Kristen Bell (39:29)
So many foxes and straight lines. Most of us are such a queer kind the worms do what they feel to me that is real and they don't give a down. If you mind. Well, I'm gonna. I wrote something and it is a story, but it's also about some of the events this week. And I honestly don't know that I yet trust myself to just like be able to talk about it openly. Because it's like, oh, I'm a lesbian, obviously. Look at my Me. Look at me. Look at my me. And this is a huge, huge week for me. This is a huge, huge week for gay folks. I'm actually like, I still can't even. I don't even. Are we okay Yesterday, My girl. I don't. I feel so. I, like, I am like the toughest jean jacket you've ever met. But I might cry. I might cry 72 times talking to you right now, or never at all. I'm not sure. My girlfriend and I just. Yesterday when we heard that, we just stared at each other all day, just like, is there. Are we supposed to go somewhere? Like, I just felt like we should go somewhere. Do you know what I mean? Like, I didn't know. We literally, like, got in the car at that and, like, I had a show last night and we had. And then she. We just, like, got in the car and just drove towards West Hollywood. Like, I think this is a thing. We just drive to there then. Especially being in la, where you're, like, in your house and you're just like. We just. We looked at each other and then we work in separate rooms in our house because we both work from home, and so we work in separate rooms. So we just would, like, look at each other and then be like, all right, back to her, and then go to work. And then one of us would just, like, tweet out, and then the other one would open the door and be like, hey, great tweet. You know? Like, that was the whole. It was just 12 hours of that. So I'm going to read something to you guys. I hope that's okay. Yeah, awesome. Okay. Yesterday morning, my dad called to say that he was so, so happy for me and my girlfriend about the DOMA news. I asked him if he was happy for himself, too, that he'd be able to see his daughter married. I'm so, so happy for me, too, he said. He was the first person I talked to yesterday. Well, besides my girlfriend, who was sleeping next to me when I checked Twitter and found out SCOTUS had left our civil rights under the tree. This is still really fresh. I'm overwhelmed and, like, tired from just years of fighting, like, holding my body tight. I don't know if that makes sense. Like, in a. Almost like just waiting to be attacked or to be disappointed. I was a little gay kid who had no idea what gay meant. Growing up in a very Catholic family in the suburbs of Chicago, I had no reference point. No one I knew was gay. No one. I was Charlie Chaplin for Halloween one year and I remember just being like, overjoyed at the prospect of wearing a suit flanked by 75 gems and a zillion poodle skirted girls. I walked house to house in a bowler hat and mustache, hauling an adult sized cane along with me because it turns out they don't make Charlie Chaplin canes in child size. Actually, an addendum, I posted this on the Internet today, and somebody posted a link to an Etsy site that sells. So 10 years of progress, George Bush to this and Chaplain Kane for every kid. You know what I mean? That's really exciting news. I've always gotten along well with my family. They're quite literally my best friends. But as a kid, I didn't understand how to be what they expected. Some things I understood, like, the importance of sticking together and leaving no one behind. There's an almost tribal element to my family. Like, if you knew us, you could imagine us rushing a castle with raised swords and a cheer up, Esposito. The part I didn't understand was how to be a girl. Because being a girl sort of also meant being the opposite of a boy and, like, the counterpoint to a boy. And I didn't understand how to be that. I didn't understand how to be what seemed to come so easy to my two sisters or my parents or everyone else around me. I didn't know how to be straight. I dated the captain of my high school football team, and I was the mascot, a red bird. He was a really nice guy. He's a kind man now. He was my best friend at the time. Senior year, we had a school dance that was famous couples themed. And having literally been voted couple most likely to live happily ever after by my graduating class, which still sticks with me to this day as being amazing. Like, they looked at, like, the captain of the football team, just a dude with 4% body fat and a bird. And they were like, you're gonna make it. Like, I love that. I just love that so much. So since we had been voted couple most likely to live happily ever after, we decided to go to this dance, this famous couple's dance, dressed as each other, dressed as ourselves, the most famous couple in our class. So he wore nylons and a wig, and I wore his football uniform. It was my favorite dance. I had the time of my life. Not because I was with my boyfriend, but because for the night I got to be my boyfriend. Like, for the night I was dating a girl. Even if confusingly, that girl was me in a way. There's a little back to the Future Y and kind of Inception Y in there or like whatever sci fi movie seems to apply and you're like, chose, you know. The call was coming from inside the nylons. The call was coming from inside the nylons. My dad and I have a special bond. He sees a lot of himself in me and I see it too. He coached me in every sport growing up. I resisted his coaching with every frame of human being, but I played really hard to please him. We both argue our point for a living. He's a lawyer, I'm a comic. It's basically the same job. He's emotional and kind hearted. There was this one time he walked for two miles across an open field between two highways to walk from a train station to this, like, swim meet. I was racing it. Like, that's the kind of dad he is. Like, he was the only dad at the swim meet in a suit and tie, but with like brambles in his hair. Like, because he had to be there. Like, he's like that kind of dad. And my mom was there too, at that meet. Like, she and I are very close. She's funny as hell and she's creative and she's like, generally cool. I have like a cool kind of a. Like a funny. Like, she's dancing. She's a funny mom. But my dad is the outwardly emotional one. Like, he's the coach. For instance, he's saying at my sister's wedding, and this wasn't weird because he's saying like, every family dinner for the entirety of our, like, just still now, he just like, if. And it's always like these show, like these, like, these really, like, these solos from like, tunes like, like. I Left My Heart in San Francisco is apparently a song. I only know that because of how many dinners he like, who will get up even to address. It's beautiful to see. He just loves his family so much. It's almost crushing sometimes. I came out to my dad passively. My parents were in my childhood bedroom, sitting next to me on my bed. My mom asked, danny seems like more than a friend. Something going on between you two? I don't think I answered. Maybe, I said. We were dating. Then I remember the next thing. Sitting next to my dad in the car in a Walgreens parking lot. And he was running in for something. He was upset. He was worried about my living so far away in Boston at the time and also about my ruining my life by being gay. You'll never have kids. He said. I could adopt. I said, if you're gay, I could Never support you adopting a child, he said, my dad is adopted. Maybe that accounts for the extra love in my family. He got to make a family that looks like him. He got to create relatives he is actually related to. And so maybe he almost couldn't handle my reversing the process, like expanding out again, diluting the esposito. Or he thought I was going to hell. Either way, he couldn't imagine my adopting, even knowing from his own personal experience that adoption can lead to happy, connected families. I was devastated. My mom bounced back pretty quickly. She started to ask me questions, seek out friends with gay kids. My dad cried for five years. Every time we talked, he cried. During that time, I didn't feel comfortable in my family. I felt like the differences between us outweighed the similarities. I was being myself, getting to know myself, and this made my dad sad. It broke my heart. Then I stayed in Boston and my first girlfriend. I finally found someone who understood that Charlie Chaplin part of me. Walking around the campus of my Catholic college, people would ask if we were sisters, which is hilarious because I'm a white person and my first girlfriend was Asian. Like, we weren't sisters. We were girlfriends. But I get it. Also, like, I get it that people could sense something was similar between us, but they were, like, too Catholic to really understand what it was. They were just like, they loved umbros, you know, like, that it's not terrible to come out. Sometimes I think people. There's a misconception there. Like, especially parents, I think, really worry about their kids when they're coming out. But it's not terrible. It's a relief. You've sensed your difference all along. Others have sensed it too. And now there's, like, finally a word for it, or a neighborhood or a destination or a designation or even a slur. Like, even a slur helps because at least, you know, at least I knew. And I found someone like me, another gay woman, and she understood. So, yeah, in a way. I mean, we were family. I was visiting home, and we were at P F Chang's. My dad. Yeah, thank you. I distinctly remember lettuce cups being served. My dad had just gotten a call, like, maybe a week earlier. His birth family was trying to find him. Maybe he was 54 at the time. 54 years of living with supportive, loving parents that he was somehow different from in this way that maybe he couldn't actually describe. Like, how do you imagine people you don't know exist? And then one phone call, and he knew. My dad has a sister, my aunt. She's adopted too. They grew up together. But since that phone call, he also has five brothers. They met in their 50s. He didn't get to meet his mom. She passed the year I was born. But I've seen a photo of her and she looks like me. Or I guess I look like her. I've met one of his brothers. My dad's met all five. I guess I never realized until I met my dad's brother Michael that my dad and my aunt look nothing alike. I don't know if you like, because you grow up and everybody's adults. So you just think like, they don't like, they just look like adult. Do you remember that from life? Like, you don't think that your parents should look like they're siblings because why would they? They're adults. So they don't look anything alike. But they are alike. They're tough and kind and good hearted and Italian. Like really, really Italian. Like super Italian. Like again, the adopted don't look as. But a lot of chest hair from even the women. Just 1 to 2 degrees in different directions. In my family, I literally have relatives whose last name is Sposito. My last name is Esposito. Like it's. We're so Italian. We just found the other closest Italian name. And then those people married each other. Okay, religious too. Like super religious Chicagoans. They've my dad and sister, they've known all the same people. They remember their grandmother living with them as children. They remember making wine with her and sausage in their basement. I told you, they're Italian. And they remember visiting the orphanage where they were adopted from to bring presents at Christmas. Their parents always brought the nuns and the orphans presents at Christmas. I would imagine that they also remember the fear, my dad and his sister, that came with being different and finding out why they're different from another kid on their block. You're adopted, this kid said, pushing it out like a slur, meaning you're different, you're less than. You're wrong. My dad had to ask his mom what it meant, what adopted meant. And if he was, was he adopted? Yes. His mom said she couldn't have kids, which was a sort of sin in and of itself for a Catholic family at the time, like a failure. I'm sure he wondered over the next 50 years whether he was a mistake, whether he was wrong, whether there was anyone else out there like him. And then he met his brothers. He met a group of people somehow like him in small ways. Like they don't sound alike and they're Not Chicagoans, and they're not espositos, but they're a little bit Italian. And they look so much alike. My dad and his brothers, they're all losing their hair in the same places, and they have the same eyes. We came out together, my dad and I, we found new family, and that strengthened our existing family. My girlfriend, who I woke up with this morning, she was there when my Nana passed. My dad's mom, his adopted mom, his real mom. She was two days shy of 100 when she died. Which really sucks if you think about the fact that I don't get any of that fucking blood. It's a really long life. That was one year ago this week that she passed. We buried my nana on her 100th birthday. And while we were preparing for the funeral, my girlfriend took my dad's car and had it washed because he had asked her to so that it would be clean for the procession. My girlfriend did him that favor without question. And he trusted her enough to ask. My dad likes my girlfriend. They talk with one another. He gives her legal advice. They have a lot in common. And my girlfriend likes my dad. My dad's brothers also sent flowers for that mass a year ago. So one year ago this week, we stood there, all of us, in front of those flowers as a family. And I guess that's what I was thinking about yesterday. I was thinking about family and I was thinking about flowers. The same stuff that I'll have at my wedding. My lawful, affirming, honest wedding, where my dad will sing. It's very fucking awesome. I just want to add one thing. I just want to add one thing. I cleared this story with my dad, who also emailed, like, a freeze. He got up this morning and, like, emailed for some reason, like, 50 guys he went to high school with to tell him to tell them that he. That he was really happy about the decision. And I thought that was really fucking cute, too. Like, he came out also. Yeah, it's great news. And my first girlfriend, because of social media, this is the cool thing. This is a cool part. Read this. And told me that she loved it and that I didn't have to change her name. So her name is actually Callie. And she. That's. This is dedicated to her. So what's up, Kel? Thanks for the Facebook message with a huge, weird smiley in it. Okay, have a great night, guys.
