Storytelling with Impact

Muneesh Jain Storytelling at The Moth in Traverse City

May 19, 2025/in Career, Emotions, Family, Identity, Relationships, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

You may remember Peter Aguero’s Moth story of how the simple suggestion of taking a pottery class altered his outlook on life. Different circumstances in this case, but Muneesh Jain’s Moth story told in Traverse City also happens to hinge on a moment in time that revised the trajectory his life was on.

But there’s always a backstory to such moments, and Muneesh talks about his parent’s expectations that he could never meet, no matter how hard he tried.

My parents are from India. So, in our house, that meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement, and a specific type of professional success: doctor, lawyer, engineer.

And he did try, to the point that his heath was at risk. But walking away from success resulted in his disconnecting from his family, as well as society itself. Rather than a short brief, Muneesh was out of sorts for five full years.

The delivery guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. I was a failure.

And then… Something unexpected happens. Something that reignites is passion, and a lifelong dream. The journey he embarks upon connects him to new people in ways he couldn’t predict, and the process seems to resurrect him. (no spoilers here — you’ll have to hear his story to learn the details of his journey)

As these articles are fueled by java, you can always…

And I realized we weren’t really even talking about baseball anymore. We were talking about family connection.

While staying with friends in Seattle, a scene unfolds we can’t possibly expect.

The next day, I hear a knock at the door. Nobody’s home, so I walk upstairs and through the glass door, I see the silhouette of a 4 foot 10, 90 pound little woman. I open the door and just say, “What are you doing here, Mother?”

As the saying goes, “It’s never too late.” For Muneesh, the subtext is that it wasn’t too late to reconnect to his mother, and in doing so, come to understand her in a way that wasn’t possible while growing up.

Transcript

My parents are from India. So, in our house, that meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement, and a specific type of professional success: doctor, lawyer, engineer. By the time my sister was 12, she knew she was going to be a doctor, just like my dad.

When I was nine, I called a family meeting to let everyone know I was never going to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer. I was going to be a gymnast. My parents, they tolerated it, but told me that one day I was going to have to grow out of it. But I went to the gym six days a week, five hours a night. And by the time I was a teenager, I was training for the Olympics. Then multiple injuries ended my career. My folks, they said, “Alright, you got that out of your system. Now it’s time to focus on your education.”

I needed them to be impressed with me, the way they were my sister. I just, I couldn’t wrap my head around doing it their way. So I came up with a bigger idea. When I was 19, I got a job with ESPN. I was producing live segments for Sportscenter, ESPN news, hanging out with my sports idols. My folks, they kept reminding me, “Don’t let this get in the way of your schoolwork.”

Alright, fine. If that wasn’t good enough, I came up with a bigger idea. I left the network and moved to Detroit, Michigan, a city that I love, and I started a sports magazine. I sold ads, I found distributors, I built a staff with grown-ass people who had kids older than me. And we were killing it. We were up to 50,000 subscribers. People were recognizing me on the street. Hell, Muhammad Ali said he liked my magazine.

But every time I’d see my parents, they’d just ask me, “When are you going back to college? Get that degree.”

This time, there was no bigger idea. I had to make this work. I doubled down, worked twice as hard, which also meant that I pretty much stopped sleeping entirely and started drinking and drugging the nights away to manage my stress levels. And when I was 24, my doctor told me that I was six months away from a heart attack.

I either had to get rid of the magazine or die. So I gave up. And something broke inside of me. And I couldn’t face my parents. I took the money I’d saved from ESPN and the magazine, and I ran away. I moved to New York into a tiny 160-square-foot studio apartment where the windows didn’t even open, and it was there that my self-imposed exile began. Slowly losing contact with every human I’d ever met.

The delivery guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. I was a failure.

My parents would call and I never knew what to say. My dad would lecture me that I wasn’t even a part of the family anymore. My mom would yell at me that I needed to get my life together. And every conversation just ended in tears. So I stopped answering their calls. Then they started sending me money to keep me alive, and I took it, and that made me hate myself so much more. And so I just stopped leaving my apartment entirely.

The TV would be on 24 hours a day. I wasn’t watching at all. I just needed flashing images and noise to block out the constant stream of shame, regret, self-loathing that was clanging around the inside of my skull.

And that became my life. Every day, all day, living in near isolation for five years.

One day, a baseball game just happened to be on. Now, I hadn’t watched a sporting event of any kind since the death of my magazine. It was always just too hard. But on this day, I was so broken, I just stared motionlessly at the screen in front of me. And within a couple of innings, something strange was happening. I felt myself sitting up in my bed, engaging with something outside of my own head. I was smiling. I mean, actually smiling, for the first time in five years.

By the time the game ended, I’d already ordered the MLB TV package and just started mainlining baseball. I was watching every game, reading every article, going back over the last five years to see everything that I’d missed. And in the middle of it all, I remembered a dream I had when I was six.

You know, “One day, I’m gonna see a baseball game at all 30 MLB stadiums.” It’s one of those silly things that a lot of baseball fans want to do, but few actually get a chance to do it. And the ones who do it, do it over the course of a lifetime, like a normal human person.

But in this moment, nobody even knew that I existed. I could disappear off the planet and no one would notice. So I said, “Screw it. I’m going to do it. And I’m gonna do it in one season.” I’m going to drive 17,000 miles in 95 days and go to a baseball game at all 30 ballparks. I started obsessively poring over maps and schedules, planning out my route.

Every time I’d go down to the bodega to buy another pack of cigarettes, instead, I would take that money out of the ATM, go back up to my apartment, shove it underneath my mattress. By the time the next baseball season came around, I’d saved $6,000 and quit smoking.

I was ready to go. I called my parents to let them know what I was doing, and they really didn’t know what to say. They were just happy that I was alive. And I hit the road. Every 48 hours I was in a new city. But I didn’t want to just sit in the ballpark alone. I needed a way to reintegrate myself into society. The problem was, I had completely forgotten how to even have a conversation with somebody else.

So I invented a podcast. I couldn’t have cared less if anybody actually listened to this thing. I just needed an excuse to go talk to strangers. And it was working. People were talking to me about the stats of their favorite ball players, the histories of their ballparks. One kid at Citi Field at a Mets game spent 20 minutes meticulously breaking down why it was that the Yankees sucked.

And I bounced from ballpark to ballpark. I noticed that my conversations, they were evolving. I talked to a father and son in Baltimore, where after our official interview, the father pulled me aside to quietly confide in me that he didn’t really have a relationship with his eldest son, but his youngest, his youngest loved baseball, so he knew that at least they’d be able to talk about that.

I talked to a mother and daughter in San Francisco who had been going to games together for 20 years. Three generations of women in Texas. The grandmother proudly shoving Little Laney, her nine-year-old granddaughter, in front of my microphone, saying, “Little Laney, tell the nice man what you do all your school reports on.” And Little Laney excitedly screams out, “The Texas Rangers!”

And I realized we weren’t really even talking about baseball anymore. We were talking about family connection.

By the time I got to LA, I’d already driven 8,000 miles on my own. I was halfway done with my tour. But this was my hell week, because the Angels and the Dodgers rarely play at home at the same time. I had to catch a game in Anaheim, drive 17 hours up to Seattle, turn back around, drive 17 hours back to LA, then 30 hours to Minnesota. That’s 4,000 miles in 10 days. But I was a man possessed, nothing was going to stop me.

After my Angels game, I hopped in the car and headed up north. But about halfway into the drive, my vision starts to get blurry and my body starts to uncontrollably shake. I pull over just in time to open the door and projectile vomit all over the side of the highway. I didn’t know what to do, so I called my dad. He just sighed into the phone and said, “You have food poisoning.” What am I supposed to do from here? “Gatorade and Pepto Bismol.”

My mom gets on the phone and starts screaming at me. This is ridiculous. You need to take better care of yourself and I hung up. I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture. I made it to Seattle in time for my game by double fisting Gatorade and Pepto Bismol. I was staying with some family friends so I knew they’d be able to take care of me.

The next day, I hear a knock at the door. Nobody’s home, so I walk upstairs and through the glass door, I see the silhouette of a 4 foot 10, 90 pound little woman. I open the door and just say, “What are you doing here, Mother?”

And she says, “I’m here to help you drive.” Now, she must have seen the panic on my face, because she followed that up with, “And I’ve been listening to your podcast. I know you don’t take bathroom or food breaks when you’re on the road, so I’m not going to take any breaks either. We’re going to stay on your schedule.” I didn’t know she was listening to the podcast.

And then she said one more thing. “I’m driving the whole way, so you’ve got two options. You sit next to me and you can sleep or we can talk.” Now, I honestly can’t remember the last time my mom and I had been in the same room together without it devolving into tears. So I said, “Okay, Mama.” I got in the car and I immediately went to sleep.

I slept the entire way to LA and when we got there, she said, “I’m not going to go to the baseball game with you.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “Because you’ve got work to do. And if people see you there with your mother, they’re not going to want to talk to you.” I said, “You’re being ridiculous, of course you’re going to come,” and I got her a ticket.

We’re at Dodger Stadium and I start interviewing the gentleman sitting next to me as I’d done at every ballpark before. My mom, she moves to the seat behind us to give us some space to chat. And after the interview is over, I can hear her talking to her new seatmate. And her new seatmate’s asking, “Wow, you must be a huge baseball fan to do this type of road trip.” And my mom just answers, “No. I really don’t like baseball. I like watching my son watch baseball.” I pretended like I didn’t hear that.

After the game was over, we’re walking back to the car and she stops me. She wants to show me a picture she had taken during the game. And I looked down on her phone and it’s actually, it’s a picture of me and the guy that I had been interviewing. And she just says, “Look. You’re smiling.”

I said, “When are you going home, Mama?” And she said, “No, no, no, no. I’m going to drive with you to Minnesota too.” This time, there was no panic on my face. I said, “Okay, we’re going to split the drive and let’s talk.”

As we made our way out east, I started talking to my mom the way that I had been talking to these strangers at the ballpark these last couple of months, asking her stories about her life. You know, this woman, she survived three wars between India and Pakistan. I didn’t know that.

She told me the story of how her and my dad’s arranged marriage came to be. I knew they were arranged, I just never knew how or why it happened. I don’t know why I never bothered to ask her that.

Right before we got to Minnesota, we made a quick pit stop in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore. And as we’re walking up to the monument, my mom peeled off to call my dad and I was eavesdropping and I could hear her say, “As immigrants to this country, we’d always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. We just never found a reason to make the trip. This is all so exciting. I can’t wait for you to be able to see… our son… is just so happy.”

Thank you.

Back to you…

As unique as the details of Muneesh’s story are, the themes are all too common. Expectations. Failure. Shame. And also being open to those times when a simple circumstance serves as inspiration to reclaim the life that’s been waiting for you. Yes, the first few steps require initiative, but success manifests when others are influential elements in your narrative.

If you have a story to tell of getting lost, then finding yourself, don’t forget the cast of characters that accompanied you on the road to recovery. With them, you would still be lost.

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Storytelling And Your Moral Compass

January 16, 2025/in Identity, Moral Compass, Personal Stories, Storytelling/by Mark Lovett

I recently had a discussion with a client about the principles which form a story’s foundation. As we delved deeper into the subject, three principles came up over and over: Honor, Integrity, and Respect. We talked at some length and the next day I decided to summarize and share what these principles meant to us:

Honor — the story being told is true, told honestly, without embellishment or fabrication. In this light, the narrative faithfully represents the authenticity of the experiences being shared and reflects the story’s true meaning.
Integrity — the story aligns with one’s actions, words, and personal values. It respects the privacy of others involved in the story, and in some situations, requires consent from the other party. (or a notification of your intent)
Respect — the story is cognizant of personal and cultural issues regarding what is going to be included in the narrative. That could involve narrative boundaries plus an understanding of the story’s emotional impact on the storyteller and the audience.

At the intersection of honor, integrity, and respect

Another subject arose as we discussed how those principles interact with each other: moral compass. As we considered the term it seemed evident that our moral compass must be positive in nature, as it’s based (as we saw it) on the three principles of honor, integrity, and respect.

When we abandon our moral compass

But as we had to admit, people don’t always align with their moral compass. In some cases, outside influences that are not in alignment with our central values and beliefs come into play. Religious dogma or political ideology are often times out of sync with the morals we hold dear. Greed has a way of masking our idea of right and wrong if there’s the possibility of a significant financial gain, and the seductive nature of being in a position of power also has a way of obscuring our convictions. The effects of fear and intimidation, of being persecuted by others or ostracized for our beliefs can cause us to transition into preservation mode. That’s when the stories we tell ourselves and others may take a moral detour.

Silence is a story unto itself

While some folks engage in a form of moral hypocrisy due to social pressure or personal gain, others remain silent as they’re fearful of repercussions whenever they tell the truth or share their honest feelings. I get it. We’re always evaluating the potential benefit of a decision against any associated risks, and history is full of stories about people who suffered, both physically and mentally as a result of publicly sharing their values and beliefs.

It’s a time for self-awareness

I’m not here to issue a moral judgement on anyone. That’s not the point of this article. Instead, it’s a call for a moment of self-reflection when telling a personal story. To be aware of whether your story’s narrative stays in alignment with your moral compass, or has deviated in some way from your cherished principles to serve another purpose.

Dealing with the dark side

We also need to recognize that in some cases a person’s moral compass can be damaged, and as a result, they no longer believe in respecting other people. We have all seen that happen in many parts of the world as fascist governments will lie, cheat, steal, and implement policies that impair basic human rights. This isn’t an instant shift, but instead happens over time. It’s a brainwashing process that replaces respect with disrespect. When that happens, the stories that are told damage society instead of being beneficial. Not the impact we’re looking for.

When it’s time to speak up

In such cases it’s more important than ever for those people who operate from a position of Honor, Integrity, and Respect have their voice heard by all. Positive change in any society always begins with the telling of personal stories. So if at all possible, share a personal story that can change the world — for the better.

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Liel Leibovitz at The Moth from The Avalon Hollywood

December 28, 2020/in Family, Humor, Identity, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

The Moth has been hosting storytelling events for 20+ years, and the thousands of storytellers who have graced their stages are proof that every story is unique, and that the best stories come from our personal experiences.

In this story, as told by Liel Leibovitz, we hear about a boy growing up who finds out that his father is really a bank robber. It’s not something that most of us can relate to. But there is a larger story about the stereotype of what it means to be a man, and Liel’s journey to deciding what that would be for himself and his son.

We’ve all had relationships with our parents during our younger years, and for those who decide to raise a family of their own, there is that ever present past alongside the desire to make our own child raising decisions. Think about your own experiences, then as you listen to Liel’s story, and review the manuscript, identify the story blocks that you could develop to craft a story of your own.

Transcript

I grew up in Israel in the 1980s, and my father’s mission in life was to make sure that his only son – me – grew up to be a real man. And so, as soon as I turned four, every Saturday he would take me shooting, which was funny because my arm was exactly the size of a Smith & Wesson .45. Two or three years later, when I was six or seven, my father would take advantage of Israel’s surprisingly relaxed car rental insurance policies and he would rent a car to take me on driving lessons, which were terrifying because even sitting in his lap I didn’t reach the wheel.

And every two or three weeks, there was a special treat. We would stop the rental car by the side of the road and my father would make me go out and change tires, whether the car needed it or not, because in his mind knowing how to change a tire was the epitome of manhood.

I really hated changing tires, and I really hated spending these Saturday afternoons with him, but he didn’t care, because he was inducting me to the International Brotherhood of Macho Men. Every chance he got, he would take me to the movies to see his heroes – men like Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris or Burt Reynolds. I didn’t mind these guys too much, but they were not my idols.

My real idol was a real live person named the Motorcycle Bandit. He appeared on the scene shortly after my twelfth birthday, robbing bank after bank after bank all over Israel. He was in and out of the bank in under forty seconds, never leaving behind any clues to his real name or identity, and he just drove people insane.

He got so popular that Israel’s most famous comedy sketch show – sort of the local version of Saturday Night Live – devoted an entire episode to the bandit, speculating in one bit that he probably never robbed a bank in Jerusalem because he didn’t particularly care for that
city. So you can imagine what happened the next day, when, in an apparent tribute to his favorite television show, the Motorcycle Bandit robbed his one and only Jerusalem bank.

People went insane. Women who worked at banks would write their names and phone numbers on little notes so that if the sexy heartthrob robber happened to hit them up, maybe when he got off work he would find their number and give them a call.

But the people who loved the bandit most were us teenage boys. For us he was a complete hero, and on Purim, which is more or less the Jewish equivalent of Halloween, we all dressed up like him – in a leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet and a big shiny gun.

So about a year and a half later, I’m thirteen and a half, I’m walking home from the eighth grade, and no one’s home, so I sort of mosey over to the kitchen to make myself a snack. I hear a knock on the door, but it’s not a tap-tap-tap. It’s a boom-boom-boom. I open the door, and there are three police officers standing there. They’re not looking at me, and none of them are saying anything.

Finally, about half a minute later, one of them looks up and says, “Son, we arrested your father a while ago with a motorcycle helmet and a leather jacket and a big shiny gun.”

And I remember my first thought was, NO WAY! You think, you think MY DAD, with a beer belly and the receding hairline and the terrible jokes, you think THAT GUY is the Motorcycle Bandit? But in the hours and the days and the weeks that passed, I learned that he was.
The real story, as I soon came to learn, began about two years earlier when my father, who was thirty-five at the time and the son of one of Israel’s wealthiest families, was summoned by his father to have “the talk.” Now, if you’ve watched a couple episodes of Dallas or Dynasty or Knot’s Landing, you know “the talk.” It’s when the rich guy calls his wayward playboy son over and says, “Son, it’s time for you to grow up and be a man, take responsibility for your life and get a job.”

My father didn’t like that at all. So he stormed out of my grandfather’s office, and he hopped on his motorcycle – because, of course – and he drove to the beach, and he’s sitting there watching the sun set over the Mediterranean, and he’s thinking about his life. My father grew up in the sixties, so he believed in sayings like “do what you love” or “follow your heart.” So he decided to follow his heart, and his heart led him to robbing banks.

Now, as it turns out, he was good at it; he was great at it; he was an inventor, an innovator. He was the Elon Musk of the stickup job. And later I learned how he did it, and how he did it was incredible. He would rob a bank in under forty seconds, he would run out, jump on his motorcycle, drive around a corner, up a ramp he had custom-built, and into a van, where he would pause, and like some mad philosopher king, he would ponder this seminal, existential question of bank robbing, which is, “Where’s the last place you would ever look for a bank robber?”

And the answer is – and now is the point in the story where any of you contemplating this line of work may want to pay attention – the answer is that the last place you would ever look for a bank robber is the bank.

So my father would take off his jacket and his helmet and tuck the gun back into his pants, and walk out of the van calmly, around the corner, and back into the bank, which at that point was a crime scene sprawling with police officers. One of these police officers would inevitably run up to my father and say, “You can’t be here, sir, this is a crime scene!”
And my father would look at him with this dopey look and say, “Oh, can I please just make a quick deposit? My wife will kill me if I don’t”, and the police officer would say something like, “Sure, but be quick about it,” and my father would walk up to the bank teller and deposit the same exact cash he had robbed three minutes earlier. This being the 1980s and computers were still kind of new, he made the cash virtually untraceable.

It was a work of genius. He was so good at it, and he became so popular, that eventually he got cocky. He robbed one bank a day, and then two, and then two banks in two different cities. One time he was riding in a cab on his way to the airport when the urge struck. He told the cabdriver, “Would you mind stopping? I promise I’ll only be a minute.” It was literally true, he was only a minute. He robbed the bank, hopped back into the cab, drove to the airport, and flew off for an all-expenses-paid vacation in New York.

But you know how this story ends. Eventually he was caught. And after he was arrested, life got really weird, in no small part because Israel, as you may have heard, being a small state surrounded by enemies, has its own ideas about prison. And one of them is that prisoners get one weekend out of the month off to go home on vacation. The logic being that since the country only has one really secure airport, if you want to go ahead and try to escape through Gaza or Syria, you know, be our guest!

So every fourth Friday, I would go to the prison to pick my father up, and we would go out and have ourselves a weekend on the town. People would come up to him and high-five him and pat him on the back and say things like “Bandit, we love you, you’re cool.” But to me he wasn’t cool. And he wasn’t even the bandit. He was my dad, who had just done something so incredibly stupid that it landed him with a twenty-year prison sentence.

But even weirder than that one weekend a month together, were the three weekends a month apart. Because here I was, and it was Saturday, and there’s no shooting practice, there’s no driving lesson, no changing tires, no Burt Reynolds, and I didn’t know what to do.

So one afternoon I got dressed, which, by the way, was also an ordeal, because when the police searched our house, they took not only all of my father’s belongings but, because we were more or less the same size, also all of mine. So I put on one of the few outfits I had – which was this really ratty, disgusting purple sweat suit with the Batman logo up front, which I assume the police thought no self-respecting bank robber would ever wear.

I walked out and started walking around town, literally looking for a sign. And then I saw it. It was a sign above a theater advertising an all-male Japanese modern-dance show. And I thought about it for maybe five seconds, and then I did something that I’m pretty sure my father would disown me for: I bought a ticket, and I went in.

And I loved it. Here onstage were these amazing, elegant, graceful men, and guess what? They weren’t punching each other in the face, they were not riding Harley-Davidsons, they were dancing. And yet they were so secure in their bodies and their masculinities, and I thought to myself, “If that’s another way of being a man, what other ways are there?”

And thus began a two-decade-long process of trial and error – of trying to figure out what kind of man I wanted to be. And look, some of the things I learned didn’t surprise me at all. I love bourbon, and I’m the kind of guy who would watch as much sports as you would let
him in a given day.

But some other things were really surprising. Like some French poets moved me to tears. And even though bourbon was great, you know what else tastes really good? Rosé wine. And even though I’m really, really good at changing tires, if I get a flat now, I’m calling AAA. I didn’t share any of these insights with my father, because for one thing he’s not really the kind of guy who’s into insights. But, for another, by the time he got out of prison, I was already a man in full – it was too late for him to shape who I became in any meaningful way.

He still comes to visit from time to time, in New York, where I live with my family. And on one of these recent visits, he and I are sitting in my living room, not talking, as men do, not talk. And my son comes prancing into the room – my three-year-old boy. Now, that boy looks exactly like me. Just as I look exactly like my father.

And if there’s one thing in the world that boy loves, it’s his older sister. And if there’s one thing in the world that his older sister loves, it’s Disney princesses. And in prances the child dressed like Princess Anna from Frozen. I look at my son, and I look at my father looking at my son – who, by the way, looked amazing in this light green taffeta with a black velvet bodice and some lovely lacing – and I know that my father is judging me.

But you know what? I don’t care. Because at that moment I realize, strangely, that by going to jail when he did, he didn’t just free me up from the burden of this macho nonsense, he also freed up my son to grow up as a happy boy who can pretend to be whoever he wants to be, even – or especially – a pretty, pretty princess.

And I can’t tell you how grateful I am that instead of going through life mindlessly as two tough guys, my son and I are free to become real men.

[Note: all comments are my opinions, not those of the speaker, or The Moth or anyone else on the planet. In my view, every story is unique, as is every interpretation of that story. The sole purpose of these posts is to inspire storytellers to become better storylisteners and to think about how their stories can become more impactful.]

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Aleeza Kazmi at The Moth from The Beacon School in New York City

December 14, 2020/in Discrimination, Education, Identity, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

I’ve always felt that storytelling should be a required course in high school, as it’s fundamental to how we formulate our thoughts and how we’ll express ourselves throughout our lives. I was delighted to discover this story by Aleeza Kazmi when she was still a student. (she’s a professional storyteller now)

Children of color often deal with issues related to identity when they’re growing up, and in this story, Aleeza recalls such an incident from when she was just six years old. Beyond her particular circumstances, it’s a narrative which speaks to the courage we sometimes need in order to express the fact that we are proud of who we are.

Transcript

So I’m six years old and I’m in the first grade and I’m sitting at a table with my three best friends and we’re all really similar. We all wear the same clothes from the children’s place that our mom’s by us, and we play on the monkey bars during recess and we play house underneath the playground at St. Catherine’s Park, which was behind our elementary school. All of our names start with A, there is Anna, Amanda, Ashia, and Aleeza. We’re working on self portraits, and this is sort of an icebreaker project of the first grade. My teacher, Ms. Harrington, presented it as a way to get to know each other’s faces. These were gonna be hung up on the wall, and I was really excited because we were on our third day of self portraits and we were going to color them in finally.

I was super excited about this because my mom had bought me a coloring book over the summer and I learned how to color inside the lines. I learned all these, yeah, really excited about that, and I learned all these really cool techniques for how to draw properly. I was basically young Picasso and I was ready to show off my skills to my friends. I knew this was an extremely special project because Ms. Harrington had brought out oil pastels. Every table got one box, and every box had one of each color. I love oil pastels because I used there really soft, and so I used to take them and pinch them between my fingers and feel them melt into my skin almost. Because there’s one of each color in every box you had to be patient and wait for your color to not be used, and the color I wanted was being used.

I was ready to color in my face, and all of my friends had colored in their face peach, and since we were all the same girl, I figured I would use peach as well. So finally, peach was available, and I color in my face and I’m going slowly and I’m watching the oil pastel melt into the paper and I color inside the lines. It’s beautiful, and I look down and this self portrait, this girl I had just drawn, is exactly how I see myself. It’s like I’m looking into a mirror, and I’m proud, and I feel Ms. Harrington, my teacher, looking over my shoulder, and I get really excited because Ms. Harrington loved it when people drew well. And I was like, she’s gonna say to me that she’s gonna hang it above her desk, so that when people came in, they knew that I drew this amazing portrait.

I was getting ready for her to compliment me, and instead she looks down and she says, “Aleeza, that’s not your color.” And I’m confused by this cuz I don’t understand how colors can belong to people. So I start panicking and I’m like, Was I not supposed to use oil pastels? You know, did I do something wrong? What did I do wrong? I couldn’t figure it out, and I couldn’t find a way to ask her.

She didn’t explain further, she just grabbed the oil pastel box and started looking through it. Didn’t find the color she was looking for. So she went to the crayon bin. Now, every elementary school had this infamous crayon bin where little bits and pieces of broken of crayon that were unwrapped and disgusting and mixed together over years and years and years and never went away.

And I never used crayons. I always used markers or color pencils or something. But Ms. Harrington went to the crayon bin, and she’s rummaging through it, and she pulls out this crayon, and it’s this nub of a brown crayon that’s unwrapped and gross. Ms. Jill Harrington hands it to me and she says, “Lisa, this is your color.”

I still don’t understand it because how can colors belong to people? But I can’t figure out a way to ask her, and so I take it and she tells me to color in my face, and so I do. But crayon and oil pastel don’t mix together and they’re not friends and they don’t wanna be on the same page together. So I’m pushing in this crayon and I’m going in all different directions and trying to make it mix with the peach, but it’s not doing it.

I’m coloring outside of the lines now and I’ve colored into my eye and my lips and now’s red on my chin. I’m panting, and Anna, Ashia and Amanda are all staring at me and I’m embarrassed. When I’m done, I look down and I’m this grotesque monster that can’t decide if it wants to be peach or brown. I wanna scream at Ms. Jill Harrington, “Please do not hang this up, I’ll do it again. I’ll do it your way this time.”

But she grabs my self portrait before I’m able to say anything, and she puts it into the pile with all of my even tone, beautiful peach friends, and it’s hung up on the wall. I go home that night and I ask my mom, “Why am I not allowed to be peach?” And she explains it to me as well as a mother can to a six year old who’s going through an identity crisis.

You know, I’m not peach and your dad isn’t peach. She does her best, but I still don’t understand it, and I don’t wanna ask her cuz I don’t wanna sound stupid, cuz everyone else seems to understand this concept of color, but I cannot wrap my head around it. So I put this idea on a shelf and I don’t think about it again until the sixth grade when I’m in a new school, and we’re all asking each other questions like, “Where did you go to elementary school and what’s your favorite book?” Just trying to get to know each other a little bit, and this one boy comes up to me and he asks me, “What race are you?” Which might be a complex question. Some people, they can’t look at me and know what race I am.

I didn’t know what race I was because I never really thought about it, so I’m trying to look for an answer. I think back to this Jill Harrington and that brown nubby crayon, and I tell him, “I’m brown.” And he looks at me, and he’s so confused, and he says, “What do you mean you’re brown? Brown isn’t a race.”

I find the words finally and they come up, and this little six year old me inside is screaming, and then now I’m screaming and I’m saying, “Who are you to tell me what I am? If I say I’m brown, then I’m brown and deal with it.”

So this boy never spoke to me again, which is fine, because I finally found the words and was able to stand up for myself.

Watch Aleeza’s video, make some notes about what impressed you, then read the manuscript and watch again. You’ll see and hear it differently the 2nd time around. You will also notice a bit of editing. To avoid the talk from reading as a run-on sentence, the word ‘and’ was removed in several places.

[Note: all comments are my opinions, not those of the speaker, or The Moth, or anyone else on the planet. In my view, every story is unique, as is every interpretation of that story. The sole purpose of these posts is to inspire storytellers to become better storylisteners and to think about how their stories can become more impactful.]

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A Decades Long Struggle for Justice as told on The Memory Palace

June 14, 2020/in Discrimination, History, Humanity, Identity, LGBTQ/by Mark Lovett

The Memory Palace continues to be one of my favorite storytelling podcasts with its unique way of bringing forth historical landscapes of people, places and events that traverse the arc of time, deftly infused with an insightful sense of relevance that speaks to current affairs.

With the struggle for racial equality front and center we have an opportunity to take a step back and revisit other struggles which continue to compromise millions of lives. Within the time frame of 8 ½ minutes Nate DiMeo compresses decades of oppression against the LGBTQ community, painting with both broad and fine strokes alike, calling out moments that crushed the dreams of countless lives. Yet love, relentlessly, pushed back the waves of oppression.

On the surface this story may seem dissimilar from the current storyline playing out in city streets, but that one phrase, “to be who they were”, binds these two struggles at the wrist. It’s difficult for me to fully comprehend, to grasp beyond the intellectual, to feel the emotions at a cellular level, to walk the streets and feel compelled, as a matter of survival, to be someone else in order to safely navigate society.

Beyond the topic laid poetically bare, pay close attention to how Nate weaves the history of one physical place and the souls who passed through its front doors to the national narrative, now his pacing gives us space to assimilate each word and phrase.

Transcript

This is the Memory Palace, I’m Nate DiMeo

The White Horse Inn on Telegraph in Oakland opened in 1933, or thereabouts. No one’s been able to nail down the date. Historians have tried, as have some of its various owners it seems over the years, but if you’re not an academic, or if you don’t have a personal financial stake in solidifying its claim as the oldest gay bar in the United States to operate continuously in one location.

It doesn’t really matter when the White Horse first opened its doors, just that it was soon enough, for a man to walk in on just the right night in 1936 or 46 or 54, and see the most beautiful man he’d ever seen in his life, and just be done for.

Soon enough for another man, who had heard of this place, heard of places like it, whispered about, or mocked by the fellows in the assembly line, or in the office, or in his usual joint across town, heard the cracks about pansies and perverts and queers, and feared what they might mean.

Feared why the words seemed to cut right through, sit strange in his belly, and tightened his throat, but who fought through that fear to make his way there to the White Horse. Who may have circled the block all butterflies, before working up the courage to park. Who may have walked right past it, rather than be seen walking in by some stranger. Or maybe he pulled his collar up, and tipped his fedora low, and pushed through the door as fast as he could.

And who may have learned that night, in that bar, where men talked to men by the fireplace in the back, where women flirted with women in the light of the jukebox, men held hands by the pool table like it was nothing, like it wasn’t everything, knew that night for sure, that this was the place he belonged, that this might be the only place he belonged.

Like it was for other women and men. Those who were identified correctly as such at birth, and those who weren’t, people who needed their lives to change, to make sense, to be less lonely, to be less scary, to be more fun, to be safe.

In the forties and fifties, and later, men and women, friends from the neighborhood at the bus, and church, friends who knew the truth about each other, would walk arm and arm up Telegraph Road to the White Horse, would play at being people they were not, and then walk through the door, into that windowless room, and become who they were.

They’d go their separate ways, he to a boyfriend, and she to a girlfriend, and they’d spend a few hours in a place where so much of what they’d been taught all their lives about what life was supposed to be, but who they had to be to be happy, or responsible, or good, or saved, just fell apart, just put the lie to the whole thing.

Laws of the universe themselves, just torn up and tossed like confetti to swirl in the bar light, and flit in the laughter and the dance songs, a light on the eyelashes of some pretty man, or float on the surface of martini glass.

And then they’d say good night to their boyfriend and girlfriend, to the people there who understood, who helped them understand, and they’d link arms and go back out into the world.

Have no illusions about the world. The world did not want that man and that woman to be who they were. Gay sex was a felony. Cross-dressing was a crime. People risked imprisonment, forced sterilization, institutionalization, lobotomization, for acting on who they were.

If the cops, armed with laws that let them raid bars if they suspected women were dancing with women, or men were holding hands, or speaking in high-pitched voices in some cities. If the cops came and threw you into the patty wagon, if not threw you up against a wall, your name would wind up in the paper along with your address. You could be fired, kicked out of your apartment, lose your car loan, get beat up, or worse, by people in your own home, or by people who now knew where your home was.

The laws would change. Attitudes would change, sometimes for the better, and sometimes not. The war seemed to change everything for awhile, especially there in the Bay area. All these soldiers and sailors and nurses flooding in, away from home for the first time, discovering who they were for the first time, discovering whole worlds in windowless rooms like the White Horse.

In the sixties a straight couple bought the bar, and they were so worried about raids, it seems, and some speculate so skeeved out by their own clientele, that they instated a strict no touching policy.

No more slow dances, no kissing, no nothing. It was like that for years. And still people came to the White Horse because it was their place. But then the late sixties came, and the hippies came, and the radicals came. Berkeley was just down the road. The black Panthers was around patrol right there in Oakland, and gay men and lesbians, and transgender started staking more radical claims, started living more radical lives, and the White Horse embraced gay liberation.

And by then it was just one of the many gay bars in the area where people could find each other, could find out who they were and who they want it to be, where they figured out what was possible to ask from this life, where they asked for it together, as they’d done in the White Horse since 1933, or thereabouts.

The White Horse Inn was open the night in 1966 when transgender women fought back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria across the Bay in San Francisco.

It was still open two years later when the Stonewall Inn was raided across the country, and people protested for three days, and never really stopped.

It was open on the night in 1973 when an arsonist set fire to a gay bar in New Orleans, locked the door, and killed 32 people. The White Horse was there for people who used it to mourn.

It was open for people who wanted to celebrate 1962, when Illinois became the first state to decriminalize homosexuality, and 13 years later when California joined it, and 28 years later when the Supreme court forced 14 States to do the same.

It was opened in 1977 when San Francisco elected Harvey milk to its board of city supervisors, and in 78 when he was assassinated.

It was opened in 1979 when 75,000 people marched in Washington for their civil rights.

And it was open all throughout the 1980s, when its customers started dying, when its employees started dying. In one year alone, eight bartenders, eight, died of AIDS related illnesses.

And the White Horse had stayed open, as it has been, again and again, when men and women, boys and girls, transgendered people were murdered for who they were.

So many since 1933 or thereabouts, mourned by what people now call the LGBTQ community. The community built year by year, night by night, in windowless rooms like the White Horse.

It was open when Vermont passed its civil unions law, when Massachusetts passed its marriage law, when San Francisco’s mayor issued marriage licenses, and when the California Supreme court annulled those unions. Annulled the marriage of the manager of the White Horse too.

It was open when the California voters rejected gay marriage, and it was open for dancing when the Supreme court threw that vote out.

It was open on a Saturday in June when someone killed 49 people in Orlando, Florida, in a place like the White Horse, where people came to be who they were.

And it was open on Sunday, and it’s open tonight. It will be open tomorrow.

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