Host - Suzanne Rust

Suzanne Rust: [00:00:03] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Suzanne Rust, your host for this episode. 

They say to never meet your idols, but I'm not so sure. I mean, if you don't meet your idols, you might miss out on learning from the people you admire most. While working at The Moth, I've had the opportunity to meet some really cool people, humanitarians, astronauts, actors, authors and have all been gracious and kind, exactly the type of people I was hoping they'd be. Folks like Elizabeth Gilbert, Mike Birbiglia, André De Shields were all warm and friendly and met my expectations. On this episode of The Moth, we've got two stories about what happens when you actually meet your idol and all the messy emotions it brings up. 

First up is Harriett Jernigan, who told this at one of our open-mic StorySLAMs in San Francisco. Here's Harriet, live at The Moth. 

[cheers and applause] 

Harriett: [00:00:53] It was 1994. I was in charge of the poetry section at the Midnight Special, this bookstore in Santa Monica that was known not only for its leftist politics, but also for its celebrity clientele, everything from Chevy Chase to Octavia Butler to Frank Zappa. I got to meet a lot of celebrities. But after a couple months, I was cool. I was cool. I used to laugh at the rookies who would sit there and swoon over the rich and famous. So stupid. After all, they were only people. But there was one celebrity I would like to have seen Maya Angelou. She had just written On the Pulse of Morning and read it for the inauguration of Bill Clinton, and she had blown up. 

People were buying her books in droves. But what really chapped my ass was when somebody would come in and say, “I don't know the author and I don't know the title, but it's about a bird.” [audience laughter] [sighs] I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's it, I think. I thought if she'd only come in. If she'd only come in, I could show her the appreciation that she deserved. I could see it so clearly in my mind, she would come in and I would make this devastatingly insightful comment, and then I'd make this mad, witty remark, and we'd sit there and share a laugh - [laughter] - and we would nod knowingly, and that would be the beginning of a beautiful lifelong friendship. [audience laughter] I could see myself after her death, giving interviews, talking about her penchant for walnuts or that time that we hung out with the rebels in Chile. [audience laughter] And then, it happened. My coworker rushes to the back to the poetry section, “She's Here. She's here.” “Who?” “Maya Angelou. She needs a poem. She needs the poem and it's not up at the front.” “Oh, come on, Maya Angelou would have her own poems.” “No, she's here visiting and she's going to give it to some friends. Come on, this is your chance. Get up there.” 

I looked around the corner, and there she was surrounded by a swarm of people who were asking for her autograph. “Holy shit. This was it. This was the seminal moment. This was the do or die.” I looked at my coworker and I screamed, “I'm not ready.” [audience laughter] I ran to the break room and I locked myself inside. [audience laughter] He's banging on the door. He's like, “Come on, what is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? She's up front. This is your chance. Go, go.” “Go away.” [audience laughter] I wailed in the back. 

About 10 minutes later, he comes back, he says, “You can come out now. She's gone.” I came out, and I walked the gauntlet of how could yous and the shaking heads and with my tail between my legs, I went outside and lit a cigarette and crouched down against the wall of the building and proceeded to beat myself up. After a couple moments, I look up, and lo and behold, there she is. She is wearing a T shirt, sweatpants and fluffy pink slippers. [audience laughter] And her hair is like all over the place. And I'm like, “How cool is that?” [audience laughter] And all of a sudden, I realize I am getting my second chance. It is time to seize my destiny. 

So, I pop up like Jack in the box, throw down my cigarette, and I run up to her and I realize, holy crap, she's six feet tall. She's huge. She's looming over me and she's waiting and I realize, this is it. This is it. And I go, “Dr. Angelou. Dr. Angelou, I just want to tell you.” Argh. [audience laughter] After I finished blubbering, she gave me a hug and she moved on, and I went and hid in the back of the store for the rest of the day. [audience laughter] So, any self-respecting 23-year-old woman, when I got home from work, there was one thing I did. I called my daddy and I said, daddy, you won't believe what happened today. And he said, “You know, it happens to a lot of people. I'm sure she understands. You'll know what to say the next time. Just forget it.” But I couldn't. I really couldn't. 

But about a year later, after the shame had finally burned off, I got this package from my dad. And there was A book inside. It was a little gift copy of her latest poem, Maya Angelou's latest poem, called Phenomenal Woman. I opened it up, and inside, there was this letter from my dad to Maya Angelou. And he had said, “About a year ago, you had an encounter with a young woman [audience laughter] at a bookstore. And unfortunately, she became speechless, and could not tell you that she is one of your greatest fans and she considers you a role model. Would you be so kind as to sign this book and send it back in the self-address stamped envelope that I've included?” 

I open it up and on the title page it says, “To the poet, Harriett Jernigan, I join your parents in wishing you joy. Maya Angelou, August 13, 1995.” I looked at that book a thousand times that night. I opened it up again and again and again, and I looked at that inscription and those 14 words just to make sure they were there. When I took it to bed with me that night, [audience laughter] I held onto it like a brand new shiny red bicycle that I'd just gotten for Christmas. Thank you. 

[cheers and applause] 

Suzanne Rust: [00:07:24] That was Harriett Jernigan. Harriet teaches writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, and collaborates with the Stanford Storytelling Project. She is also the founder of First Person Story, a live storytelling workshop that moves voices from the margins to the center. She lives in San Francisco. If you'd like to see a photo of the book that Maya Angelou signed, just go to themoth.org/extras. 

Harriett's story reminded me of a time many years ago when I was the children's book editor for a small literary magazine. I got invited to a luncheon for Toni Morrison. She is the author of some of my favorite books, Sula, The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Song of Solomon, the list goes on. So, I was thrilled and a little anxious to be in the same room with her. Would I have the nerve to approach her? Would she be nice? Would she eat me for lunch? 

I went for it and introduced myself. She thought for a moment, smiled warmly and remembered, “Oh, you wrote those nice reviews of my children's books. Thank you.” I am pretty sure that I died and went to heaven for a moment. My literary goddess was kind. Thank you for everything, Ms. Morrison. 

Continuing on our theme of literary legends, next up is Mandy Gardner, who meets their idol in an entirely different way. She told this at a Moth StorySLAM in Asheville. Here's Mandy, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause]

Mandy: [00:08:52] So, I'm walking through the cemetery. I have been for quite some time, I just assumed that there would be a sign that would point me to where she lay. She was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. But I found signs that pointed the way to Eugene O'Neill, but no Anne Sexton. I'd been walking around the cemetery for quite some time when I finally found a little guard shack. It was actually a little visitor center. But it was closed, because it was Sunday. The cemetery was mostly shut down that day. But I walked around the outside of the building. 

I had traveled all the way to Boston from my home in Atlanta, and I really wanted to pay my respects, but I just couldn't find her. So, I came upon the office, and I found a door that was propped open by a mop bucket. I am not the kind of person who just breaks into places. I'd never done this before. But I'm staring at this mop bucket, and I'm thinking about why I'm there. Why I'm there is because when I was in high school in the early 1990s in South Carolina, they didn't have a law about not talking about gay people, or the existence of queer or trans people. They just didn't. [chuckles] The school board in my town actually banned and the book, The Grapes of Wrath, because it took the name of the Lord in vain. So, you can imagine there were no queer stories told at all. 

So, when I was 15 years old and starting to realize that this was my life, I thought it meant that I was going to be lonely for the rest of my life. And then, probably hell awaited me on the other side of that, because I had no other stories that told me anything different. So, like many other queer and trans kids, I had to go looking for my own stories that would give me some glimmer of what my future life might be like. And Anne Sexton, who was not queer, she was a married lady, but she wrote poems about lesbian desire, about love. She wrote a poem called Song for a Lady and put it in a book entitled Love Poems. That little poem, that little scratch of a poem was so beautiful. It gave me a little glimpse of intimacy, of actual happiness that I could aspire to one day. 

So, yeah, in my early 20s, when I had the opportunity and the money, I went to Boston and I went to go visit her grave, but I could not find her. So, yeah, I stepped over that mop bucket and I went inside that little office. Luckily, no alarms went off. I found a guidebook and I stole it. [audience laughter] I ran outside and there was a map in there and it told me how to get there. So, I get to the grave and I'm disappointed again, because she committed suicide in 1974, which was one year before I was born. And her husband had apparently-- She was a confessional poet. She wrote about all kinds of taboo subjects. 

So, he had not put a line of her poetry on her grave. It's her name, and her date of birth and death, and that is it. I recited some of her poetry and smoked a cigarette as a burnt offering to her. And then, I was leaving. Just as I was leaving, an old sedan pulled up with four teenage boys inside of it. I immediately got tense, because I got bullied a lot by teenage boys, and that’s just a reaction that I still have. But the driver, he jumped out of the car, which made me a little more alarmed. I thought I was about to get mugged or gay bashed, I wasn't sure which. But he just said, “Do you know the way to Sacco and Vanzetti grave? We're here for a class project.” [audience laughter]

I remembered that in this group, I was the thief. I gave him the guidebook I had stolen in penance. [audience laughter] And then, he said, “Who are you here to see?” And anticipating a blank stare in response, I said, Anne Sexton? And he said, “Anne Sexton? Is she here?” [audience laughter] He turns to the boys in the car, “Hey guys, you remember those Anne Sexton poems we read in English class? Anne Sexton, I fucking love her.” [audience laughter] [audience applause]

I remembered one of my favorite lines of Anne Sexton's poetry is, Live or die, just don't poison everything. 

[cheers and applause] 

Suzanne Rust: [00:14:29] That was Mandy Gardner. Mandy lives with her wife, Michelle, in Asheville, North Carolina. She is the Associate Director of Marketing for the impact investment advisory firm, Verus. Mandy is proud to be a multi StorySLAM winning teller who has competed in two Moth GrandSLAM events in Asheville. 

That's it for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, we hope that you get to meet your idols and that they're exactly who you imagine them to be. 

Marc Sollinger: [00:14:57] Suzanne Rust is the Moth's senior curatorial producer and one of the hosts of The Moth Radio Hour. In addition to finding new voices and fresh stories for The Moth stage, Suzanne creates playlists and helps curate special storytelling events.

This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Marc Sollinger. The rest of The Moth’s leadership team include Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Lee Ann Gullie and Aldi Kaza. 

The Moth would like to thank its supporters and listeners. Stories like these are made possible by community giving. If you're not already a member, please consider becoming one or making a onetime donation today at themost.org/giveback. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by the storytellers. 

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.