Calypso

by David Sedaris

I began pacing the airport rather than doing what I normally do, which is sit in the waiting area, wondering which of the many people around me will die first, and of what.

Anyone could tell that we were related, even someone from another planet who believed that humans were as indistinguishable from one another as acorns. At this particular moment of our lives, no one belonged together more than us.

Back in Raleigh, he has two or three TVs going at the same time, all tuned to the same conservative cable station, filling his falling-down house with outrage.

Increasingly at Southern airports, instead of a “good-bye” or “thank-you,” cashiers are apt to say, “Have a blessed day.” This can make you feel like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne. “Get it off me!” I always want to scream. “Quick, before I start wearing ties with short-sleeved shirts!”

I like having a place that theoretically belongs to everyone but technically belongs to me. It’s neutral ground but not quite, meaning that if someone hangs a picture I don’t care for, I get to take it down, saying, “Let’s rethink this.” I, on the other hand, can hang whatever I like. “Why would anyone frame a piece of plywood?” my father asked the night before Thanksgiving.

London is five hours ahead of Washington, DC, except when it comes to gay marriage. In that case, it’s two years and five hours ahead, which was news to me. “Really?” I said, on meeting two lesbian wives from Wolverhampton. “You can do that here?”

Half of it is luck, and the rest is ruthlessness. You have to be cold, so my niece, Madelyn, who is twelve and has a heart made of frozen concrete, usually wins.

The people two doors down who’d been playing country music since we arrived had left, finally. Just as I was appreciating how quiet it was, a rescue helicopter appeared from the sound side of the island and soared off over the water, perhaps looking for a drowning victim or some poor swimmer who’d been mauled by a shark. It’s beautiful, the Atlantic, but at the same time so insistent, always advancing, always taking what it wants.

If there are no ghosts in your home or office, if your parking deck and toolshed are spirit-free, you don’t have to feel left out. There are any number of places that advertise themselves as haunted—inns and such.

The guy in the T-shirt that pictures a semiautomatic rifle above the message COME AND TAKE IT, the one in fatigues buying two twelve-packs of beer and a tub of rice pudding, didn’t necessarily vote Republican. He could have just stayed home on Election Day and force-fed the women he holds captive in the crawl space beneath his living room.