Episode 12: 90% of the population is not lesbians

April 4th, 2019
Hosted by Brian Birnbaum
Guest: Annie Krabbenschmidt
Produced by Katie Rainey

For the twelfth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast we invite Annie Krabbenschmidt, a writer of creative nonfiction and comedy, whether performative or simply written. Annie read her essay, "Apple Cider Donuts," at a recent reading - we were blown away, so much that we invited her on to talk about her work, which is a particle collider of human complexity. She makes it look easy, using nothing but honesty, humor, and precision to tell how difficult it was to discover her sexuality and share it with those she needs most.

>> Brian: Welcome to the 12th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your host, Brian Birnbaum. We're here today with Annie Krabbenschmidt and, of course, our lovely producers, Katie Rainey.

>> Katie: Many people. (laughter)

>> Brian: Annie is a writer of comedy and now nonfiction. She has a website with a blog and some hilarious videos, including a standup video and painfully accurate short about post break up behavior that I just watched, like, ten minutes ago. So I was like,

>> Annie: We're all in that mood right now.

>> Brian: Yeah, I was reading you before you came in.

>> Katie: I'm quite impressed with anyone who could do stand up. I think it is an unbelievably hard thing to do.

>> Brian: I thought about doing it since I was, like, twenty years old.

>> Annie: Yeah

>> Brian: And then it just slowly went down because I never was going to nut up and do it.

>> Annie: I do kind of think that, like plenty of people could do stand up. I mean, all it takes is getting up there, right? But I do think that writers like could do it. I think we are particularly scared of it because we're, like, careful with our words.

>> Brian: Interesting.

>> Annie: Yeah, that's what I think because I'm also very.. I'm still very scared of it.  And like, I haven't done it in New York yet because I just moved here.

>> Brian: I could tell you were pretty practiced too. Like, your lines are on...

>> Annie: And that's not great. Like you're not supposed to like... People aren't supposed to be like "she rehearsed that"

>> Brian: Maybe it's just to seem more casual but I thought it was pretty good.

>> Annie: Yeah, it was definitely like memorize the whole thing.

>> Brian: Yeah.

>> Annie: But ideally, you would just be like, this is my bit and then you can kind of like...

>> Brian: You off the cuff it?

>> Annie: And then when you didn't even come back to that I'm doing you Yeah.

>> Brian: You kind of wanna be a little more loose on stage.

>> Brian: Yeah, I can very much relate to that. I think I've actually maybe said this on this podcast before, but I was the kid, like in my communications class in college where for our final speech of the year, I ripped four or five shots before I was because...(laughter) and it didn't work out that well. But it was better than if I had gone sober. Because I went from being a robot who could not speak honestly just like coherent sentences, without having a panic attack to being, like, kind of slurring my words, but feeling a little better about it.

>> Annie: I was in Durham where I just moved here from, and last year I broke my leg, and it was like this formative experience for me, for sure.

>> Brian: Ohh, doing what?

>> Annie: Playing soccer. A 250 lb guy just landed...

>> Katie: Oh shit, coed soccer?

>> Annie: Yeah. It was like a big, big injury.

>> Brian: Was this the goalie?

>> Annie: No, I was center back and he was... yeah he was the goalie.

>> Brian: I was about to say... 250 lbs, what else can you be out there?

>> Annie: So basically, I was like, what else do I have to live for? Like I'm doing stand up this summer. But I drank too much and I'm a small, small human, and I drank way too much and like forgot everything. And, like people in North Carolina, are so nice that I was, like, hobbled on stage on my crutches crawled up there and I wasn't that hilarious and they're just like you were so sad for you. (laughs)

>> Katie: Wait, but I thought you started doing stand up in high school?

>> Annie: No, I did. I did. So I did a little bit in college, as I was saying earlier college kind of beat out my spark a little bit. Made me a little more afraid to do stuff like that.

>> Brian: I'm actually interested in that

>> Katie: Yeah what happened?

>> Brian: You know, I mean, honestly, college was not the greatest experience for me either, even though, by the end, it definitely got a lot better.

>> Annie: Yeah, me too.

>> Brian: But yeah, it was pretty tough for me, too.

>> Annie: I don't know what it was, but as soon as I arrived I was like, I'm a freak. Maybe it was because it was a more homogeneous campus, Duke's campus...

>> Brian: Oh I went to Maryland, by the way.

>> Katie: Yeah, I went to art school and it was freedom for me being in the south and an all girls school, and I was just like, I can be weird.

>> Annie: This anecdote is like too good not to share, but like within the first month, I was super homesick. I came from San Francisco, so I was like, who are you people? And I was in this acting class and I didn't realize that there's classes that people took just to get A's. I thought that, like everyone took a class...

>> Brian: Because they wanted to and challenge themselves?

>> Annie: Yeah. So I was like, why are all these famous basketball players in this class and like soccer players... And we did this exercise one day that was like the teacher asked for me to be in the center of the room while everyone made judgments based on their appearance.

>> Brian: Wow

>> Katie: What the fuck.

>> Annie: The exercise was like "Look how when you posture yourself a certain way, people make assumptions." And I was like, "Couldn't you have picked like any of the others? I'm clearly the only person who doesn't have friends in this class. Like couldn't you have picked anyone else? And they put me in the middle and I'm just wearing a V neck sweater, and my hair was in a messy bun and everyone's like "uptight, naive, librarian." I was just like, this is just so inaccurate.

>> Katie: And this is in Durham, right?

>> Annie: Yeah. And this is like in a class.

>> Katie: So at the same time, in the same state I was at Winston Salem at the art school. Yeah, just like being the only female in film school. And just being like, suddenly, like I have boyfriends or like, even like a couple of girlfriends, and just running amok and being weird. Wow, that's crazy.

>> Annie: That's actually so interesting because, like Duke, technically it is a liberal campus...

>> Brian: Yeah, that's kind of bullshit though. I mean, like, honestly, cause College Park is kind of the same deal. It's pretty homogeneous as well. It's not smart, is Duke. And, like, in that sense, Duke is an expensive school, right? Yeah, I think Duke is relatively... because colleges are such liberal places in general, I think compared to most colleges, Duke is probably a pretty conservative camp.

>> Annie: And it's also I have a lot of questions about the intersection of class and like your freedom of expression just because, as you guys know from this piece, the duty to uphold certain femininity and in a certain class is very high...

>> Brian: And it's southern too, right? It's in North Carolina.

>> Annie: Yeah. So the biggest reaction I had to realizing that I was gay was like, I have failed as a woman. And so now I like...

>> Brian: Wow. Yeah, later, she's going to read a part of her essay that she read at the Animal Riot reading series, which isn't done yet?

>> Annie: Yeah, I don't know.

>> Brian: It's just a part of it. So you're going to talk a little bit of that whole process...

>> Katie: When did that thought occur that you felt like you failed as a woman?

>> Annie: Well, so I definitely was like a tomboy. But I went to a small high school, so I was like, people accept me. I just have a place here. And then I got to college within, like, the first week... It was either at a party or just in this group. I was looking at a man and I was like, "No, I'm never going to be in love with you" and I was just so crushed. It was such a crushing feeling, which I'm sad to have to report that but it's the truth.

>> Brian: Last night when we were on with Chris, I was talking about how it is incredible to me...

>> Katie: Chris Gonzalez.

>> Brian: Yeah let's pour out some oat milk. Libations. (laughter) He's alive and well, way didn't kill him. We were just joking earlier that we put up blankets for the acoustics and how our neighbors probably think we're laying out sheets and murdering people. Katie actually made a little less dark example of that we're doing porn, but you know, I prefer murder. But anyway... we just one on a tangent there.

>> Katie: Welcome to our podcast. We're 10 min in.

>> Brian: But I will repeat this. "It never ceases to amaze me how big of an impact society has on your psyche in terms of coming out and realizing this for yourself" because I was telling Chris like no straight person waits until college to be like, "Oh, I like the opposite sex." It's just like there's no point where it happened. You knew.

>> Annie: And I'll take it one step further and what it was was not me seeing a woman and thinking, "Oh, I'm attracted to her." It was more like I'm not attracted to any men. And it was much more about breaking that society that's inside me and realizing, in retrospect, of course, like of course, I'm gay, like looking back, it makes total sense. But having two first negates whatever it was that was being forced on me and being like Well, now I got two addresses and figured out what I'm gonna do about it.

>> Brian: So had you had you allowed yourself to feel attraction to women before that point?

>> Annie: No. It was like I didn't even register that that's what was happening. I was just like they were good friends and it was truly like deep, deep inside. It wasn't like I have feelings for her... we're such good friends. It was just "no it's because we're best friends". It was deep in there. And so, like the funny thing about repression and coming out of it is it's such a moment of clarity as if you always knew it. But you did. It's mind-boggling about how the brain works like that.

>> Katie: Yeah, what you just said I've never articulated... but I tend to refrain from identifying as anything. I called myself bisexual for a while and like we kind of talked about this on the way. We talked a little bit about pan sexual, with Chris, vs bisexual, and I just tend to be a little bit more fluid, just in general. I have had partners of different everything of different genders and we were talking last night with Chris about that and what you just said about never really realizing that you were sexually attracted to a woman. It was just like we're really good friends. Like that was my first inkling, and with my best friends. I was just like, "I'm just so close to you."

>> Brian: That's so strange, though, because I would never be able to make the connection. I don't know how I would have been able to make The connection. It's hard for me not to feel the same way with my best friends from back home. I feel so close to them. You know what I mean? But, like I'm not attracted to them. So it's hard for me to understand how you go from A to B because you say you saw, like, "Oh, I'm definitely not attracted to men like I see that now"...

>> Katie: I don't know. I think it's a little bit different if you're female.

>> Brian: Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm trying to understand.

>> Annie: But I also think that, like what you're articulating is this challenge where it was like, you feel really close, but you're like "No" and I felt really close and I was like, "No", until one day I was like, "Yeah, no, yeah that's what's happening."

>> Brian: That's my question is like, What's stopping me from then hypothesizing that society is making me repress myself. That maybe I am into men too?

>> Annie: Maybe you should explore that then.

>> Brian: I thought about it in depth and I still don't get those feelings. But I never will really, truly know because I feel like unless I was born into a society that likes, because I like, you know, was it the Kinsey scale? Is that the right one?

>> Annie: Yeah.

KAtie: I must say, I don't know what that is.

>> Brian: You don't know the Kinsey scale?

>> Annie: I think it's the queer scale.

>> Brian: Yeah, it's like how gay or straight you are. I feel like I'm way on the straight side, but, like, who knows? Like, who knows how much I slide and who knows how much of, like, deep down or subconsciously, it's like "No, you're just never going to let yourself feel that little part."

>> Annie: Oh, and I also like... I identify as gay, but, like, I also wonder how much of that is that the closest... the next best label for me, besides straight, was that I was a gay woman.

>> Katie: Yeah.

>> Annie: I don't know. Who knows if I'm actually a lot more fluid than that, but I'm like I need to attach myself to this. I don't think that I'm. I don't know. Who knows? Like you're saying, I still struggle a lot, and not in a bad way in a good way, with trying to unlearn some of the rules of sexuality. So I'm still good with a label and I've been good with the label for six years since I came out and then only this summer, and I'm 25 for God's sake. But my therapist was like, "are you cool with liking girls. Is that actually okay with you?" And I was just like, I don't even know. The actual sexual attraction to it makes me nervous.

>> Brian: That's the correct answer though.

>> Katie: It's really only recently that I'm that I'm actively like unlearning that part that is the actual like sex and intimacy part of this whole situation.

>> Brian: I can imagine, and one of our talking points is to talk about your break... but I can imagine that it makes a break up that much harder because when you don't know when you feel so insecure about something, you just come out of your shell. Then it's like, "Oh, I have to go through this all over again". And one of the funniest parts of that video we saw was like, you're stretching and you're going to go on a run and she goes like "I just feel like I'm the only gay person in the city" and then it focuses in on the Golden Gate Bridge (laughs).

>> Annie: Yeah. But the funny thing is like, that was such a really thought I had was like, "I am alone in this world."

>> Brian: It feels like that and straight people feel like that after a break up. But I feel like it's only magnified. I mean, I feel like statistically there's probably less bi or gay people. Maybe that's not really true and that's a societal adjustment. But like for argument's sake... so you deal with how late you had to cope with all that and it's your first experience. I had my first serious relationship when I was in my mid twenties and so I was like, "I feel like a sixteen year old teenager.""

>> Annie: Yeah. Yeah. And I was so proud of myself in high school. I'm not like you girls like wasting your lives because you're hurt by some dude. Like as soon as I fell in love, I was like, "Oh, I have love tummy. I get it now. I feel so stupid. I'm just like everyone else"

>> Katie: I think that's the cutest thing, other than fluffle, that's ever been said on this podcast. We learned what a fluffle was. But yeah, love tummy. That might be the name of this episode, "love tummy".

>> Annie: What's fluffle?

>> Katie: A group of rabbits.

>> Annie: Oh, that is adorable.

>> Brian: There was, like, a shit ton of words and I was kind of upset.

>> Katie: Yeah, like a warren.

>> Brian: A warren. A brood.

>> Katie: A brood was hens.

>> Annie: I like all those words. A murder of crows. That kind of thing.

>> Katie: So I just want to give a tiny bit of context since where... I know we're very far in...

>> Annie: Who am I?

>> Katie: Yeah, who are you, Annie? I met you through our friend Mary, our mutual friend who you're in a writing group with in Brooklyn or Queens or wherever you are.

>> Brian: Where do you live?

>> Annie: I'm in Manhattan in the village. I'm currently living in my sister's apartment.

>> Katie: And you just moved to New York.

>> Annie: Yeah, like, five months. Six months anniversary is on Friday.

>> Brian: And still showed up to her reading with, like, an entourage.

>> Katie: Yeah, And you had your very first reading ever or just in New York?

>> Annie: Ever.

>> Katie: Ever, ever, ever at Animal Riot back in... was this February?

>> Annie: February 10th.

>> Katie: Yeah, she opened the night and killed it. Like you never see a first reader read like that. We're just like, holy shit. Who is this person? And I just happened to... I love Mary so much. She was like, "Hey, my friend Anne in my writing groups is really great. I'm gonna introduce you." And I was like, "Yeah, send her over." You know, I love Mary. And so I knew next to nothing about you. Other than some things I found on the Internet, I was like, Oh, she writes honest things. I like it, you know, like, whatever she reads is going to be cool. And then you just slay it.

>> Annie: It's funny. I've never had quite the strong experience where you were reading the intro to me. And I was like, Mary, this isn't me. Like I just was so convinced that you are not talking about me. So I was like, Where is this coming from? She's got it wrong.

>> Katie: Yeah. We like our little sweet personal bios. We like to make our car writers feel, you know... We're trying to make a community and everything, and then you killed it, and you brought an entourage, and we're just like "Man. You got to get on this podcast with us. Come talk to us." And we stalked you a little bit.

>> Brian: The thing that struck me about your writing is that, you know, I feel like the people that write the least like you make you the most jealous, you know? The way you write makes it just so clear and honest, from the heart, while it makes me feel like I'm just writing abstract, turgent bullshit. You know what I mean?

>> Annie: Interesting, I would probably read your work and be jealous. Can I get that abstraction in there?

>> Katie: You do cut quite to the core. It's very funny, but it's also very vulnerable. And I think that's probably what makes you a really good stand up comedian as well. I don't think anybody can stand up and do stand up. I do not think that all just as everybody can't write.

>> Brian: I think I would have to be on serious drugs. I would do it but it's not sustainable, My life would quickly devolve.

>> Annie: It's funny because my vulnerabilities also made me the target of a lot of sadness in my life, but I, like, maintain that it's got to be.

>> Brian: But that's where comedy comes from, right?

>> Annie: Just like I got to keep doing it.

>> Brian: All comedians are sad sacks. Writers and comedians are pretty similar. I just think that comedians take themselves less seriously, which is kind of way more endearing. (laughs)

>> Katie: Do you have plans to do some stand up?

>> Annie: I can't just roll up to The Comedy Store so where are the open mics that people are doing?

>> Brian: Judd Apatow can. He did that last time I was there a couple years ago.

>> Annie: Really? He's not known for his stand up.

>> Brian: It was actually really good.

>> Annie: That's cool. And he's smart, smart.

>> Brian: I don't know if you've seen his Netflix special was really good, but so, yeah, what are you trying to do stand up wise?

>> Annie: Oh, I'm just trying to get up there. I feel like every time I get up is a success. My last night in Durham, I was like, I'm really going to do it. I think I probably felt liberated by the fact that I was going to be driving away tomorrow, but did a set and it was just so fun. And this is one of the thing about writing too is that, you know, I have artist friends who are... one friend that I can think of, who's very just like I don't give a fuck about anyone. I'm just here to make the music and I'm like, good for you. And she wants me to have that feeling. But so much of my either writing or comedy or like even my work that I hoped to be pursuing in the next couple months is actually, I think, more about communicating. So for her I think it's about expression and like letting that expression fly. And for me, I'm like, always trying to touch, reach with people like you always have your own and I don't know if I always have my audience in mind, but it makes me so happy to connect with people through writing. So people being like "I was sad that I read this and I felt that you knew what that was like" and I'm sure that's the most gratifying running any writer to here. But I am so interested in making people feel less alone or making people feel more vulnerable and understood. And like she's just like, "Why do you care what people think about your writing?" Like the whole point is that, like, I want to connect with people and I'm just gonna talk to people.

>> Brian: That's great.

>> Katie: I mean, that's I think, why we do Animal Riot. Absolutely. Like, that's why we started the reading series and then now the publishing company. One hundred percent. You were telling us a little bit about, like what you write and everything and we started to talk about like what you felt licensed to write about. Can you talk a little bit about that?

>> Annie: Let me start by giving you the origin story of me as a writer because it is not so long ago. I've always been very creative and kind of like taken on projects that end up becoming writing projects. But I was not the kid who was in the corner scribbling in a notebook. I was not bookish. I was not in that kind of traditional what we think of us like the writer's origin story. And I did the standup routine in high school, and I was like "I could do this" and then on to college, and I was like "I can't do this".

>> Brian: Because of certain experiences?

>> Annie: Just like the comedy scene was a bro's club for sure. Like you're not picking up what I'm putting down.

>> Brian: Oh like the lacrosse team was there or something like that.

>> Annie: Yeah, I will say the very first time I got up in front of my storytelling class in New York, it was like my first week moving here. And, like even my asides that were funny in California like, became funny again for the first time in six years. Back with my...

>> Katie: With culture. (laughter) Yeah, you know, as born and bred in the South and having put my time in North Carolina I can say it.

>> Brian: All I see when I think of Duke is like a long sleeved crewneck like, you know, like a polo shirt with blue and white stripes. Like all I envision...

>> Katie: Yeah, like a yacht club in the middle of nowhere.

>> Brian: And also coach K's like moly face.

>> Annie: And like, guys, stop basketball. Not a big deal.

>> Katie: Oh, my don't say that to this one.

>> Brian: Yeah, I actually love sports. But I can really relate to you on how you don't have the typical bookish writer origin story. I was like a jock in high school.

>> Annie: Yeah. Me too.

>> Brian: And I kind of lived in those two worlds cause I felt kind of weird, but at the same time, like I was a part of it, you know? But I always felt a little bit like I was bestriding the line.

>> Annie: Yeah, I was a jock. But I was also in photography class. Taking pictures...

>> Katie: What did you play?

>> Annie: What?

>> Brian: Soccer.

>> Katie: Oh, soccer. That's right.

>> Annie: I thought you meant what photography did I play. And I was like, I don't know. I played soccer and tennis.

>> Brian: Did we say on the air that you had broken your leg?

>> Katie: Yeah.

>> Annie: Yes. It was on the air.

>> Brian: I've had half a glass of wine.

>> Annie: It's okay. But I was in my part time in my photo lab, taking pictures of, like, truly taking pictures of Barbie Doll's hanging by ropes.

>> Katie: Oh my God, I love this.

>> Annie: Like I was such a jock who was just like this...I wasn't, like, loud and jovial. But I was just like that jock character. And then I was in the photo in the dark room, being like manipulating...

>> Katie: I would have had such a crush on you in high school.

>> Annie: Thank you for saying that.

>> Katie: You're like my emo teenage dream.

>> Brian: Katie. I just went back to a collage of episodes that we just put out as one episode. We talked to Gangie on one of them...

>> Katie: My grandmother.

>> Brian: And the night before she showed me like all the dollhouses they made and stuff like that. It was so great. And they used to be, like, hooked up with lights and stuff, right?

>> Katie: That was my little Morty Mouse.

>> Brian: Oh, she's getting so embarrassed (laughs)

>> Katie: He's my little wooden mouse that my grandmother made. Anyway, I have all my journals. I've been writing in journals,since I was like six years old and I have them all in a trunk in there, and I have my high school one out because I bring it in with my high schoolers. I teach because they find it infinitely funny. And Brian, when he's sad, will read it when I'm not here because it makes him feel that...

>> Brian: Oh I've done that like once.

>> Katie: Yeah, it made him feel better when he was depressed.

>> Brian: Yeah I was really sad.

>> Annie: Don't you love to hear that?

>> Katie: I'm like great. My teenage scrawlings made you feel better.

>> Annie: but basically, I didn't think of it as distinctly like either that I was going to be a professional creative or that I was going to write. And I took one composing class that I think they teach you to get you good at application rating. Like how to write a personal essay. And I loved the story that I wrote about my mom about how much she loved to make snack baskets and how it was elaborate. And so it was in our high school literary magazine, and it was like, "This was fun". I just had a fun time doing it. So I didn't think about it, but got to college, wanted to write comedy television in the vein of Tina Fey just because, like, she's exactly the kind of that, like "I'm a loser outsider but still cool" kind of thing. And then I was like, No, I can't do this. This is like either too selfish or I'm not really sure what was happening, but I never pursued writing in that way, and every time you take a college writing class too it is just, like, so soul crushing to like, I don't know... I don't think I would have enjoyed any Duke writing class or writing major.

>> Brian: And so obviously you never got an MFA?

>> Annie: Yeah, I never did that. And then, yeah, I didn't love when people kind of went all in on those things because I was just, like, I'm only moderately either talented or like I still want to live. I don't know. It was just something about an environment where expertise is really valued. That I was like, I don't want to be an expert in anything. I just, like, wanna step in and express myself maybe. So I went back to grad school. Weird choice to go back to Duke but I did. And after a year, I often described the best spring of my life. And then I went back and I was like, no bad idea. It was like for stark.

>> Katie: Did you finish?

>> Annie: Did I finish my masters? Yeah. I did.

>> Brian: What was it in?

>> Annie: Public policy

>> Katie: Wow.

>> Annie: Yeah. So more related to the job to start coming up in the next month at the Trevor Project.

>> Brian: Good. You said it

>> Annie: It's in limbo right now but I should be starting.

>> Brian: It's not definite?

>> Annie: It's definite that I have the offer but who knows?

>> Brian: It might be definite. But what is definite? (laughs)

>> Katie: That's exciting though. The Trevor Project's awesome.

>> Annie: Yeah. Like I knew what kind of wanted to straddle this, like, I want to do something good in the world. And I was sitting at lunch during the last week of senior year of college with my mentor. He was like, "Why do you carry a notebook around?" And I was just like, What are you talking about? Don't don't @ me with my writing tendencies. And then I went back to grad school, had lunch with him again. And he was just like, "are you going to start owning this identity as a writer?" And I was just like, "Oh, like yeah". And he started to give me books and write me notes that were like, lift your voice. We got to do it. And so I started off slow. It was about a year and a half ago, my official writing career began, and he was very encouraging. And the first piece was the best thing I ever wrote because it was the first thing I have ever wrote and then he was like, "It's not." Like you. You need to work on it But this is a good start and then my writing has gotten so much better just because I started journaling every night on and just getting those reps in and getting the words down and, I don't know. I have a lot to say about journaling and how good it is.

>> Katie: Same, yes, that's what I teach my creative writing class.

>> Annie: So then to answer your question that you asked in the first place was basically that I kind of came at this like, well, I should write because I have experiences as a gay person, and I didn't hear those experiences before I came out, so I better start doing it. I'd better start sharing my ideas here that I know because most people, like 90% of the population, won't have just by virtue of the fact that, like, 90% of the population is not lesbians.

>> Katie: 90% of the population is not lesbians?

>> Brian: But that sounds right.

>> Katie: It sounds like the title of this. I'm gonna go ahead and google it.

>> Brian: That's in the census.

>> Annie: Well we're talking about fluidity so I was like, "Well, I can't say that 90% of the population is straight. That just can't be right. So I decided to be more specific. So I wrote a couple pieces about, like me not realizing that I had lost my virginity when I did, because I had never had penetrative sex. Sorry, mom, that I said sex. (laughter)

>> Katie: Is she going to get upset?

>> Annie: You know, but then it sounded like I was saying sorry that I didn't fulfill my duty to have penetrative sex. I'm sorry that I said sex. (laughter)

>> Brian: Sex, sex, sex, sex.

>> Annie: But just that realization that I didn't know enough about my body or about female pleasure. And all of a sudden, someone like, you know... we've been having sex this whole time. And I was like, Oh, my bad. And...

>> Brian: that's crazy.

>> Annie: Oh, yeah, totally.

>> Brian: So what did you expect sex to be with another woman if you expected... You just didn't know?

>> Annie: Oh, no, it's just this is... This is racy, but...

>> Brian: That's great. We have the parental advisory sticker.

>> Katie: It's not safe for work.

>> Annie: The first time that we did oral sex, I was like "so that was that was the big moment?" And she was like, "No, we we've been having sex for months."

>> Brian: So before that it was just like hands?

>> Annie: Sure, get the hands in the air. But I didn't think that I was like, "Oh, because I'm experiencing, like this large degree of pleasure. It's a sexual experience", but that is what sex is. So yeah, there's a lot to learn. So anyway, I started off writing about that and being like, I have a license to write about this because I know that so many people are not talking about it, which is why this piece, which I read at Animal Riot, which is about my mom and my grandpa and my family... I did sneak some gender and sexuality in there, which I couldn't help. But it felt a lot scarier because I was like, Who am I to write a sentimental piece about my mom and my dying grandfather? What gives me the right to do that when everyone has? I don't know. It's like this opposite approach to writing which is where I was putting pressure on myself to write an authoritative document about queerness and thought that was OK. But then when it was like "Try writing about this very familiar relationship that you have". I was like, I don't know what that sounds. I think it's my perfectionism in me, which is that if I'm going to write about something that most people have experienced aka having moms and having grandfather's, I better do it really, really well. It's not a healthy attitude to have when I was like, "If you're going to do something like that, it's going to be the best ever essay about Mom's". Which is, like, ridiculous, because we have so many great stories about moms out there.

>> Brian: Interesting. I expected you to say you were just nervous about what your mom was going to think.

>> Annie: I am still nervous about that.

>> Brian: Yeah, sure.

>> Katie: Has she read your writing?

>> Annie: She's read my writing. Uh, no. Oh, she's no. She's read one essay that I've written. Yeah, my parents like my whole family, just don't really know what I do in New York.

>> Katie: Yeah. Same. I'm in the same boat.

>> Annie: Yeah. And so I'm nervous... like I do think that I tried to make this a love letter to my mom basically. But I think that she, like myself, maybe has a tendency to focus on the negative, So she's just going to hear I have resent... resents. (laughs)

>> Brian: Wow.

>> Katie: She hasn't read this piece?

>> Annie: No

>> Katie: It's not published anywhere, right?

>> Brian: No she's still working on it.

>> Katie: It will be.

>> Brian: It's funny you say that because I have an essay about my time in psycho analysis. And my parents are both deaf, and it's been out for a couple of years now, but yeah, it was the same thing. A lot of it is supposed to be about repairing my relationship with my mom and how much better it's gotten in all that stuff. And then fairly recently it was difficult. We had to talk about it because she heard some comments from friends and stuff like that really upset her. And it's unfortunate that people have two be so shitty sometimes. And they focus on the negative that gets people to focus on the negative.

>> Katie: It was really people who weren't focusing on what the piece was actually saying but they were focusing on the gossip of the piece.

>> Brian: Yeah, yeah, or the buzzy like the buzzing, negative stuff and like, yeah, no, I know exactly how that feels. It's really tough.

>> Katie: No, if they were to actually, like, critically read the piece, they'd be like, "Oh, this is actually beautiful. And he's connecting with his mother in a really beautiful way" and, like, really thinks about their relationship in probably ways that people wish their children actually thought about that.

>> Brian: And it comes down to the fact that everyone has dark aspects to their relationships, even the best of them. So it's just whether you want to say it out loud or not, and I don't have a problem with doing that. And other people seem very ready to take advantage of that, you know?

>> Annie: Yeah, and I definitely like, never, ever want to... I try really hard my writing to always, like make myself the biggest demon in the writing. I'm the villain in most of my writing just because, like, I want to be very honest about how I've misunderstood things.

>> Brian: Well, let's at least say the anti hero.

>> Annie: I'm the anti hero. Yeah.

>> Katie: It's fun being the anti hero.

>> Annie: But I have a very hard time writing from a place of like I need to call this person out or anything like that. So a lot of this is like my misunderstanding of my mom and like overcoming that basically.

>> Katie: Well, I think that's very like both noble and vulnerable. But I also have this question like I have been really struggling with this myself. I have an entire novel that Brian actually just recently edited and read and that I'm sitting on for a while before I go back to you. It's got a lot of nonfiction in a way, you know, it's primarily fiction, but there are a lot of, like elements of truth into it. And it's been a lot of me exploring that relationship with my parents that was particularly bad growing up. And so I mean, I struggle with that question a lot, and I think that's a huge question, just like the literary community in general is like, What do you have license to write about? I know that typically that phrase comes around like writing and from an identity that's not yours, which has its own pros and cons for a lot of reasons. But I think that's a really interesting question of yours, just thinking about people you're really close to, like your mother. And so what do you have license to write about? And I don't know, I guess, what do you think about that? What do you both think?

>> Brian: And also and just that and like the idea of you feel like you have license to write about Queerness because you are queer. How do you feel if someone who isn't queer writes about that? Or even if it's like in fiction, which, actually I did in my novel coming out. I don't know if I'd say Julia is queer, but she definitely starts a relationship with another young woman. And so she's interested. I don't know what I did identify her as. But like, I'm straight, I'm a man.

>> Annie: Yeah, I guess it's all about how you do it is what you said earlier. And I have not thought about the fiction component of what you're asking right now. But licence to write about my mom? I feel like she's like one of the only people in my... oh getting on tough territory, like because I love her so much and we have actually such a great relationship. I actually feel better about writing about it. But I know that it comes from a place of me trying really, really hard to honor her. There are plenty of people that I feel like I don't want to go down that road in case it becomes something that's like not honoring. And it's more of, ah, ragging on them kind of thing. Whereas my mom, I just have so much respect for her and so much love for her. And I'm actually like, so sad that I have these moments of, like, "Mom why you do that." And it's not her fault and it's just that moms do that to us. So I feel like I feel more comfortable with her more so than other people that I am close to because I know that it comes from a place of huge respect for her.

>> Katie: I really admire people who write about people who are close to them and those people who don't get upset but actually see the value and the amount of like work and thought. If somebody wrote about me and even if they wrote about, like, maybe really hard parts of our relationship... Like Brian, you've written about me and things that we've gone through. Even on your blog and stuff like that. And, like, I never read it and got upset or offended.

>> Brian: I haven't published that takedown essay. (laughter)

>> Katie: Yeah, it's coming out on The Rumpus. There's something...

>> Annie: Perez Hilton.

>> Katie: Perez Hilton. Brian Birnbaum takes down his partner.

>> Annie: Which host of the Animal Riot podcast... (laughter)

>> Katie: I would love that. But no, you've written about some vulnerable conversations and stuff that we've had in our blog. And I have never...

>> Brian: First one that comes up is we had a discussion about Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

>> Katie: Yeah, And you wrote about that. And it was a tense moment for us because we had a disagreement about it.

>> Brian: We basically agreed

>> Katie: I'm sorry.

>> Brian: It wasn't that I wanted Kavanaugh nominated. It was a lot more nuanced than that.

>> Katie: No, it was just more about like call out culture.

>> Brian: Yeah, exactly. I was kind of more on the side of just like I really don't like the whole pageantry and charading of just getting mass public opinion. I just think it makes everything worse. And, like I'm not ready to just, like, call everything as I see it without, like, you know, whatever. I just think it's more important to focus on what we can change.

>> Katie: And on the same side as someone who has been sexually assaulted and watching that. So we had this whole conversation and it was a whole lot. Anyway, Brian wrote about in his bog and like, he gives it to me to edit and like, I'm just reading through that and like, I didn't even think twice about it. I was like, "Yeah, actually know like you're really thinking about our conversation and you went really in depth, and even though I was her in the moment, because I felt misunderstood, I see here where you're really actually trying to explore what happened"

>> Annie: And I may be sensitive to what my mom would think about this because I have a tendency to focus on the negative. So, like, I might be worried about the fact that I raised someone and all they remembered was that I made them go to...

>> Brian: That's essentially what happened a couple weeks ago with my mom. Just because of what some other people said it just put her in that place. And it was really distressing for me because I was like, "Oh, my God, I really worked my off on this essay and no one else is reading it like that like no one's coming away from this essay". Except for some reason, some of her... But it was... It was strange. It was strange.

>> Katie: one person.

>> Brian: What? Yeah, one person. My mom said there was another friend who made a comment or something. And, you know, when you're the center of it, like certain things can tip you in a way that's not maybe not even how they did or something. I mean, I wasn't there. I just remember getting all these texts and it was like, "Oh, my God, what's going on?"

>> Annie: And I also I'm trying like the more... I'm in therapy, obviously.

>> Katie: We all are.

>> Brian: We all are.

>> Annie: The more I try really hard to allow imperfection in myself, the more I can allow it in other people. But it's just this whole thing where I have the more I can let my mom go on these things cause I'm like, "Oh, but people can't be perfect" and the more I'm letting myself be imperfect, the more... I guess that actually, the reverse is more true where it was like I was sometimes holding people up to perfection standard. But I think it's because it came from a place of like I need to be perfect. And so the more I can kind of let that go, the more I just feel like I can let people be flawed.

>> Brian: I can relate to that, like, 120%.

>> Annie: I'm hoping one day I could read an essay about myself if someone should. Yeah, I'm available as a subject matter.

>> Brian: If you get famous enough, you can just write it about yourself. Like Kanye.

>> Katie: We've been talking about it so much.

>> Brian: What? What are we at right now?

>> Katie: 45 minutes.

>> Brian: Yeah. Let's do it. We can talk a little bit more after that too.

>> Katie: Yeah, I'm just going to intro it. You're going to read your essay, which has not been published and is not finished. Do you imagine it being part of a larger work?

>> Annie: I have to be completely honest. I have no idea, Brian, you said afterwards it's gonna get published. And I was like I hadn't even thought about it.

>> Brian: But that's the way to go.

>> Annie: Yeah, it's part of the actual essays. It is twice as long as this, and it has a lot more of talking about place and talking about politics a little bit. And talking about the irony of like, this town is a conservative town and the irony of me liking it so much as a kid and then talking about class a little bit. It actually is a little bit too wordy. I would say if I'm being completely honest, you two as my witness like I would love to write a memoir like this longer and just keep on going with it.

>> Katie: I think that's horseshit. We've already heard in the forty five minutes that we've been with you on this podcast enough for a memoir. (laughter) More than enough, just from what little I know about you and from the amount that I know about this piece and what you're about to read like... Yeah, it's a memoir in the making.

>> Brian: I think the word memoir has started to take on this largeness, where like I don't even know... we should just stop calling it may be that for young people or something, where it's just like, yeah, I'm just going to write this thing about my life because a memoir has this connotation of like "Oh, I'm old and wisened and now I have all this sageness that I'm just going to"...

>> Katie: What's the non fiction equivalent to a novella?

>> Brian: I don't know because the memoir can be short, too. I just think it's like it's almost like we need another word.

>> Annie: I'd love to write a series of short memoirs. That would be really fun. A 90 page memoir? That would be really exciting.

>> Brian: Yes.

>> Katie: Well you know some publishers. You heard it here.

>> Annie: You guys are my first call.

>> Katie: You heard it here.

>> Annie: A lot of looks are being exchanged.

>> Katie: We're going to have a conversation with you after (laughter)

>> Annie: Yeah, I just think that some people do it for the art. Like Mary Car does it because that's her form.

>> Katie: Like people equate memoir with the tell all or the like.

>> Annie: I had an experience.

>> Katie: Let me tell you about it.

>> Annie: But some people want to write in the way. David Sedaris is kind of a memoirist. Like he's an essayist he's a memoirist in a way.

>> Brian: It's like you have to justify it in a way.

>> Annie: Yeah, it sucks.

>> Brian: Yeah, that's why I almost think there needs to be another word.

>> Annie: Yeah totally. I think there should be too.

>> Brian: Oh well. But do you have a title for this yet?

>> Annie: There's a title. It's called Apple Cider Doughnuts.

>> Brian: Oh, yeah, that's right. I didn't know if that was just gonna be that because, like, you did come back to it in this... Yeah, but like, I don't know, it's just...

>> Annie: Yeah, and it's called that because I every... well, you'll find out. But like every time I had an apple cider donut these last couple of years, it reminded me of the story. And so I would go into this whole thing. And that's why it's called that. It's like an inside joke. Yeah, I can read it. Just say the word.

>> Katie: Go for it.

>> Annie: Home was not a place for burping. In Marin County, California, a suburb of San Francisco, the mere suggestion of impolite bodily noises was met with scorn. During the year, I attended a private K-8 school with an immaculate exterior, painted white and lined with navy. The school was so pristine that even its attendees appeared to be part of the design scheme, as we walked in two evenly spaced parallel lines from one class to the next – our white collared shirts tucked in, our hands behind our backs, and our socks never ever falling below our ankles.

The weekends offered me no respite. My parents’ social calendar kept my older sister and me busy at Yacht Club functions and dinner parties. We took elaborate vacations to European cities where we would get dressed up and dine in the world’s best restaurants, my innocence spoiled too early when my mom would give the American translation for escargot one bite too late.  

It was on these trips that I have the earliest memories of disgruntlement. Even dressed in complementary patterns, I found a way to ruin almost every family photo with a grimace and an expression I hoped would convey that I was dead in the eyes.

I longed to be back in my preferred vacation spot at Nonie and Pop’s in Somers Connecticut, accompanying Pop as he ran errands that seemed exotic to me, like going to the dump, and getting lost in his elaborate stories. Driving around in a hunter green truck, listening to a Patsy Cline compilation tape, the two of us would warble about our heartache, and our man’s cheating heart, getting nearly drunk on our bottles of Sarsaparilla soda.

A real man’s man, he bought me my first Swiss Army pocket knife, and spent the afternoon in his garage etching my initials into it. He could pass hours out at his bench, smoking pipe tobacco, making all sorts of things with nothing but his tools. When he made four matching coat racks, heights corresponding to the heights of my older sister, my two younger cousins, and me, I believed I’d never again know such luxury.

During one of my many summer breaks spent there, I stared wistfully at cattle farms and cornfields and told my mother that I wanted to live in a town just like Somers when I was older. I wonder what she saw when she glanced at the same winding roads. Tight-lipped, she refused to encourage my statement but was unwilling to spoil my fantasy too soon.

+++

My mom grew up in this tiny town, where women took home economics and men took shop. She had a big personality, so big as to be somewhat indecent. Though she couldn’t sing a note on key, she harbored a deep resentment when she wasn’t chosen for the school’s Christmas choir, heartbroken that she wouldn’t have her opportunity to shine in front of her classmates. She was like an artist without a medium, unable to help the fact that her charisma made her the center of attention. She received multiple detentions for disturbing classes, just by asking the wrong questions, or making ill-timed jokes. On some occasions, it was nothing more than the way she carried herself. She was nearly suspended when she addressed a teacher by her first name, Judy.

“Jud-day. Jud-ay Jud-ay,” she exclaimed with accompanying finger guns. Whether her punishment came because she violated a more literal code of conduct by using a teacher’s first name or because her outburst had too much rhythm is anyone’s guess.

Had she stayed in Somers, her future in town would have closely followed the script of some 1950s magazine advertisement - a never ending cycle of going to work at Friendly’s as a sundae specialist, and going home to her unairconditioned room, crying into her red shag carpet about a college boyfriend that cheated on her. Until eventually she would marry, move out of her parents’ house and into her husband’s.

Somewhere around the age of 22 or 23, she packed up and left with no intention of returning. Her parents made it clear that they would offer her no support, financial or emotional. Their prediction was that she’d back within six months; they were betting against her. She borrowed $600 from her cousin and aimed for California without a job or a place to live.

San Francisco would have been the perfect place for her - one where she walked crisp city streets with oversized sunglasses, and where no one would bat an eye at someone feeling eccentric enough to wear a beret and ascot.

+++

My mom must have looked at the Golden Gate Bridge and seen a gateway to her very destiny. I saw it and thought a little bit about death. That’s not so surprising, considering the iconography of the landmark, but as a teenager, I wondered how much thinking was too much. It’s not that I was necessarily suicidal, but I was pretty sure that few of my classmates had to reassure themselves that they weren’t.

I went from a grimacing adolescent to a grimacing teenager. I sulked, I despaired, I briefly starved myself. I was a good student, held leadership positions, and could talk circles around most of my classmates. But I would experience bouts of inescapable discomfort with my life. Playing soccer was almost the only thing that brought me any joy. I wasn’t a strong player and yet I felt that there was nothing else I was meant to do in this universe.

Soccer season meant grass stains, mud, shorts, and a team-wide loyalty to men’s deodorant – even from the pretty girls. I would leave for school in the morning with a bag packed to last me until 7 or 8 at night. I’d turn practice into dinner plans, often fully inserting myself into other family units. My mom stopped expecting me for dinner altogether. I was just a specter in the house that would trail filthy soccer socks in the hallways.

At social events, which I was somehow expected to attend, “showered” and “dressed, ” I felt like I was watching my life from the fourth wall - an outsider who belonged anywhere but there in that living room with groups of parents getting drunk enough to begin a sing-along. I wondered if anyone cared that it was a school night for me.

All my life, there seemed to be a social code I couldn’t crack. With the same rigor of a finishing school curriculum presenting all twenty-five levels of English peerage, my mom tried to teach me to keep track of divorces, facelifts, and civil forfeitures.

After my first week of college, I realized that at least part of my misunderstanding had to do with the fact that I was, and had all this time been, gay. Things clicked into place. My sulking, my misery, my inability to understand my mother’s wardrobe requirements – all mostly explained by my repressed sexuality.

I couldn’t connect with people because I hadn’t really looked at anybody in the eye, preferring to roll them around at sentiments I didn’t understand. Then I fell in love. While I had always thought of myself as emotionally blunt, snide, sarcastic, and frankly, mean, falling in love made me permanently soft.

+++

The fall of my junior year, Pop started to get sick. He hadn’t really been well for years. When I was 14 he had had a stroke, which caused a car accident, and he hadn’t been the same since. As a man already prone to watching five hours of westerns on television, he slowly became both couch-ridden and couch-like, sagging in his cheeks, his ears, his lower eye-lids. He was barely recognizable to us, and we to him.

That same fall, I had secretly begun dating my first girlfriend. I felt the weight of this secret, as it marked a severe departure from my parents’ plans for me. But then again, college-aged kids start keeping all sorts of secrets from their parents: bad grades, binges, assaults, depressions, girlfriends. It’s an awkward time for the impious.

When my mom called one morning on her way to visit Pop, she wondered if I would like to join her. And suddenly I heard myself saying, “Yes.”

I was living a secret life – an entire love story unfolding unbeknownst to my mom. And yet, while there was still a huge gulf between us, at least I had a better understanding of what made me so different. If we were going to build a bridge, then at least I knew where to begin building.

+++

It had been years since the garage was filled with pipe tobacco. Still, it was jarring to drive up that front way and know that my grandfather wasn’t inside, and was instead at a hospital down the road. I was advised not to visit him, because he didn’t recognize anyone, and said nasty things to people helping him. I decided to go. Mostly for my mom’s benefit, but also thinking that he might like to know I cared.

The moment I walked in the room, he looked straight at me and smiled however widely he could and, with full recognition, asked, “What are you doing here?” I wasn’t expecting that. His sudden brightness upended plans I had to stay cool. How do you bury someone who suddenly comes to life?

I told him, or tried to, through tears, that I was there to bust him out. My motorcycle was parked out front, and we were going to drive away together. He was a man who loved tall tales, and it seemed to be the only fitting explanation I could give him. Just as I started to believe it myself, the room returned to its reality. In his hospital bed, Pop looked deflated. He had needed to lose weight, but it appeared as if someone had just scooped half of him away, a couch without cushions. He was thirsty, begging for water. The nurse gave him a wet sponge to suck on. It suddenly seemed important to leave at once. I hugged him and choked out my goodbye, hating what that word meant under such circumstances.

Walking the hallway back to the car, my mom held me close

+++

We shared her childhood bedroom that weekend in Connecticut. I had my own twin bed in the room across the hall, but it was nice to share this piece of her too. Also Martha the doll sat right outside my room with her beady eyes never blinking. With all the death in the air I preferred not to walk past her on the way to the bathroom. On my mom’s bed, we leafed through her yearbook. There she was with her big hair and fake tan, looking beloved even in photographs, if that can be possible.

Somewhere near the back of the book, a note was scrawled around a senior’s headshot. The note from Rita, who bore a strong resemblance to Dorothy from the Golden Girls, started, “Dawn you dear thing you.”

“Oh Rita,” my mom sighed. “She used to pick me up on her scooter. We would ride around town all night. We had a hoot.”

And then, these words:

“She left town pretty soon after graduating and came out of the closet. I think she’s happier now. Oh I loved that big old lesbian.”

As a child, I had never met a lesbian, and I assumed that my mom hadn’t either. At best, my town had a beloved gay hairdresser, Christopher, but everyone knows that’s different. I’ve never owned a hair dryer in my life.

My mother was a socialite – world’s most gracious host, timeless style, knows the exact purpose of each wine glass she owns. I was a tomboy – t-ball champion, tree climber, obsessed with construction. The conflict that occurred between us over my wardrobe, my etiquette, and my demeanor was like a constant silent brooding. The subtext was that she was just waiting for me to grow up – to finally be the daughter she’s been shopping for her whole life.

She escaped a world where womanhood was synonymous with being meek and subservient and entered a world where she could live in full color. When she first arrived in San Francisco, one of her three jobs she took in exchange for clothes. She carried herself through the city, broke but well-dressed. Quick in her wake was the shadow of Somers – kids who lived there for life, parents who believed she would fail.  

But on her bed, looking through a class of ’78 yearbook, I saw her briefly as others do: warm, a friend to all, open-minded and non-judgmental. I had worried about coming out to her, but hearing that she rode on the back of Rita’s scooter, presumably with her arms tightly wrapped around a lesbian, I knew that she was the kind of person who could parent her gay child.

We spent the weekend together in her New England town, doing things I always thought were myths of a time gone by. As it turns out, corn mazes are very much a community event. We stopped at an apple farm, which had an apple souvenir shop run out of a barn. We found the one dozen apple cider donuts. And while we barreled through all twelve donuts I looked at her like there was no better delicacy in all the world; and she looked back at me like she’d always meant to tell me so.

We hiked a quarter mile to the top of Soapstone Mountain. The shallow valley below us was ablaze. Every leaf suddenly defined in its singularity, thanks to reds and oranges that we Californians could only imagine. And while I’m partial to the dramatic cliffs of the Pacific coast, there was something serene about how gently the hills rolled together. That weekend I caught a glimpse of the girl pointing finger guns and getting in trouble. Who was trying to make her way in the world, just like I was.

+++

My grandpa died, as grandparents do. A week after the funeral, I went home for Thanksgiving. On Wednesday, I came out to my family. Only my sister was surprised.

On Thursday, we went to a very typical Marin County Thanksgiving party. For the first time, I felt like I was in cahoots with my family. We now shared a secret. When we got home, my mom and I were in her bathroom. She flitted gruffly about until she just stopped and burst into tears. I scooped her up into my arms, like there was no gulf between us at all.

“I miss my Dad,” she cried. Her father hadn’t really been himself for years, so missing him in that moment didn’t make much sense. But death evades logic, and dead parents make daughters out of all of us.

But some connections need a time machine, and a moped scooter. Because she still doesn’t fully understand me as a human. There are times that I come home and my mom has three new dresses she would like me to try on.

As I step out of my room in a button down flannel instead, I see her look me up and down before deciding whether it’s too late in my life to instill crucial life lessons in me. She’ll propose, from time to time, that I “could be the kind of lesbian who wears skirts, you know.” There’s no amount of explanation that I could give that would convince her that skirts go against every aspect of my being, lesbian or not.  

The universe hands us oddly wrapped gifts. It was precisely in the context of a sad hospital visit that I shared one of the best weekends I’ve ever spent with my mom. If I were my mother’s classmate, I would probably have called her dear thing. Thirty years earlier, she might have even been my friend. Our only real problem was that I was her daughter, and she was my mother. And we are, to this day, two people who dared to dream of an elsewhere far from home.

+++

>> Katie: Damn.

>> Brian: Wow, I love that so much.

>> Annie: Thank you.

>> Katie: I can't believe it's not finished.

>> Annie: I don't know.

>> Brian: That's funny because that part feels so self contained. But at the same time I'm sure there's just so much else you have to say.

>> Annie: There is. But it will say the exercise of, like, I have ten minutes to do this, I need to cut out what's not necessary. Was really, really good.

>> Brian: The first time I ever read, I was like, "Oh shit, so much of what I write is bullshit."

>> Katie: Wait. You cut out things for the reading?

>> Annie: Yeah, this is half as long as...

>> Katie: So we've actually never heard the whole thing?

>> Annie: No one has.

>> Brian: So you kept that stuff for the real essay?

>> Annie: I mean, for like, the essay it lives in my computer. I don't know, but I will say, like, this is a fun version.

>> Brian: It's very tight.

>> Annie: And that's why it was just fun to read. And it focuses in on my mom a lot, which I love about it. So I don't know. Now I'm like I'm trying to... I don't want to kill my babies like no one does.

>> Brian: I also just spent a good month doing that.

>> Annie: If this is how it looked, I would be okay with it.

>> Brian: I feel like a lot of it is ideas that I have that I can explore at any time.

>> Katie: Well, I think it's a really good idea if you want to turn this into something longer, I think those ideas could be there

>> Annie: Yeah, it could either go shorter or longer.

>> Brian: Yeah, well, it's one of those things where if you wanted, you could always publish this as a stand alone, and then you can write it, like write that longer. But one of the one of my favorite aspects especially like hearing it the second time is how you give... whether your mom feels they're not, like, subconsciously or, you know, it's like above the threshold of her awareness... Like the fact that you give her this analog to your experience. "Oh, I was a woman who was too outspoken for my New England town" And then you have this other experience where I am a woman who's too tomboyish and androgenous, whatever you want to call it for her take, you know? But it's the same thing for her parents. But like clearly, it seems like she was way more understanding. But maybe it's because she went through that experience.

>> Annie: Can I just say my grandma was way too outspoken for her?

>> Brian: Really?

>> Annie: Yeah. So it just goes back in my lineage. It's just unbelievable.

>> Brian: There's just, like a little resistance there, but it's like it's not like animosity. It's like more.... just you have an idea of who your daughter is going to be.

>> Annie: My great grandparents did not want her to go to college, but they wanted her brother to go to college. So she paid for herself to go to college and was in the first graduating class at Springfield College or something.

>> Brian: And what did your grandparents feel?

>> Annie: My great grandparents. So this is my grandma being like I want to go to college and they're like, No, you're not. And she's like "I am". And so she did that and worked her whole life. My mom, they were like, "You can't go to culinary school" And she was like, "I'm moving to California", and they're like, "No, you're not". And she did. So, like, in that way, my parents are very supportive there. They're like "go to New York, you got it." But we're still learning how to talk about gender and stuff when I'm gonna wear a tie for a wedding. And she was like, "It's too hot for a tie at a wedding?". And I was like "what do men do at weddings?" And she's like, "Well, you're not a man."

>> Brian: My mom does the same thing. She says things like. You're telling me because you don't want me to wear a tie.

>> Annie: Yeah, so we still navigate that a lot. She's all good with the lesbian thing. It's the gender thing that she is trying to wrap her head around. But she's doing her best.

>> Katie: I mean we asked you before the podcast what personal pronouns you prefer and you said she/her. So is that why you still identify or...

>> Annie: No I do strongly identify as a woman and, like I'm very, very proud to be a woman. And I'm happy to be a woman. It is really interesting. I just went in for a suit fitting. First time I wore a suit, they used pronouns, and I was like, I didn't want to be like "Oh, no, no, I don't use that." So I didn't correct them. I should have cause, like, we should be advocating for our pronouns that we prefer.

>> Brian: Interesting. But that's also kind of cool of them because that's not wrong. It's just saying I'm not ascribing a particular thing.

>> Annie: And we're talking about what my style was, he was like, "You're into this androgynous athletic cut and look" and I'm like, "That's it", like. So I think that honed in on that. I don't think I identify with the gender neutral pronouns. I definitely identify as a woman. And I feel so much affinity for being a woman. But I'm like, just this year starting to, like, really embrace them more masculine sides of me as great.

>> Katie: And in general, I agree, kind of what they did is use a default they when you don't know. I was even in a long youth mental health pd today that was like eight hours long and it was like mental health 101. I was like, '' Why am I here? But they were still using, even in like, as noble is what they were trying to do, they were still using on their slide show the s slash he. And I was like, "You could just say they and that would be fine and it would encompass everyone and what you're trying to do. And so I have now used them as a default just in general.

>> Brian: And it subsumes everything.

>> Annie: Yeah, and it's so interesting. This is, like maybe a bit of an aside to that the ways that, like, I was like, I'm gonna put on a suit and I'm gonna get like, I'm gonna wear the suit. But I totally in my head was like, I am resigning myself to unfuckability. Like I am resigning myself to not being attractive because.

>> Katie: because of this wedding or just in general? That's what you want?

>> Annie: No, I think that, like, I always hated wearing dresses and so I never felt like when the time required it, that I could never not wear a dress.

>> Brian: And so that must be very uncomfortable for you.

>> Annie: Yeah, well, it's nice to dress up.

>> Brian: But wearing a suit is dressing up.

>> Annie: Yeah, and when I'm wearing things that are embracing that like, you can tell that my swagger is changing. I'm feeling a little bit. But it was so funny cause I was like, No, I'm resigning myself to being that eccentric person who wears a suit and focuses on her writing and her career or whatever. And then I'm dating someone who is like, no suits or so hot. And I was just like what? Like my mind was blown that all these rules transgressing from my mom that I could be it just shows you how deeply they're ingrained in me.

>> Brian: It's funny because I have never had that experience. For me it's obvious. We were just watching Dating Around. Have you heard about that?

>> Annie: No, no. What is that?

>> Katie: It's really addictive.

Brain: We already finished the first season or whatever it is, it's a season.

>> Katie: It's on Netflix.

>> Brian: Basically one person goes on five dates to the same restaurant. And then they go to drinks and then they pick one person to go with.

>> Annie: Oh, it's a callback to the era of MTV dating.

>> Brian: Exactly. Except it's like super classy and well shot.

>> Katie: It looks like it's not reality TV. And I would not be surprised to find out that it was all scripted, even though they're trying to sell it is reality. (laughter)

>> Brian: I think it's real, but I don't know. The conversation sounds real. But then there are these moments where they say the same thing to every day, so it's like, who knows? And then they cut it up and see how they react differently. But anyway, so in the episode where it was a gay woman like, you know, or I'm assuming she was gay, I don't know. She may have liked men too. But there was a really androgynous woman...

>> Katie: Who was by far the hottest one.

>> Brian: Katie's like, Oh, yeah, this is the hottest one, you know?

>> Annie: Yeah. It's deep in there. I'm unpacking it still, but, you know, we gotta have projects. We gotta have hobbies. (laughter)

>> Brian: And it's also really interesting because you're from near San Fran and...

>> Annie: I know. That's the worst part.

>> Brian: But you come from this conservative county, so it's like that's super strange because someone hears "Oh, you're from San Francisco. This is tough for you?" Like I mean, not that it isn't for people in San Francisco, but you do come from a conservative place.

>> Annie: Oh yeah. It's so interesting because they're a liberal place and I'm putting that in quotes for people who can't see that I'm doing this. But like, it's a very liberal county, just like Duke is a liberal campus. And so, like, conservative means something so different. And that's why I'm drawn to this area. Because I'm like, "Why are you all calling yourself... Like, Why are we talking about being liberal when, like exactly so much work to do?"

>> Brian: Totally. This is why I've kind of totally detached myself from the idea of liberal and conservative because I grew up in a blue state. I grew up outside of Baltimore, but it was a conservative place. It was not a liberal place, you know, like this.

>> Katie: That's the same as Little Rock. I'm from Little Rock Arkansas.

>> Brian: Cities are really the only liberal place.

>> Katie: Little Rock is literally only a blue district because it's a city and the surrounding all of Arkansas is red, but, like in general, in Little Rock, I mean, there're so many conservative viewpoints that I just felt suffocated.

>> Annie: Yeah, or you like, just, like, not necessarily like, "Oh, if it came to voting, maybe like, I would definitely vote liberal." But if you're gossiping about someone who looks like you can't place their gender then that is a conservative value.

>> Katie: Oh, yeah. Forget about androgyny. They, them in Little Rock. My Little Rock friends might get pissed off about this, but that's true.

>> Brian: To me more than anything, honestly, it just blows up the idea of being a liberal conservative. To me, the reason cities are so much more liberal is because we're all packed in together and we have to learn to live with each other, and it makes everything better. That's why I identify, I'm now doing quotes, as a liberal. But we all have certain conservative values. There's certain things that were more like, you know, a little more drawn into ourselves about. But yeah, that's a really interesting thing, because I there's a lot of things you have in your life that I relate to. I'm just not gay.

>> Annie: I would imagine that you are slightly more emotionally sensitive than most men.

>> Brian: I agree. I feel that way (laughs)

>> Katie: Oh 100%

>> Annie: So that might be you're coming out of the closet moment. Like "I have feelings".

>> Brian: I've known that (laughs)

>> Annie: No. No, I'm just saying that, like, just growing up with people in conservative that we're talking about in that way, like men aren't allowed to have an emotion, right? That makes you unique.

>> Brian: Right.

>> Annie: Very true. That means to transgress some of the social order.

>> Brian: Yeah, and I mean, honestly, I'm just lucky enough that I think the culture of my friends growing up was like that. I mean, don't get me wrong. Growing up in the early 2000s, it's like we're still using Gay is like, you know... not to bring up Louis CK... You know, whatever you feel about him...

>> Katie: Leave him out of this.

>> Brian: Unfortunately, back then that's what people said. And thank God we don't anymore, but that's like kind of a not very liberal thing to say. But none of us had a problem with gay people.

>> Annie: And what you're saying too. My girlfriends were so cool with me being like this, like sexless, androgynous person. None of my high school friends were wondering why I don't have a boyfriend. They're just like you're just who you are. And then it wasn't until I went out into this uber elite world of being at Duke where I was like, "Why don't I have a boyfriend?"

>> Brian: When was it? Do you remember? Like what year?

>> Annie: When I came out?

>> Brian: When you realised.

>> Annie: The first week of college. I was like, "Wow, here it is."

>> Brian: What was it about college?

>> Annie: I think that I probably was like "I'll meet a boy in college" and then I got to college and I was like, "I don't want to date any of you."

>> Brian: Man, that's so crazy.

>> Annie: Within the first week. Just like crashing like true, true, this is what's happening? Now I'm gonna explore it. I just know this is true.

>> Brian: Now, as a psychology major, I feel like, you know, I don't know if you guys know but the one of the gold standards for like, comparisons is comparing twins that have been separated for twins out of state together like twins. Because then you can see, the genetics are the same and then you see this together and apart. I feel like in terms of repression, there can be so much to mind between, like gay people and straight people, you know what I mean? Like if you could just, like if you had twins that were gay or something... I don't know, I'm not just spitballing...

>> Annie: To Katie's point, like people experience repression for all sorts of things.

>> Brian: So that's what I'm saying. It's like there's such a desire to come out. Because let's say someone represses the fact that they like a video game.

>> Annie: Yeah, repress that. It's tough (laughs)

>> Brian: Yeah, whatever. There's not this doom that builds. It's like being gay is like I want to live the way I want to live. Sex is a huge part of people's lives, you know? That's why I feel like there could be... I don't know.

>> Annie: And it's so interesting. So I've been thinking a lot now that I'm hopefully getting a job or going to be working in advocacy because when I was coming out, I was, like, so devastated. I really didn't want to do it. Did not want to deal with this hurdle because I just didn't see any sort of like, Oh, I want have sex with someone. I didn't think about that at all. My friend made me make a list of the reasons why I wanted to come out.And the first two items were like, I want to be a role model for other people who need to come out, and I want to help other people make this easier for them because it's so hard for me. Bottom of my list is that I want to be happy. Like that's a backwards list. My happiness should have come first. Like it's admirable that my intention was that I wanted to do it for other people. But that means that you're in a world where my gayness was in service of other people, which is not good. So I'm like, trying very hard to authentically flip that script a little bit and be like, This is about my happiness and then I can help others fix your safety mask to your face for you.

>> Brian: Yeah, right.

>> Annie: I definitely have so much more to say about this, and I know we can't keep going, but like I have so many thoughts about the way that I've made my gayness... or that's not even a term sorry everyone...

>> Brian: Eh, I've heard it.

>> Annie: But like work for other people or like in the service of the world where then I feel like I wanted to be the right kind of gay or I need to, like, hold myself a certain standard. Or I can't transgress gender too much because then people would be like, watch your gayness, you know, watch it. But I can now tell I can now rethink and be like this has been in the back of my mind the entire time that I've been an out woman is that I've been carefully toeing the line of like I'll be gay but like you won't even notice. You won't even notice me. Don't worry, I'll be quiet over here.

>> Katie: Oh my God, I have, like everything that you're saying right now it felt one like 100%. I mean I am a person who feels very fluid in my sexuality with a male partner and so like I keep it very close mouthed because of that because I'm just like "Okay, well, that guy, right now I am like whatever I am masquerading, like as a straight person with a male partner" and like I don't know. What you just said resonates fully with me.

>> Annie: Yeah. And I think that we should all like, I don't know, try to be thoughtful about fluidity. Not saying that you need to explore, but I'm just saying... I'm definitely not saying that.

>> Brian: I mean, honestly, I think you should. I'll tell you right now, I don't really have barriers about it. Like I have thought about it and like, I know what you're saying. I don't think that should be taboo.

>> Annie: No.

>> Brian: The whole point, it shouldn't feel like it's being forced upon.

>> Annie: Right. That's what I'm trying to say.

>> Brian: Because the only reason I would feel that way is if we still have stigmas about certain ways to live.

>> Annie: Right. So if it would only feel that way if we placed so much more value on being heterosexual. So that's what I'm trying to say.

>> Brian: Exactly, which is a knee jerk reaction in society. You know, it's funny. It's like when you watch movies and TV a lot of the time when parents hear their kids come out on a TV show or a movie, so much you hear. "Oh, no, I'm just upset because it's going to be so hard for them".

>> Annie: Yeah. And my parents were like "Are you safe?"

>> Brian: Yeah. And I think there's truth to that. But at the same time, I do think that that's a smokescreen sometimes, for "I'm actually still upset about this" because you're ingrained to feel upset about it. You know what I mean?

>> Annie: Yeah, and we live in a fear culture. And we live in a culture that we're all too safe, a little bit in a way, like even being an artist is really hard because people are like, "What are you doing?" And I feel like there are so many parallels I draw between being gay and being an artist that they feel in the same to me because they're both hiding something outside of the norm or a profit making endeavor.

>> Brian: Capitalism doesn't value us at all.

>> Annie: No, no, it's so interesting how the bravery to be gay is the same bravery that it takes to write.

>> Katie: What you just said, Brian, that life's just gonna be so hard for them... Most growing up, most people thought that my younger brother was gay and he's totally straight.

>> Brian: Probably because he's gorgeous. (laughs). He's an actor.

>> Katie: If you imagine the six foot tall, blonde haired, crystal blue eyed version of me, that's my brother and he's a little movie star. Now he's out in LA.

>> Brian: And he looks like Katie. So if I'm going to find out if I have any gay tendencies... (laughs)

>> Annie: Yeah, you should hook up with him.

>> Katie: That's my brother Roy. My brother Roy Rainey. But like most of my family at some point questioned whether or not he was gay. And they often questioned whether or not he was gay to me. And I was like, "That's not the sibling you should be talking about." And I've actually never come out to my family so if they're listening to this... I said that last night on the podcast. Last episode on the podcast with Chris I was like, "Well, shit we're talking about all this."

>> Annie: She's in good hands.

>> Katie: Yeah. I was like, "Well, I've never actually said that to any of my family" cause I've never brought home a partner who wasn't male because I knew what I was dealing with. So, yeah, so that's what I don't know, just like that whole... they said that exact thing to me. Like, you know, "I just worry about how he'll live" is what they said about Roy.

>> Brian: Because it's the thing that hedges against both. It's like I am upset, but I don't have to say I'm upset that you're gay. I can say I'm upset because you're gay, you know?

>> Annie: And then you're like, "Of course I'm gonna move to New York, and it's going to be fine." And they're like New York, big city.. like the unraveling of living this hedonistic lifestyle of New York.

>> Brian: Oh, yeah, I was the poster child of that.

>> Katie: I was more hedonistic in every other country that I've lived in than in New York. New York, I feel like I'm my most tame.

>> Annie: That's awesome.

>> Katie: So we're coming to a close.

>> Annie: Yeah, it's been so fun.

Kaite: I just want to ask you real quick is like, what else are you working on right now?

>> Annie: I don't know. I'm in a transition period. I did the whole job thing, and that was very distracting. And I'm like sometimes you finish something and you're like I'll never do anything that good again. But I have some ideas. One of the things I really want to work on is, I think a lot about loneliness. I had this experience when I first got here. And I was like accepting that I was an introvert. And I got to New York and I was like, This is amazing. I could be anonymous. And then I accidentally stumbled upon a sex themed burlesque show.

>> Katie: Oh my God, I love it.

>> Annie: Yeah, it was like I'm very uncomfortable with sex. In a public way. I'm fine with partners.

>> Katie: Oh you are from the South.

>> Brian: Well she's from San Francisco.

>> Katie: I understand that.

>> Annie: But may as well be a part of it. So the host arrives and is just like you guys ready to get sexy? And I was just like, "Oh, God, no, What just happened?" And then she was like, "Okay, I want you to find a stranger in the audience and make ninety seconds of eye contact." And I was like, "No", and as I looked into her eyes, I realized that I was gonna, like start crying because I was like, intimacy I got was like accepting this introversion and me and feeling good is a lone ranger. But then it was like, "Oh, like you're a little lonely because like that intimacy really triggered something." You missed that. And so, just like And if you've read Lonely City by Olivia Lang.

>> Brian: No

>> Katie: No

>> Annie: Yeah, there's just some thoughts about I don't know... like opening windows to look out and open windows to look in and whether you're making eye contact in a direct way. I don't know. I'll have to sit with that one for a while.

>> Katie: I like it. I want to read it.

>> Annie: Don't put that pressure on me.

>> Katie: I want to read it. Oh, I'm saying it on the air. Thank you so much for this conversation. It has been awesome.

>> Annie: Thank you guys for having me. This is the highlight of my week.

>> Brian: Wow. More than getting the job?

>> Annie: Yes, as soon as I said that (laughter)...

>> Katie: That's ok. You got the job. This has been fun but you got a really awesome job. (laughter)

>> Annie: Thank you, guys. Thank you so much.

>> Katie: Thank you.

>> Brian: OK, that's it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you're listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at deadrabbitsbks or Facebook and Instagram at DeadRabbitsBooks or through our website deadrabbitsbooks.com . This has been the 12th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast with me, your host Brian Birnbaum, featuring Annie Krabbenschmidt, whose work you confined at www.annsplain.com. That is annsplain as in manSplain... and it's produced by Katie Rainey, without whom we would merely be three of Shakespeare's thousand monkeys banging on a typewriter.