The Moth Radio Hour: The Moth's 20th Anniversary Special
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Hey there. We here at The Moth have an exciting opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors who love to tell stories. Join The Moth Story Lab this fall. Whether for an aspiring writer, a budding filmmaker, or simply someone who loves to spin a good yarn, this workshop is a chance to refine the craft of storytelling. From brainstorming to that final mic drop moment, we've got students covered.

Plus, they'll make new friends, build skills that shine in school and beyond, and have a blast along the way. These workshops are free and held in person in New York City or virtually anywhere in the U.S. Space is limited. Apply now through September 22nd at themoth.org slash students.

That's themoth.org slash students. This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was originally produced for the Moth's 20th anniversary in 2017. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginesse, and in this hour, a celebration of 20 years of the Moth. That's right. The Moth produced storytelling nights long before the start of the Moth Radio Hour.

For some, 20 years means China or platinum. We've marked 20 years with over 20,000 stories told on moth stages all around the world, with events that were stitched into our collective personal history, from Y2K to the Spice Girls, Fukushima, Bernie Madoff, the Royal Wedding, wild elections, discrimination and wars all over the world. The last 20 years have been full.

It was 1997 and AOL was a thing. And she said all of Martha's emails were just subpoenaed. So you're either voting yes to Saddam Hussein or no. There's no other candidate.

And I realized in that moment, for the first time in my life as an out gay man, I feel like an equal American. So it was me and my wife and my mother-in-law watching it. The second plane came in, and we noticed the big explosion. And that's a momentous period, because that's when Hurricane Katrina hit. That was the year that the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. Oh, yeah! ♪

Novelist George Dawes Green started The Moth in New York City in 1997 so people could connect through personal stories. The Moth community program started shortly after that, where we run storytelling workshops with underrepresented communities. The Moth is dedicated to presenting stories from everyone.

And with that, our first storyteller is Richie DeSalvo. It's a story from our archives. Richie is a tried and true all-star storyteller from the Moth Community Program. And this story is called Anthony the Hat. Here's Richie live at the Moth. One of the regulars in this pizzeria that I used to manage was Anthony the Hat. Every time Anthony would come in for lunch, he would tell me, Richie, you run a great operation here. Place is always clean. Food's great.

take care of the people nice. He'd say, "Someday you have to get your own place. You know, you need to have your own pizzeria one day." And in the back of my mind, I'd be agreeing with him because that was my dream, to one day open my own pizzeria. You know, I'd been in the business for like 15 years, and like every boss that I worked for was the same old crap. You know, "Richie, you're a good worker.

We'll give you a piece to the action. We'll take care of you. But like after a while, you know, many years, it was just like they were stringing me along and I was kind of getting fed up with the whole thing. So one particular afternoon, Anthony comes in for his usual lunch, two slices with anchovies, five garlic knots, a calzone, and a Diet Coke. I could never understand that.

And he says, "Richie, I got this proposition for you. I want you to come and work for me. I'll take you under my wing and I'll let you make some real money." And, you know, it happened to be a bad day at the shop that night, so, you know, I was kind of... I said, "Let me take a shot with Anthony." So he tells me, "I'm setting up this operation downtown. I'm gonna have my friends in the back taking some illegal bets on sports, a few numbers in the back."

And your job would be to stay up front, run the operation up front. All you need to do, Richie, is you look out for the police, you know, take care of the buzzer, let in the clients, press the code if you see the police. And in the morning when my workers come in, make sure everybody has that little metal plastic waste paper basket filled with lighter fluid and make sure everybody has matches. That was my job. Piece of cake.

I says, "No problem, Anthony." For three times the amount that I was making, it sounded pretty good. So I started working for Anthony. I mean, you know, it was great. I mean, not only working at the job, it was just like every night after work, we'd all go down to Eddie LeBlanc's Social Club down on Sullivan Street, start off with a little cappuccino.

We'd go to Nick and Eddie's on Sullivan Street. We'd go to La Dolce Vita. Every time we walked in the restaurant, the seats would part. The waiters would trip over themselves to take care of us because Anthony the Hat was there. Eddie LeBlanc was there. Frankie California was there. And, you know...

From working behind an oven all these years, this was kind of a nice thing. You know, I mean, people would stop at the table, give their respect to Anthony, buy us a bottle of wine, and just move on. And it was kind of nice. I started feeling like King Kong after a while. And the money was great. I'm spending it as fast as I'm making it. And things look good now. This is going on for about seven months. And as fate would have it, and it usually does...

I look out of the corner of my eye one afternoon and I see cops coming with hammers. And they're pretty close, so I was just able to get the code in and warn the guys. And so I knew they would get the work in the waste paper basket, no evidence, and everything would be cool. So now...

They must have known the operation. They must have had somebody come in the back because they just bolted past me and they broke down the door and they wanted the guys in the back to try to get the papers and stuff like that. So with that, I was able to walk out of the place. You know, I just kind of scooted out of there, ran down a block, got down in the subway, and I'm going like this, man, why didn't I stay sweating behind this pizza oven rather than come aboard with Anthony?

And, uh, but I didn't, and I was running down the train station with no job. So now, I didn't know what to do at first, so I just laid low for about three days. Then Anthony called me up, and I said, Anthony, you know, you took me away from this job. Now what am I going to do? I'm out of a job. This lasted a hot nine months, Anthony. You know, I know, you know, you...

I liked it in the beginning, but what am I going to do now? I'm out of a job. He says, "Well, you take it easy. Don't worry about it. You meet me at the Woolworth building tomorrow morning." I didn't really want to meet this guy anywhere or any of his friends at that point, but when Anthony said to meet him somewhere, you usually went and you met him. So I did as I was told, and I went up to the Woolworth building, met Anthony. We go up to the ninth floor, and we meet his lawyer.

And he hands me, we walk in there, and he hands me a brown bag. I says, what is this, lunch? He goes, no, what are you, a wise guy? I says, he says, open the bag. So I open the bag, and it's $38,000 in there. And I says, what is this for? He says, you see the man over there? He goes, next to my lawyer, he goes, that's the owner of the pizzeria.

Okay, so, and that's the only, only the pizzeria that's going to be your pizzeria in a couple of minutes. So I, this is pretty good. This is nice of you, Anthony. You know, I'm sorry I yelled at you before. Sorry I got a little excited. Thank you.

He says, go sit down, by the lawyer, put everything in your name, and you're the owner of the pizzeria. I says, I can't believe, I'm saying, this is unbelievable, Anthony. This is just about too much for me. This is a beautiful thing. This is my dream. This is my dream, working many, many years. So lo and behold, I get the pizzeria. I go down to Brooklyn. I set it up. I clean up the store. I name it DeSalo's Pizza, home of the baby calzone.

I was the only one in Brooklyn or in New York to make a little baby calzone. From then to now, I've never even seen it anywhere. But here I am. It's my dream. It's my dream. I buy neon. The business is going good. I mean, this was like in October. October, November. My accountant can't believe it because I'm tripling the business. I mean, the business is like quadrupling within about five months. I mean, it's like five times the amount

that the guys previously were doing. So, you know, things are looking good. I mean, like I said, I put neon in the window. I framed it with green. I put Coca-Cola in red. And I put pizza in white, like the Italian flag. It was, you know...

It was real nice. I mean, and the young kids in the area could see you from blocks away and say, Richie, that looks really cool, man. We could see you five blocks away. And it was a nice sign. And I really liked it. I spent money on these antique Coke bottles. I put them on the table. And my heart was really into it. This is my dream, man. And now I put fresh flowers in the antique Coke bottles every day, give it a nice homey look for the ladies and the kids. And it was nice. And, uh...

I was painting it up, I was putting tiles, I was wearing an air conditioner. Okay, so October, November, December, January, February, March, I'm doing really good. Fixed this place up nice, and I was making some good money. My dream was there. Now, what happened is, it was my first time in business, and I really didn't plan things well. I was so excited that Anthony had set me up.

I didn't plan on the fact that the summer was coming along and the school that I was selling a lot of pizza to was going to close, that it was a residential area, a lot of people go on vacation, so my business started to take a downturn.

And it went down half, it went down a little bit more than that. And then July came and everybody was out of town. And, you know, the business was down now. In the meantime, Bobby Cash was coming in for Anthony's payments every week and I was paying him off and it was no problem. I paid him off, I had money for supplies, I was paying the store off, I paid my workers, everything was great. So...

Now, first, this one week, I told Bobby Cash, Bobby, I don't have the $500 this week. Could you come next week? He goes to me, yeah, but don't let this happen too often. So he says, all right, we'll double up next week. I says, fine, I'll pick up the business. I told him what was going on. So the third week comes by. He comes back. He comes down, and he comes in the store. He kind of gets a little...

and I said, can I speak to Anthony? And at this point in time, he says, no, Anthony's not in the picture right now. I'm collecting the money for Anthony. So, you know, my dream's becoming a nightmare already. So now...

Bobby comes down the last time and he kind of like throws me up against the wall and I'm saying and I'm thinking of all the stories that he used to tell me when we were having a good time about how he'd shake people upside down off a 15 story construction site to get money for Anthony and this is not a good thing. So he leaves the store

He goes, "I'm gonna come back tomorrow, and you need to have the money." I says, "Alright, I'll get it up somehow." Anyway, with that, I knew there was no way I was gonna get the money, so I just shut the store down. I moved out of Brooklyn, I went out to Long Island to my sister's house, and I was trying to figure out a plan how I'm gonna get these guys their money.

Anyway, I'm out there two weeks in Long Island trying to hide, trying to calm down, trying to lay low, but I'm sick. You know, it's not... Anyway, one particular night, I get a knock at the door. I peer out the window, and who's there? It's Eddie LeBlanc, it's Frankie California, and it's Bobby Cash. So I look around, turn around, I'm with my sister, and I'm ready to say, Eileen...

Maybe I tell Eileen to tell him I'm not here, but I can't really bring this to my sister's house. You know, I did this myself. I have to take care of this myself. So, with all the courage I can get up, I open the door. I says, what's up? They says, Anthony's in the car. He wants to speak to you. I says, okay, let me get my jacket. So, took off all my jewelry. I told Eileen I'll be back in a little while. And...

We go down the driveway into the car, he says, "Get in the back." And Anthony's in the back and Andy LeBlanc, this scary individual, sits right next to me.

Okay, but Anthony says, "Take off." So we take off down the road, nobody's saying a word. Get on the Long Island Express, we're riding for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and nobody's saying a word. The silence is deafening. And we're driving, my head is down, I try to speak to Anthony, I tell him, you know, the store, this, someone, and he just, he don't want to hear about it. So...

So at this point, I don't really know what's going on. We're just driving, and nobody's saying a word. So finally, Anthony speaks. He goes, Richie, you remember the IOU that we signed in my lawyer's office? And I says, yes. And again, I try to tell him about this, and the summer came, and the air condition, and he tells me to shut up. So we're driving along, and...

You know, out of the corner of my eye I see Anthony going like this. And my stomach is flipping, my heart is racing, my head goes down even further, and he comes out with the IOU and he goes, "Remember this IOU that you signed in my lawyer's office?" And I says, "Yeah, Anthony, but the stomach..." And he just... Everybody starts laughing, he rips it up. He goes, "Richie, you're a stand-up guy."

"When you get the money, you take care of it. If you don't get it, don't worry about it. You look a little sick. Are you all right?" I said, "Yes, I'm fine, but I have a date tonight, Anthony. Could you get me home immediately?" You know? And with that, I was thinking, the next time I went out to eat, it was in a diner, and I didn't care who took care of me. I ate by myself. I paid with my own money, and it was one of the best dinners I had had in a long time. You know what I mean?

And I'll just stick to my guns, how I was brought up. If I want to make money, I'll do it how I was raised to. That's work hard, do it yourself. Don't count on anybody. Hard work in America will do the trick. That's my story. That was Richie DeSalvo at a moth night called New York Stories. Richie passed away a few years ago, but he'll always be remembered through his stories. ♪

It's important to note the Moth is a place that was built and grown by an army, a wide-ranging community of dedicated staff, board members, storytellers, volunteers, and listeners like you. Sprinkled through this 20th anniversary episode, we also have shout-outs from listeners, like this one from Mariela in Los Angeles. I just wanted to wish you guys a happy anniversary.

and let you guys know it doesn't matter what type of story it is. If it's a sad one, a happy one, a good one, a bad one, it always makes me cry. I feel so happy, and I can totally get a sense of the people who are telling this story. And happy anniversary, guys. After our break, a story from the dawn of time, when Google was invented, when the Moth Radio Hour continues. ♪

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Gines, and I'm your host. We're celebrating 20 years of moth nights in this episode, and we asked our listeners to call in and tell us their moth moment, their favorite story or how they found the moth. Here's one from Maya in San Mateo, California. And hey, it's honest.

I actually discovered the moth through hardcore stalking my therapist. When I first began to see her, I wanted to know more about her, so naturally I took to the internet to help me out with that. And there was this one video on her husband's Instagram, I believe, of them driving by a volcano and her husband

was jokingly rubbing in her face that he had spotted the volcano first, and she responded back that she was busy crying, which is why she missed it. And, um, it's definitely weird how much detail I remember about this video, and if she's listening, I am in for a very awkward next session. But...

In the caption of the video, there was a shout out to the moth because that was what they had been listening to, which is why they were crying. And I was intrigued, so I looked you guys up, fell in love, and have been a huge fan ever since.

Now, we hear that moth stories make people cry a lot. And okay, okay, it's true. Some do make people tear up. But come on, some are just very funny. Like our next story from Jesse Klein. The story's about the dawn of Google, with a shout-out to Craigslist. And a heads-up, Jesse's story does contain references to human sexuality. Here's Jesse, live at a moth main stage at the New York Public Library. Okie-pokie. So...

Here it is. In August of 2001, me and my boyfriend of six years, my first love in my life, went through one of the worst breakups in the history of recorded man. And I know that may sound naive or self-absorbed, and that's because it is. But I swear, it was really, really bad. We worked together at the same company, but that's not where we met.

We'd met in college when we were both like 18, 19 years old. And when we met, I was this like super, super nerdy virgin. And it was hard to imagine, but I was really a nerd and I was really a virgin. And he was sort of this chubby, like almost virgin. You know what I mean? Like he had a really fat face. And he had slept with someone. But for all intents and purposes, anyway, so really low self-esteem.

And that was sort of part of what brought us together, you know, it was like, I feel crappy about myself, so do I. Do you want to come over and have sex?

That was like part of the thing, but then the magical thing that happened was we got in this relationship, we loved each other, and we showered each other with affection and sex and love, and over time, we started to feel better about ourselves, you know? So like at the end of the six years, we were both feeling okay, and we were both sort of secretly, independently wondering what it would be like to sort of like give having sex with someone else a go. You know what I mean? And that's when the relationship began to crumble, and even though we still loved each other...

We ended up breaking up and he asked me to move out of our shared house. And I was devastated. But it was this sort of devastated where you think you feel bad, but something's gonna happen that's gonna make you feel worse. And for me, that was finding out that like three weeks after I moved out, he started sleeping with this 22-year-old blonde assistant at the same company we worked at. She sat like five feet away from me. Yeah, right?

I was normally a level-headed human being. I went berserker. I didn't know how to handle this. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life. Like, it was a month. Part of six years is the worst thing. And what made it even worse is she was absolutely like a Jewish girl's worst Schicksal nightmare. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

She was like blonde, she was petite, she was wavy, she had a pert nose and like no visible body hair. It was just like the worst thing. So as a Jew, I hated her for being everything that I wasn't. But then someone who was in the know told me that she was also a Jew. And I was like, oh my God. I was like, how could like, remember my own tribe betray me this way? And the worst thing was that next...

Like, there was, like, the potential for her to actually be, like, neurotic and interesting. You know what I mean? And I couldn't just imagine her as this sort of, like, emotionless wasp, you know? Which is what I had been thinking to make myself feel better. And I know that it's, like, wrong to ethnically stereotype people, but I feel like if you already hate them for really valid reasons already, it's okay. Okay.

It's all right, right? So I just, I was having a breakdown, just a total breakdown. But I was like, okay, I'm a normal human being. I will take the routes people can take to recover from this in the normal amount of time.

So I tried going to therapy to talk it out. Didn't work. I tried going to the gym to work it out. That didn't work. Instead, I fell into this depressive spiral where I couldn't think about anything. I was just ruled by these two horrible urges. One was the urge to just sort of masochistically think about how much prettier she was than me and everything about her that was...

I don't know, just so much more perfect and sexier and better. The other urge was that I needed to find out anything, something about her, something about her personality that would allow me to hate her, that would allow me to feel superior to her, like some bit of dirt on her that would prove she was actually shitty. That wasn't what I had planned to say, but it's really what was here. So one day, I'm winding on the phone to my friend Wendy. God bless Wendy. And I'm like, hey, Wendy. And, uh...

I want to hate her, I want to hate her, what can I find out to make her hateable?" And she was like, "Well, have you tried Googling her?" Now, I was a nerd, but I was not a geek. So I didn't know what Google was. I didn't know. And I'm sure, right, you all know what it is? If there's one or two people here, I'll explain it. Google is the most powerful thing ever invented on the planet.

It is this insane search engine that allows you to be crazy and stalk someone from the comfort of your own home. Right? It is a more important invention than fire or the wheel, as far as I am concerned. So she was like, "Why don't you Google her?" And I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to Google the crap out of this girl."

Because I knew her name. So I went to the little search window and I entered her name. And I didn't understand the power of Google, so I wasn't really expecting anything to happen. But within three seconds, this link comes up. And it takes me to this article that had been an interview with her from her college newspaper her freshman year. And it was like this thing where she was like the campus celebrity of the day. Listen to this. So...

The thing comes up, there's a photo of her, and it's the most adorable photo of a human being ever taken. She couldn't look blonder or more waspy Jewish. She's like wearing lowrider sweatpants before anyone even knew about those, and like a thing with a cow on it, and she's just in a three-quarter, it was great. Oh, and that drove me nuts, and I was scared to move on to the article, but I did. It was an interview, and in the interview, she revealed...

that her greatest desire, goal in life was to become a stand-up comic. A famous stand-up comic. And I was like, fuck me. Because that was my secret goal. That was my goal. And I'd always wanted to do that since I was a kid, but I'd never had the guts. I'd never had the moxie to do it. And here I was, I was reading, she was already in a sketch group, oh my god. I was like...

So, okay, so she's... She looks waspy, but she's Jewish. She's banging my boyfriend, and she's on her way to achieving my dream. This cannot stand. And I decided...

If we were both like aiming for the moon, right? We both have the same goal. I was like, "I'm getting there first," right? So I start to perform. It's an ironic thing. I've never been more miserable in my life. And I start trying to write jokes and go perform. I'm going to open mics and it's depressing and I hate it. But over time, it's like slowly improving. I get to do book shows. So it goes from like two or three depressing open mics to four or five like okay shows a week.

But all along, I'm still just like manically depressed, right? And I'm like Googling her endlessly and looking at the picture. And that picture became the focal point, not only of my loathing for her, but my loathing for myself. And I literally like five or six times a day would just stare at the photo. And I felt terrible myself. And my therapist was like, if you don't stop Googling her...

I'm going to call your doctor and put you on Prozac. And I didn't want to go on Prozac because I was scared that one of the side effects of Prozac would be that I would become less witty. And being witty was sort of the only side effect of being depressed that was working for me. You know what I mean? So, you really should not clap. But so, I decided to keep performing and I'm not going to go on Prozac. Yet.

So I'm performing. So one day, I'm doing this show. It's at like a slightly better place than I usually do it. And I'm watching the audience stream in, you know, filling in before the show starts. And who walks in but her? She comes in. The show had been advertised in Time Out New York. My name, it was very clear. She must have known I was going to be there. I was like, what kind of weird drive-by shit is this? Because she sat in the front row. Oh.

It was clear and I was like, "Oh my God, I felt so terrible." I was looking at her and she was pretty. I barely could go on and it just so upset me. I managed to do it and I ran out as soon as I was done. I ran home because I needed to have my nightly loathe fest with the photo. I'm sitting and I'm just like, "How could she do it?" I'm about to Google her and all of a sudden it occurs to me, maybe the reason she came there is because she's also obsessed with me. I'm the girl before. She's dating this guy. I was in for six years.

So she must be curious, must be driving her crazy. And I was like, what if she's Googling me? And I don't know why it had never occurred to me to try Googling myself. I think I thought there was a rule against it or something. Or that the computer would implode. Like the self-absorption wouldn't be handled. But I was like, I'm going to do it.

I type my name in, I Google myself, and to my shock and amazement, there's like shit there on the computer about me. I didn't put it there. And it's all stuff about performing. It's all like links to advertising for shows I had done, stuff that was like still there. One or two like kind of just really brief like nice mentions about things, and it like just sort of briefly made me feel better. And like I realized that it was the only antidote to like the feelings I had when I would Google her was to Google myself, and that's how I became obsessed with Googling myself.

And here's the thing about Googling yourself, it's as dirty as it sounds. You know what I mean? You have this urge to do it, but you don't want anyone to know you're doing it. The thing is, people deny it, but everyone does it. You know what I mean? But I would Google myself, I would look at things, I would see if anything new was coming up, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I couldn't stop, I was Googling her and Googling myself. Googling her, Googling myself. Feeling bad, feeling good. Okay. So one day I do a show at Irving Plaza, it was like this big thing.

Do the show, next day, you know, normal stuff, come home, Google myself. Want to check in, want to check in. Something new pops up and it's this thing, the heading, it's this link, it says funny girl. I'm like, what's this? And I click on it and it takes me to Craigslist. Yes? Do we know what Craigslist is? If anyone here doesn't know, it's this like hippy-dippy bulletin board. People renting apartments and giving each other bikes. And...

thing on it called Miss Connections and that's what Funny Girl was from. And Miss Connections is like that, you know, on the back of the voice, like when people see each other on the street and you're walking down the street and you see someone cute or whatever and you don't have the guts to talk to them and then the next day you write somebody and it's like, hey, I saw you on 6th Avenue and 8th Street. You were wearing a Metallica t-shirt. I like Metallica. Please call me. You know, like that. And it's like billions of them. And that's what Funny Girl was. Someone wrote, they had seen me at the Irving Puddle show, it was like Funny Girl, like, hey, Jessie Klein,

I saw you at the show and I thought you were really adorable. I wanted to talk to you afterwards, but I didn't have the guts. You can email me." This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life. I've never had someone just sort of like me without putting a lot of work into it. Like, when I used to want to hook up with guys, it was like a huge exertion of personality, which was exhausting. It's exhausting to have a personality. So, okay. So, anyway, so there was like... Take a couple of days to think about it, right? In the space of those few days...

I continued to go to myself more shit started popping up on Craigslist about me. The second thing was from a totally different guy and he's like, "I saw you performing but this one was kind of creepy. It wasn't as brief and adorable. It was like, 'Ew.'" And that's when I realized like, yeah, maybe the people on Craigslist Misconnections are not dating material but it could sort of be funny material for the stage because it's really the greatest website ever. So I started doing this bit all around town about Craigslist.

and missed connections. And I found out that when I did it, by saying it, I was inviting every delinquent loon to my little app because people would email me because they knew I looked at it. And stuff kept popping up and popping up. What I didn't immediately know was that a lot of it was from my friends. Because once I told them about the first two, they were like, ha ha, wouldn't it be funny to fake her out? So it was like these decoys. But I didn't care because if you looked on Craigslist, it looked like I was hot shit for like a week. LAUGHTER

I was like, "Awesome!" One day, I come, it's like within this special two weeks, I get back to my office from lunch and I have a voicemail on my phone from a man who identifies himself as a writer for the fucking New Yorker. And he says, "Hello." He's like, "I've seen all this stuff about you on Craigslist. I would like to write a talk of the town piece about you and like this crazy trend. Please call me."

What better revenge on the ex-boyfriend than for them to read an article in the New Yorker about the fact that I am hot and I am funny and I have groupies. God. And I was like, I did it. I called him. It was done deal. I was like, most legitimate publication ever, right? I've won. I've won. But then something happened, which was that the article didn't happen. Oh. She loves the pity.

No, it didn't happen. Two days later, he called. I don't even remember why it didn't happen. He was very nice on the phone. He called me and pitched it to his editor. For some reason, he couldn't get it through. I was really nice on the phone back. I was like, that's okay. Don't worry. Okay, fine. Hang up. I was more disappointed than I'd ever been in my life, and I started bawling. Bawling. Having a breakdown. Bawling, crying. And during that bawl fest...

I had this like epiphany where I left my body. It's like my soul suddenly was like, I can't take it. I left my body. I floated up to the top of the office. I looked down. I was like, let's take a lay of the land here. I'm in my office where I have not done any work for my employer in about six months because I've been diddling myself on the internet constantly. And I'm crying. I'm crying and I'm disappointed. But why? Not because I didn't get the article in the New Yorker, but because the ex-boyfriend wouldn't read it.

And it was sort of like at that second, it all just sort of like dawned on me that in the year since the breakup, I'd become so obsessed with being in this race to make other people laugh that I'd lost my ability to laugh at myself. And I was like, if I could just regain the ability to step back and look at all the crazy things I've been doing since this thing happened,

I would be a better comic. Like, this would be material. This is much funnier than anything I've been trying to write. And moreover, I would be a happier person. So that's what I did. And I've become a better comic. And I've become a happier person. And I've been dating this guy that I really like. And I don't look at that girl's picture anymore, but he and I Google each other constantly. Thank you very much.

That was Jessie Klein. Jessie's well known for her role as head writer and executive producer on the Emmy award winning show Inside Amy Schumer. She's also the author of the memoir, You'll Grow Out of It.

Over the years, the moth has connected lots of people, including Jessie and her husband, actually. After hearing one of Jessie's stories on the Moth Radio Hour years ago, a young man thought, hmm, she sounds super. And yes, her now husband Googled her and asked her out on a date. The rest is history.

After the break, a story set in South Africa that was told at a moth night to coincide with the 71st UN General Assembly. It's a contemporary story about things that are happening right in front of us right now. Coming up next on the Moth Radio Hour. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.

I'm Sarah Austin-Janess, and you're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. We're up to our final story as part of this celebration to mark 20 years of Moth Nights. Over that time, we've heard about the milestones in many people's lives and in the world.

The story coming up reminds us of the importance of bearing witness. It's from our Global Community Program, which has now expanded to the Global South, elevating stories on world issues. Sisonke Missimong told this at a moth night at Lincoln Center during the 71st UN General Assembly. The night celebrated women and girls from around the world. Here's Sisonke live at the moth. So I am the product of...

a freedom fighter, and an accountant, which I guess would make me a pragmatic idealist. My father left South Africa when he was 21 years old to join the armed wing of the liberation struggle. And a few years later, he met my mother, who was, well, she wasn't my mother at the time, but he met an accounting student, a young accounting student, who is charming and beautiful, and the rest, as they say, is history.

So when we were growing up, my parents used to say things like, when we are free, one day when freedom comes, when liberation is here, and our favorite would be when Nelson Mandela is released from jail. And my sisters and I would look at each other and be like, yeah, right, like that's ever going to happen, right? Nelson Mandela is going to get out of jail.

And of course he did. And not only did he get out of jail, but actually he was the first president of a free and democratic South Africa. And so fast forward, it's the mid 1990s, my family is back, I'm back from university, and I've landed my first job. And it's actually my dream job. I'm working for the United Nations on a program on young people in HIV and AIDS. And so of course it's a pragmatic idealist dream come true, right?

On the one hand, it's the UN, so it's like, you know, love, peace, and happiness. And on the other hand, let's face it, the UN is like the world's biggest bureaucracy, right? So it's like rules and systems and procedures. And like, I'm in heaven, right? Both. At the same time.

In one place! So it's great. So it's great. So I'm very happy. I'm also really excited because I get to throw myself into my new country and this new job all at the same time.

By this time, it's clear to me that while my parents' generation, for them, the struggle was one to end white minority rule, for my generation, the struggle is going to be slightly different, right? For us, it's going to be the tangibles. It's going to be health and education and water and sanitation, the things that you kind of need to know stuff about, right?

So I throw myself into reading and research and trying to figure out as much as I can because I'm the pragmatic idealist, right? So I've got to figure out how to do this stuff.

And so I can tell you everything about HIV and AIDS and young people because that's what my new job is about. I can tell you about the key elements of a plan for the syndromic management of STIs. I can tell you how many young women living in the northern KwaZulu-Natal district of Luhluwe age 15 to 19 are living with HIV. I can tell you the likelihood of HIV transmission in a single-sex act.

like I am on it. And then, of course, I meet Prudence. So I'm sitting in my office one morning, no doubt with my head buried in some or other, you know, research report, and this kind of whirling dervish of a mad, sort of dreadlocked teeth and joy and laughter person kind of plunks herself in front of me. And, um,

She introduces herself and like me, she's a young woman who's working for the UN. And while I was working on a program on young people in AIDS, Prue was working, she was one of the first people living openly with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. And so she was working for the UN to help to reduce stigma in the workplace. So she was hired to kind of demonstrate to employers that like people living with HIV aren't going to bite.

and that you can actually hire people living with HIV and there's going to be no negative consequences for you or your bottom line. And so we had a lot in common. And so we hung out, not just in the office, but on weekends. There were concerts and there were plays, and South Africa was this amazing new blossoming place with this fantastic new constitution, and everybody had rights.

and Prue and her sort of mad group of friends were all lesbians which was like fantastic for me because like my cool points shot up like a thousand percent so it was wonderful it was great it was a wonderful wonderful time but of course it wasn't as simple as things seemed on the surface after some time it became clear to me that Prudence was in a very violent and abusive relationship and so I pulled her aside and I was like Prue like what's going on man you know

You're the most confident, amazing woman I know. What's happening? And she's like, "Uh, uh." And it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter because what's going to happen is you need to get out of this relationship. And the way you're going to get out of that is you're going to move in with us, right? There's plenty of space in our house. Come and live with us. And so before you knew it, Prue was living with us. And of course, there wasn't a lot of space.

So she was living in my room and actually she was not just staying in my room, she was staying in my bed. So we were like chatter, chatter, chatter, late into every night. And we would get up in the morning and go to the office, exhausted because we're talking so much.

And twice a week, because Prudence had managed to wangle her way into this experimental drug treatment program, because these were the days before antiretrovirals were widely available, twice a week we would get on the highway from Pretoria, where we lived, and drive to Johannesburg to the doctor's office, where she would have the meds.

And I remember the first time we got to the doctor's office, I parked and I took the key out of the ignition, you know, ready to get out, and Prue was like, "No, you stay here." And I'm like, "Oh, but we do everything together. Okay, okay, okay. Stay in the car." And so Prue went in, and the drive back was in silence, right? There was no talking. And so this happened twice a week, every week for a few weeks.

And after a couple of weeks, the meds were clearly starting to have their effects on her. And we got to the doctor's office one morning and she needed help. There were two stairs to sort of go, two steps to walk up to get into the doctor's practice. And so she needed some help. And so I got out to help her. And like inside, secretly, I'm like feeling really bad that she's not feeling well. But thank God I get to go inside because now I see what's going on in there. Right.

So we go inside and it's this small little room and it's about 12 to 15 people who are sitting in that room and it's this deathly silence. And contrary to what all the headlines were telling us at that time about what AIDS looked like, right? AIDS is a black disease, AIDS is a gay disease, AIDS is a disease of poverty. Actually, this room didn't look like that at all, right? It was a fairly affluent middle class room.

But it was clear that nobody in that room wanted to be there. So it was like this deathly silence. And so we kind of crept in and we sat down. And, you know, people would be called one by one. And the receptionist called this name. And it was, you know, first names only. And she called Alice. And Prue stands up and she goes inside. And I'm like, huh.

And she comes back out after about 30 minutes or so, and we go back into the car, and we start making the long, silent trek back to Pretoria. And so I'm driving, and I look at her, and I say, what's he like? And Prue says, what's who like? And I said, the doctor, what's he like? And she looked at me for a long moment, and she said, he won't touch me without gloves on. And I realized that my friend, right, my brave, courageous friend,

that amazing friend who is openly living with HIV at a time when people are getting killed for that, right? Who is an out lesbian at a time when women were getting killed for that, still are actually, right? That she's also petrified and vulnerable and ashamed of herself, right? And that's not a contradiction. That's all of us. That's life, right? It's all happening at the same time.

And so in that moment, Peru taught me a really powerful and important lesson, a lesson that I have carried with me in 20 years as an activist and as an ally with people living with HIV and AIDS. And it was a lesson that was basically that

you know, it was fine to be a pragmatic idealist, right? That pragmatism is good and idealism is good, but that what I was missing was empathy. And that if I was going to make any kind of difference, if I was going to, that I wasn't actually...

listening to what Prue was saying. I was kind of listening, but I wasn't listening enough, right? And that if I was going to make any kind of impact, and if I was going to be the kind of advocate that I wanted to be, that what I was going to have to do was listen, not just to the words of people like Prudence, but much more importantly, I needed to listen to the silences.

That was Sasanki Missimong, live at Lincoln Center. Sasanki writes a column in South Africa's Daily Maverick newspaper, and she's working on a book about belonging and identity. And with that, we've reached the end of our anniversary hour. Boy, that went fast, this episode and 20 years. Before we go, one more listener's tribute, Art from Santa Ana, California. To me, the moth is the best.

reaffirms at the most primal level the human experience. All the highs and all the lows. I have a good friend who's a family physician, and he says the best diagnostic tool he's ever come across is out of a book called The Exquisite Risk, which says some Native American tribes would ask four questions. When was the last time you danced? When was the last time you sang? When was the last time you told your story?

And when was the last time you listened to the story of another? I just want to say thank you for covering at least half of that. And thank you for telling and listening with The Moth for the last 20 years. And remember to sing and dance, too, for good measure. That's it for The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll all join us next time. The Moth Radio Hour

Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Janess. Catherine Burns, Larry Rosen, and Leah Tao directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Moss Directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Liu Lee. Special thanks to Lawrence Fiorelli, Delia Bloom, and Casey Donahue.

The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of the Moth Community Program, along with Andrew Quinn and Rachel Stretcher from the Aspen Institute.

The Moth would also like to thank everyone who has ever worked, interned, or volunteered with us, from our board members to our talented and tireless staff to people who have manned the theater doors and handed out programs. And we thank our storytellers and all those who threw their name in the hat and haven't yet been picked at one of our story slams around the world. Thanks

Thanks to our talented musicians, our incomparable moth hosts, our collaborators and friends, the hundreds of public radio stations who air the show, and all of our national partners and crews for the Main Stage and Story Slam series.

So, Moth Stories are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Evan Christopher, Nightmares on Wax, Tom McDermott, and The Batteries Duo. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.