Unlike my hole, the word love is overloaded. We break down love the Greek way, how straight people’s view of gay love affects our rights, love languages (and the shithead that created them), and what queer love can teach straight people.
In this episode: News- 3:13 || Main Topic (Love)- 19:24 || Gayest & Straightest- 1:29:52
Coming to the Patreon bonus segment, Mike share gay love letters from history, and everyone melts. Get tons of bonus content for $5/mo at patreon.com/gayishpodcast.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
INTRO MUSIC [MIKE JOHNSON SINGING]
When you know that you are queer but your favorite drink is beer, that’s Gayish. You can bottom without stopping but you can’t stand going shopping, that’s Gayish. Oh, Gayish. You’re probably Gayish. Oh life’s just too short for narrow stereotypes. Oh, it’s Gayish. We’re all so Gayish. It’s Gayish with Mike and Kyle.
MIKE JOHNSON
Hello everyone in the podcast universe! This is Gayish,
KYLE GETZ
the podcast that sometimes gets serious and thinks about the generations of gay men that came before us and never knew what it was to hear a Beyonce song on the radio.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, yeah, but I bet, I bet they play her on repeat in the afterlife. Like the gay disco dance party.
KYLE GETZ
There’s just a Beyonce room.
MIKE JOHNSON
[laughs] I’m Mike Johnson.
KYLE GETZ
I’m Kyle Getz.
MIKE JOHNSON
And we’re here to bridge the gap between sexuality and actuality. And today the Beyonce room.
KYLE GETZ
The Beyonce.
MIKE JOHNSON
That’s what we’re talking about, Kyle.
KYLE GETZ
Today’s episode is the Beyonce room. Is it that Beyonce is there? Or that they’re playing Beyonce? Or everyone is Beyonce? What’s your fantasy Beyonce room?
MIKE JOHNSON
Like a room made out of Beyonces? That’s grotesque!
KYLE GETZ
Beyonce is the wallpaper? It’s heaven, it’s fine! Everyone, it’s something that’s cool and not gross in heaven.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, god. Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
We’re, we’re talking about…
MIKE JOHNSON
Looove.
KYLE GETZ
It’s almost Valentine’s Day.
MIKE JOHNSON
It is almost Valentine’s Day.
KYLE GETZ
So this is a, you know…
MIKE JOHNSON
Just one more reminder of crushing loneliness.
KYLE GETZ
It’s a little bit for like those that are not in a relationship to help commiserate and remind us that we were in this together a little bit.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Even when we’re alone.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Yeah. But first?
KYLE GETZ
I could I feel like there was something beautiful in what I said. And if I thought about it, and like it could have been—anyway—
MIKE JOHNSON
I mean, I’ll hear it later. Like, I’ll listen to the show. I always listen to the show once just like hear what you’ve edited out and what you kept. And I’ll let you know if what you said was profound or not when I hear it again.
KYLE GETZ
Thanks, if it makes it! But first?
MIKE JOHNSON
But first, I have a quick correction of sorts. Okay. I had said I went on a tirade about how hot Steven Strait is from The Expanse and that I was upset that nobody told me. The Wow Guildies told me they told me months ago, a year ago, that I should be watching that show because that boy hot and I just, I like, I acknowledge your presence in my life. And I promise to do better at listening to you in the future, you beautiful, beautiful weirdos.
KYLE GETZ
All right, that’s very nice of you to do that for them. Your correction center is sometimes like I didn’t do life perfectly. Which like that’s, we don’t need to correct our lives.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, look, that’s true.
KYLE GETZ
You’re like, in one episode I said, the date on this was 1983 and it was 1983 and a half! Like, corrections could be like, here’s a giant thing that was wrong, or that was mean. Anyway, I guess you do. Do what you want. I support you.
MIKE JOHNSON
Great.
KYLE GETZ
Hey, hey, Wow Guild. I never talked to you. Nor do I plan to. But I still love you.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Um.
KYLE GETZ
News?
MIKE JOHNSON
Time for the news!
NEWS THEME MUSIC [MIKE JOHNSON SINGING]
Shut your mouth hole. It’s time for your ear holes, news, news, news.
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay. First up, in a way I like—somebody very important to our community is now enjoying the Beyonce room in heaven. We’re gonna talk about him.
KYLE GETZ
Oh boy, that’s—wait. Sorry. Can I interrupt your important thing with something less important?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yes.
KYLE GETZ
I forgot what it was. Oh, The Expanse.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Didn’t you talk to like an actor in The Expanse? Didn’t they message us and say they listened?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Yeah!
KYLE GETZ
Hi!
MIKE JOHNSON
Hi!
KYLE GETZ
We—you’re not—okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
Well, apparently they’re a recurring character that’s going to happen in season five. So I don’t really actually know who they are yet. But like, yes, they had a—there’s a listener who was on The Expanse who reached out to us and yeah!
KYLE GETZ
And you’re being vague because we don’t know if we’re allowed to say who this is.
MIKE JOHNSON
Or if like maybe we want to have a chat with them on the show. Oh, maybe I want to bang them and like I like you know, there’s just a world of possibilities, Kyle!
KYLE GETZ
Sure. Let’s keep it vague. It’s funny being able to vague post but like on your own podcast. That’s fun. Okay. Okay. Who died? Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. entered the Beyonce room in heaven.
MIKE JOHNSON
You know, the, the newest occupant of the Beyonce room in heaven. Arnie Kantrowitz, who is a pioneering activist for the gay community is dead at the age of 81. He is perhaps best known as being one of the co-founders of GLAAD.
KYLE GETZ
Wow.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation was formed in 1985, and he was one of the people that was part of that beginning. But he also before that was an early champion of gay rights and quote, “an indefatigable campaigner for fair treatment of gay people by the media.”
KYLE GETZ
Now, what does indefetigifatigable mean specifically?
MIKE JOHNSON?
Indefatigable?
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
Like, you never run out of energy. You never get fatigued.
KYLE GETZ
Oh.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Um, he was the vice president of the Gay Activists Alliance, which was one of the first groups founded in the wake of the Stonewall riots in 1970.
KYLE GETZ
What was that called? Sorry, I don’t think I’ve heard of it.
MIKE JOHNSON
Gay Activists Alliance.
KYLE GETZ
Oh, okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
GAA, or the gaaaaaay.
KYLE GETZ
Okay, yes, there’s the GAA and then there’s….
MIKE JOHNSON
He also was a professor in the English department at the City University of New York Colleges, New York’s College of Staten Island, from 1965 to 2006. He created one of the first gay studies courses in the nation. He promoted the work of Walt Whitman and other gay writers. In 1977, he published a memoir Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay, in which he talked about the difficulties that he and other gay people faced in mid-century America. He was open about the fact that he twice tried to commit suicide. And it is yeah, he’s just was really, really important to us and our history and has now passed. Unfortunately, he passed of complications of COVID-19. But yeah, he was 81. And now he gets to listen to Love on Top on repeat, I guess.
KYLE GETZ
Do you think hell has like a Björk room of hell or something? Like, what’s—
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah, what would be—
KYLE GETZ
Like where Christian fundamentalists go? Or something? I don’t know.
MIKE JOHNSON
Michael W. Smith on repeat. They like—they’re a bunch of Christian rock folks who loved that reference just now.
KYLE GETZ
I just smiled and pretended, like I do during sex.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yep. Sayonara, Arnie. Thanks for everything.
KYLE GETZ
Worst end to the segment! Let’s move on to news number two!
MIKE JOHNSON
I haven’t even had that much wine yet!
KYLE GETZ
Sayonara, ol’ buddy!
MIKE JOHNSON
News, the second. So Jonathan Van Ness and Sean Penn have been fighting on Twitter.
KYLE GETZ
Okay, okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
Which is, which is pretty interesting. It all started when Sean Penn did a interview in The Independent, and he said, quote, “I think that men have, in my view, become quite feminized. I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them. There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans with a J and putting on a skirt.” And this, like, weird, toxically masculine idea that, like, men are becoming feminized and masculinity is disappearing is just such bullshit. And you see it in a lot of places.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
I didn’t expect it from like, liberal elite Sean Penn, who’s not known for being a conservative fuckface by any means.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. But isn’t he known as being kind of an asshole just in general, like in his life
MIKE JOHNSON
And difficult to work with or whatever?
KYLE GETZ
I love that because that’s usually what they say about women when they like, just have an opinion. So like, for Sean Penn to like, get that, “but oh, he’s so difficult to work with,” I kind of love that.
MIKE JOHNSON
He said, quote, “I’m in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized. I don’t think that to be fair to women, that we should become them.”
KYLE GETZ
Wow, that attitude is—to draw something very long reach that I completely believe in—I think this is why we have school shootings. I think the idea that men can’t talk about our emotions and need to be a certain way contributes to violence in white cis men who don’t have any other outlet and are having either mental health issues or we know that, like men commit suicide more often, like there is a disease of masculinity. And this is a perfect example of the shitty behavior that tells men that you have to be a certain way and any female quality is bad. Any traditional stereotypical feminine quality is bad. And that includes prob—I mean, he’s talking about the way you dress, but the implication there is probably talking about things or having feelings or emotions. Or we’re talking about love, like loving people. Like there’s so many things that men masculine traditional masculinity doesn’t allow men to do or be.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, I’m suddenly reminded, I think I’ve told this story before, I’m suddenly reminded of my grandparents who would just flip the fuck out if they saw somebody with their pants riding too low. It’s yeah, underwear. And like, I mean, inevitably, it was a Brown person, right. But they’re not upset about the race. It’s not racist. They’re upset at the pants, right? Like, it’s just interesting that he would talk about like, wearing skirts instead of jeans as being like, the entry point for this and sort of in denial that it’s anything to do with misogyny or homophobia. Yeah, just it’s so so fucking stupid. Well, anyway, JVN got back to him on Twitter and said, quote, first of all, “I’m nonbinary. Second, @SeanPenn, your remarks are ignorant, transphobic and devoid of intelligence. My cowardly genes have more strength, resolve, and beauty than you could understand. Sean is suffering from toxic masculinity and needs to watch Getting Curious.” Have you seen Getting Curious?
KYLE GETZ
Watch it? I thought it was a podcast.
MIKE JOHNSON
Well, I don’t know. I’m just reading the tweet.
KYLE GETZ
I’m just here to read the tweet. The teleprompter said to read—Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
It’s his Netflix show.
KYLE GETZ
Gotcha.
MIKE JOHNSON
And this article switches between he, she, and they pronouns for JVN because those are their pronouns.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
And so yeah, they recently launched their own Netflix show Getting Curious based on their podcast of the same name, where they examine topics from vaccine misinformation to the Panama Canal.
KYLE GETZ
Okay, can I go on a side rant that I both support JVN and here we go?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
I just, a celebrity podcast where they interview people they think are interesting and learn about topics is like I’m—that’s so boring. Tell me you wanted to do a podcast and didn’t have an idea without telling you wanted to do a podcast and didn’t have an idea. That’s like, it’s just I think, Adam Conway who did, I forget what it’s called, the truth, Adam’s Truth. Adam Ruins Everything!
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay.
KYLE GETZ
That was such a well-done TV show that I haven’t heard the podcast—turned into a podcast that like, let me learn about things and tell you why you’re wrong about these. But like, everything else is just like, someone said you needed a podcast.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
I just get so frustrated when celebrities are like, let me get like, we’ll do it an advice show. I’m unqualified with Anna Ferris. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Like, let me give you advice. Like that format is funny, interesting, the first time and I’m so annoyed that so many celebrities like get into the podcast thing. Don’t respond to our requests for an interview, and then like…
MIKE JOHNSON
What I just heard you say is thank god we’re not famous. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be as interesting.
KYLE GETZ
To be nice to myself for once in my life—
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay, great.
KYLE GETZ
I think the fact that anyone listens to us and we like have no, like—we are not famous and no one knows who the fuck we are. Like, we are not coming from like, you know, you’ll always see like actors that are like, oh, yeah, like, well, his dad was like, fucking I don’t know, I can’t think of any actors. But like, you know, like, we came from nothing. And so you have to, like, think you have to put more work into—you have to have more interesting ideas. You have to actually have a concept that resonates with people and celebrities just get to be like, Oh, don’t even listen to me like I want to go do this thing. Cool. Oh, oh, I learned about this fact! Cool, that’s the whole show.
MIKE JOHNSON
Now I’m gonna go be famous over here.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, exactly.Yes. Okay. I support you in what you’re saying JVN. Good for you, love it. Love it. Love the skirt.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yep. Yep. And I also think I’ve said this quote on the show before but I’m gonna say it again. When Van Ness came out in the Advocate’s sister publication OUT Magazine, she said, quote, “Some days I feel like a man. But then other days I feel like a woman. I don’t really—I think my energies are really all over the place. Any opportunity I have to break down stereotypes of the binary I am down for it. I’m here for it. I think a lot of times gender is used to separate and divide. It’s this social construct that I don’t really feel like I fit into the way I used to.”
KYLE GETZ
Fuck, I completely change—I’m like, we need people that are nonbinary, that are trans, that are queer. Like we need those people like hosting shows and being like all over the place. So I take it back. Do any podcasts you want. Like I want those voices to be more prevalent and out there. So I retract. I apologize—this is a correction on what I just said mere moments ago. I should, yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
Great.
KYLE GETZ
Is this still the news?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. News the last?
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, sorry, I’m making this way too long
MIKE JOHNSON
In what is my favorite news story of the week, New Delhi in India has the Gaya airport, GAYA. And their airport code is GAY. G-A-Y. So you can fly from PDX to GAY and that is you know Portland to—
KYLE GETZ
I mean, you’re leaving gay to go to GAY.
MIKE JOHNSON
Right. New Delhi, India. Anyway so Parliament in India had tried to get it changed because they think it is, quote, “inappropriate.”
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, this is great. Okay. Okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
There was a report from the Parliament from the Committee on Public Undertakings that wants to change the airport code and they said that it was quote “inappropriate unsuitable, offensive and embarrassing.” they suggested YAG as the alternative, which is just gay backwards. We still win.
KYLE GETZ
That’s just a gay laying on his back!
MIKE JOHNSON
And it’s interesting then because the International Air Transport Association, the IATA, which is the international body that gets to decide these things, they ended up saying quote, “Gaya airport IATA code GAY, has been in use since operationalization of Gaya airstrip. Hence, without a justifiable reason primarily concerning air safety, IATA has expressed its inability to change the code of Gaya airport.” They said nah, bitch. Fuckin’ deal with it.
KYLE GETZ
Okay, a very great response. If I could just, I wish they would have said, we can but we won’t. Can’t, like they can, but like we can’t, but we won’t, like that would have been even better. But I love it.
MIKE JOHNSON
Or just a memo on like really fancy looking letterhead that said “you’re inappropriate!”
KYLE GETZ
Yes. No signature, like, yeah, the seal and whatever. Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yep. So their stance is that codes are permanent unless there is a serious safety concern, and this does not meet that bar. That’s the news.
KYLE GETZ
That’s the news! Um, well, if you want to become a safety concern, sign up for our Patreon! I would like to thank the following new Patreon members: Chen Lang Wang, who my autocorrect changed their last name to Wangler. So I’m, I also enjoyed that as a nickname maybe for you. Jared.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, I was gonna say Just Jared, but then
KYLE GETZ
is that a website? Or is that a trashy website?
MIKE JOHNSON
The dude from Subway? That’s not good.
KYLE GETZ
No, we don’t want any of that. Paul McDonnell?
MIKE JOHNSON
Great. Okay.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, I guess we have nothing to say. You have three capital letters in your name. Okay. That’s a thing I pointed out. Um, yeah. Yeah. All right.
MIKE JOHNSON
Great. Next.
KYLE GETZ
Mm. Yeah. Alright. Russian judge gets you six out of 10. James Wood.
MIKE JOHNSON
Wait. Oh, like the actor? Who’s on The Simpsons all the time? No?
KYLE GETZ
I don’t know who—
MIKE JOHNSON
His name is James L. Woods. Or is it Wood?
KYLE GETZ
And Cat A. crane. Um, I don’t know if it’s important, but crane is all lowercase. Did you do it on purpose? Did you mistype? Yeah, who knows? No one.
MIKE JOHNSON
Um, are you Frasier’s daughter?
KYLE GETZ
Oh, fuck. I was gonna get a quote from Frasier for this episode. I forgot to do it. Oh, shit, maybe I’ll do that during the…
MIKE JOHNSON
It’s never too late. The magic of editing. Which we always do really well at.
KYLE GETZ
It’s never too late. What you just heard, the entire news segment was five minutes long. It’s because I got so much of it. Um, thank you to everyone who signed up for Patreon. We really appreciate your love and support and it means a lot to us. Okay. It means a lot to us. So thank you. And if you want to sign up and support us go to patreon.com/gayishpodcast.
MIKE JOHNSON
Do it.
[AD BREAK]
MIKE JOHNSON
Do you wanna talk about love?
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, I—
MIKE JOHNSON
I noticed you broke out the rosé.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, yeah, it’s like this is gonna be you know, this is gonna be one of those episodes that I just, I both suggested this because I feel like we’ve done a lot of a lot of, we’ve done a lot of crazy things over the years, Mike.
MIKE JOHNSON
Boy howdy.
[Pause]
KYLE GETZ
And, um, but recently, I don’t feel like we’ve had like kind of a personal episode and both with Valentine’s Day coming up just in my personal life. And I’m gonna read into, like, just with you. I just feel like this is…what?
MIKE JOHNSON
In case anybody’s forgotten that we’re very sad.
KYLE GETZ
Very sad. Yeah, for the new listeners. Hello. We’re Mike and Kyle. We’re very sad. We almost titled this podcast Gay Means Sad with Mike and Kyle. Yeah, we’re both single. And half of us is dating.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
And I don’t yeah, I don’t know. This just felt relevant. Especially around Valentine’s Day to like, yeah, I just don’t know. We’ll see.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah. Well, there, we have plenty of time to do the sad part.
KYLE GETZ
We have plenty of rosé to go before we do the sad part. Do you want to?
MIKE JOHNSON
In the meantime, I’m going to talk about the history of love.
KYLE GETZ
Okay. I’m curious what that means. Because like, I don’t know. Yeah. Okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
Well, okay, so, I’ll try to do the short version because there is a lot here. Obviously, there are—love, like all of our emotions predate written history.
KYLE GETZ
Presumably.
MIKE JOHNSON
And, and there are animals, and there are animals that are nonhuman animals, that also have emotions. And a lot of them have social structures that at least mimic the concepts of love.
KYLE GETZ
Wow, we’re really—I’m liking it, like, we are breaking love down to like, let’s what like what is love? Let’s—yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
[singing] Baby don’t hurt me! [regular voice] Oh no, I’m a little hungover so I can’t sing. But that just maybe cut that in, out here.
KYLE GETZ
You can sing later, when you’re feeling great. And I’ll cut in a beautiful verse. It’s gonna sound incredible.
MIKE JOHNSON
So romantic love in the like, romcom sense really is a invention of Victorian culture, mostly. There are there are previous examples. But um, you know, for the most part, coupling and having kids and all of that is more about like property and the utility of combining families together. And of course—
KYLE GETZ
Like, you know, the Italy Prime Minister’s daughter can marry the Spanish, you know, whoever the fuck and that will bring together our two countries because we’ve been at war and like this, something something.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, but, like the idea that like, it’s two people who are like, deeply into each other and support each other and our—romance is a relatively recent idea, culturally, at least in Western society.
KYLE GETZ
That can’t—Okay, but, but is it? Like before, like, we put names to things, surely, but like, before, people still, like felt love for each other and probably like, there were ways that they were allowed to do that or whatever. But like, I don’t know. Romance is not an invention of Victorians. Like, maybe our modern concept of the—is it the maybe the stereotypes of what love looks like and and the path you’re supposed to take?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a, like, to grossly oversimplify it. There is the whole thing about like, the caveman grabs her by the hair, clubs her over the head and drags her back to his cave. There is some there’s someone that’s, you know.
KYLE GETZ
God, I want to be clubbed.
MIKE JOHNSON
Well, so let’s go back to the ancient Greeks.
KYLE GETZ
Okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
Ancient Greece always a great place to start.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
And they had a bunch of words that we translate as love and it goes to show that the word love actually in English is very much a complicated, sort of ambiguous, encompasses multiple things, word.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
So, here are some of the words that the Greeks had for love: agápe, which meant love, especially brotherly love or charity. And it was also the love of God for man and of man for God.
KYLE GETZ
It’s interesting that brotherly love and love for God are the same. Like, those two things seem like distinct concepts and I wonder how much of that is like placing men as godly? Like…
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. It was used in ancient texts to denote feelings for your children and feelings for your spouse. It was also used to refer to a thing called the love feast, which I absolutely…
KYLE GETZ
I want to be the bottom in a love feast!
MIKE JOHNSON
…which is some kind of, it’s a Christian thing, the Christians invented it, but it has… I don’t know, the love feast is just, it’s way less interesting than it sounds.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, okay, so not defining it as—I’ll probably like it better with no more information.
MIKE JOHNSON
I guarantee your love feast is better. Second, eros, or eros love, mostly of sexual passion. It is the modern Greek word erotas, which means intimate love. It’s where erotic comes from in our language. And I mean, it’s the that’s the like, I want to bang, let’s get down with the fuckin’, kind of love.
KYLE GETZ
I was just thinking like, we have sexual love. I was trying to think of those two words that we have I made love, but that I feel like in our modern culture implies I am both romantically in love with this person and then we had sex.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
I’m trying to think if we—I don’t think we have a, I don’t know. I think we put love and sex so differently. We don’t have a sexual love. We call them fuck buddies are like kind of I think we reduce the sexual portion of it. We don’t talk about it. We kind of like why we have this show. Like we there’s so much that we diminish about the caring and affection and feelings around sex.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
That love is romantic and sex is sex and you know? Yeah, that’s interesting that they have a word for sexual love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean the phrase make love is like the one example of those coming together.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, but definitely to me has implications of we are in a committed partnership and we had sex like people don’t go like, “Oh, yeah, I went out last night and I made love to this chick.” High five, high five, high five. You know, like, but even hookups, like there’s a—yeah, there’s a feeling that we don’t define as love that is some kind of affection.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So Plato and Socrates talked about eros helping your soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth.
KYLE GETZ
He said, “helping your soul”?
MIKE JOHNSON
Recall knowledge of beauty.
KYLE GETZ
Wow.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. And—
KYLE GETZ
they were very good. Good for them. They did good.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. But they also believed that the ideal form of beauty was youthful beauty, which, let’s go back to last episode. That was like Davey Wavey’s third pro was like, they so cute.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
But yeah, anyway, and we’ll get to the younger guys thing and Greek culture here in just a little bit. The third one is philia. Or philios, which is affection, or affectionate regard or friendship usually between equals and it’s the one that would most accurately describe our relationship. It is—
KYLE GETZ
You philios me?
MIKE JOHNSON
I philios. I philios the crap out of you, Kyle. Putting the ass in philios. It’s loyalty to friends, family, community. It requires virtue, equality and familiarity. And yeah, philia. They had store-gay or store-ghee [storge], which is—
KYLE GETZ
They weren’t allowed to change their airport code either.
MIKE JOHNSON
It means love or affection, especially of parents and children. It is the common or natural empathy like that felt by parents for offspring. It is almost exclusively used in the literature as describing family relationships. It is also sometimes used when referencing the love for one’s country or a favorite sports team.
KYLE GETZ
Wow, those are such different concepts in my mind.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Yeah. I think part of it is like I don’t know for sure, but part of it feels like there is this, I love you even when you don’t deserve it kind of a feeling.
KYLE GETZ
I talk about that for Texas!
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, exactly.
KYLE GETZ
Okay. Okay, I get that makes more sense as to there could be a connection there. Yeah, there’s I think there’s something interesting with like the love of your—we talked about like blood versus chosen family, like there’s your blood family and I think we need to remember you don’t owe them a relationship, especially if they like super suck or hate you being gay or, like, you know, we need to make sure people know it’s okay to think about yourself. There’s something really beautiful about unconditional—genuine unconditional love, that I don’t know why I feel this, and it’s deep down and maybe it’s just because I popped you out of my V-town, but like, but that’s just what happens. Like, that’s beautiful.
MIKE JOHNSON
“Popped you out of my V-town” Day.
KYLE GETZ
My birthday is coming up, popped me out of my, my V-town day is coming up for me. Um, but there’s also something beautiful about, we have no reason to, like we could have never met, like there’s no, there’s nothing we can separate. And it would be like finding and building that yourself. There’s just such beautiful things about each different type.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah. The last one is zenia. It’s not the last one. So it’s, it’s, I’ve got a couple more. I have to switch.
KYLE GETZ
You lied. That’s fine.
MIKE JOHNSON
I have to switch to the gay page for this one for the ones after this. Xenia is the Greek love of hospitality. It is the love that you show to a stranger, especially in the idea of hosting them. It’s hospitality towards foreigners and guests. It was understood as a moral obligation that you had a moral commandment to take care of travelers, strangers, and foreigners.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
So and then, and then, of course, we have talked about this on the show before, but it’s been a while and so we’re gonna kind of go over it again. But there’s also pedarastia, which means boy love. And it was the most common form of same sex relationships between men in Greece. And in a lot of languages, love the Greek way is a euphemism for butt sex, like it in certain parts of ancient Greece was a relationship between an older man and an adolescent youth. I thought this was interesting: a boy was considered a boy until he was able to grow a full beard. So I’m still a boy, Kyle.
KYLE GETZ
You have patches of manhood! I think that’s representative of your life. You’ve shown patches where I’m like yeah, Mike’s an adult! Yeah!
MIKE JOHNSON
Sort of! The older man was called the erastes and he was to educate, protect, love and provide a role model for his eromenos, who is the younger—the boy who was rewarding him in beauty, youth and promise.
KYLE GETZ
Wow, that there’s…a lot of overlap in the younger guys episode that we talked about.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Although in this, 12 was the age that was like the sweet spot like
KYLE GETZ
there’s the difference.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yes, yes. Yes.
KYLE GETZ
Twelve was the sweet spot?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, I mean, because it was like masculinization is when that time was over. Like it’s not okay for like, two full grown dudes to bang each other. Or it was a different set of rules.
KYLE GETZ
With Greek it’s not “gay was totally accepted,” it’s that this kind of relationship with was accepted. Not, like, two old dudes fucking right. And by the way, when you’re old in that age, you’re like 32, and you’re like “holy moly, it’s my last day in life, I wanna see the Beyonce in the sky, who’s Beyonce, I don’t know, maybe I’ll meet her! That’s heaven for me!”
MIKE JOHNSON
God help us. But to love a boy below the age of 12 was considered inappropriate.
KYLE GETZ
Glad that’s stuck around. That’s still true.
MIKE JOHNSON
And traditionally, the relationship could continue until the boy had enough body hair or facial hair to be considered a man. This is super interesting and fucked up and worth, like, unpacking maybe at some other episode, but heterocity was not considered to be a homosexual Act. The quote unquote “man” would be taking on a dominant role, and his disciple would be take on a passive one, and when intercourse occurred between two people of the same gender, it still was not entirely regarded as a homosexual one, given that one partner would have to take on a passive role and they would therefore no longer be considered a man in terms of the sex. So the bottom, because they bottom, they’re a girl, and therefore it’s not gay.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
And that’s—there’s so much fucked up going on.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
So much so that apparently in ancient Spartan weddings in Sparta, the bride had her hair cut short and was dressed as a man. And it has been suggested by scholar George Devereaux that this was to make the husband’s transition from homosexual to heterosexual relationships easier.
KYLE GETZ
Wow, we’ve been catering to straight dudes for so long. Everything is to make their lives a little easier.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
You know, that thing you just said is insane. I need to acknowledge that instead of making my jokes. That’s, I have never heard that before and that is insane.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. “How do we make him be into ladies? I know, let’s dress her up like a boy for a day.”
KYLE GETZ
“She unfortunately has breasts. But her hair could look like a little boy.” God, is that where bowl cuts started?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yes, probably. Almost certainly.
KYLE GETZ
Almost certainly.
MIKE JOHNSON
That’s, that’s a little bit of the history of love and, and Greek words for love, which again, just come back to, like, my whole premise here, is just that love is an overloaded term. There’s all kinds of different kinds of love. Like I love you, but like in a platonic way.
KYLE GETZ
Mike, gross, stop.
MIKE JOHNSON
I love my parents. I love my brothers. But like, that’s different than the love for your husband or the love for a pet or like, the word love gets used a lot, but it’s a bunch of different shit.
KYLE GETZ
Can we agree that the love for your pet is like the everlasting, overarching, most genuine, important, sincere—there’s something so innocent and honest about my love for my dog that no, no, no, man—I love you too. Mike. I need to be better at—I want to be better at saying that to my friends, and…
MIKE JOHNSON
—it’s fine.
KYLE GETZ
You know I’m emotionally stunted enough to not expect it! No, I do. That’s, that is very important to me as a closed off kind of shell of a human trying to open up, trying to like, expressing love to people is very difficult. And anyway, I love you, Mike. Okay, I’m gonna tell you about a study.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Okay. A study about love.
KYLE GETZ
A love study. Okay, it was very interesting just like looking up what kind of studies when you had like, put in, like, gay and love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Put what in where?
KYLE GETZ
Fair! What kind of things do you get back? There are some things that talk about, you know, when they talk about love, like love in the time of AIDS, like AIDS came up and love as a like when they talk about gay love, they talk about, it’s sex, they’re talking about sex. Which reminds me, researching, understanding AIDS is super important. The AIDS crisis—but so many of our studies like that—and I forget there’s ones where I like, you know, from certain times, like, that’s all research did. That’s all we studied. So that was the only thing about gay people. And what I thought I didn’t think about is the like, when you see love in a study before the 90s, even, probably after, like, it’s about sex. They’re talking about sex.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
And, like, of course we as gay men don’t—that’s what straight people think of us. That’s what we think of ourselves as those like—there aren’t studies about gay love, like romantic love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Sure. Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
And the fact that loves mean sex. And anyway, I thought that was super interesting. So what I’m going to talk about is a study called The Power of Love. The role of emotional…what?
MIKE JOHNSON
That’s a song right? It is a song, I still can’t sing. I’m still hungover.
KYLE GETZ
But do it anyway.
MIKE JOHNSON
[singing] It’s the power of love! [regular voice] Who is that? Robert Palmer something like that?
KYLE GETZ
You can do that while I read this long title: “The role of emotional attributions and standards in heterosexuals’ attitudes towards lesbian and gay couples” published in the Social Forces magazine? Journal? In 2015 by Long Doan, Lisa R Miller and Annalise Lower.
MIKE JOHNSON
Long Dong?
KYLE GETZ
Boy I knew that wouldn’t slide by without a comment. Yes. Long Doan. It seemed to be the principal researcher. At least he was the one that did kind of all the interviews that I read about this study. But! Did you figure out who it’s by?
MIKE JOHNSON
Huey Lewis. And the news. Don’t play the theme song.
CLIP FROM THE NEWS THEME SONG [MIKE JOHNSON SINGING]
News, news, news.
MIKE JOHNSON
Great.
KYLE GETZ
That’s funny. That’s funny. That’s just good, clean fun. Okay, initially, it was gross. I’m gonna like read and study about heterosexuals’ view of gay couples but I think it’s interesting and worth and worth discussing. So what they did, I could not access the main article, all the articles about this just said the same quotes, so that made it very easy, but like I didn’t get into—so what I know is is what kinda they said and the article said. They provided participants with a love story that featured a couple—they did not state but implied the gender, the orientation of the couple by changing the names of them to imply someone were heterosexual and others were homosexual. Hey, asterisk, big, this isn’t the point but like there’s some interesting like trans issues, assumptions about like your name means this thing and your gender. There’s some interesting things about bi erasure, there’s a lot interesting even in that approach to a study, but understanding that is a limitation of and probably a realistic one. If you say like Michael and John loved each other, like most just the average person will think they’re a gay couple.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, or a Star Trek character.
KYLE GETZ
I was thinking! Okay, honestly, honestly, I thought Star Trek is—what I’ve learned from Star Trek… Cameron fucking Diaz! Like, the trend to have like male name or not male—different gendered names is like a very interesting fun thing and it made sense that Michael was the name of—anyway, we’re gonna have a Star Trek episode. Wanna tease that?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. It’s goin’ up.
KYLE GETZ
I’m excited about that. We’re gonna have someone on to talk to you about it so I could just chillax. Research. This research study. The participants then ranked—this is a kind of easy summary—like, ranked the amount of love the partners had for one another based on what they heard from the story.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, this is interesting.
KYLE GETZ
Right?
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay. So it’s—scenario, names and implied genders. How in love are they? Rate them. Go.
KYLE GETZ
Mm-hmm. And no surprise, opposite sex couples, opposite gender couples, were most perceived as most in love, followed by female—perceived same-sex female couples and then same-sex male couples. That was the order that they ranked people as in love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Quick aside, it’s pretty fucking interesting when so many sitcoms are based on the idea of how much straight people hate each other.
KYLE GETZ
Okay. I knew somewhere that yes, 100% absolutely. Fucking ball and chains, or like, “she keeps talking land we haven’t had sex in 15 years, and we’ve only been married three!”
MIKE JOHNSON
Like “that nag won’t let me drink beer and watch the game!”
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. “I gotta go ask permission to go like say hi to someone!” You know? Like, yes, like there—it is insane that straight people then believe straight people are most in love. Yeah, straight people, you should know more than anyone that you’re—a gay couple is like, man, they had to work 10 times harder to be in love than you. And so that love is more real.
MIKE JOHNSON
I’m sort of reminded when my brother told me that he wished that he could be gay because he thinks it sounds awesome to be in love with somebody you can play video games with.
KYLE GETZ
Didn’t he say like wear underwear and play video games?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, in your underwear.
KYLE GETZ
And it is. And he’s right. He’s very good. It’s a lot of fun.
MIKE JOHNSON
I feel so sorry for straight people.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, you can like be playing a game and like you start blowing them, and then you keep playing and you’re like, you know, it’s just so much fun.
Also I think it’s interesting that it did like note that female couples, like gay men, were the least likely to be perceived as in love. And I think there is something to my personal belief. I’m sure I’ve said it before. Like, I think it is harder for lesbian or female couples to be taken seriously, because it sounds like “oh, yeah, women kiss!” Like everything’s like, but what does a man think about this? Like, “oh, yeah, they love—they kiss but that’s fine, they’re curious or whatever.” So like, it’s more difficult—it’s both more accepted—people are like fine with lesbians because they think it’s kind of hot—and then, but it’s more difficult to convince them that they are genuinely like, “no, I’m deffo lesbian,” or “we’re deffo together.” But like, we can see women—we think women are more capable of love or something than two men. Like I think people see that as difficult to believe.
MIKE JOHNSON
I mean, that’s just the gendered, like, men are dead inside.
KYLE GETZ
Yep. They only wanna fuck.
MIKE JOHNSON
They can only think with their dick.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. And just because it’s true for me. And this is the most terrifying part, participants noted that couples who were believed to be most in love deserved more rights than others. So they were asked about various kinds of…
MIKE JOHNSON
Go ahead.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, you know, what’s your face?
MIKE JOHNSON
My face was like, oh, yeah, this is some horseshit, here it comes. So.
KYLE GETZ
They looked at it from a couple, a few different ways and this is where I like wish I had like article to get into some or whatever, but there was like, you know, the formal rights that we grant through like our laws and shit, like partnerships and whatever, there’s marriage, which you know, a little bit different than the the legal rights that we grant. And there’s informal—I think they call them informal privileges, which are things like just holding hands, like there are certain different things. And I think, if I remember correctly, it was like, they were more likely to believe they deserved legal—like some of those legal rights, versus other kind of rights. And yeah, this even more so I think is where the like, but straight people fucking hate each other in 90s sitcoms of like, do you really believe that the amount of love people have for each other is—then then no straight person actually deserves to be married or have legal rights based again, based on these 90s sitcoms things. Like you two fucking hate each other, like you do not deserve any rights for being in your dumb, stupid marriage that you’re stuck in where you dislike each other actively. You know?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
So yeah, I think my assumption is that people can most relate to people that are like themselves. And when straight people see other straight people, they can imagine them being in love. And if you see someone, again, pick any kind of, you know, it’s different than me, person of color, a disability, being queer, like pick anything, and it’s harder to relate to that person and harder to imagine that person being in love. So I think there’s something understandable and natural about it. And also people’s belief that like, I don’t care why you get married or why you legally get rights. Like you can, I just don’t like, it’s so interesting that people believe that how much love you feel should determine how many rights you get, like that’s insane.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Or like that there’s a measurable quantity there. Like there’s a Love-omiter.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, yes.
MIKE JOHNSON
You know, it’s like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter that says how much love you got and what do you decide.
KYLE GETZ
Hugglepuffs love the most right, Wait, is that a house or a Pokemon?
MIKE JOHNSON
It absolutely is now!
KYLE GETZ
I will later talk about more things about that are not about straight people that are about queer people. But that’s my this thing.
MIKE JOHNSON
Is Jigglypuff the favorite Pokemon of chubby chasers?
KYLE GETZ
[laughs] My dad’s favorite Pokemon is Snorlax. I respect that.
46:20
MIKE JOHNSON
Great, oh man. Um, okay. Are you ready for this? Yes, I tell you, you probably already know them. The Five Love Languages. You know what the five love languages are?
KYLE GETZ
Yes, there’s, there’s anal. There’s French. There’s not responding to texts. No, I don’t, what?
MIKE JOHNSON
Anal. There’s French. There’s French anal.
KYLE GETZ
There’s Alpha dudes with backwards hats.
MIKE JOHNSON
So The Five Love Languages is a 1992 book by Gary Chapman. And talks about the way that romantic partners express and experience love. And those love languages are words of affirmation, quality, time, giving gifts, acts of service and physical touch.
KYLE GETZ
Service my dick!
MIKE JOHNSON
Right. Well. I mean, there’s kind of a dom-sub potential there.
KYLE GETZ
It’s a love language.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. But yeah, so words of affirmation, giving compliments, using your word, your word mouth, with your face words.
KYLE GETZ
That’s demonstrated very effectively by you.
MIKE JOHNSON
I’m a professional, Kyle. Quality time. So like spending time together but that is focused on each other.
KYLE GETZ
God in my last relationship, when I just wanted to sit down and talk instead of like, I really want you to put down Instagram right now and just look at, and he could not understand that. Like I wanted him to turn off his phone and place it down and then talk to me. That was very difficult for him.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, there’s a whole generation for whom that’s really difficult, I think.
KYLE GETZ
He was about my age. So this is not—it’s interesting that yeah, that did come up on the younger guys thing, but that’s not about that.
MIKE JOHNSON
Giving gifts, so exchanging—
KYLE GETZ
Semen.
MIKE JOHNSON
—physical tokens of—
KYLE GETZ
Blow jobs.
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay.
KYLE GETZ
Birds that you bring home. What?
MIKE JOHNSON
Acts of service—doing stuff for each other, like the dishes or making the bed or whatever, and then physical touch, like touching each other. So that then comes the question. Everybody’s into all of those in some context or another and there’s a tendency for some of those to be more important than others. What’s your own personal set?
KYLE GETZ
To me quality time is really important and not just romantic, but also friendship, like the, you know, people enjoy the group things and lots of people, but I almost discounted or like, but I’m like, but I didn’t actually get to hang out with anyone. Like, if I’m with a certain size of group, I’m like, but I didn’t actually spend time with them. Like, I mean, I literally did, but so quality time and actually being able to like, sit down and talk to people. I think that’s a lot of things like having social anxiety and being an introvert and not opening up to people like that one-on-one time makes it more important. So that’s important to me. I think, um, it’s, I don’t know, maybe both like words of affirmation and gifts, like something that like I thought of you means a lot to me. And words of affirmation are one of those things that like, make me very uncomfortable, but like, are useful. Like learning to receive those and having someone who cares enough to like, affirm and support and remind me that I’m not like a terrible, shitty, despicable person like that, like is a good, like, It counters my internal narrative. So that’s important to me.
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay. I would imagine that would make you really uncomfortable.
KYLE GETZ
Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
MIKE JOHNSON
There’s also this phenomenon that we tend to project our own preferences for the love languages onto the person that we’re with. And part of this whole experience is supposed to say, figure out what your love languages are, so that you can communicate to your person, these are the things that are important to me, so that hopefully, they will then give those things to you. But also, just because it might mean a lot to you, doesn’t mean it means a lot to them. You need to figure out your partner’s love languages and prioritize what you do for them based on their preferences, not your own.
KYLE GETZ
Well, I mean but it also goes both ways. If you learn what your partner does, that shows you love them. I was just reading this thing on Reddit, it was like, probably straight people, stupid straight people, but like, every morning, some dude recorded a voice message to his partner, she was like, this is here or whatever. And then she asked him about it. He was like, I take the bus. So I’m not on the subway so I can voice talk, like she learned how much he thought through this and how much it meant him to share that with her and learning about that made that mean so much more. So even if it’s not their love language, it’s like a little bit mutual. Like you don’t just like oh, 100% default to what you do. It’s also like, hey, here’s what I do to show love and just so you know, when I do these things, these are me showing affection.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, I get that. I get that. You can learn to appreciate the gesture, whether it’s what you would default to or not.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, understanding the intention might bring more value to it that you didn’t realize, like, when I sweep up for you, it’s because, you know, I’ve seen that this happens or what or whatever and learning the meaning behind that means then you come home and things are swept up and you’re like, he just thought about me and cared about me and put time and effort into loving me, you know?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting in retrospect, looking at my marriage to Trevor, how we were very mismatched in this area, in this paradigm.
KYLE GETZ
Where, what, what are yours? And how did that play into you and Trevor?
MIKE JOHNSON
My number one, giving and receiving—
KYLE GETZ
Nice.
MIKE JOHNSON
Because yeah, I’m very verse when it comes to—
KYLE GETZ
You’re verse love top?
MIKE JOHNSON
—is physical touch. Like my go to is to touch somebody to show them my affection. And no, don’t you fucking touch me, Kyle!
KYLE GETZ
You’re too far…
MIKE JOHNSON
Keep your hands away from me!
KYLE GETZ
I’m showing affection!
MIKE JOHNSON
Great.
KYLE GETZ
Just grabbing your wrist. uncomfortably. Do you feel it?
MIKE JOHNSON
That was an okay touch. Show me on the doll where the Kyle touched you! Oh god, that was—
KYLE GETZ
You just touch your heart.
MIKE JOHNSON
Remember we were in the hot tub of Davey Wavey at the sex hotel and you put your goddamn feet on me?
KYLE GETZ
That was so fun because I was—yeah, was I naked or did I just have a jockstrap?
MIKE JOHNSON
Either way your shorts bubbled up to the top of the hot tub like some kind of fucked up stew vegetable. And then you put your feet on me!
KYLE GETZ
That first part didn’t happen, the second part, but it was very funny to me, so that’s what matters most. And I was just showing you I loved you, Mike. You’re touch. You like touch. You love—Mike loves touch. Everyone touch Mike every time you see him.
MIKE JOHNSON
Ooh, oh.
KYLE GETZ
Oh? Sorry. Touch is very important to you.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. And I think that for one reason or another—I never really quite picked it all apart. I think the touch was difficult for him. I think that he tolerated it from me, but for the most part did not like to be touched. And so that was an obstacle. But even more importantly, I think because he was wired that way, he was reluctant to engage in touch with me, like I felt very much and resented the fact that if we were going to be physically touching each other, I had to engage in that, and only in certain ways and in certain contexts, because that’s the only way that it would be well received by him. Conversely, go ahead.
KYLE GETZ
Oh, I’ve said this, but it’s been a long time. I had one of my first boyfriends. I said, I learned multiple things. At first, I was like, oh, like I said, don’t, you cannot touch my stomach. Because I feel so uncomfortable about my physical appearance.
MIKE JOHNSON
This was Jay-Z? This was Jay-Z.
KYLE GETZ
Mm hmm. And it was like, one of these like, multi-level realizations. At first I was like, oh, I get to decide what feels good and bad. And I get to say that. So like, there’s something—it sound, it is like, there’s something shitty to the like, I feel so uncomfortable with my body that I don’t like that that makes me very uncomfortable. But there’s all something nice about me realizing like, oh, I don’t like that and communicating that to a person. And then he was like, I think tried to respect that, but also communicate to me, but like, but I like doing that. And like, I’m sad now that I don’t get to do that, like, I don’t get to touch you there. And so like, learning that he actually loved my body the way it was back then…this all part of the same issue. But like, anyway, like, he likes my body the way it is and wanted to touch me like, you know, I realized that and eventually, like, accepted that piece, but I understand the touch can be uncomfortable for—I mean, it was for me, it still is for me.
MIKE JOHNSON
So yeah, I think that’s understandable. I also think that’s sad or tragic, but some of those me projecting because it’s so awesome for me, like it’s so much what I want.
KYLE GETZ
No, there’s definitely something sad about it. Like finding someone that you love unconditionally, no matter what, means letting them like, literally letting them touch any part of your body. It is like, that’s a part where like, sex, sexuality, like that piece is like there’s such an intimate part of like you are, you’re literally able to touch any part of me like that. That’s it, there’s something very beautiful there and to not allow that is a wall that you’re putting up. That’s very metaphorical.
MIKE JOHNSON
We have a personal space bubble, and like tacitly letting somebody violate that bubble whenever because you love them. It’s like there’s a thing that’s happening there.
KYLE GETZ
I should also, like, I very much understand like, no, being in a relationship does not mean you get to touch each other whenever you like, whatever you want, wherever you want. That’s not—that’s not what I’m saying. So just need to put that away, anyway.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, for sure.
KYLE GETZ
Continue.
MIKE JOHNSON
Conversely, I think that for him, Trevor, acts of service were very high on his list, both in terms of giving and receiving. Like he very much would like do the dishes, clean up the kitchen. Do a load of laundry.
KYLE GETZ
Would he?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, well, yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
Or he really loved making me breakfast, and said so. In fact, oh, this is sad. Whoo. Okay, didn’t expect to have a moment about this. He cooked me breakfast the day he left. And that was like part of the thing. Oh, that was hard to say. Oh, good thing therapy’s tomorrow, okay.
KYLE GETZ
Okay, but I don’t want to skip over that, like what did that mean to you? Was that good or bad? Or like, what?
MIKE JOHNSON
I mean it was super painful at the time and clearly a little bit now. I think it was almost like an apology. Like it was an “I still care about you” kind of a moment. Though the only way that he knew how, I think. Um, yeah. I also under-appreciated it. Like in retrospect. Not the breakfast on the day he left thing, but like his acts of service. I didn’t realize how much he was saying that he cared about me because that’s not how I am wired or receive it. And I would I would take it for granted, like the things that he would do would sometimes not even register and that’s got to be pretty fucking terrible for him, right? Like…
KYLE GETZ
It’s interesting because my initial like—and I definitely do this too, so this is like not a judgment, this is like on me as well of like, doing things for other people is a very indirect way. Like there’s something direct about touch or words of affirmation that an act of service not. It’s a little bit indirect or it can be I guess, or more likely to be or something of like, I’m doing this thing that’s not about saying I love you that says I love you. Like there’s something indirect about that that can make it easier for people like me who are like closed off or maybe are more difficult to say that to, so maybe make sense. If you’re used to maybe having a mom who says literally everything she’s thinking, so you never even have to think about it—
MIKE JOHNSON
[laughs] hypothetically
KYLE GETZ
[laughs] hypothetically—an act of service is not an act of service. It’s like you just did this thing like not realizing like, Oh, I’m going to indirectly express this to you. Like your mom, I don’t think has an indirect bone in her body. Like, if she could like she would not be as interesting or as fun like, but, so. Yeah, that makes sense that that’s like you weren’t wired to receive indirect service as love in that way.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But I also think that had we been able to like, I don’t know, recognize that and talk about it and use our words better that maybe we could have reached a at least more functional ground together. It’s interesting how it works. I don’t want to move on too quickly, like off of personal stuff, we can still talk about that.
KYLE GETZ
yeah I haven’t like seen a tear quite yet. And I feel like I could really jab the knife in and get it.
MIKE JOHNSON
It was pretty close. It was pretty close. But you failed. I also…
KYLE GETZ
Dammit. Okay, well, I will say this and not like—I do think that the idea that what you’re showing is a representation of, you two cared about each other.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, for sure.
KYLE GETZ
And loved each other. Whatever definition you want to use for that love in whatever way. And breaking up maybe because it’s the best thing for both of you, or one of you can’t do that right now, or whatever. And I think making breakfast for you, I think that’s a great way to represent that, like I care about you, and this is not a “I hate you. You fucked up, you suck” or whatever. It’s a, we care and we are not together right now. And that’s something I don’t think we necessarily explore the nuances of as much, even with straight people much less like the complexities of gay relationships. So I I think that’s an interesting moment to…
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Well, in the mourning process, right, like, a couple of the stages are anger and bargaining. And I think it’s a little combination of both of those things. You go through this phase of like, well, he must have never fucking loved me at all. It was all fake. It was all bullshit. How did I get so—why was I so stupid? And it’s not true. Like, we clearly cared about each other. And so much of that relationship was absolutely real and true, and beautiful. And it just just wasn’t enough, I guess. And that’s okay.
KYLE GETZ
Or it could have been enough and at the wrong time, or enough and clearly you didn’t have the language to communicate these love languages with each other. So like, the point of through all of that—you learned now to do that, and that can be something you bring into and you know, like, there’s…yeah. I think something we see in mostly like, in media, but also like, with straight people is “we broke up, man, what a bitch. She was always crazy!” Like that kind of shit. And I think a lot of people wanted to do that to my exes, or even people I dated, where they thought that the other person was in the wrong. And I never—I don’t think any of my exes are bad people. Yeah, we loved each other. We were together for a certain amount of time. And that was real, and they’re not a horrible person. And even if they fucked up, or no matter what, like, to all of a sudden, turn 180 and be like, go from love to “you’re a shitty, terrible person” is like, wow. Like, then I don’t know, that’s just not real or like, that’s not…
MIKE JOHNSON
It sort of makes it easier to let them go, but that’s also not supposed to be easy, or making it easy is worse. It’s like, it will fuck you up long term.
KYLE GETZ
It’s a defense mechanism to try to…
MIKE JOHNSON
Absolutely.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, for sure.
MIKE JOHNSON
Also, I had my concerns about your exes, but I don’t think any of them were bad people at all.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, I hear the, like, are they right for me? Are they you know, like, all that shit, but it’s like, the reason we broke up many times it’s because they did something shitty, or there was a shitty thing that happened. But I don’t think that makes them a bad person. I don’t think it means that I should be with them. But like, and I think that’s my kind of view of most people except Donald Trump, [Mike laughs] is like there’s something good in you no matter what you do, you can be horrible, and I think there’s good in almost everyone.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah, sometimes it’s way down deep in there.
KYLE GETZ
Boy howdy, sometimes you gotta probe.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
You said you’re—okay. Acts of service. I think we’ve gotten through one of your love languages, I think—oh, touch, acts of service were what Trevor did.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
What other—what are your other…?
MIKE JOHNSON
Gifts…am I hard to give gifts to?
KYLE GETZ
I don’t think so.
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay.
KYLE GETZ
Do I give you…I don’t think I give people gifts. Eh, sometimes.
MIKE JOHNSON
We have Secret Santa. And that’s like an opportunity or whatever. I don’t well, okay first, like, I’m the type of person that like, some of it is very much privileged and I recognize that and, like, the things that I want in my life, I purchase and have, so I think it’s like difficult maybe to—anyway…
KYLE GETZ
I think I’m good at gift giving.
MIKE JOHNSON
I think you are too.
KYLE GETZ
I think the last thing I gave you was the daddy t-shirt.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah! Changed my life, Kyle.
KYLE GETZ
I gave you that daddy t-shirt and so many boys to follow you.
MIKE JOHNSON
So many!
KYLE GETZ
Is that in your profile now? In your—coming soon at makeover episode to hear to Mike’s updates! But that’s not this episode.
MIKE JOHNSON
Trevor was extraordinarily good at giving gifts. And I always felt like I was just not as good at it. So it was another—it was another sort of mismatch. Like to him, here’s the thing that I got for you, or whatever, it was one way that he showed me affection. And it just didn’t register I think the way that he wanted it to? And then I think he also wanted that for me more than I did. Yeah, what and what’s the one? What’s one thing—having a quality time? We were real good at that. We’re like, we spent a lot of time together. And it was always pretty great.
KYLE GETZ
Was it always quality? I felt like there was a point where you thought maybe you were spending too much, like you needed other things or your—I don’t know, quality. That seems like could be a million things. But it’s not always just time.
MIKE JOHNSON
You’re right. You’re right. And I think that that is like, any relationship of sufficient length is going to end up—the quality of quality time gets dialed down just because of complacency and comfort and rut syndrome. And so, yeah.
KYLE GETZ
God, after my first relationship, yeah, Jay-Z, it was like, we spent so much time together. And I was like, afterwards I remember that was part of like, hanging out with you and Trevor after that was like, “Oh, God, I didn’t keep up with any of my friendships.” I don’t like—I just —it like realizing like that was putting 100% of my time and effort or mental or becoming complacent with not just a relationship or with life of like, “Oh, I have someone I can hang out”—being an introvert, like, I don’t need to seek out too many interactions. But when you’re single you’re like, you know, if I don’t hang out with someone for two weeks, and just work, like I’m going to feel it. Whereas in a relationship, I might not feel that same, you know, drive to make sure I maintain friendships, and I think I didn’t, I didn’t realize that the first time around, and kind of let that be my social interaction.
MIKE JOHNSON
I’m sure it felt like that. And when I mean, and it’s been a long time ago now, but when I think back to that time, like, the four of us hung out on like, on occasion, and…
KYLE GETZ
I feel like we hang out like a few times. Not that much. But…I dunno.
MIKE JOHNSON
Well, um…I don’t know, our relationship survived it. So like, great.
KYLE GETZ
That’s true and perfect.
MIKE JOHNSON
We outlasted them all!
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. Suck it! Please. Please, please suck it.
MIKE JOHNSON
Actually. Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
What?
MIKE JOHNSON
We knew each other before I ever met Trevor, and you’re still here.
KYLE GETZ
Ha! I win!
MIKE JOHNSON
You win! Okay. We’ll close this section on the five love languages by hopefully, not too quickly, because I do want to like, talk about it. But that dude that wrote that book is a hardcore Christian homophobe. And so we just like, we can have the conversation about like, is it okay to use his work on a gay podcast for the last 15, 20 minutes? Like we have? Or like, can you separate the work from the person, or whatever. But yeah, his name is Gary Chapman. And the book came out in 1992. But since then, his website has a Q&A section. And this person says, “Question: My son has recently told us that he’s gay. I’m having a very hard time dealing with it. How can I help him with this and still show love?” His answer: “Disappointment is a common emotion with parent hears one of their children indicate that he or she is gay.”
KYLE GETZ
I agree. I agree. I think, yes.
MIKE JOHNSON
“Men and women are made for each other. It is God’s design. Anything other than that is outside of that primary design of God. Now, I’m not going to try to explain all the ins and outs of homosexuality, but what I will say is this—”
KYLE GETZ
I would love to hear him fuckin’—I would love to hear him try, honestly. Okay.
MIKE JOHNSON
“But what I will say is this, we love our children, no matter what. Express your disappointment and/or your lack of understanding, but make it clear that you love them and that you will continue to love them no matter what. I would also encourage you to ask your child to do some serious reading and/or talk to a counselor to try to understand him or herself better, while continuing to affirm your love.”
KYLE GETZ
God, like half of that is good advice!
MIKE JOHNSON
Except to like, go get them counseling!
KYLE GETZ
No, they probably should get counseling! For a reason different than you think. But like, yeah, that would be helpful to have a counselor to help you through that shit.
MIKE JOHNSON
That’s true. I wonder—we should start a conversion therapy office practice, just to like, fake people out and let us talk to their gay kids and like not convert them.
KYLE GETZ
No, we would use all the same language and say we’re going to convert them into someone that God loves and someone that can be their whole self. And what we mean is we are converting them into someone who loves themselves and isn’t shitty, but they don’t—like you can say a lot of the same things and it sounds like you’re gonna make them straight again, and they just don’t realize that if you say certain things like, “Hey, you should get a counselor, do a lot of reading.” That’s a very good advice!
MIKE JOHNSON
I’m pro reading, Kyle.
KYLE GETZ
I’m pro reading, pro counselors, like a lot of that actually could be very helpful to someone coming out. Separating like the work and like, I think, clearly that what he came up with, this paradigm is interesting enough that it resulted in a conversation and exploration of our relationships, which is useful. Also, now we know not to go to his website, buy his book, like do anything that like financially supports him.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, there is a site called scarymommy.com. And it was actually I didn’t go directly to his website, there’s an article on that site that did this. This analysis is written by a Christian May last year, this was March of 2021. And she says that her recommendation is instead of supporting Gary Chapman and his website and his book, that people follow the teachings of doctors John and Julie Gottman, quote, “The Gottmans use similar concepts of simply paying attention to the kinds of gestures that are most meaningful to your partner and demonstrating your love accordingly. However, they note that a person’s primary love language likely is not fixed, is often context specific. Sometimes words of affirmation are most important and sometimes a thoughtful gift is more appreciated than anything else.” They also point out that some of Chapman’s singular languages like quality time are critical ingredients in every relationship, but she recommends doctors John and Julie Gottman as having similar teachings, similar thoughts, similar health but also they are allies and and are are not Christian homophobic dick bags.
KYLE GETZ
I signed Jay-Z and me up for a Gottman Institute seminar thing.
MIKE JOHNSON
How was it?
KYLE GETZ
We broke up before that. So when I called to cancel they said, “Are you sure? Sometimes people get back together.” And I had to think about and be like, “No, he called a dude to like, come over and like he sexted other people, he did—listen like—no, no, no, thanks. You can definitely cancel that.” I didn’t go because we didn’t make it there.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, well. Was that Taylor Swift song around yet?
KYLE GETZ
What? We didn’t make it to the Gottman Institute because you didn’t love me enough?
MIKE JOHNSON
Right.
KYLE GETZ
I love that song. Taylor’s Version. What?
MIKE JOHNSON
We are Never Ever, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together.
KYLE GETZ
Oh! We just said the same titles, I think.
MIKE JOHNSON
What do you got, Kyle?
KYLE GETZ
Okay, so my last thing I talked about, how straight people see us determines how many rights we have, I guess.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, sure.
KYLE GETZ
Majority. Actually, that’s kind of true. Um, now I’m going to talk about queer love and what straight people need to learn from us.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, sit down and learn some shit, straight people!
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, sit on a dick and learn from us. Wait. Hot straight dudes? Um, yeah, wait, no, that’s not it.
MIKE JOHNSON
And she’s gonna watch
KYLE GETZ
She’s gonna watch, or maybe leave and go get a snack because she’s unimportant in this! No, okay, we got off track already. Okay, I just wrote down things that I think that queer love can and should help other people learn from us.
MIKE JOHNSON
Great.
KYLE GETZ
And I think there’s like part of the last study is realizing that we model a lot of our norms after what straight people think we should be or what is acceptable and oh, I didn’t even read this. Like, there’s like the lead researcher was like, being in love in the way that straight people think you should be, like, there’s value to that and I think he was just trying to bring like, from this study, I learned that, but that’s a shitty thing to say. And might be true that if we love each other in a way that makes straight people comfortable, and they think we’re in love right, they will give us more rights…
Mike Johson
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
So like, that’s probably unfortunately true. And also very much like, boy, you need, you know, there’s so much that ties into gay history of like, assimilating to straight culture and being acceptable and being okay. And, you know, it’s like, what? Wait, why don’t we turn over to the—okay, hey, straight people, here’s what you need to fucking do to learn how what real love is. Because it’s not what you think it is.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
So that’s what I’m trying to do. I wrote down some, but very much open to you adding or disagreeing or whatever you want to do. Okay? Do what you normally do as a host, I guess is what I’m saying.
MIKE JOHNSON
Can’t stop, won’t stop.
KYLE GETZ
Miley Cyrus. She’s queer. Um, you’ll find him when you’re not looking, I think, is a straight love tip that people give that I fuckiiiiing hate.
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay, okay.
KYLE GETZ
Um, I think that what we learn being gay, is that there’s so many steps you have to take to accept yourself and even come out, much less than find the small percentage of people who are also either gay or bi or open to being in love with another dude, that like, I think we know that, like, it’s not just gonna happen. There’s a lot of work you got to do both on yourself and to try to date that, we just don’t have that luxury of like, oh, we’ll just happen to meet this other straight person that also was single. Like, well, that luxury to just wait and see if it happens.
MIKE JOHNSON
As much as I’ve been bitching about how much I hate dating and hate first dates, you’re making me realize that there’s a way to reframe that that just like, sitting down and having a date with somebody is a fucking miracle! Like, there is and I have a lot to be proud of and thankful for that, like, I even got to there. So yeah, I wish it would happen more often and that it was easier. But like, a first date is magic, in a way, for gay people, that you’ve made it through those hurdles to arrive at an actual physical live human being that’s available and eligible sitting across the table from you. That’s interesting.
KYLE GETZ
And one of those things, unfortunately, is you live in a country where you’re allowed to sit down in a public place together and be very obviously on a date.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Like, even that’s not a given. We’re lucky enough to be in a place where like, that’s kind of, you know, that’s most legally acceptable.
MIKE JOHNSON
At least on the coasts. For now.
KYLE GETZ
For now. Um, something else that I wrote later that I think is relevant is like, I think it’s a numbers game. I think that too many people think it’s magic. And you’ll find it and, you know, like, even if you go on dates, it’s like, oh, but like, wait for this beautiful moment. And I’m like, you go on those dates. You go on bunches of dates and a small percent, you’ll want to go on a second, and a smaller percent you want it like—I think it’s so stupid the way we view it as like, you’ll feel it and it’ll be there. And you’ll find your one like, all that. I think like—
MIKE JOHNSON
Disney rom-com horseshit.
KYLE GETZ
Yes, exactly. And so yes, this is also commending you on going on that first date, you’re gonna have to go on a bunch of them. And, and it’s like, the more you go on, the more you’re meeting people, the more you’re learning what signs tell you if, like, what things are important to figure out on that first date and what signs tell you that you’ll be interested and like, and commending yourself on going on a “failed,” quote unquote, “failed” first date is like, is very, like good, like, good for you for doing that and getting there.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s cool.
KYLE GETZ
Something I said in that whole horseshit is one true love like I think
MIKE JOHNSON
Ugh.
KYLE GETZ
What? Go ahead.
MIKE JOHNSON
Ugh. Utter horseshit. One true love is utter horseshit.
KYLE GETZ
Okay, why? Because I think there’re a couple different reasons that queer people can teach teach everyone that that’s dumb, but…
MIKE JOHNSON
Because if that were true, and it were the goal, the human race would end. There’s 7 billion people on this planet. I guarantee that there’s not just one person.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
Like, you don’t understand math.
KYLE GETZ
It’s so—if that were true, like we’d really need to set up this connected network to help people like really—like we got to get way more like global than we are, in love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, I don’t believe in soulmates and that’s like an important kind of like, that’s a very important and maybe the part of this of like, I think you can love someone just to try to like put—you could love someone at 9.3 and a 9.7. And both of those, like, who knows? Maybe one person would have been a little bit more right for you—like there’s not a right person or like, if you’re in love with a person, like that’s great. Like you know, like to try to figure out like, but is this the perfect love or the right love or my love or like that.
MIKE JOHNSON
I think of it all as a big Venn diagram with a fuckload of circles. But like, where they all come together is always more than one person. Like, there’s absolutely no way that whatever your constellation of things that makes a Venn diagram of potential candidates for you to be with, there’s more than one person in that overlap.
KYLE GETZ
I think about it. And I think these can be combined of like, if we just put it on a scale of one to 10, your love for someone falling on that scale, and maybe there’s a certain, you know, 8 and above is something like, “this is worthy of a relationship” that, you know, at least investing months in or whatever. And I imagine those like, you know, maybe for me, it’s an 8+ that goes in that overlap that like, “these are the people that I think there’s potential for us,” and those are worth exploring and investing your time and effort in.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yep, yep. Absolutely. And it’s a lyric from Rent, I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine. You’re not gonna find the person that is flawless. You want somebody that’s your—your bullshit complements their bullshit, and vice versa or something.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. God, one of the like, horrible things about getting older and trying to date is like trying to figure out like, what happened to you that you’re this age and dating? I feel like is a game that you kind of implicitly play?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
And I don’t know. I like to think I’m above it. But I’m probably not, like just trying to, like, I know, there’s like, why am I this age and still dating? Like, I think there’s a lot of reasonable explanations that I judge myself for about, like, try to like, okay, I get why I’m this age and not in a relationship. And they’re very reasonable explanations for other people, too. But there’s like, I want on a date where a guy actually said like, “I just wonder what’s wrong with you that you haven’t like, that you’re not in a relationship yet.”
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, my god. I hate “why are you single?” People think they’re being complimentary, I think. But they’re, they’re implicitly saying, “You’re too good to be true. Show me where you’re fucked up-ness is.”
KYLE GETZ
Show me your baggage. What the fuck is wrong—I wanted to be like, “I’m very depressed!” Like, that’s something at some point I’m gonna tell you. It’s not right now, I’m not gonna tell you the answer right now!
MIKE JOHNSON
You’re gonna make an emoji face when I say this. And I just come right out and I’m like, “Look, I have two ex-spouses.” Like, I just like fucking say it. Like, that’s my baggage. I’d say mine is pretty great compared to a lot of other people.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, and I very much understand that, like, “I’m gonna say this. And if you decide you don’t want to be into me, or you don’t want to explore that, like, I just know that, now I know your loss. Now I don’t have to waste my time with you. If that’s your kind of deal breaker then like, cool.” The other kind of interpretation though of your one true love is multiamory. I think that open relationships, multiamory including polyamory or relationships in a million different kinds of interpretations—I think so many straight people think of marriage, and in turn love, as you are with one person and that person for the rest of your life. And there’re, you know, a bunch of things inherent in this. Again, back to 90s sitcoms of, a dude looks at another woman’s ass and he gets in trouble and is on the couch or like, that the idea that that one is everything to you. And the only person you’ll ever find attractive. Suddenly you get married, and now no one else is attractive. Like, there’s just so many fake weird dumb things. And I will say expectations of men that—or I don’t know, or maybe it’s even expectations like,
“women, if he looks at some other chick’s ass, that means he’s cheating on you” or that, you know—so I guess expectations of both genders. But like, all of this is the kind of punch line is, we have to break social norms already so we get to reimagine and kind of understand what queer love or what love means, in our own way. And I think there’s something very difficult about that. And also, like, very fulfilling because you don’t have to stick with some of those norms.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I used to say this to Trevor all the time. I would rather you look, window shop, look at the whole world and then still choose me. Like, I don’t want you to choose me because I’m the only option because the rest have been eliminated by some arbitrary bullshit rule.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
Look around and still be into me. I think that’s better. But…
KYLE GETZ
I love that too. Yeah. Like there’s something—yeah, like, also for example, marriage. Like, there’s so much crazy and fucked up about the institution of marriage. All of a sudden we get married and now like, that says we’re in it forever, and you’re the only one, like there’s something like, if you look around and continue to pick me all the time, that’s great. And it’s not one day that you did that.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
There’s also like, which makes it weird—I always thought bachelor parties were weird in the way that straight people did them. Like, you know, it’s—
MIKE JOHNSON
Our bachelor party was weird. You were there.
KYLE GETZ
That’s—but in a different way.
MIKE JOHNSON
Go ahead.
KYLE GETZ
I feel like things I’ve seen in TV shows is like, “Oh, you can sleep with a stripper that day because it’s the day before you committed, so technically—”
MIKE JOHNSON
Right.
KYLE GETZ
The point is, “Oh, while I’m still single,” quote, like that’s what they say. Like, “while I’m still single—”
MIKE JOHNSON
—”before she ties me down and ruins my life, I’m gonna go do some shit.”
KYLE GETZ
Yes! So now you’re allowed? And it’s like, wow, is that day really that like, “Oh, now everything—now I can’t fuck other people. And now this is out of bounds for our relationship. And I was single before and now I’m married. And those are the two steps of”—like, there’s so much that doesn’t make sense about straight people weddings, and their customs.
MIKE JOHNSON
I think straight people think wedding cake is magic.
KYLE GETZ
Okay, well, they have a point there. Not to defend straight people.
MIKE JOHNSON
That like, it chemically changes the insides of the people getting married.
KYLE GETZ
You feed it to them and that’s like, it’s your fork has your like saliva or something on it that then poisons them for other people.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yup
KYLE GETZ
I always like the idea that proposing to someone is a surprise. Or like, you don’t know their answer, like that is horrible. That is insane, right?
MIKE JOHNSON
Horrible! Yeah, horrible.
KYLE GETZ
But also, I mean, I think far—a lot of these things I think are changing and far less common among even straight people. But like that used to be the thing, like, you’d propose and not know her answer.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Which is like, god, did you do not know if she actually wants to do this? Do you like, are you not sure? Is this the like, “Hey, do you want to like totally hang out for like a very, very long time together?” Is this is the first time you’re doing this? Like, that’s dumb!
MIKE JOHNSON
It’s like Allan Leaden proposed to Betty White like three times before she said yes.
KYLE GETZ
Really?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Which means Betty White said no. More than once.
KYLE GETZ
And some—maybe there’s something good about, like, in those times, like a dude getting rejected and staying with her of like, I don’t know, maybe that’s a positive masculinity for those signs of like, that’s not an ultimate affront. And he has to whatever.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, that’s true. He didn’t just straight up murder her.
KYLE GETZ
Part of it was I saw some tweet that was like, you know, a dude talking about like, going on a first date. And he was like, you know, I need to go on more first dates. What’s the worst that can happen? It doesn’t go well, or it’s awkward, and I leave? And then his female friend replied, “The worst that happens to me is I get murdered.” And he was like, “And that’s when I realized the difference. That’s when it clicked.”
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Which I think is very fair. What else? The kind of steps in the process of like, you get married, you have kids. Like I think we’ve had to reimagine that. We’ve had to reimagine the gender roles because we’re both dudes. So like, who’s gonna clean if a woman cleans, like boy, our place is going to be super dirty if we stick by that.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, Joseph Peters-Mathews and Brandon. And like, who’s taking care of the kid? Well, we both are.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. And like, instead of, she should cook and clean and he should make money like, what? I think there’s like such—all of this is like, boy, it’s so liberating to be like, “What do I like doing?” If I love cooking and you love working and making money, boy, who cares what gender it is? Do what you love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
The person—kind of honestly going back to some of the different forms of love you described, this person being your everything is like, there are lots of different kinds of love. They don’t have to be your best friend. You can have a best friend that is your platonic best friend. You can have your friends that you go out and play tag football—
MIKE JOHNSON
Sure.
KYLE GETZ
—with—
MIKE JOHNSON
Great.
KYLE GETZ
—and you love that and you like—there are lots of different roles different people can play in your lives and your spouse does not have to be the everything.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, I would make that a stronger statement: should not be. Should not be your everything.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. And so the like kind of ultimate final rule I have is if it’s consensual and makes you happy, fuck society. I think that’s what straight people can learn from us. I keep saying straight as a more and more realizing, like, straight could include trans people, can include a lot of non-queer people. If it’s consensual, makes you happy…
MIKE JOHNSON
Normies?
MIKE JOHNSON
Bore-bores?
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
I like that. Bore-bores.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah.
MIKE JOHNSON
Well, great. Did we do it?
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. Um, on the Patreon episode, what do you want to talk about there? We have—I mean, I have like so much more to say about love than that cannot be contained in this tweet.
MIKE JOHNSON
Lucky, lucky for us, it’s our show. We can do what we want.
KYLE GETZ
Oh, boy. Here’s my 30-minute reading—
MIKE JOHNSON
We can do—we can do Love Part Two, Love Part Three, we can do whatever we want, Kyle.
KYLE GETZ
That’s true.
MIKE JOHNSON
We’re masters of our own domain.
Both
GayishPodcast.com! [both laugh]
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, during the Patreon segment, we’re going to talk about the love letters written between Oscar Wilde and his baby boy.
KYLE GETZ
Oh. Mm. Not—define baby boy. Maybe adult human?
MIKE JOHNSON
Adult human.
KYLE GETZ
Great, great, great. Let’s just be very clear about this. I’m excited about that. I love the love letters that you brought to HANG, and I…
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, and at least one of them that we talked about was one that I read on Have a Nice Gay, but I figured maybe not everybody heard that and it’s still interesting. So…
KYLE GETZ
And boy, yeah, I really enjoy these. Um, yeah, I think that’s all we need to do for now.
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay, let’s take a break.
KYLE GETZ
Let’s take a break.
MIKE JOHNSON
Let’s take a break.
KYLE GETZ
I love you.
MIKE JOHNSON
Aw.
KYLE GETZ
I was talking to the listener! [both laugh]
BREAK SONG [MIKE JOHNSON SINGING]
This is the part where Mike and Kyle take a break!
MIKE JOHNSON
Are we back?
KYLE GETZ
We’re back.
MIKE JOHNSON
We’re back!
KYLE GETZ
We’re gonna show you love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh Robyn, [singing] show me love. Show me light.
KYLE GETZ
Oh god, that song, I, when I was in junior high, me and my straight—who I totally believe like very much straight best friend—like dry humped each other to it, I think because we were just horny, horny boys that didn’t know what to do and like that was a very weird—that song played and we like literally dry humped each other to.
MIKE JOHNSON
Nice. Nice.
KYLE GETZ
Dry hump our website! I dunno.
MIKE JOHNSON
Dry hump our website! It’s gayishpodcast.com
KYLE GETZ
Our social is @gayishpodcast. We are on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, join our Gayish Facebook group, /groups/Gayish Podcast, it’s called Gayish Community and join our Discord!
MIKE JOHNSON
Our hotline—you can send us text messages or leave us voicemails—is 5855-GAYISH, that’s 585-542-9474, standard rates apply. And yes, I respond to text messages. And no, I am not a robot.
KYLE GETZ
Didn’t someone was like, oh this is not a robot! Like we don’t reply to everything. We try our best to do what we—but yes, if someone is replying, it is Mike, Dan, or Kyle. Yeah. Our email is gayishpodcast@gmail.com.
MIKE JOHNSON
And our post office box is 19882 Seattle, Washington, 98109. Um, yeah!
KYLE GETZ
We have a tour, a short Pacific Northwest tour coming up, just to get you some of the dates ahead of time. I say this not knowing any of the dates myself, so looking to Mike with a computer in front of him to say them, but we are performing at the Tree Fort Festival in Boise, Idaho, Idowa?
Mike Johson
Idowa?
KYLE GETZ
Is that what I said?
MIKE JOHNSON
That is another state.
KYLE GETZ
It’s like the sub-state of Iowa.
MIKE JOHNSON
Saturday, March 26, at 4pm at the Tree Fort Music Festival in Boise, Idaho.
KYLE GETZ
The next weekend, we are performing in Portland at the Hop Cap Brewing Bar, same folks that hosted us at Yakima Pride, which is very sweet of them. And then we’re going to do some fun cool things for our fifth anniversary of being a podcast and that is on…?
MIKE JOHNSON
Sunday, April the third at Hot Capital Brewing in Portland, Oregon.
KYLE GETZ
And then we’ll be in Seattle, details TBA, but that is April 10. And I know that because that is the day after my birthday. So y’all better be there to help me celebrate in Seattle.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, it’s gonna be great. And we’re sort of testing like, our ability to do a tour, so please come.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah. Yeah, there’s like, do we have enough listeners? Like, will people show up? Is it useful? Do people like it? Do we like it? Like, yeah, there’s a lot—so like, you know, if shows, live shows, if you like them, showing up will make a big difference. So.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, absolutely. Do the four R’s, everybody. It helps us: rate, review, rubscribe and recommend. It legit is good for us.
KYLE GETZ
Recommending, yeah. Finding your gay friend and being like, “Hey, you don’t know much.” Say it like that, too.
MIKE JOHNSON
Listen to these people that don’t, either!
KYLE GETZ
Realize that’s okay! Cause other people have a fuckin’ show about not knowing shit! Do you wanna do gayest and straightest?
MIKE JOHNSON
Sure. Do you want me to go first?
KYLE GETZ
Yes.
MIKE JOHNSON
Great. So the gayest thing about me this week: I have been hanging out with a boy and that’s been fun.
KYLE GETZ
[gasps] Do you love him?
MIKE JOHNSON
God.
KYLE GETZ
It’s love.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, jesus. We watched Crazy Rich Asians. We snuggled up on the couch and watched a rom-com and I just feel that like there’s something gay about that.
KYLE GETZ
Fo sho. How’d you like it?
MIKE JOHNSON
I really enjoyed it.
KYLE GETZ
It was good, right?
MIKE JOHNSON
I really enjoyed it. Yeah. I feel like this is maybe a dangerous sentence.
KYLE GETZ
Oh, no.
MIKE JOHNSON
All of the Asian people in my life expressed to me similar family conflicts, and especially the queer Asian people in my life. And so I was glad to see that sort of played out. And yeah, it was super interesting. And the straightest thing about me this week is when while we’re cuddled up on the couch watching the movie, he looks over at my bar, and he goes, “Is that a giant candy cane full of fireball shots?”
KYLE GETZ
Yes!
MIKE JOHNSON
Yes, yes it is. That is exactly what that is.
KYLE GETZ
You have a candy cane full of fireball?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah, the ex-roommate’s boyfriend gave it to me for Christmas.
KYLE GETZ
Ooooh.
MIKE JOHNSON
So I have a candy cane full of fireball shots.
KYLE GETZ
Oh, that’s sweet.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah. How are you? What’s up?
KYLE GETZ
Um, my gayest and straightest are interestingly the opposite of what you might think. The gayest is the TV show that I’m watching: Search Party.
MIKE JOHNSON
Ooh, okay. What’s it about?
KYLE GETZ
It is about initially, to try to not ruin too many things, it is because—yeah, I’ve heard people talk about this and people love it. It’s on HBO. It is about someone who is true crime obsessed trying to find a missing person.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, okay.
KYLE GETZ
But there are like very gay characters that are, um, I—you know, I get annoyed now with like, people that are like, too hot. And I’m like, uh, no, I’m like, there are people that have like, realistic bodies, are very terrible people—that part is very nice to me. Um, and my straightest is watching the TV shows And Just Like That—which is the Sex in the City reboot—and Golden Palace, the reboot of Golden Girls. It felt very similar of like, you know, when…
MIKE JOHNSON
Are they the same show 20 years apart? Or 30 years apart?
KYLE GETZ
Well, it’s interesting. I don’t—we talked about the characters’ ages when we talked about Betty White on that episode. And I think the character—it’s so weird, they are like, not too far away in ages. And like, back in those days, it was like, “I’m retired and I’m old!” And these are like, “I’m learning to love again, and date.” And like, you know, “I’m Sarah Jessica Parker. I’m like, fucking hot.” You know, like, there’s that part. And like, they have nonbinary representation. But like, so like it, the straightest thing is because it’s very clear, like, I don’t know, I don’t know, any nonbinary people that love that representation. Like, I think in them.us, it was like, and just like that we got mediocre nonbinary representation—like, any is great. But like, what nonbinary person is like, “Hello, I’m nonbinary, and I love to make jokes about it and let’s talk about that! And that’s who I am!”
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, yeah. You know, Star Trek Discovery has a nonbinary character. And like, I’m happy for the representation and I really enjoy it. And they are definitely fucking bonking us over the head with like, they full-on announced that they’re nonbinary. And like, correcting other people’s pronouns, the way that they refer to them. And it’s, uh, I don’t know, I’m simultaneously happy for the moment and the representation, but also like, I think by the time we get to the 29th century or whatever, like, this is not going to be a thing that we talk about anymore.
KYLE GETZ
I would like to read—I posted on our Facebook group, asked the people for—it was very sexy. But I’m just gonna read a few because I liked a whole bunch of the responses.
MIKE JOHNSON
Sure, great.
KYLE GETZ
Yeah, Mason Taylor said gayest is a first date with a girl from Tinder.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yay.
KYLE GETZ
Straightest is accidentally scheduling it for Valentine’s Day week.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, no.
KYLE GETZ
A.E. says straightest is I finished a bunch of construction with lumber and power tools to build a window seat slash shelf.
MIKE JOHNSON
Hot.
KYLE GETZ
Mmm. Gayest is now it’s time to sew a seat cushion for it, hem the curtains that’ll hang from the mount, and continue decorating.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, my. I mean…
KYLE GETZ
Good for you.
MIKE JOHNSON
I mean, sewing is up there in the gay department.
KYLE GETZ
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Adam Sherman says straightest is picking up a couch for my ex-wife because she dropped a piece of jewelry back there. Gayest is getting iced coffee for my boyfriend when it’s under 30 Fahrenheit outside.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
And then lastly, Brennan Sherwood you know you got us only for one word that you included in it and I get you guys telling the nail tech that she grabbed the wrong color gel polish and then having to argue and prove I was right?
MIKE JOHNSON
Okay.
KYLE GETZ
That’s like a gay scene that would be in a TV show of like you pick the wrong nail polish right? like that’s yep, that’s hilarious. Um, straight is purposely finding an empty lot in a snowstorm to do donuts in the snow like a straight frat boy.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yes, I do that with the Jeep all the time!
KYLE GETZ
They thought about you and then they thought about me and frat boys. Anyway. Yeah, thank you all for sending your gayest and straightest.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah, thank you as always, y’all. Really appreciate it.
KYLE GETZ
Thank you to all the loves of my life. Whether you’re a dog or something worse. Thank you.
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah. Yes. And thank you to, I don’t know.
KYLE GETZ
All the boys you’ve loved before?
MIKE JOHNSON
To all the boys I’ve loved before!
KYLE GETZ
Is that a song too?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yeah.
KYLE GETZ
Oh. Is that where they got the title?
MIKE JOHNSON
It’s “girls,” but it’s Willie Nelson.
KYLE GETZ
Thank you to everyone who listens. Thank you for caring about us. Thanks. We care about you. Thanks for my friends. Thanks to my family. Thanks to Cloris Leachman. I don’t know!
MIKE JOHNSON
I will say unironically thank you to both of my ex-spouses. I’m learning to appreciate the fact that we were in love in different ways and that I am all the better for it.
KYLE GETZ
That is a great sentiment that I also echo of, I’m grateful for the people that I have loved my—the guys that I’ve dated because they’ve taught me things that I will bring into my next relationships. Thank you to you, Mike. I love you.
MIKE JOHNSON
Oh, thank you, Kyle, love you too. Now say the names.
KYLE GETZ
Who else I love: Josh Copeland, Forrest Nail, Patrick Martin, Anonymous, James Barrow, Explosive Lasagna, Kristopher Farrell, Jamie Pew, Kevin Henderson, Tipsy McStumbles, Donald Lynskey, Tomas B, DustySands, AE Coleman, Chris Khachatourians, Jerome York, and Cian and Javi. Thank you. We love you…r money.
MIKE JOHNSON
Thank you very, very much. That’s it. This has been Gayish from the Chris Khachatourians studios. I’m Mike Johnson.
KYLE GETZ
I’m Kyle Getz. Until next week, be butch, be fabulous, be you. Goodbye, Mike.
MIKE JOHNSON
See you next week.
KYLE GETZ
Oh god.
[OUTRO MUSIC, INSTRUMENTAL]
MIKE JOHNSON
Mommy made me mash my M&Ms.
KYLE GETZ
Mommy made me mash my M&Ms. Did you learn that from me? Did you ever…?
MIKE JOHNSON
Yes, I learned that from you. Of all the valuable things I’ve learned from you, Kyle, most of them are about pop songs.