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- [00:01]
Kate Tellers
Let's talk about something I've been obsessed with lately. Groon's new limited edition Raspberry Lemonade flavor. It's only available through August and it's the perfect summer upgrade to your wellness routine. You can toss a pack in your beach bag, carry on, or wherever your summer takes you. They're snackable, packable and perfect on the go. Being healthy this summer has never been more convenient or tasted better. These are eight daily gummies that combine your greens, prebiotics, essential vitamins and minerals and and over 60 whole food ingredients into one easy, tasty habit. Personally, Gruins has changed the game for me. I feel more energized, less sluggish, and I never forget to take them because I want to take them. Gruns is vegan, gluten free, dairy free, nut free, and has no artificial colors or flavors. Grun's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. You're not guessing, you're getting results. Grab your limited edition Raspberry Lemonade Groons. Get up to 52% off. Use the Code Moth We've all had those nights, the ones where sleep doesn't come easy. Sleep eludes us when we're too warm, too uncomfortable, too tangled in the stories of our own lives. That's where Chilipad by Sleep Me comes in. The Chilipad works with your current mattress. It's a water based mattress topper that lets you personalize your sleep temperatures anywhere from 55 to 115 degrees and you can even program temperature shifts to trigger deep sleep phases. Everyone around me knows that I am not so nice when I haven't slept and so I love my Chilipad. Visit www.sleep.me moth to get your Chilipad and save 20% with Code Moth. This special offer is available for the Moth listeners and only for a limited time. Order it today with free shipping and try it out for 30 days. You can return it for free. If you don't like it with their sleep trial, visit www.sleep.me moth because every story deserves a good night's sleep. Welcome to the Moth. I'm Kate Tellers and this week we'll be exploring joy and pain. A few days ago we aired an episode of the Moth Radio Hour called Human plus Nature where I shared some stories about humans nature and human nature. But for this podcast, we're taking a different look at that topic as we explore the dark side of two of life's most natural joys. Mute for a second dad Sex and laughter. And what happens when something inside you prevents you from experiencing those natural highs. First up, we've got Becky Feldman, who told this story at an LA slam where the theme of the night was gratitude. Here's Becky live at the Moth.
- [02:50]
Becky Feldman
Okay, I'm gonna get a little sexy. Throughout my adult life, I have struggled with this condition called vestibulodynia. And just give you a quick refresher. I basically have nerve pain in the entrance to my vagina or the vestibule. So when I was in college, at the end of college, I started having sex. And while I always could be stimulated clitorally, intercourse itself was always excruciatingly painful. I used to try and just like, grin and bear it and just push through the pain, but eventually my partner and I would have to stop and I would be so embarrassed and I would apologize profusely. And I would always say, like, oh, it's this medication that I'm taking. It's the side effect of it. And emotionally, it just wrecked me. I felt like my body was broken. I felt frigid. And it just got to the point where I gave up. Like in my early 20s, I stopped dating and I stopped being intimate with people. But then I got to my 30s and I was getting into bed one night, and I sleep on the left side of a full size bed, and I noticed the right side of the bed. And I was like, oh, my God, like, no one's ever been on that side of the bed. Like, a man's head has never lain upon those pillows. And I was just like, am I really going to live the rest of my life this way? So I started seeing all of these specialists who help with female sexual dysfunction. And as I was doing that, I was starting to, like, kind of panic because I'm neurotic. But also I was like, oh, I'm about to start dating again. I'm about to start being like, intimate with people again. And it's just like, been so long. Like, do I even remember how to kiss someone? And I was just like, I wish I could just like, get that first hookup out of the way where I didn't feel any pressure to please another person. So I thought that the thing for me to do in this healing process was to book a night at a random Sheraton and hire a high class escort for two hours. So that's the first time I ever told him that they. Okay.
- [05:03]
Adrienne McGillis
Anyway.
- [05:05]
Becky Feldman
So in the days leading up to this encounter, I was like, freaking out about everything. I was like, what do I wear? And I'm googling Like, what's the best chapstick for kissing? And what would my mom think? And one thing that I was worrying about was how I would pay the escort, because you do have to pay in all cash. But this is like a high class escort. And I was like, well, how do high class people give someone cash? Do they just hand them for your cash? So I was just like. I decided that the classy thing for me to do is put all of this cash in a thank you card. So I found this thank you card that had a phrase on it that I thought would potentially encompass his services. It read, thank you for your awesomeness. So the night of the encounter, I meet my escort at this bar in the Sheraton. I mean, he's so good looking, brown hair, trim, great body, looks like, you know, the male escort version of like Matt Bomer from Magic Mike. And we're sitting at the Sheraton bar and we're talking a little bit. And this guy is just like everyone else in Los Angeles. He wants to be an actor and a singer, but has like a lot of side hustles, including hustling. And eventually we make our way to my hotel room and at this point I so anxious that I could have barfed. And we're like continuing this small talk and suddenly I realized like, oh, I think he's like waiting for me to be the one to initiate this. So I very awkwardly whisper, I want you to kiss me now. And he smiles so seductively. And we just start going at it and it's delightful. My body remembers what to do. And after I have two orgasms in at most a minute and a half, honestly, it felt like I was in this different reality. I felt like a woman who had a working body and I felt normal and I was just elated. So when he asked if I want to have sex, I hesitate for a second because I wanted to so bad. But this voice in the back of my head was telling me, becky, if you do this, you're going to ruin this night. So I tell him I can. And instead of blaming it on this non existent medication, I tell him all about vestibulodynia. And he gets this very inquisitive look on his face and he grabs his phone and he starts looking up the pelvic pain in this physiotherapy database. And he's like giving me suggestions because as it turns out, he has another side hustle and that's being a physical therapy assistant. So, you know, out of all of the partners that I've had it was this escort, this two hour long fake boyfriend who was the one who tried to like validate my pain. And because I finally knew what that could feel like, I started dating like right after that. So at the end of the night I handed the escort his thank you card and I'm sure when he talks shop with his peers he's probably like this fucking weirdo. Give me a thank you card. But you know what? He deserved it. Thank you for your awesomeness.
- [08:21]
Kate Tellers
That was Becky Feldman Becky is a Los Angeles based writer and actor who loves talking about sexy topics, whether it's on her podcast about romance novels called Too Stupid to Live or her solo show, Tight A Night of Painfully Sexy Stories and Now From Sex to Laughter My sister recently sent me a text in passing about how she was visiting one of her oldest friends and over the course of the evening she laughed so hard that her rib popped out. As her big sister, I'm arguably the first person to make her laugh. So how do you think I reacted exactly? I made it my mission to make her laugh so hard every time we see each other that her ribs are are popping. I even text her follow ups hey, how many times did you pop a rib at Christmas? A bar has been set. Fellow big sisters and chronic high achievers. You feel me? And yes, I confirmed she says the pain is worth it. All of this talk about human nature has got me thinking of another essential aspect of being human telling stories. So why not get up on stage at a moth story slam? To find one near you, visit themoth.org events. You can also pitch us your story at the Moth Pitchline. For Instructions, go to themoth.org pitchline after the break. A dangerous joke. Be back in a moment.
- [09:42]
Mark Solinger
Summer is here, which unfortunately means it's heat wave time for me. A skyrocketing temperature usually means my outfits are less cute than what won't reveal me to be a walking sweat monster. Lucky for me, with Quince, I don't have to choose between the two. Their selection of breezy dresses are exactly what I need to show up looking carefree and well ventilated. The 100% organic cotton keyhole midi dress is a staple in my summer wardrobe, keeping me cool and looking good if I do say so myself. And there are a lot of other options to choose from. The best part? Everything with quints is half the cost of similar brands, giving you luxury without the markup. Give your summer closet an upgrade with quince. Go to quince.com moth for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com moth to get free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com moth Summer's.
- [10:42]
Kate Tellers
Here and we're all chasing something. A break, a goal, a vibe. Let's not let bad socks and blisters ruin it. Bombas make socks and now slides and seamless essentials that keep up with whatever your summer looks like. My Bombas are one of my day to day essential luxuries. I never realized I could have such strong opinions on socks but they are so soft, so comfortable. When I run, they hug my feet and they keep me cool and I never ever get blisters. And when I travel I have become a compression sock person because honestly, I look good and I land with legs ready for adventure. Best of all, they don't just feel good, they do good. One purchased equals one donated to someone who needs it. Cool, right? Head over to bombas.com and use code moth for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O-M-B-A-S.com code moth at checkout bombas.com can use code moth. Welcome back. Our final story is a favorite from the archive. Adrienne McGillis told this @ an Asheville story slam where the theme of the night was, appropriately enough, jokers. Here's Adrienne live at the Moth.
- [12:00]
Adrienne McGillis
So this is a story about a joke so bad that it was in fact quite dangerous. So my dad loves a good punch line. And when I was about 12 and my brother was 8, we were sitting around the kitchen table telling like 4th grade level jokes and all of a sudden my brother perked up because he had this really great joke he was going to tell and he said, well, I need a pad of paper. And so my mom got him a piece of paper out of the kitchen junk drawer and a pencil and he hunched over it and started drawing. And my dad watched this with interest and my brother spun the paper around and my dad peered at it and if you could imagine like an 8th grader drawing two stick figures with their hands sticking straight out like this and their legs akimbo and between them these two stick figures was a hula hoop sized circle. And in that side of that circle was another like basketball size proportionally to the people. And he said what is it? And my dad looked at it and he said, I don't know. And my brother said it's two men walking abreast. And so you know, it's Got all of the markers there. It's got boobs and badly drawn figures in a pun. So my dad starts laughing and my brother is just filled with this like little boy glee. And you know how like when you're with your loved ones and you start laughing, you can like feed off of each other. And my dad got laughing so hard he was crying, and all of a sudden he fell out of his chair onto the kitchen floor and he started to turn purple. And so my mom, who's a nurse, cleared the area and was about to form cpr. And I ran over to the phone and had dialed nine and was making ready to dial one. And he sat up and he looked at all of us in confusion and he said, why am I on the floor? And so my mom calmed everyone down and she said to him, she said, well, you need to go to the doctor because that's not okay for like a 40 year old man to faint. And so the next day or two days later, he went to his family practitioner and he told the doctor what had happened. And the doctor looked at my dad and he said, well, what was the joke? And so my dad asked for a pad of paper and he told the joke and the doctor looked at him with incredulity. And so my dad starts laughing and remembering his laughter from the night before, he gets laughing so hard that he got woozy. And so the doctor said, well, we need to run some tests because that's not normal. So they did some blood work and everything came back normal. And he called my father, who's a college professor, and he said, we think everything's okay. And so my dad, who was in his lab at the time, told his grad students the whole story. And he got to laughing so hard that he got woozy and had to sit down. And so he called the doctor back and said, it happened again. And so the doctor said, well, let's run some more tests and an MRI or CT scan or something later. They're pretty sure nothing is wrong. But my dad is just laughing so hard he's cutting off his airway. And so the doctor says, then just stop telling the joke. So my family were not allowed to tell that joke anymore. And if there could be a moral to the story, it's that while laughter is the best medicine, sometimes too much of a good thing can kill you.
- [16:17]
Kate Tellers
That was Adrienne McGillis. Adrienne is an architect living in Columbia, South Carolina. Unfortunately, her father, a professor of immunology, passed away on Christmas Day in 2024. When we emailed Adrienne to let her know that the story would be re airing. She told us that her dad got a huge kick out of the story the summer it was first aired. He would pull out his cell phone and play it for anyone who sat next to him for too long. He just loved that it made people laugh. Adrian hopes that you'll get a chuckle out of it too. That brings us to the end of our episode. Thanks so much for joining us. From all of us here at the Moth, have a story worthy week.
- [16:56]
Adrienne McGillis
Kate Tellers is a Storyteller host, Senior Director at the Moth and co author of their fourth book, how to Tell a Story. Her writing has been featured in Mick Sweeney's and the New Yorker. This episode of the Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin, Janess, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Mark Solinger. The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Marina Cluce, Suzanne Rust and Patricia Urenia. The Moth podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their Executive producer Leah Rhys Dennis. All Moth stories are true as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.