The Moth Podcast: Grocery Trips and Italian Trysts

Truth or dare?

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Every one of those evenings will explore the singular theme of daring, but the stories and their tellers will never be the same.

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I'm Michelle Jalaski.

Jalaski.

This is the moth.

Right now we're in Boston, a city where over 1,675 people have gone on stage and told a moth story.

Here's one of those tellers, Julie Baker.

When I hear the doorbell ring, I think, seriously?

But it's Jill, and even death wouldn't be a good excuse for blowing off Jill.

So I put on my coat with a hood.

I grab my rolling old lady carriage.

I grab the blind cane, and I head downstairs.

There she is, my blind coach.

I didn't seek out a blind coach.

I didn't know that blindness was a sport that required a coach.

But when my neuro-ophthalmologist told me that my MS-related optic nerve damage had crossed over into legal blindness,

I was like, okay,

whatever.

I see just as well as I saw yesterday.

And she said, she referred me to the Mass Commission for the Blind.

I asked her if she was allowed to do that without my consent, and she thought I was joking.

I wasn't joking.

I tell Jill on the phone that I really don't want to waste her time.

I'm sure she's a really busy person and I'm not actually blind blind

because I can still do stuff on my own.

She just listens, she says, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

And she makes an appointment to come to my house.

She's carrying a blind blind cane.

She had asked me on the phone what my height was, and I saw the cane, and I said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm not doing that.

I'm not that kind of blind.

I get around just fine.

She said, okay, okay, so do you ever fall?

I said, no, no, no, no.

Well, not out on the street.

I fell down the stairs, but it's because it's a new house to me and I have no depth perception.

But now, my son and I went to Dollar Tree and we got duct tape that's bright orange and purple sparkly

and royal blue.

We put it on each step so I don't fall down the stairs anymore.

She said, Yeah, is your son gonna follow you around with duct tape?

I thought that was a little rude.

She asked me if I ever got lost, and I said, no, I put in headphones and the Google directions told me to go up here and turn right and go up there and turn left.

And I was fine.

She said, how about in the dark?

I said, well, I just get rides in the dark.

I don't really like to walk around in the dark, especially the new neighborhood.

She said, okay, well, I'm going to give you the phone number of somebody who's also a reluctant cane user.

And you call her and you hear her story.

Whatever, I'll call her so I can tell her I talked to this woman and we're very, very different.

I call her and she's funny.

She tells me some funny stories about Jill, which I appreciate.

She also thinks Jill doesn't have much of a sense of humor.

She tells me everything changed when she named her blind cane.

And she named him Stanley.

And she introduced him to children in her classroom.

She was a teacher.

And she traveled the world with Stanley.

And Stanley helped her explore and be independent.

She said, maybe you need to name your blind cane.

I said,

yeah, I don't think so, because if I were to name the blind cane at this point, his name would be fucking Dickhead.

And then I fell in the street.

I wasn't using fucking dickhead.

It was a new sidewalk to me.

I didn't know the sidewalks by heart the way I did in my old neighborhood, so I didn't see where the roots kind of made it buckle.

And I tripped and I fell and it was hard.

And I ripped my pants and my knee was bleeding.

And I was laying there on the sidewalk.

I was embarrassed.

It hurt.

And I was pissed because Jill was right.

And I wasn't safe without the blind cane.

So I sent her a text.

I said, fine, fine.

I'll do the blind cane training.

And we did.

And we took the train

and we walked upstairs and I still

was not happy.

I didn't like that I needed the goddamn blind cane.

And I was going to do whatever I could do to avoid certain blind cane situations.

I told her that people would think I was faking because when I'm on the train with the blind cane and I'm looking at my phone, they know I can really see.

And I'm probably just trying to ride for free.

She said, yeah, do you think blindness is all black and white?

Because it's a spectrum.

When she suggested we go to the grocery store, I said, no, no, no, no.

There's this thing called Instacart.

And I don't have to do that.

And if I want to run in for oat milk, I know exactly where it is.

She said, okay, what happens if you need something?

Instacart doesn't have it and you don't know how to find it.

So I meet her.

We go to Shaw's.

It's raining.

I said to her, How do blind people deal in the rain?

I have the old lady carriage.

I have the blind cane, and it's raining.

How am I supposed to do that?

Do blind people not get to use umbrellas?

She said, Well, you have a hood, right?

We walk to the store, and I'm angry, and it's raining, but I did it.

And I asked for things that I couldn't find.

And when I left the store, the sun came out,

and I said to Jill, I'm okay on my own from here.

And I snapped my cane open like a Jedi lightsaber,

and I went home with everything

on my list.

That was Julie Baker.

Julie is a writer, storyteller, and mom of two adult children who almost always text back.

She's getting ready to walk the Camino de Santiago Portuguese coastal route, 175 miles from Porto to Spain with a blind cane named Stella and her partner Paul.

Julie, that's amazing and we can't wait to hear how it goes.

And if you'd like to see a photo of Julie and her cane named Stella at the Acropolis in Athens, check out our website themoth.org/slash extras.

On this episode, we have two stories.

You just heard the first about learning to accept help.

And this next one's all about a steamy Italian tryst.

But you'll have to wait a few seconds for it.

We'll be right back.

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Welcome back.

Up next, we'll find some unlikely lessons in the most unlikely place of all, a dating app.

Haina Bowens told this at a New York Story Slam where the theme was deal breakers.

Here's Haina live at the mall.

Thanks.

So I turned 30 at the beginning of this year.

Thank you.

And I learned that the quickest way out of an identity crisis is

sexting an Italian that you met on a hookup app.

So I was living in Chicago.

He was in Rome.

We'll call him Luca.

And

very quickly, my daily flirting, virtual flirting conversations with Luca became like the best part of my day.

We were exchanging dirty texts, photos,

voice notes, you name it.

And I had never done anything like this before, but I loved it because when I was talking to Luca, I was not,

I wasn't this like sad, depressed, anxious,

overthinker who was struggling to function I was confident I was sexy

I knew exactly what I wanted and I was someone worth wanting and

I tried to keep it I tried to take things slow so I waited eight weeks before I got on a plane to Italy

to meet Luca.

And I spent the the entire plane ride.

I should have been learning Italian words for like catfishing.

Help me.

No, I was smiling the whole way, really proud of myself because I was turning my pathetic life into a real-life movie.

And whether that movie was going to be the next great love story or a Netflix documentary about my murder,

that was for fate to decide.

And for anyone wondering, I did, I bought my own flight, I paid my way, it put me into debt, but

when you have nothing left to lose, like a looming credit card bill is really nothing.

It's a small price for the chance at love.

So

I met Luca outside the airport in Rome.

We got into his car to drive to Tuscany, and I was absolutely sick with nerves.

But he was sweet.

He was cute.

He looked just like his photos.

He even had a piece of pizza for me in the car to eat on the way.

And my entire body just relaxed in that moment because you don't bother with road pizza if you're plotting murder.

So

we pull up to Tuscany to our rustic villa.

It's sunset.

And if this is all starting to sound like too good to be true, yeah, I thought so too.

And I just was like, you know what?

That's my inner self-saboteur.

And I am not going to let that toxic prude ruin this for me.

So, like, put that to the side.

But as the night went on, the more wine I was drinking, that voice just got a little bit louder.

And I just kept thinking, you are a phony.

You're just over here performing for the stranger.

He is going to see right through you.

And I felt suddenly really stupid for being there, like

kidding myself that I was deserving or capable of this kind of like happiness.

So, you know, sexy thoughts, all sexy, sexy foreplay.

And

at one point we sit down by the fire, we're like on the carpet in front of the fire,

and that's when I look at Luca and I'm, I can tell something is weighing on him too.

So I pour another glass of,

I still can't pronounce it, Monte Puciano, whatever, wine.

And he opens up that he had lost all of his savings in like an investment that went bad earlier that year.

And he was starting to save up again, but he had moved in with his mom in Rome.

And I could tell just the shame on his face when he was telling me this was all too familiar.

And I shared with him that I had lost my day job earlier that year.

The side writing project I'd been working on for two years was recently

put on hold.

indefinitely and I had also moved in with my parents.

So there we were, two adults who had taken big risks and it landed us broke sending nudes from childhood bedrooms.

And

depending on your perspective,

it could seem very pathetic, but in that moment it seemed like incredibly romantic.

And

I'm going to save the dirty details of the rest of the weekend for like the feature script.

But

it was great.

It was a lot of fun.

And I left, I went back home,

and we drifted apart.

And it sort of turned out that like distance and work

turned out to be deal breakers.

But

I think being on that

silly app that was just meant for like fun with no strings attached,

we discovered people that we liked, each other, but also we could be people that we liked.

Confident, playful,

fun,

with a little bit of passion still left.

And

he's still a good friend.

I had a really good way to end this.

I just totally blanked on it.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, thank you.

That was Hana Bowens.

Hana's risk-taking continued with international pet sitting until she found her own cat Moses and settled in Chicago.

Her next project is a podcast about sex in the movies.

She still believes it's more important that the risk pays off rather than the credit card bill.

That's it for this episode.

If you're enjoying the podcast, why not tell a friend about it?

So many of our listeners are here because their families and loved ones told them about the moth, and we'd love if you could share our stories with the people you care about.

From all of us here at the Moth, have a story-worthy week.

Michelle Jolowski is a director at the Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world.

This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Janes, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Solinger.

The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluche, Suzanne Rust, Leanne Gully, and Patricia Uregna.

The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey.

Special thanks thanks to their executive producer, Leah Rhys-Dennis.

All moth stories are true, as remembered, by their storytellers.

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.