This week on The Moth Radio Hour: stories of beef! Petty grievances to full blown rivalries. At work, over the phone, and, of course, online. This episode is hosted by Moth Director Chloe Salmon. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Lori Tucker-Sullivan begins getting a series of strange phone calls. 18 year old Morgan Balavage is betrayed by a friend/coworker. Matthew Trenda gets into a war of words with an internet stranger. Diego Aguirre finds it difficult to be both angry at the world and a dog owner. Podcast # 903 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Chloe Salmon. Nothing captures the heart and the mind quite like a good beef. I'm not talking the deli counter variety. I'm talking grievances, rivalries, grudges. Now, do I generally advocate for negativity and chaos? No. But I'll admit it. Something about the technicolor drama of a good feud has me reaching for my popcorn every time.
And I know it's not just me. Tales of bad blood and petty squabbles have entertained us all for centuries. So in this episode, stories of bringing and slinging beef and the highs and lows we can find in the fight. Our first story comes to us from Lori Tucker Sullivan. She told it at a story slam in Detroit where we partnered with public radio station WDET. Here's Lori live at the Moth.
Okay, so in the summer of 2010, my husband Kevin was in the hospital dying of cancer, a stage four diagnosis. He had tumors that were in his lungs and in his spine, and the ones in his lungs we had treated successfully, but the ones in his spine didn't respond to treatment, and so he'd had surgery. And the first surgery went pretty well, but the second surgery did not.
And it rendered him a quadriplegic. So he was in the hospital for about 50 days. And during that time, we also had two kids. Our daughter was in middle school and our son had just graduated from high school and was getting ready to leave for college. I was still working and we had a house and all of this other stuff, life that was going on.
So my day would consist of getting up around 9 or 10 in the morning and getting the kids ready and figuring out who was going to care for them and who was going to feed them and how they were going to make it through the day. Then I would go off to the hospital and I would stay with him until about 9.30 at night.
Then I would come home and try to get some sleep and then start the routine all over again the next day.
So this is August, he's been in the hospital for about 35 days, and I'm getting ready in the morning to go see him, and the phone rang, and it was our landline, and there was a name on the caller ID that I didn't recognize, Diane someone, and I thought, well, I don't know her, but maybe it's somebody who's delivering dinner for us tonight, and so I'd better answer it.
And so I answered the phone, and Diane said to me, I knew it, I knew you were there, you're fooling around with him, and now you're caught. And I'm coming for you. You're not going to get away with this. And I said, excuse me? Who are you calling for? I'm not sure who you're calling for, but I think you have the wrong number. She said, don't tell me I have the wrong number.
I know exactly what number I dialed. You know what you're doing. You're fooling around over there, and I'm coming for you. It's up. You've been caught, and that's it. And I said, excuse me, lady, but really, my husband is in the hospital. I'm going to visit him now. The last thing on my mind is fooling around with your husband. I have other things to do. I really have to go.
And she kept on and kept on just ranting at me that I was having an affair with her husband and she had caught me and she was coming for me. So I told her, finally, I'm hanging up the phone, and if you call me again, I'm going to call the police. So I hung up, and before I could get out the door, she called back. And she kept ranting again. I picked up the phone, and she was ranting some more.
And so I told her again, Diane, if you call me again, I am calling the police. I don't know who you are, but you have the wrong person. And before I could leave again, she called again, and I let it go to voicemail, and she filled my three minutes of voicemail with ranting about me carrying on with her husband.
So I went to the hospital, did my whole thing in the evening, came home and slept, and then the next morning started the routine again, and as I'm getting ready to leave, I see on the caller ID, it's Diane again. And I thought I could reason with her this time. No, I couldn't. I couldn't. The same kind of going on and on and on.
So I called a friend at that point, and I said, I'm afraid to leave my children alone and be gone all day because this woman is threatening my life. She is saying that she's coming for me. And she sounds kind of crazy. I don't know what's going on. And so I took, planned to take my daughter to her friend's house and I was talking to her mom and telling her about it.
And she said, well, what's her name? And I said, it's right here on the caller ID. Her name is Diane something. And here's her number. And she said, oh, I know who that is. And she said, that's Francine's sister. You know Francine, her kids are in the orchestra and she runs the poinsettia sale every year. And I said, oh my God, I have to call her because I'm calling the police on her sister.
And she said, please call Francine first and tell her before you call the police. So I called Francine and I said, Francine, I have this very strange situation, but your sister is calling me every day and you know what our family's going through. And she's calling me and accusing me of having an affair with her husband. and she says she's coming for me.
And Francine said, please don't call the police. That's not my sister, it's my mother. And I said, oh, please explain this. So she said, a few weeks ago we had to put my mother in a facility because she had very quick onset dementia. And she is convinced that she is very well, but that my dad has put her there so that he can have an affair with a woman.
And I see from my caller ID that your phone number is the same as hers except for one digit. And we've been visiting her in the facility, and she's been telling us that she can prove now that my dad is really having an affair with a woman because she has talked to her on the phone. And the woman just keeps denying this, but she knows it's true. And so I said, no, it's me, and really I'm not.
And so... She said that they have tried many times to take the phone away but she gets upset and she demands to have the phone back and so the staff gives her her phone back and then half the time she was calling and getting her husband and ranting to him and then the other half of the time we figured out she was calling me.
So this went on for another several days that Diane would call me and rant to me and I would just let it go to voicemail and there were times I have to admit when I thought about picking up the phone because my day was really crappy And I would just say, yeah, Diane, we're going at it. It's hot over here. I'm sorry you're stuck in there. But I didn't. I didn't. I was always nice.
And I let it go to voicemail, and she vented. And then in September of 2010, my husband passed away. And one of the first people to come to visitation was Francine with her sister. and a big fruit plate and banana bread. And they felt so terrible about all of this happening.
And I told her, you know, what I figured out is that Diane and I actually had some things in common, because we really were both just wanted to spend time with the men we loved, and we were both just getting screwed over by the universe. And that was that. Thank you.
That was Lori Tucker Sullivan, a writer and educator living in Detroit. In 2024, her first book, I Can't Remember If I Cried, Rock Widows on Life, Love, and Legacy, was published. It contains 14 profiles of the widows of her favorite rock stars and what they taught her about grief. When I heard Lori's story, I was impressed that she didn't escalate her one-sided beef into a two-sided feud.
After all, she was going through a pretty tough time. She says that she felt the community had really rallied around her family during her husband's illness in a way she'll always be thankful for. Bringing meals, having the kids over for sleepovers, driving her husband to treatments. And Francine was a part of that community.
Lori knew she had a lot on her plate too, so she's still glad that she never picked up the phone to get into it with Francine's mom. To see a photo of Lori and her late husband Kevin as newlyweds, head over to themoth.org. A good feud can get your heart pumping.
That first flush of how dare they has the potential to turn into a grievance that burns so hot and grows so big that it eclipses everything else. That burning often dims with time, but it leaves an impression like, wow, I really felt that. Our next storyteller found her beef in the most tumultuous of times, young adulthood, and it burned all the brighter because of it.
Morgan Balavage told this story at a main stage in Seattle, where we partnered with Seattle Arts and Lectures. Here's Morgan.
It's 2002. I'm 18 years old, and I've just dropped out of college. My parents were horrified. But I wasn't sure why I wanted to be in college in the first place, so I decided to go off into the world and see what kind of lessons life had for me. We had some family friends in Seattle, so I moved up here. And I needed to find a job, so I asked my parents for advice.
And they said I should get a job at a bank, very practical for an 18-year-old to learn about money. So that's what I did. I walked into a bank branch in Wallingford and applied, got through the background check, and I was record shopping in the U District when I got the job. So I had my first job, I had to find my first apartment.
So the apartment I found with a couple of roommates, and my room was so small that when I laid down, my head and my feet would touch the opposite walls. It wasn't really a room, it was a closet. It was my first closet. So I had my first job, my first apartment, and soon I met my first boyfriends. And we met on a pre-Tinder website called Makeout Club.
And the day he moved to Seattle was the day that we met in real life and also the day we moved in together. My parents were horrified. My roommates didn't like it either. They kicked him out. He got a basement in Queen Anne and we would spend almost every night there with like a thousand spiders and a family of rats. It's not very glamorous.
But I was young and in love, and I was having a lot of fun exploring Seattle. We would hang out mostly with my boyfriend's friends that he knew from his hometown, and I was having a hard time making friends. I don't know if you've heard of this thing called the Seattle freeze. Yeah. If you haven't, Seattleites can be a little cliquish. It can be hard to break through that armor.
And so the boyfriends and I would go out, we would go to shows, we'd explore Seattle, and we'd spend a lot of time at this 24-hour diner called The Hurricane. Some of you know it. And it was at The Hurricane one night, amidst a sea of black emo haircuts, there was a beautiful red-headed mermaid named Blair. And Blair and I hit it off right off the bat. We were like soul sisters.
We became close friends, and then we were like a trio, the boyfriend and Blair and I. We would go out to shows, We would go to this 24-hour coffee shop called Bauhaus, and she needed a job, so I got her a job at my bank. And the bosses were cool with us working together, so they stationed us next to each other. So life without a college degree was great. I was having so much fun.
It was about a month after she started work that Blair asked to meet me at the hurricane by myself, which was strange. I asked the boyfriend if he knew what she wanted to talk to me about, and he had no idea. So when I showed up at the hurricane and walked in and sat down, she had a very serious look on her face. I knew something was terribly wrong.
I thought maybe her mother was sick or something. When I sat down, she said, Morgan, I have something to tell you, and it's hard for me to say. You slept with your boyfriend. And my blood ran cold, but at the same time, this fiery rage started to rise up in me. And I had this cup of coffee in front of me, and I considered, like, throwing it in her face. Like, was this what the moment called for?
But instead, I sat frozen as she slid a letter across the table to me. And as I considered my options, my only option was to run away. And so that's what I did. I grabbed the letter, and I ran out of the hurricane crying. When I got to my car, I opened the letter, and it said, I hope we can still be friends. Which, no. I drove to where my boyfriend worked. He was a cook at 13 Coins.
And I was so angry, but also so desperate for it to not be true that when I pulled into the parking lot and met him in the back of the restaurant, I begged him, tell me it isn't true. And initially he lied to me and he said he had no idea what I was talking about. But I knew that he was lying, and I flicked my cigarette at him. And he admitted that it was true. I was devastated.
I drove home crying to the apartment where I hadn't slept in months. I woke up crying, I drove to work crying, and I ran into another coworker who asked me what was wrong, and I told her, and she said, Morgan, you're just going to have to get through it. And the way I got through it was I stonewalled her. I just completely ignored her. And like, I have a natural resting bitch face.
And I was giving her the full-on, on-purpose bitch face. And we didn't have to interact that much, but at this point in my banking career, I had gotten a few promotions. I was the senior vault teller, which meant that I was responsible for all of the cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars in the back vault.
And if a bank teller was running low on cash in their drawer, they would have to give me some paperwork so that I could go get the cash to replenish their drawer. And so when Blair would give me her paperwork, I would just grab it from her and just like throw the cash at her. And it was so petty when I was 18 years old. This went on for months.
And because of my promotion, I sometimes had to put my next teller sign up and close my window so I could do some additional paperwork. And this was the case one day when there was a line of customers and I had my head down working on a project, and someone walked up to my window and just threw a piece of paper at me.
And I looked up to tell him he had to go to the back of the line, but I froze when I saw him. He looked strange. He had sunglasses on, like these knockoff Oakleys. He was wearing a hat, and he had a handkerchief over his face. But like way before it was normal to wear a mask inside. He had long sleeves on, and when I noticed that he had gloves on, I saw the gun, and I realized I was being robbed.
And I froze, and he saw me freeze, and he said, you know what to do. And I did know what to do. We had been trained extensively for bank robberies. They happen all the time. We'd been told, you don't negotiate with a bank robber. We'd been told to do whatever they say.
And we'd been told horror stories about bank robbers who had forced the employees and the customers to take off all their clothes and they'd locked them in the vault. So this is what is flashing through my head. I'm going to have to take off my clothes and stand naked next to Blair and my coworkers. When the guy says, you know what to do.
And instead I snapped into action and I opened the note and it said, put the cash in the bag. And he threw a bag at me, this like plastic thank you for shopping bag. And I put my cash in the bag and I handed it to him. And he handed it back to me and he said, it's not enough. Hers too. And he pointed to Blair. And I had a moment. I wanted to explain the situation to him. Sir. We have a situation.
This woman has slept with my boyfriend. This is going to be very awkward. You are compounding my trauma. I'll steal anyone else's cash. Just don't make me steal her cash. you can't negotiate with a bank robber. So I walked over to Blair's window. She was helping a customer, but no one knew what was going on.
I took the cash from her drawer, I put it in the bag, I handed it back to him, and then he asked me, did you put any dye packs in here? And I shook my head no, and he ran out the door. Now, dye packs are these little bombs, and they look like stacks of $20 bills, but inside, there's a little pack of dye that explodes and it renders the cash completely useless.
And it explodes when it leaves the bank premises after a few seconds. And I had put not just one, but two dye packs in there, one from my drawer and one from Blair's. And he was gonna find out real quick. So I ran to get my bank manager to tell him what was going on, and we rushed to lock the doors, and we called the authorities.
And while we were waiting for the FBI and the police to come, one of my coworkers said, hey, the last time this happened, we ordered a pizza. So we had a pizza party. At some point, the emotion caught up with me, and I found myself crying. And Blair came over and gave me a hug. And for that moment, I let myself have my friend back. I let myself be held.
And I felt this anger and this betrayal that I'd been holding on to so tightly. I felt it loosen just a little bit. And then I felt that rage rise up in me again. And before I knew what I was doing, I pushed her away from me. And I went to find someone else to comfort me, someone who hadn't slept with my boyfriends. We were robbed three times that year. And I learned a lot of lessons.
But the best lesson happens a few weeks later when the district manager came in and pulled me into a meeting, and he handed me a check. And he told me that the bank had a policy that if you had the courage to hand out a dye pack, they would give you a bonus. And because I had handed out two dye packs, I got two bonuses. And because I was 18 years old, I spent it on a tattoo.
So I learned a lot of lessons in Seattle. My favorite lesson is that when you work at a bank, it pays to get robbed. Thank you.
That was Morgan Balabaj. She's a yoga teacher who travels full-time with her rescue chihuahua. She's also a lifelong skier who is always looking for a house-sitting gig near a mountain. I figured that the high-stakes, high-danger situation might have shifted a thing or two for Morgan, and I was curious. Did she and Blair end up bonding over it and reconciling? Morgan's answer? Nope.
She worked at the bank for another year and endured even more robbery attempts and multiple banking scandals. I honestly had no idea that neighborhood banks are so stacked with drama. But through it all, she held strong and ignored Blair until she left for a new job. The betrayal cut that deep. And honestly, fair. Not all beefs can be squashed.
After the break, a man takes up arms in an online battle for the ages when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
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This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon. And in this episode, we're listening to stories of beef. Beef can come in many forms, including all-out feuds, righteous crusades, or my personal favorite, petty grievances. I'm a firm believer that this flavor of beef is central to the human species, a small and usually low-risk way to let a little steam out of the kettle.
The key is to let it out instead of letting it build up. A little steam is better than a boil over. Once it's boil over time, someone is going to get burned. Our next storyteller learned this the hard way during his stint as a keyboard warrior. Matthew Trenda told this at a Grand Slam at the Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon, where we partner with public radio station OPB.
Here's Matthew live at the MOF.
That afternoon in 2008, I found myself staring at my laptop screen, reading an email informing me that I had been banned permanently from the book website Shelfari, which was a competitor to Goodreads at the time. And if I'm honest, it was the right decision. I was an undergraduate in 2008, and in my British Lit class, one of the books we had to read was Pride and Prejudice. I hate that book.
I think if Jane Austen was a good writer, she'd be a Bronte sister. To make matters worse, you might recall that this was the era when our society was salivating over all sorts of Pride and Prejudice adaptations. There was a movie where the guy from Succession wooed Keira Knightley. There was a book where Elizabeth Bennet slays zombies for some reason. It was Pride and Prejudice everywhere.
You can imagine my suffering. Now before I continue a little about me, I am a rule follower. If there is a rule in place, I am going to follow it because my number one goal in life is to never be a burden on anyone else. All of my report cards said I was a pleasure to have in class. I never tasted alcohol until I turned 21, and when I'm out on public land, you better believe I'm leaving no trace.
So it was extremely out of character when I logged on to Shelfari and created a new post on the Pride and Prejudice discussion page without first reviewing the community guidelines. But my hatred compelled me. I said, I hate all these snobby characters, especially Elizabeth Bennet.
She is rude to her family, she does not support any of her friends, and she even admits she only liked Mr. Darcy after she saw his big house, which makes her a class traitor on top of everything else. No, none of the characters in this book deserve happiness, especially her. My post generated quite a few responses. most of them aggressive.
But there was one that I found particularly insulting, posted by a user called Mr. Litman. And he said, please ask your parents' permission before you post anything that stupid on this page again. Maybe when you develop critical thinking skills, you can rejoin the discussion. Now obviously I wasn't going to take that sitting down. So before I responded, I stood up.
I could feel the blood rush to my head, my heart rate was increasing, I could tell that I was becoming angry online. If you're unfamiliar, common symptoms of angry online include typing in all caps, refreshing a page every 30 seconds or so, and of course, staying up to the wee hours of the morning to argue about a topic that does not matter. Please ask your doctor if any of that sounds familiar.
So anyway, there I was in my power pose, and I accused Mr. Litman of being old and too comfortable in his echo chamber, and thank goodness I was here to provide a new, correct perspective on this 200-year-old disgrace of a book. Well, friends, I'm afraid that was merely the first skirmish in what would become an all-out war with Mr. Litman.
Territory was gained and conceded throughout the evening, and our battles even spread to the other pages. I saw that he'd made a post on the Wuthering Heights page that Emily Bronte was the weakest of the Bronte sisters. So I responded to that, saying, why am I not surprised you're all so wrong about this, you waste of skin?
He, in turn, found my positive review of The Great Gatsby, and he said, of course you like a book with a... Of course you like a book with a simplistic narrative where nothing happens. It's probably a fine mirror for your own life. Oh yeah, we were exchanging shots. And our war was being fought all over the site. I'm not going to go into detail on every post. But I think you all deserve to know.
Mockingbirds were killed. 1984 became an even worse year, and all was not quiet on the Western Front. The Shakespeare pages. Dear God. Despite the horrors of war, up to that point we had managed to avoid vulgarities. But back on the Pride and Prejudice page, that was about to change. I finally got Mr. Litman to crack. He posted, in all caps, Why don't you just shut up?
And then he invited me to perform a very intimate act in a rather crude way. But I was still standing and I said, at least someone might walk away from that experience satisfied, a feeling denied to anyone who has to read Pride and Prejudice. It was my sickest burn. After that, I closed my laptop and I finally went to bed, comfortable with the knowledge that I had won.
I figured I'd let him know that I would be willing to negotiate the terms of his surrender the next day. The next day, I received the email from Shelfari. It seems multiple people had reported me, and after review, it was determined that I had violated a number of the site's bylaws, and as such, my account was permanently banned.
All my data, hundreds of books, all my posts, all my reviews, gone forever. And that sucked. I was devastated. But I've had things deleted before. What really left me distraught, and what stuck with me all these years, is that loss to the world was the only documented evidence of me breaking the rules.
Matthew Trenda is the kind of guy whose possessions might just be made to last one more year. Like many English majors before him, he works in state government, and he takes a lot of pride in serving the people of Washington.
Matthew lives with his partner in Olympia, where he enjoys sharing his love for folk tales and old folk songs, playing an OK violin, and being very annoying about his favorite books. I asked him what he would say to his Shelfari nemesis now if he got the chance. Matthew's answer? I hope every time you wear a new pair of socks, you step in something wet.
Although he's not sure if Mr. Lipman was also banned for their public spat, he likes to think that his old foe is out there somewhere holding onto the grudge as well. Sounds like the beef is still on. Mr. Litman, you have 24 hours to respond. One thing about me, a favorite pastime of mine is hearing all about other people's grievances.
I love to come in hot with my opinion, which is usually that the person sharing with me was wronged. If you need someone to be outraged on your behalf, I'm your girl. In that spirit, and in honor of this episode, I sent out a call for tiny stories of the beefs in people's lives. And let me tell you, I got a lot of responses. The people need to let it out.
I picked a few of the spiciest entries to share with all of you. Are you ready to be outraged? Welcome to The Beef Corner. First up is Eric, who has a childhood grudge that has not budged.
I misspelled the word did in the first grade spelling bee. The thing is, I didn't actually misspell it. I stuttered at the beginning because I was nervous and was counted for using multiple Ds. I don't know where the teacher is who counted me out, but I hope she's miserable.
Wow, I too hope she's miserable. Bullying a child? Killing his love of spelling? Someone was drunk with power. Diabolical. This next one from Bethany is a best friend betrayal for the ages.
I was incredibly hurt when my best friend started going out with my very serious ex-boyfriend behind my back. And two years later, they got married. A week after she told me they'd started dating, she sent me flowers with a note that said, Bethany, thinking of you daily and praying for a peaceful path forward for us with a glaring lack of apology.
I know I'll never understand her actions because I would never treat a friend that way. But I've accepted that she's not going to apologize and we'll never be friends again. Thankfully, I am growing more indifferent as time goes on.
She snagged your ex and then sent you flowers? Moth listeners, we ride at dawn. Bethany, my friend, I am so very sorry and so very outraged on your behalf. Your emotional maturity is refreshing, but also, if you ever need to vent over a glass of wine, I will be available immediately. Okay, these beefs are getting hot.
Next up is Jonathan, who represents the unsung heroes of The Morning Commute, your local barista.
When I was a barista, I had a customer who would get an iced extra salted caramel latte every morning. And every morning, without fail, they would complain about how their latte tasted too much like coffee. So one morning, annoyed by their daily grievance, I decided to completely forego the addition of espresso. So it's just milk and extra salted caramel, no espresso whatsoever.
The customer took a sip of their latte, smiled, and looked at me and said, you finally made it the way I like it.
Jonathan, I love that you gave this woman what she was too afraid to ask for, a cup of literal sugar. Not only is the customer not always right, they can also be pretty annoying. Our final friend has a grievance so dangerous that they asked for complete anonymity. We take beefer safety very seriously here at the Beef Corner, so to protect the innocent, I will read it for them.
The walls are closing in. There is no escape. Send help. Okay, you see the need for anonymity. This could get a person in hot water. So clearly the thing to do here is to challenge them to an unspoken game of chicken. Just keep moving. Either they'll fold at some point or they'll end up living in your attic. High risk, high reward.
All right, folks, that is the last tiny beef I have for you today. If you'd like to hear and read more of the fabulous submissions I got, you can head over to the extras for this episode on themoth.org. This has been The Beef Corner. May your outrage never falter. In a moment, our final storyteller's grudge against the world is tested by man's best friend. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
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This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon. In this episode, we've been listening to stories of beef with nemeses of all kinds. Our final story comes to us from someone who picked the biggest beef of all, one with people and the world in general. Will he win? We shall see. Diego Aguirre told this in Big Sky, Montana, where we partnered with the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center.
Here's Diego, live at the Moth.
It's the summer of 2012. I'm about to turn 30, and I am more lost than ever. I have a huge chip on my shoulder for years now, courtesy of a violent childhood, my time in the Marine Corps, and a dangerously irresponsible resistance to therapy. I'm angry at the world. I have a short temper. I drink too much. I fight. I'm a nightmare to my on-again, off-again girlfriend.
I can't keep jobs or friends. The only friends I really have are wherever I happen to be working at the time, my co-workers. And even them, eventually, I push away. I have trouble getting along with people. I don't really like them. I don't play well with others. I've never been comfortable in a room with more than five people without any alcohol in me.
One afternoon, during this dark time in my life, I leave work after a lunch shift, and I walk by this Petco. And outside of it, an animal rescue had set up shop. All along the sidewalk, there were crates with dogs in them up for adoption. And I spot this one beautiful gray and white pit bull. He's got the sweetest face, kindest brown eyes.
He's got this gnarly, fresh scar on the side of his snout here, another fresh scar across his belly. I ask the lady who runs the rescue, this sweet little Puerto Rican lady from the Bronx. I go, who's this guy, what's his story? She goes, it's here is Papi. I found him up in the Bronx a couple of weeks ago. He had just got hit by a car. His insides were all out. I'm like, Jesus.
He's okay, he'll be fine. He's up for adoption. I'm like, oh, man, I wish, but impossible. I work in a restaurant. I'm never home. I wouldn't have time for him. I wouldn't be able to give him the life he deserves. She's like, oh, okay, I see. Hey, could you just do me a big favor? Could you just give him a quick walk around the block for me so he can go potty? I knew what she was up to.
But I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to hang out with a doggy, so I take him around the block. And sure enough, by the time we get back, that was it. I'd fallen head over heels with this guy, and there was no way I was going home without him. I adopted him right then and there. So I bring him home. I sit him down. And I go, all right, first order of business, we gotta change your name.
Because there is no way when people ask me what's your dog's name, I'm saying Boppy. I saw this movie when I was a kid, Rumble Fish, one of my favorite movies. Main character's name is Rusty James. Love that name ever since. So I went with that. And it fit him perfectly. So I have a dog now. And everything just gets better immediately.
That first night, I got some of the best sleep I'd gotten in a very long time. Went to bed early. He slept right by my side, never moved. Slept like a human, on his side with his head on the pillow. I wake up in the middle of the night from one of my usual nightmares. Put my arm around him. I calm right down, fall back asleep. Our first walk, I notice I'm much more laid back.
Things that would normally irritate me, I let them go. For example, this guy decides we're in England, is walking towards me on the wrong side of the sidewalk, his left, instead of saying something like I normally would. Just look down at Rusty James, looking up at me with that sweet face. You're right, not worth it. Let's move over. My life slowly but surely begins to change. I begin to change.
Diego, we're going out for drinks, you coming? I can't, I gotta go home and walk Rusty James. I can't, I gotta go feed Rusty James. I can't get into it with this guy. I get arrested, I'm not out of jail till tomorrow. Rusty James is fucked. I gotta walk away. I can't get into a fight with my girlfriend. Rusty James will freak out. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Rusty James begins to mold me into this better man that I would eventually become under his tutelage. I learn things like patience, understanding, tolerance, forgiveness, unconditional love. Even when my girlfriend and I break up for good, we still share custody because I understand that having double the love and care is the best thing for them.
But there's still this one little big problem that I find myself struggling with. That's my little issue with people. Not liking them. Not being comfortable around them. And Rusty James actually makes it worse. because you gotta understand, I'm walking around with the cutest dog on the planet now. And with that comes a lot of attention from people, strangers, and I'm not ready for that.
Can I say hi to your dog? Can I pet your dog? Sure. They barely get down to say hi, I'm outta there. Okay, thank you, bye. I'm a freak. I'm a dick. I'm like that for a while. One day, this old man in a wheelchair rolls by us. He's gotta be well into his 80s. He's being pushed by his caretaker nurse. And he sees Rusty James and he just lights up. I mean, just cheese from ear to ear.
Rusty James clocks him. You make eye contact with Rusty James and that's it. I mean, he's like, oh, you wanna say hi? You want in on this? Let's go. That man was so happy, petting Rusty James. The sounds that were coming out of him were delightful.
And it occurred to me, man, Rusty James and I have the power to, as silly as it sounds, with all the messed up stuff in the world that we can't do anything about, we have the power to provide people with a little joy, a smile, if ever so briefly. Why not? Why rob them of that? Why rob him of that? Let him say hi. So I start to let my guard down.
I make a conscious effort to engage, to be nice, to open myself up. Can I say hi to your dog? Please, by all means. And we get to talking, and it's not so bad. It's actually quite nice. I'm not melting or anything and thinking to myself, look at you, Diego, you can do this. And don't look now, but you're sober. And I discovered it was just so much easier and less exhausting than being a dick.
Five years go by. Five life-changing, life-enriching years. And my ex-girlfriend, who, as I mentioned, we share custody, but by this point, he's as much hers as he is mine. She informs me that she got a job in Texas, where she's originally from, and that she's going to take it, and she has to be there in a month. So now comes time to decide on Russ James' fate.
And it is a painful but logical no-brainer. I mean, she'd have steady income, house, backyard, friends and family to help out, and I had nothing and nobody to deprive him of the heaven that would be for him. Having him struggle with me in New York would be criminal. So Rusty James and I squeeze every moment we can out of the next 30 days.
And on the last day, Rusty James and I say our goodbyes in my ex-girlfriend's empty East Village studio apartment in Manhattan. And we go downstairs and we say goodbye some more. And they hop on their rented U-Haul truck and take off. And after five years with my sweet, sweet boy, he's out of my life, just like that. And I am just destroyed. I just want to get fucked up.
I want to drink myself into oblivion for the rest of the day, the week, the month. There's a bar across the street, and I intend to do just that. But I'm also afraid because I know what the state I'm in. There's no telling when I'll be able to get out of this dark hole. I know myself. I'll go on a bender. I don't give a fuck about my job, people. I don't care.
There's a gym to my right that I used to go to sometimes. Now I'm torn. Do I go straight, drown my pain? Do I go right, sweat it out, face it head on? Straight right, straight right. And I thought to myself, what would Rusty James want me to do? If he were still here and I had to come home to him tonight, which version of those two would he want walking through the door? I went right.
I went to the gym. I never did see Rusty James again after that. But his mama was really good about sending me updates on him, pics and videos of him tearing it up in the country, living his best life. And he lived a long and happy one until he died an old man about a year and a half ago. And though I never saw him again, He's always remained a constant presence and influence in my life.
Every decision I make, every action I take, I try to do so as if he were still waiting for me at home or as if he were looking up at me on one of our walks. Thank you.
That was Diego Aguirre, a New York City-based actor and storyteller. He grew up in Ecuador and lived there until he was 17. After graduation, he joined the Marine Corps and fought in Afghanistan shortly after 9-11, followed by a deployment in Guantanamo Bay. He has lived in New York for the past 20 years, making him a bona fide New Yorker. At least, that's what he's been told.
Diego's beef with the world quieted down significantly, thanks to Rusty James. That connection inspired him to find work in what he loves, dogs. His day job is as a full-time dog walker and sitter. He says he's barely home, but he loves it. He gets to spend all day with dogs, and it helps him to avoid beef with humans.
Which is a good thing, because bad sidewalk etiquette still really gets his goat. And honestly, you know, I'm there with you, Diego. Move to the side if you want to stop and check your phone, people. To see lots of photos of Diego, Rusty James, and their beautiful life together, head over to themoth.org. And take some tissues with you. You'll thank me. I promise.
That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. Whether you've been inspired to simmer the beef in your life or turn the temperature up instead, I wish you luck and I'm on your side. Thank you to our storytellers for sharing with us and to you for listening. I hope you'll join us next time.
This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Chloe Salmon, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show, along with Jody Powell, with workshop coaching from Nancy Ma and the Moth's Community Engagement Program, plus additional Grand Slam coaching by Jennifer Hickson. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch.
The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Sarah Austin Janess, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Cloutier, Leanne Gulley, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Caza. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift.
Other music in this hour from Ennio Morricone, Adam Ben Ezra, Stellwagen Symphonette, Hermanos Gutierrez, and Leonard Bernstein. We received 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 producers Jenna Weiss-Berman and 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.