New York
It’s been two years since I’ve had a drink. Amy gave me a bathroom scale for an anniversary present, and, without my shoes, I weigh 132. The other day in Greencastle I weighed 144, so I’m figuring one of the scales must be wrong. Hugh will give me a present tonight when he gets home, and maybe this evening I’ll have a piece of cake. It’s almost best not to mention it, as any celebration of sobriety seems so painfully childlike. “I know, I’ll have a tea party and invite all my invisible friends!”
April 10, 2001
San Francisco
After last night’s reading, Ronnie, Blair, and I went to dinner with a critical care nurse who’s in the process of writing two novels and told me that in 80 percent of all burglaries, the intruder defecates on the bed. If not the bed, he’ll shit on the carpet or the dining-room table. It’s done as a final fuck you to the homeowner but seems like an awful lot of trouble. It’s hard enough to use a strange toilet, let alone a mattress or carpet, so why bother? Do the burglars save up or can they just defecate on command? Is this a trick they learned in prison?
April 30, 2001
Paris
On the front door of a restaurant I saw a sign reading DINNERS, LUNCHS, RECEPTIONS.
It’s hard to say the word lunches with the missing e: lunchs.
The city of Paris is continuing last year’s ad campaign. The goal is to get people to clean up after their dogs, and the billboards read YOU HAVE GOOD REASON NOT TO PICK UP. HE DOES IT VERY WELL IN YOUR PLACE. One ad pictures a child sitting on the grass and using a cookie cutter on a Great Dane–size pile of shit. Another, my favorite, shows a blind man with six good-size stools speared on his cane. Shit isn’t terribly photogenic and the stools come off looking like the grilled sausages served at one of the many Greek restaurants off Saint-Michel.
May 3, 2001
Paris
I had an interview with a German man who writes for the equivalent of the Ladies’ Home Journal. He was a portly fellow with white teeth and glasses who wore a button-down shirt and a new pair of Levi’s. He told me that his sister is clinically depressed and read Naked during a month-long visit to a psychiatric hospital. According to him, once she’d finished, she loaned it to a fellow patient, who, in turn, loaned it to someone else. The book seemed to lift people’s spirits, and as a result, the hospital has made it recommended reading. I’m not sure whether I believe this, but it’s extremely flattering to think my book is being passed around a German asylum.
May 5, 2001
La Bagotière
Until last night we slept on a bed that came with the house and felt as though it had been stuffed with marshmallows. We’d lie down and roll to the middle, where we’d sink to the bottom and wake up feeling like someone had taken to us with a stick. I’ve been offering to buy a new bed and finally Hugh accepted. We went to Lepage in Flers, an ugly aluminum-sided building filled with equally ugly furniture. Our salesman was a small man with blond hair who invited us upstairs and pointed out the various features of the display models. “Allez-y,” he said.
The beds had plastic pads at the feet so that you could test them out without soiling the mattresses. Hugh went from one to another and lay down, looking as though he’d been sent to his room. He eventually chose the hardest, and as we went downstairs to pay, the salesman sussed us out, asking if the two of us looked forward to our good night’s sleep. This was surprising, as it fell under the category of a personal question.
“The two of you” implied that we might be sleeping together, and he said it sneakily. I don’t mind a personal question, but Hugh does, and rather than answer, he walked away to inspect a fake-leather footrest that resembled a half-deflated medicine ball. “Yes, well,” the salesman said.
The mattress and box spring were on sale and came to $800. A delivery was arranged and as I handed over my credit card, I noticed the salesman’s startling BO. It always shocks me when someone smells like that and wears a suit. A deliveryman brought the mattress at five thirty and the two of us spent the evening looking forward to bedtime. Hugh turned in at midnight and had a great night’s sleep. I went to bed at one and lay awake for hours, feeling as though I were stretched out on a length of pavement. The mattress is too hard for my taste and I woke up with a sore jaw, having dreamed I’d been hit by a car.
May 12, 2001
Atlantic Beach
When at Dad’s house, one drinks coffee from a Rush Limbaugh mug. Walking to the kitchen for a refill involves passing a thank-you card from George Bush and Dick Cheney, who stand embracing each other. Dad wanted me to ride to the beach with him, but I just couldn’t. “Why the hell not?” he asked. I looked at his Honda Civic, the seats matted with dog hair and the bumper sticker reading AL GORE IS A RISKY PROPOSITION.
I rode with him as far as Paul’s and ducked down low in the seat. He’s started driving like an old person, and I worried it might take days to reach the motel. On the ride from his house to Paul’s, he never exceeded twenty-five miles per hour.
May 17, 2001
Paris
I received a long, confusing letter from a German woman that begins, “Dear Mr. Sedaris, To be forced expressing myself in English makes me become a daisy! A fatal starting point for me. By the way—I cannot find anything which I could present you as an equal output—I am a petitioner, that’s the fact.”
I’m not sure what she wants, but she mentions SantaLand and Season’s Greetings, referring to the latter as “a cutting, ambiguous, controversial, subtle text giving us laughing the creeps.”
May 27, 2001
La Bagotière
I biked to Flers and was inching past a red light when I heard someone blow their horn behind me. They honked a second and third time, and I turned to find a police car carrying three officers, two up front and one in the back. You see that a lot here, and it always seems strange to me. The driver yelled, “Hey, that light is red,” and I got off my bike and moved it onto the sidewalk, pretending he’d said, “Here’s that butcher shop you were looking for.” I could physically feel the common, stupid expression on my face and I stood there looking in the window at meat until they had passed.
May 30, 2001
Paris
One of yesterday’s interviewers brought me a Swiss army knife. She was a small blond woman from Zurich who arrived complaining about the heat. Complaining is too strong a word. She commented on it, as did the earlier Swiss interviewer.
Both journalists found Paris to be boring and asked me what I thought of Zurich. I told the second woman that I liked the grocery store at the airport and she said, “Yes, we all go to the airport on Sunday.”