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Rachel was identity theft and a person was the kind of thing that you hear about when he was vanishing from her bank account and it turned out to be some charges in ATM withdrawals that she had made herself. So she found this out, but she figured, OK, no problem, call the bank, explain the situation, they'll take care of it. She figured out how it probably happened to be visiting friends in Chicago, sitting at a coffee shop.

And this guy walked in wearing a windbreaker and sat sort of at the table next to us. And at one point he just kind of brushed against me and I had my purse actually hanging over the chair. And it wasn't until, like after he had left and I went to pay that I realized that my wallet was gone.

But I just figured that was the person who stole your identity.

Yet my Social Security card had been in there, and I thought that was something you could do with that. So she goes and closes her bank account, switches to a different bank. Same thing happens and it just starts disappearing. She goes through several banks this way, it's like a game of bank mole where money goes, the identity thief arrives.

I was like, I don't really know what else I can do. I closed everything. It really started to freak her out for money, just, you know, keep vanishing inexplicably out of her control.

I started to become a very paranoid person all the time, like after, you know, this had been happening for a year or two.

I was just, like, very anxious all the time.

There was one point where I thought that my mail was being stolen because I was like, how else is this happening? So I got a P.O. box and I got to the point where I thought someone was following me. Like I was just so paranoid that I would like try to find alternate routes to get to my P.O. box so that I know not.

They couldn't figure out where your P.O. box is. Yeah, I. Your problem. Yeah. I mean, it sounds so crazy, looking back.

And to be honest, I didn't have that much money.

Like I was working at a nonprofit children's museum and trying to wait tables to supplement my income. But my boyfriend at the time was like helping me out. Like I always paid my rent. I didn't want him to, like, pay for me or anything. It was very uncomfortable for me. But he would like to buy the groceries and do everything. I would pay my rent and he would kind of take care of everything else.

And what did he do for a living? So he was always into politics. So at that point, he was working at the Massachusetts state House, working for the president of the Senate.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fancy job.

And without him, she'd really be sunk because money just keeps vanishing from her bank accounts. So eventually she just gives up on the entire banking system. She goes to your last account as the bank put all of the money that was remaining a thousand dollars into a bank check that she keeps in a drawer. Handles all of her finances and cash and money orders, problem solved, the GLAST. Until she and her boyfriend decide they're going to move and she needs a thousand dollars and she goes to the top dresser drawer where she keeps all of her financial stuff, the receipts and statements and all that, and there's no check.

And she's like, OK, well, maybe it fell behind the dresser. Maybe I put it somewhere else.

And so we, like, tore apart the apartment just like flipping couch cushions and like opening drawers.

And I was just like having a panic attack because this was all of the money that I had in the world and we couldn't find it. So she goes to the bank and they were like, you already cashed this check and they showed her a copy.

And then were my signature was was my forged signature and it was my boyfriend's handwriting.

Bam, bam, bam. It was the boyfriend. After all, think about it, who else could it be in retrospect, Rachel says that she is sure there was some small part of her in the back of her brain, which was like, OK, what if it's him?

I mean, of course, it's something you would think about. And the banks are always like, do you have a boyfriend? It's the boyfriend. Like, that's what banks would say, that they would suggest that, yeah, any bank or police officer would always be.

Do you have a boyfriend? It's the boyfriend. It's always the boyfriend. And I was like, you don't know my boyfriend. You don't know my boyfriend.

These are like magic words that sometimes keep people from seeing things that are right in front of their face. You don't know my boyfriend.

My boyfriend is like the king of, like, generosity and kindness, just so giving all the time to everyone. Just giving you just want to give you don't know my boyfriend. You know my wife. You don't know my spouse. You don't know my partner. You don't know them like I know them. This is one of the dangers of getting close to somebody to get close. You have to agree. I trust you. I believe you. I know that what you say is true.

You know what I say is true. And sometimes that is a mistake. That's one of the perils of intimacy. There are others, too, of course. That's what I chose about today, the perils of intimacy.

Today, we have grown men awkwardly trying to make friends with each other, not sure what to talk about. We have people are nervous, first dates bravely fighting their own insecurities and anxieties. There are downsides to being close to somebody. Let's talk about that for a change instead of how great it is to be married forever and blah, blah, blah.

Bridget Jones, wedding toast, blah, blah, blah. Single people. There are 36 million of you living alone, 139 million of you unmarried. And I know since the pandemic you might be feeling more isolated than ever. Here is an hour to make you feel good about that for a change. WBCSD, Chicago, it's this American Life. I'm IRA Glass.

Stay with us. So Rachel came back from the bank from seeing her boyfriend's handwriting on the check that he stole from her, when you got back to the studio apartment that they shared and confronted him with the truth. Obviously, you know, how is she not going to ditch him? But he said in bed with her and did something. He broke down crying and he said, I have to tell you something and I don't want to tell you because I'm afraid that if I tell you, you're going to leave me.

And that's when he told me that he has impulse control disorder, that he's been diagnosed with this like for many years, and that he's done a lot of stupid stuff. And he said he was seeing a therapist and getting help for it.

How long had you guys been together? Probably four years, three, three years, yeah. I don't to be disrespectful to somebody like actual disease, but the name impulse control disorder just sounds like the name of like well that's just like saying like, well, I just couldn't help myself. I just wanted to, like, take money from a cash register. I have impulse control disorder.

Right. Like, I just wanted to, like, sleep with your sister. Like, I have a control disorder, you know, like it just seems like the most I mean, I say with respect to people who might have this as a real disorder.

Right.

And like, you know, when you tell these stories and then you just feel like, how do you not now like you just sound so stupid.

But back then, I think I needed to hear that there was some sort of like medical reason, like, OK, like it's not just an explanation. Yeah. Like he's not a bad person. He's just like going through something that's like out of his control and it's medical. Yeah.

It's interesting how a person would want that rather than the other thing. Well, yeah, I like a bow. I could tie up and be like, well here's why not like you've been living for years with a sociopath. I think the other one sounded better. So at the time, she accepted, all right, he has an impulse control disorder and she believed that the disorder is what caused him to steal the very last money she had in this world and forge her name on a check and then search for the check with her, pretending he had no idea where the check could have gone.

But that's all she thought he did. That tiny morsel of truth is all she was able to take in at that point. She did not put together the whole truth.

They've been stealing from her for over a year, that he was the identity thief, not some stranger in a dingy apartment in Chicago.

He was the identity thief who made her so totally stressed out over money all the time, who drove her to the point where she was looking over her shoulder as she walked to her own post office box.

They stayed together for another year and a half, and before you judge, OK, before you think, how could she do that? I'll explain how it's really interesting and I think it can happen to a lot of us. For starters, her boyfriend had been the one steady thing in her life, right? She's going through this hard time with banks and credit cards and it's not ending. And he was the one thing she thought she could depend on.

It's just hard to let that go. Oh, God, makes you sound so stupid, but, yeah, I, I really thought I knew what good was like.

Everything felt so bad and so hard to control.

I was like, he has to be good because if he's not good, nothing is good. Right. That's the whole premise. That's the premise of your life, right. Yeah. Yeah. I was like rationally there's no way that it was him because, like, he literally supports me. He buys all of our groceries and he pays all of our bills and he is legitimately like my personal army to try and figure out the identity fraud.

Right. So it just doesn't add up how good that person also be taking money from me, the person who's actually paying for everything, right? Yeah.

So I was like, why would someone steal from you and then spend it on you?

Like, it just didn't make sense to me. But weird financial stuff keeps happening. Rachel gets phone calls about credit cards that are in her name that she never took out and knew nothing about. Her car gets booted even though Rachel never got a ticket herself. And occasionally the thought would cross her mind.

OK, if I broke up with him, what other troubles go away?

And you just kind of brushed that thought away. Once the boyfriend stepmother said something to Rachel, she was like the evil stepmom that he he hated her and he kind of got me to hate her. And I realize years later, she was the only one who was on to him.

This happened early on. The stepmom said to Rachel, how are you having some kind of identity theft problems?

I was again, she was like, do you guys, like, go over bills together? Like, do you guys ever do that kind of stuff together? And I was like, no, I don't want to do it. It stresses me out.

And she was like a really important part of a relationship is like figuring out financial stuff, like, you know, maybe you should look into that and like make sure that, like, he's got things under control, you know, like really tried to get me to, like, do stuff with him. And I honestly, I know she said something sort of rude about him, like, he's not great at this.

Like and I, I shut it down like I was just like, you don't know because he made me hate her. Mm hmm. So years later I realized, oh, my God, she tried to warn me, but he had done such a good job of, like, protection that I was like, she's not even a candidate for, like, trusting. It's interesting to think about what was in this for the boyfriend and I mean stealing from her, making her feel so anxious and paranoid about her finances and then stepping in to comfort her and save the day and help her out using her money like he was like a caretaker.

It like made him really happy. He really wanted to provide I think he really wanted to be a provider. And he would like make me these like, fancy dinners every night, like pack my lunch for work and stuff like that. So like I say, year and a half passes and he asks Rachel to marry him.

She says, yes, she's really happy next morning. This happens the very next morning, she gets a call from their landlord who the boyfriend had always dealt with.

And he was just screaming like, I don't know, you and your boyfriend are trying to pull, but you owe me like sixteen thousand dollars, whatever it was like. And you're being evicted. And why aren't you returning my calls? And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And he was like, you're a liar.

Just like your boyfriend should be giving her boyfriend her half of the rent. But he hadn't paid the landlord in a year. And she was like, OK, well, where did that money go?

And she started to look for it. She went through his stuff for the first time without him around and opened drawers and found all kinds of bills and credit cards in his name from American Express and Banana Republic and all kinds of other places, a whole secret financial chaos. And then they fight about how he'd been lying to her.

And this is what breaks them up, though it takes a few weeks for them to break up, which I get. He'd been her college boyfriend, they've been together five years, they were engaged. So it takes weeks, and during those weeks, horribly, we started planning a wedding, like I kind of went into like a catatonic, like state of existence where I went through the motions for like a month where, like, we would go look at wedding places.

But in the back of my mind, it was like, I can't marry this person. But I couldn't say it out loud.

I did call her boyfriend to run all this by him, everything Rachel said, and give him a chance to respond. But he said no. People close to Rachel and to him did confirm her story. So finally they agreed they were going to take a break for a few days, think about things, talk to their families, and then come back and figure things out together.

And he went home to his parents and I went to my parents and. And I never, ever saw him ever again, never. Months later, I was living with roommates and like put together that like four years I had been living with this person who was stealing from me and like started to put together like, oh, my God, like he wasn't working.

Like, he would get up every day and, like, get dressed and leave the house when I left the house and he would pretend to go to work.

I never went to his office. Like when he was working at the state house, he showed me his office from the car.

He was like, look at that gold domed building. Like, that's where I work. I'm so excited. And like I just realized, like. I don't know anything that was real, like, I don't know when he was working or when he wasn't, like you never met any of his office mates?

No, I heard stories about them all the time. Oh, so he had names of people who he said he worked with. Totally. What were the names?

I remember. And from the state house, he had a boss. I think he had named him Rob. And I just remember because there was this one time he called me at work and he was like, really upset because he was at the airport and he was like, we're all we're all supposed to go on a trip to DC. And it ends up there's like a problem with the flight. And we have to get on the next flight and there's not enough room for everyone.

And I'm really bummed because I don't think I'm going to get to go on the trip because I'm not, like, important enough, like I'm not high up enough. And he ends up not being able to go on the trip. And he was calling me from the airport telling me the story, and I felt so bad for him. But he didn't work and those people weren't real and he wasn't at the airport. I don't know, he's probably at home.

We have this idea that when we discover the truth, it is this all at once, you know, we see what's real and what isn't in a flash of understanding. In fact, the thing that we call an experience like that is the moment of truth. That's we say the moment of truth. We do not see the dragged out year and a half of the truth. That's how it goes sometimes. So now you come to accept the truth slowly in stages.

Sometimes we have reasons to hold onto a lie. We're not ready to let go of the world, that the lie preserves the people that keeps close to us. And we release the lie from our hand one finger at a time. What do they show is a rerun from four years ago and in the time since we first broadcast this story, I'm glad to say that Rachel has gotten married. She says her husband is honest and open and there are no trust issues between the two of them.

She's now written about her experiences in a book of stories called This Can't Be Happening. This just proves that much deeper than just lying and all you've ever done is. Doctor, why can't we be friends, OK, fellow adults. Here's a question. When did you make a friend? Look, I mean, an actual friend who you see regularly, you talk about actual personal things. It's hard, right, to make a new one to get to that point, to get through the awkward, hey, you wanna hang out sometime face?

I mean, this thing right now with this guy who honestly, I thought, like maybe we're going to become friends, and he sent me an e-mail saying, OK, let's have dinner. And I thought, great. And I responded with a specific time. I said, Thursday, how about Thursday? Heard nothing. Then a few days later, in an email about something completely else, he suggested again like, hey, we should do dinner some time.

And again, I was like, great, how about Thursday? Again, her nothing. What is that people? How do adults become friends? Neil, drumming on our staff has run a little experiment with human guinea pigs on this particular subject. I have no idea how adults make new friends. I'd like to, but I'm not really trying, I don't join clubs, I don't ask my coworkers out for drinks, and when I am at bars, I don't do this.

I have gone up by myself kind of just trying to talk about sports, you know, which is usually it's blaring on the TV or about the beer. Like, I know someone just ordered a beer next to me, like, oh, you know, how is that? I really like hoppy beers, blah, blah, blah.

That's Chris. Gerben, poor guy. He's 37 years old. Nine months ago, he moved his family from San Francisco to Austin for a teaching gig at a small university, leaving most of his male friends back on the West Coast. He has no choice but to start over. I haven't left New York in 16 years, but so many of my male friends have recently moved or drifted away, that I probably need to start over, too. I haven't done anything about it except maybe complain and overburden my romantic relationships.

The thing I find remarkable about Chris was that he was being proactive. He was actively seeking male friends. He got on meet up dotcom. He formed a men's only book club. He memorized baseball statistics as conversation starters. He started going to bars expressly for the purpose of meeting other hetero dudes. The only time I remember ever going really well, really well. I've been in Austin maybe for about a month, and I wasn't at this brewery near my house and I was eating dinner.

I think my wife had our daughter out somewhere, so it's on my own. And this guy sat next to me and he was there with some of his friends. And I don't remember how it started. But at some point he actually kind of like turned towards me and for a good I would say at least 20 minutes. I'm not half hour. It was just me and him. We were talking and we were talking, talking, talking. I remember in the back things like how this is business and like this is how you start like a guy friendship.

And then at some point he started talking about how he was a vet. And you've been in Iraq and they were talking about how he just flew somewhere and he took his concealed gun, like into the airport. And the TSA flipped out about it. And I'm thinking, OK, like I'm not a gun guy. And like, I don't really even know anything about guns. I'm kind of shaking my head like, OK, sure. You know, I'm in Texas now.

This is how it is. And then out of nowhere, I think he grabs my knee, if I remember correctly. But he definitely, like, move kind of closer to me and look at me right in the eye and said, you got to get a gun, bro. You got to protect your family. You got to protect your daughter, bro. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I do.

Did you feel like you needed a gun to protect your family?

All OK? Of course not. So why did you agree to to to continue along this line? Because I was desperate for friends.

The only reason I know about Chris's predicament is because he emailed this American life about it. And even though I could relate, I wouldn't have given the letter a second thought if it didn't remind me of my buddy Evan. Evan, coincidentally, had also just moved to Austin with his partner and his young daughter. I could tell from Facebook that they'd managed to get set up OK, but everyone was already feeling lonely. That's a special kind of loneliness that people in long term relationships often know too well.

We do things together. We're raising a child together, but like. We're friends, yeah, you know, that's Evan. He's honest, put the parts of our identity that, like, make me who I am being a nerd, like reading and writing my comic books and video games, movies. I need somebody to share that with us because we don't have similar interests in that regard or similar tastes. So like, you know, there's a part of me that it was important to me.

I don't want somebody to care about and to share that with. And traditionally, that's where I've gone to my friends for. Yeah.

Evan is one of those friends I let slip away in a flurry of rain checks earlier this year. We've known each other maybe ten years now. He used to recommend comic books and Xbox games that I never read nor finished. Part of what I love about Evan is how unabashedly he is, who he is. He's earnest, somewhat awkward, and above all, a nerd, although I think he'd accept the term black geek. He says he wasn't always so confident about these parts of his personality.

And moving to Austin, away from his friends and peers, living on the sleepy edge of town with only his partner and daughter has put him in unfamiliar territory. What is your place like? It's nice.

Like there's like a pool, like maybe like a couple of hundred feet away from us and there's like tennis courts.

And I said, I'm going to use them like it's nice Evan wasn't putting himself out there, but Chris was. And they live in the same city. Both men both died around the same age. Both want friends. Maybe I've been making it out to be harder than it actually is. Maybe all you have to do to make a friend is get off your ass and try.

It was a chance to find out without, you know, actually having to do anything myself. I'd fix Evan and Chris up on a date, a mandate.

You can't have a mandate without an official activity. Those are the rules. So the first thing I did was right to Chris and Evan and ask them each what they were into.

Chris sent me a list that included hiking, running karaoke and something called disc golf. Evan said he likes playing video games and eating and drinking in moderation. I suggested they go see Captain America Civil War, which was coming out in a week, the trailer was awesome.

Plus the movie stars Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Evans. That's fate, right? Evan emailed me that he'd wrangled free passes to an early screening. Morfe though he was concerned about inviting Chris. The movie features the cinematic debut of Evans, the all time favorite comic book superhero, The Black Panther, and he was worried that Chris, a total stranger, might witness him crying.

I grabbed fate by the hand and convinced Evan to give up his plus one. Anyway, when I emailed Chris the good news, he wrote back that, quote, Hate may be too strong a word, but I really dislike the newest round of superhero movies.

I didn't tell Evan about that. We kept looking. Eventually, we settled on trivia night at a brew house in town. But by then, the whole idea had started to feel a little precarious. For one thing, Chris was having some weird misgivings.

The first thing I did was Google him and see who this person was. I even went onto his Twitter feed and saw that he was interacting with people and retweeting people who seemed really big in his field. And it was intimidating. I mean, the first thing I thought was I feel sorry for this guy having to go out with me. You know, I really felt like he didn't need us.

He felt like Evan was out of his league. Meanwhile, everyone was not even thinking about Chris. He never Googled him. And when Chris gave Evan his phone number over email multiple times, Evan never responded with his when I talked to Evan hours before the date. His biggest worry was traffic. He moved to Texas from New York City. He hadn't driven in years.

There's so much unpredictability surrounding you, even when you feel like I'm in control, like I feel comforted by my abilities. But you don't go out there, like making a sudden turn or like this. It's stressful.

I get it. Having relied on the subway most of my life, driving scares the crap out of me too. But I needed Evan to get his head in the game. You see, by now I was starting to think that Chris and Evan might not immediately or ever become fast friends. They might just be too different. But whether they recognize that or not, there was something that connected them. I could see it from my perch 1800 miles away, even when they couldn't.

Evan is a deep dive pop culture junkie. Chris is an English professor who's into sports. They were opposite sides of an egg headed coin. Between them, I figured they must have the gamut of trivia game minutia thoroughly covered. If my experiment wouldn't generate a lifelong friendship, at least it was within my power to forge the mightiest trivia team in all of Boston on this particular Wednesday night. In this hope, I was not alone. Evan was poised to win.

If there's a whole bunch of superhero video games, they are like, you better believe like I want to try and own it.

Yeah, well, I. I know I looked at the website for the trivia and I and I saw like some Star Wars references and things and yes.

All Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and some other stuff. But you know, I've got my weaknesses in certain.

What are your weaknesses? I don't know what your weaknesses are talking.

I don't open at all. Really? Yeah. No, no. That was to wait for me.

The night of the mandate arrives, and I hear nothing from Chris or anyone, not a text, not an email the next morning, still nothing. I finally talked to Chris that afternoon about how the night went, being the eager one. He'd gotten to the bar first. I got there and I was going table to table asking if we could sit down. And every single person said no, you know, kind of reminded me of elementary school where, you know, you're going table to table asking if you can sit.

All the cool kids are saying no. I mean, that's kind of what it felt like.

I really felt like I was already in the hole before. I haven't even arrived.

They'd agreed ahead of time on how they would recognize each other. He told me that he was going to be wearing a purple shirt and yellow shoes and he was going to be limping slightly because he had a stubbed toe.

So I got there a little bit early to order a drink right away. How can I get boners all day? And I saw him stride up to the first white dude with a blue shirt sitting near the stage and just go introduce himself. And it wasn't me. And as soon as I saw I said this, my guy.

How tight was his shirt? I know how I went like this.

I thought it was it was a shirt I would not be able to wear out in public. And then he sat down and then the first thing he did was order a lemonade. And I thought, oh, no, this is going to be bad.

Evan eventually ordered some bourbon, but not too much moderation. So I said, you know, we need a team and what you want and it just rips off. He said, we're the lonely transplant's. And I said, all right, you know? And I thought, there's a little on the nose, you know? I mean, I was a little briefer than, you know, two dudes, one from New York, one from California, both of whom can't find any friends, blah, blah, blah.

But yeah, only Transplant's was our name, the lonely translator.

To tell the trivia night that Chris and Evan went to is officially called Geeks Who Drink, and Evan killed it.

Just as I had hoped. Chris was impressed.

There was a whole category about directors. They would show us clips and we'd have to kind of guess what the movie was. And he was getting those left and right. And I honestly sat there. I sat there for entire rounds without doing anything.

The lonely transplant's did not turn out to be the quickfire mind meld the dream team that I had hoped for.

There was one where the answer was a loofah, you know, like a batho loofa. It's an organic substance that you have to microwave once a day. So it cleans out the bacteria. And I for whatever reason, I thought it was a sea cucumber. And he's like, no, it's a little funny.

I was like, no, I promise it's a sea cucumber.

And if it's wrong, I will leave.

Chris says Evan didn't actually force him to leave or hold it over his head that he wasn't pulling his weight. Chris took that to mean that things were going well between them. The only transplants came in 19th out of about thirty teams.

Now he plays the dolphins, but their meager showing didn't matter to Chris.

This is the guy who had told me that he was missing spontaneity in his life, that his every day felt scheduled around work and running errands and toddler parties.

He was feeling like there were no surprises left. Suddenly here he was trying to remember who recorded Rock Me Amadeus, this sort of awkward, sort of dapper black dude from Brooklyn.

And he knew it was by Falko. I forgot he was by Falko.

And I didn't write down Falko. It was cool. Evan's a cool dude.

And yeah, I think, you know, if there was an opportunity to meet someone like him out in the quote unquote real world, I think I would have gone home just kind of floated on there.

Tell my wife about how excited I was for a potential new friend.

But at the end of the night, the trivia host came over to talk to Chris and Evan and something happened that left Chris feeling yet again a little inadequate.

Evan and the quiz masters went on this like long riff about Star Wars and then Star Trek and the death of Spock and how that had a relation to like men's feelings and loss. And and I'm sure I saw those movies, but I was just nodding like an idiot.

And it was at that moment where I thought, oh, man, I got nothing. Why would you need to to microwave a sea cucumber to remove bacteria that would just kill the sea cucumber? And what are you using a sea cucumber to kill to to wash? Anyway, after talking to Chris? Naturally, I called Evan. How did it go?

You know, we talk about the quiz part. Are we talking about the making a friend part?

Just general impressions. Yeah, general impressions, I think. Well, I definitely thought it was more fun than I was anticipating it to be. You know, I can definitely see myself hanging out with him again.

This was confusing to me because the entire time that I talked to Evan, he just didn't say that much about Chris or how he himself felt about the date. If he had any impressions of Chris, he didn't let on. The only thing Evan got passionate about and I should have expected this was when I asked him to revisit the impromptu Star Trek conversation he had with the host at the end of the night.

I love Wrath of Khan and the friendship between Kirk and Spock, like has been a thing that I've always love in, like science fiction, pop culture.

Kirk represented the kind of brash, impulsive seat of your pants mode of living that I never really pulled off. And Spock, he didn't fit in and his emotions were not readily accessible to him.

And, you know, his primary identifier was his intelligence, which is something I felt deeply. Kirk and Spock were opposites, thrown together under extreme circumstances and multiple alien encounters who came to a level of mutual respect and aberration that spanned a galaxy and several franchise reboots.

They were friends for decades who were willing to die for each other.

By these standards, Chris and Evan's mandate was not a rousing success.

But I'm more of a romantic comedy buff than a Star Trek fan. And rom coms, for the most part, are only about the beginnings of relationships by those standards. You just have to establish that first connection. All you really need are two people who both kind of want to meet someone and a powerful external force to bring them together like a best friend's impending wedding or a forced road trip together or say, a radio producer just trying to satisfy his own curiosity.

Would you like to hang out again? Yeah, I would.

I would. I would love to hang out with them again. I thought he was a really cool guy.

Would it be would you would you consider, like, calling Chris at some point or hang out with him again? Yeah. Yeah, totally.

I was planning after I spoke to you, I didn't want to, like, muck up the process by, like, emailing him a prematurely because I was planning to follow up and email him.

It's been three weeks since their date.

Chris and Evan still haven't gotten together again, but Evan finally gave Chris his number and they've been emailing back and forth about plans.

I think it'll happen now. I'd do it probably.

No drumming, so like I said, today's program is a rerun from four years ago. So I actually can tell you how things worked out with Chris and Evan, and that is they never became friends. They made some plans.

But then Chris moved to Chicago. Chris did say that after our story aired, he got dozens of emails from guys all over the country offering to be his friend.

Coming up, you meet your hero and maybe they're a jerk, maybe just OK, maybe they like wonderful by the third scenario might be the very, very worst in a minute. Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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Better help dotcom longtail. That's better help dotcom sell. This American Life, I'm IRA Glass. Each week in our program, we choose a theme today show the perils of intimacy, stories of what exactly can go wrong, big and small when you get close to somebody. We've arrived at Act three of our show, Act Three Hero today, gone tomorrow.

It can be so awkward meeting one of your heroes. I swear this should be like a separate word for the phenomenon, for the specific problem of like what in the world do you say or talk about that is going to live up to everything you know and feel about them?

Cowboys. Ono is a comedian and she faces Problem herself with a man who in this story she just refers to as hero.

One of the first jobs I got out of college was assisting on a video being made by a big hero of mine. My friend got me the job because she you know, she thought this would be like a really fun thing for me to do. But I just thought this is the worst thing ever, because I don't know if you can just tell by my energy.

But I'm like, really bad. And meeting most people. And this was meeting one of my heroes. And I've had, like, so many awkward, horrible interactions that at a certain point you just realize, like maybe I shouldn't speak.

I took the job and but I had a plan.

I was like, I'm going to ignore my hero.

You know, he's not even going to know I'm there. So I get there and immediately realize that this is a very small shoot. And there are only like seven people there. And one of the first people to introduce themselves to me was my hero.

He was like, hi, I'm your hero, what's your name?

And I just thought, this is the worst day ever.

And it keeps happening because he's this really nice guy, you know, he'd pass by and he'd be like, Are you having fun?

How's it going? And they just wanted to say to him, like, why are you doing this to me?

But I made it through the day without speaking to him.

They were so impressed with me.

The producer was like, hey, we have another job. Why don't you drive your hero to and from another shoot? It's like an hour outside of L.A.. Like, I couldn't say no.

I wanted to say to this producer person, like like I can't handle this. Like, I'm a danger to this man, you know?

And I said, OK. And now all these, like, thoughts are going through my head. And I was like, there's just like definitely going to be a moment where he shares something about himself. And and I'm going to be like, I already know that.

So I know everything about you, so we're in the car and like, it's really hard to avoid someone who's in your car. But a strange thing happens that I I didn't feel as uncomfortable as I thought I'd feel because he was just being so open and nice, they started sharing things and I told him that he was one of the reasons why I started doing comedy.

And I was this aspiring comedian and it was just so cool to work with him.

And as I was dropping him off, he said, I'd love to see you perform sometime.

And like, you know, he's probably being polite, but you got to imagine being younger. It was just like the most magical, exciting thing ever. And so, like a week later, I said about I went about composing just like the perfect email to invite him to a show. And the great thing about email is that, like, you don't have to send anything immediately. You know, you can draft things like can really take your time and make sure it's right.

And that's what I did. I made all these drafts, you know, I made sure all the info was there about the event and made sure, like, grammar was right and like the spacing. And I even made sure, like, I sounded like a fun person, you know, like I sounded you read in your like that girl's fun and I never heard back, but but, you know, I it didn't even matter because I was like, he's just busy.

He's like this busy guy. And and also I just felt like I had made, like, this really good impression.

And that was five years ago. And I kept doing comedy and I. I was on Gmail very recently. And something.

That I like to do so I was kind of just nostalgically looking at old emails I had sent, it's just this weird thing I like to do because occasionally I'll see, like a fun one and I'll forward it to a friend and be like, remember when I said that I was doing that?

And I scrolled way down and I stumbled upon the very email that I had written to my hero five years ago.

Dear Hero set aside two tickets for you to next month's show on January 19th, if you can make it, if not, its every month, so there's always a next time. Also, the shoot turned out awesome. It's pretty good, right? Yeah, that was Senate 12 01, and then underneath that, I. I found another one Senate 12 one within the same minute, dear hero, set aside two tickets for you next month's show on January 19th, if you can make it.

And then I added, Hope you had a wonderful holiday.

And then I found another one under that Senate twelvefold two.

I confused saving with sending them and my comedy hero received all of my drafts.

Dear Hero CESI, two tickets for next month's show on January 19. You can make it. And then there's just like huge gap.

And then I they added also the shoe turned out awesome. Yeah.

Dear hero, and this one eyed Toivo for just added the venue.

It's 12 04 again now.

I just added the time, now it's 12 05 and I just added parentheses doors at 7:00 p.m., you know, just in case he wants to come early when the doors open. 12 05, Samie male, 12 06, Samie male. And then this big time gap happens. Now it's 12, 21.

And I say, dear hero ho, it's just a..

Well, just a spelling error. Twelve twenty five. I send it off, but of course, in my style, I send it off twice.

I can't believe I did that.

And if I had known about this, like, I don't I don't know if I would be standing here in front of you tonight.

You know, it would have been too embarrassing to do anything in comedy ever after doing this sort of thing to my comedy hero.

And I also don't think I would be here tonight because I. I would be in a nut house just rocking back and forth, saying also the shoe turned out awesome.

Also the shoe turnout. Awesome. Oh, you turned out awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kyle Mizuno is a comedian in Los Angeles. She has a Web series on Comedy Central called Girl Kyle.

No, I don't want to love you guys. I know. I know. That's why I've been staying away from you.

That's why I haven't called you at 4:00.

Break it down. So we end our show today about the perils of intimacy with the story.

They try to tally up what is good and what is bad about getting close to somebody. This is one of my favorite short stories.

It's by Julia Davis. It's read for us by actor Matt Malloy wanting to listeners.

This story does acknowledge that people have sex. He's sitting there staring at a piece of paper in front of them. He's trying to break it down. He says, I'm breaking it all down the ticket with six hundred dollars. And after that, there is more for the hotel and food and so on for just ten days, say eighty dollars a day, no more like 100 dollars a day. And we made love, say, once a day. On the average, that's 100 dollars a shot.

And each time it lasted maybe two or three hours. So that would be anywhere from 33 to fifty dollars an hour, which is expensive, though of course, that wasn't all that went on because we were together almost all day long. So, I mean, she would keep looking at me and every time she looked at me, that was worth something. And she smiled at me and didn't stop talking and singing something. I said she would sail into the sunset for me.

She would be gone for me little ways, but smiling to. And tell me jokes. I loved it. But didn't exactly know what to do about it, just smiled back at her and felt slow next to her, just not quick enough. So she talked and touched me on the shoulder in the arm. She kept touching and stayed close to me. You're with each other all day long and it keeps happening. That touches and smiles. And it adds up.

It builds up. And you know where you'll be that night you're talking. And every now and then you think about it. Now, you don't think you know, you just feel it is kind of a destination. What's coming up after you leave wherever you are all evening and you're happy about it and you're planning it all, not in your head, really somewhere inside your body or all through your body. It's all mounting up and coming together so that when you get in bed, you can't help.

But it's a real performance. I mean, it all pours out, but slowly you go easy until you can't anymore or you hold back the whole time. You hold back and touch the edges of everything you edge around until you have to plunge in and finish it off. And when you're finished, you're too weak to stand. But after a while, you have to go to the bathroom and you stand. Your legs are trembling. You hold onto the doorframes.

There's a little light coming in through the window. You can see your way in and out, but you can't really see the bad. So it's really not 100 dollars a shot because it goes on all day from the start when you wake up and feel her body next to you, you don't miss a thing, not a thing of what's going on next to you. Her leg or her arm. Her shoulder, her face, that good skin. I felt other good skin.

But this skin is just the edge of something else. And you're going to start going I mean, no matter how much you crawl over each other, it won't be enough. And when you're hungry dies down a little bit, then you start to think about how much you love her. And then that started off again in her face. And you look over at her face and you can't believe how you got there and how lucky. And it's all still a surprise and it never stops.

I mean, even after it's over, it never stops being a surprise.

It's more like you have a good 16 or 18 hours a day of this going on, even when you're not whether it's still going on, I mean, it's good to be away from her because it's going to be so good to get back to her. You know, it's still there in you. And you can't go off and look at some old street or some old painting without feeling it in your body. And a few things that happened the day before that don't mean much by themselves or wouldn't mean much if you weren't having this thing together.

But you can't forget and it's all inside of you all the time. So it's more like, say, sticks into 100 would be six dollars an hour, which isn't too much. And then it really keeps going on while you're asleep, even though you probably dream about something else. A building, maybe I don't I kept dreaming every night almost about this building because I'd spend a lot of every morning in this old stone building. And when I closed my eyes, I would see these cool spaces and had this peace inside me.

I would see the bricks of the floor and the stone arches and the space, the emptiness between like a kind of dark frame around what I could see beyond the gardens. And this space was like stone, too, because of the coolness of it and the gray shadow, that kind of luminous shade that was glowing in the light of the sun falling beyond the arches. And there's also this great height of the ceiling. All this was in my mind all the time, though I didn't know it until I close my eyes.

I'm asleep and I'm not dreaming about her, but she's lying next to me. And I wake up enough times in the night to remember she's there and notice say once she was lying on her back, but now she's curled around me. I look at her closed eyes. I want to kiss her eyelids. I want to feel that soft skin under my lips. But I don't want to disturb her. I don't want to see her frown as though in her sleep she's forgotten who I am and feels that just something is bothering her.

And so I just look at her and hold onto it. All these times when I'm watching over her sleep and she's next to me and isn't away from me the way she will be later. I want to stay awake all night just to go on feeling that. But I can't. I fall asleep again, though. I'm sleeping lightly. Still trying to hold on to it. But it isn't over when it ends, I mean, it goes on after it's all over.

She's still inside you like a sweet look her you filled with her. Everything about her is kind of bled into you. Her voice, her smell, the way your body moves, it's all inside of you. At least for a while after then you begin to lose it and I'm beginning to lose it. You're afraid of how weak you are that you can't get it all back into you again. And now the whole thing is going to be out of your body and it's more on your mind than in your body.

The pictures come to you one by one. And you look at them, some of them last longer than others. You were together in this very white clean place, a coffee house having breakfast together. And the place is so white that against it you can see her clearly, her blue eyes, her smile, the colors of her clothes, even the print of the newspaper she's reading when she's not looking up at you, the light brown and red and gold of her hair when she's got her head down reading the brown coffee, the brown rolls all against the white table and those white plates and silver urns and silver knives and spoons.

And against that quiet of the sleepy people in that room, sitting alone at their tables with just some chinking and clattering of spoons and cups and saucers and some hushed voices, her voice now and then, rising and falling. The pictures come to you and you have to hope they won't lose their life too fast and dry up, though you know they will. And that you also forget some of what happened because already you're turning up little things that you nearly forgot.

We were in bed and she asked me, do I seem fat to you? And I was surprised because she didn't seem to worry about herself at all in that way. And I guess I was reading into it that she did worry about herself. So I answered what I was thinking and said stupidly that she had a very beautiful body, that her body was perfect. And I really meant it as an answer. But she said kind of sharply, That's not what I asked.

And so I had to try to answer again exactly what she had asked. And once she lay over against me late at night and she started talking her breath in my ear and she just went on and on and talked faster and faster, she couldn't stop. And I loved it. I just felt that all that life in her was running into me, too. I had so little life in me, her life, her fire was coming into me in that hot breath in my ear.

And I just wanted to go on talking forever right there next to me. And I would go on living like that. I would be able to go on living, but without her. I don't know. Then you forget some of it all, maybe most of it, almost all of it in the end, and you work hard at remembering everything's now, so you will never forget, but you can kill it to even by thinking about it too much, though, you can't help but thinking about it nearly all the time.

And then when the pictures start to go, you start asking some questions, just little questions that sit in your mind without any answers, like why did you leave the light on when you came to bed one night? But it was off the next. But she had it on the night after that and she had it off the last night. Why? And other questions. Little questions that nag at you like that. And finally, the pictures go and these dry little questions just sit there without any answers and you're left with this large, heavy pain and you that you try to numb by reading or you try to ease it by getting out in the public places where there'll be people around you.

But no matter how good you are pushing that pain away, just when you think you're going to be all right for a little while, that you're safe, you're kind of holding it off with all your strength and you're staying in some bare, little numb spot of ground. Then suddenly it will all come back. You'll hear a noise. Maybe it's a cat crying or a baby, something else like her cry. You hear it and make that connection in a part of you have no control over.

And that pain comes back so hard that you're afraid, afraid of how you're going to fall back into it again. And you wonder, no, you're terrified at how you're ever going to climb out of it. So it's not every hour of the day while it's happening, it's really for hours and hours, every day after that, for weeks, though, less and less. So that you could work out a ratio if you wanted, maybe after six weeks and only thinking about it an hour or so in the day altogether, a few minutes here and there, spread over a few minutes here and there and a half an hour before you go to sleep.

Or sometimes it all comes back and you stay awake half the night. So when you add up all that. I've only spent maybe three dollars an hour on it. If you have to figure in the bad times, too, I don't know, there weren't any bad times with her, though, maybe there was one bad time. When I told her I loved her, I couldn't help it. This is the first time this had happened with her.

Now I was half falling in love with her or maybe completely if she had let me. But she couldn't or I couldn't completely because it was all going to be so short and other things, too. And so I told her and I didn't know of any way to tell her first, that she didn't have to feel that this was a burden. You know, the fact that I loved her or that she didn't have to feel the same about me or say the same back, that it was just that I had to tell her, that's all, because it was bursting inside me and saying it wouldn't even begin to take care of what I was feeling.

Really, I couldn't say anything of what I was feeling because there was so much words, couldn't handle it. And making love only made it worse because then I wanted words badly, but they were no good, no good at all. But I told her anyway, I was lying on top of her and her hands were up by her head and my hands were on hers and our fingers were locked and there was little light on her face from the window.

But I couldn't see her and I was afraid to say it, but I had to say it because I wanted her to know it was the last night. I had to tell her then or I'd never have another chance. And I just said, before you go to sleep, I have to tell you before you go to sleep that I love you. And immediately, right away, after she said, I love you, too. And it sounded to me as if she didn't mean it a little flat, but then it usually sounds flat when somebody says, I love you too, because they're just saying it back, even if they do mean it.

And the problem is that I'll never know if she meant it or maybe someday she'll tell me whether she meant it or not. But there's there's no way to know now. And I'm sorry I did that. It was a trap. I didn't mean to put her in. I can see it was a trap because if she hadn't said anything at all, that would have hurt me, too, you know, as though she were taking something from me and just accepting it, not giving anything back.

So she really had to I mean, even if just to be kind, she had to say it. And I don't really know now if she meant it. Another bad time or it wasn't exactly bad, but it wasn't easy either, was when I had to leave, the time was coming and I was beginning to tremble and feel empty. Nothing in the middle of me, nothing inside, nothing to hold me up on my legs, and then it came.

Everything was ready and I had to go. So it was just a kiss, a quick one, as though we were afraid of what might happen after a kiss. And she was almost wild. Then she reached up to a hook by the door and took an old shirt, a green and blue shirt from the hook and put it in my arms for me to take away. The soft cloth was full of her smell. And then we stood there close together, looking at this piece of paper she had in her hand and.

I didn't lose any of it, I was holding it tight that last minute or two because this was it, we'd come to the end of it. Things always change. So this was really it over. Maybe it works out all right, maybe you haven't lost for doing it. I don't know now, really. I mean, sometimes when you think of it, you feel like a prince, really. You feel just like a king. And other times you're afraid.

You're afraid not. Not all the time, but now and then of what it's going to do to you. And it's hard to know what to do with it now walking away, I look back once and the door was still open. I could see her standing far back in the dark in the room. I could only really see her white face still looking out at me. And a white arms. I guess you get to a point where you look at that pain as if it were there in front of you, three feet away, lying in a box, an open box and a window somewhere.

It's hard and cold, like a bar of metal. You just look at it there and say, all right, I'll take it, I'll buy it. That's what it is, because you know all about it before you even go into this thing, you know, the pain is part of the whole thing. And it isn't that we can say afterwards the pleasure was greater than the pain, and that's why you do it again, that it's nothing to do with it.

You can't measure it because the pain comes after and it lasts longer. So the question really is, why doesn't the pain make you say, I won't do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that. But you don't. So I'm just thinking about it, how you can go in with six hundred dollars more like a thousand and how you can come out with an old shirt. Matt, my reading, what are you Davis's story?

Break it down. It was first published in her book of the same name. It's also in her collected stories we edited slightly for radio. Lydia Davis's new book is volume of collected essays on writing and writers called Essays One.

This program was produced by Robin Semion with help from Nancy Updike and a production staff, Zoe Chace, Sean Konya drumming Stephanie Fuken. And Jeff, you want me to meet Jonathan Mann? Keep our Larry Smith and Matt Tierney, Ed, for today's show. Joel Lovo, editorial help for today's show from Julie Snyder. And on the Baker Razor-sharp from Questro to Tyler and Michele Harris production out from the Parker additional production out for a rerun today by Norah Galen's Donelson special thanks to Kevin Alesund and The Risk podcast, where version of Rachel Rosenthal's story from the beginning of the show first appeared.

They are at risk that show NORCOM, our website, This American Life Dog, This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PR, the Public Radio Exchange. Support for this American life comes from Albats, a sustainable subbrand. Albats goal is to make products that do right by your feet and the planet more and more about the sustainable practices and find your power at all. Birds Dotcom. Thanks as always to the program's cofounder, Mr Animality. You know, I once tried to talk to him about whether Denarius Targaryen was going to end up on the Iron Throne with John Snow, or are they just misunderstood Tolkin?

I don't like it at all. Yeah, no, no. The the to wait for me.

I'm IRA Glass, back next week with my stories of this American life.