The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Camp, Cars, Cockroaches, and the Kremlin

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

A girl at summer camp tries to keep up with her sophisticated fellow campers, a writer loses a treasured pair of pants, a young man accused of stealing ends up living out of his car, and a writer lands in Moscow on the eve of a revolution. Hosted by The Moth's Artistic Director, Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Meg Wolitzer, Adam Gopnik, Matthew Dicks, and Andrew Solomon.

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 the moth.org forward slash Houston. This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns and I'll be your host for this episode.

The Moth is all about real people telling true stories. And this week we have four stories about the struggles of becoming an adult. That tricky time in your late teens, early 20s, when you're technically a grown-up, but don't always feel like one. Our first story is from the writer Meg Wallitzer. Here's Meg live at the Moth. I grew up on Long Island in the town of Ciosid, which some of you may know by its Native American name, exit 43. But the summer, I turned 15, which also happened to be the summer that Richard Nixon resigned.

I was sent to a camp in the Berkshire's and it changed my life. I'd been to summer camp before, but at those other camps, we made lanyards and we had really aggressive color war and we sang those corny camp songs made lanyards, and we had really aggressive color war, and we sang those corny camp songs, make new friends, but keep the old one is silver and the other gold, sound advice. But at this camp, we had Mozart Requiem's in the morning, and we did a lot of boutique.

Now, there's a word you don't get a chance to use in a sentence very often, boutique. And we's a word you don't get a chance to use in a sentence very often, but Tique. And we also acted in experimental plays in which invariably someone was supposed to go mad on stage and go running out through the audience. I loved it there. I wanted to act more than anything that summer, and I've been studying my favorite actresses all year. I've been looking really closely at their style. I've been looking at Elizabeth Montgomery and her stirring portrayal of Samantha Stevens. So, Karen Valentine in Room 222.

And perhaps the most moving of all, Susan Day as Laurie Partridge. But here's the thing, when I got to camp and I stood up on stage, I, this little Jewish girl from Long Island, talked in a voice that I can only describe as my Catherine Hepburn voice. Mother, where are you? Where are you, mother? I don't know where it came from.

It's sort of the acting equivalent of the poetry voice. You know what I'm talking about? I am a woman who lives in Red Hook here are the keys to my apartment. But there was one girl at camp who was really, really good. Her name was Martha, and she had long brown hair with little wildflowers sprinkled in it, and she wore long summer dresses. And whenever she spoke, little woodland animals gathered her feet. And songbirds came down and sat on her shoulders and tilted their heads to listen. At the end of the summer, we were given yearbooks, and all these boys wrote in Martha's yearbook.

I never told you this, but I was in love with you all summer. And those same boys wrote in my yearbook, you're so funny. Now, the campers weren't the only ones to love Martha. Our acting teacher did too. She was this really distinguished woman who taught theater and Greenwich Village and taught some of the great legends. She sort of looked like Isaac Dineson stunt double. When Martha got up to do a monologue, Korra, that was her name, Korra would say, oh, Martha, that was so wonderful, the way you did that Edward Albee monologue.

In fact, I'm going to call Ed tonight and tell him how good you were. Martha would say, thank you, Korra. And the little birds would say, thank you, Korra. But when I got up to act, no matter what I did, I could not please this woman. I think she tried to help me, but I was all over the place. And she would say, Negwalletzer, discipline yourself. Pipe down, be still, all these things. I couldn't do any of them.

And one day in class, we were doing an improv. And I think we were supposed to be shell-shocked World War I soldiers. And I was laughing and laughing. And she looked at me and she said, Meg Wallitzer, you are being ridiculous. Ridiculous. This was not the same as being funny. I was so ashamed, the heat rose to my face,

and all I could do was keep laughing. It was horrible. And she said, go, just go. And she sent me off and I staggered out onto the lawn really kind of like a shell-shocked world-world one soldier. And I sat down on the hill and I kept laughing. What was wrong with me? I was such a freak that I could not stop laughing. None of the other kids would have done that.

I loved these kids. They were so interesting. We talked about music and French films and art, and we even talked about sex. Now Martha, who had become my really good friend, she and I had been sitting on that hill just the day before, and I was talking to her sort of about our boyfriends back at home.

Now I had a boyfriend who, I don't know, our relationship was a little bit stormy. He sort of looked like he was going for a cat, Steven's look, but it doesn't really work when you have a retainer. He also had a tendency to refer to me as Malady. But Martha and her boyfriend, I pictured them being so sophisticated, wearing matching burrays and sort of passing a go-ah cigarette back and forth.

And I wanted to know how they did it and what the relationship was like. And I said to her, like, when you're with your boyfriend, how far do you go? I realized I sound like one of the little rascals. Um, and she said, what do you mean? And I said, well, like, do you give him a blowjob? And she looked at me and she said, oh, Meg, dear Meg, we call it making love. And I realized that that was my problem in acting class.

I was giving blow jobs and everyone else was making love. I was giving blow jobs and everyone else was making love. And I realized that that was my problem in acting class. I was giving blow jobs and everyone else was making love. But I wasn't the only one asked to leave the class. Sometimes Korra would look at Martha and say, you look a little peaked, a little tired. That improv exercise, were you out a little bit? Would you like to go rest? And Martha would say, well, I am a little tired, Korra. And Korra said, why don't you go lie down in my bed?

Now Korra had a bed in the mansion at the summer camp. And it was one of those huge four-poster beds that looked like the kind of bed that Norma Desmond would have slept in and sunset Boulevard. And it had crusty velvet blankets. I wanted more than anything for an acting teacher to say, you look tired, go lie down in my bed. I wanted to lie in that bed and make love with a boy in my acting class and turn to each

other and recite, I don't know, Samuel Beckett lines. I can't go on, I'll go on. But one day, one day, I'd been banished from class and told to go think about being serious. And Martha had been sent off to go lie down in Korra's bed. And there I was wandering despondently around the camp, and it was totally quiet. All I could hear in the distance was a little bit of oboe. I knew kids were doing interpretive dance or doing jazz hands.

And something brought me to the mansion. I wanted to talk to Martha. She was my friend, I wanted to see her and I went up the stairs, it was totally silent. And there in Korra's gigantic bed, Martha was sleeping. She was fast asleep. And I stood over her and I looked down and I thought about, you know, here's this girl.

She's so different from me. I was never gonna be that girl. I was never gonna be the girl who was asked to lie in this bed. That wasn't me. And I realized that the reason I've been laughing so much in class was because I was having an incredible time this summer. I was free and I was expressive.

It was the first time I think I'd ever felt that way. And I looked at Martha and I said, get up. And she sort of rose up from a deep sleep like a little mermaid kind of coming up from a warm pocket of amniotic seawater. And she said, what, what? And I said, come on, let's go outside. And she said, okay. And together we went outside and we went and we sat on our hill and we talked. I was good at that. There was a lot that I wanted to say. In fact, I'd begun keeping a diary that summer. And at first, I wrote so much in it,

because everything was happening. But after a while, I was so busy that I had no time to write in the diary. But I felt a little worried, because what if I became really famous one day and they wanted to publish my diaries? I'd be sort of like a lesser-known member of the Bloomsbury Circle, the Cioset set.

So I went back to my diary and on all the empty pages I wrote, nothing happened. Nothing happened. But a lot was happening that summer. And not just in me, but in the world. On August 9th, we were all called into the Charles Ives Room where a television set was wheeled in and we watched as Richard Nixon was lifted like a rotting piece of lawn furniture. Everything was changing.

This took place 40 years ago exactly this summer. Core of the acting teacher is long dead. Richard Nixon is long dead. I still miss the guy. Martha and I actually remain best friends to this day. And we're totally different from each other. She's still chic and lovely, and I'm still funny, or maybe ridiculous, like tonight, I don't know.

And I really think about, you know, the thing is, funny or maybe ridiculous like tonight, I don't know. And I really think about, you know, the thing is, it's really sort of that what happened that summer, the world is always trying to tell you what you're not. And it's really up to you to say what you are. All the things, every single thing that Korah disliked about me, my rubishness, my silliness, the way I put myself out there again and again, turned out to be the things that I feel most tender about in myself.

Thank you. Applause That was Med Woolitzer. The most recent novel is the New York Times bestseller, The Interestings, which was named a best book of the year on over 30 different lists. Her previous novels include The Uncoupling, The Tinier Nap, and The Wife. To see the photos of Meg and Martha that ran in their Camp Year book that summer, go to themoth.org. Coming up, a young Adam Gottnick, full of idealistic dreams, tries to support himself and his wife in New York City on his $3,000 annual salary.

When the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. So our last story was from Meg Woolitzer, who talked about meeting her best friend, the ethereal Martha at Summer Camp. Our next storyteller, the writer Adam Gottmick,

was hosting the show. Here's the story he told off your Meg left the stage. The event was a part of the Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference, and the theme of that night was Fish Out of Water. Here's Adam Gottneck, live at the Moth. I want to tell a little story now if you can allow me to. But my story about being a fish out of water is a little bit, has a slightly surprising premise, surprising premise because it references another story that was told tonight. Do you remember in Meg Wallitzer's story about that girl named Martha, the one with the

birds, on her shoulder, who slept in the teacher's bed, and had that conversation with Meg on the lawn? Do you remember that conversation? Right. Well, I met that girl, that very girl, Martha, about three or four years later, and I married her. That's true. That's a true story.

And now you know why. And she's here tonight with our daughter, the single most embarrassed person, anywhere in the Hamptons, or elsewhere who all the boys were in love with, and her drama teacher too, and I decided to move to New York. We lived in Canada, we lived in Montreal, Canada, and Canada, as some of you may know, is a very, very different place from New York City. And I think the truth is, is that the most intense experience of being a fish out

of water that you can imagine is to be a Canadian from a protected background who comes to New York City in the late 1970s with a few bucks in your pocket. I had a tiny fellowship of about $3,000 to get us through our first year in New York. We got in from the Canadian University that we went to in Canada. They thought that was abundant money to pay for the high life in New York. And Martha, that very Martha and I, went to New York and we rented the world's smallest apartment.

Smallest apartment. It was a 9 by 11 apartment. And I am not exaggerating. I later wrote a book called The Table Comes First, about how the first thing people should buy when they start life as a table. There was no room for a table in this apartment. It was the size of a table. The table would have taken it entirely up. But our motto in those days, our thought was that the way you would get through life and all the difficulties of life was through what we referred to as poetry. We had a kind of Scott Fitzgerald notion about how we would manage in New York.

By poetry, we meant everything except rhymed and metered verse. That had no connection to it, but we met an attitude towards life and having laid claim to this tiny basement apartment as our New York abode, and it was filled with cockroaches, which we didn't know when we rented it in daylight until we tried to spend our first night there. And there were many kinds and varieties of cockroaches, which kind of an entomological laboratory. There were little well-organized German cockroaches,

and there were those American cockroaches, the enormous ones that we call water bugs, that were like displaced wasps who had been moved out of their natural habitat. And then there were truly Asian cockroaches as well as a melting pot of small animals. And we put up a piece of plywood against the base board as an attempt to keep the cockroaches

from coming into the apartment. Because Canadians thought that that would keep them out. A piece of plywood about this big would be a sufficient shield against the entire population of New York City insects. So our peace of plywood was going to keep us safe and a poetic approach to life was going to elevate us. So we did a terrible thing. Martha had one beautiful dress, beautiful white cashmere dress, and we decided to go to Barney's and take my scholarship money. Barney's in those days was down in 17th Street and by me one perfect suit.

And this one perfect suit would get us through life. It was a terrible thing to do, but it seemed to us like a poetic gesture in the face of life. And went and bought this Ted Lapidus blue suit that was going to be our protection. Martha went back to Montreal to collect our few things. And I took this suit to a tailor's. In New York in those days, if some of you may remember, if you lived on the far east side in Yorkville, where we lived, first avenue, and 87th Street,

was a genuine neighborhood. It was filled with tailors of every imaginable ethnic association, there were Greek tailors and Jewish tailors filled with tailors of every imaginable ethnic association. There were Greek tailors and Jewish tailors, Korean tailors. I took the suit to a Greek tailor because of course I had to have the cuffs taken up because of my notably diminutive stature. And I took it and he took my measurements and I knew that life was going to be okay because despite the cockroaches, despite the tiny room, despite our absolute lack of funds, despite the graffiti

and violence and crime that raged all around us, I had a suit. I had a suit. And about a week later, I went back, a suit was supposed to be ready, my heart full, and I went back, and I collected the suit from the tailor. I put it in a garment bag, he put it in the garment bag. I took it over my shoulder, I walked back to our tiny basement apartment, and I unziped

it to take one more look at this suit that would keep me safe and in poetic elevation from the cockroaches and the world around me. And I looked at it and I looked down and I saw that the pants were gone. Yeah, exactly. And I knew that the pants had been there when I left the taillot shop and then I looked at the garment bag and I realized it had no bottom. It was a New York garment bag, no bottom and a very slippery hanger. And I realized what had happened. Exactly. I read the pants, it slid right off the hanger, and we're someplace out there on the street.

And I ran out onto first avenue, and I raced back to the tailers. And you know, the truth is, is that fish don't really have a theory of water. That's the truth about fish being out of water. They know two states, safe, and oh my god. That's all fish really know about water. And that was all I knew at that moment. The trousers were gone. The suit was ruined and I ran back to the Greek tailor and he said words that I will never forget as long as I live because they were so perfectly L.A.J.

He said, it used to fit nice. It used to fit nice. And I knew that the trousers were gone for good. And that feeling, no matter how trivial it is, no matter how small the thing lost, that moment, no matter what it is, when the vase breaks, when the trousers are gone, when the car crashes, when the ship begins to when the trousers are gone, when the car crashes, when the ship begins to go down, all share one common feeling in the pit of your stomach,

that feeling of lost and lost for good. I ran up and down, first avenue for hours. It was just at the turn of the 1980s, when homeless people were beginning to appear on the streets. And I cased every homeless man on the street sure that he had taken my size 29 trousers and was wearing them. I do that to this day.

And I called Martha, the very Martha, and I told her, darling, I've lost the trousers. I lost the pants of my suit. And she said, oh my God, oh no, because she knew the depth of the loss that this entailed for us. And then she said something very kind of strange. And she said, have you looked in the park? And I guess she had a kind of theory

that all lost things, sort of like the island of lost toys, were sort of immediately magically displaced as in a shagall painting into Central Park. And then I began scouring the streets of Manhattan for the next month by myself, looking for my lost trousers. And I realized that though I had entered New York only a month before, convinced that I was the subject of a Scott Fitzgerald story about poetry and aspiration, I was, in fact, living a story by Google, like the overcoat or the nose, about someone whose aspirations had been

permanently dashed, and I knew that I would spend the rest of my life in New York searching for my lost trousers. And about two months later, Martha and I got on the subway, and she was wearing her beautiful white dress, and I was wearing the jacket from that beautiful suit. And an old pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. And we got on that subway and we went down to City Hall and we got married in the December of 1980, long time ago. And I knew that I was an adequate not only to the measure of my wife but to the measure of my own hopes, because I would never have my suit trousers back. And no matter how many suits I've bought since, I've still are missing those pants.

And I feel that I walk through the world naked from the waist down. No matter where I go or how many years go by, because the truth is that we learn in pain in New York that a piece of plywood would never protect you and that suit trousers once lost are lost forever. That's my tale. Adam Boughtnet has been writing for the New Yorker since 1986. His books include the essay collections, Paris to the Moon, and through the Children's Gate, and a book about cooking and eating called The Table Comes First.

He and Martha are still happily married and live in a lovely apartment just blocks from their old one. Our next story is from one of our open mic story slam competitions. Recorded live at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, here's Matthew Dicks. I'm walking out of 7-11 a couple weeks ago ago with my buddy and we see a guy in the parking lot and he's standing by his car and he's brushing his teeth in the parking lot. And we get in the car and my buddy says, what the hell is the guy standing at 9 o'clock at night at 7-Eleven brushing his teeth for?

And I don't say anything but I know exactly what he is doing and why. Because it was a time in my life when I did exactly the same thing. It's 1993 and I am living in Somerville, Massachusetts, I'm 23 years old. But living in Somerville is stretching it a bit. I would say that I was homeless, but sunny, the Vietnam veteran who lives on the corner and sleeps near the movie theater tells me that I sleep in my car, and if you sleep in your car, you have a roof. And if you have a roof, you ain't homeless. And Sunny has been on the streets for a long time, so I don't argue with him.

Six months before this, I am living in a two bedroom townhouse with tennis courts and an indoor swimming pool. Managing McDonald's, working my way up the corporate ladder, and my best friend's living with me, and he's just graduated college, and he's looking for a job. And then two things happen that change my life. My buddy gets the job he's looking for,

but it's in Connecticut, so he's gonna be moving and leaving me. And about that same time, $7,000 goes missing at the McDonald's where I'm working. And though my boss doesn't think I did it, we run into a police officer who thinks I did. And so I end up arrested and indicted. And I lose my job and I can't collect unemployment

and I can't get a job. I end up homeless because the people who should be able to help me can't and the people who can't won't. So my mother has muscular dystrophy, she's in assisted living. I haven't seen my father in 20 years. My sister is a teenage mother and she is couch surfing

with her baby to friends' houses. And my brother's gone to the military and I haven't seen him in a long time. Years later, my aunts and uncles will tell me that if they had known I was in trouble, they would have helped me. But when my mother was almost homeless, they didn't do anything.

So I don't know why the fuck they think that I would have ever gone to them for help. My friends try to help me. My best friend says come to Connecticut with me, but because I'm waiting trial, I can't leave the state. My friend Sherry offers me $1,000 to loan, and I say no, I'm gonna be fine, Sherry, don't you worry. But when things start to get a little close to trouble,

I ask her for the loan, and Sherry says, oh. And this words after things start to get a little close to trouble, I ask her for the loan and Sherry says, oh, and there's words after oh, but all she has to do is say, oh, because I know that oh means that the loan wasn't real and that she didn't want to give it to me. My friend Alan offers me a place in his apartment and I'm ready to move in two days before I'm homeless and then he gets back together with his girlfriend, Kim.

So I can't move into the apartment anymore. So I'm moving to my car and I tell everyone I'm fine, but I don't tell them what I'm doing. I say, I've got a place, don't you worry. I choose Somerville because it's got parking lots with really great lighting, which is important at night. You can't sleep, but you can feel safe. And when you're homeless, safe is better than sleep.

And Somerville in 93, you can get jobs for cash because if you don't have an address and especially a phone you can't get a real job but I can work at construction in Somerville and I can pick up the pieces around the buildings because I can't build anything myself but they'll let me like run nails to guys and that kind of work and there's a perfume company and they'll let me take the perfume down to the street and I can sell it on the street for cash. I don't make a lot of money I get make enough to have a couple meals a day and to drive my car.

Every night after work, I go to Massa Soia Community College, which is about 30 minutes south of Somerville. I do go there for a shower. There are showers a lot closer to me. But the thing about being homeless is you don't expect to be so bored. And it is incredibly boring because you don't have your friends anymore, because you don't have your friends anymore

because you don't have a phone so they can't reach you and you don't want them to know what's going on. And you don't have a TV. You can't even read books at night because you've got no light anymore. So that 30-minute drive to Massa Soya in that two hours I spent on campus, showering, and the 30 minutes back, that is the best part of my day. That is the way I fill my hours. And then there's one night when I'm leaving the college and I stop at a McDonald's I used to work at years ago. And Mary is the counterperson. And Mary's this 50-year-old woman, and she's a Jehovah's Witness,

and she's the sweetest woman in the world. She used to work for me. And I get my meal and I sit down, and I'm eating my quarter pounder with cheese. And Mary comes over and she sits across from me. And she says, so where are you living now? I'm sitting my quarter pounder with cheese, and Mary comes over and she sits across from me. And she says, so where are you living now? And I say, I'm living with friends,

and Mary stares at me, like, she stares through me, and she says, where are you living? And somehow she knows, she's found out what's going on. And I haven't told anyone that I don't have a house. It occurs to me, like, I haven't told anyone that I don't have a house. It occurs to me. Like I haven't even said it aloud to myself. Every day I tell myself it's temporary. Like I grew up poor and I spent my whole childhood

running away from poverty and trying to trick my friends into thinking I had more than I had. And now I'm 23 years old and I'm right back where I was as a little kid. And I'm trying to trick my friends into thinking I'm okay when really I'm sleeping in a car at night. And I realize I'm not homeless for any other reason, but shame that I can't ask anyone for help

because I'm afraid to tell them I can't take care of myself. And so I decide to tell Mary, I tell her I'm sleeping in my car, but I tell her it's gonna be fine, don't you worry. And she says, no, you're gonna come home with me, and you'll stay with us. And I say no when I protest, but in my head, I am thinking, thank God, thank God.

We go to Mary's house and she has this little room off the kitchen, which used to be a pantry, and now it's a bedroom, and it's got two army cats in it. And there's already a guy in there whose name's Rick, he's just like me. He's your Jehovah witness without any home. And Rick speaks in tongues in his sleep all night long. And I share this tiny room with their indoor pet goat,

which originally had the room before me and Rick actually took over the room. And that goat will chew on my toes at night if they move, and it will na on my hair. And if I don't get up early in the, and it will naw on my hair. And if I don't get up early in the morning, it puts its tongue in my ear. And I lie down on that army car, and it is uncomfortable and hard. And it is the best bed I have ever slept in in my life.

Thank you. That was Matthew Ditz. Matthew was a novelist who's worked include the book's imaginary friend and his latest, the perfect comeback of Caroline Jacobs. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Alicia, and their kids Clara and Charlie. He has also a 16-time math story slam winner and two-time grand slam champion. Matthew is infamous at the moth for having been picked to go first at the slams

more times and almost to anyone else in the history of the competitions. We recently ran the numbers and know that you are statistically less likely to win a slam if you're picked first. It's hard. There's a score creep. If you watch the Olympics, you watch the ice skaters who have to skate first less likely to win a slam if you're picked first. It's hard. There's a score creep. If you watch the Olympics, the ice skaters who have to skate first are pretty much not

going to win. And the same thing happens at the moth. So if you're not at the end of the show, you're much less likely to win. And even if you're in the first half, the first five stories, those are hard positions to win in. It's, I don't blame the judges. I go crazy though. The first two positions are pretty, you're doomed if you're in the first two.

I've won a few times from the third position. So I feel like I can, I can, yeah, I can make that work. But I get crazy. I don't get nervous on stage. I don't get nervous really ever except when the names are being drawn for the first two. My friends watch me like, my head is down and I'm rocking like a like the rainman. I just I'm like, please don't pick me. Part of the problem is like you work on a story that you love and you know it's a good

story and you want to really do well. And if you get picked first, you still get to tell your story, but you just feel like it's never going to get what it deserved. So I normally don't ask this, but I feel like I want to ask you, because we have such great conversations about storytelling. What do you think makes a great story? I mean a bunch of things. Alicia, my wife says that if I can tell a story that is laugh, laugh, laugh, cry, that is

my best story. Matthew Dix. Coming up, a young man visiting friends in Moscow finds himself in the middle of a revolution when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our final story is from Andrew Solomon. He told it at the Moth London debut in the fall of 2014. The show took place at the gorgeous Union Chapel, a soaring Gothic cathedral. 900 people filled the pews in

the balcony that was lit up with hundreds of candles. Here's Andrew Solomon, live from London. My first book was about a group of Soviet artists and how their lives changed during glass-nost. And the week it was published, my mother died. And it was a terrible, terrible time for me. And I felt as though words which I had always counted on had abandoned me. I couldn't write, I could barely talk. None of it seemed to have any purpose or any value. And six weeks later I decided I had to get away from home and I thought I should go to someplace that wasn't about my mother and I decided I would go to

Moscow and see the artists I've been spending so much time with the previous few years. And I got there and for the first five days it was a kind of place of recovery. It was a place of feeling apart from that great sorrow at least a little bit. And on the sixth day I was asleep in a squat on the outskirts of Moscow that I shared with all of these artists. And my phone rang, and I answered it. And it was a rather melodramatic photographer, I knew, who said, endrew.

Gorbachev has been kidnapped. and I think we will have civil war so I cannot have dinner with you tonight. And I said, Vika Ivlev, how many times have I told you never to call me before 11 a.m. I went back to bed. There had been so much intrigue in the Soviet system. None of it seemed very significant. And when I got up and went downstairs, some of the other artists who were living in the squat were there. The artists at that time were mostly doing work that was highly ironic. It was work full of strange and hidden meanings. And as an installation project, two of them had done something that included a bed on which the bed cover was a gigantic 10 foot Russian flag.

The Russian flag was still quite a radical symbol in those Soviet days. And so when I went downstairs, closest to Chozov was sitting wrapped up in the big Russian flag. And I said, I had the strangest call from Vika Evelyva this morning. She called and said that Gorbachev had been kidnapped. And Larisa's visit to Cho-tov said, that's strange, someone called me today and said they'd seen tanks

in the south of Moscow. And I said, that's odd. And someone said, let's turn on the television and see what's happening. So we turned on the television. Everyone had vodka being Russia or coffee or some mix of the two. And we went from channel to channel and on every channel on the television there were Tchaikovsky ballets.

And the Risa said, okay, she's going to be a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more on the television, there were Trakowski Ballets. And the Risa said, okay, she said, I was not so frightened about Gorbachev Kyrgynept. I was not so alarmed about tanks in South Moscow, but I am terrified by these Trakowski Ballets. This is what they did, she explained. This is what they did, Shakespeare's claim.

This is what they did when Stalin died. This is what they did when Brezhnev was removed from power. This is what they do when the news is so momentous that there's nothing to say. So we all thought we should try to find out what was happening. And we made a few calls and we decided a lot seems to be happening around the Russian Parliament building. And so we went down there on the metro and we got out at the station Barakadnaya, called

Barakadnaya because that's where the barricades were built in the original 1917 revolution. And when we got there, as we were leaving, there was the woman who sweeps the station. There were always these women, hundreds of thousands of people pouring through and they were sweeping the dust. And they never said anything and they were bent over. And we got to the station and she was standing erect and pointing with the broom and saying, go to the demonstration, go at once to the demonstration, to everyone who came out. So we went to the demonstration, go at once to the demonstration, to everyone who came out. So we went to the demonstration,

and as we went, we had to pick our way in between construction debris, because at that point, everything in Moscow was under construction, and none of it was ever finished, and in general, it was a terrible nuisance. But in this instance, it turned out to be a great thing, because as we got closer, we saw that people were dragging things from these construction sites to build barricades around

the Russian Parliament building. And there was a woman, a rather elegant woman in high heels, who was standing just near the edge of the barricade and asking, excuse me, but do you know how to operate a bulldozer? We helped with the building of the barricades. There was someone who had managed to jumpstart a crane, who had clearly never before used a crane. He would pick things up and get them up into the air, and they would teeter there, and then they would go down someplace else. There was a woman, a sort of big Soviet Russian woman,

who was standing there and trying to direct the whole thing, and pointing where the crane should go, and telling people where to drag things, and yelling at the top of her lungs. And at that time, in the Soviet Union, it was quite trendy to have clothing with Western writing on it. And people often had it, but didn't know what their clothes said.

And she was wearing a t-shirt that said, I'd rather be playing tennis. We decided to go back down to the parliament that night. With a whole group, we'd called all our friends. There were 30 or maybe 40 of us. And someone said, but there are so many people down there, what if we get separated? And Kostya and Andrusha said, we'll take the big flag bed spread. We'll nail it to a pole and we'll have it. And if we get separated, we can meet at the flag, which we all thought was a good idea. So we went down there and we helped a little more

with building the barricades. And just as we were getting ready to go back home, a woman came up to us and she said, we have a giant helium balloon. We're blowing it up right now. We're blowing it up because we want to show where we are and we want to wave the flag so that everyone knows we're here. And you have the biggest Russian flag I have ever seen.

She said, will you give us your flag so that we can fly it over the parliament building? And Andrusia said, will you give us your flag so that we can fly it over the Parliament building? And Andrusia said, cost you? And cost you said, okay, so we left the flag. Day two, we went down again by now the barricades were fully built. There were people milling around across the street from the barricades were the tanks that had pulled up during the night and in the early part of the morning and There were soldiers very young soldiers on the tanks and we went over to talk to them We asked them where they came from and whether they'd been to Moscow before and how long they'd been in the military And then the artist would say if if you need to fire tonight, if you're told to fire on the demonstration, it's us.

That's who you'd be shooting at. It's us. And if you decide not to do it, and you want to come over, we'll find you a place to live and we'll protect you. And we gave them bread and chocolate and sausages. And then we went back to where everyone was milling around outside the parliament, demonstrating though no one knew quite what it was

they were demonstrating for. Someone had to use the Lou and someone pointed out that a musicologist I knew, Tanya Diyenko, had an apartment which looked right over the Russian Parliament building, which was in fact inside the barricades. And so we went up to Tanya's apartment, and she said, I did not imagine that my apartment would become the toilet of the resistance.

But if this is how I can help, I'm all for it. Someone pointed out that I had a Western passport and I could check in to an international hotel. And if I did so, I could maybe get some other kind of news. And I thought I'd try it. So I went to a Western hotel, and I, in fact, could get CNN, and I watched for a little while and the announcer said, unbeknownst to the protesters gathered outside the Russian Parliament building, there are troops massing to the north of Moscow who seem to be headed in their direction. So I picked up the phone and I called Tanya Diyanko

and I said unbeknownst to the protesters outside the Parliament building. There are troops massing to the north of Moscow who appear to be mobilizing in the direction of the Parliament. And Tanya said, hold on a minute. And then I heard this incredible, loud, bellowing sound. I couldn't figure out what it was. And she came back and she picked up the phone, and I said, Tonya, what was that? And she said, now they know. That night, we were outside the building, talking to all the other people who were there, the rest of the intelligentsia,

and everyone else who'd gathered, and we heard the barricade being pulled apart. And we thought, oh no, the barricade is being destroyed. And we went running to see what was happening. But it wasn't that the whole barricade was being destroyed. Boris Yeltsin was riding in on his tank to give his historic speech about democracy and about the future of Russia. And he came in, and he was applauded, and everyone was thrilled. And he came in and he was applauded and everyone was thrilled. And he stood on the parliament steps and he began saying,

I speak to you today under the banner of Russia and Kostya and Andrusha nudged each other and said, it's our banner. It's our flag. It's our banner. It's our flag. The third day, the third day we got up and we decided to go up to Swalenskaya near the American Embassy because that was the place where three people had been killed the night before, the only casualties of this unfolding drama. And when we got there, it was such a Russian scene.

There were flowers strewn on the ground. There were old women crying. There were people talking about the nature of tragedy. And we were all standing around. And suddenly, a young man came running up. He had a tweed cap clutched in his hand and wire-rimmed glasses. And he looked like a 1917 revolutionary,

or like the student in a check-off play. And he said, hurry up, come at once, there are tanks approaching the outer barricade, we have to go and defend the outer barricade. Well there had been tanks endlessly approaching and they had always just parked across the street. And so we walked up to the outer barricade quite far away in fact in the parliament building and we ranged ourselves in front of it holding hands. And two minutes later, a column of tanks rolled up,

and they stopped about three feet away from us. And it was still the Cold War, and I had grown up thinking that there was nothing more frightening in the world than a Soviet tank coming up to you. And the soldier on the front tank said, we have been given unconditional orders to destroy this barricade. If you move out of the way, we don't need to hurt anyone, but if you won't move out of the way, we'll have no choice but to run you down.

And the artist's I was with said, give us just one minute. Give us just a minute to tell you why we're here. And the soldier on the front tank crossed his arms. And the artists launched into a description of what freedom was. And they said, you're very young. You don't remember the Stalin era. Let me tell you what it was like, it was terrible. They said, you don't remember what it was like when Brezhnev ran things, but that was terrible too. And they said, you say that you're just following orders, but you're making a choice to follow those orders,

and you could make another choice instead. And they launched into a Jeffersonian panagyrected democracy of a kind that those of us who live in democracies mostly couldn't mess her. And when they finished, we stood there, sneezing, wet, cold, bedragone. And the soldier on the front tank just stared at us

for a full minute. At the end of a minute he said What you've said is true and we must bow to the will of the people If you'll clear us enough space to turn around We'll go back and we'll leave you your barricade And we all step design and the tanks mades, which is not so easy for tank. And they drove off the way that they had come, and we all embraced one another. And then I had to go to the airport because my visa expired that day. And I got in a cab, and I was on my way to the airport when the news came on.

The push had failed. Yeltsin was in charge. Russia was to be a democracy. And I thought that language had come back for me. I thought I would be able to write and talk again, because what I had always hoped, but never believed to be true, was that if you could only speak clearly enough about important things, you could change the world. And I thought how revolutions occur

because of tiny acts by many people. And when I got to Shadromethrevo, I managed to get a phone, and I called my friends, and Costa answered the phone. And I said, is it true? Is it really true? And he said, yes. And I could hear the people dancing and singing in the background.

And I said, Costa, do you think we had anything to do with it? And he said, of course, we did. He said, we helped to build the barricades. We stood outside that parliament building. We turned around that column of tanks. And then he paused. And he said, but it was my flag. Thank you. That was Andrew Solomon. Andrew is a writer, activist, and lecturer. His most recent book, Far From The Tree, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Don Fiction. He lives with his husband and son in New York and London.

To see photos of Andrew and his friends at the protest go to themoth.org. While there you can share any of the stories you've heard in this hour with your friends and family. We're also on Facebook and Twitter at The Moth. So that's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour. video hour. Your host this hour was the Moths artistic director, Katherine Burns. Katherine also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Moths directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, Jennifer Hickson, and MacBulls.

Production support from Whitney Jones, special thanks to Kathy Russo. Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth Events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift, other music in this hour from Imogen Heap, Charles Mingus, Bill Frazel, and Felix LeBond. You can find information on all the music we play at our website. The Malthus Produced for Radio by me, Jay Allison, with Ficky Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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, ferdent, and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org. for information on pitching your own story and everything else go to our website TheMoth.org