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 from The Moth, and I'll be your host this time. 

The Moth is about true personal stories. We ask people to talk about their biggest moments on stage in front of a live audience. No notes are allowed. It's storytelling without a net. 

Our first story is from Bradford Jordan. He told it at one of our open-mic StorySLAM competitions. The evening was a collaboration with Arts in Mind, a conversation series about the intersection of the arts and mental health. The theme that night was Going Sane. Here's Bradford Jordan, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause] 

Bradford: [00:00:56] So, this story is about why two years ago I didn't know if I wanted to be a dad or not, and why today I know that I do. It was about almost exactly, actually, two years ago-- I am a teacher, so I was on spring break. I went home to California to visit my father and his wife. I was laying in bed, which is an inflatable sofa bed, [chuckles] late one night looking at my iPad, and I got an email. And that email was from Stephanie Miller, a name which did not ring a bell. But the subject line got my interest, because it said, "Hey, I've got something to tell you." 

So, I opened it. I'll paraphrase the email, because I don't remember it exactly, because since I deleted it in a fit of insanity. It said something like, "Dear Bradford, you probably don't remember me. But in 2004 or 2005, when you were living in Oxford, we were introduced by a mutual friend, and we got a little crazy, and we hooked up. I never told you, but I got pregnant that night. It's five years later, and I've been talking with my therapist and my parents, who've been helping me raise my son, and we've decided it's time to reach out to you. So, whether or not you would like to be involved is up to you. Email back if interested." [audience laughter] 

I didn't really have a time where I was shocked, because I immediately started crying. I immediately started crying, because I think about being a dad all the time. That's something I've been thinking about since I knew I had a dad, and suddenly I was a dad. And so, I did the same thing I used to do when I was seven years old. I trudged across the hallway to my dad's room and I knocked on the door with tears in my voice and I said, "Dad." You know how your dad smelled at night? They don't stop smelling that way. [audience laughter] He smelled that way when he opened the door, and he took me to the talking couch. Two couches, cuddling and talking. [audience laughter] 

He took me to the talking couch, and he held me the same way he always had. I held my iPad, [audience laughter] which was what I had. He read the email, and he said to me, "Brad, this is a Facebook scam. This is what they do. [audience laughter] Don't you know that?" I thought for a second, maybe it is a Facebook scam. But there's too many details. The name of my friend when I was in Oxford, and other details that my paraphrase missed. It was too specific. 

Another thing the email that I forgot to mention had was the name of the boy. His name is Caden, and a picture attached. On the iPad, the picture doesn't come up as a photograph. It comes up as a soft-cornered square with dotted lines. I couldn't bring myself to tap on it, but my dad did. I couldn't look at it, because I was crying so hard and I was so scared and I was slowly going completely crazy. But he looked at it and he said, "It's a kid with brown hair and blue eyes. It could be any kid." 

In the passing emotions of fear and anger and destitution, I had, for what must have actually been maybe a half a second, the moment where I felt sane, and that moment was a moment when I felt-- What I imagine anyone here who's a parent felt when they became a parent, which is boundless and limitless love for this kid. I didn't know where he was, I never met him, I'd never even seen the picture that my dad had seen. But I knew that I would do anything. And then, I went back to being crazy. 

The next day, I decided I should probably call my girlfriend and tell her what was going on, because [audience laughter] her life was going to change and my life was going to change. I might be moving to England. I called her up and I asked her to sit down. She was in New York, I was in California, and I said, "You know, we've been talking a lot about if someday we want to have kids. [audience laughter] And I know that I have been questioning it. I know that I haven't been enthusiastic about it, but I want to tell you that I got an email." And she said, "From Stephanie Miller?" And I said, "What are you talking about?" [audience laughter] And she said, "April Fools'!" Yeah, no, it's fucked up. It really is. [audience laughter] It was super, super messed up. 

I hung up the phone because I couldn't say anything else to her. And my dad, after I told him, he gave me a look like, "Maybe it wasn't a Facebook scam, but I knew something fishy was going on." But I'll tell you this, is that I go back and forth between that half a minute or half a second, whatever it was, when I felt that love. Sometimes I feel like I cheated the universe, because I don't deserve to know what that feels like. Or, somehow it was inauthentic because that's for real parents, and sometimes I thank the universe because now I know that I do want to be a dad.

[cheers and applause] 

Catherine: [00:07:46] That was Bradford Jordan. Bradford is an improviser and educator. To see a picture of Bradford and his dad on the cuddle couch, go to themoth.org.

Our next story is from Charles Fatone. We met Charles when he signed up for a storytelling workshop taught by The MothSHOP Community Education Program. I recently sat down with Larry Rosen, who manages MothSHOP.

Larry: [00:08:14] The education program seeks to foster self-expression, community, and awareness through the art and the craft of personal storytelling. Because storytelling is going to do this in a way that no other art form is going to do it and that no other craft is going to do it. What we have is this magical combination of art and life.

Catherine: [00:08:42] We'll hear more from Larry when we come back. But now, here's Charles Fatone, live at a MothSHOP showcase at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City.

[cheers and applause] 

Charles: [00:08:57] It was 1975. I was sitting in my living room on my sofa with my Afghan Hound, Ria Leona, sitting next to me. I was thinking it had been a year since I ended a five-and-a-half-year live-in relationship with Reno, who was 10 years my junior. He had decided that he needed more space and a lot more partners. So, that afternoon, I took a walk across town to Waverly Place to my friend Bart. We'd been buddies since we were 19. 

And over drinks, he said, "So, are you seeing anyone?" And I said, "No." He said, "Listen, a year is a long time to mourn." And I said, "I'm not in mourning. What makes you think I'm in mourning? I'm 40. I don't have the energy to tell the story of my life again, not after Reno. I want someone my own age." He said, "Why don't you go out for a beer?" I said, "I haven't been to a gay bar in six years. I don't even know where they are." He said, "Why don't you try Ty's on Christopher Street?" I said, "Ty's is a meat rack." He said, "Well, you're not going to get married. You're just going for a beer." [audience laughter] 

Well, the logic of that appealed to me. So, that night at 11 o’clock, I walked into Ty's. It was packed wall to wall. It was October 25th, and it looked as if they were all in dress rehearsal for Halloween. [audience laughter] Leather, jeans, multicolored kerchiefs advertising God knows what. The smell of cologne, sweat, smiles, beer, whiskey. The place smelled of desire. 

I looked directly across the room and I saw a space of white wall, and next to it was standing a young, slender blond guy. In this crowd, he looked like a dish of vanilla ice cream. [audience laughter] So, I took my beer and I walked over to him. We're standing side by side and I say to myself, what the hell am I going to say to him? There are four guys nearby who are in intense conversation, intense. And suddenly, one of them drops to the floor like a sack of potatoes. I looked down and I said, "Is that drugs, or is that liquor?" And he said, "It's probably a combination of both." And so, we were talking. [audience laughter] 

We started talking about how many stimulants were being taken by everybody in that place. The guys picked their friend up and took him away. I noticed that his beer was empty, and I said to him, "Can I get you another beer?" He said, "No, thanks." I thought, oh, shit. He said, "I don't need another beer. I've already decided. Let's go." [audience laughter] Kill surprise. 

So, we walked across Washington Square Park. It was midnight, autumn in New York, to my apartment, where we exchanged desires. The next morning, we had breakfast, coffee, and toast. I also learned that his name was Terry, and that he had a degree in music and he was planning on becoming an opera singer. But in the meantime, he was a full-time nurse's aide during the evenings at midnight at St. Clare's Hospital. 

And what he did was they drag in the skells, which are derelicts from the street that were covered with shit and piss, and hand them over to him to hose down and clean. To me, that was like Mother Teresa, except without the blue and white sari. I also learned that he was 13 years younger than me, and I thought to myself, “No way. No way in hell.” I wanted someone my own age. So, any sense of possibility that there'd be anything serious between us was completely off the table. But it didn't preclude having an affair. So, we started to see each other, for dinner, theater, and stuff. 

About six months later, one night we were finishing dinner at my place. I had cooked. It was about 10:00. He goes to work at 11:00. I look at my watch and I say to myself, "This is going to have to be a quickie." But we continued talking, and I thought to myself, “Oh, what the hell, let it go.” At 11 o’clock, I pointed to the clock and I said, "You got to go to work." He said, "I'm off tonight. Surprise!" Great. He said, "Incidentally, my sublet is coming due and I'm going to have to move." And I said, "No, don't worry about that. I'll help you find someplace." And he said, "Or, I could move in here with you." 

I said, "You know, there are no doors on any of these rooms except on the toilet. This apartment is not designed for roommates." He said, "I know." I said, "You know, I can be very difficult to live with." He said, "That's okay." I said, "Listen, as long as you have to move, you can move in temporarily. And while we're looking for something for you, we'll see how it works out." 37 years later, we married in City Hall. [audience cheers and applause] 

Because we were able to. We went to Ferrara's on Grand Street, and we had Sicilian cheesecake and champagne and brandy. As we were walking along the street in the sun, we saw these two old, old guys who had to be at least 90. They were clutching onto each other and creeping along the street. Terry pointed to them and he said, "Look, that's us in 20 years." I said, "May we live that long." Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

Catherine: [00:17:15] That was Charles Fatone. To see a picture of Charles and Terry, go to themoth.org. 

We met Charles at a workshop we produced with SAGE, an organization dedicated to serving elderly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people. Charles workshopped his story and then went on to tell it at a showcase that was open to the public. Here again is Larry Rosen from The Moth, who directed Charles' story.

Larry: [00:17:41] The story was all formed in the workshop, so that workshop was presided over by the fabulous and talented and beloved Peter Aguero. When Peter first told me about the story, he said, “You've got to hear Charlie and you've got to consider him for the showcase. Not only because he's so fabulous, but precisely because his story recognizes and celebrates this precious and surprisingly brief period in history between Stonewall and the onset of the AIDS crisis.” And he said, “It was really a total of maybe 15 years.” When you think about it was this period of the excitement of opening up, the excitement of being more public, the excitement of exploration and he has such a beautiful way of saying it. 

Catherine: [00:18:42] You can hear more of my interview with Larry at our website, themoth.org. 

In a moment, we'll hear about a woman who was forced to come out to her family three separate times on two different continents. 

[Quand on n’a que l’amour by Jacques Brel] 

Jay: [00:19:14] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic public media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.

Catherine: [00:19:24] This is The Moth radio hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our next storyteller is also from The MothSHOP Community Education Program. Here's Dana Stallard, live at The Moth. 

[cheers and applause] 

Dana: [00:19:42] My mom found out that she wasn't able to have her own biological children when she married my dad, and so they decided to adopt me and my older sister from Korea when we were babies. I was raised in upstate New York in a small town, and I grew up in a white neighborhood and went to predominantly white schools. I remember going back and forth between really hating the fact that I was forced into this white world and also wanting so badly to blend in that I almost thought that I was white myself. And so, I surrounded myself with white friends, and I dated white guys, one of whom which told me one time that he didn't consider us to be in an interracial relationship, because apparently, he didn't think that skin color was important. 

And so, I went away to college. At the end of my junior year there, I met this woman named Cynthia. Cynthia was super confident who she was. She was also born and raised in Brooklyn, which made her even cooler to me from upstate New York. At first, I felt like I just admired her and I wanted to be like her. And pretty quickly I realized that I actually wanted to be with her. And so, we started dating. I told my friends about the relationship, and they were really shocked, and almost to the point of being resistant. They told me things like, “Well, you can't be gay. You've never had a girlfriend before. You can't be gay. You've always dated boys.” And my favorite, which I still get, is “You can't be gay. You don't look gay at all.” [audience laughter]

And so, I go home that summer. Its college break, and I want to tell my mom about the relationship. So, I go into her room and she's reading at nighttime, and I take this big breath, and I say all at once, “Mom, I think that I might be gay.” My mom turns to me and she says, in the iciest you can imagine, “What do you mean you think you might be gay?” I backtrack I get nervous. I explained to her I met this woman, “She's named Cynthia. She's really cool. I think I want to be in a relationship with her and see where it goes.” But my mom just basically hears me ranting and thinks that I'm the most selfish person in the world and that I'm trying to ruin her life. 

After what seems like hours of my mom yelling at me, telling me that I'm a horrible person, telling me that I'm most likely going to get AIDS, and that I am going to end up looking like a man because of this relationship. [audience laughter] I go to bed that night and I'm trying to fall asleep, but I obviously am really worked up. I hear my mom outside my bedroom door, and she's muttering under her breath, which is what she does when she gets really irritated. And she says just loud enough for me to make out, “You are not my daughter.” 

And so, if I look back on my mom's reaction to my coming out and try to make some sense of it, I can see where she's coming from a little bit. Because in high school, my older sister struggled severely with addiction, and she was diagnosed with a slew of mental illnesses, including borderline personality disorder. My mom felt this lack of connection with her and gave up on the relationship at one point. She looked at me to be her golden child, her perfect daughter. And for my mom, the perfect daughter was not going to be gay. 

And so, I woke the next morning and I tried to talk to my mom, but she basically ignored me. And if she did have to answer me, she would be passive aggressive and hostile towards me. I decided that I could not live like that, even though it only been a day of my mom reacting to me like that. So, I left home. Before I went, I left this letter from my mom. And I said, “You know, mom, I'm totally wrong about myself. I made the whole thing up. I was confused. I just missed my ex-boyfriend, and I'm really sorry that I upset you.” 

When I get home later that night, my mom is so happy that I left that letter for her. She's relieved. She thanks me for writing it and for being honest with myself, and she says, “I knew that you weren't gay after all.” And so, I told her that I broke up with Cynthia, but I actually stayed with her. We kept the relationship a secret for as long as we stayed together, which was a few years after that, through college and graduate school. But as much as I loved her and as much as she loved me back, we were just really struggling. I was fading as a person. I was trying so hard to figure out who I was, but having to keep this huge secret from my family was obviously bringing me down. And their message to me was clearly that being gay was not okay. 

So, I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into this depression. And in graduate school, Cynthia and I broke up, and I felt like I just hit rock bottom. I remember being really far away from home, not feeling like I had anyone to talk to about it. I pick up the phone one night, and I call Suicide Hotline. The woman who picks up the phone does not want to talk to me. [audience laughter] She is just trying to get me off the phone with her. She's impatient, and she's dismissive, and clearly lacking some training. [audience laughter] So, I hang up the phone. 

The next person that I call is my mom. And at that point, I've lost it. I'm sobbing. I feel like I have nothing else left to lose. And so, as I'm sobbing to my mom on the phone, she can barely make out what I'm trying to say. I tell her to put my dad on the phone. And he gets on the phone, and for the second time, I come out to my family. And my mom says, “You know, of course, Dana, we're going to accept you. We understand that you feel this way about yourself.” 

But in the meantime, she completely dismisses everything that I've been through for the last three years, because she says she's never reacted that way the first time. She says she would never say that I wasn't her daughter, and she says that she would never react with such hatred towards me. And so, in my mind, she's basically telling me that the last three years of my life that were filled with this loneliness and depression didn't really exist. 

So, I hang up the phone with my parents, and I know that they accept me. But I also know that we can never go back from that point, and that my relationship, at least with my parents at that time, would never be the same. 

In the middle of all this, something really crazy also happens to me. I'm away in graduate school, and my birth mother in Korea does a search for me. She wants to reconnect with me and see how I'm doing, see if I'm happy. I remember my mom telling me this news and everybody being really excited for me. My mom, my friends, they're like, “This is so awesome. This never happens. Your birth mother's doing a search for you and not the other way around.” I just feel really numb. Everything's fuzzy when you're in a depressed state. I didn't even understand what was really going on. But I knew that no matter what, this stranger who was my birth mother would never really know me and probably never really accept who I was. 

And so, I get the letter in the mail, and I do write back to her. We keep up some correspondence over the next couple of years. But I don't feel that invested in the relationship. I don't think that I'm ever going to be honest with her about who I am. I'm never going to see her. She lives all the way in Korea. So, I graduate from school. I move back home to try to find a job. I get this call from the adoption agency, and they're offering me this trip to go to Korea to travel with other adoptees and learn about my birth culture and learn the language, take classes at the university. I freak out, because I've never traveled anywhere, especially by myself and that's far away. I also have this paralyzing fear that when I go there, I'm going to have to go back in the closet, because it's Korean culture, and it's very homophobic to live there as a gay person. 

But I decide that I want to go on this trip. There's something in me that's really curious about my birth country and where I come from. And right about a week before I was about to leave, I get a call from the adoption agency saying, “Hey, guess what? While you're there, your birth mother would like to meet you.” And so, they told her that I was traveling to Korea, and she really wanted to reconnect with me after 23 years of never even seeing each other or meeting or anything. 

So, I meet my birth mother the third week into my trip in Korea in the summer of 2009. It's not just my birth mother that I meet. I meet my three birth sisters, two of their spouses, their children, and my birth brother. I'm sitting in this adoption agency, and they all come rushing in. They come pouring towards me. My birth mother runs up to me, and she grabs my arm, and she just starts sobbing, and she says over and over again, “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry,” in Korean. The translator tells me what she's saying, and she's crying. 

And that first day when I met them, they take me out to a Korean department store, they pick out this Korean dress for me and Korean shoes. [audience laughter] They take me in the dressing room, and they actually dress me up as if I were a little child again. [audience laughter] On the car ride on the way to the department store, I'm sitting in the back seat with my birth mother, and I put my hand down in the seat between me, and she puts hers down next to me. I see that we have the exact same hands, and I see how warm they are towards me and how much they embrace me. But I feel deep down like they're not going to accept who I am. 

The first question that my oldest birth sister asks me when she meets me is, “Do you have a boyfriend?” At that point, I certainly don't have a boyfriend. I'm actually back together with Cynthia, and I just tell her no and I feel like shut down in a way. So, I really had this beautiful time meeting them, but I left that trip feeling like this sense of being defeated, that no matter what, I just couldn't tell them who I was. And so, I get back home, and Cynthia actually proposes to me shortly after I return, and we end up getting married. It's a really, really happy time in my life, except that there's this chunk missing. I realize that the chunk is that I'm out to everybody in my life, I'm comfortable, I'm confident, but I'm not out to my birth family. I do want a relationship with them, but I'm so scared that I will lose this family that I just met for the first time. But I know that I need to do it for myself. 

So, I sit down with Cynthia, and we pick out some wedding photos to send. I decide to write this letter to Hee Kyung, who is my oldest birth sister, because she is able to speak and write some English, and I want her to translate the letter for the rest of my birth family. And so, we sit down. I put these photos in an envelope. I hand write this letter painstakingly. I look up all these words in the Korean Google dictionary, and I put the letter in the mail. And for the third time, it's like I'm coming out to my family again. 

A few days pass, I want to just kind of delay what I think is going to be the inevitable rejection of my birth family. I'm really surprised. And just a couple days after I put the letter in the mail, there's an email from Hee Kyung, who's my oldest birth sister, in my inbox. So, I sit down and I kind of brace myself for what's to come. I open the email and she says, “Congratulations on your wedding.” She tells me that the wedding photos are absolutely beautiful, and she's so glad that I found the person that I love. 

And then, Hee Kyung tells me that she considers us to be the same. It turns out that my sister, my birth sister in Korea, is also in a relationship with a woman who she wants to spend the rest of her life with. And so, she translates the letter to the rest of my family. And although my birth mother still needs a little bit of time with my news, because she's not completely comfortable with it, my birth sister tells me that we are the same. And for now, I feel like that's all I really need. 

[cheers and applause] 

Catherine: [00:31:35] That was Dana Stallard. We met Dana in a workshop we did with a group called Also Known As, a non-profit organization that offers social, educational, and community building programs and activities for international adoptees. Dana is a social worker at a Transfer High School on Coney Island. 

How are you supposed to react when minutes before your third colon surgery? Your doctor tells you that he knows you had complications with the first two operations and so they are going to be “extra careful” this time. We'll hear about that when we come back. 

[Move in the Light by Two Tone Shoe]

Jay: [00:32:27] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. 

Catherine: [00:32:38] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns from The Moth. 

Our last story is from Andy Borowitz. Andy has been a Moth host and storyteller since way back in the day. He told this story at our annual collaboration with the World Science Festival. A warning to listeners, if you're squeamish about intestines in a medical context, you might want to rejoin us in 10 minutes or so. Here's Andy Borowitz, live at the mall. 

[cheers and applause] 

Andy: [00:33:08] So, last fall, my wife Olivia and I are getting ready to go to a party, but I'm not really feeling up to it. I've been feeling crappy the last few days. I've had these weird stomach pains and bloated. I look like I'm in my third trimester. I've been constipated, which is weird for me, I've got to say. I just got to tell you this, I am very regular, okay? [audience laughter] I know that sounds like bragging. [audience laughter] But as we age, we wear that like a badge of honor, [audience laughter] so I just say that. 

So, Olivia calls the health insurance hotline that we've got and talks to a nurse, and she runs down my symptoms from the nurse. And then, the nurse asks her to ask me, “When was the last time that you passed gas?” I realized at this point that my record keeping on this is terrible. [audience laughter] So, she asks, “Well, was it in the last 24 hours?” And I think about it, and I'm like, “No, I don't think so.” And so, then the nurse says to Olivia, “You've got to get him to an emergency room within the next six hours.” 

So, we go to the emergency room, and we check in at the triage unit, which I've got to say, is not a reassuring name for a unit at all. [audience laughter] It's like the worst thing to call a unit, in a way. The intake nurse, first question she asked me is, she said, “Can you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10?” And I say, “6,” which is a huge mistake. Because at that point, an immediate sense of calm and relaxation sets in over my case. They busied themselves with the people who said 7 through 10. That's just the way it works. 

So, it takes a couple of hours. They finally X-ray me, and I'm taken to an examining room, and a doctor comes in. And this doctor is 12. [audience laughter] I feel like I'm being waited on at the Apple store. [audience laughter] I've got this big belly, and I say to him, “Doctor--” [audience laughter] I say, “What's up with this?” And he says, “Well, my diagnosis is distention.” [audience laughter] And I said, “You mean my stomach is distended?” And he said, “That's correct.” And I'm like, “Well, clearly, I'm not dealing with Dr. House here, you know?” [audience laughter] But he orders a CAT scan, and I go through that. And then for the next couple of hours or so, a bunch of other doctors come into the room. 

Disturbingly, each time a new doctor comes in, he's slightly higher on the medical hierarchy at the hospital. So, I'm pretty sure the next person who comes in is going to be Hippocrates, [audience laughter] the Father of Medicine. But finally, a guy comes in with a CAT scan results, and he is a surgical resident. Now, the only word that's worse than triage is surgical, because you know that something bad is about to happen. He says, “Well, we have good news in a way, which is, we know what's wrong with you.” And I said, “Well, what is it?” And he says, “Your colon is twisted. And this is something called a sigmoid volvulus.” I know a lot of you already know what that means, since this is the scientists and all that. 

Basically what it means is that the colon has formed a knot, and nothing's going in and nothing's coming out. It's like midtown. [audience laughter] Now, my wife Olivia, is a former journalist. She has a knack for asking the perfect question that just gets right to the truth of the matter. So, she asks, “Is he in danger?” And the doctor says, “Yes.” [audience laughter] Now, I should probably say at this point that at this point in time, Olivia and I have been married for nine months. These have been the happiest nine months of my life. And just being with her has erased all the sadness of all the years leading up to this. And during those nine months, many times I've said to myself, “Life is so awesome right now. It would take something really freaky to fuck this up.” [audience laughter] 

So, I say to the doctor, “What's next?” And he says, “Well, we have two options. And the first option is one we'd rather not do,” which is, he said, “Emergency surgery. We go in, we cut out the part of the colon that's twisted, and then we sew the two ends back together. And the reason this is not a good option is because, as you can imagine, the colon is a very contaminated part of the body. When you do emergency surgery in those conditions, the chances of an infection and then sepsis setting in are pretty high, and that will kill you.” 

So, I said, “Well, what's the other option?” He said, “Well, the other option is that we take a colonoscopy tool with a camera on the end, and we just use it as a tool, and we stick it up your rectum, and we try to manually untwist your colon. And if this works, we will then spend the next couple days in the hospital just flushing out your system, getting your colon nice and sterile. And then, on Friday, we'll do that operation, but it'll be under sterile, optimal conditions, and you'll be good to go.” [audience laughter] So, I'm like, “Shove the camera up my ass. Let's go.” [audience laughter] 

So, they do it, and thank God it works. They untwist my colon. I check into the hospital. I'm in a room. They spend the next couple days flushing out my system, and by Friday, my colon is clean as a whistle. It's unbelievable. I go in for the surgery, and miraculously, the surgery goes exactly as planned. Perfect. So, I'm in my room and I'm recovering, and for the first time, I meet my surgeon who's to going perform this on me. He's a very nice gentleman named Dr. Ho. And Dr. Ho speaks perfect English, but he's chosen to speak it in this very abbreviated, clipped fashion, like Confucius on Twitter. [audience laughter] That's the only way I can describe it. Everything is like four characters, and then he's out. 

So, I asked him like, “So, when you got in there, what did you do to my colon?” And he said, “Remove two feet.” They took out two feet of my colon. And I'm thinking, that's a lot of colon to be removed. And I said, “Why so much?” And he said, “Colon was redundant.” [audience laughter] And that is the extent of my conversation with Dr. Ho. He's out. He's out to tweet some more to somebody else. [audience laughter] So, it's awesome. Olivia takes me home, and we're feeling like we really dodged a bullet. But then, I get home, and I'm not feeling so great. I'm feeling chills and shivers. I get into bed, and I pull up the sheets all the way to my chin, like I'm a little kid home from school. I'm feeling bad. 

Then I notice that every time I sit up, I vomit. This gets worse and worse until-- I know some of us vomit occasionally, but this is continuous vomiting. It's like, I've just seen a Matthew McConaughey movie or something. [audience laughter] It's just uncontrollable. And so, we know something is majorly fucked up. So, Olivia takes me back to the hospital, and we go back to the emergency room, and I get back to the triage unit, and the nurse there says, “Can you rate your pain from 1 to 10?” And I am like, “10, motherfucker,” [audience laughter] which turns out to be the correct answer, by the way, for future reference. 

So, they take my vitals. I am so dehydrated from all this vomiting that my heart rate at rest is like a 120. My blood pressure is just plummeting to the floor, and I'm in a state of dehydration, which is known as organ failure. My organs are now failing. So, they strap me to a gurney, they put an IV in me, they start pumping me with fluids. They thread a tube up my nose and down my throat to start pumping all the bile out of my stomach. And just quarts of bile are coming out of me. I'm on there, and they give me an emergency X-ray of my abdomen. And then, with the X rays, a few minutes later, Dr. Ho appears again. [audience laughter] He explains to me that when they sewed up the two parts of my colon, apparently somehow it sprung a leak. My colon is now currently leaking into the rest of my abdomen. They can identify gas in the vicinity of my liver, which is not really where it's supposed to be. 

And I say, “Well, so, are we going to do that thing where we flush out my body for a couple of days and then we get things nice and clean and then you operate?” And he said, “No, we don't have that option here. We've got to do emergency surgery.” Exactly what we were trying to avoid the last week, “Because this can kill you.” So, I can see Olivia has one of those journalistic questions coming on, but this time, she takes one of the residents outside of the room and asks this question out of my earshot. She comes back into the room, and I can see that there are tears in her eyes. I say to her, “Did you get some bad news?” And she just says, “I just love you so much.” And I'm like, “I am fucked.” [audience laughter] Like, “Just bring in the rabbi right now, because [audience laughter] I am so over. I am so over.”

But I can tell that she's really very upset and she's falling apart, and so, I call out for a nurse and I said, “Nurse, can we have a tranquilizer for my wife? She really needs something.” [audience laughter] But it's what the resident has told her, and she hasn't told me. The resident has said, “With this kind of surgery, the odds of surviving it are about 50%. That's about what you got.” So, they wheel me into surgery, and three hours later, magically, I awake. So, I know that I've somehow survived this. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

That's not exactly a spoiler I'm here, right? I mean, come on. [audience laughter] You weren't following this very closely. [audience laughter] All right. So, I'm recovering, and there again appears Dr. Ho. He explains to me what they've done to me, which is that they've wrapped up my colon where they think the leak was, and they wanted to make it absolutely tight. So, what they've done, they're taking no chances this time. They're going to give the colon a few months to heal. And the way they're doing that is they have diverted my digestive tract elsewhere. I’m like, “What is that? Like, “When you close the upper roadway on the GWB. I mean, what does this mean?” 

What this means is they have taken out part of my small intention. It is now currently emptying out into something called an ileostomy. Dr. Ho has literally torn me a new asshole. [audience laughter] So, I'm like getting this bad news. He says, he tweets to me, “Only three months. Only three months.” Then they do a reversal surgery at the end of three months, they put your small intestine back in, and you're good to go. So, we go home, we've got three months to live with this thing. I'm getting to the gross part. [audience laughter] I'm feeling like at this point that I've totally done a bait and switch on this poor girl. Because nine months earlier, when we got married, I was healthy and robust. And now, I'm totally broken down. 

I look at myself in the mirror, I have lost 25 pounds. I've got supermodel legs, and I look like a scarecrow. So, we go back to Dr. Ho. And now, we get the first good news of this whole story, which is, he says, “You have something called a prolapsed stoma. That means we have to move up your reversal surgery by a month.” So, I remember checking into the hospital, lying on the operating room table, and I'm about to go under anesthesia, and Dr. Ho is there, and he looks me in the eye, and he says the longest single sentence he's said to me since this whole thing began, he says, “Look, I know you've had a lot of complications with these first two surgeries, so I'm going to be extra careful this time. [audience laughter] You got to love that learning curve, you know? No more boozing up in the OR. We're going to focus. We're going to focus.” [audience laughter] 

Well, obviously, I made it. As some people of you have figured out, I made it. I survived. [audience laughter] I'm here. But before I go, I need to get to the part of the story where I tell you what life lessons my colon has taught me. I'm going to write a book about this called Tuesdays with my Colon, where I just [audience laughter] go over those life lessons. But here's the thing. I was always the kind of guy who went through life and said, “Life is precious, and you got to make the most of every minute.” But I've got to say, “You don't really believe that or know it or feel it until your life is almost taken away from you, and that is totally true.”

And so, now, what I do every morning when I get up, I do two things. I'm still in bed, I look out the window, and I look at the city, the beautiful city, and the sun coming up over the city, and I check that out, and then I look in the other direction, and I look at my beautiful wife sleeping next to me, and I realize at that moment that I've got today and I have everything. Thank you very much. 

[cheers and applause] 

Thank you. Thank you.

Catherine: [00:48:55] That was Andy Borowitz. Andy is a New York Times bestselling author whose satirical news column, The Borowitz Report, can be read at the New Yorker website. He adapted the story into the memoir An Unexpected Twist, which Amazon named the best kindle single of 2012. 

To share any of the stories you've heard in this hour, go to themoth.org, where you can send a link to your friends and family, so they can stream any Moth story for free. The stories are also available at the iTunes store. You can find The Moth on Facebook and on Twitter, @themoth. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll listen next time. 

[The Twist by Hand Ballard 

[Uncanny Valley by The Drift] 

Jay: [00:49:42] Your host this hour was The Moth's artistic director, Catherine Burns. Catherine also directed the stories in the show along with Larry Rosen. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss-Berman and Brandon Hector. 

Special thanks to Joshua Wolf Shenk and MothSHOP story instructors, Peter Aguero, Cindy Freeman and [unintelligible 00:50:08]. 

Moth stories are true is 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 Horace Silver, Jacques Brel, Two Ton Shoe, and Hank Ballard. 

The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Viki 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 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.