Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  March 15, 1982

  Raleigh

  I worked late and the Kerwins invited me to join them for dinner. I said that I couldn’t because I had Greek class—a lie, but I don’t know them well enough to eat with them. I should have said yes because I’m broke until Thursday and wound up having Cream of Wheat for dinner.

  March 17, 1982

  Raleigh

  Dad called last night to ask if I wanted to go to Greece with him, Lisa, and Paul. He’s paying for the plane tickets and hotels, so of course I said yes—how could I not? They’re all going for two weeks, but I think I’ll stay longer. I figure I’ll need at least $600. I’ll also need to make accommodations for Neil, who’s mine now, completely.

  March 25, 1982

  Raleigh

  Yesterday was Dougie’s birthday, and he wore a cap with a Confederate flag on it to work. Here we are in a black neighborhood, already unwelcome. I don’t get it. I’m surprised to learn that he’s only twenty-two, not because he looks so young but because he has a three-year-old daughter who’s in his ex-wife’s custody. I’d been told he married a wealthy woman for her money, which is hard to believe because he’s such an ugly guy.

  To celebrate his birthday, Dougie went with Bobby and Tommy to a club called the Switch. They must have gotten really loaded, as the only one who came in today was Bobby, and he didn’t show up until noon. There was a lump on his head, and he said that he got it when two bouncers took his watch and threw him out. He didn’t seem angry about it, just resigned.

  April 2, 1982

  Raleigh

  This morning a female sheriff walked through my front door without knocking. I went into the kitchen, and after I identified myself, she apologized. She was looking for apartment number 6. I was glad to point it out to her. I hope she takes those two and locks them up.

  I received another ultimatum from the phone company. They demanded $60, so I went down this afternoon and gave them $30. While in line I saw Lloyd D. He was a tenant of Mom and Dad’s who moved out, owing them $600 in back rent. I ran into him twice after he got his eviction notice. On both occasions he said, “How can your daddy do this? Doesn’t he realize I’m his last white tenant?”

  Lloyd is an alcoholic. He was drunk at the phone company office and very difficult to understand. He took forever at the window, talking about the weather and so on, and after he walked away, the cashier rolled her eyes.

  April 9, 1982

  Raleigh

  Mom called the tenants in one of the Colleton Road units to tell them a repairman was coming to fix the water heater. The wife answered. Her voice is high and soft, and—like a lot of people, probably—Mom mistook her for a child. “Can I please speak to your daddy?” she asked.

  “Uh-uh, Wendy,” the wife said. “Sorry, babe.” Then she hung up.

  Mom told me this, and we laughed and laughed. Do the tenants know they’re our dinner conversation? In our minds we all but own them.

  April 10, 1982

  Raleigh

  Mom locked herself out of the house and had to crawl under the railing onto the sundeck. She’s not an athletic person, not limber in any way, so it’s such a startling image, her legs dangling in empty air.

  Jokes I heard:

  Q. What’s better than roses on a piano?

  A. Tulips (two lips) on an organ.

  Q. Did you hear about the man with French asthma?

  A. He could only catch his breath in snatches.

  April 13, 1982

  Raleigh

  Tommy breaks into drugstores to steal Valium. This is how he supplements his income. He and Bobby and I drove over to the Fast Fare for snacks this afternoon. There I was with two guys without shirts who stopped on our way out to play six rounds of a video game called Frogger.

  As I rode home from work, one of the handlebars came off my bike. So that’s another thing to take care of.

  April 15, 1982

  Raleigh

  Bobby brought his three-year-old son to work with him. An unsupervised child on a construction site. I seized up whenever he approached a Skilsaw, but Bobby had a good attitude. “Cover your ears, Brian!” he’d yell. Brian was eating caramels. They got all over his hands and, subsequently, his ears.

  April 17, 1982

  Raleigh

  Yesterday, while riding home, Joe and I saw a topless woman run down Edenton Street. She seemed to have come from the church and had her arms crossed over her breasts. I’d guess she was in her late twenties, plump, and wearing cutoff jeans. A man was leaning against the church, watching her and laughing.

  Later I went to the art auction at the design school. My piece went for $7. I tell myself that most of the thirty or so people there were students without much money, but still, $7! I was so embarrassed I left and came home. Then I took a nap and woke up depressed.

  April 20, 1982

  Raleigh

  Bobby accidentally broke his wife’s wrist during an argument. She visited us on the job site today and talked about it while drinking a Mountain Dew held in her good hand. Misty is small and pretty in the way that a country-and-western singer might be. She recently started an executive secretarial course at Hardbarger Business College. This is her first semester, and she’s taking a spelling class. “Let me give you a little pop quiz,” she said to Joe. “Spell class-action lawsuit.”

  I thought she’d hit him with something a little harder, like arbitration.

  April 24, 1982

  Raleigh

  Tiffany left Raleigh and went back to Maine to work at the reform school she went to, Élan. I’ve missed her, so it was good to talk on the phone and hear about her new life. One of the delinquents she’s assigned to kidnapped two children, drowned them, put their bodies in plastic bags, and left them on the curb for the garbagemen.

  That’s a bit more than delinquent, I think.

  April 27, 1982

  Raleigh

  Bobby met his wife, Misty, at Skate Town, where we used to go as kids. Today after her spelling class, she came by the job site, and the three of us went to Hardee’s for lunch. They ordered roast beef sandwiches and then entered a contest. First prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to the World’s Fair, and while eating they speculated on who’d watch Brian if they won. Their best bet is Misty’s sister in Charlotte, they decided, and after dropping him off, they could spend the night in Bobby’s truck.

  Then somehow we got onto the subject of shaving, which led to the shaving of legs. In Hardee’s at lunchtime, the place half full with black people, Misty looked around and observed that most nigger ladies have hair on their legs. Bobby said gorillas don’t shave neither. I flinched again and again, but they were oblivious and seemed almost innocent.

  Susan Toplikar is going to New York for a year. Her place is bigger and cheaper than mine, so we talked and arranged for me to sublet it while she’s away. The neighborhood, Oakwood, is more settled than where I am now. It’s not all NC State students.

  April 30, 1982

  Raleigh

  Joe and I were on the construction site when a man in a black car stopped to rage at us. “It ain’t fair for white men to come into this neighborhood and get jobs working on our people’s houses,” he said—a reasonable charge. He asked how much the homes we’d built were renting for, and when we told him they were for sale, not rent, he called Joe an ugly name.

  “What did you say?” Joe asked.

  “I ain’t afraid of you,” the man said.

  He drove away, and I thought of him all afternoon until a bee flew into my eye.

  May 10, 1982

  Raleigh

  I have cooked a chicken that already smelled bad two days ago. In my heart I know it’s spoiled, but I plan to eat it anyway because I’m hungry. For lunch I had a hamburger the size of a Susan B. Anthony dollar. All day long I installed doorknobs. It was all right.

  May 20, 1982

  Raleigh

  Tiffany called to say she’s coming home. She’s miserable at Éla
n. For the last three days her job has been to observe a girl in isolation who carves ugly words into her arms with splinters. “I didn’t come up here to be a prison matron,” she said.

  She thought of staying and finding work somewhere else but decided she can’t live in a state with only one zip code.

  May 26, 1982

  Raleigh

  This was our last night of Greek class. The Compos girls were out of hand, though, to be fair, they’re just kids. I’ll miss going there every week and studying with Lisa.

  May 27, 1982

  Raleigh

  Tommy got into a fight at Shirley’s Lounge, a biker bar. The management threw him out, so he jumped into his car and ran over the management. He already had a DUI and wasn’t supposed to be driving but did anyway. An undercover cop followed him and shot out two of his car windows. When the officer got out of his Camaro, Tommy ran him over as well. Both victims are in the hospital, and he’s in jail instead of at work.

  June 1, 1982

  Raleigh

  I’m going through my annual college-anxiety phase. It happens every year at graduation time. I used to think I could teach myself anything I needed to know, but I’m not sure I believe that anymore. I’d like to be educated and mature.

  June 6, 1982

  Raleigh

  At the Capital Corral I met a college freshman named Brant, who had his high school graduation tassel hanging from his rearview mirror. He told me that Heart is his favorite band, and during sex he kept telling me that he loved me and wanted to get married, presumably in the next five weeks before he returns to Norfolk for the summer.

  June 18, 1982

  Raleigh

  I called the number Brant gave me, and it was made-up. Then I called all the dorms at Louisburg College and was told there is no Brant. Tricked again.

  July 30, 1982

  Raleigh

  Just as I’m packing to move into Susan’s and go to Greece, SECCA writes and invites me to have a solo show a year from now. This is huge for me. After getting the letter, I bought $15 worth of cat food.

  August 6, 1982

  Athens, Greece

  Since Dad’s arrival, all he’s done is yell at people. He’ll ask someone on the street for directions, then tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about. He speaks combat Greek, and the people he talks to speak it back. Still, it was good to see him and Lisa and Paul. Three days alone here wasn’t such a great idea, especially in a room that’s an oven. I brought my transistor radio. There’s an OK jazz program, but everything else is Greek music.

  There are a lot of blind people in Athens. A man got on the train tonight with what looked like mayonnaise in his eyes.

  August 13, 1982

  Heraklion, Crete

  Dad bought us deck-class tickets—the cheapest—and while he and Lisa and Paul slept on benches, I stayed up and drank retsina with a stout Dutch girl. Her hair was short, like a boy’s, and she looked hard into my eyes when she spoke.

  Over the course of the evening, I learned the following:

  1. Her brother died three years ago in an automobile accident, and she cried for two years straight.

  2. Last year she had an affair with a woman.

  3. An apartment in Amsterdam is expensive.

  4. A Greek man lured her to his apartment recently and tried to make love at her. That was how she said it: “Make love at me.”

  5. Germans are terrible people. She said this again and again—insisted on it. I have no reason to dislike them, so I just said “Huh” a lot.

  On the bus from the port to Heraklion, I met Wally, an opera student at Columbia. We talked throughout the four-hour trip, and when I later introduced him to Dad, Wally addressed him as “sir.” I wanted to sleep with him.

  August 18, 1982

  Athens

  I go to a toy store and say, in Greek, “How much is the small dog?” I’m in a good mood, doing what I love—shopping. The woman is the rudest person I’ve met so far and says in flawless English that the dog winds up but is broken. Old and broken.

  “That’s all right,” I say.

  She then chides me for wanting a broken toy.

  I leave and come back three times, and each time she’s meaner. After she leaves I buy the dog from her assistant, who gives me a huge discount. What do I care that it’s broken?

  August 20, 1982

  Athens/Patras

  Dad, Paul, and Lisa left for Raleigh this morning. I walked them to Syntagma Square, where they caught a bus to the airport. Now I am one of the traveling youth. Single. I went to the post office and then returned to the hotel to pack and catch the bus to Patras. From there I’ll go by ferry to Brindisi, and then on to Rome against Dad’s better judgment. “Italian men will get you drunk in order to rob you,” he warned.

  On my way out of the hotel, I heard a man on the phone at the front desk trying to change his flight. He said it was an emergency, that his mother died and he needs to get back to America as soon as possible. That can’t be true, can it?

  Later:

  After our bus arrived in Patras, the driver made me help him pick up all the garbage people had left behind and throw it out the window. This town is the Greek Baltimore. I got a hotel room with four beds in it. That was fine until three other people showed up and claimed them. Roommates! And a shower is extra. Next door is a bumper-car pavilion. The thuds are fairly constant.

  I went out tonight after dinner and had a beer at a gas station with a table in front of it. The owner had a live duck in her hands. When I went to pay, I saw her in the back room, wringing its neck and singing along to the radio. This place makes me feel stoned.

  August 30, 1982

  Athens

  Back in Athens after Rome. The bus ride from Patras was dismal. I’d run out of books, so all I could do was stare out the window. After we arrived at the station, I met Rosa Rubio from Madrid. She speaks only Spanish, and after talking for a few hours, I brought her to my hotel. The room has three beds in it, so I offered her one and she was beside herself—hadn’t seen a real mattress in weeks, she told me. I gave her my black-and-white-striped referee shirt because it never really looked good on me. I bought us dinner and drinks. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in four days, and she was very patient with my Spanish. I enjoyed her company, and it was nice to treat someone, to be in a position to.

  September 20, 1982

  Raleigh

  A joke I heard:

  Q. Do you know how to bake toilet paper?

  A. No, but I know how to brown it on one side.

  October 11, 1982

  Raleigh

  I was riding my bike down Hillsborough Street when a carload of girls pulled up beside me. They yelled something I didn’t understand, and then one of them hit me over the head with a broom and they all shrieked—funniest thing ever. I was going full speed, and had I wrecked, they’d certainly have driven off. From now on I’m going to carry a rock in my bike basket. When something like this happens, I’m ruined for days.

  November 21, 1982

  Raleigh

  I ran into Brant last night, the college student I met last spring who said he loved me three times and then gave me a fake phone number. Since I last saw him, he’s grown a sketchy mustache, which brings out his bad complexion and makes his chin look weak. “Remember me?” I asked. “Your name is Brant, your favorite band is Heart, you go to Louisburg College and have your graduation tassel hanging off your rearview mirror.”

  He looked at me for a second and said, “All I remember is that you’re a Jew.”

  I didn’t correct him because of the way he said it, the word Jew spat out as if it were leper. Both of us walked away then, though I swear I did it first.

  December 19, 1982

  Raleigh

  Tuesday is Lisa’s birthday. She will be twenty-seven. I always told myself that when I’m that age, I’ll make a drastic change. I’m not sure why twenty-seven; maybe because it’s the age Avi and Katherine and
Allyn were when I met them.

  1983

  January 25, 1983

  Raleigh

  Paul’s birthday was four days ago, but we celebrated it last night. I gave him $6.50, which is a lot for a fifteen-year-old. Sort of.

  Afterward I went home and called R., another person who’s given me a wrong phone number. He said when we met that he’d like to have a wife and children—that he’s actually had sex with a woman. “Did you have to force yourself?” I asked.

  He said yes.

  I have much more respect for drag queens than I do for all these full-grown men lying about who they really are. Plus R. never makes his bed, so, really, who needs him?

  February 14, 1983

  Raleigh

  Blind Billy was at the IHOP tonight. He doesn’t wear dark glasses, and his eyes are wild-looking. Sometimes he’ll yell out, “I’d like some more iced tea, please!” or “I think I’m ready for dessert!” If he hears someone settle into a nearby booth, he’s likely to start a conversation about sports, any kind will do as long as it involves a ball. Billy most often comes in alone, but tonight he was with another blind man who is new to both the IHOP and the YMCA, where Billy has lived for twelve years. The new guy plays blind baseball. In the afternoons he connects his wrist with a shoestring to a sighted person’s and jogs.