David Sedaris and I practically know each other. We share the same hometown, Raleigh, NC, so the places he writes about are vivid memories for me. The Piccadilly Cafeteria in the mall, the neighborhood of The Christmas Whore and the mental hospital are vivid snapshots in my mind. He is one of those people of some fame that I imagine I will meet at a signing and out of a line of hundreds of people I’ll say something clever like “I lived in Raleigh, too! In college my best friend’s sister and her husband bought a house two blocks from where your parents used to live.” To which he would reply “Really? That’s remarkable! Hey, I have to do this thing but once I get rid of all these losers I’d love to take you out for a drink and talk about the ol’ hometown. You wouldn’t have ever considered being a writer, have you? I’ve been looking for someone to mentor!”
At the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center last night, David’s (yeah, I’m going to call him David) opening reading touched on the awkwardness of people in line at his book signings spouting lame statements like “Nice shoes!” “Do you like tacos,” or outlining some tenuous connection through their respective life paths, like, say, "My best friend's sister, etc….".
I decided not to stand in line for the book signing.
David’s strength is his writing, so the show mostly consists of him reading. The audience at TBPAC was his crowd and he kept us laughing at regular intervals. In fact, the laughs came in such a rhythm that I think you could have timed them. Kind of like contractions.
This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2009.