Contents:

Margaret Cho

[Phone ringing]

[Phone being answered]

Hi, this is Margaret Cho. I see that you found my flyer, and I’m so glad that you decided to call me. I have lost my relationship to paper. [Curious electric guitar music begins.] You know, it sort of started with a two-way pager, and it just went downhill.

I grew up in San Francisco in the ’70s at a bookstore called Paperback Traffic, which was on the corner of California and Polk Street. Our bookstore was really a meeting point for the gay community. It was in a gay neighborhood. It was a gay bookstore. And so there’s a lot of LGBTQIA materials, events that were being advertised through, um, physical pieces of paper. And just know that there was a time, maybe before you were born, that we used to have to really seek out the things that we liked. So maybe just the fact that you can get whatever you want to watch, whatever you want to see, whatever you want to listen to, whatever you want to read in a second on the device that you’re holding, just count yourself lucky and unlucky in equal measure. [Electric guitar feedback]

So, think about how you found this recording anyway. Think about the fact that you found me through a flyer. There’s something really… ironic about that!

Thank you for calling. Bye.

[Hangs up phone]

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Lucy Dacus

[Phone ringing]

[Phone being answered]

Hey! Thanks for calling. This is Lucy Dacus. I have a new record coming out called Home Video. But, besides that, I want to talk to you about a journal that was stolen from me that contained three years of my life.

So, I was on tour with my band in Chicago, and we left the van for less than an hour to go get lunch, and in that time, somebody stole a bunch of backpacks. [Electric guitar music that sounds like longing] And, uh, my stomach just dropped because I knew that my journal was in my backpack, and I knew that that wasn’t valuable to whoever was stealing from us.

The journal was mostly my senior year of high school, moving out of my parents’ house, starting college, figuring out that I needed to drop out of college, and then starting to do music, like recording my first album. And I’d journaled since I was 7 years old and then, all of a sudden, there was, like, this rift in the pattern. And I haven’t really journaled the same since.

I went through, like, a pretty long period where I did not feel rooted. And it was because I was touring a lot. But also the chain was broken. I, I knew that, like, there would be this section of my life forever that was unrepresented. And so those years, even though they happened, they felt lost, more so than just the journal, like, they felt, like, as a time of my life lost, like something I could never return to.

Recently, it occurred to me that I could just start a new journal. And, like, as I recovered memories, I could write them down. But even in the first entry of the new journal after the stolen one, I kind of wrestle with like, Why am I beginning again? What’s the point of this?

The journal is about 300 pages. Black, leather, hardcover, white unlined paper, many different colors of pen on the inside. [Music fades out.]

If I got it back, just imagining that is, like, one of the most intense feelings I think I could probably feel. I mean, immediate tears, like, from-the-throat type of tears. And that sounds so corny, but I, I can’t lie to you. Like, that would mean so much to me to be able to read those and have those and know what I thought about at that pivotal time.

I’m sure that it’s, like, in the bottom of some river. But, um, fess up if you’ve got it. [Laughs] And, you know… please give it back.

[Hangs up phone]

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Lea Delaria

[Phone ringing]

[Phone being answered]

[Music: stand-up bass plucking]

My name is Lea DeLaria. I guess most of you know me as the actor who plays Big Boo in Orange Is the New Black. I was the first openly gay comic on television in America. I think gender is so passé. I don’t care. Every day of my life, somebody calls me sir. The worst was in the gynecologist’s office. You call me a sir, I respond. You call me ma’am, I respond. Although generally I say, “Please don’t call me ma’am. I prefer Empress.” [music continues]

So I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Ai Weiwei exhibit, and those of you who don’t know who Ai Weiwei is, he is a Chinese artist — he protests fascism. It would be these photographs of his finger in front of the White House. Like, his middle finger, right? And that was my favorite thing. The finger’s just flipping off fascism all over the world, flipping off the Trump Tower, flipping off. It was, like, it was golden to me. I just loved it.

Every piece of artwork that he does is about shining the light on the fascist dictatorship in which he lives. And that’s basically what I’ve dedicated my life to, which is, you know, changing the government and the world’s concept of what it is to be queer.

So, um, I had put my umbrella down somewhere. And I kind of looked all over the Brooklyn Museum. I mean, all over the museum. Could not find what I had done with my umbrella. So I was upset. But they went, “In the museum, we sell umbrellas in the, in the bookstore.” And I went, “Great!” So I went in. Losing that umbrella was the best thing that ever happened to me because they literally had umbrellas with Ai Weiwei’s finger on them. So when you open up the umbrella, it was just your umbrella with his finger flipping off the world as you walk through the rain. So my most favorite all-time lost-and-found experience.

[Music ends]

[Hangs up phone]

Advertisement: Pop-Up Magazine’s Sidewalk Issue is presented with support from Google. One billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some sort of disability. Meet Jason Barnes, a passionate drummer who lost his arm in an accident at the age of 22. Today he’s pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician, and helping to design some of the most advanced prosthetics in the world. Watch his story and see how Google is partnering with the disabled community to make everyone’s dreams more accessible at g.co/forwardrhythm.

Cameron Esposito

[Phone ringing]

[Phone being answered]

Hi, I’m Cameron Esposito. I’m a stand-up comic. I’m gonna talk to you about losing my religion and finding forgiveness.

I was a theology major 20 years ago, and then I was gay [laughs] the whole time. And I, actually, before I even knew that I started reading what the Catholic Church had to say about women, and the sex-abuse scandal was in the news. And I was like, Fuck all this. I’m done with everything. And I never thought about it again until I was going through a divorce. [Acoustic guitar music begins.] Because divorce is messy and anger-inducing. And I was curious about forgiveness. And the only place I have ever heard people speak about forgiveness was in the context of faith.

And I happened to look at the summer course schedule for Boston College, and my favorite professor from undergrad was teaching a class about forgiveness. The other students were like, “What is going on? Why are you here?” But, um, but the conversations were the conversations that I’ve been missing in my life for the last 20 years.

I left the church really angry, you know, first with an organization, but then with a society and a culture that wouldn’t love me. I’m like a gender-fluid, confusing, masculine of center, possibly a woman, who is also queer. And I’m scared all the time that I’m going to be hurt, or attacked, or yelled at, or made fun of.

And I don’t know, it was really sort of like a return to the scene of the crime with a lot more life experience.

So yes! There was a lot of forgiveness there. I don’t know that I’m fully on the other side of it, but I think just realizing how much this had affected me and how much it still affects me. And then just, like, knowing that that’s what I’ve been up against, I can have a lot more compassion for myself and be like, You’re killing it, like, great job. This has been hard. You did a good job.

And there you go, the most personal details of my life delivered to you via your phone. What a weird experience for us both. Thanks for listening.

[Hangs up phone]

Advertisement: Pop-Up Magazine’s Sidewalk Issue is presented with support from Google. One billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some sort of disability. Meet Jason Barnes, a passionate drummer who lost his arm in an accident at the age of 22. Today he’s pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician, and helping to design some of the most advanced prosthetics in the world. Watch his story and see how Google is partnering with the disabled community to make everyone’s dreams more accessible at g.co/forwardrhythm.