Liara Roux: Jesus Is a Queer Stoner Icon
Who’s your least favorite apostle? In this episode, Michelle Tea is joined by author and self-procaimed Jesus freak Liara Roux to discuss how sex work can be spritual, what it’s like being a Scorpio, and why Paul was the worst apostle. Then, Tara Jepsen helps our listeners build their own Scorpio altar.
Liara Roux: I feel like Jesus is like a queer stoner icon who’s having dinner parties with like hookers and criminals so yeah I’m a big, big Jesus fan. I am a Jesus freak.
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Michelle Tea: Hello, and welcome to Your Magic! I’m Michelle Tea, and today I’m hanging out with Liara Roux, sex worker, Scorpio, and author of the powerful new memoir Whore of New York. We’re going to talk about destabilizing the patriarchy, being written about, and loving Jesus. After that, we’ll hear from fellow Scorpio, writer, and filmmaker Tara Jepsen, who will guide us on the creation of an altar for Scorpio Season.
Stay with us.
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Michelle Tea: If you love listening to Your Magic, now you can join us for more witchy content by supporting our work on Patreon. Later this month, I’ll be hosting our very first witch workshop where we’ll dive into the tarot. And, at our patrons-only book club, we’ll be joined by poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva to discuss her hit new book Dreaming of You. You’ll also get our weekly newsletter and new moon tarostrology readings. The making of this podcast is a labor of love, and we need your help to keep making it. Join our community at patreon.com/thisisyourmagic.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: I grew up in the house of Scorpio. I’m not talking about my astrological chart, that’s all fifth house and seventh house, Leo and Libra. No, I mean I grew up in a house ruled by Scorpios — my mother, Theresa, born on the 25th of October, and my sister, Kathleen, born one day earlier.
It’s because of them that Scorpio energy is so familiar to me. It’s because of them that Scorpio feels like family to me.
My first big, serious collaborator, the poet and filmmaker Sini Anderson, is a Scorpio. We worked together on Sister Spit, an all-girl open mic back in the 1990s, which we then made into an annual, national performance tour that has continued to exist, in various permutations, currently as a vehicle to promote the work of emerging queer BIPOC writers. Me and Sini were flat broke when we decided to take Sister Spit on the road back in 1997; years later, when I finally did my taxes, I was shocked to learn I’d made $10,000 that year. We didn’t have family resources or credit cards; there was no internet, not really, and certainly no cell phones. But, through Sini’s Scorpio grit and passion and my Aquarian big dreams we made this thing happen.
One of my longest, best friends — Tara Jepsen, who you’ll hear from later — is a Scorpio. We’ve been tight since we met in 1995, striking up an email correspondence that was so inspired, imaginative, joyfully and weirdly alive I had to bring her on the tour. Some published writers were pissed that this opportunity was given to someone based on their emails, but I know genius when I see it, and I know family when I feel it.
What I get from Scorpio energy, what I really love and revere, is their passionate engagement with the messy parts of life, right on life’s terms. They’re not perfect — no sign is — and they can be checked out and in denial as easily as anyone, but all Scorpios are in touch with at least some aspect of the big mystery of life in a way that is raw and honest and unflinching. They’re like walking, talking death practices. Take my mom, a nurse who worked with only elderly, dying patients from the day she got her nurse’s license in the 80s, til Covid just forced her into retirement. Hanging out with her, conversation can veer from prolapsed rectums, okay, to the random and tragic deaths of people from our home town who I don’t remember to the experience of feeling her husband’s soul pass through her as he died. My sister, you’ll learn if you get our newsletter, is literally kept awake at night by fundamental questions of existence. She has been known to take beer advertisements as omens from our dead, alcoholic father. She was my biggest support through the wild grief of my divorce, fetching me from alleyways where I sat sobbing and smoking, always empathizing with the intensity of my emotions. Sini Anderson’s poetry, often more screamed than spoken, dealt with addiction and family trauma; their film work is delving deeper into the gendered mysteries of Lyme Disease. Tara Jepsen, who also does comedy, is prone to sharing poop stories in her sets, she collects messages from the dead via frequent psychic readings, and she binges only the gnarliest true crime podcasts. Tara is also currently processing the loss of a formative and dearly loved pet, and from her grief texted me ‘I can only think about how good it is that you were raised around Scorpios because you can totally handle me talking about it.’ It’s a challenge to be a friend of a Scorpio, because we will always be more comfortable with our pain and struggle than many of our friends.
I love that I’ve gotten these lessons from Scorpios, that I grew up marinating in it, and as an adult have sought out friends who encourage this unwillingness to turn away from what may be scary, or gross, or weird. One of the more maligned signs in the zodiac, this Scorpio season, reach into the slimiest part of your guts and give a Scorpio some much deserved love and respect and appreciation.
Here’s Liara Roux.
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Michelle Tea: Hello, Liara Roux, thank you so much for being on Your Magic.
Liara Roux: I'm so excited. Thank you for having me.
Michelle Tea: Congrats on your book! Have you always wanted to write a memoir or was it something — was it a desire that grew in you?
Liara Roux: So I've always wanted to write fiction. And this publisher just got in touch with me and was like, We would love for you to write a book. And I was like, “Can it be a fiction book?” And they were like, “No, we only do political memoirs, so that's what you'd be doing.” I was like, “All right.” It was definitely a little nerve wracking.
Michelle Tea: What about it felt nerve wracking while you were working on it? Like what were your challenges around it and how did you counter them?
Liara Roux: Definitely. I had a lot of fears about inadvertently hurting people that were in it. Obviously, there's some people I talk about in the book where I think I'm past the point of worrying about hurting their feelings or saying something that would upset them. But there's other people — I feel like you never know how someone's going to react to something you write about them, you know? Even if you think it's super positive and glowing, they might read it and be like, “Oh, like, you don't understand me. You totally misportrayed me!” Anyone where I felt like they might have that reaction, I tried to, like, hide their character and like, turn them into someone else or like, merge them with a different person
Michelle Tea: I've definitely been on your side of it more than the other side where I’ve written about people more than I've seen myself pop up in other people's work. So, you know, I can’t imagine, it must, it must feel just so strange and vulnerable for people. I say with compassion, as I, you know, set out to write my own memoir where it’s not like I'm going to stop my ways. But I do have compassion for what that experience must be like.
Liara Roux: I love being written about, personally, so. I feel like honestly, even if they're a hater and really despise me and are trying to write this really, you know, like take down of everything that I stand for, I kind of love it. But that's just because I love attention, so.
Michelle Tea: Do you have a spiritual practice?
Liara Roux: I do, yeah. I love meditating. At first, my meditating practice was super formal and I would sit down and listen to like a guided meditation. But I found that I really love meditating during like regular daily activities like cooking or anything else like I love just like being super present in my body, like with food, especially, I feel like has been really a lot of fun for me. I also do a lot of tarot, very into astrology. I love some good general goddess worship. Like typical typical dyke stuff, I guess.
Michelle Tea: Oh my gosh, what deck are you using?
Liara Roux: I really love Trungle’s really cute decks. They do these really beautiful. So they I think they are also, like, very obsessed with Sailor Moon. Like growing up, I watched so much Sailor Moon. And so their decks have this really beautiful sort of like Art Nouveau, very colorful and beautiful esthetic. So they're a comic book artist, that's usually their thing. I think comic book artists are just so well-suited to doing tarot because they're already doing this very visual art form, and so much of it is working with archetypes anyways.
So I feel like it's just really, really fun to see what they do. But I've definitely been drawn to Trungles a lot, which is very like Lovers’ focused. It has like four or five different Lovers cards, I think, and you're supposed to take all of them out but one. But I just left all of them in because, why not?
Michelle Tea: Yes, because you know, why not? So is the idea to like, pick the Lovers card that most represents best represents like who you are and who you're attracted to?
Liara Roux: Or whatever, whatever speaks to the most, I guess. But yeah, it's like, it's so cute.
Michelle Tea: What astrological sign are you?
Liara Roux: I'm very Scorpio. Sun Moon, Venus, Jupiter, North node. And I'm a Taurus rising. So it's all seventh house and my chart ruler is in the seventh house, too. Big Scorpio Energy.
Michelle Tea: That is really intense to have that much of a Scorpio stellium. How do you feel like it's manifested in your life?
Liara Roux: Well, I think when I was younger, it was really hard to cope with and everyone was just like, “Why are you like this? Like, what is going on with this child? Like, this child is a demon.” And I was raised in a very Christian household, and I guess no one ever explicitly called me a demon. But I feel like that was like the vibe where a lot of people around in the church were just like, “This one. What's up?” But I think as I've grown older and learned how to like channel it into the right activities, it's just gotten so much more fun and I really love being a complete psycho now. So it worked out.
Michelle Tea: I mean, you had this Christian upbringing, which sounds stressful for, for a person, for anybody, but for a person such as yourself, especially. Were you able to take and take away anything from that experience into your spirituality today? Or was it just like raise the ground and start anew?
Liara Roux:I really love Jesus, and there was like a couple of years where I wasn't able to really — because I would still come back to the red tech stuff, you know? Where it's like, “Jesus, like God is love. Don't be mean to each other, guys.” But I love Jesus. I feel like Jesus is like a queer stoner icon who's having dinner parties with like hookers and criminals. So, yeah, I am a Jesus freak. Proud to say. Maybe not in like the traditional Christian way, but I guess I'm of the opinion that Paul ruined it all. I feel like Jesus went in to sort of be like, “Hey, guys, stop being such dickheads. Like smoke some weed and chill out. Maybe do some mushrooms and think about love.” And then Paul came in and was like, “Oh my God, we need to make all these rules. You guys aren't following the rules. Here are my rules.” And like Paul wasn't even called an Apostle by any of the other Apostles. He sort of like, forced his way in and he would like, write all these letters to the churches. He'd be like, “You're not following the rules. This is what Jesus actually wanted. By the way, don't listen to John. Don't listen to James. You know, I got my own thing that I want to tell you.” So I'm really anti-Paul. I think Paul is a loser and a killjoy. But I mean, Paul was very effective at spreading the message to the Greeks, and the other Apostles were like, “We don't even think this is for non-Jewish people like we just want to be like in our vibe and do mushrooms together.” And Paul was like, “We're going to colonize everywhere else as some fun religion and make them be really boring like us.”
Michelle Tea: Oh my God, I love your Christian sect so much. I would definitely come to Sunday worship at your church. I really feel like this is the view of Jesus, I think, that is totally redemptive and really possible to hold onto, like this idea that he was this like hippie kind of dude who was like, super intuitive. He's just like, just like one of these people that like, exist today. Like, there's so many people like Jesus today who, you know, just like, have big personalities and want to just like, bring people together, right? And like and talk about love and like not necessarily be super organized about it. I love your hot take on Paul being a loser and spoiling, spoiling the good fun.
Liara Roux: Thank you.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. So you talked about, you mentioned, that your publisher wanted you to write a political memoir, and I wanted to ask, did you feel like sex work is a political activity?
Liara Roux: I definitely do. I feel like sex work inherently destabilizes the patriarchy because usually sex workers are marginalized people. Queer people, women, trans people are often the people who are the most drawn to sex work and I think it's because it really gives you super easy access to money for not that much time. And so if you're disabled, if you're coming out of an abusive relationship, if you just don't fit in at the corporate job and they don't want to give you any money, then sex work is a super easy way to access it and obviously, the powers that be are not super into that, and I think that's why there's so much criminalization around it. I think it really breaks apart like the idea of a monogamous, heterosexual relationship where all the man's money goes to his wife. You know? And I think that's why, like heterosexual women and marriages are so anti sex work because like, “I'm working hard being a housewife, I don't want any of that money going to you because I'm doing like unpaid work and my compensation is supposed to be getting a piece of this guy's change, and I don't want it to be diluted.” I think men are into the idea of sex work being around because they're like, “Yeah, like, I want to fuck you,” but they want it to be as criminalized as possible because they're like, “Oh, like, I don't want you to have any rights, and I don't want you to have any leverage or power in this relationship. So I'm going to benefit from the fact that you're doing this work but when it comes to advocating for decriminalization or you having any rights, I don't know if I'm going to poke my head out and say anything.”
Michelle Tea: Do you at all that there is a spiritual component to sex work?
Liara Roux: There were a couple clients where I felt like there could be a really fun energy exchange, but it was usually because they were so open and had worked through their own shit and were really in this happy, joyful place where they could take care of me, and they realized that the money was this really beautiful, joyful thing that they could give me less so than the sex, almost. And they were really happy about giving me money. And then that made the sex really fun for me. It's like as soon as the clients wouldn't care about the sex or wouldn't care if I was in love with them, then I would be like, “Oh my God, I love you and I'm obsessed with you and you're making me come so hard.”
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Michelle Tea: Well, you know, I've got tarot cards here. Would you like me to give you a reading?
Liara Roux: I would love a tarot reading about how to approach my mom about this book because she is in it, and I... Last time I talked with her, I was like, “Just don't read it,” or like, “Maybe read the last chapter because you're in that, but it's not too sexual or whatever.” But yeah, I feel a lot of conflicting feelings about it.
Michelle Tea: Okay. I'm going to give you a couple of different pulls for this question. The first thing I'm going to do is just... I'm going to use the Thoth deck to get an idea of like what the energy is going to look like around your mom when the book comes out. You know, let's see what that's going to, to look like. Oh God, I I so relate to this question. I've been through it for years with my mom and my writings and yeah. So it’s real.
Liara Roux: I just feel like I'm always embarrassing her in this way where she's like… At this point, she's really trying to, like, connect with me and she's like, “Yeah, I just, you know, want to understand you.” I'm like, “Oh, man.”
Michelle Tea: Oh, look, this it looks like it's going to be hard, but there is the possibility of a very real renewal. The first card is the Nine of Swords. And so, oh my god, it's Cruelty. OK. So this, this card is just a hard card. In this context of this issue, I can see it manifesting in so many different ways, you know, like her feeling like it's a cruelty to her, like you're being mean to her. Her taking things personally that maybe, you know, are not personal at all. You feeling like her lashing out and being cruel to you. I don't know what her dynamic is like, how she deals with her feelings when she feels triggered. But if she lashes out at you like, that's a possibility. This is called Cruelty, and there is, you know, often a possibility of cruelty when this card comes up. But I really think this is an anxiety card. You know, in the Rider-Waite, this is, this is the person with having the nightmare. So it looks like you're both having a lot of anxiety probably. You know, she's going to feel anxious about everything, you know, how she's represented, like her love for you, her fear around, you know, I'm guessing your mom is somewhat afraid of your life, and maybe I'm just projecting about the way my mother has been afraid of my life, you know, at various points. So just like so many different anxieties sort of wrapped up, you know, and you as well, you know, having your own anxieties about your book, about not wanting to hurt her, about wanting to be able to own your own story. It just looks like, whoa, there's a lot.
The next card is a person, it’s the Princess of Swords. She's rough. She’s rough in this situation because I don't feel like I feel like you're looking to have as peaceful of a relationship with your mom as possible. But it does look like this book is going to cause a rift. It's not an un- an unhealable rift by any means, but it looks like, you know... Princess of Swords is a fighter, and this absolutely could be you defending your turf, you know, and just being like, you know, like, “No, Absolutely not.” Just like the way that personal writing is like a memoir is so, you know, that's your life story and you've got to fight for it and especially when your life story is marginalized in the ways that yours is like, it's…. You know, not only is it just so you know, you need to do it for yourself personally, but there is a political dimension where you're standing up also for, you know, issues that are larger than just you alone. And so it's really going to feel important and kind of loaded for you. And you know, this could be your mom as well. Like, again, I don't know if you guys have a history of actually, if you guys actually have big arguments and blowouts or if it's more like a, a stressful kind of buttoned up, you know, vibe. But, you know, if she is somebody who lashes out, she also could come out just wanting to, you know, be like, “No, this is like unacceptable.”
Liara Roux: She usually doesn't lash out, but she is very anxious. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my God.” And like, if she would ever yell at me, would be this sort of like frightened yell where she's like, “I need to protect you.” Like, which I didn't understand is that at the time I was like, “She hates me.” That's kind of why I want her to read the last chapter too. Because I’m like, “I wrote about how we made up and not we don't need to rehash all of painful stuff like we've already done the therapy about that.”
Michelle Tea: Oh, that's nice. That's really great to have there be like a happy ending like that in the book. Yeah, hopefully that will actually do something, but it looks like there's some stuff to get through. But look at the end. You have the Ace of Cups. So the Ace of Cups, you know, it's so beautiful. It's so renewing. I mean, you guys love each other and you know, you're both having to just kind of fight through your own anxieties and your own fears in the way that these fears keep you apart from each other and feel oppositional to each other, like you're just going to have to sort that out. You know, ideally without the Princess of Swords kind of coming in and blowing everything up, but there might be just like... You might just need to have that blowout or that meltdown to get to the Ace of Cups where it's renewing and loving. And there's a fresh start. So I really do see a fresh start for you.
Liara Roux: Oh, it's really beautiful.
Michelle Tea: It is really beautiful. I like, just like how your book has a happy ending this. This moment has a happy ending. But I want to pick some other cards for you here because it looks like, you know you will be experiencing your own anxieties. It's so anxious to have a book come out anyway. You're like, “Oh my god, here's my life bound up, you know, read it, world” especially when, like, you're writing about a life that is seen by so many people as controversial, it's like really nerve racking.
So between that, and just like knowing that your mom, that you're going to have to have some sort of reckoning with your mom before it gets smoothed out, I just want to pick from this lovely Vessel deck that I love so much, it’s an oracle deck. Yeah, just like, what are helpful energies for you to think about and to channel while you are in this space with your mom where it does feel like edgy and anxious before you get to the Ace of Cups? You know what, what's the energy that help you get to the Ace of Cups and also maybe help her get to that Ace of Cups? You know, what's the supporting vibes and energies to think about?
So... I love this deck so much. It never lets me down. It never lets me down. So you're — I picked three cards for you. The first one is It Gets Better.
Liara Roux: I love that.
Michelle Tea: It's so cute. So just knowing that. Just knowing that that Ace of Cups is waiting for you and you know, you guys, just like you said, like you've actually already lived through it. So, you know, just the living through the retelling of it is not going to be as dramatic. And then the next card you have is Love.
Liara Roux: Wow.
Michelle Tea: I know, right? Being in the love and being in the love of each other. And then this is really interesting. Your last card here is Choice. And I'm hoping that this just means like, you know, your mother, you know, like you stand by your choices, right? And just being able to like, articulate that the way that you do and embody that, the way that you do like, you know, I think it's going to be really powerful and it might just be like, you know, leading your mother to understand that like, you know you, we all make our choices in life and you stand by yours and they're different than choices she's made. But ideally, she can even, you know, accept it and even learn from it. And I think it might also be a little bit of a like, you know, you have choices in how you handle these moments, you know, when it gets stressful and when you are having to process with her. So just be aware that like, I don't know, you're not trapped in a phone call that feels too stressful. You can always, you know, get off the phone and come back to it later when you're calm, like you can make choices that feel good for you in the moments that you're dealing with this.
Liara Roux: Choose the love.
Michelle Tea: Choose the love and know that it gets better. And that's lovely, because I just feel like saying your relationship gets better. Yeah, you know, and I like that so much. [7.8s] As somebody who's like my mother just thinks I'm so weird and has my whole life like I've always been... You know what I mean? Like when you when you are that child that is so alien to your parents, your parents are just like, “Wait, what? Like, I don't understand who you are in the world.”
Liara Roux: Like, “What is going on with that one?”
Michelle Tea: I just love when those stories have happy endings, you know, and, and you guys can find ways to, you know, love each other and accept each other.
Liara Roux: I don't know if you read Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Michelle Tea: Oh, I did. It's so good.
Liara Roux: Yeah, but that is the title is for, like almost verbatim, like what my mom said to me at some point. And I feel like that was really just our childhood relationship. Like, “Why can't you just be normal and happy?”
Michelle Tea: Totally. Oh my god. Absolutely like I would... I just...I would have so many fights with my mother just trying, just trying to leave the house and in an outfit that I was wearing where she would just be like, “I don't understand.” You know, I mean, granted, I was high goth and I was wearing like clown white as foundation. You know, she's just like, “Are you having a nervous breakdown? Like what? Who wants to look like this?” You know, and I was just like, “I look amazing until you really cry and ruin my eyeliner.”
But you know, life will catch up with you. You know? I mean, I feel like it's very cool to have lived to see so many of the things that, that I said or did or believed in that to my mother was beyond the pale. So, so radical. So out there and now they're just actually quite normal aspects of our contemporary life and she sees that. And that's really gratifying. And I hope that you get to have that experience too.
Liara Roux: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this is a great and clarifying conversation for me.
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Tara Jepsen: Hi, I'm Tara Jepsen, I'm a writer and Scorpio living in Los Angeles. I am sitting in front of my altar, which I like to build every year, and I'd like to tell you a little bit about how one might build one's altar.
I encourage Scorpios to go as dark as they need to with sort of organs in jars, whatever it is that makes you feel like you're really mining the depths of your sorrow or existential melancholy. Any Scorpio, regardless of age — and this is why I say the toddlers can do this — you feel the burden of having a body. Of coming to this Earth to be in a physical form, to rack up some spiritual lessons because life is so crushing and brutal. You're going to have access to the kind of feelings that build a beautiful altar at any point in your life.
Some of the ephemera that I would put on an altar includes photographs, candles, booze of some kind, if you so choose. My beloved cat of 17 years just left this week and my friend gave me a 40 ounce of Miller High Life High in the aftermath of that, and that is on my altar, accidentally or not placed in front of some deceased alcoholics in my family.
But also love to have kind of like fun shit to delight the spirits. I have a pair of papier maché eyeballs on mine connected with hot pink pipe cleaners, and that is merely so that the spirits might visit and find themselves amused. The whole area can be festooned with candles, I don't think you can have too many. I think there is that thing where they sort of give a portal for the spirits. And they also, they just look nice. You know what I mean?
I like some weird little toys. A Miss Piggy in a convertible that I have from McDonald's in the eighties is one of my favorite little items. I just think it gives a little spark of, sort of, weirdness and joy. And I like those things cast in this kind of death-based environment.
Flowers. Fresh flowers. Papier maché eyeballs. I have like a little skeleton that we call Sven, and he’s a little — it’s a little on the nose.
I think that the main thing is to put together something that helps you feel connected to the darkness that you otherwise have to kind of sock away for the rest of the year because it creeps people out if you're not around the right people. But this time of year, you get to really trot out the dark feelings.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Thanks, Tara, for sharing this excellent way to bring some of that deep, fearless, passionate Scorpionic energy into our homes. I myself have a little plastic scorpion I stole from my kid’s box of plastic animals, and I love bringing it out each fall, dousing it in some glitter and letting it rule my altar! However Scorpio season reveals itself to you this year, we hope you’re bettered by it - left a bit more curious, fierce, and unapologetic.
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Michelle Tea: Thanks for tuning into Your Magic. Make sure you follow us on Twitter and Instagram @thisisyourmagic. You can subscribe to us right here on Spotify — do what you need to do to never miss an episode. And you can support us — plus get access to a whole bunch of bonus content — at patreon.com/thisisyourmagic. And you can email us at hello@thisisyourmagic.com. We would love to hear from you.
This episode was produced and edited by Molly Elizalde, Tony Gannon, and Vera Blossom. We got production support from Raven Yamamoto. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. Our original theme music is by John Kimbrough.
Tune in next week for a conversation with Lisa Stardust. Thanks for listening!