234: Say Anything

Ira Glass

Neil Chesanow's book is now long out of print. But back in the 1980s, when it was published, it represented, I think, a kind of utopian endgame for what self-help books could accomplish. Instead of explaining in a general way how you should handle this situation or that situation in your life, the book, Please Read This to Me, cut to the chase, went to the next logical step. It actually gave you a script. You're in this situation? Say this. Here are the actual words you can use to kick off the conversation you need to have.

Ira Glass

Over and over in this book, Chesanow and his co-author, Gareth Esersky, take some of the most painful situations that people can have with each other and give surprisingly graceful one-minute speeches that a person could say or write or show to somebody else. There are a dozen about problems that people might have together in bed. 10 are about dealing with each other as friends. 10 are about the fights that couples have over money. One of the entries even ends with the sentence, "Let's become husband and wife." All of these are written for women because, Chesanow says, men don't buy these books.

Ira Glass

When you read one of these after another, the book as a whole seems to have this almost touching faith in the idea that getting the words right might actually solve something or help something. But of course, if you want religion in your life and your partner doesn't, or if you think you've fallen out of love, or if you don't want a baby and your spouse does, I've got to say, your main problem is not what words to use. Your main problem is the situation itself. Neil Chesanow says that plenty of times he heard from women who used the words in the book and it didn't fix the problem.

Ira Glass

Which brings us to today's radio program. Today, during this week in which talking is failing on an international level, from Washington and Moscow to Paris and Baghdad, we bring you stories that ask the question, what is talking good for, anyway? When does it work? When doesn't it work? From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Our program today in four acts.

Act One, How to Write a Note. In that act, a guy who thinks that words and reason might help his friend from trying to hurt himself. Act Two, The Battle of Words Versus Fear. In that act, one man decides to conquer his fears by listing them, all of them, one after another, all 183 of them.

Act Three, When a City Opens Its Big Mouth. The story of just how easy-- how astonishingly easy-- it is to get people of all ages and races and economic levels to open up and chat. You just need three little words. Act Four, Wedding Bells and Telephone Bells. In that act, Jonathan Goldstein and Liz Gilbert bring us stories of words failing-- in one case, in the worst wedding toast that any of us has ever heard of occurring at a real wedding. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, How to Write a Note.

This first story on our show today is unusual. It wasn't originally made to be broadcast on any radio show. It was a tape made by somebody who had never put anything together for radio. He made it to give to a friend. Here's what happened.

Back in July of 1999, Jake Warga heard that somebody who he was close to in college, his friend Brian, tried to kill himself. Jake went out to visit Brian and he took with him this little MiniDisc recorder that he had just bought for himself that had this little clip-on microphone. During his visit with Brian, they recorded this long conversation they had. And then when Jake got home, he decided to edit this down and give it to Brian as a present.

He had no idea how to actually edit sound or do anything like that, so at some point, he jumped onto the internet and found a website-- a website, actually, that we've mentioned on our show in the past, called transom.org that teaches beginners how to edit and mix audio with links to free editing software. And Jake put together this story you're about to hear. And he sent it to Brian. His hope was that if Brian heard this tape, heard himself talking, heard his own words, it might convince him that he shouldn't try to kill himself again. That didn't work. Here's the tape that Jake put together.

Jake Warga

Last year, my friend Brian tried to commit suicide. He had checked himself into a new hotel that runs alongside the interstate, which happens to pass through the small college town in which he lives. And without ceremony or note-writing, he took a combination of drugs he thought sufficient enough to quietly end his life.

As people often do, Brian and I started getting lazy about communicating after I left college and moved out of that same college town. Emails became rare, and phone calls rarer. After the longest period yet of not hearing from Brian, I got a call from an old mutual friend of ours asking if I had seen or heard from him. I said I had not.

We made calls and eventually found him safe in the hospital. A few weeks later, I arranged a visit to see how my old school-- and Brian-- had changed in the years I had been away. And when I came to visit, we sat for three hours on a park bench late one summer night. He was still in the process of piecing together exactly what had happened. This is Brian.

Jake Warga

Brian doesn't have that many friends. He's good-looking and funny, yet something inside prevents him from being confident in social skills. For example, it took a long time in our friendship before he told me, and I felt confident in asking, about his biological mother. He told me she died when he was young, that she had committed suicide. His father remarried soon after and raised Brian and his brother, who is now a doctor.

Jake Warga

About a week prior to this interview, Brian was arrested in San Francisco for possession of narcotics. Brian does not use drugs or alcohol. He had gone to the same bad part of town to buy the same drugs with the intent of trying again. I asked him about this trip to San Francisco.

Jake Warga

I've read that suicide is a selfish act, yet I have never really thought of Brian as selfish. But I can understand why the relatives of suicide victims might go through that angry phase, that phase when they place the blame on the person who killed themselves to help with any feelings of guilt they might have. I asked Brian if he thought what he did was selfish.

Jake Warga

In an effort to catch up on letter-writing, Brian would occasionally write long emails filled with wit, humor, and sometimes desperation. He's an excellent writer. I asked him why he didn't write a suicide note.

Jake Warga

As we were talking, an ambulance passed by in no particular hurry.

Jake Warga

As I write this, I wonder if I'm making Brian's note for him. Am I documenting this story for him, or for whom he might leave behind? This was not the first time he tried committing suicide, and, in light of his recent arrest, not his last.

Jake Warga

After sitting at a park bench for so long, and after Brian confessed to having talked more than he ever has, we were more than overdue for a stretch. And after a while of walking around aimlessly, we picked up our old habit of trainspotting and penny-smashing.

[TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWING]

Jake Warga

At this point, Brian and I are running alongside the train as it's beginning to stop at the nearby station.

[TRAIN RUNNING]

[SCREAMING]

[TRAIN HALTING]

Jake Warga

At the end of editing this story, Brian is still alive, living in the same small town. I don't know if he's getting better or not.

Ira Glass

Jake Warga. He sent this tape to his friend Brian in 1999 and waited for a reaction. Brian emailed him. He wrote, "How did you learn about the music that you included in the interviews?" He liked some of the pieces, but said they, quote, "Might be a tad overdramatic." And he wanted to know if Jake's computer had a filter that can make him sound less stupid.

Brian also asked Jake if he had any plans to publish this story. He told Jake that he thought Jake would have an easier time publishing it if he were dead. Nearly two years later, in the spring of 2001, Brian did try to kill himself again, and this time he didn't survive. Jake added this epilogue to the story.

Jake Warga

On May 9 of this year, Brian's body was found in his room. He had injected himself with a lethal dose of morphine. He was 31 years old. I had sent this tape to Brian sometime after our interview in hopes that, by hearing himself, like looking long and hard into a mirror, he would realize what he was saying, that he would snap out of it. Though he appreciated my efforts, I did not change him. And I came closer to realizing I never could.

Brian left packets for a few people, myself included. In them were copies of letters he wrote years before, explaining some of what he felt at the time, and tapes of the interview we did that night. He actually had to make cassette copies for his brother and cousin from the MiniDiscs that I sent him.

I've had to ask myself now that Brian's dead, why do I want to share this tape? One reason is I want to take something from death, to rob it, for a little while, of the mute it imposes. I also hope that it might help someone who feels like Brian. Or, for friends and family left confused, some sense of closure they may not have had if death were allowed its silence.

So Brian, I'm relieved your pains are over. And now it's time for ours to begin. You will be missed.

Ira Glass

Jake Warga. He teaches storytelling at Stanford University. Thanks to Jay Allison and transom.org and KUOW in Seattle, where Jake's story has appeared. If you or somebody you know might need help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-TALK. That's 1-800-273-8255.

[MUSIC - "I SEE A DARKNESS" BY BONNIE PRINCE BILLY]

Coming up, three magic words that make tough New Yorkers pour out their hearts to strangers. And I'm not talking about "hand it over" or "yes, you've won" or "I love you." Also, your fears listed in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Say Anything, stories about what talking can accomplish and what it cannot accomplish. This show was first broadcast back in 2003. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, The Battle of Words Versus Fear.

Michael Bernard Loggins is in his 50s. He's developmentally disabled. He lives in San Francisco. And he says that there's certain things that he's afraid of, things that just put him on edge. And one day, he felt like he needed to write them down, just to get them out of his system. And so he started writing, numbering each fear. And it quickly got to 10, and then to 20, then to 30 and 40 and 50, till he had 138 of them on paper.

The arts program for adults where he did this, a place called Creativity Explored, published this writing as a little handwritten, xeroxed zine called, "Fears of Your Life." A few years later, Michael found that there were more fears to tame by turning them into words, and he put out a part two, a sequel titled, "Fears of Your Life, a Whole Brand New One." This one listed 45 fears. Michael gave us permission to excerpt the two books, which we do now. Actor Tom Wright is our reader.

Tom Wright

Fear of hospitals and needles. Fear of school and dentists. Fear of noises and bumps in the middle of the night. Fear of doors when they slams. Fear of toys that come on by itself without anyone touching it.

Fear of being caught with another woman after cheating on your wife. Fear of being in wrong places at the wrong time. Fear of dropping your soda as it hit the ground and fizz on you. Fear of tall giraffe. Fear of some birds. Fear of being different.

I fear that those TV people would take off my favorite cartoon, The Rugrats, off the air and wouldn't be able to watch them anymore for a long, long, long time. Please let well enough alone. Please don't take my Rugrats cartoon off the air because I love that cartoon. Let there be a possibility that life with the Rugrats stays put, means leave my Rugrats cartoon on TV, Michael said.

Fear if you put things that doesn't belongs in your ears and you bust the drums that's are in your ears, it liable to run you deaf, where you can't hear anything at all. You wouldn't be able to hear cars when they're coming at you. That can be a frightening and very horrible situation to happen to you if you had an occurrence in real life, especially if you comes involved in it. Can you get hit by cars if you can't hear them?

Michael is afraid and frightening and fearful when Andrea Scheer goes away for a very, very, very long, long, long, long vacational trips in order to go traveling all over the world, almost like different places and different cities and countries to visit people in her own image and own language. He afraid Andrea Scheer would come back to San Francisco, California, with all different accents and won't be able to speak Michael's English, or not be able to understand his words that he's telling her, like Merry Christmas.

I'm afraid and fearful that pigeons don't know right from wrong to not go out into the street. They don't have the kind of memory as we humans does to know what to do and what shall not do. They must don't know the danger of their lives are being jeopardized. And they must don't know what can definitely happen to them to humans' knowledges and sense. They land just anywhere they can find a land on surface.

Fear of sharks. Fear of giant man. Fear of gorilla. Fear of Godzilla. Fear of tall woman. Fear of killer whales. Fear of dinosaurs bird. Fear of invisible man. Fear of Blob. Fear that, if I go into the library and I happens to get like seven or eight books and I happens to find a place in the library that I would get a lot of comfortable and begin reading in those seven or eight books, but one book at a time, and I start to read and somehow, my voice and mind start to get from low to high and, thinking that there weren't anyone elses reading theirs, and I look over and the people in the library, and I get fearful and I'll say, "Oops, sorry."

If your friends are people that you are with and you hear them making decision about what they decided that they are going to steal expensive and very valuable merchandise out of the department stores and don't care less, you say, I am out of here. Bye bye. I'm not getting caught in your crazy schemes. I'm not your stealer partner. I'm just your friend. It's going to trouble, and it's on your head, not mine. I'm not going to participate in stealing with you, so leave me out of your crazy schemes, especially if it involve Oreo cookies and other stuff, hot stuff. Fear of me getting in trouble just as well.

It's very scary and fearfully to be sleeping in your bed in the middle of the night whenever there's a telephone right beside the bed on you left near the door you once enter and exit out. You are sleeping. The telephone rang and scared the living life out of you in the middle of the night. Who is this calling at this hour of the night?

Fear of a blasted music on the radio, where you are not aware that the volume is turned up. Fear of rolling downhill backward. Fear of foghorn. Fear of getting hugged by somebody you don't like. There's Los Angeles fears. Fear of getting hit over the head when you carry lots of dough with you, or bucks.

Fear is like this. Someone like a woman that you grab a hold of her hand in going down the escalator, when of a sudden, you happens to be holding a stranger hand, not realizing that she isn't your mother is scary. Fear that if you put too much of toilet paper in the toilet bowl, it will run over and get all over the floor and on you and on someone else, too. It would leak from upstairs to the next floor below.

I am afraid someday I liable to get lost inside Children's Hospital if I'm not all so familiar with that place yet. It's going to take some time to get used to it. Fearfully of that great big, humongous Children's Hospital there ever would be to Michael's knowledge. Good that Michael's sister is driving him up there on Tuesday, January 15, 2002. Even though she's with him, she can easily get lost, too. Bad situation to tangled up in, especially if you that person has an appointment at 10:45 AM in the morning. Michael Bernard Loggins does.

Michael fear that if his teacher Francis doesn't put away Michael's Top Ramen noodles up in the desk drawer that Douglas will see it and he'll liable to want to take it, and he'll happen to eat up Michael Bernard Loggins' noodles himself. And Michael Bernard Loggins would be out of luck, but he would have to go home tonight and bring back to school another pack of noodles to eat himself so that wouldn't ever, ever happened with that Douglas eat up noodle story.

It would be very fearful if I reached up on top shelf trying to reach for a nice thicker-covered dictionary book and not ask for help from someone and the books come off the shelf and make lots of noises and the people gets angry at me and don't understand that I had want help, but I were afraid to ask for it. And they'd be a jerk or a creep, as Hope tells me. And people say that I'll have to pay for the shelf, and I get in lots of trouble behind it, says Michael.

Fear of being with a friend that you have recently met start to take you places with him and you doesn't know him all that well. You didn't know that he were going to bring you fear and lots of trouble your way. Someone you doesn't know all that well starts to carry you in the store to buy you and him something to eat and drink, and all of the sudden, something very fishy starts to happen. Like for instance, your friend that you are with could be up to trouble and whoever with him could be heading in for trouble, as well, especially if a friend of yours could be bringing you trouble by stealing a big package of Oreo cookie.

People are fearful of me, which I wonder, is they think I'm all that terrible? Or I'm thinking that they think I'm not human at all, because when they sit next to me, then they get back up and move away from me. I may be a stranger, but that doesn't make me a created monster or something like that. People aren't humans. They act like ignorance dogs with their tail in back of their legs or in between their middle bodies their legs. They don't think whose feeling they hurt at all. They just do it, no consideration for whatsoever. People don't think about how they hurt my feelings or don't give a hoot. They don't give a crap.

Fear of you never knowing you were going to lose your mother is very sad and scary experience you have to face and learn from. And you wonder why she has to die. I love her. And I had loved her once while she were alive, especially if she was the mother that raised you and the others through birth. And you only wish that you could have done all you can to help save her life. There going to be a worse times and hard times for Michael Bernard Loggins and his sisters and brothers, too, especially when Mother's Day comes. Afraid this is the last thing that ever occur to me.

Ira Glass

Excerpts from Michael Bernard Loggins' two xeroxed zines, "Fears of Your Life," Parts One and Two, read first by Tom Wright, an actor in Los Angeles. Michael writes and makes art in San Francisco. To get your own copy of these amazing books or to find out more about the arts program where they were made, visit the website of Creativity Explored, creativityexplored.org.

[MUSIC - "HE'S REALLY SAYING SOMETHING" BY BANANARAMA]

Ira Glass

Act Three, When the City Opens Its Big Mouth. For months, Liz Berry and Bill Wetzel have been going out in the streets, seven days a week, 12 or 13 hours a day, in any kind of weather, with a handmade sign that says, "Talk to me."

Ira Glass

In a way, it's a relief to see just how wary people are of being scammed. Nearly every person who approaches them asks the same question in one form or another. Are you taking money? Are you with some organization? Are you doing this for TV or something? In other words, as one Chinese woman put it--

Ira Glass

Here they are, people who decided that it might be nice if strangers would just interact a little more. And they were going to take their matters into their own hands to see that it happen, even though it pays no money, even though it means camping on people's couches, even though they end up acting like cheerful customer service representatives to a largely indifferent world, one exhausting hour after another.

Ira Glass

Liz is 25. Bill is 23. But they each use the kind of vernacular that you'd expect from an 80-year-old woman. They call men fellas. And instead of using the word ass or bum to describe the part of the body that you sit on, they favor the word patootie.

They smile easily. They look young and vulnerable and almost overwhelmingly earnest. That kind of thing either works for you, or it doesn't. And for them, apparently it does. People talk to them. The sign does its job. Two plainclothes cops approach, and the one in the wraparound sunglasses talks first.

Ira Glass

In the course of this one day in New York City, Liz and Bill chat with a teenager from LaGuardia High School who was all excited about the fake country she and her friends had made up. There was a drunk guy carrying bags full of brand new computer equipment. He talked about how much money he's making.

A woman who just quit the AmeriCorps program hours before because it seemed too dangerous, and they wouldn't even give her a phone. There was a guy in Harlem who fixed up two of the patients in the optometrist's office where he works. A woman who was mad at the teacher who hit her son in school. A well-dressed man who explained the intricacies of estate tax assessment.

And there was this guy, who walked up to Liz and Bill right after being let go from his job.

Ira Glass

As conversationalists, Bill and Liz are perfectly fine, no better or worse than you and me. Mostly what they do is keep the ball rolling. Watching all this for several hours, it makes you start to see everyone on the street differently. Everyone starts to seem like he or she could suddenly burst into a story. A whole city seems filled with people who need to get something off their chests.

Ira Glass

At the end of day, a man talks to them for three hours. Three hours. Mostly about a girlfriend that he lost who he can't get over, but also about the war and the time, years ago, that he tried to kill himself. By the end, it was 1:00 in the morning and he offered Liz and Bill $100, which they turned down. Liz was still full of energy and completely cheery. It seemed like she could go for another three hours. But it was late and the streets were clearing, and it was time to go home.

[MUSIC - "TALK TO ME" BY HEATHER NOVA]

Ira Glass

Act Four, Wedding Bells and Telephone Bells. We end our program today with two brief case studies of situations where the words for something don't even matter, where it's not about the words at all. We begin with this one from Elizabeth Gilbert.

Elizabeth Gilbert

My friend Kevin once attended a wedding where he heard the world's most inappropriate wedding toast. The toast began inauspiciously enough. The best man stood up during the meal, clinked his knife against the crystal, and the other guests all quieted down.

"I was thinking on the airplane ride here about what I was going to say today about Danny and Joyce," the best man began. "And all I could think at first was what a happy day today is." Good enough start. But then this speech took an interesting turn. "And I realized that what I really wanted to talk about this afternoon is jury duty."

"Now, I don't know how many of you have ever served on a jury," he went on. "But it's a fascinating process. I was just on a jury last year for the first time in my life, and I learned a lot about myself and about the legal system. It was a pretty serious case, too. It was actually a murder trial. It was very tragic. It was this old man who got killed. Very sad. He was getting money out of an ATM in the middle of the day and some gang kids came up and robbed him and shot him right in the face."

By now, many of the wedding guests were lowering their champagne glasses gently back down to the table. "It was a cut-and-dry case, really," he went on. "There were plenty of witnesses, and the forensic evidence pointed straight to one kid as the shooter. The kid was definitely guilty. But here's the thing. It was actually a capital offense. And my jury had to decide whether or not to give this kid the death penalty."

"Now, I don't know if any of you have ever had to decide whether somebody should live or die, but it's emotionally intense. We all knew the kid was guilty, but the death penalty is nothing to take lightly. In the end, though, we decided yes, this kid needs to die. And we sent him to his death."

The tent was silent. The bride, ashen. The best man took a moment to compose himself and concluded, "That was probably the worst day of my life. And I got to thinking about it on the plane because that day was nothing like today, which is a happy day. A really happy day. So here's to Danny and Joyce." Thus concluded the toast.

I've pondered the meaning of this story for years, and ultimately, I've decided that I get it. I've heard it said before that the human psyche cannot always tell the difference between good events and bad events. All we can feel is the tremor of the earth. Which is what happened to our best man, I believe. He was so overcome by happiness for his friend and he was so out of touch with his emotions that he couldn't express that happiness appropriately. All he could do was remember the last time he had felt so moved by something, and so he tried to express that.

Sure, there's nothing parallel about an old man getting shot in the face and a dear friend getting married-- unless, of course, you measure human emotion by the weight, in which case, the two events carry exactly the same impact. Which is to say that I think I finally understand what the best man was trying to convey that afternoon. And I raise my glass to the poor guy for his valiant and hopeless attempt to celebrate.

Ira Glass

Liz Gilbert is the author of many books, including most recently, Big Magic. Her story first appeared on a website that doesn't exist anymore but was called otherpeoplesstories.com.

Well, now we move onto our next example of wordless communication. Our very last example today from Jonathan Goldstein.

Jonathan Goldstein

Hettie lives in the same building she grew up in, and I live with her. We're in an apartment two floors up from her dad. He's 78 years old and doesn't want to bother climbing up the stairs every time he wants her, so he ends up usually just calling her on the phone. He calls anywhere from 20 to 30 times a day. The one thing he never wants is conversation.

Sometimes he calls to ask Hettie what time it is because he's too tired to get up and look for himself. Sometimes he calls to see what she's having for dinner. But most of the time, he calls and doesn't say a thing. Hettie picks up the phone and only hears classical music playing and she knows it's her dad with his kitchen radio on. Sometimes I'll walk into the living room and Hettie will be watching TV with the telephone cupped to her ear, not saying a word, and I know she's on the phone with her dad, and that, three floors down, he's sitting, watching TV just as silently.

When our line is in use, the voice mail picks up. Hettie's father will leave a dozen messages in a row. The way we know it's him is that there are no words, just the click of the phone. After about 10 minutes, the fact that he can't get through starts to drive him crazy, so he walks down to the buzzers by the building's main door and buzzes our apartment. The way he sees it, why should he have to walk up two flights of stairs when he could just walk down one?

The buzzer is like an amplified dentist drill. And sometimes, when you're quiet or deep in thought, the suddenness of it is like being goosed by something cold and metallic. It is the kind of sound that rats in lab experiments come to associate with a terrible, perhaps fatal, error. When we hear the buzzer, we get off the internet or the telephone so that he could call. Even now it could buzz, you think to yourself. Or even now.

One day, I didn't get off the internet quick enough, so he went back down to the buzzer, and this time, he just leaned on it. I got off the line and Hettie phoned him. He wasn't answering. She yelled down the stairs, but still he would not stop. He was making a point. I am not exaggerating when I say that he kept the buzzer going for several minutes straight. And after a while, you could hear layered fluctuations and subtle pitch blends. He was like Yoko Ono on that thing.

Hettie got on a chair and hit the box above the door with a hammer. The buzzing stopped. A few minutes later, her father called. "What was so important?" Hettie asked. Her father was quiet. Finally, he asked her if she knew what night the Oscars were on. Hettie told him that he had gone too far.

It made Hettie's father sad that our doorbell was gone. He suggested that he and Hettie get walkie-talkies. I imagined them both sitting in their separate kitchens, each eating a sandwich, and in between long silences, one of them uttering the occasional 10-4. Hettie refused the offer. "Fine," he said. "From now on, I'll just go down into the basement and turn off the building's power two times really fast. I noticed where they keep the main switch the other day. That'll be the signal for you to free up the line."

Hettie told him that that would be the signal for her to move out. Now her father just comes up and knocks. He knocks in a particular way that I think is supposed to be a secret code. Often, after Hettie has answered the door, he just stands there in the doorway, looking at her uncertainly, sort of put upon that now that he's got her attention. He actually has to come up with something to say.

Ira Glass

Jonathan Goldstein is the host of the podcast Heavyweight from Gimlet Media.

[MUSIC - "KNOCK THREE TIMES" BY TONY ORLANDO AND DAWN]

Ira Glass

Well, this rerun episode of our program was produced by Starlee Kine and me, with Alex Blumberg, Diane Cook, Wendy Dorr, and David Kestenbaum. Matt Tierney is our technical director. Production help from Diane Wu.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia, who begs you, who implores you.

Tom Wright

Please don't take my Rugrats cartoon off the air because I love that cartoon.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

[MUSIC - TONY ORLANDO AND DAWN, "KNOCK THREE TIMES"]