genXy - The Podcast

Hi, words. Welcome to Gen XC, everyone. Welcome. Hi, greetings and salutations from Seattle and Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Which neither of us can believe every time you say that. I'm saying. Hi, all. I am Dana Dubois.

I am a Gen X word nerd living here in the Pacific Northwest. I am a writer. I am a music fan. I am a mom.

I am many complicated things. I'd like to think that all are subsumed under the umbrella of being deeply Gen XC. And I am also a very long time friend of this man, Lawrence Winterman. Hey, everyone.

I'm Lawrence Winterman. I am also Gen XC deeply so and I'm currently living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is my birth town, my hometown, and where my family returned to when I was in college, but a place that I haven't lived for nearly 50 years. I'm also a writer fascinated by words and storytelling. I'm a gay guy.

I have been gay, married twice and also sadly, gay, divorced twice. So, you know, hey, just because they make something legal doesn't mean you have to do it. The first moment it's available. Or be good at it.

So very good. I'm here and can be happier to be talking about all this stuff with one of my lifelong besties. Lawrence and I met in Mrs. Lynn's fourth grade gifted class.

Yes. We went to elementary school together. We met two middle school together. We went to high school together.

We both vowed. We would leave Florida as soon as we were 18. We applied to a bunch of colleges with no guidance because Gen X, because who told you anything about applying for colleges back then? We got into colleges that were great that we couldn't afford at all.

So, we ended up at the University of Florida in Florida for another four years. My experience was great, even though it was sort of against my will. Lawrence is okay. I was a queer kid who wasn't out in Florida in the late 80s and early 90s.

And you also you also slept with my freshman crush, which we're definitely going to talk about sometime for like 15 years. I'm sorry. That's a grotty little guy who I couldn't understand why he didn't want to go out with me. High in sight.

Always 2020. We both spent for instance in or near Atlanta in our young adulthoods. And then as many young Gen Xers did who got educated, we moved to big urban hubs and our there is a third member of this triumphant high Denise. Denise had followed an undeserving boyfriend out to Seattle.

So she went first in the early 90s. Lawrence followed and by 96, I was there as well. I am the last one still here. You've forgotten a very important point from back in high school.

Okay. When we were 16. Oh, are we going to get into this now? I mean, we can talk about it later, but I feel like the people should know that when we were 16, it was so inconceivable to us that we wouldn't meet our soulmates.

And we were 26 that we vowed that we would get married. If we had not by the time we were 26, that our soulmates, how did that work out? Well, about 10 years later, it was when I moved to Seattle and I came up to you and was like, Lawrence, I have some news. And remember that Maui made a junior year?

In a decade, we hadn't met our soulmates that we would get married in 10 years, Lawrence. And so of course, Lawrence, it came out by that time. So it was not a romantic or sexual marriage, but we would for you. Many years told everyone that we were married.

For the record, we did not actually get married. Yes, we did not legally get married in any way, shape or form, but it was definitely a running joke. And one that will be, we have many stories around, including the fact that back in 2005, Lawrence married me to my husband. And in 2023, I married him to his husband as we appreciated the ceremonies.

We've had the honor of doing that for one another. And we've had the honor of seeing one another through a revolution of our marriages, as well as other relationships and many other trials and tribulations. After the devolution of democracy. Oh, yeah, it's what a funk.

Who would have fun? I think we've talked about ourselves for a good while here, but I have one more thing to mention before we move on to talking more about XC. And that is today, in addition to being our first podcast, it's a very special day. What is it today?

Is Lawrence's birthday, right? Yes, it is. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Something very special to show you. Uh oh. I have a very special photo.

I'm going to show it right now. Lawrence, I'm not sure what's going on here because I'm not in this picture, but it looks like you are on a hiking trail with some lovely, I don't remember that young today. You were that much air. Oh my God.

94 maybe. And Denise Godlesser was good about getting us out of Seattle and into the Pacific Northwest. This is probably the first time I ever hiked in Washington State. Beautiful.

So yes, I remember being awed by the beauty of the hike and also kind of wishing that was over a minute, but every time I began kind of a lifelong love affair with hiking in the Pacific Northwest. So yes, this is me losing my trail of virginity. Oh, that's so sweet. Okay, good.

Yes. For those of you who don't know, Seattle is enveloped within two mountain ranges, the Cascades through the East and the Olympics to the West. You don't have to drive very far to be in some amazing hiking train out here, but it is one of the beautiful things about living out here. Um, I miss you being here, Lawrence, and I miss you.

Yes, you were that young. You were younger still and over time. Hopefully I will find some more photos to roll out. That sounds like a challenge and challenges.

I will happily dig through that to find pictures of young Dana. Wall of banks. Yes. You remember how amazing my wall of banks could get.

Yeah, I mean, we lived through the hair stage of the eighties. Yeah, like we looked through the hair stage of the eighties and the epicenter of the hairs. We were in South region, Florida, the epicenter of big hair. So, yeah, I, not as big as some, but I did have quite the impressive feathery bloom and you also had quite the nice feather going on.

Yeah. You've always had fabulous hair and still for this day, absolutely stunning. I think you have a really nice head of hair, especially for someone who is 85 years old. 55.

So a friend once told me that the number of five symbolizes change, represents a positive, hopefully positive changes. So double five Lawrence. Right. It should be your positive changes around these parts.

Popular pair of shoes. And mom and needs a new executive government. I wouldn't mind to new government either. And I wouldn't mind a new pair of shoes.

So let's really do five. Two five's Lawrence. Well, you have two five's. Right.

We both get shoes and we both get a new government. I think now my big good time to start explaining why Gen XE, where did this term come from? And what does it mean? Yeah, I love it.

This is this is a born of many, many conversations that we have had. And I think you should tell the people who we are. Gen XE is an adjective, not a noun. Not everyone Gen X is Gen XE.

And honestly, not everyone who's Gen XE is even in Gen X. We're definitely looking to read and talk to voices who have points of view about our generation who may not be in it. Our point of view, it's new Gen XE is the minority of the minority generation. And it's still evolving, but there are central core truths to what it means to be Gen XE.

We're still working on our elevator pitch, our 30 second, like Gen XE is this, but in typical fashion of me and you, I think we have about a three to five minute pitch. And to give it, I'm going to read our words that we posted both to sub-second to medium about introducing Gen XE about what we are and are not. Our aim at Gen XE is to explore the unique joys, pitfalls, and opportunities of our shared lived experience as the world's most overlooked generation. Relationships, family, career, music, identity, aging, fun, all of it.

But first, let's make one thing clear. Not everyone in Generation X is Gen XE. So writ large, Gen X sucks. We broke for Trump 53 to 45 in the 2024 election.

And the conservative Washington reviewer wrote that Generation X delivered the White House to Trump and even went on to proclaim us the Trumpiest generation. Gen X can be disgraceful. Sure, we were all raised as latchkey kids before the age of participation trophies. We lived robust young adulthoods before the internet.

We gained the life skills and took the hits associated with coming of age in our small and not mighty whatever generation. But being Gen XE means we continue to grow and evolve beyond our misstent youth. And we still do. Our fashion, music, and cultural values aren't frozen in 80s and Seljah, even as we still love Night Ranger.

Let's be clear, not all of us like Night Ranger. Gen X came to life completely analog, but Gen XE adapted. We're technologically savvy. We may have written our college papers on typewriters, but we can still pivot tables with the best of them.

Being Gen XE means you've had and lost music across every format ever available. And we're sort of fine about it. Perhaps you've lined your bookcases with thousands of alphabetized records and CDs now, or maybe you sold yours for cash back in the 90s and favorite digital music and still live with that regret. Guilty.

Yeah. Now we're being used to how our kids want to get facts and vinyl and shitty old digital cameras, but also we get it. We understand the appeal of physical media, even as we love our yearly Spotify wraps, even though we know they suck for artists. We're unabashedly liberal, feminist, and LGBTQ plus supporters.

We believe in science. The loathe Nazis. Gen XE is the minority of the minority generation. OK, so it's our first episode.

We should explain what this is because Gen XE was born out of the fact that we talk now when we lived here together, we would go months without talking. I've had to return to office and you are not working. And so my commute time is my morning time and we talk about many, many things, but there's always the update. So we feel we need to keep you informed of our two missing pillars.

We're going to talk a lot about pillars of this podcast. I like pillars of those things that sustain you as a pillar would. I think about them a lot of like there's your relationship pillar, your friendship pillar, your home pillar, your financial pillar, your job pillar, your love pillar, maybe your creative outlet pillar, whatever it is, the things that hold you up. There's so many pillars.

Yes. And when one only one pillar is missing, that was to support them, but sometimes when one pillar is knocked out, it knocks out other ones. Like when your job pillar is missing, as Lawrence says, is right now, that knocks financial down and it can knock home down and sometimes it can knock into a relationship and mental health and all of these other pillars, right? Oh, I know that.

Lawrence, friendship is right here. Creative outlet is right here. We've got you family, you've got your family support there. But yes, so Lawrence's big missing pillar is a job right now.

And my big missing color is relationship. How long have you been job hunting, Lawrence? Nine months. Oh my gosh, that is a full term gestational window, Lawrence.

Your unemployment could be birthed and extracted from your body. Having a C-section, I'm really confused with what we're doing. Every floor. You know, nine months is a very long time.

I was unemployed in 2018 to 2019 for five and I have once and it was one of the most stressful times in my life. Not having a boyfriend is not stressful. It's actually pretty cool, but still something that I'm looking for. So I think each week we're going to do like a check in of how are things going and or funny or tragic anecdotes from the week before.

Let's put you on the spot, Lawrence. You want to go first? What's going on with you? Sadly, there is no update on the job front.

Many, many applications were sent in over the course of the last week. I stopped counting when I hit 400 jobs applied for it. It stopped counting. I think I might be at like 500 now.

Lots of good sounding roles last week applied for haven't heard back from anything yet. So fingers crossed, as always. What about you? What's up on the on the guy front?

You know, also nothing kind of. Interestingly, last week was really jam packed week fun. I index heavily on the fun pillar. I went to my first Moff story slam and it was like the grand slam.

For those of you who don't know, the Moff is a storytelling podcast and they can't bring notes. It has to be a real story and you talk for five minutes and you tell like the story of your life. I have had a life goal for the last year to of I need to start storytelling at our local Seattle ones. So this was the first step I went to the finale of the last 10 winners every story.

Until it was great. I went to we call these big spawnites because I belong to Wayfancier, Jim, and I have any business wanting to. But my friend, Sonny and I went to the gym Friday night and we sat in the hot tub because we called that spawnite. I did a whole training about sub stack last week that I'm going to write and podcast about it because it was awesome.

I've done a lot of writing. So I haven't had any time to take a bunch and I have caused my profiles. Mostly like around the election. No, I let them linger into December.

I have a Facebook dating one up. It's a complete dumpster fire. As you know, as I show you things every now and then, someone will write where I'm like, or I'll see someone and be like, oh, OK. But what I will say is there's such a glut, such an overabundance of people who file through.

There's a far smaller pool of men who look interesting. But even off that was like, if they don't reach out and if there's not something very compelling, it just becomes like, hey, and then it I don't even remember it right back. It's not because there's nothing there. So I haven't had a live one.

I would say in a while. I did write last night some guy start writing me and I was like, oh, he's not my typical type of this. He seemed kind of funny and he said, so hey, you are single, right? And I said, like, yeah, of course, would I be spending any time on Facebook?

I was reciting if I were not single. The answer is it was sounding no. I thought it was being funny and he just thought I was like, either you didn't. What would we single or maybe?

You know, I wonder sometimes because I think I have an offbeat since the tumor and I'm pretty sure that this guy may have not been English as a first language. And I'm wondering if it came off sounding really harsh. I don't care if it did that was fine. I wasn't interested, but I thought it was funny that he asked that I was I gave up.

I thought it was the right answer and also kind of a witty answer demonstrating that if my personality and even like I. At least we always have each other to laugh at our harsh jokes. Yes. And I might just make it a point to be like, I need to dig in a little more something funnier to share, but it hasn't been a focus because I have so much else going on.

And that's probably what best right now. You can't find anybody on Facebook dating me on the other hand and literally guys do fuck off on Facebook because they keep adding me and chatting me up. And I am not on Facebook to hook up with anybody public service announcement, not hooking up from Facebook. Thank you.

Even though he has this face and this whole hoty bear thing going on. All right. That is who knew. Could we go back in time and tell my younger self that at 55 you're going to be, you know, beefy bear daddy is going to be hot commodity.

Right. Yeah. Malphie, dusty redheads with glasses on the internet. Not really a commodity.

A commodity for so long. Let's talk about writing this week. Far more interesting than dating and job hunting. So you called me how long ago was that now?

Like a week and a half ago? So yeah, a week and a half ago I went with my sister and brother-in-law up to the farm that they own in northern Indiana. And my brother-in-law had just purchased an AR 15 and technically I think it's an AR style rifle because it's not technically an AR 15. But you liberals don't understand how many times you've been told that on the internet.

You can't write that because you wrote or don't want to write. Anyways, carry on, please. Yeah. Well, here's what I discovered shooting AR 15s is fun as fuck and so easy.

I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. It is so easy that it's ridiculous that this weapon is available as easily as it is in our country. That's not breaking news. I know, but actually experiencing the accuracy and lack of recoil.

I fired three shots at the target and all three of them hit. I am not some kind of great marksman. It is just that this rifle is so easy to use. So got me thinking a lot about guns and this kind of amendment and the constitution.

And God, help me the experience that we're having as an Asian right now under this proto authoritarian or full on authoritarian government and what kind of hard power my brother in law actually said this in a way that I think is really compelling, which is we think of Congress and the Supreme Court and the federal court system, all of that is soft power. And if if people don't abide by following the rules, what's to stop them from doing anything? So I wrote an article. I hope folks read it.

I have a lot more to say about this topic and will in future podcasts and articles. But from that series topic, what did you read and write last week, Dana? One quick note on yours to Lawrence. When you called me and also what I read your story was the thought that there's so much adversity in our country right now and we're so divided.

And the other side has all the guns and all the know how about guns. Lawrence, I just found your story really made me start thinking about like how dangerous is it to be American right now and liberal and know that things are so contentious and the other side has almost all the guns. That was what it made me think. I know that wasn't that was for me.

That was subtext of your call and the story, but I couldn't help but read it to that lens. So I'm glad you learned how to shoot. Although it doesn't seem to matter. It seems like anybody can pick these monster weapons up and just fire away.

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to transition to something that I shared on top of this week, a far lighter weight gen X sort of story this summer. I took my kids for their first year of paint trip.

It was my first time overseas in 17 years. We had a ball and share a lot about those adventures over time in this podcast. But the story I shared this week is called the hunt for undies in Dublin. And this was why we were hunting.

We did not have Ireland on our itinerary. We went to Germany. We went to the Czech Republic and we went to another one on our trip, but the flight back went from Amsterdam to Dublin to Seattle. There was only one flight a day on Airlingus, which is, I think, barely an airline.

Very green when you get in that plane. The Irish will object to that characterization. Airlingus only has one flight per day from Dublin to Seattle and our flight from Amsterdam left late. We arrived in Dublin right before the plane was supposed to take off and realized we were surrounded by a bunch of Irish musicians in a punk rock band.

They were awesome. And they cheered us on as we left the plane to catch our flight. We did not catch our flight. And Airlingus lost our guys.

So they gave us a free hotel north of Dublin and tickets for the breakfast that basically the flight crew got, but we had nothing with us. And so it was like 5.30 p.m. That's how we got to the hotel. And I was like, we should at least try to find two questions and a change of underwear.

And I'm not going to tell anymore the story because there were funny details along the way. Read it to everybody. You should go read it. But the takeaway was sometimes the very best, most memorable and story worthy parts of the trip are the times when you adapt and you roll with punches, even with your teen daughters in tow.

And it was a really fun, very short, misadventure in Dublin. I don't feel like I got to see the city for going next month, though, to Ireland. I'll have a redo on Ireland that I'll be able to talk about. But the story is just a silly slice of life about how a Gen X mom rolled with the punches.

And we got to go on this little adventure in Dublin. So I hope you enjoy it. We can share links and comments from this podcast right Lawrence. Yeah, absolutely.

OK, for a little bit more. Oh, Lawrence, I got to go. My eldest just removed for helix piercing and it is touching blood. Oh, shit.

OK. The fun never ends around here. Oh, my God. OK.

I got a baby. The bye. Love you. You mean it by.