Host: Catherine Burns
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Catherine: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Catherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth, and I'll be your host this time.
The Moth is true stories told live without notes. We have three stories this hour. A performer takes us behind the scenes of the legendary show Blue Man Group, former Saturday Night Live cast member Rachel Dratch tries going on a normal date, and a neurobiologist studies the brain scans of serial killers.
Our first story is from John Grady. For eight years, John performed with Blue Man Group. For those of you who have never seen the show, here's the deal. There are three bald guys on stage. They're all dressed in black with shiny blue latex painted on their faces and heads. They live in a world of flying marshmallows, spraying colored water, and reams and reams of unspooling toilet paper. The way they communicate is through gestures and facial expressions, no one speaks. I've seen the show a lot, and I've always wondered what's going through those guys’ heads. Well, John Grady was one of those bald blue men. Here's John, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
John: [00:01:26] So, I spent eight years of my life here in New York City performing with Blue Man Group.
[cheers and applause]
Thank you. I know. No, it's like, seriously, dream job. [audience laughter] I'm serious. I mean, where else do you get to learn to be a precision, expert drummer, to learn to throw and catch with laser-like focus, and also to communicate non-verbally with two other blue men on stage and with the audience, because that's what it is. We don't speak, we don't talk. But it was a great job to have. It's my first time moving to New York City, my first off-Broadway show, and I'm so excited. The show is just addicting to do. Once you do your first show, you're just like, "Ah, I can't wait for the next one, and then the next one, and the next one, and then the next one.”
Then a week goes by, and then a month goes by, and then a year goes by, and you celebrate your first anniversary. And then, you're two years in, and a few more years have gone by, and somehow it has become a job. [audience aww] I know. It's like, I'm just trying to keep it fresh and alive after show number 2,473 or something, whatever. I'm finding myself trying to fight complacency, because you become so adept at doing all the skills that it's just not really a challenge. I find myself walking through the show thinking things like, "Did I order food between shows? [audience chuckles] Did I remember to TiVo Sopranos?" and like that.
So, now I'm trying to find and rediscover that thing, that original thing, that really connected me with the show. I find myself trying to recreate those early days. For those of you who haven't seen the show, it's primarily about the audience, about connectedness and community. The audience has gathered for the evening, for this happening, for this crazy, wild, interactive piece of theater led by these three silent, bald, and blue characters. One part of the show is we bring up a volunteer, and we refer to her as our feast guest, which, not important for you to know, but just because we sit behind a table and we eventually get to dining with her. But we also take her through a bunch of tasks, and we're getting to know her, and the audience as well by manipulating things and moving things around and opening them.
She comes to represent the audience in a way, because we're going to be up there making, not fun of her, but making fun with her. I mean, the audience empathizes with her, because they're going to be in on some of the jokes that she's not. They'll definitely, they'll feel like, "Oh my God, I'm so glad that was you up there and not me. You were amazing. You were wonderful." Now, when I go to choose a feast guest, it's my job each night. I look for someone who's sort of open and willing, just a willing participant, someone who I think best represents the spirit of the show. Like, if I was going to choose someone from the audience here to be a feast guest, it would be like this one right here, just very shiny, available. Yes. It's just like, we just make a quick connection, like, good, so I know we're good to go. It's like that.
So, I'm stepping out into the audience for the first time in the show to go pick out a feast guest. In the first few rows, people are wearing ponchos, because the show is just a mess. It's just a playground for you, and it can be messy, so we want to make sure the audience is covered and protected. So, I step out there, and I'm having, it's probably show number 2,474, just a little less committed to and present than 2,473, I don't know, when suddenly, bing, chong, bong, I see the shiny, happy person sitting over in the poncho section. She literally just pulls me in on her vortex, like, wow. I can't remember the last time that I saw someone who was so willing, so available, just so open. And I was like, "Okay, fine, you're the feast guest. Make my job easy. Great." So, now I'm going out to the audience to have a little more fun.
The other two blue men come up to me and they tell me it's time for us, for you, to let us know who the feast guest is. This is all non-verbal. And I say, "Well, check it out. Shiny, happy person right here." They're like, "Great. Shiny, happy person. Bring her on up." So, these two guys run up onto the stage. The band kicks into their theme that's going to start our procession up the aisle to the stage. [imitates music] I reach down, I grab her hand, and she's just beaming at me.
She just clings onto my arm. She leans into me. She's so excited, she has no idea what to expect. I reach down, and I pull off her poncho, and she has one arm, [audience aww] which is not a big deal, right? Even though in this piece we're going to be grabbing things and manipulating them and moving them and opening them, and oh, God, we're going to be up there making fun with her, not of her. And now, I'm beginning to panic, and I look up on stage and the other two blue men are staring down at me in horror, going, "What did you do?" "I don't know. [audience laughter] I don't know." And now I'm running the entire piece frantically through my mind, because I know it forwards and backwards, and I am going to accommodate it for her. I am going to make--
So, I could probably skip that part. Or, again, instead of her doing that, or actually, we'll just leave that part out. Actually, he probably doesn't have to do that for her, you can probably just skip that part and leave that part out. Actually, if we're going to skip that part and skip that part, why don't we just put it back down, just skip the whole thing? [audience laughter] At this point of the show, we're supposed to be sort of afraid that we're bringing someone, an audience member, into our space for the first time, and we are terrified. [audience laughter] We are sitting behind the table in a row, and our knees are knocking together, and there is this awkward silence coming from the audience that I have never experienced before.
But she is loving it. She is having the time of her life. So, I bring out the first object, which is this electric candle, and I put it on the table, and it has a little switch on it. She leans over and switches it on. That's okay, we're good, pretty good there. Next blue man next to me, he pulls out a desk lamp, and he puts it on, and he stretches it out, and she reaches over to click it. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. The switch doesn't go on. And what is about to unfold in my brain, and I'm trying to communicate with him, screaming, going, "Noooo. [unintelligible 00:07:56]” [audience laughter]
Because the joke of the piece is it's attached to a clapper light. So, he goes [audience aww] and pops the light on, [audience laughter] which usually elicits laughter from the audience, but not this time. Dead silence. Because it was like he was saying, "Well, if you had two hands, you could turn on the light." [audience laughter] Oh, dear God, help us. Last blue man brings out a box of Twinkies for us to dine on. For those of you who've seen the show, that'll make sense. He passes them out. And the Twinkie for the blue man is, it's a very curious object. The way it's shaped and sculpted, the way the light hits it and the way it sort of reflects off its golden, cakey shell.
And if this is something that's meant to be consumed, why would you put it in this package? Is there an opening to this package, and how would you open it? This is something that we play with. Oh my God, how is she going to open this package? But I look over, without missing a beat, she's already taken the Twinkie, taken the package, put it under her, what's left of her arm right here, and just goes, pops it open, puts it on her plate. [audience laughter] With such speed and dexterity, I had to see it again. So, I hand her mine, [audience laughter] she goes, pops it open, puts it on my plate. I look at the other two guys, who are still struggling with theirs. I pick it up, and I'm like, "Check it out." [audience laughter] They are completely blown away. They reach out, he gives his to hers, and she pops it open. He gets it, pops it open, and now we're good. [audience laughter]
And that thing that is starting to happen, that can only happen in a live performance, where the event on stage is starting to mirror what's happening with the audience's experience. It exists somewhere in between and creates this biofeedback loop of event and experience and experience and event and event and experience and experience and event. And now, we are with the audience and they are with us. And the two blue men beside me reach down and pick up their forks because they're going to dig into this Twinkie, and that's when I feel her shut down beside me. I literally feel her heart-light go out. I look out of the corner of my eye, and she's staring down at the knife and the fork, and I see panic in her eyes.
I reach over, and I just grab my fork, and I just gesture to her, “Just the fork, right?” She just beams back at me and says, "Yeah, that's all we need." And the two other blue men follow suit, "Yeah, exactly what-- Yeah, what he said." [audience laughter] We dig in, and it's all good. I'm feeding her, she's feeding me, we're all cross-feeding each other. It's a big flirt-fest. The piece just crescendos and explodes in this huge celebration. The audience bursts into this enormous applause, for her, really, because she was beautiful, she was amazing, and she was the catalyst for this whole thing to happen. She brought that element back that I had completely forgotten about. She brought this innocence, this childlike innocence, that ability to remain present and be honest and fearless and not try to manufacture anything again.
We send her back into the audience, and they've completely changed. The space has completely changed. Tiny Astor Place Theatre has become as large and as opulent as the Bolshoi. We go back behind our PVC-pipe instruments to play our first piece of music. Each tone that we're paddling out is just echoing into the darkness, like launching a flare into a cavernous cave. I just start to cry. I look over at the other two guys, and they are crying, because we're just raw and exhausted. But even more so, we're exhilarated that we made it through this experience together. Afterwards, I went up and met up with her in the lobby. I thanked her for being such an amazing participant in the show and for making it such an incredible experience for everyone involved, and for making the show, for me, alive again. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:12:28] That was John Grady.
[PVC by Blue Man Group]
John performs in his one-man show Fear Factor: Canine Edition, and starred off-Broadway in Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell. To see pictures of John backstage and find out more about Blue Man Group, go to themoth.org.
In a moment, we'll have a story about a neuroscientist who discovers disturbing facts about his own family while studying the brain scans of serial killers.
Jay: [00:13:05] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:13:18] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Next, we have a story from brain scientist James Fallon. James told this story as part of our annual collaboration with the World Science Festival. Here's James Fallon, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
James: [00:13:42] Now, I'm a scientist who studies the brain. I've been a neuroscientist for about 40 years. Most of that 40 years, I've been what's called a small-time scientist. I have a small lab, only a few people, small grants. Most scientists are like this. We're kind of hobbits. The whole idea of being a hobbit is that you stay within the wheelhouse of your expertise. You don't talk to the media, you don't give talks like this, and you just stay under the radar for everything. If you mind your own business, everything will be okay. And that's really how I lived almost my entire scientific life.
Now, generally, I was a pretty average guy. I was class clown in high school, I still have my Teamsters card, which I can go back to at any time, hopefully. [audience laughter] The first date I ever had, we were both 12 years old. I'm still dating her 50 years later. So, quite an average, regular guy, seriously. So, anyway, the kind of science I was doing, which is the basic chemistry connections of the brain and also adult stem cells, that was going along just fine. And then, I got a call from some colleagues in psychiatry and radiology, and they said, “You got to come over here. We got a really cool new machine.” The cool new machine was a PET scanner, positron emission tomography.
The great thing about this is you're able to see inside the human brain, the living human brain, and activate certain areas of the brain depending on what people are doing, the tasks that they're doing. For a neuroanatomist, this is a candy dispenser. It was love at first sight. And so, I got involved. I made the first mistake of going outside my wheelhouse of expertise. But anyway, we started to do these studies on consciousness and memory, addiction, and also things like schizophrenia. That was going along fine. And then, a couple years after this started, which was the mid-1990s, I saw a SWAT team come in and they were all over the medical school. It was real, right near where the PET scanner is.
I saw this guy come walking with manacles with police. And then, I got a call in the afternoon, from another colleague, he says, “You got to take a look at this.” They had started studies of serial killers. The idea was to go in, these are serial killers that had been caught. And during the penalty phase of the trial, only the penalty phase, they want to show that they're crazy, and the devil made me do it, so we could show that they were crazy, it would show up in their scans. So, I started analyzing these, maybe one or two a year. It was just a side thing. Everything was going along just fine.
Then about six years ago, another colleague showed up with a whole pile of these and all these killers' brains, scans of these killers' brains. But it was mixed in with normal people, people with depression, schizophrenia. The good thing about this is I had no idea which scan belonged to which person or what they were. It was a blind study. And this was a perfect opportunity. This is really advantageous, because it's so difficult with the legal system to get this kind of data. So, I went through and spent a few months looking at it. I started to create piles of different areas of the brain that seemed to be malfunctioning in these different people.
About three-quarters of the way through, I noticed something. I said, first of all, I knew what all the normals were, and I knew the schizophrenics because I had seen a lot of those, and depressives. There's a whole other group that had a mix of damage, but they all had one thing in common. They had damage to two parts of the brain. One was the area right above the eyes, orbital cortex, and the front of the temporal lobe. This really floored me because it was-- It made sense, because one is kind of the animal-instinct control of your brain, amygdala, and the other is where ethics and morality are thought to be processed. The fact that these two were off meant the balance was off, and it made some sense. So, I really thought about this and did a lot of reading and developed a theory, three things you need to have a psychopathic killer's brain. I just started to give talks. It was just very interesting to me.
About the same time, funny things started to happen. And the first was we were doing an Alzheimer's disease study in our lab. It was for clinical trials. We were also trying to discover new genes for Alzheimer's and schizophrenia as it turned out. Now, it turns out my wife's family is loaded with Alzheimer's disease, and she just lost two parents with Alzheimer's. So, I said, “Lookit.” I went to her and I said, “Why don't we come in as the controls, get involved, we'll do PET scans, looking for the genes for what we knew for Alzheimer's. I'll get my brothers to come in and we'll do the kids. And then, if we can see that anybody has these high levels of these high-risk genes, maybe they can do something. They can change the way they live, their diet and all these things.” And she said, “Absolutely.” She was quite heroic about this. She figured she was going to die of something else, which she did, before she died of Alzheimer's. So, we did this.
Everybody was enthusiastic. So, the results came back. And so, I was going through the pile of my family's PET scans. As I was going through, I was really very much relieved, as everyone was normal. So, all the way through, there's eight of these, and the genetics were normal. I got to one on the bottom, and I thought it was in the wrong pile, because I also had all these killers' brains in another pile on the desk. [audience laughter] And I said, “I've mixed them up.” I looked at it, and it looked like the worst case of these psychopathic killers' brains. It had no activity here and here, the two areas. I looked down and it was me. It was my name. [audience laughter] I said, I get the joke here, because I've been giving these talks.
I really thought for a second, and I'm a scientist, it was like, “Isn't that interesting?” [audience laughter] I just reflected back, because I was growing up in New York. I was Catholic Boy of the Year in New York, which got me to meet Nelson Rockefeller, I don't know why those go together. [audience laughter] I was so hyper-religious my whole life that in college, I went to a Catholic college, that a priest there, who was a professor, said, “You're so bad you got to get out.” So, he actually gave me an exorcism to get the goody two-shoes out of me. I had no idea how to sin, really. I learned. It took a while, because my heart wasn't in it, but you'd go through these steps. Okay. So, I laughed it off, because I knew that I wasn't in jail, I didn't kill anybody.
Then it was at a barbecue. We had a family barbecue, the whole family there and the kids and everything. My mother comes over as she usually does, and she pulls me aside, she says, “I hear you've been giving talks about serial killers.” I saw a twinkle in her eye, because she's really, even if she's in her 90s, it seems to be getting worse. She's very devilish about this. She says, “Check your father's family out.” [audience laughter] She said, “Your cousin, who's an editor of a paper in New York, found this new book, and it's about your father's family.” And she says, “And check your scans very carefully.”
So, I went and I got the book, and I read it, and I'm going. And it was really wild. It's about the Cornells. That's my father's family. And in it was the case of the first case of matricide, which is the killing of a mother by a son. And that was in 1667. So, it was a very interesting book on how these sorts of murder cases were handled back then. But then, at the end of the book, there were six more murderers in the same line, going from that family to me. And so, we had this whole family. And she loved this, because she had to put up her whole life with this thing about being Sicilian. [audience laughter]
And her father lived out on the streets here-- When he came over from Sicily, he was about 12. Just a couple blocks from here, and he became a bootlegger. She went up to Lucky Luciano's place. So, she always got the Mafia thing, even though she wasn't. This was her chance to get even. [audience chuckles] So, anyway, that was fine. And then, within a year, I was invited to give a TED Talk. In a TED Talk, you got to talk about something interesting, important, funny, and all this, which is not that easy. So, I got desperate. This was a mistake. I told the first part of the story about my PET scans, and everybody's normal in my family but me, and this thing about these Cornells. So, I gave that talk.
This was when TED was just starting to put these talks on YouTube. Somebody called me up, they said, "They just put your talk on YouTube, and it's got like 30,000 hits overnight." I went blank on this, because I made the first no-no about being a hobbit scientist, which is doing something like that. So, anyway, I got all these calls, a lot of media things. Head writer for the Wall Street Journal of science came out, spent some time with us. I got a phone call from the executive producer, head writer of Criminal Minds, Simon Mirren. He says, "I got what you're talking about, man, transgenerational violence." He was fantastic, and they both were. It put the pressure on me, because I had, hanging out there, this family history and my PET scans, to look further into this.
So, I looked further into the genetics. I was trying to look for things generally, we did a very broad scan, but having to do with aggression and violence. All these genetics came back in my family. I can tell you this, because every one of them have an average amount of high and low-risk genes for aggression and violence. And so, they were all cool. I looked at the last number, and there it was. And I looked at mine, and in my own DNA, I had all the high-risk alleles for violence and aggression, every one of them. And so, these so-called warrior genes. There's a number of them. The first one is monoamine oxidase, and they control serotonin and some other transmitters. It got a little bit more serious.
So, I started to ask people, because-- also I saw in there, things having to do with bonding to people were just not right. The cuddling hormones, oxytocin, vasopressin, and testosterone. It hinted at something that may not be right. That's when I really took notice. So, next mistake I made is I went around asking everybody what they thought of me. [audience laughter] Now, my wife and I have been hanging out 50 years together. "What do you really think of me?" I said, "No, no, tell me, tell me." [audience laughter] I went down, asked my grandkids, our kids, and people really close to me, friends. And every one of them, including professionals, psychiatrists who knew me well, said, "We've always known you're kind of a sociopath." [audience chuckles] And I went, "What?"
I was in a denial at that point. Every one of them said, "You don't connect to people. You're kind of cold. And you're kind of superficially glib, and you're great at parties, and you love strangers, and you love world peace and hunger and doing all these things generally. But in terms of being the person really close to you, your mother, wife, and other people very close, it ain't such a fun ride. You're quite a disappointing person to be around." [audience laughter] At 60, you're not supposed to be finding this stuff out, it's like at 21, so you can fix it, because what are you going to do at 63. So, there it was.
The very fact they all agreed, including the professionals I had known and worked with, they just said, "You're an interesting guy to be around." So, they tolerated it, because I'm fun and interesting generally. But emotionally, I don't have the empathy, apparently, bonding with people. I bond with strangers and world things. It's upside-down. There are actually genes that seem to be associated with these different kinds of empathy. Now, I heard this and after I heard all of it, I didn't care. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
I really didn't care. It was kind of the proof that what they were saying was true. [audience laughter] I said, "That's interesting," but I really, and I truly, really don't care. [audience laughter] Now, it's gotten me to think about the nature of good and evil, and about free will, and other sorts of things that we hold near and dear to our humanity. I started thinking about psychopaths, because I also happen to score a little too high on the psychopath test. [audience laughter] Like that. It's exactly how I felt. [audience laughter] I'm not a full psychopath, I'm not a psychopath lite, what's called a pro-social or successful psychopath. [audience laughter] Sounds so charming. Anybody want to go out later, I'd be happy to be with you. [audience laughter]
And so, I really started to think, there's a very constant number of these in all sorts of societies, that maybe society really needs psychopaths, because-- Do we really want our surgeons to be really empathetic when they're doing the surgery? Do we want somebody cold and calculated right on the money, right on the spot of doing a good surgery? Do we want our Green Berets to really be empathetic where they go, or do we want them to protect us? And do we want our CEOs [chuckles] and we want our investment people to really be heartfelt, or do we want them to just go out and make me some money, man? [audience laughter]
When I think of it, I said, “Maybe we need that. We need this.” Sometimes it gets out of hand. But really, it got to me in the sense that everybody feels this way about me who are close to me. People who don't know me, they say, "No, that's not true," but people who know me said, "Yes, you've got it, man." [audience chuckles] And so, I figured, just recently, in the past two months, maybe if I just acted the part, even though I don't feel it at an emotional level-- So, if I treated the people close to me with kind of caring, kind of civil, go to all the funerals and weddings instead of the parties, [audience chuckles] if I started doing those things, maybe just acting them out would be a good place to start, just to be a good companion and a good friend. And so, that's where I am now. Thanks.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:28:39] That was James Fallon.
James' recent genetic research has discovered new genes for Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, and he lectures worldwide on the brains of psychopathic killers and dictators. Recently, I sat down with Jim, and we talked about a few pieces of his story that he left out when he told it on stage.
Now, with most Moth storytellers, yourself included, we work very hard putting their stories together, but the stories aren't memorized, and sometimes the storyteller will end up leaving out some fun little bit. And in your story, you talk about discovering that there are quite a number of murderers in your family over the course of a few hundred years, but you forgot to mention your famous cousin, who is--
James: [00:29:21] Cousin Lizzie. Yeah, [chuckles] cousin Lizzie Borden [Catherine chuckles] is part of this, my father's side, the Cornell family. She's a Cornell. And so, starting from the initial matricide, my Thomas Cornell, who killed our great-great-great-great-great grandmother, you know, on through to Lizzie, there were about seven murders. And we found some more in parallel lines on that side, too. But anyway, yeah, right at the end, it was Lizzie Borden. Since The Moth and just related interviews, I started to get contacted by people who were Cornells and other Lizzie cousins. It's kind of funny. Most of them say, "No, don't say that. She was never proven guilty." [laughs]
Catherine: [00:30:05]: Wow.
James: [00:30:06] A lot of the Lizzie Borden cousins don't like to hear about this, because the other side of the Cornell family is Cornell University, and it's an upstanding family. But I've got so many horse thieves on both sides of the family. It becomes nested within that.
Catherine: [00:30:23] Right. At this point, what's Lizzie Borden, to just throw her into the mix?
James: [00:30:27] Throw her into the mix. Well, but she's a very important one, because she illustrates and highlights the fact that the murderers in our family murder their own people. They don't murder outside the family. They murder their mothers, their fathers, their husbands, their wives. And so, it's all internal to a family which has empathy and violence. There are genetic components that direct that anger and violence either outside the tribe, if you will, or inside the tribe, inside the family. So, it's a particular kind of murdering. There's fratricide, and matricide, and the killing of mates. So, it's an unusual pattern, because they're all like that.
Catherine: [00:31:08] Wow. Has your wife ever been worried to that end?
James: [00:31:12] She knows a lot about me and all my development and my family. So, she's got a really intimate knowledge of who I am.
Catherine: [00:31:21] Right.
James: [00:31:22] But this was a bit of a surprise, because she said there is a part of me that is very distant and very cold. When she heard The Moth talk, she says, "Well, that's it, that even though you're there, you're kind of this happy-go-lucky, fun, interesting guy generally, that there's this darker person there that is very distant, is not connected, doesn't have empathy.” So, I think it helped her understand or even catalog something she had already known but couldn't quite put her finger on.
Catherine: [00:31:59] At the end of the story, you talk about how you recently engaged in a self-imposed cognitive therapy, where you decided to try to behave like a more compassionate, considerate father, husband, friend, even though you don't always feel like one. And I was wondering how that's going.
James: [00:32:13] I figured that if I said it during The Moth talk, I would have to do it. [Catherine chuckles] Because people would say, "Well, you know--" Because it was like a public announcement of it. Even though not too many people would care, I would know it's out there, so I had to do it. So, I said it during that as a reminder, just in case I got lazy or off on it. So, I have actually been doing that. My wife, and my mother, the kids, and the grandkids, and my really close friends do appreciate it. It's not because I'm a nice guy, it's like, I don't want to be humiliated and disgraced. [Catherine laughs] That's probably an ego thing too, but why not? You have to trick yourself a little bit to change things in your life, I think.
[Delphyic Hymn by Matthias Bossi]
Catherine: [00:33:00] To hear more of my interview with James Fallon and see a picture of his actual brain scan, you can go to our website, themoth.org.
While you're there, pitch us your own story. We listen to every single pitch that comes in, and many are being developed for our Mainstage right now. We really are listening, so please call now if you have a story you'd like us to hear.
When we come back, comedian Rachel Dratch tells us why, when it comes to acupuncture, it's better not to scrimp.
Jay: [00:33:27] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:33:38] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth. Our last story is from former Saturday Night Live cast member Rachel Dratch. Here's Rachel, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Rachel: [00:34:03] Hi. Okay, so, I was on Saturday Night Live for seven years, and my contract was up, and I was supposed to star in a new show called 30 Rock in the role of Jenna. [audience laughter] Have you guys seen 30 Rock? Yeah, I'm not Jenna. [audience laughter] So, everything started to dry up, and I wasn't getting any jobs, any auditions, and I decided, you know what? I am not going to sit around and just mope around my apartment. I am going to take this time to do all the things that I didn't have time to do when I was a working actor. So, I did all those little things on my list. Like, I actually took Spanish class, that kind of stuff. I dog-sat for my friend's dog. I was a dog owner for a month, because I wouldn't have had time to do that if I was a TV star. [audience laughter] And then, I decided to take on the biggest challenge of all. I decided to try dating in New York.
Now, I had never actually really been on a real date before. I mean, probably a little bit, but not a lot of dates where you're like, "How many brothers and sisters do you have?" that kind of thing. [audience chuckles] My dating life consisted mainly of meeting someone in your workplace, in my case that was comedy, dating them, and then three months into it, finding out they were an addict of some sort, alcohol, pot, sex addict. Not with me, mind you, but a sex addict, [audience laughter] and then dating them for a whole other year before it just had a tragic demise.
So, I decided that if I was going to go on some real dates and go out and meet people, that I was going to have to get out of my comfort zones, which were keeping me from dating. The first comfort zone was just hanging out with comedy dudes who you work with and that you can flirt with all night, and they're like your fake boyfriend, but then you always go home alone. [audience laughter] Or, the second one was just like going out to dinner with your girlfriends in New York, which you can do every night and not meet anybody new. And then, my third one was hanging out with my gay man friends, going to a Broadway show and cocktails or something. [audience laughter] So, I was like, “I need to stop hanging out in my comfort zone.” So, imagine my happiness when I got invited to this party from this guy who was hosting it, who I met at Burning Man. [audience cheers and applause]
Yeah. The fact that I went to Burning Man is a whole other story, that's for another night. But so, I was all excited about this party, because this guy, he went to Stanford and he was in business. And I was like, “This is so not my crowd.” I mean, it's my crowd in my fantasy world, but it's not my crowd in my New York life. So, I was like, “Yes, I'm going to go to this party and really try to get out and meet people.” So, actually, I was challenged, because about two nights before the party, I was invited to go for free to Billy Elliot with my gay friend Chris. But I was like, “No, Rachel, you cannot go to the Broadway show. You have to go to this party.” So, I went to the party.
Almost immediately, I was rewarded for stepping out of the comfort zone. Because my friend, who I was supposed to meet there, was late, so that forced me to talk to strangers. I'm pretty shy, actually. I was just standing by the-- I didn't know anyone at this party. I was standing by the little hors d'oeuvre table, and this guy walked up and I was like, "Hi." Now, for me, that's huge, [audience laughter] that I actually initiated. And so, we started chatting. This guy, he was really cute, and he was a scientist, , which I was like, “That's so cool.” Someone else might meet an actor and think, "That's so cool," but I'm like, "Oh, you have a regular job." [audience chuckles]
So, he was funny. Actually, at one point I asked, I was like, "What's your name?" He had just put some food in his mouth, so he's like, "Hold on a second," and then he was like, "I know what you do, and I think you'd have better timing than that." I thought that was kind of cool. He was like, “I recognize you, but I'm not going to really say it.” [audience laughter] So, anyway, okay. So, we're just totally hitting it off. This guy, like I said, he was smart. And then, it turns out he spoke fluent Japanese. I was like, "Whoo." [audience laughter] So, I was just on board.
It all happened like it does, these dates I've seen on TV or the movies, but never in my life. Because this guy, like, we're just talking about our favorite restaurants in New York, and I said mine, he's like, "Oh, we should go there sometime. Give me your number." It was like, “What?” [audience laughter] So, it was all so smooth and natural, and it was all working just, like, on TV. So, I was all excited. Oh, for the purpose of the story, this guy's name was Steve, but his real name was Brent. [audience laughter]
So, the next morning I woke up and I was like, "Oh" I was like, “Well, who knows if he'll really call.” Well, he texted me at noon the next day. I was like, “That is good. Noon.” [audience laughter] And he was like, "Do you want to go out Friday or Saturday night?" I was like, “Friday or Saturday.” Those are real date nights. That's not like, "Want to meet up Monday at 10:00 and after?" It was like, no, Friday or Saturday. [audience laughter] So, I was all excited about this. So, I was just so happy that week. I had the potential of love in my life, and I was just like, “Doo-do-do- do-do.”
So, we're supposed to go out Saturday night. But then on Thursday, I went to Trader Joe's and disaster struck, because I picked up a gro-- I was checking out, picked up my grocery bag. It wasn't even a heavy bag at all, I don't know what the hell was happening. But I picked up this bag and my whole back went out. It was like sproing. [audience laughter] So, I had to walk home like this, like an old lady. I was thinking, the first thing was like, "Oh, no, this date is in two nights from now." And I was like, "Does God not want me to date? Why is this happening the only time I'm excited?"
Now, this back thing had only happened one other time in my life, and that was back when I was on SNL. It was the read-through, which is like, everyone's around, the cast, the host, Lorne Michaels, the whole staff is in this one room. I was walking back to my chair during the break, and I stumbled, like, nothing major, but my whole back really went out that time. I couldn't move. I was on the floor and I was writhing-- It was like a charley horse but up your whole back. So, I was like, ooh. I couldn't even move an inch that time. So, they were like, "Does anyone have any pain medication? Does anyone have muscle relaxants?"
Now, if this had been the 1970s, it would have been a pile of pills [audience laughter] thrown on the table. It was clean-living time now. So, nobody had any-- The host was Johnny Knoxville. [audience laughter] Even he didn't have any. He said they were back in his hotel room. [audience laughter] So, they had to send down for the NBC doctor. I was paralyzed. I happened to fall so my head was kind of under the conference table. Well, eventually there was no point in just waiting for me, because I was there, stuck. So, they just started the read-through up again. [audience laughter] Someone else was reading my parts. I was just like, ooh. I was squeezing the doctor's hand. Every so often Lorne would be like, "Is Rachel okay down there?" They'd be like, "No, she still can't talk." So, anyway, that took two hours to recover from.
So, I was so dreading this date, because I was like, “What if that happens on the date,” and I'm in some East Village restaurant and I have to be carted off in an ambulance or something? It would be so embarrassing. So, Saturday, day of the date, comes along and my back still isn't better. So, a friend of mine's like, "Well, what about acupuncture?" I was looking for a miracle, because I was so excited about this guy. So, I started to call up some acupuncturists on a Saturday to see, "Can you take me in two hours?" And so, none of the ones that were recommended could take me. So, then I went to the acupuncturist that was not recommended. [audience laughter] I'd like to tell you all that that is a business you want a reference. [audience laughter] Don't do the walk-in on the acupuncture.
I went to one of those Chinese storefront joints that my friend Chris. He'd gotten
massages there. I'd actually met the doctor of Eastern medicine there. He looked like a good guy. So, he's like, “They can see you.” So, I went in there. Well, that guy was nowhere to be found. It was this woman sitting there in a chair, and I was like, “Oh no. No, this is not going to be good.” But I went through with it, I did not follow my gut. I'm still convinced that she was just a masseuse who they let do acupuncture on the weekends. Because she led me back those curtains. Another thing you don't want in a medical establishment is the smell of cat pee. [audience laughter] That's just another little tip for you. [chuckles]
So, she brought me back in the curtains. And I was like, "I'm kind of nervous." She's like, "Don't be nervous." [audience laughter] She stuck two nee-- First needle, back of the knee. You might think they'd ease you in a little bit, but no, it was like, back of the knee. It hurt so much, like, I don't think it was supposed to hurt that much. The back was fine, but the back of the knee and the inside of the ankle were the two killers. She'd come by every so often and twist them. The pain would shoot up my leg, and I was going-- I was like, "Not the knee, not the knee!" [audience laughter] There were just curtains of people getting massages, just hearing, “Not the knee.” [audience laughter]
Anyway, it didn't help at all. My back was still the same. But now, I had this nausea of thinking of the knee needles, so I had to fight that off. Anyway, so, I go on the date, and I wasn't 100% feeling good. So, we didn't have that same sparkly rapport that we had the first night, because I was in pain. But I told him my back hurt, but I didn't want to be like, "I have back problems." [audience laughter] So, I didn't really go into so much detail about it. [chuckles] I was trying to sit comfortably. So, it went okay. So, then we said, “Okay, we'll go out again.” He was going away on business, and we decided we'd see each other again.
So, I did have two little red flags about this guy, but I decided I'm not going to tell my friends about these red flags, because what if it turns out to be nothing, and then I end up marrying this guy, and then I don't want some friend asking about that red flag again. [audience laughter] So, the first red flag was just alcohol. He just drank a lot that night. [audience laughter] I was still nursing glasses of wine, but he-- We ordered a bottle of wine at the table, and he drank basically the whole bottle of wine, and then we went somewhere else for cocktails. He had nine drinks that night. But I was willing to give it a pass. [audience laughter] I was like, “Maybe he's nervous.” So, anyway, okay. Oh, but you know what? The red flag was not, whatever. It kept growing, because he emailed me from his business trip being like, "Well, my liver needs a break after these business trips." And then, he was, like, “Spending every night at my friend's whiskey bar,” and I was just thinking, “Oh, well, I'm still going to ignore it, though.” Okay.
So, then he gets back, on a Wednesday, he asked me out for a Friday night. I was rehearsing this musical. I hadn't heard from him all day on Friday. So, I text him at 06:00 PM, finally, I'm still at this rehearsal. I was like, "Hey, what's up for tonight?" Well, I get a text back from him, not a phone call, mind you, I get a text back and it said, "Busy with this work thing. Maybe I'll see you when you get back from L.A." That was two months from now. Two months from now. So, basically, I got face-plant. I was just so shocked that he just asked me out, but now he's blowing me off. I felt like, just like he'd asked me out movie-style, and I was so excited, I was getting blown off movie-style now. It was like that harsh, like being so stood up, basically, like I'd only seen in the movies, now it was happening to me.
I was really upset about it, too. But then, now that I knew that we weren't really going to be dating and we weren't even making out, I was free to tell my friends about the other red flag. [audience chuckles] So, when we were at this bar, he said that when he was traveling in Japan, he ate at this restaurant that only served horse meat. I was like, "Oh, horse meat." But he was like, "No, it's the most delicious meat you'll ever try." [audience laughter] Like, he was just reveling in it.
I was thinking that's not so good to tell a woman on your first date that you're really into horse meat. Because what if I was one of those girls who had the plastic horse statues growing up? I wasn't, but what if I was. It just seems like not a thing to really tell a woman like, "I'm really into horse meat." [audience laughter] [chuckles] I'm still reeling from that, and he said, "Have you ever wondered what it would be like to taste human flesh?" [audience laughter] He didn't say it like how you might say, some parlor game like, "Would you rather walk 10 miles in the snow or eat human flesh?" [audience laughter] No. It was like he had given it some thought. He was seeking out the opportunity somewhere. Maybe there was a restaurant somewhere in the world.
It just kind of the phrase Silence of the Lambs popped into my head when he said that. And I was like, "No." And he's like, "Really? Wouldn't you just be curious?" And I said, "No, because I would just be wondering, who is this and how did they end up on my plate?" [audience laughter] [chuckles] Anyway, so, then I thought, well, you know what? Maybe it's not that God doesn't want me to date. Maybe God sprung up my back, so that I could avoid dating this guy, this alcoholic cannibal for [audience laughter] a whole year, wasting another year of my life on that. So, I got on a plane to L.A., where I was going to go do this musical, and there I was rehearsing the musical surrounded by gay men. I was back in my comfort zone. I thought I'd stay there for a while. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:48:39] That was Rachel Dratch. She joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in the fall of 1999 and stayed for seven seasons. Her memoir has the slightly hard-to-say-out-loud title Girl Walks Into a...: Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle.
All of the stories you've heard this hour are available at the iTunes Store. That's it for The Moth Radio Hour. Join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Jay: [00:49:19] Your host this hour was Catherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth. Catherine also directed the stories in this show. The Moth's executive director is Joan D. Firestone. Our producing director, Sarah Austin Jenness. Our senior producer is Jenifer Hixson. Our curatorial producer, Meg Bowles. And our media manager is Laura Hadden. Thanks to David Mutton and Brandon Echter. James Fallon's story came from a show produced in collaboration with the World Science Festival. You can learn more at worldsciencefestival.com.
The Moth's recording engineer is Paul Ruest at Argot Studios in New York City. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Man Group, Matthias Bossi, Lawless Music, and the original cast of Billy Elliot. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Viki Merrick.
This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller. All stories are told with no scripts and no second takes. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.