Beware the acephobia of drunken St. Louis women!

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney, I’m here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple, and today we’ve got a little storytime for you pertaining to just a short little weekend trip that we took to St. Louis not too terribly long ago. Ordinarily, this would not be a noteworthy enough event to talk about on the podcast, but we had exactly two nights in St. Louis. First time we have ever been there, by the way. And for some reason, both nights we encountered the most ridiculous drunk women who were inadvertently acephobic to us. Only one of them is kind of a joke. But let me tell ya, being in Kansas City, we know a lot of people who either have lived in St. Louis, have traveled to St. Louis, have family in St. Louis, ’cause it’s not terribly far from here.

Royce: Not terribly far by American standards. We’re—

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: We’re crossing one state, the state of Missouri. Kansas City is on the western border, St. Louis is on the eastern border. It’s about 260 miles, which ends up being about a 4-hour drive.

Courtney: Which by Midwestern American standards, uh, practically our neighbor. [chuckles] I know when I say things like that it always surprises my international friends, but it is what it is.

Royce: It’s— I mean, it’s a pretty extreme exaggeration, but I get it.

Courtney: I know people who literally take day trips to St. Louis. They will drive to St. Louis, do something there for a few hours, and then drive back to Kansas City.

Royce: There are anomalies. I’ve also known people who grew up in the Midwest who have casually dropped out of friendships because they didn’t want to drive 30 minutes across town. So like, people’s ability to drive varies drastically.

Courtney: So, but considering this, you know, Midwestern American car culture, people have been shocked that I have lived in Kansas City for over a decade and have never been there. And the main reason for our trip actually was not to go to St. Louis itself, but you wanted to pick up seeds in a very rural area.

Royce: Yeah, there were a few reasons to go. That was– was one reason for the trip, but it was a ways out of the way. Like, we could have gone just there instead of to St. Louis.

Courtney: Yeah, but we thought, why not, why not make it a little weekend trip? Never been there, let’s give it a try. So we had exactly 2 nights to do anything we wanted to in St. Louis. And I guess I didn’t finish my thought earlier, but of all the people who are very familiar with St. Louis and Kansas City, nearly all of them hate that place with a burning fiery passion. I know one or two anomalies that are like, “Oh, I actually think St. Louis is great.” But most people here, the temperature check is, “St. Louis is terrible, why would you ever go there?” So I wanted to see for myself what makes St. Louis so terrible. Turns out it’s the drunk women, with our limited 2-day sample size.

Courtney: So, first day we did handful of activities, and way at the end of the night, the particular hotel we were staying at had like a bar in the main level, and if you were staying in the hotel, you got a free drink that night at this bar. So we weren’t even buying anything, we just went down to this bar at the end of the night to get a single drink, just a pour of bourbon that we were then going to leave with and go back to our room. But we ended up standing next to this couple, a man and a woman, they were both clearly drunk off their asses, and unfortunately for us, that meant— that the bartenders were, like, intentionally avoiding them. So, the one walk-up area of the bar where we could just stand without taking a seat was right next to these two, and we just wanted our free pour of bourbon to leave with. And how long do you think we actually had to stand there before they finally got around to us?

Royce: I mean, it was probably like a good 15 minutes, but it was like split in two because we went there and had to figure out what was going on and then go back to the, like, counter to basically get— like, the reception area to, like, actually get our drink comp tickets.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And then come back. It felt like a lot longer.

Courtney: It felt like so much longer. Because this chatty drunk couple was just— they latched on to us. There was also— I felt a little bad for them, so this was part of the reason why I also really wanted to entertain this very loud drunk woman, because there was like fully a bridal party there, like night before the wedding, bride and groom-to-be, their bridal parties are like trying to have a nice night. And this drunk woman, the— ’cause the, the bride-to-be had like a white jumpsuit on that did have these big rhinestones. And that apparently read Elvis enough to this drunk woman that she kept saying, “You look just like Priscilla Presley!” And then she’d like, turn to us and be like, “Tell her, tell her that she looks just like Priscilla Presley!”

Courtney: And so when, when they latched on to us and started talking to us, I was like, okay, at least while we’re waiting for the bartenders to come, I will entertain this drunk woman so that she’s not bothering this bridal party. And sometimes drunk people can be very fun. You often get very good stories out of talking to drunk people. The man in this couple was also very weird because he kept openly talking about how he would, like, drunk drive while being an active firefighter. He’s like, “I used to be a firefighter here in St. Louis,” and then he’d talk about downing half a bottle of Rumpelmunds and then driving and then finishing the other half and then driving, and I was like, does this have anything to do with why you’re no longer a firefighter? Like, fascinating just trying to figure these people out. Spilling all of their secrets.

Courtney: But after you said 15 minutes, I would have guessed a half an hour. Maybe it was just because it felt so long, but this was not a busy bar. This was within the final, like, hour that this bar was open inside of a hotel. It was the bridal party who had already had their drinks and were off to the side, this drunk couple, and then the two of us, and there were three bartenders, and they still would not come and give us our free bourbon. But when they finally did, they’re like right next to this drunk woman, they’re in front of us, they’re pouring the bourbon, drunk woman says something a little sideways to this bartender who was not having any of it. This bartender, they were like, shutting down everything this woman was saying. And finally got to a point where they were kind of threatening, like, “If you keep getting obnoxious, maybe we’re gonna have to kick you out or cut you off,” or something. Not an outright threat, but hinting in that direction.

Courtney: And this drunk woman, who, as far as I’m concerned— At this point we stopped talking to her, we’re getting our drinks poured, and we’re gonna leave. I thought this interaction was done. She looks at this bartender and is like, “Why are you trying to kick me out when I’m just trying to talk to these two Harry Potters over here?” [laughs] And gestured at us frantically and then pointed at Royce’s face and said, “This one reminds me of Voldemort.” [laughs] And like, what the fuck does that mean? [laughs] I just remember we got our two tiny little cups of bourbon, which were not even worth it, by the way. It was like, we were led to believe this was gonna be like, a drink, but it was like, half a shot at best. It was like a tasting sampler. We waited this long next to this drunk woman to get a teeny tiny, like, two sips of bourbon. So, we sort of looked at these goofy little shot glasses that they handed us, the teeny tiniest little bit of bourbon, and we just silently started walking away. And halfway back to the elevator, Royce just, in such a dejected tone, goes, “Why am I Voldemort? I have hair… and a nose.” [laughs]

Royce: Yeah, we weren’t exactly able to decode that one.

Courtney: What, what does it mean?!

Royce: I don’t know, I don’t know what kind of Harry Potter you were.

Courtney: What? Why? Like, “These two Harry Potters over here—” Harry Potter what? Harry Potter characters, I guess, if you’re Voldemort. Then who the fuck am I? So was that overtly acephobic? No, that was a silly little anecdote. Did we— is it, is it a little like inherently acephobic to just be reminded that J.K. Rowling exists? Absolutely. That random drunk woman from St. Louis probably knows little to nothing even about J.K. Rowling’s transphobia. Were that where the weekend ended, this would probably not have become an episode. But the second night, we decided to go to a murder mystery dinner theater party, and it was a lot of fun. It was very interesting. Uh, you had never done anything like this before. For me, it had been an extremely long time since I had. And we were sat at a table of— what, eight?

Royce: Eight. It was really packed. They had too many people for the room it was in.

Courtney: Yeah, lots of tables crammed into a relatively small room. We both got assigned relatively sizable parts, which was interesting.

Royce: You mostly.

Courtney: Well, I—

Royce: I had a minor one.

Courtney: Spoiler alert, I was the murderer. I had a huge role. It’s probably because when the actors came around before it started and they turned to you and they were like, “How would you describe your partner that you came with?” And you were like, “Courtney is absolutely ridiculous.” [laughs]

Royce: Really extra, has theater experience.

Courtney: They seem to really latch on when you were like, “Is a Dungeon Master,” because they asked follow-up questions about that. But you got a higher than average speaking role too, which I do just think was funny because there was like one word on your card that you were just like refusing to say, and they really wanted you to say it.

Royce: Well, no, I didn’t get called on till near the end of the night, and I was fading pretty hard at that point. I’ve learned at this point that like whenever we are traveling, I am never fully able to rest. Like, I’m never back to 100% energy. I’m just less and less as the vacation goes on.

Courtney: Well, you were role-playing perfectly well, but the thing is, like, your character wanted to be a barber, and you were talking about that. You’re like, “Yeah, I’m looking for a new career, I want to blah blah blah,”

Royce: When we—

Courtney: “I’m gonna be a barber.”

Royce: So, so when we started out— this is maybe not the best first experience to a murder mystery, but we started out, we are supposed to mingle with people and talk, and I was trying to actually role-play in that moment because I thought that was supposed to— that, that was what was supposed to happen. But then it became very apparent like 5 minutes in that everyone else was playing things incredibly superficially. No secrets, no hidden information.

Courtney: Oh yeah, nobody else at our table was actually role-playing outside of like scenes where the actors were calling on people.

Royce: Yeah, so—

Courtney: When food was coming out, everyone was just talking as themselves, like, “So where are you from? What brought you to the murder mystery today?”

Royce: So I had like a minute or two talking with you and the other couple we befriended across from us, and then that was it. And then the whole show was basically calling on people to say the correct word or sentence very quickly. And so when the murder mystery came around to me near the end of the night, I paused to try to, like, frame a sentence in my head, and they were like, [whispering] “No, just, just say the word.”

Courtney: Well, ’cause the word on your card said manscaped, or like manscaping, and that is so outside of vocabulary you would actually use. And so you were telling them what you wanted to do, but you weren’t saying the word manscaping. You’re like, “Yes, I’d like to start a barber shop,” and you’re just riffing with them, and they’re like, “And what would you call that? What, what would you call that?” And because that word was a trigger for a bunch of other people to start yelling and shouting something out, which you didn’t know at the time, but that was pretty funny, so. But since I ended up being the murderer, I had a lot of scenes. I had some extra scenes. I was doing a lot of roleplaying, not only with the actors, but at one point I had to roleplay with another guest who they brought up.

Courtney: And apparently I was too good, because then the conspiracy theories started. And one woman had to get really, really weird about it. One woman at our table started getting drunk, and this was noticeable like halfway through the dinner theater. And for some reason, she latched on to the two of us. She just started eyeing us from across the table, and she’s like, “You two aren’t married. There’s no way that you’re married. You two didn’t even come here together.” And she went full-blown conspiracy theory, trying to prove or explain to other people how we weren’t even married. Our entire story about who we were is a cover.

Royce: Well, it was the couple across from us who we were talking with, one of them was also a prominent person in this murder mystery. Were they one of the people that—

Courtney: He wasn’t actually a prominent character. Near the end they just, like, asked if someone had a birthday or something, and it was like his birthday, so they called him up for an extra scene.

Royce: Well, he was a part of— he was a part of a bunch of reenactments at the end. So in terms of— I almost said screen time— stage time, was like the second most prominent person after you, and then of course the actual actors, uh, the people in the… troupe?

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Yeah, one can say troupe when discussing a group of actors.

Royce: The drunk lady actually latched on to the two of them first, and the conspiracy theory was that you and him were both plants.

Courtney: Yes, because we did have one big scene at the end where basically what they did with him – because it was his birthday and they called him up – they called me up as one of the potential suspects. And they’re like, “Tell us your story about what happened.” And this guy has to reenact it with you as you explain what happened. So he was just a body who was doing what I said. And so she’s like, “Okay, well, clearly these two are plants.” So then she’s like, eyeing us, and she’s staring at us, and she’s like, “Here’s how I know that you’re lying. You’re not a married couple.” And she was going off and she’s like, “I have not seen the two of you touch each other once tonight.” She’s like, “I have not seen you flirting, I have not seen you holding hands, or—” And, and she just starts going off and she’s like, “This is not how married couples behave.” She’s like, “I would have seen you touch each other at least once.”

Courtney: And we were like, oh my god, woman! You picked the worst possible couple to even make this case to. Because of course we aren’t gonna get into full ace educator mode when we’re literally on vacation at a murder mystery dinner theater, and we’re not even supposed to be us right now, but no one is role-playing with us in our characters outside of the scenes with the actors, which is no fun. Which did just— because that was like, the lack of physical contact was one that she really, really latched on to. And I kept trying to figure it out because obviously being who we are, we’ve gotten more overt bigoted comments from people who are like, “It’s not a real marriage if you’re asexual,” or etc. etc. Like, we talk about that. We have people who say that, sure. And this is a much more surface-level version of that. “I have not seen physical affection here in public, so therefore, I don’t think you are actually the married couple you purport to be.”

Courtney: So a superficial version of it, yes, but is it a viewpoint that is inherently steeped in amatonormativity, compulsory sexuality, expectations that relationships should be physical in a certain way? Absolutely. But I was also just so baffled. Because like, even if we weren’t a famously asexual couple, like, my good lady, we’ve been married for 12 years, we’re at a murder mystery dinner theater, where our respective characters have, like— my character had a canonical relationship with another character. And so that was what I was supposed to be acting out. And then the more drunk she got, and the more sure that she had figured it out, that I am actually a paid actor, I’m not a guest— was, was her theory that I was a paid actor and you were a guest? And I just, like, grabbed you and was like, “Hey, pretend to have come with me.” Was that the theory?

Royce: That was never really explained. She just thought that you and the other guy sitting across the table from us were paid actors and that me and the woman in that relationship actually came here together.

Courtney: Yeah, very weird. I don’t understand the logic, but the more and more drunk she got, the more and more sure she got of herself. And so she was getting a little louder. She was speaking a little more openly. And not like we go out a lot. We never went out a lot. That fully ceased when the pandemic started, and only in this last year have we started kind of ever so occasionally dipping back into the real world again. But drunk women don’t usually latch onto us in such a targeted way, and it was just so odd that of the exactly two nights we had in St. Louis, it happened twice. But I really do— [sighs] Because the thing that confused me too, she was there with her husband, and it seemed like they even had a baby or a very young child, like they were excited that they got a babysitter so that they could come tonight.

Courtney: And I would think, even a straight couple, even an allosexual couple, especially when you’ve gotten to a point where you have a kid and don’t go out very often, like, is it so hard to fathom that in a single night out in public, a married couple isn’t going to be expressing, like, overt displays of PDA? I just couldn’t get my head around it. I honestly don’t know what’s more confusing. That assertion, or the Harry Potters. [laughs] And then at the end, when it was revealed that my character was the murderer, they gave me like a little trophy, which is very nice, and I still have it. And the actors did a full-blown like, “By the way, just so we’re clear, she is not with us. She is not a paid actor.” I think she said something like, “Despite this whole Netflix special that she just treated us to, she is just a guest who showed up here tonight like all of you.” And even still, that woman did not believe. She was still like–

Royce: Yeah, it wasn’t until we were walking out to our cars that she was like, “Oh, you were a guest here.”

Courtney: [laughs] That, that’s what was really funny because they were saying this to the whole audience like, “Just so we’re clear, this was not a plant. We just picked the right person for this job. Doesn’t always happen.” And then, yeah, she was still, like, squinting her eyes at us very conspiratorily. Like, “I don’t believe it.” But yeah, she saw us, like, getting into our car outside at the end, and she did— she did go, “Oh, guess I was wrong.” Why St. Louis? Why— why are you like this? [laughs] And really, that’s— that’s really all there is to the story. It wasn’t huge, it was just very weird. Two nights in a row. And honestly, I just— I had to get that Harry Potters comment out of my head and into the world, because I think about that woman damn near every day for months on end. Like, what, what did you mean? Why are you Voldemort? And who does that make me? Leave a comment, let us know. No, don’t, don’t do that. I don’t want to be any Harry Potter characters.

Royce: Do we have any other funny, not necessarily ace-related moments from that little trip? There was the point in time on the way back because we—

Courtney: The car!

Royce: We were driving an electric car and it’s the first time we’ve taken a trip that long.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And we ended up kind of going through southern Missouri on the way back, and along that route there are far fewer chargers.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: So we were in a bit of a dicey area where, like, we needed to make sure we charged up so we could get to the next point. But we went into this small town that had two chargers, and we plugged in the car and sat down, and all of a sudden the power goes out to the whole town. Because—

Courtney: Yeah, well–!

Royce: Some kind of construction crew had, like, hit an electrical line. And so we—

Courtney: Right across the street. So we were witnessing this fire and the fire trucks coming in and the electrical company coming in. It was right across the street.

Royce: The car stopped charging and we started trying to look at the actual charging station. And then someone else came up behind us to tell us what was going on, and we turned around and yeah, sure enough, the gas pumps and the gas station, that was all dark. And then we looked across town and every other building’s light was off.

Courtney: Well, and this was awful. ’Cause yes, it was the first time we’ve taken a road trip with the electric vehicle, and we were like, surely this shouldn’t be an issue, especially Kansas City to St. Louis directly, lots of chargers, lots of options. Going detour through a more rural area, there was one charger within a wide radius. And there were two charging stations, and there was already a truck on one when we pulled up. And so— and we, we were there for less than 2 minutes before the power went out. I plugged the car in and then sat back down and then it stopped to the point where I was like, maybe it just didn’t connect quite right. Let me get out and see what happens.

Courtney: And the guy in the truck gets out and he’s like, “Did yours also just cut out?” And we were like, “Yeah, I don’t know what’s up with that.” And I was, like, calling customer service on the machine and they were like, “Oh, we see that that pump is online and working perfectly.” And we’re like, “That’s— it’s not. Neither one is. You’re wrong.” So yeah, eventually— and so what we ended up doing, and we had a narrow window of time because we had to get to a seed shop before it closed, and this was technically our entire reason for this weekend trip was to go to this seed store, and we had it down so that we had exactly enough time to charge and then drive to the seed shop to have like, what, maybe an hour left before they closed?

Royce: It was a little under, yeah, like 45 minutes.

Courtney: So we literally just sat outside on the steps of this gas station with the gas station employees. Like, the cashiers closed up, locked the store, came out and just sat on the step with us. And the two of us and these like three gas station employees were just watching the fire from across the street and watching the smoke go up. And the, and the three of them were like, “Damn, I really hope they don’t fix it so then we don’t have to do anything for the rest of the day.” And then they’d look over to us and be like, “Oh, but I mean, I hope they get it working for you two so you can charge your car.” Because we’re like, we literally can’t go anywhere until we charge this car because there aren’t enough stations around. And that is the one and only time that this has ever even remotely been an issue since we’ve gotten this electric vehicle. It wouldn’t have been this issue if we weren’t going through such a rural detour. But wow, what an adventure that was.

Royce: Yeah, because there were people with gasoline-powered cars too who were coming up to the pumps, and of course the pumps didn’t work because none of the electronics worked. But if you had a gas-powered car, you could probably drive a few miles down the road and find another gas station.

Courtney: Yeah, it was like literally if— they did eventually get it back up, so we were fine.

Royce: It didn’t take too terribly long, and we saw the emergency vehicles responding immediately.

Courtney: But this is a kind of town that had like, one gas station, like, one motel. The main road we drove in on was like, only a few blocks long. We fully— if we couldn’t charge our car that day, we would’ve just had to check into the motel, which— presumably they had a backup generator, so hopefully we wouldn’t have been fully in a room without power all night, but— Couldn’t go anywhere. So funny story though it is, uh, please don’t let that dissuade you from choosing an electric vehicle if you, like us, are in a place where driving a car is a necessity to live. Because other than this one very hyper-specific incident, we have been tremendously grateful to have this vehicle on the whole. And then we bought so many seeds. How are the seeds doing, Royce?

Royce: Well, flower seeds are harder to grow than vegetable seeds, turns out.

Courtney: Turns out.

Royce: But progress is being made. Slow progress. Seeds stay viable for a few years, so there’s just going to be rotating seed trays for a while.

Courtney: How many plants do you think are, like, inside of our house right now? Not even the ones that are in the dirt outside. How many are we actively growing and tending to?

Royce: Um, well, most of the— even the little plants are technically outside right now.

Courtney: Well—

Royce: Between like—

Courtney: They’re in pots sitting on the deck because the weather is good enough.

Royce: We have to separate a few things. We have too many tomato plants, mostly because of compost, I think. Accidental tomato plants coming up everywhere and everything. I don’t have a good inventory of what’s outside with all of the little seedling trays. I mean, there are easily dozens, and that’s not counting the, like, 80 little ficus bonsai.

Courtney: Yeah, those are really getting out of hand. [chuckles] I started bonsai as a hobby 3 years ago, and my very first tree is such a prolific mother of baby trees.

Royce: The species is ficus retusa, if anyone cares to try. They’re pretty hardy, and they propagate very easily, which is why we now have like 4th generation cuttings.

Courtney: And if you know us in person, please take some of these bonsai off my hands. [laughs]

Royce: You have a summer of shaping and repotting to do.

Courtney: I have so many bonsai trees I need to attend to. So yes, I hope you all enjoyed a couple of light little anecdotes from just a simple little weekend trip we took. We still have many questions, of course. Feel free to let us know if you have any idea why we got called Harry Potters. Or why Royce got called Voldemort. Let us know if anyone has ever questioned the validity of your relationship or marriage because you aren’t expressing enough PDA! And if you’re in St. Louis, please let us know why— why are you like this, St. Louis? Why— why are your drunk women like this? Specifically. And what exactly am I going to do with 80 baby bonsai trees? Too many questions, not enough answers.

Courtney: But while we ruminate on these questions, allow me to send you all off with today’s featured MarketplACE vendor, ConnieCookiee’s print-on-demand shop, where you can find colorful and fun artworks from a chronically ill asexual artist. Links, as always, are going to be in the show notes on our website as well as the description box if you are listening on YouTube. And there is a wide assortment of beautiful artworks here. There are just some cute little silly guys, like a capybara wearing a baseball cap. There are some cute little jellyfish, which— I’ve spoken offhandedly about a couple of times, sea creatures— very ace-coded. I don’t know why, but I don’t make the rules. And we’ve got a variety of Pride options if you are looking for something fun to celebrate this Pride month. We’ve got some Pride— Pride sheeps? Ewes? E-W-E. It says “Ewe are important” with little Pride sheeps of different colors. We’ve got an Ace-colored sheep, a Trans-colored sheep, Pride sheep, NB sheep. All kinds of delightfully queer sheep.

Courtney: But my favorite item, and the one I bought, and I’ll tell you why, is called Gimme Rainbow Cake. It is a slice of cake with the rainbow Pride colors and two little, like, paws? Like, kitty paws grabbing for it? I mean, in a lot of ways, Pride, pretty self-explanatory. Cake, pretty self-explanatory. But actually, before we went fully vegan, back when we were just lacto-ovo-vegetarian, one of my favorite brunch spots in Kansas City, Succotash, used to have these amazing massive rainbow layered cakes. These huge chunks of cake that each one had a rainbow layer, and they were so good, and I would always get a slice to take home after we had brunch there. And last time I was there, they did actually have some sweets that were vegan. I think they had some, like, really fancy nice scones that were vegan, so they certainly have options. But since I can’t eat said rainbow cake anymore without making my own, and that looks like a lot of work to get layers in all those different colors, I can have this beautiful little piece of Pride merchandise from one of our ace artists in our community. And I love that for me. So once again, that is ConnieCookiee. Make sure to check out the shop. Links in all the usual places. And always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.