A (0:00)

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 olds. 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. Spok 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.

B (1:08)

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. The Moth features true stories told live without notes and 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. Visit themoth.org this podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 75,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature. For the Moth listeners, Audible is offering a free audiobook to give you a chance to try out their service. One audiobook to consider is Life by Keith Richards. It is narrated by Johnny Depp and Joe Hurley. This is an inside glimpse into one of rock and roll's living legends. Richards talks about musical genius. He talks about crippling addiction and the ultimate redemption in a life that is basically as entertaining as it is hard to imagine. That's Life by Keith Richards, available from Audible. To try Audible free today and get a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.comthemoth that's audible.comthemoth Additional support for this podcast as well as our special insider survey are brought to you by the new 2011 Hyundai Equus, the new premium luxury sedan from Hyundai, featuring an iPad equipped with the Equus Owner's Manual app. Please take the insider survey for the moth. It's at podcast insidersurvey.com that's podcastinsidersurvey.com the story you're about to Hear by Mike Birbiglia was recorded live at the Moth Members show this June. The theme of the night was raised eyebrows. Stories of shocks, surprise and scandal.

C (3:04)

Six years ago, I was asked to host the World Travel Awards, which is not an event that I had heard of before. It's not televised, it's not webcast. It's not even barely attended. It's actually sort of a made up event by the travel industry to award the travel industry. You know, they'll say stuff like, the award for best resort goes to Sandals Resort in St. Lucia. And I'm like, oh, we're at Sandals Resort in St. Lucia. Oh, all right. So the awards were presented by this cavalcade of minor celebrities, my favorite of which was Lydia Cornell, star of the 80s, sitting come too Close for Comfort, which I watched religiously as a kid. But the real reason I was excited to go was that it was the first time that my girlfriend Abby and I had ever gone on a vacation. And we'd been together since college, and I had always dreamed of going on one of these tropical Caribbean vacations. I would watch those commercials when I was a kid or where they'd show these shots of the soft, sandy beaches and the clear, clear water. And someone in a local accent would say, come to Jamaica. And I would think, I want to come to Jamaica, but I can't afford it. That was the thing is, Abby and I were so broke. You know, it's like when you don't have any money, vacation seems like a completely ridiculous concept. You're like, well, usually our life costs about $85 per week, and on vacation it would cost 2 to $3,000 per week. So I don't know if we're going to do that this year. And so I was so excited because we were going to go on this vacation and I thought, this is going to fix everything. Abby and I had just gone to my brother Joe's wedding, and a lot of people were asking me whether or not Abby and I were going to get married. And, you know, this is a tough question because I was in love with Abby. I mean, we had been together since coming, and I couldn't imagine the idea of breaking up. And so I would just kind of nod and say, yeah, you know, I think so. But I knew that I wasn't really ready for it, but I never said it. And, you know, Abby, I don't think was convinced that we should get married either. I mean, I think that both of us were afraid of the idea of breaking up. I Mean, we were deeply afraid of what our lives would be outside of being together, because we had never done that in our adult lives. And what was difficult about this was that we had always shared our fears with each other, and we couldn't share this fear. I mean, Abby had some pretty eccentric fears. She was afraid of flying and water, which is an interesting combination, flying. So much so that when we were in college, she went to visit her parents in Florida, and she went to the airport and she looked at the plane through the window and she said, no, I'm not going. And then she took a cab to the train station and took a train 25 hours to Florida. And so it was that level of fear that she had for us breaking up, as did I. And we were at my brother Jo's wedding and they were taking these family photos, and my mother pulled me into one and she said, do you want Abby in the photo? And I said, yes. But there was a slight pause. I said, yeah. And later that night when we got home, Abby said, what was that pause? Why was there that pause? And I said, you know me, I pause. I'm a pauser. And she said, if we're not going to get married, I go, of course we're going to get married. And she said, when? And what I should have said was, can we talk about this next summer? What I did say was, next summer. And she called everyone we knew and told them we were getting married. And that's how I got engaged without getting engaged. Abby and I started planning our wedding and. And I think that she could sense that I wasn't completely into it. And I kept trying to be, you know, and I kept wanting to fix it. And I actually thought that the St. Lucia trip would be exactly what we needed to get back on track. And so we land at the St Lucia International Airport and we are picked up in a limo, which is a very extravagant and amazing way to travel, unless you're on an island that is mountainous. We went on a 39 mile trip through hills and mountains, and we really could have used like a Range Rover or like a Ford Explorer. Any car with shocks would have been fine, but we're just kind of bumping up and down. And it took about two and a half hours. And we're just stuck staring at each other with just utter ire, and we're just criticizing the driver, and then we're criticizing each other and then just picking each other apart. A lot of sentences beginning with, well, if you're going to bring up that, and ending with Something completely toxic. I mean, the phrase, if you're going to bring up that never ends with I, I'm going to tell you I love you. By the time we arrived, we were just at our wit's end, and we rolled out of the back of the car and we go to the front desk to check in, and they said, the room is not ready. And they said, you can go down at the beach and we'll set up a table and you can have drinks on the house. And so we go down to the beach and there's the soft sand and the clear water, exactly like I had seen in the commercials. It was as though the water were speaking to me. Come to Jamaica. And Abby looks me in the eye and she says, I think we should break up. And I start crying like. Like I just witnessed the death of my best friend. And she starts crying the same way. And we're just crying. And people around us are so mad at us, you know, because they're having, like, their dream vacation. And we are like these awful, like, sad extras in their dream, you know, they're just like, can't you do that somewhere else? You know, like, any Starbucks in Manhattan would be fine, you know, but just not here. And we're crying, and we're just looking out at that perfect water. And that was day one of our Caribbean dream vacation. The thing about breaking up on an island is that you can't leave. There's nowhere to go. The great Mitch Hedberg had a joke where he said that, you know, the worst place to get in an argument is in a tent. What are you going to do? Slam the flap? An island is even worse. You know, what are you going to do? Just flap your wings? Fly away? Build one of those Gilligan's island palm tree planes? We were. We were, you know, stuck in this little hotel room together, and we kept bumping into each other and we were too close for comfort. Laugh, cry, whichever way you guys want to go on that one is fine. I just thought it was an interesting tie in. We were in this hotel room for days, and we wouldn't really speak. You know, she would leave for hours at a time and wouldn't say where she was going. Then she'd come back and I'd say, where were you? And she'd just go out. And then eventually I was upgraded to her business voice. You know, that kind of cheery, professional and distant voice that you sometimes get in a breakup where she'd say, what can I do for you? You know? And I'd say, I don't know. I thought maybe we could go for a walk tonight. And she'd be like, we're not open past six. And I'd be like, I don't know, maybe we could go get coffee. And she'd say, if you'd like to admit you're wrong, press 1. If you'd like to discuss your faults in detail, press 2. If you'd like to stop going on the road, press all the buttons at once and give up your dreams. I was getting the business voice for days, and finally I just said, you know, why don't we just do something? We're here in St. Lucia. Why don't we just do what friends would do if they were on and island? And so she picked up the brochure and she said, let's go scuba diving. Which was insane because she's afraid of water. And scuba diving is like flying underwater. I don't know if you've ever done scuba scuba diving, but it's really this kind of. It kind of transcends rules entirely. You know, things that you've accepted your whole life. Like you can't breathe underwater. And if you see a shark run away, we're swimming through schools of thousands of tropical fish and even sharks. And we get out of the water and we're just exhilarated. Like, we can't believe it. Like, that was amazing, you know, And. And I go to put my arm around her, and she shrinks away. And she says, yeah, that was fun. That night we went out to the beach and we swam out to one of these floating trampolines. Have you ever seen these things where we were jumping up in the air like 7 or 8ft in the air? Like that scene in the movie Big? And we're laughing and having a great time, and I'm like, this is like old times. We're going to make this work. And. And she jumps up into the water and surfaces, and I jump after her, and I surface right behind her. I put my arms around her waist, and she just pulls away just an inch. But it felt like miles. And that's the distance that I would feel from Abby forever. And well done. I didn't know we were scoring the stories. The next morning, she said, I think I'm just gonna go home early. And I said, that makes sense. And I had to stay to host the World Travel Awards. But I said to the guy who I was working for, I said, is there any other way to get to the airport other than that limousine through the mountains? And he said, I can arrange for a helicopter. And I said, I don't think that's going to work for Abby. And she chimed in, she goes, no, that's fine. A helicopter. And so I took her to the helicopter landing. And it is the scariest helicopter I have ever seen in my life. Even in movies about scary helicopters, I mean, this, it's just like this rickety thing held together by scotch tape. And it was like the pilot looked like he was 15 or like a young 17, you know. And I said to Abby, I go, you know, you don't have to go on this thing. And she goes, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. And she gets on the helicopter and they soar above the rainforest. And it was the loneliest that I've ever felt. You know, I felt like there was a part of me that was gone. But I couldn't help but marvel at Abby, at what she had done that week. She had. She had ended a relationship that seemingly couldn't end. And then she had gone scuba diving. And then she flew away.