810: Say It to My Face
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Prologue: Prologue
Ira Glass
A few months ago, somebody said something to me that I found so humiliating that I have never talked about it. Not to anybody. Not even with the people I love the most. This is way too embarrassing. It makes me wince even to think of it. But telling my loved ones and my friends, that's real life. Those are people I have to live with. You and me, here, right now, on the radio, we have a different kind of relationship, right? I can tell you.
So this thing happened while I was still riding around the city on this poncy little folding bike, which looks ridiculous, and there's no dignity to it, but it is handy to have a bike that folds up if you live in the city. And it was maybe 9:00 PM. And I was riding home from work, and I was wearing a suit because I'd been to work. And that morning, it had been cold, so I wore a coat, even though now, at night, it was warm enough, so the coat was unnecessary, but it was just easier to wear the coat than to be carrying it.
I was also wearing one of those-- you know those reflective orange and yellow vests? I was wearing it because I'd had three bike accidents, thanks to the fact that the folding bike loses its grip on the street in the rain. Extra precaution seemed worth it. I don't know. I have gray hair at that point, a neatly trimmed beard. I was wearing a helmet. All in all, I was a picture of fastidious care.
I was going south on Avenue B. I was between 3rd and 2nd Street. A young woman was traipsing across the street, not wearing a coat, full of cheerful, loose energy, bright eyes. She sees me on the bike. I am this locked down, buttoned down, helmeted, overdressed, gray-haired man in a reflective vest. And as I rode past her, the thing she says to me is, "Do you fart out the front?" That's all she said. "Do you fart out the front?"
It was really kind of stunning. [LAUGHS] As an insult, it's both incredibly efficient and deeply mysterious. I don't even get what image she's trying to convey, in a literal sense. But I do think I get the feeling she's going for, and it's not respectful, you know? It's kind of like, you fussy, foppish, overcareful old man.
And can I say, that thought she had, she could have kept that to herself. I think all kinds of things about people on the street all the time. I keep those thoughts to myself. I do not say those things to people, to their faces, because they are strangers. They are complete strangers. They don't need to know.
But of course, it is so much easier to say what you really think with a complete stranger. With our friends, with our loved ones, it can be so much more difficult to be honest, sometimes. Right?
When somebody you really know and you have some tough truth that you need to talk through with them, the math of figuring out when to tell them and what to say and should you actually get into it and say anything at all, it can be so complicated. Like, sometimes you tell them, and the two of you talk it through and work it out, and it is relationship changing. It's vital. It is so important. And sometimes, annoyingly, it fucking blows up in your face.
Today, on our program, we have stories of two friendships. And in each of these friendships, one of the friends has something to say to the other, something big, and they have to decide, do I say it to their face? In each of these stories, they make a decision, and then that is actually when it gets interesting. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.
Act One: What Are Friends For? No Seriously. What Are They For?
Ira Glass
Act 1, "What Are Friends For? No, Seriously. What are They For?" So we start today with somebody who had something that he needed to talk through with his friend. And rather than have the tough conversation and get things off his chest and come to some new understanding, he did not do that. No, no, no. Instead, he stewed about it for years. And then he talked about it to everyone, everyone, but the one person that he really needed to talk to. Aviva DeKornfeld explains how that worked out for him.
Aviva DeKornfeld
The thing Gabe Mollica accidentally got stuck thinking about was a friendship breakup, and he got stuck there for a long time, eight years. And then he took all those thoughts and did the thing that only a former theater kid would do-- he compiled them into a one-man show. That's how I first heard about this story. I went to see Gabe's show one night because friendship is something I'm stuck thinking about, too. I recently went through a friend breakup myself.
Gabe's a small-time comedian, lives in Queens. Has a day job teaching kids how to write essays. And he starts his show by saying he doesn't have any real friends. What he has is a group of bros-- his word-- from high school. And his relationship with them is very stereotypically bro-like.
They do lots of activities together-- watch sports, play video games-- but never get into the nitty gritty of what's going on in one another's emotional lives. Like, for example, in the show, Gabe describes spending the whole day with his closest friend of the bros, Nick, and then afterwards, going over to his parents' house in Long Island.
Gabe Mollica
And I walked through the front door. And as soon as I do, my mom spots me and she goes, oh, my God, Gabe. You were just with Nick. I just saw on Facebook that Nick's sister just had a baby. How does Nick feel about being an uncle? And I was like, what? How does Nick feel about being-- I was like, I've known Nick my entire life, but I don't know how Nick feels about anything.
But I've seen the way my mother and my sister hang out with their friends. In the afternoon, they get a cup of coffee. At night, they have a glass of wine. This is key-- they look at each other. For them, the activity is each other. And for us, the activity is literally anything else. And for a long time, truly, hand to God, this did not bother me at all.
Aviva DeKornfeld
But then something hard happened. And for the first time in his adult life, Gabe needed more from his friends than just a good hang. What happened is, his mom got sick. She checked into the hospital, and for weeks, doctors can't figure out what's wrong with her. One afternoon, Gabe leaves the hospital to go walk the family dog, and it's his first real moment of quiet since everything happened. He talks about this on his show, and I asked him about it. He said he texted Nick to update him on his mom's status.
Gabe Mollica
And he responds by telling me she might be eligible for workers' comp. You might be able to get some money for this. And I'm reading that text and realizing that that is not what I'm interested in hearing about. I wasn't asking for legal advice. I was asking-- I was, in my own way, trying to get somebody to be like, hey, man, that's scary. Are you all right?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Like, I'm here for you.
Gabe Mollica
Yeah. Yeah, I'm here for you. How are you feeling?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Not, "you may be entitled to compensation."
Gabe Mollica
Yeah. Yeah, it was very Cellino & Barnes. And I think I was upset that he was just kind of missing the mark on what I needed. And so when he sent me that, it really made me feel alone. It made me feel like, what if I don't have anybody to be that in my life? Somebody who just gets it without having to be explained.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Have you ever had that?
Gabe Mollica
I had a best friend named Tim. And we were very, very close. And he was kind of like my guy for a couple of years. And it was really special.
Aviva DeKornfeld
When Gabe talks about this in his show, this is where he pivots. From here, it turns into this long ode to the only friend Gabe had ever had who would have known what to say when his mom got sick, this guy named Tim, who he'd broken up with years ago, but still hasn't gotten over because of the abrupt way it ended. It's haunted him for years. This is the thing I'm going to tell you about-- Gabe's one emotionally intimate friendship with another guy and the conversation they should have had that could have changed everything.
Gabe met Tim his sophomore year of college at Hamilton in poetry class. Gabe noticed him right away, because he managed to analyze poetry in a way that somehow didn't feel pretentious. He seemed sort of casually brilliant. So one day after class, Gabe strikes up a conversation with Tim. They walk across campus, talking.
Tim tells him that he played varsity baseball in high school, which is very impressive to Gabe, because while he'd happily accepted his fate as a musical theater nerd, he still hadn't quite kicked that straight guy urge to be good at sports. Tim, then, asks Gabe what he did in high school.
Gabe Mollica
And I'm like, yeah, man, I was in musicals. I was a little sheepish telling him, I remember. And he kind of lights up when he hears musicals. And he's like, dude, I love musicals. He's like, what have you been in? And I start telling him, Little Shop of Horrors, and Oklahoma, and all this stuff. And I'm like, have you ever been in a musical? Like, you do all this stuff.
And he's like, well, I was in one show junior year of high school. I was in Guys and Dolls. And I'm like, oh, that's crazy. I was in Guys and Dolls. Who did you play? And he says, I played Sky Masterson. And I'm like, oh, I also played Sky Masterson. And so we have this moment where we're kind of just like looking at each other like, oh, that's weird. Like junior year of high school, we played the same character.
Aviva DeKornfeld
From there, Gabe and Tim fell into that kind of all-consuming friendship you fall into when you're young, when you have time for that kind of thing. This newfound relationship felt different from Gabe's high school friendships. He and Tim could talk about real stuff.
Gabe Mollica
We would talk about family stuff. We'd talk about money stuff. We'd talk about the sacrifices our parents were making.
Aviva DeKornfeld
For you guys to go to college?
Gabe Mollica
Yeah. Both of us were on financial aid. Both of us kind of had this chip on our shoulder, like we didn't necessarily belong there. And so we kind of had this understanding. We just got each other.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Tim and Gabe would regularly stay up till 4:00 AM, smoking clove cigarettes and debating the kind of stuff you debate about in college. A year passed like this. Then Tim invited Gabe to come work with him at the summer camp for kids with chronic illnesses.
Gabe joined him and found he loved it, in part because one night at camp, Tim introduced Gabe to another counselor, Kate. Gabe remembers Tim telling him, you're going to love Kate. She's our kind of person. Tim was right. Gabe and Kate talked for hours. And at the end of the night, they walked back to their bunks together.
Gabe Mollica
And so we're doing this walk, and it's very romantic. And she kind of just like leans in, and we kiss. And something kind of goes off, at least in my brain, where I was like, whatever I need to do to hold on to this. This is like a real one.
Aviva DeKornfeld
The rest of the summer is dreamy. But Gabe has to leave camp a couple weeks early to start a teaching job in Scotland. He and Kate stay in touch. They're actually in contact all the time, texting, emailing, sending poems back and forth. But the more time passes, the less into it Kate seems to be. Eventually, she calls Gabe and breaks things off.
Gabe was upset and wrote to Tim to tell him the news. Tim responded, saying he was sorry to hear about Kate and that he loved him. Tim and Gabe and some of their camp friends had planned a New Year's trip to reunite in Edinburgh, but when they arrive, it's not fun at all, at least not for Gabe. All he wants to do is hang out with Tim one-on-one and talk about Kate, but--
Gabe Mollica
Tim and I are not really talking that much.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Why not?
Gabe Mollica
I don't know. Yeah, it felt like he wasn't really interested in spending alone time with me.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Finally, days into the trip, Tim asked Gabe to hang out, just them. Gabe is thrilled. It feels like the trip he actually wanted to have is finally starting. They go to a casino, then walk back to Gabe's apartment, where Gabe starts making them a late night snack.
Gabe Mollica
I think I had frozen pizza bagels or something, and I preheated the oven. And Tim is sitting on my kitchen counter. And he says, Gabe, life sucks and then you die.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Just out of the blue?
Gabe Mollica
Just out of the blue. He's wearing a hat, and he's sitting on my counter. He's kind of just staring off. He's like, life sucks and then you die. And I'm like, what's up?
Aviva DeKornfeld
What do you think is going on?
Gabe Mollica
I think at a certain point, there's a part of you that kind of knows things that are going to happen before they happen. And you're like, please, anything else. You know?
Aviva DeKornfeld
You're like, no, no, no, no, no, preparing for impact?
Gabe Mollica
Yeah. He's basically like, Kate and I got together, and we're not sorry. We're not going to apologize for it. This is kind of like what happened. We're together. And you're going to have to deal with that. That's what's going on.
Aviva DeKornfeld
What do you say?
Gabe Mollica
I was mad. I think I yelled. I was like, what do you mean? I want an explanation. You're not thinking about how you're coming across. You're just like, what are you talking about?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Are there specific moments that you look back at differently after Tim revealed to you the truth?
Gabe Mollica
Yeah, it makes you revisit. It makes you revisit the summer. There's staff party pictures of them hanging out. And the night of the staff party, I was in Edinburgh, and I couldn't sleep. And there was pictures of them together. And I remember kind of zooming in, like, where are their hands? Is this intimate? Am I--
Aviva DeKornfeld
Where were their hands?
Gabe Mollica
Her hand was kind of like by his waist. And I was like--
Aviva DeKornfeld
Too low.
Gabe Mollica
Too low! Too low.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I did talk to Kate about all this. She said she had liked Gabe. But when she fell for Tim, it felt like they were beginning the big relationship of their lives. And that's what Tim tried to emphasize to Gabe. But even with that being the case, it's pretty intense to say, I'm not sorry.
Gabe Mollica
Yeah.
Aviva DeKornfeld
He really said that?
Gabe Mollica
In my recollection, yeah. He was just like-- or he was like, I'm not going to apologize. I'm not going to--
Aviva DeKornfeld
Right. Like admit guilt.
Gabe Mollica
Yeah. Yeah, it was like dealing with a corporation. Like, here's your settlement, but we're not going to admit any guilt. And I kind of kept waiting for him to be like, dude, I feel awful.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Would that have helped?
Gabe Mollica
I think so, yeah. I like to think there's a way he could have done that that didn't end the friendship.
Aviva DeKornfeld
This is what Gabe can't wrap his head around-- why Tim did it in this way. He could deal with the breakup with Kate. There's a script for that kind of heartache. It was Gabe's breakup with Tim that really hurt because it wasn't supposed to happen. It's not part of the friendship contract. It felt impossible to square the coldness of what Tim had done with the guy Gabe believed his friend to be.
Eight years have passed since then. Gabe keeps expecting him to reach out because in Gabe's mind, Tim's the one who broke the relationship. So it was on him to fix it. But they still haven't talked about what happened. Even though Tim and Kate broke up years ago, they'd been engaged before that. In Gabe's show, he tells the whole story, how he and Tim met, camp, Scotland, why they stopped talking, and what he wishes he could say to Tim now.
Watching Gabe on stage, I was struck, but not surprised, by how much brain space this all still takes up for him. I know from my experience, when an important relationship implodes, detonated by one spectacularly out-of-character decision, of course, you try to make it make sense. But it's exhausting to try and put a puzzle together when you only have half the pieces. So eventually, you have to stop looking for those other pieces and make a new picture with the ones you do have.
That's what Gabe's doing with his show. And he's hoping for something more. He wants Tim to see the show so Tim can understand what all this was like for Gabe and apologize for the way he handled Gabe's feelings. And then, maybe, he could imagine having him back as a friend. The only problem with Gabe's plan, he'd never actually invited Tim to the show.
Aviva DeKornfeld
How long have you been doing the show?
Gabe Mollica
The first time I did this show was in the spring of 2019.
Aviva DeKornfeld
So you've been doing this show for four years?
Gabe Mollica
Yeah.
Aviva DeKornfeld
And you've never invited him through that whole time?
Gabe Mollica
No.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Even though you made the show for him.
Gabe Mollica
Yeah. I know that sounds--
Aviva DeKornfeld
Did you think that he knew about the show?
Gabe Mollica
Yeah. I was pretty sure that he knows about it.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Why?
Gabe Mollica
His mom's on Facebook.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Gabe's friends with Tim's mom on Facebook. So Tim must know about the show because you know, moms. Gabe assumed Tim would show up at some point. And a handful of times, he actually thought he heard Tim's laugh in the audience. It seemed crazy to me to put so much time and energy and money he didn't have into making something for essentially one person, and then stopping short of actually inviting that person to see it.
I'll be honest, if the thing Gabe complains about most is how men don't talk to each other about their feelings, I just want to say, dude, look in the mirror. Since he was never going to take the final step, just invite Tim himself, I asked if I could do it for him. After briefly panicking, he told me to make the call. To my surprise and Gabe's anxious delight, Tim agreed to come.
We were all set. Tim had his plane ticket to New York. Gabe had grabbed a slot at a local theater and started selling tickets for the show. And then, four days before the performance, Tim emails me at midnight and says he's changed his mind. He's not going to come. He'd realized what he signed up for, flying halfway across the country to watch himself portrayed as a villain in front of a live audience, and thought, why subject myself to that?
I call and text Tim, but get no response. And then, Tim finally calls me back the night before he's supposed to get on the plane to tell me his mind was made up. As it happens, Tim calls me as I'm on my way out. I'm going to a birthday dinner, where I'll see my ex-friend for the first time since she friend dumped me via text a year ago and then refused to discuss what happened.
I was nauseated at the thought of seeing her, and yet, I spent the better part of an hour pacing outside the restaurant, trying to convince Tim to see his ex-friend, knowing mine was just on the other side of the restaurant door.
Like, I get why he's saying no, but I tell him, most of us in this situation, we just try to avoid our ex-friend the best we can and occasionally suffer through awkward run-ins until one of us moves away or dies. But he and Gabe have this rare and kind of special chance to actually get some understanding. And I tell Tim, I hope he takes the opportunity. Tim's skeptical, but the next day, he texts me a picture from the plane.
Gabe heads to the theater early to get ready while I go collect Tim. Immediately, I see why Gabe liked him so much. He's warm and chatty, despite being visibly on edge. Tim and I walked to the show, talking about nothing, trying to pretend we're not strolling into a very strange situation. When we find our seats, I try to talk to Tim about how he's feeling, but he's distracted, looking around, trying to see if he recognizes anyone.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Are you feeling happy to be here at all or no?
Tim
I-- happy is not-- I wouldn't use the word "happy." I would say it's weird to be here, for sure, you know?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Tim spots Gabe's mom, and then the show starts.
Announcer
Gabe Mollica!
[APPLAUSE]
Aviva DeKornfeld
Gabe begins the show breezily, and right away, there are some jokes that really hit for Tim.
Tim
[LAUGHING]
Aviva DeKornfeld
I wonder if Gabe can hear Tim's laugh from the stage. Gabe tells lots of stories from their friendship, painting them as this kind of buddy comedy duo, if Dead Poets Society were a buddy comedy.
Gabe Mollica
The way I would take an English class, so I would just always praise whatever we were reading, put me in the very unfortunate position of going to class and being like, oh, professor, another banger from Milton, you know? But Tim would walk into poetry class with like opinions and shit. You know what I mean? He'd be like, this poem's good. This one's bad. This is the best thing I've ever read.
Aviva DeKornfeld
The show is not an 80-minute takedown. It's mostly about how much Gabe admires Tim. And yet, there are moments that are hard to watch while sitting next to Tim, like when Gabe recounts the night in Edinburgh when Tim came clean.
Gabe Mollica
And he says, well, Kate and I are together, and we're not sorry.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I'd pinned a mic on Tim, and the absence of sound coming from him during this part of the show was conspicuous. I'd spent hours talking to Gabe for this story, but sitting there, in the dark of the theater with Tim, no matter what had happened in the past, it seemed genuinely hard to be him in this moment. I don't think I'd appreciated the bravery all this required on Tim's part. Gabe finishes the show, triumphant. He later told me it was the best he'd ever performed.
Afterwards, Tim needs a minute to clear his head. He slips out for a walk while I stand with Gabe in front of the theater. Gabe is in the middle of showing me the clove cigarettes he doesn't smoke anymore, but bought for nostalgia's sake to smoke with Tim, when Tim appears, arms open, and pulls Gabe into a hug.
Gabe Mollica
Hey, Timmy. Thanks for coming, man.
Aviva DeKornfeld
We drive to the studio and get right into it. Tim said it was strange to sit in the audience, hearing someone talk about him, knowing he couldn't respond. Of course, that didn't stop him from wanting to respond, like in the moment when it's revealed that he and Kate got together.
Tim
The crowd goes, boo. I was like, fuck you, guys!
Gabe Mollica
[LAUGHS]
Tim
That's my life you're booing, you know?
Gabe Mollica
No one booed tonight. Say ooh'd.
Tim
OK, OK.
Gabe Mollica
No, no, but boo is different than ooh.
Tim
This is-- I agree. There's a difference.
Aviva DeKornfeld
The two reminisce for a bit, and pretty quickly, it's apparent that Tim does not remember the rise or fall of their friendship in nearly as much detail as Gabe does. There was one part, though, that Tim remembered clearly. Tim had tried at one point, in his own way, to make amends.
A year after their breakup, he'd invited Gabe to a concert with music by the composer Edvard Grieg, which he chose specifically because there's this one song in that concert that meant a lot to both of them when they were friends. It's called "The Last Spring." Gabe first introduced the song to him in college, when he took Tim to a Grieg concert. And then a few weeks later--
Tim
We're like up at 3:00 AM, playing video games listening to classical music on the radio. And the song "The Last Spring" came on on the radio. And I think we just kind of like stopped talking and turned up the music and sat there and listened to it. But it was just a very special moment, as I remember it.
Aviva DeKornfeld
This was the context Tim had in his head when he reached out to Gabe, thinking that maybe they could be friends again.
Tim
I was like, let's go to this concert together. It's this piece of music that has this deep resonance for both of us. And my feeling was, this is a gesture of good will, of extending an olive branch. And then Gabe said no. And so, at that point, I was like, OK. Ball's in his court.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Gabe, when you got that message from Tim, did you see it as the olive branch that Tim meant it to be?
Gabe Mollica
I don't think I saw it as like, this is Tim putting everything on the table. My perspective was like, oh, Tim doesn't want to acknowledge the hurt he's caused. He just wants to be friends again without having to do anything, is how I felt.
Tim
I think that perhaps my invitation to you to go to that concert, I think I was maybe overly relying on, you should feel as sentimental about this piece of music as I do and connect it to our friendship as much as I do. And so, without me explaining it, I remember feeling like the meaning behind this should be self-evident.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Something Tim and Gabe seemed to have in common is a kind of magical thinking. Tim had hoped that Gabe would understand everything he was trying to express-- complicated feelings, like love and remorse and nostalgia-- with what was essentially a link to Ticketmaster. Gabe had expected Tim to, romcom-style, appear unannounced one night at his performance without ever actually inviting him to a show or even telling him it existed. It's like each one had all the benefit of being heard without the burden of having to say anything at all.
The main thing Gabe wanted out of all of this was an apology for how Tim broke the news to him about Kate all those years ago. He thinks if Tim had handled it differently, they could have stayed friends. I know this is what he's waiting for. He's told me that. But an hour of circling around the topic goes by before, finally, Gabe brings it up, in a sideways sort of way.
Gabe Mollica
I guess a question for you is like, do you wish that it had happened differently?
Tim
Of course. Of course, I wish it had happened differently. I would tell you 1,000% I felt bad about it. I totally felt bad about it. But if I'm being totally honest, I remember that conversation differently. What I remember saying is less like, I'm not sorry, and more, I'm not asking your permission. But what I didn't want was for you to be like, yeah, Timmy, please don't do this.
Gabe Mollica
Yeah, I mean, that's-- it's illuminating. There was always a part of me that wanted you to tell me like, I think I'm in love with her. I don't know what to do. And at least, it maybe would have given me the opportunity to be like, Timmy, I don't want to lose you as a friend. You're coming to me, and I want you to be happy. And what always was frustrating was like, it never felt like I had the chance to be the bigger man.
Tim
That's fair, man. That's fair.
Gabe Mollica
Wow.
Tim
That's fair.
Gabe Mollica
Oh, man.
Tim
No, no, that's fair because you're right. Because what I said and even what I remember saying-- you're right-- is like, I was like, I am not going to give you the chance to tell me no, or to tell me, you really don't want me to do this.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Do you feel sorry about that, Tim?
Tim
Yeah, so what I don't feel sorry for is the facts, right? The underlying-- and but what I am learning, for the first time today is that it wasn't the facts.
Gabe Mollica
No, of course not.
Tim
It's that it wasn't the fact, and well, and that's the-- you know.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Wait, so do you feel sorry about the way the facts came out?
Tim
Well, yeah, now knowing that that's the problem, yeah.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Wait, you should tell Gabe that.
Tim
I did, I think. Didn't we?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Well, you didn't say the words, "I'm sorry."
Tim
No, I think-- well, I thought I said that earlier in the conversation, but I am sorry for the way that I broke that news to you.
Gabe Mollica
I really appreciate you saying that. Yeah, Tim, so I've been waiting a long time to hear that.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I was surprised by how unemotional and anti-climactic the apology felt. Here Tim was, saying all the words that Gabe had wanted so badly to hear, and yet, somehow, it didn't feel like all that much. And I think that's because of this other thing that kept surfacing throughout their conversation. It's one of those awkward things that seems borderline cruel to bring attention to, but I'd be remiss not to ask. So, nervously, I do.
Aviva DeKornfeld
The thing that I can't tell is, was your friendship as important to you, Tim, as it was to Gabe?
Tim
It was very important to me. I don't know how to answer that. I think-- it was incredibly important to me. I don't know that it was as important, but he was a very, very, very important friend to me.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Do you have friends now that occupy the space that Gabe previously occupied?
Tim
I do.
Aviva DeKornfeld
You do?
Tim
I do. Yeah.
Aviva DeKornfeld
We wrap up our conversation shortly after this, but the question still nags at me. So I asked Tim about it again the next day, when it was just the two of us talking.
Tim
It's a question I'm very self conscious about answering.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Why?
Tim
Because I wouldn't say like he was a guy I knew. Yeah, he was a very good friend of mine.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Was he your best friend at any point?
Tim
No, see, now we're getting into things about best friends. And I think like--
Aviva DeKornfeld
Best friends can be a tier, not a person.
Tim
Best friend's a tier, not a person.
Aviva DeKornfeld
So was he on that tier?
Tim
So, whether Gabe was on that tier, he was certainly close to it. I don't know if I would throw him all the way up there.
Aviva DeKornfeld
It was startling to see the truth of the matter laid so bare. Tim just didn't love Gabe as much as Gabe loved Tim. And really, an imbalance in love-- isn't that ultimately the reason that all relationships end? I ran this by Gabe, that maybe there was a mismatch in their feelings for one another or in how they understood their relationship. He rejected that idea outright. He says he was there. He remembers what it felt like.
Gabe Mollica
This idea that we weren't best friends, I don't want to say it's a heresy, but it's just not true.
Aviva DeKornfeld
But it's not true in your story.
Gabe Mollica
Yeah, and I think-- yes.
Aviva DeKornfeld
It could be true in Tim's.
Gabe Mollica
Yeah, and I just don't buy it. And I think that's self-preservation.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I think a part of me had been jealous that Tim and Gabe got the chance to come to some understanding, a thing that my ex-friend made clear was not on the table for us. But it hadn't occurred to me that sitting down together and rehashing things might not lead to some sort of new common ground, that Tim could just strike a match on Gabe's memories and say, nope, you're wrong. It wasn't like that. I never felt that way about you.
If that's what happens when you try to talk it out, yeah, no, thanks. I guess that's the problem when you write a one-man show, hoping it'll prompt someone to tell you the thing you've always wanted to hear. There's no guarantee that they'll say the lines you've assigned to them.
Ira Glass
Aviva DeKornfeld is a producer at our show. Gabe Mollica's show, Solo, A Show About Friendship, reopens in October and runs in New York, LA, Boston, and Chicago. Tickets are at gabemollica.com. Coming up, can words succeed where sparkly platform shoes have failed? That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.
Act Two: Pinky Swear
Ira Glass
It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Say It to My Face. We have two stories today. Each of them is about a friendship where there is something that the two friends do not see eye to eye on, and that something is so fundamental that talking about it seems just explosive. And the friends have to decide, do we discuss this at all? We've arrived at Act 2 of our program. Act 2, "Pinky Swear."
What's so interesting about the friends in this next story is that they talk every day. They are so close, best of besties. And yet, there is something that they have never talked about that is so big and so basic, that one of them wonders, are we really as close as I thought? Jasmine Garsd is one of the two friends. She's been on our show before. Jasmine lives here in the United States, in New York, but grew up in Buenos Aires.
Jasmine Garsd
On the day I left home, I sat in my kitchen with my best friend Gabbie. A taxi was waiting outside. We were leaving Argentina. I was 18. Listen, I said, barely able to make the words out without sobbing. There's something I want you to have.
Jasmine Garsd
I gave you my sparkly platform shoes.
Gabbie
It was a shitty gift. Como, really? It only means something to you. Seriously?
Jasmine Garsd
Yeah. Yeah, like how about your comic book collection?
Gabbie
Era re especifico! Que carajos ibas a hacer con unas plataformas, tipo, fue como, okay, creo que las regalé al primer homeless que encontre.
Jasmine Garsd
What the hell am I supposed to do with these, he says he thought to himself. Before he could say anything, Mama stuffed some cash savings in a pouch under her shirt and yelled, let's go. My grandma, Grandma Iaia, held my face in her bony hand and whispered something in my ear. I turned to Gabbie and told him, I'm going to move back as soon as I can. I promise.
That was more than 20 years ago. Gabbie is still my best friend. We talk all the time about everything. He knows when I'm going to go get my pap smear. I know when he's had a bad day, just by the tone of his voice. By now, some of my facial expressions are actually his. They just stuck to me, like the way I curl my lower lip when I find someone annoying.
But as close as we are, we've never really talked about how I said I was going to move back, and I haven't followed through. It became a sort of unspoken rule. We cannot talk about this one small, enormous thing, until recently, when all the words we'd kept in over the years came spilling out. It happened by accident.
Of course, nothing truly happens by accident. We reached this boiling point by our own doing, by assuming we knew one another so well, we could read each other's minds. And to be fair, we often could. We've always understood one another instinctively, from the moment we met. We were 15. Back then, I mostly spent my summer vacations at the neighborhood park. That's where I first saw him.
He was lying out in the grass next to another friend of mine. A cigarette hung from his lip. He held a Quilmes beer in his hand. And I took one look at him and thought, what a badass. He took one look at me-- lanky, pale, blocking his sun-- and curled his lower lip. He was irritated.
Gabbie
Acá está como la amiga cheta. Tipo te vi como es como demasiado rubia y demasiado blanca, es una cheta insoportable, tal cual.
Jasmine Garsd
Oh, look at this one. She looks too white. She must be insufferable. And just to prove him wrong, I took my first ever swig of beer. It was piss warm, but I chugged it down. This earned me some respect. We started joking.
We were very different. I was a scared and secretly angry, nerdy Jewish girl. He was a brown kid who was scared of being outed as gay. But we quickly signaled to each other that we both came from homes where there was a lot of arguing that easily boiled over into physical fights. The adults in our lives, they often behaved like terrifying children.
I want so badly to tell you that from that day on, we became troublemakers. But Gabbie was not the bad boy I thought he was when we met. We were not "el terror del barrio," rebellious teens.
Gabbie
Eramos ninos señora.
Jasmine Garsd
We were, as he puts it, ninos señora, children who behaved like aunties. Our big act of rebellion was secretly drinking all of my mom's tea. We hung out in the park and just gossiped, smoking cheap national tobacco, ripping the filter off to feel tougher.
Gabbie
Comprar los cigarrillos mas baratos nacionales que podíamos encontrar--
Jasmine Garsd
The park, it was our island. And on it, we shared our fears, our obsessions, and our escape plans, which always involved moving far away. Things were not good at home. My parents, who were professors, had been unemployed for a whole year. Gabbie's-- his dad was a cab driver, his mom was a secretary-- they were barely making ends meet.
Gabbie
Había noches donde como por ahí como cenábamos mate cocido con pan.
Jasmine Garsd
Sometimes, he'd come home from the park and find there was just tea and bread for dinner. At the end of each night, we'd say goodbye, see you tomorrow. I'd go back home and sometimes slip into my Grandma Iaia's bed, next to her. She kept a tiny plastic radio under her pillow, which blasted the news all night.
And over the years, the news got increasingly worse. 10% unemployment, 15% unemployment, 17% unemployment. People started just breaking into supermarkets. The police responded brutally. They killed protesters just a few minutes from my house. We had three replacement presidents in the span of one month. Lying next to Iaia's radio was like falling asleep to a muffled doomsday clock.
By the end of the year, my family decided to go. It felt like now or never. At the time, there was an exodus out of Argentina. There was a saying I heard a few times back then, "el último en salir, apague la luz." Last one out, get the lights. In the days and weeks after my departure, Gabbie watched one friend after another pick up and leave. And he was still there. He says he felt anchored to a sinking ship.
Gabbie
Me enojaba, me frustraba. me sentía como que quedaba anclado en el mismo lugar, que todos podían, que la mayoría podía elegir irse a donde quisiese.
Jasmine Garsd
I was angry, he says. I was frustrated. I felt like I was stuck in place. Everyone else could choose to go wherever they wanted, but not me. I have to stay here.
Gabbie
Todo el resto, el resto de ellos pueden elegir a dónde irse, a vos no, vos te tenés que quedar acá.
Jasmine Garsd
He dreamt of studying fashion, becoming a designer. But his mother had sat him down and told him university was not in the cards. They needed him to get a second job. So he started waiting tables. The tips were meager. No one was eating out.
Meanwhile, for me, it felt like I'd gotten thrown into the deep end of America with no life jacket. We lived in a motel in Southern California. I worked a lot of jobs-- dawn at a bakery, afternoons at the supermarket. Weekends, I sold cowboy boots at a store. Back then, Mama was always yelling at me. There was no A for effort. There was just, keep swimming or you'll drown.
Wake up, Jasmine. Enroll in community college, Jasmine. Go to bed, Jasmine. But before bed, I always tried to call Gabbie on Skype or with these international calling cards they sold at liquor stores. I'd tell him about whoever I had a crush on. He'd tell me about the pants he'd designed and made for himself.
In the background of these conversations, there was always my promise to return. Whenever I'd have a bad day, whenever my creepy boss would give me another unsolicited massage, I'd call and tell him, fuck this place. I'm so glad I'm coming back soon. Whenever Gabbie would have a bad day, when he'd get into an argument with his family or his boss would throw a tantrum, he'd sigh and say, can't wait for you to come back.
But returning at this point was impossible. I couldn't afford to even visit, let alone move back. We just needed time, we figured. I needed time. Two more years, maybe three. Three at most. In the meantime, I started making money. Not a lot, but I felt I could help my family for the first time. I started getting a taste of an independence I could never have imagined back home.
Still, Argentina was always in my rear view mirror, beautiful and resilient, alive, even in its wreckage. Gabbie would tell me about all these new things he was doing, poetry readings, a protest, a road trip. Everyone was hurting back home, but they managed to hustle and enjoy life. Meanwhile, me, I was making money in the USA, but the closest thing I had to a friend was the flatulent co-worker I took my cigarette breaks with.
It didn't matter, though, because I knew someday soon, I would make a U-turn. I'd move back. And when I did, I'd join Gabbie in his new adventures. Everything would make sense again. And I knew that coming back home could be done because I'd seen my own family do it. Back in the '70s, during the dictatorship, my parents had left Argentina, and they'd returned when it was over. Gabbie and I would always sign off our phone calls the same way. I'd tell him, see you soon. And he'd say--
Gabbie
Te amo hasta el cielo y devuelta Jazmina de mi corazón.
Jasmine Garsd
Jazmina, my love, I love you to the sky and back. See you soon.
I went back to visit in 2011. I didn't tell anyone I was coming back, not even Gabbie. I thought it would be a wonderful surprise to just show up one day, unannounced.
That night, I got into the city, went to my aunt's house, ate something, and fell asleep. The telephone woke me up before sunrise. They told me that Grandma Iaia had been found at the foot of the stairway at her nursing home, unconscious. Her skull was cracked. She'd been rushed to the hospital.
In my memory, it feels like I'm running underwater, too slow to make it in time. And by the time I got to the hospital, the police had arrived. She had died. The circumstances were murky, and it could have involved violence, so this was now an official investigation. The cops wouldn't let me in. Dazed, I walked outside and looked for a public phone. There was only one person I knew to call--
Gabbie
Yo estaba durmiendo.
Jasmine Garsd
Gabbie. He was asleep. It was early. I'm home, I told him. Home, home? Home, home. I need you to come to the hospital. When he arrived, I fell apart in his arms. In the next few days, I went to the police to badger them. Hey, when can I get her body back? The officer was too busy watching a soccer game to see me. I could hear them all yelling at the screen in the back office. I'd forgotten about this part of Argentina, how broken things could be.
At night, Gabbie would crawl into bed with me. We'd spoon and I'd cry, and he'd whisper, come on now, Jazmina. You know how things are here with the police. But all of a sudden, I had this deep, terrifying feeling of wanting to leave. I'd never felt that before. I didn't know what to make of it. And I couldn't tell Gabbie. I worried it would be too hurtful, so I kept it from him. I think it was the first time in my life I kept anything from him. He'd drift off to sleep, and I'd stay awake for hours.
A few days later, the cops called. I was to identify Iaia's body at the city morgue. Gabbie went with me. When they rolled out her body, Gabbie saw me drowning. He found my hand and whispered, Jazz--
Gabbie
Cerra los ojos.
Jasmine Garsd
--close your eyes. When he identified her body, he gave me a gift to remember her as one of the last times I saw her. The day I left, she was holding my face, whispering, "Jazmin. No te olvides de nosotros." Don't forget us.
After Iaia died, I felt like I had failed at the most important things, to hold on to the people I loved tight enough, to stay connected enough, or to, at the very least, go back home in time enough to say Como me voy a olvidar de vos. How could I ever forget you? Thank you. Goodbye. I felt guilty.
Gabbie and me, we still talked every day, but whenever it came up, me visiting or moving back, I could hear myself making excuses, even when they weren't exactly true. I can't afford a ticket. I don't have enough vacation days. Too much work.
And then last summer, I ran out of excuses. My job sent me to Argentina to report on the FIFA World Cup in 2022. That's when it happened. Gabbie and I, we finally talked about it, about how 20-some years ago, we sat in my kitchen, and I made a promise that I haven't kept. When I hopped out of the cab and saw Gabbie walk towards me, he looked as handsome as ever.
Jasmine Garsd
Gabbie! Hola.
Que onda, Jasmina? Estas igual!
We almost immediately snap back into it-- goofed off, pretended to be gymnasts on the jungle gym. He's doing great. He's a modeling agent, which he loves. He's dating a really nice guy who forces him to eat healthy. Somehow, his childhood cat, Fiona, is still alive. It felt so good to just be together, like in the old days. And so I got that nagging question. Is it time to come back home? I blurted it out in the middle of our conversation.
Jasmine Garsd
You know, my family's always like, oh, I can put you in touch with so-and-so who runs a radio station. But I don't have the contacts. I made my-- what?
There it was. Like a nervous tic, I said it, the promise followed by the excuse. I'm going to move back home. I just can't right now because of work, which is when Gabbie looked at me. His lower lip curled and finally said what he really felt. He remembers the moment as well as I do.
Gabbie
Boluda, como, deja de chamuyarme, como, basta, saltemos esto, saltemos este loop que tenemos hace años donde tipo voy a volver.
Jasmine Garsd
Come on, sis. Stop bullshitting me. Enough. Let's jump out of this loop we've been stuck in for years, where you say you're moving back or you want to move back, and it's like, it's not going to happen. Let's move on.
Gabbie
O quiero volver, y es como, tipo no va a pasar, ya está, pasamos esto. move on, ¿entendés?, y sigamos como a otra página.
Jasmine Garsd
All of this, this was new information for me. Gabbie was doing this thing that, in Spanish, we call desahogarse. I suppose it translates into venting, but it literally means "to undrown oneself," to spit out everything you've been holding in, no matter what.
Jasmine Garsd
Hubo momentos en los que te sentiste como irritado, como boluda ya no tenes que decir eso, está todo bien?
I asked him, were there moments where you felt irritated? Like, come on, girl. You don't have to keep saying this. We're good.
Gabbie
Desde el momento en que lo entendí tipo todas las veces que lo has dicho me sentí irritado. Tipo como okay, pará. Que pare. Que pare de decirme tipo esto porque Cómo es al pedo. ¿Para que me lo dice? Tipo no sé.
Jasmine Garsd
Gabbie says, of course. From the moment, I understood it. Like, every time you'd said it, I felt annoyed. Like, stop. Just stop. It was like, what is the deal here? What are you telling me this for?
Gabbie
Como...Porque sentí que me lo decias a mi para dejarme tranquilo a mi. Entendes? Y finalmente era como...no!
Jasmine Garsd
It felt like you were saying it to calm me down, and I was like, no. Looking back, he's kind of right. I did say these things out of guilt. I tried to soften things by talking about how challenging it was for me up north, which he says actually didn't help.
Gabbie
Era escuchar quejarte de algo que yo nunca tuve la posibilidad de hacer. No?
Jasmine Garsd
It was hearing you complain about something I never had the chance to do. He didn't want to hear that, not when he was barely making ends meet. And he says the moment he realized that I was never going to move back was years ago when my Grandma Iaia died, the same moment, I suppose, it became clear to me.
Gabbie
Ahí fue cuando entendí, fue como como okay, Jasmin no va a volver y automáticamente me cayo esa ficha de que ya no tenias a tus abuelas, acá ya no tenias a nada que te arraigue.
Jasmine Garsd
It immediately hit me that you no longer had your grandparents here. So I was like, OK, nothing is anchoring her here. But you were here, I say.
Jasmine Garsd
Pero vos estabas.
Gabbie
Si. Pero como amigo, es decir, tampoco como hubiese querido que vuelvas por mi. Se entiende? No ahora. En otro momento si me lo decias cuando teníamos 23 años me hubiese encantado la idea de que pudieses volver por mi. ¿Entendes?
Jasmine Garsd
Gabbie says, yeah, but as your friend, I mean, I wouldn't have wanted you to come back for me, not now. At some other time in my life, like if you had said this to me when we were 23, I would have loved for you to come back for me, you know? I do know. But I wasn't just saying it for him. I was also saying it because I was terrified. Terrified that I was drifting away, and I needed to believe I still had a home, a place where I fit in perfectly. I still want to believe that.
Jasmine Garsd
¿Pensás que todavía soy argentina?
My whole body tensed up when I asked him this question. Do you still think of me as Argentine?
Gabbie
Mm-- no quiero que te lo tomes a mal pero...no.
Jasmine Garsd
Wow.
Gabbie said, don't take this the wrong way, but no.
Gabbie
Sos re latina. Pero no se, si como...no se, hoy por hoy no te presento como una amiga argentina.
Jasmine Garsd
He says, you are very Latina, but I don't know. Nowadays, I don't introduce you as my Argentine friend. You're my North American friend. I realized a long time ago, but without meaning to, I started calling you my gringa friend.
Gabbie
Eso hace tiempo me di cuenta, tipo como sin quererlo, tipo pero te presento como mi amiga norteamericana.
Jasmine Garsd
Wow.
That son of a bitch. Being from Argentina is like my whole identity. It's like my theme song. That's how I think of myself as I move through my stupid everyday life. What the fuck? I've heard this kind of thing before.
My whole life, I had heard Latin Americans talk about US Latinos this way. People's voice would go down half an octave when they say, oh, so-and-so is Colombian, but from the US, like it's some kind of terminal illness. I guess I just didn't realize that now I live in the voice drop. Gabbie says he still loves me, even if there's parts of me that he now doesn't fully get.
Gabbie
Que esta bien que no vuelvas. Me parece bien. Es como...Me parece hasta sano que puedas entender que no hace falta que vuelvas.
Jasmine Garsd
It's OK for you not to come back for me, he says. It's healthy. I stopped waiting for you a long time ago. And so, in one fell swoop, he releases me from my teenage promise, which you would think was a huge relief. But to be honest, it feels terrible. Even as I say this, I keep thinking, but wait, maybe. Maybe I'll move back in a few more years. Maybe when I'm old. I don't want to be free from my oath, and I don't know where that leaves us.
Every time I think about my friendship with Gabbie, about what the glue is that keeps us together at a distance, I go back to this one memory. It happened back when we were kids, on that first day when we met in the park. That evening, there was a summer storm. All our friends ran home. It was just me and him. "El diluvio!" we yelled dramatically. The great flood. We laughed as we stood under a ledge to avoid the downpour.
I didn't want to go back home. I never did back then. I didn't have to explain it to him. We just knew each other profoundly from the start. He smiled at me, drenched. His brown eyes filled with mischief and said, Queres quedarte acá un rato más? Want to stay here a while longer? I felt the rush of excitement of someone who has just been spoken to for the first time. Yes, I answered. So we stood under the ledge together, watching the world around us come undone.
Ira Glass
Jasmine Garsd. She first interviewed Gabbie for her podcast, The Last Cup, La Ultima Copa, which I guess officially is about soccer star Leo Messi and Argentina, but really, if you hear it, is about so much more, about leaving home, about being an outsider in another country. It is available in English and in Spanish, wherever you get your podcasts, produced by NPR and Futuro Studios. Jasmine's story for our show today was produced by Nadia Reiman.
["SAY IT NOW" BY HANNAH JADAGU]
Credits
Ira Glass
Our program was produced today by Lilly Sullivan and edited by Laura Starecheski. The people who put our show together today include Bim Adewunmi, James Bennett II, Jendayi Bonds, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Valerie Kipnis, Tobin Low, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Ryan Rumery, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.
Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuel Berry. Special thanks today to Greg Walloch, Jonathan Goldstein, Lauren Gonzalez, and Katie Simon. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. If you are stuck for something to listen to, there are staff recommendations like in a classy neighborhood bookstore. thisamericanlife.org.
This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's confounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. His cousin, Milt, in England, is always mailing him sausages, like individual sausages. I was walking by Torey's desk this morning and saw him opening this package. I was like, what is that, Torey? He told me--
Gabe Mollica
Another banger from Milton.
Ira Glass
I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
["SAY IT NOW" BY HANNAH JADAGU]