Episode 516
with Kristen Arnett, James Kim, and Lavender Country
In this special episode celebrating "Pride Month," host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello give a shout-out to some unsung (or under-sung) queer heroes; writer Kristen Arnett (Mostly Dead Things) shares why she specifically likes to be referred to as a queer writer and why 7-Eleven is her happy place; podcaster James Kim shares how the language barrier between him and his mother complicated his coming out process… and ultimately inspired his fictional podcast Moonface; and Lavender Country, the first openly gay country band formed in the 1970s, performs "I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You" from their first album in over 40 years.
Kristen Arnett
Fiction Author + Essayist
Kristen Arnett is a queer fiction and essay writer. Her latest book, With Teeth: A Novel (2021), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction, as was her New York Times bestselling debut novel, Mostly Dead Things (2019). She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. Her next book (an untitled collection of short stories) will be published by Riverhead Books. Website • Twitter
James Kim
Audio Artist
James Kim is an audio artist from Los Angeles. His fiction podcast MOONFACE, a tender exploration of language and love through the multicultural experience of a mother and son, made the "Best of 2019" lists from Vulture and Time Magazine. Starring actor and comedian Joel Kim Booster as Paul and Esther Moon as Paul’s mother, MOONFACE puts the listener in Paul's shoes as he struggles to understand both his mother and himself. More recently, Kim’s show Vermont Ave. won Tribeca Festival's inaugural Best Fiction Podcast award. Kim has worked for Gimlet, NPR, Marketplace, The Dinner Party Download, Marfa Public Radio, and KPCC. He delivers talks to audiences around the country. Listen • Website
Lavender Country
Country Band
For Patrick Haggerty, his band Lavender Country has been a true labor of love. When he recorded and released the self-titled album Lavender Country in 1973, it was the first known gay-themed album in country music history. A DJ who played it on Seattle’s KRAB station was fired for doing so. When the album was rereleased in 2014, it found a much more accepting public, and garnered widespread acclaim. Haggerty’s life story was the focus of an award-winning documentary short in 2016. Since then, Lavender Country has been touring to spread the message of love and acceptance in the face of violence and hate. Their second album—their first in forty-nine years—Blackberry Rose, came out in 2022 on Don Giovanni Records. Listen • Instagram
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Luke Burbank Hey there, Elena.
Elena Passarello Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank It's going well. I know that you have been touring the country, putting on this Elvis performance. I want to hear about it later in the show. But first up, we've got to play a little "station location identification examination".
Elena Passarello Okay. Maybe it's to a city that I've been on tour to.
Luke Burbank Possibly. This is where I tell you about a place in the world where Live Wire is on the radio. You got to guess where I'm talking about. And because we are celebrating Pride this week that is relevant to these clues. This city has had an active gay nightlife scene since the 1930s. And in 1972, the city hosted the Democratic National Convention, which for the first time featured a public speech on gay rights which was given by the activist Jim Foster.
Elena Passarello Well, as anyone who has ever crammed mercilessly for Jeopardy! knows, the 1972 Democratic National Convention was held in Miami, Florida.
Luke Burbank You are exactly right.
Elena Passarello George McGovern got the nomination.
Luke Burbank Your Jeopardy! appearance once again helping you play station location identification. That's right. I'm talking about Miami, Florida, where we are on WLRN. My old stomps of Miami, Florida. So shout out to everyone listening down on WLRN. All right. Should we get to the show?
Elena Passarello Let's do it.
Luke Burbank All right. Take it away.
Elena Passarello From PRX. It's...
Live Audience Live Wire!
Elena Passarello This week, podcaster James Kim.
James Kim You know, it got to the point where I needed to come out to my mom and I didn't know how to do it because I didn't know the words to say I'm gay in Korean.
Elena Passarello And writer Kristin Arnett.
Kristin Arnett But another thing I'm interested in, too, is writing like life from a queer perspective.
Elena Passarello With music from Lavender Country.
Patrick Haggerty It was idiocy to think you could get anywhere in 1973 singing Marxist Gay Country. Okay?
Elena Passarello I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in to Live Wire from all over the country, including WLRN in Miami. We are celebrating Pride on the show this week. Of course, we asked the Live Wire listeners a question. We asked: What unsung or undersung hero from queer history would you like to shout out? And we're going to hear those responses coming up in just a few minutes. First, though, Elena, I keep seeing pictures of you on Instagram dressed as Elvis on stage somewhere in front of a bunch of people. What is going on exactly?
Elena Passarello Well, I've signed on for the spring tour of Pop Up Magazine, which is this, like, it's half magazine, half laser light show circus extravaganza. A bunch of writers write articles which are then set to music and it's super fun. So there's journalists and essayists and, and then weirdos like me. And I wrote an essay on how few women Elvis impersonators there are. And I interviewed some great female Elvis impersonators, including the great drag king Elvis Herselvis from Oakland, California.
Luke Burbank That is a great name.
Elena Passarello She has toured the planet with her band, The Straight White Males. She doesn't do it anymore. Now she's playing Captain Kirk in a drag version of Star Trek. She's, she's amazing. But, yeah. And so part of the shtick is halfway through, I turn into Elvis, and, you know, all it takes is a pompadour and a gold jacket, and the crowd goes wild. It's really fun.
Luke Burbank I thought you were so convincing. Again, I haven't had a chance to see it live yet, but the photos that I've seen, I feel like you really have the moves down, like the body, you know, contortion. Like I'd have believed that, you know, Elvis had reentered the building.
Elena Passarello Unfortunately, I'm doing this at the same week that the Elvis movie is opening. So that trailer of that person, Austin Butler, who's had like $1,000,000 worth of, like, lessons, it's like right up against these, like, grainy photos of me on Instagram almost getting it right, you know? And he's like, just like knocking it out of the park.
Luke Burbank For what you had to work with in terms of special effects budget, I think you're doing an amazing job.
Elena Passarello Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
Luke Burbank All right. Let's welcome our first guest onto the show. He's the creator of the fictional podcast MOONFACE, which explores language and also love through a multicultural experience of mother and son. The show landed on the Best of 2019 lists from Vulture and TIME magazine. Take a listen to this: it's our conversation with James Kim recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. James, welcome to the show.
James Kim Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank This new podcast of yours, MOONFACE, is really incredible. How did you get the idea for it?
James Kim Yeah, I, I used to work in a, uh, entertainment show for public radio, and I did a lot of interviews with a lot of celebrities who are minorities. I was just ended up being that guy, interviewing those people. I wonder why. And, you know, with every single interview, everybody was telling me how difficult it was to get their story told and how everyone was saying, no, they can't relate to these stories. And here I saw podcasting, especially fiction podcasts, as an outlet to tell these stories from marginalized communities and really kind of produce it in a way that's independent and it's cheap. You could set it on the moon. You could set it in a classroom, you could set it here in this theater, and it'd be the same budget. So, I kind of was really inspired by the idea that there was just really not a lot of stories about Asian Americans. And I just wanted to do something for the Asian-American community.
Luke Burbank One of the really interesting elements of the, of MOONFACE is, okay, so it's the story of this guy Paul.
James Kim Yeah.
Luke Burbank And he is trying to figure out how to come out to his mother, who's Korean-American, but she doesn't speak a lot of English and he doesn't speak a lot of Korean. And that creates some real challenges. Now, you are Korean-American gay man whose mother I understand does not speak a lot of English, and you do not speak a lot of Korean. Are these in any way related? [Laughter]
James Kim No. Totally not. No.
Luke Burbank Okay. Onto my next question. No, but I guess, here, my, my first question about this is really kind of practical, which is, how did this develop that you and your mom don't really share the same language?
James Kim Yeah, when I was growing up, I, I spoke Korean fluently, apparently. There's even, like, a home video that my parents would show me and be like, look how good you used to sound.
Luke Burbank Oh man.
James Kim They'd like shame me a bit, which kind of sucked. And, you know, growing up, they really wanted me to assimilate. And so they stopped taking me to Korean classes and just basically were like, just learn English and eventually you'll, you'll learn the language back again. And that never happened. And so it caused this kind of tear in our relationship where I don't really speak to my mom. You know, it's all surface level. It's about like, you know, how's your day going or does this food taste good? And then that's completely it. So, yeah, it was something where, you know, I used to speak it well and then, you know, got to the point where I needed to come out to my mom. And I didn't know how to do it because I didn't know the words to say I'm gay in Korean. And yeah, but in the end, I just kind of was like, I'm gay. And she kind of got exactly what I was saying. Like, I'm sure she's walked in on me watching porn and she saw what was on the screen, so.
Luke Burbank And that really is, let's be honest, the international language.
James Kim Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But but yeah. Everything is good now. I mean, I'm learning Korean and she's trying to learn English and we're trying to get our relationship back on track.
Luke Burbank One of the things that you did with this show, though—by the way, we're talking to James Kim, this podcast called MOONFACE—is that the mother character speaks Korean and it's not translated. What were you hoping to accomplish with that?
James Kim Yeah, I really wanted the audience and the listeners to experience exactly what the main character was feeling at the time. And to do that and to not have any translation, I thought was the best way to do it, if, especially putting everyone on his shoes when she's saying stuff and he's completely confused. It really makes the audience relate to that character. So, and too, I just, I didn't want any narration either. I didn't want to overexplain because that's, like, a big issue in public radio. I've been in public radio all my life and there's so much over-explanation and I didn't want any of that. I wanted this to be subtle and ultimately I wanted it to be like an awkward, honest kind of experience.
Elena Passarello Yeah, that's one thing that I noticed when I was listening to it. My ear is so trained to listen to podcasts, to have them be very wordy, right? And it's so quiet in a way. There are these moments of great silence. If people are going to walk to the door, you just, you don't even hear sometimes footsteps. There's just this wonderful sort of pauses and, or they go to dance and you don't, you don't really hear that much. Was that a reactive goal, just to like, not just to take the narration out, but to make it as quiet as possible?
James Kim Yeah. Some of my favorite films and media and television shows are when they have these long, long, long pauses. It's a weird example, but it's a movie called It Follows and it's...
Luke Burbank Oh yeah.
James Kim ... this horror movie. It's so incredible. But there's not a lot of dialogue in the movie, and they build these atmospheric, emotional moments just by using sound design. And so I kind of wanted to mimic that. Like I really wanted to make a fiction podcast that was utilizing audio to the fullest. So it's crazy that you like caught all the silences because in, when we recorded the actors, like they were just going through their lines like crazy. So in post-production, it was just like we, we had some moments were it was like 15, 20 seconds of silence. And the sound designer I was working with, he was like, You're absolutely insane. I was like, No, no, no, this is going to be brilliant. And, I'm going, I don't know, maybe it paid off, who knows?
Luke Burbank I was listening to a lot of this while I was driving, and I would find myself just kind of like almost lost in my own thoughts in the moments...
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank ...between what the characters are doing on MOONFACE.
Elena Passarello It's like white space on the page or something. Like it's just this this moment where you kind of check in with yourself as a participant in the storytelling.
James Kim Yeah, and I've always noticed, too, exactly like I've noticed when I'm listening to something and there's a lot of talking or there's like a lot, like if like a Radiolab episode, there's just like a lot of things happening. And I wanted like, I've noticed any time that they use silence, all of a sudden you're really paying attention. And whatever happens before and after that silence, it's like, you're holding on to those words, those sounds, or whatever's happening. So I just wanted to have as many of those moments where it's like there's so much silence in there that you're always constantly actively listening.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire from PRX. We are listening back to a conversation we had with James Kim about his podcast, MOONFACE. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be back with much more in just a moment.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are celebrating Pride this week. Let's get back into our interview with James Kim, talking about his podcast, MOONFACE. One of the things that is discussed in the podcast is this Korean term, han. Can you kind of explain what that is and what role it plays in the, in MOONFACE?
James Kim Yeah, I discovered this term a couple of years ago and it was an article, I don't remember who wrote it, but it was titled Kimchi Rage. And I was like, Whoa, that's racist. And then when I was reading it, I was like, Oh, no. Like, I totally understand this. And, and, you know, it was written by a Korean person, too. So I was like, all right. But it's, it's this thing where, you know, South Koreans have been through a lot. They've been through Japanese colonization and they've been through, you know, what happened with the DMZ and especially what's happening now in North Korea, that they've internalized a lot of these emotions and they kind of believe that these emotions that they haven't let out, this anger, this depression, this sadness, has been passed down through generation, generation, and has caused this, I don't know, like a really bubbling emotion that they can't control. And then all of a sudden it will just burst. So, like, someone showed me, like there is like a video, a YouTube video of like two Korean people who are, who were in traffic and one of them gets out of their car, starts screaming, the other one gets out of the car, start screaming, and then they get into a fist fight. And like, that's kimchi rage. It's like when they take an ordinary scenario that can be deescalated just by words, that it just escalates really quickly. And, and it all stems from this idea that, that Koreans haven't had an outlet to let all these emotions out. It's something that I feel like a lot of like second generation Koreans like me have been, we've been more open about discussing our feelings, like my, my parents' generation, they do not talk about their feelings at all. I remember when I was a little kid, my dad came up to me. Something happened in my family and it must have been bad because he came to me and he was like, Don't ever tell anybody about this. You always keep this drama in the family. Just keep it to yourself. And, you know, now, growing up with—
Luke Burbank Boy, did you ever not do that. [Laughter.].
James Kim I just laid it all out there.
Luke Burbank Like you literally are broadcasting.
James Kim Every single thing. Yeah. But yeah, exactly, like, things like making this podcast and seeing other people, like Andrew Ahn, he's a film director based in L.A., and did a, a story about a Korean-American coming out to his parents, too, and seeing a lot of these Korean-Americans like talking about their feelings and making art about their feelings. I feel like that's been kind of a countermovement to what our parents' generation has been, which is like, shut down completely.
Luke Burbank Has your mom heard the podcast?
James Kim No, she has not. She actually doesn't even know what I do. I even remember when I got like a new job in podcasting. She's like, I don't know what that is, but great. Yeah. So yeah, she totally she has no idea what a podcast is. And like, I'm going to keep it that way. There's so many things that are super personal. I mean, you both heard it. I mean, it starts at a sex club. And I would rather not have my mom listen to a character based on me having an orgasm. Kind of weird.
Luke Burbank Yeah, I think that's the right call.
James Kim Yeah, right?
Luke Burbank 100%. All right, James, I feel, even though MOONFACE is fictionalized, if folks listen to it, they learn a lot about you, as we've established. But we want the Live Wire audience to get a better sense of kind of what makes you tick. And so to that end, here on stage, we've got a physical jar on the desk. It has the five essential questions of our time in it. We call this exercise the jar of truth. [Music.] Here's how this is going to work.
James Kim Oh, man.
Luke Burbank James, we'll have you pull a question at random from the jar of truth. Elena Passarello will read you the question, and then we'd like to get your truthful answer to one of the five essential questions of our time.
James Kim Can I just do a dare instead? [Laughter.] Okay.
Elena Passarello If you look great and your friend looks terrible, is it ethical to post the photo online?
James Kim Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's on them. That's their fault. Sorry.
Luke Burbank Really?
James Kim Oh, yeah, totally. If you're looking good and it's just like, I don't know, I've had that done to me before, and I just didn't care. And I'm just like, you know what? I'm just going to—and then I ended up doing it to someone else, and they're mad about it, but I was just, like, too bad. Sorry. No offense.
Luke Burbank Yeah. I feel like I'm learning something here from you, James. Let's do another question.
Elena Passarello All right. Can you refer to multiple people as your best friend?
James Kim This sucks that I have to answer this one, because my, my best friends don't know that there's multiple best friends in my circle.
Luke Burbank Whoa.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Elena Passarello And I guess they do now. But, yeah, I. Yeah, I have, like about four or five best friends.
Luke Burbank I have probably a couple people in my life who I would, depending on the day, consider my best friend. But I don't think I've ever said to them, You are my best friend.
James Kim Really?
Luke Burbank Yeah.
James Kim You never told anyone that that, you know, they're.
Luke Burbank I mean, not since, like seventh grade.
James Kim Oh is this...
Luke Burbank But I don't, I'm not, I don't think there's anything juvenile about it. I think there's something in me that feels like that's too intense to say to one of my friends. Maybe it's too much pressure, or maybe I don't want to be locked into that.
James Kim Yeah.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank But you actually tell your friends, hey, you're my best friend?
James Kim Yeah, I feel like I'm, like, polyamorous when it comes to best friends, you know, I like multiple best friends.
Luke Burbank Because best friend indicates...
Elena Passarello It's a superlative.
Luke Burbank That that's the one best friend.
James Kim Yeah. I feel like that's the same with, like, monogamy, right? It's like, if you believe in monogamy, then it's like that one true love. And I just don't. So I feel like, yeah, I think it's totally okay about having multiple best friends. You can make that deep connection with multiple people.
Luke Burbank Well, James, now we have your mom who you don't wanna hear the podcast and your 4 to 8 best friends, who you don't want to hear this radio broadcast. You got a lot of secrets, brother. A lot of secrets. James Kim, everybody. The podcast is MOONFACE. That was James Kim right here on Live Wire. You can check out his podcast, MOONFACE, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, since James was on the show, he's made another project. It's called Vermont Avenue, and it won the Tribeca Festival's inaugural Best Fiction Podcast Award. So now you have two amazing products from James to check out if you haven't already. Live Wire is brought to you by Alaska Airlines, a member of the OneWorld alliance, connecting you to more than 1,000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska Air dot com. This is Live Wire. As we like to do each week, we ask the listeners a question. Because we're celebrating Pride this month, we asked: What unsung or undersung hero from queer history would you like to shout out? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello These are so great. One really touched me because this is an undersung hero who has recently departed. Urvashi Vaid, who was a, Josephine tells us, is a gender non-conforming lesbian immigrant of color who unapologetically and relentlessly spoke out on behalf of justice and equality. She didn't waste one moment of her precious life finding every possible opportunity to fight for a better life for her queer brothers and sisters and everyone else in between. So.
Luke Burbank Wow.
Elena Passarello Very, very cool. Very cool. She's a, she was a lawyer, an LGBT rights activist. She was president of a social justice group that helps organize people and helps innovate the movement. And really, I mean, I didn't know about her until her passing, but social media was just really paying tribute.
Luke Burbank Yeah, I remember seeing that. Every time I hear about somebody like he, you know, you mentioned this sort of, what are you going to do with this one wild life of yours concept? I think, I've got to do a little more with this one wild life of mine. You get really inspired when you hear about what people are able to accomplish when they really put their minds to it.
Elena Passarello Life is for service.
Luke Burbank That's right. I've got that piece of paper. We learned this on the show recently to write down a little note to yourself, tear that piece of paper up and carry it around with you and write "life is for service" on there.
Elena Passarello The Mister Rogers connection, I think.
Luke Burbank Yeah. All right. Who is another unsung or undersung queer hero that one of our listeners wanted to highlight?
Elena Passarello We had a lot of repeats, which was great. Billie Jean King. You are loved.
Luke Burbank Nice.
Elena Passarello Just know that.
Luke Burbank Yeah, we said, we said undersung. I feel like, for, you know, good reason, the, the legend of Billie Jean King has been sung.
Elena Passarello Yeah, fully sung. Sung like an aria. But maybe not so much this this repeated mention of Kristen Beck, Monica and other people wanted to shout out Kristen Beck. Kristen Beck is a retired United States Navy SEAL who gained public attention in 2013 when she came out as a trans woman and published a memoir called Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming Out Transgender. And before coming out, she served 20 years as a Navy SEAL, and she is the first openly transgender person to have ever held that position. So, wow, what an impressive person.
Luke Burbank Yeah. All right, before we move on, one more undersung queer hero.
Elena Passarello Okay, so we've done politics. We've done American military service.
Luke Burbank Military service, okay, what do you got for me?
Elena Passarello We waved at Billie Jean King over in sports. How about this for music, for Billie's suggestion of Ma Rainey, recognized as one of the big three foundational women's blues singers of the twenties and thirties, but lesser known as a queer figure.
Luke Burbank Yeah, I didn't know that. Of course, I've seen the name many times and even heard the music, but I didn't know that, that she was a queer person.
Elena Passarello Yes. Billie describes Ma Rainey as a gender nonconforming queer black woman who was arrested in 1925 and then afterwards recorded the song Prove It on Me, which I like. But I didn't quite listen to all the lyrics. They're great. Listen to this. "I went out last night with a crowd of my friends. They must have been women because I don't like men. It's true. I wear a collar and a tie. Talk to the gals, just like any old man."
Luke Burbank Well, you know, Ma Rainey, not being coy with those lyrics.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank That's petty straightforward about what, what was going on, for them, so.
Elena Passarello I like a good blunt song.
Luke Burbank Yeah, absolutely. Maybe the recordings, you know, were kind of scratchy back then, so some people were not fully picking up on it. But that's a, that's a pretty direct statement there, so.
Elena Passarello I'm here for it.
Luke Burbank Absolutely. Hey, thanks to everyone who wrote in with their responses to our question this week as we are celebrating Pride. You're listening to Live Wire from PRX. Our next guest is a writer whose first novel debuted on the New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Fiction. This book is a story of what happens to a family in Florida and their taxidermy shop after the father takes his own life. And then they are left to pick up the pieces. It's been called darkly hilarious. The actual title of the book, though, is Mostly Dead Things. Let's take a listen to this. It's our conversation with Kristin Arnett, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland back in 2019. [Band plays.] Hi. Hi, Kirsten. Welcome to the show.
Kristin Arnett Hello. Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank Okay. So just for folks who maybe haven't had a chance to to read the book yet, can you kind of lay out the general plot of Mostly Dead Things?
Kristin Arnett Yes, I will give you the elevator pitch. Lesbian taxidermist in central Florida takes over the family taxidermy business after her father commits suicide.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Kristin Arnett That classic tale.
Luke Burbank Yeah, that old chestnut. Why did you decide on taxidermy as the family biz?
Kristin Arnett Well, you know, as as most of us do, I was spending a lot of time just messing around on the Internet, looking at things I thought were funny. And what I was doing a lot at the time was I was looking at really horrible taxidermy because I found it really hilarious. So I was like spending way too long online looking at these, like, extremely terrible pieces of taxidermy. And as I was doing that—
Luke Burbank What makes a piece of taxidermy more terrible than what I think of all taxidermy as being.
Kristin Arnett I really think it's in the eyes. So like if the, if the eyes are placed even just a little bit off, it's like...
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Kristin Arnett The one I really love is, there's this like, beautiful lion. It's this lion, and it's like very ferocious and it's like, set in this like, like, backdrop. And then you look at its face and the eyes are just like [makes funny noise].
Luke Burbank Right. It's like the lion from the Wizard of Oz.
Kristin Arnett Yes. There's like a lot going on with it. But I spend all this time looking at this funny taxidermy. And because I'm also a librarian, I was like, oh, I'm really interested actually in how these come together. So I did like, you know, what we all do, I went on Wikipedia and then just went down the rabbit hole looking at it, like the different processes and procedures. I sound like a librarian right now.
Luke Burbank In this case, the rabbit hole was about actual rabbits.
Kristin Arnett Yes, exactly.
Luke Burbank So that was different.
Kristin Arnett So it really was a thing where I was looking at so much of it and it just became, I became obsessive about it, I think. I was just obsessive about looking at like what it took to do it. And then the more I thought about taxidermy, then it was like, actually, everything's taxidermy. I'm like, memories, taxidermy. Intimacy is taxidermy. Everything's taxidermy. Okay.
Luke Burbank And what do you mean by that? I've heard you say that in an interview.
Kristin Arnett Yeah.
Luke Burbank Can you explain that? Like you talk about taxidermy being like a family.
Kristin Arnett Yes. Well, the idea of like memory being constructed, right. A memory is like, it's a quote, but it's like "a memory is only the memory of the last time you thought of the memory or told it to somebody else." So the idea that memory is constructed or posed or structured in the way that we put it together in our own head feels like taxidermy to me because it's a lot of the same kind of things, right? The preservation of something, the posing, the curation is memory.
Elena Passarello You sort of reconstruct it to make it appear lifelike. And that's like a messed up deer on the wall.
Kristin Arnett Yes, exactly.
Elena Passarello With its eyes going crazy. My memory feels like that sometimes.
Kristin Arnett Yeah. A lot of my memories feel like they have crossed eyes, so.
Luke Burbank What, let's talk about your childhood a little bit in Florida. What was the kind of literary vibe in your home? Were your parents, readers?
Kristin Arnett Oh.
Luke Burbank What was your relationship with with books and reading and stuff like that?
Kristin Arnett My family is extremely evangelical, Southern Baptist, very conservative, so I grew up in a very specific kind of household that reading wasn't necessarily encouraged or like certain kinds of reading wasn't.
Luke Burbank Sure.
Kristin Arnett So I spent a lot of time, because I was a voracious reader and wanted to read, so I spent a lot of time secreting books away, books that, like, I read a ton of Stephen King. I was obsessed with Stephen King and I would want to read them. So, and I also wasn't allowed to ever close my bedroom door. So I'm like sitting on the floor in my bedroom, like holding the book in my lap and like, listening for somebody coming down the hallway and then chuck it.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Kristin Arnett Underneath the dresser.
Luke Burbank Were your parents afraid you were going to grow up to be gay?
Kristin Arnett [Laughs.] I think so.
Luke Burbank I mean, that's actually—we're talking to Kristen Arnett. Her new book is Mostly Dead Things— when I read interviews with you, the first thing that's in almost every bio of you is that you're a queer writer.
Kristin Arnett Yes.
Luke Burbank And that doesn't seem like it's an accident. I think that—why is it important to you to make sure that that's something that people know about you and yourself as a writer?
Kristin Arnett Because, I mean, I am a queer writer and I—a thing that I was thinking a lot about. I very, I was very purposeful in putting that in all of my bios and everything I do, because I mean the things I am interested in writing about, like I like to write about Florida, I'm interested in families and these, kind of like, really kind of messed up or hard relationships because I think all families have that stuff. But another thing I'm interested in, too, is writing like life from a queer perspective. And a thing that I think is really important is, especially when things started happening for myself and for this book, is that when you have success, you hold the door open so that other people can come in too. Because ideally what would be great is if there be like a million more kinds of queer books. So putting queer in my thing and having something be successful means hopefully, like, that enables more queer books, more of these different kinds of experiences and myriad, myriad types.
Luke Burbank But the irony is that, like, one of the main characters in the book is named Jessa, and she's queer, but it's not like a whole thing.
Kristin Arnett Yes.
Luke Burbank It sounds like for yourself as a person in the world, you want it to be known that you're a queer writer.
Kristin Arnett Yes.
Luke Burbank But for your characters, or at least this character...
Kristin Arnett Yes.
Luke Burbank ...you, that you don't want to be too obsessed with it.
Kristin Arnett Yeah, well, also a thing in writing this book, and also the kind of things I want to read, because I mean, I'm a writer, but also I'm a reader. The things I want to read are, I didn't want to write or read another coming out story. And I don't think there's anything wrong with coming out stories, but I have questions maybe about them. First of all, a coming out story is, I mean, we come out over and over again. So it's not a single experience, but a coming out story is, especially a first coming out, is a moment, right, a moment in time. And it's also usually a trauma. I would say it's usually a trauma. Even when things go well, it's like a traumatic experience to be like, gird yourself up and come out. So sometimes I wonder who the coming out narrative is being written for. I don't necessarily think it's always for queer people. I think it's for a straight audience because it's like the idea of trauma porn. So I like to think about that or consider it, and also the kind of books that I want to read as a reader. I was like, I want to read something where it's just a lived experience and someone happens to be gay. Like, I was like, I want to see the daily lived experience of a person who's gay. Like, I have problems with my family, and I happen to be queer. I, my business is going under, and I'm a gay lady. I have intimacy issues. I mean, not me. Not me personally. I don't have intimacy issues at all. And I happen to be gay. So, like, those are the things I was like, I want to explore this, but like, the story itself is like, right, like, this is a family that has a lot of things going on and also like how we cope with grief and loss and like the different trajectories those take with different people in a family.
Luke Burbank Was there a character in the book that you kind of identified with? Was it, is it the Jessa character? Is that too obvious?
Kristin Arnett Actually, for me, the character I most identify with in the book is place. Is Florida. How I wrote in this book was like the most me that's in Mostly Dead Things is Florida, is setting, because I wanted to write about Florida, because I'm from Florida. I love Florida. I've lived there my whole life. Writing from a perspective of, like, almost a sensory experience. So it's like, what does it smell like? What do you hear? Like, what does the air feel like against your skin? Those are like my, my personal kind of movements through the world there. So, like, the most Kristin character, I guess, is Orlando?
Elena Passarello Are you the embodiment of Orlando before us right now?
Kristin Arnett Wow. I want to say that. Put it on my grave. Yeah. Yeah.
Luke Burbank Yeah. Do you ever get tired of talking about Florida or in some way defending Florida? I mean, it's so associated, other than Carl Hiaasen, I don't think I can think of a writer who's more associated with Florida than you.
Kristin Arnett Yeah, I keep saying too, it's like, I'll stop talking about Florida or writing about Florida when it's not interesting, but it's always interesting. There's always something happening. Sometimes it's something super weird and sometimes it's just something beautiful for me. So I don't. I keep waiting for it to happen because I am a person, I get like bored with things really easily, but it's like the one thing that feels really lodged inside of me. I love I'm, like, tapping my own—it's in here.
Luke Burbank Yes.
Kristin Arnett It's in my heart.
Luke Burbank Sure.
Kristin Arnett But it is, it is something that I, I feel obsessive over and continue to feel obsessive over. It's also, Florida's so wide and there's so many different parts of it and so many interesting voices that are in there. There's been actually like a lot of really amazing literature just recently that's come out, that are, and it's Flor—
Luke Burbank Yeah, Lauren Groff's book. We've had her on the program.
Kristin Arnett Yeah. Lauren Groff. T Kira Madden wrote a beautiful memoir that was about Boca and also queer and biracial. Like, really amazing. Jaquira Díaz just had a memoir come out about Miami, and that book was...
Elena Passarello Insanely good.
Kristin Arnett Yeah, very, very good. So it's all these different kinds of stories about Florida because, like, you know, I'm talking about Florida, but I'm also talking about a very specific, kind of personal, localized kind of Florida. And Florida's so broad and there's so many stories there.
Luke Burbank Are you comfortable with your greatest legacy being a picture of a lizard from a 7-Eleven that you took that became quite a thing on the Internet?
Kristin Arnett That was, it was one of, it was a thing, too, that really prompted me into thinking more about writing about Florida, because it was, it was this stupid, dumb tweet. So I was, right, I wrote this thing because I was, I'm always in my 7-Eleven. I call it like my neighborhood bar. I think they would prefer. I did not. But I do.
Luke Burbank Yeah, no. The police have asked you to please stop treating it like your neighborhood bar.
Kristin Arnett They're like, please stop, please stop. So I was in there one morning before I was going to work. It was really early and I was going to get coffee and there, yeah, there was like a lizard next to the coffee maker. I just called over to my cashier, I'm like, yeah, there's a lizard over here. And, like just jokingly I was like, that's just Marvin, he likes the way the coffee smells. And this tweet went crazy viral. Like it went like it had like something like half a million likes on it. People were like, I die for the lizard, Marvin. I was like, please don't.
Luke Burbank We stan Marvin.
Kristin Arnett Yeah. People made art, like art? And it was very adorable. But that, and, the best thing out of it was 7-Eleven followed me back on Twitter.
Luke Burbank Wait, but wasn't there also a component of it where 7-Eleven was trying to figure out which 7-Eleven it was? And you were like, I'm not going to narc.
Kristin Arnett Yeah, and they were like, Oh can you let me, and I was like, I'm not going to narc on my buddy.
Luke Burbank Because that lizard probably is not 100% food safety compliant being next to the coffee.
Kristin Arnett Probably not. Although- so like the thing about that tweet for me that was not weird and just felt like a regular experience is if you're in Florida, there's lizards everywhere. There's like five lizards in my house right now, I'm sure, like if the cat hasn't murdered them.
Luke Burbank All right, Kristen, as we have just established, you are a big fan of 7-Eleven.
Kristin Arnett I am.
Luke Burbank You describe yourself as a 7-Eleven scholar, but we wanted to see how deep your knowledge actually runs with a segment that we call Let's Get Quizzical.
Live Band [Singing] Let's get quizzical, quizzical, I wanna get quizzical, quizzical! Let's see if you know your stuff!
Luke Burbank Yeah! Live Wire house band!
Luke Burbank All right. Here is the plan. We have assembled 11 true or false questions about 7-Eleven. Wow. Kristen, if you get seven of them right, you truly are a 7-Eleven scholar.
Kristin Arnett I'm so nervous.
Luke Burbank We also have an actual Slurpee here. Oh, that was purchased just down the street. It appears to be some unnatural blue color.
Kristin Arnett That's called a fruit flavor.
Luke Burbank Oh, okay.
Luke Burbank So if Kristen, you get seven out of these 11, you're a 7-Eleven scholar and you will get the Slurpee, so you're ready.
Kristin Arnett This is the hardest test of my life.
Luke Burbank Yeah. True or false? Slurpees are kosher.
Kristin Arnett True.
Luke Burbank You're absolutely right. Yes, kind of. Yes. They're mostly kosher. Diet Pepsi and Jolly Rancher flavored Slurpees are technically not kosher.
Kristin Arnett Wow.
Luke Burbank Some 7-Eleven get their machines certified kosher, by the way.
Kristin Arnett You love to hear it.
Luke Burbank You love to hear it. You just do. All right. 25% of Americans live within a mile of a 7-Eleven. Is that true or false?
Kristin Arnett I want it to be true. True?
Luke Burbank You're absolutely right. It is true.
Kristin Arnett Yes!
Luke Burbank How's she doing, Elaina?
Elena Passarello Two!
Luke Burbank Okay. That would mean five more before you're truly a 7 Eleven scholar. True or false? Kristen Arnette, out of respect for the holiday. 7-Eleven are only closed on one day and that is Christmas.
Kristin Arnett False.
Luke Burbank You're absolutely right. That is false.
Kristin Arnett I went there on Christmas.
Luke Burbank You are not alone. Not only are 7-Eleven open on Christmas, it's their biggest sales day of the year!
Kristin Arnett Wow!
Luke Burbank Which totally makes sense. Like, I know that no matter where I am, what hour of the night or what holiday it is, I'm like, I bet the 7-Eleven is open.
Kristin Arnett 7-Eleven is there for you.
Luke Burbank That's right. True or false? You can pay your taxes at 7-Eleven.
Kristin Arnett False?
Luke Burbank I'm sorry. That is true.
Elena Passarello Aww!
Luke Burbank The IRS allows people to turn in cash to pay taxes at participating 7-Eleven.
Kristin Arnett My God, what can't they do?
Luke Burbank It was an audible gasp from the audience. Okay. Elena, how are we doing?
Elena Passarello We're holding steady at three.
Luke Burbank Three? Correct. One, wrong. Four questions and seven left. Here we go. True or false? The Slurpee capital of the world is in Florida.
Kristin Arnett I want it to be true.
Luke Burbank True or false? It's Winnipeg, Canada.
Kristin Arnett What?!
Luke Burbank Where, for 19 years in a row, they have had the Slurpee Championship.
Elena Passarello Ohh.
Kristin Arnett It's so cold! [Laughs]
Luke Burbank You would think Winnipeg, Canada would be the last place they would need a Slurpee. Okay, we've sort of hit a little bit of a rough spot.
Kristin Arnett I know I'm sweating a litle in my turtle neck.
Luke Burbank Okay. All right. Here we go. The best selling worldwide Slurpee flavor is Coca-Cola. True or false?
Kristin Arnett True. Is it false?
Luke Burbank False!
Kristin Arnett No! Ok-
Luke Burbank Fanta Cherry is the best selling flavor worldwide.
Kristin Arnett The Slurpee I get is a half and half, coke and cherry. You mix up-.
Elena Passarello Mmm.
Kristin Arnett Thank you. Agree. You alternate and then you have a cherry coke.
Luke Burbank Yeah. Well, that sounds delicious. Actually sounds much better than Fanta Cherry to me. But according to our research and it was rigorous, Fanta Cherry is the best seller.
Kristin Arnett I'm about to lose the Slurpee. I'm gonna cry.
Luke Burbank Elaina how are we doing on the scoring?
Elena Passarello Kristin can only get one more wrong.
Kristin Arnett That is, we are in trouble.
Luke Burbank We got this. We got this. Here we go. 7-Eleven once sold a product called the cheeseburger bite. True or false?
Kristin Arnett True.
Luke Burbank 100% true!
Kristin Arnett I hate that.
Luke Burbank I have eaten many a cheeseburger bite after a late night out because it's like the last thing on the roller. It's the thing nobody wanted during the day.
Kristin Arnett [Laughs]
Luke Burbank True or false? 7-Eleven parent company is based in Tokyo.
Kristin Arnett True.
Luke Burbank Yes, absolutely right, it's true!
Live Audience [Cheering and Applause]
Luke Burbank It's called Seven in I Holdings Ltd, based in Japan.
Kristin Arnett That's fancy.
Luke Burbank I assume that that's just like a mega corporation that at some point absorbed them. But like, you know, do you didn't notice the changeover when they were purchased by that company?
Kristin Arnett Not on my particular 7 Eleven.
Luke Burbank That's good. They're doing a good job. And. Okay, here we go. Two more. 7-Eleven was not the original name of the store. True or false?
Kristin Arnett Mmm, true?
Luke Burbank True is absolutely right!
Live Audience [Cheering and Applause]
Luke Burbank In 1946, the name changed when they expanded their hours from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.. Before that, it was called Totem Stores, as in like tote something around.
Kristin Arnett Oh I don't like that.
Luke Burbank No, me neither.
Kristin Arnett I don't care for it.
Luke Burbank Yeah. Last one. The largest member of the Big Gulp family is the extreme gulp. True or false?
Kristin Arnett Mmm, false.
Luke Burbank Yes, you're absolutely right! The largest option is the team gulp, which is 128 ounces.
Kristin Arnett It's a small child!
Luke Burbank Yes. Gather the team around.
Elena Passarello That's a gallon of soda.
Luke Burbank You knew that on top of your head. You're absolutely right, Passarello. You also get a point. Share the Slurpee, you two.
Kristin Arnett Yay!
Luke Burbank Kristin Arnett The book is mostly Dead Things. Thanks for coming on, Live Wire!
Live Band [Closing Music]
Luke Burbank That was Kristen Arnett talking about her novel, Mostly Dead Things in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theater back in 2019. Now, since we talked to Kristen, she's released a second novel called With Teeth. She was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction for that one as well. And Kristen is a really great follow on Twitter. If that's your thing and it is my thing, that's why I'm telling you that, because I follow her on Twitter. This is Live Wire from PRX. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We will be right back.
[Break]
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are celebrating Pride on the show this week and our next guests are, as far as we could figure out, quite possibly the first openly gay country band in America. They formed back in 1972, and the reception at the time was maybe a bit chilly, it being 1972. Thankfully, things are a lot different these days and the band is still around and now they're getting all this acclaim that they've deserved for years. Rolling Stone and Pitchfork have shouted them out. In fact, they are now releasing their very first new music since they formed like 40 plus years ago. So take a listen to this. It's Lavender Country, featuring frontman Patrick Hegarty, recorded live at Fremont Abbey in Seattle back in 2019.
Luke Burbank So what was the reception like for Lavender Country when when you started this up?
Patrick Haggerty Well, I'm not I'm not only gay and country, but I'm a radical socialist. That's who I am.
Luke Burbank Right. But I mean, were people like did you go behind enemy lines with the band? Did you guys go try to play like somewhere that wasn't Capitol Hill in Seattle?
Patrick Haggerty Oh, no, no. There's- nobody would even dream of having us.
Luke Burbank Really?
Patrick Haggerty Oh, no, not with the songs I was writing. I had to make a choice in 1970 and 71 about whether I was going to go be a country music singer or whether I was going to be a radical Marxist, screaming, fill in the blank. I had to make that choice, and I did not have the option of doing both. And I decided that I was is going to be a radical activist. And that I was going to forego a career in country music singing.
Luke Burbank Did you regret that decision at some point?
Patrick Haggerty Never. Never. Because look at me now!
Elena Passarello Yeah!
Live Audience [Cheering and Applause]
Patrick Haggerty Never. No, I never I never looked back on that decision because I knew it was the right decision for me. And also, the beauty of Lavender Country was that we knew that it was hopeless commercially. Right? It was idiocy. If you think you could get anywhere in 1973 singing Marxist gay country. Okay, that was not going to pan. But somebody put one of my songs, that's a political protest song with an unmentionable title on YouTube. And I didn't know that. Somebody else heard it who was a music aficionado in Chicago. A straight man. And he took it to a straight label. In North Carolina, of all places, right? They were they bit on Lavender Country, hook, line and sinker. Both the guys who ran this label.
Luke Burbank What's the name of the label?
Patrick Haggerty The name of the label sounds gay, but they're not the name of the name of the label is Paradise A Bachelors.
Live Audience [Laughs]
Patrick Haggerty But, it's a quote from a Herman Melville novel. And we have after 46 years, we have a new album!
Live Audience [Cheering and Applause]
Patrick Haggerty And the name of the album is BlackBerry Roses and Other Songs and Sorrows. This song is about trying to figure out the difference between red hot sex and real human intimacy. Anybody had trouble with that topic? Well, it was a bombshell topic for gay men in the 1970s. Let me tell you that. It's called I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You.
Lavander Country [Music Starts] I see you stepping high with your tight blue jeans on/ Strutting like a button down paragon/ I reckon you're looking for some necking, yes I do/ Climb right on up into my manger/ But let me warn you 'bout one small danger baby/ I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You/ I see you prancing and preening as smooth as you can/ You're hotter than the popcorn dancing in the pan/ Out to capture a chunk of rapture with someone new/ Well, I can't hit the sack like an aristocrat/ If you're looking for a trick in a box of crackerjacks/ But I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You/ You're a romping bronco, I must admit/ Stomping while your lips are chomping at the bit/ Sure I'll kiss you, but who's gonna miss you/ When you're chasing midnight's through/ Be glas to be your one shot pleasure/ Even leave you grieving at your leisure, babe/ But I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You/ All of your favorite fantasies will come to an end/ And you'll be waking up tomorrow needing a friend/ Cause I can't shake the stranger out of you.
Live Audience [Applause]
Patrick Haggerty A sweet song with a message!
Luke Burbank That is Lavender Country right here on Live Wire!
Luke Burbank So they released their first album in 1973, and they just released their second album, BlackBerry Rose, back in February. So that's a pretty big-.
Elena Passarello Wow!
Luke Burbank You know, it's a it's a pretty big piece of time in between albums. But this new album, BlackBerry Rose, is getting lots of love. Rolling Stone calls it "a mix of classic honky tonk sounds with the lofi esthetic of K records or even the country leaning work of the Magnetic Fields.
Elena Passarello Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank Everything in that review is something I like listening to. So I'm definitely going to go check out BlackBerry Rose. That's Lavender Country here on Live Wire.
Luke Burbank And that is going to do it for this special episode of the show, our Pride episode. A huge thanks to our guests James Kim, Kristin Arnett and Lavender Country. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Luke Burbank Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather De Michelle is our executive director. Tim Harkins is our development and marketing director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko and our assistant editor is Trey Hester. Our house band is Ethan Fox, Tucker, Sam Tucker, Al Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and Viviana Castillo Serrano is our intern.
Luke Burbank Additional funding provided by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members John Van Staver and of Portland, Oregon, and Tony Passarello of Sandy Springs, Georgia. God, that is a familiar name. Where do I hear that?
Elena Passarello I hear that guy has great taste in daughters.
Luke Burbank I did too. For more information about our show or how to listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio Dawg. I'm Luke Burbank. For Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.
PRX.
