#7 They call me Boytitties
Dash and Beck explore various themes including social dynamics, family memories, the experience of Midwestern goodbyes, the lifespan of pets, near-death experiences, and the impact of generational trauma. They share personal anecdotes about their pets, discuss the significance of truth or dare games in their youth, and reflect on how their backgrounds have shaped their perspectives. The conversation highlights the complexities of human-animal relationships and the emotional connections that arise from shared experiences. In this engaging conversation, Dash and Beck explore the complexities of queer identity, family dynamics, and cultural divergence. They share personal anecdotes about their experiences growing up, navigating relationships with their families, and the impact of media representation on their identities. The discussion delves into the role of humor in queer culture and activism, reflecting on historical moments that shaped the community. They also touch on the significance of food and Appalachian culture, particularly the nostalgic tradition of making snow cream. Throughout the conversation, they emphasize the importance of empathy and the absurdity of societal norms, creating a rich tapestry of insights and reflections.
Takeaways
People are actually listening to... this.
The Midwestern goodbye can be confusing.
Pets often have shorter lifespans than we expect.
Near-death experiences can shape our fears.
Truth or dare reveals social dynamics among friends.
Generational trauma impacts life expectancy.
Language evolves as we grow and change.
Unconditional love from pets is profound.
Family memories shape our identities.
Social dynamics influence our interactions. Navigating queer identity often leads to a divergence from family expectations.
Cultural differences can create a sense of isolation within families.
Media representation plays a crucial role in shaping queer identities.
Humor is a vital aspect of queer culture and resistance.
Historical activism has shaped the current landscape of queer rights.
Empathy has diminished in contemporary societal interactions.
Food traditions, like snow cream, connect us to our roots.
Personal growth often involves reconciling past experiences with present identities.
The absurdity of societal norms can be a source of humor and strength.
Queer culture thrives on creativity and resilience.
tags:
Midwestern goodbye, pets, near-death experiences, truth or dare, generational trauma, social dynamics, family memories, life experiences, language evolution, unconditional love, queer identity, family dynamics, cultural divergence, media representation, queer humor, activism, empathy, Appalachian culture, snow cream, personal growth
Transcript
more followers.
Beck (:That's amazing!
Dash (:Isn't it crazy? People are actually listening to... this.
Beck (:Well, we're cool. We're hip. One time I was at Kroger and the two teenagers were speaking in teenager speak like the cashier and the person. And I said, I'm hip. And Shanna has never let me live it down. Cause I said, I understood them. She's never let me live it down that I was said that I was hip. I'm hip. Cause that's what you say when you're hip.
Dash (:I believe that's more of a typically a show don't tell kind of
Dash (:Have you ever experienced the Midwestern goodbye until you moved to Northwest Ohio?
Beck (:What do you mean the Midwest turned you goodbye?
Dash (:I had to, the, you're like, everyone agrees that the event or the evening is ending or whatever you're at. This happens at somebody's house normally. And the person gets up to leave and it's like, um, you say goodbye, you walk a couple of steps and then they resume the conversation. so, and.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Dash (:Like that happens or whatever, but the first time I experienced this, like the full actual Midwestern goodbye, I was concerned for my mental health. I thought that, because I just knew I I misunderstood the situation and I was like, are we leaving or not?
Beck (:Thank
Dash (:And it wasn't as though, I mean, I would have been, just want to, I didn't know what the polite thing to do was. And I was like, am I being rude by leaving? Am I leaving too soon or, but yeah, because it took a full 10 minutes to get to the door.
Beck (:I have definitely experienced that, but I've never heard it called the Midwestern goodbye. That's funny.
Dash (:Eric, yeah, Eric is the one who told me that it's called that. Yeah. Cause, and you know, every, every region or culture or whatever has its ways of, you know, wrapping up the conversation. well, let me let you go. My, my Papaw would always go.
Beck (:That's funny.
Beck (:Well... Let me let you go.
Dash (:Well, don't rush off. We hadn't gotten up to leave. Like, you know, the evening's done when Papaw's dozing off in the corner.
Beck (:Yeah, pad balls were good for that.
Beck (:Yup. Yup. I missed my Papaw something fierce. He was a cool guy.
Dash (:Me too, I was scrolling through pictures today looking for something in my phone and I found the last picture I have of him. Yeah.
Beck (:Oh, my babble died in 1998, so a long time ago.
Dash (:Mm.
Dash (:I think that's where my mom's dad not 98 specifically, but it was... We still lived in that trailer park, so it would have been...
Dash (:93? I think? Well her parents both died when I was still in elementary school and I actually forget now which one went first. It used to be a very clear set of events in my mind but now...
Beck (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (:I just remember it was fairly close together.
Beck (:Yeah, my mom's dad died way before I was born, like 15 years. He died fairly young. It's actually a thing in my family for people to die at the age of 47. My grandfather and my uncle both died at the age of 47. Guess how old I'll be on my next birthday?
Dash (:Hmm.
Dash (:No. Well, it's 57 in my mom's family. She had two brothers, uncles, die when they were 57. And so when she reached that age, there was a bit of a, you know, it was a bit of a thing for her. Like this knowledge, I guess, and I could totally see that.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (:But also she lives a much healthier life than, than those which expired at the age of 57.
Beck (:Right. Well, I'm a diabetic and the average lifespan of a diabetic gets much shorter than, you know, not being diabetic. And none of my aunts made it past 60. So I'm trying to be realistic.
Dash (:Yeah.
Dash (:Who's that? it's Wendel. Hi, Wendel.
Beck (:She hasn't been feeling too good the last few days. There we go. Yeah. And I think she's going deaf.
Dash (:You're gonna snap out of it, young lady.
Dash (:Yeah. Is... She looks incredible. I love her.
Beck (:She's 14, I mean, parts to start wearing out. She's down to two teeth and one eye.
Dash (:We should make little Wenda merch stickers. just, she's so photogenic. Yeah.
Beck (:I have a friend that made art of Wenda. We could use it. It's a pen drawing of Wenda that turned out beautifully.
Dash (:Is 14 older for a dog than it is for cat?
Beck (:Oh yeah. The...14 to 17 is as old as they usually get, you know what mean? Like, my poodle lived to 17. My other poodle lived to 9. So there can be a range. But she's still doing pretty good. She's still spry. She hasn't wanted to eat the last few days. She's had a little bit of a tummy ache, which if you know anything about Wenda, eating is her jam. That's her...that's her deal. So I've been kind of...
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (:Yeah.
Beck (:Little nervous about that, but she ate spaghetti noodles a little while ago, no problem.
Dash (:Yeah, there's lots of 20 year old cats rolling around out there. I think the oldest one in the world's like 29. Hang on, let me Google that now that I've said it.
Beck (:as you turn in.
Beck (:Yeah.
That's wild.
Dash (:I just happen to see it on social media and
Beck (:I think my cats were like 12 and 14 when they passed.
But I'm pretty sure Gilly had cancer.
Dash (:38 years?
Beck (:What?
Dash (:Cream puff, a mixed tabby cat from Austin, Texas holds the Guinness World Record for living to the age of 38 years.
Beck (:They're always named something like macaroni and cheese or...
Dash (:Good God.
Beck (:That's crazy.
Dash (:She's not a tabby, this is a calico. Wait, no, that's maybe it's a different picture. Maybe this is just AI, it's not very good at being Google.
Dash (:Man, she looked like she's... This is how I feel when a child says skibbity to me. Well, RIP Cream Puff the goat.
Beck (:Pet Cemetery Cat.
Beck (:Pet cemetery cat. She's like, kill me now.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Beck (:Wow, 38 years, that's pretty amazing. That's longer than my brother lived.
Dash (:I... yeah... that... I can't believe that.
Now let's see how old how. And of course, this is all just based on recent history. OK, now oldest dog.
Beck (:My dogs are 14, 13, and 12.
Dash (:okay. So the longest one, the oldest dog is this is probably a scam, but there's a reported animal named Bobby, who allegedly lived to the age of 31. However, vets and media investigators and Guinness found the microchip data to be inconclusive. What does that mean? Did they pull this chip out of another animal and stick it in this one?
Beck (:Ew, that would be weird.
Dash (:my god, that's what they did?
Beck (:That's horrifying.
Dash (:do any more internet today. I should have stopped at the cat.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Dash (:Well, RIP Bobi anyway, and I'm sure you sure you lived a life no matter what
Beck (:right? 31 is crazy for a dog. 20 is crazy for a dog.
Dash (:Yeah, says the breed typically maxes out at 12 years old.
Beck (:Yeah, big dogs usually last a shorter amount of time than small dogs. Small dogs usually live a lot longer. So for baby to be 13 is wild because she's about 100 pounds and she's a Rottweiler Mastiff mix. Yeah.
Dash (:Dang. My friends here have an incredible dog. She's beautiful, she's sweet, and she's a mix of Bernadoodle, no wait, wait, no, that's not right, of Bernese Mountain Dog and Poodle, and they call it a Bernadoodle. And when they got her, you know, she was a sizable puppy, but you know, also just...
super fluffy and they said they had no idea how big she would get and she made a recent visit to the vet. She weighs 127 pounds. Yeah. And she, you know, she's healthy. She, she gets real hot in the summer and she pants and stuff, but she plays outside. But then, you know, they were telling me like, this is most likely not a long lived animal because of this size.
Beck (:Wow.
Beck (:Baby has outlived her entire litter and all of her family. Like, she's outlived everyone. She had a brother that was still alive this time two years ago.
Dash (:Brisket and Ziggy are kicking each other's asses behind me.
She's, so Ziggy weighs, she's the only girl. I've got four male cats, two of which are ancient, and one of which is a young, stupid behemoth. He weighs 16 pounds. Yeah, and it is proportional weight. He's not fat. Well, he might be a little fat, I don't know. I'm not trying to, you know, hyper-police the weight of my cats. They're indoor animals and they're gonna live.
Beck (:wow.
Dash (:you know, full healthy lives. And they like, they like their food and I'm not trying to give myself or them any complexes over micromanaging that, you know, they play, they run around, they're fine. But yeah, so probably if there is a BMI for cats, they might be over it. I don't fucking care. But Ziggy, the only girl, she weighs about five and a half pounds. And so, but she and brisket will be running up and down the stairs and she will kick the shit out of him.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (:She kicked his ass so bad he ran away the other night.
Beck (:My elf, I think Pita weighs about 14 pounds. She's a chihuahua. And she regularly goes for the throat of Baby, the 100 pound Rottweiler Mastiff mix. Baby just looks at her like, I will eat you little dog. You're like, what the hell? But Pita goes straight for it. Like she tries it. I don't know how she's, because Baby could chomp her in one bite.
Dash (:I
You
Dash (:Can you tell the listeners what Pita stands for?
Beck (:Pita stands for pain in the ass. She existed as herself. Well, we found her in a graveyard. had gone to see my aunt's headstone they had finally got it put in. And this little blonde dog came up to us in the middle of the graveyard. And we tried to find her owners, but we were only in town for like two days. And it was in...
Dash (:And how did she earn this name?
Beck (:The graveyard was in like one town and my mom lived two towns over. So it wasn't convenient to go back down there. So we posted all over Facebook. That post came back up in my memories the other day and I got like 200 shares of my post. The owners never came forward. So she came back to Bowling Green with us and she just became my dog. The reason we kept her is that we got her in June and we had adopted Wenda in March.
in the middle of March. And when we brought Wenda home, she had never dogged before, and she didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to play with toys, she didn't know how to socialize, and she basically just sat in a corner for a while and just did nothing, right? And so we brought Pita in and Pita unlocked Wenda. They were running around the table playing and etc. etc. And so I was like, well shit, we have a Chihuahua now. But from literally the day we brought her home, she's a burrower.
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:and she gets under blankets and under pillows and under anything that she can to stay warm. And the first night that we had her at the house, my mom had a pie sitting on the kitchen table. I don't know how she got up on the table, but when I got up to go to the bathroom, she was eating the pie.
Dash (:Yes.
Beck (:So, Pita became a pain in the ass immediately.
Dash (:You
Beck (:Crazy dog.
And
Dash (:Yeah.
Beck (:Crazy dog.
Dash (:I did not grow up with, I mean, we had a couple, but I did not grow up with dogs and I find myself on edge around them because I just don't speak their language, right? I can't read their behaviors. don't under, I can't read their affect. Well, and I learned with individual dogs, you know, like when I'm around them and I get to know them, I can learn them, but I think I haven't yet, I didn't develop the, you know, I didn't have the exposure, gather enough data to,
Beck (:You'd learn if you got one. You would learn very quickly.
Dash (:to scan that, to apply it to a general view like I did with cats. And I don't know how I did with cats. Well, I guess they were just everywhere in the trailer park. Like none of them were mine. I always wanted my very own cat. In the trailer, my mom especially, she was like, that doesn't make any sense, right? There's five of us in here and it is a tight squeeze and cats have to shit in the house. you know, they need attention and, you know, they need
friends, it will have to be its friend 24 seven. And I just didn't care, but they were strays everywhere. And so I would be the cat of, you know, a pregnant cat in particular is looking for somewhere safe to, to give birth. And they would always get up inside the underpinning, the trailers where the, into the fiberglass insulation.
And then like it would just be like kittens running around inside this insulation and it was real unhealthy for them. They would get like, they would get infections and then die in there and then it stank. And so I became the, you know, I was pretty little and I became the person that people would, I would crawl under there and I could get into the insulation and fish the kittens out and the mother. And I guess I just got used to.
anticipating them and understanding their rhythms and their movements and things. I just loved them, especially kittens.
Beck (:Yeah, we always had a cat or two. The one that we had when I was in high school, his name was Pedro the Devil Cat.
Beck (:He was just a weird ass little cat. My mom ended up telling me she took him to a farm. And when I went away to college, and I knew that was a lie, but I didn't dare probe it any further than that. She didn't know any damn farmers.
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (:when we would find them, cause to stop them from getting, you know, hit on the road there. Cause it was right. Our trailer park was right on the road, in, Jellicoe before we moved up on the mountain. We would take them to live out at the dump because there was lots to eat out there and it was remote and it was like, you know, back in, down a long gravel path.
And so we would take them with us to take the trash to the dump and just leave them out there. I just fucking I hated it. I felt so sad every time we left one out there, even though and I understood, you know, and my mom and dad, they were able to explain it to me and they were correct that it was like, this is probably the best spot for this cat. There's plenty of places to hide and sleep and be safe. There's plenty to eat. But I was like, what if they're lonely?
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, I still do that. We have two ponds on the property here where I live, and a couple of weeks ago there was one duck that was out there by itself for like three days, and I had concocted an entire story how its partner had died and yeah, yeah.
Dash (:Hehe.
damn.
Beck (:I'm a softie when it comes to animals. My wife is the same way. I can't help it.
Dash (:I think, yeah, think that, I mean, a lot of people, mean, I think that there's probably people who just wouldn't piss on a flaming human, but, you know, would go to the ends of the earth to do something for an animal. I don't know what it is. Well, for one, we feel we have a level of superiority over them. We feel responsible for them.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:And they give you unconditional love. That's the sticking point for me. Animals give you unconditional love and humans don't.
Dash (:No, you do. Well, maybe dogs give you unconditional love, cats do not. You have to earn a cat's love. Yeah.
Beck (:true. Dogs do. If you treat them right, dogs absolutely do.
Dash (:I have like heard people that argument before and it totally makes sense. Dogs are like, I mean, we didn't we read them to kind of be our partners in, certain tasks and work and stuff. Maybe not all breeds. This probably doesn't apply to a blanket, but yeah, there's nothing like that in cat. They're like,
Beck (:Well, Chihuahuas are the cats of dogs, so... You know, I truly believe that it's not... that dogs are... it's really in how you raise them and their temperament and stuff like that, except for Chihuahuas. You just can't... you can't love the meanness out of them, because Lord knows we have tried. I've had this dog for 11 years.
Dash (:Hahahaha
you
you
Beck (:And
Dash (:Well, don't some dogs just communicate that way? Like there's some that, yeah, there's some that just, they, they growl. I think there's a large breed that does that and it's just how they show affection. Is it Rottweilers?
Beck (:I
Beck (:It's not my Rottweiler.
But Baby can smile. You have to get her... She doesn't do it on command. You have to get her really excited. And she does this number where she pulls her teeth up like her... her... her... errrr. That's really cute. She's a good girl. She lived her entire life outside on the hill, 12 years. And then she's been here in the apartment with me for a year. And she's done really well, so...
couldn't have asked her to do better. I think she's just glad to have a place to retire. She has two beds in this tiny ass apartment to lay in and all the food she can eat, all the love she can handle. Don't go to the bathroom with the door open or you're going to have to pet baby. She has figured out you're a sitting duck when you're in the bathroom. And she just knows when to get in there and get your pets. Like she has started like...
Our bed is a California king. It's pretty big, so there's not a lot of room on either side to get out. There's not a lot of walkway there on either side of the bed. And Baby has figured out how to wedge herself in there to lay down and get pets for me while I'm still half asleep. She's learned to work this apartment.
Dash (:Well, should we give this wheel of what have you a spin? All right.
Beck (:Yes.
Dash (:This is first one to stick around for two uses. Spinning.
Dash (:It is between two things. Okay, so it landed on something that I didn't even know what I meant when I put on here, which is truth or dare. I put it on here thinking of how of just instead of us, I don't want to play truth or dare with you, but just like, did you know, was that something that y'all played and what are some of the, guess I'm thinking of some of the stories that came out of times we played that game.
Beck (:We lived too far apart. We were too far out in the country. There was nobody to come over. All of my communication was on the phone.
Dash (:You didn't hang out with your friends?
Beck (:I couldn't. None of us had cars until we were 16 and I didn't even live on the same school district. I was the school district over so I didn't ride the bus with them or anything. So there was no going home with them after school or anything like that except for the Girl Scouts. When I was in Girl Scouts I would go home with one of my friends. Her mom was the troop leader but we never did, truth or dare. Not that I can remember. Not until I got to college anyway and that was definitely not Appalachian.
Beck (:What about you?
Dash (:The thing I remember about Truth or Dare is there were certain groups of people that I would play it with and nobody would pick truth because information is power. And I'm absolutely not telling the truth about whatever it is you're fixing to ask me. And then the dynamics of that particular game with that group became, what can I get you to do?
Beck (:Right?
Dash (:because I know you have to pick dare. And so there's this whole background psychology of playing truth or dare based on who you're with. And also, think most, like a lot of the people that I hung out with, most of us preferred dares to the truth because it's not like we were liars. So if there was something that we wanted us, if there's something I wanted you to know about me, you'd already knew it. And if...
Beck (:Right?
Dash (:If I'm keeping secrets from you, I will absolutely not tell you no matter what. Even if I say truth and you ask me something I don't want to answer, I'll lie to you. That's truth or dare is the only time I will lie. Like I'm more likely to lie playing truth or dare than any other time. Because it is psychological warfare. Especially if you're a queer person. Truth or dare was like more queer for me than spin the bottle ever was. And of course I hardly ever played spin the bottle.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (:But that like I guess just all those games in general that that sometimes They were like the little places work like the first queer experiences got snuck in or something Like truth or bot truth or dare or spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven stuff like that
Beck (:See, I wasn't popular enough to play those games. I was kind of a nerd. So I didn't get invited to those parties.
Dash (:we just put on those parties. So this was just us hanging out.
Beck (:Yeah
We really didn't have a central place to go. Like we hung out a lot once we all got cars, like after we turned 16 and stuff, but we always hung out in the car, driving around, listening to music, going to Walmart, doing that kind of thing. But none of us, none of us had a house where we were all just welcome to come hang out. We didn't have that, that one house in the, in the community where we could go do that.
Dash (:Yeah.
Dash (:Yeah, we had to drive pretty far. My friends, I lived actually, so I was friends with all of the kids who also like me lived outside the city limits and weren't supposed to actually be going to the school that we went to that was for city kids. And we were all poor white trash that just happened to be very smart and got admitted to this school. so like I lived out on
It was called airport road. And so it was where the airport used to be. And then it got shut down. And then it just became a place where started people started to put trailers when it is in high school. After we moved to Kentucky, my best friend, Ben lived out on bee Creek. He lived out on bee Creek, which was halfway to Corbin. And, and so that's most of us would, that's where we would go. It would just like, we would have to be like, okay, I'll see you in half hour and drive out there.
Beck (:Hey, my best friend was Ben too!
Dash (:But him and his family, they were probably the poorest of all of us. all, they was, they had five kids. So there was seven of them, even though the oldest had moved out, but they all lived in this house that had, it had two bedrooms, but one of them was, it was really, really small. And so I don't even know if you'd call it a bedroom. It was a really old house. So like they had.
The youngest one, Sarah, she slept, they had hung some sheets in the pantry, and so she slept in the pantry. And the second youngest, Nick, he had a little cubby in the living room similarly constructed, and so that's where he slept. And then whoever the oldest one currently living in the house was got the bedroom, and so that was Ben. And so he actually had the only door in the house. But there was this...
Rancid nasty basement under this house and We then they just let us go down there and so we turned that into with it was like I Mean kind of like a montage right like we were down there me and him and his his friend Mike and our friend Carrie and our friend Billy You know, we spent so much time down there decorating we would hang up posters We had you know, the blacklight posters and shit that were really popular in the 90s
We had a black light down there. hung up a bunch of sheets. We put down, we had found, Astro turf, turf scraps and stuff at high school. Actually stole stuff that got taken up from facilities at the high school and sort of decorated that area with it. And so between that place, like the basement, that's where we would go if it was raining or shitty, or we could be at my house, in the woods. And so they just.
we would all decide like whichever place we were going. But most of the games we played were in the basement. That's where the, we would play spades for hours.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (:But, you with them, those were actually my friends, and so Truth or Dare didn't come up that often because we all already told each other about stuff and we weren't interested in trying to manipulate each other into doing shit. I knew people who died from playing Truth or Dare. Like, that's how stupid... Yeah, there was a game going on out... What was the name of this creek?
Beck (:wow.
Dash (:It wasn't at Cumberland Falls, but it was up the up the river a ways.
And somebody dared somebody to jump off Seven Sisters at nighttime. That must have been on the lake then, if it was Seven Sisters. At nighttime, into Cumberland Lake. And they just did it.
Beck (:That's crazy. That's crazy scary. Did they drown or break their neck or?
Dash (:Yeah, true. No, it just couldn't couldn't get back to shore once I got down there.
Beck (:That's crazy.
Dash (:It's weird the way like it's the power Truth or Dare has over people.
Beck (:Hehehehe
Yeah, one of my most irrational fears is that I'm going to drive my car into a body of water in the dark and not be able to get out. And I just, I can't think about drowning. would be that and the worst way I've ever heard. So fun conversation here, but the worst way I've ever heard of anyone dying. She was a bingo player and she, her name was Nisi and she had what I don't know the name of the disease that she had or the disorder.
Dash (:Yes.
Beck (:But she was basically freezing in place, like her all her muscles were turning stony. She couldn't turn her head left or right. She couldn't raise her arms. She was completely in a wheelchair, that kind of thing. She was at home in bed and her caretaker left and left a candle burning. And she ended up dying in a fire. Can you imagine that happening and you're stuck in your body and you can't do anything?
Dash (:Dash (30:57.648)
okay.
Dash (:Something ossification is what that's called.
Dash (:that, disorder, fiber. Yeah. Five, fibro dysplasia, ossification, progressive. First time I learned about that. I also was, I was like, Whoa, what a, what an experience.
Beck (:Yeah, like I said, I've
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah.
That would be bad enough to like having to go through life with that. But then to die in a freaking fire. Like to be complete, cause she was completely in there. She was a hundred percent aware. Like you could have a complete conversation with her. She came to bingo. I don't know how she did it. Like she played one pack. You know what I mean? But she came to bingo and
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (:Yeah.
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:I just can't imagine dying like that.
Dash (:I used to have a real fear of drowning. but what I almost, I'm not going to say I almost drowned because I know that, you know, drowning is, it's a, it's a full thing, right? It takes a, it can actually take a long time, even though what the thing that leads to it is, is pretty, pretty brief. And so I was not like nearly dead or anything like that. Nobody had to perform CPR on me or that kind of thing, but I did.
get sucked into something. Did I tell you about the almost, well, it was a vacation, right? It was a hillbilly vacation that we went on. Mom and dad decided that we should have the experience of going on a vacation. And so, but not really having the resources to get that done. And so dad was at the time drove the Geo Metro. And so all five of us getting this Geo Metro and we drove from Tennessee.
to South Carolina and that was our vacation. We went to beach there in South Carolina. No, well, I mean, we did go to Myrtle beach, but we also went to this private beach called Folly Beach. do you remember after it was, it was 92, I think, 91 or 92 during the first Iraq war, the crude oil that was dumped into
Beck (:Myrtle Beach.
Dash (:The Atlantic washed up on the coastline in South Carolina, Virginia, that area there. Well, all along the coastline, there was crude oil washing up. And these people, think, instead of calling in the appropriate authorities, had attempted to dig the oil out themselves of the beach. And so I was walking and...
Beck (:Yeah, yeah.
Dash (:You know, the stuff, the like surf and stuff was coming in and I was, I'd never experienced it before. It was really cool. And then the sand starts to feel like slimy and weird and it starts moving strangely under my feet. And like it would like make way for my feet and then close in on it. Once my feet were there, so that couldn't pick it up again. And so I would like have to slurp it out to move. And then I, all of a sudden I reach a place where there's nothing beneath me. It.
It just fell straight down and the surf was coming in and pushing me down into it. And, I, it, looked perfectly flat from, from, you know, outside it, you, I couldn't anyway see it was there. And I remember like trying to signal that I needed help. And I think people thought I was joking because they could see me and they kind of, you know, laughed. And I think they just didn't realize that I was.
Beck (:Dash (34:46.727)
Cause it looked, I'm sure it didn't look like there, was actually in a hole cause it was flat or not flat, but you water. and so I had to like kind of dig my, fingers and toes into the side of whatever this was. but it was like giving way. It was, I was convinced I was not going to get out of this. And I think I was like, I was pretty small, probably like eight, eight or nine.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (:and so for a long time after that, had a real fear. couldn't see people drowning in movies. I couldn't see, I couldn't read stories about people drowning because I remember just what it felt like being pushed down by the water. It was so much heavier than me.
Beck (:Do believe in multiple timeline theory?
Dash (:Like, do I think there's a version of me out there that did drown or? I'm not sure if I believe in it, but I do enjoy like just thinking about that kind of thing.
Beck (:Yeah, that's exactly what I mean.
Beck (:Because I've had a couple of near-death experiences and I just wonder. And there have been times when I thought an accident was imminent with a semi and then it's just over. It's just gone. And I don't know how I got out of it. It's happened more than once.
Dash (:You know, I have actually had a ton of near-death experiences too, and it was always from doing redneck shit. And the thing about, you know, to sort of briefly take this back to truth or dare, you don't have to dare a hillbilly to do anything stupid, like... And so there, I regularly have flashbacks to this time I was... We used to sneak onto the roof of the dorm we lived in.
Beck (:No, we do it for fun.
Dash (:On campus, we all lived on this 10 story building and we would get up there and just fuck around on the roof. And I think about this time, one time I was fucked up and I tripped while literally skipping along the roof, kind of close to the side. And I think I remember the sound of people kind of gasping and I, and when I fell and I went to,
Went to put my hands down to push myself back up and the left one hit air. and so I had fallen almost off of this and it was dark. Of course it was, it was after midnight and there's no lights up there because we weren't supposed to be out there. And I think about that all the time. Like that, an intrusive thought goes through my head of like, you, fell off of that. You're not actually here. So whether I do or not believe in it, my OCD does.
Beck (:We were, yeah, Shanna and I were on our way to Knoxville one time to see some friends that I have down there and we were on 75 and we were just trucking along and I was in a Hyundai Accent, a hatchback, small car, Five speed and we're just laughing and going along and my car hits, or the tire hits some gravel on the side of the road where the rumble strip is. You know, if you go over it
Dash (:Yeah.
Beck (:whatever. Yeah. And there was some gravel and my car hit it and I immediately, my car spun out and I did a 360. And during that 360, when we came around one side, I was staring at the semi coming at me. And we perfectly landed in the, like not even on the side of the road, we were on the inside of the, like between the wall and the side of the road. So we like, I don't even know how there was room there because there's usually not.
Dash (:my god.
Dash (:HEH!
Beck (:And like we just sat there for a minute because I don't know how we didn't die. And then we both cracked up laughing so hard. Like it was like just relief that we didn't die. And I genuinely don't know how we didn't die in that moment.
Dash (:Maybe you did.
Beck (:When I was 11 months old, my mom took me to a county fair and it was in August, so it was right before I turned a year old. And the fairgrounds where I grew up, there's one road in and one road out. So, and the traffic is usually backed up pretty good. So if you need to get out in a hurry, it's not, it's not easy. And I had a seizure, a full-on trying to swallow my tongue, you know, the whole thing is a, I was 11 months old.
And my grandfather, they put me in a car trying to take me down the road and my grandfather jumped out of a car, ran up to some lady's house, threw me in, like ran into somebody's house and put me in a bathtub and started putting cold water on me. Trying to, cause it was, they figured it cause I was so hot, I was overheating. And my body, that's one of the reasons I sweat so much is that I don't regulate heat well. And it's, I had seizures until I was five years old because of it.
But I literally could have died from seizures that day and I didn't. And I always wondered if I changed the timeline because some weird shit has happened to me in my lifetime. And I'm one of those people that if it's weird and can happen, it will happen to me.
Dash (:think that is being a redneck though, because I'm the exact same. I don't have any normal experiences. But then I also think about the fact that all of my redneck peers, they also don't have any normal stories. And I do have questions about that. I don't have an explanation for it.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (:And so I'm not saying that, cause that doesn't even make sense either. Like what would that mean? What is it about being an Appalachian or someone who lives in a certain area? You know, they say the mountains are old and haunted, but the shit that goes on in the lives of people that is...
I don't know, maybe it's related to systemic poverty, maybe it's related to the way we just live our lives, the kinds of things we get up to. Yeah. And epigenetics, right? There's epigenetics to the way we live. Trauma, addiction, all these things. They have a literal epigenetic lasting impact on people. And so that's one of the reasons, for instance, life expectancy is impacted by lived experiences of
Beck (:generational trauma.
Dash (:trauma and addiction and stuff by both the people who experience them and their progeny. I just said progeny like I'm someone who the fuck says progeny.
Beck (:Scholars finishing their dissertation.
Dash (:Yeah, I know. I think I did use the word progeny in it a few times. What is the... Like, what was the moment that you, I think, realized that you were beginning to speak a different language than your parents?
Beck (:you
That's why it's at the forefront of your thoughts.
Beck (:It was after I came out to myself. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college is when I came out to myself. I was driving out to a country-ass place to do my job and I was smoking a joint by myself and I was just like, I'm gay. I said it out loud. I was like, I pulled over and I cried my eyes out. I was like, I'm gay. I'm I'm gay.
Dash (:Beck (42:21.288)
And I held that, that was in the summer and I didn't tell a soul until like February. I kept it completely to myself. And I started telling people, my friends, my closest friends, I ended up telling my sister, back when she was cool.
Beck (:And when I came, when I started going to the gay bar and I couldn't tell them where I was going, that's when it felt like I diverged paths from my family. That's when I felt like they couldn't, we didn't have that... Because it was basically total honesty before that. I had nothing to hide from them, you know? But then when I started going to the queer bar, I told them that I was going to the wild dog, because that sounds like a fun place to go.
I told him I was going to the straight bar when in fact I was not. was going to the queer bar. So that's what I would say. That's what I felt like a different language, different everything happened, a different reality happened. And I don't think we ever spoke the same language again.
Dash (:You become two versions of yourself.
Dash (:There's a kind of, mean, there's a code switching that occurs between like, you know, queer people and their non-queer families, especially like their parents.
Dash (:And it but the it's it's also it feels like dishonesty or maybe it is dishonestly a lot of times. But at the same time, it's also life preserving dishonesty.
Beck (:There was also a little bit of the, just the teenager angst kind of, I'm different than my parents kind of thing. I remember we went on a vacation, the only one that I remember, that I vividly remember going on, there were other ones that happened when I was too young to remember them. And then my parents got divorced and we didn't go on any more vacations. I was fifteen it was the month before my 16th birthday and we went to Myrtle Beach.
And on the way down there, there was no satellite radio. All there was was the regular radio and CDs. And my dad wanted to listen to country music the whole way down there, right? And I wanted to listen to Pearl Jam. So we made an agreement that we would listen to one of his CDs and then we would listen to one of my CDs. And so we listened to his bullshit or whatever, right? And then I put in my Pearl Jam, my Verses CD, and there's a song on there called Rats. And it says, it's basically rats don't shit where they're not supposed to.
Dash (:You
Beck (:Rats are social animals basically that you know it's a whole thing and he started like quoting lyrics from it telling me how deep it was like making fun of me that kind of thing and so I think that even then we didn't really see eye to eye but I think that's pretty typical that you know you and your parents divulge on on or diverge on what you think is good music.
Dash (:God, like what I was thinking recently about a movie like the top the the times when it began to become obvious to everybody what was going on with me, but they were still in denial about it or trying to wish it away or thinking like they could they could force it to not be true. But we had a family friend who there and they still are like, thankfully still they're still living to this couple who were best friends with my
my parents and had some two boys that were older than us. And they were like second parents to us. They were not the only ones, right? That's just how it is in the Hills. There are many, many second parents that you have. But this guy, he was paying attention. I had started to, in high school, I hung out with them and their bluegrass friends a lot. This is how I started to get exposed to more types of music.
Beck (:Right? Yep.
Dash (:Every weekend they would hang around over there at their house and drink beer and play music and stuff. And I would, I would sit with them and learn different, you know, things about playing guitar, bluegrass style and mandolin and boat banjo and all that. And that's where I learned about John pine and, Bill Watson and like. We, my mom didn't listen to that kind of, she did listen to a little bluegrass, but, and my dad wasn't around much. he works so much. And so this, this was where my.
my learning about bluegrass happened and he was paying attention and he was noticing and so he recommended a movie to me but he didn't tell me why and he didn't tell me not to watch it with my parents. So have you seen the Wachowski's first movie Bound with Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon?
Beck (:Yeah, a long time ago, but yes.
Dash (:It is their best film. It's their best work in my opinion. It's it's a fucking perfect movie It's a it's a gangster. It's a lesbian gangster heist film noir
Beck (:I think both times I saw that film I was on a date and it's hard to concentrate.
Dash (:It sounds like a date movie because it is. It's nearly pornographic. It's so, so good. And so I rented this movie from fucking Jellicoe video. The VHS popped it in at home with mom's mom and dad sitting on the couch and I'm watching it and I'm like, wait a minute. And I just begin to I begin to experience that panic of knowing that something needs to be done, but like acknowledging it.
Beck (:Yeah, for lesbians, yeah. Yeah.
Beck (:God, let me be let me go for this week really the sweet release of death
Dash (:Like, knowing that I need to turn the movie off, but standing up and breaking the spell is when the consequences will happen. And so I just need to, you know, and then like also it breaks that spell of we're not talking about it yet. Nobody's acknowledging what's happening. But finally I was like, God. And because of that, we sat there through the whole movie.
And I was like, and my mom was like, I don't believe that Donnie told you to rent that movie. And I was like, how else would I have heard about it?
this is some indie film, why is it even at Jellicoe video? But yeah, that was a watershed moment in my relationship with my parents around queerness.
Beck (:Same scenario, but but with my friends When I was a senior in high school the last week of classes We did a lot of things as a group like the last senior the reading of the will and testaments and that kind of thing and One of the more popular girls in my class had a sleepover and I had never been invited to one of the popular girl things So I was very excited, you know, and I brought a movie with me that I had rented and I thought was hilarious
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I had watched it a couple of times. I rendered it at the Little Valley video, you know, so I thought, you know, it was normal. You know this film, Curse of the Queer Wolf. Yeah, I put it in for my friends and they were like, what the hell, Becky?
Dash (:I fucking love that movie
Dash (:Wait a minute, I didn't know that you had seen that movie before we met.
Beck (:In high school I yeah, so back 90 it would have been 1996
Dash (:You're the only person I have. You're the only person I've ever met who's seen that movie before I showed it to them without, you without me. Oh my God, that movie is is a revelation. It is ridiculous. Dick cheese. All the damn puppies.
Beck (:Yeah, I learned about it in 1996.
Beck (:Larry Smallbutt and a dick cheese.
Listeners, if you have not seen Curse of the Queer Wolf, please, please do yourself a favor and get a hold of it somehow. It is fantastic.
Dash (:When I first started writing for this magazine online, the first thing I published was an article about Curse of the Queer Wolf. But that movie is really cool for a lot of reasons to me because it's from 1987 and it will not tell you what it's trying to say. And it's about, it's a queer story. It's about queer and trans panic.
but it's not telling you what side it's taking on it at first. You have to sit with it. You have to figure it out yourself or be patient. And so the first 15 minutes of that movie is just an onslaught of over the top misogyny and queer panic and trans panic until the queer wolf hunters show up with the silver dildo to kill the queer wolf.
Beck (:right?
Beck (:That's when I lost my friends.
Dash (:Well, I was sitting, I bought that VHS, I found that VHS with the off print color, so earth cover, not the original one. So it's got a cover that's like just, it's not even anybody that's in the movie. It's just some random like Victor Victoria type of thing, nothing to do with werewolves or anything. I found it for 25 cents at the Goodwill there in BG. And so me and Eric went back, we went home and we put it in, started watching it.
Beck (:Got ya.
Beck (:wow.
Dash (:for the first 15 minutes we couldn't look at each other because we knew we had to wait and see what was gonna happen. And it went on and on. It was a long time before those queer wolf hunters showed up and the movie tells you finally what it's doing. High Camp, the transformation scene is one of the only scenes that's on YouTube. Mm-hmm.
Beck (:really?
Dash (:Yeah, that's where his wrists break. And the red bandana squirts out of his back pocket.
Beck (:Yep, and the flowers are emanating from them, the radiating, the hippie flowers.
Beck (:Yeah!
Dash (:God. And he grows fishnets. It's also like this is a film, you know, it's dealing with the ridiculousness of how the AIDS, HIV AIDS epidemic was being treated. You know, these folks were being treated as though they were monsters and not, you know, fellow citizens in great suffering, deserving of as much aid as they can be provided.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (:And so then he that's not the only movie he's done like that. He made one also called rectum I've watched his entire oeuvre now because I was just when I found this dude and I ordered something from him and if you order off his side It's the only place you can get his shit. He signs it before he sends it Yeah But yeah, there's one called rectum about and this came out in 2003 and it is dealing with the post-9-eleven xenophobic
Beck (:wow.
Dash (:You know, anti-Arab, anti-Iraqi zeitgeist. And it's about an American dude who travels to Mexico and gets, I don't remember what kind of frog it is, but he gets raped by a frog. And I think I'm pretty sure it's a frog. And then his ass mutates and it becomes a Mothra style monster that is destroying towers, a la.
Allah is a strange, I should have, you I don't mean the God figure Allah, I mean the French as in terrorists knocking down buildings, you know, but it's just a gigantic American ass knocking buildings down and it's like, I don't know what you're doing and I know you're doing something and I know it's really soon after 9-11 and you just felt like you had to do, you had to get this out.
And all of these texts are also because of this traumatized text.
Dash (:dealing with a traumatized zeitgeist in a raw way.
And Queer Wolf is also funny. The John Wayne talisman.
Beck (:The whole thing is hilarious, it's just absurd. The entire thing is so camp and so much fun.
Dash (:Remember this song? Then he was bitten by a Beverly Hillbillies parody.
Beck (:I forgot. Yeah, there was the deliverance reference too. There's a little save where they're, eee, eee, eee.
Dash (:Dude, should, should, like if we ever get listeners, we'll, do a live react to, to Curse of the Queer Wolf.
Beck (:We'll do one of those video watch parties. That sounds like fun.
Dash (:Yeah.
You can get banned from everything.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (:Yeah, he's a prolific paradist. I don't know what you call someone who does parody, but even the name of his company is Pirromount because his last name is Pirro
Beck (:But.
Beck (:Mmm.
Yeah, Curse of the Queer Wolf is high comedy for sure. And that was before I was out and that still was something that I engaged with.
Dash (:is
The that panic of doing something that's accidentally gay when you're in the closet of like god why would I did have to be me that that you know said this misspoke this pun or something remember I mispronounced Amerigo Vespucci as Amerigo Vespussy
Beck (:Hahahaha!
Dash (:in elementary school or middle school. It was, was fifth grade, I guess. But even the teacher laughed at me.
Beck (:like it better, honestly.
Beck (:People, there was a kid who misread, like you know how you read, like down the rows, everybody has to read part of the story or whatever. There was a kid that misread the words burnt beans in middle school and they called that poor kid burnt beans until graduation. And now he's a librarian. He did so much reading to make up for it. He's a librarian. I don't remember. He just stumbled over the words or I don't remember exactly.
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (:What did he say?
Dash (:It's not an easy phrase.
Beck (:No, but they... of all the stupid things to tease you about, burnt beans! There's old burnt beans!
Dash (:This becomes the thing no way did you have a nickname?
Beck (:No, not that I know of. My wife has a name. Her name is Old Hammer Hands. Her mom verified it. She has hammer hands.
Dash (:in that they are okay they called me boy titties
Beck (:big and heavy and they'll whack you without meaning to. A LAMER HANDS.
Dash (:I forgot about that till just now.
Dash (:And I actually didn't understand the insult at all. I still don't really understand it. But it was the girls, because I grew tits before the other girls and they couldn't stand it. And I was ugly and I was, you know, I did gender wrong. And so why do I get boobs? And so, yeah, they called me boy titties. And now I think it's like it hurt a lot of the time, but now I think it's really funny and cool.
Beck (:haha
Beck (:You
That's hilarious. I did have a grubble. Boy titties.
Dash (:Let's make a t-shirt. Boy, these may have crop top.
Beck (:Queernecks sponsored by boy titties.
Dash (:you
Dash (:I'm sure there were plenty others, but that's my favorite.
Beck (:That's awesome.
Beck (:I can't think of any nicknames that I had. I was always being told that I looked like Rosie O'Donnell when I was in high school because I had a bob and she had her famous talk show back then so she was on TV a lot. She was a lot thinner and...
Dash (:Yeah.
Dash (:I remember liking her hair. I thought she had great style for her hair, but it's because I was queer.
Beck (:Yeah. Ditto. But, I mean, I would go to the dollar store and they'd be like, you know who you look like? Rosie O'Donnell. I got it a lot.
Dash (:Like, really all they were saying was you look queer. That was the only queer person on TV they knew about that hadn't actually come out yet.
Beck (:Yeah, pretty much.
Beck (:I took it as a compliment, I liked her a lot. I still do.
Dash (:Like her too. Man, I mean, we talked last time, I think about how queer people are funnier than, than cis straight people. But there are some pretty stand-out examples of how fucking funny queer people are. And she's, she's one of them. Leah Delaria is another one. You know her.
Beck (:yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, she was on Orange is the New Black, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Dash (:Yeah, she played boo on Orange's New Black, but she had been dominant. She did a lot of voice acting. She was on the oblongs. She played the one that looked kind of like a frog. And she had been, she was actually been a comedian her whole, that was, that has been her whole career. She's hardly ever done anything else. She was on the Caleb Hearon show recently and was telling a lot of stories and she fucking cracked me up because she's from Missouri, I think.
Beck (:Hahaha!
Dash (:and was talking about some girls school that, he asked her like, so were you a, I don't remember the name of the school, but it was something like Wellesley. It was not Wellesley, but he said the name of it and he was like, so were you a such and such girl? And she goes, yeah, if you are, what you eat.
Beck (:You gotta love lesbians.
Dash (:I absolutely do. The un- un- un-sung heroes of many, uh, an overlooked need or want in society.
Beck (:I'm a big fan myself.
Beck (:Have you ever heard the story of the Lavender Menace?
Dash (:Yeah, of course.
Beck (:I don't know how rare that story is, but I ended up buying myself a t-shirt that says lavender menace on it.
Dash (:Is it a reprint or is it one of the originals?
Beck (:No, I couldn't afford an original and I don't even know if... yeah.
Dash (:Yeah, I don't even you probably I mean, maybe they exist out there somewhere, hopefully in a museum. And also just from the the the protest of that that one day and I don't remember when that was I know that it was late 70s or early 80s. But they were basically interrupting a feminist consciousness raising section, which had specifically blackballed them because of being lesbians.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (:And it was...
No.
Dash (:Yeah, early 70s.
Dash (:The threat. this was a, and Betty Friedan is the one that used the phrase, Lavender Menace. Fuck Betty Friedan, you know?
Beck (:Yeah, she's the one that called them the the lavender madness. I have a special place in my heart because she went toe to toe with Phyllis Schlafly. I spit when I say her name. Yeah.
Dash (:Fuck Phyllis Schlafly too, yeah. I mean, there's shades of, you know, radfem history. We're getting into the history of feminism here, and it is never as simple as fuck this one or fuck that one.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (:cool lavender mini shirts.
Beck (:Except Phyllis Schlafly. Fuck Phyllis Schlafly.
Dash (:I saw a replay of the Anita Bryant pie face thing recently. That was pretty soothing.
Beck (:Yeah, it's amazing. I love queer resistance because even in our resistance, we have humor. You know what I mean? Like, we're like, you can't take it seriously. Like, you have to take us seriously, but we can still see the the absurdity in everything that we have to do. Right? I think that's part of it.
Dash (:Well, and if you look at that, if you watch that clip, what plays out afterwards is the guy, he steps back and raises his hands prepared to be arrested because that's a physical assault. And they don't do anything to him. Because we had not yet, even though we were still living in an oppressive,
Beck (:Right.
Dash (:state in which few folks, in which it was plenty of groups of people didn't share the same civil rights as a dominant group in society. We were not quite in the repressive state that we are now. Because think about a Black Lives Matter demonstrator doing something like that. They would have been shot on the spot, but at minimum arrested. And so, I mean, it's like, yeah, that's really, really cool. But there's all these
Beck (:Right.
Dash (:Speaking of timeline theory, there's all these markers, these historical moments where you can clearly see that we have reacted to something in such a way as to overcorrect back to even more and more repressive.
Dash (:I can't imagine doing something like slapping Marjorie Taylor Greene in the face with a lemon pie.
Beck (:man, but now I have like a third wish. That's amazing.
Dash (:Well, and also something I don't think people know is, or maybe we don't talk about enough, is that there's a quip after the pie. Anita Bryant says, well, at least it's a fruit pie.
Dash (:And so I hadn't remembered that. I watched it. was like, this is camp. This is high comedy. This is how we used to get our, to get things expressed. If you also think about, there's the documentary on ACT UP, I think it's called United in Anger. There's a documentary called United in Anger about the ACT UP movement to raise awareness about how deadly.
the HIV AIDS epidemic was for the queer community and cis gay men in particular, or just folks who had that kind of penetrative sex. And the die-ins that they were doing outside the FDA offices, there's footage from inside the offices of those people. Like they were standing up at the windows looking down at this demonstration, like they were giving it their full attention. They, and they weren't mocking.
You can see that these people are actually impacted by the demonstration because I think that there was still a level of empathy for each other. And I know that I'm sounding really get off your lawn and like get off my lawn and you know, super like back in them days. No, I am not saying that we should go back to the days of whatever, but you can't, is like comparing
If you study, you know, like historical actions and social movements, it is possible to pinpoint.
The loss of empathy.
Dash (:between that time and this one. Now folks are very happy to see other people suffer. Especially
Beck (:yeah, that's the whole MAGA... ...stick.
Dash (:Yeah. I'm not sure they're... I'm not sure those folks are all there.
Beck (:But they get off on owning the libs, you know what I mean? Like, if they can do something that will inconvenience or...
make a lib sad than that they're all for doing it.
Dash (:Ew.
Beck (:At this point you, maybe I'll alienate some listeners by saying this, but at this point you are making a choice. If you still follow that man, you are making a choice and.
It's not about policy anymore.
Dash (:It's very clearly been a cult of personality for a long time.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (:Should we get into this week's sponsor?
Beck (:Sure, let's see here.
Alright, this episode of Queernecks is brought to you by the humble, the reliable, the wildly underrated Fly Swatter. Appalachian air traffic control since time immemorial. Is it elegant? No. Is it high tech? Also no. But is it effective? You bet your sweet tea it is. It's the telltale thwack is the sound of the summer in the hills. Flies in the kitchen? Swatter. Mosquito on your leg? Swatter. Kids misbehavin'? Swatter. Cousin Kenny getting too nosy about your love life? Swatter.
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So whether you're defending your potato salad or just establishing clear boundaries with an insect or person, grab yourself a fly swatter. Fly swatters because in Appalachia we don't shoe problems away, we handle them.
Dash (:You know almost did one for fly swatters too, but we called them fly swats.
Beck (:I've not heard him shortened that way before.
Dash (:Yeah, it could be just be a Jellico thing, but yeah, it was fly swat. It actually, think it's kind of common in our dialect to name the thing after its action, like name it after the thing it does.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Right, yep, the clicker.
Dash (:Yeah, FlashSpot was also often in the Switch. my God, you ever have to pick your own Switch?
Beck (:I did, only once, because my parents got divorced and my mom got rid of that bullshit. But zero percent fun, zero stars, I do not recommend that at all.
Dash (:Yeah, I don't recall my parents being much for the switch the switching but you know, there was plenty of a house we stayed at or babysitter that that was yeah, you just you just knew and also just the the psychological cruelty of pick your own switch because
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (:you've got an opportunity to... Then there's a pressure of making the right decision for the best result for yourself pain-wise, but if you push it too far, then the punishment doubles, right? If you walk back in with a fern leaf or something, you'll find out how much a fern leaf can be used to hurt a person.
Beck (:right?
Dash (:And then you find out how much a tiny little switch hurts as opposed to a big, you know, branch of a switch. One time I got whipped on my legs with briars, that was definitely the worst.
Beck (:god.
Dash (:I'm not sure they knew that they had picked up Briars, but that's, they did not stop when they realized it.
Beck (:My dad had a neat little trip party trick where if there were three of us and if my sister and brother got into an argument, he would whip all three of us. If any of us, if any, any two of us got into a fight, he would whip all three of us and they fought constantly.
Dash (:Yeah, because the other one is culpable by association and also they should apparently have done something about it. That was the excuse for me.
Beck (:Yeah, especially me being my sister was nine and I was three. So, you know, clearly I should have been doing the reasoning for them.
Dash (:Yeah. You know, for me it was like I was in charge and so if the little ones did something then we all got whipped.
Beck (:Yeah, I was the littlest, so they ended with perfection with me.
Dash (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:They were afraid what would come next, actually.
Dash (:Right.
Well, this sounds like a good time for our Nouns of Appalachian Interest. This is the person, place, or thing of either Appalachian origin or central to Appalachian life. So this week's highlight is snow cream.
Let me tell you about a recipe by way of memoir excerpt as is internet tradition. It's impossible to nail down the origins of something as old as snow cream. That isn't really the point. Its roots aren't as much regional as they are spirited and experiential. The confluence of the kind of place where a good snow is intermittent and grinds life to a halt and we're asking for McDonald's will be answered with, we got hamburgers at home. The power of snow cream.
Beck (:Hahaha!
Dash (:The power of snow cream isn't in its flavor superiority or even parity to the in-store brought or to store bought ice cream. Those who'd make such a claim know it's flatly false, but the hidden truth of snow cream is in its ritual and performance, and lying about how good it is is simply part of that. The said ritual is founded on the sheer unpredictability of the weather in Appalachia in the southern part of the U.S. Catching the required new fallen snow is as easy as catching lightning in a bottle.
The flightless kind, not the beetle kind, that is. Reaching a patch of freshly dealt sky powder before any birds, critters, tires, or exploding tree debris requires the timing and persistence of an artist hunter. Snow weather disappears as quickly as it appears, and you don't know when it'll be back. So the joy experienced by all when the timing and materials align cannot be measured in calories. The experience of snow cream is indeed superior to store-bought ice cream.
While the timing is ineffable and the ingredients ephemeral, the process is simple. You must skip the first snow of winter because it clears the air, as Memaw says. This heightens the anticipation as you remember the years where there never was another. During any successive snow, you take a pail or bowl outside and skim the topmost fluffiest layers. It's best to work in groups so that you can gather enough to get inside to mommy before the first that's gathered melts in your bowl.
When you thunder inside with your haul, Mommy takes the frozen bucket from the freezer and yells at you to wad the plastic bags on your feet up and put them back inside the bag of bags below the sink. She's already arranged her wares for the event because it all must take place before the snow melts. She adds evaporated milk or condensed milk, whichever she has, a little sugar, and vanilla extract while you blow your warmest breath into your hands. Watching the list of school closures crawl across the bottom of the TV screen hoping for yours. You'll sit in front of the kerosene heater eating what is literally a bowl of water.
with no inkling that one day people in Minnesota will look at you like you have a penis growing out of the side of your head for remarking they must eat snow cream all winter long. Snow cream is fundamentally the work of people with far more imagination and ingenuity than resources and sense.
Beck (:Amen.
Dash (:I fucking love snow cream
Beck (:I've only had it a handful of times. My mom never made it. I was always at a friend's house whenever we made it. But it was really good the times that I had it.
Dash (:If you can get it right, and it also depends on the texture of the snow. Is it humid? Is it slushy snow? Is it that really dry snow? Because sometimes it can be, it almost reminds me of that astronaut food.
Beck (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (:And sometimes, you know, we would put Hershey's syrup in it or if yeah, strawberries or frozen blackberries. Mom would thaw out some blackberries.
Beck (:strawberries.
Beck (:Maybe.
Beck (:We have blackberries right now, speaking of, and we have fresh corn again. I'm excited. We're making pork chops and corn tomorrow.
Dash (:hell yeah, I just thought out a tenderloin. Somebody did something that is so like scratches my Appalachian ass too wrong at work and there's a danger that they know I do this and will hear this and I don't fucking care. So we had a food distribution day, a giveaway where we, you know, arrange bags of foods and people in the community can come and pick them up and there was some perishables in there.
of corn, ears of corn and green peppers. And someone who was involved with this event brought all the leftover perishables and left them in common areas of campus where we have, we keep food shelves for students. We stock them regularly in spaces they can always access. And they, I can almost see what they were thinking, right? Like this is the food shelf. So I'm going to leave.
perishables on it. I actually don't understand that part. As I came into work the day after and there's 12 bags filled with ears of corn and green peppers just dumped on the tables in our common area. Now you can spot the flaws in this logic, right? Firstly, there are no students on campus right now. Secondly, they didn't leave a note and they didn't email anybody that they had done this.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (:There's a third issue too that I've discovered, which is really strange for Minnesotans, is they won't take things. If you try to give them something, they'll be like, no, I'll leave it for the next person. And so I was like, you have just given me the gift of a giant rotting pile of shit I'm going to have to take care of. And so today, yeah, and I sent out an email. was like, come and get corn and stuff. because I was like, if they do it, if I do send it out. But then it was too late. By the time they came over, somebody was like, this shit's rotten.
Beck (:gosh.
Dash (:And I was like, okay. And so I went in to get rid of it all and it's just flies and nasty. And I'm like, I hope the person who did it never tells me who they are. Because that's fucking food and it could have been eaten by someone. it's not that it, you know, if we found someone to take it to the, sister has a farm and she needs it for the chickens and stuff. And I'm like, good, you know, it's going somewhere, but a human could have eaten that.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Beck (:right?
Dash (:And apparently...
Beck (:I hate wasted food. I think that's a very Appalachian thing. Yeah. We went to Bob Evans today and I got, I usually get breakfast, but I went with the grilled chicken and a salad today and I could not eat the chicken. was so, it was so juicy. It was a naturally juicy and I just couldn't work my way through it.
Dash (:It's triggering.
Dash (:Mm-hmm. It's a demoralizing feeling when you know you're like, I'm gonna have to waste this, right? I mean, I can't.
Beck (:Yeah, it was like $13.
Dash (:can't do it and I can't in good conscience pawn it off on somebody.
Beck (:Yeah, yeah. Well, we brought it home to the dogs, so at least somebody got some enjoyment out of it.
Dash (:I think that that's why, mean, dogs and cats and stuff, nothing went to waste. I remember I have this vivid sense memory of slopping the pigs. That was my least absolute least favorite farm chore was because every, wasn't compost. All the scraps went into the slot for the pigs and it was just.
accumulate, right? It will go into these 10 gallon bucket, five gallon buckets. I forget actually, which it is, you know, the ones that people turn up and that sometimes turn upside down sometimes and pretend are drums. it would be that full of a week's worth of table scrap and you'd have to take it down to the pig pen, which already smells like ragged death. And then open up this rancid bucket that someone has correctly named slop.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:pigs.
Dash (:and pour it into the trough. And it's just the whole experience. I don't know, actually now that I'm explaining it, I'm coming around on it. It's a very like, this is existence, you know, type of experience. Like this is what it takes. But it is an unpleasant sense memory.
Beck (:I can imagine that does not- nothing of that sounds appealing.
Dash (:The campus here smells like pig shit because there's so much fertilizer around and there's they're all green here. So, you know, which is cool. It's actually a hundred percent sustainable campus. They don't they make all the energy they need here. So really a testament to what is possible with a little bit of planning and engineering and, you know, effort. But it does have its drawbacks, one of which is the smell.
Beck (:Yeah, I can see that.
Dash (:And they all pretend they don't because at first I was like what does that smell and they would all be like I Don't I don't know what you mean, and I realized I was like this is permanent It always smells this way and we don't discuss it got it Holy shit the the paper mill that smells like the the inside of a dead like Did you know it's closing
Beck (:In Chillicothe, Ohio, that's the paper mill. Yeah.
That's the smell of money,
Beck (:Yeah, I heard. But if you ask anybody in Chillicothe, they'll tell you that's the smell of money, Yeah. Yeah.
Dash (:It is the smell of money. It's the smell of an entire fucking economy that is now going to what's going to happen.
Beck (:The same thing that happened to the other towns, they'll die and everything. Because Chillicothe is like the only little bastion of civilization below South, below Columbus. Yeah. Yeah. Where I live, people often drive to Chillicothe to get food because that's the only place there's a Chipotle. That's the only place there's a Olive Garden.
Dash (:It is a hidden gem, yeah. It's a sweet place, and it's filled with some sweet people.
Dash (:Well, they've got live. They have a live music scene there. They have some cool bars. have downtown street like block parties. It's a it's a actual community. So I'm Yes, that's true. They do.
Beck (:Mm-hmm. And they have the original Krispy Kreme donut too, so yeah, they're amazing.
Dash (:Yeah, I've been I'm being concerned about them since I heard about the plan. Well, let's let's wrap this up before we find any more shit to bum out about. Got a got a laugh the pain away. Well, thank you all for joining us on this week's Queernecks where we abandon the topic we. Who was our sponsor? yeah, we we.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Beck (:Flightswater. The humble Flightswater.
Dash (:We received the generous support of the Humblefly Swatter and we learned about the Southern US and Appalachian Sweet Treats snow cream, which you can make yourself. And if you Google it, you'll find out that there is a war over what actually is snow cream, just like biscuits. So join us next time and say howdy mom and them.
