#8 It Ain't All Doom and Gloom, but it's a lot
Dash and Beck explore a variety of themes ranging from personal experiences with food and small-town life to the challenges of academia and mental health. They share stories of grief, loss, and the impact of religion on their lives, while also reflecting on queer identity and community. The discussion touches on parenting choices, the role of libraries, and the influence of controversial figures in pop culture. Throughout the conversation, they emphasize the importance of personal growth, community engagement, and the complexities of navigating life as queer individuals.
Takeaways
Food rituals play a significant role in personal memories.
Life in small towns comes with unique challenges and quirks.
Academia can be a struggle, especially with grading and integrity issues.
First-generation students often face additional hurdles in education.
Mental health is crucial for personal growth and well-being.
Grief and loss are complex experiences that shape our identities.
Religious trauma can have lasting effects on individuals.
Cultural reflections on religion reveal diverse experiences.
Food and family traditions are intertwined with identity.
Art and activism often intersect in meaningful ways.
tags:
food, academia, mental health, grief, religion, queer identity, parenting, literature, community, pop culture
Transcript
yeah, we're not, don't think we've recorded it in the morning before. I had, some gas station breakfast.
Beck (:No, I don't think so.
Beck (:I don't usually eat until the afternoon, so I'm running on Red Bull and fumes.
Dash (he/him) (:When I go to work, like on a work day, I don't eat until lunchtime. I just have coffee, but, cause we were, I don't know. just, I was struck by, I was like, okay, I'm just going to go get a snack. And I walked out with, you know, those like sausage corn dogs. Yeah. You dip in syrup.
Beck (:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Did you ever eat school breakfast?
Beck (:No, I never made it on time.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Beck (:I've been a late person my whole life. It just, it is what it is.
Dash (he/him) (:We got, they had, I don't remember them having breakfast at Jellico but when we transferred to Williamsburg, they had breakfast at school and we got, you know, we had a free lunch. so with that, if you got free lunch, then you got like reduced breakfast. So it was like 30 cents for the breakfast pizza, which I'd never seen before. And I was just like, it was the most delicious thing I'd ever had.
Beck (:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Beck (:Basically, breakfast at my school was a honey bun or a super bun and chocolate milk and send you on your way.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, you could get, think you could get those too. Like they would have a selection. You could get a grilled cheese for breakfast, which is an oddly popular choice. and then buns and then breakfast pizza.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:We didn't have anything fancy like that.
Dash (he/him) (:It's possible. Yeah, I never, and it, like, it, maybe they was something at Jellico we just didn't know because we didn't have it. But, yeah, they would bring, it was like the trolley in Harry Potter. They would, a cart would go down the hallways during first period or homeroom or whatever it was. And the kids would go out and get their grilled cheese or breakfast pizza. But I discovered though, since having, you know, becoming an adult with adult money.
that gas stations have public school breakfast food. So they've got breakfast pizza. They've got the mini sausage corn dogs. Yeah, it's more than 30 cents now, though.
Beck (:Nice!
Beck (:I'm on a biscuits and gravy kick myself. Shanna gets off work at two o'clock in the afternoon, so sometimes we go out for late lunch when she gets off. And there's a little diner in my town and I usually get the breakfast, the farmer's choice. It comes with bacon, two eggs, and biscuits and gravy, and potatoes, and it's delicious. Now I'm hungry.
Dash (he/him) (:Okay, well.
Dash (he/him) (:Damn. I miss food.
Beck (:Right now I'm missing it.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah
Beck (:Though yesterday at Kroger and I've yet to try it, do you know the candy bar 100 grand? They came out with ice cream 100 grand.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
yeah, I there's a don't eat a lot of ice cream, but I've been noticing it lately because it's a I think there's a culture of it here. And there's a lot of like, fleet themed flavors in ice cream that is like shit you wouldn't think of.
Beck (:Yeah, Shanna keeps ice cream at the house. Like it's a nightly ritual for her. I'm not so much a daily user of the ice cream, but I like novelties. I like Snickers bars. I like those kinds of things, drumsticks. So I'm really excited to try the 100 grand.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:I'm
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:I've been addicted to, so pretzels are a big thing here. And I'm, know that they, but pretzels I think are a Midwest thing. anywhere where that, that's German influence is in like this, this, guess Midwest heartland area. There's you, you're just like covered up in choices for pretzels. And I have discovered the dots season pretzel and I will go through a bag every few days. It's so good.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:wow.
Dash (he/him) (:And they're not cheap. So that's something like I'll get a bag and then it'll be gone and I'll be like, well, you can have another one in a month.
Beck (:Even though you absolutely have the disposable income to afford a bag of chips.
Dash (he/him) (:if I do right now. It's you know, everything costs that much here. So you really are deciding between if I'm deciding between like pretzels and my medicine, because they both cost the same.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Right? Man, when I got my insurance back and I started paying for all my meds again, whoo! I'm an expensive bitch. I have expensive medicine tastes. I am, man. I'm a baller.
Dash (he/him) (:designer
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. I mean, the, the healthcare here is, is so incredible. think that's the only reason anybody can afford to live here because everything else is wild. Like yesterday, I don't have washer and dryer. So, and I bought one, but this is, don't know, O Brother Where Art Thou? Right. He's like, two weeks from everywhere. That's this place, except for it's more like six weeks. And so I've been out of clean clothes for a while.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:And I heard tell because nobody has websites here. They don't have phone numbers. You have to know somebody to know something, to get something. And so I heard tell of a laundry man in the next town over. And I went in search of it and you. It doesn't have a sign on it or anything. It is, it's there, but it doesn't say that's what it is. And so you have to know it's there in order to use it. This is like the least welcoming place I think I've ever lived. Like not, they don't know they're doing it, but
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:just by virtue of making everything invisible and only accessible to the people who already know it's there. It's no wonder. Nobody who moves here stays here. and so I finally found it. took me about an half hour of driving and then it only takes quarters. And so I had to then find a place to give me quarters. And so, yeah, it was a three hour saga of to do one load of laundry. So like to do, to do a load of laundry.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Cough
Beck (:wow.
Dash (he/him) (:Here, if you don't have your own washer and dryer, it'll cost you 20 dollars in quarters a quarter tank of gas, and a whole ass day.
Beck (:wow.
Dash (he/him) (:And that applies to everything. It applies to groceries. It applies to getting an eye exam. It's in the next town over.
Beck (:And you gotta pay with quarters, right?
Dash (he/him) (:You put quarters in the little eye, that eye exam machine. Flip it better or worse. Okay, insert a quarter.
Dash (he/him) (:I think that they try to make up for it with being nice. And they are nice, but it doesn't help.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:I don't know where we're gonna end up and I'm afraid to move because we like it here, you know what mean? mean, here's better, no worse than any place else.
I don't know, I worry about it.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, there's plenty to worry about.
Beck (:But I'm not going to do that today. I don't have to worry today.
Dash (he/him) (:No, not necessarily. I've got somebody coming to visit so I clean the house. If somebody would threaten to set foot in my house once a month, I'd clean it.
But besides that, I'm not doing it.
Beck (:Yeah.
You would think I would be doing more cleaning, but I'm absolutely not. I'm just basically camping out on the couch and using my computer 24-7.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:I'm doing a lot of grading. I got offered another class for the next semester and I don't know if I'm gonna take it. I don't know if I can teach five classes, that's a lot.
Dash (he/him) (:all at the same place or...
Beck (:No, four at the university I'm at and one online. Because the one online, it doesn't take a lot of time, but then again it does, you know, in some ways like it'll take three, four hours to grade something because there's 25 to 30 people in the class and so they turn in a paper and that's going to take me a few hours to get through all of them. And if I have 35 people in my class on face-to-face and I'm teaching four of those, I just don't know if I have it in me to take a fifth class.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
and
Then 40 % of them, 40 % of them, uh, then like an actual school. This is a real school though, right?
Beck (:And it pays so much less. It pays so much less than...
Beck (:Yeah, yeah, they just have a robust online program.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:It's interesting, but my God, the cheating!
Dash (he/him) (:I was just about to say, the grading, lot of the time you spend grading is filling out academic integrity reports.
Beck (:It really is. I had one guy, he's, you know, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. And if it's like their first semester online and because online school is very different than any experience that you've had in the classroom, you know, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. And so the first time I catch you cheating, I'll be like, can you explain your process to me? What happened? You know, give me a reason to let me let this pass for you, you know.
Basically, if they tell on themselves, I give it, I let them resubmit the work. And this guy was like, it's my first time and I opened up this paper and I guess I copied too much of it and I'm so sorry and I'm like, all right. So I let him redo the paper and it still was like at 35 % on turn it in, but I let it go because I didn't want to argue with him, right? So the next week, the next paper comes in and he's at 40 % again.
And so I turned him in this time, right? And then I get an email from him saying, hey, would you like to talk on the phone about this? Absolutely not. No, I don't want to talk on the phone about this. I told him I was sick and maybe next week. But the problem was he said, I don't understand what the problem is. And I said, the problem is that you are searching this online, opening somebody else's work, copying and pasting it and using it as verbatim as your own work. That's cheating.
Dash (he/him) (:No?
Beck (:You know, like when you copy whole sentences and drop them in your paper, that's cheating and you know it. You're a grown ass man. You know that's cheating. Though sometimes you'll get, I got a hundred percent score the other day and the girl had accidentally turned the file into a different class and then uploaded the right one, but it was already in the system. So it flagged it as a hundred percent match. I'm happy when that stuff happens.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, % is pretty, like that's gonna be either an extremely clear cut case of what happened or some sort of mistake.
Beck (:Yeah. Yeah. But I have no way of knowing, right? So I've got to submit the form and let them do the investigation and then... But what's weird is they don't communicate with the student at all. They only communicate with me. So I have to write all of the emails to the student. It's stupid.
Dash (he/him) (:I got a, I got a 70%. So this was, my first time, like being in grad school, right. It was my first time ever dealing with this kind of thing. And so I understood what I couldn't do just because I was not a fucking idiot, but I didn't understand the system itself. And so we were doing, revisions to something that had already been, submitted once, which was a thing. And when I, my master's program was a, was, English ton of writing.
submit, submit one paper, get Mark's comments on it and then submit it again. And so I didn't know that that meant that that work was already in that system. So when I submitted it again through turning in and got like a 98 % hit on it and I was so freaked out. I was like, what the fuck happened? And I panicked and I was like emailing the professor and I was like, I'm swearing and cheat or whatever. And she was like, it makes sense that nobody would have, would have explained to you that this is how this works, but that's just your own work.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:getting reported.
Beck (:I'm glad they calmed you down.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I think that like the, program I went to for my masters was a really good place for somebody like me to wind up who didn't know anything about how, you know, that, that kind of thing worked. Like they, they were used to dealing with students like me who were, you know, first generation or taking unusual paths to completing their education. And so like,
I felt a little more like empowered to ask questions that would have felt really stupid to ask in the PhD program.
Beck (:Right? See, and I felt I didn't get that kind of guidance. I did the same PhD and MMA program. And as a first generation, the, the MA, they weren't very cool about giving you a lot of information. You had to figure it out on your own. And so I made a lot of mistakes, especially in my master's program, but you live and you learn.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I mean that is that's pretty much the only way first gen students learn is by by a series of like panic inducing misunderstandings and just from falling on your face.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, that must have been, that was probably a very different experience than what I had.
Beck (:Yeah, I'm sure it was.
Beck (:feel like we're doing the heavy lifting already this morning.
Dash (he/him) (:What do mean?
Beck (:I just feel bored out and it's so early.
Dash (he/him) (:I know. Lately, I've been like, I'll just crash out like at lunchtime. And then I'll think like, I'll have to take a nap when I get home, but I can't nap anymore because I'm 100 years old. And so like you said, I could take a nap anytime I felt like it, I would take two naps a day, not even five years ago, take one at lunch and one after I get off work.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Well, Shanna gets off work, like I said, around 2, but she has to be at work. She has to be at work at 6 o'clock and it's a half an hour away. So she leaves here at like 5 15 in the morning. So she gets up around 4 30 and I sleep as if I get up at 4 30 and then I sleep till 10. It's pretty fabulous, honestly. I'm trying to fill my sleep pump like a camel.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:the
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah
Beck (:trying to get it all stuffed in there so when school starts I'll be running on full.
Dash (he/him) (:Becoming a morning person was not, I didn't think that would ever happen to me because I was constantly somebody who couldn't wake up in the morning.
Beck (:That's me.
Dash (he/him) (:And then all of sudden, well, I got my CPAP machine and then I got, you know, some, some, uh, help for some mental health issues. And all of a sudden now I'm sleeping at night and waking up in the morning. Yeah. And I was like, this must be what those people who can do things feel like. Is this what they have? Like, this is their secret.
Beck (:Nice.
Beck (:good sleep and mental health? Who knew?
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. I mean, because if I, if I try to like think of like what, what like my understanding of how to take care of myself was and just where I was mentally 10 years ago and put it in what I'm having to deal with now, I would just give up.
Huh.
Beck (:put me three years ago and I still don't know how I made it through all that shit. and my therapist keeps, when it's time to reschedule, she was like, do you want to reschedule? As if I'm done. And I find that pretty interesting that, you know, everything that I went through, there's a lot of crazy this lady is overlooking is the only thing that I can figure out.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:you
Dash (he/him) (:then it might not be a good fit.
Beck (:I've been with her for a couple of years.
Dash (he/him) (:Okay.
Beck (:But I feel like she thinks that I'm done because I'm not sitting in dark rooms and crying all day every day anymore, you know? I've still got issues. They're just not so grief-based. For the listeners, I lost all three of my parents in an 18-month period. And so I went through a lot of grief and, you know, a lot of therapy, thank God. It was a pretty dark time for me.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:But you know, I got through it. I got through all of the stuff that came with it. I don't think you ever get over your mom dying ever in your life, no matter what.
Dash (he/him) (:That's not, mean, everyone I speak to who has experienced it, don't talk like it's gonna ever be something they're done processing or feeling or thinking about.
Beck (:It's the weirdest kind of loss because you are literally made of her. Your source material is gone, you know?
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm. And to have that like external referent for what you're experiencing or how you're responding to things, or even someone to, to like norm with on.
Beck (:called my mom every day. Every day I called my mom. And she wasn't always up for a conversation, but I still called every day.
Dash (he/him) (:.
Beck (:Her lat, she died of depression. That wasn't the actual cause of death, but she died of depression. And so that's one of the reasons I try so hard with my mental health because I've seen what can happen in my family if you don't.
Dash (he/him) (:and what it does to the people around you. Like, people depend on us.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah.
I have no idea what Shanna will do when I'm gone. I can't even think about it.
Dash (he/him) (:Is this what we're like in the morning? A little morose. Yeah, I like to wake up early and think about death.
Beck (:Maybe we're retrospective and fun as hell.
Dash (he/him) (:I don't know why, but morning is actually the time. That's something that I didn't know about being a morning person is like you do some heavy ass thinking. Like really early in the morning, like I just I wake up thinking about shit that I'm like, was I worried about this? How long have I been worried about this?
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:In a way, maybe that's part of the benefit of being a morning person.
Beck (:would die. If I had to get up and leave for work at 5.15 in the morning, I would literally just die. I couldn't do it.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I don't think I'm not, I'm not that kind of morning person. I'm not the kind that like gets up and is like, I can't wait to shower and walk outside. Um, I'm going to get up and fuck around on the computer and, you know, watch YouTube kind of morning person.
Beck (:Yeah. I don't know what I'm more of a mid afternoon, tired pigeon. Kind of person. I'm not really a night owl. Not a morning person, not a morning bird.
Dash (he/him) (:You still... Afternoon tired pigeon.
Beck (:I like the thing of Wenda that you put up, my avatar. It's, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, well who wasn't that that drew that we need to give credit
Beck (:My friend Allie Hicks, she drew the Wenda fan art.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, that's incredible.
Yeah, we made us some new avatars listeners. So look for us on our socials and you'll see that there.
Beck (:You'll see the cutest dog that has ever lived. She's half pug, half Yorkie. So she's a Porkie like her mommy. We're the same breed.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:It's it was like a hundred hundred one Dalmatians. I do that that montage where people look like their dogs
Beck (:You know, it's been so long since I've seen that movie. I don't know, but probably that sounds right.
Dash (he/him) (:think it's the opening montage. You have pretty fun.
Beck (:We have the same color hair, Wenda and I do.
Dash (he/him) (:That's true. My hair is pretty much all, it's gray now too, but it's been gray for so long and I don't know if people really notice because it's such a strange texture.
All of sudden in the sunlight, one day though, I was going up the stairs in, shit, what is that building? The one where the MRC and Career Services and all that was. It's not Shatsel.
Beck (:My hair.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, hey, so going up the stairwell in there, Tiffany Noll turns because my hair had gone into the sunlight and she stops and goes, have you gone gray?
Beck (:H-Haze?
Beck (:As only she can.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it was so fun. It was too funny to be offensive, you know, because it was Tobias was with us and he goes like, it happens to people.
Beck (:It drove my mom crazy that I was gray-headed, and she kept telling me she was gonna buy me a bottle of Lady Clairol, which they've not made since the 80s. And I'd be like, okay, Mom. I think it made her feel old, because I was her youngest. Which made me just love it even more. I embrace my gray. I have a Cruello De Vil white streak in my bangs right up here. Can't tell right now, because of my bedhead. But I've got a white streak right there that's really cute.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it was a reflection on, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:You know what's like because in the scheme of life, I guess, and I don't know if this is science or what, but because I didn't start to grow facial hair until I, you my late thirties, early forties, because I transitioned really late in life. It's not gray. It's not silver. It's nothing. It's like, it's pretty dark brown with some red in it. You know, it's like a Viking beard. And then the top of my head is fucking white and it looks like I die my beard.
Beck (:my god, as a wedding photographer, one of the funniest things I ever saw was the groom dyed his goatee the night before the wedding and he didn't do the rest of his hair. So he had this solid black goatee on a salt and pepper head and it looked hilarious. You saying that? It was, it really, like we had to Photoshop some gray in there because it looked so bad and unnatural. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Oomph.
Dash (he/him) (:That is a look.
Dash (he/him) (:Aw, that was nice of you.
Beck (:I once, one guy pissed me off one time and in the final pictures, you had to look real close to see it, but I put a booger in his nose.
Dash (he/him) (:haha
Beck (:Don't piss off the photographer is all I'm saying. I can make you look fat or I can make you look fabulous is all I'm saying.
Dash (he/him) (:No... No...
Dash (he/him) (:The help in general, don't piss off anybody that's helping you do something like a wedding.
Dash (he/him) (:Some people though.
Beck (:I sure did. That made me laugh for days.
Dash (he/him) (:Just knowing it's out there, yeah, that would just be incredible.
Beck (:Yeah. I do the dumbest shit.
Dash (he/him) (:You have to have fun.
Beck (:Yeah!
Dash (he/him) (:Alright, let's give this wheel of what have you a spin. I don't even we've got so many of them going on out here. I'm not sure. good Lord. It has landed on church. Yeah.
Beck (:church.
I was raised Pentecostal, and if you're a listener and you don't know what that means, basically it's the women that you see in the long jean skirts and the really tall hair, because they don't wear pants and they speak in tongues and they handle snakes. Some of them, not every Pentecostal sect, handle snakes, but many of them do. They do things like cast out demons in the middle of church services and things like that.
I realized I was not a religious person at the age of four or five. I remember being in Sunday school and they were asking us questions, all the kids in Rote, know, they would ask a question, do we all say yes or no or whatever. And one of the questions they asked was, do animals have souls? And the expected answer was no. And I was like, the fuck? Like even at four or five, I had had an animal and I knew they had a soul and I was like, nope, this ain't for me. So.
Dash (he/him) (:I'm dead.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, have questions. mean, I think I have dogma questions though about Pentecostal. Like, what, what do they handle the snakes for? Like, what do the snakes do?
Beck (:Can't help you with that.
Beck (:It has something to do with the representation of the serpent in the Bible. I'm not exactly sure. Like I said, I got out of that shit very young. But my father's mother and my mother's father were both Pentecostal ministers. So it was rampant in my family. I remember waking my... because my parents divorced when I was really young, which is how I ended up with three parents. But my dad would come get us and we would stay at his mom's house for the weekend or whatever.
Dash (he/him) (:Is it like a purity thing maybe?
Beck (:And I remember waking up at five o'clock in the morning hearing grandma praying in her room, speaking in tongues, shouting in tongues, doing that kind of thing. And it scared the hell out of me.
Dash (he/him) (:I just Googled it and holiness Pentecostal Christians handle snakes as a test of faith.
stemming from a literal interpretation of Mark 16, 18, which mentions that believers taking up serpants will be spared, will be protected if they are truly filled with the Holy Spirit.
So if you get bit by a snake, you weren't really holy.
Dash (he/him) (:Okay.
Beck (:It's wild. The mental gymnastics that they have to play for some of that stuff. Like my grandmother never wore pants in her life. She lived to be in her 80s.
Dash (he/him) (:And so that one.
It's about modesty, I guess. Okay.
Beck (:Yeah, there's a whole thing about splitting the legs and that's why, like, have you ever seen the pictures of FDR in the little gown when he was a child? He's in a little white bathing gown. I read a whole book about this that splitting the legs was considered masculine and so they didn't do that even for little boys until they were five, six years old because it connected it back to the world of women and femininity.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Beck (27:33.653)
Which is why they I mean plus they were easy to clean it was a lot easier to boil white outfits than it was you know little yellow outfits or whatever and they were hand-me-downs there was no Walmart that you could go to back then to buy your Children's clothing and that kind of thing, but it definitely was the splitting of the legs and modesty
Dash (he/him) (:That makes me think. you? Did you? This is not church related. Did you or or any of the your like family have like cloth diapers?
Beck (:Not that I know of.
Dash (he/him) (:We had my mom use cloth diapers for us. and I remember like I would change Vanessa and stuff. And, I remember like when I grew up and met other people learning that that was like really weird. Cause you had to wear like, there was a cloth diaper and then had to wear these rubber. bloomers over top to make them waterproof. yeah. Pentecostal. mean, that's in, in the Pentecost, I think is a, is a.
Beck (:Yep.
Dash (he/him) (:revelation thing, like into the world, something or other.
Beck (:What's really funny is that I was raised 100 % Pentecostal. Like I said, my dad's mom and my mom's dad were both ministers. But there was a Methodist church right beside my elementary school and they had a really cool Tuesday night after school program that I got into. And somehow I ended up having my Pentecostal ass in like the 1987 Christmas play at this Methodist church.
Dash (he/him) (:Thank
Beck (:just totally, can you imagine being Pentecostal parents and then having your kids show up at a Methodist church be like, I'm going to be here now. You know, I was like, there was probably a lot of explaining to do to my grandparents or something. I don't know.
Dash (he/him) (:They probably have to.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, they probably boiled you when you got home.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I mean, and church too is like, it was your first peer group in a way. So like even before you went to school, those were the first people that weren't your family that you spent a significant amount of time learning from and learning with. Baptists is, mean, Baptists, think they also have a very hardcore belief system, it's not, like they don't have to dress a certain way. They don't handle snakes.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:They, I don't recall a lot of any speaking in tongues or anything. I remember the, the theatrics. It's not even really, well, kind of theatrics of the sermons. Like a Baptist sermon is something to behold. I was convinced the preacher was dying and I couldn't understand what he was saying. And I would get, I would have panic attacks. And I think that's how like the, they, they experienced this, this religious feeling, the sensation of like heightened,
Beck (:Right?
Yeah
Dash (he/him) (:Emotion because it's contagious. And so my heart would start being faster and I would start to, I would begin to feel scared for what was going to come next. I still feel that way about, of course I have church trauma now and not, it's not even. And it's for me, it wasn't, cause I didn't attend church that often for me. It's from, funerals. This Baptist fucking sermon at a funeral is God awful. It's.
Beck (:Yeah?
Beck (:Who does- Church trauma is real.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:They, I don't think they want you to walk out there. Like, you want me to lay down and join them right now? that what you're going for? That's what I'm picking up.
Beck (:I
Beck (:I'm just a terrible human. I'm gonna burn with the devil. Let me just go ahead and Flagate myself here or whatever you call it One time I was yeah, that's the word I was going for it's early. Sorry I was working for an autism services type place where I had a client and as part of my job I took her to church on Sunday morning, right? I got paid to do it. I was paid to be there I was not there for my religious
Dash (he/him) (:I'm
Dash (he/him) (:flagellate? Yeah.
Beck (:well-being. I was there to take her to church. I was at work. And I took her a couple of times and I refused to do it ever again after... The place that I took her was quote-unquote non-denominational, but they definitely leaned Pentecostal based on the sermons and the outfits and that kind of thing. And I was just sitting there one day, just minding my business, looking out the window, and they decided that I needed anointed with oil. And they all kind of like crowded her out of nowhere. They crowded around me and poured
put oil on my forehead and prayed like held hands and prayed hands around me. It was the weirdest. It really was. And I was a grown ass. I was probably 21, 22 years old when that happened. I basically accept to shoot weddings. I've refused to go into a church since then.
Dash (he/him) (:That's assault
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, because you don't, in a weird way, you kind of are signing up for whatever they want to do to you if you walk in there.
Beck (:Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I was there getting paid. I was not there for my own curiosity or anything like that. Church got beat out of me at a very young age. I never really wanted anything to do with it except for that one Tuesday night program, which I'm pretty sure that I went to because my brother wasn't there and they had good snacks. You know, it didn't really have anything to do with religion. I just liked... and plus I learned how to play piano there. So it was fun.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, there were definitely things I liked about going to church at the Little Baptist Church in the holler Like I didn't have to be in charge while I was there. I wasn't on the hook for anything the other kids did. Somebody else was in charge. I got to play with stuff. I got to play with toys. And it was a really poor church. It didn't have running water. There was an outhouse we had to use.
Beck (:Right. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:I did not enjoy that because it was one of the worst outhouses I've ever been in. Like there was definitely spiders in that, in that seat. And I was just like, I hated it. I would stand on top of it.
Beck (:Yeah.
yeah!
Beck (:I refuse to use outside bathrooms. I refuse. I would pee beside the outside bathroom before I peed in it.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, well this was like, it wasn't like it was in the woods though, it was on the street.
Beck (:Yeah, no, I come from a place where my grandmother had, or my great grandmother still had, I called her grandma with the potty out back. Like, there's still a thing down there in some places and I won't do it. We went to the UP in Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, and we stopped at a state park to use the bathroom and all they had were outhouses and I refused. I don't know how I held it, but I did until we got to a gas station like an hour later.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:They call these, they call those vault commodes, I think, or something. I didn't learn that until I moved up here because they don't call them outhouses. But, yeah, I mean, and there was, had music in it. So that was cool. I don't think Pentecostal, think, probably didn't have music. they might be one of the ones, but without a company. Yeah.
Beck (:Really difficult.
Beck (:they sing hymns led by the pastor, right, led by the pastor.
Dash (he/him) (:Which is cool too, but so there, there was some experiential things to church before I was young enough to understand like what, what it was that made it feel also a little bad to be there. Just that the, way that guilt just kind of settles onto you when you walk in there, especially if you're an outsider, like they'll come at you with this, one of us thing and it's, it's encoded as.
welcoming, but it's so stifling because you're immediately made to understand that whatever you were when you walked in was bad or wrong or at least inadequate. So it was a long time before I understood that both of those things were happening in the same place. Like I got to do things, fun things. I got to not be in charge, but I also got made to feel like I was a complete piece of shit.
Beck (:But you know the good thing about church is it makes everybody feel that way.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, anybody who says that they feel like they're right with the Lord or whatever they're lying through their fucking teeth. Like nobody's in church because they feel good about their relationship with God.
Beck (:Right? Right?
Beck (:You
You know, I've met a few people along the way who do religion the right way, who do it for themselves. They don't do it to like, to bring others into the religion. They're kind people. I'm thinking very particularly of this, this, this man and woman that I knew in my undergrad. I met them individually and then they ended up getting married. And they're just two of the kindest people that I've ever met, but she always says she'll pray for you and, and things like that.
It just works for some people, you know.
Dash (he/him) (:hate the thought of being prayed for. Like, why are you thinking about me?
Beck (:Yeah. Though, you know, I don't know. I think it's okay to put good energy out into the world.
Dash (he/him) (:Sure. Yeah. just don't like, so just to think that like you're a person is, in this, the way they tell it, super private conversation with them and the maker of the universe. And they're thinking about me and, and I'm. And I'm, not, not about me either. It's, about what's wrong with me about what they, and this, this creator of the universe who can't be bothered to talk to me about it, but it's going to talk to them about me.
whatever they've identified is wrong with me or something. And so I know that people mean well by it. And a lot of them, a lot of times what they mean is like, I hope things get better for you. I know that that is what a lot of people mean by if, especially if you're articulating a, if you're having a bitch session, right? Or something's going, something's going on with you and they say, I'll pray with you. Let's pray for you. That's fine. But there are people who use it as an insult, like, I'm going to pray for you because all I've done would be queer. It's like, you're going to spend your time with God talking about me.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah. Yep.
Beck (:being queer? Yeah. But you know, the one day I realized that being gay didn't even make the top 10 list of things you're not supposed to do. And realizing that, you know, so if it really mattered, it would have made the top 10 list. We could have had a top 11 list and it would have been the same. We never would have known, right?
Dash (he/him) (:I really am that bitch then, huh?
Dash (he/him) (:Nope.
Dash (he/him) (:Thank
Sure, yeah, nobody said it had to be only 10 things.
Beck (:Yeah, so he could have included it if he wanted and he didn't. So therefore, it's worse to tell a lie or to disobey your parents than it is to be gay. IMO.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, we all know that's not the point. know, if it wasn't, if it wasn't an obscure reference in an ancient book that nobody actually reads anymore to it, they'd find another reason why we're wrong. Because that's just how people are. That's how humans are wired. Look forward to reading my dissertation about it, Dropping in 2026. I know. Well, the other thing, so.
Beck (:Right, right, right.
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:This is such a fun conversation we're having today.
Dash (he/him) (:I mean, going back to like church being also kind of a, it's, it's not a third space, but it is, it afforded some third spaces because there was the times that you had to sit in congregation. And then there was the times when the kids were let loose to do stuff just as kids. And so there was a dual role of church being like, okay, it's going to indoctrinate me and teach me how to be what they want me to be. But I also get to be a little bit freer here than some places. It was just a brief moment in every Sunday.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Where we go back to the, I forget what they call it, the Sunday school.
Beck (:That's what they called it. Yeah, for us, that's what they called it. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:For the kids, yeah.
And of course it was outside because of this church. Like there was a room, but we couldn't all fit in it.
Beck (:Sarah, the head of the department where I work, is a Sunday school teacher at a Universalist Unitarian Church. And that blows my mind.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, those folks though, that's kind of, I don't know what you would call them. They're just shy of what the Satanic temple is doing in terms of parodying Christianity for the purpose of still trying to do some good in the world.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:Right. It just blows my mind that they call it Sunday school and that she is a teacher. Yeah, she's the only person that ever made me blush during sex ed. That's all I'm, I mean...
Dash (he/him) (:They still call it that.
Dash (he/him) (:Thank
Yeah.
That is pretty crazy, yeah, to think that those two, like, those two knowledges, they're coming from the same person.
Beck (:Yeah, exactly. Like, what is she teaching those children?
Dash (he/him) (:think, don't they have like the seven doctrines or something? The Unitarian Universalist?
Beck (:I don't know enough about it. I know they have a program called OWL called Our Whole Lives where they teach consent and sex ed from like elementary school age, which I advocate when I teach sex ed. Because you have to give power to little kids, right? If the 12 and underset are the most likely to be abused of any population out there, if they don't have words for their body or words for what are happening, they can't tell you, you know? And...
Dash (he/him) (:You know, my sister and her, her husband, almost said her brother-in-law, my brother-in-law are, are they, I didn't know they were doing this because why would they consult with me about it? Right. But when they were raising my niece, they apparently created a system of communication with her from the moment she began to speak in which she could assert a boundary of like, I don't want to be touched right now with anybody.
Beck (:Yeah, that's what we're talking about when we talk about sex ed for little kids. It's about bathing suit parts and being able to tell Uncle Bob that you don't want a kiss or a hug or whatever it is. You don't have to say, well children, this is a penis and this is a vagina. And when they go together, you save that for the older years. But there's lots of things that you can do to equip children with good tools.
Dash (he/him) (:And yeah, and so.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. It's simply like indicating that it is, it is within your rights as a, as a person. Everyone has this right to say, this is mine. This whole piece here is mine and I don't want you to touch it or come near it. And that you can say that to anybody. You can say that to daddy or mommy. And so I saw them do this one day and I was just, I asked about it later. I was like, what the fuck is, what did you, that's incredible.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yep. Yep. Yep.
Dash (he/him) (:How does she know how to do that? Because she was like maybe three.
She was just like, I don't know, I read a book about it. She's a librarian. Yeah. God, yeah. Talk about a space where you could be free.
Beck (:That's awesome. I love a librarian. I love the library with my whole heart.
Beck (:If they would try to introduce libraries today, would be like the liberal plot from hell, you know? Like, yeah. I'm so thankful that we have them.
Dash (he/him) (:Socialism.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, my mom worked in a library. She had a ton of part-time jobs because dad, his job was like super all each, all the jobs he had required him to work, you know, 14, whatever, hours a day. So her jobs would be like multiple part-time jobs. And one of them was at the library. And I love going to work with her at the library, in Jellico even though it was mostly full of bodice rippers. Cause that's all they had was what would get donated. So it was the Bible and bodice rippers.
Beck (:Right.
I don't judge people by what they read at all until my stepmother told me that she reads the genre where they have mail-order brides. That's her entire genre that she likes to read. And I was like, wow, okay.
Dash (he/him) (:No.
I mean, we're getting, we're getting into the weeds here, but yeah, there's, you know, there's a whole lot of really cool, scholarship and content out there on why people, particularly people with disempowered or marginalized identities in, in wider culture, enjoy engaging in, SA fantasy or, you know, just enjoyed being dominated and stuff like that. It is, you know, it doesn't make them, them weak or, or slaves or, or make them damaged in any way. It's just like.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:That's not something they can safely engage in in real life.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:because they can't trust anybody, but in the book they can trust it.
Beck (:Yeah, my biological father was a very strong personality. And he was abusive to my mom, so I assume that he was abusive to my stepmother as well. So when you say disempowered and that kind of thing, that definitely fits her way of thinking, you know.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. And, I have a good, a good friend who is writing a Romantasy novel right now. Actually, no, I say that, but I don't, it's, it's a romance. It's an erotic novel, but not Romantasy cause that's a portmanteau of fantasy and romance. And so she's not doing fantasy. It's like a spy thriller, which I think is really cool. I was like, okay. So we're just, I mean, mixing genres together. That's pretty cool.
Beck (:Yeah, totally.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, don't, I don't think people should be judged for what they read unless they try to talk to me about it. In which case it's like, or they read, about, what do think about this Harry Potter discourse? People are, entirely, but people are like, I can still enjoy the art and, separate from the artists.
Beck (:Or they ride mine camp.
Beck (:Fuck JK Rowling.
Yeah.
Beck (:Those are people that have never loved a trans person because she is advocating for like wiping out trans people, you know? And fuck that. No, Harry Potter was great. I read the whole series, but when it comes to giving her more money or more of a platform, I won't do it. I won't even watch them on ABC anymore, you know?
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Every dollar, every dollar she gets, I won't say every dollar, but you know, any given dollar she gets, any given dollar you give her could go towards attempting to eradicate trans people.
Beck (:It's like eating at Chick-fil-A, I won't do it. You know, because they give money to the eradication of gay people. And so I won't do it. And so just like JK, I love Harry Potter, but it's gone. It's dead.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:It is gone. also like this idea that you can separate the art from the artist while the artist is currently alive, actively campaigning to eradicate a group of people. I'm suspicious that anybody can do, I'm suspicious of anybody who says that they can do that, right? Because I was a massive Potter head, right? I still win Harry Potter trivia every time. I've read the books literally hundreds of times.
because they appeared at a shitty point in my life and they were something to latch onto. And now I will never touch them again because they're associated in my mind with this bitch. So I don't enjoy them anymore. I don't enjoy the thought of them anymore.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Because it's the characters themselves, if you think about it, if she's creating them, there's going to be anti-trans characters in there in the canon, you know? And if she were to write more, which apparently she's thinking about, no, I'm not doing it.
Dash (he/him) (:And it.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. And, and this fucking, and fuck HBO, you know, I love their content of other things, right? Last of Us is some of the best television I've ever seen. I'll say that until I die. But the, the idea that first of all, we need another Harry Potter series and, and that, and their willingness to, to just simply disengage with what it means to do that in light of what her
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:not only her literal politics, right? She is funding anti-trans legislation. You know? Just, I don't know.
Beck (:yeah, yeah. no, it doesn't make any sense. and people that are like, well, you know, like you said, the people that separate the art from the artist. no. especially, like you said, if they're still alive and still promoting the hatred. no. absolutely not.
Dash (he/him) (:I think the only lasting good that we can say that I can actually still adhere to that those books did was for me personally, they're one of the reasons why I was able to create a friendship with my sister. We just didn't have a lot in common. I had already moved out by the time she was becoming a...
teenager, you know, with her own personality and stuff. And like those books were of something for, they were some common ground for us. But in this, in the larger world, maybe they, they sort of gave some, some validity to YA, like to the genre of, you know, opening up some, some other probably better things to come out and get some actual critical notice. But there's no reason to defend Harry Potter.
or JK Rowling just because they used to be important things to you.
Beck (:I have no hatred towards actual Harry Potter, towards the character. It is all stemming from JK Rowling, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely is. Like Snoop Dogg is tainted now because he performed at the Donald Trump thing, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You can't separate it. But people are like, well, he really was there to do a Tech Bros thing. No. You can't... They said that it wasn't an actual Donald Trump event.
Dash (he/him) (:And it's tainted.
And she... What even was that? Because... I don't know. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:A what?
Beck (:That it was some tech bros that put it on and that's who he signed with to do the event. and it happened to be that Donald Trump was there. That's, that's too much fine line, radiation, like, no.
Dash (he/him) (:The only thing I would accept is if they fooled him, which I should kind of see happening. Like you trick a sixty year old pothead gangster. I don't know how old he is, but you know, in my mind he's approaching that age into, into something by not fully explaining the thing he's signing. Sure. I'd buy that.
Beck (:Yeah, 100 % if... Well.
Beck (:Snoop is a grandfather many times over. As my friends are becoming grandparents, and that's weird and the hell out of me, it's wild. Like, so many of my friends are becoming grandparents, and it's like, I can't even keep my room clean. You know what I mean? Like, how are you people not only having children, but grandchildren at this point? It's like, wow, that's so much responsibility.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I bet.
Dash (he/him) (:and subscribe. Stop telling me.
Dash (he/him) (:Hehehehe
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, my God, just, I've been spending some time on Reddit and I discovered a anti natalist sect of people. I'm not sure that that's how they would identify as a sect, but it's an ideology that believes that we should stop having kids. Like as a species, we should stop reproducing. Yeah, like I can't, can't actually speak with them because they're all.
Beck (:That's understandable.
Dash (he/him) (:I don't know what they're saying, right? They're speaking an inside language, but, I don't know if I would try to tell anybody else what to do with their body. I don't think I'll ever progress to that stage of cynicism, but I can, I can understand having that worldview. Although.
Beck (:Yeah. Yeah, the world is fucked up and I can't imagine bringing a kid in and to cause a person to be alive and have to go through paying rent and having a job and having to feed themselves every day. Like, I can't imagine putting that on a soul. No, my mom did it three times. That's crazy to me. That's crazy.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Dash (he/him) (:It's not, it's not easy to set someone up for success in this world. But also babies are just so sweet and I can send in dirty. They're filthy and annoying, right? Babies are annoying, but that's kind of, I don't know. It's part of their charm. It's, can see how people also get sucked into that. They're like, Oh my God, I want a Yeah.
Beck (:No, it's not.
Beck (:and dirty.
Beck (:Yeah. I love me a good baby. You know, I'm not going to say that, but I can't imagine bringing one into the world and then being responsible for it and watching it cry and be heartbroken and get into accidents and God, no, I stress enough about my dog, you know, and she never leaves my side.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I think it's probably best for everyone that I didn't reproduce, but I think that it's still probably generally a good thing that there are folks out there doing it.
Beck (:Yeah, same.
Beck (:Yeah, yeah, and you know, it's surprising to me how many gay people reproduce. Like people think that, you're gay, you can't have kids. So many gay people have kids, it's crazy.
Dash (he/him) (:Almost anybody whose reproductive parts are in working order can reproduce. You know, it has nothing to do with your identity. has nothing to do with, with who you, who or what you prefer in dating practices. It is simply a matter of does this work? am I, am I, in, in the mood to do that with it?
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah. Or even if not, is there a bank that supplies it?
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a whole industry.
Beck (:Yeah, I have several friends who have conceived through donor semen.
Dash (he/him) (:I thought about donating my or selling, I guess, my eggs because you can sell them.
Beck (:Maybe you have to go on estrogen and all kinds of stuff to do that.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, yeah, I'm not going to do any more, but I did consider it there for a while because it was paying like tens of thousands of dollars. And so I was like, well, hell yeah. But yeah, you do have to like wreck your body to do it. And so I became less interested because I'm not a fan of discomfort.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, I don't meet any other requirements. I don't think I'm not thin. I'm not I'm smart, but that's about it.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
I didn't. I don't think I got as far as looking into the actual requirements.
Beck (:they want you to be like a college graduate and you know which I finally got there but when I was thinking about doing such things I was not a college graduate.
Dash (he/him) (:Interesting. That's a very classist.
Well.
Beck (:When you're broke and you're trying to sell anything that you got, and I knew I wouldn't be using them.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, but it like, excludes the people most likely to actually need funds for something as drastic as that, you know, like a broke person is probably not, not that, I mean, you know, now it no longer matters whether you have a degree, you can be as broke as you want.
Beck (:Yeah. And sell your body to the plasma places.
Dash (he/him) (:I never did that one. I never...
Beck (:I tried and they turned me down because I was on too many medications.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, well, no, I tried to, but if you admit you're gay, they wouldn't let you do it.
Beck (:I didn't get that far, I guess.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Yeah. And I read that like people, gay people are allowed to donate blood somewhere as some state had gotten an agreement with the red cross. So like gay people could donate blood now. I guess they're that desperate for blood, but yeah, that's still illegal. I don't even know if there's law about it. They don't have to tell you why you can't donate blood, but yeah, the red cross still has a policy that queer people can't donate blood.
Beck (:Yeah, it's easier to get a firearm in Florida than it is to donate blood if you're gay.
Dash (he/him) (:Have you read that book and the band played on?
Beck (:No, but I've seen the... there's a movie version, isn't there?
Dash (he/him) (:Maybe. But so this is the story of, I mean, largely about the beginnings and the way that unfolding of the HIV epidemic. Yeah, I see a movie here. But the book is by Randy Schiltz and.
Beck (:Yeah, I think there is a movie.
Dash (he/him) (:I read, I didn't finish it because it was so fucking infuriating, but I read about, I read a little more than half of it. And because it comes right out of the gate with it's, it's not really trying to say like, you know, HIV came from, from this right patient zero is this, although it does, it can, it does a pretty good job of tracing it back to, you know, the first diagnosis.
But it also chronicles the just systemic overt, like conspiracy or just systemic oversights that allowed the disease to go as far as it did so quickly. And it was the red fucking cross. So like they, the first, gay parade, I think is actually what they called it was in San Francisco in 70 in the, it might've been 76. was mid seventies and the red cross.
learned that that community was very altruistic, was very interested in investing and doing good. And there were a lot of successful fundraisers collaborating with that event very early. And so the Red Cross got involved and they got, I think the book said somewhere around 5 % of their total donations for the year from that particular event.
because everybody was just rolling up their sleeves to help. And they noticed the anomaly. They had noticed the infection years before and didn't say anything because they got so much of their, and so it was, that's how people got it through blood transfusions. But we didn't, I just remember, you know, cause you know, I, were kids when this news began to break. I remember people didn't really talk about the blood transfusion.
Beck (:wow.
Dash (he/him) (:as much as blaming the junkies and the homos.
Beck (:Well, it was originally called GRIDS, the Gay-Related Immune Deficientness Syndrome, right? It was completely laid on the feet of the gay population.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, and that's because they knew it was coming from their drive associated with that event. it was, so that would have been 77. That makes it eight years before, like it is publicly acknowledged as a health crisis.
Beck (:That's wild.
Dash (he/him) (:That's eight years of just sending those, that those donated, those, guess, infected, donations to hospitals and blood banks across the country. Hell probably across the globe. I have no idea the reach of the Red Cross, but I imagine it is not just America. And so, yeah, I was reading this and I just was getting so, this was part of my learning, I guess, as a queer person about the extent of our
oppression and stigmatization and social and political disenfranchisement. And I was just like, I can't do anymore. So never did finish it.
And I probably won't watch that movie either.
Beck (:Yeah, the movie was really sad. I remember that.
Dash (he/him) (:I'm sure that
Beck (:You want to do our noun of Appalachian interest?
Dash (he/him) (:You wanna do that one before the sponsor? We can change things up.
Beck (:I know, you go ahead.
Beck (:I didn't realize there was an order to it.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, I would like to hear your noun of Appalachian interest. We can do a sponsor at the end. Yeah, I'm ready. Hit me.
Beck (:All right, are you ready?
All right, welcome back to Nouns of Appalachian Interest, the only segment where preserved fruit and generational trauma sometimes share a draw, a jar. Today's entry, apple butter. Thick as gossip, sweet as someone you shouldn't text after 9 p.m. and absolutely foundational in the Appalachian pantry. Now, despite the name, there's no butter in apple butter. It's a misnomer like straight pride or quiet family dinners. The butter is in the feel of it, the rich, soft, spreadable, and just a little decadent.
think jam that's been through some therapy and come out emotionally well regulated. But let's rewind a bit. Apple butter's roots go all the way back to the medieval monasteries in the Rhineland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, where monks with big orchards and bigger ambitions boiled apples down to a spreadable, spiced potion of preservation. Centuries later, German immigrants brought it to the Pennsylvania and the Appalachians, and like so many things brought by people trying to start start over, it stuck.
By the time it made its way to the hollers, apple butter had become more than a spread, it was an event. A copper kettle, a big wooden paddle, maybe a dash of clove, and lots of hands taking turns stirring for hours, sometimes all night. And that's where it gets queer for me, because like apple butter, a queer life in the mountains was never just about sustenance, it was about gathering. You stirred to stay warm, to stay close, to stay seen.
It was quiet, repetitive work that made space for whispered truths. You could stand there in the steam and let your guard down, say something real, or just let someone look at you a little longer than usual. Apple butter doesn't rush. It teaches you how to visit, how to wait, how to stir without scorching, and how to trust something that is good as something good is thickening in the bottom of the pot. And maybe that's what being queer in Appalachia feels like too, learning to be patient with sweetness.
Beck (:finding depth in the slow transformations, preserving something tender in a world that doesn't always know what to do with it. So here's to apple butter, monastery-born, mountain-bred, queer-approved. Slather it on a biscuit, stir it into your memories, or keep a jar on the shelf like a tiny time capsule of what slow, shared care can become.
Dash (he/him) (:I love apple butter. It's one of my... So do you have a recipe? you make your own?
Beck (:Me too. I have a jar in my fridge right now.
Beck (:No, I've saved many a video on how to do it, but I've never gotten around to actually doing it. There's a big farm about 15 minutes from here, and they have a little store on the farm. So you can buy fresh onions, fresh strawberries, fresh everything, and they make apple butter. So we just buy it from them because it is fabulous and they do it right. So.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. I think I know the place you're talking about. I was realizing lately that I have participated in a lot of food, know, Appalachian food rituals, canning and, you know, making jams and, apple butter and doing, you know, making biscuits, making all the dumplings and stuff, even down to food processing, livestock and things. But I couldn't tell you how I did it. Cause I was there as someone who was.
I was just, I don't know, you do like your specific role. And I didn't reach the age where the people who did know died before I got to become the knowledge holder, right? The person, think I'm of that generation where it died. Cause I remember doing it, now, but I'm not a knower now.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:Yeah, I remember my aunts being prolific crocheters and knitters and, you know, making baby clothes and doll clothes. And my aunt once crocheted an outfit for a Barbie doll that went on a cake. Like these people, like they were crafted up in the storm, you know, and macrame and all of those things.
Dash (he/him) (:I
Dash (he/him) (:Yep. Yeah, my mom would macrame. She would do well. She did all those things. She still crochets like her life depends on it.
Beck (:Yeah.
My mom just chain-smoked. She never got into any of that shit. She collected quilts. She didn't snow them.
Dash (he/him) (:I'm
But yeah, well my mom did pretty much all those things. Did you ever see or know of anybody making lye soap?
Beck (:have a friend that makes it, and they're queer. And Appalachian.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Yeah. My mom made lye soap in our tiny trailer and listeners, if you don't know what lye soap is or why making it in a trailer is a bad idea. It is literally what it sounds like. It is, it is a soap made of lye and rendered fat and to my knowledge, no, scents or anything like that. I just remember one time I got trouble in cuss for cussing and that was the soap we had. And so I had to, to
Beck (:wow.
Beck (:UGH
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I chewed some, which I think might be fatal. Yeah, oh god, I still remember that flavor.
Beck (:UGH!
Beck (:I'm feeling it for you.
Dash (he/him) (:But the smell of it, the smell of it, it never smelled the same after that. It still smelled like that when we lost it.
Beck (:I bet.
Beck (:My mom wasn't a crafty person. She liked to buy things and decorate, but she wasn't a create-it-herself kind of person.
Dash (he/him) (:Let me look up lye soap here. It's crucial to prioritize safety due to the use of caustic soda. Well, we open the windows. Does that count?
Yeah, I mean, and I'm looking at recipes now and it's all got shit we didn't have. here's one. Lard, castor oil, and lye. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Beck (:You guys were just blowing the roof off the place.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I don't-
Beck (:My mom took castor oil to have me. I was a week late and she was ready to go. And so she took a couple of spoonfuls of castor oil and I was born a few hours later.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, it's funny you should say that because our sponsor for this week is a household, an Appalachian household favorite, perhaps not anymore, based on some things we've learned about whether or not we should be using it for the shit we were. However, it is returned from the annals of history. Our sponsor for this week is Turpentine.
Beck (:Ooh.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, consider the space saving innovation of a combined medicine cabinet, cleaning closet and industrial chemical shed when you join tens of people across Appalachia in switching to turpentine. No other septic medicinal or woodworking agent is needed when you've got a mason jar full of that pungent liquid gold. There are two types of turps you can make yourself and when you have to get from your cousin, Clem, who works at the lumber yard.
Beck (:Hahaha
Beck (:Hahaha
Dash (he/him) (:But no matter what you get, what stays the same is its source from tree resin, either tapped live or pulped, and its multifarious uses. Turpentine is an all-purpose industrial solvent, antiseptic, and flavor additive. It's also a cure for whatever ails you. Poppy's aching knee? Rub some turpentine on it. Congested? Add some turpentine to boiled water and breathe the fumes. Kids got pinworms? Give them a thimbleful of some turpentine and castor oil and they'll be cleared right the hell out.
Beck (:Cough cough
Beck (:OOF
Dash (he/him) (:Have a hemorrhoid? No, you fucking don't, because if you did, granny'd rub some of that devil ether on your rear end and you fly to the moon and back before you burning stops Some in the fancy world of doctorin' will say it's not fit for half of that, but something that can light up both the dark of night and the seat of your britches can only be heaven sent. There simply isn't a problem turpentine can't fix, because if it doesn't work, you didn't live to tell about it. Turpentine is a proud sponsor of Queernut.
Beck (:Hahaha!
Dash (he/him) (:Queernecks even though they begged us not to.
Dash (he/him) (:For legal purposes, listeners, please don't do any of that shit.
Dash (he/him) (:man, I never, I never had to drink any of it, but yeah, we put, we had to put it on stuff. People are still using it in the alternate health realm to try to ease like for putting, making baths with it to try to ease pain from things like multiple sclerosis. and, those folks go through it. So I don't blame them at all for trying damn near anything, you know, and, I, that didn't appear to be something that's not safe. So if you think it might help do that.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, the smell of turpentine. I do remember using it for lamp oil. You can burn it. And we would put it on the cats when they got wolves. Do you know what a wolf is? Lord. I'm about to traumatize you. Any livestock can get it, but it was just for some reason more common with the cats and dogs.
Beck (:Wolfs? I have no idea.
Dash (he/him) (:Let me see, I'm trying to find. It's a larva of some kind that it's a fly, woof larva.
Dash (he/him) (:It's a, yeah, it's a bot. I guess it's what we called the larva of flies. it ha people get, people still get it from bot flies and stuff and like the Amazon and things, but it's just a larva that they, the fly implants under the skin of the animal and it eats the flesh until it grows enough to emerge. It's sometimes it would be fatal for them because I, got them in, they got them in their necks a lot, but yeah, we would, put turpentine on the wound and I am just now like.
And even then when I was a kid, I had, was aware like this has to be so excruciating for this animal, but it would kill the parasite. I, we also like, you I'm sorry. You could also use Vaseline or any petroleum jelly to, like, make it come out and it has to come out for air after that. And then you could just pull it out. So that's what I started doing.
Beck (:I guess.
I am traumatized, ugh!
Dash (he/him) (:But yeah, was really the only, like rubbing it on us for pain and putting it on animals for parasites was the only thing we used turpentine for by the time I came along. think everybody had worked out you probably shouldn't drink it.
Beck (:know it to take paint off your hands.
Dash (he/him) (:You know, paint thinner. And it is such a, it's, it's such a crazy thing. Like only a fucking hillbilly would come up with this stuff because you, you're tapping a live pine tree for resin for God knows what, what were you going to do with it? mean, because you can, maybe they were trying to get sap or something, but it has to be a certain, I think a tree has to be a certain maturity or certain part of the season for it to be sap. I have no idea. I've never actually done that kind of thing.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:But it's a smell. It has a wild smell to it. It actually does kind of smell like moonshine a little bit.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:I'm thinking of so many stories that I could tell about church, I don't feel like we've been bumming out. It just feels like this has been a heavier episode.
Beck (:Wait, you didn't like the part where I talked about my mom dying?
Dash (he/him) (:actually love when you talk about that. think it's important to talk about. I I worry about that though. I do worry about like sometimes when I talk about like David dying or somebody is something I'm like, are people sick of me telling them about this? is this what they think of when they think of me? Like, because I talk about this? It's not worth punishing yourself.
Beck (:hahahahah
Beck (:Right?
I definitely don't talk about it as much as I think about it, so people should be appreciative of that.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, for sure.
Dash (he/him) (:I do like church was the first time I played. No, that's not true. I had played kickball before. No, wait, no church was first time I played kickball because we started playing it in school after after I learned about it in church.
Beck (:I don't remember playing like that in church. I just remember like...
the sitting around and them asking us questions, the rote answers and that kind of thing. don't remember having fun at church. It was always serious business.
Dash (he/him) (:You know, was, once it became, well, yeah, I'm sure if you were going to a Pentecostal church, do they even have fun?
Beck (:Then I went to the Methodist Church and I was allowed to have fun, so I really liked it there.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Yeah, church was for some, got to, did arts and crafts and can you even imagine how fucking crazy it must've been to me when somebody said, we're going to glue dry macaroni to a paper plate. Then I said, to what end are we doing this? Like they didn't think to explain that it was to make a picture. And so was like, is this a food? Do we need this?
Beck (:haha
Dash (he/him) (:Well, I have realized that we've been doing a real shitty job of wrapping these episodes up. So, like some things that it would be important for listeners to know is that if you're enjoying this at all, and if you've maybe listened to more than one of these, why don't you give us a five star rating somewhere? You listen on iTunes, give us one there. If you listen on Spotify, if you listen on one those other heathern apps use whatever rating system they have and try to let the folks know that you're enjoying this. And.
Also, you can let us know. And if you have, if anything we say makes you think of anything, find us on social media and tell us about it. Because I'm interested in, are we talking to anybody who is experiencing anything similar to the shit we say?
Beck (:Right? Yeah, I would love to hear from some of our listeners.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Oh, somebody did comment on our, on the YouTube channel. Do you remember when we were talking about the university of Miami, like Western Eastern side of campus called Western campus. Miami university. Yeah. The, somebody commented on our YouTube channel explaining why that was. Yeah. Uh, and I think also the years that they gave that they were there at the same time as you 2003. Yeah. So, uh, but it's because.
Beck (:Yeah, Miami University.
Beck (:That's awesome!
Dash (he/him) (:It was originally another school there, another college, probably a normal school, exactly. Just like every, every school was an Appalachia and it was called Western College. And so when they acquired it or incorporated it into what became Miami university, they just kept the name and it was on the Eastern side of what became the new campus. Yeah. I was like, fucking crazy. Thank you so much for telling us that.
Beck (:The normal school.
Beck (:Yeah. that's cool!
Beck (:That's fun.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. I'm also interested in what your local cryptids are. So I would love to hear what your story's about, what you grew up hearing about and who was gonna get you if you did wrong.
Beck (:Or if you've ever seen a ghost.
Dash (he/him) (:Definitely want to hear about ghosts. If you've got pictures of ghosts, at Queernecks on thread.
Beck (:I don't have a picture of a ghost, but I do have. So my brother died in 2007 and when he died, my mom and her sister had not spoken in probably 20 years because of him, because of an incident that happened. Um, so my mom told her sister she could come to the funeral. And when I took pictures of my aunt and my mom sitting in my mom's living room, there were orbs all over those pictures. Um, I could find it. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Do you have that? That's cool.
Beck (:It'll take me a day or two, but I'll find it for you.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Yeah. I keep trying to say tweet, but that's not a thing anymore. And we are not on X, so don't even try. But on threads at Queernecks show us your ghosts. And if you have an ugly dog, we'd like to see that as well. Or a cute one. Well, thanks for hanging out with us. Yeah, me too. I mean, I have a soft spot for people who take on the kinds of animals that most folks are leaving behind.
Beck (:I ugly dogs.
Beck (:Yep, exactly.
Dash (he/him) (:Thanks for hanging out with us for this episode of Queernecks Say hi to your mom and them.
Beck (:See ya, bye!
