Naked

by David Sedaris

The building sat in a treeless, balding yard, its white columns promising a majesty the interior failed to deliver.

“College is the best thing that can ever happen to you,” my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking. I’m unsure of the scientific aspects, but for some reason, my nervous habits faded about the same time I took up with cigarettes. Maybe it was coincidental or perhaps the tics retreated in the face of an adversary that, despite its health risks, is much more socially acceptable than crying out in tiny voices. Were I not smoking, I’d probably be on some sort of medication that would cost the same amount of money but deny me the accoutrements: the lighters I can thoughtlessly open and close, the ashtrays that provide me with a legitimate reason to leave my chair, and the cigarettes that calm me down while giving me something to do with my hands and mouth. It’s as if I had been born to smoke, and until I realized it, my limbs were left to search for some alternative. Everything’s fine as long as I know there’s a cigarette in my immediate future. The people who ask me not to smoke in their cars have no idea what they’re in for.

I was in my second year of college when I received the news that Ya Ya had died. My mother called to tell me. I cradled the phone beneath my chin, a joint in one hand and a beer in the other, and noticed the time, 11:22 A.M. My roommate was listening in, and because I wanted to impress him as a sensitive and complex individual, I threw myself onto the bed and made the most of my grief. “It can’t be true,” I cried. “It can’t be true-hu-hu-hu-hu.” My sobs sounded as if I were reading them off a page. “A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. A-hu-hu-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw.” I had just finished reading Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and tried to pass it off as my own. “I feel like a piece of my soul has been ripped away and now I’m just a kite,” I said rubbing my eyes in an effort to provoke tears. “I’ll walk across the campus later this afternoon and search the sky, expecting to find two clouds shaped like hearts.” “I’ve got just the thing for you, bud,” my roommate said. “Just the thing for you and me both because, I don’t know if I told you this, my own grandmother died just a few months ago. My brother dropped by to do his laundry and there she was, stretched out dead in front of her trophy case. That shit is harsh, my friend. You and me have got some grieving to do, and I’ve got just the thing to set free the spirit.” His remedy involved two hits of acid, a bag of ice cubes, and a needle. We split a pair of gold posts and sat hallucinating in the dormitory kitchen as a criminal-justice major ...

After a while we began to wonder if my father had any friends who could still tie their own shoes or breathe without the aid of a respirator. With the exception of the shoe salesman, we’d never seen any of these people, only heard about them whenever one of us attempted to deep-fry chicken or operate the garbage disposal. “I’ve got a friend who buys a set of gloves and throws one of them away. He lost his right hand doing the exact same thing you’re doing. He had his arm down the drain when the cat rubbed against the switch to the garbage disposal. Now he’s wearing clip-on ties and having the restaurant waiters cut up his steak. Is that the kind of life you want for yourself?” He allowed me to mow the lawn only because he was too cheap to pay a landscaper and didn’t want to do it himself. “What happened,” he said, “is that the guy slipped, probably on a pile of crap, and his leg got caught up in the blade. He found his foot, carried it to the hospital, but it was too late to sew it back on. Can you imagine that? The guy drove fifteen, twenty miles with his foot in his lap.”

Mine was the only clean room in the entire house. This was my shrine, my temple, and I watched in horror as my drawers were emptied and my closets brutally divorced of order. While searching my desk, my father came across a gold-plated mechanical pencil he recognized as his own. It had once occupied the same drawer as his coins, and I admitted that, yes, I had “taken” the pencil but I hadn’t really “stolen” it. There was a big difference between the two. You steal the things that you covet while you take the things the original owner is incapable of appreciating. The pencil had spoken to me of its neglect, and I had offered to put it to good use. Taking is just borrowing without the formality. I’d planned on returning it once it ran out of lead —what was the big deal?

My mother was sixteen years old when she stood on her front porch and watched as men in actual white coats carried her father kicking and screaming to their local psychiatric hospital, where he received a total of thirty-seven electro-shock treatments. He had been suffering from the D.T.’s, a painful hallucinatory state marking an advanced stage of alcoholism. My mother visited him every day, and often he had no idea who she was. Once, thinking she was a nurse, he attempted to slip his hand beneath her skirt. The experience left her with a certain haunted quality I very much admired. She’d looked into the face of something horrible, and I wanted to know what that felt like.

He had an open, childlike face, the features set into a continuous expression of wonder. It was as if he’d spent the last ten years in a coma and woken up to find everything new and sensational. I told him I was a medical student completing my residency, just a few more months and I’d be graduating at the top of my class. “Really? Be a doctor and operate? On people? You must be some kind of smart to be a doctor. Operate on brains, you say?” I’d said I’d been doing it for years and that it wasn’t nearly as hard as it looked. It might seem odd for a twenty-year-old brain surgeon to be begging rides from strangers, so I told him I was hitchhiking to satisfy a bet I’d made with one of my classmates. “Fifty dollars says I can make it from Duke University to Kent State in time for tomorrow’s frontal-lobe conference,” I said. “It’s not that I need the money or anything, this is just something we doctors do to blow off steam.” “Well, I’ll see to it that you win that bet,” T. W. said.

I spent my high-school years staring at the pine trees outside my classroom window and picturing myself on the campus of an Ivy League university, where my wealthy roommate Colgate would leave me notes reading, “Meet me on the quad at five.” I wasn’t sure what a quad was, but I knew that I wanted one desperately. My college friends would own horses and monogrammed shoehorns. I’d spend weekends at my roommate’s estate, where his mother would say things like “I’ve instructed Helvetica to prepare those little pan-cakes you’re so fond of, but she’s had a devil of a time locating fresh cape gooseberries.” This woman would have really big teeth that she’d reveal every time she threw back her head to laugh at one of my many witticisms. “You’re an absolute caution,” she’d bray. “Tell me you’ll at least consider joining us this Christmas at Bridle Haven; it just wouldn’t be the same without you.”

The first quarter I roomed with a fellow named Todd, an amiable Dayton native whose only handicap was having red hair. The quadriplegics had the best drug connections, so we often found ourselves hanging out in their rooms. “The hookah’s over on the shelf,” they’d say. “Right next to the rectal suppositories.” Over time I grew accustomed to the sight of a friend’s colostomy bag and came to think of Kent State as something of an I.V. League university. The state would pay your board if you roomed with a handicapped student, so second quarter I moved in with Dale, a seventy-five-pound sophomore with muscular dystrophy. I learned to bathe Dale and set him on the toilet. I turned the pages of his books, dialed the telephone, and held the receiver against his mouth as he spoke. I dressed him and combed his hair, fed him and clipped his toenails, but I can’t say that we were ever close.

Peg’s voice was slurred to the point that information operators and pizza-delivery services, thinking she was drunk, would hang up on her. Unnerved by the sight of her, Peg’s professors automatically agreed with everything she had to say. “Good question!” they’d shout. “That’s very perceptive of you. Does anyone else have any thoughts on what she just said?” She might ask to use the bathroom, but because no one could understand her, it was always the same answer. “Good point, isn’t it class!” In the cafeteria she was met with frantic congeniality. Rather than embarrass themselves trying to figure out her choice of an entrée, they just went ahead and piled everything on her plate. A person in a wheelchair often feels invisible. Push a wheelchair and you’re invisible as well. Outside of the dorm, the only people to address us would speak as if we were deaf, kneeling beside the chair to shout, “FATHER TONY IS HAVING A GUITAR MASS THIS SUNDAY. WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN US?” Peg would beckon the speaker close and whisper, “I collect the teeth from live kittens and use them to make necklaces for Satan.” “WELL SURE YOU DO,” they’d say. “THAT’S WHAT OUR FELLOWSHIP IS ALL ABOUT.” For Peg, being invisible was an old and tiresome story. To me, it definitely had some hidden potential. So began our life of crime. We started off in grocery stores. Peg had a sack on the back of her wheelchair, which I would fill with thick steaks and frozen lobster tails. There was no need to slink behind p...

For spring break we decided to visit my family in Raleigh. Being invisible has its merits when you’re shoplifting but tends to hold a person back while hitchhiking. We parked ourselves beside the interstate, Peg’s thumb twitching at odd intervals. The five-hundred-mile trip took us close to three days. It was our story that we were a young married couple heading south to start a new life for ourselves. Churchy couples would pull over, apologizing that their car was too small to accommodate a wheelchair. They couldn’t give us a ride, but would we accept twenty dollars and a bucket of fried chicken? You bet we would. “There’s a hospital in Durham we’re hoping might do some good,” I’d say, patting Peg on the shoulder. “Here we are, a couple of newlyweds, and then this had to happen.” CB radios were activated and station wagons appeared. Waitresses in roadside restaurants would approach our table whispering, “YOUR BILL HAS BEEN TAKEN CARE OF,” and pointing to some teary-eyed couple standing beside the cash register. We found it amusing and pictured these Samaritans notifying their pastor to boast, “We saw this crippled girl and her husband and, well, we didn’t have much but we did what we could.” Someone would check us into a motel and give us cash for bus fare, making us promise to never hitchhike again. I’d take Peg out of her chair, lay her on the bed, and sprinkle the money down upon her. It was a pale imitation of a movie scene in which crafty con artists shower themselve...

There would be no picnics taken in haystacks. No gingham, or fiddle playing. Hidden behind a thick layer of permanent storm clouds, the sun dappled nothing. Contrary to what we’d assumed, apples were not picked off the ground but from the limbs of hard-to-reach trees protected by a punishing bark that tended to retain a great deal of water following a good twelve-hour rain. This was a seven-day workweek, sunup to sundown, gentle rain or driving rain. If people like us made the world go round, it was a highly guarded secret. As pickers, we were provided with one of the half dozen cabins that formed a row alongside the gravel driveway. There was no electricity, and outside of the shower located in the barn, our only source of water was one frigid, rust-caked tap. The cooking was done on a wood stove, and we slept on mattresses stuffed with what I could only begin to identify as high-heeled shoes. These hardships were played to our favor. We took to wearing overalls, admiring our somber reflections in the candlelit windows as we huddled over steaming bowls of porridge. This would do. We were pioneers. People like us had no need for pillows or towel racks. We wore our bruises like a badge, and every chest cold was a testament to our fortitude. I was on the verge of buying myself a coonskin cap when the season ended and we traveled back home to North Carolina, where I quickly re-adjusted to a life of hot water and electricity. We’d made plans to pick again the following year, b...

“These are different times we’re living in, a whole new set of rules. The kids around here, they think they’re too good to work. Only choice left is either trash or Mexicans, and I’ll take the stupid Mexicans any day.” He prodded me in the ribs, “Watch this. ‘Bueños Dios, Miguel.’” A small, dark-eyed man looked up from his wood splitting, alarmed. “They spook easy,” Hobbs said. Yes, well, people tend to do that when you come up behind them shouting, “Good God.” It’s just a habit, I guess.

It occurred to me that everything we buy has been poked or packaged by some unfortunate nitwit with a hairnet and a wad of cotton stuffed into his ears. Every ear of corn, every chocolate-coated raisin or shoelace. Every barbeque tong, paper hat, and store-bought mitten arrives with a history of abject misery. Vegetarians look at a pork roast thinking about the animal. I’d now look at them wondering whose job it was to package the shallow Styrofoam trays. That’s where the real tragedy lies. Cigarettes, crackers, gum: everything I saw would now be tainted by the reminder of my job. “Brothers and sisters, RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”

It was difficult to sleep, in part because I was so anxious to tell him my news. I was a Christian now, a Christian. Hopefully I could skip the phase of wearing large crosses and handing out pamphlets titled The Devil in Mr. Jones or Satan’s Slaughterhouse. Bypassing the hopelessly corny sing-alongs and church-basement potluck suppers, I intended to move straight into a position of judgment. People would pay me to tell them what they were doing wrong, and in criticizing their every move, I would aid all mankind. With any luck I could do this without having to read the Bible or eat anything containing marsh-mallows. I was imagining my audience with the Pope when I finally fell asleep to the sound of awakening birds.

“The guy was a homo, right?” Jon curled his lips in disgust. “That happened to me once back in the army. There’s a lot of sick people in this world. The guy asked if he could hold me, that’s what he said. ‘Can I hold you?’ I still had legs then and I used them to kick his ass. But you’re that way, too, aren’t you?” I nodded my head. “I knew it the first time I saw you operate a sander. I said, ‘That guy is sick.’ And you are, aren’t you? You’re sick.” He said it with concern, the way you might address a friend with tubes running from his nose. “You’re sick.” I attempted to re-create my crying jag, but it sounded false. “Boo-hoo-hoo. Aww-ha-ha-hu-hu-hu-hu.” There was no mucus, and I had to provoke my eyes with my fingers to produce tears. “A-he-he-hu-hu-hu.” “Don’t cry to me. Tell it to Jesus,” Jon said. “Reach out to him. Tell him you’re sorry. Crouch down there on the floor and pray, for God’s sake.” “Oh, God, hu-hu-hu, I’m so sorry I met that guy. He was so stupid.” “And tell Him you’re never going to do it again,” Jon shouted. “And I’ll never do it again,” I said. “No Curly, never again.” “With any man. Tell Him you’re never going to lay down with any other man. Tell Him you want to get married.” “Oh, please,” I said. “Please let me get married.” “To a woman,” Jon said. “Married to a woman.” “Toman,” I said, hoping that if the transcript were ever brought to heaven’s court, I could not be accused of making promises I didn’t keep. “Toman.” Somewhere along the line, I had...

The day after graduating from college, I found fifty dollars in the foyer of my Chicago apartment building. The single bill had been folded into eighths and was packed with cocaine. It occurred to me then that if I played my cards right, I might never have to find a job. People lost things all the time. They left class rings on the sinks of public bathrooms and dropped gem-studded earrings at the doors of the opera house. My job was to keep my eyes open and find these things. I didn’t want to become one of those coots who combed the beaches of Lake Michigan with a metal detector, but if I paid attention and used my head, I might never have to work again. The following afternoon, hung over from cocaine, I found twelve cents and an unopened tin of breath mints. Figuring in my previous fifty dollars, that amounted to an average of twenty-five dollars and six cents per day, which was still a decent wage. The next morning I discovered two pennies and a comb matted with short curly hairs. The day after that I found a peanut. It was then that I started to worry.

I have known people who can quit one job and find another in less time than it takes to quarter a fryer. Regardless of their experience, these people exude charm and confidence. The charm is something they were either born with or had beaten into them at an early age, but what gives them their confidence is the knowledge that someone like me has also filed an application.

My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions who hate you for what you are and you’re likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

Speaking to our mother, we realized that any conversation might be our last, and because of that, we wanted to say something important. What could one say that hadn’t already been printed on millions of greeting cards and helium balloons? “I love you,” I said at the end of one of our late-night phone calls. “I am going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” she said. I heard a match strike in the background, the tinkling of ice cubes in a raised glass. And then she hung up. I had never said such a thing to my mother, and if I had it to do over again, I would probably take it back. Nobody ever spoke that way except Lisa. It was queer to say such a thing to someone unless you were trying to talk them out of money or into bed, our mother had taught that when we were no taller than pony kegs. I had known people who said such things to their parents, “I love you,” but it always translated to mean “I’d love to get off the phone with you.”

With the exception of Lisa, we were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort, it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well-made cocktail.

Anything we forecasted was puny compared to the future that awaited us. You can’t brace yourself for famine if you’ve never known hunger; it is foolish even to try. The most you can do is eat up while you still can, stuffing yourself, shoveling it in with both hands and licking clean the plates, recalling every course in vivid detail. Our mother was back in her room and very much alive, probably watching a detective program on television. Maybe that was her light in the window, her figure stepping out onto the patio to light a cigarette. We told ourselves she probably wanted to be left alone, that’s how stoned we were. We’d think of this later, each in our own separate way. I myself tend to dwell on the stupidity of pacing a cemetery while she sat, frightened and alone, staring at the tip of her cigarette and envisioning her self, clearly now, in ashes.

It is disconcerting to talk to someone on the phone and know that he is naked. Every now and then I might call a friend who says, “You caught me on my way to the shower,” but that’s different. The man at the nudist colony sounded as though he had been naked for years. Even his voice was tanned.

I’d planned to take a cab to the bus station but was offered a ride by Jacki and Millie. This was the first time in a week that I had to get dressed. Clothing was no longer optional. Now it was mandatory, and I found myself resenting it. Turn your back on a pair of pants and things can get nasty. We rode into town, each of us tugging at our clothing. Jacki had a bumper sticker on her car that read, “Nudist on board!” and I noticed other motorists follow closely before pulling up beside us, their faces registering profound disappointment. Had we been naked, they probably would have vomited blood. It is ironic that nudists are just about the last people you’d ever want to see naked.

The women dropped me off at the bus station with twenty minutes to spare, and I raced up and down the street, passing college students in baggy, knee-length shorts and bank tellers wearing navy blue suits. For the first time in what felt like years, I saw stockings and handbags. Bodies, fat and thin, were packed into slacks and pleated skirts. Every outfit resembled a costume designed to reveal the aspirations of the wearer. The young man on the curb would like to make the first Olympic skateboarding team. The girl in the plastic skirt longs to live in a larger town. I found myself looking at these people and thinking, I know what you look like naked. I can tell by your ankles and the tightness of your belt. The flush of your face, the hair sprouting from your collar, the way your shirts hang off those bony hips: you can’t hide it from me. It was as though I’d received the true version of the X-ray specs I’d ordered as a child. The glasses were advertised in the back pages of comic books and promised the ability to see through clothing. I’d counted the days until they arrived and was clinically disappointed to discover that I’d been cheated. These were black plastic frames supporting cardboard lenses. The eyeballs were rendered to appear bloodshot, and the pupils were tiny peepholes backed by plain red acetate. The glasses, when worn, gave me the look of someone both enthused and exhausted by what he saw. They suggested the manic weariness inherent in their promise, captur...