Who is Audrey Matthes?
Audrey Matthes was born in 1985, raised in Sidney, Nebraska and spent the majority of her young life living on a farm with her parents and two brothers. She graduated from Sidney High School in 2003 and is currently attending college at Laramie County Community College (LCCC) in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while working full-time as an EMT in Sidney. She will graduate with an Associates of Applied Science degree. Audrey lives with her fiancé and his two children from a previous marriage as well as three cats and two dogs. Audrey identifies as white with predominantly German heritage, religiously agnostic but spiritual, and politically Independent. When it was announced through LCCC that the Facing Whiteness project was going to conduct a local study, Audrey was interested based of her belief that without actual conversation between persons, change can never happen.
Excerpt from interview with Audrey Matthes by Whitney Dow, 2018
Q: Do you have some sort of culture that you really identify with? Is it the Nebraskan culture; is it the Wyoming culture? Is there music culture, like bands? Or is there some sort of thing that is like the thing that you feel really comfortable, that you’re a part of?
Matthes: [01:31:38] I’m pretty big into the metal head kind of culture, metal bands. Like, Danzig is a big one that we listen to; the Misfits are really big ones. So kind of anything heavy metal is where I really get excited about doing things.
Q: Do you go to heavy metal concerts?
Matthes: Yeah, we do.
Q: What it is that you like about heavy metal?
Matthes: [01:32:09] It’s loud, and you can go to a concert, there’s that picture that floats around on Facebook sometimes, and it’s that old dude and the fisticuffs, and it’s like, mosh pit? You mean group therapy? And it’s kind of the way that it feels. It’s just loud, and it’s fun, and it’s a whole bunch of people out there to have a really good time.
Q: Could you explain to an outsider that what might look like a fistfight, how that is fun and therapeutic?
Matthes: [01:32:43] Because, I feel like it’s fun and it’s therapeutic because every day you have something that makes you mad. Every day you have something else that just adds to the pile, and adds to the pile and adds to the pile. And so then you can go to a concert, and for like three hours, scream your lungs out and jump around, and nobody’s gonna’ judge you and nobody’s gonna’ look twice at you. But if you fall down in the mosh pit, there’s gonna’ be ten people that are gonna help pick you up. And that’s awesome.
Q: Is your fiancé also a metal head?
Matthes: He is, yes.
Q: Is that how you sort of bonded, over—
Matthes: [01:33:21] That was exactly how we bonded. Actually, his ex-wife and I worked together at Pizza Hut.
Q: Can you put what we’re talking about—“My fiancé is,” yeah.
Matthes: [01:33:37] His ex-wife and I worked together, and I made a comment one day about how, somebody asked me, is like, “Oh, why don’t you date? Like, I’ve never seen you date anybody.” I said, “Oh, I don’t think there’s anybody here that is into the same things that I do.” So his ex-wife was like, “Oh, you should totally date my ex-husband.” I was like, “Oh my god, I’m totally gonna’ date your ex-husband, you lunatic. Not!” So the next day she texted me, or, she called me. And she woke me up and she says, “Here’s Jay’s [phonetic] number, and here’s when he takes break, and I think you two would really hit it off.” And I was like, all right, fine, I’m gonna’ text this guy, and he’s not gonna’ be interested, and we can just go our separate ways. And now he’s my fiancé, and we’re getting married later this year. We’ve been together for seven years.
Interview Transcript