Transcript : "Going Home" - Part 2
00;00;10;01 – 00;00;35;00
Marc Moss
Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme. Live in person and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. Have you ever felt that tug towards a place, a memory, or maybe even a person? That feeling of going home, that feeling of going home isn’t just about a physical location.
It’s about belonging and connection. It’s about finding that piece of yourself that’s been missing. On this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. We explore all the different ways we come home to ourselves and the world around us. We’ll hear stories of journeys, of second chances, of rediscovering what truly matters. So buckle up and get comfy. Join us as we embark on these heartfelt adventures.
This episode of the podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the Glacier Ice Rink and Pavilion on June 11th, 2024, as part of the Missoula Pride celebration. Eight storytellers shared their true personal stories on the theme Going Home.
00;01;19;02 – 00;01;30;05
Michelle Reilly
It was like looking through the most beautiful kaleidoscope I had ever looked through all these vibrant colors and shapes and patterns of fractals and wonder.
00;01;30;05 – 00;01;48;03
Adel Ben Bacha
As she answers the phone, she softly says hello. And then silence. That silence felt like forever. But she breaks that silence with a delicate sob.
00;01;48;03 – 00;01;59;15
Zeke Cork
I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake it. I thought maybe it was about my family, so I try to write about it, but there was always something missing. It stayed with me for years.
00;01;59;15 – 00;02;06;01
Ashley Brittner Wells
The coolest thing you could do in town was go to the games. And I desperately wanted to be cool, so I went.
00;02;06;01 – 00;02;37;00
Marc Moss
That’s coming up. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is Never Again. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call (406) 203-4683. You have three minutes to leave your pitch. The pitch deadline is August 9th. I look forward to hearing from you. We’re also looking for volunteers to help with the event.
If you love Tell Us Something and you love helping out, visit. Tell us something. Morgan. Volunteer to learn more and to sign up.
We were gathered at the Missoula County Fairgrounds in the heart of Montana amidst the vibrant energy of early June. As we remembered that we took a moment to acknowledge the traditional stewards of this land. We stand on the ancestral homelands of the Salish and Kalispell, people who for countless generations have nurtured and cared for this place. The place of the small bull trout.
Their deep connection to this land is woven into the very fabric of this valley. We honor their resilience, their knowledge of the natural world, and their enduring presence here. Acknowledgment alone is not enough. Let’s also commit to taking action ways that you can do this if you live in Missoula, or to learn more about the native tribes who still inhabit this land.
You can visit the Salish Kootenay College or the Missoula Children’s Museum to deepen your understanding of the Salish and Kalispell cultures. You can visit the Missoula Art Museum, where the exhibit We Stand with you. Contemporary artists. Honor the families of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous relative crisis runs through September 7th, 2024. You can support cultural events hosted by local tribes and explore opportunities to volunteer with their initiatives.
We can always be looking for opportunities to incorporate indigenous knowledge and practices into our everyday lives, whether it’s sustainable land management or traditional food systems. We can commit to moving beyond mere words and work towards building a more respectful and inclusive future. Honoring the legacy of the Salish and the Kalispell people on whose land we stand.
Remember this. Tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language.
We ate. Tell us something. Recognize the privilege inherent in our platform and while we love sharing a variety of voices, it’s important to amplify marginalized voices. That’s why during the event on June 11th, I stepped back and passed the mic to our friends from Missoula Pride. Devin Carpenter, who shared his story at last year’s event, and Kiara Rivera from the center, performed the honors of seeing the evening’s event.
On the podcast, you’ll hear them giving the bios for the storytellers.
Michelle Riley finds herself homeless in 10th grade in a challenge that begins a lifetime of challenges after earning a PhD. Despite her alcohol use disorder, she struggles to overcome addiction and finds unexpected hope. In an online ad, sensitive listeners, please note that Michelle’s story contains mentions of suicidal thoughts, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please take care of yourselves.
Michelle calls her story heroic measures. Thanks for listening.
00;05;41;05 – 00;06;29;18
Michelle Reilly
I found myself homeless for the first time when I was in 10th grade. My sisters and I came home from school and our father’s truck was parked there. But our father was never home this time of day. So we walked inside. Hello. Hello. No answer. We walked up the stairs and the door to my parent’s bedroom was cracked, so we pushed it open and my father was there, kneeling at the foot of his bed with all of his guns, a row of guns laid out neatly on his bed.
My mom was gone. She left. See, I grew up in a small town in rural Appalachia, and my parents were young parents. My mother had three daughters by the time she was 21. So I guess by 35, she didn’t want to be a mother anymore. And home became not so homey anymore. I started sleeping at friends houses or sleeping in my car.
Sometimes I didn’t sleep at all because by 11th grade I was working 3 or 4 jobs. I’d rotate between two afterschool jobs, and then I’d go to work third shift at a diner. And diners in Appalachia weren’t the most wholesome place for a 16 year old girl to be. So I dealt with far too many sexual propositions from older men.
There. I’d get off at 6 or 7. I’d go to school, shower in the locker room, and then I’d sleep either in homeroom or in my car. And I don’t remember thinking about these things. It was like I was just on autopilot doing them. After high school, I started undergrad with the same unwavering autopilot and schedule. I was working 5 or 6 jobs and taking 18 to 21 credits a semester.
And I was introduced to the underground rave scene in Pittsburgh and started experimenting with party drugs. I was also drinking a lot during this time and sleeping even less. I’d started drinking at a young age after my mom left, and I was given a fake ID, but I lived in a small town, so I’d frequently run into friends of my father’s at dive bars, but they knew his mental state after my mom left, so either they never told him or if they did, he was too depressed to say anything to me.
After undergrad, I moved to Reno and started living out of my car again. And then at 27, I applied to grad school and earned a master’s of science from Johns Hopkins University. And then I was offered a research position. So I moved to Flagstaff and earned my PhD and four years.
Underneath the accomplishments and overcome struggles. I was completely empty and numb, still completely out of touch with any emotions and just doing doing all the things that I know needed to get done. Doing all the things I needed to do without feeling anything. And during this time, I was still drinking a lot like a fifth whiskey a night was not uncommon.
I was still over performing at work, exceeding expectations and producing high quality products. But my behavior was erratic and my emotions were frequently uncontrolled outbursts of sobbing or rage. And I felt that uncontrollable spiraling. It’s like I was in a dark box and there wasn’t a top or bottom, and there wasn’t a way out of this box because the box was everything.
It’s like those car compactors at scrap yards. The force and pressure needed to smash a car into this tiny package of metal. That force and pressure is what it felt like all around me, all of the time in this torque box. And I couldn’t climb out of this box because the darkness was everything.
It was so isolating and I felt so alone. I became completely dysregulated and at times suicidal and really lost hope.
One day I was scrolling through Instagram and I felt an emotion, a glimmer of hope, a tiny seed deep down that I barely felt safe acknowledging. I filled out an online form for a clinical trial titled Psilocybin Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder with Co-occurring Alcohol Use Disorder.
Fast forward several long months of getting physicals, providing psychological examinations, getting bloodwork and providing a detailed drinking history. And I was told I was accepted into this trial. I started meeting twice a week with my guides, a licensed social worker and a psychologist. And there wasn’t a single meeting that I didn’t cry at, just endless tears streaming down my face.
But hopelessness was still. I felt.
On September 18th, I walked into the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Behavioral Research for my last Credos interview, and I was asked a series of questions on a scale of 0 to 10, how important is it for you to change your drinking right now? Ten? On a scale of 0 to 10, how confident are you that you can change your drinking right now?
At this point in my life, I felt like I had drank more days. I’d been alive than not drank, so my confidence was pretty low. I think I gave the question a 3 or 4. More evaluations and discussions and meditating. And then I was handed a wooden chalice and I put on a blood pressure monitor. I shades and headphones and I waited.
And if you’re familiar with psychedelics, the dose I was given was a high dose. It’s what they call a heroic dose.
The music began to entice and overwhelm me, and I was being pulled by curiosity into a world completely unfamiliar to me. Although I had a fair share of experience with party drugs, I had no experience with psychedelics.
I began to see so many fantastical things and found myself invited deeper and deeper into my internal psyche. So many interesting patterns and curiosities and a feeling of weightlessness.
It was like looking through the most beautiful kaleidoscope I had ever looked through, all these vibrant colors and shapes and patterns of fractals and wonder.
The texture of the music became the vibrant colors, and I could feel all these colors and patterns in a very intense way. The kaleidoscope became five dimensional and the universe became five dimensional. And I was a part of that.
I could feel so much depth and breadth and heights, but also time both forward and backwards and resonance. And every cell in my body was suddenly alive and vibrating with the resonance of these mutating colors and the kaleidoscope. My body became warm and endless without boundary, and I felt so much openness, like an untethered ring. Like the layers just being pulled off of me.
All that crushing heaviness. That only thing that I had felt for so long was being pulled out of me and lifted off of me and replaced with this beautiful radiance. And this warm, golden light was being poured into me and filling me and spilling out around me into this beautiful reflective pool. At some point, I don’t know the timeline, but I felt as though I was being embraced by the universe, and I felt a presence.
And I felt this presence tell me or show me that I was not alone, that I was being held, always held, and that I was loved. And I saw darkness from my past in a new light. But I felt safe there, and I felt as though I was not alone. But I was being guided through this darkness and fear was replaced with curiosity.
I explored unending time and a continuum of life, and I felt more at home than I had ever felt in my entire life. The details of the experience are inexplicable, as often is said about life changing psychedelic experiences. It was ineffable. I had one other treatment three months after my first, and I have not had the urge to numb reality through drinking since my first session.
I still carry with me that peace and comfort I felt during my first session, and I’m learning a new sense of self filled with generosity and acceptance. And I’m so grateful that I found my way home to my self-worth.
00;16;36;03 – 00;16;52;04
Devin Carpenter
Michelle Reilly is a wilderness specialist and wildlife ecologist who has lived in Missoula for 8 years. She is a wildcrafter, avid backpacker, and devoted mother. If she isn’t deep in the mountains or paddling the rivers, you can find her in her yard tending her gourmet mushroom gardens. She also runs a Missoula Ladies’ Dinner Club and enjoys entertaining in her backyard. Sensitive listeners, please note that Michelle’s story contains mentions of suicidal thoughts and the her father contemplating suicide, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please take care of yourselves. Alright, please welcome Michelle Reilly.
00;16;52;10 – 00;17;06;17
Marc Moss
Up next Adele Ben Boccia shares a vivid tale of family nostalgia and a life changing phone call that redefines the meaning of home. Adele calls her story plus 206. Thanks for listening.
00;17;06;17 – 00;17;35;07
Adel Ben Bacha
Hello, everyone. Before I tell you my story, I would like for all of you to close your eyes, at least for one part, because I want this to be a shared experience. So my story takes us back. Eight years ago in France, in the little city of my family and I are all gathered for a Thursday dinner, as my mom loves to make them.
Everyone understands what she has prepared for dinner. It’s everyone’s favorite meal, a delicious couscous that looks like perfection. So she’s in the kitchen. We are all in the living room. We are a big family of eight people, and I’m the youngest in the living room. You can hear the loud voices, some jokes being thrown at people, and very loud and heavy arguments.
So she’s in the kitchen. The dish is getting ready, and as she brings the plate in the living room, everyone just stops. They’re astonished by this red vivid color. This color comes from the spices she puts in it. The tomato sauce, the harissa. Very spicy that day. By the way. And everyone dies in. Everyone stops. And the room is filled with the sound of clinking spoons.
And so I try a very timid. Bon appétit that can be heard. Have you ever felt that ignored. If not, that hurts a lot. So everyone dives in and eats peacefully. The noise is getting louder as it was before, but suddenly the phone rings. My mum rushes through the phone to the phone and I see her eyes widening, and as they get bigger, we all see this number.
This number was longer than usual on the phone and we could all see the country code. And I remember vividly the numbers two, one, six. Answering that phone took her instantaneously back to her childhood until she was 17. As she answers the phone, she softly says hello. And then silence. That silence felt like forever. But she breaks that silence where they delicate sob.
Me and my siblings look at each other and we understand what happened. And something very bad happened. After a sleepless night, my mom boards us on the first plane. She finds to Tunisia the place where she was born. As the plane lands, her head is still up in the clouds. She walks through the airport and all she sees is just lifeless figures walking around the airport.
She goes out of the airport. And then she hops into the first taxi, and she is starting to get prepared to her two hour drive to take her to her hometown, a small village now become a city called Dubai. As she is on her way, she looks through the window and she notices that a lot of things have changed.
The palm trees are higher, the buildings too, and the traffic is heavier, making the journey even longer. She finally gets there, knocks at the door and suddenly the memories in her head start rushing as well as if it was a race. Each memory wanted to be the one, the one to be remembered. The first thing she would tell her sister.
But eventually none of them won. The door opens and my mom sees her sister. Red eyes still filled with water, without a word. She is welcomed with a heartfelt hug and welcoming eyes filled with filled with sympathy. Without saying anything, she follows her sister in a very dark room, and you can tell that the room was very dark, because the only light you could see was the swaying of the curtains through the rare breeze.
And then she enters and she sees the lifeless body on a mattress. As she sees it. She can’t help it but rush to the body. She holds her and hugs her tightly and kisses her repeatedly. On me. On me. Meaning mom in Arabic. I’m here now. You’re safe. After saying that, the only thing we could see is a tear that has been shed on my grandmother’s cheek.
One of her siblings goes to the body and closes the eyes, and you may now open yours. The reason why I chose this story is because, like my mom and the youngest of the family of eight, and I’ve always felt that it was hard to find my voice and to step up for my ideas. Because when you’re young and you have a lot of big brothers that would tell you what to think because you’re too young, you don’t know anything.
You’re naive. But now, thinking back, I think that this story shaped me in a way because I didn’t want to feel the regret and guilt that my mother felt of not being there enough for her own mom. So when I was about 18, I already knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and I’ve always made a promise to myself.
I said that whenever I get my first job as a teacher, I will buy a house and make sure that my mom is safe with my dad and that they left the small apartment we have been living all our life. So that’s what I did and I thought that would help them. But as I was growing older, I was getting, harder and harder on my siblings.
As I was repeating the process, I had been I had been living before, and now I’m thinking back, and I was hard on them because my mom wishes they called her more and visit more because she was expressing her own grief as if life could stop at any moment. So I get into a lot of arguments with my siblings, telling them that they should call mom more often because you never know what can happen.
But now I understand why I felt that. And most of all, why I shouldn’t feel like that. Because today we’re here to talk about home. And my vision of home changed. My siblings didn’t call my parents that often because they now have a family husband, wife, children. So this is now their home. But it doesn’t mean that they love my mom any less.
So what I do today to avoid that happening again is calling my mom anytime I can. And being here now. Far away from home. Only for a month. Still, I make sure that I call my mom every day because I have understood something very important. We tend to think of home as a building, something that has been built, something that protects you from the outside.
A geographical space. But I have now understood that a home is actually not a geographical place. It could be a spiritual place. So now when I call her, I always make sure that even if we don’t have much to say every day, that I get to hear every detail of her day. This way, when it’s my time to go home, I don’t feel like she felt the buildings getting higher and the trees higher to thank you.
00;25;44;02 – 00;25;54;09
Kera Rivera
Adel Ben Bacha is a 29 year-old French English teacher in Dijon, France. You must have heard of the mustard! He teaches in highschool, university and for masters’ programs, among other activities . He loves meeting new people, traveling and discovering new cultures, going out with friends and family.
00;25;54;09 – 00;26;01;02
Marc Moss
We’ll be right back after this short break. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast.
00;26;01;02 – 00;26;12;14
Zeke Cork
I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake it. I thought maybe it was about my family, so I try to write about it, but there was always something missing. It stayed with me for years.
00;26;12;14 – 00;26;18;28
Ashley Brittner Wells
The coolest thing you could do in town was go to the games. And I desperately wanted to be cool, so I went.
00;26;18;28 – 00;26;22;10
Marc Moss
That’s after the break. Stay tuned.
Thank you to our story sponsor, the Good Food Store, helping us to pay our storytellers. Learn more at Good Food store.com. Thanks to Golden Yolk Griddle, who also showed up as a story sponsor. Learn more about them at Golden Yolk griddle.com. Thank you to our accessibility sponsor, Parkside Credit Union, allowing us to hire American Sign Language interpreters at this event.
In order to be a more inclusive experience, learn about them at Parkside fcu.com. Thanks to our artist sponsor Bernice’s Bakery, who paid our poster artist. I learned about them and their delicious baked goods at Bernice’s Bakery mty.com. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula Events, Dot net, the Art attic, The Trail Less Traveled, and Missoula Broadcasting Company including the family of ESPN radio.
The trail 133, Jack FM and Missoula. Source for modern hits you 104.5. Thanks to our in-kind sponsors. Float. Missoula. Learn more at float msl.com and choice of tile. Learn about Joyce at Joyce of tile.com. Please remember that our next event is September 18th at the George and Jane Denison Theater. The theme is Never Again. You can pitch your story by calling (406) 203-4683.
Tickets are available right now at Tell Us something.org. Please follow us on all the standard social media channels and subscribe to our newsletter. In order to be informed about all of our events. Welcome back. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss.
In our next story, Zeke Cork returns to Missoula after many failed escapes to face his demons, find love and embrace his true self. Sensitive listeners, please note that Zeke’s story contains a mention of a suicide attempt, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please take care of yourselves. Zeke calls his story. Ezekiel cried. Thanks for listening.
00;28;25;09 – 00;28;39;09
Zeke Cork
Speaking. Got a short king? Yeah, sure. King on the premises? Yeah.
Thank you, Devon. And thank you, everybody, for coming.
After trying to be someone else anywhere else, I came back to Missoula. This town owns me. No matter how many times I try to run from here, it would find me and call me back and was never kicking or screaming that I’d return. It was more like tail tucked between my legs, begging for forgiveness with a promise to be better.
See, I grew up here. My handprints are in concrete. My footprints cast in the local trails. My tire tracks on the gravel roads. I went to Paxson and Roosevelt, then Hellgate High School. All my first year here. My first communion. My first kiss. My first awkward mechanics was sex. My first love, and my first heartbreak. I left my first boyfriend, who I wanted to be more than I desired, for a girl who had dumped me in the pig barn right here at the county fair.
So surrounded by the smells of shit and cotton candy. I stumbled through the sounds of the midway games and the blinking lights, where I ran into friends who tell me it was going to be okay. And then I made a girl underneath the Ferris wheel who I watched devour of candied apple with a passion I could only envy.
And I swear, she rolled her eyes at me, seeing the pathetic loser I was instead of the swaggering, give a shit start, I tried to present. Now my parents, they were educators, active members of the Democratic Party in Saint Anthony’s parish, and they pushed me to become anything that I could imagine, at least until their marriage failed. When I was a teenager.
And trust me, it needed to end. But I lost my way. I didn’t know who to be without them showing me. I think maybe later, when we’re adults ourselves, we figure out that our parents were just people trying to find their own way. But I followed my father to Portland. I blamed my aimlessness on him, and I wanted him to fix it.
I was a disaster. My once perfect father was consumed with finding his own last year, and he was really nothing more than Peter Pan chasing after his shadow. So I came back to Missoula, trying to find the promise that others had seen in me. I enrolled at the university. I was pretty focused for a while until I fell in love with that girl I’d met underneath the Ferris wheel, so I’d follow her to Chicago and then Seattle.
But she’d become this plank for me to cling onto, and an ocean of confusion and grief. That was a lot to expect of someone who was just trying to make it to shore themselves. So I packed up my books and my records, and I drove back to Missoula again. But there’s something that happens for me every time I enter this valley from any direction.
When it opens up and the neighborhoods pop into view, and whatever season it’s in presents itself in all its glory, like the royal robes of fall lilacs in the spring, the ice choked rivers in the winter, and the brown hills of late summer. And I just let out this long breath I’ve been holding. And I know, I know that I’m home.
But I can never sustain that comfort. I could only see my reflections in shards, slivers of broken glass. I couldn’t name the ways I was fractured. I only knew that I was. So I took up drinking as a hobby. And there was lots of what Beyoncé calls those red cup kisses when I’d meet a girl, and then another, and then another, hoping they’d be the one that would fix me.
But they were just crooked. Rusty nails tried to hold it together themselves, and we all kind of wanted the same thing, but the weight of it was too much for anyone to hold. And one night I had a dream about the prophet Ezekiel, the one in the desert who commands the bones to rise up out of the sand.
The one in that old song. That old gospel song. Ezekiel cried. Them bones, them bones, the ankle bone connected to the knee bone. Yeah. That guy. I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake it. I thought maybe it was about my family. So I try to write about it, but there was always something missing. It stayed with me for years, and I’d say, what is it?
Why does this haunt me? And then one late night in August, after one month of sobriety, I wandered out to the shed that belonged to the woman I was seeing at the time. And I took her shotgun with me, and I tore that place apart looking for shells. All I found was an empty box. But still I put the barrel of that thing in my mouth and I squeeze the trigger, hoping there was one in the chamber.
Well, I’m here today because there wasn’t. But the next morning I checked myself into rehab. Next month I’ll be 34 years sober.
But back then, I had to just try to make it through each day. So I stayed to myself, went to work, read, listen to music, played video games, and watched a lot of movies. But then I’d made a girl and she was cautious but intrigued. And I wasn’t a good catch. But she was beautiful, smart and strong. So we took it slow, and eventually I’d convince her to run away with me, and we moved to Seattle.
We came back to Missoula, and then we’d move to Texas, California and Alaska. Every time things got rough, we’d move. All we needed was a change of scenery. We even got married, and that meant something. Maybe that would be the thing that would save us. Where we strong enough to move back home, settle down in our family and friends again.
We’ve had so. But it was actually the opposite. It was the safest place to just let it end. See, the skeletons live here, and we’d return to the place where they’d dwell. And I still despise that broken person in the mirror. And I’d been asking someone else to love them without hesitation. Without question. Unconditionally. What a huge ask.
So, for the first time in a very long time, I was on my own and I stood on the top of Mount Sentinel, staring down at my hometown, listening to Josh Reynolds homecoming, humming along in the crisp column air. And I let the pastoral rolling. It was there that I understood what the dream she had left her countless times as a lost girl, someone’s daughter, sister, a wife, only to return to become something akin to the prodigal son.
And it probably would have been a lot easier for me to become myself in a place where no one knew my story. But instead, I asked people who had known me most of their lives to call me by a new name and address me as the man I’d always been, but repeatedly denied. And what I got in return was my family and friends wrapping their arms around me and saying, yes, this makes sense.
My ex-wife gave me my first testosterone shot and she’s my closest friend. Then I’d meet someone new. Yeah, I know, here we go again. But we’d both sworn off relationships. But that crackle and hum like power lines was pretty hard to resist. So she chose to move across the world and give me and my town a try. She liked us.
We got married in a ghost town not too far from here, and we’re trying something different. We’re helping each other unpack the baggage instead of helping and making each other lugging around. So far, so good. And I’m no longer a stranger in a strange land. I finally live in a body that I’m not at war with. And the mirror.
The mirror is now a full reflection of someone I recognize. Someone I know. I look at my perfect haircut from Compass Barbershop, who has been with me through the whole thing.
And I’ll run a razor down my neckline. And I’ll watch my shoulders broaden and my hips narrow. And I see my parents, both of them looking back at me. My mother, who’s 84, is still alive and well, and my father has passed, but both of them staring back at their son, proud of the man he’s becoming. And I have a tattoo on my chest, a line I borrowed from Florence Welch that says, I’ll show you what it means to be spared.
I landed in a safe space. Nestled between these foothills and held by this community. The place where Ezekiel Zeke rose out of a desert of despair and became home. And for me, this is what it means to be home.
00;38;37;04 – 00;38;43;13
Devin Carpenter
He lives in Missoula with his wife and two rescue mutts. He loves tacos and trucker hats.
00;38;43;13 – 00;39;05;10
Marc Moss
Wrapping up this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. Ashley Britton or Wells is a self-described tomboy in the 1980s who finds courage in the Montana Lady Griz games. It took years to find her own place in the sands and be the inspiration for girls who are like she was then. Ashley calls her story made in Montana. Thanks for listening.
00;39;05;10 – 00;39;52;13
Ashley Brittner Wells
I’m sitting on the burnt orange carpet of my bedroom for new kids on the block, blasting from a tape deck in the background. Staring back at me from my bookshelves. Kristy’s great idea. Every Garth Brooks cassette tape known to humankind. And the eyes of 1 million porcelain dolls. I’m staring at my 1993 1994 Montana Lady Griz basketball team poster.
The shit is iconic. 15 players pose in their high school leather jackets on the University of Montana campus in front of their lockers. T’s blond perms, proofs of curly bangs scrunched at the front one with a feather in her hair. The team is historic. The tag line is made in Montana because that year all the players were from our states, and I would stare at it because it was a signal to me and my friends what Montana girls like us could grow up to be.
One day. I’m all Montana, too. I was born in the mid 80s and raised in East Missoula. And did I mention that I loved the Lady Grizz? I went to all their games. I went to their summer camps in the summer, and I tried to figure out which player I wanted to be. Their home turf, Delbert Arenas, nestled up against the base of Mount Sentinel on the University of Montana campus.
Our games I would run one hand along the brown, snaking metal railing that surrounds the court, balancing a piping hot personal pan pizza, on the other hand, slide my butt along the tanned plastic bleacher seating and get ready to be pumped at the opening chords of Pop Up the Jam. I would scream, and the players ran out to raucous applause from a full house decked out in copper and gold.
The games were the coolest thing you could do in town, and it was like my posters had come to life. The players were like my celebrities Shannon Cates, Skylar Cisco, Malia Kapp. The coolest thing you could do in town was go to the games. And I desperately wanted to be cool. So I went. I have always been trying to figure out who I am in a world that doesn’t totally feel like I belong in it.
I was bigger and louder than the other kids. I tried to do all the things the boys did. I struggled to fit in pretty much anywhere you put me. I was what we referred to in the 90s as a tomboy. I didn’t know which new kid on the block I had a crush on, but I knew that I had a crush on their rat tail haircuts.
So I got one of those with my mom in tow. The hair stylist twisted my thick blond ponytail into a giant hair tie at the base of my neck and cut the whole thing off. Save the rat tail, my mom cried. She still has that ponytail tucked away in a Ziploc bag in her floral hope chest. I sometimes think it’s the last remnant of the daughter that she thought she was getting, but who?
I quickly put a stop to it. My friends and I loved my rat tail, and at the games we would strut around the arena checking people out, looking to be checked out. the crowds back then and to this day are made up of everyday Missoula fans just like us. Families retire trees. Then there was the student section.
I thought the student section were so cool. They were in college, for example. They had they were sunglasses inside. They knew all the chants and cheers. T fans, lady Griz T fans. But there was this one couple that always stood out to me. One had hair short like mine and wore hoodies and baseball caps. The other had a tease perm, poofs of curly bangs and jeans, just like the players on my beloved poster.
But they weren’t just any other couple. They were queer. I would see them, and I would watch them as much as I would watch the games. I had never seen a couple like them in Missoula or anywhere else. I would climb to the highest corner of the arena and my second hand Nike’s, and I would watch them, and I would see them put their arms around each other’s shoulders, whisper in each other’s ears, cheer for the same players.
I cheered for. And I didn’t really know what I was seeing, but it felt really safe. It felt warm. It felt like coming home. It must have taken so much bravery for them to show up to those games 30 years ago to and be totally themselves. I don’t know what it was like to be queer in the early 90s in Missoula, except that I do, because I was I just didn’t know it yet.
Back then, it felt like people kept out of each other’s business in ways they just don’t anymore. And seeing this couple was really meaningful to me, because it made me feel like maybe someday who I was going to be wasn’t one of the players on the court. It was one of the people in the stands. When I was 24, I moved to Portland, Oregon and quickly realized why a couple like that would make me feel like I’d found myself.
You probably figured it out before I did. It wasn’t difficult to be a lesbian in Portland, Oregon. It didn’t feel like taking a chance, holding hands in public with Mal, who would become my wife. Once we went hiking up the Columbia River Gorge, and on the way home, we pulled over to stop and look at the river and as we got out of the car, I planted one on Mal’s face.
And in that moment, I noticed a man in iridescent sunglasses staring at us. Standing outside of his pickup truck. It was just the three of us out there and my breath caught in my throat. But then he gave me a smile and a wave and a thumbs up. And I thought maybe it was going to be okay, and maybe I could be queer anywhere, even in Missoula, Montana.
Shortly thereafter, we moved home. You can imagine how excited I was to take Mel to a Lady Grizz game. My mom was just as excited and bought us matching University of Montana hoodies just for the occasion. We loaded our arms up with personal pan pizzas, big bags of popcorn, fountain Diet Cokes as big as we could find, and took the back arena hallways to our seats.
Nowadays, those hallways are lined with posters from all of my beloved teams from the early 90s, and I showed them all the 9394 poster and told her about the team and the dirty ball contest at summer camp, where whoever had the dirtiest ball would win a prize. At the end of Lady Griz camp. So I would dribble the ball for hours in my driveway and practice layups and try to do whatever I could to prove how committed I was to the players.
I also told her about the couple, who, you know, I’ve always wondered who they were, where they ended up. All of these images came rushing back to me as I watched the current team on Robin solving court. A few months ago we attended the senior night game and the house was packed. There were families and the student section and packs of ten year old girls walking around the arena and matching sweatshirts shox a bright pink lipstick across their faces.
Seeing and being seen, listening to whatever it is I listen to now, it is. And this time I hesitated for my arm around my shoulders.
The Montana that I grew up in, and frankly, moved back to just a few short years ago has been replaced by a moral panic. Folks aren’t exactly keeping themselves out of our communities business anymore, but we must remain being seen. When you are true to yourself, you give others permission to be true to themselves, to.
It was our turn to demonstrate a little bit of bravery. Owing so much to that couple that I will never get to thank.
So I did, everybody. I put my arms around my shoulders.
Because she is my love. And those arena seats are my home where we get to be exactly who we are and who I always have been.
00;49;56;11 – 00;50;04;18
Kera Rivera
She is best known as Mel’s wife. she is a lifelong women’s sports fan.
00;50;06;26 – 00;50;20;03
Marc Moss
Thanks for listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. This episode was recorded live in person as part of the opening events at Missoula Pride on June 11th, 2024 at the Glacier Ice Rink Pavilion.
Please remember that our next event is September 18th at the George and Jane Dennison Theater. The theme is Never Again. You can pitch your story by calling (406) 203-4683. Tickets are available currently at Tell Us something.org. Please follow us on all the standard social media channels and subscribe to our newsletter.
In order to be informed about events and all things storytelling. Stream past episodes, learn more about upcoming events, and get tickets at Tell Us something.org.
