LARGETONY Blog

I’ve been meaning to jot down a few lines about going to see David Sedaris read the another night, but I just haven’t had time. I was afraid that after a couple of days of waiting I might not be as charged about the whole event. Not true. I’m still grinning like crazy.

After having dinner at a restaurant down the street, we walked two blocks to the theater about 20 minutes before the show. There were a lot of people there. I was a little surprised at how many. But I guess becuase there are so few people in my little subset of the world who know who David Sedaris is, let alone read something other than a magazine (and usually one with the word “jugs” in the title…and I’m not talking about a pottery magazine), I guess I shouldn’t assume that there are not TONS of people who know who he is. If I had been in some big northern city, I probably would not have thought much about it. (Probably because I would be more concerned about how out of place I looked.)

I really didn’t want to look out of place at the reading, so I tried to dress like a casual smart person, rather than a goofy redneck house-painter. I wore a striped button down shirt that the stalker girl from work had given me for Christmas. I had never worn it and had never planned too because she freaked me out by giving it to me. But I just didn’t have anything I ever bought on my own that seemed right. So I bit the bullet, popped off the tags, and hit it with the iron. It fit a little too well. By that I mean that it fit me well. She had never asked me my sizes, but yet she nailed it perfectly. Even the sleeves. I have arms like monkey and usually sleeves are too short. Anyway, I wore the new shirt with a sportcoat and jeans. RJ said I looked a little like an assistant professor of philosophy. Not really sure what he meant, but I felt good about how I looked.

The lobby of this theater is really looooooong. The building takes up a city block, and the lobby takes up half of it. There were two huge lines running the length of the lobby on each side. One was people purchasing Sedaris books. The other was people getting their purchased books signed. I was a little bummed. I wish that I had known he was going to sign books before the show. I would have brought my copy of “Me Talk Pretty One Day” to have him sign…and I would have gotten there earlier. The line was enourmous and it was already about 15 minutes before showtime. We passed the signing table on the way to our seats and caught a glimpse through the crowd of a man sitting there scribbling. “That’s not him,” I thought. “I wonder who it is” But it turned out when he came on stage later, it was David Sedaris at the table. I’d seen him on TV before and remembered him as being odd-looking and small. But he looked pretty normal and every day in a nice shirt and tie. He was still small, but not very odd, really. But then, sometimes I forget I am far above average height, and therefore much of the world is small next to me. I wonder what a freak I would look like in some place like Japan. Would they see me as one of those giant transformer robots they have in their animated programs?

Actually I was afraid I was going to have to be a transformer and collapse my limbs into my seat. RJ said the seats were in the middle of the third row. But the gods smiled down on me and even though the seats were in the center of the theatre, they were on the aisle. I had room to stretch my legs. Yay! A minor thing, yes. But these small victories can really juice a long-legged person. As it turned out the leg room between the rows was not so bad either. And the seat were really roomy. I mentioned in a previous entry that the theater recently went through a 22 million dollar restoration. It was pretty freakin’ gorgeous. The lobby was pretty impressive, but inside the theater itself, it was like another world. Big domed ceiling. Velvet and gilded trim everywhere you turned. Carpet as thick as a mattress. Amazing stuff.

As soon as the lights went down, I started the grin that I still hold on my face. And for the next hour and half I grinned and laughed my ass off. I have never seen or heard a person so funny in real life. I knew he was funny, but I expected someone sort of twisted. But he was so normal. Funny as hell, and probably a bit twisted to write the brilliant things he does, but by all appearances normal. That’s probably part of what makes him so cool. This guy who seems to be like you and me, but has these brilliant observations. And he was charming. He held the audience in the palm of his hand. And I was right there with them.

The amazing thing was that in hearing him read, I realized he writes incredibly well. I mean, I knew he was a good write already, but I had a revelation as to how really, really good he is. Not just the topics, structure, metaphors, jokes…all the mechanical stuff. But he writes so well that you completely get his inflections and rhythm of his own speech just from reading. The pieces that he read that I was familiar with sounded in his voice just like they always sounded in my head. That’s an author really having a voice. He read stuff from his books (including my personal favorite “Jesus Shaves” which I referred to in “Is It Easter Yet); some stuff that he is currently working on, and a piece just published in The NewYorker this week. Among the “in the works” pieces was a story called “Town and Country.” Part of the story deals with how perceptions of people are often based on how they are dressed. And how, in reality, those percetions turn out to be wrong. It made me think of my own situation, where I wanted to look like I was smart (educated) enough to be at a David Sedaris reading.

This piece was was also one that temporarily jolted me out of my euphoria about the evening and reminded me, embarressingly, that I live in a red state. “Town and Country” had some salty language and sexual references and… well, several people in the audience of 1200 just couldn’t handle it and got up and walked out. My first thought was, “Why were you people even here? Have you read any of his books? Sure he appears on Public Radio, but he’s not folksy eyebrow breeder Garrsion Kielor (sp?).” My next thought was how embarressed I was to be an East Tennessean at that moment. I wanted to make eye contact with David from my third row seat and mouth to him, “We’re not all like that.” I didn’t want him to leave on a plane out of Knoxville believing that Tennessee is filled with uptight idiots (even though he would be correct).

The remaining smart people (and those of us dressed as smart people) though, would spend the next hour and a half being delivered an series of stories and personal diary entries built on observations with which we could all identify, yet could never express so cleverly. By the time it was over, my grins and laughter were making my cheeks sore.

He signed more books after the show, and I really wanted to buy one and have it signed. Sitting in the front of the theater, we were among the last people to get back out in the lobby and the among the last to get in line. The book buying line moved fairly quick. But the signing line, well…let’s just say that we got in line about 9:50 and I got my book signed around midnight. But it was worth standing on my feet for 2 hours straight, and not getting home until almost 2am., just to have met David Sedaris and to shake his hand. What really struck me was how he took time to actually talk to each person, even at the late hour. He wasn’t just punching people through the line. He actually talked and listened. Because he took something you said to him and used it to create a personal message in the book.

I drove back to the mountains in the light rain with my newly signed book next to me on the seat of my truck. I replayed the whole evening in my head in hopes that I will be able to tuck it back in my brain so that it will forever be in my memory banks. As time goes by, I may not remember all the details, but I won’t soon forget the night I met David Sedaris and passed as one of the smart people.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2005 at 11:49 pm and is filed under being tony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.