Ep49: Nick feared his roommate's nocturnal confession; Evelyn stepped in it at a drag bar.

Nick shares the story of a future college roommate whose drunken sleep-talking leads to one of the most alarming misunderstandings imaginable at two in the morning. 

Meanwhile, Evelyn revisits her first-ever trip to a drag bar in Ottawa, where an attempt at friendly conversation accidentally turns into a social catastrophe she still thinks about decades later when she's putting on mascara.

Make sure to catch Evelyn's post-recording addition at the end calling out a certain liar-liar-pants-on-fire member of the Reverse Jackass team. We won't tell you who...

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Want to get in touch with Nick & Evelyn? 

Email them at reversejackass@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's reverse Jack. Folks, welcome back to the Reverse Jackass podcast. We're so glad you're here. I'm Nick, and with me as always is Evelyn, the Canadian Blade. We're so glad you're here.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

We're glad we're here. I don't think people understand the struggle. We're glad. We're glad we're here. We're glad we're here.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Glad.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

So glad.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

We're gladdened.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

So so glad.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

This kind of back and forth is what people tune in for, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

People hate it, and I don't know how to get out of it.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Do people hate it? Have you gotten feedback?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Well, no, I thought you said someone doesn't like when we fight over the well, that wasn't so much the fighting over.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Amber Amber just said that it tires her when we talk about who's going to lead in. So we stopped that.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

We did. And now we're just repeating each other's sentences.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

With emphasis on different words. I think that's fun. If you don't think it's fun, write uh reversejackass at gmail.com and tell Evelyn what she's doing wrong.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yeah, I'm here for it. I can already give you a list of 15 things. So let's add to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

I love that. Okay, so uh keep those complaints coming, those criticisms. Yeah. Um remember to keep them Evelyn centric. I will not read the ones about me, but Evelyn will read the ones about both of us, and she will apply the ones that apply to her. Thank you in advance, Evelyn.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

You are welcome, and I'll read the ones about you live on the air in a podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

On your own podcast. On my own podcast. Someone, everyone. Called Nick is a big douchebag. That's outstanding. I would love that, by the way. Maybe that's what we should change this to. But in the meantime, before we bring that up in our administrative meeting, um, I want to talk to you about an experience that I had in college in the South. Okay. Um, and I want to I'm gonna give you just a little bit of background, not too much, but just enough to set the stage, which was that um my freshman year, I had a roommate. I've talked about him on this podcast, like everybody else does. And then um, between the first year and the second year, an older upperclassman came to me and said, Hey there, I think you should, I I'm doing something, and I think you should do it too. And I was like, What is that? And he's like, You should be an RA. And I was like, Wow, RAs are the coolest guys in the whole building. Everybody looks up to an RA. Yeah, they have so much, they have you know, so much authority and they're like the oldest people in the building. That's fucking cool. Meanwhile, in retrospect, you know, having a having a whole building of 150 people where a 23-year-old is the oldest person in the building is probably not a great setup, right? But I took it hook, line, and sinker, and uh, it was a good thing for me. I actually met my best friend at a job interview that we both came to. We both got the job. I got it easily. She got it by the skin of her teeth, but she still got it. And we set out on this Odyssey to be RAs. And so the best part about being an RA, far and away, other than the friends you make along the way, is that you get your own room. And it was very, very cool to have your own room. Not having a roommate was great. So I do two years as an RA. It's fun, it's great. It also kind of sucks because you have to narc people out all the time, which I know I've talked about before. But you love narking. You love but I live to nark. You live to narc. Yeah. Senior year comes around, or or we're getting ready for it, and they say, Great, we're looking forward to having you back next year. By the way, we're gonna have give you a roommate. And I was like, Oh, nope, I'm definitely not doing that. So I realized that I was not gonna be an RA for my senior year, which turned out to be good, and I needed to find a roommate. So I was back in the roommate thing. And again, things didn't go great with my first roommate, and I am willing to say that probably the majority of that is because I am not a good roommate. Um neither was he, but I think I was more of a not good roommate than he was. So I looked around with a careful amount of care to figure out who the next person would be that I would room with. And I finally found a guy that was in the theater program with me who I will call Carl. And I liked Carl. He was really, really funny. He was a good musician, he played the piano. Um, he was he was conservative, which was like not my thing, but was way less weird and upsetting than it is these days. Like it was a little more of a curiosity back then than now, right? Okay, and I just really liked him and we had mutual friends. So so I came to him and said, Carl, you know, I I need a roommate for next year. I'm gonna get a really good number because I'm a senior, a really good lottery number. Would you want to be roommates with me? And Carl said, totally. So we planned for it. So we finished out the rest of the year. And with a few weeks to go left in the year, Carl drank a lot. And uh one night he called me on my phone, and I was I didn't drink at all at that point. So I was playing Diablo on my computer in my room on a Saturday night. That was how I did it. I also used to play that skiing game. Oh my gosh, wow thing, yeah. And he called me. Okay, I'm more shocked at that than I'm like, You did? Wow. It's a still one of the finest human achievements. Like that we're gonna drain all the lakes and streams for AI, and we're gonna say create the perfect game, and AI is gonna go. Have you tried this thing where the guy skis downhill and sometimes there's a snow monster that comes after him? Um it's like a slalom and you use two fingers. So anyway, Carl calls and he says, Hey man, I'm I'm uh I can't find my keys. Uh I'm on campus, but I can't get into my dorm room because it's locked. Do you think I could come sleep at your room? And I said, Totally. I had an extra bed, easy peasy.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Like they they didn't clear out the extra bed when you're in the room, so like you weren't roommates at this point. No, no, no. This is sorry. Okay. This is still junior year.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Okay, okay. No, and I know I said I finished out the year, and I worried that would be confusing. So it's still that like we have cemented that we will be roommates, okay, but we're still finishing out junior year. Well, I still have my own room, and he calls me wasted and says he can't get into his own room because he doesn't have his keys. And I said, Cool. So he comes over and he's shit housed, and he goes to sleep in my bed, and I, you know, stay up for a little while longer playing video games, and he starts talking in his sleep, which is sort of cool. I am known to do this myself.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Oh, okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

And he was intelligible, so like he would say stuff that you could hear, and and also he'd have a conversation with you. Oh and so at one point I'm there and he turns over and he goes, Nick, said what Carl, and he goes, Isn't it great? And I said, Isn't what great? And he said, the greatest race in human history, and we get to be part of it.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Oh what?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

And I said, What? And he goes, The greatest race in all of human history, and you and I get to be a part of it. And I went cold, and I was like, oh no. Oh no. What the fuck is this? You know, like I thought, oh my god, and you know, like of course I'm totally conflict averse unless you're a freshman with a beer, in which case I'm all over it. Um I'm thinking, what am I like, what the fuck am I gonna do? And I said, Carl, what are you talking about? And he goes, This presidential race, it's so exciting. Oh my gosh. And it was the it was the Bush Gore presidential election that was leading up to it. Okay, and he was a politically minded guy, and he was so excited to be there to witness this election, which of course turned out in the worst way possible, except for the two where Trump was elected. It's like the third worst election in American history. And he was so stoked on it. And I like I've never breathed a sigh of relief in my life that was deeper and longer than the sigh of relief that I breathed in that moment when I figured out flash forward, we were better roommates than my first year was. We weren't great roommates, but one thing I had I got a and again, this is partly my fault. I got my first serious girlfriend in senior year, and she used to sleep over, which was hilarious because she and I were both six feet tall and the beds were twins. So imagine two six feet tall human beings intertwined with the limbs in a twin bed. Yeah. And according to her, he and I would have conversations all night in our sleep.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

And sometimes they made sense and sometimes they didn't, and we never remembered any of them, but apparently all night we would talk to each other. Oh my gosh, this is crazy. I'm given to understand it never got racial. Okay, well that's good. That's like because that'd be that'd be a hideous way to find out something about yourself that you didn't know. It's like, boy, when you're asleep, you're a real scumbag. Real scumbag.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

What and what year are we talking roughly here? So this would have been 2000, I guess. So okay, so we're we're still in the no cell phone. Like there was no cell phone to record any of this.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Oh, no, no, no. You would have had to have a real, you would have had to be like a recording engineer or an FBI agent to record this. Yeah. They would have had to like boot up a desktop and get out a whole microphone set up and everything. And then they'd be like, okay, how do I create what were those awful uh what were those awful like sound files, a wave file of it or whatever it was that we used to use accent?

unknown 8:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, I've got this in the middle of all the songs I pirated off the schools. Yeah, exactly. Or or like the radio station in your that you've recorded on your double tape deck.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah, I guess she could have done it on cassette if she'd wanted to, but no accents cassettes exist.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Okay, well, that's good. So there's no recording that exists to prove anything that you're talking about. So that's actually probably for the best.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yes. So my question for you, Evelyn, is in all of your Canadian life, what is what is the worst misunderstanding you've ever had?

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Oh, that's a good that that is a great prompt. I did not know you were going there. Also, the sigh of relief I could I felt I felt it from all the way over here. Like that, because you're like, oh good, oh goody. Yeah, yeah. Great, Carl, awesome. Now I have to hate you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

I'm gonna have to kill you in your sleep.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

I'm gonna have to kill you in your sleep, and you're probably gonna talk me through it. So that's really awful. Yeah, type of that. The greatest misunderstanding.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

The greatest misunderstanding brought to you by Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons. Get a four-by. Four by four. Four by Tim Hortons, get a four by four. Stupid.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

That's good. That's good. Okay. I don't know if this is the greatest, but it's the first one I thought of. We're just gonna go with it. Okay. It was first year university, and I was visiting a friend in Ottawa at this time. Okay. And this was again, probably within the first four months. So, like term one, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

So you're basically still a high school student. Fresh out of 13th.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Fresh out of the old.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

19, thank you very much. You're basically still a high school student. And it was, I don't know if it was reading week. Do you all have reading week down there?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Who the fuck are you talking to? No, in the United States, we don't have reading week. We don't our librarians are fucking defending their jobs with whips and chairs. We don't have reading week in the United States. Come on, shame on you.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Sorry, I am sorry for but this is back in the day, so I was thinking maybe there was still a little bit of integrity on the street. Oh, we didn't get about that. No. Fair enough. So we have these things called Reading Week where it's a week off every semester, and the goal is to basically get caught up on schoolwork. You have no classes. I mean, very few people treat them like study weeks, but it's a real thing. So there was a reading week that happened, and I decided to take the train to Ottawa. And I thought, I'm gonna see this friend of mine. First time we'd seen each other since, you know, we'd gone to high school together. First time I'd seen this person since probably the summer. Um, we're all just letting loose a little bit, you know, trying to find our wings, stretching our legs a little bit in the in the new world of university. We're just, you know, try all sorts of liberties being taken, social liberties. So we went out one night when I was in Ottawa, we went out one night to a drag bar. And just for a reminder for the folks out there that I grew up on a farm in the country. Um a drag farm.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

A drag sourcing a really interesting turn. We were known. I'll just put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

All the cows had full faces of makeup.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

No, no, because cows are female identified. Oh, right. All the bulls.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

That's true. That's true. See, what have I learned? Nothing. The answer is nothing. Nothing. So we go to this drag bar, and it was my first time at a drag bar. It's my first time seeing anybody in drag being in that kind of environment. I had never gone to a gay bar, I had never done any, like literally done nothing like this. So I felt like it was a little bit like being thrown in the deep end. Like, you know how you think in your, you know, your first couple of months away, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so different now. Like I'm, you know, I've I've grown up, no one's gonna recognize. Like, I'm just this totally new person. I've reinvented myself. Yeah, I get, I get, you know, eight hours away on a train ride, and I'm in a city that I'm not familiar with, and I'm at a drag bar, and I have never felt more insecure in my entire life because I don't know anybody there other than a couple friends that we went with. I don't know any of the social norms that go on in this bar at all. And so I'm just I'm fighting for my life in here internally. So at the end of the show, we we probably met some of the drag queens. I remember the show for what it was worth being fun, but I think I was too panicked during most of it to really enjoy because I'm I'm again not knowing, like I'm processing, not understanding what I'm supposed to do and being afraid I'm gonna stick it like a sore thumb. So my friends and I met with a few of the drag queens at the end and we were talking, and they were sassy and wonderful and funny, and I was kind of you know, you're doing the verbal banter back and forth with one of them. And I said something about how what are you remember?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

One person's one person's witty banter back and forth is another person's hate crime. Like, so I'm just I'm just breaking balls left and right, just giving them the what for. Um, you know, it's just going back and forth, and then eventually the spouser says, We're close. I mean, nobody else left, but uh, you know, we bailed. It was nine, nine o'clock.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Anyway, but so I said something about how much I loved her makeup. I was like, your makeup is gorgeous, right? And she said something like, Thank you. Uh, you know, mine is too. I that was obviously at a point where I was wearing 100% more makeup than I wear currently, which is almost almost none. So that my response to that was we should get together sometime and I can give you some tips.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Oh man. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

And I and the result, there were a lot of things that happened in that just whiff of a second. Number one, the air completely sucked out of the room. Yeah. Yep.

unknown 14:34

Right?

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Hey, we should get together. I should give you some tips sometime, and then the record scratch, and then the frame freeze, and the yep, that's me. You probably wonder how I got myself here. Right? Yeah. And I remember the looks of people's faces beside me, and there was a lot of like drop jaws, widened eyes, and I don't remember what she said. But I do remember it having 25% more sass than the rest of the sassy things she said to me. Sure. Which was delicate, frankly. That was yeah. And I didn't know anything. I didn't know that you don't say that. That you don't offer to give makeup tips to a drag queen who is wearing such expertly and quite frankly, artistically applied makeup. Sure, yeah. I I thought we were bonding. We were not. My intentions were to be friendly and generous, it sounds like generous. I don't know. I I don't know what my makeup looked like at the time, but I'm willing to bet it was not as good as hers, okay? And I just remember it, it was one of the quickest realizations I had where no one had to tell me that I stuck my foot in my mouth. I just immediately knew. I read the room where I was struggling so much before to read the room. I didn't struggle now. I understood everyone's reaction.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Isn't it funny how clear things get while our soul is disintegrating?

unknown 16:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yes. And and part of me feels like this is very typically me. You know, there's something that's like, this no, Evelyn, you don't say socially questionable things at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

You do. I'm I mean, this is this one is rough, but also you are 25 or however old you are when you get out of high school in Canada.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

It's 19.

unknown 16:32

25.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

You know, you were 65, about to collect your pension. Like have a little bit of grace, you know? And and you're right, maybe it is not, but I feel like I have these moments where I'm like, oh no, like my intentions definitely did not outweigh the impact in this in this situation at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Right. Uh well, and yet, you know, all we can do is learn. And I think that that person probably suffered graver insults than this. And I don't say that, you know, I don't say that because we shouldn't learn, but also, you know, I that person is probably not telling that story.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

No, they probably don't remember it.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Right? Whereas somehow, 26 years later, I do remember they're watching all your videos.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

They're like, I get all my makeup stuff from Flanagan content. They're like, I I just I just I'm watching what she's doing.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

You're like, what what makeup tips is this woman giving me?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

No, they're like, they're stealing them. You you have someone is using your persona at a drag bar in Ottawa right now.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Oh my gosh, because I do get approached saying, like, people ask me all the time if I have a sister in such and such a city. Like, I would say probably a handful of times a month when I go out, someone's like, Do you you look like someone, you know, do you have and I'm like, wow, I got doppelgangers all over the place here. Well, either that or everybody knows Heather. Yeah, everyone knows my sister.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Exactly. I mean, are they ever talking about your actual sister? Because you do possess one.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

No, because we don't look enough alike to be mistaken for each other. Do you think it's about looks and not just about like being cool or sense of humor? Okay, got it. Wow. I'm I'm funnier, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Um so maybe there, maybe there's just a whole drive club out there dedicated to looking like me, to looking like normal, middle-aged, collagen deficit women with overly plucked eyebrows from 1997.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Like, I think that could be a real thing. I gotta say, yeah, like I feel like the the trend of of flashy, super attention-grabbing makeup and uh cosmetology has been done in the drag world. Um nobody that I'm aware of inhabits the sartorial persona of somebody who's gonna wake up at four in the morning to go teach for seven hours, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah. And it's like, ooh, do I either brush my teeth or put mascara on or eat breakfast? Yeah, they're like uh look, I got four pairs of flats to choose from. Uh and bad practices over in five.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

So uh you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, there's you really you really are able to funnel down your priorities quickly, you know, in those situations. And I would I quite frankly would like to see more of an homage paid to that.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a neglected, a neglected corner of that particular lens.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

I think so. I think so. I also did speaking of misunderstandings, my face has often been misunderstood almost constantly, and I can't do anything about it. It's my face. Um, but in high school, all the time, people would come up to me like, What are you mad at me? You look really upset right now, and you've seen my face, like it is it well, I mean, you're seeing it right now, so at the very least you've seen it once. Are we okay? Yeah, yeah, right. Are we fine? Evelyn, you look really angry, and I have an incredibly expressive face, like it hides nothing, not one thing. And I'm fine with that. I love my expressive face, but my resting face is clearly concerning to some people and conveys a message that I don't intend to convey. So there have been many misunderstandings. I'm thinking high school, especially with other girls. You know, I remember very vividly being asked by one girl, like, uh, your face looks so mad all the time. And I was like, all the time. I'm not mad, like I'm not a mad person.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

But my face would like to advertise a different message.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

So, how did you put that girl back in her place?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

I stuffed her in a locker and went to P3.

unknown 20:39

It's all you can do.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

It's all you can do. Some messages cannot be written.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Honestly, I'm sick of defending my resting bitch. Now I'm mad. Now I'm mad. You want to see mad? Why don't you go open that locker and see if there's a little mad in there?

SPEAKER_01 20:55

That would be the thing. It's like, is like look in my locker and you'll see why I'm so upset. And then she like opens it and looks at it, you just stuff her the rest of the way in there.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Stuff her in there and then like shoulder the door closed and like spin that lock and strut my way to period form band. Oh, that's the dream. Whistling. Do do do do do do do do. Like song is that yeah, do you know what I'm talking about? No, I don't know. Oh. I don't know, Bugs Bunny. Uh like it came to me from Bugs Bunny. Which means that it's like probably something like a classical theme of something.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Sure. Probably something that was written in seriousness by somebody who was an artist.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yes, who never intended. Yeah, yeah. Who never at once intended for a large rooster named Foghorn Leghorn to be strutting around the chicken coop to that said theme.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Do you know that they're actually this is true, you know, they have a lot of Da Vinci's written records and journals and stuff, and they actually have a lot of them have like A foghorn leghorn looking really like like anthropomorphized rooster representative. And no one's totally sure what it is. It almost takes on like a narrative, uh like a narrator quality in some of the margins of the the diagrams and stuff that he does. So he actually it's funny that you bring that up because he actually did anticipate Foghorn Leghorn in a weird way. Is that your line face? No.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Look it up. I can't tell. I will look it up. I will look it up. You will not be disappointed. I'm gonna look it up after we finish this call. I'm gonna look it up and then I'm gonna add my own little stinger to the end of this episode. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

I think every episode would be good with an Evelyn Stinger. So, folks, stay tuned after I get done talking for the Evelyn Stinger. But in the meanwhile, thank you for showing up for the Reverse Jackass podcast. We love having you here. We love talking to, with, and about you. We would love to hear from you at reverse jackass at gmail.com. You can also email Evelyn directly at Canadianblade6969 at gmail.com if you want to register any complaints with her. Evelyn, say goodbye to these wonderful people.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Goodbye, everyone. And I am still I am not sold on the Foghorn, Lakehorn, DaVinci connection. But I'm I'm willing to be wrong, but stay tuned. I'm willing to be wrong, should be your catchphrase. What would yours be? Uh I'm not willing to be wrong. Oh, wow, how original. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, everyone. We'll see you next episode. Bye. Oh, hey everyone. Just uh your friendly Canadian blade here with a little follow-up and a stinger at the end, as promised. Uh so our instincts were correct. That was in fact Nick's lying face. And not only am I going to go delete my search history, um, because I look like an absolute tool for typing in foghorn, leghorn, Leonardo da Vinci connection. But I also want us to just sit with the reality that Nick was in fact able to come up with that story unprompted and on a complete whim. No need to interject that into the podcast episode, other than just choosing, making the choice, dear listeners, to purposely deceive not only me, but all of you. And I want us to just sit with that for a minute, because Nick doesn't get to add stingers at the end of any of the episodes, because I hold all the editing power. I know Nick will be listening to this in his car someday as he's driving down the road, going to goodness knows what Liar's Anonymous meeting he's going to. And I hope that he hears this, and I hope he knows how deeply he has hurt all of us. So, Nick, a message just for you. The next time you decide to not only lie about Leonardo da Vinci, but to bring in something so sacred as a character from Looney Tunes, take a pause and think about what you're about to do and the dozens of people that you are about to lie to. Not just me, because goodness knows I'm numb to it at this point. But I want you to think of all the people out there across the entire globe who you lied to. And I want you to sit with that, and I want you to send me a voice note as an apology that I will then include in a future episode of Reverse Jackass podcast. Although this does not right Nick's wrong, I just hope that this will bring you some peace for tonight, knowing that at least 50% of the reverse Jackass team is willing and able to fight for your right to trust your hosts. I think I'm gonna go eat some chips now. Some neighbors are besties.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Others quarrel bitterly. Stuck together through geography. One of us has nukes.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

And the other has tokes. It's American Canadian diplomacy. It's reverse.