Kathryn Burns (8:03)

That was Hilary Boone. Hillary works in nonprofits as a program manager and consultant. In her free time, she plays outside and draws cartoons. Hillary is now married and lives in Fort Ethan Allen with her wife and dog. And quick update on her mom, Carla. She's now studying massage therapy and working with patients who are in chronic pain. You can see pictures of the two of them@themoth.org while you're there. You can call our pitch line and leave a two minute version of a story you'd like to tell. Do you have a story about fighting for Something you believe in. We want to hear it. The number to call is 877799 moth. Or you can pitch us the story right at our website themoth do. Next, we have a story from Maria Hodermarska. We met Maria at a community workshop we did with Open Future Learning. Participants in this workshop were all parents of people with developmental disabilities. I happened to be in the audience when she told it, and the story has always stuck with me. Here's Maria Hodomarska live of the moth.

Maria Hodermarska (9:18)

I've always tried to let my older son show me the way. When he was eight years old, he was obsessed with trains, and he insisted on having his birthday party at Grand Central Station where he could watch the trains come and go and hand out food to homeless people. He called them lonely people. And that was his criterion for selecting who to approach lonely. At one point in the afternoon, I watched him walk up to a businessman seated on a bench waiting for the 5:10 metro north to New Haven. And I stood there fascinated, while the very lonely looking investment banker handed the sandwich back to my son. My son is also a person who lives with a disability, and it was always thought that he was functioning somewhere on the autism spectrum. Parents like me, parents of people with disabilities, spend our lives telling another story. I call it the story. The story of the pregnancy, the story of the birth, the story of the developmental milestones achieved or not achieved. The story of the accumulating laundry list of the things that the person with a disability cannot do. And the service delivery system is set up in this contentious and adversarial manner. So parents like me are required to tell the story, the same set of facts over and over again in order to get the services that our children require to professionals, bureaucrats whose job it is to either not listen, half listen, or not believe the story and deny the services. I think of it kind of as a narrative purgatory, not to mention how it feels when you want to talk about your son's majestic humanity, to know that the story that really counts is how he can't tie his shoes. When my son was about to turn 18 years of age and was going to age out of the Board of education system, he would lose all of the services that he had. So I decided to apply for Medicaid for him, which would cover the cost of extending the services that he requires into his adult life. This was going to be the most important telling of the story that I would ever do, and his entire future hinged upon that. Literally, if I didn't Tell the story well. And he didn't get the services. He would have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody to do it with. A truly lonely life. So it's a gray autumn morning and my son, who I'm going to call David and I, David and I set out for the Brooklyn Developmental Disabilities Services center, which is a 1970s brutalist structure built on a toxic landfill in East New York to house people with developmental disabilities. And we go there to do battle with the state of New York for the Medicaid and the state of New York, herein represented by a clinical psychologist who I will call Stewie. Now, that's not his real name, but his was an equally friendly diminutive. And David is looking good, as he often does. He's got on a hat and a jacket and David often looks so good, in fact, once he was nearly arrested for illegal use of his half fare card. So we arrive on the campus and first it's David's turn to go in with Stewie. And this takes about an hour and a half. And David comes out of his meeting with Stewie laughing and talking about his favorite Kinks album. And Stewie shoots me a look that I've seen on a lot of bureaucrats. It's beleaguered and slightly sarcastic and it tells me, you're going to lose this battle. Your son is too high functioning. So now it's my turn to go in. I am not feeling particularly cool or put together. I've told this story many times and I'm prepared to tell it again. I walk into the room with Stewie and pretty quickly it becomes like a boxing ring and the punches start flying. Stewie draws his attention to an 80 page adaptive behavior assessment that I've completed on my son. Stewie says, you know, you said here that your son can't follow a simple three step command, but he just told me that he's been riding the city subway system by himself for a long time and he offered me some pretty complex training train directions. That's right, I say, and I go on to explain how he took his grandparents around the city in the subway when he was three years old, but that he still can't sequence a shower and he often leaves the bathroom with soap suds in his hair. Stewie says, you know, you wrote here that your son can't do bilateral skills, and those are skills that involve tying shoelaces or cutting something. But he told me that he's learning how to play the guitar. That's right, I said, and I explained how you never want to give David a two fisted sandwich because most of it will wind up on his lap or on the floor. But if he's playing music, both his left and right brain and both hands are working in concert. I become aware that Stewie's not buying any of this and I'm losing this battle. David suddenly bursts into the room. He starts to scream at me, when are we leaving? We've been here all day. I've had enough. I'm overwhelmed. And he paces the room like a caged animal. And I say, david, maybe you want to listen to music. I've been listening to my music. The ipod's out of juice. I don't know what to do. Did you bring your charger? I say, yes, yes, yes. He says, go get the charger. Let's plug the ipod in. Maybe you can listen to some more music in a little while. And David reaches into his backpack where he's got the charger. And when he pulls it out, the bag explodes. Small pieces of paper, half broken, nubs of pencils, food, small pieces of plastic all over the room. And there I am again, where I often am a little embarrassed about my son's behavior. Until I realize that I don't need to explain anything, that David is doing the explaining for himself. He's showing the way. And Stewie begins to pay attention. He threads through the narrative that I've given him. The presence and absence of certain things. He pours over the evaluations from my son from the age of 2 to 18. I look up at the clock and realize that, see, six hours have passed. Stewie suddenly looks up at me and smiles. He tells me that he has an explanation for all of it. Your son is not autistic. The anoxia at his birth, the lack of oxygen caused brain damage. This is a traumatic brain injury. There we were, Stewie, David and me, in our ring, having done battle for many hours. My adversary had become my hero. My son David had shown the way. And as is true with any prize fight, there was a decision and my son would get his services. Thank you.

Kathryn Burns (18:20)

That was Maria Hodermarska. Maria is a clinical assistant professor of drama therapy at New York University. She's also the proud mother and stepmother of seven wonderful adults. To see a photo of Maria and her son, go to themoth.org, coming up, a trip to visit his long distance girlfriend puts a young man in a threatening situation. When the moth radio hour.

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Kathryn Burns (21:23)

This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Kathryn Burns. In this show we're hearing about fighting, specifically the decision about how far to push things. We met our next storyteller in a workshop. We did with the Aspen U Voices Fellows. He went on to tell this story at a mainstage show in Ithaca, New York. Here's Ed Mabaia.

Ed Mabaia (21:46)

In 1998, the hit song Get Jiggy with it by Will Smith was guaranteed to get everybody on the dance floor. See, it was my business to know these things because as a graduate student at Cornell University, I used to DJ at student parties just to make a little extra cash. So at one of these parties, a good friend of mine introduced me to this cute and rather shy girl named Krista. Later on, I danced with her that evening and before the night was over, I got a digis, as we called it back in the days. Not wanting to sound too desperate, I waited for exactly 48 hours before I called her and we agreed to meet for coffee right here in the commons. It turned out that neither one of us liked coffee, so we both had tea instead and we spent much of the afternoon getting to know each other, just talking. About two weeks later we started dating and things were a little rocky, a little shaky at the beginning as we were both transitioning from other relationships. However, I kind of noticed that Krista and I never ran out of things to say to each other. We would spend all weekend just sitting together, enjoying each other's company and just being in love. I had that kind of lingering feeling that, you know, this could be the one. So about a year later on, Krista got funding to go and do a PhD fieldwork in Cape Town, South Africa. I was happy for her, but I knew this would be quite a big test for young relationship. While she was away, we tried our best to maintain this long distance relationship. These are the days before Facebook and WhatsApp, so we tried to do as much as we could on email. So about a semester later on, I got funding to go and do my own field research work in my home country, Zimbabwe. I jumped in that opportunity to make a one week stopover in Cape Town to see Krista. The reunion was just as good as I had imagined it to be. As two young lovers who were happy to be reunited, we walked around town holding hands. We giggled and kissed as we checked out the many restaurants and the many amazing sights that Cape Town has to offer. Just a lovely place. Krista was renting an apartment in an upscale neighborhood called Sea Point. From the apartment you could see the deep blue Atlantic Ocean and also in the distance you could see Robben island, the infamous prison island where Nelson Mandela and a few other mostly black prisoners had been held captive and apartheid. Walking around town with Krista I noticed that people would turn around and take a look at us after we just passed them. Initially, I just brushed this off as maybe cultural differences on public display of affection. But after a while, I started to notice a pattern. We were getting these disapproving stares from mostly older white people. See, I forgot to mention that Krista was white and I am black. And this is only a few years after the end of apartheid. So South Africa was still very much divided on racial lines. While interracial dating was now legal, it was still extremely, extremely rare. Chris and I kind of brushed off this unwanted attention, and we even reminisced on how back in Ithaca, our little beautiful 10 square miles surrounded by reality, nobody would look at us. But for the first time, we started to discuss the implications of being in an interracial relationship. While I was in town, Krista told me that she had booked a dentist appointment to get her wisdom teeth pulled out. I remarked that this was not exactly the most romantic thing to do, but I did welcome this as a sign of our growing relationship. She wanted me to be there for her for this very important medical procedure. So on the day of the appointment, we drove to downtown Cape Town, where the dentist office was located. And after filling in some paperwork, Krista lay down in the dentist's chair and I sat a few feet next to her. With the help of a nurse, the dentist started yanking out these molars out of her mouth. And quite honestly, if you take away the white lab coats and the stainless steel utensils or tools, whatever they use, this scene looked straight out of medieval times. Very primitive. Just when they were starting to stitch up her gums, Krista started to mumble something. She was awake all this time. Even though she was under a partial anesthetic, she started to mumble something and call my name. So I moved closer to her and I held her hand. Then, with a mouth full of blood, she said, ed, I love you so much, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Almost in tears, I said, I love you too, babe. And this brief romantic moment was quickly interrupted by. By the dentist, who said something to the anesthetist in Afrikaans, which I could not understand. Then the anesthetist gave some instructions to the nurse, who hurried out of the room. I was starting to wonder if something was wrong. And then the nurse came back in after a few minutes with these long legal forms. Basically, the form said something to the extent of the patient may not be held liable for whatever he or she says while they're under the influence of the anesthetic. I thought this was a little bit odd. As I was filling these forms, I noticed that all the staff in that room were white. And I started to wonder if this situation maybe would have been handled a little differently if I'd been white. As after all, if this was just routine paperwork, they probably should have just given this to me when we checked in. So after the procedure, we got back in the car and I started driving back to Chris's apartment. She was still sedated, so I played some of her favorite music, and I enjoyed listening to her mumbling to some of the lyrics. When we got to her apartment, Ed parked on the curbside and they walked over to the passenger side to help Krista out of the car. She got out of the car, stood up, and she said, ed, I don't feel good. Then she turned very pale, whiter than I'd ever seen her. And then she passed out. Instinctively, I grabbed her just before she hit the ground and held her up in my arms. I screamed, help. Help. And they looked around to see if anybody was looking at us. A few people in the nearby apartment balconies and people out of their windows started to scream, help.

Brad Lawrence (30:03)

Help.

Ed Mabaia (30:03)

Somebody help. Initially, I was quite relieved to know that help was on the way. But then after a while, I realized that these people were talking to each other. None of them were talking to me. They were ignoring me as if I wasn't there at all. And at that moment, time seems to have just frozen. As I looked up at all those faces looking up over there out of their apartments, out of their balconies and windows, I noticed for the first time that all the faces were white. It then dawned on me how this situation, how this scene might look like for them. There I was, a young black man holding the body of very limp body of a young white woman who was now bleeding profusely out of her mouth. These people did not know me. What had they done to her? What had they done to her? I started to wonder. Those cries for help were not for me. These were cries to help rescue this poor girl from me. I started to fear for my own life. I recall that South Africa was well known for this mob justice where people got injured or even killed for even the most petty of crimes. I knew that with such a history of racial tension, even if the police arrived there, they probably could easily misread this situation. I felt vulnerable and confused. I could not tell the difference between my own paranoia versus what was happening out there. After what felt like an Eternity, but was probably just a few minutes. Two men showed up and approached me. They were very well built construction workers who were working on a nearby apartment. They demanded to know what was going on. In a very shaky, scared voice, I said to them, this is my girlfriend. She's just been to the dentist and I just need help getting into her apartment. They did not seem to believe me and one of them just said, look guy, we'll take it up from here. And reluctantly, I handed Krista over to them. I then led the way to the apartment and they walked behind me carrying her, still not sure what was going on. I got to her apartment, I unlocked the door, and I immediately started to look for any evidence at all to show these guys that I was indeed a boyfriend. You will be amazed how difficult it is to prove this simple little fact. First I opened a closet. I pointed to my clothes, and then I pointed to the suitcase in the corner. But that was not convincing. This could belong to any man. In desperation, I even pointed out to my Afro com and my CD of Arakele, just to show them that she at least had a black boyfriend or something. Then after a while, I saw this little picture frame sitting on the windowsill. And in this picture was Krista and me, taken up in the beautiful Adirondacks. The picture looked like a perfect postcard of two young people in love. Finally, the two men looked convinced. Around that point, Christa started to regain her consciousness. Perfect timing. I explained to her what had just happened. She smiled and whispered to me, I love you so much, Ed. And then she told these men that she was okay. I looked at them. They were starting to look very uncomfortable. I thanked them for helping me very politely. And I asked them to please leave us alone. That moment of near panic left me with so many questions running in my head. How much could our relationship endure in a society that was so racially paralyzed? How could I ever tell the difference between my own biases versus this passive aggressive racism that was out there? And even when the rules and laws and regulations say otherwise, are we really free to love whoever we want? I had all these questions running in my head. But there was one thing that was as clear to me as daylight. And that is twice that day, in the most unfiltered moments with blood in her mouth, Krista had declared her love for me. And 20 years later, right here in Ithaca, we're still getting jiggy with it. Thank you.

Kathryn Burns (35:41)

That was Ed Mabaia. Ed is an agricultural economist with deep passion for rural development in Africa. He grew up in Zimbabwe as the sixth of 10 children, he loves dancing, gardening, and fixing his daughter's hair. I asked Ed if he has any updates on the story he writes. The day after I shared the story in Ithaca, I flew to Cape Town for a conference with Krista. I felt a sense of hope when I noticed that no one was staring at us anymore as an interracial couple. To see a photo of Ed, Krista, and their kids, go to themoth.org Coming up, two siblings can't stop beating the crap out of each other. And later, a young girl struggles to stand up for herself while receiving her first tattoo. That's next on the moth radio hour. This is the moth radio hour from prx. I'm Kathryn Burns. In this hour, we're hearing stories about fighting. And our next story features an actual physical fight. It was told by Brad Lawrence at a story slam at the new eurekan Poets Cafe in New York City. Here's Brad live with ma.

Apple Product Announcer (36:50)

So at the time of this story, I am 9 years old. My sister Amy is 14, and we are both off from school for the summer. And we wake up on this particular day and we begin fighting immediately. From the minute we like, our eyes open and we are like, you're fat. You're stupid. You're ugly. I hate you. You suck. And we were just like that the entire fucking day from, like, morning cartoons until, like, the primetime lineup. We are just like, I hate you all day long. And it ranges, like, over the entire house in the basement and in our respective rooms and in the living room. And we are waiting outside the bathroom for the inner one to come out so we can start again. You are stupid and you are ugly and I hate you. And this goes on the entire day. And finally, we have taken it to the kitchen. We are in the kitchen and we are, like, hammering away at one another. My mother, who is sitting there trying to do something. Stop. Stop. I have had it. I have had it with both of you. And what you are going to do is you are going to shut up and you're going to go downstairs and you are going to watch tv and you are not going to talk to each other and you're not gonna look at each other and you're not gonna touch each other at all ever again. And you're gonna watch tv, and this is what you're gonna do. And you're be quiet. And I am gonna go to the store. And while I'm at the store, you're not looking at each other, you're not talking to each other. Stay away from one another completely or I will kill you. So, fine, so we're gonna do this on the way out of the kitchen to go downstairs and watch TV and not look at each other, talk to each other. I grab an orange and we go downstairs, and Amy gets down there first, and she gets the chair with the remote, and I get the couch, and Amy puts on, like, figure skating and goes, watch it. That's the last thing she says. So we're watching figure skating, and I'm eating the orange and Amy's. And I'm sitting there eating the orange, and for some reason, I'm eating the orange really fast. I don't know what the hurry was, but I was apparently in a really big hurry to consume this orange. So I am eating it, like, two slices at a time. And I'm just.

Ed Mabaia (38:56)

You know.

Apple Product Announcer (38:56)

And Amy's. You know. And I'm just eating the orange. And finally, I'm eating the orange, and I get two giant slices of orange stuck in my throat, and I cannot swallow it, and I cannot get it back up, and I can't speak. And so I look over and I go. And Amy thinks I'm just being annoying, so she's. And she won't look at me, and she won't talk to me, and she won't touch me. So I'm.

Brad Lawrence (39:28)

You're gross.

Apple Product Announcer (39:31)

Watching figure skating. Just, like, completely ignoring me. Her mother has gone out of the house, and she's long since gone. She was going off to the grocery store, and so I'm sitting there. Amy's. And so finally, after this persists for a while, Amy turns and she looks, and she notices my little brother is purple. And so she goes, oh, my God. And she jumps up and she runs over, and she's 14. She does not know the Hylich maneuver. So what she does, she grabs me and she throws me on the floor, and she jumps on my chest, and she takes these three fingers and she jams them down my throat. And she is rooting around in there like she is looking for the best gift in a grab bag at a birthday party, you know? And I'm here, and finally she gets a hold of the orange, and she's on my chest. And when she pulls it free, and when my mother walks back in, she's on my chest, and she is going like this. And my mother from the stairs goes, I've had enough. And she comes. Comes down the stairs, and she grabs each of us by an arm, and she is doing this, and I am still limp on the floor. And Amy is like, mom, Mom, Mom. And I'm sitting there going, no, Amy. Say bye bye, Amy, Amy. And at this point, my mom sees, like the orange looks at me and I was chugging orange. Amy saved my life. And my mother looks and her two darling children, she goes, God damn it.

Kathryn Burns (41:26)

That was Brad Lawrence. Brad tells us that not a single family visit has gone by in the last three decades that did not include Amy saying, you know, I've saved your life once. The story you just heard was actually the first story Brad ever told on stage. I was also in the audience for this telling, and I swear I thought the roof was going to lift off when Brad got going. I'll never forget it. Brad is now one of the hosts of the storytelling series the Liar show in New York. He performs his solo shows the Gospel of Cheryl Finn and the Idaho Jackson Action Playset all around the country. Our final storyteller is from the very first story slam we did in Melbourne, Australia. Here's Angela Lush live in Melbourne.

Brad Lawrence (42:19)

Okay, so contrary to what you see here, I actually grew up as a very shy person. I grew up in a country, South Australia, which is a thriving metropolis. And when I was about 18 or 19, I moved to Adelaide, which completely blew my mind. So that gives you some idea of the scale that we're talking about here. And I grew up in quite a conservative family as well. So I always knew that I was different from them, but I didn't quite know how. So I thought, what can I do to kind of rebel? But not really rebel my conservative family so that nobody would see. So I decided in my 18, 19 year old naive wisdom to get a tattoo, my first tattoo. Nobody would see it. It would be fine, it would be beautiful, it would be amazing. So this story is also about the first time that I thought that I knew what I was doing and clearly didn't. So I thought, okay, I'm not going to be like the stereotypical drunken idiot on Saturday night getting a tattoo. I'm going to plan it. So I went into a tattoo parlor my friend Kaylee with a green fairy on her hip had highly recommended. And I picked out my masterpiece. It was beautiful. It was like a four size. I thought, I'm gonna get a back piece. You know, go hard or go home.

Maria Hodermarska (43:33)

Beautiful mural.

Brad Lawrence (43:34)

It's very Amazonian. There was like leaves and lilies and cliffs and waterfalls with a pool. And the moon was setting in the background. And the piece de resistance was like on the little cliff. Jutting out was a Unicorn. I thought, this is something that I could love for the rest of my life. What could possibly go wrong? So I picked up this tattoo. I thought, right, okay, no alcohol, no late nights. So Monday afternoon, I thought, this is the perfect time. Clearly, tattooists are going to be at their peak after the weekend. So on a Monday afternoon. Oh, sorry. So on a Monday afternoon, I took some time off uni went to the tattooist on my own because I very independent and mature, and I spoke to him about what I wanted. I thought, okay, I'm just going to get the unicorn and then I can put everything else in around it when I have some more money, essentially. So I'm kind of bent over the table and the tattooist is behind me and I've lifted up my shirt and he said, I'm not going to do it on your back. And I said, what do you mean you're not going to do it on my back? And he said, it's going to hurt too much. You can't have tattoos on your back. So bear in mind this is 20 or so years ago or 30 years ago. And so I thought, okay, well, you know, maybe he's right. Maybe it's going to be too painful. So I thought, maybe. What about on my hip? He said, no, no, I'm not going to tattoo it on your hip. I thought, really? Okay. He said, what about your ass? I thought, there's plenty to work with the mural, it'll be fine. So I thought, okay, nobody will see it in the bathers. It'll be okay. So my pants are down. And he's down. He's putting the stencil on. He's tackling tattooing. And what I forgot to mention at this stage is because I was clearly very artistic. Classic. It was in black and white, the tattoo. And so he says to me, oh, and I can't do it in black and white and grayscale. It has to be in color. And I said, I'm sorry. And he said, I can't do the black and white. It has to be in color. And he said, what about brown? And I'm thinking in my head, I'm thinking, a brown un. I was like, clearly, he's a trained professional. And at this moment, I hear a bell and it's the bell of the door on the tattoo shop opening. I look to my right and I realised that actually there are no screens up. So I'm in Heinle street and professional. I can see people walking down the street if they casually glance to the left, can See me bent over with my pants down and a man behind me. But that actually wasn't the most distinct, disturbing part. Three or four guys walked in, and they were clearly friends of the tattooist, so they stepped up and were chatting with the tattooist and making jokes about what I had for breakfast and the size of my ass and the tattooist, which was quite disturbing. And I felt a little bit paralysed. And the tattooist turns to one of them and said, so I'm thinking about doing this brown. What do you think? He said, I think that's a great idea. And I'm on the table. It's like, Angela, just. This happens all the time. Just be mature. You're an adult.

Kathryn Burns (46:28)

This.

Brad Lawrence (46:28)

This is all going to be fine. And so the tattoo progresses, and he's like, how are we going to do the moon? It's like, well, now it's like the sun, and we can't really do it up here, so I'm just going to put it down there. Of course, I can't see anything because I'm Ben on the table, and the guys. And so it's like, okay, let's just go with that. And he's like, oh, you know how there's, like, a grassy cliff? And he said, we can't really do that. So we're just going to do some tufts underneath each hoof, and they're going to be bright green. It's like, I. Okay, so by this time, I am completely at his mercy. So I was like, okay, the tattoo's done. I go out. I haven't seen it because clearly mirrors were not invented at that time. So I haven't seen the tattoo. And I thought, okay, it's going to take a little while to heal. So I couldn't really recognize what was happening at first, you know, a couple of days later, at home, I'm looking. It's like, oh, I'm not quite sure, but we'll put the cream on. It'll be fine. And so eventually, I got a good look at that tattoo, and it wasn't so much the angry eyebrows or the pooh brown shading or the bright green tufts of grass or the orange circle like a religious icon behind its head. I had discovered, much to my disgust, that my unicorn had no horn. And so I had become a person with a horse on their ass. And I could not understand how this had happened. So I thought about going back and getting the horn put on. I thought really, I really couldn't quite do that. So I thought my best strategy is to ignore this, which is fine because, you know, I can't really see it. Occasionally a glance in the mirror, I think it's a spider. It's all fine. But this obviously becomes a problem when you are sleeping with someone for the first time. And as a young 18 year old from the country I hadn't really thought that through. I hadn't slept with that many people, so it quickly actually became a judge of character. So people that made naa noises or My Little Pony did not last very long. But I have a one special friend who I've known for six or seven years and one of the things that I love about him is that he has never ever mentioned my tattoo. And you guys might remember it was a beautiful time. A year or so ago, England were thrown out of the World Cup. He's British by the way, he lives in Adelaide and he sent me a text a couple of weeks later after this had happened and he said thank you so much for not mentioning the cricket. And all I wanted to do was reply and say thank you so much for not mentioning the horse on my ass for the last seven years. Thank you.

Kathryn Burns (49:09)

That was Angela Lush. Angela is a freelance writer who's currently working on a collection of essays based on her experiences as a solo traveler in her trusty camper van. We had actually podcast the story quite a few years ago and I asked Angela what the reaction was to her story. At the time, she writes, I received so many photos of bad unicorn tattoos that mine didn't seem so bad anymore. Also, my special friend heard my story via Twitter and in a hilarious emoji exchange told me he loved my horse slash unicorn. How much do we love that guy? Angela went on to say, I was very glad that I said no to including a photo of the tattoo with my story. When during a particularly tense questioning session a US Port border control recently, the agent asked, so tell me about the moth. It was bad enough sitting there for half an hour wondering if he'd listened to the story when he googled me, let alone knowing that he could have seen a picture of my butt. The moth is mostly run by women, and we all heard this story a little bit differently in the wake of the MeToo movie movement. We were trying to put our finger on it and finally realized that it was the audience's reaction. Angela's so funny, so of course they're laughing, but in the current climate, I don't know if the audience would laugh quite so hard. We asked Angela about why she didn't speak up for herself and she wrote us a letter.

Angela Lush (50:46)

Dear Moth, this is a tough one to answer without writing an essay, but essentially I think it comes down to the beliefs I had about myself. According to my upbringing, I was doing something wrong and shameful, and from childhood I had a deep rooted belief that I was wrong and shameful, something that not even God could fix. I felt incredibly vulnerable, violated and frozen in fear. And in this moment it showed up as me believing that other people, even strangers, knew more about me, my body, and how I should live my life than I did. I also believed that since I'd initiated this process, I deserved anything that came my way, even if I was terrified or knew it was wrong for me. In much the same way that I believed that if I kissed a boy, then I'd had to have sex with him, even if I didn't want to because I'd kissed him and started something. Saying no didn't even seem like a legitimate option. And if I did say no, really bad things would happen. Having my needs listened to or met seemed indulgent. I wasn't supposed to have any. Add to that some nice girls don't make a fuss or take up any space beliefs. And there you have it.

Kathryn Burns (51:53)

From Australia, that was Angela Lush. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

Jay Allison (52:26)

Your host this hour was the Moss Artistic Director, Kathryn Burns. Kathryn also directed the stories in the show along with Larry Rosen. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Lou Lee and Emily Couch. Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the Storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Lemon Jelly, Moondog, Will Smith and Crumb Ben. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by prx. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.