Some members of the LGBTQIA+ community are more well-known than others. One proponent of equal rights in the movement was Marsha P. Johnson. This week, Theresa shares how Marsha was assigned male at birth and later moved to New York, where she could live into her full identity. There she was, present at the Stonewall Uprising, established a program to help homeless street youth, and tirelessly worked to make life better.
Angie shifts gears by sharing the unhinged life of a man who’d sleep with nearly anyone, Lord Byron. This retelling of his life includes the four things he did right, along with the myriad of things he did not get right.
This story pairs well with:
Stonewall Uprising
Mary Shelley
Transcript
Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhint History Podcast. The podcast where two compulsive net jobs are going to mainline history. It’s what we do. We cannot be stopped. Our support network has tried. And we join forces every week to tell each other the stories.
We basically just learned. I’m host one. I’m Teresa and that is host two. I’m Angie.
Welcome. Um, Angie, today I get to go first. I do have kind of a banger for you. It’s going to be one that maybe you’ve heard.
I’ve definitely alluded to this human before. Oh, I’m so excited. Let’s go.
Okay. My sources out.com, power to the people exploring Martha P. Johnson’s queer liberation. New York times overlooked obituaries. Martha P. Johnson by Sue Chan, women and the American story. Martha P. Johnson. I don’t know if you know who we’re going to be talking about with those sources in mind. Uh, Martha P. Johnson. Yeah. Ding, ding, ding. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Angie: I was, I was guessing, I was guessing there wasn’t a lot to go on. Right.
Theresa: I mean, look, I’m you’re good at making meaning. So well done.
Angie: You’re like, I got to influence there. Yeah.
Theresa: So I’m going to start us off. It’s October 24th, 1945. We’re right towards the very end of World War two. Martha P. Johnson. She’s born Malcolm Michaels, Jr. And she’s born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She’s the fifth of seven children and a very working class family.
Okay. She’s assigned male at birth. And she’s known to say when she would adopt the name Martha P. Johnson, that the P stands for pay it, no mind, which basically becomes her personal motto. Love it.
Okay. Now her father, Malcolm Michael, Sr. He worked at the assembly line at the General Motors Factory in Lyndon and her mother was a housekeeper. Okay. So very blue collar origins. When she’s about five, she starts wearing dresses and feels a lot of pressure to stop because of other children’s aggression towards her.
Angie: This is the 40s. Well, I guess I just, we’re 1950 now, but okay. Yeah.
Theresa: In an interview, she would say toward the end of her life that she was 13 when she was sexually assaulted by a boy. Okay. Which is not ideal. No. And today, and this is where I have a lot of wiggle words, right?
Because today in this spray, get to use a lot of wiggle words. Historians and former friends of Marsha, they describe her as a trans woman or trans woman during the.
Angie: Is it Marsha or Martha? Marsha. Oh, okay. I was hearing you wrong the entire time.
Theresa: I’m going to listen to the playback and go, goodness grief, did I do any vocal warmups before this? Could I have gotten another cup of coffee? Could I at least pretend to try? I mean, living truth. Now, um, during her lifetime, the term transgender isn’t commonly used. There is a ton of words that they’re exploring throughout the coming decades.
Nothing truly sticks. I’m, I’m assuming in 10 years from now, we’re going to listen to this episode and go, ooh, we don’t use transgender anymore. Like, you know what I mean?
Like this is just a moving target. And so I’m using language that we use currently that didn’t exist. And I know when I listened to the stone or the stonewall episode, you’re going to hear me use a ton of wiggle words and say, uh, yeah, we’re using words.
Angie: These, yeah, you know, their words.
Theresa: Yeah. Words are words. Uh-huh. It language evolves. So she during her life would describe herself as a gay person, a transvestite and a dry queen. She would also use she, her pronouns. Okay.
Angie: Uh, thank you to her for clarifying the she, her pronouns
Theresa: and not being like Lieutenant Nun and just bouncing back and forth and being like, it’s Tuesday. So we’re going he, him.
Angie: Yeah. I mean, okay, here’s the thing. My, my, my caveat here is if that’s how you want to live your life, swapping between things. Cool. I’m not, I’m not stopping you. But for people later trying to tell the story, it’s like, I don’t know.
Theresa: Like, like, well, what’s that like? I’m going to get yelled at in the comments. Everyone is going to be angry and everyone’s going to be right to be angry and no one is going to be right to be angry. Right.
Angie: And no one’s going to actually know what that person would have felt. So here we are. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.
Theresa: Later on, she begins attending the Mount Taman African Methodist Episcopal Church as a child. And this is, she would end up practicing Christianity throughout her lifetime. She would later get drawn into Catholicism and she would visit houses of worship very frequently. Okay. And I think it’s very easy to ignore, side-eye, brush aside this lens of faith.
Angie: That’s going to, this is going to sound weird, but not in our family.
Theresa: I’m grateful that that’s, that’s your lived experience.
Angie: I just, I don’t think it’s many people’s lived experience. Right. So yeah. For us, it’s a common conversation. Right.
Theresa: But that said, I think if we want, we have to speak the stories we want to see more in the world. And I think we all have to acknowledge the complex fullness of the multifacets of a human. And that includes their faith, even if members of same faith would exclude them as possible.
Angie: 100%. 100%. Perfect.
Theresa: She would end up graduating Thomas A. Edison High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1963. And then our girl, Rompley, moves to New York City. She knew. Yeah. Basically she said she had a bag of clothes and $15 to her name.
Angie: Oh my God, me too. Same girl.
Theresa: I mean, didn’t do it to New York City, but I, I upped and moved countries with, you know, almost the equivalent.
Angie: Yeah, I’m thinking I got like 15 bucks. I can maybe make it to Oakville.
Theresa: With gas prices in this economy. Yeah. Yeah. Now, unsurprisingly, right? It’s not easy for her to live outside gender norms and the standard norms of the sexual mainstream, either today or in the early 60s. But this is what she’s doing. Now, New York State had roughly around in 1950 had downgraded the act of sodomy, which used to be a felony. Now it’s a misdemeanor. Prosecution of gay people and the criminalization of their activities is still very common.
Like we touched on this in the Stonewall episode. There’s same sex dancing. Absolutely verboten. And the state liquor authority had banned bars from serving gay people alcoholic beverages. Which is why the mob was catering to the crowd at Stonewall to begin with. People could be charged sexual deviancy crimes just for cross-dressing and police enforcement was arbitrary.
Right. And I mean, it was to the point where I don’t, you probably know this, I know you are a fashion nut job. Police would look at what side of the shirt your buttons were on because women’s buttons are on the opposite side as men’s. And if your buttons did not align with the assigned gender, you were arrested.
Angie: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And you know what’s funny is I was over here thinking like, especially for like the quote unquote drag queens. Yeah. Some of them are so magnificent that it would be like, are you sure? No, that’s definitely a woman. Definitely not.
Theresa: Yeah, that woman’s cut crease is better than anything I’ve ever done.
Angie: Yeah, 100%. So why are you resting her? Yeah. I think. Yeah. Now, okay.
Theresa: Back to Johnson. She arrives in New York and she’s alternating between going by her given name and it was just Malcolm and then this persona that she starts to create, which is black Marsha. As opposed to this regular Marsha. You know, I’m not sure why she ascribed the modifier black.
I mean, I know she is a black woman. But look, I wasn’t there. I wasn’t having a margarita with her. I wasn’t asking the origin story.
Fair. And just pretty much to make and meet, she’s engaging in prostitution and she’s arrested often. She’s quoted and saying that she stopped counting after the hundredth time and said that once in the late seventies, she was even shot. Wow. Like the clientele that she is serving may not be so pleased to see that she was assigned male at birth. To be a little bit shook. Yeah. And so there tends to be some issues with this.
She’s often found near CD hotels near Times Square, including Dixie Hotel, which is now Hotel Carter on West 43rd Street for those playing in the city. Okay. But not you, Vermont.
Yeah. No, Vermont doesn’t listen. Just ignore them.
Move on. If you are from Vermont and listening, chime in. We doubt you exist. I’m pretty sure that there is an IP block on that entire region.
You guys are the great wall of China in the U.S. for this podcast. Marcia would go on to spend basically her entire life without a permanent home. She slept often in hotel rooms, restaurants and movie theaters.
Okay. So very transient lifestyle. Sometimes she would live with friends.
She found work waiting tables, performing in drag shows, but basically would go on to make most of her money as a sex worker. Okay. Later, she would recall, quote, the ones that made the most money was the boys that could wear their own hair with just a little bit of makeup.
Angie: So, okay, we’ve grown our hair out. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, so the ones that it’s working for, the ones that’s the natural hair, not wigs. Basically. Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay.
Theresa: Now, living most of her life in New York City, she still seemed to maintain a close, if not fraught relationship with her family back in New Jersey. And this is a quoting to Al Michaels, her nephew. I was going to ask about that. Yeah.
So here you go. And this is important because in the book that I quoted last week, you know, the third edition that I have been going through. I didn’t put it in my notes, but it’s Transgender History, the third edition, a resource for Today, Struggle and Tomorrow’s by Susan Stryker. She’s talking about how commonplace it is to be rejected by your family the moment you come out of trans.
Angie: It’s wild because I’m not going to get into it, but you would think that family is family and I’ve loved you this long. Why would that be any different? Yeah. Yeah.
Theresa: Either way, she has a relationship with them. It sounds tenuous. Now, when he was 36, he was interviewed and he said that it was like a holiday whenever she came over that kids flocked to her because she brought him treats, beads, candies and flowers. Now, here’s where the other side of that coin is because her mother would make her put on men’s clothes when she entered the house, but ultimately she would end up parting with those clothes by the very next time she visited. He would also go on to say that she’d give you the shirt right off her back. You like it?
Here, you have it. Is that just being her personality? Her grandmother may have never or may have disapproved, but it was always with this undercurrent of love that her nephew says.
And when Johnson had one of her spells, like the time she was reported lost in Hoboken wearing only her underwear, her family always picked her up and brought her home or to the hospital. Okay. So there’s. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s what it sounds like it’s a relationship that’s basically, I don’t agree with the lifestyle you’re living.
We’re going to argue about it. But are you getting enough vegetables? Have you had your vitamins?
Can I get you something? It does seem that way. Yeah. It’s not the perfect family life, but there seems to be this strong dynamic of love, even if there’s a lot of trying to control and guide. Yeah.
Angie: I mean, yeah, it’s a weird time to just in the country also. So figuring out how to behave as the family is probably weird too. Yeah.
Theresa: And I think also because they are black, I’m sure there’s also, this is me speaking out of turn. This is me speaking as a white woman who does not know the steps she’s about to take.
Let’s hedge those bets. From what I understand, I’m assuming it’s also the your life as a black person is hard enough. You are signing up for extra trouble. We want to try to help you. Yeah. I think you’re probably right. As another white lady that. Yeah, that we have no business speaking on this and yet here we are. Yeah.
Angie: But I mean, it makes sense.
Theresa: I mean, I know there’s times where I’m like, look, maybe I shouldn’t do that because my life’s hard enough. And here I’m like, that right.
Theresa: Devil down twice.
Theresa: You talked me into it. Here we go.
Angie: I talked myself into it. I didn’t need help.
Theresa: Yep. Now, despite how amazingly she lived her life and her full vivacity, she tends to treat every day like a holiday. And then she’s regarded and saying that like how she treated like actual holidays as incredibly special. Her nephew would say, quote, they’d walk from the train, Marsha and like 15 or 20 of her friends. Our house would be full of people dancing.
Angie: Okay. Her family needs to get their full crap together because if 15 or 20 people showed up at my door to be dancing, it would be the best day of my life.
Theresa: Yeah, I would be like, you know what? I’m going to door dash some ingredients for some snackies and you know, you just keep the music going. We’re running out of drinks. Okay. Fantastic.
Knock it out, girl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Everyone who basically ends up meeting Johnson remembers this aspect of her personality.
They comment on how gregarious she is, her generous nature, and it always made you feel that you’re at the coolest party in town. Yeah. Okay. Which honestly, we need people like that in every friend group.
Mm-hmm. She’s a member of this avant drag performance troupe called the Hot Peaches and she would tour with them around America and Europe and they would perform comical songs and spoken word poetry. That’s awesome.
And then later, she would be photographed by Andy Warhol who would paint as her as part of his little ladies and gentlemen series of trans portraiture. That’s awesome. Okay.
Okay. And then one time, her nephew recalls that he was DJing in New York City. He pulls out an album from Earth, Wind and Fire and discovers his aunt’s image on the album artwork.
Angie: Oh, wow. Okay.
Theresa: Could you imagine you’re at work, you’re doing something, you’re in your mode and all of a sudden, oh, that’s my aunt. Yeah. Everybody has seen this image. That’s pretty cool. Now, we’re going to fast forward when an event happens that thrusts her into spotlight. And this would be when she found herself near the Stonewall Inn in the early hours. It’s June 28th, 1969.
I almost cost us a hundred years. That night, as I covered in the episode, as I covered when the episode I covered at Stonewall, which I’m going to put in the show notes so that we can just click right through police rated a gay bar. And as the officers begin to arrest people for violating the myriad of discriminatory laws, patrons of Stonewall would fight back. And this would be the whole kickoff of what is now pride. Now, there’s so many stories that conflict about how it started. But we know everyone agrees.
Marsh is on the front lines. That’s awesome. One account says she started the uprising by throwing a shot glass into a mirror. Another says she climbed a lamp post and dropped a heavy purse onto a police car, shattering the first windshield. Young trans women were just extremely vocal. They are the ones who caused, not caused. You know, they were there. They were leading this movement. Fueling the fire. Yeah, they were the kindling and this just took off, right? Yeah. And this all happened because they had nothing left to lose.
This checks. Their rage wasn’t just about the police. It was about all of the oppression and all of the fear that they live with on any given day.
Right. This amount of like angst and oppression is the powder cake. In Strasburg, it kicked off the dancing plagues in 1518. Here it kicks off a different kind of event. It kicked off a kick line. It did kick off a kick line. Now, according to Johnson, she would give an interview to writer Eric Marcus about that night.
And so this is from the horse’s mouth. She said, I was already in uptown and didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock. When I got downtown, the place is already on fire and there was a raid already. The riots had already started.
Angie: But wasn’t she the one that started them?
Theresa: So that’s the conflicting sources, right? People say that she threw the first brick. Yeah. Okay. She’s like, look, I got there at 2 a.m. Things were happening and I threw my voice into the fray. Okay.
Okay. Now, I need to, you know, back up in a second and make sure that we say that that’s riots plural because Stonewall riot implies singular. But this anti-police insurrection goes on for six days.
And it’s easy to forget that. It’s like saying the battle and you assume, oh, four to eight hours. We launched some shots, called it a day.
Sun went down, we went home, toasted, went back at it. Yeah. But this is like, no, this was, you know, going for the full thing. Now, basically, as we think about the Stonewall riot, you know, it’s easy for us to say, we want to say, this was the first brick that was thrown. This was the inciting factor. But this causes us to really lose scope of what that whole event means. You know, we focus so in on what started it versus what does that stand for? Because it’s easy, once we say that, oh, this is what cost Stonewall, Stonewall was the event, we forget that there were other anti-LGBTQ cop riots that started in the 50s and went on through the 60s. We had Compton’s cafeteria, which I covered last week. And then there’s Cooper’s Donuts riots in 1959 in Los Angeles, which eventually I may cover. I may not. For all I know, you’re going to tell me that story immediately after this. No, you’re good.
Okay. But all of those ones, you know, Cooper’s Donuts, Compton cafeteria and Stonewall, they’re community of trans women and poor hustlers that are on the forefront of that uprising. Basically, pride, as we know it, wouldn’t exist without the trans people being sidelined.
This makes sense. So while she, Johnson may not have actually been the one to throw the first shot glass or brick or what have you, she was part of the major force creating this invisible queer community that rose up that evening. And she’s known for having this fearless presence that announces herself in goodwill dresses and headpieces that she would cast off, or that she crafted from flower distal cast off. So she would go through and take all of these flowers that nobody else wanted and flower crowns.
Angie: I’m imagining what she looks like and it’s she’s stunning.
Theresa: Well, let me hold that thought and get you an image because I got you pictures. Thank you. And if you’re in the Patreon, you can see these images of her. And if you’re not, then you’ll have to wait for social media.
Angie: Okay, so honest to God right now, she looks like she’s going to the Kentucky Derby minus the hat. She’s got this large ostrich feather in her hair. Her hair is in an updo and it is phenomenal. And there’s flowers all over the updo. She’s like flower earrings.
Theresa: I believe so. They’re either like flower earrings or she’s got a flower pinned to her hair so low it looks like an earring. Yeah, okay.
Angie: Big 70s glasses on a pearl necklace, a little heart necklace, which is really cute. It looks like if I had to guess, she’s wearing like a crushed velvet top, but I’m not. That’s what it looks like to me.
Theresa: It’s got some texture to it.
Angie: Oh my gosh, she’s made it. She’s got gloves on. Oh my, I love her. Okay.
Theresa: And then this because there’s a specific photo I couldn’t find in wiki comments, but this is a bus of her. But you can see the flower crown that somebody has made for her to really exemplify her use of these cast off flowers.
Angie: I love that so much. It is like a bronze bust and there’s a lot of color around it. Like people are still placing flower petals, but as Tracey said, someone has made any flower crown. It’s actually beautiful. Like that’s art in my opinion. That’s what it should look like.
Theresa: And then here’s a picture from a prototype or from a Pride march in Los Angeles. And this is the image I wanted to find of her that’s used on this poster.
Angie: It’s in color. She’s got an off the shoulder pink. It’s got to be taken in the 80s off the shoulder pink outfit and her whole flower crown is huge. And just beaming smile from ear to ear.
Theresa: I’d say, oh, my the flower crown is huge, but it’s barely bigger than her smile.
Angie: Barely. Like, and those lips, those lips, I wish I could do my lips like that. Like them is red and they are amazing.
Theresa: OK, so I’m going to stop sharing my screen so I can go back to tell you my story without you reading it ahead of me. Thank you. Yeah, you’re good.
Now. Johnson, as she lived her life, she’s very loud, proud and off key. Right. That is just who she is. And I feel like those images can kind of help you get this visual image of who she would be.
Angie: Who I have never guessed. Right.
Theresa: So being at Stonewall, this uprising is the awakening for what we know as, you know, the LGBTQ activists, right? And soon she’s attending rallies, sit-ins, meetings. They had just formed the Gay Liberation Front and she’s there.
And she’s excited about the work she’s doing, but she’s incredibly frustrated because white gay men and lesbians are really dominating the conversation. OK. We’re good at it. This is something we’re all hopefully trying to unpack so we can get less good at it tomorrow.
Angie: Or better at sharing one of the two.
Theresa: Now she’s asking people and really pushing them to try to understand where to transgender people fit in. Because trans people, they’re more likely to be homeless. They’re more likely to be targeted by the police.
And the movement and what they’re trying to do doesn’t really appreciate the extent in which her group needs help. Right. OK. And we, like as we think back about her, it’s easy for us to say she was a legend. She did all of these incredible things. But all this legend and mythos that we’ve built around her, that’s not helping her pay bills. Her name recognition.
She’s a legend on the table. Yeah, it’s not paying the mortgage. So she’s still living on and off the streets and she’s still relying on charity and sex work to survive. I hate that for her. And for more than a decade, she would end up staying in the apartment of New Jersey gay activist, Rick Wicker, or Brandi Wicker, renamed him. And they would become, or he would become her closest friend.
Angie: OK. Now she has just 10 years of consistency.
Theresa: Yeah. Yeah. OK. But in that consistency, did she abscond for a week because of things not being comfortable? I don’t know. Right. Like right. Yeah. So even that consistency could have been inconsistent. Now, when you read about her, you tend to see her life tightly entwined with another person of mythic proportions, Sylvia Rivera. OK. And according to Rivera, they met on the streets and I get conflicting reports of whether Rivera was 11 or 12. Wow.
OK. So Sylvia is 11 or 12 and Johnson is 17 or 18. So they’re both young.
Right. Now Sylvia is this Puerto Rican trans woman who also comes to New York and they become instant friends. Marcia would teach Sylvia how to apply her makeup, live on the street and look out for trouble.
She would also encourage Sylvia to love herself and her identity. Wow. OK. So a girls girl. God, I love a girls girl. Now Marcia, surprising, probably not you at all, enjoyed expressing herself through her appearance. She builds these lavish outfits and these are pretty much a combination of thrift store finds, grifts from friends, gifts from friends, not grifts and items that she finds on the street. I love it.
Angie: I mean, she was looking glamorous in every one of those pictures.
Theresa: So she’s figuring it out. And then as I’ve shown you from the images, she’s creating these elaborate crowns of flowers. I love that. Yeah. She is making the whimsy, finding the beauty in everyday life. Now together, Sylvia and Marcia, they’re conceptualizing this idea that trans people are a marginalized community and are separate, but related to this larger queer crowd.
That’s OK. That makes sense. They’ve got their own needs. And these are often neglected or sacrificed as they’re putting their bodies in line as foot soldiers in this gay revolution.
Right. OK. And I should say that it’s around these times that we’re seeing landmark cases about protecting us from sexual discrimination and things like that. But this is often not extended to trans.
Angie: But when you say as you’re referring to women, right? Yeah. This is not extending to. Yeah, right. That will make sense, right? Because, yeah.
Theresa: So this is this is kind of the full thing that they’re experiencing. Where you’re getting the DSM is dropping gay as a condition or illness, but they’re adding in what would be people who are trans that are having gender identity disorder.
Right. OK. And then you think, OK, well, it sucks to be labeled with a disorder, but at least I have a disorder and now I can hopefully get medical treatment because it’s a diagnosable disorder. But then insurance companies are going, I mean, no.
Angie: Oh, so they’re insurance companies. Yeah. OK.
Theresa: Yeah. So there’s there’s tons of layers of issue and complexity here. Right. And this is part of what they’re batting their their skulls at the walls against. Now, shortly after Stonewall, Johnson Rivera, they would go on to find the street transvestite action revolutionaries. Accordom Star. Thanks. And they established the Star House, which is this short lived, unfunded communal space for trans women living on the streets. I’m sad that it was short lived. Mm hmm. I mean, and I think I brought it up during Stonewall. I didn’t check my notes, but they were actively engaged in sex work to keep that house going.
Wow. OK. Like they couldn’t afford to feed everybody there, but they could keep the roof and the lights on. Now, Star had this radical platform and it didn’t seem out of place when you think of today’s movement for Black Lives Matters. It included free gender expression and in the prison and justice and homelessness and the creation of this inclusive community that rejected these binding definitions of gender and identity.
Cool. So it was this very holistic, we see the whole human, we want you to be you, whatever that means. Do you kind of not feel that you’re either?
Do you feel that you’re one or the other? Let’s help you unpack this. Yeah. Now, 1970s, this is a time where Johnson is more visible, more known. She’s tall, slender. She has this incredible knack for commanding attention. Her outfits are described as red plastic high heels, slippers and stockings, shimmering robes and dresses, costume jewelry, bright wigs, plastic flowers and sometimes even artificial fruit in her hair.
Angie: I want her to be my auntie.
Theresa: I mean, truly, it’s like I made the tea. I found you this assortment of incredible things. I can’t wait to see what you do with them. This feels like RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Angie: Kind of, yeah, like the precursor to it.
Theresa: Now, Rivera and Johnson, thinking of them as combined unit, they’re, you hear one, you see the other, right? Like they are this joint of the hip kind of deal. Sylvia Rivera is often credited with the political thinking of the pair while Johnson is kind of presented as her sassy black sidekick.
But honestly, and here’s the reality. It’s pretty complicated because historians and people who’ve really done a lot of research know that Marcia has her own political ideations and how she does things. In the same interview that Marcia calls out the transphobia of gay men and mentioned her alliance with lesbians, she’s also advocating for the queer movement that is centered on anti-prison and anti-homelessness activism because it’s so easy to take her ilk and just hide them in a jail. And that’s, you know, two years before Sylvia Rivera is making this what’s now an infamous speech in Pride 1973.
And this is where she gets up and she’s like, y’all didn’t even want me to be here. But all of you white cisgender men who are gay, you suck. You’re part of the problem.
And she’s not wrong. It’s not something you want to see it like a we, you know, we’re here. We’re out.
We’re proud. So it’s like, oh, she has that speech kind of deal. Right. Now, the historian winter, he would say things like Martha survived by using this classic trickster mode that she was this archetype of this queer black trickster.
And he says that she allowed people to think she was dizzy and she was a little dizzy to ensure her survival. Showing anger for a black person America is the quickest way to get censured, ignored, punished or killed. And the one exception to that rule is the sassy black friend who can get a little angry as long as it’s funny in a you go girl cut away. In that case, anger can be rewarded.
So she has figured out the system. Love that. And that makes me frustrated.
Fair. You know, and that, yeah, I like being able to, you know, kind of get loud. And then it’s just like, well, she’s just an angry blue haired woman from Portland. What could you expect? But I’m given that leeway. I’m given that privilege.
Angie: The term knows is an even pierced.
Theresa: I’m beginning to think that I must get at least a fall see just to help other people feel better about their lives. I mean, on. So you would you? My weekend just got more packed, but we’ll see what I can do. So despite Marsha figuring out how to be big and have this big personality and get her point across without being shut down. Surprisingly, her life’s not easy, right? She starts to experience around this time a series of breakdowns in the 70s that would get her in and out of menstrual institutions. And she’s known for saying, quote, I may be crazy, but that don’t make me wrong. Also true. And she’s still known for this warmth and charisma, but she could get into physical scraps and be pretty frightening to other humans.
Angie: Oh, I’m not even a little bit surprised.
Theresa: Uh-huh. And this makes me go, oh, I hope we would have been friends. I hope we would have. I hope she would have wanted to hang out because I want to hang out with her.
Mm hmm. And then it’s around this time that she would just start to wander and start off talking about one thing and then just end up miles away. And some people like author, Martha Doberman, no, Martin Doberman in Stonewall wrote that some people would say that drugs had ruined her mind and that she was a permanent space cadet. But that when she was organizing Star, she concentrated wonderfully.
Okay. So, I don’t know, maybe she had a touch of the Tism in the ADHD. Who knows? Could be. Could be the thing. Now, 1980, this is a pivotal year for her because she’s invited to ride in the lead car at New York’s annual Gay Pride Parade.
She’d begun living with her friend, Randy Wicker in New Jersey and she cared for Wicker’s lover, David Combs, before he died of AIDS in 1990. Oh, wow. Okay. So, heavy work there. She has seen it all.
Yeah. And going back to an earlier theme I mentioned before, grieving for friends, she could sometimes be found prostrate before the statue of the Virgin Mary at the Catholic community of St. Peter’s and Paul in Hoboken. So, praying her heart out. And she’s also surprising no one, an AIDS activist, leading protest and meetings at Act Up, which is an AIDS advocacy organization. That’s awesome.
In June, 1926, nope, in June 26, 1992, in an interview, she would say that she’d been HIV positive for two years. Oh, wow. Okay. And then would go on to say, they call me a legend in my own time because there were so many queens gone that I wanted a few queens from the 70s and 80s. Wow.
That’s crazy. And then here’s the kicker because it’s, and I’m wrapping up here, but it’s several days later she’s seen for the last time her body is fished from the Hudson River on the afternoon of July 6, 1992. Do we know what happened? Next line, although the NYPD officially ruled the suicide, many of those closest to her believed it was either an accident or murder. And according to the New York City Anti-Violence Project, at the time, 1992 was the worst year on record for anti-LGBT violence.
Okay. Later in 1992, authorities reclassified the cause to drowning from an undetermined cause. And then in 2012, they agreed to take a fresh look at the case, which officially remains open. Oh, wow.
Okay. And two months after her death, Hattie Mae Cohen’s and Brian Mock are burned to death by white supremacist in their apartment in Salem, Oregon. Two months later, petty officer third class Alan Schindler is beaten to death by a shipmate with a public, or in a public toilet in Japan. His body was so brutalized that the pathologist who performed the autopsy compared his injuries, often seen after a high-speed car crash.
Angie: Wow. Imagine if people could just live their own lives. Yeah. Yeah.
Theresa: If you didn’t care about somebody else like that to that extent, because it doesn’t matter to you.
Angie: Yeah. It will forever, it will forever boggle my brain. Honest to goodness. Yeah.
Theresa: But either way, I’m going to end on this note. Martha B. Johnson, she fought, maybe even died for gay liberation. Although we still witness and experience violence and discrimination today, we live in America that is vastly safer for gays and lesbians because of the life she lived. And while that’s all, all that’s true, the very movement that idolizes her does so little for black trans women like her. That’s crazy. Wow. But that’s her story.
Angie: I’m just a follow-up crown. That’s all. It’s just, wow. It makes me sad and it gives me all the emotions in one go. So thanks.
Theresa: I’m nothing if not consistent.
Angie: You know, you’ve got to be consistent. God appreciate that. Holy beans. Do we have time for my story?
Theresa: I think so. I mean, this is going to be a longer episode, but I think I had just like a long episode or a long story on my own, but not long enough for a single. Okay. Let’s see. Well then.
Angie: Yeah, I think I could do it. I think I could do it. Do you remember, I’m just going to switch gears. Do you remember when I said I couldn’t do Casanova because he was simply too problematic for our time?
Theresa: Yes. Did we finally get some problematic enough in our timeline that it felt kindred?
Angie: No, but it occurred to me recently that that is also a definition of unhinged. So I’m going to tell you a story of Lord Byron.
Theresa: Oh, my goodness. Hey, you know how Casanova is unhinged? Well, I figured out that Lord Byron is Lord Byron and who among us, right? Here at Anyhow.
Angie: So among us in fact. So my sources are the BBC, History Lord Byron, a historic UK article by Ellen Casalo. Casalo, Lord Byron. Lord Byron, his life, writing, affairs and death. That’s a history extra. Written by Lauren Good in April of 24. The Poetry Foundation has a wonderful write up for him. The History Hit podcast with Dan Snow has a special guest, Dr. Kate Lister. Oh, yeah, from TikTok.
We love her. And then there is an organization. It’s called varsity.org and this article was called Lord Byron’s Freshers Week. It was solely about his time at Trinity. So I was curious about his politics there. So that’s where I got here. Okay, so then we have an article titled Byron was one of the few prominent defenders of the Luddites by Kate Eschner of February 2017. That was a Smithsonian article.
Theresa: And a shadow of Matt Byron and Luddites in the same sentence is sending me, but carry on.
Angie: Oh, yeah. Oh, it’s the whole thing. It’s one of the four things he did right in his lifetime.
Theresa: I like that we can count them on one hand.
Angie: Yeah, I did. I was like, you know what? There’s so small amount. Let’s just see how many there is. And then there is, you know what? I’m actually not going to tell you this source because I don’t want to ruin the last thing he did right in his life.
Theresa: Because I’m obviously paying attention, so keep that under wraps.
Angie: Yeah, you can’t tell. You can’t know. Okay, so if I said the words, mad, bad, and dangerous to know to describe someone, who do you think I would be talking about? Well, obviously the answer is Lord Byron, but who would you have thought?
Theresa: I mean, honestly, there’s several humans that have been like that. But yeah, he was kind of the bad boy of rock and roll of his time.
Angie: For sure. So that is what one lady, Caroline Lamb, described him as. So George Gordon Noel Byron, which PS, I kind of hate knowing his whole name. I don’t know why it bugs me, but I’m like, bro, he’s just Lord Byron.
Theresa: I mean, that’s like calling Ted Bundy’s Theodore. It’s like, that’s true, but that’s not the common.
Angie: Yeah, nobody’s calling him that. Nobody’s calling him that. So he is born January 22nd, 1788 in London with a club foot. I did not know that. I don’t know how I’ve gone this far into my life without knowing that he had club foot, but he did.
Theresa: I feel like that humanizes him a bit and kind of gives him a reason to be angsty.
Angie: Actually, yeah. Okay. And then I’m going to tell him about his childhood and you’re going to be like, oh damn. Okay. So he is a son of a mad, a man called Captain John Mad Jack Byron who was a widower and came with a daughter, more on him in just a moment. His mother Byron’s mother was an impoverished Scottish Harris called Catherine Byron.
Theresa: Harris or Aris? I know it has an age. It’s Aris.
Angie: However, I bit my tongue the other night. So it is very swollen and it’s hard to speak. I’m sorry to call that out then.
Theresa: No, it’s okay. Because you’re going to probably hear a lot of words like that. Oh.
Angie: So his mother, she’s Scottish. She does have a title. She does have like all of the things of proper society. She’s just pretty broke. And according to Stork UK, she is also a schizophrenic. Oh, bummer. Yeah. He, she is just as likely to make fun of his clubfoot as she is to try to call the doctors to get it corrected. She would go from this extreme tenderness to this very fiery temper at any given time. And that alone sort of, I think, paints a picture of his childhood, but wait, there’s more. Because he also has this presbyterian nurse who is very abusive, but instills in him this enduring love for the Bible as well as this deep fascination with Calvinist doctrine, particularly the ideas of innate evil and predestined salvation.
So guys is just, he is getting it from all angles. And there’s not a, in my opinion, there’s not a single decent adult in his life. But that dad, because like I said, there is not a single decent adult in his life. John, his father had married Byron’s mother for her title and he tried to live with her for a while, but basically he, what little money she did have, he squanders.
Okay. And to no one’s surprise. And he leaves to go live with his sister in France at this point, like Byron is born and his mother and him and the nurse are basically like living in shops, like the housing above shops. So they are not having a grand, right?
Things aren’t great. And they’re pretty much just a dude. No grand estate, no real funds to speak of living in the houses above the shops. Dad lives well above his means while in France with his sister. He’s going to the theater. He’s seen the court of events and he dies when Byron is only three.
Okay. So, but it doesn’t matter because Byron never knew him. Like dad was never in his picture. Later, Byron would say that he slit his own throat, but according to dad’s sisters, he was losing weight and coughing up blood. So tuberculosis.
Theresa: And, you know, maybe he was coughing up blood and then what, you know what, this is a miserable way to go. I’m just going to speed up the process.
Angie: Possibly. It was either tuberculosis or some other consumptive illness that is according to the sisters. What I think is interesting is that I wouldn’t put what you just said past because everybody in, especially on his dad’s side of the family has some sort of instability.
Theresa: So mom is schizophrenic, but dad’s family is unstable. Super unstable. Just undiagnosed. Lovely. Carry on. Yeah.
Angie: Um, the poetry foundation has this to say regarding Lord Byron’s wonderful father, quote, the prolificate captain squandered his wife’s inheritance was absent for the birth of his only son and eventually be camped for France as an exile from English creditors where he died in 1791 at 36. And I included that because I freaking love the word be camped.
It has this delightful definition depart suddenly or secretly, especially to relocate one’s business or household in another area like a scone run off, flee, bolt. And I’m like, this man is a d bag.
Theresa: Yeah, yeah. He’s a trash dad. Wimsy.
Theresa: A trash dad with whimsy. Yeah.
Angie: Honest to goodness. Okay. So when Byron is 10, his uncle dies and it makes him the sixth Lord Byron. And, um, like I said earlier, literally know that adults in the story, his uncle is known for all sorts of sort of things. Most are unlikely true, but, um, the fifth Lord Byron did nothing to help his, his image and it, he did no favors for himself.
So whether the rumors are true or not, doesn’t really matter because he sure made them look true, you know? Okay. He’s 10.
He inherits the title. I knew St. Abby. And did you know what I learned? And I cannot believe I’m 42 years old having just learned this. That house that he inherited was prior a Augustinian priory.
Theresa: You think that’s how I got the word.
Angie: Abby attached to it. Yeah. And during the desolation of the monasteries, these, these homes just became private homes. And I’m like, wait a minute, how did I not know that?
Theresa: That makes me wish I had an indescribable amount of wealth and was alive during that time because renovated churches as homes. My goodness. Fascinating.
Angie: I was like, how did I not make this connection before? What the heck? Okay. Moving on. From here, Byron receives his education at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Harrow, excuse me, it’s Harrow, is where he started dabbling in his first real love affairs with both genders. By 1803, he is madly in love with a girl called Mary Choworth and she did not feel the same, which is great because she’s his cousin. Yeah.
Theresa: I mean, you should reach a little further away than the family picnic. You would hope, right?
Angie: But this unrequited love gives us some of his first bits of poetry that are considered like great poetry, I guess, Hills of Ansley and the Adieu. When he goes to Trinity, he discovers debt and politics. Okay. Yeah, I guess, you know, he’s Lord Byron spends his life either very wealthy or very broke, like, doesn’t seem to be any in between. And he’s always fluctuating.
Theresa: He’s like, look, I inherited a certain pension for doing things. Meet my mom, dad and uncle. Carry on.
Angie: Pretty much. So here at Trinity is where he is going to meet a young man called John Cam Hobhouse, who definitely influences his ideology and his politics. In his case, they favor the wigs. If you’re curious, because I was the wigs at the time are, quote, a fractured opposition group supporting constitutional monarchy, restricted crown patronage and the interest of merchants while opposing the Tory government’s war strategies and high spending. So they broadly favor political and religious freedom for Protestant, nonconformist and limited reform on the electrical. The, oh, oh my God. The electoral electoral.
Theresa: That’s the electrical. You know, they wanted the two twenties.
Angie: They had to have the right stuff, you know. So, I mean, it seems that to me, it seems that he’s got some good political ideas. Just maybe not used in the best way at this point. I also believe this isn’t in my notes, but I also believe this is where he adopts a baby bear cup because the college won’t let him have a dog.
Theresa: Honestly, I have read that about him before. And he, yeah, in the dorms.
Angie: From what I understand, it was like a circus, a train circus bear and it was little. It wasn’t like ginormous, but a bear is a bear. It was little.
Theresa: That sounds like the justification I had for having a mouse in the dorms. Yeah.
Angie: Yeah. And you. By 21, so it’s like 1809. Our guy has already had this slew of lovers and he has taken his seat in the house of Lords. Because remember, he is a Lord. But he is bored and he leaves for two years to chore Europe with Hobhouse. He visits Greece for the first time. And this is part of why I’m doing his story, because he falls madly in love with both the people and the country of Greece.
Like he. The Greece is his thing. And he’s learning languages like all over the place.
Like he is one of those people that’s like, well, if I’m going to be here, would you mind? And it’s just learning constantly. Nice. Pretty cool, right? But keep in mind, he is also having all of these passionate love affairs everywhere he goes.
Theresa: That’s how you learn anybody. That’s how you learn language. You know, you kind of immerse yourself in the whole immersion culture. Language people. They speak it.
Angie: This includes the very problematic love of three sisters, all 15 and under, which I find to be completely appalling. But I guess the times are the times and they thought it was fabulous. Anyway, in 1812, he makes this stance and really compelling argument in Parliament on behalf of the Luddites. This is one of the first things he does right in his life.
He is basically using his voice and his power for the right reasons. Basically, what’s happening is these textile workers have been waging this war on the automated machines that are taking their jobs and threatening their way of life. So the quote unquote Luddites are destroying this machinery.
And it’s been a bit of a problem for a little bit. And Prime Minister Spencer Percival, he’s fighting for this bill that’s going to make machine breaking the capital offense. Got to protect the wealthy.
Right. But Byron, he openly opposes this and Percival’s efforts saying that the Luddites recent acts of violence are quote the product of circumstances of the most unparalleled distress. This once honest and industrious body of people Byron claims had become miserable men driven by nothing but absolute want. They’re just trying to keep their jobs. But it like put food on the table right and you’re not considering their the fact that you’re automated machines are ruining a thousand years of history here and ways of life for people for generations. Right. So in his mind, he’s already established what the Byron Akiro looks like and he’s using that to help bolster their cause.
It’s pretty cool. So in his mind, the Byron Akiro is a passionate contrarian who fights against the prevailing beliefs of society in true romantic spirit. And I love him.
In 1812, he also starts this little affair with this very passionate, very eccentric and very married Lady Caroline Lam. Yeah, here we go. Super scandalous. Right. This is the crazy X that a lot of us had.
Right. Let me just give you this quote from the Poetry Foundation because I think it’s literally perfect. He met the spirited spirited, impulsive Lady Caroline Lam who initially judged him mad bad and dangerous to know their temptuous affair lasted through the summer until Byron rejected her. She continued the pursuit, burned effigies of this picture and transformed their relationship into a Gothic romance in her novel, Glenorovan in 1816. She is also the one that sent him the blade of cubes.
Theresa: That’s, you know, honestly, I’m surprised that move didn’t work. I mean, who among us hasn’t done that one?
Angie: It literally gives me the shivers. I hate the idea. So anyway, he also at this time is running affairs with the Lady Oxford. Also, I believe Lady Lam’s mother-in-law as well as the Lady Frances Wester and also very probably with his own very married half sister, Augusta Lee, with whom he has been writing passionate letters for years.
Theresa: Who doesn’t quite love him, but will let him in her bed. It seems that way. Okay. I mean, choices carry on. Yeah.
Angie: So 1814 rolls around. It’s been a bit of a scandalous year and as like as if any of the years before weren’t, but Augusta, his half sister gives birth to a daughter. Of course, the baby is given the surname of Lee after Augusta’s husband, but gossip is gossip and everybody believes the baby girl is in fact, Byron’s. Now, one of my sources, I don’t have this in my notes, but one of my sources says this is the only child of his. If it wasn’t fact is that he did not claim like he. He spoke for all of his illegitimate children, except for this one.
Okay. So I’m not sure if he just didn’t say anything to keep it from being more scandalous or if he really believed it wasn’t his unclear, but there you have it. Sources suggest that in an attempt to recover his reputation, he marries in 1815, this young woman called Annabella Milbank, with whom he would do his second right thing.
And together they would have a daughter, a one Augusta Ada or more well known as Ada Loveless. Yep. Who? Yep. Yep. For those of you playing at home was a mathematician, writer and very recognized as the first computer program for her work on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine, which is pretty stinking cool. Like she is the bridge that gaps. Yeah, in my opinion.
Theresa: And honestly, probably his greatest contribution to the world. In my opinion.
Angie: And then I’m only saying this next sentence for the scandal, because it just makes me so happy. The couple would spend time in the home of the Duchess of Devonshire. I’m mentioning this for the girlies who love historic gossip because this woman is the second wife of the Duke. His first wife was Georgina and there is a ton of scandal within this family as well. The point here to me is rich people make great gossip. She is also a friend of the Duchess to Playa from episode 164. Okay, there we go. I love making those historical connections. I was like, wait, what? He knew the Duchess. Like what?
Theresa: He also knew Mary Shelley because we talked about him then. Yeah.
Angie: So back to the story, but because of literally everything that he has been up to the last couple of years, the couple separates shortly after Ada’s born. Because he can’t just be like a stay at home dad.
Theresa: Because he’s the insane human who would get a pet bear when they deny him a dog.
Angie: Honestly, because really then comes the fated summer of 1816 when my guy flees England for a myriad of reasons, failed marriage, scandal, heaps of affairs and debt being the main reason. And he goes to Lake Geneva specifically, Villa Diodati with friends Pershe, Shelley and his wife, Mary and Mary’s half sister, Claire Mont, which is a really ridiculous name. What do you think about it?
Theresa: I think she has something to do with renaming herself. And so she decided to be a William Williams. Good for her.
Angie: Byron had already started an affair with her while they were in London. And so when she arrives at Lake Geneva, he’s like, oh, great. And so just kind of rekindles that affair.
She later goes back to London to deliver their daughter Allegra in 1817. For all of you that are not Teresa and wonder why I call this the fated summer. This would be the summer that is rainy and cold and as a means to pass some time, someone suggests a writing contest. From here, we get two of the most influential pieces of literature ever written, in my opinion. First is Teresa’s favorite, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And yeah, it’s precursor to my favorite because also traveling with this very fashionable group is a young doctor called John Pildare. And he takes what Lord Byron has started and finishes it, creating one of the first popular vampire novels, simply titled The Vampire. And from there, about 70 years later, a man called Brem Stoker will use John Pildare’s antagonists to give us antagonists to give us Dracula. And for those of you that are playing at home, if you’re curious, yes, that was my thesis work. Spent so many days of my life stuck in this book. From here, Byron travels to Italy where he continues on his Casanova pub crawl and has moralist affairs.
Theresa: I honestly, I appreciate the Casanova pub call that if it doesn’t exist and it probably shouldn’t let you as it would be, I kind of want it to.
Angie: I mean, stamp your stamp your ticket. He has all of these illicit affairs. We have names like Marina Segeti, his landlord’s wife and Margarita Cogni. She is the wife of the Venetian baker. And then in June of 1818, according to the Poetry Foundation, quote, early in June, Byron moves into the Palazzo, you know what, I didn’t say this word out loud before.
Theresa: Anyhow, he moves into a different place.
Angie: He moves into a Palazzo with his daughter Allegra, brought to Venice by the Shelleys. The Shelleys party had come to visit him in April and they brought his daughter with them, whom they had agreed to support and educate. So I’m confused, but because Claremont is still very much in the picture, but I have some sort of understanding that perhaps she wanted Byron to have some part in her daughter’s life. So the Shelleys were like acting as the intermediary. So there you have it. She’s there. He’s lodged with his 14 servants, a menagerie and a veritable harem and his daughter. By fall of 1818, his mother and thus the last living family had been dead for about seven years. So the abbey is sold for 95,000, 94,500 pounds. What is that in today’s money?
So here’s the thing, and I’ve never had this problem before. It could be anywhere from 2 million to 65 million. That’s it. Depending on whatever calculator you used. I used three and got a different number each time.
Theresa: Congrats on using more than one. I would have called it job well done at the first and moved on, but wow, that is mind boggling.
Angie: Either way, it’s a price, right? So this gives him his death requer and it gives him this wonderful income with which to squander away. If you can’t guess it, our guy is aged beyond his years, but that doesn’t stop him from starting up an affair with the Countess, Terecha Gnucci, who she’s like 19 and married to some shmuck who’s like almost three times her age and our guy Byron at this time is like 32. These two become absolutely inseparable and Byron moves in with her, which I have questions because she’s married. Yeah. My guess is that the husband’s not around. That’s my guess.
Theresa: Either physically or upstairs. He’s just not present.
Angie: Yeah. It’s during this. So first of all, I think she’s the one he actually, if he was going to love one person, it might have been her. I feel like he loved everybody. That was the problem.
I mean to say like if he was going to be consistently like if he was going to if he if he yeah, if he was going to hang up his his pub crawl and settle down with one woman, it would have been her. At some point around this time Byron sends his daughter away to be educated at a convent near Revena and she dies there in April of 22. She’s like five. Yeah.
This is not so well with Claire Claremont because why would it? That’s her baby. Yeah. Now later the same year Byron also loses Shelly when his boat Don Juan goes down at sea. Yeah.
Theresa: And nothing is found or his heart is calcified on at the funeral pyre. Yeah.
Angie: Now remember when I had said his in his earlier travels he has this love for Greece, right? Well, he passionately supports the Greek war for independence from the Turks. And this might be the third thing he does right in 1823. He leaves Genoa where he’s been staying and he goes to Greece and he gets involved. He pays the equivalent of today of like 500,000 to refit the Greek fleet. And in December of that year he takes command of the small fighting unit, which literally makes no sense to me because up to this point he has no military experience. But like I guess if you’re rich in upper class you too can buy your own army. Yeah.
Theresa: Yeah, you don’t have to have the knowledge if you’ve got the cash. They’ve gone through that. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
Angie: His health takes a nosedive and in February 1824 he gets sick, he never recovers and he dies April 19th. His body is brought back to England and buried near his ancestral home and nodding him shire. Nodding him shire. The other thing that he does right in my opinion, which makes him pretty cool in my eyes, is that he is absolutely appalled at Lord Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon Marbles. Good. So much so that he openly writes about it and inverts. And if you’re curious, you can read it, it’s called the Curse of Minerva. But he was like, yo, that’s not our job. Leave it there.
Theresa: That belongs to them. Yeah, our job was not to take the marble and then cut them in half and destroy them because it was too heavy for your boat.
Angie: Yeah, that’s not yours. Smack in hands, put it back. Yeah, so that’s the story. That is the very shortened, very summarized story of Lord Byron, the bad boy lover and what some consider to be the first celebrity. There’s so much I left out. But I’m a big fan of him openly being appalled to the Parthenon Marbles removal.
Theresa: I mean, truly, I think honestly Byron’s one of those humans that we could have done if we were a seasonal podcast. We could have done, this is the season of Byron where Andy will regale Teresa with a blow by blow. Sure.
Angie: I mean, every source had so much information. It was one of the few times that I can say like every resource had so much information and every source had different information. Like maybe one just concentrated on his life through his poetry and one concentrated on his life through the fact of historic places. So yeah, you could go for days and days and days, a whole season of Lord Byron, which feels like a lot.
Theresa: Yeah, I feel like I am not Catholic but we need confessional after every episode.
Angie: Yeah, in my opinion. Yeah, but I mean, Dracula exists in part because of who he was.
Theresa: And it’s largely based off his personality.
Angie: Pretty much. Yeah, what’s really fun is have you ever read The Vampire?
Theresa: I have not because like I got to Frankenstein and went this is my jam and I locked on.
Angie: Fair. In The Vampire, in my copy of it, I don’t know if it sits in a different place in other copies, but my copy of it there at the end is this. It’s described as a letter that Paul Derry writes about Byron’s home in Greece. And it’s very fictional. It’s not, it’s like romanticized and all of the things, but it is kind of what Stoker looked at and was like, oh, this is how we make, this is how we make a gentleman vampire.
Like this, this works. And even though it is pretty much an aside from the rest of the story of The Vampire, that was my favorite part. And I have literally looked it up dozens of times. Are we sure this isn’t true?
I need this to be a true story. Okay, okay. Just that one letter, it’s just a little letter. It’s like three pages at the end of the book. It’s so beautiful. Anyway, there you have it.
Theresa: Well, this honestly was a wild pairing, which I love or I expect from us.
Angie: Yeah, me too. It’s weird when they’re all on the same train.
Theresa: Yeah, that always makes me uncomfortable about the following week. And if you are like, this was a wild pairing, Martha P. Johnson and Lord Byron.
Angie: Listen, I think Lord Byron would have loved Martha P. Johnson.
Theresa: I think that’s probably true. Who didn’t he love?
Angie: I mean, to be fair from some of my sources, he loved women but was not great to them. So maybe it’s I physically love you, but I emotionally don’t. He’s a fuckboy. Mm-hmm. Through and through.
Theresa: And if you are a fuckboy, no, I’m joking. Send this to somebody who is a fuckboy and you want to slowly, benignly call them out. And if they get to this point of the episode, to that, you did it. Congratulations. Please write in and tell us how it went. Yeah, we’ll put the email to contact us in the show notes. And on that note, goodbye.
Theresa: Bye.
Unhinged History 
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