The Moth Presents All These Wonders

by Catherine Burns

  Et cetera.

  So when suddenly I was the one with the guy and a fellow member of my sisterhood was in pain, in part because of me, I made a promise, not dissimilar from the Girl Scout promise:

  On my honor I will try to serve the sisterhood of single women by being kind and understanding to this one woman who just went through a breakup.

  And of course, keeping this promise should have been effortless. But the thing was, okay, it was not effortless. And the reason why, at least in part, was because I was not prepared—and that was on me—but I was not prepared for the amount of…let us say involvement that Kelly seemed to want in Mike’s current life. I’m talking in addition to any and all kinds of dog-related things, right?

  So there’s a lot of calling. There’s a lot of texting. There is a lot of activity on the old Facebook page. A lot of “We really need to catch up over coffee. We really need to catch up over dinner.”

  And the best part of me understood that all that stuff, every single inch of it, was about a woman who was in pain, right? She’s going through a breakup. These things take time, and she’d had no time.

  But the worst part of me…which is, basically, me…just desperately wanted for her to go away. And that made me feel bad about myself. So I did what we do with feelings that make us feel bad about ourselves: I just shoved them all the way down and pretended they weren’t there.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  So that was my mode of operation for a long time. That was how I led my life for about a year.

  Then, around the one-year mark, something seemingly insignificant but actually quite significant happened. And that is that Mike had a mole removed—stay with me—from his upper, upper, upper inner thigh.

  He had done this because I’d asked him to. Because he comes from a long line of people who are like, If you don’t go to the doctor, then the problem isn’t there! Whereas I come from a long line of people who are like, If you don’t go to the doctor, you’re gonna DIE! And I’d had my eye on this mole, okay? It was dangerously textural. So I was like, IT NEEDS TO GO.

  So eventually Mike does as I’ve requested and gets said mole removed, and I was truly grateful and relieved. The day following the mole removal, he posts this very tiny, intentionally funny thing about it on Facebook.

  And Kelly, as is her way, leaves a comment. Which read as follows:

  “What? No! You are at least one percent less yourself without that mole. I shall mourn its passing.”

  And I read that particular comment, and I thought about it for a second. And I don’t know what the technical medical term is for what happened next, but speaking as a layperson, I can tell you:

  I went apeshit.

  It was as though every little Uh, are you kidding me? that I’d been suppressing for a year exploded into the big, great ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! of my life.

  I lost my mind. I screamed, I pounded my fists against the wall. I was saying things out loud to myself, like, “You know what, Kelly? Just go ahead and write ‘Mike and I are so close I know what he LOOKS LIKE NAKED’ on Facebook. Seriously! Just do it. Because it would at least be more honest and direct if you did.”

  I was angry for a multitude of reasons:

  1. I’d been repressing my natural feelings for a year, and that’s gonna do it to you.

  2. Kelly wasn’t going anywhere. Because of Wilma. Kelly was around, and she was gonna stay around, and I felt powerless as a result.

  3. I’d been reminded, as I so often was, of the length and intimacy of Mike and Kelly’s relationship. It was like, Oh, right, yes, of COURSE she knows that mole, because THEY SHARED A BED TOGETHER FOR TEN YEARS! It was such an overwhelming length of time.

  And 4. Because that mole was some precancerous shit.

  It was the mole, but it was everything.

  And so because if you cannot run away from the wave, you must then dive into the wave, I did the only thing I knew how to do.

  I went back onto Facebook.

  I went back to Kelly’s comment, and clicked on Kelly’s profile.

  I clicked on the message button on Kelly’s profile.

  And then I wrote the following: “Kelly, in light of our particular relationship, let me get straight to the point. I was thinking maybe we should meet up for a drink. I think it might be helpful for the both of us. But let me know what you think. All best, Sara.”

  And Kelly wrote back: “Sara, I read your message and had two prevailing thoughts. The first was, thank you. The second was, fuck off. But the thing is, the part of me that thinks thank you is the part I like the best. So yeah, let’s go for a drink.”

  Three nights later Kelly and I met up for a drink.

  Personally, I prepared for what I now call the “X Games of Emotions” with a manicure and full facial threading, because I had to, like, beautify. Do you know what I mean? Because I was so nervous about the whole thing from the get-go, and what made it worse was that the subway broke down on the way there, and so I had to literally run the last fifteen minutes. And I don’t know when last you combined a bit of sweating with a full facial threading, but it stings, okay? So I just remember walking into this bar and being like, My face is on fire! My face is on fire!! Then Kelly walked in, and she looked perfect, and that made me more nervous.

  So then, as my conversational entrée, I said, “Hi, you look like all the photos of you that I’ve stalked on Facebook.” But she didn’t laugh. Not that she should have, but it was initially just a total mess.

  But then eventually I stopped sweating. And we both had a drink. And then we both had a couple more drinks. And then it was less of a mess. Because the thing was, we had both showed up to the X Games of Emotion, and that helped build this base level of respect that allowed us to talk honestly. Kelly talked about how so many of her actions towards Mike just felt to her like this fight for a friendship with Mike.

  I talked about how I’d made the promise of the sisterhood of single girls to her, but that I found it hard to keep. And we talked together about what it was that we both represented to the other person—which, of course, is that you can build a life with someone…and that person can make a choice to leave.

  So that all took about an hour, but we wound up out together for another five.

  And here’s how. It was sort of like once all that baggage was off me and on the table, I realized that I actually liked her. I thought she was much more self-aware in person than she seemed online. She was funny, she was warm, and I really appreciated that she was open to talking all this stuff out in the attempt at defusing it.

  Because believe me, we defused it. We talked, we got drunk, we laughed, and we defused it. And by the time I got home, it was 3:00 a.m., and Mike was like, “Oh, my God! I was worried she killed you.”

  And I was like, “Who? My girl Kelly? No waaay, man, No WAY! We defused that shit. We defused it, and I liked her, and she liked me, and I understand why you were with her, and it’s possible that I’m drunk, and I just feel so good.”

  I’d’ve loved if this story could end with me being like, “And from that day forward, we became the best of friends!” But unfortunately that feeling of “My girl Kelly!” was not sustainable, because even if you like a person in person, if you’re mostly not in person. And if they tend to text your husband a bit more often than you’d like, you can still get…annoyed.

  Several months ago I took Wilma the dog for a walk, and on the way we met this other miniature schnauzer, and I got to talking with the owner, like you do.

  She said, “Oh! Your dog’s so cute!”

  And I was like, “Oh! Thank you! Your dog’s so cute!”

  And she said, “How old is she?”

  And I said, “Oh, she’s five. How old is he?”

  And she’s like, “Oh! Well, this little sweetheart is eighteen….Ma’am…ma’am…are you okay?”

  And I am. I’m great.

  I’ve still got thirteen years to work out all my problems.

 
SARA BARRON is the author of The Harm in Asking and People Are Unappealing. Her work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, on Showtime’s This American Life, and at the HBO Comedy Festival. You can find her on Twitter @sarabarron and at sarabarron.com.

  This story was told on March 19, 2014, at The Players in New York City. The theme of the evening was This Mortal Coil: Stories of Flesh and Bone. Director: Jenifer Hixson.

  When I was little, I made a mess of my room, like any other child. The difference between me and other kids was, the person overseeing my cleanup was my stepfather, Rick. Rick was an attorney and in the military. He was very stoic, removed, emotionless.

  I used to joke and say that he was kind of like C-3PO, but with less emotion. And then it dawned on me recently that that joke actually doesn’t make any sense, because C-3PO is very emotional.

  He’s like, “R2, where are you?!” You know? My stepfather was never in a panic looking for me the way C-3PO was looking for R2.

  So cleaning up my room—I was given an allotted time, and then Rick would come in, and whatever was out of place, he would put in a large trash bag. And then he’d lock it in the trunk of the car. Then I had to do chores to earn money to buy my toys back.

  I know, it sounds harsh—because it is.

  But to be fair, they were priced fairly. I could buy an entire Millennium Falcon, windup Evel Knievel, and stuffed monkey for like a nickel each. Totally reasonable.

  But Rick, he was hard-core.

  Meanwhile, my mother was very emotional and passionate and affectionate. She was wild and funny. She was originally from southern Mississippi and was raised in a very conservative house.

  She was always wanting to make sure that I knew that the most important thing in life was to be happy. And she just supported anything I did. Anything I did was so cool, and I always looked adorable, and everything was just great, you know?

  Even down to my dropping out of high school. My mother would brag to people.

  She was like, “Yeah, Tig dropped out, you know? She’s doing her own thing.”

  My own thing? I had nothing going on. I was working at a pizza parlor or selling po’ boys. That was me “doing my own thing.”

  But then I found stand-up comedy, and I immediately had focus in my life. I was so passionate and excited about it.

  And my mother, she didn’t care if I was in some dingy club in Middle America or on TV, she just thought I was cool. As long as I was happy, she was happy.

  Rick told me that my career was a waste of my time and a waste of my intelligence, and he thought that I should be a doctor or a lawyer. He suggested that I quit comedy and go to business school. Even just a couple of years ago, when my career was going fine, and I was making good money.

  I said, “So you’re telling me if I quit comedy and go to business school, something I’m not at all interested in, and end up working in a cubicle in an office somewhere, with the life sucked out of me, you would support that?”

  He said, “Absolutely.”

  It was like, wow, okay.

  Although my mother was very supportive of me, we certainly had our differences and problems. I remember one time a decade ago being on the phone fighting, and when the argument wasn’t going anywhere, when I was midsentence, she just abruptly handed the phone to Rick.

  He said, “Tig, your mother doesn’t want to talk to you,” and he just hung up on me.

  I kept calling back, no answer. It was so frustrating and stifling.

  This March my phone rang, and the word PARENTS popped up on my caller ID. I was like, Oh, this is probably my mother calling to wish me a happy birthday. Because a couple of days before was my birthday, and I had missed her call.

  But when I answered the phone, it was Rick. And Rick has only called me like two times in my entire life.

  One was to tell me…I have no idea what that was about.

  But the second time was this time, and he was calling to tell me that my mother had fallen and hit her head and was not going to make it.

  I immediately pictured her lying in a hospital, just barely hanging on, saying, “Call Tig. Tell her to come to Texas to say good-bye.”

  I said, “Can I talk to my mother? Put her on the phone.”

  And he said, “No. You can’t ever talk to her again.”

  My mother had suffered massive brain hemorrhaging, with zero chance of recovery. It was really so intense to process that—that I would never be able to talk to her again.

  I’ve reflected a lot recently about that phone call over a decade ago when we were arguing, and I’ve thought about how I know my mother would give anything in the world to be able to come back to talk to me.

  I always think that if somebody could be like, “Okay, you can come back, but you have to come back to that phone call where you’re fighting with Tig,” there would be zero fighting. It would be only I love you’s and I’m sorry’s from both of us.

  After my mother’s funeral, we left Mississippi, our hometown where she was buried, and we were driving back to Texas. My brother and my uncle were in one car, and Rick and I were in the other.

  He said, “Tig, I want to talk to you about something.”

  And I was like, Oh, great. What could this be? I’m not in the mood.

  He said, “I wanted to talk to you about that time that you said that I hurt your feelings. The time when I told you you should go to business school.”

  I said, “Oh, yeah. That hurt my feelings, but what really hurt my feelings was telling me my career was a waste of my time and a waste of my intelligence. That was hurtful.”

  And he started to cry. The robot started to cry.

  He said, “I was wrong, and I wanted to apologize for that. I never understood you as a child. I didn’t get you at all, and I tried to project onto you my life and my route, and I expected you to take that exact same route. And I’m realizing that it’s not the child’s responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It’s the parent’s responsibility to learn who the child is, and I didn’t do that, and I’m sorry.”

  And I’m crying, too. I said, “So are you saying that if I said I was going to quit comedy and go to business school, you wouldn’t support that anymore?”

  He said, “Absolutely not. Comedy is the only thing in the world that you should be doing.”

  And I was like, Oh, my gosh. I didn’t even realize that I needed that so desperately, to hear that. And the only thing that really bums me out is that my mother wasn’t there to hear him tell me that.

  This Thanksgiving I went to Texas, and we actually spent it with Rick’s side of the family. I needed to get away and just be by myself, and I decided to drive to my mother and Rick’s house. When I pulled up into the driveway, I had a full-on breakdown, just sobbing in the driveway, because I was like, Oh, my gosh, my mother is not in that house.

  And of course I knew that, but it just really hit me in the driveway. Then I walked inside, and the house still smelled like her. And everything was just so quiet. I was looking around, and still photos that were framed just seemed so still—moments in time caught and gone forever. All the photos were still placed where my mother had placed them over the years.

  I started opening drawers, because I wanted to just see something of my mother’s. She would write little notes to herself, like, “Dentist 2:00 p.m. tomorrow.” And she was an artist, and she would sketch me perfectly on a napkin when I was just sitting around, and so I was looking for those kinds of things in the drawers, and there wasn’t anything in there.

  I went to open a closet, and there’s nothing there. I found nothing in any drawers or closets, and I started going around the house, just running around, trying to find something. Then I was in this panic and crying even harder.

  Rick had gutted the house like he had when I was a child with a trash bag.

  Everything was gone, and I was like, That is it. I am done with this person. I couldn’t believe I had fallen for that conversation, and I was so ready to write him off immed
iately. I was done.

  I called him on my cell phone, and he said, “Hello, Tig, how are you doing?”

  I said, “Not good. Not good. All of my mother’s things are gone, and so are my childhood things.”

  He said, “Hold on a minute. Go into my bedroom. Go into my closet,” and he started directing me.

  I was like, “Yeah?”

  He said, “Look at the top shelf.”

  And up there he had placed my mother’s things, and my childhood things. I opened the box. She was a dancer, too, and there were her ballet slippers and photos.

  I was like, “You’re lucky.”

  And although before March, when the word PARENTS popped up on my caller ID, it represented my mother and Rick. Now when the word PARENTS pops up on my caller ID, it’s only Rick.

  We have very different cleanup techniques, but I’m learning to get used to that.

  TIG NOTARO is currently writing, producing, and starring in the semiautobiographical comedy series One Mississippi for Amazon Studios, where she can also be seen in her recurring role as “Barb” on the Jill Soloway series Transparent. Her eagerly anticipated memoir, I’m Just a Person, was published in June 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers, and a national book tour followed. Both Tig’s HBO stand-up special Boyish Girl Interrupted and the Netflix Original Documentary simply titled Tig premiered to critical acclaim and are available for streaming. In 2013 Tig was nominated for a Grammy Award for her sophomore release, LIVE, which sold over a hundred thousand units in six short weeks. LIVE is a stand-up set delivered just days after Tig was diagnosed with invasive bilateral breast cancer. She has since announced her cancer to be in remission and remains a favorite on Conan and This American Life, and she enjoys bird-watching with her wife at their home in Los Angeles. More at tignotaro.com.

  This story was told on December 5, 2012, at the Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles. The theme of the evening was Carpe Diem: Stories of Our Most Vital Moments. Director: Sarah Austin Jenness.