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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Language, Coins and a Proposal
00:57:12
Novelist Walter Mosley examines the power of language to break and form bonds; an artist connects with her father when he sends her coins he finds on the street; a woman describes her harrowing rape and pursuit of stability; and an actor proposes marriage, but waits a long, long time for an answer.
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- [00:01]
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- [01:43]
Sarah Austin Janess
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin, Genes producing director of the Moth and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is true stories told without notes in front of a live audience. We have four stories this hour. A man feels the weight of hundreds of years on his shoulders. A woman can't quite get the pieces of her life back in order. A comedic actor finds an unanswered marriage proposal isn't funny. And Flash Rosenberg, who tells our first story. Flash is an artist. She calls herself angel, an attention span for hire. She's a photographer, performer, animator and inventor. The story you're about to hear details a scientific test Flash created called the Wish Inflation Index. Here's Flash Rosenberg live at the mall.
- [02:40]
Flash Rosenberg
So I was back in Philadelphia to perform a show I wrote called called the Wish Inflation Index. And I was nervous. This is the first time I was back in Philadelphia to do a show since I'd moved to New York three years earlier and I thought I should be really great by now. But I was just me. I was also nervous because my father was in the audience and he was going to listen to me. So I really wanted to do a good job. Now Dad's a rocket scientist, although my mom would be the first to say he's no rocket scientist. He's a logical man, an engineer who joked more than he spoke. I mean, whenever I had some difficulty, some schoolgirl nastiness, it might require, some fatherly advice, he would just go there, there. Whenever I would say I love you, he'd go right. Did he ever say he loved me? No. I mean, not even when he gave me a birthday card. He didn't sign it. There was no love dad. Instead, his theory was if a card was good enough for him to give it to me, it should be good enough for me to give to anyone else. So the cards weren't signed. And whenever he really, you know, there was some issue that really needed to be dealt with, he would suddenly launch into his best Ed McMahon impersonation. Here's your mother. So I have all of this in mind while I'm on stage ready to deliver the wish inflation index. And it's a piece about how much of a struggle I had, how tough it was when I first came to New York. I mean, the man I dearly loved suddenly stopped speaking to me. I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent, and I was much too proud to tell my father about this. But I was finding lots of pennies on the sidewalk. So why was I having so much bad luck? You know the old saying, see a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck. What's wrong with the luck? I've always paid attention to money on the ground. As far as I can tell, it's the highest paid job I've ever had. I timed it. I can pick up a penny at the rate of 1.8 per second. At that rate, I'm making a $8 per minute. That's $64.80 an hour. That's $2,592 a week, which is about $135,000 a year. If only the work were steady. So what was up with the luck? You know, it dawned on me then. It was the economy. I mean, wishes, like everything else, must have gotten inflated. But by how much? So I decided to conduct a scientific test. Every time I found a penny, I made the same wish and put it in the same jar. Same penny, same wish over and over again for three years until the wish came true. The man finally spoke to me again. But more exciting than the wish coming true was I couldn't wait to count the money. There was 475 cents in that jar. 475. Which means. Which proves that the Wishes have been inflated by 47,500%. After the show, my father came up to me and said, good job, you got the math right. And that's about as good as it gets. That's high praise from my father, who doesn't speak that much. But math was also something we shared. Whenever I needed help with math homework, Mother would say, find your father. And then dad would come in. I think, oh great, he's going to help me solve these problems so I can go watch tv. But instead dad would say, hey, this is fun. And he'd give me more problems. And he thought he was teaching me all about math, but actually he was teaching me not to ask dad for help when I had a problem. So why does his praise mean so much to me? Why is it so important when my father speaks to me? Because it was a long period of time when he couldn't. After his father died suddenly, my father suffered from a nervous breakdown. And my mother said that because he's very sad. He's now very tired and he has to go away and go away from the noise of my brother and I playing and bothering him so he can rest, so he can get better. Then every Sunday I would go with my mom on a long trip to go visit him in the hospital. Doctors had said that an eight year old daughter is sometimes the best medication to help cheer up a very sad father. But when we got there, dad would be behind the glass and mom would go in and talk to him. And he stayed behind the glass for about a year and a half. Mom reassured me, your father loves you so much, he just can't talk to you right now. Well, eventually he must have had enough rest because dad came back home and life went on. He went back to work, mom kept taking care of the kids. It was as if it had never happened. It was never discussed. But I knew somehow that things were better, that he was better. Or maybe it was just because I was better. How did I know? How do we know the things we know when we haven't been told? This is the question that has guided my entire life in art. So about a month after that performance, I go back home to Delaware to visit the family for the holidays. And when I walk in the door, dad says, here's your gift. And he hands me a clear plastic sandwich bag filled with index cards. What? I find money too. And on that top card, he had a penny taped to the edge on the left side and then over on the right, in his distinct hand printing, he wrote 12, 2, 97. And underneath, found on the stairs at Thiokol, that's where he worked. And I'm looking through the cards and by about the fourth or fifth card he suddenly decided to add what he was doing, not just where he was, the date and the finding place, such as found on the floor at the Temple Beth El Men's Club breakfast before the presentation by the Brandywine Zoo. And they had a rabbit, a chinchilla, a hedgehog, a porcupine and a ferret and a boa constrictor. And we didn't get to eat any of them. So then every time I saw dad, he would always hand me this sandwich bag with the index cards in them. And he started getting even. They always had this sort of scientific analysis all observed. And he started getting a little more philosophical or metaphysical. Like he had musings about how the coins were having their own independent life. Like this one where he found when I opened up the car door in the parking lot and there were these two heads up pennies having a conversation. I broke up their chat and put one in my right pocket, one in my left pocket. They quieted down and then there was a card that didn't have a penny taped to it. Instead he drew dollar signs and a bunch of Z's up on the left hand side. And he said, I dreamt I found a dollar, he says, which makes me assume that somewhere somebody else dreamt they lost one. Now this has been going on for over 15 years. I walk into the house, he hands me the sandwich bag. He doesn't even say hello, just here you go for the book. Because I had, what am I going to do with all these index cards and coins? So I started putting them into a binder, into these slip cases. And by now he's filled over 10, 10 books of these things. And like any good book that you've ever talked about and you say it's so good, you can't put it down. This book is so good you can't pick it up. It's so heavy. And in every aha of him finding a penny, he thinks of me and speaks to me. What luck. I mean, a kind of a quiet man has been revealed. He's almost like the opposite of a depressed person. Instead of being, you know, he might be subdued on the outside, but on the inside he's witty and alive. Well, we still haven't had some deep major father daughter chat. But instead of feeling damaged and angry by his absence, he taught me somehow to be aware of how to look in unusual places. To find out what I know. And with all these pennies he found, I found out that love can be a shared understanding and not necessarily an announcement. Thank you.
- [12:24]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Flash Rosenberg. Flash was a Guggenheim fellow, and at one point she was also the moth's fatigue. She mentioned to her dad that she told the story, and then she said, I love you. And he replied, very nice. The books with his index cards of change are piled high in her loft. Each is labeled DOD for dear old dad. Flash told me that when her father goes out with her mother, he even tries to get her to look for change.
- [12:55]
Flash Rosenberg
It's not as easy for him to bend down and get the coin. So he's always pointing and my poor mother Marilyn, get it, you know. And they'll go into the supermarket and he'll say, marilyn, look for money. And she'll go, david, get a life.
- [13:10]
Sarah Austin Janess
I asked Flash why it was important for her to tell this story.
- [13:14]
Flash Rosenberg
Well, it's important on so many levels. I want to honor all this work he's done that he did just really as a personal communication to me. He's not trying to have a major exhibit. He's not ambitious in trying to make a story or an article. It has some folk art, authenticity, which has something so valuable to me. It's actually what I at heart believe is the most important kind of art to do.
- [13:42]
Sarah Austin Janess
To hear more of my interview with flash rosenberg and to see some photos of her father's coin cards, go to themoth.org where you can find extra material on almost any story you hear on the moth radio hour. When we come back, we'll hear a story from novelist Walter Moseley on the importance of language and the weight of the past.
- [14:02]
Moth Sponsor
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- [14:28]
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- [15:56]
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- [17:06]
Sarah Austin Janess
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Janess. Our next story is from Walter Moseley. He told this story in one of our tour productions in Chicago. The theme was A More Perfect Stories of Prejudice and Power. Here's Walter Moseley, live with them all.
- [17:34]
Apple Product Announcer
You know, I've been absolutely convinced in this part of my life, in my 60th year, which I'm in now, that that the older you are, the more you live in the past and that everybody, every person as they live, every man and every woman, they're going forward through the years and the decades and they're still influenced by these things behind them. These things are no longer true, they no longer really have validity. They're no longer what's real in the world today. But we can't help it. We, we drag these things with us and some people drag things even older than themselves. And I wanted to tell a three part story that had to do with that. It starts off when I'm a little kid and my parents work for the Los Angeles Unified School District in Los Angeles and they realized that people of color weren't getting a good education. Mid-50s. They sent me to Victory Baptist Day School and Victory Baptist Day School Day. They teach reading, writing, arithmetic, and they also teach you who you are. They teach all kinds of things, like things that you really wouldn't know being a young kid in la, or maybe a young kid today anywhere in America that older men and women in the south were called boy and girl. And this was a derogatory term to say, yeah, hey boy. A 12 year old says to a 60 year old, hey boy, come here. Hey girl. You say to the woman who's taking care of you, come here. That was something that I learned. This is part of your history. Another thing is I was shown a daguerreotype, an ancient photograph of a woman, a black woman, bent over at a 90 degree angle with a sack of cotton on her back. The sack is five times larger than her, it's twice as heavy as she is and she's just dragging it and she's picking cotton and she's picking that cotton and she's putting it in the bag. That's what she's doing. She's putting this cotton in the bag, dragging this gigantic weight in her life all day long. And this came into me, this is part of my history, this is who I am and who I was and where I'm coming from. Some years goes by, maybe 10, 12 years. Now I'm 18 years old. I'm a nighttime crew custodian for the Board of Education line lausd. It's a group of about eight young men, all of us black. And we go to school at night and we do things. We strip wax off the floors or we wax floors or we move the chairs out of classrooms or we move them back in again. We do big jobs in the yard, things that the regular staff didn't have time to do and didn't have the manpower to do. And so we come in and we do the work. It was kind of fun, you know, maybe 18 to 22, 20, 23 years old. All, you know, black. I was the only one from la because it's la. Most people come from other places. There's one guy, his name's Eddie, tall, lanky guy, wore glasses, a little bit older than me. One day at a 10 o'clock lunch, Eddie's staring at me. He's just staring, like really hard. And he's looking and finally said, hey, hey, Eddie, what's up, man? And he said, you know, Walter, I like you. And I said, well, good, good. He said, but, you know, man, if somebody offered me $2,200 to kill you, you be dead. And, you know, I laughed. Not like you're laughing. I went and I said, I said, well, you know, you don't have to worry about that, Daddy. I don't think anybody wants me dead that bad. But I'm thinking like, number one, what does he need? $2,200 worth of debt. And why does he think that my demolition will somehow save him, you know, but, you know, went on, there's another guy, his name was John, he was from Arkansas, very tall guy, loved to laugh and play. And, you know, he was always saying, walter, can't you introduce me to some California girls? Because he's, you know, from Arkansas. He thinks I know things, which I didn't. But, you know, he wanted to have a good time, he wanted to play, you know, One night, all of us go to a school. It's about 6:00. We get there. There's a woman, an older white lady, late 50s, early 60s, who works in the office. She's the one who was supposed to let us in and show us where we begin to do our work. And we walk in and she's very open, very friendly, comes right up to us and she says, well, I'm so glad to see you boys. You can. And before she could finish, John jumped at her and screamed unintelligibly, like, ah. And he's at her, he's a big guy. Took four guys to hold him back. At one point, while he's screaming, he says, I will kill you. I will kill you. And. And she falls behind the desk. She's scared. Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh my. What happened? You know, what did I do? The guys, you know, drag him out. And I think Eddie actually went out to talk to him. Maybe he was threatening him or something. Anyway, he's outside and I'm sitting there and it slowly dawns on me that because this white woman from California, who probably has sons older than any of us, said, you boys. And he's from Arkansas. And he heard that story I learned at Victory Baptist. When you call a black man a boy, this is a terrible insult. And he. He was so sensitive that he would have actually attacked her. And I realized that my enemy wasn't language itself. It wasn't the utterance of language itself. It wasn't even what somebody meant. But it's how that language affected me, how sensitive I was. And I imagined John like that woman picking the cotton with this gigantic pustule on his back, larger than him, heavier than him, older than him, that if anybody just touched it, he would go crazy. It would explode. So now, you know, this is the 1960s, 1970s, actually. Now we're going to jump. 37 years later, I'm living in New York City. I'm living in the West Village. I'm walking down Christopher street one early evening. There's a young man, about the age I was when I worked for the board of education, young white guy, and he's standing there handing out pamphlets, and he's saying, come to the gay rave. Come to the gay rave. Come to the gay rave. He's very happy. He's handing out these pamphlets, people taking them. And he said, gay rave. Only 20 blocks from here. Come to the gay rave. You know, and people are taking them, and people are walking by. And I stopped. I didn't even realize I stopped. But there was a young black man, also about the same age, standing, looking at him. And he just really, really looking at him like this. Just like Eddie was looking at me when he was thinking about killing me for that $2,200. And he's looking so strongly at this guy that it stopped me. And finally, the young black man, he reaches forward and he takes one of the pamphlets, and he grabs it, and he's reading it, and he's studying it, and it's really serious. And finally, when there was nobody around the guy for a moment, the black guy said, hey. Hey, man. Hey, man. Tell me something. Tell me something. And the white guy smiles, says, what do you want, man? He goes, any. Any bitches up in here? And the white guy looks at him and he smiles, shakes his head, and he says, no, brother, just us niggas. And I was afraid. It was like somebody slapped me across the face. I thought this guy was gonna explode like John. I thought it was gonna be this incredible fight. But instead, the black guy nods and smiles and says, all right. And he was ready, you know, that's what he wanted to know. He didn't want no bitches up in there, he only wanted niggas. Now, I was in a quandary. I'm sitting there, you know, I'm an older man now, you know, and these are these two young men. And you know, I was thinking, well, maybe I should correct them, you know, maybe I should say using this sexist language, this racist language, this. And I'm just sitting there thinking about it. I thought about it for so long that when I looked up, they were gone. A white guy had gone to some other corner to invite people to the gay rave. The black guy has gone to the grave, Ray, you know, And I was sitting there and it finally came to me that they weren't talking to me. They were talking to each other. They had their own language, they were using language. And I had been so deeply affected, not unlike John had been all those years before. And I finally realized that what they were saying to me, even though they weren't talking to me, what they were saying to me is, you got to let that load go. And I realized that I was like that woman carrying that gigantic, that heavy, that 400 year old sack on my back. And I was dragging it. And not only was I carrying it, it was grafted to me. It was a part of me. I'm dragging this thing out of history and it's guiding my life. It's governing my life. It's making me make assumptions about these people who I don't know and I did not understand. And they were saying, you got to let that weight go. And I was left there feeling I would like to, but it's grafted to my skin and that I'm afraid that. That if I let it go, it might kill me. Thank you.
- [27:42]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Walter Moseley. Walter is a best selling novelist most known for his crime writing. He's won an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and Pen America's lifetime achievement award. Remember, you can pitch us your own stories. Just call us at 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684 or log on to themauf.org to record your pitch right on the web. Stories found on the Pitch Hotline are developed and then presented in tour shows all around the country. Our next story is from Barbara Weiner. Barbara took a storytelling workshop at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Minnesota and was recommended for a spot in our St. Paul lineup. When choosing which story she'd go with, I said, think about a turning point, a time when everything changed, when you were no longer the same. And she said, I know exactly the Story I want to tell. The story you're about to hear is explicit and contains violence. It isn't suitable for children. The theme this night was When Worlds Stories from the Clash. Here's Barbara Wiener, live at the mall.
- [29:07]
Barbara Weiner
The light in September in Minnesota. Is unlike any light anywhere else I've ever been. It's golden and cool, and the sky is the most vivid side of blue that I've ever seen. Now, I really appreciate that because I grew up in the South. Where the light does not change very much. You see, my dad worked for the space program. So he was this crazy rocket scientist narcissist. And our family motto was that if you worked hard, you could make the life you wanted. And if you didn't have the life you wanted, you weren't working hard enough. Now, I was, as he said, strong willed. And so, given that I was going to be a professional. And so that's what I did. I was a professional, and I was going to be a solid, shiny. I'll play by all the rules now. One beautiful, beautiful September afternoon. I was 29, and I was in my apartment in Minneapolis. And I heard a knock at the door. And I open it up, and there in the hallway is a man in a suit. And I thought, oh, that's a little odd. But he immediately told me he had lost his dog. And I was, of course, completely softened. And I said, oh, you know, I bike. Just give me your phone number. I'll find your dog. I'll call you. And I handed him a pad of paper and a pen. And he didn't take my pen. Instead, he took one out of his suit pocket and he wrote a number down. And he handed me back the pad. And I looked at it. And there weren't enough numbers to make a telephone number. And I felt hot. And I heard the sound in the back of my head. That was like those giant breakers on buildings. And you pull it down and it makes that boom sound. And there was this steel on steel sound. And I looked up from this pad of paper, and he had a gun. I'm in my bedroom, and I'm standing in front of the mirror. And I can see him holding the gun. And he is backlit by this extraordinary, beautiful September golden light. And he says, take off your clothes. And then he reaches over and he closes the blind and cuts off the light. I remember the feeling of the lace on my back. I remember a sound of this garage sale that was right next door outside my window. And there were people laughing and talking and music playing. And Then I felt the gun on my thigh and I thought, no. I knew I was going to die. And I thought, oh, my God, I have postponed my life. You know, I have been doing this a everything altogether, keeping it solid, sort of creating some future that I was going to stand, step in sometimes later, and I was going to have it all over again. And I just wasted it. And I didn't get it. I just didn't get it. And I look up into his eyes, like looking for an answer, and I see this chaos, this black tornado, barbed wire, sticky, swirling chaos. And I get it that I'm not going to be able to work harder and get out of this. I'm not going to be able to negotiate harder or work smarter or work shinier. I am going to die and there is nothing I can do about it. And I stopped. And he reached inside me and he broke something I didn't even know was there. I surrendered and he smiled and it was over. You're a nice girl, he said. I wish we had met under other circumstances. I really like you. I'm going to go now and I don't want you to move for 15 minutes. So I lay on the bed for 15 minutes. I look at the clock. It's 4:00. I'm not going to move. I know how to follow the rules. And then he does come back and he checks to make sure I hadn't moved. And he is so pleased that I didn't move. And then he leaves. They catch him the next week, and at the police lineup I find out that he actually had raped women before me and after me, and in fact had been serving a life sentence for rape, but had behaved very well. And he had been on parole now for a month. In the lineup, he walks up to the glass and says, I lost my dog. And I don't know if it's him, but my body knows. And I feel this electrical charge go through me. And the other women are there too, and they are weeping and shaking and falling apart. And everyone is so, so gentle with them. And I am so gentle with them. I comfort them and I can do this. I'm going to be okay. I'm fine. The rape counselor that I saw said I was doing great. And after two sessions she said I didn't have to come back. And I guess I was doing great. I mean, I still had nightmares and I was throwing up, but, you know, hey, I can do that. And then I got a job a few months later, my first job in tv. And I was a Pa. And I was terrific. I was completely obsessive compulsive. I was focused. I was organized. I was working 16 hours a day. I was working like my life depended on it. Because you know what? It did. I had the choice between work or nightmares. And who wouldn't choose? Work. Work. Then my girlfriend started fleeing because, you know, it was six months, and I should have been over this, and I was actually worse than I seemed to be at the beginning. And they couldn't figure it out, and they couldn't tell me everything was going to be okay, because it wasn't. And it was just easier to slowly step out of my life. And then a few months after that, I have a big fight with my rocket scientist crazy father, and. And the family who are living out of state don't call anymore. And you know what? We couldn't fix it. I couldn't fix it. They couldn't fix it. We don't like not fixing it. And so maybe it was a little better we didn't talk. I was spinning out of control. I was in control. I was holding on so tight that I had become this hard, plastic, clear shell that was filled with all of this spinning, sticky black. I was holding on so tight, I was vanishing. I couldn't even find me in there anymore. And so a friend who actually lived out of town, so she didn't have to deal with me every day so she could hang in there a little bit, gave me a phone number of a therapist she had seen. And I, every day for a couple of weeks, would call the number, and then I'd hang up because I thought, what if she tells me I'm supposed to be okay? Then what do I do? I mean, I didn't know anyone who had ever been raped. And I didn't even know that you could come out the other side. I had no idea that there was any other side. And I was terrified to have someone tell me I was. You know, I had to work harder because I couldn't work any harder. One day, I actually let it ring through. And the next day, I met Ingrid. And she did not tell me I was okay. In fact, she told me I should come in three times a week. And I did. And I started talking and I talked and I talked, and I told my story again. And I told it again, and I was still saying, why? Why do I have to keep telling this story? And yet I couldn't stop. And she said, that's how people heal. Well, one day I went in, and I didn't have any More words. I couldn't tell it anymore. I realized that I've come to this place. The spinning had taken over, and I wished I had died that day. And there was a lot of silence. And she looked at me and she knew. And she said, okay, I'm going to make you a deal. If you don't jump off a bridge, I won't abandon you. And I didn't even realize that that's what it was. Everything I thought I knew about the world was gone. And everything felt like I was abandoned. And if I was abandoned, I was alone in that black chaos. And Ingrid was not going to abandon me. And then I started to heal. About 10 years later, I was sitting in a community meeting next to an older woman. It was one of those crime meetings, you know, where something's gone in the neighborhood and we're all sitting, sitting there. And I told her my story. I mean, just a little bit of it. But I told her my story and she told me hers. Something that had happened 35 years before and she hadn't told anyone. And, you know, I realized that I could hear her story in a way I never could before, that my listening was different. It's been 27 years since. Since that day in September. And I wasn't able to put those pieces back together again into that whole shiny, solid surface. But it's a little more like a mosaic now, and, you know, it's okay. And I realized as I told my story, all kinds of stories, people started telling me their stories, all kinds of stories. And I started hearing it, and I think they did, too. And I realized that tiny places between those broken spaces was filled with these people's stories. And in fact, that mosaic is really strong because it's filled, glued together with people's stories. And every September, this last one, when I feel that golden, golden light, I remember that that sky is more and more beautiful than it was even 27 years ago. Thank you.
- [40:34]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Barbara Weiner. She lives in Minneapolis. Barbara sent the recording of this show to Ingrid, the therapist who helped her find her way. And Ingrid said she was proud of her. Barbara is a documentary filmmaker and runs a non profit group called TV by Girls where she teaches young girls to find their voices. She says every girl has the potential to help shape a better world. All the stories you've heard this hour are available at the itunes store. In a moment, our final story. An actor proposes marriage just before shooting the last episode of his TV series.
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Moth Sponsor
The Moth Radio hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and presented by the public radio exchange. Prx.org.
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Sarah Austin Janess
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin, Genes producing director of the Moth. Our last story is from comedian and actor Richard Kind. Richard has been in films on Broadway and on television. You might know him from Mad about yout. He was also the press secretary for all six seasons of Spin City. And this story takes place while filming the very last episode of that show. Here's Richard Kind live at the mall.
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Tech Reviewer
The only thing you have to know about me before I start my story is that on August 8, 1988, I declared that eight was my favorite number. All right? About 14 or 15 years ago, I'm in New York. I'm doing Spin City, okay? Now, I'm going out with this lovely woman named Dana Stanley. And about a month and a half before the date that I'm going to be talking about, I had. My dad was a jeweler in Princeton, New Jersey, okay? And he had passed away, but he, you know, everybody in New York knew him. There was a supplier. So I go to one of the gemologists and I get two sapphire stones. And then I go to another gemologist for the diamond. We put it together in platinum, and we make a beautiful engagement ring. I'm doing Spin City. It's August. I say to my girlfriend, Dana, I say, we're going to a party tonight, a cocktail party with old friends of mine, okay? So we're going. We have to get ready. Now. My girlfriend does not like social things. She doesn't like to go out a lot. I'm gregarious. I'll go to a party. I close them up. She does not. And she was a little upset. Well, what do we have to go out for? So comes the time we go out, she takes forever. She's running late, she's primping. Nothing will ever be right. She won't be perfect. But she comes downstairs, we go out to hail a cab on the streets of New York. Sure enough, as we're hailing it, sure enough, half a block south of us, there's some guy who hails the cab before us. And he gets in and Dana is, what. What is he doing? And I'm just going nuts. I'm going crazy. I don't know what I'm talking about. And, you know, I'm sweating and everything like that. And she. We get in the cab. Why do we have to. Who are we? Whose party are we going to? Who we meet? I don't want. Why do we have to do this? I have the guy with the Cab like that. We get up to West 88th Street, 18 West 88th Street. The date is August 8th. Okay, I'm biding my time, waiting. And finally, because there is no 8 West 88th street in front of 18 West 88th Street, I look at my watch, and at eight minutes after eight on August 8th, in front of 18 West 88th, I get down on my knees and I say, Dana, eight is my lucky number. It's 8:08 on August 18th. We're in front of 18 West 88th. Will you make me the luckiest man in the world? I pull out the box. I show her the ring. Will you be my wife? She doesn't say yes. She doesn't say no. Very thoughtful woman. She loves me. I know she loves me. But am I the guy? Am I the guy that she wants to spend the round? I wouldn't do it. But nevertheless, we go to Cafe des Artistes for dinner, which, for those of you who are fond of New York, it no longer exists. But there are other places to overpay. Anyway, cut to many months later. It's March. It's the last episode of Spin City. The story on the show that week involves a mouse in City hall, and we have to get a cat to chase it out. Very funny. Ha ha ha. Sitcom. But I happen, Dana and I happen to have a cat named Vladimir that's about 17 pounds, maybe 18, 19. Huge, adorable. And when you lift it underneath the shoulders, it becomes. I'm not kidding, it's this. It looks like Superman flying. And it just stands there like this. And I said, my cat is the perfect cat. Are you interested? And they go, sure. So I go home, I tell Dana, what do you say? You want to put Vladdy on tv? And she's thrilled because she loves her cat. She, you know, got it from the pound, and they were going to kill it. So she loves Vladimir. Vladimir. And now Vladdy's gonna be on tv. So I bring the cat in on Wednesday to show them. They say, he's perfect. We're gonna use him, okay? The next day, the animal wrangler, who has lost a job, a gig, because his cat is now not being paid. Mine is gonna be used. His cat is out of a job, says to me, why don't you let the cat get acclimated to the place? Jesus is right. My cat goes crazy. It's a house cat. She's missing lighting men and actors. Oh, my God. And you know, there's activity going on. My cat hates it, goes nuts. What we were gonna all he would do was bring him out of the case. Do the thing, yeah, that's the cat. And then put him back in the case and it's done for. All right, Friday comes, it's time for the show. I bring Vladdy out and Vladi immediately goes crazy, goes underneath the bleachers. I go and I chase. I chase him. He scratches my arm and it's bleeding. It's bleeding. I'm gonna go on national television. Now. I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt and a coat so nobody on TV will notice. Nobody can see it, but I know, I feel the blood is dripping down. And I finally get Vladi. It's horrible. I go, I do the scene, everything's fine. Put him back in the case. It's wonderful. Scene ends. Dana comes backstage to see Vladdy because this is her, Vladdy, who's just been on tv. Now, when I get excited and I know there is danger, I would like to say, no, Dana, don't go into the case. Vladi's feeling a little perturbed and there's danger and she might scratch you. What came out was, no, no, Dana, no, just don't stop, Stop in front of everybody. The audience, the camera people, the actors, everybody. I'm drawing attention now. Dana hates to be the center of attention. She hates it. I'm the actor. She is not. She works for a non profit. She's an animal lover. This is what she does. Not only does she not like to be the center of attention, she does not like to be yelled at at all. And here, in front of everybody, I have just done two things that she despises. Despises. She goes upstairs. I got a show to do. I'm going on national tv. Come on, come on, let's go. I go upstairs, she's up there by my dressing room, and she wails into me. She had not seen me bleeding. So, you know, she doesn't know that I'm hurt or anything like that. All she knows is that she's been embarrassed. And she goes, how dare you? Now, she's also a horsewoman and she was wearing boots and she kicked me right here. Furious. I'm telling you, she's furious. Way to go, girl. Thank you. I'm the sympathetic character in this story. So she leaves Michael Boatman, who plays the black fella on Spin City, great actor. His wife Myrna comes up to me and says, where's Dana? I said, she left. She goes, no, no, no, no, no. Where's Dana? I said, she left. She goes, where is Dana? I Said on and on. She just said, no, seriously, Richard. She just went on, where is Dana? I said, myrna, she's left. She went home. I'm not in the best mood in the world. My leg is killing me. I go home, I'm not so happy because it's, you know, it's the last episode. I, you know, I go to sleep. She's sleeping out on the couch. The next morning she comes in. I say, dana, I have not the words to tell you. I said, when I am working, I am so concentrated. I said, that is opening and closing night for me. You've got to respect that. How dare you come in. I was hurt. You kick me. Nobody kicks me. Nobody hits me. Nobody that I love. I don't care how much I love them. How could you do that to me? I said, we got to rethink everything. And Dana said, don't you know what I was going to do? I said, dana, I haven't the foggiest notion. Well, in sitcoms there is a, what's called the, there's a stand up. Who stands up and it keeps the attention of the audience up and their humor up in between scenes. And you have to reblock and you have to move cameras and everything. He's a warm up guy and he's there standing there. He's got the hardest job of the night. He's got to keep everybody up for, you know, from 7 to 11 with a microphone. And she said that she was going to get up. A woman who does not like to get up in front of people. She was going to grab the microphone and say, ladies and gentlemen, last August 8th, Richard Kind asked me to marry him. And today I want to tell you all, I accept his proposal. But she didn't do that. She kicked me and left. Dana kicked me and left. And while she was giving that little speech, Myrna was going to come up with the ring that she had in her pocket and open it there so that she could give it to Dana. And Dana would put it on her ring finger. But Dana left and Myrna had a diamond and sapphire ring in her pocket and went home to Westchester. The wrap party was that night. That was Saturday morning. Wrap party was that night. We invited the whole cast over to our house. Before the party, we announced that we were indeed going to get married. And that was 14 years ago. And now we have eight children. No, we don't. We have three. Max, Samantha and Skylar. Thank you very much.
- [53:30]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Richard Kind when he and Dana got married. George Clooney was Richard's best man. Photos of the wedding party are on our website, themoth.org that's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the Moth.
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Moth Sponsor
Your host this hour was Sarah Austin. Janess Sarah also directed the stories in this show. The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Joan D. Firestone, Kathryn Burns, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. Special thanks to Laura Haddon and Brandon Ector. The Moth's recording engineer is Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York City. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Cranes and Miles Davis. 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. Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange prx.org moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. To find out more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.