Episode 1028 - Eve Ensler
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Marin.
Marc:This is my podcast WTF.
Marc:I'm in a hotel room in St.
Marc:Louis, Missouri, looking at my reflection in a mirror.
Marc:I didn't plan it that way.
Marc:I'm sitting at a desk and I don't love it.
Marc:It's distracting.
Marc:So now I'm going to shift my focus towards the window.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:You all right?
Marc:This episode is a very special show to me because it was an amazing experience for me to talk to the woman I talked to, who is, that woman is Eve Ensler.
Marc:Now, some of you may know Eve Ensler.
Marc:She is the writer of the Vagina Monologues, and she's done a lot of work on behalf of abused women and global work on behalf of the environment and women in other countries.
Marc:But she wrote a new book
Marc:called The Apology, which I just read on a whim.
Marc:I get a lot of books, and I don't read a lot of them.
Marc:Sometimes I'll just judge by the cover or by what it's about, whether or not I'm interested or whether or not there's a guest to be booked on that book.
Marc:But this one just came in.
Marc:It was a little book, and I know of events where I read the Vagina Monologues many years ago.
Marc:And it just, for some reason, it struck me.
Marc:It's just a book itself.
Marc:And it's a little book.
Marc:It's a little hardcover book.
Marc:And I read it.
Marc:And I think it changed my life.
Marc:It's a heavy book.
Marc:But I felt compelled to talk to Eve.
Marc:I had to talk to her.
Marc:And we made it happen fairly quickly after I read the book.
Marc:I was in New York and I spoke to her.
Marc:But it's it's it's it's a it's a heavy, beautiful conversation.
Marc:It's a rare conversation about the essence of toxic masculinity.
Marc:And I'll tell you a little bit more about the book and about my experience talking to her.
Marc:But, you know, that'll be in a minute.
Marc:Let me just get you into where I'm at now.
Marc:I am in St.
Marc:Louis.
Marc:I have been for a few days.
Marc:And it's been great.
Marc:And I didn't want to come here.
Marc:I did not...
Marc:You know, I don't want to alienate people.
Marc:I have nothing against the good people of St.
Marc:Louis who enjoy what I do.
Marc:But this state is a fucking just a dumpster fire of right wing garbage.
Marc:And there's part of me that's like, do I want to go to a state that's a dumpster fire of right wing garbage of just garbage?
Marc:completely, you know, heinous religiosity.
Marc:Do I want to be part of that?
Marc:And then you realize like, well, there's that old adage.
Marc:I think it's an adage.
Marc:Maybe it's just something people say in the world we live in now.
Marc:Hey, there are good people everywhere.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:But sometimes they're surrounded.
Marc:They're surrounded by dubious people.
Marc:I don't even want to say bad.
Marc:How about misguided?
Marc:How about wrong minded?
Marc:How about myopic in a bad way?
Marc:Is there a myopic in a good way?
Marc:Dangerous.
Marc:How about that?
Marc:Inconsiderate, disrespectful, hurtful, fascistic.
Marc:There's
Marc:A number of ways to describe bad people, and I could go on.
Marc:On some level, in these situations where you have a little blue pocket in a massive amount of geographical red, they're excited I'm coming.
Marc:And it's like they don't expect people to come necessarily that are like-minded.
Marc:They don't expect people to...
Marc:to talk out loud who are like-minded unless it's quietly and you know the person you're talking to is like-minded.
Marc:That's what happens in these red states is progressives or Democrats or people that don't think along party lines sort of cluster amongst themselves, have secret meetings to just relieve some stress.
Marc:And I seem to be running a few of those, which is fine.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:I guess there's one thing I wanted to tell you before I forget is that the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival
Marc:is happening in July.
Marc:And I'm part of it.
Marc:I initially was invited up to do a glow panel with some of the women.
Marc:And then I asked them if they'd throw me a nice little theater, a sweet little theater gig.
Marc:So they did.
Marc:So I'll be at the Just for Last Festival in Montreal, July 26th, doing comedy.
Marc:And then on July 27th at 1.15 in the afternoon, we're going to be doing the glow panel.
Marc:But, you know, you can go to ha ha ha dot com and find it.
Marc:All right, Montreal.
Marc:So we got that out of the way.
Marc:So getting back to what I was talking about, there is one thing that happened.
Marc:That was kind of interesting because I have been here before and I remember it not being a great experience.
Marc:And I don't think I quite remembered why.
Marc:I did a show at the Firebird.
Marc:It was a small rock club.
Marc:It was before I really could pull anybody.
Marc:And I remember thinking like, I don't know if I need to come back here.
Marc:It haunted me.
Marc:Like in the current frame, I thought I was nervous about the political environment and also angry at the state's politics.
Marc:And I'm going to give a portion of my earnings from these shows to Planned Parenthood.
Marc:But there was something stuck in my craw and I figured out what it was.
Marc:I had a bad memory, but I didn't have it focused.
Marc:And the first night...
Marc:interesting it's sort of it's a couple of beautiful things happened really my feature act the first night performed my feature act uh mary radzinski uh you know i she's great she's great we're having a great time but she comes off stage she's like that you know you're gonna have to deal with this yeah as we're walking past she looks at me with this weird face and
Marc:But I get on stage and right stage right, there's a woman alone and she's got a laugh that is it's profound.
Marc:It's unique and it's loud.
Marc:And I'm going to go ahead and say it.
Marc:It's annoying and it's it's it can be disruptive.
Marc:And Mary drew attention to it.
Marc:And I got up there and I heard her laughing, but I didn't register it.
Marc:I didn't really think about it.
Marc:But it was, sometimes when you do comedy, there's someone who has a laugh and it's recognizable and it stands out against all the other laughter in the room.
Marc:And you can acknowledge it and then it becomes funny because it is sort of impossible not to notice it, but then it just becomes its own punchline and it can eat your show up.
Marc:But I didn't acknowledge it.
Marc:I just did that set and it was fine.
Marc:And then Friday, second show comes and I'm backstage and I hear Mary's on stage and I hear that laugh again all the way backstage.
Marc:I hear that laugh and I walk out and I'm like, what is happening?
Marc:Is she here again?
Marc:And she was.
Marc:So it happened again and it was brought more to the attention of the audience and they were aware of it.
Marc:And then I brought attention to it.
Marc:And, and then like she told me that she was at my show years ago at the firebird.
Marc:And I remembered like, Oh my God, that was one of the reasons it was bad.
Marc:And I felt bad about that, but I remember I could not get out from under her laugh and, and, and how it was, I was kind of locked into it and it made the set difficult.
Yeah.
Marc:And here she was.
Marc:It was like karma.
Marc:It was like a reckoning.
Marc:It was like I had to deal with it.
Marc:And I said to the audience, I said, this show is going to be an exercise in tolerance.
Marc:And that's important.
Marc:It's an exercise.
Marc:Because what are you going to do?
Marc:I mean, the assumption is, you know, your first assumption, your defensive assumption is she's got to be able to control that thing.
Marc:I mean, she's got to be able to temper that.
Marc:But is she?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Why assume that?
Marc:I mean, that's just who she is.
Marc:That's her laugh.
Marc:And as a comedian, what are you going to be?
Marc:What are you going to say?
Marc:Like, you know, hey, could you just stop laughing, please?
Marc:It's disruptive.
Marc:So it was sort of an interesting challenge.
Marc:You don't want to be a comedian complaining about somebody who's getting a lot of laughs because their laugh is annoying.
Yeah.
Marc:That's just her laugh.
Marc:She's one of those unique people.
Marc:But it was a bit of karma and it was a bit of learned tolerance.
Marc:So see that human lessons abound, folks.
Marc:Also, another thing happened to me is that a fan came up to me, a taller gentleman, slightly nerdy, and he gave me a gift.
Marc:He said, I want you to have this.
Marc:He says, I know that you're, you know, you're kind of hard on the nerds and the fantasy nerds and the Marvel movie business.
Marc:But I just me and my friends have been playing D&D for since high school.
Marc:And this guy's in his 40s or something in his late 30s.
Marc:And he gave me a Dungeons and Dragons die.
Marc:And he said, we want you to have this.
Marc:And I almost started crying because then I'm put in that position where I'm like, oh, I didn't mean you.
Marc:I'm just generalizing about a type of person and then judging from there, the worst thing you can do.
Marc:But I've sort of tempered that material, and it actually turns out to be sort of celebratory in the end of the show I'm doing about nerd culture.
Marc:But...
Marc:But it was very touching and it made me rethink things because he said, you know, we've been playing D&D for a long time and it's really our way of engaging our creativity.
Marc:I'm like, oh man, you're killing me, pal.
Marc:You're killing me.
Marc:Another lesson, little karma, little tolerance.
Marc:And I got me a Dungeons and Dragons die.
Marc:And just looking at this thing, I'm thinking, even if I knew the basic idea of the game, this die seems complicated and I would never really be able to wrap my brain around it.
Marc:Seems like there's math involved.
Marc:Now what's going on in a few minutes is a profound thing.
Marc:My conversation with Eve Ensler.
Marc:Because I read that book and I don't know how to, there's no spoiling the book, but it's a very courageous book to write.
Marc:And you can feel it in the prose.
Marc:The prose is beautiful.
Marc:The content of the book is horrible, horrendous, but it's written beautifully.
Marc:It's Eve coming to terms with the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that her father put her through beginning at like age five.
Marc:Her father has since passed away.
Marc:The entire book is basically a letter from her dead father
Marc:as a disembodied voice occupying limbo.
Marc:And it's an explanation.
Marc:It's a self-reckoning of how, why, and his feelings about...
Marc:sexually, physically, and emotionally abusing his daughter.
Marc:So the way she must have constructed it, and we'll talk about it, is that she had her own experience of all of those events, and then she had to humanize her father, which on some level, he was a human, he was her father, but in order to sort of figure out the working of his mind and how he justified, rationalized, or engaged in this behavior, there had to be some explanation, and she chose to tackle it from his point of view.
Marc:So what you have is a full kind of taking of responsibility by this horrendously toxic man and an apology for the most part.
Marc:But she's not apologizing for him.
Marc:She is putting it together for herself.
Marc:You know, it's her reckoning.
Marc:But to get into the mind of somebody with empathy that destroyed your soul is quite a courageous bit of creativity.
Marc:And it was profoundly moving to me because I believe that there's a spectrum of toxic masculinity and a lot of men fall on that spectrum.
Marc:Maybe even most of us that, you know, you have the sort of the one end, which is like, you know, kind of the basic disrespect patterns of of emotional neglect or lack of empathy, mild emotional abuse.
Marc:And then that spectrum just sort of arcs all the way to murder.
Marc:And I think that most men can find themselves somewhere in there at the low end of that scale.
Marc:And that part of being woke or beginning to understand or have a conversation around those things, either with yourself or with a woman or with many people about who you are in relation to that is not happening enough.
Marc:It's happening with some of us in our minds, but I don't know that I hear the conversation much.
Marc:And this woman, events where it's chosen to sort of have that conversation with her dead father through this book.
Marc:And I found it provocative because for me, you know, you read this thing and it is within this context.
Marc:this text is really the geometry of toxic masculinity on all levels.
Marc:This is obviously a far end of the spectrum example on all levels.
Marc:But the impetus and the justification and the lack of sensitivity, the lack of empathy, the complete dehumanization, the seeking to get malignant needs met despite what it'll do, it's all in there.
Marc:And there's different variations of those kind of themes, I think, in a lot of men's lives.
Marc:So I just felt compelled, you know, being somebody who is, you know, aware and trying, you know, to understand, you know, who I am as a man and who I've been as a man.
Marc:It was an important conversation to have.
Marc:And it was, you know, just, you know, utterly moving for both of us.
Marc:And I don't think either of us knew how it was going to go, but I knew that I needed to reach out to her.
Marc:And I knew I needed to have an open heart about it and to have empathy about it and to listen and also to understand how she found it within herself to do this book.
Marc:So it was powerful.
Marc:And I think that the experience you'll have listening to it will be powerful too.
Marc:So I'm wary to use the word enjoy, but I will use the word engage.
Marc:Please now engage with my conversation with the amazing Eve Ensler.
Marc:The Apology, the book that we're talking about, among other things, is available now wherever you get books.
Marc:I'm walking around here like I used to live in the Lower East Side and then I lived on 16th and 3rd.
Guest:Oh my God, I lived on 16th and 5th for years.
Marc:You did?
Guest:Yeah, years.
Guest:20 some odd years.
Guest:30 years actually.
Marc:Right there?
Guest:16 between 5th and 6th.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I lived at that old doorman building right at 3rd and 16th.
Guest:Oh, I know what it is.
Marc:Right next to Joe Jr.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I know.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yep.
Marc:Have you been there?
Guest:Have I been there?
Guest:I lived there for 30 years.
Marc:It's a weird building.
Marc:But, like, I walk around now and, you know, your brain kind of scrambles to hold on to something.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Some things are there, but, like, it's really slowly disappearing, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:everything's disappearing the sitter is corporate white rich yeah i don't know this place anymore i don't know who lives here i don't know anyone who lives here it's like it kind of freaks me out like that's why i don't come here anymore i lived here since i was 23 years old and you know one morning i woke up you know the way you do with a boyfriend or a husband right or a lover or and you wake up and you go
Guest:i don't like the way you smell yeah i don't like the way you sound i don't like the way you feel i gotta go and it only takes 20 years yeah exactly or 30 depending on your loyalty factor or self or sadism it's true i i mean it's really hard with those kind of things with the relationships with things that you love and then
Marc:Are we on?
Marc:Sure we are.
Guest:This is part of our interview?
Marc:Of course we're on.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Why wouldn't it be part of our interview?
Marc:These aren't.
Marc:No one does interviews anymore, Eve.
Marc:We talk.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Is that what happens?
Marc:We talk with people.
Marc:How long have you been out of the city, really?
Guest:I moved upstate five years ago.
Marc:And do you have animals?
Guest:I have a dog.
Guest:I have a pet snapping turtle that visits me every day.
Marc:In the water?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:You have water.
Guest:I have fish.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I have like animals that return every season.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Marc:So you're like, you're back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, oh my God, where you been?
Guest:You've been away.
Yeah.
Guest:My friend.
Marc:Oh, that's sweet.
Marc:I don't like... It's weird, as I said when I was setting up.
Marc:I don't know how we didn't meet each other because I was looking at the sort of history of it.
Marc:The vagina monologues was 95?
Guest:Started in 94.
Guest:94.
Marc:And it was in the basement of Cornelia Street you started doing that?
Guest:The first time I ever did any of the monologues was in the basement of Cornelia Street.
Marc:Because that place seats 12 people.
Guest:No, 50.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I used to do shows there.
Marc:It's crazy.
Guest:No, it's so funny.
Guest:And I didn't even know...
Guest:It was just like I was playing and I did it there that night and people were like, what is this?
Guest:And I was like, you're kidding, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so I got a little encouraged.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Because they were curious and they were like.
Guest:People were loving it.
Marc:Mind blown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was that kind of thing.
Guest:I think I read two or three monologues.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then it just kind of built from there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Step by step.
Marc:But you weren't really part of that, the kind of, like when I got, I think you're not much older than me, but a little bit.
Marc:But there was a whole generation of performance artists and stuff.
Guest:No, I wasn't part of that generation.
Marc:Right, you were a little later, right?
Marc:So you weren't like the, you know, what was the name?
Guest:Karen Finley.
Marc:Yeah, and Eric and, you know, all those people.
Guest:I know Eric really well, but I, you know.
Marc:But it was the generation before.
Marc:So, okay, here's what happens.
Marc:So I know who you are.
Marc:I've seen the vagina monologues at some point in my life.
Marc:And I just, I get this book, The Apology, the new book.
Marc:It comes with many books.
Marc:I get many books.
Marc:Of course you do.
Marc:I don't even ask for them.
Marc:And they come.
Marc:I had to rent an office just to accommodate books.
Marc:And I look at it and I'm like, all right, I know her.
Marc:And then I start reading it and I'm like, what the fuck is happening?
Yeah.
Marc:It was, I don't even know, you know, I read the whole thing, you know, cover to cover, and then I had to sit with it, and then I had to, like, experience my own pain.
Marc:And, you know, and I just, like, I've never read anything like it, and, you know, the language of it is great.
Marc:You know, I mean, it's powerful.
Marc:But the task of doing this, I can't even imagine what you went through to do this, to write this.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:And I guess I just want to talk about like because when I come out of it, I'm reading it as a man.
Marc:Like I don't know.
Guest:And by the way, it was really exciting to me that you as a man were that moved by it.
Guest:It's one of the happiest things that's happened so far.
Marc:Really?
Marc:No, it is.
Marc:About to cry now.
Guest:No, no, really.
Marc:Because, yeah, I don't know, you know, I'm sure you don't have a specific audience in mind.
Guest:Everyone.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And men.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Marc:Well, because like, you know, to sort of, when I realized that, you know, what you had to do to process the anger and then sort of move through some sort of grief in order to get to, you know, constructing an apology from the point of view of this monster who was your father.
Marc:And then have to construct a psyche and a morally bankrupt but emotional universe for this guy.
Marc:I mean, I just I couldn't even, you know, picture what you went through.
Marc:But as a man, you know, seeing some seeing a an emotional and and kind of.
Marc:explanation for really the most violent and toxic type of masculinity, just obviously by degrees, but moving through this psyche as a man was sort of like...
Marc:It was sort of devastating because you somehow were able to put intent that was explainable to him in this piece.
Marc:Now, is this the first time you've discussed publicly the the abuse?
Guest:I've been broad about the abuse.
Guest:I've talked openly about being a sexual abuse and violent survivor.
Guest:I've never been really specific.
Guest:I've never been graphic about it.
Guest:But what you're saying is really interesting about the process of
Guest:of going inside my father or letting my father come inside me, because I think it was a back and forth.
Guest:I think it's taken me 65 years to be able to do this.
Guest:It didn't happen overnight.
Guest:And I want to just preface this by saying...
Guest:It's an offering.
Guest:It's not a prescription.
Guest:What does that mean, exactly?
Guest:It's not a have to.
Marc:For another victim.
Guest:Yeah, another survivor doesn't have to choose to do this or make an apology or receive an apology.
Guest:Everyone's on their own timetable and their own process, and they may never get there, and they don't have to get there.
Guest:But I think for me, I have spent so many years really being...
Guest:a victim to my father's perpetrator whether i'm conscious of it or not i'm still in that narrative right of course and i realized last year you know having worked in a movement to end violence against women for 20 years where women and women have been telling their stories speaking out movements that you helped put together and this is the v-day movement that is year-round really yeah right yeah and has been here for 21 years and working on this day after day and then the new recent iteration with me too
Guest:I suddenly asked myself last year, okay, men are being called out.
Guest:Some are losing their jobs for a minute.
Guest:Some are going to jail, maybe two.
Guest:Some are losing status.
Guest:But have I ever heard a man grapple with this?
Guest:Has a man come out publicly to say, okay, this is what I've learned.
Guest:This is the process I've been through to change.
Guest:This is the history I've gone back to evaluate.
Guest:This is the self-interrogation I've done.
Guest:This is the apology I'm going to make.
Guest:Honestly, I have never heard a single man do that.
Marc:Not yet.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, I agree.
Marc:And it's because they're I wonder what that has to do with, you know, in terms of public personalities, whether they're advised or they don't have the courage or they don't feel the necessary contrition.
Marc:But I think it's some sort of mixture of of the three.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:My father says it in the book.
Guest:He says to be an apologist is to be a traitor to men.
Guest:And I think there's something so deep about that, that as soon as one man says he's sorry and tells the story and does the details and owns what he's done and acknowledges that what he does is wrong and that he knows it's wrong, the whole story of patriarchy begins to crumble.
Guest:That's the crumbling moment.
Guest:And I think when I was writing it, I realized, oh my God, this is a central...
Guest:Notion the apology.
Guest:This isn't a side thing.
Guest:This is right smack in the center of everything that when men are willing to step up and own what they've done, evaluate what they've done, go into the deep process you need to go into to understand how you became somebody who is capable of harassing or raping or beating or demeaning or grabbing, whatever you've done.
Guest:the world's going to change.
Guest:That's going to be the change moment we've been waiting for.
Guest:So what's going to trigger that?
Guest:And I thought to myself, well, maybe I could write what I want to hear.
Guest:Maybe I could write the words and what it would sound like and look like so it could be a possible blueprint.
Marc:Yeah, and I felt that as a man.
Marc:But it's strange and sad that it functions as a memoir as well.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:That like, you know, this is a full arc of your life from as early as you can remember, you know, through.
Marc:And I thought that was another amazing thing about the book is that as somebody who's a survivor, you know, when you like you say at the beginning, you talk you used to talk broadly about it.
Marc:And all of us who have some sort of childhood trauma or addicts and alcoholics.
Marc:Yeah, me too, right?
Marc:And that's another reason I'm surprised I never met you down around the things.
Marc:So it's that you kind of broadly say, well, I had something to do.
Marc:It probably had something to do with my upbringing.
Marc:But with this, I mean, alongside of the abuse, you were sort of able to track for yourself your behavior patterns that became malignant to you directly to certain events and the arc of the different styles of abuse.
Marc:So that must have been incredibly cathartic.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'll tell you the most exciting thing about this book.
Guest:I think most survivors, and I want to ask you a question after this.
Guest:I think most survivors are left with the kind of, what is that word, the yawn, that open yawn of the why.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Why did this friend drug me and rape me?
Guest:Why did my father want to destroy his own child?
Guest:Why did they do this?
Guest:And I think the why, just we're obsessed with it for eternity.
Guest:So for me to go into my father, to go into him and just say, why?
Guest:Tell me why.
Guest:And to begin to look at, oh, this led to this.
Guest:And this made you this.
Guest:And this made you this.
Guest:I cannot tell you how that began to...
Guest:What I'm now kind of referring to is the alchemy of the apology.
Guest:It begins to alchemize and change the chemistry of your own being because it begins to release things that have just been stuck there in not knowing, in wondering, in searching, like, why would this person do this to me?
Guest:But I'm really curious for you.
Guest:What did it trigger for you as a man?
Guest:What did it bring up for you?
Guest:Do you feel like I was right?
Guest:Did I get things about men that felt close to something?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think what was most disturbing for me is that it's these destructive impulses that happen out of a fundamental inability to express love or to express vulnerability or to not...
Marc:dump your problems on other people, your own resentment towards yourself.
Marc:I think that the structure of that, of the inability to be open, which seems to be a theme.
Marc:I talked to Brene Brown recently.
Marc:No, it did resonate in terms of masculine justifications for horrible behavior, whatever that is.
Marc:The fact is this is extraordinarily horrible.
Marc:This is about as bad as you can be.
Marc:Yet he, you know, in your characterization of him, lives with it.
Guest:Oh, and was admired.
Guest:And was admired.
Guest:I mean, no one knew what was happening inside the family.
Guest:He was, you know, he was a head of a corporation.
Guest:He was handsome.
Marc:But also the absence of guilt.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Well, look at Harvey Weinstein.
Guest:Does he have any guilt?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:There is no evidence of guilt anywhere.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:Bill Cosby, no evidence of guilt.
Marc:No evidence.
Guest:No evidence.
Marc:Well, that's also the sort of like the horrible reality of narcissism.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Is that, you know, you're incapable of empathy or self-awareness in that way.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Or feelings.
Guest:Sometimes I feel like we use narcissism as an excuse not to deal with the tyranny of patriarchy.
Marc:But real, I'm talking about personal, real pathological narcissism.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I get that.
Guest:I agree with that.
Guest:But I also don't know where...
Guest:patriarchy ends and narcissism begins.
Marc:In an individual.
Guest:Yes, because when you have all the power and all the privilege, isn't that almost inherently narcissism?
Guest:There's a kind of inbuilt narcissism to patriarchal power.
Marc:And entitlement.
Marc:Entitlement.
Marc:Yeah, I get that.
Marc:But in the personal story, by investigating him deeper, you approach it empathetically.
Marc:you know without letting him off the hook but you had to engage some sort of empathy to sort of figure out you know how he could have done this and you had to explore those emotions and then you had to you sort of you know try to explain to yourself and and to himself
Guest:you know what he came from so i mean i i think i felt like a sleuth i really did so much part of this was like a like a a psychic sleuth like just going in and being like okay what led you to this led you to this and i actually think you know as as much as this book is conjured i think sometimes the imagination is the most accurate thing because it just goes zeros in on things
Guest:I think I kind of nailed my father.
Guest:You know?
Marc:Well, you have to find the emotional logic of it or the void there.
Marc:But, I mean, I don't think we've really talked about it.
Marc:I mean, this book is a book written from the point of view of your dead father who is writing from the grave, from limbo, from purgatory, from a sort of bodiless place.
Marc:And, I mean, you set up at the beginning of the book, you know, I'm done waiting.
Marc:My father is long dead.
Marc:He will never say the words to me.
Marc:He will not make the apology, so it must be imagined.
Marc:For it is in our imagination that we can dream across boundaries, deepen the narrative, and design alternative ideas.
Marc:This letter is an invocation, a calling up.
Marc:I have tried to allow my father to speak to me as he would speak, although I have written the words I needed my father to say to me.
Marc:I had to make space for him to come through me.
Marc:There was so much about him, his history, that he never shared with me, so I have had to conjure much of that as well.
Marc:This letter is my attempt to endow my father with the will and the words to cross the border and speak the language of apology so I can finally be free.
Marc:And then you start a letter that goes for a long time.
Marc:And he does, I don't know if you can spoil a book like this, but he does make the shift from purgatory downward.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And there's a relief.
Marc:He feels relief that there's a consistency to hell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he actually kind of loves hell for a while because he's there with all the bad men of the world and he doesn't feel lonely anymore.
Guest:But I do think, I honestly think that, I think my father gets free at the end of this book.
Guest:I do.
Guest:And, you know, God knows, I did learn a lot about our relationship to the dead in writing this book.
Guest:And in...
Marc:speaking to the dead well let's talk about a couple things in order in a way so I and I think the other thing that we deal with like that I think you dealt with that I think if I'm gonna go with my gut reaction my emotional reaction was that by the time you're in college
Marc:And this final injustice happens, which is mundane compared to the history of violence.
Marc:The fact that for whatever reason, it didn't seem like necessity, you maintain a relationship with these people because he's your father.
Marc:And that has got to be the most painful thing in retrospect, was the almost unconscious instinctual need to stay in relationship.
Marc:Right?
Guest:It's such a mind...
Guest:Blank.
Guest:You know, I think I didn't see my father very often after I went to college.
Guest:I saw him maybe once or twice a year and I hardly spoke to him.
Guest:But it took me so long to be able to say really until I got sober.
Guest:To be able to say, I cannot be in a relationship with this person anymore.
Guest:This is killing me.
Guest:Because every time I saw him, I would get drunk again and I would do myself in again.
Guest:And I would do myself harm.
Guest:So when I finally cut him off, I got sober.
Guest:There's that scene in the book where he mixes me a martini when he hears that I'm sober and in the program.
Guest:He's a complete demonic monster.
Guest:And so I know for me that...
Guest:I think part of the abuse of any father or family member is that you love them.
Guest:They're your father.
Guest:It's your family.
Guest:It's the person who brought you into this world.
Guest:So you're trying to figure out how to be with the people who are supposed to be the people who are keeping you safe and protecting you and being the most important people in your life when those are the people who are doing you in.
Guest:It's so complex.
Guest:And I think you have to weave... As a friend of mine once said, you have to choose between...
Guest:Family and dignity, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think there came a point where I had to choose my dignity.
Guest:Like I couldn't no longer.
Marc:But it's a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, up until my early 20s, you know.
Marc:And I talk about this to people who I have these kind of conversations with.
Marc:I read this book by this psychologist named Robert Firestone.
Marc:called The Fantasy Bond, and it was a big piece for me, and I think you just said it, and I almost said it, is that when you're that young and the people you love are doing horrible things to you, there's no way because of the love you automatically feel and the inherent respect because of your parents to blame anyone but yourself.
Guest:Of course, you don't blame them.
Guest:I believed...
Guest:Beginning with my father incesting me at a young age.
Guest:And I was responsible for it.
Guest:I made it happen.
Guest:I was bad.
Marc:You remember those feelings?
Guest:Oh, I remember feeling like the baddest, worst person.
Guest:It's why I started drinking when I was like 13.
Guest:I couldn't tolerate how bad I felt.
Guest:I just walked around feeling guilty.
Guest:My middle name was, I'm sorry.
Guest:I just said, I'm sorry.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:No matter what happened in school, if someone was caught stealing, I was like, I'm sorry.
Guest:Like I must've done it because it was just like, it was just kind of like this spread of badness that had entered me, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it took me years and years to get out of, and I still struggle with it.
Guest:You know, I'm not completely free, you know?
Marc:So it first started when you were three?
Guest:Five.
Marc:Five.
Marc:And is that where you started whatever sort of process of writing or meditating on this stuff to get at the, you know, how did you start putting together the character of your father?
Guest:Oh, I didn't start at five.
Guest:I had spent years just being crazy.
Guest:Then there was the years of driving.
Marc:No, I mean when you were writing.
Guest:Oh, when I was writing this.
Guest:I mean, I wrote it, you know, it was really strange.
Guest:This book was like a trance.
Marc:That's what it feels like.
Guest:It came over me.
Guest:A possession.
Guest:I felt possessed.
Guest:And it's hard to say because people think you're really crazy, but it was like a possession.
Guest:And I was in Congo and
Guest:And Congo's a very amazing place for me because we have this incredible sanctuary there called City of Joy, which is a revolutionary center.
Marc:What happens there?
Guest:We heal amazing women who have been horribly violated and raped during the war.
Guest:And it's one of the most holy places I've ever been.
Guest:It's a place of radical transformation and revolutionary power.
Guest:And
Guest:You know, I was visiting.
Guest:I was there because it's run by all Congolese and it's determined by them.
Guest:But I support it and we support it and we co-founded it together.
Guest:And whenever I'm in Congo, it's such an incredibly intense place because there's so much beauty and there's so much love and there's so much war and there's so much poverty.
Guest:And so it's this intense ambiguity, you know.
Guest:And the first night I was there, I suddenly just thought, men have to apologize.
Guest:men have to apologize if men don't take responsibility for what they've done we're going to be doing this work 50 100 years from now something's got to change now we're caught we're caught we've called men out we've broken the silence but now men have to do their part of this or we're not going to move forward and i came back i went upstate and i basically locked myself away for four months i didn't see anyone i just wrote i just wrote and
Marc:But did you know you were writing this book?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It came to me when I was in Congo.
Marc:That my father has to apologize.
Guest:My father has to apologize.
Marc:My father is my representation, my perpetrator, my direct encounter on the deep emotional level with the monster of patriarchy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And also the monster of... And I need to know what I need to hear.
Guest:I need to know what the words... I need to know what the structure of an apology looks like.
Marc:How'd you figure that out?
Guest:I just started to think, what do I need to be free?
Marc:So it wasn't a format.
Guest:No.
Guest:It's like, I need my father to be humble.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I need my father to be vulnerable.
Guest:I need him to be equal and not above me.
Guest:I need my father to, you know, one of the things I realized in writing this is that we have diabolical amnesia in this country about everything.
Guest:from where it began with the Native Americans to what happened to African Americans and on and on.
Marc:It gets worse.
Marc:From now, it's because of technology as day-to-day amnesia.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It's sort of the nature of America.
Guest:America amnesia.
Guest:It's the same story.
Guest:So I realized...
Guest:It's very much connected to apologies because when you apologize, it's the antidote to amnesia.
Guest:You have to remember, reattach, reconnect with what you've done in the past and bring that into a visible and viable present so it can be transformed.
Guest:And another thing about apology is accountability.
Guest:It's accountability.
Guest:It's you feeling what I felt like when you were doing what you did to me so that you open your heart to empathy, compassion, and you hurt the way I hurt.
Guest:And then it's you going through a process where you say, what led me to become a person who could be like this?
Guest:What happened in my own childhood?
Guest:What happened in my own story?
Guest:And what do I have to go back to?
Guest:and deal with in order to shift the person I am so I never do this again.
Guest:Because I think most women want to know... I mean, look, there are many women who rightly want punishment from their perpetrators, and all perpetrators should be held accountable on some level.
Guest:But I think if you talk to many women, you will find out what they need is an apology.
Guest:They need a reckoning.
Guest:They need someone to look at them and say, this happened.
Guest:I did this.
Guest:I see your pain.
Guest:And I think...
Guest:if we could begin to create a method for that or process for that, where men felt they could come forward and begin to start doing the work of apology, I think things would begin to change.
Marc:I kind of felt that when I was reading this, that this seemed to be some sort of very earnest line being thrown to, here's the rope, the bridge.
Guest:A bridge.
Guest:It's a bridge.
Marc:I felt that.
Guest:And I had to also look at myself, all the anger I've had at men all my life, all the rage I've had at men, the distrust of men, the way I've, in my own way, hurt men by never trusting them, right?
Guest:Because of my own father.
Guest:I had to make a decision whether...
Guest:I wanted to go into that to change that so there is a bridge.
Guest:Or do we just want to keep punching at each other and hurting at each other?
Guest:Or do we want to actually stop violence?
Guest:Do we want to build a world where women are free and equal and safe and men feel really good about that and they feel like we're all in the same story rather at war, which we're at right now?
Marc:I don't fully understand it.
Marc:You know, I mean, I know that I am sort of a, you know, a victim of cultural norms.
Marc:You know, I know I've behaved badly in my life, you know, but I do know as time goes on that it's not coming from my heart.
Marc:you know because the anger and the and you know the hostility uh you know comes from a sort of sadness or some sort of shame right you would think you know that may not even be of my making right it's sort of what you're saying that to go through life because your soul has been shattered
Marc:by an act of violence and because of that you're ashamed to yourself either because you blame yourself or because you were defenseless and then you know you can't take responsibility for that shame until you can exactly and in the interim God knows what you're gonna do exactly
Guest:And I think men have so much shame.
Guest:I think there is so much shame.
Guest:And I think the tyranny of patriarchy that it puts on men to always know everything, to never be tender, to never be vulnerable, to never cry when you're a boy, to never express your feelings, express doubt, get lost in the mystery.
Guest:I mean, you just look at my father's story.
Guest:He was adored.
Guest:He was idolized.
Guest:But what does that mean?
Marc:That's my father, too.
Marc:Maybe that's why I connected.
Guest:He couldn't be a human being because of it.
Guest:He couldn't be a person who made mistakes.
Guest:He couldn't be a person who cried over a dead bird.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so what does that do to your heart?
Guest:I wrote years ago that it holds it in a hand really tightly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Squeezes it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like all the time.
Guest:Yeah, that's exactly it.
Guest:And I, you know, I once wrote a long time ago that I think that bullets are really just hardened tears, you know, that that where does all the sorrow go in men?
Guest:Where does all the shame go in men?
Guest:Where does all the tenderness go in men?
Guest:It goes into violence.
Guest:It has to go somewhere.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I were if I were brought up the way I was brought up and I wasn't able to cry, I would have become psychotic.
Guest:I would have had no release for that.
Guest:I would have gone crazy and I would have hurt people.
Guest:There's no doubt in my mind.
Guest:What would I have done with all that rage?
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But at least I got to weep all the time, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, it was weird that I noticed when I was reading it, the sort of, I imagine out of respect for their privacy or appropriate to their wishes that you didn't really bring your siblings into it.
Marc:Your mother was kind of given not a pass, but not a lot of inspection.
Marc:Why is that?
Yeah.
Guest:You know, I did a last play and a last book, and my mother sort of got... Oh, she took the hit?
Guest:No, not the hit.
Guest:She got examined.
Guest:And my brother and sister, I feel like they have their own stories, and it's not mine to tell.
Guest:Right, sure.
Marc:I respect their privacy.
Marc:Are you guys all right?
Marc:Do you...
Guest:I just want to leave it.
Guest:I don't even want to do this.
Guest:I just feel like that's stepping in their zone.
Marc:Sure, I respect that.
Marc:But your mother?
Guest:My mother's dead.
Guest:But before she died, I was definitely able to confront my mother.
Guest:about what my father had done and also about her being an accomplice to that in a lot of ways.
Guest:And she finally confessed to me in the last years before she died that I was her sacrifice.
Guest:And she said those words.
Guest:And she said, look, I came from a very poor family.
Guest:I was married to your father.
Guest:He had the money.
Guest:I had three children.
Guest:Where was I going?
Guest:Where was I going?
Guest:And she said, I look back and you were my sacrifice.
Marc:So she knew.
Guest:You know, she's never said forthright, but she said, looking back, you had infections all the time.
Guest:You had nightmares every night.
Guest:You know, you were completely crazy.
Guest:You know, and I do remember your father adoring you.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I remember she actually said to me once that my uncle said to her,
Guest:There's something strange with Arthur's attention to Eve.
Guest:Like she even remembered saying her brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what do we know and what don't we know?
Marc:I know.
Guest:Right.
Marc:What is the veil of denial to say that you were her sacrifice and she was conscious of that and willing to do that in order to maintain her place?
Marc:That that's fucking heartbreaking.
Guest:But how many people are living in that same situation?
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:I would think most of the people in that situation are living in that situation.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I'm promising you in the years to come that childhood sexual abuse will become the biggest issue that gets on cover.
Marc:It's been going on in the Catholic Church for centuries.
Guest:And if it's that much in the Catholic Church, what's really going on in the family, right?
Guest:So I think we will see a surge in
Marc:stories coming forward you know that have people have covered up denied because I think it's it's the last taboo you know and well that's it so let's track that a little so you know in in looking back on the first time your father sexually abused you at age five and then you trying to sort of you know you know track that within him emotionally and desire wise and in the moment that he crosses over that you know
Marc:Everyone knows immoral lying.
Marc:Why do you think he gave himself that freedom?
Guest:You know, this is going to sound like... Let me see if I can describe this.
Guest:I think my father...
Guest:had no business having children, right?
Guest:He had no business.
Guest:He was 50 years old.
Guest:He was a playboy.
Guest:He was whatever.
Guest:But I think that he had killed off tenderness inside of him.
Guest:He'd killed off his innocence, his youth, that part of you that is...
Guest:A child that is open, that is free.
Marc:You think he did it when you say he killed him?
Guest:Well, I think it was killed off by his parents.
Marc:Usually it's not intentional.
Guest:No, no, my father didn't kill it off.
Guest:I mean, you can see the steps in the book of what about my father destroying his own heart.
Guest:It's his heart that we were talking about.
Guest:So I think when I was born, he was overwhelmed by the opening of his heart.
Marc:I couldn't stop it.
Guest:I think it just broke him into a tenderness that he couldn't bear.
Guest:And I will bet a lot of fathers have that experience if they've cut off their hearts before.
Guest:So I think rather than going, whoa, this is too much for me.
Guest:Can somebody help me work on my feelings and process what's going on?
Guest:he went to the go-to place, which was sex, right?
Guest:It was sexual.
Guest:It was like if you push past that tenderness and you keep going to the next dimension, it's most probably sexual, right?
Marc:Well, that's the thing.
Marc:If you sexualize, and I've realized this from my own experience, that it is actually a way to avoid intimacy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I don't think people really realize that.
Guest:That's exactly it.
Guest:So rather than having your heart ripped open...
Marc:And sit with the vulnerability.
Guest:And sit with the vulnerability and weep about how much you love your daughter.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You have to have it.
Guest:Seize it.
Guest:Eat it.
Guest:Invade it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Take it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Because that's so much easier.
Marc:And satisfying.
Guest:And has closure.
Guest:And has closure.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's exactly it.
Guest:That's exactly it.
Guest:You know, sometimes I look at my granddaughter who is, both my granddaughters, who are the, just, I love them so much it feels unbearable.
Guest:You know, it just feels unbearable sometimes.
Guest:And I have to like really walk away sometimes and just let myself weep because I love them so much.
Guest:It's just like too much.
Guest:You know, so I can imagine what my father felt.
Guest:Loving me, because I know how much he loved me.
Guest:I remember how much he loved me.
Guest:And that he had to destroy it.
Guest:Because he had not, no one had allowed in him as a man to build a container for that love.
Guest:They had crushed his container.
Marc:To compartmentalize it, to contextualize it.
Guest:They had never let him breathe into his tenderness, breathe into his heart.
Guest:So when it came, he felt like he was dying in some way.
Guest:He felt like he couldn't tolerate it.
Guest:He was going to blow up.
Guest:And this is what we do to boys.
Guest:We kill off their tenderness.
Guest:We kill off their container.
Guest:So when they grow up and start to have these feelings, they either hurt it or attack it or have sex with it or, you know.
Marc:Or turn in on themselves.
Guest:Or turn in on themselves.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:The narcissistic compulsion.
Marc:The thing that came to mind when you were talking about, you know, the inability to contain it and then the consumption and the violence is that...
Marc:You know, there's a thing that's supposed to happen between parents and children where you kind of with mothers and children and I imagine fathers in a more conscious way where you do have to let them be the person they're going to be.
Marc:And I think the compulsion of somebody who is a malignant narcissist, you know, they want to make you an appendage.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what easier way than to kind of turn a child out to where all they can do is react to your needs?
Guest:And your projection of who you think they should be, right?
Guest:Like my father was...
Guest:outcome of his mother and father's desire to rise to be somebody else to have this golden son this golden boy and I don't even think my father ever felt like that boy deep inside himself but he was performative he was doing this role he was going along with it he was trying to and and then something comes along which kind of says oh this performance is totally a lie here's your real self you're like whoa the baby yeah the baby and you were the first baby
Guest:No, I was the second, but I don't think he, my brother evoked those kind of feelings in him.
Marc:And so the way you're able to chart, you know, this sort of the strange explanation that, you know, for how some, you know, the way you're able to chart the kind of like his knowledge of being in this other zone, this, you know, utterly transgressive zone where, you know, it's completely secret and completely intoxicating.
Marc:And that somehow or another, he did not have intercourse with you.
Marc:When you look back on this, do you see that as like, thank God?
Marc:Or it wouldn't have made a difference?
Guest:I don't know that it would have made a difference because I felt so violated and invaded.
Guest:I think any time...
Guest:Your sexual boundaries are overtaken by force by somebody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It feels like rape.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And he was penetrating it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it is rape.
Guest:And I think probably I think back about why that never happened.
Guest:I think it has to do with he could lie to himself better.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:These are the kind of things I was wondering about, how you thought this through.
Guest:Yeah, like that you don't have to tell yourself you're really doing anything bad if that doesn't happen.
Marc:I'm not using needles.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:That's exactly it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't even know that he could.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:This might have been weird acts of impotence in themselves.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then you chart, like, because I think the reason this book had such a profound effect as a man reading it is that, you know, once you move past the sexual abuse and what turned it into just flat-out emotional abuse and violence...
Marc:that that turn is is is you know to sort of figure out the emotional mathematics of that must have been horrible because like you know as a child you're like you know that at some point that this is wrong and it's no good and what you had to do to yourself to turn him off and then you know reap the wrath of
Guest:But also remember, as horrible as it was, as terrible as it was, I knew I was the most special person in the world to him.
Marc:And also you had this horrendous secret.
Guest:Horrendous secret, but I was it.
Guest:I was it.
Guest:Even though it was being destroyed, I was it.
Guest:In one day, I became zero from it.
Guest:I became zero.
Guest:And I never got back an inch of it.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Like I was erased.
Marc:What happened?
Guest:The day my father turned on me and the first day that he threw me across a room and smashed my face and I went flying.
Guest:It was over.
Guest:It was over.
Marc:And you blamed yourself.
Marc:Or did you do it on purpose?
Guest:Of course I blamed myself.
Marc:But I mean, did you do it on purpose?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:I hadn't done anything in that moment.
Guest:I think what happened was my father... I mean, to fight.
Guest:That's what... My father was getting a sense that people were catching on to what he was doing.
Guest:There was no doubt about it.
Guest:It was... I know I was not a well person.
Guest:And I think...
Guest:how was that manifesting itself you know i cut off all my hair i was you were what nine ten i was like really belligerent i was not eating i was you know i was i was i had greasy hair i was like a tragic character and and um and never smiled because all he wanted me to do was smile anything he wanted me to do i did the opposite you were fighting
Guest:yeah i was yeah i was i was rebelling in my own way so when the moment occurred when he suddenly realized like that night he came in and i turned my back on him right and i didn't speak and he couldn't get me into your bedroom yeah yeah and he realized that like i had become dead to him like this this wasn't going then it was like wrath the wrath
Guest:And from that point on, my father did everything in his power to destroy me.
Guest:Everything.
Guest:Everything.
Marc:Other than killing you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He almost killed me twice.
Guest:You know, I mean, so it was like, if you're going to dare reject me, if you're going to pull away from me,
Guest:then you have no right being and also there was the fear of course that i would eventually tell someone exactly so it was the combination of this is what's going to happen yeah i'm not afraid to do this no exactly i mean i always i always my mother before she died um my father before he died he said to my mother um like i think a day or two before he died
Guest:I want you to take Eva out of any will.
Guest:I don't want her given anything.
Guest:And I want you to always remember that anything she says after I'm gone is a lie because she's a liar.
Guest:And my mother said to me when I confronted her about what my father had done, if he hadn't said that, she wouldn't have believed him.
Guest:Like that was what tipped her off that it was true.
Marc:This is on his deathbed?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Like he couldn't even, like it's such a sort of, like the easy way to say it is godless act.
Guest:Protecting himself.
Marc:At that point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Protecting himself.
Marc:I don't even know.
Guest:But see, the thing about all our stories and webs is once we go down a certain road, unless you do very much work on yourself and have very much consciousness, how do you get out of the web you have laid?
Guest:My father laid his path.
Guest:He followed it to the end.
Guest:He never got off it.
Guest:What was going to get my father off his path?
Guest:He had money.
Guest:He was white.
Guest:He was a man.
Guest:He was privileged.
Guest:If he got caught.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, who was going to catch him?
Guest:Who was going to catch him?
Marc:Well, like you say, people knew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But even when men get caught...
Guest:Does that really take them off their path?
Guest:That's what I'm trying to say.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Guest:Does it really take men off their path?
Guest:If we look at all these men, have they stopped and evaluated and really gone into themselves to say?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Imagine if you obliterate a man's potential.
Marc:Like if they're jailed.
Marc:But why?
Guest:Do we have a process in jail whereby men are learning about themselves and grappling with themselves?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Jails are just punishment.
Guest:They're ludicrous institutions that just further violence, further penalize, further destroy people rather than places where people can come to consciousness about what they've done.
Marc:Well, I guess in my dumb head, because I'm fundamentally a little codependent,
Marc:I would imagine, my sense is that if you take everything away from somebody, that they will be confronted with themselves.
Marc:But it doesn't mean that they will.
Guest:No, it doesn't.
Marc:And it doesn't mean they won't fight it.
Guest:Unless we begin to institute processes.
Marc:I've seen it not happen.
Guest:You know, over and over.
Guest:Look, I worked in a woman's prison for eight years.
Guest:It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
Guest:And we did a writing group where every week the women would write about their crimes and go into the heart of them to look at why they had done what they had done, what motivated them.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:All of those women changed.
Guest:And just about all of them are now out of prison and are leading amazing lives.
Guest:Because they did that work.
Guest:Because they changed.
Guest:Our prisons should turn into...
Guest:centers for enlightenment centers for deepening centers for consciousness we're all traumatized the whole entire world is traumatized right so it's about not you know not perpetrating your on yourself because of what you learn from the perpetrator exactly because it just goes on i know it just goes on how many children who
Guest:who were horribly abused.
Guest:How many women did I meet in prison who were abused and abused who became abusers?
Guest:I mean, it just goes on.
Guest:So what are we going to do in this world to take it in another direction?
Guest:And I think that's why I believe in apologies.
Guest:They are actually a process.
Guest:You know, they're a journey that brings you to another consciousness.
Marc:Well, were you able to write?
Marc:And I agree with that.
Marc:Now, when I there was some vague conversation I had with Brene Brown about, you know, why she.
Marc:Because she's a statistician.
Marc:She's a researcher.
Marc:And she didn't have conclusive research on apologies because there was an issue with the Christian approach and the Jewish approach.
Marc:And the Jews that she spoke to, spiritual leaders, said that there's no apology without death, without grief.
Guest:Without grief.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:Did you find that writing this was a grieving process or that you grieved before?
Guest:I think when I was in my father writing this, he was going through enormous grief in this book.
Guest:Enormous grief.
Guest:Enormous grief.
Guest:Every time he would get more open and more honest, there was grief.
Guest:And when that revelation comes at the end where he says, I've been spinning in the place that's inside you.
Guest:Like, I am now lost in the space that I created inside you.
Guest:That is such a grief moment.
Guest:It's like, look what I've done to the person I love the most.
Guest:I destroyed her.
Guest:And in doing so, I destroyed myself.
Guest:I mean, you know, somebody said to me the other day, well, what would motivate men to do this?
Guest:And I just want to say, I know this, that nobody does a...
Guest:mean horrible act to another person that doesn't stay in their own soul there will be a time whether it's in this world or the next world that you come to pay for that whether whatever state you're in and the the the the the the
Guest:the gift of the biology is that you get free.
Guest:Do any of us want anything more than to be free of, of the harms we've caused or that guilt we carry or the shame we carry or the, you know, that's what we're doing here is to clean up that stuff.
Guest:So I feel like we need to say to men, um,
Guest:step forward.
Guest:Let's create processes.
Guest:Let's find clergy and rabbis and imams and people and therapists who can help you go through a process to clean up the messes you've made and the hurt you caused and the damage you've done so that you get to be a person who's living a life that isn't constantly in that web that my father created and down that road that just
Guest:creates more and more and more pain for people.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like in the book where you make it clear a couple of times, which I think was important, that him realizing that it has to be thorough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:That in order to take responsibility and experience real contrition, you have to lay it out.
Guest:Do the work.
Guest:You have to do the work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the details are the liberation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You have to be specific.
Guest:I did this to you, and this hurt you this way.
Guest:I did this to you, and I wanted to hurt you like this.
Guest:I did this to you.
Guest:This was my intention.
Guest:It has to be clean.
Guest:It has to be all the way.
Guest:Because, you know, somebody was asking me yesterday, when do you know if it's a real apology?
Guest:And I said, you know when it's a real apology.
Guest:Because there's an alchemy that happens.
Guest:You just suddenly feel...
Guest:everything gets released, which for me, I don't know what I feel about forgiveness.
Guest:I have a lot of mixed thoughts about forgiveness.
Guest:I don't even know what that is, but I know that the alchemic...
Marc:reaction of receiving apology feels like release feels like a letting go right if yeah because they're like you know you're supposed to like you know in in sobriety you know when you clean up your in recovery when you clean up your side of the street you make that amends you you know you the outcome of it is is not about you
Guest:Not about you at all.
Guest:Not about you at all.
Guest:It might be awful.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:Your work is to clean it up.
Guest:What everybody else does with it is really none of your concern.
Guest:It's your work to clean it up.
Guest:and and and be truthful and to do the digging hard work that's why you need to work with a clergy or a therapist or somebody who will help you go in and be more honest and then peel the next layer and be more honest right until you get to the bottom of that and it may take you five years to make an apology but do the work because that work is going to free your life in ways you can't even imagine there's a couple i haven't even done yet i'm almost 20 years yeah yeah do it because i'll tell you everything you carry
Guest:Waits you down.
Marc:Holds your heart.
Guest:Holds your heart.
Guest:And it keeps you from being open and alive and present and happy and sexy and here, you know?
Marc:What's your struggle with forgiveness?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I've always felt forgiveness very religious, you know?
Guest:And it felt mandated.
Guest:You know, man being the opposite.
Guest:I felt like I don't like it when people say to...
Guest:anyone who's been hurt or exploited or raped or, you know, you just need to forgive him.
Guest:It drives me absolutely insane.
Guest:Nobody needs to forgive anyone.
Guest:There's no mandate.
Guest:There's none of that.
Guest:I think what an apology does is create the conditions and the chemical reactions that are really forgiveness, but we don't even have to call it that.
Guest:It's just release.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because I don't think I'm in a position to forgive anybody.
Guest:Do you know what I'm saying?
Marc:Kind of.
Guest:Well, but in a weird way, not.
Marc:Because so much of it is self-generated.
Marc:It's really about forgiving yourself.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And how do you forgive yourself as you do the deep, thorough, complicated work of making a thorough apology?
Guest:Then you get forgiven in yourself.
Guest:You can't rely on other people to forgive you and you can't demand that other people forgive you.
Marc:It's still an outside job if you're waiting for forgiveness.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:If I make an honest apology to you and you refuse to forgive me, that's on you.
Guest:And that's your right.
Guest:You may decide you don't want to forgive me.
Guest:But I'm done.
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:I get to walk free if I've cleaned my side of the street.
Guest:And I've rarely given a thorough apology, maybe a couple times in my life, where people haven't forgiven me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or where people say, we're done.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're done.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:Move on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you know when someone's really done the work of an apology.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now...
Marc:Do you find, was there a point when you were working on this book where you're like, were there any and what are the gifts I've gotten from this man?
Guest:I thought a lot about it.
Guest:My father gave me a lot.
Guest:He gave me a lot.
Guest:My father, in spite of all his madness, had enormous integrity.
Guest:Not with me, not in his seedy half-life world with me, but he was a person that capped his salary.
Guest:He wouldn't take more than... He wanted it to be balanced with other workers.
Guest:He bought me up Unitarian, even though he was Jewish, so I could understand all religions and come to think about what was spirituality.
Guest:He gave me a very good sense about money.
Guest:that you know a balanced sense of money you know um he actually made me a very honest person surprisingly because he was so insane about honesty you know and i think it's kind of ironic that i've written the book where i've told the deepest truths of my life about him when that was his you know the thing that he but it was also the thing that he beat me up for time and time again that i was a liar
Marc:Well, that's like the president.
Marc:You keep repeating that until it becomes a message that everybody hears and then you hear it.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:And it becomes true to the degree of enough true so that they're protected.
Marc:And everything, the truth becomes flexible.
Guest:And also, I think one of the things I learned during this book is how fascism really happens.
Guest:Because my father was a fascist in the family.
Guest:No, you see it.
Guest:You just like repetition.
Guest:Repetition.
Guest:And delegitimizing everyone around you.
Guest:Making everybody, they don't understand.
Guest:They can't see the truth.
Guest:They don't have value.
Guest:They're not value.
Guest:And so eventually, you're the only person.
Marc:Until they're fragile enough to go, this is the truth.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:So I imagine that, you know, and I'm not asking, like I'm not some sort of apologist.
Marc:I'm not asking about the good things to recognize the gifts as some sort of defense of, you know, a bad man.
Marc:But like in my own process of dealing with whatever anger I had to work through with my own parents, I had to figure out, well, there must have been something I got.
Marc:I'm doing okay.
Marc:and they must be responsible for that but it's interesting the things that you listed are so contrary to this you know this compartmentalized very specific secret horror show he was running he was a totally split person right but you know but I get that but what about men who use that as an example but sort of like you know like maybe in the past well I yeah I but like I'm doing everything I can differently you know I'm not apologizing but see all the good things I've done too
Guest:Until you apologize, as far as I'm concerned.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I really feel this.
Guest:Like, this is the act that has to happen in the time that we're living in.
Guest:I can't explain it any better than this.
Marc:How do you see it happening in a practical way?
Marc:You know, what is this space you want to provide?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Here's the situation.
Guest:You're a man.
Guest:You've gone out with women.
Guest:You've been really brutal with women.
Guest:You've...
Guest:hit women around you've done terrible things to them um you make a decision that you don't want to do that anymore like you don't want to bring harm on women anymore and you go and you seek somebody out and you say i want to go through a process with you where i can eventually apologize and reckon with what i've done and stop doing and stop doing it
Guest:I want to stop doing this.
Guest:I want to find out who I am and I want to change who I am.
Guest:So I'm not going to do this anymore.
Guest:I don't want to rape women anymore.
Guest:I don't want to be a guy in a fraternity who drugs all these girls and in the middle of the night, rapes them and leaves them there.
Guest:I don't want to be that guy.
Guest:I want to be a different kind of guy.
Guest:I want to go to a therapist and I want to find out how to change.
Guest:Or clergy or whatever.
Guest:And you seek out help and you say, I'm going to go through a process and do that.
Guest:You know, this is the moment this needs to happen.
Guest:This is the moment because we've gone as far.
Guest:Look, violence against women was never a woman's issue.
Guest:We took it on because nobody else was taking it on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We don't rape ourselves.
Guest:It turns out this has always been a men's issue.
Guest:Now men need to make it their issue.
Guest:They need to say, we care as much about this as we care about sports, as we care about any of the things that occupy us.
Guest:Because our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our grandmothers, our wives, our girlfriends are suffering.
Guest:In a very major way in this world.
Guest:One out of three of us are being beaten and raped.
Guest:Every day.
Guest:Every day.
Guest:We've lived with this forever.
Guest:It's killed our will.
Guest:It's killed our sex drive.
Guest:It's killed off our intelligence.
Guest:It's killed off our agency.
Guest:It's killed off our, you know, it's killed off our ability to be employed.
Guest:It is a sickness in this society.
Guest:And men have to take this moment and say, we care.
Guest:We're going to change.
Guest:We're going to look into our hearts and souls and figure out what went wrong and what patriarchy has done to us.
Guest:Or we're not going to be here anymore.
Guest:We will perish as human beings because the people who run things now are the most misogynist predators who are not only destroying women, but they're destroying the planet.
Guest:They're destroying poor people.
Guest:They're destroying African-Americans.
Guest:They're destroying Mexicans.
Guest:They're destroying Muslims.
Guest:They're destroying anyone who isn't a white man.
Guest:And it's like, this is our hour.
Guest:We're here.
Guest:Either we change now or we perish.
Guest:And I don't think I'm being extreme.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I don't either.
Marc:I don't either.
Marc:I didn't bring any Kleenex.
Marc:I don't think you are either.
Marc:How do you, I know I feel it every day.
Marc:I feel it like it's terrifying and, you know, to transcend for anybody who's aware the feeling of helplessness.
Marc:I mean, that's the real trick because, you know, once that becomes exploited, then you just kind of move on in a kind of numb.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Consumery, apathetic, but dead way.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And I'll tell you something about apologies.
Guest:You know, we don't need to just make.
Guest:I think my dream is that these personal apologies scale up.
Guest:And then we begin to look at the cultural and political and historical apologies that need to be made, whether it's what do we do to look at the harm and devastation we brought to the indigenous people?
Guest:And what do we do to look at what we did to African-Americans for 400 years through slavery, through Jim Crow, through lynchings, through prisons?
Guest:We have a lot of reckoning to do, but it can be done.
Guest:See, it's like we can plant a trillion trees.
Guest:That could happen.
Guest:We can make apologies.
Guest:We can do these.
Guest:It's in our grasp.
Guest:It's in our control.
Guest:And I think that's what brings you life for us.
Marc:And I agree with you.
Marc:But what do you think?
Marc:Is it leadership that's missing?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:Oh, come on.
Guest:I mean, look what we have here.
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:But I mean, just in terms of the people with the courage to sort of risk themselves to really have the... Sadly, you do need a certain amount of charisma to motivate people.
Guest:And you also have to have moral fiber.
Guest:I think part of what we've lost in all of our politics is, I mean, there are some leaders here and there, like I think if you look at Alexandra Ocasio, if you look at these young women that are coming up, they have real moral fiber.
Guest:But I think part of what we're so afraid of is to have morality, to have ethics, to have a way that we believe people should be treated.
Marc:As opposed to fuck them, it's about me.
Guest:It's selfish.
Guest:I mean, ever since Reagan, I think Reagan bought in the beginning of selfishness.
Guest:neoliberal, me, me, me, yuppie land.
Guest:It's me for myself.
Guest:Step over anybody else.
Guest:You know, deregulations.
Guest:Forget about helping people.
Guest:I feel like one of the joys of being part of a world movement, you know, for all these years and being connected to women and activists and warrior women all over the world is like I am in a collective of women.
Guest:who are struggling for liberation, equality and justice.
Guest:And I am connected to women all around this planet and their struggles.
Guest:So I don't feel alone.
Guest:I feel my struggle is embedded in so many other and their struggle is embedded in my struggle.
Guest:That's what solidarity is about.
Guest:And I think we don't have any leadership that's telling us about solidarity.
Guest:We don't we don't we don't just begin with the earth.
Guest:We don't understand that we are one with the earth like that is gone.
Guest:That idea like we see it as a separate thing that we are here to take make dominion of use exploit growth growth take take take.
Guest:No that is us.
Guest:That is us.
Guest:That is our body.
Guest:That is our food.
Guest:That is our mother.
Guest:That is our that is us.
Guest:There's no separation.
Guest:So you begin there with that separation.
Guest:And then you get into all the other separations as if the story of black people in this country isn't connected to the story of white people, how you are as a white person and how you behave and what you willingly do not recognize or let yourself know.
Guest:Well, that is complicity, right?
Guest:That is complicity because you don't see that you're part of that story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, how did you, like, you know, in your own personal story, like, when did you start reckoning with putting a moral sort of, how did you become moral?
Guest:I think everything about my life was not to be my father, was just not to be what he was.
Guest:So if my father was selfish, I was generous.
Guest:If my father was unkind, I would be kind.
Guest:If my father exploited people, I would just give everything I had.
Guest:Like anything he was, I would do the exact opposite.
Guest:And it proved to be a good idea.
Guest:It worked out.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:There's a good thing about it.
Guest:So he was a role model of sorts, wasn't he?
Marc:So you've let this go.
Marc:This book is a letting go.
Marc:So much.
Marc:And now I guess we'll put this up, you know, it comes out now.
Guest:May 14th, yeah.
Marc:And what's going on as you travel the world?
Marc:What are the other things you're doing, going to the Congo?
Guest:Well, V-Day, our global movement, Kozan, there are hundreds and hundreds of productions every year of the Vagina Monologue and other plays all around the world.
Guest:Last year, I think there were 800.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, every year during February, there's 800 productions, and they raise money for local groups that work to stop violence against women in their communities.
Guest:So like in Houston, they raise money for the local battered shelter.
Guest:And then One Billion Rising is a global campaign, which involves dance and art that's now in 200 countries.
Guest:And every year, millions of people rise all over the world.
Guest:And that's in our seventh year, which was going to be a one year campaign.
Guest:And it's now in the seventh year.
Marc:Do you think you can explain exactly, you know, in a sentence or two, why art is important?
Guest:Oh, yes, I can.
Guest:Well, I think one of the problems we have, particularly in this very divided America, for example, is that everybody's into duality, right?
Guest:Left, right, guns, no guns, this, this, good, evil.
Guest:Art has this amazing capacity to go under and over.
Guest:that duality it goes into ambiguity it goes into mystery it goes into complexity and it opens your heart and so you may have a position on something but you suddenly may care for a character who has the exact opposite position so it begins to bust up all your hard preconceptions preconceptions yeah
Guest:And I think what also art does, I'll give you a quick example, like all over the world on February 14th and through now, it's all year long, women and men are dancing as a way of protest.
Guest:Well, in many countries right now, people can't protest because they're being locked up.
Marc:Because of fascism and oppression.
Guest:But they can dance.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so dance has now become in many places the biggest form of protest because there's nothing you can do about dance, right?
Guest:So again, art is mysterious.
Guest:It becomes this thing that, I mean, one of the reasons I love dancing so much is that it's public, it's free.
Guest:You do it together.
Guest:It's in your body.
Guest:You express your sexuality.
Guest:You express your life force.
Guest:You express your joy.
Guest:And you express your fury.
Guest:You express all of it.
Guest:And I have seen how dancing, like, over the seven years in all these different countries, whether it's the Philippines or India or all over Africa, it is literally lifting people's spirits so they get out of that numbness you were talking about.
Guest:So they break out of their helplessness and begin to say, yeah.
Guest:I've got the energy.
Guest:I've got the fight.
Guest:I've got revolutionary spirit in me I can work to transform consciousness I can work to transform and violence and turn it into you know a different kind of energy on this planet and I can do it in my body and I can do it in my community and I can do it collectively yeah and and how is your health my health is very good very very good you beat cancer
Guest:You know, a day at a time.
Guest:It looks like it's been nine years.
Guest:So, you know, you know, we don't.
Guest:It's funny when people say you beat cancer.
Guest:I feel like we're good.
Guest:Someone's going to get it.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Someone's going to get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, no one's getting out of here alive.
Guest:So I feel this.
Guest:I feel cancer was really, really hard and really scary and was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Guest:It just burst open the next layers of consciousness for me.
Guest:And it took me where I needed to go.
Guest:But I'm one of these people who believe that if you go into the wound, if you go all the way into the wound, there's a door there.
Guest:And then you go through the other side.
Guest:If you come up to the door and you sit there, you get sick, right?
Guest:You get creepy.
Guest:You get bitter.
Guest:But if you open the door and you go into the wound, inside that wound, there's a door.
Guest:And it's like, whew, you're out the other side.
Guest:But you got to go through a moment of like,
Guest:whoa this is painful this is weird this is horrible and then you get outside for all things all things apology being number one writing this book about my father I had moments where I was curled up in a fetal position feeling his feelings feeling him feeling my feelings feeling you know but you know what there was a door there it was a door there it was like wow you know what we resist persists what we avoid controls us it just does what's your spiritual practice
Guest:Oh, I have many.
Guest:But right now, I do a lot of meditation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm really connected to the mother, to the earth.
Marc:The communities.
Guest:The communities.
Guest:You know, when I'm at City of Joy, I'm in spiritual practice.
Guest:When I'm dancing there, when I'm dancing in Hong Kong with domestic workers, I'm doing spiritual practice.
Guest:When I'm sitting out by my pond looking at the fish, you know, I feel...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I feel so lucky and happy that I did this book and I got free.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I can just feel, you know, from the passion and the anger and the sadness and, you know, your way of expressing it, which, you know, I feel that usually your anger is informed by humility and empathy.
Marc:Sometimes I just get angry.
Marc:But I imagine to sort of balance that and not be consumed with that, you've got to lean on that other stuff.
Guest:Oh, you do.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:But I want to just say one last thing about this book.
Guest:I think for me, my whole life I was in the vice of victim to my father's perpetrator.
Guest:That's who I was.
Guest:Finishing this book, that vice is gone.
Guest:And I don't really know who I am anymore.
Guest:Like in terms of like the frame of my life, like that was the frame.
Marc:Oh, in terms of not coming from that place.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And it's like that paradigm ended.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like it's over.
Guest:So I walk around every day going like, who am I?
Guest:And what am I going to do now?
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Because everything was coming from that place.
Marc:Sounds like you're busy.
Guest:Yeah, but it's exciting.
Guest:It's exciting.
Guest:It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
Marc:But the not knowing is elated.
Marc:I love it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:It's like, who am I going to be now?
Marc:Yeah, as opposed to like, who am I?
Marc:It's like, oh, I'm free.
Guest:I'm free.
Marc:Well, it's really a powerful book and you're a powerful person.
Marc:It was great talking.
Guest:Oh, you too.
Guest:And thanks for really wanting to talk about it.
Guest:It means a lot to me.
Marc:Yeah, me too.
Marc:Hi, I'm back.
Marc:I just wanted to say that it was a powerful and moving and sort of life-changing conversation that you just heard, and I was honored to have it with her.
Marc:The book, The Apology, Eve Ensler's book, is available now wherever you get books.
Marc:And I don't have any music for you because I'm in St.
Marc:Louis.
Marc:But it is a jazz town.
Guest:i've done better maybe it's not appropriate i don't know i hope you're all right boomer lives
you