The actress (Hung, True Blood, Date Night, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Reno 911) and solo theatre artist (Bust) opens up about being an adopted child growing up in a family uncomfortable with emotion, her food and weight issues and the manipulative, alcoholic 23 year-old who wouldn’t leave her alone when she was 16. She also talks about a lie that snowballed out of control and why she had trouble stopping it.
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Episode Transcript:
Paul: Welcome to episode 79 with my guest Lauren Weedman. I’m Paul Gilmartin. This is The Mental Illness Happy Hour, an hour of honesty about all of the battles in our heads. From medically diagnosed conditions to everyday compulsive, negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. I am not a doctor, but I am a hypochondriac. And I think that has to count for something.
Uh, the website for this show is mentalpod.com. Uh, please go there. Oh, also that’s the Twitter name you can follow me at, mentalpod, and I would like to start collecting testimonials of uh—video testimonials, short, of, uh, of people talking about their experience with being afraid to ask for help, then asking for help and how, um, it’s going now that they’ve asked for help. Preferably in, you know, like less than 30 seconds. So if you would um, care to email me any of those videos, uh, email them to mentalpod@gmail.com. I’d love to put a montage together of, um, people testifying to the, the power of reaching out and asking for help, which is really ultimately what I try to be about in a hopefully entertaining way.
I want to kick things off with a question I got from a listener. Her name’s Katherine and she says, “In your opinion, what’s the difference between compassion for others and excusing bad behavior?” That is such an awesome question. And in my opinion, compassion is how we should feel towards people when they are doing things that are um—well let me phrase it this way: the difference between those two is one of severity; and I think we should show compassion for people when what they are doing is merely annoying. Uh, excusing bad behavior, I think, is an unhealthy thing that would be about not standing up for yourself or for somebody else wh-when they’re doing something that’s emotionally or physically harmful, to you or to somebody that can’t defend themselves. Th-that I think would be the d-difference. So, it’s hard to know sometimes though w-when you’re being, uh, controlling, when you’re being a doormat. Uh, it’s hard, it’s in that grey area. Uh, the other question she has, “In your opinion, what’s the difference between being codependent and wanting to help others?” And I think the answer to that is where your giving is coming from. Is it coming from a place of love and, uh, peace and calm or is it coming from a place of fear, um, or the hope that you’re going to get something in return? And that, to me, would be the difference between codependent or genuinely wanting to, uh to help.
I want to read a excerpt from somebody’s Shame and Secrets survey, uh, because I found this one interesting. And by the way, all of these surveys are on the website. And there’s about six different ones. This one, as I said, is from the Shame and Secrets survey, it’s filled out—this one was filled out by a-a woman who calls herself Elena. She’s, uh, bisexual, mostly gay, she writes, in her 20’s, and uh, “Most powerful sexual fantasies?” She writes—well actually before I read that, “Deepest, darkest thoughts?” She writes, “I’m angry at my parents for having me. I’m angry at them for thinking they were giving me the ‘give of life’ and they refused to accept responsibility for it. I am sexually attracted to my younger sister. Just a little bit, but still. I enjoy manipulating people psychologically and will do it even if I’m not truly interested in them, just for the game.”
Uh, “Sexual fantasies most powerful to you?” She writes, “When I was growing up, aged 6 to 23, my primary fantasy was of being taken captive in a compound and being forced to have sex with the boys for the purposes of procreation. When at age 23 I began to have sex with women, my fantasies took a complete turn and I was no longer the recipient of coercion and abuse. Now I fantasize solely about being the aggressor. A typical masturbatory fantasy is this: I am a woman but I have a penis. It is 1880 and I have a young woman against the wall with all her skirts and petticoats bunched up around her hips and am overpowering her. I penetrate her and imagine how it must feel to do this. She struggles, but not convincingly.” That’s so detailed, I just, uh, I found that one fascinating. There are very few sexual fantasies that people have or dark thoughts that people have th-that I don’t find, uh, interesting o-or fascinating.
Um, and then I want to, um, end this little intro with an email I got from a listener named, uh, Lucy. And she writes, “Hi Paul, I’m a new listener, just found you. I’m also starting a therapy again for the many issues I’ve learned to deal with for throughout my 36 years. I’ve been severely depressed on and off for many years, and I’m currently taking Lexapro. Long story short, I lost my virginity to rape at 13, had horrible friendships, an emotional abusive and neglectful mother and boyfriends, non-existent father, baby at 16, another at 19, medical illness, psychotic grandmother, aunts, cousins, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The reason I was moved to email you is because I feel as though this show has come into my life at just the right time. Everyone around me tells me how much I’ve accomplished given my circumstances but my living experience has been painful, dreadful, lonely, terrible frankly. I’ve never felt as if I had anyone who understood the way my mind works. As if everything I experienced from my birth was of my own doing. My experiences must confuse people because I’m a true “success story.” And yet waking up in the morning is exhausting. My parents are exhausting. My romantic relationships are exhausting. I have no friends. I feel as though I’m surrounded by the exact same type of person everywhere. When I try to communicate my needs, I am crazy, emotional, needy, confused, uh, selfish, you know the list. I have spent years trying to find some meaning, some connection, some method to improve myself: yoga, martial arts, meditation, therapy, boyfriends, friends, work, college, books, however this podcast has become the validation for 36 years of a life I could not understand how I was stuck with trying to navigate. I used to say I must have been a complete asshole in a former life. Your first episode with Dr. Zucker was so powerful for me. My experience with my mother is extremely similar, though without the sexual inappropriateness. Listening to your show, I am starting to wonder if that role was played by my grandmother. Anyway, thank you, Paul, thank you so much, I’m going to my second therapy session tonight. Your show has given me the power and self-confidence to take this on knowing that I am already ok. I can hear it in your voice but I want to reaffirm, from me, that you are helping me. I listen to your older shows every day intently, trying to find myself. You have given me my voice. I’m not afraid to sound crazy because I am not fucking crazy. I’ve been abused. I am afraid for myself if I do not continue down this path and do the work. Please keep it up.” Well thank you so much, Lucy. Uh, and if it sounds like I’m tootin’ my own horn, I am.
Uh, that makes me feel good when I get a-a an email like that. I’m sorry she’s experiencing the pain that she is, but, um, I wrote her back and I said, “Lucy, thank you for your touching email. I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that. Take comfort in knowing that you are one of the ones who’s selected in life to take a trip through the buffet sampling many, many dishes. Some don’t taste great, many taste plain old bad, but at the end of our lives, we might look back and say, ‘Man, I sure got to experience a lot. My roller coaster dipped lower, curved faster and climbed higher than most. Many times I wanted off, but when I decided to throw my hands in the air and enjoy the ride, it was the opposite of boring, predictable and easy. I’ve had to find places inside myself most people never even knew existed. I’ve had to stare down fear most people only experience during their sleep. And the bliss I felt when my demons took a day off was more satisfying than most people will ever know.”
[SHOW INTRO]
Paul: I’m here with Lauren Weedman, who, uh, I was very excited—I got your name from Jamie Denbo and I didn’t recognize your name at first and then I went to your website and I watched your reel and I was like, “Oh my God, Horny Patty from Hung!” A-and I sent you an email immediately because I was so excited because there’s a scene in Hung where you get with the male gigolo and you have this monologue where you talk about how lonely your life is and I remember watching that scene and thinking, “That actress is fucking brilliant.” There was a naturalness to it and so much vulnerability so I was very excited to come interview because I was like, “If she can bring one tenth of that vulnerability to this interview…”
Lauren: I won’t.
Paul: We’re golden.
Lauren: That’s—yeah—th-that’s my favorite scene, too, I think of all. I then they made me cra—she started that way and then by the end I was just like, after I came back second season I’d had a baby and I was like fat broad, crazier looking, and they were like, “Perfect.” They made me kind of mean and I lost my vulnerability. But I agree that was a good—I don’t mean like, “I agree I was incredible.” But I mean, that was a good scene. Yeah, I got a lot of Facebook friends out of that.
Paul: Yeah, it was wonderful. What else—people would know you from Five Year Engagement?
Lauren: I guess, I mean, I don’t know. I feel uh …
Paul: Wh-what are the biggest things that people would know you from?
Lauren: I think that, well, I used to be on The Daily Show but I realized yesterday, I brought that up with somebody, and she probab—she my have been 18 or something when I was on it. So I was on like ten years ago. But I wasn’t good—I wasn’t, you know—
Paul: No, no, I saw th-that clip of you talking about all New York has to offer – it was great.
Lauren: Right, well thank—right—there’s—it’s not—but it wasn’t my—it wasn’t the best fit of all the things—but, um, um, thank God for it, not to be ungrateful. That, I guess, The Daily Show and VH1, when I’m, when I’m traveling a lot, there’s alw—the waitresses are like, “I saw you on I Love the 90’s CDs, or I Love the Toys at Christmastime,” or whatever, you know, there’s a million of those shows. I used to do those. And then mostly it’s Horny Patty which I get too, like when I’m with my kid too, people are like, “Horny Patty!” Um, and it’s, uh, yeah. And I get ca—I get work from that show, I think just based on, like, “She’ll show her boobs!” You know, like, like, I feel—I got a job on True Blood, I shot that a year or maybe a year ago, and I swear it’s just because I’m having—she’ll show her saggy fucking titties, she doesn’t care. So I think those are the ones I think most like—but I’m a theater person first, I just do little blurb, you know what I mean? Little hits of TV so I can do more theater.
Paul: Yeah, um, I saw a clip from a show that you did called, uh, Bust, which, uh, was—the clip that I saw w-was really great. Is that something that you’re currently doing or, yes?
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I do that show—well I do solo theater—that’s my main thing. That’s how I got The Daily Show that’s how I do anything. That’s what I do—
Paul: And you write and perform solo shows.
Lauren: Yes, yeah, and they’re autobiographical, um they are—God, I’ve done nine shows, I just did another one. I’m doing a commission from Portland Center Stage for a new one, um, and I’m always working on—that’s my main thing. And I’ve been—I get commissions from Seattle theaters and Portland theaters mostly and Northwest. And, um, uh, yes, Bust I’ve been touring for like five years or something. That continues to go on and on and on. Because people love jail.
Paul: So y-you have a lot of, uh, things to say.
Lauren: I guess so. A lot of traumas to work out, yes.
Paul: What—where would be good place to start? What was, uh, what was it like growing up? Where did you grow up? What was your home life like?
Lauren: Um, I grew up in Indianapolis in sort of suburbia. Upper middle class—I’m adopted. (sobbing) And so, I’m sorry—I’m just kidding. Um, it’s such a—I do that joke, it’s so dumb—but I grew up in a pretty awesome, like an awesome like sort of mansion-y neighborhood. Lot of suicides. Like there was one thing—I was gonna try it but there was no show there so I had to let it go. Um, but I was like—because there was a—there were suicides on three of the—three people on my block committed suic—at some point in their lives. And there was bankruptcy and there was leukemia—there’s all this intensity as it is, I mean, that not …
Paul: Wh-what suburb was it?
Lauren: It was 71st Street and Meridian. So it’s like—
Paul: Oh yeah. It’s—the houses get amazing on Meridian. All of the sudden it’s like, what is this, West Palm Beach?
Lauren: Totally. They’re incredible. They’re all—they’re—actually our house, my childhood house, was bought by the president of Eli Lilly and they tore it down, there’s like a gazebo, like a walkway where the house used to be. So …
Paul: Lilly is like the biggest employer in Indianapolis.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. It’s huge. So I grew up there with my—you know, and I’m the youngest of—I have two other, you know, I have—but I mean, I-I write about it so much, it’s so funny that it’s hard to then sum it up because I do so much writing about it now, I’m like, it’s boring—I was adopted, I’m the outsider, you know, whatever. It’s all the—where I definitely grew up loving that I was adopted, to the point—and I knew it—I don’t remember being told, like, I don’t remember—I remember being told there was not—
Paul: Were you siblings adopted?
Lauren: No, no they were natural. And, and so, in fact my mother, who says—she says this all the—when I’ve asked her why she chose to adopt when she already had two daughters, and she, um, and she told me this again recently. She was like, “Well, we just, we had so many girl clothes, you know. So we just thought it would be, you know, easier.” And I’m like, “ You had so many girl clothes so you decided to adopt another?”
Paul: Decided to fill them?
Lauren: Yeah, I guess so. So Goodwill didn’t do pickups then or something? Or just like, I had so many clothes to give away, you know what, let’s just adopt. Let’s get a couple foster kids to put that shirt on. Um, hate to waste it. So she—they don’t get into a-any emotional—in fact, sometimes I pretend that they’re just like old farm people with Alzheimer’s. They’re just like these old—I think they come from farm stock. Not a very, you know, emotional—which is a great environment to grow up in to create a, um, solo theater artist. Yeah, so it’s, yeah.
Paul: So, uh, kind of an emotionally, uh, withholding environment?
Lauren: Oh for sure, in fact, another—that they, um—if I came for dinner time—I mean, she might as well have rung a bell and been like, you know, “Dinner time!” You know, like, “Hello Dada and Mama.” You know, like, not that way but yet it had that vibe, of like, formality. If I came downstairs and I wasn’t like in a hilarious mood, or if I wasn’t just positive, you know what I mean, if I wasn’t like, “Oh, hey, dinner! Wow! Funny thing happened on the steps!” um, coming down for dinner, like if I didn’t have like an act ready or something, my mom would be like, “You don’t seem like you’re in a very good mood. If you want to go upstairs and get yourself ready for dinner, and when you feel like you’re in the mood to come down for dinner, you may come join us.”
Paul: I see, s-so the message was kind of given that there are emotions that are appropriate and there are emotions that are not.
Lauren: If you cried, there was like, yeah, I mean, and I—she was a little—yeah, very much so.
Paul: That is so damaging. That is so damaging.
Lauren: It is damaging. It worked out well though. I would never do it to my kid but I’m always like, the struggle to try to free it, when you didn’t have it, is pretty awesome. It’s pretty interesting to have to struggle not to say, like, “Everyone should molest, cause oh, the comeback journey is so …” I don’t mean that, but, I don’t know.
Paul: But th-th-there’s so many people that I have befriended who, and I’m one of those people, that grew up in, kind of an emotionally closed off environment. And the damage to me is that you wind up not recognizing what you’re feeling so that you don’t even know where to begin to try to help yourself. Because you have to identify what you’re feeling before you can deal with it.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah.
Paul: So it becomes this grey blob inside of you that is, like, impossible to put your finger on so you just want to fill it with something. So what would you fill it with?
Lauren: (in a low voice) Food, Paul. Can I get a brownie? Yeah—is that the lowest voice?
Paul: That was pretty low.
Lauren: I know it freaked me out. I got on the elevator the other day and I was like, (low voice), “What floor are you on?” And this guy goes, “Oh, what a low voice for such a young lady!” I was kind of flattered he thought I was young, but …
Paul: That was a total backhanded compliment.
Lauren: It was, yeah, and it was also like, “Did you think I was a trannie?” And then I lost him.
And, uh, I was fat. And I ate a—I was a big—the big major binger and I wish to God I’d had—and this is horrible, I know that people who—I see so many women with anorexia that freak the shit out of me in this part of town, and I’m always just like, all right, friends who blatantly have it but won’t acknowledge it, you what I mean, where they’re just like, “I made you a sandwich!” “You’re not having one?” “Oh, no, I ate so much two seconds ago before you were here.” You know, there’s so much of that that freaks me out, but, sadly, I never had the strength of an anorexic. I was just fat. And so I ate and ate and ate. Um, then my mother—then I was in Weight Watchers, and Nutrisystem and hypnotists, and like all this, you know, cause I was not only fat but adopted, so it was just like, who knew what—had just been dropped—they were like, “Well, her mother may have had some emotion—“ You know, like, they always assumed that whatever was going on with me—if I had laughing fits, I don’t mean like, I wouldn’t just like stand up on the table and start like hysterically laughing and like masturbating. I wasn’t like crazy, but if I had like a giggle fit, I guess, my mother would be—would be like, “Well”—she thought I was like—they thought I had petite mal seizures, which I guess I did but I had no memory of that because I would black out. I don’t have any memory of anything, and petit mals—sort of jumping all over the place—was that they are—you can just sort of space out for a second. And so they—o-or have like, I-I don’t know. Any weird, let me put it this way—
Paul: Petit mal is just nice when you don’t feel like having a grand mal. It’s nice between grand mals.
Lauren: Yeah, totally. I’m just not ready for a grand mal. A little one today, and then maybe tomorrow when I have more energy I’ll get into the grand mal.
Um, but basically, what I’m trying to say, as I was talking so quickly I got dizzy, um, that, uh, they would—any odd behavior was like, “She’s having a seizure!” Like, it was sort of like who done—“I think her birth mother might have had a blood dis—“ like there was always a misunderstanding—you know, a fear, of what they got. A-and as I got fatter, and with the emotional thing for sure, and I had a horrible boyfriend. I-I had—the other thing, that I’ve tried to write about, but it’s so dreary that even when I start to tell friends—look, I gestured to you like you’re a friend, sorry.
Paul: Well, you’re opening up to me.
Lauren: No, that’s weird, that’s not right. Sorry, I’m adopted, and I don’t, no I was kidding.
Um, I-I do need more Facebook friends though. Are we Facebook friends?
Paul: Uh, not yet.
Lauren: Ok, let’s make that happen. Gotta get that number up.
Paul: We will be.
Lauren: Gotta get that number up. Just kidding. I got some message like, “I’m at 5000 friends, I guess I better do a fan page, blah, blah, blah.” Ugh.
Anyway, uh, that person I referred to is somebody you probably had on the show, but …
Anyway, so, uh, being—eating emotion, being fat, what was I just saying? I lost my train of thought.
Paul: Your parents always thinking, “We don’t know what we got here.”
Lauren: Yeah, “we don’t know what we got.” There was something else I was gonna say and I have to let it go.
Paul: The petit mal seizures.
Lauren: Right. Seizure, seizure. Fat person having a seizure. Um, no, I forget, I’ve lost it, so I’ve just gotta let it go. Not feeling it.
Paul: Uh, one thing th-that strikes me in talking to you is that, um, some type—it seems like an emotion will start to come up for you, and you want to—and you’re afraid that it’s not appropriate and you feel the need to cover it with humor because there might be something awkward or painful or somebody’s gonna feel sorry for you.
Lauren: (laughs) Do you feel sorry for me? Um, yeah, I’m sure that’s true and I also have a problem with st-staying on a certain topic.
Paul: Do you have ADHD?
Lauren: I probably—everybody who has ADHD always says that I do. But I’m not—but I’m always like, well give me some of your fucking medication then because I don’t have it. Um, maybe I do but it’s not gotten—I mean it gets in my way generally, sure, but it’s not, I’ve not been diagnosed as that. Um, but I-I was on radio shows, um, I used to do these sort of—a show out of Seattle called Rewind. And it was kind of like a Politically Incorrect kind of show, where you sat around—comedians or writers and stuff—and I was always getting an email after every show like, “Lauren, we’re having a really hard time editing you, like you have got to finish a sentence. Like, you have got to get to the end here.” And I was thinking, “I can’t do the show then.” Cuz I’m not sure—cuz I get in the middle and I’m like, “Uh, yeah, meh, I gotta keep going—I can’t.” Um, and then I just performed the other night on Cabaret, and um, I had the same thing, where I had a little panic when I got onstage, for whatever, you know, reason, and I could not stay with the story or a topic. And I got to the point where I was like, “Oh my God, I’m exhausted. I can’t.” And the audience is laughing and the people are like, “Well wait—how your brain works!” I’m like, “I know! Oh yeah!” So sometimes it’s cha-ching, because it’s just, you know—but to try to you know—because I wrote a book, I’m trying to work on another one, and it’s really hard to stay.
Paul: Sometimes it goes, it goes off the rails.
Lauren: Yeah, and I’m sure what you’re saying is true. It’s that—that I can’t, I can’t feel a thing, I can’t keep going, I don’t have—or as my friend Sandy said, what I—which I love, that’s so true—she was like, “You know—“ she said it to me so long ago, but she was like, “In the world, we’re all born—like there’s—some of us are just born knowing we’re ok. We have this core feeling of just, I’m ok.” Like, and I hope m-my kid gets that. But and then there’s those of us who have this core “I’m not ok.” Yeah, and I am so of the “not ok”’s. And everyone I love is of the “not ok”’s. And people who are ok, I run into them on the playground, could not be more mind-numbingly boring to me, people who are just so ok to keep talking about something, and they don’t even in the middle of think that maybe it’s boring, or they don’t have any fear of the fact that they’re gonna talk about, “Oh, you do snacks on blah,” like I get like, “How do you not hate yourself right now for being so boring?” Or being so, I don’t know, i-it’s, yeah. But that’s true.
Paul: Are you, are you afraid sometimes o-of feeling—well, here’s the thing. A-and I’m not trying to judge you at all, I’m trying—
Lauren: Judge me? That would be awesome! Please! To my face, it would be so fun!
Paul: I’m trying to get t-to like deeper down inside wh-what your primary emotions are and what you feel, a-and, um, it—are you the type of person, and this is just me wildly guessing, that is afraid of being sad in front of somebody else because i-it’s going to, um, be putting too much on them, and you feel the need to try to check with them?
Lauren: Yeah, and when you were saying it, I was like, “How rude!” I was like who—in fact, yes, absolutely. Well done. That sounds patronizing, I was like, “Well done, Paul.”
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: No, I meant it, um, oh for sure, and I um, I would never—it’s funny because I’m with m-my husband—I say “husband”, it sounds so made up, but—anyway, we just got married like a year ago—for health insurance, not love—actually, I like him. Anyway, he is nothing—he was a crier when I first—and I’ve been with, um, no my first husband was not, but he—Jeff is a major emotion shower. Um, to the point where he can literally talk about history, and get like, as he’s talking in front of people, and he’ll say the words like, “I’m feeling emotional right now, it’s funny, when I think of Queen Elizabeth, and how, when she burst her…” And I will be so like, “Oh my God. Like dry up.” Like he is so, he’s so over the top that I used to think, well I don’t show mine to simply balance it out. Because we can’t have two people like (fake sobbing) “I have a story too about being in the car today.” Like, we can’t just devastate people with—but it was before that. I’ve always been like that. And in fact—
Paul: It’s probably, I can imagine, why you chose him, because you felt like there’s a complement here.
Lauren: Oh sure, a sobber, yeah.
Paul: Don’t you want—well don’t you think oftentimes the person that’s really withdrawn picks the person who’s very social.
Lauren: Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. And that’s how it is. I’m more social than he is—no he’s much more—of course, and he has helped me. In fact, m-my weight thing has really gone away since I’ve been with him. And which, (indistinct) when I was listening to Jamie Denbo’s podcast she had a moment that was like, “Oh, I just realized that right now.” And I just had the same moment. Cuz I just realized that because that’s probably why the weight thing went away. Because people are always ask—when I’m talking to friends who are still struggling with weight, as their issue and trying to analyze, and all my ice cream mother and blah, blah, blah—not ice cream mother but ice queen mother, I’m like, God it’s funny but with Jeff all of the sudden, I thought maybe it was because Jeff had no issues around food. I’m like maybe that’s it. But it’s not. It’s that he so much loves emotion and process and that, you know, he loves it. So yeah, that’s helpful.
But the last thing my therapist said to me, before I shot her, not really, before, the last thing she said—I don’t go there anymore—but she, um—and after this I don’t feel like I need to go either—um, but, was like, “I feel like, Lauren, you have some—“ she’s got this like big cross around her neck for some reason—I’m not like “Get your fucking cross off—“ I’m not like so anti-you know, Christian, whatever, but, anyway, she’s very prim and proper and well-dressed and very sweet, anyway, she was like, “You just don’t like to have any needs at all. You don’t want to have any—“ And I was like—and again, I was like, “That sounds like kind of a good selling point.” Like, I can never—like why would I want to have—I don’t get what the—
Paul: Why having needs is a good thing?
Lauren: Yeah, I honestly have like a weird block, where I’m like “Huh?” Like, I don’t even—I—yeah.
Paul: Well, I mean it sounds like the house that you grew up in you were—the message was kind of like don’t be needy, because it’s uncomfortable for the rest of us.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. I would—yes, absolutely.
Paul: You know, stay between the wall on the left and the wall on the right and we’ll all be ok.
Lauren: Totally. Midwest too, so the combination of that.
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: When I going through my divorce, the one—this is just a classic moment that sums it up too—is that—it’s the one that I’m always telling my friends so it’s not like a hard one to tell, I’m not like going to, you know, not going to (indistinct), I mean I will, but I’m not right now. That he—that I went to visit my parents and we were at Panera’s, because I love Panera’s. Panera’s is different in Indiana, it’s got, I don’t know, the bread is fresher. Um, and, I decided to show them what I was feeling like because it was the first time coming home after I was divorced. And it’s weird if you’re divorced, the first time you show up without your family. You’re just like I’m back to me, ok. Like, ok, nobody else is here. And I was—the whole time was odd—or sad to me. I then I was like—and I said to them—and I started crying when I said it, which is not normal, as you said, um. And I was like, “It’s so hard to be here. Is it weird to see me here without him? That I’m now back to me, there’s—“ And I started crying. And as I started crying I looked up and both of my parents are looking out the window, and my dad’s like, “They’re putting the umbrellas up Sharon. I guess it’s gonna rain.”
Paul: Are you serious?
Lauren: I’m totally serious. And then—and I remember that that kind of dried me up and all I think of, as with everything when it happens, I’m just like, “I can’t wait to tell everybody.” Cuz, like that’s hilarious.
Paul: That’s one of the nice things about being an artist is when horror rolls your way or something that’s awful or sad or whatever, you’re like, “Oh new bit.”
Lauren: Totally. Cha-ching. As I tell—when I’m teaching, I’m always like, “Does anybody have leukemia? Oh! You’re so lucky! Ok, so now, here’s what you’re gonna do.” I’m always trying to like, “It’s ok. Life is—keep—you know, give it out—you can—it’ll—you know.”
Paul: But isn’t there a point though where it’s, yes, yeah, there’s a certain catharsis in dealing with stuff artistically but does it ever really address it in the way that it needs to be addressed fully.
Lauren: Right, I don’t know. Well I do feel this thing—I-I—why I feel like it’s good—why I do want to address it fully and figure it out, and I usually and up doing it, and I’ve been so resistant to always say that the theater I do is some kind of therapy, but I always take on something that’s gonna change me by the end of the show, I hope. Or by the end of the process of writing it. Do you know what I mean? Like I try to face something where I’m like, ok, I don’t know what’s behind this but we’ll see when I’m—once I’m—hopefully it’ll happen on stage, where I’ll realize why I’m doing the show or I’ll have some kind of breakthrough of what’s, you know, happening with myself or this issue in my life or whatever. Um, yeah.
Paul: I just want to grab the pillow – I’m picking up the noise when you’re hitting the—
Lauren: I’m sorry I keep doing that.
Paul: Hitting th-the table. Well I want you to feel free, so what I’m just gonna do is I’m just gonna grab a-a-a pillow there.
Lauren: You’re gonna put a pillow there?
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: I won’t do it. I don’t want a pillow there.
Paul: Are you sure?
Lauren: Yeah, cuz I feel like it’ll be weird, I’ll be big!
Paul: Ok.
Lauren: I just won’t do it.
Paul: Ok. Cuz it just, i-it …
Lauren: I don’t want any annoying things going on.
Paul: Ok, um …
Lauren: (sighs) I don’t know how to talk.
Paul: I just don’t want you to be self-conscious.
Lauren: I don’t think I’ll be self-conscious.
Paul: And by the way this happens like about 75% of the time when I do stuff at people’s kitchen tables.
Lauren: Right. Right, ok.
Paul: It’s almost always an issue.
Lauren: Ok, it wasn’t like it’s me isn’t it? I’m a freak! Sorry, I can recover from that. I’m not like reeling the rest of the time, ‘And then he told me not to touch the table, I felt like he hated me.’ Um, what was I saying before I was slapping my hand—I did it again. (laughs) I don’t want the pillow though, Paul, please not the pillow. (indistinct)
Paul: Ok. What were we talking about?
Lauren: I know it’s hard to keep the focus. I have that problem at least.
Paul: Oh, about y-your mom and dad and—
Lauren: Writing about things.
Paul: The catharsis of writing and does it ever really get deep enough.
Lauren: Oh, I know what I was going to say, is that I these things to be resolved, not with my parents, I don’t really believe in the sitting down and going, “You know, that hurt man. I told you about my divorce—“. Because literally, even though my parents are fine, as I—it’s—I keep telling my sisters who argue with them all the time, I’m like, you’re arguing with almost eighty-year-old. Like, pretend they’re dying old people with Alzheimer’s. I don’t want them to listen to this.
Paul: If they don’t have the desire to change, you’re kind of wasting your time.
Lauren: Yeah and it seems kinda cruel, cuz like I feel like I see the whole history of where they came from, it does not—there’s—and I have my birth parents, I have to say, too. So I have this wonderful balance of—
Paul: So you went back and sought them out.
Lauren: My adopted mother found them. Isn’t that kind of awkward. She’s like, “I found them, I found them Lauren, go!” Like, it—yeah, she found them for me. So, because—I want to make sure these things are worked out, this whole like, how the emotions are and how I’m feeling things, whatever, for my kid. You know, now it matters. Before—I mean, it mattered to me before because I would think, “Well how come I’m not this?” or “How come my life didn’t work out like this?” And I’d wanna you know, “It’s because of I’m of the ‘not ok’’s.” You know, or like having—every time my manager will complain—she wouldn’t complain to me—but I’ll tell her about something that happened to me in the waiting room before going in for an audition, she’s like, “Lauren, you’ve got to shut people out. You’ve got to put your headphones on. You’ve got to do something.” And she was always so, um, stressed out by how affected I was by everything. And I was like, “but yeah that’s why I um—that’s why you represent me, because I’m so affected by it.” You want—everyone wants the results of it but—
Paul: But you have a life outside your art.
Lauren: Yes, this is true. I do kind of. Um, so I want—yeah, I want these things to be worked out just so I’m not, you know, I don’t want that to be the legacy that I pass on to my child. You know what I mean? Of like, not being able to be (indistinct) or whatever.
Paul: I think a lot of times artists will use their art as an excuse to accept things that are emotionally unacceptable in their, in their lives. While there is c-certainly a bounty of great things about emotional turmoil artistically, um, it can really degrade the quality of your life I think.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t want that. Any time I hit a wall, I mean any time I hit a wall, literally, “Oh God, I’m not making money.” Or I’m not getting—or Jeff and I are so not connecting, or you know, why is it that—I don’t know, I can’t, whatever. Whenever I’m so lonely that it’s unbelievable or whatever. If I’m having—any time that I hit a wall then I always—I’m a massive—mostly Buddhist, but, I mean self-help, I meditate—time to do this, time to do this.
Paul: So there are a lot of outlets outside of performing.
Lauren: Totally.
Paul: Th-that’s great.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, no I don’t just sort of like—and I’m not someone who’s—
Paul: Save it for the show.
Lauren: Yeah, totally. Right, no I’m—I-I definitely—I want peace. I’ve gotta get through the day, like, I’m not just like so in a world where I’m just like, “I’m nuts, I’m anxious all the time.” No, I wanna, you know, function.
Paul: So wh-what are the things th-that kind of um, fuck with you the most, or make you saddest, or …
Lauren: Other people’s reactions. I have a hard time—this is—were you gonna say something else or should I?
Paul: No.
Lauren: Um, uh, cuz if you keep going I’ll fucking slam the table. Um, I-I recently—because I’m alone, um, in the summers cuz my husband goes fishing in Alaska. It’s his work for three months a year. And so it’s me and my son. And the whole kindness to strangers thing, or the whole interaction with strangers, or the person on the phone, or I know this is probably a lot of people’s lives, but unlike some people, since I work at home, and I’m, you know, I write at home or I’m, you know, auditioning, even when I do my theater, I’m alone, alone, alone, alone. Like I’m solo backstage, you know, so my—I get super needy about what I want from people passing me on the sidewalk, or how I’m treated in the grocery store, and to the point where I’m like I can’t wait for what I’m really—if I’m working on a show, like a TV show or something, I’m with—I’m in my little—you have your group, you have your office place, you know what I mean, of people. So I’m not as affected by the outside world, I don’t need everybody to be, to return my smile, like, that was on my list, of like, I can’t believe how much—maybe it’s the neighborhood I’m in too, where it’s like they don’t smile back, and how that will—or something that somebody will say to me, or like this customer service woman, she wasn’t rude to me though, but, um, uh, I was telling you this story about like, customer service with Time Warner, but I had another customer service at Bank of America, just wanna put that name out there, cuz um I lost my wallet and the way the guy was treating me on the phone, um, and he kept saying the sentence, “Sorry if you’re inconvenienced, ma’am.” Cuz like my wallet was stolen, “I’m sorry if you’re inconvenienced, ma’am.” And I go, “Oh my God, did you take it?” Obviously I’m kidding! And he goes, he paused for a second, “Ok, ma’am, let me just get this information from you.” And then I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t make a joke.” And he says nothing. And I go, “Got it. I got the vibe right away.” And I won’t stop talking—I can’t make any (indistinct) but ok, got it, I’m not—no joking. Ok, and then he, um, told me I’d get a new card—that’s so dumb! I’m gonna do that old lady thing where I’m telling details, who gives a shit?
But the point is how depressed that made me. Cuz I’m thinking about him, not relating, and then I’m wondering what’s up with him, it’s like God, the shame is so—like I’m starting to analyze why people can’t be—or I can’t say “hi” to Leo, who’s like two-and-a-half, my kid, and he’s the—he’s really into “hi” and “bye”. And so it makes my day when, um, when somebody says “hi” back to him. And I never in my life remember ever if a little kid said “hi” to me that I would just be like, “Excuse me.” Like, walking around, you know. And people don’t. And I’m always like—and I’m not saying that, you know, every mentally ill person on the street has to like bend down and go, “How old are you? What do you want for Christmas?” Like I’m not looking for crazy interaction. But that’s, I have to say right now, where I’m like, i-it’s kind of how people get road rage, I guess. Right? Does that make any sense?
Paul: Yeah! I mean it sounds to me like you want your humanity to be, to be recognized by, by other people. That “Hi, I’m here, I a living, breathing human being on this, on this planet.”
Lauren: You want them doing it back.
Paul: Right.
Lauren: I have a little self-righteousness where I’m like, I would never—like, I would always—like if my neighbor’s here, I’m always—people in this apartment building, there are people that pass by me and I’ll say, “Hi, we live in the same building,” and they won’t say “hi,” they’ll just keep walking.
Paul: Yes.
Lauren: I had it in New York City too, but I was younger, so I wasn’t as needy. I had other things on my mind, you know, like drinking and getting fired from things. So, I, uh, when that happens, and they’ll pass by, I will be like, “You don’t have to say ‘hi.’ That’s ok.” Then I’ll always make a joke to see if I can bring them back in. It’s only because I’m like, why would you not want to start like, I don’t know, create a community because you live here. Or like why would you not care about…? That kind of stuff.
Paul: Some people are painfully shy. Some people are just so afraid they’re gonna say the wrong thing. I mean, some people are selfish and totally into their own bullshit and are fucking rude. But other people, I think, th-they’re just—have crippling social anxiety.
Lauren: Yes, well, m-my sister, my half sister—
Paul: So I will ask people, “Excuse me, do you have crippling social anxiety?”
Lauren: (laughs)
Paul: If not then Hello!
Lauren: No because I’ve been at—this has been such an issue for me, I was asking my half sister about it, where I was like—I would do some pitch-in or something at the school or the drop—the day care place where Leo goes, and, um, none of the parents would talk to me. And I’m, I could not be, I mean socializing is, I mean that’s like “Ohhhh”, I wanna talk. And people—I would start conversations and people are like, “Yeah, well.” And then walk away. And they were all in couples too, it was like—because my husband wasn’t there—and I’m like, do they think I’m like—am I—do I look like a gross, like single mom who’s just like “Hey sorry, you talked to me for five minutes so I feel like we have a connection. Can I borrow like $500 and I need some place to sleep, man.” Like do they think I’m gonna take something—like I was freak—I felt so, um depressed about how, um, needy I am in the sense of wanting to make connections and how people are so not doing it. And my sister was like, well, she was—this is her analysis of like—“Well maybe,” she goes, “you’re so confident that I think it would make some people a little bit shy. That you come off as so overly like ‘Hey! Whoa!’ that people …” And so I tried to use that as kind of like, “Oh, you’re so pretty that people are scared of you.” So when people tell themselves that—I have a girlfriend who actually says that. She goes, “Remember any time anyone does something to you, just know that they’re jealous cuz you’re pretty.” And I was like, “I’d like to use that (indistinct).” Um, but I think th-th-the confidence thing, I was like, well it is true, because I do come on really like, like “So what’s your name and what’s your blah, blah, blah?” you know. Like a little bit like I’m hosting a frickin’ talk show, you know. Like “Where’d y’all drive in from?” and like, “hopes and fears!” Like, you know, like I’m a little too. I mean, not to mock you.
Paul: I did not take that as a mock.
Lauren: Oh good.
Paul: Uh, so what would—are there, are there any kind of seminal moments from, from your life that you’d like to touch on that were especially kind of painful, transformative, embarrassing, um …
Lauren: Yes.
Paul: Ok
Lauren: I don’t want to talk about them though. Um, no I talk about so many of them. Like I have shows about the worst things I’ve done in my life, I have shows about. Cuz it’s a chronic thing o-o-of always divulging that. Which is interesting to be that in the world, actually. Um but …
Paul: Could you, could you do this – could you give me a list of some of them, and then if there are ones—
Lauren: You choose one?
Paul: Yeah. You would choose one?
Lauren: Yeah, multiple choice. Um, my—I had a-a-a—I’ve never written about this—I had an abusive boyfriend when I was like 16, who was a standup comic in Indianapolis. So perhaps—but not a good one. Um, and that was horrible. He was like 23.
Paul: And you were how old?
Lauren: I was 16. It was the first time I did standup when I was 16 and I never did it again in that kind of realm. I would say because of that perhaps. And then … yeah.
Paul: D-did your parents know that you were dating this guy?
Lauren: Yes. And the only time they got involved—the got involved twice. Once was to sit him down and say if he got me pregnant that they would prosecute him for statutory rape. And then the last, the last thing that happened was my mother—he had locked himself, um, in our bathroom, and was crying and—always threatening to kill himself, a mess, right? And I brought, I mean, just a crazy, crazy person into our lives, into our house. Anyway, he was locked in the bathroom and my mother was the one who got him out and told him to go. I mean, she didn’t know anything was going on during the relationship but she actually did say, you know, “Matt, you’re out,” whatever. You know, and so that was a huge, um, thing. And my sister did try to help me, but.
Paul: Didn’t they wonder why a 23-year-old man is hanging around with their 16-year-old?
Lauren: Nobody liked him. Nobody liked him.
Paul: B-but wh-what parent signs off on a 23-year-old man hanging around their 16-year-old daughter?
Lauren: I don’t know, I think that were probably under the thing of like, “Well—“ I was always defending him because he was doing such horrible things, that I was mortified to think that they would know or see even a tiny bit of what was going on. So I protected him so much. And so my—that’s—it’s interesting to have that happen at such a young age because it gives you this empathy for seeing it in other people know, like you understand that people are just—do not want you to know the shame that you have been, you know?
Paul: We’ll get to that in a second, but I want to know why did you feel the need to stay with this guy when he was treating you so badly? Was it—
Lauren: Well I wanted out from the—I hated him from the moment I met him—like I was—it was af—it was so funny because I’m you’d know one of the people involved in it, perhaps I should say—is that—I did—I was in high school and everybody was like—I was writing monologues then in my high school theater department. And people were like, “Lauren, you’re as funny as Carol Burnett.” Like that was the thing—like reference point of like, which—and, and I had a friend who did standup, who would sneak into standup clubs and do open mic. And he was underage, and he was like, “It doesn’t matter, you just go sign in. They don’t care. You can get up on stage.” I think the place was called something like Giggles or, you know what I mean, this is what they’re called. Um and, so he was gonna sneak me in, cuz I’d written a monologue that killed in high school. Ok, so that’s already—I’m in trouble, to think I’m gonna go into a comedy club, a bar and do like a—like it was a character monologue, it was so bad. And so we go—
Paul: Oh they love character monologues at standup clubs.
Lauren: Oh they do! Nothing more than a character comedy. I literally was talking to people that weren’t there. I was in art class, it was called—where I was like painting a naked guy and I was like, “Keep up the good work!” I mean, you know, it was really horrible and dumb. And, I go and I-I bomb. And then I freak out and I run to my car and I lock myself in my car, in my friend’s car, and I’m crying and crying because I’ve never failed. I remember thinking at the time, “I’ve never failed!” Again, I’m 16.
My friends all leave and then they guy who used to be the voice of The King, his name was like, Dave Something, he was on Q95, Dave Something, anyway, he was famous, he was there on the show with them all the time and he did Elvis, but they referred to him as The King. He had red hair, he was this big dude. He came and was like, “You know what? You’ve got something.” He knocked on my window and was like, “Come inside. You know, a lot of the comedians, we all thought that you’ve got—you do have something. You’ve gotta get up again. Come inside, let’s buy you a drink, you know. Don’t sit out here and do this.” And then because of him, because he was famous, in my world, in my Q95 world, I went inside and then, uh, Matt found me. And he totally just, pfwhoot—glommed onto me. And then I was like, “I’m 16!” Because before that I was like—not gonna say how old I was and as soon as he was interested I was like, “I’m only 16. Here’s my ID.” And he didn’t care.
Paul: Really?
Lauren: Yeah. From that moment on I wanted him away from me, but I had no idea what to …
Paul: Say?
Lauren: How to—he would threaten to kill himself and I wasn’t at that point—
Paul: Ooohh.
Lauren: I didn’t know what to do.
Paul: Oh that is … Jesus!
Lauren: I know, it was horrible. And he stalk—in fact, I have a friend th-that, um, recently from high school who I had drinks with and she remembers everything from high school and she was like, “Do you remember that time?” And we’re in some like, I feel like we’re in Malibu or someplace kind of like that, in California. It was a sort of environment like that. And she was like, “Do you remember that guy—remember when we were in the middle—it was after the play that you—remember that boyfriend, that really gross boyfriend, and he went up and he punched you in front of everybody?” And I was like (laughs), “I do remember that.”
Paul: Oh my God.
Lauren: And he—and I remember chasing after him, after he’d done that to me in front of these people, but because I didn’t want him to do something more, like I didn’t want him to like, I don’t know, like hide in the—he would follow me around, he would stalk me.
Paul: You were worried about his feelings, how he felt, what the repercussions of him punching you?
Lauren: Because I knew that he was so—several times things like that happened and I would chase after him. And only one time I was at a bar, and I was 16, I was with all these—and he hit me in front of other people, and people—
Paul: Like punched you in the face?
Lauren: Not in my face but in the back of my head. It was always like—which is, really that’s a coward. No, but he, um, yeah, he hit me. And I was like—and these guys in the bar like were holding onto me not to go after him, so trashy. So trashy. Yeah, it’s really a horrible—can I say too—I’ve told—when I’ve tried to tell this story I never get very far because my friends are always like please, Lauren, get help, I can’t hear—like, it’s too painful to listen to.
Paul: The guys in the bar were holding you from …
Lauren: Going after him.
Paul: Going after him like physically hurting him or t-to go talk to him?
Lauren: They were um—they wanted to hold me back because I was—from chasing after him, because he would hit and then cry.
Paul: Oh.
Lauren: As they tend to do.
Paul: So they were holding you back from going wasting your time consoling him.
Lauren: We’ll drive you home—we’ll take care—whatever. And I was like, “I have to—“ and he was—and then—because I always knew he’d come out to—he was—and he’s the one person I’m always—because he joined the Army right after we broke up and the Gulf War was happening and I was like, “Oh please let him—“. He’s the only person I’ve ever been like, “Oh, I hope that he gets killed. Like, I hope that happens. Somebody hears that he got killed, let me know.” Um, but instead I-I hear from—and I can’t find—cuz he’s also somebody that—everybody has found me after I’m—they see me one time on something, I’ve got Facebook friends from way back. You know, I can’t think of one person or area of my life that has not found me. Um, that’s um—but he has, obviously, I mean he shouldn’t—it was a horrible time, horrible things happened.
Um, and I have a whole show about lying about rape. And that’s become a—that’s what Bust is about, is a part of it. And I have a story about that, how I—I saw in y-y-your, uh, website that you have a woman who was also—was date-raped in college in Chicago. Anyway, I um, was in Chicago and I told this horrible lie—but I’ve written about this story a million times and I always make myself the bad guy. The liar, basically. I didn’t prosecute anybody, nobody went to jail. It was a—it was just a lie that got out of control, and then I had to, you know.
Paul: What was the lie?
Lauren: I said I was raped.
Paul: Oh, and you weren’t.
Lauren: I was not. So I—and I wrote an article for Glamour magazine, and that’s what Bust is about too, is about sort of putting this lie out there, hoping I’d help girls—I think 18 years old, first year of college is bad for a lot of girls. And so I was trying to reach that population and blah, blah, blah, and, um, all this social consciousness sort of stuff, and then—and make this change—but, anyway, I get of lot of the—the rape, like, thing comes up a lot. I write about it, I sort of—
Paul: How old were you when you, when you lied about it?
Lauren: I was, uh, 18.
Paul: Ok.
Lauren: And the thing that I never talked about, I don’t bring up on the show even, is that I was raped, by him. So I don’t—but I never say that because that’s the last thing—even now I don’t—that’s the last thing I wanna—I’d much rather be the person who lied about it.
Paul: Than the person it happened to.
Lauren: Yes. Yes.
Paul: Why do you think that is?
Lauren: Cuz I like to party, just kidding. (laughs) I (indistinct)—that’s so intense, like, um, it’s like a heroin addict or something.
Paul: Maybe because—
Lauren: People don’t take care—I don’t know, it’s like—first of all, it’s a more interesting conversation, not to say that like, “Being raped is boring.” It’s not. It’s not at all. Of course, I don’t mean that at all, but to talk about the lie is so complicated and to explain why I did it would sort of sum up the play.
Paul: I see.
Lauren: There’s something about just wanting to let it be this is what happened, this lie went out of control, like I could explain my parents are this or blah, blah, blah, or the rape, or blah. And I also did not actually want to talk about the rape thing because I feel like it’s not as, you know, I don’t know.
Paul: Well I mean, the d-difference that strikes me too is you have control over lying about rape, whereas being raped you would be bringing up something where you’re reminded that you had no control.
Lauren: Yes, yeah, and I-I mention it—this last show I started doing in Seattle a couple months ago um, called SRO—I mentioned it and even when I mentioned it on stage, because the show is kind of improv-y, um, so I’m just kind of workshopping it. And I was gonna talk about it a for a little bit. And I get to it, and I would always be like, I had kind of a ‘fairly abusive boyfriend’ and then I would go on. And I was like—cuz I can’t completely—for some reason, I don’t want to do that to the audience. I want to keep them with me, to keep going. I don’t need sit and do something –I can do it maybe in another—
Paul: Are you afraid they’re going to feel sad or pity for you?
Lauren: Yeah. And I don’t know that that’s what I want from being on stage. (laughs)
Paul: You know, that, that’s—are you afraid that you’re going to think that they think you’re manipulating them?
Lauren: Yeah. A-a-and when I see it, and I have so many memories of going to see—because people go to each other’s solo shows a lot, and I used to see a lot in New York that were a lot of people that were, um, dealing with sobriety and that kind of stuff and they’d sit on the edge of the stage and be like, “This is me.” You know? And sure, I was gonna die—you know, people commit suicide and I’ve just never—do not ever do that, Lauren.
Paul: So you found it to be self-indulgent when you saw other people doing it.
Lauren: Yes. And I don’t need on stage—if it serves the story, then let’s bring it out. I certainly don’t need to bring it out to go, “Here’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” Um, and in this one, um, this show, it did serve the story. And I think it’ll continue to as I do work on the show. But I-I-I—to get into it, I swear it’s a story that I’ve tried to tell m-my husband, my friends.
Paul: Which story?
Lauren: The abusive boyfriend guy.
Paul: Ok.
Lauren: And I started to tell it, and people would just go, “Lauren, Lauren, I just—oh, God, it’s hard to hear. Like it’s really hard to hear.” And I’m like, “I know.” And I don’t—so therefore I’m—I said I was gonna get therapy just to work on that one issue. And then I got in there and I was like, “I don’t mind talking about it.” And I got bored in the middle of it. I did that, I did that.
Paul: Was it really bored though? Was that really the emotion? Because that strikes me as like the last thing talking about being raped would…
Lauren: Well I don’t—the rape thing is just like—and it’s not like rape like he chased me down and like punched me in the head or something, or he did those things and had sex after, um, but it was more like him being drunk all the time and forcing me into that, you know what I mean? Just a big frickin’ nasty, gross drunk. Um, but funny, just kidding.
Paul: What would keep you from just getting up and leaving the situation? Would he physically hold you, or did you feel like?
Lauren: My parents—he would—it would always be—we had this great ritual, and by great (laughs)—no, um, I mean, where two o’clock—this is all while I was in high school, I’d be sleeping, you know, getting ready to go to school the next day, and at 2:00 in the morning, about 2:15 is when his car would pull up the driveway, and he drove off the driveway, and my father was very into his lawn, and ruined my dad’s lawn many times, I remember—anyway, and he’d drive up and he would sort of screech, and drunk, up on the grass, and, you know. And then he would get out and start throwing things at my window, and I would just be petrified my parents were gonna find out. And then I’d bring him inside so he wouldn’t be loud outside and he would knock into things, he’d be falling on the—I mean, just a d-runk, just everywhere and crying, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” He lived in his parents’ basement. He’s that guy but without the, um, hilarious Judd Apatow movie behind it or something.
And then I would go out to his car to smoke a cigarette with him. I remember that. And I hated smoking, all of this stuff was just like, I didn’t want to smoke, but he was, “Come have a cigarette with me.” And I just wanted to, “Shhhhh. Shut up!” So I don’t wake up my parents. And then it would be in his car. And so I wanted to go but I couldn’t—I didn’t want him to …
Paul: Wake your parents up.
Lauren: Yeah, wake my parents up. I didn’t want anybody to know in this, like, neighborhood that this was going on.
Paul: If I could just stop you for a second and just say to parents out there that this is the kind of shit that happens when you deny your children’s emotional reality. That they then feel like they can’t go to you with things, because a-any person listening to this would be thinking to themselves, “She should be able to go to her parents and say, ‘This fucking creepy guy won’t leave me alone. Dad, go down and tell this guy to fucking leave!’”
Lauren: Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah.
Paul: And yet you felt like you couldn’t do that. That’s amazing to me. That’s so sad.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, it is sad. I’d hate that for—yeah, it is. It is sad. Don’t—I’m not gonna cry.
Paul: I’m not trying to get you—I’m not trying to get you to cry.
Lauren: I’m just saying I’m not gonna cry!
Paul: Oh.
Lauren: I’m just kidding. My therapist used to always push the issue. I’d be right—she’d say something like that to me, that’s super intense to hear, and definitely, you know, emotional, and she’d—and I’d just about—“I’m gonna cry.” And then she’d push the tissue box towards me and be like, “No, I’m not going to.”
Paul: My therapist does that, but she pushes Kleenex and says, “Give it a yank.”
Lauren: Eeew! (laughs) That’s not the term I think you should use when you’re about to feel something.
Um, yeah, th-that’s really—yeah, no, I think that’s really, really sad. That’s totally sad. I don’t, I mean, th-that whole time period was really sad. I was in the hospital, um, I got—I had all sorts of things.
Paul: Hospital for what?
Lauren: For, um, I had this chronic sinus infection that was from crying. That was from—I mean, that sounds so like—but it was. And I remember the doctor saying, “She needs to be careful not to get too emotional.” He mentioned emotions in front of my mother. And I remember thinking, “I’m crying all the time. I’m crying with him all the time. With Matt.” I was always crying in these fights. And from smoking. The smoking would give me like these sinus problems and stuff. And it got so bad and I could never get better. Cuz I wasn’t getting sleep and I was crying a lot and then I—
Paul: Did you cry in front of your parents or try to hide it?
Lauren: Oh, no, no, no, no. I mean, I’m talking about crying with Matt. Screaming, crying fights kind of stuff. Of just, I don’t remember the details now.
Paul: Did you think somehow in your mind that you were going to be able to extricate him from all his pain and that you could help him?
Lauren: Yeah, it was part—it’s so cliché, that he was a complete wreck. He even asked my parents for help. And told them, he showed up on Christmas, he’d walk from his house to our house, which was very far, and he was bloody, like he’d fallen a couple of times walking there, like it was horrible. He like shows up on our doorstep, asked my dad for help to get work, cuz he couldn’t get a job. Um, he—I knew that he was, uh, a super—he was just a mess of a messed up—I’d never met somebody that down, th-that fucked up, who was asking me for help.
I mean now it’s a major part of my life—that’s one of lists of what I’d be afraid of, is that somebody would need help that I couldn’t help—for someone to be in front of me—I mean, now I’m getting better at going like, “I’ve already donated.” You know, like, I’m becoming bougie (sp?) enough to know how to do that, just kidding. Um, but, him in front of me doing that I was just more than—to help him was the only thing I was doing.
Paul: Plus then you don’t have to look at what you’re feeling. I think that’s one of the things why i-it can be a drug in terms of like, being drawn to—if not being drawn to messed up people, allowing yourself to be in their sphere. And not extricating yourself is because there is an oblivion in getting wrapped up in somebody else’s bullshit cuz then you don’t have to really see that my parents aren’t listening to what—my parents don’t care to know my emotions.
Lauren: Right.
Paul: What a painful fucking truth.
Lauren: Totally. And it also—it reminds me because everyone’s always saying I’m a drama addict, but I think that’s more it. Because I’m always like with people that have major—and the one time I was—my first husband was not a very dramatic person. He was just sort of like—I was always trying to get something deeper, something going on with him, or fighting or whatever. He was always like, “You’re mining for something that’s not there, Lauren. Like, I’m Ok.” (indistinct) I’m like eating my arm and hitting myself, like, “Ah, I can’t take it!” And so I found—I always found—and then I meet a widower with a teenaged son, who’s an alcoholic, I meet another drama and it was awesome. Because then I could like, phew, relax again. So it’s not the drama—I think it’s—that’s interesting because um, you know, having him gone, Jeff’s gone, I have to be stuck now with like, “It’s just me.” And the loneliness of that, of not having something else to be distracted by. Oh shoot, you just analyzed it away, because that’s true, in the playground I’m always writing or doing—or telling stories about how I can’t stand how boring the people are at the playground, and people are like, “I had a morning.” And I’m like, “What does that mean? What did he say to you? What happened? What are you doing? Did you have like a death exp—what happened?” And they’re like, “Oh, Mondays!” And I’m like, “Oh, what’s a Monday?”
Paul: So you’re constantly let down by—cuz there’s—it’s like, “Hey, we’re having a barbecue!” And you go over there and it’s a single shrimp. You know what I mean? Like there’s nothing for you to feast on, no oblivion for you.
Lauren: That is, oh, that’s Santa Monica right there. I’m always like where—somebody must be—
Paul: Where are my broken people?
Lauren: Yes! They’re not—I have to go back to—anyway, yeah. It’s true—you can’t—th-they won’t, they won’t come out here.
Paul: W-we were talking before we started rolling, uh, about support groups and stuff, a-and you have been having prob—because you’re been to s-support groups in the past but y-you were saying that you just found them, um, the quality of them to be, uh bad, which it—a lot of people can experience. There are some bad support groups out there. They’re full of whiners that don’t care to get into the solution or to ask for help, they just wanna complain.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah that’s what I—I was always jokingly calling them just a complainers support group, just people like, you know, “Well she said she was gonna make the coffee but guess who made the coffee? Anyway, thanks for listening.” You know, and I’m like, “Oh God, you’re welcome.” Um, that, or when I would go to the, um, some support groups i-in like Hollywood or whatever, people were all sort of like, “Ok, so where are you performing? Because you’re hilarious!” I was like, “I don’t wanna talk about that.” Or it was like, you know, it was celebrity driven. Which was really depressing, you know.
Paul: Because it’s the opposite of what a support group is about.
Lauren: Totally. And there was—but actually the first time I went in was the most profound feeling I had. And maybe it’s nice to know it’s there or something, because I remember when I first went to a support group for—I was a—my husband was sober, but not—a “dry drunk” as they say, is what they were saying about him. And when I went in, I remember walking in and hearing people talk and just crying and crying and crying. And felt so, like, “Oh my God, everybody’s just letting it out here.” Like it was awesome. And it was—that was really profound, but I never quite got that feeling back.
Paul: Y-you went back to that meeting but it wasn’t as good again?
Lauren: I don’t know if I went to that exact meeting. And it wasn’t so much the people, it was—what they were describing was what was allowed here.
Paul: Was your story.
Lauren: Yeah. What we’re doing here, and I was like, “That’s what I—that’s what I’m here for.”
Paul: There is nothing like hearing somebody else tell your story. If not necessarily the details of your story, what is happening emotionally with you. Because the worst pain to me is the pain that I can’t describe. The pain that I can’t find the words for. You know, I was trying to describe depression yesterday to somebody and I said, “It’s like you feel dead inside and the only place where the words exist to describe it is inside you. And you can’t access it because that part of you is dead. And it’s like this awful gray cloud.” It’s like trying to describe a gray cloud but you can’t use the word “gray” and you can’t use the word “cloud”.
Lauren: Oh my God, it gives me anxiety just hearing it, yeah. Horrible.
Paul: And, and, when you go to a support group, you’re surrounded by people who have experience in describing that. And so you can get that moment of “Yes! That’s what I’m feeling! Oh my God, that’s what you did? Oh, I’ll try that.”
Lauren: Right.
Paul: Or just to have somebody to listen to you, um. I can’t say enough good things about, uh, support groups, and if you, if you’re out there and you’re listening, try a bunch of different ones. If you go to one and you don’t like it, try another one.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I definitely—I’m pro.
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: Support groups. Even though I’m such a—you know, I find reasons to be like—any group, listen, you know, I don’t like music festivals, any of those kinda groups.
Paul: S-so I have to ask you , just because I’m curious about it. Th-the lying about the rape, th-the um, you said that when you were 18?
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Paul: Um, what was the reason for making that up and who did you accuse of?
Lauren: I didn’t accuse anyone. I made up a person. I didn’t have a person.
Paul: Oh, ok.
Lauren: And what it was was, um—
Paul: And had you been raped at this point actually?
Lauren: Yeah. But I did not know that or say that or voice that.
Paul: You didn’t know what this guy had done to you would be considered rape.
Lauren: I, yeah, I don’t think—or maybe I did, I don’t know. I don’t remember really thinking about him during that time period. It’s only recently where—yeah. Yeah. I knew it was horrible but I also was like I came out to the car with Matt. So I didn’t get that whole …
Paul: So you blamed yourself.
Lauren: Yeah. I didn’t get—
Paul: God.
Lauren: And I let him over and over. It’s really hard to like—but at 16.
Paul: You’re 16. It makes me so angry that parents would—especially your dad. How would your dad not know? He was 23.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, Now he knew—everybody hated Matt. And they hated him but nobody, you know, did a big, the anger was clear. It wasn’t like they were like, “Hey Matt! Listen, hey pull up a chair!” You know, they were like—they were just—they couldn’t stand being in the same room with him.
Paul: So pawn him off on your daughter.
Lauren: Right, right, let Lauren take him, right. I don’t know, yeah, it is pretty bad. But you know, I was adopted, they probably didn’t count it as like the regular—they’re like, now if it was Lisa!
Paul: Do you honestly believe there’s some truth to that?
Lauren: No. I don’t think that’s true.
Paul: All right.
Lauren: I think they—my sisters who weren’t adopted would probably be like, “They did that to me too!” You know, like.
Paul: What were your sisters saying? Were they younger or older than you?
Lauren: They were older. Um, my oldest sister, who didn’t live at home, was the, was the only one during that entire time period who was like saying to me, “If Matt comes over I’m leaving.” She was letting me know like, “Lauren, I don’t like him AT ALL. Like I don’t like seeing him touch you. I don’t like—“ I mean, she was so—really an amazing thing to know that—to have that in your history of knowing that somebody cared. Do you know what I mean?
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: I love that, that she was—I mean, she’s still like that, um. The other sister was stamp collecting or something. Um, again, nobody liked him. But the rape thing was that, um, he—the rape thing, the lie, was that I was at college—it was my first year at DePaul Theater School, and I was, um, I definitely was like, that whole thing of being the star at your high school and then going to this awesome theater school. And um, and I loved it, I loved the work, that’s never been a problem, the theater stuff or the acting stuff. It was socially I was—i-it—I felt like I was the fattest person that had ever gone to that school. And even my movement teacher had taken me aside and was like, “If you don’t lose weight, you’re gonna forever be stuck as a character person, you’ll never have certain roles, you’ll always be—“ Which, you know, turns out that if anything, uggh, I wish I were fifty pounds heavier I’d probably work more. But, um, anyway, so there was an issue. And I didn’t have any boyfriends—you know, I didn’t—all this hooking up was going on. It’s so 18 years old. All these things now sound so like, you know, whatever. Like, “She took my sweater, so I said I was raped.”
Like, so anyway, I was having social uh—
Paul: Feeling left behind?
Lauren: With boys. I was obsessed with boys, obviously. And then, um, I had a party in my room, and I remember that everybody was hooking up and that the guy that I liked hooked up with another friend, and I couldn’t believe it because he’d been talking to me all night. Like I always had that cliché of like, he’s my friend but he wants to fuck her, he didn’t even talk to her all night. So that happened. And they were all—we were all supposed to go down to the lake together and they left without me but there was this meeting point so I guess they all had this person they wanted to hook up with there so they thought everyone was there, and so they were gone. I literally was just like, hello, I thought we were meeting here. So I had a little breakdown that night, of just crying—just an 18-year-old, “I’m just nobody and I guess no boy likes me.”
And so I called my ex-boyfriend back at home who was gay, and I didn’t know it then, super caustic. I called him and he was mean to me on the phone when I was complaining to him. He was like, “I’m so sorry for you going to your little private theater school. I’m sorry things are hard for you.” And then I kept upping how bad things were going and I eventually said—I said I was mugged, he didn’t believe me. I’m really making this quick, right. And then I eventually said, “ Actually, well I was—I was attacked, I just got back from the hospital.” And he was like, “So you’re saying you were raped? Is that what you’re trying to say to me?” Then I said, “Yes.”
And I remember as soon as I said it, I was like I’m never—I’m only gonna use that with him. Like I’ll only ever mention it to him. And that—and then—this is the part that’s like an Afterschool Special, or bad one, or a good one maybe, I was—somebody overheard me—just to put it—the door was ajar, another girl was waiting to use the phones, it was group phone that we all—and, um, she overheard me. And I came out after talking to him—and he’s still—he was like, “I’ll come out next weekend to visit you,” and whatever. He still wasn’t that concerned. Maybe he knew I lied, I don’t know. Um and she was crying. So she had heard it. And was like, “You just got back from that? I can’t believe—“ and then she walked me back to my dorm room. And then the next day everyone at the party shows up at my dorm room and they’re all holding each other, like crying and supporting each other, that I’d been attacked, and that they hadn’t been there. And I just went—and it looked like I had been attacked because I was in such a state of shock, and I just remember I didn’t say anything. And everyone was like—and then—the end of it is that it ended up getting to police, or it got to the security of the campus.
Paul: Oh wow.
Lauren: And when security found out I got brought in to the police and then they all sat me down, the head of the University was there, all these people in a room. They ambushed me basically. They said they were taking me to the mental health center just to get a counselor since I’d been attacked. And the whole time I’m not telling anybody any details. I’m saying nothing. I have no made up story. I just go quiet. And so they think I’m a victim in some way.
And so eventually they sit me down, this therapist is there but this police—and they were like, “You did not—there’s no report of an attack happening so either you were attacked and you didn’t tell anybody, um, and you need to get help, or you lied and you’re really scaring a lot of people. So which way? Either way you need help.” And I was like, “Um.” There’s not a moment where I thought that I wanted to be a victim. That I would be a liar, sorry.
Paul: Right.
Lauren: That I wanted to be the victim, that’s the problem. So I was absolut—never—I would rather go down as the victim than I was like, “I lied.” I keep saying the wrong thing!
Paul: Yes.
Lauren: I’m trying to rewrite history, desperately! I was raped, I said I was. And then I—they went through the whole thing. I had to do a sketchbook composite of the guy, I tried to make up somebody. And then the worst part of the lie, I always say at least, is that they brought in a guy who worked at the drugstore near my, uh, dorm room. And that’s the part too—because I get email, after I wrote an article for Glamour magazine, I got ripped apart, you know, people who were like, you know.
Paul: It’s the worst thing ever.
Lauren: It is the worst thing ever, of course.
Paul: It’s not the worst thing ever, but.
Lauren: But to people—it’s a great—I mean I got, of course, got really ripped apart. Um, and they’re always like, “She did hurt somebody, she said she doesn’t,” or whatever. Like somebody’s life was—and it was horrible because the guy did not look like somebody who was used to being brought in for lineups, cuz he had to go to a lineup. And I didn’t, you know, I said it was him. I’m just kidding, I didn’t. I didn’t—so that’s the worst. And then, yeah, and then that lie stayed with me for a while until I told somebody, and they paired me up—it’s a whole long story. But I—you know, my best friend at school ended up being a woman who was raped. They paired us together because they thought we’d both been raped. And she’s the first person I told the truth to.
Paul: But you actually had been raped, you just didn’t know that it was rape, that’s the irony.
Lauren: Yeah. That’s the old folk thing that you know now. You know what I mean? Like there’s no way that I would have been, like here’s the thing, I thought it was because I didn’t know my birth mother. If I had known my birth—if I had known there was somebody out there that would be hurt by knowing that I was raped, I wouldn’t have said it. But I wasn’t worried about my parents finding out that I was raped. Like I didn’t think they were gonna be—
Paul: But you were worried about them finding out you were a liar.
Lauren: Yeah. Oh when they found out, they were just like, we knew. And they let me stew in this lie for a long time. Like my parents eventually—
Paul: They knew—they said we knew you were lying.
Lauren: Uh huh. Isn’t that amazing? (laughs)
Paul: I’m just, my mouth is open. Just ….
Lauren: My dad brought it up. They’re good people now. The internet’s scary. My dad’s into the internet now.
Paul: Is he?
Lauren: Yeah. Well, I don’t know if he can find this. He wouldn’t know how to hook up speakers, you know, so. Ooh.
Paul: I’m just …
Lauren: In fact—
Paul: I’m just so tired of hearing—experiencing this a-and hearing this from parents that just don’t have—either don’t want to be bothered—you know, before you go fuck and have a kid—
Lauren: Or buy a kid. Like I was adopted.
Paul: Yes.
Lauren: Like they asked for it.
Paul: Or buy a kid, learn how to be comfortable with somebody having emotions.
Lauren: Yeah that’s just—hopefully there’s a new generation. Do you know what I mean.
Paul: I think there is. I think there is.
Lauren: I think, sadly enough, they’re dying out, those folks that are just like, “Boy, she’s crying a lot. Shut the door!” You know what I mean? Like I think that’s another generation.
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: There seems to be—even Oprah—it’s a dumb thing—even the fact that she has helped kind of raise a new generation, you know? And like the awareness of like—and blogs.
Paul: But there’s a lot of people that just also write that off as new age-y horseshit.
Lauren: Yeah.
Paul: And it’s just, you know, a bunch of pussies that—feeling sorry for themselves.
Lauren: Totally.
Paul: And it’s like well, you know, it does have repercussions. It has wide, wide, wide-ranging repercussions. Because it’s not only about you, it affects people around you.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, if you don’t sort of—yeah.
Paul: So what are some, uh, some other seminal moments from your life?
Lauren: Those are the two biggest ones. I can’t really—the other ones I don’t really—they aren’t as, um, intense too. I mean, truly, th-that Matt one, that guy is the worst thing ever to me. I really can’t think of, um, anything besides that. And the rape one I’ve talked about so much.
Paul: D-did the sexual assault by Matt, was it on more than one occasion?
Lauren: You know, in my mind I’m like every time.
Paul: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Lauren: Yeah, I lost my virginity to him, which is the worst part because it was against my w—I mean, I wasn’t like—I didn’t want to. You know, and just the whole thing of like hating him, hating him. And Novas. He drove a Nova, a blue Nova. And I’m like, oh, if I see a Nova, I’m just like, god, ugh, those cars, I can just smell that, ugh, that like deep like metallic—the smell that people get when the drink so much that their organs are just like floating around, you know what I mean? And just like whiskey or something. So gross. Um, yeah—I forget even what—I got this image of like floating organs and whiskey.
Paul: I was asking how many times.
Lauren: Oh, I have no idea. Like I said, every time. I never was like, “Oh, that was great.” He was so mean too about like—I was obsessed with David Bowie and I remember getting into fights—I remember thinking like, “How am I even—how did this person slip in?” Because I don’t know—everyone I know—I was in theater, theater, theater, theater. I was just in theat—all my friends were—every man I’d dated up to that point was gay. Like, I was just such a theater fag, you that was just so me, yet this guy slips in who’s just like, “David Bowie. Oh you like David Bowie? He’s a fag. Like he’s a total—“ I remember being like, “What?! Who do I know who would say that about David Bowie?” Like he’s my—and he would call me fat—he would be—talk about my weight, you know, he would just—
Paul: Jesus.
Lauren: Yeah, he was horrible. He wasn’t—and literally the only thing that kept me to him was that he was a victim—by his parents—you know, his parents hated him. I don’t know why.
Paul: Was there also a part of you that felt like you didn’t have the words to say, “Get the fuck out of my life?”
Lauren: I did not. I did not.
Paul: You did not have those words?
Lauren: I did not have those words. Because when I even broke up, it was always—I was scared to do it because of the way he would threaten, when I would do it.
Paul: That is one of the—threatening to kill yourself to manipulate somebody is one of the meanest things you can do.
Lauren: It’s so—i-it’s mean, and it’s so immature—it’s just such a—
Paul: And sadly it works on some people.
Lauren: Well it worked on me at the time because I was—the first time he did it I remember being at a party and then I—he kept trying to call me and somehow, I don’t remember how—because there was no way for him to get ahold of me then because it was back in the, you know, the 1700’s, where I just had regular phones, but I remember somehow he found me or I got—he got ahold of me at some party and was like, “If you don’t come over here right now I’m gonna—I’m gonna kill myself. Like I’ve totally—I got—I’m in a bad place—I’m gonna—I need you right now.” And I remember just being like, “Ah shit, I gotta go. Like he’s—“ And at the time he said suicide and I remember everyone—I remember saying like, “He said he’s gonna kill himself.” My friend’s like, “Oh my God!” You know how 16-year-olds are.
Paul: That’s what the suicide hotline number is for.
Lauren: Yeah. (laughs)
Paul: Seriously, I have it on my website and, um, yeah, that’s what we should do.
Lauren: Well he wouldn’t kill himself too, that’s why he’s such a shit.
Paul: It’s just a way of controlling you.
Lauren: Yeah, I guess he—
Paul: He was trying to control you.
Lauren: Yeah, it’s so funny because I guess my parents now, they’re always like—they have—they joke about, um, uh, they’ll say, “Lauren, we’re gonna go out to dinner. We’ve got a surprise guest who’s coming.” And they’ll be like, “Hey! Uh, Matt’s coming.” You know, and they’ll mention his name like, “You know, I’ve never met—“ because they don’t even get—where I’m like—(laughs) you—and it’s hilarious to me, honestly, because it’s so, well did you hear that? So.
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: Well, somebody dropped a plate. As I’m talking about, you know, I don’t know how many times he raped me. Like, oh that plate was dropped.
Um, anyway, they don’t even get th-the severity of his so they really will be like, “Well maybe Matt will wanna come to the party. Ha, ha, ha!” And I’ll be like, “Oh, you guys!” You like so don’t get it. Like just kind of—as I said. If I told them now it would just be—they would be like, “Well, the umbrellas are up, looks like it’s gonna rain.”
Paul: They’re in their 80’s you said?
Lauren: Well they’re about—they’re in their upper 70’s or so. And I want them to keep sending stuff to Leo, so I don’t want any trouble.
Paul: To Leo?
Lauren: Leo’s my son.
Paul: Oh, ok
Lauren: I don’t want to cut off the gifts.
Paul: Yeah, sure
Lauren: I don’t wanna make them mad.
Paul: Do you, uh, do you wanna do a fear list?
Lauren: Sure. These are so funny because I was writing it—m-my husband used to do this all the time when he was in a support group, he would do his list of “I have fear … I have fear …” to start the day. It’s a great thing if you’re a snooper to be able to read someone’s fear list. I was really bummed when he stopped because I never knew how he was really feeling.
My first one is a little jokey before I got into, um, the mode of it, ok?
Paul: Oh, ok.
Lauren: Not jokey—it’s real, but I realized I was getting too like, “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Ok, cut the schmaltz, we can get down to it.
I’m afraid that my car’s gonna hit a curb just right, you know, like when you do like a small bump, but it’s gonna flip my car over and then I’m gonna be stuck upside down with my skirt up, or something pressed up against—like my butt—like my ass pressed up against the thing—like something super vulnerable, um, like that. Um, or, that I’ll die in that crash or whatever and that my last thought right before I hit the curb will be something like, “Oh God, I’d hate if I died with my skirt up.” Like something shallow like that, do you know what I mean? That I have some dumb thought right before it’s my last like—does my butt look big? Or whatever.
Paul: Uh, I-I’m reading, uh, a fear list from a listener named Jonah. And he says—cuz I’ve listed so many of my fears on the—I’m gonna start repeating.
Lauren: Hopefully you’re run out.
Paul: Uh, oh there’s more, I just haven’t gotten in touch with them yet.
Lauren: Right.
Paul: Um, Jonah writes, “I’m afraid that I’m prematurely losing my sex drive.”
Lauren: Oh God, that is scary.
Paul: Yeah.
Lauren: Um, I-I-I’ve—I’m afraid that I’m gonna die before Leo’s grown up. He’s my son.
Paul: Uh, Jonah writes, “I’m afraid that I will never find a compatible spouse and not have kids.”
Lauren: Oh I have a lot of friends who have that fear. Um, uh, I have a fear that I’m gonna get throat cancer or something where I lose my voice. That’s my biggest fear.
Paul: Uh, Jonah says, “I’m afraid that my upbringing stunted my ability to be a self-reliant adult.”
Lauren: Oh, God, that’s mine too Jonah. Um, uh, I have a new fear just from talking to you where I’m like—I realize I do have a fear of crying really hard in front of somebody and I couldn’t stop. And they would be like “Are you…?” And that’s happened where I started laughing one time during a pitch session, at like a comedy environment for TV, where I started laughing really, really hard. And it was a joke about somebody being a white Urkel, it wasn’t even that funny. But I started laughing, because it was kind of funny at the time, I was laughing so hard and then I started crying at the table in front of everybody, it was like, (laugh) (sob). And then I excused myself to the bathroom and it was like, what, whoa. Like that was pretty ….
Paul: Really?
Lauren: Yeah, it was pretty funny.
Paul: It’s amazing, the affect that Jaleel White can have on people.
Lauren: Who?
Paul: That’s the guy that plays Urkel.
Lauren: That’s the guy? I didn’t even know his name. Look at this.
Paul: I think that’s his name.
Uh, Jonah writes, “I’m afraid that I will never find the key to balancing my brain chemistry.” Oh my God, do I relate to that one.
Lauren: Ah, that’s scary because your brain is so hard to like control chemistry-wise.
I’m afraid that the message boards are right.
Paul: Uh, “I’m afraid of germs.” That’s a pretty basic one.
Lauren: Oh I don’t really think about that so much though. Not to discount his fear by any means, but. I’m kind of disgusting like that. I’m always like, “I’ll eat that apple. The one that just rolled underneath your car.”
Um, I am afraid that I’m like the characters that I always audition for.
Paul: Uh, “I’m afraid of malnutrition and that I will never figure out what my body really needs me to eat.”
Lauren: Oh, what does this say? I have fear that I’ll never have the time or the guts to shut out Hollywood and focus on some issue that matters to me in order to create a new show. Does that make sense?
Paul: Mm-hmm. Uh, I’m gonna read—that’s it for Jonah’s fears, and I’m gonna read uh, some fears from a listener named Andrew, and, uh, he writes, “I’m afraid that I have made bad life decisions and will permanently negatively affect a person that I love. And those decisions will always linger in my head as a ‘what if’ scenario that can never be undone.”
Lauren: Oh, that’s fun too. Um, I have a fear—I’ve put two in one—I’m afraid that my husband will drink like a street drunk and then at some point will have a colostomy bag.
Paul: (laughs) I’m sorry to laugh at your fear, but, but I just did.
Uh, Andrew rights, “I’m afraid my parents are ashamed of my career choices and are embarrassed to talk about me to others. Compounding this fear is the guilt I have for their monetary assistance in my education that I haven’t put to good use.”
Lauren: Oh God, that’s heavy too. I have a fear about—of kids seeing my pubic hair. (laughs) Sorry. (laughs) Not that I have a ton of pubic hair, I just wanna clarify. But I have a fear at the beach there will be like a patch showing and some little kid will see it and be messed up—like she shed her bathing suit. You wouldn’t talk that way as a child, but, anyway. That’s so gross.
Paul: Uh, I’d never thought about a-a-a bush as being aggressive. But that—
Lauren: A bush, even that grosses me out. Maybe it’s just pubic hair that bothers me, I guess.
Paul: “Bush.” Yeah why don’t I take a time machine back into the ‘70’s.
Lauren: Like Richard Pryor.
Paul: Uh, Andrew writes, “I am afraid that I will never achieve my dreams, and if I do achieve my dreams, the feeling will not live up to my expectations and be fleeting.” Oh my God, this guy is inside my brain.
Lauren: I was gonna say, that is true, that’s what’s gonna happen. It never lives up to what—you have to just know that. It’s never, never exact—that’s why you gotta have, you know, something else on the side besides the dream.
Um, uh, I’m—this one’s kinda dumb but I’m afraid that I’m gonna seem like a mean Montana—Oh, I have this fear about being—like the area I live in—I have this fear about that people are rude to me or cut off from me because they think I’m a wealthy—like having blond hair and being white. And the older I get, the more this like, “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry ma’am. The spoons are over there ma’am.” As if I’m like, “That’s right the spoons are over there, because I’m going to write a letter. I-I bought—I’m a customer.” Like I’m scared that people see me that way.
Paul: That you’re the Santa Monica stereotype.
Lauren: Yes that I’m bougie (sp?) or something when I’m so not. I’m always like, “I’m poor!”
Paul: Yep. Um, Andrew writes, “I’m afraid that maybe living in California and pursuing an entertainment career was a mistake.”
Lauren: Hmmm. I know that one. Um, I fear that I’m one—or I’m afraid that I’m one risk away from something huge, like to evolve.
Paul: Uh, “I’m afraid that I’ve lost touch people that used to be my friends and can never rebuild those bonds.”
Lauren: Oh, Facebook, what are you talking about? I’m just kidding, it so doesn’t help. Um I’m afraid I’ll never go to Amsterdam again.
Paul: Uh, “I’m afraid that people I used to be smarter than and more successful than when I was younger have now passed me by.”
Lauren: Oh God, yeah. Now he’s in my head.
Um, I afraid of seeing people throw up on the street.
Paul: “I’m afraid that life isn’t fair and will never be fair and the ramifications of living in a world that isn’t fair.”
Lauren: Oh my God. (laughs) It’s true. It is. That’s why you have to learn to, you know, garden.
Paul: Yeah. I heard somebody say one time, uh, they said, “Don’t pray for justice, pray for mercy.”
Lauren: Totally. Exactly. There’s no justice. I totally felt—I totally—oh God.
Uh, I’m afraid that I’m going to be sick and that I will have an 18-year-old nurse taking care of me. Like somebody so young, you know, who’s like, “That’s Ok! That’s what bathrooms are for, ha!” You know, you’re like, “uhh…”
Paul: And then as soon as they shut the door, they’re like (puke noise).
Lauren: Exactly. Which happened to me when I had my C-section. I was like crying and she was like, “That’s ok, it’s all right to feel emotional right now.” I was like on the toilet (sobbing), this is so vulnerable, I can’t stand it.
Paul: Um, Andrew writes, “I’m afraid that when I grow older I will look back on my 20’s and 30’s and wish I hadn’t worried so much.” I think everybody is gonna look back on their life and wish that they hadn’t worried so much.
Lauren: Totally.
Paul: I-I don’t think there is probably anything that we waste as much time on as worrying.
Lauren: No. That’s why I think in my 20’s and 30’s when I was thinking that, I was gonna put that on the list too about my physical self. Because I’m like, I-I’m so afraid of—well I’m not afraid anymore because it’s coming up, now it’s happened. Where I’m like—where your body changes and you’re getting old and you’re like, “Oh, I’m old now. I see my age. I’m older.” And now I never appreciated that, you know what I mean, that I was ever—that I had, you know, non-sagging boobs. Again, but now my sagging boobs I can make a career on. On HBO.
Paul: Yes, and you can reach Lauren at saggyboobs.com.
Lauren: Right, or HBO.com.
Paul: Um, Andrew writes, “I’m afraid that my parents are getting older and soon I will have to move closer to them and take care of them.”
Lauren: Oh I haven’t thought—my parents—it’s great. Commenting on fears, is that really gauche?
Paul: No it’s not.
Lauren: Um, because the good thing about my parents being, um, emotionless is that they literally will be sitting there—my dad has like kind of a Parkinson’s shake, and has all sorts of things happening with him. As far as I know, he’s probably in adult diapers, he’s shaking, he may have no legs, but he’s just like, “We’re doing good, what’s happening on your end?”
Paul: Right.
Lauren: Like they admit to nothing. Nothing. And they will never admit to anything. They just don’t tell you. They could have the flu and be like, you know, well, “Well, I think I’m done with dinner. I’m just gonna excuse myself.” And (puking noise), you know, right as they go say, “excuse me.” They’re not gonna say they don’t feel good, they’re not gonna say they don’t—which is funny cuz Jeff’s parents are to any “How are you?” they’re just like, “Lonely, scared, manic. Not a lot of sleep and people don’t understand how hard it is. I have no money.” You know, you’re like, “that’s so hard to hear.” I feel so lucky that my parents are like you know, gonna basically be like elephants or what are the animals that, you know, don’t wanna bother you so they go off to the tree to die, you know, by themselves?
Paul: Yeah, I think all animals.
Lauren: All animals, bless their hearts.
Paul: Um, your turn or my turn?
Lauren: I don’t have any more fears. I just have to go on that. I mean I do—I’m done, I have no more fears!
Paul: Well let’s go to the uh, the love list.
Lauren: Ok.
Paul: Um, I am going to …
Lauren: Your examples of the loves and the fears are so good that it made me—I was trying to get more creative, more detailed with mine. Cuz I was like, “I love breezes.” And you were like, “I love Maine, this cottage on the lake, wearing a blue terry robe,” like were so detailing.
Paul: Uh, I’ll start. I love, I love when my depression goes away and life excites me.
Lauren: Oh, that would be good. Um, that’s good, I should be a therapist. Oh, that would be good wouldn’t it.
Um, I love when a Patty Griffin song comes on my headphones when I’m running on the beach.
Paul: I love being in the Apple store and needing something, and, uh, yes, being in the Apple store and needing something. I thought there was more.
Lauren: That’s hilarious because you know when you’re in there you specifically have a need and wanting to …
Paul: Because it’s different from when you’re just browsing because you then you feel like I’m just, you know, a technology whore, but when there’s a reason to be in there, you’re like, “No, I’m not shallow. I’m just, I’m …”
Lauren: That is so funny. I have that with all—yes. Yes.
Paul: Because it’s so exciting to walk in there.
Lauren: Totally. Um, I love flying into Seattle.
Paul: Um, I love looking at a motherboard and realizing how powerful human ingenuity is.
Lauren: Oh, that’s very brainy of you. I love, um, hearing a Dutch accent on the streets.
Paul: Uh, I’m gonna read some, uh, loves from, uh tweeters.
Lauren: Ok.
Paul: This is from, uh, Dean Patino. And he writes, “I love that I can now make eye contact with strangers without feeling awkward, usually.”
Lauren: That’s weird. My next one was I love when a stranger smiles back.
Paul: Really?
Lauren: Yeah.
Paul: We have these moments of, uh, serendipity sometimes on these that I love.
Lauren: Yeah that’s awesome.
Paul: Uh, Dean writes, “I love when dogs get tired and lay their heads flat on the ground.”
Lauren: I love when Leo, who’s my kid, I love when he sings when we’re on the bike together.
Paul: Uh, Dean writes, “I love seeing baby gorilla at the zoo pinch his badass-looking father in the nipple.”
Lauren: (laughs)
Paul: He’s good!
Lauren: If I would’ve seen that, I’d love it too! I just haven’t seen enough. Um, I love, um, when my husband comes, the first day he’s back from fishing in Alaska. He’s always hot.
Paul: I love when the moon is orange.
Lauren: Ooh, I like that too, love I mean. Um, I love being backstage, um, I love doing that walk backstage alone to my places. You know, to get ready to go on. I love that walk.
Paul: Uh, Dean writes, “I loved giving Bootsy Collins a high five when he crowdsurfing.”
Lauren: (laughs) Bootsy Collins is a real mood booster. Um, I love adults when they laugh at farts.
Paul: Uh, Dean writes, “I love the old lady in Japan that helped me find the museum even though she wasn’t going there and didn’t understand what I was saying.”
Lauren: Oh!
Paul: I love that. I love that.
Lauren: That is so great. Cuz I immediately, I’m like, I love the old Italian woman when I was in Italy who brought me in her house to show me her new oven. Um, I love seeing photos—this just happened is why I put it on the list—I’m like, “Oh yeah, write down whatever is in front of me.” I love seeing photos of my birth family that I’ve never seen before, like before I met them, like pictures of them together.
Paul: Uh, Dean writes, I love wearing warm clothes right after they come out of the dryer.” That’s a great one.
Lauren: I do too. I was trying to get that I do too, cozy-bozy things. I’m a failure. Don’t say anything. Don’t analyze it. Just let me be a failure, please don’t leave her trying to take that away from me. I don’t know what your whole, you know, y-y-your picture thing is, but.
Um, l love when Jeff—and he’s got a son, an older son now who’s 21—I love when they watch basketball together.
Paul: Dean writes, “I love when a toddler falls down on his or her face, gets back up and laughs.”
Lauren: Yeah, that’s—yeah, that’s really… I have all sorts of stories, the images of—because Leo’s exactly that age, it’s hilarious. I love when—I have a new one—I love when someone passes Leo and Leo says something about them really loud that makes them turn around and laugh. Because he’ll be like, you know, “She wasn’t wearing her hat!” Something like that just cracks me up because again it brings people kind of—so I’ll just add that one.
Paul: Uh, Dean writes, uh, “I love when someone asks a question and the other person says, ‘Dean (me) would know that.’”
Lauren: Oh, God that would be nice. Must be nice to be Dean. Because I would like to know—I don’t know. All I get is, “Well Lauren’s not medicated, so.”
Paul: Stay away.
Lauren: Totally. Lauren, you have to (indistinct). Um, uh, I love—this is so pathetic, you’re really gonna pity me—I like drinking wine in airports.
Paul: I like that one!
Lauren: I like it fine! In a high register, it’s great! Good!
Paul: Dean writes, “I love that I now feel good enough about myself to spend a Saturday playing video games and not feel guilty about it.” I like that one.
Lauren: Oh that’s a good one too. I like other people’s—well you probably chose the best ones, right?
Paul: No, I’m actually just going down a-a—I just printed out a page of tweets. Every once in a while I’ll get on Twitter and I’ll say, “Hey, let’s do a fear-off, let’s do a love-off.” And then people will just list them and I just print them.
Lauren: These are the conversations—I’ve gotta find—that’s awesome. You’ve created the world that I wanna be in. Because it’s like I want everybody telling me all the different. Which I do through theater, the solo stuff, I get a line of people, but then you meet other rape liars, and you don’t want to meet them. They’re like, “I’m so like you.” And you’re like, “Oh God, well don’t hang out with me then.”
Paul: Uh, I also did, I started a, uh, survey, um, I have surveys on the website, like about shame and secrets and other kinds of stuff and I have a new one up there now where, um, I ask people to try to describe like whatever their struggle is in a sentence or two so that people who don’t deal with that struggle can understand what it feels like to be in their skin. Like, like I was describing what my depression felt like and I—when you find the words to describe it, it’s kind of cathartic and it feels good and I think it helps other people so, um, if you go to the website, mentalpod.com there is the, I think it’s called Struggle in a Sentence survey, uh, and you can add your own. There are other ones there like depression, addiction, you know, OCD.
Lauren: It like stresses me out to try to think of a sentence. It’s so hard to get once sentence. I’m like what about (indistinct) look, like just take a picture of my eyes or something. Um, that’s, that’s awesome. That’s a great, that’s a great service. I don’t know the depression thing so much, I don’t think. Well, I drink, so, I’m just kidding.
Paul: Whose, uh, whose turn were we on?
Lauren: I only have one more and it’s not my favorite one. That was all whiny, sorry. I’m like, whine, whine, I’m so fat. Um, my—I like when people are um—I like being at the store, the grocery store, the day before a holiday, I have to say. I like when all of us doing the same—it’s like oh look at everybody doing the same—I like that a lot.
Paul: That’s so funny, that is the exact opposite of what my wife feels. She cannot stand crowds, cannot stand being at the store the day before when it’s all maddening. It’s weird how some people are energized by crowds and other people are like just completely stressed out.
Lauren: Well, I don’t like a crowd, I don’t wanna be—what I like is this feeling of like everybody’s getting ready, like it matters, we all want our family to be. You know what I mean?
Paul: Yes.
Lauren: There’s like this weird thing. We’re all doing this thing at the same time. Like 9/11! I’m just kidding. Thanksgiving and 9/11. Oh, I love it! But I remember that because I was in New York for 9/11, it’s like there was this thing and we’re all thinking the same thing, we’re all together. Like, and I know we all are—because I do believe in—I’m very much of the opinion that we’re all of the collective unconscious—you know, I believe in that so there’s a moment where we’re all pfwhoot!, we’re all—I love it.
Paul: It’s amazing.
Lauren: And there’s something—I love it—that’s why I love theater, because you get to be in the room where maybe it’s happening, except for the four old people in the front who are like, “I don’t know what’s happening. Let’s go, let’s leave.” Like I have that.
Paul: And talk and think that nobody can hear them. “What did she say?”
Lauren: You know what, I don’t even have—I would almost be able to deal with the talkers because I would know that they are with me or trying to be with me, for me, I should put it on my list, but then who the fuck cares about me—but I cannot st—I have people who sleep before the show even starts. Or I come out and they’re in the front row because they’re so exhausted they couldn’t, they couldn’t possibly make it past the front row to find another seat, they’re just like, “I gotta go here now (plop).” Like they just pass out and fold over. I come out to start the show and they’re already, it’s always old white men. I have a real prejudice against the old white men.
Paul: They can’t jump.
Lauren: They cannot jump. And they steal your luggage at the, at the baggage reclaiming place.
Paul: Uh, so I will wrap it up with, uh, a final love from Dean, who writes, “I loved that when my therapist told me I’d made faster progress then her other patients, I was able to believe it.” Which is very nice.
Lauren: My therapist doesn’t remark in progress, does yours?
Paul: Uh, actually yes, yesterday she did. But I also was kind of a mess so she might have just been trying to be—make me feel better.
Lauren: Trying to be like, “Well, you’re not punching anymore. Good for you!” I’m like, “Hey! My therapist never talked about progress!” As if like, did you notice, like wait a second, she never talked about progress. Well she said I accepted Jeff more, that’s the only time—like, “That’s good. It seems like you just accepted.” And I’m like, “Yeah, as opposed to…”
Paul: Well, Lauren, I want to thank you so much for being a guest, and, um, opening up, and—
Lauren: Thank you! You did it, Paul Gilmartin.
Paul: Is there, is there anything that you want to, uh plug? I don’t know when this will go up because a lot of times I record these weeks, months ahead of when they air.
Lauren: No, I mean I’m always performing, doing something. And I have a book.
Paul: Which one?
Lauren: It’s on Amazon, called A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body. And so that’s, that’s, you know, it’s from 2007 but it’s still available. It’s big font. I have friends who are like, “I read it last night.” I’m like, “Oh, I was hoping it would be more of a journey, but, no, just a general link.
Paul: And they can visit your website laurenweedman.net.
Lauren: Dot com.
Paul: Oh, dot com?
Lauren: Or net. I think both work. Yeah.
Paul: And Weedman is W-E-E-D-M-A-N. Just like it sounds.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Paul: And, uh, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Lauren: Thank you.
Paul: Well many thanks to Lauren Weedman for a great episode.
Um, before I take it out with a happy moment from a listener survey, I want to remind you there’s a couple of different ways to support the show if you feel, uh, so inclined. As I said, the website is mentalpod.com and, uh, you can make a single PayPal donation there, you can also do a monthly recurring PayPal donation, which I love, brings me a little closer to my dream of being able to make this my fulltime job. Thank you to those of you that are monthly donors. I really, really appreciate it.
Um, you can also support the show there by, um, buying your Amazon stuff through our little search box and that way Amazon gives us a couple of nickels. Doesn’t cost you anything. You can buy a t-shirt there on our website, and you can support us non-financially by giving us a good iTunes rating. That boosts our ranking, brings more people to the show. You can also support us non-financially by spreading the word, posting of Facebook, Tumblr, all the social media that, uh, that you use. That is greatly, greatly appreciated. And, um, I want to give another plug for the uh, walk that’s coming up in Chicago on September 29th, uh, to raise money for suicide prevention. It’s the Out of the Darkness Walk and the website to, um, get involved in that is chicagowalk.org. And again, that’s on September 29th in Chicago.
Um, and I also want to remind you guys that are struggling to, um, find therapy, if money is tight, and you live in or near a big city, Google “low fee therapy” and the name of your, uh, city, and you’ll get a bunch of results. Because there are, there are those places. I did it in Los Angeles, and I’m currently, uh, at about my 12th trip to a low fee therapist. And, uh, it’s great. She actually isn’t even licensed yet, uh, she’s still doing her training, but she’s extremely knowledgeable, extremely compassionate, and, uh, as good as any licensed therapist I’ve ever been to before. And it’s, uh, affordable, which I love.
All right. Enough of my yakking. I’m gonna take it out with a, this is from the Happiest Moments survey. And this was filled out by a woman who calls herself Mary-Kate Olsen. She’s a female, straight, in her 30’s and, happiest moments, memories, she writes, “In kindergarten art class we were all selected to paint and decorate these Christmas angel cutouts. I finished mine way early and was too anxious to get up and tell the teacher so I just kept piling more glitter and paint onto this totally over accessorized angel. Eventually the art teacher came over and made a huge deal out of how beautiful my angel was. They ended up hanging it in the school office and I got some sort of award from the principal. I was thrilled. For once I was getting attention for something other than my buck teeth and speech impediment. A couple of months ago, driving back to Detroit after my father’s funeral in Connecticut, I was with my boyfriend, feeling very connected and safe with him, also feeling the deep relief that all the funeral was over, all of it, 300 miles behind us and counting. I felt oddly alive and indestructible. We hit standstill traffic on I-86, eventually just turned the engine off and started playing cards. It was a beautiful day. People started getting out of their cars and wandering around. Everyone seemed in an all right mood. Eventually we got off the highway and got lunch at a diner. And I had one of those miraculous grilled cheese sandwiches you get at off ramp diners. I wasn’t worried about anything for the first time in years.”
Well that’s beautiful, thank you for that, Mary-Kate. Um, so thanks for listening guys and, uh, if you’re out there and you’re stuck, just remember there is hope. There is definitely hope. And you are most definitely not alone. Thanks for listening.
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