115. VM: He's Not a Bad Man, But He's a Bad Man

This is the Abbey Normal Podcast, here to tell you that you're weird, and that's normal.

The M is all-encompassing. Voicemails, voice memos, we're doing a monologue. Music. Last episode number 114 i talked with stephanie and may lee about bodies beauty routines and botox and there were a couple topics that didn't make it into that episode so for your holiday enjoyment this little episode includes a love story involving muffins puppies and skater boys and a family dinner interrupted by an R-rated cancer story.

It all begins with a discussion around who we present ourselves for and whether stable romantic relationships contribute to a sense of contentment with our bodies. Here we go. Maybe becoming an adult is chipping away at that marble plinth to get to the private moments of joy person all the time that doesn't give a shit about how they're observed by others. Like, I'm constantly chipping. I don't even know, like, making ourselves look a specific way, right?

Like, is that for ourselves or is that totally for the eyes of others? Like, I don't even know how to make that dividing line. I mean, even just like the way I was taught to dress was for like other people's eyes, right? Like you wear dresses with a belt because you want your waist to look tiny and you wear your pants up at your waist so your waist looks tiny. And everything was for other people's eyes, not for yourself.

So I don't know. I have a hard time like finding that boundary. you you well i think for women who whether you realize it or not you are always dressing for the approval of other women who are informed by a larger systemic misogyny right you do have a period probably in your life where you dress for the male gaze yeah as an adult the best fucking compliments the ones that i get if i wear something and i'm really feeling myself the ones that i cherish are from women i

don't give a fuck what a man thinks about what shut up don't even speak to me go look somewhere else you don't even deserve to look at this i just men what why are you existing around me gross like I'm just not like I don't I do I so don't care what men think yeah it's it's it's not a fun answer I I yeah like at 48 I. Oh, you don't like my hair? Go fuck yourself forever.

I do also, I 100% agree, but also I feel really lucky to have been in a long-term relationship so that I am very much free to not give any fucks about that, right? Like, I think if I was single and wanting a partner, I might be in a different headspace. I don't know, you know? Maybe I'd give a little more shit about my cellulite or fucking whatever, you know? I'd give a shit about those things.

But if i have i'm at my i'm i'll be 48 next week i met my husband when i was 17 years old and we started going out like immediately we've been together for a really long time god forbid he dies i love this man boots like more than anything i call him when i'm leaving work and we stay on the phone for the whole car ride and when i pull into the driveway i'm like i'm hanging up now and And I walk in the front door and we still continue the conversation. Right?

Boots. Love him down. If he died, the way that I would never want to even speak to another man. Like, the thought of having to, like, the, if I look at the cost-benefit analysis of having to fit a man into my life or speak to him or deal with his bullshit opinions.

His whack hair or lack thereof his bullshit ass ideas like the way that like I just shut down immediately like I the way that he would have to be and I'm not like I as much as I would like to love to be a lesbian it would make my life so much easier a man would have to be spectacular I mean spectacular, peerless for me to even want to engage in a conversation. You have to be hot, funny, wicked, sexy, highly intelligent, like, out the gate.

You have a stray dangly earring or, like, a weirdly cuffed pant, spinach in your teeth. I don't like the way your hair smells. You pronounce a word wrong. Yeah, your ick is going to... Oh, yeah. Like, how did you meet such a perfect person for you when you were 17? Like, how? Idealized what romance and love and movies from movies of the 80s. A.

Informing, like, yeah, you absolutely meet people and fall in love with them instantly. It's totally normal. Music. He was skateboarding outside of a Safeway. And I didn't, my parents had moved to the town, but I had stayed at my school in a different town. So I didn't know any of the kids my age there. And now I was out of school. And he was skateboarding outside of a Safeway. And he had seen me drive by and I parked and I went in the store. I was making carrot muffins.

And I came out of the store and I was like, well, I mean, I know skaters. I'll just watch them. There was an older gentleman watching them too. And now I realize that that sounded creepy. But I went over to watch them skateboard. And I sat down. My butt hit the concrete curb to watch these skaters because this was the thing that everybody did at that age. And within six seconds, six to ten seconds of me sitting down, he skated in a straight line towards me and sat down.

And I was like, what's up? That's the move right there. Not just a what's up and a head nod. What's up?

My name is Woody. what's your name oh my god and I was like you're named after a boner and he's like yeah and I was like started laughing and I'm like oh okay he wasn't offended he didn't look at me funny he's like on board he doesn't mind being the butt of a joke subconsciously right right and I tell him my name I'm you know I'm Maylee and he's like are you I don't do are you from around here and I was like oh my parents live here I was like oh what do

you know everybody in Castro Valley and he's like yeah it's Castro Valley I kind of do and I was like it's like a small little suburb of the Bay Area I was like oh okay and he was so confident but not arrogant and he goes yeah we should hang out sometime and I said well what are you doing right now and he looks at his friends he's like later and he like I was like my parents just got a puppy and he's like 10 weeks old he's hella cute. Do you want to like come up and see the puppy?

And he's like, yeah. So he leaves. He follows me in his car up to my parents' house. And he gets out, he comes in, he meets my parents that night. Fuck these carrot muffins, I'm not making that shit. And we play with a puppy for like 30 minutes and there's a park up the street from my parents' house. So we drove up there in his car and we sat on a bench on like opposite sides of a park bench. And we talked for like five hours in a row.

At no point did he make any, he didn't say any. He talked to me like I felt, this is what I felt. Like he had never talked he had never been asked those questions before and he had never said those answers out loud before my god I love it so much I knew in five minutes, that I was going to marry him and I think I probably told him that night I'm going to marry you and he was like you're insane, and I'm like well okay but two things can be true at the same time so who's

insane now oh my god 31 years later, so shut up. Oh. Stupid. So fucking cute. I know. I know. I think he's like, I look at him and I'm still like, he's so handsome. It makes me sick. Makes me stick to my stomach. You two are crazy cute together. I love him. He's my bestie. Jeremy's your bestie, right? Yeah. Number one on the call sheet. Yeah. 100%. You and Jeremy are so stupid cute together. I just can't.

Anything happens, happy, sad, doesn't matter what it is. He's the first person, I would tell.

Number one on the call sheet. Yep. So even though men are trash, back to my original point, which is like, the men that we are with make us feel help us feel comfortable and confident in our bodies and i think they do the solidness of the relationship it's sure i mean my husband did tell me i had a beautiful vagina the other night which was really surprising he's never even said you have a beautiful haircut he never said you have a beautiful face but

he did unprompted like not we were talking about something and i was like i just remember the context mailey is now remembering the story and it's not for you but the point is it wasn't like he wasn't trying to pull a move yeah yeah.

Yes i think maybe i said like why do you want to i don't want to see all that and he's like you have a beautiful vagina and i was like sometimes they bust out just like sweet and wise things for no reason it was very like again he is a person who's like oh you got a haircut it looks nice it's the highest compliment he's not yeah not like he's like nice right he just doesn't have a huge vocabulary for that stuff so beautiful vagina threw me for like 25 loops god i feel like

i should get a card like that i just keep in my wallet that i usually be like Yeah, yeah. Music. He doesn't make me feel insecure, but again, I don't know that I'm looking for, like, I want him to notice when I have a haircut. If I get dressed for us to go out, like, yes, it is nice when he's like, you look good. But the stuff that I do is, the one thing that I think if you asked him, he would say, like, your wife does a lot of stuff to her face.

He will tell you yeah but she doesn't look different she just looks the same all the time, thing that's changed is maybe the volume of my body right he used to occupy lift space but my face i've not done so many things that i look like a i have a new a different face I have the same face. And he's like, she just looks this, like, kind of ageless. Like, she's just kind of, like, in a stasis of not aging.

Which she's like, which is great. Music. Okay, the lead up to this final story is that we were talking about cancer. You can hear more about Stephanie's skin cancer treatment on the last episode. This is not about that. I was going to say teeth cancer. You get jaw cancer from chew and smoking and all that. Okay, pause. We're going to put a pin in that for just a second. We can, we can. So we were at dinner last night. We have a 24-year-old son. My husband and I

have a 20-year-old son. And it was me, my husband, my son. My parents were on the other side of the table. And I don't know what the context was that I said something about jaw cancer or throat cancer. And Woody and I looked at one another and I said, either he or I said, I can't remember, like Michael Douglas. So I was just going to go straight to that. My son goes, oh, my dad was saying Michael Douglas.

I know the context was. Okay. The context was, as my dad was saying, that he watched Wednesday and it has Catherine Zeta-Jones in it. And she's super beautiful. Why was she married to an old looking piece of shit like Michael Douglas? And I said, Michael Douglas, to his credit, was very good looking. And then he had cancer. And my dad goes, what kind of cancer did he have? I said, throat cancer. And Woody and I kind of looked at one another and started laughing.

And my dad didn't catch it, but my son goes, why are you laughing at Michael Douglas' throat cancer? I said, ask me later how he got throat cancer. My son's like, how the fuck did he get throat cancer then? And my parents are sitting across from me. Why do they react like that? Gentle listener, if you do not know, Michael Douglas got throat cancer from eating too much pussy in the 80s. This is facts on facts on facts. He even said it in an article.

Go look it up in Vanity Fair. I mean, he didn't say it like that, but he literally got HPV that caused him to have throat cancer from eating a whole bunch of pussy in the 80s, 70s, and 80s. Am I wrong? No, it's true. That's true. Yeah. 100% true facts. So anyways, you can get throat cancer from eating pussy. Be careful. Protect yourself. You know. But, you know, he had a, he lived a good life. Yes. Yes, yes, right. Bought pressure to a lot of ladies while he was married to another lady.

You know, he's not a bad man. Music.