Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

by David Sedaris

If nothing else, a diary teaches you what you’re interested in. Perhaps at the beginning you restrict yourself to issues of social injustice or all the unfortunate people trapped beneath the rubble in Turkey or Italy or wherever the last great earthquake hit. You keep the diary you feel you should be keeping, the one that, if discovered by your mother or college roommate, would leave them thinking, If only I was as civic-minded/bighearted/philosophical as Edward!

After a year, you realize it takes time to rail against injustice, time you might better spend questioning fondue or describing those ferrets you couldn’t afford. Unless, of course, social injustice is your thing, in which case—knock yourself out. The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can’t. Won’t people turn away if they know the real me? you wonder. The me that hates my own child, that put my perfectly healthy dog to sleep? The me who thinks, deep down, that maybe The Wire was overrated?

I decided that maybe two volumes—the second of which will cover the years 2003 to 2017—would make more sense. It’s worth mentioning that this is my edit. Of the roughly eight million words handwritten or typed into my diary since September 5, 1977, I’m including only a small fraction.

A different edit, no doubt a more precise one, would have involved handing my diary over to someone else, but that is something I can’t imagine doing, unless, perhaps, that person is a journalist. (They never get beyond the third page, which they usually call “the middle,” as in “I’d hoped to finish this before our interview but am only in the middle!”) That said, I don’t really expect anyone to read this from start to finish. It seems more like the sort of thing you might dip in and out of, like someone else’s yearbook or a collection of jokes. It wasn’t easy revisiting what are now 156 volumes of my diary. I broke the job up—a month or two per day—but after reading about me, I’d have to spend the rest of the day being me. I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything quite so exhausting. Hugh would be in the next room and hear me shout things like “Will you just shut up!” and “Who cares about the goddamn pocket square!” “Who are you talking to?” he’d ask. “Me in 2001,” I’d answer. By then I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The early years, 1977 to 1983, were the bleakest. I was writing my diaries by hand back then. The letters were small and, fueled by meth, a typical entry would go on for pages—solid walls of words, and every last one of them complete bullshit. I’ve included very little of that time in this book. It’s like listening to a crazy person. The gist is all you need, really.

Civilization means not waiting five hours for a ride. Round Rock is civilized, Austin is too, but I’m not sure about Temple.

Todd and I each took three hits of sugar cube acid. Too much. It was a real bad trip, like torture, enough to turn someone into a Christian. I’ve been up for two days.

I started the day with a ceramic pig but abandoned it after it got to be a drag to carry.

I want to be in school.

Breaking branches is called trashing. Skirting is picking the low-hanging fruit on someone else’s tree. This is what Norm calls an Okie tactic.

If you talk to people, you can have whatever you want.

In 1951 Norm worked at the sawmill and a guy named Barney Bailey gave him the nickname Peewee, which is what everyone here calls him. Barney Bailey has a wife he calls Buffalo Grass. Buffalo Grass Bailey. After filling the final pear bin, Norm, Jesus, and I drank beer. I made $211.24 this season. Back in Raleigh I have $150 in savings. That’s a total of $361.24. I am optimistic that things will fall into place, and one day I’ll be sitting in New York City with correct bus fare in my pocket.

I went to John’s and saw his studio. He explained what all his tools do and then he suggested that he could pay me in Christmas gifts. If he has a pool, two cars, two Streamline trailers, and a home with two fireplaces in it, he can pay me in real money. I don’t think his wife likes me too much. Christians are strange people.

or staring down a dildo collection at Tom’s.

Amy babysits and scours the houses for dirty magazines, which she then brings home. She really is divine for her age (seventeen). Today while I shoveled the driveway, she asked what I thought the filthiest word was. I said cunt. In her opinion, it’s fuckwad. She said it sends chills down her spine. The other day we went to see Midnight Express. She was really loud during the torture scenes and kept squirming in her seat, saying, “Shit, oh, shit.”

The last time I was up at five was because I hadn’t gone to bed yet.

Dad on friendship: “Sure, some people are nice. Real nice. Nice like carpets so you can walk all over them.”

They make me think of Mrs. Covington, who comes into the Breakfast House every day. She complains if I don’t fill her coffee cup to the top, and then when I do, she complains that it’s too full.

Gas in four states is now selling for over $1 a gallon. I’d love to work in a service station just so I could hear people complain.

I really try to refrain from marijuana until at least ten thirty at night, but when it’s put in front of me, I forget how miserable it makes me feel. I get nauseated and don’t move around as much. At night, though, I take a bath and listen to the radio. At night, it’s great.

Me: Are you Italian? Italian guy: Just do your job and minda you own business.

Conversation I overheard at the IHOP:

Man to a woman he’d just screwed: If I’d known you were a virgin, I’d have taken more time. Woman: If I’d known you had more time, I would have taken my panty hose off.

I was walking home when someone in a passing car leaned out the window and spat right in the center of my face.

The World According to Garp.

On the bus yesterday morning, I ran into D., who has a Mohawk and goes to court tomorrow on two counts of drunk-and-disorderly conduct, one count of trespassing, and one count of urinating on a woman’s leg. She’d promised to sleep with him if he bought her beers, so he did. Then she ran off with her friends, so he caught up and peed on her skirt.

One day when I had her, a kid wet his pants during geography, and she told the class that Steve was just excited about learning. Even in 1964 I thought that was funny.

Yesterday afternoon three black women beckoned me to their car and told me that my fly was down. I thanked them because nobody ever tells you things like that.

He didn’t say anything about my artwork but suggested right away that we sit on the bed in our underwear. But L. wasn’t wearing underwear. Instead he had on diapers and rubber pants. I was not braced. L.’s favorite phrase was “a real turn-on.” Diapers were “a real turn-on,” as was being peed on and being five. “Daddy,” he said, “if I was your little boy, how would you dress me? Would my little rubber pants be tight?” I was a nervous wreck. L. was disappointed that I wouldn’t play along, and I think it was pretty clear I just wanted him to crawl home. I went into the kitchen for a long time, and when I came back to the bedroom, he was asleep.

No enjoyment of showers on Friday and Saturday nights. This doesn’t mean they can’t be taken, but they have to be short. The bar features country-and-western music on weekends, and if we use all the hot water, there won’t be enough for “the broads in the ladies’ rooms.” “Hey,” he said, “put yourself in my shoes.”

There was a major fight at the hotel late last night between the owner, Brad, and his daughter Ginger, who is eighteen:

Last week, under Avi’s window, a man from the hotel bar hit a woman for dancing with another man. When we mentioned it to Brad, he said that if she was dancing with someone else, she deserved to be beaten.

decoupaged

1980

I’m on this pure meth I got from W.’s friend Liz. It’s moist and foul-tasting, super-severe, and I haven’t figured out the right dose yet. Allyn from downstairs tried it too. Then she and I threw a party that was fine until two drunk guys wandered over from the IHOP and crawled into bed with Dee Dee’s nine-year-old daughter, who was asleep in the other room.

“Here you go.”

1981

Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal?

I went tonight to the Winn-Dixie on Person Street, across from the Krispy Kreme. It’s a low-income neighborhood, right on the line separating the white and black areas of town. I was walking from the parking lot to the front door when I saw a man enter. He was tall and black, clearly drunk, and behind him were two girls, laughing and pointing. The man was pushing an empty cart, and just inside the door, one of his feet caught on the carpet. He fell to his knees, and a moment later the cart he’d been putting all his weight on fell over as well. With nothing to support him, he crashed face-first onto the floor. I was maybe twenty feet away but didn’t rush forward to help him. No one did. I was looking for magazines, so I decided at the last minute to try the Fast Fare across the street instead. When they didn’t have what I wanted, I returned to the Winn-Dixie, where the man was still lying on the floor. It made me uncomfortable, so I decided to skip the magazines and just go to Krispy Kreme instead.

Jean Harris was convicted of second-degree murder. I kind of liked her.

I feel guilty and grateful.

I had four Scotches and passed out before making a major spectacle of myself.

I have $5 to my name, and even that is owed.

Friday night we went to dinner at the Villa Capri. Mom got lost on the way there. She took two or three incorrect turns and wound up jumping the median when she realized we were in the wrong lane and a car was heading directly toward us. Her excuse was that she hadn’t had a drink yet.

There is a new cancer that strikes only homosexual men. I heard about it on the radio tonight.

Joe interviewed a carpenter named T.W. for a job and asked at the end, “Now, do you have any questions for me?” “Yeah,” T.W. said. “Did you get any pussy last night?”

Luther laughed hardest when I fell off the truck. When I returned from the van after looking for staples, he said I’d been gone so long he figured I’d walked into town. That got a great response. In total, he told on me three times.

T.W. is married to Candy, and they have two daughters, Raelyn and Lacey. They’re not allowed to date until they’re sixteen. That’s the rule, and the older one has been complaining about it. “She’s hot as a nigger bride,” T.W. says. For lunch today he had a Little Debbie cake, a Mello Yello, and a can of Beanee Weenees.

“Well, that’s a Jew for you,” Bobby, one of the carpenters, said. To make him uncomfortable, I told him that I was Jewish. Bobby then explained that there are two kinds of Jews. “There are Jews and then there are Jews,” he said. Bobby’s wife was in a trailer fire. There are eleven kids in his family. I questioned his constant use of the word nigger, and afterward he and T.W. used it nonstop just to annoy

Where on earth does she get her information from?

Today T.W. and I worked alone, nailing siding onto the Pratts’ house. I made mistakes, and he was patient until I took a measurement and marked the tape instead of the board. He asked then if I thought I’d ever amount to anything. His tone suggested that if I did think I’d amount to anything, I was fooling myself. T.W. comments on every woman he sees, with no exceptions. We ate lunch together at the Golden Skillet. A waitress was bending over to clear a table, and he smacked his lips and commented loudly on what he’d rather be eating. Spook girls have good legs, he says. “There’s a pretty little spook girl works over to the nigger store. I’d like to take her home to my wife and say, ‘Here you go. Treat her like a sister.’ Get me some pigger nussy, some soul hole.” “Monkey and the baboon playing in the grass. Monkey sticks his fingers up the baboon’s ass.” “It was easier to get pussy back when girls didn’t have no cars and had to depend on men for rides.” “Slippery as a puppy’s peter.” “Get me a granny raisin cake. It’s got a pitcher of an old granny on the cover with her hair all up in a bun. If they don’t got none, buy me a male Hershey bar—you know, the kind with the nuts.” To a fifteen-year-old girl he called out, “C’mere so I can smell of it.” At the end of the day he decided that I’m too shy with women.