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David Sedaris Knows What You’ll Laugh at When No One Is Judging
David Sedaris Knows What You’ll Laugh at When No One Is Judging
“When I was riding my bike or walking,” says David Sedaris, sitting on the terrace of his apartment high above Manhattan on a gentle autumn evening, looking back on his younger days, “I used to fantasize about having the life that I have now.” No wonder. The essayist’s books, the latest of which is “A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020),” are reliable best sellers, and he’s the rare author whose readings, reliably, fill theaters. Such professional constancies have afforded Sedaris, who is 64, and his longtime partner and frequent literary foil, Hugh Hamrick, personal luxuries like homes in New York, Paris, the English countryside and on the beach in his native North Carolina, as well as the means to indulge his passion for Comme des Garçons clothing. More fortunate still, his success — Sedaris was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019 — hasn’t softened the mordant snap that is so much its source. “Now when I walk around, I don’t dream about the future. Because in the future, I’m just older,” Sedaris said. “I mean, if life is like a roller coaster, right over this little hump I’m at now is terminal cancer.”
There’s always a sense in your books that you’re an empathetic guy at heart, but some of the funniest parts are when you’re expressing condescension or disdain. So I’m curious: How do you see empathy as fitting into what you do? I’m not a monster, I suppose. In the new book, I said there’s a look that you perfect in first class, like, Just do your little job. Writing it makes me laugh because it’s so snobby. But it’s thought snobby. It’s not action snobby. There’s a huge difference. I refuse to believe that everybody’s not an asshole in their brain. Who doesn’t walk through the airport and think, Oh, my God, that person looks awful; look at her legs; what made her think it was a good idea to get a tattoo there? I would never say it. If you go to Starbucks, and you’re like: “I’ll pay with cash. No, you know what? I’m going to pay with a card. No, you know what — ” If you think the people behind you aren’t imagining you in the electric chair, you’re wrong. And they should be imagining you in the electric chair.
In the last entry of the new diaries — it’s from Dec. 31, 2020 — you write that you had finally turned old, and your realization had to do with finding certain ideas hard to understand. What are some ideas where you disagree with what you see as younger people’s consensus? That has been interesting signing books: When gay men and lesbians come up, I say, “Where do you stand on the word ‘queer’?” The young people are like, “I love it.” It’s their word. I hate it. I read an interview with this woman, and she identifies as queer because she’s tall. People who identify as queer because they feel “other”? Everybody does at some point in their life. It’s just the rebranding. No one asked me about it. There was not a vote. So now I identify as a straight man. Whatever you identify as, people have to respect that, right? I identify as a straight man because the word “straight” doesn’t change. I just want some stability.
But isn’t the rebranding you mentioned more about other people wanting to be described a certain way? What’s the tension there for you? I’d rather say I’m homosexual than queer. It’s completely strictly generational. That’s what people my age were called, you know? But that’s not the part of it that bothers me. It’s just the rebranding. That’s why now I’m a straight man. And you know what?
What? I’m going to be a really good spokesperson for straight men too. We’ve been maligned for too long, and we’ve had it. We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.
It’s about time straight men got a chance. It really is.
I don’t know. Is there really some problematic movement of people who used to identify as straight now identifying as queer? Well, it’s a lot of people who are genderqueer or metasexual.
What’s metasexual? You only have sex with someone who you feel a deep emotional commitment with. It used to be called “Christian.”
Are there ideas younger people hold that you don’t necessarily feel comfortable with but that you also suspect might be an improvement on your own? In some literary offices I’ve heard that people are no longer allowed to say, “May I have a word with you?” because it triggers people into thinking they’re going to be fired. Are they supposed to just say, “Hey, David, you’re [expletive] fired”? Or Brandeis University putting out that list of words and phrases: You can’t say you “killed” that exam or take another “stab” at it. But you can order the battered chicken?
So I guess your answer is no? If somebody treats me poorly, it’s like they handed me money. I write about it, and I’m like, I’m so glad I was there at that moment. I don’t want anybody to throw acid on me, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s shy of that. I was out a couple of weeks ago. Usually I go out after midnight, and I take a five-mile walk. I’m on Park Avenue; I take a right onto East 72nd Street. This woman says, “My name’s Andrea. I’m from Queens. I’m the queen of Queens. You need a date?” She grabs my penis, and I said, “Look, I’m gay.” But she will not get off of me. So I went to a doorman building. It wasn’t my building. Anyway, she was so annoying. I wrote about it in my diary. I made it funny, but I said, “Can a woman sexually assault a man?” Because the threat of penetration wasn’t there. I was afraid because she was so unpredictable, and she had the craziness in her eyes, but I don’t believe I was afraid the way a woman would be afraid if a man did the same thing.
That answer went in an unexpected direction. Oh, I wrote about it in my diary, and I thought, This could be an essay. But there has to be some depth to it. One of the things I realized was that if I was Black, I couldn’t have gone to a doorman building on the Upper East Side and had them let me in — probably wouldn’t. That maybe isn’t an aspect I would have considered two years ago, you know? You don’t want to make somebody feel bad. You don’t want to belittle somebody. You don’t want to heap stuff on them. But there’s something to be said about developing a thick skin. Like, I wrote an angry email recently to Audm because they were doing a New Yorker story about the making of “Midnight Cowboy.” They quoted John Wayne, who said it was a movie about a couple of bleep. So I wrote to Audm, and I said why did you bleep out the word “fag”? You’re quoting John Wayne in 1969. Of course John Wayne said that. Bleeping out the word is treating me like I’m some sensitive flower.
What was the last thing that you were offended by? I get angry about things, but I don’t know that I get “offended.” It’s not really a word that I would use. I don’t like it when someone says, “I love to read about your dysfunctional family,” because I don’t like the word “dysfunctional.” I don’t think it means anything. There’s a certain kind of person who thinks that’s a fun word to say. If I hang out with my siblings and I talk to them all the time, I don’t see how that’s dysfunctional. But I don’t think I get offended.
Unlike in the first volume of your diaries, there’s not much self-doubt or anxiety in the new one. I’m a happy person.
How much of that is an outcome of achieving success? Because often people think success will make them happy, and then it doesn’t. It’s hard to say, because I don’t know what it would be like to not have done that. I remember what it was like not to have any money, and to be sick and not have health insurance and not be able to go to the doctor. I have friends who are my age who have all those fears and anxieties, and they’re near retirement age. They can’t retire, and they all say the same thing: I’m just going to work until I drop. But my job is to take whatever [expletive] thing is in front of me and make it laughable. You have to be in a certain state to make that happen, and I’m always in that state. My boyfriend, Hugh — you can leave the room, and there’s no telling what’s going to be there when you come back five minutes later. You can’t have two people like that in a relationship. I’m the sunny one. Somebody has to be.
There’s also a degree of affluence in the new set of diaries that contrasts with the poverty that you lived in for a lot of the period covered by the earlier set. Some people feel guilt or embarrassment over having a lot of money. Do you have any ambivalence about it? I think I am pretty good at it. I was thinking about my dad, because his house just sold and Amy sent me a picture of the chaos that was his house. There was something he had on his dresser about “The Art of Giving.” My father was the cheapest person. One year I donated money to the church for him for Christmas, and he called and asked if he could have the write-off. There’s a responsibility to having money, and my dad didn’t honor that. No one taught me about that responsibility, but you look around and there’s just [expletive] you’re supposed to do if you have money. Give it away. Be generous. Find your younger self and make a difference in that person’s life. And you’re supposed to spend money if you have it. You’re not supposed to just keep it all. It’s one thing if you’re poor, but if you have it, you’re supposed to buy [expletive]. It’s different for you, because you have kids, right? So you have to think, If I buy that painting, that’s the college education for both of my kids. But I don’t have to worry about that.
How much do you spend on Comme des Garçons in a year? I wonder if I spend $50,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that much. But the way I look at it — when I first started reading out loud, I would wear a tie. I always dressed up. My ideas of dressing up have just gotten different. My audience, they don’t understand it. They think I’m crazy. But if you’re going to be in front of people, you should give ’em something to look at.
Do you think much about what you can and can’t get away with? People say, “I can’t believe what you say onstage,” because you can’t say anything anymore. I mean, I love an old-fashioned vulgar joke. There is a joke that I’ve been reading onstage: A woman wakes up on her 40th birthday, and she goes to the drugstore and says: “Today’s my birthday. Can you guess how old I am?” The druggist says, “36?” She says, “I’m 40.” Next she goes to the butcher shop and goes: “Today’s my birthday. Can you guess how old I am?” The butcher says, “32.” She goes, “No, I’m 40.” She goes up and down Main Street. Nobody comes close to guessing her age. She gets in her car and goes to the gas station. Says to the guy, “Can you guess how old I am?” He says, “I can guess your age and your birthday. But first you have to let me fondle your breasts for a while.” She says, “OK.” Then after about five minutes, he says, “You are 40 years old, and your birthday’s today.” “How did you do that?” He goes, “I was in line behind you at the butcher shop.” The audience gives the biggest laugh from that line. But first the audience makes a noise when the gas station attendant says, “You have to allow me to fondle your breasts for a while,” and she says, “OK.” Whereas 20 years ago, her agreeing to it would have just been accepted as part of the joke.
Are you finding that the gap between what people will laugh at and what they would admit to finding funny is getting more pronounced? You know what was interesting? I did a bookstore event the other day, and I read the funniest bits from the diary. I got nothing. Nothing. Then people said afterward, “My face hurt from laughing.” I said: “You weren’t laughing. I was here, you know.” But you turn the lights off? In a theater, the lights are all the way down, and people will laugh.
Because people behave differently when they’re not worried about any social consequences or judgments? Yeah. Especially if you’re in America and race comes up in any way, the audience freaks out. So Andrea, the woman who assaulted me, was Black. When I shape that into an essay, I think it’s important. I was let into the foyer of a building I don’t live in; that had everything to do with me being white. If you have a character who’s Black and is not a virtuous character, the audience freaks out, because they think: If I laugh, does that make me a racist? If I don’t like this person, does that make me a racist? It’s something I’ve noticed for years. The audience freaks out, and it’s by and large a white audience freaking out, and it gets worse with every passing day.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.
David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Alice Waters about being uncompromising and Neil deGrasse Tyson about how science might once again reign supreme.