Me and Mark Twain, Down By the Schoolyard: A Love Story
So on Friday, February 22, 2013, I had somehow found my way to being a featured storyteller at an event called “The MOuTH at the Mark Twain House.”
It was organized and spearheaded by NPR personality, voice, and all-around-rockstar Chion Wolf. Originally, it was supposed to be in conjunction with the MOTH Radio people, but they (as it turned out) proved to be dicks, so Chion and Jacques Lamarre, from the Twain House, stuck a “u” into MOTH and made their own event (You should totally like them on Facebook, btw.)
Being February and close to Valentine’s day, the organizing theme for this, the inaugural kick-off of “The MOuTH” in Hartford, Connecticut, at the amazing Twain House and Museum auditorium, was “stories about love.”
I told the best story about love I know. I hope you all enjoy it.
What you need to know going in: For the first 30 seconds, I make reference to a quotation that was carved into the wall behind me, as a kind of unspoken communication to the audience of “Hey, don’t worry– I’m quick on my feet; look, this observation could not have been pre-planned, so relax a little, secure in the knowledge that the guy with the mic is going to be funny and listen-able to.” The quotation is “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.” But there’s an accidental line through an S in “Persuasive.”
Ok, without further ado, here’s me, telling the truth about love to an audience of strangers. And also, to the woman I love more than everything.
edit: If you are here from NPR/The MOuTH, and you enjoy my story-stylings (and have copious amounts of earbud-time to fritter away), there’s more where this comes from at the weekly storytelling podcast I do with my friend Keith Field. Keith is approximately 300 times funnier than I am, which you will soon come to know if you become a fan of the podcast/show. It is at http://www.thetimehascomepodcast.com/ and there are literal DAYS worth of content in there.
To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.”
I’m gonna post a comment I got on Facebook, because I was really touched by it. It is from my friend Carlos Antonio Brown. He wrote this, when he shared the link:
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I enjoy recommending things. Today, this clip is my recommendation. Listen to this nifty story.
As I listened to Josh’s telling of the school days provenance of his love affair with his wife, Jolene, I couldn’t help thinking of what is to me the most salient difference between Josh’s and my experiences as callow(er), young(er) men: he’s Straight and I am Gay.
“Fortune favors the bold!” Josh adjures. But though I fancy I grok his gist, the likelihood of being so bold as to engage, as ’twere, with my own school-days “crush” (I ought say, “crushes”–quite plural) was vanishingly small–Gay boys got the crap beaten out of them.
Still, our differences attenuate to the merely ostensible by dint of the elements of Josh’s expression: his gleefully nerdly, D&D sense of the world; ironic humor; and ethic of Bravery, nurtured, I gather, at least as much as my own, by the moral lights of Stan Lee and Gene Roddenberry.
I was just talking with our mutual friend, Robert, about Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” the first line of which declares: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” refuting the poem’s ironic fallacy of a final line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” … Good story telling dismantles and, hopefully, may ultimately obviate walls.
When a Straight, white guy tells his love story in a fashion that resonates so emotionally familiar for a Gay, black guy… well, I think that’s some good writing, folks.
Enjoy!
Well done, Mr. Dobbin! Obliged.
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Thank YOU, Carlos. Like those annoyingly polite chipmunks from the Warner Bros. cartoons who insisted on being more polite to one another than the other one, “No, no– I am obliged!”