Heavyweight Check In 3

Pushkin right there.

I knew I heard the loud.

Hello, Hello, Simon.

Hi, Hi.

When you picked up the phone, I heard voices in the background. What was that?

I like just playing videos in the background and listening to them.

Oh, just for the company. Yeah, so you just kind of listen to them in the background. Like, Simon is ten years old, and like most kids, his school is closed indefinitely, but his parents have jobs they still need to leave the house for. So Simon's home all alone all day except for lunchtime when his dad stops by to eat with him. What kind of lunch do you usually have.

I've been having a lot of hot pockets.

Oh yeah, are they really hot inside?

Sometimes you gotta let him cool down. One time I had one too hot and they burned the back of my taste buds for like the rest of the day.

Oh my god.

You just can't tell when they're hot or not from the outside because they don't steam up or anything. So when you take your first bites, like, am I gonna just swallow it or spit it out?

Yeah? You got to be patient. Yeah, so your dad comes home, so you guys are able to have lunch together. Yeah, do you look forward to that.

Yeah, I get really lonely.

Oh you do, huh.

Yeah, I didn't realize that I would get this lonely, and only a few days.

Were the first couple of days less lonely.

Yeah, they because it was just the first time ever being home alone for a full day by myself. Yeah, but then I just got used to it, and then it wasn't so exciting, and then I realized how it was pretty lonely.

So what do you do when you get lonely?

Well, usually I take my mind off it by doing more homework or watching videos.

Do you have advice for other people who are by themselves right now and who maybe aren't used to it.

It makes you feel a lot better if you just open up a blind or something like in my living room, we have a big window, okay, and then there's a blind on it. I usually if I get scared, I just open that up and look outside, and then I know that, you know, nothing else is happening, so I'm fine and I can see outside, and it just makes you feel better.

Yeah, it's good sometimes to just remember that there's an outside out there.

Right, Yeah, it's not just you inside, and that's completely it.

Yeah, so you have lunch, your dad heads back to work, and then what then I do the not the.

Homework on paper, but just like where I have to practice my recorder and do some read and all that stuff.

Oh you play the recorder?

Oh yeah, that's our music.

Do you have your recorder with you right now?

Yes? I actually do. It's just on the automan.

Would you would you be able to favor me with a little a little bit of what you've been practicing.

Okay, I'll try, might mess up.

You're just practicing we've been.

Trying to do when the same spot marching in.

Oh yeah, let's hear it. Okay, here we go, Simon. Yeah, that was excellent. And you know what was really really great about it was your sense of timing. It's it sounds tight, is what I'm saying. Your hip to my jazz lingo.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I've probably kept you from your from your studies long enough.

Right, I mean, I really don't care because I would rather not do it.

But well, I don't want to get in trouble with your parents, so I'm going to let you. I'm going to let you get back to your routine. It's been really nice getting to talk to you.

Yeah, thank you for letting me talk to you too.

Okay, take care Simon you too. Fe Hello, Stevie Lane.

This is g.

I have khalilt khalilt. Hey, I see you've got your showbiz a voice on Khalila.

I think this is just my normal voice.

You just had a You just had a birthday this week.

I did just have a birthday. My birthday was very good. I had a Zoom party. Our own Stevie was in attendance. It was very fun, and I tweeted a thing about like, oh, it would be nice if people sent me like photos or stories of like small nice things. Get it to my birthday. People sent me such amazing stuff.

Can you can you share some of the little moments that you received?

So I got a lot of pick of people's pets. Here's one that says, my small nice thing soup and sandwich and soup and sand which are two cats that are like cuddling together on the bed. Here's one that says I was at the pharmacy and a sweet old man in front of me announced to all the pharmacists, I'm so in love with each and every one of you,

This had to be a Brooklyn dog. No, probably. And Stevie, how have you been? What have you been up to?

Last night, we were kind of flipping through the channels and Panic Room was on. Have you guys seen Panic.

Room a long time ago?

Is that with Jody Foster?

Yeah, it's about home invasion and Jodi Foster and Christian Stewart, her daughter, locked themselves in the Panic Room and they like go out because the bad guys are out there, and like there's this one moment where Jodie Foster realizes she left her cell phone just outside the panic room, and so she like opens the door the Panic room, darts out, grabs her cell phone, and like runs back in and closed the door. And I was like, I feel like that's like our trips to the grocery store.

You know.

It's like, yeah, oh, this is such a weird parallel.

Yeah.

I do feel like there are all these small signs of nature re asserting itself. Just I feel like I've been seeing so many birds, like so many blue jays and red card too.

Actually I identified a bird call this morning. I was like, you know, I hear that bird all the time, and I'm gonna find out what kind of burd it is?

What does it sound like?

I'm sure you guys have heard it. It's that one that's like, dude.

Dude, do do do do?

Do?

Do?

Do you know that word?

Yes?

I do know that part.

I hear that bird all the time. And I was finally like, what is it?

And so how did you do that? Is there a hizam for bird call?

I googled like a descending note bird trill and I had to click around some but I found it. It's a white throated sparrow.

Obviously, Like, this isn't affecting everybody the same way, but do you feel like there's comfort in the idea that everybody's going through it and everybody's in it together.

I think there is comfort in like sort of that feeling of like community, and like it's funny just how many people I've talked to you that are experiencing the same things, and like one of them is that everyone seems to be having really weird, vivid dreams yeah, And I don't totally know why that is, if it's like a stress response or like where it's coming from that it's happening to so many people.

Yeah, And are you guys dreaming about this moment, like about the virus specifically?

Sometimes a little bit. Yeah, But what was actually nice was last night I had a stress dream about trying to catch an Amtrak train and like not being able to get to the right track, and like I woke up and I was like, oh, like nostalgic for the days that I was trying to catch trains.

Stevie, are you what are your dreams?

Like, I've just been having this thing where every single moment of waking up has been like awaking from a dream, and I've been enjoying them. Like none of them have been bad. They've all been sort of like that kind of like wonderful dream where you're.

Just like.

Enjoying being somewhere else or like in some strain world in your head.

That's nice.

Yeah, that is nice. It seems that right now there are a lot of people who are feeling lonely and lonely in a particular kind of way where they're just yearning to reach out to people that they have lost contact with in ways that they feel remiss about. They don't understand why they drifted, and they just want to get back in touch. So at the end of our last check in, we put a call out to people

We hung out basically every day. We hung out in her dorm all the time between classes, and we graduated, and she actually helped me get on my feet despite not having much space. She allowed me to stay in her living room on her couch for no money. She said, you know what, just save up towards a deposit, save up towards getting your own furniture, so don't worry about paying me rent. She would go to work and she would sneak. She worked at Mimi's Cafe, which is like

So Armie was dealing with a lot at the time. She was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico trying to start a life in the US, and then she started dating a much older man named Mark.

She was constantly arguing with him because she felt like it would be beneficial to her if he would marry her so she could get her citizenship squared away and get a job and really get her career going, but he was afraid to do it.

Caesar says Army would obsess over her relationship with Mark, just replaying the same conversations they had over and over. Now Caesar's able to see how the relationship with Mark was tied to army sense of security, but at the time he just found it exhausting and so he began to slowly pull away. I, unfortunately, was more of a fair weather friend at the time. I guess what was also going on at the time was that Caesar was coming to terms with the fact that he was gay.

Her boyfriend was the one that was always like poking fun at me, and he would always be like, oh, just come out and say it already.

So I felt like I.

Couldn't because honestly, I didn't want to prove them right. I didn't want to be like, Okay, fine.

You're right.

Yeah. So the breaking point came in the form of a missed dinner date. Army had booked the reservation months in advance, but Caesar completely forgot all about it, and instead he went to Disneyland, and Army called him from the restaurant while he was online at Space Mountain.

She got really, really, really upset, and I thought, Okay, I just need to apologize. I'll reach out to her later because I feel like she needs maybe a minute to cool off. And that minute turned into I don't know, I think it's been like five six years now. I think about her all the time, and I feel I just feel ashamed, and but I just don't know how to how to approach it.

So what do you want to do? Do you want to you want to you want to try to reach out.

Yeah, I do.

I've been I've been contemplating doing it for years.

Do you want to just try cold calling.

Right now?

Yeah?

Yeah?

Let me see you still have her phone number?

So I do, but I don't know if it's still her phone number. Let me send her a text. I'm saying, hello, is this still Army's number?

Yeah? So yeah, we just we just wait and finally he gets a text back and it says, what's up. Sorry, my nine month old keeps me away from the phone, and yeah, so Caesar writes back to her, Wow, you have a baby. That's so nice to hear. He explains that, you know, he lets her know that he's talking to me, and he asks if we can give her a call, and the text is marked red. But he doesn't hear

Hello, Hey Army. Yes, Hey, what's up. It's nice to hear your voice. It's been way too long.

No, but I'm not promising anything because it's Conor's nap time. So he might get a little loud.

He's a little crazy, So okay, well let me jump into it. Then.

I've been thinking a lot about you throughout the years, but especially more recently, and I wanted to reach out again and apologize for being a crappy friend, for not knowing how to listen to you when you were struggling with figuring out what to do with your life, with your legal statage, with your relationship, forgetting about our freaking dinner reservations at bestie. I left you hanging, and I when I was embarrassed.

You see, And when you did that, it was like to me, like you always had so so many friends, ca sir, I did not until this day, I still don't. So when you left me was it was? It was bad?

So I just turned away and I have always felt bad about it.

I was feeling really awkward about coming out to you.

And why were you feeling about coming out to me?

It's not like I was home, like.

I was like totally open and like.

Like I you know, I wasn't going to reject you for that.

Remember what you told me? You said, I will.

Never forget like I told you, Like we're gonna laugh about this like when we're old, you know, and I told you that I will always be there for you.

That's how I remember it.

And I know it sounds really.

Shitty, but I was really I was really afraid to face Mark.

And he always says the most inappropriate things, but that's Mark, you know, his sense of humor.

So to us, it was just like, just do it, come out of the closet, you know.

And I think we were not sensitive to that.

Yeah, we're still together and we have a we got married, we have a baby together, So you did, Yeah we did.

Oh wow, congratulations.

We're actually pretty happy. We don't find like cats and dogs anymore. We're pretty happy now, so oh good.

I'll be right behind you. I got married in September. I got married to a man, surprise, surprise. His name is Henry. And we've been working to make a baby too. So right now we're in the process of being matched with a surrogate. But yeah, everything's on hold because of the pandemic. Well, honestly, what I wanted to do was

And yeah, I love interesting.

Yeah, maybe when all this thing clears out, that'll be an interesting, interesting thing to try.

I'm not going to say it's not going.

To be awkward, but yeah, you'll be had be something.

Okay, thanks again for hearing me out a yeah, well, you take care and I'll talk too soon. Okay, bye bye.

Do you think you're gonna do you? I mean, do you do you think you will reach out to her again?

Oh?

I will, definitely will. I want to see what a kid looks like and I want to.

Yeah.

I feel like she made it clear to me that maybe I'm gonna have to be the one to make more of an effort.

Yeah, and I'm okay with that.

It is funny that people are thinking about reaching out to people and reconnecting at this time when like there's no chance of actually like doing that in a real way for the foreseeable future. You know, like I feel like there's some safety in that almost Yeah.

Yeah, And also like it just I don't know. One of the things that I felt in listening to the two of them talk is that there's a certain kind of permission that these times grant, but then there's there are certain things that it just cannot do.

You know, like she's not just going to forgive him because we're under quarantine.

Right, Yeah, it just seems like Caesar is going to have work to do. So there's one more call that I made to somebody that I'd wanted to reach out to and had been meaning to, someone that I'm fond of and whose work I admire. He's an author, podcast host.

Even better, V blogger, vlogger, blogger, blogger with a V. Is that a word in the twenty first century?

It sure is?

All right, what a glorious time we live in.

Hello John Green, Hi, how are you good?

I assume I'm catching you at home?

Yeah. Yeah, we're in the library in my house and we set up a microphone, and so.

I am talking to you from a closet in my basement. The only desk that would fit into the closet isn't a desk, a piano bench, And the only chair that would fit under the piano bench is my three year old's child sized chair. And like to pile the indignities on, like I actually had to barter with him to get it from him, you know, Like he was like, but that's my chair, and I was like, I know, but Papa has to go downstairs and earn his keep. How are you faring.

Up and down? It has been really hard for me at times, just because I know myself to be alarmist. I know myself to be anxious, I know myself to be a catastrophizer. But you can usually look to the people in your life who don't look at the world the way you do, and you can take their temperature and be like, Okay, well that must be the real reality. Yeah, And now I look at those people and they are not community getting to me that everything is okay, like, you know, like they are freaked out.

Yeah.

Like my brother is the sanest person I know and always sees the good side of things, like never acts as if he's under stress even when he is. And he hung up on me yesterday like for the first time in fifteen years, And then I called him back and he was like, sorry, I'm under a lot of stress. And I was like what you huh?

Are are there things that have been bringing you comfort lately?

I drink one diet Doctor Pepper per day.

Ah. Yeah, I have one.

Hundred diet Doctor Pepper's and I'm kind of counting down, assuming that this will be over by the time I get to the last diet Doctor Pepper, or at least that it will be better. Yeah, and oh my god, that one Doctor Pepper a day tastes so flipping good.

Last night, I had a can of Poke zero that I took out for a walk with me, and that was really nice.

Yeah. A couple of days ago, a neighbor rolled me a beer. I was walking by and he said, do you want a beer? And I said sure, and he rolled the beer to me and then it was at my feet and I was like, I guess I have to pick this up, even though there's no way I'm drinking this until I like wipe it down with sixteen different colorox wipes and like wash my hands up to my elbows. But I kind of like raised the beer to him and I was like thanks, and then I put it in my jacket pocket and I did drink it.

I think that's really nice. Yeah, it seems as though like right now people are thinking about people that they've lost touch with for whatever reasons and want to reach out.

Oh yeah, I've been experiencing it so deeply. Oh really, Yeah, because I was my best friend from high school. We loved each other so much and we said I love you all the time, and Todd's love for me like held me together in those years. But what I've been thinking about lately is how much it still holds me together even though I haven't talked to him and I don't know seven or eight years, because the gifts that he gave me, the confidence that he gave me, are

Yeah. And have you guys just just drifted no particular reason.

No reason, Yeah, no I don't. I don't think so. But the distance almost becomes like a vicious cycle, because the longer I go without talking to someone, the more it feels like it will break my heart to talk to them, and the more guilty I feel for not having talk to them.

Yeah, this guy, his name is Todd. Yeah, you don't feel like calling Todd, do you?

I don't know that I know how to call Todd. Oh how come I don't know his number?

Oh you lost his number?

I was just googling him. Let me. I'm hold on, I'm looking. Yeah, I think it might take me. I think I have a number.

Oh wow, that was quick.

Yeah, it might not be right, but it also might be right. I think it's right. Uh. Yeah, I'm nervous now. Uh is it the idea of the idea of calling of calling him on a podcast without having asked if I could call him on a podcast first?

Yeah?

Can I call him? Ask if I can call him on a podcast?

And then and then if he's game conference me in maybe.

Oh, I'm so nervous.

Well, you know what and here here I mean, if you get on the phone and you never come back to the line, I'll just assume that you guys are are talking and are happily talking and you've forgotten about me.

That's a great idea. All right, I'm gonna try this number. We'll see if it were.

Yeah, I'll be standing by.

Oh it didn't work.

Oh what happened?

There was a It just was wrong the disconnected number.

Huh did you try it twice? Make sure you had the number? Great point, That's what I'm here for.

Hold on, Okay, let me do it again.

Try it again.