D + J 4-Ever

Last night I saw David Sedaris read at my school. I couldn't get anyone else to go with me. Not Amy, not Pedro, not my mother. So I went by myself. Seeing David Sedaris is worth sitting by yourself a few rows down from your students, who are no doubt thinking, "Oh, that's so sad. My English teacher is sitting by herself." when they could, and should, be thinking, "Oh, look! There's my English teacher. She's the one with that ridiculously attractive man!"

So, I sat by myself as they herded stragglers in through the balcony doors. The reading would start fifteen minutes late because there were so many people there, and getting them in their proper seats was a nightmare for the ushers.

I was sitting next to the best smelling gay couple in the world. They wore crisp shirts and wire-frame glasses. They filled the extra fifteen minutes of wait-time by mocking people. Mainly lesbians.

The one sitting next to me raised his already high voice to octaves unknown. He said, "Ooooh, I'm a lesbian! Ooooh, I'm so cool because I'm a lesbian! Lesbian! Lesbian! Lesbian!" and the other one would laugh and laugh and laugh.

I wanted to laugh too, but I was busy pretending not to listen to their conversations while simultaneously assessing the boy one of my students was sitting with. He was a little goth and a little dirty. He looked bored. I wondered if they were dating, and I was still wondering this when the lights dimmed and Sedaris came out.

People freaked. They woo-woo'ed. They whistled. They stomped their feet.

He opened his mouth, thanked us for coming, and started reading. I wanted to slump over in my seat and cry because I was so in love with him and this was so wonderful and I wanted him to somehow see me out in the crowd and invite me back to his hotel room so we could talk about good literature over a bottle of champagne.

This would not be the last time my mind was consumed by fantasies that involved some sort of beverage.

The inside of that giant auditorium was stifling. The gay couple next to me was roasting in their crisp shirts, and they kept fanning themselves with programs. I was in a better position because I was in a skirt which gave me some air circulation around the legs, but my throat was parched. Very parched. When Sedaris started reading an essay about the things he would do to flush the toilet when the water got turned off at his place in France—things like filling the tank with milk or orange juice—my brain was filled with a vision of me standing in David Sedaris's bathroom, lifting the back of his toilet, sinking a straw deep in the reservoir of OJ, and drinking.

But even though I was mildly hallucinatory due to dehyrdration, I still spent every moment of the reading wanting to eat Sedaris's perfect words. I wanted to stuff them in my mouth and make a delicious literary meal of them. I wanted to rush the stage, throw myself at his feet and say, "Take me with you! Take me with you!"

I don't know where I thought he was going, but, boy, did I want to go.

He did a book signing afterward. A book signing that took him forever. I don't know how long he signed after I left, but I know I was in the middle of the line and I waited an hour and a half to get up to him. It was 11:30 when he took up a pen and started working on my book. When I craned around to look behind me, I saw that the line stretched back to the other entrance of the auditorium. To get to all of those people he would've had to sign until 2:00 AM. I don't know if he did, but I can't imagine those people were sent home unfulfilled after standing in line for that long.

Anyway, here's where I confess to one of my neuroses. I have mini panic attacks anytime I meet an author I love. If I'm getting my book signed, I will stand in line and spend dozens of minutes trying to work out what I'm going to say. I'll obsess. Do I sound stupid? Does that make me sound like a groupie? Is this author going to go home, call their loved ones, and tell them about this weirdo he/she met at the reading?

My hands sweat. I fidget. I try to improve my posture so I can at least look graceful before I blow it all out of the water with whatever stupidity comes out of my mouth.

Well, I had a long wait before I could get even remotely close to Sedaris, so I didn't spend a lot of that time stressing. I figured I'd come up with something eventually. I stood patiently in line—even during the time where he had to dash outside for a quick cigarette break—and fantasized about liquids. I had none. Everyone around me had some. I couldn't even get out of line, because this was a serious line and you could tell people were very serious about budgers, and I was alone, so there was no one to hold my place. I began to theorize that there should be a separate line for people who were there by themselves, so they could be taken care of first. After all, they had no one to talk to, and they were really fucking thirsty and couldn't even dash over to the drinking fountain.

In the worst moments—moments past the hour-long wait mark—I began to sway on my feet. I wondered if I was going to faint. I wondered if I was going to slump over on the people in front of me—a hairdresser and her best gay friend. If I did that, I wouldn't get to see Sedaris. I wouldn't get to talk to him or say thank you or get him to sign my book. So I just thought very hard about the half-full bottle of water that was sitting in a cupholder in my car.

And then, after all that dreaming about the sweet wet that would soon be on my tongue, I was five people away from meeting David Sedaris. I entered panic mode. I shifted my weight and ran things through my head. What could I say? Something about my students, how we read several of his essays in class and they loved them? I figured it would be uncouth to ask if he was really sure he liked guys because, well, if he didn't, he and I could be a great team, and we could go run off and get married and live in France.

I decided to say the thing about my students loving him and appreciating him and how they said reading his personal essays had helped them with their personal essays. I practiced a few sentences in my head. I reordered words. I thought about the pitch of my voice. I prayed he wouldn't notice how badly my eyebrows are in need of a wax.

And then there he was. In front of me. Smiling and saying hello.

I handed him my book. I asked him how he was doing. I told him about my students. And he proceeded to talk to me for a few minutes. We talked about students, about teaching. He told me a story about a textbook publisher that had included "Let it Snow"—one of the pieces I'd had my students read—in a composition text. The publisher sent him a review copy. He checked it out, looked over the story, then read the questions at the end. This particular textbook author had written a question that asked What did you feel when you read Sedaris's story about his mother's bad parenting skills? Do you have any experience with alcoholics? What are they?

Then he talked about how people are always sending him writing because their friends have said they sound just like him. He always reads those things and sends the author a small note, saying that it was a pleasure to read their work. He talked about how he doesn't want to say much more because he doesn't know the person and how they can take criticism or a review of their work. He talked about how he doesn't want to get in the way of them eventually finding their own voice.

I wanted to tell him about how I, for a part of my graduate career, was busy trying to be Lorrie Moore with a touch of Aimee Bender. I wanted to tell him that one day I woke up and wrote a story that sounded like neither of them. It just sounded like me. I wanted to tell him those things, but we'd already been talking for a little while, and I could sense the line behind me shifting on their weight and panicking about the things they were going to say to him. He would take the time to talk to each of them the way he had talked to me, and they too would be charmed, so I didn't want to take up anymore of their time. I thanked him, told him to have a lovely night, and then walked out to my car, where I sucked down the entire bottle of water in one giant gulp.

I felt light-headed from all that literary goodness, from the slight dehyrdation, from the sweet message David Sedaris had written in my copy of Barrel Fever.

I felt good. When I announced I was getting tickets to go see Sedaris, Pedro had cautioned me. "I saw him the last time he was here," he said. "I didn't like his attitude." I was scared that I might feel the same when I went to see him, but I was pleasantly surprised. He read for a long time, was charming, was kind, and took the time to chat with each person who handed him a book. I almost called Pedro to tell him he was wrong, that David Sedaris's attitude was everything I wanted it to be, and that he had been wearing the most smashing thin-striped shirt and skinny burgundy tie, and that he was so cute I wanted to go with him wherever he went, so I could spend the rest of my days writing in a room next to the room where he was writing.