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Bawdy Storytelling
Episode 24 - Wanderlust
00:33:52
Wanderlust: a strong impulse or longing for wandering
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- [00:07]
Rachel Lark
I've been around the world in the pouring rain Feeling out of place, really feeling strange. Take me to a place where they know my name. Cause I ain't met nobody that looks the same. I'm a fish out of water Lying out of the jungle. I need my peoples, my peoples. Take mixing my peoples.
- [00:54]
Beth Hirsch
Hey y'.
- [00:55]
Carrie Callah
All.
- [00:55]
Dixie de La Tour
Welcome to the Body Storytelling podcast. I am sexual folklorist Dixie de La Tour, and I have the travel bug so bad right now. I really, really want to travel and I can't. So this week's stories are all about wanderlust. I've got spring fever. I can't get out the way that I want to. And I'm gonna tell you a little backstory about why. So when I'm not traveling with Body Storytelling and I travel quite a bit, I live in San Francisco with my partner, Bent de La Tour. Bent is an off roading instructor and he is never happier than when he is in the Mojave Desert or on the Lost coast in Oregon along the ocean, leading people on trips that your car cannot go into because everybody has modified vehicles that do crazy things. He has seriously 32 inch tires on his monster truck. He could climb any mountain, you name it. And on these trips, he often takes our 160 pound St. Bernard quake. And quake is super high energy. He loves being out in the dirt when they come back from trips where Bent hasn't had a shower in like a week. I'm like, hang on, hang on, let me sniff you real good because I like his stink. And the dog comes home happy and tired and the partner comes home satisfied from travel and I can go off and do my thing. But about three months ago, Bent had an accident and he shattered his leg in such a way that they couldn't even set the bones for the first month. And that meant that I had to stay close to home and take care of him, which is what I'm doing these days. And that means that Our high energy St Bernard is relying on me to give him adventure hikes. That is not my skill set. And I'm taking care of bedpans and urinals and hiking. Don't like hiking. And did I say I don't like hiking? I'm not sure I got across that. I don't like hiking. I don't like hiking. And that means that I can't travel. So I'm gonna dream of the road. And we're going to live through the adventures of others. Our first storyteller is a stand up comic from Cleveland Ohio. She has been featured on after ellen on queerty.com. she has been on a gender journey in the time that I have known her. I believe she currently identifies as she. I am very careful of people's gender identity and the pronouns they choose for me to use. If I got that wrong, let me know. That is very, very important. This story is about how she was made to be welcome in a new place. And this story is from Carrie Callah.
- [03:44]
Carrie Callah
Is that okay? Oh, my God. Just keep giving it up for Dixie right now. Damn. Damn. Magic. Lady magic. This is indeed the story of how I fell in love with San Francisco. And it starts with a vacation here three years ago and the one night stand that ensued. My name is Carrie. Indeed I am trans. I came out of the womb and the doctor was like, that's a lady, baby. This is before that happened. I was 28 and I had been living in Chicago trying to make it as a stand up comedian and nothing had worked out ever. I was incredibly broke, Incredibly broke. I had had a relationship end. I, I had not gotten any fame as a stand up comic. And I had also, by the end of my time in Chicago, developed a case of pink eye that, like when you're in second grade, a case of pink eye. And it turns out that if you let pink eye go for long enough, it can become an inner ear infection. So I had come back to Cleveland, Ohio, where I'm from, and moved back in with Mr. And Mrs. Callahan in my childhood bedroom. And, and guys, I was feeling real humbled. Gotta tell you. What? Humbled. Humbled. I was not trying to have sex. No. And my childhood bedroom is like a pretty not sexy place, but still I was not feeling it. My mojo was gone. The only thing that I really knew was how to do was work at a restaurant and pay off my credit card debt. And I didn't really know what I was going to do beyond that. And my friend Nelly in Chicago saw that I had no mojo. The mojo had been decimated. And she was like, you know what my good friend Carrie needs? He needs. Well, she, at this point, she needs to go to the land of queers and weed. So that'll, that'll put the sparkle back in Kerry's eye. So it's February, and we took a vacation here to San Francisco. Nellie's from Chicago, I'm from Cleveland. We did the classic Midwestern tourist thing and we made every mistake. We got a hotel in the financial district. It was February. We brought only tank tops and flip flops. And we get to the financial district. And we're like, well, there are no gay people trying to smoke us up. What's going on? Everything we've heard about California is a lie. But we got it together, and we used yelp and we yelped lesbian bar and took a cab there.
- [06:40]
Beth Hirsch
I'm not.
- [06:41]
Carrie Callah
I'm not gonna tell you which bar. But you know which bar. No, I. I didn't say it. I didn't say it. I didn't say that at all. Okay. We took a cab to an unnamed lesbian bar, and we get in there, and the room is full of very, very cute, masculine women with asymmetrical haircuts. I could not fucking deal at all. So I started slamming vodka sodas, which was good. Which was good because there was a woman at the bar, and she was exceptionally cute. She was like st. Stocking, kind of like a real muscly way, like, all muscle. And she had short brown hair and blue eyes, and she had just, like, a real cute, open face. Like, I've been trying to think of what celebrity she looked like. She looked like a young Michael J. Fox. I don't like to think about how much t teen idols have played into my queer consciousness. Point is, she looked. And she had a huge, huge, silver, elaborate belt buckle on which we, of course, talked about. How did she win this? How did she get this elaborate silver belt buckle? Oh, by riding bulls in the gay rodeo. Yeah, she had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very hot. And once someone tells you that one of the things that they do well is hang onto a bucking bull long enough to win buckles for it, it's all you can think about. So I was just like. I just was blush. I just blushed my entire body. Just for, like, the whole three hours. We were talking. I have anti game. So we had to talk for three hours. And then she was like, oh, you know, well, you two, since you're visiting the city, you should come to gay country western dancing with me. What?
- [08:58]
Rachel Lark
What?
- [08:59]
Carrie Callah
Gay country western dancing. What? I should back up and let you know that my childhood hero was Annie Oakley. I rode western saddle through middle school. I have a Willie Nelson tattoo. I've got a country western theme going on in my erotic landscape. So we show up to her apartment the next night to pre game. We shot, like, BB guns down her hallway. I was like, california's a crazy place. And then she took us into her big walk in closet full of country western wear and outfitted us in boots and jeans and flannels and buckles and a cowboy hat and you know, I mean, we're just fantasy role playing at this point as far as I'm concerned. I'm in Brokeback Mountain now already. I'm in the outfit. And we go to country western dancing. And I would have been very impressed if it was a bar with 50 people in the back of the bar. Guys, that is not what this is at all. There's an association called Sundance Saloon, which you should look up sundancesaloon.org and they have country western dancing every Thursday and Sunday and they rent out a warehouse to do it. And like 300 people are there. 300 people outfit in awesome cowboy outfits. And they're doing elaborate line dances, like line dances where it must have taken them two years of practicing to get the line dance. This is a full on subculture. And I'm just like entranced. And I haven't given her a name yet. Let's call her Jack. And Jack teaches me how to two step. And it's so romantic. It's so romantic. And we're whirling around to a Dwight Yoakum song and all these gay couples are around us whirling in the lights. And I say, this is the most romantic moment of my life. And Jack says, cool. What do you say? I don't know. You're giving someone an experience. So we go back to her house and she gives me an experience. She, as they say in country music, she laid me down. And this was actually a hard part. I was thinking about why this was hard for me to talk about the actual visuals of the sexual. And it's because the sex that really gets me off is not sex that I want people to know that I like so much. And that is, I really love bottoming a lot. A lot. I really love it. It's hard because when you're a masculine person, people a lot of times want you to top them. And I'm trying to do that. But it was such a thrill to be the bottom in this situation. You're welcome for all the bottoming that I did. And so her hand's inside me and I'm really loving it. And I'm loving it so much that she feels confident enough to flip me over and I'm on my hands and knees with her hands inside me. It was so good, guys. It was so good. But what was extra amazing is that she had asked me if I wanted to keep my shirt on, which I had heard of other people. So this is a thing that more radical elements of society do. Just be respectful of people's body. Dysphoria and things like that. So just letting your partners know, you can keep however you feel about your body. You're allowed to have those complicated feelings, and you can work with them while we have sex. Yeah. Yeah. And she asked me if I wanted to leave my shirt on. And honestly, it had never occurred to me that. That I could also do that. Maybe my chest didn't have to be a part of the sex equation. First time I realized that wasn't brave enough to admit to complicated feelings, but still opened up a door for me. So I get her hand in me a lot. I come a lot. I tell her that I haven't had sex in a year since the breakup in Chicago. She says, yeah, don't do that again. And I was like, I'm not going to. And then the next morning, she made me fancy coffee in her little mission apartment kitchen. And there's like a compost bin and fancy coffee and fancy pots and pans, and then like a Taylor Swift poster on the wall and, like, Brad Paisley is playing on her Mac. And I looked around and I was like, oh, hey, I could have an apartment like this someday. You know, I could, like, I could come here someday and dress as a cowboy all the time and have sex with other cowboys. I could.
- [14:17]
Beth Hirsch
Even.
- [14:17]
Carrie Callah
I could even get a whole cowboy's fists inside me if I wanted. And that's okay.
- [14:24]
Dixie de La Tour
And.
- [14:26]
Carrie Callah
It was really something. It was a big of a romantic moment for me as twirling to the two step. And I had to go. I had to go. We couldn't linger because I had an appointment to take acid in Golden Gate Park. And as she pointed me towards the train station, she handed me a baggie full of gummy vitamins and a children's bubble set. And I got the inkling that I was not the first out of towner that she had hosted. Just began to think maybe she was experienced in this way. But you know what? That is a okay with me because I think that what I took away from that experience, besides the own glimpses of my own future, the owner, this me that was maybe waiting around the bend for me was really the value of hospitality, you know? So I would encourage you, if you host an out of towner, to do it right. Show them a beautiful thing and also just let them see how what a weird little world you've created for yourself, because they might be looking for their own weird little world themselves. And it could mean a lot to them. So thanks so much.
- [16:13]
Dixie de La Tour
So have y' all heard about this thing called patreon.com patreon.com spelled P A T R E o-n.com don't you love it when Southern people spell things? Patreon.com is a way to support the projects that you love. So Kickstarter, you may have heard of Kickstarter, is a way to support a special project, like maybe going on tour or something that needs to be built. But a podcast is ongoing. This one comes out every week, and that means every week I need equipment and a sound engineer and someone to help me go through the Body Storytelling archives and find stories for you, or maybe collect the stories that are going on stage all the time and bring them to you through this podcast. And that means I need help, and that means I need to pay people. So if you could go to patreon.com bodi b a w D Y you could support the podcast. You can make sure you continue to get it and you can tell us that you want this thing. I wasn't sure if a podcast was a way for me to go, and as someone who's been producing live shows for 10 years, I've. I'm trying something new. You supporting the Patreon tells me that it's something that you want so you can support for as little as a dollar a month. You can go up as high as you want. I'm okay with that. And telling your friends, sharing the episodes and asking them to support the Patreon too, means that we can keep doing this thing. You can put your earbuds in, you can be anything you want, and we're going to keep bringing that to you through the glory of Patreon. Please go to patreon.com bodi Support the body Storytelling podcast. And thanks in advance for doing that. Our next story is from someone who had moved from Seattle, Washington to the Bay Area. She came up to me at a show in Oakland, California, and someone had told her to come to Body Storytelling. She had sat and listened to the stories, and at the end of the night she came up to me and she said, I just moved here. I don't know how to find my community, but I have a feeling that if I got on your stage that I would find my people. And I said, that is absolutely true. I see it happen all the time. Let's do it. And she pitched me a story and we worked on it and I was astounded. I found out later she's a playwright. That explains her marvelous way with words. She has performed for me many times. This story was told at Our Wanderlust show and the storyteller's name is Beth Hirsch.
- [19:01]
Carrie Callah
I love your skin.
- [19:04]
Beth Hirsch
Hi. I'm really nervous and there are a lot of lights on me, so. Hi. When I turned 18, the first thing that I did was to go out and become a stripper. I know that really screams of like a well adjusted childhood and no daddy issues or anything like that, but I had just found the amazing power of being a sexual object. Like you get so much attention and like people, mostly it was the attention and I had yet not found the drawbacks, the emotional drawbacks and pitfalls of letting people treat you like an object. So, oh, at the time, do you guys know the X Men villain juggernaut? Like he's this unstoppable mutant that will run through walls and buildings and safes and the only thing that will bring him down is a psychic blast. Yeah, that was me, except it was people in relationships. At the time, I thought what was going to turn me into an adult was sex. Like some guy would stick his dick in me and I would come and I'd know how to do my taxes. Like I'd get really, like I'd get really good at blowjobs and be able to turn my library books in on time. And I had just found out it was super easy for me to get sex, which felt great. At 18, it felt fabulous, which was good because the sex that I was getting was stunningly mediocre. And what was more embarrassing was the lengths at which I was willing to go to get this like truly mediocre sex. Between my freshman and sophomore year in College, I drove 800 miles to get fucked on a dirty kitchen floor by a guy I'd met once. Jude. This is where Dixie would tell me to describe Jude to you so that you can picture him for the rest of the story. But I can't really remember what he looked like. So like picture like a six foot pile of bland, like little blurry.
- [21:33]
Carrie Callah
There he is.
- [21:33]
Beth Hirsch
There's Jude. I had met Jude at a family wedding and I hadn't had sex with him that night because I was blowing my cousin. That is mostly, mostly for shock value. I mean technically he is my cousin. Not blood related at all. Not that that would have stopped 18 year old Beth. I had met him that night and we had kissed that first night. Pre blowjob of his friend. We had kissed that night and I had thought it was so romantic because he had a girlfriend and I had a fucked up idea of romance. So nine months later when he emails me and says that he's broken up with his girlfriend. I'm like, well, yes, immediately what I need to do is drive 800 miles to have sex with you.
- [22:24]
Dixie de La Tour
Yes.
- [22:26]
Beth Hirsch
Thankfully I talked to my friend Leah before I left and she was like, hey honey, how about you tell some people where you're going? How about like, hey, I have some friends down there. Just a thought like maybe I could go with you. We don't need to leave in the middle of the night. So Leah and I drove 12 miles together listening to crappy books on tape while I imagined Jude pounding the ability to get my oil changed on time into my cervix. We get there in the middle of the night and I drop Leah off and I find where Jude lives and it's on this like unlit street in this dumpy house. And by Jude lives I mean that some nice friends of Jude were letting him crash on a mat on their kitchen. And I like see him and he's not as cute and he doesn't smell quite as good as I remembered. But hey, I'm here. So four minutes later we're fucking on the kitchen floor, My ass is slamming into the broken linoleum while I am looking at the dog fur glued with beer like right next to my head. And I'm just thinking about when he's done I can take a shower and jerk off. But when he's done he wants to go out to a party, a college party because it's 2 in the morning and he's 26. So what we should do is go binge drinking with some 19 year olds. So we drive across town and you know, you can tell the place because there's like three passed out people, people on the lawn. You can smell it coming. It's just urine and vomit. And you're like, cool, looks like a great party. We go inside and same urine and vomit. And after about my third glass, big red plastic glass of pure liquor, I'm like, I'm not feeling so well. I better find the one carpeted room in the house to go lay down and throw up in. And did I try to clean that up? No, I just took someone's jacket and just like put it over that. I make fun of myself for being a classy lady now, but 18 year old Beth was a fucking treasure. So I wiped the vomit out of my mouth. I'm sure I got another giant like jug of liquor. And I went to go find Jude who was making out with some girl in the corner. And my first thought was, oh, thank God, I don't have to fuck him again. So now in the story is this big question mark. I don't know what happened. I was clearly too drunk and didn't know where I was and all of those things. But somehow, somehow I woke up on Jude's kitchen mat on the floor, when his roommate, who had a real job and it's Tuesday, like, gets up to make breakfast and just kick the drunk naked girl aside. Hi. Sorry. I went to their bathroom, threw up a few times and got in the shower, which was cold because they'd had their hot water shut off because no one had fucked the ability to pay their bills on time into them. So I'm freezing cold and feeling terrible. But there's a side yard and it's sunny. So I go out into the side yard and I stand in the sun shivering. My head is on fire. There's vomit in the back of my throat and there's cum in my hair. And I feel this overwhelming feeling, this odd sense that can be summed up in one, one quick phrase. Boy, I sure did that. I have made some choices and I have, like, living with the consequences of those choices. Good on me. I didn't say goodbye to Jude. I didn't leave him a note. I just went to find my friend Leo, where I had dropped her off the night before. She was staying with some friends and I started helping them build a cedar deck. And I learned how to drink beer instead of hard liquor. I went hiking in the redwoods and skinny dipping in the ocean. Had a wonderful time. Our three day vacation turned into two weeks and I didn't see Jude for any of it until we were getting packed up to leave and he showed up to tell me that I was a cunt and that I had broken his heart. So about an hour out of Portland, in the middle of the night, driving home, I start to think, like, what kind of broken person am I that I don't give a shit about hurting this guy who I supposedly really liked. And like, I wondered why I was pursuing sex so much when I didn't seem to like it. And then I stopped wondering about those things because I was 18 and it was really dark and I could only see as far as my headlights would show. Thank you.
- [28:15]
Dixie de La Tour
So a podcast is a great thing, but it is only 50% of the body storytelling experience. You go to a live show, there are games, there are friendly people, There's Bango, our dirty bingo game. There is an opportunity to flirt, to meet the storyteller, to ask them questions. All of these things happen only at a live show. So we're bringing you the stories through the podcast. But I'm sorry, I just can't fit all of that through a microphone. Upcoming live shows include Wednesday, April 26. The theme of the night is Infomaniac, and that will be in Seattle at the rebar. Seattle. Infomaniac shows impart a lot of information. We have a lot of really geeky stories, and we send you home with information that you didn't have before. You're entertained. It's great stories. It's sex. Who doesn't like sex? But you also learn a thing or two, and those are some of our most popular shows. And then on May 17, we're back in San Francisco with nerd sex. Nerd sex is not only stories that relate to graphic novels and looking for the G spot or the prostate or it's about people who like to experiment with chemistry. Maybe you like to flavor your fluids. Pineapple juice is a great one, by the way. Makes everything taste good. Or maybe you wanna. Maybe you went on a quest, you learned a few things, and you're gonna teach us through your story. There is nothing better than a story about sex because it's kind of hard to ask people some of these questions. But when somebody gets up and tells you a story, start to finish, about how they wanted to learn something and they did, it's not only a great sexual adventure, but it is information you can take home and try yourself. Our nerd sex show will have special games. I'm working on a new game. We'll have Sniff Test. We will have OK Pervert, where you get to flirt with people. It's kind of like casual encounters, except it's easy, analog, right there in the building. There are no scammers. Everybody's for real. You know, you didn't wander into the wrong section of the Internet and somehow you're flirting with somebody in Denver. They're right there in the room with you. And if my new game is ready in time, we are going to have something new to try together. There's also sniff tests. Sniff test is a really bad idea. Pheromone dating. It's so much fun. So that is May 17th in San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, in June, we are going to have on assignment for Bodi. On assignment for Bodi means that you and I together help create a fresh adventure for you. And you go make it happen. And you get on stage and tell us what happened. We ask you to keep yourself safe. Don't do anything dangerous. But if you're looking for somebody to hold your hand as you experiment, as you try something new. I'd love to help you make that happen. If you'd like to be part of On Assignment for bodi, email me dixieodistorytelling.com and let's put you on stage with a brand new fresh story. Because I'm a Southern girl, I like to say thank you. So thank yous go out to podcast producer Matthew Marder, to sound engineer David Grossoff, to Ruben Tan, who runs our On Demand and our livestream. Reuben has had a death in the family and is overseas. There has not been a live stream over the past month or so. We're not sure when he's gonna be back. But Ruben, we're thinking about you and we're sending our love to Joe Moore, who records video, and to the team that helps bring body storytelling to the stage. It is so much more than me. There's no way I could do all of it by myself. So if you see a volunteer at a live show, tell them thank you. It's really important. As I'm dreaming of the road, I am living vicariously through the adventures of others. And I'm going to tell you about somebody who's on the road right now that you need to go see when she comes to your city. She has recently performed for Dan Savage of A Savage Love. He has a live show that he does and she went up to Portland to perform there. She is now performing with a full band. The name of the band is Rachel Lark and the Damaged Goods and it is the songs from Body Storytelling and a few others. She has put together a full stage production and that means you are going to get to hear these songs in an entirely new way. She is on tour now. Please go to rachelark.com to find out when she's coming to your city. You do not want to miss this show. That's it. Thank you so much for listening to the Bawdi Storytelling podcast. I'm sexual folklorist Dixie de La Tour. I hope to see you in a city somewhere soon, but till then, tell your friends about the podcast. Listen to the back episodes. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of the Body Storytelling Podcast.
- [32:49]
Rachel Lark
This is your traveling song.
- [32:53]
Carrie Callah
And I.
- [32:53]
Rachel Lark
Won'T ask you to stay Cause life don't work that way But I can try and fit inside your suitcase but my feet would stick out of the end so this is your traveling song My love come find me on the trail Tr oh this is your TR song my love Come find me true.
- [33:46]
Carrie Callah
And once someone tells you that one of the things that they do well is hang on to a bucking bull long enough to win buckles for it, it's all you can think about.