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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Blue Men, Psychopaths, and a Bad Date
00:57:12
After many years in the legendary Blue Man Group, a performer makes a profound connection with an audience member; a world-renowned neuroscientist identifies patterns in the brains of psychopathic killers, and Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch meets a debonair man at a cocktail party and dares to think he might be Mr. Right.
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And actual results will vary.
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Kathryn Burns
From prx. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Kathryn Burns, artistic director of the Moth and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is true stories told live without notes. We have three stories this hour. A performer takes us behind the scenes of the legendary show Blue Man Group. Former Saturday Night Live cast member Rachel Dratz tries going on a normal date. And a neurobiologist studies the brain scans of serial killers. Our first story is from John Grady. For eight years, John performed with Blue Man Group. For those of you who have never seen the show, here's the deal. There are three bald guys on stage. They're all dressed in black with shiny blue latex paint on their faces and heads. They live in a world of flying marshmallows spraying colored water and reams and reams of unspooling toilet paper. The way they communicate is through gestures and facial expressions. No one speaks. I've seen the show a lot and I've always wondered what's going through those guys heads. Well, John Grady was one of those ball blue men. Here's John live at the mall.
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Disclaimer Announcer
So I spent eight years of my life here in New York City performing with Blue Man Group. Thank you. I know. No, it's like seriously, dream job. I'M serious. I mean, where else do you get to learn, you know, to be a precision expert drummer, to learn to throw and catch with, you know, laser like focus and you know, and also to communicate non verbally with two other blue men on stage and with the audience. Because. Because that's what it is. We don't speak, we don't talk. But it was a great job to have. I mean, it's my first time moving in New York City, my first off Broadway show, and I'm like so excited. The show is just addicting to do. Once you do your first show, you're just like, ah, I can't wait for the next one and the next one, the next one and then the next one. Then a week goes by and then month goes by and then a year goes by and you celebrate your first anniversary and then you're like two years in and a few more years and a few more years have gone by and somehow it has become a job. I know, it's like I'm just trying to keep it fresh and alive after show number 2473 or something, whatever. And you just. I'm finding myself trying to fight complacency because you become so adept at doing all the skills that it's just not really a challenge. And I find myself walking through the show thinking things like, did I order food between shows? Did I remember the tivo Sopranos and like that. So now I'm trying to find and rediscover that thing, that original thing that really connected me with the show. And I find myself trying to recreate those early days. For those of you who haven't seen the show, it's primarily about the audience, about connectedness and community. The audience has gathered for the evening, for this happening, for this crazy, wild, you know, interactive piece of theater led by these three silent, bald and blue characters. And one part of the show is we bring up a volunteer and we refer to her as our feast guest. Which not important for you to know, but just because we sit behind a table and we eventually get to dining with her, but we also take her through a bunch of tasks and we're getting to know her and the audience as well by manipulating things and moving things around and opening them. And she comes to represent the audience in a way because we're going to be up there making not fun of her, but making fun with her. But I mean, the audience empathizes with her because you know, they're going to be in on some of the jokes that she's not. I Mean, they'll definitely. They'll feel like, oh, my God, I'm so glad that was you up there and not me. You were amazing. You were wonderful. Now when I go to choose a feast guest, it's my job each night I look for someone who's sort of open and willing, just a willing participant. Someone who I think best represents the spirit of the show. Like, if I was going to choose someone from the audience here to be a feast guest, it would be like this one right here, just very shiny, available. Yes. It's just that we just make a quick connection, like, good. So I know we're good to go. It's like that. So I'm stepping out into the audience for the first time in the show to go pick out a feast guest. In the first few rows, people are wearing ponchos because the show is just a mess. It's just a play. It's just a playground for you. And it just can be messy. So we wanted to make sure the audience is covered and protected. So I step out there and I'm having. It's probably show number 2,474. Just a little less committed to and present than 2473. I don't know. When suddenly, Bing Chong bong. I see the shin happy person sitting over in the poncho section and she literally just pulls me in on her vortex. Like, wow. I can't remember the last time that I saw someone who was so willing, so available, just so open. And I was like, okay, fine, you're the feast guest. Make my job easy. Great. So now I'm going out to the audience to have a little more fun. The other two blue men come up to me and they tell me, it's time for us, for you to let us know who the feast guest is. And this is all non verbal. And I said, well, check it out. Shiny happy person right here. They're like, great, shiny happy person. Bring her on up. So these two guys run up onto the stage, the band kicks into their sort of theme that's going to start our procession up the aisle to the stage. I reach down, I grab her hand and she's just beaming at me. And she just clings onto my arm. She leans into me. She's so excited. She has no idea what to expect. And I reach down and I pull off her poncho and she has one arm, which is not a big deal, right? I mean, even though in this piece we're going to be grabbing things and manipulating them and moving them and opening them and oh, God. We're going to be up there making fun with her, not of her. And now I'm beginning to panic, and I look up on stage and the other two blue men are staring down at me in horror, going, what did you do? I don't know. I don't know. And now I'm running the entire piece frantically through my mind because I know it forwards and backwards, and I am going to accommodate it for her. I am going to make. So I could probably skip that part. Or again, instead of her doing that, or actually, we'll just leave that part out. Actually, he probably doesn't have to do that for her. He'd probably just skip that part and leave that part out. Actually, we're going to skip that part and skip that part. Why don't we just put it back down her scene? Just skip the whole thing. And at this point of the show, we're supposed to be sort of afraid, you know, that we're bringing someone, an audience member, into our space for the first time. And we are terrified. I mean, we are sitting behind the table in a row and our knees are knocking together, you know, and there is this awkward silence coming from the audience that I have never experienced before. But she is loving it. She is having the time of her life. So I bring out the first object, which is this is electric candle, and I put it on the table and has a little switch on it, and she leans over and switches it on. That's okay. We're good. Pretty good there. Next blue man next to me, he pulls out a desk lamp and he puts it on, and he stretches it out and she reaches over to click it. Click, click, click, click, click. The switch doesn't go on. And what is about to unfold in my brain, and I'm trying to communicate with him, screaming, going, no, don't. Because the joke of the piece is it's attached to a clapper light. So he goes and pops the light on, which usually elicits laughter from the audience, but not this time. Dead silence. Because it was like he was saying, well, if you had two hands, you could turn on the light. Oh, dear God, help us. Last blue man brings out a box of Twinkies for us to dine on. For those of you who've seen the show, that'll make sense. He passes them out. And the Twinkie for the blue man is a very curious object. The way it's shaped and sculpted, the way the light hits it and the way it sort of reflects off its golden, cakey shell. And if this is something that's meant to be consumed, why would you put it in this package? And if it's. Is there an opening to this package? I mean, how would you open it? And this is something that we play with and oh, my God, how is she going to open this package? But I look over without missing a beat, she's already taken the Twinkie, taken the package, put under her, what's left of her arm right here, and just goes, pops it open, puts it on her plate with such speed and dexterity, I had to see it again. So I hand her mine, she goes, pops it open, puts it on my plate. I look at the other two guys who are still struggling with theirs, and I pick it up. I'm like, check it out. They are completely blown away. They rejoin. He gives his to hers, and she pops it open. He gets it, pops it over, and now we're good. And that thing, that thing that is starting to happen, that can only happen in a live performance where the event on stage is starting to mirror what's happening with the audience's experience. And it exists somewhere in between and creates this biofeedback loop of event and experience and experience and event and event and experience and experience and event. And now we are with the audience and they are with us. And the two blue men beside me reach down and pick up their forks because they're going to dig into this Twinkie. And that's when I feel her shut down beside me. I literally feel her heart light go out. And I look out of the corner of my eye and she's staring down at the knife and the fork. And I see panic in her eyes. And I reach over and I just grab my fork and I just gesture to her, just the fork, right? And she just beams back at me and says, yeah, that's all we need. And the two other blue men follow suit. Yeah, I'm exactly what. Yeah, what he said. And we dig in and it's all good. I'm feeding her, she's feeding me. We're all cross feeding each other. It's a big flirt fest. And the piece just crescendos and explodes in this huge celebration. And the audience bursts into this enormous applause for her, really, because she was beautiful, she was amazing. And she was the catalyst for this whole thing, thing to happen. And she brought that element back that I had completely forgotten about. She brought this innocence, this childlike innocence, that ability to remain present and be honest and fearless and not try to manufacture anything again. And we send her back into the audience and they've completely changed and space has completely changed. Tiny Astor Place theater has become as large and as, as opulent as the Bolshoi. And we go back behind our PVC pipe instruments to play our first piece of music. And each tone that we're paddling out is just echoing into the darkness like launching a flare into a cavernous ca and I just start to cry. And I look over at the other two guys and they are crying because we were just raw and exhausted. But even more so, we were exhilarated that we made it through this experience together. And afterwards I went up and met up with her in the lobby and I thanked her for being such an amazing participant in the show and for making it such an incredible experience for everyone involved and for making the show for me alive again. Thank you.
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Kathryn Burns
That was John Grady. John performs in his one man show Fear Factor Canine Edition and starred off Broadway in Balding Stories Left to Tell. To see pictures of John backstage and find out more about Blue man group, go to themoth.org in a moment we'll have a story about a neuroscientist who discovers disturbing facts about his own family while studying the brain scans of serial killers.
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Production Announcer
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by by Atlantic Public Media and presented by the public radio exchange.
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Kathryn Burns
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Kathryn Bur. Next we have a story from brain scientist James Fallon. James told this story as part of our annual collaboration with the World Science Festival. Here's James Fallon live at the Moth.
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Apple Announcer
I'm a scientist who studies the brain and I've been a neuroscientist for about 40 years. And most of that 40 years I've been what's called a small time scientist. I have a small lab, only a few people, small grants. And most scientists are like this. We're kind of hobbits. And the whole idea of being a hobbit is that you stay within the wheelhouse of your expertise. You don't talk to the media, you don't give talks like this and you just stay under the radar for everything. And if mind your own business, everything will be okay. And that's really how I lived my almost my entire scientific life. Now generally I was like pretty average guy. I was a class clown in high school. I still have my Teamsters card which I can go back to at any time hopefully. And the first date I ever had, we were both 12 years old. I'm still dating her 50 years later. So quite an, you know, an average regular guy, seriously. And so anyway, the kind of science I was doing, which is the basic chemistry connections of the brain and also adult stem cells that was going along just fine. And then I got a call from some colleagues in psychiatry and radiology, and they said, you've got to come over here. We've got a really cool new machine. And the cool new machine was a PET scanner, Positron emission tomography. And the great thing about this is you're able to see inside the human brain, the living human brain, and activate certain areas of the brain depending on what people are doing, the tasks that they're doing. And so, I mean, for a neuroanatomist, this is a candy dispenser. And it was love at first sight. And so I got involved. I made the first mistake of going outside my wheelhouse of expertise. But anyways, we started to do these studies on consciousness and memory addiction and also things like schizophrenia. And that was going along fine. And then a couple years after this started, which was kind of the mid-90s, I saw a SWAT team come in, and they were all over the medical school. And it was right near where the PET scanner is. And I saw this guy come walking with manacles with police. And then I got a call in the afternoon from another colleague. He says, you got to take a look at this. And they had started studies of serial killers. And the idea was to go in. These are serial killers that have been caught. And during the penalty phase of the trial, only the penalty phase, they want to show that they're crazy, right? And the devil made me do it so we could show that they were crazy. It would show up in their scans. So I started analyzing these, maybe one or two a year. There was this kind of a side thing, and everything was going along just fine. Then about six years ago, another colleague showed up with a whole pile of these and had all these killers brains, scans of these killers brains, but it was mixed in with normal people, people with depression, schizophrenia. And the good thing about this is I had no idea which scan belonged to which person or what they were. It was a blind study, and this was a perfect opportunity. And this is really advantageous because it's so difficult with the legal system to get this kind of data. So I went through and spent a few months looking at it, and I started to create piles of different areas of the brain that seemed to be malfunctioning in these different people. About three quarters of the way through, I noticed something. I said, first of all, I knew what all the normals were, and I knew the schizophrenics, because I had seen a lot of those, and depressors. There was a whole Other group that had a mix of damage, but they all had one thing in common. They had damage to two parts of the brain. One was the area right above the eyes, orbital cortex, the front of the temporal lobe. And this really floored me because it was, it made sense because one is kind of the animal instinct, control of your brain, amygdala and the other is where ethics and morality are thought to be processed. And the fact that these two were off meant the balance was off and it made some sense. So I really thought about this and did a lot of reading and developed a theory, you know, three things you need for to have a psychopathic killer's brain. And I just started to give talks. It was just very interesting to me. About the same time funny things started to happen. And the first was we were doing an Alzheimer's disease study in our lab. It was for clinical trials. We're also trying to discover new genes for schizophrenia, for Alzheimer's and schizophrenia, as it turned out. Now it turns out my wife's family loaded with Alzheimer's disease and she just lost two parents with Alzheimer's. So I said, look it, I went to her and I said, why don't we come in as the controls get involved, we'll do PET scans, look for the genes for what we knew for Alzheimer's and I'll get my brothers to come in and we'll do the kids. And then if we can see that anybody has these high level of these high risk genes, maybe they can do something and they can change the way they live, their diet and all these things. And she said absolutely. I mean she was quite heroic about this and she figured she was going to die of something else, which she didn't before she died of Alzheimer's. So we did this, everybody was enthusiastic. So the results came back. And so I was going through the pile of my family's PET scans and as I was going through, I was really very much relieved as everyone was normal. So all the way through there's like eight of these and the genetics were normal. And I got to one on the bottom and I thought it was in the wrong pile because I also had all these killer's brains in another pile on the desk. And I said, I've mixed them up. And I looked at it and it looked like the worst case of these psychopathic killer's brains and had no activity here and here, the two areas. And I looked down and it was me is my name. So I kind of thought, I said, I kind of get the joke here because Giving these talks. So. And, you know, I really thought for a second, and I'm a scientist, was like, isn't that interesting? And I just reflected back as I was, you know, growing up in New York, I was Catholic Boy of the Year in New York, which got me to meet Nelson Rockefeller. I don't know why those go together. And, you know, I was so hyper religious my whole life that in college, I went to a Catholic college, that a priest there who was a professor said, you're so bad, you got to get out. So he actually gave me an exorcism to get the goody two shoes out of me. I had no idea how to sin, really. And I learned it took a while because my heart wasn't in it. But you'd go through these steps, okay, now. So I kind of laughed it off because I knew that I was in jail. I didn't kill anybody. Then I was at a barbecue. We had a family barbecue, the whole family there and the kids and everything. My mother comes over, she usually does, and she pulls me aside. She says, I hear you've been giving talks about serial killers. And I saw a twinkle in her eye, you know, because she's really. Even if she's in her 90s, it seems to be getting worse. She's very devilish about this. She says, check your father's family out. She said, your cousin, who's an editor of a paper in New York, found this new book, and it's about your father's family. And he says, and check your scans very carefully. So I went and I got the book, and I read it, and I'm going, and it was really wild. It's about the Cornells. That's my father's family. And in it was the case of the first case of matricide, which is the killing of a mother by a son. And that was in 1667. So it was a very interesting book on, you know, how these sorts of murder cases were handled back then. But then at the end of the book, there were six more murderers in the same line going from that family to me. And so we had this whole family. And she loved this because she had to put up the whole life with this thing about being Sicilian, you know. And her father, you know, lived out on the streets here. When he came over from Sicily, he was about 12, just a couple blocks from here, and he had, you know, he had become a bootlegger. And she went up to Lucky Luciano's place. So she always gave her the Mafia thing, even though she wasn't this was her chance to get even. So anyway, that was fine. And then I was, within a year I was invited to give a TED Talk. In a TED Talk, you gotta talk about something interesting, important, funny and all this, which is not that easy. So I got desperate and this was a mistake. And I told the first part of the story about my PET scans and everybody's normal in my family but me and this thing about these Cornells. So I gave that talk and within. And this was when Ted was just starting to put these talks on YouTube. Somebody called me up and they said, they just put your. You talk on YouTube and it's got like 30,000 hits overnight. And I went kind of blank on this because I made the first. No, no. About being a hobbit scientist, which is doing something like that. So anyway, I got all these calls, a lot of media things. Head writer for the Wall Street Journal of Science came out, spent some time with us. I got a phone call from the executive producer, head writer of Criminal Minds, Simon Mirren. He says, I got what you're talking about, man, transgenerational violence. And he was fantastic. And they both were. It kind of put the pressure on me because I had hanging out there, this family history and my PET scans to look further into this. So I looked further into the genetics and I was trying to look for things generally we did a very broad scan, but having to do with aggression and violence and all these genetics came back in my family. And I can tell you this because every one of them have an average amount of high and low risk genes for aggression and violence. And so they were all cool. And I looked at the last number and there it was. And I looked at mine and I, in my own DNA, I had all the high risk alleles for violence and aggression, every one of them. And so these so called warrior genes, and there's a number of them, the first one is monoamine oxidase and they control serotonin and some other transmitters. And so it got a little bit more serious. So I started to ask people because also I saw in there things having to do with bonding to people were just not right. You know, the cuddling sort of hormones, oxytocin, vasopressin and testosterone. It hinted at something may not be right. That's when I really took notice. So next mistake I made is I went around asking everybody what they thought of me. Now my wife and I have been hanging out, you know, 50 years together. What do you really think of me? I said, no, no, tell me, tell Me, I went down, yes, my grandkids, our kids, and people really close to my friends. And every one of them, including professionals, psychiatrists who knew me well, said, we've always known you're kind of a sociopath. And I went, what? I said, you know, And I was in sort of a denial at that point. Every one of them said, you don't connect to people. You're kind of cold and you're kind of superficially glib, and you're great at parties and you love strangers and you love world peace and hunger and doing all these things generally. But in terms of being the person really close to you, your mother, wife, and other people, very close, it ain't such a fun ride. It was quite a disappointing person to be around. And at 63, you're not supposed to be finding this stuff out. It's like at 21. So you can fix it, because what are you going to do at 63? So there it was. And you know, the very fact they all agreed, including the professionals I had known and worked with, they just said, you're an interesting guy to be around. So they kind of tolerate it because I'm fun and interesting generally, but emotionally, I don't have the kind of empathy apparently bonding with people. I bond with strangers. Strangers and world things. It's upside. So I live. And there are actually genes that seem to be associated with these different kinds of empathy. Now, I heard this, and after I heard all of it, I didn't care. I really didn't care. And it was kind of the proof that what they were saying was true. I said, that's interesting, but I really, and I truly, really don't care. Now it's gotten me to think about, you know, the nature of good and evil and about free will and other sorts of things that we hold near and dear to our humanity. And I started thinking about psychopaths because I also happen to score a little too high on the psychopath test. Like that. That's exactly how I felt. I'm not a full psychopath. I'm not a psychopath. Light what's called a pro, social or successful psychopath sounds so charming. Anybody want to go out later? I'd be happy to be with you. And so, and I really started to think there's a very constant number of these in all sorts of societies that maybe society really needs psychopaths. Because, I mean, do we really want our surgeons to be really empathetic when they're doing the surgery? Do we want somebody cold and calculated right on the Money right on the spot of doing a good surgery. Do we want our Green Berets to really be empathetic where they go? Or do we want them to protect us? And do we want our CEOs and we want our investment people to really be heartfelt or. They wanted me to just go out and make me some money, man. And when I think of it, and I said, maybe we need them. We need this. And sometimes it gets out of hand, but really, it kind of got to me in the sense that everybody feels this way about me or close to me. People don't know me. They said, oh, that's not true. But people who know said, yes, you've got it, man. And so I figured just recently, the past two months, maybe if I just acted the part, even though if I don't feel it at an emotional level. So if I treated the people close to me with kind of caring, kind of civil, go to all the funerals and weddings instead of the parties, if I started doing those things, maybe just acting them out would be a good place to start, just to be a good companion and a good friend. And so that's where I am now. Thanks.
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Kathryn Burns
That was James Fallon. James, recent genetic research has discovered new genes for Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, and he lectures worldwide on the brains of psychopathic killers and dictators. Recently, I sat down with Jim, and we talked about a few pieces of his story that he left out when he told it on stage. Now, with most moth storytellers, yourself included, work very hard putting their stories together, but the stories aren't memorized, and sometimes the storyteller will end up leaving out some fun little bit. And in your story, you talk about discovering that there are quite a number of murderers in your family over the course of a few hundred years, but you forgot to mention your famous cousin.
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Apple Announcer
Who is Cousin Lizzie. Yeah, cousin Lizzie Borden is part of this, my father's side, the Cornell family. She's a Cornell. And so starting from the initial matricide, Thomas Cornell, who killed our great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, you know, on through to Lizzie, there was about seven murders. And we found some more and parallel lines on that side, too. But anyway, yeah, I mean, right at the end, it was Lizzie Borden. And since, you know, the moth and just related interviews, I started to get contacted by people who are Cornells and other Lizzie cousins. And it's kind of funny, most of them say, no, don't say that. She was never proven guilty. You know, they don't have a lot of the Lizzie Borden cousins don't like to hear about this. Cause, you know, the other side of the Cornell family is Cornell University, and it's kind of an upstanding family. But, you know, I've got so many horse thieves on both sides of the family, I just, you know, it becomes nested within that.
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Kathryn Burns
Right at this point, what's Lizzie Borden to just throw her into the mix?
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Apple Announcer
Throw her into the mix. Well, but she's a very important one because she illustrates and highlights the fact that the murderers in our family murder their own people. You know, they don't murder outside the family. They murder their mothers, their fathers, their husbands, their. And so it's all internal to a family which has, you know, empathy and violence. There are genetic components that direct that anger and violence either outside the tribe, if you will, or inside the tribe, inside the family. So it's a particular kind of murdering. You know, there's franticide and matricide and the killing of mates. So it's an unusual pattern because they're all like that.
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Disclaimer Announcer
Wow.
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Kathryn Burns
Has your wife ever been worried to that end?
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Apple Announcer
She knows a lot about me and all my development and my family. So she's got a really intimate knowledge of, you know, who I am.
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Right.
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But this was a bit of a surprise because, you know, she said there is a part of me that is very distant and very cold. And so this experience and when she heard the moth talk, you know, she says, well, that's kind of it. You know, that even though you're there, you're kind of this happy, go, lucky, fun, interesting guy. Generally that there's this darker person there that is very distant, is not connected, doesn't have empathy. So I think it helped her understand or even catalog something she had already known but couldn't quite put her finger on.
- [36:07]
Kathryn Burns
At the end of the story, you talk about how you recently engaged in a sort of self imposed cognitive therapy where you decided to try to behave like a more compassionate, considerate father, husband, friend, even though you don't always feel like one. And I was wondering how that's going.
- [36:21]
Apple Announcer
You know, I figured that if I said it during the moth talk, I would have to do it because people say, well, you know, because it was like a public announcement of it, even though not too many people would care, but I would know it's out there, so I had to do it. So I kind of said it during that as a reminder just in case I got lazy or off on it. So I have actually been doing that and my wife and my mother the kids and the grandkids and my really close friends do appreciate it. It's not cause I'm a nice guy. It's like, I don't want to be humiliated and disgraced. That's probably an ego thing too, but why not? I mean, you have to trick yourself a little bit to change things in your life, I think.
- [37:08]
Kathryn Burns
To hear more of my interview with James Fallon and c picture of his actual brain scan, you can go to our website, themoth.org while you're there, pitch us your own story. We listen to every single pitch that comes in, and many are being developed for our main stage. Right now. We really are listening. So please call now if you have a story you'd like us to hear. When we come back, comedian Rachel Dratch tells us why, when it comes to acupuncture, it's better not to scrimp.
- [37:35]
Production Announcer
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and presented by the public radio exchange prx.org this is the.
- [37:47]
Kathryn Burns
Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Kathryn Burns, artistic director of the Moth. Our last story is from former Saturday Night Live cast member Rachel Dratch. Here's Rachel live at the Moth.
- [38:11]
Apple Announcer
Hi. Okay, so I was on Saturday Night Live for seven years and my contract was up, and I was supposed to star in a new show called 30 Rock in the role of Jenna. Have you guys seen 30 Rock? Yeah, I'm not Jenna. So everything sort of started to dry up, and I wasn't getting any jobs, any auditions. And I decided, you know what? I am not going to sit around and just mope around my apartment. I'm going to take this time to do all the things that I didn't have time to do when I was a working actor. So I did all those little things on my list. Like, I actually took Spanish class, you know, that kind of stuff. And I dog sat for my friend's dog. I was a dog owner for a month, you know, because I wouldn't have had time to do that if I was a TV star. And so, and then I decided to take on the biggest challenge of all. I decided to try dating in New York. Now, I had never actually really been on a real date before. Like, I mean, probably a little bit, but not a lot of dates where you're like, how many brothers and sisters do you have? Like, that kind of thing. My dating life consisted mainly of meeting someone in your workplace. In my place, that was comedy, dating them, and then three months into it, finding out they were an addict of some sort Alcohol, pot, sex addict. Not with me, mind you, but a sex addict. And then dating them for a whole other year, but before it just had a tragic demise. So I decided that if I was going to go on some real dates and go out and meet people, that I was going to have to get out of my comfort zones, which were keeping me from dating. The first comfort zone was just hanging out with comedy dudes who you work with and they can flirt with all night and they're sort of like your fake boyfriend, but then you always go home alone. Or the second one was just like, going out to dinner with your girlfriends in New York, which you can do, like, every night and not meet anybody new. And then my third one was hanging out with my gay man friends, you know, going to, like, a Broadway show and cocktails or something. So I was like, I need to stop hanging out in my comfort zone. So imagine my happiness when I got invited to this party from this guy who was hosting it, who I met at Burning Man. Yes, I. Yeah, the fact that I went to Burning man is a whole other story. That's for another night. But. So I was all excited about this party because this guy, he went to Stanford and he was in business. And I was like, this is so not my crowd. I mean, it's my crowd in my fantasy world, but it's not my crowd in my New York life. So I was like, yes, I'm going to go to this party and really try to get out and meet people. So actually, I was challenged because about two nights before the party, I was invited to go for free to Billy Elliot with my gay friend Chris. But I was like, no, Rachel, you cannot go to the Broadway show. You have to go to this party. So I went to the party, and almost immediately, I was rewarded for stepping out of the comfort zone because my friend who I was supposed to meet there was late, so that forced me to talk to strangers. And I'm pretty shy, actually. So, like, I was just standing by the. You know, I didn't know anyone at this party. I was standing by the little hors d'oeuvre table, and this guy walked up and I was like, hi. No, for me, that's, like, huge. So that I actually initiated. And so we started chatting, and this guy, like, he was really cute, and he was a scientist, which I was like, that's so cool. You know, someone else might meet an actor and think, that's so cool. But I'm like, oh, you have a regular job, you know? And so he was like, Funny. Like, actually at one point I asked, I was like, what's your name? And he had just put some food in his mouth. So he's like, hold on a second. And then he was like, I know what you do and I think you'd have better timing than that. And I thought that was kind of cool. Like, he was like, I recognize you, but I'm not gonna really say it. So. So anyway, okay. So we were just totally hitting it off. Like this guy, like I said he was like smart and it turns out he spoke fluent Japanese. I was like, woo. So I was just on board. And so it all happened like it does. Like these dates I've seen on TV or the movies, but never in my life. Because this guy, we were just talking about our favorite restaurants in New York and I said mine. He's like, oh, we should go there sometime. Give me your number. It was like, what? So it was all so smooth and natural and it was all working just like on tv. So I was all excited and. Oh, for the purpose of this story, this guy's name was Steve, but his real name was Brent. So the next morning I woke up and I was like all excited. I was like, well, who knows if he'll really call it. Well, he texted me at noon the next day. I was like, that is good noon. And he was like, do you want to go out Friday or Saturday night? I was like, Friday or. Those are real date nights. That's not like, want to meet up Monday at 10 after? It was like, no, Friday or Saturday. So I was like, I'm excited about this. So I was just so happy that week. I was, you know, I had the potential of love in my life and I was just like, do, do, do, do, do, do. And then. But then on Thursday, so we're supposed to go out Saturday night. But then on Thursday I went to Trader Joe's and disaster struck because I picked up a gro. I was checking out, picked up my grocery bag. It wasn't even a heavy bag at all. I don't know what the hell was happening. But I picked up this bag and my whole back went out. It was like sproing. And so I had to walk home like this, you know, like an old lady. And I was thinking the first thing was like, oh, no, this date is in two nights from now. And I was like, does God not want me to date? Why is this happening the only time I'm excited now? This back thing had only happened one other time in my life. And that was back when I was on snl. It was the read through, which is like, everyone's around, like, the cast, the host, Lorne Michaels, the whole staff is in this one room. And I was walking back to my chair during the break, and I sort of stumbled. Like, nothing major, but my whole back really went out that time. Like, I couldn't move. I was on the floor and I was writhing. It was like a charley horse, but up your whole back. So I was like. And I couldn't even move an inch that time. So they were like, does anyone have any pain medication? Does anyone have muscle relaxants? Now, if this had been the 70s, it would have been, you know, a pile of pills thrown on the table, but nobody. It was clean living time now. So nobody had any. Even the host was Johnny Knoxville. Even he didn't have any. He said they were back in his hotel room, so they had to send down for the NBC doctor. And I was like, paralyzed. I happened to fall, so my head was kind of under the conference table. Well, eventually, there was no point in just waiting for me because I was there, stuck. So they just started the read through up again. And someone else was reading my parts. I couldn't even. I was just like. I was squeezing the doctor's hand. And every so often, Lauren would be like, is Rachel okay down there? And they'd be like, no, she still can't talk. So anyway, that took, like, two hours to recover from. So I was so dreading this date because I was like, what if that happens on the date and I'm in some East Village restaurant and I have to be carted off in an ambulance or something? It would be so embarrassing. So Saturday day of the day comes along, and my back still isn't better. So a friend of mine's like, what about acupuncture? And I was looking for a miracle because I was so excited about this guy. So I started to call up some acupuncturists on a Saturday to see can you take me in two hours? So none of the ones that were recommended could take me. So then I went to the acupuncturist that was not recommended. And I would like to tell you all that that is a business. You want a reference? Don't do the walk in on the acupuncture. I went to one of those Chinese storefront joints that my friend Chris, he had gotten massages there, and I'd actually met the doctor of Eastern medicine there. And he looked like a good guy. So he's like, they can see you. So I Went in there. Well, that guy was nowhere to be found. It was this woman sitting there in a chair. And I was like, oh, no, no, this is not going to be good. But. But I went through with it. Like, I did not follow my gut. And I'm still convinced that she was just a masseuse who they let do acupuncture on the weekends, like, because she. She led me back. You know, it's those curtains. And another thing you don't want in a medical establishment is the smell of cat pee. That's just a. Another little tip for you. But. So she brought me back in the curtains. I was like. I was like, I'm kind of nervous. She's like, don't be nervous. Like. And then she. She stuck two knee. First needle, back of the knee. You might think they'd ease you in a little bit, but no, it was like, back of the knee. It hurt so much. Like, I don't think it was supposed to hurt that much. The back was fine, but the back of the knee and the inside of the ankle were the two killers. And she'd come by every so often and twist them, and, like, the pain would shoot up my leg, and it was like. And I was going like, no, not the knee, not the knee. Like. And there were just curtains of people getting massages, just hearing, like. Anyway, it didn't help at all. My back was still the same, but now I had this, like, nausea of thinking of the knee needles, you know, So I had to fight that off. Anyway, so I go on the date, and I wasn't, like, 100% feeling good, you know, but. So we didn't have that same sort of sparkly rapport that we had the first night because I was in pain, but I told him my back hurt, but I didn't want to be like, I have back problems. So I didn't really go into so much detail about it. I was kind of trying to sit, you know, comfortably. But so it went okay. But then. So then we said, okay, we'll go out again. He was going away on business, and we decided we'd see each other again. So I did have two little red flags about this guy. But I decided, I'm not going to tell my friends about these red flags because what if it turns out to be nothing? And then I end up marrying this guy? And then I don't want some friend asking about that red flag again. So the first red flag was just alcohol. He just drank a lot that night. I was still nursing a glass of wine for the bar. We ordered a bottle of wine at the table, and he drank basically the whole bottle of wine. And then we went somewhere else for cocktails. He had like nine drinks that night. But, you know, I was willing to give it a pass. I was like, maybe he's nervous, you know. So anyway, okay. So then. Oh, but you know what? The red flag was not whatever. Like it kept growing, growing because he emailed me from his business trip being like, well, my liver is really, you know, my liver needs a break after these business trips. And then he was like spending every night at my friend's whiskey bar. And I was just thinking, oh, well, I'm still gonna ignore it though. Okay. So then he gets back and he asked me out on a Wednesday. He asked me out for a Friday night. And so I was, you know, I was rehearsing this musical and I hadn't heard from him all day on Friday. So I text him at 6pm Finally, I'm still at this rehearsal. I was like, hey, what's up for tonight? Well, I get a text back from him. Not a phone call, mind you. I get a text back and it said, busy with this work thing. Maybe I'll see you when you get back from la. That was two months from now. Two months from now. So basically I got like, face plant. I was just so shocked that he just asked me out, but now he's blowing me off. And I felt like just like he'd asked me out movie style. And I was so excited I was getting blown off movie style. Now it was like that harsh, like being stood up, basically, like I'd only seen in the movies. Now it was happening to me and I was. I was really upset about it too. But then now that I knew that we weren't really going to be dating and we weren't even making out, I was free to tell my friends about the other red flag. So when we were at this bar, he said that when he was traveling in Japan, he ate at this restaurant that only served horse meat. And I was kind of like, oh, horse meat. But he was like, no, it's the most delicious meat you'll ever try. He was just reveling in it. I was thinking, like, that's not so good to tell a woman on your first date that you're really into horse meat. Because what if I was one of those girls who had the plastic horse statues growing up? I mean, I wasn't, but what if I was? It just seems like not a thing to really tell a woman. Like, I'm really into horse meat. But. And then he said, I'm still reeling for that. And he said, have you ever wondered what it'd be like to taste human flesh? And he didn't say it like how you might say, you know, some parlor game, like, would you rather walk 10 miles in the snow or eat human flesh? No. It was like he had given it some thought. Like he was. Like he was seeking out the opportunity somewhere. Maybe there was a restaurant somewhere in the world. And it just kind of like the phrase silence of the lambs popped into my head when he said that. And I was like, no. And he's like, really? Wouldn't you just be curious? And I said, no, because I would just be wondering, who is this? And how did they end up on my plate? But anyway, so then I thought, well, you know what? Maybe it's not that God doesn't want me to date. Maybe God sprung up my back so that I could avoid dating this guy, this alcoholic cannibal for a whole year, wasting another year of my life on that. So I got on the plane to la, where I was going to go do this musical, and there I was rehearsing the musical, surrounded by gay men. I was back in my comfort zone. I thought I'd stay there for a while. Thank you.
- [52:46]
Kathryn Burns
That was Rachel Dratch. She joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in the fall of 1999 and stayed for seven seasons. Her memoir has the slightly hard to say out loud title Girl Walks into a Calamities, Dating Disasters and a Midlife Miracle. All of the stories you've heard this hour are available at the iTunes store. That's it for the Moth Radio Hour. Join us next time. And that's the story from the Moth.
- [53:26]
Production Announcer
Your host this hour was Kathryn Burns, artistic director of the Moth. Catherine also directed the stories in this show. The Moth's executive director is Joan D. Firestone, our producing director, Sarah Austin Janess. Our senior producer is Jennifer Hickson, our curatorial producer, Meg Bowles. And our media manager is Laura Haddon. Thanks to David Mutton and Brandon Echter. James Fallon's story came from a show produced in collaboration with the World Science Festival. You can learn more@worldScienceFestival.com the Moss recording engineer is Paul Ruest at the Argos studios in New York City. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Man Group, Matthias Bossi, Lawless music and the original cast of Billy Elliot. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Vicki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world, the Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange. Prx.org moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the Storyteller. All stories are told with no scripts and no second takes. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.