"Guys & Dolls: He Made It Weird"

[00:00:01] Man, do some people make things ever so fcking weird. And when it comes to love, human beings in general are capable of crossing from odd choices to behavior so unhinged, new generations still talk about it 100 years later.

[00:00:22] We've all been there. Everyone has at least one kink, one weirdly wounded viewpoint, one cognitive distortion we're bringing to the romantic table.

[00:00:33] Most of us bring a whole picnic basket full of bullshit. Some of us convince ourselves the person sitting across from us ordering more breadsticks will plug their metaphorical umbilical cords into our hearts and slowly siphon away the best years of our lives.

[00:00:51] Others stand before a completely dysfunctional shitshow of a partner with a drug habit and a collection of Alex Jones mugs and thinks, Yes, I can mold this human into the perfect husband.

[00:01:04] Now, this isn't to say that a little taste of cray-cray can't fan the flames of intensity we often crave. We're not here to take a steaming shit on the concept of a romance rush.

[00:01:16] But in this episode, we're also not talking about your garden variety oddballs or even the type of person that aims to make it Facebook official after 48 hours of knowing you. We're descending further into the mind colon where the most depraved projections of human attachment turn into emotional colitis.

[00:01:38] It's been a running internet joke for years now that some guys will do anything to avoid going to therapy because of a combination of cost, stigma, and the very silly belief that asking for help makes men weak.

[00:01:53] Dudes have been funneling their many complex emotions about love and partnership into unhealthy outlets since forever. And while ultimately this sucks, it has given us some of the best podcast material in history. Gary, log out of eHarmony and get Kimberly in here.

[00:02:13] Things are literally about to come apart at the seams. The following podcast contains adult themes, gritty details from true crimes, and naughty language. Listener discretion is advised. There's no time now. I began five years ago in secret, working all night every night right into the dawn.

[00:02:35] A thousand experiments, a thousand failures, and then at last the great wonderful day. Hello, all you spooky nerds. Welcome back to Human Fuckery, the only podcast that puts your tender heart in a blender and watches it spin round into a beautiful oblivion. I am your host.

[00:03:02] Did you just quote Eve Six circa 1998? Yes. This is a Valentine's Day episode, and all of our listeners are as ancient as we are. I am your host, doctor of clinical psychology and passionate advocate for healing the hearts of men.

[00:03:21] Edward, joining me today as always is bitter, problematic feminist. Excuse me. An antagonizer of the manosphere with a secret heart of gold and winner of last month's traumatizing episode, Kimberly.

[00:03:37] It was a very close call on that victory, however, with our formal guest judges split down the middle and a lot of passionate voting on behalf of the listeners. Jared in Indiana stated that Edward's story stuck with me.

[00:03:55] Adam Reed said it was some serious depravity and fuckery, which is true. Poor Philip said, and I quote, three month old needle finger McGee. That's it. That was his whole vote. And Terry simply said, holy fucking shit.

[00:04:10] So your story of Japan's secret medical experiments at unit 730 fuck really left an impression.

[00:04:19] My story of the San Quentin prison experiments appears to have won because voters like socialist librarian Brittany and yoga queen Nicole loved that I use words like scrote and coin purse to describe testicles like a hundred times in a single episode because I am a hack.

[00:04:38] If you have no idea what we're talking about, go back and listen to January's episode on human history's long and continuing bad habit of being really unethical when it comes to medical research.

[00:04:52] Special guest Dr. Lucas Trautman and Dr. Elizabeth Nicholson made some amazing points about life in the medical world today that everyone should hear. And if you do know what we're talking about, good news. This episode is significantly lighter and involves zero babies being experimented on. Thank God.

[00:05:17] Anyway, if you're brand new to human fuckery, here's how the competition works. Kimberly and I draw a topic out of a dusty mercury tainted top hat purchased from a haunted shop on Royal Street.

[00:05:30] We each get one week to dig into the archives and find the best story from history's colon that we feel demonstrates the assigned theme. We get another week in the studio to record and score our submissions.

[00:05:43] And then we meet here in human fuckery's fuckery dungeon to present our stories to reluctant judges and have one of us declared the winner. In the process, listeners will, we hope, learn some stuff.

[00:05:59] It should be noted that our intern slash producer slash CEO, Gary the Ghoul, kidnaps the show's judges in the dead of night and forces them under threat of creative death to participate. So listeners should know that judges rulings are suspect at best and always coerced.

[00:06:18] Joining us today are Mia Borders and Kate Duncan, co-hosts of the podcast Great Question. A lighthearted show which brings two great minds to the table to discuss things less horrifying than Kimberly and I do.

[00:06:33] Mia is an esteemed New Orleans soul singer songwriter, one who's written some of the best breakup songs ever to be sung at Jazz Fest.

[00:06:43] Kate is also a musician and educator helping train the next generation of great New Orleans musicians so they too can keep the tradition of genius alive. Mia and Kate have not only been co-workers and co-creators but best friends for years.

[00:07:02] And since this month's episode is about the weirdness of human connection, we are lucky to have their very healthy partnership dynamic in the room. Edward, can you get on that formal announcement thing, baby? The subject of today's podcast is guys and dogs.

[00:07:22] How are we coercing our guests into participation today? Gary was up for hours this week stalking both Mia and Kate online, then carefully constructing effigies of their ex-lovers out of paper mache, horse hair, wax, silk, wire and several party-sized bags of pirate's booty. He's exceptionally crafty.

[00:07:47] He really is. Both women have been bound, gagged and placed in a full-sized bed surrounded by these life-sized puppets while we play boys to men's End of the Road. Over and over again on loop. Great work, Gary. You are one of a kind. It's a tough one, man.

[00:08:07] Edward, I believe your story goes first this episode? It sure as fuck does. A quick note to everyone listening that we use the word crazy broadly and often during this episode. This is not to shame or diminish anyone with actual mental illness.

[00:08:27] Everyone in this room has been there themselves and is about to share some of their more problematic personal stories. It's completely normal to be crazy in some way after the last three years. It's also just really abnormal to pull the stuff the leads of this month's submissions do.

[00:08:46] Well said. He was just a boy when the visions began. Carl Tanzler, aka Count Carl Tanzler von Kosel, was described by many as a brilliant yet eccentric young man. He was gifted, though often misunderstood.

[00:09:07] But the opinions of others did little to dissuade his reporting of nightly visitations from the apparitions of ancestors long since past. It might have been easy for his parents to dismiss these sightings as nothing more than the overactive fears of a child's mind in the dark.

[00:09:28] However, these weren't exactly run-of-the-mill hauntings. According to Carl, his ghosts seemed to serve more as messengers from beyond rather than boogiemen.

[00:09:42] He would often find himself awestruck by what he described as broadcast images of a dark-haired, dark-skinned, exotic woman different from that of anyone he'd ever laid eyes on. Despite this, there was nothing unfamiliar in these visions.

[00:10:02] The conveyances of his ancestors were less a revelation and more of a remembrance of a beloved that lived inside him from before he was born. A memory of someone he need not search for, but instead to someday recognize.

[00:10:21] Even as that love would lead him through the darkest and most unrecognizable places of his life. This was his destiny. The poet Rumi once wrote, quote, The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.

[00:10:46] Lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along. What you seek is seeking you. Mm, what a beautiful passage. I wonder what the prolific 13th century Persian scribe might say if he had any idea of just how many Valentine's Day cards he sold by now.

[00:11:07] Don't get me wrong, I love a tasty spoonful of romance on occasion, and I do buy my fair share of hallmark. But objectively, especially in the glorious month of February, it's fair to question our interpretations of ancient text.

[00:11:23] And consider that traditional notions and pervasive themes found in love stories might have left us just as Rumi described, blind. Maybe what he's suggesting is that each of us are actually born whole.

[00:11:38] And any expenditure of energy traversing the world in search of the missing piece is simply time of our lives wasted. Eruptive yearnings via the unmet needs of our ego projected onto the hearts of the unsuspecting. Efforts to reconcile with our primal wounds.

[00:11:58] Pain we've long ago suffered still rattling through the psyche like a rock in our shoe, eroding the concept that we could ever be enough for anyone.

[00:12:09] But what if the only thing standing between us and a life spent in love is the hallucination that we ever needed anyone else to take us there?

[00:12:21] Sadly, this consideration rarely moves the needle, leaving most of us hopelessly romanticizing a moment of reconciliation with an other that will never come. And eventually, there will be precious little we wouldn't do to have a mere taste of it. Carl's memory became his future on April 22nd, 1930.

[00:12:49] He was born February 8th, 1877 in Dresden, Germany. His love quest hadn't exactly unfurled in the most expeditious manner. By the time he met Elena, he was a seasoned 53 years of age. Graying, bearded and bespectacled, time seemed to have prematurely taken its toll.

[00:13:13] Having traveled many roads, from Dresden eventually leading him all the way to the United States, Carl would then, not surprisingly, become a Florida man. Purporting to have nine university degrees unverified, he took a job working as a radiologist technologist at the nearby Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida.

[00:13:37] Settling into his new life in paradise, he'd kept a relatively low profile for some time, putting in his hours each week and diligently attending to his rotation of patients. But that all changed the moment she walked through the hospital doors.

[00:13:56] Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, aka Elena, was an oft-talked-about local beauty. A stunning 22-year-old Cuban American with dark hair, dark skin and exotic features. The recognition was instant. This was the woman that Carl had been waiting for. The woman from his visions.

[00:14:21] The lover that lived inside him all along. And despite being 30 years older and now married with two kids, Carl immediately became transfixed. But unfortunately what lived inside of Elena was a different story altogether. And the very reason she'd found herself in Carl's examination room that day.

[00:14:44] As the cold stethoscope bit at her skin, Elena's lungs crackled with each inhale. She'd been struggling for weeks with an unshakable illness. It wouldn't be long before the doctors would confirm a diagnosis of tuberculosis.

[00:15:02] A disease still considered fatal at the time and one that had already claimed the lives of most of Elena's family. Oh, what a cruel twist of fate this was. Carl had only just met her and he was already in grief.

[00:15:19] But however heartbroken by the news, he once again would not be dissuaded. And he became determined to save Elena's life. Sparing zero expense in displaying a total irreverence for hospital authority, Carl set out to find a miracle cure for the young beauty.

[00:15:40] He maintained absolutely no qualifications to competently treat her. But he would show up at Elena's family home, offering a variety of tonics, elixirs and illegally wheeling in various electrical equipment and x-ray machines he'd taken from the hospital.

[00:15:56] And as time wore on, he also began showering her with gifts. Eventually professing his unconditional love, he made his intentions known. Now there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Elena ever reciprocated these feelings. But it was of no consequence.

[00:16:19] Despite Carl's best efforts, she would succumb to the cruel disease in just over a year. Now having grown relatively close with her family to a degree, Carl insisted they allow him to cover Elena's funeral expenses.

[00:16:36] They reluctantly agreed and Tansler constructed an expensive stone mausoleum at Key West Cemetery. To express her unyielding gratitude for all he had done and tried to do, Elena's mother gifted Carl with locks of the young woman's hair.

[00:16:54] While also remaining ignorant to the fact that only one set of keys had ever been made to her daughter's tomb. And those keys were in the sole possession of Carl Tansler. After her passing, Carl would use those keys to visit with Elena each night.

[00:17:14] He would serenade her by moonlight, singing Spanish lullabies and claim that her spirit could speak to him. Often insisting he find a way to set her free. He left gifts and even had a telephone installed in her tomb.

[00:17:31] Now much to the discomfort of her family, the ritual persisted for the next two years. And then it abruptly stopped. During this period, Tansler was fired from his job at the hospital for unknown reasons. Over the next two years, his behavior became even more unusual.

[00:17:53] Those who knew him became concerned. He was often spotted about town, purchasing women's clothes and perfumes. And then one night, neighbors reported seeing him through the windows of his home, dancing in apparent ecstasy with what appeared to be a life-size doll.

[00:18:14] These accounts eventually made their way to Elena's family. And in 1940, her sister, Florinda, paid Carl a visit. He couldn't have been more thrilled. Excitedly leading her through his home to the feet of what she thought was an effigy created for her sister.

[00:18:35] It appeared to be a life-sized wax dummy, clumsily constructed in Elena's likeness. Disturbed by the scene, Florinda alerted authorities who would eventually seize the doll. The call that came next was beyond what anyone could have anticipated.

[00:18:55] Upon further investigation, it was determined that this doll was no effigy of the deceased young woman. But instead, the rotting corpse of Elena Hoya herself. Tansler confessed to police that he excavated Elena's tomb in April of 1933, using a toy wagon to transport her body back to his house.

[00:19:19] Over the next seven years, he worked tirelessly to preserve her corpse. An autopsy revealed an extensive list of modifications. To retain the shape of her frame, he used coat hangers and stuffed her torso with rags. He tied her bones together with piano wires.

[00:19:40] He used silk cloth soaked in wax and plaster of Paris to reconstruct her skin and face. Her eyes were replaced with glass prosthetics. As her hair fell out, Tansler stapled a wig to her scalp, along with the locks of hair gifted to him by her mother.

[00:20:00] To mask the overwhelming stench of death, he utilized a combination of perfume, flowers, disinfectants and preserving agents. Doctors also noted that a tube had been inserted between her legs, an effort to reconstruct some semblance of her vagina. The body was primarily kept in his bedroom.

[00:20:22] But when work needed to be done, Carl would transport her to his makeshift laboratory, a room built in the shape of an airplane. He referred to it as Elena's Airship.

[00:20:35] Tansler's plan was to eventually use the plane to bring Hoyos back to life, imagining that he could fly her high into the stratosphere, so that radiation from outer space could penetrate her tissues and restore life to her form.

[00:20:51] After a psychiatric evaluation, Tansler was inexplicably deemed fit to stand trial. He was charged with destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization. However, the statute of limitations had expired and the charges were dropped.

[00:21:10] Before Hoyos' remains were eventually laid to rest once more, her modified corpse was put on display at a funeral home, where nearly 7,000 people came to bear witness. Carl, after asking for Elena's body back and being swiftly denied, lived the rest of his days without much further incident.

[00:21:33] In 1944, he moved to Pasco County, Florida, where he wrote an autobiography called The Secret of Elena's Tomb. It appeared in the pulp publication Fantastic Adventures in 1947. Interestingly enough, through all of this, public reaction to Tansler was more sympathetic than horror.

[00:21:57] He was viewed with pity, seen as a lonely old eccentric. It's possible that this sort of space was made for Carl because, well, folks recognize their own desperation in his actions. His story, with its malformed finger, gently stroked our desire to be loved with such unconditional devotion,

[00:22:19] a love that defies all rational thought, that we may be held for all time, even as we rot and our beloved will never abandon us.

[00:22:30] After all, what if Carl was right? What if his life with Elena was predestined, and his vision served as guideposts towards the completion of his soul? What if Rumi was speaking literally?

[00:22:44] That our lives are mystically and spiritually lockstep with a magical other, a twin flame, a soulmate we've traveled alongside through many lives, each of which carrying the imperative that we find our way back to them.

[00:22:59] If we can return to the other, we can somehow return to the self. And let's face it, it makes for a better story on wedding blogs. I know I may sound like a jaded bitch to some of you, but for every happily ever after,

[00:23:16] there are countless tales of love quests turned fractures, doom disguised as destiny. I'm not asking anyone to turn away from love. However, at your own peril, I'm cautioning you to also not turn away from the many invitations,

[00:23:34] including this story that you'll be afforded to discover that though life is often better spent with someone on our arm, it's not requisite for you to live in love and know that you deserve it.

[00:23:48] Lovers may not finally meet somewhere, but in denial of said invitations, I can assure you, monsters often do. And eventually we discover strange things in the mirror when we seek what isn't seeking us. Karl Tanzler died in 1952 at the age of 75.

[00:24:09] His body was discovered on the floor of his home three weeks after his passing. In his arms was yet another life sized effigy of Elena. Karl, what'd you think? How'd you feel? Karl, Karl, Karl. My goodness. And answer a question for me. I'll do my best.

[00:24:34] How much did Elena actually look like the girl that he had these visions of as a child? Oh, I mean, nobody knows because we weren't inside Karl's head.

[00:24:44] So like he did. So there wasn't like journal entries or like when he wrote his story that was published in like the pulp novella fiction thing, like he wasn't like she looked just like her. Yeah. I mean, he said it was it was the woman.

[00:24:56] It was identical that that when he was a boy, he saw visions of a dark haired, dark skinned woman, very ethnic, very exotic. And considering that he's coming from Germany and everyone is very, very white. Yeah. This was atypical.

[00:25:10] This was like someone he'd never seen before in his life. And so in his mind, like the image very much so stood out. And when he first saw Elena, it was an instant recognition.

[00:25:20] This is her. This is the person that I've been having visions of because, you know, for the sake of brevity and all that good stuff, redundancy and storytelling.

[00:25:29] He not only had this vision when he was a boy, but he also said that during a trip to Italy as an adult, he had the same recurring vision of this same woman that he would eventually meet some years later.

[00:25:43] So it seemed to be a part of his life thematically for for all of his years, all 53 years prior to meeting this gal.

[00:25:50] Yeah, this was so I do want listeners to know that truly like Edward and I had to rename what this episode is called because we did not tell each other. What was the original name that we had?

[00:26:07] We were going to do like weird couples like this was supposed to be weird couples, odd couples, like, you know, like and then we recorded these stories. We're like, I can't believe we both picked stories about, you know, European dudes who fucking made it weird.

[00:26:23] So, yeah, my my jaw dropped when I heard your story, in part because I can't believe that we both picked stories like this.

[00:26:33] Yeah. And but in part because yours is just like, oh, my God, this smell, the the the smell of not only being in a tomb in Key West, Florida for people who don't live in the tropics. Anyone who's never been to Key West? Very human.

[00:26:55] It is. Good God. You know, you yourself, the way the way we smell by 1230 to 1245 in the afternoon with deodorant on it is pretty heinous. So that was a thing. But then like just the sheer amount of effort he went through to preserve her all of those years.

[00:27:16] And like as she kept decomposing, just like patching it up like, yeah, I like, oh, my God. It'd be fascinating to know how much of her was actually left. I'm very serious. She would have completely decomposed after seven years, given the fact that she was likely embalmed.

[00:27:34] Right. But, you know, with all the work that he was doing to it, the reconstruction and he was clearly cuddling with her and glaring. She wasn't just sitting in a box like he was interacting with this thing. How much of this was even Elena anymore?

[00:27:49] Right. And you said they saw him dancing with her. Yeah. Apparently, slow dancing in the window late at night was was Carl's bag. I wonder what his favorite song was. I immediately pictured the end of Avengers Endgame. Oh, my God. Thinking of Captain America.

[00:28:07] You have to be kidding me. Slow dancing in their living room. The camera pans out. And that was exactly what I saw. Oh, my God. I'm picturing this because these two things have nothing to do with each other.

[00:28:19] But the time period, I guess I just believe that like everything around like late 30s, early 40s with like the only song they had to slow dance to was that.

[00:28:27] But in my mind, I probably thought like this was the kind of magic moment that Carl believed he was having. Do you know what I mean? Yes. No, definitely. Well, I thought the exact same thing. So what is wrong with us?

[00:28:41] Yeah, there's something very wrong with both of us. I'll take it to therapy this week. But so let me ask you a clinical psychology question because I don't want us to get hamstrung in the guests section on it.

[00:28:53] But like so like say you're a parent of like a terminally ill young person. How do you feel about this much older white man working in like the hospital, like bringing hospital equipment over and trying to help and like saying he loves her and paying for the funeral?

[00:29:17] Do you think, oh, this is amazing and this is romantic and this is so lovely? Or are you like this is weird?

[00:29:23] I would have been suspect. But at the same time, I would have been desperate for the help, especially if I was the first generation immigrant and, you know, didn't likely have many resources. And at that point, three fourths of my entire family had died from TB.

[00:29:39] And this person is willing to, you know, to share these medical advancements that he supposedly had discovered on his own with his nine university degrees that no one could ever verify. You know, I'd have been like, bro, we'll do whatever.

[00:29:54] Like just but the moment it crossed over into the I love you and I want to give you gifts. And once I saw the writing on the wall and in the likelihood that, you know, my relative probably wasn't going to live at it, I would have said thanks.

[00:30:08] But no, it would it be safe to say that you are skeptical that Carl had nine university degrees? One thousand percent. Yes. Yeah. You think Carl told people that he was an actual count.

[00:30:21] He wasn't actually a count. No, every bit of that evidence indicates that he just hallucinated all of this, that he made it all up. Carl was a really sick guy. He had some troubles for sure. Yeah.

[00:30:31] Was there anything in his backstory about why he might be this fucked up? Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hello, all you spooky nerds. And also normal people with, I don't know, social skills, an air fryer, whatever it is that makes normal people normal.

[00:30:48] We accept all kinds here and we also accept all kinds over on our Patreon. Nice segue. We get it. Everyone's broke. Everyone's got a Patreon and no one wants to fill out yet another online payment form.

[00:31:04] But if you're listening to this show, then you'll actually love our Patreon. It's got all the best parts of the podcast. Weird stories from history's colon underscoring and silly sound effects, dark psychology. And less of the other leftover stuff. Us specifically. Less of us yammering.

[00:31:22] Every month, subscribers get either one or two. You get to pick slickly produced guest free and banter free episodes of Secret Story Time. Our series covering wild stories and case studies ripped from the anals of human history.

[00:31:40] Subscribers also get long form written stories in case you're someone who still likes to read. Early and ad-free access to the usual monthly human fuckery competition show. And the ability to pick what we'll write about or do new episodes on next.

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[00:32:05] It's hard to find a landlord who'll accept a demonic hell spawn with a torture fetish in this market. You can help us keep Gary housed and this show alive by heading over to www.patreon.com backslash human fuckery.

[00:32:19] Just pick a tier, enjoy the dozens of already released episodes of Secret Story Time. And wait till you see what we drop next month because yeah, it's some entertaining fuckery. No, sadly, sparse details.

[00:32:37] It kind of happens that way, especially, you know, you're talking about a hundred years ago. No, totally. Coming from the other side of the world. He wasn't a famous person, so his life wasn't well documented.

[00:32:48] And we know more about the end of his life than we do the beginning of his life, which was the freak show. So how popular is this case in Florida? Like, do people still talk about it?

[00:33:01] Like in New Orleans, we have like weird murder and weird relationship stories that like entire tours are built around. Like, yeah, I mean, it, you know, ghost tours are a big thing here in New Orleans. A lot of the stories are completely manufactured, totally made up. Yeah, definitely.

[00:33:18] There's so many great history tours that you can take. Why not take one that actually has human history in it rather than like, hey, we're just going to focus on stories of dead people. This story shows up on the Key West version of the ghost tour.

[00:33:31] Now, Key West isn't one of those ones that jumps out at you like Savannah, Georgia or. I don't know. Florida man almost always seems like a situation that would be like I would take a Florida man tour.

[00:33:42] But, you know, between Carl's story and the Robert the Doll story that lives in Key West. Yes, you're right. You're right. There's a lot of spooky stuff down there that gets talked about. And he is still heavily featured.

[00:33:57] I believe that his story showed up on a recent HBO documentary a few years ago. One of RuPaul's drag race winners, Sharon Needles, wrote a song about Carl Tanzler. Fascinating. He's been sprinkled throughout pop culture for the last half decade. Oh, man. He's in and out, you know.

[00:34:18] Hey, yeah. This story, this story stuck with me. I read about this probably a decade ago and I was like some way, somehow I'm going to talk about this someday. And I don't know in what context or format, but I'm going to tell this story.

[00:34:33] So here we are, guys. This is a story definitely worth telling. I'm really happy you did. You did a great job. This is this is nuts. Well, thank you. I want to be careful not to talk too much.

[00:34:46] Are you OK with me just putting my story on and then we can get to these guests? Because I like I want to talk to people about these stories with a group. I have one question for you. Great. Go for it.

[00:34:57] Obviously, Elena was not consenting to her corpse being desecrated. Yeah. Excavated after the fact. No, no consent. No.

[00:35:07] What if prior to my death, I told you that over the next seven years, I wanted you to do everything that you could to preserve my body and keep it inside your home with you? What do you think you might say?

[00:35:23] First, I would try and figure out if you're fucking with me, because people at home should know that that is the sort of thing that you would say to somebody just to fuck with them. Come on.

[00:35:33] Then if it became clear that you were not fucking with me, I would do a little deeper digging to make sure that you're mentally stable. And then if those were genuinely your wishes, I would do it. Wow. Yeah, that's impressive. Thank you. I love you.

[00:35:50] I want your needs to be met. And yeah, I would do it. It's fucking gross, though. And I would require that before your death, you would help me find the least smelly, least disgusting way to do it.

[00:36:03] Do you think you would eventually get used to like just seeing my corpse in the corner of your room at night? It's only one way to find out. Okay. Well, let's get on to your story now.

[00:36:17] Oscar peered around the edge of the canvas, studied his muse with a cocked head, then pulled his paintbrush in a sweeping arc down to the left, right and up again, smooth as a pendulum swing.

[00:36:36] He leaned back and scrutinized the result, satisfied he'd captured the curve of her breast in a vibrant layer of cream colored paint. Oscar had been sketching and shading every inch of her for years. It was one of the ways he chose to celebrate the love of his life.

[00:36:56] Across the room, reclined back on the battered green studio couch, his muse gazed back wordlessly. Today she was enveloped in a royal blue coat fastened underneath her ample bosom, dark hair pulled back and tied off her face. She'd been there for hours now.

[00:37:15] Painting can be tedious work, a time-consuming combination of being intensely examined and ignored entirely. But such is the price of being painted into immortality. On a cluttered table not far from Oscar's elbow lay a pile of old books and magazines.

[00:37:33] A battered copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses rested on top, tented open to the myth of Pygmalion. In case pandemic trauma has replaced your memory of ancient Roman poetry, Pygmalion is the story of a king and a sculptor who falls painfully in love with his creation.

[00:37:52] A statue of a beautiful woman emerging from a block of ivory. As the story goes, the besotted artist begs the goddess Aphrodite to bring his art to life. She does. Pygmalion and the now living statue get married, and everyone appears to live happily ever after.

[00:38:12] As ancient mythology goes, it's about as positive an outcome as you'll get. Oscar loved this story. As the golden light of evening transitioned into inky darkness, Oscar decided it was time to wrap up for the night.

[00:38:26] He stood, crossed the paint-speckled rug, and sat down next to Alma for the first time in hours. He placed one hand in the curve of her hip, fondling the soft fabric of her cerulean coat. She did not return his touch, speak or blink.

[00:38:44] Her eyes, painted on with ink, stared motionlessly through him. He noticed the exposed skin above her coat, its bumpy, uneven texture, the hundreds of feathers which covered her shoulders, neck and décolletage. Oscar felt a great, hollow pain in the middle of his torso.

[00:39:06] The feathers, her lifeless eyes, the coarse horsehair pinned up on her head. The doll in front of him failed to live up to the living, breathing Alma Mahler in every single way. But the real Alma Mahler was gone. The real Alma Mahler was never coming back.

[00:39:29] Oscar scooped the doll into his arms, carried her like a 5'8 baby down the narrow studio stairs, walked the hallway to his room and placed her in his bed. Then he crawled in next to her and cried angrily until he was asleep.

[00:39:48] Our mildly unhinged tale of woe begins in Berlin at a fancy party in 1912. That's the night Oscar Kokoschka threw on his cheap, threadbare jacket,

[00:40:01] slipped a sketchbook into his pocket and dragged himself to the rich section of Berlin for a gathering hosted by famous landscape artist Emil Jacob Schindler. A broke but genuinely talented painter and writer, Oscar was 26 years old at the time, a contemporary of Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt.

[00:40:22] Together, they would help cement Germany as one of the 20th century's most important artist enclaves. With his long, striking face, side-parted blonde hair and intense blue eyes, young Oscar was a hottie.

[00:40:38] But he also had a reputation in the scene for being a bit of a beast in social settings, careless with words and brash in conduct. He'd gotten an invite to Schindler's party anyway, however, and wasn't likely to meet a wealthy patron for his work sitting at home.

[00:40:55] So he went and he ended up being very glad that he did. Sitting at the center of the gathering at the family piano was a bewitching woman wearing the veil of a widow in mourning.

[00:41:10] She sang as her pale fingers danced skillfully upon ivory keys, voice clear and painfully romantic as it emerged from underneath the dark lace of her headpiece. Oscar pulled out his sketchpad, found a seat, and began drawing.

[00:41:27] Alma Schindler Mahler was 33 the night she noticed Oscar Kokoschka drawing her in her stepfather's parlor while she played Liebestad from Tristan and Isolde. She recalled a quote, handsome figure, disturbingly coarse end quote, watching her with intensity and sketching with equal focus.

[00:41:49] This was not the first time such a thing had happened to Alma. A composer, pianist and writer born into a family of well-moneyed creatives, she'd been attracting the attention of male artists for years.

[00:42:02] She'd even married celebrated composer and leading conductor of his generation, Gustav Mahler, bearing him two children. But he died quite suddenly of heart disease in May of 1911, leaving Alma behind to swathe herself in black lace and play sad songs in public.

[00:42:21] One of the more famous muses in history, Alma Mahler looked like Melanie Linsky mixed with a dash of Rachel Weisz. She had heavily lidded blue eyes and a Mona Lisa smile.

[00:42:33] She also had big old boobies and the donk of an Instagram goddess, something we know because eventually Oscar painted her naked a lot.

[00:42:42] The pair started chatting. And by the end of that night in 1912, he had, quote, pulled me into his arms into a strange, almost shocking and violent hug, she wrote. He recalled in his writings that Alma, quote, seemed to have fallen in love with me at first sight.

[00:43:02] End quote. By the next day, Oscar had proposed marriage. Alma declined to the wedding, but fell into his bed anyway. If there's anything consistent about human behavior across millennia, it's that some people get wild horny for a messy relationship.

[00:43:20] Who can blame them, really? Love sickness dumps so much adrenaline to the human bloodstream, it can feel like doing whippets while hang gliding. Intensity gets humans high as fuck. And most of us are unaware that intensity and healthy love are not the same thing.

[00:43:39] So it's no surprise that sexy, grieving widow Alma and hot, broke young artist Oscar, two lonely souls at difficult points in their lives, found something they needed in the other. They were not particularly well matched. Alma was a famously charming conversationalist, witty and elegant.

[00:44:01] He was brooding, insecure and arrogant at that time. Alma was older and financially stable, paying for everything the couple did.

[00:44:10] He was seven years her junior, still eking out a career and seemed to bring nothing but dick, paint and chaos into her life, which initially she was fine with. Never before had I savored such a convulsion, such hell, such paradise, she wrote of their coupling.

[00:44:31] They banged. They wrote intimate letters. She told him about how her dead husband shat on her songwriting and forced her to focus solely on motherhood. Oscar told her she was brilliant, beautiful and the greatest muse any man could hope for.

[00:44:46] He painted her naked, dressed, standing, sitting, reclining. They fought, made up, fucked, repeated. Oscar's paintings of her also started garnering critical attention, in part because they were of Alma Mahler and in part because they were very good.

[00:45:02] But as the months wore on, the pair assumed the excruciating dance of the anxious partner and the avoidant partner. Oscar grew jealous and weird, proposing marriage over and over. He kissed the photos of her dead husband Gustav, marking them with saliva like a dog.

[00:45:22] He spied on her apartment at night, policed who visited her when he wasn't around and wrote her angry letters when in his feelings. His need to paint her became compulsive and controlling rather than creative. And she started to withdraw.

[00:45:38] I must have you for my wife or my genius will self-destruct. You must resuscitate my soul each night like an elixir, he wrote to her.

[00:45:51] Friends began to worry about the wellness of both parties. Alma's mother even told her daughter if she, quote, saw Oscar again, I'll shoot you dead, end quote. Finally, around a year into their entanglement, Alma came to the table with a proposal.

[00:46:08] She had planned a solo trip to Bohemia to work and relax. If Oscar painted a true masterpiece while she was gone, she would put his fear of abandonment in its grave and marry him.

[00:46:22] Oscar called her bluff. The Bride of the Wind, a self-portrait of Kokoschka and Mahler created in 1913, was critically acclaimed and remains one of Oscar's best known works today.

[00:46:36] The painting, which you can Google while listening to me, is a shrine to the pair's tempestuous relationship. Adrift in a choppy sea of dark water, Alma sleeps soundly on Oscar's chest, the pair in a naked embrace.

[00:46:53] Next to her, a gaunt, anxious-faced Oscar lays wide awake and fiddling nervously with his hands. It was a masterpiece. It also turned out to be an accurate portrait of where the couple really was.

[00:47:08] Despite meeting her ultimatum, Alma wouldn't marry Oscar once home. The time in Bohemia had allowed her room to think, and she was dismayed to find her love's obsessive tendencies had only intensified with her absence.

[00:47:23] Alma told Oscar his passion was consuming her life and that they could only see each other every three days. It's unclear whether this was part of letting him down easy or a genuine effort to build space for the relationship to become healthier.

[00:47:39] But either way, Oscar made it weird. He started wearing one of her old red nightgowns around his studio day in and out, even receiving guests in it. Then Alma accidentally got pregnant in 1914. Terrified the child would be born into dysfunction, Alma refused to have the baby, terminating the pregnancy against Oscar's wishes.

[00:48:02] When she bled through her dressing gown shortly after the procedure, Oscar took it from her, displaying it prominently in his home and or wearing the blood-stained garment constantly around her, stating it was the last remnant of his only child.

[00:48:20] Finally, he dramatically sold a bunch of paintings, bought a horse, volunteered for the Austrian infantry and charged into World War fucking one, saying he'd rather die on the front lines than be tortured by the pain of what Alma had done.

[00:48:40] He almost accomplished this, getting shot in the head and stabbed through the lung with a bayonet in 1915. It's unclear how long exactly Kokoschka was stuck in the hospital, first being treated for the bullet in his head, then for the lung wound, and finally for shell shock, which is fair, but we know he got home around 1916 to 1917.

[00:49:04] There, he found Alma Mahler was now Alma Mahler Gropius. She had married old flame and friend Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus, while Oscar was gone.

[00:49:18] It is at this point that some writers say Oscar's brain exploded. This considering he'd been shot in the head semi-recently seems reductive, but it's fair to say coming home from a traumatic brain injury summer camp to learn your ex married some rich architect in a bow tie while you were gone is gonna be terrible for anyone's mental health.

[00:49:40] His muse, the living goddess whose music had filled his ears and body had been replicated in literally hundreds of pieces of his work, was gone to him forever. It was as if he'd been stabbed with the bayonet all over again.

[00:49:57] Oscar handled the news by deciding to get a life-size doll of Alma made, then live with her.

[00:50:05] Now, some historians say everything I'm about to tell you is just a performance artist doing performance art. Others say he was a nutball obsessed with possessing Alma Mahler by any means necessary.

[00:50:18] The only thing anyone knows with certainty is that Oscar hired an avant-garde dollmaker and seamstress who once made gowns for Alma to make the first ever real doll of his ex. Her name was Hermione, Hermione, Hermine, I have no idea, Muse, and while she was a little creeped out by the commission, she needed the money.

[00:50:42] Oscar took the designing of his new muse deadly seriously. He nicknamed himself Pygmalion and renamed Hermine Aphrodite, like in the Ovid poem. He mailed dozens of nude sketches and paintings of Alma along with pages of written instructions to Muse, including this one.

[00:51:06] Yesterday I sent a life-size drawing of my beloved, and I ask you to copy this most carefully to transform it into reality. Pay special attention to the dimensions of the head and neck, to the ribcage, the rump, and the limbs.

[00:51:22] And to take heart, the contours of the body, the line of the neck to the back, the curve of her belly. Please permit my sense of touch to take pleasure in those places where layers of fat or muscle suddenly give way to a sinewy cover of skin. The point of all this for me is an experience which I must be able to embrace.

[00:51:50] He also said,

[00:51:52] Although I feel ashamed, I must still write this. It remains our secret, as you are my confidante. The partes hontusis must be made perfect and luxuriant and covered with hair. Otherwise it is not to be a woman but a monster, and only a woman can inspire me to create works of art, even when she lives in my imagination only.

[00:52:19] It's private letters like this, and also the one where he asked if Moose could make a mouth that opens and put a tongue in it, that make it feel like the whole, oh, Oscar was just a rascally artist doing theater theory feel inaccurate.

[00:52:35] Around January 1919, he sent an especially weird message concerned about whether Moose was working secretly enough, taking enough care to prevent anyone from seeing or touching his creation.

[00:52:49] I would die of jealousy if some man were allowed to touch the artificial woman in her nakedness with his hands or glimpse her with his eyes. When, when shall I be able to hold all this in my hands? Oh, Oscar.

[00:53:06] While he waited for his creation to arrive, Oscar ordered fine custom lingerie and gowns to dress his new muse in, and allegedly hired a ladies maid to style the doll's long brunette hair in the latest fashions.

[00:53:22] In February 1919, a large coffin-like box from Hermine Hermione Herm, Herm, Moose finally arrived at the home of Oscar Kokoschka.

[00:53:34] He tore into it with shaking hands and mad enthusiasm, scooped out the sawdust, pulled back a sheet and found something closer to a Japanese body pillow of Joan Crawford than a replica of Alma Mahler.

[00:53:51] He'd asked explicitly for the skin to be made of palest silk. What he'd gotten instead was a human covered in swan skin with the feathers still attached. Possibly because wartime shortages meant silk was not available, but possibly because Moose by now hated her patron and didn't want him fucking her artwork. No one knows.

[00:54:17] Oscar ran to his writing desk and began a scathing roast of Moose's creation, which he then sent to her by messenger, saying with deep unhappiness that

[00:54:27] I was honestly shocked by your doll. The outer shell is a polar bear skin that would be better suited for a fake fuzzy bear bedside rug. For the suppleness and smoothness of a woman's skin.

[00:54:45] But because weird love is unconditional, Oscar committed to keeping his imperfect Alma doll despite her weird, pelt-like skin and lifeless eyes. For the sake of any confusion, I will heretofore be referring to the creation as Dalma.

[00:55:01] Allegedly, anyway, Oscar had his maid tend Dalma. He paid people to spread word of her arrival, raising some of those questions about whether this was a performance piece or just a guy being nuts.

[00:55:14] He had her dressed in her custom lingerie, expensive dresses, jewelry. Some accounts say the two could be seen in Vienna, traveling in carriages together, sitting in cafes and dining.

[00:55:28] A few sources even say he rented an opera box in Berlin, bringing Dalma as his date and introducing her to others as if she were real.

[00:55:38] And he did use her as a muse, painting the piece referenced at the very beginning of this story, Woman in Blue, as well as Painter with Doll and At the Easel.

[00:55:51] But after around a year, Oscar's fetish flamed out. He wrote that the quote, very thingness end quote of Dalma and all the ways she failed to be Alma cured him of his obsession with both.

[00:56:07] And so he did what any rational heterosexual man of culture does when breaking up with his creepy sex doll. He threw her a death party. A chamber orchestra from the local opera was hired. Formal invitations were mailed to Kokoschka's friends and peers and cases of fine champagne ordered.

[00:56:28] Courtesans and glitterati descended upon Oscar's home in their finest attire to see the quote, silent woman, as Dalma was called. A pretty young servant paraded the lifeless creation around like a model at a fashion show.

[00:56:44] Oscar, exceptionally drunk, ordered the orchestra to play a waltz, then danced with the puppet in front of everyone. Finally, out in the garden near a Baroque fountain, Oscar ritually beheaded Dalma, smashed a bottle of red wine over her naked body and left her there.

[00:57:03] We were all drunk, he said. The next morning, police woke up a very, very hungover Oscar and several still drunk guests sleeping on the furniture.

[00:57:15] Apparently, a resident in another apartment had seen the limp, wine-stained and headless body of Dalma and believed that the mad Kokoschka had finally lost his shit and murdered somebody. All parties were relieved to find it was just Oscar being weird again.

[00:57:33] Still Alma Mahler went on to divorce Walter Gropius, then remarry a third time to novelist Franz Werfel. She had a bunch of torrid affairs too, which we'll tell you about some other time.

[00:57:46] In old age, Alma and Oscar reconnected, sexting each other via handwritten letters sent from the UK, where he had moved, to her home in the United States.

[00:57:58] If I ever find the time, I'll make you a life-sized wooden figure of myself and you should take me to bed with you ever again sometime. Live for it, my unfaithful love, he wrote to her.

[00:58:16] Alma's reply? How could we ever have separated since we were made for each other? Just a reminder, everyone out there, that now's a great time to sign up for therapy, if you haven't already.

[00:59:04] I don't know if I would have been able to extract, I mean, because just, oh, it's so sad. It's so sad. Both people were so mentally unwell, so emotionally in pain, so tormented, but like I could see myself in both of them.

[00:59:26] And so like, I really, like, I felt very moved and horrified and affected by the story. But like, thank you. I worked quite hard to try and pull some levity out of it, in part because last month's episode was so devastatingly difficult to listen to.

[00:59:41] But in part also because as much as I feel for both of them, and it was really painful, like, it is fucking nuts. Like, artists do crazy shit and throughout history we love highlighting crazy artist stories.

[00:59:58] And like, they called him the mad Kokoschka, like, and he seemed to kind of dig it. He didn't seem offended by it. Do you think he leaned into the persona?

[01:00:08] I think he did. I really think he did. Now, granted, I wasn't there. I had no interactions with him.

[01:00:15] I could be projecting. That could be incorrect. And also, as I tried to highlight in the story, this is a person who experienced getting shot in the head and stabbed through the lung on the front lines of World War I when like there were no drone strikes.

[01:00:31] Like, it's like, you know, you were really, war was war, like in the trenches. It's like, you know, good God, you know, that's the thing.

[01:00:39] And so I could be incorrect, but I do think that, you know, I quoted that one point in the story where it says he had a reputation of kind of being a beast. Like, he was a provocateur. He liked upsetting people sometimes.

[01:00:53] And so that would suggest to me anyway, that he might have been interested in leaning into this.

[01:00:58] And there is, you know, a little evidence here and there. Like I mentioned, you know, like paying people to spread word that he had this doll now and paying people to share the detail that he had made for the doll.

[01:01:11] Like, that would suggest somebody leaning in. But also if you have like real bad brain damage and you've become delusionally obsessed with your ex, like that might be a way of wounding her.

[01:01:21] Like, I'm not trying to get attention or be known as the mad kakashka. I'm trying to get word out so it gets back to Alma that I have a doll of her because I'm still so in love with her.

[01:01:32] And I don't know if that was about humiliation for him. I don't know if it was like a way to try and get her attention and just like acting out to lure her back.

[01:01:40] I don't know what it was about, but it sure was interesting choice. He did make it weird.

[01:01:43] So, you know, I guess we can agree or we can look at this and say at least in part, these were antics. These were theatrics. Now, do you think behind closed doors there was any sort of sincere intimate relationship with this inanimate object?

[01:02:00] And I'm not talking sexually. I'm talking about legitimate emotional transference. I think that that was one thousand percent the point. And his letters make it really clear that that's what he was going to do.

[01:02:15] But I think that Ms. Moos threw a wrench in that whole plan for him with the skin because I don't think he was able to do the emotional transference once he saw what she looked like. Sure.

[01:02:26] The section of the story where, you know, he's saying it looks like a bear pelt that should be next to a bed. He was really upset with the doll that he got. Sounds like he had a lot of high expectations for what could be made at that time.

[01:02:44] I'm happy that you said that. There was a historian, an art historian who wrote a paper about this and, you know, they were kind of experts in like what was available at the time, what things were made out of.

[01:02:57] And they said Kokoschka was completely delusional in his request. Moos didn't work hard enough to manage his expectations. And there was no reality until about 10 years ago in which the doll that he wanted could have been made.

[01:03:13] We are indeed making and selling the type of doll that he was looking for now to people. We absolutely are. But what he wanted was a hundred years away from being. And so he was going to be unhappy with whatever he got.

[01:03:26] But if you have not already Googled the Alma Mahler doll, go do it right now and you will see that I think it was probably very difficult for him to emotionally project on her because he was genuinely disgusted by the doll.

[01:03:41] Although the paintings he made of him and the doll were, you know, kind of they're weird, but they're also very impressive.

[01:03:49] If you're into like weird expressionist paintings. What did you think of his choice to keep the doll and like try and make the best of it for a while?

[01:04:01] I mean, I guess once once he paid for it, you know, might as well see what kind of mileage he can get out of it.

[01:04:09] I mean, it is scandalous to some extent, especially paying people to kind of spread the word about it that this crazed artist is creating these images of Alma Mahler, except this is a doll because she left him. It makes for a great story. It really does.

[01:04:28] And it seemed like he was at least slightly aware of selling that angle and recognizing that the relationship he had to this woman was the launching pad for the success of his art career.

[01:04:40] Yeah, he was like it wasn't like, oh, I'm bitter because people say I'm only famous because of Alma. Like he's like she is the muse with which all of my artistic ability funnels through. My future is attached to her. Like I can't paint if I can't have her.

[01:04:58] The only paintings that I have that are any good are of her. Like he was all in on Alma Mahler like being the foundation of his entire career and his success. But it also created an obsession with her and a dependency on her.

[01:05:13] That's actually like an incredibly unhealthy dynamic. Like if you can't create, if you don't possess. One thing that really skeezed me out about him is that he seemed very excited in his letters about the doll.

[01:05:29] One to fuck it. But two, because he seemed to really be a guy who was like, I think he's a guy who would have joined the manosphere with great enthusiasm. But no, he really wanted a more submissive Mahler.

[01:05:45] Sure. And he was very angry with her for not being submissive. And so the fact that he got obsessed with a possessing a version of her that he could completely control like that really skeezed me out. I was like, that's gross, dude.

[01:06:00] But do you think that between your story and my story, like we have do you think that we have some characters here who were guys who were kind of getting off on the idea of like, I just want like a seen and not heard woman.

[01:06:13] And this is the way to have it. No, no. I think in Carl's case, it was a matter of circumstance. Him creating this effigy out of a corpse and as a way of trying to preserve what little he felt he ever had of this person.

[01:06:31] I don't think it was about, oh, I want this scene and not her. It sounds like he had a relatively submissive, inagreeable wife already that he left. That's right. Right. He had a child, the whole nine yards. Fuck, I forgot about that detail.

[01:06:46] She contributed to his care later in life, even after all of this was public and good for you, lady. I mean, it's... Is it? I mean, to be... It doesn't sound good for anybody. Okay, look, if it harmed her, no, of course.

[01:07:01] But to be able to find that kind of space, grace and forgiveness for another person to look at them and likely say this person is sick, but I love them anyway. I mean, she kept her distance.

[01:07:12] They didn't move in together or anything like that, but she still cared for him. And I think there is something admirable in that. You know, for Oscar, it does seem like he found a scenario that was unwinnable for him. And that was the point.

[01:07:26] He was looking for something that he could never have. He created a dynamic that was never attainable. This woman was never going to be this version of a woman that he idealized. And it wasn't even necessarily that he idealized it.

[01:07:41] I think the inclination towards maybe wanting to break Alma or make her become more submissive is just because of that itch and that urge, that fiery, intense compulsion that we have.

[01:07:55] That if we can make this person who does not love us, love us, then we can reconcile with our haunted past and we can now believe that we ourselves are lovable. She did love him. She just couldn't be with him because of the way he acted.

[01:08:12] I mean, what do you think about Oscar's choice to take the nightgown that she bled on after the abortion and lay it out where she could see it constantly and then wear it whenever he was around her? Like, what a passive aggressive dick move.

[01:08:33] You know, I don't know exactly why he was doing it. If it was just for the sake of provoking her. Some people, even bad attention is better than no attention.

[01:08:44] And it seemed like he was getting at that point where he was getting less and less attention from her. Yes.

[01:08:50] And so more of his tactics became about harming her or trying to wound her than, you know, getting back towards that place where they were, where it felt like maybe some of this was reciprocal. It seemed like he was settling, but I'm sure he wasn't satisfied with it.

[01:09:06] But yes, it was emotionally abusive. It was horrible. Yeah, it was not great. You know, you mentioned this in the intro. Would you say that proposing to a woman that you just met 24 hours after meeting her is on par with making it Facebook official after 48 hours?

[01:09:23] No, I think it's worse. OK, great. I think that's great. Good. People that rush into making things Facebook official, you know, like making your profile picture the person you just met like a week ago. You know, there that's intense and should be evaluated.

[01:09:41] But proposing the day after you meet someone. I mean, he could have rolled the dice and gotten lucky. We hear anecdotal stories about it and we point at them and say, look, it worked for them. What a beautiful love story. Pam and Tommy. Oh, no, wait.

[01:09:56] Yeah, that's more. Pam and Tommy. But there's no way unless you believe in magic. And I'm not going to shit on that and take that away from anyone else that this person psychologically was not living in total projection. There's no way. Right. Yeah.

[01:10:12] OK, well, I think we have some interesting stuff to talk to the guests about. You want to see if we can get Gary to turn the the boys to men CD off and get these gals in here?

[01:10:25] I mean, I think we can leave it on, but let's wheel them in regardless. All right. Great. Great. Let's do it. Gary. Welcome, guys, to human fuckery. How you been laying in bed all day with the effigies of your former lovers? Comfy?

[01:10:43] It's a two way street of I'm sorry. Yeah. Rekindle any old memories, anything? Not any good ones. Just further repressed. Thank you. Yeah. Good. Good. As long as you disassociate, as soon as you get into the bed, you're usually fine. So it explains half my relationships. Oh, boy.

[01:10:59] That's no. Come on. Are you my ex? It's never too late. Never too late. Well, welcome to the show. We've already done the formal introduction, but it's worth mentioning that the two people dragged in by Gary are like besties, like besties, besties.

[01:11:22] So while you've not yet like made effigies to each other or like done creepy doll stuff, like you do have a close and intimate relationship. We do. Which makes you uniquely qualified to comment on today's stories. I believe so. So have either of you ever been a muse?

[01:11:45] I'm an Aries and an only child, so I presume I'm everyone's muse. Ah, OK. The universe kind of does revolve around me. Right. That is a safe. Right. Yeah. OK. I don't believe I have. Now, wait a minute. Oh, fuck you.

[01:12:03] No one's ever told either of you like you were my muse for this project? I wrote this about you. I painted this for you. I photographed you. No one has ever explicitly said that to me. There have been rumors. Rumors. Rumors. That's bullshit. That's a rumor. It's not.

[01:12:22] You. OK, you can't start the rumor. I didn't start the rumor. First of all, that was a conversation between us. Are you willing to disclose the rumor for our listeners? There's a song by someone that I know that seems to paint a picture. It's not me.

[01:12:36] I need to establish this right here. Someone with curly hair and glasses who may or may not work among books. OK. I worked in the library when I was a student and there is some references. OK. I love this. In released material.

[01:12:55] I'm trying so hard not to just say stuff. Please tell us the name of the song so we can assess for ourselves. No, I can't do that. Please. Well, let's say it was about you. Right.

[01:13:10] Now, upon the discovery that there may or may not have been a song written about you. Were you disquieted or were you flattered by it? There's flattery for sure. But there is a little bit of disquiet in the maybe the lack of transparency and openness.

[01:13:27] And be like, oh, hey. This is about you. But maybe I don't know. I'm not entitled to that knowledge. You would want to know? You would want to know? Oh, hey, this is about you?

[01:13:36] Well, let's turn it over to you because I know people have written stuff about you. No, that's just angry, angry letters. But I'm sure that you know about some stuff. And I'm sure you don't know about other stuff. Technically, that's still very inspiring. Like it's still inspired work.

[01:13:50] It was an effigy, right? Like six metal albums I've written. So, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I'm mad at you. Yeah. No, I'm mad at you is still. Oh, that well never runs dry. Yeah, it's great. I say that all the time. Yeah, I'm still writing about it.

[01:14:03] You've built a career around it. This effigy that I've got next to me. So, thinking about some of our students, I'm sure they've written a few songs about both of us. I doubt that. I hope so. I wonder. We'll ask them. They'll be truthful, right?

[01:14:18] Edward, have you ever been a muse? Yeah. Yeah, I've had quite a few songs written about me. With the swag. Yeah, right? Like, yes, I have. Yes, I'm extremely good looking. No, I mean, it wasn't like initially in my life. It took years and years.

[01:14:32] But the more that I came to know other creative types and what have you, you fall into their path. And you have entanglements and all that good stuff. And eventually, you end up pulling something out of them.

[01:14:44] Some of the songs were about disappointment or heartache or you kind of suck or whatever. But I accept it. It's where anyone is when they write music. It's not necessarily intended to hurt you, but you got to respect that. Mine are.

[01:15:05] I've written a few with the point of like, I can't wait for this bitch to hear this. I've had a few of those experiences in my life. I played one live in my dorm room for my ex-boyfriend. I was like, you come over here.

[01:15:19] I got something to show you. How did that go? It was so uncomfortable. What kind of feedback did you get on the piece? I don't think he fully understood that it was going to be exclusively about him. He was my ex that hooked up with my best friend.

[01:15:38] Which is why I was very wary of getting a new bestie. Yes, she's booed up, so it's okay. Right. Yeah, married people never cheat. So you have nothing to worry about. Yeah. Yeah. So he was like, oh, it was about just me.

[01:15:56] I thought it was going to be about me and her and maybe you. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You fucked up. You earned this one. Did you guys maintain a friendship after that or was the... Yes, actually. Congratulations.

[01:16:11] He's listening now. That's what I'd like to know. I doubt that. We'll send it to him. What about you, Kimberly? I mean, you've been falling in and out of paths with creatives all your life. I have. I have.

[01:16:23] I don't know that I've ever been like amused anybody, but I have had things written about me. I had an apology song written for me. What a rarity. It is a rarity. You can hear it on Michael Cerveris' album. He was...

[01:16:39] He's a wonderful bandmate and absolutely fantastic best friend. And he was a middling boyfriend during the... He had some really great qualities as a boyfriend, but also some challenging qualities as a boyfriend. And then like years after the fact, he wrote me like this kind of beautiful like...

[01:16:55] Nice. Like landscape of like sadness and remorse. And I was like that's a fucking delightful way to be apologized to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Look at you. Man, I just made a new life goal. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's pretty cool.

[01:17:11] I think that I have been an artist, like a visual artist muse, but like very much without my consent. Like... What? I've taken like 6,000 photographs of you. I was just about to ask. I was not talking about you. No, no.

[01:17:26] So when I was in high school, I was in a pop punk ska band. Hell yeah, you were. That was extremely popular in central New Jersey. Nowhere else. Just in central New Jersey. But there was a young man and he drew me a lot.

[01:17:41] And he would bring the things that he drew to the shows and give them to me. And they... The boobs got bigger and bigger and bigger and the outfits got more and more anime babe over time.

[01:17:54] And they were not an adequate representation or even a slightly accurate representation of how I dress. And so over time, it went from being like, oh, like look at this other nerd like me to like, oh no, this is weird.

[01:18:04] And I don't know what you do with these drawings. And I don't want to know what you do with these drawings. It sounds like he really understood you. That's all my essence. My essence is anime babe.

[01:18:14] But I just wanted to have a little bit more consent as far as like what he did with the photos. I feel like he had a real Oscar Kokoschka kind of vibe. Like, you know, there was a thing. But I mean, Edward, you've taken like 6,000 photos of me.

[01:18:27] Would you call me a muse? Of course. Oh, well, that's very sweet. Thanks. Look at that. That's fucking delightful. Look at this healthy consenting. This feels great. See Oscar, see Carl. There's a way that you can do this.

[01:18:42] And all you have to do is just maybe go to therapy, which Edward has done. And just get the consent of the people that you do this with. Are you cool with this? That's a great. Right? Are you cool with this? It's such like a neat, casual.

[01:18:58] And then if they say no, like not having a fucking meltdown about it. I think it's critical. Yeah, just being like, oh, okay, they said no.

[01:19:07] Did you guys see that there was like this week there was a kid who asked a gal in middle school to be his valentine or whatever. And she said no. And so like the whole class was like. And I was like, you know, this is all right.

[01:19:24] So people who don't know is that like his entire class was like comforting him because this girl turned him down. And part of me was like, this is really sweet. We're holding space for men's feelings. And then I was like, wait, hold on. He asked. She said no.

[01:19:36] And then everybody treated him like it was the biggest tragedy that has ever befallen him. And he deserved special attention and care because a person erected a healthy boundary with him.

[01:19:48] And now this girl is like being demonized by people online simply because she said, sorry, I'm not interested in you. They're little too. Right? Like they're young. Like they're like, you know. Yeah. Yes.

[01:19:59] Like and I was like, I think that this is really unhealthy all the way around. I think we're not reinforcing really good messages here. We're two steps away from stealing the keys to a to a morgue and being the sole proprietor of it.

[01:20:11] Putting a telephone in a tomb. Who's calling who? Yeah. So many questions. We're going to get to these stories for sure today. This is this is when we're really going to actually talk about the stories. But I did. You know, the the co-theme.

[01:20:22] So, you know, this is our way of like weirdly digging into Valentine's Day, like in relationship tropes and, you know, different ways of connecting.

[01:20:30] But it's also we would like to talk about men's mental health a little bit because there's there's no way to discuss these stories without touching on issues of men's mental health. So Alma Mahler was the model of fucking mental health. She was absolutely not.

[01:20:49] I'm going to do a whole secret story time episode about Mahler and some of her choices and her chasing intensity. She reaches the end of her life and is like, you know what? We were meant for each other. Why would we ever break up? What the fuck, Alma?

[01:21:06] But she's got so much that she needs her own episode. We're not talking about men's mental health because women are just like walking around crushing it right now and because all non-binary and trans folks are just like winning the mental health Olympics. Like that's that's not the point.

[01:21:22] The point is these stories center around dudes who, because they did not have other outlets, channeled them in some unhealthy ways.

[01:21:31] And perhaps if they had been encouraged to like examine their behavior and may not have lost their partner to begin with, may never have projected a fantasy onto a dead girl. All sorts of other stuff.

[01:21:44] So do either of you have a story about encountering a gentleman who like really needed some mental health support and them not not getting it? That's way too broad. So zoom in. There's a lot of guys. Make that narrower, Edward. Narrow my question. Narrow my canal.

[01:22:06] I would like to know if there's something more relatable to the tales in the sense that there may have been a gentleman who projected his unmet needs upon either of you to the extent that it became a runaway fucking freight train. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[01:22:23] Okay, Kate, tell us a story. This is a storytelling show. No, I mean, I will cop to the fact that I'm also I'm going to circle back Aries only child who thinks the world revolves around her.

[01:22:34] So there were maybe things that I could have seen in this person and I could have not leaned in to that attention or to that interest. I don't I mean, Alma sounds like she did. Yes. Yes. Elena. I don't that whole situation.

[01:22:52] Yeah, she was a lot of questions. A lot of questions. So, you know, I don't know what she was up to with the TV, but she's making the whole thing for it. She was dying. I don't know where she got that from.

[01:23:05] But no, I mean, just men that maybe hadn't been asked to check their emotions in relation to themselves in the world. I'm going to cite a specific person, maternal relationship, the mama.

[01:23:20] And then just also like having some regular discourse with women where you could have a friend and not let that turn into or not presume that that was going to turn into. Yes. All roads don't lead to romance. Correct. Nor do they need to.

[01:23:38] I remember feeling because I've just for whatever reason, always identified more on like I'm better friends with men. Like it's more easy to say like easier access on the front end. Right. Right. Sitting next to a best friend who's not so.

[01:23:52] But like just it's easier to really on the front end. And I always had that hinge of, oh, if I react in certain ways or if. Right. Are they going to think dot, dot, dot that I'm into them and in a more romantic way. Right.

[01:24:08] Are we going to cross the friend zone Rubicon into. Or if you have a partner and then you have a male friend in your life. Right. It's like, no, it's just a, you know, like. Right. All of those things. It's just easier to navigate.

[01:24:21] And I think both of the stories mentioned and talked on like finding love and using that as a definition of a life well lived. If you can look back and say, I had a wonderful partner and I loved them so dearly. Then I've done it, but not necessarily.

[01:24:37] That's such a. It's a very limiting. Yeah. We don't need that. So I'm sure, you know, most people think like, OK, here's my access to romance friend, not friend, whatever. Right. I'm going to go there. So, yeah, I mean, story wise, I don't know. Broken so many hearts.

[01:24:52] Who could who could really tell? I'm kidding. We have an assassin in the room, ladies and gentlemen. So nothing that ever became like truly problematic in your life. I'm trying to think about like police records. No, I don't think so. Damaged property.

[01:25:06] No stalkers, no calls at 3 a.m. Oh, calls at 3 a.m.? Heavy breathing, hanging up. Yeah. Yeah. How about pages and pages of unhinged text? Dead birds on your porch. Yeah, I dated a poet for a very long time. I'm so sorry. Unhinged text. Yeah.

[01:25:25] Fill the blank in there. As a poet, I really had to do a lot of work on myself. Ditto. And like calling yourself out too. I really, really sent too many pages of text to some people in the past. Way too much image.

[01:25:36] I'd like to apologize to all of you if any of you are still listening. To quote my good friend Mark Cogman, who may or may not be listening, when it comes to poets, run like hell. Yeah. I wish 23-year-old Kate would have known that.

[01:25:50] It seems like a great idea. Really, really. It sounds so romantic. You're like, they're going to make art about me. I'll live on after I'm gone. Our love, even if it's fleeting, will have some permanence to it. And then you're like, oh no, we're both crazy. Oh no.

[01:26:06] We just rhyming words. Or not. Or not. Putting line breaks just wherever the fuck you want. Get out of here, Emily Dickinson. You did about six months in before you discovered the siphon hose coming out of your ass, where they're slowly draining your life force away from you.

[01:26:24] I feel attacked. It didn't take that long, Kim. Come on. Oh my God. That was such a vision. I'm there now. Don't want that. So we've learned that Kate has had some experiences, but has handled them pretty well in part because she's a ruthless sociopath. So that's great.

[01:26:45] Congratulations. Like most Aries. You nailed it. Mia, how about you? And do you care to share your astrological side? I'm a Leo, obviously. So you both think the world revolves around you. I run this bitch.

[01:27:05] Now, unfortunately, the only person I've had to call the police on was a woman. And I was so upset to do it because she's setting us all back. You hear that, Kim? Yep. I hear it. Now I hear it. Women can do bad things.

[01:27:21] Next episode, women's mental health. We're going to go there. We're absolutely going to go there. I'm here for everybody to be accountable. I broke the egg. I've got to represent the 20 male listeners that we have. Okay? Yes, we do have a disproportionate. What do I always say?

[01:27:38] Bitches be cray. Yeah. Titties all day. Yes. Oh, I like that. She did it. That's great. She did it on the mic. There you go. I love saying that on our show. Yes, the T word. It's on the board. Trademarked. Oh yeah, no, you can curse here.

[01:27:53] I was a dude who was getting increasingly inappropriate. And it became very clear that if I were to stay, it would have gotten physical because he just had that possessive nature from day one. But I was like, oh my God, he is so passionate. He's so into me.

[01:28:11] Oh my God, I'm so valuable. He just can't stop. Yes. I'm amazing. Also, let me pat myself on the back because I'm slaying it. But that turned out to be just his own stuff in his head.

[01:28:25] And he was projecting a lot of parental stuff on me as well. And so that didn't work out. I said, thank you, no thank you. And he actually respected it, which was the first time. He came back.

[01:28:42] So did you say welcome back or did he just come back? He just came back and then it turned into like, okay, I'm going to block you. Ah, okay. Yes. And then that was it. Okay, well, that's good. That's good. No police, no dead birds. Yeah. That's great.

[01:28:58] Went home. And it was, I mean, we lived in the same sort of neighborhood, so it was. Yeah. I can smell it. And it's such a visceral thing. Edward, you've been harassed by some men with boundary issues. Why we got to go to the men with me?

[01:29:15] What is this? Because Wiccans go equal opportunity. We're not just. We're teens, that's why. Yeah, sure. Yeah. You remember that part where we made the guests tell the story? I remember. Well, look, I've never had a relationship with a man, so I've not had anything that. Yet.

[01:29:36] That was longstanding or interesting from that perspective. Just a lot of unsolicited, inappropriate messages. That's probably the extent of it over the years. Yeah. Nothing to be frightened by. Okay. Yeah. All right. I mean, you're on stage in your underpants a lot, so I imagine.

[01:29:56] I'd say a lot. I only saw it that one time. But there were other times. There were other times before that. And yeah, he did get some very thirsty messages from some people. Who were very interested in what he had to offer on the stage.

[01:30:14] I mean, to be fair to those gentlemen, you know, performance wise, I'm very androgynous. And it confuses the shit out of some people. Hard saying. Most of them make an assumption that I lean certain ways and what have you. And that's okay. I don't blame them for that.

[01:30:33] He sings, he acts, he dresses in drag. I've got this all figured out. Ha ha, you don't. Yeah. No. I fortunately never had to call the police.

[01:30:43] But I did have to have my partner at the time kind of make very clear to a young man in college who was furious that he was not my boyfriend.

[01:30:56] Furious that he wasn't my boyfriend to the point where he got blind drunk and then broke the dormitory floor toilets and mirrors. Like just started smashing shit. Those are built to take a beating. They are. They're basically prison toilets.

[01:31:14] And yeah, he felt his frustration about his unrequited love eventually when I brought my boyfriend at the time to school to hang out turned into like him losing his shit.

[01:31:29] And I remember this part too because he freaked out at me in the hallway and was like, I can't believe you would bring him here. And he was like, I took you to see Wicked, like the Broadway musical. He's got a hook. I mean that is fair.

[01:31:42] And I was like, we're both musical theater majors. So my assumption was that we were doing this to like, you know, it was like 2002. Yeah, we won the tickets in the lottery. Right. Like what we're doing is learning about the crap that we're studying.

[01:31:56] And I know that this was like a, you know, a whole thing. And also I've been like extremely clear with you that I'm not interested.

[01:32:01] Like I've not been ambivalent in like I wasn't like flirting one day and sending nudes the next day and then being like, oh, no. And like it was like, no, we're just friends. We're only going to be friends. And so he he broke a lot of stuff. Wow.

[01:32:14] So that that flattering. I was just mentally ill enough at the time to have a sort of similar reaction. Like, you know, after years of being like very androgynous and like completely uninteresting to the opposite gender.

[01:32:28] Like I had like a two to five year period where I was kind of like crushing it. And then it turned out that that sucked. And I cut all my hair off again was like, I'm never doing that again. That's a that's the road to madness there.

[01:32:42] And so it's just this queer life going going forward. I don't know how hyper feminine people do it. I genuinely don't look. It is exhausting for the short period of time.

[01:32:50] In recent years, even with the short hair, there have been folks that have projected on you that have, you know, relentlessly sent you emails and letters saying like, I know you said you weren't interested, but you're still the one. Mm hmm. That has happened. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:33:07] I mean, there's, you know, there's some people are really into androgyny. I'm just saying in this particular case, that this particular window of time in my life was that kind of like hyper. I was working at Hooters at the time.

[01:33:18] I cannot communicate how feminine it was, like long blonde hair down to the nipples. It's the word of the day. Yeah. You know, like, you know, lots of pink over tweezed eyebrows. This is 2003. You know, it's like the glory, the world's worst decade for eyebrows.

[01:33:35] But yeah, everybody was modeling their femininity off of Britney Spears at that time. And I was I was one of them. I was modeling my androgyny off of Justin Timberlake at that time. Actually, that's a good choice. There's a lot of baggy jeans.

[01:33:49] I was a lot of denim jackets, beanie caps. Yeah, it's a good look. It's still a good look. I love that look for men and women now. Still, honestly, I was rocking it in a parade. This one was not a fan. No, listen now.

[01:34:02] Listen, I was so jazzed about my hoodie and beanie combo. It was warm. I'll give you that. It was so hot. Why do you have a beanie on? Okay, that's fair. But I need, I had to wear my baggy jeans.

[01:34:13] So I was like, I got to finish the fit. No, okay. I have empathetic body heat. If I see somebody wearing something that's going to make them too hot, I am immediately sweaty. I was super comfy. But I appreciate you looking at it. I was uncomfortable.

[01:34:26] My hair was a hot mess. You know what? You gotta do what you gotta do. So for the sake of balance in today's conversation, I think it's all important that we all recognize

[01:34:39] that as much as we're judging the people in our stories and as much as we might be reflecting on some crazy shit some people did to us, we are all very capable of being crazy. Oh, for sure. I waited in a parking lot for someone.

[01:34:51] We'd, fin line over here. So let's all claim, Mia, what's one of your lowest? That was pretty crazy. Super sorry about that. Whoever you were, I probably, that was not my best choice. Can't be accountable for something crazy you did. I'd broken up with my ex.

[01:35:10] We were split, but getting a lot of mixed signals. And I waited in the parking lot. I was still in college, so I was still dumb and didn't have anything to do the next day. It was during finals.

[01:35:25] I waited in the parking lot for her to come back to see if she came back alone, if she came back with someone. And then she saw me and I was like, oh, yeah, it's supposed to be incognito.

[01:35:40] And I tried to speed off in my little blue Civic. And then she immediately called me. It was like, fuck are you doing? I was like, I don't know. That's a great question. I'm going to sleep. Oh, that's that's a great. Yeah.

[01:35:55] So did you start therapy after that? Were you already in therapy? What did your therapist have to say? I probably didn't tell her about that. I don't think I copped to that until like five years later. Listen, here's something that I did. What do we think?

[01:36:15] Like that was bad. I agree. I agree. Can we move on? Great. Have you ever repeated the behavior? No, no, no, no. So accountable. Change the behavior. Did you ever apologize? Did you say sorry for that creepy thing I did? I don't know.

[01:36:33] I think I definitely acknowledged it. I don't know if I said the words I'm sorry because I was also that's also a recent development of mine is yes. We're all learning how to do the words. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just being about over there.

[01:36:50] She's cheering on your personal growth. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. Gross. This is long before she knew me. I tell her all the time how crazy I am and how much of a mess I was. Yeah.

[01:37:04] I will say that I apologized in some form or fashion. It was not really received and that's fine. Okay. That's fair. Okay. Most of your stories end in I wrote an essay about it and I love that you call them essays. They are essays. Are they diary entries?

[01:37:27] Do you submit them to journals? Essays. I hear here is my point. Here are the three thesis statements. Three supporting closing statement. As you can see, I was a crazy bitch. In summation, I was being crazy. My thesis statement was that bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks.

[01:37:44] Whoa. Myself included. Wow. What a strong and fantastic thesis statement. I really dig that. Kate, own your crazy. Okay. I was thinking while you were telling your story. I am a very internal, it's all going to be just on me when I go ape.

[01:38:07] I have been so mad at a person that probably didn't deserve it in a relationship that I put my foot through a door. Sorry, mom. I had to buy that door again. Sanding down a door is more work than you think it is. That's actually true.

[01:38:24] It's been more internal on my experience of just going ape shit. I'm so angry about something. I was remembering a time when I was in a similar situation of relationship is either it was over or could we have even called it something to have been

[01:38:44] over and I'm going to check in on social media. A lot of thumbing around on Facebook. Then when you talk to that person again, I was like, yeah, with your sister Celia and then the dog named Bruno that you saw once. I'm so sorry.

[01:39:00] I've outed myself for that kind of crazy. I've clearly been stalking you. Why do you know that my mom's cacciatore is killing on Sundays? I thought it was just a presumption. I don't know. Run away.

[01:39:13] So I think for me, it's more like the extreme reaction that maybe our two stories are going to show my extreme is in my own bubble. But yeah, I can recall being very interested in a certain person's social media presence for way too long.

[01:39:33] Okay. Many times during the day. Let's check in. Let's see. Mom's cacciatore is still killing. And then just accidentally slipping it out like, oh yeah. And then you're with your sister. Yes. So sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Like we'll just end this now. Congratulations. Yeah. I really respect the accountability.

[01:39:52] Good stuff. Yeah. Well done. That's what we're looking for folks. Edward, own your crazy. Gosh. I've had some problematic behaviors over the years for sure. My most unhinged thing I ever did. I was 17. So I forgive myself. If it was yesterday, I wouldn't.

[01:40:12] I would have just jumped off of a fucking building. Oh God. I was like I had like the biggest crush on this girl who I maybe spoke to three times totally. And I wrote her a 10 page love letter. Oh, that's too many pages. Nine too many.

[01:40:32] This is what girls want. Right? This is what we see in the movies. Right. Right. You're an old. Yeah. Make some big declaration of love and it's not going to make someone unsettled or give them an ulcer at all. And so I had it delivered to her house.

[01:40:52] It was really fucking gross. How does it live? I like not a postman. I had it delivered by a friend who was pretending to be a delivery man. Yeah. Did they have a costume? Yes, he did. It involved brown shorts. No, he dressed like a sailor and sang.

[01:41:14] And that was entirely. It was entirely his choice. What is your artistic choice here? I didn't curate the singing telegram. But he just went with it and I respected him for it. Honestly, that was probably the best thing that came out of the whole thing.

[01:41:32] And of course, she never responded. So, of course, I had to call her. Yeah. Oh, you better check in. Just to make sure she got it. He didn't bring it to the wrong house.

[01:41:44] And then I showed up at school next year and everybody knew that I was a stalker. And if every water fountain was filled with bleach, I would have hit everyone. I would have gone through every hallway and just drank. It was mortifying. But you live, you learn.

[01:42:05] You know, maybe it was his song choice, though. I don't think it was your letter. Yeah, I think it's the sailor's fault. The theme song from Oklahoma just doesn't like really get people in the mood anymore.

[01:42:15] Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. It used to in like the 50s. But now, it's a different time. I feel like if you reach middle age and you're not horrified at least by like a dozen things you've done, you're just not paying attention.

[01:42:29] It's fun to make that list at night when you're in bed. Oh yeah, that was fucking crazy. Even if I don't want to, that is what my brain does when it's time for me to sleep. Or if it's time for me to meditate because I'm anxious about something.

[01:42:44] That embarrassing shit I did in second grade, crystal clear. Cannot remember my login for 17 different websites. But I can definitely remember that time in second grade. Yeah. Kimberly, come on. We can't leave you out here. No, we can't. But we got to be careful.

[01:43:03] I had some very problematic behavior. Give us the drama. I'm sifting like a gold panner. Like for which is the biggest nugget that I don't actually, I won't become suicidal if I tell this one on the air. It's a toss up. There was one, you know what?

[01:43:28] Michael, I talked about Michael before. My ex Michael was my bandmate. Michael did do some middling not great stuff as a boyfriend and wrote that apology song about it. So I will say that I was also not a great girlfriend at the time.

[01:43:44] And there was one night where we got into a big fight in his apartment. And we were in our pajamas. It was raining outside. And I just opened up his apartment door, weeping like moaning fucking Myrtle from the Harry Potter movies.

[01:44:05] And in my bare feet, walked from 7th and 23rd to the West Side Highway. In my bare feet, in the rain with Michael chasing after me going, please stop, please stop. You're going to get sick. This is crazy. Just come back and like would not stop wailing.

[01:44:22] And at some point, some cops drove by and saw a wet girl with her shoes off walking down 20 seconds towards the West Side Highway. And said, you know, ma'am, can we help you? And like there's a man following you. And I was just like, he's the worst boyfriend.

[01:44:41] And like, and the cops rolled up the window and just kept going. And I walked all the way to the West Side Highway in my bare feet, weeping and crying like a fucking infant over some shit.

[01:44:55] Instead of just being an adult and being like, this is not healthy for either of us. So yeah, that's problematic. That's not great. Sure. That's not the right way to handle any of that. That's pretty embarrassing. So yeah, now everybody knows that.

[01:45:11] And all these years you have never told me that story. But I wanted to, you know, it's just pretty fucking embarrassing. It just nests right into the book perfectly. I hate you so much. I'm being vulnerable here. Come on, man.

[01:45:28] I sent a fake singing telegram to some girl I barely knew. Yours is hilarious. Mine is tragic. And really, I'm sure if you had had an editor, it would have gone better. You know, it was mine. Editors make the world go round.

[01:45:45] No editor could have fixed what I did like that. That was just fucking nice. The cops were like, NYPD? NYPD was like, oh no, no, we're good. This bitch a mess. So she's a kicker. We're good. In her bare wet, disgusting feet.

[01:46:03] So yeah, so that's a thing that I did. Anyway, you can see me and Michael's band playing this year at Jazz Fest on the Laniap stage on May 4th. Man, I like that. I appreciate everybody's openness. Yeah, I think this is good. You know, the idea is that...

[01:46:21] I feel like I'm at Al-Anon or something. If you can't admit that you did something, like it is okay to be struggling with other people's mental health struggles, but you have to own that they're universal. Everybody fucks up. We are all capable of being unhinged.

[01:46:37] So like when people get really self-righteous, even myself, it's good to check yourself and be like, remember this? I think everybody should carry a list of five of the dumbest, stupidest, most unhinged shit they have ever done

[01:46:51] so that when they're really like, I'm better than you, they can look at the list and be like, but we're all human. And we're all... We all deserve compassion. For the sake of humility and not shame. It's just there to be like, I'm a mess also. Okay.

[01:47:07] Yeah, I feel you. Cool. Well, why don't we get into these stories? Let's get in. Edward, you went first. Why don't you engage the guests about the tale of Carl. You son of a bitch. Oh, Carl. Carl Tanzler. Where to begin with Carl?

[01:47:27] If either of you had TB, would you have wanted him for your radiologist technologist? As somebody who struggled with a lot of upper respiratory issues as a young child. Strong intro. I was the kid in the tent all the time. That's me.

[01:47:44] Well, he would have went all out to help you. He would have been very helpful. I did like, I just want to point out, I love when a young child is pointed out as misunderstood.

[01:47:55] Like that word is just such a red flag of like, oh, some shit's about to go down. Yes. Yeah. 100%. Well, you know, brilliant kids I think often are misunderstood for sure. I sure was.

[01:48:08] If they don't get positive mirroring, they can definitely grow up to be a bit strange. Yeah. For sure. No, I just love that that's where we started. Like misunderstood young person. I'm like, oh, I fucking got your number. I know where we're going.

[01:48:22] So you never had premonitions or visions as a young girl? I didn't, but I did want to say I have a former co-worker whose son talked to her dead father. And I know this is going to upset the person to the right of me.

[01:48:37] Kids are creepy as fuck, man. Kids are creepy. And then the whole conversation, it just started to devolve into, we worked in a suite that was shared by a counseling center.

[01:48:48] And so it was just people on the break talking and some of the counselors were like, well, that's actually normal. Yeah. And they're like, yeah, young children are able to like divine into other energies and connect more easily as we get older. And, you know, fossilized internally.

[01:49:03] We stop being receptors. As your pineal gland calcifies and you're not tripping your balls off all day long the way a three year old is. All that fluoride in the water. So I didn't have them, but like it's kind of a common thing. Yeah. It's not uncommon.

[01:49:18] I'm not judging, but like the misunderstood moniker. I was like, oh yeah, I know this kid. Well, actually, here's a question before we dive deeper into that. Just first impressions as you were listening to the Carl story, were you like, this is fascinating.

[01:49:33] I felt that what emotions did it bring up? What was the overall feel? I was very upset from the get because I was into it. And then I want to say like halfway through, I yelled, oh, it's this fucking guy. Because. He's familiar to you.

[01:49:52] The vaginal pipe is something that will live in my memory for years. I think I first heard this story, not as beautifully told. It's very confusing listening to that voice say such upsetting things. It's true. It's true. Because I'm a woman. But, ugh.

[01:50:14] But yeah, Carl has has lived in my brain for some time now. Yes. They talk about him not infrequently in Key West. Yeah. Oh, right. Right. Because he was a Florida man. He's on a lot of the ghost tours.

[01:50:30] Yeah. They they talk about Carl and and Elena quite a bit. Oh, oh, we have you ever been to the grave site? No. You should. Next gig, ass. Let's do it. You should do a gig for Elena. She's actually in an unmarked grave like she's she was hidden.

[01:50:49] Yeah. Yeah. So that no freaks or weirdos would dig her up again. Oh, yeah. Because more freaks, more weirdos. And there are plenty of them in Florida to go around. Like wasn't he from Dresden? Was that? Yes. Dresden to Key West. Yep. That trajectory.

[01:51:06] That's not that was the also Oscar taught in Dresden. And so I was like, what's wrong with Justin? What's happening? Yeah. A lot of the weird shit Oscar did before he got to Dresden. So it's not Dresden, but wow. Germans then come on. We talk to Florida.

[01:51:22] Yeah. We talk about Germans. Do we need to? I don't think we do. Yeah. Well, we might. We're going to for the next hour. So we will be talking about Germans or Austrians at least. But yeah. OK, Kate.

[01:51:34] So it sounds like you started to listen and you had, you know, like, OK, I got this kid's number. But like as the story went on, how do what feelings really see this coming? No. Well, so misunderstood was like the first thing.

[01:51:47] And then I felt good about it. Man, upper respiratory issue. This is great. Taking care of family. Oh, fuck. No. What is this with the I pictured like a little red wagon that he was pulling with her. Like, yeah, the red flyer. Yeah. Radio flyer. Radio flyer. Yes.

[01:52:06] Limbs hanging out. Just like fucking seven doors in it. Oh, yeah. Just passing other people's houses. Oh, yeah. Like no problem with that whatsoever. And yeah, the like the I can't even say so. So just Edward and I turn for me. Was he fucking the tube?

[01:52:27] No, he was. Well, look, there's conflicting reports. Is there any evidence that he was fucking the tube? I'm gonna clear it up. Yes, it was there. There was never any admission of necrophilia.

[01:52:41] But there are some people who say that there there was some indication or some evidence to suggest that that's most likely the relationship he had to that tube. It just wasn't released at the time for pretty obvious reasons. OK, gotcha. Oh, boy.

[01:52:59] There's no way it wasn't going down like that. It doesn't make sense as to why it would. Well, you know, I just as a journalist, it feels important not to assume and ask questions. We cannot say definitively, but it does seem most likely.

[01:53:15] I mean, once you move it to a second location, your intentions are nefarious. Right. Right. We all know that. You're not wrong. Detail and precision. And then all I wrote was in my notes to remind myself coat hangers. With like 17 question marks after it.

[01:53:34] It made me think of like, you know, when you've had a thick winter sweater hanging on a coat hanger. And then you get the little humps. Like, I imagine that. Oh, yeah. And then I pictured like the one scene of him dancing in Sun Louet.

[01:53:50] It was this like really macabre Home Alone scene. Yes. Get out of my brain. With the fucking clown that just like looking through sheer curtains and neighbors being like, oh, I guess he got a picture. Like rock around the clock.

[01:54:05] Exactly. And then like just hair kind of like disassembling itself as he twirls. Like I just had a lot of imagery and it was pretty tough by the end, we'll say. Yeah. Yeah. Edward's storytelling was pretty visceral.

[01:54:17] Does your reaction to it change if you imagine yourself as Elena versus Elena's sister? Like, if this was your sister, how would you have felt to discover this? That seven years had gone by. I'm going to lay hands on you.

[01:54:35] I am absolutely committing a felony. I'm committing a felony. I'm getting in trouble. But if it was say your corpse and you're looking down from Sky Daddy Cloud Heaven and what are your thoughts?

[01:54:43] Are you just like, fuck it, have fun? Or do you feel offended? Do you feel like all those elixirs you gave me? I thought you loved me. If y'all don't cremate me, I'm coming back to haunt you.

[01:54:55] Please understand. Hollow me out in case any of my rotted overmedicated organs are helpful to someone. Probably not. And then burn me. Please don't touch me. I feel the same way. I want the people who want some of my ashes for whatever reason to have them.

[01:55:14] I want some to go in the river at like a Tuesday Mardi Gras party. And then I want like after that, whatever y'all want to do with them, great, scatter them some cool places.

[01:55:23] They're all going to end up in the same place. But yeah, if somebody fucks my corpse, I swear to God, I will never leave them alone. And anyone who shares their DNA will be haunted in perpetuity. I will never stop.

[01:55:37] I will put my ghost foot through this ghost door one more time. And then I will not send it down because it's very time consuming to remember. From generation after generation. Edward asked the question I was going to, because like I have a sister.

[01:55:51] And so as I was listening, I was just like, if I ever came into a grown man's home and my dead sister was, and he was like, look what I've done.

[01:56:04] Like there's a really good chance no one would ever find out that it happened because there would just be two dead bodies in that home and I would be in the wind. Gone. Never here for me again.

[01:56:15] I thought about that turn, like of her walking in and if you're sad like that and you know someone else is sad, you're sharing grief. You're probably so excited, like, wow, you did something nice for this person.

[01:56:27] And then that fucking moment that she like turns a corner or however she discovers it. I like to imagine a creaky door. Like he's like, da da da da. And then just the surreal shift.

[01:56:39] And you can hear the person playing one detuned violin string as she realizes what it is. The brain starts to put the pieces together. Yeah, yeah. How did you feel about the news that people, and Edward remind me this was the 1930s.

[01:56:57] Which decade was this around the time that people were talking about this happening? Oh, it happened in the 1930s. Right. Then seven years go by. Close to the 1940s. How do we feel about people in the 1940s being like, poor Carl, he just loved her so much.

[01:57:18] Like I really struggled with that part actually. Listen, I love a beautiful brown girl just as much as the next person. Same. I dream about them too. But she expressed no interest. She met you because she's dying and you're like, right, this is it girl.

[01:57:39] Oh, I finally found you. I'm never going to let you go. Gross. I also like to imagine the mother and the sister sort of talking about Carl and be like, who's this crazy dude who's like paying for the funeral?

[01:57:54] He wants to pay, I mean, take his money, but what? And then it just starts to unravel and they're like, oh, this is way more sinister than we thought. Right. Yeah.

[01:58:05] The layers of trauma, the inability that either of those, that the whole family would have trusting anybody in the medical community ever again. Like, thanks. You just fucked an entire family. I mean, you fucked their corpse daughter and then you fucked the whole family trauma wise for eternity.

[01:58:23] If you take yourself out of it and you don't imagine that it's your sister, like you can feel no sympathy for him at all?

[01:58:29] I can feel empathy for that level of loneliness and I can feel empathy for somebody like when you got to the end of the story and we're like, he had made another doll and was found dead with it.

[01:58:45] I was like in that moment, I felt a little bit of empathy because I was like, this was a human being. They had needs. Their needs clearly weren't met. They obviously needed some help. Like they never got any sort of reciprocal love.

[01:59:01] It sounds like for decades at a time like that is kind of sad. So at the point where he's dead holding this, the second effigy of his unrequited love, I was like, I do feel kind of bad for Carl.

[01:59:13] But what he did and the trauma that inflicted upon these people who had already been deeply traumatized by the loss of this young woman that they loved very much. Yeah, like I can feel empathy and still be like, Carl, what the fuck?

[01:59:28] But like my dude, no, absolutely not. Read the goddamn room. Yes. Like I can empathize, especially with feeling like you found that person. Right. And then for whatever reason, it turns out they're not that person. They're gone. And then shit. What do I do now? Right.

[01:59:47] But fucking a deafening like, come on. Or taking or even hanging out. Why are you hanging out? You got a phone in there. So much touching. Yeah. Wait, what? Can we talk about the phone? Yeah, I think we should talk about the phone.

[02:00:02] Edward, what the fuck was the phone for? Does it ring out? There's really not much more to it. He just had a phone installed, I guess. Was he there so much that like he needed to do business from the phone? Was he calling for pizza?

[02:00:15] I think that it was just in case she wanted to call him. Incredible. That's just unchecked. On the nights that he wasn't there. Or while he was at work or something like that, that she could call him. Because he believed she was communicating with him.

[02:00:35] He also clearly believed in machinery being assistive because this was the airplane, right? We haven't even talked about the fucking airplane. You're right. Why don't we talk about the airplane? That's right, he was going to fly her away or something.

[02:00:48] He was going to use radiation to bring her to life. Frankenstein her into life again. You're right. There is a whole Frankenstein element here that I didn't think of. It makes it that much more of a struggle to be mad at this guy because he's fucking crazy.

[02:01:05] He's clearly got a lot going on. But hey guys, he was passed through clinicians and they said he was cool. They said he was cool. He's fine. Somebody help me. Edward, you're a doctor of psychology.

[02:01:19] How does this man not get diagnosed with something that like how does he or they're like, yeah, yeah, he's got a stanchion. Like he's fine. He's mentally sound.

[02:01:31] Well, I mean, if for that type of thing, you could argue that anybody who does something absolutely heinous is fucking crazy.

[02:01:38] Right. But to to deem someone mentally insane, there has to be an abject lack of awareness for what they're doing, where they are, the decisions that they've made, etc. And so he was very aware. He admitted to it. He communicated very clearly.

[02:01:56] This is what I did and this is why I did it. This is my logic. To me, it is rational sound logic. Here it is like they found him psychologically fit to stand trial, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was psychologically fit.

[02:02:10] Yeah, he was definitely competent and but also he's a white dude in late 30s, 40s. Yeah, he's going to get some easy passes in Florida. In Florida. He was German, though. He was German. Not a good time to be a German in the United States.

[02:02:26] That's fair, but also kind of great time to get hired as a German in the United States. Honestly, we were just yeah, like NASA just fucking loved them some Nazis. So, you know, now would you have gone to the exhibition of her corpse? No, hell no.

[02:02:44] No, it's going to smell. I don't care how many things of perfume you put in it. That smell will never leave your nose. You spray it with CK1 still not interested. Oh, no one is wearing light blue. Soak it to death. No, thank you. Carl Cookie Duke's Tanzer.

[02:03:00] Oh, I hope you found love that is reciprocated wherever you are now. I wonder what his afterlife looks like. It's I don't I don't want to probably look like a botch painting, you know, like it's just like layers upon layer of weird stuff.

[02:03:18] Now, a pulp magazine publishes his autobiography. This was fascinating to me. Let's say I mean, ethically speaking, let's create a parallel to say this show in 2023. Would you have Carl on the show?

[02:03:32] I wouldn't have him on this show, but I am positive that Joe Rogan would have him on his show. Howard Warren Joe Rogan. The platform to tell his story as to why.

[02:03:41] I would be fascinated as a journalist to interview him and try and probe some of the decision making and see how disconnected it was. But like I wouldn't be like, hey, today, what we're going to do is just let Carl talk for 90 minutes. Like that. Yeah.

[02:03:59] And like we're not going to ask him like his opinion on like, you know, American economics or like racial relations or anything. What about you guys? This podcast called Tanzania. Would you have Carl on here? I have some great questions. I have so many great questions.

[02:04:12] So what's the one question you would most want to ask Carl on your show? You go for it, man. I was going to ask you guys if you and this is like sick. OK, right now I'm going to put it out there.

[02:04:24] Love it. I was going to ask him or if you guys had thought about what's the deterioration rate of like actual skin once somebody is dead and then is out in the air? You know, like in the Florida air.

[02:04:38] And so I was just thinking, like, Carl, tell us about like how long that held up. That's what I would ask. OK, that's a good question. Depends on how often and how much to what extent she'd been embalmed. Right. Abraham Lincoln is a famous case of it.

[02:04:57] He had been embalmed so many times when they toured his corpse around the United States after his death that when he was excavated seven years later, he was still alive. But when he was excavated seven years later, he looked exactly the same. So it's like an oil change.

[02:05:12] Pretty much. Yeah. They replaced the blood. You could say that went under the hood. Yeah. Do all the right. Yeah. Yeah. But also remember, he was he was fucking this corpse. So that's some wear and tear. There's some wear and tear on this.

[02:05:27] I mean, did you guys look at the photographs? No, no, no. I have at a point in my life. It's so upsetting. No, I have been in treatment for PTSD for years. I don't need to go backwards.

[02:05:43] Maintenance is what I would really want to ask him about because the first couple of things he tried in terms of like recreating her skin didn't work or something. And so then he was like, oh, do the silk and put some wax on top.

[02:05:57] Like, what are you doing, bro? My coat hangers. What was your relationship like with your mother? What would you have used besides coat hangers? I don't know. Like, hey. OK. All right. Why was I that ready to say? I'm going to fully cop to like what the fuck.

[02:06:14] Hair curls? Why not? I mean, I mean, bedding and they use horse hair inside Alma's doll. So, I mean, but we'll get there. Yeah. I'm just going to apologize for how easy that was for me. No, you know what? Good for you. You know, you're a problem solver.

[02:06:30] Yes, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. You know, and I think it's important to highlight again that you're an educator shaping young minds. So like, we see. Yeah. No, this is good. She's got answers. She's thought things out. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is really great. All right.

[02:06:49] Edward, my final question before we move on to the next story is, do you think that any amount of psychotherapy would have been able to help Mr. Tanzer? It that will depend on your definition of help.

[02:07:05] If we're talking about outcomes, I mean, the man never hurt anyone ever again in his life. He never desecrated another corpse. He never excavated another grave. It seemed like his obsession just focused centrally on Elena Hoya. But it seemed like it harmed him and her family.

[02:07:24] So it's not like no one was harmed. Oh, no, no, no. I'm saying after the fact. Right. And look, therapeutic interventions, obviously you want to help people reconcile with their past decisions, integrate to become a better person going forward.

[02:07:39] But some people will just say, look, as long as this person doesn't cause any more trouble, we can say that this is a therapeutic success. If this person doesn't do any more messed up stuff, we can say that they are redeemed and they are.

[02:07:52] He did build another effigy to her. They've been rehabbed. Sounds like he may have been fucking. But I mean, if he just started with the effigy, the straight up effigy. Right. Never stole the corpse. Never touched her real body. Right. All right, fam.

[02:08:08] It's weird, but it's weird as hell.

[02:08:10] But I think his psyche was likely so fragile that getting close to the realities of what he had done and whatever had happened to him in his past that compelled him to make some of the choices that he did, it probably would have caused more harm than it would have helped.

[02:08:30] I'm curious about the H.R. meeting because you're saying nothing happened after that point. But the H.R. meeting at the point where he was fired from his job, right? Under sure. Undefined. Yeah. What was he up to? I mean, they might have just been anything.

[02:08:46] They might have figured out that he had taken machinery. Yeah. Like pencils or something like that. Who knows? It sounds like he was pilfering like radiology equipment. Yeah. Like that's, you know, that feels like grounds for dismissal.

[02:09:00] Like, hey, did you take this ultrasound out of the hospital and bring it to a young Cuban woman's home and then use it on her without our consent? Like, yeah. Yeah, I did do that. And they were looking for stuff. Yeah.

[02:09:15] Like we've got to get him out of here. Right. He took a lot of Post-it notes. We got to let him go. Man, that is our whiteout, Carl. I'm really sorry, but this is the end of the road. Terms of your employment do say right here, Section A.

[02:09:28] OK. All right. Well, shall we move on to a should we move out of Key West and into, you know, Europe circa World War One-ish? I'd be mad if we didn't. Great time. Great time to be there. So, OK. Special guests.

[02:09:46] What were your initial thoughts, feelings as you dove into the story of Dalma and Oscar? Well, I'll say I was amused and frightened because I saw the title of the story. And some people don't like or fuck with dolls at all in any shape or form.

[02:10:09] I know some of those people. Oh, there's one in the room. And so I was like, hey, pedophobia. Let me listen to this. You did give me the heads up. Like that's what a best friend does, though.

[02:10:23] I assume if it was some shit about clowns and or snakes, you'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me just give you the CliffsNotes. Yeah. And then it turns out, in my opinion, the doll, I would much rather hang with this doll than Elena. That's for sure.

[02:10:38] The smell seems to have been significantly better with Dalma than it was with. Dalma probably smelled like rose water on a spring day. Yeah, no, that's beautifully said. What's that face about? So Kate's not into dolls? No. You just listed what's the actual...

[02:10:58] Pedophobia. The irrational fear of dolls. It's a real thing. If you are mimicking a human behavior, even like Teddy Ruxpin can fuck right off. Teddy Ruxpin? He's pretty terrifying. Why are your eyes clicking and blinking? It's terrifying. And like Chucky and then that leprechaun movie.

[02:11:21] All those things that are anthropomorphic that shouldn't be. Annabelle. I'm going to lift both feet off the floor right now. No. And so you gave me the heads up because you saw the email first and I was like, yeah, all right.

[02:11:37] It was very much like an, oh no! What did I just get us into? But to me it wasn't... It wasn't about that. It didn't feel like the same thing as what... I'm still trying to lift my feet off the ground about thinking about Teddy Ruxpin.

[02:11:53] To me, I didn't see a correlation of what I fear when you're going through the small world. I think of it was the sheer weirdness. Did you look at her photo? Did you see the photo of her doll? Oh my God, you did? I mean that helped.

[02:12:11] She really did look like Joan Crawford. So for me, that really took some of the terror out of it. 1000%. It's like they put a Joan Crawford mask on like a human chicken hybrid and then we're like, here, this is your sex doll.

[02:12:24] We'll get into how heroic I think Ms. Moose is for the choice. I was like, Ms. Moose, fuck this dude's plan and I am here for it. Yeah, so sorry I interrupted you.

[02:12:41] No, I have a bias because Gustav Mahler happens to be my favorite composer in that world of... I like romantic compositions and his contemporary Richard Wagner was actually a hero of Alma, I learned. And they were bitter rivals, Gustav and Richard.

[02:13:03] So I automatically had sympathy for the whole situation. I was like, man, that second symphony is beautiful. Went so far out of the scheme of what was actually happening with this man and the chicken feathers and the skin that was dimply.

[02:13:19] Then I was like, okay, well let's see how this plays out. Right? But no, it was painted on eyes. I mean, I don't know. It's a little scarecrow situation. It was a little scarecrow-y. Yeah, it was a little scarecrow-y.

[02:13:35] Something that's interesting since this episode is men's mental health adjacent. When Alma Mahler and Gustav were still married, but she was banging Gropius, who she eventually married on the side, Bauhaus bow tie guy. For those who don't know all of this weird German art history.

[02:13:52] When they were on the outs, Mr. Mahler went to Sigmund Freud himself and said, my marriage is in shambles. What should I do? And Freud was like, uh, did a big old line of cocaine. And then he dissected some eels to find their testicles.

[02:14:12] That's a joke from last episode for the four of you who get that joke. But then he was like, what if you just supported her passions and told her her fucking songwriting was good? And Gustav was like, that's a great idea. I'm going to try that.

[02:14:28] And so he did go to therapy. He did change his behavior. He did go to Alma and say, super sorry. It was not fair for me to take your creative passions away and reduce you to motherhood. And then he died. So they were reconciling.

[02:14:41] It was kind of tragic when he passed, but like he was a, he like, unbelievably enough, Gustav Mahler was kind of the hero in this story. He's the one person who went to therapy and was like, I'm going to try and do better.

[02:14:54] Well, the interesting thing, I mean, they have never proven that he had syphilis, but yes, that's a sexually contracted disease. So now I'm wondering Alma, ma'am, almost getting it in.

[02:15:05] Like she was doing things that a person's brain who doesn't have, you know, solid parts to it with the syphilis. Maybe her decision making and logic were affected because of her relationship sexually to Gustav Mahler. It's entirely possible. We don't know. We don't know.

[02:15:23] And they lost a kid. They did. Yeah. She lost a kid. Yes. So she lost her husband and she lost her kid in a little short window. And then she, I'm going to fuck this guy.

[02:15:32] And then she, she meets this young guy who's like, ooh, you know, like everything you do is amazing. If you look at if you look at Kokoschka when he's young, he's kind of got like Tom Hardy before the steroids vibe.

[02:15:47] So like he was kind of a hottie when he was. Yeah. He was a little Aryan dreamboat. And so, you know, you're just sitting there in your morning veil, mourning your kid, mourning your dead husband.

[02:15:56] All of a sudden like this, you know, skinny Tom Hardy looking guys like, hey, I'm going to violently hug you and draw you. And like, you know, like I get it. Like who amongst us is not rebounded with absolutely the wrong person under the worst situations?

[02:16:12] You know, like like we've all done it. We've all made a terrible decision that way. And it doesn't sound initially like theirs was so terrible, like they had some things in common. But he was just Dick Paint and Chaos. Dick Paint and Chaos.

[02:16:26] That is like a lot of fun. If you're 20, early 30s and she was early 30s. I was kind of into that stuff. It's a great album. Dick Paint and Chaos. Yeah, that's no, that's solid. Somebody should do that album. Yeah. Yeah. OK. I find it interesting.

[02:16:44] I mean, we've got a million stories about people unhinged who pursue these types of situations and they do absolutely nothing impressive with their lives whatsoever.

[02:16:55] Whereas you've got a guy like this who may or may not have made a decision to kind of chase something to the edge of his fucking sanity and created masterpieces. He did.

[02:17:09] Now, Mia, did you ever have an era like this in your life where you were like, I just want to go down the deep, dark hole and just see what I can make? I may. If it's precious and important and I make the thing itself.

[02:17:24] And does it ever justify it? Does it ever just does the outcome ever justify the means of just maladaptive and dysfunctional behavior that people put each other? So you're asking like a dysfunction for the dysfunction, for the sake of art. Is it worth it?

[02:17:41] Is that kind of want to make sure I quote you correctly? I am one of these bitches who gets wild horny for messy relationships. Thank you for quoting me. OK.

[02:17:53] So, yes, I have rebounded with the wrong people and stayed in that well after I should have just to be like, let me see what I can get out of this. And that's good song. Monstrous behavior. I know that she definitely got an apology. He did not. Sorry.

[02:18:15] It's complicated when you phrase it like that. It wasn't a throuple. Let's be clear. Yes, I, I, I don't know that it was worth it in the end emotionally. But in terms of the work. Yeah, man, I wrote some bangers. All right.

[02:18:36] At the expense of others and at the expense of myself. Yeah. But I think I was put here to make art. So I have to say that it is worth it. Oh, that person. So do you feel some kinship with Oscar? I get it.

[02:18:55] But oh, oh, I mean, like she's so messy. He's so messy. Messy man. Kind word. Mm hmm. I really think they they had something special. That's dark. I also I was thinking about I think a lot about our students and our students age, you know, college age kids.

[02:19:18] Messy is fine. But like they feel everything all the time. And I see them live through a lot of like excitement to take over the world and to change, you know, other people's experience through their own music.

[02:19:33] And I remember when you're in your young 20s, but like largely through your 20s, you feel all that intensity. Yes. And then I met my husband and I remember thinking, God love him. It's like, well, this is a normal relationship.

[02:19:48] I'm not going to write any more of those awesome songs anymore. Like all of the music that I wrote that was just like fucking on point. I'm so angry or you broke my heart or I'm in the pit of despair. Well, this is now like a stable relationship.

[02:20:03] And there goes all the songwriting. God damn it. How can I destabilize this? Can I throw a grenade in it? But yeah, I'd see where you justify the end.

[02:20:17] You know, I mean, like him, did you ever feel like let's see how far I can destabilize myself before the cost benefit starts to invert? Yeah. Yeah. I think everybody likes to toe the line and get as close to the edge as possible.

[02:20:34] Aren't we always just trying to deconstruct ourselves, like self-destruct? Probably. Until someone is really unless somebody has modeled like, hey, this is maybe not it or been like, hey, as your therapist or as your best friend or as your mom or whatever,

[02:20:51] like I just can't watch you have to rebuild from scratch with all of these wounds again. Like there isn't really anything culturally that encourages anybody I know of in at least American culture, Western culture that I know of to like fucking stop with this nonsense.

[02:21:11] Like all of the best TV shows are about messes and maladaptive people. All of the great love stories end in suicide or, you know, somebody getting like really abused. But it's OK because these two people were super in love and they just had to.

[02:21:28] And like, you know, the stories end at the point where like nobody's murdered each other yet or like or will even go back and reframe certain like, you know, crimes of passion is like, oh, but they were so in love and like, yeah.

[02:21:42] And I mean, oh, God, yes, it's so romantic. Yeah. Like, you know, Sid and Nancy and like and then you hear people writing songs about like, I want to love you like Sid and Nancy. And you're like, no, no, no. Actually list that out.

[02:21:53] You know, if we could if we could timeline that, that's not great. So, Kim, I mean, did you ever metaphorically cut a vein just so you can bleed on the page? Like blow my life up for art specifically?

[02:22:07] Sure. Or not necessarily even blow it up, but just try to push the envelope, just take it right to the edge.

[02:22:16] I would say that like for a period in my late 20s, early 30s, I had like delusions of like I was put here to make art like and like that's that. Like I'm a creative person and that's my thing.

[02:22:32] And so I need to live in service of that. And I would make choices to chase intensity and create chaos so that I always had like this. And people would be like, your stories are so incredible in the way you write in these poems and this play.

[02:22:48] Like, where did you get this idea? And I'd be like my life, fuckers, you know, but like it was so unhealthy. Kimberly, I think this may be a great time to teach our listeners about the hitch list. Oh no. Oh my God.

[02:23:03] I mean, because it sounds like that's what you're talking about, right? You know, I hate you. Oh my God. It was almost optioned by Mark Wahlberg, wasn't it? It was almost optioned as a.

[02:23:15] OK, and I will confess to this and I will leave it up even though people are going to be able to find it now. Uh oh. You're welcome. Thank you. I was in my early 20s. I had never really left New Jersey.

[02:23:30] I had never like, you know, I had been with my college sweetheart the whole time. The relationship was very stable. It was very healthy.

[02:23:41] And I felt like I was just drowning in stagnation and that the only thing that was going to happen was I was going to become like a like a mal, a malformed, like middle class man. Middle class mom in the town that I grew up in.

[02:23:57] And that terrified me. And so I completely blew my life up, like broke up with the person who I would go on to marry and then divorce. So that's on me. But, you know, things do happen.

[02:24:12] I blew our very healthy relationship up, moved into like a communal living situation in Brooklyn and started a blog called The Hitch List, which was a list of like 50 things I needed to accomplish before I would be ready to get married.

[02:24:32] And then I started to check the things off the list and write about them. But they were like things like. It wasn't like get a checking account. It was like be a part of an orgy. It was like have an orgy. And like it was the early on.

[02:24:48] It was like have an orgy. It was like sleep with someone famous. And this was the early zeros. And this is very problematic. But I was like sleep with somebody from every race, like really fucked up, like like cancel me immediately level stuff.

[02:25:07] But I was like twenty five. My brain there's not even really excuse. Like my brain was pretty much jelled. Like when you're 18, your cortex is still developing. You're making. No, no. I was just tanking my life. And then they did. They almost optioned it as a movie.

[02:25:22] But The Hitch List, you can read. It's still out there. But yeah, Edward likes to read every so often. I'm working for my next project.

[02:25:31] If you want to turn The Hitch List into a project, it had a it had like there was like a little like a sniper sites and it had like a wedding ring in the middle. Like it was very well packaged.

[02:25:42] I am a very good writer and I am very good at packaging things for pitches and sales. But yeah, I'm pretty embarrassed. But it does still exist. And it was my my name. My blogger name was Polly Sillabic. So that's how you can find.

[02:25:58] Somebody might dig this up and give you a call. Netflix might be. Well, great. When you're looking for whose bank account to dump Polly's earnings into. It's me. I'm fucking Polly. I'm literally taking devastatingly cringe like it is. It is insufferably cringe.

[02:26:18] I thought it was cringe and adorable. Thanks. I really appreciate that. Thank you. I love the just the chutzpah that it takes. So I'm going to do all of it. I shout out to my ex-husband, Ray. I am so sorry. That whole thing was really fucked up.

[02:26:35] I've been in therapy for a really long time. So we're working on all of that. What did you guys think about the moment when Oscar opened the box and his very specific instructions about what the skin should be made out of had very clearly been ignored?

[02:26:54] Did you think that Ms. Moose was a hero or did you think that she just couldn't find enough silk? I felt bad that he got something that he had paid a lot of money for that was less than his expectation. I feel that too.

[02:27:08] As a professional person, you pay me to do a job, I'm going to do that job. But if your resume says avant-garde puppet maker and you're known for avant-garde stuff. It's not like Wish.com. You know what you're getting with Wish.com.

[02:27:23] He didn't go to the person who's like, what I do is make silicone molds of real women that look exactly like that. She was like, I'm a fucking puppet maker and seamstress. It's 1917. I have limited resources. Also, there's a war going on.

[02:27:39] Also, he sent like 15 of the letters that Edward sent without the benefit of a singing sailor to deliver them. Let me police and micromanage every single one of your artistic decisions while weirdly nicknaming you without your consent.

[02:27:57] And making it clear that even though I said when I was going to hire you, this was a doll for me to paint. This is definitely a doll for me to fuck. You know she was sewing. He's going to fuck this doll.

[02:28:08] Why am I even stitching this so well? You're down with that up until you get the one that's like, for me it was the letter about like, you know, you better be working in secret because I can't handle it if someone even looks at my fucking doll.

[02:28:21] And that's when I'm like, I'm putting swan feathers on this. You fucking fuck. Have fun with this. Have fun fucking this doll, you creep. As women, did you have similar reactions? Because I was like, yeah. No, I like that. Yeah, Ms. Moose. I think she made a choice.

[02:28:39] Listeners should know that Ms. Moose committed suicide 10 years after all of this happened in part, they think, because the doll ruined her reputation. Oscar kind of got to be like the mad Kokoschka and he got to be like the weird guy who's like just the mad artist.

[02:28:56] But women who hired her as a seamstress were like, you made this creep sex doll while Alma was still alive. I don't want you to make a weird sex doll of me and my man breakup. So I'm not hiring you as a seamstress anymore.

[02:29:10] And so she lost a lot of work because of the doll. And they think that's part of the reason she killed herself. And I was like, oh, that's horrible. Womp womp. Really brought her down with that. Yeah. I'm great at ruining a party. So you're welcome.

[02:29:23] I mean, I do like to think that she was, you know, sticking to him a little bit. Yeah, that's that. I mean, the letters were just like, my dude, let the woman work. Couple breaks, fam. You're going to get something to put in there.

[02:29:37] There has to be someone else you can write. Yeah. Write all you need to. But what do you think about he this was just brain trauma? Like, what do we think about the possibility? Like, I mean, he did take a bullet to the head.

[02:29:50] Or do you think that this was coming independent of the bullet? Wasn't he a little bit kooky dooks before that? He was definitely a little kooky dooks before that. I mean, it didn't help anything. That's for sure. Yeah. No, I don't think the brain trauma really helped. Man.

[02:30:04] But yeah, I mean, I had a question. Well, I guess it's for both of y'all. But when he specifically referenced, what is it? The pontays. What happened? Pontusas. I mean, look, I'm not very good at any language except English. Is that where we get punani from?

[02:30:24] I believe that. From an etymological standpoint, I'm fascinated. Yes, but yeah, that was devastatingly specific and did make me laugh quite hard. Oh gosh, I just I needed to make sure that I address that. Listeners, if anyone knows.

[02:30:41] Yes, if anybody is gifted in other languages, please let us know if he was asking for ass hair and stuff like that. What I will say in Oscars, you know, and at a time when we're really celebrating body positivity.

[02:30:59] He was very specific that she needed to be thick. Just delicious. Wanted a thick and delicious doll and that it couldn't be too slim.

[02:31:10] And he actually drew a diagram of where the fat deposits direct quote needed to go so that it could feel like Alma when he was doing whatever it was he was he was doing with it. So I respect that. Yeah, I like him thick now.

[02:31:24] Yeah, she was indeed stacked. Yes. Yes. I was not being I wasn't just making a donk joke because it's a funny word. No, your description was Alma is a thick and delicious muse. Working it too. Yes. She knew it. Yes. And I'm here for that. I support that.

[02:31:42] They say part of the reason she had as many lovers as she did is because she was a little bit deaf in one ear so she would constantly lean in.

[02:31:50] And so like she created like a feeling of intimacy with everybody she talked to and like everybody felt kind of like a trap like men and women were kind of like feeling Alma Mahler. I thought that was kind of fascinating.

[02:32:02] But yeah, he stood outside her house before the brain injury. Yeah. Until three in the morning, multiple nights just to make sure no one was coming and going. That feels a little unhealthy. But again, maybe he had reason to think that because he went off and came back.

[02:32:24] And here's this gropius dude whose name I am a 12 year old. I was like, Walter was grope is saying Alma. Like I couldn't. And then I went to like habeas corpus and I was like, grope is corporate.

[02:32:40] But I mean, he maybe he had reason to think she wouldn't be faithful. She was definitely sending sexy letters to grope is while she was with him. So it didn't seem like she was trying to hide anything about it. She was not. I don't want to marry you.

[02:32:55] Yes. Let's keep banging until I do later on. If you make it back to this, if you make a masterpiece, if you make a masterpiece, I'll actually made a masterpiece. Yeah. Did you see the painting? I did. I didn't see the painting.

[02:33:09] It's it's it is a masterpiece of anxious attachment. Like if you want a painting that shows what anxious attachment looks like that, that, you know, I might have to do. Google it. So our poor, wonderful. Edward is hosts here. Don't realize that's our little stupid.

[02:33:29] That's a catchphrase because we have to Google a lot of because we come unprepared to our show. We do the research. I think I think that's great. We over research and our show is still incredibly disorganized. So I mean, Edward is an artist.

[02:33:44] What did you think of his work? It's tough because he's he's got the kind of style where you could either tip towards this is incredible or this is he's just fucking bad. Like, honestly, like it's not for you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[02:34:03] I think expressionism, if done well, obviously can convey something that realism simply cannot. And I did like that painting in particular.

[02:34:14] I thought that just the choice for how he chose to position his hands, as you referenced in the story, just kind of the anxiety, like the self-awareness to say that, like, I am perpetually fucking troubled.

[02:34:29] Even when I am next to this person, I am always terrified of losing them. What is wrong with me? There's there, you know, I don't need to look at that painting ever again.

[02:34:38] I mean, the bride of the wind that she could just be swept away at any time. It you know, it's haunting. It's very heartbreaking.

[02:34:46] He did seem to have some kind of cognizance for his shortcomings in terms of I don't know how much he needed this person to love him in order to feel complete. Mm hmm. It was sad. It was sad.

[02:35:02] It seemed like he had a lot of imposter syndrome going on and he just never really found his footing as the renowned artist that he wanted to be until he met this woman.

[02:35:15] And then he sort of glommed onto her and said my success is based on this relationship. And he very much, he wrote that like Alma is the reason for my success. Like the only reason I'm now a well-known artist is because of Alma. She's my muse. Yeah.

[02:35:31] And it doesn't unrequited love like when somebody dangles it around, it doesn't it make you go a little crazy? Oh, Alma was 100% out for it. Oh yeah, no, there's no winners on human fuckery. There's no winners in this story. Everybody did stuff wrong.

[02:35:47] Everybody did a few things right. I mean, psychologically, like it's kind of the root basis for Necrophilia to go back to Carl. It's like to have an unresisting partner. That's the allure of it. It's pretty, it's intense. It's fucking crazy.

[02:36:03] But it, yeah, having that unreciprocated love will make someone a bit nuts for sure. Yeah. Now, I mean, this guy went so far as to have a doll crafted and I'm not saying either of you have ever had a doll crafted of an ex.

[02:36:19] But a lot of times after really those big heartbreaks that we experienced throughout our lives in the period of mourning where we haven't just completely let go, maybe we hold on to a specific artifact.

[02:36:33] Maybe there's a shirt or a little stuffed animal or something like that that we kind of project on the same way that he did as he was just angrily crying himself to sleep holding this doll.

[02:36:47] Do you guys have anything that comes to mind in any of the varying relationships you've had that stands out to you? I don't know why you're looking at me right now.

[02:36:57] Because I'm thinking about a gift I was given by an ex that I kept long past, you know, fell apart because I was like, well, the energy is still there. Sure. Connectivity. But then the day I threw it in the trash was like such a nice day.

[02:37:20] Oh, my God. It's like a thousand pounds off my shoulders. So I have kept something that was tied to a person because it's like, well, the reverberation of their caring is still here. Right. I get that. Did you ever talk to it? Can't say that I did. Okay.

[02:37:39] No. Did you ever take it to bed? Yeah. Did you ever write about it? No. No paintings? Nope. Don't think so. All right. How about you? Kate's too well adjusted for this show. No, no. I'm keeping my crazy in my back pocket.

[02:37:54] I don't know that I hold on to relationship mementos. I keep pictures or I kept pictures. And then I... What's the tense on that? I slowly started to just like one by one with this particular ex, just start to get rid of them. Some got torn. That's okay.

[02:38:17] Some got burned. Yeah, things happen. We gonna do what it do. But yeah, it's mostly photographs for me. Yeah. There was a box that I'd kept through our relationship, like keeping mementos, movie tickets, concert tickets, all that bullshit. I threw that out immediately. Yeah.

[02:38:34] And then as I heard the trash truck coming, I was like, oh shit, what if we get back together? It's too late. Edward, what about you? You're a sentimental dude. I'm too sentimental. Yeah. I'm a bit nostalgic.

[02:38:47] Gosh, I've got a few of those that I've inadimate objects that I've projected on over the years. I did have literal dolls. Not that I made. No. Okay. Everybody's alright. There was a lot of leaning towards the door happening. Well, look at the time. No, no, no, no.

[02:39:09] Is that my mom calling? This is a very. Oh, I know what you're talking about. This is a sweet story. It's a sweet, but it's also a challenging story. We're here for you. I bet. It's a safe space. Yeah, men's mental health.

[02:39:22] We love, we stan a man who's, you go to therapy, you feel the feelings, you journal, we're cheering you on, buddy. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay. No, I, me and my ex many years ago, we went on a vacation together.

[02:39:38] And when we were in this other country, we got these dolls and they were both like little devils. Like they looked just like this kind of skeleton that I have here, except they had movable parts and everything like that. And we kept them together all the time.

[02:39:58] They had kind of like a Mexican Day of the Dead feel to them. They were cool. They were less terrifying. To us, we were the dolls, you know, and we nicknamed them Scully and Mulder because we used to like watching The X-Files all the time.

[02:40:12] And when I ended the relationship in the most clinically unchecked way I could at the time. Edward blew up his relationship the way I blew up my relationship. There was no string of logic to follow at all. Sometimes you just hurt people because you're an asshole.

[02:40:33] Hurt people, hurt people, hurt people, hurt people. I wouldn't say it's, well, I'm just an asshole. I just couldn't, I couldn't identify what I was feeling. Correct. I didn't understand and I didn't have the patience to try and understand.

[02:40:47] At that age, the impulse was just to run away. I'll find a new thing that feels better. Yes, run away from the discomfort and run towards intensity. Just like you described.

[02:40:58] And so we were living together and I moved out first, but my name was on the lease and all that good stuff.

[02:41:07] And so when she finally moved out, I had to go back and do a walkthrough of the whole thing and make sure everything's clean and good shit like that. And I walk in and the only thing left in the place is Scully and Mulder. Damn. Is she cold?

[02:41:25] No, it wasn't cold. It wasn't cold. It was a very loving goodbye. That is not how I experienced that story. That's not how I would have interpreted it. Good for you. I'm just, I know. You were in it. I just know. We believe, nice.

[02:41:39] We are three petty bitches. I would have done this for the wrong reasons. Hope your heart breaks, mother. No, there was like a rose in the lap and everything like that. Like it was like an I'll always love you kind of thing, you know?

[02:41:53] I'm going to die alone. And I kept those dolls for years and years and years and years. Wherever I moved, I took them with me. And, you know, sometimes I'd walk past them like when I was having a difficult moment, like thinking about where things went wrong.

[02:42:12] And I became the album art for the previously mentioned Mark Cogman. You know, I'd talk to the doll and be like, you bitch or whatever, you know, or just be like, I miss you. You know, I'm sorry.

[02:42:24] I was such an asshole or whatever, depending on what I was going through in therapy that day. And and then one day I came home and my my husky Bateman had eaten them both. And I just I had to accept that they were the dolls of the wind.

[02:42:41] They were just like, you really need to fucking let this go. Dad, I'm worried about you. I want you to move on. But but that's those are two little things that I I kept in projected on for way too many years for sure.

[02:42:57] Yeah. But, you know, does that shock anyone after the singing telegram story? Probably not. I'm not. Yeah. I've got issues. Great. Great. Well, Kimberly. Yeah. Fuck's sake. You're not getting away. Well, moving on.

[02:43:12] Without even if this is the last thing we talk about, did you have something like this? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, 100 percent. I. You did and you were still ready to just skirt over this. I mean, look, I feel like I've revealed a lot of myself this episode.

[02:43:35] So, you know, we've done a lot of just like nakedly laying out what a complete fuck up I am. And I felt like, you know, maybe I could get out of this one. But now I feel too banged up. No, no, I don't feel too banged up.

[02:43:46] I'm good. I will say that if you read any of my fiction work or creative writing work, the the things that I have hung on to from past relationships are littered across songs and poems and plays and monologues and will be for fucking eternity.

[02:44:03] Like that's just a thing that I do. But do have a very funny story about an artifact that I kept too long and the way that I got rid of it, which was I was engaged very young, like 19 years old. Terrible dude, Mike, each shit.

[02:44:20] It's been 20 years and I want you to hear me say this. Yeah. Each shit. Fuck out of here, Mike. Shit. Each shit. He was living with me. We were planning the marriage. No, no. I can forgive and I do. But each shit. But these are not mutually exclusive.

[02:44:35] I can say I forgive you for these things you did. But like this was a person who was he was living with me. He was driving my car. He drove my car to do theater in another state. He started fucking his dance partner. Eat a bag of dicks.

[02:44:49] Exactly. That's it. Three months while he continued to fuck this girl, while I had to live in the house with the 20 centerpieces for the wedding that was never going to happen and couldn't get the car back.

[02:45:01] So but as terrible as as that whole thing was, I kept the ring like I still had the ring that he proposed with, you know, and it was like, you know, I didn't know if I was ever going to have that experience again.

[02:45:16] And I just I couldn't let the ring go.

[02:45:18] And like every now and then I would like take it out and look at it and like, you know, then put it back in the box of like agony that, you know, it's like, you know, just the box of things that you only look at when you want to feel pain.

[02:45:30] And like I couldn't let the box go. But then when I was moving in, you know, the deeper part of my relationship with my now ex-husband, you know, he was like, look, Mike sucked and this box is just pain.

[02:45:46] And I was like the ring and I was like the ring just like it has some kind of like magic hold on me. And he has told this story publicly, so it's not inappropriate for me to share it.

[02:45:56] But he took the ring out and then he took his dick out and then he wiped his dick all over the ring. That sounds like something Ray would absolutely do. And then he said, spell's broken. And I was like, yep, that's it.

[02:46:13] So he took out his magic wand and he was like, nope. The ring was sanitized and then I sold it for 75 bucks at a pawn shop. Oh my God, I sold my ring for 75 bucks too! That's very nice. That's crushed my money. Nice.

[02:46:27] I had no connection to my ring by the way.

[02:46:30] Well, you know, so yeah, that was the thing that but like I really held on to it too long and it was like somebody who loved me was noticing that it like it had a hold on me and just did the silliest spell they could.

[02:46:42] And much like Oscar Kokoschka being like, I suddenly don't need this doll or Alma in my life anymore. I was like, oh, that's just a fucking hunk of metal that some dickhead gave me. Like, OK, all right, cool. So, yeah, that's that's mine.

[02:46:56] Now we can wrap it up. Well, yeah. So it is getting to be about that time. My final question to you guys is who would you have wanted to be in a relationship with more Oscar or Carl? I think I've got to go with Oscar as well.

[02:47:15] Yeah, as long as he's not touching my actual body. And, and wait, Oscar, he wanted to give her a doll too, right? Yeah, the wooden doll. The wooden doll of himself. They circle back years later. They did circle back. Over an ocean. Over an ocean. Yeah.

[02:47:32] I mean, what were those letters like? Girl in six months. Girl in 18 months. Not to mention Carl looked like the mad scientist from Nightmare Before Christmas. Like he looked fucking hideous. Carl was not my type. Carl was definitely not my type. That is true.

[02:47:50] It sounds like Oscar at least laid pipe. Either, but it does sound like he laid pipe because he was not like she was very enthusiastic about him. Six decades later was like, yeah, I do remember that dick. I am down with a wooden doll of you.

[02:48:06] Quite a swat. She had encountered some of the some of the best and worst. Circled right back. The arts world of that generation could have possibly provided her and she was into it still. So like he was he was putting in work. Yeah. Good for Oscar. Yeah.

[02:48:26] I'm sure his family's thrilled that we're talking about him this way. But I mean, they all were giving him kudos. Yeah, he did leave behind some important. I got this doll of you.

[02:48:34] One day I'm going to hook you up with a solid wood doll of me that you. But he was fighting for her representation as like your skin was more beautiful than. Yeah, sure. I'm just a hunk of wood girl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:48:49] I think I've got to go with Oscar, like make beautiful art about me. I know you want to like. You can't help it. I get it. But like also, like I just said, like, thank you for fighting for my my skin complexion,

[02:49:00] not being that of like bullshit swan feathers. Right. And, you know, you thought that much of me. Mm hmm. You didn't. But you thought in your head that you were fighting for my beauty. OK, cool. That's that's kind of that's fucked up.

[02:49:14] But like that's kind of it's kind of cool. And then they circle back if they hadn't come back around. I think I would have a different opinion. Yeah, she never wanted to speak to him ever again. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:49:27] But like the fact that he did humiliate her, I mean, it was like it was not like Alma was unaware that Koshka was riding around in a fucking carriage painting nudes of the doll of her. Yeah, she knew. Mm hmm.

[02:49:38] And that was rough for a little bit, but it was pre social media. So she didn't have to deal with it all that much. I think so. Facebook on this day. I remember when he made that doll of you. Oh, my God. That was OK.

[02:49:51] Well, here's the time where you guys get to pick whichever you think is the winner. Keeping in mind that there are no winners in this show. So we all lost. We all know everybody lost. Well, some. Yeah. Kate, which story are you going with? It's yours, girlfriend.

[02:50:12] All right. Can you explain why? What's your justification for why this is the winner? I think it just it's swirled around the context of that era and that experience. It's also like personal bias. I do love a good Mahler. Like the Alma, the Gustav.

[02:50:29] You were loving a Mahler story. You had me at Mahler. Cool. But also, yeah, I just the fact that they circled back. Yeah, you're right. It was a semi happy ending. We closed that loop. Yeah. Yeah, you might be an Aries, but you have a soul.

[02:50:45] I have a cancer on the inside. It's I mean, Carl circle. I'm in his own way. You know, Carl did circle back with a second doll. I would call that a double down, not a circle. Yeah, yeah, no. Took away the first one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:51:04] Mia, it's you. Shit. I got to go with with the homie Edward. OK. Take it to the streets. Fucking split. Another split. Explain your explain your choice. I really didn't think this was going to happen because we're usually so lined up. Right. Is this beginning of the end?

[02:51:17] Gosh. Oh, man. Start making that doll. Cannot wait to see what y'all's breakup looks like. Oh my God. If I made a doll of you? Super excited about it. Cookie Dukes. No. You gave me plastic love. Love. Yeah. OK. So what was it about Edwards?

[02:51:31] Or was it the storytelling? Was it the second doll? It was just so visceral. From beginning to end, like he's got these visions as a kid of this ideal woman and then she shows up. But then the universe takes her and he's like, fuck it.

[02:51:50] I'm still all in, baby girl. And then her family's involved and then it just all falls apart. And the cops take what they believe is a doll out of the house. That's fascinating to me in and of itself that they would take that initiative. You're totally right.

[02:52:07] And then they come to find, oh shit, it's not a doll. Oh no, this is the sex corpse. Oh God, do we bring it back? Yeah. It's just there were, it will linger with me. Yeah. I mean, that's the mark of a good story, right? You're right.

[02:52:15] No, you're right. OK, that's great. So much like Pax Lovid, Edwards' story leaves a taste in Mia's mouth and she's just gonna carry this, you know, it's just a, it's just a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a

[02:52:19] it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a,

[02:54:53] Yeah. Bye. How many times did I tell myself, get out of this hell? It don't take no plastic love. I wish you well.