March 19, 2024 • 36 mins
Ophira talks with the very funny comedian Julia Scotti about starring in Susan Sandler's documentary, "Funny That Way," being a transgender woman, and the power of a good teacher.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It used to be chairs all the stuff at sales.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Fun Parenting's a joke. Hello, listeners, this is parenting is
a joke.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm a New Yorker.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Magazine you are never going to read named Ofira Eisenberg.
And on the show, we bring together professionals, stand up comedians,
and funny people to talk about their creative lives and
their work and also what it's like to do that
while raising kids. That's right, How the fuck are they
doing it? I only let my son play free iPad games,
(00:34):
look at me with my strict boundaries and rules. So
he downloaded one this weekend called plague Ink.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
You get a world map, and then you choose if
you're a virus or a bacteria, and whether you travel
by air, water, or food. And you also get to
choose that when you infect people if they die or
get sick, and then you try to infect the world.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
El that's the game.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
M h.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's like Risk, but with a twenty nineteen COVID twist.
So I said to him, why are you interested in
playing this dark game where people die from a virus?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Why can't you just play Legos?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Is what I always want to say, but instead I
say something where you're building and healing, and he said, well,
if you want the cure, you have to pay four dollars.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So I bought it.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I figured, you know, I was curing a few things really,
but no, I was just foiled again by a dumb
app throwing four bucks as an add on trying to
create some positivity. But at least now when he looks
at a map he can point out Canada, Algeria, and Peru. Yeah,
because that's where he infected the most people.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That's weird too.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
My guest today is Julia Scotti, and we talk about
her comedy career and her coming out story.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I came out on national television on America's Got Talent.
You Gotta Go Bigger, Go Hold.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I say more with me and Julia Scotti right after
these bite sized ads happy Spring Equinox. It's here. It's wild,
isn't it. Yeah? You know it's wild. My kid's behavior
and apparently this is a thing.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It's not just him.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
There are actually articles about the spring behavior roller coaster,
especially for elementary school kids. So anytime I see the therapist,
she's like, oh, yeah, this time of year, my kid patients,
they are the worst and part of it is because spring.
And then also they've just figured out how school works now,
(02:47):
so there's nothing new, and it's sort of this weird
time where there's no holidays. You know, they're not quite
sliding into the finish line, but there's nothing new, so
they're all rattled and get out fun. Yeah, shout out
to the teachers. Good luck. The other roller coaster i'm
(03:08):
on is my mom friend journey not going well. I
talked about it last week, you know what, and I
was just so surprised. You put these things out there
sometimes and then people get back to me, and so
many moms told me they feel the same way, and
it just made me so sad. I was like, all
of these cool people are all so lonely. We got
(03:28):
to get together. My problem is that I tried too hard.
I try too hard with my you know, pick up
mom school banter, trying to fit in, trying to I
don't know, be liked, and my jokes do not land.
It's just getting worse.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Okay, here's the latest.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So once again I thought we were all just having
fun and the conversation turned to sex with your partner
after having kids, and I said, I got right in there,
and I said, oh my god, blowjobs. Those are the
most precious andy in a relationship, because that is the
first to go okay as time moves forward, I mean,
(04:06):
who wants to give a blowjob? Anyway? And one woman
raised her hand, so I high fived it, and then
she corrected me. She said no, I was saying, I
do I like giving blowjobs? I like it still, and
the other moms nodded in agreement. Who are you people?
I mean, come on, I was shamed. I was shamed.
(04:27):
Oh yeah, for not being the perfect woman partner, mom,
blowjob giver. You know what. I don't want to join
your group anymore. I am done with it.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Do I care? Do I try to win over these
moms or do.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I just forget about it? Do I buy Dale Carnegie's
book on how to Influence people and make friends? Or
do I just stop talking about flatio and stuff and
kids into bags on the playground? That's what I bombed
with last week. I'm up for suggestions, I guess, except
for joining one of those mom Finder friend apps. Good okay,
(05:01):
I can't do tender moms.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Lisa have my comedy friends.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So let's dive right into this great conversation with Julia Scotti.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Everybody.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I'm excited for my guest today because we haven't talked
in a while, so it's always great to have an
opportunity to get together.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
She performs stand up all over the country. She is
the star of the critically acclaimed documentary Julia Scotti.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Funny that Way, and you can see her on Showtime
as one of the performers in More Funny Women of
a Certain Age.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Julia Scotti, Hello, Wow, I'm special.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Look at all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Hi, It's just true. It's just true.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So I didn't even forgot to mention my Nobel Prize
that I want to.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
That would be nice if a comic once won the
Nobel Prize. That's how we would know the Nobel Prize
is over.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I was thinking about that the other day. There should
be a Nobel Prize for comedy.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah. Yeah, If laughter's the best medice, and who is
doling out the most of the best medicine these days.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Who's finding the cure for the worldwide on we we currently?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, that's who is the true truth teller.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I'm doing It would be you. I'm going to vote
for you.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I always start by asking the same question, which is,
what are the ages and names? If you feel comfortable
of your kids.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Well, I'll give you the ages, but you know, they
prefer not to have their names understood. I have a
forty three, forty four year old, believe it. Wow, for
my first I've been married multiple times. Okay, I have
a thirty four year old. She's going to be thirty
five this year, and my and my son it's going
to my other son is going to be thirty two.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay. I mean, on one level, your parenting duties feel done.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Their cook Yeah, I you know, I washed my hands
with the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I was on the road a lot there and when
they were growing up, so and you know, there were
multiple divorces going on too. So I had a juggle
career and trying not to you know, not to be
a horrible parent. And I was always afraid of history
repeating itself because my parents divorced when I was six
years old. Okay, and so you know, so I'm completely
(07:21):
skillless when it comes to dealing with that sort of thing.
But I did my best.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You know, yeah, do it if your kids have kids,
are you a grandparent?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
No?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
They vowed after their experience with me. No, they I
don't know. They just don't. They haven't been exposed to
the best of domestic circumstances, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, so no children, Okay, So they are just living
lives and being wealthy because they don't have to spend
the money on children.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Exactly, lives of quiet splendor and you know, travel a
feeling of zen piece, you know, and they're tolls.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So you're a nationally headlining comedian. You are former teacher
sixth grade.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Well, I taught for twenty years and then when the
with my niece likes to call it, the event happened.
And then, as comics are, we don't deal well with
the authority figures. So I decided that teaching. I want
to go back to comedy, you know. And so I
loved teaching and hearing.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And the event that you were saying for our listeners
is that you transition.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I did. I'm transgender transition in twenty Well, it began
in nineteen ninety nine, and I fully transition in twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
You're doing comedy as a man, and then you take
a ten year break, you become a teacher.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You decide this is not what I want to do.
And then you decide to go back to the stage,
and you are coming back as a woman.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
First, my first question is what actually lured you back
on to the stage after all those years?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
What the hell was I thinking? The stand up is
like the Hotel California. You can check out any time
you want, but you can never And about when I
finished teaching, I got to I reached out to a
friend of mine, she comic from Philadelphia named Chris Rich.
We hadn't seen each other in a long time. She goes,
let's have lunch. I said great. Over the course of
(09:27):
the lunch, she said to me, when are you coming
back to commedists. I'm not coming back. I'm a man
sixty something years all on transgender. They all wants to
see me, you know, And she said, you know you
want to, And of course, of course I did. Comic
doesn't want to because once you put a set together
and come on out and do it. So I did.
(09:50):
And again, you know, drug addicts that we are getting
on stage and you hear that, you hear that applause
and laughter, and that's all she wrote there. That was
all I needed. I'm so easy.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Obviously, you notice as differences, But did you notice any
differences about like, did you feel like you had to
come out at the beginning of your set every time?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Well, I did come out. That was one of them.
I had personal criteria. I wanted they were only two.
I wanted to be totally honest about who and what
I was, and I wanted to be fearless about it.
I wasn't going to shy away from it. That was
the first test of it. And they came out at
this club in Bristol, Pennsylvania, which is a blue collar
club and right not exactly a liberal a bestion of
(10:38):
liberal thinking. And I came out and that was the
first thing I said. I graduated college, I've been away.
I graduated college, I got divorced, and oh yeah, I
had a sex change. And the audience it's like it
was like you know that scene in the in Young Frankenstein,
what they do and putting on the writs in the audience,
it's just like it was like that. And I had
(11:01):
to keep saying it, no, I really am transgender, I really,
and they still weren't getting it. And finally, on the
third time they believed me. They didn't know what to do.
I don't think they'd ever. It's like seeing a unicorn
in person for the first time. It's like, can I go?
And I'm like, that's okay, it's not contagious, you can
touch me. So it was that kind of stuff that
(11:24):
was eleven twelve years ago and now it was a
different world that yes, and so I know it doesn't
seem like a long time ago, but it really really was.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It seems to me like the last five years was
the longest amount of time ever in the history of time.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
So yeah, well i'll give you that.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So you're eleven years. I mean, that's what I just think.
It's almost like it was double.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
But obviously it was like you say, if you go
out now in an audience, let's just say, same kind
of scenario.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Well, now it's now it's sort of part of my uh,
you knows, my act is there's about ten, ten to
fifteen minutes devoted to that. But I came out on
national television, you know, on America's Got Talent. You're got
to go Bigger, go home. I say, what was that like, Well,
that was an interesting experience too, thirteen million people I
(12:21):
called the mother of all you know, coming out stories. Yeah,
there was a moment, you know, like you know, you know,
when you're doing stand up, there's that little voices in
your head, like the board of directors I call them that.
They're always making executive decisions, you know, should we say this,
should we say that?
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And AGT left it up to me as to whether
or not I wanted to come out, and I still
hadn't decided. I mean, I'm out there doing the set,
and I said, we all right, if I do come out,
I'm not going to come out until after the set
because I want to be judged on the set only.
And it went well, and then you know, and then
how we asked that question. I said, what the hell,
(12:57):
you just go for it all. But then all of
a sudden they stood up and they started screaming and
yelling and clapping. I was like, oh, okay, you know
I can do this. I figured that my age was
the worst I could do. Killy, I had us rights anyway.
It wasn't like I was Dancer with the Stars, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So it airs and what is the response, Like, I'm
sure you're receiving response.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Oh, I mean local papers are calling me, they're tracking
me down. I can't go to the supermarket because people
are like swamp. Yeah. Yeah, it was really weird. I went,
I get done Carolines. I was booked in Caroline. It's
Times Square. People are running up to me. Truck drivers
like sweat. You know you hear about celebrities going yeah,
(13:47):
truck driver's going that actually happened. Truck was like I
saw you last night. I'm like, okay, and it's it's exciting,
but it's kind of creepy. You know. Well you must
get that too.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
No, well, at that point where you like, oh my goodness,
I'm selling tickets. This is a different phase of my career.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah. I called Tom and genuine he's my manager, Tom
Tom Jena. I call him up and I go, we're
asking for more money. We're up in the price. I
want to take a step back, if you don't mind
with my kids, because I had to really think about it,
whether it's going to come out on TV, because of
(14:32):
how it would affect my kids.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Well, I was going to ask about that for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I always said to them when, especially when I came
out to them as kids. They were much younger when
they came out. It was hard. It was agonizing to
make that decision because it could traumatize you know, I
was essentially killing their father when they were little. But
then I said, you know, I can't, I can't let
(14:58):
that be my deciding factor because if I how can
I tell them as a parent to be true to
themselves if I can't be true to myself. And that
I knew as sure as I'm talking to you that
this was the right decision for me. At the time,
we were divorced already, so it was not like I
was living there with them, and it led to a
(15:18):
fourteen year absence in their lives. They decided, you know,
well they didn't decide, but their mother decided that I
shouldn't be in their life.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Was she scared?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't know what she was. I mean, you know what,
I don't want to speculate on her thinking processes. I
just know that it was just awful those years going
through this is such a personal experience, especially back then
because it was so new, and so I was embarrassed.
I had a lot of shame. I was embarrassed for
(15:54):
what my kids might be going through, what they were
being called I didn't care about me. So can you
get back to a g T admitting in front of
the entire really the world. It's not just America that
I was getting emails from Australia and Brazil and England.
I mean, it was it was crazy, and I had
(16:15):
to take that into consideration, you know, when the when
the kids, when it came to the kids. But I again,
that was that be to thine own self. Be true.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yes, during the time when you weren't had potentially had
no contact with your kids, did you still send birthday
cards or anything? Or was it just nothing.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
I tried to, you know, to send emails and text
messages and whatever I could do. My mother was still
alive at the time, and so I would hear from
her what they were doing, what they had, you know,
and then I would send a little you know, hey,
Orgian had a great football game or whatever. And then
she would give me, you know, there's school pictures, you know,
(16:58):
and so I have these these serious the pictures of
them growing up. Oh wow, And that was my only
you know, the only way I could identify them if
I saw them. You know, he was really bad. It
was really really, really barely bad.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
But it's changed.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
It's changed, but it's never going to be the way
it should because I missed everything. You know, in their lives,
we're more like, we're more friendly than parent child.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Okay, when did it change?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I mean you were talking three different people here, so
I can't imagine each person had their own relationship.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
It actually started with my son, who was the baby. Yeah, baby,
he opened the door. Well, actually I kind of opened that.
I was always like when his birthday would come around,
I would just say, hey, happy birthday. And then he
started to respond to my text. I was like, oh,
maybe he's opening the door, and little by little, you know,
the door open. My daughter was a little harder.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Going back to the very beginning. Did you always want
to have children?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
That's a really now that I have of course, now
that I have them.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
My life, of course, of course.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
But as a as a as a young comic, and
having come from the childhood environment that I did, it
was a very bad situation. My father was an alcoholic,
he left when I was six. My mother was what
they called the paramid schizophrenic back then, in an at
of mental hospitals a couple of times, you know, a
(18:34):
shock therapy and all that. So, and I was Catholic
on topic it, I mean, I don't mean to minimize
the the value of what they did to me, you know,
because this was not progressive Catholic, this is going my way,
beat the hell outy and none kind of catholic. Wow. Yeah,
so all of those things combine. I don't want to
(18:57):
swear on your show, but.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
You can it get fucked you up.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It does. When it came to children, I did not
really want to recreate that, and especially when my first
marriage broke up. You know, I always felt like history
was repeating itself right.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So, and also as a stand up, I imagine were
you at all like how does this work?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well, there's no rule, you know this back then, there
were no rules for stand ups, And I'm like, what
do we do? You know, ironical. I gotta go on
the road. I gotta go into the city every night,
and I gotta you know, not make any money for years.
I got to keep two jobs, two three jobs, and
still be a parent. I mean it was a you know,
juggling chainsaws.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
You know, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
In your documentary, you know, there is this really very
poignant moment where your son is there and you're watching
old footage of your stand up.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
So yeah, there's a part of the movie we were
looking at me and doing this anti trans bit. Is
that the part you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, And I
forgot the thing even existed that that was your material.
It was my material. Yeah. And the minute I saw it,
I knew what it was. And you can see in
the movie where I go because you want to turn
(20:15):
this off, I'm like no, no, no, you know, and
then as an unfold I was like, stop, shut up,
shut off, Julie. Yeah. But at the time I was
going through that, that gender identity thing. At the time,
I just didn't understand what it was. I thought it
was sexual that I thought I was gay, And you know,
there was no information. That's the thing I keep trying
(20:37):
to explain to people. It's not like today. There was
no internet. There was nothing, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, who did you go to?
Speaker 3 (20:45):
My Kate, the woman you's here at the end of
the movie that's on the phone. She just the love
of my life and to this day I love her.
There's nobody else in my life never will be. And
she got me to understand what it was. I had
had my two previous wives that called me a woman
a million times. You're acting like a woman you're being
(21:07):
a woman.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Then my mother tells me that she thought she was
having a girl right up until I was born. I
was like, oh Jesus, all right, but I did. It
didn't sink in until Kate said it, And she said
it at a moment in our relationship where I was desperate.
I was suicidal, you know, because I didn't know what
was wrong with me. Wrong it's a bad word. I
(21:29):
didn't know what it was, what was going through you.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, and when you say that, your your partners would say,
you're acting like a woman. What do you in what context?
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I was to stay, I don't know. They would say,
you know, it's such a woman. Why in such a woman?
Like say it's a big jarred I remember my I
remember one of them used to say, just because I
used to like musicals. You know.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
That.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know that was difficult, very difficult.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
But you know that's the kind of shit I got
from them. It's like, you know, all right, I like musical,
like you know, I cry a West Side story? What
do you want from me?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
They're not allowed to.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, well back then, you know, not if you were
an Italian guy. I know you guys didn't cry a
West Side story.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So it's interesting though.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
You know that you your transition, you go back to college,
you become a teacher, and as I understand, like very
difficult period in the sense that you did not have
any contact with your kids.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And I mean, listen, I just can't even imagine how
devastating that is.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Well, teaching was my salvation because I was able to.
You know, I started out working for the Association of
Retarded Citizens ARC, that was what it's called, and I
was I worked for them for six months and I
had a client profoundly brain damage, blind, deaf, I mean
(22:58):
Korean and understanding English at all. And they gave me
this kid and he was violent and I and I
grew to love him, and I you know, I mean,
I taught him how to eat with the other people.
This kid could never eat by himself. And so I
stayed there until nine to eleven. Happened that day. I
(23:20):
had him and I had him in the car because
I used to pick him up at work. And I've
never told this story before. I see what you did.
You brought he was in the back of the van
with me and Howid Stern was on who just did
the most amazing job of reporting the events of that day.
(23:42):
And I'm in the car, in the van. He's in
the back and he's he's rubbing slivea on my head
and he's just just doing awful things to me, and
you know, but that's what he did. But all I
could think of was I want to see my kids.
I want to. I want to I want to leave
this kid home and go to run to my kids
because I don't know if this is the end of
(24:04):
the world. I don't know what's going on, right, you know,
And I can't. I can't go see them. I'm not
allowed to see them. It just broke my heart. But
I got them to the to the center where we taught,
and we got through that day, as we all know,
we got through the days after. In about a couple
of weeks after nine to eleven, I got a call.
(24:24):
I had been sending out resumes to the school systems
and I got a call from this one school system
when I liked there was a woman going out on maternityly,
which I found terribly ironic. You know, They wanted to
interview me for the position. And so I went and
I got the job, and I left and I stayed
at this school for seven years. Love my kids. I
love my kids, and they filled my original point was
(24:46):
they filled so much of that hole in my heart
and my soul. Yeah, than not having my kids with me.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Now, I'm sorry, this is a stupid question. Did you
have to come out to the administration?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Did you have to? I was free opt too at
that point, okay, but I was living as Julia. You
have to live a year and your knew identity before
they'll approve you for any kind of surgery. That's the
way it was. And I don't know if it's still
the same way. My license said Julia had my name changed,
but there was new Jersey. Wouldn't change the gender. Oh really?
(25:23):
And I hope that, I hope to God that they
wouldn't have looked at it, you know, And so because
you have to get a background check and everything, and
I don't know what was showing up on it, nobody
ever said anything to me. And either they knew and
didn't want to say, or I got caught. The bureaucracy
saved me.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Nobody thought they just didn't look at it.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
A few times. I was glad that, you know, bureaucracy
was around, but I would never I had a kid in,
you know, alone in the class like if I was come,
you know, working with him or her. And I always
did it with We sat in front of the door
where you could see me. The door was always open
because at that point there were no walls.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
To protect me, right and you were aware of that.
You were like, I have to take this into my
own hands.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Oh was I am? My first day is teaching, first
day of teaching. I've performed in front of thousands of people,
but you've never thought walk into a classroom first time,
and walking to a classroom as a transgender woman pre
apt Yeah, you know, so my first and I tell
his story first twelve year olds or whatever like twelve yeah, yeah,
(26:32):
were modal ages, not even at the beginning of the year.
I came in a month into the year so and
I could do this. So first day of school, this kid,
at the end of the day puts a piece of
paper on my desk. You know, I don't know when
he dropped it there, but I opened it up, like, oh,
one of these kids is saying welcome. I open it
up and says, here, everybody thinks you're a man. It
(26:55):
hit me yeah, that's exactly well. The way it hit me,
it was like a gut punch and I and I
could feel myself getting taught and ready to just lose
my it, lose my ship. I started to cry and
I grabbed all my stuff and I ran out of
the school and went home. It was the end of
the day and I'm driving down Route nine. I remember this,
here's a porn and I'm going to kill myself. That's
(27:16):
all there is. I went. I drove over to Lavalla,
New Jersey, where my when I was a kid, I
had spent summers. And it was October. It was a
rainy day and nobody was there. It was at the
season was over. And I sat in the car on
the on the bay, overlooking the bay, and I was
(27:36):
going to just drive the car off the pier and
that would have been the end of it. I don't
know what stopped me. At the very leg I had
my hand on the gear shift, it was in drive.
I was something just said, no, you've worked too hard
(27:57):
to get through college at such a late age stage
of your life. There's something more for you to do yet,
it's not time. And if you let this twelve year
old I remember the voice in my head was like,
this twelve year old punk kid is not going to
get the best of you. And so I put the
car in the park. I decided to go home. I
(28:20):
came back the next I went back to school the
next day, didn't say a word about what had happened.
And the next day and the next day, and seven
years later, I left there. My heart was breaking because
I didn't want to leave.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Oh yeah, I am thinking, as you were telling a story,
you know this is Yes, it's a twelve year old,
and yes they can be brutal, but obviously hitting you
at a point where not only you're you know, it's
a pretty vulnerable time in your life. Oh just you
know the way that kids, I think, can drive a
(28:57):
stack through someone, Oh smart, with just blurting out the
most id kind of statements. And do you think of
a comedy audience, and you know they're drunken hacklers. People
have said some terrible things to me. There is still
a tiny bit of the adult brain that cannot be
(29:17):
as cutting as a kid.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Oh no, especially on your first day. Don't forget me.
I went back to college at forty eight. I was
still lan When I went back and I was. I
graduated as mail, and you know, all the changes happened afterwards,
but I had worked so high, graduated at the top
of my class. I had like a three point eighty
seven GPA. I was so proud of myself, and I
(29:41):
really wanted to be a good teacher because I had
had all of the few people in my early life
in high school that had affected me in a positive
way was a teacher.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Okay, I was.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I was a really troubled kid, you know, in high school,
and I was always getting into trouble. But I was smart,
you know. And for the teachers that I wanted to
perform for, I did. And this particular one she I
won't mention her name. She's still alive. She senior year.
I was walking past her office and she she caught
My name was Richard. And I hear her, just go Richard,
(30:20):
just like that? Ship would I do? I bought my
sit down? She did one of these sit down. So
I sat down, and she goes, what are your plans
for college? Where are you going to college? I'm not
going to college. We don't have any money to send
me to college. I got to support my mother. Besides that,
I wanted to I'm going to be a physician. I'm
going to be in show business. I'm not college. And
(30:42):
she said to me, well, what if I paid for
your college education? Well, and I was like what, And
I see I'm getting teary thinking about Sorry. She goes,
call it alone, she goes, call it a gift. Whatever
you want to do, she goes, I will pay for
your occasion.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I ain't getting dearious you're saying this.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
And because I was a dumb ass kid, I said no,
But I never forgot it. She was the first person
in my life whoever wow, just reached out. So when
I decided to be a teacher, I told her, you know,
I wrote her a letter and I wanted to be
(31:24):
just like her. I wanted to be as good as
teachers are. I believe that you have to wherever you
are at the moment is where you're supposed to be.
And my seven years in that school were where exactly
where I was supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
If I may, it sounds to me like you were
a parent to many.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Well, I've always said that the kids gave me back
more than I gave them in terms of that, and
you're right. I felt like a lot of them. You know,
their mothers or fathers were in jail, or they were
in drugs and just really really troubled kids. And those
are the kids I wanted. Give me those. I was
like the m A Lazarus. Sidn't give me your tired
before you kids punching lockers for no apparent reason, because
(32:03):
I felt a kinship with them.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Now, your son is doing comedy, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
He loves comedy, okay, but not to stand that that's
not his forte. He's trying it. God, yeah, I told
him the same thing. Loves sketch comedy, but he's a writer. Frankly,
that's what he does.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Do you help him? Encourage him? Do you ever my job?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
I got enough trouble with my own, my own comedy. Besides,
he doesn't need me. He doesn't need me.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
He's already good at it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
They were little, I especially him in his crib in
the morning. I would always do stick with him, like
but he was like two or three. I think I
had two jokes that I told my kids, the first
jokes that they ever heard, and one was the best
time to go to the dentist two thirty.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
The best.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
It's a classic love it. The other one was why
will you you never starve in the desert because of
all the sand witch is there.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I'm telling that to my son later.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
You remember that, Okay. It took him a while to
get to understand that joke because I haven't stand in
his crib andico, do you understand because of all the
sand which is there? And sandwich? And then he would sing,
we would It was a big Louis Prima fam I
still haven't and he is now too, and so we
(33:27):
used to sing Louis Prima songs. He would be in
the crib and.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
I go, every time it rains, it rains, pennies from heaven,
and then he would go, shooby doobie. This is like,
So the answer to your question is he kind of
didn't have a choice. I gay, I kind of unleashed
the crack.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
It in him.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
You did family business.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
It's the family business. Pass it along. Thank you so much, Julia.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
We done. We're not done, Arlie.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
This is the point where we always say we should
get together.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
The pooe, I know we should get together.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Hey, thanks so much for listening, and don't forget to
check out our new mini episodes.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
They drop every Thursday.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
The next one is more of my chat with Julia Scotti.
Check it out because she tells me the best birthday
present story ever. Also, if you have a friend who
should be celebrated for living their truth, send them this episode,
send them all of our episodes. If you haven't yet
subscribed to this podcast, stop my Apple podcast. Just take
(34:27):
a quick little vier there. Give us five stars, leave
a review. It really helps us, so thank you. You
can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at parenting
is a joke. On x we are at parenting joke.
We have a substack with new stuff every single week,
so much content. Stop by substack and search for parenting
(34:48):
as a joke. If you're in New York City, I'm
performing here in town all week. Find out all my
dates Atfireisberg dot com. Follow me everywhere at ofira e
on Instagram. You may have noticed, perhap that I've been
doing a push up challenge. Where am I at sixty people?
That was my goal.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
I did it.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I did it. I did sixty push ups in one day.
It felt amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Never going to do it again.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Just kidding, trying to sustain harder than I think. So
I need a new challenge. Feel free to suggest one
right now. My life is meaningless. Our episode is produced
by me and Julie Smith clem. Our editor is Nina Porzuki.
Our sound designer is Tito Toby Mack. Our digital marketing
is done by Laura Vogel. Our video editor is Melissa Weiss.
Our overqualified intern is Jeffrey Kaufman. Thank you to all
(35:33):
of the engineers as Citybox, and we'll leave you with
a little bit more from Julia Scotti Meta really weird.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
It turns out men are really sensitive about penis. Things
they good.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
I had one guy said to me, why would you
want to become a woman like I don't know, because
my salaries to line.
Speaker 5 (36:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Another guy said to me, you know what, I feel like,
you're betraying our gender.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Like betraying our gender. What do we spies? What top secret.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
Information from the magical world of men? Do you see
me sharing with the women folk? Are you afraid I
might tell them that men only need two
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Things food and a place to put their penis, and
that sometimes those two things are the same
It used to be chairs all the stuff at sales.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Fun Parenting's a joke. Hello, listeners, this is parenting is
a joke.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm a New Yorker.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Magazine you are never going to read named Ofira Eisenberg.
And on the show, we bring together professionals, stand up comedians,
and funny people to talk about their creative lives and
their work and also what it's like to do that
while raising kids. That's right, How the fuck are they
doing it? I only let my son play free iPad games,
(00:34):
look at me with my strict boundaries and rules. So
he downloaded one this weekend called plague Ink.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
You get a world map, and then you choose if
you're a virus or a bacteria, and whether you travel
by air, water, or food. And you also get to
choose that when you infect people if they die or
get sick, and then you try to infect the world.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
El that's the game.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
M h.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's like Risk, but with a twenty nineteen COVID twist.
So I said to him, why are you interested in
playing this dark game where people die from a virus?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Why can't you just play Legos?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Is what I always want to say, but instead I
say something where you're building and healing, and he said, well,
if you want the cure, you have to pay four dollars.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So I bought it.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I figured, you know, I was curing a few things really,
but no, I was just foiled again by a dumb
app throwing four bucks as an add on trying to
create some positivity. But at least now when he looks
at a map he can point out Canada, Algeria, and Peru. Yeah,
because that's where he infected the most people.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That's weird too.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
My guest today is Julia Scotti, and we talk about
her comedy career and her coming out story.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I came out on national television on America's Got Talent.
You Gotta Go Bigger, Go Hold.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I say more with me and Julia Scotti right after
these bite sized ads happy Spring Equinox. It's here. It's wild,
isn't it. Yeah? You know it's wild. My kid's behavior
and apparently this is a thing.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It's not just him.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
There are actually articles about the spring behavior roller coaster,
especially for elementary school kids. So anytime I see the therapist,
she's like, oh, yeah, this time of year, my kid patients,
they are the worst and part of it is because spring.
And then also they've just figured out how school works now,
(02:47):
so there's nothing new, and it's sort of this weird
time where there's no holidays. You know, they're not quite
sliding into the finish line, but there's nothing new, so
they're all rattled and get out fun. Yeah, shout out
to the teachers. Good luck. The other roller coaster i'm
(03:08):
on is my mom friend journey not going well. I
talked about it last week, you know what, and I
was just so surprised. You put these things out there
sometimes and then people get back to me, and so
many moms told me they feel the same way, and
it just made me so sad. I was like, all
of these cool people are all so lonely. We got
(03:28):
to get together. My problem is that I tried too hard.
I try too hard with my you know, pick up
mom school banter, trying to fit in, trying to I
don't know, be liked, and my jokes do not land.
It's just getting worse.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Okay, here's the latest.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So once again I thought we were all just having
fun and the conversation turned to sex with your partner
after having kids, and I said, I got right in there,
and I said, oh my god, blowjobs. Those are the
most precious andy in a relationship, because that is the
first to go okay as time moves forward, I mean,
(04:06):
who wants to give a blowjob? Anyway? And one woman
raised her hand, so I high fived it, and then
she corrected me. She said no, I was saying, I
do I like giving blowjobs? I like it still, and
the other moms nodded in agreement. Who are you people?
I mean, come on, I was shamed. I was shamed.
(04:27):
Oh yeah, for not being the perfect woman partner, mom,
blowjob giver. You know what. I don't want to join
your group anymore. I am done with it.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Do I care? Do I try to win over these
moms or do.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I just forget about it? Do I buy Dale Carnegie's
book on how to Influence people and make friends? Or
do I just stop talking about flatio and stuff and
kids into bags on the playground? That's what I bombed
with last week. I'm up for suggestions, I guess, except
for joining one of those mom Finder friend apps. Good okay,
(05:01):
I can't do tender moms.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Lisa have my comedy friends.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So let's dive right into this great conversation with Julia Scotti.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Everybody.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I'm excited for my guest today because we haven't talked
in a while, so it's always great to have an
opportunity to get together.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
She performs stand up all over the country. She is
the star of the critically acclaimed documentary Julia Scotti.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Funny that Way, and you can see her on Showtime
as one of the performers in More Funny Women of
a Certain Age.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Julia Scotti, Hello, Wow, I'm special.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Look at all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Hi, It's just true. It's just true.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So I didn't even forgot to mention my Nobel Prize
that I want to.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
That would be nice if a comic once won the
Nobel Prize. That's how we would know the Nobel Prize
is over.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I was thinking about that the other day. There should
be a Nobel Prize for comedy.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah. Yeah, If laughter's the best medice, and who is
doling out the most of the best medicine these days.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Who's finding the cure for the worldwide on we we currently?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, that's who is the true truth teller.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I'm doing It would be you. I'm going to vote
for you.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I always start by asking the same question, which is,
what are the ages and names? If you feel comfortable
of your kids.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Well, I'll give you the ages, but you know, they
prefer not to have their names understood. I have a
forty three, forty four year old, believe it. Wow, for
my first I've been married multiple times. Okay, I have
a thirty four year old. She's going to be thirty
five this year, and my and my son it's going
to my other son is going to be thirty two.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay. I mean, on one level, your parenting duties feel done.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Their cook Yeah, I you know, I washed my hands
with the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I was on the road a lot there and when
they were growing up, so and you know, there were
multiple divorces going on too. So I had a juggle
career and trying not to you know, not to be
a horrible parent. And I was always afraid of history
repeating itself because my parents divorced when I was six
years old. Okay, and so you know, so I'm completely
(07:21):
skillless when it comes to dealing with that sort of thing.
But I did my best.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You know, yeah, do it if your kids have kids,
are you a grandparent?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
No?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
They vowed after their experience with me. No, they I
don't know. They just don't. They haven't been exposed to
the best of domestic circumstances, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, so no children, Okay, So they are just living
lives and being wealthy because they don't have to spend
the money on children.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Exactly, lives of quiet splendor and you know, travel a
feeling of zen piece, you know, and they're tolls.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So you're a nationally headlining comedian. You are former teacher
sixth grade.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Well, I taught for twenty years and then when the
with my niece likes to call it, the event happened.
And then, as comics are, we don't deal well with
the authority figures. So I decided that teaching. I want
to go back to comedy, you know. And so I
loved teaching and hearing.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And the event that you were saying for our listeners
is that you transition.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I did. I'm transgender transition in twenty Well, it began
in nineteen ninety nine, and I fully transition in twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
You're doing comedy as a man, and then you take
a ten year break, you become a teacher.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You decide this is not what I want to do.
And then you decide to go back to the stage,
and you are coming back as a woman.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
First, my first question is what actually lured you back
on to the stage after all those years?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
What the hell was I thinking? The stand up is
like the Hotel California. You can check out any time
you want, but you can never And about when I
finished teaching, I got to I reached out to a
friend of mine, she comic from Philadelphia named Chris Rich.
We hadn't seen each other in a long time. She goes,
let's have lunch. I said great. Over the course of
(09:27):
the lunch, she said to me, when are you coming
back to commedists. I'm not coming back. I'm a man
sixty something years all on transgender. They all wants to
see me, you know, And she said, you know you
want to, And of course, of course I did. Comic
doesn't want to because once you put a set together
and come on out and do it. So I did.
(09:50):
And again, you know, drug addicts that we are getting
on stage and you hear that, you hear that applause
and laughter, and that's all she wrote there. That was
all I needed. I'm so easy.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Obviously, you notice as differences, But did you notice any
differences about like, did you feel like you had to
come out at the beginning of your set every time?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Well, I did come out. That was one of them.
I had personal criteria. I wanted they were only two.
I wanted to be totally honest about who and what
I was, and I wanted to be fearless about it.
I wasn't going to shy away from it. That was
the first test of it. And they came out at
this club in Bristol, Pennsylvania, which is a blue collar
club and right not exactly a liberal a bestion of
(10:38):
liberal thinking. And I came out and that was the
first thing I said. I graduated college, I've been away.
I graduated college, I got divorced, and oh yeah, I
had a sex change. And the audience it's like it
was like you know that scene in the in Young Frankenstein,
what they do and putting on the writs in the audience,
it's just like it was like that. And I had
(11:01):
to keep saying it, no, I really am transgender, I really,
and they still weren't getting it. And finally, on the
third time they believed me. They didn't know what to do.
I don't think they'd ever. It's like seeing a unicorn
in person for the first time. It's like, can I go?
And I'm like, that's okay, it's not contagious, you can
touch me. So it was that kind of stuff that
(11:24):
was eleven twelve years ago and now it was a
different world that yes, and so I know it doesn't
seem like a long time ago, but it really really was.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It seems to me like the last five years was
the longest amount of time ever in the history of time.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
So yeah, well i'll give you that.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So you're eleven years. I mean, that's what I just think.
It's almost like it was double.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
But obviously it was like you say, if you go
out now in an audience, let's just say, same kind
of scenario.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Well, now it's now it's sort of part of my uh,
you knows, my act is there's about ten, ten to
fifteen minutes devoted to that. But I came out on
national television, you know, on America's Got Talent. You're got
to go Bigger, go home. I say, what was that like, Well,
that was an interesting experience too, thirteen million people I
(12:21):
called the mother of all you know, coming out stories. Yeah,
there was a moment, you know, like you know, you know,
when you're doing stand up, there's that little voices in
your head, like the board of directors I call them that.
They're always making executive decisions, you know, should we say this,
should we say that?
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And AGT left it up to me as to whether
or not I wanted to come out, and I still
hadn't decided. I mean, I'm out there doing the set,
and I said, we all right, if I do come out,
I'm not going to come out until after the set
because I want to be judged on the set only.
And it went well, and then you know, and then
how we asked that question. I said, what the hell,
(12:57):
you just go for it all. But then all of
a sudden they stood up and they started screaming and
yelling and clapping. I was like, oh, okay, you know
I can do this. I figured that my age was
the worst I could do. Killy, I had us rights anyway.
It wasn't like I was Dancer with the Stars, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So it airs and what is the response, Like, I'm
sure you're receiving response.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Oh, I mean local papers are calling me, they're tracking
me down. I can't go to the supermarket because people
are like swamp. Yeah. Yeah, it was really weird. I went,
I get done Carolines. I was booked in Caroline. It's
Times Square. People are running up to me. Truck drivers
like sweat. You know you hear about celebrities going yeah,
(13:47):
truck driver's going that actually happened. Truck was like I
saw you last night. I'm like, okay, and it's it's exciting,
but it's kind of creepy. You know. Well you must
get that too.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
No, well, at that point where you like, oh my goodness,
I'm selling tickets. This is a different phase of my career.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah. I called Tom and genuine he's my manager, Tom
Tom Jena. I call him up and I go, we're
asking for more money. We're up in the price. I
want to take a step back, if you don't mind
with my kids, because I had to really think about it,
whether it's going to come out on TV, because of
(14:32):
how it would affect my kids.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Well, I was going to ask about that for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I always said to them when, especially when I came
out to them as kids. They were much younger when
they came out. It was hard. It was agonizing to
make that decision because it could traumatize you know, I
was essentially killing their father when they were little. But
then I said, you know, I can't, I can't let
(14:58):
that be my deciding factor because if I how can
I tell them as a parent to be true to
themselves if I can't be true to myself. And that
I knew as sure as I'm talking to you that
this was the right decision for me. At the time,
we were divorced already, so it was not like I
was living there with them, and it led to a
(15:18):
fourteen year absence in their lives. They decided, you know,
well they didn't decide, but their mother decided that I
shouldn't be in their life.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Was she scared?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't know what she was. I mean, you know what,
I don't want to speculate on her thinking processes. I
just know that it was just awful those years going
through this is such a personal experience, especially back then
because it was so new, and so I was embarrassed.
I had a lot of shame. I was embarrassed for
(15:54):
what my kids might be going through, what they were
being called I didn't care about me. So can you
get back to a g T admitting in front of
the entire really the world. It's not just America that
I was getting emails from Australia and Brazil and England.
I mean, it was it was crazy, and I had
(16:15):
to take that into consideration, you know, when the when
the kids, when it came to the kids. But I again,
that was that be to thine own self. Be true.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yes, during the time when you weren't had potentially had
no contact with your kids, did you still send birthday
cards or anything? Or was it just nothing.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
I tried to, you know, to send emails and text
messages and whatever I could do. My mother was still
alive at the time, and so I would hear from
her what they were doing, what they had, you know,
and then I would send a little you know, hey,
Orgian had a great football game or whatever. And then
she would give me, you know, there's school pictures, you know,
(16:58):
and so I have these these serious the pictures of
them growing up. Oh wow, And that was my only
you know, the only way I could identify them if
I saw them. You know, he was really bad. It
was really really, really barely bad.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
But it's changed.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
It's changed, but it's never going to be the way
it should because I missed everything. You know, in their lives,
we're more like, we're more friendly than parent child.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Okay, when did it change?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I mean you were talking three different people here, so
I can't imagine each person had their own relationship.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
It actually started with my son, who was the baby. Yeah, baby,
he opened the door. Well, actually I kind of opened that.
I was always like when his birthday would come around,
I would just say, hey, happy birthday. And then he
started to respond to my text. I was like, oh,
maybe he's opening the door, and little by little, you know,
the door open. My daughter was a little harder.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Going back to the very beginning. Did you always want
to have children?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
That's a really now that I have of course, now
that I have them.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
My life, of course, of course.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
But as a as a as a young comic, and
having come from the childhood environment that I did, it
was a very bad situation. My father was an alcoholic,
he left when I was six. My mother was what
they called the paramid schizophrenic back then, in an at
of mental hospitals a couple of times, you know, a
(18:34):
shock therapy and all that. So, and I was Catholic
on topic it, I mean, I don't mean to minimize
the the value of what they did to me, you know,
because this was not progressive Catholic, this is going my way,
beat the hell outy and none kind of catholic. Wow. Yeah,
so all of those things combine. I don't want to
(18:57):
swear on your show, but.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
You can it get fucked you up.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It does. When it came to children, I did not
really want to recreate that, and especially when my first
marriage broke up. You know, I always felt like history
was repeating itself right.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So, and also as a stand up, I imagine were
you at all like how does this work?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well, there's no rule, you know this back then, there
were no rules for stand ups, And I'm like, what
do we do? You know, ironical. I gotta go on
the road. I gotta go into the city every night,
and I gotta you know, not make any money for years.
I got to keep two jobs, two three jobs, and
still be a parent. I mean it was a you know,
juggling chainsaws.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
You know, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
In your documentary, you know, there is this really very
poignant moment where your son is there and you're watching
old footage of your stand up.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
So yeah, there's a part of the movie we were
looking at me and doing this anti trans bit. Is
that the part you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, And I
forgot the thing even existed that that was your material.
It was my material. Yeah. And the minute I saw it,
I knew what it was. And you can see in
the movie where I go because you want to turn
(20:15):
this off, I'm like no, no, no, you know, and
then as an unfold I was like, stop, shut up,
shut off, Julie. Yeah. But at the time I was
going through that, that gender identity thing. At the time,
I just didn't understand what it was. I thought it
was sexual that I thought I was gay, And you know,
there was no information. That's the thing I keep trying
(20:37):
to explain to people. It's not like today. There was
no internet. There was nothing, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, who did you go to?
Speaker 3 (20:45):
My Kate, the woman you's here at the end of
the movie that's on the phone. She just the love
of my life and to this day I love her.
There's nobody else in my life never will be. And
she got me to understand what it was. I had
had my two previous wives that called me a woman
a million times. You're acting like a woman you're being
(21:07):
a woman.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Then my mother tells me that she thought she was
having a girl right up until I was born. I
was like, oh Jesus, all right, but I did. It
didn't sink in until Kate said it, And she said
it at a moment in our relationship where I was desperate.
I was suicidal, you know, because I didn't know what
was wrong with me. Wrong it's a bad word. I
(21:29):
didn't know what it was, what was going through you.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, and when you say that, your your partners would say,
you're acting like a woman. What do you in what context?
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I was to stay, I don't know. They would say,
you know, it's such a woman. Why in such a woman?
Like say it's a big jarred I remember my I
remember one of them used to say, just because I
used to like musicals. You know.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
That.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know that was difficult, very difficult.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
But you know that's the kind of shit I got
from them. It's like, you know, all right, I like musical,
like you know, I cry a West Side story? What
do you want from me?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
They're not allowed to.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, well back then, you know, not if you were
an Italian guy. I know you guys didn't cry a
West Side story.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So it's interesting though.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
You know that you your transition, you go back to college,
you become a teacher, and as I understand, like very
difficult period in the sense that you did not have
any contact with your kids.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And I mean, listen, I just can't even imagine how
devastating that is.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Well, teaching was my salvation because I was able to.
You know, I started out working for the Association of
Retarded Citizens ARC, that was what it's called, and I
was I worked for them for six months and I
had a client profoundly brain damage, blind, deaf, I mean
(22:58):
Korean and understanding English at all. And they gave me
this kid and he was violent and I and I
grew to love him, and I you know, I mean,
I taught him how to eat with the other people.
This kid could never eat by himself. And so I
stayed there until nine to eleven. Happened that day. I
(23:20):
had him and I had him in the car because
I used to pick him up at work. And I've
never told this story before. I see what you did.
You brought he was in the back of the van
with me and Howid Stern was on who just did
the most amazing job of reporting the events of that day.
(23:42):
And I'm in the car, in the van. He's in
the back and he's he's rubbing slivea on my head
and he's just just doing awful things to me, and
you know, but that's what he did. But all I
could think of was I want to see my kids.
I want to. I want to I want to leave
this kid home and go to run to my kids
because I don't know if this is the end of
(24:04):
the world. I don't know what's going on, right, you know,
And I can't. I can't go see them. I'm not
allowed to see them. It just broke my heart. But
I got them to the to the center where we taught,
and we got through that day, as we all know,
we got through the days after. In about a couple
of weeks after nine to eleven, I got a call.
(24:24):
I had been sending out resumes to the school systems
and I got a call from this one school system
when I liked there was a woman going out on maternityly,
which I found terribly ironic. You know, They wanted to
interview me for the position. And so I went and
I got the job, and I left and I stayed
at this school for seven years. Love my kids. I
love my kids, and they filled my original point was
(24:46):
they filled so much of that hole in my heart
and my soul. Yeah, than not having my kids with me.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Now, I'm sorry, this is a stupid question. Did you
have to come out to the administration?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Did you have to? I was free opt too at
that point, okay, but I was living as Julia. You
have to live a year and your knew identity before
they'll approve you for any kind of surgery. That's the
way it was. And I don't know if it's still
the same way. My license said Julia had my name changed,
but there was new Jersey. Wouldn't change the gender. Oh really?
(25:23):
And I hope that, I hope to God that they
wouldn't have looked at it, you know, And so because
you have to get a background check and everything, and
I don't know what was showing up on it, nobody
ever said anything to me. And either they knew and
didn't want to say, or I got caught. The bureaucracy
saved me.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Nobody thought they just didn't look at it.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
A few times. I was glad that, you know, bureaucracy
was around, but I would never I had a kid in,
you know, alone in the class like if I was come,
you know, working with him or her. And I always
did it with We sat in front of the door
where you could see me. The door was always open
because at that point there were no walls.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
To protect me, right and you were aware of that.
You were like, I have to take this into my
own hands.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Oh was I am? My first day is teaching, first
day of teaching. I've performed in front of thousands of people,
but you've never thought walk into a classroom first time,
and walking to a classroom as a transgender woman pre
apt Yeah, you know, so my first and I tell
his story first twelve year olds or whatever like twelve yeah, yeah,
(26:32):
were modal ages, not even at the beginning of the year.
I came in a month into the year so and
I could do this. So first day of school, this kid,
at the end of the day puts a piece of
paper on my desk. You know, I don't know when
he dropped it there, but I opened it up, like, oh,
one of these kids is saying welcome. I open it
up and says, here, everybody thinks you're a man. It
(26:55):
hit me yeah, that's exactly well. The way it hit me,
it was like a gut punch and I and I
could feel myself getting taught and ready to just lose
my it, lose my ship. I started to cry and
I grabbed all my stuff and I ran out of
the school and went home. It was the end of
the day and I'm driving down Route nine. I remember this,
here's a porn and I'm going to kill myself. That's
(27:16):
all there is. I went. I drove over to Lavalla,
New Jersey, where my when I was a kid, I
had spent summers. And it was October. It was a
rainy day and nobody was there. It was at the
season was over. And I sat in the car on
the on the bay, overlooking the bay, and I was
(27:36):
going to just drive the car off the pier and
that would have been the end of it. I don't
know what stopped me. At the very leg I had
my hand on the gear shift, it was in drive.
I was something just said, no, you've worked too hard
(27:57):
to get through college at such a late age stage
of your life. There's something more for you to do yet,
it's not time. And if you let this twelve year
old I remember the voice in my head was like,
this twelve year old punk kid is not going to
get the best of you. And so I put the
car in the park. I decided to go home. I
(28:20):
came back the next I went back to school the
next day, didn't say a word about what had happened.
And the next day and the next day, and seven
years later, I left there. My heart was breaking because
I didn't want to leave.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Oh yeah, I am thinking, as you were telling a story,
you know this is Yes, it's a twelve year old,
and yes they can be brutal, but obviously hitting you
at a point where not only you're you know, it's
a pretty vulnerable time in your life. Oh just you
know the way that kids, I think, can drive a
(28:57):
stack through someone, Oh smart, with just blurting out the
most id kind of statements. And do you think of
a comedy audience, and you know they're drunken hacklers. People
have said some terrible things to me. There is still
a tiny bit of the adult brain that cannot be
(29:17):
as cutting as a kid.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Oh no, especially on your first day. Don't forget me.
I went back to college at forty eight. I was
still lan When I went back and I was. I
graduated as mail, and you know, all the changes happened afterwards,
but I had worked so high, graduated at the top
of my class. I had like a three point eighty
seven GPA. I was so proud of myself, and I
(29:41):
really wanted to be a good teacher because I had
had all of the few people in my early life
in high school that had affected me in a positive
way was a teacher.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Okay, I was.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I was a really troubled kid, you know, in high school,
and I was always getting into trouble. But I was smart,
you know. And for the teachers that I wanted to
perform for, I did. And this particular one she I
won't mention her name. She's still alive. She senior year.
I was walking past her office and she she caught
My name was Richard. And I hear her, just go Richard,
(30:20):
just like that? Ship would I do? I bought my
sit down? She did one of these sit down. So
I sat down, and she goes, what are your plans
for college? Where are you going to college? I'm not
going to college. We don't have any money to send
me to college. I got to support my mother. Besides that,
I wanted to I'm going to be a physician. I'm
going to be in show business. I'm not college. And
(30:42):
she said to me, well, what if I paid for
your college education? Well, and I was like what, And
I see I'm getting teary thinking about Sorry. She goes,
call it alone, she goes, call it a gift. Whatever
you want to do, she goes, I will pay for
your occasion.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I ain't getting dearious you're saying this.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
And because I was a dumb ass kid, I said no,
But I never forgot it. She was the first person
in my life whoever wow, just reached out. So when
I decided to be a teacher, I told her, you know,
I wrote her a letter and I wanted to be
(31:24):
just like her. I wanted to be as good as
teachers are. I believe that you have to wherever you
are at the moment is where you're supposed to be.
And my seven years in that school were where exactly
where I was supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
If I may, it sounds to me like you were
a parent to many.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Well, I've always said that the kids gave me back
more than I gave them in terms of that, and
you're right. I felt like a lot of them. You know,
their mothers or fathers were in jail, or they were
in drugs and just really really troubled kids. And those
are the kids I wanted. Give me those. I was
like the m A Lazarus. Sidn't give me your tired
before you kids punching lockers for no apparent reason, because
(32:03):
I felt a kinship with them.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Now, your son is doing comedy, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
He loves comedy, okay, but not to stand that that's
not his forte. He's trying it. God, yeah, I told
him the same thing. Loves sketch comedy, but he's a writer. Frankly,
that's what he does.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Do you help him? Encourage him? Do you ever my job?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
I got enough trouble with my own, my own comedy. Besides,
he doesn't need me. He doesn't need me.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
He's already good at it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
They were little, I especially him in his crib in
the morning. I would always do stick with him, like
but he was like two or three. I think I
had two jokes that I told my kids, the first
jokes that they ever heard, and one was the best
time to go to the dentist two thirty.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
The best.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
It's a classic love it. The other one was why
will you you never starve in the desert because of
all the sand witch is there.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I'm telling that to my son later.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
You remember that, Okay. It took him a while to
get to understand that joke because I haven't stand in
his crib andico, do you understand because of all the
sand which is there? And sandwich? And then he would sing,
we would It was a big Louis Prima fam I
still haven't and he is now too, and so we
(33:27):
used to sing Louis Prima songs. He would be in
the crib and.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
I go, every time it rains, it rains, pennies from heaven,
and then he would go, shooby doobie. This is like,
So the answer to your question is he kind of
didn't have a choice. I gay, I kind of unleashed
the crack.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
It in him.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
You did family business.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
It's the family business. Pass it along. Thank you so much, Julia.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
We done. We're not done, Arlie.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
This is the point where we always say we should
get together.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
The pooe, I know we should get together.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Hey, thanks so much for listening, and don't forget to
check out our new mini episodes.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
They drop every Thursday.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
The next one is more of my chat with Julia Scotti.
Check it out because she tells me the best birthday
present story ever. Also, if you have a friend who
should be celebrated for living their truth, send them this episode,
send them all of our episodes. If you haven't yet
subscribed to this podcast, stop my Apple podcast. Just take
(34:27):
a quick little vier there. Give us five stars, leave
a review. It really helps us, so thank you. You
can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at parenting
is a joke. On x we are at parenting joke.
We have a substack with new stuff every single week,
so much content. Stop by substack and search for parenting
(34:48):
as a joke. If you're in New York City, I'm
performing here in town all week. Find out all my
dates Atfireisberg dot com. Follow me everywhere at ofira e
on Instagram. You may have noticed, perhap that I've been
doing a push up challenge. Where am I at sixty people?
That was my goal.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
I did it.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I did it. I did sixty push ups in one day.
It felt amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Never going to do it again.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Just kidding, trying to sustain harder than I think. So
I need a new challenge. Feel free to suggest one
right now. My life is meaningless. Our episode is produced
by me and Julie Smith clem. Our editor is Nina Porzuki.
Our sound designer is Tito Toby Mack. Our digital marketing
is done by Laura Vogel. Our video editor is Melissa Weiss.
Our overqualified intern is Jeffrey Kaufman. Thank you to all
(35:33):
of the engineers as Citybox, and we'll leave you with
a little bit more from Julia Scotti Meta really weird.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
It turns out men are really sensitive about penis. Things
they good.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
I had one guy said to me, why would you
want to become a woman like I don't know, because
my salaries to line.
Speaker 5 (36:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Another guy said to me, you know what, I feel like,
you're betraying our gender.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Like betraying our gender. What do we spies? What top secret.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
Information from the magical world of men? Do you see
me sharing with the women folk? Are you afraid I
might tell them that men only need two
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Things food and a place to put their penis, and
that sometimes those two things are the same
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