To Thine Own Self Be True

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Go back to To Thine Own Self Be True Episode. 
 

Host: Jay Allison

 

[overture music]

 

Jay: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour with more true stories told live. I'm Jay Allison. We're taking our theme this time from Act 1 of Hamlet, where Polonius famously offers his son some advice. This above all, To Thine Own Self Be True. In this hour, five storytellers who stand up for their beliefs and accept themselves as they are. 

 

Our first story is from R. Eric Thomas. Eric is one of The Moth's beloved hosts. You may have heard him introducing storytellers at a Mainstage in Philly or a D.C. StorySLAM. He told this story at a Mainstage in Seattle, where we partnered with Seattle Arts and Lectures. Here's R. Eric Thomas telling his story on a night when he was the host live from Benaroya Hall.

 

[applause]

 

Eric: [00:01:07] Tonight's theme is high anxiety. I was very excited when they asked me to host the show, because I have nothing but anxiety stories. [audience laughter] I'm skipping therapy to be here. [audience laughter] So, we have a lot to talk about. [audience laughter] I'm just kidding. But I do want to share just this one couple minute long story about a time. I guess probably about 10 years ago now. No. Yeah, 10 years ago. I'm almost 30 at that point. [audience laughter] I know you can't tell. It don't crack, [audience laughter] but—

 

[cheers and applause]

 

So, at this point, I'm almost 30. As you are want to do as you get to your late 20s, you start to take stock of where you are in life, where I wasn't a great place, but I was starting to feel more confident about who I was and I was starting to ask for what I wanted more.

 

've always been the kind of person, even when I was little, even when I was a little kid where when I would walk down the street, some people would just turn to me, point at me and say, “Gay,” which is a strange thing when you're seven years old and you're like, “I don't know what that word means. But does it mean they like my shorter rolls, because--" [audience laughter] Okay. By the time I got to 28 when this story takes place, I was a little tired of it, because I like recognition. Don't get me wrong. But I was like, “I don't feel like I should be accepting this in the spirit that it's intended. This isn't an insult in my opinion, but people were intending it as an insult.” 

 

I said to myself, how do I become the person who is not always pointed at and yell and people yell gay at him? I decided it was a problem with my masculinity. I just wasn't masculine enough. I had to be more covert about being gay. I could be gay, but just not like gay, [audience laughter] whatever that means. As I said, I was not quite where I needed to be yet as a person, but I was getting there. So, I decided to do. I was like, “Well, what would a masculine person do? What would the Rock do? What would Vin Diesel do?” [audience laughter] I decided to do the most masculine thing I could think of. I signed up to join the gay softball league in Philadelphia. [audience laughter] I was like, “This seems great.”

 

I was looking for wrestling, but they didn't have it. [audience laughter] I was like, “Oh, yeah, I'm going to be so masculine. I'm going to go play this game.” And then, I was like, “I don't know how to play softball.” [audience laughter] So, I Wikipedia-ed it. [audience laughter] I found out two things that you throw underhand and that the balls are bigger. That's what he said. [audience laughter] I was like, “Well, we're all set.” I have to say I was a little nervous about this whole thing. It didn't seem like a great plan, but I didn't have a lot of options. 

 

My roommate was a really big sports fan. He was also a gay guy, but he was very muscular and he would scream through the house when the Phillies won. And I was like, “Okay. Well, he's a part of the softball league and he seems to be well adjusted. So, the only difference between me and him are pecs and the softball league.” [audience laughter] So, I chose the latter. And so, I joined, I get assigned to this team. They have a little uniform shirt and you could wear baseball pants or whatever. But I brought these really cute shorts from American Apparel. They were like super adorable, [audience laughter] because my legs are really great. [audience laughter] 

 

I showed up to the team. They were very welcoming and they were very nice to me and they're like-- We did some drills to test everybody's skills. And they're like, “We're going to put you in far-right field.” [audience laughter] “But if you really put your back into it and you work hard, you can advance to other positions.” And I was like, “Oh, I don't care about this at all. [audience laughter] Far right field seems a okay to me, Queens.” [audience laughter] I was like, “If I'm on the team, that's masculinity. It's like bab bidi bobbidi boo, you know, or bibbidi boppity bro, I should say. [audience laughter] I didn't know that I was going to have to participate in this. 

 

I had a secondary objective, which was just to meet a boyfriend. So, I was like, “Well, far right field seems like a great place to just strut around in my little shorts.” [audience laughter] I was very happy out there, because inside, the actual playing area, [audience laughter] they were very serious about softball, [audience laughter] which was offensive to me. [audience laughter] I thought it was going to be a whole bunch of Queens quoting A League of Their Own. [audience laughter] Some of them had never even seen A League of Their Own. [audience laughter] I'm going around, “There's no crying in baseball.” And they're like, “This is softball. Nobody's crying.” And I'm like-- [audience laughter] 

 

I did get to be a little bit concerning as we continued through our season. We didn't have a great record, and I was not helping anybody. When the ball would come my way, I'd be like, “No, thank you.” [audience laughter] I was making plenty of jokes from out there, just yelling into them like, “That's what he said.” But I started to realize, I was like, “Maybe I'm too gay for the gay softball league.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “This isn't what you came here to do. You didn't come here to crack jokes and look really good. You came here to be more masculine.” 

 

And so, the games started to be like-- Whereas before, they had been this source of joy and flippancy and camp, for me, they became this place of huge anxiety. I tried to get better, but I was not practicing [audience laughter] and I don't have any skills. So, I was just bad. Midway through the season, the whole league had to do a skills assessment. If you were given a score and if you got below a 7, you had to go to a skills day. The implication was like, “If you didn't really get it at the skills day, maybe this wasn't your spiritual journey.” [audience laughter] 

 

I was about to be kicked out of the gay softball league. [audience laughter] So, I was like, “I'm going to go to this game or whatever, and I'm going to play or whatever.” So, I watched A League of Their Own, and I was like, “I'm going to [audience laughter] channel Geena Davis. [sings] We're the members of the All American League. We come from cities near and far. [audience laughter] I didn't show up. I got my glove unused, [audience laughter] got my little shorts. They're doing a batting drill or clinic when I get there. There's a woman behind home plate, and she's coaching you through. And so, I'm watching people. They're hitting or not hitting. And then it's my turn and I'm like, “Okay, let's do this. You're the man. You're the man. You can hit this underhanded, large-balled, softball.” 

 

And so, the ball comes to me. It's a good pitch, I guess. I don't know. [audience laughter] I swing hard and I miss hard. I miss so hard that my foot pops up, like when they kiss in the movies. [audience laughter] And the coach, this beautiful soul turns to me and she said, “Okay, that was a fine attempt, but it was a little gay. [audience laughter] Maybe you want to think about butching it up a little bit.” And for all the times that strangers with amazing gaydar have turned to me on the street and yelled gay. It never landed like that. When this lesbian woman turned to me and told me that my swing was too gay, I realized that I was on the inside of something and that she could say it and I could say it. And it didn't have to be an insult that I threw back at myself, because that's what I was doing. 

 

This performance was really just me working off all the nervous energy, all the anxiety that I had about being perceived as not enough, as not masculine enough, as not good enough at this game. If she was gay and I was gay and my swing was gay, we are all gay. [audience laughter] That was the point of this whole thing. And so, all I had to do was hit a damn ball. So, she was like, “Here's what you got to do. You got to stick your butt out and you got to wait a little bit longer before you hit it.” And I was like, “That's what he said.” [audience laughter] Incorrigible. 

 

I did what she said. I cracked fewer jokes. And the pitch came, I swung and I hit it and went sailing out over the field. Please. Thank you. [audience laughter] I hit one ball. Please, I will sign autographs afterwards. [audience laughter] I thought everything was going to change for me after that. I thought I'd be good. I watched Angels In The Outfield and I was like, “Well, you know, the kid knows how to play baseball at the end of the movie. So, that's me, or whatever. I'm the natural. Whatever happens in that movie, I don't know.” [audience laughter] 

 

But the fact of the matter was, I had not come to this game with the right intentions, and I had not come to this game being true about myself or my intentions. And so, when the season was over, I quit the team. The next year, I went back as a cheerleader- [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] - and I found a boyfriend. [audience laughter] So, that's all I really needed to do. 

 

[cheers and applause] 

 

Jay: [00:12:13] R. Eric Thomas is a writer based in Baltimore. In 2020, he released his best-selling humorous memoir, Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, which includes a chapter on more of his exploits on the softball team. After his attempt at softball, Eric says, “I did not learn my lesson vis-a-vis my own sports abilities. I enthusiastically joined a gay kickball league last winter. Unfortunately, the pandemic forced the league to cancel before we could play. But I look forward to failing upwards once it's safe again to do so.” 

 

Next up, storytellers from our open-mic StorySLAMs tell us about standing up for themselves at work, in their relationships and in their poetry, when The Moth Radio Hour continues. 

 

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.

 

This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. The next three stories come from our StorySLAMs, which are open-mic storytelling competitions that we hold in cities around the US and even across the globe. At Moth StorySLAMs, anyone can throw their name into an actual hat to tell a tale. That means you can go from the audience to the stage if the theme of the night fits some story worthy event in your life. Or, you might learn the surprising backstory of the stranger sitting right next to you when their name is drawn. SLAMS are fun. 

 

So, next up, three slammers from cities around the world sharing stories of doing what they know is right, even when it's not that easy. First, Renita Walls. She told this story at an Atlanta SLAM, where we are presented by Georgia Public Broadcasting. 

 

[cheers and applause] 

 

Here's Renita, live at The Moth.

 

Renita: [00:14:38] So, when I was like way younger and way more open with my art, I was a slam poet. You know, I was allowing people to critique my art. And so, I was probably about 24 or so, and I decided to enter this SLAM. So, if you don't know what a SLAM poetry thing is, you perform a poem, you get some prize. So, this prize was for $500. And then it went on to like $2,500, because it was a promotional thing for this movie, Soul Plane. Have y'all seen this movie? Okay. So, if you have not seen this movie, imagine every stereotypical thing you have ever heard or seen or said or thought about a black person and put it together and thinking about it for an hour and a half, and that's the whole movie. [audience laughter] So, I'm like, “Okay.” 

 

So, the thing was to write a poem about soul, right? Okay. So, Atlanta is really known for poetry. If you don't know that, Atlanta is big on the scene. So, I'm sure the promoters were thinking, “Atlanta's going to have some hot ass poems.” This is going to be fantastic, right? So, I joined the SLAM, and it's some big hitters. and I'm really young in the game. I'm so nervous, but I make it through to the finals. Okay, here we go. It's going well. Night before the SLAM, sitting at home, I'm looking at the promo for the movie. I'm like, “This is some bullshit.” [audience laughter] Like, “Am I really about to write a poem or listen to people do poems about soul and their spirit and black history? But this shit, no, I can't do it.” 

 

So, my friend calls me, he's like, “Yeah, Nita, you getting ready for the SLAM?” I said, “I'm about to rewrite my poem.” [audience laughter] He said, “Hold on. The poem SLAM is tomorrow. That is a bad idea.” “No, it's not a bad idea. I'm going to rewrite the poem and I'm going to do an anti-soul plane poem tomorrow.” He's like, “This is a bad idea, Nita.” “Okay, bye.” Hang up the phone [audience laughter] Write the poem, memorize the poem, do the poem all night, don't sleep, go to work, do the poem all day. In the bathroom, in the mirror, I'm doing the poem all the way there. I get there, I feel like I'm going to pass out. [audience laughter] I'm so nervous. 

 

So, a friend of mine sees me, she's like, “Yeah, you got your poem ready?” I'm like, “Yup, I wrote it yesterday.” She said, “What? This is going to be bad. Let me hear it.” Did it for her. She said, “Let's run it. Okay, let's do it.” I said, “Okay.” So, now I'm feeling a little hyped up. I stand up there. All my friends go. They are great. Everything is going well. It's my turn. I'm like, “Oh, this is going to be bad. But I'm going to do it because I rode it. I will stand on my moral high horse. I will not let this damn SLAM go awry. I'm here to represent the black people.” [audience laughter] So, I get up there and the first line is, “It is clear. There is no soul in Soul Plane. Only souls, souls for very low payment.” I look and I see my friend who is the promoter's face, and it just says, “Oh, shit.” [audience laughter] 

 

I don't let that stop me. I just keep running head on, like I'm going to say what I got to say. “We've been bamboozled, led astray, run amok.” I really actually said these things. [audience laughter] I was quoting Malcolm X. I was on the high horse, the biggest soapbox you have ever seen. I was on it. Everybody started cheering. It was like, I was representing the people. Everybody felt this way, but nobody said it. They were all thinking about this $500. [audience laughter] I put people's names in the poem that were in the SLAM. It was so relevant. People were losing it. Everybody's on top of their chairs. And I got hyped. I felt like a poetry rockstar. I wanted to crowd surf [audience laughter] and I'm like, “It's like 50 people in here. So, that's going to be an epic fail. Don't do it. You're crazy.” So, I just did my poem. Everything was great. 

 

I got off the stage, everybody's shaking my hand. People are like, “I don't even want to go up next behind her.” People on this stage right now, I won't mention no names, but they did not [audience laughter] want to go up behind me- [audience cheers and applause] -because it was so epic. It was fantastic until they sent the footage to LA. And they saw nothing, but my angry black ass going off about this movie. And they were like, “We are not cutting the check.” And I'm like, “Are you serious?” So, my friend who was the promoter was like, “Look, she might can't go on for the big prize. I get it. You don't want her representing the movie. But she didn't break the rules. She wrote a poem about soul, about how she won't sell her soul for this trash movie [audience laughter] and you got to pay her.” They felt bamboozled. Let astray, run amok, but the check cleared.

 

[cheers and applause]

 

Jay: [00:19:33] Renita Walls is a poet, storyteller and nurse, originally from Baltimore, Maryland. She tells us, she enjoys sharing her truth through performance art. Renita said, her poem was not aired at the movie opening, which she “Can understand.” 

 

Our next story is from Hayley Dunning, who told it at a StorySLAM at Rich Mix in London. Here's Hayley. 

 

[cheers and applause]

 

Hayley: [00:20:15] Hello. So, I had been single for four years when Andrew joined our office. I checked out all the new guys who joined the department, naturally. But it was slim pickings. I would say he was slim pickings. He was kind of scrawny, a bit skinny and not that much taller than me. So, not my normal type because they make me feel a little bit indelicate. But his soft Scottish accent and twinkling blue eyes were enough to draw me in. So, we bonded over a love of writing. We used to send each other haikus that we'd written every day. Sometimes they were serious and beautiful. Sometimes they were silly and throwaway. We had a lot of conversations that I might have considered flirting, even though they were mostly about grammar. [audience laughter]

 

I fell in love with him though, when went to interview someone together for a video. He'd printed out the questions that we'd prepared on an A4 sheet of paper and folded it in such a way, so that when I turned it to ask the next set of questions, you couldn't hear any rustling from the paper, that was picked up by the microphone near my chest. It was so efficient and had so much forethought. [audience laughter] That's what really gets me going. [audience laughter] So, yes. So, Andrew was perfect. That is, except for the wedding ring he was always turning on his finger. 

 

So, one day, we had an assignment that took us across the park together. And we talked about how difficult it would be to have a partner who was better at our own game than us, how the pressure to have children on our generation was misguided about mortgages. As casually as I could, I asked him, “What does your other half do?” And he said, “Oh, he's a UX designer.” [chuckles] So, I was really glad that he wasn't looking at me in that moment, because I swear if he'd looked in my eyes, he would have seen that little bit of my heart break. 

 

The very next day, we were in a meeting. He noticed that my eyes are different colors. They're not quite so. They're both blue, but one of them has a big brown splurge in it that makes it look that way. But I had waited forever for a man to look close enough to notice. And so, it hurt. But obviously, I realized that my feelings had to change. I wanted us to still be friends and this stupid fantasy of mine would get in the way of that. And obviously, I wanted to find my own love. But still, I thought he was magnificent and I wondered if perhaps he should know that. 

 

Not long after that, one of my cats died. He was a little kitten that I'd had since he was a kitten. He'd grown into this big, soft cat who was warm and soft, and he'd been comfort itself to me. And then, he and comfort were gone. And I said to Andrew, I felt like I'd lost some of the love in my life, some that I'd given and some that I'd received. He said that it was still there, even though I couldn't feel it. And I thought, everyone should know when they're loved. It should be a compliment. I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know how. 

 

At that time, I was doing a short story writing class. We had this assignment to write a story that was like a physical and an emotional journey. So, I wrote a version of this story. I wrote mine and Andrew’s story set against a physical journey where I was going to an office Christmas party and he would be there. The idea in the story, is that I would tell him, but I get there and he's outside the pub and I go to tell him, but we're interrupted by a colleague and the moment is gone. And that's where that story ended. My teacher loved it and the other students loved it and that was great. But I still hadn't told him. 

 

And then, so, New Year’s Day came around and I was like, “I've got to start this year off right.” And so, I decided to send him the story I'd written in the short story class. I sent it as a word doc attachment over WhatsApp, so I could see those two blue ticks when he'd read it. [audience laughter] So, he read it and I waited and then little dots to show that he was typing. And finally, he said, “I love you too, buddy.” And that was enough. 

 

[cheers and applause]

 

Jay: [00:24:06] That was Hayley Dunning. Hayley is a science writer, covering cutting edge research into everything from artificial cells to black holes. She's currently editing her first sci-fi novel. She lives in London with two cats and zero humans. She and Andrew are still colleagues and close friends. Hayley says, they have helped each other through the process of writing their first novels. 

 

The last of these three slam stories comes from Heidi Stuber. She told this at a GrandSLAM, the ultimate storytelling showdown, in which the winners of 10 StorySLAMs compete for the title of Storytelling Champion. Here from Town Hall in Seattle, where we partner with public radio station KUOW, Heidi Stuber.

 

[cheers and applause] 

 

Heidi: [00:25:06] So, it had just been a week since my son got out of the hospital, when my husband moved out. My son was only eight years old, and he'd been recently diagnosed with autism and he had to go to the hospital because of some pretty challenging behaviors related to his disability. My husband was actually my second husband, so my son's stepdad. And he'd been a really good stepdad. He taught my son to read and he taught my son to ride a bike. He really loved him and he was all in. On the day of our wedding, he put a medallion around my son's neck and he promised to love him like his own son. 

 

But something about the hospital just broke him, and he bailed. He moved out when we weren't even there and he didn't tell us where he was. I was only allowed to call him one time a week for 20 minutes. And for months, we lived like this. My son was a mess, because he just got out of the hospital and the Special Ed Nanny had quit. I had this new job at a startup that I knew I couldn't keep if this man didn't stay in my life. And for the entire time he was gone, I just kept telling him, “No matter what you need, I'll do it. I am all in. I love you so much. I am here to give you whatever you need.” And so, after a couple months, he asked to sit down and have lunch. He said, “I'm finally ready to share with you what I need.” I was so excited, because I knew I was ready to give it. 

 

And so, when I showed up at this really mediocre Mexican restaurant and sat down with him, he slid this piece of paper across the table at me. And in big letters at the top, it was like, HUSBAND'S NEEDS. [audience laughter] He has a name; I'm just not going to use it. [audience laughter] And underneath that, he had listed out very clearly, all the most difficult symptoms of my son's disability. And next to each one, he said, “I will no longer tolerate this in my home.” I looked at this list and I said, “This is impossible. How could you ever expect this? No eight-year-old can agree to never have a behavioral challenge, let alone a disabled one who just got out of the hospital.” And he said, “I don't know if it's possible or not, but it's just what I need.” 

 

And I said, “What are you possibly expecting?” Like, “What do you want? Do you want me to send him away?” And he perked up. [audience laughter] He said, “Well, if that's what it takes.” And I said, “Where do you think he's going to go?” And he said, “That's not my problem.” And then, he said the most incredible thing. He said, “I love you so much, and I love your son, and I miss you, and I want to come home and be a family again.” And in that moment, it wasn't so much a decision as this chasm opened inside my chest. And on one side was this dream of a life we were going to have together as a blended family. And on the other side was the life I was now going to lead. 

 

I pushed the paper back across the table and I said, “You promised me you would never make me choose.” I got up and I left the restaurant, and he wrote up the divorce paperwork that night. I'd love to tell you that things got better, like I got rid of that loser. [chuckles] But the truth is, everything got worse. The divorce was nasty and he was nasty. He got the house and he never even said goodbye to my son, who he had been raising half his life with me. [sighs] I was so mad for so long. I mean, I was furious. All these people, like, I go to yoga and I try to be spiritual and they're like, “Oh, you need to forgive him. You know, it's not for him, it's for you.” And I was like, “Fuck, if I forgive that guy.” [audience laughter] 

 

It's been years now. If I haven't found my way to forgiveness, I've found my way to some peace, because I have had to go to the mat for my son again and again and again. And the gift that man gave me is there was never going to be a cost worse than the one I had already paid, which means there was never going to be a barrier to advocating for him that I couldn't do. And that day in the Mexican restaurant, when I made that decision, that was not a decision. What I realized was my son, who is a beautiful and bright and curious, delightful soul, he deserves nothing less than complete belief in him and unwavering support. And anything less than that will no longer be tolerated in my home. Thank you. 

 

[cheers and applause] 

 

Jay: [00:31:04] Heidi Stuber is a writer and businesswoman who lives with her red-headed son in Seattle. When her son was four, a pediatrician predicted he would end up in jail. She spent 12 years proving that man wrong. She's currently working on her first book, When Your Heart Won't Budge. Heidi says, that after three stays at Seattle Children's Hospital from the ages of eight and nine, her son hasn't had to be admitted again in six years. To see a photo of Heidi at the StorySLAM that she won, which qualified her for this GrandSLAM, go to our website, themoth.org. 

 

If any of these stories have inspired you to tell your own, check out SLAMs near you at our website. 

 

[softhearted music]

 

After the break, the origin story of a famous musician in an unlikely place. 

 

[softhearted music]

 

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. 

 

This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. 

 

[song]

 

[00:33:01] This song may sound familiar to a fair chunk of our listeners. It's by Joe Jackson, who is also our last storyteller in this hour. He told this story for us two decades ago. Here's Joe Jackson, live at the Players Club in New York City. 

 

[applause]

 

Joe: [00:33:24] Hello. My story this evening is about The Admiral Drake, which is not a person, but a pub in my hometown, which is Portsmouth, which is a rather rough naval port town on the south coast of England. This was the scene of one of my early musical triumphs when I was 17. But just before we get to The Admiral Drake, just to give you a little bit of context, I did my very first gig when I was only 16. This was also playing piano in a pub. It's always a pub. [audience laughter] But it was a great success and it was almost too easy, as it happened. And this went to my head a bit and I was rather pleased with myself and I thought that I was launched on a glittering career as a gigging musician. 

 

It didn't work out quite like that, because the next few gigs I did were pretty disastrous. I'll give you an example. I was recruited by two much older guys, I was 17 by now, a bass player and a drummer who wanted to form a jazz trio. After a couple of rehearsals, the drummer announced that he got us a gig at the Portsmouth Irish Club. [audience laughter] What? [audience laughter] And I said, “The Irish Club? We're a bloody jazz trio. What are we doing at the Irish Club?” He said, “No, no, no. don't worry. They use it for all kinds of music and all kinds of people go there. It'll be fine.” 

 

Well, we showed up at the Irish Club. And the drummer was quite right about one thing. The audience was not Irish at all. It consisted of about 100 skinheads. [audience laughter] Now, skinheads in Portsmouth at this time were not really known for their appreciation of acoustic jazz trios. [audience laughter] For a while, they just stood and stared blankly at us, and then they started to throw things. [audience laughter] Nothing too dangerous. The purpose was really humiliation. So, they threw pennies, you know, peanuts, fag ins or cigarette butts to two Americans, [audience laughter] fag packets, more pennies. And after a while, of course, we were duly humiliated and scared shitless. 

 

So, what this did is it inspired in me a defiant determination. I thought, God, there's got to be one decent gig in this godforsaken town. I started to do a strange pub crawl where I walked into just about every pub in town just to see if they had a piano and usually walked straight out again. But I eventually found myself in The Admiral Drake, which was a shabby pub. And the landlord, his name was Charlie, was from Birmingham. I don't know if you know what a Birmingham accent sounds like, but a Birmingham accent, it's rather nasal and, you know, one of the most unpleasant accents in the UK, [audience laughter] it’s like that. So, this is how Charlie taught. 

 

And he said, not only did he have a piano, he had a 1902 Bechstein. [audience laughter] So, I tried the piano and it actually was a bit beat up. But it wasn't bad. It was playable. And Charlie was interested in having some live music in his pub a couple of nights a week. So, I said, “Great, great. Can I bring some mates in as guest musicians?” And he said, “Well, I can't pay you anymore.” I said, “Well, that's all right.” Slipping into my 17-year-old self there. [audience laughter] “That's all right.” Cheerful naivety, “That's all right, just pay us as much as you can and we'll split it between us.” To which Charlie replied, “Well, in that case, you can bring the fucking London Philharmonic [audience laughter] for all I care.” 

 

Well, I immediately called my friend, Martin, Martin Keel, who was one of the first musicians I ever worked with. He was a saxophone player. But to call him that doesn't do him justice, because he played every wind instrument you could imagine. He had a huge array of instruments, anything you could blow, you know, Martin could play. And not content with this, he would try to invent new instruments by taking them apart and sticking bits of different instruments together. [audience laughter] He was a musical Frankenstein. 

 

I always found this vaguely disturbing. I wasn't quite sure why, but he invented things like the Clario saxatrombophone [audience laughter] and things that just sounded absolutely bizarre. Anyway, I called him and he said, “Yeah, great, Admiral Drake, let's go.” And he called his friend, Phil the Mousely, [audience laughter] who played drums and that was the band. We soon rehearsed a very large and eclectic repertoire that was everything from jazz standards to Beatles songs to these dreadful old sing along pub songs that they have in England. [sings] Underneath the arches [audience laughter] I dream my dreams away,” these dreadful old songs. 

 

However, right from the moment we first started playing, we were a hit. And the main reason for this is that The Admiral Drake, as it turned out, was the watering hole of a team of local marines. They were the Royal Marines Field Gun Crew. And these guys were tough. They were like made of iron, you know, they were bullet headed, tattoos all over them. One of them I'll never forget had his name, which was Jock, [audience laughter] tattooed across his throat. These guys made the skinheads at the Irish Club look like nuns. [audience laughter] You know what I mean? 

 

Anyway, they liked us. So, we were golden. The Marines liked us. They sang along, they bought us drinks, they steered dangerous drunks away from us, [audience laughter] and it was just fantastic. We realized after a short while that we could do anything we liked. And no matter how silly it was, it was fine with them. Martin used to play wearing an 18th century naval officer's coat with a dummy parrot stuck to the shoulder. [audience laughter] And meanwhile, there was a real parrot. The pub had a resident parrot behind the bar. [audience laughter] And the only thing it could say was, “You bloody bastard.” [audience laughter] It was more like, [changes voice] “You bloody bastard, you bloody bastard” over and over again. 

 

So, things just got sillier and sillier. Martin's Frankenstein tendencies came out. He played things like a teapot with a trumpet mouthpiece attached to it. [audience laughter] Some of the other characters that The Admiral Drake included, the landlady was a great character. I think largely because of her, the place always seems to have a vaguely seedy red-light bordello feel to it. For instance, in the ladies’ room, there was a poster on the wall, a kitsch poster of Adam in the Garden of Eden wearing just a fig leaf. And the fig leaf was actually a little flap that, of course, was crying out to be lifted up. [audience laughter]

 

And when it was lifted up, there was a tiny notice underneath it that said, “A bell has just rung in the bar,” [audience laughter] which in fact it had. [audience laughter] Locals would line up outside the ladies’ room and jeer at whoever came out. This was considered great sport. Anyway, things got sillier and sillier. One particular night that I remember vividly, and one of the reasons I remember it so well, is because my brother was there. He was only 15 at the time, and not yet the connoisseur of pubs that he would later become. But he ventured into The Admiral Drake, and we both vividly remember we were requested to play the stripper. 

 

So, Phil the Mouse started a boom, boom boo boom on the Thomsons, and went into the stripper. One of the Royal Marines Field Gun Crew got up onto a table behind me and proceeded to strip. I couldn't really see what was going on. But there were more and more choruses were demanded, and the noise grew and grew to hysteria practically. Until I looked around and I saw a pair of naked, hairy Royal Marine buttocks just a few inches [audience laughter] from my face. This was followed by a deafening roar of approval, which was then followed by a deafening crash as the table collapsed. And just mayhem. Bodies piling on top of each other, beer spraying everywhere and the Marines mate struggling to get to his clothes before he could [chuckles] so they could hide them. And then, the bell was rung. “Time, gentlemen, please.” 

 

The evening ended with a rousing chorus of, We'll meet again. Don't Know where, don't know when. My brother came up to me, looking slightly shaken and white, and said, “Is it always like this?” [audience laughter] I know that I don't remember exactly how it came to an end, but I know it soured in various small ways. For instance, the crowd sometimes was so noisy that we could barely hear ourselves. We didn't have any amplification. I was pounding the piano so hard. At one point, I looked up and I actually saw a hammer come flying out of the top of the piano, [audience laughter] something I would not have thought possible. 

 

At the end of the evening, I said to Charlie, “Look, maybe the time has come to invest in a new instrument.” Well, this was the wrong thing to say. Charlie was mortally offended by this. “That piano,” he said, “is a 1902 Bechstein.” [audience laughter] And I said, “Yeah, I know. But it was a good piano once, but now it's just knackered.” And he said, “Well, if you was born in 1902, you'd be bloody knackered too” [audience laughter] and he stormed off. 

 

Anyway, things went downhill for one reason or another, and we eventually lost the gig, but not before I realized that it was possible to actually have fun playing music. The Admiral Drake has a special place in my heart, because it was then that I realized that I didn't really want to do anything else other than make music. It's still there, by the way. The Admiral Drake is still there. It's still a dump. But if you ever go to Portsmouth, there's just a little brief postscript to the story, which is that after we stop playing, my brother ventured into the pub again. 

 

He didn't know I hadn't told him that weren't playing there anymore. The Marines grabbed him and said, “Oi, where's your brother?” And of course, he said, “Well, I don't know.” And they said, “Well, never mind. You can play.” And he said, “No, I can't.” And they dragged him to the piano, and he was forced to play about a dozen choruses of the only tune he knew, for which he was rewarded with loud applause and free drinks for the rest of the evening. [audience laughter] That's my story. Thanks for having me. Cheers. 

 

[cheers and applause] 

 

Jay: [00:43:57] That was Joe Jackson. And this is one of his most popular songs. 

 

[Steppin’ out plays] 

 

Joe grew up in Portsmouth, England, where he played his first gigs to drunken sailors and skinheads before studying at the Royal Academy of Music. 2019 saw the release of his latest album, fool and a successful six-month tour. And his eclectic career is very much ongoing while his pop hits from the 1980s endure. 

 

If you have a story to tell us, you can pitch it to us right on our site, or you can call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the world. Again, you can pitch us at themoth.org. 

 

Tim David: [00:45:17] Growing up, my mother was an accountant. She worked for a big law firm in Providence, Rhode Island. My older brother went off to college, became a sound engineer and my father designed nuclear submarines for the Navy. So, naturally, I went off to college. It was the family way. Very quickly, I realized school was not for me, but I needed a backup plan. Can't just tell dad you're quitting school. So, I had one. Came back and said, “Dad, I figured out what I want to do in my life.” He said, “Oh, that's great because we're spending all this money.” I said, “Hold on, have a seat. I've decided that I want to be a professional magician. What do you think?” 

 

And he said, “Ha-ha. Oh, you're serious. No, Tim, see, that was fine as a hobby when you were 10, but this is the real world. You're going to have bills that you're going to have to pay.” He brought me over to the kitchen table where all the bills were spread out, and he grabbed his calculator and Mr. Science Logic Man tried to logic my dream out of me. He calculated right then and there was going to cost me $800 a month to live at his house. So, new policy instituted, $800 a month in rent. Do you think I went back to school? The answer is no. I looked at those numbers and said, “This is going to be hard. I'm going to have to work hard and make it happen.” Ultimately, I did. 

 

The two moments that I realized that I was a success wasn't the touring the United States or doing 350 shows per year. There was one internal and one external. The internal one was when I looked at my taxes one year and I'm like, “Oh my God, I made more money than my dad did,” [chuckles] basically a nuclear physicist than I did as a magician. And the second moment was when my dad came to look at my first place when I first moved out on my own. He looked around and handed me an envelope. And inside the envelope was all the rent money that I had ever paid to him in cash. He knew all along what he was going to do with it. It was a father saying to his son, “I'm proud of you. You did it.”

 

Linda Kent: [00:47:15] A few years ago, my sister asked me to enter a popular TV family quiz show. I was a bit reluctant to do it, because it's pretty uncool. But I am a single mum, so I had just that week told my daughter that if she practiced swimming really hard and swam to the other side of the pool that I would take her snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. And incredibly, she did it. So, I thought, I need to get some money. So, I said to my sister that I would go on the TV show only if we won. So, I had a really bad attitude about it and I told my family that I would answer sausages to every question. 

 

So, we got through the audition process and the day came to film the show. So, when it was my turn to go up to meet the host in the middle and a member from the other family, the question was, “What is the top food that people eat when they go camping?” Anyway, the woman from the other family hit the buzzer first and she answered baked beans. And when it came to me, I said, sausages and we won $10,000 and I was able to take my daughter swimming on the Great Barrier Reef. 

 

Jay: [00:48:32] Remember, you can pitch us at 877-799-MOTH, or online at themoth.org. You can share these stories or others from The Moth Archive or buy tickets to Moth storytelling events all through our website. We have Moth events year-round. You can find a show near you and come out and tell a story. You can also find us on social media. We're on Facebook and Twitter, @themoth. 

 

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]

 

This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was hosted by me, Jay Allison. I also produced the show along with Catherine Burns and Meg Bowles. Coproducer, Viki Merrick. And associate producer, Emily Couch. Story direction by Lea Thau with additional GrandSLAM coaching by Chloe Salmon. 

 

The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Kellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Moth’s stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our pitches came from Tim David and Linda Kent. 

 

Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Lionel Hampton, RJD2, Oskar Schuster, Bruce Cockburn and Joe Jackson. The hour was supported with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

 

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcast--