Boston Moth StorySLAM Themed “Business”, August 2018

Nina Livingstone:

So, in 1988, I had my first professional, freelance job interviewing an Oscar-winning actress, Marlee Matlin. I was absolutely thrilled, absolutely excited. I had a lot of eyesight then. I’m totally blind now. Okay, whatever. So, as soon as I found out… And it was very last minute, I scrambled immediately. I was so excited trying to figure out, what was I going to wear? So, I rummaged through my closet trying to figure out what I was going to wear, and I found this dress, which… It was absolutely horrible. It was sheer. It had many colors. It was actually too big on me. I wore it anyway. So, my friend said to me, “No. No. No. You don’t want to wear that.” I said, “I’m going to wear it.” She said, “I’m going to give you my boyfriend’s suit jacket,” a black suit jacket, which was quite large and had big shoulders and it covered my dress. I figured, what the heck. It’s going to cover my dress.

And I looked a little like Frankenstein, okay. And my hair at the time was absolutely massive. It was as large as a beach umbrella, and then on top of that I had a string of faux pearls that dangled from my neck to my knees. But don’t worry, I gave it a triple knot in the middle of to keep it from entangling. Hey, there was something good, though. I had great shoes. They were Italian shoes, high heels, pretty good. But I looked like a cross between a Halloween costume and a tramp. Three important things about being a writer here. I had my notebook, my pen, and my tape recorder, very important, and I had it inside my pocket, the men’s jacket. So, it actually sufficed. With my friend who carried my camera around her neck, we both attended the outdoor fundraiser event in Boston.

Once inside this open tent, we sat in the VIP section among reporters, and in front of us, there she was. She was beautiful, Marlee Matlin, and with her, signing was her interpreter. She was deaf, as am I. Her interpreter Jack… And it was a Q&A session. Great. After that subsided, we walked outside the tent, and I continued to communicate with Marlee Matlin. We spoke in sign language, and in the middle of the conversation she said, “I’ll be right back.” She left. We noticed that a throng of people walking through the threshold, Boston notables such as Ted Kennedy, et cetera. And they donned swag bags as did my friend and I. And she said to me, “Do you have any champagne in your bag?”

I said, “Why?” She said, “Well, I finished mine.” I said, “So fast.” I said, “Sure, you can have my bag.” And then she said to me, “I got to tell you something.” She said before Marlee came back… She said to me, “I opened the camera by mistake and exposed the film.” And I said, “Oh, gosh. There goes…” “Well,” she said, “Nina, you better check your tape recorder.” So, I checked through everything. It was a cassette recorder at the time. Now of, course I had sight and I could see the reel. It wasn’t spinning, and that was a real serious, “Oh, wow!” It wasn’t spinning, so she said, “It looks like it’s not working properly. The battery’s dead.” I said, “Okay. All right. Shit happens.” Okay. So, I put it in my pocket. Marlee came, and I started to talk to her. We were having this conversation in sign language and voice, and I think she wore hearing aids also. I did.

A photographer walked by, and he took photographs of us. After the event was over, I wrote my article and called it The Amateur Reporter and the Enchanting Soirée. I checked the next day, just check out photographs in the Boston newspaper. I found that there were all the great photographs of Marlee, absolutely gorgeous, beautiful photographs of her; however, there was one photograph I noticed, and it was Marlee and I. We were both talking. The photograph, it was the worst picture of my entire professional life so far. She said to me, “What,” in sign language. And it looked like a WTF thing, but me, I looked horrible. It was all about how horrible. I had that whole outfit, and I was trying to tell her, “How…” This is the same for “how”, and it ended up in the photograph I’m going… So, I’ve taken that, and I continue to write, do articles, and do interviews no matter how challenging they are. I love what I do. I love it.