when people are practicing a religion,
00:56:37.95
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, and let me put it this way. there' It's called mythologies no matter what religion it is. Those things are called mythologies, yeah.
00:56:43.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:56:45.69
Sumiko Saulson
And, you know, all those things about, ah mo like, we were we were talking about Moses and and um the Pharaoh and the plagues and, you know, yeah, when when you're talking about all that stuff, those are mythologies.
00:57:01.12
Sumiko Saulson
And in people not liking language is is yeah is a thing. um Yeah, this country is is currently in a super duper duper like magical thinking regressive period of time.
00:57:19.01
Sumiko Saulson
So even as someone who has practiced, um been a practicing Christian for a good half of my life, I would say more maybe. Yeah, probably more.
00:57:32.86
Sumiko Saulson
um I feel like the political situation in this country is scary because of a lot of Christian literalism.
00:57:39.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep.
00:57:39.93
Sumiko Saulson
Do you know? Yeah, um a whole bunch of people take Christianity very literally.
00:57:43.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, people are talking about things like demons and woke mind virus as if they're real things that are actually impacting people.
00:57:53.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the whole demon thing freaks me out, man. I met a woman years ago in a rehab and she used to talk about seeing demons. And for a while we agreed that this was a symptom of her mental illness and she believed there were demons.
00:58:07.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that she could reason that they weren't real, but she also thought she could see them. And I thought it was really interesting, and I liked talking to her about it because I was so fascinated by the concept.
00:58:20.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then one day she told me that my husband had a demon inside of him and that I should do something about it. And I said, okay, I'm out. This is no longer amusing in any way.
00:58:31.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
But I was so floored at the idea that there are adults walking around in society, driving cars and having jobs, and believing that other human beings had demons inside of them. That is terrifying. That's like serial killer shit.
00:58:48.49
Sumiko Saulson
I'm going to say this. i want to say this as a person who has, um you know, mental ah mental health condition that makes it so that i have hallucinations like that.
00:59:03.84
Sumiko Saulson
um Yeah. ah People that have psychotic features or psychosis or ah hallucinations, um that doesn't make us like serial killers or anything like that.
00:59:16.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, you are correct. That is not what I tried to imply.
00:59:19.55
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah
00:59:20.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
i Well, I must have phrased that very clumsily, because, no, I'm sure that all people that have delusions are not potential serial killers.
00:59:28.33
Sumiko Saulson
Right But I think I think there's a whole bunch of I mean gonna say this And I'm gonna word this carefully Cause I wanna make sure that my intention here is clear Okay
00:59:30.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
But a lot of people that are serial killers do have delusions.
00:59:44.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:59:45.61
Sumiko Saulson
um There are many, many, many people in churches and religious environments that will say that people are possessed by demons. And I have been accused of being possessed by a demon by a neo-pagan that was in no shape or form a Christian.
01:00:03.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yikes.
01:00:03.48
Sumiko Saulson
I got accused of being demonically possessed by a couple neo-pagans for... reasons of my mental health symptoms and because I'm allergic to fragrances.
01:00:22.60
Sumiko Saulson
So my fragrance allergies mean that I can't be around burning incense or frankincense.
01:00:29.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:00:29.84
Sumiko Saulson
So Christians are not the only ones who have magical thinking paranoia about demonic forces and someone being allergic to incense or frankincense definitely does not mean that they're demonically possessed.
01:00:46.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Indeed.
01:00:46.94
Sumiko Saulson
And if someone has schizophrenia or, um, they have schizoaffective disorder or they have bipolar disorder with psychotic features, which I have, and you see them talk to themselves, them talking to themselves does not mean they're demon infested and probably part of the reason that I have really, as a person who has been really very religiously connected my whole life, because I have a tendency to feel that there is a spiritual world that exists, but I've had to take a more pragmatic, doubting view, honestly, for my own protection because of my mental illness.
01:01:40.40
Sumiko Saulson
Because I'm really not trying to see myself as someone who's dealing with demons. These are not demons. These are mental health symptoms. Okay.
01:01:51.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, yeah
01:01:52.25
Sumiko Saulson
yeah Yeah. These are not demons. But, you know, I do talk to myself.
01:01:59.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right
01:02:00.30
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. um And so what I want to say is the people like me that are mentally ill, that talk to ourselves are one category of people and the people like that person you saw in the hospital are another category of people.
01:02:18.59
Sumiko Saulson
And religious people might be impacted by people that are mentally ill because um there's a lot of thought that the woman who came up with the idea of the rapture was someone who was who had a mental illness, right?
01:02:34.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:02:35.47
Sumiko Saulson
But then there's a whole bunch of people who do not have a diagnosed mental illness who believe in a whole bunch of these mythologies. So how do you deal with the fact that there's a bunch of people who have no mental health issue that we're aware of who are televangelists who are running gigantic churches that are telling people that they're possessed with demons?
01:02:56.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Well, and I mean, i think in the case of televangelists, they're lying. They're just lying for money. I mean, I don't know these people, but that seems like the most likely explanation.
01:03:09.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, it's like with these fucking Republicans. They're lying. And you keep saying, well, how do you reconcile doing this with your life and then supporting this legislation? Oh, they're they're just bullshit, you know?
01:03:21.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I don't think that that's true of... ah the majority of people, but the people that make it a business, yeah, it's just crap.
01:03:31.33
Sumiko Saulson
I don't know. i don't know those people. ah do know that a lot of people have magical thinking and they believe that they believe in magic and they believe that magic is real and they believe that magic is real to such a degree that they think that their magical thinking justifies taking any number of positions with regards to other human beings.
01:03:56.94
Sumiko Saulson
And that's where it can get dangerous. Okay. I have magical thinking too. um I sometimes I'm thinking, you know, Oh, astrology, that sounds great. And I'm on a Pisces Aries cusp and that means this, this, this, this and that, right?
01:04:13.66
Sumiko Saulson
um Sometimes I'm thinking, um you know, God, I love that for me. You know, I love that.
01:04:20.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
it is it
01:04:21.82
Sumiko Saulson
What is it? The Florence and the Machine song? ah song You know, big God, I need a big God. You know and the editing know, have you ever heard that song?
01:04:33.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes.
01:04:34.84
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. Like she's being really sarcastic because she's hurt, you know, and in and she's like, you know, is this this a part of the process?
01:04:40.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:04:43.94
Sumiko Saulson
Because Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, it hurts.
01:04:47.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. huh
01:04:48.57
Sumiko Saulson
You know, sometimes I feel, you know, sometimes I feel like a Christian. But as a Christian, ah just feel like there's a separation of church and state.
01:05:05.64
Sumiko Saulson
For a reason, because we left, you know, England to have religious freedom and not so that people could take their dogma from their religious practice and their mythologies and use that as an excuse to oppress people.
01:05:07.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:05:25.52
Sumiko Saulson
And although some of the people that are out there oppressing people might have mental health issues like I do, um in my experience, most of them are perfectly sane.
01:05:37.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, and that's the thing.
01:05:37.35
Sumiko Saulson
And it's easy to... it's easy to
01:05:39.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
We want to get into this space where we assume that people that do terrible things must be mentally ill. And that's, I think, a tough trap to fall into because, you know, being cruel, being an asshole, not dealing with your own personal shit doesn't necessarily mean you have some sort of organic mental illness.
01:06:00.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
You could just be bad.
01:06:02.57
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I mean, people don't want to deal with basic, like... facts of human nature. People want to think of human beings as more pure than we are.
01:06:15.61
Sumiko Saulson
People don't want to question things we do. Like I have friends that are vegan and I'm not vegan and I eat meat. And when my friends talk about the cruelty of the meat eating industry, you know,
01:06:31.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's tricky because, you know, they make a lot of sense, but you can't
01:06:36.17
Sumiko Saulson
They're making a lot of sense Right
01:06:38.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
But you can't necessarily, like, we all have to decide where those lines are. Like, I think most people believe that slavery is wrong. If you did a poll, everyone would say we shouldn't have slavery. But then we have iPhones and chocolate and Temu and things that, like, we know comes from slave labor.
01:06:57.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
And yet we're not going to do without electronics because how do you live in the world like that?
01:07:04.44
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, exactly
01:07:04.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
so
01:07:06.28
Sumiko Saulson
Exactly.
01:07:06.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
So yeah, we all have to find those lines for ourselves. I remember recently i got scoldy with someone that I normally respect a great deal. I don't know if you are familiar with Thorne Coyle, the writer.
01:07:17.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
She's a fairly famous ah witch who studied under the gardeners.
01:07:21.60
Sumiko Saulson
Uh-huh.
01:07:22.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
And she had a new book out and she there was a Facebook ad.
01:07:23.24
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:07:27.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I was like, I'm sorry, you gave money to Zuckerberg? And the thing is that I had decided ah over a year ago that I was going to stop giving money to Zuckerberg.
01:07:38.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
So my whole mindset was like, oh my God, why would anyone give money to that Nazi, blah, blah, blah. And I was really judgy with her. And she shot back at me and was like, oh, you know what? I gave him $15 to hype my book. So friggin what?
01:07:53.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, really? You're going to judge me for that? And I was like, oh, yeah, that's that's me being an asshole, isn't it?
01:08:02.10
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:08:02.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I had like no problem just being like, well, I don't agree with with what you did. So I'm going to say in this public forum that I think you're wrong and fuck, that's fucked up and you shouldn't have done. And, you know, I was way out of line.
01:08:15.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so I had to take the schooling on that.
01:08:17.05
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:08:18.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, yep. Nope. You're right. That that was me being fucked up.
01:08:24.10
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I think it's hard for human beings in in general, like, is not what going to say. human beings in American culture, we're taught that individualism is just like this important part of American culture.
01:08:39.84
Sumiko Saulson
And part of that is us having a very, very, very strong reluctance to being wrong. It's just part of American culture and the internet is is creating an an amplified echo chamber of our overall desire to just be right all the damn time.
01:08:58.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and that's why i make such a point of not just surrounding myself with the smartest people that I can, like the most insightful people, but I really invite and encourage people to tell me when they think that I am wrong.
01:09:13.37
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:09:13.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I may not always agree, but I definitely want to hear the viewpoint. You know? Because I don't know everything.
01:09:18.57
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. i mean...
01:09:20.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
I haven't met everyone. I need i need the information that I don't have.
01:09:25.01
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. I mean, I'm um not always good at hearing that. I'm wrong, but um I can hear it. I don't like it, but I can hear it. um Can I get some um something to drink really quick and come right back?
01:09:33.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
like
01:09:37.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah, yeah. We'll go ahead and pause for sec. Go right ahead.
01:09:39.78
Sumiko Saulson
Okay. I'll be right back.
01:09:41.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Now, I definitely want to get into your work. um Personally, one of my most pervasive fears is swarms of things.
01:09:53.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, even good things. If there's, like, too many puppies or too many butterflies or something, i don't like it. It's too much. So, with that in mind, how scared will I be of the Rat Kings?
01:10:05.23
Sumiko Saulson
Um, it's poetry. So, I feel like,
01:10:10.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but it's not like poetry cannot be terrifying. I think we all know that it can.
01:10:13.75
Sumiko Saulson
look yeah, poetry can be really scary, but think, like, sort of like, Jordan Peele meets Edgar Allan Poe in terms of of scariness level.
01:10:24.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh. Okay.
01:10:30.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so conceptual, moody, vaguely threatening.
01:10:34.27
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:10:34.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:10:36.59
Sumiko Saulson
the The title um story, so that so I want to put out that the Rat King was nominated for Ram Stoker Award, but I think you have an older version of my bio, so I wanted to put it out there that there's a newer book, Melancholia, which is currently nominated for a Bram Stoker award.
01:10:57.75
Sumiko Saulson
So I don't want leave that part out. ah But the Rat King title poem is, um it uses the analogy of the Rat King, which, um do you know what Rat King is?
01:11:09.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes. Mm-hmm.
01:11:10.92
Sumiko Saulson
Right. Yeah. So it's like, a bunch of rats that are caught together by the tail and then they have to live together. It uses that analogy to talk about a group of homeless people that are out there dying in the cold.
01:11:22.89
Sumiko Saulson
um And, you know, how people get stuck together in community and they have to live and die together in these harsh conditions. So it's told from the point of view of a ghost of a homeless person talking about what happened to that person's community.
01:11:44.87
Sumiko Saulson
So it's it's not really like a cryptid tale. um It sounds like it's going to be about a cryptid, but it's, it's actually about the ghost of some, of some homeless folks.
01:11:57.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:11:59.21
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:11:59.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
that's That still sounds scary if I do say so. do say so
01:12:02.33
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, it is. um and I think that that book has another um thing. i forget. ah um I think it's called um No Alien is Illegal.
01:12:17.98
Sumiko Saulson
And it's a like poem that's about um a hu about a ah ah person ah person of color driving through a sundown town.
01:12:30.78
Sumiko Saulson
And the um there are some racists trying to lynch the person. But at the same time, there are aliens in a UFO that are in there doing things like um bisecting cows and stuff like that. And, you know, while wow the um the um you know oh while the person of color, I think it's a black person, is trying to escape the sundown town.
01:13:05.35
Sumiko Saulson
um And I think maybe the the the the racists are also um chasing after illegal immigrants and stuff.
01:13:13.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:13:13.27
Sumiko Saulson
um The aliens are chasing them, so the aliens are killing them up, and and that's that poem.
01:13:20.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
It seems like kind of a similar vibe to Lovecraft Country. am i Am I getting that right?
01:13:27.12
Sumiko Saulson
That poem, yeah. In that particular poem, yeah.
01:13:30.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:13:31.54
Sumiko Saulson
There's another one in there. That's about some people who decide it's okay to have a plantation themed wedding and they get cursed.
01:13:38.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, God.
01:13:41.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
You need to.
01:13:43.09
Sumiko Saulson
to
01:13:46.47
Sumiko Saulson
Like they thought it was harmless, but no, they got cursed.
01:13:46.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:13:49.67
Sumiko Saulson
So there's some poems like that in there. Yeah.
01:13:56.27
Sumiko Saulson
And so it's not really cryptic centered as you might think based on the title.
01:14:02.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Alright. Actually... Wait. So what was your first Stoker nomination?
01:14:11.67
Sumiko Saulson
The Rat King.
01:14:12.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Okay, and then melancholia was the second one.
01:14:16.30
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
01:14:17.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:14:18.26
Sumiko Saulson
Melancholia is currently nominated. So have to wait until June to find out whether or not it won. And it's got some stiff competition. Yeah, all five of the nominees in the poetry category are people of color this year.
01:14:36.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh wow, that's awesome.
01:14:37.89
Sumiko Saulson
Mm-hmm.
01:14:40.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
That is awesome.
01:14:41.30
Sumiko Saulson
No. Yeah.
01:14:44.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sorry, I'm just looking over my list to see what else we want to talk about. Now, actually, i wonder if you would not mind giving us a short primer on neopronouns, because you've already demonstrated you know a whole lot more about this than I do, and you also use neopronouns yourself.
01:15:02.81
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, so, um, so I'm non-binary. I'm also gender fluid, which is a slightly different thing. So, Non-binary means that you don't identify strictly with um you know either of the binary genders of male or female.
01:15:27.74
Sumiko Saulson
ah That could mean that you just do not identify with either one of them. um Or it could mean that you just don't strictly identify with either one of them and it's something else.
01:15:41.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and then gender fluid kind of means that it, I mean, i don't want to say it depends on the day, but like it varies, right?
01:15:43.32
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:15:49.28
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. It means it gender fluid means that it varies. So in my case, there is some variance there. um So I would say that um some days and might be presenting in a more masculine way than other days. I might be presenting in a more feminine way.
01:16:13.10
Sumiko Saulson
And also regardless of how I'm presenting or how I look, I might be feeling in a different way. And in my personal case, I would say that when I was a really little kid, like when I was, you know, like four or five, my really early memory memories, I really did not feel gendered.
01:16:35.56
Sumiko Saulson
So that's agender.
01:16:37.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
wow
01:16:37.37
Sumiko Saulson
So when I was little, I was a gender, i didn't understand why people kept trying to put this thing called gender on me. People kept trying to make gender a thing, and I didn't understand why.
01:16:50.32
Sumiko Saulson
um And I think that when I was a bit older than that, like when I was nine, i started actively questioning if my gender was what was assigned at birth, and I would do things like um put on yeah I was assigned female at birth. I would put on male clothes, ah sneak around in the boys' bathroom, walk around with my brother, and try on what would it feel like to be ah guy.
01:17:22.75
Sumiko Saulson
and this really continued um until I was about 19 years old, the actively questioning, is it possible that I'm a dude?
01:17:35.54
Sumiko Saulson
Um... And when I was 19, I was doing things like, well, at that point in time, if you were trans man ah or a trans woman, because they really only talked about binary trans people, um what you would do is you would live your life in the gender.
01:18:03.03
Sumiko Saulson
um so you would socially transition for two years because you to do that.
01:18:07.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:18:08.13
Sumiko Saulson
where you could do any medical transitioning. So it went as far as me,
01:18:15.13
Sumiko Saulson
you know, starting to do things that were like social transition things. But then I was only doing them part of the time, which makes sense. I'm gender fluid and not binary.
01:18:27.09
Sumiko Saulson
So I would be out there part-time social transitioning.
01:18:31.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
So did you feel safe doing that?
01:18:31.63
Sumiko Saulson
And after a while, uh-uh,
01:18:34.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, was that something, did you have support or was that something you were just doing on your own?
01:18:39.65
Sumiko Saulson
I mean, I was in a relationship with someone who um was into cross-dressing.
01:18:45.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Okay.
01:18:45.52
Sumiko Saulson
So since I was in a relationship with a cross-dresser, i think that he probably, i mean, he was supportive. He might not have fully understood the difference between that and cross-dressing.
01:18:59.33
Sumiko Saulson
So maybe that felt like we were both cross-dressing them. um
01:19:05.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
But I mean, cross-dressing is an activity, right?
01:19:05.01
Sumiko Saulson
But like we did,
01:19:07.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like drag. It's just, it's a thing that you do as opposed to being part of an identity.
01:19:12.04
Sumiko Saulson
Right, as opposed to an identity. Although, to be fair, um a lot of times people that have been cross-dressing come out as gender-fluid or non-binary these days.
01:19:24.50
Sumiko Saulson
So, although it's an activity that you do, um as more awareness of the existence of gender-fluid people, non-binary people, and um just gender queerness of any sort, ah the more that that is it is is is is something that people are aware of.
01:19:45.48
Sumiko Saulson
The more you have people that are, um you know, coming out and saying, hey, actually, i am non-binary.
01:19:54.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, and the thing is that people say, like, you know, it's like with autism.
01:19:54.65
Sumiko Saulson
I'm genderqueer, et cetera.
01:19:58.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
People say, well, why are there so many more cases now? Well, because we understand it, and people know that it's an option. You know, before people understood about being trans or being enbyte,
01:20:06.42
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
01:20:10.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
they just felt wrong and they didn't know why.
01:20:11.93
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:20:12.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
and they went through their whole entire lives, maybe never meeting or knowing another person who felt the same way, you know, and it's, it's such a tragedy because it only takes a little bit of information to say, Oh, okay.
01:20:20.74
Sumiko Saulson
Right, exactly. Yeah.
01:20:28.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's what's going on. And that's,
01:20:31.16
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:20:31.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's like a late in life diagnosis where you just find out that like, oh, you had autism the whole time or you had ADD and no one told you or you're bipolar or, you know, you're lactose intolerant, like whatever it is. It's like, oh, this thing that's been fucking up my life.
01:20:47.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
I finally understand what it is. And now I have a basis on which to do something about it. Whether it's to turn into that gate and embrace a new identity or to say, you know what, I'm going to get this thing treated so I don't have to deal with it or, you know, whatever.
01:20:57.14
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, 100%.
01:21:05.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Having the knowledge is always better than not having it.
01:21:10.76
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
01:21:11.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Which is.
01:21:11.65
Sumiko Saulson
And you're close to my age, so you probably understand some of like what it was like then, right?
01:21:16.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh yeah. Mm hmm.
01:21:17.88
Sumiko Saulson
So like, you know, when I was a teenager, ah you know, there was a lot of um people playing with gender roles that were pop stars. So some of those people really actually were genderqueer, genderfluid, or transgender people, um but not all of them were.
01:21:33.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:21:37.18
Sumiko Saulson
And so at that point, people were just like, oh, well, you're genderbending, because that's what people thought that was, um because of like, Annie Lennox and, you know, Boy George, you know, boy George is a gay femme and gay femmes that present in a very feminine manner like that can i yeah identify in a lot of ways.
01:22:06.82
Sumiko Saulson
Some identify as genderqueer. Some actually identify as non-binary. Some just don't. They just identify cisgender and are dressing that way.
01:22:21.96
Sumiko Saulson
And some of these, the piece some drag queens are a thing, but there's a whole drag queen to trans woman pipeline.
01:22:32.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:22:32.87
Sumiko Saulson
So some of the drag queens turned out to actually be trans women. Um, so, um, like Marilyn, which was another pop star at the time was a person who was, was, was in fact trans, you know, was in fact, um, what nowadays you would have maybe called something like non-binary, but in those days it was like, there was only a binary trans person.
01:22:59.88
Sumiko Saulson
So if you weren't
01:23:00.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
right
01:23:02.03
Sumiko Saulson
strictly binary, then it was like they weren't counting you among the trans, you know what I'm saying? And in the 80s, there were a whole bunch of people who were um very much not conforming to um binary gender roles, you know, like um I think I mentioned Marilyn Boy George, um and Lennox,
01:23:28.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Grace Jones. and so
01:23:30.51
Sumiko Saulson
Even people like Prince were pushing back against binary gender roles by saying, hey, I'm a man and I can wear all this makeup. I can wear all this purple. I can wear all these lacy sleeves.
01:23:45.80
Sumiko Saulson
um So there was a lot of that happening then. So I think that people contextualized it with what they were seeing in pop music a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
01:23:57.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and even people that were not necessarily cross-dressing, I mean, glam rock in the 80s, all those weird like You know, metal like poison and, the you know, the guys with like, they were wanted you to know they were straight.
01:24:13.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
They were super, super straight, but head to toe and leather, long, fluffy hair, way more makeup than I would ever wear to go out, you know?
01:24:15.41
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
01:24:23.22
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, exactly.
01:24:23.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
so So everybody's trying new things in the 80s, which is funny now because there are so many people our age that are like, well, men were men in my day and women were women.
01:24:24.44
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
01:24:33.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's like, okay, first of all, Grace Jones could kick all those guys' asses. Let's start there. But, you know, plenty of people were experimenting and figuring things out and just, you know, splashing out.
01:24:39.10
Sumiko Saulson
right
01:24:46.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, David Bowie, like, how would you even put a label on that? He's just being in him, you know?
01:24:52.03
Sumiko Saulson
Right, exactly. And that it is funny that people, like, I'm like, it's like, did you exist in the same age that I did? Because, like, we what are you even talking about?
01:25:00.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:25:03.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
right
01:25:04.30
Sumiko Saulson
know?
01:25:06.85
Sumiko Saulson
in um And so I came out as bisexual when I was 18. Yeah.
01:25:13.48
Sumiko Saulson
And that added another layer of complexity because while I was experimenting with gender prior to coming out as bisexual, had a lot of people, including my own cousin, in fact, who were like, well, what this means is that you're a dyke.
01:25:32.55
Sumiko Saulson
This means you're lesbian.
01:25:33.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah you
01:25:34.60
Sumiko Saulson
Because, like, yeah, because gender...
01:25:34.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Thanks for letting me know.
01:25:39.02
Sumiko Saulson
And sexuality couldn't exist separately. So if I was running around with short hair in jeans and suspenders and band t-shirts and dressing like a little skater dude, because that was my aesthetic.
01:26:01.51
Sumiko Saulson
like I think I had combat boots. I was dressing in a punk rock fashion that was a fashion that people thought of as masculine.
01:26:17.10
Sumiko Saulson
i was dressing like, you know, like a little punk rock dude or a little skater dude. i had really short hair or I had a mohawk. i had a mohawk a lot of the times too.
01:26:26.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know, I've seen your pictures online.
01:26:26.54
Sumiko Saulson
And this was like, where i like
01:26:28.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
I am aware that you still dress like that.
01:26:30.92
Sumiko Saulson
yeah. And I can show you some pictures of me when I was a teenager in and you'll see what I'm saying. So people couldn't understand that my gender existed separately from my um sexual preference. So, you know, from the time I was like, you know, a younger teen, like 13, 14, 15, they're like, oh, well, this means you're lesbian. This means you're lesbian.
01:26:55.90
Sumiko Saulson
I am not a lesbian and I am bisexual. And when I came out as bi, At 18, it was like for some people, it was like, oh, well, this verifies what I've been saying the whole time. this gender stuff means that you're a lesbian.
01:27:11.00
Sumiko Saulson
And no, it's actually two separate things. It's my gender and my sexuality because sexual orientation and gender, not actually the same thing.
01:27:20.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I didn't understand that for the longest time.
01:27:21.49
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:27:23.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
And when Billy Martin, the writer, announced that, you know, they were transitioning, i didn't, I was confused because i had an idea in my head that if you're transitioning, the goal is to be straight, like to be whatever the dominant societal, you know, sexuality is.
01:27:33.86
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:27:45.37
Sumiko Saulson
yeah
01:27:47.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I didn't understand like, okay, wait, but you were a girl, and now you're gonna be a guy. And see, already that part's wrong. So I was already, like, not fully understanding that, no, they've always been a dude, but when they were born, that no one noticed that. So they they went the other way.
01:28:04.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
So... I didn't understand like why you would basically make yourself gay. it was the mindset that I had. And then, you know, people had to like explain it to me. And I read some stuff about it that like, no, that they're separate. They don't,
01:28:21.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah really have anything to do with each other and that the goal is not to present as one gender or the other and then be attracted to the opposite gender like that's not part of it that's not necessarily what anyone is going for and I didn't get that because I think I knew two gay people growing up because I had an aunt who left the convent to marry a woman
01:28:33.99
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:28:46.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
And but we weren't supposed to talk about it.
01:28:46.52
Sumiko Saulson
yeah
01:28:48.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, I i said to marry a woman, no, to to live with a woman, of course, they couldn't get married because it was the But we weren't even, we weren't supposed to talk about it. Nobody was supposed to mention that we knew that they were gay. And so I didn't have a frame of reference. And then, you know, they tried to make us Catholic for a while. So by the time there were people that I could ask about that sort of thing,
01:29:11.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
they were telling me the Catholic version of it, which was not particularly welcoming.
01:29:18.20
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I think when I was a little kid, i didn't know too many gay people. And I think that when I was like, um you know, maybe nine um My mom had a close friend who was bisexual but was closeted for religious reasons, and that was the first time I really got to know adult that was queer.
01:29:43.13
Sumiko Saulson
um But I think that, like... um I knew something was up with my gender from from a really early age.
01:29:53.62
Sumiko Saulson
And it's funny because i didn't figure out that I was bisexual until after I went through puberty. Like I knew that that I liked guys, um you know, when I was, you know, um prepubescent, like, you know, when I was nine I definitely knew that I liked guys, but I was like 15 before I figured out that I liked girls.
01:30:21.20
Sumiko Saulson
um Like I was watching um Cat People, the one with Natasha Kinski and in yeah, speaking of Insist and Malcolm McDowell.
01:30:25.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:30:29.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Speaking of incest, right? Yeah.
01:30:35.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:30:35.45
Sumiko Saulson
And I just, you know, suddenly realized that I was hot for both of these these actors. I'm like, okay then.
01:30:43.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and lucky for you, there they are naked.
01:30:46.88
Sumiko Saulson
yeah oh Yeah, they were in there naked. i mean I'm sure that was not a coincidence about why I figured out that I was hot for both of them.
01:30:54.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and that's only because of our age, because if if we were 10 years younger, then it would have been the mummy.
01:30:54.47
Sumiko Saulson
Okay.
01:31:01.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because everyone references Brendan Fraser's Mummy as the movie that made them bisexual because all of the men and all of the women are just so beautiful and on display.
01:31:12.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:31:13.04
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:31:14.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Let me...
01:31:14.16
Sumiko Saulson
Well, for me, it was it was cat people. And I'm into, um i am definitely, I'm kinky. I'm into BDSM. ah And, ah you know, Natasha Kinski's in bondage in this movie.
01:31:31.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:31:31.83
Sumiko Saulson
okay
01:31:32.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:31:33.91
Sumiko Saulson
ah That definitely it did did have something that had something to do with it.
01:31:34.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Lot of tie-ups.
01:31:37.70
Sumiko Saulson
like That did have something to do with me suddenly really understanding that I was bisexual. like It was a moment. I mean, when I was ah a a a little prepubescent person and I saw Enter the Dragon and they had had those little knife things and they scratched Bruce Lee on the chest, I felt a thing.
01:32:02.39
Sumiko Saulson
And I was like, what the hell?
01:32:02.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:32:04.30
Sumiko Saulson
What is this? What am I feeling here? So yeah, that those things were happening. So yeah. So I came out as by ah when I was 18 because was sitting and front of a nightclub and a ah super cute skater girl came up to me and she said, um you know, have you ever thought like I was, I was, I was having a conversation that didn't involve her.
01:32:33.35
Sumiko Saulson
bitching about my love life and men. And she came up to me and she said, have you ever thought of dating women? And I looked at her and I said, no but if you're asking me for a date, then I think I should start to right now because you're high.
01:32:47.88
Sumiko Saulson
how And that was my first girlfriend.
01:32:50.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
That is fantastic.
01:32:51.26
Sumiko Saulson
Her name was Chris. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So um but back to neo-pronouns because you asked me about that.
01:32:59.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:33:01.32
Sumiko Saulson
I use they them pronouns and I also use ze here pronouns and the fact that ze here pronouns are called neo pronouns is hilarious to me because these pronouns have been ah around for a long time
01:33:17.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
So they're like the the toga of new clothes.
01:33:18.49
Sumiko Saulson
um
01:33:21.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:33:21.57
Sumiko Saulson
um the what
01:33:22.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because it's, I mean, it's like a Viking word, right?
01:33:25.90
Sumiko Saulson
um I don't know that it was a Viking word
01:33:32.27
Sumiko Saulson
ah Is what a Viking word?
01:33:35.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
I, here, well, here.
01:33:35.77
Sumiko Saulson
Z in here?
01:33:38.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
i was I was not familiar with Z at all, but here is like...
01:33:38.74
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:33:42.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's a word that I encountered when I was reading about runes, so I assume old school Germanic, and then you had commented on it recently as well. because
01:33:51.16
Sumiko Saulson
I do think that they're old school Germanic pronouns. I think that that's correct. But Z here pronouns have been around um since at least 1864 and possibly have been around since 1780s.
01:34:11.43
Sumiko Saulson
ah Okay, since so since the 1780s.
01:34:14.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:34:14.71
Sumiko Saulson
They've been around for a long time, so they're not really new. um so gender-neutral pronouns.
01:34:26.86
Sumiko Saulson
um Before people decided that ah they, them pronouns were acceptable gender neutral pronouns. um there were There was a long history of other pronouns and zzeer or zheer pronouns are not the oldest one, but they are some very old pronouns.
01:34:55.07
Sumiko Saulson
I think than is the oldest one, in fact. So um The history of they, them as a gender neutral pronoun is also interesting, um especially since so many people um push back against that based on grammar.
01:35:15.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and that's so weird, because first of all, MAGA people pretending that they care a whole lot about grammar on the internet?
01:35:15.58
Sumiko Saulson
But they, yeah. Yeah.
01:35:23.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sorry, nope, not buying it. I'm familiar with MAGA grammar, and they're not sticklers.
01:35:30.57
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, know.
01:35:31.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
But also, we all know how to use those in the singular.
01:35:33.15
Sumiko Saulson
so
01:35:34.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
We do it all the time. My new boss is coming in tomorrow. Oh, really? When will they be here? We know we're talking about one person. We know what it means when we say they. And so people that suddenly want to pretend that we don't know that are, I mean, i just, I wish people would admit that they're just big assholes.
01:35:45.48
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
01:35:54.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, why is it so hard to admit that like, oh yeah, I'm a bigot. So what? um Just, just say it instead of pretending you have a grammatical objection to treating someone with the respect and dignity that they're asking for.
01:36:01.58
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I know.
01:36:06.77
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:36:10.63
Sumiko Saulson
I know. So they, them pronouns have been used as singular pronouns for a very, very, very long time. They were used in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a singular pronoun back in 1386.
01:36:24.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it is.
01:36:24.41
Sumiko Saulson
That's real long time. that's a real long time
01:36:28.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
it and
01:36:29.00
Sumiko Saulson
ah And they're in Shakespeare's Hamlet as singular pronouns um back in 1599. So um it's been, um you know, like, what's that, like 800 years?
01:36:44.08
Sumiko Saulson
It's been a real long time. So um they they're they're used they're used as singular pronouns in um Pride and Prejudice.
01:36:54.76
Sumiko Saulson
It's been a long time. um The current popularity of they them pronouns as gender neutral pronouns um came about um because of feminism.
01:37:10.21
Sumiko Saulson
um Because there was a practice of listing people of an unknown gender as he him. And
01:37:21.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh. Mm-hmm.
01:37:23.00
Sumiko Saulson
Since you're around my age, you might remember in the 70s when we were little kids, when they were arguing about how to change textbooks to make it so that they were not just saying he him when they didn't know the gender.
01:37:39.76
Sumiko Saulson
So some people thought the approach was to just change and have different genders in there and not always he, him. Some people did the really awkward ah Shahi thing, which it was C slash H E.
01:37:53.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep. yeah
01:37:54.47
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. Right. And some people said to go with they, them, you know, so, um you know, and so this was actually pushed back against using the male gender whenever,
01:38:12.86
Sumiko Saulson
you know So the practice of using the male gender pronouns to describe someone of a nonspecific gender started in the 18th century, and it's a sexist practice.
01:38:24.76
Sumiko Saulson
So people brought back they, them pronouns, which was what was used previously, and that's how they, them pronouns became gender-neutral pronoun.
01:38:37.10
Sumiko Saulson
And another um small thing I'd like to say on that I have a friend who's German and in Germany, ah it, it's like it pronouns are used for people rather than they, them pronouns when it's, you know, as a singular non-gendered pronoun.
01:38:56.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:38:57.29
Sumiko Saulson
But in the United States, in American English, there's a lot of negative association with it, it's pronouns because we don't
01:39:06.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, it sounds dehumanizing.
01:39:07.89
Sumiko Saulson
oh Right. It sounds dehumanizing because we only use that singular pronoun for animals. We don't use it for humans. That's the way we distinguish humans from animals.
01:39:20.61
Sumiko Saulson
Therefore, it feels dehumanizing to us because of the way we use language. So that's no.
01:39:28.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:39:29.78
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. So, yeah, Z here have been pronouns have been um a lot around ah For a really long time, but I guess they're new because they're newer than they them um So Thon is another old gender gender neutral pronoun which is from Scots term Yon and that one has been around since 1858 eighteen fifty eight
01:40:01.76
Sumiko Saulson
so Some of these pronouns that they're calling neo-pronouns, what I'm saying is, are over 100 years old. um And they're so they're not really that new.
01:40:15.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
So maybe we should call them garage sale pronouns because they're not new, but they're new to us. We're digging them out and using them because aren't they great?
01:40:24.83
Sumiko Saulson
Some gender pronouns, some gender, so they do actually have pronouns. neopronouns so I don't want to say that all neopronouns are older ones but some of the really really popular ones are ones that have actually been around for a long time and they were popular they were more popular than they them up until probably around 15 years ago when they them pronouns started taking um
01:41:01.30
Sumiko Saulson
Over. You know I'm saying?
01:41:04.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:41:04.45
Sumiko Saulson
So, um but there are ones that are just really, really, really, really really new. Like my partner has pronoun set, be bimbos, which is a they a pun on bimbos.
01:41:21.45
Sumiko Saulson
So... be B-bimbos, B-bimbos. So some of these are are actually, you know, really are new. um And, you know, they they although you there are, um like,
01:41:42.66
Sumiko Saulson
theoretically an endless number of neo-pronouns that could exist, There are just you really um a limited number that are really popular. Fae Femme Fear is another really popular set of neopronouns.
01:41:58.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Now, I definitely want to get into um some some things about community and and politics, if that's okay.
01:42:09.76
Sumiko Saulson
Okay.
01:42:09.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:42:10.06
Sumiko Saulson
Okay.
01:42:10.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
We do talk a lot about ah the importance of community on the show, and you in particular, like, I'm kind of getting a greater understanding for you, because I know that you've built a community in a lot of different ways. Like,
01:42:23.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that, um, I guess my first question is what, how would you advise someone who does not have a supportive community around them? How does someone go about finding their people?
01:42:37.62
Sumiko Saulson
um So I want to clarify what you mean by community.
01:42:41.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I'm talking about um the connections that we make outside of family that are close, whether it's for projects, but like having um people around you that understand and support you and that that's communal, you know, because I mean, like like me, like I went no contact from my family in my 20s.
01:42:57.01
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:43:03.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, ah you know, so I also had to sort of build my own new family, but I didn't, you know, it was kind of sporadic and it took a long time. And I wouldn't say that the way that I went about it is anything that I would recommend, but you actually see more together than I am in a lot of different ways. So I would like to hear what you have to say about finding your people.
01:43:29.61
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm 57 and my mom died um just um before I turned 51. So I think the community I have now is a community that I built after my mother died.
01:43:46.69
Sumiko Saulson
So, um you know, ah would say that I was older by then and I had had a lot of life experience before that. So it's not like I went out into the world and set out to build community and really um had, you know, just, yeah, I was already older by then.
01:44:11.19
Sumiko Saulson
and I had been part of many communities and I would say I'm still part of, of many of the communities that I was a part of when I was younger.
01:44:23.11
Sumiko Saulson
so when um i was um really like a kid um I was really quiet and um soft-spoken and shy and introverted in artsy and sat in the corner at the library and at the, um you know, cafe and at the cafeteria getting bullied a lot.
01:44:53.17
Sumiko Saulson
And the first time that I really became like a part of a community was, um, the punk rock community.
01:45:05.46
Sumiko Saulson
um so, um, my cousin Gina came out from, um, l LA to live with us in Hawaii and she's like a year older than me.
01:45:16.87
Sumiko Saulson
And I started running around with her and we started going, um, out to the punk clubs and we were little, you know, we like 13 and 14 years old.
01:45:26.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, wow.
01:45:26.54
Sumiko Saulson
So we were really little. Um, And, you know, there were things that I liked to do that were more introverted things. Like there was a, um like video gaming was popular and i was really into video gaming and there was a big um like arcade, giant gaming arcade called the fun factory. And I would drag Gina down to the fun factory to play video games. Cause I liked doing that.
01:45:52.50
Sumiko Saulson
But me and my cousin went out and we started to find this community together. but After a while, um it really became a thing where Gina was like a super popular person.
01:46:05.54
Sumiko Saulson
And I was a less popular person that was her cousin for a lot of reasons. um Gina's Jewish and white presenting and I'm biracial.
01:46:20.24
Sumiko Saulson
And Gina was thin. And honestly, people treated didn' me like i was fat, but only weighed like 140 pounds. I wasn't really that big. you I pimples, whatever. So um there started to be um a thing where I maybe wasn't fitting in socially with Gina's friends as much.
01:46:43.26
Sumiko Saulson
And um then I started hanging around a couple of um gay boys, um Mark ah Sanchez and Mike McElhaney.
01:46:54.24
Sumiko Saulson
So I went and got my own friends and they were some gay men. and um But they weren't men. they were They were gay children because we were all children.
01:47:02.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:47:02.81
Sumiko Saulson
And then ah
01:47:08.10
Sumiko Saulson
we were goths. So then I started hanging out in the goth community. So that was like when I started moving away from my cousin and I started hanging out with the goths more in the punk rockers less. And I would say that there was an intermediate period between that where I was just alone um with my Walkman headphones on listening to like um ah Joy Division and being surly.
01:47:40.42
Sumiko Saulson
oh and I forgot my brother was a punk rocker and he was hanging out with us and our punk rock friends.
01:47:41.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
01:47:44.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
nice
01:47:45.19
Sumiko Saulson
So I was still part of the punk rock community, but then I was also hanging out with the goths. And when I started hanging out with the goths, it started to be where had my own sort of like,
01:47:56.85
Sumiko Saulson
social identity that was very separate. um So when I moved to San Francisco, I became a part of the goth community here really quickly.
01:48:09.19
Sumiko Saulson
And I would say that the goth community was my main social community that I was plugged into um in my twenties as well. um And I think that i
01:48:28.36
Sumiko Saulson
joined Carista Consciousness Church, which was a...
01:48:33.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
01:48:36.37
Sumiko Saulson
um I would say that it it did show up in the Cult Awareness Group book as being mostly harmless. um I would say they were mostly harmless, but they did sort of um pressure people to get sterilized, and um I couldn't have kids because...
01:48:58.17
Sumiko Saulson
I had endometriosis and I was going to to have surgery for a big ah ovarian cyst and then they kind of pressured me to get my tubes tied and they got kind of cut and burned.
01:49:07.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
01:49:07.56
Sumiko Saulson
um But other than that, that was probably the most culty thing that they were doing. They were um a polyfidelity group and so they had like group marriage.
01:49:18.50
Sumiko Saulson
So I would say that um I'm not going to say that that's an ideal way to to build community, but I joined that group.
01:49:26.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
I see.
01:49:27.19
Sumiko Saulson
So that happened. And I was there between the ages of 19 and 23, i think. So that happened.
01:49:40.63
Sumiko Saulson
um And when I rolled out of that, I just went back to, um i mean the whole time I was there, ah was still a punk rocker and a goth, and I was still going the see punk shows and goth shows and going to goth clubs.
01:49:58.92
Sumiko Saulson
So I rolled just right back out into like the punk and the goth scene again.
01:50:03.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:50:04.26
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:50:05.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, it sounds like um there's a lot to glean from that.
01:50:07.41
Sumiko Saulson
yeah
01:50:09.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
First of all, you can be part of more than one community. And if a community is not like meeting all your needs, you don't have to stick around.
01:50:19.27
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, i learned a lot from um from i learned a lot from being able to leave communities.
01:50:31.29
Sumiko Saulson
Karista broke up, and when it was breaking up, um things got more and more, like, less controlling because it was in the process of falling apart.
01:50:47.29
Sumiko Saulson
and I was one of the people who joined it near the end and So like in the last Maybe here that it existed me and one of the other like really younger members um ah Who went by hope ah we got like to have our own group that was like our own like B fic um and which is what they call, i forget what that was called, best friend identity cluster or something.
01:51:19.07
Sumiko Saulson
It was a little group marriage thing. We had our own one and that meant we had our own apartment, which was really awesome. And I think that um for like a year, year and a half, we we were up in there, we had our own place.
01:51:37.07
Sumiko Saulson
And it was really awesome. And then people would come through and they would try to join our group and other people passed in and out and didn't really stick. So it was just kind of me and my bestie getting to be awesome roommates and having fun a lot.
01:51:53.96
Sumiko Saulson
And then the, then the commune broke up. Um, and when it broke up, I went and actually got a place with my mother, um, after that.
01:52:02.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
01:52:03.15
Sumiko Saulson
So me and my mom got a place together. um I think that when I was um in Hawaii, um after I broke up with my girlfriend, i had a boyfriend and my boyfriend was not monogamous.
01:52:19.22
Sumiko Saulson
And he said, you know, we could have a monogamous relationship, but it won't last very long. And if you want to have a longer relationship with me, then we should have, ah you know, like a polyamorous relationship.
01:52:31.61
Sumiko Saulson
And I didn't know what polyamory was, so I didn't want to do it. But then after we broke up, I kind of regretted it and I was like, maybe I should have tried it. So I think that that kind of made me more open to wanting to try it.
01:52:44.10
Sumiko Saulson
So I did. um ah tried it before I got in Karista and I tried it in Karista. I tried it after Karista. So I was actually ah non-monogamous.
01:52:59.75
Sumiko Saulson
from an early age and I was non-monogamous on and off throughout my adult life. So that was just part of what was going on with me. um i think that when Karista broke up and I was able to go back to like the punk in the goth clubs and stuff like that.
01:53:21.89
Sumiko Saulson
um I think I was dating a lot of people that were like gutter goths and gutter punks. AKA people that were homeless and marginally housed.
01:53:34.50
Sumiko Saulson
And they had something called SF net, which was like, um they had ah table top um like computers that you could dial into and talk to people.
01:53:47.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:53:48.47
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. And this was pre-internet. This was from like 1991 to
01:53:54.66
Sumiko Saulson
So I got on this dial-up BBS called um SFNet, and that ended up being another place that became like one of my main social circles.
01:54:05.70
Sumiko Saulson
So it was pre-internet, but it was like we were connecting online, and then we would have like these in-person get-together meetups. um I'm still friends with a bunch of my friends from SFNet.
01:54:18.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:54:19.27
Sumiko Saulson
I'm still friends with a bunch of my friends from the goth ah clubs dating back to friends that I have had from high so since high school. So um honestly, the the the the goth community, i mean, i so still a part of the punk community, but not really in the same way. I'm super integrated in the goth community. So I would say that the goth community was my first and most longstanding
01:54:52.27
Sumiko Saulson
group of um like social group. And I think that when I moved away from the punk community towards the goth community, it became a safe place for me to be queer because the goth community just had way more queer people.
01:55:10.79
Sumiko Saulson
um like when 18 and I was young goth, and i was a young ah god Uh, I had like baby bats already, like little kid goths that I looked out for.
01:55:21.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:55:22.99
Sumiko Saulson
and one of them was a trans girl that was 13, you know? So by then I definitely had a lot of friends that were gay, um, and trans and stuff like that.
01:55:35.91
Sumiko Saulson
So I feel like the goth community was a much more queer space than the punk community. The punk community can be really, um,
01:55:47.92
Sumiko Saulson
like A lot of these punk bands have gone full on like Red Macca hat over the years.
01:55:55.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no. no
01:55:59.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it seems like every day I'm finding out about somebody new that went MAGA and it's just gross and disappointing.
01:55:59.23
Sumiko Saulson
Sorry just say
01:56:04.93
Sumiko Saulson
to say. It's not like it hasn't happened to people in the goth community because there's Morrissey. um but it's just like In the punk community, it just keeps happening nonstop.
01:56:18.03
Sumiko Saulson
ah There's, ah yeah, ah you know, Johnny Rotten is...
01:56:24.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, John Lydon, like, broke everyone's heart, and we probably should have, like, at that point.
01:56:24.49
Sumiko Saulson
um
01:56:29.49
Sumiko Saulson
Right.
01:56:31.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, that that's a trust-no-one kind of thing. Like, oh, so nothing means anything.
01:56:35.47
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. X from X.
01:56:41.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know
01:56:41.33
Sumiko Saulson
ah There's just like so many of them. Honestly, it's just gotten to the point where You just expect it at this point.
01:56:48.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
I just, is is there ah an amount of money that makes people just do that suddenly?
01:56:55.09
Sumiko Saulson
I feel like for John Lydon, that was the case, that it was the amount of money. ah no one in X has any money. They're all they're still poor. They just went the libertarian route for that, and that happens.
01:57:10.73
Sumiko Saulson
in um But in in in in in the case of Morrissey, he's always been a bigot.
01:57:17.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah.
01:57:17.08
Sumiko Saulson
Like, we just didn't understand that the National Front disco was not ironic, and he wasn't making fun of the National Front.
01:57:17.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:57:23.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
ha
01:57:27.10
Sumiko Saulson
He was actually a member of it.
01:57:29.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
01:57:29.21
Sumiko Saulson
Like, we could have known he was a bigot. I mean, maybe he was English, so, and, you know, we were Americans, and we didn't understand that that was, you know.
01:57:39.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
The thing is, I i always knew Morrissey was a dick because he said such mean things about fat people.
01:57:40.72
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
01:57:46.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's always a tell. If you go out of your way to insult fat people, you are almost certainly bad in plenty of other ways.
01:57:53.80
Sumiko Saulson
i I'm going to say this, all the things that he said about fat women, i understood that differently. um i understood that as him saying, I'm a totally ripped, studly gay man.
01:58:08.82
Sumiko Saulson
And how can you be with that fat woman? How dare you? So I'm like, okay, you're gay and somebody hurt you in whatever.
01:58:14.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Bye.
01:58:19.30
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, whatever, dude. um So I probably took that the same way as I would take it if, um like like, I agree with you, it's bigoted.
01:58:30.70
Sumiko Saulson
So you're not wrong. You're absolutely correct. But one time when I was in a punk band called Poetic Justice, when I was like 18 years old, um we opened for another band and the other band's lead singer jumped up and complained about how her boyfriend just left her for an ethnic girl.
01:58:57.41
Sumiko Saulson
And i'm like, you know what, a bitch?
01:59:00.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
01:59:00.57
Sumiko Saulson
ah You know what, bitch?
01:59:05.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, when you when you hit the word ethnic, you may get very clear that you're trying to not say something that you want very much to say.
01:59:05.42
Sumiko Saulson
ah You're opening for me. Right. You're opening for me. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. You know, you just said something super racist and you,
01:59:20.15
Sumiko Saulson
You know, think that saying ethnic makes it not racist, but you're mad because, you know, you got dumped for a fucking woman of color. And I, you know, bet it's really, really chafing your hide and hurting your ass that, you know, you got to open for me.
01:59:36.26
Sumiko Saulson
So, you know what? Fuck you, bitch. You're opening for me. Kiss my fucking, kiss my, you know, chubby black ass. Just kiss it.
01:59:47.50
Sumiko Saulson
And, like, I was just like, okay, Morrissey is really pissed off because, you know, from his point of view, he wanted to be in relationships with a bunch of men. And some of these guys that he wanted to be in relationships with, um you know, maybe they were in the closet and they were gay.
02:00:05.69
Sumiko Saulson
Or maybe they were bi and they got with a woman. And then they got with woman and he's talking shit about how um she's fat. To me, it just sounds like a zillion, like, songs, like,
02:00:17.46
Sumiko Saulson
like hip-hop songs, like um ah like what's that song? um Like, oh, God. um I feel like it's Kesha or something.
02:00:32.49
Sumiko Saulson
um It's um ah with when the one where she's going, I hate you so much right now. And in the song, she's like, ah why, you know, why not me? Why the hell her?
02:00:47.61
Sumiko Saulson
She's so raunchy and vulgar. And I'm like, you're jealous. So you're talking shit about the other woman.
02:00:51.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
who Okay.
02:00:53.73
Sumiko Saulson
I'm like, Morrissey is just talking shit about the other woman. She's fat. Like, okay, whatever, dude. you know
02:01:03.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it's it's hard to think of a way in which Morrissey is not just a little bitch.
02:01:04.27
Sumiko Saulson
And like,
02:01:09.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um...
02:01:10.04
Sumiko Saulson
Morrissey is just, yeah, Morrissey is a problem on a stick and it's too bad because he did actually mean something as an out gay man, you know, at a time when being an out gay man, topping pop charts was just not a thing.
02:01:29.75
Sumiko Saulson
And I feel bad because I know that there's some gay men and there's some gay gods and gay alternative rockers. They have very, very, very like, broken, hurt, mixed feelings about um Morrissey. And I'm not going to tell them not to like Morrissey because he did really represent something as a gay man.
02:01:52.72
Sumiko Saulson
when he his song, and I hate saying anything positive about him because he's such a douchebag.
02:01:58.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
02:01:58.09
Sumiko Saulson
He's just super racist. he he he He said that the reason that he didn't win Top of the Pops in 86 was because of the so-called Jamaican conspiracy.
02:02:09.10
Sumiko Saulson
he His song A Rush and a Push and the Land Will Be Ours It Was Once Before and It Will Be Again Whatever like When you know we were kids and we listening to that and we were like oh wow this is probably something really cool about how like Native Americans should take back America but no it's him saying right no it's about how England needs to be for white people again that's what it's literally about
02:02:28.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I definitely thought it was fighting man stuff and
02:02:38.50
Sumiko Saulson
and And, you know, and and I feel like we just really like, we yeah, we thought he was thought he was he was going to stick it to the man. But when you listen to it and you know that this dude is ah is ah is a dyed-in-the-wool racist, he is just saying England needs to go back to being for white people. and he's like And he's like, and people uglier than you and i And I'm like, dude, whoa.
02:03:01.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
who Thanks.
02:03:05.25
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, he's a racist. he He said, Like something, you know, like he he yeah he said he said a lot of horrible, super racist things, ah some of which I'm just not going repeat.
02:03:20.55
Sumiko Saulson
So the dude is a douchebag.
02:03:21.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
02:03:22.31
Sumiko Saulson
He's like just really messed up, you know, on a lot of levels.
02:03:22.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
02:03:27.42
Sumiko Saulson
But when I listen to the song, Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, It's like after talking crap about fat women for years and years and years, he came out with this song that really just shows that on a certain level, he is also relating to the fat women because he starts talking about some girls are bigger than others.
02:03:45.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
you
02:03:52.55
Sumiko Saulson
And then he's talking about, he's like talking about crying and saying, lend me your pillow, the one that you came on. And he's really actually talking about the ways that he as a gay man is experiencing some things that are the same as what these fat women are experiencing in terms of being with guys that want to hook up on the down low and treat you like crap.
02:04:23.67
Sumiko Saulson
And I'm like, you know, that came out later when he was a solo artist. So, I do think about that and and, you know, yeah, I do think that about what he says about fat women.
02:04:43.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Okay.
02:04:44.53
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah.
02:04:44.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I can see where you're coming from there.
02:04:45.66
Sumiko Saulson
But, yeah, but he's still um a racist douche and...
02:04:46.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
02:04:51.68
Sumiko Saulson
He just really is. And, you know, he put on a little weight and he is so like just upset when anyone calls him like fat. He was like so upset because the South Park thing mocking him showed him as being fat.
02:05:06.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
02:05:06.93
Sumiko Saulson
ah
02:05:07.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Well, in the Simpsons episode, my goodness. Um, yeah, I agree.
02:05:12.03
Sumiko Saulson
He deserves that.
02:05:14.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
I agree.
02:05:14.18
Sumiko Saulson
deserves that.
02:05:14.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, I, I don't like to, as a rule, body shame, but if you're a big body shamer who puts on weight, I'll probably make a cracker too.
02:05:23.21
Sumiko Saulson
Right, exactly.
02:05:23.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's
02:05:24.05
Sumiko Saulson
Like, he's not that big, but he just is, you know, he got older like the rest of us, and not and he cannot handle that.
02:05:28.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
who
02:05:32.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Alright, well we are about out of time.
02:05:32.79
Sumiko Saulson
So, oh um,
02:05:35.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
um It is actually time for the Mad Libs, so I hope you're ready for that.
02:05:40.72
Sumiko Saulson
Okay.
02:05:43.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
We're going to start with some nouns. Look like I need one, two, three, four, five singular nouns.
02:05:52.03
Sumiko Saulson
Five singular nouns.
02:05:53.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
02:05:54.65
Sumiko Saulson
um Cat. um Dildo. um Spider monkey.
02:06:06.73
Sumiko Saulson
um Vampire. and werewolf.
02:06:16.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, now I need one, two, three, four plural nouns.
02:06:31.31
Sumiko Saulson
Cocktails.
02:06:36.15
Sumiko Saulson
Boogers.
02:06:41.01
Sumiko Saulson
Turds.
02:06:46.06
Sumiko Saulson
Microphones.
02:06:48.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. I think that's all of them. All right. And so then we need a color.
02:06:56.06
Sumiko Saulson
Black.
02:06:58.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
place.
02:07:02.95
Sumiko Saulson
Milpitas.
02:07:04.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
What is it?
02:07:06.38
Sumiko Saulson
Milpitas.
02:07:07.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Where's that?
02:07:09.39
Sumiko Saulson
it's a but It's a city in the Bay Area that has like a problem with... like You know how people have like dump sites?
02:07:20.42
Sumiko Saulson
So their dump site was done improperly and it gives off a bad smell. So there's a web but website called Milpitas Smell.
02:07:31.38
Sumiko Saulson
It's all about the stench that comes out of penis.
02:07:35.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I learned something today. All right.
02:07:40.61
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, it's between here and San Jose.
02:07:42.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
02:07:42.99
Sumiko Saulson
So, yeah.
02:07:43.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. So I need a celebrity.
02:07:49.11
Sumiko Saulson
um Wow. um Kendrick Lamar?
02:07:57.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
02:08:01.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
He's one of those people that I learned about semi recently because i like to make it a point to know everybody that's making manga people rage. And then I was like, this song is really good.
02:08:11.07
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah Um, yeah He's all over Drake and with good reason
02:08:13.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wait, is that a joke about pedophiles? It is.
02:08:20.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, okay, that explains why manga people don't like him. Well, that and, you know, being black. um I need another celebrity.
02:08:29.92
Sumiko Saulson
Um Laverne Cox Um
02:08:34.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. and an adjective.
02:08:40.97
Sumiko Saulson
Fabulous.
02:08:43.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Actually, it looks like I need one, two, three more adjectives.
02:08:50.51
Sumiko Saulson
Rainbow.
02:08:54.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
02:08:59.63
Sumiko Saulson
Girthy.
02:09:02.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm, one more.
02:09:06.17
Sumiko Saulson
Inflamed.
02:09:08.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
And finally, i need an exclamation.
02:09:13.88
Sumiko Saulson
Jeepers.
02:09:17.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. this is say This is called Right Through His Legs is the name of it.
02:09:24.13
Sumiko Saulson
Oh no.
02:09:24.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Yeah, this is a bunch of sports ones I think we're in right now. um Because I don't pick out a good lib. I just go do them in order for my big giant book. It was Game 6 of the Cat Series 1986. The Boston Black Cocktails were tied with the Milpitas Boogers in the bottom of the 10th inning when Kendrick Lamar stepped up to the plate.
02:09:52.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
There were two outs and a dildo on third. All Boston needed was one more spider monkey to bring home a victory.
02:10:03.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Laverne Cox, a fabulous sinker ball pitcher, threw a terrific vampire. See that? I can believe. Getting the batter out should have been as rainbow as 1-2-3, but the ball went right through the first baseman's turd.
02:10:18.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, turds. Cries of, oh no, and jeepers were heard throughout the stands. The player on third raced home and scored the winning werewolf. To this day...
02:10:30.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
girthy baseball fans still talk about that game and the inflamed loss for the red microphones.
02:10:38.45
Sumiko Saulson
Oh
02:10:39.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
I know, right?
02:10:40.38
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah. The turd-covered ball, that's probably why they lost.
02:10:43.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
02:10:44.34
Sumiko Saulson
It's probably connected to the Milpitas smell.
02:10:46.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right? Nobody wanted to touch it after that. So, Miko, I am so glad that you could be here and we could have this conversation.
02:10:51.37
Sumiko Saulson
ah
02:10:53.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
This was great and I learned so much.
02:10:57.07
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, this is a trip.
02:10:58.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's always nice for me when people are patient with my ignorance.
02:10:58.60
Sumiko Saulson
and
02:11:01.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's the only way I'll learn.
02:11:03.17
Sumiko Saulson
Okay, cool.
02:11:03.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
who
02:11:04.77
Sumiko Saulson
i hope i I hope I actually answered your question about community because I feel like I rambled there, but hey.
02:11:11.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, i think I think that's a lot of a lot of good information, and i think that I hope that people will get something from it. I'm confident that they will. um Oh, you know, I actually didn't ask you um if you have an audio sample, because sometimes we do have audio samples um at the end. If you have like a short story read or you know anything that you want to share with readers, we can add it to the end of the episode.
02:11:34.86
Sumiko Saulson
Yeah, I can give you an audio some sample and have a bunch of them. I have a bunch of them.
02:11:40.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Awesome.
02:11:40.91
Sumiko Saulson
So, yeah.
02:11:41.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Awesome. So yeah, so wait for that at the end of the episode listeners and you will find it and we will see everybody next week. Just want to remind you before we go that we are sponsored by Sometimes Hilarious Horror Magazine and you can find us on Ko-Fi.
02:11:57.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's ko-fi slash Sometimes Hilarious Horror. Supporting the magazine is a great way to support us here at the podcast. All right. So we'll see everybody next week.
02:12:13.18
Sumiko Saulson
Thank you.
02:12:13.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
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