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Episode 405: Hallie Lieberman and the Drawer of Dead Pitches
656 Plays7 months ago
Hallie Lieberman (@hallielieberman) is a journalist, writer, and historian. She's the author of Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy. Her latest piece for The Atavist is "The Handcuff Man." Visit magazine.atavist.com to read it.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Promo Code and Editing Approach
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers, you know, deep down, that I love a good beer, or several. And at times, a tasty non-alcoholic beer scratches that itch when I'm trying not to be hungover AF. If you visit athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get a nice little discount on your first order. Free Wave and Athletic Light are my favorites. Tell them I sent you.
00:00:25
Speaker
I don't get any money and they are not a sponsor of the show. I am just an ambassador and I love celebrating this frothy hoppy product.
00:00:35
Speaker
saying I'm very hands-on, get my hands dirty, learn as much as I can, absorb as much as I can in the editing process, because I really wanna know a story inside and out. Well, yeah, no, and I thought I was the only one who did that. I'll be like, oh, I thought of this, of course, everyone else is writing about Tunisia's butt plugs in the 1915s. And I'll tell my boyfriend, and I'll be like, Hallie, you really think so? And I'm like, oh, I'm too in my bubble that I think that.
Introducing the Podcast and Halle Lieberman's Story
00:01:10
Speaker
Well, hey, CNN4S, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast of the show, where I speak to primarily badass writers about the art of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, that guy you don't want to sit next to on the bus. Halle Lieberman is our guest today on this little podcast that could. She's this month's featured Atavistian writer. So, you know, spoiler alerts. You could very well go to magazine.atavist.com and read her story on The Handcuffed Man.
00:01:39
Speaker
A serial attacker targeting gay men in Atlanta at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early 90s. Consider subscribing to The Addams. I don't get any kickbacks. No ads, blockbuster stories once a month. Honestly, the no ads part is kind of like the biggest selling point for me. You can read and immerse yourself in the work.
00:02:04
Speaker
without a fucking perfume ad taking up half your screen and all your RAM gets taken up, newyorker.com. Halle is a writer, a journalist, a historian who carved out a niche niche covering the sex industry. She's the author of Buzz, a stimulating history of the sex toy. I want to read it. Maybe I will.
00:02:28
Speaker
Oh, you don't think I will? Now I'm gonna do it. Show notes to this episode of More or at BrendanOmero.com, hey, where you can sign up for the monthly rage against the algorithm newsletter, a short riff, four books, and seven links. It literally goes up to 11. There's a writing prompt in there. CNF and happy hour is back. All you must do is give me your email.
00:02:56
Speaker
First of the month, no spam, can't beat it. There's also patreon.com slash cnfpod if you wanna throw a few bucks in the kitty.
Patreon Perks and Editing Insights
00:03:04
Speaker
And you know what I do? That is super cool and you get like a super fucking discount. Depending on your tier, I offer one-on-one office hours. It's stupid bonkers, good idea. I'm making it more structured. And I'll iron out those details a little more, but if you want more of that, a little one-on-one counsel, you know what?
00:03:25
Speaker
Not gonna find a better deal than at patreon.com slash CNF pod. First we're gonna hear from Sayward Darby, editor-in-chief of The Atavist and the lead editor of Halley's Peace.
00:03:39
Speaker
She's gonna talk about developing an editing style in the same way that we talk about how writers have style and voice. I asked her about like editing style, editing voice, sort of, and some common areas of bloat that she finds in stories that are almost unilaterally better on the cutting room floor. I'll do a parting shot at the end of the show, but let's get things started with Sayward, Riff,
00:04:20
Speaker
Never a wasted word, especially in the drafting, because sometimes you need to lay down that road before you know where potholes are. So yeah, I guess just in talking about that element of it, that throat clearing, as much as you know it's going to get clipped out, it sometimes has to get down anyway to get you over that hump and to get you started.
00:04:44
Speaker
I totally agree with that. No word is a wasted word if you're putting it down. And similarly, I had a professor in college, my thesis advisor actually, who reminded me that thinking is a part of the writing process. And so he's like, don't beat yourself up if you're not putting words down because you are thinking and considering. And just because there are words on the page doesn't necessarily mean that's any better than the things you're thinking in your head.
00:05:07
Speaker
I mean, take that with a grain of salt. Maybe some people disagree with that. But yeah, I think I definitely work out ideas, both as an editor and a writer. And I always tell writers, too, I'd rather have more than less to work with, which is not to say, please don't file 100,000-word story. That's insane. Also, please don't file a 40,000-word story. But when people say, oh, I was thinking the word count was going to be around 8,000, I think I might send it at more like,
00:05:37
Speaker
you know, 10 to 12, I'm sorry. And I mean, 99% of the time, that's completely fine because actually having more, you know, gives more options also gets gives me a better sense of kind of what you're thinking is important, what you're trying to say in the piece, that kind of stuff. I mean, cutting can be hard and killing your darlings can be hard. But but I think that there really is something to be said for just writing everything you feel like you need to write.
00:06:03
Speaker
Across the pieces you edit, are there common bloat that you see in stories like, oh, this is just what people tend to overwrite and this can almost unilaterally always go?
Sayward Darby's Editing Philosophy
00:06:16
Speaker
But sometimes people feel the need to like overplay transitions between like ideas or sections, almost essentially like summarizing what you just said or summarizing where you're about to go. It can often just feel like this isn't necessary, like just keep telling us the story. I would say sometimes people get description of stuff.
00:06:37
Speaker
So places, people, and just because they have it, they want to put it in because it's color. If you take a step back and say, but does this really serve the story? Does it serve the purpose of the story? You know, sometimes it just doesn't. And just because you have it doesn't mean you need to use it. And I think that especially this is tough when writers are working on stories that are not inherently, quote, colorful. So, you know, or situations where they can't
00:07:06
Speaker
We're not able to see the action or we're not able to witness the action, you know, they are often like well I'll just you know I'll just go at length describing like the building that this took place in or something. And it's like well but does the building itself mean anything to the story, you know, like that somebody get lost in the corridors of the building.
00:07:25
Speaker
Or, you know, I don't know, like, does the windows play some role in the, you know, it's like, why are, like, what are we doing with that description? And sort of the same thing with, with people's, people's physicality, like telling me the color hair.
00:07:40
Speaker
and height and rough frame of a person is not, I mean sometimes that's totally fine and great like thank you now I can see them better but other times it can start to feel pretty perfunctory and so those those are ones that jump to mind um but it really depends on the story you know there are stories where um I wind up cutting a lot of history because it's like well that's super interesting but you know we're not writing a book
00:08:06
Speaker
And, you know, we want to kind of cherry pick what history is most relevant or representative to contextualize a story we're telling. But then there are other stories where there's really not a lot of history and it's just, you know, you just have a ton of reporting right in front of you and you're trying to figure out, you know, well, what's the most important stuff here? I find myself as an editor just cutting the stuff that doesn't pop as much, that doesn't speak to, you know, the themes and the narrative as much.
00:08:32
Speaker
For sure. And, you know, with writers, you know, we talk about style and voice a lot. And I wanted to get a sense of maybe editing as style or style and editing and maybe how you arrived at your particular voice as an editor.
00:08:50
Speaker
I mean, I was thinking about this. So I was at the power of narrative conference last weekend and I was thinking, I was telling my husband how hard it is to talk about editing and to explain like how you edit. Um, which I mean, I think, you know, the same certainly goes for, for writing in a lot of ways. Um, but you know, for me, especially at the out of us now for these last seven years, seven years,
00:09:14
Speaker
you know, we're such a small shop, and it's really just me and Jonah half time. And it's been a pretty like, solitary process. And so, you know, my collaboration is with the writers, but not necessarily with other editors with the exception of Jonah, of course, a lot of
00:09:33
Speaker
how I, because I think I'm continually developing. We're all developing, growing, changing, improving at what we do, hopefully. So it's kind of hard to say like, ah, I learned a lesson here, or this person gave me great advice, or something along those lines. I think that stylistically, I'm aware that I'm a tough editor insofar as I always think something can be better. And again, with activist stories, I know that readers really expect a super high level
00:10:03
Speaker
of quality, thought, structure, because they know that we're only publishing once a month. If you're, I don't know, a restaurant that makes one thing, you better make it really, really well every single time. And so I think partially my approach to editing has been influenced by just the nature of the activist.
00:10:29
Speaker
And so I definitely jump into things and I'm immediately looking for ways to really make something the best version of itself. And as opposed to, oh, this is what is in front of me. How do I fix it around the edges and prove it around the edges? I'm way more grown to saying, well, have we thought about blowing it up and taking the pieces apart and putting it back together?
00:10:56
Speaker
And to be clear, in previous lives, I edited very differently because I was moving more quickly and I was just completely different types of publications. I'm definitely also an editor who I do research as I go, so I think this comes from being a fact checker early in my career and then certainly also being a reporter writer myself.
00:11:20
Speaker
You know, if I'm reading something and I want to, and I'm like, Oh, I have a question about that. I'm more likely to go learn about it myself than just put into a comment bubble. Tell me more about this, which, um, but I also like to think of that actually makes me a better editor of.
00:11:35
Speaker
the project in the long run because then I'm kind of like developing my own knowledge base as I go. As opposed to just saying like, okay, I have this in front of me, I'm trying to kind of figure out the structure, kind of trying to figure out the voice, whatever it may be. I'm also really trying to get a lot of knowledge under my belt about the
00:11:54
Speaker
topic so that I can make informed suggestion. I also hope that by learning that stuff myself, I'm also not asking as many obvious questions to writers. And so if I go and read a court filing or skim a court filing,
00:12:12
Speaker
related to a story that we're working on, you know, then I just have it in my head and I'm able to say, okay, like, you know, these are the dynamics in play. These were the witnesses who spoke like, okay, I can see this scene better and now I have a better handle on it. So I don't think that there's a right or a wrong way to do these things. That's just kind of, you know, the thing that works well for me. And I think that works well for
00:12:35
Speaker
for the activist So yeah, I guess that's a long way of saying like I'm a very like hands-on get my hands dirty Learn as much as I can absorb as much as I can in the editing process because I really want to know a story inside and out and Regarding Halley's piece on that the handcuff man. Yep What uh when this comes across your desk, you know, what's your first impressions of it? and then what were some unique challenges for you on the editor side to Bring this piece to light
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, well, so I had worked with Hallie before. She wrote a story for us in 2018 called The Trigger Effect, which is a fantastic story that I highly recommend people go read. It was a finalist for the Dart Award for the coverage of trauma.
00:13:22
Speaker
And it's about a shooting, a campus shooting that happened at Georgia Tech. And it's about the year after the shooting, essentially what happened and the effect that it had on the victims' friends, on campus culture. And it's just a really, really great piece. So Hallie and I had worked
00:13:44
Speaker
super closely together on that. And I really enjoyed working with her. She is based in Georgia. She has a really deep well of knowledge, particularly about issues pertaining to LGBT communities and sex work. And I should say the trigger effect that story involves a student who was queer, the victim was queer. So when Hallie pitched, I was like, great, love Hallie.
00:14:10
Speaker
She's a delight and somebody who I think brings a lot of expertise and thought, like thoughtfulness to her work on some pretty, you know, what can be some pretty delicate stories. And what's interesting in the case of the the Handcuff Man story, I'd never heard of this case and the way I'm
00:14:32
Speaker
kind of thinking about
Hallie Lieberman's Pitch and Contextual Challenges
00:14:33
Speaker
it as like the Jeffrey Dahmer of Atlanta, basically, you know, the serial predator that you've probably never heard of, unless you were, you know, a gay man in Atlanta in the 1980s. And it was one of those moments where I was like, there's absolutely nobody in the world better positioned than Hallie to write about this. She had already secured great sources, including some former sex workers. And again, she's the kind of person who I just know
00:14:57
Speaker
really has respect for those people, is used to talking to them about their work, about their personal lives, their histories. And so I immediately kind of felt comfortable with where she was positioned vis-a-vis her sources.
00:15:14
Speaker
And then it was also one of these historical stories where there was just a lot of, like, a wealth of archival material that was, I mean, quite honestly, really fun to go through. You know, old newspaper articles like Susan Faludi, like,
00:15:29
Speaker
like covered or mentioned the handcuff man in a story of hers like I don't know about a decade before she won the Pulitzer and so that was also like exciting to me was realizing that there was this not only were there really good human sources she was going to have access to but there was this rich
00:15:45
Speaker
archive, you know, it's a story that also, you know, is very much of a time of a place. And I think that, you know, the gay community, the gay scene in Atlanta is kind of its own character in the story. We're talking about a time period in which, you know, on the one hand, the community was more robust than it had ever been more out, quote unquote, than it had ever been. But sodomy was still illegal in Georgia. And the HIV AIDS crisis was, you know, obviously,
00:16:12
Speaker
I think pretty close to its peak if we're talking pure numbers. And so, you know, this very tense time, very dramatic time. And I really liked the way she was thinking about place in that regard. And then the other thing is like, there was just such an incredible amount of detail about the perpetrator.
00:16:29
Speaker
um who he was what his backstory was and you know how he was able to get away with what he did for for so long and so on the one hand he's a bit of a cipher in the story on the other hand i think you actually get closer to him than is often the case in in stories like this so that's all to say like when the pitch came through it felt
00:16:53
Speaker
it had a lot of components that immediately made me think, oh, this is going to work well for us. And to kind of tie things together with what we were talking about a moment ago, when Hallie first filed her piece, I want to say it wound up being, it's on the shorter side for us, which is, of course, so long. It's like 8,000-ish words. And she filed like, I want to say it like twice that length.
00:17:14
Speaker
what a lot of what wound up getting cut was history and context. And Hallie is a historian, and it makes a ton of sense that, you know, she would be able to deliver a lot of material that contextualizes what was going on, the time, the place, the people. And it was all, to be clear, absolutely fascinating. So I was reading it through, and I was like, yep, absolutely. I would read a book about this, you know?
00:17:39
Speaker
But then for the purposes of the story, it was like, okay, what of those details feels really essential to the story we're trying to tell here? I hope that all that stuff that hit the cutting room floor ultimately is useful for her at some point. Maybe there is a book somewhere in here. I don't know, not necessarily about the handcuff man specifically, but about queer life in the Deep South or gay life in the Deep South at this time.
00:18:07
Speaker
So it's such a dark story on the one hand, but it was also I think a story that, I mean, I'm always jazzed to work on our stories, but I was definitely jazzed to work on this one because of like all those things I just described, like just knowing that all of those components were there. How hard is that conversation to have with a writer when you know ultimately you're going to be cutting 50% of what they submit?
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. And I usually don't tell them that. I don't usually say, hey, I'm going to dive into the edit. And I'm probably going to cut like half of it. Because I feel like it's one of those things you have to see it, right? Like if you say that, that sounds terrifying. If you say that, it sounds like, oh my god, you're going to mangle my story. And so more often what I do is I just do it.
00:19:05
Speaker
And then when I send my edit, I try to explain as best I can that the number of words cut is in no way a reflection of the quality of the story at all. Those things don't really have anything to do with each other as far as I'm concerned. It just means that in reading this story, I felt like
00:19:25
Speaker
you know, the version of it that we had discussed, and to be clear, like I've always had conversations with writers before they turn something in, so there's no like, surprise, I'm actually gonna make it into something else. It's more like, we've talked about this, we had these goals in mind, and I think to reach those goals, you know, I think this shorter length
00:19:44
Speaker
is better. I also always tell people, or I try to always tell people if I haven't, that's only because I forgot. Which is, you know, if you disagree, if there are things that are no longer in here that you think are essential, that you want to talk about, like, this is a collaborative process, tell me that. Like, tell me if there are things you feel like need to go back in. And like, I'm very, very open to that. So I also similarly, like, I almost never send track changed first edits.
00:20:12
Speaker
Because I mean, I always have them like I have the track change version saved, but then I usually just clean it up and send it to people because I think seeing all that red or blue or green or whatever it is, like, terrifies people. And it's like, oh, no, look at everything that's wrong. And it's like, or don't look at all of that and just look at what's in front of you, like, you know, the the piece of clay that's now been kind of shaped into something. And do you like it better? And if you don't, like, we'll figure it out. But I think that like there are these triggers people have about
00:20:41
Speaker
you know, quantity of words, color of things on screen that can almost distract them from the real question, which is, is this working better? So that's how I approach it, for better or for worse. Yeah, when you make cuts of that nature and you send, you know, that new document, oftentimes
00:21:00
Speaker
you don't even know it's gone. You know what I mean? Like you're reading it and you're like, if there's like a phantom limb kind of scene, like okay, maybe that's a good jumping off point for a conversation about putting something back in. But by and large, like if you just read along going, oh, this sounds all right, be like, I didn't even realize that this character that I spent 500 words on, it doesn't contribute anything. It's just taking up too much stage time. I don't even know it's gone.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly it. If you can just say, hey, shift your perspective. Try not to compare it too much to what you turned in. Try to keep in mind what we talked about, because a first draft is aiming at a target. And maybe you're not quite at the bullseye, but we've talked about the bullseye.
00:21:49
Speaker
right? And so like, can you can you try to kind of focus on that and see if this new thing in front of you, which is a proposal works for you. And I think your phantom limb
00:21:59
Speaker
description is exactly right. If somebody says, man, I feel really strongly about this, I think it really adds XYZ to the piece. Or I just think it's such a cool piece of reporting. I want to make sure. All that kind of stuff. We'll figure it out. I can't really think of a situation where if somebody said, I feel strongly about this, I would say no.
00:22:20
Speaker
You know, maybe, okay, we find a way to tighten it or, you know, tuck it in somewhere, read it, read it through and do you really miss what's not there? Ask, ask yourself that. And, and if you do miss it, why do you miss it? Do you miss it because?
00:22:36
Speaker
You were proud of it. Do you miss it because you feel like the story now has lost something? Do you miss it because the story now doesn't make sense to you in the same way? And sort of like working through those, working through your feelings, Brenda. And that's what I'm talking about. Or it took you a year to find a document or something. And it's like to find a source. And now we're going to cut it. This took me forever to find.
00:23:04
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And look, I get it. And like, I want to talk about that stuff with writers, you know, and I want to give them my two cents to say, okay, as an editor, therefore, as a reader, I'm telling you, like, this is why I found it inessential or unessential or, you know, I don't know, confusing or, you know, took us down a sort of side path. We didn't need to go down. You know, I can absolutely be convinced to
00:23:28
Speaker
keep it in if you can if you can explain why and oftentimes in that explanation the the why and the where of it will become apparent right because sometimes in saying well I think this this this it's like oh well that's okay I see what you're saying like well then that means we should probably tuck it into section three not section six you know what I mean like that conversation can often be generative in its own way.
00:23:51
Speaker
Awesome. Well, as always, they were this side of the table is always so illuminating to what's forthcoming with Halley's piece and then Halley's participation in this conversation. So as always, thanks so much for the time, and we're going to kick it over to Halley in just a moment. Thanks so much.
00:24:18
Speaker
All right, you all warmed up. You ready for the real workout? Hallie was a trip man. There's mention of Tunisian butt plugs. Okay. Hallie has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin with a dissertation in sex toy history.
Discovering and Researching the 'Handcuff Man'
00:24:35
Speaker
Her work has appeared in Bitch, Bust, Eater, and the Atavist.
00:24:40
Speaker
She had a story run in 2018 titled trigger effect. Visit Hallie Lieberman.com to learn more about her and follow her on social media at Hallie Lieberman's two L's in Hallie. She lives in Atlanta and she was a true pleasure to hang out with. She talks about rejection, sticking it to her dissertation committee and how to maybe find the wills
00:25:09
Speaker
Here's Halle. Yeah. So, so basically I got into, um, this story because I was working on male sex workers, but with female clients, and then I got asked to give this like keynote speech at academic conference. Um, but it was like a pre-conference. It wasn't that big a deal. Um, but anyway, they said, are, can you do something on the history?
00:25:38
Speaker
sexual history of the South. And I decided to start in Atlanta, like where the conference was, where I live. And I literally went into newspapers.com and search male prostitute and Atlanta Journal Constitution and found the story. And that's, that's how it all began.
00:25:56
Speaker
That was kind of a big jumping off point. I wanted to kind of in a global sense about how you find story ideas. For you, is it as simple as putting in a search of that nature into newspapers.com or do you have other little reservoirs that you're in, you're like, yeah, story things. That makes me sound so basic, which in a way is true. I have I have basically like a laser focus on
00:26:25
Speaker
on certain subjects and look for the stories everywhere. But no, where else I find stories? I find so many stories on Reddit. So many. And I search certain subreddits like sexwork, subreddit, sextoys, gossip subreddits, all this stuff for stories as well. I follow sex industry news, follow some Facebook groups, that's all a part of it.
00:26:54
Speaker
When do you feel or like what's kind of the spidey sense that you feel when you you find something you're like Oh that one in particular feels like it could be rich
00:27:05
Speaker
So there are a couple of things. One of the things is if I talk to someone who, like a friend who, you know, could either be polite with a story and be like, oh, okay, that sounds interesting, you know, or it's like, wait, what happens next? Wait, tell me the end of the story. So I gauge like friends, boyfriend, parents, all like anybody you're talking to, if they have that kind of interest, you kind of know
00:27:30
Speaker
okay, you've got something there. And that that happened with the handcuff man where it was like, I have to be honest here to my friends, two of my friends, teenagers, and including a seven year old who should not have been overhearing the conversation about the handcuff man. And that's my fault. And I feel guilty. But anyway, they were asking questions like, Oh, wait, tell me more about this. So so that's how I knew this story was was good.
00:27:54
Speaker
And then it's a matter of it seems like, OK, this this feels juicy. And then you got to you got to find the material to to kind of like back it up. And at what point did you know, especially with handcuff man, that it was like, oh, there's there's a lot here to work with and shape.
00:28:12
Speaker
Well, okay. So yeah, so basically I had to give this speech at the conference and I had, um, I was like, okay, I'm going to do the handcuff man. This is fun. This can be like in, you know, 45 minute talk. There was so much that I had to leave out of this talk.
00:28:30
Speaker
There was, you know, I had all the newspaper articles from newspapers.com, but then there were all these victims that I was like, oh, I could reach out to them. They were the court documents. I found out Hancock man was a suspect in the Lena child murders from the 1980s, which were these
00:28:51
Speaker
huge things where there are Atlanta missing and murdered children. A bunch of children just disappeared in the city. And for months, they were trying to figure out who was doing this. It was terrifying. So yeah, there was just so much material. And after I gave the talk, people were like, is this going to be a podcast? When where can we hear more about that? What happens? And I was like, Oh, my God, I need to I need to write this thing out.
00:29:17
Speaker
And when you were looking to pitch and formulate a query of some kind that obviously ends up landing with the activist, what did that look like? And what were the nuts and bolts of this particular pitch? It was threading the needle, right? Because this is true crime. And true crime draws eyeballs. I like true crime. I'm not a true crime head like some of my friends are, but I'm into it.
00:29:46
Speaker
But I had to like in the pitch, I didn't want to just be like, you know, crying. Yeah, which is, you know, has its place. And I like it. But I, I like it more as a Trojan horse into a bigger story. For me, that bigger story is the story of sex work, and the history of sex work.
00:30:09
Speaker
the history of gay men and how we have treated gay sexuality, paid sexuality, all this stuff, the fact that we have criminalized gay men. Gay men were criminalized at the time the handcuff man was coming and
00:30:26
Speaker
finding them, kidnapping them, setting their genitals on fire. Gay sex was criminalized and also sex workers criminalized. And so for me, it was like, this is a Trojan horse into this world that it's hard to get people to pay attention to because it's super depressing. It's the AIDS era. And yes, people want to know this history, but they're not really going to make a choice, I don't think, to read and learn about it.
00:30:53
Speaker
that much because it's so so depressing but with the true crime angle with this you trojan horse it and you learn about this era and how you know making everything illegal making being gay illegal making sex work illegal allows predators like the handcuff man to thrive and for me it was like
00:31:13
Speaker
put that in the pitch, show that, yes, it's true crime, yes, it'll attract people, but the bigger story, it has this bigger kernel that's so important about the history of queer people and the history of sex work, and that is what I'm trying to show through this story in part.
00:31:33
Speaker
So, so that was what I tried to do in the pitch. And, you know, out of this, fortunately lets you do like super long pitches because the stories are super long. And so I was able to get all that in there. I also put like, Hey, I have sources of victims. Hey, I'm doing archival research at Georgia State University. You know, I live here. I have neighbors who were here at the time. So I put all that in there.
00:31:56
Speaker
Excellent. That was what I wanted to unpack a little bit too, and it's where a lot of people go wrong in pitches. You might have the kernel of what could be a good story, but you haven't proven that you necessarily have access or the documents or a library card where you can really plumb the depths of whatever subculture you're
00:32:20
Speaker
you're going down what rabbit hole you're going down. So it's really, I think, good for people to hear, to be like, OK, that's the kind of stuff you really need to prove in the pitch if you're going to get commissioned to write a story of this nature.
00:32:34
Speaker
saying that, you know, people are listening and they're like, oh, I'm never going to have the sources. Like people have, you have more sources than you think you do. Like literally my sources, I mean, they didn't really make it into the story, but they were useful for just general ideas about it were like literally my neighbors. So even if you don't, you think you don't have the sources, like there are special collections in almost every city.
00:32:58
Speaker
Um, there are local, like if you're doing a story and you want to do a historical story, like you can get the sources, just like walk into, like most archives are public. You just need to make an appointment.
00:33:10
Speaker
You can walk in there, talk to an archivist, talk to a research librarian. There are resources there. I think it does seem like there are barriers to entry because I was talking to my friend about my research and she was like, I want to go to archives, but I don't know how to. I'm like, no, you can go in them. So I think putting yourself out there a little more, you have more resources, more people can do this kind of work, I think, than think they can.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, can you, in your career as a journalist and reporter and a writer, can you point to kind of like an early win that you experienced that really put fuel in your tank to keep you on this path?
Hallie's Journey in Storytelling and Academia
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I will say, after getting my PhD in 2014, I couldn't get anything published. To the point, I couldn't get an academic article published. I tried to write for The Impulsive Buy, a junk food blog I read that's literally like, I love it. It's pictures of finds in Walmart and other things like that, like the newest kind of Oreos. And I tried to write for them and I got rejected. They said, your voice isn't a fit for us.
00:34:18
Speaker
It was horrible. I was so depressed. I was completely depressed and couldn't get my stuff published anywhere. I think a lot of times this part of the story is left out. I literally walked into the lake in Wisconsin. This was after four and a half years of trying to get this academic article in the history of the vibrator published. I did every change the editor said, and then it got rejected.
00:34:48
Speaker
So I was at this completely low point and the win that made me, you know, I was like suicidal, depressed on the maximum dose of Zoloft, which I exceeded the maximum dose. Now I'm very proud of on 250 milligrams. Um,
00:35:03
Speaker
But yeah, and I was like, no one loves me. My boyfriend was like, I love you. I'm like, shut the fuck up. And so I was insufferable. But I really felt like a failure. I was like, I can't go on living. I'm a writer. And then I pitched a story to, well, first off, I agreed to write for free for a local queer magazine. That gave me a little self-confidence. And after doing that, and I hadn't written the story yet,
00:35:30
Speaker
My boyfriend's like, look, because I pitched this story on Gosnell Dunk and the inventor of the silicone dildo to Atlantic. They were interested. They ultimately declined. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm horrible. And Eric's like, why don't you pitch it to Bitch magazine? I just Google publications. See, see if they're interested.
00:35:48
Speaker
pitch the same story. I actually got a phone call from my editor. It was the first yes I had gotten in basically my whole life. And aside from writing for the student newspaper and undergrad, and it changed my life. It led for me to get an agent, because I put in there, I was working on a book, I got an email from an agent in New York,
00:36:14
Speaker
And now this story became an audio book. It really, and I wrote a book and it changed my life. But those low points, like you think, I'm sure a lot of your listeners have been there. It's horrible, but you can get out of them. But yeah, I know that feeling. It's just awful. And that was the turning point for me. What kept you going and persevering in the face of just that monumental rejection?
00:36:42
Speaker
Um, so what kept me going, even though I like, I hate to admit it, my boyfriend's like at work is like my boyfriend being like, I love you. Like you're wonderful. And my, um, and my friends, my friend Allison, who, um, she died of cancer actually at age 36 in 2021. Um, but she was like,
00:37:01
Speaker
like right before she died and i feel so guilty doing this but i said like do you think i can be a full-time writer and she said of course and anyway so i had these friends and family who were really uh you know that kept me going but no matter like i literally would
00:37:19
Speaker
not leave my bed like I was at depressed. But then there's this little hint of me in the back of my head where it's like, I can do this. I need this. I need to do this. This is like I have no skills. I can work at Chili's. Chili's that was in the back of my. Chili's said they would always welcome me back. It was a chili is in Colorado Springs. So I was like, okay, I could always work in Chili's. But but there's just a little part of me that was like,
00:37:42
Speaker
you can you know you need to do this you can do this you can't give up and that's what kept me going i would literally get out of bed pitch something and go back and crawl back into bed and um and that's like where i was
00:37:58
Speaker
And, um, you know, sometimes I feel like a weirdo. I'm like, I'm not the only one who did this, but I doubt I am. But anyway, that's what kept me going. I wanted to tell these stories. I thought they were important. I'm obsessed with the history of sex. I'm obsessed with telling stories that no one else gives a shit about. So that's what kept me going.
00:38:15
Speaker
That's yeah, that's amazing and it also it just in terms of your your why like why you pursue Writing in a career like this and you know, I constantly question that myself like why do we like put ourselves through the mill and
00:38:32
Speaker
of doing this to try to get, you know, work published and try to platform people that might be under platformed or what. And I wonder what your why is because that's ultimately kind of what keeps us going on this because it defies all logic in a lot of ways.
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah. So for my thing is like, you know, if I don't tell, I mean, this makes me think like I'm a great, there are other good writers who could possibly tell the stories I'm telling. So of course, but my thing is these stories weren't being told like there's this history. So for the handcuff man in particular, there's this history that is literally in my neighborhood. I have neighbors who are in their seventies who were alive during this time who didn't
00:39:14
Speaker
know this story and when i told them their eyes lit up and most of my neighbors are gay men it's amazing love my neighborhood and they were like oh wait a second i wonder i'm gonna ask my friends about the hancock man oh how do i not know this queer history like and i'm like okay so if i have people who are around who didn't know it it's like a part it's an important part of the history that needs to be told and if i don't do it i'm not sure anyone else will do it sex workers in general their stories
00:39:44
Speaker
A lot with so few archives that even, and I'm writing a story about this right now for the Boston Globe about sex in the archives and porn in the archives, but there's so few archives that will even accept sexual material. So that's, and the ones that do like Kinsey Institute in Indiana just got defunded.
00:40:03
Speaker
So these stories literally are not making to the archives in a lot of places. And if they are like a Georgia state where there are some sex in the archives, they have to hide it from the Republican legislature if it's any, you know, public university. So so you have
00:40:21
Speaker
multiple places where these stories are getting hidden, erased, not saved. And there's like the cliche, okay, if I'm gonna, you know, if I get really sick and I'm gonna die, burn all my porn, clear all my history. You know, we have this like shame. So a lot of the stuff doesn't get saved because there's shame surrounding it. And so that's what like drives me. I'm like, I have no shame.
00:40:44
Speaker
You know, I ran around yelling about penises when I was like five years old. My dad thought it because he's Jewish, thought I was a urologist, hoped, hoped I was going to be a urologist. And and I was like, no, you know, like I'm not smart enough to be a urologist. I became the second best thing, not really like the millionth best thing, which is a writer, a sex historian. But yeah, so.
00:41:08
Speaker
If you're lucky enough to have a subject you're passionate about and you don't have shame and you can tell these stories that are hidden, then, you know, that's a way to, that's what will drive you.
00:41:21
Speaker
Well, since a lot of people are hung up in a shame way around sex and talking about it or writing about it, how have you over the years grown comfortable with writing about it?
00:41:39
Speaker
Like you said, you're shameless, but I have to think that it goes deeper than that, because you are trying to preserve something that gets purged when you want to clear your browser history or something. You're trying to preserve something.
00:41:58
Speaker
Yeah. And so I, one of the things that will answer this is that I forgot to say was Magnus Hirschfeld, like the, one of the best archives of the history of sex and history of trans people literally got burned down by the Nazis and destroyed by the Nazis. So this is, there's a big history of these archives, not just being destroyed by individuals, but by, you know, fascists. So, so you're talking about me. Yes. It's not just that I'm naturally shameless.
00:42:25
Speaker
I have had challenges, so when I first wanted to write about the history of sex, or wanted to write about sex in grad school in my PhD program, my advisor told me not to, he said, don't write about this, wait until you get tenure, don't write about the history of sex twice.
00:42:45
Speaker
And yeah, I was like, well, no, no one's getting tenure anymore. That's not going to happen. I don't care. Uh, I'm going to do it anyway. And I chose, I chose an advisor who I thought I could boss around because apparently we choose advisors like, you know, like our, a parental figure and my parents have been afraid of me. So I had selected someone I thought I could boss around and I did, he said, okay, do it.
00:43:10
Speaker
But there were challenges, like even at my committee, like when I was getting my PhD and defending it, there was one woman on my committee actually, and she was the one who said, our sex toys were studying. And she said this to me, is the history worth studying? She said it sincerely, and it was like a dagger to my heart.
00:43:31
Speaker
And, um, and I said, and I thought, well, they might not pass me. I might not get my PhD, but fuck it. I don't care. I'm going to defend this thing because you just said that to me in the shittiest way. I said, look, your colleagues studied literally the history of pencils. Okay. There's someone wrote a whole book, Henry Petroski on the history of that.
00:43:51
Speaker
I consider that valid, but why is that not questioned, but sex toys out? What's the difference? And the difference is it's about sex and people think that's not valid. Well, that's exactly why I'm going to study it. So yes, I had challenges, in fact, throughout trying to challenge the current history of the vibrator that was out there. That was the paper that didn't get published with technology and culture, which was this journal, because another scholar had published in there, I was challenging her, they said,
00:44:21
Speaker
you're not feminist enough. So yes, there've been challenges, challenges, challenges throughout the way. But I mean, in the face of that, you just go, well, you know, this is something I think it's important, the more challenges, you know, as my dad told me, like, if it was easy, everyone would do it, you know, anything worth doing is not going to be easy. My parents tell me I agree. And so that's you just have to keep that stuff in the back of your head.
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's a yeah, it's a it's a really good good thing to say because I remember an early earlier conversation I had with Susan Orlean about issues just talking about her like I think even just reporting on the orchid thief and like she OK, but listen, though.
Learning from Successful Writers and Personal Ideas
00:45:06
Speaker
I just kind of fumbled and bumbled and tumbled all over myself in trying to relay this particular anecdote to Hallie. And I was like, you know what? Why don't I go try and find the tape of exactly what I was talking about regarding Susan and pull out that clip. And I did. And I found it. And it's going to go right here, right now. But anybody could go look up
00:45:34
Speaker
the history of South Florida, and my editor said to me, but they won't. By which he meant, you're learning this for your reader, and it doesn't matter whether you learned it by having a first-person experience or you learned it by going to the library and doing research.
00:45:57
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's inspiring hearing someone that like accomplished being like, Oh, someone else would have done it. Yeah. Because sometimes I feel exactly that same way. Like, Oh, well, you know, someone just could have just reported this out. Why didn't they, you know, like, Oh, well, I guess I'll do, you know, like, her editors write, like, there are definitely stories that other people are not going to tell are not going to tell them the way you're going to tell them.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, too, like sometimes I get into this habit of like, oh, if I've if I think of an idea or something like, oh, like if I thought of it, then shit, it must have already been done. Like I kind of like don't value my own input and my own ideas. I'm like, I love I thought about it. Someone else must have already done this. So I'm not going to do it.
00:46:41
Speaker
And so it's a way of undercutting yourself. And the fact is, sometimes your ideas are worth pursuing. And no one else is going to run with it, because you're following your particular taste. Well, yeah. And I thought I was the only one who did that. I'll be like, oh, I thought of this. Of course, everyone else is writing about Tunisia's butt plugs in the 1915s. And I'll tell my boyfriend, and I'll be like, Hallie, you really think so? And I'm like, oh, I'm too in my bubble that I think that.
00:47:10
Speaker
Um, so yeah, like it's sometimes it's nice to have a reality check or my friends being like, yeah, no, you know, yeah, I'm not writing about that. Um, but, uh, but yeah, it is easy to fall into that trap. And I do the same thing. Like if I get published and you know, a good outlet, I'm like, well, if I got published there, it's not that good. And so kind of a sheen like goes off of it. And I'm like, wait a second. That's like crazy. I know.
00:47:35
Speaker
When I got into my MFA program, like mid-aughts, I remember the first thing I thought of was just like, oh, wow, this must have been a week class, week admittance class to, if I got, they accepted me, man, they must have been desperate. Yeah, well, that makes me, and where was your MFA program? It was low residency at Townsend, Maryland, at Goucher College, a creative nonfiction program.
00:48:06
Speaker
Um, yeah, no, I, uh, I definitely have the same vibe and it's funny. I'm like, I always wondered if I'm a creative nonfiction writer and I thought I like wasn't good enough to do it. And I asked, I was like, Eric, but I'm going to be on a creative nonfiction podcast. Does that mean I do creative nonfiction? He was like, I guess so. I was asking my boyfriend, like, and I didn't know, I thought that was something more creative. People did like I'm not creative. So I think we all have these kind of like, no matter how much.
00:48:35
Speaker
You know, it's nice to hear people like Susan, like Orlene, like say that no matter how much success people have, they still have this like kind of insecurity. And I think that's maybe a creative person thing or a writer thing or something.
00:48:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, and it's been exacerbated by the last 15 years by the algorithms that control us. And we just are constantly bombarded with what we perceive to be everyone's successes. And we're just constantly comparing ourselves to other people.
00:49:08
Speaker
the perception that they're broadcasting versus how crappy we feel for getting like 20 rejections in a month and like no feedback or just Silence from and he's just like goddamn it. I've been doing this for 20 years and I'm still Wrestling with all this bullshit like shouldn't it get better?
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Like, and that's why I feel like I need to talk openly about all my rejections. I've gotten so many rejections. It's ridiculous. And I still get so many rejections a day or not a day, but like every week when you pitch.
00:49:43
Speaker
And, um, you know, and it's, uh, but then you see everyone being successful, like the social media stuff and you're like, motherfucker, like what's wrong with me? And so, yeah, so it's like never ending. But for me, all I need is like one yes. If I have one yes going on, if I've got a story going on, then I'm like, okay, it's like the armor to handle like all the no's that are going to come in. Um,
00:50:07
Speaker
I don't know if you feel this way, but as I go on and I get used to getting lots of no's, and some stories I'll get, like Handcuffed Man got rejected from a number of outlets before that of this took it. There was a podcast company really interested in it. There were a couple podcast companies really interested in it.
00:50:30
Speaker
And so I'm glad it's going to be an audio story as well. But like I started the question, is this even a good story? You know, you start to think, oh, it sucks, man. I suck. I'm a loser. And then I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's just I think it's natural, I guess. Yeah, it's incredible. It's just like if it gets turned down so many times, you're like, well, there's got to be a reason.
00:50:49
Speaker
And the most likely reason is, like, well, it's not a good enough story. Or if it's a good enough story, I'm just somehow incapable of selling it in a way that internally resonates with me. Like, why can't I convince anyone that this has as much value as I think it has? And that ultimately comes down to, I don't know, maybe it's just like, oh, my God, I'm not skilled enough to see the capital A, what this thing is about, to really get it across the goal line. And then they –
00:51:19
Speaker
Then you talk yourself in circles, then you just throw it in a drawer or forget about it altogether.
00:51:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And then you have like the drawer of dead pitches or whatever, like virtual drawers on your computer. But yeah, I mean, and I've, I've had enough stuff that like, I've gotten 20 rejections, and then one yes, and it's gone on to be like, you know, it's funny, because sometimes you'll have stories like that. And then it comes out, and then you get all this interest from it. And then you get people saying, well, like, were you following a trend on this story? I'm like, following a trend, bitch, like everyone told me like it was terrible.
00:51:54
Speaker
I'm like, what? People have no clue, and they mean well, but they have no clue. When something gets in print, then suddenly people think all these things and they don't see the fight to get there.
00:52:12
Speaker
My brain is operating on like 1980s technology and it's it's I always devolved back to like sport metaphors and like say there's a Quarterback drafted in the fourth round or something and it's and he ends up being really good. It's so he's been rejected Constantly and was devalued to the near end of the draft Become someone good and then all of a sudden everyone's like yeah We had a good grade on that guy
00:52:38
Speaker
Well, if you had such a good grade on that guy, why didn't you take him earlier? Why didn't you take him at all? And so it's one of those things like if your story, like people are going to read this in the activist and be like, all those people were rejected to be like, yeah, you know, it was, you know, it was, it was really good. You know, it just, we wanted to take it, but we didn't. It's just like, well, no, you should have taken it if you thought there was that much value in it. And it's, you know, it's going to turn out to be a great story because it is a great story.
00:53:02
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, no, I absolutely it's that kind of stuff is frustrating. What what when you're saying quarterbacks, what was Tom Drake, Tom Brady drafted? Was he? Oh, you're asking the right guy because I grew up in Massachusetts. And yeah, no, he was a sixth round draft pick. One hundred ninety nine overall.
00:53:20
Speaker
Cause I thought, Oh, wow. Wow. Um, I thought he was one of, he was not high in the draft. I mean, they're probably, and he's like the best quarterback of all time. Um, or one of the best. Uh, and I'm sure there are other examples aside from Tom Brady, but, uh, but yeah, it is interesting. Um, and then people look back on it, but that sports analogy makes a lot of sense.
00:53:45
Speaker
I always devolve to sport metaphors because it kind of it just like clicks with me and kind of makes sense and like oh yeah you get every all the scouts out there you can see scouts as editors and head coaches as editors and they're not perfect you know they they they take gambles and they're off and wrong not out of any malicious intent it just could be a matter of taste at that time and you just have to keep on delusionally believing in yourself in the face of monumental rejection
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, you know, in taking that metaphor further, it would be amazing or also demoralizing. But if there were a writer draft every year, like you have the New York Times and New Yorker and they're like picking all these people and like you're competing and like, you know, you have to like write, you know, give them your best clips and you're making it through the rounds and getting money. That would be awesome. Yeah. A writer combine.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then you get like the T-shirt, you're like, yeah, I'm going with the New York Times. That's right, guys. And competing for money, it would be amazing. I mean, that's why like, so I love like people betting on arts. Like I wrote about Oscars betting. Like I love this idea of combining like the commerce with, you know, arts and putting money on stuff and like how that works.
00:55:04
Speaker
That's awesome. So with The Handcuffed Man and the story, what were some unique challenges to you as you were thinking about the structure and your entry point into the story with Michael Jordan, which, not that Michael Jordan, different Michael Jordan and like your entry point to the story and the kind of unique challenges that you experienced throughout the drafting of the story?
Editorial Restructuring and Story Impact
00:55:31
Speaker
Well, that was 100% say word who is one of the best. I'm not saying this to be nice. Like I tell friends and my boyfriend this say word Darby is one of the best editors like I've ever worked with. Like she's incredible. She will make you sound like a million times better than you are as a writer.
00:55:48
Speaker
Um, and she was the one who suggested Jordan because I initially had max trader who is a guy victim in Atlanta who I know and I've hung out with and he's come over to our house for pizza. We become friendly since interviewing him for the story. I initially.
00:56:07
Speaker
had him as the lead and say where it said no, put Jordan at the beginning because he was kind of like, she didn't say inciting incident, but she implied that like he set everything in motion. And so she, she rearranged it and restructured it to have him and I think it works so much better.
00:56:28
Speaker
Isn't it crazy like you know you have you know you've been with the piece for you know months and months and months you've read it so many times and and then someone like a say word comes along or an equally skilled editor like Jonah Ogles as well who works with works with say word and they just almost instantly they just see things you can't see it blows me away all the time.
00:56:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like, it's like a gift to me. I'm like, oh my god, she's looking at my stuff. Like, I mean, I should pay her to edit my book. Like, she is. I'm not that I don't think she does that kind of work. But like, she is like a miracle worker in that sense. And so yeah, it's like, I've been working with the whole time. And then she changes that. I'm like, Oh, duh.
00:57:12
Speaker
this like I couldn't see it's like you're blind when you're stuck in a story you're blind to the bigger picture um and so that's how she structured that and that um yeah and then going from this attack and unfortunately the guy is named Michael Jordan and like anytime I tell friends about they're like what Michael Jordan's a gay sex worker I'm like maybe he was not sure he's never addressed it this is a different Michael Jordan
00:57:37
Speaker
But yeah, so it works well because you have that attack that kind of galvanized everything, even though, and that's like the sad and crazy part, you had a handcuffed man, you had this serial predator of gay men who had attacked, police estimated, maybe 100 people.
00:57:59
Speaker
at this point had already been arrested for murdering a young gay man and then got off on the because no one wanted to testify. They only had circumstantial evidence. So you have this person who police knew the name of the guy. They've been following him for like a decade and
00:58:17
Speaker
It was really like this public event and the fact that it was covered by this, you know, young man was burned and mutilated on his genitals after Handcuffed Man gave him a drink and said, I'll pay you $50 to drink and the guy, you know,
00:58:40
Speaker
and said, like, get hard before you get in my car. And then the guy blacked out and woke up, you know, behind the Ponce de Leon hotel, like, burnt on his genitals. But that, um, that whole story and the fact that it got in Atlanta's biggest paper, that galvanized things. But the gay press had been covering, you know, these attacks or covering, you know, attacks on gay men long before the mainstream press did.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah, and talk about the Trojan horse aspect of your story. You talk about how the coverage of gay men in this story, they were just patently ignored and not taken seriously. It was almost like, we just don't even want to
00:59:29
Speaker
Yeah, help and support that community if we just turn our turn away from it'll just go away And that's kind of the the tragedy underlying so much of the story Yeah, and I mean one of the things and and I talked about it in the story was This was what they were nearing like the height of the AIDS crisis gay men were considered, you know vectors of disease and
00:59:56
Speaker
They were dying and we did not have good treatments for AIDS and HIV and people were terrified of it. They were scared of gay men. There were all these things and people, you know, there are preachers saying this was God's punishment for homosexual lifestyles. So you had this whole episode. And so it's like, OK, for some people, it's like, OK, gay people are getting murdered. All right.
01:00:19
Speaker
Well, you know, they're dying for other reasons or spreading disease. I mean, it's disturbing to even talk about it in these terms, but there were people who believed that their lives, they were subhuman, their lives weren't valuable, and then you add sex work into it. And as, you know, Max said in this story, even in the gay community, hustlers, gay male sex workers were lowest of the low. We were the scum on the totem pole, he said. We were the people who
01:00:45
Speaker
You know, even in that community, if we were getting murdered, well, you know, it's not as bad as, you know, a lawyer, a closeted gay lawyer or someone else like that.
01:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, and that also, you know, the main, you know, the handcuff man himself, Bennett, at the center of this, you know, he was a lawyer and, you know, a closeted gay man, but also protected by his privilege, too, given where his prominent parents and everything. So no one wanted to touch him, even though, you know, he was pretty well known to be attached to these attacks.
01:01:25
Speaker
So yeah, to add to that, so yeah, he was educated at Emory University Law School. He was white. He was like, as I say in the story, he was like, family was the Kennedys of their small town of Tawanda, Pennsylvania. And he was protected by his privilege when he lived in this small town and he was accused of paying, molesting boys, paying them.
01:01:54
Speaker
for sex. He had some altercation with a gay man and was it
01:02:01
Speaker
what ended up not being arrested for it. The man who he had an altercation with ended up being arrested. So he was just protected, protected, protected. His dad was in the pocket of the police there. And that's why he ended up in Atlanta because the police, the head of police in Twana was like, send your son to Atlanta, which is terrible. Get him out of here. He's like, you know, attacking everyone here. So he comes down here and does the same stuff. And you would think, well, big city Atlanta,
01:02:29
Speaker
know maybe he wouldn't get the kind of protection he got in the like big fish small pond tawanda but nope i mean he was uh this prominent ish guy he was wealthy he was protected i mean he was arrested for
01:02:46
Speaker
Kidnapping a police officer. Um, that's crazy. And he just got a $75 fine. It was like, what the hell, like kidnapping a police officer who was, you know, to try to, you know, apply him basically with alcohol and set his genitals on fire. He didn't get that far, got arrested beforehand. But, but this is, this enabled him, if he had been any other race other than white, if he hadn't been rich, I mean, he would not have gotten away with this stuff in my opinion.
01:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, and then there's what eventually, you know, leads to him being tried is this, uh, the Williams rule thing.
Legal Strategy and Societal Issues in the Story
01:03:24
Speaker
I was wondering maybe you can expand on, on that and how that was employed.
01:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, so that was the Williams rule defense. So basically he got the Michael Jordan burning happened. And then after that happened, like the Atlanta police sent out this teletype because it was the 90s. So it wasn't like email. They sent it around the country and said, hey, we got this weird crime.
01:03:51
Speaker
This man burned. Has anyone else seen anything that happened like that? And in Tampa, they had had a crime, almost the exact same MO, where a man had been picked up, Gary Clapp, picked up at Salvation Army by someone claiming, hey, I'll pay you 50 bucks to drink. He picked up Gary Clapp.
01:04:13
Speaker
and Gary drank with him, then blacked out. And the next thing he knew, he was in the mangroves with his legs on fire. He was burned so badly, his legs had to be amputated. When Tampa police heard about the Atlanta case, they were like, oh, we can get this guy through the Williams rule through showing a pattern of behavior outside the state of Florida. And so the Williams rule allowed
01:04:41
Speaker
allowed them to show that pattern of behavior and get Robert Lee Bennett Jr. using similar cases in a different state. That was really important for this case because Richard Greer, the AJC reporter I talked to said he believes that there were attacks throughout the country and in Mexico and in other
01:05:06
Speaker
other countries. I mean, it's crazy. So, you know, with a serial predator like this, having a law like this, having a way to charge someone, that made a difference in getting him the charges he did, getting him convicted.
01:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, and what's all the more upsetting about the story as well is that it's, the root of it comes from Bennett's internalized homophobia and the hatred of himself and not wanting to be gay and being gay, and then he's exacting that revenge on other gay men, which is just, that just adds to yet another tragic grace point to the narrative too.
01:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think like, that's the like, heartbreaking thing is this is a gay man who's growing up, he's born at 47 growing up in a time when being gay was illegal. And it was considered considered a mental illness until 1973 when the APA got got rid of that, which was a big fight.
01:06:14
Speaker
to end the diagnosis of the mental illness. So you're growing up, you're thinking you're crazy, you're, what you're doing is illegal.
01:06:24
Speaker
And all that gets put on him and he internalizes it all and then abuses other people. I mean, you know, there were millions of gay men at this time who did not do what this guy did. But I think it is instructive to look at it, like you said, as something where
01:06:45
Speaker
It's like, okay, there are these pressures. There's this negativity and it turns into self hatred. That's, you know, there are a lot of gay men and lesbian women and you know, all queer people a lot have this.
01:07:00
Speaker
kind of feelings because when society is telling you you're sick, you're disturbed, you need to change, you need to convert, it's hard not to feel bad about yourself. And so that is kind of something I think other people can, you know, that make it a bigger tragedy. It's like if our and I thought about that as writing this story, if our society was more accepting, would this I mean, he was obviously a psychopath, but would he been able to channel it in another way? I don't know.
01:07:26
Speaker
And with the writing of the piece as well, so there's the elements of him, of Bennett, his kind of calling card, if you will, is burning the genitals on his victims. And at the very end of the story, as he has passed away in prison, he wants his personal items burned.
01:07:51
Speaker
And that's how you end the story. And I love how you end the story there on that element of the irony of that. And just at what point did that kind of ring in your head as a good ending? Well, and I'm trying to think of Sayward as the one who suggested that. But yeah, I mean, it's a poetic ending. And I remember, so I can't tell you if I thought to end it that way or she did.
01:08:20
Speaker
But what I will say is when I got the, my dad suggested I find his will. My dad's a Tex and a state attorney. And so he said, and in, in Florida, where, which is where Bennett was in jail, he said, fine. And he's like, this is how you get as well. Like find it, see what it says.
01:08:39
Speaker
So he did, and then I saw that, and I remember literally getting chills and being terrified. I'm like, oh my God, he wants his stuff set on fire. He wants all his possessions burned. And that's the way he did other people. And it was almost like he wanted to erase his life and his history, and his way of coping with his desires was burning his own history, just like he burned other men
01:09:08
Speaker
on their genitals, which was so not even a metaphor for your sexual desires are sick. And so it was poetic in a horrible, disgusting, bizarre way. And I wonder, I actually asked his childhood friend, was he into fire as a kid? And he wasn't. And she said the worst thing they did as kids was throw pumpkins off a bridge.
01:09:37
Speaker
And yeah, I was like, well, that's not too bad. And she like still felt she's like the sweetest woman. She's like in her 70s. She's she's she still felt bad about like throwing that pumpkin off the bridge. I'm like, that's fine. And it's like interesting that that's his best friend who still feels bad about throwing a pumpkin off a bridge like 50 years later. Meanwhile, like the other best friend like murdered or not murdered.
01:10:00
Speaker
attacked all these people and like didn't appear to ever feel bad. I'm like, how are these two people best friends? But for me, there was some sort of like, obviously, I kept thinking like the Jekyll Hyde double life thing here. Because the way she described him, I'm like, either something happened in high school, because she described him as a nice,
01:10:20
Speaker
gay man. You know, she's like, we didn't have the words for it then, but I knew it was a feminine and all the girls liked him and it was her like boyfriend, quote unquote. They only kissed once and it was like for show. But I'm like, how did did something happen in high school? I always, you know, I never figured it out, but it seemed like something had happened. Either that or he was just completely hiding the side of himself. How did you track down his will?
01:10:47
Speaker
So I tracked it down through public records requests. I think like wills are public information and I had to go through, I forget what system if it was the city clerk or something. I had to find out what county he had filed his will in and go to that county and request it.
01:11:09
Speaker
But yeah, I would recommend, you know, if you're doing history, getting people's wills, they can I even found sources to talk to from the will. They can be really useful. And, you know, another thing is just like getting more information than you think you're going to use.
Using Public Records for Storytelling
01:11:23
Speaker
It's always better to have more, in my opinion. Oh, for sure. Yeah, I got a divorce deposition stuff from the 1940s for, you know, the book I'm working on and it
01:11:34
Speaker
It just, it has such incredible detail in it. And it's just like, oh wow, like I, it was one of those things I didn't really know to look for. And I worked with a, I hired a researcher to help me do some things and she, she was, she's just really good at finding things. And then she came across to something that was like a divorce filing, but not all the deposition stuff. And I was like, oh, where would I even find this stuff? She's like, oh, you can,
01:12:00
Speaker
asked the county courthouse, and so I just emailed the county courthouse, and I'm like, do you have a record of this? And a few hours later, he emailed me like a 30-page PDF of the entire thing. I was like, holy fuck, this is pretty amazing stuff. Sad, but amazing.
01:12:20
Speaker
I'm so jealous that you got that, because I tried to get his handcuff man's divorce deposition, which the previous journalist had gotten it. It was from the 80s. And in stupid Fulton County, I mean, Fulton County is fine where I live. But anyway, it was DeKalb County. But anyway, they had destroyed it. They're like, we need to destroy things that are this many years old. I'm like, why?
01:12:43
Speaker
Um, so annoying. So some counties like keep them. And I'm so glad you got that material because I've been trying to get divorce proceedings, um, for other things that are, you know, all older and haven't been able to get them. But this is another reason why like, I don't, I've never been married. Um, but like, if you get married and then get divorced, you know, all your shit goes out there. Like, so watch out, you know, like it's such a great source for historians to keep your stuff buttoned up. That's what I always say.
01:13:13
Speaker
Keep it tight, everyone. Yeah, yeah. Well, very nice. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Hallie. And as you bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. And that can just be anything you're excited about. So that's bringing some degree of joy to your life. And so I'd just extend that to you, Hallie.
01:13:36
Speaker
Okay, so what I'm most excited about in this, this is a new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I'm a huge Larry David fan. It's the last season. So that's what I'm really into right now. And so these are not like, novel recommendations or whatever, although I read the novel thrust, which was really good.
01:13:55
Speaker
Just finish that. But the other thing is the movie Love Lies Bleeding, the A24 movie starring Kristen Stewart. That's a lesbian wrestling noir. Highly recommend it. Oh, fantastic. So yeah, this is wonderful. So yeah, thank you so much for the time and coming on the show and talking shop about this amazing story that you've written. So yeah, thanks, Hallie. Thanks for the time. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. This was so fun.
01:14:30
Speaker
Good time, right? Thanks to Sayward and Hallie. Visit magazine.adivis.com to subscribe to the magazine and read The Handcuff Man. Man, where two and a half weeks from my major deadline, my official deadline, the one that if I violate it, I have to give all my money back. Give them my money back. I've cut 20,000 words from the book.
01:14:59
Speaker
I've got about 30,000 to go. It's brutal. Buu-rudel. And I'm at the point in the manuscript where I can no longer tell if it's boring or if I'm merely bored with it because I can practically recite it by memory.
01:15:13
Speaker
Like, do musicians who play a song a thousand times, like, can they look at the song and they're like, oh, this song is just bad or boring, or are they just bored with it? I guess they can tell by looking at the audience. But with this book, I'm going block by block, scene by scene and asking
01:15:34
Speaker
What are you adding to the story? What is your job? Where do you see yourself in five years? There's a 250 word paragraph. It's merely atmospheric. It doesn't do any lifting, let alone heavy lifting. You're cool and all, kind of cute, but you gotta go. This person I interviewed for 90 minutes or more. Okay, you know, you might get a single sentence in the book. This person I platform for a thousand words. I'm sorry, you get like a hundred now.
01:16:03
Speaker
If that. I've done the low hanging fruit edits. I'm in the mid hanging fruit edits. The one where you start to need like that little basket thing where you like put the extender on it and you go and you go you reach way up and you get like an apple and you think catches it and you get the apple there. Yeah. Then this is the kind of the bigger swaths and chunks and then the final pass.
01:16:33
Speaker
With eyes glazed and burning, can you cut a single word from every sentence on average? Remove all unnecessary passive voice. Yeah, maybe that'll account for 10,000 more words.
01:16:51
Speaker
My eyes are bludged out, my chest is always tight and I think I hurt my back again. My overhead press is plateaued and I keep eating fucking peanut butter like it's water. And there's this bald spot in my beard and it makes me wonder if I should just shave it all off. So that's writing a book and you wake up at night and you're like, fuck, I can't believe I didn't use that newspaper archive at all. And then you go to the couch and you can't sleep and you're staring at the blue light of the simply safe base station and you're like,
01:17:23
Speaker
And you're also like, if you can't do interview, see ya.
01:17:50
Speaker
you