Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  Last week, under Avi’s window, a man from the hotel bar hit a woman for dancing with another man. When we mentioned it to Brad, he said that if she was dancing with someone else, she deserved to be beaten.

  October 19, 1979

  Knowlesville

  Today we began picking Golden Delicious, the most fragile. I was on the end row, beside the avenue of poplars, and while working I thought of my sister Amy. At lunch Avi and I took thirty-five apples and sent them in a box to the gang back in Raleigh. Each one we wrapped in something different: a sock, a glove, a Xerox of an apple. They were McIntoshes, Macouns, Goldens, and Northern Spies, each then tied in string with a name tag on it.

  This was payday. So far I have $400 in savings.

  October 26, 1979

  Knowlesville

  It must have snowed twelve times today, though never for more than three minutes at a stretch. That didn’t stop us from picking, though.

  In the morning over coffee, Doreen, our waitress, who last month told us that at the age of six she was raped by her father, announced that she once worked at a carnival gaming booth and is now a lesbian living in a trailer with her girlfriend, Rocky.

  I said I was gay too, and she seemed happy and pointed out other gay customers. “That woman over there, dressed like a man? She’s a dyke who drives a truck and is named Peewee.”

  Doreen has Rocky’s face decoupaged to her key chain and told me that the two of them were married last year at a gay church in Florida.

  October 28, 1979

  Knowlesville

  Jean and George, two pickers I overheard this morning:

  Jean: You’re picking too slow, George. If you hurry up we can get out of here.

  George: You’re the slow one.

  Jean: My breakfast hasn’t affected me yet.

  George: Honey, your breakfast is in my pants.

  November 6, 1979

  Knowlesville

  Picking ended. I feel like camp is over. In the barn, a party. A long table was set up, and I liked watching everyone but me get plastered. Lots of silly speeches. It’s interesting to work with people for almost six weeks but never see them all together.

  December 8, 1979

  Raleigh

  I started work back at the Breakfast House today and learned that my gas-company credit rating has slipped to a B. Was ill all day yesterday. When the meth catches up to you, you find yourself paying for it. When on a spree, I’m convinced I can smoke three packs of cigarettes, not eat, and run all over town with no consequences.

  1980

  January 1, 1980

  Raleigh

  I gave away all my meth yesterday. It’s either give it up or become an addict and lose all my hair and teeth. I never sleep or eat anymore. I never leave my apartment.

  January 26, 1980

  Raleigh

  I’ve been a mature twenty-three-year-old adult for one month. Last night I lay in bed from three o’clock until four thirty, starting to panic. Some meth this morning, some now. I think I’ll give the rest away, because after several days and nights it starts to get hairy. I got a lot done, though—made ten valentines, started on a shroud, took some egg crates and attached them to a broiler pan and a great photo of a chicken from the Washington Post. It all came together, all this stuff in my closet.

  I’ve started peeing in my kitchen, into empty jars, then replacing the lids and putting them on the shelf. I’m considering saving a month’s worth.

  February 7, 1980

  Raleigh

  Last night up ’til five a.m. Finished four more crates. Took far too much speed in the course of the day and spent today coming down, down, down. Slept until noon, took a bath without bothering to rinse the thick layer of Comet from the bottom of the tub. Went back to bed until four. Then another bath and up to begin my day. Bought baby bottles, toothpaste, aspirin.

  February 26, 1980

  Raleigh

  Both the crates I entered into a biennial at the NC Museum were accepted. Both. Not one, but two. There were fourteen hundred entries, and only forty-five were chosen.

  March 8, 1980

  Raleigh

  Tiffany was on TV last night. It was a show about Élan and other places similar to the one she’s been exiled to. In her snippet she was standing in a boxing ring with a bar across her eyes. I’ve been writing to her since she left, but she just sent a letter and told me to stop.

  I’m going to start saving dirty napkins at work.

  March 9, 1980

  Raleigh

  Last night I took my first quaalude, and, boy, did it wreck me. I was totally useless—not quite like being drunk, but close. None of the queasiness, just really relaxed. Relaxed to the point of idiocy. Coming home, walking up my stairs, I fell. Then I fell twice in my apartment and decided I was better off on the ground, crawled to my alarm clock, set it, and crawled to bed.

  March 18, 1980

  Raleigh

  I have just taken amphetamines stolen from a drugstore. They’re given to hyperactive children to make them even more hyperactive so they’ll get tired and pass out, giving their parents a rest.

  Last night I went stark raving mad. I had a list of calls to make and used the same two dimes for five hours before coming to the conclusion that all three friends were together having a wonderful time and talking about me. I paced, made messes, finally cooked pork chops, and tried to read magazines.

  April 8, 1980

  Raleigh

  I’m on this pure meth I got from W.’s friend Liz. It’s moist and foul-tasting, super-severe, and I haven’t figured out the right dose yet. Allyn from downstairs tried it too. Then she and I threw a party that was fine until two drunk guys wandered over from the IHOP and crawled into bed with Dee Dee’s nine-year-old daughter, who was asleep in the other room.

  April 11, 1980

  Raleigh

  I’ve got $12, no job, and unpaid rent. I’m depressed, I’m broke, and soon I’ll be out of drugs. I feel so sleazy and cheap. Still, I have two sculptures in the art museum.

  April 25, 1980

  Raleigh

  I began work, sort of, at Irregardless’s lunch place downtown. It’s two and a half hours a day. People order at the counter, and my job is to carry their trays to their tables when their food is ready. The hard part is figuring out what to say. I eventually settled on “Here you go.” It felt good to have somewhere I had to be, to have someone expecting me.

  April 29, 1980

  Raleigh

  I worked at the Empire today, clearing someone’s backyard of kudzu. Dad drove me home afterward. “I’m a fifty-eight-year-old man with the mind of a twenty-one-year-old,” he said in the car.

  An hour later I was smoking opium with Allyn from downstairs. We didn’t feel much, so we put on a Ravi Shankar album and plugged in some colored lights, hoping that might help, but it didn’t.

  May 6, 1980

  Raleigh

  Ronnie’s new roommate, K., eats only raw vegetables. It’s to keep her in shape for all the drugs she takes. We talked last night and she said it was just a matter of time before grocery stores start selling human meat. She really believes this.

  July 7, 1980

  Raleigh

  I was accepted into the SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art) show. My name will be published in the catalog, so once again I’ll get to see it in print. Now I’d like to get into the phone book.

  July 30, 1980

  Raleigh

  I’ve been raging for three days, so I was grateful when H. gave me half a quaalude, which I’ll down as soon as we reach the reception for the SECCA show. This is probably a mistake.

  August 7, 1980

  Raleigh

  I haven’t written in a week. Hence the news in brief:

  I packed everything into my crates and carried them downstairs. Allyn and I lived together for a few days. Then she moved to Pittsburgh. Gretchen moved into my old place.

  Julia is gone, moved to New York.


  The night of the SECCA reception, it must have been a hundred degrees. It was good to see my photos again. The quaalude wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  Tulip, the dog Ronnie was looking after, killed the next-door neighbor’s Chihuahua. Ronnie is wrecked, Tulip oblivious.

  On August 2 I went to the beach for five days with the family. We stayed in a condo with air-conditioning and now I have a tan.

  In Pittsburgh Allyn will go to school. Lately I think of going back to college, maybe the Art Institute of Chicago. Just being together enough to apply would be an accomplishment. Talking to Lyn, I realize I’m still young.

  October 1, 1980

  Raleigh

  Gretchen and her friend Carl found a fetal puppy this morning on a sidewalk at NC State. Now it’s upstairs in her freezer and she’s named it Pokey.

  Some crank called the house and told Mom he wanted to eat her pussy—his words, not mine. “Isn’t that sick?” she told me. “I’m a fifty-year-old woman.”

  Actually, I think she’s fifty-one.

  October 9, 1980

  Raleigh

  If by Monday at five I haven’t given the phone company $79, they’ll cut off my service and make my life miserable until they get their money. I was better off when I lived upstairs and used the pay phone at the IHOP, except of course that people couldn’t call me.

  October 10, 1980

  Raleigh

  I dropped my telephone again. Now it never rings and I have to guess if someone is trying to contact me.

  October 19, 1980

  Raleigh

  Randall, the gay alcoholic in the house next door, boldly peeps through my windows. “Boy, you sure rock in that chair a lot,” he said last week, his face pressed against my screen.

  This time I was lying on my bed with Katherine’s cats. I’m watching them while she’s out of town. I can be very mushy, and he watched me kissing them and saying that all the other cats in the neighborhood were jealous of their beauty. Then I heard, “David. David. It’s me, Randall. Listen, I’m running low on money and wonder if I can maybe borrow thirty-five cents for cigarettes.”

  He has to be forty years old, at least.

  December 20, 1980

  Raleigh

  A girl who lived down the street from us when we were growing up got married. Dad reminds me that not only is Andrea a college graduate, but her husband is too, and that they both made good grades. After the reception, tipsy, Mom and Dad stopped by for coffee. It was the first time they visited together.

  1981

  January 6, 1981

  Raleigh

  Ronnie and I worked last night on the performance piece we’re calling HUD (for Housing and Urban Detectives). I’ve borrowed Paul’s typewriter for two weeks and given notice at Irregardless. My last day is Friday, January 16. The performance is Saturday. Meanwhile, I’ve applied for a job as a teacher’s aide at the Tammy Lynn home for the retarded.

  February 1, 1981

  Raleigh

  We went to Lance’s for dinner last night and I learned that he keeps a dead rattlesnake in his freezer. He found it on the highway somewhere. The snake’s not messy dead, just missing some guts, and even frozen solid it still looks alive. Margaret wants to photograph it in my freshly painted apartment, but I’m afraid to even remove it from the bag. Were my dad to see it, he’d drop dead of a heart attack—wham, no questions asked. Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal?

  February 17, 1981

  Raleigh

  Mom took me to the IHOP for lunch and told me not to worry about the $20 I owe her. It’s her birthday.

  February 20, 1981

  Raleigh

  I went tonight to the Winn-Dixie on Person Street, across from the Krispy Kreme. It’s a low-income neighborhood, right on the line separating the white and black areas of town. I was walking from the parking lot to the front door when I saw a man enter. He was tall and black, clearly drunk, and behind him were two girls, laughing and pointing. The man was pushing an empty cart, and just inside the door, one of his feet caught on the carpet. He fell to his knees, and a moment later the cart he’d been putting all his weight on fell over as well. With nothing to support him, he crashed face-first onto the floor. I was maybe twenty feet away but didn’t rush forward to help him. No one did. I was looking for magazines, so I decided at the last minute to try the Fast Fare across the street instead. When they didn’t have what I wanted, I returned to the Winn-Dixie, where the man was still lying on the floor. It made me uncomfortable, so I decided to skip the magazines and just go to Krispy Kreme instead.

  February 25, 1981

  Raleigh

  Jean Harris was convicted of second-degree murder. I kind of liked her.

  February 26, 1981

  Raleigh

  Mom dropped by this morning with at least $60 worth of groceries: pork chops, chicken, hamburger meat, salami, cheese, cereal, eggs, oil, pancake mix, broccoli, canned tomatoes, corn, beans, pasta, bread, syrup, oatmeal. I feel guilty and grateful.

  Later I went to the design school and saw Komar and Melamid, the Soviet dissident artists, who are funny. They showed a photo of a human skull placed atop a horse skeleton and claimed it was a Minotaur. Then they showed three bones glued together and said it was a triangladon. I sold them my soul for $1.

  March 17, 1981

  Raleigh

  I went to pick up my pieces that were rejected by the Wake County show. “Oh, yes,” the woman said when I gave her my name, “you’re the one with the little cardboard boxes.”

  “Yes, that’s me.” I’d wanted to get in just to trouble people like her.

  I’m making corn bread for dinner again. Last night I had an omelet with old rice in it.

  April 5, 1981

  Raleigh

  Wednesday’s performance went very well—sixty-four people. I was convinced there would only be eight. Everyone was very warm afterward, complimentary. On Friday I felt divorced from the action. Can’t tell whether or not the audience noticed. There were sixty-nine of them that night. Large party afterward, lots of people, half of them strangers. I had four Scotches and passed out before making a major spectacle of myself.

  April 6, 1981

  Raleigh

  Quickly approaching rock bottom as far as money is concerned. I haven’t paid the rent yet. Tonight I bought a box of pancake mix, a dozen eggs, and a pint of milk. I have $5 to my name, and even that is owed.

  April 7, 1981

  Raleigh

  “Base metals. There is no gold.” I took my fraternity pin, the one I found last year, to two pawnshops, thinking I could use the money to settle my phone bill. They want $65 right this minute. Every time I go to pay in person, they have me dial 2. That puts me in touch with a professional scolder who tells me I wouldn’t be in this fix if I had paid my bills when they were due. I tried today to put down $5, and the woman laughed in my face and gave me until Friday.

  On returning home, I called Joe, who might have some work for me. Then I called Lou Stark and agreed to paint her living room in exchange for $20 and some food. I’m getting $159 back from the IRS, so in a pinch I could ask Mom to front it for me.

  April 8, 1981

  Raleigh

  I worked for Joe today, cleaning windows in a passive solar house owned by a marriage counselor and his wife, a home-ec teacher. He has work for me tomorrow as well. On the ride home with S., I smoked a joint. It was too early for me, but I couldn’t say no. So there I was, high at three o’clock in the afternoon. Later I rode my bike downtown, feeling refreshed. Bought some tempera paint and some milk.

  A phone call:

  Woman: Hello, David?

  Me: Yes.

  Woman: This is Sandra.

  Me: Do I know you?

  Woman: Yes, you know me.

  Me: From where?

  Woman: Oh, come on, you slept here last night.

  Me: You must have the wrong Dav
id. This is David Sedaris.

  Woman: I know. You slept here last night and left your jockstrap.

  Me: I don’t even own a jockstrap.

  Woman: You sound like some kind of faggot to me.

  (She hangs up, which is unfair, as I didn’t get a chance to respond.)

  April 12, 1981

  Raleigh

  Friday night we went to dinner at the Villa Capri. Mom got lost on the way there. She took two or three incorrect turns and wound up jumping the median when she realized we were in the wrong lane and a car was heading directly toward us. Her excuse was that she hadn’t had a drink yet.

  April 16, 1981

  Raleigh

  I modeled for Susan’s drawing class this afternoon and had an eerie feeling that everyone was staring at me. Half an hour of thirty-second poses, then an hour and a half of five-minute poses. The class was told to emphasize my head, face, and shoulders. I brought a bag of tricks and disguises. I picked my nose, sucked my thumb, sulked, wore a cylinder on my head, prayed, really pulled out all the stops. I’d never model naked, but with clothes on it’s all right.