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- [00:00]
Intuit Sponsor
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- [02:09]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This podcast is brought to you by stamps.com youm've probably heard the cost of a stamp just went up to 49, but not if you have stamps.com with stamps.com you'll pay less for postage than you would at the post office for first class mail, priority priority, express mail packages and more. Stamps.com is easy to use and convenient. Buy and print discounted stamps, shipping labels and more using your own computer and printer. Not only will you save money with Stamps.com you'll save valuable time too. Stamps.com always keeps the rates up to date so you'll get the exact postage you need every time right from your desk. Never go to the post office again. Right now there's a special offer for listeners of the Moth podcast, a no risk trial plus a $110 bonus offer that includes a digital scale and up to $55 free postage. Don't wait. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and then type in moth. That's stamps.com and then you just enter Moth. This podcast is brought to you by squarespace.com if if you have a story to tell. Whether it's about starting a new business or sharing photos from a recent adventure, Squarespace gives you an all in one platform to bring those stories to life online. With modern templates, mobile responsive designs, simple drag and drop tools, and 24 hour support, you can create a professional website or online portfolio in just a few minutes. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts, head to squarespace.com and use the offer traffic code the moth2 so another great episode. One of our favorite types of episodes of the podcast. Today we bring you a full hour of stories once again from our very own Moth Radio Hour. Here it is, the Moth Radio Hour.
- [04:06]
Jennifer Hickson
From prx, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson from the Moth's artistic team and I'll be your host this time. At any given Moth show, there are two ironclad rules. One no reading. Two no fiction. But of course, there's another requirement, a live audience. Even though the audience doesn't speak except for laughter and the occasional gasp, our hope is the stories feel more like a conversation rather than a presentation. There's a volley between the storyteller and the audience. This hour we have five stories for you. We'll hear a story of gender nonconformity at a bicycle shop, an Internet date that involves three bullets, a daughter who keeps distance from her mother, community healing among survivors of the Khmer Rouge, and this first story from Madison Perry. He told it at one of our Grand Slam storytelling competitions in Los Angeles, where we partner with public radio station kcrw. The thing was without a net. Here's Madison Perry live at the mall.
- [05:14]
Madison Perry
During the summer during college, I went backpacking in Europe with two of my best friends, Carney and Kyler, and it was a great trip. It was six weeks, we went all over the continent and we ended the trip in Pamplona, Spain for the Festival of San Fermin, which is where they do the running of the bulls. And I'd wanted to go to this thing. So I was in eighth grade and I read the Sun Also Rises and I started worshiping Hemingway. And I just. I wanted to do it. But the entire trip I went back and forth about whether I would actually do the running because it's dangerous and they, you know, people get injured all the time. People have even died doing it. Like, there's a reason they have the phrase, mess with the bull, get the horns. It's because they have horns and the horns get you. And so I was scared. And on the morning we were going to do it, we went and there are these narrow cobblestone streets and they're lined with these big fences that are big enough for you to go through or jump over. And we walked up to them and like, in America, if you do anything, like if you do a 5k fun run, you've got to register and get a bib number and you've got to sign a waiver that says, I could die from joggin. In Spain, you step through that fence, that's it. There's not even a warning sign, like, we warn people that there may be peanuts in bags of peanuts here, nothing there. The only deterrent is common sense, which my friend Kyler had none of because he went right through the fence. And I'm standing there and this is a big deal for me because I'm not like a risk taker kind of guy. Like, I was the kid growing up that would always be like, are you sure we should be doing this, guys? Seems pretty dangerous, guys. Like, that was me, you know? So I'm sitting there and I'm kind of. I'm kind of panicked. And I'm looking at Carney and he definitely wasn't going. He decided it was too dangerous. And I'm looking across the fence at Kyler and I'm starting to panic, and I'm kind of like, what's the healthcare like in Spain? Like, not good. This country's known for napping. Like, that's. And so finally Kyler looks at me and he just says, just step through the fence. And I kind of in a trance, I go through with him and we're walking off and Carney yells after us, be careful. Which, like, the only way to do that is to not do the running of the bulls. So we're walking and we're in the crowd and we're all wearing the white with the red sash and the red bandana. We did it all up and I Have no idea what's going to happen. Like, my. The only knowledge I have of bulls and bull fighting at this point is from Bugs Bunny cartoon. Like, they hate red. Like, you can distract them if you put lipstick on a cow. Like, that's what I'm. Like, I'm imagining the bulls sharpening their horn on that spinning wheel. Like, that's what's going through my head. And there's, like, a buzz in the crowd, like, just before a fight breaks out. And then a rocket explodes in the sky, and that's the sign that they've let the bulls go. So we're standing there. We're ready to run, and then this wave of white and red, this surge of people, comes around the corner, followed by the six gigantic bulls. And we take off running as hard as we can. People are pushing me. Elbows are flying. People are going, toros, vamonos. Go, go. And someone falls down behind me, and I want to help them, but I think, leave him. He's already dead. And I just keep. I just keep running. And the bulls are on us in no time. And you can hear their hooves on the cobblestone. And people are jumping and hanging from windows and cowering in doorways. And people are on the ground with their hands over their head. And I see Kyler, he goes Superman style through the fence to my right. He just dives head first. And I run over to the fence, and I put my hand on it, but I don't jump over. I just kind of stand there, and I watch as the bulls come running by me about five feet away from me. And it's one of those moments where it's just slow motion. They're giant, muscular legs, and the humps were going up and down and their sharp horns. And it was just amazing and beautiful and. And even in that moment, I was like, this is the most badass thing I will ever do. And, like, there's not even a close second. Like, the second most badass thing I've done is get a squirrel out of the house that got in through the chimney. Like, I'm not a badass. So they go running by, and then I help Kyler through the fence, and our heart rates are dropping. God, that was so cool. And congratulating each other. And then someone says, mas turos. There are more bulls. And we start running again, and we're sprinting as fast as we can. And it's over half a mile to the bull arena, and we're sprinting the entire way, looking back the entire time, sure that these Bulls are bigger and stronger and faster, and they will kill us. And we get to the arena and we realize there were no more bulls. We'd been running terrified from nothing, which is probably some sort of life metaphor. And so we walk into the bull arena, and it's got the sand floor and it's round, and it's filled with people that cheer on the runners that have come in. And it was like gladiator, the movie. And I actually yelled, are you entertained? Which is a little cheesy. But at the time, the movie had just come out, it was perfect. And we were just. I was hugging Kyler and we were hugging strangers, and it was just. It was awesome. It was so awesome. Awesome was the only word I could say. I was like, this is awesome. Kyler's like, I'm gonna get some sand. I was like, that's awesome. And so we're taking sand and we're shoving it in our pockets from this arena. And Kyler says, I'm sure to get some red stuff that's. That has the bull's blood stained. And I was like, that's awesome. Even though it's really just unsanitary. And so we're walking back and we see this old guy and his shirt's ripped open and it's stained with blood. The bull got him a little bit. And the first aid people are like, medico, do you need help? And he's like, no. And we were like, that's awesome. And so we walk back and Carney's waiting, and he says, how was it? And we're like, awesome. And then he says, I should have run. You know, there wasn't that many bulls. I should have run. First of all, screw him. There was plenty of bulls. The second, I was just. I was so glad I did it because I got to go home with no regrets. And I'm just so glad I stepped through that fence. Thanks.
- [11:25]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Madison Perry. He's a screenwriter and star storyteller who's won two moth grand slams. He's now one of our story slam hosts in Los Angeles. Our next story is from Malik White. It was told that New Belgium beer's Tour de Fat, a traveling bicycle festival. The story was recorded outdoors, so you may pick up on some residual noise from the festival. Please note in the story, Malik quotes someone who uses offensive language. Here's Malik live in Chicago.
- [12:04]
Malik White
She came with me when I moved to Chicago. She was kind of hazelnut colored and small framed like me. And we were perfect for each other for a while. Her Name was Layla, and she was my bike. But six months in, I started identifying as transgender, and things with Laila got a little complicated. That means that despite being biologically female, I identify somewhere on the masculine end of the gender spectrum. And while being a beer bellied, football watching dude has clearly just never been in the cards for me, I did change my name. I asked everybody to call me he instead of she. And I tried desperately to pass as male. So that meant shaving off all of my hair, speaking in a voice an octave deeper than my normal range, and turning on the boy's charms to no avail. Because the grocery store cashiers still called me ma'am, teenagers still called me a dyke. And on the rare occasion when I did pass, I couldn't get into bars because bouncers tended to think I was a 10 year old boy. You can probably tell. And I blamed Layla. I mean, when people saw me riding around on my little girl bike, they saw a girl. So I was heartbroken the day that Layla was stolen. But I decided to seize the moment as an opportunity to buy my first men's bike. One that reflected the person I was becoming. So, 4th of July weekend last summer, the local bike shop announces a sale on twin hybrids. And I go there with just enough cash to get me one way on the bus, because I made a promise to myself that I was gonna buy a bike that day and I was gonna ride it home. So I walk in and the sales guy greets me with a How can I help you, sir? Ma'am? Sir? But I'm not even paying attention because I'm making a beeline for the bike in the corner. The bike that is everything I want. It's black and gold and badass. And unlike most men's bikes, which have names like Ranger or Mountain Cub, this one is called the Cutter. So the sales guy sees me salivating over this bike, and he goes into the back room to get me the extra small frame size, and he comes back empty handed and he says, I'm sorry, sir, ma'am. Looks like Schwinn doesn't make this bike in your size, but we carry the women's model. And I think, screw it if it's black and gold and called the Cutter. Like, who cares about the shape of the frame? I need to have this bike. And he goes into the back room and he wheels out the flashiest, most garish, awful bike I have ever seen in my life. The back half of the frame is lime green, the seat is speckled with polka dots, and the entire Front half of the bike, including the front wheel, is hot pink. I was terrified of pink. Not because I didn't like it, but because pink or anything remotely feminine compromised my ability to pass. But I promised myself I would buy a bike that day, and I needed two wheels to get home. So I just took a deep breath and said, okay, I'll take it. And on that ride home, I made many promises to myself. Promises that I would cover the pink with strategically placed stickers. Promises that eventually I'd just spray paint the whole thing black. And while fellow commuters were checking out my flashy new wheels, I cringed when I thought about what they saw. A girl riding a very girly bike. And then I heard it.
- [16:06]
Madison Perry
Faggot.
- [16:11]
Malik White
I hit the brakes. I turn around. I'm looking for the jerk who's probably harassing some poor little femme boy jogging in his short shorts. And I don't see anybody. And then I hear, nice bike, faggot. I realize he's talking to me. And I am elated. I mean, I do not condone homophobic slurs. And I am fully aware that when someone calls you faggot in the mean way, you do not smile. But I did. I was smiling because I was finally passing, just not in the way I expected. So I compose my face and I keep going. And then I hear somebody else say, his bike is so gay. And I get a few more comments like that on my way home. And somewhere along the way, I have what I like to call a gender revelation. I realize that I don't have to hide the feminine parts of myself to be seen as the person that I am. And I realized that I don't want to be trapped in anybody's gender box, not even the male one. So over the next few months, I started wearing a rhinestone stud in my right earlobe. I bought hot pink skinny jeans. I realized that I'm the kind of boy who wears his hair a little bit long and listens to Elton John. I am the kind of boy who rides a faggot bike. I recently celebrated my three year anniversary of being openly trans and my one year anniversary with Faggot Bike. And no, I never ended up covering the pink with stickers or spray paint because I want Faggot Bike to be who she is. Completely all hot pink and green and just a little bit scuffed and dented. Thanks.
- [18:21]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Malik White live at the Moth show at the Tour de Fat festival.
- [18:28]
Madison Perry
If you see me riding on my.
- [18:31]
Jennifer Hickson
Pink bicycle, Malik is a performer and gender warrior from Chicago. Who writes, directs and and performs new plays every week with the Neo Futurist Theater ensemble in a moment. Two stories of finding love and only.
- [18:48]
Eric Hall
One involves match.com the Moth is supported by makers 46 handcrafted bourbon aged with seared French oak staves online at makers46.com makers 46 bourbon whiskey, 47% alcohol by volume to distilled in Loretto, Kentucky reminds listeners to drink responsibly. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
- [19:16]
Dan Kennedy
Prx.Org Building a Strong relationship with your team is key for any business, right? You need to meet, collaborate with co workers and clients, all that stuff. Develop ideas and solutions. You need to work together no matter where you are. So that's why you need gotomeeting with HD Faces and it's a powerful, simple way to meet online from anywhere, anytime. With GoToMeeting by Citrix, you can share screens and collaborate on documents in real time. You can make it easier for your team to be on the same page and you can see your team face to face, just like being in the same room. You can launch or join a meeting from anywhere using your computer, mobile or tablet. It's really easy. You can even present from your iPad. Now start working Smarter today. Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days. Visit GoToMeeting.com, click the Try it Free button and use the promo code moth. That's GoToMeeting.com promo code moth. GoToMeeting Meetingis believing from PRX.
- [20:13]
Jennifer Hickson
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson. The Moth hosts story slams around the country where people can put their names in the hat for a chance to tell their stories. This next story comes from one of our slams in Louisville, Kentucky, where we partner with public radio station WL every February. In all our slam cities across the country, we do the same theme, Love Hurts. It's our answer to Valentine's Day, and the lovelorn, the burned, the dumped, the heartbroken, and sometimes even the heartbreakers show up for a chance to tell their tales of being kicked in the butt by love. Here's Eric hall at the Love Hurts Story slam in Louisville, Kentucky.
- [20:59]
Kim Watson Brooks
November 29, 2006. It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm Wednesday, and I had just spent two days in Columbus, Ohio for business and I'm racing back south on I71 to Louisville and I got the sunroof open and the the sun is streaming in and I got the music turned up entirely Too loud. And really, the two words that could describe me on that day were giddy and doomed. I'm giddy because I'm 40 and I have a date that night back in Louis. And I'm doomed because I'm completely unqualified to have a date that night. As I said, I was 40 and I was recently divorced from my wife of 15 years, who was my college sweetheart and literally the first person that I dated in college. And so we had been together our entire adult lives. So if you can get past sort of the emotional baggage that I'm hauling around at the time, you can't escape the fact that I haven't had a date since the Reagan administration. But never fear. This is why they invented match.com because match.com is how recently divorced, socially inept people meet. And so my date, my match date for that night is Fireball. That's not her real name. That was her match handle. And she. I'd been around long enough to know that she was really almost too good to be true. Or it seemed like she was smart, she was funny, she was confident, she was attractive. And apparently she was really punctual because she showed up at exactly 7 o'clock that night at the Bristol for drinks. And I knew punctual. I'm in love. And really, that night began our storybook romance because within a year, Fireball and I were married. And within a year, Fireball and I were divorced. But I don't want to make fun of, you know, it's funny. Yeah. But it really, honestly was the two most painful, traumatic years of my life and probably of her life. And honestly, we should have known better. I mean, really, we should have known better. But barring that, we should have at least paid attention to the signs that were sent from the gods telling us to stop and turn back. And the most obvious of these signs came on our first date that night, which by all accounts was the perfect first date. Drinks turned into dinner and then dinner turned into dessert. And then the wait staff got impatient with us. So we left the restaurant and we walked around the corner to Heiney Brothers to get coffee that night. And it was still a beautiful, warm night. So we brought our coffee out to those concrete tables, really comfortable concrete tables, and we sat down. And no sooner had we sat down than we both spotted them in the middle of the table, three perfectly intact, hollow tipped bullets just sitting there. Now, a normal, rational human being would have seen the bullets for what they were, which was an unmistakable sign of impending disaster. But we were Crazy. We were desperate for this relationship, or any relationship to work. And so we turned those bullets into a good omen. And for our entire two year relationship, we lived by the theme of the three bullets. We wrote poems about the bullets, we wrote stories about the bullets. They were even published in a Valentine's Day magazine. At our wedding, we had frosting shaped like bullets on the cake. We. I even commissioned a glassblower to create special champagne flutes in the shape of a bullet for our wedding. But the best gift was one Christmas, one of the two Christmases, I went to a jeweler and I took one of the three bullets. And I was going to turn it into a charm for a charm bracelet. And I was going to have it inscribed with the date that we first met. And the jeweler looked at me like I was crazy and he told me, you need to leave now. And so I went to five other jewelers and finally, the fifth jeweler, he at least had pity on me. And he said, you should take that to a custom jeweler, which is basically an artist, because they do shit like that. And he gave me the name of somebody that he knew. And I met this guy, it was actually a father and son team, and they had a garage on a back alley. And I was a little scared, but he was a big, affable, friendly, gregarious guy. And he meets me at the garage and he kind of rolls the bullet around in his hand and he surprises me. And when he says, well, sure, we'll do it, give me a week. So I go back in a week and this guy meets me there and he is giddy, he's like excited about this, and it's beautiful. He's done an amazing job on this charm. But what he's really excited about is that it's one of a kind. He's never made anything like it before. And he assures me he'll never make anything like it again. And I thought that was a funny comment. And I was going to ask him why, but he volunteered. He says, well, there was a bit of an incident, you see, before we could engrave it, we had to take it apart to take the powder out. And, well, when we did that, it kind of exploded. And I said, oh, my God. He said, but he stopped me and he said, no regrets. What's the saying? Whatever doesn't kill me just makes me stronger. And at that moment, as I'm nodding, I look up and I see the sun. And the right side of his face is red and blistered. And he's missing an eyebrow and most of his hair on this side of the head. And I'm like, oh my God. But he was right. It didn't kill him. And so those two years did not kill me. In fact, I think I really needed those years. I got smarter and I got stronger as a result of those two years. So Fireball, if you're out there, I don't regret a single day because I'm smarter and I'm stronger. And if I had it all to do over again, I'm smart enough to say, hell no.
- [27:55]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Eric Paul. He's a marketing exec and self professed dork who loves literature and spreadsheets. To see a picture of Eric and Fireball's three bullet themed wedding cake, visit themoth.org look closely and you can read the phrase Cupid's Packing Heat written in frosting on the side of the cake. Our next story is from Kim Watson Brooks. It was told at a mainstage Moth Night, presented by public radio station WFA in Charlotte, North Carolina. The theme was into the Wild. Here's Kim Watson Brooks.
- [28:34]
Andrew Solomon
So it's fall 1995 and I'm a junior at Carolina Chapel Hill, and it's towards the end of the fall semester and I haven't talked to my mom since the summer. Now, now, it's important that you understand that my mom is a holy terror. Holy in the sense that she never dated, she went to church a lot and she believed that if you spared the rod, you spoiled the child. Terror in the sense that she never spared the rod or the belt or her fists or even her tongue. In fact, I call my mom the verbal assassin. She could find your emotional weaknesses and hit it with laser like precision. It's not an exaggeration to say that my mom found a reason to lash out almost every day and my heart would pound whenever I'd hear a key in the door. I was afraid of my mother and I thought about the time where I would be able to escape and be free of all of that. So it's a few days before the start of my junior year and my mom's temper has flared up again. And this time she decided not to spear the cortlets up against my head. So I remember her telling me that I'm going to beat some sense into you. And this time it worked. Something changed. I have to say that when you don't feel loved, it's easy to leave. Plus, I had money in my pocket. I was a paid intern. Yes, those used to exist. I Was a paid intern, and I had just gotten my final paycheck, plus a surprise bonus, plus money that all my colleagues gathered to send me back to school. And I had enough money to stay in a hotel for the next couple of nights, which is what I did. And then the third day, I woke up. I rented a U haul, and I waited for my mom to go to church and crept like a thief in the night back into her place to gather all of my things, pack up my truck, and hit the road. I felt so free, Like I had escaped, you know? And so I'm riding to Chapel Hill, and I get there, and it's my junior year. And so towards the end of that semester, I started thinking about my mom more, you know, not giving her my phone number or my address. And whenever I talk to my friends and tell them about what I've been through with my mom, they either get angry or they cry with me. But inevitably, they'd all say, you only have one mother. You only have one mother. So one random weekend, I caught a ride with a friend, and I went home to spend time with mine. And that evening, I was there. The phone rang, and I picked it up, which I almost never did. And there was a young guy on the other end of the line who asked to speak to my mom. And when I asked him who he was, he said, I. I'm an old friend of your mother. Now, I told you, my mom never dated. And I was pretty sure I knew all of her friends, so I was a little suspicious of this guy. And then I handed my mom the phone, and she took the cordless into the bathroom, where she stayed for over three hours. When she came out, I was curious. I had to know what was going on. So I said, who's that? Why is he calling? And. And she told me that that young man was my brother. I was shocked. And I listened to my mom confess. You know, she'd been this vibrant woman, this outgoing belle of the ball. She had friends, she liked to hang out. She. She was thoughtful and compassionate. And she was pregnant. An unwed mother. Now, I come from a family of teachers, and they were well respected and well known in the community. And my mom didn't want to bring shame to the family name. So she decided to go two and a half hours up the road to UNC hospitals and have my brother before handing him over to a nurse, never to see him again. And this was the first time my brother chose to reach out to my mom. And I'm sitting there, and I'm Listening to my mom confess and talk to me for the first time in a way she's never talked to me before, she's confiding in me. And I couldn't help but think that if I hadn't chosen this weekend to go home, if I hadn't intercepted the call, I never would have known this. Well, my mom and I united because we wanted to know so much about my brother. You know, he'd done all of this research, and he knew so much about us, but we knew nothing about him. All we knew was that his first name was John, and he wouldn't tell us his last name, which kind of confused me, because I thought, if you go through all of this trouble to find your family, wouldn't you want to tell them about your life, too? And so, as it turns out, my brother issued what I can only imagine was a test of our commitment. A scavenger hunt. He was a med school student and had recently written an article for this medical publication, New England Medical Journal, and said, if you find this, then you'll know who I am. So my mom and I were working together. We went to the public library, and after a little due diligence, we found the article, and we found my brother. So we were so excited, we called him, eager to let him know that we passed the test. And so, eventually, we met face to face, Christmas 1995. He looked just like my mother. There was no denying him. And the more we talked, the more I realized that, oh, my gosh, we have so much in common. It was like there was never a point where I didn't know him. You know, we're both curious. We ask a lot of questions. We're both kind of goofy. We have a similar laugh, a warped sense of humor. We both graduated from unc. We're both into the arts. We had so much in common. And as my brother continued talking, I realized that we were also living parallel lives. My brother grew up in Charlotte, miles away from where I grew up. His parents knew my grandparents. My brother was a student in my grandfather, his biological grandfather's class. There was so much that we had in common, and all I could think about was the fact that he was trying so hard to find us. And then he goes on to tell us about how he always felt adopted, like there was something that was missing, you know? And when he confided in his mother his suspicions, she confirmed that, yes, he had been adopted. And she told him why they chose him and that she would always be his mother and she would always love him. And I have to say, I felt a little ashamed because I'm listening to this story, and I cannot help that jealousy and a little bit of sorrow is seeping in. You know, I'm listening to my brother tell me about how much his parents loved him, and yet I never felt that way with my biological mom. He worked so hard to find us because he felt like there was something missing. And yet I would have given anything to be in his shoes. I would have given anything to have been the one who was adopted. And then I started to feel empathy for my mom. You know, my brother was in his late 20s. He was a med school student. He had loving parents. My mother could no longer be his mother, but I could always be his sister. And I started wondering about how life would have been different if she kept him. You know, I was thinking that maybe he could have protected me from her rage. Or better yet, maybe my mom wouldn't have been so unhappy if she didn't have the weight of this horrible secret bearing down on her soul. My brother and I continue to talk, and I also make an effort to continue reaching out to my mother. It's hard. It can be tense. But I love her and I know she loves me. She's not the one I turn to, however, when I'm facing challenging situations. Back in 2010, I was going through a divorce, and it was difficult. I was trying to determine where I was going to spend my first Christmas alone. You know, I wanted to be with family. I wanted to feel safe and loved. And so I hopped in my car and I drove down to Florida to be with my brother, because that's what he is. Family. Thank you.
- [38:58]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Kim Watson Brooks. She works in corporate development at a radio station and is also an equity stage actor. To see a picture of Kim with her long lost and then found Brother, please visit themoth.org when we come back, we'll hear a story about an unconventional way of healing a broken community.
- [39:24]
Eric Hall
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
- [39:32]
Dan Kennedy
Prx.Org Building a Strong Relationship with your team is key for any business, right? You need to meet, collaborate with co workers and clients, all that stuff, develop ideas and solutions. You need to work together no matter where you are. So that's why you need gotomeeting with HD faces. It's a powerful, simple way to meet online from anywhere, anytime. With GoToMeeting by Citrix, you can share screens and collaborate on documents in real time. You can make it easier for your team to be on the same page and you can see your team face to face, just like being in the same room. You can launch or join a meeting from anywhere using your computer, mobile or tablet. It's really easy. You can even present from your iPad. Now start working Smarter. Today. Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days. Visit GoToMeeting.com, click the Try it free button and use the promo code moth. That's GoToMeeting.com promo code moth GoToMeeting meeting is believing.
- [40:28]
Jennifer Hickson
This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Jennifer Hickson. Our final story is from Andrew Solomon. He told it for a show called Savage Stories of Melancholy. I should warn you that some of this story touches on the brutality of war and might be disturbing to some. But despite the content, the story is ultimately uplifting and I think you're going to love it. Here's Andrew Solomon live at the mosque.
- [40:57]
I
While I was working on my book on depression, I became really interested in the idea that depression is a universal phenomenon. And most of the people I was talking to about depression were, were essentially middle class Western people who had been through nervous breakdowns of one kind or another. And so I went into all of these different contexts to look at how depression functioned among really poor people and among people across history. And I went into a lot of non Western contexts and looked at depression among the Greenlandic Inuit and depression among tribes people in Senegal and talked to some people from Rwanda about what they'd been through. And I had a really amazing set of experiences in Cambodia, which was actually the first place that I went in the course of this broadening set of examinations. And I went there because I wanted to see what happens in a country where the entire population has been subjected to enormous trauma. What is it like when it's not just a person who's had a little private trauma and who says, well, everyone else is okay, look what happened to me, but rather a whole country that has just been completely devastated. And so I went to see what life was like among survivors of the Khmer Rouge. And when I got to Cambodia, I talked to various people and eventually someone gave me the name of a woman who they said had done some amazing work with depressed survivors of the Khmer Rouge and gave me her phone number and I called her up and we spoke on the phone and she didn't speak English very well and I had someone kind of help me out who spoke Cambodian. But we made an arrangement to meet each other and she set the location. It was a room Upstairs from a newspaper office sort of in the outskirts of Phnom Penh. And I said I'd bring a translator. And I got there and there was this tiny kind of 4 foot tall woman with her hair sort of pulled back and with a kind of already before we started talking sort of intense expression and this kind of slightly flickering quality that I'd noticed in a lot of the people who had been through Khmer Rouge stuff looking around and we started talking and I said, why don't we just try to talk to each other and not have a translator? I said, so now let's begin with what happened to you during the Khmer Rouge period. And she said, well, I didn't have such a bad time. And so then she told me about nuts. Such a bad time, which I thought was kind of a bad time. She said that she had worked as a secretary in the Ministry of Finance and that when Pol Pot came into power she had managed, unlike most people who were so called intellectuals, to pretend to be a peasant. And so she had not been summarily executed immediately. She had been separated from her husband and she was with her three children. She had a daughter who was 12, a son who was 6 and an infant. And she and her three children were taken together off to a RE education camp. And on the way out to the RE education camp she was tied to a tree and made to watch while a battalion of soldiers raped and then murdered her daughter. She was then let free and she went on with her 6 year old son and the infant and she got to the re education camp in the country and they were set to work tilling in the fields and she spent some time tilling in the fields and she said that was okay. She was there for a few months and then one day she was told that somebody had reported something on her and she and her two children were taken to the killing fields and very few people who were taken to those fields ever left them. When she got there she was tied to a bamboo stick that was positioned over a kind of low ravine in such a way that as long as she kept her knees braced she could stand up. But as soon as she really released them or fell asleep, she would tumble over into the ravine and die at the bottom of the ravine and her two children were tied onto her and she stood there with her two children and the children were screaming. And she finally said to one of the soldiers, she said she was trying to think of something to say and she remembered the name of somebody who was kind of middle management in the Khmer Rouge. And she said, listen, she said, you know, I was actually for a long time the mistress of this guy. She said, and I think if you kill me, you're going to find out you're going to get in a lot of trouble. She said, I just don't think you really want to be killing me. She said, re educating me is fine, but if you are the one who kills me, he's going to find out and it's not going to be good for you. So this guy said, I'm not sure I believe you, but on the chance that you're right, I'm going to cut the things that are tying you and I'm going to let you go. And you go into the jungle, which starts right over there. And you get down there and don't you ever let me see you again, because if I or anyone else sees you anytime, that will be the end for you. And he cut the ropes that were tying her up and she grabbed her two children and. And they ran into the jungle and they got into the jungle and they lived in the jungle on roots and on whatever they could get from the trees that were in the jungle. And she said she just kept running. She said she tried never to see another human being because she never knew if she saw even the rustle of movement in the distance who was on which side. After a while, because she had such poor nutrition living this way, the milk in her breasts dried up and so her infant died. So she was left with just the six year old. But she managed to live with him in that way in the jungle for more than two years until the fall of Pol Pot. And finally after two years, Pol Pot fell and she was able to come back out of the jungle. She came back out with this child and she made her way back to Phnom Penh. And when she got there, she was wandering around in the desolation with lots of other people who were similar. They had returned to Phnom Penh and she managed to find her husband who had also not been killed because he had very early on been beaten so badly about the head with heavy objects that he had become a functional idiot. And he had been left as a sort of street person wandering around outside of the city because the city had been emptied out. But she found him and she and he and their son were taken and they were put into a resettlement camp on the border of Thailand. And when they got to that resettlement camp, she was one of the few people there who was actually educated because almost all Educated people had been found and killed. And because she was educated, she actually spoke foreign languages. And so she was able to communicate with the foreign aid workers who had come to work in the resettlement camp. And she began talking to them. And she was given a nicer hut than most of the people who were in tents in that camp were given. And she lived in that hut. And she began looking at the other people in the camp, and she saw that there were all of these poor women who had made it through the whole Khmer Rouge period and who were living in tents and who weren't taking care of their own children, who were just lying there in these tents, completely still, completely vacant, and letting their own children wander around unfed and uncared for. And she went to the foreign aid workers and she said, we have to do something for these people. She said at that point, she didn't really have the word for depression, but she said, there's something wrong with these women. They're not doing anything. They're hardly even alive. Well, some of the foreign aid workers actually tried to get some antidepressant medication, but those were still relatively early days for antidepressants, and there wasn't really very much that could be done. And finances were very tight. And so she said, I want to try to do something for these women. And she began going around and trying to stir them up. And she said over the next couple of years, she began to put together a program. And as she'd been describing all of this, we were sitting in this sort of small room and telling her own story. She'd remained very composed. When she started to talk about these other women, she fell off the little sofa she'd been sitting on, and she began to weep. She said, they were just sitting there, and I went to them, and I finally understood that I could help them by working with them in three stages. I had to teach them three things. The first thing she said was that I had to teach them to forget. She said their minds were so full of the horrible things that had happened to them and such horrible things that happened to them. And first I had to get them to tell me what those horrible things were, and then I had to talk to them and give them some other things to think about and some other things to put in their minds, because they would never forget completely the horrible things that had happened to them. Them. But I needed to crowd out a little bit of the bad stuff that was taking up every millimeter of their consciousness, she said. And so I began to do that, and Bit by bit, you could feel that their minds were beginning to open up to something else. And bit by bit, I began to feel like I was getting a little bit of forgetfulness into those minds. And when I had reached the point at which I felt they were actually beginning to forget, then I went on to the second thing. And the second thing was to teach them to work. These were people who didn't know how to do anything. And even if all they could ever learn to do was to keep their own place neat and clean, they had to have something that they could start doing and then do, and then know that they'd done it to have some purpose in life. And maybe someday they would clean someone else's house, they would do something for somebody else, but they would have a purpose and they would have a direction and they would have a focus. She said, and so I would teach them to work. And then when I had taught them those two things to forget and to work, I would teach them the third thing, which was to perform manicures and pedicures. So this had all been very emotional up until this point, and I felt I couldn't burst out laughing, and I said, manicures and pedicures? She said, you know, the worst atrocity of all that was wrought by the Khmer Rouge was that half the country turned against the other half of the country. And people who lived through that period knew that they couldn't put any faith in anyone else, and they completely lost the habit of looking anyone else, even half, in the eye, she said, and all of these women had been deprived for a long time of any occasion to indulge the least bit of personal vanity. I brought them to my hut and I built a special room that I would fill with steam. And it was a pleasure for them to feel beautiful. But what was really amazing for them was that in this context, it was something that was at once very intimate and very impersonal. And they would start because I was telling them how to do it and giving them this instruction to handle each other's fingers and each other's toes, and it meant they were touching each other. And if I had told them to begin to hold each other's hands or to have some kind of physical contact with other people, they would have shied away and they would have pulled back. They weren't ready to do anything with anyone. But in this context, they would touch each other's fingers, they would touch each other's toes. And then, because it was such a funny context and because they felt so happy about the fact that they were for a moment feeling a little bit beautiful again. They would begin to laugh together and they would begin to tell each other little bits of stories and things. And that was the way that I taught them to trust again. Because the ability to trust was the biggest thing that they had lost of all, she said. And when I felt that I had really been able to teach them to forget and to work and to trust, then what I tried to say to them was that those were not three separate skills, but three separate parts of a single way of being in the world. And when I felt they understood that, then I said to them, now you are ready. Now you are not so depressed. Now you can go into the world again. But what I afterwards found out was that many of those women didn't want to go into the world again. They had been so transformed by their exposure to this remarkable, charismatic woman. And they all said, but we want to come back here and we want to do more things with you. And so what Falie Nuon did was to find that there were many children who were without parents in Cambodia at that time and at this time. And she set up an orphanage which is called the Future Light Orphanage in Phnom Penh. And it's completely staffed by the women who have come through her depression treatment program. And those women volunteer there, they're not paid, but they formed a community. And that community of depressed women who have worked through their depression are supported and managed to stave off the recurrence of that depression to some large extent by remaining part of this very tight community. And it's the largest and most successful orphanage that's been established in the wake of the Khmer Rouge and they care for all of the lost children who there are in Cambodia. And she remains this small, really rather meek, rather quiet woman. Quiet though she can tell a good story. She should come to the next mall. This meek, rather quiet woman who just managed to figure out when she was in the camps and stuck with these women who are neglecting their own children and who are suffering from such severe, such crippling, such utterly disabling depression. This is what we have to do to get them to sit up and eventually take care of not only their own children, but all the children. Thanks.
- [54:31]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Andrew Solomon. His award winning books include the Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree. To see a picture of him during his trip to Cambodia and learn more about the orphanage mentioned in the story, visit themoth.org you can find all the stories you heard in this hour at the itunes, store or on our website. And while you're there, we'd love to hear your story. Click on Tell a Story and it'll take you on a step by step. How to or you can just call the pin line at 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.
- [55:18]
Eric Hall
Your host this hour was Jennifer Hickson. Jen also directed the stories in the show along with Maggie C. And Joey Zanders. The rest of the Moths directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, and Meg Bowles, with production support from Genois Berman and Brandon Echter. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Se? Es Cuerdas, Michael P. Lawless Music and Roxmi Kamara. 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 for more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org There you go.
- [56:33]
Dan Kennedy
Another full episode of the Moth Radio Hour right here on the podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we enjoyed it. This podcast is brought to you by squarespace.com if you have a story to tell, whether it's about starting a new business or sharing photos from a recent adventure, Squarespace gives you an all in one platform to bring those stories to life online. With modern templates, mobile responsive design, simple drag and drop tools, and 24 hour support, you can create a professional website or online portfolio in just a few minutes. For a free trial and and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts, head to squarespace.com and use the offer code themoth2 Listeners in Iowa City or around Iowa City, here's some news for you. The Moth main stage is coming to the Englert Theater in Iowa City. That'll be Friday, February 21st. For tickets and also for a list of all of our upcoming tour shows, visit the moth.org Our podcast host, Dan.
- [57:34]
Jennifer Hickson
Kennedy, is a writer and performer living in New York and author of the new novel American Spirit available now.
- [57:42]
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.