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Joe Franklin? I'm ready. It's Ira Glass here. Oh, you're the emcee on the show, Ira. I am the emcee on the show. Yes. Oh great. Ira? I-R-A, Ira? Ira, I-R-A. Oh, great. Now hold on one second, Ira. Don't go away. Hello? [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Call me after 3 o'clock. I have great news for you. Ira. Yes. So listen, Tony. If the phone rings, take it in the back. And then come out and tell me who it is. Just say, Joe's being with a camera crew. Just for about 10 minutes. We'll do about five minutes, 10 minutes, right, Ira? That's right. Well, one great thing about starting a new show is utter anonymity. Nobody really knows what to expect from you. This interviewee did not know
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us from Adam. OK, we're what? About a minute. We're one minute five into the new show. Right now, it is stretching in front of us, a perfect future yet to be fulfilled. An uncharted little world. A little baby coming into the world, no little scars on it or anything. Nobody hearing my words right now is thinking, "Oh, man, remember that show, back when it used to be good? That show, I never missed that show back in the old days, back in the first couple years before it got so-called popular. Back when it was still good." No, actually, I think that force, that human desire to say that is so strong, to say that "I was there back when that show was good," that
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force is so strong, it is so basic to who we are as people that I know-- OK, what are we? We are two minutes into the program-- I know that somewhere out there, one or two of you are saying, "Oh, sure. I used to listen to that show back in the first 30 seconds, back when it used to be really good. Remember back when they used to do all that crazy stuff? When they had that guy on the phone? Remember back then?" Well, from WBEZ, in the glorious city of Chicago, Illinois. The name of this show is Your Radio Playhouse. I'm your emcee. I'm your emcee, Ira Glass. OK, the idea of this show, this new little show, is stories, some by journalists
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and documentary producers, like myself, some just regular people telling their own little stories, some by artists, and writers, and performers of all different kinds. And the idea is we're going to bring you stuff you're not going to find anywhere else. And there is also going to be music. And tonight's show, we thought that we would have a theme. Tonight's show is going to be New Beginnings. And to kick things off, I called the man who's had, as best as anybody can tell, the longest running program in the history of television. His name is Joe Franklin, and his program ran for 43 years on local television in New York. And he claims that he invented the talk show format. And I called him to
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get some advice on how to create a long-running, healthy program. I've been called in many times to give a sort of a Dean, the elder statesman, even though I'm still a young kid. But I've been called in to give this kind of advice to new kids on the block. Conan O'Brien had me on his first show. And people like that. There's no guidance. It's a matter of paying attention. Your voice, I've heard so much about the sparkle, about the energy in your voice. The voice, on radio especially, is everything. And when the guest is sitting with you, you've got to look into his eyes. Many times, you get an author on there who's begrudgingly sitting there. He'd rather be home in his ivory
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tower. And above all, get the plug fast. Otherwise, he's worried you're not going to make the plug for the book. And I created a line, Ira, that's been picked up by George Burns. I always said, the main ingredient for longevity in the talk show field, where the mortality rate is so staggering, the main ingredient is sincerity. And once you learn to fake that, then you got it made. I made that up. And I just played it by ear. I was a natural born talker, I guess. So let me just summarize what I'm getting from you. You're saying you should just pay attention, look people in the eye, be sincere when I'm on the air, get in the plug early. That's the key. And
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don't look in their nose or their belly button. Look right in the eye. Eye contact is everything. And as I say, it's a lot of fun. And I never called anybody in my life to come on to my show. And I'm sure that they'll be coming to you too. I heard about you, and I called you and wanted to wish you good look, Ira. Imagine the thrill of John F. Kennedy walking into my studio. Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan, five times. And Bing Crosby. And I've got a major book out right now, by the way, Ira, called Up Late with Joe Franklin from Simon & Schuster. And if you find a copy in the store-- You see now, I guess I've sort of messed
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that one up, because I didn't let you get in your plug early. See, that is my fault. I got it in toward the bitter end. It's like Duke Ellington. He always used to have his dessert at the beginning of the meal. Duke Ellington said, because he would never have no room for it at the end. So he had his dessert at the beginning. Who is it? Well, no, good news, 6 o'clock. Well, Joe Franklin, thank you very much for being with us on our premier show. Ira, I'm going to be a listener and a fan. And let's always be in touch. All right, Your Radio Playhouse. All right. I'm making eye contact with you right-- wait, how does Joe put it? Wait a
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second. Look right in the eye. Eye contact is everything. I am making eye contact with you right now. That is just how much I have already learned. OK, so the thing about new beginnings is that there are the ones that we actually undertake and then there are the ones that we just wish for. And the ones that we wish for pretty much outnumber the ones that we really undertake. Well, Kevin Kelly spent most of his twenties wandering around Asia. He was basically wandering around as a freelance photographer. And he found himself photographing a lot of religious ceremonies and drawn to religious ceremonies of all sorts. And he says that he was really confused about what he believed. And he was the kind of
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person who had always dreamt about a new beginning, where he wouldn't struggle with these questions. I would get twisted and caught up. And these things were in the background, consuming me. And actually, I found that I could think about little else for many, many months, that behind all that I was doing, there was always this unresolved question of was God real. And if he was real, then how could we ignore him? And if we were trying to not ignore him, what would we do? And if he was real, then what about these other things that people said about God? We will not attempt to answer these questions, by the way, in this hour. I just want to just give you a sense of
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scope here, just modest scope. But what we want to talk about is what happened to Kevin Kelly. What happened is that at the age of 27, all of this changed when he came into Jerusalem on the eve of Easter and Passover. It was the same weekend. And flocks of people are coming into the city. So I entered Jerusalem on Easter with a simple expectation that I was going to photograph another religious ceremony, another religious festival. And then, for various reasons, I got locked out of my hostel room. They had a curfew. And I didn't make it back in time. And I was in quite a fix because I was a stranger in this very strange town. When it happened, I didn't have enough
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money to stay elsewhere, nor did I even have knowledge of where to go. So I wandered the Old Town of Jerusalem at night, which had been shuttered up and was like a time machine. It was as if I had been transported back to the 15th century, because all the souvenir vendors were gone, and what was left were the labyrinthian paths of cobbled passageways. And I wandered around for a number of hours, and it was getting colder. Eventually, I found myself at the one place that was still open, which was some of the churches. And particularly, after wandering around until about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, I finally settled into the Church of the Holy Scepter, which is called and viewed as the
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church built over the mound where Jesus Christ was crucified. And I was getting very tired. And there weren't many people around. And so eventually, I laid myself out on about the only flat area that was left, which was this marble slab underneath some pendants that had incense on them. And this was presumably the slab that commemorated the exact positioning of the crosses. So I slept there. I slept on the crucifixion spot on that night because it was the only place-- they had no place in the inn. I slept there until early morning, when the activity started to increase, and people started coming in. And I went out and followed the crowd where it was going when they were going out to the tombs
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area in Jerusalem. And I went out. And there were some folding chairs set up in front of this tomb area. And as the sun was coming up on that Easter morning, I was staring at empty tombs. And for a reason that I can not comprehend, as I sat on that chair contemplating this view of the early sun morning coming into the empty tombs, all that I had been wrestling with for the past many, many years in thinking about religion sort of became resolved in my mind. And at that very moment, I believed that Jesus Christ had, indeed, risen from those tombs. In an instant, the tension of trying to figure things out was resolved, because now, suddenly, everything was figured out. It was
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as if you had been working on a problem for a long time and suddenly the answer was there. And it was very clear that was the answer. And although there were many things that were still not clear to you, you were very certain that you were on the right path. Having that realization that I believe that Jesus Christ had actually risen from those tombs did not settle 1,001 other things about what one was supposed to do with that, what I was supposed to do with that. Did that mean I was supposed to be a monk? Did that mean I was supposed to be an evangelist? Did that mean that I had to immediately renounce all that I had, and get into sackcloths and
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ashes, and march out into the desert? All that was left unopened. And that is, in fact, what occupied my mind as I went back to my hostel to lay down and think about. Because I had no clue what it really meant to me ultimately, and that's what I was pondering when I was laying there napping. And I wouldn't say it was a voice, but there was an idea that came into my mind that just would not go away, and that was that I should live as if I would die in six months, that I should really, truly live. And that I could not tell for certain whether I would really die, but that either way, I should live as if I was going
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to die. And so that was the assignment. I'm a pretty rational person. I'm pretty logical. And after thinking the thought that I should live as if I was going to die in six months, the first thought that comes to my head was, "Well, that's pretty silly. I have no evidence whatsoever. I could live like I'm going to die in six months and not die at all. It would just be an interesting exercise." But at the same time, it was equally probable that I might die in six months. It happened all the time. There was no guarantee that I wouldn't die. And so fairly quickly, I decided that I could not settle that issue of whether I would really die or not, or just
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think that I was going to die in six months, and that, in either case, the important thing was to live as if I really believed that I was going to die in six months, which is what I set out to do. The next couple days, I had the joyous experience of saying to myself, "OK, what do I do for six months if I have only six months to live?" And the answers to that surprised me as much as the assignment, because after thinking that through and contemplating it, the conclusion that I came to was that what I wanted to do for six months was to go home and be ordinary, to go back to my parents, to help them take out the trash,
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and trim the hedges, and move furniture around, and to be with them. And I was really shocked by that, because I thought that with six months to live, I would climb Mount Everest, or I would go scuba diving to the depths of the ocean, or get in a speedboat and see how fast I could go. But instead, I wanted to go back home and be with my family for that time. I, of course, did not tell anybody my crazy idea. This is, in fact, the first time I'm really talking about it publicly. Because it's a very scary and alarming idea. And I never told anybody why I was coming home. I got back to where my parents live in New Jersey, and things
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were unbelievably ordinary. And yet, I found myself relishing the ordinariness and finding it in some ways as exotic as anything that I had traveled to see. I helped around the house. I dug up shrubs. I worked on a deck. I moved furniture, washed dishes. And I was intending to spend my last remaining six months at home getting to know my parents better and myself, hopefully. But about three months into that, my travel urges, I guess, got the better of me. And what I was most concerned about was I wanted to see my brothers and sisters. I had four brothers and sisters. And they were scattered all across the country. And so I felt very strongly that I wanted to see them before I
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died. And I got the idea that the way to see them was to ride my bicycle across the country and visit them on bicycle. But before I did that, I made up a will to dispose of the little things that I had. And I had some money left over. And one of the things I did with that money was I went to the bank and got some cashier's checks for $500 and $1,000. And I mailed the money to various people anonymously as gifts. And I think giving away those thousands of dollars was the first true act of charity I had ever done. Because there was absolutely no way for any kind of gratitude or elevated feelings to come back to me, because the
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people had no idea who had sent them that money. It was really remarkable to see the consequences of getting an anonymous gift like that. Because when you get a check for $1,000 in the mail, you immediately become suspicious of all your friends of having given that to you. And so there's this suspicion of charity, suspicion of goodness that starts to infect the people that are around you. And you look at someone, you think, "Hm, I wonder if he gave me that $1,000?" Does that make sense? You look at them, and you think, "I wonder if he gave me that $1,000?" And then you act really nice to him. And then the next person you see, the next of your friends, you think, "Could
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this be the person?" And then you act really nice to them. I almost want to begin a little speech here about let us all now take up this practice. All of us. Everyone within the sound of my voice. If we all could just do this right now, then I would believe that our little radio show, just 19 minutes into the program, had contributed in some way. I had enough money left over to basically pay for food and whatnot on my bicycle journey across America. And the path that I had to visit all my brothers and sisters was not a direct route, going from San Francisco to New York. I actually had to go up to Idaho, and back down to Texas, and then
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back up through Indiana. So it was a 5,000 mile trip. The day which, coincidentally, was exactly six months from when I had this assignment, was October 31. It was Halloween. And so the plan would be that I would ride back home, so that I would come back to die on the day after Halloween. I think there are a lot of people who have trouble staying in the present. There are some people who like to slip into the past as a means to perhaps fantasize or escape. And they find that the past is the place that they retreat to. And I often retreat to the future. I was not a person who planned or had a career staged out, or who had a particular
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woman he wanted to marry some day, or some vision of a house. The future that I found so hard to give up was a much more insidious type. It was that of I'd like to buy this record because, in the future, I want to hear this song again and again. Or I will read this book, and there are some cool ideas in it because someday I may write an article about this. And it's good to know that. There was a sense in which my entire life was shifted to the future. And the thought of doing something now for the enjoyment, or the pleasures, or the principle of the function of just right now, without any sense at all that it would ever be
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used again or that it could ever be brought forward, was extremely difficult and disconcerting. And I fought it day by day and tooth by tooth. One of the ways I dealt with this was that I was actually able, by the last weeks, to not think about my life beyond Halloween. There was a way which I had just-- each time a thought came up about something that was beyond this horizon, I just said, "Nope, can't think about it. It doesn't work. We have to dwell in the present." And at the same time I was doing that, and I was able to do that, I also decided that it was an entirely unnatural and inhumane way to live. And that having a future is part
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of what being human is about. And that when you take away the future for humans, you take away a lot of their humanness. And that it's not actually a very good thing to live entirely in the present. That one needs to have a past, and one needs to have a future to be fully human. It was a journey that began at the tomb of Jesus. And as I set off to my own presumed death, I did, indeed, think about Jesus Christ who, according to the Gospels, surrendered his own life in a very knowing way. So we have the history in the Gospels of Jesus's torment in his soul, as he approached what he knew of his anointed time to die. So it was,
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again, that very harsh information of knowing when you're going to die. And Jesus's soul was in great turmoil and pain because of knowing that. And I think I did experience some of that, not because I had the same weight. It was just my own life. But Jesus prayed that this burden be lifted, and there were days when I did pray that, that if I didn't have to die, I really would rather not. By late fall, I was pedaling through the Appalachians, and it was getting colder and colder. And my hands were freezing on the bicycles, and there was ice on my tents in the morning when I got up. And as each day went on, I was coming closer and closer to terrain
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that I was familiar with and that felt like home. And I was riding into New Jersey, and I was elated. I was elated that I had accomplished this long journey. And I was elated that I was home to see my parents. And I came in to their house on Halloween day. And I was so filled with ideas, and things, and emotions, that I didn't really say very much. And again, I couldn't say very much. I think we had a wonderful dinner. They were, of course, glad to see me because they hadn't seen me in a long time. They knew I was coming back, and we had a wonderful dinner. We had baskets of candy, which I gave out to the kids. And we
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had a discussion that night which was about nothing in particular. It was not about the future. It was just about, I think, talking about our family and my brothers and sisters. And I was telling them all that I had learned about them. And so it was a very together and, again, not a very dramatic evening, but just a pleasant one, one that you might have a memory about as you were dying, which was not a special evening, but just an ordinary evening. And I went to bed that night, which was a very difficult thing to do because I was fully prepared at that point never to wake up again. I had been praying. I had gotten everything arranged. I had fully gone through
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in my own mind, in my own soul, all the things that I might have regretted. And I had righted as many of those as I thought I could through letters. And I was prepared, as much as anybody could be prepared to die. And so I went to bed while the kids were still ringing doorbells. And I went to sleep, because I was very tired after that long trip. And I didn't know what was going to happen the next day. I thought I had done all that I could. And the next morning, I woke up. And the next morning, I woke up, and it was as if-- The next morning I woke up, and it was as if I had the entire-- my entire
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life again. The next morning, I woke up, and I had my entire life again. I had my future again. There was nothing special about the day. It was another ordinary day. I was reborn into ordinariness. But what more could one ask for? Well, Kevin Kelly is 43 now. That happened when he was 27. In his latest rebirth, he is the executive editor of Wired magazine, a glossy magazine about the future and the present. He told us that he wasn't even sure he has ever even told his parents this story, even this many years later. Anyway, he spoke with me and Paul Tough from the studios of KQED in San Francisco. This is Your Radio Playhouse on WBEZ Chicago. Good morning. Glass, Jacobson &
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Associates. Hey, is Barry there? Pardon me? Is Barry there? Yes, he is. He's on another call. Do you wish to hold, or I could take a message, or you can leave one on his voicemail? It's his son. Uh-huh. Isn't this starting to sound like-- this little dialogue-- isn't it starting to sound like an episode of Dr. Katz? You know that TV show? "This is his son." "Uh-huh. Yeah." Anyway, so I thought I would call my parents in Baltimore and ask for advice on this, our first evening of our brand new radio show, Your Radio Playhouse. Can I leave a message with you? Or is it better to use his voicemail? It doesn't matter. I'll put it right on his voicemail. OK, let's do.
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OK, hold on, please. This is the story of my childhood right there. Dad is a little too busy to talk. But there's the recording of Frank Sinatra when needed. Hello? Hey, Mom. Oh, hi, Ira. How you doing? Fine. Can you hold on a second? Sure. This is what it's like with my parents. They're so busy. Call them. Put on hold. [SINGING] Baby, what's your hurry? When I call my little sister, she works at Disney, and so there's Disney music playing on the hold system. But there's a lot of Disney music. And there's a lot of it that peo-- Hi. Hi, Mom. Yeah. It's me. Yeah. Listen, can I record a quick conversation with you about something? What about? Well, you know the new
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show goes on the air this week. And as part of the show, we were thinking about having me call around to different people and get advice from them. And I wanted to know if you would have any advice. Hm. Do I have any advice? Well, can I ask another question? Sure. Who is your target audience? You are such a pro. I'm saying that you're in danger of appealing to a narrow range of listeners if it becomes a little too-- I don't know what word to use. Artsy. Artsy, yeah. Are you and Dad still worried about me making a living in public radio? I know just for years, you were urging me to just get out and get, basically, any job in TV that
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I possibly could. But now that I've got my own show, are you guys still worried? Or do you feel like things are going OK? Do you want me to get into television still? Now that Hugh Grant is such a big star, and everybody who sees you or sees your picture thinks how much you look like Hugh Grant, that fires up that TV thing again in me. All right. I'm stopping the tape. This is me live. That was the tape. Only my mother could possibly believe this. Only a mother could pretty much believe this. Other adults see me, and the thought that goes through their head is not Hugh Grant. The thought that goes through their head is tall Jew. Well, gosh, wouldn't they
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want this wonderful humanistic, intelligent reporter who looks like Hugh Grant? All right. Yeah, let's move on. What's the theme for this week? The theme for this week is new beginnings. And we have several stories, people telling about various ways in which their life began anew at some point. That's very interesting, because I just did an interview this morning with a newspaper reporter about roman-- I'm just going to stop the tape again. This is my whole life. I call my mom for an interview, and it's not even her first interview of the day. I was lucky to get a booking. She's a therapist, and sometimes she gets called by the papers and stuff. --mance, romantic love. And people's expectations about relationships. And one of
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the things I believe is that there are a lot of people who are good at beginnings, but they're not good at middles. Which means what? It means that they like the beginning, where there's all this idealization and romantic projections. And the other person can be who they think they should be, rather than who they are. And when they get to the middle phase-- All right. I'm just going to stop the tape. Listen, all of you in the audience right now, let's just agree right now, it's the very beginning of our relationship. It's the very beginning of our radio relationship right now. This is our little first little radio date, and I just don't want any idealizing on either side. OK? Let's just make
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eye contact right now. Remember what Joe Franklin said about the eye contact. No idealizing. --where there's more of a reality-based relationship, they run away from it because it's not as exciting. It's interesting that you say that because, actually, as we've approached the first show, I've realized that I am much more comfortable with the notion of every day, work-a-day radio work, and being on every week, and having pieces on the air. But the notion of saying in a really big way, "OK, this is the beginning. It's the beginning, and we're going to have a big beginning, and we're going to make an epic statement," I feel very uncomfortable with. So you are good at middles. I'm better, I think, at middles than at beginnings.
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That's good. That's good because practically all of life is the middle. We have gotten so deep here. I never expected that it was going to get so deep. I'm just very pleased at how deep this has gotten. Now you're sitting there, you're thinking, "Is he making fun of me? What's happening now? Where are you?" No, I'm not. I'm not, actually. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. You have nothing to worry about. Are we going to get a tape of this since we're outside the Chicago listening area? Depending on how you sound, yeah. Well, that's my mom, Shirley Glass, speaking to us from Baltimore. I don't think she's going to get a tape. I do not think she's going to get a tape. Well,
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next on our little playhouse stage, we have Mr. Lawrence Steger. Now those of you who have been listening carefully to our program and taking notes, and I know there are many of you out there, you know what I'm supposed to do at this point. You know because you were listening carefully to Joe Franklin at the very beginning of our program. Above all, get the plug fast. That's right. Well, thank you, Joe Franklin. Lawrence Steger is a filmmaker and a performance artist, just back from performing in Glasgow, Scotland. He's going back there in January to collaborate with the performance artist, Ron Athey, who lives here in Chicago. And basically, we contacted Lawrence, and we told him the story that you heard over the course
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of the last half-hour, Kevin Kelly's story, this guy who believes he only has six months to live, goes on this cross-country road trip. And as it turned out, when Lawrence Steger found out, the day that he found out that he was HIV positive, this was five years ago, on that day, it was the exact day that he and a friend left on a cross-country car trip. So we commissioned him to do a little piece about his experience. And here it is. Title. Road. Treatment. It's shot entirely on video, mostly handheld. Shaky, out of focus, bad color. Overblown color actually. Sort of the way colors are separated on an old television console, yet still has all the outlines of the images repeated. The outlines
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of the images, the silhouettes, repeated over and over, ad nauseam, and fading into each other. Can I get this microphone adjusted a little, so I don't have to lean over so much? Yeah, sure. Just pull that. Check one, two, three. Sound better? Yeah. Sorry. Thanks. Synopsis. The story concerns Luke, gay, white, Midwestern, late twenties. Follows Luke on the day that he is informed of his HIV positive status. Luke cops a stance of cold, brittle, not unlike the Harrison Ford narration on Blade Runner, but there's a hint of vulnerability to Luke. Have we got the Harrison Ford or the Rutger Hauer voice? Yeah. Great. Roll it. Enhance 5719. Track 45 left. Great. Take it under me. That's great. Story follows Luke. He's accompanied by
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his college buddy, Bill, and both are packed for a road trip across the country to San Francisco. This isn't the right section of Blade Runner. Can you just kill the Blade Runner? Locations. Car interior. Gas station exterior. HIV clinic parking lot. HIV clinic interior. Highway. Music. Strauss's four last songs, particularly "Ruhe, meine Seele!" sung by Dame Janet Baker. Can you take it under me? Hold. Follows Luke and his friend Bill to the gas station and to the clinic, the last stop before getting on the highway. OK. Take it out. Take out the Janet Baker. Bill loads one hits of pot while driving on the way to the gas station and to the clinic. Can we nix that Strauss music? It's too mournful. There's
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really no music on the soundtrack. It's stark, crisp. Maybe some songs coming from the radio at the clinic's desk? Great. And definitely from the car radio mixed with surfing on an AM radio. No music. The drama is constantly being undermined through the cool, collective quality of Luke's demeanor. He seems detached, quote, "I am not sure how I feel. I feel a little sad, sort of mad. I guess blank. But I'm OK. I'm sure I'll get a handle on it," end quote. Luke thinks he's sounding like a short story assignment in a creative writing class or, worse, trapped inside an artsy novel. Luke imagines himself in a television dramatization of himself. Camera pulls back from behind Luke's head, sort of on a mini-crane. Camera
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floats, hovers over the back of Luke's head. "The ceiling of the car must be incredibly high," he thinks to himself. Bill pulls into the closest parking spot in the clinic, blows out the last of the one-hit, and, as he's knocking the brass pipe into the ashtray, turns to Luke with that slightly watery look in his eyes from too much intake. Luke takes it as one of those Care Bear looks that he's experienced before from Bill. A little clumsy since Bill has to force his face into a sympathetic posture. Quick close-up on the corner of Bill's mouth. There's a moment of anger flashing in Luke when he registers Bill's look. When Bill asks him, "What are you thinking about?" Luke responds, "Who's thinking? Nothing."
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"I hate thinking I'm in a novel," he thinks to himself. Cut to interior of the clinic, the reception area. Can we change this sound bed here? Great. Take it down just a-- Great. In the scene that we talked about on the phone, the clinic waiting room scene, that scene flips back and forth between various security black-and-white cameras mounted at the ceilings. The nurse assigned to Luke's anonymous number is a black drag queen named Stephanie, who wears a full nurse's outfit complete with a little paper hat that sits atop of her freshly coiffed hairdo. She's the only one in the clinic who wears a real uniform. Stephanie has the longest fingernails that Luke has ever seen on anyone. Luke thinks briefly about how the
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fingernails keep on growing even after a person dies, but he pushes that thought away with this fingers to his forehead, wonders why he is thinking about that. It's that novel thing again. Stephanie, the drag queen nurse, walks Luke back to the small cubicles that the tests are administered in and then used to relay the results. Luke's narrator imagines how many people have been in these cubicles and what they would look like if they were all piled on top of one another. Piles of tested bodies. Cut to Stephanie closing the hollow core door, makes that hollow core door sound. Do we have that on cart? Perfect. Maybe a shot from a security camera that shows all of the cubicles in the clinic. Luke imagines
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himself in a George Tooker painting that was reproduced in his sixth grade reader. He wonders what his sixth grade teacher would think of Stephanie. He wonders if his sixth grade teacher was ever tested. He imagines her body in the pileup of bodies who have come to the clinic. Stephanie has been saying something, and Luke has to blink his eyes again to refocus. He explains to Stephanie that he has been expecting this result, that he's experienced a large share of AIDS, cared for, and, likewise, buried lots of his friends. But it doesn't seem to come as a surprise. Stephanie says, "You can cry or hold my hand. I just want you to sit for a moment and let it sink in." Luke thinks, "Whatever."
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Cut to Bill in waiting room, flipping through People's The Year in Pictures. Cut back to close-up of Luke, forehead wrinkled. He thinks his narrator wants him to get out of the cubicle. He waits for Stephanie to finish her spiel, thanks her, and shakes her hand, getting a slight scrape from one of the fingernails. Close-up on Luke's hand, no scratch. The walls seem to pulsate as Luke walks down the hallway to the reception area. He tries to be as blank as possible to Bill. I'm not sure about this final section. I know that we talked about it ending on the highway with the car being surrounded by bikers on their way to the Sturgis bikers' rally. But now I like the idea of it
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ending on the highway entrance ramp. Cut to interior of car pulling out of parking lot. Luke keeps looking straight ahead, as he murmurs, "I'm positive." Long, slow pan from the back of Luke's head to the back of Bill's. There's no reaction in either of their faces or, better, the profiles of their faces. This is the longest shot. They don't look at each other. Perhaps this scene would be shot in blue screen with the camera in the backseat and the sky surrounding the two heads of Bill and Luke having that old, scratchy, 16 millimeter time lapse exposure, so the clouds seem to be moving at a rapid pace. Flickers, flips back and forth between real sky and blue screen backdrop. Voice comes up on
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a car radio. "Trying not to think of the future. Just live in the present moment." Something like that. You got that? It comes onto the radio. I also decided that it was an entirely unnatural and inhumane way to live, and that having a future is part of what being human is about, and that when you take away the future for humans, you take away a lot of the humanness, and that it's not actually a very good thing to live entirely in the present, that one needs to have a past. Luke comments to Bill, "Live entirely in the present, huh?" Bill drives and looks out the corner of his right eye to see what position Luke is holding his head in. Luke looks outside
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passenger window and, every once in a while, turns to glance at Bill. Long pause. There's dead air. Cut to Luke's point of view. Car is pulling onto entrance ramp of highway. Luke sees hitchhiker with a sign that he stands for any remote meaning to the narrative. Luke sees himself outside of his own story. He can't read the hitchhiker's sign. He knows that he's on a long silent journey. He leans over to turn off the radio. Cut to black. Well, Lawrence Steger is a Chicago performance artist and filmmaker. This is Your Radio Playhouse. I'm Ira Glass. OK, what am I doing right now? What am I doing right now? That's right. That's right. Eye contact. Look right in the eye. Eye contact is everything.
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That's right. Advice from the master. OK. Let's review our program so far. Let's just review. Let's just get things straight right now. Our stories so far have been about people whose futures were taken from them and were thrown into the present in one way or another. I guess when any big emotional moment happens, you are thrown in the present in a really aggressive, aggressive way, whether you choose to or not. You have this hyper sense of reality. Well, the next story is about someone whose future was taken from him when he was wrongly imprisoned for 20 years. And his sentence was commuted two years ago. And he found himself reborn into everyday life. It was like I just-- I don't know. It seemed
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like the oxygen was even different. You know what I mean? The air seemed to be thinner. I'll tell you what's been a real kick for me, getting up, cooking breakfast. Making pancakes, and eggs, and bacon, and stuff like that. It sounds drab maybe to the common-- everybody would think of that as, "That's really drab." But for me, that's really exciting. And that's one of the things I always dreamed of doing. I also dreamt of finding a very lovely lady, and I have. Inside, I'm happy. Inside. This is Ed Ryder. He was in prison for murder and was doing time in Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania. And a few years ago, a key witness who had testified against him admitted to lying while under oath,
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and other evidence came forward. He was made a free man. Back when he was in Graterford Prison, he played trumpet, and he sang with a jazz band. And that whole time, he dreamed of this new life, a new life that he would have outside as a professional musician. And that's what he's working on. That's what he's working on right now. And he's playing. He doesn't have a CD yet, but he's playing gigs in the real world. The first time I played, when I got out of prison, I didn't feel compelled to be so exact like I did when I was at Graterford. Inmates are the worst, critical people in the world. They criticize anything you do. In prison, you have a lot of
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musicians. After all, musicians, they don't make no money, so I guess the first place you find them at is in prison. But you have a lot of guys who are musicians. And even though they might not be actively playing anymore, they'll be quick to criticize you, whether the chord is not right, or whether you didn't flatten the ninth, whether you didn't raise this fifth, or you guys didn't play the changes right. Although it might not have took away from the structure of the music, it's just that, I guess you can say that prisoners have a tendency to think like classical musicians would. Everything has to be perfect and exact the way it's heard. And everything has to be like that. There's no going
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against the grain. And here, in the world, people are a little different. They don't concern themselves so much with that, as much as how are you entertaining us? How are you helping us to feel better about ourselves? How are you making us feel better? At Graterford, there is nothing you can do to make them feel better, except to release them. So if you can play for a Graterford audience, you don't even look for an applause. Just as long as they don't boo you, you're all right. If they can't find nothing wrong with the music, they'll tell you, "You just didn't turn right. When you had the horn up, you didn't hold it on a 45 degree angle. It didn't look right." So they'll
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find something. Now you know how we heard people earlier in the program talk about the importance of living in the present. But when we interviewed Ed Ryder, he pointed out that, in prison, the most important thing is to keep your eye on the future, on the day that you're going to get out. And that the guys who just live in the present do really badly, because, of course, the present is so terrible. I think when I was in prison, I dreamed more about the future in my head. I just had a lot of plans, a lot of things that I just dreamed about, I just dreamed of doing and dreamed of accomplishing. You're forced almost to. You know what I mean? You have
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nothing else to look forward to but tomorrow. You're constantly hoping and hoping. You're trying to plan something for the future. We asked him if he is still playing the same music now that his future is here and he's out. And we thought that maybe the songs that he used to play would just bring back these hard memories of prison that he'd rather just as soon avoid. But he said, no, he plays the same numbers now that he used to, though sometimes they mean something different to him today. When I was in Graterford, I always listened to it. I had a tape of "God Bless the Child That's Got His Own" by Billie Holiday. And what it meant to me when I was at
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Graterford-- and it has the same meaning now, but it's different. In the sense that, when I was at Graterford, when she said, "Them that's got shall get, Them that's not shall lose. So the Bible says, and it still is news. Mama may have, Papa may have, But God bless the child that has his own." Well, in my mind, at Graterford, I thought that, yes, I was the child that had his own, because I was out here on my own. I had no help at the time. There was no hope. I seen no way. I was like a child. I was like a child because I had no one I can turn to. My parents had passed. I had no one I could turn
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to. And I felt like every time I would listen to that, I felt as though she was talking directly to me. And for me, that meant that I was on my own in this prison situation. And I was going to have to make it the best way that I could. And I was going to have to muster all the energy that I could possibly muster. Now when I was released and I heard the same song again, it still had that meaning, but now it's a different-- I'm on my own differently because I'm not in prison anymore. That's not the struggle no more. It's me. But I'm on my own now because I've got things that I have to do. I have responsibilities now
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that I have to take care of. I have bills that I have to pay. I have job responsibility. I have a lot of other things that I have to do, and I have to do these things on my own now. I don't have no prison guards waking me up in the morning, telling me, "Hey, it's time to get up," or "It's time to go eat, " or "It's time where you guys can go to a shower." I don't have that anymore. I'm on my own. So all this now is dependent upon me and my own initiative. [SINGING] Them that's got shall get, them that's not will lose. So the Bible said, and it still is news. Mama may have, Papa may have, but
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God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own. You know the strong get more, while the weak ones fade. Empty pockets don't, they don't make the grade. Mama may have, Papa may have, but God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own. Money, you've got lots of friends. They all keep hanging around your door. But when money's gone and all of the spendings end, they don't come around, they won't come around no more. Rich relations give a crust of bread and such. Go on and help yourself, but you better not take too much. Mama may have, Papa may have, but God bless the child that's got his own. God bless the child that's got his own. That's
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basically some of it. Ed Ryder joining us in the playhouse from the studios of WHYY in Philadelphia, speaking with me and associate producer Nancy Updike. Ed Ryder's a big Billie Holiday fanatic. That was the word he used, "fanatic," when we asked him about it. So when we asked him to play a number with his horn, with his trumpet, he played "Lover Man." That's pretty much all the time we have for this evening. This show was produced by Dolores Wilber, Peter Clowney, Nancy Updike, Alix Spiegel, and myself. Contributing editors Paul Tough and Jack Hitt on the west coast, Margy Rochlin on the east coast. I've got that backwards. Paul Tough and Jack Hitt on the east coast. Margy Rochlin on the west. You see,
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you get so confused when you have two pieces of music running at the same time. Torey Malatia has supported this show from the start. We'll be back next week, same time, we hope. From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Ira Glass.
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There's what we wish for and there's what we get. For Susan Bergman, the story went like this. Her father led a double life. On the one hand, he proudly described himself as a family man, a church organist, in a denomination that was so strict the women covered their heads, wore no make-up, no dancing, no smoking, no drinking, no going to theaters, no swimming with members of the opposite sex, even. Her father stage-managed things so they appeared to be the perfect blond-haired, blue-eyed, American family. But secretly, he was having sex with men. By all accounts, it was lots of men. Sometimes he would even fly off to New York, go to gay clubs there. In 1983, he was one of the first victims of
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AIDS. They had barely named the disease. The symptoms weren't familiar. And he died before his children got the chance to ask him about who he really was and talk to him about how they should reconcile who he had pretended to be all those years, with who he was. What was real of their childhood? Susan Bergman wrote a book about her family's experience. And on her book tour, a very particular thing started to happen. Gay men, who were still married or who had been married, started to contact her. They wanted to explain her father's double life to her. They wanted to explain their own double lives to her. And they wanted to offer her the conversation that she never got to have with her
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father. Well, from WBEZ in Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Back once again for another hour documenting life in these United States. Today's program in four acts. Act One, gay men. I talk to Susan Bergman about her father. Act Two, a gay man talks to me in a parked car in an undisclosed location about why he thinks that his children don't need to know that he's gay and why he stays married. Act Three, we take all the heavy, very heavy themes about lying and families from the first two acts and rework them as comedy, if you can believe that. And finally, Act Four, the sins of the fathers pass on to the sons. Stay with us. Act One, The Book Tour.
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Susan Bergman came to our studios, loaded down with evidence. OK, now you've brought in some tapes of yourself being interviewed on talk radio shows that I've got here. So this first one, do we need to explain it at all before we play it? I think this was a caller that was, in some ways, typical of the response that I got on talk radio. Here we go. I have a particularly close connection to this sort of thing. I'm a gay father, divorced now. So I'm very close to this. In particular, I can understand your father's secretiveness and his pain. There's always the resentment that you had to go through the pain, that you had to hide, that you had to lie. And you live
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with that resentment. It really never quite goes away, even in my case, after you've come completely out and divorced and the whole bit. And the resentment lives on, that I had to do live that lie, that I had to lie to my wife, that I had to lie to my children, that I had to life to my family. And never be happy. Never, never, never know happiness. Hey, Susan? Uh-huh. Can I just ask you, what was your reaction to-- when he was saying this, had it occurred to you before that your father would actually be resentful of the family for the secret that he was keeping from you? He was angry at us a lot. But it seemed like it was more-- I
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mean I interpreted that as we were bothering Dad, or Mom was asking too many questions. Yeah. It's not one that had occurred to me. And I would have to contest that assumption that one has to lie or one is put in a situation where lying is the only appropriate gesture or response. Let's go back to this tape. And I hope that-- I don't know. Is there anything that I can help you. Any questions that I could answer. Because I'm still alive and I've been through it. That's great. Boy, I hope I can do this without just kind of gushing all over you, because it's so great of you to call in and offer that. It's beautiful. I didn't get that chance with my
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father. I guess I would ask you-- I'm just stopping the tape here. I'm just going to stop the tape here, because as you're listening, you're making the gagging signal at your own reaction. Oh, I think that's so great. Oh, I think that's so wonderful. I was not in touch with the full range of the reaction until after I hung up the telephone and stopped the radio interview. And clearly, that man was hurting in a lot of ways. And the last thing I needed to do was have a fight with him on the air about being a liar, or whatever. Whatever anger I would have had towards my father didn't seem to me to apply to him. He was just some innocent bystander. So
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I just tried to be nice. And it was kind-- oh yeah. There's the thing that you wish for and there's the thing that you get. And if what you really need is a long talk with your father, the kind of talk where you get mad and argue, and maybe he gets mad, and maybe people admit mistakes, and maybe things get resolved or maybe they don't get resolved, and you learn that they won't get resolved. But if that conversation is what you need, then no stranger on a radio call-in show, however well meaning, is going to give that to you. It's a mockery of what you need. But there you are. There you are. You're talking to this man, this stranger. And you find
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yourself asking a version of the question that you would most like to ask your own father. And you get an answer that is totally useless, because really it has nothing to do with you. You said, you didn't want to share your quote, "real life," maybe. But why do you feel that you were forced to lie about that? How could your family have shared your life? You see the problem is that once you get trapped into doing the thing you think you're supposed to do at a young age-- I married at 23 because I thought it was-- I knew I was gay then already. Hm. So did my wife, for that matter. She put it aside. Gay men sent Susan Bergman photos of themselves.
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One happy couple stands there in one of the photos in matching sweaters, raising glasses, smiling. The letter said that if her father had lived and divorced her mother, this is the kind of happiness he could have had. The letters that Susan Bergman got from the children and spouses of gay fathers, she said, seemed to be written in a completely different language than the letters she got from the gay fathers. It was like two different cultures, two different perspectives. There are lots of books about men coming out, gay men coming out, gay women coming out. But nobody seemed to be able to remember a book that had been told from the point of view of the children and the wives that these gay men
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had left behind. And families who are in that situation felt this shock of we are not alone. And they contacted her. You brought examples of letters? Yeah. The most poignant letter that I got, this woman says she read the book. "Our lives are so similar, Susan, that it was eerie for me to read." She talks about their background. They were all so fundamentalist. Our family wasn't quite fundamentalist. But this woman says, "Bible believing churches that started in their living room. We had six well-behaved, talented, athletic children in our prosperous and highly visible family." "When my dad was diagnosed in 1988," she writes, "my mom kicked him out of the house and would have nothing else to do with him. Three of us moved
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him out of town, encouraged him to change his name, and lied about his mysterious disease and our parent's sudden separation. Now, they are both gone. And we are left to deal with the fraud that was our life." They had just buried their mother-- when she wrote me this letter-- who had died of AIDS because the father didn't protect the mother at all. She says, "I'm writing to you now, not to pour out my heart, but to ask if my sisters and I can come take you out for lunch soon there in Chicago? There are not many like us who have suffered such circumstances. And I know in my heart that I should be able to hold my head high and talk about my
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mother's needless death without shame. But as of now, I can't." That's the end of that letter. And I talked to this family at length, on several different occasions. They did come to Chicago. They did? Yeah. Two of the daughters came. Some of the sons were not willing to even acknowledge that the parents had died of AIDS yet, one of them being a physician. One of the sons being a physician? Yeah. But the interesting story that they have, as her father was dying, they spent hours and hours interviewing their father on tape about his sexual contacts. They got the names of all of the married men that he had been with in this three-city area and the addresses and the phone numbers, which he
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had. And they began calling those men's wives on the telephone, because they wanted to save lives, because they knew their mother was dying. And so they would call up these women and say, you don't know me but-- Yup. --my father has had sex with your husband. Yes. I mean can you imagine that? I mean, of course they debated this among themselves. They thought this is none of our business. But when their mother got AIDS, they knew that this list of 100 married men were not taking any precautions with their own wives. And they started calling. And I said, "Well, what was the reaction?" I asked them to go on. And they said a lot of women hung up the phone them. And some
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would say, "Oh, thank you very much for calling." And as you say that, the thing that occurs to me is it's such a complicated act, because partly it's an act of compassion for somebody. And then partly it's such an act of vengeance against somebody else, and calling-- I know but-- --out that man. I mean if you lose your mother to AIDS, I can see why. I never had to do that. Yeah. But I'll tell you, in the town I live in, outside Chicago, there is a family, at least one, where the same thing is going on. The father is very promiscuous, a prominent man in town, has four young children. His wife has no idea he's a practicing homosexual. They have unprotected sex.
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And people in the community come to me and say, "What should we do? We've asked him to tell her. We're thinking about telling her. We want to protect her so that her kids have one parent." And when I talk to-- And what do you tell them? I say that's their decision. They're going to have to really think about that, because I don't know the people. I can't go into their lives just because I wrote some book on some related subject. If they're involved in the family system in some way, they have to make that decision. I have no idea. But when I talk to gay men about this book, who have read it and want to have a conversation, almost everyone has said
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to me, "Oh yeah, my main partners are married men." I said, "Well, you have to think about your own responsibility to the family then, I imagine." All these different fathers who contacted you, did any of them say, I'm sorry, I did something that hurt people and I'm sorry? Well, no. Because there's a lot of talk trying to defend the position that's just newly being articulated in their lives. And I understand that they're building their ramparts or whatever. That position being, I was right to at least clear up this lie. Finally, I did the one right thing. I left my family and became a true homosexual. That's the right thing, that's being defended in almost all of the letters. This is a very interesting
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letter signed, anonymously yours. He says, "At the risk of intrusion, which is not my intention, I'm compelled to write you and express some gentle viewpoints based on experiences similar to those in your book, but admittedly little real knowledge of your life." I appreciated that acknowledgement very much. "Based on your writing, however, I strongly feel that your father's life with you and your family was not the sham it may superficially appear. I see the story from a different perspective, as that of a tragic, often unconscious struggle by your father to love his family and not end up as one of nature's mistakes, which of course he wasn't. Were there no kisses of bruised knees, soothing of tears and hurt feelings, umpteen occasions of personal
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denial, dreams of success and happiness for you and the others? Would it be unreasonable to consider yourself doubly-loved, by a fractured psyche fighting desperately against the nature he was given? In retrospect, are not his intents as important as his failures?" It's a beautiful letter in some ways. And in other ways, there are these irritants in these approaches. I shouldn't be so critical I suppose, but then to say to me, were there no kisses of bruised knees? Yes, of course. Yeah, I had a great Daddy in many regards. Yes, he was a split person. And I don't think that he enjoyed being split, and neither does this gentleman. But that doesn't make him a better father. And that's almost the thing that this letter
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is driving towards, like couldn't you be doubly loved, being loved by a homosexual father? No. I think I was well-loved by my father. I think my father was a split person, and that that destroyed him and it worked towards the destruction of his family. By coming to understand that your family was structured around a lie, that who you were told you were and that the family was, has nothing to do with what you really are or were, that's very complicated. Susan Bergman. Her book is called Anonymity. Coming up, a gay father explains why he chooses not to tell his children of his double life. Act Two, Dad in the Closet. This next story isn't intended to answer whatever questions Susan Bergman might have
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about her father. It's intended to answer our questions about these gay men who stay in their marriages, leading double lives. The man we found to interview for this has been married for 26 years, heads a support group, called Review, for men in similar circumstances. He was willing to be interviewed, but he didn't want me coming to his home and he didn't want to come to our studios either. On the phone, I understood this to mean that he didn't feel comfortable appearing in public like this. Later, he told me that I had misunderstood, that he just didn't want to drive that far. In any case, we met in a parking lot on Damen Avenue and drove to a quiet street, where I conducted the
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interview, in his car. My name is Jerry Walters. Now let me just ask you, is it OK for us to use your name on the radio? Jerry Walters isn't my real name. It's a name that when I used to work on a hotline, they said pick out a name that you're comfortable with and use that. And so that's what I've been using. Plus, it separates business from my club activities. So Jerry Walters is fine. This man is in his fifties, was a teenager during the Eisenhower years. He looked like any suburban dad. He was neatly dressed, in gray wool slacks, a sweater, and what appeared to be a clip-on necktie. He says he was always a good boy. He says he doesn't really
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get at angry people, doesn't know how to yell at people. Back in high school, he says, he was the kind of boy who'd go out with girls, but never make passes at them. I graduated. I would date occasionally. And I did find somebody that seemed like a very nice person, that we had a lot in common. And we went out on a date. But that afternoon, after I met her in the morning, and that afternoon I had my first gay experience. And so, it was really kind of a red-letter day. I went bowling with her in the evening. And I was out with another man that afternoon. So I thought well, the situation with the other man was scary and disappointing and painful,
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to say the least. And so I thought, well, fine. That's out of my system. I don't want any more of that. He went on to marry the girl, who he's still married to nearly three decades later. But soon after their wedding, he became increasingly obsessed with men. He found himself driving out to the forest preserves, where gay men were known to hang out. Men would walk over to his car. Men would try to talk to him. And I would drive out of the forest preserve areas like a bat out of hell, to be perfectly honest. And thinking that, fine, I didn't do anything. So there's no reason for me to feel guilty. But I would end up with headaches that were so severe
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that I couldn't work. I would come home four or five days a week, and just be incapacitated with the pain. But then I was taking aspirins and Tylenol, and everything else. I got hooked on tranquilizers. And it's a scary thing. When this obsession first takes hold, where first you are thinking about it, and before you know it, you are completely consumed by the thought of doing something with another male. You're not even sure of what you want to do. You're not sure who you want to do it with or where these people are, but you are totally consumed with that quest. Well suddenly, my wife became the person that was stopping me from pursuing what I absolutely, positively had to do to survive.
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And your thinking gets distorted, would be an understatement. Why what happens? What do you start to think about? Maybe I shouldn't say this and maybe it's unique in my situation, but you think, gee, if she had an accident or something-- yes, I knew-- it sounds bizarre. But you're almost ready to plot to kill somebody. And I've told her this. And it's something that we-- here's a very mild mannered person, almost plotting somebody's demise, because they're stopping you. And they don't even know what's going on at this point. Do you think that at that time, before you told your wife, do think that in a day-to-day way, you had a lot of resentment that you would act out on, you would snap at her,
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that you would just be short with her? Because what you are describing is being so resentful. No, I didn't. I held it inside. You see, this was your wife. You can't do this. I'm one of these people that holds the door open for women and very courteous with people. So I held it inside. And you think the top of your head is going to blow off instead. Finally, after two years of marriage, he got up the courage to tell his wife he wanted to have sex with men. She says, "Oh, is that all?" And I said, "You don't understand. I've got these feelings for men and I don't know how to deal with them." And she says, "Well, I married all of you.
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I didn't marry part of you. We'll just figure out how to deal with it." And so from there, we just set the guidelines that would work for us. I asked her what she needed to be comfortable? She wanted, number one, to know where I would be. And that's fine. I would sooner leave a phone number underneath the telephone, that if I don't show up by 10 o'clock or 12 o'clock, she calls. She wanted me to be home when the kids got home, or when the kids woke up in the morning, which is fine. The term, "are you sleeping with somebody," I think, is kind of stupid. If I'm going someplace to sleep, I'll sleep at home. I'm going out for sex, not for
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sleeping. So that was never a problem. That's really the only things. And she said, "I want to be the most important person in your life." And she always has been and she always will be. He says, of course, he uses condoms. So he doesn't being home any infections or AIDS. His children and the people he works with don't know he's gay, though after his father died, he told his mother. Why stay married? Because I love her and she loves me. And we're probably the best thing that happened to each other, ever. See, I don't like-- there's a difference between gay feelings and living the gay lifestyle, a dramatic difference. And I know a lot of people will disagree with this and maybe take
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offense at this. There is an arrested adolescence in the gay community. There is an acceptance of lying because it was needed to survive. And honesty is something that I really put a high price on and I really value it. I suggest to him that he's the one who lies, by staying in a straight marriage, and not telling his own children he's gay. He says he's not really lying to his children. As he explains it, there's no easy time to sit your kids down and tell them that you're gay. When they're 5 or 10, it'll make no sense. When they hit adolescence, it could be confusing, a kind of burden, as they sort through their own sexual identities. If his children ask him directly
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he says, then he'll tell the truth. And he says, they'll ask when they're ready to hear the answer. If you want to know something, you will ask the question. If you don't ask the question, either you know the answer or you don't want to deal with the answer. Am I right? How old are your children? They're in their 20's. They're girls. Hm. Well, what is your assessment of what's going on? Do you think that they know, but they choose not to ask consciously? Yes. And it's a conscious choice? Yes. I think it's very much a conscious choice. I think that they accept me for who I am. And I don't think they want to know a whole lot more about it. But you're
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saying they accept you for who you are, but they don't actually know entirely who you are, because you keep a certain part from them. I am who my children see. The only thing different about me is that I have sex with men. That is the only difference. If that makes me a different person in their eyes, what value is that? How is that going to enhance me as a father if suddenly this is in the equation too? I'm a good father. I'm a good husband. I take care of them. I was there when they needed things, and with school and growing up and advice and everything. And I don't think that what a person does in their bedroom, or someone else's bedroom, really
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is your children's concern. Later in our conversation, Jerry says that he'd like to tell his daughters the truth, but his wife doesn't want him to. She doesn't want anybody to know. He feels he has to respect her wishes. I ask him if his wife is simply ashamed that other people will know her husband looks for sex outside of the marriage? No, says Jerry. She knows the marriage works for them and simply doesn't want to have to put up with the opinions of people who won't understand. And they do have a sex life, Jerry says, of a sort. Are you as sexually attracted to women as you are to men? No. We don't depend on each other for our sexual satisfaction. I don't know
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if I should go into that or not. Probably not. Masturbation is something that is part of what we do for sexual satisfaction. And however you do it, it's satisfying. Does she see other men? No. She says that's not what I'm about. We talked for two hours. It started to get cold in the car. Over time, as we talked, it became clear that this man stayed in his marriage, partly because he couldn't imagine any other life for himself. To Jerry, being an adult means having a wife, a house in the burbs, a couple kids, dinner parties, and mortgage payments, and mowing the lawn. That was the only way that people lived. I mean anything else wasn't even considered. And so how could I be
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