Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

by David Sedaris

  Fifteen and Wondering

  Dear Wondering:

  Take five years off after you graduate from high school. Move away from home, get a menial job, fall for as many unworthy young men as it takes to get all that nonsense out of your system. Don’t even think about college until your mind is parched and you are frantic to learn. Don’t marry in your twenties. Don’t be kind to yourself. Keep in touch.

  Dear Betty:

  I was not “lying about the sex”; nor do I for a minute imagine that you thought I was. You simply could not resist making a flip wisecrack at my expense.

  I was lying about my friends, who have gradually lost their affection for me but continue to socialize with us because they value my husband’s company. He is aging well. I am turning into a fool. I’m one of those handsome old beauties with a gravelly, post-menopausal voice and a terrible laugh. I never had much of a sense of humor, but once I had a smoky, provocative laugh, which has now somehow become the sort of theatrical bray that hushes crowds. Strangers, accosted by me at parties, attacked at lunch counters and in elevators, shift and squirm in alarm: Even the most obtuse knows he’s about to be mugged, that he will not be allowed to pass until I have exacted my tribute. I am all affectation, obvious need and naked ego: just that kind of horrible woman who imagines herself an unforgettable character. I tell off-color jokes and hold my breath after the punch line, threatening to asphyxiate if you fail to applaud my remarkably emancipated attitude. During the past forty years I have told countless people about the stillbirth of my son, to show that I Have Known Great Sorrow. I parade my political beliefs, all liberal and unexamined, as evidence of my wisdom. I am a deeply boring, fatuous woman, and strangers pity me, friends lose patience with me, and my family loves me because it never occurs to any of them that I know it. I am the emperor in his new clothes, who knew perfectly well he was naked, who just needed a little attention, that’s all, merely the transfixed attention of the entire populace, not an unreasonable request, just unlimited lifetime use of the cosmic footlights.

  Don’t try to tell me I can change. Of course I can’t. And don’t for an instant presume that I’m not all that bad. I am. Believe it.

  Niobe

  Dear Niobe:

  Yes, but on the other hand your astonishing self-awareness makes you a genuinely tragic figure. And, honey, cling to this: you’re not ordinary. Commonplace sufferers find themselves trapped in homely, deformed, or dying bodies; you’re trapped in an inferior soul. You really are a remarkable woman. Bravo!

  How about it, Ladies? Isn’t she something?

  Dear Betty:

  Just who the hell do you think you are?

  Washington Wallop

  Dear Wallop:

  I am 147 pounds of despair in a fifty-pound mail sack. Though overpaid, I groan with ennui beneath the negligible weight of your all too modest expectations, and when I fail to counter one of your clichés with another twice as mindless, I apologize, even though the fault, God knows, is yours. I am

  Betty

  Dear Betty:

  Temper, temper.

  F.P.S.

  Dear F:

  I can’t help it. That broad really frosts my butt.

  Dear Betty:

  Do I have an inner life? I think I read somewhere that women don’t. Also, what does it mean? Do you think we’re capable of original thought?

  Fifteen and Still Wondering

  Dear Wondering:

  I love you, and wish you were my own daughter. I have in fact two daughters, but neither of them has an inner life. I am what they call nowadays a “controlling personality.” (Believe me, dear, that’s not what they used to call it.) I was one of those omniscient mothers—the ones who always claim to know what their children are thinking, what they’ve just done, what they are planning to do. Not for any sinister reasons, mind you, but I got so good at guessing and predicting that, without intending to, I actually convinced them both of their utter transparency. They are each adrift, goalless and pathetic. They are big soft women, big criers, especially when they spend much time with me. I think I should feel worse about this than I actually do. Do you think this is Darwinian of me? (Hint: Go to a good library, and take out some books on Darwin.)

  Dear Betty:

  It’s me again! Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do with a ten-foot length of old garden hose?

  Petunia

  Dear Petunia:

  Do you ever just sit still? Do you ever just sit in front of a mirror, for instance, and stare at your face? It’s none of my business, but—and I say this with no snide intent; I am trying to be good, so that my teeth are literally clenched as I write this—I seriously think you should calm down. Petunia, even the Athenians threw things away. Let the garden hose be what it is, a piece of garbage. Now sit very very very still and try to think of nothing but the weight of your eyelids. Come to rest. Let your muscles slip and slide. Easy does it, girl. Easy. Shhhhhhhhhhhh.

  Dear Betty:

  Maybe you should stop “trying to be good” if that’s the best you can do. If I were Petunia, I’d rather get a wisecrack than a lot of patronizing advice based upon a snap analysis of my character and the circumstances of my life. You’re a fine one to exhort them to wonder, be surprised, and admit to possibilities. On the basis of little evidence you’ve turned the woman into a cartoon. You don’t see her as a person at all, just a type. Early thirties, right? Hyperthyroid, narrow-shouldered, big-bottomed, frantically cheery, classically obsessive-compulsive, a churchgoing, choir-singing, Brownie-troop-mothering Total Woman with a soft sweet high voice, darting panic behind her deep-set eyes, an awful cornball sense of humor, and an overbite like a prairie dog. Am I right? Boy, how trite can you get! And how presumptuous you’ve become! I’ve tried to see it your way, but it’s no go. I say, bring back the Original Betty.

  F.P.S.

  Dear F:

  Look, we know for a fact she’s a cornball. No one who asks what she should do with a ten-foot length of hose could possibly have a sense of humor. As for the rest, well, I stayed up half the night trying to imagine another psychological context for her question (which, I must object, is hardly “a little evidence”), so that if I have failed, it isn’t for lack of trying.

  Oh, all right, I admit it. I did see her as a type. But it becomes so difficult to believe that Petunia, or any of them, has any kind of independent existence. Remember, these folks are just words on a page; of course they’re full-fleshed and complex, but I have to take this on faith. Most of them probably think they’re revealing their true selves, whereas really they tell me almost nothing, and with every letter I’m supposed to make up a whole person, out of scraps.

  I don’t like to complain, but this doesn’t get any easier with practice, and I’m tiring now, and losing my nerve. I can live with not being nice—nobody nice would do what I do—but what if I’m not any good?

  READERS:

  Do you think that failure of the imagination can have moral significance? I mean, is it a character flaw or just an insufficiency of skill? Is triteness a sin? Or what?

  Dear Betty:

  Last night my husband woke me up at 2:00 A.M. with a strange request. Then after a while this old song started going through my head that I hadn’t thought about for thirty years. I must have gone through the darn thing ten thousand times. It got so I was following the words with a bouncing ball, so that even when I blocked out the sound, that old ball was still bobbing away in my head and I never did get to sleep until sunrise. The question is, does anybody out there know the missing words?

  Herman the German and Frenchie the Swede

  Set out for the Alkali Flats—Oh!

  Herman did follow and Frenchie did lead

  And they carried something in, or on, their hats—Oh!

  Now Herman said, “Frenchie, let’s rest for a while,

  “My pony has something the matter with it—Oh!”

  Now Frenchie said, “Herman, we’ll rest in a mile,
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br />   “On the banks of the River Something—Oh!”*

  Now Hattie McGurk was a sorrowful gal,

  Something something something.

  She had a dirt camp in the high chaparral

  And a something as wide as Nebraska.

  There’s more, but I never did know the other verses, so they don’t matter so much.

  Betty, we sure do love you out here in Elko.

  Sleepytime Sal

  Dear Betty:

  One time I was at this Tupperware party at my girlfriend’s. Actually, it was just like a Tupperware party, only it was marital underwear, but it was run the same way. Anyway, everybody was drinking beer and passing around the items, and cutting up, you know, laughing about the candy pants and whatnot, and having a real good time. Only all of a sudden this feeling came over me. I started feeling real sorry for everybody, even though they were screaming and acting silly. I thought about how much work it was to have fun, and how brave we all were for going to the trouble, since the easiest thing would be to just moan and cry and bite the walls, because we’re all going to die anyway, sooner or later. Isn’t that sad? I saw how every human life is a story, and the story always ends badly. It came to me that there wasn’t any God at all and that we’ve always known this, but most of us are too polite and kind to talk about it. Finally I got so blue that I had to go into the bathroom and bawl. Then I was all right.

  Partly Sunny

  Dear Betty:

  When I was first married you ran a recipe in your column called “How to Preserve Your Mate.” It had all kinds of stuff in it like “fold in a generous dollop of forgiveness” and “add plenty of spice.” I thought it was so cute that I copied it out on a sampler. Time went by, and I got a divorce, and finished high school, and then I got a university scholarship, and eventually a master’s degree in business administration. Now I’m married again, to a corporate tax lawyer, and we live in a charming old pre-Revolutionary farmhouse, and all our pillows are made of goose down, and our pot holders and coffee mugs and the bedspreads and curtains in the children’s rooms all have Marimekko prints, and every item of clothing I own is made of natural fiber. But I never threw that old sampler away, and every now and then, when I’m all alone, I take it out and look at it and laugh my head off about what an incredible middle-class jerk I used to be.

  Save the Whales

  Dear Betty:

  This is the end of the line for you and the rest of your ilk. We shall no longer seek the counsel of false matriarchs, keepers of the Old Order, quislings whose sole power derives from the continuing bondage of their sisters. Like the dinosaurs, your bodies will fuel the new society, where each woman shall be sovereign, and acknowledge her rage, and validate her neighbor’s rage, and rejoice in everybody’s rage, and caper and dance widdershins beneath the gibbous moon.

  Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre

  Dear Betty:

  I did what you said and sat real quiet and let myself go. Then you know what happened? I got real nutty and started wondering if I was just an idea in the mind of God. Is this an original thought? ’Cause if it is, you can keep it.

  Hey, are you all right?

  Petunia

  Dear Petunia:

  No, since you ask. My mother is dying. My husband’s mistress has myesthenia gravis. My younger daughter just gave all of her trust money to the Church of the Famous Maker. And I, like Niobe, am not aging well. My ulcer is bleeding, I can’t sleep, and I’m not so much depressed as humiliated, both by slapstick catastrophe and by the minute tragedy of my wasted talents. To tell you the truth, I feel like hell.

  Dear Betty:

  I can see you have problems, dear, but whining doesn’t advance the ball. Why not make a list of all your blessings and tape it to your medicine chest? Or send an anonymous houseplant to your oldest enemy? Why not expose yourself to the clergyman of your choice? Or, you could surprise hubby with a yummy devil’s food layer cake, made from scratch in the nude.

  Or, if nothing seems to work, you can put your head down and suffer like any other dumb animal. This always does the trick for me.

  Ha ha ha. How do you like it, Sister? Ha ha ha ha ha.

  Bitterly Laughing in the Heartland

  Dear Betty:

  See? They’re closing in. You had to try it, didn’t you, you got them going, and now all hell’s breaking loose. You took a sweet racket and ruined it, and for what? Honor? Integrity? Aesthetic principle? Well, go ahead and martyr yourself, but leave me out of it.

  F.P.S.

  READERS:

  For what it’s worth,

  BETTY REALLY BELIEVES

  That God is criminally irresponsible.

  That nobility is possible.

  That hope is necessary.

  That courage is commonplace.

  That sentimentality is wicked.

  That cynicism is worse.

  That most people are surprisingly good sports.

  That some people are irredeemable idiots.

  That everybody on the Board of Directors of GM, Ford, Chrysler, and U.S. Steel, and every third member of Congress and the Cabinet, ought to be taken out, lined up against a wall and shot.

  That whining, though ugly, sometimes advances the ball.

  How about it, Readers? What do you believe?

  Dear Betty:

  Does anybody have the recipe for Kooky Cake?

  Kooky in Dubuque

  Dear Kooky:

  Forget the cake. The cake is terrible. What we’re trying for here is a community of souls, a free exchange of original thoughts, an unrehearsed, raucous, a cappella chorus of Middle American women.

  A Symphony of Gals!

  Kooky, for God’s sake, tell me your fears, your dreams, your awfulest secrets, and I’ll tell you mine. Tell me, for instance, why you use that degrading nickname. I’m sending you my private phone number. Use it. Call me, Kooky. Call me anytime. Call collect. Call soon.

  That goes for everybody else. All my dear readers, the loyal and the hateful, the genuine and the fictional, the rich and the strange. Call me anytime. Or, I’ll send you my home address. Drop in. I’m serious. Let’s talk.

  Serious? You’re critical. These people are going to kill you.

  These people are my dearest friends. I love them all.

  You do not! You don’t even know them!

  What’s the question?

  But…sentimentality is wicked.

  But cynicism is worse.

  *(If I could get the name of the river I’d be all set here)

  Song of the Shirt,

  1941

  Dorothy Parker

  It was one of those extraordinarily bright days that make things look somehow bigger. The Avenue seemed to stretch wider and longer, and the buildings to leap higher into the skies. The window-box blooms were not just a mass and a blur; it was as if they had been enlarged, so that you could see the design of the blossoms and even their separate petals. Indeed you could sharply see all sorts of pleasant things that were usually too small for your notice—the lean figurines on radiator caps, and the nice round gold knobs on flagpoles, the flowers and fruits on ladies’ hats and the creamy dew applied to the eyelids beneath them. There should be more of such days.

  The exceptional brightness must have had its effect upon unseen objects, too, for Mrs. Martindale, as she paused to look up the Avenue, seemed actually to feel her heart grow bigger than ever within her. The size of Mrs. Martindale’s heart was renowned among her friends, and they, as friends will, had gone around babbling about it. And so Mrs. Martindale’s name was high on the lists of all those organizations that send out appeals to buy tickets and she was frequently obliged to be photographed seated at a table, listening eagerly to her neighbor, at some function for the good of charity. Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom. Mrs. Martindale’s breasts were admirable, delicate yet firm, pointing one to the right, one to the left; angry at each other, as the Russians have it. />
  Her heart was the warmer, now, for the fine sight of the Avenue. All the flags looked brand-new. The red and the white and the blue were so vivid they fairly vibrated, and the crisp stars seemed to dance on their points. Mrs. Martindale had a flag, too, clipped to the lapel of her jacket. She had had quantities of rubies and diamonds and sapphires just knocking about, set in floral designs on evening bags and vanity boxes and cigarette-cases; she had taken the lot of them to her jeweller, and he had assembled them into a charming little Old Glory. There had been enough of them for him to devise a rippled flag, and that was fortunate, for those flat flags looked sharp and stiff. There were numbers of emeralds, formerly figuring as leaves and stems in the floral designs, which were of course of no use to the present scheme and so were left over, in an embossed leather case. Someday, perhaps, Mrs. Martindale would confer with her jeweller about an arrangement to employ them. But there was no time for such matters now.

  There were many men in uniform walking along the Avenue under the bright banners. The soldiers strode quickly and surely, each on to a destination. The sailors, two by two, ambled, paused at a corner and looked down a street, gave it up and went slower along their unknown way. Mrs. Martindale’s heart grew again as she looked at them. She had a friend who made a practice of stopping uniformed men on the street and thanking them, individually, for what they were doing for her. Mrs. Martindale felt that this was going unnecessarily far. Still, she did see, a little bit, what her friend meant.

  And surely no soldier or sailor would have objected to being addressed by Mrs. Martindale. For she was lovely, and no other woman was lovely like her. She was tall, and her body streamed like a sonnet. Her face was formed all of triangles, as a cat’s is, and her eyes and her hair were blue-gray. Her hair did not taper in its growth about her forehead and temples; it sprang suddenly, in great thick waves, from a straight line across her brow. Its blue-gray was not premature. Mrs. Martindale lingered in her fragrant forties. Has not afternoon been adjudged the fairest time of the day?