Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

by David Sedaris

Irene said no, the trouble is that her brother is taking all her and her mother’s clothes and that they haven’t got a single bra or pair of panties left.

There’s a big argument going on next door in Spanish. I can make out two words: whore and shoe. Two men are yelling at the woman. Someone has been slapped. On the ground in front of the building are a number of broken things that seem to have been thrown out the window. Clothes and hangers, a cabbage, mayonnaise.

Betty Carter is perfection. They just played her version of “What’s New”

on the radio. It’s on her latest record, and I think I’ll buy it for Dad. Female jazz vocalists are just about the only things we agree on. When good music would come on the radio at home, he used to call me into the living room and make me sit still until the song was over, saying as it played, “Are you listening to this? My God!”

There was a severely handicapped guy at the IHOP tonight. He was with two men and a woman, and I watched as one of the men spooned ice cream into his mouth. Everyone involved was black. The guy in the wheelchair could not talk; he could only moan. I couldn’t tell what it meant, though: Was he in pain? Was he unhappy? It sounded like he was being tortured—horrible to listen to. The woman kept scolding him and calling him a show-off. She said she would quit taking him to nightclubs if he kept on acting that way. Does he think the IHOP is a nightclub, I wondered, or is she referring to someplace else?

At night in warm weather, the courtyard of my building is crowded with children jumping rope and playing various games. They’d bashed in a piñata while I was at the IHOP, and I returned to find bits of it all over the ground, lying among candy wrappers. This afternoon I was working, and when someone knocked on the door, I answered wearing a hideous rubber mask I’d brought back from Raleigh. I’d assumed a kid had come around, but instead it was the man down the hall, who asked for a cigarette.

The woman next door came, asking for a cigarette. Four minutes later she sent her daughter to ask for another one. The next time I just won’t answer. All day long I fend off people who want my cigarettes. It’s not right that I should lose the battle in my very own home.

Edith Sitwell said that one of her favorite pastimes was to sharpen her claws on the wooden heads of her opponents.

I met with a guy named Harry, who’s started a refinishing business. I’d hoped I was done with chemical stripper, but he’s offering $5 an hour and we’ll be working in people’s houses rather than in a garage. The interview was held at Harry’s apartment, a big clean place, nicely decorated but with the TV on. His wife was at work, and after asking me a few questions, he offered me a beer. Then he rolled a joint, and I thought, Great, I’ve found a job.

Ken Shorr,

Tiffany was rushed to the hospital in New York the night before last. It turned out she was four months pregnant and the baby was growing in her fallopian tube rather than in her womb. It’s called an ectopic pregnancy, and she knew nothing about it until she started hemorrhaging. “Do you have any questions?” the doctor asked before he performed the operation to extract the fetus. And in a weak voice Tiffany said, “Yes. When can I have sex again?” You really have to hand it to her sometimes.

Tonight at the IHOP two men were hostile to Lisa the waitress. They had ordered hamburgers and kept pestering her as to their whereabouts. Were those them, under the heat lamp? They better not be! The men were gay, a couple. Both were in their fifties and one had a mustache. Lisa gave them some lip and they stormed out. I was at the register when one of them returned and told her she could take his hamburger and shove it up her ass. When saying this, he lowered his voice to a whisper and narrowed his eyes. The two men live near the bowling alley in a basement apartment. I often walk by and see them in there, sometimes lying around in colorful underpants watching TV. Their floor is carpeted and there’s a dumbbell in one corner.

I worry I’ll lose my private reading time at the IHOP.

The woman entered the apartment across the hall, and after she had closed the door behind her, Mr. Johnston told me he had her in the palm of his hand, that she was his for the taking. As he said this, I heard three clicks—one lock after another being secured. That’s how interested she was.

There’s a woman in my writing class named T. who was pregnant at the start of the quarter and had her baby a few weeks ago. Every so often over the past few months, she’d make a comment, but she’s never read any of her writing out loud. I can’t help but think she was drunk or stoned today. She said out of nowhere that she would like her story read and that Rose would be the one to do it. “I’m tired of hearing all this average stuff,” she told us. “It’s time for something good.” Rose started and was stopped by T. a few seconds into it. “You didn’t give people time to relax,” T. said, slurring her words a bit. The story, when Rose finally got to it, was about a young woman dressing for a lesbian party. She has recently decided she is attracted to women and wears jeans and cowboy boots. Once dressed, she leaves the house. The end. T. was angry that the story wasn’t longer. “It seemed longer when I wrote it,” she said. Then she blamed Rose for reading too quickly and making it sound less substantial. She told the class that she herself is a lesbian and that none of us could relate because we’re all afraid to confront our gayness. People in the class looked at one another, not knowing what to say. The women weren’t too keen to learn they were all insecure lesbians masquerading as heterosexuals. T. criticized people who think realism is using the word shit. She went on and on until someone told her to shut up. Then she put her head on her desk and fell asleep. She even snored.

One of the things we laughed about was an old episode of The Newlywed Game. The host asked the wives, “What’s the most exotic place you’ve ever made love?” He was likely expecting “The kitchen” or “On a tennis court at night,” but one woman didn’t quite understand the question and answered, “In the butt.”

Since I’ve been home for Christmas vacation, Paul has been leaving notes on the kitchen counter that say Please wake me up at 7:30. Signed, David. Last night Mom made lemon tarts for dessert. Paul took an empty shell and filled it with cold mashed potatoes. Then he topped it with whipped cream and fooled me with it. Mom is making him put down a $20 deposit every time he takes her car.

Amy and I went from her apartment to the A&P. It was late, and as we walked back through the parking lot to the car, an old woman approached and asked us for a ride home. Her name was Eunice, and she settled into the backseat, saying, “Don’t worry, baby. I ain’t gonna sit on your tapes.” On our way to her place she pointed out landmarks—the Johnsons’ house, for instance. She told us that for years she worked as their housekeeper but lost the job when she had to go to New York and check on some furniture. Eunice said we looked like nice people. That’s why she’d asked us for a ride. “You look nice too,” we said. And she promised us that she was. When we dropped her off, Eunice told us that we should come back in the summertime and visit her. She pointed to a space in her dark yard and told us that in warm weather that’s where we could find her, sitting under the yum-yum tree.

There is a blind black fellow who comes into the IHOP once a week and has a friend who is also blind. Neither of them wears dark glasses, and one of them speaks very formally. Tonight a Bill Withers song came over the sound system, and the one guy said to the other, “It may interest you to know that we can expect a new LP from this gentleman in the near future.” When his chicken arrived, the waitress, Barbara, cut it up for him.

There was a man at the IHOP tonight who had on two hats at the same time. The base was a stocking cap, and over it was a red floppy thing a woman might wear to a garden party. The waitress, Mary, ignored the guy at first. Then she took his order but made him pay in advance. He wanted coffee with his eggs, and when, after ten minutes or so, he still hadn’t gotten it and asked politely when it might arrive, Mary snapped at him and said that she was busy, OK? It made me uncomfortable to watch her be so rude. Had she had trouble with him in the past? Did it have anything to do with his two hats?

My favorite couple sat not far away. They’re old, and it took me months to figure out if they were a man and a woman or two women. Now I know that they’re brother and sister. The two are very kind and always ask after Barbara’s health. Tonight the brother ordered chocolate chip pancakes. Then he picked up the syrup and asked if you pour it over the top, as if he’d never seen a pancake before.

Tiffany has moved in with a piano player named Mike. They’re living in Queens and selling cocaine to make money. Before this she worked at Macy’s for a Belgian chocolate company. I think hers is what you call a checkered career.

I saw an interview with one of the few surviving passengers of the Delta Flight 191 crash—a woman. She had been visiting with a friend in the smoking section when they went down. Being in the back of the plane saved her life. On the news, she said, “I’m going to start smoking and stop flying.” She had a cigarette in her hand and was holding it awkwardly, like the beginner she is.

Tonight at the IHOP I overheard Mary talking to a policeman. She started by saying that she hates Africans. They’re demanding, she claimed, and they don’t know how to drive. She said that she stands behind South Africa and hopes they do not change their policies. She’s maybe thirty, Mary, short and pretty with an athletic walk.

Ted H. is my painting teacher. He says “Yeah” to mean “Isn’t that so?” and has gray curly hair.

On Thursday the Cherokee Nation elected their first woman leader. Her name is Wilma Mankiller.

1986

I am trying my best not to spend much money. With nothing coming in, I have to clamp down, so at Walgreens I bought a bar of Fiesta brand soap, which is horrible but costs only 20 cents. I used it last night and still smell like one of those deodorizing pucks they put in the urinals at gas stations.

Folding clothes at the Laundromat last night, I could feel someone at my back, close but not quite touching. It was a black woman eating an apple. She was maybe twenty-three years old, and as I continued with what I was doing, she talked to me. “What days do we eat meat?” she asked. I thought it was a riddle at first. I mean, who’s the “we” here? I told her we eat meat whenever we want to, or can afford to. “Can we eat meat three times a day?” she asked. “Sure,” I said. “If we feel up to it.” “Where is there a Catholic church?” she asked. I told her I didn’t know, and she said, “You a lie.” Then she went into the bathroom and stayed there until I left. This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers.

This afternoon I was hit over the head by a hammer. I was on my hands and knees, picking up bits of plaster, and shoved aside the ladder I’d left it resting on top of. When it fell, it felt just the way I always imagined it would. I was stunned. Now there’s a bleeding lump the size of a small egg on the top of my head. It’s what a cartoon character would have, only it’s me.

At the supermarket a man in his sixties was talking to the maintenance worker about the adult bookstore a few doors down. “So you’re in there, after paying three or four bucks for tokens and another fifty cents just for walking in the door. Your movie starts and then some guy sticks his dick through a hole in the wall. And what do I want with that, right? It’s disgusting, and the tokens are good for only three or four minutes before the screen turns black. Hell, for a few more bucks I could buy the whole stinking movie. Do you see what I’m talking about? I wouldn’t go into the place, but I got a lot of friends there.”

One of the people I voted for this morning was named Lee Botts. Her campaign slogan is HER BOTTOM LINE IS CLEAN WATER. Someone tampered with the sign she had in front of the school, and now it reads LEE BOTTS. HER BOTTOM IS CLEAN.

On the L I sat next to a black woman studying a textbook. “How’s your math?” she asked as I settled in. I thought she’d said mouth, so I said, “Excuse me?” She pointed to her book. “Algebra. I could use some help with these problems.” Math is my worst subject, so I apologized, then watched as she wrote and scribbled in her margins.

I left the airport cursing and muttering to myself, because I was angry and embarrassed to be twenty-nine and hinting around for money. I make myself sick.

Man on the bus with a gray beard and a cheap suit: “I’ll kick your fucking ass, bitch.” He said this to every woman who walked down the aisle. “I’ll kick your fucking ass!”

The woman was around my age, and while Rick reached for his wallet, she pulled what she said was a birth certificate from her pocket and flashed it for a second. “See, I got a baby. I’m not lying.” I wondered what she’d do if I offered to buy the birth certificate for $20. Not that I would have, it was just an idea, and such a cruel one it made me blush.

I went to breakfast on the corner of Leland and Broadway, and my waitress had her initials tattooed on her wrist. When my food came, a couple approached and stood on the other side of the window. The man pointed to himself. Then he pointed to the woman beside him and put his hands into a prayer position, begging for my toast and eggs.

Today I listened to Daddy-O. Sometimes he calls his show The Sunday Jazz Clambake, but today it was Daddy-O on the Patio. He has little nicknames he’s given the musicians: Sassy, of course, for Sarah Vaughan. Today after playing “A Cottage for Sale,” he said, “Mr. B. is doing fine. “Who? Why, Billy Eckstine!” Daddy-O calls the radio station “Dad’s pad.” I imagine it looks like a den and has in it many pictures of him shaking hands with famous jazz musicians. I’d love to have a den one day. That’s why I don’t want to live in a loft—it’s one big room. I suppose you could carve a “den space” out of it, but it’s not the same thing.

On my way home, riding my bike down Buena Vista, I saw two raccoons on the sidewalk. I’ve never in my life seen one. I stopped my bike to get a closer look and watched as they climbed up a tree. You could have knocked me over with a feather, seeing raccoons like that.

After class I came home and spent an hour and a half taking my typewriter apart. Something was jammed inside. There are countless tiny screws in there, and it’s amazing to me that I fixed it. I feel so proud of myself.

Later she went to the Laundromat, where she saw a man carefully folding his wet clothes and putting them in the dryer.

Dad called at six a.m. It was still dark outside, so I assumed someone had died. Why else would he call me? It seemed he was on his way from British Columbia to Raleigh and was at O’Hare, laid over between flights. In Canada he’d fished for steelhead trout. He caught five big ones in ten days, but his main haul was stones, which are his new thing. In his suitcase were two twenty-five-pounders, one that he says resembles a human head and another that looks like a fish. While there he saw an eagle swoop down and snatch a beaver off the banks of a pond. I loved the wonder in his voice when he related this story. My father has a terrific voice.

The woman received the news and remembered thinking, If anyone has to die, why not my mother? In those days, she said, dead bodies were put on ice and displayed in the family’s home. Her father’s casket had a leak. “I remember the ice melting and dripping and forming a puddle on the floor, and I will remember it until I die,” she said. “I’ll remember seeing it and thinking, Here is my father. He is on ice in the living room.”

I ate lunch at McDonald’s and saw a fat wallet fall out of a man’s jacket pocket and onto the floor. Broke as I am, I did not think of waiting until he walked away and then taking it. Instead I said, “Hey, you dropped your wallet.” He said, “Oh,” and looked at me as if I were the one who’d taken it from his pocket. Tonight at the coffee shop a telephone number fell out of my library book and a man pointed it out to me. It was not an important number, but still I pretended that this guy had saved my life. He did not seem to care.

A man approached me on the street, saying, “Sir?” I told him I’d already given away all my change, and he said, “No, I don’t want money. I want a job. I need one.” I told him there was a labor pickup on Broadway and Wilson and that he might try there early in the morning. The fellow was black and had nice clothes on. He was a few years older than me and said, “I have experience in accounting.” This last word was whispered, which was strange. I told him that I didn’t know anything about accounting. “Well, can you give me some money, then?” he asked. “I’m hungry. Can you buy me something to eat?” I said no, and he continued, “What if I come to your place and you fix me something?”

Don is interesting to me because he treats everyone like a child. He scolds and gives pats on the head. His poetry is about “sittin’” in a hotel room with “nothin’” but his memories and an “ol’ trombone.” His paintings are equally clichéd—night scenes, mainly. Norman Rockwell with a five o’clock shadow. Don is complex in an odd way. “I guess you could say that I’ve always been a loner,” he says, and, “Really, my concerns are very intellectual.” He spends a lot of time telling you how smart he is, which is odd because, if you’re truly all that bright, people can usually figure it out on their own.

At the Kentland Western Pancake House in Kentland, Indiana, we sat beside a table of high school athletes. They’d just come from a football game and were eating fries and talking about the coach. One thing about him, they all agreed, was that he wears loose shorts and always wants to sit on the desk. When the coach does that, his balls hang out. You don’t want to notice them, but you pretty much have to. They’re just this guy’s hairy balls, and you don’t look at them because you’re interested or anything, but how can you not notice them?

Never Too Young to Die.

Times have changed when a hermaphrodite wants to control the country and only two people stand in his way. If he were a black or Hispanic hermaphrodite, he’d probably have a harder time of it.

A woman at the IHOP tonight got up from her chair and crossed the room to eat french fries off the plate of a person who had just left. She was stylishly dressed and had a suitcase with her. Everything on the menu was too much, she moaned. It sounded like she was trying to watch her weight, though she was surely talking about the prices. Four chocolate chip pancakes were out of the question, she said, “so how about you sell me two?” The waitress said short stacks just come in buttermilk, so the woman ordered a plate of french fries, which she ate with ketchup. Then she took syrup and poured it onto her spoon, the way you might with cough medicine. She had multiple spoonfuls of all the various flavors, one right after the other. In my nine years of going nearly every night to the IHOP, both here and in Raleigh, I have never before seen anyone drink the syrup. She had to be crazy.