Culture Clash: The Moth Radio Hour

This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jay Allison, producer of this radio show, in this hour's stories of culture shock, crossing the boundaries between people, communities, and even species. Sometimes we adapt, sometimes not so much. Our first story is told by Jason Cordellus. He told this with us at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. Here's Jason, live from the Wheeler Opera House. In December of 2001, I went on my very first cruise, and I had always dreamed of going on one of those all-gay RSVP cruises. You know, the ones that you read about too, Sonny Alcapulco, or Porta Viarda, or Puerto Rico. All that sun, all those banana colladas, and all those boys. This, however, was not that cruise. On September 11th, my best girlfriend, Marion, lost her firefighter husband, Dave Fontana, and she was left alone to raise their five-year-old son, Aidan. The date also happens to be their wedding anniversary. So I quit my job, and I've been by her side pretty much ever since. And she says, I don't have to do that. And I say, well, it's what anyone would do. And she says, well, no, it's not. And I say, well, then it's what Susan Sarandon would do. And I mean, prior to the 11th, I was really just the gay best friend, you know. But since then, I have kind of been promoted. And Marion has come to refer to me to all the people in her life, the firefighters and the widows and the neighbors and cousins. She refers to me as her new gay husband. And I joke, and I say, like Liza and David Guest. And Marion laughs, but most of the others ask me, Liza, who? You see what I'm dealing with. Now, it then came this cruise. Now, Royal Caribbean had generously offered this cruise to all the 343 firefighter families who had lost. And when Marion asked me if I was interested in going with her and Aidan, I kind of envisioned this gay family vacation, sort of a Willing Grace meets Love Boat meets Six Feet Under. And so, absolutely, I said, I would even make all the arrangements. So I call Royal Caribbean. And I speak to this Ms. Shapiro, a very surly woman. But I'm very excited about the tan that I know I'm going to have. And I want to know where the ship is going to be going. Where's the ship going? I ask. She says, nowhere. I say, well, what do you mean? She says, I mean nowhere. I say, well, the ship has to have a destiny. You must go to Puerto Rico or Acapulco or Port of Iardor. She says, no, it goes nowhere. I say, what is this ship to stay in port? She says, no, it goes out to sea. I say, to where? She says, nowhere. This woman sounds as though she's reciting lines from an E&S go play poorly. I say, I'm sorry, I'm not getting this. So the ship has got to have a destination. She says, well, yeah, it leaves New York Harbor. It floats out to sea. Then it floats back. We're calling this a cruise to nowhere. And I pause and I wait for Rod Sterling to begin his voiceover. And then I continue. And I say, all right, let me get this right. You're sending a boat full of widows and their grief-stricken, terrorized families onto something called a cruise to nowhere. She says, yeah, I say, okay. And then later in the conversation, when I inquire as to why we have to provide passport numbers if we're really not going to go anywhere, she says, well, you're going somewhere, but the somewhere is nowhere. And therefore everyone needs a valid U.S. passport number. I should have known then that this cruise had the potential of sinking me. Comes cruise day. And we arrive at Pier 58, me, the gay husband, Marion, little Aiden. And we see the ship, which is, it's got to be eight blocks long and 14 stories tall and it boasts its very uniceating rink. In line, there are 5,000 people because apparently the trip was offered to the entire fire department and they all seem to have accepted. So I, the gay husband, wait in line, three hours, low blood sugar, after which I am dragging all of our luggage up a very steep ramp, at which point the all-male ice-capades dance team tramples me. I kind of get my bearings and out of my pockets fall Aiden's Star Wars action figures out of my brand new Dolce & Gabbana Puffy white ski jacket. And he runs up screaming at me and sprays me with his very, very juice box all over the brand new Dolce & Gabbana Puffy white ski jacket. So I'm trying desperately just to keep it all together, my hair, my emotions, my outfit. He hits me because Queen Amidala's got all messed up. I'm thinking not the only Queen. And we get on board the ship and the ship, the glorious ship, the interior of the ship looks to me as if it is perhaps exploded out from the bowels of Siegfried and Roy. I mean, there are American flags everywhere and metallic everything and their kids screaming and widows crying and firefighters guzzling free beer. And my very tasteful gay male aesthetic begins to have kind of a panic attack. I mean, because like the Barney's warehouse sale on a Saturday I can handle, but this husband vacation stuff, not so much. And I just chant the mantra that I have since the beginning of all this, which is it's about Mary and not me. This is about Mary and not me. And I take a deep, calm breath and then we set sail to nowhere. And if you're wondering just how long it takes to get to know where the answer is about 18 hours, which is a bit distressing because it's taken me 34 years. And I rally for Mary as best as I can. And I'm introduced to the firefighters as her gay husband and I curtsy politely. But no one gets me. No one gets it. No one gets it. I have not been around another gay man for three months because I'm cooking and cleaning for Mary and I'm putting it in bed and I'm giving her foot massages like her husband did and providing her with sympathy and Valium. And I look around and I see that I am, I'm the only gay husband on board. The only gay anything. And I begin to see that for some reason, surprisingly, there isn't a high demand for the gay man in the world of a wife of a firefighter, which is surprising because with all due respect to the wives of firefighters, they could really benefit from us, really. I mean, that first night I kind of gave my services to this woman and we were sitting and chatting and I said to her, you know, Veronica, you're much too pretty to be wearing that much lip liner. I mean, just soften it. And she didn't like that. Back in Brooklyn, I made sense of Marion's life, but here not so much. You know, and so the second night we put Aiden with a babysitter, thank God. And we go to dinner and at the dinner, the orchestra plays Marion's wedding song. So we leave and we take a stroll on board and it's chilly and it's moonlight. It's very romantic. And we pause to gaze at the moon and I can see that Marion's about to start crying. And I've been able to now kind of gauge her emotional moods like a seismologist kind of reads a Richter scale. And I want to say something funny. So I joke and I say, it's like our gay honey moon. And she kind of laughs and then it's quiet. And for the first time, I start to miss my own life. I mean, clearly we should be here and having this moment, but I think with different people, her with her husband and me with, I don't know, the ice capades dance team, maybe. And I start to wonder and maybe it's wrong, but I was like, God, is this really all that my life has become now? You know, I'm just going to be a gay man married to this wonderful, but kind of high maintenance woman. Is this what happened to Tom Cruise? I don't know. And then like a gift from the gods. I swear to God, Marion hears this beat. She hears a disco beat because above us, there's a discotech. And it sounds so queer, but I mean, Barbra Streisand and Donna Summers, enough is enough, enough starts playing. And Marion is infected and she wants to dance. And I'm like, yeah, she says, do it for me. I say, have fun because it's Donna Summers. So we dance. And we go up to the discotech gestures and gestures has got dry ice and gargoyles and all this and that. And she's dancing and I'm on the sideline pouting because I'm supposed to be on a gay cruise, not a widow cruise. And until I hear Patty LaBelle's Lady Marmalade, because this is my song, right? This is the song I came out to 20 years ago to my best friend. So I'm in this disco trance all of a sudden those widows from Staten Island kind of look like drag queens to me. And I take to the dance floor and I like months of despair and sadness are just dripping off of me in the middle of this dance floor in the middle of this cruise in the middle of fucking nowhere. And it doesn't matter where we are or what kind of cruise it is because my friend Marion and I were dancing. We're having a good time and we're laughing and she's smiling and sweating and we're mouthing those immortal lyrics. Gitchy, gitchy, yah yah, dah dah. You know, and for just a moment, it feels like nothing's changed. No, not that may not that nothing has changed, but that at least as Gloria Gaynor would say, I will survive or she will survive or whatever. You get the point, we'll survive. And then who should spill onto the dance floor? But thank you, the entire All Male Ice Capades dance team. And I am stunned because I have not seen another homosexual up close for three months. And I look at them and I'm so intrigued by their movement and their pageantry, you know, and I want to dance with the Ice Capades dancers, but I'm dancing with Mary. Ice Capades, Mary, ice, you know, and she sees me looking longingly and she motions with her hands to me as if to say, go Jason, go, be with your people. I will be all right. And so I do. And I talk to them and I introduce myself as a gay husband and they laugh and one of them wearing a headdress says, no shit. Well, like lies in David Guest. And we all laugh and I feel great. And then I look over and Marion is alone at the bar and she's sipping a cocktail and she's crying. And I go to walk over to her, but then this captain, this very handsome captain approaches her with a cocktail and she blushes. And I think, of course, of course, I mean, eventually I'm going to be replaced. I mean, it's natural, but it kind of, so then there's a little squeal over here because a share song has come on and the Ice Capades dancers want to dance. And the one with the headdress asks me if I want to dance and I look at him, look at Mary, look at him and look at the headdress. He's wearing a headdress. I say, yeah, I want to dance. And so I do. That's it. That was Jason Cordellos. Jason left New York in 2007 to write for Mad TV in LA for a few seasons. Since then, he moved back to his hometown of San Francisco and is writing a book about his pioneering ancestors history. They were one of the families in the infamous Donner party in 1846. In a moment, cultural icon, Cheech Marine, discovers a new world just a few towns away when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Are you at campaign's lighting of the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results. So we opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions. Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit. Go to linkedin.com.slashlead. Terms and conditions apply. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison. And in this episode, stories of getting your bearings after your world shifts. Next up is actor, comedian and activist Cheech Marine. He told this story at a main stage event we produced in partnership with the Mesa Art Center in Arizona. Here's Cheech Marine live at the Moth. Bam, bam, bam! I was only eight years old, but I knew exactly what that sound was. I think that every eight-year-old in South Central LA knew exactly what that sound was. There were gunshots and they were being fired three feet outside my bedroom window. Bam, bam! Another two shots and I just slid out of the bed and crawled as fast as I could into the living room where my mom and dad slept in a Murphy bed that pulled out of the wall. Mom, mom, they're shooting back there. I know me who stayed out and she grabbed me and threw herself on top of me. And it must have been, my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my feet, man. And she stayed on me for a long time and then finally she got up, went to the window, pulled back to shade and then red and blue swirling police lights filled the whole room. Mom, where's dad? He's out there. What's happening? There was a burglary. And indeed there was a burglary happening in the barbershop next door. And over the years I asked my dad, what happened that night? And this is what he told me. About three o'clock in the morning he heard this faint tinkle of a low-rent burglary alarm going off. Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. He said, it sounded just low-rent. And at this time he was an eight-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. So he got up, pulled back to shade and he looked over there and there was a guy in the barbershop walking around with a little flashlight. Without thinking, he got on his khaki pants, put on his white t-shirt and got his gun. He told my mother, called the police, give him the address, tell them, I'm LAPD and I'm going out to investigate. And be sure to tell him I'm wearing a white t-shirt. So he went down the alley, got to the place where the door had been jimmied open, saw the guy in there showing his flashlight and his gun at him and said, I'm a LAPD, come out with your hands up. And the guy complied and he walked out of the place and he stood there in the alley when my dad turned around, put his hands up against the wall and started frisking him. In one pocket he pulled out three straight razors. In the other pocket it was a very long screwdriver which I guess he used to jimmy open the door and he held him there. The guy said, what are you going to do with me? My dad said, I'm just going to hold you here until the cops come. They're on their way. They'd been raining that night and he laid his umbrella up against the wall and all of a sudden you could hear a siren coming down the street and he looked at my dad and said, I'm not going back to prison. And made a lunge for his gun and knocked it out of his hand. The gun was on the ground, on the wet ground and they both went for it and whoever got there first was going to live. And he wrestled with the guy and he was trying to keep him away from the gun as much as he could and he was trying to get a hold of him. The guy broke free, grabbed the umbrella that was lying there and started to whack him over the head with it. Just at that same time the cops came out of their car at the head of the alley. My mom opened the window. My husband's a policeman. He's the one on the white t-shirt, the white t-shirt. He's the cop. By this time my dad had found the gun on the wet ground, turned on his back and fired and he hit the guy in the shoulder. At the same time the other cops let go. Bam, bam, bam, bam. The guy staggered, almost made it to the end of the alley and then collapsed. He was dead. And in every police involved shooting, there was an inquest. Everybody that's participated or had something to do with it gives testimony. All the cops, my dad, even my mother, the band's parents who lived in the area, they came and they testified that they had tried the best to do it to raise their son but he had a significant criminal record and had just spent four years in the state penitentiary for armed robbery. But they said he didn't deserve to die for this bullshit burglary. They concluded that it was justifiable homicide in the act of an armed robbery case closed. Everything went back to normal but it never went back to normal for me. I had nightmares every single night. Anything woke me up and I was out in the window looking around and my heart was always beating. I was on the juvenile track to a fast heart attack. So about six months go by and my dad announces one day, we're going to go take a trip out to the San Fernando Valley to see my police buddy, Ernie. Okay, well I'd never been to the San Fernando Valley. Sounded like an exciting adventure. I'd never been to the country and what country there was. So we all piled in the Plymouth and headed out for Granada Hills. I remember getting on the freeway and the freeway in those days stopped at Van Nuys and we had to go through five or six towns before we got to Granada Hills and all the orange groves. It was in the middle of Orange Grove and it was kind of boring. It was a long ride and I started looking out the window and what I noticed that shocked me, people had swimming pools in their backyards, their own private swimming pools. How could, wow, and so I started counting them. As we got along by, I got in a search form, I looked through fences and behind stuff and where I could see a flash of blue, there was a swimming pool. How could there be so many? And by the time we got to the Dickens house, that was the name of the family we were going to visit, I'd gotten up to 50. Wow. So we got to the Dickens house, Ernie, Virginia, and their son Mike and they were very nice, they made us lunch and my dad and Ernie fell in this easy camaraderie that all cops have. And then they announced, Ernie and I are going for a ride and we'll be right back. So we continued to chat with Virginia and Mike and tell stories and they became our lifelong friends. After a couple hours, my dad and Ernie came back and chatted a little more than my dad announced, well, we're going home now. Okay, see you later. We all climbed back into the Plymouth and headed back for South Central. My dad was very silent on the way back home. He didn't say a word to where we're almost home and then he said, I bought a house today and my mother's jaw dropped. What? Yeah, I just made a down payment on the house of Block Overs from Ernie's. We're going to move it in a week. My mother at the time was eight and a half months pregnant with my twin sisters. She started breathing really heavy. I thought she was going to deliver right there. So a week later, I found myself in the cab of a moving truck with my dad on the way to our new home in Granada Hills. And I was scared. I was excited, but I was scared. I wasn't scared about leaving South Central. That was a scary place for me. I'd seen two homicides by the time I was seven. And there was always, I was kind of missing a couple friends, but not much. But I would miss my extended family who lived all over the South Central, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my grandmother, my grandfather. But we were going to this new place, Granada Hills. So as soon as we got off the freeway, I started counting swimming pools again. And by the time we got to our new house, I was up to 75. And so there we were in front of our brand new house, glistening in the middle of this dirt lot. And I looked up and down the block and there were similar houses on brand new house, dirt lot. And I was, wow, this is amazing. And we got out of the car and walked in, walked up to the house and opened the door and that smell, that smell of a brand new house. And if you can take the car, the smell of a new car and multiply it by 100,000 times, that's what that smell was, that fresh paint and that park a floor that never been stepped on. We were the first people ever going to be, that were the first people who ever lived in this house. And it was like, I like, we were in dreamland. So we walked in and looked around and and it was four bedrooms where we had been living in this tiny, tiny duplex in south central. And it was four bedrooms, two baths and a huge lot. I would learn all my basic gardening skills in that lot. And that night we went to sleep. We only had two pieces of furniture in the whole house, two beds, the one I slept in and the one my parents slept in. I went to sleep. And in the middle of the night I woke up, I heard a sound. It's happening again. I looked out the window, we didn't have any shades on the on the windows at this time, we had just moved in. I looked out the window and could see nothing. But this, it sounded like our house was getting electrocuted. Opened the window and the sound got louder and opened the window the whole way. And it was really loud now. And it took me a minute to figure out what exactly that sound was. It was crickets. A million crickets. A million crickets had replaced screaming sirens, which I heard 10 times a day in South Central. The next day my dad had to get up and go to work and all the way in downtown LA. He took the only car we were there at the house. My poor mother would just wander around trying to find some shady spot, sit there and pant like a German shepherd. She was going to deliver any day. So I would walk her around. I got up and I would walk, she would waddle. And we would go into every room and just kind of sit there in the room and feel the ambiance of the room. There was no furniture. We sit on the floor. Even at that age it was hard to pick her up after we had to get out of there. And we'd go into, I picked up my room. Okay, that's going to be, that's great. It's a park a floor. It's just like at the Boston Gardens. This is amazing. And then we'd pick out the room that my twin sisters Margie and Monica would occupy. And we would look out the window of every room and then we would go and sit in the living room and look out those windows and imagine a big lawn in front and gardens in back. And we didn't have a swimming pool. And we would never have a swimming pool. And it was okay. I didn't really care. It was just a status symbol. Besides, I didn't even know how to swim at that point. So summer went on and it was always hot. It was just 100 degrees every day. And my grandmother came out to help with the care of the twins and they were born Margie and Monica. And we were having a great time settling into our new house. I remember the first day my mother walked in the kitchen and turned on the taps and mud came out. That's how new that house was. So summer was over. And I was ready to start my new school. Granada Hills Elementary. So my grandmother had come and she was watching over my twin sisters and my mother walked me through the orange grove till we arrived at Granada Hills Elementary. And we got up to the playground. There was kids yelling and screaming. It looked just like South Central. Only everybody was a little more polite, but it was loud. And we walked in and found my classroom. The teacher was very nice. She greeted me, showed me to a desk. And I was trying to be on my best behavior. I was actually trying not to wrinkle my clothes. And I walked like a starched robot. I sat down. I don't even remember what she said. She was just going on about this is here, this is there. And these are the rules and blah, blah, blah. Reset bell rang. All the kids had it out the door. So I got out there and looked around at the playground. And I noticed that everybody was white. Everybody, not all all white. There was a few Mexicans, but no Asians and certainly no blacks. I said, well, this is weird, but okay. I mean, one day everybody in my neighborhood was black. And then the next day, everybody was white. It was like going from Nigeria to a Natsbury farm, you know? What is going on here? So I looked around for something familiar, something I could relate to. And in the distance, I saw a tether ball. And kids were playing tether ball. Hey, they had tether ball in my old school. I'll go try that. I walked over and sat down on the bench to be in the next one to play. And they were playing tether ball just like they played tether ball in South Central. Okay, I know these rules. And in the near distance, I saw these two kids walking towards me. And they were laughing to each other. And they were pointing at me. And then they would laugh again and then point again. And finally, they got up to the bench where I was sitting. And the bigger one shoved me right off the bench. And he said, hey, get to the end, Blackie. I didn't know the procedure here in Granada Hills. I only knew what I knew from South Central. So I swung as hard as I could and hit this guy right in the mouth. And I guess that was the first time his sense of entitlement ever got challenged. Because he lit up like a thermometer and he didn't stop crying for a half hour. And a teacher, nearby teacher, her little Johnny crying, he came, got the both of us and marched us off to the principal's office. And on the way there, I thought of the beating that I was absolutely going to get from my father and from misbehaving. But it paled in the comparison to the thought of at least one little a-hole was never going to bother me again. Nice first day. So I was thinking South Central was undeniably a violent place, sirens every day. But the violence was general. It was all around. It was happening to other people. This is the first time it was personal. This is the first time I'd ever been in a fight. I didn't fight with my friends. There were my friends. And so I wondered, I was the same kid in the situation. So what was different about that world and the new world? What was that dividing line? What was that boundary that separated those two worlds? And I came to the conclusion that it was a line of 75 swimming pools. Thank you. That was Cheech Marine. In addition to his fame and notoriety as half of Cheech and Chong, he's directed Broadway shows, been honored by the Smithsonian, written children's books, and a memoir called Cheech is Not My Real Name, but Don't Call Me Chong. Cheech is of Mexican descent and holds one of the most significant private collections of Chicano art in the world. I caught up with Cheech recently on an internet call. Obviously, you're a comedian. You're also a memoirist. How does telling a story at the Moth differ from the other ways you talk about your life? More frightening. You know, really, because these are untested things. And the only reaction, the first reaction you get is when you put it in front of an audience so you don't know how they're, how's it gonna go, or you know, you don't know where the spots are, and you just go and do it. So it's tightrope walking. For me, I'm used to rehearsal and know exactly what I'm doing. There was a lot of improv in it, but this was frightening. And it was this particular one was a subject that was very fragile to my psyche. Because of the traumatic events that you went through as a kid? Yeah, exactly. And the neighborhood, and then my father was a policeman in the middle of it. You know, when you're growing up as a kid, that everything seems normal, you know, because that's all you know. You know, gunshots in the middle and three o'clock in the morning is normal, you know, and every kid in that neighborhood knew what that was. Getting shot or hit or anything. I mean, it's like, oh, that's normal. That happens every day. Well, it doesn't happen every day in most neighborhoods, but it didn't mind. Until you got to the swimming pool neighborhood. Into the swimming pool, guys, man, that line, you know. I mean, you know, what for me what it brought back was a lot of, I mean, those memories sitting in the back of the car in the backseat of the car, you know, I'm all alone. I like in your stories, the way you talk about childhood, it seems like it's really vivid for you. You bring it back really easily, like you transport yourself and us there. Yeah, you know, I was coming into consciousness, basically, I'm just passing the age of reason and starting to figure a little few things out. And then when you had something to contrast it with, South Central to Granada Hills is as much contrast as you could get. Like, okay, how do I fit in here? How do I do this? So those memories are very, very vivid. Are you going to tell any more mall stories, you think? I don't know. I mean, it's that was very scary for me. It really is a higher wire deal. You know, you're tilting over here, and you got to tilt back, you know, but but you're listening to the audience for reaction for the very first time. And it's like, but you know, a mall story, audience reactions, I mean, as a comedian, what you said is true. If they don't laugh, it's not funny, but with a moth, you might just change their rate of breathing or you might just exactly it. That's exactly it. You when they're quiet, when they're quiet, that's much more fearful because you never heard it before. And in that silence, there is great depth and great meaning. It's mentioned that you have like the largest collection of Shekhan award or something like it. Can you tell me a little about that? Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't claim to have the largest. I mean, there's other large collections out there. I just claim to have the best. I mean, you know, you can argue with that, but show me your museum. Cheech Marine. His recently opened museum in Riverside, California is the Cheech Marine Center for Chicano art and culture. He says it will probably be referred to as the Cheech. In a moment, two stories about crossing the boundary between the human and the animal kingdoms when this hour about culture shock continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. On my new podcast on par with Mari Povich, we're getting down to the truth behind the names that you know and love unfiltered conversations with legends like Leanne Morgan, Kathy Griffin, Ricky Lake, to find out when they feel the most on par. We're breaking it down with Don Lemon, Aaron Parness, Lamani Jones, laughing it up with Josh Johnson, Dan Soder, many more. You know, the results are in great conversations are always on par. So follow and listen to on par wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison. We're hearing about relating to new worlds and our next stories are both about ways we relate to the world of animals. The first comes from our Houston StorySlam where we partner with Houston Public Media storyteller Prachi Mehta grew up afraid of animals. So when she arrived in Texas from her native India, the ubiquity of pets was surprising and even profoundly uncomfortable. Here's Prachi at Warehouse Live in Houston. Have you all ever watched those movies where they portray animals as extraterrestrial beings with different senses from us capable of talking in their own little language and having special powers? I was one of those people who believed that to be true. I grew up in India where animals live a very different life from us humans. Let me explain. Growing up, I watched cats and dogs walking down the street having a ball. They had no rules. They would chase each other, scavenge for food, hunt, do whatever they pleased. I rarely saw pets and for me animals were someone to be afraid of, someone to be feared and respected. Now this perception was greatly challenged when I moved to the United States six years back. And when I moved here, my first stop was Austin. For those of you who have been to Austin, it's a beautiful city with beautiful people and you hardly see animals walking down the street. Animals were people's friends here, best friends. They were companions, they were confidants of the American people and I was not used to that idea. It was very strange to me. Sometimes I would walk into conversations where I thought they were talking about their kids. For instance, they would be talking about how education and development and learning and daycare and sickness and at some point I realized they're talking about their pets. It was amazing. I would always feel like I had nothing to contribute at this point. And so I would just, you know, not my head and say, yeah. So not just the fact that I was there in America and living a new life. I was so excited trying to make new friends and just, you know, live it up. It's the American dream. But my American dream came to a full stop when I had to understand that I had to deal with pets everywhere. Everywhere I went, my friends, my friends' siblings, my professors, everyone had at least one pet. I walk into their house very excited trying to make friends and as soon as I entered their house and saw a pet, I would jump on the couch or jump on the bed because I wanted to be as far as possible from these pets. My friends, they were tolerant, you know, they were very nice to me and they would actually make sure that they locked their pets and kept them as far as possible. And at some point I felt that if this continues, I can definitely see myself staying in the US. But as things went on, you know, two years down the line, I was almost done with graduate school at UT Austin and I was still keeping my arm's distance from any kind of pet possible. Now, as it happens, you know, life, life has its own course. So the last month that I was in Austin, I had to stay with my cousin and I used to visit this cousin often. She lived in Round Rock and she did not have pets. So I was fine, right? And I go there very excited to spend my last month in Austin with them and I walk in and I see this little puppy walk up to me and she has three kids, my cousin, and they're like, Prachi Masi, look, we have a pet. Dad gifted one to my mom last week. And I was just like, oh my god, I can't do this. I just ran. The kids were running towards me and I was running towards the couch and again, it was a little puppy, a sweet little puppy, a Labrador. And in retrospect, it was just so cute. But at that time, I just felt like it would claw, you know, it would come and bite me. And I thought that, you know, that was all they wanted to do was to come and bite you. You know, it was just like a deception, you know, they're so sweet and cute. And those little cats and little dogs and you go close to them. And as soon as you go close to them, you're gone. So the next month, I spent very carefully in my cousin's house. I was in on the top most surfaces as possible on the first floor, on beds, on couches. I would not try to put my feet down because the puppy was roaming everywhere. And it was tough. My niece and nephew, they would take the dog and come to me close, brandishing it as a sword when they wanted something from me. So at some point, my cousin sat me down. She had had enough. She took me close to the dog. And she was like, you are touching this dog right now. I closed my eyes. I'm with trembling hands. I touched the dog. And sensing that it was not going to bite me any time soon, I actually stroked it. And I stroked it once more. And it was fine, you know. It actually did not bite me. So I felt that my fear had gone away at that point. But no, it took a couple more months. I had to meet with more pets, more cats and dogs. I made it a point to go and say hi to all of my friends, friends, pets. And at some point, I got rid of the fear. And that has set me free. Let me tell you something. Letting go of fear is empowering. And from that point onwards, I'm okay with any pet. I have just one rule. Don't lick me. Otherwise, bring it on. Thank you. Pachimeta has been living in the United States for almost eight years now, working in the energy sector. She tells us she's proud to finally be able to occupy the same room as someone's pet. She now adores Jimmy, the pup in the story. And when she visits him, Jimmy still knows to lay down calmly, to be padded and not to lick. To see a photo of Pachie, unafraid, despite having a cat in her lap, you can go to our website, TheMoth.org. How we regard other creatures can range from reverence to food. Our next storyteller, Marnie Litvin, tries to bridge that divide. She told us at a story slam in New York City where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Marnie, live from the Bell House in Brooklyn. I did a little bit of farm work in college and a little bit of farm work after college. And when I'm 24, I get this summer job at a Quaker farm camp in Vermont. And I'm going to work in the garden and I'm going to teach teenagers how to work in a garden. And I'm going to have a very relaxed summer. And I'm going to learn all about Quaker values. And it's going to be real chill. And in my second week of training before the kids arrive, the head farmer is teaching us about the values of nonviolence and simplicity and interdependence and valuing the light in all of us. And I'm dozing off. And then I hear her say, and that is why we do chicken harvest. And I'm like, excuse me? That is not the right verb. But it turns out that at this camp, this camp where we have kids working on a working farm all summer doing construction projects, volunteering at a day camp, this is a real service oriented camp. One of the things that we have the kids do is raise chickens and then kill them and eat them. And because I'm part of the garden staff, I get to run it. I'm a vegetarian. I've been a vegetarian for 20 years. And I worked on farms with vegetables. Vegetables. I do vegetables. And I'm like, okay, this is what we're going to do. And all summer long, we get these chickens, they're called broiler hens. They're like franken chickens. And they grow super fast. And they're the kind of chickens that are used in meat processing. They're not cute. They grow these giant breasts within six weeks. And their little legs can't even support them. And so for the whole summer, every kid has to help take care of the chickens. We feed them every day. We water them. We talk to them. We love them. And then at the end of the summer, it's time for chicken harvest. And I don't know how I'm going to get through it. Because I've never slaughtered an animal. I've never killed anything. Never wanted to. But I'm like, okay, we're doing this. So the way that I go about it is that I make sure that everything is perfect. I set up all the stations that the kids are going to go through with their chickens. I lead a training beforehand on how it's okay to cry. It's okay to laugh on accident. It's okay to hit your friend. You know, we don't know how we're going to react. At least of all me and every kind of, we all have to respect each other. And the kids are like, okay, okay, okay. And they're looking at me and I'm like, it's totally fine, right? And they're like, you tell us. And so the day of chicken harvest, I wake up in the morning, I assemble all the kids and I tell them, okay, the first part of chicken harvest is to give your chicken the best last day ever. So the kids, I pair the kids up, each kid gets a chicken and they spend the day cuddling the chicken, taking the chicken to the lake, doing arts and crafts with their chicken. And then it's the afternoon and it's time to harvest. So I'm just like, I'm so focused on the preparations for it that like, it's just, it starts happening and it happens so fast. And before you know it, first there's a field of chickens and kids and then there's just a field and within it, within an hour, it feels like it happens in seconds. Everyone has killed their chicken and processed their chicken. And at the end of it, we're all covered in blood and feathers. And I go down to the lake to collect my thoughts. And I want to cry and I can't because it was so easy. I'm looking at my reflection in the water and I'm like, you are a person who can kill things. I didn't know that about myself and I thought, I can't wait to eat this chicken. And most of us don't have the opportunity to know what it's like to kill something. But I know that when the revolution comes, I'm going to love it. Thank you. That was Marnie Litvin. Marnie is a writer and comic living in Ann Arbor. They are a student in the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. To see a photo of Marnie as well as a link to their website where you can hear and read more of their stories, visit our website, TheMoth.org. While you're there, you can pitch us your own story. Do you have one about animals or crossing a cultural divide? You can pitch us by recording two minutes about your story right on our site or call 877-799-Moth. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the world. You can share any of these stories or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to Moth storytelling events in your area all through our website, TheMoth.org. There are Moth events year round. Find a show near you and come out and tell a story. You can find us on social media too. We're on Facebook and Twitter at TheMoth. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time and that's the story from TheMoth. This episode of TheMoth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Meg Bowles. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, Associate Producer Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Sarah Austin Genesse and Leah Tau. The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluchet, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour is from Epidemic Sound. Podcast music production support from Davie Sumner. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including Executive Producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org.