TELL

TELL S2E5 - Getting It In - Episode Transcript

Drae Campbell: From the corporate infrastructure [strum] [laughter] [TELL THEME SONG]

[MUSIC BED] DC: Hi, I’m Drae Campbell and this is TELL -- a podcast where queer people tell queer stories. For the past 8 years I’ve been hosting and curating a night of live storytelling at BGSQD -- a queer bookstore in Manhattan. And now I’m sharing those stories with the world… again! Season 2.

DC: Just so you know these stories were recorded at all different times and places and throughout the quarantine, pre-vax, post-vax, and everything in between.

DC: So, if you need a dose of queer community, or just wanna hear great stories told by the people who lived them, you’ve come to the right place. So gloss up your lips and dig up your capsule, ‘cause TELL is queering the narrative and telling our stories, on our terms.

[FADE OUT MUSIC]

[MUSIC BED: Twinkly disco] DC: Each episode of TELL features three stories that center around a theme and the theme of this episode is… [echo] GETTING. IT. IN.

DC: First up… Dima Matta is a beirut-based actor, writer, and Fulbright scholar who uses they / them pronouns. This story is basically queer dispatch from an actual revolution underway in Beruit. The story was recorded in October of 2020…

[END MUSIC BED]

[DIMA MATTA]
Dima Matta: Hi, everybody. Drae, thanks for having me. It's good to see everybody. It's 2 a.m. so it's been a long day. I'll tell you why later, it's part of the story. I'm a little old fashioned. I have a red notebook and it just has the clitoris, and it says in Arabic, "I'm a storyteller", which really is all you need in life. But I do want to tell you that a year ago, I was at a bar and I was on a date. And it was not a great date, we didn't have much to talk about. And suddenly I look around the bar and people are all looking at their phones and people were talking and whispering, and a woman next to me says, "Did you see what is happening?" And I said, "What is happening?" And she says "People are on the streets, like in the thousands, all over the country." So I look at my phone, right, Facebook, everything. And people were in the streets, they were chanting, they were burning tires, they were all over the place. And I just couldn't sit still. I'm like, "Okay, well, this date is boring, so I need an exit, and a revolution was a great exit. Like, if there was ever a good way to end a bad date, it was the revolution. So I'm like, "Great, I'm out of here. Peace." And I just went, I took a cab. And the cab driver, just like was kind of navigating fires, like, burning tires all over. And I'm like, "OK, you can drop me off here." And I go down and I join my other friends who are already there. And we're thousands of people already downtown Beirut, near the parliament. And there was a collective anger and a collective just ball of energy, and everybody had their phones up and with the flashlight on. And so there a sea of thousands of shiny things. So everybody was saying the same word "revolution". So I took a photo of that. And that is the first photo I took of the October 17, 2019, revolution in Lebanon.

DM: So for the next weeks, that's all I did. I was in the streets all the time protesting, chanting, blocking roads. So we'd wake up in the morning before the sun would come up, and we'd, you know, I'd get my coffee and head to the nearest roadblock. And there was a queer roadblock, I just want everybody to know this. It was where we all kind of knew that's where the queers were blocking the road. And so everybody, even though it was like five a.m., everybody would be really good looking because we know that's where we're seeing all the queers [laughs]. So, yeah, we'd get there and we'd just sort of form a line in the middle of the road to stop people from basically getting to their jobs. So the whole point is to paralyze the city or the country the way the government is paralyzing us and paralyzing the city and the country. And it was lovely because the queers always have the best ideas. And so one of them just saw a broken washing machine on the, on the side of the road and just dragged it to the middle of the road. And then this other person saw a huge potted plant and dragged it and just sat on top of the washing machine with the little Lebanese flag in her hand, just like waving it, and like legs crossed like, "we're here [laughs] and you're not passing through." So that was wonderful. And then the sun would come up. And everything was golden, right? All the buildings, all the rooftops, everything was shiny, and that was beautiful.

DM: But I kept thinking for days, since I told Drae I would tell the story, about what I would talk about. And I just feel like I can't talk about anything else. This is all I want to talk about. This is all I can talk about. And I think over the past year, the world has lost so much, and I feel like in Lebanon we lost more than we could ever handle. We are facing a pandemic and we are facing a crippling economic collapse. So the price of everything has more than quadrupled. So a dollar would be a thousand five hundred Lebanese pounds. Now, a dollar is eight thousand five hundred Lebanese pounds. About 50 percent of the population lives under the poverty line and people are going hungry. And over this past year, a lot of my Palestinian friends have been sending me messages, checking up on me, asking me how I'm doing. [??] And you know, it's really bad when Palestinian people check up on you. Like, we worry about you. We're like, we're fucked if Palestinians are asking about how we're doing, we're not doing OK. That's how you know. And I reached the point where I really don't want to see the silver lining. If there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I, I don't see it and I don't want to see it. I kind of want to just examine the devastation that we're all in, and sit in it, and sit with it. Because I feel like if, if I don't, then we forget and forgetting is the first step in staying still. And we've been doing that for too long here.

DM: Since the beginning of the pandemic and quarantine, the lockdown, I've become obsessed with taking a look at the Facebook memories. So as soon as it's after midnight, I go to the tab that says Facebook Memories, and I want to know exactly what I posted on this day, a year ago, or three years ago, or seven years ago. What was I doing? What kind of person was I two years ago, four years ago? So 10 years ago, I thought I was straight and I had a horrible sense of fashion. So. But about three years ago, I saw that I posted this quote and it says "As if a city can be illuminated and destroyed in the same instant." And on August 4th, 2020, that's exactly what happened in Beirut. The third biggest non-nuclear explosion devastated the city, and more than 200 people died. More than 6000 people were injured and more than three hundred thousand people lost their homes. For the longest time, they, our parents, and the older generation told us that “You don't know Beirut if you didn't know it before the Civil War.” So before 1975. And now I think people will be saying, “You don't know Beirut if you didn't know it before August 4th, 2020.” So I feel like I lost my city.

DM: I woke up this morning and today is October 17, 2020 -- a year since the revolution started. And I was just crying. I couldn't stop crying. And I ordered breakfast. And when the delivery guy came, I was still in my underwear with like red eyes and puffy eyes, and I looked horrible. But I had, you know, I had to go get my breakfast. I opened the door, get my breakfast. My cat is just like walking around me. And the delivery guy says, in Arabic, "Your eyes are shining." Your eyes are shining meant that there are tears in my eyes, so they're, they're shining. That's how they say it in Arabic. And I said, "Yeah, I'm allergic" and pointed to my cat who has been with me for two years. But that was the only excuse I could think of that I'm allergic to my own pet. And he was like, "Oh, bye." Right? What can you say to that? And he left. And then a few hours later, I got dressed and headed down to the streets to join thousands of people who are there to remember a year passing since the beginning of the revolution and to commemorate the October 4th blast and the people we lost. And there was music and people were dancing. People were chanting. People were, again, saying the word "revolution". And it was beautiful. It was beautiful and it was sad at the same time. This time last year, we had so much hope. We couldn't get out of the streets. We just wanted to be there all the time. We had major FOMO because we felt like everything that was worth living was happening in the streets, and whenever we would go home then life would be on pause until we could go back to the streets. And then we walked from downtown to the port, which is where the explosion happened. Thousands of people stood for a moment in silence, in memory of the lives that we lost. And at that point, the sunset over the port, the sea was shining. Right next to the port. There's a bronze statue of a man in traditional Lebanese wear. And the name of the statue is "The First Lebanese Immigrant". And this was from the 1800s. And ever since the pandemic, the economic collapse, and the Beirut blast, almost all of my friends have left. They've gone to other cities, better cities, whatever that means. And people have been leaving this country since the 1800s, and everything around the statue was destroyed. But the statue still stands. I remembered the poem that I got my quote from by Brigid Bates. She writes, "As if we need to be survivors in order to be free." Right now, everybody in Beirut is a survivor. We're lucky because we didn't die. I have friends who were where the blast happened a minute before it did. We're all alive by chance. We're all survivors. But right now, sitting at home, when there's a pandemic that is killing us, where there is a government that is killing us, I don't know if I would say we were free. Thank you.

[FADE UP MUSIC BED: Synthy disco]

Audience: [applause]

DC: Yes, thank you! Thank you for sharing that. Wow, um, I can't believe it's exactly a year ago, tonight? Right?

DM: Yeah.

DC: So much has happened in a year.

DM: Mm hmm.

DC: So did you ever hear from that person you went on the date with again? That’s kind of what I want to know.

DM: [laughs] Well, the thing is, during all the protests, for months, you'd head down to the streets, thousands of people, but you'd hear all the feminist chants: "down with the patriarchy," etc. And that's where you know, the queers are. So you'd all head there. So it's all your exes [laughter] and all the people you've slept with, just like there, waiting to topple the government, [laughs] and make you feel awkward in the process. So...

DC: So, that's very similar to New York, I feel…

DM: I'm sure, yeah. [laughs]

DC: Like any queer communities, like you're going to go and you're going to be like, "Oh, there's my ex, but let's fucking fight! [laughter] Road block!" And everything was golden. I loved that. There's nothing that I can add, and I'm just honored that you shared that story with us and thank you for like staying up.

DM: Thank you for having me.

DC: Give it up for Dima! Yayyyyyyy [applause]

DM: Thanks everybody

DC: Thank you.

DC: You can find Dima at dima matta on Instagram. That’s D-I-M-A M-A-T-T-A.

DC: Next up…Calvin’s Cato is a comedian, actor, writer, and perma-temp. Calvin’s story is about mushrooms, depression, trauma, finding yourself… it has everything! And it’s a great reminder that going to therapy is important. Trigger warning for this story, there is a discussion of suicide. This story was recorded in April of 2021…

[FADE OUT MUSIC BED]

[CALVIN CATO]
Calvin Cato: Hello! So this story this actually takes place about eight years ago and eight years ago, if you knew me back then you would think that I had everything together, you know, because on paper, things were great. I had a good job. I had a boyfriend, I had an apartment. And I was doing standup comedy regularly. And so, according to the outside world, they were like, "Wow, you're like, You're killing it. You look good on Facebook. You haven't discovered Instagram yet. Things are working out. It's really wonderful." But on the inside, I knew something was off. And so this was in the winter of 2013, and I was coming to terms with the fact that things didn't feel right. And I couldn't figure out what it was. And so in terms of the boyfriend that I had, it was a long distance relationship that was growing more and more distant -- emphasis on the distant, not as much on the actual relationship part. And for the good job that I had, it was a great job. It was wonderful. I had health insurance. But I was working in an all-white office and some of us on this Zoom chat can understand what it's like to be around a bunch of whites when you're a minority. There's a lot of talk about Girls, and Glee, and Friends, and I was like, "Can we watch Living Single? Like, I don't give a shit.” So they were very getting on my nerves. And then a lot of micro aggressions. And then on top of that, even the standup comedy, it was good, I was getting a lot of shows, but standup comedy doesn't pay well. And you can't build a 401K on drink tickets. And so I was really getting concerned about what's going on and what my future is. And why am I not happy if people keep telling me that I'm happy and telling me that things are good?

CC: So it's the winter of 2013, and what I always did, because again, I need to decompress from the Caucasians, is that I would always take from December 24th through January 1st. That was like, that's my holiday, that's my me time. You know, I'm going to just watch everything I want to watch. Watch, Love Jones. You know, I was going to watch all my Black shit. And I was like, I'm not going to have to listen to any like, you know, just weird bullshit about like, "Oh my god, Seinfeld's so funny", I just don't want any of that. So that's my happy zone. But I realized that I took time off and I wasn't feeling good, like, and I knew I was getting depressed and I was drinking a lot by myself. It was like bad. Like, you know your depression is bad when you're actually using your DVD player. Like, I was like, I have to actually plug this in. I was watching like old episodes of Daria. I was trying to like, get myself back up into an even keel, and I couldn't really do it. And the New Year’s came and went. Normally I go out for new years. I didn't even go out for New Year’s. And then, my time was up. I supposed to go back to work and I just didn't go back to work.

CC: So it was on the Friday of the first new year. The first new Friday, my friend [??] convinced me to go out of the house and he was like, "Hey, you come with me, I'm going to be performing standup comedy show. It's going to be weird." And I was like, "OK, sure, I'll go with you." And so I go with him to this comedy show. And I get to the show, and I see him, and he's like, "Hey, wouldn't it be fun if we did mushrooms together?" And I laughed because like, "Yeah, of course, I'll be fun." And then he pulled out a bag of mushrooms and I was like, "Oh shit, this, this is a go now." So we end up doing mushrooms, and then he's like, "Oh, fuck, I have to get on stage now." And I was like, "Whaaaa." So he gets on stage. He does his act. He gets off stage. And I was like, "How are you feeling?" And he's like, "I feel fine, how are you feeling?" I was like, "I feel fine. Nothing's hit yet.” And so he goes, "Here you go, then finish off the whole bag of mushrooms." So I finish off the rest of the bag of mushrooms. And we're hanging out together. We’re at a bar. We're drinking a little bit. And then my friend gets a call from his wife because his wife was like, "Hey, can you go home and relieve the babysitter?” And so he's like, "Oh, fuck, I got to go home. Oh, I'm starting a trip right now." So he leaves to go home and take care of his kids, and he goes, "You're going to be alright by yourself, right?" And I was like, "Yeah, sure!" And then literally right after he left was when I could like smell colors. Like I started tripping haaaaaaard by myself. And so I'm trying to like process what's going on, and I don't know if anyone's been on mushrooms before. This was my first time. I had never done mushrooms before. I got a random bag of drugs offered to me. And you really freak out. If you're not with anybody, you don't know what's going on. And so I remember I left the bar and then I walked to the park, and then it took off my shoes and socks and started walking barefoot through the park. Which, New York City, yuck. Tetanus. Gross. So I'm walking through this park barefoot now. And I said, "You know what? I'm going to call my boyfriend, and I'm going to tell him about how I feel right now." And so I call my boyfriend. And he, of course, is not happy. He's like, "You're telling me that you're barefoot in a park by yourself. What's going on?" And I was like, "It's fine. I don't want to go home. Also, I don't know how this is working out. Is this working out? Are we still going to be together?" Don't try to break up with your boyfriend on mushrooms, kids. It's not good. But we have this crazy fight. And then he goes, "I just need you to go home right now, so I need you to get on a train -- put your shoes on first, then get on the train, and then go home." So I get on the train and I'm still like, kind of hallucinating, kind of freaking out, but I'm on the train. I freak out so badly that I get off of the train. And my house, or my apartment rather, is 50 blocks away from the train station. [??] But I walked all 50 of those blocks home. And like, I'm just having like waves of experiences. Like, I'm like, "What's going on the bricks?" And "There is a roach, but like, maybe that's like Papa Roach? I don't know. Papa Roach is a cool song person back in the day." Trying to figure everything out. And then I get home and I take a massive dump. And the dump felt like a metaphor for my life, where I realized I need to shed the dead weight in my life. I have to break up with this guy.

CC: So I sober up. I still am not going to work, by the way. I spent a whole week, haven't gone to work. And then the day I was finally supposed to go back into work, I was like "OK, I am going to go into work today, and I'm going to break up with my boyfriend in the evening, and then we're going to figure out what my life is supposed to be." And so I get on the train to go into work and the lady jumps in front of the train to try to kill herself. And at this point, I just am like, "I can't go to work, so I go back home." And she's on the news like later on in the day, and I find out that she's only 15 years old, 15-year-old girl who jumps in front of the train because her boyfriend dumped her. And so now I'm like, "I don't think I can do anything anymore." And I didn't realize that what I was having was just a nervous breakdown. I just completely broke down. I stopped answering calls. And finally, my friend, who had worked as a therapist, was the one who got through to me and was like, "I'm going to come over, I'm going to need you to clean up your apartment. We need to get this together. We need to find you a therapist." And I'd never seen a therapist before. So I was like, "I'm not crazy. It's fine. I'm fine. I'm fine." She's like, "No, you're not fine. This is not a normal reaction, and you experienced a lot of trauma right now, so you have to actually go and see a therapist." And thanks to her, I went, I saw this amazing therapist. She was like just the loveliest, best kind of like lesbian therapist. Like she, it was just like flannel, and like every session she always had a different boot. And like, there's always like vaguely vaginal art on the walls. And she was like, rotate it out every couple of months. And she really helped to break through to me. And she helped me to say that I don't have to project a picture of myself. I need to just be myself. And it took a while, but it helped to loosen me up. It helped me to get through everything, and it helped me learn to say no and set boundaries and not feel like I had to have a picture perfect life. Sadly, I'm not seeing her anymore, but I'm always so grateful for the fact that she helped me find the real me. So that's it. Thank you.

[FADE UP MUSIC BED: Synthy disco]

DC: Wow. Thank you.

Audience: [applause, woos]

DC: That story really had everything mushrooms, a giant poop. [laughter] I love that story. Thank you.

CC: Thank you so much. Seriously.

DC: Thank you. That was really amazing and brave and wonderful.

DC: You can find Calvin at Calvin Cato dot com. That’s Cato spelled C-A-T-O.

DC: Our last story… Letta Neely is a writer, poet, and performer based in Boston. I almost want to say that this story requires no introduction – because it so beautifully encapsulates what’s going on, a moment, it’s poetic, it’s wonderful, enjoy! A warning: this next story contains some violent themes. It This story was recorded in June 2021 for the Juneteenth show which was hosted by Lea Robinson…

[FADE OUT MUSIC BED]

[LETTA NEELY]
Letta Neely: So this next piece is called Eulogy for a Dyke Bar. I'm from Indiana, and we had a couple of bars that were home spots, right? So this is called eulogy for a dyke bar. If you've ever been to Indiana, maybe been to this bar. But here we go…

LN: There was the 10 Indianapolis. Have to park your car three blocks away and walk. Have to not look dyke-ish as you walk in the direction of the bar. It's impossible, but you try. Look both ways before you enter the alley. Count five doors down. Make sure there isn't a line. No publicity. Knock five times. It doesn't matter if you have ID. That's only for the raids. For when the police come. But I.D. alone won't get you in. You better know the password or know someone who knows the password. If you don't know it and you don't know the bouncer, you walk back to the end of the alley, stand around trying to look non dyke-ish, trying to look like you're not standing idle while you're standing idle, waiting, waiting for someone you might recognize headed in the same direction you just came from. I don't remember how I found it, but it has been my homing point since then. Inside the 10, there is old carpet everywhere, card tables, a few wooden tables, a mirror made with square tiles of mirror. This is so when someone throws a bottle at it or slams a recent ex into it, you can replace the tiles and not the whole mirror. There is disco balls and lots of cheap beer spilled onto the carpet. The place smells like stale beer and the anticipation of pussy.

LN: The 10 was where we went to discover we weren't alone. See you kept all these thoughts, these sweaty palms, these prayers to unsend yourself to yourself. You didn't say anything to confirm who you were. Even when the boys called you a dyke or tomboy. I should have said “amen”, but instead I enrolled in yet another Bible study. I wrote love poems, lust poems and erotic poems, but not in ink. I wrote them on a chalkboard in my mind, and erased each and every one immediately. Erasing them was even harder and more necessary than erasing the feel of my father's hands and cock from my body. Internal danger, external danger. I needed to protect myself at all costs. Secrets. These type about hiding who you are lead to more secrets. Till you're hiding everything you do to maintain the secret. The addiction, the lies, the travel routes, the friends, the enemies. You even hide your kissing skills. The boys said “I didn't know how” and dumped me. I did. I just wanted them to stop. You become, I became, a secret to myself. I thought I was the only one in my high school lusting after my best friend until I walked into the 10 and see my three girls from the basketball team and the coach on the dance floor. I thought I was the only one until I was kissing some girl in the dark corner, and when the lights came on I realized she was from my neighborhood. The 10 was this place of sacredness. For four hours. You could be the part of yourself that you weren't anywhere else. Fuck the story you had to make up to say where you'd been. Fuck the fact that none of us will reminisce about this when we see each other on the street or in class. Never will I say I saw my coach fingering a player in the corner in the dance floor. Even though I know it was wrong, even though it was nasty. Even though that girl end up missing lots of shots on the court, drinking herself into a stupor, never graduating high school.

LN: The 10 was where you learn how to dance, how to let your body access freedom, how to relax into yourself. It was release. You found your crew. You realized you were not alone. You were not a sin. You weren't going to hell. In fact, you had found heaven right there in the Midwest, right there in the alley. You had a password. You had a way in. In the 10, it wasn't about Black girl’s and white girl’s animosity. Save that shit for outside the club. And we did. Fight in school by day, dance in the club by night until we couldn't fight anymore. Until looking at the chicks you fingered meant you couldn't actually knock them out when they muttered "N*****" in school. Because you at least had smelled them when they were human. And then eventually some of them remembered you too and stopped saying the words that erased you. Eventually, the dancing, the grinding, the recognition gave us access to solidarity that was unmatched by imposed hatred and the necessity of love, lust, truth paved the way for un-stale conversation. I know we changed each other. I know we did because I watched Laura Eastess -- the hardest white dyke I'd ever met. She had a mouth like a KKK recruit when I met her on the first day of fifth grade. I watched her punch the living shit out of a white boy, our senior year for spitting on a Black freshman. She got suspended for it and ostracized by her white friends. But she was laughing when I saw her, laughing and draining a Coors, standing at the bar with her Black girlfriend, who she couldn't claim by daylight. As time went on, we got a big rainbow sign and it hung out front. Still had to go to the back door, though, because the front was cemented in. It was capitalism and the guests of the state that fucked us all up in the end.

LN: The 10 is gone. The other bars are gone. Gays and lesbians can get married and have property, and the white girls with the white girls and the white boys with the white boys they gentrify are shit now. Thank you.

[FADE UP MUSIC BED: Synth, upbeat]

Audience: [applause, snapping] Thank you.

Audience: Yes yes.

Audience: Thank you.

Lea Robinson: Wow. Just give it up one more time. Thank you so much. Wow. Thank you for sharing that with us. I'm a little blown away.

DC: You can find Letta at Letta Neely on Instagram – last name, N-E-E-L-Y. And you can also find Letta at Letta Neely dot wordpress dot com.

DC: [sigh] Thank you so much for tuning in… and queer folks, remember – If you don't tell
your story, someone else will, so get out there and…

Audience: TELL! QUEER! STORIES!

[END MUSIC BED]

[FADE UP TELL THEME]

DC: TELL is created, hosted and produced by me, Drae Campbell. The stories are recorded live, on zoom or on location at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division -- a pop and pop book shop and event space in the LGBTQ Center in Manhattan. Go say hi to Greg and Donny, who run BGSQD, and tell them we sent you, or follow them at B G S Q D.

DC: The TELL Podcast is produced by Emily Boghossian, recorded at BRIC House in Downtown Brooklyn by Zak Sherzad, Eric Haugesag, and Onel Mulet, and edited by Lauren Klein. Our theme songs were written and recorded by Drae Campbell and Peter Lettre. Charlie Hoxie and Kuye Youngblood are the wind beneath our wings.

DC: Remember to follow us on Spotify, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, google us on google play, and slide into our DMs @tellqueerz or @draebiz on Instagram. That’s queers and biz with a “z”, obviously. And you know what if you like me specifically, check me out on DraeCampbell.com.

TELL is part of the BRIC family. For more information on this and all BRIC Radio podcasts, visit bric arts media dot org.

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