Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Leslie Jordan: Gay, Sober & Fabulous

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Mayim explores the neurobiology and neuroanatomical differences between gay and straight men while the beloved comedian Leslie Jordan shares his personal struggles with crystal meth and alcoholism. He discusses growing up gay in the south at a time when no one talked about gay rights and he reflects on starting his first serious relationship in his 50s and how sobriety has allowed him access to aspects of his mental health and love life he had never experienced. BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I fell out of the womb and landed in my mother's high fields. That's just it. What I found out was the little dark cloud that had always followed me was not my homosexuality. No, it was depression. He said, let me put you on 10 milligrams of paxil. I would call him every day. Nothing's happening, you know, because I'm a drug addict. I'm a bad.

I'm Miam Bialik, and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break down all of the things that make us break down. Today, we're breaking down sexual identity and gender. It's my ambiolics break down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fix you more than that. She's going to break down. It's a breakdown.

She's going to break it down. We have a really, really special guest today. Our guest today is Leslie Jordan, who is my co-star on the new show that I'm working on Call Me Cat. But you may know him because you're one of his almost, six million followers on Instagram. We're going to talk to Leslie Jordan about his sexual identity, how and when he knew that he was gay and how it's affected his life and his mental health in general.

It's really, do not miss this one. Before we get into sexual identity from a neuroscience perspective and break it down, I would like to acknowledge my pod partner to my right, Jonathan Cohen, the man who makes me think that I'm in charge when he's really the one in charge. Good morning, Jonathan. Good morning. Okay. Jonathan, do you have anything to say today?

Do you have any housekeeping? Quick housekeeping. I'm going to put on your apron and get to work. Get my broom out. If you're listening on audio, subscribe to the podcast. Give us a positive review. It helps us make more and recommend it to a friend. One in five people suffer with some form of mental health or addiction.

I don't know what suffer. Live with. Live with experience. Come up against. You might suffer. Depends on the day. We all know someone who is going through something, and so this podcast is intended to give them some information

and let them know they're not alone. If you are listening in audio, consider taking a look at the video. We're fun on video. We wear matching outfits. We have a website, biolikbreakdown.com. B-I-A? L-I-K. Breakdown.com.

Where you can ask MIME anything. We have a very important introduction where MIM is going to drop some science on us, and we're going to skip the Asked MyManything question for the day, but we are going to post it on the website for this episode. And before we get into the introduction, we have a word of the day. Word of the day. The word of the day today is disassociation.

Dissociation. I think it's dissociation. The word of the day is dissociation. Is that how I spelled it? There's a lot of letters in this word. Dissociation is a state where you, I mean, the euphemism is you leave your body. But what it is is when the brain is overwhelmed or flooded, there are compensatory things. Like your brain will compensate for too much of something, which may be unconscious. You may not even realize that you're getting too much of something of heavy emotional content in particular.

And you will have the sensation of not being in your body. It can be very disconcerting. You often will lose time. Like you can be in the middle of a conversation and someone will say, hello, and not just like, oh, I'm thinking of something else. It literally can feel like you are transported to another place. It is a powerful tool of survival, which gets, sometimes wires get crossed and it gets kind of utilized by your brain in times that it might not need to, but it is a tool, a coping tool that's often used in situations of intense trauma or violence or

abuse where the only choice that your brain has is to to essentially allow you not to be there. And that's what dissociation is. But you, sometimes people, if you smoke pot and you get really paranoid, you start dissociating. It's not a conscious decision. It's a chemical, you know, it's a chemical party that you don't want to go to. That's the word of the day. Let's start breaking down sexual identity. I'm going to be very upfront here. If you think homosexuality, is a choice, if you think homosexuality is a sin, if you think it's a mental illness, if you think it's an abomination,

you're probably not going to like this episode. Skip, come back on the next one. No, stay. What are you telling people to skip? Look, do not skip this episode. There's a problem in our society in general where we cannot have open conversation with people who may have slightly different differences.

And yes, this could be an opportunity. This is an opportunity. For someone to come and listen to a different perspective. Correct. A science perspective. A science perspective. As a human and as a scientist, I'm going to tell you that there is absolutely scientific data, legitimate scientific data supporting the fact that brains are wired differently and brains are wired

differently in a way that can impact sexual attraction and gender identity. This episode is not about debating whether or not that's true. That's not what we do here. It's not what I do here. I don't need to debate that. And I don't think it would really serve any of us. It's really not a good use of my degree, honestly. But I do want to explain some of the neuroscience and the endocrinology behind how those of us in the scientific community do understand gender and sexuality.

And then we'll get into what happens to individuals who are marginalized, who are told that they're crazy, who are forced to not be who they are, who are vilified for essentially existing the way they were made, the way their creator made them. We're going to break down the mental health challenges also surrounding suppression of sexuality and gender identity. Everybody take a deep breath. We're going to be okay. I don't want to go overboard with being like, I'm going to prove to you that sexuality and gender have a basis in brain and genetics. That's about as annoying as me being like, I'm going to prove to you, God exists. I don't really need to prove that, and that's not...

That's episode 50. What I will say, there are literally regions of the brain, which show statistically significant differences, both in size and activation and innervation between the brains of homosexuals and heterosexuals. We're going to have all those references on the website. You're welcome to go in there and pick them apart. I don't list research that's been done on four people from a journal you've never heard of. The research I'm talking about, it is verified, it is significant in psychoneuroendocrinology, and we will list those references. Questions do arise, well, are those regions of the brain different

because of the behavior the person's doing. Like if you're a man and you love men and you're thinking about men all the time, maybe that part of the brain is just getting different because you love men. It's the I love men part of the brain. But there is a lot of compelling research that the differences come before those behaviors.

I know that you're wondering, can you do these studies in humans? The answer is no. You can look at brain activity in humans, but in terms of messing with those regions of the brain and seeing what happens, you guessed it, that research is done on adorable animals. There are birds, zebra finches, where there's highly sexually dimorphic behavior. The males sing and the females cannot.

And a lot of the research, the initial research about sexuality and specificity of brains of males versus females and how that impact sexuality has been done in the zebra finch. We'll put a picture of the zebra finch on the website to thank them for their great sacrifice. There are also a lot of of really interesting studies about the hormonal profiles and also brain scans of trans women. Fascinating, fascinating section of research showing the differences between the brains of men who transition in order to be with women versus the brains of men who transition in order to be with men. It's not the kind of thing where it's like, oh, they're missing this part of the brain, or like they have a new brain or this one doesn't have any estrogen. And that's

one has a lot. It's a lot of stats. It's a lot of stats. But the point of statistics in this kind of research is to be able to pull out subtle differences and then rule out the possibility that those differences are due to socioeconomics, to all sorts of things. So these are very elaborate, but again, verified and significant studies. But the fact that even functional brain scans, which means you have different tasks that are done while doing MRI, you know, functional MRI, the fact that there are those kinds of differences is so fascinating. And when I was a grad student, I went to a full year's worth of seminars all about the neuroendocrinology of sexual identity.

It was, we called them, I think, brown bag lunches back when people used bags to bring their lunch. And it was week after week of this kind of research that we would go and listen to experts at UCLA and from other universities in this field. And the take-home message is that people are different in ways that involve neuro-euro-eastern. anatomical differences. Differences in the anatomy of the brain. Being gay is not an aberration. It's not a mistake. If you believe that the only reason that people can love each other is to make babies, you probably have a lot of other opinions that I don't agree with and don't feel like debating. People couple for many, many reasons. Not everyone has to couple for one purpose, i.e. procreation.

For the purposes of this conversation and based on the people in my family and my circle of friends who are gay, who are queer, who are all sorts of aspects of the spectrum, it's very clear that a sense of attraction is something that we often understand from a very young age. And that's not always necessarily linked to sexual attraction. It's not always that developed, especially when we're young. But for people who feel like they're stuck in the wrong body, for people who feel like there's something not consistent with the way they feel things or feel attraction. These are very powerful feelings. They're lasting feelings. They can impact your life changes, your life choices, but they can impact your mental health status. For anyone who has

experienced this, it's incredibly challenging to try and assert yourself in a world that is heteronormative. There are many people who have beautiful coming out stories. I love those stories. And for many people, especially from previous generations, the coming out process has often been painful. For many people, it involves decades, in some cases, of hiding, and in many cases, trying to live a heterosexual life thinking that it would make all those other feelings go away. Many interesting stories of people, I hate to say it, but it's true, becoming priests, because they feel like, well, if I join a community where I'm not supposed to have sex, it won't be an issue because it's the actual act of homosexual sex that is specifically discussed

in the Old Testament. It became an issue. It became somewhat of an issue and also very important to acknowledge that people who are gay are not pedophiles. 100%. Homosexuality has nothing to do by definition with pedophilia. And it's something that I'm very sensitive about when people talk about all those gay priests. I'm not saying that, but, you know, all those gay people do not pray on children. Praying on children is a very separate conversation.

and while there may be gay people who also are pedophiles, homosexuality in and of itself is not pedophilia. There are straight pedophiles. I haven't done the research, but that's what I've heard. Gem of the day goes to Jonathan Cohen. There are straight people who are pedophiles. That's true. And we're not making fun of any of this, but yes.

Also, while being bullied is for many an expected part of growing up, it can be truly miserable if you are being bullied or harassed for your... your unchosen sexual existence, you know, or sense of who you are. So many go through childhoods and teenage years of being tormented. Many come out unscathed and brush it off. Someone very close to me was teased for being fat as a kid. And what he said that he felt intuitively to say was, really?

That's the best you can do is call me fat. that is an unbelievable response, which I never had as a child towards anything that I was teased about. And that's where individual variability comes in of the human experience. Some people may move through being bullied for being gay with tremendous ease, but what determines whether you do or don't is, you guessed it, your DNA. You inherit coping mechanisms. You inherit the way you are, both from your DNA and also from your environment. My mom, for example, is super sensitive. She cries if she sees other people being teased or abused. And I'm like that too. My father also, incredibly compassionate person back at the day when there were special ed classes,

my father who was a drama teacher, the first day of the semester, he would go to the heads of the special ed classes and say, do you have any students in this class who might want to be in drama? And the teachers would look at him every year's same thing like, what? And he would say, do you have any students who you think might enjoy being in my drama class? And they would say, but you're not a special ed teacher. And he would say, I know I'm not. And I grew up watching children in wheelchairs who could barely articulate things, give monologues.

My father would have deaf students signing their parts in plays. Like, I grew up like that. I'm a feeler. I'm a feeler. I get that from... Empath. I'm an empath, yes. But the point is we get how we are from both our parents, environment that they

put us in and from the DNA that they've been given us. And that's what determines whether you can handle to whatever degree being being teased or bullied. I went to school with a boy who I'm pretty sure was gay. He was teased mercilessly. He was teased for being effeminate. He was teased for not being as tough or resilient as people thought boys should be, as our guest Leslie will talk about. Not being athletic can be really, really difficult. This boy cried a lot. This boy cried a lot. like he would get his feelings hurt because people were teasing him and he would cry a lot. And that was also very unusual. Seeing boys cry was very unusual at that time. I was friends with him and I'll just be honest. I really felt like it was my job to make him feel better, which is also another

episode. I wonder what happened to him. He had a Korean name and he also had an English name. I will say neither of them to preserve his anonymity. But I think about him a lot. He was awesome. He was so talented. He was a tremendous. a singer. He was a great dancer. He was delightful. And I really hope that if he was gay, that he got to come out of the closet and be his awesome self. I really hope that for him. But I don't know. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine. Drink more water. There's no real data.

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They also have nutritional guidance, tips for lifestyle and behavioral adjustments. You even get your true biological age that you can track over time. Superpower used to cost $499.99. Right now, it's $199 for the full experience, which is much more affordable than anything else out there. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower. Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiolics breakdown to help support the show. Let's talk some statistics. Let's break down some statistics.

Jonathan, the vast majority of young people come out of the closet at what age? 14 or 16. I am not looking this up on the internet, by the way. 16 or 17. Let's talk about statistics super briefly. Be careful what you read on the internet. Be careful what a headline says. Because if you tell me, you know, 90% of Americans want to vote for Biden, whatever,

That's 90% of the people that you polled want to vote for Biden. Could have been 2,000 people you pulled. It could have been 10 people, right? And if you only chose people from a Democrat, like statistics lie. But. Not your statistics. Not my statistics. Because I'm a scientist who specifically is telling you that I'm going to give you a statistic

based on 2.5 million teenagers. It's a good sample size. That's a very good. It's a strong N, as we say. N is the number of people in a study. A combined analysis of 2.5 million teens gives us this stat. Well, suicide attempts among gay adolescents is staggering. It is almost four times as great as suicide attempts among heterosexual youth.

And among transgender youth, it is nearly six times greater. So what a lot of people are thinking is like, well, why aren't you worrying about the heterosexuals? I am worried about the heterosexuals, and we cover that on many other episodes. But what's important to focus on, I think, right now is that we're looking at the mental health profile with an added pressure of sexual identity or gender identity. There's also a tremendous divide in the black and brown communities, a lot of complexity there as well in terms of the cultural environments. So while many individuals may grow into well-adjusted lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,

queer plus adults, mental health resources for the gay community and for, for gay teenagers are still very scarce. There's also a tremendous amount of stigma in many places in this country and world where there's simply less contact and exposure to gay people. One of the most vulnerable populations is that of the queer, black, and Latino men. The black community and the Latino community

tend to have specific opinions about masculinity. Coming out and being queer can be life-threatening in many black and brown communities. I'm going to list a bunch of statistics and a bunch of resources on Biologna. Breakdown.com. Nearly one in 10, that's 9%. Transgender people have been physically attacked in the past year because of being transgender. Black transgender women were more likely to be physically attacked because of being transgender, 14% more compared to black non-binary people and transgender men.

I know this sounds like a lot of numbers. Suffice it to say there's very specific vulnerability in certain populations in addition to the vulnerability of simply being, simply being gay. That's a roundabout way. of introducing us to our guest, Leslie Jordan, who's going to be joining us to talk about his journey, which is going to take us far beyond simply his identity as a gay man growing up in the South in the 50s and 60s. Break it down. It is really, it's a delight and an honor to welcome Leslie Jordan

to My Ambialy's Breakdown. Hello, Leslie. Hello, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. So a lot of people may not have known who Leslie Jordan was before the quarantine. You have a long history in television. You are obviously a very talented character actor and comedian, also an equal rights advocate. You do a lot of amazing things.

You've been on many, many, many, many shows that people have heard of. And Will & Grace, an American Horror Story, Murphy Brown, the neighbors raising hope, so many things. but most recently, you have exploded into the consciousness of the world because of what you've started doing on Instagram and TikTok really during the quarantine, correct? Exactly. That's exactly correct. The way that I got to know you is that we're going to be on this new show, Call Me Cat, together on Fox. And the part that you play was originally written for a woman. and we were auditioning lots and lots of really talented Southern Dames,

but it didn't really feel like we were capturing this character. And Fox Network, which is what our show is on, said, what about Leslie Jordan for the role? And I said, well, he's not a girl. And they said this would be a very, you know, very different way to go, which is, you know, a euphemism for anything in our industry that's not what people expected. and I told you this story when we were filming the pilot. When I pulled up the email with your audition,

I wasn't directly looking at it, and it started playing, and I said, well, that can't be Leslie Jordan, because that's a woman's voice. I must have pulled up the wrong thing. And I looked, and it was you. And you captured the spirit of a character who had just been left by their partner

and who had a delightful and sweet way to look at the world, but was truly heartbroken. And you captured so much, and we are so thrilled that Phyllis became Phil. But tell us about your Instagram. Like, how did this happen? How many followers did you have going into quarantine? And where are we at now? I started, I wasn't even on Instagram until about a year ago.

Well, a year before the blow up, I was, doing another television show for Fox, the cool kids, and Tess Sanchez, who's head of the casting there, said to me, you know, you need to post this and post this. I said, I didn't know what she meant. I'm not making this up. I thought she meant post-its, like little yellow post-its. Like, I didn't know. She said, honey, you're not on Instagram. I said, no, I don't do a lot of that. I said, I do Facebook, but other people do it for me. She said, oh, and she signed me up that day and I called her and I said I have 20,000 followers. She said, well, that's nothing. I said nothing. 20,000 people want to listen to what I'm saying. And then it jumped a week later,

Megan Malali, my friend from Will & Gray. I mean, yeah, Will & Grace, who played Karen Walker, reposted something of mine and it jumped to 80,000. And that's where it stayed for a really long time. But I thought, that's fine. Can you believe it? And then I was home and Tennessee and someone called me and said, honey, you've gone viral. And I said, no, I'm fine. I don't have a lot. I said, I'm in Tennessee with my mother. They go, no, you've gone viral on the internet. I still didn't know. And who knows what triggered it? I think it was because I was home and I was being silly because I was so bored. And I posted twice a day for 80 days. Oh, gosh. I've had people that work in television as writers say, you know what, Leslie, the content that you were putting out,

people get like $250,000 a year for that. And I was just spewing it out for free. And so, who knows, you know, now it's at a point where, because I have a book deal and I have Carmi Cat and so much going on, I had to go on and say to all my friends, and I call them my friends, look, y'all've got to let up on me. I can't post every day. So it's how many followers do you have? How many followers do you have now? I think it's 5.5 million. Oh, million. And you're also on TikTok. Well, I'm not on TikTok.

But tell us what has happened that you've been taken to TikTok. People record my little, you know, things and make things into them, memes, and this and that. And I went on, there was something on TikTok that got like, like, mil, I couldn't even believe, like, 124 million years. Yeah, it's, you know. obviously we are of a different generation, but I'm 44. And even in my short career, you know, compared to yours, compared to sweet, we have seen a tremendous shift in the scale of people that we can touch. And it is terrifying and also unbelievable. But that's kind of why I wanted to talk to you today, because we know the kind of people who typically have millions and millions of followers

on Instagram. They usually don't have many clothes on. Or, you know, they're the kind of people that we consider sort of, you know, aspirational in our culture. Like, I want to look like that. I want to be that. But I think what has been so powerful is that you have, essentially, your brand is you. It's you being you. And I, you know, I got to interact with you before we even got to be in person. And you're a very, very, very very specific charming southern gentleman. And there's also so many different layers to you. And so that's really why I wanted to, I wanted to break your brain open a little bit. So where'd you grow up and what your home life was like? I know you have sisters. But tell us, like, what did your folks do? And what were you like as a kid? I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. My dad was in the service.

my dad was a man's man. He was a sports fanatic. Adored me, but I'm out in the front yard twirling a baton. You know what I mean? He's got all of his army buddies coming over. And I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. My sisters, I have identical twin sisters who are 22 months younger than me. So we're like a dog and pony show. I mean, when we were little, it was the three of us, you know, almost like triplets. But I had the most amazing child. I have a mother. I just won the lottery with her, you know. She was 19 when she had me. My dad was 21. So they were just babies. You know, we all grew up together. I don't remember being at home much. We just, they just threw us in the back. See, we didn't have seatbelts or anything. Just kids. You know, I can remember my mother just, kids, get in the car, get in the car. We just, boom, off we went. I don't know where we went. It was a very devout family. We went to church every time the doors opened. And then when I was 11, my dad's plane went down. and he was killed on active duty. He was flying to Haddiskburg, Mississippi for a summer Army reserve camp. So that sort of shattered everything, you know. And then kind of the troubles began because I started acting out a little bit because, you know, it's a terrible time to lose your dad. And I couldn't deal very well with, oh, Lord, there's a lot of drug use and carrying on and, you know,

incarcerations and this and that, which I think made me who I am today, you know, to go through all of that. I try very hard. I'm home now with my mom and we're like best friends, but I put her through the ranger, you know, put her through the wringer. It all happened to make me who I am today. So, you know, you can't regret. You can't go back and say, oh, I wished I'd been a better son. I wished I'd been this. Today, I'm a good son. If you had to sort of define when you, your troubled years ended, or maybe they're still going on. But what was that like? Was it like through your 20s?

Was it through your teens? Honey, it was until I was 42. I got sober at 42. Yeah, I was like 42. I was still using drugs. I was still carrying on up. And through it all, I kept my career. It's the weirdest thing.

You know, I was never able. I was very functioning. I never ever worked high. I would be coming down off something or this and that. You know, you just get sick and tired to be in sick and tired. And what it was was self-medication. It was self-medication because I figured out when I was 14 years old, I'll never forget.

I was always a little, you know, people see me today and I'm so kind of self-assured and fun and la-l-la-la. I was such an awkward kid. I didn't even know what to do with my arms. I was effeminate. I was so afraid, you know, that I was going to be teased. I wasn't teased a lot. I've had a cousin that said, you talk all the time about being teased. You were the most popular kid in school.

Yeah, but at any, any. minute the axe was going to fall. Okay, so, yeah, I mean, first of all, you've already made me cry three times. It's a drinking game at home. It is a drinking game. How many times can we make Miami cry? You know, some of my favorite people are gay or queer. My own family, we've, you know, I have several cousins who have come out, and it's been

a very interesting journey watching that evolve. So when did you first twirl the baton? meaning when did you, when did you feel different? Did you know you were different? What was it like to be you kind of owning who you were? And was it connected to a notion of like, I'm different or this is related to a sexual preference? Like, what was it like? I fell out of the womb and landed in my mother's high heels.

That was just it. I landed. That's where I landed. My mother and my grandmother, I think, took one, her mother, Mary Lucille. took one look at little Leslie and thought he's going to need some help. And Southern mothers can circle the wagons. So I always had this amazing little secret garden where I could be what I wanted to be and play with dolls and I learned to sew doll clothes and anything I want to.

But let's just don't tell Daddy. You know, and so you know that it's like shameful maybe or not like what a little boy should do. But I learned to be funny. And I think that is part of my defense mechanism. I notice it even as an adult that if I'm around you and I'm uncomfortable or something, I'm tap dancing. You know, I fall right into it. Bam, bam, bam. And that's keeping you right there, you know, as opposed to letting you in.

In high school, I was very, very popular. And then I, about 17, it just, that's when the drug started. And I realized, well, actually, when I was 14, I'll never forget this. I went to my friend, we don't drink in my religion, Baptist or complete teetotelists, but I had a friend that was an Episcopalian. Oh, yeah, those Episcopalians. The Whiskeypalians. And so my friend, her parents had a bar, and we were 14 years old.

It was New Year's Eve, and we'd gotten out of the house somehow, and we tore into that liquor. And I remember that was the first time I was ever drunk, all of a sudden, I was precious. I was just adorable. And so you figure out, wow, it's a little easier being gay, you know, when I'm loaded. And thus began this self-medicating. When I was 42, I got sober from everything. Went to, you know, a recovery program.

And then I got, when the real recovery started, I was about five years sober. And I said to my spiritual advisor at the time, I said, you know, what happened to that great feeling where you just wake up in the morning and I don't I'm still not I'm five years sober and I don't he said well you know and he suggested a medication are we allowed to talk there. Yeah. Talk. Just he said let me put you on 10 milligrams of paxil because he said it's not it's more for OCD and it's more for helping you focus. I start I'll call him every day. Nothing's happening you know, because I'm a drughead. I'm ready.

You have to taper on with Paxil. And it's every day I'd call. I feel nothing. This matter, we've got to go to something else. And then there was this morning, I woke up, I'll never forget. And it was almost like a Disney movie. I heard the birds sing, and I thought, what are that? There's birds in Northridge.

I was living in Northridge at the time. And it just got this sense of well-being, you know, this sense of well-being. of, oh, wow, okay. And it wasn't, you know, anything. And I still take 10 milligrams of paxil, you know, and I realize. Can we see what it's like if you take 20? I kind of want to do that week with you.

I do take, I take 10 in the morning, 10. I'm way ahead of you. What I found out was the little dark cloud that had always followed me was not my homosexuality. See, that's what I thought that was. Well, of course I'm not, you know, of course. Of course I've got this other side, this dark side, because I'm gay. Come on. No, no. It was depression. Mild Depression, which, you know, I honor today and I'll have days where I say, you know, and I can even say to myself, I'm not buying into that today. I'm not going there today. Paxil will kind of dissolve thoughts. It's just an amazing drug. Yeah, it does some magic. It does. Yeah. Obviously, there's a lot of different kinds, there are a lot of different kinds of gay people.

gay men who do not like dolls and who do not like twirling batons and there are gay women who are femme and there are gay women whoever. So when did for you the sexual identity part of your identity kind of crystallize, meaning, you know, when we're three and four, we like the things that we like, but we don't always think, oh, this means that I might be the kind of person who doesn't want to have babies with a woman, right? Did you ever date women? Did you know that you only wanted to date men? What was that like also in the South when you grew up? Like, I can't imagine there were a lot of gay bars that you could go to. I was on my own because I didn't know any other queers. I didn't know a single one. I mean, there was the one kid in my school who was, you know, teased and

very, you know, made me look like a hell's angel. This kid, you know, so he was teased and stuff. And I was always able to, with my humor, I never did. girls. My generation also, you're talking to the 70s, we were kind of like, it was kind of like a hippie time, you know, it was, we hung out, we smoked a little dope, this, nobody dated. Like, you know what I mean? I don't remember that ever. I mean, I guess the high school cheerleaders dated the football players. I don't know what they did, but we didn't date. We just, you know, we just got high and rolled here and roll there. And then it rolled into where I went to Atlanta on my own. And I became, I was a bag man in a limo.

It was kind of like the glitter rock days, but I would go to the clubs at night and then just crash places. I don't remember even having a home for years. I would just get up in this car and that car. And it was just crazy, crazy, crazy times that rolled all the way. You know what? People that abuse drugs and drink alcohol can really be able to relate to this.

As you get older, you notice your friends are getting younger. because people that are your age have settled down, you know, and oh, please, not me, you know. They're doing things and they're getting jobs and they're doing careers. And so I'm 30s running with the 20-year-olds and then I'm in my 40s and I'm still ready with the 20-year-olds. But 42 was when I quit using, my drug of choice was crystal math because I could do, everybody else would do a little line. I have never known a speed addict. that wasn't on, not riddling. Yes, is it riddling?

It's something that it's almost amphetamines that they give somebody. Yep, exactly. To calm on down. I would do, snort a little crisp, and it was just, everything just evened out. And I remember the first time I tried to,

I thought, I need a little bit of this every day for the rest of my life and everything is going to be perfect, you know, because I had found. And so, but then it just, you know, you just get insane on it, insane on it. that locked in your house with the thinking people are peeking in.

And there's nobody out there. Yeah, that's the drug that you use and then it uses you. I mean, that's really. How old are you now? I don't want to Google what you were born. No, I'm 65. So your mama is. My mother's 85.

Wow. And where are your sisters now? My sisters are at home. What's interesting is my sisters have, you know, headed out for careers here, careers there. You know, they both worked at the Marriott for 20 years. One did food, the other did beverage. They're like a little unit.

They're just the twins. And they've always had one another. And so one has been engaged twice. One has been engaged once they've never gotten married. Wow. Because if you married one, you were going to get them both. And so they have almost always lived with my mother. My mother has gone with them.

And so now I was able to buy a beautiful place. Looks like Laura Ashley threw up in it. It's just all fixed up and it's just adorable. And they live there and with seven cats. I'm just so lucky because they will take care of my mother until the day she goes. It's just mom and the twins, mom and them. I'm going to go home for mom and them. Tell me a bit more, you know, and you can be as vague or as specific as you want.

You are partnered now. No. Have you always, you are not partnered. Yeah. So who knows? Who knows? Got it. Okay, fine.

So, okay, everything is very complicated. But I guess I do want to know, you know, has there been a period in your life where you, where you had a partner for an extended period of time? Do you kind of consider, you know, yourself kind of not alone, but kind of an isolated island of amazingness and people come in and out of your life? Like, what's your, I guess what's your, what's your, Tell us what your kind of emotional intimacy is like. Until I was 58 and I met the guy I'm with now, which five years now, who knows, we're in different cities, but we're, yeah, we're as married as they come, but it's just very complicated.

I had never had a boyfriend. I had never had a boyfriend. I had never had a serious relationship. You know, that's what I even scream now when we have fights, you know. I'm new at this. You know, I'm new at this. this, we're five years in. You're not that new, but I am new at this.

I don't, I've, I've lived alone, always, you know, I've just always been a loner. I don't know if it was because I had my identical twin sisters who were always there with each other. And then me, I just play alone, you know, I played alone. And I'm perfectly happy at that. You know, do I get lonely? Yeah. Of course I do. Yeah.

But not really. I remember I used to sometimes it'd be Friday evening. and I think, wonder what everybody else is doing. And now I never think that. I'm 65 and I'm home in front of the TV and having the best time. And I've got my two cats. And I looked around the other night and I thought, I am as content as I could possibly be.

What a blessing. What a blessing to be able to be content with yourself. I know people that cannot be alone. I have one friend that I'm like, honey, you know, honey. No, I can't have lunch every day. No, I can't. It's not that I don't love you. I just, I can't, you know. What are your friendships like? Are you mostly friends with women? Are you friends with men also? Do you tend to have queer friends? Do you have all kinds of friends?

My friendship, I'm down to probably three really solid friends. You know, as you get older, you don't have all that. You know, people will call me and say, well, let's hang out. Hang out. What's hang out? Like, do what? Go to the farmer's market and I don't know hang out. I don't want to come over your house and hang out. I don't know that. You know, I'm busy with this and that and I'm writing. But I have three pretty solid friends. But my best friend is the guy I'm with. You know, we just, my goodness.

I told him the other day, I said, if you ever leave me, I'm going with you. Because what would, you know what? But it's not codependency. I've learned that a long time ago. Tell us about that, because we talk about that on this show. So tell us about codependency and sort of your experience with it. My experience is that when I was about 14 or 15, all the other guys in class who were straight were meeting girls and breaking up, you know, learning to do this, do that. I was just fantasizing.

I would sit at the, look at the back of the head of some really cute boy. And, you know, we would break up. We'd go. And because I was fun, people wanted to hang out with me. And I'd invite him to go get a hamburger or something, and I'd be on a date. You know what I mean? He was just grabbing a hamburger. but I have always fallen for straight guys,

which is something a lot of gay men do. And it's like, what do you expect? You think like one moment they're going to wake up and go, oh, I think today I won't be straight. Well, no, that's not going to happen. So what is that? It's like this unrequited love kind of thing. And I had to go into therapy about that

because it started happening a lot in sobriety where you're never, ever supposed to go after newcomers into recovery. I've been in and around a lot of different rooms. There are people who specifically are attracted to that person who's so wounded because you want to, I mean, that's what the other programs for. You want to fix them. You want to be their savior. But that in and of itself is its own, it's its own addiction. And I dealt with that. And I dealt with that. I did a lot of writing. You know, what was interesting was that my spiritual advisor said to me, I asked him when I was about three years into recovery, would you help me?

And because I saw him around and he was like this kind of super guy, Superman. And he said, no, can't work with you. It's just too much drama. You buy into all the drama. I thought, I didn't know what he was talking about. I had no idea what he's talking about. He said, somebody else could win. Five years, I finally went to him.

And he said, call me at 10 minutes after eight tomorrow morning and tell me five fears. Yep. So what does that have to do with anything? I called him up at 10 minutes or not. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of getting AIDS. I'm afraid I'm going to, you know, this, this, five.

He goes, okay, baby. He says, one are you going to leave the house, all those fears. He said, now call me in the morning, 10 minutes after eight, tell me five fears. Meanwhile, go to a recovery meeting and put your hand out and greet every single newcomer. I thought, we're not dealing with my problem.

What are we doing here? And we got up to about 80 fears. And then all of a sudden it started making sense because he would say, okay, real and imagined. I said, I don't know the difference. He goes, well, a real fear, a bear's chasing you through the woods. That's a real fear. The bear might eat you. But most of your fears, every one of my fears were imagined.

False evidence appearing real. That's what fears. There you go. Oh, my God. I think we should pause there for a second because I think that is a huge piece of learning for people, the difference between the real and the imagined and how in our lives we start. to separate those two because, you know, the way the human brain works, which mine can explain to us, they don't feel different to us. No, our brain doesn't know the difference between real or

imagined fear. But I think also what Leslie's kind of talking about is those are the things that stop us from being our whole self. It's fear and its resentment. I say this to Jonathan all the time. If you had to name the two things that are going to stop you from being who God intended you to be, the universe, whatever you want to call it, it's fear and its resentment. And it will follow you everywhere. It'll follow you throughout. And being sober, it's not a solution. It's the first step you take towards that rigorous honesty. My sponsor would tell me, put pen to paper and write. And he said, use a pen. It slows your mind down to the speed of a... Correct. It's not the same when you type. And you'll get some clarity. And I thought, all this

pablum, all this recovery pablum. But it works. Oh my gosh, it works. It works if you work it, as we say. Well, I'm curious, Leslie, is that how you started to slow yourself down? Because you talked about your earlier, Crystal was a great way to slow down. And so I was curious, in sobriety, how do you, you know, actively work to not go as quickly? I think that is one of the many tools. You know, you have, you're given all these tools to learn to do what the drugs did for you, whatever it was. I recognize things now. You know, I recognize, oh my gosh, I'm doing behavior that's not sober. That's, you know, one of the many tools is riding. I use breathing a lot. You know, obviously being raised Baptist and that's a very specific, you know, kind of religious path. And the things you're talking

about are a path of spiritual recovery. What I'm very curious, though, I always want to ask this of Southern people. Like, are you a religious, do you believe in God? Do you have a practice around that? Like, what's that like? And is it a part of sort of keeping sober, you know, emotionally sober? What happened with me was, of course, I rejected the path that I was raised in, that we have to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross. I didn't reject that in any ways. I turned my back on it. And then I remember I started when I was about 18 or 19 or so exploring, and especially when I got to California, which is about 28 years old, exploring other religious paths. I would go out to Santa Monica and I would chant.

Oh, we would, nam yo ho rengi-ko. And then I ask them, you know, what am I chanting for? And they said, for whatever, we'll bring you happiness. And nam yo ho rengi-go, get my ass on the letterman's show. Not to make fun, but that's kind of what I was doing. I was chanting for things I wanted. And then I ended up, you know, here and there. Here's where I stand today.

I heard a wonderful speaker named Carrie F. Miss Carrie Fisher years ago. And she said something. She said, I'm a very enthusiastic, agnostic who would love nothing better than to be proven wrong. So I seek. You know what I mean? I have this open heart. So what are my beliefs?

Well, I'm seeking. You know, I'm finding. Of course, I want to believe that there's a power. greater than ourselves and I pray and I talk to him. But do I know for sure? I don't think any of us know for sure. But anyway, it's in the seeking that you find your faith, I think, where I've found some faith. You know, I used to, oh, wrestle with it.

Like, I need to be, because when I was a kid, I wanted to be a good Christian. That's the way I was raised to follow the teachings. And I tried and I tried. And then you start thinking, but wait a minute, I am gay and I believe that I was, I was born this way, and I don't think that's necessary. It's not my cross-to-bear. You know, that's what you say, well, it's your cross-to-bear. No, it's not my cross-to-bear. It's what I am. And so there was a lot of, and I think the minute that I let go of just all the wrestling with it, and it just is, is when my relationship with my mother got so much better, my relationship with, you know, my

family, others, and I'm just open, you know, I'm just a little open, but I will still go. I will still go to church with my mother. And as my spiritual advice suggested, garner what you can. It's like a little buffet. Take what you like and leave the rest. And put it under the pew in front of you. Because don't discard it. Don't say, well, that's just bullshit.

Because it may not be to this one. It may be their pearl of wisdom. Just put it under the, oh, that doesn't really work for me. We do know there are differences that are verifiable in brains and in brain activity. your instinct is correct. And I also think it's really, it's horrible that we need to verify what people for thousands and thousands of years have known, which is about their true identity. It's something that I know you must and do, you know, come up with or come up against from people who have issue with homosexuality. And that's what I say at the top of this episode.

If you believe homosexuality is a choice, you're probably not going to like this episode. You know, I feel like you're likely far too experienced and mature to want to debate with people if homosexuality is a choice. But I guess I do want to know a little about how you choose to do advocacy and what that's like and what you feel that you're providing that maybe you would have loved to have in terms of this is how you were born and the way you're born is perfect. Yeah, I'd like to hear sort of why and how you choose to use your voice that way. When I first got to West Hollywood in 1982, it was a city in crises.

People were dropping like flies with AIDS, and we were not getting any help. And so we figured out very quickly we had to take care of our own. And I jumped right into the trenches, and I saw miracles, you know, just with people whose families had turned their back on them because of, you know, they not only found out that they were getting. but that they had this disease. And it was a real period of growth for me where some real beauty came out of that. I think it's a little bit, I think you and I talked about this,

a little bit like what's going on right now with COVID in that we're all going through this together. And I noticed in the gay community, we went through that struggle altogether and we came out a stronger community, a more loving community because we were more willing to reach out to one another. I think that was where I just figured out, you know what, like you said, I can't argue with you.

I'm not going to argue with you. I know what I know. I know what I know. And you know what you know. So a story I tell when I was three, I asked for a bride doll for Christmas. And my, you know, lieutenant colonel of a daddy said, no, no, I'm not going to get him a bride doll peggy. It was 1958. But Christmas Eve, all I could talk about was

Sandy Claus is going to bring me a bride doll. And my mother said to my dad, what are you going to tell him? Because I won't know what to say. She heard the door shut. Well, when I came down on Christmas morning under the tree was a beautiful bride doll. Life size to a three-year-old. Mother said it was life.

And I squatted in the floor and peed. I peed all over the place. Now tell me that that is some sort of, sort of choice for a little boy. Not to equate, but like you said, I think it is very important. There are a lot of gay people that didn't play with dolls and didn't, you know, didn't this and that. But my journey was that I did.

And I love my sponsor says to me all the time, people, like our parents, especially, they did the best they could with the light they had to see. That's right. With the tools and resources that they had. And they did the best they could. And as we're doing, we're all doing the best we can with the light that we have to see with in love. Leslie, thank you. Do you want to give a shout out to any, like, to your book? Like, do you have a release date?

What can you, what can you push besides Call Me Cat? We got the cover yesterday. It's called, how y'all doing? Mischief and Misadventures from a life well lived. And it's coming out on Mother's Day. I love it. Well, I'm going to buy copies and have you sign them. So I'm just warning you in advance. I'll bring them to work. I'll leave them in your dressing room. Well, by then, We will have been picked up for our second season. From your mouth to our higher power's ears. Leslie, I adore you and thank you for everything you give. You have really, you've saved so many people's spirits.

Thank you. Leslie Jordan, he's an unbelievable creature. He's an unbelievable man. I thought we were going to talk about the ski school reboot. I literally thought that was going to be like, oh, I like being gay. It's fun. I did not know it would go that deep, that quick. What a journey also.

I mean... And you get to work with him every day. I get to work with him and play. I mean, it's like play. You know, working with him is like play. We just, we have the best time. And, oh, wow. I mean, this was very special episode, yes,

because this is my co-star. Like, it's someone that's actively in my life talking about my field of study. Leslie is a real, he's an advocate. He acknowledges that gender and sexuality, these are complicated things, his sense of dedication to this community and really to lifting up that community is so, so significant.

I'll list on the website, we'll list some of the organizations that Leslie and I both are part of that support LGBTQIA plus individuals. I really hope that this episode was helpful. I found it really helpful. It's so interesting hearing from people of a different generation, you know, about things that are in the cultural vernacular now in such a different way.

I'm very grateful for his experience. that he, you know, fell out of his mom's womb into her high heels. But I know so many people who struggle with even, like, naming their identity and then also finding comfort, finding partners that can be loving and supportive. There's so much complexity also with the discrimination, the persecution still of this community. The theme that keeps coming up is this idea of not sober, behavior. Yes. The idea that it's not just the drug use or alcohol use or whatever the use might be, but there's actually a pattern of behavior that people who are very sober for a long time say,

oh, I've fallen into a behavior that is not sober behavior. Even thinking can be not sober is what he was talking about. But I think also, I really didn't expect him to talk about depression. And I think that's also, he brought up such a beautiful layer to his identity and honestly our existence in that he thought all along like, well, of course I'm unhappy. I'm gay. It's hard to be gay. There's not that many of us, right? When he cleared away the numb, you know, the numbing, when he cleared away addiction, what he was left with was who he was. That was the person who was using those things to try and not feel that way. And for him, medication really tip the scales for him and has been a wonderful support for him,

but that doesn't mean he hasn't done the work and doesn't continue to do the work. A pill is not a cure. A pill is something that can bridge that progress that you only really get to make by doing that hard work. What does help mean? I bring that up because when someone tells me, Jonathan, you need help. Jonathan, you need help. No, I don't. I'll show you. How's that working for you? Pretty well.

Says you. I raise it just because we want to ensure that these, you might need help if, are just, there are resources out there, some of those resources we link to. And when I say you might need help, what I often mean is you might need to spend more concentrated time thinking about this, researching it, speaking to other people who've had that experience. You might, yeah, you might need more information. Yeah, this doesn't mean like you need to get some medication in you. That's not what it means.

It means we all need help. And so after we've clarified that, you might need help if... You might need help if you have a distinct or even fuzzy sensation that you are in a body or a sexual identity that doesn't feel right. If you don't know what that means, it may not be your experience. If you do know what that means, that's what it is. If there's something that feels not right, that is something to explore. You might need help if you feel unable to date or have really any meaningful. connection with people because you feel like no one can know the whole you. You might need help if you

feel ultimately confused about who you're attracted to or why. And you might need help if you feel in any way marginalized or threatened because of your sexual or gender identity and especially for young people and especially for people who grow up outside of urban centers in places where these things often are not talked about. There are absolutely resources for you. There are anonymous resources where you can find ways to