Host: George Dawes Green
[overture music]
George: [00:00:13] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour.
The places where we tell our stories can transfigure them. I'm George Dawes Green, the founder of The Moth. I've been all over the world listening to tales told in the most remarkable venues. The spirit of the place always seeps into the story.
For example, a summer night in the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, 478 acres of marble mausoleums and statuary and ancient oaks, the final resting place of Leonard Bernstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany and thousands of others. And all of them gathered, along with some living souls, for a Moth that we were performing, in the middle of the graveyard.
There are moths and bats and sometimes planes flying out of LaGuardia. We launch with a moment from our own resident spirit, Edgar Oliver. It's not a story he tells so much as an evocation, just to draw us all together.
[applause]
Remember, whenever you listen to Edgar, his voice isn't an act, it's how he sounds every day.
Edgar: [00:01:32] I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, with my mother and with my sister, Helen. One of our favorite places to play all throughout my childhood was in cemeteries. We would go get fried chicken at the Woolworths on Broughton Street, and then we’d go with our sketchpads to the Colonial Cemetery to picnic atop the family vaults that were all shaped like gigantic brick bedsteads.
Helen and I loved to climb on the strange bed-shaped vaults and to lie on the gently curved bellies of the vaults and play at being dead. While we played, mother drew in her sketchpad. It was beautiful to lie there in the golden light, feeling so alive, pretending to be dead. [audience laughter] At the very back of the cemetery was a playground with old rusted iron swings that shrieked when you swung in them. Helen and I loved to swing high and make the swing shriek mournfully, [audience laughter] the cry of our flight.
On the other side of the brick wall overlooking the playground rose the Savannah jailhouse, a tall old building with a tower topped by a red onion dome. High up in the jailhouse wall were dark arched windows, where you could see the silhouettes of men's heads. The prisoners watching us as we swang.
Welcome to The Moth at the Greenwood Cemetery.
[cheers and applause]
George: [00:04:00] That was Edgar Oliver. Edgar’s most recent play, New York Trilogy, got rave reviews from The New Yorker, The Times and everybody else. It was dreamy in that graveyard, with the honeysuckle and the stars and the sleeping souls all around us. And after Edgar, the novelist, Sheri Holman, told us this story.
[cheers and applause]
Sheri: [00:04:31] “Does any human being ever realize life while they live it, every, every minute?” This is about the only line that I can remember from Our Town, which was the brief highlight of my very short but heartfelt theatrical career. My junior year of college, I got to play Emily. She was just a normal girl who knew exactly how her life was going to go, until she unexpectedly died in childbirth. And for the whole third act of the play, she found herself in a cemetery full of folding chairs. [audience laughter] I was acting the hell out of this part. I believed in it completely. And our final night, we got a standing ovation. I looked out into the audience and the 11th or 12th row, I saw my mother. My mother was sobbing hysterically.
And of course, I was secretly delighted by this, because we live to torture our parents, right? And so, here I was, you know success. I looked out and she was sobbing and sobbing, and she was still crying at the end of the play when I came out to give her a hug. And she was still crying, I was like, “Mom, it was just a play.” And she was like, “Don’t you ever die on me again.” I promised her I wouldn’t. [chuckles] My mother was with me through all of these amazing milestones. She always used to say to me, whenever I would panic her like this, she would say, “I’m going to get my revenge when you have children of your own.”
And so, she was with me for the birth of my daughter. And two years later, a little less than two years later, she was with me for the birth of my twin sons, Linus and Felix. This was probably the most poorly timed pregnancy ever, because their due date was the exact day that my third novel was supposed to be published. I had this elaborate book tour planned. My mother and my aunt came along to each take a six-week-old baby. They carried these babies while I sleep-deprived, gave readings up and down the East Coast. I would sit in the back of this minivan, and I would have one baby on this boob, and I would have another baby on this boob and I would nurse them in the back of this van.
It was while I was nursing, my sons that I started to notice that something was a little bit unusual about my son, Linus. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but when babies nurse, they gaze up at their mothers like this, with this love, and you have this amazing connection. My daughter had gazed like this, and Felix had gazed like this. But Linus, when he was nursing, he would look off and away. It struck me as very odd. I couldn't think of why a baby wouldn't look at his own mother. And I thought, could he be autistic? But I knew that it was way too early to diagnose something like that. My mother noticed it too, and she's like, "Yeah, you should check that out."
And so, we got back after the book tour to Brooklyn, and I went to the two-month well visit for my son. The pediatrician took a look at him and he's like, "No, no, he's fine. You're a new mother, you're anxious. Maybe he's a little behind, but don't worry about it. Bring him back in a month." But something told me, no, something's just not right. I remember that night so vividly. The whole family was sitting in the kitchen and it was my husband, myself, my daughter and Felix was in his little bouncy chair. And Linus, who had his shots where he was pale and he was in the baby swing and he was swinging in the dark in the living room.
I could see him through the archway in the darkness, and he just felt like he was on the other side of a divide. He felt like he was swinging away from me. I got this just horrible pit of the stomach feeling. I was like, “You know, fuck that doctor.” [audience laughter] And so, I called her back the next day and I was like, "Listen, I really want to get him checked out." She’s like, "All right. Well, get his eyes checked before we start doing neurological testing." So, I made an appointment with an eye doctor.
This was the winter. All of a sudden, New York City was hit with this terrible blizzard. It was 2003, December 5th. The whole city was snowed in under this horrible blizzard. And here I was going to take this three-month-old baby on the subway in a blizzard, because I had a bad feeling. But I went ahead and I did it. I got to the doctor's office and they dilated his pupils. The doctor got very quiet, and he disappeared into the back room and he came back with a business card for a man named Dr. Abramson, who was the world's leading specialist in retinoblastoma, a very rare kind of cancer. And he said, "Your son has a massive tumor on his retina of his right eye, and you need to get it treated right away" and a week later, we had started chemotherapy.
I never knew a child so young could even get cancer. I’d never heard of anything like this. So, my husband and I went into straightforward battle mode. It’s like, we were going to take care of this, we were going to be in control, we were going to do everything that we could. We went to Sloan Kettering every three weeks. They would gas him, they would examine his eye, they would find a new tumor. We’d go back three more weeks, they’d gas him, they’d examine his eye, they’d find another two or three tumors. It was ultimately 13 tumors in all.
I kept looking for answers is like, “What could cause something like this?” I would ask the doctors, is like, "What caused this?" And they’d say, "Nothing caused it. It's a random mutation." But I couldn't believe that. Clearly, it wasn’t my son’s fault. He was three months old. He hadn’t smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. He hadn't been lying in the tanning bed. Something must have caused this. It must be me, because I was his mother, and it was my job to protect him. I had failed at the one job that a mother is given, which was to protect my son.
It was about this time that the dirty diapers started. When my daughter was little, we had this beautiful house in Clinton Hill, and it had a front porch. One morning, when she was maybe seven or eight months old, I came out and I almost tripped over a dirty diaper rolled up on the welcome mat. I was like, “Uff, some random piece of garbage. It’s Brooklyn.” So, I picked it up, and I threw it in the trash and didn’t think anything more of it. A couple of days later, I came out and there was another dirty diaper that was right on the welcome mat. I’m like “Mm, this doesn’t feel so random anymore” [chuckles] Maybe another week would go by and then another dirty diaper. I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from and who I’d made an enemy of.
And then, I remembered that our babysitter had gotten into some turf war with another babysitter on the playground. [audience laughter] I was like, “All right, this is a language I don’t even speak, I’m not going to get stressed about it. But now, it came when my son was sick. I walk out with the double stroller and I almost tripped over another dirty diaper again. And this time, I just lost my shit, [laughs] I’ll be perfectly honest. I was like, “Who is out to get my family?” The dirty diapers kept coming and I couldn’t figure out who it was.
About the same time, my daughter, who was three years old, started to get weird on me too and she wouldn’t go into the boys’ bedroom. Every time she is going to the boys bedroom, she’d point at the closet and she starts crying and she’s like “A bad na lives there. A bad na lives there.” And Na was her three-year-old word for bird. She’s like “There’s a bad bird that lives in that closet.” And so, I’m freaking out. It's like, diaper is coming, there’s a bad bird that lives in the closet, my son has cancer. So, I did what any rational mother would do. [chuckles] I went to Chinatown and I bought this enormous plastic dragon that was so big I'd seen it in a store. And I thought, this somehow will protect my children, because this is fierce looking motherfucking dragon. [audience laughter] And it's like, "This should scare the blackbird in the closet.”
So, I hung this dragon over the crib. And the very next day, [chuckles] I walk into the boys’ bedroom and the right eye of that dragon is on the floor. And Ella says to me, she's like, "The na picked it out." And I'm like, "Get a grip on yourself.” I got a hot glue gun. I put the eye back on. [audience laughter] I went to bed. The next night, Ella comes screaming into our bedroom with a doll that she has that she's been given for Christmas. And she's like, "My doll's eye is missing. My doll's eye is missing." And the right eye of her doll was gone.
My husband, who's not superstitious at all even, he was freaking out at this point. He went under her bed and he found the right eye of the doll. It was under her bed. And so, by this time, I'm like, "I am reaching out to anybody." I reached out to a neighbor who is very well versed in the art of Santeria. [audience laughter] And she's like, "Oh, yeah, somebody's got it in for you. You have definitely been cursed and you need to get a priest in here and exorcise this house. You need to sleep with Bibles in the window of the boys’ bedroom." But I'm rational and like, "I'm not going to go to some punk ass botanica and Park Slope or on Smith Street." It's like, "I'm going to go to the Sloan Kettering of Botanicas."
So, I get on the number two train and I go straight to Flatbush. [audience laughter] I'm walking around, looking for-- I don't even know what the hell I'm looking for, but it's like I find this botanica and it's like love potions and money powders and the candles of the orishas that are masquerading as Catholic saints. I walk in there and there's this guy that's sitting behind a wall of bulletproof glass, like it's a liquor store. [audience laughter] And chuckles] What I remember about him, he had these blue white eyes that were like, cloudy with cataracts. He was eating from a styrofoam bowl of cup of noodles. So, he's slurping these noodles.
I walk into this-- [audience laughter] I walk in and I'm like, "Excuse me, someone has put a curse on my house and my family, [audience laughter] and I need something to fight back." [audience laughter] He just looks at me and he nods. He nods at the shelf that's like down below. It's all these brown bottles of something called La Bamba. I look at it. It's like, it's floor wash. It's like, "What are you taking me for, a chump?" So, I turned back to him. I was like, "No, no, no. I don't think you understand. Somebody is waging supernatural warfare [audience laughter] on my family and you're trying to sell me floor wash? I need something that will fuck somebody the fuck up." [audience laughter]
He looks at me and he leans in. I come up to the bulletproof glass, it's all scratched up, and he says to me, he's like, "Lady, if somebody's trying to put a curse on you, why don't you go home and figure out what you did to deserve it?" And I was like, "Okay." I paid for the La Mamba [audience laughter] and I left. He'd hit it exactly on the nose, because he'd spoken to me my exact fear. What had I done to deserve it? And not what I had done to deserve my own bad luck, but what had I done to bring this down on an innocent baby?
I went home and I poured that fucking La Bamba all over my front porch. I'm mopping it in the middle of the night. It's like stripping the paint off my porch. [audience laughter] I'm thinking about the stories that we tell ourselves and how random everything is and how random bullshit comes for innocent children every day all over the world. And earlier, I'd connected the dots and I told myself a story that saved his life. It got him to the hospital and it got him treatment at a time when he could have died. And then, later on, in all the agony and the fear and the despair and the guilt, I told myself another story and I connected the dots in another way that made me to blame. I got to a point as a mop in that [laughs] fucking porch and it's like, "Why do we tell ourselves these stories and why do so many of our stories slip into ghost stories?"
I realized the only control I had over this situation, my own personal Santeria, was to let go of the story that I needed to tell myself and live more, like Emily had said, in our town, to realize life every, every minute. When I woke up the next morning, it was like a bright and beautiful and clear winter day. Ella started talking about the black bird and I'm like, "Let's go to the playground." We went outside and it was a beautiful day. And I said, "You know what? Let's eat this day. Let's eat it. Take this perfect day. Who knows how many of them we're going to get? And take it inside you and let's chew it and let's swallow it, so that we can have it for later and it can always be with us."
We started to eat the day, my family. And one day, Ella walked in to the boys’ room and she's like, "That Na is gone." I already knew that Na was gone, because I'd felt it and I'd felt this dark spirit lift from our house when I stopped connecting the dots. I thought about the only other line that I remember from our town, something that I always thought was so beautiful. I think about it every time I try to tell a big story. I realize what we really need most often are just postcards, just moments.
There was a beautiful moment in our town before Emily died and found herself in a cemetery when she was falling in love and somebody sent a postcard to her fiancé to be his little sister. I think of it addressed to my son, Linus. And it goes, "Linus Redmond. 364 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. The United States of America. The planet Earth, the solar system, the Galaxy, the infinite, punishing, most merciful mind of God.” Thanks.
[cheers and applause]
George: [00:18:57] That was Sheri Holman. I wanted to find out if Sheri's son made it okay through his cancer.
How is your family doing now? How's your son?
Sheri: [00:19:08] Thanks for asking. The family's fabulous. My son is now a brilliant, witty, very sarcastic 14-year-old boy. And the whole family's doing great. He just started high school.
George: [00:19:20] And having gone through this experience, is there any good that you got out of it?
Sheri: [00:19:26] Well, there's always this Damocles hanging over your family. There's always the dark cloud and you always have to be vigilant. But I think it really taught the entire family to just appreciate what we have, and don't look too far into the future and be incredibly grateful.
George: [00:19:44] You know, you were telling a story about appreciating every moment of life. Actually, all the stories told in the graveyard that night were really about that. The graveyard as a venue to tell this story about the appreciation of life. Did it make it richer?
Sheri: [00:20:05] I think so. Well, number one, I'm Southern, so graveyards have a [chuckles] huge place in our culture. It's like, you tell stories in graveyards, you make out in graveyards. And so, it seemed perfect to tell a Moth story in a graveyard.
But one of the things about having a baby that's diagnosed with cancer, he was only three months old when he was diagnosed, is you are stripped of the illusion of this 76, 78 years of life being real. You realize front and center, we are all born to die. There's just no more illusion about it. He didn't do anything to cause this. It's just this is what's coming for every single one of us.
So, telling the story in the graveyard and celebrating my son's life and being there with this remarkable audience and you and my friends and my family, it was life in the midst of death, which is what we're all walking around carrying. We just don't open our eyes to it most days.
[soft pleasant music]
George: [00:21:08] My favorite of Sheri Holman's novels is The Dress Lodger, a 19th-century thriller set in the midst of the cholera epidemic, and featuring a prostitute and a doctor whose sideline is grave robbing. Run and get it.
We'll be back in a moment with a tale of an American soldier in Vietnam, who has a date with a beautiful woman in Bangkok. But first, he has to fight and win a battle. That story and more, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[soft pleasant music]
Jay: [00:22:05] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
George: [00:22:15] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm George Dawes Green. We're talking about the places where we tell our stories and how they inform and enliven those stories. The special power of being at a particular Moth on a particular night.
A few years ago, we gathered at the Players Club in New York City for a night of tales about the Vietnam War. The night was called 19 Years and 180 days. We always keep a special table for our raconteurs. And on that night, the little group of Vietnam vets and survivors seemed powerfully bonded. They were cheering each other's stories and embracing when they came down from the stage.
[cheers and applause]
Last to come was this strange love story that sprang from that terrible war. Here's Captain Larry Kerr.
Larry: [00:23:14] In the early autumn of 1969, I was a hot mess. Not yet 26 years old, I was finishing up my second one-year tour in Vietnam. I had been at war altogether here and there for two and a half years at that point and had no idea what I was going to do in the future. I knew exactly what the problem was. There was a girl, Omi, who I should have married and didn't. And that was the whole story at that point.
She was smart, meltingly lovely, strong and she had a fierce belief in the possibility of occasional magic. I could have married her and I didn't and that was it. I had no idea what to do. I'd come back on active duty to spend a second year in Vietnam, because I hadn't found a place for myself in a very changed America when I went back from the first. And here I was at the end of the second year and still didn't know what to do.
Now, this sad tale is not just me. This is my mother as well. We raised one another. We practically grew up together. She was a girl when I was born, and then we raised my two younger brothers. This is a woman who supported me all my life. She heard that Omi had married another man and she said, "You stupid boy, you stupid, stupid boy." [audience laughter] And didn't talk to me for several weeks. [audience laughter] That's a pretty pathetic figure. But this hopelessness, I knew what the focus of it was, okay?
I just had to hold it in, because I couldn't show it to the world. I led the Kontum Mike Force, 600 mountain tribesmen and 17 Green Berets. And our job was to be the cavalry when Special Forces camps along the border areas came under siege. And so, they expected me to be steady, to be serious. I presented a steely and as hard face as I could to the world.
Well, I guess I was probably off-putting enough that nobody in the gang noticed when I got a letter. A letter. Some of you may not know what a letter is. [audience laughter] It's what we did before Snapchat and Twitter and email and so forth. And it came on paper. [audience laughter] I got a letter from the girl, Omi. She said, "I'm divorced." Period. Bang. [audience laughter] She said, “I thought I would be traveling perhaps in Southeast Asia, probably at the end of August.” Well, that happened to be just when my tour, I'm sorry, the end of October. That's exactly when my tour ended. I knew later-- I mean, I sorted it out that she had been talking to my mother. [audience laughter]
Well, I went into military precision mode. I started by getting a car and driver in Bangkok, where we were going to meet. I mean, the way she put it, "Let's just meet in Bangkok," as if, well, two people who knew each other vaguely would go to the Oriental Hotel and have tea. But I knew this was serious for her, and so I wanted to make everything just right. But the timing was the crucial element, because this is a woman who hadn't had, in the years I had known her, $10 in her purse. I mean, the same $10 at one time. [audience laughter] I knew if she managed somehow to buy this ticket to Bangkok, that she was going to arrive broke, and so I had to be there.
And so my planning on time was meticulous, I figured out how long it would take, I added one day for every movement. Every time I had to change planes, every time I had to walk across the street, we had a day. I'm going to get there four days early, as my target is four days early, and then I threw in another three days. [audience laughter] Look, I'm playing for my life here.
And then, very quickly, we're getting into the middle of October, and the fellow who's relieving me has reported for duty, and I've signed over the equipment and the weapons to him, we've shaken hands, it's essentially done. I don't get out the door quite fast enough when a message comes in and says, "One of our posts on the Laotian border has come under siege and we have to go do our part to save him.” I could have left, but in truth, none of my guys expected me to, because the new guy didn't even know everyone's name yet. You can't really expect him to march off to war when he's just, "Hey, you," relationships. So, I put down my packed bags and went back to the war.
We went up to the camp. It was an ugly bit of business. They were being shelled by heavy mortars and artillery, and we pushed back the forward observers, the eyes and ears of the artillery and then went after the guns themselves. And eventually, it was all over. I had a day left, but I rushed to an airplane without being on the manifest, against the rules, and got down to Saigon. I had one day to find a way to Bangkok. I was five days until the next commercial flights went across and three days until the embassy courier flight went to Bangkok.
At the end of a long and very frustrating day, arguably the darkest day of my life, a guy said, "Captain, you can't get there by the 28th even if you hijack an airplane." [audience laughter] I felt like I couldn't breathe. I felt like I had somehow been hit with something. And so, I went to the Special Forces Club. The bar there was open seven days a week, 24 hours a day for eight years, [audience laughter] all in all. I went there and I had a lot of money in my jeans. And so, I drank good scotch.
After three scotches, generously poured, it came to me. I could fix this. I was going to drink myself to death in that bar. I told myself, you're not leaving here until they carry you out dead. Just as I had started into that mode, in through the door comes Martha Raye. Maggie Ray, the patron saint of the Green Berets. Now, some of you may not know who Martha Raye is, or was. She was born in 1916. By 1921, she was a headliner in vaudeville. She made her first movie in 1934, made 30 more of them, three times with Bob Hope. But my favorite movie, Monsieur Verdot, she played with Charlie Chaplin. She acted him right off the screen through the entire movie, and he was the director and the producer.
So, Maggie came in, and she and I had known each other since the beginning of that second tour of mine. We had a good relationship. We had shared common interest. We like good coffee and vodka and movies. We spent a lot of time talking about that. Well, she walked in, surveyed her domain there. Maggie had been there six months a year for seven years. It wasn't to do shows and it wasn't to promote herself or her career or anything, she just came and largely just hung around with the guys, the Green Berets. She was our cheerleader. She was our confidante.
Well, she walked in, as I say, she surveyed her domain and then she looked at me, and she sat down, ordered a drink and gave me a huge stage frown, tapped my hand and said, "Larry, what's wrong?" I said, "Maggie, I just screwed up my whole life. There's one girl, she's going to be in Bangkok. I'm not going to be able to get there. I don't know what I'm going to do. I've just ruined everything. I've just completely fouled this whole thing up." I said, "She's going to arrive in Bangkok, she's going to be broke, she's going to wait a day, maybe two and then she's going to have to go home."
Maggie thought about it for a minute. She said, "Larry, are you sure that this girl is that important? Because there are an awful lot of ways to have fun in this world without-- Just invent it yourself all over again." I said, "No, Maggie, she's absolutely the girl I want, the girl I need, the girl I want to marry. This is everything. She's it." She gave me another pause and then she said, "We'll fix this. We're going to go tomorrow and see the head of the 7th Air Force,” that's a four-star general, “and we're going to fix this. We'll get you a ride to get in Bangkok on time."
And so, I went to my room and woke up. And 10 minutes later, the adrenaline in me had burned off all the hangover and I was ready for the day. I marched out to meet Maggie, and off we went to see the head of the 7th Air Force. We walked into the building at Tan Son Nhut airfield that said Headquarters 7th Air Force, through the door, and there are signs that say, Executive Suites this direction. Maggie understood that the real head of the 7th Air Force was not the four-star general who got in the pictures. It was the senior non-commissioned officer who really ran the place, Command Master Sergeant Francis Patrick Mahoney. Not Mahoney, dear God, no. Mahoney. [audience laughter]
And so, Mahoney operates in a huge bay of people doing busy and important work in a plexiglass cube. That's his office, so he can see in every direction. I'm left to sit outside. Maggie is received like royalty inside. Her gesticulations get wilder and wilder. She's pointing over her shoulder at me. But Mahoney's head is slowly turning this way. And what was a smile has turned to a, "Oh, my God." [audience laughter] The issue is in real doubt. I can tell, because Maggie cries. Maggie only cried on cue. [audience laughter] She's pulled out all the stops.
So, at any rate, this goes on for some time. I'm fidgeting, trying to look professional, fidgeting. I'm finally called in. He looks at me like I was something the dog drug in and said, "Captain, we'd be glad to give you a hand with this problem. Be at Chalk 102 at midnight tonight and we'll get you to Bangkok on time." Well, I must have given him-- Say, "Thank you very much" as I ran out to see Chalk 1. Chalk's just a circle underground with a number painted on it. It's a meeting place. I rushed back to my room, packed my bag, and with a flashlight I went onto a very dark, very dimly lit Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base.
I was having some questions about which way to turn when I got to the headquarters to get there. But then, I saw there was a light shining, and that seemed to be in about the right direction. So, I walked to the light. That light was right over Chalk 102. It's in a war zone. We're on an air base. It's dark everywhere, except where I'm standing. I felt like Bogart in Casablanca. [audience laughter] But along comes a major right at the crack of midnight, grabs my arm, he says, "You're Kerr?" I said, "Yes, sir." And we went to the general's Learjet.
There's a lieutenant colonel flying, general's personal pilot. This major is a co-pilot. There's a senior enlisted guy in the back who's a crew chief and occasional steward. And moments later, we're moving towards altitude in the general's plane. I'm leaning back, drinking some of the general's booze. [audience laughter] Now, the surreal is part of the actual fabric of war. You see it everywhere. I was at the end of any ability to generate any disbelief about anything. But this was strange, even for Vietnam, and Maggie's mojo was sensational.
So I got my way to Bangkok. I had enough time for a few hours' sleep to get nice and clean and spiffy, and go to the airport to meet this woman. It was a big green room, hospital green, cement blocks. It's a palace now, that airport. But then, it was very basic. The gates emptied into the hall from a distance, and all of us waiting to see people were kept behind the lines at some distance off. So, I'm peering very carefully to see her. And for reasons that she's never been able to justify, she's about the last person off the train. [audience laughter]
At any rate, I look for her and I look for her, and finally there she is. She can't see me yet, but I can see her. Her eyes are shining, her face is shining, she's ready for adventure, she's thrilled to be there, she's thrilled about making a new life with me. Well, a year later, I married the woman.
[cheers and applause]
Not as dumb as I look. [audience laughter] And 46 years later, when I see her, when I go to pick her up at a ferry stop or a train or an airport, I run through a mental catalog of my visions of her. It always stops bang on that picture of her back in Bangkok in 1969. And the face I look for and the face I find is that same 1969 face, dark eyes glistening, face shining, ready for an adventure. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
George: [00:37:48] That was Larry Kerr. Larry was a soldier, stockbroker, diplomat and teacher. He retired to Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, where he spends his time sailing, lecturing, writing poetry and finding animal shapes in rain clouds.
Do you have a story to tell us? You can pitch us your story by recording it right on our site or call 877-799-M-O-T-H. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the world. Here's a pitch we liked.
Therese: [00:38:29] Hi, my name is Therese Wood. I live in Lansing, Michigan. I'm a registered nurse, case manager. About 12 years ago, I had a young man in his 20s come to me at the assisted living where I worked. Said his dad had early Alzheimer's, [clears throat] early onset Alzheimer's, and was very declined and needed to be placed, but he wanted to preserve his dignity and he didn't know how to do it. His dad was a physician, well loved, well-traveled and still thought he was a physician, though he was going to daycare every day.
So, I brought him into the assisted living, into the office and I faked an interview with him. I told him that we had an opening for an on-site physician and toured him around the facility, introduced him to all the staff, acted like it was a genuine position. I showed him an empty room, told him that would be his office, took him back to the main office, got out an employment form, talked it up a little bit more and then broke the news to him that we couldn't pay him, but we could offer him room and board in exchange for his services. He was tickled, he was thrilled. His son was in tears, thanked me and he signed and moved in two days later.
George: [00:39:46] Remember, you can pitch us at 877-799-M-O-T-H or online at themoth.org, where you can also share these stories or others from the Moth Archive.
Next up, an Armenian American college girl finds her way through first love, when The Moth Radio Hour returns.
[soft melodious music]
Jay: [00:40:33] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
George: [00:40:45] You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm George Dawes Green.
If you've never been to a Moth, try to come to a GrandSLAM. These are amateur storytellers. They go to a Moth SLAM, put their names into a hat, their stories are judged. If they win, they're invited to compete at one of our GrandSLAMs, which in New York are held at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The audience is always packed with fanatic Moth fans and raconteurs. And our host, Dan Kennedy, is always sharp and spontaneous and otherworldly. And the nights can get out of hand.
This story you're about to hear is deep, but a little bit racy. So, if any reference to sexual situations might be offensive to you, you should tune back in about seven minutes.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Anoush Froundjian from the Moth GrandSLAM in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Anoush: [00:41:44] It's the summer of 2003. I had just finished my first year at Mount Holyoke College, and I was now beginning a summer job as a box office manager in Sharon, Connecticut. I'd be living in the dorms with everybody who worked there backstage. This dorm, it was a small house, but more like a cabin. When you walked in, the first thing you'd notice was that it smelled like cigarette smoke and that the floors were lined with empty beer bottles, or what they would call empties. [audience laughter]
I'm not really a partier. I never was. I was always an old soul and I was honestly more busier being Armenian than having any time for drinking, drugs or anything else. So, I was 19 and I decided that I wanted to see how the other half lived. So, within my first week of work, I drank for the first time, I smoked pot for the first time and I lost my virginity to the guy who operated the sound booth. [audience laughter] So, now, I had a boyfriend kind of, [audience laughter] and had also earned myself the nickname Tequila. [audience laughter]
But since I didn’t have a big group of friends at the time to get advice from or ask questions to, I was figuring things out on my own. Like, is it normal that my body hurts this much still afterwards, or is it normal that he's not talking to me that much now, as much as he did or is it normal that my throat feels like I have a lump in it all the time? And if so, then how much of their sadness do women typically express, [audience laughter] as opposed to the amount that they keep inside and forget about? [audience cheers and applause]
So, after a while, I just couldn’t take it anymore. And one weekend, when I was visiting my parents, my family at their summer home which is a couple towns away from Sharon, I see my reflection in the porch window and I start to sob. My uncle, who’s sitting a couple feet away in a wicker couch, looks over and says, “Are you all right?” I just ran away and I swung open the porch door and ran down the stairs, down the hill. As I was running down, relatives were running up. I bump shoulders with my dad. My dad and I look at each other, and he looks at me and he goes, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “Oh, nothing.” He looks at me again.
Since my dad has this way of just being able to read me really well, he said, “Oh, you had sex?” [audience laughter] I didn’t know what to say, because I wasn’t planning on discussing it with my parents. [audience laughter] But my parents are really cool, but they’re also Armenian. My dad is also from Lebanon, so you never know. [audience laughter] So, I look at him and I go, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Did you use a condom?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Are you okay?” And I said, “Yeah.” And so, he pats me on the shoulder, like in a welcome aboard kind of a way, [audience laughter] and says, “Okay.” I immediately felt better, because now I could stop feeling guilty and mad at myself and just feel sad the normal way. [audience laughter]
Later that night, everybody was going home, like, my uncles and aunts all went home and my dad went home. It was just me, my mom, and my little brother, Rafi, who was 10 at the time. My mom somehow found out. She lights a cigarette and she sits me down and she says, “What the hell were you thinking?” My mom has a way of coming on really strong until you realize that it’s just her way of fighting for you. She eventually says, “I just don’t know why you never look out for your heart.” And I say, “Mom, who looks out for their hearts anymore?” And she says, “You know what? I think you should invite him over for dinner. [audience laughter] I think you should invite him over for dinner with me and Rafi. I think it would be fun.”
And I said, “What?” And she said, “Yes. This is who you are. If someone’s going to like you, they have to love all sides of you. Don’t you dare minimize yourself for somebody else.” I don’t know what it was, maybe it was my inner Mount Holyokeness or my inner Armenian, and I looked at her and I said, “Okay.” [audience laughter] So, the next day, I go to the sound booth and I said, “Look, I know we’re not getting married or anything, but my mom wants to know if you want to come over and have dinner with her and my little brother.” And he goes, “Okay.” And I go, “Okay. Oh, God.” [audience laughter]
And then, I’m setting the table for the most unnecessary meal of the century. [audience laughter] My mom is in the other room cooking a very elaborate meal. I'm like, “Mom, why did you roast an entire chicken? He doesn't even love me.” [audience laughter] I look through the window and see his green Subaru drive up. I hear the door slam shut and I’m just like, ready. He walks in, and we sit down and everything’s fine. My mom and him talk about bands they both like. My brother talks to him about instruments he wants to learn how to play.
But something happens, because my brother, who's 10, he's too young to know what's going on, but he knows what's going on and he gives me this look from across the table. It’s like, “Interesting evening, huh?” [audience laughter] I just start laughing. I start laughing and laughing and laughing. It’s noticeable. [audience laughter] I'm just so happy, because I finally have my voice back. I realized that you can have a lot of courage to run away from home and to try new things, but it takes twice the amount of courage to be able to come back. I realized that he wasn’t the special guest that my mother invited to dinner that night. That special guest was me.
[cheers and applause]
George: [00:48:37] That was Anoush Froundjian, a storyteller, improviser and cartoonist. Anoush won that GrandSLAM. To see a picture of her on that night and other photos of the GrandSLAM atmosphere, go to our website, themoth.org. That’s themoth.org.
There are Moths happening just about every day all over the world. We’ve had Moths in dive bars and cathedrals, in an old leaky scow on the Hudson River, in an abandoned dance hall in Tajikistan. Get a crowd of people, a microphone and someone with a story to tell, and the spirit of the place will come out. You should be there too. To find out where Moths are happening near you, go to our website, themoth.org.
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.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:49] Your host this hour was George Dawes Green, novelist and founder of The Moth. Catherine Burns and Jenifer Hixson directed the stories of the show. The rest of the Moth’s directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Lou Ly.
Moth Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Tin Hat, 07, Sam Amidon, Jessica Lurie and Ara Dinkjian. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.