THE man with the dyed black hair pulled a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket, and as he unfolded them I recalled a summer evening in my parents’ back yard. This was thirty-five years ago, a dinner for my sister Gretchen’s tenth birthday. My father grilled steaks. My mother set the picnic table with insect-repelling candles, and just as we started to eat she caught me chewing a hunk of beef the size of a coin purse. Gorging always set her off, but on this occasion it bothered her more than usual.
“I hope you choke to death,” she said.
I was twelve years old, and paused, thinking, Did I hear her correctly?
“That’s right, piggy, suffocate.”
In that moment, I hoped that I would choke to death. The knot of beef would lodge itself in my throat, and for the rest of her life my mother would feel haunted and responsible. Every time she passed a steak house, or browsed the meat counter of a grocery store, she would think of me and reflect upon what she had said—the words “hope” and “death” in the same sentence. But, of course, I hadn’t choked. Instead, I had lived and grown to adulthood, so that I could sit in this waiting room dressed in nothing but my underpants. La la la.
It was around this time that two more people entered. The woman looked to be in her mid-fifties, and accompanied an elderly man who was, if anything, overdressed: a suit, a sweater, a scarf, and an overcoat, which he removed with great difficulty, every button a challenge. Give it to me, I thought. Over here. But he was deaf to my telepathy, and handed his coat to the woman, who folded it over the back of her chair. Our eyes met for a moment—hers widening as they moved from my face to my chest—and then she picked a magazine off the table and handed it to the elderly man, who I now took to be her father. She then selected a magazine of her own, and as she turned the pages I allowed myself to relax a little. She was just a woman reading a copy of Paris Match, and I was just the person sitting across from her. True, I had no clothes on, but maybe she wouldn’t dwell on that, maybe none of these people would. The old man, the couple with their matching hair: “How was the hospital?” their friends might ask, and they’d answer, “Fine,” or “Oh, you know, the same.”
“Did you see anything fucked up?”
“No, not that I can think of.”
It sometimes helps to remind myself that not everyone is like me. Not everyone writes things down in a notebook, and then transcribes them into a diary. Fewer still will take that diary, clean it up a bit, and read it in front of an audience: “March 14th. Paris. Went with Dad to the hospital, where we sat across from a man in his underpants. They were briefs, not boxers, a little on the gray side, the elastic slack from too many washings. I later said to Father, ‘Other people have to use those chairs, too, you know,’ and he agreed that it was unsanitary.
“Odd little guy, creepy. Hair on his shoulders. Big idiot smile plastered on his face, just sitting there, mumbling to himself.”
How conceited I am to think I might be remembered, especially in a busy hospital where human misery is a matter of course. If any of these people did keep a diary, their day’s entry would likely have to do with a diagnosis, some piece of news either inconvenient or life-altering: the liver’s not a match, the cancer has spread to the spinal column. Compared with that, a man in his underpants is no more remarkable than a dust-covered plant, or the magazine-subscription card lying on the floor beside the table. Then, too, good news or bad, these people would eventually leave the hospital and return to the streets, where any number of things might wipe me from their memory.
PERHAPS on their way home they’ll see a dog with a wooden leg, which I saw myself one afternoon. It was a German shepherd, and his prosthesis looked as though it had been made from a billy club. The network of straps holding the leg in place was a real eyeopener, but stranger still was the noise it made against the floor of the subway car, a dull thud that managed to sound both plaintive and forceful at the same time. Then there was the dog’s owner, who looked at his pet and then at me, with an expression reading, “That’s okay. I took care of it.”
Or maybe they’ll run into something comparatively small yet no less astonishing. I was walking to the bus stop one morning and came upon a well-dressed woman lying on the sidewalk in front of an office supply store. A small crowd had formed, and just as I joined it a fire truck pulled up. In America, if someone dropped to the ground, you’d call an ambulance, but in France it’s the firemen who do most of the rescuing. There were four of them, and, after checking to see that the woman was okay, one of them returned to the truck and opened the door. I thought he was looking for an aluminum blanket, the type they use for people in shock, but instead he pulled out a goblet. Anywhere else it would have been a cup, made of paper or plastic, but this was glass, and had a stem. I guess they carry it around in the front seat, next to the axes or whatever.
The fireman filled the goblet with bottled water, and then he handed it to the woman, who was sitting up now and running her hand over her hair, the way one might when waking from a nap. It was the lead story in my diary that night, but, no matter how hard I fiddled with it, I felt something was missing. Had I mentioned that it was autumn? Did the leaves on the sidewalk contribute to my sense of utter delight, or was it just the goblet, and the dignity it bespoke: “Yes, you may be on the ground; yes, this drink may be your last—but let’s do it right, shall we?”
Everyone has his own standards, but, in my opinion, a sight like that is at least fifty times better than what I was providing. A goblet will keep you going for years, while a man in his underpants is good for maybe two days, a week at the most. Unless, of course, you are the man in his underpants, in which case it will probably stay with you for the rest of your life—not on the tip of your mind, not handy like a phone number, but still within easy reach, like a mouthful of steak, or a dog with a wooden leg. How often you’ll think of the cold plastic chair, and of the nurse’s face as she passes the room and discovers you with your hands between your knees. Such surprise, such amusement as she proposes some new adventure, then stands there, waiting for your d’accord.
2006
DAVID SEDARIS
TASTELESS
ONE of the things they promise when you quit smoking is that food will regain its flavor. Taste buds paved beneath decades of tar will spring back to life, and an entire sense will be restored. I thought it would be like putting on a pair of glasses—something dramatic that makes you say “Whoa!”—but it’s been six months now, and I have yet to notice any significant change.
Part of the problem might be me. I’ve always been in touch with my stomach, but my mouth and I don’t really speak. Oh, it chews all right. It helps me form words and holds stuff when my hands are full, but it doesn’t do any of these things very well. It’s third-rate at best—fifth if you take my teeth into consideration.
Even before I started smoking, I was not a remarkably attentive eater. “Great fried fish,” I’d say to my mother, only to discover that I was eating a chicken breast or, just as likely, a veal cutlet. She might as well have done away with names and identified our meals by color: “Golden brown.” “Red.” “Beige with some pink in it.”
I am a shoveler, a quantity man, and I like to keep going until I feel sick. It’s how a prisoner might eat, one arm maneuvering the fork and the other encircling the plate like a fence: head lowered close to my food, eyes darting this way and that; even if I don’t particularly like it, it’s mine, God damn it.
Some of this has to do with coming from a large family. Always afraid that I wouldn’t get enough, I’d start worrying about more long before I finished what was in front of me. We’d be at the dinner table, and, convict-like, out of one side of my mouth, I’d whisper to my sister Amy.
“What’ll you take for that chicken leg?”
“You mean my barbecued rib?”
“Call it what you like, just give me your asking price.”
“Oh gosh,” she’d say. “A quarter?”
“Twenty-five cents! Wha
t do you think this is—a restaurant?”
She’d raise the baton of meat to her face and examine it for flaws. “A dime.”
“A nickel,” I’d say, and before she could argue I’d have snatched it away.
I should have been enormous, the size of a panda, but I think that the fear of going without—the anxiety that this produced—acted like a kind of furnace, and burned off the calories before I could gain weight. Even after learning how to make my own meals, I remained, if not skinny, then at least average. My older sister Lisa and I were in elementary school when our mother bought us our first cookbook. The recipes were fairly simple—lots of Jell-O–based desserts and a wheel-shaped meat loaf cooked in an angel-food-cake pan. This last one was miraculous to me. “A meat loaf—with a hole in it!” I kept saying. I guess I thought that as it baked the cavity would fill itself with rubies or butterscotch pudding. How else to explain my disappointment the first dozen times I made it?
In high school, I started cooking pizzas—“from scratch,” I liked to say, “the ol’ fashioned way.” On Saturday afternoons, I’d make my dough, place it in a cloth-covered bowl, and set it in the linen closet to rise. We’d have our dinner at seven or so, and four hours later, just as Shock Theater, our local horror-movie program, came on, I’d put my pizzas in the oven. It might have been all right if this were just part of my evening, but it was everything: All I knew about being young had canned Parmesan cheese on it. While my classmates were taking acid and having sex in their cars, I was arranging sausage buttons and sliced peppers into smiley faces.
“The next one should look mad,” my younger brother would say. And, as proof of my versatility, I would create a frown.
To make it all that much sadder, things never got any better than this. Never again would I take so many chances or feel such giddy confidence in my abilities. This is not to say that I stopped cooking, just that I stopped trying.
Between the year that I left my parents’ house and the year that I met Hugh, I made myself dinner just about every night. I generally alternated between three or four simple meals, but if forced to name my signature dish I’d probably have gone with my Chicken and Linguine with Grease on It. I don’t know that I ever had an actual recipe; rather, like my Steak and Linguine with Blood on It, I just sort of played it by ear. The good thing about those meals was that they had only two ingredients. Anything more than that and I’m like Hugh’s mother buying Christmas presents. “I look at the list, I go to the store, and then I just freeze,” she says.
I suggest that it’s nothing to get worked up about, and see in her eyes the look I give when someone says, “It’s only a dinner party,” or “Can we have something with the Chicken and Linguine with Grease on It?”
I cook for myself when I’m alone; otherwise, Hugh takes care of it, and happily, too. People tell me that he’s a real chef, and something about the way they say it, a tone of respect and envy, leads me to believe them. I know that the dinners he prepares are correct. If something is supposed to be hot, it is. If it looks rust-colored in pictures, it looks rust-colored on the plate. I’m always happy to eat Hugh’s cooking, but when it comes to truly tasting, to discerning the subtleties I hear others talking about, it’s as if my tongue were wearing a mitten.
That’s why fine restaurants are wasted on me. I suppose I can appreciate the lighting, or the speed with which my water glass is refilled, but, as far as the food is concerned, if I can’t distinguish between a peach and an apricot I really can’t tell the difference between an excellent truffle and a mediocre one. Then, too, the more you pay the less they generally give you to eat. French friends visiting the United States are floored by the size of the portions. “Plates the size of hubcaps!” they cry. “No wonder the Americans are so fat.”
“I know,” I say. “Isn’t it awful?” Then I think of Claim Jumper, a California-based chain that serves a massive hamburger called the Widow Maker. I ordered a side of creamed spinach there, and it came in what looked like a mixing bowl. It was like being miniaturized, shrunk to the height of a leprechaun or a doll and dropped in the dining room of regular-sized people. Even the salt and pepper shakers seemed enormous. I ate at Claim Jumper only once, and it was the first time in years that I didn’t corral my plate. For starters, my arm wasn’t long enough, but even if it had been I wouldn’t have felt the need. There was plenty to go around, some of it brown, some of it green, and some a color I’ve come to think of, almost dreamily, as enough.
2007
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
MIKE ALBO (b. 1969) is a novelist, playwright, and performance artist, and VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN (b. 1969) writes the Medium column for The New York Times Magazine. They are the authors of the book The Underminer.
HENRY ALFORD (b. 1962) has contributed to The New Yorker since 1998. He is the author of the books Municipal Bondage and Big Kiss, which won the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and also writes for The New York Times.
JENNY ALLEN (b. 1955) has written for The New York Times, Life, New York, Esquire, and Vogue. She is the author of The Long Chalkboard, a book of fables for grownups.
WOODY ALLEN (b. 1935) was nominated for an Emmy as a writer for Sid Caesar’s television show before becoming famous as a standup comic. He is now best known as the writer and director (and often star) of numerous films, including such classics as Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. He has recently published Mere Anarchy and The Insanity Defense.
ROGER ANGELL (b. 1920) has been a fiction editor at The New Yorker since 1956 and a contributor since 1944. He has been writing about baseball since 1962; his books include The Summer Game, Season Ticket, A Pitcher’s Story, and Let Me Finish.
MICHAEL J. ARLEN (b. 1930) was the magazine’s television critic in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the author of a novel and seven books of nonfiction, including Living-Room War, an examination of television reportage. In 1976, he won the National Book Award for Passage to Ararat.
ANDREW BARLOW (b. 1978) attended Brown University, where he edited the humor magazine. He is the co-author of A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man.
NOAH BAUMBACH (b. 1969) wrote and directed the films Kicking and Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, The Squid and the Whale, and Margot at the Wedding.
ROBERT BENCHLEY (1889–1945) was the editor of The Harvard Lampoon and went on to work at Life and Vanity Fair. One of the wits of the Algonquin Round Table, he developed his famous “Treasurer’s Report” monologue for a stage review; he performed it throughout his life onstage, and also in one of the first short films with sound, in 1928. He wrote for The New Yorker from 1925 to 1940 and was also a popular radio broadcaster, appearing in forty-eight short films, including the Oscar-winning How to Sleep(1935).
BETSY BERNE (b. 1956) is the author of the novel Bad Timing and the co-author of Narciso Rodriguez, published by Rizzoli. Her writing has appeared in Vogue and The New York Times Magazine.
ZEV BOROW (b. 1972) has contributed humor and journalism to New York, GQ, McSweeney’s, and Spin. He currently lives in Los Angeles and writes for film and television.
ANDY BOROWITZ (b. 1958) is the founder of The Borowitz Report, a humor website, and the winner of the first-ever National Press Club award for humor. He is the creator and producer of the television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and a co-producer of the film Pleasantville. His books include The Republican Play-book, Who Moved My Soap?, and The Trillionaire Next Door.
YONI BRENNER (b. 1980) was raised in Michigan, and writes for film and television.
MARSHALL BRICKMAN (b. 1941) was a member of the folksinging groups the Journeymen and the Tarriers before becoming a writer for Candid Camera and The Tonight Show. He collaborated with Woody Allen as a writer on several films, sharing an Oscar for Annie Hall, and went on to write and direct a number of feature films, including Simon and The Manhattan Project. He most recently co-wrote the book for the Broadway musical Jersey Boys.
DAVID BROOKS (b.
1961) is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. He is the author of the books Bobos in Paradise and On Paradise Drive.
CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY (b. 1952) is the author of thirteen books, including Boomsday, Thank You for Smoking, and Little Green Men. He is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine, and has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1981.
FRANK CAMMUSO (b. 1965), a political cartoonist, and HART SEELY (b. 1952), a reporter, are writing partners whose comic articles have appeared in The New York Times and the Syracuse Herald-Journal. 2007-Eleven and Other American Comedies is a collection of their pieces.
JOHNNY CARSON (1925–2005) was the host of The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992.
CARINA CHOCANO (b. 1968) is a film critic for The Los Angeles Times. Previously, she was a television critic for Entertainment Weekly and a senior writer for Salon.
PETER DE VRIES (1910–1993) was born in Chicago and worked there as an editor of Poetry magazine. He was a regular contributor to The New Yorker in the 1940s and 1950s. His life in suburban Connecticut provided the setting for many of his popular comic novels, including Reuben, Reuben and The Tunnel of Love.
LARRY DOYLE (b. 1958) was for several years a writer and producer for The Simpsons. He wrote the films Duplex and Looney Toons: Back in Action. He has also been an editor at Spy and The National Lampoon. He is the author of the novel I Love You, Beth Cooper.
H. F. ELLIS (1907–2000) wrote and edited for Punch until S. J. Perelman encouraged him to contribute to The New Yorker. He is perhaps best known in England for his book about a hapless British schoolmaster, The Papers of A. J. Wentworth, BA.
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