Cameron Esposito is a Los Angeles-based comic, actor, and writer. Her new memoir is Save Yourself.From the transcript of Esposito's NPR interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro:
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me how you grew up. Let's start there.--Marshal Zeringue
ESPOSITO: I was the gooniest (ph) kid around. You know, I had crossed eyes, so I wore an eye patch. I wore glasses on top of the eye patch (laughter). I had braces, a bowl cut.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And then you describe how you sort of transformed yourself. And you had an eating disorder. You became proudly abstinent. The girlfriend of the captain of the football team - quintessential teenage experience.
ESPOSITO: Well, that's part of what - you know, I know that I say that the book is for queer kids, but I think it's also for anybody that felt that they couldn't quite measure up to cultural standards. You know, I was dating the captain of the football team. I was pretty well-liked. And that was not my experience of myself. You know, I really thought I was disgusting and wrong and that something was really off with me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And then you talk about this journey to sort of discovering yourself. And the chapter where this happens with your sexuality is titled "Getting Gay" (laughter), which I really liked. Talk about a little bit about that, about what that journey looked like.
ESPOSITO: I was at a conservative Catholic college and interested in specifically the social justice side of what I saw in my faith, you know, in the faith that I was raised in and doing work to try to connect with those who are underserved. And it was in doing this work that I met this woman, another student at my college. And, you know, we eventually kissed, which was this, like, massive, life-transforming kiss because I had dated men. And it had felt confusing to me why people were in relationships. I mean, I liked the guys I dated. They were my friends. But I also felt a real emotional distance from them. And I felt, like, a real physical distance from them. And then having this experience of kissing a woman for the first time was really a...[read on]