Latest / Eating While Broke / FLAME MONROE - Succotash
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Hmmm, y'all had all the booby.
- 0:04Speaker 2: I ain't got I don't have boobs, so I got them.
- 0:07Speaker 2: I had them for like three seconds when I had
- 0:09Speaker 2: a baby.
- 0:09Speaker 1: I borral man. They alone, They going back.
- 0:14Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of Eating While Broke. I'm your host,
- 0:17Speaker 2: Coleen Wit and today we have Emmy nominated flaming role
- 0:20Speaker 2: in the building comedian, actress, writer, entertainer, podcaster. Also, what's
- 0:29Speaker 2: what's the name of your podcast? Learn? You guys could
- 0:32Speaker 2: check her out on the Black Effects. So today what
- 0:35Speaker 2: do you have us eating?
- 0:37Speaker 1: She forgot dad, mom, brother.
- 0:43Speaker 2: It's sad because I did leave that out on purpose.
- 0:46Speaker 2: But then no, that is probably the hardest title, right
- 0:48Speaker 2: that is that is.
- 0:49Speaker 1: The hardest, the most joyful, and the most pain.
- 0:51Speaker 2: And how many kids you?
- 0:53Speaker 1: Three? Three? He wasn't playing just wait, I wouldn't with
- 1:00Speaker 1: tight with it out mistakes, not at all. Thank you
- 1:05Speaker 1: for having me. Hello everyone, eating Eating Broken. You know
- 1:09Speaker 1: what we're gonna have? This is what I ate when
- 1:11Speaker 1: I was broken.
- 1:11Speaker 3: Scutas suckutash is a poor man's meal, but it will
- 1:14Speaker 3: feel you up.
- 1:14Speaker 2: How do you how do you spell that sucker tash?
- 1:17Speaker 3: Now you asked me some difficult questions, sucker tash. So
- 1:23Speaker 3: I'm thinking it's s U C c A T t
- 1:26Speaker 3: A s h.
- 1:28Speaker 2: I think did you make it up?
- 1:30Speaker 1: No?
- 1:30Speaker 3: Absolutely not. My grandmother May used to make this all
- 1:32Speaker 3: the time. It was a bunch of us, so she
- 1:34Speaker 3: had to stretch it out.
- 1:36Speaker 2: Okay, so what are the ingredients?
- 1:38Speaker 3: So the ingredients actually is our whole curnel of corn cutokra,
- 1:43Speaker 3: a tomato, onion, green pepper, celery, and whatever season you
- 1:47Speaker 3: season to taste however you want. And usually bacon. I
- 1:50Speaker 3: don't see the bacon up here, and you put it
- 1:52Speaker 3: over a bit of rice.
- 1:53Speaker 2: We do have bacon, and you.
- 1:54Speaker 3: Can imagine feeding about nine kids screaming and it will fill.
- 1:59Speaker 1: And it was healthy because it was ventance.
- 2:24Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because I saw Okrah. And when I saw Oprah,
- 2:27Speaker 2: I said.
- 2:28Speaker 1: Oh heck no. I'll tell you about okrah.
- 2:33Speaker 3: Y'all young kids say macaroni and cheese. Let us all
- 2:37Speaker 3: here say Okrah. I'm gonna let you sit on there
- 2:39Speaker 3: and think about that for a minute.
- 2:41Speaker 2: Something. You have to be very good at cooking. I'm
- 2:45Speaker 2: gonna tell you a little story. Okay. My mom is
- 2:47Speaker 2: Jamaican and she would do the whole Okrah thing. It's
- 2:49Speaker 2: my mama was a great cook. But me and my
- 2:52Speaker 2: siblings would band together that every time the Okrah rent
- 2:55Speaker 2: like came to the front of the freezer, it was
- 2:57Speaker 2: like someone's job to go and hide it to the
- 2:59Speaker 2: back of the freezer. And that was the job of
- 3:01Speaker 2: us kids, was just to hide the Oprah and she
- 3:04Speaker 2: would never find it.
- 3:05Speaker 1: Okay, it's pretty tasteless though.
- 3:06Speaker 2: It really is flimey though well, and then okay, and
- 3:11Speaker 2: then I was in North Carolina with Nick Cannon and blimey.
- 3:19Speaker 1: I was.
- 3:20Speaker 2: I was out there and I had told him like,
- 3:22Speaker 2: I really hate Okra and he was like, you ain't
- 3:23Speaker 2: never had fried Okra? And I said, okay, you know,
- 3:26Speaker 2: I'll take one for the team. And I still hated it,
- 3:29Speaker 2: So I can't mess with Okra. So I'm going to
- 3:32Speaker 2: gracefully take this one for the team for eating while broke.
- 3:36Speaker 2: But we do have bacon. Do you want me to
- 3:39Speaker 2: like bacon?
- 3:40Speaker 1: Yes? Please? Because bacon is the starter.
- 3:42Speaker 2: All right, So we're now back, So we have your
- 3:44Speaker 2: apple with bacon, all right, So let's get the cooking.
- 3:48Speaker 3: Let me drop a little olive oil here, saying, oh,
- 3:51Speaker 3: I brought you a gift before I get started.
- 3:53Speaker 1: I brought you a fan.
- 3:54Speaker 3: Okay, what is your face? I want to see you
- 3:56Speaker 3: pop it too? Here we go, Hey, what is that?
- 4:01Speaker 1: What is that?
- 4:02Speaker 2: Can't bitch do what I do?
- 4:04Speaker 1: I believe it.
- 4:05Speaker 2: This is this is the this is gonna be the
- 4:07Speaker 2: model for the rest of my life.
- 4:08Speaker 3: Everybody mindset is what he's she we That is my
- 4:12Speaker 3: own preferred pronoun. He's wet because I pretty much feel
- 4:15Speaker 3: like they kick me out the community. I got my
- 4:16Speaker 3: own pronoun. Man stands for he cast the check, she
- 4:19Speaker 3: make the money. We spent the same person saying the
- 4:21Speaker 3: same person?
- 4:22Speaker 2: Is I like that? I like that?
- 4:24Speaker 1: I cover all the bases?
- 4:28Speaker 2: Is that you?
- 4:28Speaker 1: That is me?
- 4:29Speaker 2: Okay?
- 4:30Speaker 1: And in my sexty day, I was.
- 4:33Speaker 2: Young, So you started out. So let's kind of take
- 4:38Speaker 2: it back to you call it succotash circuit circuitans. So
- 4:43Speaker 2: what was going on in the era of sutash.
- 4:46Speaker 3: We were living in the projects of Chicago on the
- 4:48Speaker 3: West Side and hearing horn the projects. My grandmother Big
- 4:51Speaker 3: jip That's what everybody called my grandmother, Big Jipu. She
- 4:54Speaker 3: was my grandmother ran guns, so candy, uh so women
- 5:00Speaker 3: so drugs.
- 5:01Speaker 1: This was the gains of other.
- 5:03Speaker 3: Projects, and it was a bunch of grandkids. She had
- 5:05Speaker 3: a bunch of grandkids, so she had to stretch food
- 5:08Speaker 3: out in between when it was high and low.
- 5:09Speaker 1: My grandma was a blu leg My grandmother is a pimp.
- 5:11Speaker 1: I love my grandmother. May she rest in peace.
- 5:13Speaker 2: And she raised you.
- 5:15Speaker 3: She pretty much raised my mama. Was bucked while my
- 5:17Speaker 3: mom was out doing her thing. My mother was seventeen
- 5:20Speaker 3: when she had me, so she was a kid. And
- 5:22Speaker 3: I didn't understand that when I was a kid, But
- 5:24Speaker 3: now that I have my own children, I get. I
- 5:28Speaker 3: couldn't imagine my daughter, who's nineteen, having a baby now
- 5:31Speaker 3: because she's not responsible at all. So I can only
- 5:34Speaker 3: imagine what Valerie was like. That's my mother, Valerie. So
- 5:37Speaker 3: my grandmother stepped up, you know, and a lot of
- 5:41Speaker 3: black grandmother's back then, not only just black. I'm weller,
- 5:45Speaker 3: that is how you say it in Spanish.
- 5:47Speaker 2: Well I have no idea.
- 5:49Speaker 1: Oh well, you look like I'm so well.
- 5:53Speaker 3: Anyway, a lot of grandmothers had to step up to
- 5:55Speaker 3: help raise the grandkids because the moms were young, or
- 5:58Speaker 3: they were working, they were trying to better themselves, to
- 6:01Speaker 3: make a better life. So my grandmother stepped up and
- 6:03Speaker 3: it was but I was the first grand baby. I
- 6:05Speaker 3: was the most spoiled, and I was the most loved.
- 6:08Speaker 3: I hope my other my other siblings don't hear that.
- 6:11Speaker 2: I guarantee you and you'll get that random phone call.
- 6:16Speaker 2: So this was the signature edition Grandma's house.
- 6:19Speaker 3: This was the poor man's meal when money was tight
- 6:22Speaker 3: and we knew money was this how we But she
- 6:23Speaker 3: would always like fry a big thing of chicken wings.
- 6:26Speaker 1: Chicken wings was dirt cheap back then. Good guy, you.
- 6:28Speaker 3: Could get a whole bag of chicken wings and feed
- 6:30Speaker 3: the family of twelve for fat dollars.
- 6:32Speaker 1: Fat dollars, my bag. You want chicken wing needs to
- 6:33Speaker 1: go around? Good God.
- 6:35Speaker 2: Yesterday's prices, Yeah, yesterday's prices. So you grew up with
- 6:40Speaker 2: your grandmother. How did you get into comedy? How did
- 6:43Speaker 2: you get into the entertainment?
- 6:44Speaker 1: Like?
- 6:44Speaker 2: What was that first step?
- 6:46Speaker 1: Well? I never I could not sing, I couldn't dance.
- 6:48Speaker 3: Well, what a lot of people don't know about me
- 6:50Speaker 3: is that when I graduated high school, I graduated CVS
- 6:53Speaker 3: High School in Chicago.
- 6:54Speaker 1: I had a four year music scholarship to the Cookman.
- 6:56Speaker 1: I played the obo.
- 6:57Speaker 3: I was in All City Orchestra and man, I almost
- 7:00Speaker 3: set first chair to us at second chair.
- 7:03Speaker 1: What instrument the obo?
- 7:05Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is.
- 7:06Speaker 1: It's a double ree instrument. I was.
- 7:08Speaker 3: I was masterful at it. My teacher, mister Harold Anthony Bradman,
- 7:11Speaker 3: he rest in peace, just was a teacher that was
- 7:15Speaker 3: diligent and the things that he got away with as
- 7:18Speaker 3: a teacher back then he would be under the jail
- 7:20Speaker 3: with now. But it instilled such a drive in us,
- 7:25Speaker 3: and we wanted to make him plou proud. We wanted
- 7:28Speaker 3: to please him because we could see the smile of
- 7:31Speaker 3: pride on his face when we did a great job.
- 7:33Speaker 3: I don't I think that's what's missing with teaching now.
- 7:35Speaker 3: The teachers, a lot of teachers, not all, because it's
- 7:37Speaker 3: still some great teachers out here, don't want the children
- 7:40Speaker 3: to show pride. You show the pride the kid makes
- 7:43Speaker 3: you proud. It makes the kid a better kid. To
- 7:45Speaker 3: me life, it's too soft to now everybody get a ward.
- 7:48Speaker 3: Oh everybody didn't get a war. When I was a kid.
- 7:50Speaker 3: If you didn't do well, you got okay, we'll see
- 7:53Speaker 3: you next time. It made you thrive to do better
- 7:56Speaker 3: and be better to all these kids and everybody. Get
- 7:58Speaker 3: a ward.
- 7:59Speaker 1: Little Johnny, it's not deserve board. He was too slow.
- 8:03Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, that's low heat.
- 8:05Speaker 1: I got it on low heat. Let me.
- 8:06Speaker 3: I ain't got my real glasses on the girl. I
- 8:09Speaker 3: can't even see you right now.
- 8:10Speaker 1: You know, when you get old like hair.
- 8:13Speaker 2: I'll put it on four. Yeah, there you're good.
- 8:16Speaker 1: I was gonna see you don't even want you don't
- 8:17Speaker 1: even cook? Girl. What's the name of this show? Oh?
- 8:20Speaker 2: Cook? I thought sleep on me?
- 8:24Speaker 1: Guys.
- 8:24Speaker 3: So what you do is you saw you get to
- 8:25Speaker 3: bake it heated up, and then you start start tearing
- 8:27Speaker 3: the onions and bell pepper and celery with it as
- 8:30Speaker 3: it heats up, because then you get all the flavors going.
- 8:32Speaker 3: And then you season the veggies and the meat while
- 8:34Speaker 3: they're in there, and you add the corn and the
- 8:37Speaker 3: the tomatoes and the celery, I mean the okra last,
- 8:41Speaker 3: because the okra takes no time. It's just pretty much steamed.
- 8:44Speaker 2: Now, is there a reason why you went my frozen
- 8:46Speaker 2: corn and frozen okra?
- 8:48Speaker 3: Because it's quick and I got three kids not being
- 8:50Speaker 3: a hurry. But when you got time, you got time
- 8:53Speaker 3: to shut the corn and roll with tomato. Get cut
- 8:56Speaker 3: into dice the tomatoes up.
- 8:57Speaker 1: I ain't got time for that girl. Three kids, you know,
- 8:59Speaker 1: two of the same age and they're not twins.
- 9:01Speaker 2: How oh, never mind, just.
- 9:10Speaker 1: You forget already.
- 9:13Speaker 2: I got olds at the same time, two different.
- 9:17Speaker 1: And both my baby mama's named Tasha.
- 9:19Speaker 2: I know someone that their baby mama's one named the
- 9:22Speaker 2: kid Aja and the other one named the kid a.
- 9:27Speaker 1: And I was like, two different baby mamas.
- 9:29Speaker 2: Yes, I said, they must have been beefing, but your
- 9:31Speaker 2: baby mama's got along well it well, probably not.
- 9:36Speaker 1: Know each other like that.
- 9:37Speaker 3: But both of their names was Tasha, but their names
- 9:39Speaker 3: weren't Tasha when I met them.
- 9:41Speaker 1: See, both my baby mamas are very masculine.
- 9:43Speaker 3: Stood girls like so that you know, we all come
- 9:46Speaker 3: up with our own name.
- 9:46Speaker 1: I'm flaying that ain't my legal name.
- 9:48Speaker 3: So I didn't know they was Tasha's until after the
- 9:53Speaker 3: deed had been done.
- 9:55Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, So you and all your baby mamas get
- 9:59Speaker 2: along with.
- 10:00Speaker 3: My son's mom who my first born, my son, Jamaicas,
- 10:03Speaker 3: His mom passed last year from diabetes. But my other
- 10:07Speaker 3: my daughter's mom two daughters. Yeah we cool, We okay,
- 10:11Speaker 3: that's the truth. Okay, we're okay, And I can say
- 10:14Speaker 3: that now because there was a time I couldn't say that.
- 10:17Speaker 3: There was a time we were feuding and bitter because
- 10:20Speaker 3: I got full custyer other kids the entire time. But
- 10:23Speaker 3: that's not what we were feuding about.
- 10:25Speaker 2: Okay, were you a young mom?
- 10:27Speaker 1: I mean I was thirty seven when I had my
- 10:30Speaker 1: first baby.
- 10:31Speaker 2: Oh okay, you like me?
- 10:33Speaker 3: I was, you know, because I watched my mother, my aunties,
- 10:38Speaker 3: who all had children young, lose their lives. Not lose
- 10:42Speaker 3: like they died, but they were never able to live
- 10:45Speaker 3: and thrive. So I knew I wanted a family of
- 10:48Speaker 3: my own, but I wanted to be flaming roofus as
- 10:51Speaker 3: long as I could before I did that.
- 10:53Speaker 1: So I was so. You know, a lot of people
- 10:55Speaker 1: go when they get older.
- 10:56Speaker 3: They say, oh, I'm reliving my childhood. There's no need
- 10:58Speaker 3: for me to relive my childhood.
- 10:59Speaker 1: I did.
- 11:00Speaker 3: I was playing my whole twenties. I didn't have a
- 11:02Speaker 3: baby to thirty seven, so I was allowed to be met.
- 11:05Speaker 3: But I am ready to be an empty nester again.
- 11:07Speaker 2: Yeah, oh your kids still live with you?
- 11:09Speaker 1: Hell? Yeah? What? Your pandemic slowed everything? Down, including them.
- 11:15Speaker 2: So your kids grew up Now I'm gonna go a
- 11:19Speaker 2: little deep with it. So your kids grew up in
- 11:21Speaker 2: an environment having a situation that's not traditional I guess
- 11:27Speaker 2: in the world sense when they were going through it,
- 11:30Speaker 2: like cause right now we're in a world where trans
- 11:32Speaker 2: and all all this is like it's actually almost in
- 11:36Speaker 2: everything you turn on. You turn on the TV, commercials, movies, whatever.
- 11:40Speaker 2: But your kids grew up in an era where that
- 11:43Speaker 2: wasn't the norm.
- 11:43Speaker 3: Right, Well, I don't know if it was an era.
- 11:45Speaker 3: You're not only twenty. They just grew up in the
- 11:47Speaker 3: house with me, you know. And will I say that
- 11:51Speaker 3: we grew up together? Probably yes, you know, even though
- 11:55Speaker 3: that I was thirty seven, I never had kids, but
- 11:57Speaker 3: I had a baby brother that I raised, so it
- 12:00Speaker 3: wasn't like I was, you know, new to its just
- 12:02Speaker 3: having my own. And then I thought that me and
- 12:03Speaker 3: my my daughter's mom were going to be married and
- 12:06Speaker 3: be together and be in love. And because I love
- 12:10Speaker 3: that woman with everything in me, but she didn't love
- 12:13Speaker 3: me back. I realized after the fact that I had
- 12:16Speaker 3: two children with somebody who never loved me.
- 12:19Speaker 2: You had two children.
- 12:20Speaker 1: With somebody who never loved me, how do you figure that?
- 12:24Speaker 3: Well, you know, you don't figure it while you're in it,
- 12:26Speaker 3: because love is blind, and you take way more than
- 12:28Speaker 3: you should.
- 12:29Speaker 1: That's anybody.
- 12:30Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 12:31Speaker 3: But when I got out of it and I realized
- 12:33Speaker 3: the things that she could say to me, and I
- 12:36Speaker 3: think that didn't say Dick could say to me what
- 12:39Speaker 3: she did, I realized this person never loved me. You
- 12:42Speaker 3: know a lot of us put love and all this
- 12:44Speaker 3: emphasis on love and oh they love me, and you
- 12:47Speaker 3: take abuse, and it don't always have to be a
- 12:49Speaker 3: physical abuse, it really does. Mental abuse is to me
- 12:53Speaker 3: is way more damaging because you can't the pain don't stop.
- 12:57Speaker 3: You hit me in my arm. That pain gon hurt
- 12:59Speaker 3: now gonna eventually go away, But them words that cut
- 13:02Speaker 3: the scars of your heart don't never go away. That's
- 13:04Speaker 3: why I tell people all the time, I'm not afraid
- 13:06Speaker 3: of a new love. I'm a picturepad of that old
- 13:08Speaker 3: hurt because I loved this woman with everything in me.
- 13:11Speaker 3: But it just didn't work. But I did get cussy
- 13:13Speaker 3: other kids. I was happy, and we had and the
- 13:15Speaker 3: kids still talk to her. They always have talking. I
- 13:18Speaker 3: never stopped them from talking.
- 13:19Speaker 2: To Okay, okay, perfect, So you you're going to school
- 13:24Speaker 2: for music, how do you transition from there?
- 13:30Speaker 3: So let me tell you when I went to so
- 13:32Speaker 3: because I'm from the c Chicago. I'm from Chicago. And
- 13:35Speaker 3: if I was speaking like I got a list, I
- 13:36Speaker 3: got five screws in my mouth right now. So I'm
- 13:38Speaker 3: getting into implants. I'm in the process of process, and
- 13:42Speaker 3: so I'm speaking weird to me. But I was born
- 13:45Speaker 3: and raised on the West Side. I was educated on
- 13:47Speaker 3: the South Side. I came out on the North Side,
- 13:50Speaker 3: but I did my best work on the East Side.
- 13:54Speaker 1: That's me being koy.
- 13:57Speaker 3: I didn't even know I wanted to play music. I
- 14:00Speaker 3: went there was a in the band in CBS High
- 14:03Speaker 3: School band. The years that we were there, I'm not
- 14:04Speaker 3: going to tell you all the years do the manu.
- 14:08Speaker 3: We were the number one band in the country. We
- 14:10Speaker 3: were invited to d C and everywhere to play because
- 14:13Speaker 3: I band director Harold Bray was such a fantastic teacher
- 14:17Speaker 3: and I went into it was called the be Have.
- 14:20Speaker 3: I went in one day. I was really really short
- 14:21Speaker 3: that in high school until I came a junior, I
- 14:23Speaker 3: was only like fort eleven OAU.
- 14:25Speaker 2: Right now, you're what you're like? You got to be
- 14:26Speaker 2: like six. No, no, no, I'm only five, only five eight.
- 14:29Speaker 1: I'm only five.
- 14:30Speaker 3: A look, I just have a big princi I'm sure,
- 14:34Speaker 3: and I wear really high heels on stage because I
- 14:36Speaker 3: want to be really tall. I envy tall people. That's
- 14:38Speaker 3: what I always wanted to be. I always wanted to
- 14:40Speaker 3: be tall. Everybody thinks I'm really tall. I just got
- 14:42Speaker 3: a big ass mouth and a big you know shape. Oh,
- 14:49Speaker 3: let me stick keep starting my food and uh. I
- 14:51Speaker 3: went in and I just joined the band.
- 14:54Speaker 1: And it gave me because I didn't have a dad
- 14:57Speaker 1: at home.
- 14:57Speaker 3: My mom was on drugs for such a long time,
- 14:59Speaker 3: and gave me a family that was my first outside
- 15:03Speaker 3: of my real friend because my uncles and I were
- 15:05Speaker 3: gangsters and my aunties was out doing anything. So it
- 15:08Speaker 3: gave me a sense of family and community. So I
- 15:11Speaker 3: was like, it was God dignos exactly what he's doing.
- 15:14Speaker 3: Whenever you think you're wrong or you're on the wrong
- 15:16Speaker 3: path of things ain't going the way you want him
- 15:18Speaker 3: to go. I promise you he know what he's doing,
- 15:20Speaker 3: and when you get to where he wants you to
- 15:23Speaker 3: get to, he's going to let it all reveal itself
- 15:26Speaker 3: to you. That I did it this way for this reason.
- 15:29Speaker 2: Like you'll have an aha moment, Yeah, like.
- 15:32Speaker 3: Why did I join the band? And then way out
- 15:34Speaker 3: later I'm like, wow, that was a great experience. Then
- 15:37Speaker 3: you know, so it was out he always knows what
- 15:39Speaker 3: he's doing.
- 15:40Speaker 1: I know we questioned it, but so you joined this band.
- 15:43Speaker 3: Joined the band started off with the saxophone. Then I
- 15:47Speaker 3: moved to the clarinet, and then I moved to the flute.
- 15:50Speaker 3: Saxophone was my first joy, I thought, so was the clarinet,
- 15:54Speaker 3: and then the food I was really good at. But
- 15:56Speaker 3: then Harold Brace say, Marcus, that's how it used to
- 15:59Speaker 3: call my name. I want you to try to oboe.
- 16:02Speaker 3: It's because you're a good reader of music. Because I
- 16:04Speaker 3: could read the music really quickly, and I hated to
- 16:07Speaker 3: think it gave.
- 16:07Speaker 2: Me a headache.
- 16:09Speaker 3: I read not only in trouble clip not a base clap,
- 16:13Speaker 3: because you have to roll your lips in to blow,
- 16:16Speaker 3: and it was very hard.
- 16:17Speaker 1: I couldn't roll my lips. I'm like, that hurts.
- 16:19Speaker 3: But when I got it, it was something about the
- 16:22Speaker 3: instrument would just soothe me. So whatever drama was going
- 16:26Speaker 3: on at home, whatever disrespectful names I was being called
- 16:29Speaker 3: or whatever abuse I was going through in my own house.
- 16:32Speaker 3: My instrument brought me peace. So that's why I touched it.
- 16:37Speaker 3: Since I left high school.
- 16:41Speaker 2: I do have whatever disrespectful names you recalled.
- 16:44Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my mother was quite abusive. She was.
- 16:46Speaker 3: My mother was on drugs though, and she my grandmother,
- 16:49Speaker 3: was abusive to her, from what she tells me. And
- 16:51Speaker 3: a lot of times we don't understand that, especially when
- 16:54Speaker 3: it comes to mothers. We don't know what what they
- 16:57Speaker 3: went through growing up. And when you were a kid,
- 16:59Speaker 3: you don't give a damn. You want my mom to
- 17:02Speaker 3: be nice to me. I don't know what your mama
- 17:04Speaker 3: did to you. Yeah, because I'm too young to understand that.
- 17:07Speaker 3: But a lot of times parents need to stop thinking
- 17:09Speaker 3: that these kids don't hear and see everything. Because kids
- 17:12Speaker 3: here and see everything. Talk to them like their little adults.
- 17:17Speaker 3: They are one day they will be adults. They're just
- 17:19Speaker 3: little people. They're not babies. They're little people. Sometimes you
- 17:22Speaker 3: got to give it to it. And I wish my
- 17:24Speaker 3: mother would have told me being why she was so
- 17:26Speaker 3: angry and so hurt and so broken, and then you
- 17:29Speaker 3: take the shit out on me, you know. But a
- 17:31Speaker 3: lot of times we don't know, and we don't understand
- 17:33Speaker 3: that as children until we get older, and some of
- 17:35Speaker 3: us cannot forgive that. Now me and my mother's relationship
- 17:38Speaker 3: has been completely repaired.
- 17:40Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah we did.
- 17:42Speaker 2: We both did the work to prepair it. Or did
- 17:45Speaker 2: you just do a whole lot of forgiving on yourself?
- 17:46Speaker 3: We both did a lot of forgiving on us. I
- 17:49Speaker 3: had to talk to my mother to understand why she
- 17:51Speaker 3: was so angry and so mean all the time. It
- 17:55Speaker 3: wasn't about drugs. It was about either a man or
- 17:57Speaker 3: she what my grandmother put her through, but she broke.
- 18:00Speaker 3: I wasn't a girl, so the cycle. You can't do
- 18:03Speaker 3: to me what she did you. But the name she
- 18:05Speaker 3: called me was some of those names. Those names hurt
- 18:07Speaker 3: to this day.
- 18:09Speaker 2: I have a question, and this is an off off
- 18:11Speaker 2: topic question, but as a parents in questions is someone
- 18:14Speaker 2: new parents, do you agree it's better for a kid
- 18:16Speaker 2: not to see the parents show any emotion or do
- 18:19Speaker 2: you think it's okay for a kid to see parents
- 18:21Speaker 2: go through emotions?
- 18:22Speaker 1: Absolutely, you should show you if.
- 18:24Speaker 2: You should, like if I cry? Should I? Is it
- 18:26Speaker 2: okay to cry in front of a child or is
- 18:28Speaker 2: it not okay? You hide and protect.
- 18:31Speaker 3: I think it makes a child more attenked to you
- 18:34Speaker 3: because when my mother used to cry when I was
- 18:35Speaker 3: a baby or when I was a kid, I would
- 18:37Speaker 3: cry too because my mother was my mother was hurt.
- 18:39Speaker 1: I felt that emotion.
- 18:41Speaker 3: I think that this world that we live in now
- 18:43Speaker 3: is trying to make us touch free and emotionless.
- 18:46Speaker 1: I think you should show your children child emotions. How
- 18:49Speaker 1: is it going to pass on?
- 18:50Speaker 2: Okay? Yeah?
- 18:51Speaker 3: So you know if you if something hurts you, you
- 18:53Speaker 3: cry about it. If something bothers you, you want to
- 18:56Speaker 3: speak up about it now.
- 18:57Speaker 1: So why would not show all of them?
- 18:58Speaker 3: When you're happy, it's a happy emotion, So why would
- 19:01Speaker 3: you show all the emotions?
- 19:02Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Everything is not a dai
- 19:04Speaker 1: of emoji to stay new generation.
- 19:06Speaker 2: But I just thought because with kids, you know, the
- 19:10Speaker 2: assumption is, you know, uh, I guess you just want
- 19:14Speaker 2: to like protect them from.
- 19:18Speaker 1: The world that we live in.
- 19:19Speaker 3: You can't protect your kids from going to the grocery store, church,
- 19:22Speaker 3: or school because you don't know what's going to happen.
- 19:25Speaker 3: What you have to do is be the best you
- 19:27Speaker 3: that you can be. There is no book, There is
- 19:29Speaker 3: no right or wrong way. There is a wrong way
- 19:31Speaker 3: to be a parent, But there is no correct way
- 19:34Speaker 3: to be a parent. You be the parent that you
- 19:36Speaker 3: want that you want. That's the best thing you can do.
- 19:39Speaker 1: Be the parent that you want.
- 19:55Speaker 2: So after music, where does comedy? Is comedy? The next step?
- 19:58Speaker 2: Like where is? I feel like something had to happen
- 20:01Speaker 2: between music?
- 20:02Speaker 1: Like what I had a girl? Drag? I started doing drag.
- 20:06Speaker 3: But you know what made me know that I was
- 20:08Speaker 3: quick with it was when we were in high school
- 20:10Speaker 3: we played the dozens. You know, we used to play
- 20:12Speaker 3: this game called beat Yo Coup Chae, beat Yo.
- 20:16Speaker 1: My name is Flame. I'm having fame, you know, like
- 20:20Speaker 1: that I got good games, okay yo, Mama is lame. Okay, okay.
- 20:25Speaker 1: So when we were on the.
- 20:26Speaker 3: Bad buses, because we used to do the games and
- 20:28Speaker 3: we were all together, it was just great fun.
- 20:31Speaker 1: And looking back on that, I'm like a lot of
- 20:33Speaker 1: these kids because.
- 20:34Speaker 3: They they on their phone, they don't even look at
- 20:38Speaker 3: each other, and I'm like, they don't never understand what
- 20:41Speaker 3: that was like. And I'm glad I have those memories.
- 20:43Speaker 3: I hope I never lose my memory. I can lose
- 20:44Speaker 3: my dad mad, but I want to lose my memory.
- 20:47Speaker 2: So in those interactions you started to I.
- 20:51Speaker 3: Real fell out because I had to fight girl. You know,
- 20:54Speaker 3: if you did too bad, they will fight you. So
- 20:55Speaker 3: I used to get beat up.
- 20:56Speaker 1: A couple of times.
- 20:58Speaker 2: At the point.
- 20:58Speaker 1: You're some boy was a gay boy.
- 21:02Speaker 3: I was the openly gay boy. And I was always sissy.
- 21:04Speaker 3: I was always assistant. That's not everybody would that's sissy Marcus.
- 21:08Speaker 3: But I was always me because my grandmother in stead
- 21:11Speaker 3: just be happy, just be just be happy. She knew
- 21:15Speaker 3: I jumped double dutch. I was the best jumping up
- 21:17Speaker 3: double dutch rope jumper and everything. But and I got
- 21:20Speaker 3: into a lot of fights. But it was a different
- 21:21Speaker 3: type of bully, and it toughened me up. And also
- 21:25Speaker 3: nobody died. You know, we didn't have the internet to say, oh,
- 21:28Speaker 3: a hundred people say you you funny looking, and a
- 21:31Speaker 3: hundred people agree with it. First of all, I don't
- 21:32Speaker 3: know the person who said it, and damn show don't
- 21:34Speaker 3: know the other hundred that agreed with it. So it's
- 21:37Speaker 3: just it was a different time, and I don't know,
- 21:41Speaker 3: it made me strong. And then when I got out
- 21:44Speaker 3: of high school, because it took me five years to
- 21:46Speaker 3: get ou of high school, did you catch that. Yeah,
- 21:50Speaker 3: that's because I wouldn't go. I wasn't going. My mother
- 21:52Speaker 3: was going. I moved out and everything, and so I
- 21:55Speaker 3: was doing my own thing.
- 21:56Speaker 1: I thought I was.
- 21:56Speaker 3: Grown for real, but I wanted my high schoo It
- 22:00Speaker 3: was the Plumber because my band teacher told me to
- 22:02Speaker 3: come back. He begged me to come back to school. Okay,
- 22:05Speaker 3: that's why I said that. Man was great to me.
- 22:07Speaker 3: And then I started doing drag shows. We were We
- 22:09Speaker 3: graduated high school and I took a year to go
- 22:13Speaker 3: to a little like a little local college. It was
- 22:15Speaker 3: some kind of word processing thing. I was good at typing,
- 22:18Speaker 3: but I didn't want to do that. I discovered the
- 22:20Speaker 3: night life and we started going to the gay bars.
- 22:22Speaker 3: And I went to this club called the Baton Show
- 22:23Speaker 3: Lounge in Chicago. The Baton is still around too. It's
- 22:26Speaker 3: a female impersonation club and girl, I saw these men
- 22:30Speaker 3: dressed up as women, and I was fascinated.
- 22:32Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. I was like, I never do that.
- 22:35Speaker 2: You said you wouldn't do that.
- 22:36Speaker 3: I said I would never do that. Halloween came. I
- 22:42Speaker 3: didn't want to be a clown. I didn't want to
- 22:44Speaker 3: be a fire Trucker. I wanted to be a girl
- 22:46Speaker 3: good goud, I said, I was gonna do it one time.
- 22:48Speaker 3: Here we are thirty some years later, cities and Jesus,
- 22:53Speaker 3: that's why I tell people all the time, you never
- 22:55Speaker 3: know what your life, where life is going to take you,
- 22:56Speaker 3: So don't make decisions that are that you can't take.
- 23:00Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so he started with the drag and then
- 23:03Speaker 2: so how long are you doing the drag for it?
- 23:05Speaker 2: So when you say doing drag, like that's not.
- 23:07Speaker 1: A career, right, Oh my god, that was a career.
- 23:10Speaker 2: So you would make money doing I was.
- 23:12Speaker 3: I did the drag shows in Chicago. So and then
- 23:14Speaker 3: let me tell you, I never wanted to be on
- 23:16Speaker 3: the microphone.
- 23:17Speaker 1: We would.
- 23:17Speaker 3: I was just one of the one of the one
- 23:20Speaker 3: of the girls, one of the players. They always had
- 23:22Speaker 3: to host. My sister Tasha Thomas, May she rest in peace.
- 23:24Speaker 3: Ages took a lot of my friends in the agies.
- 23:26Speaker 3: Took a lot of my friends.
- 23:29Speaker 1: And she was like.
- 23:32Speaker 3: When I first did drag, the very first time, it
- 23:34Speaker 3: was at the Baton, But then I went to the
- 23:36Speaker 3: black club, it was called Club Laray, the greatest club ever,
- 23:39Speaker 3: and I did a Teina Marie song you make love
- 23:41Speaker 3: like springtime.
- 23:42Speaker 1: Remind you. I did the Black Song at the White
- 23:44Speaker 1: Club and the White song at the Black Club. This
- 23:46Speaker 1: is this is me wow.
- 23:48Speaker 3: So uh, she said, what did you do, baby, I
- 23:50Speaker 3: said the attend She looked at me, she said, yeah, baby,
- 23:52Speaker 3: drag ain't for everybody.
- 23:54Speaker 1: Oh girl, my heart was broken. I was so hurt
- 23:59Speaker 1: behind that.
- 24:00Speaker 3: But I wasn't hurt to a point because Harold Bray,
- 24:03Speaker 3: the teacher, had made me tough. I wasn't hurt to
- 24:07Speaker 3: a point where I'm gonna go home and I ain't
- 24:09Speaker 3: gonna never do drag again. I'm gonna stick my head
- 24:11Speaker 3: into saying I was at the point of, oh, but
- 24:13Speaker 3: you don't tell me what I can't do. I'm gonna
- 24:16Speaker 3: show you. Yeah I did, and I got better and better.
- 24:19Speaker 3: And so then she got into a fight with another
- 24:22Speaker 3: young lady at the club. Okay, and the frank corner
- 24:24Speaker 3: my business.
- 24:25Speaker 2: For anyone that doesn't know, And I'm gonna say anyone
- 24:27Speaker 2: because me, I'm gonna say for me when you say
- 24:29Speaker 2: drag queen, because I kind of know and I kind
- 24:32Speaker 2: of don't. So I've been to a club and I've
- 24:34Speaker 2: seen drag queens at like Hamburger Marie in La. Yeah, okay,
- 24:38Speaker 2: and they performed. So when you say you did drag,
- 24:40Speaker 2: that's what you were doing. Your performing, you're on stage. Okay,
- 24:42Speaker 2: I got it.
- 24:43Speaker 3: But we had a different breed of drag. I was
- 24:45Speaker 3: to me was very different. This is a very different
- 24:48Speaker 3: era of drag. But so we were at a club
- 24:50Speaker 3: called the Clubhouse. Tatter got into a fight with another
- 24:53Speaker 3: young lady named Casey. Makes you rest in peace? I
- 24:55Speaker 3: told the agent through out of my friend. And so
- 24:57Speaker 3: a guy named Mark, the manager, Tino guy, came in
- 25:00Speaker 3: a judgement. He said, Tash, she got suspended night. We
- 25:03Speaker 3: need a host. So we all live in the mirror puting.
- 25:05Speaker 1: Now make up on it.
- 25:06Speaker 3: I ain't paid no attention because that was never something
- 25:07Speaker 3: I was going to do. He says, flame you do it?
- 25:10Speaker 3: I said, oh, absolutely not. He said, well, I said,
- 25:12Speaker 3: I'm horrible on them, like, I don't want to talk
- 25:14Speaker 3: to these people.
- 25:14Speaker 1: I don't know them.
- 25:16Speaker 3: They want to see me be a girl. They don't
- 25:17Speaker 3: want to hear me talking nothing. So I went out there.
- 25:19Speaker 3: I did he put He forced me, I give you
- 25:21Speaker 3: an extra fifty bucks. I said, oh okay. I went
- 25:24Speaker 3: and I was terrible. Oh, no, I was terrible. So
- 25:27Speaker 3: he said, come back next week and do it again.
- 25:29Speaker 3: I said, I don't want to. I don't want to
- 25:31Speaker 3: do this. He said, do it again. I did it again.
- 25:34Speaker 3: I was worse the second week than I was the
- 25:36Speaker 3: first week, almost to the point where the audience was
- 25:39Speaker 3: going to move me because it was a gay audience.
- 25:40Speaker 3: They played no games. Then he said one more time.
- 25:43Speaker 3: I said, why do you keep making me do this?
- 25:45Speaker 3: Which which is a testament to sometimes people see something
- 25:48Speaker 3: in you that you don't see in yourself. I went
- 25:51Speaker 3: out the third week and somebody heckled me from the
- 25:53Speaker 3: audience and said something really horrible.
- 25:55Speaker 1: I don't even remember, but whatever my comeback was. The
- 25:58Speaker 1: room erupted.
- 25:59Speaker 3: I said, oh, yes, that's what you're supposed to do.
- 26:03Speaker 3: Ever since then, I was so I was born.
- 26:05Speaker 1: Now, mind you.
- 26:05Speaker 3: I hosted the drag shows for seventeen years successfully in Chicago.
- 26:10Speaker 3: I would have five or six hundred people come out
- 26:12Speaker 3: on a Monday Thursday night in the middle of a
- 26:13Speaker 3: blizzard fifty degrees below zero to see flame moro.
- 26:17Speaker 2: Okay, and you're at this point just hosting. You're not
- 26:19Speaker 2: doing stand up.
- 26:20Speaker 3: No, I hadn't done stand up yet, so we went
- 26:22Speaker 3: to all jokes aside. One night, me and a couple
- 26:25Speaker 3: of friends of my comedy club just you know, just
- 26:29Speaker 3: we want to go to the comedy club. I think
- 26:30Speaker 3: it was like an open mic night or something, and
- 26:32Speaker 3: Damion Williams was the host. So I was never a
- 26:35Speaker 3: passable transforman, like you knew, you know, I mean, the
- 26:39Speaker 3: body was banging, but you knew. The face was like, uh,
- 26:42Speaker 3: that ain't no girl. And I'm not offended by that
- 26:45Speaker 3: because I'm very comfortable with who I am and who
- 26:48Speaker 3: I was. And so he started with me from the
- 26:51Speaker 3: from the stage. He didn't know he had met mother Goose,
- 26:54Speaker 3: so I told that ass up. So he invited me
- 26:57Speaker 3: to come up on stage and we went back and forth.
- 26:59Speaker 3: And at the time, I was on house arrests and
- 27:01Speaker 3: I had on pants and I had on a teddy
- 27:03Speaker 3: because teddies were popular at the time, and sure you
- 27:05Speaker 3: have the way back that was. And he said, I said,
- 27:08Speaker 3: don't play with me. Play are you know I'm only
- 27:10Speaker 3: out on loan, I'm on house arrests. I pulled my pants,
- 27:12Speaker 3: laid up and show my house arrests ain't cle And
- 27:13Speaker 3: the whole club went crazy.
- 27:15Speaker 2: Why were you on house arrests.
- 27:16Speaker 1: Okay, we're gonna get to that. So that's what That's
- 27:19Speaker 1: what I knew. I'm like, oh yeah, this is what
- 27:20Speaker 1: I'm supposed to do.
- 27:21Speaker 3: So I was on house arrest because I went to
- 27:23Speaker 3: I went to prison for the scept of practice in
- 27:26Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one.
- 27:28Speaker 2: What does that mean? What is practice?
- 27:30Speaker 3: Girl openeding fictitious bank accounts underfect names and you know,
- 27:35Speaker 3: like stealing bank robin, I'm funny in Clyde together, I'm.
- 27:39Speaker 1: Buddy in Clyde together.
- 27:41Speaker 2: Okay.
- 27:41Speaker 3: And I was sentenced to three and a half years.
- 27:44Speaker 3: My first defense, I had never got caught. That ain't
- 27:46Speaker 3: mean I had never done a crime. I had never
- 27:48Speaker 3: got caught.
- 27:49Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, so you was gangster.
- 27:51Speaker 1: I told you.
- 27:52Speaker 3: I was raised by all Gates's grandmama and every but
- 27:54Speaker 3: the judge that sendence me her name. I want you
- 27:56Speaker 3: to remember this name in Google. Her name was just
- 27:58Speaker 3: Joan core Boy. She I had a great lawyer, Jeffrey.
- 28:06Speaker 3: Jeffrey's last name. I can't think that number man somewhere else.
- 28:10Speaker 3: I was about to say Epstein, that's name is damn sure,
- 28:12Speaker 3: ain't no Jeffrey, no no. But he was a Jewish guy,
- 28:16Speaker 3: very very nice. He charged me a gang of money.
- 28:19Speaker 3: All the money I saw out there, I gave it
- 28:20Speaker 3: to him to get me out of jail. But he
- 28:22Speaker 3: told me that she had been data that she had
- 28:24Speaker 3: a ninety seven percent conviction rate for black and brown
- 28:27Speaker 3: me and this was ninety one. So I'm like, he's like,
- 28:30Speaker 3: she's going to send this you to prison just to
- 28:32Speaker 3: put the eggs on you. I'm like, okay, he said,
- 28:34Speaker 3: I'm gonna get your at least typing possible. Now, mind you,
- 28:37Speaker 3: I'm twenty one years old, maybe brand new breast and
- 28:40Speaker 3: plants I got in Tijuana, Mexico for sixteen hundred dollars.
- 28:43Speaker 3: I've been taking hormones for a couple of years. I
- 28:45Speaker 3: was I had got silicon in my hips, I was shaped,
- 28:48Speaker 3: I had long red head to my shoulders, my own
- 28:50Speaker 3: haird They didn't make you cut your hair anything. They
- 28:52Speaker 3: put me and if she sentenced me to a me
- 28:54Speaker 3: and spenitentiary for three and a half years.
- 28:57Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
- 28:58Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 28:58Speaker 3: There was no trends in jail at the time. There
- 29:00Speaker 3: was nothing like me. I was a complete anominal.
- 29:03Speaker 2: That's very dangerous, right, if.
- 29:06Speaker 1: You didn't have my mindset in my mouthpiece.
- 29:08Speaker 3: Thank god that I was raised by the people that
- 29:10Speaker 3: I was raised, because the intimidation didn't work with me.
- 29:13Speaker 3: So the thing to do was to lock me up
- 29:17Speaker 3: in the hospital because that's what they could say, they
- 29:19Speaker 3: could keep me safe.
- 29:21Speaker 1: I didn't want to be in a hospital. Wasn't nothing
- 29:22Speaker 1: wrong with me.
- 29:23Speaker 3: I wanted to be out with everybody else because at
- 29:25Speaker 3: that time it was a different time with prison.
- 29:27Speaker 2: So so you preferred to go to regular per.
- 29:31Speaker 1: Oh, yeah I was. I was. I didn't want to
- 29:33Speaker 1: go to jail at all. Yeah.
- 29:36Speaker 3: I didn't want to be locked up. I didn't want
- 29:37Speaker 3: to be confined. I didn't want to be put in segregation.
- 29:40Speaker 3: I hadn't done anything wrong. So they tried to do
- 29:44Speaker 3: that because I was trains and there was no place
- 29:46Speaker 3: for your Now you send me to prison, now, girl,
- 29:48Speaker 3: they got a whole wing of training. I got trains
- 29:51Speaker 3: every they got a whole trans prison, I think. And
- 29:54Speaker 3: but I incited three riots in thirty days and didn't
- 29:58Speaker 3: even know that. I'd say it right because I had
- 30:00Speaker 3: to wear the state issued T shirts, and the T
- 30:02Speaker 3: shirts were paper thieves, so you could see my area,
- 30:04Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, and my friend used to sew up
- 30:06Speaker 3: my jogging pants for me to make him fit like
- 30:08Speaker 3: stretch pants.
- 30:08Speaker 1: This was ninety one.
- 30:09Speaker 3: Wasn't those stretch pants he was sewing up. I got
- 30:11Speaker 3: with four a pack of cigarettes. So I was in
- 30:13Speaker 3: there just causing a ruckus. Mind you, I had a
- 30:17Speaker 3: full bread and it didn't matter. It did not matter.
- 30:19Speaker 3: So the warden at that time came and found me.
- 30:22Speaker 3: He says, are you Parker b whatever my institution name was.
- 30:25Speaker 3: I said I am. This was forty six days in.
- 30:27Speaker 3: He says, bait you coming up out of my prison.
- 30:29Speaker 3: You got these inward uneasy? That's exactly what he said
- 30:33Speaker 3: to me.
- 30:33Speaker 1: Wow.
- 30:34Speaker 3: Two days later I was in my own house. I
- 30:36Speaker 3: served eleven and a half months on house arrests in
- 30:39Speaker 3: my own house.
- 30:39Speaker 2: That's crazy.
- 30:41Speaker 3: Look at Godo, no catch this story. Let me finish
- 30:44Speaker 3: the story. We ain't get back back to the judge. Meanwhile,
- 30:48Speaker 3: about a year later, the judge was on vacation with
- 30:50Speaker 3: her family in Boca Raton, Florida. True story, Google it,
- 30:54Speaker 3: and she was killed in a freak accident. You know
- 30:57Speaker 3: how you have to push the clicker and the electrical
- 31:00Speaker 3: gate closes. The electual gate when you know when you
- 31:03Speaker 3: the sensor. When it hits ther sensor, it is supposed
- 31:05Speaker 3: to stop. There was no censor. It never stopped. The
- 31:08Speaker 3: gate crushed and killed her family, suit and got twenty
- 31:10Speaker 3: million dollars. Oh no, did I fail to mention that
- 31:13Speaker 3: I got an A on my online electricians class while
- 31:15Speaker 3: I was on house to rest. That's a joke. I'd
- 31:18Speaker 3: never been in the vocal Town, Florida. But the story
- 31:21Speaker 3: is true.
- 31:22Speaker 1: Google it.
- 31:22Speaker 2: Okay, okay, So how do you go from Chicago seventeen
- 31:26Speaker 2: years to where you're at today? I'm trying to catch.
- 31:30Speaker 1: Up, catch up today.
- 31:32Speaker 3: So I met Tasha for first Tasha my son's mom,
- 31:38Speaker 3: and we was just kicking the bobos and we ended
- 31:39Speaker 3: up getting pregnant.
- 31:40Speaker 1: So I wanted her. She had already had a son
- 31:42Speaker 1: and maybe two years older.
- 31:43Speaker 2: This is the one you love, right.
- 31:45Speaker 1: No, this was the boy I was just kicking the
- 31:46Speaker 1: bobos with the first Tash. Tasha too was the one
- 31:48Speaker 1: I love.
- 31:49Speaker 3: And she said and what I respected about her, may
- 31:52Speaker 3: she rest in peace. May you rest in peace? Tasha
- 31:55Speaker 3: was She was like, I don't want another baby, fling,
- 31:57Speaker 3: I said, just have my baby. I'd never actually for anything,
- 32:00Speaker 3: I never had to go to court. We never had
- 32:02Speaker 3: to set no papers. It was I took him home
- 32:05Speaker 3: from the hospital. If she wanted to see him, she could,
- 32:08Speaker 3: but it was my baby and he stealed my baby.
- 32:10Speaker 1: My baby got full rat to TSU. Last year.
- 32:13Speaker 3: He only did one semester Tennessee State Universey made the
- 32:16Speaker 3: Ding's list that he hated it.
- 32:18Speaker 2: So you asked her for the baby, and then she
- 32:20Speaker 2: did it.
- 32:21Speaker 3: And never gave me no grief over the years. Now,
- 32:24Speaker 3: the other one who I loved, we went back and forth.
- 32:27Speaker 3: I had to go to court eleven times here in
- 32:28Speaker 3: Long Beach just to get custy with my kids.
- 32:30Speaker 1: Eleven times.
- 32:31Speaker 3: I didn't go in drag, I didn't go dressed up,
- 32:34Speaker 3: I didn't go over the top. But the judge, because
- 32:37Speaker 3: I was my presentation is transgender, made me come to
- 32:40Speaker 3: court eleven times just from my own biological children. Wow,
- 32:44Speaker 3: Illinois told me no. Illinois just said absolutely not. That's
- 32:47Speaker 3: why that was the reason we moved from Illinois to California.
- 32:52Speaker 1: Everybody said you was chasing your dream.
- 32:54Speaker 3: I was chasing that too, But I wanted custody of
- 32:57Speaker 3: my children and I didn't even need no colleges. And
- 33:00Speaker 3: why I'm living in life. I'm living who I am.
- 33:03Speaker 3: This is who I was when they were conceived. Why
- 33:04Speaker 3: would anything change? Yes, please, why would anything change? So
- 33:09Speaker 3: that's where we're at.
- 33:10Speaker 2: Okay, so now you're in LA you have your children.
- 33:15Speaker 2: How does flame and Roll turn? You know, to flame
- 33:20Speaker 2: and roll?
- 33:21Speaker 1: So I was working at Hamburger, Mary's and Long Beach
- 33:24Speaker 1: for a long time.
- 33:25Speaker 2: Really, Oh yeah, I wonder if you went to you
- 33:28Speaker 2: were there when I went You were in Hollywood, right, yeah,
- 33:31Speaker 2: the Hollywood.
- 33:32Speaker 3: Yeah, I never really went there. I used to work
- 33:34Speaker 3: at the one in Loan Beach. But they were very
- 33:36Speaker 3: racist behind the scenes. Let me just say that publicly,
- 33:39Speaker 3: because racism does exist within the game community. You know,
- 33:43Speaker 3: you love to say we're not racist.
- 33:45Speaker 4: Bush yeahs added so just corn okras, celery, onions, tomato.
- 33:56Speaker 2: And some lawries.
- 33:59Speaker 1: I had some accent. I put that to that.
- 34:01Speaker 3: And that's with MSG now without okay, without that's like
- 34:05Speaker 3: having sex with no kindom good god. Uh So yeah,
- 34:09Speaker 3: And so I worked there and then I did botched
- 34:13Speaker 3: in maybe twenty sixteen, and they fixed my left boot
- 34:18Speaker 3: because my left booth had encapsulated. It was kind of
- 34:20Speaker 3: Gangmang and leaning to the left. It was thank and
- 34:23Speaker 3: I didn't know. I was never in any paint or anything.
- 34:25Speaker 3: And because when I worked at hammerger Mary's, I tell you,
- 34:27Speaker 3: God put you where he needs you to be. I
- 34:29Speaker 3: was miserable there. I made tons of money. I was
- 34:31Speaker 3: the biggest girl there as far as would make all
- 34:34Speaker 3: the money. But I was miserable because they were just
- 34:36Speaker 3: they were just it just wasn't for me.
- 34:38Speaker 1: Okay and uh.
- 34:39Speaker 3: We were taking pictures and the guy was like, have
- 34:41Speaker 3: you been on I thought about going on boys? I'm
- 34:44Speaker 3: like for what He was like, Oh no, we'll fix
- 34:46Speaker 3: your nose or if you got breathe with just because
- 34:49Speaker 3: your story is so interesting, because he knew I had
- 34:51Speaker 3: kids and everything, and I was like no, And you
- 34:52Speaker 3: know everybody in Hollywood will tell you.
- 34:54Speaker 1: I'm a producer. I'm yeah.
- 34:56Speaker 3: He said, I said, I'll give you my email address,
- 34:57Speaker 3: and so I gave him my email address and longer hold.
- 34:59Speaker 3: Two weeks they reached out to me and I went
- 35:02Speaker 3: to see doctor de Bry and I told him I
- 35:03Speaker 3: wanted to make my breast and plant smaller. And when
- 35:05Speaker 3: they did the X ray, he showed me that my
- 35:07Speaker 3: left breast was completely busted. When you watched the episode
- 35:10Speaker 3: on YouTube. You'll see it.
- 35:11Speaker 1: I didn't even know that because I wasn't in no pain.
- 35:13Speaker 2: I was.
- 35:14Speaker 1: I was. I was slipping off the stage and everything.
- 35:17Speaker 1: And he was the nicest man.
- 35:18Speaker 3: Oh, he was the nicest, nicest doctor Deboro and that's
- 35:22Speaker 3: it was nice too, But the bro just was the
- 35:24Speaker 3: sweet got very expensive surgery.
- 35:25Speaker 1: They gave me great boobs.
- 35:26Speaker 2: Too, and they gave it to you. They didn't comp it.
- 35:29Speaker 3: Yeah, it was for free because you know my story.
- 35:32Speaker 3: But I had to be on TV boom My wig
- 35:34Speaker 3: off and with my fat belly at that time, I
- 35:36Speaker 3: was a little thicker. And when idea the reveal at
- 35:38Speaker 3: Hamburger Mary's, Tiffany had it, who had just taped Girls Trip.
- 35:41Speaker 3: We were already friends. We were already cool and not
- 35:45Speaker 3: like close close friends, but we worked on the circuit
- 35:47Speaker 3: together and we were always very personal with each other.
- 35:50Speaker 3: She she came and introduced me. She had taped Girl Trip,
- 35:54Speaker 3: Girls Trip, but it hadn't dropped yet, so she hadn't
- 35:56Speaker 3: become the superstar that she become. So I told him,
- 35:59Speaker 3: I asked her when she introduced me. She said, yeah,
- 36:01Speaker 3: she came out to the club. She introduced me and
- 36:04Speaker 3: woo wooh, And I told the producer, I said, you
- 36:06Speaker 3: need to watch this girl. This girlgle we magnificent. Tiffany
- 36:09Speaker 3: came behind the scenes after the fact that she saw
- 36:12Speaker 3: me talking with him, and she says, when I make it,
- 36:14Speaker 3: I'm going to come back and get you. She did,
- 36:17Speaker 3: she did, and she did, and when she got an
- 36:20Speaker 3: opportunity to do Stay Ready, she called me. And there
- 36:24Speaker 3: were forces on that show that did not want me
- 36:26Speaker 3: on that show, that did not want no parts of
- 36:28Speaker 3: me on that show, and Tiffany was like, Nope, this
- 36:31Speaker 3: is who I want.
- 36:32Speaker 1: This is who's gonna be on the show.
- 36:34Speaker 3: They didn't want me so bad that they didn't want
- 36:36Speaker 3: to submit my episode, and my episode was the only
- 36:39Speaker 3: one submitted and got nominated for Emmy.
- 36:42Speaker 1: Wow.
- 36:45Speaker 3: Tiffany had his present Stay Ready. And I'm not saying
- 36:48Speaker 3: that like I'm gloating. I'm saying that because I had
- 36:51Speaker 3: to prove somebody wrong. I know what works for me.
- 36:54Speaker 3: I'm very comfortable with flame Moro, and I know what
- 36:58Speaker 3: my weaknesses and my strengths are.
- 37:00Speaker 2: So where did comedy come into play?
- 37:05Speaker 3: I don't know. And y'all gonna be mad at me
- 37:07Speaker 3: about this. Comedy is not my first live. Stand up
- 37:10Speaker 3: is not my first live as I'm an MC. And
- 37:14Speaker 3: the reason I say that people say, well, isn't it
- 37:15Speaker 3: the same thing? Absolutely not. A lot of comedians can't host,
- 37:18Speaker 3: and a lot of hosts can't do stand up. Luckily
- 37:21Speaker 3: I can do both. But I love to host because
- 37:24Speaker 3: what that allows.
- 37:25Speaker 1: Me to do is excuse me. Is whatever curtain or
- 37:31Speaker 1: fear or shield you have in.
- 37:33Speaker 3: Front of you, after sitting with me, listening to me
- 37:37Speaker 3: self defecate, laugh, make jokes about what's happening in the
- 37:40Speaker 3: world from a human aspect twenty minutes here, you're going
- 37:44Speaker 3: to be so familiar with me. You're gonna be like
- 37:46Speaker 3: I forgot the flame was trans slame. Is my uncle
- 37:48Speaker 3: or my auntie or this is?
- 37:50Speaker 1: That is my gift. My gift is to bring people together,
- 37:54Speaker 1: not to separate us.
- 37:55Speaker 2: Yeah, because I could see that the first time we met.
- 37:58Speaker 2: Was I want to say, was it like eight months ago?
- 38:00Speaker 2: We may have been nine months ago. We were at
- 38:01Speaker 2: the iHeart some iHeart things for the Black Effect, and
- 38:05Speaker 2: I met you, and I can honestly say I don't
- 38:09Speaker 2: know any trans anything, not in person, like I don't
- 38:12Speaker 2: know anybody personally, and I remember like our first interaction,
- 38:16Speaker 2: you were like I had all these random questions, like
- 38:19Speaker 2: within three minutes of meeting you, and you were like
- 38:21Speaker 2: breaking it down and you know you we had some
- 38:25Speaker 2: of the same viewpoints, but it was for me. It
- 38:28Speaker 2: was so nice to hear it come from you. And
- 38:31Speaker 2: I was like, oh, okay, so you know, my first interaction
- 38:34Speaker 2: with like a trans person where we could like openly
- 38:37Speaker 2: talk about stuff. And I was throwing stuff at you,
- 38:40Speaker 2: and I remember everybody just looking around like Okay, it's
- 38:42Speaker 2: Coley's like just gonna keep going. And I was like, well,
- 38:44Speaker 2: was you make me feel comfortable?
- 38:46Speaker 1: Thank you? That is my gift.
- 38:49Speaker 3: And because I do free voices, which is every Monday
- 38:52Speaker 3: night and then we put your shameless plugging at the
- 38:54Speaker 3: Hollywood Laugh Factory at seven.
- 38:56Speaker 2: Thirty we do a show at the Laugh Factory.
- 38:58Speaker 1: Huh every Monday night, Monday night, seven thirty pm.
- 39:02Speaker 3: I have such a diverse audience and and I'm talking
- 39:05Speaker 3: when I say the verse, I'm talking about Asian, Caucasian,
- 39:09Speaker 3: Mexican that that come to enjoy me. Because there I'm
- 39:14Speaker 3: not going to say there is no color, but there
- 39:16Speaker 3: is no race with me. Yeah, everybody gets it. I
- 39:19Speaker 3: destroyed black people because I'm glad I destroyed what And
- 39:22Speaker 3: when I say destroy, I make you see it for
- 39:24Speaker 3: what it is and then make you laugh at it
- 39:26Speaker 3: because it's not that serious.
- 39:27Speaker 1: Yes, and it just puts everybody at ease.
- 39:30Speaker 3: And just every Monday, and I'm telling we have the
- 39:33Speaker 3: best you should come out, we have the best time,
- 39:36Speaker 3: because that's.
- 39:36Speaker 1: What I want to do.
- 39:37Speaker 3: Every The world is so tight and so disgrunted, and
- 39:40Speaker 3: racism ain't going nowhere. Politics is crazy. We have survived coronavirus.
- 39:46Speaker 3: This is the forty seventh day of twenty twenty three,
- 39:49Speaker 3: and we have had sixty eight mass shootings. Wow, you
- 39:52Speaker 3: don't know what's going to happen twenty minutes from now.
- 39:56Speaker 1: So live your life and have a great time living.
- 39:58Speaker 3: It ain't gonna always be peaches and cream, but it
- 40:01Speaker 3: don't take it so serious.
- 40:18Speaker 2: Do you feel like you've arrived?
- 40:20Speaker 1: No? Absolutely not.
- 40:21Speaker 2: Was there a point in your career where you're like, okay,
- 40:23Speaker 2: this is it?
- 40:24Speaker 3: Like I'm stable in twenty nineteen and then the pandemic
- 40:28Speaker 3: hit twenty nineteen. My career was flourishing like a brand
- 40:32Speaker 3: new flower in spring. And then I did the Breakfast Club,
- 40:35Speaker 3: which I absolutely love, and a lot of my community
- 40:39Speaker 3: felt like I didn't speak on their behalf. I didn't
- 40:42Speaker 3: because here's the killer right here. Because I'm a part
- 40:45Speaker 3: of the lgbt Q I A plus community does not
- 40:48Speaker 3: mean that because I got a little shine that I'm
- 40:51Speaker 3: supposed to be the spokesperson of the community. That was
- 40:54Speaker 3: never something that I wanted. That was never an objective
- 40:56Speaker 3: that And if you listen to me on the Breakfast Club,
- 41:00Speaker 3: which brought me on as a comedian, they never brought
- 41:03Speaker 3: me on because I was trans. They never brought me
- 41:05Speaker 3: on because I was black or dead. They brought me
- 41:07Speaker 3: on because I was a comedian. I could explicitly said three, four, five,
- 41:13Speaker 3: twelve times, I represent flame Unroe.
- 41:16Speaker 1: I'm speaking for me, okay.
- 41:18Speaker 2: So on that interview, that was the thing that was
- 41:20Speaker 2: like the.
- 41:20Speaker 3: That was the turning point that made them feel like,
- 41:23Speaker 3: I'm not really a trans person or I'm not a
- 41:25Speaker 3: trans woman.
- 41:26Speaker 1: I'm this.
- 41:27Speaker 3: Whatever your opinion is of you never has any re
- 41:30Speaker 3: infection on me because what you're saying about me don't
- 41:33Speaker 3: don't represent me.
- 41:34Speaker 2: Well, the trans community has the not the trans community.
- 41:37Speaker 2: The LGBTQ community has so much power. Were you a
- 41:40Speaker 2: little bit intimidated when there was a backlash? Were you
- 41:44Speaker 2: a little you know they intimidated or nervous because I
- 41:48Speaker 2: feel like they have so much power that like getting
- 41:50Speaker 2: the wrath from them can be very scary.
- 41:53Speaker 1: Well, I have.
- 41:53Speaker 3: I've faced the raft since maybe September of last year.
- 41:57Speaker 3: I probably lost two hundred thousand dollars in work because
- 42:01Speaker 3: of who I am and how I speak.
- 42:03Speaker 2: And that's crazy, because you're a part of their community
- 42:05Speaker 2: and that you still you can still face some level
- 42:09Speaker 2: of punishment.
- 42:11Speaker 3: Nothing that I survive the eighties, the nineties and the
- 42:16Speaker 3: two thousands.
- 42:17Speaker 1: That ain't gonna break me, Okay.
- 42:19Speaker 3: And I see women and I know what a woman
- 42:22Speaker 3: is to me, and I know what a woman is
- 42:24Speaker 3: to this world, which is Mother Earth and every trans
- 42:26Speaker 3: woman and trans man and lgbt Q I a plus
- 42:29Speaker 3: person came through.
- 42:30Speaker 1: A woman, a woman.
- 42:33Speaker 3: And that's not to say that however you feel you
- 42:35Speaker 3: represent you, that you don't represent you.
- 42:37Speaker 1: But we came through a woman. Yeah. I'm not a female,
- 42:41Speaker 1: I will never be a female. I'm a female impersonator
- 42:44Speaker 1: and a very good way.
- 42:45Speaker 2: You're still only twenty minutes and that's why you always
- 42:47Speaker 2: say that he she we.
- 42:48Speaker 3: That's why I say he she we because you know,
- 42:51Speaker 3: and there's so many new terminologies with the non binary
- 42:54Speaker 3: and you know, and I'm still learning, and I'm a
- 42:57Speaker 3: part of the community, but I am a dinosaur in
- 42:59Speaker 3: some aspect because I'm still learning. Because every other week
- 43:02Speaker 3: it's a goddamn new alphabet latitude, so I'm still learning.
- 43:05Speaker 1: I thought it was twenty six y'all. Oh my god, do.
- 43:08Speaker 2: You feel obligated to keep up with the with the
- 43:12Speaker 2: the new lango.
- 43:14Speaker 3: I feel like I have a responsibility that I need
- 43:18Speaker 3: to learn it in case I'm ever speaking with some
- 43:20Speaker 3: other people. Is that they're dialect That does not mean
- 43:24Speaker 3: that I have to use the language that they use.
- 43:26Speaker 3: I just need to be able to say that I
- 43:28Speaker 3: understand what you're saying to me. Because all the women
- 43:31Speaker 3: that I know, biological women do not like the term
- 43:33Speaker 3: cis woman, so I don't use cis woman exactly.
- 43:39Speaker 2: But okay, let's try your dish. Is it ready?
- 43:42Speaker 1: It's pretty much ready? You got some rice?
- 43:44Speaker 2: I have rice?
- 43:44Speaker 1: Okay, y'all, so we got some?
- 43:46Speaker 2: Do we put the rice in your dish or do
- 43:47Speaker 2: we put it on your plate?
- 43:49Speaker 1: And I'm gonna put it and you put this over
- 43:50Speaker 1: top of.
- 43:51Speaker 2: The rice, okay, and then I'm gonna put some rice
- 43:53Speaker 2: on your plate. So in the crash, so you were
- 43:58Speaker 2: you felt like you were doing well before the crash, Yeah,
- 44:01Speaker 2: and then the pandemic.
- 44:02Speaker 3: Happening, and the pandemic happened, but then I heeart that.
- 44:04Speaker 3: So what people don't know is they think that me
- 44:06Speaker 3: and Charlomagne had this great friendship that happen. Charlemagne hired
- 44:09Speaker 3: me the very first time I did the Breakfast Club.
- 44:12Speaker 3: He said, you're coming to work for me, he told
- 44:14Speaker 3: me on that day.
- 44:15Speaker 1: Okay, I say, you ain't got no doubt.
- 44:16Speaker 3: You know which power you got? You ain't got nothing,
- 44:18Speaker 3: Lord behold. Charlie May signed fourteen podcasts and self included
- 44:22Speaker 3: two years ago to the Black Effect Network. He was
- 44:26Speaker 3: creating something and you know, and on that excuse me,
- 44:29Speaker 3: everybody wanted me to give Charlamagne a hard time with
- 44:32Speaker 3: blame he is and he did. When you're going to
- 44:34Speaker 3: show tear him up. Charlemagne and Enby were so pleasant
- 44:37Speaker 3: to me and so wonderful to me and respectful. You know,
- 44:40Speaker 3: even when I went on that time when Boosie was
- 44:42Speaker 3: on there a little boosy. He gets a bad rap
- 44:44Speaker 3: from the community. His manager is openly gay, and I
- 44:48Speaker 3: ain't talking about just regular gay. He the gay with
- 44:50Speaker 3: the cape and the s and the ryaningstones and the feathers.
- 44:53Speaker 1: That kind of gay. Good.
- 44:56Speaker 2: I want a piece of bacon, just just so I
- 44:58Speaker 2: can say, I have a piece of bacon, A plate
- 45:00Speaker 2: of your pre cooked my pre cooked appleby it sounds
- 45:04Speaker 2: very Is there a reason why it has to be
- 45:06Speaker 2: apple work?
- 45:07Speaker 1: Oh? I love apple baker apple. We just got a
- 45:10Speaker 1: flavor to it.
- 45:10Speaker 3: Oh and you know who has the best apple bakon
- 45:13Speaker 3: gelston It costs three hundred dollars a pack.
- 45:15Speaker 1: Oh my god. You know Gelston's is the high end store.
- 45:20Speaker 2: I've only shot that Gelston's. Uh, when when there's it's
- 45:25Speaker 2: that moment.
- 45:26Speaker 1: Let me.
- 45:28Speaker 3: I buy an E B T car from a girl
- 45:30Speaker 3: sometimes and I go to Gelston's with eb T car
- 45:33Speaker 3: and get the strip and crab and lobster and get
- 45:35Speaker 3: to the counter and she said hi, cash check, And
- 45:37Speaker 3: I say eb T real loud, so everybody look at me.
- 45:41Speaker 2: You know what's so funny? You wouldn't even think that
- 45:43Speaker 2: about E B T and Gelston's.
- 45:44Speaker 1: They take everybody take ebt baby.
- 45:46Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what. When I was younger, I thought
- 45:49Speaker 2: you couldn't get fast food with food stamps. But then
- 45:52Speaker 2: now it's like, you can get fast food with food stands.
- 45:55Speaker 1: This show one PG. I'll tell you what else you
- 45:57Speaker 1: can give a food stamp.
- 45:58Speaker 2: Hold, it's not what can you get?
- 46:03Speaker 1: It was a joke. Okay, you taste it?
- 46:09Speaker 2: I taste it. It's you know what. I just want
- 46:11Speaker 2: to try the Oprah.
- 46:12Speaker 3: Try to it's not gonna even have a you can
- 46:15Speaker 3: do it. You can do it, you can do it.
- 46:17Speaker 1: I believe in you.
- 46:21Speaker 2: Oh god, I still hey, Okra a taste it's Slimmy.
- 46:26Speaker 2: Oh my god, I can't do that?
- 46:28Speaker 1: Means are you married?
- 46:31Speaker 2: Yeah? Well about to be divorced?
- 46:35Speaker 3: Is it because you didn't like Slimmy?
- 46:43Speaker 2: I got a good comeback for world. No, it's because
- 46:46Speaker 2: too many girls like Slimmy.
- 46:48Speaker 1: Okay that come on, I got it all the way.
- 46:54Speaker 1: If y'all missed that, y'all too young? Grow up?
- 46:56Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. No, but you know what
- 46:59Speaker 2: I'm not.
- 47:00Speaker 1: I don't like what you know, like Oprah.
- 47:03Speaker 2: I don't like what anything? What?
- 47:04Speaker 3: What?
- 47:05Speaker 2: Yeah? Like that texture? So maybe that could inside joke inside,
- 47:11Speaker 2: I know.
- 47:11Speaker 3: Exactly what but that the player up under this wing
- 47:15Speaker 3: is like, you ain't no fun.
- 47:16Speaker 1: I would have divorced you. You don't like what?
- 47:22Speaker 2: No, let me tell you.
- 47:23Speaker 1: You hear me talk about Okra, that's what I was talking.
- 47:26Speaker 2: Let me just tell you so I can just save
- 47:28Speaker 2: my own reputation. And god, God, please hopefully my family
- 47:32Speaker 2: doesn't listen to this episode. But let me tell you something. Okay,
- 47:36Speaker 2: he married me, so I clearly learned how to do
- 47:39Speaker 2: the job that I had to do to do it. Okay,
- 47:42Speaker 2: so I do I accommodated. Okay, it sounds like a task.
- 47:47Speaker 2: I need you to enjoy it. Do you know what?
- 47:50Speaker 1: I need you to smile.
- 47:54Speaker 3: Like it's the last supper.
- 48:00Speaker 2: Look, when we got off the cameras off, I'm I'm
- 48:02Speaker 2: gonna show her how I was getting down. Okay, because
- 48:05Speaker 2: she will be impressed with me.
- 48:07Speaker 3: Okay, she said she, but you show me the right way.
- 48:12Speaker 3: This rig might slide back a little bit, and oh
- 48:15Speaker 3: my god, let me stop my photi.
- 48:19Speaker 1: So you know I did Coming View first.
- 48:20Speaker 3: I was the first trans person ever to be on
- 48:24Speaker 3: Coming View in two thousand and four, where Ricky Smiley.
- 48:27Speaker 2: Was that had to have been a pivotal moment where
- 48:29Speaker 2: it was.
- 48:30Speaker 3: But but hear me when I tell you, Chris Spencer
- 48:32Speaker 3: was the one who got me on Coming View. Chrispincer
- 48:34Speaker 3: picked up the phone, made a phone call and got
- 48:36Speaker 3: me with Joyce Coleman and I was on Common View.
- 48:38Speaker 3: But they tried to market me as a female. They
- 48:40Speaker 3: were petrified to market me as a trans in two
- 48:43Speaker 3: thousand and four. This is how far we have come
- 48:46Speaker 3: because if they marketed me as a trans to controversy
- 48:50Speaker 3: along with.
- 48:51Speaker 1: You know, but all the world wasn't ready, Oh my god,
- 48:53Speaker 1: the world.
- 48:53Speaker 2: But when they see it, they wouldn't be able to tell.
- 48:56Speaker 3: They could tell, but they really did not want to
- 48:59Speaker 3: say the words.
- 49:01Speaker 1: This is and this is why I'm saying.
- 49:03Speaker 3: We have moved from a space where they wouldn't say
- 49:05Speaker 3: trans woman and transman is self explanatory.
- 49:08Speaker 2: But can I ask is do you don't think? Well,
- 49:10Speaker 2: you would? You would only be the one to know.
- 49:12Speaker 2: So is it more proper to say trans woman or
- 49:15Speaker 2: just say.
- 49:15Speaker 1: She see I like both? Okay, there was a time, Okay,
- 49:23Speaker 1: you know where he is not? Okay?
- 49:25Speaker 3: If if a trans girl's presentation is female, it is
- 49:29Speaker 3: disrespectful to call her he. We do that out of
- 49:32Speaker 3: shade when we argue with each other, but it really
- 49:35Speaker 3: is disrespectful.
- 49:36Speaker 1: And some of their play that yeah.
- 49:39Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure a lot of people are gonna didn't
- 49:41Speaker 2: know that.
- 49:42Speaker 3: Yeah with me because I'm so comfortable who I am
- 49:45Speaker 3: and my my pronoun you know, say it's he she
- 49:48Speaker 3: weak again. I'm a comedian, so every I make light
- 49:52Speaker 3: and fun pretty much of almost everything.
- 49:55Speaker 2: By the way, this is delicious. I just moved all
- 49:57Speaker 2: the oak run to the side.
- 50:00Speaker 3: I wish I had my other seasons, but I'm telling
- 50:02Speaker 3: you that, you see, I'm telling you make the same
- 50:04Speaker 3: baby you get each other.
- 50:05Speaker 2: Look at all that Oprah everybody, how much I hate Oprah,
- 50:08Speaker 2: I will never there just nothing, nothing's making.
- 50:13Speaker 1: And I'm not going to force that on you either.
- 50:15Speaker 1: I want you to hear what I was saying, literally
- 50:18Speaker 1: what I say.
- 50:19Speaker 3: I'm not going to force that on you, just like
- 50:21Speaker 3: I don't force me on people. I earned when I
- 50:25Speaker 3: started in comedy in ninety seven ninety eight. I could
- 50:31Speaker 3: be in the green room with a room for the
- 50:33Speaker 3: comedians and I was invisible. They wouldn't talk to me,
- 50:37Speaker 3: They wouldn't speak to me. They wouldn't even make eye
- 50:39Speaker 3: contact with me. I earned their respect because I kept coming.
- 50:44Speaker 3: They weren't going to chase me away. I was a
- 50:46Speaker 3: tough not to crack, and I kept learning and getting
- 50:49Speaker 3: on stage, and every now and again I would break
- 50:51Speaker 3: through show, kept teeny show and half, and every now
- 50:54Speaker 3: and again a comic come and say good job.
- 50:56Speaker 1: Like sometimes it was on the low on a choir.
- 50:58Speaker 3: But it let me know I was doing I was
- 51:00Speaker 3: supposed to do. When they saw that I wasn't going anywhere.
- 51:02Speaker 3: And I've been in the game twenty years now, a
- 51:04Speaker 3: one male comic and said, ooh, Flame tried to get
- 51:06Speaker 3: with me. Flamee tried. That was never the reputation I wanted.
- 51:09Speaker 3: That was never what I didn't come in here for that.
- 51:11Speaker 3: I came here to do this job. I wanted to
- 51:13Speaker 3: play a y'all spint. I didn't want to play in
- 51:15Speaker 3: just the LGBT party. It's too limided. I wanted to
- 51:18Speaker 3: be a world known comedian, not just a gay comedian.
- 51:22Speaker 2: What made Charlotte bring you on the Breakfast Club?
- 51:24Speaker 3: Because I had did they ready with Tiffany House and
- 51:26Speaker 3: she had did the show. And that's why I said
- 51:28Speaker 3: when he brought me on. He didn't bring me on
- 51:30Speaker 3: as a trans person. He brought me on as a
- 51:32Speaker 3: comedian because we had taped they ready, and so my
- 51:35Speaker 3: community got upset with me because they wanted me to
- 51:38Speaker 3: be the you know, everybody gets a little shot. No,
- 51:41Speaker 3: that was not what I didn't going there to tell
- 51:43Speaker 3: him down. I love my sister, but I'm not gonna
- 51:44Speaker 3: fight for bullshit. If it's bullshit, I'm not gonna I'm
- 51:46Speaker 3: not gonna stand up for that. But if it's something real,
- 51:49Speaker 3: like you know what's real to me? Like right now,
- 51:51Speaker 3: we all in the tizzy over pronouns and bathroom rights. Meanwhile,
- 51:55Speaker 3: the GOP is forcing a don't say gay bill and
- 51:59Speaker 3: no more drag, which is how I made my living
- 52:01Speaker 3: for a very long time, and a lot of my sisters,
- 52:03Speaker 3: including the girls from RuPaul's Drag Race, we make our
- 52:06Speaker 3: living off drag shows. Y'all got George Santez, who is
- 52:09Speaker 3: openly gay and used to do drag shows in Santa Bill,
- 52:12Speaker 3: to say don't say gay and no on drag shows,
- 52:15Speaker 3: and we ain't said.
- 52:16Speaker 1: Have you heard the community in an uproar about George Santos.
- 52:19Speaker 2: No, I don't say gay, That what does that mean
- 52:21Speaker 2: you can't say the word.
- 52:22Speaker 3: Well, according to Ron DeSantis in Florida, he's trying to
- 52:26Speaker 3: He has adopted the bill where they don't want teach
- 52:28Speaker 3: the little kids to be able to come to If
- 52:30Speaker 3: you were my teacher and I couldn't talk to my
- 52:32Speaker 3: mom that I was having feelings for little boys, but
- 52:35Speaker 3: you made me feel safe, So I came and talked
- 52:37Speaker 3: to you.
- 52:38Speaker 1: And you can go to jail.
- 52:40Speaker 3: You can lose your job because you're not supposed to
- 52:42Speaker 3: have those conversations with these So now these kids have
- 52:45Speaker 3: nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to. It's not safe.
- 52:49Speaker 3: But we're not in an uproar about that. We're too
- 52:51Speaker 3: busy worried about things that are just so insignificant. I
- 52:54Speaker 3: don't fight over insignificant. It needs to mean something, and
- 52:57Speaker 3: that means something to me.
- 52:59Speaker 2: If you had advice to give to someone that's coming
- 53:01Speaker 2: up in the same lane as you, what advice would
- 53:04Speaker 2: you get?
- 53:07Speaker 3: Make great relationships and get as much stage time experience
- 53:11Speaker 3: as you can because every room is different, every audience
- 53:15Speaker 3: is different, and learn your audience. There is a responsibility
- 53:18Speaker 3: on comedians to learn their audience.
- 53:21Speaker 1: There is a lot of comedians.
- 53:22Speaker 3: I ain't changing myself for nobody, Then you're not growing
- 53:26Speaker 3: as a comic because I'm not going to go into
- 53:28Speaker 3: a room full of Trumpsters doing my trump stuff knowing
- 53:32Speaker 3: that I'm offending these people on purpose. Now I will
- 53:36Speaker 3: change it from talking about his politics to talking about
- 53:38Speaker 3: his shape or his hair to make it.
- 53:40Speaker 1: Funny to them.
- 53:42Speaker 3: There is a responsibility, and a lot of times I
- 53:45Speaker 3: think that some of these comics that don't change things
- 53:50Speaker 3: happen that shouldn't happen because you have to adapt, adapt
- 53:55Speaker 3: to the room that you're in.
- 53:56Speaker 2: Okay, And then I just have just a couple more
- 53:58Speaker 2: questions because we definitely went over the come on, what
- 54:01Speaker 2: was the hardest hurdle you think you had to overcome,
- 54:04Speaker 2: either personally or professionally in your entire lifetime.
- 54:08Speaker 1: Or broken heart?
- 54:10Speaker 3: It's the hardest thing I've ever heard that would come
- 54:12Speaker 3: because people always didn't like me or I didn't like him.
- 54:15Speaker 1: I was always good with that too.
- 54:16Speaker 2: But why do you say broken heart? Did it affect
- 54:18Speaker 2: you professionally?
- 54:19Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, it made me.
- 54:20Speaker 3: It made me step away from the stage for a while,
- 54:22Speaker 3: because I'm telling my baby, Mama had me some displaced
- 54:25Speaker 3: She had me crazy as a role is and long
- 54:27Speaker 3: did it last? For seven years? But I've had my
- 54:29Speaker 3: heart broken by a woman and a man when I
- 54:31Speaker 3: went to prison. When I got caught, I had a boyfriend.
- 54:33Speaker 3: He put me in prison.
- 54:35Speaker 1: I was slick. I wouldn't go get caught. He turned me.
- 54:37Speaker 1: He turned me. He was angry.
- 54:38Speaker 3: Riched Yeah, bitch, ass nigga.
- 54:42Speaker 1: Can I say that.
- 54:44Speaker 2: I assume you broke up on him when he snitched?
- 54:46Speaker 3: Well, I see that. That's show you how damb I was.
- 54:48Speaker 3: I got out of prison and went right back to him.
- 54:50Speaker 3: But Menjo only did forty eight days.
- 54:52Speaker 1: But I went right back to him, Okay.
- 54:55Speaker 3: And and what happened was I was blind because I
- 54:59Speaker 3: was in it. But after going through the prison humiliation
- 55:02Speaker 3: because I never had anything bad happened to me in prison,
- 55:05Speaker 3: Thank you Jesus. I was so protected because my uncles
- 55:07Speaker 3: were all stones on the West Side. Everybody knew the
- 55:10Speaker 3: Gifts and family. Everybody knew us, so they knew who
- 55:13Speaker 3: I was, so nobody was gonna bother me.
- 55:17Speaker 1: I mean not. I was never worried about that part.
- 55:20Speaker 1: But he was just he got drugs and it just
- 55:24Speaker 1: hurt me. I don't never want to I'm afraid of
- 55:26Speaker 1: love because of that.
- 55:28Speaker 2: So what did like you did? Seven years of heartbreak?
- 55:31Speaker 2: So what got you out of it? Was it just time?
- 55:33Speaker 3: Or was it like she kept she left? You know,
- 55:35Speaker 3: she kept leaving. What's the songbody ojy? She says, your
- 55:38Speaker 3: body's here with me, but your man is on the
- 55:40Speaker 3: other side of town.
- 55:41Speaker 1: She stayed on the other side of town. Her body
- 55:44Speaker 1: was physically there, but she wasn't there. And she was young.
- 55:48Speaker 1: She didn't want to be a mom. She wanted to.
- 55:51Speaker 3: I think she wanted to be a mother for her mother,
- 55:53Speaker 3: but she really didn't want to be a mommy.
- 55:55Speaker 1: If you understand what that her mama wanted her.
- 55:57Speaker 3: To prove that she was because she was an open legs,
- 56:00Speaker 3: looked like a little boy, and her mom wanted her
- 56:03Speaker 3: to be girl grandmama. So I think she did that
- 56:07Speaker 3: for her mom. I just happened to be the collateral damage.
- 56:10Speaker 1: Thank god. I wanted my children though.
- 56:12Speaker 2: Okay, okay, And then you got back to work.
- 56:17Speaker 1: I had to heal.
- 56:18Speaker 2: How did how did you heal and get back in
- 56:21Speaker 2: the race?
- 56:22Speaker 1: That was the that was the hardest part.
- 56:24Speaker 3: I have. My oldest daughter's name is easy. My children
- 56:26Speaker 3: name is JaMarcus, Ezzy and Isaiah. Isabella Easy looks exactly
- 56:32Speaker 3: like her mother. And I'm talking about from day one.
- 56:36Speaker 3: So do you know how hard it was to men
- 56:39Speaker 3: your broken heart while still functioning. I had a three
- 56:42Speaker 3: year old, a three month old, and a three and
- 56:44Speaker 3: a half year old, all at the same time by
- 56:46Speaker 3: myself with a broken heart in southern California, own food stamps.
- 56:51Speaker 3: We couldn't get on Section eight because they said I
- 56:53Speaker 3: made too much money struggling, couldn't find no work because
- 56:58Speaker 3: I couldn't get my man right. But I couldn't get
- 57:01Speaker 3: in a dark hole depressed because I had a bottle
- 57:04Speaker 3: to fix. I had daycare, I had a pampa to change,
- 57:07Speaker 3: I had to do laundry.
- 57:09Speaker 1: God kept me busy so I wouldn't sit and.
- 57:11Speaker 3: Wallow in my pain, even though there was times when
- 57:14Speaker 3: I went to that bathroom it had meltdown because I
- 57:17Speaker 3: didn't have no help. I couldn't leave my kids on
- 57:19Speaker 3: my mom. Yeah, you know my mom had She was
- 57:24Speaker 3: she was not nice.
- 57:25Speaker 2: So how are you working and supporting everything?
- 57:29Speaker 3: I was always a master of what I needed to do.
- 57:31Speaker 3: I was always a great hustler. I was always a
- 57:34Speaker 3: good hustler. You know, I knew how to push the
- 57:36Speaker 3: almost illegal boundaries to make sure that my children could
- 57:40Speaker 3: And when we were broke, when I had no money
- 57:43Speaker 3: and I couldn't get no work because I was ostracized.
- 57:46Speaker 3: After I left Hamburger, Mareas and Long Beach in southern California,
- 57:50Speaker 3: where I couldn't get no work in the drag shows,
- 57:52Speaker 3: I sharpened up my gucca skills. I knew how to
- 57:55Speaker 3: go to the grocery store and take a pack of
- 57:57Speaker 3: meat and take the censer off and go to the
- 57:59Speaker 3: freezer and stick it down my girdle to get out.
- 58:02Speaker 1: Oh, I had to feed money.
- 58:03Speaker 2: I take it. Your kids know about stash?
- 58:05Speaker 1: Oh my god, yes we eat we got money, We
- 58:07Speaker 1: still eat it.
- 58:09Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, I love that you got personal.
- 58:13Speaker 3: Like, well, you know what, why sugar coat the true
- 58:17Speaker 3: I did what I had to do to take care
- 58:18Speaker 3: of my family. So when when they would take ostracize
- 58:22Speaker 3: me and say like they're doing now this whole cancel
- 58:24Speaker 3: culture thing, you are starving some possibly starving somebody's kid. Yeah,
- 58:29Speaker 3: you know you you mad at this person because of
- 58:31Speaker 3: a statement they said, like you don't have an opinion,
- 58:34Speaker 3: like you haven't said some things that could offend somebody
- 58:37Speaker 3: or have benefits or still offending somebody, and you want
- 58:40Speaker 3: to stop somebody because I hurt your feelings. You get
- 58:45Speaker 3: over feelings, you don't get over AR fifteens. Yes, you
- 58:49Speaker 3: know this country is so backwards and baffling to me.
- 58:52Speaker 3: We want to take away books that take away history,
- 58:54Speaker 3: but we don't want to We don't want to stop
- 58:55Speaker 3: selling AR fifteens. That's making history because air fifteen gonna
- 58:59Speaker 3: make you his three.
- 59:02Speaker 1: I'm telling you I maybe maybe I'm twisted.
- 59:05Speaker 2: No, I'm against. I'm one hundred percent against cancel culture.
- 59:09Speaker 2: My husband's a comedian, my little brother is a comedian,
- 59:11Speaker 2: and I can only imagine, like, you know, the that
- 59:17Speaker 2: area where you know comedy is supposed to laugh at
- 59:19Speaker 2: my pain, right, and it's just you know, it's now
- 59:22Speaker 2: in an area where you know, now you have to
- 59:24Speaker 2: be considerate of the audience's feelings, which usually they.
- 59:28Speaker 3: Want you to walk around on Asia's I can't even
- 59:30Speaker 3: balance their regular shoes. I damn sure they're gonna walk
- 59:32Speaker 3: around the way as you're gonna get it. You're just
- 59:34Speaker 3: gonna get it. And here it is. It's not gonna.
- 59:36Speaker 2: Stop me, but you're not you're not afraid of cancel culture.
- 59:38Speaker 3: I am not afraid of anything but Jesus, that's it.
- 59:42Speaker 3: They have stopped a lot of work for me. But
- 59:44Speaker 3: it's just like you stop work for me. I came
- 59:46Speaker 3: and Sammy for a third year for Laugh and Learn.
- 59:49Speaker 3: The bookings keep coming in from the comedy clubs because
- 59:51Speaker 3: the mouth don't stop.
- 59:52Speaker 1: And the talent is here.
- 59:54Speaker 3: What you're gonna silence me? No, that ain't gonna silence me.
- 59:59Speaker 3: Still in my we ignite, but that ain't gonna silence me?
- 1:00:03Speaker 2: All right? Well, where can everybody catch up with you
- 1:00:05Speaker 2: and keep up with you?
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: Oh?
- 1:00:07Speaker 3: You can follow me on Instagram at Monroe Flame, on
- 1:00:10Speaker 3: Twitter at Flame Monroe, on YouTube at Flame Monroe, on
- 1:00:14Speaker 3: TikTok at Flame Monroe one two five, and on Facebook
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: at Marcus Flame Monroe Parker. And you can go to
- 1:00:21Speaker 3: my bio on Instagram to see where my books are
- 1:00:23Speaker 3: coming up. Because I'm coming to younkers. I'm coming to pleasanton.
- 1:00:26Speaker 3: But every Monday you can see me at the Hollywood
- 1:00:28Speaker 3: Laugh Factor on Sunset blahlah blah. We have the best
- 1:00:31Speaker 3: best adult fund for free voices. Come and hang out
- 1:00:33Speaker 3: with me. There's no censor and You're going to be
- 1:00:37Speaker 3: thoroughly entertained.
- 1:00:38Speaker 1: And this is my nice dress. This is my Christian
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: dress Monday.
- 1:00:42Speaker 3: And.
- 1:00:45Speaker 2: Can bitch do what we do?
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: Okay, let me see you pop?
- 1:00:50Speaker 2: Oh you do it right? Okay, I'm not there yet.
- 1:00:53Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, okay.
- 1:00:56Speaker 3: When your daughter's like getting on your nerves screaming hop
- 1:00:59Speaker 3: that fan.
- 1:01:00Speaker 2: I guarantee you. Once my daughter sees me do this,
- 1:01:02Speaker 2: that's the only thing she's gonna be doing next. Thank
- 1:01:06Speaker 2: you guys for tuning in to another episode of Eating
- 1:01:08Speaker 2: While Broke. The disc soccotash was definitely something you can
- 1:01:12Speaker 2: make at home, easy, affordable, convenient. You know, in my
- 1:01:16Speaker 2: personal opinion, skip the okra up please peace out.
- 1:01:21Speaker 5: You better keep it wet.
- 1:01:43Speaker 2: For more Eating While Broke from iHeartRadio and The Black Effect,
- 1:01:47Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
- 1:01:50Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.