Host: Meg Bowles
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Meg: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles.
And in this show, we have stories of that special person who did something or said something that changed those around them, the parent, the teacher, the volunteer, the celebrity, the dependable best friend or the surprise guest. We encounter people every day and sometimes they leave a lasting impact.
Our first storyteller, Greg Quiroga, shared this story at one of our open-mic StorySLAMs in San Francisco, which was supported by public radio stations KALW and KQED. Live from the Rickshaw Stop, here's Greg Quiroga.
[cheers and applause]
Greg: [00:00:52] I was 10 years old when my parents got divorced. And my mom did the thing that made the most sense to her. She hooked up with my dad's sister's ex-husband, who'd always been Uncle Steve to me. He was a pot growing Vietnam veteran, who had lost his vocal cords to a hand grenade in Vietnam that blew up.
It also opened up his knee, and it left him dead in the mass unit for all of three minutes, which greatly changed his perspective on life. It also made every metal detector he ever went through just light up like a Christmas tree. Everybody around us called him Whispering Steve, because he couldn't talk like normal. He whispered. I quickly adapted to Whispering Steve instead of Uncle Steve.
The one thing about Whispering Steve, was that he'd always been a really good dad to his two sons, my brother cousins. [audience laughter] I'd always admired the way that he'd been a father to them. So, it wasn't so much like I had lost an uncle as gained a father in the vacuum that was left when my parents split up.
Steve was this guy who always wanted there to be magic in the world, especially for the kids around him. He went to great lengths to make sure that there was magic filled every event that he took-- He didn't read stories at bedtime, he invented them. He told tales that had me and my brother cousins flying through the air on jetpacks with lightsabers, doing battle with orcs, where we were the heroes on a nightly basis.
We never wanted to go to sleep. He made everything that happened-- Every moment that he could take and twist into a perfect opportunity for it to be fun for everybody he did. We were driving to San Francisco for the very first time. I had never seen the Golden Gate Bridge before. And this is back in the days before seat belts were mandatory. And so, the three of us are bouncing around in the backseat of his car, just all fired up. And he said, “I'll give--” I'm sorry. “I'll give a Hershey's candy bar to the first one of you that can spot the Golden Gate Bridge.”
So, we're on high alert. I mean, at this point, we’re like, “We’re real. I want the Hershey's candy bar. And related or not, I'm going to beat them two.” And so, we're all bouncing around. And of course, he knew, as soon as we all were looking all the way through mirror, and as we came wending our way through the tunnel, boom, there it was. All three of us were like, “The Golden Gate Bridge.” And he's like, “Yeah, I guess you all get candy bars now.” [audience laughter] It was that perfect moment.
Steve remained in my life, because he was still my uncle technically, [audience laughter] I always referred to him as my uncle by divorce, which was the simplest way to sum up the situation. Even after they split up, he remained a good uncle to me. He would help me out with projects.
With the first year, I decided, back in 2000 to go to Burning Man against all of the wishes of my long time Burner friends who said the thing was over and dead and there was no use going to it at that point, because everything had grown to 45,000 people. I went to Uncle Steve for help, because I had this concept for an art project I wanted to build, and he was the one person who I knew could help me with it.
And so, I drove all the way up to his land in Northern California, and there he was on the end of the router with the Marlboro cigarette hanging from his mouth, helping me, “You're really going to go all the way out there with no electricity and no water, and for what?” I was like, “You got to trust me on this, man. It's going to be special.” Through college, when I needed a place to party, he would let me come to his house and hang out.
But after that first Burning man experience, it was a few months later that I went to the VA Hospital in San Francisco to visit Steve. My cousin, Justin, was in town. Everybody was super somber, because he'd been diagnosed with an extremely late stage of lung cancer.
He was one of those Marlboro miles collectors that had the Marlboro canoe [audience laughter] and the Marlboro pool table. Anything that you could get, he had collected.
It was late-stage lung cancer. It was three months later that I went up to his land to say goodbye. And it was hard. I mean, here was a man who had been dead and came back. And so, I wrote him a letter, because I was better at communicating that way. I took it and I gave it to him and I couldn't look him in the face. He was shrunk, he was shriveled, he'd been completely reduced. He was just this gaunt skeleton of what he used to be.
I couldn't stand to see him that way. I spent the afternoon at his house and was back having dinner with my mom at a friend's house. And she said, “You know, he feels like you've already written him off, like he's already dead.” I just was so shocked. So, I went back that night. I had to walk a long-- It's a mile. No streetlights. It's all dirt road. Flashing back to my days as a 10-year-old and 11-year-old, worried that bears were going to get me, and he'd already gone to sleep.
As I was walking back, thinking on where I was at my life in that point. I put it out to the universe that the thing that I wanted most was to meet her, that she had to be out there somewhere. I was finally open and willing to have her in my life. And so, the next night, I swear to God, I met the woman who would become the love of my life, Michelle. And 13 years later, we have an eight-year-old boy who believes that there is magic in the world.
Looking back, I've always assigned a lot of regret to the things that I didn't have control of. Like, I always wished that Steve could have met Michelle and seen the ways he'd helped me and seen what a good father I'd become. But more than anything what I regret, is that I couldn't just look him in the face and tell him how much he meant to me when it still mattered.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: Greg Quiroga is a fundraising auctioneer, performer and founder of the San Francisco Disc Golf Club. Greg says he thinks about Steve often. He was such an important part of his life. And he always imagined that when he started his own family, Steve would be part of it. Greg shared a journal entry he wrote to Steve after he died, and I asked him to read it for us.
Greg: I still find myself thinking that you're going to show up, that I'll be able to share pictures with you when I get home. It's funny how your dying changed my relationship with you. Knowing that you're gone, I notice more often how you've affected me, the ways I think, feel and enjoy the world. Thank you for living each day like it was your last. If nothing else, I now try to do the same.
Meg: You can see pictures of Greg, including some photos of the art installation Greg made for Burning Man in honor of Steve. That's on our website, themoth.org.
Often when you ask people who most influenced them or changed the course of their lives, the answer is a teacher who saw something in them or took extra care to make sure they were reaching their full potential.
So, in honor of those teachers, our next story comes from Meg Lavery, who shared it at a GrandSLAM event we produced in Chicago, where we're supported by public radio station WBEZ. Here's Meg, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Meg Lavery: [00:08:27] I was sitting on a metal stool in front of my desk holding a copy of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. When out of the corner of my eye I saw through the janky ass metal blinds that never really closed all the way shadows or figures. Before I could really process what I was seeing over the intercom blared this sound, “We are in a full building lockdown. Repeat. We are in a full building lockdown.”
I prayed it was a drill, but I wasn't, for sure. And adrenaline pulsed through my body as I leaped from my stool, ran to the door, shutting it with one hand and ushering my students to stand, move against the wall and sit in front of the cabinets away from the window.
The pounding started on the windows, pound, pound, pound. And two girls grabbed hands. Their matching friendship bracelets trembling on their wrists. A boy, who was usually so quiet and reserved, sat upright and spread his arms as if shielding the kids around him from the sound. The pounding continued, but faded as it moved down our windows to other classrooms until we were sitting in silence. I know that we were all holding our breath, because I was in a room with 27 seventh graders and I could hear the clock tick.
Now, I had been in that classroom for many years, and I didn't even know that the clock made a sound. [audience laughter] Then, we started hearing some noise by the door. I had a synapse in my brain that made me panic that I had forgotten to lock it that morning. I had been very careful to come in through my door and lock it immediately ever since the staff meeting that we had a few weeks before.
It was 2008, and there had been a shooting at Northern Illinois University on Valentine's Day. And that hit very close to home for the community where I taught at that time. And our principal worked with authorities to put together procedures, so that we, at our middle school, would have a process for a lockdown in case of an active shooter.
We sat at the staff meeting and they told us they wanted it to mimic real life, so we weren't going to get the time or the date that it would happen, just know that we've given you a script, you know the procedures and your job is to keep the kids safe. And I took that very seriously, because school should be a safe place no matter where you live. [audience cheers and applause]
That is why I was particularly worried that I hadn't locked the door. So, when we heard the noises, I was panicked. But thankfully I had, because the noises soon turned to shouting and panging, “Open the door. Open the door.” We sat and listened to the lock struggle to hold its place as the door was violently jerked. The kids who were sitting closest to the door were stricken. Their fists were clenched, their eyes were shut, their jaws were clenched. It's like they were bracing for impact. I just kept thinking, what the hell would I do if this was real?
So, I reassured myself with the same idea that I told my students in reassurance a few minutes later when the drill was over, “This is the thing, guys. School shootings don't happen. In 10 years since Columbine, there's only been a handful of shootings, and they've all been at colleges and universities. We do tornado drills and fire drills, and you're not afraid of those. This is just something the school needs.”
I felt okay about that answer until a girl raised her hand and said, “So, Miss Larry, what if I was like getting a drink or something when the lockdown happened? But when I came back, the door was locked. What would happen then?” Fuck. Shit. Fuck. [audience laughter] Obviously, I didn't say that to her. Thankfully, I had the script to go by, but I knew what the script said. And the script said that I had to look at that barely 13-year-old girl and tell her, “I had to leave her in the hallway, that I couldn't compromise the 26 students that were still in the classroom.”
She looked at me and she recoiled, and a veil of innocence fell down her face with her tears and said, “You mean you would leave me out there to die?” What do you say? Yes, no, maybe?” I gave her the answer that I could fall back on, and that was again to reassure her that this was an anomaly, it was not going to happen in Lake County, Illinois. She accepted the answer, even though it wasn't the one that she wanted. Actually, everyone in that room accepted the answer, because it gave us all the security we needed to hear.
Now, fast forward 10 years to 2019, I'm teaching in a new district, in a new school, still middle schoolers. And the thing is, these kids have been doing this drill, kids that are in middle school now since they were in kindergarten, they are seasoned veterans. And the thing is, I can no longer look at them and tell them that school shootings don't happen, that they're anomaly, that we don't have to be concerned about them, because a neighboring town had a middle schooler this year found with a loaded armed rifle in his bedroom after making threats to the school, many of whom my students knew.
So, when the familiar lockdown announcement came on over the intercom, the students didn't look to me at all. They were more like military operatives than awkward teenagers as they planned how to barricade the door with which desks and which stapler would be the heaviest one to throw at someone. When I brought my finger to my mouth to help them be quiet, a kid looked at me unflinchingly and said words that cut to my core. “Miss Lavery, I know that that's what you think you're supposed to do, but your job is not to save us, we have to save ourselves.”
I looked up at a sign that's been hanging in my room that says something like, “The job of a teacher is to enable the student to move forth without you.” I had looked at that sign a lot of times for inspiration, but I never thought the way I would see it play out was in that situation. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: Meg Lavery is a middle school health teacher, coach and certified yoga instructor, and is currently working on a graduate degree through the International Institute of Restorative Practices. She lives in a conservation community in the Chicago suburbs with her wife, daughter and a menagerie of rescue animals. Meg says, growing up, her teachers were life giving, especially after she lost her mother at the age of 13. She loves teaching and says she hopes that her students will remember her as a teacher who helped them become more compassionate, self-aware and curious humans.
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Coming up, wedding bells at City Hall, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:15:58] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Meg: [00:16:10] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles.
There have been moments throughout history where people have come together to lend a hand in good times and bad, out of celebration or necessity, each of those individuals contributed something special and chances are they will be remembered by someone they encountered.
This is true of our next storyteller, Beth Yates, who, in a moment of celebration, wanted to help spread a little joy from the High Noon Saloon in Madison, Wisconsin, where we're supported by WPR. Here's Beth Yates.
[cheers and applause]
Beth: [00:16:45] I had the worst blisters that I've ever had in my life. It kept me out of work for two days. I couldn't walk, and I'd do it 100 times again. This was back in 2004, and I was married in the San Francisco gay marriage, Lollapalooza. [audience cheers and applause]
Gavin Newsom, on February 13th, married two older lesbians on a Friday night and said he was going to be marrying people over the weekend. And I thought, they're going to shut this puppy down. Saturday morning, it's all over the news. There's lines all over for people lining up to be married. At some point, my partner and I say to each other, “We got to do this.” We call friends, we call family.
Saturday, we go and we are waiting in line to be married, family and friends around us.
4 o’clock, we get towards the front of the line, and they say, “No more today.” We go back Sunday morning at 04:30 in the morning, and it's pouring rain. Family and friends show up at 06:30. We get married at 11:00 AM in the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. But that's not really my story. My story is I loved it and I wanted to do it again. [audience laughter]
So, Monday night, I get on the phone and I'm trolling our friends saying, “Who wants to get married? You got to do this.” I find a couple who agrees. And I go Tuesday [audience laughter] and they get married. And that's not enough. [audience laughter] So, Wednesday morning, I call into work and I say, “I'm not coming in.” I go down to San Francisco City Hall and I dress up, because these are people's weddings. I got a suit on and I got these great new high heels that I have.
The volunteer job I got is I got to escort couples from where they filled out their paperwork, the registrar's office down this long corridor with all these people way waiting to fill out their paperwork to the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda, where they had the official ceremony. And each person I'd bring down each couple, people would clap.
So, about 10:00 in the morning, I get to the front of the line where I'm dropping off this couple that had just signed their paperwork, and I noticed there is a pile of flowers. And I say to the volunteer, “What are these? Where are these coming from?” The guy says, “I don't know.” You got to Understand, like, this was happening in the moment. Nobody knew diddley. So, I get back at about 11:30, and I look over and the pile is huge. And I say to the volunteer, “Where are these coming from?” And the woman says, “You got to read them.”
So, I pick up one, and it's from a family in Denver. And they say, “Our son died of AIDS years ago, but if he was still alive, he and his partner would be there with you getting married. I know you didn't have time to get a bouquet and plan for your wedding. So, this is our in honor of him and in celebration of your marriage.” I read another one. And it's from a family in Minnesota. And they say, “If we could be there getting married, we would. We just couldn't make it in.”
Somewhere around 2 o'clock, I am there with this couple and they're filling out their paperwork. I turn around, and the SWAT team is standing behind us. I don't know if you've ever seen a SWAT team close up, but they look huge and they are covered head to toe. And this man makes this announcement, “You need to stay where you are.” And somebody says, “What's going on?” And he says, “There's protesters coming in. We can't ask them to leave until they disrupt work.” So, we wait.
Pretty soon, you hear some people coming along saying horrid things. You see some horrible signs. So, when the protesters get there, SWAT clears them out. And when SWAT leaves with the protesters, people in the line are clapping and cheering as they get all these protesters out. And then, I get to walk down with the first couple after these protesters, and people stood up and screamed and clapped and yelled for this couple. And this couple makes it to the Rotunda, and they have their wedding. It's over at 5 o’clock, I go home, I take off my shoes. I have the worst blisters I've ever had in my life, and I literally cannot walk for two days and I do it 100 times again.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: That was Beth Yates. Beth has been working as a leadership trainer and consultant for 30 years. She said so many people wanted to be part of that historic event. They were excited, and happy and showed up to help everyone in line. One person came with a rolling cart from their office with coffee from Starbucks, cream, sugar, stir sticks, the whole thing. One day, when it rained, some folks showed up with socks for people who had been standing in line for hours and had wet feet. Others handed out umbrellas.
For her part, she said, “I hope my volunteering made things easier, but I don't want or expect to be remembered by anyone. It was their special day, and I just felt honored to have been a small part of it.” Beth has been with her spouse, Jackie, for 35 years now. You can see pictures of Beth and her wife, Jackie, on their special day on our website, themoth.org.
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Our next storyteller is Brittney Cooper, who found herself in an interesting situation when someone she never expected was compelled to contact her after reading something she wrote. She shared her story at the Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem. Here's Brittney Cooper, live at the Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Brittney [00:22:37] So, in the early 2000s, I became the first person in my family to graduate from college and to go on to pursue a PhD.
[cheers and applause]
Now, when you go to med school, you become a doctor. And when you go to law school, you become a lawyer. But when you go to grad school in the humanities, you become a critic. [audience laughter] Imagine studying for six years for the expressed privilege of telling everybody who's ever written or said anything what is wrong with what they have said. [audience laughter] Imagine further explaining this to your family at Thanksgiving.
So, one of the ways that I would cope with this unfortunate turn of events, is that I would go to the movies, typically a matinee on a Wednesday. And my favorite filmmaker at the time was Tyler Perry. When I went to see Diary of a Mad Black Woman, I thought to myself, here is a man who understands black women who have been done wrong.
When Kimberly Elise's character slaps the shit out of the husband that has been abusing her, I'm in theater hooting and hollering with all the ladies in there. But at the same time, I'm also becoming a feminist. And you know, I'm down for smashing the patriarchy and everything, but nobody tells you that the first casualty of a feminist analysis is movies.
You hate them, because you see the patriarchy, absolutely, everywhere. You become a feminist and suddenly you can't like anything anymore. [audience laughter] You're a professional unliker of everything. [audience laughter] Or, as they say in the hood, I'm getting a PhD play a hating degree. [audience laughter]
It occurs to me though that I like these movies, so I'm going to keep going, but I'm just not going to tell my feminist friends how much I like the movies. Because every time I talk to them, they're using language like tropes, and representations and how problematic the films are. But what I'm thinking to myself is, but in Daddy's Little Girls, Gabrielle Union's character snacks, fine ass, Idris Elba. And I don't know a straight black girl that don't want Idris. [audience laughter] And I'm also thinking, this feels a little bit like home.
Tyler Perry built his career making these Madea stage plays, and there was like an underground economy of VHS dubs that you could get of these plays. So, I remember watching one of these plays with my auntie and her laughing hysterically. I'm sitting there going like, “The play looked a little low budget.” [audience laughter] but Madea is a gun toting, a pistol toting granny. And my granny was a pistol toting granny? So, it worked for me.
But I was also starting to see what my friends were saying, because I went to see The Family That Preys, and the female character in that movie is so villainized that by the time her husband knocks the shit out of her, the women in theater are hooting and hollering again, but this time, I'm not hollering with them, because you know, I'm a feminist now and that's domestic violence. So, I'm starting to think, maybe me and Tyler might have to break up.
Fast forward, I finished my PhD. I get a job as a professor at a big state school in the deep south. Tyler and I have broken up, but his star has continued to ascend. I'm trying to figure out how to wear this big old title as both a PhD and a critic, even though I come from people that don't really have fancy titles. So, I call up my girls, who are mostly first-generation PhDs themselves, and we form a crew and a blog called the Crunk Feminist Collective. [audience cheers and applause]
So, around this time, Tyler puts out a show called The Haves and the Have Nots. And like a good feminist, I tune in to hate watch the show. And as suspected, as expected, he gives me something to hate. So, the next day, I go to the Crunk Feminist Collective blog, and I pin a post called Tyler Perry Hates Black Women.
Now, let me say that some high-profile feminists would be coming through and reading the blog, but I didn't really think any famous, famous people were reading the blog. So, imagine my surprise the next day when I get an email, subject line, Tyler Perry wants to talk to you. [audience laughter] I think it's a joke, right? But I open the email, I called the number back and it's not a joke. His assistant gets on the phone and she says, “Oh, he wants to talk to you.” [audience laughter]
So, we set up a time to talk, the next day. And the day in between, I spend my time calling all my homegirls going, “What we going to do?” [audience laughter] And the consensus among the feminist cabal is finishing. [audience laughter and applause]
They're like, “We have been waiting our whole careers for this, and you have been chosen, so you got to do that shit.” [audience laughter] And I'm like, “But it's Tyler Perry though.” So, the next day, I've now moved to New Jersey. I'm a professor at a state school in New Jersey. I'm sitting in my one-bedroom apartment with peeling paint. The person that lives across the hall from me is a grad student, because it turns out that professor money doesn't go as far as you think it does when you don't come from generational wealth. I'm waiting on a famous millionaire filmmaker to call my phone. I also have an intense need to pee, but I'm afraid to make a run for it.
So, right on time, the phone rings. “Ms. Cooper, this is Tyler Perry.” “Hi, Mr. Perry.” “Nope, call me Tyler.” “Okay. Call me Brittney.” “Brittney, you wrote some things about me that I want to talk about.” “Well, Tyler, let me begin by saying that I've seen all of your films and I really respect.” “Nope, you said that I hate black women, and I don't understand how you came to that conclusion.” Deep breath. He really want to do this.
All right, let's begin with The Haves and Have Nots. “Why in the first three minutes of that show do we have a maid, a sex worker and a rich black bitch? These are tropes of black womanhood.” And he stops me, he says, “Tropes? Let me explain something to you. You're talking to a man with a 12th grade education. So, I don't know anything about tropes. But when I was growing up, the person that lived next door to me was a maid and her daughter was a sex worker, and they were like the nicest people ever.”
And so, then I realized like, “Oh, wow. Yeah, he's Tyler Perry and he's rich, and I'm not rich, but I have a PhD and he has a 12th grade education.” And so, all of a sudden, maybe the playing field is not so disparate as I thought. I also think to myself like, my mother was a single mother with a 12th grade education. And my uncle, who Tyler Perry is starting to sound like on the phone, also had a 12th grade education. So, I realized like, these are the people that raised me and let me switch my tack up a little bit.
So, I say, “Tyler, you know, you and I have a lot in common. We're both from Louisiana. We were both raised in the church. We both had pistol toting grannies. We both had an abusive parent.” And he said, “Oh, wow, I didn't know that about you, but I just knew you were sharp. And now that I do know this about you, I don't understand why you don't understand what I'm trying to do in my movies.” And so, I say to him, “Okay, here's really my question. Why are the educated black girls in your movies such bitches to everybody?” And he says, “Well, because there was a whole branch of my family growing up. They all went to college and they all treated everybody like trash.”
And I realized, damn, like, that's exactly the thing that I feared that having all of this education might make me unrecognizable to the people that raised me, because the thing that I loved about Tyler Perry's movies, is that he writes hard for working class black girls, the girls that work behind the counter at Waffle House, the church ladies. The grannies that press $20 into your hand when you come home from school, those are the kind of folks that raised me, and I wanted to be recognizable to them.
So, I'm thinking about all this. And Tyler breaks in, “Brittney, something urgent just came up. Can I call you back? I'll call you back in 20 minutes.” And I'm like, “Okay.” So, we get off the phone, I run to pee and then I'm sitting in my house going, “Damn, he not going to call me back, because I was blowing this conversation and maybe being a little bit of a jerk.” But like he said, 20 minutes later, the phone rings. “Tyler, this is Brittney. Where were we?”
So, with my 20 minutes of hindsight and hastily gained wisdom, I say, “Here's the thing I'm really trying to say, Tyler. Is it possible for you to uplift working class black girls in your films without throwing the educated sisters under the bus? Because educated girls love your movies, too.” And he says, “You know what? That's profound. Can I uplift one group without demonizing another group? I'm going to think about that.”
And so, then, I said to him, “Now, if you want to keep talking about this, I'm a professional critic and I'm happy to offer these no pieces, I'm never calling your ass again.” [audience laughter] We both screamed, because it was like the realest moment in this conversation. [audience laughter] But he said, “I always like to talk to my critics. I learn a lot from them.” And I said, “Fair enough,” and we hung up.
I was left thinking that the thing that connects Tyler Perry and me, is that we're both working class southern folks who, in our respective fields, have “made it.” And we want to do the kind of work that always honors the places where we come from. I realized that his work called up for me the fear that maybe I would be losing touch with the folks that meant the most to me. But what I also thought was that I'm used to men dismissing me, because I have loud opinions, and I'm brash, and unapologetic and I'm a feminist.
But when this millionaire filmmaker read the little old blog of a not even thousandaire professor and heard me say that the way he represented girls like me in his movies essentially hurt my feelings, he didn't ignore me or act like he hadn't seen it or heard it. He picked up the phone and called me. And then, he listened, and called back and listened again until he could find something useful to make his art better. I had been so swift and sure to proclaim that Tyler Perry hates black women, and I was left to consider maybe listening is what love looks like after all. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: Brittney Cooper is from Ruston, Louisiana, a small college town six hours north of New Orleans. She's an only child and proud of it. By day, she's a women's gender sexuality studies professor and a black feminist BF.
Brittney said that call from Tyler Perry clarified her relationship with being a critic and helped her realize that what she cared more about than being right was being heard. She says, “My soul is better, and indeed, I think our collective American soul is better when we do our best to really listen to each other. I wish to the extent that it was in our power that more of us would pick up the phone and have a conversation.” You can find out more about Brittney and see pictures of the Crunk Feminist Collective on our website, themoth.org.
Coming up, face to face with a designated enemy behind the gates of Guantanamo, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:36:23] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Meg: [00:36:36] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles.
And our final story comes from Jeremy Jennings. He shared it at an evening we produced at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. A quick note for listeners. Jeremy's story includes some difficult details and extreme situations that might not be appropriate for all listeners. Here's Jeremy Jennings.
[cheers and applause]
Jeremy: [00:37:00] All right. On my first shift as a guard on the mental health block at Camp Delta, Guantanamo, there was a man locked in the rubber room, banging his head repeatedly on the glass window of the door, and bleeding from his forehead and rattling it on its hinges. This went on for some time until I started to worry, he was going to do some serious harm to himself. And so, I alerted the medical staff, and the sergeant of the guard, and they told me, “That guy, he's just trying to get your attention and he's manipulating you, so ignore him.” So, I followed my orders, but I thought to myself, if my job here is not to keep the detainees safe, then what is my job?
I joined the Army National Guard in 2000 after seeing a commercial on TV with young guys my age doing the sorts of army stuff I had dreamed about doing since the one year I was junior ROTC in high school. But I grew up in a military family, and I had some idea what active duty was like and what real war might be like. I didn't want to be a real soldier. So, I thought I could join the guard, I could train as a real soldier, but I wouldn't have to be one.
And then, 9/11 happened. I found myself on guard duty at the Golden Gate Bridge. As time went on, some of us were pulled off that mission and sent to Afghanistan. And then, the war in Iraq started, and more of us were pulled off and sent to Iraq. And eventually, my unit was activated and we were assigned to detainee operations in Guantanamo Bay.
When we got there, the camp commander told us, “This is the front line of the war on terror. We're getting good information and we're saving lives. And make no mistake, these guys are highly trained Taliban and Al-Qaeda commando guys. They know how to resist our interrogation, they know how to organize inside a prison, and they know how to manipulate you. And if you give them the chance, they will try to kill you.”
This made us all very nervous, because were not a military police unit. We were field artillery. We were trained to shoot the enemy from long distances. But this was our mission, so we were going to do it the best we could.
The first time I walked inside that prison, gate after gate locked behind me and I passed through row after row of concertina wire until I felt like I was locked inside there with all the rest of them. And it was terrifying. Every time, it was terrifying.
The prison was constructed of steel shipping containers that had been chopped up and reassembled with steel diamond plate and wire mesh to create open air prison blocks that held about 50 detainees each. And every time we went inside that place, we put tape over our name tags on our uniforms, and we put a patch over our unit insignia that said MP. And every time we interacted with the detainees, we wore rubber surgical gloves. And the number one rule was to not socialize with the detainees. You don't talk about the weather. You don't talk about sports. You only talk about camp business. As time went on, some of those detainees did live up to what the camp commander had told us about them, but the majority did not and this was troubling.
One night in the barracks, I confided in my roommate, and I said, “This mission seems crazy, man. It doesn't feel like what we're doing is right. In fact, it feels like what we're doing is wrong.” And he says, “Yeah, man, I know. I feel the same way. But isn't that how it's supposed to feel when you get sent off to do war stuff?” We never talked about that again, because the last thing you want your fellow soldiers or your commanders to think is that you're a terrorist sympathizer.
And eventually, I was assigned a special mission inside the camp as a guard on the mental health block. And there, the rules were inverted. We were encouraged to socialize with the detainees and get to know them, establish a rapport, so that we could manipulate their behavior and keep everyone safe.
And on that block, there were a number of permanent residents. There was the man in the rubber room. There was another man who saw ghosts of his dead family in genies. There was another man who just paced back and forth in his cell all day long. And the only time he ever spoke to me was when he asked me for a soccer magazine. And at night, when he laid down on his bunk, you could see the paint worn off on the floor where he had been stepping all day long.
But down at the end of the block, near the entrance, there was a guy we called Tony Blair. Some previous shift had given him that nickname as a cruel joke. But Tony Blair was a decent guy. He spoke pretty good English, he knew a bunch of rap songs, he knew a bunch of jokes and he was good at imitating the guards. 90% of the time, he was no problem at all. And if Tony Blair liked you, he would insist on giving you a fist bump through the wire mesh of his cell when he saw you and call you his homeboy.
But one day, Tony Blair came back from interrogation and he had changed. He got very depressed and he started acting out. And I asked him, “What happened, Tony Blair?” And he said, “The interrogators had told him crazy things and that he didn't think he was ever going home.” And as the staff and the other guards retaliated against his behavior, I couldn't do anything to protect him, but at least I didn't have to join in and treat him like an asshole.
But one night, when I was walking the block, I came to his cell, and he was twisting up his bedsheet into a rope, and he was threading it through the steel mesh of his wall and preparing to hang himself. I'd seen this before, and it was my worst nightmare as a guard to have a detainee kill themselves on my watch. So, I panicked. Didn't know what to do at first. I thought maybe I could run down to the end of the block and grab the suicide kit with the keys to open his cell and the scissors to cut him down, but I didn't want to leave him there long enough to hurt himself.
So, I just stood there and I said, “Tony Blair, come talk to me. Just come to the door. Come talk to me.” Eventually, he did come to the door. And I said, “Tony Blair, what's going on? Why are you doing this?” And he just looked at me and said, “Because I'm never going home,” and he went back to preparing the noose. I just kept pleading with him. I said, “Tony Blair, come back. Come back to the door and talk to me. Just talk to me.”
So, eventually, he did come back to the door and talk. He just looked at me and he said, “I won't kill myself if we're real friends.” I said, “Of course, we're real friends. We're homeboys.” And I offered him a fist bump, but he refused it. He said, “No, if we're real friends, then we should shake hands like real brothers.” And I thought to myself, “This is what the camp commander was talking about. Tony Blair has been manipulating me. And as soon as I open that bean hole and I give him my hand, he's going to stab me with a steel welding rod that the welders had left inside the prison when they built this place, and that we had found on cell searches.”
But another part of me thought, “Tony Blair is not a killer. He's just given up.” And so, I opened the bean hole and I gave him my hand, and he still refused it. He said, “No. Not with gloves, but like real brothers.” So, I took my gloves off and I gave him my hand. [sobbing] He just held it with both his hands, very gently, and he didn't say a word. He just looked at me. I don't know how long we stood there, but for the first time, I felt like I'd done something right in that place. And then, he quietly let go of my hand and he turned around, took the sheet down, laid down on his bunk and went to bed.
It wasn't long after that night that it was my last shift on that block. I walked down past his cell like I usually did. I said, “See you tomorrow, Tony Blair.” And I never saw him again. [sobbing] I spent four more years in the army after that.
The last year, they held me over my contract, sent me to Iraq for a year. And so, when I returned, I had no obligation left to the military. I just walked away. But I never forgot about those detainees. I was curious, and I found some Freedom of Information act documents, and I searched through them and I found who I thought Tony Blair was. And I discovered that they had never charged or convicted him of anything and that they had released him. I don't know when and I don't know where they sent him. I just hope he made it home.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: That was Jeremy Jennings. You should know that as Jeremy was working on his story, he left out critical operational details and was careful not to discuss anything classified or not covered by the Freedom of Information Act. I mention this, because people who've worked at Guantanamo are not at liberty to speak about many parts of the experience.
In an email, Jeremy wrote, “I feel guilty and responsible for what happened there. I need to say something true and human about that place that forever stands for pain, torture, injustice and inhumanity. I just want America to remember what we did, account for it, accept responsibility, know that good people do all the worst things and sometimes the bad guys aren't who we think they are.”
You can find out more about Jeremy and all the storytellers you've heard in this hour on our website, themoth.org.
[whimsical music]
That’s it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. I hope these stories have made their own lasting impression. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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Jay: [00:49:37] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison. Catherine Burns and Meg Bowles, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Viki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch.
The rest of the Moth leadership team include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.
Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour was from Bill Orcutt, Khruangbin, The Crusaders, Grégoire Maret, Romain Collin and Bill Frisell. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the arts. Thanks, this hour to Troy Public Radio.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcasts, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.