Shhhhhh, It’s A Secret: Tim Manley and Shania
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This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows from New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more. The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.

To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Mark Salinger, the producer of the podcast and your host for this episode. Yes, I am both producing this episode and hosting it. And yes, I feel a little weird about that.

So, what's the biggest secret you've ever kept? For me it was… wait, this is actually going out to a lot of people, like, a lot of people, so I'm not going to share the biggest secret I've ever kept.

The most fun secrets I've ever kept were probably all the crushes I and my friends had in high school. Shout out to Julie and Craig. Not their actual names, but if they're listening to this, I think they know who they are and they probably know I had a little crush on them. Anyway, looking back, the secret crushes weren't fun so much as the most important things ever. This episode, we've got stories about secrets and about how when you're growing up, every secret can seem like the end of the world.

And to share those stories, we're going to be playing an episode from The Moth's very first spinoff podcast, G.R.O.W.N. That's G-R-O-W-N. I could go on and on about how special I think G.R.O.W.N. is, but why don't you just hear it for yourself?

Fonzo, I've got something really special for you today. Oh, yeah? It is my diary from 2008, and I would like you to do the honors of reading some of these passages from 10-year-old Aliza. It would be my honor. I'm going to set the scene, and I'm going to talk about this. All right, so this is a blue hardcover journal, and Aliza has set up—

Tons of highlighted sticky notes throughout it. Okay. I start off by writing, no one can look beyond this point. Uh-oh. Are we going beyond that point? You get to read beyond this point because now I've moved on past everything. Should I start right here? Yeah, I think you can read that one. I'm so nervous. Tomorrow is the first day going to school knowing *** likes me.

I don't know what to say to him. Yikes! Yo! Yikes is, like, written in the biggest with an exclamation point. Let me see. Okay. So, **** asked me out, but I said no. But now I want to go out with him, but he won't ask me out. So, I asked him out, but all he said was, isn't it supposed to be the other way around? And now I'm pissed off. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

And now we have bold red.

Writing all, taking up the, like one line, taking up the whole page of the next page. And it says Bella crossed, it says crossed out Bella with a circle. Who's Bella? Bella Swan from Twilight. All right. Read what else is on the page. She's not good. She's not, she's not. She's canceled. She's canceled in this. She's canceled. New Moon, Breaking Dawn. I love Edward Cullen.

And then that's what's going down. December 16th. My heart is broken into a trillion pieces. *** is going out with ***. She used to be my friend. And then she has her own signature. AK. AK. December 22nd, 2008. 2008 is coming to an end. Parentheses ill.

lied to everyone. She isn't and never was going out with ***. It has mono, the kissing disease. I wonder who he got it from. Parentheses, not me. And then a whole other page about Twilight. Ridiculous. Grown. Grown. Grown. Grown. I'm Aliza. And I'm Fonzo. And this is Grown, a podcast from the moth full of stories about what it means to grow up. So Aliza, why are we reading your diary again?

Well, because this episode is all about secrets. The stuff we hide and what happens when they're uncovered. Are the secrets going to be about Twilight? No, no. No more Twilight secrets. At least for now. First up today is Shania. She told the story at the Mothball, a once-a-year celebration of storytelling that the Moth puts on. Fonzo and I actually got to go this year and hear the story live. You're in for a real treat. Here's Shania. I didn't always want to be an older sister.

I was a younger sister for a while. I have an older brother, and I really enjoyed the perks. But I have this vivid memory of me lying on the floor of our apartment. I'm coloring in a picture. It's vibrant, it's beautiful, I'm in the lines. I'm doing my best five-year-old drawing. I'm like Michelangelo, this is my Sistine Chapel.

And I stand up to show the picture to my grandmother and my older brother. And just at that moment, the door opened and my mother and my father walk in and they're holding this little bundle and everyone runs to the door to see the new baby, to see my baby sister. And I'm standing there with my Sistine Chapel and no one's looking at me. And I'm like, oh my God, this is going to be the rest of my life.

But then this thing happens when your siblings get older, and it turns out they have personalities, and sometimes those personalities are pretty good, and they grow on you. And we spent summers together in Jamaica, making up stories, going on adventures. We read the same books. We didn't always watch the same movies, but I realized that I could bring my sister to the movies I liked and make my sister like those movies if I tried.

And even though my artistic career peaked with my five-year-old coloring, my sister turned out to be this incredible artist who could paint and draw and weave baskets and crochet blankets. And, OK, it was a little annoying, but it was still really cool.

And just as I was realizing all this, I was graduating high school, and I was moving a thousand miles away, and I had this fear that I was losing my chance to be the older sister I knew I could be. I had this ridiculous fear that my sister would forget me, or worse, that I hadn't done anything worth remembering for my sister yet. But luckily, around this time that I was graduating high school,

My sister was graduating middle school, so middle school prom was coming up, and my mom was working. And my mom was like, "Well, someone needs to go dress shopping with my sister." And I volunteered because I was like, "This is my chance. This is like our movie moment. I'm going to find the perfect dress, the one that our mom would never pick because she doesn't have style and I do."

And it's going to blow my sister's mind, and this is going to be our big moment, and she'll forever tell all her friends about this incredible moment with me. So I make it a big affair. We're at Macy's. We have like $100. We're in the mall. And I'm like, this is going to be it. And I'm running around, and I'm grabbing dresses, and I'm holding them up, and I'm getting these shrugs and these head shakes. And I'm like, that's fine. I will not be thrown off.

I'm not going to buy the dress that gets a shrug or a head shake. I need to blow my sister's mind. So I'm running back, and I'm grabbing more dresses. I'm holding them up. I'm getting shrugs. I'm getting head shakes. I'm running back. I'm getting more dresses. Around dress number 15, I'm realizing this isn't going so well. And I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I'm not as fashionable as I thought. But the Macy's isn't that big, and we are running out of dresses. So...

I'm looking at my sister, and I realize that my sister is looking across the aisle, not at the dresses, but at the suits and at the blazers. And I'm like, oh, shit. I have to... I'm doing the wrong thing. So I put down the dress I'm holding, and I walk over, and I'm like, do you want a suit? And finally, I see this little glimmer in my sister's eyes, and I get a nod, a nod, finally. So...

I'm thinking about it, and I'm having a little dilemma because I know that our mom gave us money for a dress, and our mom's expecting a dress, and our mom is very traditional. And so if we don't go home with the dress, who knows what can of worms that'll open or what conversations we'll have to have. But this is still my big moment, so I get to thinking.

And we run to the discount rack, and we find this very simple, plain dress that's, like, white at the top, black at the bottom. It kind of looks exactly like a suit, almost like it was put here for us. And it costs, like, very little money. So I pick that up, and I'm like, how's this? And I finally get a nod. And so then we run across the aisle to the suits and the blazers, and now we're having fun, and we're trying on blazers, and...

I'm like brushing off the shoulders and I'm giving all this advice that's like based on nothing, where I'm like, "Oh, your shoulders can't look like that. They have to look like this." And ...

I sound really smart, even though I'm not. And we find the perfect suit. We find the perfect blazer for... We find the perfect blazer. And then we aren't done yet because we need to accessorize. And so we start looking at pocket squares. We start looking at bow ties because my sister's really into bow ties, not regular ties. I don't know how to tie a bow tie, but I figure we'll figure that part out. Um...

So we find a bow tie that matches the handkerchief, and they're like little blue dots. It's very decorative. It's very good. Pop of color. And we go to the register, and I've been doing the math, and we are a little over. But I'm in high school, and I have my first debit card, and I don't have a job, but I do have Christmas money. And I'm really excited to use my Christmas money. So I'm really excited when I get to pull out my wallet, pull out my debit card, slide it across, you know, like I'm in a movie.

And it's like $13. It's not that big a deal. And so we leave, and we're so excited, and we go home, and we're prepping for the big day. I'm watching a YouTube video on how to tie a bow tie. That is not how you tie a bow tie. They make it look so easy, but I didn't really figure it out. But I figured, you know, close enough. The big day comes. We have this plan where my sister goes in, and then I'm like, "Oh, no."

They forgot the purse. And so I go in and I have my backpack on with the blazer and the bow tie and handkerchief. And so we're in the lobby of the prom venue and we're putting the suit, we're putting the jacket over the dress that looks like a suit and I'm buttoning it and I'm tying the tie and I'm putting the handkerchief in. I'm not tying the tie super well. This isn't like a perfect movie moment because the tie is crooked and that's not what a bow tie is supposed to look like.

But for whatever reason, we were still having the time of our lives, and I'm like beaming, and he's flushed with joy, and he's ready to run in. And I'm like, "Wait, no, I have to take pictures." So I step back, and I'm snapping pictures. I'm kind of tearing up, but I'm still trying to be the cool sister, so I'm like, "This is fine." And I'm like, "We have to get some pictures with your friends." And then I realize I'm actually being the lame mom, so I have to stop. So I back up, and I try not to cry, and I watch my brother walk in.

Thank you. That was Shania. When we asked Shania how her younger self would describe her now, she said, she's me, but with a fear of heights and a much better sense of who she is. Up next, a story about holding a secret so hard manifests on your own body. But first, Fonzo, I want to get your thoughts on sharing secrets, a.k.a. gossip. Are you a gossiper? Do you like gossip? I feel like...

But gossip comes naturally. You know what I'm saying? When you're with your friends, stuff comes up. You know what I'm saying? I don't trust anyone who's like, I don't like to hear gossip. Like, no, no, no. We all do. You don't like to hear gossip. I mean, when things happen, you know, when things happen, you talk about it. You know what I'm saying? But...

Yeah, everybody. Gossip is a way of life. You know what I'm saying? Just like storytelling. Yeah. Okay. Way to bring it home. But no, that's so true. Gossip is just like natural storytelling. We're just telling stories. I have this like one distinct day in high school I remember. I was definitely a gossiper in high school. Not like I would like whisper gossip to people, but I loved the gossip.

It, like, fueled me to go to school every day or else I probably wouldn't have gone. Like, I just wanted to know what was happening. And I remember one day, like, this couple broke up and then, like, something else happened. And I happened to be around for both of those events. So people would be trying to figure out, like, what was going on throughout the day. And people would be like, go to Aliza. She knows. So I just had people coming up to me and be like, we heard that you know. I'm like, I know everything.

Oh, my God. And I was just telling people what had happened. And I felt like—I felt on top of the world that day. I'm like, I am the keeper of the gossip today, you know? Oh, my God. Usually I'm the one that hears it, but I held the gossip. You were the New York Times that day. You were the Aliza Post. Yeah.

Nice. Yeah, definitely. When you just have the scoop, you know? Mm-hmm. When you just got the scoop. Especially it's like high school or like any—if you're around your friends, what are you letting that loose? You know what I'm saying? You're letting that loose. I don't know. But do you think like secrets are like gossip? Well, not gossip, but secrets. Are secrets always bad? No. Secrets are not bad. And I think in Shania's story, it's especially good to highlight that. And just like it was something—

that couldn't be understood by adults maybe at the time or someone who wasn't well-versed in those situations, you know what I'm saying, or didn't look at it in the brightest light. And so we have secrets for a reason. We have secrets because we want them to be withheld from certain people or groups.

Like sometimes things are in secrets, but they're just things that aren't ready to be revealed to the world yet. Yeah, exactly. You know, I think that those things can be heavy, but to find the people you can confide in, you know, lifts some of that weight a little bit. Yeah. You don't have to lift it completely. Oh, it's screaming from the heavens. Mm-hmm.

But I bet, you know, telling someone you really love and telling someone you trust, that feels pretty good. Yeah. And that's all you probably need. You don't need to have everyone know something all the time. That's so true.

kind of similar I mean similar to that um me and my boyfriend had been dating we've been dating for four years and he had never met my grandma before it was this unspoken secret like she knew I had a boyfriend everybody in my family's met him except for her but I just was too afraid to talk to her about it because she's a bit more um she's a grandma she's been more traditional and and you know and I'm and I'm the girl of the family whatever um

And so recently I was like, Grandma, I really want you to meet him. Like, it's time. And she's like, okay, if you say so. And I was so nervous. It was like revealing a secret, you know, that how is she going to take it? Is she going to accept the secret? Is she going to, you know? And she loved him. And it all went really well. And I felt so silly for holding on to the secret for so long. But I knew that I needed to get to a point where I felt ready to let him. And you got to that point. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. It was nice.

Shout out to my grandma. Up next is Tim Manley with a story all about what it means to wear your heart on your sleeve. It was a spring night in 2008 and I'm lying underneath the covers next to my best friend, Ben. This had become kind of normal for the past few months that we slept next to each other with this like one foot space between us. We were pioneers of a new masculinity.

comfortable expressing our platonic care for each other. No concern for homophobic social norms. And I was totally in love with him. Not like a friend love, but like a love like when I felt alone, I thought about Ben and it made everything okay. And I decided that tonight was the night I was gonna tell him. And he's lying next to me, but he's facing the other way, so all I can see is the streetlight on the curve of his shoulder.

And I start to say something, but the words stop in my throat. And so I reach out my hand, but no matter how much I will it, I can't move my hand closer to him. And I can feel the words inside of me. They're like physical objects that are like all piled up and like pressing against me. But I can't say them and my body is immobile. In the morning...

Go to bed, wake up. Ben makes us some granola and yogurt. And I sit at the kitchen table silently. And underneath the table, I'm massaging my own hands because when I woke up, I had these weird tender nodules like on my palm and in between my fingers. These like red bumps that hurt when I press them, but I kept pressing them.

And when I went home, I had to lie down on my bed because my legs hurt so bad. When I lie down, I looked at them, my legs were all swollen and they had these red splotches on them and on my thighs were those like bumps again. My roommate came in and she said that the bumps were my emotions trapped inside of me. And if I could just learn how to say the things that were stuck inside of me, my body would show that. My rheumatologist felt otherwise.

She, like, you know, felt around a lot of my arms. She cut out a big chunk of my leg. And she... Not a big, a little chunk. A little piece of my leg, I should clarify. Uh...

And it wasn't that crazy. And she explained that the skin tells you a lot about what's going on beneath it, that it's sort of like the communicator between the inside of your body and the outside world. She also told me that I had this rare thing called cutaneous polyarteritis nodosa, which

Right? Totally. Seen the Buzzfeed article about it. It's an inflammation of the blood vessels, but only in the skin. And she said that I was actually very lucky that it was only in the skin because if it moved to my internal organs, which sometimes it did, it was often fatal. And I asked her, how often does that happen? And she replied very casually, oh, there's not enough research.

I'm like, all right, well. And she gave me a prescription for a medication that's usually used to treat gout in the elderly. On my way home, I passed by the drugstore, and for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to go in and get it filled. Instead, I went home, and I worked for a long time on an email to Ben, which, of course, I couldn't send when I was done. All the words seemed cliche. All the sentences started with, I feel like...

That's a lot. I needed instead sort of like a more, like an email wasn't right. So what I did then, I opened up the drawer next to my bed and I took out a black pen and I wrote on my hand, Ben. And the ink shimmered for like a heartbeat and then it dried. And I continued to write a message to him. I wrote, Ben.

"Ben, when I feel stuck or when I feel frozen by my fears and by my doubts, I think of your face, and you're telling me yes."

I took a photo of it with the camera on my laptop, but I couldn't email him the picture because it felt like he'd be too vulnerable. And it wasn't just Ben that I had these things inside of me that I needed to say to them. You know, there was also like my brothers and my sisters and my mother and my father and my stepmother. There were so many people in my life who I had so many things to say to. And so I decided that I would write a message to someone in my life

Every night on my hand. And I took a photo of it every night and I started a blog called I Need You To Know How Much I Love You. I didn't tell anyone about it. And every night, right on my hand, I'd post the photo. And in the morning, I'd wake up with phrases tattooed on my face backwards. And they'd become righted in the bathroom mirror. Like, I don't know, but...

or I wish I could, or you are so... And I was taking those things that were trapped inside of me and I was communicating them to the outside. And as I started to do this, I did it for like a... Well, as I did it for months, the stuff on my arms and my legs totally cleared up. I was also like exercising more and eating better and drinking more water and I started wearing these like knee-high anti-embolism compression stockings that grandmas wear. But it was definitely all about letting the feelings out.

And so once my body looked good, I knew I could call Ben. And I called him from the window of my bedroom, and I told him, Ben, I have this idea about me and you. It comes to me the way that ideas for drawings come to me. Me and you swapping T-shirts, me and you holding hands, me and you like brothers. And he said to me, Tim, I think you know, and I did know, and it felt so good. And he said, I think you know that I'm only attracted to women. And...

That's how I was so sad in a way because I knew I just lost the thing that made me feel less alone. But also my body felt so good because I'd learned how to take this stuff that was inside of me and I put it outside of me. And in the process, I'd transformed who I was on the outside and the inside. And then that night I wrote on my hand, Ben, thank you for helping me become the person I wished I could be. Thank you. Thank you so much. I love you. I love you back.

That was Tim Manley. He told us that my younger self would say that I am very lucky not to be in my 20s anymore. Urgh, sheesh. Can't wait for those days. I wish.

Well, if you want to see pictures of Tim's drawn on hand, check out themoth.org slash grown. We've also got information on our storytellers, bonus content, ways to connect with us, all of that good stuff. And if you're wondering, Ben is an artist living in L.A., and he and Tim are still best friends. Now, it doesn't matter if you're in love with your best friend or if you have a crush on Edward Cullen. Everyone has secrets. As long as you're not Tim Jacob. Yeah.

We decided to go out into the city and hear some of them. Here's David Leppelstadt. Hello, my name is David and I'm out here right near the Staten Island Ferry, a very secretive and a very windy part of New York City. And we're going around asking people if they can tell us a little bit about a secret from their life. So I was wondering if you've ever heard a secret that changed your life. I guess the biggest secret that I found out was maybe that like I had like a half brother from my dad.

Wow. Yeah. It was like pretty recently after he was born, but it was still like a secret, I suppose. So that was kind of like different and mind blowing for me. So I had no idea. So when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I was hanging out with this person. It was our first time hanging out. And I coughed too hard and I peed myself in the Harris Teeter. Oh, no. I had to walk back home.

um with my pee stained pants and yeah it was our first time hanging out my daughter is here do you mind now but yeah i don't i don't have that money many i guess uh i probably would have told you this too uh when i was 18 down in the virgin islands streaking around a pool because i lost a card game was there a secret that you kept when you were a child that no one else knew

That I'm a lesbian. Wow. As a child, when did you sort of figure out that this was a secret you had? I don't know. I started to see girls and like them. I don't know. And then I

Like the girls, so I told my friends, and this year, I've been for a year with my girlfriend. Oh my gosh, congratulations. Thank you. And I told my grandparents and my parents and everything, and...

I don't know, I'm so happy. So secret no more. So how does it feel to now have it not be a secret and have it be something that you're able to share and have your love be something that you're able to share with your family? It feels good because it's what I am and it makes me happy and it was so frustrating not to share something that makes me so happy, you know?

You just listened to an episode of Grown. If you like what you heard, or if you think that a young person in your life might get something out of it, the entire first season is available from wherever you get your podcasts. And you can go to grownpod.com, that's G-R-O-W-N-P-O-D, .com for more information on how to listen and the people that make the show. We just know you'll love it. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.

Mark Zollinger is the podcast producer at The Moth and the senior producer of Grown, The Moth's spin-off podcast. In addition to his work at The Moth, Mark makes creepy horror podcasts, bakes a mean bagel, and feels very weird about referring to himself in the third person.

This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Ginesse, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Katherine Burns, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cloutier, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Leigh-Anne Gelley, and Aldi Caza. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers.

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PeerX, the public radio exchange. Helping make public radio more public at peerx.org.