That’s what he told us his story was about. And quitting smoking, but like all the best stories, it’s not about the thing it’s supposed to be about. Mark has an uncanny knack for curveball narratives. We love all of our storytellers, and we’ve been flabbergasted by the quality of stories people are telling at Chaos Thaoghaire, and the candidness with which some of them are told. There have been times — every month of this year, in fact — when I’ve genuinely wanted to drop to my knees in gratitude and appreciation of some of our storytellers. For telling such candid truths. For making us laugh. For making us think about shit we never thought about. We’ve been so delighted, even touched, that people would associate themselves with us on purpose, let alone with such enthusiasm. We’re genuinely confused when people thank us for having them because to us it’s the other way around. But now I’m getting emotional, and you’ll probably think I’ve been drinking.

It’s always tough to do the segue when one of our speakers finishes. I always feel a bit like I’m not giving their stories the breathing room they deserve. But there are three times in the so-far brief history of Chaos Thaoghaire (although this month was our tenth!) when, at the end of a story, I was so overwhelmed that it felt wrong to take the microphone and say a simple “thank you”, where I’ve found it necessary to acknowledge the magnitude of what we’d just heard but was at a total loss to express it, so generally end up muttering something incoherent to the room, half-wondering if I should instead leave everyone to have a moment of silence to recover. Una Mullally’s story in November ended with an unexpected burst, John Kamys’s (sadly unrecorded, although we’re still hoping he’ll tell it into a microphone soon because it’s too good not to save) story from the February 23rd Sex Chaos made speaking aloud almost impossible for about thirty seconds afterward, and Mark Congiusta’s story from last Thursday night had me a bit shaky. I was pretty choked up on the night, but listening back to this yesterday in the privacy of my sitting room, I felt even more moved.

I don’t want to give too much away because I want you to hear it, and I don’t want to feel like this is a platform, but it’s not only a good story, it’s a significant one because it’s not something men are generally encouraged to express, especially not publicly, and that was a really bloody brave and amazing and possibly difficult thing to do.

Anyway, the rest of the stories will be up on the site soon, but I think this one generated a lot of discussion, and we wanted to get it up here as soon as we could. It’s a good story for a lot of reasons, and a good story is always an important story.

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