"People Are Strange..."
As my current podcast series Jacob Hawley: On Love comes to an end, there’s a song lyric that sticks in my head when I think back over the past six months making the show. The Doors’ Jim Morrison sang ‘People Are Strange’, and after six months of visiting porn sets, speaking to people of every possible sexual persuasion and being sent a sex doll as a thank you for one particular interview, I tend to agree.
In truth, making this series has been a bit of a rollercoaster. At the outset I highlighted that I wanted to make a series about intimacy, and the irony is that for the most part, I haven’t even been able to sit in the same room as the guests I’ve interviewed, let alone get close to them. It has felt strange to sit in my flat, meet someone for the first time over a zoom call and within minutes ask them questions about some of the most personal parts of their life. Although in fairness, this was easier than in November when, in full earshot of my neighbours, I interviewed Tyger Drew-Honey in my building’s shared garden about how his parents were pioneering porn stars (as Tyger described just how his father had created ‘point-of-view’ style porn, all of the windows along the garden slammed shut).
In terms of the interviewing, one thing I really aimed to do with this series was to approach each conversation with an open mind, and not to gawp at the way anyone chooses to live their lives. The mistake I’ve felt journalists have made in the past when covering these kinds of topics is to just voice their own incredulity at the person or the things they speak about, and I’ve done my best not to do that, although it hasn’t always been easy.
In my previous series On Drugs, I came at that with a level of experience on the topic. Part of my ambitions in making that series was trying to portray the multi-faceted, nuanced world that I’d experienced through my years around the world of recreational drugs - I haven’t had the same lived experience with the topics I’ve covered in this series. Over the course of the twelve episodes I’ve realised I’m a father approaching my 30s in a long-term, monogamous relationship who stopped watching porn years ago… I’m pretty boring.
And yet, even discussing the topics that seem most foreign, even when I’m speaking to someone whose world feels so different to my own, the most cheering parts of this series have come in the small, very human moments in which common ground is found.
I spoke to sex workers about a new legal bill being discussed, the Nordic Model, and how it would affect their lives and the way they work. It's a complicated set of laws that affect the lives of people who are very different to me, it concerns a lot of things I’m not particularly familiar with, and despite the fact these laws are being designed and suggested by people who claim to have the best wishes of sex workers, and indeed women, in mind, it has actually received a lot of backlash from sex workers themselves. All sounds pretty complex and strange, doesn’t it? Until you talk to sex workers and you realise they actually want the same things for their working conditions as most of us do: safety, security, a certain amount of choice and free will. Ultimately a lot of their concerns come down to work/life balance, which I’m sure is something even my more conservative listeners would be able to relate to, especially as our work/life balance has shifted so severely after a year of lockdown.
If you choose to find these people and these topics as strange, you’ll always feel that way, and you’ll be lonelier for not acquainting yourself with the people around you and the way that they choose to love."
I spoke to people about how they’ve managed to date and find love during lockdown. As someone who has spent the last year mostly with one person (and then, a few months in, with a very little person who wears nappies that need changing) it was intriguing to hear how some people had struggled with the loneliness of lockdown, and how they’ve navigated blossoming relationships. Writer Annie Lord spoke about how the element of the unknown is so important in dating, the way we use our imagination to fill in the gaps between the things we don’t know about a person. Sindhu Vee told me a similar sense of imagination is key to keeping a marriage alive. I’m not dating, and I’m not married, yet this still speaks to me and the loves in my life.
Even in the most alien situation, when I visited a porn set, there were small moments of familiarity that made the experience relatable. The film’s writer and star Kayden Gray insisted on making me a cup of tea between shoots because he was nervous. I told him how I’d do similar, busy myself with menial tasks to take my mind off of my nerves just before a big performance. We spoke about how porn had negatively shaped both of our experiences of sex, and shared our ideas about how positive representations of sex could repair our generation of men, even if those representations of sex came within pornography (... I should add that, even though I told Kayden I was allergic to nuts, he still made my tea with almond milk. I was too polite to say anything, told myself it would be fine, and then worried that I was going to vomit whilst watching him shoot a scene).
The rest of that Jim Morrison lyric goes ‘People are strange… when you're a stranger. Faces look ugly when you're alone’. If you choose to find these people and these topics as strange, you’ll always feel that way, and you’ll be lonelier for not acquainting yourself with the people around you and the way that they choose to love. In this final episode I look at polyamory, and speak to an old mate of mine about how he’s started trying it in his relationship. Some of it might sound strange, but give it a listen, and you’ll hear just another person, with just another way that they choose to love.
This series has been a huge privilege to make, and I’ve been very lucky to speak to such a wide range of people who, ultimately, just love in different ways. I’ve gained a new set of perspectives, and in some cases, a new set of friends. I’ve even learned new things about old friends. And, on top of all of that, I got a sex doll out of it. Result.
Bio
Jacob Hawley is a comedian and the presenter and creator of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sounds’s award-winning podcast Jacob Hawley: On Drugs. The second series Jacob Hawley: On Love is out now.
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