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- [00:00]
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- [01:32]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This podcast is brought to you by stamps.com these days you can get practically anything on demand like this podcast. Did you know you can even get postage on demand@stamps.com buy and print official US postage right from your own computer and printer. It's easy and convenient. Plus stamps.com will give you a digital scale. It'll automatically calculate the exact postage you need for any letter or package. You can print the postage directly onto envelopes or labels, or even plain paper. Then you just hand your mail to your mail carrier. There's no need for you to go to the post office ever again or even lease one of those expensive postage meters. Right now there's a special offer for listeners of the Moth podcast. A no risk trial plus a $110 bonus offer that includes the digital scale and up to $55 free postage. Don't wait. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type moth that's stamps.com and enter moth. The story you're about to hear by Gillian Lauren was told live here in New York City last year. The theme of the night was Heart of Darkness, Stories of Love and War.
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Gillian Lauren
So I was an 18 year old NYU dropout struggling to pay my rent in New York by dancing at the Kit Kat Club on 56 and Broadway when a friend of mine. You know it. Okay, a friend of mine approached me about a casting call. And this casting call was supposedly to go and entertain rich businessmen in Singapore. It didn't seem all that different from what I was already doing, so I went. But when I got the job, they told me that it wasn't in Singapore at all. In fact, I was being invited to be the personal guest of the Prince of Brunei. Now, Brunei is a sultanate in Southeast Asia. It was a country I had only recently even heard of. And at the time, the Sultan of Brunei was the richest man in the world. And I was being hired to work for his youngest brother, who is Prince Jeffrey Bolkiah, also known in the media as the Playboy Prince. Now, my job description was elusive at best, but I fantasized that I might get to Brunei and find a wild adventure and a pile of money and an employer who was nothing less than Prince Charming. I suspected more realistically that I had signed on to be some sort of international quasi prostitute. But even that seemed. It seemed like a wild and exotic transformation for a Jewish girl from the burbs of Jersey. And honestly, I wanted nothing less than transformation. I wanted so badly for my life to be something more exceptional than just going to usually fruitless B movie auditions during the day and squeaking around a brass pole at night. And I thought maybe this was it. And it seemed like it would be worth the risk. So ever since I was 16 and I first heard Patti Smith's album Easter, I decided that Patti Smith was the absolute barometer of all things cool and right. And I would ask myself, when faced with tough decisions, what would Patti Smith do? So I weighed my options. Should I stay? Should I go? What would Patti Smith do? And I decided. Patti Smith would go. She would get on a plane and go to exotic lands, and she would never once look back. And that's what I did. And when I arrived at the airport in Bandar Seri Begawan, I was greeted by two Secret Service agents who immediately took my passport, supposedly to update my visa or something. And I had the first flicker of a thought that maybe I had not completely understood the implications of the decision that I had made to go there. But all of these apprehensions were overshadowed. Or when I saw the royal compound, it was immense. It looked like a resort in Fort Lauderdale if it had been imagined by Aladdin. There were gold domes and there were swimming pools and there were tennis courts. And I saw all of this, and my head raced with plans, and I thought, is it that far out of the realm of possibility that maybe I could make a prince fall in love with me and my life will change in dazzling and unexpected ways? And inside, the palace was just as impressive. It was cavernous. And in the entryway there was a big fountain. And the carpets glowed because they were actually woven through with real gold. And on the walls there were Picassos and there were Pollux. And this wasn't even where the prince lived. There were other palaces where he lived. There were still other palaces where his three wives lived. This was strictly his play palace. And at this palace, every night he threw parties. And at the parties there was alcohol, although, strictly speaking, it was illegal in Brunei. There was music, there was dancing. And above all, there were women, beautiful women from from all over the world. There were women from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, a handful of us from the US and all of us were vying for the attention of the prince. It was like the original Bachelor. And we would go to these parties every night, and then we would stumble home drunkenly at five in the morning, and we'd sleep, sleep all day. And the days tumbled into nights, tumbled into days, tumbled into nights. And after two weeks there, contrary to all my big plans, I had not made a prince fall in love with me. Rather, I had sat there and watched from across the room as all the other women flirted with him. And he ignored me. And I wondered what they had that I didn't. And I figured I didn't know how to play that game. I just didn't rate. And I thought that was going to be it. I was going to be going home like that. But one morning I was spirited away from the palace, and I was taken to an office building in the capital city. And I was locked in an office there. And it was freezing cold, and it was stuffed with all this tacky furniture and what seemed like a hundred pictures of the prince's three wives. And I tried one door and it was locked. I tried the other door. It was locked. There was no bathroom. I waited there for four hours until I was trembling from hunger, from cold, from nerves. I considered peeing in a trash can, and I hoped that I was waiting there for the prince and not for some other mysterious, unthinkable fate, because they had taken my passport. And these were people who were way more powerful than me. And I thought very few people even knew where I really was. I could vanish at that moment. And there would be no culpability. And there was nothing I could do about it. So I closed my eyes and I tried to imagine I was somewhere warm. And I fell asleep. And when I woke up, it was to the sound of the door opening. And standing in front of me was the prince. And until that moment, I had only seen him in casual clothes. But that day, he looked like a prince. He was dressed in this snazzy uniform and he had medals on his chest. And I sat up way too quickly. I wouldn't say what I felt for him at that minute was love exactly, but I felt this very deep sense of gratitude for the fact that he had rescued me from this freezing cold, locked room in the first place. But I also felt a profound desire to be valued by this person. And I think in extreme circumstances, the combination of these two things can look very much like love. And the prince kissed me. And that was how our romance started. And I got to know him a little bit. And as I did, I found out that the prince was not only handsome, he was also bright. And he was educated. And yes, he was charming. And in spite of the totally bizarre circumstances, I liked him. And for whatever reason, he liked me too. And I rose very quickly through the ranks of the women and I became his second favorite girlfriend. I know, right? Is that good? His second favorite girlfriend? It was in the context, under the circumstances, it was good enough. And the prince at this time was looking for a fourth wife. Now, for a fourth wife, it would not be inconceivable for him to choose from amongst the women at the parties. And honestly, I thought about it. I did. I imagined what it would be like to marry him. I think what Disney brainwashed American girl would not think. But I really tried not to add self delusion to my growing list of character flaws at this point, because I realized that we were prostitutes. If you go to the same party every night, you wind up making out with the guy throwing the parties, and you walk home with a handful of cash. You are a hooker. And at first, this didn't really bother me. But eventually all of the locked doors and the constant surveillance we were under started to wear on my nerves. And so one day when I was with the prince on a business trip in Malaysia, a guard came to fetch me. And he told me to put on an evening gown in the middle of the afternoon. And this was not all that unusual. But what was unusual was when we got in the elevator, he did not press the button for the penthouse where the prince was staying. Rather, he Pressed the button for the roof, and I panicked. And I thought, what could be on the roof? Oh, my God, what have I done? I know too much. And they're trying to get rid of me. They're going to pitch me off the edge. They're going to fabricate the headlines. They're going to say, american teenager dies in a drug deal gone wrong at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton. But when we got to the roof, there was a helicopter there, so that was a relief. I got in the helicopter, it hopped over to the next building, and I was escorted to a suite. And this suite looked like if a wedding cake was dipped in gold. And that was the hotel room. That is what it looked like. And at the other end of the suite, a football field away, it seemed, sat the Sultan of Brunei, the richest man in the world. And I recognized him because in Brunei, his face was everywhere. It was on the billboards, it was on the television, it was on the money. And the Sultan of Brunei asked me to come over and to sit down next to him. And I did, and I poured us a cup of tea. And he introduced himself as Martin. Now, all of the royal brothers had Western nicknames from. From their school days in England. But I was a little disappointed by Martin. It did not seem very sultany to me. It seemed more like one of my Jewish uncles, like my uncle Morty. But Martin and I chatted, and he was lovely. He was so different from the prince. The prince was moody and demanding and. And he was very hard to please. And the sultan was cheerful and breezy, and he was easy to please. He just wanted me to do a little dance, which, by the way, is a terrifically awkward thing to do with no music. And then he wanted some oral sex. And then he very definitely wanted me to leave, which I did. And I had been in Brunei for long enough to know that I was not meant to be insulted by the fact that the prince had passed me off to his brother. I was meant to be honored that I had been this gift. But as I walked away from the Sultan that day, I. This trickle of truth started to work its way into my brain. And I thought I had come there really wanting an adventure. I had started out wanting to be free, and I wound up a piece of property. And I asked myself, what would Patti Smith do? And the answer was, she wouldn't be there. Really, she wouldn't. So when had that happened? And I would like to tell you that this stunning little gem of self knowledge instantly transformed me into a person who made wiser and more self loving choices. But that's not the case. Although eventually I'd like to think that is what happened. But I stayed in Brunei for a while after that until I really figured out that numbness is its own kind of misery and that freedom from carrying what happens to you is not freedom. And when I figured that out, I walked away from the Prince and I never went back. And so now when I ask myself what would Patti Smith do? I can usually say that I think she would like where I wound up. I think she would stay here. Thank you.
- [17:14]
Dan Kennedy
Gillian Lauren is the author of the novel Pretty and the New York Times best selling memoir Some My Life in a Harem. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Magazine, Salon, the Rumpus, and the Moth's new book, among others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son and Just a quick word from one of our sponsors Sponsors Building a strong relationship with your team is key for any business, right? You need to meet, collaborate with co workers and clients, all that stuff. Develop ideas and solutions. You need to work together no matter where you are. So that's why you need gotomeeting with HD Faces. It's a powerful, simple way to meet online from anywhere, anytime. With GoToMeeting by Citrix, you can share screens and collaborate on documents in real time. You make it easier for your team to be on the same page and you can see your team face to face just like being in the same room. You can launch or join a meeting from anywhere using your computer, mobile or tablet. It's really easy. You can even present from your iPad. Now start working Smarter today. Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days. Visit GoToMeeting.com, click the Try it Free button and use the promo code moth. That's GoToMeeting.com promo code moth GoToMeeting Meeting is believing and here's a reminder. The Moth Main Stage is coming to Berkeley's Zellerbach auditorium on Monday, October 28th as part of the Bay Area Science Festival. Also, the Moth Main Stage is returning to St. Paul on Friday, November 8th. That's presented by our friends at Minnesota Public Radio. For tickets and for a list of all of our upcoming tour stops, just visit the Moth D Our podcast host.
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Gillian Lauren
Dan Kennedy is a writer and performer living in New York and author of the new novel American Spirit. Available now.
- [19:08]
Dan Kennedy
Thanks to all of you for listening and we hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio exchange, helping make podcasts public radio more public@prx.org.