Host: Dan Kennedy

Dan: [00:00:01] Hey, welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. Thanks for tuning in for another batch of stories. 

This week, we're going to take a look at the distances that we go. The distance we go for vacation, for health, for living a life filled with purpose that really, that escalated right there. We've gone from vacation to a very lofty goal. But we want to talk about the changes we find in ourselves when we return. It's part of a two-episode little series that we'll be doing on this same theme. And to start off, we want to jump right in with this story from Emma John. 

[cheers and applause] 

Emma shared this story at a special event we held with AFAR magazine. Here's Emma John. 

Emma: [00:00:44] It's late at night. I'm 13 years old, and I am lying in a four-poster bed next to my sister in Venice. The door to our room bursts open, and in rushes a woman in pink silk pajamas and she is yelling at us, “Gondolier. Gondolier.” 

The woman's name is Annie, and she is my mother's best friend. She is single and in her 30s, and has never been left in sole charge of children before this. [audience chuckles] We are in Venice, because my grandmother has just died. Our grandma lived with my family since my sister was born, and my mum has just spent the last six months nursing her through a terminal illness. 

It's been a rough time on our family, and Annie thought that my parents could do with a break, so she offered to take the kids away to her favorite city, which is why she is now exploding into the room and flinging open the shutters. As she does so, we realize what she is so het up about. Because out in the darkness, somewhere in the canals beneath us, is the sound of singing. There is an actual real life singing gondolier somewhere out in the dark nearby. “There's no time to lose,” says Annie, “No time to get dressed.” So, we slip on our shoes and we just pull a coat over our pajamas and we hurtle down the stone steps of our building. 

Chasing through the maze of Venice's footpaths and bridges, which are, by the way, lit only intermittently by sporadic street lighting. We lose ourselves repeatedly in dead ends and blind alleys. We have to navigate by the sound of the music. So, each time we hear a new snatch of aria, we pack pelt across empty piazzas. 

Now, in my case, I'm wearing pajama bottoms that are too big for me, so I am having to run holding these things up at the waist, so that they don't fall down around my ankles. We emerge very suddenly onto a tiny stone bridge and we catch our first sight of the gondolier. His low boat is passing smoothly through the water towards us carrying a smooching couple who look quite surprised to see three females in their night clothes [audience chuckles] giddily staring and pointing at them. 

One of them, me, actually bent double, because I'm puffed out from the running, but I am also still trying to keep these wretched pajamas up. But the gondolier looks at us suavely and waves. As the boat passes beneath the bridge, he sings to us, and I feel like I'm in a movie. It is without doubt the single most romantic, thrilling escapade of my 13-year-old life. That whole week in Venice left a huge impact on me. It introduced me to arts and culture in a way I'd never experienced before, it left me with a love of Italy that I've never shaken since and it formed this bond with Annie that just grew stronger and more special as the years went on. 

So, 20 years later, I am 33 and single and childless. And Annie is married and her daughter Neve has just turned 13. So, I offer to repay the favor. I take Neve to Venice to experience some of the magic of that place that I felt when I was a teenager, and hopefully to be the same kind of crazy, inspiring chaperone that Annie was to me. We stand in St. Mark's Square together for the first time, surrounded by the golden lions and the glittering mosaics and the breathtaking basilica. I ask Neve what she thinks. She shrugs and says, “I've seen stuff like this before.” [audience chuckles] I am crushed. But it's okay. I think we've plenty of time and there's lots more here to impress her. 

So, I pack our schedule with activities. We do the glass blowing at Murano, and the fish market at Rialto, and we do the frescoes at the Doge's palace and the beaches at the Lido. I even get the waiters at Harry's Cocktail Bar to serve her a Shirley Temple, because the Italians are really laid back about children being around alcohol. And frustratingly, none of this impresses Neve at all. 

Every time we finish one activity, she looks up at me through her wispy blonde hair, her wide blue eyes emanating boredom, [audience chuckles] and she says, “What we going to do next?” And these words begin to pierce my heart, because every time I hear them, I fret about, what am I doing wrong? I am obviously boring her, so I try to up my game. I book us into a workshop at a costumiers, and we spend the afternoon creating and decorating Venetian masks, that kind they wear to the masked balls. 

This reminds me of how, during my teenage trip, Annie would tell my sister and me spellbinding stories about secret societies and deadly jewels and Casanova. I recount all I can of these to Neve, hoping to inspire her with some of the exotic romance of the place. She finishes her mask and she gives it a satisfied nod. She looks up at me and says, “What are we going to do next?” I had pictured her being overwhelmed with excitement. I had imagined us sharing the same kind of wild, extravagant fun that Annie and I had. But I see none of that in her eyes. And in fact, I have the heartbreaking feeling that she is just waiting out this week, longing to be home. 

Meanwhile, I am spending every moment of this vacation fretting about what we do when the next distraction runs out. And by the middle of the week, I am at peak levels of anxiety and I have run out of ideas. So, one morning, while Neve is still asleep, because I, by the way, am exhausted and sleepless, I grab my phone from the side of the bed and I sneak it under the bedclothes and I frantically text Annie, “Help. What did you do with us??!” 

She messages back a few minutes later. “Took siestas, sat in the square and made you draw things.” Now, I haven't sketched since I was a teenager. But before we left, Annie had slipped a hardcover, spiral bound sketchbook and a tin of pencils into the top of my suitcase. So, that morning over breakfast, when Neve asks, “What are we going to do next?” I point at the book and I say, “Today, we are going to draw things.” [audience laughter] 

A little way from our apartment, she picks a spot with a view of ancient, crumbly building, and we sit down, and we open the sketchbook across our two laps and we begin our wobbly line drawings. But as we sit there and I catch sight of Neve’s face concentrating very hard on this casement window in front of her, I have a wisp of memory from 20 years before of my sister and I sitting next to each other, chewing on the ends of our pencils and sharing an eraser between us. As I now become absorbed in the columns with their leafy capitals, a new feeling descends on me, kind of like a piece. 

We sit there for about an hour in mostly silence before Neve looks at my picture and tells me she thinks it's very good. “I like the way you've made it lean to the left,” she says. [audience chuckles] I look at hers and I tell hers is very good too. She smiles and she says, “Let's do some more.” So, we go looking for new subjects. Wells, palazzos, the bell tower of the Santa Maria Gloriosa. When we've done and we've had enough, we walk around town feeling really proud of our achievements. And suddenly, anything seems possible. 

Neve suggests that we play a game. She says, “I'll flip a coin. Heads we go left, tails we go right.” And now, the afternoon is an exciting adventure. It leads us through pretty squares lined with olive trees, and it takes us to expensive shops that sell silk scarves which we wrap around our heads like movie stars, and expensive grown-up perfumes which we spray all over each other until we stink. Eventually, we pop out again at St Mark's Square, only this time Neve wants to go in the basilica. 

So, we stand in line for the obligatory half hour, during which time my now delightful companion bubbles with conversation, “Look at that cute dog. Oh, I love small dogs. Not big ones though. When did you get your ears pierced? I want to get mine pierced, but mum says, not until I'm 16. Have you read the Pittacus law books? Oh, they're amazing. Let me tell you how they start.”

So, we are within spitting distance of the vast cathedral door, when the marshal on duty looks at Neve and points at her skirt and shakes his head. The skirt is too short. It might offend God. He can't risk it. [audience chuckles] Neve leans over to me and whispers, “It's okay, I got this.” She grabs her skirt and she twists and wiggles and twists until the hemline is reaching her knees. Of course, this means that her waistband is now barely covering her butt. 

So, as we walk up the aisle of Venice's most holy and magnificent edifice, she has her hands clamped to her midriff, desperate not to expose herself. We're in fits of giggles. The more we try to suppress them, the worse it gets and we're getting strange looks. By the time we are up at the altar, she is doubled over with laughter. I am looking at a giddy 13-year-old who is holding her skirt just as I had to hold my pajama bottoms up 20 years ago. And finally, we are sharing the magic of Venice. [audience laughter] 

[cheers and applause] 

Dan: [00:12:24] That was Emma John. Her first book, Following on: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket, was named the 2017 Wisden Book of the Year. Emma's also a contributing writer at AFAR magazine, where her work has taken her everywhere from the opera in Vienna to bluegrass festivals in North Carolina. Her next book, Bluegrass in the Backwoods, which is about her musical journey through the American south, will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in spring 2018. 

Our second story on the podcast this week comes from T. Richard Corcoran. He told this at a Moth community showcase that we had earlier this year. The theme of the night was Unfinished Business. 

[cheers and applause] 

Here's T. Richard Corcoran, live in New York City. 

T. Richard: [00:13:14] Wow, that's bright. So, one day, in early spring, a day like today, a friend of mine asked me a really provocative question. She said, “If money were no object, what would you want to do?” And the answer surprised me. I said, “I'd like to take a bike trip to the south of France.” [audience chuckles] I didn't even own a bike. I probably hadn't biked since I was 14. And I didn't even know I had this idea in my head. But it was crystal clear that this is what I wanted to do. I'm not sure why, but maybe it was because of the fact that I had just been given back my life. 

See, seven years before, I had tested positive for HIV. And back then, that was pretty much a death sentence. It was just a matter of when. For the next six years, I was healthy and just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And then, it started to drop. And in two months, I lost 20 pounds for no reason, and then I got pneumonia and was laid up in bed for weeks and weeks and I was preparing to die. But just in the nick of time, the new antiretrovirals came out the ARVs and saved-- Yay. [audience chuckles] And saved my life, literally snatched me from death's door.

I had a full Lazarus effect. I went from thin and weak to gaining all my weight back, having full health and full energy. And then, my friend asked that question. So, I ordered a bike. [audience laughter] Then one morning at the gym, I saw a brochure for the Boston to New York AIDS ride. It's like 280 miles over three days biking from Boston to New York. And I thought, I have a bike on the way, I'm HIV positive, it's a good cause, so I signed up. 

It was great, they had these training rides you'd meet on the weekends and sometimes on the evenings, and bike 10 miles, 15 miles, 30 miles, 40 miles, needed to work up to 100 miles, because that's what you had to do on the ride itself. That's called a century. But my bike ride to France was in July and the ride wasn't until September. So, I got some training in before and then I went to France. I had to bring my bike to the bike shop to have them pack it up to take it on the plane. You can't quite wheel it down the aisle. They showed me what they were going to take apart and they told me how to put it back together and I was like, “Okay, I got that.” [audience chuckles] And then, I left the bike for them to pack up and ship to the airport, so I could get it on the plane. 

When I got to Nice International Airport, I opened the bike box and it was taken apart way more than they had told me they were going to. [audience chuckles] There were no instructions, and here I am standing on the sidewalk in front of the airport in my full biking gear that I had changed into [audience laughter] padded shorts, jersey, helmet, clicking shoes for my clips, [audience laughter] looking at my bike and all these pieces, not knowing how to put it back together. I literally started to cry. 

What I forgot to tell you, is that the year before when I almost died, I had been in a 10-year relationship that actually did die that same year. We traveled a lot together. So, this was the first trip I was taking by myself. But when something would go wrong on the trip, his job was to cry [audience chuckles] and my job was to be the strong one. And here I was alone and crying. I was kind of confused. And then, I realized I also needed to be the strong one. So, I stepped up and I wiped my tears and I figured out how to put the bike back together and it didn't fall apart. I started my 18-day, almost 500 mile bike trip alone in the south of France. 

[cheers and applause] 

It wasn't easy. [audience laughter] The thing I forgot to mention is that I had 50 pounds of luggage on the bike. [audience laughter] When you're biking alone, you have to take everything with you. There's not someone driving it up behind and saying, “Here, here's your luggage.” So, it was really hard. The south of France is really hilly. Thank God, I had signed up for the aid ride. It wasn't a plan, but those training rides, I wouldn't have been able to do this without them. 

The French people were great. I remember one guy yelling after me, “Bon courage.” Great expression. It means good courage. I wish we had that in English. But I guess it really did take courage to do this. The countryside, the farmland, I remember one vista of fields and fields of lavender that they were farming, because someone has to grow this stuff to sell it. [audience chuckles] But it was so gorgeous and I couldn't see another human being, another car, another bike all by myself, and I realized then that this was really like a meditation on wheels. 

I got back to the States. I still had the AIDS ride to do in about a month or so. So, I got back on the training rides. At some point, I'm not sure when it was, but I found out about a group of riders that did the ride and they were called the positive peddlers. And what they were a group of riders that were HIV positive and willing to be out about their status to put a face of HIV on to the ride and for the reason the ride was happening. And I thought, well, I was out about my status to my immediate family and to my close friends, but I wasn't really that out about it. It's risky. I mean, people judge you. It's a sexually transmitted disease. It's hard with dating and it's just risky to be out about it. And I thought, I need to step up and I joined the group. 

In short order, the leader of the group sort of flaked out, and I thought, okay, I'll take the lead. [audience laughter] Then on the ride itself, I found out that we were given jerseys that on the back said, “Positive peddler,” [audience laughter] for bikers that come up and pass you. It was like, “Okay, they'll know who I am.” And on the ride, the morning of the ride, they gave us a six foot tall pole with an orange pennant fluorescent that you had attached to your back wheel that would go like, “This, as you were riding,” so that people would know they were approaching a positive peddler. [audience laughter] 

But the great thing that really came out of that, is that everyone knew I was a positive peddler as the others, and the conversations and the things that people shared that they felt free to share about loved ones they lost about why they were doing the ride. I was probably the reason I was doing the ride. So, I did the ride the following year, I became a training ride leader, and then I became the chair of the training ride leaders, and did the ride again and then I trained the following year. 

And then, one Sunday in January, I was reading the New York Times and there was an article about Al Gore at the UN talking about AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. And that even though the new drugs are saving lives in this country and the developed world, they were just too expensive to save lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. I couldn't believe it. I got viscerally angry. Probably the angriest I've ever been in my life. A few days later, I was at my acupuncturist and there's a beautiful woman there named Evan who was HIV positive and very out about it. She's my role model. I walked in the door and I overheard her across the room saying, “I'm going to the International AIDS Conference in South Africa.” I was hanging up my coat. I didn't even know what it was, but I knew in a flash I had to step up and I said, “I'll be there.” 

[cheers and applause] 

Dan: [00:22:24] That was T. Richard Corcoran. T is an entrepreneur and New Yorker. He's also the board chair of Health GAP, an organization dedicated to seeing that all people with HIV have access to life saving medications. He says, he hopes that he'll get to lead the organization as it goes out of business by ending the global AIDS pandemic. As far as getting back in the saddle to ride, that has taken a little bit of a backseat. 

T got a brand-new beautiful bike from his sisters for his 50th birthday, as encouragement really to get back into the sport, but that was 13 years ago and that bike still has not been ridden. Okay, maybe one day, T. 

That's all for this week's podcast. Be sure to tune in again next Friday for more stories of transformative travel. Until then, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week. 

Mooj: [00:23:17] Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock on and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller with The Moth.

Dan: [00:23:26] Podcast, production by Timothy Lou Ly. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.