Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This week, two stories about young men coming of age, one in the US Midwest and one in Australia. It's kind of amazing to once again realize we are all very much the same in this world.
Our first story is from Tony Birch. He told it on a Mainstage back in 2015. The theme of the night was Between Worlds. Here's Tony, live from Melbourne.
[applause]
Tony: [00:00:33] In what would become my last year of high school, my father had a serious nervous breakdown. And it came as a great relief to his family, because he's a man who had terrorized his wife, my mother, and terrorized his children for many years. So, to have him out of our life was something that gave me a sense of lightness.
I started the school year that year sitting behind a girl who I'd sat behind the previous two years, a girl who I'd never noticed before. She was an Italian girl who worked in her father's fruit shop. But on that first day of school, something remarkable happened. The sun was shining through the window into the classroom. I'm not sure if it was the sun shimmering off her hair, if her hair was shimmering towards the sun, but her brown hair looked absolutely beautiful.
When she turned around and looked at me, she had these remarkable chestnut eyes, and they warmed this spot here in my heart. I knew straight away that I was in love with her and I needed to tell her, I'm in love with you. [audience laughter] The problem was she had a lot of girlfriends that she hung around. If I wanted to tell her I loved her, I couldn't get close to her. And even if I got close to her, I was a very shy boy and it wouldn't have been possible.
Back home, things were very difficult, because my mother worked in the factory every day. She had five children who had sat on their collective ass and not helped her for many years. But she finally asked that we have to do something around the house and help her. But none of us volunteered. And then, one Saturday morning, she said, "Will anyone go to the fruit shop for me?" I jumped up and said, "I'll go to the fruit shop."
I headed to the fruit shop with a long list of vegetables and fruit. I walked into the fruit shop and there was the Italian girl, the fruit shop girl, behind the counter at the fruit shop with this incredibly beautiful floral apron on. [audience laughter] I stood behind a mountain of tomatoes and I looked across at the Italian girl. I tried to get her attention. She wouldn't look at me. She was looking over the other side of the room. I looked over the other side of the room, and there in the corner of the shop was her father. He was wearing an apron, but it was a leather apron, a medieval leather apron. [audience laughter] He had one eye on his Italian daughter, the other eye on a boy who was looking at his Italian daughter, so she would not dare look at me, so there was no chance of getting her attention and telling her I loved her in the shop. [audience chuckles]
The next week at school, I was walking down the stairs at lunchtime and an older boy bumped into me on purpose to get my attention. He said, "Your whole family are fucking crazy and your father as mad as a cut snake," which was true, but he shouldn't have said it. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
So, I challenged that boy to a fight. And after school, we met at the tram stop. We always had a fight at the tram stop, because if you were losing, you could get on the tram and go home. [audience laughter] So, we're fighting at the tram stop. I throw a punch, he grabs me by the school jumper and we fall through a shop front window and the glass falls down around us. Not surprisingly, I was expelled from school. And being expelled from school meant that I couldn't see the Italian girl at school any longer. So, I lay at home on the couch moping.
My older brother came home from school one day with a book in his hand. He goes, "What are you going to do for the rest of your life?" I said, "Nothing," I was so distraught. He goes, "Look, oh, here's something you can do for me. I can't do my English essays." He threw the book at me. He said, "Do read that book and see if you can do the essay for me." I said, "What is it?" He said, "I don't know. It's some French shit. I can't understand it. You do it."
I picked up the book. I couldn't pronounce the author's name. I put the book in my back pocket and forgot about it. Forgot completely about it. I walked outside into the street and I saw a tram going by and I saw the Italian girl on the tram going home to the fruit shop. I chased the tram. I followed the girl up the street. She went into the fruit shop, and she put her apron on and stood behind the counter. I had a 5 cent piece in my hand. I walked into the shop and I thought, what can I get for 5 cents? I picked up one apple in one hand. I looked at. I picked up another apple and she saw me. She felt sorry for me. She came over with two mandarins and says, "You can have two mandarins for 5 cents." The most romantic words I've ever heard until this day. [audience laughter]
I went home with my two mandarins, and then I decided I would go back to the shop every night after school until I could tell that girl I loved her with her father watching in the corner. So, I went back the next night, the night after that and night after that. Sometimes I left with a single carrot, sometimes with an apple. One night, I left with a solitary potato. [audience laughter] When you come from a family of six, five starving children, your mother working in a factory, never go home with a single potato and say, "I have bought dinner." [audience laughter]
I didn't know what to do. Then my brother came home from school one day and he said, "There's going to be a school dance in three weeks." I thought, a school dance? The Italian girl will be going to the school dance. I'll go to the school dance and see the Italian girl. But I couldn't go to the school dance, because I'd been expelled from school. Because if you're expelled from school, you can't dance at the school dance either. [audience chuckles]
So, I had a meeting. I went up to the rooftop of the Housing Commission flats with my gang, my very intelligent gang of four boys. We sat down and we hatched a plan. And the plan was that my friends would go in the front door of the school dance, they would go around to the side door, they would open the emergency exit. I would sneak into the school dance. I would hover in the background. When the Italian girl came, I would come forth and say, I love you, end of story. [audience laughter]
There was a second part of the plan which didn't make any sense then and makes less sense now. My friend said, "And I've got another idea." I said, "What's that?" He said, "I'm going to get a water pistol. I'm going to fill it with blue ink. I'm going to go to the dance. I'm going to spray everyone with blue ink." [audience laughter] We all thought, okay. [audience laughter] So, the next Saturday night, they go in the front of the school dance. I'm hiding behind a bush at the side of the dance. A minute later, I hear the door creak open. It's my friend. He says, "Come in, come in."
I sneak into the school dance. I hover in the corner in the darkness. No one can see me. And then, the lights on the dance floor go on. A song comes on, a very sophisticated song, Ballroom Blitz by Sweet. [audience laughter] The Italian girl gyrates onto the dance floor. She has this immaculate white dress on that she bought from Merivale and Mr. John. She has her hair done up, the biggest hair I've ever seen. It must have been blow-wiped by Edward Beale himself, this big hair. [audience chuckles] And I think, this is my moment, this is my time. I push my friends aside, I walk through the crowd, I go onto the dance floor. The Italian girl from the fruit shop, she turns and looks at me with those chestnut eyes, and I am just besotted. I take a step toward her, about to say, I love you. And then, a look of horror on her face. I turn around and it's my friend with the water pistol, aiming his water pistol at the Italian girl.
He shoots the water pistol and a spray of blue ink strikes her in the heart. I turn back and look at her. She has her hands over her heart. She starts to bleed blue blood through her fingers, down her white dress. My blue angel bleeding in the middle of the dance floor. I want to help her, but my friend, he grabs me with one arm, says, "Run, the police are coming." And with the other, he sprays the crowd on the way out. [audience laughter] We get two steps outside the dance hall when I'm wrapped in a bear hug by the local police sergeant and some other police.
They stand us up against the wall, they pat us down and they find all sorts of contraband. They find, of course, the water pistol with the blue ink. They find half a bottle of ouzo. There was a lot of Greeks in Richmond at the time, a half a bottle of ouzo. [audience chuckles] They find a pipe gun, a marble and a firecracker. And when the policeman gets to me, he pats me down. He feels an object in my back pocket. He pulls it out, he goes, "What's this?" I look over my shoulder, I say, "It's a novel." He looks at the front cover. He says, "The Outsider by Albert Camus. [audience chuckles] Who the fuck is Camus?" [audience laughter] I said, "It's Albert Camus and he's a French-Algerian." He hits me across the head with a book and calls me a smart ass, which is true. [audience chuckles]
The next week we have to go to court. We're charged with willful damage and four boys have to front up at court. I managed to hide the letter that was sent to my home from my mother. I didn't want to worry that I was going to court. We go to court and the judge gives us a 12-month probation, because we had no prior convictions. I'm about to leave the court and the judge calls us down the front. He goes into his desk, he pulls out a book he holds up and he says, "Which one of you boys is the existentialist?” [audience laughter]
Now, my mother brought me up to admit to nothing. [audience laughter] I said, "Not me." And he said, "Obviously, it's yours." He gives me the book. [audience laughter] I go home. I walk into the flat and I'm shocked to see my father sitting at the kitchen table. But there's something different about him. I walk over to my father. He's completely immobilized. I look into his eyes and his eyes are dead, and I realize this is a man that has changed because of being in psychiatric care. And as I found out later, this man had been pacified by pills and shock treatment with waves of electricity passing through his body that turn him into, in a way, a sort of a corpse.
But terribly at that moment, I had never felt so safe as I did at that moment, knowing my father could not harm me or anyone in his family again. I took the book, I went up to the top of the housing commission, I sat under the moon and I read Albert Camus, The Outsider, from cover to cover. Now, I know the central character, a man called Meursault. He's a killer. He kills someone. But as a 15-year-old boy, even then, growing up a delinquent in a housing commission estate, I read that book and I thought it was so sad, because he was a man who seemed to care about no one, he was a man who was completely isolated, and he was a man who wanted for and didn't have any friends.
I had a family that loved me. I had some friends who had often made some fairly dubious decisions about [audience chuckles] how-to pick-up girls at a dance. [audience chuckles] But they were my friends. And forever being the optimist, from that night onwards, I knew that there was an Italian girl in a fruit shop who would give me one more chance to say, I love you. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:12:23] Tony Birch is an acclaimed author in fiction and nonfiction. His work has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies in Australia, and internationally. In 2016, Tony was nominated for a Miles Franklin Award for his book, Ghost River.
Okay, our next story is by Brad Lawrence. And it comes from a 2014 Mainstage event that we did in Austin, Texas. The theme of the night was Voices Carry. Here's Brad Lawrence.
[applause]
Brad: [00:12:57] I was an artistic child. And that was a blessing and a curse, because I was also being raised evangelical Christian. And every evangelical, worth their salt, knows that art is the gateway drug to drugs [audience chuckles] and homosexuality. You start off drawing superheroes out of comic books or whatever, and then pretty soon, it's unspeakable acts behind a gas station to fund your heroin habit. That's how this goes. [audience chuckles] We all know. We all know.
But fortunately for me and my eternal soul, my church, The Assemblies of God, they had come up with hands-on method of guiding the artistic youth in their ministry back onto the path of righteousness. And how they did this, is they had partnered with an organization called Teen Talent, which ran Christian-themed talent shows that the teenagers in these youth ministries could enter with their Christian-themed art.
So, when I was 14, I entered the Missouri state Teen Talent competition with this drawing. And the drawing was a very tight close up of the crucified hand of Christ, about mid-forearm to fingertip. Special attention was paid to the nail driven into the center of the palm, and the rending of the flesh around the wound, and the swelling of the tissue, and the way the blood cupped in the palm, and drifted over, and gathered in the knots and fibers of the old rugged cross. This drawing owed a lot more to the heavy metal album covers the kid down the street had shown me [audience chuckles] than it did to the Renaissance. But I belong to an apocalyptic faith, and they bought it and I won the Missouri statewide Teen Talent competition. [audience cheers and applause]
That's right. Which meant that I was automatically entered into the national competition to be held that year in glamorous downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. So, without any further ado, my mom, my sister and I, we all jump into the car, we go barreling across the prairie to the Indianapolis hotel convention center where we have booked rooms for ourselves. We arrive at the hotel convention center and we get there, and it is just-- This place is so fancy. I have never been to a place this fancy. Like, you go inside, there was a McDonald's inside the lobby [audience chuckles] of the hotel convention center complex. I had never seen a McDonald's inside another structure before. So, fancy.
We're just bowled over by the place. We go to the desk, and we get our room keys. We have a room on the fourth floor. We go over to this glass elevator and ride the elevator up to the fourth floor and get to our hotel room and open the door and it's a hotel room. We throw in our bags. And then, my mom and my sister, they are ready to get their church on, because there is so much church to be had on this particular weekend at the Indianapolis hotel convention center complex. Like, there's a lot going on and they're ready to get to it. But me, for my part, what I want to do is I want to go down this little gallery off to the far side of the lobby where my drawing is on display with all its competition and I want to go see that.
So, we decide we're going to split up. My mom and sister, they head off to do their thing and I go back to the elevator and ride back down to the lobby. I'm making my way across the lobby when I see about halfway across there is, in the lobby of the hotel convention complex, there is a Waldenbooks. So fancy. [audience chuckles] And for me at 14, a Waldenbooks is synonymous with sci-fi and fantasy novels and comic books. And if my church elders had been aware of what was in these books, I might have been in trouble for this. But this was the era of MTV and Prince and Madonna had been unleashed upon the youth of the nation. And so, there was just bigger fish to fry than a kid reading quietly in the corner, right? [audience chuckles]
So I was getting away with these. They hadn't officially become a sin yet. So, I decide I'm going to make a little detour into Waldenbooks. I go into Waldenbooks, heading back toward the sci-fi and fantasy section. As I'm going, I'm passing by the magazine rack and I enact this ritual that every 14-year-old boy just knows to do instinctually. That's what my eyes drift to the far top right-hand corner of the magazine rack, [audience chuckles] where the adult men's magazines are kept. Always, always up high where you can be seen if you should reach for them.
So, there's a second part of the ritual. And the second part is that you let your eyes drift down to the lower racks on the magazine rack just in case one of these magazines has escaped its confines [audience chuckles] and made its way down to a lower shelf, where you can actually get a hold of it and have a look at it. But that never happens. You're never that lucky until today. [audience laughter] And I just catch it out of the corner of my eye and I look down and it is on the bottom shelf tucked behind an automotive magazine. All I can see is the last two letters in the title, just the O and the Y, but you know that font. [audience laughter]
So, I look around Waldenbooks, which is completely empty except for me and the clerk. Between me and the clerk is a rack of hardbacks and a rack of bookmarks. So, I've got plenty of cover. So, I turn back around and I duck down and I grab the Playboy out from behind the automotive magazine and I flip it open immediately to the centerfold, because I know I've got a very narrow window of opportunity here [audience chuckles] to get as much female nudity into my brain as possible. Like, an adult could catch me and embarrass me or goose-stepped out of this place. Anyway, so I've got to get right to the goods.
I get to the centerfold. The centerfold is a lovely Asian woman who is arranged in a variety of scenarios, some very logical, others don't make as much sense. Like, there she is in a boxing ring wearing nothing but boxing gloves. Why? Don't know, don't care. Because I'm just trying to get as much of her nudity into my brain as I possibly can, as quickly as I can. I'm so focused on every line and curve of her body, that is, I'm creating new synapses, trying to absorb every bit of flesh that I possibly can, just make sure I've got it in there. They say you only use 20% of your brain, I use all my brain. [audience laughter] Just getting her in there just like.
Once I'm absolutely sure I've got her, like she's permanently a part of my brain, was I'm sure I’ve got her in there, I close the magazine, put it back behind the automotive magazine and stand up. When I stand up, I have this feeling in my stomach, like it is full of microwaved honey. [audience chuckles] It is amazing. So, now, I turn back towards the entrance of Waldenbooks, determined to go back to my now empty hotel room and do what comes naturally. [audience chuckles]
I walk all stiff-legged out of Waldenbooks [audience chuckles] and step out into the lobby of the hotel convention center complex, and that’s when I suddenly remember where I am. I am in the single largest gathering of evangelical Christians that I can conceive of. They're everywhere. They're all walking past me wearing name tags, identifying themselves as convention goers. As they pass, these good Christian people, they are looking at me and smiling, because they think I’m one of them. Because they don’t know what I know, which is I’ve just been ducked in a dark corner staring at pictures of a naked woman, and suddenly all that warm honey in my stomach flips over and goes cold and rancid as I am leveled by a mountain of shame and guilt.
Because it is at this moment that I realize that I am such a horrible sinner that even here, even in this most sacred place, the Indianapolis Hotel convention center complex, [audience laughter] even here, I cannot resist the temptations of the demon lust. And I have been taught that that is the most sad and pathetic way to go to hell. It is basically self-abuse as an engine on a death dive right into the fiery pit.
I just can't take their gaze as they pass by and smile at me. It is horrifying me. I am so full of guilt and shame. I don't want to be down here with these good Christian people anymore and feel like I'm a lie. I need to get away from them. But if I go back up to my hotel room, I'll be alone and I won't be able to resist temptation. I'm just going to compound my sin, I know that. But I can't be down here, I can't be down here with them and there's nowhere else to go. So, I go back to the elevator and I press the button and the elevator comes down and the door is open and I get on and I press the button for the fourth floor.
And the doors are closing and just they're about to close, a hand jumps into the gap and the doors spring back open. And onto the elevator gets four elderly people, three men, one woman, all of them wearing name tags identifying them as convention goers. And the oldest gentleman in a powder blue suit, his name tag identifies him as a minister. And now, it is me and the minister and his friends and my mountain of shame all in this glass elevator.
And the doors close, and the elevator goes up, and it gets to the fourth floor, and the doors open and there is the brown shag carpeted road to perdition [audience chuckles] that leads back to my hotel room. I take one step towards it and I suddenly stop and I turn around and announce to everyone in the elevator, "I am having a problem with the demon lust. Will you pray with me?" [audience laughter] And they all look shocked. And I look shocked, because I didn't know I was going to do this until I done it. [audience chuckles] But their shock wears off faster than mine, because they have been preparing every single day of their lives to do battle with the forces of Satan, and you never know when the call to battle is going to come and they are ready.
And the minister goes all steely eyed. He looks at me and he says, "Yes son. Yes, we will." I step back onto the elevator, and they all gather around me and lay hands upon me and bow their heads and close their eyes. And the elevator doors close and the minister, he raises his head up towards heaven and he says, "O Lord, please raise this young man up out of the temptations of the demon lust and into Your Light and Love. Oh, Jesus." As he's praying for me, the elevator begins to bounce up and down in this glass tube over the lobby like a great holy yo, yo, as its impromptu [audience chuckles] prayer meeting is going on for the salvation of my soul.
It takes a long time to save my soul. It takes so long, in fact, when we finally open our eyes, a fifth guy had gotten on the elevator. [audience laughter] Apparently, the elevator had stopped, the doors had opened. He had seen the battle against evil taking place and had joined the fight. [audience laughter] And now, here he is smiling at me and they're all smiling at me. And the woman, she's smiling at me and crying. I think I may be crying too. And the minister, all the steel's out of his eyes now and it's just pure grandfatherly countenance, as he looks at me and he says, "Son, do you feel better?" I look him in the eye and I say, "Yes, Sir. Yes, I do." And in that moment, I am not lying. In that moment, I did actually feel better for a little while. [audience chuckles]
Two things came out of this. Number one, my drawing took second place. [audience applause]
And number two, years later, my mother would apologize to me for what I was being taught in the youth ministry. She was unaware. And my mom, her religious faith is built on love and compassion and forgiveness. And she did not know, she didn't realize that what I was being taught in the youth ministry, was that compassion and forgiveness, those are for somebody else, never for yourself.
My religion was teaching me to take these tiny little sins and stack them up. And stack them up so high that eventually that stack got to the point where it blotted out the sun. You do not lose your faith all at once. Losing your faith is a process. And for me, it took years. But there were many times during those years when I would think back to that afternoon in the elevator when it took five people to save me from the sin of being 14. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:26:08] Brad Lawrence is a storyteller, who's been featured in stand-up, variety, and burlesque shows all over the United States, as well as festivals from the Edinburgh Fringe to South by Southwest.
That's all for this week. Thanks to you for listening. Thanks to our storytellers. And from all of us at The Moth here in New York, we hope you have a story-worthy week.
Mooj: [00:26:30] Dan Kennedy is the author of the books, Loser Goes First, Rock On and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer with The Moth.
Dan: [00:26:39] Podcast production by Timothy Lou Ly. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City. supervised by Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.