Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

by David Sedaris

I received another ultimatum from the phone company. They demanded $60, so I went down this afternoon and gave them $30. While in line I saw Lloyd D. He was a tenant of Mom and Dad’s who moved out, owing them $600 in back rent. I ran into him twice after he got his eviction notice. On both occasions he said, “How can your daddy do this? Doesn’t he realize I’m his last white tenant?” Lloyd is an alcoholic. He was drunk at the phone company office and very difficult to understand. He took forever at the window, talking about the weather and so on, and after he walked away, the cashier rolled her eyes.

Mom told me this, and we laughed and laughed. Do the tenants know they’re our dinner conversation? In our minds we all but own them.

Q. What’s better than roses on a piano? A. Tulips (two lips) on an organ.

Bobby brought his three-year-old son to work with him. An unsupervised child on a construction site. I seized up whenever he approached a Skilsaw, but Bobby had a good attitude. “Cover your ears, Brian!” he’d yell. Brian was eating caramels. They got all over his hands and, subsequently, his ears.

Yesterday, while riding home, Joe and I saw a topless woman run down Edenton Street. She seemed to have come from the church and had her arms crossed over her breasts. I’d guess she was in her late twenties, plump, and wearing cutoff jeans. A man was leaning against the church, watching her and laughing.

One of the delinquents she’s assigned to kidnapped two children, drowned them, put their bodies in plastic bags, and left them on the curb for the garbagemen. That’s a bit more than delinquent, I think.

Then somehow we got onto the subject of shaving, which led to the shaving of legs. In Hardee’s at lunchtime, the place half full with black people, Misty looked around and observed that most nigger ladies have hair on their legs. Bobby said gorillas don’t shave neither. I flinched again and again, but they were oblivious and seemed almost innocent.

Joe and I were on the construction site when a man in a black car stopped to rage at us. “It ain’t fair for white men to come into this neighborhood and get jobs working on our people’s houses,” he said—a reasonable charge. He asked how much the homes we’d built were renting for, and when we told him they were for sale, not rent, he called Joe an ugly name. “What did you say?” Joe asked. “I ain’t afraid of you,” the man said. He drove away, and I thought of him all afternoon until a bee flew into my eye.

Tiffany called to say she’s coming home. She’s miserable at Élan. For the last three days her job has been to observe a girl in isolation who carves ugly words into her arms with splinters. “I didn’t come up here to be a prison matron,” she said. She thought of staying and finding work somewhere else but decided she can’t live in a state with only one zip code.

Tommy got into a fight at Shirley’s Lounge, a biker bar. The management threw him out, so he jumped into his car and ran over the management. He already had a DUI and wasn’t supposed to be driving but did anyway. An undercover cop followed him and shot out two of his car windows. When the officer got out of his Camaro, Tommy ran him over as well. Both victims are in the hospital, and he’s in jail instead of at work.

I’m going through my annual college-anxiety phase. It happens every year at graduation time. I used to think I could teach myself anything I needed to know, but I’m not sure I believe that anymore. I’d like to be educated and mature.

At the Capital Corral I met a college freshman named Brant, who had his high school graduation tassel hanging from his rearview mirror. He told me that Heart is his favorite band, and during sex he kept telling me that he loved me and wanted to get married, presumably in the next five weeks before he returns to Norfolk for the summer.

SECCA writes and invites me to have a solo show a year from now.

Since Dad’s arrival, all he’s done is yell at people. He’ll ask someone on the street for directions, then tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about. He speaks combat Greek, and the people he talks to speak it back.

Dad bought us deck-class tickets—the cheapest—and while he and Lisa and Paul slept on benches, I stayed up and drank retsina with a stout Dutch girl. Her hair was short, like a boy’s, and

she looked hard into my eyes when she spoke.

A Greek man lured her to his apartment recently and tried to make love at her. That was how she said it: “Make love at me.”

I met Wally, an opera student at Columbia. We talked throughout the four-hour trip, and when I later introduced him to Dad, Wally addressed him as “sir.” I wanted to sleep with him.

After our bus arrived in Patras, the driver made me help him pick up all the garbage people had left behind and throw it out the window. This town is the Greek Baltimore. I got a hotel room with four beds in it. That was fine until three other people showed up and claimed them. Roommates! And a shower is extra. Next door is a bumper-car pavilion. The thuds are fairly constant. I went out tonight after dinner and had a beer at a gas station with a table in front of it. The owner had a live duck in her hands. When I went to pay, I saw her in the back room, wringing its neck and singing along to the radio. This place makes me feel stoned.

I met Rosa Rubio from Madrid. She speaks only Spanish, and after talking for a few hours, I brought her to my hotel. The room has three beds in it, so I offered her one and she was beside herself—hadn’t seen a real mattress in weeks, she told me. I gave her my black-and-white-striped referee shirt because it never really looked good on me. I bought us dinner and drinks. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in four days, and she was very patient with my Spanish. I enjoyed her company, and it was nice to treat someone, to be in a position to.

Q. Do you know how to bake toilet paper? A. No, but I know how to brown it on one side.

I was riding my bike down Hillsborough Street when a carload of girls pulled up beside me. They yelled something I didn’t understand, and then one of them hit me over the head with a broom and they all shrieked—funniest thing ever. I was going full speed, and had I wrecked, they’d certainly have driven off. From now on I’m going to carry a rock in my bike basket. When something like this happens, I’m ruined for days.

I ran into Brant last night, the college student I met last spring who said he loved me three times and then gave me a fake phone number. Since I last saw him, he’s grown a sketchy mustache, which brings out his bad complexion and makes his chin look weak. “Remember me?” I asked. “Your name is Brant, your favorite band is Heart, you go to Louisburg College and have your graduation tassel hanging off your rearview mirror.” He looked at me for a second and said, “All I remember is that you’re a Jew.” I didn’t correct him because of the way he said it, the word Jew spat out as if it were leper. Both of us walked away then, though I swear I did it first.

Paul’s birthday was four days ago, but we celebrated it last night. I gave him $6.50, which is a lot for a fifteen-year-old. Sort of.

Afterward I went home and called R., another person who’s given me a wrong phone number. He said when we met that he’d like to have a wife and children—that he’s actually had sex with a woman. “Did you have to force yourself?” I asked. He said yes. I have much more respect for drag queens than I do for all these full-grown men lying about who they really are. Plus R. never makes his bed, so, really, who needs him?

Last night was Mom’s birthday. Sometimes

the group

doesn’t work, and people wander off after eating, but last night it was good, and everyone remained seated for hours afterward. At one point, out of nowhere, Mom told Lisa that she wasn’t the first person on earth to do it in the...

All day I worked for Dean and didn’t notice until I got to the IHOP that my hands and forearms were smeared with walnut stain. It looked awful, like I’d been fisting someone.

Last night on my way to the IHOP I was pulled over by a Pontiac with three high black guys in it. They said they were selling pot and asked if I was a cop. “I sure am,” I said, at which point three of the four car doors opened. Were they going to run or beat me up? I wondered. I said I was only kidding—“Do I look like a cop to you?”—and the guy in the front passenger seat held up a small bag of pot he wanted $15 for. Something felt wrong, so I said no. It’s probably not a good idea to buy drugs in the middle of the street. If they’d taken my money and driven off, I really couldn’t have complained to anyone.

I spent last night with Ferris, a UNC student who once shot and killed someone who was breaking into his house. He was fifteen at the time and said that the rifle blew a hole right through the burglar’s chest. I don’t know if he was telling the truth, but either way it was strange. Ferris was chunky, with a handsome face. This morning he called his mother—collect. She has two houses and is buying him a condominium in Chapel Hill. We had sex five times, and he stayed for coffee.

I went to the Winn-Dixie and was heading across the parking lot in the direction of home when four black people in a car beckoned me over. They were two young couples, one up front and the other in the back. “Hey,” the girl in the front said, “you look like Al Pacino.”

This is Friday. I worked hard all week and have paid my rent and bills. There is $60 left over, so I can’t complain. After coming home, I listened to the radio and cleaned up a little. A woman on All Things Considered wrote a book of advice called If You Want to Write and mentioned the importance of keeping a diary. It was valuable, she said, because after a while you’d stop being forced and pretentious and become honest and unafraid of your thoughts. All week Dean and I have been talking about school—a graduate program for him and undergrad for me. I wrote to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and asked for a catalog. It’s a small step, but at least it’s something. I’ve only been to Chicago once. It was in 1978. I was taking a bus to Oregon and had just enough time during our stopover to run to the museum and buy postcards.

They’re really not free to live where they want in this town.

Paul and I went out swimming yesterday. The current was strong, and I realized after a few minutes that I could no longer touch the bottom. He was farther out than I was, and the harder we swam toward the shore, the farther away we seemed to get. “Try harder!” I yelled. “Fuck you!” Paul yelled back. Both of us started to panic after that. I thought of him drowning and of how much trouble I’d be in. I could almost picture it, heaped on top of the grief I’d be feeling. I grabbed him then, and we both gave it all we had and were eventually washed ashore. It was terrifying.

They haven’t made love in three days. She won’t let him because all he wants is to get his rocks off. “You want to climb on and climb off, but I’m a lovin’ kind of woman.”

against the wall I had my glass against.

Bessie told me this goes on all the time. They fight and then the police are called. A few weeks ago he was led away in handcuffs, but the next day he was back. I guess it’s just their way.

At the mailbox this afternoon I met Faye, the heavy woman next door with the red hair. She asked if I had change for a quarter, and while I went through my pockets she asked if I knew anyone who had a phone. She said she needed to call her daddy, so I let her in. When Faye got no answer, she asked if she could try again later. Then she said that if I needed any furniture, just holler because she and her boyfriend, Vic, have a whole lot. A few minutes later she returned with a woman who’s even bigger than she is. The friend had knocked on my door yesterday and asked if Johnny was here. “I’m afraid I don’t know any Johnny,” I told her. It turns out Faye has a cat as well, a Siamese named Tiki. She saw Neil when she was using the phone and asked if I’d be interested in having the two of them mate. On her way out, she told me that she has two beautiful daughters that Social Services has taken. She hasn’t seen them since December 24, but if she and Vic are good, she can maybe get them back. “The woman in one oh three is a hussy,” Faye said. “She’s forty-one, but I’m just twenty-nine and had never been in jail in my life until last year.” She asked if I’d make some puppets for her beautiful daughters and told me that while she was out the other day, Vic had the hussy right there in their bed. To get him back she also made love with someone in the exact same spot. Last Friday she cut Vic, and the police arrived while she still had the knife in her hand.

Then she said that she was robbed last week. It seemed she’d forgotten to lock the door, and when she turned around a man put his hands around her neck and demanded all her money. She said she couldn’t believe this was happening to her and that she called him “sir.” “I told him he was welcome to all the money and that I hoped he spent it wisely.” After she emptied the cash drawer, he asked for a cord or something he could use to tie her up with. “I promised him that if he let me be, I wouldn’t call the police,” she said. “So he didn’t tie me up and I didn’t call them.” “But why?” I asked. “Because I promised.” “Can’t there be an exception?” I asked. “I mean, do you really have to keep every single promise you make?” She said no but that he could have returned or sent one of his friends to rough her up. “I considered calling a private company and having them dust my neck for fingerprints, but I looked in the Yellow Pages and didn’t find any such business,” she said.

Aside from working for Tracy, Julia and I have WPTF radio in common. We both listen to Open Line and agreed that Barbara needs to start putting some of her callers in their place.

On Thursday I was accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and on Friday I received insurance and housing information. I’ll leave Raleigh on January 2. It hasn’t really hit me yet, all the work I have to do before I go. Leaving. I am leaving. “What’s David up to?” “Didn’t you hear? He left and moved to Chicago!”

This was my last night at the IHOP. I’ve been going steadily since 1979, just drinking coffee and reading. On my way out tonight I said good-bye to my waitress and left a $2 tip. I didn’t cry, though I worried I might.

Also today I got a real winter coat, boots, socks, and gloves. The coat is down and super-ugly. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d wear a down coat. Gretchen came with me. Then I went and paid $183 for my train ticket. I liked the woman at the station and felt bad for hating her so hard the other day when she wasn’t answering the phone.

Last night, after finishing the cabinets, I went to the little market around the corner for beer and found $45 on the floor in front of the checkout counter. I thought I’d dropped it, and by the time I discovered it wasn’t mine, I was back home. First thing today I went out and blew it. I bought: 1. two pounds of goat meat 2. more beer 3. Fires by Raymond Carver 4. the New York Review of Books 5. hardware 6. groceries 7. a magazine called Straight to Hell in which gay men recount true sexual experiences, many of them outdoors and in cars or under bridges

Phyllis Levy.

People phone in and discuss their sexual experiences—

She was clearly disturbed and suggested that Sue might want to date men who were not related to her.

Phyllis was happy for her and spoke briefly about the element of surprise.

He said that small insects were thriving in his girlfriend’s pubic forest—that’s how he described it. He was worried that she’d been unfaithful and that these creatures were a sign of that.