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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:22]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com this message comes from Greenlight Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely and invest with your guardrails in place with Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started risk free@greenlight.com Spotify Foreign.
- [01:08]
Kevin Allison
Hey.
- [01:08]
Folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison and every Thursday we release these special episodes where we look back at content from our earlier years. But before we start today, I want to remind you all that for the first time in about a decade, I'm going to be teaching my eight week long storytelling workshop, this time online for United States time zones. There'll be one starting in mid April, one starting in mid May and one starting at the beginning of June. So it's just this little window of time here where you can join me and a bunch of other Risk fans who will be sharing stories and getting feedback, hearing my lectures, all sorts of fun stuff, a showcase at the end for friends and family. Email me at kevinrisk-show.com and I'll send you more information this week. It's a one story long episode that first premiered on the podcast in 2013. It's an episode we call the Roof Is on Fire.
- [03:15]
Hello kids, this is Extra Risk where we give you just a little bit more of the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, this is no request behind me now. Now on today's episode we're going to feature a story from a lovely man, New York storyteller Mr. Robert Hearst. I first heard Robert tell this story at David Crabb and Kami Klimako's show. Ask Me Right here in New York. And right after the show ended, I ran up to David and asked him, hey, can you record and edit that story that Robert just told a version of it? And I think both of them did a lovely job. So without further ado, here is Robert Hearst with a story we call the Roof is on Fire.
- [04:20]
Handsome Poets
It.
- [04:46]
Kevin Allison
You might call it a phobia, a fear. I would say it was a medically reasoned fear, but I had developed this fear that my leg was gonna fall off. I know that maybe sound crazy like phobia, but it was very real. It all kind of stemmed out of the fact that I had a hip replacement recently. And I was very concerned about doing any little thing that might jar might upset the joint cause it would fall apart. I remember I was in the doctor and I was fairly young, I was 40 years old. And he looks at my X ray and goes, and he's Russian. He goes, Mr. Hearst, you have hip of an 80 year old man. An 80 year old man. That's not good. And he says, you're going to have to have a hip replacement. So I do that and I notice he has the model of the hip in front of me. And so I'm playing around with it and it just comes apart in my hand and I kind of laughs, I broke your model, doc. And he goes, it is not broken. But what holds it together? I mean, this is just a model. The real one won't just pop apart. And he goes, no, that is the real one. But what holds it together? You, you hold it together. Your muscles, your body, it holds it together. And I was freaking out. I was responsible for holding me together. That's the way your hip works. I thought, oh crap. And that's allowed this kind of fear to fall into my head that if I bent too far over or moved too much this way, or if I jumped or tripped or something, it would just pop off and my leg would flop around like some boneless chicken. And so in this kind of hysteria and panic mode. And I was on disability from work for like three or four months as recuperating, doing rehab and all of this. My girlfriend had gotten this call from her friends in San Francisco that they were all going to go to Burning Man. And I thought, yes, that's what I need. I need to go to Burning Man. Really not fully considering my hip, would I be ready in the three more months to actually walk around in the desert and party the way I wanted to party needlessly? We go to Burning man and I'm already Starting to panic because there are thousands and thousands of people, close to 50,000 people. The circumference of Burning Man, I think it's about 10 miles. And these people just arrive out of nowhere. And a city develops. And I'm really excited because Margo's friends are theater people. And I always, you know, I'm a theater geek from high school. And they're also. And she said, now be aware, they're gay, but the whole camp is gay. And I thought, well, that's fine. I don't have any problem with it. That's great. And so we get there and we meet her friends Charlie and Mark, and they tell me that the camp's name is the Little Crack Whores. And of course, little spelled the cute way L apostrophe I L. And the logo is kind of like the Coppertone girl, but this is more of an androgynous figure. And you realize that the crack, it's not, you know, it's not drugs. It's. It's ass. And these are a bunch of guys that are really having a lot of fun in the desert. We get our tent set up, and we're outside of the main tent. And the main tent is amazing. One of the guys, this older gentleman, was an architect, and he'd gotten these. I don't even know quite what they are. They're kind of like billboard tarp kind of things. And they weren't Abercrombie and Fitch, but they were something like that. So they were all these, like, male torsos that are just muscled and no fat. And the tent itself looked like something out of the Arabian Nights, the kasbah kind of a thing. And so inside this giant tent, there were all everybody's little tents. And then the hangers on, which was me and my girlfriend, were on the outside. And I'm very excited. I'm really kind of nervous because my hip doesn't feel right. And what's also embarrassing is that I can't really even put on my shoes and socks. And so my girlfriend has. Has to put them on for me. So it's like kind of the level that I'm at, but I'm excited. We go and we start meeting people and everyone is nice, but in that kind of nice way. You know, it's like I said, oh, they think I'm Margo's straight boyfriend. And we gotta be, you know, watch our P's and Q's around. Who let the straight guy in here? And I said, this can't stand. And so the next Day, they had a big party, a little crack whore party. And Margot, my girlfriend, decided that. That she was going to. Had packed me some costumes. I forget what it was, but it was something stupid as, like, husky girl or, you know. And so I had this little blue jean skirt and a yellow kind of frilly chemise that was kind of off the shoulder. And it allowed a little midriff or muffin top in my case. And I thought, you know, heck, I'm gonna do this. And so I get dressed up, and my hair was kind of long at the time, so I got us this flowery headband. I put on makeup and. And I'm all excited to get out and show the guys that I'm, you know, one of the girls. And I realize that the jean short skirt is too short and that if I lift up my. My stuff, as it were, kind of would peek out, like, peek a boo. Hello. Oh, my God. My stuff is, like, just out. And there I was like, I know I wanted to be a crack whore, but how much of a crack whore did I want to be? I know that maybe that's not the most politically correct, but, you know, hey, when in Rome. So I thought, you know, I'm going to be proud, hold my shoulders back, and if the stuff is peekabooing out, then let it peek a boo. And they just loved it. And they were like, oh, my God. And I forget. They called me Carla, I think, for a while. And it was. It was great. Now I was one of the guys or one of the girls or whatever, and was kind of accepted, and we had great fun. And Charlie and Mark, Margo's best friends, I got along fabulously with them. It's so rare in life that you meet people where you just feel instantly at home. And Charlie's from the South. He's originally from Kentucky, and he's about my age. Mark's a little younger, and he's from Trinidad. And they both look famous. I don't know how to put it. Mark looks like he could be like the love child of Mick Jagger and David Bowie. And I was telling Mark that I just. I want to go dance. And so he slips me some ecstasy. And I'd never done ecstasy before, which I highly recommend because I was so touchable. So felt so good to be in my own skin. And after being so worried about my leg falling off, it was nice to not have to worry about that. And so we would go out dancing. And I got to talk to Charlie, and he was also from the south, and so we really commiserated on living these awful Southern childhoods. And I told him about my dad. My dad was such a horror show. Just a horrible person who I. Now I look back, I think. I'm pretty sure he thought I was gay because I loved to dance. And he would say fun things like, turn off that God damn nigger music. I don't want no son of mine flouncing around like no goddamn faggot. And I'm telling Charlie this, who grew up in Kentucky, and it's like we understood. And he still got that little bit of an accent and it just felt like home. And he was telling me about how his brother would always tease him calling him Charles Nelson Riley. And it was great. And he kept on mentioning. And I remember being astounded because art was popping up everywhere in Burning Man. Every empty space there would be some art. And not just art, but the people were art. You know, it's like people talk about being in New York, that you can really be yourself, but it's more of an apathetic because nobody cares. But when I was there, I felt like not so much people cared. But everybody was so glad that you were being a performer. They didn't want you to sit on the sidelines and if you dressed in some crazy outfit or whatever, you would get applause. People would come up and give you some water or a treat or drugs, you know, if you're very lucky. We'll be right back.
- [14:05]
Ryan Reynolds
We're back.
- [14:07]
Kevin Allison
So we're getting along fabulously. And Charlie says we got to go to the temple. He's been talking about this temple. We've got to go to the temple. But it's at the way end and the very edge of the whole city. And so we make a day of it. We're going to go out, we get on our bicycles and we bicycle out and we get to the temple. And I was told that it was exceptionally beautiful this year. It was 2009 and nothing really prepared me for the immensity of. Was about four stories high and it was made out of reclaimed wood. You would think by looking at it that it was marble, but it was just wood that had been thrown out and discarded. The symbolism of that was so profound to me. This trash to treasure. And the structure was built in the shape of a lotus. In Buddhism, the lotus is a flower symbolic of the vagina of being open to accepting bliss in your life. And. And Charlie's telling me all about this and about the vajra, which is the lightning bolt or the penis. And the penis meets the lotus and bliss. And I thought, yeah, I want that. We go into the temple. And there are meditation benches all along the outside of the temple. And I don't remember whether he told me, but it didn't sink in. When I got inside the temple, it was a memorial for people. Anybody could go in and put up memorials for people that they had lost. So you'd have pictures of children that parents had lost, or children who had lost parents or lovers. And not just the memorials for those that have passed, but also things that you wanted to let go of. Like, there were people who were trying to give up heroin or drugs, and they had made these little alters about the drug, how it had taken over their lives and how they wanted to let it go. One person had even had put a leg, a picture of their leg that they had lost in an accident. And they now had to walk with crutches, with a prosthesis. And that just started to overwhelm me. And the. The group, all my friends, we'd all started to kind of fan out, and it was very somber. I remember I had wanted to get to the next level. There's four levels of four stories, and there was this big, long ramp. And I remember walking up in the middle of it, and I just felt like I was going to fall, like I was going to fall backwards. And I started to panic a little, that fear about my leg falling off if I was being put in danger. And as I was trying to, like, scoot off to the side, which was awkward and humiliating, people just started swarming around me, trying to get around me. And I panicked even more. And eventually I got to the rail, and I remember feeling so ashamed, so heavy, so weighted down with this fear. And it wasn't just the leg or that now that I was different, I was never going to run again. I couldn't cross my legs. I couldn't put on my own shoes, my own socks. But I started thinking that my mother, by the time she would have been my age, she had already been bound in a wheelchair for five or six years. And here I am, feeling sad for myself, throwing a pity party. And I was just so angry. And I kept thinking about all the loss around me, and it just felt like the whole world was kind of darkening or irising out. And then my new friend Mark came back down, and he saw me. And I tried to smile and kind of wave him off, that I was just, you know, needed a moment. But he knew what was going on, and he just. He came. He didn't say anything. And he just. He put his arm around me. And this gentle, beautiful man who my father would have hated, showed me kindness and gentleness, and I just lost it. And he helped me out, helped me down the ramp outside to one of the little meditation benches. And we're just sitting there and just being. And eventually everybody else comes out and they see me on the bench and they're concerned. They go, did something happen? And I just tell them, you know, I just got a little overwhelmed. And Mark says he'll be okay. And then Charlie sits down with me, and I'm still a little shaken. And he holds my hand and he says, you know, it's okay. A lot of people, I felt the same way when I first went through the temple. And it's all about just letting go, just throwing away all that shit that you just don't need anymore. And he said, listen, I want to tell you a very special prayer to remember. Because at the end of all of this, at the end of Burning man, they're going to burn this temple. And I remember, I just couldn't believe that they're going to burn it. This beautiful structure, and it was just all going up in flames. And he said, here's what I want you to remember. Very simple phrase. And we can all do it together. And he looked me in the eye, holding my hand, and he said, the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don't need no water Let the motherfucker burn Burn, motherfucker, burn. And everyone thought this was the most hysterical thing. And we all stood up, we got on our bicycles, and we still kept chanting, the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don't need no water Let the motherfucker burn Burn, motherfucker, burn.
- [20:51]
Handsome Poets
Sirens rolling in the desert in the desert you're out in the backseat of my car we're gonna watch the stars In a new place In a new place we lost track. It doesn't matter. Cause we are on this road together Start a fire, a fire. New kids coming into town let's get together we take over now. On fire, on fire. New kids coming into town let's get together, we take over now.
- [21:40]
Kevin Allison
That's it for this week, folks. This is Handsome Poets behind me now with a song called sky on Fire. And remember, if you love risk, please spread the word. Tell your friends. Remember on Twitter and Facebook, we're riskshow. On Twitter, I'm hekevinalison, and there's a whole slew of stuff you can find at risk. Show.com or thestorystudio.org where we teach storytelling. And having said all that, all that remains to be said is, folks, today's the day. Take a risk.
- [22:21]
Handsome Poets
We are on this road together let's start a fire a fire we'll get coming into town let's get together, we take over now on fire, on fire Milkin's coming into town let's get together we take over now on fire, on fire Milk, it's coming into town let's get together, we take over now.