... for dinner? Your time starts now.

We're just having picky bits for dinner is a thing British people say to you when they're essentially serving Lunchables at a dinner [laughs] you've been invited to.

You've brought wine, thinking there was going to be a meal.

But it turns out your Cabernet is the main, and the rest of the time you'll be having stale crackers and sweaty meats, and a bunch of cheese you can't have 'cause you're lactose intolerant.

You've got 60 seconds without hesitating, repeating, or deviating, and it starts now.

Seagulls are why pigeons deserve more respect.

[laughs]

How dare we call pigeons rats with wings when those seafaring trash pterodactyls will rip pizza crusts out of the hands of toddlers and eat party vomit off the cobblestone-

Mm-hmm.

Uh, 'cause I talked a lot about that and having grown up in sort of, like, gifted and talented education in California, and how that was sort of predicated on an IQ test that both, like, limited, um, the opportunities for a lot of Black people in California-

Yeah.

I mean, did he like-- Was he just sort of like chuffed as chips about his own work, or did he start to see things happening go like, "Oh, wait a second, not exactly that." Or was he just like, "Keep using it.

W-- This is all great."

Uh, Desiree, when you're, when you're trying to impress a partner, do you dance or dive, or do you stare at them from afar?

Oh, I'm the, I'm the creepy staring type.

I, I don't know that that's impressing anybody, but, like, yeah, if I like you, I probably have acted like I don't care for quite some time, and then I just stare at you longingly when I think you're not looking.

[laughs]

... what I find gross is a dead body hanging out for, like, days and days.

So if you can get rid of it, like, stumbling on a dead body, ugh.

Stumbling on a skeleton, still creepy, but less so.

So, like, just get rid of it.

Was it like an escapism or into something that wasn't happening, so it was more exciting?

I think it was me trying to figure out m- myself as a sexual being, feeling like a lot of body shame.

Like, I've always just sort of, I've always been a fat person.

I've always had a sort of sense of like [grumbling] And so I thought that, you know, being the, um, Ivy League educated brainiac that I was, that I was gonna go out and learn all of these things, and sort of try to figure out where I might fit in.

I think that I was still judging myself based on patriarchal ideals and, you know, feeling like I wasn't wanted in one way, but then kind of constantly getting a sort of like, um...

I don't know how to describe it, but, like, fitting into the fetish world, right?

And what was home like growing up?

Oh, God.

And you had your own reference point, so.

Yeah, from encountering that.

And also, like, when you talked about her at the begin- like, obviously I lived long enough to see her in her later years and her passing, so I knew that, like, things were relatively happy.

But when you talked about her beginning being sort of like, oh, things were actually pretty well set up in Black middle class, that usually goes one of two ways.

Yeah.

I was waiting to see if there was ever any th- of that element.

But it seemed like she was just trying to be resilient against, like, being buffeted by society and all of these various odds.

Like, being expelled from Hollywood as a communist and going to, uh, Europe, and coming back from that and having a whole renewed phase of your career where everyone's like, "Oh, actually, here's all of your flowers, and a Broadway show, and, you know, all of this work," is really incredible and rarely happens.

So-

Yeah, from encountering that, and also, like, when you talked about her at the beginning, like, obviously I lived long enough to see her in her later years and her passing, so I knew that, like, things were relatively happy.

But when you talked about her beginning being sort of like, "Oh, things were actually pretty well set up in Black middle class," that usually goes one of two ways.

Yeah.

I was waiting to see if there was ever any th- of that element.

But it seemed like she was just trying to be resilient against, like, being buffeted by society and all of these various odds.

Like, being expelled from Hollywood as a communist and going to, uh, Europe and coming back from that and having a whole renewed phase of your career where everyone's like, "Oh, actually, here's all of your flowers and a Broadway show," and, you know, all of this work is really incredible and rarely happens.