People at the Core
People at the Core
A Writer's Life: Airbnb, Mafia and Memoir with Nicole Treska
Join us for a delightful conversation at Greenpoint Palace Bar where Rita and Marisa chat with the incredibly talented Nicole Treska about the politics of Airbnb and high NYC rents as we fantasize about creating a Golden Girls type of compound or escaping to Italy. Nicole's tales of life in Harlem and her evolution to published author inspire us all, as we navigate the highs and lows of New York City living.
Nicole recently published her memoir, "Wonderland", about growing up in Boston. The heart of our discussion centers around the complexities of writing about family history, especially when it involves touching on sensitive subjects like mafia connections and addiction. Nicole shares her experiences balancing honesty with familial respect, highlighting the importance of grace and truthfulness in storytelling. We delve into the challenges of portraying loved ones as they truly are, and the way writing can strain yet ultimately deepen our understanding of family relationships.
As we switch gears, our conversation wanders through the generational impact our parents have had on our romantic relationships and how we share a lighthearted appreciation for iconic actors like Bob Hoskins and Peter Falk. This episode is a blend of humor, sincerity, and insight, encouraging listeners to reflect on how family and storytelling shape our lives and relationships.
Books by Nicole Treska:
Wonderland: A Tale of Hustling Hard and Breaking Even
Mentions:
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Email us! peopleatthecorepodcast@gmail.com
From the Greenpoint Palace Bar in Brooklyn, new York, writers and bartenders Rita and Marissa have intimate conversations with an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life about their passions, paranoia and perspectives. Featured guests could be artists or authors, exterminators or private investigators, or the person sitting next to you at the bar. This is People at the Core.
Speaker 2:Hey, hi Marissa, hi, I'm Rasa.
Speaker 3:Hi Rita, we're both a little. I don't know you, just I appreciate diagnosed, my diagnosed, diagnosed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, diagnostic.
Speaker 3:Diagnosed my thatosed, yeah, diagnosed, diagnostic Diagnosed that I have an ulcer.
Speaker 2:I was like I woke up feeling fine.
Speaker 3:I had some coffee, and then I ate breakfast and I feel terrible and I consistently put off eating breakfast because I feel terrible pretty much immediately thereafter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and yeah, I mean I didn't go to medical school, but I had ulcers before and that's.
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean it tracks by the time dinner comes around. I'm fine, but it's uh cool, great um yeah, podcast life man yeah, just kidding so I decided to have breakfast, have coffee, feel shitty and then calm it down with a little breakfast tequila, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean it's afternoon. Yeah, you're doing great, it's totally fine, and it's a Sunday. I was up at 7 in the morning anyway, so it's like half a day already. Yeah, yeah, I worked a big wedding yesterday here and then didn't sleep at all. Just too excited, too pumped about it, I was watching these terrible movies called like the Divergent series or something, when Ken and I got married at the courthouse, my friends who are with us.
Speaker 3:They were teachers because we had the restaurant and we only had Mondays off. So we're like, okay, it's 11 in the morning, what the fuck are we going to do? And we're like, after brunch, they brought us brunch. We're like, okay, let's go to the movies. Let me invite everyone to the movies and we saw the first of the Divergent series. A little Prosecco brunch buzzed, and that just reminds me of my marriage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually saw it in a theater too in Portland, oregon, with this terrible man. Let's send him my story.
Speaker 3:So I don't remember. Yeah, I think of love and it's a, it's a palpable, not good, but entertaining yeah, I think of hatred and now adderall hatred, not the movie hatred.
Speaker 2:No, I think of when. Now, when I think of divergent, I think of hatred for this man that was like such a terrible person, and then the adderall that kept me up till six in the morning yesterday watching it. So now I just hate Divergent.
Speaker 3:And then now I think of a little Aaron Rodgers, because the girl, the protagonist, that kind of launched her career Shiley. What's her name? Shailene.
Speaker 2:It's a hard one. She dated Aaron Rodgers. Yeah, they were engaged.
Speaker 3:I think, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:I don't love him. I don't know. I was obsessed with him.
Speaker 3:And then his vocal opinions and like just play ball, just play ball.
Speaker 2:Yeah, his opinions are trash Anywho.
Speaker 3:Anywho, here we are Stoked for our guest today.
Speaker 2:So, stoked.
Speaker 3:I met her through my first reading series. I was invited to a reading series last year called Must Love Memoir and links to that in our notes and I heard her read from her memoir which is now published existing in physical copies out in the world. So I'm super stoked to have her and she's been on the Palace Reading Series team a couple times now.
Speaker 2:Yes, we are obsessed with her and love her.
Speaker 3:So Nicole Treska is our guest today. She is the author of the debut memoir Wonderland a tale of hustling hard and breaking even. Her work has recently appeared in the End Forever Magazine and Archway Editions. The Wall Street Journal called Wonderland Gatsby-esque and Tesca as a washed up the shores of respectability.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:She lives in Harlem with her husband James and their three-legged dog, nadine. She made it all the way from Harlem to Greenpoint which is basically like going out of state, so we're very excited and appreciative to have you here.
Speaker 4:Welcome. Thank you, it comes with the territory. Now I'm in Brooklyn like seven times a week. I should have lived here, if I planned on having a book.
Speaker 2:Right, but how long have you been in Harlem? 16 years since I moved here since 2008.
Speaker 4:I always been in harlem because I worked at city college and that's why originally, and it was cheap, it was it had not become four thousand we were just talking about four thousand dollars a month as an average rent. It's approaching that harlem too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's everywhere it's safe. No, no place is safe. It's awful like unbelievable where's their?
Speaker 3:if we all pool our money together, uh, we could buy a plot golden girls compound yeah, where though where? I mean that would be florida, my best friend is buying with her husband.
Speaker 4:They're buying a place in Italy, and what the hell is the name of the town? I don't even know, but I'm like, oh, you're gonna live in like a stone house on a big field in Italy you're gonna be Diane Lane and meet your sexy carpenter. I know I'm gonna make James, my husband, wear a carpenter belt. I love it, I'm going to make James.
Speaker 2:My husband wear a carpenter belt. I love it. That's amazing.
Speaker 4:Baby, there's a nail loose over there, in this ancient, ancient stone wall.
Speaker 3:Well, because weren't they doing also, like certain towns, that because work and all the young people left, yeah, and so it was just aging people. And to keep the towns alive, they were offering incentives Like if you buy and you spend X amount of time or X amount of money, blah, blah, blah, then you get all of these incentives to if you have citizenship or to get this cheap house deal because we need to keep the towns alive, because it's just fucking old people now.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, it does seem like it seems both tricky. I know people who have been trying to get residency in Italy for years and have both had great luck or terrible luck. But it seems like, yeah, they're basically like please come buy property and that's sort of what they're doing. But my friend Catherine married Max, who's from Naples, so he Napoli.
Speaker 2:Yes, friend Catherine married uh, max, who's from?
Speaker 4:Naples, so he Napoli, so that makes it. That's why I was just. It makes it a little easier in terms of like who you're dealing with because, I feel like, if you like, go to southern Italy as an American and you're like I just want this property. Yeah, they're like yeah, they're like, yeah, it's like there's definitely like part of the plan there, and then we can. You know the contracting will be very expensive, but I feel like that's the goal.
Speaker 4:A long way of saying I want a plot to go hang out into a Golden Girls plot.
Speaker 2:Where would you go? Do you go to Italy too? Where would you go if you could go anywhere?
Speaker 4:My husband's family grew up in Portugal, went to high school outside. Lisbon and I feel like I really, really love Lisbon. I went there and I was like oh, this town is like fucking great sidebar.
Speaker 3:Ken and I are going there later this fall. He left his job I'm in a seasonal position that is ending and we decided to go and explore Portugal, spain and France. We have some friends in Spain and France, but Portugal. I don't have any connections and have done my prelim research.
Speaker 4:But you know yeah. I would love to. I have a few friends there. I will pass all the intel along. It's. It's an amazing, I think. Like every place in the world, post-pandemic digital nomad lifestyles have led to like the gentrification of every city on earth, and that certainly also happened in lisbon, where the people that live there are like well, we are priced out of the center of the city anymore. So they're doing, they're taking steps on that, but that, even with that, it's still like a really lovely, wonderful place.
Speaker 3:So I would love to there was doing some incentives for even foreign ownership. Yeah, and then it backfired because, then they started Airbnb-ing and then Well.
Speaker 4:Airbnb and in the book I talk a lot about Airbnb being something that started Like. When I started it, it felt like I lived in one bedroom and I rented out my second bedroom and that felt very much like the mission of the platform. And then, within a few years, it was like oh, this is like a uber situation yeah, more than a like for the people, but I feel like they always start that way, they're like good intentions or with like good intentions, but like good marketing about intentions and then they're like psych.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, they're like we just want money.
Speaker 3:Yeah the same time, like what's happening here in New York, they change the laws, so you have to do long term right, which for me, defies the actual purpose of saving short term saving real housing it's not fucking saving housing. What you're doing is forcing people into hotels which are ridiculously expensive that there's no like cap on those. So when my mother comes to visit.
Speaker 4:No, I'm not having a fucking three hundred dollars a night in a hotel but then you have airbnbs that are better priced than that, because that's what it used to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I could, yeah, I could have my mom, my brother and the girlfriends, whatever. Get two bedrooms for, you know, 200 bucks yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Now, that's now it's two hotel rooms.
Speaker 3:It's 600 bucks, or it's a blow up in my sharing my railroad yeah, somebody's on the cut like that's terrible. Well, it's like they've.
Speaker 4:They've, I think you know, having been through it with them like they sort of created a model with cleaning fee. It's like they created a way by which people think it's $100 a night, and then by the time they add on all of those extra things. So it's sort of like I don't know. I feel like there was a movement against staying at Airbnbs toward hotels, and I'm for it. I'm like I don't the list of chores, the exorbitant costs the like terrible housing politics. It's like it started cool, it isn't. It is just shit.
Speaker 3:Now, yeah, when we sold, lucky we did much of the chagrin of my landlord it was kind of on the dl, she didn't know, but anyway, um. And then later was like are you? And I was like yeah, but anyway, uh, so that helped us travel. We were traveling for four months. Oh yeah, of course, and I made it so it was only like adults or families, thinking of my neighbors. There was no kids. It was like it had to be longer, like than a week, but that really enabled us to be able to travel.
Speaker 4:But had it stayed any. Like that was the sweet spot. That was the sweet spot. It's sweet spot. It's like then landlords were like what, I can buy whole floors of units and like turn them into hotel apartments. Like there was a sweet that's.
Speaker 1:I wrote about it in the book I was like I traveled.
Speaker 4:A woman was in my apartment for all of the summer and she had a great deal and I was in wherever I think it was in. Spain that summer and I was like that was a great deal, so it's like, like it, it it was awesome.
Speaker 1:I don't know how you get back to that outside of like VC sort of culture like new text.
Speaker 4:I'm like what do you do? I guess you have to go back to like couch surfer. Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 3:In Mexico. It's quite reasonably priced, uh, and like I had this family who had like a farmhouse and they built this like guest farmhouse and then you know how else will I fucking find it and like it was reasonably priced and it was awesome. When I go down to Oaxaca and I stay times and I make a relationship with people and little honest, like I message them after I'm like hey, you save money on taxes, you save money on this, I will pay you cash. I like, hey, you save money on taxes, you save money on this, I will pay you cash.
Speaker 3:I save money you save money your whole deal, and because they have generation properties that used to be big families, where you have like kind of hacienda style, and then people moved out and then so you can have a part uh property that you can rent out to maintain your family fucking home and you can yeah, right, right, but it's just not that case anymore, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the problem here. Oh yeah, cyber, okay, yeah, anyway okay.
Speaker 3:It's not open to comments, however. Um, so you live in harlem, but before like, and in your book you talk about being from Boston. Yes, um, did you come here for school?
Speaker 4:yeah, I came here. My friends, uh, from the University of Hawaii, who I went to undergraduate with, came to study at City College for graduate school. And I had been needing to leave Honolulu because, like New York, it is very expensive. But unlike New York, it is much more limited in potential because of its size, like you can just it's an island. It's a much smaller island than this one.
Speaker 4:And so it's like it would have been nice and my choices were sort of go back to UH for a master's in creative writing or do something else. And my friends Olay and Iris, who are sisters from Maui, had come out and started at City College and I was like, all right, well, I guess that's what I'll do. It was I was very aimless at that particular juncture, so it was a very or not aimless, but less like I didn't know how to get where I was going.
Speaker 4:So if they were doing that, I was like cool, yeah, great, I'll do that too.
Speaker 3:I'll make it work.
Speaker 4:Sure, yeah, and then I moved into the same building in Harlem as them and they moved out like six months later and I stayed in that unit for like 10 years.
Speaker 3:so I feel like they very much gave me my life in New York, which was amazing. So inciting incident.
Speaker 4:It was my inciting incident and then yeah, and then I've been in Harlem ever since um, and now I'm up on 119th. My husband and I moved to a place that is very, very much bigger than my little shoebox, and now I have my dog, nadine.
Speaker 3:Nice, he's the two I know. So yeah, so your book talks about your family and some of the trials and tribulations.
Speaker 2:Talk about your book, because I'm obsessed with it. I'm sure you're talking a lot about it right now.
Speaker 4:That makes me ready.
Speaker 2:Ready. Okay, you're prepared for this I'm ready.
Speaker 3:So you talk about Boston, you talk about family involvement adjacent to mafia, kind of things on one end. How does your family feel about that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, Um, they are of. You know, there are many of them and they all have various opinions. I think my dad, phil, who's very central to the story and was very involved in like um interviews and I would call him and be like when you said that you threw that kid through a pastry case that was at Davis square, right and be like, yeah, davis square.
Speaker 4:I'd be like all right, cool, and like so he was like fact checking for me and like we did all of these recorded interviews. So I think for the most part, my dad is very feels like he's part of this. I'll be like. The book was really hard to write and he'll be like for me too.
Speaker 4:So it's like it's cute and it's very, but I still think there's the sense that that what I write about you know my memory of his worst days, uh, are forgiving, but still sort of like yeah, you did do that and he's like, but I didn't yeah, so it's like I still think there's that sense that even though he is very on board and very involved when he reads what I wrote, as his daughter, as the daughter of someone who went to prison and worked in uh, you know, bookkeeping and and was always sort of in and out, um of like I don't know, the shores of respectability Is that what the Wall Street term is I feel like as the daughter of that kid, my view of him can be loving and critical and I still think that critical thing is a little bit chafing for him, which is fine, but I guess that's what you get.
Speaker 3:You know, like to some extent, when you have a conversation about a memory or an incident and you can check the facts like the place or the names and all of those things, but the perception, I think it might be jarring for him. It's like, oh, I remember this, this was the activity, yes, we've talked about this.
Speaker 4:And you're like oh, I didn't at that time or even later think about how that affected you or how you saw that, because there's two actors in a yeah, and you're thinking and, in ways, as the child, the way your parent thinks about you is kind of secondary to what's going on in their life, or that they're acting in a way to protect you. So it's like right, the idea that I would be like I hated when that happened and you'd be like but I was doing that for you, you know so it's like that sense of of both.
Speaker 4:It's not two equal people, it's an adult and a child, and I think that can be um, to realize you had agency as well. Yeah, like, I think that that can be a shock too, and, like my mom, so you know, I think my dad's in, but that thing, perception.
Speaker 4:I think that perception, excuse me, sort of hits everybody, like my sister yeah yeah, is very involved in this story in regards to her own uh life and relationship with her husband, who, uh at the time, who had been an addict a heroin addict and in asking her how she felt about it, she was like, well, you told the truth.
Speaker 4:But I hated reading it because yeah, what happened to me, yeah, and and I said, but was it what I said about it? Because I really did not want to use her pain anybody in my family's pain as a grist for my plot points, or in how I made this larger statement and she said, no, you told the the truth, but it's just hard for me to read that. So I think she's being very gracious and and gave me a lot of allowance and what to write. And then I think my mother is an old school Bostonian.
Speaker 4:Uh, who is like you're not supposed to say any of this to anybody and what did did you say what have you said?
Speaker 3:So that was another question I had. Have you had any backlash from the non-family community of people? Yeah, no, not yet. I mean listen.
Speaker 4:You know, because I think of like Goodfellas and stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Nobody's showing up at my door for like, uh, I hope for what's in the book. I mean, most of the people involved in any of the things I spoke about are dead, or my immediate family, so I feel like there is, and you know, I think a lot of people and I think, if there are people who I've heard from you know via the goodreads and Amazon reviews that are like, trust me, I should not be in there, but I get in there sometimes.
Speaker 4:That are like I thought, this was going to be a mob book, I feel like some people really wanted expose juicy murder, things that would get me caught in a web of.
Speaker 4:But, it's like no, my dad was a bookie for the winter Hill gang. He went to prison. My, my parents and family knew people who did murders and crimes, all of whom are dead now. But that was the culture in the city at the time in a particular part of the city, but like nothing that like even my editor you had done. And when it went through legal it was like they were all sort of like yeah, there's bad stuff in here, but nothing like incriminating.
Speaker 4:So I think that's, and what I will say to keep it juicy is like that wasn't an accident right.
Speaker 3:There are things that I won't talk about or write about what I wanted to know, if there's some stories or some anecdotes that didn't fit the storyline or that could be retold in vagary yes, I can give you a vagary about a very funny.
Speaker 4:I actually think I can just tell you the story. It's fine that it's not in print, but I really don't think it's a big deal. So my dad was what I would call like a sort of a petty criminal not like a heavily like, I mean, maybe not petty. He was a federal drug trafficker.
Speaker 1:So it's like, yeah, like he was like armed but.
Speaker 4:But it's very funny the way perception works. Right Again he's like but I barely did anything wrong and I very much grew up believing that.
Speaker 4:And then I look into the Globe archives, or like he would tell me something and I'd be like, wait a minute, like that's, that's not nothing, that's right something wrong um and when we were kids, he would always like wear a neck brace out to take the garbage out, or like when we would go out, but then the second we would get in the house he'd just like take it off. Okay, so he was just like always running like light insurance for all, where he was like doing the like I've hurt my neck, I made an insurance claim. But then you'd be like I'd be like 10 years old and he'd say like I can't forget to put the brace on, like don't worry about it. And it was always like sort of like a magician, like everybody in the family was like don't believe what you see with your eyes right now, don't ask any questions it's fine, but then you'd be like, all right, cool, and then literally like into my 30s or even now I'm 45.
Speaker 4:I feel like I wrote the book and since I turned 40 I was like wait, were they lying about all of that stuff, or were they like right?
Speaker 1:is that not the?
Speaker 4:straight truth about and it's like, yeah, I think I've been had like ethically, so it's like there's that, there's when we go off mic, I will tell you another um vagary, but with details. And then there were a lot of um, a lot more explicit things that my parents had been witness to, or information that they knew that bringing up felt too close to anything that was either still ongoing or like as a case, or just like you know, no, no, things that happen that you'll see on documentaries and they'll be like oh yeah, kevin Weeks, that guy used to drink next to him. So it's like, when they told me stuff about like people of ill repute.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Even though it wasn't like I saw him kill a guy. It was like I drank next to him and I know he's a monster. It's like that was enough for me to like steer clear of.
Speaker 4:But those are people that my father knew very well and, like I'll say, my one of the things he would tell me is that like people would come into the diner where my papa ran the diner that all these guys hung out at and my dad worked there after he got out of the war uh, and they would come in and they'd be like phil, don't go here on this day, like just steer clear or like don't hang out with this guy anymore, and then like a week later he'd be dead.
Speaker 4:So it's like those are things and I at one point I said to my dad, like did you ever feel like you should have like told that guy? Did you feel any responsibility?
Speaker 4:Any sense of like when you are being told by somebody like don't hang out with this person anymore Because wink, wink and you live in this world that you live in, like you know what that means. And he was like no, what are you fucking kidding me? Like they'd kill me next immediately. And so you realize the cost of that world is like not a choice you get to make. It's just like the rules are the rules. And it's like if I like you, I'll tell you not to hang out with someone we're about to murder.
Speaker 4:But if you tell him I don't like you anymore and then I'll kill you, too, so it was like, yeah, it was crazy, and then that's just wild, it was crazy, and then that's. That's with my father being very tangential to all of this right like not a made man, not super involved, but like even still the stakes were ruinous. I would say for the family.
Speaker 2:Oh fucking trip man. I know I'm like speechless I I just want to hear you talk all day long. I'm thinking of all these movies and things and these.
Speaker 4:But it's funny because it wasn't really like like I lived.
Speaker 4:Growing up you weren't aware A weirdly sort of somebody said I did an interview with somebody the other day and they said your Boston is like pretty unknown to me. Like we grew up in different cities and I was like, well, it's a little unknown to me too, because we were raised in this bubble of uh, I would, it wasn't a lie. But like my family was like, look at us, we're very normal and middle class and in the meantime we're like moving every three months with the navy and my mom's like out of Boston, we're getting out of Boston and it's like so there was this sense that like we were being fed a real hard like family propaganda.
Speaker 4:I was like this is all fine and good and great and natural and healthy and comparatively it probably really was, but like it was and you were a kid.
Speaker 3:And what did you know different? Nothing, you know. This is your normal.
Speaker 4:This is your life and like that's what everybody's sort of banking on. And I actually feel like if my mom is furious which she very well may be furious about all this it is because I'm not a kid who doesn't know anything anymore, but rather I'm looking at these things and being like, well, what was it? And she's like no, no, no, no. So it's like that kind of critique is not in nobody's family. Is anybody allowed to be like you know what I've noticed, you know.
Speaker 2:I was going to say too, when you were saying about your mother my mother is the exact same way too.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean, Whenever she reads my stories.
Speaker 2:She's very much like that's not the way that happened, or we just don't talk about it. You know, like why do you have to talk about these things, Rita? Why do we have to talk about your hospital stays or your rapes? And sometimes she's kind of like she loves to be like. Well, I mean, are you sure it happened like that?
Speaker 3:Like this level of denial that is so deep Because that destabilizes her worldview. Whether she is consciously trying to create that or subconsciously trying to ignore? Yeah, or both.
Speaker 4:Or all of it, and I think that that complexity is often how, in families, you get the truth being denied when your children tell you what's going on, or like secrets that get bare and it's like so it's this thing where it's like I think the underlying belief is well, this is for your own good and we're doing this to help you, but I'm like I think that 50 generations of families would probably be like. I don't think this helps that much to just tell terrible secrets and like hide everything. I had a friend who had a terrible situation where somebody died in the family and a kid was asking questions and they said well, we're not going to tell them now because they shouldn't know. So we're going to tell them. Something else happened and I said um, I just want to say in the most like empathetic way possible that I just wrote a book about how bad that can be to the kid. Who knows that something terribly wrong is wrong and you're telling them it isn't.
Speaker 4:I was like. So if this is something you need to do for, like yourself for a few months until you Because it fucks up your instinct.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and your sense of self, and you're like hey, these are flashes and triggers that are telling me something, and then you're going to deny that, which I was right, but then you just Like adults, people that I'm supposed to look to, to trust, are telling me and that's where it's like it's innocent, but it's not so innocent.
Speaker 4:And it can be really harmful.
Speaker 3:It's not a fucking Santa Claus, yeah, You're like. Hmm, yeah, I thought it was your room when I went pee. Like you're like okay, but I have a line.
Speaker 4:There's a line in the book that says something about like the children of secrets become the adults of best guesses. And I have had more people tell me that that line meant something to them and I'm like something to them and I'm like, oh great. And then I'm like that is terrible and sad. Yeah, that is sad that like this line that I thought I was like this rare child of like a family full of secrets and denial and like like um, half truths and all, and you're like, no, no, this is the nature of families. Yeah, I think, and it's the nature of like how you see, like you said, like how you see a child versus an adult. So, right, yeah, I'm glad it resonates.
Speaker 2:But I wish I just want it.
Speaker 3:Uh like, the children of secrets become the adults of best guesses, because it's true right, you're like I don't know I guess that's what happened and then like whatever somebody's telling me? Yeah, I don't know I can't trust my own self. I can't trust my eyes, my intuition. I can't trust my eyes, my intuition, my ears or any of these people.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Because everyone's going to lie.
Speaker 4:Everyone's cover, or like what's the perspective they're reporting? It's like my family loved to be like oh, you're listening to so-and-so. That's fucking crazy, why did you listen to that? And it's like it's all to the end of sowing doubt and it did I never and if you don't know what's true or not, you sort of give up. It's like propaganda.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're gaslighting. Yeah, you're gaslighting.
Speaker 4:Eventually you're like I just You'll destabilize constantly. I'm not going to even question this, I'm just going to keep going. So it is funny to be like oh, that's wild. So yeah, I think everybody wants to be seen as good.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 4:I think I saw everybody as good, but also saw them whole. I tried to be very fair.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is, I mean, hard to do, and that's just the sense of you're trying to portray people.
Speaker 3:You love your tragically flawed heroes, because we're all tragically flawed, yeah, and some are just a little more active. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah right exactly.
Speaker 2:Did you always plan on writing a memoir, or how did that come into your curiosity, I think.
Speaker 4:I was always writing what I would call auto fiction. Auto fiction, and then I tried to write it as a novel, novel and that, like, with my father as the main character.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as like a child.
Speaker 4:Because I was ultimately really more interested in like how did this happen to my father and his three?
Speaker 3:siblings. How did he?
Speaker 4:get to be and that had been like the driving. Exactly that had been like the driving question for me for like most of my life, was like how did my aunt become an institutionalized schizophrenic? How did my uncle die of heroin after doing five years for you know, bankrupt or Cumberland? He robbed Cumberland Farms. Everybody in my family is very Boston. Their crimes are very Boston crimes. But what happened to all of these kids and then I had to go back to like, well, it had to be their childhood and my grandparents.
Speaker 4:And so I tried it that way and that wasn't working. And then my agent, annie DeWitt, who's wonderful and at the shipment agency she was like a friend. She was a friend of mine before. She just said write all the stuff you tell me when you go to dinner with your dad Because she would like stay at my house. She was teaching at Columbia and lived in the Catskill, so she would stay over once a week and I would just get home and be like you are never going to believe what my dad did today. And then I like launch into a story and she was like just write those down. And that became the base of what I thought was more auto fiction.
Speaker 4:And she read it and was like oh yeah, no, that's a memoir yeah.
Speaker 3:Which it obviously is a memoir, right, and then you're trying to find the childhood of them, to understand their motivations as adults, but really you're actually trying to find your own childhood through their story.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think I was writing my dad as a me a proxy for sure, and once I think I realized that in the memoir, it became easier to do that work, Although I still do have those questions. I just don't think I get to like ever know yeah, for my parents.
Speaker 3:They don't have the answers and they're not doing an investigative. No, yeah, phil is.
Speaker 4:My dad is very yeah, phil is like contemplative, like to the point of me being like that's enough, dad, I have to go stuff. But he's like do you think that people can change? You know that's like just calls me on the phone with like very deep questions. It's very cute, but he is definitely and I think that's why he's sort of a hero of the book is that he? Is very committed to being a better version of himself as an old as like as he's 77.
Speaker 3:Cause now he got, he got a lesson, he got a, he got a guidebook, he's got he's so psyched.
Speaker 4:He's so psyched about the book, even though I don't think he'll ever read it. Yeah, he could read it.
Speaker 3:He'll pick it up.
Speaker 4:He keeps telling me he's going to read it, but I be like. This article in the Wall Street Journal said I was an occasional drug trafficker and I was like you were. And he was like, but I only did it a few times and I was like exactly.
Speaker 2:Occasional. That's amazing, that's amazing.
Speaker 4:So I was like but this is the stuff where it's like, according to him, who's where I've gotten all of this information from nothing was a big deal. He only did it once. What are you even? Why would you ever say anything like that? And then I would go look it up in the archive and I'd be like, oh you, federal drug trafficking, that's bad. That doesn't sound like a casual crime.
Speaker 3:I bumped into this guy and something yeah, something fell out of my pocket yeah, yeah he does that is the way he spends it, for sure, but he's.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. And you're still very close to both parents, or still very close to my dad.
Speaker 4:My mom and I are kind of always navigating. I'm the oldest of four and I feel very I feel that I was very parentified to both my parents and my younger siblings.
Speaker 4:So I'm sort of the kid who moves away from the family and being from an Italian Albanian immigrant clannish sort of community that is not met well, but to my mind I'm like I've fulfilled my obligations and I need to go be my own adult. So I think the book was part of that too. I think it was like you can't stop me. It's the defiance I've always had, I think, sort of put on the page.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and that makes sense, and there's always like, as the three of us now you know it's mother-daughter relationships are very tricky, they are. You know, just there's something complicated and complex about them that I've just always and all my girlfriends have you know have people say it's challenging you know, one way or the other.
Speaker 3:It's yeah, my mother and I have the best relationship we've ever had now and I'm about to be 44. Right, right. I'm going to read a text. Shout out Mama. I did a shout out to. Oh, I turned the phone off.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can't read it did a shout out to oh, I turned the phone off. Yeah, you can't, um. So I talked in the last podcast about I don't I talk about. I write about my family, but I write about my grandparents who are dead or I write about like generalities and I was like I don't write about my mother really or discuss her because she's alive and I just you know stuff, and she she texted that, uh, that I can say whatever I want and that she has no greater love than her love of her children and that she knows that she didn't always like do the best or whatever, but she did the best she could, something like that not as apologizing, but then said I know that we both will have different perspectives of what happened and that's okay yeah, yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:I love that, you know but, it's 40, 44 years to get there, but yes and I still like.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that, um, but I'm still holding back a bit that's fair.
Speaker 4:I mean, phil was like.
Speaker 3:I know I'm not holding back a bit, that's fair.
Speaker 4:I mean, phil was like. I know I'm not going to like everything in here, but I love you and I hope it succeeds, right but it's that sort of sentiment you want. But for me it was like, if I don't get that, I won't stop doing this thing.
Speaker 3:It just makes it easier, it makes it easier.
Speaker 4:It makes it easier. It makes it easier for you, I think, especially because I don't think any of us are writing about our families like them, yeah, or with mountains, like I think if you're doing any sort of memoir work or creative nonfiction you're being very like mindful of, you should be being very mindful of what you're saying, so I think it's not done lightly you're understanding the character and you're understanding motivations and you should love your villains.
Speaker 3:You should love your bad guys as much as your good guys because you understand them, and I think the whole process of auto fiction or memoiric writing is to understand ourselves via the important characters in our lives.
Speaker 4:But I mean, I think that what I've found, and I think is fair too, is that you know, people in your lives don't like being characters. Yeah, and so I think sort of seeing how to make them, and that's very tricky in a memoir because in a way, you want to write a narrative, right you?
Speaker 1:have to.
Speaker 4:You're trying to write something that's going to carry a reader through it and you're like well, it can become very reductive to talk about, like you said earlier, like a plot point, even though it's not. You're using it in a way and so I have, I think, coming out the other end of this. Just, I have, I have a line. Um, I was just at Pangea last night, my restaurant that I worked at. I love it was the first place I went to in the city. They've taken wonderful care of me. I write about it in the book, but I wrote like a three sentence passage, um, and and I watched Stephen, my like lovely, wonderful, like boss and and friend, read this three lines and I could sort of see him being like oh, okay oh, like and it was in what?
Speaker 4:in what? Way it was like I said. You know, pangea is this wonderful um East Village establishment that caters to an aging gay crowd and sometimes they can't pay their bill. The restaurant could. It was 2008.
Speaker 4:The market had just cut and it was sort of in the context of we're working through this market collapse in the city and this group of artists who are living on a budget and this restaurant that's struggling to stay afloat is my life raft and they need a life raft and everybody at the bar needs a life, so like that sort of image of the restaurant was very accurate in the moment, but I think, as the person who's like, oh, is that my three sentences in the book, it's like, okay, great so.
Speaker 4:I think there's like there's shit. I haven't even considered that. The way that almost writing about anybody is a little backhanded yeah, no, it's right.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's basically like sending that text to your friend about a person and then reading it right and even if it's the most lovely, like and it is, and even if it's the most lovely like and it is this thing where it's like I tried to send anything to my sister about my sister to my buddy, Eugene has a chapter in the book.
Speaker 4:I sent a passage in a chapter. I sent that to him and was like this is what I've got. Do you want to change or correct? And they would be like I actually that you said that I loved Frank, like my husband here, but now I did not Like I actually hated him at this point and I'd be like good note.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, yeah, like so they were very receptive, almost Things that like I allowed edits to the people I thought needed to have a look for themselves and for the the um, like Verat, like the truth of the work. But I think that, like with my mom or my dad, that becomes perception and subjectivity and I did not want their opinions on my opinions, on my life, Cause I've had them my whole life.
Speaker 4:So like going back, you know, but like going, going back to waiting for your parents to die or waiting for the people in your life that you're writing about to die. I was like, well, screw it. They've been bossing me around with this very Italian, very commanding sort of narrative my whole life and it's never made me feel included or my opinion matters. So I'm just going to do my thing now and they can like it or not like it.
Speaker 4:It's like I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do my thing now and they can like it or not Like like it's like, I'm not going to wait for them to die, cause, like people live so long now, like you know, it's like what am I going to wait till I'm 70? To write about like my own life, like, no, like they can like it or they can not like it.
Speaker 2:I did it, love and and I hope they can see that, yeah, I mean, I think about that all time, you, and that's why I wanted to know you know just you when I'm writing about my family and their issue. You know my brother's a heroin addict my dad's alcoholic preacher. You know, moms are a public eat. How, like? How far do you take it? How far do you go with the telling your story versus exploiting them? You know, and and I think you did a really good job of explaining that.
Speaker 4:I mean, if there was one big word I would say it's like grace for your subjects.
Speaker 4:It's like being graceful to people you hate, like being graceful to people you love but you're angry at being graceful to people you love and you have no problems. Like it's like being graceful with your subjects is sort of imperative because, like you are, for me there are moments where my father stole money from me and like couldn't pay it back because he lost a big gambling, uh debt, and like to write. That is to write about being angry and feeling betrayed and like and it's like it's so easy, I think, to lead with that and like instead to be like oh, he's an addict, and like. These are the things like. And again, drug use to mental illness.
Speaker 4:It's like yeah it all deserves a lot of grace, and I think if we're the ones writing about it, we already have given that grace, so it's like we're already kind of there. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:I've never even thought of it that way. I mean I kind of want to live my. You know you want to live your life with this grace right. So of course you should apply that to your writing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's very hard though.
Speaker 2:It is, but I think that that was beautiful like.
Speaker 4:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I just like teared up a little.
Speaker 4:I did you know, because then they can't get that mad at you if we're going to be like practical on top of being like it's like if you're like I showed you in the bed, because there are things and I had this conversation with a friend about moments where I felt like the book was dishonest or not dishonest but was, um, not honoring my anger or my current feeling about a thing, and somebody said you know you will never be upset, that you memorialized everybody in their best possible way. So it's like if there are things I didn't say about people or feelings I didn't explore about people, it doesn't mean they weren't true.
Speaker 4:It just means that there are other things that I chose and that those were graceful choices too, to say, okay, I'll pursue this as the focus and not the worser things. But you know, again, tell the person you wrote about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Like. How do you explain that? Well, sometimes I think you like this. You should again tell the person you wrote about that. Yeah, exactly Like. How do you explain that Well?
Speaker 4:sometimes I think you like this. You should be lucky. That's all I said.
Speaker 2:Because that is a line that is in my back pocket for the day, truly how I feel that's a really good line yeah.
Speaker 4:And they should be, because we're being nice, because we can tell a lot more. Yeah, we're being very nice.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. I think that's beautiful. Well, you know what time it is. What time is it? It's question time. What time is it? It doesn't go so fast.
Speaker 4:It does go really fast. I know, wait a minute, the yap always.
Speaker 3:The yap in Zelda. Are you ready for a card?
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 4:Zelda has decided to these are always really weird. Allow me to be here.
Speaker 3:Okay, in what ways have your parents influenced your choice or choices Of partner?
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, adjacent.
Speaker 4:But, not that is a very good question. I think that I think that my mom influenced my choices to in a very practical way. She was always very much like find somebody that you love but that takes care of you, and she meant financially and like, but what I have found is that, like, two supportive partners create a singular better life than two people who are always struggling, or one person not pulling their weight and another. So I think partnership, partnership. I think that she really like on top of sort of love, which she's always done very hard and taught me that as well, I think she taught me to be practical and look for a partner. I think my dad really screwed me up because I was dating very unavailable men for a very long time and I think that I also.
Speaker 4:He also taught me to be sort of like dumbly optimistic and have like pie in the sky, expectations about what I deserve, which is great in a lot of ways, but in romance, pretty bad. So I think, um, I think my dad gave me the more weirdly, the more complex thing to work through, but like he loves James so much and they both love my husband- so they're like nice, nice work yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice don't have. I mean, I have a dog, yeah, but my, my parents have been married for 50 years and they hate each other. I mean they are like right oil and water. I I've never seen them kiss in my whole life. No, I've never seen them hold hands like nothing. So I don't know if subconsciously or consciously, it is that I I don't want. I also don't want to be in that position. I don't want to like put all the blame on them, like I'm single, because I suck and they hate each other that's not the truth.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean I've had no, I've had many beautiful long-term partners that I love dearly and and maybe some got away and maybe it was just not right timing, but you know, I've experienced love. I've experienced beautiful, unconditional love um, I love my dog the most and so I guess that's a good relationship right. It's the healthiest relationship.
Speaker 3:I have relationship nonsense. Yes, not a love partner, but a life partner's the healthiest relationship. I have Relationship yes, not a love partner but a life partner.
Speaker 2:But I don't know, I mean I think about it a lot. I think about, like, how much hatred they have for each other, but they live together. I mean they're married, they're together.
Speaker 4:I mean I feel like that does influence Because you're like well, maybe you've had all of these encompassing big loves, but you're also not going to fall into something that's going to put you in a loveless 50-year. No kissing, that's probably a blinking big no-no.
Speaker 2:I think so too. I think that's why I bail a lot. I'm just like I don't know if it's working or not.
Speaker 4:I've been engaged three times Is. Is that always the right choice? I don't know, but like that's probably where the impulse comes from.
Speaker 2:I think so too. I think so too. So love you, mom and dad.
Speaker 4:Yeah, hey guys, are you listening, hey guys?
Speaker 3:My parents were married for 13 years. They got married at 18 and, wow ditto. I don't think they were friends or lovers. So on both sides, my, my father, was not an emotive person. So I think, like as a teenager, I went for, like you know, the boy who was like oh, he said three words, yeah. And then later in life I went through these very, also emotionally retarded but very explosive, passion filled men who were just terrible yeah, um, or terrible people in a relationship um.
Speaker 3:So I was like oh, emotion and passion, that's the opposite, uh. But then you know realizing that that didn't work and now I have someone who is a partnership and he's my best friend and I really like him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have a very successful and healthy relationship.
Speaker 3:And it's not to say that we're not passionate. We are passionate, but it's a healthy enjoyment of life and each other and respect and communication. And, like he comes from a culture that isn't big on talking or sharing feelings, he's Taiwanese. Culture isn't big on talking or sharing feelings he's taiwanese, um, and so that was a hard thing for him to normalize um, but he's done great.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he's amazing yeah, james is british, he also doesn't emote. Well, not, not honestly, just sarcasm but, um, but I do think also like ken feels very stable in a way that james feels really stable and I think that for creatives like I think two creatives dating is oh yeah, been there done. Yeah, like it's dumb, it's awful, impossible to avoid. It feels like so right and amazing, but it's always wrong. Um, but like. Stability is the thing that I feel like, whether in yourself or with somebody else.
Speaker 3:You can't work if you don't feel stable and grounded, yeah, safe, and to be able to just breathe yeah, you know, if you're like holding and I catch myself holding my breath and it's like you don't have to like you're not waiting for something to drop, to explode, to break.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, or you're not like picking at the same time, like he does share, it's just wasn't used to like articulating things and so like it wasn't digging and picking at these boys who, like, just couldn't process their own emotions, it was just he wasn't boys who like just couldn't process their own emotions it was just he was, he was ready, not like chiseling, fucking away, yeah, um.
Speaker 4:So, yes, I feel like there's, you know, and it's a pivot quickly from the question box about this stuff, but like learning how to be with another person isn't always that everything they do like that they communicate the best. When you meet, you're like, no, like. James and I cannot do a domestic chore together. We have to split the chores and I build the thing and he works in the garden, because if we try to do them at the same time we will kill each other right?
Speaker 2:like that's not practice, it's just learning to work with your team to make the best. It's management, you, it's management. You're like oh, rock it. Yeah, exactly, it's like okay.
Speaker 3:Right you gather the tools.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll do this. I'll catch up the schematics Right, this is how it works.
Speaker 3:And it's different for everyone.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that should be the fun part, the figuring out. Yeah, that's beautiful when you hit the sweet spot, the sweet spot. One day I'll get there again, I think maybe.
Speaker 2:So we'll see, otherwise, my dog's really cute, so that's fine um, all right, you guys, are you ready for my fucking? No, we're, we're, we're fucking baby, we're killing and we're fucking and we're being what do you guys think?
Speaker 3:this what's our? Okay, mine's a weird one.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's Jessica's.
Speaker 3:Oh, oh. I have so many opinions on.
Speaker 2:Jessica's. Okay, well, I only have three.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know, I hope they're overlapped, okay.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, we'll all know who these people are. Yes, jessica Lange. You know who Jessica Lange is. Jessica Rabbit, oh, and Jessica Biel. Do you know who Jessica?
Speaker 4:Biel is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly.
Speaker 4:And it is Fuck, kill Bee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know it's a tough one because they got a cartoon in there, but iconic.
Speaker 4:Okay, okay, I got it, okay, you got yours. Yeah, Okay, Kill Biel Bee Lang Fuck.
Speaker 2:Rabbit 100% man. I feel like that's a solid. Yeah, I got to go with that one too.
Speaker 3:I'm going to triple it, but I'm going to give a Y.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2:Jessica.
Speaker 3:Ling. I mean how old is she? She's fucking gorgeous. She's got a stellar career. She's fucking amazing and talented. Gorgeous, she's got a stellar career. She's fucking amazing and talented and has been able to be a name and a celebrity with also. I mean, she's old enough that she didn't start out with the paparazzi stuff, but I don't feel like there's ever been scandal and she's always been fucking classy.
Speaker 2:Gangster Unless she married Sam Shepard forever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know if we're still together, but what a babe.
Speaker 2:He's a stud.
Speaker 4:I yeah, I don't know if it's still together, but what a babe. He's a stud. Yeah, I know exactly it's like that and like Gina Rollins and Cassavetes. You're like these are good couples.
Speaker 2:These are hot Hollywood couples.
Speaker 3:Jessica Biel. If Jessica Lange wasn't in it then I might want to be. I don't want to be married to JT, but also it feels like she tries to navigate her stardom with choice things and coming up as a child actor in fucking seventh heaven and shit like yeah, that's a hard thing to overcome I just have never, I don't know.
Speaker 4:She just sort of blurs into me too, like I don't. It's like I have to struggle to find her face. I had to look her up, but I appreciate that she has made sculpted arms and like women like athletic sexy and like I love that it is a big point against her that she's married to JT. That was definitely mine too.
Speaker 2:I didn't know which way you guys were gonna go, if it was gonna be a bonus or yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna fuck a cartoon, yeah. So I guess we all'm going to fuck a cartoon, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I guess we all three are going to fuck a cartoon, I mean that, yeah, and with just, she's always been a babe.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a confidence. She hasn't aged a day.
Speaker 2:She hasn't aged a day.
Speaker 3:Not like, aging isn't sexy. Hey, slang yeah of course it's, just isn't sexy. Yeah, yeah, of course, but it is established Wait just very quickly on this note.
Speaker 4:Did you guys read all fours yet? Miranda July no, it is like. It's like not that aging isn't sexy, and then you're like but actually it's horrifying, and when it starts happening to you you have like a midlife crisis and you're like yeah, but the book is, and I like Miranda July. I love Miranda July for this one.
Speaker 3:But like was not the last one, the man, I don't think I had a need to get so into her in the kind of like mid-millennial mayhem.
Speaker 4:when it was like girls, there was like enough quirky sort of Exactly. But like this book, kind of targeting in on like middle age desire perimenopause, yeah, like aging, all of these things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 45, same, yeah 45.
Speaker 4:If you are 45 or like it will rock your shit in a way where you're like, oh my God, why is this me? So I-. Really Okay, I am like a new convert being like oh, she saw my ass. What's it called? All fours she just got nominated for the National Book Award.
Speaker 3:Okay, oh, snap Well.
Speaker 2:I will definitely put that on my list and read that, because that's right up my alley. Yeah, it's the time, now is the time. Now is the time, and.
Speaker 4:I like that there's room for these midlife crises of ladies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 4:Ladies crises.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I feel like it's usually a guy, genre Exactly Netflix, and that flicks in all of the little streaming services that capitalized a particular audience because they're the older, sexy divorced women taking in younger lovers.
Speaker 2:There was a.
Speaker 3:Nicole Kidman one, and then there was an Anne Hathaway one where they're like fucking 20-year-olds.
Speaker 4:And this is the guy realm typically. Yeah, exactly, and so I appreciate they're terrible movies, but I appreciated the gender flick.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and so I appreciate they're terrible movies but I appreciated the gender flick Right yeah.
Speaker 2:Zelda, the dog is just sitting here looking needy and opinionated and adorable, and adorable.
Speaker 3:Her quietness is so assertive and aggressive. Oh God, All right guys, All right love y'all Bye.
Speaker 2:Thank you To Jessica's.
Speaker 3:To Jessica's To.
Speaker 2:Jessica's Okay bye. What was her which?
Speaker 3:one Rabbit.
Speaker 2:She just always had her hair over her eye. Remember, you could only see one eye.
Speaker 4:I'm going to need to watch it again, because here's what I've actually learned Is that, if it were a fuck, kill Mary Of all of these people.
Speaker 1:Bob Hoskins would be high on that list.
Speaker 4:for me he's a babe.
Speaker 2:I think he's a total babe too, and I am with that 100%.
Speaker 4:He's just like a British hairy little stocky.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. I've always found him so attractive. I feel the same.
Speaker 4:And Peter Falk.
Speaker 3:I have like whoever, oh, peter Falk.
Speaker 4:I have like yeah, ever Peter Falk, never I just sat at my grandma's house and, yes, a lot of, I know I'm like wait, that's where those feelings yeah, yeah, exactly, all right on that note.
