June 6, 2019 • 41 mins
iO's upbringing pushes him to a life or death moment, and his path toward healing leads straight to Billy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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before we begin. Today's episode contains a discussion of addiction
and suicidal ideations, so please take care in listening. Last thing, um,
(00:46):
just briefly, it's four so um the drug that she
was taking. You mentioned it. This is one of the
first conversations I had with my producer, Austin. I'm about
to tell him about one of the most pivotal moments
in my life with my mom. I was nineteen and
she was in a really bad way, the most down
(01:10):
the rabbit hole of drinking. I thought it was just
drinking at that point. It was very, very very dark.
My whole upbringing. My mom would have these gnarly outbursts.
But I had always thought she just couldn't handle alcohol.
She would have one glass of wine and fly off
the handle. So one day my mom, for the first
(01:32):
time in many years, left town and I was there
with this friend of mine. Uh. We decided to clean
and we were cleaning, and I lifted up her mattress
of all cliche things, and there was a pillbottle under
her mattress. I remember time kind of slowing down and
(01:55):
being like aware, just kind of kinetically aware that I
had stumbled upon something that was going to change the
course of my life. And it said it was a
prescription for a drug called the oxen. And I went
(02:19):
and I searched what is the oxen? And it basically
said that it was a emphetamine, and it said, uh,
should never be mixed with alcohol because it produces psychotic behavior.
And I was like, oh, cool, Okay, you know she's
(02:41):
on speed. That's what this has been. And it's really
hard to explain the sensation. It's it's like the butterfly
emerging from the cocoon. These moments in your life when
you're forced out of childhood into adulthood, all of a sudden,
(03:05):
I had grown up thinking that my mom was crazy,
and there's a loneliness that's inherent to that, and isolation
and terror and pain. And in that moment, I realized,
it's not because she's fucking crazy, it's because she's been
on this drug, and it shifted everything. My dad told
(03:34):
me that the Saxon had been billy a drug. So
I then started digging into Billy, trying to understand the
house of grief that I was born into. Today on
the show My Life with my Mom, how it fell
(03:56):
apart and came back together again from Crimetown, I'm io
till it right, And this is the ballad of Billy ball.
(04:20):
If somebody who you thought was your life partner, your protector,
you're like soulmate, is viciously murdered, your grief is of
a different nature. It's ray jing grief. It's like slaughter.
Everybody grief. I grew up entirely at the mercy of
somebody else's moods, who was simultaneously my greatest protector and
(04:46):
my greatest antagonist. I'm a little worried that we're going
into family. Should I not worry about this because it's
your show? But I mean, this is very difficult, very
complex stuff. Chapter ten, something bigger than me. Why don't
(05:14):
we just start? Tell me who you are. So my
name is Cora, and we grew up together. I mean
we really grew up together. Core's five years older than
I am, and her dad and my dad were best friends,
So we spent a lot of time together as kids.
You were so um, spunky and scrappy and fiercely intelligent.
(05:40):
But you were also like physically small and and and
wispy and beautiful and delicate. You know, you were immediately
my sibling. Yeah, I was really special. I mean we
spent a lot of time together, listening to music and
bullshitting all day long, and eating snacks because we were
(06:01):
always hungry, and walking around in the summer and getting
ices and just being around the city. You know, it
was not a place for children. I mean it was
an adult world. There were parties all the time. There
(06:23):
were shooting galleries where people would go cop drugs, shoot up.
I have a memory of being six years old and
walking to your father's house with my dad and on
the way stopping in a building because you know, he
just had to make a quick stop. You know, there
was a lot of poverty, and there was a lot
(06:44):
of drugs. So I kind of inherently had these feelings
of and wanting to just protect you a lot because
I sensed that there was danger. And I remember, you know,
sleeping over at your house for example. And you know, Rebecca,
(07:06):
your mom had a boyfriend, Bernardo, for a long time,
you know, and it was a small apartment and I remember,
you know, I remember them having sex in the middle
of the night. It's not that, you know, sex is
so indecent or whatever, but there was something like really
primal going on and there was no privacy, and it
(07:27):
just was not okay. It kind of just like held you.
We were like lying in the bed and I just
pretended I was sleeping, and you kind of woke up
for a second and looked at me, and I just
was like, it's okay, and I just kind of held you.
I didn't feel like you were in a safe environment.
(07:47):
And I never questioned that you were loved. Your parents
love you extremely, but I felt that your mom was
really going through some ship on a soul level. That's
something had happened that had shifted her consciousness. Did you
(08:07):
ever hear anything about Billy. I don't remember hearing about
Billy It's okay. If not, I don't remember. She's also
very cagy. I don't know what was your understanding then
of what was going on with her. She's just your
mom is wild, you know, your mom is wild. And
(08:28):
I felt like the poverty did not help, you know,
being super broke all the time and taking care of
a kid. It's it's traumatic, you know, but there was
there was always a sense of IO can totally take
care of IO. You were scheming and like hustling. Always.
(08:49):
You were like figuring out the way to get what
you needed or wanted that your parents couldn't provide. You know,
most kids can't go home and or do homework or whatever.
And I'd be like, okay, how do I get quarters.
I'm showing Austin my go to hustle spot in front
(09:11):
of a McDonald's on Broadway, and this McDonald's right here
was like my like north Star. If I could get
enough money to get a happy meal, I was like,
it was a good day. How would you get money?
I made like ghosts out of tissues and sold them,
and ghosts like Halloween ghosts, like you bawl up a
(09:31):
tissue and then you take another tissue and you put
it over the top, and then you put like a
rubber band for the neck, and then you draw a
little face on it. And I would walk around and
sell those. I was a cute little kid, being like,
you know, give me a dollar, and people be like, damn,
a dollar would be like two dollars, and like damn,
people would buy my like weird dumb ship. I look
at the world as like a Rubik's cube, where I'm like,
(09:54):
all right, so I'm nine, I can't get a job.
I've got seventy five cents. I need to make it
to tomorrow, and I need to eat. Okay, So when
this piece goes there and that piece goes there, and
I know I can call it this person for that
and maybe I can eat the scraps over there, It's
just like a riddle. You know. On the one hand,
she was really rough, and on the other hand, I
(10:14):
got this sense that, like anything that I came up
with was a valid Your parents and my parents as well,
you know, never questioned our creativity, are intelligence or self sufficiency.
You would come to school in army fatigues, and you
(10:35):
were so adamantly and clearly, very very sure that you
were a boy. You were a boy. You presented as
a boy. There was no distinguishing feature that would mark
you or gender you as a girl. You were very
(10:57):
clear in your communication that I am a boy, period,
full stop, and don't fucking ask me. And your dad
in particular, was just like, yeah, that's yo. You know,
Iowa was io. You declared it to me. It wasn't
like I had to You just declared it to me.
You said, I'm a boy. I told this to my
(11:18):
dad when I was really little. You know, we were
just walking through Central Park and you went to join
some kids to play baseball, and they said you couldn't
play because you were a girl. And you marched up
to me and said, from now on, dad, I'm a boy.
I'm your son. You will refer to me as he,
and that's it. Do you understand? And I just accepted it.
So I went home and I said, hey, Rebecca, I says,
(11:42):
I says, she's a boy. Rebecca's like great, fine. She
gave things that were totally above and beyond, like accepting
me for who I was. Right. She fostered my imagination
and she like read to me a ton and like
there was always books and music and always always always
(12:02):
music and dance and culture and like fostering my imagination.
Around this time, my dad left for Europe, he says,
to try to get clean, leaving me alone with my mom.
I think the thing is my mom didn't realize that
she was an unsafe place for me. She applied the
(12:23):
same like dieting standards to me that she applied to herself.
And she applied the same professional expectations of me as
an eight year old as she did of herself as
a thirty eight year old. You know, but thinking back
when she was with Billy, it seems like they lived
that way too, you know, like that was accepted back then,
(12:45):
and as the world changed around her, she stayed the same.
There was definitely like a disconnect for her about like
what a child needs. So we're down here. This is
like this is the City Hall area, very kind of
epic architecture. I took Austin downtown to a place where
I made a drastic move to change my life. Is
(13:07):
this the way? Oh? This is it is? Yeah, this
is the building. I'll never forget these columns ever, So
the New York County Family Court. It all started when
I arrived at a new school for seventh grade, and
I had huge dark bag circles under my eyes and
(13:28):
I was really really pale and really really skinny. And
at that school they had an actual gym that was
gender segregated, and so the first gym class, they sent
me down and we're like, okay, go change in the
locker rooms. And I was like, like, I can't go
in the girls. I can't go in the boys, like
and I had this gender meltdown, and they were just
like okay, Like you need to talk to the school psychologist,
(13:48):
like what's going on. He asked me what my home
life was like. I was like, uh, because I was
not supposed to talk to people of authority because my
mom's love of her life had been killed by the police.
Authority was bad. And I told her. I told her
that our fridge had no food in it, which barely
(14:09):
mattered because the power was off half the time. Anyway,
I told her that I stole most of my meals,
but I didn't go to doctors. I didn't sleep enough,
and my mom and I would scream at each other
like banshees. I told her that I was hungry and
scared and that I hated my life. So one day,
this woman shows up at my school the middle of
(14:31):
the day and this woman is standing in the hall
and she's like are you I I'm like yeah, and
she was like Hi, I'm so and so I'm your
social worker and I'm here to take you away. And
I was like, I need to call my mom and
she's like, you're not allowed to. And I was like,
I don't give a funk, like I'm calling my mom,
like I will fight you physically. You don't want that scene.
(14:53):
Just let me call my mother and tell her what's happening,
because I'm not doing that to her where I'm just
gonna vanish off the face of the earth. My mom
was like, don't go with anybody. Don't go with anybody.
I'm gonna kill your guidance counselor. So I was like,
it wasn't her, it was me, And I'm okay, and
I'm gonna be in touch with you when I can.
(15:14):
I gotta go. So I left, I got my coat,
went and got outside, went outside and got in a
van with this woman and they drove us right down
here the New York City Family Court Building and they
took me upstairs and we went into an office and
they basically were like, all right, well here it is
(15:35):
like this is the moment. You now get to decide
what you want to do with your future. And I
was like, holy sh it, give me a minute. I
need to think about it. And I went this room
and they got me some French fries, and then my
mom showed up and started screaming in the next room
about how I was a liar. I had told them
that I hadn't really been to the dentist, and she
was like, I listed the dentist all the time, and
(15:55):
she's calling me she and I heard it through the wall,
and I was like, nah, fuck this, like my mom
is calling me a liar. I'm not going home. I
told them I wanted to live with my dad in Germany.
I just got a call from New York that you
(16:19):
were in the custody of the city and that you
had brought about your removal from the house. And I
got the next plain to New York and then began
this long battle of me trying to win custody. And
I made the mistake in the first interview with your attorneys,
(16:39):
because the city assigned your attorneys of being a little
bit protective of Rebecca because they were trying to characterize
her as a kind of monster, and I was saying, no, no, no,
Rebecca is not a monster. You don't understand. And I
was just saying, Rebecca, can you just stop back off.
I wants to live with me. Let I live with me.
Stop fighting this, and then we don't have to go
(17:00):
through this whole court thing, and I can just you know,
it's time to move on. Okay, Rebecca, You've come to
the end of your rope on this thing. You know,
my lawyer said to me, if you speak to her again,
I'm no longer your lawyer. She is the opponent. We
have to win. Don't be a pussy like that's how
they talk. The custody battle lasted three months. The courtroom
(17:22):
wasn't a place where my mom shined. It was very
sad for me to see Rebecca funk it up um
and come in with a black eye, come in with
a lawyer who was half an hour late and couldn't
get his tie straight, and and then say stupid things
like she has a vast knowledge of the human body,
and that's why you didn't go to see the dentist.
(17:43):
When I watched her say these things, and the judge
kept looking up at me like we were looking at
each other silently, going like, oh boy, you know, um
it was very painful. Actually, Rebecca defeated herself. Do you
remember the phone call when you called me to tell me.
I don't recall anything except we won and you were delighted.
(18:05):
I don't remember. I think your first words, where can
we go? My first question was as my mom monkay ah, right,
that's true. Yeah, of course you were very defensive of
your mom. You're from the very beginning you were worried
about her condition. You made the move to defend yourself,
but you were very worried about it. Of course you were.
(18:29):
After it was over, during mandated welfare checks, I saw
my mom for the first time since she lost the case.
The first time we showed up, my mom showed up
with a big black eye. The second time we showed up,
she showed up with like a bag of ice over
her other eye and it was bleeding. When she said
that her boyfriend had thrown a bell and it had
(18:51):
accidentally skewered her eyeball, and just all this bullshit, you know,
because she had a fucked up, monstrous boyfriend, and I
know that I've like just destroyed her, and she's like
bleeding from the eyes like some kind of biblical matriarch.
And I was just like, I can't fucking handle this.
I think I came outside and threw up or something.
(19:11):
She had to go to the hospital. She almost lost
her eye. M just fucked up, fucked up things happened
here after the break Germany. I lived in a beautiful,
(19:35):
small university city in Germany called and you were plunged
into a kind of better than normal circumstance, like a
wonderful circumstance to which you were completely unaccustomed. I stepped
off the plane in Germany and it was like the
Twilight Zone. People got mad when you jay walked, and
(19:59):
the error was chris so clear. Everybody thought I knew
jay Z because I was from New York. And everybody
was nice to each other. And I had a wonderful
kind of nineteenth century apartment with many rooms and bedrooms
(20:19):
and dining rooms and balcony. My dad lived with his
girlfriend in a big apartment. I learned how to use
a fork and knife. I had a computer and a
full refrigerator, both powered by electricity, but I wasn't an
easy kid. You actually just wanted me to be your
dad and leave any other circumstance. And that was your
(20:42):
declaration to me. You know, I didn't escape that fucking
jail for you to have a girlfriend and a career
and a life in the theater. I'm here, now, let's go.
I was impossible. I had never had any dishes to wash,
and I resented having to take out the trash. I
hated having to share my dad, and I was coming
(21:02):
to grips with something huge that I couldn't identify yet.
When you hit puberty, you just announced made another announcement.
You just kind of came to me and said, I'm
going to be a girl now. I had never tried
to be a girl before, and being in a safe
environment made me long for acceptance and friends. So I
thought I'd try it. I grew my hair out and
(21:24):
got tighter jeans, but I had a real problem with authority.
I got kicked out of two German schools and then
a boarding school in England. You were a nightmare. You
were determined to like burn the world down. I mean
when you went away to boarding school in Europe. He
(21:45):
went to this progressive this is my friend Cora again.
And I was afraid that you were going to live
in Europe for the rest of your life and I
wasn't going to see you, um. But I didn't live
in Europe for the rest of my life. When I
was sixteen, I got kicked out of that boarding school
and my dad's heroin addiction had escalated, so I had
nowhere else to go but the place that I had
(22:05):
fought so hard to escape, that New York City apartment
with my mom. But I just remember there being a
very sharp disconnect between the years that you were with
seven the years that you were living with your mom. Um.
And I remember one night this is so anecdotal, and
again I wasn't there, so it's like third person bullshit,
But your mom was in a state, and all I
(22:30):
remember really from the story was that the ambulance was called,
and I think she was having like a psychotic episode. Basically,
there was a lot of concern. Maybe you can fill
me in. Sure. It was the night before I was
taking my final exams graduate high school, so I was seventeen.
(22:53):
It was also the night before my mom's birthday. She
came home really really really drunk and really upset that
I hadn't taken her out for her birthday. That hadn't
happened yet. She was obliterated and was saying that I
(23:17):
was a horrible child because I hadn't done anything for
her birthday. And I went in and I was like, Mom,
your birthday tomorrow, would take out to dinner. And she
was so upset and so convinced that I was a
horrible spawn that she was started talking about getting on
the six train and riding into the end of the
line and getting out and walking. I was scared my
(23:43):
mom was going to hurt herself. I didn't know what
to do, so I called the cops. Then they showed
up with an ambulance, and I was in my pajama
pants and had no shoes on, and had nothing in
my pockets about my cell phone and my keys. And
they knocked on the door, and I just like freaked
out because I was so I was like, I can't
(24:05):
and I like I went downstairs to the second floor
and stayed at the other end of the hall while
they went in and effectively arrested her. And when they
passed by me to take her into the ambulance, she
looked at me with this just betrayal and terror and fear,
and was just like burning her eyes through me of like,
(24:28):
how could you invite the police into our home? And
I went to the officer and I was like, can
I please just get in the ambulance with her for
a second and explain to her that this is for
her safety? And he was like sure. So I jumped
in the ambulance and sat down and was like, mom,
(24:51):
this happened because I don't want you to hurt yourself,
and of course she just spewed violence at me and
we immediately started f eating and the fucking e MT
sitting across from muscos are you inebriated? And I was
like what, and she was like, your pupils are dilated.
(25:12):
Are you intoxicated? And I was like, my pupils are
fucking dilated because it's four in the morning and I
am terrified and my mother is strapped into an ambulance
right now. And she was like, that's it, you're intoxicated
to your coming with us, lam traps me into the seat.
I was in disbelief as they drove us to the
(25:32):
hospital and then they locked us in separate rooms. Oh
my god. I but then I made my escape. I
basically convinced this like young guard dude to like let
me use the bathroom down the hall And as I
was going to the bathroom, I saw an exit sign
(25:55):
down the hallway and I just fucking ran and I
took off in my socks, and like the sun was
starting to come up, and I ran all the way
back to the apartment and I fell asleep. Then she
came home, and she threw everything in the house at
(26:20):
my door and tried to beat it down with my
own baseball bat, tried to bust it down with the body.
I don't know how that piece of ship in section
eight housing door held up, but it did. And eventually
she passed out. I woke up that morning, you know whatever,
an hour of tormented non sleep later, and I went
(26:44):
to high school and somehow passed my exams. Goddamn, it's
a miracle. Huhm. I was a bad one. This went
on for years. We fought brutally all the time. Eventually
(27:05):
I found that bottle of desks and under her mattress.
I was furious. I couldn't believe everything she'd put me through.
Because she'd been high. I wanted nothing to do with her,
and when I was twenty two, I moved out for
good and then I met Katie. Hi, Hi, I'm recording you.
(27:29):
Oh my, how did we meet Katie? Well, I was
really embodying my grungy coffee girl Harry armpitted lesbian self,
and Um, one of our mutual friends introduced us. And
(27:52):
then you swooped up real stylish, like in your piel Mercedes.
And we went to the Googgenheim because where I'd seen
New Yorkers and at our first date non date, which
was not a date but was definitely a date. Um,
what happened at the Guggenheim, Well, they have individual bathroom
(28:17):
stalls at the Guggenheim. Shout out to the Guggenheim for
their romantic design. And I think you said, like, I
have to go to the bathroom, and UM, I said,
I'm coming with you. And I walked into the bathroom
with you, and I really hope you use this for
your podcast because this is really funny and I and
(28:40):
I said I wish that I could straddle you right now,
and he said, why can't you? And then I came
over and straddled you, and we basically hooked up for
the first time in the Gugenheim bathroom with people like
pounding on the wall, M and Co. And then you
(29:01):
invited me over your apartment in which you had just
recently moved and had one box on the floor and
we had our like first romantic dinner on a cardboard
box on the floor with no furniture. Katie and I
were together for the next few years, and during that
time she got to know my mom. In terms of Rebecca,
I mean, she's wild and she's I don't want to say,
(29:27):
I'm not the most integrated, grounded person that you'll ever meet.
When your mom was either immersed in being intoxicated and
consumed by her own depth of pain, there was no
room for you, um, and that you were immersed in
her pain, um involuntarily and without really comprehension of what
(29:49):
was going on. What what is your understanding of where
her pain came from? I mean, I think a lot
of it has to do with Billy Um, whom she
has always talked about a lot, this saga of losing
the love of her life and the unresolved story and
(30:10):
history of that and living in the past and um
that being an open wound. Katie and I broke up,
and I started doing some pretty self destructive things of
my own. I was a workaholic and drinking too much
to try and manage the anxiety that was surfacing. I
(30:31):
was insistent that I was not a victim and that
everything was fine, but inside I was a disaster. When
I was twenty seven, I went to California for work
and the bottom fell out. You called me and we're like,
I need your help. I need you to come here
right away. It was urgent, everything called very urgent um
(30:53):
and I got on a plane as quick as I could.
What did you find when you got there? You were reallyish,
shell of yourself um, you a feeling of being really
hollow um and your face like barely had any color
(31:14):
in it, and you were crying kind of consistently, but
frantically and randomly. You couldn't sleep. You would wake up
in terror, literal terror, like shaking and and yelling and
(31:36):
feeling like you were going to die. And it was
really scary. Do you think I thought that I was
going crazy? Yes? I mean definitely you expressed that you
thought you were going crazy. I was having a mental breakdown.
I started calling Katie and my dad constantly to not
be alone. You were having panic attacks, and you were
(31:58):
having um great disturbances of the spirit. It was like, oh,
a black cloud is moving over my head from behind me,
and I everything is dune and I have to die.
The pain and stress were building, and I didn't know
where they were coming from. Something bigger than me was
(32:18):
overtaking my mind, and I was terrified. And I remember
there was a particular day when I went to the
beach and it was a big, blazing, beautiful blue day,
and I sat on the beach, wrapped in a towel
and everything was black and it disturbed me so much.
(32:40):
I got into my car and I was sobbing so
hard I could almost not drive. It was all coming
to an unbearable head. And I called my dad. At
the end of my rope, I got back to my
friend's house I was staying at, and I called you, saying,
I want to get off this planet, holding a end
of mine's gun in my hand. I didn't know that.
(33:06):
And you said to me, if you kill yourself, you
will take me with you. Oh, I probably did. Yeah,
that's probably true. It is Yeah, that would be unacceptable.
So I didn't and at that point I was faced
with Okay, if it's not blue pill, then what does
(33:30):
red pill look like? And for me, it was to
embark on a quest for understanding. I decided to live,
but to change everything. If I was going to make it,
(33:53):
I was going to have to rip the plant out
of the ground and repot it in entirely new soil.
I started exercising, going to a twelve step program for
the loved ones of addicts. I stopped drinking and went
to therapy twice a week, and I started writing a
book about my childhood. You discovered agency you were digging,
(34:17):
you were looking, you were managing the information you were discovering.
It wasn't happening to you. You were actually taking charge
of experience. So that's a very important thing to do. Eventually,
I was diagnosed with PTSD, which explained the mental breakdown,
(34:39):
and I realized that I had been denying something I
knew clearly when I was a kid. I'm transgender. I'm
a man in a female body, which was a massive
thing to unravel of its own. It took me nine
months to get back on my feet, but when I did,
I threw myself headlo into my new life. Tonight, we
(35:02):
hear from artist Io till it Right, whose photography projects
have sparked a dial is an artist, activist, writer of
the new memoir Darling Days Bout Darling Days. I moved
to California full time and set up shop in the desert.
My mom and I started to connect again. Our relationship
(35:24):
works a lot better three thousand miles apart. Hey, I listen,
are you coming back across the country? Can't you bring
me a tumbleweed growing? Tumbleweed called me back by so.
(35:45):
Understanding that my mom wasn't just choosing to be an
asshole was a really big thing, And that then led
me to wondering about what caused all of the pain
that she was trying to medicate away. How did she
get there? How did she get to the point where
like she could make choices that would imperil her kid
(36:06):
and not know Billy all right is this same recording.
It's February six, two thousand and sixteen, and we are
sitting in Williamsburg, and for the first time, we're having
(36:27):
a sit down interview session for what will become the
Ballad of Billy Balls and his baby Girl. Here's my mama. Yeah,
Billy knew it at Harvard School. If I don't move
past my anger and she doesn't move past her grief,
we're not going to ever be able to have a
functional relationship with each other. And I'm trying to change
(36:48):
it because I don't want to be angry at her forever. Okay, obvious,
so much love, be so much on but man, goal
in arms, but all the things that Billy didn't want
to show her she doesn't want to see. I need
to know that stuff. She just needs to know where
(37:09):
he is. I want to find Billy's bodies so that
she can say goodbye to him and maybe have a
happier life. We're gonna find that, Okay, Okay, and you
(37:43):
know what, I did find him. That's in two weeks.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal ideations,
(38:03):
please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at to seven,
three eight to five. This lifeline provides free and confidential support.
If you're queer and needs support, you can call the
Trevor Project also seven at one eight six six four
(38:24):
eight eight seven three eight six. I called them during
my darkest moments and they saved my life. Use it.
Crimetown is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. The Ballad
(38:45):
of Billie Balls is hosted by me Io Till It
Right and made in partnership with Cadence thirteen. You can
find me on the internet. I'm Io loves you on everything,
and if you want to know more about my story,
pick up my memoir Darling Day. We also want to
hear from you. We have a voicemail set up and
(39:06):
I love it when you call. Here's Casey from Dallas.
I had kids, young have two kids, being a mom
with such a hard job, and I screwed up so
many times. I wish my kids could listen to this
and have the same kind of compassion and understanding that
you have for your mom and your dad, because it's
the hardest job to love someone so much and have
(39:28):
so much power over the way their life turns out
while just being a human being and trying to figure
life out for yourself. If there's something on your mind, thoughts, feelings, complaints,
call us and leave us a voicemail at five seven
oh three nine too. Especially if today brought stuff up
(39:49):
for you, just call us and tell us about it.
You can also get into our discussion forum on our website.
The Ballad of Billy Balls dot Com. This show is
produced by Me, Kevin Sheppard and Ryan Swigert. Our senior
producers Austin Mitchell, editing by Zach Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling.
(40:10):
Fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was mixed by
Kenny Qcak. Music and sound design by Kenny Qcak. Our
title track is Dark Allies by Light Asylum. Archival researched
by Brennan Reats. Thanks to Daniella Aria, Rachel Lee Wright,
Emily Wiedermann, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro, Bill Clegg, Ben Davis,
(40:34):
Oran Rosenbaum and the team at Cadence thirteen. Special thanks
to Sophie Martinez, Cora Fisher Andrea Frank's, Sarah Driver, Seth Tillott,
Katie Atherton, Nicole Rauscher, Lena Tillott, Leslie Wright, d D Tillott,
Brunetta Robinson and Jones Stockhammer and Amber and Johnny for
(40:55):
taking me in when I needed it the most, and
of course, my Mom, without whom none of this would
be possible
Career Builder is made for people who have that thing
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before we begin. Today's episode contains a discussion of addiction
and suicidal ideations, so please take care in listening. Last thing, um,
(00:46):
just briefly, it's four so um the drug that she
was taking. You mentioned it. This is one of the
first conversations I had with my producer, Austin. I'm about
to tell him about one of the most pivotal moments
in my life with my mom. I was nineteen and
she was in a really bad way, the most down
(01:10):
the rabbit hole of drinking. I thought it was just
drinking at that point. It was very, very very dark.
My whole upbringing. My mom would have these gnarly outbursts.
But I had always thought she just couldn't handle alcohol.
She would have one glass of wine and fly off
the handle. So one day my mom, for the first
(01:32):
time in many years, left town and I was there
with this friend of mine. Uh. We decided to clean
and we were cleaning, and I lifted up her mattress
of all cliche things, and there was a pillbottle under
her mattress. I remember time kind of slowing down and
(01:55):
being like aware, just kind of kinetically aware that I
had stumbled upon something that was going to change the
course of my life. And it said it was a
prescription for a drug called the oxen. And I went
(02:19):
and I searched what is the oxen? And it basically
said that it was a emphetamine, and it said, uh,
should never be mixed with alcohol because it produces psychotic behavior.
And I was like, oh, cool, Okay, you know she's
(02:41):
on speed. That's what this has been. And it's really
hard to explain the sensation. It's it's like the butterfly
emerging from the cocoon. These moments in your life when
you're forced out of childhood into adulthood, all of a sudden,
(03:05):
I had grown up thinking that my mom was crazy,
and there's a loneliness that's inherent to that, and isolation
and terror and pain. And in that moment, I realized,
it's not because she's fucking crazy, it's because she's been
on this drug, and it shifted everything. My dad told
(03:34):
me that the Saxon had been billy a drug. So
I then started digging into Billy, trying to understand the
house of grief that I was born into. Today on
the show My Life with my Mom, how it fell
(03:56):
apart and came back together again from Crimetown, I'm io
till it right, And this is the ballad of Billy ball.
(04:20):
If somebody who you thought was your life partner, your protector,
you're like soulmate, is viciously murdered, your grief is of
a different nature. It's ray jing grief. It's like slaughter.
Everybody grief. I grew up entirely at the mercy of
somebody else's moods, who was simultaneously my greatest protector and
(04:46):
my greatest antagonist. I'm a little worried that we're going
into family. Should I not worry about this because it's
your show? But I mean, this is very difficult, very
complex stuff. Chapter ten, something bigger than me. Why don't
(05:14):
we just start? Tell me who you are. So my
name is Cora, and we grew up together. I mean
we really grew up together. Core's five years older than
I am, and her dad and my dad were best friends,
So we spent a lot of time together as kids.
You were so um, spunky and scrappy and fiercely intelligent.
(05:40):
But you were also like physically small and and and
wispy and beautiful and delicate. You know, you were immediately
my sibling. Yeah, I was really special. I mean we
spent a lot of time together, listening to music and
bullshitting all day long, and eating snacks because we were
(06:01):
always hungry, and walking around in the summer and getting
ices and just being around the city. You know, it
was not a place for children. I mean it was
an adult world. There were parties all the time. There
(06:23):
were shooting galleries where people would go cop drugs, shoot up.
I have a memory of being six years old and
walking to your father's house with my dad and on
the way stopping in a building because you know, he
just had to make a quick stop. You know, there
was a lot of poverty, and there was a lot
(06:44):
of drugs. So I kind of inherently had these feelings
of and wanting to just protect you a lot because
I sensed that there was danger. And I remember, you know,
sleeping over at your house for example. And you know, Rebecca,
(07:06):
your mom had a boyfriend, Bernardo, for a long time,
you know, and it was a small apartment and I remember,
you know, I remember them having sex in the middle
of the night. It's not that, you know, sex is
so indecent or whatever, but there was something like really
primal going on and there was no privacy, and it
(07:27):
just was not okay. It kind of just like held you.
We were like lying in the bed and I just
pretended I was sleeping, and you kind of woke up
for a second and looked at me, and I just
was like, it's okay, and I just kind of held you.
I didn't feel like you were in a safe environment.
(07:47):
And I never questioned that you were loved. Your parents
love you extremely, but I felt that your mom was
really going through some ship on a soul level. That's
something had happened that had shifted her consciousness. Did you
(08:07):
ever hear anything about Billy. I don't remember hearing about
Billy It's okay. If not, I don't remember. She's also
very cagy. I don't know what was your understanding then
of what was going on with her. She's just your
mom is wild, you know, your mom is wild. And
(08:28):
I felt like the poverty did not help, you know,
being super broke all the time and taking care of
a kid. It's it's traumatic, you know, but there was
there was always a sense of IO can totally take
care of IO. You were scheming and like hustling. Always.
(08:49):
You were like figuring out the way to get what
you needed or wanted that your parents couldn't provide. You know,
most kids can't go home and or do homework or whatever.
And I'd be like, okay, how do I get quarters.
I'm showing Austin my go to hustle spot in front
(09:11):
of a McDonald's on Broadway, and this McDonald's right here
was like my like north Star. If I could get
enough money to get a happy meal, I was like,
it was a good day. How would you get money?
I made like ghosts out of tissues and sold them,
and ghosts like Halloween ghosts, like you bawl up a
(09:31):
tissue and then you take another tissue and you put
it over the top, and then you put like a
rubber band for the neck, and then you draw a
little face on it. And I would walk around and
sell those. I was a cute little kid, being like,
you know, give me a dollar, and people be like, damn,
a dollar would be like two dollars, and like damn,
people would buy my like weird dumb ship. I look
at the world as like a Rubik's cube, where I'm like,
(09:54):
all right, so I'm nine, I can't get a job.
I've got seventy five cents. I need to make it
to tomorrow, and I need to eat. Okay, So when
this piece goes there and that piece goes there, and
I know I can call it this person for that
and maybe I can eat the scraps over there, It's
just like a riddle. You know. On the one hand,
she was really rough, and on the other hand, I
(10:14):
got this sense that, like anything that I came up
with was a valid Your parents and my parents as well,
you know, never questioned our creativity, are intelligence or self sufficiency.
You would come to school in army fatigues, and you
(10:35):
were so adamantly and clearly, very very sure that you
were a boy. You were a boy. You presented as
a boy. There was no distinguishing feature that would mark
you or gender you as a girl. You were very
(10:57):
clear in your communication that I am a boy, period,
full stop, and don't fucking ask me. And your dad
in particular, was just like, yeah, that's yo. You know,
Iowa was io. You declared it to me. It wasn't
like I had to You just declared it to me.
You said, I'm a boy. I told this to my
(11:18):
dad when I was really little. You know, we were
just walking through Central Park and you went to join
some kids to play baseball, and they said you couldn't
play because you were a girl. And you marched up
to me and said, from now on, dad, I'm a boy.
I'm your son. You will refer to me as he,
and that's it. Do you understand? And I just accepted it.
So I went home and I said, hey, Rebecca, I says,
(11:42):
I says, she's a boy. Rebecca's like great, fine. She
gave things that were totally above and beyond, like accepting
me for who I was. Right. She fostered my imagination
and she like read to me a ton and like
there was always books and music and always always always
(12:02):
music and dance and culture and like fostering my imagination.
Around this time, my dad left for Europe, he says,
to try to get clean, leaving me alone with my mom.
I think the thing is my mom didn't realize that
she was an unsafe place for me. She applied the
(12:23):
same like dieting standards to me that she applied to herself.
And she applied the same professional expectations of me as
an eight year old as she did of herself as
a thirty eight year old. You know, but thinking back
when she was with Billy, it seems like they lived
that way too, you know, like that was accepted back then,
(12:45):
and as the world changed around her, she stayed the same.
There was definitely like a disconnect for her about like
what a child needs. So we're down here. This is
like this is the City Hall area, very kind of
epic architecture. I took Austin downtown to a place where
I made a drastic move to change my life. Is
(13:07):
this the way? Oh? This is it is? Yeah, this
is the building. I'll never forget these columns ever, So
the New York County Family Court. It all started when
I arrived at a new school for seventh grade, and
I had huge dark bag circles under my eyes and
(13:28):
I was really really pale and really really skinny. And
at that school they had an actual gym that was
gender segregated, and so the first gym class, they sent
me down and we're like, okay, go change in the
locker rooms. And I was like, like, I can't go
in the girls. I can't go in the boys, like
and I had this gender meltdown, and they were just
like okay, Like you need to talk to the school psychologist,
(13:48):
like what's going on. He asked me what my home
life was like. I was like, uh, because I was
not supposed to talk to people of authority because my
mom's love of her life had been killed by the police.
Authority was bad. And I told her. I told her
that our fridge had no food in it, which barely
(14:09):
mattered because the power was off half the time. Anyway,
I told her that I stole most of my meals,
but I didn't go to doctors. I didn't sleep enough,
and my mom and I would scream at each other
like banshees. I told her that I was hungry and
scared and that I hated my life. So one day,
this woman shows up at my school the middle of
(14:31):
the day and this woman is standing in the hall
and she's like are you I I'm like yeah, and
she was like Hi, I'm so and so I'm your
social worker and I'm here to take you away. And
I was like, I need to call my mom and
she's like, you're not allowed to. And I was like,
I don't give a funk, like I'm calling my mom,
like I will fight you physically. You don't want that scene.
(14:53):
Just let me call my mother and tell her what's happening,
because I'm not doing that to her where I'm just
gonna vanish off the face of the earth. My mom
was like, don't go with anybody. Don't go with anybody.
I'm gonna kill your guidance counselor. So I was like,
it wasn't her, it was me, And I'm okay, and
I'm gonna be in touch with you when I can.
(15:14):
I gotta go. So I left, I got my coat,
went and got outside, went outside and got in a
van with this woman and they drove us right down
here the New York City Family Court Building and they
took me upstairs and we went into an office and
they basically were like, all right, well here it is
(15:35):
like this is the moment. You now get to decide
what you want to do with your future. And I
was like, holy sh it, give me a minute. I
need to think about it. And I went this room
and they got me some French fries, and then my
mom showed up and started screaming in the next room
about how I was a liar. I had told them
that I hadn't really been to the dentist, and she
was like, I listed the dentist all the time, and
(15:55):
she's calling me she and I heard it through the wall,
and I was like, nah, fuck this, like my mom
is calling me a liar. I'm not going home. I
told them I wanted to live with my dad in Germany.
I just got a call from New York that you
(16:19):
were in the custody of the city and that you
had brought about your removal from the house. And I
got the next plain to New York and then began
this long battle of me trying to win custody. And
I made the mistake in the first interview with your attorneys,
(16:39):
because the city assigned your attorneys of being a little
bit protective of Rebecca because they were trying to characterize
her as a kind of monster, and I was saying, no, no, no,
Rebecca is not a monster. You don't understand. And I
was just saying, Rebecca, can you just stop back off.
I wants to live with me. Let I live with me.
Stop fighting this, and then we don't have to go
(17:00):
through this whole court thing, and I can just you know,
it's time to move on. Okay, Rebecca, You've come to
the end of your rope on this thing. You know,
my lawyer said to me, if you speak to her again,
I'm no longer your lawyer. She is the opponent. We
have to win. Don't be a pussy like that's how
they talk. The custody battle lasted three months. The courtroom
(17:22):
wasn't a place where my mom shined. It was very
sad for me to see Rebecca funk it up um
and come in with a black eye, come in with
a lawyer who was half an hour late and couldn't
get his tie straight, and and then say stupid things
like she has a vast knowledge of the human body,
and that's why you didn't go to see the dentist.
(17:43):
When I watched her say these things, and the judge
kept looking up at me like we were looking at
each other silently, going like, oh boy, you know, um
it was very painful. Actually, Rebecca defeated herself. Do you
remember the phone call when you called me to tell me.
I don't recall anything except we won and you were delighted.
(18:05):
I don't remember. I think your first words, where can
we go? My first question was as my mom monkay ah, right,
that's true. Yeah, of course you were very defensive of
your mom. You're from the very beginning you were worried
about her condition. You made the move to defend yourself,
but you were very worried about it. Of course you were.
(18:29):
After it was over, during mandated welfare checks, I saw
my mom for the first time since she lost the case.
The first time we showed up, my mom showed up
with a big black eye. The second time we showed up,
she showed up with like a bag of ice over
her other eye and it was bleeding. When she said
that her boyfriend had thrown a bell and it had
(18:51):
accidentally skewered her eyeball, and just all this bullshit, you know,
because she had a fucked up, monstrous boyfriend, and I
know that I've like just destroyed her, and she's like
bleeding from the eyes like some kind of biblical matriarch.
And I was just like, I can't fucking handle this.
I think I came outside and threw up or something.
(19:11):
She had to go to the hospital. She almost lost
her eye. M just fucked up, fucked up things happened
here after the break Germany. I lived in a beautiful,
(19:35):
small university city in Germany called and you were plunged
into a kind of better than normal circumstance, like a
wonderful circumstance to which you were completely unaccustomed. I stepped
off the plane in Germany and it was like the
Twilight Zone. People got mad when you jay walked, and
(19:59):
the error was chris so clear. Everybody thought I knew
jay Z because I was from New York. And everybody
was nice to each other. And I had a wonderful
kind of nineteenth century apartment with many rooms and bedrooms
(20:19):
and dining rooms and balcony. My dad lived with his
girlfriend in a big apartment. I learned how to use
a fork and knife. I had a computer and a
full refrigerator, both powered by electricity, but I wasn't an
easy kid. You actually just wanted me to be your
dad and leave any other circumstance. And that was your
(20:42):
declaration to me. You know, I didn't escape that fucking
jail for you to have a girlfriend and a career
and a life in the theater. I'm here, now, let's go.
I was impossible. I had never had any dishes to wash,
and I resented having to take out the trash. I
hated having to share my dad, and I was coming
(21:02):
to grips with something huge that I couldn't identify yet.
When you hit puberty, you just announced made another announcement.
You just kind of came to me and said, I'm
going to be a girl now. I had never tried
to be a girl before, and being in a safe
environment made me long for acceptance and friends. So I
thought I'd try it. I grew my hair out and
(21:24):
got tighter jeans, but I had a real problem with authority.
I got kicked out of two German schools and then
a boarding school in England. You were a nightmare. You
were determined to like burn the world down. I mean
when you went away to boarding school in Europe. He
(21:45):
went to this progressive this is my friend Cora again.
And I was afraid that you were going to live
in Europe for the rest of your life and I
wasn't going to see you, um. But I didn't live
in Europe for the rest of my life. When I
was sixteen, I got kicked out of that boarding school
and my dad's heroin addiction had escalated, so I had
nowhere else to go but the place that I had
(22:05):
fought so hard to escape, that New York City apartment
with my mom. But I just remember there being a
very sharp disconnect between the years that you were with
seven the years that you were living with your mom. Um.
And I remember one night this is so anecdotal, and
again I wasn't there, so it's like third person bullshit,
But your mom was in a state, and all I
(22:30):
remember really from the story was that the ambulance was called,
and I think she was having like a psychotic episode. Basically,
there was a lot of concern. Maybe you can fill
me in. Sure. It was the night before I was
taking my final exams graduate high school, so I was seventeen.
(22:53):
It was also the night before my mom's birthday. She
came home really really really drunk and really upset that
I hadn't taken her out for her birthday. That hadn't
happened yet. She was obliterated and was saying that I
(23:17):
was a horrible child because I hadn't done anything for
her birthday. And I went in and I was like, Mom,
your birthday tomorrow, would take out to dinner. And she
was so upset and so convinced that I was a
horrible spawn that she was started talking about getting on
the six train and riding into the end of the
line and getting out and walking. I was scared my
(23:43):
mom was going to hurt herself. I didn't know what
to do, so I called the cops. Then they showed
up with an ambulance, and I was in my pajama
pants and had no shoes on, and had nothing in
my pockets about my cell phone and my keys. And
they knocked on the door, and I just like freaked
out because I was so I was like, I can't
(24:05):
and I like I went downstairs to the second floor
and stayed at the other end of the hall while
they went in and effectively arrested her. And when they
passed by me to take her into the ambulance, she
looked at me with this just betrayal and terror and fear,
and was just like burning her eyes through me of like,
(24:28):
how could you invite the police into our home? And
I went to the officer and I was like, can
I please just get in the ambulance with her for
a second and explain to her that this is for
her safety? And he was like sure. So I jumped
in the ambulance and sat down and was like, mom,
(24:51):
this happened because I don't want you to hurt yourself,
and of course she just spewed violence at me and
we immediately started f eating and the fucking e MT
sitting across from muscos are you inebriated? And I was
like what, and she was like, your pupils are dilated.
(25:12):
Are you intoxicated? And I was like, my pupils are
fucking dilated because it's four in the morning and I
am terrified and my mother is strapped into an ambulance
right now. And she was like, that's it, you're intoxicated
to your coming with us, lam traps me into the seat.
I was in disbelief as they drove us to the
(25:32):
hospital and then they locked us in separate rooms. Oh
my god. I but then I made my escape. I
basically convinced this like young guard dude to like let
me use the bathroom down the hall And as I
was going to the bathroom, I saw an exit sign
(25:55):
down the hallway and I just fucking ran and I
took off in my socks, and like the sun was
starting to come up, and I ran all the way
back to the apartment and I fell asleep. Then she
came home, and she threw everything in the house at
(26:20):
my door and tried to beat it down with my
own baseball bat, tried to bust it down with the body.
I don't know how that piece of ship in section
eight housing door held up, but it did. And eventually
she passed out. I woke up that morning, you know whatever,
an hour of tormented non sleep later, and I went
(26:44):
to high school and somehow passed my exams. Goddamn, it's
a miracle. Huhm. I was a bad one. This went
on for years. We fought brutally all the time. Eventually
(27:05):
I found that bottle of desks and under her mattress.
I was furious. I couldn't believe everything she'd put me through.
Because she'd been high. I wanted nothing to do with her,
and when I was twenty two, I moved out for
good and then I met Katie. Hi, Hi, I'm recording you.
(27:29):
Oh my, how did we meet Katie? Well, I was
really embodying my grungy coffee girl Harry armpitted lesbian self,
and Um, one of our mutual friends introduced us. And
(27:52):
then you swooped up real stylish, like in your piel Mercedes.
And we went to the Googgenheim because where I'd seen
New Yorkers and at our first date non date, which
was not a date but was definitely a date. Um,
what happened at the Guggenheim, Well, they have individual bathroom
(28:17):
stalls at the Guggenheim. Shout out to the Guggenheim for
their romantic design. And I think you said, like, I
have to go to the bathroom, and UM, I said,
I'm coming with you. And I walked into the bathroom
with you, and I really hope you use this for
your podcast because this is really funny and I and
(28:40):
I said I wish that I could straddle you right now,
and he said, why can't you? And then I came
over and straddled you, and we basically hooked up for
the first time in the Gugenheim bathroom with people like
pounding on the wall, M and Co. And then you
(29:01):
invited me over your apartment in which you had just
recently moved and had one box on the floor and
we had our like first romantic dinner on a cardboard
box on the floor with no furniture. Katie and I
were together for the next few years, and during that
time she got to know my mom. In terms of Rebecca,
I mean, she's wild and she's I don't want to say,
(29:27):
I'm not the most integrated, grounded person that you'll ever meet.
When your mom was either immersed in being intoxicated and
consumed by her own depth of pain, there was no
room for you, um, and that you were immersed in
her pain, um involuntarily and without really comprehension of what
(29:49):
was going on. What what is your understanding of where
her pain came from? I mean, I think a lot
of it has to do with Billy Um, whom she
has always talked about a lot, this saga of losing
the love of her life and the unresolved story and
(30:10):
history of that and living in the past and um
that being an open wound. Katie and I broke up,
and I started doing some pretty self destructive things of
my own. I was a workaholic and drinking too much
to try and manage the anxiety that was surfacing. I
(30:31):
was insistent that I was not a victim and that
everything was fine, but inside I was a disaster. When
I was twenty seven, I went to California for work
and the bottom fell out. You called me and we're like,
I need your help. I need you to come here
right away. It was urgent, everything called very urgent um
(30:53):
and I got on a plane as quick as I could.
What did you find when you got there? You were reallyish,
shell of yourself um, you a feeling of being really
hollow um and your face like barely had any color
(31:14):
in it, and you were crying kind of consistently, but
frantically and randomly. You couldn't sleep. You would wake up
in terror, literal terror, like shaking and and yelling and
(31:36):
feeling like you were going to die. And it was
really scary. Do you think I thought that I was
going crazy? Yes? I mean definitely you expressed that you
thought you were going crazy. I was having a mental breakdown.
I started calling Katie and my dad constantly to not
be alone. You were having panic attacks, and you were
(31:58):
having um great disturbances of the spirit. It was like, oh,
a black cloud is moving over my head from behind me,
and I everything is dune and I have to die.
The pain and stress were building, and I didn't know
where they were coming from. Something bigger than me was
(32:18):
overtaking my mind, and I was terrified. And I remember
there was a particular day when I went to the
beach and it was a big, blazing, beautiful blue day,
and I sat on the beach, wrapped in a towel
and everything was black and it disturbed me so much.
(32:40):
I got into my car and I was sobbing so
hard I could almost not drive. It was all coming
to an unbearable head. And I called my dad. At
the end of my rope, I got back to my
friend's house I was staying at, and I called you, saying,
I want to get off this planet, holding a end
of mine's gun in my hand. I didn't know that.
(33:06):
And you said to me, if you kill yourself, you
will take me with you. Oh, I probably did. Yeah,
that's probably true. It is Yeah, that would be unacceptable.
So I didn't and at that point I was faced
with Okay, if it's not blue pill, then what does
(33:30):
red pill look like? And for me, it was to
embark on a quest for understanding. I decided to live,
but to change everything. If I was going to make it,
(33:53):
I was going to have to rip the plant out
of the ground and repot it in entirely new soil.
I started exercising, going to a twelve step program for
the loved ones of addicts. I stopped drinking and went
to therapy twice a week, and I started writing a
book about my childhood. You discovered agency you were digging,
(34:17):
you were looking, you were managing the information you were discovering.
It wasn't happening to you. You were actually taking charge
of experience. So that's a very important thing to do. Eventually,
I was diagnosed with PTSD, which explained the mental breakdown,
(34:39):
and I realized that I had been denying something I
knew clearly when I was a kid. I'm transgender. I'm
a man in a female body, which was a massive
thing to unravel of its own. It took me nine
months to get back on my feet, but when I did,
I threw myself headlo into my new life. Tonight, we
(35:02):
hear from artist Io till it Right, whose photography projects
have sparked a dial is an artist, activist, writer of
the new memoir Darling Days Bout Darling Days. I moved
to California full time and set up shop in the desert.
My mom and I started to connect again. Our relationship
(35:24):
works a lot better three thousand miles apart. Hey, I listen,
are you coming back across the country? Can't you bring
me a tumbleweed growing? Tumbleweed called me back by so.
(35:45):
Understanding that my mom wasn't just choosing to be an
asshole was a really big thing, And that then led
me to wondering about what caused all of the pain
that she was trying to medicate away. How did she
get there? How did she get to the point where
like she could make choices that would imperil her kid
(36:06):
and not know Billy all right is this same recording.
It's February six, two thousand and sixteen, and we are
sitting in Williamsburg, and for the first time, we're having
(36:27):
a sit down interview session for what will become the
Ballad of Billy Balls and his baby Girl. Here's my mama. Yeah,
Billy knew it at Harvard School. If I don't move
past my anger and she doesn't move past her grief,
we're not going to ever be able to have a
functional relationship with each other. And I'm trying to change
(36:48):
it because I don't want to be angry at her forever. Okay, obvious,
so much love, be so much on but man, goal
in arms, but all the things that Billy didn't want
to show her she doesn't want to see. I need
to know that stuff. She just needs to know where
(37:09):
he is. I want to find Billy's bodies so that
she can say goodbye to him and maybe have a
happier life. We're gonna find that, Okay, Okay, and you
(37:43):
know what, I did find him. That's in two weeks.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal ideations,
(38:03):
please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at to seven,
three eight to five. This lifeline provides free and confidential support.
If you're queer and needs support, you can call the
Trevor Project also seven at one eight six six four
(38:24):
eight eight seven three eight six. I called them during
my darkest moments and they saved my life. Use it.
Crimetown is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. The Ballad
(38:45):
of Billie Balls is hosted by me Io Till It
Right and made in partnership with Cadence thirteen. You can
find me on the internet. I'm Io loves you on everything,
and if you want to know more about my story,
pick up my memoir Darling Day. We also want to
hear from you. We have a voicemail set up and
(39:06):
I love it when you call. Here's Casey from Dallas.
I had kids, young have two kids, being a mom
with such a hard job, and I screwed up so
many times. I wish my kids could listen to this
and have the same kind of compassion and understanding that
you have for your mom and your dad, because it's
the hardest job to love someone so much and have
(39:28):
so much power over the way their life turns out
while just being a human being and trying to figure
life out for yourself. If there's something on your mind, thoughts, feelings, complaints,
call us and leave us a voicemail at five seven
oh three nine too. Especially if today brought stuff up
(39:49):
for you, just call us and tell us about it.
You can also get into our discussion forum on our website.
The Ballad of Billy Balls dot Com. This show is
produced by Me, Kevin Sheppard and Ryan Swigert. Our senior
producers Austin Mitchell, editing by Zach Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling.
(40:10):
Fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was mixed by
Kenny Qcak. Music and sound design by Kenny Qcak. Our
title track is Dark Allies by Light Asylum. Archival researched
by Brennan Reats. Thanks to Daniella Aria, Rachel Lee Wright,
Emily Wiedermann, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro, Bill Clegg, Ben Davis,
(40:34):
Oran Rosenbaum and the team at Cadence thirteen. Special thanks
to Sophie Martinez, Cora Fisher Andrea Frank's, Sarah Driver, Seth Tillott,
Katie Atherton, Nicole Rauscher, Lena Tillott, Leslie Wright, d D Tillott,
Brunetta Robinson and Jones Stockhammer and Amber and Johnny for
(40:55):
taking me in when I needed it the most, and
of course, my Mom, without whom none of this would
be possible
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