Host: Larry Rosen

Larry Rosen: [00:00:03] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Larry Rosen, your host for this week. 

For 2022, the 25th Anniversary of The Moth, we've been taking a look back at every year we've been around. This episode, we're at 2010. In 2010, The Moth Radio Hour won a Peabody. And we opened up our pitch line, allowing anyone to submit a two-minute version of a story they'd like to tell. With the pitch line, The Moth was able to invite even more people from even more backgrounds to share their stories. 

At this point, we receive hundreds of pitches a month from all over the world. We listened to each and every one and then developed some of them from Moth Mainstage shows worldwide. Here's a pitch we loved from Daniel Hardy in Hamilton, Ohio. 

Daniel: [00:00:56] When I was growing up, I was the second oldest of four girls. We were each about three to four years apart, which could have led to some disastrous competition. But blessedly, we got along pretty well, as a whole. We were known as the Girls. We got along even better as we entered our 20s. Despite the spreading out across the country and the world, even when we couldn't get back together for holidays and birthdays, we would still Skype. Even before COVID made that the cool thing to do. 

10 years ago, I came to understand the lifelong depression and anxiety that I dealt with was related to my being a transgender man and not one of the girls at all. I was terrified for what that would mean to my place in this very special sisterhood that I shared. I came out to my younger sisters first, and they accepted it as if I had simply said, “Today is [audio cut].” My older sister had far more questions, but was equally as accepting once she understood, she mostly wanted to know what it would mean for my health in the future. 10 years later, I now have two nieces from two of my sisters. And this summer, I realized that we have a whole new generation of the girls. 

Larry Rosen: [00:02:23] In this special Pride episode celebrating the 52nd year of Pride itself, we wanted to share two stories that speak to the LGBTQ+ experience, and to some of the joys and struggles and triumphs within it. 

Our first storyteller is Donald Harrison. He told this at a Moth StorySLAM in Philadelphia. Here's Donald, live at The Moth. 

[cheers and applause] 

Donald: [00:02:56] I love the way that my phone's notifications make me feel inside. [audience laughter] A text? Oh. A Facebook message? All right. A Snapchat? Hubba hubba. [audience laughter] I embrace the connection of my phone and my body's chemicals. 

I'm 35 years old and this connection began quite a while ago. The Roberts lived down the street from us and they had all of the technological stuff first. So, it was in their home office beside my friend that I heard for the first time the crashing, dinging, da dun, da dun sound of the dial up modem. [audience laughter] And that jubilant voice that said, “You've got mail, America Online.” I was in awe, “What was this place?” [audience laughter] It was here too that I was led into an even stranger the America Online chat room. [audience laughter] 

Beside my friend, we answered the periodic age, sex, location checks, [audience laughter] pretending to be the same person and chatting. What were we chatting about? I have no idea. We were in one of those general chat rooms. But of course, with chat rooms you have like a whole menu, there's all these subgroups and interest areas. I knew as I sat beside my friend that when we got America Online in my house, there was one place I would go immediately. 

Later at my house, we got a dial up modem, we got our own America Online accounts and I went directly to gay and lesbian chat number 48. [audience laughter] And then, gay and lesbian chat number 17, 12, 39, 4, 5. I went into all the gay and lesbian chat rooms. And in every one of them, I found a group of people that I could talk to as I couldn't in real life, a group of people I never expected to be able to talk to. 

I was a teenager, I was terrified of my sexuality and I was, until America Online, alone with it. So, I chatted. I went into gay and lesbian chat rooms and I chatted and I chatted. Maybe you're thinking at this point, “Oh, great, here we go, another story about internet porn.” [audience laughter] Or, “Bullies on the loose.” But this is not that. Instead, I chatted in these rooms and I plucked out two friends. They were both my age, both the same year in high school, both in the closet, both very secretive about their lives. One of them was called practically, maybe. He liked Björk and lived in Boston. One was named Reel Flyboy with the real spelled ee. [audience laughter] He lived in Arkansas and I lived in New Jersey. We chatted all the time. 

I remember in the summers, I would sit on the front porch of my parent’s shore house and we had this huge heavy black laptop and I would put it on my lap and my thighs were just so sweaty. [audience laughter] You hear those sounds, right? You remember like person sign online, and the door would creak open [audience laughter] and they'd leave and it would slam shut. [audience laughter] There was only one message sound da, da, da. And I'd be sitting in the corner of my parent’s short house, just da, da, da. Da, da, da. Da, da, da. [audience laughter]. They go back and forth. 

Across the room, my father is just sitting quietly at the table doing a crossword puzzle, having no idea what I was up to. It strikes me today what a revolutionary way this was to sit on your parent’s front porch. I was chatting with these two kids and nobody knew about it. They didn't know about each other. It was this other life that I was living in America Online land. We chatted not to form the foundation of some future in person relationship.  We weren't dating online. We were just there for each other. 

We exchanged a few pictures of our faces, because that's all you had at that point. We couldn't take anymore. We didn't take our clothes off, or masturbate or anything like that. We just talked. We didn't ever expect to meet each other. But then, then, we were seniors in high school and we were deciding where to go to college. And crazily, practically maybe from Boston ended up going to Northeastern in Boston. And Reel Flyboy from Arkansas ended up going to Emerson in Boston. And me from South Jersey, I went to Boston College. So, I met both of my America Online friends in real life. 

Reel Flyboy and I dated for the whole first year of college. He became my R-E-A-L first boyfriend, [audience laughter] like the Vice President of the United States. My mother still uses her aol.com email address [audience laughter] for all of her official mom business. [audience laughter] I was at her house over Christmas and she signed online. And damned, if that thing doesn't still say you've got mail. [audience laughter] Oh, what that made me feel inside to hear that. aol.com email addresses make you seem, I don't know, a little silly or out of touch. “Get Gmail. What are you doing?” [audience laughter] But for me, they're also a relic of this time and this place that was really wonderful and for which I have to be forever grateful. Thank you. 

[cheers and applause]

Larry Rosen: [00:09:00] That was Donald Harrison. Donald is a writer and performer and has told many stories on The Moth stage. He also performs weekly at a gay piano bar in Philadelphia where he's lived for the past 10 years. I asked Donald, what he's been proud of in the years since he told this story? Here's what he said. 

Daniel: [00:09:22] This story takes place in the 1990s. And of course, back then meeting people on the internet wasn't a very cool thing to do. This was before any online dating or anything like that. And so, I think I'm proud of my younger self for not only acknowledging and accepting fairly early on that I was gay, but also for giving myself the permission to reach out to others, to trust other people from the internet and to allow those friendships to take me where they did, which was, of course, to a place I never expected. That was just really awesome. 

Larry Rosen: [00:09:58] Our next storyteller is Tara Clancy. She told us at a New York City GrandSLAM. Here's Tara. Live at The Moth. 

[cheers and applause]

Tara: [00:10:11] All right. So, when I told my father I was gay, he said, “All you need is love, sister.” And then, we listened to a couple of Carole King records while making our own yogurt. [audience laughter] Not a chance. My dad is a retired New York cop, devout Irish Catholic. He keeps a picture of the Pope hung around the rear view of his truck. 

And in fact, becoming a cop was his second choice of career. His first was to be a priest. And he even went into the seminary, really hoping God would call him, turns out he didn't. No hard feelings. My dad left. And a little while later, he met my mother and he had me. So, in essence, I am his fall from grace [audience laughter] that I'm also an atheist, lesbian, drop in the ocean. [audience laughter] 

So, while my dad wasn't cut out for bringing God's love to the masses, he was just great at throwing them in jail. I mean that. He was in the warrant squad, which means he was like a bounty hunter for the NYPD for 21 years. After that, he retired, but not before getting his degree at night in accounting, naturally. That being the next logical step, priest, bounty hunter, accountant. [audience laughter] 

So, the only reason I thought this might have gone okay, is that my dad does have some very good gay friends who he even calls old school gays. Like, he'll brag about them. And he'll say, “And they don't make them like that anymore.” [audience laughter] Meaning, his gays. But that didn't matter. When I told him I was gay, “He flipped out.”

He was living in Atlanta at the time I was here. And so, our phone conversation ended with him insisting I fly down there that weekend to talk in person, click. So, there I am in the passenger seat of the truck. And the only thing he has said to me is, “We're going to a hotel. That's it.” And we drive. He and I, silent, motionless, the Pope swinging left and right. [audience laughter] 

Two hours later, we're on a one lane road in the mountains. And now, I'm thinking what you might be thinking. [audience laughter] Hotel, my ass, right? We are going to some pray the gay away, Jesus camp, you know? But just then, a billboard appears. It has a picture of a woman on it, not unlike the St. Paulie girl with the braids and the beer and everything. And then, it says, “Welcome to Helen, Georgia, a recreated alpine village.” [audience laughter] 

And suddenly, here we are in this Disneyland bed, fake German town with windmills. There are entire families wearing matching green hats with feathers. And this is it. This is a place my father has chosen to have the conversation of a lifetime with me, okay? This place where there is also something called Charlemagne's kingdom that has three guys outside wearing lederhosen and playing glockenspiels, right? 

So, we pull into our parking space at The Heidi Motel. No shit. And head in. [audience laughter] And then, after sitting there stone faced, drinking Johnnie Walker out of our complimentary beer steins like idiots, he sets out to discover if, how and why I'm gay in a room that has not one, but two cuckoo clocks. [audience laughter] 

So, first, he blames me. “You're confused and you need therapy,” he says. “I need therapy?” I say. “I need therapy? There is an Oompa band outside, dad.” Then he goes from blaming me to blaming himself. “I shouldn't have bought you those GI Joes or the Hot Wheels.” Anyway, this brings us to a little flashback to my childhood. 

So, my dad and I lived in a tiny studio apartment when I was a kid. Just the two of us, pull out couch. And so, he starts thinking on that time in our lives and he gets a little bit quiet and he goes, “God, what did I know about bringing up a little girl? I did what I could. Really. I just did what I could.” And at that, we broke for dinner across the street at Heidelberg Schnitzelhaus. [audience laughter] 

We didn't say very much, but the anger was fading. And then, somewhere in between the sauerbraten and the strudel, my dad met his Waterloo. Literally, he just looked up at me, he raised a glass and he went, “Oh, screw it.” At least now, we got two things in common, whiskey and women. [audience laughter] Thank you. 

[cheers and applause] 

Larry Rosen: [00:15:41] Tara Clancy is a writer, comic and actor. She's a frequent host of The Moth Mainstage and has told stories on The Moth Radio Hour, NPR's Snap Judgment and Risk. Writing has been published in the New York Times, the Nation, the Paris Review Daily and the New York Times Magazine. She's appeared on HBO's Girls and High Maintenance, and has been a panelist on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Tara's memoir, The Clancy's of Queens was a 2016 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. To close this out, we have another wonderful story pitch. Here's Irwin Keller. 

Irwin Keller: [00:16:27] This is a story about a wedding, long and coming short unplanning, a wedding that was held hostage. It was 2004, and San Francisco had opened the doors to gay marriage Through a series of bizarre bureaucratic stuff, we found ourselves at City Hall with 31 guests and flowers being told we were bumped from the calendar. Now, there was another problem couple there too. Young African American lesbians, both deaf. They hadn't brought an interpreter. 

Now, I'd once taken a semester of ASL. And in the subsequent years, I'd signed to myself a little making up signs for words I didn't know and I lost track which signs I'd learned and which I'd invented. The city clerk saw me engaging in these confused pleasantries with them. She announced that I would only be married today if I interpreted their wedding first. 

I had no ability, but I also had no choice. So, I was whisked to a wedding chapel that could only have been designed by a civil servant. The justice of the peace opened his script, “We are gathered here in the presence of these witnesses to unite this couple in matrimony.” My hands started moving. “We here with point to witnesses unite marriage. You and you, the contract of marriage is most solemn. Marriage is important, and not to be undertaken lightly. Very important. But with a realization of its obligations and responsibilities, very, very important.”

I watch the frequent confusion on their faces give way to looks of love and joy between them. They kissed, I hugged them and raced across the building to my wedding. Later that day, the court halted the weddings and a couple months later they were annulled. It took another four years for us to marry in a way that would stick. But we're the last generation to have to fight for this thing. So basic, so beautiful. Marriage, very, very important. 

Larry Rosen: [00:18:29] Remember, we'd love to hear a story from you about the turning points in your life. You can pitch us right on our website, themoth.org. We listen to every pitch we receive. And some of them are developed for Moth Mainstages all around the world. 

That's all for this week. We hope you enjoyed our celebration of Pride. We'd like to leave you with these words of Harvey Milk. “If you are not personally free to be yourself in that most important of all human activities, the expression of love, then life itself loses its meaning.” From all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week. We hope it's a week filled with pride, and joy and love. 

Marc Sollinger: [00:19:22] Larry Rosen is a master instructor at The Moth. After 25 years teaching, directing and practicing theater and comedy performance, Larry discovered the simplicity, power and beauty of true stories. Shortly thereafter, he found The Moth. As they say, “Timing is everything.” Tara Clancy's story was directed by Jenifer Hixson. 

This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Marc Sollinger. The rest of The Moth’s leadership team include Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Inga Glodowski and Aldi Kaza. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers.

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, The Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.