Lenny Breedlove (4:22)

People are always asking me if I'm a man or a woman. And I always say, what are you asking me for? Do I look like I especially. I don't say that if it's a cop. Like this one night, you know. So one night, one rolls right up next to me and he's kind of staring at me. And I know in the dark he's gonna think I'm a guy. And then he's gonna look at my license and then it's gonna be a F for female instead of M for mail. And then that's gonna tick them off because no one likes to be confused, especially not a cop. And, you know, because it's troubling, right, to be confused. So I'm always in trouble. If you can't trust me to put the right letter in the right box, I mean, how are you going to trust me not to be a maniac? I mean, everyone's seen Silence of the Lambs. You know how we are, people. If my M doesn't match their F, then I'm a fraud, a fake, a felon. I'm a gender outlaw, basically. I'm scary. I feel like I'm scary. I don't fit in the gender binary. And so I probably. I'm not gonna get one of those big fancy tech downtown jobs. So I just. I make up stuff to do, you know, with my peeps. And we live in the low rent hood and we don't call the cops, we call each other. Because if I call the cops, one of three things usually happens. Either A, they don't show up and we gotta solve stuff ourselves. Or B, they do show up and then I'm a snitch and I need witness protection. Or C, they do show up and they decide I'm the problem and then I go to jail. So I don't call the cops, call my friends, call my posse, and usually somebody's there to like, grab my hand just as I'm kinda sliding off the edges of society and. And I always am because I'm always holding hands with the wrong person or I'm dressed the wrong way or I'm hanging out with the brown people and that always pisses off the haters. And then I gotta hurt em, and then I'm in trouble with the cops, so everybody's trying to kill me, which is stressful. Always looking over my shoulder, you know, and then I would have to take the edge off, so I'd have to drink and then I'd have to eat some lewds and then I'd smoke some trees. Pretty soon I'm passed out in a corner with what I feel like is a big sign on my back that says free stuff. Then I have to wake up because you can't take care of yourself when you're asleep. So wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey. Better yet, meth, blow, crack. See, so I always end up like, breaking the law. Breaking the law. But I'm a changed man now. That's over. But I still have, I can't have that bad boy aura. You know, cops can smell that a mile away. So this cop, he's pulled up next to me and he's staring at me. I'm like, oh boy. I'm gonna have to explain to him how I'm not dealing drugs anymore. And he's reading the sign on the side of my car. He reads it out loud to me. Like I've never seen the sign. I frickin put it there. You know, homo bills, mo's gettin hoes where they needs to gos. He's all, what is that? I go, well, it's a, it's a volunteer ride service for the LGBT lmnop qrst community. You know, drag queens and trans people and gay male homosexuals and, you know, babes in short skirts and long hair. Just people that might need a ride but can't get one. And then they don't have to because it's, you know, it's volunteers. He's like, do you have to be gay? I'm all, no. But every time you take a straight guy to the marina. You got three drag queens standing on a street corner crying. He's off. Well, well, we wouldn't want that. Drives away, I'm like, wait, when did that happen? When did cops get all that sensitivity training, eh? When did I get so helpy and kind of seems like he's relieved that I'm picking up some of his slack. Does that mean that like I'm on the same team now? Does that mean I'm the man? No, I'm Peter Pan, an eternally small boy always played by a middle aged woman with a posse of pirates, babes and fairies. Like when I was in high school, I'd always get all the gay male homosexuals. And normally here I would say the F word. But you can't because you might get bleeps. You have to say gay male homosexuals. So you know, every time I'm saying gay male homosexuals, I'm saying the F word. Which you can't, but I can, because, you know, I'm that and you're not. Probably. Maybe. Anyway, so I get all the gay male homosexuals and I put them in my dad's station wagon. We'd go to the gay male homosexual bar and we'd all get drunk and then I would drive them home again. Because I had to have my posse, I had to have my gang because I was like shy. Cause then I didn't have any friends because I was the only child. So I had to get high, I had to have a lot of drugs and alcohol in my system. Pretty soon I had so much drugs and alcohol in my system and didn't have any more friends, so I had to stop. But I still had to have fun. I still had to have adventure. So I would create more gangs and more posses. Like one time I started an all girl bike messenger company called Lickety Split. Anyway, and then how about an all dyke punk band, half naked, playing the chainsaw, Everybody's scared. It's good. Pretty soon I'm like touring the world and I'm running around, I'm looking for my peeps and I'm singing a song, telling them a story. And they give me a bed and a sandwich and it's great. Then one day I'm on tour, I get this call and my mom's had a stroke. Everything changes like overnight. I have to go home and I can't be on tour. I can't have adventure, I can't have my posse. I gotta go take care of my mom. It's hard and it's sad and she's slid off the edges of reality and into a wheelchair. And she said half her mind is gone. And like, she's mad. I mean, she used to be like this hard edged kind of faux queen. Now she's just mad and frustrated. Not that sad. And I miss her because she's like there and not there. And I care. But I can't really like cheer her up because we're both just bummed, you know, And I'm like, I know what I got to do. I got to get a hold of my chosen family, you know, I gotta find my peeps. I know what to do. Well, she's got a car, which she's obviously not going to be driving anytime soon. I know a whole bunch of babes that either work at the bachelor party or the strip joint, et cetera. And I'll just like pile them babs into mom's car and I'll just drive them around and I'll take them to the bachelor party in the strip joint. I'll be the tough guy. I'll be like, hands off the ladies and I'll call it ho. Mobiles get it right. So like, I don't really plan it out. I start doing that and all of a sudden it's like turned into this non stop. No plot, all action, 24 hours, 365 days. Like mobile chosen family reunion. There's like leather daddies and drag mamas and everybody wants a ride and everybody wants to give the rides. Everybody wants to jump in their car and drive around. So they we got the butchers and the badass beds and everybody's driving the leather and the glitter and the padded hips and the feathers, everything. And you always finding like a fake fingernail in the back seat or something. End of the night. And so it's beautiful, it's a good thing. And everybody that gets in my homemobile has like a story about how they get left in the dust. And there's a cab and we were flagging it down, but we were holding hands with two guys holding hands in cab. Zing right by and then go pick up the straight couple down the street. I know, sad. And who doesn't love boys in love? And the drag queen again. You know what? I just had these guys following me down the street and I was like, don't make me take off this stiletto and put it in your eye. Because under this man, under this dress, I'm still a man. So God forbid that a cab would stop for her because then he would be saying something too. He'd be like, hey, baby. Hey, baby, what's under the dress? And. And you wouldn't want that because then you would have, like, crashed cabs and dead cabbies with high heels in the rides. And it wouldn't be good except, like, we're giving more and more and more rides until pretty soon, you have to wait longer and longer and longer for a homo bill. But people do. They want it. They'll wait. They'll let millions of cabs fly by. They don't even care. They're like, I'm waiting for my homobile. Sometimes cabs will slow down because they think it's a lady. They want to slow down for ladies because you're a babe. And they want their babe in the car. And then they slow down. They're like, that's a man. They keep ding. They take off. So I stopped to pick up my passenger who's called and is waiting for a very long time, this translating. And she's standing in front of this Latina drag bar called Estanoche, which, by the way, is now closed thanks to gentrification. So just side note, Casey, you aren't dealing with enough important things to solve immediately. And she's like, are you my homobile? I'm like, yay. I'm a knight in shining armor. Fun. Good times. Jump in. And you know. And she's a trans woman, which not to be confused with the drag queen. This is a very important distinguish thing that you have to remember is that a drag queen is gay male homosexual that puts on a wig and a dress and then goes on stage and he does some cute things and he goes home. He takes off the wig and a dress, and he's back to being a gay male homosexual.

Whitney Jones (15:01)

But.

Lenny Breedlove (15:01)

But a trans woman goes home and she's still a woman. She lives as a woman day and night. And sometimes trans women will get on stage and sing a song or lip sync. Even at the drag bar, she's still a trans woman. And you gotta remember the difference. Cause if you don't, handbags will be swung. So anyway, she gets in the car and she's like, you know, I just want to tell you thank you so much for caring about us and loving us. And I'm thinking, care, love. I'm just trying to. Fun, you know? She's like, because so many of us were getting hurt. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know about that. You know, she's like, I actually. I want you to call this organization that I'm a member of. It's The. It's like a trans lady organization. They're Latina, and you should tell them about homobiles so you can take care of them. And I was like, okay, great. So I call up, and the lady's really great. She's really nice. And she's like, okay, come on. And I'll tell them to be there. Of course, I'm gonna have to train, translate for you because a lot of them don't speak English. And I was like, cool. She's gonna translate for the trans ladies. I'm ready. It's gonna be great. They sound super fun. It's good. So I show up, and sure enough, they are having fun, and they're singing songs in Spanish together and laughing and talking and having a good time together. And then I walk in, they look at me. I'm a little apprehensive. Like, I don't know, they don't speak English. They don't look like they have a lot of money or maybe jobs or a lot of power in the world. And I wonder if any of them ever feel like sometimes they got a sign on their back that says, free stuff. Like, I'm not up. Not. I'm like, hey, what's up? And the meeting hasn't started yet, and I see this big, beautiful altar on the wall. And I go over, and it's like Christmas lights and, like, candles and Mary Magdalene in the middle and all these beautiful pictures of all these beautiful Latina trans women on the wall. And I walk over there, and I look and I like, this is so amazing. And I recognize one of the pictures is a picture of the most famous trans women of all, Gwen Araujo. Now, it's tragic about why she's the most famous trans woman is because her killers were confused by her, the M F. They didn't think that her F matched their M. So that made them mad, and then that made them feel justified to take her life. And that because to them, her F didn't mean anything other than she was a fake, a fraud, and a felon. And, you know, her family loved her so much that whenever the newspapers wrote about her afterwards and they would try to get give her a male pronoun and refer to her as man, they'd be like, no, actually, you need to correct that, Gwen. Don't be confused. Regardless of whatever her body told you, she's a woman. And her family made sure that her killers went to prison. And her family actually asked a judge to change her gender posthumously, legally. That was the first time that ever happened. That gave us all hope. I look at the rest of the women on the wall and I none of them have that kind of justice or protection or love. And I look at my sisters in the room and they're smiling kind of sweet. But in my mind I'm thinking like, I bet they're like, just what do you think you're gonna be able to do for us, wet ol white boy? So I just say, you know what? You don't gotta speak English. You don't have to donate any money. You don't gotta give us any gas money. Just text us and we'll come and get you and take you where you need to goes. And then they look at me like maybe I see a couple of glimmers of trust. So now I stay busy. I'm keeping the streets safe for America and that makes me happy. So I get to bring a smile home to my mom. And whenever I feel like I'm sliding off the edges of society, I just grab the hand of somebody else who's sliding too.

Jama Jack (19:44)

Lenny Breedlove is the author of the novel Godspeed, was the singer for the band Tribe 8 and was the writer performer of Lenny Breedlove's One Freak Show, a comic solo show on gender, and the ensuing book, which won the 2010 Lamda Literary Award in the transgender category. He's the founder of Homobiles a Ride service for the LGBTIQQ community and its allies, which along with his creative work, won him the 2012 Harvey Milk LGBT Club Award for active. You can find out more about the Kitchen Sisters and their podcast Fugitive Waves at their website kitchensisters.org Our second story comes from another special moth event that we did. This is from a workshop our community program did in Uganda along with the African Women's Development Fund. Here's storyteller Jama Jack.

Whitney Jones (20:43)

In December last year, I was on this flight to Nairobi from Eldoret, where I had been invited to attend the launching of an organization based on the work that I do. We spent the whole day at this event and it happened on the last day of the 16 Days of Activism to end violence against women. So I was dressed in orange, a sign of my solidarity with victims and survivors of violence. On the way back in the flight, I was seated next to one of my hosts. She was also dressed in orange. So there was that solidarity thing going on between the two of us. We started talking about our work and it was centered on fgm. Somehow the conversation turned to religion and we talked about how we believed in our different religions I am Muslim, she is Christian. It was also around a time when there were a lot of bombings in Nigeria by Boko Haram. There was the ISIS issue that came up in the news every time. And there was a bombing in a Pakistani school that took the lives of over 100 children. She looked at me and told me about all of these things as if I did not already know. And then she said, I cannot imagine how you can still be Muslim after this. Under normal circumstances, I would get defensive and try to defend my religion and my faith and tell her not to paint us all with the same brush just because of the actions of a few. But perhaps because I was too tired from the events of the day or because I was being polite to my host and did not want to get into that debate. I just turned away and looked out of the window. And in that moment, I wished she could see what I saw. A three year old me, dressed in a beautiful dress, ready to go to church. I am Muslim, but I was born to a Christian mother. My father is Muslim, and in my country I'm expected to be a Muslim too. But because I was raised by my mother and her Christian family and was not introduced to Islam in my early age, I grew up a Christian. I spent my childhood in church. I lived with my cousins who were Christians and had gone through all the rights of Christian children. And even when my cousins did not feel like they wanted to go to church, my sister and I, the Muslims, would dress up and go to church because this is what we knew, this is what we felt, it was what we wanted. And the beautiful thing was that we had the freedom to be what we wanted to be. There was no pressure from my mother's family to follow my father's religion. There was no pressure from my father's family to move away from what we knew. In my mother's home, my grandmother, I remember my mother's mother, who's also a Christian, would always hear the call to prayer from the mosque and tell us, jamaica, Aminata, you need to get up and go pray. But she was not forcing us. For her, it was a reminder of what our father was and what society expected us to be. When it was Eid, which is a Muslim feast, we would celebrate with my father's family, and at Christmas we would celebrate with my mother's family. So we had the best of both worlds. And in that moment, I wished she could see the beauty of that freedom, of that moment where we were innocent and given the chance to discover what both religions offered and what we would want to choose in the end. And I looked at her, and I felt a bit sad that she could not get to hear this story and she would never get to know how. At the age of 12, I decided I wanted to be Muslim. This was influenced by events in my life that happened in school. So in school, you sign up and you're either listed as a Muslim or a Christian. I was listed as a Muslim, and this meant I had to take the Islamic religious knowledge class instead of the Christian religious education class, which is what I would have wanted to do and where I would have felt more comfortable. I had to deal with a lot of embarrassment in that class because sometimes we're expected to recite from the Quran, and I did not have any experience doing that whatsoever. I felt I needed to affirm my position, and I took it upon myself to employ the services of a Quranic teacher who would come to our house and teach us the Quran every evening. And then I let go of that teacher. But I continued my reading and my research, and I discovered that, yes, this was the religion I wanted to be associated with. Islam was for me. And in that moment in the plane, it was sad because she could not see all of this. And I looked at her and felt she had this sense of superiority over me because my religion was being painted as this very evil religion that prescribed the killing of people, that perpetrated a lot of injustices. And the sad thing was she did not choose to see me as human first and judge Islam by our interactions, but then from the actions of other people. It was a small aircraft. The flight was turbulent. It was really scary. At some point, everything was shaking, and we held hands, the two of us. And in that moment, I realized it did not matter who was Muslim or Christian. The only thing that mattered was that we were human and each of us was trying to get out of that situation safe. Thank you.

Jama Jack (26:45)

Jama Jack is the University Communications Officer of University of the Gambia. She holds a degree in Communication Studies and journalism and runs a personal blog where she raises awareness and promotes the various causes she supports, especially issues related to women and girls. All right, everyone, that's it from the Moth podcast. You can find us on Facebook and on Twitter he Moth. We're also on Instagram. Mothstories. If that's your thing, check us out there. Thanks, everyone for listening and coming out to the shows all year. Here's the other person that I have to thank, aside from everyone. I want to thank podcast producer Whitney Jones. This is his last episode with us and he has made the podcast just so much fun to work on over the last year and brought so much to the table. He's heading off to do some great stuff.

Lenny Breedlove (27:45)

Though.

Jama Jack (27:45)

You might not know this, but Whitney is the host of a really cool music podcast called P Pitch that I love and he is off to do that full time. We wish him all the best and we hope you have a story worthy week.

Dan Kennedy (28:01)

Dan Kennedy is the author of the books Loser Goes First, Rock on An American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer.

Jama Jack (28:09)

With the Moth Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast and the Moth Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange helping make public radio more public@prx.org.