Host: Jenifer Hixson
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Jenifer: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jenifer Hixson, senior producer at The Moth, and I'll be your host this time.
This hour, we have five stories for you, two from our Mainstage series and three from our StorySLAMs. We'll hear about a set of Tiffany bowls that reignite a childhood dream, a Chicago kid's harrowing hitchhiking story, a Japanese mosh pit, some surprise correspondence from Iggy Pop.
And our first story from Erin Barker. Erin is a writer and copy editor. And she told this story for a show called Hearts of Darkness: Stories of Love and War. Here's Erin, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Erin: [00:00:59] So, when I was about 12 years old, my mom said she wanted to talk to me about something. My mom and I didn't have a lot of talks. I loved her very much, but she was kind of an intimidating figure. She was one of those corporate working moms with the beeper, and the pantsuit, and the rolly suitcase. [audience chuckles] She yelled important things into phones a lot, and she was away a lot on business. But she sat me down in the living room, and she told me that she was pregnant. It was strange the way she said it, almost like she wasn't that happy about it.
It had been eight years since my brother was born, but even I could remember how excited everybody had been, how everyone had ideas for names, how all the grandparents had flown in from out of town, how barely a day went by that we didn't get some massive delivery of congratulations balloons or a giant stuffed animal. But this time, there were no balloons. There weren't even any cards, but still I was very excited. I never expected to have another sibling after my little brother. I was optimistic that this time I'd get one who could throw a baseball. [audience laughter]
I told everyone the big news. I told everyone at school, everyone at church, my Girl Scout troop, the next-door neighbors, the kid who mowed our lawn, everybody. And they were all just as excited as I was. Except, after a while, I started to notice that when these people would inevitably congratulate my dad on the big news, there would be this whispered exchange, and then that person would say, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry." I didn't know what that meant until one day when my dad took me out for ice cream.
My dad was like my best friend when I was a kid. He was the dad who would read to us every night before bed, and would listen very seriously to my thoughts on the Roald Dahl masterpiece James and the Giant Peach, and the film version's inherent inferiority. [audience laughter] I think we can all agree. [audience laughter] He taught me how to throw a baseball, and at one point really believed he could teach my brother the same. [audience laughter] He told us that Darth Vader had to wear that suit, because he'd been injured in a car accident, [audience laughter] and so my brother and I had better always wear our seat belts, [audience laughter] unless we wanted to end up like him.
Imagine my disillusionment when I saw the Star Wars prequels. [audience laughter] Disillusionment on so very many levels. [audience laughter] But anyway, because my dad and I were so close, I knew what ice cream meant. Every time my dad has bad news, he takes us out for ice cream. It's kind of his MO. Don't ever go to the Cold Stone Creamery with my dad. [audience laughter] Just don't do it, unless you want to find out that grandpa has cancer, or your dog's been put to sleep, or your nanny's been fired for stealing your mother's jewelry. Just don't go. [audience laughter]
So, we get our ice cream of doom. And my dad, he takes a deep breath and he says, "The baby your mother is pregnant with is not mine." I can see him looking at me to try to see if I understand, at 12 years old, what he means. As it just so happened, I had conveniently just learned what sex was in school. I understood exactly what was going on here and I understood what my dad was telling me. I can tell how hard it was for him to tell me, and I know that as much as he didn't want to tell all of those other people, I am the very last person that he wanted to tell. And then, he says, "Do you know who the father is?"
And I realize, with sudden clarity, that I do know, that I have perhaps always known, but not realized it until this exact moment. "Andy," I said, and my dad nodded. Andy was my mom's co-worker, this British guy about 10 years younger than her, who would take me and my mom and my brother on little trips and buy us expensive presents. He'd even, oddly enough, gone to church with us. I thought he was our friend. I realize now that I'd been wrong and that I'd been stupid not to realize it.
And as a result, not only had I failed to prevent this disaster, and like every child I truly believed in my heart that I could have with a well-timed tantrum or the right number of slammed doors, but I'd also made it infinitely worse for the person who deserved it the least, my father. I'd been coming home for months saying things like, "Dad, look at the awesome Lego castle Andy bought us." I'd been calling him to say, "Dad, guess what, we taught Andy how to play baseball today," never noticing the tense silence on the other end of the line. Not to mention, I publicly humiliated him by telling everyone about my mother's pregnancy. I was racked with guilt and I was no longer excited about the new baby.
Shortly after this, my parents got divorced, and my mom bought a house down the street from my dad's, because the neighborhood didn't already have enough to talk about. [audience laughter] We were supposed to go down there every now and then when my mom was home. One day, I went down and there was a cake on the table, and my mom said, "Andy and I got married today. Do you want a piece of the wedding cake?" No, I did not want a piece of the cake of lies. [audience laughter] The next time I went down, I was met with an even bigger surprise, this time in the form of a strange pink baby who I was told was my new sister. "Do you want to hold her?" my mom asked. No, I did not want to hold her. I didn't want to look at her, at this baby who had broken my father's heart.
I loathed this horrible creature, and I always would. I decided then, I made a commitment in that moment to hate this baby for the rest of my life, possibly longer. [audience laughter] There was just one problem. I don't know if you've ever tried to hate a baby, [audience laughter] but it is real fucking hard. [audience laughter] Because everything they do is magical as shit. [audience laughter] And this was especially true in the case of my sister Emma, who had a little Pebbles Flintstone ponytail on top of her head. Every night that I was at my mom's house, she would refuse to go to sleep until I'd come up and sung to her, the same song every time, Shoe Box by Barenaked Ladies, [audience laughter] which is an inappropriate song to sing to a little girl since it's about statutory rape. [audience laughter] But she'd heard me playing it in my room, and that was what she wanted, so who was I to argue?
Soon, I found myself bonding with my mom for the first time in a long time over our mutual love for Emma and our mutual hatred of the Teletubbies. And slowly, all my anger fell down like dominoes. When I forgave my sister, it was easier to forgive my mom, and when I forgave my mom, it was easier to forgive myself. I admit I never quite forgave Andy, but that was okay, it turned out his stay with us was only temporary anyway. He met another married woman with children, and started going to church with them, and presumably started this story all over with someone else. As for my dad, I never had to ask for his forgiveness. It was always there.
Emma is 14 years old now, and she's gone from Teletubbies to Twilight, clearly she has questionable taste. [audience laughter] In a few years, it'll probably be Dan Brown novels. [audience laughter] But despite that, we're great friends and I love her very much, and I can't regret anything that happened, because without it, we wouldn't have her, although she never did learn how to throw a baseball. Thanks.
[cheers and applause]
[melodious piano music]
Jenifer: [00:10:48] That was Erin Barker. She co-hosts and produces a show focused on science called The Story Collider. To see a baseball card featuring Erin in her Little League uniform, visit themoth.org.
[upbeat music]
Maybe you have a story you think would be perfect for The Moth, something that happened to you that changed how you saw the world. We want to hear it. Call our pitch line at 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. Follow the prompts. Before you call, know that you have just about two minutes. Or, you can also pitch us right on our website. We look forward to hearing your story.
In a moment, we'll be back with two stories. One about a dream born in Wakulla County, Florida, and another about a hitchhiker on Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway.
[upbeat music]
Jay: [00:12:14] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Jenifer: [00:12:25] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jenifer Hixson.
Our next story is by Alvin Hall. If you go to Alvin's website, you can see the whopping 17 financial-planning books he's written, some of them bestsellers. But I first heard Alvin on the radio program Tell Me More, where he was patiently advising callers on how to manage their money. A few months later, we were casting for our show Stories of Currency. I got in touch with Alvin to see if he had any stories about his own relationship with money.
[cheers and applause]
And here's Alvin Hall, live at The Moth.
Alvin: [00:13:02] Good evening. Let me get this up here. We only went to town once a month when I was a little boy. We had a farm, we grew, raised or hunted everything that we had. When we went to town, my mother and grandmother would give us a nickel or a dime to buy whatever we wanted as a treat. I so looked forward to that. While my brothers and sisters would go off and buy toys and candy, I would go to the back of the five-and-dime store, to this one area where they had these little bitty discs with bits of film in them, and I would buy a View-Master slide. [audience chuckles]
I would go through the row and look for places like Rome, London, Paris, and a town called Constantinople. [audience laughter] I would then come back home in the truck, go into the backyard, pull out my View-Master slide, and point it at the sky, and I would sit there in reverie for hours. I would cross the Bosphorus, I would go up the Eiffel Tower, I would create these travelogues, a word I didn't know at that time, [audience laughter] in my mind until my mother called me to do a chore in the house.
I was raised in a very WASPy black family. [audience laughter] We did not talk. My parents spoke in syllables. If they really liked what you did, they would go, "Mm-mm." [audience laughter] If they thought what you did was adequate but expected, "Mm-mm-mm." [audience laughter] If they thought what you did was horrible, it was, "Hmm." And the lower the register of that, mm, the more judgment was imparted by that. [audience laughter]
When I was nine years old, my mother-- I recall my mother making this statement all the time. She kept saying, "I raised you to leave my house. When you get to be 18 years old, all of you, I raised you to leave my house." My brothers and sisters and I would look at each other and wonder. At age nine, I decided to tell her, "I'm going to leave this place." My mother looked at me, she said, "What did you say?" I said, "One of these days, I'm going to leave this place." She went, "Hmm." [audience laughter]
Integration occurred in 1968, and I went from an all-black school named Shadeville, very Faulknerian, [audience laughter] to the county school. And there I had probably my second fight of my entire high-school career. This guy called me something, and we got into a fight, and I fought to win. At the school, people became aware of me, and so they recommended me to a program, a Lyndon Baines Johnson program called Project Upward Bound at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. What a destiny I had. [audience laughter]
Nonetheless, I got into the program, and there was a lady who ran the program, the most glamorous black woman I had ever met, a lady named Ms. Freddy Grooms. She had a medium sized afro that was perfectly coiffed every day. She wore clothes that were in blocks of colors. I can see them to this day. And at this program, she really took an interest in me. In my classes, however, I was the eager kid. I was constantly putting up my hand every answer. I knew the answer to everything. I was really, really on. And the teacher said to me, “How do you know so much?” And I said, “I read the World Book Encyclopedia.”
When we had no money at night, my mother, who subscribed to the World Book Encyclopedia, would say to us, “Don, my middle name, pick out the letter Q, boy, and read something to us. Pick out the letter B, boy, and read something to us.” Well, little did we know that I was learning all that stuff. So, in class, I was really eager. This does not make me popular with the other people in the program. [audience laughter]
Eventually, I got into a little scuffle. I was put on parole. But Mrs. Grooms took interest in me and recommended me to her friend, Dr. Joel Fleishman, who had started a program at Yale University called Yale Summer High School. And I applied to that program. The day I got that letter, I sat in the kitchen of the house. I knew with everything in me that I was going. I was going to go if it took everything to make it happen. I think my parents suspected that. So, on the day I got ready to go-- I wasn't afraid of anything, not a single thing. Because in my mind, I'd already traveled to Paris and London and Constantinople. [audience laughter] So, going up to New Haven, Connecticut, cinch. [audience laughter]
I got on that plane, got to New Haven, Connecticut. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I was home. There was John Wall, John Laemmle, Alba, Clyde, all the tutors and counselors made me feel so at home. I loved it. At the end of the summer, I had to come back home. I got off the plane, came home. My grandmother walked up to me, put her hands on my face on both sides, looked into my eyes, and then held me close to her and said, “You are never coming home again. You are never coming home again.”
I then applied to college, went off to school in Maine, had a wonderful time, did well in school. Life was good. It was pretty good. I got a good job. I traveled a lot. I would write my parents postcards in tiny little writing. I'd write these entire narratives, and I would say to my parents, “Did you ever receive my postcards?” My parents would go, “Mm, mm, mm.” [audience laughter] Nothing more was said about the postcards. “Curious,” I said to myself.
Well, eventually, I got a job in New York City, a job that I really loved on Wall-Street. Things were going really well for me. I started to travel. I still wrote my parents cards. When I told my parents that I was moving to New York City, my grandmother said, “Mm. [audience laughter] You know that Richard Pryor man lived in New York.” [audience laughter] Wall Street was really good to me, and I found a place where I could work, I enjoyed the creativity of being in training on Wall Street. But in one of the recessions, I got laid off. I knew that the layoff was coming. I got so mad about the layoff, in anticipation of it that I decided I was going to fight. I was going to fight when they laid me off.
So, on the day they laid me off, I said basically to myself, you're going to have to pay me to get rid of me. You're going to have to pay me. I fought that day, one of the hardest fights I've ever fought in my life to get a great severance package. When I walked out of that office, I had a severance package that was beyond my dreams. I walked out of the office, got into a taxi and said, “Take me to Tiffany's.” [audience laughter] I took the taxi from downtown to Tiffany's. I told the taxi to wait. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
I had wanted these green celadon bowls for three and a half years. I would go to Tiffany's and I would just lust after them. And today, I was going to give them to myself as a present for that package I negotiated. I had them wrap them in the blue and white box, put them in a bag, and I came down in that side elevator at Tiffany's, got into the taxes, and said, “Take me to the D'Agostino's.” I went to the D'Agostino's bought a half gallon of milk and a box of Cheerios and then said, “Take me home.” [audience laughter] I went home, opened the box, washed the bowls, and poured the Cheerios and the milk in the bowl. [audience laughter] And I thought, if I have to be unemployed, every day I eat from these bowls, [audience laughter] I'll be happy. I sat there and I ate my Cheerios blissfully.
As I was eating those Cheerios, I said to myself, "It's time to go to Paris." I had avoided going to Paris, I don't know why, but it was time to go to Paris. So, I called and booked a ticket. Called a friend of mine and said, "I'm going to come to Paris, can I stay with you?" He said, "Sure." I got on that plane to Paris. It was so exciting. Got off at Charles de Gaulle, took the [unintelligible 00:22:40] in, and uncharacteristically, I missed my stop. I travel a lot, I never miss a stop. I missed my stop.
So, I got off at the next stop, came out of the metro, walking down the street and turned a corner. It was like everything went out of me. I was in exactly the same spot where that picture was taken that I used to sit and look at through that View-Master slide. I was in my own dream. I had made it real. I sat there for a moment, and then I burst into tears. I just thought, I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm here. And for the next five days, I went all over Paris, and I saw every place that was in those View-Master slides. I did not miss a single one.
That first night in Paris, my friend who lived in the 1st arrondissement had a rooftop terrace. And so, when I arrived late, he said, “Oh, I have some champagne and caviar upstairs.” So, we went up to the rooftop. As the sun was setting over Paris, I watched as all of the lights came up on the monuments one by one. As I stood there, I heard my mother and my grandmother say, “Mm-hmm.” [audience laughter] This year is a significant birthday for me, and I've decided that it's time for me to see that city once call Constantinople. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:24:36] That was Alvin Hall. He's an author, teacher, television, and radio broadcaster. To see a picture of young Alvin during his transformative summer at Yale, visit themoth.org.
[melodious music]
Our next three stories are from The Moth StorySLAM. These are open-mic events held in cities all across the country. Check our website to see if we're near you or coming soon. StorySLAMs are The Moth's wildcard series. We post dates and themes and people just show up with stories. 10 names are picked at random and each person gets just five minutes, plus a grace minute. Each night generates a winner chosen by judges from the audience.
The person you'll hear next is Paul Teodo. He won a StorySLAM and then qualified for the GrandSLAM in an evening of mostly funny stories. Paul's very serious story rendered the room pin-drop silent. The theme for the GrandSLAM was Identity Crisis.
[cheers and applause]
Here is GrandSLAM winner Paul Teodo, live at The Moth in Chicago.
Paul: [00:25:50] I believe, and some other folks believe too, that crisis greatly contributes to the development of identity. The theory goes like this: when you're a little kid, you get into a jam, where you either think, A, that I'm going to be killed, B, that people are going to leave me and I'll be all alone in this world, or C, I'm going to go crazy.
On December 25th, 1960, my Uncle Mike, who was a Chicago vice cop on the South Side of Chicago, contributed to the development of my identity. I'm Italian. I'm from the South Side of Chicago. And back in the late 1950s and 1960s, if you were Italian on the South Side of Chicago and it was a holiday, you had about 45 people in your dining room around an eight-person dining room table, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine. And you had about 400 plates of food on the table. The kids got done eating in about three and a half minutes, and the adults took seven to eight hours to complete their meal.
[hollers]
So, me and my cousin Rico get done in about seven or eight minutes, and we figure we got to figure out what to do next. So, we start jumping off the couch. Not the couch, but the top of the back of the couch. And we're jumping. My Uncle Mike says, "Knock it off, Paulie." So, I don't knock it off. I jump again. "Knock it off." I jump again. He says, "Knock it off." I jump again and I clip a bottle of wine. He jumps up in a flash, gets his cuffs out, handcuffs me to the radiator. [audience laughter]
Now, this room is loaded with smoke, and I'm a little kid, and I'm sweating, and I say, "Uncle Mike, let me out of here." He looks at me and keeps eating. I say, "Uncle Mike, come on, let me out of here." He keeps eating. I look at him, I say, "Let me out of here, I'm going to kill you." He gets up, uncuffs me. I jump up, grab a bottle of wine, hit him in the head, and go for his gun. He throws me off his back, and at that moment in time, I became what many people would say a dangerous person. For the next 12 years, I did things that probably weren't too good.
Flash forward to January 8th, 1973. I'm standing on the Dan Ryan Expressway with my thumb out underneath the Magikist sign, hitchhiking to go back to Galesburg to finish my last semester of college. A truck rolls by, it's freezing cold, splashes slush all over me. Next truck goes by, splashes more slush. A car goes by, a guy gives me the finger. And finally, a guy in an Olds 88 stops. He reaches over, unbuttons the button, I hop in. He hands his hand out to me and he says, "Johnny." I say, "Paul." I look in the back seat of his car, he's got a toolbox and a pick and a shovel. And it stinks in the car. And on the seat, it's got a red rag.
And so, I'm looking at him as he's driving me, and I'm looking at him, he's got a crew cut and like a little Adolf Hitler mustache. I'm looking at him, and I'm looking at him, I say, "You look like somebody I know." He says, "I ain't anybody you know." And I say, "You look like my brother-in-law's father, Wally." He says, "I ain't Wally." So, we're driving along. He says, "I do construction." I say, "Okay, I'm on my way back to college. The economy sucks, I don't know what I'm going to do." He says, "Come to work at my company, a construction company." I look in the back seat again, I see a clown nose and a red wig on the floor.
We're driving along and there's silence in the car. The snow's coming down, and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him. He says, "Galesburg, huh?" I say, "Yeah." He says, "I'm only going to Joliet." I say, "Fine." A couple minutes later he says, "If you let me play with your dick, I'll drive you to Galesburg." I say, "I don't go that way." He says, "Come on." I say, "No." Dead silence. I'm sweating, I'm thinking of my Uncle Mike, I'm thinking of being chained to the radiator.
He looks at me, he says, "Let me play with your dick." And at that moment, he moves towards the red rag, and I flip my hand down, and a pistol goes onto the driver's-side floorboard, and I am scared shitless. I look at him and I say, "You have picked up a very dangerous person. I will grab the fucking steering wheel of this car and I will kill both of us. Let me out." He goes, "Oh, okay, okay, okay." I say, "No, no, no, no, not here, in the middle of nowhere. You drive to the intersection of I-55 and 80 and you let me out there." He drives. I get out of the car backwards, and I'm watching him.
Flash forward to December 22nd, 1978. I'm at my sister's house on a Friday night, she's making pot roast, I can still smell it. John Drury comes on the news and he says, "A grisly discovery has been made in Norwood Park." My sister comes in from the kitchen, says, "Look it," to her husband. "It looks like your father, Wally." I get the chill down my spine. Flash forward to May 10th, 1994. John Wayne Gacy was executed for killing 33 young men. Because of my Uncle Mike and my crisis with my identity, I was fortunate not to be number 34.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:31:51] That was Paul Teodo. I asked Paul to come into the studio and tell us a little more about this story.
Paul: [00:31:57] Well, not to sound overly psychological, but I was pretty traumatized when I was handcuffed to a very hot radiator. I was yelling and screaming and sweating to let me go, and he didn't. In fact, he laughed at me. And only until I then screamed at him, “I'm going to kill you,” did he then let me go. Something clicked in me that if, in fact, when I became really scared, I became aggressive, I could get out of a jam.
Subsequent to that, when I got older, a teenager and a young man in adulthood, I would get afraid and then I would become aggressive. And in the incident later on when I was hitchhiking, that situation reverting all the way back to when I was eight or nine years old, in my opinion, helped me save me at that moment. So, I attribute some of that to my Uncle Mike.
Jenifer: [00:33:00] So, tell me, how certain are you that it was the convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy who picked you up that day when you were hitchhiking?
Paul: [00:33:09] Well, the incident happened for sure. Whether it was him or not, no one really knows other than that's what I believe, because all of those things that I just described fit his MO.
Jenifer: [00:33:21] So, are you still a dangerous person, you think?
Paul: [00:33:26] Probably not.
Jenifer: [00:33:28] [laughs] Just probably? [chuckles]
Paul: [00:33:32] Well, I think if anyone gets pushed, I'll just speak for myself. If I was pushed, I would push back.
Jenifer: [00:33:38] Tell me a little bit about what you do now, Paul.
Paul: [00:33:42] I'm really fortunate. I work as a hospital administrator on the South Side of Chicago at a Catholic hospital with a group of incredibly mission-oriented nuns. I've been doing hospital administration for probably over 25 years.
Jenifer: [00:34:00] That was Paul Teodo. To see a photo of Paul as a boy with his Uncle Mike, visit themoth.org.
[upbeat music]
Coming up in a moment are two stories, both involving the softer side of punk rock.
Jay: [00:34:24] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Jenifer: [00:34:34] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jenifer Hixson, senior producer at The Moth.
Our next story is from Sam Thurman. He's a web developer who lives in New York City, but his story takes place while he was in art school in Japan. Here's Sam Thurman, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Sam: [00:34:59] Thank you. So, I am in Tokyo, Japan. I mean, in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan. I'm at the Fuji Rock Festival. It's a rock festival that is in the mountains. They convert skiing, snowboarding mountain range. I'm there to see a band. They're called the Bad Brains. They are a Jamaican punk hardcore group from the early 1980s. I'm timid. I would not normally have gone to a show like that. In Japan, I notice people are very polite. And so, I am in the middle of a crowd of about 300 people. It is pitch black.
The band takes to the stage and the lights go on. And for the first time, I see the people packed in around me. And they do not look polite at all. They are foaming at the mouth, and their mouths are pierced and their faces are covered in tattoos. And the band starts to play, and the crowd surges towards the front, and I am carried like driftwood, and I am deposited in the middle of the mosh pit. Now, I had apparently never been to a real mosh pit before, and it seemed as though this one was directed towards hurting me specifically. [audience laughter] I was getting punched in the face and kicked in the ribs and jabbed in the shins. And so, I tried to escape the only direction I could, forwards, further towards the stage, and I make it to that metal barricade between the people and the stage, and that is when I feel an arm wrap around my neck and it pulls me backwards into the crowd.
And then, I feel a foot jab into my back, above my buttocks, and then I feel a hand wrap around my face, and then I realize that a small man has begun to climb me. [audience laughter] He's climbing me like a human ladder, so he can crowd surf. He makes it to the top of my head, his feet are on my shoulders, and he kicks off. As he kicks off, my glasses get kicked off of my face into the mosh pit in front of me. If you've grown up with glasses, it is as if somebody has kicked your eyes out of your skull [audience laughter] onto the ground before you. And so, without thinking, I dive down into the mosh pit, knowing well that I could die. [audience laughter]
But as I'm searching around on the ground for my glasses, something strange happens. I don't get stomped on the neck. As I'm looking in front of me, I notice a light shine onto my hand, and then another light. And before I know it, the entire ground around me is illuminated. I look up, and a circle of mosh-pit guys have formed a perimeter around me, [audience chuckles] and they're holding their cell-phone lights down to illuminate the ground under my feet. They look like angels. [audience laughter] I find the crippled corpse of my glasses, and I scoop it up from the earth, and I hold it close to my chest. A guy offers his hand. He has a lip piercing. I take it, he stands me up, and he says, "Are you okay?" And I say, "Yeah, I'm okay." And instantaneously, the mosh pit reassembles. [audience laughter] These men disappear into the night. But it's completely different now.
I'm punching people in the head. [audience laughter] And before I know it, another man wraps his arm around my neck, and he plants his foot above my ass. But then, I look back, I grab his shoulder, I grab his shirt, and I fucking throw that guy [audience laughter] as hard as I can. I watch him shoot up and over the crowd, and he sails away, back into the crowd behind me, and I can see the smile on his face. [audience laughter] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:39:49] That was Sam Thurman, live at The Moth StorySLAM.
[punk rock music]
To see a picture of Sam during his school days at the Osaka School of Art, visit our webpage at themoth.org.
[punk rock music]
Our final story comes from one of our StorySLAMs in Los Angeles. At The Moth, there is no reading on stage. But in the case of Ameera, we did allow her to bring her special artifact up to the stage. Here's Ameera Chowdhury, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Ameera: [00:40:26] When I was a teenager, in spite of being a straight-A student, I had delinquent tastes in music. I loved 1970s punk rock, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, who, if you don't know, are the spiritual ancestors of bands like Nirvana and Green Day. [audience chuckles] Of all these bands, my absolute favorite were those godfathers of punk, Iggy Pop and the Stooges. Nobody epitomized sex, drugs, and rock and roll the way they did.
It was 1997, and Iggy's record company had just released a greatest-hits compilation called Nude & Rude to coincide with his 50th birthday. Being a delinquent, I skipped class to listen to the CD at my mall's Blockbuster Music. But then, being a straight-A student, I wrote a review of it for my local paper, the Sun-Sentinel. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
When the article was published, I clipped it and sent it to Iggy's record company, hoping they would deliver it as fan mail. And they did. A few months later, I got this envelope in the mail. No return address, New York postmark, and a Georgia O'Keeffe flower postage stamp, [audience laughter] which my artist friend Carlos later explained was supposed to represent lady parts. [audience laughter]
So, I tear open the envelope, and inside is this card with this absurd photo of Iggy on the cover wearing a crown. When I open it, I realize that it's a personal note from Iggy himself.
[cheers and hollers]
Iggy wrote, "Ameera, hi, I got your letter. When you get this card, give me a call if you want to, please. 212 [beep] 91. [audience cheers and applause]
There's a machine, so leave a number if I'm not there. I'll be in South Florida quite soon," which is where I lived at the time. "It'd be nice to meet you. Iggy." [audience laughter] I was nervous and flipping out, [audience laughter] because Iggy Pop was my idol, my teenage fantasy, and he wanted to talk to me on the phone. I was sure I was going to pass out, so I begged my boyfriend Eric to phone the number on a three-way conference call for moral support. [audience laughter]
Eric dials the number and the answering machine picks up. The message on the machine isn't something normal and comforting like, "Hi, I'm not here, leave a number after the beep," but rather Iggy's sneering, "This is that thing you throw peanuts at. Take a shot, sucker." [audience laughter] So, poor Eric is awkwardly leaving a message when Iggy, who screens his phone calls like Gwen Stefani, picks up. [audience laughter] Now, Eric is stammering and calling him Mr. Pop. [audience laughter] And somehow Iggy smoothly talks him into hanging up. And then, Iggy and I are alone together on the phone.
I'd like to think that after reading my review, Iggy must have thought I was older and worldlier than I was, because we hit it off really well. He was in the process of getting divorced. Was on the rebound, [audience laughter] leaving New York, moving to Miami, and he wanted to meet me. He told me that he liked my exotic name. So, although we never explicitly discussed it, I was pretty sure I'd get to live out my wildest rock-star fantasies with Iggy Pop. Iggy and I spoke a couple of nights in a row. And in the meantime, I persuaded my friend Carlos to drive me to Miami. Everything was set except for a time and a place.
Let me stress that this was happening in 1997, when people still talked on the phone and didn't just text all the time. [audience laughter] Also, I only had one line in my house, and the kind of family where everyone picks up the phone in the other room and listens in or interrupts as they see fit. [audience laughter] So, when I called Iggy the next night to arrange a meeting, my mom, who had gotten word that I was spending a lot of time on the phone with an older man, [audience laughter] picks up the other line and says, "Ameera, time for beddy-buys, [audience laughter] it's a school night." [audience laughter] The game was up. [audience laughter] I awkwardly confessed that I was only a high-school student, and Iggy politely explained that he couldn't meet me anymore or every male member of my bloodline would come after him with swords. [audience laughter] I am not going to-- [chuckles] That was the last I ever heard from him.
At the time, I was absolutely mortified that this had happened. Because the coolest thing that had ever happened to me had just ended in the most uncool way imaginable. [audience laughter] But after years of therapy, I've come to see [audience laughter] that the real hero of this story is not me or Iggy Pop, but my mom, who, despite working two jobs, still had the attention span to save me from my inner teenage delinquent. While I didn't get to live out my rock-star rebound fantasies with Iggy Pop, she got to live out every mother's fantasy. My mom told Iggy Pop that it was a school night.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:46:44] That was Ameera Chowdhury.
[punk music]
She has a PhD in math from UC San Diego, and is a research fellow at UCLA. To see a scan of her note from Iggy, visit our website, themoth.org.
PS. We bleeped Iggy's phone number from the story, but we tried it and it doesn't work anymore anyway. Remember, you can pitch us your story at themoth.org. Check out this pitch.
Okay, so, I really need to tell somebody this story. When I was a sophomore in college, the night before my mother was to come out to pick me up, she called up and she said, “Okay, I'm going to be there at, you know, 02:30,” or she gave me a very specific time, which was very unlike my mother, because, you know, she was flighty, she didn't really do things that way. And I said, 'Well, why, why exactly at 02:30,' or 01:30, whatever time she told me. And she said, 'Well, I'm going to be there because at 11 o'clock, I'm going to set the house on fire.” [chuckles]
So, she arrives at my apartment at exactly whatever the assigned time was, early afternoon, and she says to me, “Okay, I'm really nervous, you have to drive home to our burning house.” And I said, “But I don't know how to drive.” My mother had this souped-up Maverick of a car, in fact, I think it was called a Maverick. It was yellow and black. I had to drive home while my mother is in the car, hysterical, because we're going to be going home to a house that's on fire, and I have to act like it's an accident, which I'll give you the details if you want to know the details, but I only have a minute. Okay, that's the end of my story. So, I'll give you the rest of the details, is a machine going to go off now and tell me that my time's up? I think it is, isn't it?"
[music playing]
Anyway the story gets weirder, because my mother had actually planted new furniture in the house and taken all the antiques out. She's an antique dealer. Anyway, that's the story. Give me a call if you want to hear the rest of it. It's really bizarre. Okay, see ya.
Jenifer: [00:49:16] Remember, you can pitch us your story at themoth.org or 877-799-MOTH. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll listen next time.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Jay: [00:49:39] Your host this hour was Jenifer Hixson. Jenifer also directed the stories in the show.
The rest of The Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss-Berman and Brandon Echter.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argot Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from American Football, Stéphane Grappelli, Mogwai, Bad Brains, and Iggy Pop.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 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 generous, just, verdant, and peaceful world.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.