When You Are Engulfed in Flames

by David Sedaris

He has the most extraordinary sense of direction I’ve ever seen in a mammal. Even in Venice, where the streets were seemingly designed by ants, he left the train station, looked once at a map, and led us straight to our hotel. An hour after checking in he was giving directions to strangers, and by the time we left he was suggesting shortcuts to gondoliers.

“Old people, college students, even the colored men at the gas station—the soul brothers, or whatever we’re supposed to call them now.” It was such an outmoded term, I just had to use it myself. “How did the soul brothers know your father?”

It was only at Halloween that we were allowed to choose our own outfits. One year I went as a pirate, but from then on I was always a hobo. It’s a word you don’t often hear anymore. Along with “tramp,” it’s been replaced by “homeless person,” which isn’t the same thing. Unlike someone who was evicted or lost his house in a fire, the hobo roughed it by choice. Being at liberty, unencumbered by bills and mortgages, better suited his drinking schedule, and so he found shelter wherever he could, never a bum, but something much less threatening, a figure of merriment, almost.

I went as a hobo because it was easy: a charcoal beard smudged on the cheeks, pants with holes in them, a hat, an oversized shirt, and a sport coat stained with food and cigarette ash. Take away the hat, and it’s exactly how I’ve dressed since 1978.

High school taught me a valuable lesson about glasses: don’t wear them. Contacts have always seemed like too much work, so instead I just squint, figuring that if something is more than six feet away I’ll just deal with it when I get there.

Time is cruel to everything but seems to have singled out eyeglasses for special punishment. What looks good now is guaranteed to embarrass you twenty years down the line,

I tried my best not to sound too hopeful. “Is someone sending you to prison?”

“We couldn’t possibly get rid of him.” In America this translates to “Make me an offer,” but in France they really mean it.

I always like to offer a few alternatives, though in this case they were completely unnecessary. Hugh was beside himself, couldn’t have been happier. I assumed he’d be using the skeleton as a model and was a little put off when, instead of taking it to his studio, he carried it into the bedroom and hung it from the ceiling.

What they do at 6:00 a.m. is anyone’s guess. I only know that they’re incredibly self-righteous about it and talk about the dawn as if it’s a personal reward, bestowed on account of their great virtue.

“Number one reason not to blow a horse in your bedroom,” I told her, though it was actually much further down on the list. Number four maybe, the top slots being reserved for the loss of dignity, the invitation to disease, and the off chance that your parents might drop by.

I’m pretty good when it comes to retaining nouns and adjectives, but the bit about applying the glaze to the shapely jug—that’s where I tend to stumble. In English, it’s easy enough—“I put this on that”—but in French, such things have a way of biting you in the ass. I might have to say, “Do you like the glaze the shapely jug accepted from me?” or “Do you like the shapely jug in the glaze of which I earlier applied?”

As it is, whenever someone asks how long I’ve been in France I wonder if it’s possible to literally die of shame. “I’m away a lot,” I always say. “Two and a half months a year in America, and at least two in England, sometimes more.” “Yes, but how long ago did you come to France?” “What?” “I asked, ‘How. Long. Have. You. Been. In. France?’” Then I might say, “I love chicken,” or “Big bees can be dangerous,” anything to change the subject.

As I later said to Hugh, “Do you tell a person, ‘No. I don’t want to see pictures of your insides’? Of course not. How can you?”

When handed a photograph of someone’s wife or children, I know how to form the appropriate compliment. “How pretty!” I can say. Or “How like you.” “What nice eyes.” “What a pleasant smile.” Hip replacement presented more of a challenge, and I alternated between “I like the pin” and, simply, “Ouch.”

It was a twenty-four-hour bug, the kind that completely empties you out and takes away your will to live. You’d get yourself a glass of water, but that would involve standing, and so instead you just sort of stare toward the kitchen, hoping that

maybe one of the pipes will burst and the water will come to you.

You meet someone and fall in love; then umpteen years later you’re lying on the floor in a foreign country, promising, hoping, as a matter of principle, that you’ll be dead by sunrise.

Most of the gay couples I knew at that time had some sort of an arrangement. Boyfriend A could sleep with someone else as long as he didn’t bring him home—or as long as he did bring him home. And Boyfriend B was free to do the same. It was a good setup for those who enjoyed variety and the thrill of the hunt, but to me it was just scary, and way too much work—like having one job while applying for another.

More often than not, we’d just breathe into our separate receivers. “Are you still there?” “I’m here.” “Good. Don’t hang up.” “I won’t.”

In one of these tanks, I sat beside a woman whose two-year-old son was confined to a wheelchair. This drew the sort of crowd that normally waves torches, and I admired the way the mother ignored it.

If it’s rare to find a really good photograph of bacon, it’s rarer still to find one on your bedside table. The same is true of nachos. They’re just not photogenic.

“You just need to cut back a little,” he told me. Not being a smoker himself, he didn’t understand how agonizing that would be. It had been the same with alcohol; easier to stop altogether than to test myself every day. As far as getting wasted was concerned, I was definitely minor league. All I know is that I drank to get drunk, and I succeeded every night for over twenty years.

A Japanese woman we’d met in Paris came to the apartment yesterday and spent several hours explaining our appliances. The microwave, the water kettle, the electric bathtub: everything blinks and bleeps and calls out in the middle of the night. I’d wondered what the rice maker was carrying on about, and Reiko told us that it was on a timer and simply wanted us to know that it was present and ready for duty. That was the kettle’s story as well, while the tub was just being an asshole and waking us up for no reason.

Eventually, he said, “Oh, OK,” the way I do when moving on seems more important than understanding. Then we all went back to class.

How different life looks when people behave themselves—the windows not barred, the walls not covered with graffiti-repellent paint. And those vending machines, right out in the open, lined up on the sidewalk like people waiting for a bus.

“Maybe. But in Japan, not a good idea.” After school I went to the Cozy Corner with Akira, who spent many years in California and now works as a book translator. We both ordered shotokeki, and as we ate he observed that, as opposed to English, Japanese is a listener’s language. “What’s not being mentioned is usually more important than what is.”

The way I see it, I came here to quit smoking. That’s my first priority, and, as long as I don’t start again, I can consider myself, if not a success, then at least not a complete failure.

the way he nodded and moved into the next lane suggested that I had overstepped some fundamental boundary. It’s the same in the locker room, apparently. Someone can have a leech stuck to his ass, but unless it’s a talking one, and unless it personally asks you a question, you should say nothing.

I was in El Paso one afternoon, changing out of my swimsuit, and a young man said, “Excuse me, but aren’t you…” When I say I was changing out of my swimsuit, I mean that I had nothing on. No socks, no T-shirt. My underpants were in my hand.

I wish I could do my penitence with grace, but I doubt that will happen any time soon.