New York
I applied for a job at an Upper East Side sandwich shop. The woman I spoke to was named Charlotte, and I was the fifth person she’d interviewed. I don’t know who the first one was, but the three who went before me were all from Pakistan.
“Why do you want to work with sandwiches?” Charlotte asked.
And I thought, Well, I don’t, really. It’s just that I need a job.
Next I went to 5 & 10 No Exaggeration. It’s a combination antiques store/restaurant. Waiters are required to wear wing-tip shoes, suspenders, and bow ties, and it’s a smoke-free business. I don’t know why I bothered, really. New York restaurants want waiters who look like models. If you’re not pretty, you don’t stand a chance. Then there’s the no-experience problem.
This is Lincoln’s Birthday, so the library was closed.
March 1, 1992
New York
Patrick and I moved furniture from Jericho, Long Island, to Park Slope in Brooklyn. We were near the drop-off point when I noticed what smelled like a candle burning inside a pumpkin. Then I saw smoke coming from the back of the van and we pulled over. One of us had apparently thrown a lit cigarette out the window that blew back in and settled on a moving quilt. It burned through two layers but luckily didn’t reach the tabletop. The people we picked up the furniture from in Jericho, an older couple, had a spotless house. What’s odd is that they had brass knockers on all of their inside doors—to the bathrooms and bedrooms, the closets, everything. “Be careful,” they kept saying. “Watch the corner! Watch the stairs!”
The couple in Park Slope were in their late thirties and had a baby. They smiled a lot, were nice. Brooklyn is covered in graffiti. Absolutely covered.
March 19, 1992
New York
Hugh and I went to Westport, Connecticut, and picked up two tuxedo cats that used to belong to the actress Sandy Dennis, who recently died of ovarian cancer. On the train back to New York, two black teenagers were discovered hiding in the bathroom. They’d snuck on without paying and were shocked when the conductor asked them to hand over their Walkmans, saying, “Those should about cover the price of the tickets.”
“You don’t understand,” one of the kids said. “These aren’t our Walkmans.” He said that they belonged to friends and that they went to a really tough school where every day someone got shot and killed.
“That’s not my problem,” the conductor said.
“But…,” the kid said. “But…”
The conductor said they’d have to get off at the next stop, 125th Street.
The other kid spoke up then, saying, “But we want to get off at Grand Central.”
“Look,” the conductor said, “you can either get off at One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street or go to jail.”
To this, the first kid said, “Which one?”
March 22, 1992
New York
Patrick stayed up late last night and watched a show about termites, which don’t eat wood but apparently just store it in their cheeks or whatnot. Then they bring it back to the mound, where they use it to mulch mushrooms. Can this be true? I’m so gullible sometimes.
March 23, 1992
New York
According to the book I’m reading, Judy Garland was once singing “Over the Rainbow” at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles when a moth flew into her open mouth. She couldn’t spit it out in the middle of the song, so she just parked it in her cheek until she had finished. Again, can that be true?
June 15, 1992
New York
Normally in the morning, Hugh drinks tea and eats a piece of fruit. Most often it’s an apple, but this morning it was a banana that had been sitting too long on the shelf. The peel was bruised almost black, and inside it was the color of pus, all slick and nasty-looking. I’d just brushed one of the cats and couldn’t help but take the hair and arrange it just so on Hugh’s seeping banana. Then I sat back and winced. It truly was disgusting. Obscene, really.
June 21, 1992
New York
A few weeks back, my Interview Magazine mention came out, and this morning I received a postcard reading Dear Mr. Sedaris, You are very cute and I love what you have to say about the world. It is a crazy place, but you make it well worth it. Your admirer, Jean Snyder.
The card is just what I needed. It’s nutty, sure, but how nice to know that some stranger is thinking of me.
June 23, 1992
New York
At Coney Island we passed a sideshow booth that featured a two-headed baby represented in four mammoth paintings. In the first he was in diapers, shaking a rattle. Then there he was, taking his first, astonished steps. In the third painting the baby seemed on the verge of a decision, one head delighted, and the other one wailing. The fourth should have been the first but wasn’t for some reason. It showed the baby swaddled in a bandanna, delivered by a stork that had sunglasses on.
I had to see this for myself, so while Hugh waited out front, I bought a ticket and went inside. There, I found the two-headed baby, not playing patty-cake or scribbling on walls with a crayon but floating in a jar of formaldehyde. Three of the four pictures I’d seen were absolute bullshit, as he couldn’t have been more than a few hours old when he died. Even in a jar, that kid has outearned me.
June 24, 1992
New York
The postcard I received the other day, the one from a stranger, was false. Hugh wrote it, not Jean Snyder. She was someone he went to school with as a child in Beirut. It seems he typed the postcard, attached a used stamp, and extended the cancellation marks with a pencil. I really have to hand it to him sometimes.
July 3, 1992
New York
I stopped at a discount store on Broadway this morning hoping to buy some floor-wax remover for one of my cleaning jobs. It was the kind of place that sells everything but under a different name. For instance, they have an all-purpose spray, but it’s called Fabulous instead of Fantastik. They don’t sell Ajax, they sell Apex. The store is owned by men in black turbans who asked that I check my bag on entering. I did, and when I didn’t find what I was looking for, I returned to collect it.
“You stole something,” the security goon at the counter said.
This same thing had just happened a few weeks ago, so I was furious. “Are you accusing me of shoplifting?”
“You have something in your pocket,” he told me.
“Really?” I said. “You pretty sure of that?” I emptied my pockets, front and back. “Does your store sell keys to my apartment? Do you sell half packs of cigarettes and books of matches from a restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island? Or, hey, maybe I stole my own wallet!”
The man said, “I can accuse you of anything I want.”