I had arrived at the event late, delayed by a fishtank, and the third storyteller had just finished up her turn on the stage. The venue was that old church in the South End that was now a community center. Friends have held events there in the past, and it's always a little interesting to see the way the place can wear different crowds. I had arrived at the event without a story in mind. The theme, "Deception", didn't trigger anything for me, and, frankly, I'd been on the local Moth stage twice already and I didn't want to be known as some sort of limelight hog.
Still, there were other storytellers who ascended that stage who I recognized from past events: the short bespectacled redhead rocking the hipster librarian look who recited at the "Outgrown" Moth; the easygoing, baseball capped fratboy who had his "aw, shucks, I'm just an average Joe" thing going was familiar from "Unintended". It shouldn't be surprising to see that there was a scene for this. Then, at intermission, the host said, "we're still a little short on storytellers, so if you've got one to tell, please don't by shy. We'll be happy to talk you through it."
It's funny what happens to my head when it goes from being a passive audience to "ooh, these guys have a problem. Maybe I can help with the solution."
At intermission, the hipster librarian made the "game knows game" eye contact with me, and she asked, "did you throw your name in the bag tonight?" and I kind of shrugged and said "maybe". The back of my mind was running through different memories of being misled or making a misinterpretation. Then it settled on one seed ... a nugget of a factoid that I've used in conversation with friends in the past but one that never made it into a full story.
"When I was young, and living in the Philippines, I really believed that Tony The Tiger was real because I saw him on TV. I also believed that he really did share breakfast with young children. However, because all of the children that he ate with were white, I also believed that he only ate breakfast with American children. And this made sense to me because, when I was young, I did believe that America was a magical and exceptional place."
The advice that I picked up over doing this that I've felt to be most valuable: "don't memorize every word of your story. Don't obsess on specific sentences of phrases. Focus on the main points, and on the twists or themes that you want to say. Let your voice fill in the rest."
"Hi, my name is Cris, and I should let you know that I was born in the city of Manila, in the Philippines. I was born to a father who had grown up and fell in love with San Francisco, but had returned to Manila to raise a family. Still, because of my father, our family was particularly prone to an adage among my countrymen that: 'every Filipino wants to grow up to be American'.
"We received syndicated American TV in Manila, so I not only watched the Silver Spoons and CHiPs and Dynasty and Star Trek, but I would also sometimes watch American commercials. And I remember, when I was 3, that I really believed that Tony the Tiger was real because I saw him on TV. I also believed that he really did share breakfast with young children. However, because all of the children that he ate with were white, I also believed that he only ate breakfast with American children. And this made sense to me because when I was young, I did believe that America was a magical, exceptional and privileged place.
"This was made even more vivid in my mind when we actually visited America for the first time, and I remember flying into San Francisco and I saw my first vending machine, and I was all, 'oh my god, I could buy candy without having to talk to anyone or having them judge me for my choices' or after I discovered my first apple ... which, you have to realize, right? In the tropics, all fruit requires work. You need to peel something or cut into something or smash it with a hammer. This idea of a fruit that you could just pick up and eat? Magical.
"When I was around 10, we did eventually move to America, though the circumstances around that are another story and another time. Suffice to say though, while I was initially excited and giddy for this prospect, I also came to realize that the promise of America -- of this immigrant land that welcomed anyone who had drive and ambition did not match up to the reality. My father was a married entrepreneur and bizarrely this landed him in a weird gap that made it hard for him to gain residency. We gave it three years before eventually moving to Canada, where the residency requirements were more open.
"But still, we did not give up on this dream, and I chose to come back to the US for university. Now, over the past twenty years, I have been shuffled through a series of foreign visas. Student, Canadian Free Trade, Student, H1 Employment. Now, I am in the arduous gauntlet of applying for a Green Card through my job. Through it all, I have lost my original wide eyed wonder of this country. I have seen the distance between the promise of Ellis Island with it's beckoning to the poor, tired and hungry and the reality of today which is more about the oppressed, the cheap and the single. For a while, maybe I was a wee bit cynical.
"But now, you know, I get it. I get why you guys want to keep the door open, but some of you are scared about who will come in. I get that while you like to believe yourselves to be welcoming, you also don't owe me anything. Like that point when I grew up and realized that Tony the Tiger was not real, and American kids were not special, rather than holding you up on a pedestal, I realized that regardless of where we are born, we all struggle with the gap between our aspirations and our opportunities. Between our dreams of what can be and the circumstances of the present. No country owes us salvation. We save ourselves and earn the lives that we have.
"I wish ... I wish I could've told this story two months from now. For I am in a point in my Green Card where I expect to hear a judgement from Immigration, and if they say yes, I can stay and get on with my life. And if they say no, I will have to take twenty years of dreams, friendship and community, and pack it up and move on. Either of those will be an ending, and I am sorry that I don't have one to offer you tonight.
"Still, regardless of what happens: I will say thank you. I thank you for the opportunity to live here. I thank you for forging a country where, while the laws are wary of me and my kind, the people are welcoming. I thank you for a country that strives to be egalitarian and kind and open, even if it wrestles with instincts that tend to the petty, selfish and tribal. I thank you for a country that inspires a three year old to believe in the magic of talking tigers. And I thank you for listening to me tonight."
In retrospect -- as a guest in their house, I let that audience of white, genteel NPR listeners off goddamn easy and had given them all an excuse to maintain their complacency. But, hey,
the audience doesn't like downer endings. All the same, it is a borderline rant, which they sort of discourage at the Moth, and the story sort of loses its focus around the disillusionment part. Judging at the Moth is done by averaging the scores assigned by three different judging teams and I was given a 9.1, 8.8 and 7.0. The 7.0 got a round of boo's, which I found comforting, but I wasn't surprised by it. I'm only proud of that story as something that I pulled out of my ass in ten minutes. They do say that sometimes you can't tell a story because you don't have enough distance from it yet, and I think that one probably qualifies.