June 4, 2017
Cambridge, Massachusetts
I was 23 years old
David Sedaris’s new book is out. Theft By Finding. A collection of his diaries from 1977 (when he was 21) to 2002. Couldn’t imagine a more timely release of a Sedaris book, personally. As I quickly learned, the literal diary format of the book does not make for the usual kind of reading experience. It’s a night stand book. I’ve been reading a few entries at a time once I’m tucked into bed for the night. I’m only a couple “years” into his life and I’ve cried more times than I could count. He’s poor, he’s lost, he’s hungover, he adores his mother. Again: timely. And obviously, it gives me hope. And context. And a reminder that my struggling has JUST begun. (And also that I should try being a little more interesting.)
It came out last Friday. I promptly Instagrammed a photo of myself doing everything short of making out with its cover. And Christine Russo—an Emmanuel girl who I never really got to know in school but who I’ve recently run into at the MFA and then again along The Charles, where she said she didn’t want to interrupt me cause I looked “deep in thought”—she commented, asking if I was going to his “book thing” tomorrow in Cambridge. He had a reading and a signing at Harvard Book Store. Alas, the reading was already sold out but—hidden in the depths of the FAQ—was a confirmation that the signing was open to the public.
For the first 45 minutes (of the two hours and 45 minutes I waited), I was the very last person on line. I was eventually joined by a half-dozen stragglers. Alas. I liked the idea of being David’s very last of the night. I was right behind a boy who I thought was cute and, per his body language (which is just to say: low power poses), I figured he was gay. I was right.
“Who’s Aaron?” David asked, when this guy came forward with his book in hand.
“A guy...who I used to see,” says Low Power Gay. “We broke up. He lives in Dallas now.”
And just like that, I was up.
“Yoohoo,” I said to David.
He immediately started laughing at my ‘Brian’ nameplate, asking where I got such a thing. I told him that I can’t shower with it on. From there, he asked what I did and—knee jerk reaction, considering I triumphantly worked my last shift three weeks ago now—I said the hotel which prompted him to say how much he hates when front desk workers ask how his flight was.
“Here, this is what I do when I get asked that question,” he said. “Ask me how my flight was.”
“David, how was your—?”
“—is that Madonna on your shirt?” he interrupted.
Madonna was on my shirt. I was wearing that t-shirt I printed of an old Blitz magazine cover. “Was this the woman of the eighties?” reads the headline with a face that’s half-Madonna and half-Margaret Thatcher. I told him how, if I lived in England, I feel like all I’d want to talk about is Margaret Thatcher in the same way that, if I lived in Argentina, all I’d want to talk about is Eva Peron. I brought up Terry Gross (he was on Fresh Air last month, an interview that—shocker—brought me to tears) and he said how much he loved her recent interview with Gabourey Sidibe. David was shocked to hear I don’t watch Empire. But then he asked if I watched Feud. I just about creamed.
Not only was I actively obsessed with Feud: Bette and Joan but, while I was waiting online, I heard him talking about TV with someone and I made a mental note to bring up Feud. And lo! He talked about how much he loves Jackie Hoffmann, that she used to be in all the plays he and Amy put on. He told me about this amazing old clip of Joan Crawford reading some book. He loved Jessica Lange’s performance but I said I preferred Susan’s. He said he can’t forgive her for her politics. I disagreed. But I met him halfway and said she could have cooled it with her Bette Davisian consonants.
“Beau-TEE-ful,” I imitated.
He got such a kick out of that. Laughed, laughed, laughed. Now mind you, with my vantage point at the end of tonight’s line, I was privy to very nearly every interaction he had. How brief he sometimes was, how distracted he could occasionally get. Maybe he just didn’t have the burden of keeping people waiting, what with there hardly being anyone left behind me. Regardless—he talked to me for every bit of five minutes. And then, when he slid my signed book back toward me, he extended his hand. A handshake! From David Sedaris! And as I floated away, I heard him repeat to himself, “Beau-tee-ful.”
Got a slice of free pizza and an application to work at the bookstore on my way out. Was slightly drizzling at that point but I was too jazzed to take the bus home. I decided to walk. I was riding so high on our interaction that I almost forgot to read his inscription. On the otherwise empty streets, I opened up the book:
“To Brian,
You know who you are.
David Sedaris”
June 14, 2018
Chicago, Illinois
I was 24 years old
The Book Cellar organized the people on line for signings by this letter system. Took every bit of an hour just to get through “D.” And I was “M.” But a lot of people gave up (lame!) so once, like, “H” rolled around, it coasted. A girl about 15 people ahead of me brought along this whole big stack of books to get signed for her friend, Gideon.
“You can write something sassy in them,” says the friend.
“Ffffaaaaagggg,” says David, inscribing Gideon’s book.
The girl directly ahead of me was a recent Yale graduate. They talked about Hillary’s commencement address. She was sent on her way and I sidled up, saying, “Hi, David” in perhaps a too-familiar tone. I feel like he cringed a little. Immediately, he turns to the woman sitting beside him and asks where she went to school. Montclair State. A Jersey girl. David turned back to me and asked where I went to school. I said Emmanuel and naturally: crickets. I told him how the first time I ever heard of the school was from my high school English teacher and how I thought she was calling it “a manual college.” That got a laugh. And my inscription:
“To Brian,
Graduate of a manual college.
David Sedaris”
He asked me what I did for work and I said dog walker to which he responded, “I can’t think of a worse job.” And the thing is: I don’t disagree with him! I might not call it the worst but still. I was nervous and our rapport just wasn’t landing and I tried to get across all the reasons why I do like it: paid to exercise, paid to get tan, good hours, walking outside.
“You’re not selling me here,” said David.
He then asked me, when I open my own dog walking company one day, what I’ll call it. Neither of us could come up with anything. And all the while, I’m confronted with the reality of David Sedaris—and for that matter: the universe at large—thinking that all I want to be is a dog walker.
“I really feel sorry for you. What is it you want to do?” David asked.
Crushing. Whatever I managed to mumble, David said in response—and kindly—that I was still young. I said goodbye, walking away disappointed but not devastated. I knew there’d be no replicating the interaction we had last summer. And I can admit that I needed that interaction more then than I do now. Life was a lot more listless last summer. That said, he is something of my hero and his remarks—as playful and even concerned as they might have been—were a little upsetting to hear. Mostly because I agree with them. And especially since I had to go and walk dogs the very next day. And the day after that. And the Monday after that. Oh well. I’ve heard amazing things about this new collection and I’m still very excited to read it.
November 10, 2021
Brooklyn, New York
I am 27 years old
At 16 years old, with no way of knowing I’d spend vast stretches of the next ten years walking dogs, I opted for “Francis” as my confirmation name. The patron saint of animals. God barks. But had I read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim before I was officially conferred with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I could very well have ended up Brian Thomas David Burns. Because with an immediate and sacred kind of mightiness, from the very moment I first read him, I fell in love with David Sedaris. At some point in my sophomore year of high school, so: mere months after getting confirmed as a Catholic, I had an English teacher ask if I’d ever read anything by him. I hadn’t. What I had read—and unabashedly adored—was Chelsea Handler’s books, inspiring me to incorporate my own voice and, dare I say, humor into essays on Macbeth and A Separate Peace and, less successfully, I’m sure, Things Fall Apart. Generous enough to suggest I showed some Sedarisian wit in these papers, my teacher insisted I read his books. My life—and I say this without the slimmest exaggeration—changed forever.
At first, it was just his writing that had me so enamoured, his words alone making me into such an ardent disciple. The stories in his collections accomplished exactly what I wanted to achieve in those high school essays and then, eventually, my column in my college’s newspaper. “Over the Rainbow with Brian Burns.” A series that was, I suppose, technically assigned to me by an editor but, really, and by sheer force of will, given to me by me. I wanted to make something funny and poignant and true out of my life and I wanted an audience for that and here was the opportunity. It was a dream. It is the dream. Because try as I might, all these years later, what am I doing if not writing and re-writing those same thousand-word columns all about Brian Burns? For that, I’ve got David Sedaris to thank. And to blame.
How conscious this was, I can’t be sure but, at some point, this all got to be about something bigger than just David’s writing. To be honest, I’m hesitant to admit just how much of my adult life has been shaped by him, almost embarrassed to think about my too-real desire to go about my 20s in a fashion strikingly similar to the way David went about his own. The opportunities I turned down, the jobs I held onto, the tiny bedrooms I lived in—all of it so directly inspired by David’s leanest years of stripping floors and cleaning apartments and spending so much time alone in the company of his subjects. And then Theft By Finding came out, his diary collection that felt, to me, like a road map. Those couple entries I’d read each night by the soft glow of my essential oil diffuser, I felt like a student of the Talmud—the unyielding travails of my little life in my little shtetl falling away as I communed by candlelight with the word of God. It all seemed so easy. That if I just remained simple in means, noble in profession, and grand in objective, the meek will indeed inherit the Little, Brown and Company book deal.
If the common refrain is that the only person you ever truly lie to is yourself, that’s doubly true for anyone who keeps a diary. The idea that I walked away from our less-than-stellar interaction in that Chicago bookstore “disappointed but not devastated” is laughable, not to mention my summer spent living for free on the back porch of a friend’s grandmother’s apartment proving any “less listless” than the one that came before it. I was desperate for another interaction where we’d spar over some detail of a show we both loved, an exchange where David wouldn’t once feel compelled to glance at however many people were still waiting. Remaining so hopeful that with some sparkling turn of phrase, I’d shine brightly enough for him to set down his pen and shake my hand. That if David felt sorry for anyone, it’d be someone else down the line, the next constant stranger to hold out his book, eager for a dedication, saying hello to a man they’ll never really know.