The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: The Moth StorySLAM

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

In this hour we’ll travel around the country to hear stories from our live open mic StorySLAM events: Louisville, Kentucky; San Francisco; Burlington, Vermont; Portland, Oregon; as well as the birthplace of the Moth StorySlam, New York City. Hosted by The Moth's Senior Director Meg Bowles. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Hosted by: Meg Bowles Storytellers: John Dubuc, Leah Benson, Kathi Kinnear Hill, Tom Herndon, Caitlin Myer, David Sampliner, Tara Clancy

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org forward slash Houston. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bulls and in this hour we'll travel around the country to hear stories from our

live, open Mike's Story Slam events. Louisville, Kentucky, San Francisco, Burlington, Vermont, and Portland, Oregon, as well as the birthplace of the Moth Story Slam, New York City. The story slams started in 2001. Back then, poetry slams were all the rage in New York and our founder George Dawes Green thought, why not start an evening where people, anyone who wanted to, could get up on stage and share a story. The first few nights were pretty rocky but people kept coming and the stories got

better and today we have slams all over the country and all over the world. In every city the evenings are the same. Ten storytellers drawn from a hat, four teams of judges, and one winner. When John Dubuque first went to the story slam in Burlington, Vermont, he'd never been on a stage. He was a semi-pro football player who came for an evening out with his girlfriend. What he didn't realize was she would end up putting his man in the hat. Here's John Dubuque live at the mall. All right, first I want to thank my lovely new fiance for volunteering me for this. We

got engaged last week. Thank you. Thank you. I think it's important to preface this story by saying that like, I'm a man's man. I play football. I work at a juvenile detention center as like a hybrid Superman prison guard. I do a lot of different things. A year ago, approximately, at that juvenile detention center that I work at, I was approached by the staff there, the director there, that they were trying to incorporate some new programming, and that programming was going to be yoga for the kids. Not something that I do. I mean, I'm 300 pounds, I play football and like roll around and drink beer.

I don't lay on a mat. So I was a little bit hesitant when they came to me and said, hey, we want to send you away for a week to an all intensive yoga retreat. But I'm pretty open-minded and they said, for this week, we'll pay you, we're gonna send you away. But I'm pretty open-minded and they said, for this week, we'll pay you, we're gonna send you in. I thought, oh, I don't have to be in the building, I can go out, get paid, and so I signed up.

It was Karpalu, I don't know if any of you know what that is, but so it's like, in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, it's like four hours from Vermont, it was completely not anything that I have ever been. Anything I've ever done in my life, it's nowhere like anything I've ever done. So I got in the van with two other employees who are going with me.

One of them takes yoga all the time and the other is like a 95 pound female who is super flexible and gymnast and she did a little yoga as well. So I'm completely out of my element. We get in the car, we drive down to Karpalu, get there and it's like hog warps up on the mountain. You know, we get there in the middle of the night, it's all lit up and there's people running around in yoga pants and You know all that stuff and I did not know what I'm getting myself into Very very very hesitant I walk through the doors

The one of the women that I had worked with she attended Karpalu on her own about a year prior and When before we left she came to us and said, no matter what you do when you go there, make sure that you at least one day go to noon dance. So they have this program there. So we were in classes all day learning yoga, learning about yoga instruction, learning how to,

better take care of yourself as a person. And then during the two hour lunch break every day, you could just eat, which I did for the majority of the time there. Or you could take another yoga class, or they offered meditation, and they also offered this new dance class. So the woman I worked with said, new dance,

she compared it to giving child birth. She said it was like the greatest experience she's ever had in her life. So knowing that I'm never gonna be able to give childbirth, I thought like, I guess I gotta try it out. So while the two people I had went with were taking a yoga class one day, I kinda got at them, my comfort zone and I went to New Ndance.

So I walked in and there's probably like 50 people in this big circle and there's an instructor with like a headset mic that's running the whole thing and she's starting you out with some basic stretches and you know you're kind of like moving around and floating and like starting that. Then she asks everyone to get on all fours. So, I'm a little concerned at this moment, but I get down there and she, you know, I'm balanced out on all fours and she starts going through like cat cow pose, which this is all new to me. I'm just learning this. So like cat cow, cat cow.

So, I'm getting through it, I'm doing it, struggling a little bit. And I'm kind of rigid because the next thing she says is now pretend that you're actually a cat. And she's like, start looking around the room. And maybe you notice another cat that catches your eye. And so now I'm like whoa like all fours like super super still and super quiet and this woman she looks at me and I'm trying not

to see her but I definitely see her you can't miss her. She's got like big long red hair like flowing clothes and she's just a personality. So she starts crawling over to me on all fours. And I'm still like, and I'm just thinking, I have a girlfriend at home. I don't know what's about to happen. I don't know what they do with these hippie retreats. Like, help, but so I'm saying there. And the next thing the instructor says is, maybe you start rubbing hips with the person next to you.

So she comes over and I guess I looked in fighting. So she's got her hips right along my and she's just rotating the hips and rubbing against me. And then she starts to purr. And that was just too much for me. And my mind is freaking out, it's racing, I'm going crazy. And she looks at me and she says, have you tried purring? And I told her that I didn't think I had it in me.

And she kind of persisted and she kept gyrating. So finally, I kind of looked around the room and realized there's no, the people I work with, they're gone in another yoga class, there's nobody else here. No one's ever going to find out about it, right? So I let out a little... And honestly, it was probably one of the most freeing things I've ever done in my life. And it just like instantly, like, everything, all my guard

was down, everything was off. And I just danced my face off for like an hour. And it was absolutely incredible. And I kind of realized, I think, in that moment that you really don't know what you're capable of until you kind of let your guard down a little bit. So. John DeVue can do that being crowned the Story Slam winner of that evening.

John is since retired from playing football. He still works at Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, and as for yoga, he's been in contact with Krupalu about going back for a longer teaching certification course. You can see a picture of John and his Beyoncé Courtney, who was responsible for getting him up on stage, on our radio extras page at themuff.org. When Lee Abinson took the stage at our story slam in Portland, Oregon, she found it all a little terrifying. She says it's one thing to talk in front of people you know, and a completely different

thing to reveal a part of yourself in a room filled with strangers. Here's Leigh Abinson, live from Portland. So, his name was Carlos. We'd worked together in Kutsul-Tunango, Guatemala, where I'd been living for a couple of years. And by this point, we'd been living together for about six months, but I'd been secretly in love with him for about nine. He'd recently started working at this bar called Bohemios, which we've been hanging out at for months. It was this really crappy, awful dive bar that catered to American tourists.

You know, the kind of place that pours like really light beer, awful stuff, but blairs, the best and worst music, from the 70s, 80s and 90s, all from the United States so that people want to come in there. But no one really did. But we hung out there every night, singing along the songs like Unbreak My Heart and living on a prayer

and doing our best to translate every single word for the locals hanging out in there into Spanish so that they could ironically appreciate everything as well. But anyway, it was really exciting when he started working there. So Carlos came home one night to our apartment and it was fairly late, like 1 or 2 am. But I was, of course, waiting up for him, like I always did, because I just wanted to see him. And he came in, he told me, you know, a little bit about the night, of the funny stories about what the drunks did.

And then he went to go take a shower. But before doing that, he laid down this pile of books that he had brought with him to the bar, something to look at during the slow hours. And as he walked away, I of course looked at it because I always wanted to know what he was reading so that I knew what I should be reading too. So the next time he asked me who my favorite poet was, I knew that I should say something like,

as repound instead of William Blake. So on this particular night, he was reading a collection of T.S. Eliot poems. And when I bent down to pick up the book, this piece of paper fell out onto the floor, and I could immediately recognize his somewhat childish handwriting. And I couldn't see much, but I could see

that it was written in Spanish, and I saw the foie, craze, no poire lever sin ti. I know. I was like, oh my God, and in that moment I knew, I knew that this letter was written for me. It was a love letter that Carlos had written out for me and me alone to see. And so I ran, I went to get my dictionary,

because there are two things you should know about Carlos. First off, he is the son of U.S. diplomats and had grown up in Spanish-speaking countries his entire life, and so he was fluent. And I lived in Guatemala for a couple of years and I was son of U.S. diplomats and had grown up in Spanish-speaking countries his entire life, and so he was fluent. And I lived in Guatemala for a couple of years, and so I was fluent in the way that I might write like fluent on my job resume, but not actually fluent, you know.

And so I knew I'd need some help. And number two was that Carlos had a degree in poetry from Yale. And so I knew whatever he was gonna be writing to me was going to be in that like absolutely beautiful and totally incomprehensible way that poets express themselves. So I got my dictionary and I started translating and it was amazing.

Like the first line was, when I first met you, I was afraid, but now I can't live without you. And I just stopped. This is exactly what I'd been wanting to say to him for months. This is exactly what I'd wanted to be hearing. And I couldn't believe it had been happening. I had given up my life essentially to be with this man. I'd stayed living in this foreign country when I could have been returning to the United States

to start a career and stuff. And instead, I just stayed with him and we spent every moment together. We knew everything about one another and we shared our hopes and dreams and all these things and I knew that we were in love but I'd never heard it from him before. And so I was just so excited and it got even better from there. It turned from him being afraid to him, not being able to live without me, and all of these really amazing things. And I was allowing myself, like my mind was running wild,

and I was imagining how he would walk out of the bathroom, and I would walk towards him, and I would like embrace him, and passionately kiss him, and run my hands through his amazing hair. And I would just let him know that I felt the same. And at this moment, I remember something running through my head, like that golden rule, just like Misty,

that if something's too good to be true, that it might be too good. So, but then I was like, you know what, fuck it. This is actually true. Like this is happening. This guy wrote a letter to me. And so I continued reading. I opened back up my dictionary.

And that's when she got a little bit weird. Because all of a sudden, the next line that I was reading was talking about how I had had done him wrong. And it's like I didn't say Leah exactly, but I knew it was about me. And I was like, I never ever done this man wrong. Like I have committed myself to this relationship to being the perfect, perfect person for him. Like I don't know what he's talking about. And then all of a sudden it just like hit me. And this translation that I was doing became so clear.

All the words just like formed in front of me. And I at that point just crossed my fingers, took a deep breath and just pleaded with the universe, hoping that the next words that I would read on this page of this love letter would not be what I thought that they were. Then I opened my eyes, and I looked down, and I saw, voy, as sobre, vivir. And at that moment, I just started to cry,

because I realized, Carlos didn't love me. He never did, never was going to. And I wasn't reading a love letter. I was reading a translation of the Gloria Gainer hit song I Will Survive. And at that point, I wasn't entirely sure that I would. LAUGHTER CHEERING AND APPLAUSE When Leigh have been to the left of the stage, the judges scores landed her in the bottom half,

far from a win. But the thing most people don't realize is, we have a team of people listening to every story ever told at a slam. The judging at a show is really just for fun, and it gives us an excuse to celebrate someone for telling a great story. But when I told Leah that we wanted to play her story

on the radio, she said, take that, judges. Here's another story from the Portland Oregon Slam series. Kathy Canier Hill also missed winning the night, but only by a fraction of a point. The theme of the evening was crime and punishment. Here's Kathy Canere Hill, live at the mall. The year's 1965. Take that in for a minute. My best friend is Lena, and she has beautiful green eyes and sandy blonde hair. And then there's me.

At that time, I don't think I had a whole lot of teeth. I was eight years old. And my hair was every direction. We were awkward. We were eight. But we were best friends. She invited me swimming. It was July, middle of the summer, hot in Portland. And I was so excited, I'd been swimming a lot,

but I hadn't gone to her pool. So I patched my little beach bag, like it was a huge outing. It was 13 blocks away. And I had my talent with Daisy's on it. It was the 60s and $1.50. A dollar to get into the pool in $0.50. A dollar to get into the pool in 50 cents so I could get two dream cycles.

This was heaven. And it was in the day that you could go and walk 13 blocks. You'd moms weren't watching. They just said, bye. Have fun. So we get to the pool. And it's eagles. And it's Eagles. It's called Eagles, Eagles Club.

I didn't know anything about that. And so more in line, there's a lot of kids with the same idea on this hot day. And we're just shooting the breeze and looking at our little dollars in our hands. That was a whole lot of money. And we get up to the desk before you get to the pool. And Lena was so proud to say,

where members here and I brought my friend. And the guy must have been 15. He looked like a really old guy to me. He had a buzz cut, blonde, icy, mean, blue eyes. And he looked at Lena and said, you can come in, but she can't. Wow, what? Did we hear that right? Well, no, this is my best friend. This is my very best friend.

And I can bring a friend because I do that. I always do that. And so she has a dollar, and I held my dollar up. I was proud. He didn't take my dollar. She's a no, my mom and dad said that I can bring my friend. She's Kathy. She's my best friend and we're going to swim. And he looked at her and he said, you can go in, but she can't.

So what does an eight-year-old girl do when she really knows what's going on, but she'd never been there before? In my neighborhood, I'd been called that word. There was always one creep in the neighborhood. But institutionalized racism, I didn't know what that was. I didn't know that this was policy. I didn't even know the word policy. But I knew in my heart that I wasn't going to swim that day.

So I looked at Lena and I said sincerely from my heart you swim. You swim. And this like come over later. And she's eight so she did. She walks away and I turned around and all those kids behind me were looking at me, but they weren't looking at me with hate, they were looking at me because they were confused too. For some reason I was being punished and I think the crime was the color of my skin.

So I walked out, and I walked what might have been the longest walk of my life and the loneliest home. That was Kathy Keneer Hill. If you check out our website, you can see a picture of Kathy and find out more about her and our other storytellers. You can also find out if we have a slam coming up in your area. That's at themoth.org. Coming up, we'll hear more stories from our Open Mike Story slam series all around the country. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Meg Bulls and our next storyteller, Tom Herndon, put his name in the hat at a slam in Louisville, Kentucky. He said every time a storyteller name would be drawn, he'd feel fear and nervous excitement. But when he didn't hear his name, he'd feel relief. When his name eventually was called, he took the stage and told this story. A big applause. A big applause. All right. Well, I can tell you that nothing shatters a child's innocence

more than watching one of their parents get busted. When I was 10, my mom and I went on a trip to visit some relatives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and our flight included a stop in Chicago. Turned out to be a very long stop. And faced with the prospect of six hours at a hair airport, we could have gone into the city, maybe called a Cubs game or gone to the art institute.

But for my depression era mother, those things cost money. And what my mom saw as an opportunity at the airport with six hours to kill was a chance to make some money. And at the center of this financial banancer I was to kill was a chance to make some money. And at the center of this financial bananza, were luggage carts. What my mom noticed was that all the luggage carts in the rack, you had to put a dollar in, you got the luggage card out, you took

it wherever you needed it, and if you brought it back, you got a quarter. But nobody ever brings the card back, and my mom quickly starts corralling all the cards that she can lay her hands on, bringing them back to the rack and getting the quarter. I'm mortally embarrassed by this, I pretend not to know who this woman is, but after an hour of pretty good hustle, she's sporting a pretty hefty pocket of quarters. And she says, hey, come on, let's hustle. I'll split it with you. So reluctantly, I get drawn into the enterprise. And I'm just spotting it first.

I'm kind of staying on the fringe of this whole thing. But we're doing OK. We're racking up the quarters. And that probably would have been all good and well until my mom is taking one of the cards back to the rack and a woman stops her and says, hey, you finished with that cart? You modify, take it.

And another light bulb goes off in my mom's head. And she says, yeah, you can have it for a dollar. And my mom's mine. She's going to get the same price as if she went to the rack, but she's quadrupled her profit margin. Now, if my mom was busy before when she was making a quarter of her cart, she is now a blur. And one of the busiest airports in the world, she is moving.

She's checking the monitors. She's seeing where flights are coming in. She is looking at people coming from California. They're gonna have a lot of luggage. We gotta get that flight. She's hanging out at baggage claim. Whoa, look at all those suitcase you got. They're gonna have a lot of luggage. We gotta get that flight. She's hanging out at baggage claim. Whoa, look at all those suitcases you got.

You probably could use a cart. Trust cost you a dollar. She's infectious, she's persistent, she's likable, and she is putting away the paper money now. I'm not really keen on this new business direction that our enterprise is taking. Even though I was young, I starting to sense that maybe we've crossed over into something

a little different now. And my suspicion is confirmed when on the way to another gate to meet potential customers. My mom rounds a corner with a cart and runs right into two Chicago area airport police officers. Ma'am, what are you doing? What am I doing? Answer by repeating the question that buys you a little time What does it look like I'm doing? Answer a question with a question at this point my mom had been married to an attorney for 25 years So her verbal fencing skills are pretty solid Well, ma'am it looks like you're taking these carts and

Selling them to other people. And that's illegal. I can tell this isn't a chance encounter because one of the security officers says into his walkie talkie, yeah, 1012, we found her. Ma'am, why don't you have a seat? Now I'm getting very nervous. These security folks have utility belts and badges. And I think I see handcuffs on the belts. And I'm wondering if those are going to come out. And people are starting to stare.

They're starting to look. And he goes back and forth with my mom a little bit. We're just coming from West Virginia. We don't know about your big city ways. Just taking the carts back for their quarter. So after a while, he says, look, if you want to take the carts back, that's fine. Take the quarters. But you can't walk around here selling this thing.

Okay? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sorry for the misunderstanding Not really a misunderstanding, but that's okay And my mom says Well, we finish up our low-profit margin into the work get on the flight to Minneapolis and My mom says I don't think we need to tell your father about this.

We can just keep this between you and me. Thanks. That was Tom Hurnden at the Louisville Story Slam. These days, Tom is a father of two, a high school senior, and a freshman. He works in advertising and he has to travel a fair amount. Often, he'll find himself at a terminal waiting to catch a flight, and he'll see luggage carts and think of his mom. At every slam in every city, it's hard to be the first name called, but someone always has to deal with the added pressure of going first, like Caitlin Meyer when she told this story

in San Francisco. The theme of the night was interference. So I grew up in Provo, Utah, and if you don't know, Provo, Utah is the center of Mormondom. You think it's Salt Lake, but it's Provo. I was raised Mormon, but you should know as a teenager, I was a very bad Mormon. When I was 16, every night I would go into my room, like I was going to bed, put on my nightcown, close to the door, take off my nightcown, put on my clothes, open the window, climb out, and spend the night with my boyfriend, Lucio.

And all of his friends, we hung out in the party house. He was a metal guitarist. He was great. He had long hair. My parents hated him. It was perfect. So one morning after spending all night with Lucio and his friends, I climbed back in my bedroom window, and there's my father in my bedroom. I had this idea that, okay, the jig is up, I've been caught. So, maybe now is time to come clean about all of my sins. I'm not really sure what I was thinking. But I told my father that I was on the pill.

He cried a little bit and he said, I'm glad that you're taking precautions. And then he said, I'm going to have to tell your mother. I heard the whale from the other side of the house. It was operatic. It was, oh! And that touched that off. And it was, it was hell for, it was a really good approximation of hell, even though Mormons don't believe in hell.

It was a good Catholic hell going on. And so I was told to leave the room after they calmed down a little bit. I was told to leave the room and they had to discuss things, my fate. So after a while they said, okay, you can come back. My mom was completely white and she had this grim mask on. And they said, we've been talking and you have a choice. Oh, yay! Great! I have a choice. They said, we're thinking about heritage school. Heritage school was a reform school.

And you may have seen documentaries about schools like these, where big, burly guys come into a teenager's bedroom in the middle of the night and kidnap them and take them away to this horrific reform school. They were always under suit from the ACLU. I know this because my mother used to work there. It's a charming, charming place. I said, okay, what's the other you can marry him. Oh, wow. I said, OK. Yeah, fine. Oh, marry him.

That's what you want? That's what you're going to get. So we loaded into the car, and we drove down to the party house. And Lucius Friend Darren was on the front lawn and I saw him through the windshield of the car and he went running inside to get wake Lucio up because we've been up all night. Lucio came out all rumpled and sat in the back seat of the car. I was in the front seat between my parents and my parents proposed to him. And Lucio bless his heart, said, yes.

He was also over 18, so they had that statutory thing over his head, but that's not why he said yes. It was love. So for a month, we were engaged. And I got to see him once a week on alternating weeks. He would come to my house and we'd have a family financial planning meeting because we couldn't get married until he could support me.

And on alternating weeks, I'd go to his parents' house. His parents were resilient. And they would have this big dinner. And you know, this is Lucio's fiance, everything is beautiful. So this is where the interference comes in. My parents sent me to a therapist after one month of engagement. I went to this therapist and I told him what was going on and he said, that's ridiculous. I said, yeah. He said, you don't need to go to reform school.

I said, yeah, he said you're too young to get married. I said, yeah. He said, you need to get out of that house. I said, I know that he did and my parents said you're right. So I left home at 16 and came to California and for the rest of my life I will be grateful to that therapist who saved my life. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. That was Caitlin Meyer. Caitlin is a writer who used to live in San Francisco. She recently got rid of all of her belongings,

a let go of her apartment, and is now living the life of a nomad. Since telling that story, she's lived in Istanbul, Greece, Kathmandu, and a tiny village in Sri Lanka. Lucio recently found Caitlin on Facebook, and on a trip back home to visit her father, she saw Lucio and met his six kids, including two teenage boys, she says, look disturbingly like he did when they were nearly married. Coming up, we visit the hometown of the Moth Story Slam, New York City. The Malthor 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 Meg Bulls and our next story was told back in 2011 at the Housing Works in New York City. The show that night was sold out, and our next storyteller, David Sampleener, couldn't get in. But when a couple of people happened to walk out, the person on the door let him in and he managed to get his name in the hat just in time. After nine stories

with just one slot remaining and many names still in the hat, David got picked. Fittingly, the theme of the night was luck. Here's David Sampleener, live at the Marble. So two weeks before my partner Rachel was due to give birth to our son, I decided that we should get married. And Rachel always wanted to be married before we had a child, but she got pregnant first. And so we'd sort of permanently put on hold the idea of ever having a wedding, but it was the 11th hour and I decided, you know, I'm going to surprise her with this notion of going down to City Hall, going to the Justice of the Peace and getting married before her son arrived.

And so I broached the idea with her and she's ecstatic about it and we decide, you know, we're going to go the very last day that we can go before our babies do it or arrive. And it's going to be Friday, May 1st. I say, honey, I'm going to take care of everything. So I called the wedding bureau and I get a woman on the phone and I say, you know, what do you have to bring downtown to get married in front of the Justice of the Peace and she says, all you need is a picture ID and just make sure that you get there before 345 and the doors closed. I say, fantastic, I hang up the phone, wedding planned. So Friday May 1st arrives, and Rachel and I are getting all gussied up in our Sunday best, and it's 2 o'clock, and we're about to santa out the door.

We have plenty of time to get down to the wedding, girl. And Rachel turns to me and she asks, are you sure, honey, that all you need is a picture ID to get married down. Tell me, I said, yes. I'm positive. And she immediately goes back in the apartment turns on the computer, goes to the Wedding Bureau website. And she's looking down the website. It starts to dawn on me that my research wasn't as thorough

as it needed to be. It turns out you don't just need like a driver's license to get married, it turns out you need a wedding license to have a wedding in New York State. And also New York requires a 24 hour waiting period in between the time that you get your marriage license and the time that you're going to have your wedding to discourage any rash decisions. And I realize that we've got less than two hours before the window permanently closes on the idea that we can get married before having our child.

And so I do the only thing that I can think of doing, which is to project this aura of extreme confidence to mask this inner sinking despair. And I turn to Rachel and I say, honey, it's gonna happen. And I grab her by the arm, we go out the door, and we hail a cab, we get down to the wedding bureau, and we kind of collar this agent there, and we tell her our story, and she says,

well, it is possible to get a judge's waiver and eliminate that 25 hour waiting period. But the thing is, it's 230 right now, our doors closed at 345, and the line that you need to get into to get your marriage certificate is an hour and a half. So our heart sink again, and she says, your only option is to trade up, and she hands us this little paper ticket with a number on it. You get the deli counter. So Rachel starts prading her pregnant belly up and down the aisles of the wedding bureau when she finds someone in the willing to trade

But it only gets us 30 minutes ahead So we realized we got a trade again So we take our new ticket and we walk down the aisles of the wedding bureau and Rachel's Parading our pregnant belly she finds somebody else and suddenly the hour and a half way to shrunk to 20 minutes And we wait our 20 minutes, we go to the front, we get our marriage certificate, and it's now 310, and we still need to find a judge and get him to sign a waiver and get back inside the wedding bureau by 345.

Well, the state courthouse building is actually right across the street, and it should be no problem except that Rachel is about to give birth. And so across the street is like Mars. And we are sort of crawling across the street and up, which seems like 400 marble steps to the corn house and up three flights of stairs. And we end up in the judges chamber and there's no judge. And the clerk sort of takes one look at Rachel and says,

I'm going to go help you find the judge. It's 336, an in walks a guy who looks a lot like a judge. And he glances over at Rachel's belly and he says, I'll sign. And so we grab the sign way out of his hand and we rush back to the wedding bureau. And just as the clock strikes 345, we slide inside the door. We're ushered immediately back to a room where there's a justice of the peace and we say our vows and as soon as we finish saying, I do, the lights go off in the room.

And we were the last wedding of the day in New York City. And so as we're walking outside the wedding bureau after all of this and walking off into the sun set our first moment as husband and wife. And Rachel turns to me and she says, you are a lucky bastard. And I look back into her eyes and I say the three words that really are the only three words a husband should really ever say to his wife and that's you're right honey. David Samplier and his wife Rachel did eventually have a wedding ceremony with friends and family and at the same time they celebrated their son's first

birthday. When they said their vows they were holding their son Gabriel in their arms. They were holding their son Gabriel in their arms. If you win a story slam, you automatically go on to tell a new story, along with nine other story slam winners at something we call the Grand Slam. The first time Tara Clancy told a story at the Grand Slam, half of Queen showed up, mostly Tara's friends and family. They took over a whole section of seats and screamed like crazy when she went up. Here's Tara Clancy, live at the mall.

All right. So when I told my father I was gay, he said, all you need is love, sister. And then he listened to a couple of Carol King records while making our own yoga. Not a chance. My dad is a retired New York cop, devout Irish Catholic. He keeps a picture of the pope hung around the rear view

of his truck. And in fact, becoming a cop was his second choice of career. His first was to be a priest. And he even went into the seminary, really hoping God would call him. Turns out he didn't know what feelings. My dad left. And a little while later, he met my mother and he had me.

So in essence, I am his fall from grace. That I'm also an atheist lesbian, drop in the ocean. You know? So while my dad wasn't cut out for bringing God's love to the masses, he was just great at throwing them in jail. And I mean that. He was in the Warren squad, which means he was like a bounty hunter for the NYPD for 21 years.

After that, he retired, but not before getting his degree at night in accounting, naturally. That being the next logical step, priest bounty hunter accounting. So, the only reason I thought this might have gone okay is that my dad does have some very good gay friends who we even call old school gays. I kill brag about them, you know, and I'll say, and they don't make them like that anymore, you know, meaning his gays, you know.

But that didn't matter. When I told him I was gay, he flipped out. He was living in Atlanta at the time I was here. And so our phone conversation ended with him insisting I fly down there that weekend to talk in person click. So there I am in the passenger seat of the truck. And the only thing he has said to me is we're going to a hotel.

That's it. And we drive. He and I, silent, motionless, the pope swinging left and right. I'm sorry. Two hours later, we're on a one-leane road in the mountains. And now I'm thinking what you might be thinking. Hotel My Ass, right?

We are going to some pray, the gay away, Jesus camp, you know? But just then, a billboard appears. And it has a picture of a woman on it, so it's not unlike the St. Pauli girl, you know, with the braids and the beer and everything. And then it says, welcome to Helen Georgia, a recreated Alpine village. And suddenly here we are, in this Disney Land bed fake German town, you know, with windmills, and there are entire families wearing matching green hats with feathers, you know, and this is it. This is a place my father has chosen to have the conversation of a lifetime with me.

Okay? This place where there is also something called Charlemagne's Kingdom that has three guys outside wearing later hos and playing Glockenspiels. All alright? So we pull into our parking space at the Heidi Motel, no shit, and head in. And then after sitting there, a stone face drinking Johnny Walker out of our complimentary beer stones, like idiots, he sets out to discover if how and why I'm gay in a room that has not won but two kuku clocks. So first he blames me, you're confused and you need therapy, he says. I need therapy, I say I need therapy, There is an upa band outside, dad. Then he goes from blaming me to blaming himself. I shouldn't have brought to those GI Joe's, you know,

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

I just, I did what I could, you know, really. I just did what I could. And at that, we broke for dinner across the street at Heidelberg Schnitzelhaus. We didn't say very much, but the anger was fading. And then somewhere in between the Sauer-Bratten and the strudel, my dad met his waterlue. Literally, he just looked up at me, he raised a glass, and he went, oh, screw it. At least now we got two things in common.

Whiskey and women. Thank you. That night, Tara Clancy won and became the New York City Grand Slam Champion. Her father's back living in Georgia and Tara says he's heard the story and really liked it, which for her is the best compliment because she thinks he's the greatest storyteller ever. Tara and her father have never returned to Helen Georgia. 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 Island. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Your hostess hour was Meg Bowles. The rest of the most directorial staff includes Katherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, and Jennifer Hickson, with production support from Whitney Jones. Most stories are true, is remembered in a firm 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 Evan Christopher, Paco

Flores, Gloria Gainer, Richie Havens, Three-Leg Torso, Randy Newman, Carla Killstead, and Tin Hat, and Freddie Price, and the ads is brass band. Links to all the music we use are at our website. The Moth has produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massage Uses. 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 the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.

To find out more about our podcast and to get information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, thomoth.org. you