Apathy and Cookies
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006If you were to say to me, “Claire, name a small, gay man in his mid-to-late 40s whom you would marry if he asked,” I would undoubtedly say, “David Sedaris. Why, did he say something about me?”
It is at this juncture that I would like to remind you that David Bowie is neither in his 40s nor gay, so he does not qualify for the position.
My friend, Tracy, and I saw David Sedaris speak tonight. Well, not so much speak as read. He read us a story about a human skeleton, dirty stories about New York City cab drivers, and animal porn. And I love him. I love his balding head and tiny yellow teeth and the part of him that thought it appropriate to say, “Last year I put out a book called Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules for the Faith Kids’ Charity* to raise money for…I don’t know, fucked up kids? I forget.” He then went on to say, “I think they were blind. And retarded. Or they couldn’t read. No, sing. They couldn’t sing.” And that is when I fell in love, because, you see, the way to my cold, dead heart is through bitter and unfeeling apathy. Or cookies. Apathy and cookies. Yum.
I saw David Sedaris once before, last year, when he came to Vanderbilt. I listened to his stories and then stood in line to meet him after the reading. You were asked to mark the place in your book with a post-it note so that David Sedaris could flip to it quickly, sign it, and move on to the next wide-eyed literary wannabe behind you. But I messed it up. For one, I didn’t bring a book for him to sign. Most people bought books at the reading, but I already owned all of them and I’d be damned if I was going to spend $12.95 on a second copy just so the author could scribble something inside it. I may be in love, but I’m not an idiot. So I asked him to sign my program instead. I was at the end of the line, the third to last person to get an autograph, and while I was waiting, I absentmindedly removed my post-it note, crumpled it and put it in my pocket. So when I got to the front, I had no autograph reference point for David Sedaris. He and I had to flip through my program together to find his picture. “To Claire: You’re doing it ALL WRONG,” David Sedaris wrote to me, and I took it home and put it in a scrapbook.
I thought maybe tonight he would recognize me. David Sedaris would look out into the audience, his eyes resting on my soft, feminine features that meant nothing to him because he has The Gay, and he would smile. “Claire!” he would say after the reading, approaching me with open arms. “How have you been?” We would do that kiss-kiss thing on either side of our cheeks because he lives in France now and that’s what French people do, right? He would then go on at length about how he met thousands of people on this book tour, but it was my down-to-earth persona and girl-next-door charm that stuck with him all those months. “Plus, you laugh at hobo jokes,” he would say with a smile. “I love a woman who laughs at a good hobo joke.” I’d ask if he wanted to get some coffee, he would hesitate and then accept, and four hours later, we’d be at Bongo Java, wondering where the time went. He’d give me the name of his agent, I’d give him the name of my hairstylist, and we would be friends for life.
Sadly, this didn’t happen. He stood on the stage and Tracy and I remained in fold-out chairs in the audience. At one point, he pointed in our direction, but it was a generic hand-gesture and really, it was more towards Tracy than me. But I have not given up. I know in my heart that we were meant to be.
*I made up the name of that charity. I don’t remember what it was really called and I don’t want to do any research to figure it out.
