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 when levine and i’m nikkinhomaefad and today we’re gonna be talking about sex relationships and this is high school so boys ew ew hey how’s it going hi i’ve missed being next to you i’m just like watching you through this zoom and it’s just a little bit different it’s just not the same yeah it’s true it’s literally not the same how was your how was your week what have you been up to week was pretty good it’s um the weather is fantastic here which has meant that zach and i have a new morning routine like going outdoors yeah we go outdoors so we have been going on a early morning walk every day with our dog kismesh and then which has just been amazing just to go out to the park walk kish measures off leash no one is there it’s fantastic and then we come home we drop kishmish off and then we both go to the gym together oh it’s really great oh that sounds so healthy everything about that why is there no one else at the park i was going to ask you if you ingrained yourself into that like weird ass like early morning healthy people situation but like no one else in atlanta is doing that he’s doing that well it’s it’s also a new park so i don’t think everybody knows about it yet oh okay it’s on the up and up got it it’s on the up and up we are early adopters we go to the gym and also not a ton of people there but new gym it’s also a new new building i feel like you can you can tell a lot about a person though by the way they behave in a gym what do you what do you mean like how much noise somebody makes when like grunting weights oh okay grunting how much how how conscientious they are of other people maybe they’re just weak and they can’t help i you know i i don’t even attempt to lift up a weight what would happen fair fair okay so grunting while lifting right you can’t control your body all the time but like you can control how much time you spend on a certain piece of equipment okay for example right and so there are these people that i swear to you they the entire time the 60 odd minutes that were there okay don’t brag i’ve monopolized a single piece of workout equipment got it do you see me hovering do you see me hovering i’m hovering because i’m interested in using that piece of equipment okay uh so there’s no one at the park but the people at the gym are just pissing you off for using the equipment and grunting yeah so i i i myself did a little bit of lifting and grunting this past week i’d lifted my suitcase into the overhead compartment of an airplane uh twice in fact where were you going we were in new york the guys did kelly and ryan and fallon it was their eighth time on fallon which is insane i had emailed the producer that we usually work with and i was at the subject line said like excited for the sixth time question mark and she was like it’s actually the eighth time and i was like mind blown that’s a lot of times in the past i think it’s i think the first time was eight years ago so it’s like a it’s become an annual thing i i guess but we were there for about 48 hours it was a whirlwind situation i don’t know if i grunted as i lifted my suitcase but uh i have business stories there’s there’s nothing exciting that i have stories about but like so okay so i’m sorry jimmy fallon and kelly and ryan are pretty exciting it’s exciting but like you go go watch those clips that’s the exciting part of those things um the reality of the situation is that we had multiple meetings that we are also going to uh in between the appearances and the following day and you know i think i think a good portion of my time people may not know involves meetings and calls and not things that are that fun but when you’re in new york city and you’re sitting at these like board tables and people are wearing suits it’s like a different kind of meeting sure and i had a little mishap involving nuts uh in the meetings where i it was an early morning meeting and uh you know i had like some espresso and a couple pieces of dried fruit that i had brought along with me and then we went to this meeting and i was thinking to myself that seems like an appropriate thing to have before a meeting you’ll be fine but the thing about me is if my stomach is empty it it growls very very loudly and so the producers on gmm actually know when it’s quote pistachio time on set because they can hear my stomach growling and i have to go up and like get pistachios is what i usually get to fill my stomach that sounds like the loudest thing to have to have on set well there’s some separation uh so that so that i’m not heard but um okay so i had my book bag with me like off to the side and i knew that in my book that i had nuts but this is like a fairly small room there’s only like five people and we’re going through like a powerpoint presentation and my stomach starts growling and i’m like now all i can think about is the etiquette of the room my stomach is growling these people are wearing suits it’s a very intimidating situation and i have a choice i can either let my stomach growl even louder it is like monstrous like it is unacceptable how loud my stomach growls or i can right now i’m thinking like it’s like a vitamix exactly like a vitamix or i can like reach for the nuts and i know that if i just get a handful of nuts i won’t growl so there’s a couple of false starts that i have you won’t growl i won’t growl and there’s a couple of like reach for the bag but no no don’t eat the nut situations before i convince myself like you need to eat the nuts girl and so like i pick like a particularly loud slide and i like reach and i get a handful of nuts out of my bag and no one says anything i’m like should i mention that i’m having nuts like is there a fun joke i can slip in about me having nuts but no i don’t mention it and my stomach stops growling and i’ve clearly eaten nuts in front of everyone and no one said anything and then we get out of the meeting and i was like guys i’m really sorry that i that that the nut thing happened and of course both fret and link are like we saw the nuts we saw that you were eating the nuts we didn’t know if there was anything to say about the nuts we think it’s okay that you ate the nuts but it was just one so they they were also wrapping their brain for a nut joke no i think it was just like we all don’t normally go into those situations so they were like i don’t know maybe that thing was okay so the nut thing was fine but another mishap that i had in a business sense earlier was we had an external conference call and i accidentally said the c word and i can’t even say what the c word is because i find it to be so bad and i’m not british it was not it was awkward and i didn’t mean to say it but i was in the middle of a really great speech and i was trying to say the word content oh my gosh okay i thought you were hungry again and it just came out no no bad uh no and i said it and i quickly corrected myself but it was out there i could see i could see everyone’s face i could see everyone registering that i just had said it but no one wanted to you know call it out because we don’t have that relationship with this external team i was talking to um and uh i just have to live with the fact that i said the c word speaking of c words today’s episode what’s going on girl [Laughter] well okay so we’ve touched on in past episodes i think some of the themes that led us to this episode you know we’ve talked about kind of us being good girls in a lot of ways um for me we’ve talked about me being closeted in high school but we didn’t really get into you know the relationships that i had that weren’t uh secret um and we’ve touched on as well you know the expectations that were on both of us but but a lot of expectations that were on you and kind of how that led to your lack of dating life in a lot of ways because it wasn’t something that was necessarily allowed but today i think that we figured we’d dive in to more specifics in the world of relationships and dating and and sex because there was so much stuff going on i just think that we we both had different touch points for it for instance i think all of my touch points are very um performative right like the relationships that i had with uh i was gonna say gentlemen but boys in high school were all for show it was all right to try and hide the reality of what was behind the scenes i am interested in learning more about this because i didn’t feel like the guys you dated were kind of random okay and here’s the thing a lot of sense to me here’s the thing they weren’t random because i did the really [ ] up thing of going who are my friends talking about that they like or have interest in because that’s who i should like or have interest in really yes it’s so messed up but the because i think in my mind i was like listen i don’t give a [ ] about any of these guys i can’t i mean of course everyone can tell like who’s an attractive person but like i was just like i don’t actively want to date any of these people but like if my friends think this person is cool or they want to date this person then it indicates to me that this person is dateable i’m not saying this was the right thing to do and i shouldn’t have even dated anyone and i feel kind of bad for the guys that i did date and you know you you know one i don’t really feel bad for the one dude that you know that’s really funny this is like you were like who which guy can help me mask my lesbianism and how can i also lose a friend how can i also lose a friend in the process i never lost okay so so i think you you obviously know about the guy that i dated senior year and we can we can talk about that but what i don’t think you know and or maybe you don’t remember is the guy i dated my junior year who i also had my first kiss with was he at grimsley no because i remember i went to israel for a period of time my junior year for like half the year and this was a guy that i met in that program and the other girls that were with me from grimsley who were a grade older than i was oh i had no idea you went on this semester abroad with other people you knew oh yeah yeah that’s why i went okay so this was an international romance well okay let me start at the beginning so i went went to this um you know semester abroad in israel program and there were a number of other high school students who were there most were i think most were seniors because i was junior and i was a year younger and they were from all over i believe all over the united states i don’t think it extended to to different different countries oh my god i just said this seaworld now i did not hear it what is wrong with you that’s all i can think about um anyway so there was this one dude that was there and the the group of ladies that i um knew from grimsley who were with me were like oh my god he’s so cute and he’s so sweet and he was like an okay looking guy i think like he he had i remember he had like really pretty blue eyes and then then just look like a dude i don’t know i don’t know how to describe dudes they you know what i mean he was doodly on a one to ten scale level of attractiveness well he had like a little bit of a maybelli maybe like a slight nerd vibe maybe like a a kind of um like an rei thing going on you know what i mean okay a little hippie-ish a little hippie-ish outdoorsy he had curly uh brown hair he was from atlanta oh my god yeah so he’s he could be listening because we’re because we’re broadcasting in atlanta um so um and his name was dean which also for me as a high schooler i was obsessed with gilmore girls i was a dean girl i was a dean girl because i didn’t understand that jess was clearly the hotter one and that people were more into him but i thought dean was like the nice one who wouldn’t touch you and that’s what i was into anyway so uh i remember this very clearly my my first real kiss because you know we had our own rooms it was like a kind of a bad dorm and there was a like wall of closets in like our shared space that i shared with my roommates and my parents had shipped uh it was hanukkah so they shipped like eight little presents because you know for hanukkah every night you were present mom and dad if you’re still listening those were the days huh haven’t gotten those eight presents in a while just one just one will do also oh my god i hope you’re not listening because i just said the c word earlier and i want to talk about kissing boys and i just don’t want you to listen anyway our parents are definitely listening my mom mentioned something the other day that alluded to the fact she was listening she was upset about something i said about the puppet troupe origin story or something and and she was like i only listened to that part and then i was thinking about it and i was like where did that part hit in the thing that was not i don’t really understand how you could have just listened to that i’m gonna you’re listening no i’m gonna pretend that they’re not listening i’m pretending that you’re not listening mom um so i went to this closet that had uh one of the gifts in it and he had followed me in that’s the thing about boys they [ ] follow you everywhere they’re just everywhere they just wanna oh god um anyway so uh i had opened the gift and then he like leaned in to give me a kiss which thinking about it it’s like it wasn’t a gift from him why the heck was he giving me a kiss after opening my my parents gift was it food maybe he wanted some of them [Laughter] and i am sorry dean it is on me it is not on you but it was a terrible kiss it i guess i didn’t understand at that time how to kiss what a kiss was for like i just like i checked it off the list i was like this is something that needs to be done it’s disgusting i don’t want to do it with you but i think i do need to break it down i really need to break down the kisses the mechanics of this kiss okay yeah yeah so one was it lip to lip lip to tongue tongue to tongue teeth to teeth okay have you seen i don’t know if you’ve seen this tick tock thing going around where there’s a specific way that women put on chapstick and then there’s a specific way that dudes put on chapstick have you seen this no but i’m just thinking about my husband doing it exactly so when you put on chapstick you like yeah you go you kind of like go for each lip like nicely and it looks like nice that you’ve put on chapstick that way and that’s just how women put on chapstick and when a dude puts on chapstick he makes like a puckery annie hole with his freaking lips and then he like just like takes the chapstick like it’s like a crown and he’s a kindergartner and shoves it in that’s what this kiss was like that’s what like it was forceful i can’t even answer was it lip tongue teeth it was all those things like at one time okay so you guys kissed and then and then did you say anything to him he it unclear to me if he too was like this is terrible i feel like not i think that he was probably like this is awesome he didn’t talk like that i mean he was he talked like an rei guy like i don’t know so then we were like kind of dating i guess like you know like you didn’t really have formalized conversations like that in high school but like you were go you were going out yeah like we were we were like kind of a thing i guess and you know i got a lot of pats on the back from from the girls who also thought that he was really cute and i was like okay great dean and the dean in the bank um hats on the back and daggers in the back no they they they they were happy very happy for me yeah okay great then flash forward we’re back in the states and he lives in atlanta and we’re in greensboro and he’s like keeping in touch with me and i think this was a probably an aim situation an aim situation like yeah you know i’m already into it because you know you couldn’t like t9 text this situation out like it took forever to like click through to the you know no one was texting at this time it was expensive uh that too there was no unlimited plan so he somehow he was gonna come visit and i think it was for some dance i i’m i think that i took him to maybe a dance at some point no i know not really okay okay i’m sorry a guy that you dated in high school was going to travel on a plane to your home and ostensibly stay in your home now in my home i think he stayed with he was going to book a hotel i don’t know who he stayed with he must have had like a guy friend in town or something yeah girl that’s a big deal yeah the kiss was bad but this is good girl you fly you fly all the way up or maybe he drove maybe he drove five hours who knows i could care less i don’t have any memory of the hardship for him just for myself and i remember when he came up one i was like openly not excited about him uh traveling up and i remember my mom saying something after i came out that she was like yeah you always seem to be really bothered by the guys that you were dating or i had some kind of relationship with and i was like yeah mom i was they follow you everywhere mom and i remember there was some kind of sleeping bag situation there was some kind of like sleep over at someone’s house and he was there and he was next to me and and we had to kiss because that’s what we had to do and i am telling you just like terrible like terrible more chapstick kissing um and uh anyway i don’t remember how that ended i was probably me saying like i need to focus i mean my school work and you live too far away for this long distance relationship i don’t know it wasn’t real but we didn’t really have a relationship and can i ask about your parents no i want to know like how how did they feel about you dating somebody was that were there any like rules or any any issue they had with it no because i think i think they kind of knew like i think they kind of knew that i was gay or i wasn’t into the situation and that i would police myself you know like i think they were like oh this could be you know not not great that she’s dating a guy but like and also i think they trusted me that like i wasn’t gonna you know do anything stupid but we also just never really talked about that stuff like i was never comfortable talking with my parents about relationships or who i liked and i think maybe part of it was because i was closeted and gay and i certainly wasn’t gonna talk about that with my parents but i also that’s just not the relationship that we had there wasn’t there wasn’t a lot of discussion about who do you have a crush on who you going with to this dance and i don’t remember that for my sister necessarily either and even into adulthood we just don’t talk about that kind of thing it’s like your parents just aren’t interested in your life [Laughter] if you’re listening mrs levine that was a joke you’re a great mom wow boundaries they had such boundaries i don’t know what it was i think it it might be like a touch of that kind of conservative nature too because i also don’t remember ever getting this the sex talk or anything like that like i don’t think that was broached ever um so i think it was it’s just a little bit of old-school parenting in that way and i think it was a little bit of just being a little conservative but also i i clearly didn’t like these guys and so i don’t think my parents were like don’t they take things too far because they were like she she’s gay i wonder if some of this could have had to do with like if they knew you were gay but nobody was talking about that’s what i’m saying that’s what i’m saying i wonder if they didn’t talking about it meant that they would then have to talk about you being gay yes i think so but even today i wouldn’t like i after recording this episode i wouldn’t go and ask my mom that it’s just not the type of relationship i could i could ask for you yeah can you aim her can you instant message my mom and uh and walker through things if she takes her away message off i would be happy to but she has kept that thing on for [Music] years certainly you know the senior year situation because that took place in the states the people i know also this [ ] went to israel once and then she comes back saying the states the states you only see in the united states of america if you spent significant time outside of the united states i love it do you okay i i think so i mean yes i’m super worldly um okay yes grimsley bay i remember grimsley bay okay tell the people listening from your perspective so i dated this guy my senior year for a very brief period of time just give your give your perspective on that um yeah you’re making like a disgusted face which is a good start it is a good start no and he probably is listening let’s be real well it’s less it’s a it’s not it’s a confused face because when i said i like the guys that you went out with or liked or pretended to like it was random because there was no theme i guess you’ve revealed you remember multiples because i don’t know if i do because you guys that you chose to go to dances with which we know now that they weren’t surprised you liked exactly yeah they were guys that you were somewhat associated with right and in those days like we were not nuanced in our relationships we’re talking about our relationships with the opposite sex right so they were all like a potential and everything so interesting yeah i i just thought like we’re friends so we’ll go to this school dancing there will be pressure so this person that you dated he didn’t make sense to me at all because you guys had such a different sense of personality and humor and interest and look at religion and there was i mean you picked the person that was at least like you yeah i think he was also very religious wasn’t he oh yeah he was really into it maybe it was like this long-term conversion plan to get me saved i love that for you yes but no it was just like you were so masochistic now that i think about it because that was the last person you should have dated given who you were well okay so i do remember older friend number three the name is familiar so she was one of my friends that was in the grade above us and she was friends with all the girls that i went to israel with and like part of that friend group that i was very close with at the time the same friend group that the the girl that i had like a relationship with um yeah was in this friend group as well and um she in particular had a crush on this guy that i dated my senior year and this is she should have just crushed me like she should have just been like you know we’re over we’re not friends anymore i can’t believe you’re dating this guy because that was a situation i would have helped you yeah no because i i’m i’m she is somebody that i actually from time to time do text with and talk to and really really love a lot and we know it would have helped you end the relationship with beard number one sooner oh if she was like yeah yeah no and and i think that we unpacked this like years ago when when we were talking about it and i apologized and kind of explained hey the only reason i dated him was because i got the signal from you that like he was someone worth dating i also don’t know why the hell she would have dated him because she’s so cool and funny was he mean to you was he like no he he was very sweet except for when i broke up with him he told everyone he thought that i was a lesbian that wasn’t very what yeah yeah i don’t remember this yeah but i don’t think anyone believed him because clearly i’m not so older friend number three and i kind of i believe i if i haven’t apologized to her i know she’s listening right now and i didn’t give a [ ] about that guy and i’m sorry that i dated him anyway so so you’re so good at apologies by the way i can’t wait to receive one from you and hate you for the rest of my life no i i think we already talked about it so this guy i think i think obviously had a crush on me i got the signal that he was somebody worth dating i started dating on him and the dating was less like we’re going to go on dates and more like he would just freaking show up at my house after school like he would just be at my house after school and i was like we didn’t discuss this situation i am annoyed that you exist i would like to just pretend that i’m going out with you at school as his facade but not bringing it into reality and he would there’d always be some kind of like sports game on that like he wanted to watch with me and i was like listen i don’t like boys and i don’t like sports in this situation keeping me away from homework which i do like more than you and whatever sports game is on but it was like i think that’s what people were doing when they dated back then like it was like sports watching and at their house so i was like i remember like he would we would be on the couch and he’d have his arm around me watching whatever sports game oh oh god it was terrible your grades suffer the semester you dated him no also after i came back from uh being abroad uh i didn’t i didn’t really care that much because that’s what ruined my grades and i ruined my grades i mean got got a couple bees in there so i remember some chapstick kissing with him not as bad as the dean situation i’ll say okay and then i remember a particularly awkward valentine’s day and it’s funny because the other day i heard this car driving by my house and they were blasting music and the song they were blasting was hey there delilah which i think we all remember yeah yeah it’s a funny song to blast out your car door in 2022 car door that’s not what i meant you know what i mean well this connects to the valentine’s day story okay because on valentine’s day i came home and he wasn’t there oh thank god but i love this idea that he would be there without you sometimes he would sometimes he would and he because he was like that type of guy too who like tried to have a relationship with my parents like he was that that nice guy type of thing yeah yeah now i feel bad i feel bad for the support it’s okay to feel bad i wanted to have a girlfriend and i remember my sister like i walked in the door and my sister was kind of like i don’t think you’re gonna like this it’s like she kind of gave me that that look and maybe even said that and i was like i don’t know what that means and i walked upstairs to my room and like when i got up to the top of the stairs i could hear hey there delilah like playing out into the hallway and then i walked into the room and there was like a teddy bear on the bed and like flowers and like the speaker playing hey there delilah and like a card that was like happy valentine’s day something sweet um yeah and i instead of being like oh this is so sweet i was like i was like oh god mom someone’s broken in i was like this has gone too far and i think shortly thereafter i broke up with him because i was like everything about the situation i don’t like and you just took it to the next level and really it ruined hey there delilah for me which i liked as a song up until that point but now i associate it with that yeah moment with like forced upon affection yeah oh how dare he try and be sweet and and have a romantic said there were flowers there were flowers or there were flower petals i don’t think there were flower petals i think that would have been too sexy okay he needed to stick with what young life i really like that he stuck to flowers because the flower petals you’re right it’s just like in an invitation it’s like follow the yellow brick road where these flowers look yellow brick road yes wizard of oz is a sexy ass movie wow so yeah so those were my main like going out with dating [Music] stories and there’s nothing there’s nothing sexual about either one of those things at least for me there was nothing sexual right about about dating either one of those guys i i wonder about people for whom dating was a sexual thing though because like oh gosh already this idea of dating in high school to me was foreign for a number of reasons right off limits for a number of reasons but the idea of there being like a potential sexual interaction to me was what same girl safe but people were having sex in high school it which blows my mind because none of our friends were we’re doing it none of our immediately and to this day none of us have done it yeah it’s just yeah and yeah yeah that’s very true that’s very true mom do you remember when sexy lexie had sex no why how do you remember that you weren’t like in in a girls group with her were you no no this had she did not confide in me i was not there when it happened but i have this movie-like scene in my head where there was some rumor going around school that she and football boy had sex they were dating each other very seriously through um in school and somebody said like they did it remember that’s how we also talked about it they did it oh that’s also when people started saying things like they hooked up yeah it was always like confusing like make out hookup or sex hookup i thought that it was i initially thought hookup was make out but then i thought it was like other stuff that wasn’t sex that was my understanding is that it wasn’t we didn’t use hookup as in have sex we used it as in did everything else i think as people got more mature and experienced they started using hookup as the catch-all okay and that’s where it got confusing for me because any time somebody said hook up i’m like already the kiss is pretty tantalizing wait okay so humorous shared that they did it and i i was you know super i guess naive you could say because my mind was going into so many different directions for like what does this mean for her how will she change um how will he change like how are they managing it right when was this by the way was this senior year i think is their senior year so which is also like not scandalous at all yeah not at all i think it’s pretty average actually yeah right but we’re walking across the breezeway between the math building and the main building and i see her walk by and she looks pretty cool she’s got her abercrombie jeans on those nice new balance shoes probably like a collared shirt she looks really cute straightened hair and i see her walk by and i literally i’m like this for those of you who are only listening to our podcast negan is following her with her full head turning as she walks by no she cause were you looking for like i was looking for like signs vagina was blowing in the wind she was all of a sudden a woman i think i was i had so many questions and i was also disturbed that i knew it felt wrong that i had this information but you didn’t approach her no i did not ask her i did not fact check the rumor with her got it i think we pretty we know you know and it makes again it makes sense they were in a serious relationship and da da da but even if it wasn’t true that moment was such a like okay freddie prince jr is about to walk around the corner and high-five her heck yeah you know oh they’ve done it they’ve done it yeah freddie prince jr would pop up on on high school campuses across the states uh high-fiving uh people who had just had sex for those of you who needed more context [Music] so there’s one story that i have that is like a little bit more sexual that you also don’t know about i don’t think okay art school boy um art school boy had an older brother who in terms of if we’re going back to the attractive scale he was towards the 10 on the attractive scale there was no rei there was no nerdiness and also like had like a little bit of a feminine thing going like he was like pretty he was like a pretty pretty guy but i also knew that he probably you know dated a bunch of or hooked up with a bunch of girls or whatever i went over to art school boys house for a sleepover and already just geez your parents were so nice but he was gay it didn’t matter oh it doesn’t matter he could still slip up um and i was oh yeah this might this is my senior year you know and i’m probably 18 at this point too it’s like if i can’t go sleep over at my gay best friend’s house like what can you do at 18 you know um and and then actual crush was there as well and i think i was at this point in that clandestine relationship where i was like oh well if you don’t want to make the move i’m going to show you all the other people who would or like there was like i think there was like a me trying to make her jealous situation and one of course it worked because of course she was jealous of any of those things but but i think the vocalization of that jealousy was too hard to muster but anyway so we’re sleeping over at art school boys house and i’m very vocal about i’m gonna sneak upstairs and i’m gonna hook up with your brother and i was solely doing this to make her jealous like i said um but i also knew that his brother probably wanted to make out with me and i was like i mean i know it’s not going to go any farther than that and i should probably get some make outs under my belt i’m going off to college you know and so i did so i went upstairs and practical yeah um strategic and uh we started to make out in his room his grandmother walked into their room his grandmother walked into his bedroom as we’re making out and uh and it was very awkward and uh and i went back downstairs but the moral of the story is if you are secretly seeing a closeted straight girl just go make out with a cute boy upstairs and it will spice spice things up for you and by spice things up i mean we still never kissed or anything but she was very jealous i will say he did not chapstick kiss so maybe that was the exit of the chapstick kiss era okay you graduated from yeah so i think that was an important lesson and really was yeah because it wasn’t a chapstick kiss that was the only like semi-sexualized moment i think in my high school experience in that way so you know i’m sure people at school were talking about how i did it as well in my new balance didn’t wear the abercrombie as we’ve discussed but yeah gosh so back to this um you’re not allowed to go to sleepovers and you’re not allowed to date thing i think that that that sent you down a different path and you know back to the kind of school dance of it all and and me mentioning that i only went with friends those those moments meant a lot more to you i think because that was one of the only times you were allowed to you know explore a quote relationship with the opposite sex is that a fair interpretation yeah i think that i think that’s fair my parents did not believe in high schoolers dating in other words i was not allowed to date and so was this something was this a rule that like were you sat down and told that you’re not allowed to date until you’re in college or until you’re out of our house or joke that i could date after i got my phd got it okay okay so he would make that joke but my parents never actually said negging you’re not allowed to date and my parents were like one it’s pretty common for like immigrant parents to have that stance like you can’t date because dating was not a thing at least for them growing up but they never said you can’t date instead they took a very like abstract mind [ ] approach where they said why would one date it makes no sense it’s a distraction from your studies it’s a distraction from all the things that you’re passionate about doesn’t make sense to date you don’t have time for it but i could there was no like rule about hanging out with guys my parents embraced me having guy friends and all of that and so while i couldn’t date guys i could talk to them and that meant that i got really good i think at talking to guys and like like the closest i could get to a relationship like as friends like as as like you were like i know i can be friend guys so i will and that’s my outlet or or like i i do have a crush on this guy but we can only be friends and so we will be friends and i will cultivate that or was it also like you were allowed to say to your parents like he’s my friend that i that i like and they were like okay as long as you’re not dating him like what was the oh absolutely not no everything was like guys and girls guy friends girlfriends same thing you have the same kind of relationship with them and it’s just friendly right okay i knew instinctively not to share that i liked somebody okay right a little bit more romantically and so i didn’t make friends with guys because i wanted there to be something i made friends with guys because i wanted to have guy friends okay but i felt like i had like a freedom to talk to guys because i knew that i could never have it be anything more serious than just talking that makes a lot of sense yeah there’s a maturity there too by the way because i think that that’s hard at that age to to think about it in that in that sense i was a forced it was a it was like a forced maturity i guess yeah because yeah that was it and i mean i jeez it is funny because i i feel like what ended up happening in some cases was that i was maybe more comfortable than the average girl at talking with guys and getting to a really fun and familiar level but it could have also been seen as me leading someone on because they assumed oh we’re like really having a fun time talking she must be interested did it ever get to that point where they expressed interest and you were like oh no no like we’re just friends my yearbook would suggest that i think [Laughter] i think yeah i feel a little bit bad about it because i feel like i did give the impression that there was something more when it was just like actually the something more was i really liked you and i could just be comfortable with just liking you as a friend as a person right whereas other girls knew that like um if i like you we can go to the dance together and hook up be boyfriend girlfriend go to each other’s houses i’m like nope none of that is gonna happen for me yeah just boards have a valentine’s day surprise planned for me in my bedroom but maybe with rose petals so anyway i got really like what to this day for me i mean until i married my husband the thing that was most exciting for me and dating was the banter and the most important thing is what’s our conversation like well that’s true that’s true period like what your relationship is like with the person aside from that’s true but i could get a sense of that very quickly because i i was so well practiced at it yeah yeah i had a lot of self-restraint i think because i could stay in that banter phase for a long time okay when it comes to your like crushes in high school did you go to dances with people that you actually liked because we talked about the drinking dance situation you said that that was the case for that particular guy but was that the case for all the guys that or some of the guys that you went to these dances with and also they asked you to the dances so the the it was like a mutual situation yeah so some of the dances i definitely went with people that i was excited about some of them know it was just like whatever you know whatever it’s just like we got to go to the dance microphone my group of friends isn’t going as a group of girls everybody’s taking a date so it was practical we know that that stephanie is really into her date and she can’t be bothered to go with her friends but my oh gosh there was one guy i had a huge oh my god stevie i’m such a crush on this guy soccer boy oh he was on the soccer team he had one of those like shaggy haircuts that he would always go like this oh he had a swoop he had a mic i that name sounds familiar but i’m like picturing it as like a 90s sitcom star for some reason is there like a celebrity with it with that name as well i would love to be able to picture this this guy this guy dark brown hair or like blonde hair or a dirty blonde dirty blonde soccer player really good soccer player he was really smart okay oh my gosh i had such a crush on him and i can’t remember how we were first introduced but he was an upperclassman and also my sister knew his brother they were in the same class four years earlier and so i felt like somehow he was vetted so we got to know each other and we spent a lot of time on aim chad which was like a jam did you what was your screen name by the way i’m scared to say it because i i think someone can like hack me or something i don’t know well mine it was twinkling eight yes i remember that you remember yeah yeah yeah twinkling because i went to a girl scout camp once and what i got an award i got an award that said most twinkling smile okay so that was twinkling and then the number eight because that was my soccer jersey shooter and you were a known soccer player yes because i’m actually a big odd number fan but eight i got it once and then you know consistency is important so anyway so we would spend time on aim and i would just like oh i would just wait for his away message to go off for him to come back for us to chat and he was it was just such fun back and forth there was like an engaging conversation there with yeah soccer player man really yes oh my gosh be engaged okay it was great and so he asked me to the prom and i guess you guys weren’t go oh i’m sorry i guess you guys weren’t going to the prom because you weren’t invited no it wasn’t our year to go yeah we could only go i guess as a junior or senior and so when he asked i got really nervous because it felt like oh this is you wouldn’t have any of your friends i wouldn’t have you guys there would be i would be by myself and somehow my my sister convinced my parents to let me go because my parents were also like dances what is this business of like going with a guy like what happened to the student council to show my support they’re like do what your sister did and go with a group of girls why can’t you just do that i’m like no so we go and we have a great time it’s at the star mount country club and then we go out to take a break and we sit on sit on the curb and we’re chatting having a good back and forth and i just know oh my god i think he’s about to kiss me like this is a moment but then homewrecker comes and ruins it she completely ruined me you had me on the edge of my seat i was like and then and then what happened with swoosh hair and i remember homewrecker because she would ruin your moment she had to ruin your moment face i don’t know i don’t remember her that well okay but not a bad not a bad takeaway um so that moo moment was completely ruined does she have a crush on him i don’t know are they just friends and she just happened to go outside yeah i think they were friends but was there a lean in was there like a was the music swelling in the background and you’re like ah we were sitting a little mermaid okay um sitting side to side and she butts her head right in the middle and you know what she probably saved me too because i think i’m not really sure i would have gone for the kiss even if he came in because one again once again we’re at a school function there are administrators everywhere and two like you i was always thinking multiple steps ahead if we kiss then this means that we’re dating i am not really allowed to date and so how does it how is this going to even work okay so why would we even go down this thing so i was always about like living on just before living on the edge yeah same same of what could happen um i just didn’t know how to like navigate and you know what’s weird i did you know that i couldn’t date not really because again like it’s not something that any of us were really doing or talking about like i i for some reason dating beard number one my senior year stands out to me as something that i was doing that none of our other friend group was necessarily doing that’s exactly right yeah um but i didn’t think it was like you weren’t allowed to date so much as that you like you said like you it was a distraction for you or you weren’t super interested in it and i don’t remember us talking too much about like having a crush on people and or i think maybe i tuned it out because i knew i knew that i didn’t i was incapable of having those feelings for a guy so maybe it was like one of those things that i was like oh i don’t want to acknowledge that this is a possibility because it only furthers the fact that i’m gay something i don’t want to deal with right now um so no it doesn’t get conversation down i think i was embarrassed that i couldn’t date so you didn’t share that openly so i didn’t share it which is i don’t know exactly how to what that means but i remember that like it would get to like with him like he asked me to do so many things and i would make up excuses and all of my excuses were like oh you mean you didn’t tell him too that you couldn’t date exactly i i admitted to anyone that i wasn’t allowed to date so i was like oh i have homework i have a family thing i’m have a charity event i have a i became really great at the excuse and i wonder if i could have what would have happened if i just said i’m not allowed to date yeah but okay so i do remember i i don’t i you know the conversations aren’t vivid for me about the crush of it all but i do remember you having a crush on and or going to a school dance with prom date right okay i did not have a crush on him but we did go to prom senior prom and he did he have a crush on you i thought there was something yeah yeah i think so yeah i think so he was a friend for like all of high school and i remember being a little bit a little bit mad at him about asking me to prom because prom was my last opportunity to explore anything close to a relationship junior prom and it was also the era of like laguna beach promposals do you remember that okay the grand gesture where people would like show up with signs or balloons or some some amazing way of asking you to prom and there were some versions of that at grimsley and so i was like maybe something like that could happen to me who knows and the closest thing i got to that was prom date asking me to prom like two months before anyone else had prom on their mind he locked you down he locked me down and i remember just being upset that he took away any option right i think i would was there i don’t know i just remember that like being like can’t you just ask me on the normal schedule so i don’t feel forced well and also he was so squarely a friend that you didn’t really have interest in that it kind of took like the romantic nature out of it yeah even though at the time you knew that he maybe had feelings for you and i think that’s what makes it hard is when you know somebody has feelings for you well gosh that was your entire experience in high school i guess but that’s hard because then you’re like constantly like am i doing anything that gives them the signal that i want to do more and at that time purely just being nice to someone was like being nice to a guy was like giving them the signal that you were interested in well there you go there’s my there’s my yearbook as a sign of that so we go to the dance and i think right before he um he injures himself playing soccer and so he is in this white jacket uh like cream colored jacket he looks sharp but he uh has a boot he has a boot on and he was like oh damn it you asked me two months in advance and now you’re wearing a freaking boot get your [ ] together man oh so it didn’t really nothing exciting really happened with him but you know what years later he ended up dating one of my best friends in paris not not in the states not in the safe also i will say i i don’t know if he’s listening but uh he’s he’s actually a super cool dude some cool [ ] yeah yeah i am so proud of him he’s like owning the jeans denim space in the north carolina area yeah he he he has some cool stuff going on and uh and we we dm from time to time because yeah i like i like the stuff that he makes well prom date if you’re listening i’m so glad that you got to meet my friend in paris i’m sorry it didn’t work out between the two of us but um i would like to say if you’re listening neginta deserves a a promposal so get your [ __ ] together and that’s why i’m salty about it yeah and let just let zach know that maybe you might be receiving like a dramatic promposal in the mail or something yeah and it’s just platonic but i think that we’re really giving him an opportunity to make things up to you thank you so much stevie you’re being such a good friend and prom date i’m living in atlanta if you need my address stevie can provide it to you but like it doesn’t have to be anything too fancy no actually i think it does i think it specifically does have to be a fancy promposal do you think it could be jeans now you’re thinking practically now you’re just like i could use a new pair of nice jeans i think my sizing my bottom sizing is complicated you know with the hip well he makes custom custom wear so i think it’ll be i think it’ll be fine okay i’m expecting a dm in my um inbox or prom date if you want to reach me just hashtag gaygrimsly on twitter all right well i think that we’ve unpacked quite a bit in the lack of sex area but the general relationship area oh god heaven forbid we talk about these topics as we progress through life uh because i have quite a few stories uh that oh who’s bragging now that bloom no no there’s a guy named chad involved so there’s no bragging yeah it’s just it’s just a stereotype it’s regrets um and on that note thanks for listening to best friends back all right and if you enjoy talking about uh wieners this is my this is my first segue please check out our podcast a hot dog is a sandwich every wednesday hosted by mythical chef josh and nicole where they talk about the internet’s most intriguing and hilarious food debates i don’t think they often talk about wieners uh so if you actually are a wiener enthusiast please don’t take me at my word you can catch brand new episodes every friday of this show make sure to follow so you don’t miss an episode if you’re enjoying the podcast leave us a review you can follow at mythical pods on tick tock for clips to share with family and friends you can follow me at nagin and stevie everywhere at stevie w levine and of course you can hear me every monday through friday on good mythical morning with bretton link youtube.comgoodmythicalmorning i’ll see you there and we’ll probably talk about weiners you