Happy-Go-Lucky

by David Sedaris

Hopefully Olivier was just stalled, lingering at the gate a moment before taking off. Still, I thought as I headed out the door to where I’d parked my bike, I’d wanted so much more for this boy: not just Paris, but the world.

At twenty-two, you are built for poverty and rejection. And you know why? Because you’re good-looking. You might not realize it this morning, but thirty years from now, you will pull out pictures of yourself taken on this day and think, Why did nobody tell me I was so fucking attractive? You maybe can’t see it now because you’re comparing yourself to the person next to you, or two rows up. But you are stunning.

And let me tell you something else: when you’re on your deathbed, or at least, say, sixty-one, the time you’ll look back on most fondly will not be the day you bought your first Picasso painting at Sotheby’s, the little still life done in 1921—oh, am I alone in this?—but the years after you graduated, when you were first living as an adult and everything seemed so possible. Maybe nothing worked out the way you planned, but you still thought it would, were convinced that it would. You were most likely broke and living in some crummy apartment. But it was your apartment, and you were good-looking. I guess I’m saying that these next few years could be the best of your lives. Just don’t blow it.

Choose one thing to be terribly, terribly offended by—this as opposed to the dozens or possibly hundreds that many of you are currently juggling.

Be yourself. Unless yourself is an asshole. How will I know if I’m an asshole? you’re probably wondering. Well, pay attention. Do people avoid you? Every time you park the car or do your laundry, do you wind up engaged in some sort of conflict?

They see me getting scolded from time to time, getting locked out of my own house, but where are they in the darkening rooms when a close friend dies or rebels storm the embassy? When the wind picks up and the floodwaters rise? When you realize you’d give anything to make that other person stop hurting, if only so he can tear your head off again? And you can forgive and forget again. On and on, hopefully. Then on and on and on.

There are few greater pleasures than feeling proud of someone, of worrying you might burst with it, especially if that someone is related to you and therefore part of your organization. I’ve always thought of my family that way, as a company. What’s good for one of us is good for all of us.

Seek approval from the one person you desperately want it from, and you’re guaranteed not to get it.

As for my dad, I couldn’t tell if he meant “You won” as in “You won the game of life,” or “You won over me, your father, who told you—assured you when you were small and then kept reassuring you—that you were worthless.” Whichever way he intended those two faint words, I will take them and, in doing so, throw down this lance I’ve been hoisting for the past sixty years. For I am old myself now, and it is so very, very heavy.

In America, the talk now is all about white privilege, but regardless of your race, there’s American privilege as well, or at least Western privilege. It means that when you’re in Dakar or Minsk your embassy is open and staffed, and you don’t need to hand out bribes in order to get what you need. That spark you feel when an idea comes to you—This could work. I can actually make this happen!—is Western privilege as well. It may not be certainty, but it’s hope, and if you think that’s worthless, try living in a place where nobody has it. Worse still, try getting a decent hotel room there.

My friend Mike likened this constant monitoring to having a second job. It was exhausting, and the moment that Biden was sworn in to office I let it all go. When the new president speaks, I feel the way I do on a plane when the pilot announces that after reaching our cruising altitude he will head due north, or take a left at Lake Erie. You don’t need to tell me about your job, I always think. Just, you know, do it.

I can’t remember my mother’s last words to me. They were delivered over the phone at the end of a casual conversation. “See you,” she might have said, or “I’ll call back in a few days.” And in the thoughtless way you respond when you think you have forever with the person on the other end of the line, I likely said, “OK.”

My father’s last words to me, spoken in the too-hot, too-bright dining room at his assisted living facility three days before his ninety-eighth birthday, are “Don’t go yet. Don’t leave.”

For our natures, I have just recently learned from my father, can change. Or maybe they’re simply revealed, and the dear, cheerful man I saw that afternoon at Springmoor was there all along, smothered in layers of rage and impatience that burned away as he blazed into the homestretch.

One always hears of families falling apart after the death of a parent. Lifelong checks are no longer in place and the balance is thrown off. Slights become insurmountable. There are squabbles over the estate, etc. It’s a pretty rough patch of road.

Saul Bellow wrote, “Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces.” I felt like I’d collected all the big, easy-to-reach, obvious ones. The splinters, though, will definitely take a while—the rest of my life, perhaps.

Was feeding your dog from a plate in the dining room better than wiping your ass on a face mask? Difficult to say, really. Both were pretty hard to take. That said, if you’re after a decent night’s sleep, your safest bet is the Ritz, where most of the guests have at least stayed in a hotel before and know better than to yell, “Bro, you are so fucking