HBM056: It Works Better in Movies
Here Be Monsters
Here Be Monsters Podcast
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2016
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Lina Misitzis was a teenager, she told people she was dying. She wasn't. But, an entire genre of "dying girl gets the guy" movies taught her that landing a boyfriend required a certain brevity on this planet. She only lied to men, men she wanted to be with.
Content Note: Explicit Content
That was more than ten years ago, but the guilt of exploiting imaginary illness for (failed) romantic gain stays with her to the present. Julia Wallace, her therapist, thinks that Lina can overcome this guilt by re-writing the story of her teenage years, by calling three people she wronged and telling the truth. So, Lina does.
Music: The Black Spot, Serocell
Lina Misitzis produced this piece. Jeff Emtman edited it with help from Bethany Denton and Nick White.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the independent producer project of KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. Hey, how are you? How are you? |
| 0:17.0 | I'm well, how are you? I'm great. |
| 0:20.0 | Well, I made those phone calls I told you I was going to make to those men. |
| 0:27.0 | To tell them that I am not dying anymore. |
| 0:36.0 | You're actually closer to death now than you were then. |
| 0:42.0 | Isn't it funny? |
| 0:43.0 | Yeah, I am. |
| 0:46.2 | But further from death than I told them I was. Whenever I tell my therapist about the things I regret doing as a kid, she tells me to start mentioning them in everyday conversation, like they're no big deal. |
| 1:05.8 | At a bar, to a friend, to a stranger, whatever, she says, as long as I'm talking about my regrets |
| 1:11.6 | casually, they'll stop feeling like |
| 1:13.6 | doomsday secrets eroding in my stomach. But that's much harder than it sounds. |
| 1:20.8 | I don't really know how to say, oh hey, I stole $20 from your mom when we were kids, like it's no big deal. |
| 1:28.0 | And I did do that. But it's not the worst thing I did. |
| 1:32.0 | I used to tell people that I was dying. It started when I was 15. |
| 1:36.8 | It was always men, men I was attracted to or thought I had a chance with. |
| 1:41.5 | It's the kind of lie that seems completely detached from how I behave now. But for the last |
| 1:47.1 | decade I've lived with enormous guilt. I've wondered, was that specific lie big enough to make me psychotic? |
| 1:53.0 | Did everyone know I was making it up? |
| 1:55.0 | Do some of those men think that I'm dead? |
| 1:58.0 | Is it possible to be a good person now if I did such a bad thing then. |
| 2:02.8 | Here be monsters, the podcast about the unknown. |
| 2:17.0 | The unknown. Oh, uh, uh, uh, Hello? |
... |
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