The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Pizza, Polar Bears, and Rock Stars

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

A woman attempts to cross the Arctic solo with a dog team, an Orthodox Jewish boy tests God by eating pizza, a woman in her underwear sprints past a neighbor’s confused girlfriend, and Guns N’ Roses bass player Duff McKagan survives a health scare. Storytellers: Pam Flowers, Moshe Schulman, Jennifer Sodini, and Duff McKagan.

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 Meg Bulls and in this hour we'll hear four stories recorded live on stage in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and St. Paul, Minnesota.

The backgrounds of the storytellers are wildly different. We'll hear from a medical analyst and aspiring writer who pays the bills, waiting tables, a woman from a small town in Alaska and a world-renowned rock star. The one thing they all have in common is that they've shared their stories on the Moth stage. We'll begin with a story from Pam Flowers that she told at the historic Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul. The evening was produced in partnership with Minnesota Public Radio. Here's Pam Live at the mosque. Thank you. Well, when I was a little girl, we had this radio in our house.

This thing was as big as a piece of furniture. And I used to sit there on the floor with my ear pressed up against the speaker and I would listen to my favorite radio program. I was about this guy named Sergeant Preston and his dog King. And they used to have a dog team and they'd go running all over the Arctic, writing wrongs. And I used to fantasize about how one day I was going to grow up and I was going to do those very things.

But of course, life kind of got in the way a little bit. And believe it or not, 40 years later, there I was standing on the outskirts of Barrow, Alaska alone with an eight dog team and we were going to dogs led across Arctic America to the east side of Canada. Well I just didn't get up one day and say, well I guess I'm going to dogs led across Arctic America. I had actually spent about 10 years in Alaska. And I had learned how to dog sled,

how to take care of my dogs, and gone on a lot of expeditions to gain experience. So when we left Faro, Alaska in February 14, 1993, I believe that my eight dogs and I were ready to go. Now, the way it works in dog sledding is you have a team of dogs, in this case I had eight, and you put a harness on them, and on the end of the harness there's a line, and the line goes back to the front of the sled, and the mushroom stands on the back of the sled, and you tell those dogs what to do.

So you don't have any leash or rain, you just use your voice to control the dogs. Well, of course, it's kind of tricky to figure out how to make eight dogs do the same thing at the same time. So you have what's called a lead dog, and that's kind of, you know, the head dog, the number one lead dog. And that's kind of, you know, head dog, the number one lead dog. My dog was a dog named Douglas. And I called him Dougie Dog. And Dougie Dog was a big ol' 75 pound, floppy or guy.

And he was just happy to go lucky. He'd do anything I ask him to do. Dougie had a son named Robert. And as far as anyone knows, Robert never did a single thing. He was told in his entire life. So why is he in the team? Well, the bitter truth is, I didn't have much in the way of money. I needed eight dogs.

I only had eight dogs. So if you were in my channel, you were going. So I took Robert along, and I put him in the back of the team where I thought he couldn't cause any trouble. And to be fair to Robert, he did work pretty hard. So. So off we went on our first day, and our first day was absolutely spectacular. I mean, everything went just the way it was supposed to go.

And I'm standing there and camp that first night, and I'm looking around and I'm looking at my dogs, I'll snuggle up behind the sleds, my little red and white tent is waiting for me, and I'm looking around and I'm thinking, you know, we're pretty isolated. There's nobody else around us for a long ways. But that's okay because I'm a person who really loves solitude and isolation. And anyway, I was so jazzed.

I mean, my dream was coming true. Well, I was going to be the first woman to dog sled across the Arctic. No woman had ever done this alone before. And I'd spent a couple of years looking for sponsorship. No one would help us. No one. So I borrowed every nickel it took to make this happen. And not too long before we left, I ran into my neighbor, Guy named Dave.

I like to call him Neighbor Dave. And I told Neighbor Dave, my woe is about money, and Neighbor Dave, you know, he's this big guy, like 6'4", and 200 pounds, and he looks down at me and he says, well, what do you expect? Your five feet nothing. What do you 100 pounds soak and wet? And those eight dogs ears, they're nothing but a bunch of clunkers.

Nobody believes in you and you're gonna fail. Wow, thanks Dave. So I'm standing there in that camp that first night and I thought to myself, you cannot listen to people like Dave. And I thought, you know, these people, they don't see what I see, they don't feel what I feel when I'm up here. And I'm looking at the sun and the western sky, and I'm looking at the Arctic Ocean

and this giant sheet of ice and all this land frozen and I think about the power it took to make that happen. My dogs and I have the same stuff in us as what's in all of that and when I look at that I don't feel small, I don't feel weak, I feel full of power like I can do anything. Well, I wasn't naive enough to think that this was going to be a day at the beach. This was going to be a pretty arduous thing. As it turned out, there were more storms in the Arctic that winter than there had been in recorded history. So when a storm is coming, you need to stop before it comes.

And you set up your camp, and I would put it my dog's sleds on their sides, and then put the dogs behind the sleds out of the wind, set up my tent, and then I'd get in there, and snuggle up with a book, and read. But it is not a time, actually, when you can just rest because I would go out every four hours around the clock and check on my dogs and make sure they had enough food. And if it was so windy, I couldn't stand up.

I did that on my hands and knees. Well, of course, it wasn't all bad whether we had just so many spectacular days out there, so beautiful in the Arctic. One day that stands out most in my mind is this one day right before we cross the Canadian border. And I'm looking off to the south and there are these mountains. And this has got a little snow on. It looks like scrimshaw and the Arctic Ocean and the air was so pure and had no smell.

And so quiet there is no sound. It's just total peace. And we continued along, we were sledding, and we came around to this beautiful big beach. And it looked so perfect. It looked like a super highway right in front of beach. And it looked so perfect. It looked like a super highway right in front of us. And I got this idea. I thought, I'm going to take Robert, my dog Robert, and I'm going to put him up in front beside my number one lead dog, Dougie Dog.

And I'm going to give Robert a chance to show that he can learn commands. What could he possibly do wrong? About five minutes later, we came around a corner and there up in a ravine off to the right was a mother polar bear cub. There about a hundred yards away and there's standing on this beautiful white snow and this perfect blue sky behind them is like a picture. And I thought, you know, the dogs aren't even

going to see her. Well, Robert's a bit of a tourist. And he just happened to look off to the right, and he saw the bears. And so now he swings to the right, and he wants to go and visit the bears. Now I'm sure that Robert thought those bears were dogs because dogs really don't like bears. And I'm yelling at Dougie Ha, and that means go left. Ha, Dougie Ha, because I'm trying to get Dougie to take us away from the bears. But now the other six dogs see what Robert is seeing and they decide they need to go see the bears.

So now the whole team swung hard to the right and we are rocketing across this frozen beach. I'm standing on this on the break as hard as I can but it's not working because it's only about an inch of snow on this beach and there's nothing for it to bite into. I'm trying to flip the sled over but I can't flip it over. We go rocketing across this beach, we get to the bottom of the ravine. Now the ravine is full of hard pack windblown snow and the break bites and we jerk to a halt. But now my lead dog is Dougie and Robert are only about three feet from this bear. And I'm like maybe 60 feet. And I'm yelling at Dougie, ha, ha, go to the left.

But he doesn't hear me. It's just total chaos. I have no control over anything that's happening. And this bear is standing there and looking at us and she is not happy. And she looked at my dog, Dougie. And she ran towards him in kind of a false charge. She tried to stop before she hit him,

but actually the ravine was so slick that she banged right into him and sent him tumbling to the bottom of the ravine, taking the whole team with him. She turned around and high-tailed it back to her cub and when the dog saw her running away, they tried to chase after her, but they couldn't quite get to her because, of course, the break is still in the snow. And now this bear is getting really agitated, and the dogs are lunging and lunging and barking, and she's getting more and more agitated, and she starts to drool. You would have to be there to see how much drool can come out of an agitated bear's mouth. This is like four water faucets going off at one time.

And then she starts wagging her head and clawing at the snow. And then she made this sound. I'd always been told by native people when a polar bear makes that sound, they're getting serious and you better be ready. Amazingly, I just got real calm and everything around me started happening in slow motion. I reached into my sled bag and I pulled out my shotgun, turned off the safety and I aimed it at her and I thought if she's gonna hurt one of my dogs, I'm gonna shoot her. And then everything stopped.

It just got totally silent. No more barking, no more hissing. Just silence. And then the bear seemed to see me for the first time. She took one step towards me, and she looked at me with those cold black eyes. My stomach just lurched. And I stepped away from the sled, one step, held out my hand and I said, it's okay, it's okay, we're going to go now. And I swear, I heard that bear say to me in my mind, I don't want to hurt you, I just

want you to go. And with that, she just walked to her den opening about 70 feet away and slipped inside. And her little cub is running over there trying to catch up to Mama. And it got right beside the den opening. Now it had had its first lesson on how to be a big tough polar bear. And it looked over at us and it went, ah! And then it jumped inside and I never saw them again. So I ran up, got the lines on tangled and jumped on the sled and I said, all right, let's go.

I wanted as much distance between us and those polar bears as possible. We didn't stop for three hours. And it took me three days to stop shaking. We had many more challenges on this journey, but somehow we always managed to rescue one another. This journey took 11 months, and then my eight dogs and I went home happy and healthy. I had wanted to prove by doing this journey that my dogs and I were good enough that we were in a bunch of clunkers. And together we did that. But what I gained most was a profound respect for my dogs and for myself.

And as for neighbor Dave? I who cares what Dave thinks. Thank you. Handflowers, 2500 mile track across across Arctic America was the longest solo dog sled trek by a woman in recorded history. She likes to tell people you're never too young to have a dream and you're never too old to make it come true. If you have a story you'd like to tell, go to the moth.org and leave us a two-minute pitch. Here's a pitch from Jacqueline Medunameet who told us a little about a childhood experience growing up in Nigeria.

When I was growing up, I suffered severe and blinded in my grand-chatex amtivar. Some days it was so bad that I could not even get out of bed. My father decided that evil spirits were the cause and that someone had put a curse on me with powerful magic. And the only way to get rid of this was through an exorcism. At about 7 p.m. 1 a.m. in Lagos, Nigeria, at the age of 13,

my mother drove me to medicine man that would banish the evil spirits and restore me to normalcy. You can pitch your story at the Moth.org and when you do, don't forget to tell us where you're located. Our favorite pitches are developed from ushows all around the world. Coming up, a young boy tests his faith with a slice of pizza. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bulls and our next story comes from Mosha Schulman. Mosha told this story on our main stage in New York City.

The theme of the evening was secret heart. Here's Mosha, live at the mall. When I was a child, I was given a blessing to become the greatest rabbi of my time. But at 15 years old, I was struggling in school and I felt like I couldn't live up to the pressure of my blessing anymore. I'm the fourth of age children and I was raised in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Muntsu, New York. For those of you who haven't been raised orthodox Jewish, it's kind of like growing up Amish,

only we had electricity. But still, I wasn't allowed to watch TV, read secular books, you know, eat non-coachered food or even talk to girls, and I was taught from a young age, but my rabbis, that if I disobeyed any of God's commandments, I would receive a punishment. And by punishment, my rabbis meant that God would most likely,

you know, kill me. And here's the thing, I believe them. I was a good boy, I got straight A's, I listened to my parents and my rabbis. But as I got older, I started to question and wonder, would God really hurt me if I didn't obey him? So I started to test him. One morning at school, I moved my Yamaka

from the back of my head to a few inches closer to the front of my head. Now that was a sign of modernism. That was like upgrading from a prepaid flip phone to an iPhone. And then I started secretly listening to Howard Stern on the bus on the way to school. And I was wondering if the other boys were listening to him too. You know, it was fascinating to me to listen to someone who was discussing about something other than, you know, the Talmud and the Torah. And even more thrilling was the fact

that this Howard Stern guy was Jewish. He was using itish words and talking about chauvets and the Jewish holidays. And that got me thinking, wait a second, if Howard Stern is Jewish and he's practically sending every day with the things I've heard him talk about why hasn't God killed him yet. But even though I was starting to push back,

I was still afraid of going too far. And at the same time, I was becoming quickly the solution with my upbringing. Things were falling apart at home. My parents were going through a pretty bad divorce, and I wanted to get away from them and my rabbis and the religious restrictions. So for winter break that year, I planned to trip the Florida

with my older brother, Israel. Israel had left the fold a year earlier and moved him with my non-religious aunt Linda in Belmore Long Island. So the plan was to meet him at her house and then we'd leave for the airport on Sunday. Now I always wanted to go to my aunt's house. My brother told me she had things I could have only dreamed of having one day. A Grand White Piano, a spiral staircase, and two 50-inch screen TVs. So I got to my aunt's house on Friday afternoon and time for Shabbos, and she was kind

enough to buy me some kosher food. But for the duration of Shabbos, but the time Shabbos was over on Saturday night, there was no kosher food left, and I was hungry. So we all got into the car to go graze for kosher food out on the pastures of Long Island. Now I was pretty good at searching for food because it seemed to be a theme in my family. You know, being one of eight kids, I always felt like there wouldn't be enough of it. And I constantly paced the kitchen, you know, looking in the pantry and the fridge for my next meal. And sometimes I'd even go as far as to hide food, you

know, out of fear that there wouldn't be any left. And I always wished there was some sort of pill that would substitute a meal, like the muna and the Torah. You know, when the Jews were in the desert and they complained to Moses and Aaron that they would rather have died with pots of meats surrounding them in Egypt, then die of thirst and hunger in the desert. And God hearing their complaints quickly answered and told them, look, I settled down. I'm going to show you how great I am. I'm going to fill the camp with bread and meat. And I believe that the direct quote was, because then you will know I'm the Lord

your God. And sure enough, my rabbis taught me that you could ask him for anything and it would literally drop from the sky. Anything you wanted, pizza, ice cream candy, it would magically appear. But nothing was magically appearing in Long Island, so we continued driving around looking for a kosher restaurant, but none were open. So I recommended we go to the local stop and shop to look for kosher frozen pizza. For some reason, in my community, that's a delicacy. So we scanned all the aisles and stopped and shop, but I couldn't find anything that had an OU marked on the package. Now the OU symbol means that it has officially been certified kosher. And if you were only

allowed to eat food within an OU marked on the package, then meant you were most likely Alchoy Orthodox, which I was. But if you were only allowed to eat food that was watched over by a specific rabbi, then marked within an official stamp by that rabbi, that meant you were acidic. But if you were allowed to eat food that had a kosher but made with dairy certification, then you were most likely modern orthodox or also known in my community as a borderline Jew. And if you were allowed to eat food that had a K marked on it, or worse than that, a capital case, or run it by a triangle, or even worse than that, the Hebrew National Certification, you could forget about a seat next to God on the world to come because he wouldn't

even consider Jewish. Eating that food was just as bad as throwing a ryanocative to the ground, cursing God and biting into a bacon egg and she's sandwiched. So having found no kosher frozen pizza, we all stood outside, stopped and shop, contemplating what to do next. You know, our search for kosher food had been going on close to two hours, and we were all frustrated. You know, I was beginning to feel like the Israelites in the Torah.

I would have preferred to die in Muncie with kosher meats surrounding me than die of hunger in the desolate suburb of Belmore, Long Island. My aunt asked me what I wanted to eat, and I didn't know. She asked me if it had to be kosher, and again, I didn't know. You know, I was just wishing there was no such thing as kosher or non-kosher. So my aunt pressed me again, does it have to be kosher or not? And I was beginning to realize that, in the moment, that even if I found something relatively kosher, I would have been disappointed. I secretly wanted something non-coaster, but I was too afraid to ask for it or admit it.

My aunt turned to my brother Israel for some help, and my brother said, look, I don't want to force them to eat non-coaster if he doesn't want to. And my aunt was getting angry, so she said, well, what is with this kosher stuff? Anyway, you know, it's just blessed by a rabbi, right? So why don't I buy some food and bless it? We'll just get this over with. And I had to tell her, well, my rabbi's taught me that women aren't allowed to bless the food.

And that got even more angry. So she started to walk away. And then I said, well, maybe I could eat something if I don't know that it's not coach or. So she quickly turned around and yelled, well, how does that work? So I explained what I learned in Talmud class. Follow this guys. If a Jew is in an airport and he buys a kosher hamburger and while he's gone, you know, to wash and make a blessing on the bread, you know, someone switches his burger out with a non- kosher

one and if he eats it, it's okay. Now, that logic, I agreed with. She was excited about that, so she had a plan. She told me that she'd go into the store and buy the food for me, and I wouldn't have any idea that it's not kosher. So I agreed. So we all got back into the car and drove to Stella's pizzeria on Merrick Road. My aunt asked me what I wanted and I told her a mushroom slice and she said just one and I said yes, I just won, I didn't want to piss God off more by getting two.

So my aunt and my brother went into the store and I sat in the back of the car waiting for God to blow up the piece of shop, the car, or both. My 15 year old mind was being filled with every rabbi I ever had in Nishiva yelling at me that I was going to be thrown into a pit of fire for sinning. I was in a goesha car, in a goesha parking lot, next to a goesha store. And I watched closely as the counterboy put the slices into the oven, and I was afraid of my touch pork. You know, what if there's pork flavor in the oven, or what if he cut my slice with the knife that he cut, a slice of pepperoni or bacon?

And my heart races, is Atlanta paid the cash here? he cut my slice with the knife that he cut, a slice of pepperoni or bacon. And my heart races is at Linda paid the cashier and I thought God was going to take her right then, he's going to take an arm off her sever her head. And I thought about that saying, don't kill the messenger to try and comfort me, but God was God. You can do whatever the hell he wanted. And I was scared for my brother too, even though he didn't order or pay for the slices, but the fact that he was in the store with my aunt made him an accessory to my downfall

as a kosher Jew. And I started to get a stomach ache and I couldn't even tell if I was hungry anymore. And the guilt was racking up pretty heavily and I realized I wasn't that good boy that I used to be. So my aunt and my brother walked out of the store, got back into the car. My brother held the pizza box with the slices in it, but I couldn't look at them or the box of pizza. I was too nervous.

I just stared out the window as we continued down the street, afraid of the car crashing into a tree or a telephone pole. And I could already see the breaking news headline, you know, Orthodox Jew buys non-coachers slice of pizza and is immediately killed on the way home. Then you will know I'm the Lord your God, I thought. Then you will know. So when we got home, Israel placed a pizza box on the dining table and Linda went into the kitchen to grab some paper plates and asked her if they'd take my slice out and he said, no, I don't want to get involved.

My aunt told us we were both nuts and she put my slice in a plate. And my aunt and my brother already started eating so I felt a little encouraged and I figured if I was going to be taken out they'd go with me. So I picked up the slice, took the first bite, I chewed it, I swallowed it. They asked me how it was and I told them it was pretty good, but it was better than pretty good, but better than any kosher pizza I'd ever had. You know, tasty tomato sauce, then crust, fresh mushrooms and cheese, but I didn't want to come off as too happy or cocky, you know, I didn't want to piss him off even more

upstairs. And so I quickly finished the slice and I checked to make sure I wasn't dead and thought, please God, forgive me, just this once, please, it's just a stupid mushroom slice at pizza. I enjoyed the slice, but I just broke in a major commandment. But the next day, Israel and I went to Florida and it was over the course of that week that I traded in my amico for a baseball cap. I was finally free from the pressure of my blessing and my rabbis and my parents' chaotic divorce.

It was just me and my older brother, free to do as we pleased. We spent full days at Universal Studios riding the roller coasters and playing our Cades. We stayed up late in the hotel watching movies, and I couldn't stop eating pizza that week. I think I had pizza for nearly every meal. Flaro is my Sodom and Gamora. But of course, it isn't that easy.

It's not like I just ate that one slice, and everything is all good. It's been 10 years since I get that mushroom slice and I've since made a full break from the rhythm as fold. And yet, I'm still scared that something horrible is going to happen to me for breaking the rules. And I imagine ordering a bacon egg and cheese sandwich one day and I can already see the breaking news headline,

former orthodox Jew orders a bacon egg and cheese sandwich and it's instantly struck down by lightning and local diner. Then you will know, and the Lord your God. Then you will know. Thank you. That was Moshe Schulman. Moshe is a writer living in New York City. The place Rabbi's Worn Tim were the people who walk the streets were little more than

Vilda Haya, wild animals. To see a picture from Moshe's life changing week at Universal Studios, go to the Moth.org. Our next story comes from Jennifer Soudini. Jennifer threw her name in the hat at one of our monthly open mic story slams in Chicago, where we partner with Public Radio Station WBUZ. Here's Jennifer Soudini, live at the mall. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time and yeah, dangerous, I know. And I lived in a very small apartment building and I lived on the top floor. And it was my apartment and the apartment of a man named Gary.

I didn't know Gary very well. He just seemed like a typical Pittsburgh-Edo. He had a girlfriend maybe maybe I never saw her. He had like, uh, what's it called? Like, like, like, Rowe-Fryer's Club roast DVDs show up a lot. That's really all I knew about him. The second floor were two more apartments with a clear glass door, and the bottom is a basement. Two apartments in the basement, a garage, and then all the way across the garage, there was the laundry room. Now, at the time, I was working a lot of different jobs, going from one job to the next, I had an internship, and then I worked as a waitress.

I was running a very late one day. And so, pulling to the garage in my car, throwing my uniform, which was still in my car from the night before, into the wash, run up to my apartment. I'm thinking, okay, here's what I could do. I could either go all, you know, change my clothes, put on pants and a shirt, go all the way back downstairs through the garage to the laundry room, get my clothes, then run all the way back upstairs to my apartment, change, and then go all the way back downstairs to my car, drive to work as a waitress. to my car drive to work as a way of dress. I thought, no, no, no, here's what I'm gonna do.

Put on my underwear and undershirt. I'm gonna sprint down the stairs, through the garage into the laundry room, put the fresh warm clothes right from the dryer, get in my car and leave. This is gonna save like minutes. It's brilliant. And then, then I think, wait a second, Jennifer, this sounds like one of those stories where you're going to really embarrass yourself. And then I thought, wait, no, then I thought wait no because I thought that nothing is gonna happen.

So, underwear on. Out the door, third floor, lock the door. I am on the landing between the third floor and the second floor, and I hear the buzzer ring. Now, like I said, this is a clear glass door. Whoever is on the second floor, ring the buzzer. It was gonna seeming. Fun. Crisis a burden. Run back upstairs. Uh, I hear Gary coming out of his car.

So now I have to make a choice. In my underwear, do I run upstairs, fumble with my keys, as Gary just inexplicably sees me in my underwear trying to get back into my apartment? Or do I sprint past the unknown person at the door? Obvious choice, right? Sprint past the person, front of the glass.

I mean, this sounds like minutes, this is like seconds. And so, I run, this sounds like minutes. This is like seconds. And so I run down the stairs, past the door in my underwear, get to the downstairs, and I look up, and I see a woman who actually kind of looks a little bit like me, kind of my same shape, same hair color, and I look at her, and I give her the best life's fucking weird sometimes you see someone run by and they're otherware and she looks down at me and there is a look of a murder on her face

and I realize that must be Gary's girlfriend. So in her eyes, what happened was she rings the doorbell and a girl in her underwear sprints by, looks up and keeps on going. And I just thought, how is Gary possibly going to explain this? She's going to say, Gary, I ran the door. Who was that girl in her underwear sprinting from the top floor? What are you talking about, honey? What do you mean? What am I talking about?

There's just girls sprinting around her arm and I did get to work on time, but I did not come home for three days after. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was Jennifer So-D. Since telling that story, Jennifer's work for the Warhol Museum is an intern held a job at a publishing company and now works as an analyst for a medical consulting company.

She says she spends the rest of her time DJing, playing pinball and telling stories. She's currently the producer and host of the Chicago Storytelling Live Music Show called The First Time. You can find and share the stories in this hour and hear many more if you check out the Moth Archive on our website. After our break, the former basis of Guns and Roses finds himself in a very real life or death situation. The Mothradio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is the Mothradio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bulls, and our last story comes from Duff McKagan, the former bass player for

guns and roses and for velvet revolver. He told this story at a show we produced in Los Angeles. You can imagine, Duff has a million stories, but he decided in the end to tell the one he said meant the very most to him. Here's Duff McKagan, glad to be back. Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Where's that? Oh! Oh! In my 20s, I experienced a certain amount of success in my musical career. And really, ever since I was, could remember. That's all I ever wanted.

But also in my mid 20s, I started to spiral deeper down into my addiction of alcohol and drugs. And at about 27, I realized three of my best friends, my very best friends, had all died from drug overdoses. And it just seemed that it was everywhere around me. And I just became numb. I was getting numb and I couldn't find my way out of my own addiction. And I bought a dream house back home in Seattle, this house that myself and my friends,

when we were little, we'd look at the house and say, one day one of us is going to have that house. And I was at that point. I bought the house, the castle, we called it. And I got on a plane from LA to Seattle to take possession of this new home. And sat on the plane in Kirk-O-Bane, sat next to me on the plane. And he was famously in his drug hell and I was in mine and we just sort of commiserated on where we were at and that was it we landed and I went to my house and two days later I was there alone, and my phone rang, and hey, Duff, weren't you just

on the plane with Kurt? He's dead. And I thought, I didn't think. I was numb. It didn't affect me. I just kind of figured that's the way it was going with a lot of us. And I figured I was next at that point.

Four weeks later in that house, I woke up one morning in my bed, and I had a sharp little pain. And I thought it was gas, so I just sort of rolled over in bed, and the pain spread and it got sharper. And I thought something bad was going on, but I thought still it was just a lot of gas. So I rolled again. And the pain dripped down on the inside of me

down across my stomach and down into my quad muscles. And it felt like dull knives just cutting into me. And I couldn't breathe and I couldn't move one last time to reach my phone, to call 911 or a friend or my mom. And I thought, well, this is it. I didn't think I would last till I was 30 and here I was, I was 30 now.

And this is it. I'm going to die alone in my bed in this house, in the pain. I didn't think I would die in this much pain. And just then I heard my door open downstairs, and it was my best friend since childhood. Andy, I heard him say say hey, where are you? And he could tell That I was home my car was in the garage and my keys and wallet were downstairs on the counter And I heard him come up the stairs and I and I I knew I just I could die now with at least my best friend and he came into the bedroom And he he said it's finally happened.

And Andy picked me up and the pain was so bad that I whispered in his ear and that it could have only been a whisper or a whimper more like, Andy, please just kill me. I just couldn't take the pain. I remember a cold floor of the ER at a hospital there in Seattle. I remember getting two shots of Demarol and two shots of Morphine. And from previous experience, I knew what this stuff should do, and it didn't work on me. And the panic that I suddenly felt like this pain's not going to go away. I remember at that point my doctor, who's father, was my birth doctor, had delivered me, and they were our family doctor,

and now the son had taken over the practice, and he came in, my doctor, this son of the doctor who had birthed me, came in, and they did an ultrasound, and I saw his face above me, and it went white. And apparently what had happened, my pancreas had expanded to a size of a football and it had burst. And it spills the bile that digest your food and it spills it all over your insides.

And I remember seeing my mom there in her wheelchair with Parkinson's and me me the youngest of her eight children and Matubes running it in out of me. I had an intervenence more feeding by this time an intervenence, liberium from the shakes from my withdrawal and my mom there. I'm just thinking the order of this whole thing is fucking wrong. I should be taking care of my mom and now she has to see this, see her youngest son. They did another ultrasound. I heard them talking about splitting it people open to let the steam out, to release some

of the pain before they die. And apparently there's only a 15% chance of survival in this particular thing I had, but I just wanted to die. I couldn't take the pain anymore. There was another ultrasound, and my doctor came to me a day of pass, maybe two, I don't know, but that ultrasound, he came to me and he said, Duff, you begin with a second chance, you better figure out what this is all about. Apparently my pancreas had gone back down to size, which just doesn't happen.

And they were going to keep me in the hospital until the, where it rubs your, I guess, I don't know if they can sew it up or not, but they were just going to see if it healed. So they kept me in the hospital and I was thirsty. They couldn't feed me any water or food, there was ice chips and I started to heal. And they took the morphine button away,

and I remember kind of like feeling the withdrawal from that and the Librium heal and they took the morphine button away and I remember kind of like feeling the withdrawal from that and the liberium button they took away but they kept the inner Venus and I started to heal. And after two weeks they said you know you're free to go, Duff, we have a rehab for you to go to and I said I'm done and I was done, I was done. This was the longest in this two weeks. I'd been off of alcohols in my adult life. It's the longest. I'd been off street drugs.

In my adult life, two weeks. And I was giddy. I left the hospital. I remember seeing the doors of the hospital and starting to run. And I doubled over in pain because my insides were still raw from the burns. But this was my first experience in sober life

in my adult life. And I remember smelling like things we take for granted. Fresh, cut grass. I smelt this, and it reminded me of having a lawn job when I was 12 and 11 and being so happy. And I got a newspaper and I smelled a new sprint, something I hadn't smelled since I was a paper boy.

I remember going to a grocery store on this rusty old mountain bike I had. I pulled it out of my garage. I just didn't know what to do. I went to the grocery store and it was chaos and there to me it was there's sounds coming through the sound system. I'm sure clerks just checking prices on grocery items but I thought they were all talking about me. And this normal transaction, I went to get smokes. I bought some barbecue sauce. I don't know why. And I was sweating and I got a pack of smokes and I gave

her the money, it was kind of crumpled up out of my sweaty pocket. And to her was a normal transaction, but to me it just wasn't. I heard about this martial arts dojo. And I knew I needed something else. My first day I walked into this dojo, this school. And there was two guys in the boxing ring, and these two guys were kickboxing. They were fighting. They were sparring. And other guys hitting heavy bags,

and guys jumping rope, and speed bags, and then this man walked up to me and he said, I'm since a Benny. Are you here to work? And when you looked at me in the eyes, it didn't just look in my eyes, you looked down inside of me and I knew, I just knew I didn't have to tell him what had happened to me,

that he already had a sense of everything and what I needed. And what I saw in his eyes was something I wanted. I was desperate for it. It was peace. In this whole time, the doctor is what he said to me, you're here for a reason, Duff. I don't know what that means. The sensei, he put me to work that day. We did some physical work, but very little.

And then he sent me home and he said, Duff, you clean up your house, wash your clothes, fold them, put them in your dresser, clean your kitchen, clean all your house, wash your clothes, fold them, put them in your dresser, clean your kitchen, clean all your dishes, put them in the dishwasher, and when you use another dish, you put it straight in the dishwasher and make your bed. And tomorrow morning, when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror. And I didn't really know what this is about. And he said, be back here tomorrow at night. And I did, and I came back.

And I did what he said. I looked in the mirror, and I cleaned my house, and I came back, and he worked me harder. And this went on day by day. And my doctor's words still reverberating around in my head. You're here for a reason. You better figure it out. As a physical workout's got more intense, I was jumping rope. I learned how to do a lot of pushups and start to spar and do defense and hit bags.

And then I was, emotions came out of me. I remember one day hitting a heavy bag and emotions came out and I started to cry. I had no idea why I don't, I'm not a cryer. My sensei worked me out even harder. I remember becoming un-num. And going home and making calls, people I had affected when I was out there doing all of that stuff before. And I called my family, I called friends, and I was keeping my house clean,

and I was looking at myself in the mirror every morning. And my doctor's words kept reverberating around in my head, you hear, for a reason. After two years of every day at this dojo, with my sensei, one morning I woke up, and I looked in the mirror and I saw myself. I saw this person I liked. I'd done everything the day before. I got it. I'd done everything the day before that I was said I was going to do.

I didn't go to bed with any weight on my chest. I returned to every phone call. And I was at peace, and I liked myself. And I came to the dojo, I said, since I saw myself in the mirror, and he says, I know, I knew you would. About a year later, I met the woman that would become my wife, and we fell in love. And a year after that, we were in another hospital room, but this time it wasn't an ER. It was a burning sweet.

And in the chaos of the long, 17-hour labor and me being with my wife and the doctor finally coming in and I hear saying one last push, Susan, one last push. And this little baby came out and they gave her to me and she was terrified. She was crying and there was chaos in the room and I said, hey, baby, it's me, it's your dad. And she suddenly stopped crying. And her big, beautiful eyes just looked up at me. And she was completely calm. And she knew she was safe.

And a light came around me. And I can't explain it. It was real, it was light, and it surrounded my whole soul and this baby. And in that instant, I realized the reason I was there, the reason I'd spied up that pancreatitis, thank you. That was Duff McCagans. Duff is best known as the basis for guns and roses, but he's also a writer. He's written columns for Seattle Weekly and ESPN.com, and he's the author of How to Be a Man and Other Illusions.

His daughter Grace, who we mentioned, is all grown up now and in her own punk band called the Pink Slips. You can find out more about Duff and all the storytellers in this hour by visiting the Radio Extras page on our website, theMoth.org. That's it for this hour. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour. Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the most directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin

Janess, and Jennifer Hickson, with production support from Whitney Jones. Malthe Vance 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 Thomas Leib, Croquet, Lawless music, and Guns and Roses. Links to all the music we use are at our website. The Moth is produced for radio by me, J. Allyson, with Vicki 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, verdant, and peaceful world. The Moth radio hour is presented by PRX to find out more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org.

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