The Women of Ill Repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley and Maureen Holloway.
Wendy, have you ever been scammed? Like seriously scammed, like by a serious scam artist?
No, not really like I feel like I was scammed. Like there was the eavestrough guy that was pretty bad. That was-
What happened?
Well I gave him 200 bucks to clean up out the eavestrough and he disappeared so he was a scam but I guess I wouldn't call him an artist.
No, no, no I had a guy come to my house once and knock on the door and he says that your car across the street the with one with a dent in it and I said yes and he said I can put some cream on it that will make the dents go away.
Ok this wasn't yesterday I hope this-
No, but I mean I was an adult he said I'll give you give me 100 bucks, I'll put some cream on the dent and then I'll come back tomorrow and buff it out. So I gave him 100 bucks and he put this toothpaste or something on it and left.
I mean toothpaste is great. Apparently you can put toothpaste in wall and falls in the wall. It's like amazing,
But do you know what these, these guys are drifters. They're not actual the key word is artists. A scam artist has artistry involved in pulling the wool over somebody's eyes. It's it's performative. I look at Better Call Saul or Inventing Anna, these are true artists.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's Imagine if they it became true artists and weren't just drifters. I am you know, like, there's The Sting. There's Ocean's 11 Ocean's 12,13 there's a few of them.
In all these narratives you root for the scam artists rarely the victim they're often portrayed as clueless patsies.
Patsies really?
Patsies yeah, it's like chumps right, but not in Zoe Whittall
's book, The Fake.
Yeah, it's such a good book actually The Fake, she writes up a storm she's written a whole bunch of books all highly acclaimed. Her third novel, The Best Kinds Of People was shortlisted for the for the Geller. She's done stand up. She has worked as a writer on Degrassi, Baroness Von Sketch, Schitt's Creek . She's a poet, she's, well, she's a writer.
She writes everything she writes all the things but this latest novel, The fake is inspired by her own personal experience with a scam artist, actually. A sociopath is what you would probably call them. So let's talk about that liars and the people who love them. Welcome Zoe Whittall.
Hi, Zoe.
Hi. Thanks for having me.
It's lovely to see you. I think you're almost like, you know, like, you had to do this podcast because you're to me, you're like a little sister like you, you've spent time in Montreal like me, and you're from the Eastern Townships. I've just sort of moved there and you live in Prince Edward County and I live in Prince Edward County now. So we're, you're like my little sister. So you have to do this.
Well, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you.
Yeah it's lovely to see you. So go ahead, Maureen. That's, I'm sure there's much more weighty things to speak of.
Well, no the family reunion is wonderful. But Zoe, let's talk about the fact that this book in particular was inspired by an experience that you went through. Do you want to tell us about that?
Absolutely. So when I was in my late 20s, I dated a woman who lied to me about having cancer, she lied about all sorts of other things as well. And I always knew after that experience, that I would write about it, but I needed a lot of time to be able to find the humor in it, because meeting and interacting with someone who is a pathological liar is like strangely devastating, very humiliating, but also just like, piqued my writerly curiosity and made me feel like I was living in the last 10 minutes of a Law and Order episode, where I was like, what's gonna happen? And then you never really figure it out in most cases, like most people who are like con artists, or who have this type of personality will move on from mark to mark as soon as they're discovered. And that was certainly was the case with my relationship as well. And then so for years, I just thought like, that is a weird thing that happened. I want to write about it, but I need the distance to find the humor in it and to be able to fictionalize it in a way like the character of Cammie, who is the liar in the book, the fake is very, very different from the person who I experienced, but she shares a lot of the same traits, because I think a lot of people with this kind of personality disorder, or however you want to frame it, they sort of follow the same patterns of speech, the same patterns of manipulation. And ever since I have that experience, I became obsessed with like consuming media, and books and TV shows and movies about scammers because they are so similar and it would be very comforting to watch other people go through those similar patterns. So what by the time the pandemic hit it, you know, this was part of a two book deal, and I knew I had to write another book and it was during locked down. And I was like, I think I finally have the space and the time to really think deep into the experience of two people who get taken in in this kind of way. Because it's a unique, uniquely like weirdly uncomfortably shameful experience. And that I think shame is a great route for narrative.
I have so many questions, but I, it's just so weird because someone really close to me. I mean, I can tell you off camera though, the whole sordid story, but someone really close to me, a friend of theirs basically lied about having cancer lied about all kinds of monstrous things that have happened and supposedly faked a suicide, lied about all kinds of weird things has happened to family members. Apparently, it's, it's like a it's a thing. It's apparently you are not the only person that this happened to it's, well, who are these people?
Right, I think and I think one of the questions I had while writing the book was how do I write that character? Like, everything is shifting, like, how do you embody a character who would that has a shifting interiority? You know? And I think that like, the fascinating thing, it is a type of personality disorder or a type of post traumatic reaction, or it's the kind of mental illness I think that is so stigmatized that people, we don't talk about it as much. And it's really hard to reckon with, like, I never really found an answer to what my ex partner why she was the way she was, but I have a lot of theories or theories, or that's, you know, some kids who are emotionally neglected, will you know, how all kids go through that phase where they figure out lying, and they're like, they kind of delight in it, it's I don't know, if age four, or five or something. I think that often people if they're traumatized or neglected during that time, they don't grow out of it. And they keep it as like a way to get through life or to get the things that they can't ask for directly like attention. I also found it fascinating that a lot of the con artists that you hear about it, when they're men, they pretend to be like Mi5 spies, or like so many men to pretend to be surgeons or in the army or whatever high level, like these very masculine things. I would say that women of this personality will lie about things to get care. And I sometimes wonder, are they lying about being sick to get the care that they have never received? Or that they are expected to give others but can't, you know, like, stay curious thing. And, you know, I think I was easily taken in, in my own experience, because I had never met anyone who had had cancer. And as soon as I had, like, my best friend from high school had breast cancer and as soon as I started to experience that, I was like, oh, how did I ever think that this boy had actual cancer like it just but but I think that people who manipulate this way they figure out how they mirror you and they figure out what your vulnerabilities and your special interests are. And they pretend to be like the person you've always wanted. And then they figure out what you know, and don't know and then manipulate accordingly. It's like a very charismatic, very weird kind of creepy intelligence. You know?
I have a theory though. And it's Cammie one of the people that she pulls the wool over their eyes whenever her patsies, if you will, the woman that she gets involved with had just lost her wife, and that's where she beats her. So it reminded of the Helena Bonham Carter character in Fight Club, where she would go to grief groups just to feel something and she was a con artist too. But she she would explain that she would go to whether you know, you're recovering alcoholic, or at loss, somebody should go to these groups, because she was emotionally numb and she was looking for a way to connect. And I thought that was really interesting. I mean, it's still sociopathic. It's still bizarre, because we ever really understand what can make camis motivation is I mean, she's, she's obviously troubled. She's obviously had a terrible past. But that's not enough to explain it. And I wonder here, I'm talking about her like, she's a real person. But I wonder if that emotional numbness is also something that drives sociopaths in general. Just throwing it out there.
I wonder, you know, I don't know if you guys are on TikTok, but there's a fascinating group of people on TikTok, who are diagnosed narcissist who talk about how they manipulate people, and they and some of them have a level of awareness sand some of them have a level of therapy that they've now gone through to recognize the patterns that they have used to manipulate people. And I feel like that's as close as I got to figuring out who Cammie really was. I'll explain a little bit about the book. So Shelby and Gibson get taken in. They're both in a very vulnerable place in their lives. Gibson, Gibson, newly divorced, and Charlie's wife has died of an aneurysm and they're both completely lost and then this charismatic person comes into their life and sort of actually gives them some really positive things as well like some positive reasons for living. And then it turns out that she's actually not who she says she is. And I never decide while writing if I wanted to give a definitive answer as to who Cammie is and why she is the way she is because I feel in some ways you can't really know. I tried to find someone who had recovered from Munchausen syndrome, I tried to reclined reformed pathological liars. It was, it was somewhat impossible to try to find someone who was in recovery, to speak with me about what that would be like. And ultimately, I decided I wanted to focus on the experience of the people who get taken in. And I wanted to do it in a way that allowed for all the feelings that they have, even though they were contradictory. And I think people know who have like addictions in their family, or people who have certain types of trouble that use you can still love someone who does horrible things, and that that complication can drive you mad, you know, so Shelby and Gibson when they meet each other and figure out that they've been manipulated not to trust each other. And they put two and two together and realize that she didn't have cancer, which isn't a spoiler, you can tell from the name of the book, we have two reactions where like, sometimes when they're angry, they want revenge, they want to tell everybody in her life that she's a scammer. They want to out her, you know, and then in some other ways they want to help her they, they're like, look, we do love you. What if we helped you get to therapy, you need to start being true to yourself. And it's ultimately something that, you know, like addictions, you can't really change unless you want to, and you can't force someone to change. And then they're left feeling like what just happened in our lives that this like tornado blew through it and made us think about the world and about, like the role of honesty and truth so differently.
Well, that's where we are now, right? We're trying to deal with what what is truth. And I love that the last chapter of the book is basically given to Cammie, where she's saying, like, screw you. And so she does, I think, see it as a skill. She's not going to admit anything, the intervention did not work. But she basically said, I helped all of you people and she, she, she did, so who's lying to who, ultimately, and which is something that you explore in the book, which is, which is fascinating.
The segments, where Cammie addresses the reader, I wanted the reader to experience what it feels like to be charmed by her. And I felt like I really knew that that segment was working when I was going through the with a copy editor. And the copy editors role is to fact check continuity, make sure everything is correct. And we we had this like long exchange where she was like, well, well, Cammie says this, but I don't know if this year would have made sense for this year this time. And then in the end, I was like, Oh, wait, no, no, this entire section is a lie. Like none of this is true. It doesn't really matter if it's accurate, which I thought was very funny. And it made me feel better about that section, because it's hard to write a character who's trying to call on you. But I wanted the reader to experience that. And I wanted them in the end to be like, did she have cancer? Like, I think it's pretty obvious that that she didn't like there are ways that she had she addresses in that kind of first person monologue that I wanted to be a kind of seduction.
So you did really have cancer, right, Maureen?
No, I really did and you really did. I mean, it makes you wonder, why would any? Why would anybody do that? Um, this is what we've been talking about. But here's a question and I do know, I do know, a couple of sociopaths or narcissists, we can call them or just people who think that they are Machiavellian in a positive way, you know, oh, I can fix stuff. But I wonder and this is more to do with Zoe saying you couldn't find anybody to talk to, do sociopaths know, they're sociopaths? Do you think that they know that they're there's something wrong with them?
The closest I could come to finding an answer was these you know, these people on TikTok who say, you know, I'm a diagnosed narcissist, and diagnosed sociopath, and then try to explain and in some ways you can you want it to think of it as a type of neuro divergence, you know, that they are this way they've been this way since childhood. I've often thought that well, you know, people must be good in some way. And then maybe something happened that made them fear off the goodness path. But I don't really know what I think anymore after after doing this much research for the book and having these experiences. But I don't know if they know, I think some people must know they must feel a difference in them. Because I think that that there is a way that that the people on TikTok who talk about being sociopaths are like oh, well, we watch how people behave when certain things happen and then we mimic. There was an interesting storyline and I can't remember what's procedural it was that I was watching about, you know, a little girl who's very young, who like take, kills an animal and takes it apart and then later she is obsessed with becoming a surgeon and there are high rates of sociopathy amongst surgeons, and amongst high level CEOs, like all these, a lot of these positions of power where you where it's a benefit to not think about others, you know, like I feel like if you had if you had a lot of empathy, it would be very difficult to actually cut into somebody you know, so that that's fascinating to me, but I don't really know the answer but but I loved while writing this book, thinking about all the possibilities, you know.
Yeah, I look at a lot of people who are so psychiatrists, and I'm like really? Like you're, you're dangerous. I don't think you should be advising other people what to do. So it's really hard to, it's really hard to know that because people, I mean, do does everybody lie to themselves? Because your book sort of suggests that both the patsies and the scam artists are lying.
What happened to me during that experience, and also while writing the book I was thinking about, you know, when you meet someone who lies so egregiously, and so obviously, and emphatically, it makes you think about how we all lie, like I certainly started to think about, oh, I lie to avoid conflict, I lie to appear polite, I lie, to get professional situations or to not hurt someone's feelings. And it makes you really question your own sense of values and try to win and try to figure out what's what in terms of your own value system. And I do think that there is a part of our fascination with liars and scam artists is is partly because I think it's fascinating to watch people break social norms. To me, in some ways, I'm like, look at the freedom they have to just do whatever when I'm, like, anxiously obsessed with, like, how I'm perceived or, or if I'm being a good friend, or it's, it's fascinating to watch people who don't, who don't have a care in the world about that, and in fact, have another orientation. And it's just, it's fascinating, I think, especially since it's a type of emotional manipulation that is so hard to detect. And but I feel like once you've been through it, like, I certainly feel like if I'm at a party, and somebody walks in, who is extremely charismatic, who shares vulnerable personal things within the first like, 30 seconds of meeting you, the kind of person where everyone's like, oh, my God did you need so and so they're amazing. I know, almost immediately, like a light shines, a stage light shines down from the ceiling, and it's like, stay away from this person.
Really?
Yeah, I feel like I have a sense now.
The Women Of Ill Repute.
So let's look at this from another point of view from a comedic point of view, because your book is also very funny. And you well, it is, and some of the shows that Wendy and I were talking about off the top like, Ocean's 11 and Better Call Saul. I mean, they are comedies. And, uh, maybe the word for that would be caper. They're caper stories, rather than, you know, like, the fake is not a caper, but it is not completely different. And for some people like Cammie, it's like, hey, this'll be fun. I'm gonna put on a show and see how far I can take it and so there's that aspect as well, right? There's that this is, this is fun. This is going to be fun. For me, it may be fun for the people that I scan, but probably not, who cares?
Yes, she is a very funny character. It was important to me for the book to be funny, because it is kind of absurd. And I feel that way about a lot of mental illnesses, like I myself have, you know, have have anxiety disorder, and ADHD, and all sorts of the more socially acceptable to talk about mental illnesses and there is something absurdity about sort about them like this. It's some of my fears that I've gotten over have been absurd. My sense of humor is quite dark in that way and I felt like that had to be in the book too. And I feel like that's what came with the time it took for me to really figure out how I wanted to tell this emotional story through these characters that I had to create in order to, I think, tell the kind of truth that I wouldn't have been able to tell in a memoir, for example,
Do you know that's a I don't want to go on about this more than I have to but nobody, everyone's afraid to laugh at certain aspects of mental health because you don't want to offend anybody. You know, it's not you can't make Tourettes Syndrome jokes anymore, not that you ever should. But it is sort of the last taboo can body shame people nor should you and I'm not advocating that you make fun of people with mental health issues. But at the same token, I'm not saying that it's not without humor, and we should maybe be more accepting of that. That's not a question that's a statement.
I think we use humor as a way to understand ourselves and and our way to explain the world to each other and I feel like you know, like Maria Bamford is one of my favorite comedians, and she talks about her mental illness in a way that is just I don't know, think kind of revolutionary and so funny, because I don't know, I think it just is funny. It's it's incredibly difficult, but I think all all things that are incredibly difficult are, are funny, in a way with time as the cliche goes.
But then there's Hannah Gatsby, right, who did that her first huge success was that the standup where she said, I'm not going to do fat jokes anymore. Because yeah, I can do fat jokes. And, you know, Chris Farley, or whatever made a was was successful and made fun of that. But I and it's easy to get a laugh. I'm not going to do that anymore. And a lot of people were like, whoa, you just have a mental illness. I found her very moving and very funny, but not everybody did. And then her second one was about okay, I had These issues I've got these. So let's just talk about other things and be and be funny. But there is there is, as Maureen says, and you've acknowledged there is like this fine line between what's funny and what's, what's mental illness so-
And the line keeps moving. The line is shifts in line is different for different people. You know, some people say you just can't laugh at that. And I'm like, you could laugh at anything. Ultimately.
Yeah, well, we don't want to do any of those jokes here.
Yeah. Do you think that you can laugh at anything, it's just about how good the joke is, and where the jokes coming from. You know, like, I think that Hannah Gatsby's point about no longer making fun of herself, in her own kind of comedic writing arc. I think that was really interesting and a new thing to say on such a large stage. And I think that, you know, there are certain things about myself I wouldn't joke about, or I would only joke about if I found a really interesting way in that someone had never done before. So I'm gonna try to think of an example. Okay, so a lot of people think you should never make rape jokes, for example, but I think like Beth Stelling has an excellent rape joke. I think Amy Schumer has an excellent rape joke, there's a bunch of very smart ways to go about it so that the laugh is not on the victim, or the laugh is about the culture or you know, is some is a way of thinking about an issue that you've never heard before. Because I think what a lot of people are responding to when they're saying, Oh, you shouldn't make that joke is that the joke was lazy, or the joke was cliche, or it's been done a million times, you know.
Or it was ignorant, right. I think you're right. It just needs to be needs to be funny.
Yeah.
That's all. It just needs to be funny. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I mean, everybody has a different sense of what's of what's funny, but I know somebody who was raped and and she, she really appreciated hearing somebody people joke about tell rape jokes. Like, as like menopause, you're not allowed to talk about menopause until lately, there's all these owners, people talking about menopause. And all of these other people who are shocked, like you can't talk about like everything. Or almost everything I suppose should be able to be talked about, including your book. The Fake. Why didn't we know that it was about that?
I love quoting because and I do it ad nauseam. Marshall McLuhan who said, "Every joke has a grievance". Every special every good joke. There's something at the bottom of it that upset somebody at some point. And that's why we laugh. We laugh because we're shocked. It's a little bit of a shock. And then you kind of laughing at how bad that like, oh, wow, they went there. And so you're laughing almost apologetically, but you're still laughing, right?
I found it interesting reading about you Zoe that, that you were inspired at age 11 that you wanted to write because you were reading Judy Blume and now her books have been banned. Yeah. And I mean, some things some things should be cancelled I suppose. But Judy Blume? Like really.
Judy Blume?
Yeah. Judy Blume. And what was your book, Are You There?
'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
'
She talked about how there's yeah, and you didn't even realize it was about religion? Well, I guess you were 11. But what was the influence of Judy Blume?
Well, Judy Blume was actually even a sauna stylistic level, I think, to read something that was that just had such a unique voice, and was, you know, like, first person monologue, or even like a close third person, like most of the stories that you encountered in the 70s and 80s, when I was a kid, were, you know, constructed in a certain kind of way, so as to have a little bit of distance. And I think that Judy Blume was one of the first pioneers of, of what was really great about the first era of young adult books. You know, they were books for kids, that understood kids, instead of talking down to kids. And that was really unique for me, like, I remember in the sixth grade, because I was in the accelerated reading group, they were like, Oh, we're gonna let you read The Hobbit. Because, you know, everybody who gets to a certain level can have this like prize of winning the Hobbit and I remember hating the Hobbit and being like, I don't really connect at all. And I thought it was so funny to look back on that I was like, I just wanted to read things that felt true. And that changes as you get older, hopefully, although now there's a whole world of adults who read young adult, but I think it's really important at the tween age to, to, you know, read stories told in this kind of way. I think Judy Blume is so fantastic. I saw the movie and it was wonderful. Did you see the movie?
I've got it on my list. I want it I want to watch it on. It's I can't remember. It's on Netflix. I'm not sure but it's available. So then don't forget Chelsea Handler's, Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea
. That version as well.
So are you actually allowed to say that you didn't like The Hobbit? I mean, I've never heard anyone say that.
It's so funny because I have I have in the past taught creative writing workshops and there's always like four or five students who really want to write about elves and goblins and whatever and I just, I can't I I'm such a, it's not a thing I'm proud of. But like, I'm such a realist. I don't like to read speculative fiction, and I don't understand how to be a good editor or a good teacher. And so I often will just tell people like you should go for somebody who understands it. Because I, you know, I don't want to knock it as a genre, but I just, you know, certain we all have our own tastes. That's interesting. If I knew that from a young age.
Yeah, no, no, each to his own, for sure. I can see I like the fact that you describe yourself as too much of a pragmatist, which for realist, to, to, to embrace that kind of world. Are you writing right now? I'm sure you're writing all the time?
Yes I am writing a book of short stories called Wild failure. And I think it's one of the things I'm most proud of having written like, I think a lot of books come out and I feel like, oh, I wish I could rewrite this page. You know, they're never finished, but I feel very happy with this one. I also have a book of poems called no credit river that's coming out shortly after. And I'm working on a book for the ECW Press Pop Matter Series, and it's about the Gilmore Girls. I don't know if you've ever watched it.
Really? Yes. Oh, God. Yes. I love the Gilmore Girls who
So funny and it's a show that's become this cult favorite and it has fans all over who rewatch and rewatch and, and so I'm writing a show about Gilmore Girls that I sort of came up with during lockdown and because I was rewatching it and I'm really excited about that, too.
Oh, I'm really excited about that. Yeah.
So we live in the same town i Yeah, we have to like run into each other buying vegetables or something. And, and and you're from the Eastern Townships in Quebec, which I just moved to and I found very expensive and very fancy. But but when you grew up like apparently yeah, I've talked to someone who says Oh, no, there I got on the school bus in the morning and there was somebody would rake ringworm stains all over them. They had no plumbing. So it's very, very different. Yeah, so I hope you had a nice upbringing in the Eastern Townships,
My parents moved there in the 70s. This sort of back to the landers, and my dad was an elementary school teacher and we had a farm like a hobby farm. And but it was like, you know, we lived there 15 years, but we were always from away so to speak, because like the the families had been there generations, generations, everybody on my school bus were cousins except for us. But I loved it there. It's beautiful. It's one of those places where when I go back, I can see with adult eyes like, oh, it's actually quite gorgeous. And it's surprising that it's what you said about it being fancy, because, you know, my parents had 100 acre farm when they sold I think they probably sold it for like, I don't know, $90,000 like, like, you couldn't you couldn't sell anything out there. And so it actually I learned at Concordia and a religion class, but the Eastern Townships is or was at the time, the cult capital of North America, because land was so cheap, and people just go out and buy like put a school bus on two acres. And then, you know, it's where the Raelians are from, etc. So it was a really interesting place to grow up.
Well, I'm starting a cult. And if you'd like to come and join, I'm not I'm not sure what we're going to do. I even drink wine and laugh.
I'm in.
And there's lots of Anglos there. So my I learned to speak French gradually, but but my husband is he loves it. And we live on a something that's called a street which does not happen in Quebec. So it's there's lots of there's lots of Anglos in the in the neighborhood, which is which is lovely. And you're an Anglo and you now you now live in Eastern Townships, you now live in near me too.
its street as opposed to rue. You mean they use the English they actually use the English word. Yeah.
Which doesn't exist in Quebec. Anyway, we thank you so much, Zoe, for coming back. And we're glad that you're writing and I hope that it's funny doesn't failure doesn't sound very funny, but
Everything's funny. Everything's funny. Thank you so much Zoe.
Thank you.
Take good care.
Take care.
I thought you guys knew each other. It's funny. I just assumed that she was like an old friend of yours.
No, no, I just, I just read that piece by Joanna Schneller in the in the Globe and Mail. And I thought she is such an interesting character. And then the more you read about her like, like some of the comedies like the Wendy Weiner stuff I find annoying, which is the whole point. They're annoying. But the fact that she wrote for SNL in the early years in the first three years and then has gone on to do like improv or you know, improv is really, really, really, really hard. And she succeeded to that.
I get what she says, I'm also you know, I don't I don't tell jokes, I'm going to do tell jokes, you know that, but they're not very good. I like working with other people. Even in radio, I had a show where it was more or less on my own for a year, and I hated it. If you're not collaborating. It's not as much fun and so I get that, you know, you're as good as the people that you're working with. Which brings me to you Wendy.
Yeah, well, this is the first time that I've had a co host. I've always sort of been, you know, Wendy the workhorse so I'm gonna go and get the story and here's the story or no, I'm the big anchor. Yeah, so it's weird. It's weird to have this partnership and to share with somebody who's just as pigheaded as me to share a platform and share ideas and yeah.
You say the craziest thing. All right, that was Robin Duke and for those of you who aren't aware it is Wendy Mesley's Birthday Boxing Day. So the day after the night before. Yeah, you look great. You are great.
Well, it's lovely. It's lovely to talk to talk to you and her. And everybody's funny. It's all good. Yeah, and I'm old
Women Of Ill Repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley. With the help from the team at the Sound Off Media Company and producer Jet Belgraver.
