The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Lauren Hough

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Author Lauren Hough calls her Twitter pal Andy to talk about her new book, "Leaving Isn't The Hardest Thing." They also discuss her experiences growing up in a cult, being gay in the military during peak "Don't ask, don't tell," and the power of empathy.

Hey everybody, it's Andy Richter here and this is another episode of the three questions and I am very excited to talk to one of my virtual pals. We aren't IRL friends yet, but someday we're working towards it. But it's the very funny author and bon vivant and dog lover, survivor, Lauren Huff. Hi. Hi. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Lauren, you're here. I mean, aside from the fact that I wanted to talk to you, but you've got a great book out now calling Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing, which I read, which I told you in a DM,

is really saying something because I have a terrible attention deficit and reading is, unless it's an article a newspaper article or a magazine article is about four or five pages long i have a real hard time sticking to it um so but i i read your whole book and it is so funny and so uh well brave you know i mean people toss that word around but it is it's a it's brave you know because it's quite a story and there's a lot of warts and all kind of stuff told about it and um and it's just a really compelling collection of essays and and and thank you for uh providing it for us

oh thank you so much that means a lot thank you oh sure sure now where are you right now are you in the east coast yeah i'm up in uh near well near boston i'm at my brother's house staying in his spare room as you know best selling writers do um are you kind of are you kind of in between places right now? Yeah, I'm trying to figure out. I've got to drive down next week to look at apartments in Austin. The last time I rented Sight Unseen, there was a dumpster right outside my window. So we're like 5 a.m. on.

It was just pallets in the dumpster. It was a rat, which was fun. My dog was the first thing he was uninterested in killing was a fucking rat. So that was really helpful. Yeah, yeah. He figured it was a pre-existing roommate. It was easy to tell him it can't be there. Now, so you are going back to Austin because you were in Austin and then you kind of cleared out.

Was that for COVID reasons? A little bit for COVID. That's one of those questions. Every time someone asks it, I'm like, oh, man, I'm sorry about what's about to happen to you. I thought maybe it was going to be one of those. It's none of your fucking business kind of questions. No, no. My dog was getting really old and it was like 95 degrees in Austin at nine o'clock at night, and the only thing he enjoyed anymore was walks.

So I took him up here. Well, before the pandemic, the pandemic kind of ruined it, but he used to be able to rent a house on the Cape for nothing over the winter because who in their right mind would want to be there? Except writers who kind of want to lose their minds and right. I didn't do any writing, but, um, yeah. So I got to walk on the beach and sniff dead stuff and stuff for the last

few months. Yeah. So yeah. How old was he? He was 12. I think. Yeah. Not quite sure.

We're kind of guessing. He was a random stray who just showed up so an akita yeah that's the wild thing about it i have no idea how that i lived right near an air force base in maryland and i think someone might have deployed or divorced or all the reasons people throw dogs out yeah yeah that's that's i because i have a rescue dog too. And, and it's just, and also she's like, she was, they, like the dog catcher picked her up on the streets of Bakersfield and she was only about six months old, which was a surprise to me when she went from 54 pounds to 95 pounds. Like I thought I was getting a full grown dog, but I was getting a full grown dog but i was getting a half grown dog

but she's she's a beautiful just a great dog and and she's very specific like because i i had that blood test thing done on her and one parent was half great pyrenees half border collie and then the other parent was like a mixture of German Shepherd and Chow. And so it was very specific. Like somebody was doing some Frankenstein shit in Bakersfield. And then just like let her go, I guess, you know, because they held her in animal control there for a while before she ended up, you know, being carted off to us dilettantes in L.A., which is kern county to la pipeline of of thrown away dogs you know which i'm lucky to get but uh i just can't picture i just am amazed like tossing a dog out you know i just you know a cat maybe but you know a dog and i like cats but i just think you know you cats, odds are cat can fend for itself.

You know? Yeah. Some cats really apparently just want to be outside and they're happy with that. Yeah. I mean, I feel bad for the bird population. Yeah, I know. I mean, I felt bad for the cat population when Teddy was a loose dog. The first time I saw him, he was trotting down the street with a cat. In his mouth, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, ooch. He was kind of a serial killer. So we took him in.

The cats in the neighborhood were very appreciative. Now, he's the final dedication in your book. Yeah. And you called him the love of your life uh and do you do you think that's that's gonna hold up do you think that there's some bond with animals you know with your dogs that that people can't approach in some way i think maybe so um or i don't know. Maybe I'd like to think I've learned more about relationships from dogs. They don't care if you're a good person or a bad person or had a bad day or a good day. They just fucking love you.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's different, I think, with most people. People are a lot more complicated, that's for sure. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. Or worse. But, yeah, he's, I don't know.

And I'll get another dog at some point, and he'll be the love of my life. So, who knows? Sorry, Teddy. But they all are. And how long did you have Teddy? Ten years. Ten years. Yeah. And how long did you have Teddy? 10 years. 10 years. Yeah.

That's a good long time. Especially for a big dog. That's the trade-off with big dogs. You get a big dog, but they don't live as long. You know, that's with my dog. Because as big as she is, that is like something I'm like, oh. You know, it just seems to work out that way. Yeah, it's unfortunate. i can't ever get there are dog breeds that only live to be four

seven years old i i can't do that to myself yeah i was at the dog park and the biggest great day i've ever seen in my life like the at the at the shoulder had to be almost five feet and the guy had him on a leash it's a big open dog feet and the guy had him on a leash it's a big open dog part and the guy had him on a leash and i said is he aggressive and he said now he's got a heart condition and i mean it was a young dog it's like obviously like it's too fucking big like its own heart can't sustain it you know like sometimes it's franken again it's frankenstein again it's frankenstein stuff you know yeah i mean leave it to us to ruin even dogs i know i know is it something amazing let's destroy and also to take a to take a wolf and and have it be uh a dachshund and a great day you you know, like that, like that they have a common ancestor and that that's how good we are at fucking with stuff.

Now, kind of the, you know, like the the headline of your of your history is that you were raised in the family, which is, you know, shorthand known as a christian sex cult um and um and your book is a lot about that is like about the book is kind of just your struggle to kind of be out with that i mean you you came out as a lesbian before you came out as a as a cult kid came out as a lesbian before you came out as a as a cult kid um because you talk about how there were other cult kids that kind of it came easier to them and i and i was wondering and you talk about a little bit but if you could talk about it here like what was the difference between you and them do you think uh i'm a fucking coward i think big difference. Yeah, I don't know why I was so scared of talking about it. And that shame they kick into us as kids of, you know, don't talk about it, whatever it is. We're always taught not to talk about it.

And yeah, and then the second problem is it's just kind of a conversation showstopper really if i drop yeah i was born in a sex cult that's we're not gonna end up talking about barbecues yeah yeah 20 minutes from there that's that's it that's all we're gonna be talking about yeah um yeah i can see that that's pretty cumbersome. Yeah, so I don't know. Unless you say, I was born in a sex cult, and I don't want to talk about it. Now let's talk about charcoal versus propane, motherfucker. The important questions of life. Yeah. Yeah, I still don't know what to do with it.

I've got the book out now, and now there's this huge imbalance of information that people know all of this about me. And I'm still learning their name and where they're from. I don't know what the fuck you do with that. Yeah. I haven't been on TV. It's like I have lots of one-way friendships with people that have watched me for years and that I've never met. And then I see them and there's this sort of, they have this ease and this familiarity with me, but I don't know them, you know, and you just kind of, it feels weird.

And it feels, especially in the beginning, like intrusive, you know, and kind of like, you know, but you just get used to it, you know, I mean, do you feel now that there is this imbalance of information between you and a lot of people that that admire you and that like you and that, you know, have have become your clientele? Do you have moments of regret? Like, oh, shit, I never should have done this. Weirdly, no, i thought i would i was i panicked a lot more before the book came out than after it did after it did i mean there's nothing i can do it's it's fucking

out there yeah um and it's just learning how to deal with that but yeah i hadn't most of the panic was beforehand um while i was writing it everything else, and especially right before it came out. But, no, I'm happy with it. It's really good. You should be happy with it. It's really good. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's the main thing is I finally found a way to tell the story where it wasn't just, you know, here's the list of really sad shit that happened. Yeah. Nobody wants to fucking read that. And I didn't want to put it out. And nobody wants to re-traumatize other people just by reading my book. It's going to fuck up your head for two weeks. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I had a few things to say. It turned out. And I think it's funny. We put out this book of, you know, here's my life in a sex cult. And it's not about that at all. I kind of tricked people into reading my communist manifesto. Yeah. You're a cable guy socialism project.

Yeah. And how is your family with the book? Are they okay with how it all came out? For the most part? Yeah. There, I mean, there's,

there's, there's always a little bit of fear. I think when, I mean, I don't want any of them putting out a fucking book. So beat them to the punch. Yeah. That is the secret is don't be the sister of a writer.

The one who writes the book. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're fine with it. I, I mean, there's also the benefit.

I can sell a lot of fucking cookies on girl scout cookies on Twitter. So for nieces. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that turns out pretty useful now you were uh you were born in germany is that correct yeah i was born in berlin and when you're

born in germany are you born as a u.s citizen to u.s parents or are you a german citizen or i mean yeah not according to germany i'm an American. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, both of my parents were American. When was the first time that you spent any substantive time in the U.S.? I was almost seven when we came back. So, yeah, we'd come to visit once. I have no memory of that whatsoever. Yeah. I was like two. But, yeah, we came back when I was six just about to turn seven and i was here for until i was nine yeah i don't think the culture shock really hit me at the time because i was

you know six years old and i'm sure there is a huge difference between uh santiago chile and amarillo texas but yeah i didn't really notice other than that none of the kids spoke spanish anymore yeah um and also i didn't speak the other than that none of the kids spoke Spanish anymore. And also, I didn't speak the right kind of Spanish. I did try to go talk to some of the kids at school, and they just looked at me like I was a nutcase because I didn't know that there were dialects, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I had a pretty typical—I didn't know that I had been in a cult. I didn't know any of that.

I probably taught the kids on the playground way too many details about sex because it would really piss me off if they thought, like, storks brought babies. They're like, no, look, here's what happens. It's probably a little strange for a seven-year-old to know. Yeah. But, yeah, I didn't know anything about it until we went back in. Yeah. And what prompted going back in? I don't know exactly.

You'd have to ask my parents and who fucking did it. Well, I have them on tomorrow. I'm going to interview them tomorrow. Oh, shit. I think it was, there's a lot of guilt when you leave a cult. You don't know if they are right. You really do think they're right. And the cult was actively recruiting ex-members at the time. But it's also really fucking hard to survive out here.

My mom was waiting tables at two different restaurants, and we were on food stamps. So, you know, here, join us and have a job and free childcare and a house to live in. It doesn't seem like a tough sell, really. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can just surmise that it's almost like a kind of like extended childhood in that you are sort of you don't make any big decisions for yourself do you really when you're they're in there like were they uh you really don't i mean even i we left it out when i was 15 and it's still shocking to me how hard it is to survive out here and i think the harder it is to survive out here. And I think the harder it is to survive out here and make decisions and,

you know, one little thing can screw up your entire fucking life. Yeah. I understand more and more why they joined. It's really simple. You do this, you do that. They tell you what to do.

It's great. Yeah. And now was there like, was somebody getting rich off of that cult? Yeah, I'm sure. It's all rumor, but I've heard of, you know, so-and-so's mom was a courier and they were dragging suitcases of cash to Switzerland over time. And the leaders owned a lot of property, but we owned nothing.

So someone was making money off of it. It used to piss me off. We had these little comic books that we read when we were kids, and it was just about the Prophet David Berg's family. And they always had swimming pools and socks. And we're sleeping on like futons yeah you know it was just a row of futons in our room on the floor and that's two or three kids to a futon and that's how we slept so yeah and there were no socks you're always like stealing people's socks constantly or mine would

get stolen and i'd steal them back i don't know nobody ever donates socks when they're donating clothes so yeah that was the big one that's what uh you know that bombus company that's what they say that that's like the most in demand thing at at shelters is socks so that's why they they donate a pair for every 18 pair that they sell. That's awesome. Yeah. Now, all the moving around when you're a kid, how is that? Is there any rhyme or reason to that? Or is that just kind of part of the business model of keeping people compliant? I think it's a little few things. It's yeah, it definitely keeps you compliant When they would separate families, any sort of power structure that wasn't the cult's power structure. So, yeah, your parents would just dip. You would randomly get assigned a kid for family day because they didn't have any parents at that home.

And it was really annoying because if you had, like, there were only two kids in our family. For the most part, it was me and my brother. So on our family day, we could go to fun places like we go sledding or go to the zoo or whatever. But if we had another kid, then we couldn't afford it. And it was really fucking annoying. Jesus Christ. But yeah, it was also just to make money or they would get thrown out of a country. The family got, they all got deported from the Philippines, so everybody ended up in Japan.

Yeah. By the time Japan was booming, so it was a great place to raise money. Wow. Does it still exist at all in any form? Yeah, they're just phoning it in now. Oh, really? The founder died. His wife and her boyfriend are running it.

They live in Mexico. Run a couple hotels. And yeah, if you tithe enough, they'll send you a fucking email. Wow. What a payoff. It's basically running a sub-stack. They might be on sub-stack. Who fucking knows? can't you tell my loves are growing you were in amarillo because of your grandmother yeah your maternal grandmother yeah yeah that was always our landing spot was grandma's house

and when you went back in were you okay with that like Like, I wasn't first. I thought it was fucking awesome. I didn't have to go to school anymore. Yeah. So, and I hated school. I was in fourth grade and it was in a, go into school in Plano,

Texas. And it was a bunch of little rich kids and they were, and then the kids from the apartments behind the school. So you'd have half the kids at school talking about jockey class after school. And the other half were on food stamps. Yeah. So, yeah, I hated that school. So, yeah, I thought it was great.

There were kids to play with. I thought it was basically a slumber party every night. Yeah. It turned out to be really fucking different. So, yeah, I was thrilled. I thought I might get to see my dad and my sisters again because they were already in. My parents had divorced while we were out. Yeah.

So, and they were, I knew they were in Europe. And then we got sent to Japan, which was not Europe and not where my dad and my sisters were. So I was really not happy about that. Yeah. But that slumber party was going to bed every night and sharing a bed with another kid, sharing a room with like 12 other kids sometimes, or my parents, which was just gross. Yeah.

No nine-year-old wants to sleep in the same room with your parents. Yeah, yeah. They think you're asleep and you're not. Yeah. Anyway, but yeah, it was just, all we did was fucking take care of the younger kids. They had more did was take care of the younger kids. They had more kids to take care of the next kids. It was, all I did was change diapers or we would be out.

It was, I didn't mind it as much in Japan. I was really scared in Dallas that another kid from school would see me basically begging. We would hand someone a poster and be like, hey, we're Christian mission missionaries give us money yeah and that was our job every day yeah now you talk in the book about how kind of that you've always kind of taken solace or found escape in reading and writing and was that the case too when you were a a young teenager? Or did that start at some point? I don't know. It started early. My grandma used to take us to the library. And I was obsessed with the Ramona books like every other little nerd my age.

Yeah. But, yeah, it was when I – my grandmother used to send us books when we were in the family. So it would just be random. I don't think there was any reading list she was going by. You'd get a Louis L'Amour novel one week. You'd get a Jackie Collins novel one week. And I didn't fucking care. I read anything she sent.

And my mom would let us hide them in a room, so I'd sneak into the bathroom at night and read. But yeah, it was a great way. It's strange because I have ADHD, but I can focus on a book more than anything else. TV, listening to something, I zone out. I have no idea what happened. But a book, I can get lost.

So it worked for me. So there was somebody that would have come in and confiscated those books. Like, that was – Oh, yeah. I had gotten caught with them before. You get accused of having a lust for knowledge, which didn't sound like a bad thing to me. Yeah, wow. According to them, it was really fucking bad, apparently.

Because, yeah, you get stuck up in a room having to read family material and writing reactions to it basically fucking book reports but you have to yeah yeah pretend to be super touched by the work and i've learned a lesson and all the rest of it yeah um yeah they they they outlawed i mean it's basically the way power works, control information, and you get to control people. Yeah. And when did you start writing, kind of, and what form did that take? Was it like journaling? Yeah, it started as journaling.

It started as, well, I mean, there was also a lot of bad poetry. Yeah. I tried to write country songs for a long time because that's that's the next book yeah um yeah i i i tried it all but and then i really you know i thought it had to be easy to write a thriller i can do that everybody there's a formula to this i was terrible at it um my plots made no sense whatsoever everything i fucking wrote that was fiction sounds exactly like the last person i read yeah um yeah it wasn't until i started i was like all

right fuck it i'm gonna try to actually write these stories out some of them and i kind of found out i do actually have a voice which is super fun yeah so yeah was that was that from somebody reading your stuff and and giving or was it all like did you show your stuff to people no i really just showed it to other call babies at first yeah you know one or two or two friends. I didn't really trust anyone with it. I started writing a book, I think like everybody does after a bad breakup, and started writing all of these stories. And I can write a book out of this. And then we got back together and I stopped writing it. And then we broke up again. And that breakup made me send it to an agent. So apparently breaking up with people is just great for my creativity.

Yeah. Why not? That does seem like a bad precedent now that you are a published author and you're going to be expected to follow up on it. It does seem like relationship kryptonite, like it wouldn't take long for people to figure it out i mean honestly i i think maybe wanting to date me after reading that book is probably the first red flag look if charles manson can get married you can get a girlfriend thanks man no problem that's what i'm here for no No, well, I don't think, I mean, it's hard to expose yourself like that. But, you know, as I get older, I'm 54 now, and I just feel like I don't have time to hide shit anymore. Like, you know, because it's all going to come out anyway.

Because it's all going to come out anyway. I don't mean like to the world. I mean like to people that I am interested in or want to be friends or relationships with or whatever. But I just think as you get older, you just shed all that because it's just – I don't know. You're getting old and ugly anyway, so why not? It's fucking exhausting. I think that's my problem with dating right now i didn't even bother it's just so much fucking texting i want to skip to like a year in where we're just sitting on the couch watching on something on netflix and like

hating the way i breathe i don't i don't want to do any of the dating part. Yeah, yeah. I'm just tired of it. Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't want to get coffee. I don't want to fucking shower first. I don't, I don't. Yeah, just show up. It's fine. Yeah. I was married for 25 years and for a long, like, during the happy times, I would think about like, whenever I'd hear somebody be like, oh, you get married and then you're going to be with that person for the

rest of your life. And you're like, fuck yeah. Like you don't have to do all, you don't have to sit there and go like, so what, you know, what do your folks do? You know, you don't have to go through all that preliminary nonsense. You're just like with somebody and you're you and they're them and you just get to live, you know, and just get to be there. And, you know, try and hold it together as long as you can. But, you know. Maybe. God knows we've learned it last year. Life is boring as fuck.

I just really want someone to hang out with when life is really goddamn boring it's mostly waiting for shit yep or sitting in the fucking car in traffic i yeah i really just want someone when i see when i see a fucking chipmunk i want someone to be like hey look chipmunk that's it i'm just fucking talking to myself right i miss my dog so goddamn much is I had a dog to go, hey, look, chipmunk. Yeah. You could be in a relationship with someone that wants to kill the chipmunk then. Yeah, I'd be fine with that. It would be – I had a squirrel nemesis in Austin, and I really just wanted to rant to someone about my fucking squirrel nemesis.

really just wanted to rant to someone about my fucking squirrel nemesis okay i would be fine if they hated me for the squirrel nemesis and thought i was an asshole for hating that fucking squirrel yeah but i just wanted to tell someone about that oh he's a fucking asshole he ate every goddamn tomato he didn't even eat him he just like suck out a little corner and then drop him somewhere and i and they do seem to i don't know if it's projection but like because i have one in my yard that i swear taunts my dog it just they do yeah just comes to fuck with my dog and get her all riled up and then you know knowing full well you'll never get me you stupid dog you know they do they'll hide like just out of reach on the tree and then pop out really quick and then go just out of reach. They're fucking dicks.

Chatter, chatter, chatter. You left the cult when your mom left the cult at about 15, right? Yeah, yeah. At 15. And then you finished up high school in Amarillo? I mean, if you could call it that, yeah. I went to my senior year at, I mean, my high school mascot's a fucking rebel. It was a terrible place. Like a Confederate rebel kind of?

Yep. Yeah, yeah. Proud, proud heritage. One of those fucking schools. Yeah, and I only did senior year, which was fine, it turns out. I mean, I've done all right with it, I guess. Just because, you know, you've really lived under duress your whole life in that way, that you're kind of, like, you don't really have a place.

I mean, well, let's talk about that first. What is a sense of place to you? Like, do you end up feeling like you're at home places ever? Or do you think because of that constant churning, you know, relocating, that that's even possible? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. it concerns me a lot because you want to fucking settle down and

have the house and the dog and everything else but as soon as I'm in a place I'm looking for the next place to go and I don't know if that'll ever leave I don't know if there's a way to work with that

there are two places that kind of feel like home to me. Berlin's one of them and Austin's the other. And I think it's because no one fits in there really, so everyone does. There are some cities that the artists and queers and anarchists and everything kind of gravitated towards. and everything kind of gravitated towards so yeah i've been i've been itching to get back to austin and i didn't know i would feel that way about another place so yeah we'll see if that works out also it's i mean the downside is it's about to be uninhabitable um or might already be uninhabitable by humans and we're just prolonging it but oh yeah because of climate change it's really fucking miserably high because of climate change it's really

fucking miserably high because of climate change or because of because of the the laws that they're passing down there god there's that too yeah but i mean somebody's got to fucking be in texas to vote i know i know i had my i had uh my ex-sister-in-law lived in Austin for a while, and we used to go down and visit, and it was so great. But if it's your view of Texas, it is a skewed view. I said it's like sitting next to a fun gay cousin at a Romney wedding. You know, it's like, this seems really fun, and man, this is interesting. Like, this seems really fun, and man, this is interesting. But then, you know, when you go up to the buffet, you realize, oh, my God, these fuckers are white and Christian and Jesus.

Yeah. I don't know what the fuck to do about Texas. I don't. Yeah. I'm fascinated with them. And it's weird because in person, I've never really encountered problem with a texan being a bigot in person yeah yeah um but then they'll vote against you every fucking time so right there is a large part of me that prefers new englanders just telling you to go fuck yourself when they hate you right i it's a little more suspicious of people who smile at me. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know what to do with that. I know I don't feel safe going to the bathroom anywhere outside of a city. Yeah, Texas is always weird, too, because it is a unique place. It does have its own, you know, like people will be like, I'm so proud to be from, you know, Wisconsin. And it's like, whoa, way. It's Wisconsin. What's the difference between Wisconsin and, you know, Rockford, Illinois or, you know, Beloit, Michigan? It's all, you know, it's all very similar.

But Texas is its own thing. And it's always been interesting to me that this, you know, don't mess with Texas. We're rebels. We're independent and stuff. And yet it's one of the places that demands the most conformity and, you know, tries to squash actual individualism and individuality among actual Texans than lots of other places. And it's strange. That's one of those things i don't know that i before this book came out i don't know that i was even telling people as a texan because i was just so tired of

the eye rolling about it i'm like i'm not one of those it's fine yeah yeah it just happened to be from texas it's yeah it's not my fault well you can tell them you're, you know, you're a child of the world. You're a global citizen. Oh, God. Not by choice, but, you know, but still, you know. Yeah, that sounds like one of those dating profile red flags. We're at the school of hard knocks. I'm street smart. Uh-oh.

That means you're an addict. So, you up and joined the Air Force. Was there any thought behind that? Or was it just kind of like, I got to do something now? I'm out of high school and Amarillo ain't doing it for me. I couldn't figure out how to go to school. I didn't know about student loans or any of that. I had no fucking clue how to go to school. I didn't know about student loans or any of that. I had no fucking clue how to go to a school.

Yeah. We didn't have Google. And had anybody in your family been to college? Not really. My mom went to UT. But, you know, that was way back when. Her parents probably helped her get in. I have no idea.

Yeah. I had no idea how to do any of it. So it was the Air Force was just chance. I showed up at a strip mall the morning after I graduated high school, and the Air Force recruiter was the first guy who showed up. So who were I, Air Force? Like showed up, were you just there to, like, buy something? No, I was sitting outside the recruiting office waiting to join one of them.

Oh, wow. I just wanted out of Amarillo. And I knew that was a fast way to get there. The thought of going through just basic training, even the funny ones that are depicted in the movies, just feels like, oh, that is not for me. Like, no fucking way. And do you think maybe the cult kind of like made that seem like small potatoes in comparison uh yeah maybe i mean it's hard to be scared of a drill sergeant when you met my stepdad but there was also i mean the military itself there was also the family was

so anti-military and so anti-american and so joining the military felt like a giant fuck you um oh wow but was really just the same fucking thing yeah so and yeah it was just repeating i said what you were saying you don't have to make any decisions the toughest decision i made in the air Force was whether to roll my sleeves up or down. Wow. Yeah, it was easy. Yeah. There still was a lot of struggles with certainly your sexual identity because you were court-martialed because someone else was terrorizing you about being gay. Yeah.

I mean, that was the stink of Don't ask, don't tell really is I, I believed all of the jokes about it more than I understood the law, the jokes about it. And the terror of the nineties was that gays were going to be allowed to serve in the military and gays were serving in the military. And, you know, you could be in a shower with a gay.

So I thought it was going to be fine to be in the military. And I really wasn't thinking about it so much at all. And it wasn't until I started, you know, I kind of came out to myself and accepted my own sexuality and realized, like, it really doesn't actually matter how many guys you sleep with. You're still going to be a lesbian. But if they found out out that meant you told so a lot of people were turned in a lot of people were turned in by their exes it was a really easy way to hurt someone wow um some people if they find one there was a witch hunt that happened on hickam air force base in hawaii where they found one guy and they went through his email and his phone records

and investigated everybody he'd talked to to find all the other gays on base. It was a fucking nightmare. We lived in terror, really, of anyone finding out. You didn't know who to trust because you had to know how someone

was going to act when they were mad, too. It's weird that it was that recent but also i mean trans people are just yesterday allowed to serve in the military so yeah yeah and and now and you know now a big rallying cry where in its place was you know gay marriage is going to ruin marriage and now gay people get married and you can tell like oh marriage is dead like it's nobody's getting married anymore because the gays are married yeah um you know it's just a horseshit smoke screen to keep power does it picks if you're gonna have an us you have to have a them yeah they just designate a new them every couple weeks and see which one sticks

yeah but it's shocking like to go through somebody's email and phone records that's asking i thought you were not supposed you know what i mean like if it's don't ask don't tell don't go through the guy's phone record you know what i mean but then again it's don't ask, don't tell, don't go through the guy's phone record. You know what I mean? But then again, it's all fucking slanted. And I'm sure that the military, you know, there was probably a lot of people in the military that, like any powerful group, is like, don't fucking tell me what to do. And so they're going to, you know, don't't ask don't tell just becomes a new way to destroy people and to you know eject people yeah generally that's that's what we do now were you out to

yourself when you joined the air force and i really i mean i'd been accused of being gay most of my childhood long before i understood what being a lesbian was. Yeah. And was that because you were a quote-unquote tomboy? Yeah, I was born a dyke. I didn't wear skirts enough. I didn't brush my hair enough. I didn't, you know, I had no interest in looking pretty for the boys.

Yeah. So, yeah, I just really didn't want them to be right about anything, including that. It just pissed me off. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it wasn't even so much any – I didn't really have much Christian belief left. I don't know where that went. I just tossed it out with the family when I left my shit there. But I was terrified of them being right.

I just wanted to be every dipshit 19-year-old. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be exactly like everyone else and not stand out. Being a six-foot-tall lesbian definitely stands out, whether you admit it or not, it turns out, because no one was fucking surprised. Wow. Yeah.

Was there always kind of the, you know, abuse and questioning and bullying throughout the Air Force, or was it just when you got to South Carolina? It was really just when I got to South Carolina. That was, I mean, I think you're in there with your peers. Nobody gave a shit about gay people in the military in the 90s. At my age, we didn't care. We were raised by the real world. We loved Pedro. So, yeah, but then it just took that you know, that one kid who did care. Yeah.

So, I mean, that was basically the problem with it. It just took one. So, yeah, I got a little too lax about it. Too lax is not my fucking fault. But yeah, I trusted people. I thought nobody cared. So I stopped worrying about it so much because it seemed like it was going to be fine. And then I started getting death threats on my car.

So, yeah, it's, you know, it does. I can be, you know, I can sort of be on an optimistic side and think like, oh, how long ago it was. Like, you know, like when Barack Obama said, you know, I believe in civil unions for gay people. And as he's saying it, you know, like Barack Obama doesn't give a shit about, like he's for gay marriage. You know, you have to read between the lines because everybody has to play this, you know, dance about not everybody's ready yet and then it turns out yeah they are they're fucking ready you know yeah there's a couple of stupid you know wedding cake issues that come up but everybody's ready and everybody's you know like i say nothing gay people can marry now and that was like i mean i was an adult when that was like out of the question or even started to be talked about so on one hand you can think like wow things do progress but then the other hand you do think it's also there's you

know there's a bunch of people in this country that are that are like that one person that that finds out about you and writes threats on your car but they're like 30 of them and they're holding the country hostage because they don't want you know trans girls to be on the fucking track team you know and they don't have any any real issue i don't know i'm now i'm just nobody on the fucking track team that has a problem with it it's yeah yeah and also it's like they they can't they had they have maybe like one german example of of it being you know even approaching an issue it's like that and that that question is you know when you ask people in wherever the fuck it is you you know, Indiana, like where, where are all these trans kids that are fucking up sports and like,

they don't exist. Oh boy. Anyway, now I'm just bitching. And this is not what this show is for. That's my other show, which I don't broadcast. My mirror show.

Can't you tell my love's a-growing? Are you writing during this time, too? I mean, are you... God, I wish I was. Is anybody? Yeah, I know, I know. Because I don't know, and I don't know how it can be done. Yeah.

I think I have to forget how hard it was to write a book before I started another one I don't know I don't know what to do with that I also just I'm so fucking sick of myself it's not healthy to think about yourself this much

it's really not all I do is talk about it about me and about the worst fucking things that ever happened to me so that's super fun this much. It's really not. All I do is talk about it, about me, and about the worst fucking things that ever happened to me, so that's super fun. I'm a great time at the parties we don't have.

Do you have therapy support for this process now? No, I mean, because you are. You're putting it all out there and it's like, I hope you got. I do. The problem. I mean, everything's turning into therapy support. My book of answers just turned into therapy sessions, but yeah, I, I. Or like, or this or podcasts that you agree to be on.

Cause you know, some fucker from Twitter, so might as well be on this podcast. Is it fun? Yeah, I have a therapist on Zoom, like everything else. The Zoom part of it feels weird. It also feels weird because I've just been watching his life fall apart along with mine. been watching his life fall apart along with mine um yeah i've watched him gain exactly as much weight and go through the same bad hair decisions of you know the one week where he tried to cut it himself cut his own hair yeah so yeah i don't i don't even know if i should be talking to him about my problems i'd like to know what his are.

Well, you know, it's like you're always a genius when it comes to other people's problems. I am. I can give people advice about the exact same fucking thing that I'm going through, and I'm like, well, here's what you should do. And then I go home and sit in my own full diaper. Yeah. I don't know. I think it's essential, but at the same time, I don't know how much it's helping. Yeah.

Do you think about maybe breaking out from autobiographical essays and doing something else? Yes. Yeah, that is the one thing I am writing. And I've been doing it for a while. No one wants to read them or pay for them, but I've been writing those little Dust Bowl short stories for a while now about all these stories I heard with my grandparents sitting around the room

after someone's funeral and they start talking about the past. But they'd all grown up during the Dust Bowl around Amarillo, so their stories were kind of crazy about jackrabbit plagues which is a real fucking thing why it's better to eat a bunny than a jackrabbit but you can't eat a bunny during April because I have weird stories

I write those and they're fun and're ridiculous, and they're not about me. So those are – I just – I don't think I feel like me at all, or I don't know who the fuck I am if I'm not writing. So I've got to write something, whether there's a point to it or not. Do you think that that urge to write, do you think that that would have been in you if you hadn't been so i want to say i don't know if stifled is the right word but if you hadn't been so like controlled and kind of you know tamped down throughout your your childhood and throughout so much of your life i don don't know. I mean, that's the big question. Would you be funny if you'd had a happy childhood? Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. I'll never know. I'm glad I do have writing. I don't know what the fuck I would do without it. Yeah. There's something really fucking amazing. Not just for a cold baby,

but I'm a middle child. No one has ever given a flying fuck. What I said, like still to this day on the family zoom, nobody listens to me. Yeah. I'm screaming. I'm respected author.

All I want there. They don't give a shit. You should make that your, your screen name on the zoom. But they don't give a shit. You should make your screen name on the Zoom. Expected author. But they don't. I should. They used to quite literally silence us when we were kids.

That was one of their favorite punishments is we just weren't allowed to fucking talk for a day or a week or a month sometimes. Yeah. Kids who went through it. I know a guy who was on silence restriction for a fucking year. He just wasn't allowed to talk for a month sometimes. I know kids who went through it. I know a guy who was on silence restriction for a fucking year. He just wasn't allowed to talk for a fucking year. What do you say that prompts a year of silence? I don't even remember.

He'd made a gay joke about something. I don't remember what it was. They always suspected him of being gay. He wasn't their their gaydar wasn't any better than anyone else's so yeah it's it's yeah people are reading my fucking book and i mean they can't burn them all yeah but at the same time it's still surprising to me when like anybody fucking talks to me on Twitter.

I, I've just. You mean strangers that have read the book? Yeah, strangers that have read the book. Anybody, people who haven't read the book, I'm just always really surprised like what will go wild on there and get like 2000 or wake up to a flood of responses. I'm like, I don't even remember what I said. Yeah. That why, why do you think i'm a

serious person um is it the check mark an intellectual people yell at me that i'm a shitty journalist and i'm like i'm not a fucking journalist i don't even know what a journalist does really yeah yeah so yeah the check mark really riles people up, I think. What do you, I mean, how do you feel about Twitter? How long have you been on it? Probably, I mean, a long time, but for the most part, I was just using it to check weather and shit for forever and then started using it for writing.

I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it because I made, I kind of made my career because of Twitter. I found an audience and that cable guy essay that blew up started as just me on Twitter. Like, hey, you guys want to hear some dumb cable guy stories? And yeah, I made friends with fucking writers and Sinead O'Connor talked to me this morning, which I mean, come on, man, that's cool as shit. I know. It's crazy. Yeah.

But then it's toxic as fuck. And it's this huge time suck. And who fucking knows if Twitter sells books or anything else? Supposedly, I keep telling my fucking 11-year-old niece that I'm on there to sell books every time she gives me shit for tweeting about my book. And I'm like, it's literally my job. What do you know? You're

11. She told me to call her when I'm at number one. Fucker. Jesus Christ. And I bet she has socks. Yeah. Nothing like being bullied by a middle schooler for your self-esteem it's great but uh you can't even drive but yeah who knows if it fucking sells books or sells anything at all i don't yeah the fuck are we on there for i think it does honestly i i do think among writers and book readers there is there's a lot of people on there

that that it does matter because my having been on a talk show for a million years i never feel like, you know, Jake Gyllenhaal comes out to sell his new movie. And he's like, I like him. He's great. And he's, you know, charming and whatever. But it's like, I don't know if that's really putting any asses in seats for Jake Gyllenhaal's movie. I guess, you know, as a total organism, the press that puts the, you know, the rolling, glumphing monster that is the press for one particular project can have a cumulative effect. But I don't know of any individual one, except for books. When people come on to sell their book on a TV show, it sells books.

Like, that's like a verifiable thing. But I mean, the margin on books is, you know, so small anyway. You know, if you sell 500 books, that's, you know, that's like half a million viewers on TV, you know, it's, you know, books is such a weird business. Yeah. Apparently I'm not in a house shopping margin yet. Not yet, yeah. In my brother's fucking spare room.

It's great. Has anybody talked to you about film rights? Yeah, there have been discussions. But, I mean, just not specifically, but how do you feel about that notion, about the prospect of seeing this book on TV or on a cinema screen. I don't think anyone's going to make a film of the book. I think if they were buying it, they'd be buying my name and just making whatever the fuck they want out of it and sort of the story, which is fine with me.

Yeah, if you get a house out of it. Yeah, yeah. And I also feel bad for anyone who'd have to play me because, I mean, we discussed my bad haircuts. I had a mohawk for a while that was bright yellow. It was during the middle of the KMI thing. Like, that takes a couple years to grow out. So that is a commitment from whoever wants to play that part.

Was that a statement of individuality or a cry for help, that mohawk? A little of both, probably. It was right when I got out of jail, and for some reason, my dumbass decided to be real smart to just look like a fucking criminal. Yeah. Well, yeah. You want to see a criminal? I'll show you.

I'll see a criminal. Yeah. And also, too, if you get arrested with that, maybe you aren't treated so much like the silly white lady that you're treated like in jail. You know, maybe they'd be like, oh, she must be a badass. She looks like an extra from an eighties movie about punks. Do you have any, I mean, we talked a little bit about, you know, just, well, we've talked a lot about kind of just the upheaval that the,

that the book has brought to your life and the, you know, the attention. Do you have any concrete plans that you're looking forward to that, you know, that you're kind of, or is it all kind of up in the air at this point for you? It's really up in the air. I think I don't know what this looks like yet. This has all been on screens. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't even know. Yeah. I don't know if there's actual money or what that looks like. I don't understand fucking finances at all. Yeah, yeah. My sister-in-law is going to have to look at that. Yeah.

At least my brother married well. But I don't fucking know. I'm going to go to Austin for a while just because it's the first time I don't have a dog, a girlfriend, or a job, really. But I can finally live downtown in a shitty studio apartment and have the coffee shop down the street or the bar down the street that I can walk home to. And I've really always wanted that fucking life. So I'm going to try it for a year and figure out what the fuck comes next hopefully figure out how to write something that'll sell i don't i don't know i think i have to sell another one though at some point yeah well you know i always feel like

whenever there's like oh that thing did well now i I have to do another one. It never helps to worry. You know, like if there is some kind of compartmentalizing that you can put away that like, well, yeah, I'm just going to do another one because, you know, I did the first one and, you know, I got more. There's more, you know, you just got to kind of, you know, whistle past the graveyard of your own self-doubt, you know. No, I've got to figure out something else to do. I don't know. I didn't really have a backup plan. Well, it is great that, you know, that you told your story.

You know, it's a story that obviously people are interested in hearing, and it's very well told. And you are a smart, charming, funny, unique person. And, you know, so it's, it's good. Like it,

this is all, I mean, I know, you know, it's good, but I know it's also overwhelming and you're not used to this, but you know, it's all good.

Thank you. No, you're welcome. You're welcome. Oh, fuck. Yeah. No,

it's, I don't know. It's you're welcome you're welcome oh fuck yeah no it's i don't know it's you're a fucking comic so it means a lot for some reason that you think i'm funny yeah no come on come on i don't know that we ever get past the please like me nobody ever gets past that you know you're laying in your deathbed probably thinking i hope the funeral director thinks i'm cute while involving me what do you uh what what do you want people to take away from your story and you know and kind of who you are and what your presence is in the world i don't know maybe a little fucking empathy wouldn't hurt anyone. I think the surprising thing for me, I believed it when I wrote the book or I wouldn't have written it,

but there's belief and there's a different level of knowledge. I didn't realize how many, not just cults people, but I hear from ex-evangelicals and ex-Mormons and just so many kids who grew up completely repressed by their surroundings and their environment and their parents and their families and schools. And it's one of those things of, I don't know, maybe all those things we're ashamed of are really, truly, what are actually fucking isolating us, not the circumstance themselves, but just the shame about it.

Because it turns out a whole lot of fucking people can relate. And I thought so, but it's been really fucking cool to hear it. Well, I'm glad that, you know, you're giving people that opportunity to sort of relate to this. Because I completely agree. I mean, taking little kids and telling them not to be who they are, it does not seem to work out very well. I mean, you know, unless they're torturing small animals, that you should put a stop to. But, you know, but...

I'm glad we drew the line there. That's a good line andy yeah well i mean i just want to make sure that people know where i feel about the animal culture because there's been whispers uh well lauren thank you so much uh for taking this time out and talking to me and uh again i love the book uh it's it's called uh leaving isn't the hardest thing yes it is available you actually sent me a copy and then i left it on a fucking airplane so i had to go buy a copy so you know i i actually spent money on the goddamn thing because i was only three quarters of the way through it and i needed to finish it up oh shit thank you yeah and uh and i still like reading real books i i'm i have not

really crossed over into the e-reader world i just i get the convenience of it but i just it it doesn't grab me the same way my phone it turns out because here's the thing is i'm already on my phone so i forget to check my phone oh Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. You're still fucking around on your phone, but you're reading. You're not looking at Twitter and Instagram or, you know. So it turns out that kind of works for me. Oh, that's good. I might give that a try. I hope to see you soon. Are you vaccinated? I am. I am vaccinated. Well, if you come out to L.A., look me up, because I'd love to buy you a drink or a bag of weed or whatever.

We'll take both. Okay. All right, Lauren Hopp, thanks so much for your time. And thank you all out there for listening to another episode of The Three Questions. Come back next week where I ask people other stuff. I've got a big, big love for you. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Earwolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Galitza Hayek.

The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Make sure to rate and review The three questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts. Can't you tell my loves are growing? This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.