Host: Sarah Austin Jenness

[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]

Sarah: [00:00:13] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness from The Moth, and I'll be your host this time. At The Moth, people tell true stories from their lives. Storytellers of all kinds stand on stage without notes in bars, clubs, and theaters, and they tell these stories to audiences all around the country. We take the best stories from these nights and we share them here with you.

This hour we'll have four stories. We'll take you from a bittersweet family reunion in a hospice to an elementary school battle of wits over prized Legos, then from lessons learned in a Chinese restaurant to a bullied student getting even in Spanish Harlem. [crowd noise] Our first story this hour is from writer James Braly. He told it in 2006 at a Moth night called “Last Exit: Stories About Endings.” Here's James live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause] 

James: [00:01:11] I am [scoffs] sitting on a little wooden visitor's stool in room 202 of the Houston Memorial Hospice, holding my sister Kathy's hand, telling her how much I love her. She is on her back in a bed in a nightgown and compared to the hospital were just at, not much more. Just an oxygen mask and an IV connected to a drug pump that every 10 minutes injects her with Dilaudid, a painkiller; so powerful and potentially deadly the hospital wouldn't give it to her. Evidently, Dilaudid is what you get when there's no reason to be afraid of dying anymore, when dying is what you're supposed to do. And so, unlike the hospital, which was full of beeps and monitors and people trying to keep Kathy alive, the hospice is very still and quiet. The only sounds are the hiss from the oxygen and every 10 minutes from the drug pump, followed by if Kathy happens to be awake as she is now looking out there through far away Dilaudid eyes, when she turns to me and lifts up her oxygen mask and says, "Do you love me enough to trade places?"

Now, I love Kathy more than anyone I've ever known, apart from my little boys, Oliver and Owen, and my wife Susan, on good days. [audience chuckle] So, I start crying as I look at Kathy, thinking, "Are you nuts? Yeah, I'm your brother, but come on." But I'm ashamed to tell that to Kathy. So, I say, "Well, would you want to be married to Susan? [audience laughter] A teetotalling Dr. Jekyll to Kathy's party animal, Mr. Hyde? And would you want to raise Oliver and Owen with her, who Susan continues to breastfeed over my objections at six and four years, turning me into Mr. Hyde every time I see It." Kathy says, "When you put it like that, [audience chuckle] I don't think so." [audience chuckle] And she starts laughing until she falls asleep, having chosen death over life in my marriage. audience laughter] Which I totally understand because I feel that way too a lot of times. But the main thing is everything's under control.

When we first checked Kathy into the hospital-- into the hospice, I had a private meeting with the counselor and I told her, "I'm going to need your help. My family does not know how to function as a family. We haven't been in the same room in 40 years, since my parents were divorced when I was a little boy. Nobody gets along. Everybody suspects each other of some kind of conspiracy, usually of stealing their money frequently, which is true. [audience chuckle] They hate Kathy's boyfriend, Steve. Steve hates them. I want Kathy's last days filled with peace and love." And the director said, "That's a very nice thought, it's a very noble thought. But in my experience, people usually die the way they lived. [audience chuckle] So, maybe it's not your job to make things right," which I thought was a very good piece of advice, except that my job leading my life, dealing with my marriage, is infinitely more complicated and painful than trying to lead my family, all of whom have descended on Houston Hospice to be with Kathy.

My dad, a decorated bomber pilot who has transferred his ferociousness from North Korea to ice cream [audience laughter] and now is so massive his knees can't support his body. [audience chuckle] My bird-like mom and the new face she gave herself for her 75th birthday. [audience chuckle] Her gigantic muumuu wearing, otherwise identical twin sister [audience chuckle] with her old face. [audience chuckle] Together looking like this before and after advertisement [audience laughter] for plastic surgery and liposuction. My big sister Corinne, who runs a makeup business called Facade. [audience laughter] Without irony. [audience chuckle] My older brother Terrell, who the last time I saw him was subscribing to Mafia magazine [audience chuckle] without irony. And me, the gray-haired baby brother and a family emissary to Kathy's boyfriend Steve, who the men call Long Hair, the women call the moron, [audience laughter] who suddenly walks into the room as I'm sitting there on the stool passed me over to Kathy's bed, grabbing her by the shoulders, shaking her awake and says, "Wake up, wake up Rabbit Girl. I got the license. We're going to be married." Kathy opens her eyes and says, "When?" He says, "Tonight at 10," and they hug and she falls back asleep and he turns to me and says, "Just so there won't be any misunderstanding." Meaning he'll be Kathy's legal next of kin, giving him legal control of family heirlooms in their apartment, China and silver, which my sister Corinne thinks are hers and legal control of Kathy's body, which my mom thinks is hers.

Then he says, "If Corinne wants to have me arrested, which she does, [audience chuckle] it's going to be about a lot more than silver. If she doesn't leave me alone, I will kill her. I will step on her head, mate." He's Australian. [audience laughter] I am over it. And he walks back out the room, leaving me feeling once again that things are out of control. So, when Kathy wakes up, I say, "Are you sure you want to marry this guy? I'm not here to judge. I just want you to make sure you know what's going on." Kathy says, "They may have me on a lot of drugs, but I know what I'm doing. I'm not done partying yet." I say, "Okay, who's invited?" Steve has the medical power of attorney, so he's used that to quarantine everybody else in my family down the hall in a family room. Kathy says, "I want everybody there. Tell Daddy I want him to give me away." Which he has never done at either of her previous weddings or been to any family wedding, because as he told me when I invited him to my wedding with Susan, "If your mother's going to be there, I think I'll pass." [audience laughter] I say, "Okay." She says, "I can't look at you, Hunt." My middle name. Kathy's nickname for me. It makes me laugh. I say, "Why?" "Because there are grapes around your head" And she falls back asleep.

So, I get up and go down to the family room and tell my mom, dad, aunt, brother and sister they're getting married. My dad says, "Can't be. She's unconscious, son." "Evidently not dad." "Tonight at 10 o'clock, she wants you to give her away." "How did Long Hair get a marriage license?" "The preacher." The fundamentalist minister who's been coming around trying to get Kathy's deathbed conversion every night. "That son of a [beep]." [audience chuckle] My brother Terrell says, "Maybe he's trying to adopt a baby, dad. So that he could legally inherit Kathy's share of the family trust, which cannot go to a boyfriend or a childless husband." My dad says, "I didn't think of that, son." And I'm proud that his offspring has uncovered a conspiracy that he himself had overlooked. [audience laughter] 

My aunt says, "What adoption agency would let a baby go to a drug addict dying of cancer and a moron? [audience chuckle] I think it's going to be hilarious when the creature finds out he's not inheriting a thing." My mom, her twin sister, says, "He's too stupid to figure that out." My sister says, "I don't care if you're a hideous moron. You can't help it if you're born stupid and ugly. What matters is what's inside." She's the president of Facade. [audience laughter] And what's inside, I assure you, is pure evil. [audience chuckle] I say finally, "Whatever we may think of Steve, and I'm not crazy about the guy, I think he's marrying Kathy because he loves her and he wants control. Her ashes mean more to him than they do to us." My dad says, "He doesn't love her any more than my cat, son. It's all about the money. Now you put your antenna out just a little bit further and see what you pick up. [audience chuckle] Now, how are you and Susan getting along?" [audience chuckle] "Fine, dad, we're getting along fine."

And I get up and go outside to the garden. The hospice is in a converted Tudor mansion that used to belong to an oil baron, and I sit down on the stone bench next to a meditation fountain under an apple tree and call home. Susan answers and says, "How are you feeling?" I say, "Fine. I'm doing fine," because I can't tell Susan how I'm feeling because that will bring me closer to the marriage, closer to each other, and I don't want to be closer to the marriage. I want to think about Kathy's marriage, somebody else's intractable personal problem filled life, which is about to end. And so, when I finish telling Susan about the chaos, I am completely numb, like I'm on drugs. [audience chuckle]

That night, after changing into the dark suit I had reluctantly packed in New York, thinking I might have to wear it once, I walk into Kathy's room with the rest of my family for the wedding. Kathy is in the corner, asleep as usual. So, we sit around and wait for Steve and the preacher to arrive and Steve's mom Betty, and her lover, MJ. [audience chuckle] Mary Jane, who have flown here for the wedding and who in my mom's book worse than being lesbians, are late. [audience laughter] "Where are Betty and her rodent?" [audience chuckle] she says. My sister Corinne says, "Maybe the black flapping vultures flew home." My dad wheels over and says, "Let me tell you something about Long Hair. His mother's—he/she is a he wearing a wig." I say, "I don't know, dad.” “She is a little mannish, but she is not a woman, son. Maybe she's a hermaphrodite. At the least she's a major oddball."

I get up and walk over next to Kathy to get away from him, but he wheels over and continues, "Your day and your garage have something important in common. They both need to be filled." My dad frequently speaks in aphorisms sometimes which have no apparent connection to observable phenomena. [audience chuckle] "And it doesn't matter how big you build your garage. You can build a 10-car garage and one day you'll come home in your 11th car with no place to put it. It's just how it is." I get up and walk away from him and try to feel just what I feel for Kathy. Until Steve and the preacher walk in the room, followed by Betty and MJ. The preacher wakes Kathy up. Corinne does Kathy's makeup as only the president of Facade can. She looks beautiful, finally framing her face to look like a Madonna in a burgundy shawl embroidered with gold around the edges and then giving her a wedding bouquet. My dad stands up. The nurse walks in to make sure Kathy's not being coerced. Steve walks over to the corner and takes Kathy's hand, and the preacher opens the Bible and begins. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony," like an auctioneer, because he needs to finish before Kathy falls back asleep. Kathy says, "I do." My dad looks at Steve and they shake hands. My mom says congratulations and gives him one of her bony osteoporosis hugs.

I pop open the champagne and pour it in the paper cups from the water cooler. Everybody drinks a toast to the bride and groom when someone says, "How about a picture of the kids?" So, I walk over to the corner and stand one side of Kathy's bed and my brother and sister stand on the other and we pose for a photograph, looking at a giant poster of the same pose taken 20 years ago at my sister Corinne's wedding. The only photograph of the four of us together ever taken. Corinne had it enlarged and put on Kathy's wall to remind her of home. So, I stand there staring at it, at how we used to look, posing for the last photograph we'll ever take. My mom and dad looking on. All of us together in a room for the first time I can ever remember, and probably the last because of Kathy, who in the end is showing us all how hard it is but how beautiful it can be to let go. Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

[music playing]

Sarah: [00:17:46] That was James Braly. To see a photo of James with his family, go to themoth.org where you can find extra material on almost any store you hear on The Moth Radio Hour. In the end, James admits he was grateful to his future brother-in-law for giving his sister love and comfort in her last days. He said they'd known each other maybe a year and she was dying when they met at happy hour on the beach and he knew what he was signing on for. James Braly's memoir is called Life in a Marital Institution. This story is also included in our first Moth book, a collection of 50 A+ Moth stories. In a moment, we'll be back with two stories from our SLAM nights. One from an elementary school teacher in a battle of wits over jewel encrusted Legos. Another from a man whose sassy grandma teaches him a lesson while sipping beer.

This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. Next up, two stories from our open mic StorySLAM series. We partner with public radio stations to produce these shows all around the country. Check themoth.org to see if we're in a city near you. WNYC supports our New York StorySLAMs, which is where these two stories originated. First up, Micaela Blei. The night Micaela told this story, the theme was “Theft.”

[cheers and applause] 

Here's Micaela live at a Moth story zone.

Micaela: [00:19:22] In the elementary school where I teach, there are Legos that are very valuable and Legos no one gives a [beep] about. [audience chuckle] The ones you don't really care about are the ones there are thousands of, the gray 2 x 4s, the black 2 x 4s, anything that's red. For some reason, all we have are red Legos. And the ones that are valuable are the things that you can't really find. So, there's a second grade, a third grade, and a fourth grade, everyone's got bins. And in these bins the things you very rarely see are anything lime green. I think once upon a time we had a set that was lime green. Anything that has a picture on it, it's kind of magical. And then these jewels, they're these little plastic, clear colored Legos and they really look valuable. [giggles] I mean, I'm kind of psyched about them too. [audience chuckle] 

And every class has--, and especially my class has what I like to call the Black Hole Boys. They are the boys who sit anytime there's choice time and put together Legos and discuss theories of outer space and infinity and they build spaceships and they're like, "Well, but okay, but could there be a black hole that would be strong enough to pull other black holes in?" And they all sort of think about that for a while [audience chuckle] and they're my boys. I like them, I'm really into them. And most of playing Legos anywhere in my school is really mostly just pawing through looking for the valuable ones. [audience chuckle] Of course you could build with them, but that's not the fun part. The fun part is I found this orange jewel or whatever. So, that's always a big deal. And all the bins are outside underneath the cubbies. So, every class has their bins near their class as cubbies.

The second-- I teach third grade. The second graders come to me one day and they say, "We need your help. We think someone's been stealing our jewels." [audience chuckle] Now they have to dismantle all their Legos at the end of every week so that it's really fair so you have a chance to paw through and find the jewels anew every Monday. And they have been noticing that over the course of several weeks, they find fewer and fewer jewels and they suspect my class. And I say, "You know what? That's not really fair. I'm sure that it is not my guys who are doing that." And they say, "Well, we think you should look through their bins at their spaceships and find out if they've got our jewels." And I said, "You know what? That's not what we're going to do. We're going to trust them. We're going to ask them, 'Did you take those jewels?' And if they say no, we're going to believe them."

Because secretly I'm thinking, “There's no-- A, there's no way my boys did it, and B, I don't really want to get in the middle of that if that's what's going on.” [audience laughter] So, we ask my boys and the sort of ringleader, the head of the Black Hole Boys, Edward, is this very smart, very sour kid whose spaceships are amazing. I mean, they look like they could really go. [audience chuckle] And he says, "No, we have not. Have you tried the fourth grade? Because those guys think they're so big." [audience chuckle] 

And so, me and these three little second graders go to the fourth grade and we say to some of the fourth graders who are playing with Legos in a very much tougher, apparently way, [audience chuckle] "Did you guys take these jewels?" And the fourth graders say, "No." And then later, privately, they say, "You know, are you sure the second graders are telling the truth? Because they think they're so cute." [audience laughter] There begins to have-- there's a culture of fear developing [audience chuckle] across all three grades. No one trusts each other. Everyone's sort of looking at each other's things that they're building. And the teachers are picking up on it, too. I'm sort of watching everyone's spaceships being like, "I don't remember that orange one and that green one and the blue one in the second grade of 2A, that's not-- I don't know if that's right."

And I'm sort of getting there too, but we're all kind of watching each other and then I am getting homework. Edward does his homework and does more homework than he needs to, but he always forgets to hand it in. And so, I just randomly-- I go into his cubby just to grab the math homework that I know is in there. Under the math homework is a jewel encrusted spaceship. [audience laughter] Dazzling. [audience laughter and applause] The wings have wings, and those wings have other things. And there's a glass window that I have literally never seen before. In the six years that I've been teaching there, I have never seen this glass window. He must have had it since the beginning of second grade and just hidden it in various places. [audience chuckle] It's beautiful. But I'm stuck with a dilemma. What do I do with this?

If I accuse him, then, number one, the second graders are kind of intense and I'm a little worried about what they would do. [audience laughter] Number two, I already told the second graders it couldn't have possibly been my boys. This is my reputation on the line as well. I don't want it to have been him. I could, it occurs to me, just steal it back. [audience chuckle] I could just take it. Because if he tried to say someone stole my jewel encrusted spaceship, that would be on him. That would be his-- that's a dilemma he would have. [audience chuckle] But then I realized that could possibly be framing another kid. And I do have-- I have my line I will not cross. [audience chuckle] So, I'm not going to frame a kid.

So, instead I wait for a Friday when we should be taking apart our things and he has not been taking apart the spaceship. [giggles] And I wait till Friday. I get him alone and I say to him really casually, "So, don't forget to take apart your spaceship." And he looks at me and he knows I know. [audience chuckle] And he says something really ballsy. He goes, "I did. I already did." [audience laughter] I sit down with him, I open the cubby, I show him the spaceship and I say, "This is an amazing spaceship. [audience chuckle] You did a really great job. But you got to let it go." And we cut a deal.

And over the course of several weeks, we dismantled the spaceship very, very slowly. I can't just smash it. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to just take the whole thing apart. And I start secretly putting those jewels back in other people's cubbies [audience chuckle] for him so that he can still be the head of the Black Hole Boys and not lose that reputation that he has that he loves and so that I don't have to go back on my word, that my boys didn't do anything. I was an accessory to a third-grade crime. [audience laughter] There's no way around that. That's it. Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

[Redencion by Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez playing]

Sarah: [00:26:35] That was Micaela Blei. Micaela taught third grade for eight years. Her advice to teachers is try to think like both a kid and an adult. Be responsible for your students, but try to understand their logic. To see photos of Lego sculptures that these kids have made over the years, go to themoth.org.

Our next story comes from a night with theme The Deep End. Here's Aaron Wolfe live at The Moth.

Aaron: [00:27:06] So, as we cross the Triborough Bridge into Queens, I'm suddenly gripped with this terror that I'm going to die one day. It's something I think about all the time. The infinity of nothingness that awaits every one of us when we die is basically the only thing that's scarier to me than making small talk at a party. [audience chuckle] But this time crossing the bridge, it's different because this time I'm going to see my Grandma Ruthie. Growing up, I would spend my weekends with my grandparents. They'd pick me up on Friday nights at my parents’ apartment in Washington Heights and we'd go out and spend-- I'd sleep over and then in the morning I'd have Saturday with Grandma Ruthie. These long adventurous days that were like packed as though she was trying to pack all of the world's knowledge into one 12-hour period.

We'd wake up early and we'd drink coffee with lots of sugar and then she'd give me trillion vitamins. [audience chuckle] And then we'd head into the city and we'd start at the Central Park Zoo and she'd teach me about marsupials and watching panda bears and then we'd go to the MoMA and it was about learning about Monet and impressionism and how he was going blind at the end. And then we'd walk downtown past all the shops to Sweet Basils in the West Village where we'd see Doc Cheatham play trumpet. And she taught me that you need to hear bebop when the sun is still up in the sky. And then we'd go across to Chinatown and. And she taught me how to use chopsticks at Petit Soo Chow on Bayard Street where we'd eat lamb with scallions and the Fujianese waitresses would laugh at us. [audience chuckle] 

And then finally we'd go back to her place in Bayside, Queens and she'd teach me how to lose at rummy. [audience chuckle] She always beat me at rummy. And it wasn't enough to just beat me. She'd wait for me to reach for one more card, and then she'd slap my hand and she'd say, "Rummy, kiddo." And she'd throw her cards down and laugh until she peed in her pants. [audience laughter] And even that was a lesson. She wanted me to know that it's not enough to beat your grandson at cards. You have to squeeze every last little drop of joy out of beating him. [audience chuckle]

But I'm not thinking about that as we cross the bridge. And I'm not thinking about that as we pull up outside of their apartment building in Queens. I'm not thinking about that as I walk into the door and see my grandfather and my mom and my grandmother sitting on the couch. I'm thinking about death and dying. Because where once she would have been the loudest person in the room, now she can barely move. And where once she would have, like, wrapped me in this huge bear hug, now it seems like the couch is going to swallow her alive. And where once her belly was ground zero for the ongoing battle between sweet pork and Jack LaLanne workout classes, now there's just cancer. And I know that I'm supposed to go and sit at her feet and hug her and kiss her and hold her hand and say goodbye. I know I'm supposed to do that, but I want to flee.

I want to run as fast and as far away as I can. I don't want to see her like this. I don't want to see me like her. I don't want to even make eye contact with this woman that I love so dearly, because if I do, maybe death will, like, reach out from over her shoulder and touch me, too. And then she says, "So, where are we going for dinner?" [audience chuckle] And I look at my mom with this look of horror because I don't know what food goes well with dying. And she never taught me that lesson. And I'm like these wide eyes to my mom, like, "Do something. Please say something." And my mom says, "What are you in the mood for, Aaron?"

And so, we had passed a Chinese restaurant around the corner, and I say, "Well, we could just call Great Wall, and I'll go over and pick it up." And my grandmother, dying of ovarian cancer, pulls herself to the edge of the couch and straightens herself up and says, "My grandson doesn't eat takeout food with me." And that's how we end up carrying her off the couch, down the steps, into the car and driving 30 minutes to the closest Japanese restaurant that was suitable for her and her grandson. And we sit in a booth by the window. And when it comes her time to order, we all kind of hold our breath. She hasn't managed solid food in weeks and she can barely do a sip of water because of the pain.

And she looks at the waitress and she says, "I'll have a Sapporo. [audience chuckle] In a mug, please." [audience chuckle] And we eat our rolls and she drinks half of her beer. And she tells us about the time that she and my grandfather and my uncle Irving and aunt Rachie went to China together, and how they traveled through Siberia on the railroad and how she once hitchhiked with her sister Hilda and these incredible stories about her life. And for a moment, there's no death. There's no cancer. We're all immortal. Time stretches out forever. There's a moment like that in every meal that's great if you pay attention, it's there where oblivion is replaced with infinity. And then the cheque comes and then we go home.

And it's time to do that thing that I've been dreading, that thing that you only truly ever do once in your life with another person, saying goodbye. And we do it outside of her apartment building. And she hugs me and she kisses me on the cheek and she cries a little bit. And then we do it. We say goodbye. And I'm waiting for the dread, the icy cold hand of death on my heart. But I don't feel it because she's built this shield around me. This meal has been this shield where she didn't want me to learn that final lesson of what happens when you go. And a few days later, she's sitting on the couch next to her son and her husband and she says, "It's time." And they help her to the bed and she lies down and she says, "Do you think there's a heaven?" And my grandfather says, "I don't know. [audience chuckle] Are you scared?" And she says, "No." And then she closes her eyes and dies.

When it gets too much for me, my therapist Carl told me to do this thing [audience chuckle] where I'm supposed to look over my shoulder and say, "Hello, Death. Nice to see you again." [audience chuckle] My therapist Carl says that a man that's not afraid to die is a dangerous man. And a dangerous man is a sexy man, [audience laughter] And that's why I went to therapist Carl in the first place. [audience laughter] My therapist Carl is a genius samurai warrior poet with an MSW, but he's wrong. [audience chuckle] He's wrong. The last lesson my grandma Ruthie taught me is one that I hope I know when I stand on the edge of infinity. It's that “It's not enough to say, ‘Hello, Death, nice to see you again’ You have to say, ‘Hello, Death, nice to see you again. Listen, before we go, I'm going to have one more beer.’" Thanks, guys.

[cheers and applause] 

[One for My Baby by Don Shirley playing]

Sarah: [00:33:45] That was Aaron Wolfe. Aaron is a writer, editor, father, amateur worrier, private chef to his wife, and fanatical supporter of Tottenham Hotspur, a soccer team from North London, a place he's now never been. His short film Record Play was in competition at the Sundance Festival in 2013.

[One for My Baby by Don Shirley continues]

After this break, our final story. A seventh grader stands up to a bully, but the consequences are complicated.

Jay: [00:34:31] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.

Sarah: [00:34:42] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness from The Moth. Our final storyteller is Ernesto Quiñonez. Ernesto told this story with us in Denver at an evening called A More Perfect Union: Stories of Prejudice and Power. Here's Ernesto Quiñonez.

[cheers and applause]

Ernesto: [00:35:08] So, I'm from the Spanish Harlem section of New York City, and while I was growing up in the seventh grade, I was being bullied by a big Italian ninth grader named Mario. And Mario had a routine. Mario had this scene that he would create, and it was that he would wait till lunchtime, and then what he would do is that he would pace in between the tables where the seventh graders were having their lunch. And he would pace in between the tables and he was carrying his milk. And then he'll pick out a victim or a target, one of us Latino kids. And then Mario will spill milk on our back. And then he'll say, "You're a wetback. What are you going to do? I mean, you're a wetback anyway. You're a wetback, so I don't do anything wrong."

We didn't like it. We didn't like it one bit. But this guy was big, man. Mario was big. You seen the movie Grease? When they don't look like high school kids? [audience laughter] Mario was like that. People would come, say, "He's a teacher, right?" Like, "No, he's a ninth grader." [audience chuckle] He was big. His father, I remember his father was this hulk of a man, and he used to have these big hands. They were like milk crate hands. He could like, take the phone book and rip it in two. And Mario was like that. None of us liked it. And I knew that sooner or later I was going to be one of his targets. One day, they were serving ice cream, and I had my tray, and I went down to sit at the table. And from the corner of my eye, I see Mario pacing between the tables.

And the seventh graders, when we would see Mario doing this, it was like we would tense up. Everybody would just get nervous. It was like those National Geographic shows that you see when the herd is all antsy and nervous because the lion is [audience chuckle]. And then once she pounces on one person-- on one antelope takes it, then the herd is like, "Okay, cool, now we can eat." [audience chuckle] It was like that with Mario. We would be tense and. And we're like, "Okay, not me. Not me. Oh, Hector, good. That's it." [audience laughter] I knew it was going to be me sooner or later.

That day, when they were serving ice cream, I saw Mario and I said, "I'm going to hit him. If he does this to me, I'm going to hit him." I was determined to hit him. I feel Mario doing his little scene. And I feel him on my back. I feel him. I know he's back there. And then I feel the cold running down my spine. And I shoot right up. "What are you going to do? What are you going to do? You're a wetback anyway. What are you going to do, huh? What are you going to do? Wetback." And I barely-- I was-- He was towering over me, and I barely reached his neck. And as angry as I was, I just sat back down and he took my ice cream. None of the seventh graders would think less of you. They're like, "Dude, he's big. I mean, what are you going to do?" And we were pretty much determined that, “All right, he's a ninth grader. Eventually he's going to graduate. He'll be gone in eighth grade. We'll be in eighth grade. And we just let's weather the storm. Let’s weather the storm. No one's going to face this guy.” But I just felt so angry, and I just felt so humiliated.

Then one day, they were serving hot dogs, and I had my tray, and I saw Mario doing his little thing again. And I felt him behind me. And I was waiting for the milk. I was waiting for that cold to run down my spine. But instead, an arm came from above. And he took my hot dog. And I shot up, and I grabbed the hot dog. I said, "Hey, that's mine. Give it back." And it broke in two. So, then Mario said, "Oh, freak. Here, you take it." And he threw it at my face. And I jumped him. I jumped him. Mario slipped, and I started beating him up. I started hitting him. But before I knew it, Mario had flipped me over and he was beating the crap out of me. [audience chuckle] I mean, he was really beating me up. He gave me a black eye. He gave me a really bruised cheek. This cheekbone was really bruised. And he loosened my tooth, which years later came out. But I had stood up to the bully. [audience holler] I had stood up to the bully, and I was the toast of the seventh graders. [audience laughter] I was like the Obama of the seventh-grade class. [audience laughter] And I was so proud of my bruises. They were like badges. They were like war wounds, and everybody was like, "Wow. Ernesto, you did it. Wow." So, I was eating my lunch in peace. See, Mario isn’t to bother me, I stood up to him.

So I am eating. Mario doing his thing. And then I feel the cold milk running down my back. And I felt so betrayed. I felt so betrayed by a principle. I felt betrayed by a principle that if you hit a bully, he will stop picking on you. [audience chuckle] It was a principle. The way that the planets revolve around the sun. It's a principle. [audience chuckle] The way that gravity says, if you throw something up, it will come down. It's a principle. You hit a bully, he stops picking on you. But it wasn't working that way. What I had to realize was that Mario wasn't a bully. He was a racist. He was a racist bully. And other measures had to be taken. And I was just tired of it. I was fed up.

So, me and my friend got together, who had also been one of Mario's victims. We got together and we decided to do this. And what we did was that we went to a stationary store, and while my friend kept the clerk busy, I went to where the magazines were, and I knew exactly what genre I wanted, and it was easy to find. And I took the magazine that I knew was the magazine I wanted, and I put it inside my pants and I put my shirt back down. I went to my friend and said, "You ready? Let's go. All right, let's go. You're not going to buy anything? Okay, let's go." The magazine I stole was called Blue Boy. And Blue Boy is like a men's porn magazine for men. It's got all these naked men. And what we did was we got a six-month subscription and we were broke. So, we saved and were pulling our money [audience laughter] and we got two vibrators and we mailed it to Mario as if Mario had actually asked for this. [audience chuckle]

And we knew. We knew, like, every family Spanish Harlem, it's the mother who has the mail key. Everything goes through the mom. [audience chuckle] The welfare checks, the bills, it all goes through the mom. So, we knew it was the mom who was going to get this first. And we knew it. [audience chuckle] And so we went to school, and we waited and we waited, and we got terrorized, and we waited. One day, Mario didn't come to school. [audience chuckle] I said, "All right, maybe he's sick." Then, second day, he did not come to school. And then word was that his father had beaten him, and he was in the hospital. His father had given him a beating. It was so bad that he was in the hospital. And I knew why. I knew. But I still held on to hope that maybe that's the kind of family they are. That's why he's a bully. His father beats everybody up.

But there was this kid named Felix, and he was, like, the gossiper of the school. And soon enough, he was telling the boys, "Yo, yo, you guys heard? Mario is G. Mario is G." And then I knew that we had gone too far, that it was us. I asked my friend, "You going to come? Should we go visit him?" He said, "I'm not visiting Mario." But I went. I went. He was staying at Metropolitan Hospital. And I walked in, I went to the visitor's desk. You had to say you were family. So here I was saying I was family [audience chuckle] to this guy. And I got the visitor's pass, this big plastic card. And I was wondering, “What is it that I'm doing here? Why am I here? How is he going to receive me? What am I going to say to Mario?” You know? But somehow, I also felt like maybe I should take-- I should do this visit. And I got on the elevator, holding my pass. I punched the floor. The doors open. And they closed back. And I went back down. And then I went home. And I didn't see him.

The next time I saw Mario in school, when he did come, he had a cast on his face. He had like a hockey mask because his father had also broken his nose. So, he had a big cast. And he wasn't-- he wasn't the same Mario. That swagger, that atmosphere of this invulnerable person was gone. And it wasn't this-- it wasn’t because his father had beaten him up, it was because of this rumor that was going around, a rumor that I had started. My memory of him was in the yard smoking with his friends. And I felt, should I say something to him? And I also didn't. But I realized that he was leaving people alone, not because he didn't want to bully them because he wanted to be left alone because something had humiliated him.

It was only years later. It was only years later when I started writing novels. When I started writing about El Barrio, about Spanish Harlem, and started scrutinizing my life. What was it that happened in these neighborhoods? What exactly? What was this all about? When it finally hit me that prejudice is so evil that it can creep up on you, and before you know it, you yourself have become the bigot. And I was guilty of that because I had subscribed to this notion, this fear of homosexuality that was rampant in El Barrio. I knew that was the reaction his parents were going to have towards Mario. And I wanted him to feel this discomfort. And I was guilty of that. There's not much you can do with the past except learn from it and maybe get a chance at asking for forgiveness. And if lucky, be forgiven. And so, tonight, I'm going to throw it out to the universe, and maybe it'll reach Mario's ears. "Mario, I am sorry. We were just two kids stuck in a ghetto. We didn't know any better. It was me. I'm sorry. It was me."

[cheers and applause]

Sarah: [00:47:52] That was Ernesto Quiñonez. [audience holler] Ernesto is a writer. His novels include Bodega Dreams and Chango's Fire.

[Secret Love from Manuel Galban + Ry Cooder playing]

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