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at allbirds.com, code FRESH24. Hello

1:09

and welcome to Sentimental Garbage, the podcast where we

1:11

talk about the culture we love that society sometimes

1:13

makes us feel ashamed of. My name

1:15

is Caroline, and I'm begging of you, please don't take

1:17

my man. And she's not the girlfriend,

1:19

she's not the mistress, she's the goomah.

1:21

It's Madeline Gray. I had

1:23

to Google what that meant last night. I'm

1:26

so glad that for once I shared my episode

1:28

notes in advance. Yes, a goomah

1:30

is a mafia term for a

1:33

mistress. Wow, I should have watched the

1:35

Sopranos in lockdown like everyone else did. Yeah, I feel like

1:37

I've been waiting maybe my whole life to use it

1:39

professionally in a sentence, and now I've ticked that

1:41

off. Yeah, but when I was Googling it, it

1:43

was suggesting that it was a mistress, but also

1:45

kind of like another mother, almost a kind of

1:47

maternal figure. And I liked that kind of dual

1:50

role. As somebody

1:52

who's been thinking about mistresses for some time, I

1:54

imagine it was nice to add dimensionality to your

1:56

understanding. Absolutely, yeah, all I've got is like hussy

1:58

and side chicks, so that's a good one. great one.

2:00

Pussy, side chick, now Guma.

2:04

So Madeline Grey, can I call you Mary? Please.

2:07

Everybody does. You have written a

2:09

book called Green Dot that like,

2:11

if you're in any way switched on to the

2:14

book press at all, like people, people

2:16

have fucking heard of it. You know, it is,

2:18

it is everywhere at the moment and for like

2:20

very good reason in that it's just been a

2:22

really long time since the literary novel was this

2:24

funny. I really, really loved it.

2:27

But when we reached out to do a show with you, uh,

2:30

mistresses came back immediately. And my favorite, favorite

2:32

kind of episodes to do on this show

2:35

is not movies or albums. It's

2:37

like concepts that exist in the culture

2:39

that we just accept as a set

2:42

kind of bunch of traits about and

2:44

then we move on from and we

2:46

don't really delve into enough. And so

2:48

today we're delving into mistresses. Absolutely.

2:50

I'm very excited. I've clearly thought about this

2:53

a lot for like four years. So

2:55

yeah, let's go. First of all, like

2:57

give me your thesis. Jesus.

3:01

If there is a unifying thesis,

3:03

are you just interested in them?

3:05

The unifying thesis mistresses by Leslie

3:07

Jamison. Um, yeah, so essentially,

3:09

like there's all different kinds of mistress. The one I'm

3:11

interested in most is the kind

3:13

of woman who is actually in the relationship

3:15

with the married man and doesn't want to

3:18

be in a relationship with him. Obviously there

3:20

are other iterations where people are just like

3:22

sleeping together one time and they're also,

3:25

they qualify as mistresses, I suppose, but

3:27

I'm interested more in the woman who's

3:29

waiting in a liminal space to wait

3:32

for a man to decide he

3:34

loves her more than the other

3:36

woman that he's with. And

3:39

like the only thesis that I have as

3:41

such is that it is a completely, um,

3:45

it's an undesirable role to be in.

3:47

It's really, really hard and sad

3:49

and existentially devastating. And

3:51

the moral repugnance

3:54

that like immediately comes to the mistress,

3:56

I think speaks much more to like

3:58

heteronormative like structure. things

4:01

in society than it does to if

4:04

we just stopped and tried to empathize with that

4:06

woman for a second. Yeah yeah and like on

4:09

that great thesis by the way and on

4:11

that like what

4:13

I find so fascinating about examining mistress's in

4:16

this exact moment is that like you and

4:18

I are in the same industry and I

4:20

would say that we're making books within the

4:22

same segment of the same industry which is like

4:24

literary slightly comic kind of

4:26

novel very comic. Let's say

4:29

very comic. Hilarious. We're funny

4:32

but very much this very

4:36

healthy industry at the moment of a lot of

4:38

books being published by a lot of women a lot

4:40

of them between the ages of you know 25

4:43

and 38 kind of thing and a lot of them

4:45

about this subject

4:48

about young women becoming

4:51

mistresses with

4:54

generally with men much older.

4:56

Your debut Green Dot is about

4:58

a girl in her first office

5:01

job who is so like

5:03

paralyzingly, numbingly both

5:05

bored and just like feels

5:07

sort of drained and stripped

5:09

by the kind of work that she's doing

5:11

that it's almost like she has to have

5:13

an affair yeah to sort of keep the

5:15

blood flowing in her veins. Yeah it's not

5:17

a great excuse but like an excuse. Yeah

5:19

yeah exactly like for Hera the character like

5:22

I think that if she was in any other

5:25

context it's like quite unlikely that she would pursue

5:27

this particular romantic path. Yeah and I think that's

5:29

that's like in your first book and in a lot of

5:31

these books about mistresses these women are

5:34

making this choice because in

5:36

every other realm of their working life

5:38

they just feel like

5:41

an empty husk. When no one

5:44

is treating them with intellectual respect

5:46

there's no kind of suggestion that

5:48

labor will equate to like value

5:52

and then there's this prospect of

5:54

feeling something with a kind of

5:56

a narrative that they already

5:58

know so well from popular culture. which is

6:00

a married dude. So they try and latch on

6:03

to this thing that they

6:05

kind of already know of by heart. Yeah,

6:07

yes, yes. And that's so, and when

6:10

you say latch on, it's like, what

6:13

I loved about your book is that like, even though

6:16

Hera becomes sort of like the victim of this,

6:19

and so does my character

6:21

Jane in Promising Young Women, which follows a different

6:24

book entirely, but a similar

6:26

plot structure, is that they,

6:28

they end up

6:30

being sort of victimized by this thing that

6:33

they end this contract they entered into willingly.

6:35

And also in the beginning of these relationships,

6:37

they see themselves as the predator. Yeah,

6:39

precisely. And so I think the

6:41

tension that I'm trying to play with, and I think that you

6:43

played with as well, is the

6:46

space between doing something

6:48

because it's ironic and like funny, and you think

6:51

that you understand it, and therefore it's like

6:53

a commitment to the bit. And

6:56

then like that space where you actually commit to

6:58

the bit so much that the bit becomes your actual

7:00

life, like, can it still be said to be ironic?

7:02

Probably not. Probably

7:05

not. Although I really do believe that

7:08

like, you, every

7:10

new phase of your life that you enter, you

7:12

enter at first ironically. Like Dolly

7:14

always says, it's about like people going on cruise ships

7:17

ironically. I actually think I'd love to go

7:19

on a cruise ship. I'm already there. Speaking

7:22

of mistresses, I just read an extract from

7:25

Pandora's newsletter of one of

7:27

the ex-mistresses of the Playboy Mansion,

7:29

where she described her life

7:32

at the Playboy Mansion as like being on

7:34

a cruise ship. It was like that kind

7:36

of schedule. It was like eight o'clock is

7:38

movie time, ten o'clock is sex time, then

7:40

Hugh has his BLT. Yeah, oh

7:42

my god, that sounds wild. Yeah, Pandora was because I

7:44

saw her last week, she was telling me that there

7:46

was like a kind of, almost that

7:49

kind of level of schedule in the bedroom as well.

7:51

That'd be like kind of a rotating like

7:54

sushi train of bodies. Rotating

7:58

sushi train of bodies. in

8:00

the morning. Well

8:05

yeah, it's like, and I think using

8:07

sort of like, you know, Hugh Hefner

8:10

and the bunnies, like,

8:12

and that was, I think it's

8:16

interesting if you can even class them as mistresses.

8:18

They exist in the same cultural category as mistresses,

8:20

even though like, sometimes he's married, sometimes he isn't,

8:22

but he always just has a bunch of them

8:25

acting on this kind of contract. But it is sort of

8:27

like, the most blown up

8:29

version of this is that like, he

8:32

is mutually predatory, right?

8:34

Like he's preying on them because he needs

8:36

their youth and their beauty and their affection

8:39

in order to still look like Hugh Hefner. Like

8:41

Hugh Hefner alone is just an old man in

8:43

a dressing gown. But then

8:45

they're sort of, you

8:48

know, they're in a financial sort

8:50

of agreement with them. Absolutely. Yeah, they have

8:52

housing, they have a clothing budget, they have

8:54

food and they have hopefully cultural capital that

8:57

they can then use after the mutually beneficial

8:59

relationship is over. But it's still icky to

9:01

me. It's not good. I'm judging by the

9:03

slew of memoirs. They don't feel good about

9:06

it either. But I remember that

9:08

was so glamorized when I was growing up, that show

9:10

was over the Playboy Mansion. I was obsessed with it.

9:13

Yeah, completely. Like I remember that those

9:15

three original girls so well. And like,

9:17

I remember they

9:19

were sort of like Holly Bridges and Kendra. I

9:24

remember finding Holly so beautiful and

9:26

glamorous and classy and just like,

9:28

like, oh, and like, it

9:32

may be a stretch to say that it was aimed at

9:34

young girls. But it was

9:36

was it wasn't mad at getting young

9:38

girls. Like it had that sort of like opening titles

9:40

that was so like it was almost like

9:42

the nanny's opening title. It was like really

9:44

sassy and bright or whatever. And then there

9:47

was these like, three girls who looked like

9:49

Barbie dolls, who just like everything that

9:51

you sort of grown up as being what you should want to

9:53

be. And then you're sort of like, they all

9:55

have their different personalities like and like, like

9:58

Holly's the sort of Hollywood starlet. And

10:00

Kendra's the... She's sporty spice.

10:02

She's sporty spice. And then the other one is the

10:04

other one. Yeah, she's the third. I'm the third one.

10:07

No, she's down to... She's cute. She's

10:10

kind of like, how did I end up

10:12

here? She's the

10:14

one you're supposed to relate to, right? Yes,

10:16

she's the one who has seemingly no ulterior

10:18

motives. Yeah. Whereas Holly wants to be

10:20

the wife, Kendra wants to obviously

10:23

start her own lifestyle, of yoga pants,

10:25

probably. And the other one's just along

10:27

for the ride. But yeah,

10:29

feeling very... not

10:32

sus about it. Yeah, exactly. And

10:34

they would always kind of omit... They

10:36

weren't doing a big brother, you know, adults-only

10:39

kind of style filming, where you could see

10:41

them having sex, but it was always kind

10:43

of cut to black. Yeah, yeah. And that

10:45

bit was omitted. Or them being

10:47

hovering at the bedroom door,

10:49

being like, bye now. Yeah, exactly. We're gonna

10:52

suck off you. Fuck.

10:55

Fuck. I

10:57

can't believe we all managed

10:59

to grow up and have healthy relationships with

11:01

other human beings, given that was the petri

11:04

dish that we were grown inside of. I'd

11:06

forgotten about that show. Jesus.

11:08

Yeah, it's a lot. But it was the

11:11

ultimate mistress game show, you know? Yeah, and

11:13

once again in that show, even though there's

11:15

a sisterhood to it, they're all in it

11:17

together to give Hugh his massage. They

11:21

are... Real Rosie the Riveter

11:24

shit. There is a sense that there is... One

11:27

will be the winner. It is still kind of

11:29

like playing women against each other. And that is

11:32

so much of what the whole mistress trope is

11:34

more generally, I think. Even

11:37

the phrase, the other woman. But to just

11:39

that... That's a primary. That's a

11:41

primary woman, and she's like the second woman

11:43

who doesn't have a name, and her relation

11:46

is just her competition with the primary woman.

11:48

Yes. Yeah, that's her entire identity.

11:50

Yeah, exactly. So just

11:52

even the wording of it kind of

11:54

plays into how mistress tropes are, to

11:58

my mind, extremely misogynistic. Yeah,

12:00

yeah, it's the like. It's.

12:03

Interesting as well, because I'm having

12:05

written. Myself. To novels or center

12:07

around in a fair of sometimes and I'm

12:10

a human being. on on me and look

12:12

on good reads. You know many that. Split

12:15

am I find really interesting when people

12:17

leave a review and in that race

12:19

you felt sort of include their own

12:21

personal. Biases and the of that by

12:23

his eyes off him, then being like I

12:26

find infidelity content incredibly difficult. Yeah, which makes

12:28

sense in the in the sense of like

12:30

I'm. His employees happened to most

12:32

people. yeah, and and and to the into different

12:34

degrees obviously. I mean as to how your boyfriends

12:37

knock. Somebody in a club or whatever. and

12:39

then this full scale your husband is having

12:41

a relationship with somebody out another family in

12:43

a before. The end

12:45

she wishes to supplant. yes I'm and so I

12:47

do understand why people would take their clear of

12:49

it, but I just I find it. Fascinating.

12:52

How frequently I'm reading comments? Yeah, we'll I

12:55

mean it. Yes, I get that a lot

12:57

in good grades things and it's fun. It's.

12:59

Fun because they're usually the most dramatic

13:02

posts on good grades. They say like

13:04

this woman is an apartment. In

13:07

a sense one star like? I wish I

13:09

could give it zero. I've got like a

13:11

lot of those. I'm. Fat. Yeah, I

13:13

mean I just think that's hilarious because obviously

13:15

if you're like judging a book by somehow

13:18

personally reliable yeah was a really hard to

13:20

trust whatever you say after we as yeah

13:22

I agree. That you're right. It's because so

13:24

many people. Have. Been cheated on who

13:26

hasn't had to look after a friend or family

13:28

member who the and said it on and it

13:30

is. The. Worse, and she

13:33

does feel like absolute trash.

13:35

But it's interesting. To unpack? Why

13:37

that is? Because. You know,

13:40

That the end of the day rule humans with

13:42

desires and as as have been happening since the

13:44

beginning of time. There. Was still.

13:46

Does it hurt so? months? Yeah. When

13:49

statistically you will. Almost callers

13:51

inevitable. Yeah. Exactly.

13:55

i mean it's because of aware

13:57

that relationships have a monogamous relationship

13:59

That's the one rule, right? You

14:02

don't cheat. It's amazing how much

14:04

people will accept that their partner

14:06

is actually very detrimental, but

14:08

they won't accept cheating. I think

14:10

that's really

14:14

interesting, the priority list of acceptable

14:17

inner-metorganized partnerships. Lae-ann It

14:20

is fascinating, because

14:22

it is such an ingrained – and this is the

14:25

full thing of like, if I were to use it

14:27

on, I would lose my mind. Lae-ann

14:29

I'm not saying like, oh, I am above this

14:31

on any level. Lae-ann No, no, no, no, no, no,

14:33

no. A woman's gone is me. Lae-ann

14:35

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I would be –

14:38

I would go off

14:40

the planet for a year. I would have to be

14:42

sent to space. Lae-ann

14:45

I actually read a really good book about that. It's called

14:47

Girlfriend on Mars, by the way. Anyway,

14:50

sorry, go on. Lae-ann Love that. So I'm

14:52

not – it's interesting to

14:54

pick apart something that you still feel

14:56

like you can never truly be remissed.

15:00

to you, you would fucking die.

15:02

But the thing of like, the

15:05

cultural ruse that we've memorised sort of thing

15:07

and that, like – for

15:10

example, if I found out that my partner had

15:13

been stealing 500 quid

15:15

off of me in small increments. Pacific. I don't

15:18

know why I picked 500

15:20

quid, I was like, what's a big amount of money? Not

15:23

so big that I would know this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously,

15:25

I'd know if I – you know what I mean? But

15:27

yes, they were stealing small amounts

15:30

of money from me that amounted to a large

15:32

amount of money over time. And

15:34

their excuse was, well, I needed it and you

15:36

had it. Yeah. But

15:40

I would get over that quickly. Yeah, you

15:43

probably would be able to get over that. And

15:45

even – but even like more – I

15:47

mean, that's pretty insidious, but more insidious things

15:49

like what if your partner is just like

15:51

consistently disrespectful to your friends and family. And

15:53

you can just a lot of people just

15:55

accept that like a creation of toxicity over

15:57

time. Yeah. But as soon as their partner like. Lizzie's

16:01

dick and one lady. One lady! It's

16:03

over. Which I think is

16:05

probably fair in that instance

16:07

because he sounds like a

16:09

terrible partner. But yeah,

16:11

the different kind of gradations of

16:14

acceptability. Gail De Mmm.

16:25

Lizzie Because I think that often

16:27

in these stories, and both stories that we

16:29

wrote were from the perspective of the mistress,

16:31

but the stories that are from the perspective

16:33

of the scorned

16:35

woman, it's so much of it

16:37

that it's embarrassing that a who else knows. Gail

16:40

De Yeah. Lizzie And

16:42

that people know and people are talking about

16:44

your marriage, this implicitly, explicitly private thing that

16:46

people now know the details of. And so

16:48

I think a huge part of infidelity is

16:51

obviously to do with one-on-one

16:54

betrayal, but also public

16:56

shame. Gail De Yeah, absolutely. It's

16:58

kind of like the maximized

17:00

equivalent of falling over in the

17:02

street and having your undies on show to everyone. It's

17:04

your private life. And it's

17:07

not just that your private life is out there, but

17:09

that your private life is out there. And in that

17:11

narrative, someone's

17:14

betrayed you. Lizzie Yeah.

17:16

Gail De And that's the person who

17:18

has been lied to by the person who shouldn't lie to

17:20

you. And everyone knows that. That's awful. Lizzie Everyone

17:23

knows that. Yeah, yeah. I

17:25

remember hearing gossip about somebody's

17:28

affair at some point and having that

17:31

terrible feeling of like, I

17:33

know this thing about a woman's life and I

17:35

don't know this woman, but I know

17:38

more about her life than she does in

17:40

this specific way. And that's such, it's

17:43

so unnatural. Lizzie Yeah,

17:45

yeah. Kind of an uncanny, kind

17:47

of gross feeling, which

17:49

leads me to question

17:52

in that circumstance, would you ever feel

17:54

the need to tell the woman? Gail

17:57

De Wow. Would

18:00

feel the knees would I act on that? Yeah Okay,

18:03

but that's just like the most elastic question ever because like

18:05

what what about you? How would you feel about it? Well,

18:08

I don't see I think my answer is no But

18:10

I've talked about this with a lot of people and

18:12

a lot of women say no I think I would

18:14

have a duty to tell the

18:17

woman in question that infidelity is occurring

18:19

I personally think that that's the man's

18:21

responsibility is he is the one who

18:23

is yeah If it

18:25

were somebody in my life like Gary an

18:28

intimate person in my life, I

18:30

would confront the man Yeah, and

18:33

we're again. We're doing this in a very heteronormative

18:35

thing like we're gonna teach you to obviously yes,

18:37

they can Getting

18:40

the vote was all about But

18:43

I would probably confront the man

18:45

yeah and and and maybe

18:47

even give him a deadline I Love

18:50

it. Yeah, ultimatum. Well, here's the

18:52

here's the follow-up question If

18:55

you say that somebody intimate to you is being

18:57

cheated on and you confront their partner Do

19:01

you tell them is it better for

19:03

that person to own up or to stop or to

19:05

own up and stop? Mmm,

19:07

I think yeah I mean I I

19:10

have quite an elastic view of all of

19:12

this having having had to empathize with

19:15

Yeah, someone who's the the baddie in this

19:17

narrative. Yeah, I think that Stopping

19:20

is the most important part to be

19:22

honest and I think that It

19:25

depends on me like severity of how long the affairs

19:27

been going on But if they're telling

19:30

the truth simply to unburden themselves, and it's going

19:32

to hurt someone a lot more I don't always

19:34

think that that's the best thing to do Yeah

19:39

Yeah, I'm kind of of the same Opinion

19:42

hmm, which I know it

19:44

could be like an unsavory opinion. Yeah people would

19:46

disagree with but Yeah, it's

19:49

weird as well when you like well I'm also

19:51

fascinated by and what like so

19:53

you and I have written these novels about affairs

19:55

Hmm so have many other women they have and

19:58

of our generation but But, and

20:01

obviously like it's, that in

20:03

itself is not an amazing insight because like

20:05

an affair is sort of plot

20:08

wise, it's a very easy framework

20:11

to work within. Because it

20:13

puts you know, at least two characters

20:15

on one side of a secret, you know, secrets

20:17

are great for plus, they're great for suspense,

20:19

they're great for driving narrative and like, it's

20:21

a very common situation, it's easy to relate

20:23

to, it's easy to populate your story with

20:25

like really good, wonderful

20:28

characters and great dialogue if everyone knows

20:30

that it's acting on an affair timeline,

20:32

you know, so the reader already understands

20:35

the beats of the story. Yeah, they're

20:37

stepped in like skis. Yeah, they're stepped

20:39

in, exactly. And I think that's why often

20:41

it's like what, you know, people come to when

20:43

they're writing their first novel. And,

20:46

but what I'm most curious about

20:48

is, what is it that

20:52

in the millennial treatment of

20:54

the affair that is different to how people in the

20:57

80s were treating the affair in their books or

20:59

film, you know? Well,

21:01

I think, I mean, the

21:03

80s is a bit trickier because you know,

21:06

women were already getting a bit more agency

21:08

then. But I think that the

21:11

difference between the contemporary affair novel and

21:13

the past affair novel is that hopefully

21:15

the situation that women find themselves generally

21:18

in society now is they can be

21:20

financially independent, they can make all their

21:22

own choices, hopefully and

21:26

they ostensibly could not do that tried

21:28

and true falling for an older

21:30

person who has money. They

21:32

don't need to do it. So they're kind of

21:34

like acting on a desire that is like the

21:36

echo of a previous need, if

21:39

that makes sense? Like in generations before

21:41

maybe women would sleep with like, yeah,

21:43

the men because they had

21:45

to. Yeah, yeah. Because that made

21:48

their life more viable. Totally. And why

21:50

jewellery was the most popular mistress gift because it is

21:52

something that can be sold. You can trade it. Exactly.

21:55

After the affair is over. Yeah. And

21:57

these days, I would think that that's less necessary or I

21:59

would hope. And so it's

22:01

kind of like, yeah,

22:05

reenacting a journey that you've heard before.

22:09

It feels familiar, I suppose. And

22:11

I think that there

22:14

is something, for me at least, for

22:16

my character, but also like in Raven

22:18

the Lani's Buster or even Conversations with

22:20

Friends or This

22:23

Happy by Niamh Campbell, all these are fair

22:25

novels. There's a kind

22:27

of knowingness that

22:29

is enjoyed by the younger woman. She

22:31

sees the older man as ridiculous.

22:34

Yeah, yeah. And she sees

22:36

his absolute inability to comprehend that the

22:39

world is different for her than it

22:41

is for him and that their struggles

22:43

might not be the same. She kind

22:45

of sees that as beautifully hilarious.

22:49

And there's a joy in inevitability

22:51

and in jumping into loving

22:53

someone who you love. Do

22:56

you think it's a bit of a fool? I

22:59

don't know if that's like maybe just my

23:01

way of saying it. No, definitely that is a

23:03

tone that runs through a lot of these is

23:05

like, and I

23:08

think there's something

23:10

in that that gets to

23:12

the heart of millennial self-talk

23:15

or something, if that's

23:17

even the word I'm looking for, is how

23:21

we talk to ourselves about ourselves as a

23:23

generation. Is that like, okay, we have

23:25

no property. And

23:30

we know that classic thing of being the first

23:32

generation who may have less than their parents

23:35

and all that kind of thing. And the victims of

23:37

however many different kinds of social downfalls and

23:40

graduating in the recession and all those things

23:43

that have affected our generation have a

23:45

stymied our development economically in comparison to

23:47

Gen Xers or to Boomers. And

23:49

that we were like, okay, we may

23:51

not, our self-talk tends to be,

23:54

we may not have a lot, but

23:56

we sure do know a lot. Exactly.

24:00

That's it. And

24:02

so going into relationships with, you

24:04

know, Gen Xers or Boomers, being

24:06

like, okay, you may have stuff,

24:08

but I know stuff about the

24:10

world and you and I, and also

24:13

I'm highly theropized and like, even

24:15

if I'm not highly theropized, there's

24:17

a herd immunity happening with my

24:19

generation where enough people are theropized

24:21

that has dripshed through the generation,

24:23

and therefore we can understand, we

24:26

think, we therefore we think we can understand the

24:28

human mind more than any other generation before us.

24:30

And so we're like, I have a handle on

24:32

this. You love me because of the ache in

24:34

you. Yeah, exactly. You

24:36

see me the desire for a previous time

24:38

when you didn't have a mortgage. What that

24:41

says is. Yeah, exactly.

24:43

And then like what

24:45

it actually, and in

24:47

all these other novels, I feel like there comes a point of

24:49

this of being like, you're living in the

24:51

fringes of a life of a person who has

24:53

everything and you have nothing. But I say it's

24:55

kind of like, yeah, proximity

24:58

to what you can't have. And

25:00

in that way, it is masochistic.

25:02

Yeah, right. And I think that's

25:04

what's more than sex, love

25:07

and secrets. I think that sounds like an

25:09

expose on the channel. Sex, love

25:11

and secrets, the modern affair novel. It

25:15

is a thing of like, generationally,

25:17

we feel very robbed

25:20

or something. And we're

25:22

trying to like, house back our own

25:24

jewels. Yeah, completely. Take me to your

25:26

fucking house. I'll see your wife's shit.

25:28

Yeah, let me take your linen. Give

25:34

me an Aesop hand cream. Give

25:37

it to me. Whereas

25:39

then, like you look at something like um, fatal

25:43

attraction, obviously, like, I mean,

25:45

the quintessential, insane affair.

25:47

Glenn Close does unhinged so

25:50

well. It's so good. Except

25:52

I, though I do think that, so

25:55

if anyone hasn't seen fatal attraction, which you really

25:57

must, but I understand that like there are people

26:00

who might be a bit younger who might have missed the boat

26:02

or whatever. It is

26:04

like, Glenn Close, his name

26:06

is Alex, and she's like, big

26:08

business lady. And she says she's a

26:11

book editor, she's a book editor, and

26:13

she's a little odd looking, but in

26:15

a fucking hot way. And it's a,

26:17

then she meets Michael Douglas. Yeah, yeah.

26:20

Through, through work, they start this steamy

26:22

affair. And then there's

26:24

kind of a ranking of attention where, you know, he wants

26:26

to, he's got, he's got a wife, and in

26:30

the suburbs and all that, it's very New

26:32

York-y. And then she comes to him and

26:34

says that she's pregnant from the affair. Which

26:36

only lasted a weekend, by the way. A

26:38

weekend? Yeah. I can't

26:40

remember how much time passes, you know. It's

26:43

not long. Not long. And she says, you

26:45

know, I'm 35 years old,

26:47

this might be my last chance to have

26:49

a baby or whatever. But then there is

26:51

a, and like, it's such a strange film

26:53

in that like, for maybe two thirds of

26:55

the movie, this character

26:57

hasn't really done anything wrong. You

26:59

know, she she's had sex with

27:01

someone. And this is this is the interesting

27:03

thing, because it's like how much moral

27:06

obligation does the mistress have to

27:08

the other woman? If

27:10

he's not considering it, then why should she? She's

27:14

behaving in a way that's like, she's frustrated because

27:16

she's pregnant by somebody who's ignoring her and icing

27:18

her out and being cruel to her. And you

27:20

can see her frustrations building. But then in the

27:23

last third, it like, just goes

27:25

over the edge. And it's like, she's a fucking psycho. She's

27:27

in your house, she's gonna kill you, she's killing your pets.

27:29

And now we kill her. Sarah K Yeah,

27:36

yeah, yeah, absolutely. It enters full blown chaos

27:38

mode. I think that yeah, the phrase, yeah,

27:40

bunny boiler was

27:43

born from that film, which is amazing. And I use it a lot

27:45

in my life. Not just for women, what

27:47

they take is this woman that you can

27:49

kind of identify and empathize with. And then

27:51

they turn her into the hugest

27:54

villain, you can kind of see her going

27:56

into her Cruella de Vil phase of life.

27:58

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. for

28:01

God. But

28:04

I feel like there was a, and

28:07

maybe these are because there was definitely a bunch

28:09

of movies around that time that was kind

28:11

of referred to as a the erotic thriller

28:13

that tended to hinge on like a sexy

28:15

woman going batshit on a poor defenseless guy

28:17

who only has his dick to blame, you

28:19

know. And

28:22

they're very, they're very male authored stories. And

28:25

they feel very much like a

28:28

post divorce era anxiety, I feel,

28:30

where it's like, we're getting, you know, early 80s,

28:33

more women at work, more divorce is

28:35

happening, more women able to leave the marriages

28:37

that were making them unhappy. And

28:39

then the sort of an increase of

28:42

like awareness of family law. And

28:44

this being this sort of threat of being like, if you

28:47

cheat on your wife, then your

28:49

wife can divorce you. And she can

28:51

take everything. And the and these women

28:53

who are sleeping with us, they're ruining

28:55

everything. Oh my goodness, I didn't

28:57

think of it as government propaganda for the

28:59

nuclear family. I think it is. Okay. Yeah.

29:03

Sorry, it's hard to me now.

29:06

Wow, you heard it here first. You

29:08

heard it here first. But

29:10

no, that's a really good point. And that's the

29:13

whole thing. It is protecting this

29:15

idea of man, woman, together, anything

29:17

that threatens that evil and

29:20

evil. What is what

29:22

in these films is threatening that is

29:24

another woman. Yeah, not like anything

29:27

else in the world. No, no.

29:30

Or anything wrong with him? Oh, no, gosh,

29:33

no, I didn't even consider that. No, because

29:35

it has to be framed of that. Like,

29:37

this woman is so sexy

29:39

that you would be crazy and

29:41

maybe even dickless not to

29:43

have sex with her. But she's a predator.

29:46

Yeah, exactly. And then as soon as she

29:48

has like human needs, one sort of desires,

29:50

yeah, the talent are out, you know, and

29:52

you're now the victim. Yeah, which is like,

29:54

I can't remember

29:56

what I was watching. It was the fall. I was

29:58

watching the fall the other night. Gillian Anderson.

30:02

Yes, I haven't seen it. Anyway, she says

30:04

that classic line which is that like women

30:06

are afraid that men will laugh at them.

30:08

Yes. Sorry, men are afraid that women will

30:10

laugh at them and women are afraid that

30:12

men will kill them. And that's kind of

30:14

the huge anxiety of these films

30:16

and these tropes is that men

30:19

are simply terrified of not getting

30:22

their dick in something. Yeah. Someone will laugh at

30:25

them. Or that like putting their

30:27

dick in something may have any kind of

30:29

cost. Oh yeah, any ramification at all. Yeah.

30:31

Yeah. Like EG, your wife

30:33

finding out and taking your money. But

30:38

I really do think that like if you look at those movies

30:40

like Cardinal Knowledge or Fatal Attraction or

30:43

like there's a bunch of them. I

30:45

feel like Richard Gere wasn't a lot but they were all

30:47

the erotic thriller kind of thing. It

30:49

all comes from like the oh no

30:52

kind of the the

30:54

heartbeat behind it is like women can just leave

30:57

you now if they're unhappy. And so

30:59

that means the other woman can leverage that. Yeah.

31:02

And now they all have too much power and they can't

31:04

know about each other. Oh my

31:07

goodness. It's just yeah. But

31:09

then and then you have like the kind

31:12

of trickle down effect of that vision

31:14

of an evil woman who comes into other

31:16

less erotic thriller

31:19

films like I'm just thinking of the

31:22

brunette harlot in Love

31:24

Actually. Love Actually. Yeah. Who is

31:26

apparently I had a lot of emails

31:28

about this around the Love Actually episode. Very

31:31

big in Germany. Really? Yeah. She's beautiful. She

31:33

is beautiful. I hope her career is thriving.

31:35

Yeah. I thought that it was like one of

31:37

those Billy Zane things where it's like you will

31:39

always be Kail Harkley. Yeah, yeah, yeah. True. But

31:42

no, she's wonderful. And yeah, that moment where she

31:44

like, you know, widens her legs

31:46

apart. That to me when I was younger

31:48

and watching that I was like, evil.

31:51

That is pure evil. Yeah.

31:54

I just couldn't leave and then of course you

31:56

get the perspective of Emma Thompson crying

31:58

the Joni Mitchell which is possible. the saddest

32:00

scene in cinema. Yeah and so then

32:02

you have it maybe swinging back the

32:04

other way to well not

32:07

that it was ever against the wife but it was more pro-man. Yeah

32:10

yeah yeah no the wife is just a sitting duck

32:12

that's the thing and that's why in

32:14

these narratives which is just like why

32:17

that line from Emma Thompson is so

32:19

powerful that like you've made the life

32:21

I lead foolish which is to

32:23

me like it used to be the blankets moving and

32:25

now it's the life I lead is foolish for

32:29

me anyway.

32:31

She's so strong. God I love her

32:33

and I love that Fast Car is like having another

32:35

moment. Fast Car. Sorry

32:38

I'm just now thinking about Tracy Chapman. I'm

32:41

just thinking of strong songs that I love. I'm

32:46

watching the Grammy. That's the funniest

32:48

non sequitur ever. I

32:52

love Emma Thompson. I love that Fast Car

32:54

is having a moment. I'm

32:58

so funny thinking about powerful

33:00

women. Okay

33:02

sorry affairs. Yeah affairs. So

33:06

it's weird because like you know I think you and I

33:08

are probably extremely young when we both saw love actually for

33:10

the first time and

33:14

it is interesting the sort of how

33:16

young you are when this messaging is imprinted

33:18

on you. Yeah. The nuclear family is to

33:20

be protected all costs. The

33:23

blameless wife is like her

33:25

worst crimes are probably in

33:27

these narratives that she's sort

33:29

of like sagging and lifeless and about the

33:31

family and not sexy enough anymore and has

33:33

left down the family somehow and we're not

33:36

blaming her but we're saying there are reasons

33:38

she's cheating. Always narrative and then this sort

33:40

of like vipress woman comes in and

33:42

we we've been memorizing and been shown

33:45

that narrative since we were like five.

33:48

Yes. And like I think the most

33:51

real world you know version

33:54

of it is the Bill Clinton, Monica

33:56

Lewinsky thing. How

34:00

old was your first memory of that? You're a little younger than

34:02

I am, so you've been younger than me. Yeah,

34:04

I don't actually remember it occurring, but

34:06

what I know of it, I mean,

34:11

I just had the scene playing in my

34:13

head of, you know, I did not have

34:15

sexual relations with that woman, his denial. And

34:18

then I have an image of

34:20

her being a very saucy, kind

34:22

of gorgeous, very

34:25

like voluptuous woman who I

34:28

can see why someone like him

34:30

would want someone like her. That was honestly, as

34:32

a child, I was like, I'd tap that. I'd

34:37

tap that. But yeah, and

34:40

then I knew from like public

34:42

discourse that she was like absolutely

34:45

vilified for a long time. And then in 2017,

34:47

I was studying at Oxford and I didn't have

34:49

a membership for the

34:54

Oxford Union because it was really expensive, but one

34:56

of my friends did. And they had like fancy

34:58

people come and speak at this

35:01

union. And they had Monica Lewinsky come.

35:03

And then she was on her like

35:05

vindication tour. Yeah, at that point.

35:07

And she was like an anti-bullying

35:09

advocate and just was like coming

35:11

into her prime. Yeah, I've,

35:14

and looking so gorgeous, looking fierce

35:16

and so funny. Yeah. And

35:19

so like, kind.

35:21

Yeah. The kindness that

35:24

she was able to express for the whole thing

35:26

and the kind of humility and humaneness. Yeah. And

35:28

I think that she's, yeah, she's just come out

35:30

the other side and absolute icon and we all

35:32

just kind of laugh at Bill Clinton. So

35:35

funny, isn't it? And like, the

35:38

same with the other

35:40

famous mistress of the

35:42

21st century, which is Camilla

35:45

Parker-Bold. Oh my God. Who is currently

35:47

the queen of England. I know. Okay. So

35:49

this is, I

35:51

was at the, I don't know if I

35:53

can, I can probably say this. I was at the BBC

35:55

the other day and I was recording a radio thing and

35:58

they asked me what mistress of England was. in popular

36:00

culture have inspired Green Dot. And I

36:03

started with, will your queen for one? How'd

36:06

they like that? They deleted it

36:08

from the show. Oh my god.

36:11

Wow. So there's clearly

36:13

still some kind of gut reaction. Yeah.

36:16

That we can't speak of her in

36:18

those terms. Anymore. Yeah. Because we have

36:20

for 50 years. Yeah, it's like now

36:22

she's been consecrated. We can no longer

36:24

say that she's started in

36:26

an affair, which I found so bizarre and weird.

36:30

It's so bizarre and weird. Yeah.

36:35

But I mean, so my knowledge

36:37

of Camilla has been, yeah, my

36:40

mum was really pro Diana and she's like, I

36:42

weeps when she died and all that kind of

36:44

stuff. And

36:48

then I learned about Tampon Gate probably when

36:50

I was in my teens. And that's objectively

36:52

hilarious. Explain Tampon Gate for anybody who doesn't

36:54

know about it. Yeah, absolutely. Like

36:57

someone taps Camilla and Charles' phone

37:00

conversation. It was published a few

37:02

years later in a British newspaper.

37:05

And essentially they were chatting, like

37:07

some sexy kind of erotic chat

37:09

where he's saying, I

37:11

wish I could be inside your panties. And

37:13

then she goes like, well, maybe

37:16

in another life you'll come back as them. Then

37:18

he's like, maybe I'll come back as a Tampak.

37:20

It's like knowing my look, I'll come back as a

37:22

Tampak. Yeah. Not even Tampon.

37:24

Tampaks. Dropped the brand

37:26

name. Was

37:28

like the first brand collab in royal

37:31

history. Charles X Tampak.

37:37

Yeah. And then it was just truly

37:39

iconic. I find that

37:41

so funny. It's hilarious. In a way

37:44

that makes me feel really warmly towards

37:46

them as a couple. Me too. Like, I think

37:48

when people are like, I'm so glad that you framed

37:50

the quote that way, because

37:52

it makes me know that we're friends now. Because

37:54

sometimes you hear people talk about the Tampak and

37:56

I don't like the royals. I like, fuck them. Whatever. Perfect.

38:00

But in terms of individually, like

38:02

people frame that tampon story is like, Charles

38:05

is a pervert and he like

38:07

longs to be a tampon. No, this is

38:09

like, clearly a funny conversation. That is a

38:12

funny, cute little in joke between them. We

38:14

all say stupid things to our partners.

38:16

And like, actually, this brings me on

38:18

to my next point, really, is that like,

38:20

the position of

38:22

the mistress in

38:25

like, real life

38:27

in political life as well. On

38:31

some level is her job to humanize a

38:33

man that seems incredibly remote to us. Because

38:37

like, I remember reading

38:39

something about Marie Antoinette. And

38:41

one of the reasons that contributes to

38:43

the widespread hatred of Marie Antoinette people

38:46

think is that like Louis did 16th? Was

38:48

that what I was saying? Yeah, I don't know.

38:50

I just say him as the character in the

38:52

Sofia couple of films. Jason Schwartzman.

38:54

Yeah, thank you. Because

38:58

he was so uninterested in sex, and he was

39:00

just kind of a

39:02

little nerd who wanted

39:05

to be alone with

39:07

his kids. He didn't ever

39:09

take him a royal mistress, but neither did

39:11

he have much sex with his wife, really.

39:14

And the kind of the courtier manners

39:16

and language and sort of the way that the

39:19

way courtly life would then sort of filter down

39:21

into middle class life and everyday life, and to

39:23

this kind of world where everyone knows a little

39:25

bit about the royals, even though it isn't written down anywhere,

39:28

is that like, the king would have

39:30

a wife who would sort of absorb

39:32

the domestic roles of, of

39:35

our courtly society, like she produces the

39:37

children, she hosts the dinner party, all

39:39

that kind of stuff. And the mistress

39:41

is the person who absorbs the foibles

39:43

of that man. And so we find

39:45

out things like what kind of he

39:48

likes to put jam on her toes or

39:51

whatever. And these are the things that we

39:53

find out through mistress communication. This is mistress

39:55

or mistress law. Yeah, so the

39:57

foibles of powerful men is communicated through this mistress.

40:00

Oh, that's very interesting.

40:02

It's the vector of like idiosyncrasy

40:04

comes from the mistress. Yeah, that

40:07

is so good. Tiger Woods,

40:09

because Tiger Woods is an

40:12

amazing gopher. An

40:14

amazing golfer. So when Tiger

40:17

Woods was having all these affairs a few years ago, or he's

40:20

been having his affairs for years and years, but when it came

40:22

out a few years ago, one

40:24

of his mistresses who was a cocktail waitress

40:26

called Jamie, their texts got

40:29

leaked or she sold them to a paper. And here

40:32

are the texts. Here's an excerpt of the text.

40:36

Jamie, if we

40:38

hang out on a sun way, we

40:41

can watch Desperate Housewives again. Tiger,

40:45

oh god. Jamie, take

40:48

a break from watching boring old golf

40:50

than nothing. Jamie, I mean the amazing

40:52

sport of golf, winky face. Jamie, an

40:55

hour later, babe, I was kidding. Tiger,

40:57

I know sexy. I

41:05

know sexy. Oh my god, it's so

41:07

good. Oh, I

41:11

just love, it's like National

41:14

Poetry Day. I know. It's

41:16

yeah. It beats any Mary Oliver for me that

41:18

day. It's

41:21

so good. I see I will now have

41:23

that forever ingrained on my like retinas, ingrained

41:25

lol, but whatever they're on my retinas. But

41:28

for me, it's the Adam Levine text.

41:31

Yeah. And when he's cheating on the party, like, why

41:33

would anyone do that? But anyway, and

41:36

he just says to some woman that

41:38

he's talking with online, he just says,

41:40

fuck. And

41:44

I just, it's so many U's.

41:46

It's so good. Yeah. To

41:51

me, for some reason, when the

41:53

Adam Levine thing happened, I

41:55

got very prissy. I was like, no, this is,

41:57

um, this is, oh, I think.

42:00

This is Benita. I don't know,

42:02

I got very pretty and

42:04

I was like, I think because I was such

42:06

a big maroon fan when I was a kid,

42:08

I was like, don't, like, I know he's probably

42:10

a scumbag, but like, don't make me have my

42:13

memories. Oh no. But Tiger Woods,

42:15

I'm just like, golf hat. Are

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started. Yeah,

43:41

so you were saying that Tiger Woods had

43:43

a lot of mistresses on the go at

43:45

once, right? Yes. So

43:47

my research from this comes from the three-part Shameless series.

43:50

A great Australian resource. It is. I

43:52

love relating to Australians. Every

43:55

time an Australian comes on this podcast, an angel gets her

43:57

wings. Yeah,

44:00

so they do an amazing three-part series, really,

44:02

really well researched. But what I found fascinating

44:05

about it is that this

44:07

is like, you know, obviously he

44:09

has been a famous golfer since he was

44:11

like 13, like something extraordinary. And he was

44:14

very much shepherded by his father who

44:16

was, you know, as many children of

44:18

prodigies are just like obsessed with his

44:21

own lore, Lisa V. Tiger. And the

44:24

dad and the

44:26

dad's friend kind of like was on the road with him

44:28

going to all these golfing tournaments from when he

44:30

was he was like really, really young, like a small

44:32

kid. And they were just constantly

44:34

just meeting women and taking them back to the

44:36

Winnebago and just setting up

44:38

and like the dad's friend did

44:40

this amazing interview where he was like, I

44:43

let him down. Like I didn't, he was

44:45

a young kid and he was looking to me for guidance. And

44:47

I showed him that this was a proper way to act in

44:49

the world. And it's like,

44:51

it's very upsetting. But

44:54

then, what I find fascinating

44:56

about Mr. Mistresses of both sports stars

44:58

and politicians is that they are unlike

45:00

being, for example, a rock star or an

45:03

actor. These are like, for let's

45:05

face it, for rock stars and actors, even

45:07

if you were very busy, you were still doing your job for

45:09

quite a small amount of your time. Do

45:13

you know what I mean? Even if you're like

45:15

a touring musician, I'm sorry. How

45:19

long does the concert go for anyway? Come

45:21

on, that's your Taylor Swift. Like you're on

45:23

stage for 19 minutes a day. I'm not

45:25

saying it's not hard. I'm just saying there's

45:27

downtime. Yes. Songs are so short. Songs

45:30

are so short. I'm

45:33

just saying, there are professions that have downtime built into

45:35

them. And it's kind of no surprise

45:37

when a lot of both

45:40

affairs and, you know, substance abuse and

45:42

all these things happen. Yeah. But

45:45

with sports stars who need

45:47

to stay in peak physical condition,

45:50

and also have an enormous amount of pressure

45:52

and probably also even though Tiger Woods was

45:54

probably playing golf like eight hours a day,

45:56

still downtime, you know? Yes. And I can

45:58

see why. if

46:01

you needed to self-medicate because of the pressure

46:03

of both fame and competition, that

46:06

you would not, that you can self-medicate with anything

46:08

that will compromise your game.

46:10

Yeah, exactly. And so why you would

46:12

turn to affairs. Yeah. I remember a

46:14

friend of mine was, she did

46:18

like a master's in politics or whatever, but she

46:20

said something like, and it's a real feminist woman

46:22

or whatever. And she's like, I've

46:24

studied every American president and all I've learned is

46:26

that like, if someone's going to be in control

46:28

of the free world, you better hope his vice

46:30

is women. Mmm.

46:34

Yes, absolutely. Which goes back to the idea

46:36

that it's the mistress's job to deal

46:38

with. Yeah. All of these. The insecurities,

46:40

the foibles. Strange little traits. Yeah. Strange

46:43

little traits. Yeah.

46:47

And I, I'm

46:49

just thinking about Tiger Woods now. But

46:52

they all thought these like, at least 12 different

46:54

women thought they were the only one. Yeah.

46:57

Because he was texting them all the

46:59

time. It is very time consuming.

47:01

Yeah. The constant dialogue. And it,

47:05

it does make you wonder, yeah, how anyone

47:07

gets, gets any work done, particularly if it's

47:09

someone having an affair who has an office

47:11

job or like a job that actually requires

47:13

them to do stuff more than

47:15

sing a little song. Yeah.

47:17

Sing a little song. It's

47:23

the thing with, because social media exists and

47:25

texting exists, it can be a constant dialogue

47:27

like all the time. So I actually just

47:29

don't know how Taylor's... Tiger Woods?

47:35

It's easy to actually say one when you mean the other.

47:37

God, never thought I'd say them interchangeable. But

47:40

how Tiger Woods was able to do that,

47:42

like purely time wise. Yeah, I don't. Yeah.

47:46

Really? Because all of his texts were quite general,

47:48

right? They were never really going to anything specific.

47:50

It was like, you're sex, you're sexy baby. Like

47:53

maybe... I know sexy. Yeah. Maybe he

47:55

discussed Desperate Housewives with all of them.

47:57

Like perhaps it was the same conversation.

48:00

During that time period, all the people

48:02

were talking about anyway. Yeah, exactly. So

48:05

he was probably getting intel

48:07

from one girlie and telling it

48:09

to the next about the characters and actually it

48:11

was maybe really beneficial for all of them in

48:13

that way. I wonder whose favourite was. Who

48:16

his favourite was. It's gotta be Gabriella, right?

48:19

Was she the one played by a... People on

48:21

Goria. Yes. Yeah. She's

48:24

the traditionally hot one. They're all hot. They're all hot,

48:26

but yeah. God. She

48:29

really did turn the world upside down there for a

48:31

few years though. Yeah. I

48:34

mean she had an affair as well actually with the

48:36

gardener. Yes! Well

48:38

this goes back to the

48:41

gendered nature of affairs really. And

48:43

I remember in Ali Wong's latest comedy

48:45

special her saying that there was all these

48:48

words for mistress and no word

48:50

for, no dedicated word for men

48:52

who are the boyfriend of a

48:54

married woman. Yeah, that's true.

48:57

But yeah, no there are no words for that. But usually

48:59

in that regard, in the

49:01

narrative right, it's like a hot younger wife

49:04

who is dissatisfied with her

49:07

hot... Yeah. Sorry, with her

49:09

unhot, rich, older partner and she's going for

49:11

a bit on the side because she still

49:13

has sexual desires that her old man partner

49:15

can't deal with.

49:17

Yeah, yeah. That's often the narrative.

49:19

That's the narrative. Yes. Are you

49:21

aware of any other narratives in popular culture where a

49:24

woman cheats and she doesn't shape with a young hottie?

49:27

I was thinking about this last night, the film Waitress.

49:31

Oh, is that another Keri Russell? Yes,

49:33

delightful movie, became a musical. Yeah, yeah.

49:36

Yeah, yeah. But that whole thing,

49:38

it's interesting because I guess all

49:40

affair narratives, especially when you're supposed to be siding

49:42

with a cheater, they give you a good

49:44

reason I suppose. In the

49:46

Keri Russell thing it's that she has an emotionally abusive

49:49

husband. It's actually one of the

49:51

most, one of the earliest and most nuances portrayals

49:53

of emotional abuse I've ever seen in a

49:55

movie and maybe kind of the

49:57

only one in the mainstream rom-com where

49:59

it Feals Italy. She isn't never physically

50:02

under threat, but it is always

50:04

frightening. Am. And then she, ah,

50:06

she gets pregnant by her husband.

50:08

She. Doesn't tell him he wants to leave him

50:10

and she begins an affair with a gynecologist.

50:12

all while making great pie. Not, i'm sorry

50:14

I know you're talking. About affair dynamics. the all

50:16

I can think of is like her making pie. My

50:18

now. Like

50:21

the cross hatching, I know it

50:23

was so good Soviet movie, but okay,

50:25

yeah, I'm into that makes perfect sense

50:28

that she would want. Yeah.

50:30

They would someone who officer some kind of emotional

50:32

stability and like when she's things he did like

50:34

sit at home via. Via. So

50:37

yeah I mean is it always was Giving

50:39

the reasons. Yeah. Absolutely. And

50:41

then we've got. On

50:43

the other side of the coin to amble in. Got.

50:47

Would go a day we gotta I

50:49

gotta we have a that six wives.

50:51

Yes so I mean my knowledge is kind

50:53

of see the history. Mostly comes in the

50:55

film The Other Bolland Go. Great. Things

50:58

to get from he earned that essentially.

51:00

Actually, you probably not as a make a new. Sources

51:02

say they don't want to pressure myself in designs and

51:04

they won't. I love Tracy Chapman! Size

51:09

So. They

51:12

what Henry the eighth. So

51:14

thousand American. Eight

51:17

year age gap or something between them are

51:19

diverse. A significant age gap between the two

51:21

of them. Ah well knows can have a

51:23

son has Mary No one like marry whom

51:25

they buy Candy bar Can the Elizabeth movie

51:27

that. Ah,

51:31

Has. A bunch of mister says i'm

51:33

even legitimizes the sun. Through one of

51:36

them Henry Fitzroy and that then

51:38

ambulance as our then Mary boat

51:40

incomes long and she's one of

51:42

the many. And see as

51:44

per the Philippa Gregory book the

51:46

Other Bolland Girl was have read

51:48

so many times under which is

51:50

not bad considering it's to American

51:52

actresses I know but is. it

51:54

can i get scarlett johansson natalie

51:57

portman yeah i'm yum yum yum

52:00

that's very the time as well that that was

52:02

like the ultimate choice. Yeah, that's

52:05

so true.

52:08

And yeah, and

52:10

so she's sort of working within

52:12

this framework of like, I've been selected,

52:15

I'm enjoying this, I'm enjoying the spoils of this, but I will

52:17

go back, I will do what my family says and go back

52:19

to my husband by the end of it. She has two children

52:22

with him. And then her sister

52:25

Anne, who's sexy and who has been in

52:27

France, and a play by Natalie Portman, comes

52:32

back from France. She becomes a Mr. Super

52:34

King, but she never, I mean, according to

52:36

both historical lore and the fictional lore that

52:38

we've, you know, so much ambled in content

52:41

of the men over the years, she

52:43

never actually consummated it until they

52:46

were married because she was always aiming

52:49

for the big prize, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, she had

52:51

exactly she had her eye on the prize and that

52:53

differentiated her from her sister who

52:55

was just doing a little hanky-panky because

52:57

it was asked for. Yeah. And

53:00

Natalie Portman, obviously

53:03

has that Hawkeye. Yeah, I just

53:05

love that book so much. Yeah.

53:08

I love all Philippa Gregory. I love

53:11

her. We have an episode

53:14

on that book, by the way, scroll back

53:16

to the almost beginning if anyone wants to do it.

53:18

But the

53:21

what's interesting about that is then like, Anne

53:24

Boleyn gets the prize, but she's

53:27

also murdered. Yeah. But

53:29

also then sets up one of the great

53:31

like, mollocks of British history with Elizabeth the

53:33

First, obviously. But it

53:35

is a sort of interesting poetic.

53:39

That's what I think that's why like, nobody knows

53:41

shit about Henry V. We all know about Henry

53:43

V.A. because all those wives are fucking interesting. That's

53:45

true. And they are the gateway to the foibles

53:48

that make an office which is King of England,

53:50

which seems so remote and historical. They make it

53:52

pure and weird and real. Yeah. But were you

53:55

about to say like, in the public imagination, that

53:57

Anne Boleyn being beheaded is kind of like poetic justice for

53:59

the Missy? Truth is that where you going there

54:01

may be because the as I think that. Might

54:03

be right, The rehab people love that story

54:06

so. Much as that, she was like Kenny

54:08

and like Mackey of aliens. Or yeah, like,

54:10

wanted to. Go

54:12

above her station. As mistress and go

54:14

into the wrong life which is like

54:16

seen as a trajectory that is not.

54:18

The natural way of things, exactly

54:20

like overstepped her marked. Down

54:22

He said it's hidden, gets cut down literally. One.

54:26

Hundred percent. And eight It makes me think now because like

54:28

and you're both. Your your cards or hera.

54:30

Is. Like constantly living on this nice. I

54:33

did like. He's about to leave her and

54:35

she'll want and I mean that means as

54:37

he sees as possible com that could give

54:39

another over. It reminded me Flowers Music what

54:41

is Meet. Flowers in the Attic

54:43

his eighty's pop novel of my most favorite

54:45

book or hi Jeremy seventies actually read my

54:48

Budget Hundred and It's about Probably heard about

54:50

where he likes but these. Four kids who

54:52

are locked in a lot of by their mother

54:54

on the promise that their. Grandfather who is

54:56

a millionaire and lived downstairs will die any

54:58

day now and then they will be free

55:00

and they were all the riches I could

55:03

possibly want and then they end up locked

55:05

up. There is a good they gave, they

55:07

got their necks and. Be. One week when we

55:09

go li and and the best like is I have

55:11

that your life and then three the half your path

55:13

and their entire adolescents path and in that. Time

55:16

They go from being these

55:18

golden children to be like

55:20

these centers. Incestuous, incestuous, very

55:22

warped, very traumatize, Almost Dead

55:24

Like Law is my favorite

55:26

books. And that was is

55:28

hop mobile as a with that populace. Unbelievably

55:31

yeah dude. I got a

55:33

rate at guess the audiobook. yes

55:35

You Will Die So I

55:37

guess so. You're saying that

55:39

her reminded you of the

55:42

goblin incestuous. Yes, forgot. Her

55:46

name is Cathy Doll and ganger I'm

55:48

but ah. Yeah because it is

55:50

saying of like somebody who was

55:52

told. That like the only, you'll have to wait

55:54

a short time and then that sort of weight

55:56

just keep getting. Drawn. Out and drawn out. and

55:59

You is the reason they're. Know.

56:01

That like. Oh My God. you can

56:03

be waiting forever like you're gonna. You gonna

56:05

waste your precious use and because like and.

56:08

Like. Recognizably warped by this weight. And and

56:10

you don't know that because you're living a

56:12

day to day, but I'm seeing it zoomed

56:14

out and I'm like screaming for you to

56:16

run. A I? you know, Absolutely. I

56:19

completely yes I like. I was deafening thinking

56:21

of. And. I think our said this

56:23

in the book at some point a one of his friends

56:25

maybe but like the sunk cost fallacy which is essentially out

56:27

of the book He just said we as like. But

56:29

wasn't as you siblings Yes, which is better and

56:31

more fun. Or

56:33

I'm okay. I'm spotlight the idea that if

56:36

you're waiting in a case of tickets and

56:38

you down been waiting for an hour. Even

56:40

if like the tickets like almost certainly.

56:43

Gonna sell out like before you get eat you did

56:45

you think have already been. There. For now I don't

56:47

want way that alice. Okay waiting. For.

56:49

Us our yeah exactly. Simplest an online on the

56:51

hook and thing waiting for their place in the

56:53

he's a jump on the get ahead the queue

56:56

and it's like that will be two hundred and

56:58

sixty dollars. I wish I got to. That. Stuff

57:00

I still haven't gotten to get some really upset about

57:02

it. I just feel like as I meant to be.

57:04

The had him with his. He opened it and I. Kept thinking

57:06

that, but it's in Sydney next week. It's

57:08

Morrow. Maybe. You're not gonna

57:10

go then if anyone's list of it comes

57:12

up. I need tickets. Might

57:15

have terrorists, I don't I four episodes on. A bit

57:17

on the spot as Oliver Girl, but like I. Just

57:19

feel like see is going to be touring.

57:22

For ever wear the same age of the

57:24

year. I don't

57:26

care, it's very soon as and okay you know

57:28

what? No, I'm not gonna go into this about

57:30

it is a territory. It's really important that that's all

57:32

it. I know it is important. I had a

57:34

spot I'm so get the idea of waiting for

57:36

something that promises nothing. Is certainly like the main

57:38

kind of course of my book and the

57:41

bookie describe and a lot of these narratives

57:43

of young women. Waiting. For

57:45

a man to leave his partner or a

57:47

woman or whatever weddings anyone to leave their

57:49

partner. And I think. Maybe.

57:51

You are simple what makes. Contemporary.

57:54

As animals different and I'm gonna like a

57:56

zoom out for his and because. i

57:58

say that structure, that

58:00

waiting pattern being your constant

58:04

state of being as kind

58:06

of like a metaphor for

58:08

existing in what

58:12

there's this great theorist called Zara Ahmed calls like

58:15

the promise of happiness that like neoliberalism sells up.

58:17

What's her book called again? It's been a really

58:19

nice time. She's got so

58:21

many good ones. The latest one I think is

58:23

called the feminist handbook, but she literally has one

58:26

called The Promise of Happiness. Okay. There's

58:28

heaps and they're all wonderful. She lives in

58:30

Britain. She's originally, she grew up in Australia,

58:33

but it's this idea that,

58:36

and it's kind of coincided with another theorist, Lauren Berlant,

58:38

who I love, the idea that

58:41

in kind of neoliberal capitalism were sold

58:43

the idea of like a trajectory of

58:45

our lives, which is get promotions, get

58:49

a house, have children, you

58:51

know, and

58:53

then when you get there, then you want the next

58:55

thing. You're not satisfied. And

58:58

the idea is that you'll

59:00

forever be on the treadmill

59:02

of wanting and

59:05

not getting what you want. And that's

59:07

just the way that our life is structured

59:09

in capitalism. And I think that,

59:11

yeah, the kind of waiting for

59:13

a man or partner

59:16

who even when you get

59:18

him probably won't give you what you want. There's

59:21

a real similarity there. I think it's like an uncanny

59:23

reflection. It is an

59:25

uncanny reflection. Yeah. Yeah.

59:29

And it also, it narrows

59:32

the focus of wanting, I guess.

59:34

Yeah. Like if you look at here, I, in your book,

59:36

this is somebody who is, you know, she's

59:38

got like three degrees. She's utterly rudderless. She's

59:40

living with her dad. She has no instincts

59:43

or intentions to really find a job that

59:46

is rewarding to her, which is interesting because

59:48

it's like, again, it's

59:50

very much a millennial loadstone

59:53

is that like, we must find

59:55

work satisfying and pleasurable. Yeah. It's

59:58

fucking weird. Yeah. But

1:00:00

she has none of this, but she's

1:00:02

the only... So she's living in this

1:00:04

kind of amorphous glob of strange

1:00:07

emptiness and wanting. And so in order to... It's a

1:00:09

bit like when you have a baby, your only problem

1:00:11

is your baby. When you have a drug addiction, all

1:00:13

you care about is where your drugs are coming from.

1:00:16

And when you're in a fair, your

1:00:18

life has a kind of an odd purpose.

1:00:20

Yeah, precisely. And there's the... You

1:00:22

wake up, your eyes go to

1:00:24

your phone, have their message, and

1:00:26

you make yourself proximate to

1:00:29

them at all times in case

1:00:31

they have a pocket of time. And

1:00:34

suddenly, yeah, you're totally right.

1:00:36

Everything else kind of doesn't matter. And

1:00:39

that can feel great, comforting and great.

1:00:41

Yeah. Why people join cults, why people are

1:00:43

into religion, you know? Precisely, yeah. It's

1:00:46

just the religion of love. And

1:00:48

love. Wow. You

1:00:51

got a fast car. All

1:00:55

right. To wrap

1:00:57

up, I'm really interested in asking,

1:01:01

when you started writing this book, I

1:01:04

feel like the best

1:01:07

books are books that go into where

1:01:09

the author goes into it with a question and comes

1:01:11

out with no answers but more questions. How

1:01:15

do you feel like your thought process around

1:01:17

the fairs evolved while both writing,

1:01:19

editing and putting this book out into the world? I

1:01:23

think that when I started writing the book, I

1:01:29

was more earnestly invested in

1:01:31

the characters themselves. I wanted to

1:01:34

see how this particular character would

1:01:38

go through the trials and

1:01:40

tribulations of waiting for someone

1:01:42

that wasn't going to give them what they

1:01:44

wanted. And I think writing

1:01:46

it and now talking about it, it's just

1:01:49

opened up so many more philosophical

1:01:52

and ideological questions about everything we've been

1:01:54

talking about on this podcast and what

1:01:56

is desire, what do we owe each

1:01:59

other. How does capitalism

1:02:01

literally reinforce the relationship

1:02:03

narratives that determine our

1:02:05

lives? Yeah. And

1:02:08

that's been an absolute joy for me because I feel

1:02:10

like when you're writing something, anything

1:02:14

that you, if you're looking

1:02:16

for connection, any two points can always connect. And

1:02:19

so if you go in with a journey and then you

1:02:21

read another book, then you can relate that to what you're

1:02:23

writing and it becomes like a whole matrix of ideas.

1:02:25

So it's been really

1:02:28

wonderful for just

1:02:30

a story about two people to kind of gloss them out into

1:02:32

a lot more than that. Yeah.

1:02:35

That's why we do this, Jo. No,

1:02:38

I love that you said that because I feel

1:02:40

like we're

1:02:42

in this very unique publishing

1:02:45

phase at the moment. Maybe it's not that unique.

1:02:48

Maybe it feels as unique as we're the

1:02:50

ones experiencing it. And we're very unique. I

1:02:52

was like, um, uh, I, I've,

1:02:58

I've, before I'm reading you today, I read a few interviews

1:03:00

that you've done and press that you've done. And

1:03:02

I've, I've felt maybe the

1:03:04

interview we're treating you and then I think it's

1:03:06

just me just projecting of

1:03:09

being like, you gals, you

1:03:11

gals are all also you

1:03:13

gals. Yeah. You gals, sad gals.

1:03:15

You sad. Yeah. You

1:03:18

sad gals. I feel like

1:03:20

this current iteration of like,

1:03:23

and I guess you

1:03:25

could call it like the post Sally Rooney, the

1:03:28

kind of the landfill Sally sort of thing, like

1:03:30

every, every publisher

1:03:33

wanting to mimic the success

1:03:36

of a phenomenon, but

1:03:38

also there being lots of women who

1:03:40

write like that kind of, you know,

1:03:42

or, or not, or even about those

1:03:44

sort of subjects. And so it gets

1:03:47

grouped into this sort of marketing term

1:03:49

when what it actually is, is what you

1:03:51

just said, which is a matrix of ideas

1:03:53

of people who have experienced the same things

1:03:55

with generation and want to unpack them. Yeah,

1:03:57

precisely. And I mean, it is. Yeah,

1:04:00

like there were so many friends sent

1:04:02

me a headline the other day that an Australian newspaper

1:04:04

did and it was just from Sally

1:04:07

Rooney to Lana Del Rey why a

1:04:10

millennial women so Sad

1:04:12

or something like that and then it had just a

1:04:14

giant picture of me like It

1:04:20

was amazing But

1:04:23

yeah, this is kind of the flattening

1:04:26

of yeah to suggest that this is

1:04:28

a genre that like women are Writing

1:04:31

because it's marketable. Yeah, like

1:04:33

a demeaning. It's unbelievable Yeah,

1:04:36

the reason that women are writing about it are

1:04:38

because these are the ideas that clearly are on

1:04:41

our minds or these writers minds And

1:04:45

yeah, just to be called a sad

1:04:47

girl novelist is it

1:04:49

fucking kills me Yeah, and it's

1:04:51

so infantilizing I'm

1:04:54

so glad that you brought this up. Yeah, please speak more

1:04:57

But I've heard that there's the sad girls and like I

1:05:01

I love a meme as much as anybody else I love

1:05:03

the girl dinner. I love the girl mats, but like

1:05:05

at some point You

1:05:07

kind of want to say like I'm fucking

1:05:10

good at my job And I I try

1:05:12

really hard at it stop referring to me as

1:05:14

a child Like yeah, a sad child a sad

1:05:16

child It's really strange and then

1:05:18

I you know if you gender swap it then you've

1:05:20

got sad boy novels Yeah,

1:05:23

you know imagine like David Foster Wallace being

1:05:25

called a sad boy. No, I'm learner sad

1:05:27

boy novelist. Yeah, you know like Shit,

1:05:30

you know, I'm thinking all the sad boys

1:05:32

that I'm Tony Soprano is a sad boy Like

1:05:36

it doesn't Like in the

1:05:38

protagonist of Camus the outside a sad boy Sad

1:05:41

boy and it's love me a messy

1:05:43

chaotic sad boy exactly so It

1:05:46

just it doesn't doesn't work if you flip

1:05:48

it gender wise and you can see the

1:05:50

kind of More

1:05:52

insidious misogyny that's going into the

1:05:54

term. Yeah, I mean it does

1:05:57

in publishing obviously trends are helpful

1:06:00

helpful because then you can say if

1:06:02

you like this, you like this, the

1:06:04

kind of Amazon algorithm of recommendation. And

1:06:06

it's wonderful and helpful. And it genuinely

1:06:08

does mean that a rising tide will

1:06:11

lift all boats. Yeah, precisely. Yeah,

1:06:13

but the

1:06:16

suggestion is then if you're seen as

1:06:18

existing within a certain remit of literature

1:06:20

or type of writing. Or

1:06:22

even our Irish. Or

1:06:24

even, yes, exactly, our

1:06:26

Irish woman, my gosh.

1:06:30

Then your point

1:06:33

of view is presumed to be the exact

1:06:35

same. And your writing style as well. I

1:06:38

think even though I'm dealing with,

1:06:40

I guess, issues that are part of popular

1:06:42

consciousness and the discourse, I

1:06:45

personally think my writing style is

1:06:47

quite idiosyncratic. It's very idiosyncratic. So

1:06:49

I just, it's really

1:06:51

interesting to see

1:06:54

how it's, flattening

1:06:56

is so convenient to do and

1:06:58

people don't think about the ramifications

1:07:00

of that flattening. Yeah, yeah. Complete.

1:07:03

And it's not even just the flattening of all

1:07:05

authors together, it's the flattening of all media to

1:07:07

one. Like the amount of book proofs that I

1:07:09

get sent that say for fans of Fleabank, I've

1:07:12

got that a lot. Like a TV show.

1:07:14

Yeah. I love Fleabank.

1:07:16

Lovely, lovely genius woman, but like

1:07:19

not a novelist. Yeah, yeah,

1:07:21

exactly. And so this kind of

1:07:23

implication that it all can just be squashed in together

1:07:25

and given the vague headline of like the

1:07:27

millennial sadness. Yeah, and it's depriving things

1:07:30

of their fullness because there are lots

1:07:32

of books that I have actually hesitated

1:07:34

to read because the kind of press

1:07:36

on the back looks generic,

1:07:40

which these books are not. Often are not.

1:07:42

Often are not. Yeah, like This Happy by

1:07:44

Is it Neve Campbell? Yes. And

1:07:47

you know, Lustre and

1:07:49

Conversation with Friends, they are three

1:07:52

wildly different novels, yet all compared

1:07:54

to one another. Yeah, exactly. You've

1:07:56

got like, yeah, a young

1:07:58

black woman in New York having enough. fair with

1:08:00

a married guy. You've got

1:08:03

someone involved in a kind

1:08:05

of four-way relationship in Dublin.

1:08:08

And then you've got a young woman who's

1:08:10

a PhD student having an affair with her

1:08:12

professor over a very short amount of time

1:08:14

looking back. Now she's married. These are different

1:08:16

stories. Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:20

Come on. Anyway,

1:08:23

it feels very cleansing to run. Yeah, that was good. Thank

1:08:25

you. Get it out. Is

1:08:29

it too soon to ask what you're working on next? No,

1:08:31

no, that's okay. So

1:08:33

I literally, this is not that interesting

1:08:36

to anyone, but I've been doing my PhD for

1:08:38

like four years and I just handed it in.

1:08:40

So that's actually a big burden off my shoulder.

1:08:42

Oh, congratulations. Thank you. So, but that's

1:08:44

really good. And then also I'm writing, I'm beginning

1:08:46

to write the next novel, but it's very early days. Amazing.

1:08:49

Well, it sounds like you're very fucking busy and I'm

1:08:51

so delighted for your success. Thank

1:08:53

you. It's wonderful to see just someone really

1:08:56

talented and really nice to get

1:08:58

things. Thank you. Well, I feel the same about

1:09:00

you. I was telling Caroline if we just began

1:09:02

this, but she was like, nice to

1:09:04

meet you. And I was like, we've met. No,

1:09:07

it's okay. Because years and years

1:09:09

ago, I was a big fan of your work and

1:09:11

she just, Caroline had just come

1:09:13

out with Promising Young Women and I went to her

1:09:16

like book launch and so I said in a youth

1:09:18

hostel, so I could go there. And so I'm just

1:09:20

thrilled to be here today. Cool. Like,

1:09:22

because I was emailing you about like what we're

1:09:24

going to talk about today. I was like, better

1:09:26

explain to her like the context for me and

1:09:28

who I am and Parker. And then you were like,

1:09:30

yeah, we've met. I was like, oh, okay. I was

1:09:32

like, can you sign my book? It was not. Did

1:09:35

I write anything funny or was it just too muddy?

1:09:37

Oh my God. I don't know. I have to go

1:09:40

back and find it. I hope it was at least

1:09:42

funny. No, it

1:09:44

was great. And it's been an amazing culture career. I

1:09:46

also loved the Rachel incident so much. Thanks,

1:09:48

man. You're welcome. Yeah,

1:09:51

me too. All right. Bye everyone. Bye. AKS

1:10:14

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