Speaker 1: Pushkin. Joe Biden has made up his mind about this decision,
Speaker 1: and there's actually an email that has gone out to
Speaker 1: supporters that said that Joe Biden has selected Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: as his running mate. There's actually an entire Biden low.
Speaker 1: I'm Ashley Ford and this is the Chronicles of naw
Speaker 1: where we ask writers to dream up short stories inspired
Speaker 1: by the news. If elected, she would be the first
Speaker 1: woman vice president, the first lack vice president. She would
Speaker 1: be the highest ranking Asian American in US history. Now
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden has officially picked a woman as his
Speaker 1: running mate, can we talk about his weird, uncomfortable history
Speaker 1: with women. He was talking to me while he was
Speaker 1: rubbing my nose with his mister Biden himself said, it
Speaker 1: was never his intention to make anyone uncomfortable. And our
Speaker 1: social wars began to change or shoot it and the
Speaker 1: bomb is a protected personal space have been reset. I
Speaker 1: get it. I get it. Oh, yes, we're going to
Speaker 1: go there. With the election looming. It is an uncomfortable subject,
Speaker 1: but it's there. Joe Biden has been a handsy guy
Speaker 1: throughout his career and it's had a chilling effect on
Speaker 1: some of the women he touched. What just happened? Did
Speaker 1: that just happen? Did I think what just happened is
Speaker 1: actually what happened? Laura Van Denberg's new book is a
Speaker 1: collection of surreal stories about women making their way through
Speaker 1: dark worlds. It's called I Hold a Wolf by the Ears.
Speaker 1: She says, Biden's transgressions are emblematic of our time. Me
Speaker 1: too has changed things a lot, but really has it.
Speaker 1: I have been there, you know. I have absolutely had
Speaker 1: those sorts of encounters with men and then sort of
Speaker 1: been through that process of second guest saying and sort
Speaker 1: of talking myself out of my own understandings and my
Speaker 1: own perception. So I was interested in writing into that
Speaker 1: psychological territory. In a world gone haywire, sometimes art is
Speaker 1: the only thing that can make sense of it all.
Speaker 1: For a long time, only one person on earth, her
Speaker 1: closest friend, knew about the incident. They used to work
Speaker 1: on the hill, and what the Vice president had done
Speaker 1: was insidious and hard to name if you weren't familiar
Speaker 1: with the way some men in politics like to handle
Speaker 1: women as though they were overgrown babies. No harm in
Speaker 1: a little tickle, a pinch on the thigh, the incident
Speaker 1: had occurred as a fundraiser, and when she whispered the
Speaker 1: details at some desolate after party bar her friend had
Speaker 1: asked if she planned to tell anyone, and she said,
Speaker 1: of course. Now he's the vice president. I'm a nobody, nothing.
Speaker 1: So she could not believe it when the former assemblywoman
Speaker 1: from Nevada came forward many years later and described news
Speaker 1: cameras how the vice president had touched heart, smell my hair.
Speaker 1: He had recently announced that he was running for president again,
Speaker 1: and the assemblywoman believed that people needed to know. In
Speaker 1: the middle of the press conference, her closest friend called
Speaker 1: and said, you're still a nobody, a nothing. That woman
Speaker 1: you see on TV right now. They will ruin her life. Later,
Speaker 1: as she packed for a three day conference in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: she reminded herself that the vice president hadn't raped, hadn't
Speaker 1: pressed her to a bed and waved his dick in
Speaker 1: her face. She told herself that he wasn't a dangerous person,
Speaker 1: just oblivious to realities in which he did not sit
Speaker 1: at the center. She tried not to think about how
Speaker 1: such obliviousness was one of the most dangerous ways for
Speaker 1: a person to be. She fell asleep to the news
Speaker 1: where the assemblywoman was still talking, asking to be taken seriously,
Speaker 1: to be believed in San Francisco. She had no idea
Speaker 1: that her fate would be altered by airline miles, for
Speaker 1: had she ended up on a different flight, or even
Speaker 1: in a different row, she would have likely heeded her
Speaker 1: friend's advice, run her business, gone on with her life.
Speaker 1: But then at SFO, a gate agent called her up,
Speaker 1: said she'd landed a complimentary upgrade, and printed a new
Speaker 1: boarding pass for seat three D. She heard her seat
Speaker 1: mate before she saw him, his voice like thunder sounding
Speaker 1: in the wings of a stage. When he appeared in
Speaker 1: the aisle, he was flushed and booming into a cell phone. White,
Speaker 1: broad shouldered, thick waves of sandy hair. He wore a
Speaker 1: yellow polo and khaki pants and brown leather loafers without socks.
Speaker 1: He flopped down next to her, knocking her complimentary bottled
Speaker 1: water to the floor, and kept on booming. She opened
Speaker 1: a travel magazine and shrank down into her seat. In
Speaker 1: the air, her seat MAT's attention turned to the flight attendants. Apparently,
Speaker 1: he took at least forty six first class flights a year,
Speaker 1: and in his opinion, everything about this one was wrong.
Speaker 1: The hot towel was too cold, a replacement towel too hot.
Speaker 1: The drink cart lacked some obscure brand of whiskey. Both
Speaker 1: flight attendants in first class happened to be women. When
Speaker 1: one of them, a tall brunette and a red neckscarf
Speaker 1: apologized about the whiskey for the hundredth time, the man
Speaker 1: asked for her full name. He said he planned to
Speaker 1: file a report. He demanded to know if she liked
Speaker 1: her job, if she thought she'd deserved to keep it,
Speaker 1: And then he laughed, a seat shaking, thigh slapping laugh,
Speaker 1: like the whole thing had been in an extended, practical joke.
Speaker 1: Only then was the flight attendant permitted to walk away.
Speaker 1: It was the laugh that made her stomach clench. Right
Speaker 1: when things were getting bad enough that another passenger might
Speaker 1: feel compelled to intervene, or the flight attendant might feel
Speaker 1: justified in using words like verbal abuse, He'd wielded his
Speaker 1: laugh like a shield. Don't be so sensitive, take a
Speaker 1: joke already. Everything is normal here. That was the worst
Speaker 1: thing about these incidents, she thought, as she watched the
Speaker 1: flight attendant and flee the way They destroyed your confidence
Speaker 1: in your own perceptions. She glanced around at the other
Speaker 1: passengers and realized she and the flight attendants were the
Speaker 1: only women in first class. She wondered if these other
Speaker 1: men had noticed what she had just now, what it
Speaker 1: would take for one of them to call out their
Speaker 1: own kind. She finished her magazine, she drank a glass
Speaker 1: of wine. Her seat mate watched ESPN and drank copious
Speaker 1: amounts of a less obscure whiskey. She found herself thinking
Speaker 1: about the warm grip of the Vice President's hand on
Speaker 1: her neck, the way he pulled her in sudden and close,
Speaker 1: his nose brushing her face. She had been terrified that
Speaker 1: he was going to kiss her Somewhere over Nebraska. Her
Speaker 1: seat mate resurrected the whisky situation. Why don't you have
Speaker 1: what I want? He roared at the second flight attendant,
Speaker 1: an older blonde and a black cart again, who stood
Speaker 1: rigid by the drink cart. She stretched up in her seat.
Speaker 1: The other passengers were all reading newspapers or sleeping or
Speaker 1: otherwise useless. She thought of the assemblywoman speaking on TV.
Speaker 1: She tapped the man's shoulder, and he paused in his tirade,
Speaker 1: giving the flight attendant enough cover to hurry the cart
Speaker 1: down the aisle. You should be ashamed of yourself. She
Speaker 1: felt light headed, her chest was tight, but she pushed on,
Speaker 1: you've been acting like a bully this whole flight. He
Speaker 1: lurched back into his seat and stared at her, panting
Speaker 1: a little. She felt the heat rad heat from his body.
Speaker 1: His cheeks were swollen red, his eyes slid around like
Speaker 1: wet marbles. She imagined he'd probably already sized her up
Speaker 1: during boarding and determined her to be a nothing. Hey
Speaker 1: do you think you are? He slurred. She told him
Speaker 1: that was three D by Laura Van Denburg, the narrator
Speaker 1: with Cindy Cats. How are you doing today, Laura, I'm good, Ashley.
Speaker 1: How are you doing? I'm pretty good. I've got to
Speaker 1: know you leave us hanging there at the end. What
Speaker 1: do you think she told him there at the end. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: this story was inspired a bit by interaction that I
Speaker 1: had with a man on a flight who is like
Speaker 1: maybe the most appalling human being that I've ever encountered
Speaker 1: in public or up there. So in my imagination she
Speaker 1: said something maybe that was kind of close to what
Speaker 1: I said in life, which is, you are being verbally abusive.
Speaker 1: Your behavior is completely inappropriate, and I see what you're
Speaker 1: doing and you have to stop. So what did he
Speaker 1: say back to you? So he said something very close
Speaker 1: to with a man on the plane set in the story,
Speaker 1: which is, who do you think you are talking to
Speaker 1: me like that? And then I repeated what I had
Speaker 1: said the first time, and then he was really angry
Speaker 1: for a minute and then just kind of passed out
Speaker 1: and seemed to go to sleep, which everyone was happy about. Yes,
Speaker 1: I like that. I like that you wore him down.
Speaker 1: This story really gets into the situations where women feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: They are insidious situations, and the men in these situations
Speaker 1: are often oblivious. What do you think women lose because
Speaker 1: of what men won't allow themselves to see or hear? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like how much how much time do we have?
Speaker 1: I understand this is, you know, really painful line of
Speaker 1: conversation that's come up in the me too dialogues. This
Speaker 1: idea that because something happened to a woman early in
Speaker 1: her career, she didn't pursue a particular path or she
Speaker 1: didn't reach in a particular direction. And I think like,
Speaker 1: in some ways, you know, the greatest cruelty of the
Speaker 1: kind of violation that I write about in this particular
Speaker 1: story is again just the way that they can undermine
Speaker 1: our own perceptions and our own grasp on reality, and
Speaker 1: the way that you know, maybe our body is telling
Speaker 1: us this is what happened and it was wrong, but
Speaker 1: our brain, for all kinds of reasons, because we don't
Speaker 1: want to lose opportunity, because we're scared of consequence and repercussion,
Speaker 1: is trying to talk our body into a different story.
Speaker 1: And so I think that estrangement from the bodied reality
Speaker 1: and the intellectual reality, that feeling that maybe we've lost
Speaker 1: trust in ourselves, I mean trust in oneself ability to
Speaker 1: sort of see a situation to say, yes, this is
Speaker 1: what happened. I believe what my body is telling me.
Speaker 1: I think that that's a really profound loss that so
Speaker 1: many women experience. I mean, I would count myself among them,
Speaker 1: and I know quite a few women who would stand
Speaker 1: right alongside me same. This story was inspired by this
Speaker 1: narrative in the media of Joe Biden and his history
Speaker 1: of being handsy with women. How do you think the
Speaker 1: vice president handled those allegations where you paying attention to
Speaker 1: that story as it continued, Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: his handling of it has been poor in my opinion.
Speaker 1: I also want to pause and say I intend to
Speaker 1: vote for him, despite the many things I could say
Speaker 1: in response to this question. But yeah, I think his
Speaker 1: handling of it has been poor. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: he really understands or has really absorbed the pain that
Speaker 1: he's caused. When there is sort of more of a
Speaker 1: gesture in the direction of accountability, chalking it up to
Speaker 1: how norms have changed and times have changed, and he
Speaker 1: understands he needs to change with those times. It's sort
Speaker 1: of really taking himself out of the equation, like at
Speaker 1: a different time, this would have been fine, but now
Speaker 1: we're in this new world and it's not fine anymore,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, you don't get it. It was
Speaker 1: never fine. But the differences is that you have women
Speaker 1: coming forward and saying this was not fine then, and
Speaker 1: is not fine now and will not be fine in
Speaker 1: the future the end. Can you think of your ideal
Speaker 1: way you would have wanted him to respond. I think
Speaker 1: a step in the right direction would have been accountability
Speaker 1: in the sense that he was wrong to have done
Speaker 1: these things and that he was wrong to have violated
Speaker 1: these women in these ways without sort of pinning it
Speaker 1: on changing social norms, but to say something like it
Speaker 1: was wrong, then it was wrong. Now this is why
Speaker 1: it was wrong, even if it wasn't particularly sexual. This
Speaker 1: was an abuse of power. I was in a position
Speaker 1: of power, and I abuse that power. As a starting point,
Speaker 1: I would say, a greater degree of self honesty on
Speaker 1: Biden's part, I think would have been a step in
Speaker 1: the right direction. Early on in the story, the narrator
Speaker 1: doesn't want to call out the vice president, like he's
Speaker 1: the vice president and she's a nobody. According to her friend,
Speaker 1: she's on the wrong end of a power dynamic. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the story she finds her voice
Speaker 1: to speak out what changed her. So, in my understanding,
Speaker 1: I think that the confrontation on the plane and why
Speaker 1: that felt to me like an apt container for this story.
Speaker 1: But because it comes from a headline, we sort of
Speaker 1: have a sense of what happens next that right, she
Speaker 1: does come forward with her allegations, I think coming into
Speaker 1: contact with a man who's like toxic masculinity on steroids,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's so explicit and it's so not ambiguous,
Speaker 1: and it's so clear that someone has got to intervene
Speaker 1: and say something to this person and take a stand
Speaker 1: for decency that it clarifies her thinking ultimately about whether
Speaker 1: to come forward or not to confront the vice president
Speaker 1: in this way. Laura Vandenberg, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your story and thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the Chronicles of Now podcast. Thank you so much, Ashley.
Speaker 1: I loved your questions. You can read my full interview
Speaker 1: with Laura Vandenberg on our website Chronicles dot fm, where
Speaker 1: you can also read the story you just heard and
Speaker 1: other short fiction torn from today's headlines. Our sound designer
Speaker 1: and composer is Bart Warshaw, our producer is Curtis Fox,
Speaker 1: and our associate producer is Emily Rosten. Tyler Cabot is
Speaker 1: the executive producer and founder of Chronicles of Now for
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is Leetlmlat. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliori, Heather Fame, and Eric Sandler for
Speaker 1: the Chronicles of Now podcast. I'm Ashley Ford. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening.