Themes and Variations

by David Sedaris

you think I’m putting my bra back on for this bullshit, you are so sorely mistaken.

What’s the worst thing you can hear while you’re blowing Willie Nelson? “I’m not really Willie Nelson.” And: It’s late at night, and a man is getting ready to go to bed, when he hears a knock on his door. He opens it and looks down to see a snail. “Yes,” it says, “I’d like to talk to you about buying some magazine subscriptions.” Beside himself with rage, the man rears back, kicks the snail as hard as he can, and storms off to bed.

Two years later, there comes another knock. The man answers, and again he finds the snail, who looks up at him and says, “What the fuck was that all about?”

“So, God tells Adam, ‘I’m going to make you a wife, a helpmate, the most beautiful woman who ever lived. She’ll be fantastic in bed, uncomplaining, and ready to carry out your every desire. The thing is, it’ll cost you.’ “‘How much?’ Adam asks. “‘An eye, an elbow, a collarbone, and your left ball.’ “Adam thinks for a minute, then asks, ‘What can I get for a rib?’”

The third man marries an American girl. He orders her to keep the house clean, the dishes washed, and the lawn mowed, and to put hot meals on the table every evening. The first day, he doesn’t see anything. The second day, he doesn’t see anything either. But by the third day, some of the swelling has gone down. He can make out basic shapes with his left eye, and his arm has healed well enough that he can throw together a sandwich and load the dishwasher. He still has some difficulty when he urinates.

I’m pretty sure I could tumble down all the stairs in the Empire State Building, naked, with a greased-up pepper grinder in each hand, and a box of candles around my neck, and still end up in the lobby with an empty rectum.

I came across a Subway, but I can’t bear the smell of those places. “It’s like a loaf of bread farted,” Jon Stewart once observed.

Give away fifty dollars of your own money, and the moment you tell someone about it, you’re an asshole. I mean, the one thing you’re really not allowed to bring up in this world is your generosity. Because the moment you do, it’s not generosity anymore—by bringing it to light, you’ve killed it. Plus it makes the people you tell feel ungenerous. And they wind up hating you.”

“And there’s no point in me doing anything if I can’t write about it,” I continued. “It would be like . . . walking ten miles without my Fitbit on—a complete waste. I mean, I do do things I don’t write about: I use the bathroom, I have sex, but I try to be quick about it.”

Something in the early summer of 2019 had us all thinking about enormous gaping assholes.