670. It’s Trash-ception with Chelsea Devantez of Glamourous Trash

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode 670 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today I have a very special guest: podcaster and writer and comedian Chelsea Devantez. One of Chelsea’s listeners connected to her my show after my interview with Joanna Shupe in episode 600. No, 650! Wasn’t even that long ago! Wow! So time is a flat circle, first of all – you knew that – but we connected over Instagram and then over email. I had been trying to work up the nerve to invite her to be on my show, and then, like, the whole universe intervened through this lovely person, so thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was on her show recapping Danielle Steel’s dog memoir – which you should listen to, ‘cause that memoir was incredible – and now she is in the guest chair on mine about a memoir, but it’s her memoir. Her book, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (But I’m Going to Anyway) was published last summer, and we are going to talk about hosting and vulnerability, being the memoirist and reading the memoir, hating small talk and avoiding it by writing a memoir, and also how the Depp-Heard case affected the final version of that memoir.

Now, I want to be very clear here: Chelsea’s memoir is bookended by her own story of intimate partner violence, and much of it was redacted, as we discuss in the interview, but I want to be clear that throughout our conversation we talk about domestic violence, intimate partner violence, infertility, donor-conceived children and adult donor-conceived children, the infertility industry, drive-by shootings, and mental health.

It sounds like it’s going to be really heavy and dark. It is heavy, but it’s not dark, because Chelsea is a wonderfully fun person to talk to, and I’m very, very honored to have her on the show, and I hope you enjoy this interview.

I will have links to all of the books that we talk about, every memoir she mentions, including her own, and the books that we discuss at the end. Do not worry. I will also have links to all of the places on the internet that we talk about, including Len Pennie, who is the Scots poet who wrote the book poyums that I interviewed her last year? She won a big award, and it’s super cool. Her acceptance speech is amazing, and I will link to that in the show notes as well.

I have a compliment this week, which is so fun.

To Elizabeth K.: Musical librettos are being written right now that contain entire song and dance numbers about how funny and admirable you are and how much your friends admire your style. The costume department is ready.

If you would like a compliment of your very own or you would like to support the show, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. The Patreon community helps me procure more issues of Romantic Times; it keeps the show going; it makes sure that every episode is accessible, because we have a transcript hand-compiled by garlicknitter. Hey, garlicknitter! [Hey! – gk] Your support means a lot. Again, if you’d like to join it’s patreon.com/SmartBitches. If Patreon is not in the cards right now, I completely understand. May I humbly request that you leave a review for the show if you like it, wherever you listen. Or, you know, tell some people.

But most of all, thank you for listening. Flight attendants used to say this: something like, We know you have a choice in airlines, so thank you for flying with us. So believe me, I know you have choices in podcasts? There, there are a few. There are quite a few. I listen to many of them myself. Thank you for listening. I’m really honored to keep you company, and I hope you enjoy the show!

So let’s do it! On with my conversation with Chelsea Devantez.

[music]

Sarah: So this is the only awkward part: if you would please introduce yourself and tell the people who will be listening who you are and what you do, and also, thank you so much for doing this interview.

Chelsea Devantez: I’m so happy to be here. I fell in love with you recently and quickly and deeply.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Likewise!

Chelsea: So, so I’m, I’m ha-, I’m so happy to be here. My name is Chelsea Devantez. As I say on my podcast, I am a TV writer, comedian, filmmaker, author, and sometimes I manage stuff too. And to expand on that, I have a podcast called Glamorous Trash where we read and recap celebrity memoirs. We also do viral articles, some other extra-trashy discourse. I also wrote a memoir titled I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, and then I’ve written in TV for, you know, the past ten to – ohhh, math! Hmm! – somewhere between ten and a hundred years, I have written for television.

Sarah: I know it feels that way.

Chelsea: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah: So I listened to your memoir on a very, very long flight, and it was truly excellent, so thank you for keeping me company, ‘cause I don’t sleep well on planes. But I’m, I now have this weird feeling of knowing a lot about you? Yet we’ve met twice. And I’m like, Oh, okay, now I’m talking to you, and I know all of this stuff to ask you about your past. Has that ever happened with you and the memoirs that you look at on your podcast? Like, have you ever met the person and been like, Wow, I know all your business?

Chelsea: Oh yeah. It, you know, really only with the memoirs that go deep, ‘cause some of them are like, you know, they stay surface, but yeah, I feel like if I, I met Jane Fonda I would be like, Have you, have we healed the daddy wound? How’s it going? And she’d be like, Who are you? You know?

Sarah: Right?

Chelsea: I’d be like, I mean, you know, we both have a daddy wound. I love your work! [Laughs]

Sarah: I mean, first of all, who doesn’t? And second, like, you have to know that that’s going to happen, right? Like, you’ve written a memoir; you have to expect that people are going to come up to you with this, like, graduate-level knowledge of your past and your deepest scars, whereas you don’t know anything about that person. That’s –

Chelsea: Yeah!

Sarah: – incredibly vulnerable action, I have to say. I’m really, like, I don’t know I could do, I don’t know if I could do that. I’m really, really in awe.

Chelsea: You def-, you definitely could. You definitely could, and I think I en-, you know? I enjoy it, and I’ll tell you why, which is because for a really long time, because a lot of the stuff that happened to me had so much shame attached to it –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: – not only just shame was attached to it because of what happened, but then society has shame about it, so it’s, like, not something you should talk about? And so I hated small talk. No one knew anything about me for many, many years. I’m talking like, I think I’m, it’s like thirty-two years old, and my best friends always knew everything; like, my closest friends always knew everything; but they’ve read the memoir and they’re like, Well, you didn’t tell me this –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – or, or this tiny detail, right, because I didn’t want, I couldn’t talk about it, and I hated small talk, and I was so afraid to have a podcast, and I really slowly worked my way into sharing, because sharing is the antidote to shame.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: And I did it with a therapist. So, I mean, really scientifically, like, probably took me four years with my trauma therapist before I then, we delegated a safe person who I could try sharing with. I did it step by step, and now I’m out here and I’m like, I love that people know all this stuff about me that I kept inside in, in a prison –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – for so long, and now it’s out there and free, and I’m comfortable with it. It’s just such a literal miracle that I enjoy it now, and it, it’s one of those, like, if I can do it, you can do it! But, like, had I, I wish you could have met me at thirty and be like, I can’t believe this type of change is possible.

Sarah: I kind of love this as the antidote to small talk? Like, I only small talk –

Chelsea: Yeah!

Sarah: – I’m just going to publish a memoir, and if you know me, now you know everything. We don’t, we can just skip right over all of it. We don’t need it at all!

Chelsea: My favorite, because, my friends always make fun of me ‘cause I, at a, at a party, I always find one person and we just go deep for hours –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: – because I don’t want to, I –

Sarah: Me neither.

Chelsea: – really hate small talk, so yeah, a memoir’s a great way to skip that. [Laughs]

Sarah: And the interesting thing about being a podcaster, which I know you know, is that you, as the host – and I’m always cognizant of this – you have to create an intimate conversation with someone who you may not have ever met or talked to before, and you have to do that in the moment, while it’s happening, while also, like, managing it as the person hosting. You know what I mean? Like, you have to –

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: – talk to somebody you’ve just met like five minutes before, and then have a really deeper-level conversation.

Chelsea: Yeah, I mean, and, and really, kudos to you for doing it so well, because I have –

Sarah: Thank you.

Chelsea: – books to help me, right? So, it is so much easier to talk about your life or get emotional when you are talking about someone else’s shit?

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: And that is such a beautiful path to connection and, and sharing, but, like, without a book in between us as our third? Much harder.

Sarah: It is, it is harder, and I love doing interviews with authors when I can say, Okay, I just want you to tell me, what is the one thing you’ve been dying to nerd out about? Because I promise you I want to hear it. Like –

Chelsea: I love that.

Sarah: – the thing that someone nerds out about it so interesting, and it makes it much more personal. Like, I am, I am seeing you, and I am hearing you, and I genuinely want to hear what you’re thinking about that you don’t tell anybody else.

Chelsea: Yeah, true curiosity is such a gift in another human? Probably my favorite quality.

Sarah: And if it’s not curiosity, nosiness works.

Chelsea: Oh my God! Gossip? Who doesn’t love gossip? Get on in there via curiosity!

Sarah: I am so nosy.

Chelsea: [Laughs] I love that you own it, though, you know?

Sarah: Oh yeah! I’m, I am absolutely nosy. I want to hear –

Chelsea: Yeah, same here!

Sarah: – I want to hear my, my, my neighbor’s work drama. I want to hear about, like, you know, the drama before I moved here. Please, tell me everything!

Chelsea: There’s no way to be obsessed with memoirs, as I am, if you don’t want to know every little piece of someone else’s life, yeah.

Sarah: And it’s interesting, because you and I recapped the Danielle Steel memoir, which was obs- – [laughs] – ostensibly about her dog, so it was actually –

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – very much about her?

Chelsea: [Laughs] Yeah! That was such a beloved episode. So many people are – by the way, you need to come back. I’ve made promises on the Patreon.

Sarah: I would love to any time. Just yell. Ah! Thank you; please tell your Cookies that I appreciate that so much.

Chelsea: I will, I will.

Sarah: I loved doing that, particularly because that was one of my first experiences with a memoir where I’m like, Oh! Did you mean to tell me that?

Chelsea: Yeah, like, surely you don’t mean to say that your husband made you clean up your dog’s poop and pee for nine years of your life.

Sarah: Right.

Chelsea: When you are ostensibly writing twenty hours a day and the breadwinner? Like, one of these things isn’t fitting.

Sarah: I want to see this memoir rewritten on Reddit!

Chelsea: Yes!

Sarah: On, like, Am I the Asshole? So my husband adopted a dog and told me he was in charge of the front half and I was in charge of the back half.

Chelsea: Wait, Sarah, that is so funny, to take questions from memoir to AMA on the Reddit?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: I’m sorry, you’re a genius. Who’s doing this, you or me? Because someone’s doing it.

Sarah: [Laughs] That is your department. I will provide the fun ideas. Honestly, imagine the AMA from her perspective. So I just cleaned up another dog poop –

Chelsea: It’d be so funny to get answers on that and be like, Okay, this is, was from Danielle Steel’s memoir. [Laughs]

Sarah: My gosh. Imagine meeting Danielle Steel.

Chelsea: I, I don’t think I want to. That’s, there’s a lot of people where I’m like, I like you better as an enigma.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s true!

Chelsea: No, truly!

Sarah: That’s true!

Chelsea: Especially knowing some of how she feels about dogs, I’m like, We don’t need to meet. I can just admire you from afar.

Sarah: Yeah, we can, it’s fine.

Chelsea: It’s fine.

Sarah: In your memoir, you talk about reading memoirs and gleaning advice from them, and then how that lead you into writing your own. What parts of talking about and reading memoirs helped you with your own memoir? Because it’s a big jump to, I’m reading your business, to Here’s all of mine.

Chelsea: Yeah, I mean, it, it was really specific things like, again, like, when you have shame –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – you feel, you, inherent in that feeling is, like, this is only me, and I am the only one, and it’s just, it, and you’re like, No, but it’s just true, right? And there’s no way for you to know that’s not true, because you’re not talking about it –

Sarah: Right!

Chelsea: – right? And, and therefore no one can respond back to you and say, I feel the same. And so it truly was mindblowing for me to read Demi Moore’s memoir, and when she’s fourteen she finds out her dad is not her real dad, and she’s been using the other dad’s last name, she’s got to switch another last name, and I was like, I mean, I found out my dad was not my real dad at fourteen. And this is, like, fucking Demi Moore –

Sarah: Right.

Chelsea: – right? And then, like, all of the domestic violence I went through, and all of the abuse I went through is in, unfortunately, many, many stories –

Sarah: So many.

Chelsea: – and memoirs, and even down to, like, there was a really specific, there’s a really specific story of mine that includes, unfor- – I, I assume you’ll do a TRIGGER WARNING for this episode.

Sarah: I will at the top; do not worry.

Chelsea: But it includes multiple drive-by shootings, and –

Sarah: Oh God!

Chelsea: – I’m reading Tina Turner’s memoir –

Sarah: Oh, oh!

Chelsea: – and in it –

Sarah: Ooh, boy. That’s a heavy lift.

Chelsea: Heavy lift, and one little piece of her story is multiple drive-by shootings, and you, sort of when you’re in it, you’re just like, How fucked in, is my life for this to have happened to me? And I, I was also very young. You know, and you’re like, this was just a piece of what Tina Turner went through, and it’s not, I’m not the only person in the world who was, like, targeted multiple times by, you know, a, a romantic partner, and so –

Sarah: Mm-mm.

Chelsea: – really, it was really the specific parts over and over and over again of all of these issues that I thought were mine alone, seen in other really successful women’s lives, who have the careers that I want – you know, writer, actor –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – director – that made me be like, Oh my God. Every time I read about it in another memoir, I truly felt like a, a small religious therapy experience? And that’s when I realized, like, Oh, and now I want to do it and, like, pass it on. And also, the art of doing it is probably – I don’t know, if this, if memoirs were akin to Scientology, like, whatever the highest level of thetans is, is writing your own memoir. Where, like, okay, I’ve learned about the things –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chelsea: – I’ve been really helped. All the, you know, brain things, scans went through. Now it’s time for me to meet L. Ron Hubbard! That’s what writing your own memoir is; it’s the highest level.

Sarah: It’s like the, it’s like the Bowser of therapy.

Chelsea: Yes! [Laughs] Exactly! The final –

Sarah: The final boss.

Chelsea: The final boss.

Sarah: And it’s, it’s so interesting to read something that makes you feel seen? Like, that’s happened to me, and, and I’ve felt like, Oh, I’m not the only one this happened to? And then –

Chelsea: Mm.

Sarah: – like, there’s this relief of sharing and this relief of reciprocating, and then, for me, there’s almost immediately a rage. Like, why was I suffering by myself when this is so many other people?

Chelsea: I, I cannot agree with you more, and I, I feel like that rage is what powers me –

Sarah: Yes!

Chelsea: – every day? And my podcast. You have Trashy Books in your podcast name? I have Trash in my podcast name, and I think, like, it’s because for so long we were told these books were trash.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: And I now fully know it’s so that we would ignore how powerful they are.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: So that I would not be picking up memoirs, learning how not-alone I am –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – so that other women couldn’t come together; so that we would all – that’s why they want us to feel shame, so that we won’t talk and won’t create change, won’t come together, and so it’s just so, yeah, it’s a really infuriating epiphany when it happens, where you go, Oh my God, they’ve been shitting on girls’ culture or feminine culture so that we would not find solace or help from it.

Sarah: Yes. That’s a hundred percent true. We named the site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books because we knew that critiquing romances was going to create a furious response from the romance community at that time. There was a very strong Be nice; don’t critique culture, and we were like, Well, let’s talk about how there’s a lot of rape, coercion, and some real dubious consent going on here, and surely we can do better, and the name of the site was like, Well, we called ourselves bitches, and we called the books trashy, so what else do you got? We took that away from you.

Chelsea: Yes! I love, I love owning – again, I did it too! Like, I, I, I spent most of my life, I really, like – [laughs] – I very lovingly, I came from trash. I, I came up with Glamorous Trash because I realized it was how I described my childhood. It’s trash, but, like, we have drugstore lipstick and, like, vanilla lattes from 7-Eleven.

Sarah: Yep!

Chelsea: You know what I mean? Like, we have feather boas from Walmart, and, like, a little mini dress, and so – but most of my life I was like, Fit in; be normal –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – don’t be weird; don’t be poor; don’t be trash, right? Like, you want to be – I wanted a nice life, so I cosplayed as a nice lady who deserves that. And it wasn’t until I was like, Wait, fuck all y’all! I love my trash-bringing. I am trash, and that’s a, the, it’s a beautiful thing now!

Sarah: Yeah. I also think that people largely do not want to engage with awareness of their own complicity in sustaining the secrecy of domestic violence. People –

Chelsea: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – don’t want to engage with how they may have been complicit in participating in the shaming of someone who’s going through domestic violence, and we still don’t know how to talk about it.

Chelsea: Oh, oh, and we still do it, and, like, I, you know, I consider myself pretty high on the scale of awareness, and, like, I’m sure I could fall into it. It, it’s like –

Sarah: Easily.

Chelsea: – it’s like when people are like, you know, you see a Britney Spears post and you’re like –

Sarah: Oh, girl.

Chelsea: – Oh no! Like, she’s fucked up, right? And it’s like, you guys, like, you are looking at so much trauma! Do you know what I mean?

Sarah: Justin Bieber, too. Justin Bieber is the exact –

Chelsea: Oh, Justin Bieber? Sorry, Roseanne Barr?

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: Amanda Bynes?

Sarah: Oh gosh.

Chelsea: Sinead O’Connor, Anne Heche. And it’s like, these women who survived and these people who survived so much and were so brutalized by this system designed to brutalize them, and when their suffering has gone so far that it shows up –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – we’re now mad at them.

Sarah: Yes, how dare you. It’s like, it’s like the, the, to reuse an analogy, it’s the Bowser version of Shut up and sing; I don’t want to hear you talk about politics. I don’t want to hear you talk about things that make me uncomfortable. I don’t want to hear you talk about how the cost of your fame for the music that I enjoyed was your entire childhood and your mental health. I don’t want to hear about that; I just want to hear the song.

Chelsea: Not talking about something is never, never, never, never the answer. And I think we still do it now, where we go, Oh, it’s better not to talk about that! No!

Sarah: No!

Chelsea: You, you are, you are damning it to live in a shameful shadow where it will only get worse. The best thing we can do is talk, critique, discuss –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – and allow something to fully bloom in the way we would allow anything else to bloom!

Sarah: Yep. And you see that in a larger societal context, too, because we had #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, and a lot of open discussion about sexism, abuse, racism, environmental racism and workplace racism, all of these problems. Now we have to swing back where we’re not allowed to talk about anything having to do with diversity or marginalization; in fact, those people are going to be persecuted. We’re not going to talk about this; it’s not okay. We have to go back to pretending like everything’s fine. And if you really want to pull my red handle and tell me I have to pretend like everything’s fine when it’s not. Because I’m sure, like you, I grew up going, Oh, I’m sure this is fine! I mean, I’m not fine, but it has to be fine, because otherwise –

Chelsea: Everyone else is –

Sarah: Yeah, everyone else is –

Chelsea: – fine.

Sarah: – saying it’s fine. Let’s all pretend –

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: – like nothing is wrong is, like, the number one thing. I’m like, No! Mm-mm!

Can you tell me the story of why so much of the first and last chapters were redacted? I know that you went through some incredibly traumatic things, and I’m certainly not asking you to relive any of it, but that’s –

Chelsea: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – not what I want to ask you. What I want to know is how come so much of it was redacted? Because to me that seemed like an egregious level of interference in a memoir, considering what else has been revealed in memoirs.

Chelsea: Yeah, yeah. And it, it’s like, it’s such a frustrating thing, too, because they also didn’t allow me to tell people why it was redacted, right?

Sarah: Oh, so you can’t answer this question. I’m sorry.

Chelsea: I can answer around it.

Sarah: Okay!

Chelsea: I can answer what I can answer. Basically, I, I went through domestic violence very young. I was fifteen and sixteen years old.

Sarah: Oh God.

Chelsea: And then ten years later the case was opened again for other, wild reasons, and that was sort of when I was a teenager. This was the, the start of the book, and when it came back ten years later, and I was performing on stage in a comedy theater, and, like, this sheriff walks in with papers to, to my bosses, and, and, like, at a comedy theater, where they’re like, Well, this is an elaborate bit. [Laughs] You know, they’d be like, She really, she paid a sheriff to walk into the comedy show?

Sarah: Oh my God!

Chelsea: You know, so – and it was this moment when sort of the first chink in this image I’d created as just, like, a nice, normal gal doing comedy –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And then it’s just like, Why is she being served, why is she being served –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – at this comedy theater? Because this case was being reopened, and it was kind of the first moment I cracked and, and had to tell the people around me what, what was happening to me, but –

Sarah: What a humiliating decision!

Chelsea: Humiliating, and I think the thing that happens with a lot of trauma victims, which is, like, when you’re going through it, like, you know, it’d been ten years –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – but it didn’t matter. I was going through it, and I had no, I had no idea that I’d had C-PTSD then and, and in at that moment, and now, ha-ha-ha. And I didn’t know my brain was pretty incapable of making it through the next steps of the process. I had to, I have no idea, because you just kind of, a part of you blacks out –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – another part of you takes the driver’s seat, and so –

Sarah: I’ve been fine till now, so I guess I’ll make it through!

Chelsea: Yeah! You, you really, the best way I can explain it is, like, all the sudden you wake up and you’ve been driving a car going a hundred miles an hour, and you’re like, I’m sorry, have, have I been driving this whole time? You’re just like, Wait, what happened?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: Like, that’s kind, that’s what disassociation and trauma, trauma at least feels like to me, and so, to me.

So that was the book, and that was how I sold it, and really the, the, the big reason I wanted to even write a memoir is because being a comedian, I felt like I could tell an authentic domestic violence story with some jokes in it, which is rarely allowed and rarely done. We really relegate domestic violence to Lifetime movies –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – and newspaper headlines, and it’s really, really easy to think of it as this, like, faraway thing that happens to this sad woman.

Sarah: Would never happen to me!

Chelsea: Not to me, not to my friend, not to the comedian I’m watching on stage –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – and so I really, once, once I was finally able to speak that story, I really wanted to speak it, because I’d been silenced so much in my life, whether it was me silencing myself or other people around me being like, Ugh, stop talking like that; you’re making us uncomfortable; like, whatever it was. And so, anyways, so that’s how I sold the book. I turned the book in with all of that, and I got this phone call and an email from the lawyers that the publisher worked with –

Sarah: Right.

Chelsea: – saying that there was too much liability. They used my own writing and were like, He sounds really dangerous! And it’s like, Yeah! And they’re like, So, sounds – so we don’t want to take that on. I was like, Da fuq?! Yeah, and then they wrote, there’s a sentence in an email that says, Johnny Depp’s case set a precedent for men to be able to sue women through loopholes –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: – and even though it, it can’t be defamation if it’s true – not only is mine true, it’s been to court twice. Like – [laughs] – it’s already been documented! – but even when someone brings a case against you?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: To go and file the paperwork, to be like, Hey! This is not true. Here’s all the evidence. It doesn’t even, it can’t even go to trial? Would still be a – I, I don’t know; I’m not a lawyer; but the numbers I’ve heard are like a, is like fifty thousand dollars.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: And so the, when lawyers are like, It is our job to make sure the publisher doesn’t, doesn’t spend a dime – especially on me; I’m not famous. I’m not – you know what I mean? I’m not, I’m not writing like the Facebook book. So I do think different lawyers would have made an entirely different decision?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: I know, because I spoke with them. [Laughs] I, you know what I mean, I did everything I could, and these lawyers were just really citing this Johnny Depp’s case and thought there could be a chance that, that HarperCollins would have to pay fifty thousand dollars to not go to trial. Yeah.

Sarah: This is why Johnny Depp plastered the internet with all of this propaganda –

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: – about, about Amber Heard.

Chelsea: Oh yeah.

Sarah: This is, this is why. To protect him and other men.

Chelsea: Yeah, and they said it would affect domestic violence victims, and yeah, it did.

Sarah: Sure did.

Chelsea: I’m one of them, and, and I, I tried to sign, I think it’s called an indemnity clause?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: Could at that point. Then they’re like, Well, no, you’ve had too many conversations with us, so it’s tainted, so you can’t. I mean, like, I tried everything. But I, one, I could not put out a memoir about my life without this single thing that has shaped me most as a human.

Sarah: Obviously.

Chelsea: Like – and it was the whole reason I even wanted to write it. And then, two! It ruined the writing. I had no beginning; I had no end; I didn’t have the middle parts; I didn’t have all the fun twisties that tie it together; and the vain part of me that wants to be a good writer was like, You’ve destroyed the book.

Sarah: But you’re right! You’re right! You’re absolutely right! Without the beginning and without the end book-, bookending it, all of the major, like, the major beats of your story reflect back on all of the aspects of being harmed and being shamed and carrying it with you and trying again. Like, there’s no, there’s no through line without it. You’re a hundred percent right!

Chelsea: Yeah. So then I, I tried ev-, I really tried everything. It was a really horrible time in my life, and I decided, like, I wasn’t going to do the book, and then I had a lot of martinis and conversations and decided I would do the book, and instead of trying to tell my story, I would try and tell the story of how our systems silence victims. And I would – so the publishers didn’t redact my book. I redacted my book, and I sent it back, and I was like, How about now? And the lawyers were like, Okay. Well, technically we can’t tell you to delete this, ‘cause I deleted just enough words, and I put as much as I could in there. There’s Easter eggs throughout the book to tell you the full story, if you want to go and find it. I slipped some things past them – ha-ha-ha – and I, and I blacked out, because I wanted the reader to see what had been done to me, what had been done to my book, and if I am someone who came to a place where I had money, I had lawyers, like, I, I’m, I was Jon Stewart’s head writer; like, I know famous people. Every now and then they’ll text me back. If I do not have the resources to tell my own story, imagine what happens to any other domestic violence victim with just an ounce less of what I have.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And so that was a story I tried to tell. I will say it was pure rage that got me across the finish line of publishing that book, and if I could go back and redo it, I, I would, I would write a new beginning and a new end. I would fill in those parts of the story, and I would, I would move the domestic violence stuff to the middle, just because, because of the writing of it. And yet it’s a Catch-22 because if I hadn’t done it, I never would have the brainpower to believe I even have a life story outside domestic violence that I could even write about.

Sarah: Right. And that’s part of what frames the book. Like, this is a major defining moment of your life then, and then more recently, and everything else in between fills that in! Like, it’s, the structure is the way it is for a very good reason, because it is a very, very important foundational element of who you are, but it’s not the only thing about who you are. There’s lots of other stuff.

Chelsea: Yeah! And also, like, maybe I need more healing or whatever, but, like, it, it really is who I am. Like, at sixteen years old, going through that, like, one hundred percent defines every aspect of who I am in my life.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: It was, you know, ugh. I don’t want to get emotional, I’m just so tired of it, but it really, he, I think I, I know I wrote this in the book, but, like, he, he did not kill me, but he did kill the person I was supposed to be.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: And I feel that every day. And I know a different person arose to carry me through this life, and that’s the person I am now, but I can still feel the girl that I could have been and was supposed to be – and she’s a lot nicer.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chelsea: And, and I feel that every day.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And I’m not going to pretend that, like, that’s not my life story and that’s why I chose to black out the words. There were times where I, I blacked out entire pages, and my editor was like, Why? People won’t be able to read this. And it was, I was like, I want them to know how much is being taken from me.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And now…going back, maybe like as an outsider picking up my book, you’re sort of like, Why the fuck are three pages blacked out? Like, maybe I would do it differently now, but I really didn’t know how I was going to make it through this process, and it was anger. All I had was anger to tap into –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – and so that’s how I made all my decisions as we published the book.

Sarah: I think actually…

Chelsea: By the way, everyone, it’s a comedy memoir! [Laughs]

Sarah: And it’s really good and also funny as fuck. Very funny.

Chelsea: Oh, thanks, Sarah. It’s just, it’s so funny to be like, Oh, there are some jokes in it! But yeah, it just became this serious thing, you know what I mean?

Sarah: Well, by showing people what they’re not getting, you are enticing them. It’s like all of the effort of Meta to squash the or-, the Careless People memoir only made it more famous.

Chelsea: Of course.

Sarah: I don’t want you to read this. Oh, really? Why not? What’s, what’s it say? How come you don’t want me to read this? How come I’m not allowed to have this information that you are publishing? What’s the deal? And you made it very clear: I am in this position because there was no other way forward to publication.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: And from what I understand – I just want to make sure I understand correctly – the attorneys, the house attorneys at your publisher were concerned that the level of detail and the specificity would leave them open to liability on behalf of the person who did this.

Chelsea: Yeah, and the person who did it, I wrote about them and said, in the – they said, This seems like a person who would do something stupid and try and sue – like, they used my own words to be like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – Hmm, this seems dangerous. It’s like, You fucking think? What do you think I lived through?

Sarah: Right.

Chelsea: And they used that to be like, you know, this seems like a, this seems like a person who would try and legally ask for things that would cost us money to shoot down. You know, you’re not going to make us enough money for this to be worth it. Which is – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yep.

Chelsea: Which is, you know, it is what it is. Had I not gone to court twice –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – I actually might have had a better chance of including my story.

Sarah: That’s true!

Chelsea: Do, I mean, like, we had a bunch of legal documents between us that the publishers hated! You know what I mean? It’s like, I, I can’t really say? But if you’re a lawyer, I know any lawyers out there listening, I know there are a lot of lawyers in the romance space?

Sarah: So many! [Laughs]

Chelsea: You probably know what I’m talking about.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: You probably know what is in some of that paperwork that then made a book lawyer be like, Well, maybe, you know, maybe this could be used against us.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: I had a million lawyers weigh in to be like, No, it couldn’t. But it didn’t matter in the end.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: It was still a bestseller –

Sarah: Fuck yeah, it was!

Chelsea: – it still did great, but I, I don’t, I think maybe they would have needed, like, you know, the Facebook-book-level sales –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – in order to really –

Sarah: Precisely.

Chelsea: – stand behind that, and listen, like, it was crazy! It’s like, Rebel Wilson has black bars in her memoir –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – because a person didn’t want her to talk about them, and so it’s happening more and more.

Sarah: It’s also extremely smart decision on your part, I think, because it reminds me a lot of the idea of a blind item in gossip?

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Like, so-and-so, who does such-and-such, was seen doing suh-duh-duh-duh. And what, your job is to put, is to put together who it is and what they were doing. Like, your, your job is to, to embark on the puzzle, and –

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: – that’s a very alluring challenge. Have people figured it out?

Chelsea: I would be shocked if they didn’t!

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s true!

Chelsea: I left a lot in!

Sarah: Yes, you did!

Chelsea: Listen, I wrote, I wrote about basically what happened to me, basically how it affected my life, and, and I left some details in. You’re not getting the gory every second sentence that I wanted to put in there –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – but it’s there.

Sarah: The degree to which you went into the effects of being a donor-conceived child were, were deeply vulnerable, but also I had no idea.

Chelsea: Yeah, totally. And, and that’s on, that’s on purpose. That’s on purpose. The fertility industry makes so much money –

Sarah: Holy cow!

Chelsea: – and I don’t –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: I don’t think people realize that it is unregulated. It is not federally regulated, and in states where there are regulations they are minor. What medical industry do you know of that isn’t regulated? And they’ve really purposefully kept it that way so that they can pull off a lot of crimes and fuckery, and, like, every year there’s a donor conception summit of medical professionals talking about the field, and every year they will not include a donor-conceived adult on any panel, on any part of it – there’s, we protest outside – because they don’t want people to know what happens when those babies become adults and that the processes they’re using are extremely harmful!

Sarah: Well, it’s, well, it’s just like we’ve been talking about: don’t make me feel uncomfortable, don’t take away my profits, don’t tell me what I’m doing is wrong, and don’t tell me there’s any downside to what I’m doing, because effectively they are taking people at their most vulnerable, when they want to have a child, and every path that way – I mean, I went through infertility to conceive my older child; that shit is expensive, even with insurance helping you. It is –

Chelsea: Oh yeah!

Sarah: – costly, and it is degrading, and it is –

Chelsea: It is –

Sarah: – awfully hard!

Chelsea: – such a good point that, to bring up, that they, they profit off of fertility trauma.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: They look for you in your most traumatic state, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – you know, I think, I, I was sure the chapter I was going to get the most hate about was the donor conception chapter. It was on a, a much smaller scale, and what was  so beautiful was that I more often had parents of donor-conceived children come to me in my DMs and ask, What can I do –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: – that will help them?

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: And that was incredible, because there’s just so many thing that aren’t taught or talked about of ways that are going to, like, help you and your child to have a beautiful life together?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: And I only, I only got a handful of, like, you know –

Sarah: How dare you?

Chelsea: How dare you speak the actual truth of donor conception –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chelsea: – because I don’t want to believe that I’ve participated in that?

Sarah: And yet I know so many women who have chosen donor conception motherhood and choose to be single parents because, well, the selection is terrible for partners for them. They have not met anyone who is worthy of having children with, and you, you, it’s mostly portrayed as this empowering, feminist, unique experience, and they’re going to, they’re, they’re going to do this fulfilling activity, because the other thing, of course, working against these women is that we are taught from a young age that as women we are not adults until we are married, until someone has –

Chelsea: Mmm.

Sarah: – chosen us, and then, that’s like intermediate level adulthood? What you’ve really got to do is have some children, and then you are an adult, and you are an authority, and people will take you seriously. Like, how many commercials –

Chelsea: Hmm.

Sarah: – you hear that go, Well, as a mom, I think – yeah, okay. Because I have procreated twice does not give me supreme knowledge of any kind over any other person. That is preposterous, but that’s how we’re taught!

Chelsea: Oh yeah, and it, I mean, I think, I think this is what’s so crazy to me is, like, I’m going to be a single mom because the choice in partners are terrible, right? These terrible, let’s say dudes; let’s say it’s hetero. Who do you think is donating sperm anonymously for fifty dollars a pop? It ain’t our best! [Laughs] You know what I mean? Like, you, you, it’s like, I always think of it as like swiping on Tinder, right? Every man is like, I’m funny! I’m funny! I love to travel! I’m funny. I, I have a great sense of humor, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And you meet them, and you’re like, You’re the worst person alive. You’re not funny at all.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chelsea: But on Tinder profiles they’re like, I’m funny! I’m smart! I love to travel! And we go, Sure! Okay!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: And then adults like me grow up, you, with the, with technology now; like, you’ll never be able to hide it! When I was born they, they believed I was never going to find out, and scientists and doctors lied to parents, they lied to children, and they were like, Well, surely, not only will DNA testing not, not be something that comes about, it will not be sold to you for sixty-nine dollars on a Christmas special. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – it won’t be available commercially. And third, I was conceived in the, in 1986, so they don’t know that the internet’s going to happen –

Sarah: Nope.

Chelsea: – and that that process will take seconds, right? And so now we obviously know that that’s available, but it’s like, imagine who you want your child to meet as their parent. Don’t you want a say in that?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And that’s where it’s like, open donor conception or knowing, just knowing someone who can donate; like, that’s going to be their parent, and I think in donor conception they like to believe, like, Well, no, no. Like, that person has no part of you. And that is so much of who we are, and the loss of that makes it more important?

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: And that person is half of our genetics –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: – and if genetics didn’t matter, then why did you want to have a baby if genetics didn’t matter? They do matter! And the things that happen on the other end of the line when you get ahold of your donor parent have been some of the most brutal things I’ve ever witnessed and read about and experienced.

Sarah: Have there been more developments and support for this group of people, the adult children of sperm donors?

Chelsea: I mean, when I was writing the book, there was a bill being passed in Colorado capping the amount of times of, I believe it was the amount of times of a man or woman could donate, which is still ten. [Laughs] So it’s a lot. And also, you can just go to a different clinic –

Sarah: Yeah –

Chelsea: – and donate again!

Sarah: – they’re not cross-checking.

Chelsea: They’re not cross-checking; there’s no system…

Sarah: And there’s no federal reg-, regulation, so there’s no database.

Chelsea: There’s no database, there’s no system, and so I think they were also capping no anonymous donations, so that –

Sarah: Hmmm.

Chelsea: Basically, every human has the right to their medical records –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: – to know who they are. There’s been things like that. There’s beautiful, the, the donor-conceived community is growing. There’s really beautiful, incredible groups. There’s, there’s scammer groups that take – I mean, like, there’s always been a lot of growth and a lot of conversation around it, and it is getting better all the time –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – but it has, but not in ways that actually really are going to impact on a large scale.

Sarah: It reminds me a little bit of how very common it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s for white parents to adopt children of color, but to have absolutely no counseling, input, awareness that what they are doing is a transcultural adoption.

Chelsea: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Sarah: That this child is going to experience the world so differently than you do, in ways that you cannot and will not every fully understand. You cannot understand how much your privilege protects you and doesn’t protect your child, who you may want to protect every time, but you can’t. Now –

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: – there’s actual conversations if you are adopting a child who is not the same ethnicity or background as you. There are more steps in some places – not all – to say, Okay, we need to talk about what these differences are. We can’t pretend they’re not there. We have to talk about them.

Chelsea: Yeah! Oh yeah! And at least there’s, I mean, that’s a thing; it’s like, it’s the same thing that we started with: just talk about it –

Sarah: Yes!

Chelsea: – and share information. There’s so many ways to raise and be an adoptee; to be a donor-conceived person; to, to raise a donor-conceived child that are, like, so beautiful and helpful and healthy –

Sarah: Yeah!

Chelsea: – and if you do those things, like, the chances are so high that everything’s going to work out beautifully.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: So it’s just like, just talk and find those things versus, like, being like, No, I don’t have to! And that’s not what it means and, you know, not taking feelings into consideration of the human that you created –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – or adopted.

Sarah: This is my secret. This is my shame. You know, you don’t need to know any of these things about me, even though I’m your parent. Like, yeah! I –

Chelsea: Right. And we shouldn’t put, we shouldn’t put shame on biological children or not! Like, it’s like –

Sarah: No.

Chelsea: – parents keep it a secret because they’ve been told to feel shame about infertility or –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: …but it’s like –

Sarah: I did!

Chelsea: – it all, it all – yeah, exactly! – All those –

Sarah: I sure did.

Chelsea: You did?

Sarah: Oh, always. I was pretty sure I knew what my problem was, but, you know, they test my spouse, and they’re like, Oh, he’s fine! And I’m like, Okay –

Chelsea: Hmm.

Sarah: – so it really is me. I am the one who is failing, and I am the one who can’t do – and it took me a really long time to be like, No! That’s just biology, and you had no say in it, and you –

Chelsea: Yeah!

Sarah: – figured out a way around it. Nice job.

Chelsea: Yeah! Yeah, and, and it doesn’t make you less of a parent or less of a mom. Like –

Sarah: Yes! Less of a person.

Chelsea: Yeah, the only thing that would make you less is if you held yourself and your child back from your deepest connection.

Sarah: Yeah!

Chelsea: And it’s like, there’s no point in letting shame do that, whereas you can just know, Ah! Sarah, so cool to hear.

Sarah: Thank you!

May I ask you about my absolute favorite section of your book? I loved it so much, I rewound it and listened to it twice. I loved the section on drag, and I feel like that is the –

Chelsea: Ohhh!

Sarah: – ultimate expression of no shame. It is the antithesis of being shrouded in shame. It is like, Nope! I’m really, really not! Get ready! I loved what you wrote about drag as the ultimate expression of feminine power and what drag does for you. Could you talk a little bit about that? What led you to that conclusion? What does drag do for you? And who, who is your drag identity?

Chelsea: Oh, I love that question!

Sarah: And also, thank you for that section. It made me so happy. Like, I – really, it is the most important thing I think that memoirs and personal stories do is reframing? Giving you an entirely different frame to look at the current situation through and making me and my thinking, Oh! Drag identity! Of course! That was so brilliant, so first of all, thank you, and please just tell me everything.

Chelsea: Oh, thank you! Yeah, drag, I mean, drag, drag saved my life; drag queens saved my life. I truly believe they are our walking saviors, our walking witches. You know, I was watching drag, I was going to drag shows, I was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, and I was just watching these humans who’d been cast out of society in so many ways, being told they were trash, pick up all that trash and make it beautiful, and make it art, and remake themselves, and it was, it was, I needed that so badly in my life. And so I was at a show, and I recognized this makeup artist from a shoot I’d been on, but she was, she was a woman, as, as I knew her, but she was a woman drag queen, and I’d never seen that in my life. That was –

Sarah: That was the first time I’d encountered it, was your book. I had no idea.

Chelsea: Oh, really! Ah…

Sarah: Yeah, I had no idea!

Chelsea: Yeah, I, and it, it’s like, Oh, how could a cishet woman perform as a female drag queen, because drag as we know it is binary? Men are women; women are men; you know, drag kings. And what I loved is that it was truly breaking the gender binary.

Sarah: Yes!

Chelsea: If gender is a spectrum, if gender is a performance, what do you mean, only men can perform women, and only women can perform men? Like, why would you adhere to that binary? All gender is a performance. And that set, like, that set me on fire. I felt so freed by it, and I had always felt really punished for femininity. Like, it’s what got me into violent relationships; it’s what, it’s what, you know, like, it’s, a lot of feminine-presenting people who, who get abused, who get sexually abused, who aren’t taken seriously, who can’t be comedians, who can’t be a writer. Like, I just felt like my femininity was such a weakness.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And I was fighting against it in the comedy world. I was putting on, like, a sweatshirt and, like, a gross ponytail and I was, like, one of the boys, because being feminine means, meant you were weak, and all the sudden, in drag queens, I saw femininity as strength. I saw nails as, like, fuck you. I saw tits as, like, I’m scared of your tits. Like, I saw –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chelsea: – I just saw all this power in this thing that I felt had been ruining my life, and when I stepped into my drag persona, I think I finally became, I know I finally became the person I was supposed to be, because I finally, I am a naturally high-femme person, and it just helped me actually be myself and find a lot of strength in it, so that, like, when I was running comedy rooms, like, I was doing it in a bold lip and cleavage and being like, And everyone can – [sings] – suck it!

Sarah: Yep.

Chelsea: And see it as powerful! It’s powerful; it’s not weakness. And so yeah, drag changed my life, and now I love – if anyone’s still confused listening to this, just think of Chappell Roan! Chappell Roan is a female drag queen.

Sarah: Yes. I will tell you, I have an author that I read a lot, who you might like. Her name is Dr. Emily Nagoski. She’s written a book about burnout with her twin sister Amelia; she wrote a book called Come As You Are, the science of orgasm; and she also wrote a book called Come Together about sustaining healthy long-term partnerships. One of the things that she identified through the research is that couples who are actively trying to undo the gender binary in their relationships tend to have a longer, more fulfilling relationship, because they’re not trapping each other in these very strict roles of Well, this is your job because you are this gender. And if you can do that –

Chelsea: Oh, I love it!

Sarah: Isn’t it amazing? So the book Come Together talks about that a lot, that gender binaries are harmful in just about every way!

Chelsea: Absolutely! And I, it’s, I love watching it get broken more and more –

Sarah: Oh –

Chelsea: – and I think the younger generations are doing, like, such an incredible job of that, and, like – and I also think, like, it, I do feel like I have a, a really high sense of masculinity, and I have a high sense of femininity, and my partner also is like, I feel like very well-balanced, and that is, like, why we have, like, such a good marriage? You know –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – and why I love him so much, and I, I think it was really hard dating in a binary that didn’t allow – I, I’m not even, I’m not even talking about gender expression. Like, we, we’re both, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s, it’s basically like, if you’re afraid, if you’re, like, a dude who’s like, Oh! If you put some nail polish on my nail, I’m no longer a man!

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: And he’s like, Bleah! Like, if you have some weird fear around that, it’s just, like, so destructive.

Sarah: Well, the, the essential of a gender identity is someone else is going to catch you being deviant.

Chelsea: Yeah, going outside of the rules. It’s also so funny to me, like, it’s like, you guys know that biologically, biologically, a woman’s hair doesn’t grow long and a man’s hair stops at a crew cut.

Sarah: No.

Chelsea: Like, you’re aware that we decided this? [Laughs]

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: No. Nobody’s aware.

Sarah: The other thing about the drag identity and your discussion of it that I, that really resonated with me was the idea that drag is both – I want to, I, I think I can say this in a way that makes sense – drag is both the amplified and accessorized version of your true self, but also a whole new being for you to embody. It’s both the essential you and a completely new version of you, at the same time!

Chelsea: Absolutely, and I, and I think it’s different for every queen, where it’s like, are you creating a creation? Oh, you see my little doggy. Are you creating a, a, a creation that you want to step into ‘cause it’s nothing like you? Are you creating the person you want to be, and this is the only way you can be them? Yeah, it’s such a, I, for me, it’s a really spiritual art form, one with, you know, with, with doing the splits and showing nips!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chelsea: You know, it’s like it’s such a – and it’s like funny and fun and has, like, jo- – I know we’ve been, like, really serious on this podcast, but it’s just like, it’s just like, it’s fucked up, it’s hilarious, humor’s built into it. Like, it’s, it, yeah, it’s a really, it was probably my religion if I had one.

Sarah: It, it worked! I mean, I, I listened to that section twice, I thought it was so powerful.

Chelsea: Aw, that’s really touching.

Sarah: Hands down, my favorite part.

Chelsea: Ah! I love that. And in that section I had a partner who was very scared by it, so yeah.

Sarah: Well. Their loss.

Chelsea: Oh yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Now, I also want to ask you, as a podcaster, what advice do you have for anyone who is seeking to encourage and grow a supportive community like you have with the fans of your site, of your, of your podcast, that you call the Cookies? What are the ways in which you have fostered that community?

Chelsea: I think that curiosity you and I were talking about, like, I think, like, really beautifully built into my podcast, and I, and I think yours is like, a book club is not one person talking.

Sarah: No.

Chelsea: A book club is so great, because you have all these different thoughts and ideas, and when it comes to a podcast, I am the only one talking, and so I went and I sought out other people’s thoughts and ideas, first in my Instagram stories and now on Patreon –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – and then that feeds back into the podcast, and so I think really, but that, but it’s not fake. Like, you, sometimes you see these posts and they’re like, Comment below your favorite matcha latte, like, whatever?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: No, I’m genuinely like, What do you think about Delta Burke’s, you know –

Sarah: Oh God, that book –

Chelsea: – period on Designing Women? And when people weigh in, it elevates my life every single time.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: Our Patreon comments now are in a place where, like, after an episode comes out there’ll be like eighty or so comments that are like reading a follow-up book –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – of incredible thoughts –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – you know? And so it’s like it, I think just a genuine place and need and desire for a community. If community’s only there for likes and clicks it, like, probably won’t work, but, like, really build a space that, like, that gives back to the community and then gives back to you, and, like, your, that community is, like, taking you somewhere? And, and I, and then I, this is the silliest thing? But, like, having a platform that is conducive to community in that, like, I really didn’t know what I was doing with podcasts at first? I was kind of like going and reading –

Sarah: Oh, roger that!

Chelsea: – and I was like – yeah! And I was like, I don’t know, go, go join a Facebook group? Like, I mean, I wasn’t even on Facebook. I have a, I have one profile for my donor-conceived community and my book club? But I sent them all to Facebook to commune and gather, but, like, I’m not on Facebook, a lot of people aren’t on Facebook, and so community couldn’t really build.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: You know what I mean? Or, like, Instagram stories, everything has to go through me, and so it was really a happy accident, joining the Patreon, and then it’s like, it just has the platform for chats and for posts, and it’s like a place where you actually can commune?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: So I, I think, I think, like, one is practical and the other is spiritual, and the last thing I’ll say is I also accidentally stumbled into a community when I accidentally, or purposefully, became the person I was truly supposed to be –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – and shared it.

Sarah: Yep.

Chelsea: Because peop-, you cannot find your people if you cannot find you.

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: And if you cannot share you –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – no one else knows you’re there!

Sarah: Yep.

Chelsea: And the moment I did that Dolly Parton thing of, like, find out who you are and do it on purpose, which, honestly, I read it, I read that at fifteen, and I was like, All right, you got it…Thirty-five, I’m like, Okay, I think I finally did it! [Laughs] But the moment I did that, all the people who were like me or liked the things I liked were then able to show up. And it’s hard, Sarah.

Sarah: So hard!

Chelsea: I was a comedian coming up being like, Yes, I want to know who I am! I’m doing it, I’m doing it! And there were just so many years where I wasn’t doing it because I didn’t want to talk about being a domestic violence survivor? Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – I didn’t want to talk about being donor-conceived? Like, I, I, all these things were like, But not that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: You know what I mean, where I’m like, No, no, I am who I am, but not that!

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And it really wasn’t until I embraced all the parts I hated about myself –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: – that I actually could be myself.

Sarah: Yeah. There’s a poet you might like; her name is Len Pennie? She wrote a book called poyums, and it is about domestic violence –

Chelsea: poyums!

Sarah: – poyums – but it’s written in Scots. Once you read it, you kind of figure out what it means, and there’s a lot of context for it, and she has a wonderful Instagram and TikTok presence where she basically reads her poems and talks about them. She recently won a major award in the UK for her book as Book of the Year, and – I think it was like the Best Poetry of the Year – and in her speech she said, I wrote a book of poems about domestic violence because usually when I bring it up the, the conversation will just stop. No one wants to talk about it. And I want domestic violence to be a conversation starter. I want to be able –

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: – to in foster this. So you might really like her book poyums.

Chelsea: I love that! I will absolutely do that. And, and that’s how I feel about comedy. I think, I think we should make, I think domestic violence should be able to be something you can laugh and make jokes about, so that it can be an entryway into talking about it.

Sarah: If I can make a suggestion, the audiobook she reads in, in Scots? Mwah. Perfect.

Chelsea: Ah! Nice.

Sarah: So speaking of books, I always ask this question: what book are you reading that – books, book, books – that you would like to tell people about?

Chelsea: Ooh! I mean, like, I’m always reading for the podcast schedule.

Sarah: Obviously.

Chelsea: So right now I’m reading So Gay for You, which is the memoir of the two actors on The L Word, who have the PANTS podcast, and they wrote their memoir in tandem with each other? And then I’m also reading the memoir from Heart, which is two sisters who wrote the memoir in tandem with each other. This is just pure accident, I am reading two memoirs that have two back-and-forth narrators in them? Which is a really, really wild experience.

And if I could recommend one fiction book –

Sarah: Yes.

Chelsea: – Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll. It’s – yeah, I can’t stop thinking about it; probably read it a year ago.

Sarah: Have you seen the book that just came out that’s about, it’s called Girl on Girl?

Chelsea: I, yes, I said, you, you know, it’s where you’re like, That’s what everything I’m saying! You know what I mean? Like, oh my God!

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: And so yeah, I got it immediately, and I’m going chapter by chapter. I’m, I’m hoping to book club it on our Patreon or our podcast, but it’s, it’s a tough one to get through? Because it’s so true and so sad!

Sarah: And so painful to see it, like, all laid out in –

Chelsea: Yeah.

Sarah: – chronological and, and, and it’s also deeply objective? Like, here is what happened. It’s not trying to persuade you; it’s just like, here’s what happened! Here’s the information. If –

Chelsea: Yep.

Sarah: I will, I will put it in the show notes, but it’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. Ho boy, is that true!

Chelsea: Yep. And they tried to get her to, like, personalize it, make it more of a memoir, but because that’s – which, listen, it’s my favorite – but because that’s often done to female authors, she strictly said, Absolutely not.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s like the book about Hollywood, Burn It All Down or Burn It Down?

Chelsea: Yes!

Sarah: Yeah, same thing.

Chelsea: Yes, uh-huh! Absolutely.

Sarah: It, you have to be objective, and you have to be reporting the facts. Like, women can do journalism too. It just doesn’t have to be –

Chelsea: Can you believe?

Sarah: It doesn’t have to be in the Features section as a diary. It’s fine.

Chelsea: Exactly, exactly.

Sarah: Where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Chelsea: Ah! I would love to be found! The Glamorous Trash podcast, anywhere you listen to your podcasts. I suggest you start with Sarah’s episode –

Sarah: Ah.

Chelsea: – on Danielle Steel. Absolutely riveting. You wouldn’t believe it could be possible in a memoir about a dog, but wow, it was a ride.

And then I’m also on Instagram @chelseadevantez, where I put a lot of stuff in my Instagram stories; that’s where a lot of the community happens. And I also have the Glamorous Trash podcast account, which is fully dedicated to just books. So if you’re like, This lady sounds okay, but I care only about books, go to the Glamorous Trash podcast account –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chelsea: – that’s where I like book club books and things.

Sarah: I want you to know that I wrote You will fear my tits in several places while I was reading your memoir. Will fear my –

Chelsea: [Laughs] Should I get it as a tattoo right across my tits?

Sarah: I think that plus a merch line is a very important mission.

Chelsea: You will fear my tits. Ohhh!

Sarah: You. Will. Fear. My. Tits.

Chelsea: Sarah, you are a little business genius! You’re over here with AMAs –

Sarah: Yep.

Chelsea: – merch with lines from the book.

Sarah: Just right across your bazoombas! You will –

Chelsea: Will fear my tits.

Sarah: – fear my tits.

Chelsea: I love that –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chelsea: – so much.

Sarah: Long-sleeve T-shirts, short-sleeve T-shirts, do it all. Yep.

Chelsea: Crop, a bra…

Sarah: Bikini? Oh yeah!

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Sarah: Also, I want to say a particular thank-you to one of your Cookies. The reason that you and I met is because you were asking on Instagram about who is connecting the current moment to what happened at the turn of the century during the Gilded Age? Someone has done this. And one of your listeners said, I just listened to a podcast with Sarah Wendell and Joanna Shupe, who does that exact work.

Chelsea: Yes! I love that episode! I, I have Joanna Shupe’s newsletter in my inbox all the time. You also really sparked a, a romance journey I’ve been on that I’m, like, so thrilled about –

Sarah: Yay!

Chelsea: – and I have to thank you! Yeah!

Sarah: I am so pleased, and genuinely, if you ever need recommendations, please reach out to me. I will, I will hivemind a reading list for you of romance –

Chelsea: Oh!

Sarah: – any time you want.

Chelsea: Oh yeah.

Sarah: That’s my, literally my job is to connect romance readers with each other and with the books they want to read.

Chelsea: Oh my God! Okay, I’m going to, I’m, right now I’m starting Seven Days in June, and I will come back from there and get a rec. I have my Patreon community to thank, because after your episode I was like, Where do I begin? And everyone said, Seven Days in June!

Sarah: They make good recommendations.

Chelsea: They do. They’re, they’re, they’re smart Cookies.

Sarah: Hence the name.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!

Chelsea: Thank you. Adore you. Thank you. My trash sister.

Sarah: Thank you for being here, thank you for being on the show, thank you for having me on your show, and thank you for doing an interview with me. This has been such a delight.

Chelsea: Let’s do it many times again.

Sarah: Let’s do it!

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you profusely to Chelsea for hanging out with me and for writing such a vulnerable and funny memoir. I will have links in the show notes, and may I suggest the audio, because she reads it, and it’s excellent.

I wrote a lot of things that Chelsea said down as I was editing, which is usually how I find the subtitle for the episode, and this week’s episode had two potential subtitles. The one that I used and also Not Talking Is Never the Answer; Just Talk About It, which I think is very good advice. Not talking about it is never the answer.

I always end with a bad joke. This joke is terrible, and that’s why I’m sharing it with you.

What do you call it when you use the weights on display at a store for exercise instead of joining a gym?

Give up? What do you call it when you use the weights on display at a store instead of going to the gym?

Shop-lifting.

[Laughs] So bad! That joke is from u/masselein, I think, on Reddit, and I’m deeply grateful ‘cause it’s terrible. Now, please go forth a tell lots of people and tell me how loud they groaned. It’s my favorite part of getting feedback about the show. I told the joke, and my dad was so mad! That’s the best kind of feedback; thank you.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week! And in the words of my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping, thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking.

[end of music]