Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. On today's episode, two stories about fathers and sons.
Our first story is told by Nate Charles. And Nate told this story here in New York City at our GrandSLAM last year. The theme of the night was Breaking Ground. Here's Nate.
[cheers and applause]
Nate: [00:00:21] So, when I left my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia, for the first time and went to Melbourne to go to drama school, my family started a ritual. And the thing about starting a ritual when you do it for the first time, is you don't know that it's a ritual, but you are starting a ritual. And this is what we do every time I leave. We did it last time I left and we're going to do it next time I leave. And this is what happened that day.
My mom is first. She hugs me and she gives me like a mom-length hug. You know a mom length hug when you're like, done, but they're just barnacling on. [audience chuckles] She digs her head into my pec and she says, I'm-- My pec. She digs her head into my flabby chest and she says, [audience laughter] "I'm going to miss you, Natty." I put my hand on the back of her head and I say, "I'm not going for long and I'm going to come back, I promise."
My brother and sister, they're later. What they like to do is they wait until I'm boarding the plane, so it's like me and strangers and we're all wheeling our carry on. What they like to do is they shout symptoms to an STI that I don't have that I have to keep an eye on. So, I'll be boarding with strangers and they'll be like, "It's going to scab up, but don't pick ointment. [audience laughter] Ointment." And I'll be like, "Fuck off, guys. Thank you very much." [audience laughter]
My dad is last. He does this every time, and he did this the day that I left. I say, "Dad, I'm leaving." And he says, "Yup." [audience laughter] I say, "Dad, going to miss you, man." And he says, "You haven't even gotten on the plane yet, Nat. Jesus, get on the plane." [audience laughter] Okay. I say, "Dad, I love you." And he says, "Take care." [audience laughter] So, I get on the plane, the first time I'm leaving Adelaide with half a sentence filling up my heart. I sit there and I look out the window and I look at the town of Adelaide, the only town I've ever known, the town that my whole family is, the town that I grew up in, the town that I took acid and talked to hoodies in. [audience laughter] That was me. [audience applause]
I watch it get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and then it's gone. It's just me and clouds. And for the first time in my entire life, I'm alone. And I think to myself, "Did that motherfucker really say, 'Take care'?" [audience laughter] My dad doesn't love me. I realize this as I'm in the air and I get-- The plane lands and I'm waiting for my bags. I'm like, "Whoa. My dad does not love me the way I love him." That's me, guys. I went to drama school for three years. I pretended to be stain and shit like that, [audience chuckles] knowing that my father, the man who raised me, does not love me the way I love him. [audience laughter]
After all of this, I get a phone call from my mum. And she says that my grandfather, my father's father, has passed away, my nonno, and I have to come back to Adelaide for the funeral. She says, "At least do it to be there for your dad." I get on the plane and I fly back. And no matter what I do, I just can't bring myself to cry. I don't know why, but something is missing. And then, there's the day of the funeral. You know what a funeral is like? It's shitty. Everyone wears black and we try to feel good, but we can't.
We're standing outside the funeral home. You're not meant to be the pallbearer for your family. You're not meant to do that. But for some reason, nonno wanted us to carry him one last time. So, we're standing out waiting. My dad is up by the head on the right and I'm down by the feet on the left. And just before we go in, my dad turns to me and he says, "Nat, can you please come up here across from me?" And I say, "Why?" And he says, "Because I need you across from me." I switch and we carry my grandfather in. And the whole time I'm thinking, "Man, this guy is so heavy. He is really heavy. [audience laughter] He lost a leg. I don't understand." [audience laughter]
We carry him in, and we walk past all of our mourning family. And the guys at the back peel off, and the guys at the middle peel off and it's just me and nonno and Dad. And my dad puts his hand on the coffin and he says, "Take care, Pop. Take care." And I put my hand on my dad's hand, and I look him in the face, and he grabs my head and he just smushes it into the lapel of his jacket. And for the first time since my Nonno died, I cry. And for the first time since I was a little boy, my dad holds me until I stop. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:05:33] Nate Charles is a performer and comedian based in New York City. He wrote a full hour-length show about his dad and he flew back to Australia to perform it in front of him. It went well enough that Nate has a bimonthly show now. It’s called Late Nate with Nate Charles, featuring interviews with both his parents and other New Yorkers too. You can also catch him in various basements, back rooms and on makeshift stages pretending to be different people for laughter. To see a video of his show, Late Nate with Nate Charles, just visit themoth.org.
Our second story is from Moth favorite Adam Gopnik. Adam has a brand-new book out next week. It's called At the Strangers' Gate. And we're really proud that many of the stories in the book were first told here at The Moth. We shared this in front of The Moth audience back in 2013 at our annual Mothball here in New York City. Here's Adam Gopnik.
[applause]
Adam: [00:06:34] My grandfather, my grandfather worked on the docks in Philadelphia. I don't mean he toted bales and lifted barges. He was Jewish. He had a wholesale fish business down by the docks. I remember from my childhood that he kept wonderful hours. He would get up at 04:30 in the morning to go down to the docks, go down and run his business. I could hear him get up the days, the weekends that I stayed with him. He would work all day and work very hard. And then, at the end of the day at 5 o'clock, he would go not home directly to dinner, he would go to a Schwitz. He would go and take a steam bath.
And on the occasions, the weekends when I would be staying with him, he would take me with him. It was a wonderful experience, because he would go to the Russian steam bath, and get wrapped up in a towel and I would get wrapped up with him, and we would go into the steam room and there he would sit and groan in the company of other men like him who had powerful muscles buried deep in their body under layers of schmaltz and fat. [audience laughter] And they would have wonderful names.
My grandfather Al would be there wrapped in his tail, sweating and perspiring with Benny and Mo and Joseph and Sidney. These men who have disappeared, the only Sidneys I know now are eight-year-old girls. [audience laughter] They would sit and perspire and groan out the days and dignities and Trevise and then go home to dinner and their wives. I thought it was the most wonderful environment that I'd ever been in my life. At that moment, I began to make a distinction that I've carried through life with me, that essentially there are two kinds of Jewish men. There are groaning Jews and then there are whining Jews. [audience laughter]
My father belonged to the whining Jew generation. That's very much the Woody Allen generation in which everything is an agony. He was always agonized about everything and twisted and warped by liberal guilt about everything and everything in life. Every question about civil rights, about women's rights was agonizing. You wind your way through it in the same spirit that my grandfather had groaned his way through the steam bath.
My ambition in life essentially was to turn myself from a whining Jew back into a groaning Jew with all of the authority and integrity that those men had had in the steam bath on Camac Street in Philadelphia. And I've measured out my life in terms of successful steam baths that I've been able to have over the years in Montreal, in Philadelphia, in Paris and in New York. It's difficult to get a really good steam bath these days, a true Schwitz, where you can groan and remake yourself as a man.
So, about a year ago, my son Luke approached me. I've told stories about Luke here at The Moth and elsewhere for a long time. He's a wonderful kid. Always has been. Interesting mind. Now, he's 18, he's about to leave for college, leave home for good. He's got a deep voice and a laconic manner and he's much taller than I am and still a wonderful friend. But he's leaving home. He’s going away. He's going away for good. Breaks my heart. But he says to me last year for his birthday, what he really wanted was a membership, that we could have a membership in a health club together. Because he loves to work out and make himself appealing to 18-year-old girls. I enjoy working out too. But for me, working out is simply a kind of necessary preliminary to taking a steam bath.
So, we found a gym here in New York down on 14th Street that had and we took the tour, this wonderful large steam bath. I thought, this is great. He can work out, I can pretend to work out and we can take a steam bath together and we'll reinstate this wonderful lineage of perspiration that began with my grandfather and passed on to my father and then to me, and that I will leave my son with this imprint before he goes away for good of perspiration and solidarity that we will share.
So, one Saturday, after we join the club, we go down to 14th Street together. We go down, and Luke actually works out. He strains and moves the machines around. I pretend to work out. I do the necessary little labor that you have to do in order to have the preliminary sweat that allows you to go to the steam room and get the real sweat. We do it for about half an hour, and then we go get our towels on and we go in the direction of the steam room. I'm immensely pleased, because this is something we'll be able to share together always as a memory before he goes to college.
I go towards the steam room, and I open the steam room door and I feel the familiar, comforting sensation of the damp, moist air. As my eyes adjust and I look through the mist and the steam, I see on the other side of the steam room, two men having sex. [audience laughter] I do that thing that you do when you have an unexpected vision of looking straight ahead and pretending you've forgotten what you had come for.
And the two men who are having sex, one looks directly at me, the other lifts his head up and looks at me. They look at me in a way that's neither entirely appraising nor entirely disapproving, but essentially broadly curious about my presence. [audience laughter] It's not invitational, exactly, but nor is it exclusive. [audience laughter] I do a quick calculation, this is not my grandfather's steam room. [audience laughter] And I back out because I've got Luke, who's 18. It's a little complicated. So, I back out and I say to Luke, "You know what? Your mom is expecting us home early today. We should just go take a shower, and we'll go. We'll get home."
As I'm taking the shower, I feel indignant, because I'm being deprived of this essentially family transmission. So, like Dharma transmission amongst Japanese Zen people. We have steam transmission in my family. And I'm not being able to give it to Luke, and I get annoyed. And yet, at the same time, I have to ask myself, because I am somebody who's twisted with liberal guilt, like my father, like a whining Jew. I have to ask myself like, would I be offended? Was it a gay thing? I said that would be terrible if I was bigoted, because it was two men having sex.
So, I have to do the necessary transposition that all liberals have to do, which is to say, now, what if it had been in another dimension, in another steam room in an alternate universe, if it had been a man and a woman having sex in the steam room, would I have been offended? And if that equation worked out that yes, I would, then I would have a legitimate right to be offended by being two men having sex. It's like one of those algebra formulas they used to give you in sixth grade, where one side worked out in balance with the other side, you would solve the equation.
And I asked myself, would I have been startled by that? And I said, I really would have been. I really would have been if it had been a man and a woman having sex. Ergo, therefore, I have a right, indeed an obligation, to complain about this behavior. So, I pull myself together, and I say, I'm going to go talk to the manager. I say, “Look, you know what? I have got something I got to deal with. I've got to talk to the guy. Would you just go have a donut across the street, right, young guy?”
And I go and I pull myself together to try and talk to the manager about this. I'm in a state of high, slightly whining agitation about this, [audience chuckles] because this is going to be the first time in history in which you will have simultaneously braided together an indignant complaint and an abject apology, at the same time. Indignantly complaining about the inappropriate behavior and at the same time, objectively apologizing for not being gay myself and complaining at the same time.
So, I come in and I say, “I want you to understand something.” I say to this very nice gym manager, “I want you to understand something. I am the least homophobic person on the face of the earth. My son's name is Auden, who's a member here. He's named after the great gay poet, W.H. Auden. [audience laughter] I am essentially, I'm essentially a homosexual person who's trapped in a heterosexual identity with a wife and children. [audience laughter] I am an art critic by vocation. I do all the cooking at our house. I wear an apron when I make dinner every night and I am in the middle of writing a Broadway musical.
I could sing a couple of the numbers for you [audience laughter] if you want to hear them, so you can see that I am not a bigot in any imaginable way. But two men were having sex, and I think it was inappropriate.” I land on that word, I hate that word, because it's a word of my generation, my father's generation. We're agonized. We're always saying something is appropriate or inappropriate. I've always hated that word, but it's the only word that applies, I think, to this situation.
And the guy looks at me and says, "You're right, that was inappropriate behavior and we'll deal with it. It's the major problem we have in health clubs in New York." [audience laughter] And I say, "That would interest my grandfather that people having sex in the steam room." I don't even think it occurred to Benny and Mo and Sidney that this would ever be a problem. But despite my agitation and my feelings of becoming not a groaner, but a whiner, I feel I've not done too badly.
I go across the street, 14th street, and I find Luca in the donut shop. And he said, "What were you doing, Dad?" And I look up at him and say, "Oh, nothing, just talking to the guy. Just talking." And he said, "What were you talking about? I can see you were agitated about something." And I said, "Oh, nothing at all." He looks down at me and says, "Was it about the two guys having sex in the steam room?" [audience laughter] I realized he saw the whole thing, and I said, "Uh-huh." He said, "Yeah, that was awkward. That was awkward."
I suddenly am visited by the blessing of this word, awkward, which everyone in his generation uses, right? Things are either random or they're awkward. [audience laughter] I knew at that moment what a great blessing this word was. Because my father's generation had to agonize about everything. They were worried about the moral standing of everything, judging the moral standing of everything that happened. And my generation is obsessed with appropriate, inappropriate. We're concerned ourselves with behavior. Is this the right behavior or the inappropriate behavior or the appropriate behavior?
And his generation is concerned only about grace. Only about grace. Something is either a graceful action or it's an awkward action. They're without bigotry, self-consciousness, without even differentiation of any kind. The whole world is a wonderful aquarium of events. Not a steam bath, but a dense water world in which you watch everything go by. Some of it is graceful and some of it is awkward, and that's the only appropriate judgment you can pass on it. I realized that he had far more insight and equanimity about the moment than I could ever possess. He was ready to leave home and the transmission had taken place without the necessity of steam passing from hand to hand.
Two weeks later, I decided to go back by myself. I went back with some trepidation, but determined to see whatever happened in that steam room as either graceful or awkward, and in no other terms. Wrapped in my towel, I approach the steam room and I see beside it in giant printed letters of red, a sign. And it says, "Anyone found using this steam room in an inappropriate manner will be banned from the club for life." I realized it's my sign. [audience laughter] I am responsible for this horrible, forbidding, puritanical prohibition that's gone on. I didn't even need it.
The question is, do I go in or not? So, I decide to go in. And through the steam, I imagine, because modern liberal guilt is being replaced by postmodern paranoia, that everybody tightly wrapped up in their towel, taking no pleasure in life at that moment is staring at me. “That's the guy who made the sign.” And even if it was only a fantasy, I decided I couldn't bear it. So, I shut my eyes and did the only thing a Jewish man can do in that circumstance. I lowered myself down awkwardly on the seat, and at last claiming my inheritance, I groaned. Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:20:48] Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and he's been contributing to the magazine since 1986. Adam's newest book, At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York, is set to release on September 5th. If you'd like to pre-order it, you can find it online now.
That's it for this week on The Moth Podcast. And from all of us here at The Moth, we wish you a story-worthy week.
Mooj: [00:21:14] Dan Kennedy is the author of the books, Loser Goes First, Rock On and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer with The Moth.
Dan: [00:21:24] Podcast production by Timothy Lou Ly. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.