Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

by David Sedaris

  I waited for five minutes and was just about to give up when she ran into the theater with a bag in her hand, saying, “Thank you so much,” and “You were so nice.” In the theater I took a seat against the wall. There were people in the middle of the aisle, three Americans who did nothing as I tried to pass. I mean, they didn’t even pull in their legs. It was like I was invisible. I always stand when someone passes and naturally expect others to do the same. Just before the movie started, a tall guy took a seat in front of me. I had to lean to the left in order to see the screen and during the two hours, I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back. It feels like I’ve been shot and the exit wound is right below my left shoulder blade. I’m blaming the three Americans who refused to stand as I took my seat. Had they been more cooperative, I would have moved and spared myself this pain. I mean, it really hurts.

  August 12, 2001

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  The RER crawled to de Gaulle and stopped for twenty minutes at Aerogare 1, so we missed our afternoon flight to Edinburgh. I don’t remember the last time I missed a plane, and it took me a while to get beyond the shock of it. For the rest of the afternoon I thought, If only we’d left sooner. If only we’d hailed a cab. It always helps that Hugh takes these things a lot harder than I do. He decided that fine, he’d just stay home, and it took a while for me to change his mind. There was another flight at nine and the woman at the desk gave me the last ticket.

  Hugh was put on standby and promised that if he made it on board, he’d never complain again. Those were his words: never again. I drew up a little contract and he signed it. I now have it in writing. “If I, Hugh Hamrick, get a seat on tonight’s flight I will never complain again.” He got his seat, and every five minutes I pulled out the contract and gloated.

  It was a small plane. Our flight attendant was named Daisy and she served us a frozen dinner featuring a slab of meat and some sort of jelled-rice concoction. When I say frozen, I don’t mean “thawed” or “reheated,” I mean frozen. Hugh’s rice concoction was impenetrable and my meat was trimmed in ice. I was free to complain all I wanted, but, having signed the contract, he could do nothing but smile and chip away at his rock-hard brownie.

  August 13, 2001

  Perth, Scotland

  On the BBC’s recommendation we visited a coastal town called North Berwick. It was a small place with a wide beach offering a view of several craggy islands set a half mile out to sea. I call it the sea, but according to Hugh it was actually the Firth of Forth, a cove. North Berwick was noted in our guidebook for its handsome public toilets, which were decorated with flowers and little signs asking you to keep the place clean. Lunch was taken at the Butter Cup Café.

  At the table next to ours sat two white-haired women, one of whom was blind and carried a folding cane. The blind woman talked a lot, and as she spoke, her bored friend looked out onto the street, saying they’d better get going before the rain started. “Oh, I’m used to the rain,” the blind woman said. “If I let the weather stop me, I’d never get anywhere.” She buttoned her coat and then settled back in her seat to finish her tea.

  Our meals arrived and just as we started eating, the blind woman decided it was time to go. She rose from her chair, collected her purse, and farted in Hugh’s face. It was a small trumpeting sound that was talked about for the rest of the day.

  August 17, 2001

  Paris

  Yesterday outside the movie theater I saw a Japanese albino. He was a young man in his late twenties with hair and skin the color of cotton balls. Maybe it was due to his pale skin, but his teeth looked really yellow. They were crooked, too, and crammed into his mouth. He had a rash covering his jaw and a half dozen tattooed stars burned into his arm. The poor guy was just a mess. It was four thirty in the afternoon and I was at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés to see Love Streams, which was playing as part of their Essential Cassavetes series.

  His movies are often too long and sometimes dull. When Gena Rowlands is on-screen I’m in heaven, and when she goes away I sit in the dark and think about other things—the Japanese albino, for instance.

  I’ve been here for three years but still won’t stop a stranger to ask for a match. People ask me all the time, but I just can’t seem to do it myself. Neither can I walk into Fnac and ask where I might find a certain CD. Instead, I just roam around, not even knowing which genre it’s under. In French record stores, the CDs are grouped under strange headings, many of which include the word black. I believe they have a section called Black Rage. After looking at Fnac I walked to Montparnasse to catch the 96 bus. I could have just as easily walked home, but I thought it might be fun to visit the train station with no luggage.

  August 18, 2001

  Paris

  I walked into the kitchen this morning to find a pigeon sitting on top of the cabinet above the sink. There are always dozens of them roosting on the ledges of the surrounding buildings, and I was surprised one hadn’t come in sooner. I don’t know how long the pigeon had been here or what she’d done with her time alone. I spilled some couscous on the counter last night and found it was still there, so I’m guessing she didn’t have the opportunity to eat. I’m no expert, but it seems that pigeons would like couscous.

  Yesterday I had my picture taken by an American named Anthony. He’s been in Paris for seventeen years and his girlfriend just had a baby, which has changed his life. “It’s different now,” he said. “When you’re single you maybe have an affair and your girlfriend decides to break up with you. So it’s painful, but you just go out and find someone else.”

  It seems to me that if you’re having an affair, the person being cheated on has dibs on the word painful, but I didn’t say anything. Anthony has done a lot of work in Russia and used to keep an apartment in Moscow. “Those Russian women will destroy you,” he said. He’s trying to be a family man, but I don’t have much faith that it will work out.

  September 12, 2001

  Paris

  Last night on TV I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center. I watched the towers fall in on themselves, I watched the burning Pentagon, and then I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center. From my kitchen, office, and living-room windows, I saw my neighbors watching the same thing, each with a remote in one hand and a telephone in the other. It felt like everyone in the world was in front of the TV. Now it’s the next day and I still haven’t gotten it through my head. The thing that gets me the most are the hijacked planes. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to realize you’re actually aiming for something. You’re not going to land in Afghanistan or be held hostage on some tarmac; you’re going to die in three seconds. What’s frightening is that it was so ingenious and perfectly orchestrated. Who did this?

  Patsy and I met at six o’clock at the café on Saint-Sulpice. She’d been watching CNN and told me that, as Americans abroad, we’re supposed to keep a low profile and avoid speaking English on the street. It’s a standard warning the State Department issues whenever there’s trouble. French police have blocked off areas of the Marais and are stopping pedestrians to ask for their papers. Flights en route to New York returned to de Gaulle and I’m not sure when they’ll resume. All American airports are closed, as are the bridges and tunnels leading into Manhattan. I tried calling Amy, but all the lines were clogged. She doesn’t get out of bed before noon, so I’m assuming she’s OK. Steven called me at midnight to tell me that Rakoff and Sarah are fine, as is Art Spiegelman. On the television Giuliani is saying that as many as ten thousand people might have died. On the radio the event’s being compared to D-day. Bush called it “an attack on freedom itself,” while Jacques Chirac, much more eloquently, called it an attack on civilization.

  September 14, 2001

  Paris

  Last night, we attended the memorial service held at the American Church over by the Musée d’Orsay. Unlike Wednesday’s service at the American Cathedral, this was a full-fledged media event, with appearanc
es by President Chirac, Prime Minister Jospin, and the mayor of Paris. I’d never been in a room with a president and thought it was nice the way he paused every so often and made eye contact with the audience. The church isn’t very big, and half the pews were reserved with signs reading PARLIAMENT, HIGH DIGNITARIES, and DIPLOMATIC CORPS. This being the American Church, I’d assumed the service would be in English, but, aside from a few opening remarks, everything was said in French.

  Brief, five-minute sermons were delivered by a Protestant minister, the grand rabbi of Paris, and a Muslim cleric with a strange gray comb-over. The choir sang, the service ended, and just as the dignitaries were filing out the door, someone in the back of the room started singing “God Bless America.” The man started and his countrymen joined in, including Jessye Norman, who placed her hand over her heart and sang as if she were an average devastated woman rather than an opera star. The thing about “God Bless America” is that, after a certain point, nobody really knows the words.

  There’s always a weird mumbling that follows “Stand beside her and guide her,” and lasts until “From the mountains to the prairies.” Then there’s that bit about the oceans white with foam, which is just a strange thing to mention in a patriotic song. What killed me, what killed many of us, was the very end: “My home sweet home.” Because, whatever else Paris might be, this is not our home, it’s just the place where we have our jobs or apartments. How could we have forgotten that?

  September 24, 2001

  Amsterdam

  The day before yesterday a chemical plant exploded in Toulouse. Patsy called to tell me about it, and, as we’d done a week earlier, we both turned on our TVs and continued to talk while flipping between channels. Twenty-nine people were reported dead and hundreds were injured. Windows were smashed for miles around. A woman lay on the sidewalk crying. Men mopped their bloody faces with the sleeves of their sport coats. The first assumption was that it had been a bomb, but after an hour or so, they attributed it to human error, which was a huge relief. The thing is that we’d been expecting something. Everyone’s just sort of waiting for the next big event. Yesterday morning the phone rang and I heard Hugh say, “Oh, my God. You’re kidding. When?”

  I was sitting at my desk, imagining the worst, when he covered the receiver and said that Leslie had chipped a tooth.

  September 28, 2001

  Paris

  Don called last night to talk. I’m thinking that before he dials he makes a list of topics, adding little notes pertaining to this or that subject. Haffmans. Sent faxes. No response. Anything unexpected seems to throw him off balance and it’s painful to listen as he tries to right himself.

  “Amsterdam, right. That reminds me of, oh, it was that movie with what’s her name, when she and the guy get thrown into the water and so forth. It was…no, maybe that was Venice, or rather they made it in Amsterdam because of course everything’s so hard when it comes to the Italians. But Amsterdam, that reminds me of, oh, he was this great old guy who was up near…I think it was Greenland and he got lost somehow and, well, what with the weather and so forth he got…the thing with, the disease and he had to cut off his own feet, which is what’s happening right now to Bradbury with the diabetes. They didn’t remove the entire foot, but they took a part of it and, oh, it’s just been a rough couple of weeks here.”

  October 2, 2001

  New York

  I called Amy at four a.m. Paris time and finally got through to her. She told me that, a few days after the World Trade Center collapsed, she went to a play rehearsal on the Upper East Side. The trains were moving faster than she’d anticipated, and she wound up arriving early, with half an hour to kill. There’s a Gucci boutique up on Madison Avenue, and, although the brand has never appealed to her, she went inside and looked around. The saleswoman was pushy, and within ten minutes, Amy was strapped into a pair of shoes with very high heels. They were uncomfortable, and when she removed them, she noticed that the insides were stained with blood. Wet blood. Her blood.

  The shoes had caused her to pop a blister, but rather than writing it off as an accident, the saleswoman told Amy that now she pretty much had to pay for them, to the tune of $500.

  I can’t fault Amy for giving in, as I would have done the same thing. She bought the shoes she’d never liked in the first place and was leaving the store when she was approached by what she described as two hippies. She meant the new, anti-globalization hippies, who are even more self-righteous than the old ones. The pair moved up the street, and as they passed her one of them spat, “The world is falling apart, so let’s all go shopping, right.”

  Feeling now both shallow and taken advantage of, Amy went to a deli and asked for a brown paper sack. She transferred the shoes into it, threw the box and the Gucci bag into the trash, and continued on to her rehearsal. Eventually she got the bloodstains out with an ice cube, but she couldn’t return the high heels, as she’d thrown the receipt into the trash can. The world is falling apart and now she’s stuck with this pair of shoes.

  October 6, 2001

  Paris

  A stranger called and left a message saying that he too knew someone who’d attempted to “talk pretty.” “My friend tried to say he was hungry, but instead he said, ‘I am a woman’! Ha! Anyway, keep writing!”

  I’d never anticipated that people would want to work the book title into a sentence, though I guess I should have expected as much. They did the same with Naked: “I told a friend to get Naked. Ha!” or “I was reading Naked—but, hey, not literally!” Yesterday’s stranger phoned from the airport and apologized for not having called me sooner.

  October 7, 2001

  Paris

  The French meteorologists have gone on strike, meaning that no one knows what the forecast will be from one day to the next. The TV weathermen are still there, but they have no reports to deliver. Instead of predicting what might happen tomorrow, they discuss what already happened today, saying things like “Well, as you can see, we had some rain.” It’s a news report designed for shut-ins.

  October 8, 2001

  Paris

  When hauled before the new world court of folly and decadence, I will have to admit that when the war broke out, I was standing in the Paris branch of the Jil Sander boutique talking to a woman in a calf-length Prada vest trimmed with the fur of aborted fetal lamb. An American press had just published the collected snapshots of Dennis Hopper and we’d been invited by Leslie to the launch party. The first bombs fell on Iraq as the guest of honor made his way to the second floor, and the news was delivered by Lauren Bacall, who wore a fist-size jeweled hair clip, the tiny stones arranged into the message I love Paris.

  October 10, 2001

  Paris

  The news gets more distressing every day. I’m lucky, then, to have Hugh, who’s taken the calm and logical approach. Last night before going to bed he said, “What are you so worried about? The guy’s finished. He can’t even come out of his cave.” I thought of how strange that might have sounded a year ago. “He can’t even come out of his cave.” Who would I have thought he was talking about? What kind of a person lives in a cave?

  What initially set me off was bin Laden’s television appearance. It wasn’t live, of course. It was just a speech recorded in, well, his cave. The language was very baroque and I would have laughed were he not calling for the complete annihilation of my country. It was both horrible and horribly overwritten. “America is scared,” he said. “From the north to the south. From the east to the west.”

  Why not just say that America is scared all over?

  His call for a holy war was backed up last night by a taped message from his al Qaeda network; a spokesman said that more planes would be hijacked. I don’t necessarily believe they’ll be able to do it again, but with every broadcast, they inflame more of their followers.

  It’s really disheartening to see those narrow streets choked with people, raising their fists and calling for our death. I was uncomfortable but felt bette
r after talking to Paul. “Listen,” he said, “those folks running from the World Trade Center, they eat with knives and forks. They wear shoes, understand? See, we’ve moved on. We’ve progressed while they’re sitting around in the dirt just toiling with that shit. OK, they fucked us up a little. We let our guard down and they got us. This shit happens, but it won’t happen again.” That Paul. They should put him on TV.

  This afternoon we went to look at sofa beds at a store on the boulevard Raspail. I was just wondering if a certain model came in a smaller size when the saleswoman interrupted me and asked if I was English. I said that I was American and for the next twenty minutes she talked nonstop, the words gushing from her mouth like water from a fire hose. “You have to stop this bombing,” she said, “because the people, they’ll get mad and we don’t know what they’re going to do next. They could corrupt our drinking water and then what? You open the tap and you die, or maybe they’ll blow up our nuclear power plants, and then what? It’s over, all of this, the whole world is over and, yes, what they did was terrible, but you’re only going to get them stirred up. They’re crazy, the Israelis are crazy, and when they’re done fighting, whoever wins is going to come after us. They’ll poison the earth and the water and there’ll be chaos and rioting and we’ll all die!”