Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan: [00:01:35] [crowd noise] Welcome to The Moth podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This week we've got a great episode of The Moth Radio Hour for you here on the podcast. We had a great show at Town Hall. Here are stories from Lynn Ferguson, Simon Doonan and Kemp Powers, so enjoy.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift playing]
Jay: [00:02:02] From PRX this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show and in this hour, we bring you a live Moth event from Town hall in New York City. The theme of the evening was “You are here: Stories of lefts and rights.” [crowd murmuring] The host is Adam Gopnik from Adam has been a writer for the New Yorker since 1986. He's the author of the books Paris to the Moon, Through the Children's Gate, and The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food. On stage at The Moth, here's Adam Gopnik.
[applause]
Adam: [00:02:43] Welcome. Our stories tonight are all stories of lefts and rights, that's our theme. And in every time, we do a Moth program, what we do is ask people a question. We ask all of our storytellers a question, and then we see how they respond to it. And let me start the evening of confession and comedy and complicity with one of the most wonderful of Moth storytellers, Simon Doonan.
[cheers and applause]
And when I asked Simon-- yes, indeed. And when I asked Simon the question and the question, we decided to ask all of our stories tellers tonight is “If you could be somewhere else tonight rather than here, where would it be?” And Simon told me that he would rather be home in bed with Liberace. [applause] Who is his Norwich terrier. Would you welcome, please, Simon Doonan.
[cheers and applause]
Simon: [00:03:53] It's 2003, and The Devil Wears Prada hits the bookstores. I try reading it and find quickly that I would really rather prefer having sex with a dead relative. [audience laughter] So, here's my issue, I've been in the fashion world a long time, and what's great about fashion is that it's a refuge for very eccentric, quirky people, idiosyncratic people, outliers, gypsies, super freaks, hello. So, all of these people seemed completely missing from this book. Instead of all these creative people, there were sort of a lot of careerist bimbos in high heels.
And the Anna Wintour character, the editor in chief, seemed like this cartoony, cantankerous, coat-flinging caligula. [audience laughter] And really, Anna Wintour is not that like that at all. She's actually a den mother for all the creative outliers and people that she's put around her.
So anyway, two years later, my phone rings, and it doesn't ring very often, but I pick it up. A voice says, “Hello, we're casting a major motion picture, The Devil Wears Prada, and we want you to audition for the role of Nigel.” [audience laughter] Mysteriously, all my disdain for the book just [audience laughter] melts, like so much Velveeta, and I grab my dog, Liberace, and I say to him, “This is incredible. We're going to claw our way to the top. This is going to be unbelievable. We've made it.” And he gives me this slightly skeptical look, and I said, “Oh, okay, fair enough. Well, at the very least, it will be a righting of wrongs.” If the book didn't have the freaky super freaks like the film would because of moi.
So now, did I have any misgivings about being able to act? Of course not. [audience laughter] Movie acting always seemed to me a complete doddle. I mean, no offense, Meryl, Brad, George, all of you, academy Award wins, no offense, but I really think anyone could do it. Just standing, hitting your mark over and over again with a lot of makeup on. It's not like doing King Lear one night and then Othello the next stage acting, that would take a bit of effort, but movie acting, hello, that's why children are so good at it, anyone can do it [audience laughter].
I did have one teensy weensy misgiving. The character of Nigel in the book is a sort of helpful homo. He's a soothing presence, he's a problem solver, he gives good advice, I never had-- this was going to be an effort for me because I'm just not a helpful homo [audience laughter] and people often ask me for advice and I just give horrible advice, like they want help with their appearance and I always tell them something like, “Just get a blue stripper wig and wear a monocle or a Miss Marple cape.” Or if they want beauty tips, I say, “Just run home and plunge your breasts into ice cold water.” [audience laughter] Like my advice giving, I'm not helpful. I never was. I could never be on that show Queer Eye for the whatever. But I thought, it's just a film, I can channel a bit of helpfulness.
And so, the day before the audition, I called my dad, my 80-year-old dad in England, and I said, “You're never going to believe what's happened. I'm auditioning for a movie opposite Meryl Streep.” And there was this pause on the phone and he said, “Wow.” He didn't say wow. Because he's English, he said, “Good heavens.” [audience laughter] He said, “Good heavens, if they called you, they must really be scraping the barrel. [audience laughter] What are they thinking?” And you know, he's always been the wind beneath my wing, so, I thought about his advice and he did have a point. I mean, what were they thinking calling somebody whose entertainment resume consists of three appearances on America's Next Top Model, one cameo on Gossip Girl, an endless catty bitchy talking head thingies on VH1. But putting these concerns aside, putting aside the concerns about my helpfulness, I went to bed early, woke up bright eyed, bushy tailed, arrived at the audition office embarrassingly early, and the casting director showed me in. And I did what I consider to be a pastiche riddled impersonation of a gay fashionista. I windmilled my arms about, there was a lot of physicality, a lot of sighing and zhushing and she ran towards me and she said, “You are incredible. You have to come back and meet the director immediately.” Wow. Lights, camera, action.
She handed me the script with all kinds of post its in it, learned these pieces of dialogue. So, I went home and set about the task of learning the dialogue. And the funny thing happened, like the long-complicated bits were really quite easy to learn. It was the short bits like “Hello, yes, I'd love to,” or “No, not today, thank you.” Those short sentences were oddly much harder to memorize. And I began to sort of empathize with Marilyn Monroe who first famously could not remember the line, “Hello, it's me Sugar.” And had to do 50 takes. And her name was Sugar, so she kept getting it wrong, “Hello, it's me Sugar.” [audience laughter] And they ended up writing this-- everyone says, well, she was like that, she was drunk or whatever, but I think it was just those little sentences are really hard and they ended up writing it on this chest of drawers, “Hello, it's me sugar.” Take 50, she got it right.
So, I go in to meet the director. Having learnt my script again embarrassingly early, I'm sort of channeling Barbara Stanwyck, who was very professional and nice to everybody on the set, and early. I thought, I'm not going to let Hollywood eat me alive. I'm going to be that celebrity, the one who's just totally professional. So, I go in and I knock it out of the park. I'm unbelievable. I milk the camera, I make love to the camera and the director is smiling from ear to ear. And after I finished, he said to me, “So, tell me about Anna Wintour, what is she really like?” And I said, “Well, she's nothing like the character in the book. She's actually very straightforward and incredibly fair. Very well-liked by her employees and is an incredible mother. Her children, have you met them? They're just exemplary.” And he'd already glazed over, this wasn't what he wanted to hear.
So, I think-- get out of the casting office. Well, you know, and obviously I've got the part. So I go, I'm leaving the casting office and I run smack into Phillip Bloch. Phillip, like me, is also a fashion commentator, a Telly Nelly, as it were. And he said to me, “Yes, I'm here to audition for the part of Nigel.” And I gave him a look like [audience laughter] take my part and I will cut you bitch, that was the look I gave. I didn't say it. And I was riding the limited stops bus home thinking this is the last time I'm going to be able to do this kind of stuff because I'll be famous and I won't be able to ride the bus. [audience laughter] So, I'm on the bus and I think Phillip's never going to get it because Nigel is English. So, I have such an advantage there with the accent and everything.
So, the next morning, I get up early, take Liberace out for a poop, and I run into Robert Verdi. Robert Verdi, another gay fashionista, amazing guy who tells me, “Yes, he's been auditioning for the part of Nigel.” So, I walk to the end of the block with Liberace’s poop in a little bag, which I very considerately knotted the top of the bag to put in the trash. And Liberace looks up at me and he gives me another one of his skeptical looks. And this time it's a look which says, “You've been had.” And as I dropped the poop into the receptacle, I thought, yeah, I think I might have been. And these dark suspicions were confirmed a couple of days later when it was announced that a straight actor, Stanley Tucci, would be playing the part of Nigel. Clearly, all these efforts were a piece of cunningly orchestrated unpaid research for some overpaid heterosexual Hollywood actor. [audience laughter]
So, the premiere rolls around after I've made the movie. No tickets are forthcoming, which is quite bizarre when you think of the massive contribution I've made to the movie in terms of research. Anna Wintour, in a gesture of exquisite magnanimity, shows up at the premiere. And where am I? I'm left on the corner of Hollywood and vine, clutching the shards of my broken dreams. But it's been five years, and tonight I'm asking myself, “What would Anna do?” Anna would put on her shades, pick up a Chanel bag and move on. And that's what I'm going to do. No, I'm really going to do it. I promise you. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Adam: [00:14:32] Simon Doonan.
[music playing]
Jay: [00:14:36] Writer, bon vivant, window dresser, and fashion commentator, Simon Doonan is the creative ambassador for Barneys New York and has worked in fashion for over 35 years. He's written five books, including his latest, Gay Men Don't Get Fat. And he writes a column for Slate entitled Notes from the Fashion Apocalypse. To share any of the stories you hear on The Moth Radio Hour, go to themoth.org where you can stream the stories for free and send the link to your friends and family. We'll be back in a moment with more stories from this live event at Town Hall in New York City.
The Moth is supported by brilliant earth offering diamond engagement rings and fine jewelry set with ethically sourced diamonds and a curated collection of vintage jewelry dedicated to eco-friendly practices and available at brilliantearth.com.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Jay: [00:16:07] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. [cheers and applause] You're listening to a live storytelling event held in New York City with theme “You are here.” Your host is Adam Gopnik.
[cheers and applause]
Adam: [00:16:21] Our next storyteller. When I asked him where he would rather be in the world tonight if he could be anywhere besides here, he said that he would like to be in São Paulo in Brazil, because Anthony Bourdain once said that it looks as though Los Angeles threw up on New York, [audience laughter] which is a distinguished thing. Would you welcome, please, Kemp Powers.
[cheers and applause]
Kemp: [00:16:54] I'm standing alone on a subway platform in the Carroll Garden section of Brooklyn. It's 1986 and I'm alone because I've just missed the doors closing on this particular F train. Now, by the time I realize my mistake, it's too late. The train starts moving and my eyes are trying to track the passing windows on the subway cars and I catch little glimpses of groups of kids who are riding in the empty spaces in between those cars. I suddenly hear this loud crack and turn around and look behind me and I see the D cell battery that just missed my head rolling to a stop. You see, the kids who are riding on the train are actually chucking batteries at the people standing on the platform. And by people, I mean me. [audience chuckle] So I cover my face, I duck low and I run as fast as I can for the exit, occasionally hearing more cracks as batteries zip by and ricochet behind me until eventually the train speeds out of the station.
On this day, none of them got me, and I'm relieved. But there's always going to be other days. It's amazing the things that we can train ourselves to become accustomed to. And growing up in what you have to describe as the battlefields of Brooklyn in the 1980s, I became accustomed to a lot. The sight of blood when it pours out of a gaping wound, the peculiar scent of cheap paint when it burns from one too many house fires. Some people say that enduring these experiences gives us character. And if that's the case, then by the time I was an adult, I was overflowing with character.
When my son was born, I remember holding him in my arms and thinking if through genetic osmosis we pass certain traits onto our children, then this boy was going to be ready for anything. But my son ended up surprising me in very different, unexpected ways. And I often found myself asking, just “Why is my son such a little bitch all the time?” [audience laughter] The whining, the quick descents into tears, these things were the fuel that fed the ass kicking’s the city streets delivered on a daily basis.
And my son is like that kid who didn't have the common sense not to let his mother drop him off right in front of school because he was afraid to take the subway. It's like that kid was almost asking for the rotten egg that was going to be thrown at his head later on in the day. And I have to admit, my son and I would not have been friends as children. [audience laughter] When he was younger, I found his soft but inquisitive nature really entertaining. When his preschool held their first mock presidential elections, my son was the only person who abstained from voting. [audience laughter] He said that he didn't want to ruffle any feathers. And I can't count how many times he's been on the losing end of some of the absolute worst schoolyard trades in all of West Los Angeles, where we live right now. Like the time that he traded away a brand-new gigantic Transformers robot for this torn up, worthless comic book.
So, at first, I blame California and its progressive learning. [audience laughter] Starting in preschool, it seems like there's no such thing as conflict resolution, because no one seems willing to acknowledge that kids are actually in conflict. Every child is required to call every other child my friend all the time. And “What do we do when my friend gouges me in the face?” The teacher asks. And I say, “Kick his ass,” but see, I can't say that out loud because that would make me a bad parent. The answer to the question is, “We asked my friend what I did that made him so angry,” and if that's not opening the door to a repeat offense. [audience laughter] I just don't know what is.
The only lessons I learned when I was a kid are in perseverance. You either silently endure, you break, or you fight back. And in reality, the only answer is to fight back. And my son never fights back. When someone takes something from him, he just cries himself into a puddle. And honestly, I was starting to worry if I was failing in my duties as a father, if I wasn't preparing him adequately for this harsh world, if he was just going to be plowed over. And it sure wasn't helping toughen him up that he spent his summers in camps that didn't do anything but arts and crafts and trips to Disneyland.
My summers were spent either sweltering in our apartment or, if I was really unlucky, on vacation down in North Carolina, where I spent my days fighting with the local hillbillies. [audience chuckle] My nights trying to build up the courage to go to the bathroom in an outhouse and having all of my snack foods rationed by my aunt. One chore completed got me one Cheez it Doodle. [audience laughter] And these weren't your typical chores. Making your bed is a requirement, not a chore. A chore would be like going out to a dark shed at night and having to clean off all the webs, scorpions and critters from a dilapidated old tractor. Or having to pick your body weight in corn or tomatoes. [audience laughter] And that's a lot of work for a damn Cheez Doodle, [audience laughter] but I did it. And it's a work my son has never had to do. His only chores are to clean his room and to spritz his pet frog. [audience laughter] And [giggles] I have no doubt that if I didn't actually miss the frog for him, that thing would die like within a week. And if I took away all his snack foods, he'd probably fall into such a depression that no one on a Paxil would pull him out of it. It’s, I’m sorry—[chuckles]
Yeah, so I blamed his white mother [laughter and applause] because after all, how could I explain my little caramel colored Woody Allen's seeming hypersensitivity to the entire world around him? I mean, there was no rabid, mangy animal that he didn't want to take home. And there was no deranged homeless person that we walked by that he couldn't engage in a heavy, involved conversation. I mean, when I was his age, I was completely oblivious to the kids outside world. You see, being New Yorkers, were perpetual renters that meant we moved around a lot. In theory, it's easy, but the reality is, being a single mom with four kids, moving is anything but easy. But my mom had a hard rule that she lived. When the drama reaches your front door, it's time to go. And sadly, the drama reached our front door a lot.
See, I had three much older sisters, but they were all about a year to a year and a half apart in age. This meant they all got to go to the same school at the same time. Now, having two relatives in one school could be called a family, but I think when you have three in one school, you have to call that a gang. This meant most trips outside of our cramped apartment either began or ended in fights with other neighborhood girls. And these fights got so common that it got to the point where they would actually ring our doorbell. And when my mother answered, they'd say politely, “Hello, Ms. Powers, is it okay if your daughter comes out to fight?” [audience laughter] But don't let the politeness fool you. I mean, these fights got really, really bad.
I remember one time my father brought my sister Stephanie home early from school. She'd been suspended for a week because she'd slashed up another girl's face with a razor blade. And don't act surprised, that was common back then because a girl could carry a razor comfortably all day in her mouth, in the space between her cheek and her tongue.
My son couldn't carry a razor in his mouth on his best day, as a matter of fact, he's already achieved what I call the mythical twofer. He's cut himself with safety scissors. [audience laughter] And he's managed to split open his eyebrow on a rounded edge free table [audience laughter]. And even if he could, I doubt he could handle the fallout from these Pyrrhic victories. Case in point, back when I was his age, I remember one morning, it was a Saturday morning, I was sitting in the living room watching my cartoons and eating a bowl of Apple Jacks. Someone, most likely the boyfriend of one of my sisters, too many enemies to count, flung a Molotov cocktail at our front door and it almost burned the whole building down. I remember the adults running around frantically and panicking as the smoke crept under the door, but I didn't move, I just sat there, kept eating my Apple Jacks and watched my cartoons. The fire department arrived, they doused the flames, and I hadn't moved. I remember actually being surprised the next morning when I left the apartment and the entire hall was completely black from the intense heat, which was covered in soot. All except one spot right by our front door where someone had actually written into the soot, “We know where you live, Ms. Powers. It's time to go.”
Years later, I'm sitting at my kitchen table with my son, and he's eating his favorite cereal, Honey Nut Cheerios. Only he hasn't finished the bowl. Instead, he's been collecting Band-Aids and he's gathering them into this big pile in the center of the table. I tell him it's just a field trip, and then nothing's going to happen to him [audience laughter] that requires this amount of medical supplies. [audience laughter] And he looks at me, puzzled. He says, “They're not for me, Dad. I need all this because if something happens to one of my friends, I need to be able to take care of them.” If something happens to one of my friends, I need to be able to take care of them. And it's at that point that I realized the error of my character assessment. You see, my son was a sweet boy. But after how I'd grown up, I couldn't process his sweetness as anything other than weakness. In scorning him for his obvious inability to flourish in the world that I knew, I totally miss the point that he was being guided through a world in which compassion and love were all around him as opposed to being lost on the edge of a fist, on the tip of a baseball bat or down the barrel of a gun.
See, I hope that in my life my son never knows what it's like to have his shoes stolen from off of his feet. I hope that he's never subjected to the humiliating ritual of having to go out to a tree and select the branch with which he's going to beaten. I don't want him to know the scent of gunfire and I don't want him to know the awful sound of someone dying in your arms. These are things I know. I still think my son and I wouldn't have been friends as children. I mean, how could we man? He couldn't have saved me. He couldn't have helped me strike out at those who hurt me. But I draw new comfort in knowing that our not having been friends wouldn't have been because of his inability to outsmart the vicious world we called home, but from my jealousy at his not having needed to. So, I help him gather all his Band-Aids up into his bag. And even though I know he's going to get grief for it from the other boys, on this day, I let him take his favorite stuffed animal to school too. [audience chuckle] Because what my son's known all along, and what I'm sadly just now learning, is that being kind and decent is nothing to be ashamed of. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Adam: [00:29:06] Kemp Powers, Kemp Powers.
Jay: [00:29:11] Kemp Powers is a writer, editor, playwright, author and occasional bird watcher. He's a resident playwright at Los Angeles award-winning Rogue Machine Theater Company. He's already worked on his new play, The Two Reds. All the stories you're hearing in this hour are available at the iTunes store. And you can find photos and web extras at themoth.org. You can also download The Moth app which is available for both iOS android. We'll be back in a moment with our final story from this live event in New York City.
Support for The Moth comes from Wells Fargo. Dedicated to the belief that small is huge. Wells Fargo is committed to neighborhoods, small businesses and the communities they serve. More information at wellsfargo.com/stories. Wells Fargo, together will go far.
[music playing]
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Jay: [00:31:46] [crowd murmuring] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. You're listening to a live Moth event in New York City where the audience gathered at Town Hall to listen to stories. The theme was “You are here stories of lefts and rights.” The evening was a celebration of the publication of The Moth's first book, 50 True Stories, which includes an introduction and a story by the host of this evening, Adam Gopnik.
[cheers and applause]
Adam: [00:32:16] A lot of people, actually I was seeing a lot of old friends who I hadn't seen for a while during intermission and a lot of them asked me about my son Luke because the story I have in the book is about texting with my son Luke when he was about 12 years old and I was led to believe that LOL meant lots of love [audience laughter] and that you should sign every text that you sent. When people were in a great deal of trouble and difficulty emotionally, [audience chuckle] you should sign it LOL, so they would be--
So, people were asking me how Luke is doing. And I'm glad to say Luke came home from college last night for the first time, and we were absolutely thrilled. It was like something from a World War II movie. Luke's home. Luke is home. [audience laughter] And he had been gone for 48 hours. [audience laughter] And the college he goes to is 30 minutes away, up the Hudson, but we couldn't get over it. We couldn't get over it because there's an asymmetry, an asymmetry built into the relationship of parents and children. We just give them every kind of love that we possibly can, and all we can reasonably expect in return is pity and tolerance. [audience laughter] That's the most you can expect. And if you think about it, that's exactly what at our best moments, we're able to give our best parents is pity and tolerance. [audience laughter]
And the amazing thing is, too, when he comes home 48 hours later, drops his laundry off and says, “I got to run. I'm meeting some people downtown.” You become your grandmother at that moment. You say, “No, it's fine. It's fine. I was making dinner. I was making your favorite spaghetti, [audience laughter] but go to Greenwich Village with your beatnik friends,” and you become your grandmother at that moment. And then you realize that your grandmother became your grandmother at that moment. And it marches on through the generations.
The thing I forgot to ask him, which we'd been meaning to ask him since he left for college on Saturday [audience laughter] was how everything in the apartment works, because we have absolutely no idea. [audience laughter] He took that information away with him. Every password for every piece of equipment in the house is completely opaque to us. We have no idea how to record a television program, how to get the printer to work. We have no idea what the WI-FI code is. The moment Luke left the house we were immediately thrust back into 1982, [audience laughter] when I was a grooming editor at a fashion magazine. And all we can do is play with colognes at night because we have no access to anything else in the house. We become like those people in the South Seas, the cargo cultists, who imagine that everything will work by magic if you just wait long enough, so we're completely in the dark in every way. But next time he comes home from college, next weekend, I hope it will be, [audience laughter] We'll ask him how you record programs on the television and be able to begin living again.
Fortunately, someone else asked me about our dog, Butterscotch, because I've written about our dog a little bit and how she's doing. And the good thing about dogs, I realized as they asked, is that they never pity you. Dogs don't. Dogs have made a simple deal 60,000 years ago. You give us food and we will never pity you at all. We'll just give you love and pry open your circles of compassion a little bit farther.
We've come, I'm sad to say, to our last storyteller. When I asked her where, if you could be anywhere in the world tonight, aside from here, in Town Hall, celebrating the New Year with your fellow storytellers, she said she would like to be. She would like to be with Lenny Kravitz, who she doesn't even know, in bed, watching movies, eating pizza and snuggling, [audience laughter] which is, curiously, how I often celebrate the New Year too. Will you welcome, please, Lynn Ferguson.
[cheers and applause]
Lynn: [00:36:42] Hi. Oh, come on. Who wouldn't want to be snuggling with Lenny Kravitz? [audience chuckle] So, this accent is Scottish, if you're wondering, I'm not actually from Scotland. I'm really from Westchester [audience laughter] and I just put on this to give me the edge, not really. No edge, no Lenny. Anyway, a friend of mine is Bosnian and he married a Serbian and together they had a child. They had to flee their country because their child, being of mixed race was in danger by just being. They called their son Trim, which means courage. My friend said he called his son courage because he fell as soon as the child was born. And that he'd lost all of his own courage and that anything that he'd fought for in his previous life had gone. And now he'd fight for nothing but the life of that child.
I've thought about that a lot since I've had my son. About the things that I've lost. I thought that maybe I should have called him dress sense or whole night’s sleep. [audience laughter] Or the ability to watch a grownup movie the whole way through. Then I settled for peace of mind. I was 37 when I first fell pregnant. I mean, I didn't-- You know what? I didn't fall pregnant. There wasn't some incident with a sidewalk and a flip flop. I did stuff. I got pregnant. I was 37, you understand? But the point is, I'd lived a bit, but suddenly, after 20 years of self-imposed hedonism, I found myself unable to smoke, unable to drink alcohol and taking a little sabbatical from patty, caffeine and soft cheese. The discovery wasn't the kind of romantic one you get in black and white movies. I had been touring France on the back of a motorcycle with my husband when I started to feel a bit unwell. Now a word of advice, if you're feeling sick, right, don't do it 80 miles an hour, leather pants one end, crash helmet in the other in a country where they eat snails because they can.
So, we arrive back home, my husband decides he wants some takeout food. I have this bizarre thing where I want to do a pregnancy test, it's positive. So, my husband arrives back with his little brown paper bag to be greeted with the immortal phrase, “Put your curry down, sweetheart. [audience laughter] Something really big I have to tell you.” You know, I've heard it said that you feel most like a woman when you're pregnant. It's complete rubbish, it's not so, I felt most like a beached whale. [audience laughter] And it's like a completely bizarre thing because you suddenly find yourself entirely responsible for this other person, and this other person has only got you. And so even though the two of you are together like 24 hours a day, it's not like you can just go to a bar and have a discussion about it.
But before I got pregnant, my greatest fear about getting run down by a car was that I wouldn't be wearing matching underwear. But after I got pregnant, the whole idea of getting run over by a car took on a whole different meaning. Never mind the eating for two, it's the kind of thinking for two that wears you out. There was a lot of difficulty around my pregnancy, firstly because I was 37. Now, 37 is considered quite an old age to be having your first child. So, anybody here who's 36 and thinking about becoming a parent, get your skates on. So, in fact, in the medical profession they define it as clinical geriatric and I am not even joking, right? So almost as soon as everybody agreed that I was technically in the family way, they decided that I should have an amniocentesis. Now, an amniocentesis is like an invasive test. They put a needle into the fluid here, the amniotic fluid, and it can tell you whether the baby has Down syndrome or not. But there's also a 1% risk that it will cause damage to the fetus or the fetus will miscarry.
Now, you see, I'm like, totally not against risk. I think it's a matter of choice. And I like risk and I'm completely and utterly pro-choice, but there was no way to me that I figured that they were going to do it, you know, I mean, it wasn't the baby's fault that I was 37, that was entirely on me. That was my decision. So, I was like, “No.” But at every appointment it would come up about the amniocentesis. And so, I started, initially, I would kind of deal with it. You know, that way when you don't want to have coffee with someone, when you go, “Oh, dare the amniocentesis. We'll do. I can't do it this week, though. [audience laughter] Maybe next week maybe. Oh, no, my mother's coming, no, I can't do that.”
But as they became more insistent about it, I kind of felt I had too. So, I was like, “Can this test tell me whether this child will be a jerk? [audience laughter] Can your test tell me whether this kid is going to be one of those really screamy ones that annoys the hell out of everybody on airplanes? Can your test tell me whether this small, tiny growing human being will mature into a fully grown adult who has some horrific affinity with Peruvian pan flute music?” [audience laughter] Do you know what I mean? Because I'm worried about Down syndrome, I’m hands up, but I'm pregnant and I'm worried about a lot of things, so thanks very much and everything, but no.
Then came the 20-week scan. We were told we were having a boy. Then the ladies scanning the baby said that my son had statistically a very large head. I looked across at my husband for the first time, I swear, noticing his statistically large head. [audience laughter] I silently cursed love for being blind. She told me I was 37, I knew that. Then scanning the baby's head, she said there were choroid plexus cyst all down one side of the baby's brain. Okay, that wasn't really something I was expecting. We were told that everything was going to be fine in that way when you just know it's not. And we had to wait for a specialist.
So, the specialist we went to see, she told us we were having a boy. We knew that. She told me I was 37. I know. She said the baby had a statistically large head. [audience laughter] Then she said that the choroid plexus cysts were a problem. We'd kind of guessed that. And then scanning the baby again, she said that there was a vessel missing on the umbilical cord. She said we needed to do the test, but because I'd waited so long, they didn't want to do an amnio, they wanted to do something called a Cordial, which is pretty much the same brand as an amnio. They insert a big needle into the womb and they take a little bit off the umbilical cord and that can tell them what's going on with the baby.
Now, this is an umbilical cord, right? That they have just told me isn't fully functioning. We didn't even need a discussion for the decision. I was like, okay, right. The Down syndrome thing, it's not exactly what we planned, okay. And I know it's going to be difficult, probably for us and for him in ways that I don't even know yet, but actually, personally, I think there are worse things than being Down syndrome. I mean, being down syndrome doesn't mean you're a bad person, does it? So, I said no. But then that's when they told me that Down syndrome was off the table. And what we were talking about now was Edwards, a syndrome that means the baby will either die in the womb or within the first year of life.
You know what? [scoffs] We'd had so many scans, and I'd seen my son. I'd seen his heart, seen the inside of his eyes. I'd seen his hands and his feet. And in fact, during one of the scans, he'd held his hand out to the front of my body as if to say, “Will you go away? I'm busy. Do not disturb.” I'd felt my son move inside my body. Do you know what? What did it matter whether he had a disorder or not and if he was going to die? We're all going to die, right? So, we should meet first.
[00:47:23] It was my son, and he needed me. He was depending on me to make the right decision, so I said no. We had no choice but to change hospitals. After they offered me a termination at 25 weeks. It became really clear that they wanted to win a battle, and I just wanted to see my boy. At precisely 35 weeks and five days, my son decided it was time to be born. My husband drove us to the hospital in our car, neither of us talking about what lay ahead. The conversation made up of the same four phrases. “Are you okay?” “Yep.” “You do know I love you?” “Yep.” The birth process was the true definition of laborious. My husband waited and gave me water and held my hand. And the midwives were brilliant. They were really patient and reassuring. “It would be okay,” they said. Everything was really early, but it would be okay. I have no idea how long labor lasted, but eventually, after one final push, my son appeared, shot out in fact, doing a kind of handbrake turn on the table as he did so he was purple in color, and my husband cut the cord. But whereas before there had been noise and bustle and shouting, suddenly there was silence. It was like the whole world had gone underwater.
[00:49:05] The door burst open and people in white coats came in. They bundled my son over onto a metal table where they hurriedly tried to resuscitate him. I had failed my son. [scoffs] He was depending on me and I had failed him. And the whole world was underwater. Then suddenly he choked, gagged, coughed up something and started to breathe. And the people in the white coats wandered off. And with my husband standing next to me, they handed me my son. He was perfect. [chuckles] “Fine,” they said, “He's absolutely fine.” [audience laughter]
[00:50:13] My son looked up at me. He was curious. He was amazing. I was so, so very tired. He looked up at me as if to say, “Whew. That was all a bit of a trial.” [audience laughter] So, so very sleepy. “I am so glad you're here,” I said. My son is 10 years old now and he's still perfect some of the time. [audience laughter] And like his father, he still has a statistically large head. [audience laughter] And I haven't seen my Bosnian friend for such a long time, but I often wonder how he's getting on in his self-imposed exile. I called my son Fergus. In Irish, it means the right choice, but it has a different meaning in Scottish, it means courage too. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Adam: [00:51:41] Lynn Ferguson. Lynn Ferguson.
Jay: [00:51:50] Scottish writer and performer Lynn Ferguson is a self-confessed mongrel of the arts whose career spans TV, radio, film and stage. Trained as a classical actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, [music playing] Lynn has performed in all manner of places and contents herself in the knowledge that it's likely she will always best known as the voice of a plasticine chicken in the movie Chicken Run.
Remember, you can pitch us your own story. We listen to all the pitches and pick some to be told on the stage. Our number is 887-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-MOTH. You can leave your message there or visit themoth.org and record right on the web. You'll have about two minutes to tell us about your story. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio hour. We hope you'll join us next time and that’s the story from The Moth.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Your host this hour was Adam Gopnik. The stories in this show were directed by Catherine Burns and Meg Bowles. The rest of The Moth directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson. Production support from Kirsty Bennett, Jenna Weiss-Berman, and Brandon Echter. 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 Madonna, John Zorn and Brian Bowers. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts with help from Viki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And 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.
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Adam: [00:54:21] There you go, a full hour of stories, The Moth Radio Hour right here on The Moth Podcast. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Jay: [00:54:29] Support for The Moth comes from Wells Fargo. Dedicated to the belief that small is huge. Wells Fargo is committed to neighborhoods, small businesses and the communities they serve. More information at wellsfargo.com/stories. Wells Fargo, together will go far.
The Moth is supported by Brilliant Earth, offering diamond engagement rings and fine jewelry set with ethically sourced diamonds and a curated collection of vintage jewelry dedicated to ecofriendly practices and available at brilliantearth.com.
Dan: [00:55:03] Hey, a reminder for our listeners in Michigan. The Moth Mainstage is coming to East Lansing, Michigan. That's going to be Wednesday, May 28th. For tickets and for a list of all of our tour stops that are coming up, just visit themoth.org.
Female Speaker: [00:55:17] Our podcast host, Dan Kennedy is a writer and performer living in New York and author of the new novel American Spirit available now.
[applause]
Dan: [00:55:27] Thanks to all of you for listening and we hope you have a story-worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argot Studios in New York. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public @prx.org.