ramble [Music] welcome to best friends back all right the show where two high school best friends try the best friend thing again i’m stevie wynn levine and i’m nakin homaifa and today we’re talking all about the end of high school graduation graduation maybe a little bit of college you know we might get crazy once again stevie deciding to talk about something else and i realized um listen the fact that i am making full sentences right now and not just purely focused on the fact that right before we started recording a ginormous spider came down from the ceiling about six inches away from my face and we cannot find it is it well okay now i’m focusing on it but i i listen there’s gonna be a raw energy to this episode and it’s gonna be an energy of me looking around for this freaking spider it was not a small spider was it colored in any way did it it had poisonous marks on it an amber glow to the body yes oh that’s that’s what i was saying and then poor logan tried to come to my rescue while screaming i don’t normally do this which made me feel very very protected um and then i heard logan say a few times i killed it and then she keeps looking for it no i killed it no she did not kill it but i hope that it was really scared by the screaming the thing is like i just was in a rain forest i just came back from being in a rain forest for an extended period of time this is what i wanted to know weren’t you a round bud [ ] in my right ear oh my god what if i had a spider um you know it was raining and cold and i feel like maybe the bugs were like nah we’re we’re cool okay uh so yeah so for for our friends listening i just got back from roughly a week-long vacation i went up to the ho rain forest uh in washington serves you right yeah which um my dog sitter was like hope you see other hoes there and i was like sir nailed it nailed it oh a male dog sitter okay a male dog said her he’s a good joke he’s a gay male okay yeah yeah um and it was beautiful have you ever been up to washington to that area i’ve only been to no not to washington uh seattle but i haven’t done any of the outdoor stuff there well so we flew into portland we rented a camper van like a like a sprinter-esque van with a full freaking bed in it and like a little kitchen situation yeah and then we drove up the coast um of oregon to washington camped overnight on the coast like on the beach virtually which was gorgeous then went up to the rainforest then went up up to a different part of the rainforest came back down on the way back down to portland stopped at a oyster place on the coast that i’ve ordered oysters from in the past oh my god this freaking spider um and then spent the weekend in portland so it was like a whole situation it was a whole traveling situation i often plan vacations that don’t involve relaxing and i did it again what did you do for food in the camper [Laughter] we went grocery shopping before because naturally i planned out where the largest grocery store was before getting you know up into the woods and yeah planned out our little like meals that we were gonna have and it was raining virtually the whole time but also did you know there are things called rain pants it’s like a rain jacket but it’s for your lower half yeah we got rain pants we got rain jackets we went on a six mile hike through a rain forest to a waterfall we saw a black bear oh what did you do well so the whole hike i was like singing because i just wanted to make noise yeah um here i come yes here i come that was that’s like mostly the lyric that i was choosing it’s like here i come animals oh there’s this really annoying girl so this this hike like we were the only ones that we saw the whole time except for one person on the six mile hike into the middle of rainforest in the rain to a waterfall this is how remote it was but on another hike there were like 25 people around you at all times it was like that type of situation and there was this girl with like a bell hanging off the back of her backpack that was like ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding that you like obviously i think was if she was alone in the woods like yeah it was her here i come belle but i was like [ ] you are surrounded by 25 people jesus deeper into the forest and away from me what are you thinking that’s so annoying yeah it kind of disrupts the whole out in nature yeah yeah but then in portland which i’ve never been to portland before and that was also a good time keep portland weird portland’s very weird every uber driver was a different type of experience we had a um a drug dealer who uh offered us mushrooms and in like quite a like nicely poetic way i thought um we had a uber driver that belted out every lyric to every song we were listening to we had an uber driver from tillamook uh where are they right and there’s only 2 000 people and then also like encountered some really awesome fans some really awesome mythical beasts it turns out my my niche yeah is women between the ages of 21 to 35 who are either a waitress host or manager of a really great restaurant oh that’s a great niche yeah yeah did you get any hookups because of it i got some hookups but i got some like i mean not to get heartfelt not to like bring this podcast to a real area here but um just some like genuinely nice things that that these mythical bees said and and appreciated you know what what we do and um i just was like this is so nice and thanks for the free dessert and uh other treats uh really but really it was just like man it wasn’t just a because sometimes if you’re out with rhett and link they’ll get like a hey you you’re those guys you’re you’re you’re you’re famous right and it’s like yeah i mean if you you’re j why are you saying anything uh at this point but this was so that’s a weird question to answer like yes yeah i’m famous yeah exactly um but this was like you know heart felt like excuse me i don’t mean to bother you or you know that type of thing so so would you say like your fans are just generally more graceful yeah yeah that’s what i wanted to say that is so lovely yeah it was just a nice surprise and that’s a great way for cassie to remember that you were special oh my gosh cassie started one one of the encounters she started crying because she thought it was so nice i was like this is really nice i do wish i was with other people who weren’t impressed by me so they could be impressed by this situation but fine you can cry that um that’s also a nice response so how was your weekend any any tears for you lots of song lyrics um here i come here come on no i was at a wedding this weekend in in atlanta one of my friends from college and everybody was on the dance floor they were playing lots of high school hits actually for the first couple hours lots of little john lots of yin yang twins wow a lot of usher and i just haven’t heard these songs in a long time but as soon as they play they’re the songs you know every you know every lyric as it comes out okay and i just realized these are incredibly inappropriate lyrics and we’re just like everyone i don’t know we’re at a different phase of life where yelling like can i play with your panty line is inappropriate you know and so we’re missing a lyric love that one so i’m dancing with a group of friends and like me and a guy are kind of like looking at each other dancing and it gets that line and we both immediately divert our eyes do you know this person yeah we’re not okay but we’re like you can’t sing these lyrics and look into anyone’s eyes so everybody’s just like dancing and looking down but still screaming at the lyrics and then during this same song they look to the side and the groom is dancing with his with his mother-in-law and she’s just like everyone’s having so much fun but then it’s the part of the song that’s like danielle skate skate skate skates and the mother-in-law knew the words yeah well she she perhaps knew how to sing the words but did she suggest the meaning of the words that is highly doubtful and just is highly doubtful no she knew how to parrot it back and i just um and i just realized there’s like oh i i think that songs have either i’ve stopped listening to songs like that so yeah i don’t listen to music anymore honestly it’s just really all together it’s just too inappropriate yeah okay well turns out weddings are more pg-13 than i expected and uh so you marched right up to the dj and you were like sir excuse me we are only in our mid-30s we cannot be reciting lyrics like this i demand some nickel back ew and if you don’t play nickelback then i’m can you take i was gonna eat i was gonna say can you sing one nickelback song although i don’t think is that nickelback i think that’s the other group that kind of looked like them with free yeah is that yeah creed it’s creed okay logan’s looking for the spider constantly is really throwing me off otherwise i’ll stop i would totally know a nickel yeah i’m gonna also say that logan in the other room looking everywhere else is also throwing me off which is why that was such a disjointed story logan okay uh graduate you had you you also had a bunch of friends in town too no yeah you had yes it’s been a it’s been a couple weeks of high social high social time which is oh you guys getting high [Laughter] which i have had a ton of fun with but man man did we crash our last guest guest left yesterday it’s hard to host people like it drains energy out of you and it’s different yeah yeah yeah i’m i’m having a weird come down from like you know how sometimes if you’re away from your house i think it’s dependent on how many days and where you go then you come back into your house and you’re like what is this place it is so foreign what is that smell how do i drive to work the smell the smell the smell that’s the big one let me tell you we have a diffuser that cassie has been testing she’s convinced i don’t like any smell which i’m very particular about i could see that about you yeah but this new smell is like supposedly a sandalwood but to me i love sandals i love the idea of sandalwood i’m very hesitant on the hippie adjacent spelling spectrum because there’s this incidency like non-champa patchouli area where i associate it with like dirt and yeah so we walked back into the house and it smelled like sandalwood uh and you know it’s like it’s the same reason i don’t want to get a subaru like i don’t want to be i’m i’m really gay but like do i need to have a subaru do i need my house out loud you know so um basically i’m just trying to get used to smelling like a dirty clean lesbian hippie i like the version of sandalwood that’s like a men’s cologne yes yes that i think things that also are like wood but slightly burnt wood that’s my niche fire a little bit yeah which by the way my hair still smells like even though i have washed it numerous times since the soul campfire that we had it’s hard to have a campfire in the rain yeah how how did that happen when one night it wasn’t raining there was this camp spot that um it was a little bit more exposed it was like more of a state park campsite that we were in and there was a dude a lot of subarus up in washington oregon um yeah but there was a dude at the campsite that was like kind of next to us and we saw sorry for those who want to move on to graduation uh and um when we when we like parked the van and like went to go like you know sign the forms that you have to do whatever he had these like rainbow aviators on and he was like hey i’m assuming you can like register online or something and we’re like oh yeah you know being nice to him or whatever and then there was this woman with a small child that was like 15 feet away and so the assumption was like oh that’s a family and maybe they’re in a little tiff maybe they’re in a little fight or maybe the kid wanted to go adventure off whatever and we come back to the campsite uh shortly thereafter and there’s no woman and child so we were like maybe he the little kid had to go potty or i don’t i don’t know then surely thereafter this man is playing with giant pieces of wood and sticks as if they are swords still no wife no he’s like playing by himself playing by himself in his campsite area at this point we had been on a hike we’d you know we’re not just staying at this like little piece of land never saw the woman and the child ever ever again did you get an amber alert there was there was a big duffel bag at one point uh that he wheeled off oh my god are you do you think they were inside of that duffel bag they might have been inside of the duffel bag they might have been inside of the tent they might have actually not been his wife and kid which i think is the most realistic situation have you been watching a lot of like true crime stuff well it’s everywhere and also like yes did we google is there a man is there a couple fling from ohio yeah we did did we google like like should we tell the ranger about this yeah we did we kept an eye out okay so yes yeah [Music] anyway graduation uh a lyric or a song that comes to mind what’s that yes okay okay what do you think i’m about to say vitamin c yes [Music] should we do it together five four three two one as we i didn’t know where you were gonna start look at us 15 years later [ ] we still got it did i this might be a mythical bee story or maybe i told you at some point but like i had a friend vitamin c i don’t know where she is today but 10 years ago she was working at this management company that my friend was also working at just like as a normal human being and not vitamin c which is crazy to me and uh i sent my friend uh i think at the time an aim aim message is that what we use maybe email chat chat uh and it was a just a youtube link and she clicked on it and it was uh the vitamin c music video and her computer was at full blast and she was sitting next to vitamin c and she was like [ ] you and i was like yeah oh man well you want to know what vitamin c is doing now oh yeah i do since early 2019 fitzpatrick has served as a music executive for netflix she went from management company to nickelodeon to netflix that’s huge what’s her name colleen and fitzpatrick colleen thanks for listening oh do you think that’s what the c is in vitamin c oh colleen miss miss colleen fitzpatrick if you’re out there listening yeah just just just write in at hashtag kate grimsley let us know just to see in vitamin c come from colleen speaking of seas and grimsleys uh okay we have previously discussed you being the salutatorian not the valedictorian how i previously remembered i mean that’s right number one not to i remember a certain point where i was like very obsessed with where i ranked because i think it was i think we could see right like because there was um what’s that group of 10 people the marshalls the marshall marshall yes it was like the top 10 people right and that had the best grades got to all i remember was like they got to stand at the perimeter of us of the graduation of a certain event they got to play security at graduation well because remember the whole speech about like don’t lock your legs we’ve had several marshals faint [Laughter] and they say the same thing at wedding rehearsals to the bridesmaids oh okay don’t lie who also guard the event i cuz i remember i had gone to israel and my grades had slipped and spoiler alert i have my transcript from high school with me today uh this is insane to me you live in another state then you grew up your parents no longer live in the childhood house you have all of this material yeah this is incredible yeah i’m super organized so my grades slipped so i slipped out of the top 10 when i came back and i was very devastated i think i was like 11. and i really wanted to stand with my legs loose and you know show off my muscles but i didn’t get to oh yeah so i remember being so competitive all for what all to get into a good school i guess like that seemed like like the end goal of everything was like totally be at the top of the class and get into the best school and if you get into the best school everything else will fall into place and you’ll achieve everything that you want but you actually did those things you actually were at the top of the class he actually did get into the best school but i will tell you that like that mentality of like you have to be the best or get you have to get as close to number one as possible otherwise nothing is guaranteed so i remember even thinking like ooh number two that might that might be a problem do you know how close you were i think i was very close yeah sure like anywhere from like five to ten points away zero five percent i’m sure it was close because everything in the top ten was close yeah you know like how much how many more a’s could you get whatever you know but remember i remember thinking one thing like man if i didn’t take spanish maybe i could have been number one really she missed insta hated me wait let me see i think spanish was i think i gotta be in spanish i think that was one of my things and i’m sure i have this so freshman year always uh sophomore year all a’s junior year took a real took a real hit junior year i p ip ib can’t read now english that’s when i began to become illiterate i got a b that was count of monte cristo years honors spanish five four b that’s my sense go i be math ib math sl standard level no yes sl stan stands for ib math standard level b and then the only two classes i got uh a’s in were ap environmental science which everyone knows is a complete joke oh mr feeney he always had these red eyes oh my gosh our teacher’s name was mr feeney yes that’s cool i don’t remember that he was high he was he was a stone he had red eyes and everybody would joke that he now we definitely need to adr his okay because his career is nice well let me tell you it’s a cool name so we’re gonna have to add a really cool name and then ap government i got an a um i hope everyone’s enjoying this to be fair junior year was the hardest academic year yes but i also i was like just gone for a semester and uh that was very oh so you actually lucked out you left junior year was so freaking hard back to senior year all a’s except for ap spanish language gotta be so that’s right so yeah so i’m confirming for you i respect that you would have been number one uh had you not taken spanish what would you have taken though latin it would have a language a language right because in my head it was like you have to take a foreign language otherwise a college can’t take you i think you do i think i think you did that makes sense to me that you did who knows um okay so did you have to speak at graduation by the way i don’t remember that yeah i gave a speech i gave a speech was it just like um not as good as the valedictorian speech i probably had another ron burgundy quote that i used trying to make it relatable it was uh for those of you that go to the movies and you watch movies and you don’t spend all your time studying and trying to get into harvard here’s a quote here’s a quote guys i learned it from the internet i never even saw the movie [Laughter] yeah there was a speech involved my family printed out this banner from print shop deluxe remember that service you could make your own birthday cards and your own banners how large was the banner you printed on regular printer paper you print it at home but then you attach it but then back in those days i remember we thought it was really cool like oh we can do this stuff ourselves i never bought a birthday card in high school because i could customize my own on print shop deluxe i think i know what you’re talking about yeah i didn’t realize the multi uh multi-piece of paper banner situation what did your banner say uh i probably have a picture of it like congratulations yeah second best yeah yeah my parents were like better luck next time because my gosh i felt like the first semester of senior year for me was applying to colleges i’d like to like nine well okay tell me about that before you move on like where did you apply did you have your site set on harvard like were you like a little uh rory situation like what was your you were just like i want to get into an ivy league like where did you apply nope and nope okay i’ll tell you i applied to in-state applied to unc and duke uva harvard princeton yale stanford washu mostly ivy’s then but my number one school was duke okay my sister had gone to duke i had not been there duke i had a scholarship to go there i just my sister had the most amazing time yeah her friends were great she was traveling all the time it was funded by the school she just had an incredible time and i wanted something similar and so my sites were set on duke and harvard was actually the easiest application of all wow they didn’t have one of these like they didn’t have an extensive um supplemental application they’re just like we’re going to judge the [ ] out of you like based on your comment your entire life okay yeah um so harvard’s was just kind of like a it was it didn’t take much more work so it was easy the standard it was easier it was yeah yeah i was set on duke but um and once when i got in i remember remember this like i feel like when we were in high school was when electronic like email notifications were becoming popular yes electricity yeah yeah yeah yeah everything was on the edge of uh like in person versus internet like it seemed new like it was like okay like maybe our year was like the first year it was like you can actually do this online but like previously you were not able to do it so like it was not really chunky and like yeah yeah yeah oh my gosh and you would you would judge whether or not you got in based on the thickness of the envelope yeah and the postman knew college college like admission time and he would hand deliver when i when i got like a university acceptance he would bring it up to the door rather than oh what about i did not have that queensborough postman thank you so much oh you don’t even remember his name god i’m trash so did you get into all nine schools that you applied to and why did you not go to duke if you got in and you got a scholarship so here was the thing was turns out my parents were like this is our dream for you to go to harvard they didn’t tell me that but i kind of read through the my dad grew up in a village in iran and he came to the united states at 19 went through all all the kind of higher level education you could he never imagined that his kids could go to a place like harvard yeah so it was all very like when it happened it was significant for many reasons but to their credit they did not pressure me to go all they did was say like you need to go to the weekend where they have admitted students come yeah you need to go and make an informed decision about it because i was like oh my god it’s going to be full of nerds full of people that aren’t going to have fun meanwhile somebody could say that that’s what i was but i was ready somebody could say i was ready to kind of let loose a little bit in college and negine’s version of let loose yeah yeah i didn’t want to go somewhere where was it going to be this same like senior year all over again yeah you wanted to go somewhere where other people were having sex but not you and then you could talk about them yeah yeah so that was the thing that changed it i went to the weekend and i had a ton of fun and i realized like oh this is actually a place where i could see myself it was a really terrible weekend too in terms of weather it was raining it was cold it was nasty yet i had a ton of fun and i made a friends that i’m still friends with today at that weekend so that’s when that’s when i was like okay i can see myself here boy i want to know i want to know where else you got in or where you didn’t get in like so because harvard like yes i get it but for gilmore girls fans she always wanted to go to harvard and then she got into yale and then she went to yale so yeah so like what what were the other i i don’t think i got into princeton okay but you got into the other ivs but you still chose harvard yeah because it was harvard i think that was part of it and i also went to the weekend yeah but you did go to the weekends of the other schools yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah you’re right i like made some choices um my application experience was quite different because i didn’t have confidence in myself so i only applied to schools that i knew i was going to get into i mean i guess i had a certain amount of confidence but i didn’t apply to any ivs or anything i did not even entertain that idea my my mouth is open right now it’s a gape yeah i didn’t apply to any ivs well i’m i’m i don’t care about that i’m just i’m i’m surprised that you applied to places that you thought that you only that you could get into well okay here’s the thing i knew that i wanted to do something in the entertainment industry i didn’t know if i wanted to be a producer or an entertainment lawyer when i was really young i wanted to be an actor and then i was like well i wasn’t like my parents were like what about a lawyer so i knew like okay something in that particular realm so i was more interested in like who had the best program for that particular thing but i also was super motivated by like getting the hell out of the south and like being gay somewhere else i just didn’t quite understand that like you know i chose syracuse because well don’t they have a great they have a great program they have a great television radio film program so i went to school for television radio film and then my minor was in um entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises so actually i kind of landed in a in a really uh spot on spot spot on spot um they really it was a smart school so um i have a vast vocabulary but i when i went to go visit syracuse it was the perfect day which let me tell you my piece of advice don’t go to syracuse it is miserably cold it is so cloudy we had actually looked up this past weekend um because everywhere we go cassie tries to convince me that we need to move there because she doesn’t like la very much so she started looking up stats about the amount of rain and clouds in portland um and then i was like can you compare that to other cities contextualize it for me exactly because if you look up like the rainiest city in the u.s it’s um by like amount of rain not about not like each day so i was like look up the cloudiest city and i believe number one was rochester which is right next to syracuse and number two was buffalo uh which is right next to syracuse so it’s like it’s so cloudy it snows the majority of the year it would snow in in april i would walk backwards to class i would have like one inch of my forehead showing like uggs were in terrible situations my uggs looked terrible and my nose was always rudolph red and i really disliked i’m sorry uh syracuse like just the the place we have numerous uh mythical crew members that are from syracuse which is odd oh interesting well okay well i would like to say that then similar advice visit the school no that’s so that’s the thing so i i yeah so i visited in in april but it was like sunny completely like a classic quad and i was like this is school like this is a college and this is why i want to go here the other places i applied like i applied to um some schools in the dc area because i thought you know people were going there so like george washington and american and of course unc which looking back i’m like dad unc is such an amazing school and like it wasn’t even all right you know kind of list because it was like of course it was too close to him yeah yeah yeah sorry unc story remember salty boy yes from our senior year i remember he really wanted to get into unc and a bunch of girls got in that year and he didn’t or he was wait listed and he like throughout second semester senior year was going around being like yeah unc is really competitive for guys that’s why all the girls got in gosh people made a lot of excuses that year a lot of excuses did you ever say anything in your college applications about your identity whether it was your queerness your [ ] jewish being anything you know i can’t i told you that my my like main essay was about finding nemo i can’t i can’t even recall why i don’t even know how that tied it i don’t know what i wrote i certainly did not write about being gay at all at all no um i but i can’t remember anything else other than that why did you do you remember what you wrote i remember the the the identity thing came up where you had to like say your ethnicity or something like that your race or ethnicity yeah and that was a really big debate in my household because 2006 was not a pretty year for iranians in the news it was like a lot of bad stuff was happening with the president at the time ahmadinejad he like claimed that the holiday cost didn’t exist there was missile testing so like iran wasn’t looking good and my dad was convinced that saying like admitting basically that i was iranian and not saying iranian-american or just like other would be held against me huh and we don’t have too many data points to prove him right or wrong but it was a time in history when it felt like a um what’s the word like a liability yeah iranian um and all three of us uh my sister myself my brother every time we we applied to school my dad was like please don’t tell them you’re iranian like you don’t know how that impacts you and we all chose to say it huh so was your mom on the other side of the uh i think my mom was kind of like she probably agreed with my dad she’s like well why mix it up it’s a it’s an unknown variable um because this is also a few years after 9 11. yeah people were not people were not pro middle east yeah but yeah that’s why i wondered whether or not anything any part of your identity was like i don’t know an issue no and applying i mean i wouldn’t have even yeah at that time i was barely admitting to myself that i was gay so i certainly would have been like hey school i know i’m going to get into anyway i just wanted to let you know before myself and anyone else i know that i am gay so if the a’s and b’s on my you know maybe there was like a subconscious metaphor of finding nemo yeah nemo was other vaginas anyway speaking of [Music] okay so when you said you made friends at your like weekend yeah so i had a uh they had like a a jewish group house or something maybe no chabad is like a um more like hello sorry house maybe maybe that’s what it was and they had like a orientation for freshmen coming in that like happened a few days before you know everyone got there so that’s what i did um to make friends and i had friended this girl on facebook that was in this group like you could you you know because remember facebook was like you had to have your edu email address to get a facebook and so as soon as you got it like that summer before you went it was like oh yes facebook and then you went on and then you friended a bunch of people which seems so odd because there wasn’t like a lot of people on there so you know oh yeah i was friending randos yeah well one of the girls that i friended i met in real life at this the pre-orientation situation and then so that became like my entry freshman year friend group but remember i was closeted and so it was like i was just like this i guess this group of straight girls is who i’m gonna hang out with um and i feel like that happens to a lot of people going into a new place like that like you befriend some people at the start and then you maybe don’t become friends with them as you like find yourself or find others that are more interesting yeah yeah um that group was also i remember the like awkward icebreaker of sitting around in a circle and introducing yourself to everyone and there was a guy in that group who i was like oh he’s cute i was like i mean like objectively attractive like if we’re gonna keep faking these things um you had your turn you might be one um but i don’t remember when but shortly thereafter he came out to me and i was like okay yeah that makes sense checks out um and he actually was the first one that i ever came out to and yeah and so there that was like one guy from that particular group that i kept in touch with and he wound up dating one of my other friends that i was friends with uh my freshman year when i went from hanging out with the straight girls to hanging out with the the gay kids quite a transition uh between the two but one thing i remember about the straight girls is i decided we already talked about how it was a mess my my freshman year of college um but i decided you know we’d get like the big handles of cheap vodka and you’d like filter them yeah yeah and we’re drinking like the shittiest possible stuff but whenever i bartended i played a little you bartended oh like at the party like your local at like the other half of the dorm room where you pour like juice into a cup you gave yourself such a big title i had to well i mean back then that was a drink it was like coke and rum or you know whatever it was they call it a rum and coke um i decided you know what i’m gonna not put a lot of alcohol in these drinks and see how these girls behave when they think that they’ve had some alcohol it’s a whole placebo test and it was always a fun test for me because perhaps straight wasn’t the best word to describe well perhaps straight isn’t the best word to describe any any girl really who is a freshman in college uh so we had some good times we had some oh good times before i was like maybe i’ll maybe i’ll find the actual out gay people okay you know what’s really what’s what’s something that we really haven’t talked about what the hell happened to us we just kind of i was i was talking to zach about it this weekend he was like okay so did something happen where you and stevie then just stopped talking did you guys visit each other at college did you i was like no we didn’t visit i didn’t know people were visiting each other at college he was like yeah all my friends would his friends would travel cross country to visit each other in college that wasn’t even an option in my mind no that wasn’t a thing we were we had too much work to do we had too much study i remember we had we had some crazy facebook wall back and forth did we i feel like in that in that era people would write anything on facebook there was no sense of like everyone can see this so we had a lot of those kinds of back and forth but we just kind of yeah well definitely in all honesty i think a big part of it for me was the whole coming out thing like i you know we talked about when i came out to you but i did i felt like that separated me from my past in a lot of ways for some reason yeah it was kind of like i took this whole like southern conservative thing and i kind of applied it to everyone even though that wasn’t the case so it was like me kind of saying like this is a new new chapter and like why step back into the past in a lot of ways um but also i think it just was like difficult and you have to work for friendships and i didn’t know that at the time speaking of pieces of advice if you want to have maintain a friendship uh from your past you gotta work for it you gotta work for it it’s it’s just like a romantic relationship like we treat boyfriend girlfriend partners as these like investments and i feel like i’m i’m learning now in my in my 30s that friendships platonic ones are just are just like that they are all they all require like time quality time words of affirmation all of this stylish touch for some of us touch you know what actually i i remember specifically one friend from high school who came to visit me my freshman year at syracuse art school boy but so he was still in high school because he was a year younger than me um and i also remember actually the older girls that i was friends with i would visit them in okay unc so this is like everybody but negine no it was like i’m making a pair i’m saying like i was a senior in high school and i went to go visit people who were freshmen in college he was a senior in high school then he came to visit me but no like freshman to freshman uh contact you know um i don’t know why i’m like waving my arms and like putting my hands together uh anyway so he came up to visit me at syracuse and this is uh after i decided to befriend a lesbian and a gay guy and i also was not out at this point i just happened to be best friends with these two and we imbibed as one did in the dorms because we were underage and couldn’t go anywhere else and the girl i was friends with and art school boy who i the girl i would later date art school boy i never dated they decided to run at each other as fast as they could i don’t know we weren’t red rose from guinea rover yeah they i don’t know if it was like a like an embracing like greeting i don’t i don’t remember but like i just remember the two of them running at each other in the hallway as quickly as possible him tackling her her hitting her head on the back of you know on the on the floor but they were so drunk that they were just like laughing hysterically i’m don’t really understand what’s going on he he like picks her head off the floor there’s like a little puddle of blood on the floor and so then i’m immediately like oh god i gotta snap into you know taking care of the situation mode they won’t let you enjoy one freaking yeah yeah i’m like okay we’re uh we’re underage we’re drinking we have to get rid of that evidence however we can because i’m gonna have to call an ambulance and uh and yeah and so i was like what a great visit uh for art school boy to come up for this situation so and i also like for some reason wasn’t wearing a shirt at the time um and so i’m like okay everyone hide all of the alcohol sit here i’m gonna call the ambulance to come the police and the the emts come in um i’ve put on a shirt at this particular point and then we have to take her to the hospital to go get stitches in the back of her head and she also has what appears to be a concussion at this point um so we go to the hospital and i like i’m having all these what i think like serious conversations i’m really holding it together and then like as we’re exiting the nurse who like you know put the bandage or whatever over the stitches and like was telling me like you need to wake her up every however long she was like um and by the way your shirt’s on inside out and backwards smooth clearly everyone knew like we were just drunk dumb teenagers who had gotten themselves into a mess um but yeah that’s the only visit that i recall happening and and then we all slept like you know we’re all slept in the same room and i had like an alarm that went off every however many hours to wake her up and like he was like welcome to college welcome to college wow it’s a great story that’s a really great story um okay well here’s the thing it’s episode 12 of best friend’s back all right and it also happens to be the season finale of best friend’s back all right friends i’m we made it to the finale we’ve i’ve never been i have never been part of a single finale oh i think this might be disappointing i didn’t really have anything planned other than to say that it’s the finale and explain to me and why it’s the season finale not the series finale because okay so here’s the thing the premise was can we bring a friendship back to life i think check jerry [Laughter] so here’s the thought now that we’ve revived the friendship now that we’ve had 12 episodes of high school adolescent exploration why not close the chapter on that kind of past relationship and re-establish excitement close need to go back to it and then for season two we can explore whatever we want oh yes it’s gonna get wild i mean i’m talking gynecology i’m talking urology [Laughter] actually it’s actually going to be a very specific narrow tight focus that we’re gonna have for season two because we got a lot of male listeners here so i don’t want to i don’t want them oh i thought we got a lot of mail i was like oh my god we got mail oh we got guys i would i would love to receive paper fan mail so mom if you’re listening please send you know send me some fan mail my address um i think our mail listeners would love to hear about uh fiorala topics like yeah yeah yeah but we also pee yeah oh you know well urology isn’t about urine no it’s about the male the male parts i didn’t know that oh yeah yeah yeah oh okay straight face can’t tell if she’s serious or not can’t tell if she knows or not it’s okay in the second season we’re also going to be just exploring a lot of topics that we don’t have information about right because we don’t have to be experts in order to have a conversation about something this is going to be a particular challenge for stevie oh my god i do not in that in that and they don’t even entertain doing an episode about urology in that really well fine fine we can do an episode about urology fine because all of the male is telling us that we need to do an episode about urology oh um wow i hope this is really enticing for you all and you’re really celebrating the season two of best friends back you know what i hope that you miss us just to feel the sensation of you know happiness when we return and that return date is on a piece of paper that is not my transcript oh here it is still spider-free that return will be july 8th with an all-new season where we start a fresh chapter of friendship beyond high school you want to do you want to just read it one more time and then this time pretend like you’re saying it you’re coming up with it on the spot but we’ll be back july 8th with an all new season where we’ll start a fresh chapter of friendship beyond high school and don’t worry you can still tweet at us with hashtag gaygrimsley uh and um yeah that’s that was convincing right that was i’d like to say though just for the record one more time no i really have enjoyed doing this with you what a fun life you’re being sincere what a fun way to rekindle a friendship yeah this has been really nice and let me tell you it’s also really nice to listen to really bad podcasts every once in a while and remind yourself like episode episode one was fine again i didn’t say one i said episode what yeah sure fine friends we will miss you for four weeks approximately we will see you back on july 8th we cannot wait cannot wait to talk about all types of things with you if you have any suggestions of what you would like us to talk about tweet at us uh use that hashtag and um as always thanks for listening to best friends back all right you can catch brand new episodes starting july 8th every friday so make sure you follow so you don’t miss an episode hey and if you need other podcasts to listen to in the meantime we have a whole swath of delicious mythical podcasts including a hot dog is a sandwich which is actually delicious because they talk about all kinds of culinary quandaries highly recommend checking out a hot dog is a sandwich with josh and nicole if you’re enjoying this podcast please leave us a review you can follow at mythical pods on tick tock for clips to share with family and friends you can follow mckeen nakeen nikki did i [ __ ] it up it’s okay it’s just practice don’t feel embarrassed uh well can i do it you said it right i did yeah you can follow him again at nagin and me everywhere at stevie w levine and of course you can hear me every monday through friday on good mythical morning with rhett link at youtube.com good mythical morning i’ll see you there don’t forget to do your summer reading you