The Moth - The Moth Podcast: Grocery Trips and Italian Trysts

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

This week's stories are going to take us from a sexy Italian tryst, to a life-changing realization. From learning to love, to learning to accept help from others. This episode was hosted by Michelle Jalowski. Storytellers: Julie Baker learns to come to terms with her blind cane. Hanna Bowens goes to Italy to meet someone she met on a dating app. Podcast # 916 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Ford It's a Big Deal event! Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca today. I'm Michelle Jalaski, this is The Moth. Right now we're in Boston, a city where over 1,675 people have gone on stage and told a moth story. Here's one of those tellers, Julie Baker. When I hear the doorbell ring, I think, seriously? But it's Jill, and even death wouldn't be a good excuse for blowing off Jill. So I put on my coat with a hood, I grab my rolling old lady carriage. I grab the blind cane and I head downstairs.

There she is, my blind coach. I didn't seek out a blind coach. I didn't know that blindness was a sport that required a coach. But when my neuro-ophthalmologist told me that my MS-related optic nerve damage had crossed over into legal blindness, I was like, okay, whatever. I see just as well as I saw yesterday, and she said, she referred me to the mass commission for the blind. I asked her if she was allowed to do that without my consent, and she thought I was joking. I wasn't joking. I tell Jill on the phone that I really don't want to waste her time.

I'm sure she's a really busy person. And I'm not actually blind blind because I can still do stuff on my own. She just listens. She says, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And she makes an appointment to come to my house. She's carrying a blind cane. She had asked me on the phone what my height was and I saw the cane and I said, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm not doing that. I'm not that kind of blind. I get around just fine. She said, okay, okay, so do you ever fall? I said, no, no, no, no. Well, not out on the street. I fell down the stairs, but it's because it's a new house to me and I have no depth perception.

But now my son and I went to Dollar Tree and we got duct tape that's bright orange and purple sparkly and royal blue and we put it on each step so I don't fall down the stairs anymore. She said, yeah, is your son going to follow you around with duct tape? I thought that was a little rude. She asked me if I ever got lost and I said no I put in headphones and the Google directions told me to go up here and turn right and go up there and turn left and I was fine. She said how about in the dark? I said well I just get rides in the dark.

I don't really like to walk around in the dark, especially the new neighborhood. She said, OK. Well, I'm going to give you the phone number of somebody who's also a reluctant cane user. And you call her, and you hear her story. Whatever. I'll call her so I can tell her

I talked to this woman and we're very, very different. I call her. And she's funny, she tells me some funny stories about Jill, which I appreciate. She also thinks Jill doesn't have much of a sense of humor. She tells me everything changed when she named her blind cane. And she named him Stanley and she introduced him to children in her classroom. She was a teacher and she

traveled the world with Stanley. And Stanley helped her explore and be independent. She said, maybe you need to name your blind cane. I said, yeah, I don't think so, because if I were to name the blind cane at this point, his name would be fucking dickhead. And then I fell in the street. I wasn't using fucking dickhead. It was a new sidewalk to me. I didn't know the sidewalks by heart

the way I did in my old neighborhood. So I didn't see where the roots kind of made it buckle. And I tripped and I fell and it was hard. And I ripped my pants and my knee was bleeding and I was laying there on the sidewalk. I was embarrassed. It hurt. And I was pissed because Jill was right.

And I wasn't safe without the blind cane. So I sent her a text, I said, fine, fine, I'll do the blind cane training. And we did. And we took the train and we walked upstairs and I still was not happy. I didn't like that I needed the goddamn blind cane and I was gonna do whatever I could do to avoid certain blind cane situations. I told her that people would think I was faking because when I'm on the train with the blind cane and I'm looking at my phone, they know I can really see. And I'm probably just trying to ride for free.

She said, yeah, do you think blindness is all black and white? Because it's a spectrum. When she suggested we go to the grocery store, I said, no, no, no, no, there's this thing called Instacart and I don't have to do that. And if I want to run in for oat milk, I know exactly where it is. She said, okay, what happens if you need something, Instacart doesn't have it and you don't know how to find it. So I meet her. We go to Shaw's. It's raining. I said to her, how do

blind people deal in the rain? I have the old lady carriage, I have the blind cane, and it's raining. How am I supposed to do that? Do blind people not get to use umbrellas? She said, well, you have a hood, right? We walked to the store and I'm angry and it's raining, but I did it and I asked for things that I couldn't find. And when I left the store, the sun came out and I said to Jill, I'm okay on my own from here. And I snapped my cane open like a Jedi lightsaber. And I went home with everything on my list. That was Julie Baker. Julie is a writer, storyteller, and mom of two adult children who almost always text

back. She's getting ready to walk the Camino de Santiago, Portuguese coastal route, 175 miles from Porto to Spain, with a blind cane named Stella and her partner, Paul. Julie, that's amazing, and we can't wait to hear how it goes. And if you'd like to see a photo of Julie and her cane named Stella at the Acropolis in Athens, check out our website, themoth.org slash extras. On this episode we have two stories. You just heard the first about learning to accept help.

And this next one's all about a steamy Italian tryst. But you'll have to wait a few seconds for it. We'll be right back. I was looking for a way to determine what my body needed for more energy and to better understand my metabolism. And Lumen helps me do that. Your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does. It's how your body converts food into energy. When your metabolism is healthy, you feel it. Steady energy, better fitness results, and even improved sleep. Lumen is a first-of-its-kind handheld device that measures your metabolism through your

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Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Welcome back. Up next, we'll find some unlikely lessons in the most unlikely place of all, a dating app. Hanna Bowens told this at a New York Story slam where the theme was deal breakers. Here's Hanna, live at the month. Thanks. So I turned 30 at the beginning of this year. Thank you. And I learned that the quickest The quickest way out of an identity crisis is sexting an Italian that you met on a hookup app. So I was living in Chicago. He was in Rome.

We'll call him Luca. And very quickly, my daily flirting, virtual flirting conversations with Luca became like the best part of my day. We were exchanging dirty texts, photos, voice notes, you name it. And I had never done anything like this before, but I loved it because when I was talking to Luca, I was not, I wasn't this like sad, depressed, anxious, over-thinker who was struggling to function. I was confident, I was sexy.

I knew exactly what I wanted and I was someone worth wanting. And I tried to keep it, I tried to take things slow. So I waited eight weeks before I got on a plane to Italy to meet Luca. And I spent the entire plane ride, I should have been learning Italian words for like catfishing, help me. No, I was smiling the whole way, really proud of myself, because I was turning my pathetic life into a real-life movie.

And whether that movie was gonna be the next great love story or a Netflix documentary about my murder... that was for fate to decide. Um... And for anyone wondering, I did... I bought my own flight, I paid my way, it put me into debt, but when you have nothing left to lose,

like a looming credit card bill is really nothing. It's a small price for the chance it'll up. So I met Luca outside the airport in Rome. We got into his car to drive to Tuscany, and I was absolutely sick with nerves nerves but he was sweet, he was cute, he looked just like his photos, he even had a piece of pizza for me in the car to eat on the way and my entire body just relaxed in that moment because you don't bother with road pizza if you're plotting murder. So we pull up to Tuscany

to our rustic villa, it's sunset, and if this is all starting to sound like too good to be true, yeah I thought so too. And I just was like, you know what, that's my inner self saboteur and I am not gonna let that toxic prude ruin this for me. So like put that to the side. But as the night went on, the more wine I was drinking that voice just got a little bit louder and I just kept thinking you are a phony. You're just over here performing for the stranger he is gonna see right through you and I felt suddenly really stupid for being there

like kidding myself that I was deserving or capable of this kind of like happiness. So, you know, sexy thoughts, all sexy, sexy foreplay. And at one point we sit down by the fire, we're like on the carpet in front of the fire. And that's when I look at Luca and I'm, I can tell is weighing on him, too. So I pour another glass of I still can't pronounce it Monty Puccino, whatever wine and He opens up that he had lost all of his savings in like an investment that went bad earlier that year and He was starting to save up again,

but he had moved in with his mom in Rome. And I could tell just the shame on his face when he was telling me this was all too familiar. And I shared with him that I had lost my day job earlier that year. The side writing project I'd been working on for two years was recently put on hold indefinitely, and I had also moved in with my parents.

So there we were, two adults who had taken big risks, and could seem very pathetic, but in that moment, it seemed like incredibly romantic. And I'm going to save the dirty details of the rest of the weekend for like the teacher script. But it was great, it was a lot of fun. And I left, I went back home, and we drifted apart. And it sorta turned out that distance and work turned out to be deal breakers. But I think being on that silly app that was just meant for fun with no strings attached, we discovered people that we liked, each other, but also we could be people that we liked.

Confident, playful, fun, with a little bit of passion still left left and he's still a good friend. I had a really good way to end this and I just totally blanked on it, I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you. That was Haina Bowens. Haina's risk-taking continued with international pet sitting until she found her own cat, Moses, and settled in Chicago. Her next project is a podcast about sex in the movies. She still believes it's more important that the risk pays off rather than the credit card

bill. That's it for this episode. If you're enjoying the podcast, why not tell a friend about it? So many of our listeners are here because their families and loved ones told them about The Moth, and we'd love if you could share our stories with the people you care about. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week. Michelle Jalowski is a director at The Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world. This episode of the Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Giness, Sarah

Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluchay, Suzanne Rust, Lee Ann Gulley, and Patricia Ureña. The Moth podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website,

themoth.org.