Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

by David Sedaris

  The two of them ordered from busboys and called the hostess over at one point to ask for a club soda. They weren’t malicious, but I can’t imagine that either of them ever worked in a restaurant.

  April 14, 1996

  New York

  I saw Helen yesterday for the first time since late January. She’d called me over to fix her mop, and I arrived to find her without her teeth in. “You’re fat,” she told me. “You need to take some of that blubber and give it to Hugh. He’s got a skinny ass.”

  May 13, 1996

  New York

  A man called last night, saying he had read my book and asking if I could come clean his house. I offered to give him Bart’s number, but he reiterated that he wanted me. In exchange, he said, he would give me four stories I could put in my next book. I told him my book wasn’t about other people’s stories, and he got snippy and yelled, “Then why the hell don’t you screen your calls?” before hanging up.

  June 21, 1996

  New York

  A stranger called from New Jersey to ask if I’d written a movie he’d just seen. I told him no and he talked for a while about this and that. He offered a cure for writer’s block, which was odd, as I hadn’t mentioned anything about it. It turned out he’s a painter who is having a hard time finishing a portrait. That was the day my typewriter broke. I couldn’t work so just sat in the rocking chair and listened to him.

  August 6, 1996

  La Bagotière

  Things are moving along at the house. Not only do we have water, but now there’s even a washing machine. This saves us from doing laundry in the tub, which always took forever, especially the wringing-out part.

  I’m continuing to put new vocabulary words on index cards. “What does that mean?” I keep asking Hugh as he’s talking to people. “How do you spell it?” He lost his patience a few hours after we arrived.

  In the morning we went to the small city of Flers and ran into R. and her husband, P. They’re a fit and attractive couple fifteen years older than us who feel that their friends should be equally youthful and good-looking. After she’d kissed me, R. put her hand on my stomach and pinched my cheek, saying that I am fat and pale. “Look at me!” she sang. “I am very bronzed! P. and I have been watching the Olympics. The black people run as if they’re being chased by tigers, so now we are doing the same thing! Every morning we jog in the forest. Then I go home to bronze myself.” She invited us to lunch, but I begged off. Three green beans and she’s full.

  September 9, 1996

  New York

  I walked so long and hard in Paris the other day that my overgrown toenails rubbed against one another and started to bleed. Before leaving for the airport, I went to cut them and, finding no clippers, I used a pair of Colette’s poultry shears. That is exactly why you don’t want people staying in your apartment when you’re not there, or even when you are, really.

  October 10, 1996

  New York

  Amy’s been called for jury duty and she phoned from the courthouse, saying, “It’s a rape case and I hope I get it. The guy is really cute!”

  November 18, 1996

  New York

  I was on the number 6 train early yesterday evening, coming from 59th Street. The car was crowded and I stood before a group of three men. All were black and in their late twenties and all were dressed in similar-looking bomber jackets. The fellow in the middle was the heaviest of the three, and as we got under way, he nudged me and pointed, saying, “Hey, you. There’s a seat over there. Ax that lady to move her bag so you can have it.”

  “That’s OK,” I said. “I’m fine standing.”

  He pursed his lips and mocked me for his friends. “I’m fine standing.” They laughed, and he continued. “I can’t stand this shit with everyone putting they germs in my face. Fuckers. They’s all faggots and lesbians, faggots and lesbians, the whole city is turning faggot. Yo, man, I’m going to ax you one more time to sit the fuck down.” He took his foot then, placed it against my thigh, and pushed me.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “I mean, what difference does it make whether I stand or sit? What’s it to you?”

  He said that I was blocking his view and that he wanted to look at the girl seated opposite him. So I moved down the car a few feet, wondering why he couldn’t have said so in the first place and hating him with all my might. It sickened me to hear him sweet-talking the young woman who was now back in his sight line. “You are one beautiful lady, has anybody ever tolt you that?”

  He went on and on, and against all the advice I was telepathically sending her, she responded. No, she wasn’t married, she said, but she did have a man in her life. Yes, she would take his phone number, but she wasn’t promising anything. He called it out, and I was a fool not to write it down. If I’d had a pen on me, I’d be calling him night and day until he was forced to change his number. “Yes,” I’d say. “We met on the train and you said you wanted to get together. Don’t you remember?”

  November 26, 1996

  New York

  Hugh left this morning to spend Thanksgiving with his mother, Joan, whom I’ve taken to calling Maw Hamrick. I’m on this kick lately where I pretend that she’s one of my closest personal friends. Whenever I hear Hugh’s key in the door, I pick up the phone and act like I’m in the middle of a conversation with her. “Well, sure,” I’ll say, “I know it’s hard, but we’ll get together some other time, when it can be just me and you, without Hugh to bother us. Oops, hold on…I think I hear him coming.” I claim to receive gifts and checks from her and have been writing fake letters in which she says she wishes I were her son instead of him.

  It doesn’t get to him because it’s so ridiculous. In truth, she’d much rather hang out with Hugh than with me. Joan was here last month for a few days and spent her mornings drinking tea and reading the international section of the Times. It’s the last part I’m likely to turn to, but having lived in Africa and the Middle East, the Hamricks love nothing more than to discuss foreign policy. They’re forever mentioning some crisis in Karachi or Ghana, and they know the first and last names of countless ambassadors and attachés. They’re so far removed from my own family.

  November 29, 1996

  New York

  I went to Amy’s apartment for Thanksgiving and left for home, drunk and stoned, at three a.m. She had a good-size crowd, and charged her guests $5 for the chance to wear a Pilgrim hat and have their picture taken with her rabbit, Tattle Tail. Eight people took her up on it, but in the end, not one of them paid. Lately I’m trying to be a better listener. This involves asking questions such as “Tell me, Louis, do you have a lot of candles in your house?”

  Louis works with Amy at Marion’s and his thing is to tell huge lies and then allow himself to be interrogated. Last night he said he was the world’s first rapper.

  “Really, the first?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And it was hard because no one believed that it would catch on and grow into this big sensation.”

  “Did people make fun of you?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, everyone.”

  “And did that hurt?”

  “It hurt a lot. An awful lot.”

  An old neighbor of Lisa’s was recently caught having sex with his Labrador retriever, and when I told Louis about it, he asked if the dog could get pregnant.

  “Are you serious?” I said. “How old are you?” That’s one of those things you think about when you’re a child, the possibility of a half boy/half pony. If it were possible to crossbreed like that, the world would be full of talking goats and sheep who could shear their own wool.

  November 30, 1996

  New York

  Helen called offering me some gravy. I told her our refrigerator was full and she launched into her suspicion that our seventy-five-year-old neighbor is creeping into her apartment while she’s asleep. It makes no sense, but she’s convinced that something is going on. She then recounted her recent fights with the people at the co
rner grocery and the construction crew renovating the apartment upstairs from her. After that, she talked about her nephew and the reasons she didn’t go to her daughter’s house for Thanksgiving. Her monologue went on for twenty minutes and ended with “So if you don’t want my gravy, go fuck yourself.”

  December 18, 1996

  New York

  We met last night for the first read-through of the play (The Little Frieda Mysteries) and I felt bad for everyone in the room. What I’d written was so clunky and full of exposition, I wouldn’t blame any of them for trying to back out. One scene between Amy and Chuck (Coggins) has potential, but the rest will have to be scrapped.

  At the copy shop on Prince Street an hour or so before our meeting, I stood in line behind a woman with dyed-black hair. She was taking forever, color-Xeroxing photos of herself, and said to the guy behind the counter that though she pays next to nothing in rent, she’s looking for a new apartment. “I’ve got two lizards on Thompson Street, but they’re not getting any light.”

  1997

  January 29, 1997

  New York

  On Monday, The New Yorker arranged for Amy and me to have our picture taken by Duane Michals. This so they can run it in the Goings On About Town section. I was a big fan of his when I was in my early twenties, all those photos with the cursive writing along the bottoms of them. Amy and I promised ourselves we wouldn’t do anything stupid, and an hour later we were sitting on top of a battered piano with our arms in slings.

  Mr. Michals was what you might call a wild card, and at the end of the session, our mouths ached from fake laughing. “Did you know that Flaubert had a second career as a gynecologist? He wrote a book about it called Madame Ovary.”

  Years back he had been shooting an upside-down model who accidentally kicked him in the head with his heavy boots and crushed his skull. Now there are metal plates in it.

  February 3, 1997

  New York

  The New Yorker is taking the Shouts and Murmurs piece I wrote for Valentine’s Day. Chris sent the galleys by messenger, and, reading them over, I noticed four repetitions of the phrase “we’re hoping.” I pointed this out on the phone yesterday and he said, “Man, you’re like a self-cleaning oven!”

  February 4, 1997

  New York

  I had a horrible experience today with a photographer named Chris, who’d come to take my picture for some magazine. We were trying to prepare a tech rehearsal of the play, and because we were so busy, I asked if we could meet at the theater. Chris thought it might be nice to use the basement hallway so we went downstairs, where he and his assistant set up their lights and umbrellas. I’m finding it progressively more difficult to have my picture taken, especially now, when there always has to be a gimmick. The idea is that you have to be humiliated in order for your personality to shine through. You need to hang from the ceiling by a hook or crawl on your hands and knees through a puddle of something.

  Chris started the session by handing me a package of stage cigarettes he wanted me to cram into my mouth—the entire thing. “I’m catching some reflection off the packaging,” he said. “So can you lower your head a little?”

  Normally I just do what they tell me, figuring the quicker I surrender, the sooner I’ll get out of there. Today, though, I snapped. “I can’t do this,” I said after taking the package out of my mouth. “It makes me feel silly.”

  “If it makes you feel silly,” he said, “you need to find another way to do it. If I give you a wacky idea, you should give me one that’s even wackier.”

  I told him it wasn’t my job to out-wacky him, that I’m not a comedian or even an actor, for that matter, and that I saw nothing wrong with just a normal photo of me standing up or sitting in a chair.

  And that was pretty much the end of that. He told me about some other “difficult people” he’d worked with, and I defended them all. I mean, really. How is it that someone wants to tie you to the railroad tracks, and refusing makes you the bad guy?

  I told him about the photographer I had last week who wanted me to spit onto a pane of glass and then press my face against it.

  “That sounds interesting,” Chris said. “What was his name?”

  I told him I didn’t remember, and he nodded, saying, “That tells me everything I need to know.”

  February 15, 1997

  New York

  Tiffany arrived yesterday for a short visit. She’s on mood stabilizers and they seem to have made a significant difference. She listens to people now and doesn’t get angry quite so easily. I took her with me to Little, Brown and introduced her to everyone. Hugh made a rack of lamb for dinner and then we all went to the play and out for drinks afterward. She’s especially entertaining when talking about Ludovic, the French guy who stayed with her for a while. “He said to me, ‘I like you, Tiffany, but I don’t love you.’”

  She’d responded that here in America, if you don’t love someone, you don’t tell them; rather, you just say nothing. I wish I’d written it down verbatim. It was so funny the way she said it.

  March 5, 1997

  New York

  Dad came to town for the book-release party, and I woke him this morning at four. A short while later I accompanied him to 6th Avenue, where he caught a taxi to Penn Station. It was still dark, and a lot of remarkable people were out: a man screaming about shitty black criminals, a sobbing woman, the drunk super from across the street. Funny how normal it all seems to me now. Before getting into his cab, Dad shook my hand and told me to be a good boy. He said it as though I were seven years old, as if he didn’t know that I had grown up. It made me so sad.

  March 28, 1997

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Someone told me that Minneapolis, where I was yesterday, is the slimmest city in the United States. I don’t know if that’s true, but it did have a Laundromat called the Spin Cycle. I also passed a gift shop called the Caardvark. I did a reading at a gay bookstore called a Brother’s Touch. It was what I’d feared it might be, lots of rainbow-striped flags and wind socks. My mike was set up in the magazine section, so behind me were pictures of all sorts of men, some in jockstraps, some with gags that looked like Ping-Pong balls in their mouths. What killed me, though, was the incense, which was coconut, I think.

  March 29, 1997

  Atlanta, Georgia

  The Cedar Rapids airport was decorated for Easter. They’d put plastic grass, marshmallow chicks, and plastic eggs atop the X-ray scanner, and I was looking at them when one of the guards, a young woman, asked to check my bag. She found the bottle of Scotch that Little, Brown had sent me and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to have to pour this out.”

  I thought that maybe this was a rule in Iowa, but then her boss stepped over and said, “No, Tanya, you don’t pour it out. You just need to smell it and make certain it’s not gasoline.”

  “Really? I’ve been pouring it out for the last two months!”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have been,” her supervisor told her.

  The woman named Tanya opened my bottle of Scotch, held it to her nose, and winced. “Now I got liquor on my hands,” she said. “Great!”

  Her supervisor rolled her eyes. “Oh, just go over to the fountain, add a little water, and have a drink,” she said, sighing. “It’ll do you some good.”

  April 13, 1997

  Portland

  This morning at the Seattle airport I saw a kid, maybe ten years old, jerking his head every fifteen seconds or so. It was like seeing myself as a boy. His father said, “Aaron, I’m warning you…” I wanted to rush over and scoop the kid up.

  May 10, 1997

  New York

  I finished Nickel Dreams, the new Tanya Tucker autobiography. Every time she used the phrase “my new friend,” I pulled out my pen, knowing there would be a great name coming. The book is full of them, my favorites being Peanutt Montgomery, Sonny Throckmorton, Michael Smotherman, Dave Dudley, and Sheila Slaughter.

  May 17, 1997

 
; La Bagotière

  Mr. G’s new colt is sick so we went to the barn and watched as he milked the mother. He then fed the baby from a bottle, eventually taking the nipple off and pouring the milk down its throat, saying, “Come on, now, drink.” His wife then shoved a thermometer up the colt’s ass and together they force-fed it some paraffin oil—all this because the vet charges extra on weekends.

  Coming from New York, I find it really shocking to spend time around animals. The baby geese are in the garage, their backs bare and bloody from where they’ve plucked one another’s feathers out. Lambs are in their pen. They’re friendly, the babies, but already their coats are caked with dirt and shit. In the pen next to theirs, a nine-year-old ewe sits on all fours facing a bowlful of mush. All her teeth have fallen out, so she can no longer graze or eat hay or pellets.

  June 19, 1997

  New York

  I was watching The Simpsons last night when Tiffany called. She’d just spent a month in Raleigh and it was strange listening to her talk about it. “Then Gretchen wanted me to change the hat on her taxidermied beaver, and I said, ‘Are you telling me or asking me?’”

  She was particularly bothered about a lamp and how she needed Dad to put it in his car and bring it to her at Paul’s place. “This is about respect,” she kept saying as I looked at the TV screen with the sound turned off, wondering what I was missing.

  June 27, 1997