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Friday Fellowship Ep. 3 - From Worship Bands to OnlyFans w/ April Gloria
81 Plays4 years ago
On this episode of Friday Fellowship, we're hanging out with professional cosplayer, OnlyFans extraordinaire, and Casey's wife of 11 years, April Gloria! We cover some fun topics like purity culture object lessons (you know, like how a girl who's kissed a boy is like chewed gum), "crossing the line" in Christian relationships, the all-consuming inferno of teenage jealousy, coming to terms with and embracing your sexuality, and the never-ending cringe factory that is an E-girl's inbox. We had a blast hanging out with April, and definitely suggest checking out her work on Instagram (@_aprilgloria), Facebook (www.facebook.com/aprilgloriacosplay), Twitch (twitch.tv/aprilgloria), and OnlyFans (www.onlyfans.com/aprilgloria).
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Transcript
Impact of Birth Control on Perception of Sex
00:00:00
Speaker
Because a conversation was like, I just don't know if we can handle this. If I'm on birth control, are we going to feel like we can just have sex? Because there's not much chance to have a baby. You take away the single repercussion that you're told is the worst possible consequence of sex.
00:00:21
Speaker
I was like, oh, take that away. We could have still given each other an STD. I mean, we didn't really know how those were. No. I had sex ed. I don't know about you guys. Did not. Nope. No. My sex ed ended with plants. Oh, you got to learn about stamens and pistols? Stamens, pistols, and that was it.
Introducing April Glory and Humorous Banter
00:01:10
Speaker
And welcome to a special episode of growing up christian our our third installment of friday fellowship Fellowship today. We are joined Is it fellowship? Okay. Well, whichever there's fellowship happening today. We're joined by a very special guest Uh, the the sour to my sweet the the hot dog to my bun I hate my beloved wife april glory
00:01:40
Speaker
That's really, really great that I can be the hot dog to your bun. I always wanted to be a wiener. Or wait, which one was it? Whichever, whichever is fine. I mean, if you really want to be the wiener, you can. He is. Or the bun. I don't know.
00:02:00
Speaker
We can both do wieners. It's good. It's 2021. Great. It's fine. Anything's fine. Sounds good. I'm just excited to be fellowshiping with you, April. It's been even more, God, what?
00:02:16
Speaker
more than 10 years yeah 10 years was it 2009 when we left yeah well and sam didn't come to our wedding because you didn't fucking invite me everyone was invited i didn't know joe came yes he was in it you just chose not to come and that's cool but you know own up to your mistake
00:02:37
Speaker
It's possible I wasn't invited. Did you do formal invitations or just like call people? I feel like for some people we did. I could only buy like a limited amount because we didn't have any money.
00:02:48
Speaker
For Jesse and Joey did. You just told me I could be Jesse's plus one, I think is what happened. That might be a plus one, Jesse. You can bring Sam if you want. Yeah. So I guess the last time you guys would have talked would have been like May or so of 2009.
April's College Days and Relationship Stories
00:03:10
Speaker
One of those last shows or whatever, probably. You've pretty much known us like all the way from the beginning because we started dating. My second semester at Liberty would have been in the spring. It was in April and then the following semester you were there.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, been around, seen some things, heard some stories. Oh yeah, I'm sure they were great stories. Riveting once about the concerns and fears of going too far. Oh yeah, that was a big subject. I was concerned about that. Oh, so what was too far for you guys? April, you go first.
00:03:56
Speaker
Well, it kind of changed over time because you're kind of like, okay, this is too far. But then once you do it a couple times, you're like, well, maybe this is okay. Maybe this is too far. So it changed all the time and we're very fluid about it. The movement of that line is directly proportional to how horny you are before you get married.
00:04:22
Speaker
Pretty much. Yeah. It was followed by a lot of Bible studies afterwards, though. Did you guys ever talk to a spiritual authority about it? No. No. No, I wasn't ready to do that. We were too factual. I had one of the deans talk to me about it against my will when I got in trouble. Yeesh. You got in trouble for something that happened between us?
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, because I think, actually, I don't remember. Wait, no, that was a different guy. Sorry, Casey. There were multiple times when I got in trouble. I didn't get in trouble my entire life. I go to Liberty, and I end up serving 25 hours community service, paying a $250 fine, and having to sit in the dean's office, having the dean talk to me about why I shouldn't be boy crazy.
00:05:16
Speaker
You're just so boyfriend. Oh, is that why you were you were working? Did you do community service of the rot? Yes, I did. For all the outsiders, the rot was our dining hall. Yeah. And after after serving that community service, cleaning dirty dishes, the name is fully accurate. Yeah. Oh, my God. I bet it is not super clean back there.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was like I had to like empty all the old food into the trash and like put it in this like grinder. I think it was a grinder. But anyway, I felt like I was I was looking at vomit the entire day. They match that back into like burgers and then threw them on the on the griddle. Is that? Oh, yeah, I bet. Who gets to like add a, you know, like pump a bucket of water into the egg powder every morning? Is that like a permanent employee?
00:06:08
Speaker
Did you have any direct experience with the liquid eggs? A lot of people were pumped to go and just be able to eat as much as they wanted whenever they wanted.
00:06:25
Speaker
And that was, I couldn't. I truly hated that food. And apparently on the grand scale, from what I heard, I didn't have a lot of experience elsewhere, is that their food wasn't actually that bad. But I don't think I eat anything other than burgers and chicken sandwiches or something for at least a year.
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think my first year was my each meal consisted only of a piece of pizza, a side of ranch, a big salad with ranch on top and a big glass of chocolate milk. A big glass of ranch. I'm out of the house and I'm eating chocolate milk and pizza every every meal. Pretty much. And then, you know, the freshman 15 catches up to you.
00:07:13
Speaker
I guess I need to stop drinking so much ranch.
Evangelical Upbringing and Education Journey
00:07:19
Speaker
What brought you to Liberty? I don't know anything about your life, so I get to interview you easier than Casey does. Perfect. What was your general Christian background? Let's start there.
00:07:34
Speaker
So I guess I grew up in a Evangelical Christian home. We went to a Baptist church when I was younger, and then we switched to a fundamentalist church when I was in sixth grade. You didn't advertise themselves as a fundamentalist church?
00:07:51
Speaker
Is it like something from the mentalist church? That's crazy. It was, well, it used to be a union church, but then they changed to Bible church because we're just non-denominational or whatever. And then I was homeschooled from fourth grade up until 11th grade. So I went to public school for two years after that, after begging my parents.
00:08:16
Speaker
And then I went to Liberty University because my parents told me I must attend a Christian college. They wanted me to attend a Christian college. Nice. Did they do the whole, we'll only pay for it if you go to a Christian college? Or was it you have to go to a Christian college and you have to pay for it?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah option B It's so funny that we fall into stuff like that because it's like you literally have the choice you're paying for it And you're still yeah, I must comply. Yeah the fundamentalism I guess
00:08:48
Speaker
Pretty much. You only really got to check out a couple of schools though, right? I only went to one college for a weekend at Houghton College, which was another Christian college in New York State, like upstate New York, and I chose against it because of the weather. I was like, I don't know if I want to deal with all that snow or whatever.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, that weather sucks. It sucks in Memphis, Massachusetts, upstate New York is even worse. It's real snowy. When you switched to high school from being homeschooled, were you just like, oh my God, or did you fit in? Did you feel weird? Was it a good two years?
00:09:23
Speaker
Yes and no. In some ways I did because I made friends and everything. In other ways, I was just, I didn't know how to deal with certain social situations or whatever, like dating or anything. So it was kind of weird in some ways. I was really desperate to get back into public school. Like I was, I begged my parents to go to public school in sixth grade, I think it was. And I went to the orientation and then they were like, no, no, no, no, no, you're going to be home school again. And then I went to the freshman orientation.
00:09:51
Speaker
And then they were like, no, no, no, no, let's homeschool you more. And I'm just like, oh my gosh. God, they dangled that carrot in front of you. And I had known, I knew people from when I was younger and stuff. And actually what ended up happening was my school ended up having me repeat 11th grade because I didn't have enough electives
00:10:14
Speaker
after being homeschooled, my entire life was an elective pretty much. Your parents didn't forge your transcripts like every other homeschooled kid? They probably didn't know about that. I did not know about that until just now. I didn't know how to do that. April's parents are like as pure as the wind driven snow. So I don't think they would do that. They wouldn't do that. There's a lot of integrity. Yeah. But I'm kind of glad because I'm glad I got two years in kind of experiencing stuff.
00:10:44
Speaker
before I went off to Christian college. Where you couldn't experience stuff again. I mean, I guess I could, but I had to be sneaky about it. I had to up my sneak level a bit.
Musical Journey and Influences
00:10:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Let me ask you, were you in any sort of worship band?
00:11:04
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Of course not. I was fun fact. In my first round of 11th grade, I was in a worship band. I went one of my best friends, Emily, who I've known my entire life pretty much. My mom and her dad were friends before
00:11:26
Speaker
All of us were born. My mom had to leave her mom's birthday party to go to the hospital to have me. Anyway, shout out Emily. Yes. You're the best. Emily's awesome. I went with her to her church one night and her church happened to be the church that I used to go to as a kid. They were having this audition thingy for their new worship band that they were putting together.
00:11:49
Speaker
And so Emily and I went up and we sang with the little mics and they had people up in the sound booth that could like isolate everyone's voices, I think, sounds and see how well everybody was doing. And so Emily and I got picked to be the singers. And then there were three other guys.
00:12:07
Speaker
One, two, three, four other guys in it. Drummer, guitar player, bassist and keyboardist. And so we were a little band and we called ourselves Crimson Redemption. Yeah. Oh, that's a great worship band name. I don't I don't remember who who thought of it. It wasn't us, but it was a collective effort, maybe. Yeah. But we thought that was like, you know, really cool. So we were in we did that for I don't
00:12:37
Speaker
I guess it was, it wasn't even a year, I don't think. We started it up in January and I think it was, oh my gosh, I can't even, I think it was less than a year and we like stopped doing it in like the summer or something like that. Did you tell your public school friends about it? I wasn't in public school about it yet. I wasn't in public school yet. Some stars just burned too bright, you know? Better to burn out the fade away.
00:13:05
Speaker
No okay so April and I part of why we ended up meeting and actually like getting acquainted was because of music and so like when you join the worship band like what were what were you listening to at the time was music a big deal?
00:13:21
Speaker
Uh, yes, I, I actually discovered a lot of bands that I ended up liking through the worship band because some of the guys in there liked different music than I was listening to. Cause I was kind of in, in the like pop slash pop punk stuff. Like my favorite band was Reliant K. They still hold up. I just, they're still, they're still like one of my top faves. Like I could still listen to them and be perfectly happy.
00:13:48
Speaker
I was away last weekend. I had a four-hour drive back home and I put on a couple of their albums. I hadn't listened to Collapsible Lung in quite some time. They really bring it, every album, they bring it. Yeah, they're good. I think Matt's a really good writer when he wants to be. Yeah, for sure. All right. Pop quiz, favorite Reliant K song, Everybody Go.
00:14:15
Speaker
Oh my gosh. It depends on the album. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It's a shit pop quiz because we still haven't given, those are usually like what? Uh, quick answers. How are we doing? Well, at the time I would have said pressing on. That's what I would have said at the time because Emily and I convinced the guys to play
00:14:40
Speaker
Pressing on at but but we had to barter because they wanted us to sing chop suey by system of a down and we were like no we're not singing that and So we were like we want you guys to sing Reliant K and they were like well if you sing chop suey then we'll do Reliant K so we ended up singing chop suey at one of the practice or a couple
Impact of Purity Culture on Youth
00:14:57
Speaker
of the practices and Yeah, we were great
00:15:03
Speaker
There's a video of it somewhere in Emily's parents' basement. Oh, my God. Pressing on is my choice. That's where I'm going. Which one was that one on? I don't know song titles at all, ever, for anyone. That was like their big single from the anatomy of the tongue and cheek, the one with the orange and white cover. OK. Yeah. That's Sadie Hawkins dance. Yeah, that's way back. Some of the more, I mean, I remember
00:15:30
Speaker
Emily and Sarah and I really like Be My Escape. That was a big one for a while. Five Score was a solid album. Yes, Five Score was a really good one. A good album. I so hate consequences from the album. It was good. I liked that one. I did actually really get into them. I got into them a little bit with Five Score, but when I decided I was sold on them, I thought Forget Not Slow Down was such a good album. I really liked pretty much every song on that album. I just think it was a
00:16:00
Speaker
Really it was like just pass is a kind of like not not so much pop-punk anymore, but still Yeah, okay. I loved it I'll have to go back and listen to those because I those are like the after five score I didn't I didn't I kind of fell off for a little bit. Yeah, but I
00:16:17
Speaker
My friends and I were talking about Collapsible long recently and they were like, wow, I didn't even realize that these songs were so good or whatever. That was like a pop album. That one you just drifted into pop music and I loved it.
00:16:31
Speaker
They do have a song called Gloria on that album, so I was like, okay. Well, there you go. Okay, so. We're talking about what bands I liked at the time. Exactly. Let's see, I was what, 16. I think I was saying one of my diaries, I have like a list of bands that I liked back in the day.
00:16:53
Speaker
I think at that time it would be like Blank K, Blindside, Chevelle. I forgot about Chevelle. Oh my gosh, I still listen to them a lot. We just recently went and saw them again. Really? Yeah, I've seen them a couple of times within the past couple of years. Yeah, right before the pandemic we saw them. We played one of their songs with our band or whatever too. We didn't actually play- They were just like a rock band, right? It was like rock bridging in the new metal gap kind of.
00:17:23
Speaker
So we were like that, but we also played like worship songs for the youth group. Like this other stuff we played like in our drummer's basement or wherever we were practicing, like we didn't really play. I think I would think we might have like sneaked like aerials by system of it down in one of the youth group nights or whatever. But we played like we would do like like ocean floor by audio adrenaline at youth group night or something like that. But yeah, it was like a more rock ish sort of style.
00:17:51
Speaker
Would you describe yourself as like a rocker chick? I probably would have at the time, honestly. I wanted to play guitar so bad. So bad. Very Avril of you. Yeah. I know. I was like Avril before. Oh, wait. I don't know when her album came out. I think that was before Avril though.
00:18:09
Speaker
Avril was definitely high school for us. Let's see. Yeah. I know. Well, I know in, in, when I was in like 2005 or so, like people would joke, cause I had really long hair, long straight hair and people would joke like that. I was like the Avril. I bet it was like the, you know, dollar store, Avril or whatever. That was a 2000 Avril was 2002. Holy smokes 2002. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess that would be, that would be around then then.
00:18:37
Speaker
Cause I think 2003 was when we were doing the band thing. So yeah. Yep. So everyone influence. I love Hillary Duff. Hillary Duff was my number one influence too. Oh my goodness. Oh, shared in shared influence. That's nice. I had a Hillary Duff poster in my room. I have surprised your parents allowed that. So I had a Hillary Duff pictures pasted into my diary. They only let me keep the head.
00:19:07
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Jesus. So, April is currently holding up her diary or flipping today. It is thick with two C's. Yeah. That's a lot of diary right there. There's a lot of pictures in it.
00:19:25
Speaker
These are all mostly Hilary Duff. A whole page, like scrapbooking style page dedicated to Hilary Duff. Yeah. And then there's, well, there's a couple of other people in there too. There's like, uh, Josie and the Pussycats. Oh, yeah. Mary-Kate and Ashley, Hilary Duff. Um, yep. That's like straight out of, uh, what was that teen magazine? Yeah, pretty much. That was like the big deal.
00:19:52
Speaker
I had to read the magazines at Emily's house because I wasn't really, I mean, I don't know if I was directly not allowed to read them, but I just kind of didn't ask. So I was like, Emily gets all those magazines. I'll just read them at her house. I was like, how do you know if he thinks you're a good kisser? Yeah. Okay. So in one of the diary entries,
00:20:13
Speaker
No, it doesn't have to do with kissing, but in one of the diary entries, I wrote like, I was at Sarah's house reading, another one of my best friends that I've known forever. I was at Sarah's house reading such and such magazine and it was like a bunch of guys wrote in and said what they didn't like in girls or something. It was like, guys don't like when you wear a lot of sparkly eyeshadow. I don't know why I wrote that in my diary. I don't know. They wrote everything. Don't wear a lot of sparkly eyeshadow.
00:20:41
Speaker
I'm wearing all of the sparkly eyeshadow at the moment. We have most of our retirement fund tied up in eyeshadow. We have a lot of sparkly powders. It's my favorite thing.
00:20:56
Speaker
Okay, so I cheated a little bit because we talked about this before you came on, but we both live, all of us really, anybody that's probably listening to this, lived through the era of purity culture where it was like a center focus of the youth group experience, right? It was a huge percentage of the time that we spent in church was talking about purity and how to,
00:21:23
Speaker
how to keep it and all the bad things that would make you, you know, Refusible as a spouse. So, Refusible or worthless. We spent countless hours talking about these things and she's got some, you know, as
00:21:45
Speaker
as awful as some of that stuff was for guys, it was way worse for girls. And you've told me some stories about some of the things that you experienced in youth group and stuff that were kind of shocking to me. Okay. Yes, that's accurate. So my favorite one that I like to tell and it always
00:22:08
Speaker
makes my friends who have not grown up in purity cultures, jaws drop is one day, I think we were, I think I was a freshman in high school. So it was about 14. Um, we were in the freshmen girls Sunday school group or youth group group. I don't remember which one, but they had us cut out and you're probably going to guess where it's going, but we had, they had us cut out paper hearts and they said, okay, this is your heart. So what I want you to do is tear off a little piece.
00:22:37
Speaker
for each person that you've given your heart to. And this includes like celebrity crushes, guys that you've thought about, like more than you should or whatever, like more than God, like anyone you've put before your relationship with God, like tear off a little piece. And I was just like, okay. So like tore off my little pieces and stuff. And they were like, okay, now hold up this heart. This is what you have to give to your husband.
00:23:04
Speaker
Ugh, was yours the smallest? Was that really traumatizing me? I don't know if it was the smallest. I don't remember. How big of a piece did you tear off for Pete Wentz? Oh no, my gosh. This was before the days of Pete Wentz, okay? Ah, I wonder who Pete is so you can tag him on Instagram. Oh my gosh. He's a fall out boy.
00:23:25
Speaker
He's the pretty one from fallout wing when people used to come into sunday grill when I was working and be like You look like the guy from fallout boy pete lense is the one that I thought they were talking about But they were actually talking about the fat guy with glasses Oh gosh, yeah, we'll time we'll tag him. We'll respond I You gotta hand it to uh
00:23:50
Speaker
the boomer generation, they came up with some really creative object lessons to make you feel less than human.
00:23:58
Speaker
I read a book when I was younger called Dateable, and that book had a lot of object lessons in it. It talked about if you're a virgin and you're like a clean, I think that was in the book, like a clean sticker or something, or maybe that was a youth group, I don't know, it all runs together. A sticker. Like a sticker, and you're like, oh, you stick a sticker down once, but then if you pull it up, stick it back down, it's not the same anymore.
00:24:25
Speaker
Oh my god. In the book, in that book, there was an example that was like dating somebody is like, like it basically compared the girl or like having sex or whatever, like doing things with the other person to like a car, like bit first base was like sitting in the car, like second base was like turning on the car and then like,
00:24:48
Speaker
having sex was just like rent, like riding a car around like crazy. Yeah, pretty much like, oh, your car's wrecked now. What are you going to do?
00:24:56
Speaker
Oh my God. Some of these metaphors are actually like, even the sticker one, like the heart one, insane. The sticker one. And so, but what I'm thinking, it's like that metaphor, I don't know. It's obviously breaks down at some point because it's like you put a sticker on and you take it off and it doesn't stick anymore. Like, but you can have sex and then have sex again and not have it be less than sex. It's like, it's not like, not true. Not true.
00:25:21
Speaker
I don't know what the intent is, how they explain it. Do you recall that at all? No, that's all they said. All of us were just sitting there with our eyes like, oh no, I don't want to be a used up sticker. I'm already trash. Oh no, I've already kissed somebody. What am I going to do?
00:25:44
Speaker
or whatever. Yeah. So it's great. It's it's funny to hear like the difference between like how guys were talked to about this stuff and how girls were talked to because I follow like a lot of purity culture, Instagram accounts and stuff. And I think like there's a lot of talk about
00:26:05
Speaker
There was definitely a lot more harsh, awful rhetoric used when talking to girls, by the sounds of it. But guys, the way that it was talked to with guys was definitely not like, well, you're a slave to your desire and you probably shouldn't have sex, but if you do, oh well, at least you're not a girl that's all used up.
00:26:27
Speaker
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it was. Yeah, you're right. It wasn't like that. Like, I mean, I actually I didn't my did April. Did your youth group split stuff up a lot and do like guys and girls shit or is it like, yeah, right. Well, you're our freshman year. We our whole year was we would like sing worship or whatever with the whole group. And then we split up with two freshman guys, freshman girls. The whole year. Yeah. Okay.
00:26:51
Speaker
So like for me, in my experience growing youth group, it wasn't really like mine was, I honestly think mine was pretty like tame in comparison to other people's experiences. Like, yeah, there wasn't, there was the occasional split up. Like there was the occasional, like, well, like kind of like break out into small group type things where like a few people like sometimes they'd like break it out by school and then try to encourage people to like,
00:27:15
Speaker
be more Christian at school and then us homeschoolers got a special message because we didn't have any interaction with people in the outside world. But it was generally like didn't drift into the topic of sex. I know after my time they ended up doing some like boys and girls like Bible studies where they would
00:27:35
Speaker
approach those subjects a bit more so I have no idea what those looked like but like I got that message too of like the like sometimes the other example is like I there's a couple but one of them is like oh would you chew bubblegum that's already been chewed by somebody else or oh yeah it's just like I mean there's countless ways you can take that into but
00:27:57
Speaker
So that's kind of what I got. And I definitely felt some shame around it. I mean, enough to keep me from having sex until I got married, I guess. But it's interesting for me to hear about other people's experience. Because even the big time books, we obviously have talked about I Kiss Dating Goodbye and some of the big books that were all about
00:28:22
Speaker
purity and avoiding sex until marriage. It's like that mindset was instilled in me in a general level, but I didn't read those books. I was kind of just like, yeah, I get it. Don't have sex. I understand. And then it was a little bit easier probably for the obvious reasons for me to just like not feel a deep sense of shame about it. It's like, oh, cross that line. Let's just jump back and do the right thing.
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah. Be better next time. I don't know.
00:28:53
Speaker
I never read those books either. My parents didn't make me read those, which I'm really glad about. My youth group wasn't always like that. We weren't talking about that every single week or anything, but every once in a while, I know I keep talking about the diaries, but I recently found them and I've been just reading them just to see. Every once in a while, I'd be like, today we talked about wife submitting to husbands. Yeah, I know.
00:29:20
Speaker
I wouldn't like offer any commentary about it. I would just be like, this is what we talked about. So because I guess it was just like, this is how it is. This is what we talk about in youth group or whatever. But yeah, I was I'm glad that I was never meant or like never made to read those books. And we weren't like, it's like the first boyfriend I ever had. I did not tell any like I didn't tell my parents.
00:29:43
Speaker
or anything. It only lasted about a month and a half because I was 17 and I didn't know how to have a boyfriend. So I was kind of, I wasn't really a great girlfriend to say the least. So we ended up breaking up, but my parents didn't find out till afterwards when the guy's youth group leader told, asked my sister, oh, how do you like April's boyfriend? And Natalie was like, or my sister, yeah, she was like,
00:30:12
Speaker
What? April's boyfriend? And so she ended up telling me, telling my mom or whatever, and I was just like, oh no. But then my mom was like, oh, it's fine. You're 17. And I'm just like, I didn't realize that it was okay to have a boyfriend.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, so much stress. Yeah, like I was just I was so worried about it. And I just I don't know. And then it was then it was fine. I guess so. Well, I guess now I know. Yeah, I never felt comfortable even I was similar. I didn't feel like the first time I started dating somebody, I didn't I wasn't about to tell anybody. Yeah, my parents know I was like, because then they'd make a thing of it. And then you like you knew, like, or had an idea of what conversations might follow.
00:30:55
Speaker
It's like, well, just remember. And you're like, stop. I don't want to hear from you. Yeah. Well, I it's so I don't know. Probably would have been like, oh, he's a Christian. It's fine. Whatever. Oh, yeah. That definitely I did date a non-Christian. And when I was a senior in high school, that was a big thing. So, oh, yeah. Yeah. That was they. My parents were not. They weren't happy. They so kind of I. I have like a thing, one excerpt from a diary that said that
00:31:24
Speaker
He and my mom got into like a little tiny debate or whatever. And, but I was kind of on my mom's side because I was like, I hope I was like, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I was, I was kind of like hoping that he would kind of see the, the light or whatever, you know, like convert for you. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Um,
00:31:49
Speaker
But my mom actually ended up, we actually talked about this. I went to visit my parents recently and she, we were talking about it and she was like, yeah, I remember telling him to go to Liberty for college for a weekend or whatever, just to see what it's like and stuff. Like, you know, just, you know, you should go down there and check it out. And then he ended up breaking up with me like two weeks later. It's like, this is going to be a difficult thing.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah. He's like, Oh man, this is how it's going to be. Nah, I'm out. But yeah, I mean, it worked out. It worked out for the better, but it was, it was really tense between me and my parents for a while. What's he doing now? Well, I don't, he's married now. I think he's still dating Christian girls and saying, Oh my gosh, people, I learned his lesson. He's like, never again, polluting people.
00:32:42
Speaker
see if I can bring him to the dark side. Oh my gosh. So you spent your two years sewing your wild oats at the public school, just a whirlwind of debauchery. And then you went to Liberty. Yeah, then I went to Liberty. Fresh off a breakup. Like right before, did you break up because you went to college?
00:33:05
Speaker
I think he broke up with me because I went to college. It was like two weeks in, I think two weeks after I'd been there. And then he broke up with me and then he started dating like a little April 2.0 back home. I was like, dang it.
00:33:19
Speaker
Oh, gross.
Navigating New Friendships Post-Breakup
00:33:21
Speaker
That person looks a lot like me. Like she's like me, but cooler in my in my eyes. But yeah, so that was I had I like was forced to basically what I did, I was just like, man, I don't know anybody here. I have no friends. So I just went like door to door in my dorm and was like, hey, let's hang out. And so I just I was like forced to just like make friends all over again, kind of because I didn't know anybody there pretty much. And so
00:33:48
Speaker
That's what the first couple of months were. You were like a real social butterfly. I was for a while. I really just wanted to be pals with everybody. Which is good. That's how we met. Yeah, I also really liked attention.
00:34:06
Speaker
No, yeah, that's all. Attention was nice. I always liked the idea of getting it. I never did. And that was demoralizing. But yeah, heads up. Yeah, same. Like maybe people will finally think I'm cool in college. And then you get there and you're just like, shit, nothing's changed. I'm still the same person. OK, let's figure out how to just love myself, I guess. Is that what you're supposed to do? Yeah, I think I skipped that when I went straight to getting attention.
00:34:35
Speaker
You can put off learning how to love yourself if you get attention. Oh, yeah, it's fine for a while. You're good. So I remember like when I went to school to Liberty because I did the first year at a secular college totally out of my element, had a horrible time. Like sometime in the spring, I was like, I'm getting out of here. I need to go to a Christian school. So I transferred to Liberty and moved out of state way down there and stuff.
00:35:02
Speaker
And I remember like early on in my first semester, seeing you like walking around campus. Cause you were like this little, yeah, I think so. Yeah. Wow. You're like a, a sceney weenie. So I started following you. You didn't say to me, hiding trees when you turned around.
00:35:27
Speaker
Mapped out your seat location at convo. I see it. Yeah, I just goose-necked a little bit as I was driving by. You had naps in your dorm of what her daily pathing was? That's the kind of thing I would have done at the time. A lot of stalker mentality going on there. I would never talk to a girl, but maybe by happenstance, I'll just end up talking to her.
00:35:49
Speaker
Like maybe I'll fall down and she'll help me up or vice versa, you know, like a Disney movie. You're like sitting in booby traps just so you can rescue her. Oh my gosh. This was family Robinson style. You're like pulling trip lines and shit. As she eats shit in the pavement and you run over, you're like, hey, let me help you. Oh, where did you come from? Random man who may have set a trap for me?
00:36:14
Speaker
You know, I I'm a romantic. Yeah. So I was in a fresh new metal band at the time. And I remember like finding your profile on Facebook and messaging you and being like, hey, I'll see you around like before. You should totally check out my band. I remember the phrase that you used. You said you look like the kind of girl who listens to a little metal.
00:36:41
Speaker
You were so edgy. I was. I was like, Hey, founder. I really, how did you find me? There was a lot of people at Liberty, man. And you, how does anybody find anybody? Oh my gosh. Well, do we have mutual friends? We need hours and hours of detective work. Maybe, uh, maybe Wes at the time. Oh my gosh.
00:37:02
Speaker
Wes was our drummer. Wes was a beautiful young boy. He was gorgeous and he was the envy of all the girls. They loved him. There was some debate as to whether or not he had fully gone through puberty yet when he was in college. I like that though. That whiskey mustache. I was invited to sit at his table and I felt so good about myself.
00:37:31
Speaker
I wasn't invited by him, I was invited by one of his friends and I was very happy about it.
00:37:36
Speaker
So that might be it might have been where I found you is through what maybe I saw you guys like you in that group hanging out together and maybe Added you through there, but uh, so I message april i'm like, hey You should check out my band cutie. Oh my gosh She messages me back, but my roommate ryan intercepts the message and responds to her from my facebook like
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, we should totally hang out sometime. Blah, blah, blah. You know, Ryan. Yeah. And I thought that Casey was like, eh, nevermind. I'm good. So I was like, all right, I guess I'm hanging out with him. Let a Ryan move. That's messed up. Oh my gosh. That's gross. So we actually like met at the dining hall.
00:38:26
Speaker
And we have a picture together from the first night that we met. It was Christmas night at the dining hall. Like they had a Santa Claus there or something.
00:38:36
Speaker
That's high Jesus. I can't believe it was Santa Claus. I know. Satan Claus? How could they? So, yeah, there's a picture of us all sitting with Santa. I forget who was actually on his lap and who was the rest of us. We're all just kind of sitting around him and stuff. I think I was kneeling on the floor and I had my arm around your leg. It was April and the poison rings. It was just like this, you know? It's fine. Like the cover of the first Star Wars movie? Is that?
00:39:07
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Just like that. I think I might have been like kneeling with my elbow or something. I don't remember. Like kneeling on one person with whatever. I don't remember. I want to point out that I said the first Star Wars movie because I know there are going to be people who are mad that I just called it that. I knew exactly what you meant, though, too. But I don't remember. But that iconic pose. Well enough. Episode four, A New Hope. A New Hope. Thanks. Yeah. That wasn't coming to me, wasn't it? I knew.
00:39:34
Speaker
I could picture it. Yeah, I got the Star Wars trivia on tap if you need anything else. Yeah. So there was a bunch of stuff that happened, but we ended up dating and everything. And I think like we purity culture immediately played a role in our relationship, like early, early on.
Purity Culture's Effect on Relationships
00:39:56
Speaker
Because we kind of had like, we started dating like two or three weeks before the semester ended and we were all going home for the summer. Yeah. That's right. Casey said he had to snag me up before I went home to all the boys in Jersey. Exactly. All those filthy jerseys. That's something you would say. He didn't tell me that at the time. It was like later on that I found that out.
00:40:18
Speaker
because he just didn't trust and he knew if you were in a committed relationship you would have just had sex with all of them and then damaged goods. Everyone, he didn't want me to be like a worthless piece of gum. Yeah, I only chew gum once, you know, and I was intent on chewing that gum.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, great. Oh, that's the worst. That's the most disgusting description. But so we we started hanging out a little bit. We ended up going to a show. I think I invited you to go with us to a concert. We went and saw Darkest Hour. Yeah. And Sam, do you remember August Burns Red 2? Or was it just Darkest Hour?
00:41:04
Speaker
Yeah, I can't remember who else was on the show. It may have been August Burns Red, but I know that. Sam, do you remember the local band Ghost from a Fallen Age? Yeah. So. I thought they were, I thought they actually got bigger than that. Darkest Hour was the shit, man. I fucking love Darkest Hour. Yeah, they're good. Yeah.
00:41:20
Speaker
They were great. And it was in this college town further north, and it was a really rough show. There was no bouncers or anything at this place, so the shows there were always just insane. Chaos. People get punched, ambulances once in a while. It was rough. Of course, I wanted to get up front, as usual.
00:41:45
Speaker
So I kind of awkwardly tagged along with April while she was, while we were up towards the front. And because it was so rough, like I felt necessary to put my arm around her shoulders. And that was a big step for me. I felt a little conflicted about it. Yeah. But it all worked out and thankfully we got married so I don't have to feel guilty about putting my arm around it. Yeah, that would have been, that would have been inexcusable otherwise. Was that your first time putting your arm around a woman?
00:42:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I remember like immediately after we started dating it, you know, we immediately started having like talks about boundaries and, you know, keeping God first in our relationship. Oh, yeah. Oh, did you guys have the conversation about whether or not you guys should ever drive, be alone in a car with a person of the opposite sex?
00:42:41
Speaker
No we just we did it we did that right away yeah no no like no no no not you two like as you start dating like oh April needs a ride home and the guy who she works with like I can give you a ride home oh like other people yeah that I don't know if we had a conversations about it.
00:43:01
Speaker
We would have felt weird about that for sure, though. Yeah, because that was a I remember that conversation at Liberty, like in in maybe it was like their Wednesday night church or maybe some of those church service I attended. But that was like a real that I mean, that was a real thing. This is like if you're in a relationship with some it's like it's I mean, it's dangerous enough to be alone in the car with someone of the opposite sex, even if you're not really, but if you are in a relationship,
00:43:27
Speaker
It's an absolute no-no. If someone's like, oh, you don't have a ride, I can give you a ride home, and you're like, okay, then no. You wait there until you find somebody who can actually get you home where you start walking. This was like a zero give on this for some people. So I remember hearing these
00:43:46
Speaker
conversations and being taught this. And Jill and I had those conversations, we're just like, I don't, I think we shouldn't do that. Of course, we gave up on that real quick, because it's like, this is dominant and practical. Yeah, but I don't know if we had physical conversations about it. But I bet you if that if it came down to it, we would have felt weird if the other one were doing we're doing that.
00:44:09
Speaker
We were very insecure. Yeah, I was very, very jealous. Very jealous. We all were. You don't grow up like we did and not feel those extreme levels. Because I think it comes from being taught that sex is just a demon lurking around each corner and it's just, jump out and fuck you real quick.
00:44:29
Speaker
like if you if you have a conversation with somebody of the of another gender then they're immediately thinking about having sex with you or something yeah you like it's just lock eyes and then all of a sudden you realize that you're inside somebody oh my god how did that happen
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's yeah, it was very like, they made it scary. So like, when you actually start dating somebody, and you think about being alone, what's on the other, you're like, anything could have like, you really convinced that, at any point, anything could happen.
00:45:03
Speaker
Because you're all a bunch of weak-willed horned dogs. Yeah. And for the girls, they teach you that all dudes are just out looking at women and wanting to have sex with them all the time. And they can't look at a woman without thinking about their boobs and stuff and wanting to have sex. So you end up not trusting any guys ever pretty much with anyone else that's a girl.
00:45:26
Speaker
especially because one of my relationships there was a rumor that he had done something with somebody else too so then it's just like adds that on it's like oh so it does happen that's real that's a real thing that happens you can't trust any men at all none of them
00:45:41
Speaker
Well, there's another part of purity culture that I don't know if people really talk about that much, but it's almost like a secondary effect of it. I never had any close female friends, very few that I was ever actual friends with other than just like, yeah, we go to youth group together or something like that.
00:46:05
Speaker
And I feel like purity culture like teaches men especially, but anybody really that like person of the opposite sex is only valuable to you in so much as they're a potential partner.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yes. Yes. And I agree because I feel like, well, I always liked, I always wanted to have a lot of guy friends, I guess. I liked having girlfriends too. Like girlfriends are my favorite probably, but like I'm not going to be like, I don't hang out with girls or too much drama. Like I'm not like that person. Because that was a type of person. We all know that type of person. Oh, yes. The cool girl. We love her. Yeah.
00:46:48
Speaker
But I liked having friends of multiple genders and I liked hanging out with all kinds of people. And it sucked when I suddenly was in a relationship and all of the friends that were guys basically disappeared. And that was not cool for me to find out. I was like, oh, so do they just feel weird around me now or did they only want
00:47:14
Speaker
To be friends with me if they wanted to date me or like what was it? Like I didn't I didn't understand where that was coming from
00:47:21
Speaker
I mean, that's probably an element of it. Like, oh, yeah, because I mean, there is like, I, I think purity culture, it doesn't God, hopefully I'll get crucified for this. It doesn't get everything wrong. It just has the worst possible solutions to some general truths like it.
00:47:45
Speaker
It's like a very extreme. It's extreme. It's an extreme reaction to some general truths that don't have to be scary. Like, for example, like young men going through puberty into college, like, they're just they are, they're horny. And they
00:48:02
Speaker
Yeah. If you grow up in, I guess in general, having relationships with people of the opposite sex, but or being around people you think are attractive, everything is just like firing things off in your brain a little bit. But that what the problem with the purity culture is, it's telling you that the solution to this is like, this is going to happen, suppress it, shut it down. And don't put yourself in a situation where anything could happen. Otherwise, your failure, as opposed to like, this is what's going to happen.
00:48:31
Speaker
You're not a slave to your emotions. You can treat people with respect and dignity, and you need to take people seriously and respect them as individuals. It was not the conversations that were being had. I feel like in purity culture, in general, you lose the ability to do that, which is why you see the repercussions of it.
00:48:53
Speaker
you know, people just getting married too early or people just, you know, you don't have any real safe sex understanding. So God forbid you have a condom on you because then you end up then you're planning for sex instead of like this. Exactly. There's so many.
00:49:10
Speaker
Don't go on birth control because that means you're going to feel like you can have sex whenever you want. Yeah. I remember the first time I realized that a girl I knew was on birth control because her timer went off at the same time frequently. But that girl felt like she owed people an explanation. I have this hormone imbalance and she wasn't being dishonest. That's why she was on birth control.
00:49:37
Speaker
She didn't know anybody that explanation like in the real world outside of Christian college and purity culture. You don't owe people that explanation as like a 20 year old woman. Like, yeah, I know. I didn't I didn't start birth control until the summer before we got married. So we were worried about it. Yeah, we were. That was like a conversation was like, I just don't know if we can handle this. You know, like if like if I'm on birth control, are we going to feel like we can just like have sex because
00:50:06
Speaker
You know, like there's not much chance to have a baby. So, you know, you take you take away the single like repercussion that you're told is like the worst possible consequence of sex.
00:50:19
Speaker
Like yeah, oh take that away and we could have we could have still given each other an STD I mean, we didn't really know how those I had sex ed. I don't know about you guys did not know my sex ed ended with plants Oh, you got to learn about the stamens and pistols Stamens pistols and that was it. Oh
00:50:42
Speaker
Yeah, I remember there was a production. Yeah, yeah. I see over there in a corner being like, if I accidentally come on my cell phone, I have a baby. I remember like, in my paces, in my school books, which is like these little weird workbooks, you know, I've talked about how they had these comic strips in them. Yeah, that was like the perfect little Christian kids and their struggles on a daily basis and how ridiculous they were.
00:51:09
Speaker
The closest they came to talking about sex was like this weird like two-page story that talked about the main character Ace Virtuson and his grandparents are like alluding to
00:51:27
Speaker
the idea that sex was between like a man and his wife and it was sacred and that, you know, it should only be reserved for marriage. But like, they didn't really say anything. It was all just like this weird implication. And then it was like, then grandma and grandpa, Vurchison, like looked at each other longingly and stuff. And I remember us talking about it at school like, this is so weird. Like, I know. What is this, you know?
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's a that you know why they wanted sexy. Yes, that. Yeah, exactly. They want to put that unsexy concept into your brain of like, yeah, I'm not if I'm not going to picture old people doing it like young cartoons. No problem when you're 14 years old. But they're going to even middle age ones. They're going to. I thought they would invent like a new a new character, like a sleazy, like Susie Skankson or something.
00:52:21
Speaker
What are they doing? Why isn't the grandparents explaining it?
00:52:27
Speaker
Well, yeah, Suzy slept a lot. Suzy self-will, I think. Self-will. Oh, my God. The implication was that her and Ronnie Prideheart were having sex. Oh. And they got in that motorcycle accident. She died. And you know, you reap what you sow. That's in the Bible. If you have sex, you're going to die. It's like mean girls. Exactly.
00:52:50
Speaker
You guys have a lot of biblical truths. Oh, I know. So like, if you you know, quote unquote deconstructing, I think one of the things that that's hard for that's been hard for me and is still like something that I struggle with is like,
00:53:05
Speaker
Just being angry at the I mean kind of just the world for like your experience growing up and stuff and like I get this some of that is justified it is but like you can't stay there, you know, it's not healthy for you to dwell in that and April and I've had a lot of conversations about it one of the areas that like is the toughest for me to not be angry about is like sometimes, you know, it really makes you feel like
Reflections on Missing Normal Dating Experiences
00:53:34
Speaker
you were robbed of like a normal fun exciting like dating experience because you're just so worried about that stuff all the time. It was a constant topic of conversation and stress among us at a time when like we were committed to each other we ended up getting married like we should have just been.
00:53:55
Speaker
carefree, you know, whether regardless of whether or not we, you know, wanted to go that far or whatever, like, it should not have been something that just weighed on our relationship for years, you know, before we finally got married. Yeah, yeah. It's
00:54:11
Speaker
I feel like we, we ended up having fun, like in spite of it or whatever, but I feel like in, when you're, when you've grown up like that, like it does kind of take over everything sort of like the first two people I dated, I didn't kiss at all or whatever. Cause I was just like, nope, that's nothing. You're not supposed to do it. It doesn't feel right. I don't know. Like once you kiss somebody, then like, maybe like, what if you get married someday? Like maybe you don't get married someday. Just a little less sticky. Like, yeah, I know. Like.
00:54:40
Speaker
You're just like so concerned, like putting your face on someone's face has such huge repercussions.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, or whatever. And so it's like all you can think about. And you're just like, oh, no, he hugged me for like five seconds. Like, oh, no, he's he's like hugging me from like behind. Like, that's not good. Like, why is he doing that? Like, I don't think we should be able to we should do that. And it's just like this whole like dumb inner monologue that just is just every time the person's around is just like going off in your in your the back of your head, just like, oh, no, just like yacking at you.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my God. It's so funny because I didn't, I really, those anxieties did not happen to me the same way. It's so interesting hearing from people who they did. And of course, I know there's a difference, like we've already talked about how men get it, how women get it, but I
00:55:37
Speaker
And some people got it in more extreme ways. Like I feel like the people around me and in my youth group as a whole all experienced it fairly similarly like in that like the hugging the kissing like those were steps that like of course they had to be reserved for an actual relationship and you couldn't just go around making out with people for fun, but it was like to hear about like the anxiety people had about even just kissing somebody and
00:56:03
Speaker
I do remember some conversations about how special your first kiss should be and blah, blah, blah. And there was a little bit of me that was disappointed when I broke up. The first girlfriend that I had was maybe a two month thing. It didn't last long. I found out she liked me and that made me like her. It was just as pedantic as it gets. After it was over, I was like,
00:56:28
Speaker
Did I waste those? No, you didn't. You're fine, dude. But I had to think about it and I was like, how am I going to explain this to my next girlfriend? There's something to explain. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like such a big deal at the time, for sure. Sam, did you? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
00:56:48
Speaker
I was just going to say, I remember a book that my littlest sister had when she was younger called The Princess and the Kiss. And it was all about how the parents gave the baby a kiss and said, only give this to the most special person ever. And it was all about how you should only give a kiss to the person you're going to be with forever. So that's a whole other thing. You're supposed to tell them it's from your dad. Yeah.
00:57:15
Speaker
My dad wanted me to give this to you. So much tongue. Sam, did you experience jealousy? I think so. I don't recall it a lot.
00:57:36
Speaker
I know there were times when Jill and I first started dating. I was a senior in high school and that was her first year at Word of Life Bible College. I think that's where I experienced it the most.
00:57:52
Speaker
Jill was the only, she was the second person I dated, so I still had no experience with it. There was all those insecurities. She was away, and I remember she'd talk about some of her friends at Word of Life, and then I remember getting those feelings of nervous, oh, she has a guy friend? Well, you know what that leads to. I remember actually getting a little bit nervous about that stuff when I was younger. I think by the time I was at Liberty and we were around together,
00:58:20
Speaker
Like we didn't I don't it's possible Jill did but I don't really recall either of us feeling that way at that point But we also spent so much time together like what's there to be jealous of when you never see anybody? We were we were jealous I had a problem I was
00:58:49
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Like when I think about how I was in college, the only word that comes to mind is insufferable. I would get so upset if there was any like hint that someone like, like I remember a specific show that they played where there was another band there that had multiple girls in the band. I said to kill.
00:59:15
Speaker
Yes, that one. I was going to call him out. I came to you pretty quick, Casey. No. Yeah. What are you doing? Check his phone. I feel guilty. They were talking about how you guys were talking to them or something. You're like, yeah, they're super cool. I was just like, uh-oh.
00:59:37
Speaker
There's girls, and they're cool, and they're pretty. I don't even remember what they looked like, but I assume they were. It's hard to remember their faces after you mutilated them, after you murdered them, and shoved them into a dumpster, right? Yeah, it's hard to recall. I don't know. I have their face skin hanging on my wall still. I don't remember what the bone structure looked like underneath it. There's stuff beneath the Texas sand. Some locks of hair that I save in my wallet. That's fine. But I remember we went out.
01:00:05
Speaker
And like we were like fighting in the parking lot or something. Cause I was mad and like Casey says something about how like, like it's not a big deal. Like there's pretty girls everywhere. I was just like, no, there's not, you can only think that I'm pretty. I was just so upset and I was like crying. I don't remember what, what, I don't know. It was just like a bit, like my feeling, like they just, I had a lot of feelings and they just came out right there in the parking lot. It was really classy.
01:00:37
Speaker
I'm sure someone would have that on YouTube if only there were cell phones at the time, they could have recorded this. Yeah, what a shame. Yeah, I remember it like, because before we started dating, like you had gone on a couple, you had one boyfriend and then had gone on a couple of dates with people at Liberty. I had three boyfriends, but that's fine, whatever. But who's counting? One that lasted longer than two months.
01:01:04
Speaker
But it was like basically like yeah, I stood in the elevator with this guy one time and I had never experienced those feelings before like I had never really felt jealousy before and I remember it was just like
01:01:21
Speaker
this just like consuming inferno that I had no idea what to do with I just felt like absolute unfathomable rage towards just these random dudes that like it was nothing you know but like I just never had to process that before you guys were both in the elevator I was gonna say wait which one was this
01:01:43
Speaker
Explain this story a little bit more. You and April got into an elevator together. No, no, no, no, no. I was saying I was using that as an example. That's how benign. Oh, like the interaction was like I rode in an elevator with somebody. Exactly. For example. OK, OK, OK. It was like there was nothing to be jealous about, but it didn't keep me from feeling like I wanted to kill people. Oh, no.
01:02:07
Speaker
And just nobody had ever talked about that like nobody that's it's funny like sometimes thinking about the kind of stuff that you spent tons of time talking about in youth group and stuff like tons of time talking about like
01:02:21
Speaker
purity and maintaining your integrity with the opposite sex and stuff. No time talking about how to be in a relationship, how to deal fairly with your partner and all this stuff, how to be a good friend to anyone. How to treat people. I had no idea.
01:02:39
Speaker
Well, it's all stuff that they're like, that's not important. We need to make sure that they don't think that condoms will get them out of purgatory. Oh, my gosh. Well, I think it's such a huge problem is that like when you don't prepare, like when all that set up of like how wrong it is to last and and just the general like problems around
01:03:03
Speaker
being horny or whatever. You get to this point where you're like, if the person you're dating is your good Christian and the person you're dating is going to be a good Christian, at least on your level, then they clearly won't experience these feelings about people that we've been told are wrong. So just even having a general conversation about reasonable, regular, normal human feelings
01:03:30
Speaker
in general like relationship struggles. It's like, oh, I guess this is over before it started. The whole thing's falling apart. How do you manage these emotions? I didn't realize my boyfriend or girlfriend was a giant dirty pervert because they like this or that or thought about this that way or thought, oh, if you think this person's attractive, then I guess you're just going to start fucking around and this thing's over. It just sends you on this spiral.
01:03:54
Speaker
Because you're just you've been so conditioned to think that good Christian people can resist those feelings. So the second you experience somebody's humanity on even the basic level like that, it's like it just spirals. Yeah, it's really jarring. Just like you don't know how to deal with it. Yeah. Yeah. And then the whole thing, it's like, oh, no, now there's no trust. And now that's a whole other thing.
01:04:22
Speaker
How are we going to rebuild all that stuff? It's a lot. Yeah, that's a great point too. Obviously, relationships are built on trust. If your baseline is distrust the second you realize that if you and your significant other walk by somebody and one of those people and they're really just like,
01:04:45
Speaker
I bet they think that person's attractive. I bet they want to have sex with them. It literally obliterates trust on a basic level. You start a relationship with somebody and you start with this baseline of no trust.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to get over. Like, I don't know. It depends on the person, but some people it takes a long time to get over that or it takes a lot of a lot of effort to like start to get over that. Well, there's nobody in the community like there's no prominent people in those in that community that are telling you that you're wrong for thinking that either. Right. Like the everything that you've learned confirms your worst inclinations.
01:05:33
Speaker
Yep. Or you just don't tell anyone about it because you just don't tell anyone about your feelings because you can't trust that they will not judge your feelings when you tell them.
01:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, the judging, yeah, the fear of being judged is definitely, because then you don't want, I think maybe, what do you think about this actually? I'll ask you, do you think that it has to do with it confirming that they might, it might confirm for you that that's not a good person for you to be with, or do you think it's going to confirm that, I don't know, it feels like if you open yourself up and tell somebody about it, who's beholden to that culture and the ideology that we understand,
01:06:14
Speaker
What do you think it is specifically that, what type of judgment is, or are you being fearful of? What do you think?
01:06:24
Speaker
So I think a part of it I think is you tell somebody about it and they will think that there's something wrong with you as a person. Because a lot of times I feel like when you they it's kind of I don't know if it's like directly taught or if it's just a byproduct but if you're with somebody and they're looking at somebody else you think that there's something wrong with you as a as a result of it.
01:06:49
Speaker
And so you telling somebody else about it, maybe they'll confirm that yes, there's something wrong with you. You must be doing something wrong to make this person not want to be 100% devoted to you. And I know different life experiences can also kind of confirm that as well. So it's kind of, I know it's not only that.
01:07:09
Speaker
Like maybe they will tell you like, oh, maybe you shouldn't be with that person. And then deep inside, you don't want to not be with that person. And so you're like, I don't want to hear this person tell me that I should break up with them. I also don't want to hear them tell me there's something wrong with me and what I'm doing and how I think. So I'm just going to keep it in and either hope it goes away or
01:07:31
Speaker
like, take it out on somebody, like, wrongfully. Yeah, yeah, it's like almost turns into a lose-lose, like, it penalizes honesty in any way.
01:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like a lot of things like I didn't feel comfortable a lot of times growing up talking to and I I don't I don't blame like anyone around I don't blame my family or whatever But like growing up for some reason I did not feel comfortable telling Like anyone in my family what was going on with me mentally? I was like, this is not Like I just can't do it. I'll just write it in my diary but even in my diaries I kind of had like
01:08:09
Speaker
different catchphrases that would mean certain other things. Like I would write down a sentence, but that sentence would mean something else, like a deeper feeling or whatever. Like I didn't directly say like, I am feeling this most of the time. Yeah, people peek into my diary. Yeah, you write it in code. Yeah, pretty much. But I knew what it meant. Like if I read it now, like sometimes reading back those entries, I'm just like, OK, I know exactly what I was thinking at that moment. It's really odd.
01:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, it's yeah, I did well, and I think you bring up a good point about like blame. It's really easy to lay every negative thing that you experienced and felt and had trouble with at the feet of some, you know, in our case, it's easy to do like, just put all of this on the church and the youth group, and the purity culture and all of that stuff, you know, and
01:09:06
Speaker
And i don't think that's always fair and it doesn't always like it's not always productive when in fact like some of this stuff is just normal teenage emotions that you know you kind of take responsibility for.
01:09:19
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, that's part of healing from it is realizing like, you know, some of this was just me internalizing these messages or, you know, my worst possible interpretation of some of these teachings and stuff like that.
01:09:37
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And I think, I don't know, I've talked to my therapist about this kind of stuff. And she and I'm just like, is it? Is it just me being like this? Or is it like a result of my upbringing and stuff? And she's like, it's not either one. Like it's like a combination of things. Like you can't like just blame one source for how you think about something today. It's like multiple things kind of like join together and create like what you're thinking and feeling.
01:10:07
Speaker
Yeah. We all knew those kids in Christian, like in our Christian upbringing, youth group, whatever. There were always those kids that didn't give a shit about what we were being taught. They just would, they'd fuck around, they'd do whatever they wanted, and you were resentful of them, and you were like worried about them, but not really. Talking to you, Garrett.
01:10:27
Speaker
So freaking normal. There was always a level of jealousy in your judgment. And so it almost feels like you were saying the combination of general self-esteem, baseline anxiety. Are you an anxious person or are you not? Are you a person who has low self-esteem or not? And you take all those factors and then you combine
01:10:56
Speaker
like a purity culture around that. And then those are the people who get really fucked up by it, probably more so than like Ronnie fucks a lot or whatever his name was from those comic strips who just. Donnie do gooder. Yeah, it's like the opposite of that. Yeah. The one who killed his girlfriend in a motorcycle accident. Oh, yeah. They tried fucking on a motorcycle while driving 90 miles an hour. I think that's how it doesn't work. Ronnie Proudheart. Yeah, his reprehensible. He sleaze bag.
01:11:25
Speaker
so yeah but just the general like yeah because i don't i know so many people who just were like yeah i grew up like that walked away from it or it maybe didn't sometimes those are the people like the ones who like really fucked off the most and didn't give a shit are the ones who like in their 30s after kids are like kind of remind me of
01:11:45
Speaker
like their parents in the way that they're just back in church and just kind of like going it's like yeah we just this is what's right we go to church now like they kind of like settled back in and and didn't really seem to like think a lot deeper about they're just like just fell into that as they once their life settled down I don't know if anyone else feels similar yeah
01:12:07
Speaker
I kind of feel like we, like me and Casey anyway, we've talked about this. We kind of feel like we're like five years behind or whatever with a lot of stuff or like 10 years behind a lot of stuff.
01:12:20
Speaker
I don't know if we experienced a lot of things late in life, and we're like coming to like different realizations late in life, or not late in life, because we're not old or anything. But it just seems like we're like certain mindsets and stuff things we're figuring out. I feel like we should have figured out like 10 years ago. Yeah. Our goal for the summer is to take Molly and go to a rave.
01:12:43
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I think that's 100% true though. Even in the stuff that I experienced with music and being in a band and that being my identity, I feel like I did what 14-year-olds do at 24.
01:13:05
Speaker
you know, yeah, where I had to like actually go, okay, well, it's it's not like the music I like is not who I am. Like there's more to me than that, I hope. But
01:13:17
Speaker
It was, I think like in spite of all of that stuff, one of the things that like is hard to admit sometimes, but I think it's absolutely true for me and maybe not for everybody, but for me, especially like part of the reason that this was so hard to shake off is not just because it was like drilled into us, but it was also because it was comforting.
01:13:38
Speaker
It was like a security blanket and it gave you this assurance that like you knew what life was, you knew what the right path was. Like in spite of being at odds with it some of the time, you felt 100 percent confident that like you had an accurate picture of what things looked like through all of these different teachings and stuff. And that sometimes I think is like the hardest part to admit and the hardest part to let go of. Yeah.
01:14:06
Speaker
I really enjoy being comfortable in all aspects. I find it very easy to like lean back into complacency as well. And so it was, it was a lot of that. I think I really liked my like routine. I really liked this is what I'm thinking and this is what I do or whatever. So if anything shook that up, it was just like, Oh my goodness, the whole world is falling. I have no idea what's going on. So I can definitely see that. You've been around.
01:14:36
Speaker
like around concepts of human sexuality, you know, as a young kid, as a teenager, like those are like, they're not for everyone. Of course they're those, and they're, they probably are for everyone. Like you have those kids in high school who are like, you know, they all talk about sex and wanting to get laid well before anyone does. And there, there is a general fear around it. There's a general like discomfort. There's nervousness. There's, I don't know what I'm doing. Like there's a,
01:15:05
Speaker
just probably a shyness around a wedding. I know, like, I was like, just the fear of like, I don't know, I'm scared that somebody will see me naked together, dumb, like, just literally anything. Like all of your insecurities are under a magnifying glass when it comes to sexuality and navigating that for the first time. And, you know, I at some level, I think purity culture gives anxious kids or kids with low self-esteem or
01:15:35
Speaker
Not it could just be even normal kids who aren't just like, you don't really need to experience anxiety, depression, low self esteem either. But like, it does give you this, this protective feeling of like, I don't have to worry. I don't have to worry about that.
01:15:52
Speaker
I don't have to navigate that. And I can use this as a way to avoid those levels. So then you're stuck with those feelings into your late teens, your early 20s. And at that point that you're getting over any shame around your sexuality, your body, your whatever it is, I think that probably plays into
01:16:17
Speaker
why purity culture, as much as it provides a level of anxiety, I think you can also stick to it because on the flip side of that same coin is a level of comfort in not having to navigate those feelings at a young age where you don't even really know how to navigate your feelings. Yeah, it's true.
01:16:40
Speaker
It was, it's, it's funny because, well, yeah, it's hard because like, I don't know what part of that was that teaching and what part of that was just myself, my natural tendencies. But I mean, I guess, like I said before, it was maybe both at the same time, but I just like didn't, it was really easy for me to just like be like, eh.
01:16:57
Speaker
Whatever. I didn't really long for sex at all. I just didn't think about it. It was like, whatever. I might want a first kiss or whatever, sure, but I was just not interested in that. I couldn't picture myself doing that with anybody, really. Then they're like, oh, okay, so once you get married, then it's a free for all. That's it. You got to just flip a switch and be different. That's a whole other thing.
Exploring Gender and Sexuality Perceptions
01:17:26
Speaker
My sister talked about she's recently like told this story again, but she talked about like going to a sleepover with a bunch of like a group of like girls from the church and stuff that were, you know, girls I knew, you know, people like us that just didn't they never dated. They never had relationships and stuff until like after high school and into college. And they they all pretty much dated and married the first person that they that they had a relationship with. And she said that, you know, they're talking about
01:17:55
Speaker
relationships and stuff. And these girls are like, I want to get married. And I want kids, but I don't want to have sex. Yeah, I just don't want to have it ever. And I remember saying that too. That's like drilled into us. I think like in that in that, in that community, and it's just I don't know, it's just so much undue stress on something that
01:18:19
Speaker
is already like, has a lot of strings attached to it in terms of like your self esteem and self worth. And it's, I don't know, it just puts undue burden on something that, you know, really requires you to be vulnerable and stuff like that to begin with. Yeah.
01:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I have. Okay, so you'll hear polls and statistics and things like that that will that will show that women generally like maybe around porn actually is probably where I've heard a lot of statistics is like oh women are as likely to watch porn as men are.
01:18:57
Speaker
or women are as sexual as men are. That's not the world we grew up in. The world we grew up in is men are really sexual, women are not. I never in my entire life ever, ever, ever heard a single guy say, I don't know if I ever want to have sex. It didn't happen with women.
01:19:17
Speaker
Apparently, the percentage of it isn't big enough to make a difference in the percentage of women who aren't feeling that way when you're polling people as a whole. But I imagine that if you polled evangelical Christians or millennials who grew up evangelical, that they will be disproportionately affected by those messages. Women, in particular,
01:19:46
Speaker
Because that doesn't seem as uncommon like that seems more common than it should be given the statistics and the that I've heard cited over the past five six seven years as I've kind of deconstructed my faith or and been Learning more about human sexuality and the way that purity culture affects people so I think that is super notable that like You wouldn't hear a man say that you would only hear a woman
01:20:14
Speaker
say that who grew up in evangelical culture. I mean, there may be other people that say it, but I definitely feel like it is maybe more common. It would be interesting to do a couple different polls to see what the results were.
01:20:30
Speaker
Yeah, so okay. I'm gonna warp speed ahead of here a little bit. Just kind of like touching on some of that. Like, I feel like we're talking about a lot of the, the struggles involved with relationships and stuff. Overall, you know, I think
01:20:50
Speaker
April and I always like we're able to pull through some of those tough times and stuff. A big part of that was because we've always just been like really good friends. Yes. In spite of whatever was going on with all of that stuff. Like we always just had a ton of fun together and really enjoyed each other's company and stuff. Um, but talking about like moving past purity culture and everything, um,
01:21:15
Speaker
back in. Well, you'd have to tell me how long ago it's been maybe 2013 or something like that.
Empowerment Through Cosplay and Modeling
01:21:22
Speaker
Cosplay stuff. Yeah, so it was talk about cosplay and like the role that that played in helping you deal with some of the things that we're talking about.
01:21:33
Speaker
So for those of you don't know, cosplay is a combination of the word costume and play, and it is not sexual. I mean, some people it is, but not for me. I feel like it's like a recited thing now, but it's basically dressing up when it's not Halloween. I make my own costumes out of or based on characters that I like from video games and other media.
01:22:01
Speaker
And in 2013, I started trying it out and now I'm basically doing it like I kind of built an internet following, which has been a whole lot of interesting times. But I think that it helped me a lot because
01:22:22
Speaker
I met a lot of people during like when I first started and up until today that do like more like sexy modeling type of stuff. And when I first started, I was kind of just like, oh, yikes.
01:22:38
Speaker
these people that do this, they're over there. And then I make costumes, I'm over here and stuff. But then I started meeting people and becoming friends with people that did more modeling type of stuff. And it kind of showed me that these are real people, they do this
01:22:54
Speaker
kind of modeling stuff because they want to. It's not because they're trying to steal your partner or whatever. I was taught when I was younger, any attractive model is trying to steal your husband. They're going to think about them instead of you. That's it. You're done. You're ugly because they're looking at this person. That's it. Eventually, over time,
01:23:18
Speaker
kind of opened my mind to that. And eventually I started doing that kind of modeling, the encouragement of Casey, but, you know, whatever. But now my biggest source of income is an OnlyFans account. So it's kind of like I have sort of become what I used to hate, basically.
01:23:46
Speaker
Which makes it sound pretty awful, but it's not. Yeah. I mean, you know, coming from being encouraged to slut shame as a teen to sort of doing that kind of modeling has been very interesting.
01:23:59
Speaker
It's a lot of weird mind stuff, too, along the way. Yeah. When you started it, you were obviously still unraveling some of the feelings around shame, purity culture, things like that. Did it feel like a big scary move to make that transition? Was there a lot of discomfort? What feelings did you have around finally making the choice to
01:24:26
Speaker
go from what you were doing to something that you thought you wouldn't do before.
01:24:31
Speaker
It was kind of, it was kind of nerf racking. And even still, like every time I would post something or every time we would do a set, I would be like kind of nervous about like what kind of pictures I was doing. Like, Oh no, like people are going to like see me. And cause I was always the person who would like in high school, I would change in the lot, the like bathroom stall. I didn't want anyone to see me in any, any state of undress at all or whatever. But, uh,
01:25:00
Speaker
I don't know, I'm not going to lie, the income potential was a pretty big motivator. I always say if I could, not saying this is what you're doing. I'm just saying this for myself. If I could spread my butt cheeks on OnlyFans for a full salary, I'd do it. I mean, I don't have to spread. I don't want to brag, but I don't have to spread them to make a decent income.
01:25:25
Speaker
It's true. Just touch it on the costume side of things, which is where you started just making screen accurate video game costumes and stuff. Yes. There's a lot of things that happened here that
01:25:41
Speaker
helped along the way towards making peace with some of the purity culture stuff. But I feel like it represented a big change in your life. Like at the most basic level, I think it was like you had something that you were really good at, like making the costumes and stuff that you could pour yourself into and that you really built it. You know, you really found a spot in a community
01:26:08
Speaker
doing that, like lots of great friends and stuff like that that were all just like vibrant, creative people. Yeah, yeah, that was that was a big part of it helped me because for a while a little bit before that I was kind of between jobs and I didn't really have a ton of hobbies. And so like I wasn't extremely happy, I guess, like there's like an undercurrent of like dissatisfaction with my things that were going on, I guess. And discovering that hobby kind of
01:26:37
Speaker
brought a sort of new vibrancy to my life, I guess, and a new confidence. I felt like I could make stuff and have it turn out pretty well for the time. And we were doing pictures, and we were going on trips and stuff to do photos and everything, learning photography. And I was always learning new things about each costume. So I think that kind of kickstarted a confidence level that I didn't really have before.
01:27:07
Speaker
There's like, I feel like at a really basic level, like part of what purity culture teaches girls is like, don't draw attention to yourself. Like don't do anything that draws attention to you because that's dirty and that's wrong. And I mean, even at the most basic level, like making costumes and going to a Comic Con and taking pictures with people like is such a benign like,
01:27:34
Speaker
you know, a pure hearted activity. And I feel like even even that in like a purity culture setting would draw like the ire of some people. Yeah, like even going back to like college days, like I wanted like
01:27:49
Speaker
the attention and the friendship of people, but if it became anything closer than that, I was just like, oh, no, no, no, no. That's it. No closer, please. But as time went on, when we were doing the costume thing, it showed me like, oh, no, it's okay to get recognition and stuff for things that you make and everything. So that helped me a lot, I think.
01:28:15
Speaker
Sometimes I think about like how bad I am at accepting a compliment and it's like embarrassing. Oh my gosh. But I feel like that's part of it. And maybe that's not a purity culture thing. That's just like a quiet Midwestern conservative sort of culture thing. But like when somebody says that you did a really good job on something, you have to be like, no, no, no.
01:28:43
Speaker
Like, it's it's awkward for somebody to just recognize that you did good at something. And that's almost like what was happening on a regular basis with cosplay. Like, you know, you were getting recognition for making these costumes and dressing up as characters that I mean, you were you just you looked so much like the character. You know, people were constantly like, man, you did such a great job on this costume. You're like a perfect Elizabeth from Bioshock and stuff like that. And
01:29:13
Speaker
Like maybe at the, in the beginning, like that's part of what helped was just like learning how to take those, that positive recognition, you know? Yeah. I think it was mostly just like surprising. Cause I feel like I was, I feel like I don't know. I feel like I could sometimes accept the compliments or whatever, but like, I would always kind of like maybe joke about something else afterwards or whatever. Cause I don't think I had.
01:29:38
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I guess I didn't grow up in the Midwest either. So it's like, kind of a little, maybe different in that way, I'm not sure. But it was kind of like, I definitely was surprised though, like that the first time that we went to like a show or whatever, I was like, wow, people want my picture.
01:29:57
Speaker
I don't know if it was like surprise or like, not suspicion, but kind of just like, what is this? Why are they doing this? I'm sure you had to start along, somewhere along the way, you started getting some unwelcome compliments from, because I know, I mean, the internet's full of really classy people, I know, and they're very much a stand up community. Oh yeah, 99%.
01:30:24
Speaker
I'm sure you've, what kind of weirdo deflecting have you had to do? Any cease and desists? Oh, we've sent so many. So many. Like, and I'll say, like, people will take your, like, if you upload pictures to OnlyFans or Patreon, people will take them and distribute them wherever. Revenge porn websites. It's really great. It's awesome.
01:30:44
Speaker
There looks like thank you great person who's providing a service of giving free content Mostly unknown internet person
01:30:55
Speaker
It's so dumb. Anyway, but yeah, um, ever since basically ever since I started, I've been dealing with, uh, annoying people online. The, the first time that I ever remember dealing with that is I made the grave mistake of uploading pictures of myself to Imdr the, uh, the standup website of Imdr full of classy people who say things like,
01:31:24
Speaker
Rape is the only thing that comes to mind. Yeah. I'm looking at a picture of my face. It's so awful. The other classic from my Facebook page is wood cream pie. Okay. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. They don't need to ask my permission or anything. It's funny. You don't need many words either. No. Just wood cream pie. No need a lot. They're definitely not a caveman at all.
01:31:54
Speaker
2 out of 10 makes my penis burp. Oh my gosh. The internet thing came in waves over the years because it's weird how much it's changed building a following online. When you first started out,
01:32:15
Speaker
I mean, you could still like if you had 10,000 people on your Facebook fan page, like you could reach most of those people posting something. Yeah. But then the further along it got, the more it was necessary for something to like go viral for you to like gain followers and stuff. Yeah. And the viral moments were always like, it was great because you're like, man, I'm getting like a whole bunch of new followers and stuff. But then you also get an influx of just the worst people. You spend like a week doing damage control.
01:32:46
Speaker
Just filtering out and blocking perverts. Pretty much. I just like pick out a random detail and be like, you've disgusting elbows. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I think my favorite is when people try and point out something that they think is inaccurate to the character and I can prove them wrong with a screenshot. It's the best thing ever. Like one time somebody told me, I mean, and like, obviously people can cosplay whatever they want. You don't have to look just like the character or anything, but
01:33:15
Speaker
I personally tried to look like the characters, and one time someone told me that one of my costumes I needed to hit the gym because I wasn't muscular enough. My legs were too skinny.
01:33:28
Speaker
And it was a character that is pretty slender. And so I sent them a picture of her with her little chicken legs. I was like, eh, got it wrong. Wrong. I'm right. Or they'd be like, your wig isn't thin enough or something, or needs more dirt. And I'm just like, this character's not dirty. She has no dirt upon her.
01:33:54
Speaker
why didn't you make yourself taller? Yeah, it's such a strange, those are such strange criticisms when it's like, you know, you're not that person. Yeah, it's not real. You can only do so much to make yourself look exactly like that person barring plastic surgery before each shoot. Right, or like, they'd be like, oh, you should have used real metal. And I'm just like, oh yeah, with the forge in my backyard.
01:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, cool. Six foot sword. Like yeah, that'd be 120 pounds. Definitely not gonna lift that over my head. No, thanks. I'm good. The some of the funniest ones are the people who like there's a certain segment of followers that just come back with the same thing over and over and over again. Oh my gosh. Like
01:34:48
Speaker
There's a guy on Facebook that every picture she's posted for like five years, he comments gorgeous hugs on, on every photo, every photo he's in there. Like there's multiple emojis in there too. Like roses and hearts and all those, you know, the rose emoji. Do you feel that the rose emoji is the most romantic of her emojis?
01:35:14
Speaker
Oh, totally. It definitely shouldn't be deleted the next time Apple doesn't update. It seems so interesting that somebody would be, look, I mean, no knock on you. It's cool that you have fans that are there to support. I've just, but when someone's consistently commenting and investing on a level like that for five years, it's like, yeah, what, who are you? And do you have a real life as well?
01:35:42
Speaker
The answer is no. No. Definitely not. Like this is moved from something that's just like I'm a fan to I'm obsessed and I have a sex doll that looks just like you.
01:35:54
Speaker
Sorry. I mean, you know, at this point, I would not be surprised. Someone out there's got one, whatever. It's just like a scarecrow stuff. Other than K.C. for one year out of 10. Yeah, right. Just don't talk to me about it. Do whatever you want. Just don't talk to me about it. Like, why do you got to tell me about it?
01:36:16
Speaker
Okay, so you got to talk about the craziest moment in all of this, which was the Taylor Swift thing.
Internet Fame and Its Challenges
01:36:26
Speaker
Oh, yes. So I had a couple makeup looks go viral a couple years ago. A couple. So what happened was, I think it was
01:36:37
Speaker
I don't know what magazine it was. Some magazine that does online articles was like, hey, they emailed me and they said, hey, can we really like your Taylor Swift books? Can we do an article about you? And I didn't get the message until the next morning. And by the time I was getting ready to reply, they had already published the article with all my pictures on it.
01:36:58
Speaker
It was like, Taylor Swift lookalike, whatever, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And that sparked a lot of unpleasantries. It grew my count a lot, which was good.
01:37:14
Speaker
I guess like it made my Instagram grow and stuff. And I got like a little gig where I went on, did like a TV segment where they showed like, you know, like steel celebrity style, like poor man Taylor Swift outfit for $20 and stuff. And they had like a, it was like a sec. It was on, what was it? Harry Connick Jr. show. Um, yeah. So they had like a steel celebrity style, um, segment and they had me and a girl who looked like Ariana Grande and a girl who looked like Rihanna.
01:37:41
Speaker
come out in an outfit that was an affordable option of what they would wear or something like that, which was fun. It was cool, all that stuff. I had some cool things happen, but I had a lot of
01:37:55
Speaker
A lot of weird things happen as well. A lot of mean teenagers decided to tell me that I was ugly. Or telling me like, you can't be her. There's only one. I'm just like, obviously. Duh. What's the deal here? Who cares? Why is it such a big deal? But they were very offended that I wore red lipstick and winged liner. It was very offensive to them.
01:38:25
Speaker
Well, and like, so this one article came out and what, what we learned through this experience is that all of the clickbait articles that you see, like all of those publications just like copy and paste each other's work. They're just, they're just constantly putting out content, right? Yeah. Cause after that, there was like five, six, seven other articles that came out right after that.
01:38:48
Speaker
is a bunch. I mean, over the course of like a couple of months, it was probably 30 articles. Yeah, it was like Cosmo and Yahoo and all those, you know, whatever, not really news. Yeah. As you Google April Gloria Taylor Swift, like, and just click news and like a ton of different articles come up. And it's all the same stuff. Like they use the same pictures. Same pictures from 2016.
01:39:15
Speaker
But but yeah, it was just a weird experience. Got a lot of radio stations that were like, Hey, can you come in and pretend to be Taylor Swift and try to trick people? Yeah, I did an interview on a local radio station. And then they were like, Hey, do you want to come to this tiny Kansas mall?
01:39:34
Speaker
and pretend to be her and see if we can trick people into thinking that Taylor Swift is at our tiny little Kansas mall. I'm just like, no, thank you. First of all, I am only five foot five. She is like five foot 10 or even taller in heels. There's no way that people are that stupid. Well, I wouldn't say that. I mean, people aren't super smart.
01:40:00
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I feel like it would have just been embarrassing. For you. That's embarrassing. Because then you have to be like, gotcha. And then you have to deal with people being like, oh, we're going to murder you now. So that's not fun. And then it felt like they were just using me for fodder almost. Well, they just want people to listen to their stupid fucking show probably. Yeah.
01:40:22
Speaker
Local radio is the worst medium. It's like they do prank calls and stuff. You're just like, Oh my gosh. In their trash. You're like, that's not even a prank. That's just like, Hey, uh, your son was in a horrible car wreck and he's on life support. Gotcha. You're like, that's not a prank call. Just kidding. It's Mojo in the morning. You just want two free tickets to, uh, to stay dead state fair. They put like a, like a falling down noise or something.
01:40:57
Speaker
There's always a fart noise. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.
01:41:04
Speaker
Yeah, I got a lot of weird messages after that, like a lot of a lot of strange comments and messages. I actually have a folder on my phone for all of like the weird messages that I get, not all of them, because a lot of times, like before this, I just deleted them all. But I was getting such an influx and I'm like, man, I got to save these so I can look back and laugh at how stupid they are. These are my favorite. My folder is called Dumb Dumb Boys.
01:41:30
Speaker
And the first one that I have in here, uh, I don't know when it was sent. Oh, 2017. So like right after all this stuff was happening, it says, it was an email to me. He says, can I ask a favor? I am of the opinion that women are more beautiful without makeup in terms of the look without makeup. Could you send a picture after looking? I promise I will delete.
01:41:53
Speaker
Oh, after looking, I promise I will delete. I'm sure you will. It is very trustworthy. No one's ever followed through on that promise. No. I love the, I like that lane of guy who's like, who thinks that because they tell women they look bad, like they, that's a virtue to them. They think they're like super virtuous. I think it's the ultimate compliment to tell, like, dude, stop crying. And streams, like, you don't even have to try, you don't have to spend time putting on makeup in front of me because I'm just so obsessed with you.
01:42:22
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's like boomer compliment. That's something that your your uncle tells your aunt. He's like, she she gets all dressed up and puts on makeup and stuff. And he's like, you don't need all that makeup. Like as if it's a compliment, as if it's like, oh, you're so pretty without it. What it what it actually translates to is like, you look horrible and I don't like it. Washing off like, oh, my gosh, how dare she put on makeup because she likes how she looks in it. Wow.
01:42:52
Speaker
You're allowed to express yourself. No. Yeah. If you're a single dude and you're listening right now and you're just trying to figure out how to connect with a girl, don't do that. No, no, no, no. Say, wow, your makeup looks great. That's it. Yeah. I love you. She put effort into it. She's wearing purple eyeshadow. Like I love your purple eyeshadow.
01:43:14
Speaker
She picked that purple eyeshadow for a reason, okay? These tips are for free. Because she likes it. You don't even have to subscribe to our OnlyFans for these, so... Yeah, that's for free. You're welcome. Yeah. Let me see if I can find some other... Yeah. Waiting for another one here. Oh, there's always the... There's some current ones. Let's see. Oh, this is one with a spelling error. I think spelling errors are kind of funny.
01:43:42
Speaker
They say, when you walk in the streets, people might ask you for an author graft. Thank you, Taylor.
01:43:52
Speaker
That's such a lame thing to say anyway. I get that so much. People are like, oh my gosh, do people stop you in the street? And I'm just like, no, they never do. Literally never. Let's be honest. If Taylor wasn't near where Taylor lives, if she was in the Midwest and just threw on sweatpants and a t-shirt
01:44:17
Speaker
and put her hair back in a ponytail and walked into a store, bought a gallon of milk and walked out. I'm sure nobody would say anything like that. Right. Like you you can be a celebrity and be like a little it's hard to be normal if you're in your certain area. But like you're there's plenty of people who look enough like like if you're in New York and you see someone who looks like Conan, it's probably Conan and you're going to say hi to him. But like, right. I don't know. You're in the middle of Kansas. Like honestly, you think
01:44:50
Speaker
If Taylor Swift is in Kansas, she's just doing whatever. Is she really going to walk out with a winged liner and red lipstick? I don't think she's going to do that. It would be like, if you're a celebrity, you want to minimize the amount of paparazzi when you just want to mind your own business.
01:45:06
Speaker
At that point, people would be like, that looks a lot like Taylor. What's Taylor doing in Kansas? Probably nothing. That's probably not Taylor. And then they just go about their business. Exactly. It's a weird glamorization of that kind of thing.
01:45:20
Speaker
I don't wear that makeup out in public very much. I don't know. It did get to a point where I purposefully stopped wearing that sort of makeup, like the red lipstick and stuff. I haven't worn red lipstick in forever now because I don't want... I don't know. It's a really weird thing.
01:45:41
Speaker
on. It's like a whole. Yeah, to just be constantly accused of trying to look like somebody else and you're just trying to wear red lipstick like everybody. Yeah, because because that was a whole other thing. It's like, oh, you're intentionally copying her entire life. Like, you know, there's just a couple, you know, a couple features that kind of sort of line up sometimes. And like maybe like, well, one thing, like I always hated my natural hair color, which happens to be like an ash blonde that Taylor Swift's hair is.
01:46:11
Speaker
and looking at that color on her I'm like wow that looks great like maybe I'm cool with my natural hair color now like it kind of helped me kind of come to grips with that.
01:46:20
Speaker
like the eyebrow shape. Like I never wanted like to have like, I always thought like all my eyebrows look too angry. Like I don't want to look angry. Like my arch, like I would, I wanted like straight, like Daenerys eyebrows. Like I really wanted those like thick, like straight eyebrows, but like seeing them on, on Taylor kind of was like, okay, so she looks pretty. And like other people too, like Nicole Kidman has this really arch eyebrows. I was like, they look great.
01:46:42
Speaker
and they have those eyebrows, maybe it's okay if I have those eyebrows too. It's actually helped me in some sort of way in a weird way, but in other ways it's just kind of like, it's been real weird. Do you have a favorite that you want to send us off with? A favorite comment?
01:47:05
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's so many. There's so many. Hold on. Let me look and see. Well, there's a couple. There's one that's like, are you trying to look like Taylor Swift? It's sad. Makes me sad. Makes me sad. Oh, another one. You will look prettier if you don't wear makeup. Heart emoji.
01:47:27
Speaker
Nice. Here's a classic smiley face. Eat less pretty gal and maintain your beautiful. Oh Jesus. Eat less. Eat less. Yep. Okay. Maintain your beautiful.
01:47:46
Speaker
Oh, and I also had to change my phone number because I kept getting email or kept getting text messages from like promoters in the Bay Area that wanted me to come to their events and stuff. I don't know how my phone number got leaked somewhere. It was somewhere online and somebody called me.
01:48:04
Speaker
And Casey answered the phone and then they hung up and then they said, they messaged me and they were like, Oh, is this April? Like I want you to come to my daughter's birthday party as Taylor Swift. And I'm just like, who is this? And how did you get my number? And they were like, Oh, are you mad? I'm like, uh, I'm not happy. There's been some weird things over the years. Yeah. Well, yeah, sorry. Well, at one point.
01:48:31
Speaker
We were leaving the house and the mail truck pulled up and we live in the middle of nowhere. Tiny, tiny town. Yeah. There's only a few houses like within, you know, five square miles of us. We're just out there. And so the mail guy pulls up.
01:48:48
Speaker
And he's a young kid that I've never seen before. He's got some mail for us. So I just walk across the street to get it from him directly. And he goes, is your wife, is she that Taylor Swift girl? And I'm like, I don't know if they do HR training when you get hired on at the post office. But I can't imagine that this is something that's not against policy.
01:49:12
Speaker
Like great, now somebody knows where we live and like, yeah, just like bizarre things like that over the years. I think the absolute weirdest, most uncomfortable thing was a guy who on Instagram created a group chat with me and Taylor Swift's official account and proceeded to type out a role play situation between the three of us with photos.
01:49:41
Speaker
Oh my God. Dude, it was good actually. It was like, you come down the stairs and I greet you and we have dinner and there's a picture of a fake cruise ship inside or something like that.
01:50:00
Speaker
a picture of a girl tied up or something like that. Afterwards, it was like, you both say, that was great. Let's go get ice cream. It's like that always sunny episode where Dennis is writing his erotic novel.
01:50:20
Speaker
He's like, dude, your boobs are awesome. Oh, my gosh. It's literally like that kind of like my first thought was like, oh, my gosh, I hope that like out of all the millions of messages that she gets, I hope this is not the one that she sees and attaches my name to because I was I'm not a willing participant in this. Absolutely not.
01:50:43
Speaker
What if that was your first conversation? Taylor actually responds. She's like, oh my gosh, this is really messed up, guys. I'd be like, I hate this. I hate it. Yeah. Well, April, thanks for joining us.
01:51:02
Speaker
Oh, thanks for having me. Appreciate you recounting some fun stories and comments. I've got enough of those to last 10 years. Yeah, that means about the span of time it's been since we've last talked. Pretty much. I got enough. You can be here for a while.
01:51:24
Speaker
So thanks everybody for listening. We'll be back on Tuesday with another regular episode of Growing Up Christian. And if you're not in the discord, you know, definitely jump in there. You can find the link on any of our social media pages and you can talk to me and Sam and April.
April Gloria's Online Platforms and Community Engagement
01:51:46
Speaker
And if you want to, if you want to see my costumes, you can look at me on Instagram.
01:51:50
Speaker
Yes, at underscore April Gloria because somebody has taken at April Gloria unfairly So I got costumes on there. I have a Facebook page April Gloria cosplay I also have only fans if you're into that sort of thing as well as a patreon and I also stream on Twitch I play video games on Twitch Mondays and Wednesdays at 1 p.m. Central time
01:52:15
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, you know, if you do want to send in your erotic fan fiction, um, April's not really into it, but you know, feel free to include me and Sam in any of those descriptions. So if you pay them, then they'll rate it for you. I'll rate your fan fiction.
01:52:33
Speaker
I will even read it on the podcast. Oh, thank good money. If you were like for 20 bucks, I'll proofread your fan fiction for spelling errors. Perfect. Well, thanks everybody for listening and we will catch you next.