The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Mighty: Bull, Pen, Gun

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

An author who treasures the art of letter-writing is spellbound by an inmate who becomes a pen pal, a man comes to terms with a personal tragedy caused by a gun, and a writer describes how Ernest Hemingway persuades him to risk his life by pretending to be a matador. 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. Hosted by: Catherine Burns Storytellers: A. E. Hotchner, Kemp Powers, Joyce Maynard

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. From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Katherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth, and I'll be your host this time.

The Moth is about people telling true, personal stories on stage and bars and theaters around the country. We encourage people to turn off their cell phones, sit back, and listen to the experiences of their friends and neighbors for a little bit. We record the stories and play the best of them for you here every week. We have three stories this hour. A magazine journalist goes to extraordinary lengths to impress his friend Ernest Hemingway. A teenager growing up in Brooklyn in the 1980s pays an impossibly high price when a practical joke goes wrong. And a young, recently divorced lonely heart finds her soulmate behind prison bars.

Our first story is from A.E. Hutchner. Mr. Hutchner was born in 1920, and for years people have been telling me that we just had to get him from the moth. Just get him on the phone and you'll see. Well, I finally did get him on the phone. I knew that he was a writer who cut in his start as a journalist in World War II and that he founded the charity Numen's own with his friend Paul Newman. When we finally spoke, I

asked him what he might want to talk about and he said, well I could do a story by the time my friend Ernest Hemingway taught me into dressing up like a Matador and going into a bullring in Spain in the 1950s. Yes, please. Here's a hot schner, live at the mall. I'm going to take you back to Spain in the summer of 1959. When the big event was a mono-o-mono bullfight between the two great monitors of that epic, shall we domingine and Antonio O'Donnell? on youth. There hadn't been such a bullfight, a mono-womano in 30 years, and there hasn't been one since then, so it was a great event. And my longtime friend, Ernest Hemingway,

called me, and he said, I'm going to go there and cover it for Life magazine. I'm going to write about it. Why don't you come on down and we'll have another adventure? I admit, Ernest, when I edited his novel across River and Into the Trees, and afterwards I had adept in many of these short stories and novels for television and for the movies. And we'd have some great adventures together. Fishing for Marlin and hunting birds and Idaho and a lot of other things.

So I got to Valencia where the first mono-omano was held and they were marvelous both both fighters. And the second mono-omano was in Malaga where they were even better. And afterwards we all adjourned to the Miramar Terrace where we had a great deal of red wine and tapas and had a good time. And during the course of it, Antonio, who was Ernest's favorite bullfighter of all time, said, you know something, Peckas? I think you should be in the ring. What do you think Ernest? He called me Peckas.

That was his nickname. Peckas means the freckled one, which I was at that time. Ernie said, that's fine. Hodges, you should be ready to get in the ring, be a monitor, and I'll be your manager. And we now drink a lot of red wine, and we're having a great time, and I'm extrapolating over the world, fight,

and I know that that's just red wine talking and not anything that's going to happen. And before we leave Antonio, so say what? The next monommono is in Ciodad and Rael. You can be the Sobera Saliente, and I'll put you in one of my suits. I didn't think I'd take more of this. When we got to see the adrie-al, to see the monomal monomal, we went up to the hotel room where Antonio was the wish-and-swear-take. Good luck. There was on the bed a bullfight suit.

And it was Antonio's. And he came over and he said, I thought you'd like the colors. There, ivory and black, with a touch of red. He said, I think it goes with your complexion. I said, my complexion right now is white and getting whiter. So they proceeded to dress me. Now I want to tell you, a bullfighter's costume is no laughing matter. The undergarment is pulled on you and it's like new skin. Then they give you your trot de lute, which is your outer garments.

They weigh approximately like an anvil being put on your back. So I was dressed up in my suit. There was no way really to move in any direction. I was mummified. You have to be suited like this because if you go in the ring and there's a breeze, a little wind, and you're wearing anything that moves. The bull is gonna go for you instead of the cloth that you're waving out here.

So therefore I now put together, and I thought, you know, this is one of those biblious jokes that got me dressed up, and then, haha, they go to the ring, and they made me hear the room, and this ridiculous costume. I'm not gonna be in this ridiculous costume. I'm not going to be in a bull ring. As the hour approaches for the fight, everybody leaves except Antonio

and me, we're along in the room. And Antonio goes over to a table where he has some religious objects and he starts to pray over them. I'm in my corner over there wishing to hell I had something to pray over. The door opens, it's for real. I am down now in the van and we're on our way to the bullfight and I'm sitting next manager, Mr. Senior Ernest Hemingway. And he said to me, you know, this is my first time as a monitor manager and I'm rather nervous. He said, I'm rather nervous. How about you? Ah! At that moment, the van is going by the bull ring. And outside the entrance of the bull ring is a poster bigger than this room.

And at the top it says, Bono Romano. And it's Domine Gain versus Rodunjith. And underneath, Sovicelliente, El Pecas. So dunyeth and underneath, sovacea yente, el pecus. Now, I want to tell you what a sovacea yente is. It's a substitute sword and this modidor, who's a third mod monitor, only goes in the ring if the other two have been blessed, blessed off the face of the sand, either by a goring or whatever. Obviously a joke. now were prepared for the Paseo. You've all seen in the movies the Paseo where everybody goes across the sand, the horses and the modedores and everybody else.

I'm standing there with these two great modedores. They have fixed my ceremonial cape so it's exactly right. Antonio says, me, listen, be careful about when we walk the peseo over to the judges stand where the president is. Follow me exactly because Lietri was a bullfighter, took a young Count Tiba in as a souberse hyente as a joke, but Tiba was a little bit wob, and the warden spotted him. They arrested him, and he spent a week in jail. And I thought, now's the time to run. But off we went.

The horses first, then the two modedores, then El Pecas, and then the rest of it. Walking from there, over to the president's box, was four miles. I did everything I could to be just like Antonio, and I guess I pulled it off. I didn't wind up in jail. We'd docked our hats to the president. I went into the Coyote home, which is the little alley between the wooden Berbera and the first row seats. My manager is standing there. He says, you know, there's something I forgot to tell you. By the way, I'll tell you one thing you told me in that wagon that I glossed over, but you should know.

I said to him, when I get to the ring, I'm not conversing with what a modern order is. Well, give me some advice from my manager. He says, you only have to do three things. Number one, look tragic. He said, the bullfight is a very serious business, so you should look like you're serious. I said, have you looked at me? He says, number two, when you get to the ring, people are watching you, don't lean on anything, it's ugly for the suit.

And number three, if the photographer is coming toward you, put your right foot forward at sexier. So there's my manager, who now says to me, this is only forgot to tell you, there's my manager who now says to me, this is what I forgot to tell you. There's a fourth thing and that is that you have to show yourself to this crowd. The sober sayente always must make his presence known. Whatever blood was left unfrozened froze. At this point, Dom and Gainard already had the first bull. Or done with, yes, the second bull. He does a couple of cape works with him, and then he fixes him. Fixes the bull stands still there. Walks over to the Barara motions to me. I come out. I doth I had to the crowd. I'm ready to leave. My cape is over my arm.

The fixed bowl decides not to be fixed. And if you can imagine yourself on a railroad track and there's a locomotive coming right at you, That was that boy. Ardonia said to me, Peckas, don't move. Don't move. I was frozen still. As the bullet approached us and got within striking distance Ardia, who was to my right, swiped his cape, pulled him away and did a phyanna. And the Soviet saiyete, whose cape had slipped down and pulled it up, I guess the crowd saw I was making a pass. At 808, I stiffly ended out of there. And that was my only experience in the ring. And Tonyo was terrific with the last bowl, his third bowl.

It was a Fiena like nobody had ever seen. The crowd went crazy. They waved their handkerchiefs, white handkerchiefs, to influence the judges, and the judges gave him the penultimate. Both the ears of the bowl, the tail, and a hoof gave him the penultimate. Both the ears of the bull to tail and a hoof, and they also demanded a tour. So now we do a tour of the ring, and he comes out and brings me with him.

So, well, Peckas, the silver saliente, is now going to make a triumphal tour of the ring with this great body door. The Efficient Autos in Spain are very appreciative of a great performance. And they throw a manner of things to the monitor. A fence and cigars and bolted full wine and tiras, mant, Shoes, hats, whatever. So this is sailing down on us. And I'm saying, well, this is a great thing.

Look at all this, George's. And Antonio says, Peckas, pick up the lady's shoes. Nothing else. My men will get the rest. So I'm following him, and I'm picking up lady's shoes. I don't know. Now, if you got a tight jacket on and you can't really get your arms around and your pants are so tight they feel like you're

going to fall over every time you've been down. Picking up lady's shoes is not easy. And it's also, it's not very fulfilling. Not for a mother door. So we circle the rings and my arms are full of lady's shoes. We finish and as often as a group of men come out and they lift and Tony up on their shoulders and they parade him out to the street where they're going to parade him through the streets of the hotel. And the band comes to follow him and lift alone in the center of the ring. Is a sober say-and-e with his arms full of shoes. I didn't know I could move as fast as I did to get back to that bed as it was pulling out.

I got back to the hotel and I went into his Antonio suite and Antonio said, hey, Pecus, you were wonderful. Just throw them in the bed. So I dumped the shoes in the bed. He said, come on, the wine is flowing and we've got tapas. I went over ahead of glass. The wine earnest was enjoying himself, knock on the door. He said, pick us, you get that. I opened it up and there is the most gorgeous senior arena you've ever seen. She said, stocking feets, she's holding one shoe, she says, I come from my shoe.

she says, I come from my shoe. So I asked her to be a little bit bad. I helped to put the shoe on her daily foot. And Antonio and Ernst, come over and invite her for wine. And we all have a glass of wine. And there's a knock on the door. And another knock on the door. And another knock on the door and another knock on the door and another knock on the door. And they came.

They reclaimed their shoes. They joined the party. It was wonderful. They stayed into the wee hours. And the next day, the photographer of Life Magazine, who been with us and taking pictures of the day before, he came with his prints of them. And there was a big 8 by 10 of El Pecac

with the two great monitors of the world on his right-left, beaming, and Ernest comes over and said, oh, that's wonderful, hot you found your true profession. I said, just a minute, it may be wonderful to you. But look at the front of their pants, those significant bumps, and look at the insignificant thing that I have. He said, how many handgriches did you use? I said, hey, good you're my manager, You didn't tell me to use my urges. He says, when you've been to a lot of bull fights with me, didn't you see that all these monitors have nice humps

in the front of their pants? I said, the subject never interested me until now. I said, hey, good Chiefs, you're my it up. It's okay. We'll make him ends. Antonio has his next fight in Ronda. He wants you to be here with his sober sayente again. And And this time, we'll make a level playing feel out of it. I said, fine. And he said, and I'll tell you what we're going to do. And then he paid me one of the greatest compliments I ever got. He said, while they're dressing, they'll be using two handkerchiefs,

but Texas, you only need one. All eight. All eight. All eight. All eight. All eight. All eight. All eight.

All eight. All eight. That was AE Hot Share. Mr. Hot Share passed away in February of 2020 at the age of 102. He was the author of many books and plays including Papa Hemingway and his memoir King of the Hill, which was made into a movie by Steven Soderberg. Mr. Hotscher and I sat down and talked about putting your life on the line for a great story.

So in this story, he's pushing you to go along with something that at first you think is a joke. pushing you to go along with something that at first you think is a joke. And so I was wondering why did you go through with it? I mean you literally risked your life. If you are a freelance writer as long as I was, you answer every challenge. You never walk away from it. So if I am faced with the challenge of being a modidor and having you go in the ring with the two most famous modidor's maybe of all time you don't pass it up. How often do you get a chance like that? So faced with the possibility of being speared by the horn of a bull or getting through it all and having the experience I chose the latter As it turns out Ernest Hemingway himself wrote about the events and Mr. Hotscher's story

No, you know people are often skeptical and say oh no what that couldn't happen But if you got Ernest Hemingway corroborating it, I guess they accept it All right now this is account of the event that I talked about. Quote from his book, The Dangerous Summer. When they came downstairs and Tonyo had his same dark, reserved, concentrated before the bullfight face, with the eyes hooded against all outsiders. Hodges Freckle faced, and second baseman's profile, was that of a seasoned novo yellow, facing his first great chance.

He nodded at me somberly. No one could tell he was not a bullfighter, and Antonio Su fitted him perfectly. After the bullfight, Ernest Hemingway bought the Mata Door costume for Mr. Hotshner as a gift. To see the life magazine pictures of him and costume with Hemingway, and to hear more of my interview with him, go to themoth.org. In a moment, we'll have a story about a middle-aged man who was haunted by a childhood accident. 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 Katherine Burns. Our next story is from Kemp Powers. We first met Kemp when he started telling stories that are Los Angeles story slams, our open mic storytelling contest that happened around the country. He told it at an evening in New York that we called I Witness Stories from the Front.

We have to warn you, the story is very intense and may not be appropriate for children. Here's Kemp Powers live at the mall. Here's Kent Powers, live at the mall. The first time that I passed out on the Chicago L train, I just knew that I was dying from mad cow disease. At least that's what I told my doctor when I was trying to self-diagnose in his office, and he was pretty impressed by the depths of my neurosis. Understand this is before WebMD when everyone could do it. But he assured me that despite the fact that I had been to Europe and eaten several

steaks that I wasn't suffering from at Cal, I had anxiety. And he asked me if there was anything that had happened recently that had been causing stress. And I had to think about the question for a little while. I said, you know, I haven't been adjusting well to my move to Chicago. And he nodded his head. He said, you know, a transition like that into a new city can cause a lot of stress. I said, my father's dying of cancer.

And I can't convince him to take better care of himself. He nodded again. This is obviously a story he's heard a lot of times before. Then I said, you know, my daughter almost died last year from V. Browell's seizures, and I'm pretty much terrified to be left alone with her. Now, this raised his eyebrows. He wrote me a prescription for Xanix, and gave me the name of a therapist he wanted me to see right away to delve into this further. Now, I don't know what prompted me to say what I said, but as he handed me the prescription, I just blurted it out.

I said, you know, oh, one more thing. When I was 14 years old, I shot my best friend in the face accidentally, and I watched him die. Henry was one of seven people to die that day in New York City, 1988. At 14, he wasn't even the youngest. A 12-year-old kid from Queens had that dubious distinction. But his was the death that I saw at my own eyes, the one that I was responsible for at

my own hands, and the one that I'm going to carry with me for the rest of my life. Now home back then was a two-bedroom co-op in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, for those who know Brooklyn pretty well. It was a big source of pride for my mom, who had raised my three older sisters and I almost single-handedly since splitting for my dad when I was four years old. This was the first place that she owned

after it seemed like an annual ritual of moving. Now, for those who don't know, New York was really violent and dangerous back then. Detroit, New Orleans, and Gary, Indiana rolled into one dangerous. 2000 murders a year violent. But I never let the violence swirling around in the world

outside ever impact me. I was actually an honorable student all the way. And when Henry and I met in the seventh grade, we got along immediately. The physical contrast couldn't have been more extreme. He was unusually muscular and well built for a 12-year-old. And I was just as oddly tall and lanky for a kid the same age. But that's pretty much where our difference has ended. We both were into all the same things. We shared all of the same fears, we walked together every day after

school to the Carroll Street subway station in South Brooklyn. And we both hated the older boys from John J. High School nearby who show up every Halloween and rain rotten eggs, diesel batteries, and of course water balloons filled with nair on our heads, which gave you a nice surprise when you got home and tried to clean up. He was my first and best friend. Now, on the afternoon of April 14, 1988, Henry and Chris, another friend of mine, came by my apartment, like they had many times before.

They dropped their book bags and plopped down on my bed. My mother was a captain in the army reserves at this time. We had three guns in the house. The 38 caliber revolver was my favorite, not just because it was the one we kept loaded. Also, it was just the most interesting, it looked like a gun from the movies. And it was one I always showed to my friends,

even though my mom never knew about it. And this day was no different. I started off by emptying the gun, made sure all the bullets were out, then I demonstrated my index finger spin the cowboy move that I've been working on. Then I took a single bullet, I pretended to insert it into the cylinder and pointed the gun at my friends. I can actually remember smiling as I pulled the trigger. Ready to shout, gotcha, when I made them jump. But instead of the dull click of a hammer followed by laughter, there was a muzzle

flash, an explosion, and shock. Both of my friends, Chris and Henry, I turned their backs to me and I remember being overcome with confusion. How'd the fucking bullet get into the chamber? Chris turned and looked at me, and my heart started racing, and we both looked over at Henry. I guess we were waiting for him to turn around, say, oh shit, and then tell me how much trouble I was going to get into when my mother got home. Now, whenever we're faced with something horrific, I think it's human instinct to want to run. And mentally, that's what I did. I just like fled into my own psyche.

Like I went back years to being with my father, Coney Island on the pier, trying to catch a bluefish with my piece of shit rot and real. And then the next thing you know, I was back there in the hallway and it was full of people. My mom was there now sobbing. The paramedics were there. Of course the cops were there and Chris and I were there. One of the paramedics were there, of course the cops were there, and Chris and I were there.

One of the paramedics came out of the apartment, I remember begging him, please tell me he's okay, please tell me he's okay, and even though I knew what he was going to say, I just like wasn't prepared for the words, he just said he's gone. That night in the police station, I had to recount in detail everything that had happened for the police. I didn't want to, I had to recount in detail everything that had happened for the police. I didn't want to, I wanted to crawl into that table and hide. But I did, slowly, methodically, choking back tears as when I looked down and realized that my sweatshirt was covered in blood.

My dad was there, I almost never saw him at that time, but he was there with my mom with the same fuller in look on his face. The wake came about a week later, and I didn't think Henry's family would have any interest in me attending, but my mom insisted we go. So when we got to the funeral home, there was a huge crowd gathered around the coffin, and I made my way over to Henry. And he looked really nice. They had him in a really nice blue suit.

But I remember the coffin making him look so small. And I just stood there and stared at him while everyone else around me wailed. That's when I suddenly heard this woman's voice. She said, I just want to see him. And I remember it made me jump, because I didn't know whether she was talking about Henry lying there in the coffin, or me, his killer, standing over him, crying onto his jacket.

I know every eye on the funeral home was on me, and all I could do was just close my eyes and wish that that was someplace else. Now miraculously, Henry's family did not want to press charges. They embraced me and offered their forgiveness. And when the Brooklyn DA hit me with a long list of charges, ranging from manslaughter to assault with a deadly weapon, I think it was 17 charges total. They were the ones who stood up and said they didn't want to destroy two young lives instead of one.

And they're the reason that instead of going to jail, I got one year of counseling. That was my sentence. I remember thinking them profusely outside of the courthouse that day for giving me a second chance when I didn't think I deserved one. Now, in the years that followed, I thought it was odd that no one, none of my friends,

and none of my family, ever said a single word about Henry. Everyone went about their lives as though he had never existed. The entire incident was white from my record when I was 16. So it hadn't even existed in a legal sense. And if I never mentioned it again, they would never come up. But I thought about it, the shooting in Henry almost every fucking day.

And oddly enough, it's what drove me for a number of years. Ask any friend of mine in college. I was the most anal-retentive dude they ever met. I wouldn't touch alcohol, I wouldn't smoke a cigarette. Don't get me wrong, I made up for it years later. But I just felt like I had to do him proud and I had to be perfect. And for a long period of time, I thought I was doing it. Successful career. I was a faithful husband and a doting father on my daughter, who I watch grow from an infant into a toddler.

But then her sickness at 18 months, pretty much derailed all of it. When we got to the hospital, my daughter's body was convulsing. And all of a sudden, all of these emotions and feelings I had in felt since I was 14 came rushing back. The feeling of panic, the feeling of helplessness. And that's when it dawned on me. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is going to be my sentence that I'm going to have to see what it's like to lose a child. And, you know, miraculously she did survive

and the doctor, the medical staff assured me that some children just have a really low tolerance for fever and it's something that she would probably grow out of, almost certainly grow out of. But the damage was done and when we got back home, everything was just completely different. I was just terrified to be left alone with her. I felt like this marked man, and that the second it was just me and her, something was going to go wrong.

And it didn't help that after she got sick, I suddenly started having this recurring dream about Henry. And it was always the same dream. In the dream I'd be asleep, I'd wake up, sit up in my bed, and he'd be sitting there on the edge of my bed staring at me. With the bullet hole, still in his chin, about the size of a nickel. I'd start talking to him, I'd say, hey, how are you doing? And his blank face, face would just show no expression. And after a while, I'd start getting desperate and pleading with him. I'd start asking him if he knew how sorry I was.

I'd ask him if he knew that it was an accident. I'd ask him if he knew how much I missed him. Then finally, he would open his mouth and try to respond. But just like on that day, the bullets stopped him from speaking, and he just gasped for air. I break down into tears and I wake up crying in bed and this dream repeated itself for years. Henry always there staring at me the same

and me just getting older and older and older. 14, 18, 21, 25, 30 and starting to grey. It took me passing out on the L that day to realize it, but I knew that I needed help. Now, Henry is dead and I killed him. No one can absolve you of your sins if you don't believe it in your heart, and I honestly don't believe there's any amount of good I can do in my life that will absolve me of his death. But my trying to live a life for two people, one of whom I can never bring back, was just a recipe for a disaster that was going to do me and everyone who cared about me. It took this chain of events that started with me passing out in public and ended with me having

that first tentative conversation with my mother about the data realize it. And it was an interesting conversation, if uncomfortable. I found out that my mom, of course, had been dealing with a lot of the same feelings of guilt, but more illuminating, sheep and battling anxiety since the day it happened. I think we found some small amount of comfort

in learning that little thing about each other. You know, my marriage died, but I lived on. My daughter's 13 years old now and healthy. I have an eight-year-old son, and he's healthy as an ox. I hope both of my kids grow up to be wonderful people. The types of people who bring so much joy to everyone around them that their absence would be a tragedy, because that's the kind of person that Henry was.

He died 24 years ago, and it's still fresh. But I'm no longer miserable. In fact, I'm well on my way to become the happiest person I know, and I think that fact would have made him happy. He also doesn't visit me in my dreams anymore. And I can finally admit that I'm comfortable with never seeing his face ever again.

In my dreams are otherwise. Because at the end of the day, what will an old man like me have to say to his 14-year-old friend that hasn't been set already? Thank you. Woo! Woo! Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! That was Kemp Powers. Kemp is a playwright, screenwriter, director, and occasional bird watcher. He's a co-director and co-writer of the Disney and Pixar feature Soul, and the writer of the Regina King directed film, One Night in Miami, which is based on his award-winning play

of the same name. Kip sat down with him off senior director Meg Boles who directed his story. Unfortunately, this kind of tragic accident isn't also uncommon. And I know when you and I were talking, you said that you have pretty strong reactions whenever you hear about an accidental shooting in the news. You tell us a little bit about what goes through your head when you... You know, we are... We live in a very unforgiving society.

And I understood the power of forgiveness at a very, very young age. Because I was given a chance, a second chance, I don't think I deserved. And that's spoke to the incredible power forgiveness can have on another human being. And in my experience and my observations, I think our societies become, every year we become less and less forgiving. And when those types of stories come on, people's immediate reaction is rage. If that happened to me, I would fill into blank. I would do that. And ever since that tragic accident, I've always, one of the most powerful things to come out of that was the gift that my friends family gave me, which was the gift of a second chance.

To hear more of Meg's interview with Kemp, go to themoft.org. While you're there, pitch us your own story. When we come back, we'll hear from a single mom who is horrified to discover why her new pinpal's nickname is Grizzly. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues. Music 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, artistic director of the Moth.

Our last story is from the writer Joyce Maynard. Joyce told this story way back in 2000 when the Moth was just getting off the ground. Joyce told us that she's someone whose life has shaped by the writing and receiving of letters. She says, I've always regarded the writing of letters as a form of escape. It's an escape for the writer of the letter, it's an escape for the recipient of the letter. There's something singular about the form of a letter that allows a person to leave his life and recreate himself as he would like to be on paper. Become this perfect person for as long as the letter lasts, drop it in the mailbox, and let it fly to wherever, and enter into the imagination of the recipient.

Here is Joyce Maynard from an evening we call Babes in the Big House, Stories of Dairy Nascades. This is the story of an escape and escape through letters. I have to add, it's not just me, I think many of us escape this way. Men in prison are a good example. A man in prison who cannot touch a woman anymore often develops a particular kind of brilliance at letter writing. And this is the story of one such man, who I will tell you, wrote the best letters I ever received, and I've received some good letters.

It was a really bad time in my life. My mother had just died of a brain tumor. I discovered that my husband was having an affair with our babysitter. Our marriage actually ended the week that my mother died. But my mother died first, which did allow my husband to take me to court for half of the small amount of money that my mother had left her in her will. So I was spending most of that money on a lawyer trying to defend myself also against the suit for

the custody of our three children. It was, as I said, a bad time in my life. And about the only person that I seemed to have to protect me, I had my friends, of course, was this $125 an hour lawyer to whom I was rapidly becoming so deeply in debt that I couldn't imagine ever getting out. And into this very dark moment in my life, I was living, I should say, in a small town in New Hampshire and it was winter, came a letter. As I say, I get lots of letters and I've come to recognize what a letter from prison looks like.

The address on the front of the envelope is usually written in pencil, that's one giveaway. And the return address has a very long code number. And this letter came from Folsom. The man who wrote the letter said that most of the time when the male came to the cell block, the kind of reading matter that really got the men going was the monthly delivery of Playboy or Penthouse. But what he really loved were my weekly columns

in the newspaper about my children and my family. That melted my heart. He knew all the little information about, you know, which of my children played the baritone horn and which one wanted to be a pitcher and which one was acting in Annie that season. He followed us all very carefully. He knew my recipe for apple pie.

And he said that in the absence of any family of his own, he had come to regard me and my children as his special family. It was a very sweet and touching letter, signed grizzly. And so of course, I had to write back. And I sent him first a kind of business like four line note saying, you know, dear Grizzly, it was really nice to hear from you. And I'm glad you like my work. And here's one of my favorite cookie recipes.

So I sent him my four line note. He sent me a 10 page letter written very tiny letters in pencil. I sent him a five sentence note. He sent me a 20 page letter. I sent him a one page letter. He sent me a 50 page letter back. That was the first week of my correspondence with Grizzly. Now, I would like to be able to tell you it would be the more mature and sophisticated

thing if I could say that I put this all in its proper perspective. But in fact, over the days and weeks that I began to hear from Grizzly with more and more frequency and sheer volume, I found myself being pulled into his story. The story that I'm telling you will no question give you abundant evidence of my poor judgment in life. But one thing I will attest to, and I will stand on this to my last breath is that I know good writing. And Grizzly knew how to do it. I have seldom read stories more powerful than the ones that he spun out in the growing stack of pages that were accumulating on my bedside table.

I had started saving these letters till I went to bed, those long, cold, New Hampshire, winter nights when I felt so alone in the world. And as if really my one friend and protector was this man 3,000 miles away in prison, he told me he didn't talk about prison life. He talked about his life before prison. He grew up on a citrus farm in the San Fernando Valley.

His parents had both died tragically when he was very young and he was raised by his grandmother. He wrote about women, the women that he had loved, and he loved hard Grizzly. That was one thing that I recognized about him. You know, I have to say, at the point that, in my own defense here, at the point that Grizzly came into my life, I had been single out in the world of dating a little bit. And I know there are women here tonight who will understand this, that if you have been a single woman out in the world of dating, the fact that somebody's a senior partner in a law firm, or they work for Charles Schwab, or they have tenure at NYU, is absolutely no guarantee that the person won't be a true sociopath.

So I actually came to believe that maybe I had found the one good man. I really believed that I had found the one good man. I really believed that I had found the one good heart. There was a kind of purity and honesty about his writing, about his grammar, about his spelling. When major holidays came around, he had coloring book pages that he'd color in for me and put stickers on. And he wrote poems for my children.

He knew when all their birthdays were. He would describe to me, you know, it came to be a little league season and there was nobody to warm up my picture son for the games, but me. And he kind of threw the males, give me advice on how to throw a knuckleball, you know, and he didn't think much of my $125 an hour lawyer. He told me in no uncertain terms, powerful language, what he would do to my husband if he was there, he would make him eat his underwear. And I almost felt that he could just break through the bars to do it.

He was a man of so much power. He was not really a particularly physically big person. He'd sent me his picture. And you know, it wasn't that he was a particularly handsome person. In fact, I guess you'd wasn't that he was a particularly handsome person. In fact, I guess you'd have to say he was ugly, but I had married, in fact, a very handsome person. So I knew about the lie of that one, too. Grizzly sent me a picture posed very carefully in front of the cinder block cell wall behind him, wearing a bandage around his head.

I never found out why that was. And a cowboy hat on top of that, a long beard. And his best shirt, he said that it was misbuttoned. I remember that. Well, now it was worse than winter even. It was mud season in New Hampshire, which is a really hard time of year. And I just finished my winter car accidents, and now I was into my spring getting stuck in the mud.

And he would send me advice about how to fix my car and how to check the rotors on my brakes. I don't even remember what all the parts were anymore, but he'd draw little diagrams and tell me what I should look for. And I guess I'd have to tell you that I was falling in love with him. There were a couple of moments when I recognized that this really didn't make sense.

And I try to cut it off. And every time that I would send him a letter saying, you know what, really, grizzly, I don't see a future here. He would send back another story that would just break your heart. One was the time that he told me about his first wife. That was the woman, his first wife, had died in childbirth with their daughter. About two months later, I tried to break it off again, and that time he told me the story

of his second wife, and she had been the most beautiful woman in the state of California, and they used to ride Harleys together, and she got horribly disfigured in a motorcycle accident. He told me he was getting out. He told me he was getting out of prison. And my friend said, you've got to find out what he was in for. I had thought that was a really rude thing to ask him. And it showed a kind of lack of trust.

And I didn't have the kind of good heart that he did. But when I knew he was coming out and he was coming to play catch with my sons, I thought I'd better do it. So I called up the prison. I called up the prison. I asked for the social worker. The social worker told me to another social worker, another social worker.

I got the social worker. I said, I've got to know what he's in for. She said, we don't do that. There are many procedures. I said, she said, why do you ask? I said, well, I'm in a kind of a relationship with this person. She said, you know what? I'm going to break the rules.

Sit down, honey. Do you know why they call him Grizzly? He's in Folsom for the Grizzly murder of his parents. They were beheaded. He will not be getting out anytime in the next 300 years. She added that please not to break it off quick because he could do violence to her and she was a little afraid of that. But I found it absolutely impossible to write back to him, although his letters began to pile up and up and up. And for over a year, the thick packets of letters continued to land in my mail slot. I read them for about a week, but they were so truly toxic and poisonous, and the same

kind of power to create beauty now created the most ugly, vicious, bitter, scary writing that I have ever read. And I've read some of that too. I never threw out his letters. I keep them in a folder in the back of my closet. And I must tell you that I am haunted by the knowledge that somewhere in a maximum security prison in Southern California.

There is most assuredly the Christmas photograph of me and my three children taped to a That was Joyce Moonard. She's the author of numerous books in magazine articles, including the memoir, A Home in the World, and The Novel to Die for. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from The Moth. Your host this hour was Katherine Burns. Katherine directed the stories in the show along with Meg Bowles and Joey Zanders. The rest of the most direct-toil staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Gines and Jennifer

Hickson. Production support from Laura Haddon and Whitney Jones. Moth Events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul R. West. Our theme music is by the Drift, other music in this hour from Sydney, Bichet, Miles Davis, and Lawless Music. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick, head 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, verdant and peaceful world. Malth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx.org. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else,

go to our website, TheMoth.org.