Welcome back to bisexual podcast.
That's not right.
Welcome back to bisexual coffee.
Yeah.
Get the goosebumps out.
Pop, pop.
Welcome back to bisexual coffee,
where it's only $7 and it won't break the bank.
Today's gonna be a little bit different
because Edith is going to be kind of a mediator,
kind of in the background,
making sure everything is running smoothly.
She's also gonna jump in in case for some reason
I have to go somewhere.
And we're gonna focus on today's guest,
Marcus Allen Frishman,
who is a very interesting individual.
It's first time on the podcast
and we wanna make sure our focus is on him.
So we hope you enjoy and let us know
what you think in the comments.
You know, I have a nickname.
It's called Sir Chief.
Tell us about it.
I will in a minute.
But I think we should just add like everything
as your nickname.
Just the word everything.
Everything, yeah, everything.
Because you're everything.
I mean, we could call her bagel,
short for everything bagel, I'm fine with that.
Oh, I like that.
Everything bagel. I like that too.
We're under something.
Excuse me, Michael.
Hi, I'm Marcus.
Hello, Marcus.
I shake your hand,
but that's hard to do through a computer screen.
How are you?
Oh, I'm not a big toucher.
Okay, well, I would delight in making you one comfortable.
I'm not kidding.
Look, I love the COVID moments
because I didn't have to shake hands.
I will say this.
I am a big fan of maintaining the six foot distance
in the grocery store now.
People will get very close behind you
because they feel like that's the same thing to do.
I will move to the other end of my cart,
put the handle and the entire cart between me
and somebody else.
The last time I did that to somebody,
I could hear them in the background going,
I'm not a toucher.
I respect that.
I don't do that because I'm not...
You know, I am a hugger,
but I'm not a toucher of hands.
Hands are really dirty.
You'll put your entire body against someone,
but the hands are a no-no.
Well, they're close.
We're storing a punch story on the hands.
So when I was 817,
I was volunteering at the Motion Picture Health and Welfare Fund
for a couple of years, actually one year.
They suggested I become a nurse.
So they had a training program for nursing assistants.
I went into that program and came a nurse
and then stayed there three years as an employee
doing de-cubitus care.
But the point is I had an in-service where
we didn't know what it was about.
It was a secret in-service.
In-service, you know what an in-service is, Edith.
Michael may not know what the word means.
It means training in your job.
Okay, so we have this half-hour training program.
We go into a trailer and we don't know why.
We're handed a piece of paper and we're all sitting down
and she turns the lights out at about the 15-minute mark.
Okay.
After a dumb lecture that was completely irrelevant.
The paper had a glowing substance on it.
So we touched this paper.
We were told to put it down after we touched it.
Never to touch it again.
And then she's doing a lecture 15 minutes later.
The lights go out and the black light goes on.
And what is glowing, let me assure you,
it was way more than the paper.
Yeah.
It was quite embarrassing, the spots on the body
that people were touching.
All over your face.
And she did it to prove the contamination of bacteria
on the hands.
They could pass easily with viruses.
That would definitely be a lesson that would stick with me.
I can see why you got it.
That's in your brain now.
I can tell.
Look, I have the same aversion to hands that Marcus does.
I know what he's talking about because when you work in the hospital,
there's something called hospital acquired infections.
Sure, I guess.
And in the hospital, they have teams of people that will go in
and clean a hospital room because of the amount of,
dare I say it, fecal matter that is all over.
It's all over everything.
Think about the gas pump.
On how much fecal matter there is everywhere.
Anyway, that's just a tangent.
And I'll just say that.
Yeah, you know,
I'm a fast learner here on bisexual coffee and we, we welcome them.
We normally, we hug them, but we will only fist bump them.
I'm a more of a fist bumper now that I'm thinking about it back,
but, you know, before COVID and everything like that,
I, it was like the Southern thing to do.
You just shook a band's hand and yeah.
And now after COVID fist bumping is more of the thing anyway.
But if I recognize a hugger in our elbows.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I'm not going to hug you.
I'm not going to hug you.
So I'd be like, yeah, bring it in.
I've been like that for years.
Much to most of my bosses.
Bosses is the people who were above me.
Dismay because I'd be hugging everybody.
He's like, please stop hugging people.
I'm like, I love my fellow man.
I don't know what's wrong with that.
So questions.
We've got questions for you, Mark.
Oh boy.
Just so you know, just so it's on the record.
I think there are topics that will touch on.
Possibly.
I'm going to react to you.
But if we don't, I might want to mention a few and might even hold
one up to the, because I think they're great.
Concepts.
Okay.
Big picture on some things, but that will be reactive to you.
I, I, I, I think that's a great idea.
I think we're going to be able to,
we're going to be able to,
we're going to be able to get to the bottom of it.
I think we're going to be able to get to the bottom of it.
I think that's a great idea.
I think we're going to be able to get to the bottom of it.
I think really you've come this far.
If you're just looking to have us explore the stage with you in
the next few guys,
I'm very interested to see exactly how much overlap we have because
I will say this.
I'm coming into your sphere of influence and kind of finding the
bredcrumbs of the internet where your name is peppered all
throughout.
with other people using your name in and you actually begin.
Here's what I wanna do.
I wanna go, I have a list of things
and we can jump around as we want to, as we need to.
But the first thing that I wanna dig into
is some of the more sensational stuff
in the first one being what you have given yourself,
for one thing, labels.
You put yourself, give yourself labels
and from what I can tell,
one of them, especially your email,
which I'm not gonna blast out here for other people,
gives you a title that I don't think
you actually have within the government
and I'm wondering.
I love this question.
Yeah, is this your way of putting it out there
into the universe for hoping of reaping it later?
No.
Ha ha ha ha.
Next question.
Ha ha ha ha.
We don't have to give the email address out
but needless to say, we will say that it begins with Senator.
Yes.
Okay, so I was a student body senator.
I was given an email address before I had a computer.
Okay.
I was also smart enough to resign
from USC student body senator position
to take up the, I think it was $75 a day
and that was a lot, but it was student money.
So they, $75 a day job as the parliamentarian instead.
But I retained this email address that I never used.
But when I finally got my computer and account,
after I graduated, you have to think about it.
I opened a account as my internet provider
and an email provider and both internet and email.
And I remember just reopening an account.
They said, you have an account based on some basis.
And that was it.
And only once, only once do I recall
in my entire experience with that.
And that is my only email address.
When I say only, I'll explain that too.
Only once do I remember anyone saying,
hey, are you a senator?
What does this mean or whatever it was?
I remember the moment.
It was a hotel reservation.
Okay.
I was doing.
Oh, I like it.
And she came back with, are you a senator?
And she oddly enough, this woman who was an employee
at physically at the hotel asked me again when I arrived.
So yeah, that's the only time I recall anyone mentioning it
other than people very close to me saying,
hey, why is your email?
Now is my provider of email.
And I think there's a Gmail.
I don't use it.
I think my business internet site has a email address
that forwards, not I think I know, but I don't use it.
I don't, the only email I use to send anybody anything
is the one you refer.
That's wild to me because I have,
and I just counted them up the other day
when I was answering a poll because somebody wanted to know,
hey, how many email addresses you have
just because it's the internet to ask questions like that.
And I have six Gmail.
And I'm pretty sure if I wanted to,
I could reopen my hotmail if I want to.
I never got an AOL one and I know that I have
at least two Yahoo because when I first got an email,
it was Yahoo.
And then-
I had a Yahoo, but I never used the email.
And I have an Apple.
Apple's assigned you, you have an Apple account,
you get an Apple, but I don't use incoming
or outgoing any of those.
So you don't have-
It's for the cloud.
You don't have a junk email.
Like I have one that I give to people
when I just don't want to deal with it.
The closest we have to any other email being used is my,
and I'd have to think what it is.
I don't know.
Don't, don't, don't talk to yourself.
All right, so I can, it's anyway, it's my business email
and it's forwards to-
So that's a simple question.
Thank you.
No, my mother predicted, she had some psychic ability.
And she said my son is going to be a senator,
but she said it many times, but I have not,
she was, I think she said it
pre my student body senator position.
So-
I mean, that makes her right.
She made it right.
That's right.
Well, she called it.
She sounds pretty smart.
She was a wonderful lady.
Yeah.
Go ahead, now, I'm sorry to belabor the-
No, this is-
No, that's all right.
It's conversation, Mark.
It's just-
This is fine.
So the other thing that I wanted to know
when we're talking about titles is another one,
which I'm sure has a heck of a story,
and I would love for you to regale people
who don't know you about terrorists, Hunter.
The short version is I was forced to go to the Philippines
for a five year period due to my work,
a component of my work.
I became very well known there
because I was essentially
California's representative to the Philippines.
We have the third or fourth largest investor in the Philippines.
Most people don't know that,
even we don't know that in California,
but it was a fact.
I did something that saved that investment
that was going to be divested by leadership of California.
Leadership's a significant word there.
And I single-handedly saved it kind of accidentally.
Now that's a great story in itself,
but the point is that's what gets the Philippines
under protest.
I didn't want to go and I kept going significantly
three to four months a year for five years,
living in a hotel.
I'd say three, five days.
Under protest each time,
or by like the second time you just kind of knew
this was your lot.
No, okay, let's digress.
So the first visit, I went to my boss and I said,
are you kidding me?
I got to go to the,
they want to honor me, the boss,
but they're going to honor you.
You go.
Okay.
Can I turn the 14 day visit into seven days?
Please, no, you're going with Romeo
and you're going to love it
and you're going to do your job
and he's setting up all these things
and the government of the Philippines,
the president wants you, the speaker wants,
everybody wants him.
All right, I'll go.
Well, remember I tried to reduce that 14 day trip
to seven days.
I had a blog and a girlfriend here.
I don't want to go to the Philippines.
I'm not a traveler to new places.
It's not my style.
A lot of reasons, but I had to go.
So I went on day 36,
Romeo and I get off the elevator.
Romeo is my employee, my colleague.
The highest ranking Filipino political appointee
in California, mind you.
He had some stature and he, but he worked for me
and he and I are at opposite ends
of the hotel Shangri-La hallway
by Romeo entering our room in the afternoon
and I look down at the floor and there's a message
and I pick it up and it says,
if you don't come home, you're fired.
Whoa.
And I quickly exit to the back of the hall.
Romeo had the same message, boss, he shouts to me.
I said, Romeo, you got to say, we realized,
meet in the hall, we have the same message.
It looks like the boss wants us back.
He called me boss, I called him.
We both have the same book.
And this boss was elected official,
the second highest ranking Republican
and the fifth largest economy of the world, California.
It wasn't the governor, but somebody else.
We decided we better quickly communicate and get back.
That took us a week to actually do that.
We got back, boss was happy,
but the point of the story is,
the trip I wanted to turn seven days turned into 36
and frankly, I was willing to extend.
I enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of that visit
that repeated itself in equal ways for many,
for at least two years and then slowly diminished
over the five year period that I went there.
It resulted in significant political advantage
for my boss in California on a micro level
with Filipinos.
We have 1.6 million of them at the time,
the largest conglomerate of Filipinos
in any place in the country.
And so politically, it was a thing.
It's really not a Republican thing
to go after ethnic groups,
but you take what you can get
and it was forced upon us essentially by the circumstances.
So we pursued it and we raised a lot of money
from Filipino groups.
Anyway, I'm forgetting the original premise of the question.
Oh, terrorism.
I'm established.
I'm in the paper, I'm on television.
Everyone knows me, the words getting out.
At some point, I will say seven years into the Philippines
because I got a girlfriend,
broke up with my American girlfriend of 14 years,
got a Filipino girlfriend that I met on my very first visit.
Met her within the first two weeks of my first visit.
So I had a reason to go back now.
I had a life in the Philippines
after the job ends in 2008 and I keep going back,
but I don't go back monthly.
I go back long periods, three to four months,
dense, usually beginning in March every year.
I had a girlfriend at a life.
I still stayed, lived in a hotel.
Eventually I bought a condo.
But at some point I was approached by individuals
who, someone I knew at the hotel,
someone I met at the hotel that to this day,
I suspect is CIA and his name,
and would meet with me occasionally over the years.
Eventually he said math, my nickname there is math,
M-A-F math, there's a project that we need your help on.
Now, I, you know, he's a mystery man.
I, you know, to this day,
and I communicate with him regularly,
but it's a mystery.
Who, what he does and why he's there,
but nevertheless, he is part of introducing me
to a man called General Ray.
General Ray's not a general.
He's a member of the former member, a young man,
former member, but been in the military a long time,
former Philippine military of a ranking
I can't remember right now.
We call him General Ray.
I was introduced to Ray and Ray said,
Marcus, there's a group that is labeled
a terrorist group around the world.
They control the movements of someone wanted
by the American government on the 10 most wanted list.
We need your help to coordinate a possible turnover
of this al-Qaeda individual that's in their control
in the Philippines.
They are not al-Qaeda.
In return, they want some reward money.
You could have some.
And they want you to help,
they think that this will help them reduce
their terrorist status, international terrorist status,
which is a thing, the United Nations
at the American State Department
to a domestic terrorist level.
Domestic terrorist is what they wanted to be
and they don't want to be an international terrorist.
It comes with different restrictions.
Sure.
Because and truthfully, they had domestic issues.
They were a Muslim group in South Philippines
that wanted certain Muslim control of their region.
And they wanted a peace treaty with the Philippine government
and they would only blow up Filipinos
and kidnap foreigners for income
and some Filipinos for income.
And so that was what they did.
They didn't really bother the world community
with international terrorism.
But they want to turn over this al-Qaeda terrorist
that they control his movement.
So I don't quite understand any of this,
although I have some experience
in foreign affairs and national security issues,
but that's why I'm originally to be in the Philippines.
And this meeting goes to an ex-meeting,
an ex-meeting, an ex-meeting.
And eventually I contact the State Department's Bureau
of Rewards for Justice program,
which is connected with the FBI and the CIA
and the other 16 intelligence agencies.
And I tell them boldly in an email, very boldly,
because I think exaggeration is the best thing to get attention
as long as it's based in truth.
I said indirectly I control the movements of Marwyn
and that it would be advisable
if the State Department contacts me
because I believe I could arrange a turnover of this terrorist
by the fact that I control indirectly his movements.
I was advised to, I had to send that email several times,
I was advised at some point by the State Department
in writing and by phone to, when I got to Manila,
to meet with certain individuals
that were labeled as State Department employees.
They were in fact CIA.
Paul Kennedy, I released his name already,
so which wasn't a proper thing to do,
but it's public record.
And the other guy, forgetting, and General Ray.
I sit down with them and I tell them what we're going to do,
and I have a plan that's very grandiose.
I'm going to be the one to take possession
of the terrorist peacefully.
I am going to be the one that will move him
to proper locations for the Americans to take control.
And I was admonished at my plan, and I had an investor.
I had a very well-known international security company
that they make, they're more famous for transporting large amounts
of money, I mean, enough to put on a 747, but legally.
They do it legally.
By international, because at this point,
you are subject to both US and Philippines.
Sure.
International to the Philippines or international to the US?
No, it's an American company.
It's an American company that has a contract in the Philippines
to guard border intrusions.
OK.
With regard to drugs and products and whatever problem
that I have, it's unrelated to this.
But I knew him, and I contacted him and met with him,
and he said, oh, yeah, we can do this project.
It's going to be expensive.
We need a helicopter.
We need a plane.
We need another helicopter.
We need this.
So I developed a proposal.
I can't remember if I did this on the second or third visit,
because I went back.
But the point is, I presented this to the State Department.
They admonished me.
Let's just use that word.
That's what I've used before.
I could imagine somebody in the border
before they even did anything.
It was like, what the hell is this guy thinking?
Yeah, right.
I'm not dealing with the Philippines.
The Indians, man.
I'm just dealing with, yeah, but I got a plan.
I watched The Bounty Hunter.
Anyway.
I heard you.
You think I'm joking.
I said that in the movie.
No, no, I hear you.
Yeah, of course not.
I love The Bounty Hunter.
I'm the new dog.
And he went to get, you know, the funny thing is,
I thought it was perfectly, because I looked all this stuff up,
and I found, oh, dog got famous when he went to the Mexico
to get whatever they were.
I'm not joking.
So, I mean, it's funny, but it's serious.
But let me just end with this.
They say to me, Marcus, we need verification.
But they also told me, we know these people.
They're legit.
Because I said all the way down to the point
that I get the verification document.
Cut me off if the story gets boring.
I had a lot of questions.
And I got one.
All right.
So, what verification?
And I'm thinking, how do you get verification?
Oh, that's easy.
You have to get a letter.
A letter?
From whom?
Get him to write a letter.
I said, this seems all right.
But I'm trying to play like I know I'm not hesitant.
Oh, sure.
We'll get a letter.
Yeah, of course.
All right.
You know, I'm the new ones.
They were never had a letter.
Yeah, we're getting a letter.
Yeah, I'm gonna letter it.
Okay, I can show you that letter.
So I go to Ray and he says, oh yeah, yeah,
that's no problem, really.
Okay.
Oh yeah, I think I waited a week.
I got a letter, I met Ray in an envelope, comes a,
and I have the heart copy still
and I have the picture of it.
It's on the terrorist letterhead.
I think I've seen this.
It's officially, okay, it describes,
I didn't know what it was when I got it,
but it apparently is a document that is used
to allow this guy to move around.
It is kept with the people surrounding him and him
so that they don't get killed moving around
the South Philippines.
It's his paper.
There's a name for it.
And the reason I know this is when I finally did
the story with the newspaper in the Philippines,
I showed them the document and the first time I heard it,
she says, oh, that's a, fill in the blank,
the name of the document.
In my head, it is a terrorist passport.
There's not just a letter of verification.
No, no, it's used, and she had a name for it.
It was used for IDs internally down there
so that they know who people are.
Oh, okay, a means of transport document.
Okay, so I faxed that document at some point
to the State Department contact, my handler.
It was called my handler.
And my handler took three days and texted me
and said, it's verified.
At one point I asked him, how did you verify it?
And he said, Marcus, we gave it to someone
who gave it to someone who went into the camp
and went to Boy Hoshimi, the chairman,
to verify he signed it.
Then we got a verbal from our, so presumably,
it was a CIA guy to a source,
the source to the actual signitor.
The signature's famous, I mean, famous,
you know, he's a well-known leader of the group.
And he comes back with a signature.
So that's how they got verified in three days
and then they informed me it's verified.
And as I told you, I may have understated it
before I was to get the letter,
I was doubting the seriousness.
When I faxed it, my faxed cover sheet
that I still possess in a file on that table,
it had on it, I don't know, something like this,
I don't know if it's real or not or just another scam.
But I put that in there because I felt like it
because I thought the whole thing was silly at some point
but everyone was taking it very seriously but me.
Nevertheless, this guy, Marwin, was what he was called,
the state, American State Department informed me
that they will allow the Philippine government
to do the arrest.
It will be a domestic arrest by the National Police Force.
And I questioned that.
I was told that in the moment I was being told
not to arrange it myself.
Right.
And I said, well, why isn't this an American project?
And he said to me, there are certain countries
for which if Ben and Ben Laden had not been caught yet
or he already had, I hope I'm getting my date straight,
but the Ben Laden reference was made.
And he said, if Ben Laden was here,
we wouldn't go and get him.
They would.
That's the line that I was given.
Whether it's correct or not.
And Israel was given, Israel was another example.
We would not go into Israel, he said, to get a terrorist.
They would do it and they would hand them to us.
So that's a search.
Well, he probably broke some laws in the Philippines.
Essentially, that's what we did.
And then the United States.
We turned it over to the Philippine government.
The National Police Force, not the military,
engaged him in a battle twice over a couple of years.
Failed battles.
Americans provided, this is public information,
it's on the internet.
Americans provided drone searches.
And then here's the pinnacle moment.
I'm in a taxi.
I have just arrived to the Philippines.
It's one or two days in the Philippines.
I'm in a taxi and there's a lot of commotion going on
on the radio immediately when I come in,
in English and Tagalog, it's a congressional hearing.
And I said to my taxi driver, what's going on?
Because I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
I wasn't in the car long, but it was serious.
And he says, like any good Filipino knowing their terrorists,
he says to me, they killed Marwin.
They killed Marwin?
I know who Marwin was.
How do you know who Marwin is?
Well, he knew.
You can be very stereotypic in the Philippines.
Trust me on this.
Taxi drivers in the Philippines are uneducated
and they're poor.
He knew who this was because that's their culture.
They know this.
They know who's South in the Philippines and wanted.
So there's a congressional hearing.
Now I'm already an acknowledged well-known American.
They called me the ambassador.
The state of California paid somebody to fly
from Sacramento to my local office,
not my Sacramento office,
and change my title and add the word ambassador
to my title badge on my door.
My boss paid for that or the state paid for that
because I was called the ambassador at that point.
Well, you are when you travel the United States.
I'm not really the ambassador.
I was on liaison to the CalPERS.
Okay, I'll liaison.
I was the agency that was involved with the investment.
That was CalPERS, but I saved that investment
having a higher ranking than CalPERS.
But anyway, back to the point.
So the terrorist has killed, they grab his finger,
they take it to the FBI Los Angeles.
It gets verified in a couple of weeks.
Did you get to see his body?
He has hit the fan in the Philippines,
but guess who shows up to the congressional hearing?
Who? Me.
I went to the speaker.
The speaker, Bill Monty, is one of my closest friends
in the Philippines.
He was speaker of the House of Representatives.
He was not on the committee doing this
and was only remotely involved in it,
but he is the speaker.
I went right to his office and I said, what do I do?
And I think the whole story's wrong.
This man never had to die like that.
And there never had to be 41 killed on the Filipino side.
It's, I'm sorry, 44.
They're called the Fallen 44.
They are a legend.
They died killing this man.
And I said no one had to die.
The American government could have done it differently.
I was, it was supposed to be a turnover.
Boy Hoshimi, the chairman of this terrorist group
was going to give him to anyone I said so.
They were going to turn him over.
Nobody would have died is the point.
Maybe he would have at some point, but no one else.
And he would have likely been taken to Guantanamo.
But the, but everybody wanted him dead
and they killed him unnecessarily.
And can 44 people, Filipinos died.
So there's the, that's the scandal.
The Philippines they wanted him dead.
The Philippines and the scandal, the hearing.
Why did 44 people die?
Who knew about this?
The president claimed he didn't.
President of the Philippines at that point.
The national police force did.
And the story comes alive.
So I'm on television, I'm front page of the paper
in the Philippines.
And I testified, they would only let me testify
behind the scenes.
They never, I was in the room,
but they would never allow me public testimony.
The American ambassador put pressure on the Filipinos.
Don't let Frishman go there.
Now the national police chief was asked,
what about Frishman?
And he said, I defer you to the American ambassador.
The ambassador was asked on television.
What about Frishman?
And the ambassador says,
we don't comment on ongoing investigations.
Frishman's under investigation.
So that was really the end of it.
It diminishes at some point.
This was the scandal in the Philippines was all about
why are we doing,
why are the Aaron boys of the American government
and how come our national military wasn't,
a lot of components.
But I made clear to the people that debriefed me
on the Philippine side,
the Americans never debriefed me.
At some point.
So you just, I hate to interrupt you.
So your involvement was more orchestrating
the entire thing.
You put it together.
I located the target location,
but I was in the taxi when I learned what happened.
And I said to him, where did they find Marwin?
And he says, they found him in Massa Patino.
I pulled out my pen and a business calling card.
And I said, how do you,
and I remembered it sounded like the place
I told them he was at.
I said, how do you spell it?
I spelled it, put it on my back of my business card.
I make the best notes on the back of business cards.
I put it in my pocket.
When I got home that night,
which was before I met the Congress and the speaker
and did all the interviews,
I opened my file, which I traveled with back and forth
to the Philippines several times over several years.
I opened the file and there it was.
It was right there in that document,
that matching name, which I'm mispronouncing, location.
So I gave the target location.
That's exactly where he was killed.
There was a source, Marwin's companion,
for lack of a better word, gave him up too.
On the precise location.
So on the third battle.
On the third battle, they killed him.
44 men died and it's a scandal.
And that was what was sorted out in the Philippines.
The term terrorist hunter in this case is more boring.
It sounds like because of how deep you were into everything.
You were really, it doesn't even sound like you really knew
how deep you were until much later.
Like you were probably already waiting.
I made that up.
Nobody called me a terrorist hunter.
I made it up myself.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Like on your end, I feel like that that's where
that's coming from because, I mean, it's a wild,
it's a sensational story.
You might as well have a sensational title to go with it.
I mean, you wrote a book about it too, right?
No, I didn't write the book.
I'm waiting.
I have a website somewhere.
I don't know how to find it, but it's there.
It's kind of a placeholder.
And it's a book based on the website.
You know where it is reminding me.
But my assistant, Berna, and the Philippines made one.
The reason I needed to do that is I requested the file
from the State Department via the Freedom of Information Act.
The State Department, I almost sued them,
but when they learned they were going to get sued
because I had attorney interaction with them,
they agreed on a release date.
Look, you can't explain these things.
They agreed on a release date of June or July,
whatever it is, 2025.
So in an email, the real person, multiple times
when I ask for my update, they come back now with that date.
That date had only been given to me a few months ago.
But for several years, they wouldn't provide me the file.
And then we threaten the suit, and now they've given a date.
So we'll see next summer if I get it.
So something may come out of that.
And those documents will be needed if ever I do write a book.
But the book will only be of interest to Filipinos.
But you know, they're a massive book.
I don't think so, Marcus.
I don't think it's just going to be Filipinos, my dude.
I think there's going to be a lot of people who would be really
interested to read that, especially if you get your sources in.
You can get a couple of people to talk with you about that.
I'm going to have to get somebody to help me write a broader,
interesting story to it.
But it's amazing how little stories can be entire books,
I guess.
Well, Michael has written a book.
Talk about my book.
Yes, I got to talk about this book.
He wrote a book.
So the fact that, I mean, when you talk to him,
he knows about the whole process.
I don't know anything about the process.
I have somebody in the wings as a ghost writer, but somebody's
talking about it.
I'd be willing to give you my advice on how it's happened
and everything like that.
Because it wasn't just a single story.
I also interviewed other people.
I put their stories in with me.
So as I'm growing up in this book, because it's a memoir,
these people are growing up with me as well.
So it makes it for pretty interesting time.
So if you can find a book.
What's the name of the book?
It's called Dink.
D-I-N-Q. And it's available on Amazon.
I can send you a link after all this.
Tell them about what Dink is.
He was in the Navy.
I was.
I was in the Navy for four years from 2001 to 2005.
And it is my life experiences from the ages of five
up until I get out of the Navy at 23.
And it's mixed with D&D.
It's mixed with firsthand experiences.
It's mixed with various interviews of people
that have been with me.
It was a passion project.
It was cathartic.
And it was my first step to realizing
I needed to go to therapy.
D&D. What is D&D?
Dungeons and Dragons, my friend.
Oh, of course.
It's a game.
Oh, I know it.
I know it.
Everyone was playing it when I was in high school.
Yeah.
Everybody's still playing it now, I guarantee it.
If we're doing it this weekend, as a matter of fact.
We got a live show.
I'm actually a talent.
I'll send you the link.
You should fly all the way out to South Carolina, Marcus.
We can entertain you in the nerdy bookstore.
It'd be great.
I bet South Carolina is a beautiful place.
It is.
I'm staying in an Airbnb.
It's the perfect weather time right now, too.
All the trees are changing.
It's nice.
It's cool.
It's crisp.
The air smells and tastes like dead leaves.
It's great.
It's my favorite time of year.
So let's talk.
You don't get any of that.
Lots of modulus.
So with you going back and forth to the Philippines
and from the US, you said when you first
started headed over there, your first trip,
you didn't want to leave.
You had a dog.
You had a girlfriend.
And then you go over there.
And then there's a bunch of yada yada in that story.
All of a sudden you have a girlfriend over in the Philippines.
My girlfriend and I ended in 2003.
I went to the Philippines for the first time in 2003.
OK.
Was it because you traveled?
I was single by time I traveled to the Philippines.
OK.
But was it the lead up?
I mean, I don't want to dig too much in your personal stuff.
I'll ask anything.
What was your question?
So was it the lead up going there?
Or is it like, hey, look, I have to go to the Philippines?
No connection.
She wanted to marry me.
We were together 14 years.
We were engaged.
I never married her.
And she bought a wedding dress.
We had an engagement ring.
She was fine until the final year.
But when I never did it because I wasn't ready,
that was my line.
But I loved her.
And we had a wonderful relationship.
She said, I can't wait anymore.
And she left.
And now, essentially, I wasted 14 years of her life,
according to her.
So I went to the Philippines sometime later that year.
I can't remember.
I think it was actually July because it
was the morning of the coup in the Philippines.
OK.
And I arrived just after they closed the airports.
And I didn't have a girlfriend.
And within a couple of weeks, I met a lovely young lady
named Tessa.
Somebody introduced me to her.
And we began a three and a half year relationship.
I got her a visa, brought her to America.
And she hated it.
She hated living here.
She loved me.
We didn't marry.
She went back.
Yeah, it works like that sometimes, doesn't it?
So talk to her the other night.
I still see her family on every visit.
We hear of bisexual coffee.
Don't shy away from talking about things
about sex and relationships.
And since this kind of naturally came that way,
with a little bit of diverting.
But still, I mean, it was pretty natural, I feel.
I feel like I did a good job.
I'm a good host.
Yes, you are.
14 year engagement or relationship.
How long was the engagement?
Hard to remember.
I'm going to guess, seven years.
OK, about half the time.
All right.
Why such a long game if you knew that you didn't
want to cross the finish line?
I don't know.
I have an answer for everything.
I loved her.
We had a great relationship.
She loved me.
It was wonderful.
And that's why we were heading to marriage.
But I told her in this last conversation,
I'm just not ready.
But I want you to wait.
Now, I became ready very quickly.
We broke up.
I got involved with someone else.
And I was ready.
Because I realized I had lost a woman because of it.
A really significant good relationship.
And I lost this woman that I wanted
to spend the rest of my life with.
And all my fault.
All my fault.
So now, I believe I'm, I don't know,
are you religious?
Karma, payback, purgatory?
I'm Buddhist.
Karma.
And my punishment has been not being able to get married,
even though I've had an opportunity several times.
So I've been ready for marriage since 2004.
OK.
I've been married.
I'm on my second marriage.
And I'm not going to lie.
I learned from my first one.
My first one ended very amicably.
We went our separate ways.
We are still very much good friends.
We reverted back to the friends that we were before we got
married, understanding that we were better friends
than we ever were spouses.
We didn't grow as spouses.
We did not.
We made plans.
We never kept them.
Or we thought we were going to make plans.
And then the other person, we get scared and not actually
have the conversation.
It was, it wasn't healthy.
It wasn't verdant, I guess you could call it.
I'm doing, we're doing better here.
The economy is helping us not grow the way that we want to.
But we have plans.
We have desires.
I fell in love with this woman.
And I can see nothing but a great future with this person.
How long was the first marriage?
14 years.
Wow.
14 years.
You know what 14 years you like.
Yeah, well.
I did it.
I did it too, Marcus.
I did it too.
I was married 17 years.
And we just couldn't, I think it was, I have a big ego.
And so did he.
Now I found healthiness in my ego, like a nice place to be.
And I don't have to be right all the time.
And I don't have to have things my way.
And I'm friends with my husband.
But I'm not going back.
To say husband, you're divorced.
No.
Oh.
Right.
Her situation, hold on.
For me and the camera, it's this way.
Her situation is a definition of a situation ship.
And then kind of fold it over a little bit.
It's a.
I have a big family.
I have a lot of people that love me.
Yeah.
Most of my friends have bad marriages, but for two that come to mind.
And there's an interesting component in both of those two fabulous marriages.
Oh yeah.
The wife is the breadwinner and significant breadwinner.
The husbands are professionals, pretty smart and have their own businesses, but they're
failed businesses.
I don't just, it's a, I only say this because it's the two people who are in happy marriages
that I know.
Out of that dynamic, this is you observing this from the outside.
Obviously, you're not in their relationship.
You don't know really what's going on in their house every time.
But what do you think is about that is the negative aspect of that?
What is causing a bad marriage?
Oh, well, no, those are the two that have the good marriage.
I read that wrong.
I don't know.
All of my other friends have bad marriage.
I haven't analyzed, oh, because people have bad marriages for different reasons, but I
was more curious and focused on, these are lifetime friends, both of them as childhood
friends.
And I see them regularly.
And when I say them, I see them, not them and their wife.
And although I know the wife and the children on both sides, they are so happily married.
And I've dissected this as though it means something, but it's the only factor that's
similar between both.
Maybe irrelevant, just a coincidence.
May not be relevant at all.
It could be.
Human beings are so multifaceted that coincidences pop up all the time.
But I mean, heck, maybe you're onto something.
I'll be the first to admit it's not by much, but my wife makes more than I do.
But the job that she does has so many different layers to it.
I don't think she's getting paid enough, to be quite honest with you.
It's been wild actually in this relationship to see someone who loves their job so much
that they're willing to put up with some of the stress and maybe not as much pay as they
could be getting.
And any criticism that I normally give towards her, I'm like, Hey, are you sure this is your
job?
It looks like it's really stressing you out.
And this way, I don't think you're getting support in this way.
She's like, I love what I do.
And I hope that's going to pay out for her.
But it's been great to see that because in my last relationship, because I was in the
Navy in the beginning of our marriage, she didn't have to work.
I was making that Navy money.
I was able to bring that in.
And when we got out of the military, there's a whole blink slate in her resume and nobody
wanted to hire her.
And it just got worse and worse until maybe about three or four years before we got divorced
is when she finally landed a job.
And before then, we just kind of lived on cheap carbs and lived in a trailer.
Like it was, like I said, we didn't grow.
We didn't grow.
Economics is critical, I think, in relationships.
It is.
It's almost sometimes, sometimes defines them.
Now, I'm not saying it should be like that or that it would be like that with me, but
it's my observation.
It matters so much to people that it destroys relationships and makes them thrive.
Sure.
It jades.
Look, it jades your vision.
It messes things up.
I come from nursing.
There are so many rules and laws and things that govern nursing.
I have a doctor over me that oversees everything.
I can't give a patient anything without a doctor's order.
And I've had to get really good at nursing.
So now I do really well, you know, I can't complain.
My bills are paid.
I have no debt.
I'm truly grateful.
But when I first started and I didn't have the experience, it wrecks you as a person,
the level of stress until you get, you know, it's just like being a hunter, right?
You don't, you don't, it's like, what am I going to do?
What is this?
I saw it when I was in nursing.
I saw it at a high level, but it's hospital nursing.
You know, I worked on a ward with other nurses, LVNs are at an RN, then the supervisor RN,
a lot of pressure.
It's a lot of pressure.
So when I came home, I wanted compassion and I wasn't getting it.
And then my ego would be, well, fuck this shit.
But some people, they're not capable of thinking that way.
And they haven't had the experiences that I've had and the inability to have compassion.
And the thing is, I didn't have compassion for him.
It takes two in a relationship.
It doesn't take one.
You got a tango baby.
Yep.
Well, you know why Edith, he liked you probably.
Tell me.
Because you're a nurse.
Nurses, a successful nurse is a giver, not a taker.
And they care about other people before themselves sometimes.
This diminishes their personality in some ways, but it's always good for the other person.
Right.
Well, you know.
I mean, I bet he was happy.
Yeah, but I've, from what I've heard, Edith has done some growing and she understands
her self worth now.
Right.
And I love that.
Yeah, I do.
And that's why I'm in a situation.
Right.
So these.
Which is an evolution.
Yeah.
So seeing all these things, seeing what is worked for other people's relationships and
seeing, you know, what has not worked for yours, it's okay to say that, hey, it's my fault.
But working on those faults is a defining part of what it means to become a better human,
if not just for yourself, but maybe for somebody else who happens to come into your life.
So what does that look like for you?
How is Marcus Allen Frischman bettering himself from day to day?
I think it was just a bolt of lightning experience.
I don't think I needed to learn it over time.
When I lost her and I didn't, I didn't make any attempts to get her back because of the
guilt that I felt because I thought she was right, you know, and I loved her.
And it was a very unselfish move to not attempt to rekindle it.
I stayed in touch, but I didn't rekindle.
And by then, in short timeframe, I was in love with another woman.
You know, your heart can be filled very quickly with someone else.
Especially when there's a vacuum created, definitely.
Oh, yeah, sure.
And that relationship was fabulous.
She had the Filipino dynamic that, you know, why should she, I should point out something.
There's a conventional thought that women in the Philippines, because remember, I'm
spending a lot of time there.
People say, what do you see about Philippine women?
I don't.
If I lived in France, I would probably date French women.
I'd be in a commuted relationship with a French woman.
I suppose if I was in Italy, it would be an Italian woman.
So there's, you know, there's no desire for Filipino women.
In fact, I think it might even be a negative, frankly.
It's a negative component.
But nevertheless, it is what it is.
I fell in love.
She came to America and was shocked because I didn't tell her what life is like here
versus there.
There's so much to explain.
How could you have done it in a simple conversation?
Let's be honest.
Well, I did it in my next relationship.
I had several other back to back.
I've only been single since 2019, probably three months, with the exception of a period
in COVID lockdown.
So I'm into committed relationships.
I've never had a casual relationship in my life.
I have long term relationships.
All of them have been good post college.
I had, let's say, contentious relationships in college because I was a different person
and sought opposites, but I learned quickly in college after college, you know, I got
to find a woman who's like me.
So that I think is a major key to success for relationships, finding a match because
then you don't have to deal with differences.
Now that may be selfish, narcissistic, fill in the blank, but it works.
It does work.
I mean, sure.
I use this term only sometimes, but I have to say it feels like it might fit here.
That might seem a little masturbatory for signing somebody who fits you so well that
it feels like it is you.
For me, and I want to get back to your relationship.
I just want to throw this in here.
The relationship I have right now, I am with somebody whose love language is arguing, who
she needs to know that I'm not placating her, that I have my own views at respect
her own views and if they clash, we're going to talk about it.
And she, well, sometimes I feel like she pulls like something out of an argument hat just
to have an argument and I'll, you know, I'll play along and I was like, you just want to
fight right now.
That's fine.
And we'll just have it out.
But imagine if you didn't fight because she was like you.
I use that phrase, but I was walking to the bank teller machine at about the three-year
point of this relationship that we're talking about with Tessa was her name.
And we fought on the way to the bank.
We fought about her father's answering machine.
And I will bore you with the details, the components of that fight, but I'll give you
the topic.
And that's what we thought from the condo down to the hotel room down to the bank.
And after we got finished with the bank, I turned to Tessa and I said, you know, Tessa,
we should pray and she's kind of grumpy, right?
Why should we pray now?
What are you talking about?
We should pray to God that we have an argument like this every single day.
What did Marcus mean when he told that to Tessa?
You're going to have to find out in two weeks.
It's not very often that we have such a long episode that we can't abbreviate it down,
but there's just too much good stuff here.
I didn't want to cut anything out.
So I'll see you guys in a week with a very special episode and two weeks will continue
the Marcus Allen Frishman interview.
But we also wanted to say, hey, Spotify has got comments now and almost everything's got
a rating system.
If you could rate our podcast, we'd love to know what you think and comment below.
If there's any way that you want to get in contact with us, you can either do that or
get in touch with us at bisexualcoffeepodcastalloneword.com.
Thank you so much for listening and as always, peace out and word to your mother.