Coach Alex Ray: Hello, hello, my unicorns, welcome back to another special guest episode of the Queer Confidence podcast.
Coach Alex Ray: I am so excited today to introduce you to comedian co-host of the Dom Pop podcast and my hair idol, Quincy ae.
Quincy Bazen: Hello, wait, I love that you pronounced my last name correctly.
Quincy Bazen: I'm already feel like I'm at home here.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm so glad you know.
Coach Alex Ray: Usually I check that before we hit record and I forgot to you didn't need to.
Quincy Bazen: You were so strong and right.
Quincy Bazen: You were like I love it.
Coach Alex Ray: Excellent, thank you.
Coach Alex Ray: In my head I hesitated there for a moment.
Coach Alex Ray: It was like oh fuck, just go for it.
Quincy Bazen: We can re-record if we need to.
Quincy Bazen: No, you had to nail that, nailed it.
Quincy Bazen: All of my teachers in high school shaking.
Coach Alex Ray: Why?
Coach Alex Ray: How do they usually?
Quincy Bazen: Your last name seems sort of easy to pronounce to me, I think so it's like there's an E which makes you assume that you should think it's a hard A noise.
Quincy Bazen: But now people go Bazen all the time Bazen.
Quincy Bazen: I get mailed still to this day.
Quincy Bazen: That says brazen.
Quincy Bazen: I'm like we're just throwing in extra letters.
Quincy Bazen: Now you should just teach a seminar and then we'll be good to go.
Coach Alex Ray: I mean brazen.
Coach Alex Ray: What an iconic name to have.
Quincy Bazen: I thought about changing my name before I started pursuing my career.
Quincy Bazen: I thought about just adding an asterisk over the A, not an asterisk, but like an accent.
Quincy Bazen: Thank you.
Quincy Bazen: Oh my God, an accent over the A, just so people knew exactly where to hit it with.
Quincy Bazen: All my friends told me it looked too pretentious, so I didn't do that.
Coach Alex Ray: I mean pretentious might not even be bad in this industry anyway.
Quincy Bazen: Let's just say everyone has to be a little bit pretentious to make it right.
Quincy Bazen: So when I, if I don't make it, I'm going to believe my friends for not letting me put the accents on my A.
Coach Alex Ray: Well, at least you have someone else to blame, so that you don't have to blame yourself Ever.
Quincy Bazen: Okay, I'm not going to take responsibility for my actions.
Coach Alex Ray: The perfect introduction to a podcast on confidence.
Coach Alex Ray: Oh my God, okay, no, for real, though, give a, give everyone a little.
Coach Alex Ray: Introduce that introduction Intra.
Coach Alex Ray: Ooh, that sounds sturdy.
Coach Alex Ray: Okay, introduction to yourself.
Coach Alex Ray: Who are you?
Coach Alex Ray: What do you do?
Quincy Bazen: I put me on the spot.
Quincy Bazen: I'm not used to being the center of attention, that's not true.
Quincy Bazen: Okay, my name is Quincy Bayeson.
Quincy Bazen: Like you nailed, I am a comedian living in Los Angeles, california, but I still feel new to LA.
Quincy Bazen: I just moved here, like we were talking about before we reported.
Quincy Bazen: I just moved here after the pandemic in 2021.
Quincy Bazen: Before that, I was in San Diego for a couple of years.
Quincy Bazen: I think San Diego was like my toe step into moving to California, because I just moved across the country without a job, without anything.
Quincy Bazen: I just wanted to be.
Quincy Bazen: You know where the lights and beaches are.
Quincy Bazen: But my best friend, who I moved with, hates LA, the lack of change, so I couldn't convince her to move with me.
Quincy Bazen: So we did San Diego and I loved that.
Quincy Bazen: But before that I was actually a tour manager for the world's largest student home festival, which feels like another lifetime now, but I was the director of that festival for a couple of years and before that I was a Navy brat.
Quincy Bazen: I moved a.
Quincy Bazen: Can I curse?
Quincy Bazen: Do we curse?
Coach Alex Ray: Oh, absolutely, we like to say the fuck word here.
Quincy Bazen: It was really great because I was going to say I moved what historians have called a fuck ton of times before I graduated high school.
Quincy Bazen: I think it was like 14 or 15 times before I graduated high school and then through a loophole and did up in Florida because of in state tuition and is that a bio?
Quincy Bazen: I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: I need to work on my elevator pit for myself.
Quincy Bazen: I guess I think that works.
Quincy Bazen: I'm a child of the world is what I'm trying to say.
Quincy Bazen: I'm in Europe mostly, and then yeah, oh my God, that was awful.
Quincy Bazen: I need a button.
Quincy Bazen: I need like a hook.
Quincy Bazen: I have no hook or button.
Quincy Bazen: I love that I told her for universe too.
Quincy Bazen: Like sorry for those of you trying to keep track, I was just bouncing all around.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm ADHD.
Quincy Bazen: Everyone listening knows that Okay, great, and I didn't take my Adderall this morning.
Coach Alex Ray: Y'all welcome to the most chaotic episode ever.
Coach Alex Ray: Here we go.
Quincy Bazen: Anyone who listened to my podcast also expects nothing but chaos.
Quincy Bazen: So, absolutely, you're from Dump Hop, you're right at home.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, okay, tell everyone a little bit about your show.
Quincy Bazen: Oh, dump Hop, Product of the pandemic.
Quincy Bazen: So many podcasts are my best friend and I are.
Quincy Bazen: Entire text thread for the past decade has just been us talking about the pop girls and you know what the these rollouts or like what our favorite rollouts are, how the singles are stacking up and it's just all this like stupid gay conversation.
Quincy Bazen: You know that there that we love to have and I was like I bet there are people who are interested in having these baggie conversations with us.
Coach Alex Ray: And I don't know not many gays are into pop music.
Quincy Bazen: No, it's pretty niche, I'm learning, but we started it in 2021 and we're so.
Quincy Bazen: We're in our third season now and every week we just tackle an album.
Quincy Bazen: We go track by track, which is really fun.
Quincy Bazen: We get to talk, not only like the big hits every you know but like the deep cuts, and we get to do like, I mean just everybody, we just did our hundredth episode a few months ago.
Quincy Bazen: Congratulations, thank you, it's so, it's I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: It's fun, it's nice.
Quincy Bazen: So, like a force during the pandemic, it was nice to just like keep in touch with my bestie, but now it's I mean, it's work, as I'm sure you know.
Quincy Bazen: Like it's, it's work.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, I'm top of that, but it's a.
Quincy Bazen: It's a project that was really, really passionate about, and now we started interviewing other artists, which is super exciting and kind of adding new elements to it.
Quincy Bazen: The best part about it that was every year we do our own awards show, because we don't care about the Grammys, but the nominees dot, dot, dot is where it's at, okay, that's where the real winners are awarded, okay, but I love it's just, it's just a fantasy.
Quincy Bazen: We just live in our own little fantasy world and we Kiki and for whatever reason people seem to like to listen to it, so it all works out.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, I really like I listened to part of a couple episodes because I wanted to like get like learn a little bit about you before having you on the show and I love the like BDSM Dominic tricks vibe that you all have with this show.
Quincy Bazen: Well see, because the T is in my, my pre not pre performing because I performed on my life, but pre like pursuing performing full time.
Quincy Bazen: I was a marketing gay, like so many other days are, and so I'm big on the branding and I love to brand.
Quincy Bazen: I love to put my Canva pro membership straight to work.
Coach Alex Ray: So I think all of that came from.
Quincy Bazen: I think the like all of the dominatrix stuff came from.
Quincy Bazen: We were just like shooting this shit up.
Quincy Bazen: We were going to call the podcast when we were developing.
Quincy Bazen: It was called pop goes poof, but then again, like I just didn't, I couldn't see it.
Quincy Bazen: I couldn't, really couldn't see the structure or whatever.
Quincy Bazen: And then my friends who I think was single at the time, something someone messaged him about he was they were looking for a Dom Top and I was like that's it.
Quincy Bazen: Like that's it, it's Dom Pop and it's just this BDSM gay music fantasy.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, the rest is her story.
Quincy Bazen: There you go.
Coach Alex Ray: Quite frankly, the whip sound effects do it for me.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, like in the demo of the pilot.
Quincy Bazen: Demo of the pilot.
Quincy Bazen: See, I can be pretentious, I don't need the accent I was trying to incorporate, like handcuff noises and like shackling, and I'm like, no, it's too much.
Quincy Bazen: Like you got to buy it, like it's too much.
Quincy Bazen: But yes, love a good web.
Coach Alex Ray: Absolutely.
Coach Alex Ray: I don't do any sound effects on this podcast yet, but you know if, if and when I do, that's absolutely at the top three sound effects.
Coach Alex Ray: I never.
Quincy Bazen: I did an interview a couple of weeks ago on one of my friends podcasts and she basically records live with like a sound board and iPad, so anytime either one of us wanted to play a sound effect, we just press the corresponding button and there was like a shade rattle or there was like I might wait, you might have cracked this code, because that's way less work.
Quincy Bazen: Also then, like the seven hours and editing I'm doing every week.
Coach Alex Ray: Right.
Quincy Bazen: I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: I might have to look into that.
Coach Alex Ray: That's a great idea.
Coach Alex Ray: Send me that info when you get it.
Quincy Bazen: I want the like instant sound board.
Coach Alex Ray: I don't like listening back to it later and editing.
Coach Alex Ray: I make notes as I go.
Quincy Bazen: If there's any parts that I need to like, clip you know, as I'm rambling, you're like, okay, we're cutting, whatever the fuck you say right now, right.
Coach Alex Ray: I've lost interest.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm looking out the window.
Coach Alex Ray: I have no idea what we're talking about anymore.
Coach Alex Ray: Right, yeah.
Quincy Bazen: I feel like I enjoy it better when, like because, like I mean, like we've done so many episodes now, like sometimes we're not always doing like an album that we're obsessed with, which I think is part of the reason we wanted to like interject interviews now is, like I don't ever want it to become a chore.
Quincy Bazen: I wanted like it's work, but it's it's work that I'm passionate about.
Quincy Bazen: I can't we're just like talking about an album because we have to put out an episode, then neither of us are enthusiastic and then those are the episodes that I find that I'm not really having fun editing.
Quincy Bazen: Because, like, I'm not fun editing I used to be a video editor for a long time Like I think it's good for my ADHD to like it's very detail oriented and like it's a good task.
Quincy Bazen: But again, like, if the content isn't interesting to me as the producer, then like I don't really feel like it's going to be that interesting to the consumers either.
Quincy Bazen: You know.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, 100%, 100%.
Coach Alex Ray: You're in the right industry, absolutely All right, tell us a little bit more.
Coach Alex Ray: I want to hear more about your journey becoming a comedian Becoming a comedian.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, like how the fuck did you get here?
Coach Alex Ray: Have you always known that you wanted to get into comedy?
Coach Alex Ray: Is this like a new or?
Coach Alex Ray: Thing?
Quincy Bazen: No, it's definitely.
Quincy Bazen: It's a newer thing.
Quincy Bazen: I hate to keep talking about the pandemic, but it really was a form of a time In a wakeening Right.
Quincy Bazen: Well, I mean, I think for so many people, it gave us an opportunity to really sit with the lives that we've made.
Quincy Bazen: You know, physically, obviously, like I'm in this space, who are the people that I've surrounded myself with?
Quincy Bazen: Where am I at with my life?
Quincy Bazen: You know, I was fortunate enough that I didn't lose my job.
Quincy Bazen: I was already working remotely for that film festival prior to the pandemic.
Quincy Bazen: So, for the record, I was working remote before.
Quincy Bazen: It was cool.
Coach Alex Ray: Same thing here for like shining our credentials.
Quincy Bazen: You know what it is.
Quincy Bazen: I mean we'll get into this later and like the confidence portion, but I just like I really struggle with authority and I really struggle with anyone telling me what to do ever.
Quincy Bazen: So the freedom of working remote was a beacon for me from the onset, I think, of my professional life.
Quincy Bazen: But I mean, I've always been a performer.
Quincy Bazen: I've been an actor since I was seven, six.
Quincy Bazen: My mom loves to tell the story about me disappearing in the McDonald's playground and then when she found me 10 minutes later, I was yelling action and I had recreated like a retelling of the Titanic with all of these children I had just met.
Quincy Bazen: Oh my God, because on top of being a performer my entire life, I've been a control freak since I came out of the loom.
Quincy Bazen: But you know, I grew up on military bases.
Quincy Bazen: I moved pretty much every single year.
Quincy Bazen: So like I would, you know, finish my grade and then we'd move during the summer, do a grade and during the summer, and so all I had as a constant was theater and I would just seek out theater.
Quincy Bazen: And you know, theater freaks are easy to bond with because you know, we're all, we're all a bit of an outcast and you know, as the perpetual new kid on the block, it was easier for me to kind of like just sink my teeth into that and chart away forward.
Quincy Bazen: So I majored in theater, but nowhere we're majoring in theater mattered.
Quincy Bazen: I was in Tampa, florida, and I got involved with this film festival and then it hit me I was like, well, I don't really need a degree in theater, I want to pursue acting, or you can just pursue acting.
Quincy Bazen: So I just changed my major to mass com and then got involved with the film festival, the other yada, yada, yada.
Quincy Bazen: And then was actually pursuing writing and directing.
Quincy Bazen: For a while and right before the pandemic I was working on a web series called rest, in pieces Kind of autobiographical, but only in the sense that like the characters had, like my character had my own name and it was just like this kind of cartoon version of myself and me and my two best friends were the other characters and I wrote and directed it and it was actually meant to be a six part like full length, 30 minute sitcom fantasy, incredible.
Quincy Bazen: We kind of, because one of my friends lived in Denver at the time.
Quincy Bazen: Our shooting schedule was kind of staggered, and so by the time the pandemic hit, we only had one episode shot in full and it was the third episode.
Quincy Bazen: So I ended up.
Quincy Bazen: I was just like so itching to like do something.
Quincy Bazen: I was like, well, okay, well, scrap everything else and I'll just put this episode out as its own web series.
Quincy Bazen: So I chopped it up into three bits and I promoted it over 2020.
Quincy Bazen: And then I was just kind of twiddling my sums in 2021 started the podcast and I was okay, that's great.
Quincy Bazen: But then after four months I was like I need more, like I'm not fulfilled.
Quincy Bazen: I wasn't doing any theater, wasn't doing any acting, but I didn't have the tools or the community anymore to be doing full like web series episodes.
Quincy Bazen: I'm like what can I do 100% of the time with my own time?
Quincy Bazen: Like what can I devote as much effort as I want to and see that progress?
Quincy Bazen: And I ended up turning to stand up because I was like, well, I can tell these stories and I can do the performing thing and I can do the writing thing, and I don't need to like fly my friend in from Denver, I don't need to fly my cinematographer down from San Francisco, I don't need to get five people together for three days at a time which is way harder than it sounds, also when you have no money, and so it just became.
Quincy Bazen: It became, I guess.
Quincy Bazen: I guess it was born out of necessity, but now, you know, I'm in the process of writing like two different one man shows and I think that that's something I'm finding about my.
Quincy Bazen: My voice as a comedian to is like I think for a while I was, I was stuck in this mind.
Quincy Bazen: Instead of okay, stand up, is like you go up and you're like, well, here's this and here's this joke, blah, blah, blah.
Quincy Bazen: But that was never my writing style and it's never been my performing style either.
Quincy Bazen: So I think, specifically the last year or so, trying to weave in my own identity, into my my material has been really fun, and I think, if you come see one of my shows, I'm very conversational.
Quincy Bazen: I'm just like he came with my girls and I'm an open book, so I talk about all kinds of stuff from, like mental health to my sex life and things like that.
Quincy Bazen: So I think that I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: It's a.
Quincy Bazen: It's a very much an ongoing journey and it's very much something I'm still learning about.
Quincy Bazen: I'm putting up my first hour this fall with plans not going to do another one next spring, because I just want to like kind of throw everything I've got at the wall and then see what can happen to know, because I just, I just can't I just want to wait around.
Quincy Bazen: I'm too impatient.
Quincy Bazen: Also is another thing to know about me.
Quincy Bazen: I'm the most impatient person I know.
Quincy Bazen: I mean even just like the last year that it's taken to kind of like work on the material and get to it like I would be doing it every fucking day if I could and didn't need to like pay bills and, you know, do regular bullshit stuff.
Coach Alex Ray: Yes, totally.
Quincy Bazen: Super long answer.
Quincy Bazen: I hope it made sense.
Quincy Bazen: I hope we tracked it from absolutely did.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, I think one of the you do.
Coach Alex Ray: You have another job that supports you to while you do all this.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, I still do copyrighting.
Quincy Bazen: So I do like copyrighting like a medical marijuana company.
Quincy Bazen: Great, Any like fun cutesy little weed strain you're reading about.
Quincy Bazen: I could have wrote it.
Quincy Bazen: I could have wrote it probably did.
Coach Alex Ray: There's a lot of accents on all the a's you know.
Quincy Bazen: You know, that's my calling card.
Coach Alex Ray: I think it's important for for people to hear that too, because I know I, being around the world of like a lot of entrepreneurs for the last oh God how many years seven years really got this image that, oh, you just sort of like quit everything, you go in and then you're just successful and then that is not how the world works.
Coach Alex Ray: That's not how it works.
Coach Alex Ray: And I love hearing other people that are willing to be like oh no, like this is my dream, this is my passion, this is what I my main thing, but like I also have like a fucking full time job that supports all this shit.
Quincy Bazen: You know, when I first moved to LA and people were asking me like what I did, I would tell them that I was a copywriter, which, like I look back on, like why did I ever tell anybody that like that's like where I get 90% of my income and like that's how, like it's what I have to do to like support myself and support it's like my family, but I, I mean that's not who I am, that's what I have to do to support what I am, which is like a performer and actor, comedian.
Quincy Bazen: That you're absolutely right.
Quincy Bazen: Like nobody talks about the hustle, as much as I hate that, the grind, quote unquote but it's very real and very prevalent in my life and I think most other performers lives.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, also like golden tip number one of the day.
Coach Alex Ray: If you are pursuing a like new career, if you're pursuing a new future, whatever it is, stop identifying yourself with the old version.
Quincy Bazen: I saw some.
Coach Alex Ray: God.
Quincy Bazen: Sorry, I'm gonna interrupt you.
Quincy Bazen: I saw some tweet like I actually think it was before the pandemic.
Quincy Bazen: I wish I could attribute the quote, but it was basically like if you're, if you're, stop calling yourself like an aspiring filmmaker or a fire, like if you're making anything, like you're doing it, like that's what you are.
Quincy Bazen: Like adding the aspiring in front of it is already minimizing what you're doing and it just puts out that energy that you don't view yourself as on par with all these other people in the industry.
Quincy Bazen: Like it's a, it's a mentality of yourself, it's a mentality for others, because Lord knows how the other half of the work is networking and getting other people to believe in you.
Quincy Bazen: So that's something that I forgot about, I think, for a long time, but from the past year I've been trying to just own it, you know, just fake it to you may get yeah, or it's not even really faking it at that point though.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, also true.
Quincy Bazen: See, there we go again.
Quincy Bazen: See like I'm still still.
Quincy Bazen: It still feels like faking, everything feels like faking, even when you're making.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, even orgasm sometimes.
Quincy Bazen: No, don't fake orgasm, not in my experience.
Coach Alex Ray: I have before faked orgasms, but it was just like I was so miserable and this is like a few years ago, like hooking up, and I was like I just want to get out of here.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm like, oh, wow, that was great.
Coach Alex Ray: Okay, thank you, bye.
Quincy Bazen: Well, but you see the problem with men faking orgasms or those of us with penises faking orgasms.
Quincy Bazen: Is there really has to be evidence of such an orgasm and I'm like well, I'm not here to like give you, exhibit a like, I'm just going to have to figure out a way to come and then get the fuck out of here.
Coach Alex Ray: I would pretend when I was topping and I'd be like oh god, it's in there, okay, bye.
Coach Alex Ray: And then like yeah, I get to leave before they find out that they had no deposit.
Quincy Bazen: Oh yeah.
Coach Alex Ray: Anyway, we don't fake anymore.
Quincy Bazen: No, no, no, no.
Quincy Bazen: I don't think I've ever faked an orgasm.
Quincy Bazen: Actually, I just would genuinely like okay, I'm good, I don't think it's going to happen to me.
Coach Alex Ray: Honestly, I love that.
Coach Alex Ray: See, we were talking also y'all before starting, about how we've learned that honesty is, oh my god, so important in relationships, but we'll get that to that later.
Coach Alex Ray: I want to hear more about your coming out journey, because you told me that you, you know you grew up in the military, moving around everywhere and then came to the states and college.
Coach Alex Ray: Like, when did you come out and what was that like for you?
Coach Alex Ray: I've never interviewed anyone on the podcast.
Coach Alex Ray: It's had to come out in like a military family setting.
Quincy Bazen: Well, this is actually what my show is about.
Quincy Bazen: My show is called don't ask, don't tell, and it's all about.
Quincy Bazen: I mean just just that.
Quincy Bazen: It's about my journey growing up, you know, in a conservative Christian military home abroad.
Quincy Bazen: You know I was in high school.
Quincy Bazen: I went to high school in Bahrain, which is a country off the coast of Saudi Arabia.
Quincy Bazen: So very pick my words carefully it's.
Quincy Bazen: I wouldn't say that it's the most liberal place you could go, certainly not the most forward thinking.
Quincy Bazen: So I think for me it was like whatever the opposite of exposure therapy is like.
Quincy Bazen: I didn't meet a gay person until I was in college back in the States and it was very much like I was just thrown into the deep end.
Quincy Bazen: I mean maybe not the deep end, because I still went to college in Florida in 2011, but it was like a very crazy awakening to me.
Quincy Bazen: I remember I came out to my best friends summer after I graduated high school.
Quincy Bazen: I told her that I was bisexual.
Quincy Bazen: Because I believed that I was bisexual, I thought that I would maybe hook up with some dude like fiddle at each other a little, and then it'd be out of my system and I was going to marry a woman and maybe we just wouldn't have a super exciting sex life.
Quincy Bazen: But that was the life ahead of me and then, over the course of my freshman year for no reason in particular, I guess, just like getting older and developing more critical thinking I came to the conclusion that I was not bisexual and I was just gay, and that in itself was very much okay, obviously.
Quincy Bazen: But I think it's interesting to talk about these things now, because this was over a decade ago.
Quincy Bazen: Like the thought of being in the closet or the thought of not embracing my queer identity.
Quincy Bazen: It makes me laugh.
Quincy Bazen: Like I feel like I'm chuckling now because it just seems so far removed from who I am.
Quincy Bazen: Like I'm just a queer little bitch.
Quincy Bazen: Like I love being gay, I love being queer.
Quincy Bazen: Because I think what's so exciting about being queer is like coming out is just the first barrier.
Quincy Bazen: Like it's this first fuck you to society.
Quincy Bazen: That like I don't play by these rules that you've set up for me, I don't have to live within these four walls that you've built around me and you and the world.
Quincy Bazen: And once you've broken through that barrier, like every other barrier just seems really weak and feeble.
Quincy Bazen: And then you realize that you can have so much more freedom in your life.
Quincy Bazen: You can dress however you want, you can express yourself in any way that you want, you can hang out with people that are really really fun and interesting and queerer than you are, and that's exciting and these people are gonna bring out more of your identity.
Quincy Bazen: And you know, obviously I live in LA so it's not that hard to like find these communities here.
Quincy Bazen: But the little bits that I was getting in Florida at the time was really really exciting.
Quincy Bazen: In it it almost like in the same way that like when you're like kissing a boy for the first time, like it feels.
Quincy Bazen: It feels I don't wanna say wrong because obviously I don't know but there's like this itch in the back of your mind like oh, like what is this?
Quincy Bazen: This is strange and it's new to me, but I think I like it and I think I wanna explore this more.
Quincy Bazen: I think that that's what a lot of my college years were and even beyond that, I think that that's what my twenties were.
Quincy Bazen: My twenties were coming to not terms, but coming to the light and the joy of just like living as a free, queer person.
Quincy Bazen: Love that.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah.
Quincy Bazen: There was another long answer for you, sorry have it alert.
Coach Alex Ray: I know why you're apologizing.
Coach Alex Ray: This is your guest interview.
Coach Alex Ray: You get to talk a lot.
Quincy Bazen: No, I just ran, I just talked.
Quincy Bazen: I literally just went to visit my mom like two weeks ago and she just kept talking, and talking, and talking.
Quincy Bazen: And I'm like girl, why are you still talking?
Quincy Bazen: And I'm like oh God, oh God.
Coach Alex Ray: It's really and that's where you get it from, Literally, and I was like my.
Quincy Bazen: My boyfriend and I we went to Italy to cause he's from England, so his mom and my mom was in Italy, and so his mom flew down to Italy to meet us for the weekend and his mom my mom was just talking her ear off and his mom was a very good listener and I was like oh, look, it's us.
Quincy Bazen: There's the talker and there's the listener.
Quincy Bazen: What?
Coach Alex Ray: I love it, and, and now people are going to pay to just let you talk at them for an hour, right?
Quincy Bazen: Exactly, exactly.
Quincy Bazen: That's really where I'm happy.
Quincy Bazen: It's just with a microphone on stage.
Quincy Bazen: I always say that I could have done drag if I wasn't as lazy as I am.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, I just don't have the energy and the stamina that they do to put all that extra work into it.
Quincy Bazen: But I'm happy to throw a couple knock knocks at ya, you know, keep you entertained while I just keep rambling.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, oh yeah there.
Coach Alex Ray: I've done drag a couple of times and I was like this is so uncomfortable, it's so much effort ahead of time.
Coach Alex Ray: I was like I bet.
Coach Alex Ray: No, I can't.
Coach Alex Ray: No, I've got so much respect for drag.
Coach Alex Ray: Let's see.
Coach Alex Ray: Was there anything else I wanted to ask you about that?
Coach Alex Ray: I mean, I was thinking like what was it like?
Coach Alex Ray: How'd your family react to you coming out and is there?
Coach Alex Ray: Any that you wanna share think would be useful for people to learn from.
Quincy Bazen: A useful I don't know, let's see.
Quincy Bazen: So I came out to.
Quincy Bazen: I came out to my sister first.
Quincy Bazen: My sister's one of my best friends in the world.
Quincy Bazen: Still.
Quincy Bazen: I came out to her first.
Quincy Bazen: She was great and lovely.
Quincy Bazen: And then I came out to my mom.
Quincy Bazen: So I came out like over the course of 2013,.
Quincy Bazen: I came out and I came out to my sister at the top of the year it was like January 1st or 2nd or something, because I was home for the holidays and then I came out to my mom that summer and she was great.
Quincy Bazen: She cried, said she knew, and I was like okay, but my favorite part of that story is the whole week I've been trying to buy this like $300 blazer, but I couldn't bring myself to spend $300, which I mean when you're 19,.
Coach Alex Ray: It's like rent it's like a thousand dollars, but anyway.
Quincy Bazen: So I had come out to her, we had this really like intense crime moment, and she was flying back to Germany later that night, and so she came up to me again, again and I like hugged me and she's like I want you to go get that place, and then she handed me $300.
Quincy Bazen: And I was like I didn't end up getting the blazer, but I was suddenly $300 richer and I was like, okay, coming out pays okay.
Quincy Bazen: Coming out pays is what I learned.
Coach Alex Ray: And then I've never heard that lesson before and I like it.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah well, you're learning more and more every time you hear a new story.
Quincy Bazen: right, it's all about the new perspective, Mine is all about financial gain, which is actually why I didn't come out to my dad for so long well, like another six months because I was worried that because they were like supporting me while I was in college and like paying my tuition, my rent, and I was worried that they would not do that any longer, should he learn the truth about what I'm up to on that campus.
Quincy Bazen: But this is a very, actually dramatic story I'll spare you the details of, but we had a family meeting.
Quincy Bazen: I don't know if you were a family meeting kind of home, but we were- we did sometimes have some family meetings.
Coach Alex Ray: It was always bad, Always bad of course, yeah, always bad.
Quincy Bazen: And my dad is, my dad's a military man.
Quincy Bazen: He's very, very type A and you know, I don't even I don't think the details were even about me, like it was about my brother.
Quincy Bazen: My brother was doing something and it just put my dad in a pissy mood, and then he wanted us to have this family meeting and I don't know about your experience, but whenever I felt like I was gonna come out, it was literally like Katie and me girls like the word vomit, but I could just feel it coming.
Quincy Bazen: My whole body would tense.
Quincy Bazen: And when I came out to my sister, I just started sobbing because it felt like it was out of my hands, like I wasn't in the driver's seat anymore.
Quincy Bazen: I just knew this was the moment I was gonna come out and that whole meeting I just had this knot in my stomach.
Quincy Bazen: I'm like this is it, like this is what's gonna happen.
Quincy Bazen: And there was just this massive, dramatic, screaming match like between me and my brother and my dad so dramatic, just so extra.
Quincy Bazen: And the fall there was no like fallout per se in the way that I was worried about their being, but it became.
Quincy Bazen: I mean, that was 2013.
Quincy Bazen: And I think that it wasn't until 2018 that my dad finally was able to say that he was like.
Quincy Bazen: He was able to say that I had convinced him that being gay wasn't a choice.
Quincy Bazen: So it was like this very prolonged six year journey for him, more so than anybody else.
Quincy Bazen: And I think for a while I struggled with the idea of like having to take on this role of a teacher because and I feel this way about a lot of things too like queer people go through so much Like I don't.
Quincy Bazen: Sometimes I struggle with the idea to think that it's fair that we also have to, on top of all of what society has put onto us and put us through.
Quincy Bazen: We've got to sit there and we've got to be the bigger person and we've got to be patient and we've got to teach bigots how to be better people.
Quincy Bazen: And I struggled with that for a long time.
Quincy Bazen: I was very ready to just like wipe my hands.
Quincy Bazen: I mean like well, if you don't get it, you don't get it, fuck off.
Quincy Bazen: But that's not, obviously, a super successful communication tactic.
Quincy Bazen: So I didn't do that.
Quincy Bazen: And you know, my dad's not perfect by any means, but he loves me, he loves my boyfriend, he loves to see me happy and that's what I try to focus on.
Coach Alex Ray: So Wow, Do you have anything that you could share that for anyone going through something similar like what helped you have the patience during that time?
Quincy Bazen: You know, I think I don't know how applicable this is across the board, but for me, I always thought of my father as a very, very intelligent person and I think I got a lot of my intelligence from him and so a lot of my drive and a lot of my type A organizational quirks All the quirks.
Quincy Bazen: I've been asked and I just, I mean, I don't know, I just really struggle, not even past tense, because even beyond 2018 and into the pandemic, like these ideas that he had or these ideas that people like him had, because they're just so quick to believe the propaganda machine about anything that threatens, you know, the white nuclear family's way of life.
Quincy Bazen: They're just not interested in it.
Quincy Bazen: But I think I realized that if I wasn't gonna have the patience and if I wasn't going to maintain communication with him, he's never gonna speak to another gay person in his life, like he's not gonna have anybody who's willing to have these conversations with him.
Quincy Bazen: And my parents actually just got divorced this summer and I think that it's because they couldn't have those conversations anymore.
Quincy Bazen: And yes, you know he's come a long way, but like some things, he just can't shake.
Quincy Bazen: If you think the election's stolen, I don't know what to tell you, because I can only send you so many links and poke so many holes in these silly, silly things you're saying before.
Quincy Bazen: For your own sanity, you have to draw a line, you have to draw a boundary.
Quincy Bazen: So, while I have a good relationship with him regarding, like my personal life, like we, we still struggle to see eye to eye on the world in many, many ways.
Quincy Bazen: But again, I think it's all because of the same reason, like it's all because the people in power don't want people to be breaking down those berries, breaking down those walls, because then their way of life, where they're sitting pretty on top without question, is threatened and they don't want that at all.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, makes sense.
Coach Alex Ray: Also like we could go so far down that rabbit hole, but for today we'll set that one aside.
Coach Alex Ray: Thank you for sharing that.
Coach Alex Ray: I think that is absolutely helpful and useful for everyone today.
Coach Alex Ray: So let's see switching gears here a little bit.
Coach Alex Ray: I would love to hear what is it like for you being on stage in front of people.
Coach Alex Ray: I mean, you're on a literal stage often and you're also on a virtual stage.
Coach Alex Ray: I mean, you don't have.
Coach Alex Ray: You have a sizable online following with like what?
Coach Alex Ray: Nearly 40,000 followers on Instagram now and almost 50,000 on TikTok.
Coach Alex Ray: Like eyeballs are on you.
Quincy Bazen: Yes, eyeballs are on me and I think the two very different experiences for me.
Quincy Bazen: I love being on a real stage, like I've performed my entire life.
Quincy Bazen: I feel very, very comfortable talking to large groups of people.
Quincy Bazen: I do not love the digital stage and I think, if, if, if and if I truly believe there was any way for me to be successful in this industry without social media, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Quincy Bazen: But, like so many things in 20 to 23, it's a necessary evil.
Quincy Bazen: I I don't really know how I would promote myself or promote my actual art without it.
Quincy Bazen: Like and I talked about this a couple months ago with my boyfriend because I felt like social media was becoming this, this weird, I guess, job that I had to do, or like this weird, I mean and I don't mean to discredit anyone who like content, creation is there, is their life.
Quincy Bazen: I used to have a lot of fun doing that before the pandemic and I don't know, I just really lost the spark for it and now it's become this thing that I have to focus on and get people to care about, so that they will think about caring about this other thing that I really want them to care about you know which is you being like on stage, coming to my show, like coming to my?
Quincy Bazen: show or like watching my web series, or like following my acting journey or whatever.
Quincy Bazen: But in order to that, I've got to be successful on social media in like all of these ways and all of these different platforms.
Quincy Bazen: And I don't know, I mean it's just, I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: I think I also struggle too with just like this idea of like an enclosed perception of myself.
Quincy Bazen: Like I don't like the idea some video of me popping up or a picture of me popping up on somebody who, somebody's page who's never seen or heard of me before, and then that's their entire perception of who I am.
Quincy Bazen: And obviously this is just like the internet and I need to get over it, but I do.
Quincy Bazen: I really do struggle with this concept of people not understanding facets to individuals and how we're all multifaceted.
Quincy Bazen: And I don't know, when I started really trying to focus on social media, like a little over a year ago, I think I was like, okay, I just got to, I just got to rip the bandaid off.
Quincy Bazen: You know, of course, having any kind of presence comes with comments that are nice and comments that aren't nice, and I had to take the Beyonce approach and just stop reading comments, because everyone has an opinion right and you're never going to please anybody and, nope, not everybody's going to think you're funny and everybody's going to think that your content is you know slang, the house down the booties, and I would just take it really personally.
Quincy Bazen: People would like make fun of me for something I said and I was like, oh, but that's not even true, because look at this other thing I did, where I was doing exactly what you just said I couldn't have been doing and I was like, you know, I just got to stop.
Quincy Bazen: And I think this too.
Quincy Bazen: I think when my therapist says I think that and I agree that I think it all goes back to just like being in the closet and trying to be a people pleaser for so much of my life, for the first two decades of my life, just because if I could just get people to like me and I could just be amenable and mold myself into this, into whatever I needed to be for that situation, then they wouldn't ask questions and no one's going to focus on me too much, you know.
Quincy Bazen: But now that I'm not that person anymore, it really it stings a little bit when I don't, when I don't know how to please these people, and I think what I've accepted in the past.
Quincy Bazen: Very recently I should really turn 30, which was a big moment for me earlier this year.
Coach Alex Ray: You turn 30,.
Coach Alex Ray: Okay, I have you believe in birthday.
Quincy Bazen: Thank you.
Quincy Bazen: Thank you, yeah, in May I just had to.
Quincy Bazen: I didn't want to carry that with me into this new decade.
Quincy Bazen: You know, I wanted to just embrace what I have to offer.
Quincy Bazen: You know, I don't ever want to be like a crowd pleaser in the sense that I don't know, I don't know who I could say right now without insulting somebody.
Quincy Bazen: But like, for some reason, going to the Big Bang Theory, like highest rated show on television for too many years, right and, but it's because it just appealed to the masses.
Quincy Bazen: But like I don't know anybody that actually likes that show, except my mom, but she doesn't count, her taste is questionable.
Quincy Bazen: I don't want to.
Quincy Bazen: I don't want to be.
Quincy Bazen: I want to be.
Quincy Bazen: I want to.
Quincy Bazen: I want to do something that's less amenable and something that's more niche and something that's more honest and individual, because that's what I am I don't think that I am for the masses, like I am like a very queer man who has a lot of sex with boys and I love pop music and I suddenly I can't think of anything else I'm interested in.
Quincy Bazen: I love to be and I am obsessed with the way like I have all these tiny little things about me that I try, I'm trying really hard to celebrate about myself in my 30.
Quincy Bazen: And that's what I think I'm trying to do online as well, and try to bring the energy that I have on stage, of the mentality I have on stage, into the mentality I have when I'm working on social media.
Quincy Bazen: It's like you know what?
Quincy Bazen: I'm here to have fun, like whatever.
Quincy Bazen: Like I don't really I don't need to dwell on what every person in the audience is thinking because I don't like I get up, I perform and then I leave and I'm like, oh, that was fun, so I don't need to sit and dwell and we'll, you know, read comments like oh, what is?
Quincy Bazen: Like I'm a user one, two, five, three, four, two thinking about my punchline, like I don't need to worry about that.
Quincy Bazen: So all of that to say I feel very comfortable on stage and I'm working on feeling more comfortable in a digital space button.
Quincy Bazen: Boom, there we go, rats it up.
Coach Alex Ray: I love the punchline the, the summary sentence you gave us Copywriter.
Quincy Bazen: Okay, I'm always going to come to a conclusion there, you go.
Coach Alex Ray: Yes, so you are good at what you do on the side too.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, you have to be, you have to be.
Coach Alex Ray: Um, I mean, I was going to ask you the next question I had was what do you do to maintain authenticity with all these eyes on you?
Coach Alex Ray: But I think you really answered that question really well there that you do want to be an authentic, like multifaceted person and you see others and people in general as not just this easily summed up.
Coach Alex Ray: 32nd yeah.
Quincy Bazen: I know it's like when I was first starting like tick tock, specifically like I could off tick tock for so long.
Quincy Bazen: It was so big during the pandemic and I certainly could have been working on that and like building a presence.
Quincy Bazen: But, quite frankly, I was too depressed to be thinking about my career.
Quincy Bazen: But when I started focusing on it, all I could really think to do was like hop on these trends, like because that's what will get these eyes on me.
Quincy Bazen: But now I'm trying to shift.
Quincy Bazen: I kind of stopped it now because I don't, I don't want to fucking do that Like I don't want to be.
Quincy Bazen: I don't want to be a content creator.
Quincy Bazen: I don't want to be like writing these trend waves forever, like again.
Quincy Bazen: Like I want to make my own art.
Quincy Bazen: I don't want to direct attention to it, but I think you have to play a bit of the game to that initial audience.
Quincy Bazen: And this is by no means like a masterclass, because I it's very much a work in progress, but this is my mentality, I think for it.
Coach Alex Ray: Yes, and that's all we want here.
Coach Alex Ray: We don't even have fucking masterclass, we just want to know, hey, what's been working for you?
Coach Alex Ray: The real shit.
Quincy Bazen: That's far.
Quincy Bazen: That's about it.
Coach Alex Ray: Yeah, all right.
Coach Alex Ray: What to I mean?
Coach Alex Ray: You come across as a very, like, confident person who knows who he is.
Coach Alex Ray: What tips do you have for that?
Coach Alex Ray: And also like what's your internal experience like, because I know mine can often be way more insecure on the inside than I appear on the outside.
Quincy Bazen: So I'm sure, for sure.
Quincy Bazen: I mean, we're all insecure, totally.
Quincy Bazen: I Wait, what is the question?
Coach Alex Ray: Just have to be Okay.
Coach Alex Ray: The summary is what tips of confidence do you have?
Coach Alex Ray: I don't know, because I mean You're right.
Quincy Bazen: People can seem like the most competent person ever, but you have no idea what's going on behind closed doors.
Quincy Bazen: Honestly I think a lot of where my confidence, like my external confidence, like where that light seems to come from is actually again going back to just having to push out this personality of being friendly and doing again whatever people need me to do in the time.
Quincy Bazen: So when I was closeted, they weren't poking holes in this narrative that I was spinning, and that's not to say that I'm not confident and that it's all been like a trauma response.
Quincy Bazen: But I think that it's a different kind of confidence.
Quincy Bazen: As you know, a queer person wearing heels walking down some downtown alley that I'm doing now, that I was like at 15, just walking through the high school trying to blend in, you know, but I don't know, I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: I really struggle to care what people in real life saying which again is where I'm trying to get to with the digital space Like I just want to live my life and I think that I live my life in a way that I stay in my own lane, I'm not bothering anybody online in real life, like I'm not here to start shit, like I'm here for a good time and I think that if I want, if I was, to ask my friends or people that I know here and like what their experiences with me.
Quincy Bazen: Like in the room, I would hope that I'm just like there to have fun, I'm there to have a good time.
Quincy Bazen: I'm like I actually had I had a birthday party again for my 30th and there was some like friends or friends that showed up and they reached there to have a great time and my boyfriend took that where.
Quincy Bazen: I'm like I want to be better friends with them, like I want that energy in my life all the time because that's what I want to get out, like I just want to show up to have fun and show up to have a good time.
Quincy Bazen: And I think that a lot of that energy maybe comes across as confidence.
Quincy Bazen: And there are things that I'm very confident in and there are, of course, things that I'm not so confident in.
Quincy Bazen: I mean back to, I think, this year.
Quincy Bazen: Well, later, last year I decided that I wanted to get serious about acting again.
Quincy Bazen: I hadn't really acted since before the pandemic and of course, you know, doing stand up, there is performance involved, but it's I don't always want to perform shit that I write.
Quincy Bazen: You know, I'd love to do something with somebody else's material and I got serious about that and but you know, at the time I was 29 and like I'm a bit late to the game, like this is LA, you know, now 25 is late to the game.
Quincy Bazen: And I just sat with myself a lot and had to ask myself, like what has taken me so long to get to this place?
Quincy Bazen: Why am I so scared of, you know, being on camera?
Quincy Bazen: And as silly as it was, I realized I had to get a nose job.
Quincy Bazen: So I got a nose job in January and my confidence skyrocketed.
Quincy Bazen: I was like, amazing, now I can be on camera and now I can have fun.
Quincy Bazen: I feel way more confident just in every aspect of my life.
Quincy Bazen: But like nobody nobody knows that I did that because it's just this thing that I was hyper-focused on, and it wasn't like an egregious change to my face in any way, but it was this very small, albeit very expensive change that I just needed to make for myself.
Quincy Bazen: And whether it was, you know, actually something that's going to have any effect on my career Not sure yet.
Quincy Bazen: Maybe it's just a placebo effect for me, but that's totally fine too.
Quincy Bazen: Like I would spend the same amount of money just to feel the way that I do about myself and what I feel like I'm capable of now, more so than if you had asked me and last year, yeah, yeah.
Quincy Bazen: So just come up.
Quincy Bazen: If you want to feel confident, go get some plastic surgery and I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Quincy Bazen: Also, a lot of therapy, yes, Absolutely.
Coach Alex Ray: And yeah, I mean also.
Coach Alex Ray: I love that you brought that up, because I think you know I'm not sure you know as RuPaul says, everything is drag and we're all constantly putting on some kind of show, we're always altering our appearance and there are certain forms of that that we deem as like acceptable and righteous, and there's forms of it that we're like oh my God, something's wrong with them for getting plastic surgery.
Coach Alex Ray: But it's okay to like buy expensive clothes or facial products or makeup or like why not just let people do what the fuck they want to do, that they enjoy.
Quincy Bazen: It's so true and, to be fair, like half of it was medical.
Quincy Bazen: But then he's like I can also just like straighten this for you.
Quincy Bazen: I'm like, yeah, do it please.
Coach Alex Ray: Please do that.
Quincy Bazen: Because I like I don't know, I just again like I was willing to take this risk for myself and I think that there's a nuance to those things too, like if you want to get plastic surgery, you should get plastic surgery, but I'm not, I'm never in a position where I'm like promoting it or like you need to do this or people should be doing this to their bodies, or like a certain brand of celebrity that's like always changing with the hot body shape is like that shit gives me the egg, like it really really does.
Quincy Bazen: But I don't think that I'd ever want to like be secretive about it because, like I did it and I'm totally I'm more than happy that it's the best thing I ever did for myself, you know, and if you're doing it to like not fulfill that strong word, but like to achieve is also the wrong word.
Coach Alex Ray: Damn, see, now I know I should have taken that role, I mean is it just like it was a desire that you had for your life, versus oh, I have to do this in order to impress people.
Quincy Bazen: No, I genuinely, I genuinely just didn't feel comfortable in camera, like I would never audition for like film auditions.
Quincy Bazen: That's why I stuck to the stage primarily, and when I was shooting my web series, like I was very careful to shoot from like specific angles of myself and that's just not like a sustainable way to exist or succeed in this industry.
Quincy Bazen: So it really felt like I don't know, maybe it's actually sounds bad when I say it that way Like I have to turn for the industry, but I was, I was willing to give it a go, you know.
Quincy Bazen: And again, like I didn't do anything super crazy, like you saw a picture of me before and you saw a picture now, like I don't think that it would be super obvious, but I don't know it was.
Quincy Bazen: It was something that I was comfortable doing and something I thought about since I was 20.
Quincy Bazen: And I'm I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: I like to blame my parents for it, actually, because my mom so my two younger siblings, right, and everybody was C-sectioned except for me, where she tried to give birth to me 12 hours, naturally, before they were.
Quincy Bazen: Maybe she just do a C-section.
Quincy Bazen: And so when I went into my initial consultation, the doctor was like, have you ever broken your nose and then it just like healed in correctly.
Quincy Bazen: And I was like, no, but, dot dot, dot, my mom did try to deliver me via her canal for like 12 hours before the doctor's shoulder wasn't happening.
Quincy Bazen: He was like, yeah, that's what happened.
Quincy Bazen: So I sent my parents the bill for the situation.
Quincy Bazen: I was just doing my best, the circumstances I was given.
Coach Alex Ray: Okay, yes, yes, too funny.
Coach Alex Ray: Well, okay, I want to ask a couple of questions that the audience asked.
Coach Alex Ray: So let's, let's like rapid fire these real quick.
Coach Alex Ray: The first one this is like a deep question, so do your like quick answer here?
Coach Alex Ray: Okay, I think we already kind of got my specialty, but let's try mine either, so we'll see.
Coach Alex Ray: All right, how has how let me not punch the mic how has having a concertive upbringing adjusted your views of your self worth?
Quincy Bazen: Great question, also something I tackle a lot in my show, I think.
Quincy Bazen: For you know kind of what I what I spoke about earlier, like it.
Quincy Bazen: Just it put me in a box and it felt like I needed.
Quincy Bazen: I never thought about breaking out of the box.
Quincy Bazen: So I thought about how do I survive in this box, how can I thrive in this box?
Quincy Bazen: And after a while you just kind of come to that not really seeming like a feasible option for you and I think you come to a place and you're like I've had some I'm already off the chart of quick answers here, but you know I've had.
Quincy Bazen: I've been very open, like in my we have frozen here.
Quincy Bazen: But, of course, what's?
Quincy Bazen: What's the cliche phrase about coming out?
Quincy Bazen: It's like it gets better and like.
Quincy Bazen: I hate to say that, but God, it's so true, it really is so true.
Quincy Bazen: Things that are cliche are cliche for a reason because my life pre coming out just feels like a different one, like it's just a different person.
Quincy Bazen: That's why I was laughing earlier.
Quincy Bazen: When I think about it, like I've come so far from I hope who knows what will be impacting next week from my therapy counts, but I've come so far from like the trauma of my childhood that it really does like I feel like I have to, like I don't know, log back into that email in my mind and I think, god, like, like, where have I put all these things?
Quincy Bazen: Because I genuinely don't think about it anymore.
Quincy Bazen: I feel very far, I feel very removed from my conservative upbringing and certainly not by accident.
Quincy Bazen: I've done that to myself and I would do it a thousand times over again.
Quincy Bazen: But I think that, to answer the question, one sentence it has made me very rebellious and very proud and almost a spiteful way, like I love to show up again, just like in the gayest thing you could imagine and just like stare down the bikers on the street as I'm walking past in my little heels and fish nets.
Quincy Bazen: Like I just put on a show.
Quincy Bazen: I love to piss people off too.
Quincy Bazen: I'm also petty, so there's that.
Coach Alex Ray: Love it.
Coach Alex Ray: So I mean it sounds like just it did have an effect.
Coach Alex Ray: It sounds like on your self worth, but as you've worked through that in therapy and everything it's, that has had a tremendous impact on the way that you, on purpose, like, dare yourself to just show up and piss people off.
Quincy Bazen: Yeah, you have to build those self confidence bricks back brick by brick, not to use another wall metaphor I'm all over the place, but it's true.
Coach Alex Ray: Very true.
Coach Alex Ray: Um, okay, let's see, let's do two more.
Coach Alex Ray: All of these were submitted anonymously, so let's see.
Quincy Bazen: Oh, I know, I know.
Coach Alex Ray: Sorry, so I don't have any any name to add to these, but um, what is something about your identity that people might not know at first glance?
Quincy Bazen: I'm dancing to?
Quincy Bazen: Hmm, god, I feel there's so many ways to take that question.
Quincy Bazen: I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: I um, yeah, but I wouldn't be able to answer that question anymore.
Quincy Bazen: Whatbody in the audience?
Quincy Bazen: I use, I use he, him pronouns in my, in my daily life.
Quincy Bazen: But for a while and I think I think the year and a half coming out of quarantine which I guess, just like the last two years in general, I'm like moving to LA was very freeing.
Quincy Bazen: You know, it felt like suddenly there were, there were no holds barred.
Quincy Bazen: You know, being in your house, locked up all the time, not seeing anybody just now, like being in Santa Monica on the streets.
Quincy Bazen: It was probably where you can really do anything and be anyone and nobody's going to blink twice.
Quincy Bazen: And I think that first year of me living here was very that.
Quincy Bazen: You know, every party you go to has a theme, every event has like a dress code.
Quincy Bazen: One of the first parties I went to and I went here was you could only wear black and white or you wouldn't be led in.
Quincy Bazen: I'm like, oh, this is the most I think I've ever heard of.
Quincy Bazen: So I was living for it and I was really loving exploring my femininity and I had lost a bunch of weight post pandemic and I loved feeling like this pretty little girly and there was a few months there where I was like thinking a lot about how, like and I mean, of course, like pronouns are just like always in the discourse and not really long as concerned as to shut the fucking thinking about my own identity.
Quincy Bazen: And I was doing a lot of thinking about how again, like how I, how I felt, like I wanted to be perceived versus how I wanted to live my life.
Quincy Bazen: And I went around and around with that for a while and I had conversations with, you know, people that I love and people that love me, and I think it came to the conclusion that like I, he, him, he, him feels good for me and like I love dressing very feminine and I love tackling the feminine side of me and, but I think most of all, like I love standing in the face of man.
Quincy Bazen: You know, I love standing in the face of this idea of what a man should be and saying, well, actually, a man can be anything.
Quincy Bazen: I'm a man too.
Quincy Bazen: I can wear whatever I want because of it.
Quincy Bazen: So I don't know that actually answers the question, but that's where my mind went when hearing identity.
Coach Alex Ray: I love that answer.
Coach Alex Ray: That is such a fun, fun thing to learn about you.
Coach Alex Ray: Okay, thank you for that.
Coach Alex Ray: Let's see one last question, again anonymous, here.
Coach Alex Ray: Where or with whom do you feel the strongest sense of community?
Quincy Bazen: Hmm, okay, two separate things, because I feel like with whom is easy?
Quincy Bazen: It's with my boyfriend, owen, love of my life, that's personally I've ever met.
Quincy Bazen: The reason that I'm chasing my dreams is because he's encouraged me and he's helped put up those bricks of my own self confidence.
Quincy Bazen: So I have to say him community is interesting because I think that there was a time where I could have said LA, but because, again, because you can't just be anybody and it's so free here.
Quincy Bazen: But I think there's also like this other side of LA that feels like a competition and it feels like everybody's trying to be something or do something, which is great, and it's one of the reasons I'm here.
Quincy Bazen: But after a while that can it can wear you down.
Quincy Bazen: No, it's like hot fuck why I'm not doing XYZ.
Quincy Bazen: Like you know, this guy is doing.
Quincy Bazen: Another reason that I really struggle with being online.
Quincy Bazen: I wish to death I could just be offline and do my own thing, but that's not the world we live in.
Quincy Bazen: So to where?
Quincy Bazen: gosh maybe like the middle of the high tops dance floor.
Quincy Bazen: When I'm just dancing on a Friday night, I feel really free and again like it's in Hollywood.
Quincy Bazen: So like you can feel free and I am I took a trip to PV for my 30th event.
Quincy Bazen: No, you have to go.
Quincy Bazen: I'd never walked into a city that was so full of gay people, especially in a foreign country, and like I've seen my fair share of our foreign countries, I was just I mean, I worked for my boat we just thought it was like the trip of our lifetimes, like I was just so enamored with how comfortable and safe I felt and I don't know.
Quincy Bazen: It seems like a weird random answer, but that's what's coming to me here in this moment.
Quincy Bazen: So I'm going to say, in PV with my man and love it.
Quincy Bazen: Sorry, all over the top.
Quincy Bazen: This is all the top.
Coach Alex Ray: Everyone listening right now is laughing us.
Coach Alex Ray: I know they are.
Coach Alex Ray: They're having a great time, if they like listening to me on because I do about 50 50 now solo and guest episodes.
Coach Alex Ray: If they like listening to me, they're going to enjoy this.
Coach Alex Ray: They're minor, very chaotic.
Coach Alex Ray: Okay, good, like hi.
Coach Alex Ray: I have a message for you, but first I'm going to talk about 30 minutes or other things, and then I'll give it to you at the end in five seconds.
Coach Alex Ray: It's a lot of four.
Coach Alex Ray: Play a lot of four.
Coach Alex Ray: Play, alright, y'all.
Coach Alex Ray: If you want to be able to ask questions of future guests, you've got to join the Instagram broadcast channel and in there you'll be able to ask your questions and join in on the conversation, as well as get more insight information about upcoming guests Before we head out.
Coach Alex Ray: Quincy, what else do you want to share with our listeners today?
Coach Alex Ray: Where can they find you?
Coach Alex Ray: What can they do?
Coach Alex Ray: How can they support you?
Coach Alex Ray: How can they get more of you?
Quincy Bazen: You can find me on any relevant platform at look at, quincy, I'm doing shows.
Quincy Bazen: I'm always doing shows, but I'm doing my show in New York, in LA, this fall, so look out for that announcement coming very soon and I would love to see everybody there and I'd love to.
Quincy Bazen: I love meeting people, I love saying hello and then, yeah, of course, come listen to Dom Pop as well.
Quincy Bazen: If you love hearing me ramble that, you want to hear me ramble out pop music.
Coach Alex Ray: There you go, so we'll have links to that in the show notes for everyone.
Coach Alex Ray: It's you and your friend Hayden right who do Dom Pop together.
Coach Alex Ray: Cool, well, link all of this in the show notes and go follow Quincy.
Coach Alex Ray: Go enjoy all of his stuff.
Coach Alex Ray: Alright, any final words before we head out today.
Quincy Bazen: This was so much fun.
Quincy Bazen: I really appreciate it.
Quincy Bazen: Thank you, alex.
Quincy Bazen: Such a fun conversation.
Coach Alex Ray: You're so welcome.
Coach Alex Ray: I'm so glad that I was able to have you on the show today and that we could all learn some things from you, so thanks for being here.
Quincy Bazen: Thank you, bye guy.
Coach Alex Ray: Bye everyone, I'll see you on the next episode.