(Adult content below)
Lacey sits in her living-room, waiting for a lemon cheesecake to finish baking in the oven.
Eric: What did you make for dinner?
Lacey: Baked potatoes, chicken, and green beans. With gravy.
Eric: And you drank a Stella Artois?
Lacey: Three fourths of one. Cold.
Eric: That’s a nice night.
Lacey: That part of the evening has gone well.
Eric: What’s your recipe for the dinner?
Lacey: I’ll just share the gravy.
Put chicken breasts in a frying pan, cook on each side for a few minutes, on high. In olive oil. Season. And then add chicken broth and cook on a lower heat. Covered. Add more chicken broth. Deglaze, if necessary. Add cornstarch, after chicken is removed. Bring to a boil.
Season more. Let simmer a little bit longer.
Eric: Seems simple.
Lacey: Yes!
The tricky part for me is the seasoning. Getting that just right.
Eric: Have you made cheesecake before?
Lacey: Yes! Although, only once. It wasn’t good, but it was edible.
Eric: How did the caramels turn out?
Lacey: WELL! They’re a success.
A neighbor: Does she cook like this all of the time?
Eric: Yes.
Are you still hungry?
Lacey: Yes.
*She laughs*
Eric: What else do you think you’ll eat?
Lacey: *Thinks*
A peanut butter sandwich, and milk.
I wish we had pickles. Actually, I think we do!
Eric: I’m eating a bowl of fruit. With granola.
Lacey: That’s admirable! If only…
Eric: Homemade graham cracker crust?
Lacey: Yes!
I’m eating hot salsa with sour cream and Tostitos instead.
Eric: So…if I was alive in Great Britain, would I be able to get married? To a man.
Lacey: Not legally.
But in people’s hearts and minds? Yes.
Eric: I think you’re missing the point. People were angry.
Stop being so…decent. Just…listen to the emotion.
I’m going to be Casi.
Casi: Lacey! I don’t know what you mean, I’m not ill-bred! How dare you! You’re a cold-hearted person! Goodbye loser! Goodbye rubbish.
Eric: Now…respond to the emotion.
Lacey: *Thinks*
I’d start laughing. It’s so overly dramatic.
But that’s mean?
Umm…-
“Okay!! Thank you!”
Eric: *Laughs*
I’ll try to be her again, “NO! THANK YOU! Thank you, for bringing your arrogance into the perfume world. You’re a BITCH!”
Lacey: You’re welcome.
Eric: She says, “YOU’RE A BITCH!”
Lacey: I just ignore her now.
Eric: I’ll be Alisha. “In Washington the homes are more expensive.”
Lacey: Well-
“Wait, are you dyslexic?”
Eric: *Laughs*
Then she says, “Yes, although I don’t know what that has to do with this conversation.”
Lacey: Oh, okay. Nevermind.
Eric: She’s silent now.
Let’s do Franny, “You sound exactly how I thought you’d sound on camera.”
Lacey: Yikes! That’s sad. I’m not captured well.
Eric: She just laughs at you.
Lacey: And I say, “Oh my god! You’re not that smart or pretty huh?”
Eric: She reposts it and reports you. If she can. Maybe calls the FBI.
He cracks-up laughing.
Lacey: Were they really so trashy?
Eric: Yes.
You’ve missed it, because you’re so out of the loop. And you’re such a genuinely nice person.
Lacey: What a WEIRD way to talk.
Eric: People don’t, when they’re well-bred, as often. And it’s actually relatively modern. The Greatest Generation didn’t talk like that as often, if ever.
Would you call the way we talk now innocent? Or that?
Lacey: Now.
It seems…glib. But it’s just icky.
It makes me want to rip my tongue out.
A Muslim: She’s not kidding.
A hater: Why?
Lacey: It’s SOOO stupid.
I mean…it’s like a verbal pogo stick. You go up and down- YUCK!
Edgar Allan Poe: People started talking like this in the 80s. People were a lot more careful about how they said things in the past and people call it innocent now, but it really wasn’t. It was more intellectually sophisticated, and rigorous.
You had to actually mean what you were saying and think about what you were saying. You couldn’t just assume that everyone was going to telepathically and psychically read you like a shrink or a psychic.
I don’t think any of you have understood literature, or art who are in this conversation acting like she’s an idiot for not understanding what you people have been doing this whole time. 
People really didn’t start doing this in conversation until the 1980s. I mean we’re going in circles for idiots. They call it a more simple innocent time because people don’t know how to respect other people anymore.
I’m just like her. I’m cold and dry because I’m actually saying something.
You people are dumb. You don’t realize that people back then spoke the way they wrote.
It’s also almost as if none of you have really watched any movies or television shows from the past. They weren’t doing what people do today. You people really are that different than her and me too.
And no, you’re not smarter. I’m sorry.
Actually, people lie because if they read Billings talking about your family, the way that you’re supposed to apparently, you would have to think he hated your family based on what he said. Because according to you fucking idiots people never say anything. They just intuitively say stupid shit like, “Gobley poopy pants!” which really just means I love you.
You’re asking something of her and me both that we can’t give you emotionally. We don’t love you. I have love for people and so does she but I’m not madly in love with everybody and nobody the way people are today?
Eric: If you look at recordings as a people from the 1800s, they do talk like her, even subtly.
There is no subtext. But then you have to take everything you say very seriously and people today have a really hard time doing that. 
If you even watch a movie from the 40s, they still talked like her. I’m not making this up! How have you guys never realize this people talked like her all of the time until the 1980s.
What you’re asking us to do right now is insane. Because the truth is, you’re supposed to talk the way she talks, even now. That’s what they teach you in school.
I think you’re all expecting her to take care of you and help you live your life for you and I don’t think that that’s remotely sane. 
Eric: How many of you idiot haters have told yourself that she just is too stupid to understand what you’re really saying?
Bobby: I think we all have. Because that’s one of the most popular things at the moment for narcissists to do, is to have these double entendre’s with everything that they’re saying.
So people really didn’t have those?? 
Lem: Did I ever talk that way?
Bobby: No.
Lem: What if I did?
And so when I said, “You know, Jack has a great sense of humor and he’s never lost that ability to make jokes.” If you psychically listen to what I’m saying I am saying, “I think he’s a fucking moron and I’d like to kill him.”
People really don’t do this little double entendre thing all the time. They really don’t!
Who decided that this was how everyone was talking???
The CIA: We’re starting to worry that people are losing their minds.
Israel: Lacey, when do you pick up on it?
Lacey: In the late 90s.
Even if it started in the 80s, I have to think that it really became a thing more during the 90s.
Because it was making its way into popular culture. And I feel like it was very prevalent in the television show Friends.
Israel: Why did you not figure out what they were doing?
Lacey: Because it’s such a dumb way to talk. It is such a dumb way to talk.
I mean, there are meanings in what people say obviously, but there’s always a subtext. I’ve never been unaware of that. But what you’re suggesting is something different than just subtext. 
Yeah, it’s different than insinuation. It’s different than context or tone or subtext. What you’re suggesting is that you’re supposed to psychically read people’s minds and that everyone does this and that you’re never supposed to be listening to what people actually say so much is trying to intuit what they really mean.
Bobby: Well I’ve just been going through thinking about everything that I’ve ever said, and I’m realizing that he hated us. And obviously, Eric is working for the CIA, sorry to blow your cover jackass. 
Lacey: Yeah, I’m trying to do this and I’m not I’m not able to read everyone’s mind.
Eric: I think that’s not what I was suggesting.
I was suggesting that you listen more for what people are emotionally saying.
Lacey: But what if you’re wrong? You know it’s like I’ve made so many mistakes actually over the years trying to interpret people. I don’t think that that’s the safest thing to do…-
Eric: OK well I think you’re actually probably reading people extremely well to the point where you’re intimidating to other people but I think that there’s an element of what you’ve been missing that probably was exploited by people who hated you in the perfume community.
If you think about people in that way, how would you interpret that guy who wrote you out of the blue saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry that the perfume community was mean to you!”? I mean, he was full of shit, but what would you have said given what I’ve told you?
Lacey: Oh God help me! You know it’s really not that easy to read people over text.
But let’s see. I probably would’ve responded to him at the very beginning and said something like, “I don’t really think you mean that and I think it’s strange how you guys just keep bothering me like you’re part of some bizarre conspiracy to attack me.” 
Eric: But you can’t do that. 
Lacey: Yeah, because he could come back at me and say, “ Oh my gosh, you’re accusing me of committing a felony.”
I really think that this is a narcissistic issue and I’m not the narcissist. I really think that people today are too narcissistic for society to function. Because one of the traits of narcissism is expecting people to read your mind.
And it’s bizarre how you guys are expecting to be able to say gibberish basically and then just be totally understood. Like you’re entitled to just walk around with no effort at all or no consideration for other people just be totally understood. 
I mean, obviously some people are very psychically connected to each other and they don’t have to try so hard. But that’s not actually common and usually you’re better off just giving people personal space intellectually and emotionally and not assuming that you know constantly what they mean. Sometimes you can tell sometimes you just know, but I really think that is not the safest thing to assume with most people who are healthy. 
I think it might actually be a a sign of mental unwellness not just a societal trend.
The CIA: She’s right.
Lacey: See…you can expect people to “understand you” and read you to some degree. But…making everything SO subversive? *eye roll* There’s something sick about that.
There’d be no English language…if we had such…constant psychic powers. No need for all the idiosyncrasies. …It’s all FAR too nuanced. No. People put an enormous amount of effort into being clear. On the surface.
And there’d be no need for music. Especially complex music. Why bother writing anything beyond a few sentences? Because people could psychically misread you.
No. It’s true, there’s something to this. But it’s also absolute nonsense.
A writer: Looking back at Friends…what do you make of it? Given this new information.
Lacey: Were they all high on pot…constantly?
Chandler: YEAH!
Or something else…-
No. But…-
Lacey: No. A lot of those conversations seem…infused with chemicals.
A writer for the show: They were often all high.
Lacey: So then why are we supposed to be reading this?
The CIA: We’re not.
Lacey: You know what JFK was really saying? In EVERY speech?
The CIA: No.
Lacey: “I’m sexy.
Hi. I’m SEXY.
I’m SEXY.
I’m GONNA FUCK YOU.
Vote me in. I’ll grab your balls.
Vote me in. I’ll kiss ya!”
That’s genuinely what he always seems to be saying. And I bet that’s intentional. So…why is this supposed to be…what everyone is doing?
And yes. Lem is constantly saying he wants Jack dead.
Actually, he’s begging for Jack to be assassinated.
Bobby: What’s he saying about me?
Lacey: “Do you want to kill him too?”
Bobby: What about when he was saying…he loved my uncle?
Lacey: “I don’t mean this. I’m full of shit.
Don’t take that personally.
It’s just…I have to kiss their asses? You know? So do you.
I don’t necessarily give much of a shit about him at all.
I guess…I loved him? What does that even mean? But…I did??? Did I? I mean-
I think…I did in a way?”
The CIA: I think a lot of narcissistic people don’t have the courage to say what they’re really thinking flat out or articulately and they’re afraid of you Lacey. I think you have been missing something but whatever it is that you’re reading right now is probably 100% accurate but I don’t think it’s actually what we were thinking you were gonna start reading…
Lacey: Does Putin just like torturing stupid people?
The CIA: Is this based on this new reading method that we told you to do?
Lacey: YES!
You have me looking at what everyone’s saying in this new way and there is something there but I’m not sure if it’s what people are supposed to be reading because it seems like information that everyone else is missing?
The CIA: I think people are intimidated by her and they keep thinking that they’re not. I really think that’s what it is.
Lacey: I don’t think I’m supposed to be reading this because right now I’m reading on you that you just need to use the restroom?
The CIA: *She laughs*
Yes. I have a very strong feeling that this really is not something that’s almost appropriate for her to be doing.
Lacey: OK well I can’t undo that.
Bobby: Eric. Let’s cancel that!
Eric: We did it.
Lacey: I think when Jack said his famous speech about thing not what you can do and all that? He was thinking, “I’m gonna go smoke pot later.” And, “I want Lem’s dick, and a nice juicy steaks. But he doesn’t want that and he keeps throwing-up.
I wish my dad was here. I want my daddy.
No, I just wanna sit in his lap. I’m so scared.
I guess I’ll just have to have Cracker Jack’s after the speech because Jackie needs to get her hairsprayed.”?
A reader: That’s embarrassing!
Lacey: OK you’re trying to tell me that I am being embarrassing, but you never really finished the thought and so I can’t really take you seriously. But you’re also thinking that you can’t really handle hearing this and that your mother would be mortified. 
A reader: Bless your stupid little heart. 
Lacey: You’re trying to sound smart and you’re not that smart or that cool and you’re kind of just pathetic. 
You’re extraordinarily pathetic.
You’re such a fucking loser.
I feel really sorry for you.
Because you know that I’m smart and what I’m saying is interesting and you have nothing that interesting to contribute to anybody cause you’re just pathetic.
The CIA: That’s probably all true. 
Lacey: She’s till going on and on.
Do you ever shut up or do you just go around? Embarrassing yourself?
The CIA: That very well could be a woman who is genuinely very pathetic.
Lacey: Who is conjuring her to attack me? Because that’s really stupid right now.
The CIA: I don’t wanna say.
Lacey: OK I think it really is that people are expecting me to take their nonsense more seriously than I do.
A hater: So you just wanna interact with people in a very polite, formal way?
Lacey: I mean, I could go around reading everyone’s dietary habits and their innermost insecurities but I think it’s a lot better to probably just let people talk and try to get a sense of what they’re saying that matters you know? Because it’s like why would I just listen to the insults or the stuff that’s really none of my business? Why not just listen for their heart and to their tone and other cues that are more normal?
The CIA: Yeah.
Lacey: No I’m sorry I think I’m being attacked by narcissist because I really think if people were this intuitive and I’m that bizarre that people wouldn’t be misunderstanding each other nearly as often as they are.
Hmm.
Lem: More tomorrow.
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