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David Sedaris opens up about his family, quitting smoking, inconvenient back hair, gay marriage and, oh, so much more
In his latest bestseller, “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” David Sedaris once again proves that he is a deliciously shrewd observer of the modern world; a man capable of making the most out of complicated air travel, addiction, hitchhiking and any number of emotional hiccups in his long-term relationship with Hugh Hamrick. Beyond the stories on the page, the NPR titan and bestselling author of “Naked,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” is just as you’d imagine him to be: downright funny. But, in a revealing Q&A, Sedaris managed to share a few stories that never reached the printed page—yet. How is your book tour going?Oh goodness. If public speaking were your worst nightmare, it would feel like the worst thing that ever happened to you. Last night, for instance, in Kansas, it wasn’t that big of a store, so they set speakers outside in the parking lot. They had people outside. It was the first time I’ve ever done something like this before. I was inside the store and everybody else was outside of the store. And I looked at them and I saw what a puppy would see. I spoke to them through the glass and they came in and I signed books for eight hours. 
That’s a long time. Did they feed you?Yeah. But that was a situation … where people were standing up in front of you at the booksigning table and it’s hard to hear them. There was a time when I was in Minneapolis and they had 800 folding chairs set up and they could sit, and sometimes you are in a chain store in a mall and sometimes there are employees who are not there for you. There are kids in the store and people who have stuff to do, and then you show up. So it doesn’t work to say ‘pussy’ in that situation. So, what makes you laugh?When people fall down. Or … sometimes I tickle myself. But the other day, this girl had an owl on her shirt. So I drew an owl in her book and next to the owl I drew a cartoon bubble next the owl’s mouth and I said, when you hear owls, what you probably hear is ‘who who, who who who.’ But what an owl is really saying—and then I picked up the pen and wrote in the bubble—is: ‘I like black people.’ I love the idea that that’s really what owls are talking about. All these years—at last the answer comes.I don’t know where that came from but I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a keeper.’ But I think I laugh a lot. Obviously absurd things make me laugh. I laugh inappropriately. The other night a woman— a nurse—came to the line so I asked if she had seen any good accidents lately. She said she had. There was grandmother who was 69 years old and her grandson was going to come to mow the lawn and he was late. And she couldn’t wait any more and she thought she could do it herself. 
Oh no.… and she had one of those lawn mowers—the kind with a trailer that pulls behind you with rotating blades on it—and she fell backwards on the seat while she was mowing the lawn and she cut off both of her legs. Ouch.… and a breast and an ass cheek. Seriously?Yes. I was just picturing her in that wheel chair thinking, ‘If I only had that other ass cheek it would be OK.’ I just think it would be uncomfortable to sit in that wheel chair for the rest of your life with only one ass cheek. Oh my.The woman who told me it didn’t expect me to laugh, but it’s a cautionary tale … About patience.Yeah. But the woman said the only reason she was telling me this story is because the woman was cognizant all the way to the hospital. And then she died on the operating table, but by that point, the woman telling me the story had already hit the jackpot! I think because it was so unexpected and so visual. I mean, you see the grandmother and then the grandmother without the leg. And there goes the arm, the breast, so … that made me laugh. Were I to laugh if it were my grandmother? I don’t know. Well … you do write a great deal about your own family. I was wondering what are some of the things about your parents’ marriage that really influenced you?Well, that’s an interesting question. My parents remained married. They never got a divorce. Divorce wasn’t as common then as it is now. My parents weren’t very physical people. You didn’t see them hug and kiss a lot. You didn’t hear them saying, ‘Oh, I love you.’ And they didn’t do that much together. That didn’t seem abnormal to me. I mean, I am not one of those people who got a boyfriend and then thought you were supposed to do anything together, or thought that we were supposed to have our hands all over each other all the time. I don’t mean sex. And people often say, ‘Oh, it must be so hard to be away from Hugh for a whole month.’ And well, it’s great. And it’s good for him, too. People need breathing room.They do. Then again, the idea that I got from my parents was that you don’t need all that stuff. You know, all that stuff that I saw on television; just watching family on television and seeing how they operate. I never really bought it. I always thought that television always got families really wrong. So there’s a lot of realness in your family?Well, yeah. I mean, it all seems real to me. It’s really interesting when people say, ‘Well, I love reading about that dysfunctional family of yours.’ I think, well, it functions better than any family I can think of. We’re all friends and we all truly enjoy each other’s company. What’s unfunctioning about that? So, you’ve quite smoking. How many years did you smoke?Thirty-eight years. 
Do you have more energy?It’s funny how quickly you feel better. I was surprised by that. But I swim. I force myself to swim, It’s something I could not have done if I was smoking. I can do 30 [laps]. I like it. I went swimming the other day in Omaha, Nebraska, and I got up early and worked out for a while, and I found out there was a YMCA up the street. I had the entire pool for myself for a while and then this guy showed up and it was just the two of us. I felt bad for the lifeguard. It must have been boring. Luckily they have cell phones and they can talk to their boyfriend and say, ‘This is boring to watch old guys with hair on their backs!’ I mean, if a person has hair on their back … You have hair on your back?Oh yes, it’s completely disgusting. And I had it waxed off one time. Well, my friend waxed it off and it just grew back with a vengeance. I started noticing gray hair on my chest, too, so I bought a shirt and the top button was a little bit low, I thought, so I had a snap added, because I don’t want to … well, I can live with gray hair on my chest, but I am not going to show it to people. I am not going to have my shirt unbuttoned and have gray hair stick out. I am going to have that covered. It’s great you can share these things.I also have this problem when I pee, and then I think that’s over with and then I have a leakage problem. And somebody said, ‘Oh, you’ve broke your seal and once your seal is broken you can’t turn back.’ What seal?You know that thing in your sink where you have a washer in there and then it breaks and then leaks? Well, my ‘washer’ broke and I can’t fix it. So I have been asking men of a certain age if the same thing is happening to them. One guy said, ‘Well you need to ask your doctor about Flomax.’ And the guy said, ‘What I do is wear two pairs of briefs.’ Another man said I needed to get Depends; that they makes these pads that go on the front of your underpants, and I’m sorry, I can’t wear Depends. I can’t. Don’t talk to me about Depends. 
This could be great fodder for an essay.Yes, it is, but also I realize that khaki pants are a problem if you have this issue, because they show up stained. I can be in the airport with piss stains all over me. Everybody can see it. What I wind up doing is splashing myself all over so it looks like I had a water faucet accident. Then I come out and my shirt is wet and my pants. Everything. Pretty ingenious. Now, you and Hugh have been together 17 years. What is one of the best things about your relationship?One of the best things is that I don’t have to do anything. He does everything. Can you clone him?He drives, He cooks. He fixes things. Like, I don’t open what I call icky mail—any kind of bill or statement; anything that isn’t personally addressed or is a free sample. I don’t have anything to do with it. I’ll put it into a pile and he’ll come right home and open it right up as if it’s a birthday card. He does all the cooking. I mean, I am happy to go shopping—more than happy to buy toilet paper or light bulbs. I’ll go to two stores every day with pleasure. He’s clean. We’ve never gone to bed with a dirty dish—ever! A coffee cup in the sink? Never. We don’t have to argue about that. And it’s good, too, because when you get older—I am 51—so if something happened to Hugh … I mean, I think it would be different if you were a heterosexual man. Like, heterosexual men can easily find a woman at age 50 but if you’re gay and you’re 50, it’s a lot harder to find somebody, unless you want to buy somebody to be there—like the 25-year-old boyfriend. I can’t see myself doing that. So if Hugh and I broke up, I would just be alone for the rest of my life. I am so incredibly grateful. And I think my gratitude shows. And I think that brings a lot to a relationship. Have you folks been following the California Gay Marriage movement?Yeah. I just got an email forwarded to me from the Mayor of Beverly Hills who offered to marry Hugh and I. Are you going to do it?No. We are not the type to get married. You know what I mean? I do. No pun intended.I know people who are married, even before it was legal to be married, and there’s this need for them to have the vows and the ceremony on the cliff and it’s just not us. We’re not going to break up. But I might do the civil union in London. I mean, I’d sign a piece of paper that would save me money. Right now, if I die, Hugh would have to pay a 60 percent inheritance tax on our apartment. And with the civil union it would come down to 30 percent. That said, I remember when the California Supreme Court handed down the decision. I was listening to the news, and I remember this woman saying, ‘I texted my girlfriend and asked her to marry me.’ I cannot imagine not being touched by her enthusiasm. It’s like a scene from a Woody Allen movie. But for people who want gay marriage, I am incredible happy for them. It’s just not me. Do you have a lot of gay friends who want to get married?I am trying to think … Well, you’ve said all your friends are really Hugh’s friends …Right. I think most of his gay friends in America are single. I mean, the good thing about being gay is that you don’t have to go to weddings. Straight people I know have to go to so many weddings and they have to buy gifts and it just feels like the same wedding over and over and over, and the same band … I’ve only been to two weddings in my life. Really?My sisters got married. Actually, make that three weddings. I went to another one when I was 22. Three weddings and I am 51 years old. You live in Paris, but do you follow gay rights here in the States?Yeah. I mean, I don’t get any newsletters or anything. But I never understood people’s objection to gay marriage. I never understood why people felt like it threatened their marriage; that somehow two lesbians exchanging poetry on a mountaintop … that that is going to … I mean, I want to say, ‘Not everything is about you!’ If two lesbians exchange vows on a mountaintop, that’s not saying anything about you and your marriage to your husband. And why would you think that it does? I have a media escort. I get a big kick out of them. She was Republican and she was saying, ‘The next thing they are going to want is to marry dogs and cats!’ I thought, ‘Thank you so much for linking me to an animal that licks his own asshole!’ 
Amazing. Well. you are revered in the LGBT community and …I don’t think I am. You don’t?No, I am not gay enough. Like, last night, I signed books for eight hours. I bet there were eight gay men. I get more lesbians than gay men. I am not gay enough. Well, what do you mean, you’re not gay enough?I am not hip enough. I don’t know. I don’t get any more gay people in my audience than there are in the population. You know, I mean—a percentage? I guess there’s something about that that is, in a way, kind of progressive. I mean, I think it’s kind of neat that a 14-year-old straight high school student will show up to hear a 50-year-old talk about his boyfriend lance a boil on his ass. [Laughs] But I think the way I write about my relationship is all about trying to make a life with someone. I don’t think I write in a way that’s … I mean, the focus isn’t necessarily two men. We happen to be two men but our problems are the same as everybody else’s. We’re more than our sexuality—we’re human beings first, right?When I was growing up, there were no books in the library on homosexuals, or any homosexuals on TV. I mean there were, but you didn’t know that they were gay. It was easy to believe that you were the only gay man on Earth. Twenty years ago, my books would be in the gay and lesbian section of the bookstore because I was writing about my boyfriend. The manager of the bookstore would see the word ‘boyfriend’ in the book and say, ‘Oh, we have to put that over there.’ At this point, when I think of lesbian gay section of the book store, I think I’d find books about the joy of lesbian sex, or how to make your own cock ring crafts, but I would like to think gay-themed books, in general, have been moved into the more general section of the bookstore. What is the best advice you have been given?Golly. Oh, my mother told me a long, long, long time ago, to always bring singles and exact change on the plane—to buy a drink. I don’t drink any more but I’ve always followed my mother’s advice. I am forever appalled by the frequent fliers in the skies who order a drink and offer to pay with a twenty-dollar bill. Now, they are on planes as much as I am. They know that they should have exact change. A part of me thinks it’s just another inconsiderate straight guy thing, but another part of it is that the flight attendant won’t be able to get the change and they think they can just get a free drink. It’s really irritating to me. I am irritated on behalf of the flight attendant. So, on my last book tour, I put a tip jar on the booksigning table. Seriously?Yes. I made $4,000 in tips. So I had a carry-on bag filled with wads of cash, so the flight attendant would get a twenty from somebody, and I would raise my hand and say, ‘Hello miss, I have change. How would you like it? Fives? Singles? I was the flight attendant’s best friend. You always need to be thinking of your bills when you are traveling. 
What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned about yourself lately?Well, you know what? It’s that I don’t hate pretzels. I thought I hated pretzels. And I don’t hate them. It used to be I was on planes and they would give out pretzels and I was mad and I’d say, ‘No, I don’t want them!’ And then I was so hungry the other day, and I ate them and I thought, ‘You know, this ain’t so bad.’ David Sedaris speaks at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Oct. 26. To order tickets, or to learn more about UCSC’s Arts & Lectures’ upcoming season, visit http://artslectures.ucsc.edu or call 459-3861.
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