The Moth Presents Occasional Magic Read online

  ALSO BY THE MOTH

  The Moth Presents All These Wonders

  The Moth: 50 True Stories

  Copyright © 2019 by The Moth

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  crownpublishing.com

  Crown Archetype and colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  “Foreword” adapted from the essay “Novelist Meg Wolitzer on 20 Years of The Moth” originally published in Newsweek magazine on June 16, 2017; “What I Wore to My Divorce” from Approval Junkie by Faith Salie, copyright © 2016 by Salient Productions, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House LLC; “Have You Met Him Yet?” from Thanks, Obama by David Litt, copyright © 2017 by David Litt. Reprinted by courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers; “Seven Shades of Blue,” by Beth Nielson Chapman © 1995, 1997 BNC Songs (ASCAP). All rights reserved; “Thank You for Being a Friend,” words and music by Andrew Gold, copyright © 1978 Luckyu Music. All rights administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC; “I Dreamed a Dream,” from Les Miserables, music by Claude-Michel Schönberg; lyrics by Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer. Music and French lyrics copyright © 1980 by Editions Musicales Alain Boublil. English lyrics copyright © 1986 by Alain Boublil Music Ltd. (ASCAP). Mechanical and publication rights for the USA administered by Alain Boublil Music Ltd. (ASCAP) c/o Spielman Koenigsberg & Parker LLP; Richard Koenigsberg. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. This music is copyright. Photocopying is illegal. All performance rights restricted. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 9781101904428

  Ebook ISBN 9781101904435

  Cover design by Jake Nicolella

  v5.4

  ep

  TO THE STORIES THAT GIVE US PERSPECTIVE, CLARITY, AND HOPE

  Foreword:MEG WOLITZER

  Introduction:CATHERINE BURNS

  PUT YOUR CURRY DOWN, SWEETHEART

  Quiet Fire:PHYLLIS MARIE BOWDWIN

  Real Men Don’t Rob Banks:LIEL LEIBOVITZ

  Opposing Forces:MARTHA RUIZ-PERILLA

  Me and Mama vs. Christmas:PETER AGUERO

  Theory of Change:JOURNEY JAMISON

  Before Fergus:LYNN FERGUSON

  Spicy:DAVID MONTGOMERY

  THE PAIN OF THE JUMP IS NOTHING

  What I Wore to My Divorce:FAITH SALIE

  Leaving Baghdad:ABBAS MOUSA

  The Value of Words:MARIS BLECHNER

  How to Say It:BESS STILLMAN

  “Have You Met Him Yet?”:DAVID LITT

  C'est la Vie:TERRANCE FLYNN

  The Magic of Maggie:LARRY KERR

  THIS PLACE IS BOLD, THIS PLACE IS BRAVE

  Until the Real You Shows Up:ROSANNE CASH

  Surviving Comrade Stalin:VICTOR LEVENSTEIN

  Outdoor Camp:VIN SHAMBRY

  I Know It by Heart:EMMA GORDON

  Living in the Extreme:ANN DANIELS

  The Haunted Freezer:GEORGE DAWES GREEN

  When the Heart Is Full:FATOU WURIE

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT WALL

  The Freedom Riders and Me:BARBARA COLLINS BOWIE

  Curses:JON BENNETT

  Bearing Witness:D. PARVAZ

  And How Does That Make You Feel?:DAN KENNEDY

  A Moment in Silence:LELAND MELVIN

  Seven Shades of Blue:BETH NIELSEN CHAPMAN

  IT’S MESSY, BUT IT WORKS

  My Post-Nuclear Family:ANDREW SOLOMON

  You Can Come Back:JOSHUA WOLF SHENK

  Our Normal:MARY THERESA ARCHBOLD

  Reclaiming Fear:MAGDA SZUBANSKI

  The Junkie and the Monk:MIKE DESTEFANO

  Can I Get a Witness?:JENI DE LA O

  Pastels and Crayons:ALEEZA KAZMI

  THE WATTAGE OF OUR INNER LIGHT

  True Justice:SHEILA CALLOWAY

  Jump from a Plane:ANA DEL CASTILLO

  Charlie Ravioli:ADAM GOPNIK

  Operation Babylift:JASON TRIEU

  Gaggy’s Blessing:KRISTA TIPPETT

  Inside Joke:OPHIRA EISENBERG

  The Patriots’ Game:ALI AL ABDULLATIF

  WE’LL COME WITH LIONS

  The Care Package:LEONARD LEE SMITH

  Are We There Yet?:ABENY MATHAYO KUCHA

  Honku:AARON NAPARSTEK

  Love Wins:JIM OBERGEFELL

  Roadside:DYLAN PARK

  The Book War:WANG PING

  About The Moth's Directors

  Acknowledgments

  About The Moth

  When I was first asked to be a storyteller at The Moth, a nonprofit that sends people out in front of audiences to tell their true stories, I was a little leery. The word “storyteller” made me uneasy; I pictured myself sitting somberly with a group of people in a circle, wearing a special storyteller cloak. But of course telling a story at The Moth is nothing like that.

  It wasn’t that I was afraid of standing up before an audience. I’m a novelist, so reading aloud to a roomful of people (or even a handful of people and a loud bookstore cappuccino machine) is something I know how to do. But at The Moth you can’t hold notes. While the artistic director had been working with me on my piece, helping me turn it from an anecdote into a fully realized story, I was still hung up on the remembering part.

  The Moth, which has become something of an international phenomenon, puts on story nights and slams and has worked with countless people from a variety of backgrounds, helping them sift through their own histories and think about what has mattered to them. At a Moth evening, which is often a lively and raucous event, you might find a country-music icon, a dentist, an Iraqi interpreter, an Arctic explorer. You never know who or what will be in the mix.

  I chose a story from my adolescence, which to me remains a startlingly vivid time. I tried hard to memorize all the parts of it, but in the days leading up to the big night, whenever I banished my husband from the living room and stood there with a timer, practicing, I found that I was leaving out entire chunks of story. I started to panic.

  Then I realized that instead of focusing on memorizing, I should focus on memory. I simply remembered the experience of being at summer camp in the 1970s, feeling young and excited and open. And once I really felt it all over again, I found the words. They weren’t the exact same words as during my last rehearsal, but they weren’t supposed to be. A Moth story is like a living thing: it changes and moves.

  Finally, onstage under a spotlight in front of an enormous audience, I was like a better-coiffed, much older version of that girl I’d been at camp. I would say to anyone who is thinking of getting up onstage and telling a story: what you need to do, most of all, is feel like yourself. Once you do that, the words will come.

  And also, as it turns out, the applause. I left the stage gratified, hot-faced, exorcised, thrilled, thinking, I would do this again. Hell, I would even do it wearing a special storyteller cloak.

  Here, in this new collection, you will find forty-seven storytellers from all over the world. Some of them, I’m sure, experienced the same mix of nerves and excitement that I did when I walked up to the microphone. How fortunate we are that they were willing to channel their memories into these strong and radiant stories, and how wonderful it is that we now have the cha
nce to read them here.

  —Meg Wolitzer

  The title of this collection, Occasional Magic, comes from a story told by Vietnam veteran Larry Kerr. It’s about his intense love for a young woman named Omie, whom he describes as “smart, meltingly lovely, and strong, with a fierce belief in the possibility of occasional magic.”

  Occasional magic refers to those moments of beauty, wonder, and clarity, often stumbled upon, where we suddenly see a piece of truth about our life. As Moth directors we spend our days helping people shape their stories. We help people identify the most important moments of their lives (as we sometimes put it, “the moments when you became you”) so the audience will understand why they mattered so much.

  All the stories on the following pages were first told in front of live audiences. They showcase the great range of humanity—from a fifteen-year-old kid saving a life in Chicago to a Russian facing down the KGB—and cover all seven continents.

  To select them we read transcriptions of hundreds of stories before narrowing it down to these forty-seven, which were chosen for their ability to convey emotion, humor, and vulnerability in print. They were then edited with an emphasis on preserving the live voices as much as possible—so you’ll find tense changes, sentence fragments, and even the occasional grammatical mistake.

  The authenticity of those voices is what can make a show in a three-thousand-seat theater feel like being in someone’s living room. The feeling that the person onstage isn’t presenting a story, but sharing one, the same way we might with a friend over dinner. The warmth and investment of the audience is as much a part of the show as the stories themselves.

  We will forever try to live up to the way British writer and Moth storyteller Lemn Sissay described the feel of Moth evenings: “Imagine The Moth to be an encampment in the desert. Take a seat. Someone will make space for you. It’s dusk in the land of story. What’s happening? Who knows? Someone’s gonna stand up and speak? Something about their life—something that means something to them, something that may mean something to you. The sun dips and fires, rising stars spill across the sky like shoals of silver fish. You see there are as many small fires as there are stars. This is not an encampment. It is the world. The air is perfect body temperature. It is. The Moth is by the people, for the people. That’s you.”

  For more than two decades, tens of thousands of people have shared stories on Moth stages around the world, and millions more have shown up with open hearts to listen.

  If the warm response of Moth audiences assures us of anything, it’s that empathy is alive and well in the world, and for that we have a reason to feel hopeful.

  —Catherine Burns

  Artistic Director

  It was 1979, and it was summer in New York City. I was interviewing for a promotion from secretary to coordinator of daytime casting at ABC. I was thrilled. I put on a beautiful new blouse and matching skirt and two-inch heels.

  I was ready.

  But there were some who felt that I wasn’t tough enough to manage a job like that. And somewhere deep inside there was a small part of me that suspected they might be right.

  I actually had one friend, a colleague at the office, blurt out, “Phyllis, you’re just too nice.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  I was supposed to meet a friend across the street for lunch before my interview. When I got across the street, there was this horde of people filling up the sidewalk. They formed a human oval three people deep.

  I didn’t know what was going on, but I needed to get into the building. So I found a gap and I worked my way through, got into the opening, and was about to climb the stairs to go in when someone came up behind me and pinned my arms to my sides and prevented me from moving. I looked over both shoulders to try to figure out who it was, but I couldn’t see anything, so I struggled, and the more I struggled, the tighter the grip became on my body.

  When I looked out, I saw a sea of faces, and I was searching them for some clue about what was wrong, who was holding me, what was going on, but they were just eating their lunches, chewing, and watching me.

  Suddenly the pressure eased, and a set of rough hands groped my entire body and then gave me a sharp push in my lower back. I stumbled forward, almost falling, but I regained my balance and whirled around and found a six-foot mime leering at me.

  He was in full dress, with the beret, the striped shirt, the suspenders, the black pants, and the black sneakers, and he was dancing and bobbing and weaving around this human oval. He bent over, and he started to show me his behind, and he beckoned to me: Come and hit me. That’s what he was indicating.

  So I obliged.

  I wrapped the strap of my bag around my hand, and I swung at him. The minute the bag was about to make contact, he sprang away and moved to another side of the oval.

  Then he did it again: beckoned, pointed, beckoned.

  I went after him this time in such earnest, and I swung my bag so hard that when he dodged (and he did dodge), I was pulled forward by the momentum and stumbled, and the crowd began to laugh.

  I was so embarrassed. So when he invited me a third time, common sense prevailed. I was in a straight skirt with heels on, and he was bouncing around like a ball. I was outmatched.

  I said, “You got it.”

  I turned around and proceeded to go up the stairs when he rushed up, squeezed my behind, and then darted to safety in another part of the oval.

  People laughed. I stood there so humiliated that waves of rage began to run through my body. But I finally got myself together, went up the stairs, went into the building, and went to the cafeteria, where they were serving my favorite dish, turkey Tetrazzini.

  But I couldn’t eat.

  I sat down at that table feeling so dejected about what had just happened. I had been blindsided, bullied, and blatantly violated by a strange man in front of a group of strangers in the street.

  I said to myself, They must be giving him really big tips for him to do such a thing to me. I couldn’t defend myself. I couldn’t protect myself in any way. So I just sat there feeling powerless.

  Then I remembered something that I had dropped in my purse about four months ago. I had bought it in the 99-Cent Store as a joke. So I started digging down in the bag. And when my fingers made contact with that cold canister, I figured I had some options after all.

  I pulled it out, wrapped a paper napkin around it, said, “Got to go,” and I turned around and rushed outside to see if he was still there.

  Of course he was. And by now the human oval had grown to five people deep. He had lots more audience.

  As I looked at him, another woman cut in, a beautiful blond woman with a flared red dress on. She came through the crowd just as I had, and she was about to climb those stairs when this man got down on the ground and insinuated himself between her legs and stood up.

  I was astounded. He basically had her mounted on his lower back like a rider on a horse. He grabbed her legs and proceeded to gallop around the oval. And the poor woman’s arms were flailing as she was trying to hold on to her purse and keep from falling backwards. He let her down and promptly lifted her dress up over her head and held it there to the hoots and whistles from the crowd. When he finally let her go, the woman staggered into the building and disappeared.

  I was saying to myself, Is this New York City in 1979, or am I in the Twilight Zone? How could this happen here in the city, in broad daylight? Where are the police?

  And just as I thought that, an elderly gentleman—tall, handsome, salt-and-pepper gray, maybe about eighty-five—stepped out from the oval, and he approached the mime with an elderly woman in tow. She was holding on to his jacket, and she was peering out at the mime and cringing, peering out and cringing.

  And I thought, I wonder what he did to that old woman. Sure enough, the man walked up to the mime, and he was shaking his finger in the mime’s face and chastisin
g him.

  The mime feigned innocence. He threw his hands up in the air, and he put on that sad face, and he mimed crying.

  Somebody from the crowd yelled, “Boo, BOO! Leave the mime alone!”

  And the crowd picked up the chant: “BOO, BOO! Leave the mime alone!” The man looked up, startled, into the hostile eyes of the wolf pack consisting of executives, messengers, and clerks.

  There was a UPS driver there, a postal worker, men of all ages, all races, out there enjoying the show. The man shook his head and gently took the woman by her hand and led her out of the crowd.

  By then I was beginning to understand that this was a show, this was theater in the round, and any woman who made the mistake of stepping through that crowd became a player, whether she liked it or not. That woman, any woman, became the catch of the day on the mime’s lunchtime menu for entertaining his patrons.

  So when he started looking around for a new player, I stepped back into the arena, and I waited for him to see me. Sure enough, he saw me out of the corner of his eye, and he started coming toward me.

  When he got a little closer, his eyes narrowed, and I couldn’t tell whether it was because he remembered me from our past encounter or whether he was trying to figure out how he was going to launch a frontal attack, because every time he did something, he always attacked from behind.

  I didn’t wait. When he got two feet closer, I said, “Hi. Remember me?”

  And I smiled.

  And lifted my can of pepper spray.

  And I sprayed him in his face.

  His eyes got wide, and he reached for my throat, and I stepped backwards, and I sprayed him again and again.

  I sprayed him like a roach.

  He began coughing, and sneezing, and wheezing, and staggering about, because now he couldn’t see, and he started heading towards the street.

  His loyal supporters parted, and they let him go. He landed on the hood of a parked car, coughing, sneezing, wheezing. But while I was enjoying watching him, someone karate-chopped my right hand, and I dropped my canister.