Transcript
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Kathryn Burns (1:20)
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. Hi, I'm Kathryn Burns, the Moth's artistic director. In this hour, we'll hear stories about running away from home ridiculously over packed suitcases, the power of a hymn sung in an unlikely place, and this first story about setting up house in a place that most people would find downright creepy. It was told by the Moth's founder, George Dawes Green, at Union Chapel in London. Here's George live at the Moth.
George Dawes Green (1:51)
When I was 15 years old, I lived for a while in a mausoleum. Actually a very short while, less than a week, but it was actually a wonderful time. It was summer and there was honeysuckle and fireflies and I was desperately in love with a girl who was dead and with a man who was living but psychotic. And it was the happiest time of my life. And this is how I came to be there. When I was 12 years old, my parents took me down to Glynn County, Georgia, and that was to me, like being buried alive. Everything was gray. The skies were gray, the Spanish moss was gray. The cicadas were singing that song all the time. And I was lonely and my parents were drunks and I just wait for them to go to sleep. And then I turn on the light and stay up the whole night reading about exploration, mostly Arctic exploration or searching for the source of the Nile, or really anything that was about getting as far away from Glynn County, Georgia, as one could get. And, of course, because I stayed up all night, Mornings were torture to me. Glenn Academy was torture to me. And my grades sort of went into a death spiral through the 30s to the 20s to the teens. And I actually kind of longed for the perfection of absolute zero. But I didn't have the stick to itiveness. So I dropped out of high school when I was 15. And I hitchhiked north. And I got a job in New York City as a messenger. And I got to wear this really sharp tie and jacket. And I loved not being a civilian. And I sneered at all yellow school buses. And for a while, I lived in some flops around Manhattan. And then I went one day, one Saturday, I went with a friend of mine on a road trip up to New Rochelle, N.Y. which is a little suburb. And I don't actually remember why I did it. I guess we were on a drug run. But anyway, we wound up hanging out at this sort of divey apartment full of drug dealers and derelicts. And at one point, I went back to the bathroom, and I saw in a back room. A man sitting at an upright piano and singing operatic. An operatic aria about an orangutan. And I was mesmerized. And he turned around after the song, and he looked at me and. And said, do you play chess? His name was John Orlando. He was about 30. He was kind of a slender. If you can imagine, he was kind of a slender Alfred Hitchcock. And we wound up playing chess for a week. And John's strategy for chess was to gather all of his pieces into kind of a fortress in the rear of the board on the left side, which he called the West. And from there, he would send his knights out on these long, gallant expeditions. From which they'd never return. And it would take me hours to pick my way in there and find his king and kill it. And during the whole time, John would be laughing hysterically. And afterwards, I never really could see the point of competitive chess. I just wanted to play what John called chivalric chess. But why was this original man living in this flophouse with drug dealers? Well, it was. The rent was very cheap. And it was split eight ways. And when I moved in, it was split nine ways. And I used to then commute to my job down in New York City. And then come back on the train back to this drug den every night. And I didn't do all that many drugs, but I did happily help to sort and clean. And it was an utterly depraved life for a 15 year old. And there was a 15 year old girl who used to come by. She was this beautiful redhead and just exploding into her sexuality. And of course she came by for the older guys. She. She didn't even notice me. But I was just painfully in love with her. And when I would just smell her, it would cripple me. Downstairs was this little old lady, Irene, who used to worry about me and tell me that I had to go home. And she would bake me lasagna. And I would tell her, you know, I really have no home because my parents are drunks. And I just loved her. I loved talking to her. And I loved John Orlando, who was unbalanced and who would sit up there at that piano all day long working on that opera about the Bronx Zoo where he had once worked. And he was making all of the keepers and all of the animals sing in these arias. And I think that this opera was driving him insane. Because one day I remember walking up from the train station and John was coming toward me and he had this fedora and he didn't really see me. And he just sort of walked almost past me. And then he stopped and said, Mr. Glo, there's a four ply fousey flying out of here at 5:00. Get a line on it. And then he just walked away. And I was in love with him. I mean, I'm not gay, but this was a physical love. When I was around him, I couldn't breathe. I felt like he was the world. I felt like, you know, I loved him the way that a worm loves its apple. And I think he loved me too, because, you know, the drug dealers were always trying to throw me out. They were always saying, John, this punk kid, he's 15 years old, he's gonna draw some unwanted attention. And John would say to them, no, George stays. I don't know if you've noticed about George, but he has. One amazing thing about him is that he doesn't buy into anything. He just floats through life. I want to see what he's gonna buy into. So he stays. So they threw us both out and then we had nowhere to go. We were homeless and I wasn't going to get paid for a week. And John never had any money, but he said that he knew that there were these mausoleums in the back of the local graveyard that were sort of in disrepair. And so we packed up some blankets and some pillows and some wine and we went and broke into one of these mausoleums. And it had two marble shelves on either side. And under one was the mortal remains of some man. And then under the other was his wife. And John and I sort of made our beds on these marble shelves. And we felt so safe there. The caretaker was old and never came around at night. And the police never would go into that graveyard at all. And we just kind of wandered around and got to know our neighbors. There was a dead 19 year old girl buried there. She had died in 1928 and her name was Hazel Ashe. And her inscription read, she lived for poetry. And I immediately forgot the sexy red headed girl. And when we went back to the mausoleum, I said to John, we have to write poems for Hazel Ash tonight. And he just wrote these horrible, disgusting, obscene verses. And I had to tell him to shut up. And he just laughed at me. And his laugh echoed in that mausoleum. People ask me if it was spooky in there, and I'll say, you know, it really wasn't spooky to me. I will say that if you don't like spiders, you would not have liked living there. And I will say it was clammy and gray and lifeless. And I probably would have been scared out of my wits if John Orlando hadn't been with me. But he was with me every second because he wouldn't spend a moment in that graveyard alone. So if I went out at night to take a leak, he would come shuffling out after me and sort of stand behind me. And in the morning, when I got up bright and early and put on my jacket and tie and went to my job, he went out of the graveyard with me. And then when I came back on the train that night and walked up to the graveyard, he was waiting there by the fence. And we were both so hungry, so we were hungry to the point we had to do something. So we. John had a friend of his, and we walked to the friend's house. And as we walked, we made up a poem about John's friend. And when we got to his house, we recited the poem to the man who in exchange, gave us supper and a few dollars. And then later, when John and I were walking home to the graveyard, John said to me, now you're a professional writer. And I said, oh, come on, John. He just gave us dinner and five bucks. And John said, that's what the hooker said. You're a pro. And I was so proud. And I had a little piece of pie that I saved for Hazel Ash and I put it on her gravestone. And then John and I went into the mausoleum and he sang his songs of the elephants all night. And every now and then he would let out these amazing farts that he called el destructos. And we would have to evacuate the mausoleum. And then the sprinklers came on in the middle of the night, and we just ran around buck naked under the sprinklers. And I was so happy that my scalp ached. And John saw this and he said, you know, you're buying into this, aren't you? And I said, into what? And he said, living in a graveyard. And I laughed, but I wasn't buying into that. I was buying into being with somebody who turned every moment of his life into art. And then a few days later, I was on my way home from work, coming up the graveyard lawn, and I saw that our mausoleum's door had a brand new lock. And I just immediately turned and ran. And I went to Irene's house and she said to me, so now you have to go home. And I said, I can't go home until we find John. So I went looking for John every day. And about two weeks went by. And then one Sunday morning, someone came to get us and said that John was at the chapel on Mayflower Avenue and was singing songs about zoo life in the middle of the mass. And I ran as fast as I could, and when I got there, they were putting John into a police car and taking him to the mental hospital, from where I don't think he ever came out, as far as I know. But as he got into the car, he saw me and he tipped his fedora and said, Mr. Glo, I got to go. And then, so did I. I had to go home.