Speaker 1: Still getting used to the video thing, Like I can't
Speaker 1: hunch if you like Larry King with my shoulders all
Speaker 1: the way up, A very important story for you today.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that's that's not Larry King, who
Speaker 1: did Larry King, Mary, Larry Queen, Larry Queen. But one
Speaker 1: day we'll do the Larry King Larry Queen's story. Well,
Speaker 1: since we don't often have much else to talk about,
Speaker 1: we did go to the movies. We did. We got
Speaker 1: to see The Fableman's. It was different than I thought,
Speaker 1: but it was beautiful. We talked about it for like
Speaker 1: two hours, still still coming up with things to say
Speaker 1: about it. The performances were so so good and I
Speaker 1: just can't recommend it. And I've loved it seriously plastic.
Speaker 1: I thought it was gonna be way more like Baby
Speaker 1: Spielberg learns to love movies. Yeah, it was that, but
Speaker 1: it was way more about The Fableman's Like it was
Speaker 1: a story about a family and uh and a fascinating one.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm to tie it into aiculous romance.
Speaker 1: You know. It's about a couple, about love and romance,
Speaker 1: and it's about like all the ways that relationships work.
Speaker 1: What kind of different kinds of love and I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just it was just really color. Be surprised a
Speaker 1: good Steven Spielberg movie had to happen. So I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: I think this Spielberg guy, he's got it. He's got it.
Speaker 1: He's really good. We'll we'll see more from him. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure, mark my words. Check it out. I loved it.
Speaker 1: You heard it here first Ridiculous Romance. Go see The
Speaker 1: Fableman's directed by Steven Spielberg in theaters are on demand. Now, wow,
Speaker 1: that was a good commercial. I'll be expecting my bag
Speaker 1: of money in the mail, Mr Spielberg, or at least
Speaker 1: a partner next film. Oh, now that would be You're welcome.
Speaker 1: One more experience in our I r L media consuming
Speaker 1: lives that relates into ridiculous Romance. And we're not going
Speaker 1: to talk about it. I promise you won't give any details.
Speaker 1: But this week's the last of US episode. You guys,
Speaker 1: just if you like Ridiculous Romance, oh my god, well
Speaker 1: go watch it right now, just this one episode. If
Speaker 1: you don't want to watch everything, it's fine. Be like,
Speaker 1: I don't like zombies. I don't want to watch a
Speaker 1: Gore episode. This is just watch this one. It's its
Speaker 1: own little movie, and it's just wonderful, wonderful. I loved it,
Speaker 1: cried in the best way. It's wonderful, such a cool
Speaker 1: way to like, I don't know, just have a cool
Speaker 1: moment and an apocalypse, you know, sett Yeah, isn't that
Speaker 1: what we're all looking for? I meancase, I'm so sick
Speaker 1: of the Apocalypse being full of lame moments. Yeah, ohurres
Speaker 1: the cool moments of the Apocalypse. I'm chilling. I gotta say.
Speaker 1: In recent years, you know, what's what's the superpower you'd want? Right,
Speaker 1: It's always a big question. I want to fly, I
Speaker 1: want super strength, immortality, whatever I want. Click, I want
Speaker 1: the Adam Sandler remote where I can just fast forward,
Speaker 1: because I so often am like this storyline is stupid
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be over zip. Not even world events,
Speaker 1: sometimes just like personal stuff like oh I've got a cold,
Speaker 1: you know, fast forward. I don't This is a dumb
Speaker 1: chapter and I don't feel like reading it. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot about days of my life
Speaker 1: sometimes where I'm like stupid, don't like it skipped today.
Speaker 1: I know it's not gonna it's not. It's inconsequential in
Speaker 1: a long run. So can we just damn can we
Speaker 1: just move forward? No? What wasn't boring was that I
Speaker 1: recently got to attend the Orlando Winter Mini Fringe in January. Um,
Speaker 1: the Orlando Fringe is huge, and they do like kind
Speaker 1: of a smaller curated fringe in the wintertime, right, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Fringe Festival, performing Arts festival. Diana
Speaker 1: runs the Atlanta Fringe for you out there who might
Speaker 1: not be regularly nurse. That's so true, Thank you. I
Speaker 1: can talk about fringe like everybody knows exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about at all times. But but yeah, it was
Speaker 1: really cool. They had like I don't something like sixteen
Speaker 1: shows or something twenty shows going on over the course
Speaker 1: of the weekend. And I got to see a really
Speaker 1: great solo show called The Real Black Swan from this
Speaker 1: performer named Les Kirk and Doll, who was a really,
Speaker 1: really fantastic performer. If you want to look him up.
Speaker 1: He's got a podcast called a Lifetime of Hallmark where
Speaker 1: he talks about Lifetime and Hallmark movies. Just great. He's
Speaker 1: fantastic and every way, and the show was all about
Speaker 1: how the first drag queen was a former slave, And
Speaker 1: of course I was like, roll all out, what did
Speaker 1: you say? So I had to like hop on the
Speaker 1: internet and learn everything I could about it. Most of
Speaker 1: it was in his show, of course, but I was like,
Speaker 1: let me look it up, and I thought it would
Speaker 1: make a great episode for our show. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and say that this was suggested by less
Speaker 1: Kirk and Doll without his knowledge. He didn't realize he
Speaker 1: was suggesting it, but he did. So let's hear all
Speaker 1: about William Dorsey Swan, who was the former enslaved man
Speaker 1: who would go on to throw some fabulous underground drag
Speaker 1: balls and become the first gay rights activist in America. Fantastic.
Speaker 1: Let's go hey their French, come listen. Well, Elia and
Speaker 1: Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a
Speaker 1: romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a lover. It
Speaker 1: might be any type of person at all, and abstract
Speaker 1: constrom a concrete wall. But if there's a story with
Speaker 1: the second clinch, ridiculous romans a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Before we settle down and commit to this story, let's
Speaker 1: talk about drag with a quick fling with history. Let's
Speaker 1: go men wearing women's clothes goes all the way back
Speaker 1: to ancient Greece. During those times, the term female impersonator
Speaker 1: was used, and it most often applied to mostly straight
Speaker 1: men who were playing the parts of women on stage. Right,
Speaker 1: because in ancient Greece and all the way up to
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty one, women were not allowed to act professionally
Speaker 1: on stage, so men had to play all the ladies roles.
Speaker 1: Because you still want to have romances and you still
Speaker 1: want to you know, you need a nurse or a
Speaker 1: mom or whatever. But dressing up and playing that's a
Speaker 1: man's job. That's what. So that the idea of masculinity
Speaker 1: has changed so much, what it is and how it's expressed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, that's partly what makes Shakespeare's cross
Speaker 1: dressing place so funny. He's writing it at least already
Speaker 1: knowing that the men will be dressed as women, so
Speaker 1: then he puts the women dressed as men, and they're
Speaker 1: all these shenanigans occur, but it's like an extra layer
Speaker 1: of funny because you already know that cross dressing is
Speaker 1: already happening, So like I'm Bruce, and I'm playing viola
Speaker 1: and I got to wear this big, long wig and
Speaker 1: I alone can't wait to meet you up maybe remember.
Speaker 1: But then she got a dress up as I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Ben Foglio, I'm making this up, and she's got to
Speaker 1: wear a man's wig on top of that playing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean, you know, you can see why it's
Speaker 1: extra funny two people. At that time, all I had
Speaker 1: to say this was extremely common. It was a very
Speaker 1: normalized thing to do, and plenty of men had very
Speaker 1: successful careers specializing in female performance. One actor in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundred's his name is Julian Eltinge, and he
Speaker 1: was such a hit that he performed as a female
Speaker 1: part for King William the Seventh before he abdicated, and
Speaker 1: he was given a white bulldog as a like a
Speaker 1: gift from the king, just like I guess, so unless
Speaker 1: you weren't prepared to take care of a white bulldog.
Speaker 1: But he's like, oh, I gotta like get this on
Speaker 1: a steamship now back to America. But yeah, Julian was
Speaker 1: so worried about people thinking that he was gay that
Speaker 1: he would like put on this kind of super masculine
Speaker 1: persona in his regular life to be like, I'm very
Speaker 1: different from the lady I play on stage. And I
Speaker 1: mean I understand it because apparently the first time he
Speaker 1: was discovered wearing women's clothes, his father beat the ship
Speaker 1: out of him, So I can see why he was scared.
Speaker 1: But it really it's like until cross dressing or gender
Speaker 1: bending became associated with being queer, which wasn't until like
Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties, it wasn't really considered to be
Speaker 1: a gay thing. In fact, in Brigham Morris Young, who
Speaker 1: was the son of the second President of the Church
Speaker 1: of Latter Day Saint Saying on stage as Madame Pettorini,
Speaker 1: and in fact he once performed as Madame Pettorini at
Speaker 1: the birthday party for the fifth President of the Church
Speaker 1: of Latter Day Saints, Lorenzo Snow, which kind of suggests
Speaker 1: they were all into it. So yeah, just men in drag,
Speaker 1: especially white men in drag, pretty common throughout the centuries.
Speaker 1: But we also can't talk about the history of drag
Speaker 1: without bringing up that some people say that drag is
Speaker 1: rooted in racist black face performance from the early nine now,
Speaker 1: once women were allowed to get on stage, female impersonation
Speaker 1: sharply declined like, we don't need you to do that
Speaker 1: got women. But then minstrel and vaudeville shows came along,
Speaker 1: and there it became a trope in comedy to put
Speaker 1: a man in women's clothing, right, So you had white
Speaker 1: men performing in black face playing black female tropes. The
Speaker 1: argument being that drag for black people specifically is rooted
Speaker 1: in racist black face performance is based on this because
Speaker 1: it was It was basically, these men were already wearing
Speaker 1: black face, so of course they're going to just include women,
Speaker 1: you know, black women as part of their mocking and
Speaker 1: their shitty comedy. And so they were also wearing drag.
Speaker 1: But those were white men, white men wearing black face
Speaker 1: and playing black women. Um So, in terms of like
Speaker 1: black people themselves doing drag, I don't know, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I agree that that's completely accurate. I guess as
Speaker 1: in like the idea that black men were emasculated deliberately
Speaker 1: by being made to dress in drag, yeah, or like
Speaker 1: that they didn't want to do it, you know that
Speaker 1: there was no black performer out there who wanted to
Speaker 1: do it. Was just this thing they were forced to
Speaker 1: do to humiliate themselves. That's kind of some of the
Speaker 1: rhetoric I've I've seen interesting, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: you know widely that opinion is held by anybody, um,
Speaker 1: but it was just something that really stuck in my
Speaker 1: crop because I was like, I was like, is that true?
Speaker 1: And I was really trying to find something to back
Speaker 1: it up. And that's kind of the only thing I
Speaker 1: can see is that black face performers were playing black
Speaker 1: women in drag. And that's not to say that there
Speaker 1: is not plenty of racism to complain about within drag
Speaker 1: ballroom culture, because the reason that black performers struck out
Speaker 1: on their own to do drag competitions was because all
Speaker 1: female impersonation and drag competitions were interracial frequently, but the
Speaker 1: judges were always white, so they never let the black
Speaker 1: performers win anything naturally. So they were like, well, we'll
Speaker 1: go off and make our own thing, and that ended
Speaker 1: up being the more popular version, and the more you know,
Speaker 1: what became the modern version of dragon dragon ballroom culture.
Speaker 1: Figure black people took a piece of culture and said
Speaker 1: we're going to go off and do our own version
Speaker 1: of this, and it was way better and more fun
Speaker 1: and everybody thousand times more cool, surprise, surprise real. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: as dragon ballroom culture got more popular and more mainstream
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties and seventies, white people then reco
Speaker 1: opted kind of like kind of went back in. They
Speaker 1: co opted the dances, the moves, the attitude to make
Speaker 1: a bunch of money without actually supporting any of the
Speaker 1: people that they stole from. This sounds like a unique
Speaker 1: thing that's only happened this one time. We really lifted,
Speaker 1: we totally bifted white people. Fortunately, never did that again.
Speaker 1: Now if you look it up, there's plenty of discourse about.
Speaker 1: For example, Jenny Livingston, who directed the nine film Paris
Speaker 1: Is Burning. She had promised that the queens that she
Speaker 1: interviewed for that film would get like a portion of
Speaker 1: the proceeds of the film. They never got anything. Um
Speaker 1: Madonna's song Vogue is another good example. She kind of
Speaker 1: took the moves and everything from it, but she didn't
Speaker 1: really do much for the community, I suppose, And so
Speaker 1: that's kind of a good example of that kind of exploitation.
Speaker 1: There are the two examples that come up the most.
Speaker 1: As early as eighteen sixty seven, Harlem's Hamilton's Lodge was
Speaker 1: holding an annual Odd Fellows Ball, and it had both
Speaker 1: black and white performers compete for prizes for the best
Speaker 1: female impersonator. And the terms drag and drag queen did
Speaker 1: more than likely, as best as we can tell, originate
Speaker 1: with William Dorsey Swann, who is our subject today now.
Speaker 1: William was born into slavery in Maryland around eighteen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: He was the fifth eldest of thirteen siblings. Channing Gerard Joseph,
Speaker 1: who's the main reason that we know anything about William
Speaker 1: Swan at all, says in his paper for the Oxford
Speaker 1: African American Studies Center that William's mother was an enslaved
Speaker 1: housekeeper named Mary Jane Yunker, and his father was an
Speaker 1: enslaved wheat farmer and musician named Andrew Jackson Swan. The
Speaker 1: Civil War was very difficult for them. They lived in Hancock, Maryland,
Speaker 1: which was a Union held town, but it straddled the
Speaker 1: Mason Dixon line, so there's plenty of people who lived
Speaker 1: there who saved their loyalty for the Confederate South. What
Speaker 1: a weird place to live, I know. Literally, you talk
Speaker 1: about a divided nation and brother against brother and all
Speaker 1: this stuff. But like literally, you know, Berlin, there's a
Speaker 1: wall right through the middle year town. So soldiers would
Speaker 1: come in and they would eat or destroy crops in
Speaker 1: this town, making food very scarce. But the family still
Speaker 1: celebrated Christmas and other holidays together, and Gerard Joseph writes
Speaker 1: quote from these experiences, Swan learned the importance of unity,
Speaker 1: self sacrifice, and the pursuit of joy in the face
Speaker 1: of oppression, values he would carry into his adult life.
Speaker 1: And when the war was over and the Swans had
Speaker 1: their freedom, Swan's parents bought a farm in Hancock, Maryland,
Speaker 1: and William wouldn't have been much more than like seven
Speaker 1: years old at this time, but like a lot of
Speaker 1: formerly enslaved kids, he did not go to school. Instead,
Speaker 1: he was expected to work as soon as possible and
Speaker 1: help contribute to the family income. True so likely he
Speaker 1: did all kinds of like odd jobs and tasks that
Speaker 1: a kid can make a wage with, until he was
Speaker 1: old enough to get hired as a hotel waiter. But
Speaker 1: then in late in eighteen eighty he felt like he
Speaker 1: wasn't really making enough money doing that, so he took
Speaker 1: off to Washington, d C. Coming from sleepy little Hancock. Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. That capital of the whole country. It was
Speaker 1: just a very exciting uh sprawled out is full of
Speaker 1: hustle and bustle and opportunities. So William quickly found a
Speaker 1: job as a janitor at the Spencerian Business College, and
Speaker 1: he spent his spare time learning how to read and write.
Speaker 1: But one of the best things about Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: At this time was that there were a lot more
Speaker 1: men like William. There men who had same sex attraction.
Speaker 1: And William was a well mannered, very charming guy. He
Speaker 1: made friends everywhere he went. It's just like a natural
Speaker 1: party planner. He saw the need for gathering space for
Speaker 1: all these men, so he started holding secret gatherings that
Speaker 1: he called drags, which are Joseph says, might be a
Speaker 1: corruption of grand rag, which was a term for a
Speaker 1: masquerade ball. Grand drag, drag, Grand drag drag, Grand Rag.
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean you can totally see how
Speaker 1: it how it could have come about so much faster
Speaker 1: than saying grand reg I know, grand rag, who's got that,
Speaker 1: who's got the time? And of course if you say
Speaker 1: come on down to my rag, I mean nobody's coming.
Speaker 1: No one's come to that now asked for the term
Speaker 1: queen that came for the annual Emancipation Day parade. This
Speaker 1: commemorated the end of slavery. In D. C. Gerard Joseph
Speaker 1: Wrights quote, the parades highlights were the queens of liberty.
Speaker 1: They were crowned black women who sat atop elaborate flower
Speaker 1: covered floats. The grace and beauty of these women, who
Speaker 1: personified African Americans new found freedom, made a deep impression
Speaker 1: on Swan, who took the title queen among his friends.
Speaker 1: So even though female impersonation and costume balls were popular
Speaker 1: all throughout history, quote, Swan is the earliest documented person
Speaker 1: to be known as a queen of a cross dressing
Speaker 1: ball described by US participants as a drag. Hence William
Speaker 1: was the very first drag queen. I love this because
Speaker 1: you can just kind of picture him, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, meeting these dudes and being like, Oh, there's
Speaker 1: people like me around and we all want to get together,
Speaker 1: we want to party, we want to do stuff, and
Speaker 1: then seeing this parade and kind of being like, I'm
Speaker 1: a queen and just kind of saying, y'all, let's kind
Speaker 1: of drag. I'm the queen. Come to the house of Swan.
Speaker 1: Time to party, you know, like you just kind of
Speaker 1: see it all come together. We can all be queens. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But of course these drags, all Williams parties, got him
Speaker 1: in trouble with the law more than once. So we'll
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we'll hear about all that
Speaker 1: right afterwards. Welcome back, everybody. So William Dorsey Swan had
Speaker 1: his first brush with the law in eighteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: when he was twenty four years old. He was caught
Speaker 1: stealing books from the Washington Library Company and party supplies
Speaker 1: like silver ware and plates from his employers, who were
Speaker 1: white educators named Henry and Sarah Spencer. They ran the
Speaker 1: college that he worked at. William pleaded guilty to petty larceny.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to six months in prison for stealing
Speaker 1: the books and one month for the silverware, but the Spencer's,
Speaker 1: along with the sentencing judge and the assistant U S attorney,
Speaker 1: asked Chester A. Arthur for presidential pardon for Swan. Um.
Speaker 1: They said he sent his family everything he could spare
Speaker 1: from his wages, and that he was quote free from vice, industrious,
Speaker 1: refined in his habits, and associations, gentle in his disposition,
Speaker 1: courteous in his bearing. And they also said, you know
Speaker 1: he stole books, he was just trying to become better educated.
Speaker 1: Why should you punish him for that? Um? And they
Speaker 1: said that the college would be happy to provide him
Speaker 1: lifetime employment as their janitor. Okay, so these like the
Speaker 1: Spencers were on board with William Swan, right, but like,
Speaker 1: if the spencer's the judge and the assistant attorney, we're
Speaker 1: all coming to his defense. Who pressed charges in the
Speaker 1: first place? Great question? Was it just like, oh, we
Speaker 1: caught him, so we have to go through this regularole,
Speaker 1: but we'll try and undo the damage. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And it's it's actually not recorded if he ever got
Speaker 1: the pardon, or if he served his full sentence, or
Speaker 1: they just kind of let him out after a couple
Speaker 1: of months writing. It's not it's not recorded anywhere. Um.
Speaker 1: But I does speak to his character that the Spencer's right, No,
Speaker 1: this guy is great. What are you talking about. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they didn't know to what use the silverware was
Speaker 1: being put perhaps, but you know they were basically like
Speaker 1: let him be, you know what I mean? So anyway,
Speaker 1: at some point he was out of jail and he
Speaker 1: was throwing parties again because you know, Swan's not going
Speaker 1: to be kept down by a little petty larceny charge.
Speaker 1: And of course these parties are underground. Their invitation only
Speaker 1: um Usually invitations were issued at places like the y
Speaker 1: m c A. And often the location would be withheld
Speaker 1: or changed at the last minute to avoid the possibility
Speaker 1: of being rated. But so it's kind of a whisper campaign,
Speaker 1: like a doing tonight right, you gotta come down the
Speaker 1: fourth and Broadway, except it's not gonna be. We'll text
Speaker 1: you with the real location five minutes before it starts.
Speaker 1: Is where I write it down in text on a
Speaker 1: sheet of paper, and I'm going to tie it to
Speaker 1: a pigeon and then good luck after that because these
Speaker 1: are not trained pigeons. Help it flies to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So these parties included dinner and dancing, including the cake Walk.
Speaker 1: If you're a regular listener, you might remember from our
Speaker 1: episode about Ada and George Walker that the cake walk
Speaker 1: was this dance that was very popular during slavery. But
Speaker 1: it was all about style, you know. It was the
Speaker 1: best moves, the funniest, the most ostentatious, whatever, just like
Speaker 1: you know, come out here on the dance floor and
Speaker 1: do something wild. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And then the winner
Speaker 1: of this dance would get a cake as a prize.
Speaker 1: So the moves involved in the cake walk would eventually
Speaker 1: be the inspiration for voguing. So William and his guests,
Speaker 1: they were dancing, they're dining, they're drinking altogether regularly at
Speaker 1: these secret parties. And they would all wear, as the
Speaker 1: Washington critic put it in seven quote, low neck and
Speaker 1: short sleeve silk dresses, several of them with trains. They
Speaker 1: all wore corsets, bustles, long hose and slippers and everything
Speaker 1: that goes to make a female's dress complete. That's right.
Speaker 1: They had it, all accessories and everything. They would wear
Speaker 1: wigs like they were really going for it. They wanted
Speaker 1: to look the best. Some of the guests included Felix
Speaker 1: Hall and Pierce Lafayette, who were the first documented same
Speaker 1: sex enslaved couple. William had been friends with these men
Speaker 1: for a long time, and at this point in the
Speaker 1: story he and Pierce were actually lovers. We're not sure
Speaker 1: if Felix was still in the mix or not. There's
Speaker 1: not much recorded about him, but we can tell you
Speaker 1: a little bit about Pierce. Yes, Pierce Lafayette had been
Speaker 1: enslaved in Georgia by none other than Alexander H. Stevens,
Speaker 1: who was the vice President of the Confederate States of America,
Speaker 1: so sort of close to the seat of power. I
Speaker 1: guess um stevens legacy is basically that he gave a
Speaker 1: big speech in eighteen sixty one, straight up saying, quote,
Speaker 1: our new government, its foundations are laid. It's cornerstone rests
Speaker 1: upon the great truth that the negro is not equal
Speaker 1: to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior
Speaker 1: race is his natural and normal condition. Wow. Pretty explicit.
Speaker 1: This is where this is when I read some ship
Speaker 1: and I'm like people who try to tell me that
Speaker 1: it wasn't about slavery. I just don't understand. It's very
Speaker 1: clearly about slave. They kept saying it over and over again,
Speaker 1: secret they were very proud of it. In fact, even
Speaker 1: though they agreed on slavery, Alexander Stevens and the Confederate
Speaker 1: President Jefferson Davis did not get along otherwise, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four, Stevens gave another famous speech in Milledgeville Georgia,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know this, but that was the capital
Speaker 1: of the confederacyne you know that, if I ever was
Speaker 1: told it, I definitely forgot it. The Millageville I like
Speaker 1: that the former capital of the Confederacy is now Millageville, Georgia.
Speaker 1: I know, all right, you go to Millageville and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is no offense to people who live in Millageville,
Speaker 1: people from Millageville, from millage from they left. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's people still living in Villageville who were cool. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's in Millageville and he's ranting in this speech in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four that it was just against white liberty
Speaker 1: to conscript soldiers and how dare you draft me into
Speaker 1: the r and so on, and he was advocating for
Speaker 1: policies that would lead to peace with the North, but
Speaker 1: without you know, giving up the slavery. So anyway, just
Speaker 1: kind of going on and on about how it's very
Speaker 1: important for white people to feel free and have personal
Speaker 1: freedom in the quick irony. And while he was giving
Speaker 1: this speech, according to the New York Times, Pierce decided
Speaker 1: to grab a little perty for himself and he quote
Speaker 1: escaped to the Union lines and placed himself in the
Speaker 1: service of a cavalry unit commanded by General Joseph Wheeler.
Speaker 1: This guy's given his big speech, and Pierce just slipped out.
Speaker 1: He's like, see you later, boss, to have a good
Speaker 1: speech by take my ask to the union line and
Speaker 1: be like, how can I help you? Well, Pierce escaping
Speaker 1: apparently really chocked Alexander Stevens, who, as we said, had
Speaker 1: given his whole big cornerstone speech all about how, as
Speaker 1: the New York Times put it, quote, the unquestioning obedience
Speaker 1: he expected from Pierce and his other thirty odd slaves
Speaker 1: was a function of their racial deficiencies and white superiority,
Speaker 1: he insisted, had been vindicated by modern science. Just guys
Speaker 1: literally like, well, all of the people I enslaved will
Speaker 1: inherently be obedient because scientifically I am superior to them.
Speaker 1: And then they ran off on him right well, and
Speaker 1: he and that they liked it. That. I think he
Speaker 1: also had a little bit of that where he's like,
Speaker 1: not only is it it's natural for them, they prefer it.
Speaker 1: They're safer and happier when they're enslaved by me and
Speaker 1: told what to do. Unbelievable, And the Pierces like, let
Speaker 1: me prove you wrong right fast, and that he's so
Speaker 1: taken about what I thought you liked this. The New
Speaker 1: York Times says that Pierce Leaving haunted Stevens in late
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, after the war was over and Stevens
Speaker 1: was serving a five month jail sentence awaiting a possible
Speaker 1: trial for treason against the United States. Because of the treason,
Speaker 1: because of you know, because of the treason, he quote
Speaker 1: recorded several dreams of his once trusted servants. In one
Speaker 1: of the most vivid, he imagined the life that a
Speaker 1: wayward Pierce would be living beyond his master's control. Oh lord,
Speaker 1: what was that dream? Oh my god? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't give us the details. But he's starving in
Speaker 1: the streets. He's living in a ditch somewhere. It could
Speaker 1: be sife and comfortable. Well, Pierce and Stevens did cross
Speaker 1: paths again. Stevens, who did not get a prison sentence
Speaker 1: for treason. Actually he was elected to the House of
Speaker 1: Representatives in eight seventy three, which I'm sorry. The guy
Speaker 1: who was the vice President of the Confederacy later got
Speaker 1: elected to the House of Representatives name a healing Well
Speaker 1: you know, it's just goes to show you that the
Speaker 1: end of the Civil War did not make everyone suddenly
Speaker 1: changed their minds. Oh no, not even a little. Well,
Speaker 1: Stevens did use his influence to help get Pierce a
Speaker 1: civil service appointment at the Interior Department. Stevens had apparently
Speaker 1: tried to train Pierce to be a trusted dependent and
Speaker 1: assistant to him, and now that he was his own man.
Speaker 1: As New York Times rights quote, stevens Southern mastery was
Speaker 1: replaced by a routine act of political patronage. This guy
Speaker 1: makes no sense. This guy previously enslaved. This man told him, oh,
Speaker 1: you like it here, genetically, I'm superior to you. When
Speaker 1: he escaped, he was shocked and said, well, let me
Speaker 1: get you a job in government. Then. I mean, it
Speaker 1: must be really hard to like hold all this weird
Speaker 1: ship together where you're like, this person's inferior to me,
Speaker 1: but they're not so inferior that he can't be a
Speaker 1: trusted assistant to me. But he definitely prefers that to
Speaker 1: like leaving living, you know, living his own life and
Speaker 1: doing whatever he wants. But now he does want to
Speaker 1: do whatever he wants. Will I guess he's still a
Speaker 1: smart guy. I'll go ahead and help him get this job.
Speaker 1: Why didn't he just ever once be like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe some black people are as smart as white people,
Speaker 1: and some white people are as dumb as anybody else.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I don't know why he can't see
Speaker 1: at all, But there's it's just a brain. That's what's
Speaker 1: so frustrating about it, because clearly this whole time he thought, oh,
Speaker 1: you are good enough to be my assistant. I just
Speaker 1: don't want to pay you or treat you like a person.
Speaker 1: But now that I have to, I guess I'll just
Speaker 1: take you into the same job. But I guess I'll
Speaker 1: pay you a little bit of money this time, and
Speaker 1: I won't make you sleep in a barn outside, you know,
Speaker 1: Like it's just goes to show people like Stevens who
Speaker 1: knew all along that these are human beings and but
Speaker 1: convince themselves they weren't. A line. Just like, your brain
Speaker 1: don't work, you know what I mean, your brain's broken. Well,
Speaker 1: it was at Pierce's elegant two story house in Hancock, Maryland,
Speaker 1: that William was throwing another one of his drag balls
Speaker 1: in seven and it got busted up by the cops,
Speaker 1: six men were arrested. As Gerard Joseph Wrights quote, newspapers
Speaker 1: described several black men wearing bewitching fascinators, silk sacks, or
Speaker 1: kashmere dresses while on route to balls Um. They also
Speaker 1: printed the names of the men arrested. So again very
Speaker 1: important to point out. These men were risking everything to
Speaker 1: go to this party. You know, they could lose their reputation,
Speaker 1: their livelihood, their freedom, their friendships if they were discovered.
Speaker 1: They were the center of moral panic and scorn. It
Speaker 1: sounds like just a little party, but it's clearly more
Speaker 1: important than that. And in the seven raid, according to Joseph,
Speaker 1: this was quote the first time the wider world learned
Speaker 1: of Swan and the Motley group of messengers, Butlers, coachman,
Speaker 1: and cooks. So now that the group was more widely known,
Speaker 1: of course everyone had their little hot take, just like today,
Speaker 1: even though we don't have you know, they didn't have Twitter,
Speaker 1: they still wrote some dumb ship and of course they
Speaker 1: didn't have the terms that we have today gender, non conforming, transgender.
Speaker 1: They didn't even have the term cross dressing really yet.
Speaker 1: So one researcher named Dr Charles Hamiltons. Hughes described them
Speaker 1: in a medical journal as quote an organization of colored
Speaker 1: erato paths and aleccherous gang of sexual perverts. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a great time to me, quite frankly. Again, these
Speaker 1: guys are funny to me because they're just so freaked
Speaker 1: out by skirt. You know, it's the same people who
Speaker 1: were not even talking about women wearing pants, which of
Speaker 1: course we know women were arrested for wearing pants even
Speaker 1: further than men were arrested for wearing dresses. But like,
Speaker 1: they're so upset when you wear a different type of
Speaker 1: clothing than they think your gender should be wearing. Like
Speaker 1: they think the whole world's falling apart and it's really
Speaker 1: not worth all that stress so concerned about, right, And
Speaker 1: most of it is all comes down to their this
Speaker 1: idea in their heads that it's something sexual, as if
Speaker 1: that's the most horrific thing that ever happened in the world,
Speaker 1: the thing that literally has been happening since before any
Speaker 1: other human activity happened, literally anything else, before we did
Speaker 1: anything else that we're doing today, we were having sex
Speaker 1: with each other. But it wasn't until during a raid
Speaker 1: when William would really cement his place in Queer history.
Speaker 1: It was his thirtieth birthday party, and William was wearing
Speaker 1: quote a gorgeous dress of cream colored satin. Likely this
Speaker 1: dress was made by William's younger brother, Daniel J. Swan,
Speaker 1: who was a tailor, and Daniel made women's clothing for
Speaker 1: himself and several other people in their community. At least
Speaker 1: two of William's brothers regularly attended his parties. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: party was going great, fabulous ball, lots of people dancing,
Speaker 1: looking wonderful, I'm sure when suddenly the cops showed up
Speaker 1: and they barged in. Now William Dorsey Swann, who was
Speaker 1: not a small man, he charged right up the officers
Speaker 1: and he fought them at the door, yes, boldly telling
Speaker 1: one officer quote, you is no gentleman, how dare you, sir?
Speaker 1: I love it. I wish you would take a glove off,
Speaker 1: like smacking on the face. Right. So, you know, he's
Speaker 1: a blazing this beautiful cream dress and he's fighting off,
Speaker 1: you know, a whole whole brigade of cops at the door,
Speaker 1: and he's holding them off long enough that seventeen of
Speaker 1: his guests were able to escape. But in the process,
Speaker 1: William's dress was torn to shreds, and he, along with
Speaker 1: twelve others, were arrested. Gerard Joseph points out that his
Speaker 1: choice to resist quote, rather than submit passively to his arrest,
Speaker 1: marks one of the earliest known instances of violent resistance
Speaker 1: in the name of gay rights. Hell, yes, amazing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. He got so mad. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: anger is really really valuable emotion, you know, and when
Speaker 1: they're like, don't treat me like this. I'm done coming
Speaker 1: in with violence to knock you down and make you stop,
Speaker 1: you know, living your own free life right on my
Speaker 1: private property or someone's private property, Like what is what's
Speaker 1: it to you? But William did not stop there. We
Speaker 1: will tell you all about his clash with Grover Cleveland
Speaker 1: right after these words, welcome back to everybody. So after
Speaker 1: that bust up in that that kind of public airing
Speaker 1: of their private parties made it a lot harder to
Speaker 1: throw these drag balls, but William still held them anyway.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm going to keep partying. And he had
Speaker 1: another one get busted up in six. This time he
Speaker 1: was convicted of keeping a disorderly house, which was a
Speaker 1: euphemism for running a brothel, okay, because we keep a
Speaker 1: disorderly house. I was like, now, there's no evidence whatsoever
Speaker 1: that William Dorsey Swan ran a brothel or engaged in
Speaker 1: sex work at all, but you know he had gay parties.
Speaker 1: So people like Hughes condemned these balls as quote orgies
Speaker 1: of lascivious debauchery beyond pen power of description, and the
Speaker 1: prosecutor at the trial even said that it was just
Speaker 1: a punishment for Swan's sexual relationships with other men and
Speaker 1: his quote evil example in the community. So he even
Speaker 1: straight up was like, yeah, we know it's bogus, but
Speaker 1: we just want to get you for something. At the trial,
Speaker 1: Swan was sentenced to ten months in jail, with the
Speaker 1: judge lament thing that he couldn't make it ten years
Speaker 1: and saying quote, I would like to send you where
Speaker 1: you would never again see a man's face, and would
Speaker 1: then like to rid the city of all other disreputable
Speaker 1: persons of the same kind. Wow, geez, Like these guys,
Speaker 1: they're so full throated with this ship. It's insane, and
Speaker 1: it kind of shows you how fine it was to
Speaker 1: be shitty to people a different because it was just
Speaker 1: so in your face. Well, I'm like, what what anger
Speaker 1: and hatred is so permeating you that you're given an
Speaker 1: opportunity to unleash it and you just let it out
Speaker 1: in the most horrible way you can know? Like, what
Speaker 1: is everything okay at home? For? This is what you
Speaker 1: care about with this level of vitriol? Like this, of
Speaker 1: all things going on in this is what you're concerned with. Hey,
Speaker 1: what do you hate most of the world? Well, when
Speaker 1: people enjoy their time to gather, it really makes me. Man,
Speaker 1: I hate parties with music like Jesus. Maybe the judge
Speaker 1: never got invited to a party. It was just like
Speaker 1: if I can't party, no I can't. So the speculation station,
Speaker 1: this judge was just a complete loser who didn't know
Speaker 1: how to make friends. I'm satisfied with that speculation station.
Speaker 1: I think we can just write that down in the
Speaker 1: history books. Now, I didn't get invited to a lot
Speaker 1: of parties, so no, no offense to my younger self.
Speaker 1: You were a complete loser who didn't know how to
Speaker 1: make friends. But that doesn't make you a bad person.
Speaker 1: I didn't get invited to a lot of parties either.
Speaker 1: That's why we throw our own. Now you're all invited.
Speaker 1: Well after this sentencing and this incredibly rude comment by
Speaker 1: the judge, William of course was furious. Three months into
Speaker 1: serving his sentence, he filed at for a presidential pardon, saying,
Speaker 1: according to Natitia Curry, who's the archives specialist at the
Speaker 1: National Archives in Maryland, that quote, he was a respectable
Speaker 1: hard worker with a long record of continuous employment, and
Speaker 1: that the sentence was severe to the crime, and that
Speaker 1: if released, he would live a proper and law abiding life,
Speaker 1: and that that to me just goes to show how
Speaker 1: much work William had to do to hold his tongue
Speaker 1: right and say like, I can't believe how I've been treated.
Speaker 1: But let me just explain to you why I will
Speaker 1: continue to be a good, hard working citizen. You know,
Speaker 1: he contributes and blah blah blah. I mean, when I'm
Speaker 1: sure in his heart and mind he was screaming some
Speaker 1: pretty it's a lot of vitriol of his own. I've
Speaker 1: got some things I would say, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I would be saying some a lot of ill advised things,
Speaker 1: let's say. Well, William's petition was signed by thirty of
Speaker 1: his friends and allies, possibly some who were part of
Speaker 1: the drag work or community. But the U S Attorney A. A.
Speaker 1: Bernie scoffed at it, saying, quote, the prisoner was in
Speaker 1: fact convicted of the most horrible and disgusting offense is
Speaker 1: known to the law, an offense so disgusted that it
Speaker 1: is unnamed. Jeus Bernie unnamed. Is we're an address party.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm assuming he's talking about the actual like
Speaker 1: gay sex that they're really objecting to. But like, bro
Speaker 1: and yeah, William Swan was like, I'm looking at other
Speaker 1: people who got probably for real, the charge of keeping
Speaker 1: a disorderly house, and they didn't get ten months in jails,
Speaker 1: got much shorter sentences. So even if I was, you know,
Speaker 1: so this guy's like, but it's worse that you did it.
Speaker 1: It's worse that it was a bunch of men. You know.
Speaker 1: He's like, Hey, I've got a friend whose former enslaver
Speaker 1: was the vice president of the Treasonist Confederacy and he
Speaker 1: is now a representative for the US government. Meanwhile, I
Speaker 1: had a party with some men in dresses and I
Speaker 1: have to go to jail for you wish ten years. Well,
Speaker 1: Alexander Stevens is some property and you see it's different. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: this petition made its way to the desk of the President,
Speaker 1: Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland, now he took his time answering it,
Speaker 1: perhaps read it in nonconsecutive possession. And while it was
Speaker 1: still pending review, Williams friends started calling Bernie's office because
Speaker 1: they were worried about William's health. Now, everything had been
Speaker 1: fine when he got a doctor's check up when he
Speaker 1: entered the jail in March, but then the same doctor
Speaker 1: in July diagnosed William with heart disease that he said
Speaker 1: was made worse by the prison conditions. So the friends
Speaker 1: are like, listen, he's like his life is endangered because
Speaker 1: of this prison sentence. Is in there some way you
Speaker 1: could commute it. But Grover Cleveland denied the pardon on
Speaker 1: July eighteen, nine six. Naticia Curry rights that he quote
Speaker 1: stated in summary that the implications of his health were
Speaker 1: not sufficient to counter the character of his offense. So
Speaker 1: basically was like, go ahead and die in jail. But
Speaker 1: even though he was unsuccessful channing through our Joseph points
Speaker 1: out that this makes swan quote the earliest recorded American
Speaker 1: to take specific legal and political steps to defend the
Speaker 1: queer communities right to gather without the threat of criminalization, suppression,
Speaker 1: or police violence. Another first, So really really like one
Speaker 1: of the first queer rights activists. He was the first
Speaker 1: to have violently resist arrest and the first to try
Speaker 1: political means um too to kind of state his piece,
Speaker 1: you know, in the late e Dreids, And it's so
Speaker 1: interesting to look at that and think about, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the Stonewall riots or something like that. And also it's
Speaker 1: really disheartening to look at this and say, well, this
Speaker 1: was a hundred and thirty years ago, I know, and
Speaker 1: here we are well, and like I know, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: like real turned up about it myself. Because there's bills
Speaker 1: currently in legislation that are trying to outlaw cross dressing,
Speaker 1: and it's they're very anti trans. They're specifically I think
Speaker 1: targeting trans youth or anyone adults as well, but I
Speaker 1: mean essentially they're writing it like you can't wear pants,
Speaker 1: men can't wear tights, you know. Like it's like insane
Speaker 1: to me to to one tell me that I live
Speaker 1: in a free country and that I can't wear pants, Like,
Speaker 1: I just think that's stupid. So anyway, it's like, as
Speaker 1: you say, we're looking at a very very early on
Speaker 1: and then nineteen sixty nine and then still now still
Speaker 1: still arguing about this, just like, can't we move on?
Speaker 1: Speaking of click fast forward? Ng, can I not fast
Speaker 1: forward through this shitty fascist part please, because we already
Speaker 1: know how this goes fastward or rewind and then just
Speaker 1: record over? Okay, that works too, I'm into it. How
Speaker 1: much can this click remote do? I never? Can it
Speaker 1: change reality? Can I just like implant new memories in
Speaker 1: people's brains and make them less shitty? Please? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I know him like going on and on, but it
Speaker 1: just makes me mad because it just seems like such
Speaker 1: a simple freedom, a norm of what what you put
Speaker 1: on your body, and I don't know, I just don't
Speaker 1: care walk around an address. Well. When he got out
Speaker 1: of prison, Swan was totally done with Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And he moved back home to Hancock and he retired
Speaker 1: from the drag scene after about nine but his brother
Speaker 1: Daniel continued the parties, and he continued providing costumes for
Speaker 1: the drag community until his death in nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: He dressed notable Black DC drag queens like aldn Garrison
Speaker 1: and mother Louis Diggs Williams. Drag balls were organized as
Speaker 1: house of Swan with mothers or more experienced performers mentoring
Speaker 1: the younger ones, and today the modern ballroom scene maintains
Speaker 1: this same format. You have your houses, the mothers, the queens.
Speaker 1: Even a lot of the language remains. Gerard Joseph writes,
Speaker 1: quote striking Lee. Descriptions of balls from the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: are sprinkled with phrases like strike a pose, sachet, across
Speaker 1: the floor, and vogue, the same terms that are heard
Speaker 1: today on TV shows like RU Paul's Drag Race or
Speaker 1: pose that's so fun that they didn't change? Why would
Speaker 1: they sat across the floor? What else do you need?
Speaker 1: Is there a better way to say that? You can
Speaker 1: hop in a time machine and go to back many
Speaker 1: many decades and say vogue, and people know what you mean.
Speaker 1: They will start to vogue. William Dorsey Swan died in
Speaker 1: nine and this was the same year and around this
Speaker 1: era when the queer culture started to really be linked
Speaker 1: intrinsically to drag and they would use slurs against queer
Speaker 1: people to describe some of these events as well, like
Speaker 1: Hamilton Lodge odd Fellow's Ball, which you know, we'll even
Speaker 1: need to say what they called that here, but it's
Speaker 1: it's the point in time at which the idea of
Speaker 1: cross dressing, you know, putting on clothes of the of
Speaker 1: a different gender, was associated with being gay or queer, yes,
Speaker 1: having the same sex attraction, which is not, as we
Speaker 1: pointed out this top of the episode, was not true
Speaker 1: for much. Right, it was just like, oh, you specialize
Speaker 1: in female performance, and not just that they associated those
Speaker 1: two things together, but they did so pejoratively, right, like
Speaker 1: it was a negative as opposed to being an extreme positive,
Speaker 1: because no one does it as well. Come on and
Speaker 1: to his death, authorities burned William Swan's home and everything
Speaker 1: in it. I don't know what the point of that
Speaker 1: was except to be shitty. Um. So unfortunately, there are
Speaker 1: no photos of William Swans, we can't look at any
Speaker 1: of his personal papers. We don't know anything about him
Speaker 1: beyond uh, basically what's in this episode. Because channing through
Speaker 1: our Joseph is also uh, I guess an ex drag queen,
Speaker 1: and he was like just looking through clippings one day
Speaker 1: and he found this newspaper clipping the said thirteen negroes
Speaker 1: were arrested outside this party and they were all dressed
Speaker 1: in women's clothing, and he was like, what's this and
Speaker 1: he ends up like busting this whole story open. So
Speaker 1: big ups to Channing, to our Joseph. He's also writing
Speaker 1: a nonfiction book called The House of Swan, where slaves
Speaker 1: become queens. Um So if when whenever that comes out,
Speaker 1: gonna try to read that because good. Also part of
Speaker 1: William Swan's like a see, this is pretty great. There's
Speaker 1: a road in DC called Swan Street, and for a
Speaker 1: very long time they were like, oh, it's named for
Speaker 1: the slave owner whose name was Thomas Swann. But in
Speaker 1: two they adopted a resolution to say no, it's named
Speaker 1: for William Dorsey Swan, the first drag queen, the first
Speaker 1: LGBT rights activist, who may have been born a slave,
Speaker 1: but damn it, he didn't let anybody tell him what
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, and I love that. They was like,
Speaker 1: you know what funk that guy? Make it Make it
Speaker 1: be about this guy. Yeah, thats what we want you
Speaker 1: to learn about him instead. That's awesome. Isn't that a
Speaker 1: crazy story? I love it. I'm very fascinating. I mean
Speaker 1: this is this kind of history, well exactly what's happening.
Speaker 1: I learned about this as an adult, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: where was this all my life? Right? You know? I
Speaker 1: mean I've I've been seeing drag shows since probably high school, yes,
Speaker 1: definitely college, and I have known a little bit about
Speaker 1: the history like Stonewall and things like that, but but
Speaker 1: never no one, I mean, like said this history has
Speaker 1: been kind of lost. So I'm glad that Channing Gerard
Speaker 1: Joseph is putting it together because it seems like something
Speaker 1: kind of important to know, I know, and what a
Speaker 1: great character and stuff. I mean. He also points out
Speaker 1: he's like, it's really I mean, it sucks that they
Speaker 1: got arrested and their names printed in the newspaper because
Speaker 1: it made them less safe in their time and in
Speaker 1: their space, and you know it, it just wasn't great.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, he's like, if we didn't have that,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't know they existed at all. So in a way,
Speaker 1: very grateful for the record of them being arrested and
Speaker 1: having to ask for these pardons, because otherwise they would
Speaker 1: be lost to history completely. We wouldn't have any idea
Speaker 1: about anything about them. So and then even that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can see someone reading the very same article and going, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a place I can go and party with guys
Speaker 1: like me. Okay, I'm gonna try to get to the
Speaker 1: y m c A, find out the address, get the
Speaker 1: the discord or whatever. I gotta do. Very interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of that terrible double edged sword where
Speaker 1: you're you're like, He's like, if it weren't for this,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't know. If they hadn't done that, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been a shitty for them. I don't know which
Speaker 1: one I'd rather get rid of. So you hear that
Speaker 1: everyone Diana is advocating to arrest marginalized people. We can't
Speaker 1: have a record at their story later. Don't say that.
Speaker 1: I would never No, no, I would say the opposite. Actually, hey,
Speaker 1: everybody out there, you know, every time you cause a
Speaker 1: fuss about someone that you don't like and you want
Speaker 1: to marginalize them, if you want to oppress them, you
Speaker 1: know you might be building up their own case against you.
Speaker 1: You might be you know, history is not going to
Speaker 1: look kindly on you, and they're going to see what
Speaker 1: you were doing to people, and hopefully the story will
Speaker 1: change later on or you could just not treat people
Speaker 1: shitty to begin with, right, just stop giving a fuck
Speaker 1: if someone is wearing a skirt or whatever. Who cares?
Speaker 1: Who cares? Who care? I'm going to measure from the
Speaker 1: beginning to the end of my life, okay, and I'll
Speaker 1: look back, and there's two versions. One where I really
Speaker 1: gave a ship about people in about men wearing dresses
Speaker 1: or whatever, and one where I don't. And I guarantee
Speaker 1: you at the end of those two lives, everything is
Speaker 1: the same, except that I probably had more and better
Speaker 1: friends in the one where I wasn't an ask Okay,
Speaker 1: for real, this, I'm like, do you need a hobby?
Speaker 1: Do we need to find you a volunteer job, like
Speaker 1: cleaning up some trash somewhere so you can do something
Speaker 1: useful because this energy you're putting into this dumb ship,
Speaker 1: it's just such a waste, exactly, such a waste. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you have so much drive, so much emotion and passion,
Speaker 1: can you not like put it somewhere? Well, you're embarrassing yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a big part of it too. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm embarrassed for you because you're dumb. Dumb, that's that
Speaker 1: be can't stay silent. It has to speak up, and
Speaker 1: you're Abe who can't stay right the bee can't stay silent. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I want to thank less Kirk and Doll for a
Speaker 1: beautiful performance of this and you do get a chance
Speaker 1: to see the real black Swan. He does perform it
Speaker 1: several different places around the country. He might do even
Speaker 1: an online version. It's really really great show. He kind
Speaker 1: of like weaves his own life in with William Dorsey
Speaker 1: Swan and it's really great. That's so cool and uh so,
Speaker 1: I just loved it and I was really excited to
Speaker 1: be introduced to this guy. So thank you Less Kirk
Speaker 1: and Doll, and I hope that you liked this story
Speaker 1: as much as we did. You know we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Our email address is ridic Romance at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. That's right, or find us online on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli and
Speaker 1: I'm Dynamite Boom. The show is at ridic Romance on
Speaker 1: those platforms and Ridiculous Romance on TikTok. Yes, and you
Speaker 1: are awesome. Thank you for spending time with us today.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. You'll see soon. Bye bye.