Speaker 1: Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Speaker 1: Barbary Lane. Welcome to a special episode of Full Circle
Speaker 1: the Podcast. I am your host, Charles Tyson Junior, and
Speaker 1: today I am delighted to be sitting with our guest.
Speaker 1: He is a wonderful author, storyteller, educator, and what a
Speaker 1: human being. Wayne Scott is here to talk about his
Speaker 1: memoir The Maps They gave us One Marriage Reimagined, and
Speaker 1: I am here to tell you that it is a
Speaker 1: wonderful read and I can't wait to talk to him
Speaker 1: about it. Wayne. How are you welcome to the Full
Speaker 1: Circle Table.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you very much for inviting me. It's an honor.
Speaker 1: I've been looking looking forward to this. I just finished
Speaker 1: the last thirty pages last night.
Speaker 2: Last I'm bowing to you, like not like the writer's soul,
Speaker 2: like like somebody, especially in this day and age, somebody
Speaker 2: saying they read it.
Speaker 1: I mean, oh, I inhaled everything, but the last thirty
Speaker 1: pages in like less than a week because I read
Speaker 1: it while I'm at work, because I have a little
Speaker 1: bit of downtime. It worked, okay, okay, and then I
Speaker 1: got busy and I had the last thirty pages and
Speaker 1: it was causing me to have a little tick.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, that's so cool for me to hear.
Speaker 1: So this is a deeply personal story, obviously mamoors usually are.
Speaker 1: But you talk about a lot of deep things. Uh family, identity, Uh, sexuality.
Speaker 1: Why don't you tell us a little bit about, or
Speaker 1: more than a little bit, what the maps they gave
Speaker 1: us is about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, first of all, maybe what it can say
Speaker 2: is where the title comes from. The title comes from
Speaker 2: a love poem that was written by the lesbian feminist
Speaker 2: poet Adrian Rich in the seventies, a series of poems
Speaker 2: called the twenty one Love Poems, and it was about
Speaker 2: the beginning of her relationship with another woman, and it
Speaker 2: was very much about what it's like to love each
Speaker 2: other in a world that's hostile to your love. And
Speaker 2: so the line is, whatever we do together is pure invention.
Speaker 2: The maps they gave us were out of date by years.
Speaker 1: Beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so she's very much talking about how for
Speaker 2: queer couples we have to chart our own course. We
Speaker 2: have to forge a different path. You know, we can't
Speaker 2: actually fit into the kind of heteronormative containers that are
Speaker 2: supplied to us. They won't fit and so we have
Speaker 2: to figure out some creatively, imaginatively, we have to design
Speaker 2: our own containers. And so this very much fits with
Speaker 2: my experience. My spouse and I are in what psychologists,
Speaker 2: I'm going to just a clunky term here, what psychologists
Speaker 2: call a mixed orientation relationship, which means she's straight and
Speaker 2: I'm not. You know, I identify as queer or bisexual,
Speaker 2: and and you know those don't fit those kinds of
Speaker 2: relationships don't fit in the usual heteronormative script. Although you
Speaker 2: know for I'm not, I'm not, I'm not unlike many
Speaker 2: bisexual guys who marry women and move in straight passing relationships,
Speaker 2: and that you try, you try. This is what this
Speaker 2: is what, this is the form, the container that is
Speaker 2: given to you by your the people that you want
Speaker 2: to please and get approval from minister's family, things like that,
Speaker 2: and so you try. And you know, when my spouse
Speaker 2: and I made are marriage vows, right, we were in
Speaker 2: our late twenties. And you don't know what do.
Speaker 1: You know what? You don't know much in your twenties.
Speaker 2: No, and you don't know much in your sixties. I
Speaker 2: mean you can't foretell, right, you can't see what life
Speaker 2: is going to be like. You don't know a lot
Speaker 2: about what it's going to be like to get older,
Speaker 2: to age. You don't know like the ways in which
Speaker 2: desire and intimacy shift and evolve as two people are
Speaker 2: aging together within the same receptacle. And so for us,
Speaker 2: at least the heteronormative container we had it, it didn't
Speaker 2: it didn't fit. At a certain point, at about the
Speaker 2: fifteen year mark, we had a bit of a crisis
Speaker 2: and I realized I had kind of lopped off this
Speaker 2: huge important part of myself. It's almost like I had
Speaker 2: forgotten who I was in a way that I just
Speaker 2: kind of I couldn't tolerate anymore. The loneliness and the
Speaker 2: desperation and the desolation was too much. And I also
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to talk to her about it, because,
Speaker 2: again with the script that was a supply to us
Speaker 2: about what a heteronormative marriage is supposed to look like,
Speaker 2: for me to initiate the conversation would be to initiate
Speaker 2: a conversation about divorce. That's that's how it felt like.
Speaker 2: We have a very binary way of thinking about all
Speaker 2: these different you know, whether it's male or female or
Speaker 2: monogamy or they are straight or marriage or divorce, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: or monogamy or not. Like it's they're very polarized ways.
Speaker 2: And and in fact, human humans, human relationships and humans
Speaker 2: are messier and more fluid than that. Right. And we
Speaker 2: need and we need to find containers. Maybe we need
Speaker 2: to reinvent, reimagine containers that are going to allow us
Speaker 2: more room to grow, to evolve, to heal sometimes.
Speaker 1: Right. And I think it also comes down to I
Speaker 1: think wiring because some people I was actually just having
Speaker 1: this conversation a couple of days ago, how like, I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm wired for something like an open relationship.
Speaker 2: Mm hm, like.
Speaker 1: I And I think part of that is, you know,
Speaker 1: in my twenties and thirties, I was such a hoe.
Speaker 1: So when I'm ready to settle down, I'm ready to
Speaker 1: like settle down.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm seeing more and more with friends that they're
Speaker 1: exploring open relationships, and to me from the outside, it
Speaker 1: just looks so messy.
Speaker 2: Yep, No, you're right, it is messy.
Speaker 1: But if it works, I mean, you know, I try
Speaker 1: to like not sit in judgment because if it's working
Speaker 1: for you and no one's getting hurt. Who am I
Speaker 1: to have anything to say?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just don't think I'm wired that way.
Speaker 1: So if you are good at god speed, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 2: Well, And I actually appreciate you saying what you just said,
Speaker 2: because I think it's very important to come into any
Speaker 2: conversation like this with out an agenda and without being
Speaker 2: prescriptive or dogmatic that one relationship form is superior to another.
Speaker 2: We all have to find our way, right. And actually,
Speaker 2: you know when you first said I am not wired
Speaker 2: for nominogamy, honestly, Charles, I would have said that. I
Speaker 2: would have said that a couple of years ago to
Speaker 2: you know, And the period of time that's depicted in
Speaker 2: the memoir is a period. It's a it's a crucible,
Speaker 2: it's a period of intense struggle with this couple trying
Speaker 2: this marital experiment. Can we transition into a non monogamous
Speaker 2: form from what we had? And we didn't know it
Speaker 2: was going to work, We really didn't. We thought of
Speaker 2: it as an experiment and it was quite fraught for
Speaker 2: you know, for about a year, it was quite fraud
Speaker 2: But at a certain point, as with everything, you do
Speaker 2: it enough you start to develop your your routines and
Speaker 2: your grooves and your guardrails, and you figure out how
Speaker 2: how this is, how we can make this safe. And
Speaker 2: you know, one of the biggest ways for us, that's
Speaker 2: in the memoir that we made it safe was to
Speaker 2: make sure that we always honored our bond to each other. Right,
Speaker 2: you know that we had to continuously nurture our bond
Speaker 2: and have very open discussions about you know, how were
Speaker 2: these other relationships going to be Where were they going
Speaker 2: to sit in relationship to the to the thing that
Speaker 2: was important to both of us, which is what was
Speaker 2: both our bond but also our family. We had three
Speaker 2: school aged children.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it felt very like our marriage is this,
Speaker 1: anything else is that and that cannot affect this and
Speaker 1: vice versa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I want to say too, like
Speaker 2: I because I'm a psychotherapist myself and I work with
Speaker 2: a lot of non monogamous couples. There's so many forms
Speaker 2: this takes, and in many ways I probably have you know,
Speaker 2: I'm probably more vanilla flavor of polyamory than the average person.
Speaker 2: And that we do like our marriage is the central
Speaker 2: thing and then we have outside relationships and not everybody
Speaker 2: does it that way some some people do it in
Speaker 2: a way where they're more equal egalitarian. All relationships are important.
Speaker 2: There's just so many ways to do it. And I
Speaker 2: have respect for all of them, actually, and I have
Speaker 2: I have respect for people who are in monogamous bonds
Speaker 2: as well. It's it's hard no matter what you do, right,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be its. It's both joyful, but it's also
Speaker 2: struggle whenever two people are trying to move through life
Speaker 2: and tandem right.
Speaker 1: And I guess it comes down to what are the
Speaker 1: needs being met by each relationship? Yeah, right, because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, not every everyone can't be everything, So you
Speaker 1: need to find the healthiest way to get those needs met,
Speaker 1: keeping everyone basically safe and sane. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: tap dance, I feel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, you know it is it is. It
Speaker 2: is a dance. And you have to be conscious of
Speaker 2: what your what your partner's doing, what they're needing. You know,
Speaker 2: you have to keep your eyes on each other, out
Speaker 2: of out of a place of caring.
Speaker 1: A very tense part for me anyway. I was like
Speaker 1: literally on the edge of my seat when I was reading.
Speaker 1: Was the moments when you made that you both made
Speaker 1: the decisions to introduce the other to your other, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you're both having varying degrees of you know,
Speaker 1: how should I be? Wait, I kind of like this person?
Speaker 1: Should I like this person?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, I mean it's when we first started down
Speaker 2: this path, we decided that, because of our own history,
Speaker 2: because of our own emotional dynamic, if we were going
Speaker 2: to have this experiment, she had to go first. She
Speaker 2: had to make connections with other people and see how
Speaker 2: that would go for her. It couldn't be me going first.
Speaker 1: Because that would be too close to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it would. I think it could
Speaker 2: be seen as self serving. I I just she was
Speaker 2: the more I think she was of the two of us,
Speaker 2: she was a little bit more ambivalent about going down
Speaker 2: this path. I mean I also had my anxieties about it,
Speaker 2: but I think she was She had a little bit
Speaker 2: more ambivalence, and so just out of respect for you know,
Speaker 2: for me not to get out too far ahead of her,
Speaker 2: to respect her pace. Yeah, Yeah, basically that was it.
Speaker 2: But you know the thing is, even when she sort
Speaker 2: of was connecting with other men, having dates and things
Speaker 2: like that, it was like very threatening for me. Like
Speaker 2: I didn't think it I didn't imagine. I didn't think
Speaker 2: it would be, but it but it was. It was.
Speaker 2: And the first couple of times she went out, these
Speaker 2: are these are all stories that are in the memoir.
Speaker 2: I was miserable. I was miserable at home waiting, you know,
Speaker 2: like I kept thinking I should have something to do
Speaker 2: productive with my time to distract myself. I should watch
Speaker 2: a movie, stuff like that, and I kept just be like,
Speaker 2: I'm just waiting. I was just like waiting looking out
Speaker 2: the window at the parking spot where her car was
Speaker 2: supposed to be, just waiting for her to come home,
Speaker 2: which is just the worst thing you can do. It's
Speaker 2: not I do not advise that as a way to
Speaker 2: deal with the first a few times your partner goes
Speaker 2: out on a date. But that's what I did. I
Speaker 2: was I just I just made myself miserable, right.
Speaker 1: And then when she comes home and she's not miserable,
Speaker 1: she had the nerve to have a good time.
Speaker 2: Then, yeah, I mean what A lot of no monogamous
Speaker 2: couples refer that refer to that as re entry dynamics.
Speaker 2: When you come back to the to the person who
Speaker 2: was left, you know, and both people often are in
Speaker 2: very different emotional spaces that way, and you gotta and
Speaker 2: you gotta have conversations about how do we want to
Speaker 2: navigate that, what's the level of transparency we want to
Speaker 2: have about what each of us is up to and
Speaker 2: things like that, how do we what's the right level
Speaker 2: of connections to each other's lives as well as protection?
Speaker 1: And I imagine also because what basically was the impetus
Speaker 1: for this whole thing was you had a moment of
Speaker 1: you know, we'll call it infidelity, and so you probably
Speaker 1: had a moment of like, do I even deserve to
Speaker 1: do I even have the right to have any feelings
Speaker 1: about this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Definitely there was betrayal, right, and there were behaviors
Speaker 2: that I am not proud to talk about. But I think,
Speaker 2: you know, like many human beings, you know, I had
Speaker 2: kind of backed myself into a corner having agreed to
Speaker 2: a marital form that didn't allow me enough room to
Speaker 2: have it, to even have that conversation that this isn't
Speaker 2: this isn't working or fitting for me, Like, I didn't
Speaker 2: know how to have that conversation, because to have that
Speaker 2: conversation would be akin to asking for divorce. Within the
Speaker 2: model we had been supplied right, right, And my thing was,
Speaker 2: I want to be married to you. I'm still in
Speaker 2: love with you. I don't ever want to not be
Speaker 2: with you, but I also want to be able to
Speaker 2: acknowledge this other part of who I am. Right, And again,
Speaker 2: there's just not there's a lot of erasure in our
Speaker 2: culture around when it comes to queer and bisexual, especially
Speaker 2: bisexual identities.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing, like as as a bisexual man,
Speaker 1: like I completely understand. That's why, you know, when I
Speaker 1: was still dating cis gender women, they had to be queer.
Speaker 2: They had to like at that table, yeah, because then
Speaker 2: they would understand, they would they would they be able
Speaker 2: to I mean it wouldn't mean that it would be
Speaker 2: completely easy, but they would understand why you couldn't just
Speaker 2: kind of buy into a heteronormative container that wasn't going
Speaker 2: to fit for you, right.
Speaker 1: And you know then because inevitably the tired tropes start
Speaker 1: coming in. Well, I can't compete with a man, it's
Speaker 1: not a competition, huh yeah, yeah, you know, or you're
Speaker 1: just gay.
Speaker 2: Right obviously not right? Right? Yeah, you know, it's interesting
Speaker 2: I learned there's a there's a potential when you go
Speaker 2: down this path to learn an awful lot about yourself
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't that you wouldn't know otherwise. So, like
Speaker 2: you know, I mentioned that when she would go out
Speaker 2: on dates, I would stay at home and have a
Speaker 2: private little crisis of masculine pride. A lot of stuff
Speaker 2: insecurity came up about my own male identity and having
Speaker 2: grown up as a kind of a misfit boy right
Speaker 2: in a heteronormative world, being very kind of genderly typical myself.
Speaker 2: I had absorbed a lot of shame. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of residual shame that I just don't fit in
Speaker 2: this world. I'm not right. There's something wrong with my boyhood,
Speaker 2: my masculinity. And this came up very powerful from powerfully
Speaker 2: for me. When she went out with a regular heado
Speaker 2: sexual guy, he was the better guy, you know, yes,
Speaker 2: And I either some part of me wanted to be
Speaker 2: a normal guy who doesn't when they're a kid, especially
Speaker 2: you know, you want because what you would be safe
Speaker 2: then then people wouldn't pick on you as much. So
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff. But interestingly, because we had committed
Speaker 2: this to this path of nominogamy, the way that I
Speaker 2: had to manage that internal sense of threat. I couldn't impose.
Speaker 2: I couldn't try to control her and say, well, you
Speaker 2: just can't do that anymore because it brings up too
Speaker 2: much unpleasantness in me. I couldn't do that. I had
Speaker 2: you actually have to go inward and say, Okay, I
Speaker 2: need to understand this part of myself. And and for me,
Speaker 2: painful as it was, it was a really really important reckoning.
Speaker 2: You know that I had absorbed, still had absorbed so
Speaker 2: many messages that there was something wrong with the way
Speaker 2: I showed up as a guy in the world that
Speaker 2: I needed to still let go of. I needed to
Speaker 2: shed those supplied and just structive definitions of masculinity, that
Speaker 2: the way that the way that I was a man
Speaker 2: was perfectly.
Speaker 1: Fine, exactly. And you know, I've been a huge proponent
Speaker 1: of the idea that there is more than one way
Speaker 1: to be a man, and I used to say there's
Speaker 1: no wrong way, but examples that make that statement wrong
Speaker 1: keep coming up these days or whatever. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: I totally, I totally get that. And when you're a
Speaker 1: bisexual man, you're walking that line because if you're dating men,
Speaker 1: if you're in the space where that is the accepted
Speaker 1: norm you know, then you run the risk of not
Speaker 1: being gay enough, and then the in the the other
Speaker 1: after that, you're you're a quote unquote too gay. So
Speaker 1: it's like, how do I set those levels? It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a unique thing for for queer and by folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I still like a little guilty confession here,
Speaker 2: But like, I still feel like I have a very
Speaker 2: uneasy relationship to the words queer and gay because experientially
Speaker 2: I feel like I belong. But I also, I mean,
Speaker 2: I still live under the same roof with my wife.
Speaker 2: I still I still have enormous privileges in moving through
Speaker 2: the world in a straight passing relationship. And so sometimes
Speaker 2: I feel I feel, I feel like sometimes when I say,
Speaker 2: when I refer to myself as being queer, I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm going to get thrown out of the club,
Speaker 2: or that there's some kind of police that are going
Speaker 2: to show up and say, you know what, h no,
Speaker 2: You're not living with enough danger and risk. But I
Speaker 2: mean I think, you know, I mean, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean I'm not as straight passing now as I was
Speaker 2: pre having all these publications. You know, like now most
Speaker 2: people know that I'm an odd ball, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm a kind of my own weirdo, and I'm happy
Speaker 2: that way. You know, I'm happy, I'm kind of proudly
Speaker 2: kind of charting my own path. But I didn't always
Speaker 2: used to be that way.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, I think it was at your wedding
Speaker 1: or after the wedding, I think you like said to
Speaker 1: your mom, can you like just drop a little hint
Speaker 1: about my queerness just to let.
Speaker 2: People know, yeah, that I'm not even though we were
Speaker 2: getting married in a relatively conventional looking form that, at
Speaker 2: least at that point in the game, I did not
Speaker 2: want to. I didn't want people to think I was
Speaker 2: losing that awareness who I was. I didn't want it
Speaker 2: to be perceived as me converting. Right. That was actually
Speaker 2: the most frightening thing of all is that anyone witnessing
Speaker 2: our marriage would think, oh, gay men can just change them. Well,
Speaker 2: let's just ask them all to change. Let's just start
Speaker 2: putting pressure on our sons to sort of like to
Speaker 2: be to go back out and go out with girls,
Speaker 2: and if they just give it a try, they'll be.
Speaker 2: That would that would, to me, would be the most
Speaker 2: toxic thing for people to take from our being together,
Speaker 2: our our our wedding ceremony.
Speaker 1: Yet the right girl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but but but in a world that is
Speaker 2: still still to this day so hostile. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's getting I mean, I just feel like I feel
Speaker 2: like we made so much progress and now I just
Speaker 2: feel like it it is. I never thought it could
Speaker 2: be so terrifyingly retro.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I It's funny. I'm revisiting so many conversations
Speaker 1: that I've been having with you today. I was just
Speaker 1: talking about how, you know, I came out in the
Speaker 1: early nineties and and like that whole decade, queerness was
Speaker 1: still taboo. You know, we still had we were on
Speaker 1: the well not really tail end of, but we're on
Speaker 1: the the the later part.
Speaker 2: Of the AIDS very dangerous right.
Speaker 1: Sex of any kind still has that that specter around it.
Speaker 1: People were still equating homosexuality with with AIDS. So there
Speaker 1: was still that permeating homophobia in in society. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's what we were dealing with. So my queerness and
Speaker 1: my being out throughout that decade felt very confrontational. It
Speaker 1: felt very you know, punk rock. It felt very you know,
Speaker 1: I'm here, You're going to deal with me. You're gonna
Speaker 1: like it. And if you don't like it. And it's
Speaker 1: starting to feel like that again, Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: haven't had a bottle thrown at me from a moving
Speaker 1: car in broad daylight yet, so at least it's different
Speaker 1: in that sense. But so, yeah, we're going backwards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting to me, I said, I
Speaker 2: might get sad talking about this because it just hits
Speaker 2: so close to home. But the way, the degree to
Speaker 2: which our larger authoritarian structures are picking on trans kids
Speaker 2: is just killing me because I'm so much more aware currently,
Speaker 2: and I'm a parent, I'm so much more aware now
Speaker 2: of how incredibly vulnerable that tiny group of kids are
Speaker 2: in the world, you know, Like, and they do not
Speaker 2: need any more hostility piled on top of them. They
Speaker 2: do not need any more peace people in the world
Speaker 2: telling them there's something wrong with them. They are already
Speaker 2: a bit vulnerable in this you know, kind of brutal world.
Speaker 2: But then just being a kid is vulnerable. But then
Speaker 2: being a kid who doesn't kind of fit the mold.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's a little bit easier, depend
Speaker 2: on what region of the country you're in. But but
Speaker 2: the other piece of me, you know, remembering back to
Speaker 2: our history, you know, and Stonewall is remembering you know what,
Speaker 2: watch who you pick on, Watch who you pick on,
Speaker 2: because you know it. The first people who fought back
Speaker 2: at Stonewall were our non binary siblings. They were they
Speaker 2: were the first person people to fight back with ferocity,
Speaker 2: and people sometimes forget that. So, you know, So there's
Speaker 2: also a part of me that's like, you know, we
Speaker 2: have been here before where there was this cultural animosity
Speaker 2: towards the queer community. We've been here before, and in
Speaker 2: a way we kind of know what to do. You know.
Speaker 2: You just don't lose your voice. You know. The people
Speaker 2: who are positioned to be strong and to raise their voice,
Speaker 2: you know, have to keep doing that, you know. And
Speaker 2: I see them out there, you know, I see people
Speaker 2: out there saying that this is wrong, what we're doing
Speaker 2: and how we're talking. Especially again, I'm just particularly sensitized
Speaker 2: now to the to the plight of trans kids. But
Speaker 2: you know, we got we gotta stay strong.
Speaker 1: And indeed we really do. And luckily, you know, we
Speaker 1: now come from that stock of activism and rebelliousness, you know,
Speaker 1: And this is the part that it cracks me up
Speaker 1: because it's, you know, the idea that queer folks are weak.
Speaker 1: It's like, we spent a lot of our lives fighting,
Speaker 1: like what makes you think, you know, and we have
Speaker 1: these people that, you know, the ones making these decisions
Speaker 1: are overfed, overprivileged, never had to go through anything significant, right,
Speaker 1: and they're coming at us who've had to like overcome
Speaker 1: all of the things, you know, make something fabulous out
Speaker 1: of nothing. It's like, why do you think that you
Speaker 1: can come for us like that?
Speaker 2: Right? Right? Right? Yeah? I mean, and I love you
Speaker 2: saying I love that you just said making something fabulous
Speaker 2: out of nothing, because I mean the teeny tiny consolation
Speaker 2: that for me is coming out of this brutal period
Speaker 2: of history that we find ourselves in, is that these
Speaker 2: are the kinds of crucibles that produce extraordinary art. You know,
Speaker 2: Like I said, I think about like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room,
Speaker 2: which to me is like this, to say it's path
Speaker 2: breaking for what it was doing in the fifties is
Speaker 2: to is to diminish it. It was like like like
Speaker 2: I mean, like it was visionary. I mean it actually
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things in my memoir I
Speaker 2: there's a reckoning, there is a there's a there's a
Speaker 2: reckoning with the fact that, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 2: actually doing anything particularly new or innovative. Here. There is
Speaker 2: a legacy of queer and feminist writers and people and
Speaker 2: heroes who have lit the way, if you can only
Speaker 2: find them, right, because you just gotta find them. You gotta,
Speaker 2: you gotta you, we gotta. This is why banning books
Speaker 2: is so incredibly dangerous, right, because it erases history and culture,
Speaker 2: marginalized cultures that in fact show you know, you're It's like,
Speaker 2: it's like Baldwin says, you're suffering. You think you're suffering
Speaker 2: is unique. You think it's the worst thing that's ever
Speaker 2: happened in the world. It's not. It's not. Other people
Speaker 2: have done this, and if you can find those examples, right,
Speaker 2: there's this There's a scene in the memoir early on.
Speaker 2: You know, I was during the just like you, I
Speaker 2: kind of was coming of age during the AIDS pandemic,
Speaker 2: and I found out that one of my former boyfriends
Speaker 2: had probably had AIDS how to go through getting tested,
Speaker 2: and at that time you would wait through or weeks
Speaker 2: for your results, this unparrible period of like and I
Speaker 2: was sick during the time, I had a really bad
Speaker 2: cold that wouldn't go away, probably because of the stress.
Speaker 2: So I really thought I really thought it. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: really thought this was it. But in that time of crisis,
Speaker 2: when I was so miserable and so alone too, because
Speaker 2: I didn't tell anybody I was waiting for my HIV tests,
Speaker 2: I was too embarrassed and shamed. Right, I discovered Audrey
Speaker 2: Lord's The Cancer Journals, her intimate exploration of what it
Speaker 2: was like as an African American, lesbian, Famish woman to
Speaker 2: have breast cancer in a world that politicizes that disease
Speaker 2: and blames the victims. Right, And it was really like
Speaker 2: she was like, she's like my best friend. I slept
Speaker 2: with that book, and it's a thin book. I just
Speaker 2: read and reread The Cancer Journals because I just was like,
Speaker 2: she is my fellow traveler. She has already gone down
Speaker 2: this path. And you know, and it's interesting too because
Speaker 2: in eighty seven when I read The Cancer Journal, she
Speaker 2: was still alive, right. I think she died a couple
Speaker 2: of years later. But and that's the sort of the
Speaker 2: brilliant thing about literature is, you know, it's our cultural DNA.
Speaker 2: Even after the writer dies, they're still there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you talk about this this rich legacy,
Speaker 1: this tapestry of you know, the work of queer artists
Speaker 1: and queer writers, and it is it's so rich, and
Speaker 1: it makes me sad because you know, there used to
Speaker 1: be a time when the queer community at large, all
Speaker 1: the letters, you know, we had more of a community,
Speaker 1: We were able to lean on each other more, we
Speaker 1: were all in the same gang as it were. And
Speaker 1: I feel like now, and you know, there are obvious,
Speaker 1: you know, exceptions, There always has been, because you know,
Speaker 1: racism has always been a thing. Misogyny has always been
Speaker 1: a thing. But I feel like more so now, the infighting,
Speaker 1: the way we just eat our own, you know, it's
Speaker 1: we have to. And I guess it's because it's been
Speaker 1: easier put in italics in air quotes for a couple
Speaker 1: of decades, that we don't feel the need to have
Speaker 1: to lean on each other as much. You were able
Speaker 1: to have a little bit more autonomy. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't need to all gather in the hole in the
Speaker 1: wall gay bar, the lesbians and the queer men and
Speaker 1: the trans folks and the drag queens, because you know,
Speaker 1: the men can go on grinder and ordered dick like
Speaker 1: pizza now, you know, so we don't need that. That
Speaker 1: whole aspect of community is lost. That's the part that
Speaker 1: makes me sad that coupled with banning books that are
Speaker 1: our history, trying to prevent the next generation from learning
Speaker 1: about where we come from.
Speaker 2: It's the one thing, that one thing, that's one thing
Speaker 2: that's kind of like interesting to me about I don't
Speaker 2: know about conversations about book banning and this in the day,
Speaker 2: in the day of the internet, right it's you know,
Speaker 2: like it's really not just these physical books we burn.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I mean, I mean, like like the
Speaker 2: toothpaste is already out of the tube. Like really, you
Speaker 2: really think you're going to eradicate this, Like I know,
Speaker 2: like I feel for uh, queer and marginalized kids in
Speaker 2: Red States. I wish I could create a pipeline where
Speaker 2: it could just come to Portland, work and where I live,
Speaker 2: which is very progressive, you know, But I mean, but
Speaker 2: it's out there, you like, you know, like I mean,
Speaker 2: do we really think we can just completely erase it?
Speaker 2: It's it's out there and people will be able to
Speaker 2: find if people are determined, they will, they will find
Speaker 2: their examples and their history. It's just it's just we
Speaker 2: are you. You said, you know, we we we kind
Speaker 2: of have had had a period where maybe it felt
Speaker 2: a little bit easier, and you put that in scare quotes,
Speaker 2: and I agree. There were some there were protections that
Speaker 2: we had coming of age that our forebears didn't have.
Speaker 2: Certainly James Baldon didn't have them, right, And and also
Speaker 2: there was a there's been of visibility. I think with
Speaker 2: the Internet that has also been it's been problematic in
Speaker 2: some ways, but also in many ways it's been really profound.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, especially for people growing up in more isolated
Speaker 2: areas where they don't have many role models.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So it's just hard for me to like, you know,
Speaker 2: like it's it's hard for me to imagine that it's
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's an old fashioned thing to
Speaker 2: think you're going to ban these books.
Speaker 1: They're out there exactly there, I say many times on
Speaker 1: the podcast. You know, it would be a really bad
Speaker 1: idea young queer people in in small towns if you
Speaker 1: were to find someone on the Internet that's from a
Speaker 1: big city with a big library and you know, let
Speaker 1: them borrow their library card and go on the Libby
Speaker 1: app and then you have access to all these books.
Speaker 1: That would be a really bad idea. You shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: Don't do that.
Speaker 2: When yeah, yeah, yeah, right right. I mean I'm I'm
Speaker 2: a parent. I have three children, they're all in the
Speaker 2: early twenties now, but I remember when they were even
Speaker 2: before they were teenagers, they had access to the Internet,
Speaker 2: and this idea as parents, this older idea that we
Speaker 2: somehow controlled what information they had access to. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that was that was ridiculous. They knew everything that
Speaker 2: was going on in the world before we did because
Speaker 2: they were on their phones. I mean, I didn't do
Speaker 2: a great job of like ty trading my children's exposure
Speaker 2: to the you know, to to you know, to the
Speaker 2: world through the Internet and through their phones. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the kids will figure it out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's as long as there have been kids
Speaker 1: and parents, there have been kids figuring out ways to
Speaker 1: sneak to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's I think we got to hold on to
Speaker 2: that during this this really vulnerable, hostile period in history
Speaker 2: to remember that, like we we are still designed to
Speaker 2: survive under adverse circumstances. We are we are and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in our DNA at this point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't stop the beat. So, in addition to your
Speaker 1: telling of your story and the challenges you met with
Speaker 1: your marriage, you also had a particularly difficult relationship with
Speaker 1: your father. That was a very poignant part of the book.
Speaker 1: Would you mind talking about that a little bit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, thank you for asking about that. I think
Speaker 2: very fraught relationship with my father, who for most of
Speaker 2: my life was a pretty pretty lost in his alcoholism.
Speaker 2: And he was also very kind of conventionally socialized as
Speaker 2: a cisgendered male. And so one of my father's big
Speaker 2: influences life was the influences in life was this cowboy western.
Speaker 2: It was a film that came out in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties called Shane and Shane is the original rugged individualists
Speaker 2: who calls the shots and is celebrated for keeping his
Speaker 2: secrets from people and doesn't you know, tells everybody that
Speaker 2: he meets, you know, don't get too attached to me,
Speaker 2: because when I leave, I leave and nobody follows me.
Speaker 2: I'm my own person. I'm not going to get bogged
Speaker 2: down in the frills of the domestic front. Right. And
Speaker 2: Shane comes to this town in the Wyoming Territory and
Speaker 2: befriends a farmer and his wife and their eight year
Speaker 2: old son, Joey, and the book is from the perspective
Speaker 2: of Joey, and uh and yeah, it's just a it's
Speaker 2: just a it's a camp every campy story about this
Speaker 2: hyper masculine character. And that was my dad's role model.
Speaker 2: That was That was that was who like, who kind
Speaker 2: of defined who he was. And when I was eight
Speaker 2: or nine years old myself, i'd about eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 2: My dad comes up to my bedroom and wakes me
Speaker 2: up and says, it's on. You've got to see it.
Speaker 2: The movie Shane is on the is on the late show,
Speaker 2: so he carries me downstairs, and I was like, this
Speaker 2: mandatory conscript. He's gonna show me Shane because that's he's
Speaker 2: giving me a He's giving me a survival strategy, you know,
Speaker 2: because he knew I was a kid that was bullied
Speaker 2: a lot, and Shane is the role model of how
Speaker 2: to fight back because Shane is always pulling out his guns.
Speaker 2: Whenever anybody pisses him off, right, he just shoots them,
Speaker 2: so you know, So that was that was, that was
Speaker 2: the role model.
Speaker 1: And you know, and it makes you wonder how much
Speaker 1: of a role model he was for so many more men,
Speaker 1: because that's.
Speaker 2: Well, he's definitely a roll model for my dad, because
Speaker 2: when I was fourteen, my dad left, you know, my
Speaker 2: just in the same way that Shane got on his
Speaker 2: horse and rode off into the horizon and said, no
Speaker 2: one's allowed to follow me. That my dad did that too, right,
Speaker 2: And so you know, growing up, I growing up, I
Speaker 2: didn't actually make the connection between my dad's script for
Speaker 2: his life and Shane, the movie that he worshiped and
Speaker 2: loved so much. But I made it later later, it
Speaker 2: ends in the memoir. I made it later in life.
Speaker 2: I realized, Oh, that was his script, that was his justification,
Speaker 2: that was his rationale for living this life that was
Speaker 2: so in so many ways, so disappointing to his sons
Speaker 2: and his wife because he really just left and didn't
Speaker 2: tell us where he was going. Right, So that was
Speaker 2: the role model. And you know, I struggled with my
Speaker 2: dad throughout my life, struggled trying to help him get
Speaker 2: into rehab, and I would not not successfully, right, you know,
Speaker 2: like he actually is one of those Like when his
Speaker 2: death certificate came back when he died about twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: It said cause of death. It said drinking. When I
Speaker 2: didn't know you could die from a behavior. I thought
Speaker 2: it would be some fancy Latin diagnostic word, just one
Speaker 2: word drinking.
Speaker 1: Right, because you hear the phrase drinking himself to death
Speaker 1: and it feels like a metaphor. But no, you can
Speaker 1: actually do that. There were a couple of things you
Speaker 1: said in regards to your father in the book that like,
Speaker 1: just let the air out of my sales. The one
Speaker 1: moment was when you asked him, are you saying that
Speaker 1: you're choosing the bottle over us? Basically, and he said yeah,
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just like wow, But it's like the honesty
Speaker 1: of that. But at the same time, well damn yeah.
Speaker 2: Well you know, it's actually it's interestingly interestingly for me
Speaker 2: to have to hear you mirror that back, that that
Speaker 2: scene from my from my life, because it was at
Speaker 2: the same on the one hand, it was so incredibly
Speaker 2: painful to hear him say that, but on the other hand,
Speaker 2: it was kind of a gift of liberation because because
Speaker 2: he was he was kind of saying, you can't rescue me,
Speaker 2: you gotta let this one go, And it actually did.
Speaker 2: It freed me up that actually that that scene occurs
Speaker 2: right in the chapter before my spouse and I decide
Speaker 2: to get married. I was suddenly freed up to have
Speaker 2: other adult relationships. I didn't have to give so much
Speaker 2: of my psychological real estate to this man who was
Speaker 2: kind of admittedly kind of lost in his alcoholism. So yeah,
Speaker 2: like a really a painful moment, but also weirdly kind
Speaker 2: of a gift, you know. And it's one of those
Speaker 2: things too, like when he said the alcohol is more
Speaker 2: important than you to me, it wasn't like he was
Speaker 2: actually telling me something I didn't already into it, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, the example of his whole life up to
Speaker 2: that point was that, yes, of course he's always choosing
Speaker 2: the alcohol over being a sober you know, conversationalist with me.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It was only when he was just days from his
Speaker 2: deathbed that I had a conversation with him sober for
Speaker 2: the first time in really a very long time. Years
Speaker 2: went by and I hadn't seen him sober.
Speaker 1: So and I imagine there had to have been a
Speaker 1: little bit of hope that by asking the question that
Speaker 1: would have like awakened something and snapped him out of something.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, you keep hoping. You know, when
Speaker 2: you're a kid, you know this whole idea of codependence,
Speaker 2: which is such an old fashioned idea. Now I'm really
Speaker 2: skeptical about it in many ways because if you have
Speaker 2: a loved one, if you have a family member who's
Speaker 2: suffering with a chronic disease, and alcoholism is just a
Speaker 2: chronic disease. It is not a personal feeling. It's a
Speaker 2: chronic disease. But there's a behavioral component to it as well,
Speaker 2: where some people do kick it right, some people do
Speaker 2: get into recovery, and so you always hope that your
Speaker 2: parent will be the one that kicks it right. Mine
Speaker 2: was not. Mine was not, but it does. It does
Speaker 2: give me this incredible appreciation whenever I meet any person
Speaker 2: who's a parent, especially a father, who has gone from
Speaker 2: being an alcoholic to being a recovery I'm like, I'm thrilled.
Speaker 2: I'm inspired by their example on the gift that they
Speaker 2: are giving to their children.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the other moment that guided me was I
Speaker 1: think it was either at the funeral or around that
Speaker 1: immediate time, and you were hearing everyone and tell these
Speaker 1: stories about how much they loved him and how much
Speaker 1: they had these affectionate feelings for him, and you had
Speaker 1: that moment of like, did I love him? I don't
Speaker 1: think I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I'm thank you for mentioning that
Speaker 2: I had this incredible gift from the universe. A couple
Speaker 2: of years after my dad died, which is that some
Speaker 2: of his very good friends from his navy days reached
Speaker 2: out to me. I'm like you, I'm a junior. I
Speaker 2: see you've got junior in your name. I'm also I'm
Speaker 2: named after my dad. So that's another weird gift that
Speaker 2: he gave me, or that I was given. And so
Speaker 2: this guy reached out to me and said, hey, I'm
Speaker 2: looking for a Wayne Scott who served in the Navy
Speaker 2: during these years. Is that you or is he in
Speaker 2: a relationship to you? And I said, well, that was
Speaker 2: my dad. And the friends didn't know that he had
Speaker 2: died because he had fallen out of touch with them,
Speaker 2: but I said, yeah, he passed away. Ya da da.
Speaker 2: They invited me to their reunion. They said, you know what,
Speaker 2: we're getting together to reminisce. Why don't you come? You
Speaker 2: come in your dad's place. And so I went to
Speaker 2: this gathering of these four friends of my dad they
Speaker 2: had known him since he was a teenager, and of
Speaker 2: course they had a very different relationship with him. They
Speaker 2: I was the disappointed son, right, but they were the
Speaker 2: drinking buddies. They were the people who went through young
Speaker 2: adulthood with him, and they had nothing but happy, fun
Speaker 2: memories of him. And it was kind of fun to
Speaker 2: realize that, you know what, I actually might have liked
Speaker 2: him if I hadn't been an economic dependent, like if
Speaker 2: I you know, if I hadn't needed to developmentally, you know,
Speaker 2: in my experience of him, I had needed him to
Speaker 2: show up in certain ways. But if I had just
Speaker 2: met him at a bar, actually I might have liked him.
Speaker 2: I probably would have really enjoyed him. And so it
Speaker 2: actually expanded my capacity for empathy into his life. I
Speaker 2: actually was able to recognize, you know what, he was
Speaker 2: a funny, likable, loving man to many many people in
Speaker 2: his life. He wasn't great with kids, he wasn't yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I had these and I also had this example,
Speaker 2: like with these men, they're so gruff and they're all
Speaker 2: I'm sure Republican. I know many of them. I still
Speaker 2: keep in touch with many of them. I know they
Speaker 2: voted for Trump. You know, but they were so kind
Speaker 2: to me, and I really think it was because of
Speaker 2: their connection with my dad. They were kind of like
Speaker 2: these grandfather grandfathers by proxy, right, My own my own
Speaker 2: dad wasn't alive to be able to coop over his grandchildren.
Speaker 2: But they wanted to see pictures of my kids and
Speaker 2: they and they could and it was and it was
Speaker 2: a gift. It was a gift. It was it was
Speaker 2: you know, like I was like, I was like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I didn't get the the benefit of being able to
Speaker 2: see my dad live into his seventies and maybe see
Speaker 2: if he would have changed. But these men who were
Speaker 2: his friends and who knew him, they came into my
Speaker 2: life and they could, they could They helped me heal something.
Speaker 2: You know, they really did help me heal something. And
Speaker 2: it was from the most unlikely place. You wouldn't think
Speaker 2: that these older white guys, Niagara Republicans would be so
Speaker 2: kind to this, like progressive social worker guy from Portland, Oregon. Right,
Speaker 2: he's very queer identified.
Speaker 1: Right, And I love how you had described a photograph
Speaker 1: of your father with his his drinking buddies, and you know,
Speaker 1: the picture I got in my head was like this
Speaker 1: is kind of home erotic, but beside the point. And
Speaker 1: when they basically demanded that you take a picture with them,
Speaker 1: and when you said I was in my father's place,
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I mean the the the ultimate and unexpected
Speaker 2: experience of belonging where you never thought you'd belong right.
Speaker 2: And they had this picture that was taken in the
Speaker 2: fifties when they were in the service, when they were
Speaker 2: out having a wild night on the town of the
Speaker 2: four or the five of them standing next to each
Speaker 2: other with these big shittyat and grins on their place
Speaker 2: and beers and cigarettes and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And basically what we literally did is we recreated that
Speaker 2: photo with me in the place where my dad was.
Speaker 1: That's so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was. It was it again. It was
Speaker 2: a gift.
Speaker 1: It's like that internet trend of families recreating their childhood photos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fun. It's yeah with with with a bunch
Speaker 2: of older guys. Yeah, there's I love.
Speaker 1: I love the the way you have with words when
Speaker 1: you write. It's the book is such an easy read
Speaker 1: because you have this comfortable voice and you have a wit,
Speaker 1: and you know there are things that are just downright funny,
Speaker 1: like the first thing I had marked. I'm probably not
Speaker 1: going to find it by the end of the sentence.
Speaker 1: But you had mentioned when you were exploring being with women,
Speaker 1: and you said, you know, you wanted to be good
Speaker 1: at it, and you had heard about the term going down.
Speaker 1: I much prefer the word kind of lingus. It sounds
Speaker 1: like something you would do with a wine taste, I cackled.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you saw the humor in that.
Speaker 1: Where where would you say that your your humor comes from?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I know the answer to this,
Speaker 1: But where'd you say your humor comes from?
Speaker 2: Hm? Wow? I had thought about that, well, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe just because we were just talking about him. I mean,
Speaker 2: my dad was hilariously funny, you know, and was very
Speaker 2: charming in groups of people, and I always knew that
Speaker 2: he was funny, you know, and that that that that
Speaker 2: was something both my parents put a lot of value
Speaker 2: on humor and seeing the humorous in life. And then
Speaker 2: I think that got potentiated when I found myself a
Speaker 2: member of the queer community, because I think, you know,
Speaker 2: gay men and lesbians and queer people, I think they're
Speaker 2: hilariously funny. They have to be right, you know, like
Speaker 2: it's their coping mechanism and strategy and and you know,
Speaker 2: like part of that whole section that you were talking
Speaker 2: about where the younger version of me has got this
Speaker 2: kind of scorecard where he's keeping track of all the
Speaker 2: different sexual acts he's participated in and what he still
Speaker 2: got to do. It's his to do list of sex,
Speaker 2: which I'm so ashamed of now in retrospect. But that
Speaker 2: is the way I thought when I was nineteen twenty.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, not proud, but it's true, true
Speaker 2: to who I was that you know, uh yeah. It
Speaker 2: also speaks to the limitations of the language and the
Speaker 2: ways we had of thinking about you know, that meant
Speaker 2: I was the script I was given about sexuality at
Speaker 2: that age was that it was a series of accomplishments.
Speaker 2: It was bases to be run, which is terrible, Which
Speaker 2: is terrible. I was not given this idea that it
Speaker 2: I was not given this idea of intimacy, of actual
Speaker 2: genuine intimacy and how and what sex is really like
Speaker 2: separate from the pornographies that are offered to us culturally. Right,
Speaker 2: And you know, and there's a point where I'm with
Speaker 2: my spouse and we're going down that path, and I realized,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that list. I have to forget that
Speaker 2: list ever existed.
Speaker 1: You know, And you know, going back to you know,
Speaker 1: the role Book of being a Man, It's like, when
Speaker 1: you think about it, the quote unquote traditional correct way
Speaker 1: to be a man doesn't really serve them, you know,
Speaker 1: it definitely doesn't make them ideal partners. You know, you
Speaker 1: come from this mindset of sex is transactional, sex is
Speaker 1: something that you win, you know, being emotionally unavailable, showing
Speaker 1: emotions is considered weak. It's like, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: whole TikTok genre. I'll call it. This gentleman named Barrett Paul,
Speaker 1: and he has this whole thing about why we don't
Speaker 1: need straight men, and it's very much that. It's like,
Speaker 1: if your idea of what makes you a man is
Speaker 1: in trend in all of these things that don't make
Speaker 1: you a great person, yeah, you know, and all the
Speaker 1: qualities that we associate with being weak, with being queer,
Speaker 1: those are the things that are actually goals. It's like,
Speaker 1: how do we end up here?
Speaker 2: Right right? Yeah? Well, it's interesting as you were talking,
Speaker 2: I was thinking about the way in which the cowboy
Speaker 2: Shane story, you know, kind of laid the roadmap for
Speaker 2: my dad, and I think he wanted to lay that
Speaker 2: roadmap for me. And you know, Shane is very connected
Speaker 2: to the tragic history of Western expansion imperialism. You know,
Speaker 2: the story takes place in Wyoming. There is in both
Speaker 2: a movie and the book it's based on, there is
Speaker 2: not a single reference to indigenous people at all. And yet,
Speaker 2: of course we know archives and from history that there
Speaker 2: had been this forcible, violent erasure of those people, but
Speaker 2: it's not even mentioned, right, But what is mentioned is
Speaker 2: that men have secrets and men protect their secrets, and
Speaker 2: that is to be celebrated. That a man knows who
Speaker 2: he is and that he doesn't have to tell you
Speaker 2: anything he doesn't want to tell you, and he gets
Speaker 2: to white wash and tell what the truth is, and
Speaker 2: that truth doesn't have to even acknowledge that you exist.
Speaker 2: And so it's interesting to me like having this like
Speaker 2: intimate experience with my dad of his abandonment of our family,
Speaker 2: his devaluing of family relationships, and then realizing this connects
Speaker 2: to these broader forces in history that don't care about community,
Speaker 2: that only care about power and expansion and control and imperialism, right,
Speaker 2: and and how much that is that's the roadmap that boys,
Speaker 2: espect white boys especially are given or sexual boys are
Speaker 2: given to their detriment because it doesn't make them happy people.
Speaker 1: Right. And you know, if you really think about it,
Speaker 1: like male cisgender heterosexuality is more homosexual in that, like
Speaker 1: they don't really seem to like women, like queer men
Speaker 1: like women.
Speaker 2: Right well, having like you know, emotional, playful intimate confidences. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I always say, you know that all of homophobia
Speaker 1: and transphobia is deeply rooted in misogyny because we don't
Speaker 1: raise boys to be men, we raise them to not
Speaker 1: be women.
Speaker 2: That's that's very wise. I think that's very true.
Speaker 1: And it's it that battle against anything that is feminine
Speaker 1: or considered feminine is like the root of almost all
Speaker 1: the evils that we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. And our resistance to
Speaker 2: women in power, you know, and and you know, like,
Speaker 2: what is it about this freaking country that we can't
Speaker 2: get a woman into the highest office? What you know?
Speaker 2: What is that about? You know, Like I mean obviously
Speaker 2: that speaks to how incredibly entrenched in ourselves the cells
Speaker 2: that make us. It is that we cannot allow a
Speaker 2: woman to be in that role, and how much better
Speaker 2: the world would be if we had that sensibility.
Speaker 1: Well, and you know, part of that is, you know again,
Speaker 1: self introspection is not one of those qualities that's nurtured
Speaker 1: so right and.
Speaker 2: And respect and honoring of of people's inner lives, right
Speaker 2: and feelings and vulnerabilities. That truly the stuff that makes
Speaker 2: us humans and not ken dolls.
Speaker 1: Right, hold on one second, I'm.
Speaker 2: Sorry, that's okay.
Speaker 1: What were we saying.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, We're just talking about talking about Western imperialist expansion.
Speaker 2: It's connection to the we're talking about the big stuff.
Speaker 2: We're talking about big ideas.
Speaker 1: I love how that tends to happen on this show.
Speaker 1: It's like we go from so my book to well
Speaker 1: the meaning of life. Yeah, yeah, but one could argue
Speaker 1: that in your story those two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 1: Please and thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, thank you for reading.
Speaker 1: It, because yeah, your story is really, of course, it
Speaker 1: is yours story, but it is also an exploration of
Speaker 1: the dynamics of relationships, the personal journeys of self discovery,
Speaker 1: family dynamics. Like there's just so many big capital letter
Speaker 1: you know, subjects that are touched on in your story,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful that I got to read it.
Speaker 2: That's so lovely to hear. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, and I definitely want to say that
Speaker 1: it has been a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 2: Likewise, you're very skilled at putting people at ease.
Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you. I'm very glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: So if we wanted to learn more about you and
Speaker 1: where to purchase the book, where would we go?
Speaker 2: You can go to my website which is Wayne scott
Speaker 2: Wrights dot com and that will lead you to the
Speaker 2: website of Black Lawrence Press, which is the small independent
Speaker 2: press that published and published the memoir and has been
Speaker 2: wonderful to me. And we should always of course support
Speaker 2: the little guys, you know, the small independent presses. So
Speaker 2: if people buy directly from Black Lawrence, that would be
Speaker 2: the most amazing thing. They have been. They knew from
Speaker 2: when I from I when I first found them. They
Speaker 2: they they recognized that it was such a vulnerable, intimate story,
Speaker 2: and they were really clearer to me that they were
Speaker 2: going to protect it, you know, and they were gonna
Speaker 2: be they were going to be they were gonna be
Speaker 2: careful with me as I kind of moved into this
Speaker 2: kind of capitalist commercial economy of book buying, that they
Speaker 2: were gonna be protective and I and I always appreciated
Speaker 2: that about them.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it, and we will make
Speaker 1: sure to include that information in the notes of this episode,
Speaker 1: because so the book is currently available, it is okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so make sure that everyone within the sound of our
Speaker 1: voice gets your own copy of this book. It is
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderful story. The title of the book is
Speaker 1: The Maps They gave Us One Marriage Reimagined. I you know,
Speaker 1: it's not often that I gush over a book. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that. You know, I'm always glad when it's
Speaker 1: a good read. You know, I love I love authentic stories.
Speaker 1: I love wit, I love humor, I love honesty, and
Speaker 1: all of that is contained in this story. And you
Speaker 1: should be very proud. One more quick question. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: there was going to be a movie, who would play you?
Speaker 2: I actually know the answer to this immediately because my
Speaker 2: in my writer's group we did this. We were all
Speaker 2: writing books, memoirs, and we all had to figure out
Speaker 2: who was going to play us. I think Noah Reed
Speaker 2: would play me. From Shit's Creek, Shit's Creek. Remember David
Speaker 2: David's boyfriend in Shit's Creek.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay, okay, nice, So did you okay? All right?
Speaker 1: So do you have a dreamcast for anyone else?
Speaker 2: Hm?
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 2: My spouse I think would be played over There are
Speaker 2: in different generations, but I always think of Lord Laura
Speaker 2: Dern when I think of my spouse. Okay, different generationally
Speaker 2: from Noah Reed, but you know, I think about the
Speaker 2: span of her career. I could see Laura Laura Dern
Speaker 2: in that role and then actually the couple's counselor the
Speaker 2: brilliant couple's counselor that we went to Liney, who's a
Speaker 2: big character in the book. She would be played by
Speaker 2: Alexandra Billings. Do you know how? Yes, I remember, I am
Speaker 2: I right. Wouldn't that be like you know, like, so, Alexander,
Speaker 2: if you're out there, you know this book is waiting
Speaker 2: for you. This is the.
Speaker 1: Part of me thinks that Alexander Billings listens to this show.
Speaker 1: So I think you might have done something and I
Speaker 1: did not. I would not have thought of that when
Speaker 1: reading the book. But now that you say it, yes,
Speaker 1: that is the right choice.
Speaker 2: Yes, So day I got it all cast out. I
Speaker 2: got it all cast out. Somebody so I'm Larady from
Speaker 2: highlowig does need to give me a call. I'll pick
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 1: Well now, I can't wait for the movie, right, So,
Speaker 1: Wayne Scott, thank you so much for joining being here
Speaker 1: at the Full Circle table.
Speaker 2: You are delight, as are you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and I have a feeling this is not
Speaker 1: going to be the last time we sit and chat,
Speaker 1: oh hope. So thank you very much and you have.
Speaker 2: A wonderful day, you too, you too.
Speaker 1: Take care. Full Circle is a Never Scurred Productions podcast
Speaker 1: hosted by Charles Tyson Junior and Mark the Madrigal, Produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Never Scurred Executive Produced by Charles Tyson
Speaker 1: Junior and Mark the Madrigal. Our theme in music is
Speaker 1: by the jingle Berries. All names, pictures, music, audio, and
Speaker 1: video clips are registered trademarks and or copyrights of their
Speaker 1: respective copyright holders.