get a free bread machine!” he shouted.
I just don’t trust a man that high on juice. Even so, within twenty minutes, the Juice Man almost snagged me. He peered close to the camera and I felt the tug, the Visa whispering, “Come get me” from my purse. What juicing magnificence! What a pair of brows!
I could call and tell the ladies working the phones that I’d order one only if he’d throw in his eyebrows. I could use them to clean up under the toilet rims or the burners on the stove. They’d be perfect for digging down in the hollow valves of my son’s trumpet to get all the spit and crud out. I’d never have to buy another box of Brillo pads.
In the end I resisted, turned off the tube and decided to call it a day. First the gynecologist who said I looked just like my photo in the paper while his face was one inch from my cervix. Then the DMV lady who gave me a tag only after I signed over any and all body parts that wouldn’t kill me if excised.
Maybe I’ll go soak in the tub and eat a carton of Milk Duds. If the candy yanks out my teeth, I can always save the good molars for the DMV lady in order to be certain of getting a new tag next time it came due.
Hooking Up With David Sedaris
O ne day my fairy godmother arrived in the form of a publicist.
She waved her magic wand and set up a meeting with a famous writer I’ve long admired and loved and had naughty fantasies about. No matter that he’s gay.
I turned into Cinderella in a dress from the Goodwill on the day I met this literary genius the world knows as David Sedaris at a hotel, spending at least ninety minutes awed and enraptured. I couldn’t think a clear thought or form a complete sentence as I felt my dark hair turning platinum blonde and my IQ dropping from its normal 50-to-70 range to around 35 points.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I wanted to invite him to sit in my lap, the cute little thing that he was. Being a big girl, 5 feet, 8 inches on a flat-heeled day, he could have nestled against my motherly tummy and I could have petted his brilliant little head.
He looked at me expectantly. I knew what he was wanting. He was like most men and wanted to get in and get out, quickly. I wanted it to last. Foreplay, lots of foreplay, even if it was in the form of staring and saying nothing. So that’s what I did. It’s all I could do. Stare speechless for quite some time.
“Sooooo,” he said, and his famous and distinctive voice, one heard by millions on National Public Radio and his audio books, made my knees weak. It was that utterly unmatched blend of North Carolina, New York, European nasal delight. The man was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album. His voice was his meal ticket.
“Any questions?” he asked, probably wondering why I was sitting there in a trance.
Questions. Shit. I was supposed to think up some sharp and extraordinarily original questions. I’m a reporter, a columnist, a foolish woman who, upon seeing this man, went from my mid-40s to being 17 and acting as if I was staring at Peter Frampton.
I mumbled and felt my hands shaking as I took out a pen that turned out to be a tampon attached to a panty liner that had escaped its plastic shield. Shit. Shit. Shit. He raised his cute little eyebrows, lit a cigarette and allowed one of those completely charming half smiles as I switched for a better pen. This time, an eyebrow pencil.
Mercy, things were going poorly. I knew he must have thought, “Wow, they sent a real winner to my hotel this time.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Let’s see now…”
I was imagining we’d have intelligent conversation, exchange witticisms and then declare our soul mate status. Then reality hit. I’m married. He’s gay. This is not a match made in Heaven or a match by any means. This was simply a famous gay man I was in love with cerebrally. One who would NEVER love me back.
But in my wild fantasy he would tell me what I longed to hear beautiful or smart gay men say. “I will no longer ever want another man in my life. You have changed me forever. I’m as straight as plywood.”
Regardless, here he was, sitting directly across from me in a wrinkled shirt, shadowy stubble and that quirky face that reminds me of a gnome’s only cuter.
Now, getting this once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet him at a motel, which the high class call hotels, was the highlight of my year, considering I hadn’t given birth or done anything major in quite some time.
I wanted to enjoy cranial gymnastics with Sedaris, and then by the end of our interview, have him declare he was in love and that he’d have to drop poor Hugh, his boyfriend of one hundred years.
Of course at some point in a fantasy, one must face reality. Sedaris will never love me, and after our ninety minutes together I will probably never hear from him again unless I turn on my CD player and listen as his delightful voice chitters on about hitchhiking, youth in Asia or my favorite story about Santa and 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