Holiday Special 2014: Monkeys, Megachurches, and First Elves: The Moth Radio Hour

This episode originally aired on December 16th, 2014. If you've been moved by a story this year, text 'GIVE25' to 78679 to make a donation to The Moth today. A special holiday edition of The Moth Radio Hour: Simon Doonan encounters challenges when called on to decorate the White House for Christmas, a man is hesitant to work with a ‘Hollywood’ style church in his neighborhood, a Jewish girl meets Santa, and a boy thinks his dreams have finally come true when he gets an exotic pet. This hour is hosted by Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Storytellers: Simon Doonan stirs up controversy with small details on his Christmas ball decorations. Mark Redmond works with a homeless shelter in Vermont. Ophira Eisenberg wanted to meet Santa Claus. Taylor Negron grows up “California Gothic” and must balance the joy of owning a monkey with his fear of Charles Manson.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour, true stories told live. I'm Catherine Burns, and this is the Moth Holiday Special. A spirit moves in a megachurch, a Jewish girl from Canada pines for Christmas, a kid's terror of Charles Manson almost ruins the holidays. And first, this story from one of our longtime Moth storytellers, Simon Doonan, with his holiday story he told at the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City. Here's Simon, live at the Moth.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Jackie Kennedy's crystal balls were up here. Nancy Reagan's luscious red ribbons were down here. Barbara Bush's dangling orbs were over here. Yes, you've guessed it, probably, right? I was in the White House Holiday Storage Facility, where they keep all the holiday decor from White House past. There was, oh, it was just beyond, Pat Nixon's little beaded orbs. It was amazing. So, how did I get there?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  In January 2009, I get a phone call from Desiree Rogers. Hello, bonjour, Desiree Rogers. And then he dropped the phone, and I thought it was one of my friends pretending to be Desiree Rogers. And then, so she said, "We want you to come and decorate the White House for the holidays." "We," I hope you noted, "the we want you." And I couldn't believe it. I thought, my God, I came to this country when I was 25 years old, in the 70s, and I just had like a little Dorothy bag and a dream and a little, a little bit of cash. And now, I clawed my way up through the cutthroat world of window dressing.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  I clawed my way up and wow, at the age of 57, I'm getting a call from the White House Press Secretary, "Come and decorate the White House." I couldn't believe it. And I thought, well, I'd just become a citizen, actually, about two months before the election. And I'd pulled the lever for Barack Obama. And I thought, finally, I'm a citizen. I pulled the lever. And now I'm gonna decorate the White House. I had visions of myself showing Sasha and Malia how to thread popcorn.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I saw myself, I got really carried away really quickly. I saw myself in the organic garden clutching Beau the water dog as the first flakes of snow fell in the coming fall. So my fantasy was interrupted when Desiree said, "Of course, we're gonna have to vet you first and look through your background and everything." And that's when I thought, oh, well, forget it then. Because with my rap sheet, that reckless driving conviction and the getting arrested on a railway station in 1968 going to a pop festival, yada, yada. Plus, my reputation as a provocateur

• 3:53Speaker 01

  in the field of window dressing. I'd done all these insane things. When they only have to hit Google Image Simon Doonan and up it's gonna come all this banana stuff. I'm never gonna get this job if they're gonna vet me. So somehow miraculously, I think the vetting machine must have been at the repair shop that day. But I got the job. So I went down to Washington in the spring of 2009 and went to the warehouse, rummaged around, met all my collaborators, spent days measuring things in the White House. It's so huge. I had to measure mantelpieces and windows. And I had great collaborators, Kimberly and Sally.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  And we measured things and we went back and forth to the warehouse and unearthed things that we thought, oh, we'll reuse some of these things. Because why not? Hello, recycling, why not?

• 4:49Speaker 01

  So, I'm getting more and more wound up about this project because it's so huge, it's such a responsibility, but I'm determined to do the Obamas proud. Because, you know, it's not about me, it's about them. It's their house. So, then, in the warehouse, I find these crates and crates and crates of these huge plastic silver balls that are so tacky and horrible, I can only imagine that Betty Ford, bless her heart, put, this must have been her era, because she was going to Studio 54 and she probably thought, "I want some sparkle, I want some silver."

• 5:31Speaker 01

  But there they were, these hideous plastic orbs, in a hundred million years would you ever think, "Oh yes, White House holiday decor," if you looked at them. So I thought, "This'll be great." There's so many of them, there's 500 of them. We'll take them all and ship them to community centers all over America, and people can decoupage them, and it'll involve America and yada yada. So, along with all the pine berries and pepper berries and larch things and Douglas fir this, that and the other, all the incredible things we were specking and ordering and designing, we thought we'd have this participation component, and all these 500 balls would go on the Blue Room tree.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  So, I'm obviously really wound up, flying back and forward to Washington, etc., and Desiree says, "We have to go and present all your ideas to Mrs. Obama." So I have a meeting with her, which was sort of like this. "Hello."

• 6:31Speaker 01

  And then, with Desiree, "Hello." Staring up in the air, because they are literally twice my height.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  And, as I stood there, between Mrs. Obama, so beautiful, so chic, so fun, intelligent, and Desiree, so wonderful, incredible, giving me this job, j'adore. So, I'm between the two of them, and I realize at that moment, "Oh my God, I am the first elf."

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Right? I'm the first elf. So...

• 7:19Speaker 01

  The fall... The fall goes by in a blur of anticipation. I have to do all my stuff at Barney's and then I get ready because, obviously being in retail, we put, we install the holiday decorations on about August 15th, something like that. But actually, the White House is very chic and restrained and they wait till after Thanksgiving. So, after Thanksgiving, I'm all revved up, ready to go to actually install all the stuff we've been prepping and blah, blah, blah. And so, I go down to Washington. Two days before the installation, the Salahis... Yes! The chick with the sari and the iron blonde hair,

• 8:00Speaker 01

  allegedly crashed that party and it's like, it changes everything. Suddenly, there is going to be no publicité. There's like a total lockdown on any kind of publicity. Not that I cared about that or anything.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  The cover of People magazine with me and Bo the Water Dog and the snow falling. So, there's a total lockdown on publicity. So, me and all the incredible volunteers, which was many, many women in Christmas sweaters, and me. And incredible people, fabulous volunteers. We pile into the White House, we start installing and, you know, Oprah's film crew comes through and we all have to hide in a cupboard because they don't want any publicity. And then HGTV comes through and we have to sneak in behind a fireplace. And so, at one point, I'm on a scaffolding in the Blue Room and we're throwing these balls on the tree, all the ones have come in from all the community centers.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And they're incredible. People have used, the theme that we gave them was American monuments. So, there's like, you know, the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls and people have done these fantastic Indian reservations. Amazing, amazing stuff that's come in. We're throwing it quickly, we have a day to do this whole installation. And I get a call from this journalist and he says... I just spoke to the press office and they're denying that you're involved. And I, you know what? I thought, this is a time to show that elves can take the high road. And as I trudged through the snow that night back to the W Hotel across the street

• 9:46Speaker 01

  with my little elf boots on through the snow, I thought, I don't care that much. You know, what's important is we knocked it out of the park. The whole White House looked unbelievable. It was so chic, so gorgeous and beyond. I felt really, really good. Who needs publicity when you've done such a fantastic job? So, cut to December 20th. A conservative blogger who has a major conservative site sends a mole into the White House with an iPhone and takes some little tiny pictures of some of these decoupaged balls that have come in from various community centers.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  To wit, a picture of a Pittsburgh ball. And as we all know, Pittsburgh is the birthplace of Andy Warhol. And on this ball is a tiny postage-sized stamp of an Andy Warhol Chairman Mao. So that's on one ball. Then somehow or other, this clever little mole gets their little iPhone and finds another ball with a drag queen on it. They find a ball with Hedda Lettis on it. So Hedda Lettis. Yeah, you know those old jokes, "Birth of a nation, anchovy." So they've got, and then they find a ball with Mount Rushmore and somebody has cleverly,

• 11:13Speaker 01

  creatively decoupaged Barack Obama's head onto one of the president's. So these pictures are then blown up on this website and the headline is, "Simon Dunin introduces communist agenda and anti-family values into the White House." And suddenly, I, there's banging on the door. The doorman says, "You're on Fox News." There's like streaming that thing, like crazy window dresser introduces communist agenda. I mean, nothing could be further from a, I'm such a relentless capitalist shopping lunatic.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  So, streaming, you know, introducing Communist Agenda... Then it explodes on the internet. Like, it's on a million websites, Communist Agenda, Communist Ag... So, at this point, I'm in the fetal position under my toadstool. It was horrifying. And there were... Then the death threats started. "Yes, hello, madam, it's not that funny, is it, now?" The death threats started. "Somebody should bash your brains out with a baseball bat, blah, blah." And I forwarded a few of these to the White House,

• 12:38Speaker 01

  and they responded, "Buy a helmet." So, fortunately, I mean, obviously, fortunately, this had a finite ending, because Christmas ends. Like, so, this horrible nightmare of unwanted publicity ended, and because, thank God, you know, there was a finite ending. It's called December 24th. So, 25th, anyway. So then, my takeaway from all this is that there are really two types of people in the world. There are little elves that go around and make everything fabulous and brilliant and gorgeous and wonderful.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  And then there are people who sit blogging and tweeting about the efforts of the first group on their ever-widening asses. And my other takeaway from it is that really, no holiday is complete without at least one drag queen and a bunch of elves. Thank you.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  That was Simon Duman. He's worked in fashion for over 35 years as a writer, window dresser, fashion commentator, and creative ambassador for Barneys New York. He has a column in Slate and has written six books, most recently a fashion memoir called The Asylum. Simon lives in New York City with his partner and their Norwich terrier, the Barachi. To see pictures of the White House decked out in Simon's decorations, and specifically the head of lettuce ornament, go to themoth.org. While there, you can share any of the stories you've heard in this hour with your friends and family. We're also on Facebook and Twitter at The Moth.

• 14:31Speaker 02

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

• 14:39Speaker 03

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• 15:37Speaker 00

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Catherine Burns from The Moth. Holiday stories, everyone's got them. Here's one my mother used to tell. When she was a little girl, Mama's father, my grandfather, would leave their house late at night on Christmas Eve. He owned a five-and-dime store in the small town where they lived in rural Kentucky, surrounded by farms. Through word of mouth, her father let it be known that if there were farmers in the community who didn't have the money to buy presents for their kids, he'd meet them at the back door of his store at 9:00 PM on Christmas Eve, and whatever he had left on the shelves was theirs to take home to their families. Many of them would give him an IOU and pay him back when the crops came in that summer. Okay, so that's the spirit of Christmas, but it gets better.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  More than 30 years later, when I was staying with my grandmother in the summer, the doorbell would sometimes ring. When you got to the door, there'd be no one there, but there'd be a big box of corn or tomatoes on the doorstep, left there by the families and children of those farmers. My grandfather had died years ago, leaving my grandmother a widow way too young, and she was very happy to have those fresh vegetables. My mother always said, "The spirit of Santa Claus is alive and well," and I think she was right.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  That was my mother's story. Maybe your mother has a holiday story. If so, have her call our pitch line, which allows anyone to leave a two-minute version of a story, holiday or otherwise. The number is 877-799-MOTH. Again, that's 877-799-MOTH. Or you can pitch us the story at themoth.org.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Now we're going to hear from Mark Redman, who we met when he called our pitch line a few years ago. Here he is telling a story to his hometown crowd in Burlington, Vermont.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  So I moved to Vermont a little over 10 years ago with my wife and child. And we bought a house in Essex. It's a town about 25 minutes from here. And right before we moved into the house, we took a little walking tour of the neighborhood. And we met a neighbor. And she said, "Oh, you're gonna love it here. There's a lot of little kids, the schools are good, it's safe." And then she asked us a question. She said, "Are you gonna look for a church to join?" I thought this was a little unusual to be getting this question. I moved up here from Yonkers, and in Yonkers, they typically don't ask you that. But I thought, "Well, this is Vermont. Maybe that's what they ask you. It's a little different." So I said, "Well, we're Catholic,

• 18:38Speaker 04

  so you will probably look for a Catholic church to join." And she said, "Well, if you're looking for a contemporary Christian experience, that's my church. That's the church to join. So when you move in your house and you want to learn more about my church, please come over." So we did move into the house, and then I met a different neighbor. And I told her about this neighbor kind of promoting her church. And the neighbor said, "Oh, yeah, I know what church she's talking about. We call that the Hollywood church. Every service on Sunday is a big production. It's big screen, multimedia, big extravaganza." I said, "Okay." And then I met a third neighbor, a guy down the block. And I told him about this woman promoting her church.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  And he said, "Yeah, my wife and I went to that church once. We're not going back. That was messed up."

• 19:32Speaker 04

  So at that point, I'm like, okay, okay, I'm convinced, I'm convinced. I don't need to hear anything else. I'm getting the impression this is one of these feel-good churches, and that's not me. I do go to church every Sunday. I classify myself as a peace and justice Catholic. Meaning, to me, if you're gonna be spiritual, if you're gonna be religious, it's about helping the poor, sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, civil rights, saving the planet from destruction, social justice.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  And the people I've always looked up to are people like Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, the nuns on the bus.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  People who really put it on the line. Their faith led them to action, to try and change the world. And that's how I've tried to live my life. I studied business in college. I worked for two years on Madison Avenue. I left that to start working with homeless and at-risk kids. And I've been at it for 32 years. Here, thank you.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Here in Burlington, I'm Director of Spectrum. We work with homeless teens, kids addicted to drugs and alcohol, kids who are in trouble with the police, kids suffering from mental illness, runaways. And it's really my religious beliefs that drive why I do the work that I do.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  Couple of weeks later, I'm at work, and I get an email. It's an all-agency email from our volunteer coordinator. Because this church, the one I'm talking about, has contacted her because a group of kids there have collected some items to donate to Spectrum, and they want someone to come that Sunday to pick up the things and say a few words to the kids. So my first reaction is, I do not want to be the one to go to this church. Even though I've never been there, I don't have a good feeling about this church. It reminds me of these mega-churches you read about. But, I'm the director. I live closer than anyone else in the organization to the church. It's like two miles away. I said, "I'll go." So I showed up that Sunday.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  And I went inside, and I'm going in with an attitude. Are you picking that up? You getting that? Going in with an attitude, I admit that. I said who I was. They said, "You go upstairs. There's a classroom up there. There's a group of kids waiting for you." So I went in. It was like 20, 25 kids. Little, like nine and 10 years old. So I went, and it was a couple of adults, four or five adults. So I went in and I gathered the kids around me and I told them about Spectrum and the work that we do. And they brought up this box, and I opened up the box, and it had sheets and towels and soap and toothpaste. And I remember it had dental floss. Because I remember taking the dental floss out and saying, "This is good, because even homeless kids need to floss their teeth every night."

• 22:36Speaker 04

  So, uh, I'm looking at my watch and I'm thinking, "Wow, this is great, man. 15 minutes, I'm out of here." And the adult standing right next to me says, "Mark, before you go, there's a little girl here named Emily, and, uh, she has something special for you. Emily, will you please come up to the front?" So this little girl comes walking up to the front, dragging this black duffel bag behind her. And she stands in front of me and she looks up and says, "My brother died this year, and my family would like to give this to you to give to a boy at Spectrum."

• 23:12Speaker 04

  So I leaned over and I unzipped the bag, and it had a lot of the same stuff that had been in the box. It had soap and toothpaste and towels. And it had a Bible, a white leather-bound Bible, and it had a card. So I took the card out of the bag, and somebody had written in ink on the front of the card to a young man at Spectrum. So I took the card out and pre-printed on the front, it said, "Always remember, 'God is watching over you.'" And it had a picture of her brother pasted to the inside of the card. Now, this girl's like nine years old. I'm expecting to see a little boy, but it's a young man.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  It's a young guy. It looks like somebody we would work with at Spectrum. And it's got the ages of his birth and his death, and he's 21 years old. And he's handsome. He looks happy. He's smiling in the picture. So I leaned over to the adult who was next to me, and I whispered to him, "How did her brother die?" And he whispers back, "Heroin overdose."

• 24:21Speaker 04

  When I heard that man, it was like the words ripped right through me, you know? And it was like something shifted deep inside of me in an instant. And it was one of those times in your life where you see things very clearly, like a Zen moment, a moment of awakening. And the first thing I saw clearly was my own blindness, my own foolishness, my own prejudice. And then I saw that, you know, maybe this church is not the kind of church that I prefer, or the kind of worship that I would like, but there are a lot of really good people in this church.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  And some of them, like this little girl standing in front of me and her family, are in tremendous pain. And if this church is where they go to find peace and hope and healing, so what? So what? What right do I have to judge that? So I knelt down and I looked at this girl, and I said, "You have my word. I am gonna give this to the right young man at Spectrum." And I gave her a hug, and I left. And I brought that black bag into work that week, and I told the staff the whole story. And I said, "We have the perfect person. We took this homeless kid in two years ago.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  He'd been living on the streets, he's been living at Spectrum ever since. He's done really well. In fact, he's gotten into college, he's moving to Vermont Technical College in Randolph. In a few weeks, he's gonna live in a dorm, and he could really use this stuff." I said, "Great, give it to him, but one condition. I'm gonna find the address of this girl and her family, and I want him to write a thank you note." And I know he did that. And I thought that was the end of the story, but it wasn't, because a few months later, I got a letter. I got a letter from the mother of this young boy who had died.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  And I would get this same letter for the next two or three years in a row. And every letter would start the same way. Today would have been my son's 22nd birthday, 23rd birthday, 20, whatever year it was. And she would enclose a check for $250. And she would write in the letter her son's favorite restaurants. This one she writes, "The Little Indian Restaurant on North Menusky Avenue. Nectars, shanty on the shore." She would say, "Please, take a group of you boys out to dinner with this money." In this letter she writes, "The thought of a group of guys going out, having a good meal together, laughing and enjoying themselves will do me good. I wish we could be doing that with my son.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  But I'm blessed to be able to do this small thing in loving memory of him." The church itself, over the last 10 years, has been unbelievably generous to Spectrum. Food, donations, money. If I emailed them tomorrow and said, "You know, in about a month, it's gonna be cold in Vermont? And we have hundreds of kids who need coats and gloves and hats and scarves? Our shelves would be filled within a week." That's how good they are. And you know, I did something I never thought I'd do. I went to one of their services. Yes, I did. They're like...

• 27:48Speaker 04

  They had like a Christmas pageant, a Christmas show. Was it Hollywood? Yeah, it was a little Hollywood. They had singers and dancers and drummers and confetti and the fake snow coming out of the... You know? But it was very sincere. I found it very meaningful and very spiritual. And at the end of the night, they packed my car with wrapped Christmas presents to take back to the kids at Spectrum. Thank you.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  That was Mark Redman. Mark is the Executive Director of Spectrum Youth and Family Services in Burlington, Vermont, where he has served since 2003. He's the author of "The Goodness Within: Reaching Out to Troubled Teens with Love and Compassion." Our next story is from Ophira Eisenberg. Ophira told this story while hosting one of our open-mic Story Slam competitions on Christmas Eve. Here's Ophira Eisenberg, live at the mall.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  I'm doing this. I'm doing this. I have to do it because I was obsessed, some of you know this, but I was obsessed with Santa Claus as a child. I really, and I'm Jewish, Ophira Eisenberg, really? Are you not Japanese? Jewish, yeah. And I wanted to see Santa Claus so badly as a kid, I thought the one in the mall was the real thing. I hated Hanukkah because Hanukkah sucks, only in comparison to Christmas. It only sucks when you're in a public school, and you're the only Jew, and everyone else is doing Christmas, and you're the only one, two weeks earlier, lighting a fucking candle. And maybe your parents, if you're Jewish, gave you eight presents, you know, but that is a choice. That is not in the Torah or the Talmud. And our parents didn't do that.

• 29:53Speaker 05

  You just got socks one of the days, and it was random. I wanted to go see Santa because I wanted to get presents, and I knew that was the way to do it. My mother would be like, "No, you can't go see Santa, we're Jewish." And I would be like, "Well, who brings us presents?" Because the answer, as far as I was concerned, was nobody. But she would make shit up. She'd be like, "Uh, Moses." I'm like, "What?" She's like, "Oh yeah, Moses comes down the mountain every Hanukkah with a sack of dreidels." And I knew that was bullshit, so... We're at the mall, one day, right close to Christmas,

• 30:38Speaker 05

  and that castle is amazing. Right, the castle is amazing. All the characters are so happy. And the snow has sparkles in it. And I realize what I can do is I can throw a fit, because my mother will be shamed. We don't look that Jewish. I mean, if I just threw a fit going, "Let me see Santa," in the middle of a mall, she will look like the worst mother ever and have to let me go. And so I do that, and she goes, "Fine." Like, I'm just like, "I wanna go see Santa!" Like, crying and screaming. And she goes, "Fine, go see Santa." And I can't believe it. And I get in the line with all the other kids, but I don't say anything, because now I'm an undercover Christian and I don't wanna blow it. So I'm very quiet. I just focus on the gift I want. I'm like, "Barbie Dreamhouse." And I'm just repeating, "Just, that's all you have to say. Barbie Dreamhouse, that is all you have to say.

• 31:22Speaker 05

  That is all you have to say." And then I get into the castle. A little elf hen beckons me in. And then I sit on Santa's lap, which is creepy, because he's just a guy. Like, he's just a man. Like, he's just an old guy. Very creepy.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  And he leans down to me and he says, "What would you like for Christmas, little girl?" "The best." Best question ever. And I looked up to him and I just went,

• 31:51Speaker 05

  "I'm Jewish." Like, I fell apart. I couldn't handle it. I totally went off script.

• 32:00Speaker 05

  And he was like, "That's okay, so am I."

• 32:10Speaker 05

  And I didn't know what to do with that information, so I just kept repeating, "It's Santa's true, or Santa's true, or Santa's true." And these mean elves came out of nowhere and, like, pushed me out of the castle. And kids were crying. And I heard an elf in a walkie-talkie going, "Code nine, Jew in a lap. Code nine, Jew in a lap."

• 32:30Speaker 05

  And I ran out, my mother's there, there's kind of chaos happening, and I'm running towards her, and my mother's like, "What is going on?" I'm like, "Mom, I just found out, Santa is Jewish." And my mother, without skipping a beat, goes, "Well, of course he is. Who else do you think works on Christmas?"

• 32:49Speaker 05

  There you go, that is my holiday tale.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  That was Ophira Eisenberg. She's the author of Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy. Coming up, a Christmas celebration involving Jim Morrison, grilled cheese sandwiches, and a bullfrog named Jeremiah, when The Moth Radio Hour returns.

• 33:21Speaker 02

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

• 33:28Speaker 03

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• 34:26Speaker 00

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Catherine Burns from The Moth. Our final holiday story was told in East Lansing, Michigan, but takes place in the early 1970s in Southern California. Here's Taylor Negron, live at The Moth.

• 34:53Speaker 06

  I was born in Los Angeles in a house in a canyon that was in a nest of palm trees that casted these thin, unmoving shadows like prison bars. It was very California Gothic. I am very California Gothic. I am the child of those people that you used to see in the ads for cigarettes in the back of Life magazine. Those handsome people that were always wearing

• 35:37Speaker 06

  terry cloth robes and penny loafers smoking cigarettes, looking like they just heard the funniest joke of their life. The Marlboro Man met the Virginia Slims Woman and had me.

• 36:00Speaker 06

  It's very California Gothic to have your best friend's mother, who is a movie star, keep her cracked Oscar in the kitchen next to the salt and the cumin and the cuma-dun. It's very California Gothic to see Joan Didion crying at the wheel of her green Jaguar on Moore Park below Ventura. It's very California Gothic to have a cousin who is a rock star. My cousin is Chuck Negron, the lead singer for the group Three Dog Night. And he bore a startling resemblance to Charles Manson.

• 36:49Speaker 06

  Now, when you were a kid like me in 1970, growing up in Los Angeles, you knew that you shared the city with Charles Manson and his family. Because that grisly, murderous night of mayhem and helter-skelter was all anybody could talk about. And for those of you who are too young to know what helter-skelter is, it's kind of like twerking, but with blood. And it was really scary.

• 37:25Speaker 06

  Really horrifying.

• 37:28Speaker 06

  And my parents, they were always going out on the town. They were always getting dressed up and leaving like in Mad Men, right? They just left me alone. They just went out. One night, my father came in and he said, "I want you to close all these doors and windows. I don't want these hippies to come in here and degut you."

• 37:59Speaker 06

  You heard him.

• 38:02Speaker 06

  That was an option in my childhood, to be degutted.

• 38:08Speaker 06

  And it left a tremendous psychic scar on my life that has stayed with me forever. And I'm still very disturbed by hippies and long hairs and headbands and large candles and beads and bandanas. I just don't like any of it.

• 38:33Speaker 06

  But I was only 12 years old. I was a tween. I was a changeling.

• 38:42Speaker 06

  I was changing into a man. But childhood is a place where your fears are disproportionate. They're huge. But then, so are your goals. And that's where the magic can happen, in these goals. And my goal, when I was a child, was to own a gorilla.

• 39:08Speaker 06

  Or, you know, a monkey, or an ape. Anything from the monkey, ape, gorilla family. I just wanted someone to, you know, be able to play hide-and-go-seek with.

• 39:19Speaker 06

  Swim, shoot dice, light ironing.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  And my parents were these really emphatic kind of ghetto people from New York City, right? Who didn't like animals at all. And my mother said, "Look, you will never, ever see a monkey walk through that door."

• 39:53Speaker 06

  But something very magical happened.

• 39:58Speaker 06

  That Christmas of 1970. You see, my uncle Ishmael, that was his real name, Ishmael, he was a trucker. And he had his...

• 40:09Speaker 06

  He had his own flatbed truck, which meant that he could follow other people around who had flatbed trucks and pick up what fell off of theirs.

• 40:21Speaker 06

  And one day, he was closing down this raggedy-ass Circus Vargas in the Hollywood Bowl parking lot on Highland. And he came across a monkey that somebody was throwing out.

• 40:34Speaker 06

  A live monkey.

• 40:38Speaker 06

  Named Carol.

• 40:41Speaker 06

  Two Rs, two Ls.

• 40:45Speaker 06

  And we knew it was called Carol because it had its own cage with its name on it. And that is what changed the deal with my parents. Because they are emphatic New Yorkers, so they said, "Well, if it's free..."

• 41:02Speaker 06

  And it comes with a cage. What harm can it do?

• 41:10Speaker 06

  Well, Carol came to the house. I was so excited. Carol arrived on that flatbed truck on a pile of grapefruits in his cage. And when I went out there and greeted him, and I looked into those big, round eyes, I knew that I would understand everything that monkey had to say to me. And that I would experience unconditional love. Well, the monkey promptly squatted, shat into its hand, and then threw it into my eye.

• 41:47Speaker 06

  Under paw.

• 41:56Speaker 06

  And from the shadow, I heard the ice clink in my mom's drink.

• 42:03Speaker 06

  And she said, "That's your monkey."

• 42:10Speaker 06

  I loved my monkey so much, and I stuck with my monkey while everybody turned against my monkey. Sometimes they even put a sheet over its cage. I stuck with my monkey when my monkey willfully and intentionally fucked my grandmother's mink hat.

• 42:31Speaker 06

  And I took the blame.

• 42:45Speaker 06

  Carol was my most cherished early Christmas present. But Carol was not the only unexpected visitor that season.

• 43:00Speaker 06

  One Christmas night, the Santa Ana winds blew too hard against the glass in cold, frightening Los Angeles. I had fallen asleep into a deep Christmas sleep, and I looked out the window, and I saw a van pull up in front of the house, turn off, and just stop. Nothing happened for thirty minutes. Nothing happened. And I thought to myself, "This is it. This is my nightmare. It's going to come true." And I thought to myself, "Well, at least I made it to twelve." Then I looked out, and the door opened up,

• 43:45Speaker 06

  and then finally this plume of smoke rolled out, and these hippies came out on wobbly feet and started slinking up to the front of the house. And as the cast of Woodstock approached, I felt vulnerable in my Charlie Brown sleeping t-shirt. And I waited for the physical and emotional attack to begin. There was a knock on the door, and I heard my mother's voice muffled. I knew she was dead, throats cut. I had read the papers. But then I heard her say,

• 44:29Speaker 06

  "Grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone." Why was my mother giving protein to a serial killer? And then there was a blast as my father came into my room, and he said, "Your cousin Chuck is here. Come down." And I timidly followed my father down the stairs to see in the living room what appeared to be Mama Cass Elliot, Jim Morrison, and assorted long hairs devouring Christmas cookies. My cousin stood shyly holding a Three Dog Night album at the stereo, and he told us he was going to play a song for us that no one had ever heard before. Side one, song A.

• 45:18Speaker 06

  Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him a drink of his wine. And on that cold, windy night, everyone stood up and started to dance. My father grabbed my mother and they started to dance. I looked over and Jim Morrison, V. Jim Morrison, was dancing the Jitterbug with my grandmother on the coffee table.

• 45:56Speaker 06

  It was so extraordinary, it was so magnificent. The hippies and the long hairs were all singing along to choruses of, "Joy to the world, all the boys and girls now." And then, the song was over and someone picked up the needle and put it back at the beginning. And the song continued and the dancing continued. And there's something emblematic about certain California Christmas memories. And here is one that is transcendent: rock and roll. And this is what made my monkey legendary.

• 46:42Speaker 06

  He came down,

• 46:46Speaker 06

  hurtling, down the stairs and went right up to the stereo and started dancing.

• 46:58Speaker 06

  Had we forgotten? Carol was a circus monkey.

• 47:04Speaker 06

  And this was her cue. "You know I love the ladies." His arms outstretched like rubber bands and he started picking off the ornaments from the Christmas tree. "Love to have my fun." The monkey started to juggle.

• 47:29Speaker 06

  I'm a hot night rider and a rainbow flyer. A straight-shooting son of a gun.

• 47:37Speaker 06

  I said, "A straight-sho-"

• 47:41Speaker 06

  I wish you were all there to have seen the expression on those stoned...

• 47:49Speaker 06

  On it, we found out later, LSD. Hippies, and my grandmother, as Carol, my monkey, rightfully claimed the spotlight.

• 48:02Speaker 06

  Glee is a very good word to use, because that's what it was. Pure happiness and glee, because I was 12 years old and I was alive. And I had escaped Manson's knife.

• 48:18Speaker 06

  And I had a monkey with talent.

• 48:24Speaker 06

  And as everybody danced, and as everybody laughed, and as everybody ate cookies, I looked at my family, I looked at these people, and

• 48:33Speaker 06

  all of their crimes, past, present, and future, seemed to just spill out and dissolve into the contours of the blue shag rug.

• 48:45Speaker 06

  And as Carol balanced an ashtray on his nose, it was as though I was looking into my future. Because I realized all the glorious things that could happen with music and with joy. And that Christmas, the last one that I was ever a child, I learned a very important lesson that I'd like to pass on to you all tonight. And that's that, no matter how horrible your day is, and no matter how scary your night is, everything can turn on a dime and with a knock on the door. Thank you.

• 49:38Speaker 07

  Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  That was Taylor Negron. Taylor has 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, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  So that's it. Happy holidays from all of us here at The Moth Radio Hour.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Catherine Burns, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show along with Maggie Sino and Jennifer Hickson. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janice Megbowls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Kluches, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza. Moth Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. One sad note: Our friend and storyteller in this hour, Taylor Negron, passed away since this show was first broadcast.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Manheim Steamroller, Mark O'Connor, Taj Mahal, The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, The Karl Orff Ensemble, and Three Dog Night. 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.