Episode 344: Becoming A Man with Ash Perez
Doree and Elise reflect on the five-year anniversary of Covid lockdown. Then, they invite Ash Perez (former BuzzFeed video star and current 2nd Try cast member) on to talk about his relationship to his father and masculinity, what his journey has taught him about the performance of gender, how he decides what information to share publicly and what to keep private, and what he’s doing to make sense of the news right now.
Photo Credit: Jackson Davis
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Transcript
The transcript for this episode Ai generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir,
Elise Hu (00:16):
and I'm Elise Hu. And we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Doree Shafrir (00:20):
How's it going, Elise?
Elise Hu (00:22):
I'm okay. We are checking in today, Monday, just a few days after the five-year anniversary of everything shutting down because of Covid. Do you remember where you were when they shut down schools and told you not to do non-essential things?
Doree Shafrir (00:43):
So the weekend before stuff started shutting down, we were in Vegas and we were getting, the news was sounding increasingly frantic, and my parents were at our house watching Henry, who was then nine months old. And I was like, I'm sending an Instacart order to our house with lots of toilet paper. And my mom was like,
Elise Hu (01:10):
Oh, right,
Doree Shafrir (01:10):
Okay. Totally thinking I was overreacting. And then that Wednesday, which was when the NBA canceled their games and Tom Hanks said he had covid that night. I had plans with nine moms from my baby group to have dinner at John and Vinny's and we went and we were all sort of like, can we hug? No one really knew what to do. And then the next day someone I knew was in town who was a photographer and she was doing some project on podcast. I forget what she was doing, but she came to our house and she took pictures of me and Henry. And then I think I also went to the Jane Club, which was, it used to be this coworking space for women here in LA and everything was weird. People were wiping down tables, no one knew what to do, you know what I mean?
Elise Hu (02:12):
Oh no, I remember that week very clearly.
Doree Shafrir (02:16):
So, and then it was like, oh, things are going to be closed for two weeks. I just remember that thinking.
Elise Hu (02:24):
Yeah, I was super into all the activities that we'd be able to do. I'm like, oh, cool, I get to run homeschool for a little bit. I was kind of excited about it. But yeah, that Wednesday when Tom and Rita got, it was such a turning point
Doree Shafrir (02:40):
Because
Elise Hu (02:40):
They are like America's mom and dad in a lot of ways. And I was in New York and New York had already been hit by Covid or it had begun to get hit by Covid. And I am a Chinese person and I appear as a Chinese American. And so I remember needing to cough because my throat was dry on the subway and then panicking I can't cough while Asian. And this was all before all of the attacks on Asian people and the kung flu and everything that they were calling. But yeah, I remember being self-conscious about coughing on the subway, but also I was there at Penguin Random House on that Wednesday that you're talking about to do meetings for my book. I was going around doing the in-person meetings for the book that became flawless. And I remember being at Penguin Random House at 11 o'clock for that meeting. And then as we were leaving an email went out to the whole publishing house saying, you need to start working from home at 1:00 PM
Doree Shafrir (03:39):
Oh my
Elise Hu (03:40):
God. So I might have been one of the last in-person meetings at PRH before they were done for months and months and months, if not a year plus. But then that was the last night that Broadway was open too. And my agent and my friend Alex Garcia, the documentary filmmaker, and I got together at this house where I was staying in soho and we decided to sing karaoke together at the house. There was a karaoke setup, I shit you not, two out of three of them the next week went down. It was Howard and Alex.
Doree Shafrir (04:18):
Oh my God. And
Elise Hu (04:20):
They were like, we're really sick and we've been sick for a long time. And they didn't realize it was covid until they lost their sense of taste and smell, which was new at the time.
Doree Shafrir (04:31):
Yikes
Elise Hu (04:32):
Was running rampant that week of March 10th, March 11th
Doree Shafrir (04:36):
In
Elise Hu (04:37):
New York and New York. It was such a scary time. But yeah, I've just been very wistful and reflective on that time because it does feel like it's where the timeline split though you and I know that the real timeline split it Bush v Gore in 2000, but another timeline split happened in March of 2020. And then so much of the social fabric and the inequalities that we see today with education and the loneliness epidemic and wealth and the way we work and the gender gap and so many things you could argue go back. And then the distrust of medicine and public health go back to that turning point. And so I've been really thinking about it. The New York Times did a really eye-opening series of charts. It's like five charts or 10 charts that show how covid changed everything. And I've just been reflecting on that a lot. And in a lot of ways our lives just kind of ground back up again or the wheels of capitalism just started back up again after the restrictions were lifted and the stay at home orders stopped and the vaccines were more universal. But I just wonder whether we really spiritually or collectively as people really reckoned with everything that happened. And it's so important because we're in this time of increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters which do similar things as pandemics. They kind of stop
Doree Shafrir (06:07):
Everything.
Elise Hu (06:08):
So we wanted to put this question out to you sort of like how have you changed, how have the way that you've taken care of yourself or each other changed as a result of Covid? And what do you remember about it? What did you take away from it? Are you still keeping up with your sourdough starters? I mean, all of
Doree Shafrir (06:28):
That. Elise, Kate and I did a podcast. We did a daily podcast called Here For You. I
Elise Hu (06:34):
Remember that. Yeah, I've heard a couple episodes of it. I was listening to it I think in the beginning and I thought it was such a service that y'all just checked in every day, but its also a time capsule.
Doree Shafrir (06:45):
Yeah, I was just going to say, I think it's a real time capsule. I haven't gone back and listened to it, but I feel like it is such a time capsule because I just remember we did an episode on Covid because some of our listeners, we had a listener in Italy who called in and do you remember Italy got hit really hard early, and then we were like, we'll just do a daily podcast. And I was really glad we did it. And it was also one of those things where we were like, well, we'll just do it for these two weeks that we're all shut down. Wow. Then it was like, so I think we did about two months of it because we really intended it to be just this short thing. And then it was like, oh, there's no end in sight. So it was kind of crazy. But anyway, the reason of the reason we were thinking about this, in addition to just the press coverage around it is because this came up a bunch in our conversation with our guest today, Ash Perez, whose father died from Covid, and he talks a lot about how that affected the rest of his life.
Elise Hu (07:58):
It was a real timeline split for him individually.
Doree Shafrir (08:00):
Yes. Yes, exactly. So we'd love to hear from you. And before we get to Ash, I just want to remind everyone you can visit our website forever 35 podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. You can follow us on Instagram at Forever 35 podcast. Join our patreon at patreon.com/forever three five Shop our favorite products at Shop my us slash forever 35. Sign up for our newsletter at Forever 35 podcast. Do com slash newsletter and call or text us at five nine one zero three nine zero and email us at Forever five Podcast at gmail com.
Elise Hu (08:36):
And just one quick note on our Patreon where a lot of things are happening, where we have our monthly pop culture episodes where we have our special Tuesday q and as with our Monday guests that are extras and then our Friday casual chats that are only available to our paid Patreon subscribers. We also let you all decide what our theme months are going to be. And so we have a poll up right now and it's going to be live or you're going to have a voting period for the next week or so to choose what we're going to give the series treatment to another time this year. So we've already done midlife and menopause. That was our first theme month last year. And then we're just coming off of Friendship month. So let us know what's on your mind. And I'm not going to give you some sample ideas and sample topics because I don't want to accidentally sway the vote.
(09:23)
So just head on over to patreon.com/forever three five and cast your vote. Now on to Ash Perez by Trade Ash as a writer and producer with uniquely deep understanding of the intersections between tech, traditional broadcast and digital storytelling, having worked for some of the premier companies in each space as a first generation queer Cuban, Korean, Filipino person, he brings an organically diverse point of view to all of his endeavors. And on Instagram, Ash describes himself as a badass hunky dude and a TV writer and an author and a member of the second TriCast and formerly, and this is crucial of buzzfeed with Dory.
Doree Shafrir (10:10):
Yes. Alright, here's Ash. Ash, welcome to Forever 35. It's so great to see you.
Ash Perez (10:19):
Thank you. I'm finally here and I'm finally 35, so
Doree Shafrir (10:23):
Yay. I know it's so perfect. Well, as you may know, we start off our conversations with our guests by asking them about a self-care practice that they have. So is there something that you do that you would consider?
Ash Perez (10:37):
Yeah, my newest one is single discipline focus. So I'll be watching, lately it's been watching women's basketball unrivaled as the New league and instead of being on my phone and playing a game or texting and making dinner and doing something, my self-care is just like, I'll even text my girlfriend and be like, if she's not in the house with me, I'll be like, Hey, I'm going on Do Not disturb. And I just watch basketball and it's so nice. And even during commercials and stuff, I don't go to my phone. I just sit there and try and be present.
Elise Hu (11:18):
Yeah, our attention is such a finite resource too, so just to be able to concentrate it.
Ash Perez (11:24):
Yes. And mine has just gotten so much worse and so bad, and I've noticed a lot of that started when I realized that my phone was just making me so sad and I started putting limits on it. You can put time limits on your phone and the apps and it just gives you cognizance of how often you're on it. And then from there I was like, okay, well I'm not doing my phone anymore, so what am I going to do? Started playing settlers ofan on my iPad that I was playing it too much and I was like, I have to move my body. So I would only let myself play when I was at the gym and I was walking on the treadmill. So then I started exercising and then from there I was like, well, what do I do at home? And I read books. So now I've actually from that one single thing, single thing, recognizing that my attention has been splitting. I've actually gotten into a lot more single attention disciplines.
Doree Shafrir (12:21):
Cool. I really admire that. And the way you talk about it makes me want to try it. And I'm also thinking of my husband who has a DHD and he will often have three screens going, and I'm like, what? I'm just like, this is so much happening. And for some reason he says his brain can kind of handle it all.
Ash Perez (12:49):
I don't know, I have a DHD too and I'm medicated for and everything. And I also understand that I either have to have a lot of sensory input and it almost makes it cancel out. It's nothing. Or I do the same thing where I'll have a podcast be driving, but then I realize just like anything, your brain needs variety. And so I'm like, okay, I do that. So then in order to make sure the part of my brain that needs to concentrate still works, I'm going to make sure that for fun things I'm also practicing concentration and not just when I have to drill down.
Doree Shafrir (13:24):
Yeah, I love that. So Ash, I don't even know where to begin because I met you, I dunno, 11 or 12 years ago, I think. Were you an intern on the travel vertical is what was your
Ash Perez (13:42):
I had just gotten hired full time. You're actually the reason that I was able to move to LA because I was in New York at Buzzfeed and did not want to be there anymore because New York was just such a hard place to live. I'm from
Doree Shafrir (13:55):
California
Ash Perez (13:56):
And I came out here for a visit and you were trying to build your team and you're like, I'm going to steal you if you want to come here. And I was like, yes, please. And I had just gotten hired three weeks before I got hired from being an intern. And then the Huffington Post tried to scoop me and then I got given the travel vertical and then three weeks later I was in LA and you were like, come to la. And then from there Zay scooped, me and Andrew go to the video team. So I just got scooped all over the place.
Doree Shafrir (14:30):
Wow, okay. So everything that happened is due to me.
Ash Perez (14:36):
Yes. I'm now trans because of you.
Doree Shafrir (14:40):
Yeah, it's all because of me. I mean, I like to think you butterfly wings. Exactly.
Elise Hu (14:47):
Okay, let's take a break and we be right.
Doree Shafrir (14:56):
As you alluded, you had this sort of meteoric rise through buzzfeed. You got famous on YouTube. You've had some unbelievable professional and personal highlights. And I guess just for our benefit, the benefit of our listeners, could you just sort of walk us through what your professional and personal life, what the highlights have been in the last 10 years? Because I feel like so much has been overlapping. Yeah, that'd be great. That's true.
Ash Perez (15:24):
So professionally, I say most easiest to understand is I'm a writer across all mediums. So I wrote for the internet and then I wrote a book and I wrote for television. Now I just finished writing an audio original for Simon and Schuster. So I've done it across all kinds of mediums, but the kind of consistency is that I tend to write and also that it tends to be funny, a little bit funny and a little bit dark sometimes. And that's partially because of the mixture of what you're saying of personal life. And I don't know if this just happened because of Covid that our everyone's personal and professional life mashed together in a way that it didn't before because you literally brought your professional life home.
(16:15)
But for me, COVID was big because I lost my dad to Covid in 2020 and then started transitioning shortly after that, partially because my dad died. I realized I had so much, I was so tied to the idea of being daddy's girl. In no other way did I like being a girl except for that was my most valuable name is that I was daddy's girl. And when my dad died, a lot of those layers kind of just shed themselves. And then I got married, I got divorced, the strike happened, but most recently in the last year, I have started up again in terms of full force making things. I joined back with some friends from Buzzfeed, the Try guys, and they have a company called Second Try Now, which is very apt for all of us. It is our second try at the internet, and I just recently released a show called New Guy Tries, that's chronicling my journey into manhood. It's a little bit scripted, a little bit unscripted, just different. And it was also an exploration on grief, honestly, because it ended up being the fact that I didn't have my biggest male role model meant that going into masculinity was that much more difficult.
(17:44)
And we just started filming season two this week and still writing, still trying to develop stuff for tv. In the middle of that, I wrote for a couple of television shows, I developed a pilot with a, B, C that didn't end up going, but was a really great experience. So truly a little bit of everything.
Elise Hu (18:06):
Yeah, you're in la. We're all project people, and that's what I actually love about being in la. Just on your dad, what did your dad mean to you besides just the identity of how you related to him, but also what do you feel like you have taken from him and his example in terms of manhood?
Ash Perez (18:28):
It's so funny because my dad was constantly trying to saying the most trite things to me in these idioms incorrectly. He was from Cuba, so they were all scrambled and didn't really make any sense and you would say the wrong thing.
Elise Hu (18:40):
Okay, give us an example. Yeah,
Ash Perez (18:43):
He'd be like, or he'd translate something from Spanish, don't spit in the sky, it'll land on your face. And I was like, what? And he's like, that's really profound in Spanish. I'm like, okay, what the fuck? Or he was obsessed with the idea of family and was always, blood is thicker than water and I just didn't pay attention growing up, we were very similar and for that reason also, he taught me how to think him. My aunts have most recently said that talking to you is talking to your dad because you think exactly like him, and that's why we would have these big blowout fights, which is what I miss about him the most in my dreams. I'll argue with him. Then I'll tell my mom like, oh, I saw dad. We were arguing. She goes, oh, I'm sorry. I'm like, no, it was great. We were just arguing with each other about stupid stuff, but now he is just in my head all the time and all that dumb stuff. He said, even like, don't spit in the sky, it'll fall on your face. I'm like, how does that apply to my life? But it does, and the manhood part of it, it's so interesting because doing that series, it was supposed to be me as a trans man examining masculinity, patriarchy.
(20:19)
It ended up being at the same time, this reflection for all my cis male friends to reflect on their masculinity. In turn, we were all reflecting on our dads and brothers and systems of where did we get this from in a way that was very, very different than femininity because of patriarchy. Patriarchy I think forces most women because you're in a position where you're made less than for no reason. You are forced to examine the system that you're a part of in order to succeed in it. You don't necessarily have to do that as a man, particularly the more types of privilege that you have if you're a white man, if you're able bodied, if you're handsome, if you grew up wealthy and
Elise Hu (21:04):
You're right, there's no reflection required because you're considered the default.
Ash Perez (21:08):
Yeah, literally. You're literally to be the default. You never realize you're different or you don't have to or examine why things are easy for you, and that's no one's fault. It's just something that I recognized in talking across the board to all the men that I talked to. It wasn't even just only cis white men. It was basically all men were like, I've never thought about this, or I've thought about it and I've had no place to say it.
Doree Shafrir (21:44):
I watched the first episode of your series and there's so many just moving and profound moments in it when you're in the barbershop with Zach, and he is kind of like, you can see the gears turning as he's reflecting on all this stuff where he's like, oh, oh, this is all connected.
Ash Perez (22:11):
Particularly Zach in that instance, in the barbershop got uncomfortable to the point that they would very much try and do a hard redirect because they almost didn't realize like, wait, why are we talking about my childhood and how it was hard for me to grow up and what being in therapy did, you should talk to your barber now. This isn't what barbers talk about.
Elise Hu (22:33):
This supposed to be about your journey. Yeah, it was instinctively uncomfortable, but given your journey, you now get to really define in an intentional way what kind of man you want to be, which is really exciting, but also probably overwhelming and disorienting in some ways. I'm just curious, what aspects of masculinity and getting to occupy space as a man are your favorite?
Ash Perez (23:04):
I'll tell you guys, it's a mind fuck. Having been a woman in a very feminist woman and not having felt like the default for so long, the biggest thing that's fucking insane is just feeling physically safe. Wherever I go, my girlfriend is four inches taller than me or three inches taller than me, and if I'm there, her shorter boyfriend, nobody bothers us. But if she's, I know the exact feeling and I can get into Ubers now and nobody's a fricking weirdo to me and leering or asking me about my day, I don't have to make up where I'm going or a fake boyfriend. I get a lot more respect. I feel like if I say something, people automatically default to listening to me. There's also this weird bro code of the dude, man, I got you bro. Guys just take care of each other and girls do it too. It's like the, Hey, I got you. But the whole thing is a social experiment, honestly, and it's infuriating because I know the other side too, and so I don't feel like I can enjoy the privilege in the same way that someone who was born with them can, because half the time, it just makes me so upset that if I'm at a bar, I can get a drink really quickly
(24:32)
And not have it be dependent on am I pretty or not? Your point of what's the good stuff though? The best thing, aside from just feeling like myself, and I just went to a wedding recently and I didn't realize how much of my personality was a facet of the things that were giving me dysmorphia. I didn't like summer, I didn't like the beach, I didn't like exercise. I didn't like going out to bars or nightclubs or weddings or anything like that because I didn't want to be in clothes. That made me feel dysmorphic, but I didn't realize that, and now I go to the gym all the time. I love swimming. I loved this summer was amazing, and going to a wedding and getting to just wear what I want to, I was like, oh, I have no anxiety around this. So things that I thought were part of my personality actually,
Elise Hu (25:31):
And just how wonderful to be able to feel at home in your own body and not alienated from it. I think just being embodied means so much.
Ash Perez (25:40):
It does, and it's something, it goes along with that. The same self-care thing I was talking about earlier of presence and focus before I say how I would've defined my twenties is I was a ghost with a personality or a walking brain with no body. I just felt completely disembodied and it was affecting even my brain and my mental capacity in terms of there's a lot of my twenties that I don't remember with the detail that I should because I think I just was repressing so much, but grief shed a lot of that away because there's just no illusions under grief. You don't have the energy for anything besides what's real. So yeah, it's been incredible to be in my body. I told my girlfriend, I was like, am I an athlete? Do I have to identify as an athlete? Now? I'm like, I don't need to come out again as something else.
Doree Shafrir (26:46):
You've had all this change in the last five years, but there's probably still more change to come and we don't know what that change is going to look like.
Ash Perez (26:55):
Even chemically, there's changes that are like, I'm starting to get my beard. My voice is still lowering. I'm still very much in the prepubescent. I have acne because I'm just going through a second adolescence right now. So I started writing a book Lost in Transition that I was like, I'm going to write a series of essays about what it's been like to be in transition, the things I miss about womanhood, the things that I'm learning about manhood, and I put the book down for a little bit and just have even recently picked it up, and within two years, even the way that I feel in my body is so different. So it just shows that growth is constant.
Doree Shafrir (27:35):
So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Elise Hu (27:47):
We're curious what it's been like for you to live through all of this really intense personal change. So publicly, how are you deciding which aspects of your life to keep more private? What is your thinking or your framework behind this, if there's one at all?
Ash Perez (28:04):
That's a great question. I mean, I accidentally became famous on the internet for sharing my personality, and I was very lucky, unlike a lot of my colleagues became, including the try guys became famous for sharing their unscripted real selves.
(28:24)
I was much more always doing narrative work, which was helpful to have a barrier. Even though my name was Ashley, my character, it was still a character, so I got to have some sense of separation. But all the social media stuff was very dependent on how much of my personality I shared. People started speculating, am I dating some of my coworkers or what's going on behind the scenes? And I gave it all very freely because the reward was so big. There was a point where we were getting a thousand Instagram followers a day. I just remember, I was like, is this ever going to stop? We went in a span of six months from nobody knowing us to having 700,000 followers, which even now I try and conceptualize what that actually means, and we were getting recognized all the time and couldn't go to target without getting stopped, and it had simultaneously been my childhood dream, but then also the pressure was just like, and it was an accident. It's not like I was a singer and got famous for being a singer. I was a writer who happened to be in videos who got famous for, I don't even know what, honestly, I think just being relatable, being an awkward Asian girl. And the funny thing too is that my whole personality was about being awkward, and it kept me in this kind of stasis of staying young and awkward, even as I was maturing a little bit Disney channel type of vibes.
Doree Shafrir (30:10):
And I feel like a lot of your fans were teens also.
Ash Perez (30:14):
Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah, teens. I mean, now, it's so funny. I have 22, 23 year olds who come to me are like, oh my God, I watch every day in middle school, which makes me feel really old, but I'm like, what are you talking about? I had a coworker, I worked on the Biden Harris campaign as a senior producer doing some video work, and one of my coworkers was like, you were like my middle school idol. And I was like, what? We're coworker what are talking about? Wow. Right? We're the same age, aren't we? Yeah, literally. Whatcha talking about, but now post my dad, I'm very public about my grief and I share pretty much every part of that because to me, there's not enough of it and not enough real talk about what grief looks like and how long it lasts and all the random things that nobody talks about because there're social taboos. But then I didn't talk about my divorce much, and that just felt like that's personal to me and
Elise Hu (31:22):
Another person too.
Ash Perez (31:23):
Exactly. Exactly. And I might talk about it later if I want to, but in general, I think default to sharing what will be helpful to other people because that's the part of my job that I like about being public. So this new guy tries, even though it was deeply personal and kind of embarrassing and scary to have to do those things in front of camera, I knew that there were people who would benefit from that, including me
Elise Hu (31:52):
Also. It was just a delight too.
Ash Perez (31:55):
Thank you.
Elise Hu (31:55):
I mean, just a delight to watch you glow up if you'll
Doree Shafrir (32:00):
Yes, yes. This might be a question that is of interest to me and 10 other people, but as you were talking about the process of getting famous essentially really quickly and by accident, I'm wondering where was Buzzfeed in all of this? Was there any sort of support for you guys? I was in a different, at that point, I was in a different division of the company and I felt like I was kind of watching it from afar and it was like, oh, cool, best meet video blowing up. But I never really talked to anyone about what was that like? And did the company, I dunno, go on.
Ash Perez (32:44):
No one's asked me that before and that's a great question. No, is the answer, the only support as we grew the company tried to grow around us. The problem was that it was built off of literally the studio system. Jonah had started reading about the studio system but didn't really get to the ending and it ended the exact same way. The studio system is great because you take young talent who would've otherwise not been able to accomplish that much without having set resources in one place. The problem is that when that talent becomes independent enough to have aspirations beyond what the studio wants them to do, and they're constrained to the studio you have, and we are not this at all, but in the studio system, you had Marilyn Monroe making these G level pictures that she didn't want to do anymore and that she didn't need to do. And putting a level of output, part of I think the hope of every artist is that you can graduate to a level where your output can decrease so that you can have more time to put that a dream.
Elise Hu (33:50):
Yes, more money for less effort. I mean, I have two life goals, basically be more money for less effort and then peaking when I'm 90 and dying.
Ash Perez (33:59):
Exactly. Those are great. I'm going to steal those, but I want to be, my dream is to be the equivalent of whatever Adele is of I'm going to fuck off for five years and you'll get an album when you want, or God help us all if we can be Rihanna and just be like, actually, I'm not doing any more music.
Elise Hu (34:18):
Just buy my cosmetics,
Ash Perez (34:19):
Right? Yeah. Even though you guys love it, I'm going to succeed at this other thing. But Buzzfeed support was all just interpersonal, where we were really lucky that other YouTubers, because we would go to VidCon with other famous YouTubers and stuff like that, but we were such different people. We worked for a company, we got a w2, we had a nine to five. We had
Doree Shafrir (34:40):
Bosses,
Ash Perez (34:41):
People who stayed, who got famous on YouTube when we were famous, were at home by themselves, editing by themselves, and were not around. People did not have jobs, did not, or not traditional jobs.
Doree Shafrir (34:54):
And
Ash Perez (34:54):
It's like, no, we had happy hour. We had the structure of a job while being adults and being, getting to be famous. So we never, externally, we felt famous in terms of when we would go out, we would walk from the office and go to Chipotle or something, and then we could tell that everyone was like, oh my God. But when we're coworkers, I'm not looking at Quinta or Eugene or anybody, I'm like, can you give me notes on this thing? And we would still have our bosses be like, Hey, we start at nine o'clock, not at nine 30, so it doesn't really matter.
Doree Shafrir (35:34):
I want to go back to the series that you're doing for second try. In particular these very moving moments with your mother cookie in that video. And I mean, I remember, I feel like Cookie came to the office.
Ash Perez (35:50):
Oh, she did. You probably have a toothbrush with my dad's name on it because my mom was handing out toothbrushes to everybody. My dad was a dentist, so my mom was us giving everybody toothbrushes.
Doree Shafrir (36:01):
Cookie was just so lovely and such a warm presence. And I loved her moments in that video and because you can see she's really trying to be there for you, and it doesn't come naturally to her, but she's really trying. And I was wondering if you could talk about what your relationship with her is now and how she's kind of been there for you during your whole journey.
Ash Perez (36:33):
Oh yeah. I mean, my favorite, it's great. It's incredible. But I'll tell you, 15 years ago when I came out as bisexual, my mom cried for four years and couldn't deal with it. And I say that not as a knock on my mom, but to remind people that people need time to get accustomed to something that in most cases, queer people have to come out to ourselves first and get the courage to even say this thing that we've been thinking for. Who knows? Might've been your whole life. And then somebody else who's known you your whole life is hearing this information for the first time and having to reorganize everything that they think about you. And it's a different kind of loss. I guess I'd be interested to ask my mom because queerness in terms of sexuality is more of a loss of the future, and transness is a loss of the past, so it's a different thing that people are dealing with. I got a little lucky. I came out first as queer, then my sibling came out as trans, which ironically was not the thing that prompted me to be trans. I just was like, okay, good for you
(37:46)
Then. But it helped a lot of my parents learning the language and learning. And then I also think that my mom just saw me and was like, oh my God, you're so much happier. This makes sense. And then now she's been putting together so much stuff from my childhood of like, this is basically who you would've ended up as if we had let you do the things that you were so adamant about. As child, I wanted to be a little boy. I had dreams that I was a little boy, and I would get found out as a little girl, and I always wanted to take my shirt off and I wanted to play rough, and I wanted all of that, and I very much was against all of the outward performances of girlhood, those fucking socks that I had to wear at church. Those little
Elise Hu (38:40):
Doilies with the little
Ash Perez (38:41):
Place. Yes, the white fucking with those Mary Janes that are shiny. Oh God, talk about dysphoria. But now my mom's just like, oh, actually you look and remind me of how you were when you were five, which is so interesting. So in some ways, my mom has been great because I think she just has learned, as long as your kids are happy, that's a miracle. So let them do whatever they're doing to be happy as long as it doesn't hurt someone else.
Elise Hu (39:14):
Yeah. Speaking of other people, and you don't have to say anything profound here, we have this moment to reflect. So obviously we're in this time where non cis, non-white identities are really under threat and in danger, especially trans children. So how are you making sense of it all and how are you hoping things will turn out?
Ash Perez (39:40):
I'm not making sense of it all. I think it's nonsense, but I think something that's different about me that has actually bothered a lot of my friends who are my allies, not even my trans friends, but my cis allies, is that I grew up really Christian. I had a lot of friends and college friends who voted for Trump, and I don't cut people out of my life or I try not to. I've only cut a few friends out of my life for direct transphobia against me. I got uninvited to my best friend's bachelorette party. She didn't feel comfortable seeing me shirtless, and it was Barbie themed. So it was like that was difficult, and that felt like a direct thing that was like, this is hurting me. I'm not going to allow this in my life anymore. But in general, I think the only way through this is for everybody to have more empathy. And it reminds me of, I don't remember the exact Maya Angelou quote, but I remember watching an interview with her where she was talking about the only way to get to the good is to address the evil in yourself and to see the evil in others as something that could be possible in you
(41:06)
Because a murderer, a thief, a bigot, homophobia, transphobia. We are products of how we were raised, what we listened to, where we were born. And I truly don't believe that most people want to be hateful or that most people want to be hurting each other. I think we've just grown up in a media environment and because of our phones and because of social media where it's too easy to believe that that's the truth of what people are like, but it's not, we were all just in the fires. We know what happens when people are really in trouble and people need each other. But I think we just haven't had to engage in that way. And Covid was an emergency that pulled us away from each other. We weren't allowed to run towards each other.
(42:00)
So the way that I'm dealing with this, and my friends know this, is like I don't read the news. I don't need to know how horrible things are for trans people. It's already terrifying to just be myself and be in my body. I know it's horrible. I know that shit's coming for us. So I tell my friends, please don't tell me the news unless it's imminent or important. And if you want to know how to help advocate for me on my behalf when I'm not there, because the last thing trans people and people of color need right now and disadvantaged women is to be a sounding board for all of the horror that's happening in the world. So I just try and play. You don't want
Elise Hu (42:41):
To be our pain sponge. I don't want to be anybody's pain sponge.
Ash Perez (42:45):
Exactly. Pain sponge, that's great. But honestly, the way that I'm coping is by making things, by making this second season of new Guy tries. When the first season came out and the reception was so warm, I had this moment of false like, oh my God, is this going to be the new? Are we in a post gender era? Because Will and Harper had just come out. And I was like, this is amazing. And then two months later, I was like, oh, no. And I had a second of fear of like, should we even make this second season? Is this going to put me in danger? Is it going to put more trans people in danger? And I had a very active talk with myself and reflection of like, I need to continue to be me, and I'm going to make this show with just as much joy as I made in the first season, because humanizing people has always been what brings us closer together. And all I can do as a trans person is to put my humanity on display. And then it's your choice whether you want to be a dick or not.
Elise Hu (43:56):
Beautiful. Ash Perez, thank you so much. And tell folks where they can find you.
Ash Perez (44:02):
Oh gosh, my address is No, just kidding.
Elise Hu (44:07):
Latitude and longitude, please.
Ash Perez (44:09):
Yeah, I'll give you the satellite pinpoint. If you guys text me, I'll send you a pin. But yeah, I am. I have a substack called, what are We even doing here? And you can find me on substack. You can I guess find me on Instagram, but I'm trying to not be on it. But mostly you can pay attention to second try. Watch the first season. There's a free trial right now. You can watch the first season. And then when the second season comes out, the most helpful thing you can do to have this media happen is to watch it and promote it and tell people about it. So thank you guys for giving me this space. Thank you
Doree Shafrir (44:51):
For coming on. Thank you for coming on. This is really, really great. Oh, it was really great for me to talk to Ash just personally because I haven't sat down and chatted with them in literally years. So it was nice to just catch up and just talk about everything that he's been through the last 10 years.
Elise Hu (45:23):
Yeah, no, I can tell too, it's nice when we have some of our friends on because there's that warmth and familiarity, and I think it really comes through in the tape, so
Doree Shafrir (45:32):
Totally. Totally.
Elise Hu (45:34):
Awesome.
Doree Shafrir (45:35):
Alright, intention zone. Intention zone. Elise, how has your sleep hygiene these days?
Elise Hu (45:42):
My sleep score average has reached an 83, which is very good for me. Yes, yes. I mean, I can very rarely get into the nineties. I think you have to sleep 14 hours to get into the nineties, but I am averaging an 83, which is pretty good for me, and I'm just trying to be better about it. But I do get thrown off sometimes when Issa decides to come up in the middle of the night to complain that Luna is snoring and that she wants to sleep somewhere else. And I'm like, well, where is that going to be? I don't want it to be with me. It'll disrupt my sleep hygiene.
Doree Shafrir (46:24):
Do they share a room?
Elise Hu (46:26):
Yes. The younger two share a room. So she ended up wanting to go to the back house, the Hugh Hideaway, and then I was like, no, I'm not getting up at three in the morning to walk you to the back house.
Doree Shafrir (46:37):
Right? Yeah, no. And then you
Elise Hu (46:38):
Hear Rob going, do you want me to walk her? And I'm like,
Doree Shafrir (46:41):
Well, I guess
Elise Hu (46:45):
Funny. I was like, I want her just to go back to bed and live with her snoring sister, but fine, whatever. Anyway, so it is better. And then this week I have noticed that I've been really neglecting Oscar the dog, Oscar the Golden. So this week, my intention is to go on some long walks with Oscar because he really needs them. He's a big dog, and if he doesn't walk, he starts getting into stuff. He starts looking for fertilizer in the yard, and it could just be very dangerous. He started trying to not go for the ant farm that we recently got.
Doree Shafrir (47:24):
Oh man.
Elise Hu (47:24):
So long walks with Oscar is going to be good for him, but also good for me.
Doree Shafrir (47:29):
Alright.
Elise Hu (47:30):
What about you? I know you are good about going on long walks with Henry and with
Doree Shafrir (47:34):
Bo? Mostly with Bo, but yeah, Henry doesn't always want to come on walks with Bo, but sometimes he does. And of course, if Matt's not here, he has to come on walks with Bo. I also, you know how Reddit will show you subreddits that you don't subscribe to that they think you'll be interested in?
Elise Hu (48:00):
Yeah, like Blake Lively stuff.
Doree Shafrir (48:02):
Yeah. Well, so they've been, occasionally there's a dog training one that comes up, but it's like some specific type of dog training. I forget exactly what it is. But anyway, I had always said that a lot of times I'll just let Bo lead the way, wherever his nose takes him will go, I'll block off that time and we can just do whatever. And I learned through this subreddit that there's an actual name for that, which is Sniff Walks. Oh yes. And they're like, really? I have never heard of this. They're really important for their mental health. Apparently allowing your dog to go on sniff walks is vital for their overall mental wellbeing. The act of sniffing provides mental stimulation and enrichment as it activates their brain and engages their senses. It's like solving puzzles or reading a captivating book for them.
Elise Hu (48:58):
Whoa. Okay. I
Doree Shafrir (48:59):
Need to,
(49:00)
So it's less even about both kind of old at this point. He's probably almost 10. We don't know exactly how old he is. And so the amount of actual physical exercise he needs is not that high anymore. As opposed to Oscar, who I'm sure needs a lot of physical stimulation, but he does need that mental stimulation. And I noticed that he is calmer when he gets those longer walks where he can just sort of meander and I don't have an agenda. And he's just like, he often has a route that he wants to take and he's leading me on that. So I'm like, all right, Bo. Anyway, sorry, just long aside about sniff walks and dogs.
Elise Hu (49:42):
Yeah, that's a great insight. Okay, I'm going to
Doree Shafrir (49:44):
Do
Elise Hu (49:45):
That.
Doree Shafrir (49:46):
Okay. So last week my intention was just rainy day stuff. I did do an indoor Peloton workout yesterday when it was raining. Good. Yeah, trying to just keep the old mental health up when I can't go outside. And I know having lived the first 35 years of my life in the Northeast, I am well aware that it is a privilege to only have a few days of the year where I can't go outside. But now I live in Southern California. I pay a lot to live in Southern California. So I'm like, boy, don't even get me
Elise Hu (50:24):
Started.
Doree Shafrir (50:25):
Yeah. I want to live that life. So this week there's some stuff in our house that we have just put off getting rid of, and I finally made a bulk item pickup request through the 3 1 1 app. So we're getting rid of a bunch of stuff this week and I want to hopefully get rid of a bunch more stuff next week. So this is amazing. I cleared off this table of junk in the driveway. I'm just trying to just get stuff out of here because I feel like it is just bad to have it around. It's making me crazy. So that's my intention for this week.
Elise Hu (51:12):
Cool. Alright, we'll check in next week on this.
Doree Shafrir (51:15):
Okay. All right, everybody. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Sam Junio, Sami Reed, our project manager and our network partners Acast. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time. Bye.