The Moth Presents All These Wonders
Page 29
[Singing] “Love to have my fun.” And the monkey started to juggle.
[Singing] “I’m a high night rider and a rainbow flyer, a straight-shooting son of a gun. I said a straight, shoot—”
And if you could have seen the expression on those stoned-out (on, we found out later, LSD) hippies, as Carroll, my monkey, rightfully claimed the spotlight. Glee is a very good word to use. That’s what it was—pure happiness and glee.
Because I was twelve years old, and I was alive. I had escaped Manson’s knife. And I had a monkey with talent.
And as everybody danced and laughed and ate cookies, I looked at my family, and all of their crimes, past, present, and future, seemed to just spill out and dissolve into the contours of the blue shag rug.
And as Carroll balanced an ashtray on his nose, it was as though I was looking into my own future. Because I saw all the glorious things that could happen with music and with joy.
That Christmas, the last one that I was ever a child, I learned a very important lesson:
No matter how horrible your day is, and no matter how scary your night is, everything can turn on a dime.
When there’s a knock on the door.
And music,
and joy,
arrive.
TAYLOR NEGRON was a veteran stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. He starred in his own HBO special and appeared on The Tonight Show, as well as in films such as Stuart Little, The Last Boy Scout, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Aristocrats, and Punchline. You may have seen him on The Joy Behar Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Wizards of Waverly Place. He performed regularly across the United States and is one of the founding members of the UnCabaret, dubbed “the Mother show of Alternative Comedy” by the Wall Street Journal. Negron was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2008. On January 10, 2015, just a few months after he told this story, he died at the age of fifty-seven at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by family. We miss him very much.
This story was told on May 28, 2014, at the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts in East Lansing, Michigan. The theme of the evening was Twist of Fate. Director: Jenifer Hixson.
The Moth would like to thank:
Our founder, George Dawes Green.
Our Board of Directors: Serena Altschul, Lawrence C. Burstein, Deborah Dugan, Joan D. Firestone, Alice Gottesman, Eric Green, Ari Handel, Tony Hendra, Courtney Holt, Anne Maffei, Dr. Alan Manevitz, Joanne Ramos, Melanie Shorin, and Roger Skelton.
Our donors and everyone who has ever worked, interned, or volunteered at The Moth and helped us achieve our goals, particularly our talented and tireless staff: Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Maggie Cino, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Inga Glodowski, Anna Katrina Olujimi, Micaela Blei, David Mutton, Sarah Jane Johnson, Kirsty Bennett, Larry Rosen, Catherine McCarthy, Jenelle Pifer, Michael La Guerra, Jemma Rose Brown, Michelle Jalowski, Sam Hacker, Nadine Tadros, Timothy Lou Ly, Chloe Salmon, Jodi Powell, Anna Martin, Lauren Fiorelli, Betsy Perez, Bonnie Levison, Casey Donahue, Miles Smith, and Suzette Burton.
The Moth StorySLAM community, where each week, hundreds of five-minute true stories are shared around the world. Eleven of the forty-five stories in this book are from people we first met at The Moth StorySLAMs.
Our talented musicians who light up the stage with their sound. And our incomparable Moth hosts, who bring their nimble wit, emotional intelligence and fiery energy to audiences night after night in twenty-six cities across the globe—you are our ultimate ambassadors.
Our collaborators, friends, and partners in crime: Jay Allison, John Barth, Meryl Cooper, Mark Ellingham, Adam Gopnik, Joanne Heyman, Kerri Hoffman, Dan Kennedy, Viki Merrick, Paul Ruest, Jake Shapiro, and Kathleen Unwin.
The hundreds of public radio stations around the country who air The Moth Radio Hour, all of our national partners for both the MainStage and StorySLAM series, and all of our regional StorySLAM crews for their tireless dedication.
Our gifted agent, Daniel Greenberg—thank you for your patience, talent, and wise counsel.
The entire team at Crown (we could not be more thrilled to be a part of the family): Molly Stern, Annsley Rosner, Trish Boczkowski, Rebecca Marsh, Julie Cepler, Kelsey Lawrence, and most especially our extraordinary editor, Matt Inman, who has had our back through two story collections and brought a bold vision to this book.
The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling, and a recipient of a 2012 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation MacArthur Award for Creative & Effective Institutions (MACEI). It was founded in 1997 by the novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to re-create the feeling of sultry summer evenings in his native Georgia, when moths were attracted to the light on the porch where he and his friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales.
Each show features simple, old-fashioned storytelling on thoroughly modern themes by wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors.
Through its ongoing programs—The Moth Mainstage, which tours internationally; The Moth StorySLAM program, which conducts open-mic storytelling competitions in twenty-two US cities plus London, Dublin, Melbourne, and Sydney; The Moth Community Program, which brings storytelling workshops free of charge to underserved populations; The Moth High School StorySLAMs, which brings the thrill of competitive storytelling to high schools across the country; and The Moth Corporate Program, which offers industry-specific storytelling solutions—The Moth has presented more than twenty thousand stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide.
The Moth podcast is downloaded over 44 million times a year, and the Peabody Award–winning The Moth Radio Hour, produced by Jay Allison and presented by PRX, The Public Radio Exchange, airs on the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation “ABC RN,” and over four hundred and fifty radio stations in the United States. The book, The Moth: 50 True Stories is an international bestseller. themoth.org