Tucson storyteller Molly McCloy loves telling stories about hard things. She’s done it on stage and in print. Her memoir, “Nine Grudges: The Spiteful Origins of the Happiest Dyke on Earth” will be published later this year.
But it wasn’t always easy for McCloy to talk about things like the mental and physical abuse she suffered as a child. To speak the truth about sad moments, ironically, she had to find a way to laugh at them.
McCloy's been writing about this recently on her Substack, which is also called “Happiest Dyke on Earth.” In a series of posts titled “Trauma Writing Lessons,” she invites readers to get in touch with the counter-intuitive idea that it’s OK — and maybe even healthy — to find humor in the worst moments of our lives.
As she recently told The Show, she had an epiphany about this as she was developing a solo show. During a workshop, McCloy told her director a story she’d always thought of as tragic, about a moment from her childhood when her father flew into a terrifying rage.
Full conversation
MOLLY MCCLOY: And so my brothers and I, our response to that was, "OK, well, we’re gonna kill him when he’s old. We’re gonna push him off a cliff in his wheelchair." And that was kind of the response to that. ... But I was not seeing the humor in that yet. Like, clearly it’s funny.
SAM DINGMAN: These 8-year-olds plotting the demise.
MCCLOY: Exactly. And my director was like, “Um, read that again, because that’s actually a laugh line.” And I didn’t see that at all until she said that. And once she said that, then I thought, “Oh God, that’s right, this is funny.”
DINGMAN: So what was it about her laughing at it — or encouraging you to think of it as a funny moment? What did that unlock for you?
MCCLOY: That unlocked the fact that kids don’t have a lot of power, but a sense of humor is a powerful thing.
DINGMAN: So, that, if I’m hearing you right, ties into this idea of agency. Now looking back as an adult, you can say, “You know what, that anger was terrifying for us, but now I can make fun of it.”
MCCLOY: Exactly —
DINGMAN: That’s a powerful thing.
MCCLOY: Yeah. And it took us a while to come around to that, but we really came around to this sense of humor surrounding our dad’s anger when we were teenagers. Once you’ve had a couple of bong hits through a bong made out of a pickle jar, then a grown man throwing a tantrum is funny.
DINGMAN: Wait, and were these bong hits from when you were a teenager or bong hits as an adult looking back?
MCCLOY: Oh, this is as a teenager.
DINGMAN: As a teenager, OK.
MCCLOY: Yeah.
DINGMAN: So now you’re looking back at this moment where, like, you’re enjoying some bong hits from a pickle jar and your dad’s throwing a tantrum.
MCCLOY: It became entertaining to the point that my brothers would set him off on purpose.
DINGMAN: Oh, my God.
MCCLOY: You know, just trying to irritate him on purpose so that we could laugh at him and kind of feel some empowerment around that anger that used to scare us so much.
DINGMAN: So this is an amazing transition. You go from this anger being terrifying to it being something that you can actually control.
MCCLOY: Exactly.
DINGMAN: I hope you don’t feel like this language is too dramatic, but I feel like what you’re describing is a kind of alchemy. A way in which these very upsetting experiences that many of us have had can become — through the reclaiming of them as stories that we are telling —points of connection.
To go with the experience you had, you’re sitting there talking to this trusted colleague, and they’re able to reflect back to you, “This doesn’t have to be a sad memory, Molly.”
MCCLOY: Yeah, it’s interesting. Maybe we could call it a reclamation.
DINGMAN: Absolutely. Yeah. So you obviously, Molly, you’re a performer. You’re a writer. You’re somebody who makes it your business to reclaim events from your life as a way of expressing yourself. But I get the sense that in your mind, it’s valuable to go through that process, regardless of what the end goal of the process is.
MCCLOY: Yeah. I think not everybody wants to tell the story on stage, right? But I noticed when I had one of my stories on the RISK! podcast and people were contacting me and immediately were starting to tell their own stories. And were like, "I was a child of an alcoholic parent" and starting to tell their stories. And I thought there’s something about telling the story that’s really important to people.
Especially when we’re talking about childhood trauma stories, because the topic is so taboo. And when you try to talk about it to people that haven’t had that experience ... you’re misunderstood a lot. You’re sort of seen as damaged goods. There’s pity.
But at the same time, I think that what happens for a lot of people — and it definitely happened for me — is that you want to be able to voice it in some way, because sometimes you’ve been gaslit out of the fact that it’s true.
DINGMAN: It’s interesting, this idea you’re alluding to of audiences — whether it’s other people in your life or a literal audience at a show — not necessarily always being ready to receive a story like this. I can imagine sitting in an audience — I shouldn’t say “I can imagine.” I’ve literally had this experience of sitting at a show and someone is talking about something that they are clearly still actively dealing with the trauma of.
And most people who go to shows, that’s not what they’re there for. And it makes them worry about the performer rather than experience it as a story. But if you have tapped into this agency element that you’re describing, I would imagine that sends a signal from the performer that’s like, “It’s OK for me to talk about this. I’m in control of this.”
MCCLOY: Well, it’s the difference between a horror story and an adventure story, right? So a horror story is just all these horrific things are happening to me, and I’m the victim. The adventure story is I’m trying to do this; I’m trying to get this thing; I’m trying to take this action. It’s a lot easier for people to listen to.
DINGMAN: Right. And the idea of telling a story about what happened to you in the first place is an active choice.
MCCLOY: Well, one thing that I point out — because I’ve gotten some flack about this from not too many people — but saying, “Well, what if there is no agency in this moment at all?” And I point out that I’m talking sometimes about very subtle things. What did you think? Or the fact that you’re still here now, that you survived it.
In my own piece, obviously, we have that murder plot of pushing my dad off the cliff in the wheelchair. Well, that became a fantasy for me when I was in these powerless moments. I would call even that act of having a fantasy to escape is agency.
DINGMAN: And I think that’s a very profound idea you expressed, too, this notion that simply by virtue of the fact that you are telling a story about something, it means you survived it.
MCCLOY: Absolutely. And it means you get to name it. You get to frame it. It’s powerful.
DINGMAN: What would you say engaging with your own traumatic histories and writing your own stories has done for you in your life?
MCCLOY: I’ve been able to not freeze, and I’m really proud of that. And that’s just happened to me in the last year. So I was on the subway in LA, and this guy, this giant man, got on the subway. He was drinking a beer and harassing these women next to me. And then he turned on me and started to harass me.
And in the past, I don’t think I would have been able to make this move, but I just walked away from him. I didn’t freeze. I was able to breathe, I was able to stay focused. I was able to stay fully present.
And that is my goal, is to not find myself frozen and retraumatized in daily conflicts because I think that’s what tends to happen to people with childhood trauma.
DINGMAN: Well, amen to that.
MCCLOY: Thanks, Sam.
DINGMAN: I have been speaking with Molly McCloy. Molly is a four-time winner of the Moth Story Slam, a comedian, a storyteller and her memoir, “Nine Grudges: The Spiteful Origins of the Happiest Dyke on Earth,” is available for preorder now. Molly, thank you for this conversation.
MCCLOY: Thank you, Sam.
-
The murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles in 1976 is still one of the most notable events in Phoenix history. But despite that, nobody’s written a comprehensive historical book about the case — until now. -
Caroline Bicks studied Shakespeare at Harvard. She’s written books about the Bard, who’s obviously one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. But not so far behind Shakespeare is Stephen King, who’s the subject of Bicks’ most recent book, “Monsters in the Archive.” -
“Stories of the Street” is a collection of the stories Michael Demangone and his fellow students have met as part of the university’s street medicine program. -
More than a decade ago, during the Syrian Civil War, the northern Syrian city of Manbij was the setting for a real-world, real-time experiment in democracy. And that experiment is captured in the new book "Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution." -
When author Tom Leveen was writing one of his novels, which is called “Party,” he wasn’t thinking in terms of genre. The book is about a group of high school students, all headed to the same party to celebrate the end of the school year.
