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- [00:00]
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- [01:09]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. The Moth Podcast is sponsored by LegalZoom. It's time to create your own story when you start that business you've been dreaming about, LegalZoom can help you ensure your assets are legally protected with LLCs, incorporation and other business filings. They can also help you legally protect your family. LegalZoom has been helping Americans get personalized wills, powers of attorney, and living Trusts for over 12 years. Their service was developed by a team of experienced attorneys and LegalZoom takes care of you from start to finish as an introduction to Moth listeners. Now you can get a special discount. To thank you for listening to our podcast. It's if you're a parent or entrepreneur, call or visit legalzoom.com today and see how easy it is to protect your family or launch your business. Dream. LegalZoom can provide self help services at your specific direction or connect you with an attorney, but they're not a law firm. Go to legalzoom.com for wills starting at $69 or in corporations and LLCs for only $99 and get your special discount by entering Moth in the referral box at checkout. This week we bring you two stories from our Story Slam Series. And as you probably know, our Story Slams are our open mic storytelling competitions and we're doing them in 13 cities across the country. Now. The first story by Tara Clancy was told live at a Story Slam in New York last summer. The theme of the night was fall from grace.
- [02:47]
Tara Clancy
All right? So when I told my father I was gay, he said, all you need is love, sister. And then we listened to a couple of Carole King records while making our own yogurt. Not a chance. My dad is a retired New York cop, devout Irish Catholic. You know, he keeps a picture of the Pope hung around the rear view of his truck. Okay. And in fact, becoming a cop was his second choice of career. His first was to be a priest. And he even went into the seminary, you know, really hoping God would call him. Turns out he didn't. No hard feelings. My dad left, and a little while later, he met my mother and he had me. So, in essence, I am his fall from grace. That I'm also an atheist, lesbian, drop in the ocean, you know? So while my dad wasn't cut out for bringing God's love to the masses, he was just great at throwing them in jail. And I mean that, you know, he was in the warrant squad, which means he was like a bounty hunter for the NYPD for 21 years. After that, he retired, but not before getting his degree at night in accounting, naturally.
- [04:02]
Susan Kent
You know.
- [04:02]
Tara Clancy
You know, that being the next logical step. Priest, bounty hunter, accountant. So, you know, the only reason I thought this might have gone okay is that my dad does have some very good gay friends who he even calls old school gays, you know, like he'll brag about them, you know, and he'll say, and they don't make them like that anymore, you know, meaning his gays, you know? But that didn't matter. When I told him I was gay, he flipped out. He was living in Atlanta at the time I was here. And so our phone conversation ended with him insisting I fly down there that weekend to talk in person. Click. So there I am in the passenger seat of the truck, and the only thing he has said to me is, we're going to a hotel. That's it. And we drive, he and I, silent, motionless. The Pope swinging left and right. Two hours later, we're on a one lane road in the mountains. And now I'm thinking what you might be thinking. Hotel my ass, right? We are going to some pray the gay away Jesus camp, you know? But just then, a billboard appears and it has a picture of a woman on it. Sort of not unlike the St. Paulie girl, you know, with the braids and the beer and everything. And then it says, welcome to Helen, Georgia, a recreated Alpine village. And suddenly, here we are in this Disneyland, bad fake German town, you Know, with windmills. And there are entire families wearing matching green hats with fen feathers, you know, and this is it. This is a place my father has chosen to have the conversation of a lifetime with me. Okay? This place where there is also something called Charlemagne's kingdom that has three guys outside wearing lederhose and playing glockenspiels. All right, so we pull into our parking space at the Heidi Motel. No shit. And head in. And then after sitting there stone faced, drinking Johnnie Walker out of our complimentary beer steins like idiots, he sets out to discover if, how, and why I'm gay in a room that has not one, but two cuckoo clocks. So first he blames me. You're confused and you need therapy. He says, I need therapy? I say, I need therapy. There is an Oompa band outside, dad. Then he goes from blaming me to blaming himself. I shouldn't have bought you those GI Joes, you know, or the Hot Wheels. Anyway, this brings us to a little flashback to my childhood. So, you know, my dad and I lived in a tiny studio apartment when I was a kid. Just the two of us, pull out couch. And so he starts thinking on that sort of time in our lives. And he gets a little bit quiet and he goes, you know, God, what did I know about bringing up a little girl? I just. I did what I could, you know, Really, I just did what I could. And at that, we broke for dinner across the street at Heidelberg Schnitzel House. We didn't say very much, but the anger was fading. And then somewhere in between the sauerbraten and the strudel, my dad met his Waterloo. Literally, he just looked up at me, he raised a glass and he went, oh, screw it. At least now we got two things in common. Whiskey and women. Thank you.
- [08:14]
Dan Kennedy
Tara Clancy is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Rumpus. She lives in New York with her wife and two sons and is currently working on a memoir, which she describes as a lesbian Annie Hall. But the lobster lives. More about tara@taraclancy.com the next story you're going to hear by Susan Kent was also told live at a store slam in New York last year. The theme of that night was Extra Mile.
- [08:46]
Susan Kent
Hi. So it was right before Christmas 1990, when I first told my mother that I was pregnant. And I remember walking down the hallway and seeing her asleep on the sofa in the light of the Christmas tree before I woke her up and said, I need you to take me to the hospital right now. Now I'm having a baby. And she woke up to find me standing there in her pink nightgown, covered in blood from my waist down. And she said, no, you're not. You just have cramps. And I was like, well, actually, yes, I'm having a baby, and we need to go now. And she said, no, no, no, it's fine. Come on, let me take you to the bedroom. Let me check it out. So she checks it out in the way that you would imagine that you would check it out. And she was like, oh, my God, we have to go right now. I said, okay, great. We leave. My sister is coming out of the bedroom saying, what's happening? She said, we have to go. We'll be back later. She throws me in the car and starts screaming at me, why didn't you tell me this earlier? Well, I was 19 and had gotten pregnant at a keg party, as you do, and, you know, so I didn't want to tell her, and so I woke her up, and she gets me in the car, and we are only two miles away from our hospital. And her main concern, because I'm a girl from South Georgia, is my reputation. We can't go to the local hospital. So instead, we go to the gas station, and I sit in the passenger seat with my feet on the dashboard and wait for her to pump gas and then go inside and pay. And then she comes back, and she drives me to the hospital like a maniac. I've never driven so fast in my life through the backwoods of South Georgia. We get to the hospital, we run in. My daughter's having a baby. They throw me into a wheelchair. I go straight to a hospital room, and there this nurse is like, you have to get into your gown. And I start freaking out, and I sit on a toilet, and she's like, don't do that. I was like, oh, sorry. It's my first time. Yeah, I don't know. And so they finally, they get me onto a gurney, and they're taking me into the delivery room, and I look up at the doctor, and I was like, I don't want to see it. I had had my whole plan the entire time since the morning I woke up after the keg party and thought, oh, my God, my head hurts. Oh, my God, I'm pregnant. And I just knew. And in that moment, I thought, I'm not having this baby. 19, I'm in South Georgia. I'm getting hell out of here. Nobody's stopping me. So I told the doctor I wanted to give the baby up for Adoption. And he wheeled me in. I had the baby. I woke up the next morning, and we had a meeting with the doctor where we had to go in and discuss what we were going to do. I said, you know, I want to give the baby up for adoption. He said, well, what about the father? I said, well, I wasn't planning on telling the father because I had lied to my mother about who the boy was because I didn't want to admit to her the keg party part. And so I had said it was this boyfriend I had. And then the doctor said I had to tell the name so that we could get confirmation from the guy. And I thought, oh, well, he's going to be surprised, because we never even slept together. And I was like, well, wait, how about this? I also had a boyfriend circa, you know, impregnation that ended up committing suicide. And I was like, what if we say it was his baby? And the doctor said, no, we have to talk to his parents. I was like, okay, hold on. Oh, what? What if. I don't know. He was like, thank you. That's what I've been waiting for. I was like, awesome. So that's what we went with. And then he was like, okay, Actually, I happen to know a nice family. They're Christians, and they've been looking for a baby, and let me give them a call, all right? You know, work it out. I don't care. And so that afternoon, an attorney secretary comes into my bedroom in my hospital room and brings in papers. And she hands them over to me, and I sign away my rights to what they listed as a baby girl. And up until that moment, I had not connected with this lump in my body. I had just kind of pretended that it wasn't happening. I prayed for some miscarriages, you know, just kind of separated somehow. Your brain just can ignore everything that's happening underneath. And so when I read that phrase, baby girl on the paper, it was the first moment that I made the connection to it being a human being that I was passing along to some family I had never met, had no idea about Christian family. Just saying, you know. And so I signed the papers. I remember my mother giving the secretary a firm, talking to about, that's really inappropriate. You shouldn't have done that. She didn't even know she was trying to give it up. And that afternoon, we drove 30 miles back and we went home, and we never spoke of it again. And baby girl turned 22 this past December, and I still have not heard from her, but I feel like it's not my right to look for her, so I left my records open and we'll see what happens. Thank you.
- [15:10]
Dan Kennedy
Susan Kent is a writer and storyteller. She co hosts the monthly storytelling show Tell It Brooklyn and frequently overshares about her Deep south upbringing on southern discomforts.com South Susan is writing a memoir and if Manifestation works, it's gonna be a huge success. Also, here's something we've got planned for this summer. The Moth main stage is returning to Martha's vineyard on Saturday, August 3rd. That'll be at the Tabernacle. For information on tickets and for all of our upcoming tour stops, visit themoth.org.
- [15:44]
Susan Kent
Our podcast host, Dan Kennedy is a writer and performer living in New York and author of the new novel American Spirit. Available now.
- [15:53]
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 public radio more public@prx.org.