the six to eight black men.
While this first interview may well be our last, I must still consider myself blessed as both a journalist and a woman. Not a lot of gay-loving heteros get to meet David Sedaris in a hotel—especially one as opulently masculine and volcanically inspired as the Grove Park Inn, located in Asheville, North Carolina.
Here’s how it all went down.
Thunder cracked and the sky emptied as I pulled into the swanky hotel parking lot with my notepad, nerves and audio recording device. I adjusted my bosoms, two unless I lie down (as you may recall), which are now approaching their third birthday and beginning a frightful descent that might require action should they not quit falling and multiplying.
I approached the concierge’s desk. “I’m here to see Mr. David Sedaris,” I said with great jubilance and measured control. The gracious and dignified hotel employee raised one brow, as if I was a loony fan trying to pull a stalking. Perhaps that much was true, but I didn’t want to let on. Plus, I had Little, Brown’s permission to meet the huge star of radio and stage, a major player on the New York Times Best-sellers List, the man who single-handedly turned a job as a Macy’s elf into one of the funniest stories ever written.
My heart tripped as if I was 17 and meeting Frampton, which I never got to do because as I raced the stage during one of his concerts, the security guards grabbed me and put me in the “jail” at the Omni in Atlanta until the concert was over.
The concierge rang David’s room.
“Yes, Mr. Sedaris. There is a reporter here who SAYS she has an appointment with you, but I wasn’t sure this could possibly be the case…Yes…so you say. Well, then.” The suspicious concierge, surprise on his face, grimaced and cleared his throat. “Mr. Sedaris will meet you here at my station momentarily.” I gulped the humid air and listened as the rain pounded the hotel’s tiled roof, rolling off in sheets as guests enjoyed the storm while sitting snug in giant rocking chairs under the covered porches.
I thought I would pass out and felt the palpitations coming on. Not now, I told my heart. I can’t go to the ER now. I coughed and beat on my chest like a mad gorilla to get my heart back into proper rhythm.
Things kept dropping from my clumsy grip. First the notebook. Then the recording device. His people had said no camera, so I obeyed, thinking, “He’s as a bad as a woman. Still, I love him so!”
I inhaled some yoga breaths and exhaled mightily, blowing the leaves off a small plant. I did some more breathing and chest beating and was gathering a bit of a crowd.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the concierge asked.
“No. Do you have some defibrillator paddles like those they have on airplanes to keep people from dying of heart attacks and various and sundry arrhythmias?”
Just when I thought the room was going black and the heart attack had arrived, there he was. Precious David. Walking toward me in a wrinkled, striped yellow shirt and beautiful beard stubble. Was he smiling? Could he possible be smiling at ME????
I dropped my purse and blushed. “Sorry. I’m Susan…uh…Hi. Umm…I be with the…What I meant to say is, I’m with the paper. Not I be with the paper…Anyway…Oh, never mind.” I couldn’t remember the name of the paper or my last name. “I’m just here, well, to talk to you about stuff.”
Stuff. Who says “stuff” to David Sedaris? He is accustomed to scholars analyzing and interviewing him, not country bumpkins who can’t even remember their names and occupations.
We shook hands, though mine was already shaking on its own. We were about the same height. Should I hug him? Should I ask if he’d like a piggyback ride around the hotel just for fun? He couldn’t weigh that much—maybe 110, 120. We could go up and down the great hallways giddy-upping and just forget the whole interview thing since I had no idea what in the world I was going to talk to him about.
“Hello,” he said in an almost childlike voice and I moved forward to hug him, but it’s a good thing I didn’t, and you’ll hear more about that later.
He didn’t introduce himself. I figured it was because he is shy, and saying, “Hi, I’m David Sedaris” would be like a big movie star playing demure and saying, “Hello, I’m George Clooney.” No need for introductions on his part. We decided to go someplace where he could smoke his Kool cigarette. I’d never known a white man to smoke Kools. Seemed like Kools were the top cig choice for hip African Americans and Marlboro Lights were for white folks.
We chose a small table in the main room where the fireplaces are big enough to engulf most of my living room. Dulcimers dueled, and I could barely hear the soft-spoken writer. I kept imagining him leaning over and saying, “Forget this. I think I love you. Isn’t that what life is made of? Though it worries me to say that I’ve never felt this way.”
He had probably watched The Partridge Family . I’ll bet he liked David Cassidy, too. And Bobby Sherman and Peter Frampton.
He lit his cigarette, and I just sat there drinking in the smell as if it was aromatherapy and not carcinogenic. I panted and palpitated and wondered if maybe he would get upset if I did the gorilla defibrillator thing on my chest since I was again beginning to black out from nervousness. I had read in one of his books where he used to lick things like doorknobs and lightbulbs and that he suffered from an assortment of obsessive-compulsive behaviors and neuroses. Surely he would understand a girl trying to beat her heart back into a steady pump-pumping.
I was still wet with rain, rustling my papers and parcels like a dog trying to get comfortable. He smoked and stared and didn’t seem to mind he was there for an interview and I was doing nothing but daydreaming and thinking of love songs.
I’d better ask something…anything. “Have you been here before, to Asheville?” My voice came out squeaky, twangy and very Loretta Lynnish.
He smiled and relaxed with his legs crossed and his arms loose. “About four or five times. Lisa’s here with me,” he said.
Oh, I guess he meant to throw that in so I’d know his “bodyguard” sister was on call in case I had any ideas of sinking my heterosexual fangs into his sweet gay neck meat.
This would be Lisa, his older sister, and one of his personal assistants of sorts. Other siblings also play starring roles in his books, which include Barrel Fever , Holidays on Ice , Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day , the latter two becoming immediate best sellers. His latest that I owned, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim , is also a best seller and I’ve read them all at least twice.
What could I ask next? Hmm. I just sat with the cat holding my tongue hostage and a recording device by my side. He stared at it several times. “It’s not a camera,” I said, laughing nervously. “I was thinking maybe later, we could have you do a little reading, a minireading into this microphone.”
At this point he could have laughed hysterically at the preposterousness of my plan. Here was a man with a golden voice and here was a hicky, though I prefer drawling, Southern Belle with a cerebral crush on a very gay man trying to coax that voice onto her recording device.
His face registered utter kindness. Or maybe I was misreading things. Perhaps he was humming a Frampton tune. Maybe he was thinking how refreshingly small my pores were. I’ll admit my skin was looking rather good since I burned it off with some acid ordered from eBay.
OK…What to ask? Other reviewers and interviewers
