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- [00:00]
Rosetta Stone
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year old's. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years. With millions of users and 25 languages offered speaking Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off, visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@RosettaStone.com moth today.
- [01:22]
Andy Borowitz
Welcome to the Moth Podcast welcome to the podcast. I'm Andy Borowitz. The Moth features true stories told live without notes. All stories on the podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York and Los Angeles and from our tour shows across the country. Visit themoth.org the story you are about to hear is by Ed Gavigan and this is his second appearance on the Moth Podcast. Many of you will remember his first story about unwittingly walking into a gang initiation in New York City and only barely surviving his injuries. We got an enormous response to this story and Ed himself received hundreds of emails from podcast listeners. We're very happy to share with you that Ed and his wife, the cute poet bartender from the story, just had a beautiful baby girl. If you'd like to hear the original story, you can find it@themost.org this new story was recorded live at the moth mainstage in March 2009, and the theme of the night was put to the test.
- [02:27]
Ed Gavigan
So when the phone rang that morning, I didn't want to pick it up. I was in a world of pain. I had everything hurt. My body, my head. I was an emotional and a physical wreck. And I looked over at the caller ID and I could see that it was the District Attorney's office calling. And so I knew that it was Assistant District Attorney Kennedy calling. And I knew what he was calling about, but I didn't know exactly what he wanted, he was calling about a case where five guys were in custody for attempted murder. And they were gang members from a gang called the Latin Kings. And they had come in from Brooklyn on the night before Thanksgiving. And their mission was to kill somebody that night as part of an initiation where they were hoping to move up in the management ranks of the gang. Kind of like an outward bound for urban thugs. And you never think that you're going to be the guy whose whole life changes forever because you choose to walk down one side of the street instead of the other side. But as I turned off of Bleecker street to walk down the block that night, I picked the right hand side of the street and I walked into their ambush. And about 15 minutes later, I was being wheeled into the emergency trauma room at St. Vincent's with multiple stab wounds from three different knives. One of them had a 10 inch blade. And the surgeon operated the rest of the night to try and save me. I needed two complete blood transfusions to keep me in place until he could do his work. And I was conscious up until they put me out for the surgery. And I was pretty certain that I was not going to make it. In fact, everybody was so sure that there was no way I could live that they gave my case to the homicide detectives, I guess to save on the paperwork when I eventually died. But they took out organs and they removed about a third of my intestines. And I was on life support. And when I came off of life support, the nurse came in with a clipboard and she wanted to talk to me about my insurance. Well, I was self employed, so I was insurance free. And they let me though, have a special program at St. Vincent's for people with no insurance, which consisted of a bottle of Percocet and a cane and a bag to put all my crap in. And they said as they pulled out the morphine and the catheter and the chest tubes and the oxygen mask, they said, come back in two weeks, we want to take a look at those stitches. And my mother, who had sat by my bedside for the whole thing, said, you need to come back to Wyoming, where I grew up and where the whole family was. And she goes, we gotta leave this horrible city and, you know, get a plane ticket and just come back and be safe and get out of here. And I agreed. I felt like I could use a little break. And we flew back to Wyoming and my two brothers and my sister were there, and they just could not believe what had transpired. And they said, you know, what the hell went on? And I said, you know what? I want to tell you this. I want to tell you everything that happened, but I'm so happy to be alive. I feel so lucky. I want to go out into the mountains, all right, because we grew up in Wyoming, and we have this camping thing, and I said, let's drive out into the hills, and we'll make a fire on a hill. I'll look at the stars, and I'll tell you what happened. And you can, you know, kind of understand what it was like. So they're like, all right, we'll drive out in the mountains. You can tell us a story in front of a big fire. All right? So my sister gets in her Honda, and she's like, listen, I have to work in the morning, so we got to take two cars so I can drive back swine. She goes in the Honda with one of my brothers, and I'm with my other brother and his. He's got a 1966 GTO. So we're following her driving out at dusk across the prairie into the mountains. And my brother is driving. He's looking over at me, and he's like, man, you look like shit. And I had lost £40 in the hospital. I was looking pretty skeletal, and I was kind of freaking out at every little bump and everything. And he started to cry, and he's like, I can't believe it was really, like, five guys, three knives, like. And I was like, yeah. But, you know, when I was in college, I was at Notre Dame. I was on the boxing team. So I knocked one guy out, and they arrested him, and he gave up the names of all the other guys who ran away. So there were five guys in jail because I got one and knocked him out. And my brother's like, dude, all right, all right. That's cool. But he couldn't believe that that would be a test of manhood, that three guys with knives would ambush an unarmed guy. And he's looking at me, and he's crying. And that was why he didn't see, as we came over the hill, that my sister had stopped on the road because there was a herd of antelope crossing. And I didn't have a seatbelt on because when we got in the car, I had so many stitches from the stab wounds and the surgery that the seatbelt hurt too much to put on. And he was looking at me. And we hit my sister's car at 60 miles an hour, and I hit my face on the dashboard, and I went through the windshield. And I came to about 40 yards down the highway, and I could just smell the burning rubber. And I looked, and I saw the headlights at crazy angles. We'd torn the back off of my sister's car. Both cars were in the ditch. There's broken glass everywhere and dissing radiators. And they're all screaming. And I think I'm dead again. But it hurts so much that I can't imagine that they have this kind of pain after you're dead. And I'm laying there, and they all come running over and they're screaming and looking down at me. And I look up, and we're in the middle. We're an hour from anything. There's no phones, there's no lights, there's no houses. I really had wanted to get out into the woods. And we just stood there. Neither car can drive. And the next car that comes along is a pickup truck. And this guy pulls over. Of course, he sees everything that's gone on, Calls the state troopers, the highway patrol shows up. Trooper gets out. He comes over. He wants everybody's id. We all give him our driver's license, and he goes, well, I'm not writing any tickets tonight. You all have the same last name. You sort this out when you get home. All right? We need to get this guy to the hospital. So they're loading me into the back of this pickup truck, and I'm in just. I'm in bad pain. And as my sister and the pickup driver putting me in, I hear the trooper saying to my brother, that GTO was a 66. My brother's like, yeah, it had a factory tri Power carburetor on it. And I'm just like, wyoming, man. All right, can you get me to the hospital? So we drive into Cheyenne. It's an hour. We get to the hospital, and at that time of night, it's Cheyenne mainly. All they deal with is car accidents. So they bring me in, and the nurse on duty goes, weren't wearing a seatbelt, were you? I'm like, all right. We get up on the thing. She starts to take my shirt off to check my vitals, and she sees stab wounds, surgery scars, staples, hundreds of stitches. She goes, honey, what happened to you? Where did you come from? I'm just like, listen, just stitch up my face. I need to get out of here. All right? Let me get on my way. So I take the next plane back to New York City. I get here, and I've got my appointment with my surgeon that saved my life. I've Got to go in and see him now. The last thing that he told me was, stay off your feet and don't take a shower, and I'll see you in two weeks. So I go in to see him, and he is pissed. It's like he's just restored an old English piece of furniture, and I've taken a hammer to it, and he starts looking at me, and he says, you know what? If you had had that seatbelt on, you would have ruptured everything inside of you from the impact, and you'd be dead. So you actually saved your own life. And I'm like, whatever doesn't kill me just hurts me even more. It's fine. So the surgeon, you know, checks everything out. I'm fine. I've got two black eyes, a broken nose, stitches from my forehead to my brow, my nose, both lips are full of stitches, and I've got broken teeth. He just sends me on my way. And I go back to my apartment, and I'm having a hard time. I can't sleep. I've got competing nightmares. I've got. I'm being stabbed. I'm in a car crash. I'm in surgery. I just flew through the windshield. I can't eat. I can't go to the bathroom. I'm oozing pus and intermittent bloody noses. I just cry. I cry and cry. I'm wracked with sobs. I can't. I have no idea what my place on earth is anymore. Nothing is safe. And then I decided to check my phone messages, right? Because the machine is completely full. I've got 36 messages, like. Beep. This is Bob. I'm here with Ellen. We're waiting for you. You didn't come to the meeting. I can't understand. Ed, you know, I really thought this was important to you. I really. I have to say, I'm very annoyed. Beep. Ed. Bob, Ellen had to leave. All right? Now I. We're never going to work again. Okay? I don't understand. Next one. Ed, we've been waiting for the furniture to be delivered. I don't understand what happened.
- [11:58]
Rosetta Stone
Beep.
- [11:58]
Ed Gavigan
On and on and on. Every. And these people don't even know I've been stabbed. They're just. You know, there were business deals that just. They. They hadn't been notified. So I'm in a world of hurt, and I find out my van has been towed while I was in the hospital. And then the phone's ringing, and it's ADA Kennedy, and he wants me to come in and make a victim's impact statement so I can let the criminals know how this has impacted my life. And I don't want to do it. I tell him I don't have the energy. I don't. I'm not interested in it. I want to get on. I want to forget everything that's ever happened to me. I just want to. I have a new chance at life, and I want to go on with it. I don't want to do this. And he tells me that he needs me to do it because it's going to help my case. His case, actually. And he says, what happens is, if you don't come in and make this statement, the criminals come in and people feel sorry for them because These guys were 17, 18 years old, and they're going to see them in handcuffs and scared and little. And they're going to. They're going to feel sorry for them. He said, I want them to hear from the victim's point of view. So I felt like, okay, let me think about this. Okay, I agree. I'll do it. I'll do it for you. And then I think, you know what? I'm going to be in the courtroom when that guy comes in, and I'll just jump over the rail and strangle him. That'll be great. And then I realize, no, because then I'll be in jail and there'll be four other guys that don't get strangled. So then I think to myself, all right, what I'm going to do is write down all of my anger and my hurt and express to this punk what he ruined and how he destroyed my business and my health and my sense in the world that you can walk down the street without something bad happening to you. And I really. It was very important to me to communicate that to him. And then as I played it in my mind, I imagined this kid in court sneering back at me like, hey, yeah, yuppie, you got a shitty life now. Well, I have always had a shitty life, and I'm gonna have a shitty life going forward. And welcome to your shitty life, because I don't care about your pain, and I'm not interested in hearing about how things are not working out for you. And I thought to myself, you know what? I don't want to miss the opportunity to communicate with this kid. My rant is one thing, but I'm going to actually get to look him in the eye. And this is a guy whose scars I'll carry for the rest of my life. And I want to communicate. I wanted to Change the equation in his head however I could. So that's how I found myself in court with my cane. And the judge, they bring him in, he's in handcuffs. He doesn't even look old enough to buy cigarettes at the bodega. And the judge asks me if I can get up and speak. And I get up and I look at him, and sure enough, I mean, I want to choke the shit out of him, but I feel sorry for him. I look at him, he's just a little guy, there's no family members on his side of the courtroom. And I look at him and I go, you know, you set out that night to kill somebody that you didn't know. And the sentence for murder, which is what you wanted to do, is 25 years to life in New York. Murder one. I said, but I didn't die. Thanks to the ambulance crew and the skill of a surgeon and my strength and an incredible amount of luck, I'm here, which means you get to listen to me. And it also means that the maximum you can go to prison for is 15 years for attempted murder. But you set out to kill me. So your intention is What? I think 25 to life, you should be prepared to deal with. And instead, you're only going to deal with 15 years in prison maximum. And I looked at him and there were tears were coming down my eyes, and I was like, I was thinking, how am I going to say this? I said, you owe me one. You owe me a favor. Because on one day, you're going to walk out of prison 10 years early. And he starts to cry and his hands are cuffed behind his back, and he starts to slam his face down on the table. And I figured I might have got to him. And then I said to him, you know, on the day you walk out of prison, I want you to remember that you have gotten another chance. You're getting 10 years handed to you, just like I got another chance at my life. And I expect you to remember today and to make the best of that chance. And I will, too.
- [16:45]
Andy Borowitz
Ed Gavigan has designed and built houses and furniture for fancy people and humble folk on four continents. The Moth is a non profit organization. Consider supporting our free podcast by going to our podcast contribution page or by becoming a Moth member@themost.org Our podcast host.
- [17:06]
Ed Gavigan
Andy Borowitz is a comedian, actor and writer whose work appears regularly in the New Yorker, the New York times, and@borowitzreport.com.
- [17:15]
Andy Borowitz
Thanks to Maz Swift for our podcast music and please tell us what you thought of today's episode. What would you like to hear more of or less of? Email us@podcastthemoth.org thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Network Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange Helping make public radio more public@prx.org.