Transcript
Dan Kennedy (0:00)
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Tony Burch (1:09)
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This week, two stories about young men coming of age, one in the US Midwest and one in Australia. And it's kind of amazing to once again realize we are all very, very much the same in this world. Our first story is from Tony Burch. He told it on a main Stage back in 2015. The theme of the night was between worlds. Here's Tony live from Melbourne.
Brad Lawrence (1:41)
In what would become my last year of high school, my father had a serious nervous breakdown, and it came as a great relief to his family because he's a man who had terrorized his wife, my mother, and terrorised his children for many years. So to have him out of our life was something that gave me a sense of lightness. I started the school year that year sitting behind a girl who I'd sat behind the previous two years, a girl who I'd never noticed before. She was an Italian girl who worked in her father's fruit shop. But on that first day of school, something remarkable happened. The sun was shining through the window into the classroom, and I'm not sure if it was the sun shimmering off her hair or if her hair was shimmering towards the sun, but her brown hair looked absolutely beautiful. And when she turned around and looked at me, she had these remarkable chestnut eyes and they warmed this spot here in my heart. And I knew straight away that I was in love with her. And I needed to Tell her I'm in love with you. The problem was she had a lot of girlfriends that she hung around. If I wanted to tell her I loved her, I couldn't get close to her. And even if I got close to her, I was a very shy boy and it wouldn't have been possible. Back home, things were very difficult because my mother worked in the factory every day. She had five children who had sat on their collective ass and not helped her for many years. But she finally asked that we have to do something around the house and help her. But none of us volunteered. And then one Saturday morning, she said, will anyone go to the fruit shop for me? I jumped up and said, I'll go to the fruit shop. I headed to the fruit shop with a long list of vegetables and fruit. And I walked into the fruit shop, and there was the Italian girl, the fruit shop girl behind the counter at the fruit shop with this incredibly beautiful floral apron on. I stood behind a mountain of tomatoes, and I looked across at the Italian girl. I tried to get her attention. She wouldn't look at me. She was looking over the other side of the room, And I looked over the other side of the room, and there in the corner of the shop was her father. He was wearing an apron, but it was a leather apron, a medieval leather apron. And he had one eye on his Italian daughter, the other eye on a boy who was looking at his Italian daughter so she would not dare look at me, so there was no chance of getting her attention and telling her I loved her in the shop. The next week at school, I was walking down the stairs at lunchtime and an older boy bumped into me on purpose to get my attention. He said, your whole family are fucking crazy. And your father as mad as a cut snake. Which was true, but he shouldn't have said it. So I challenged that boy to a fight. And after school, we met at the tram stop. We always had a fight at the tram stop, because if you were losing, you could get on the tram and go home. So we're fighting at the tram stop. I throw a punch, he grabs me by the school jumper, and we fall through a shop front window and the glass falls down around us. Not surprisingly, I was expelled from school. And being expelled from school meant that I couldn't see the Italians girl at school any longer. So I lay at home on the couch moping. My older brother came home from school one day with a book in his hand. He goes, what are you going to do for the rest of your life? I said, nothing. I Was so distraught. He goes, look, here's something you can do for me. I can't do my English essays. He threw the book at me. He said, do read that book and see if you can do the essay for me. I said, what is it? He said, I don't know. It's some French shit. I can't understand it. You do it. I picked up the book. I couldn't pronounce the author's name. I put the book in my back pocket and forgot about it. Forgot completely about it. I walked outside into the street and I saw a tram going by. And I saw the Italian girl on the tram going home to the fruit shop. I chased the tram. I followed the girl up the street. She went into the fruit shop and she put her apron on and stood behind the counter. I had a 5 cent piece in my hand. I walked into the shop and I thought, what can I get for 5 cents? I picked up one apple in one hand. I looked at, I picked up another apple and she saw me. She felt sorry for me. She came over with two mandarins and says, you can have two mandarins for 5 cents. The most romantic words I've ever heard until this day. I went home with my two mandarins. And then I decided I would go back to the shop every night after school until I could tell that girl I loved her with her father watching in the corner. So I went back the next night, the night after that, the night after that. Sometimes I left with a single carrot, sometimes with an apple. One night I left with a solitary potato. When you come from a family of six, five starving children, your mother working in a factory, never go home with a single potato and say, I have bought dinner. I didn't know what to do. Then my brother came home from school one day and he said, you know there's going to be a school dance in three weeks. I thought, a school dance? The Italian girl will be going to the school dance. I'll go to the school dance and see the Italian girl. But I couldn't go to the school dance because they'd been expelled from school. Because if you're expelled from school, you can't dance at the school dance either. So I had a meeting. I went up to the rooftop of the Housing Commission flats with my gang, my very intelligent gang of four boys. We sat down and we hatched a plan. And the plan was that my friends would go in the front door of the school dance. They would go around to the side door, they would open the emergency exit, sneak into the School dance. I would hover in the background. When the Italian girl came, I would come forth and say, I love you. End of story. There was a second part of the plan which didn't make any sense then and makes less sense now. My friend said, and I've got another idea. I said, what's that? He said, I'm going to get a water pistol. I'm going to fill it with blue ink. I'm going to go to the dance. I'm going to spray everyone with blue ink. We all thought, okay. So the next Saturday night, they go in the front of the school dance. I'm hiding behind a bush at the side of the dance. A minute later, I hear the door creak open. It's my friend. He says, come in, come in. I sneak into the school dance. I hover in the corner in the darkness. No one can see me. And then the lights on the dance floor go on. A song comes on, a very sophisticated song. Ballroom Blitz by Sweet. The Italian girl gyrates onto the dance floor. She has this immaculate white dress on that she bought from Mary Vale and Mr. John. She has her hair done up, the biggest hair I've ever seen. It must have been Blow Wife by Edward Beale himself. This big hair. And I think, this is my moment. This is my time. I push my friends aside. I walk through the crowd. I go onto the dance floor. The Italian girl from the fruit shop, she turns and looks at me with those chestnut eyes, and I am just besotted. I take a step toward her, about to say, I love you. And then a look of horror on her face. I turn around and it's my friend with the water pistol. Aiming his water pistol at the Italian girl. He shoots the water pistol and a spray of blue ink strikes her in the heart. I turn back and look at her. She has her hands over her heart. She starts to bleed blue blood through her fingers, down her white dress. My blue angel bleeding in the middle of the dance floor. I want to help her, but my friend, he grabs me with one arm, says, run, the police are coming. And with the other, he sprays the crowd on the way out. We get two steps outside the dance hall when I'm wrapped in a bear hug by the local police sergeant and some other police. They stand us up against the wall, they pat us down, and they find all sorts of contraband. They find, of course, the water pistol with the blue ink. They find half a bottle of ouzo. There was a lot of Greeks in Richmond at the time. A half a bottle of Ouzo. They find a pipe, gun, a marble and a firecracker. And when the policeman gets to me, he pats me down. He feels an object in my back pocket. He pulls it out. He goes, what's this? I look over my shoulder. I say, it's a novel. He looks at the front cover. He says, the Outsider by Albert Camus. Who the fuck is Camus? I said, it's Albert Camus and he's a French Algerian. He hits me across the head with a book and calls me a smart ass, which is true. The next week we have to go to court. We're charged with willful damage and four boys have to front up at court. I managed to hide the letter that was sent to my home from my mother. I didn't want to worry that I was going to court. We go to court and the judge gives us a 12 month probation because we had no prior convictions. I'm about to leave the court and the judge calls us down the front. He goes into his desk, he pulls out a book. He holds up, he says, which one of you boys is the existentialist Now? My mother brought me up to admit to nothing. I said, not me. And he said, obviously, it's yours. He gives me the book. I go home. I walk into the flat and I'm shocked to see my father sitting at the kitchen table. But there's something different about him. I walk over to my father, he's completely immobilized. I look into his eyes and his eyes are dead. And I realize this is a man that has changed because of being in psychiatric care. And as I found out later, this is a man who'd been pacified by pills and shock treatment with waves of electricity passing through his body that turn him into a. In a way, a sort of a corpse. But terribly at that moment, I had never felt so safe as I did at that moment. Knowing my father could not harm me or anyone in his family again. I took the book. I went up to the top of the housing commission. I sat under the moon and I read Albert Camus, the Outsider from COVID to cover. Now I know the central character, a man called Merceau. He's a killer. He kills someone. But as a 15 year old boy, even then, growing up, a delinquent in a housing commission estate, I read that book and I thought it was so sad because he was a man who seemed to care about no one. He was a man who was completely isolated and he was a man who wanted and didn't have any friends. I had a family that loved me. I had some friends who had often made some fairly dubious decisions about how to pick up girls at a dance. But they were my friends. And forever being the optimist, from that night onwards, I knew that there was an Italian girl in a fruit shop who would give me one more chance to say, I love you. Thank you.