The Moth (44 page)
Authors: Unknown
THE MOTH WOULD LIKE TO THANK:
All of our storytellers. You are the heart and the soul of The Moth, and don’t think we ever forget it for a second.
Our collaborators, friends, and partners: Ana Adlerstein, Peter Aguero, Jay Allison, Jenny Allen, Jonathan Ames, John Barth, Mike Birbiglia, Debbie Bisno, Deborah Blakeley, Andy Borowitz, Richard Brehm, Amy Brill, Todd Bush, Sandi Carroll, Angelica Compagno, Tracy Day and Brian Greene at the World Science Festival, Brooke Delaney, Mary Domowitz, Simon Doonan, Carla Hendra, Joanne Heyman, Lyndi Hirsch, Paul Holdengräber and the New York Public Library, Kerri Hoffman, Dan Kennedy, Bonnie Levison, Caro Llewellyn, John Martello and the Players Club, D. J. Martin, Viki Merrick, Michaela Murphy, the
New Yorker
Festival, John Newell, the
Paris Review
, the PEN World Voices Festival, Shelagh Ratner, Ray Blue, Paul Ruest, Rudy Rush, Joe Del Senno, Jake Shapiro, Tom Shillue, Israel Smith, Jayne Sosland, Jon Spurney, Mazz Swift, Susan Towers, Steve Zimmer, Adam Wade, Caleigh Waldman, Chris
Wall, Katherine Wesling, and Alex Roy, who literally picked us up off the street and housed us, whisking us off to our future in his purple Porsche.
The hundreds of public radio stations around the country who air
The Moth Radio Hour
and all of our national partners for both the Mainstage and StorySLAM series, especially Mikel Ellcessor at WDET and Jennifer Ferro at KCRW and Steve Edwards (formerly of WBEZ) for being the first to take on the StorySLAM series; Andrew Proctor at Literary Arts for being the first to sponsor the MothSHOP program outside of New York City; and UCLA Live, whose offer to host us started the Moth Mainstage touring series. Kerry Armstrong, Gary Buchler, and all of our regional StorySLAM crews for their tireless dedication.
All of our funders who have been the wind beneath our Moth wings (and kept the lights on) for the last sixteen years. We are forever grateful. A special note of thanks to our lead donors: Amazon.com, Kim Bendheim and the Leon Lowenstein Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America, Charles Evans Jr., Maker’s Mark, the National Endowment for the Arts, NBC Universal, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, Ogilvy & Mather, Alice S. Powers Irrevocable Living Trust, David Richenthal, and our deepest gratitude to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for helping The Moth’s stories soar across the country on public radio.
Our gifted agent, Daniel Greenberg. Your consummate counsel, faith, and taste have been our guide, and we’re forever grateful.
Editor extraordinaire Elisabeth Dyssegaard, who read hundreds of stories and taught us how to make a book from the
ground up (it was like having Beethoven prepare us for a concert at Carnegie Hall when we’d never even played a scale).
Special thanks to The Moth StorySLAM, where each week, hundreds of five-minute true stories are shared across the nation. We provide a stage, a theme, and a host, and the general public surprises us with their stories. We owe a lot to the communities surrounding these special shows, which end up feeling like big extended families. Fourteen of the fifty stories in this book are from people we first met at The Moth StorySLAMs.
GEORGE DAWES GREEN WOULD LIKE TO THANK:
Our early curators and drivers and muses: Gaby Tana, who said just stop fussing and
do this thing
; Meg Bowles (the “Homecoming” Moth you curated is still my favorite); Ann Marlowe, the soul of Manhattan; Carolyn Marks Blackwood, our angel, seeing us through the dark.
Our Executive Directors: Katie Kerr, who was there at the conception and must share the blame; Joey Xanders, the irresistible force; Lea Thau, our architect, who built this house out of cobwebs and moonshine; Joan Firestone: you spent your life nurturing creators; how can we ever live up to the fierce pride you take in us all? And Sarah Haberman, who has to face down the terrifying future…
Our founding Board Members: Judy Stone, who won the brutal campaign to become our first president (coin-flip); Pegi Vail and her illuminated soul; Melvin Estrella (the right thing happens to the happy man); Sheri Holman, my deepest friend; my beloved editor, Jamie Raab (despising this obsession that stole my writing time, but signing on anyway to keep an eye on me).
My agent, Molly Friedrich, who gives everything, always and quietly.
Jenifer Hixson, Director of the Moth slam, fellow Marvin-lover, biting but tender wit, late late woozy nights at L’Express after the Players.
Sarah Austin Jenness (your laugh-out-in-the-dark audience, rescuing us on stage).
Former Board Members who took calls, many calls, at midnight: Mark Baltazar, Bliss Broyard (my partner-in-arms), Nell Casey, Margaret Braun, Nina Collins, Pamela Mitchell, Josh Shenk (our graceful philosopher), David Sarlin, Jeffery Rudell.
Alan Manevitz, who looks after us. Dan Kennedy, my brother rat. Our former timekeeper Katy Rose Cox McComb and her sweetly nagging fiddle. Alex Roy, whirlwind. Gary Lippman and Scott Asen with their wheels of gorgeous admirers at the Moth Balls.
Terri Galvin, our mad beautiful story connoisseur. Jenn Coonce (
Hmm
—are you really enough of a
celebrity
to be on this list?). Molly Greene, who found our name among the Moth-Seraphs. Rosalie Barnes (remember we cooked up the slam on a subway ride to Brooklyn?).
The powers behind our brand-new Moth High School slams: Anna Sweeney, Neil Gaiman, Catherine McCarthy, Micaela Blei…
Catherine will thank all the staff and the present board members, but may I say that our whole sprawling fly-by-night community has always been a dazzlement to me: you producers working endless hours, you curators and interns and donors and courageous raconteurs, and you hundreds of insanely time-generous volunteers:
Where in the world do you all come from?
CATHERINE BURNS WOULD LIKE TO THANK:
My fellow Moth sisters and story directors: Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Maggie Cino, and Kate Tellers. Putting these shows together with the five of you is truly one of the great honors of my life. Your talent—only matched by your enormous hearts—inspires, humbles, and nourishes me daily.
Sarah Haberman, now officially my partner at The Moth: So lucky to stand beside you.
Our Board of Directors, who believed that the stories from the stage could have equal power and poetry on the page: Anne Maffei, Ari Handel, Serena Altschul, Lawrence C. Burstein, Deborah Dugan, Tony Hendra, Courtney Holt, Dr. Alan Manevitz, and Roger Skelton.
Joan Firestone, our captain, and my very first reader. You gave me faith that the baby had wings and was going to fly.
Lea Thau, whose strategic vision and bottomless determination brought the magic of The Moth to the national arena. For ten years she gave her blood, sweat, tears, and talent, and we are forever grateful.
Everyone who has ever worked, interned, or volunteered at The Moth and helped us achieve our goals. Particularly our talented and tireless full time staff: David Mutton, Anna Katrina Sacramento, Kirsty Bennett, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Laura Hadden, Terence Mickey, Robin Wachsberger, Larry Rosen, Brandon Echter, and Terence Mickey.
For panicked Sunday afternoon calls about correct tenses and the nuances of the publishing industry: Judy Stone, Joshua Wolf Shenk, Jonathan Talat Phillips, Sarah Porter, and Jennifer Echols.
For literally searching the Russian-speaking world for Anoid Rakhmatyllaeva: Michael Daisey, Muyassar Vakhobova, Shafoat Kobilova, Anne Benjaminson, and especially Anya Kuznetsova, forever our translator in every sense of the word.
Our staff’s much-beleaguered spouses, particularly my husband, Joshua, without whose help and grace this book would not have gotten edited.
The Moth—hailed as “New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket” by the
Wall Street Journal—
is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It was founded in 1997 by the novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings in his native Georgia, when moths were attracted to the light on the porch where he and his friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales. The first New York Moth event was held in George’s living room, and the story events quickly spread to larger venues throughout the city. The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, by people from all walks of life, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Each show features simple, old-fashioned storytelling on thoroughly modern themes by wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors.
Today, The Moth conducts six ongoing programs—The Moth Mainstage, which tours nationally, has featured stories by Malcolm Gladwell, Ethan Hawke, Margaret Cho, Annie
Proulx, Salman Rushdie, and an astronaut, a pickpocket, a hot-dog eating champion, and hundreds more; The Moth StorySLAM program, which conducts open-mic storytelling competitions in Ann Arbor, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Louisville, New York, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, St. Paul, and Seattle; The MothSHOP Community Education Program, which brings storytelling workshops free of charge to underserved populations; The Moth High School StorySLAMs, which brings the thrill of competitive storytelling to high schools across the country; The Moth Podcast, which is downloaded more than a million times a month; MothSHOP Corporate, which offers industry-specific storytelling solutions; and the Peabody Award-winning
The Moth Radio Hour
, produced by Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media and presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, which was launched in 2009, airs weekly on public radio stations nationwide. Pitch us your own story at themoth.org.
Compilation copyright © 2013 The Moth. Copyrights in the individual works retained by the contributors.
IT’S TRICKY
Words and Music by Joseph Simmons, Darryl McDaniels, Jason Mizell and Rick Rubin Copyright (c) 1986 Protoons, Inc. All Rights Administered by Universal Music Corp. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 1500 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0596-3
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photograph by Sarah Stacke
First eBook Edition
Original trade paperback edition printed in the United States of America.