Goodmaterial pt1

This is a recording of Episode 2 of Thrift Shop Book Club. They discuss the book "Good Material" by Dolly Alderton. The book is about Andy, a stand-up comedian, and his failed relationship with Jen. They talk about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the male ego in comedy. They discuss the struggles of living in London and the lack of vulnerability in Andy's comedy. The book starts with a list of why it's a good thing that Andy and Jess broke up. Okay, this is a recording of Episode 2 of, what did we say in the first one, Charity Shop Book Club or Thrift Shop Book Club? We're pivoting to Thrift Shop Book Club because it's more internationally appealing. Okay, Thrift Shop Book Club and the book we're reading is Good Material. Okay, hi everybody, welcome to the second episode of Thrift Shop Book Club. Today we are going to be talking about Good Material by Dolly Alderton, a book I really enjoyed, a book I'm very excited. I think we should do an introduction that's more colloquial, where like, hello, how are you, how are you, like it's a conversation maybe. Hi! Hello! How are you? I'm great, how are you? I just quit my job. Beautiful. That's a great take, actually. Okay, so today we are going to be talking about Good Material by Dolly Alderton. Which I found difficult to read because it shared some shocking similarities in tone with Spare by Prince Harry, something that you also picked up on, but ultimately, like, a very moving, thoughtful read, and I'm excited to talk about it with you. But before we do dive into it, I'm just going to read a little blurb from the back so that people have an idea of what it's about. Here it goes. Andy loved Jen. Jen loved Andy, and he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is dot, dot, dot, without a home, waiting for his stand-up career to take off, wondering why everyone around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship, because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not the least, his ex-girlfriend's side of the story. In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Olserton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today and the true voice of a generation. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I mean, I agree. Readers or listeners will remember we covered Spawn. Spawn. Yes. I mean, readers will remember that we covered Spare last week, and the tone was very much that of a mediocre white man in his thirties, and Dolly Olserton- British. British white man in his thirties. And Dolly Olserton has done an excellent job of recreating this in this book. The reason we actually decided to pick this book- well, it was my pick. The reason I decided to pick this book was actually that we were at the Edinburgh Fringe in August this year, and we saw a speech that Dolly Olserton had. It was an in-conversation with another author, and- A Q&A moment. What? It was a Q&A moment. It's true. I should mention who that author is, actually, that will be in my calendar. Oh, yeah. Be good. Just because it feels bad not to mention, like- Yeah, I think starting with sort of unpacking our Edinburgh Fringe Festival, how we found the event we went to with Dolly Olserton is actually a fantastic place to start this conversation, because Andy is a sort of- I wouldn't say fail, but stalling comedian who has some ties to the Fringe. So it's all very full circle, all very appropriate to talk about. I agree. Sorry, I'm just trying to find it. Dolly Olserton. She sent a screenshot somewhere. Do you know the family friend who texted my mom that she saw me at Fringe was seated behind us at that talk? Wow. She was like two rows behind us. Isn't that insane? Yeah. I don't know. It's true. Okay. Dolly Olserton with Yomi Adegose. Okay. Sorry. Let me- Take it from the top. Yeah, so we saw a talk between Dolly Olserton and Yomi Adegose about being female writers. They've both recently written books from the male point of view. Good Material is Dolly's. And it was just a really moving talk that really spoke to us when we were there. They spoke a lot about what it's like being a woman, female friendships, and kind of dealing with your fertility and growing old. And one of the quotes that she said, which really spoke to me, especially at the time, was, you know, I will never tire of speaking to women and having conversations with women. And that really made me want to read her book, which is why we started with Good Material. Everything I know about love is also coming up, so watch this space. But seeing her at Fringe was also quite thematic because Andy in the book is a stand-up comedian. And I think my understanding of male stand-up comedians was really nuanced by the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. So for anyone at home who doesn't know what the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is, maybe international listeners, it's a comedy and theatre festival that happens in Edinburgh every year. It's probably one of the biggest in Europe, I'd imagine. It's huge in the UK, and you have a wide range of comedians, from kind of big sell-out shows who tour globally to, like, very small comedians who maybe do, like, free performances. You've also got a few random bits and bobs, like dancers, theatre, a few university comedy groups, all sorts, really. And it's really fun, and it's, I think, it's like two or three weeks in August. It's quite a long festival. And when we went, we really saw a wide range. Mm-hmm. Well, I think we would have enjoyed, like, discovering Domino Anderson in any context, but it was so appropriate and refreshing to stumble upon her at Fringe, because our experience that weekend was very much so one of swimming through, navigating in, being surrounded by the male ego, being subjected to the male ego, being part of, like, the desperation. And I don't even say desperation, like, fully derogatorily. Like, I think you need that hunger as a performer to motivate you. But it was also, I don't know, I just feel like we took a pretty intimate crawl around the male psyche that weekend with all, because comedy is such, like, a soul-bearing art form, and people really tell you everything you need to know in a much shorter time than you may expect. It's true. I mean, I think desperation is a good word, and we see that in Andy in the book as well. This kind of need to be liked and to be funny. And I think when you're making someone laugh as well, it's such a vulnerable thing, where you really show, I mean, showing what you find funny and what you think other people will find funny is very, very telling about your character, about your values as well, I would say. But it's also, it doesn't really work unless you have the audience on side. It's, I think, like a lot of theatre, you can really alienate the audience. You can play a lot with your relationship as a performer to the audience. But with stand-up comedy, they kind of have to like you, because if they laugh at you, it has to be because you've allowed it. Otherwise, it just doesn't work, basically. And, you know, we saw some very good comedy, I would say. We saw some very bad comedy. And Andy in the book is on the very bad category. He's in his thirties, I think mid-thirties. And he's been on the circuit for a while. He's been repeating the same material for a while. And he really, he's driving like 10 hours to play in front of 24 people in an unpaid kind of pub gig. Like, he does it for love of the game. It's mainly from like MC jobs, from like, you know, hosting. Corporate events. Exactly. He's still living his student job lifestyle in his mid-thirties. And I think he's also very much a London type in that way. People who kind of find that London is such a difficult city to come up with and to live in, and to kind of financially bear the pressure of, that they never really end up finding their niche, because on the one hand, they haven't had the space to experiment and to be able to kind of take risks, because they've always had to financially cover their rent and their bills and everything. But on the other hand of that, they've never really been able to let go of the London dream. And in this case, it's London. I think London is a really good example of it. But I think at the moment we're seeing this in capitals in general, you know, that they're kind of the obvious place to go for ambitious people to succeed. But then it's very easy to get stuck. I think you bringing up like the precarity, the financial precarity of London is really a point and another thing we will touch on, especially when it comes to Andy's housing were, I think, brilliant, like her brilliant mind. She's so right. It's so specifically London. She really captures the ethos. But in Andy's particular case, I would say that the reason in the book that we are led to believe, like, why he is uninspired, why he's regurgitating, like, banal observational comedy he came up with a decade ago is more so because of his inability to be vulnerable to other people or himself. And therefore, like, he's not interesting to others because he isn't introspecting or like bringing something new or honest to the table. So in this instance, I would say it's more about Andy, like, interpersonal struggles than the city. Yes, I meant more of the gig lifestyle, I think is typical of the city. But I agree. I think also the type of comedy he does, he's like desperate to be liked in a way that's vulnerable, but none of what he's putting out there is vulnerable. And yet he thinks it is. He gets genuinely very hurt when he gets bad reviews, which we'll come to. But I think the housing is a good place to start because when, so the book starts with a list of, that Andy has made, of why it's a good thing that me and Jess, Jess is his girlfriend. And I think, should we go through the list now? I think we should. I think the book, like, opens and ends with lists, and I think we should honour that. I think, I don't know, maybe we talk about the list later. Because I think the housing would be a better segue. It's a good through line. It's a good, like, chronological through line. Let's do the housing first. Okay. I'll make a note of the list. So the book starts with Andy having just broken up with his long-term girlfriend, Jess. He's been caught a bit off guard by this. And he is staying with his friends, Abby and Jane, who are married, with kids. And he's staying in their spare room. And you really, from the get-go, get the feeling of, like, oh, it's uncomfortable for him to be here, but, like, does he realise that? And from there, we kind of see him go through all these different housing options that London has to offer. So after, I think, about a month of moping around in their spare room, he... Well, I think, sorry, not to cut you off, but just because I think this point is only relevant, like, right now, so I'm going to jam it in, which is the dynamic that, like, is so obvious to us as people who have lived in London for a long time, of the fact that breaking up, like, and this is true in lots of cities, but, like, breaking up having an significant impact on your housing, on your, like, stability of life, because, like, a lot of people live, like, move in with their partners prematurely because, again, of the financial precarious London. And I think an interesting aspect of Andy's break-up with Jess is that, as we learn later in the book, they are renting a flat together. So she actually comes from, like, a well-off family and owns a flat, but because he wants to feel like they are equally contributing financially to this relationship, even though he is a floss comedian and she's, like, an insurance corporate girlie, it is that she puts the flat she owns out for rent and then lets the flat with Andy while she still pays more of the rent than him, all in service of, like, his fragile ego and so that he can be, like, a man. Meanwhile, she's bending over backwards, putting herself in, like, a totally illogical living situation to, like, make him feel big, which really strikes me as, like, crap. Anyway. Yeah. Well, I think it also speaks to their lack of financial planning for the future. Like, there's a lot of reasons they break up, which we'll come to, but one that isn't particularly explicitly addressed in the book, but that I think is very relevant, is that does live as a perpetual teenager, and part of that is, you know, rent is one of the biggest overheads you have in London, and it's money that you just don't get back. And, you know, it would make so much more sense for him to live with her, not just financially in terms of, like, spending more money by renting, but also just in terms of, like, saving for the future so that maybe they can buy a house together. Like, yeah, I think it's also, like, a kind of, it really shows not just the fragility of his ego, that he kind of needs her to make this compromise, but also the lack of, kind of, financial responsibility and financial awareness that he has as an adult at his big age, to be honest. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Totally. Yes. So, at the beginning of the book, he is living with Abby and Jane, and a recurring theme in the book is also that Andy feels that he's, like, a few steps behind his friends a lot of the time. So, most of his friends are kind of in long-term relationships, just as he was, but now that he's no longer in them, he feels suddenly very isolated from them, and you really feel that for all of his friends in a group of, I think, like, five young men, well, men in their thirties, and for all of them, you really feel... Who are in high school. Yes. Who have not really changed their social dynamics since they were 18, and probably still see their university years as... And I think if you are a woman who has dated men, this is immediately recognizable to you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of that culture, in a way. And I think it's... Well, on the one hand, like, it's nice to have long-term friendships, obviously, but on the other hand, one thing that's recognizable in all of these relationships is that these men's emotional relationships are with their partners. Like, as friends, they have very little in common. They don't really talk about their emotions. Like, when Andy breaks up with Jess, their... Like, they do have a lot in common, but they fail to, like, recognize, address, and, like, affirm that in each other, because they are so emotionally constipated. Yes. But they organize a kind of pub crawl for, like, Andy's breakup, to help him get over it, basically. And this pub crawl basically consists of them getting, like, blackout drunk, and... Well, of him getting blackout drunk, and of the others kind of gasping to get away, because they've got to, like, look after the kids, and they want to get back to their wives. And part of this is Andy projecting, I would say, his insecurities with his friends not liking him, because that's something he's constantly worried about, is whether people like him. But part of it is also that, like, their emotional needs are entirely fulfilled by their partners, as we were saying. Yeah. And I think when he's living with Abby and Jane, he's kind of witnessing this firsthand, where something embarrassing happens between him and Jess. I can't quite remember what, but he tells Abby not to tell Jane, because Jane and Jess are also best friends, as Abby obviously does. And it's, you know, it's presented as, like, well, of course I told her. I tell her everything. But the fact that that kind of relationship to your wife is so prioritized above your friendships, to the point that, like, you know, it's not even a question that you would, like, betray and take from, like, your friend for it, I think is very revealing of the dynamics that come up. And I'm not even saying this in a super critical way, but just in a very, like, I think it's a very kind of typical thing of, like, heterosexual and patriarchal models and systems, that you end up in these kind of, like, your main romantic relationship being the be-all, end-all, and then your friendships being kind of extensions that you prioritize less and less as you have a family, as you have kids. Yeah. I think a good example of exactly this dynamic that you're talking about that is portrayed immediately in the book is that Andy's first instinct when he's, like, depressed, at home, day drinking, trying to deal with this, like, ultimate rejection, is instead of reaching out immediately. He actually, like, ghosts his friends following the breakup. He doesn't, like, text them at all. He instead decides to reach out to every woman he's had a relationship with since he was 17. And, again, this rings so true. And then, like, there are these moments of, like, pure comedy where Andy is, like, conversing with the girl he dated when he was 17 who now has, like, a husband and kids, and it's like, I remember you took it hard when we broke up, like, we don't have anything to talk about right now. Yeah, he asks her out for a coffee, and she's kind of like, I don't really see the point of that. She's like, I don't even know you. It's been a lifetime. I think this also shows, though, the way that, you know, in, like, couples and in, like, heterosexual dynamics as well, it's very easy to kind of make up these ideas with other people, especially when you've dated and then you've broken up. Like, I think the whole breakup process often you, like, invent a person to miss that isn't the person you broke up with. Yeah, I agree. Exactly. And I think that kind of reaching out is he's reaching out to his fantasy that never existed of a woman who never existed based on someone he dated for, like, less than a year when he was 17. And, you know, in my experience, when I've had exes reach out, it's been the same. These people don't know me. And four years later, they'll come up because they're kind of thinking back on the past nostalgically and they've got this idea that, you know, I'm like the one who got away or something when we broke up for good reasons and have nothing in common. Do you remember what his next housing step is? I believe the first housing step is the houseboat. Yes. Iconic. Iconic. As a woman living in East London, I see houseboats every day. And they are a real symptom of the, like, housing crisis in London. But they are so much shit. They are, like, so shitty. It's crazy. Some of them are sort of like... Well, let's just focus on Andy because there's such a range of houseboats that you're going to see on the canal. I do think it's important to know, though, that in general, you can see there's two types of houseboats. There's a houseboat for people who are, like, genuinely struggling and, like, have bought a houseboat because it's a cheap option that are, like, usually in pretty bad nick, like, moving all the time, quite dirty. Like, often you can really tell that the person living there is quite mentally ill. They'll be a bit feety and things like that. And you will have, like, maybe even next to it, maybe, like, five minutes along the canal, the most beautiful, like... Double-wide. Exactly. That's, like, very well-maintained. That's kind of, you know, probably cost as much as a house. It's more about living that kind of nomadic... Botanian. Yeah. Yeah, I know. That's a good example. It's sort of like... It's a real microcosm of inequality in the city, I would say. Yeah. You also don't have a real toilet. You don't have a real shower. Even in these, like, nice houseboats. Like, you have a camping toilet. You have, like, a hose. You don't... Like, you don't have central heating. You have a generator, an external generator. You have a wood-burning fire. Like, it's pretty... It's a bit camping vibes to live in a houseboat point-blank, I would say. Well, it's also apparently the community that gets most broken into. Partly because they're quite... Definitely. Also partly because there's still such a hatred and kind of... Well, does it count as xenophobia? Or it's, like, gypsies? Is gypsies a politically correct term? I think gypsies is a slur now. I think you say bromo or traveler communities. Okay. Well, remember we iconically have that yoga teacher... Remember we iconically have that yoga teacher who lives in a houseboat and she... I have to say it again for the recording! And, in fact, they're actually one of the most broken into communities in London. Partly because they're easy to break into, but partly because there's still such a hatred of bromo and traveler communities who are kind of associated with houseboats. Yeah. I remember the yoga teacher we had who famously lives on a houseboat and she had a new neighbor pull up. That's the other thing. Your neighbors are constantly changing. Your location is constantly changing. Unless you want to pay extravagant more in fees. And she had a guy pull up to her houseboat, hit on her, she rejects him, and he unties her fucking hole with her cat inside and sends it a-drifting down the canal. And if a good Samaritan hadn't grabbed her boat for her, she would have lost all of her earthly possessions. And her home. Yeah. It would be such a vulnerable place to live. Yeah. That's a good material. Andy ends up in a rather rough houseboat. He meets a man at a conference that he... I think it's like a prize, like a corporate prize night, and he's presenting the prize because he's so good at doing jokes. And he is approached by a gentleman of middling age, balding, with a delicate rat tail, braided rat tail hanging down the back. And, again, this man shivers down my spine for accuracy. And this guy immediately spots a potential tenant in Andy. Yes. This man, I think, is like recently, well, purchased a houseboat when he had just been divorced. And, honestly, we don't see much of him. But what we do see is a cutting. So he offers the house... He hears that Andy is going through a housing crisis, or rather prompts this information from him. Andy clearly absolutely exudes those vibes and offers him to rent this houseboat for a very cheap price for London, which I think is still about £500. So, you know, in the grand scheme of things, not that cheap, but cheap for London. And Andy shows up. And this houseboat is, as you might expect, in shambles. The windows are leaking. He, as a tallish man, does not sit in the bed. He can't stand up straight. Yeah. They are quite small houseboats. They're really made for small people. I think he lasts about a night before he decides to back out of this rental contract. And does he go back to his mum at that point? No, he goes back to his friend's attic. Yeah. So he goes back to his friend's attic. Through allies. The next move is he sees a sign in the newspaper. Old school. Rightmove and Zoopla are not meeting his budgetary needs. So Andy goes to Hunden's for a house share elsewhere. And boy, does he find it. You will do us the pleasure of reading the advertisement when you find it. Just a moment. Don't. Sick book. Another phenomenon of London, but again, I'm sure this elsewhere is very pronounced here, is the phenomenon of older landlords, especially those who live alone, like single older landlords who actually cannot afford their mortgage, and so have a tenant that they live with in their home. And that's almost always a pretty cursed dynamic, I would say. And this is exactly the dynamic that Andy ends up in when he answers an ad that says, Lodger wanted Hornby. No remain voters. £618 per month, including bills. This is, so contact Hornby is an area that is kind of outside of central London, but still on the tube, and remain voters would be people who voted to remain in the EU during the Brexit vote. So we're identifying this man as conservative. And, you know, probably quite frustrated. I say that as a staunch European. But shall I read the entire ad? Yes. The entire ad is, I am looking for a lodger in my two-bed house in Hornby. I will live there. My name is Maurice. I have no pets. I am 78. There is a garden. I do not accept rent in a bank account, only cash or cheques. The room is a big room, double bed furnished. No to all practicing religions and musical instruments. Love that those are put on your cell. I have a television, bath, shower. All genders are welcome, no under 25s. All nationalities welcome, excluding Dutch. My number is, please call me if you would like it. Goodbye. Viva. I mean, excellent character introduction, I would say. There is a lot to analyze. I would say excluding Dutch is interesting because it kind of, well, no, I do not think I want to go into talks about prostitution. I think it is not. So, naturally, Andy sees this ad and is like, ooh, ooh, ooh, that sounds just like me. He shows up. Maurice is a conspiracy theorist. He is a huge, huge fan. And a hoarder. A hoarder. And he, we find out, was cheated on by his wife with his brother. His wife then left him for his brother. And ever since then he has never really recovered. And he has become, like, deeply suspicious of anything because he has been through such a big betrayal. And an interesting dynamic, so Andy decides to take the room and he lives there for the rest of the book. And an interesting dynamic between them is that Maurice is very much a kind of idea of what Andy could turn into in some way. Yes, a fear. The lonely, like, sad, socially isolated, older gentleman. Exactly. Like, I would say I do not really see Andy literally turning into Maurice, but you definitely feel the fear in him. Andy, as we said, he is a kind of perpetual boy, but there are definitely, like, signs of him being worried about aging. One of them is that every day he takes a bath. The most important one, without a doubt, is the pole. The pole there at his house. In which he does nothing to alter, but instead obsessively documents via photos of his head taken surreptitiously in the bathroom. Like, the slow but inevitable march of time. Yes. It's excruciating. And it's really, I think it reflects his attitude to life. This kind of seeing time passing and really anguishing over it, but never acting to change your life. Honestly, you cope with that line. You're right. I mean, at no point do we see Andy really take any initiative except to perform the same gig over and over again. At the same time, there's a deep envy of other people who either have full heads of hair or have successful comedic careers. One dynamic I think is quite interesting is with a fellow comedian, Emery, who is described as kind of hot and successful. And Emery, from my point of view as a reader in this book, like, you know, he often, like, he's good with women. He has a successful show. But, well, for me, he's tarnished by association for the fact that he and Andy hang out at all. But also, like, you know, I would say he's just a guy with a fairly successful comedian career. But Andy, like, cannot stand his success. Andy likes Emery. He thinks he's charismatic. He thinks he's charming. He would count Emery as friends, and yet he's preying on his failure every day. And when Emery does succeed, he cannot feel, like, genuine happiness for his friend, and instead only feels, like, deep insecurity. Like, there is not room for both of them in the world to succeed. That his friend's success comes at the expense of his own or, like, simply serves to highlight his own failure. Exactly. I think that's the case for Emery Wins an Award, and that's exactly how he reacts. But I think another interesting point at which it comes up is when Andy gets a bad review for one of his shows. And this is, like, a random review in a web newspaper. And he's reading through comments obsessively, and he's so worried that, like, Jess will see this review. And, you know, he, like, Emery reaches out to be like, oh, that sucks, but, you know, it'll blow over. And he's kind of really almost angry at him for reaching out, and humiliated by the fact that someone's reaching out to kind of offer any kind of comfort. I think Emery even offers to, like, put a statement in defense of him, which, obviously, Andy interprets as being an empty offer and doesn't take him up on. And then, like, I don't know, just a resentful, resentful, fragile man. Well, but there's also a side to it, which we saw in Prince Harry as well, where, like, the self-pity is addictive. He enjoys feeling sorry for himself. He enjoys confronting himself with other people and being like, well, it's easy for them because, you know, if I had Emery's good looks or whatever. Or her hair. Again, never taking accountability for why his life isn't the way he wants it to be. And I think his jealousy also, well, it's, again, it's kind of clinging to his youth and not really, it's, you know, he's obviously having a kind of midlife crisis. And one of the ways this comes out is in his relationship with Sophie. Sophie is a young woman who has the misfortune of being in Andy's circle by virtue of her flatmate, who is also an aspiring comedian. Sophie is 23 years old. Sophie is a cool girl. Nihilistic. Chill. Super chill. And definitely, like, so mature for her age, you know? So when we meet Sophie, I think she's 23 and her friends are 23. And it's a really kind of interesting portrayal of young women of that age, especially straight young women and their kind of relationship to men and to sex and to, like, discovering their own sexuality. So the way we meet them is at a pub. Talia, who is her friend, who is the aspiring comedian who Andy meets her through, is there, and their other flatmate Emma is there. And Emma is going to an orgy, which I think really already immediately introduces the kind of way that young women especially hypersexualize themselves in a way that, you know, it's very much sold, I would say, as a form of emancipation. Yeah. That your self-objectification or, like, self-hypersexualization is in some way a feminist act or, like, well, yeah, that's really what it comes down to. Well, there's an equivocation between hypersexualizing yourself and therefore being in control and between, like, being able to earn your sexuality because you're liberated. It's a bit of a, like, chicken and the egg, except, you know, there is very much a beginning, and the beginning is empowerment. Hypersexualization does not lead to empowerment, it's the other way around. But I think, obviously, like, as a young woman, you're very encouraged to hypersexualize yourself, and it is often a bad thing. I mean, look at Britney Spears. But yes, so Emma is going to an orgy, and she is super cool and chill about it, and Andy feels like a kind of stick in the mud for not being cool and chill about it. But he's certainly titillated. He's titillated, but also I think the way that he, again, makes it about himself really shows the lack of reflection he has on, like, the motivations of other people. Like, I would say, I'm 25, and since my frontal lobe has developed, like, it has been so easy to, like, read teenage emotions. You know, like, they really are open books. And if you as a 35-year-old adult human being are impressed, confused, struggling to interact with the youth, like, that's not you. Well, I think impressed is the right word. Like, if you're impressed that a 23-year-old is going to an orgy, rather than, like, taking a moment immediately to analyze that. And you don't have to come to the same conclusion as I have, but really to think, like, oh, why would you do that? But rather, like, you'll have this view of an orgy as a really cool thing that you just wish you could have gotten into. And that you could have told other people about to shock and impress them. Exactly. But the introduction to these three characters as flatmates is that they call their flat the Het Ket Crack Den, although they assure me they mistried crack. And Emma points out Sophie's actually the only heterosexual one now. Cringe, Sophie sighs in response to this. Hate that about myself. Talia's tempted. Sorry, I have to jump in. But this discourse of, like, oh, I hate being heterosexual, men are so disappointing. Like, I hear it all the time online. I hear it all the time in person. And I am aghast of it. Like, simply demand more from your male partner. Um, I don't know. What do you think? It's a pretty, like, unhelpful little, like, dialogue that straight women have. Especially, like, young, liberal straight women up me street. I mean, I think there's also this fantasy about lesbian relationships as if lesbians can't be bad partners. Like, some of my partners I have had, like, the displeasure of meeting have been lesbians. Like, I've seen them treat their girlfriends terribly, you know? Like, the idea that the problem is men rather than the problem is, like, you not being able to advocate for yourself in your relationship, pick partners who will treat you properly. Again, I think it's kind of shifting the blame to the wrong place. Like, shifting the agency to the wrong place. It also fits into the narrative of, like, all men are trash. And, you know, being a woman does not by default make you a good person. It does not make you more enlightened. Like, women are very active and, like, crucial in perpetrating patriarchal standards. And you will not have, like, you know, women have to individually make the effort to be feminists, to be emancipated. And, like, men also have to make that effort. And to just think that the problem is that they're men full stop, I think, really, on the one hand, like, doesn't hold them accountable in a way that's important to make that effort. It also articulates the issue in a very relevant way. Exactly. And, like, blames and also makes it, like, an innate thing that men can't have.