Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. And on this episode, we're celebrating Pride Month. We've got three stories on the podcast today.
And the first one comes from Jill McDonough. She told this at our first ever Moth StorySLAM in Boston. The theme of the night was Chemistry. Here's Jill, live from Boston.
[applause]
Jill: [00:00:23] So, May 2nd, 1999, I had a bicycle and it got stolen. So, it wasn't a good day for me, in part, because I couldn't afford to get another bicycle. So, I did what anyone would do, which is to call Bob Maloney, because Bob Maloney was my best friend and he had a spare bike. So, I went over to his house, and he hooked me up with a bicycle, and we went for a bike ride and he made sure it fit me. I was still sad. And he said, "You should come out tonight. There's this great rock show and this band called Chelsea on Fire is playing. They're this wonderful lesbian rock band, and I think you're really going to like them."
And at the time, if you had looked at my stats, you would conclude that I was a heterosexual woman who had a really good time in college, [audience chuckles] and that would be roughly accurate. So, I went to the show, because although I was a heterosexual woman who had a good time in college-- Like, who doesn't love a lesbian rock band? [audience chuckles] You knew that was going to be a good time. So, I went. I got there early. When I walked in, I saw this fantastic, like a little horseshoe table of all really tough looking, wonderful lesbians. And I was like, “I should really spend more time with lesbians. They just have this certain joie de vivre.” I don't know what it-- [audience chuckles] I love them. I don't know any lesbians in Boston. I need to hang out with more lesbians. [audience laughter]
In particular that one in the middle. [audience chuckles] That was the moment of chemistry that this story is about. Because at the time, although I was a heterosexual woman who had a really good time in college, at that moment of first seeing that woman, I understood a lot more about myself, including the fact that I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. I just had to convince her of that. [audience chuckles] I didn't really know. Like, how do you come onto a lesbian? I don't know, like normal way? [audience chuckles] So, that was my plan to figure out how to come on to the lesbian and find out her name, for example. That would have been a good idea. And then, she got up on stage.
So, now, she's the lead singer and lead guitarist of a band called Chelsea on Fire. This is part of why it's a drag that I had to follow Nathan. I thrive in an environment of low expectations. [audience laughter] So, for this person to be the lead singer and guitarist—So, I go up to her afterward and I'm like, "I thought you were great." And she's like, "Great, buy this CD." And I'm like, "No, you don't understand.” Like, “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives." [audience laughter] So, I wrote her a poem, because what else are you going to do? [audience chuckles] And it worked. She's here. Her name's Josie Packard. [audience cheers and applause]
If you look at our staff, you will conclude accurately that we've been married roughly since May 2nd, 1999. [audience laughter] [audience cheers]
And every day, I wake up and I decide to believe in God, so that I can thank Him for Bob Maloney, and for lesbians, and for rock bands, and for Chelsea on Fire, and for Josie, and for guitars and for that asshole who stole my bicycle. [audience chuckles] Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:04:13] Jill McDonough teaches at UMass Boston's MFA program in creative writing, and directs 24 Pearl Street, the Fine Arts Work Center online. She's the author of the books, Habeas Corpus and Reaper among others. She has another book on the way. It's going to be called Here All Night, and that's coming out from Alice James Books. Jill and Josie are still going strong. In fact, they recently celebrated their 18th anniversary. This is very cool. So, congratulations to the two of them. To see a photo of them, and to find out more about Jill, you can visit our site, themoth.org.
So, our second story today on The Moth Podcast comes from Owen Lewis. He shared this at another Boston SLAM that we did five years after our inaugural SLAM in 2017.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Owen, live at The Moth.
Owen: [00:05:10] I don't remember being a little girl who wanted big muscles and a beard, but I do remember having this overwhelming jealousy of my older brother. His broad shoulders, his flat stomach, everything he got to wear, his short hair. I was envious. Mostly, I was envious of the way that people treated him. I wasn't crazy about the way people treated me. They treated me like a girl, which was fair, because I was a girl. But it wasn't really fair, because in our society, women and girls are treated with expectations of fragility and needing to be rescued and weakness. So, I wasn't crazy about that part of it.
I didn't know what being transgender was when I was a kid, so I just stayed being a girl. I stayed being a niece and a daughter and a sister. I didn't realize there was another way. Then about 2008, I came to Simmons College right here in Boston, Massachusetts, and I met a bunch of really awesome, radical, open-minded, supportive people who showed me that there was another way. I cut off all my hair. I grew it back recently. [audience chuckles] I got a tattoo, and I started becoming pretty comfortable in a more androgynous kind of state. I hung out in that space for a while. I was ever searching for gender neutral single stall restrooms, being uncomfortable in men and women's rooms. People would argue about my gender in front of me, whether I was a boy or a girl. That was always really fun. So, slowly, I started presenting and identifying on the more masculine end of the gender spectrum.
While I stayed the same person, while I started transitioning, people started treating me very differently. People in our society treat men and women very differently, and I can vouch for that. I have seen both sides of the spectrum. People suddenly assumed I had a girlfriend. People suddenly assumed I could fix car and computer problems. [audience laughter] I can't. [audience laughter] People assumed I couldn't understand women's problems. I can. [audience chuckles] A lot of things are happening, and it was quite a trip.
But of all of the things that they don't tell you about transitioning, they don't tell you that choosing your name is going to be really hard. It's a thing that most people don't have to do. So, I stuck with a gender-neutral name for a while, Dino, short for dinosaur, of course. [audience chuckles] And then, I thought that maybe I should have a more professional serious name that people would respect a little bit more. I seemed to be drawn to O names, and Owen popped into my head one day and I looked in the mirror and I thought it fit really well. So, I thought Owen. Okay. So, I started telling friends and family that was the name I was going by and except for a few slip ups, people got on board.
Then one Thanksgiving, I was home in New Hampshire for Thanksgiving. I was with my dad. We were clearing or we were setting the table. My dad is a pretty quiet man, and he's been supportive but pretty shy about my whole transition. Kind of nonchalantly he suddenly goes, "Hey, did I ever tell you that if you had been born a boy, I was going to name you Owen?" And I was like, "No, dad, you failed to mention that really important detail that would make me feel really validated." [audience laughter] So, I thought that was pretty cool. Of all of the names that I could have chosen, the fact that I chose my father's the name that he was going to give me from the start without knowing that information was a pretty validating thing, along with having a real beard instead of a foam beard that I had in the bathtub when I was a kid. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:09:50] That was Owen Lewis. Owen lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he works as a building substitute teacher at an elementary school. He gets to work with every student from pre-school through fifth grade. They talk about feelings and challenging societal norms. They play copious amounts of tag, and of course, study. After school, he teaches a Spanish and also a SLAM poetry class. In his free time, he writes music and he also illustrates.
So, our last storyteller on The Moth Podcast this week is Bethany Cintron. Bethany told this story as part of our Lincoln Center Education program here in New York. The theme that night was Identity Crisis. Here's Bethany, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Bethany: [00:10:36] I'm a little nervous, I'll be honest. So, I was a 15-year-old bisexual feminist who was figuring out who she was. I was always open about who I was. So, if anybody asked, I was straight up and I told them. But I never really felt like I had this space to sort of be who I was. It was always suppressed and just very minor. I remember telling people, and they always gave me this look like, "Well, you don't look gay." I never really knew what that means. Like, what does it mean to look gay? But I remember finding out about the Pride Parade in New York. For those who don't know what the Pride Parade is, it celebrates the LGBTQ community.
I remember finding out about it, and I was so happy. I was like, "Here's my space. I'm going to go there and I'm going to have so much fun." It looked great. It's one of the biggest Pride Parades in the US. So, I was so excited to get there. So, I remember trying to get there, but something coincidental would always happen. Like, it would just start raining, and my mom was like, "You're not going to go outside. You're going to get sick." Or, it was my cousin's graduation party and we had to throw him a party. We didn't even get him any cake, which sucks. So, I was there, like, for what? [audience chuckles] Or, my friends didn't want to go with me, so I would have to go alone. Like, whatever friends they ended up not going. So, I was like, "I didn't want to go alone. I was too nervous." So, I ended up not going.
Year after year, it didn't seem like I was going to be able to get there. In junior year, I joined the Gay Straight Alliance in my school, and I ended up becoming president of it. As president, I proposed that we should go to the Pride Parade together. I was like, "Oh, yeah, we just go together. It's going to be great. We're all going to have fun.” Like, “It's funded by school,” whatever. So, everyone's like, "Yeah, let's go." We created group chats. We had messages. We had Facebook events. It just seemed like it was going to happen. I was ready to go.
The Pride Parade is in June. So, April came up, May came up and then finally, it was June, and all of us were super excited. June 25th was our day. I remember June 12th. I was sitting in my room, and it was-- My dad always used to play the news in the living room. It would just be playing, and I would be listening. Not really listening, but listening in the back of my mind. I remember hearing a live report in Florida. So, I got up and went to listen to it with my dad, and I saw that it was the Pulse nightclub shooting. It was a gay nightclub in Florida, and 49 people were killed in a hate crime. I just remembered feeling terrible.
Like, we're so close to this date, and someone just goes and kills people in cold blood and I just felt horrible. I already knew what was going to happen. This was going to be my thing, this thing that was going to prevent me from getting to the Pride Parade. The next few days, I went through my messages and my Facebook events, and people were dropping out. It switched from going to not going. People were like, "Oh, something came up." Or, my mom said, "I can't go anymore." Or, some just flat out said like, "I'm not going because I'm afraid it might happen here. What if someone uses that as motivation to attack the biggest Pride Parade in America?" Again, I wasn't going to go.
I felt so disappointed, because I knew that I was going to go away for college. I wouldn't be in New York, so I was going to miss this event. It was just another year of me not going. I went to my mom, because my mom is my best friend, and I told her-- I was just crying to her and I was like, "Mom, I feel terrible. I just really wanted to go. I'm not going to go." I'm just so frustrated. She said, "Jesus, relax. If no one's going to go, I'll go with you, because no one's going to prevent you from loving who you love." It was set. June 25th, it was me, my mom, and my three close friends and we're on the train going to the Pride Parade.
We watched the dull colors of just the streets in the city transform into these magical rainbow colors. There were people boarding and they had rainbow outfits, crazy outfits, frilly, puffy everything. It was just great. They were making their own way to the Pride Parade. So, I was getting more and more excited getting there. I remember we got to the streets of Manhattan. It was packed. Like, it was impossible. Like, there were bars everywhere. You would have to walk three blocks down just to get to the block that you were right by.
I had my own rainbow outfit. I had a rainbow Star Trooper shirt. I had a flag that I wrapped around my neck, like a cape that I bought for $15, which I realize now is really expensive for a flag. [audience chuckles] I had a rainbow bandana. I was so excited. I went from the back of the crowd to the middle of the crowd to the front of the crowd. Next thing I know, I'm giving high fives to people in the parade. I'm seeing all these big floats. I'm getting stickers and fans. It was just great. I was having so much fun, and I just wanted to scream like, "Take that, homophobia." I remember taking a whole bunch of pictures on my way back from the Pride Parade.
I was on the train, and I was looking over at the videos and the pictures and I saw this whole idea of looking gay. There were so many different kinds of body types, hair types, everything, skin color. I just realized that there was no particular way to look gay physically. Looking gay was showing support for what you believe in, showing support for your friends, just being there and being confident in your identity. I realized that day, we were all proud to look gay. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:16:42] That was Bethany Cintron. Bethany is a sophomore at DePaul University and hopes to pursue a career in teaching. She's an activist and has been part of protests in support of DACA, Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. Since her first parade, she's been to one every year. If you happen to have a Pride Parade nearby, we here at The Moth hope that you're able to make it out and enjoy the festivities, celebrate and as always, we hope you have a story-worthy week.
Mooj: [00:17:14] 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: [00:17:23] 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.