EP. 6 - TRUE CRIME  SELENA
[MELISSA]
All plants are ugly (Say more!)

[OLIVIA]
Avocado toast isn't green (Say more!)

[MELISSA]
Mosquitos are doing a good job (Say more!)

[OLIVIA]
I would sleep with Hobo Johnson (pause)
I would

[Olivia]
Hello

[melissa]
Hello

[Olivia]
Oh hi
[Olivia]
Hi

[melissa]
Hiiiiii

[melissa]
Oh, oh hi

[Olivia]
Hiiiii

[Melissa]
Hi

[Olivia]
Uh welcome to Say More

[Melissa]
I’m Melissa

[Olivia]
And I'm Olivia

[Melissa]
Obviously
[Olivia]
And bitch we bought a microphone

[Melissa]
That's right! If you can hear us better it’s because we invested in $149 microphone from the Apple Store sold to us by a nice musical theatre man named Nate

[Olivia]
And he was the epitome of customer service

[Melissa]
He really sold it to us

[Olivia]
We told him that we had a podcast and he literally screamed with enthusiasm and then downloaded the podcast before selling us the microphone

[Melissa]
And he was like ‘yeah this is what it's about making connections with creative people' and I was like “hell yeah okay” thanks

[Olivia]
Like, go off Nate

[Melissa]
Yeah he was so nice

[Olivia]
He was incredible
[Melissa]
Um yeah I heard that getting a job at the Apple Store is like really competitive as like - it's really competitive only one out of a hundred people get it or something ‘cause you have to be like -

[Olivia]
You have to be so knowledgeable

[Melissa]
Yeah and patient and like be into Apple products I don't know

[Olivia]
Mhm I was thinking about that when he was talking and he was saying that he goes to school
I was literally thinking in my head like why do you go to school when you work at the Apple Store like isn't this your career?
It doesn't feel like a retail job it feels like a real job

[Melissa]
You get a lot of money? Don't you?

[Olivia]
I feel like you must make a lot of money
But also Steve Jobs was a fucking capitalist piece of shit so maybe they make nothing

[Melissa]
The higher the turtleneck, the more slave labor you support

[Olivia]
I’m literally wearing a tall turtleneck right now

[Melissa]
Okay Olivia is a capitalist

[Olivia]
Yeah, no, we bought the fuck out of that microphone
and you know what I know that it was a smart choice because Nate explained why it was a smart choice

[Melissa]
Yeah yeah I want to take a class on sound

[Olivia]
You should - can you take a class

[Melissa]
Probably. Can anyone teach me? If anyone can teach me about sound, I would love to learn.
I’m tired of living in ignorance

[Olivia]
I wanna know

[Melissa]
Only thing I know about sound
I want to bring back to being about sex

[Olivia]
I knew you were going to do that
Maybe we should talk about that one episode about
verbal or audio - audible orgasms because I got thoughts motherfucker

[Melissa]
As someone who has silent - I just have sex silently
I don't even breathe during sex

[Olivia]
The only sound you can hear is the back of my head hitting headboard
It just sounds like this [thump thump thump thump] that’s it

[Melissa]
You can just hear like nice pleasant y'know just my
ooh ooh oh thank you
All you hear is me saying thank you when it's over

[Olivia]
It sounds like a dove cry brr brr
Um so we… have a really fun episode for you not because we bought a microphone

[Melissa]
And not because we're fun

[Olivia]
Not because we’re fun but because as the podcast is continuing we're starting to get a better idea of its format and we're playing a little more with audience participation and we opened an email account and you guys emailed us suggestions and topics and questions and life questions and mundane things

[Melissa]
And thanks so much for feedback regarding sound quality and, like, things we should be talking about, doing more or less of
Thank you

[Olivia]
And if you have more suggestions or you have comments or you want to join the discussion you can use hashtag #SayMorePodcast (Yeahhh) on Twitter and there are a bunch of Say More listeners on there talking about different things um yeah

[Melissa]
Cool. Okay so this episode I'm going to be-- Olivia's going to be talking about true crime. I'm going to be talking about Selena Quintanilla-Pérez
the late Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, but first let me ask Oliva some things on true crime (yes)
Um so for those of you who don't know, Olivia's about to come out with a very highly lauded - is that a word

[Olivia]
I don't know. Highly anticipated?

[Melissa]
Highly anticipated book of poetry called Life of the Party that's like deeply inspired by true crime um, murdered women
Okay so let's start at the beginning (yes)
What sparked your interest in true crime?

[Olivia]
So I was not I-I don't I guess maybe this is kind of ironic I don't actually consider myself a true crime nerd (yeah)
I don't actually consume that much true crime
Okay I shouldn't say cause A, that would make me sound like a liar. I do consume true crime but I guess the point is that like I don't know everything there is to know about serial killers
I don't like follow I don't like watch every single true crime series that's on TV
I'm not I guess i'm just not that much of a hardcore nerd about anything
I'm just not a nerd I've always been popular so that's who I am

[Melissa]
Okay, I dig

[Olivia]
No, i just but the reason I got into true crime is because I've always had a really incredible phobia of being murdered
and I know that everyone has a phobia of being murdered but i really started to see the way that it was impacting my life in ways that it wasn't impacting my friends' lives
And I started to develop like really intense phobias of really random places
Um, like hallways (mhm) and parking garages
And when I say like intense phobias, I mean like literally like checking into hotels and like asking for a room near the elevator and like refusing to park in parking garages like actually like really changing the landscape of my life
Um, like not hiking alone, not running alone which is hard and so when I had to--  finally I got to a point where I had to unpack why I felt this way
and the only thing that always makes me feel better whenever I have a kind of obsession or a fear or problem is to like find community that also has that
And I found My Favorite Murder which is a podcast about true crime
And I realized that this obsession I had with reading stories about women being murdered was not uncommon and that we all have different reasons for doing it but that i wasn't alone in it and so that's why understand why i was so interested in reading like that - violent stories
Why I was consuming it and why I was terribly afraid of it and that's how my true crime obsession started

[Melissa]
Cool. Do you think it's like the same feeling when you consume true crime as when you do when you watch a regular scary movie?

[Olivia]
No not at all I'm not
It doesn't resonate me as horror it resonates to me as like real life
I feel like horror is fantastical and women being murdered is not
It can freak me out like there was that book that came out I'll Be Gone in the Dark about the Golden State Killer and I read about half of it and I had to leave it at an Airbnb on tour because I was so scared of it
because I knew that the more i read it, the more it was going to fuck up my life like i'm starting to get fears about like literally ridiculous shit like I'm starting to have fears about having windows like that's not okay
you can't have a phobia of windows it's just not sustainable and I knew that it just wasn't good for me

[Melissa]
Yeah I remember when I was listening to My Favorite Murder the two times that I did it was like june and i had just gotten a new bed frame and i had all of my windows open because it was so hot
and i was putting together my bedframe and just like listening to a man listening to a a story about a man who had like climbed through windows and murdered women anyway yeah

[Olivia]
Yeah exactly, and you start to wonder like that's what the book is about mostly
is like when I started to consume True Crime no-
I was consuming true crime while having these phobias and it was like the chicken or the egg like I started to realize that I wasn't sure if I was afraid because I was consuming true crime or I was consuming true crime because I needed to justify my fear that already existed or both and then I was like
Am I afraid just because i'm a woman? like in America?
Maybe i'm born to be afraid and there's nothing I can do about it
or maybe I'm making it worse, like maybe I should be reading romance novels and everyone tells you different things but I still don't know and don't quite understand and I've definitely had heightened moments my life of severe phobia and they've gotten better over time and yeah

[Melissa]
Yeah um I feel like whenever I'm consumed by something it's because I feel like I see myself in it or an aspect of myself in it. Is that something that you felt when you were

[Olivia]
Totally, yeah
Yeah because it's like
No, yeah absolutely it's like a weird form of representation
You're like watching a movie about a girl that's like your age who was like jogging in a park at the same time you would be jogging in a park and then she was strangled and murdered and you're like “oh, it's me” you know

[Melissa]
I only see myself when I'm dead

[Olivia]
When I'm dead
The book is about that too, about like knowing about at any time it could be me and like what photo would they choose of me and what would they say about me and y'know

[Melissa]
Yeah, yeah I feel like I've always had a like mastubatory thing of like thinking about myself dead (Totally)
Like tragically young

[Olivia]
Yeah, absolutely

[Melissa]
Yeah. So two questions: What are your thoughts on like, the glorification of serial killers and how would you talk about like true crime under the lens of like speaking of representation, like how many murdered white women do we see in true crime versus how many y'know black trans women or something

[Olivia]
Totally. Okay, so the romanticization of serial killers I was like into that when everyone was into it so when I was 13 and I discovered Wikipedia like yeah I read the whole Ted Bundy page because that shit is well it's like terror porn you're like ‘oh my God you know he killed these women and then went back a week later and dressed them up in cowgirl clothes'
It's like addicting I remember once being a young teenager and like my dad being like “why are you doing? that what's the point of that” and I think it still gets me like if I start reading it I get into a hole but
I don't like it. I think it's weird when they get romanticized
I think its weird when ppl are quote-unquote “obsessed”
Especially men, like i've seen- I've heard a lot of men be like “oh yeah, I'm obsessed with Ted Bundy”
And I'm like okay, Ted Bundy raped and murdered literally dozens of women like not that long ago (mhm)
And that's not- like yes he's like a celebrity but that doesn't You don't just like talk candidly about that shit
That shit is like really serious and scary and violent
And like common, I know it's like not common, but it is. Like the violence of men is like really common and not and very familiar to women so when men just like talk casually about these men throughout history who made a career out of abusing and killing women I don't fuck with that (yeah)
So I don't really fuck with the romanticization of it
It (yeah) it doesn't diagnosis the problem to me at all (mhm)

[Melissa]
Um so I feel like there's a trope of - like in TV and maybe of real life of intense girls being obsessed with serial killers (Yeah totally)
Like there's that show Loved did you ever watch that where what the fuck is her name

[Olivia]
I forget

[Melissa]
It's not Alison Brie

[Olivia]
No it's someone else

[Melissa]
But she's like really intense and like an addict (yeah) and she's obsessed with serial killers (mhm)
What it that - like how is that different from

[Olivia]
Well I think it's different in the way that because of power in history i think that a woman being obsessed with a man that could murder her is different from a man being obsessed with that person
Um simply like i think that if you could be - it's the same as reclaiming language like it's like I can use the word “bitch” but like - I can call you a bitch but like a dude can't
It's the same reason, it's because this is mine
and I'm allowed to do with it what I want
and I think that like historically men who have been violent to women
I think we're allowed to grapple with that fear the way we want to. And if that mean obsessing over it and reading everything about it, then we're allowed to do that
I think men maybe need to unpack what they're obsessed with and why
Is it because they are disturbed by it or is it because they idolize it? There's a really fine line there (right)
However that being said, I do feel like there's like a sexualization sometimes from women of these serial killers that kind of weirds me out
I think it's a little weird to be like “oh my God Ted Bundy was so sexy” (yeah)
I don't know, I feel like I'm imitating someone but I'm not i think I've even said that before

[Melissa]
Yeah, I mean he was an attractive man, yeah

[Olivia]
Yeah that shouldn't be a thing that we say that we joke (Isn't that craaazy) about like it should like tell us that men who you could be attracted to and interested in could also fucking kill you (yeah)
and that's actually much more likely, that the men whom we love kill us
Um, and so I don't know I guess that's there's that trope I think that's just a media attempt to be like “this girl's edgy because she like serial killers” and maybe that is edgy
I guess that i was one of those girls
Overall, I think it's weird to romanticize it and i think that that's one of the things that distances me from true crime. I want to talk about it - like I want to understand why a genre that is largely devoted to the murder of women and girls is so incredibly popular
And I think it's because - I think people love to see women and girls get killed (mhm)
And that's the simple fucking fact about it. And I think girls watch it because they know it could happen to them and I think men watch it because sometimes they fucking fantasize about it. I don't know, that's just my opinion.
But that's what the book is about - is like unpacking that and like this phenomenon and why it- I don't know and like you said, to answer your second question about representation, like yeah part of the reason why I see myself in true crime is because i'm a young cis white woman. Honestly
True crime as a media, as a genre, is like as both a fictional genre and also nonfictional with headlines and documentaries is like really, really inaccurate
So like, the social group that's at the highest risk of homicide is trans women of color, specifically black trans women
And on top of that, women in general are more likely to be murdered by intimate partners than anyone else
I think more women are murdered by their partners, their husbands and boyfriends every year, than soldiers are killed abroad in war
And, but true crime only covers young, cis white women, and of those young, cis white women, it only covers white women killed by strangers
So it's like the furthest away from what's most likely to happen to you
You're most likely gonna be killed by a boyfriend and if you're cis and white you're not even that likely
So it's like, it's fucked up.

[Melissa]
There's a weird romance of both like the beautiful white girl and also the stranger
There's like a romance in a stranger

[Olivia]
Totally mhm, cause it's- it absolves the men in our lives of guilt, you know, like “oh it's going to be a crazy man that you've never seen” it's not going to be the very dude you live with (Yeah)
And then the reason that we don't cover, the reason that the media doesn't cover black and brown and indigenous women, specifically trans women, is because we don't see those lives often -- I'm saying “we” as in like white supremacy -- as like valuable to mourn and that's the other simple fact
We are- there's a hierarchy to being mourned and we see who's- we see that hierarchy in what gets covered and the fact that news articles are not written about brown girls going missing but like a white girl goes missing and it's like the whole fucking country shuts down, you know?
I guess that I do wish that we grappled with that more when it comes to true crime
I think there's too much like obsession of true crime and not enough pausing to be like “hey what the fuck is the deal here” (yeah) cause it's fucking twisted and it's weird and it's- I don't know

[Melissa]
Do you have a serial killer that you're still fixated on?

[Olivia]
Uhh  yeah so I was pretty into the Golden State Killer who was just discovered, who was just caught
Part of why I was into him was because it was exciting to see him, this whole book was written about him. He was this like notorious killer and serial rapist that got off that escaped like no one knew who he was and then they caught him in April of this year, 40 years after his crimes took place
And that was exciting because I got to watch that unfold, but I also fixated on him because I think he-
We all have our own serial killer. Meaning, we all have specific fears and we all have one serial killer that triggers those fears. So like Jeffrey Dahmer never scared me that much because his like,he wouldn't have targeted me and also like, his crimes were so like, absurd that I couldn't see myself in them
This guy though his crimes

[Melissa]
And why wouldn't have Jeffrey Dahmer have targeted you?

[Olivia]
Oh, he targeted young boys. He mostly targeted very young boys so I could read about Jeffrey Dahmer but there wasn't that ame fear attached to him
But the the Golden State Killer did everything I was afraid of. And when I was reading about him, it felt like I was built to be afraid of the Golden State Killer. I was like “oh fuck” he was like climbing through women's windows and tying them up and assaulting them and then coming back and torturing them and calling them on the phone years later and just like everything- he stalked them
He was also a cop so he could like get into people's homes very easily, that abuse of power, the fact that he escaped it for so long. He just scared the shit out of me, man
So him and then the other serial killer I've been fixated on is Aileen Wuornos because I don't think she is a serial killer.
So the thing about the definition of “serial killer” is that it isn't just about the number. It's partially about the number of people you've killed but if someone is a mass shooter, if someone kills 71 people in a shopping mall with a gun, we don't call them a serial killer. So it's not just about the number, it's also about the fetishization of of death so it's about becoming kind of like fixated on and obsessed with a certain process so like, serial killers kill people in the same way every time and they're kind of like almost sexually attached to it.
But Aileen Wuornos wasn't that.
She killed eight men and most of those were self-defense. A lot of those were robberies. So, I don't think what she did was right, but, actually that's a lie I think some of it was right. I think it's okay.

[Melissa]
And did she get joy out of it?

[Olivia]
I don't think she got joy out of it. I think that she was she was a sex worker who, many times was being violently assaulted, and-and defended herself and it resulted in death. And I think the other times she had lost it and was just fucking done and her (yeah) something in her snapped that like, calling her a serial killer lacks empathy, because I think she was she spent her whole life being incredibly abused and eventually took it into her own hands to get justice and I don't know. So I'm kind of into her but I don't really consider her a serial killer.

[Melissa]
Yeah. Where do you think - like I don't know
Is violence like an inherently male thing?

[Olivia]
Well no because, I mean women have the capacity to be violent, like racist white women y'know who like fucking call the cops on Black girls having lemonade stands (mhm)
Uhh but I think a lot of violence is definitely a male thing, a masculine thing
Yeah, it's not a coincidence that like almost every serial killer throughout time is a man and also almost every victim of homicide is--  most victims of intimate partner homicide are women being killed by their male partners
And I don't know what to say about that

[Melissa]
Yeah, what do you think it comes from?

[Olivia]
I think it comes from telling men that they are not allowed to process their emotions emotionally and that they have to do it physically
I think it comes from teaching men that their value is in their, like, strength, their physical strength, their ability to dominate
I think it comes from teaching boys from a really young age that the way they can relate to other is by overpowering one another and by overpowering women
And I think it comes from a culture of feeding men and boys media that's most of the time on-- at the expense of women so like porn that is at the expense of women and movies that show women being murdered and show women being assaulted and show women being dominated and yeah I think it's like all of it
It's systematic and it's cultural and it's fucking
And it's like years and years and years of this conditioning that results in a culture that breeds these dudes. Yeah

[Melissa]
Um, wow. I'm just listening

[Olivia]
Yeah I think that's all
All in all, I think true crime has the potential to be a really really radical genre
I think it's radical to talk about an epidemic of homicide against women in this country in a creative way
I think that's fucking really cool
I think it's cool to- that it exists in all genres. I think it's cool that there's podcasts and documentaries and tv shows and books of poems
But I don't think it's being done in a way that is holistic, I don't think that it's done in a way that's accurate and I sometimes worry it's being done in a way that perpetuates a culture that fetishizes the death of women.
And I think it has the potential to do the opposite and I think it has the potential to illuminate it as a problem and fight against it
And I think it means women talking candidly about their fears and their phobias and the things that they do in their lives to protect themselves
And I think it means having representation in media and in news and I think it means making room for more voices in true crime and yeah
That's my feelings on true crime (wow, cool)
That's that.

[Olivia]
Okay so I'm going to be interviewing Melissa about Selena.
Not Selena Gomez.
I feel like we probably have listeners that are probably pretty young

[Melissa]
Oh, yeah.
Um so not Selena Gomez

[Olivia]
So tell me who Selena is (Um)
Well first, Melissa is working on a poetry collection about Selena (mhm)
About the death of Selena and the romanticization of Selena and the upset- the cultural obsession with Selena (mhm) and her killer (yeah)
So tell me who Selena is.

[Melissa]
So Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was a very beloved, still a very beloved, Tahana pop star who like rose to fame pretty quickly and started like being integrated into the American market
And then was tragically murdered by her- the manager of her fan club Yolanda Salvadar. Uhh and like since then she's been, like, kind of deeply idolized in the like Latin community
She's like definitely like a deity to us and something that yeah fascinates me is like how much of the aesthetic is loved by Selena
Like how much people- I don't know I feel like something I've realized writing this is I've been trying my whole life to look like Selena and whenever I do, I feel beautiful
Or like- I don't know
So that is who Selena is. Some songs that you may know,
English-speaking-only listeners, are Dreaming Of You and I Could Fall in Love.
Dreaming Of You was released posthumously, which is a word I used to think meant after you were funny, but it's after you die

[Olivia]
I always thought it was post-humor-ously

[Melissa]
That's what I always did too and I was like oh they were funny once and they're not funny anymore

[Olivia]
Which is also true you're not funny when you're dead

[Melissa]
You're not funny when you're dead
Yeah. So that song and a video was released after she died and the video is super bizarre to me because it's a girl who kind of looks like Selena (oh weird)
And she's just like dreaming in her room while Selena is on the tv like watching over her? And then at the end she like- she like- her dad's asleep on the couch and she kisses her dad on the forehead and she escapes with her lover in her car

[Olivia]
Wow
So what made you begin writing this book like what was the first poem or how did the idea come to you?

[Melissa]
I was- I guess I was- so I was in my MFA program and we were like talking about obsessions and like looking at several books of poems. Like for example There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce. And I was really struck by I think it's called RoboBeyonce and you're supposed to like write after poems so I wrote one called Zombie Selena.
And then I was really into the idea- like I love what Morgan Parker does where she's talking about a beloved celebrity figure like one who like deeply represents Black womanhood and femininity but not really talking about it at all like talking about herself and just using her as a starting off point or like a lens to talk about herself. And I was like “that's really rad. like poetry is cool that way” or poetry is like kind of inherently selfish but in a way that benefits other people (Totally) because you get to like really focus on something of yourself and as specific as- I always found like the more specific, the more- okay wait- [unintelligible] alright whatever I've always found this thing that everybody knows

[Olivia]
I did a TED Talk on it

[Melissa]
I know

[Olivia]
Okay bitch

[Melissa]
So I was like “that's cool I'm gonna try to do that” so I wrote a bunch of poems that were quote-unquote about Selena but they weren't, they were like about me. And then like, I found that that wasn't really working? And Adrian Metica (?) came in and
He wrote a book of poems about- ah fuck I forget- a book of poems about a boxer
Um, I'm clearly more moved by Morgan Parker's book
But he was like really saying like how could you think that you're more important than history and facts
And I kind of had a problem with that cause I was like “well what the hell I don't need to do all this research”
But then I was looking at research on Selena and I was like okay. The facts are poetry themselves.

[Olivia]
Yeah, no exactly, I felt that when I was writing my book too

[Melissa]
Yeah, so I began looking at transcripts from the trial and like interviews and it's just so fucking bananas and that's helped me alot with writing
So yeah we can't all be-

[Olivia]
Can you tell the listeners about the things- like can you tell us your inside knowledge about what the fuck happened to Selena?