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- [00:00]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
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- [01:08]
Dan Kennedy
Hi, it's Dan Kennedy, your podcast host. I'm on vacation for the next few weeks, but I'm leaving you in the good hands of guest host Mike Birbiglia, who you know as a writer, comedian and Moth regular. I'll be back in September to kick off the moth's fall season when there will be new CDs, a new edition of the Radio Hour, new merchandise and and of course great new live events for you to attend and great new podcast stories. So I'll see you then and I hope you have a story worthy summer.
- [01:37]
Mike Birbiglia
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Mike Birbiglia and if you don't know the Moth, the Moth is a non profit organization that features true stories told live without notes. You probably know that all stories on the podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit and from our tour shows across the country. Actually, we're trying to come to your town. We're trying to come to every town and you can support us in that effort by helping us win a grant through the Pepsi Refresh Project. We're trying to launch four new story slams across America. So vote for the Moth every day throughout August by visiting refresheverything.com or this seems easier by texting 10135 to the number 73774. Standard message rates apply and thank you. Thank you so much. The story you're about to Hear by Meg Wolitzer was recorded live at the Moth main stage in 2002. The theme of the night was in love and relationships on the rocks. Here's Meg.
- [02:51]
Meg Wolitzer
I grew up inside a Judy Blume novel, by which I mean my entire girlhood was sort of filled with boys, malls, Tampax and bases. Now, I know the bases have changed in recent years, but back then it was a really, really big thing. And it all reached fever pitch the summer that I went to sleepaway camp. Now, my father chose this camp, but my mother had wanted me to go to a kind of real arts camp. This camp in Vermont where everybody wore a toga and did an interpretive version of the Aeneid in the woods. My father said, no, no, no, no. You have to go to a real regular camp. So I went to a place called Pakatakan in the Catskills, which that summer was shut down because a kid got shot in the leg. They had riflery, which I was not allowed to partake of. Instead, while the kids were shooting each other, I sat on a little hill with a loom. And while I was sitting on that hill with my loom, a boy walked by, and he came up and admired my loom. And we talked and we fell in love. This was my first boyfriend. His name was David. He lived on Long island, as I did. I lived at exit 43, he lived at exit 48. So we had a lot in common. We all, amazingly, went to the same mall, the Walt Whitman Mall. Which is true, is this incredible oxymoron. But it's where I went every weekend for Huckapoo blouses and poetry. And we just had this wonderful, adorable relationship. It was first love. He was very sweet, although he did wear these strange shirts that were velour and had a little round zipper pull. I don't know, they've kind of gone out of fashion. But I didn't mind it at the time. And we were really in love. And we went back to our homes and we wrote to each other. But, you know, the thing was, that summer at the camp, there was a very, very strange relationship between the boys and girls. The boys were always trying to do stuff to the girls. And one thing that they did was they would come into our bunks at night and they would go around the most hapless girl in the bunk and they would truck her. And if you don't know what this is, they would gather around the bunk and they would start vibrating the bed. And they would then say, vroom, vroom, vroom. And Then they would shine two flashlights in her eyes and they'd say, look out, look out, the truck is coming. And supposedly she would fall out of BE. And in 1963, a girl had died that way. They said, I don't know. The camp was still in existence by the time I was there, although the shooting did shut it down. Heart attacks, good shooting bad. Another thing that they did was that they insisted, one boy in particular insisted that while the girls were sleeping, he came into their bunk and went to third with them. And we wondered, is this possible that we wouldn't know? And we'd say, that's not possible. You didn't really do that. But we were very afraid of this. The bases, at that time, point in time, in the 1970s, first base was, they touched your breasts. It was all, what happened to you? You were this, I'm sorry, forgive me. First base, whoa, I wish, I wish. First base, they kissed you and you sort of laid there like a kind of. Or sat there like a kind of blow up doll, you know. Second base, they touched your breasts beneath your huckapoo blouse. Third base, they put their hand inside you like a hand puppet. And it was all things that were happening to you. You were this passive person. So we went back, back to our lives and we wrote to each other. And David, though, he was a lovely boy and we were really in love and he was adorable and he was very passionate. He became sort of under the sway of the bases idea, perhaps because of the influence of those other boys. And all he wanted to do was go to third. It became an obsession and we talked about it all the time. We'd have conversations. How you doing? Good. How's algebra? Okay, you know, sine cosine. But have you given any thought to going to third? And it was this thing that went on and on. I'd say, no, I have to empty the dishwasher. I'd get off the phone. I didn't know what to do. And around this same time, my feminist consciousness was sort of growing and coming into being. And my mother had one of those big Jewish afros and her friends would come to the House and Ms. Magazine arrived all fat, filled with ads for vibrators and stuff. And I started a consciousness raising group in my junior high school. Yes, I did. I sent away to the National Organization of Women for a pamphlet on topics that would be good to use. And the topics were so irrelevant to me. In my experience, they were things like multiple orgasm and you. And I just needed something that said when your mom really doesn't listen or PSATs, relax. You know, really, it wasn't for me. And yet I had this. And I felt really sort of inspired by these feminist heroes, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. And while this was happening, I started to think, you know, going to Third would be something that was a feminist statement. I could do this. This had nothing to do with my parents. It was an act that came from me. And I was wearing at this time David's necklace. His father was a really low rent jeweler and he made me a necklace that was half a heart. So half a heart, if you can picture it, kind of looks like a jagged tooth. And it said David on it. And he wore the other half that said Meg, these jagged things. And we loved each other. But the conversations always came around again and again to third. And one day the mail came and there was this big, like oatmeal papered heavy envelope with sealing wax with his initial on it. And I opened it and in calligraphy, because he'd gotten a calligraphy set, I think, for his bar mitzvah, it said, whilst thou go to third, milady. Well, we negotiated like two lawyers on the phone, night after night, you know, well, you know, that's two and a half. Okay, we go to third. And finally there was going to be a party for his birthday and it was going to be at his house, exit 48. And all the kids from camp were going to come and I would sleep over. His parents would be there. I'd sleep in the rec room, the whole thing. I would sleep over and we would go to Third. This was our plan. My father drove me there. Doo, doo, doo. Are you looking forward to your visit? You know, and I just thought, I'm, you know, I'm woman. Yes, yes. We got there and the kids all came and there was a lot of discussion, as there usually was. If she's buying the stairway to heaven, do you think that, I mean, why does she have to buy it? And where would you buy a stairway to heaven, you know? This conversation went on long into the evening. And one by one, the kids were picked up by their own parents. Beep, beep, outside by. They would go home. The kid whose leg had been shot off limped out. They all started to leave. And I started to realize, wait, I don't want them to leave. I was feeling, feeling something different from what I thought. And I thought, but I want to do this. Why am I feeling this way? It wasn't that I was scared. I really was kind of an adventurous kid. But I began to feel that maybe I was sort of going along with it, and it wasn't this big sort of feminist thing that I thought. But the kids were gone. And I'm helping his mother with the dishes. I'm saying, oh, let me have that plate. No, it needs more drying. And I wanted this to last. I didn't want to go to my bed that they'd set up for me in the rec room. But finally it was really late. I had to do it. The parents went upstairs to watch Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon. I went downstairs to this hideous rec room, and I lay down underneath a poster of Christina's World, you know, the lame girl lying in the field of wheat. And I kind of felt like that I'm lying there on this little bed, and all of a sudden, from the top of the stairs, I see this figure, and I hear a creak on the orange carpeted stairs. And David comes down, and he's wearing a bathrobe, and it's like a miniature Hugh Hefner. I mean, he practically had a, you know, a snifter of brandy. He was swirling as he walked down the stairs. And he came into the room, and he said, so, are you ready to go to third? And all of our love and our adorable sort of puppy love passion was just being taken over by this horrible thing that we decided to do in this freakish, negotiated way. And in that dark rec room, the heads of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan appeared to me, and Gloria Steinem with her aviator glasses and Betty Friedan. And I thought, no, this is not what I want to do. And I said to him, no, I don't want to. He tied his belt of his robe tighter, put down the brandy snifter, said, what? But it's what we agreed. I said, I know, but I just don't want to. Well, he stomped back upstairs. The next morning at breakfast, everything had changed between us. It was like we were strangers. And right before my father picked me up, I said to him, you know, I don't think you know how to treat women. Well, I went home with my father, sat in the car, do, do, do, do, do. What happened there?
- [11:49]
Dan Kennedy
Anything?
- [11:49]
Meg Wolitzer
Did you and your friends have fun? And I just couldn't tell him anything that had happened. I went back to life. We broke up. I took off the jagged tooth heart. I went on in life. I went to third. Yes, I did. I went to fourth. I did everything. The bases changed. Everything went on. And many, many years later, when I was married and had two kids. The phone rang and it was David. And he said to me, you know, that's so great that your life has worked out. He said, mine hasn't been so great. And I thought about what you said and I realized that you were right. I really didn't know how to treat women. And I've had a lot of problems in relationships over the years. He's been like, living with this what if I had gone to third with him? Would his life have been better and mine have been worse? There's no way to know. But, you know, the thing is, it doesn't really matter anymore because there are no bases anymore. That's the sad truth about adulthood. There's nothing to aspire to in that way. It's all a big open field. There's no bases. The bases have been removed and we're all sort of walking along it together. And there we are, me and my friends and you and Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and the kid with one leg. And I walk along this field and I turn to Gloria Steinem and I say, did I do the right thing? And she nods. Thank you.
- [13:09]
Mike Birbiglia
Meg Walitzer is a novelist whose new book, the Uncoupling, will be published by Riverhead in April. Her many novels include the Ten Year Nap, the Position, and the Wife. Wolitzer's fiction has appeared in the Best American Short Stories and she lives in New York City. The Moth is coming back to Pittsburgh. Come to the show in Pittsburgh. We're really excited about it. August 26American Shorts at WYEP is presenting Nerves of Stories of Moxie and Might. So for more information that, visit www.themost.org and keep track of all of our activities by friending us on Facebook, which you know you really have to be on if you're alive. Or you can follow us on Twitter where we tweet under the handle mothstories.
- [13:57]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
Our podcast host, host Mike Birbiglia, has been an active member of the moth community since 2003 and is the author of the forthcoming comedic memoir Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True stories, coming out October 12th.
- [14:11]
Mike Birbiglia
Thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you have a story worthy week Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange Helping make Public Radio more public at prx. Org.