The Moth - 25 Years of Stories: Pride

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

This week, we celebrate Pride. This episode is hosted by Larry Rosen. Host: Larry Rosen Storytellers: Donald Harrison, Tara Clancy

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org forward slash Houston. Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Larry Rosen, your host for this week. For 2022, the 25th anniversary of the Moth, we've been taking a look back at every year we've been around.

This episode, we're a 2010. In 2010, the Moth radio hour won a Peebony, and we opened up our pitchline, allowing anyone to submit a two minute version of the story they'd like to tell. With the pitchline, the Moth was able to invite even more people from even more backgrounds to share their stories. At this point, we receive hundreds of pitches a month from all over the world. We listen to each and every one and then develop some of them for Moth main stage shows worldwide. Here's a pitch we loved from Daniel Hart and Hamilton Ohio. When I was growing up, I was a second oldest of four girls. We were each about three to four years apart, which could have led to some disastrous competition, but,

blessedly, we got along pretty well as a whole. We were known as the girls. We got along even better as we entered our 20s and despite discrediting out across the country and the world. Even when we couldn't get back together for holidays and birthdays, we would still Skype even before COVID made that the cool thing to do. Ten years ago, I came to understand the lifelong depression and anxiety that I dealt with was related to my being a transgender man and not one of the girls at all. I was terrified for what that would mean to my place in this very special sisterhood that I shared. I came out to my younger sister's first and they accepted it as if I had simply said,

today is Tuesday. My older sister had far more questions, but was equally as accepting once she understood. She mostly wanted to know what it would mean for my health in the future. Ten years later, I now have two nieces from two of my sisters. And this summer, I realize that we have a whole new generation of the girls. In this special Pride episode, celebrating the 52nd year of Pride itself, we wanted to share two stories that speak to the LGBTQ plus experience. And to some of the joys and struggles and triumphs within it.

Our first storyteller is Donald Harrison. He told this at a Moth Story slam in Philadelphia. Here's Donald, live at the Moth. I love the way that my phone's notifications make me feel inside. A text? A Facebook message? Alright. A Snapchat? Ha-ba-ba.

I embrace the connection of my phone and my body's chemicals. I'm 35 years old and this connection began quite a while ago. The Roberts lived down a street from us and they had all of the technological stuff first. So it was in their home office beside my friend that I heard for the first time,

the crashing, dinging, dud-un, dud-un, kfff sound of the dial-up modem. And that jubilant voice, that said, you've got mail. America online. I was an all. What was this place?

It was here too that I was in awe. What was this place? It was here too that I was led into an even stranger zone, the America Online chat room. Beside my friend, we answered the periodic age sex location checks, pretending to be the same person. And chatting. What were we chatting about? I have no idea. We were in one of those general chat rooms. But of course with chat rooms you have like a whole menu. There's all these subgroups and interest areas. And I knew as I sat beside my friend that when we got America online in my house there was one place I would go immediately. Later, in my house, we got a dial-up modem, we got our own America online accounts, and I went directly to gay and lesbian chat number 48.

And then gay and lesbian chat number 17, 12, 39, 4, 5. I went into all the gay and lesbian chat rooms and in every one of them I found a group of people that I could talk to as I couldn't in real life. A group of people I never expected to be able to talk to. I was a teenager, I was terrified of my sexuality and I was until America online alone with it. So I chatted. I went into Game Lesbian chat rooms and I chatted and I chatted.

And maybe you're thinking at this point, oh great, here we go, another story about internet porn. Or bullies on the loose. But this is not that. Instead, I chatted in these rooms, and I plucked out two friends. They were both my age, both the same year in high school, both in the closet, both very secretive about their lives. One of them was called practically maybe.

He liked Bjork and lived in Boston. One was named Real Fly, boy, with the real spelled E-E. He lived in Arkansas and I lived in New Jersey. We chatted all the time. I remember in the summers, I would sit on the front porch of my parents' shore house and we had this huge heavy black laptop and I would put it on my lap and my thighs which are so sweaty.

And you hear those sounds, right? You remember, like, the person signed online and the door would creak open, and they'd leave and it would slam shut. There was only one message sound, and I'd be sitting in the corner of my parent's showhouse, just, you go back and forth, and across the room, my father is just sitting quietly at the table doing a crossword puzzle, having no idea what I was up to. And it strikes me today what a revolutionary way this was

to sit on your parents' front porch. I was chatting with these two kids, and nobody knew about it. They didn't know about each other. It was this other life that I was living in America online land. We chatted not to form the foundation of some future in-person relationship. We weren't dating online. We were just there for each other. We exchanged a few pictures of our faces because that's all you had at that point, and we

couldn't take anymore. We didn't take our clothes off or masturbate or anything like that. We just talked. We didn't ever expect to meet each other. But then, then we were seniors in high school, and we were deciding where to go to college, and crazily, practically maybe from Boston, ended up going to Northeastern in Boston, and real flyboy from Arkansas,

ended up going to Emerson in Boston, and me from South Jersey, I went to Boston College. So I met both of my America online friends in real life, and real flyboy and I dated for the whole first year of college he became my R.E.A.L. first boyfriend. Like the vice president of the United States my mother still uses her a well dot.com email address. For all her official mom business. I was at her house over Christmas and she signed online and damned if that thing doesn't still say you've got mail. And oh what that made me feel inside to hear that.

aowl.com email addresses make you seem I don't know a little silly or What that made me feel inside to hear that. AOL.com email addresses make you seem, I don't know, a little silly or out of touch. Get Gmail, what are you doing? But for me, they're also a relic of this time and this place that was really wonderful and for which I have to be forever grateful. Thank you. That was Donald Harrison. Donald is a writer and performer and has told many stories on the most stage. He also performs weekly at a gay piano bar in Philadelphia,

where he's lived for the past ten years. I asked Donald what he's been proud of in the years since he told this story. Here's what he said. This story takes place in the 90s and of course back then meeting people on the internet wasn't like, you know, a very cool thing to do. This was before any online dating or anything like that. And so I think I'm proud of my younger self for not only acknowledging and accepting fairly early on that I was gay, but also for giving myself the permission to reach out to others, to trust other people

from the internet, and to allow those friendships to take me where they did, which was of course to a place I never expected that was just really awesome. Our next storyteller is Tara Clancy. She told us at a New York City Grand Slyham. Here's Tara, I put them all. Woo! All right. So when I told my father I was gay, he said, all you need is love, sister.

And then we listen to a couple of Carol King records while making our own yoga. Not a chance. My dad is a retired New York cop, devout Irish Catholic. It keeps a picture of the pope hung around the rear view of this truck. Okay. And in fact, becoming a cop was his second choice of career. His first was to be a priest. And he even went into the seminary, you know, really hoping God would call him. Turns out he didn't know hard feelings. My dad left. And a little while later, he met my mother and he had me. So, in essence, I am his fall from grace.

That I'm also an atheist lesbian, ahhh drop in the ocean, you know? So, while my dad wasn't cut out for bringing God's love to the masses, he was just great at throwing them in jail. And I mean that, you know. He was in the warrant squad, which means he was like a bounty hunter for the NYPD for 21 years. After that, he retired, but not before getting his degree at night in accounting, naturally.

That being the next logical step, priest, bounty hunter, accounting. So the only reason I thought this might have gone okay is that my dad does have some very good gay friends who he even calls old school gays you know I feel brag about them you know and I'll say and they don't make them like that anymore you know meaning his gays you know but that didn't matter When I told him I was gay, he flipped out. He was living in Atlanta at the time I was here. And so our phone conversation ended with him insisting

I fly down there that weekend to talk in person click. So there I am in the passenger seat of the truck. And the only thing he has said to me is, we're going to a hotel. That's it. And we drive. He and I silent, motionless, the Pope swinging left and right.

Two hours later, we're on one-lane road in the mountains and now I'm thinking what you might be thinking. Hotel Myass, right? We are going to some pray the gay away, Jesus camp, you know, but just then a billboard appears and it has a picture of a woman on it so it is not unlike the St. Paulie girl, you know, with the braids and the beer and everything. And then it says, welcome to Helen Georgia, a recreated outpined village. And suddenly here we are, in this Disney Land bed,

fake German town, you know, with windmills and there are entire families wearing matching green hats with feathers, you know, and this is it. This is a place my father has chosen to have the conversation of a lifetime with me. Okay? This place where there is also something called Shalamaine's Kingdom that has three guys outside wearing later holes and playing Glock and Spells, all right? So we pull into our parking space at the Heidi Motel no shit and hidden. And then after sitting there, stone face drinking Johnny Walker out of our complimentary beer stones like idiots, he sets out to

discover if how and why I'm gay in a room that has not won but two cuckoo clocks. So first he blames me, you're confused and you need therapy, he says. I need therapy, I say. I need therapy. There is an oompa band outside, dad. Dad. Danny goes from blaming me to blaming himself. I shouldn't have bought to those GI Joes, you know? Or the Hot Wheels.

Anyway, this brings us to a little flashback to my childhood. So you know, my dad and I live in a tiny studio apartment when I was a kid, just the two of us pull out couch. And so we start thinking on that sort of time in our lives, and he gets a little bit quiet, and he goes, you know, God, what did I know about bringing up a little girl? I just, I did what I could, you know? Really. I just did what I could.

And at that, we broke for dinner across the street at Hydealburg, Schnitzelhaus. We didn't say very much, but the anger was fading. And then somewhere in between the sour broth and the shrewdle, my dad met his waterlue. Literally, he just looked up at me, he raised a glass, and he went, oh, screw it. At least now we got two things in common. Whiskey and women. Thank you. Tara Plancy is a writer, comic and actor.

She's a frequent host of the month main stage and has told stories on the month radio hour, NPR's snap judgment, and risk. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, the nation, the Paris Review Daily, and the New York Times magazine. She's appeared on HBO's Girls and High Maintenance, and has been a panelist on NPR's Weight-Wade Don't Tell Me. Tarrism MMR, the clansies of Queens, was a 2016 Barnes and Noble discover great new writers, Pick. To close this out, we have another wonderful story

pitch. Here's Erwin Keller. This is a story about a wedding, long incoming, short on planning, a wedding that was held hostage. It was 2004, and San Francisco had opened the doors to game marriage. Through a series of bizarre bureaucratic stuff, we found ourselves at City Hall with 31 guests and flowers being told we were bumped from the calendar. Now there was another problem there too.

Young African-American lesbians, both deaf, they haven't brought an interpreter. Now I've once taken a semester of ASL and in the subsequent years I've signed to myself a little, making up signs for words I didn't know, and I kind of lost track which signs I'd learned and which I'd invented. The city clerk saw me engaging in these confused pleasantries with them and she announced that I would only be married today if I interpreted their wedding first. I had no ability, but I also had no choice. So I was whisked to a wedding chapel that could only have been designed by a civil servant. The justice of the peace opened

his script. We are gathered here in the presence of these witnesses to unite this couple in matrimony. these witnesses to unite this couple in matrimony. My hands started moving. We, here, with point to witnesses, unite, marriage, you and you. The contract of marriage is most solemn. Marriage is important, and not to be undertaken lightly. Very important. But with the realization of its obligations and responsibilities. Very, very important. I watched the frequent confusion on their faces, give way to looks of love and joy between them. They kissed. I hugged them and raced across the building to my wedding.

Later that day, the court halted the weddings, and a couple months later they were annulled. It took another four years for us to marry in a way that would stick, but we're the last generation to have to fight for this thing so basic, so beautiful, marriage, very, very important. Remember, we'd love to hear a story from you about the turning points in your life. You can pitch us right on our website, the Mothato org. We listen to every pitch we receive and some of them are developed from Mothmainstages all around the world. That's all for this week.

We hope you enjoyed our celebration of pride. We'd like to leave you with these words of Harvey Milk. If you are not personally free to be yourself, in that most important of all human activities, the expression of love, then life itself loses its meaning. From all of us here at the Mohoth, at the Story Worthy Week, we hope it's a week filled with pride, and joy, and love. Larry Rosen is a master instructor at the Moff. After 25 years teaching, directing, and practicing theater, and comedy performance, Larry discovered the simplicity, power, and beauty of true stories, shortly thereafter

he found the month. As they say, timing is every third. Tara Clancy's story was directed by Jennifer Hickson. This episode of the month podcast was produced by Sarah Austin's Ness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Solinger. The rest of the month's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucche, Suzanne Rest, Ingeke Gladowski, and Aldi Kaza. All Moss stories are true as remembered by storytellers. For more about our podcast,

information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PierX, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio more public at PierX.org.