Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  While eating, he asked Billy a number of questions. “Does anyone bother you in the shower at the Y? Is there hot water in the morning?” He asked about the discount blind people get on taxi service. “I’m told it applies from eight a.m. until six at night. Is that right? I’ve got friends I’d like to visit.”

  Billy said he didn’t remember. He last took a cab six years ago.

  The new guy talked about the library for the blind and some good books he’d listened to lately. He mentioned one and Billy said, “Did you listen to that Villanova game on Saturday night? Now that was something!” He’s really loud. All he’d talk about was sports until the new guy mentioned an audiobook on World War II. Then Billy said, yelling, “Now those German people, they talk ugly! Sounds like everything they have to say is just pure meanness. I bet they can sure give somebody hell. Same with those Japanese.”

  February 18, 1983

  Raleigh

  Last night was Mom’s birthday. Sometimes the group doesn’t work, and people wander off after eating, but last night it was good, and everyone remained seated for hours afterward. At one point, out of nowhere, Mom told Lisa that she wasn’t the first person on earth to do it in the backseat of a car. “You won’t be the last either,” she said.

  February 24, 1983

  Raleigh

  A joke I heard:

  Q. Why don’t Haitians take baths?

  A. They’d rather wash up onshore.

  May 26, 1983

  Raleigh

  All day I worked for Dean and didn’t notice until I got to the IHOP that my hands and forearms were smeared with walnut stain. It looked awful, like I’d been fisting someone. When the waitress came, I leaned forward and hid my arms under the table. On returning home, I noticed that my apartment smells like cat urine.

  June 5, 1983

  Raleigh

  Last night on my way to the IHOP I was pulled over by a Pontiac with three high black guys in it. They said they were selling pot and asked if I was a cop.

  “I sure am,” I said, at which point three of the four car doors opened. Were they going to run or beat me up? I wondered.

  I said I was only kidding—“Do I look like a cop to you?”—and the guy in the front passenger seat held up a small bag of pot he wanted $15 for.

  Something felt wrong, so I said no. It’s probably not a good idea to buy drugs in the middle of the street. If they’d taken my money and driven off, I really couldn’t have complained to anyone.

  June 26, 1983

  Raleigh

  I spent last night with Ferris, a UNC student who once shot and killed someone who was breaking into his house. He was fifteen at the time and said that the rifle blew a hole right through the burglar’s chest. I don’t know if he was telling the truth, but either way it was strange. Ferris was chunky, with a handsome face. This morning he called his mother—collect. She has two houses and is buying him a condominium in Chapel Hill. We had sex five times, and he stayed for coffee.

  June 27, 1983

  Raleigh

  I went to the Winn-Dixie and was heading across the parking lot in the direction of home when four black people in a car beckoned me over. They were two young couples, one up front and the other in the back. “Hey,” the girl in the front said, “you look like Al Pacino.”

  July 1, 1983

  Raleigh

  This is Friday. I worked hard all week and have paid my rent and bills. There is $60 left over, so I can’t complain. After coming home, I listened to the radio and cleaned up a little. A woman on All Things Considered wrote a book of advice called If You Want to Write and mentioned the importance of keeping a diary. It was valuable, she said, because after a while you’d stop being forced and pretentious and become honest and unafraid of your thoughts.

  All week Dean and I have been talking about school—a graduate program for him and undergrad for me. I wrote to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and asked for a catalog. It’s a small step, but at least it’s something. I’ve only been to Chicago once. It was in 1978. I was taking a bus to Oregon and had just enough time during our stopover to run to the museum and buy postcards.

  July 12, 1983

  Raleigh

  Susan comes back August 1, so I’ve started looking for a new apartment. The man I met with today, Mr. H., addressed me as “sport” and showed me a dark, trashy place on Edenton Street. When I commented on how small it was, he suggested I erect a sheet of plywood in the hall and expand a little. “Or you can talk to the old gal across from you. She don’t use her parlor much and might probably let you sit in there sometimes.”

  The woman he was referring to heard Mr. H.’s voice and stepped out to talk to him. She is small, less than five feet tall, an American Indian perhaps, and it seems she is going to court next week. “I’m just worried my previous felony might be held against me.”

  “You tell Curtis for me that if he testifies against you, I’ll kick his mama out of here so fast it’ll make her head spin,” Mr. H. said. “’Cause I ain’t putting up with no shit or no trash.”

  Shit was Mr. H.’s favorite word, and he used it fourteen times before I stopped counting. “Shit, you could just move the bed into the kitchen.” “Shit, you got a fire escape. Sit out there, why don’t you!” “Shit, get yourself some plywood and a couple of cinder blocks and you can fix that right up.”

  The apartment I looked at has a sign on the door reading WARNING, THE PERSON LIVING HERE HAS A GUN AND WILL USE IT.

  I told Mr. H. I’m still looking at places, and he shook my hand, saying, “So long, Bo.”

  There are three vacancies in the Vance Apartments, also on Edenton Street. I noticed the empty windows and called the Realtor for an appointment. Only weird gay people, old ladies, and drunks live at the Vance. It’s scandalous, and the one-bedrooms go for $220 a month. That means that with bills, etc., I’ll have to put aside $60 a week, which is almost $10 a day.

  August 3, 1983

  Raleigh

  It’s taking me a while to adjust to the new apartment. I’m on a corner, so there’s traffic noise and more pedestrians than I’m used to. Last night I was sanding one of the sculptures for my SECCA show. It was dark outside, and two black men yelled something up to me. I didn’t want to get into anything, so I pretended I couldn’t hear them. Five minutes later there was someone at my door. I opened it, and it was the two guys who had yelled. They thought I was painting the apartment and asked if it was for rent.

  The two looked to be in their late thirties. I told them that the apartment was mine but that there were other vacancies. One of the men started to ask if he could look at my place. What stopped him, most likely, was how suspicious it sounded, but I said, “Sure, come on in.” I was happy to have visitors, and after a tour I wrote down the name of the realty company, wondering as I did so whether or not they allowed blacks. They can’t say they don’t, of course, but in the short time I’ve been here I haven’t noticed any black people coming or going. They’re really not free to live where they want in this town.

  August 13, 1983

  Raleigh

  This afternoon a woman knocked on my door and asked if there were any rooms to rent. She was missing her front teeth and had a duffel bag over her shoulder. I’m not sure why she chose my door to knock on. Why climb up to the second floor? Why not ask one of the people forever hanging out on the front stoop?

  August 26, 1983

  Emerald Isle

  Paul and I went out swimming yesterday. The current was strong, and I realized after a few minutes that I could no longer touch the bottom. He was farther out than I was, and the harder we swam toward the shore, the farther away we seemed to get. “Try harder!” I yelled.

  “Fuck you!” Paul yelled back.

  Both of us started to panic after that. I thought of him drowning and of how much trouble I’d be in. I could almost picture it, heaped on top of the grief I’d be feeling. I grabbed him then, and we both gave it all we had and were eventually
washed ashore. It was terrifying.

  August 30, 1983

  Raleigh

  The woman next door seems to be moving out. Apparently there was a big fight while I was at the beach and the police were called. Bessie told me this. “Those two was having a free-for-all,” she said, meaning, I guess, the woman and her boyfriend. She added that the woman had two dogs that would shit in the apartment. “Then she’d pick up the turds and toss them out the window,” Bessie said.

  September 22, 1983

  Raleigh

  Last night the neighbors had a huge fight. The woman, who it seems did not move out, is obese with red hair. She works at a pool hall and lives with a thin, trashy man who’s around my age. They hold hands a lot on the street and use the phone at Watkins Grill because they don’t have one of their own.

  Their argument started at midnight. I was up working, so I put a glass against the wall. The woman was slurring and yelling about him running around with a hussy—such an old-fashioned word. Apparently he can’t hold down a job and spends his days drinking, doing drugs, and watching TV. They haven’t made love in three days. She won’t let him because all he wants is to get his rocks off. “You want to climb on and climb off, but I’m a lovin’ kind of woman.”

  He said she’s nothing but a cocktease, and when she brought up the hussy again he called her a fat whore.

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  Then he said that at least he knows who his father is. “Your mother was just a whore like you.”

  “No, your mother was a whore.”

  “No, yours was.”

  “No, yours was.”

  She called him a sorry son of a bitch and then he threw her against the wall I had my glass against. When he then walked into the other room, she went berserk, shouting, “Hussy!” Doors were slammed, things broke. I’d have called the police if I’d had a phone, but it hasn’t been connected yet.

  Bessie told me this goes on all the time. They fight and then the police are called. A few weeks ago he was led away in handcuffs, but the next day he was back. I guess it’s just their way.

  October 3, 1983

  Raleigh

  At the mailbox this afternoon I met Faye, the heavy woman next door with the red hair. She asked if I had change for a quarter, and while I went through my pockets she asked if I knew anyone who had a phone. She said she needed to call her daddy, so I let her in.

  When Faye got no answer, she asked if she could try again later. Then she said that if I needed any furniture, just holler because she and her boyfriend, Vic, have a whole lot. A few minutes later she returned with a woman who’s even bigger than she is. The friend had knocked on my door yesterday and asked if Johnny was here.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know any Johnny,” I told her.

  It turns out Faye has a cat as well, a Siamese named Tiki. She saw Neil when she was using the phone and asked if I’d be interested in having the two of them mate. On her way out, she told me that she has two beautiful daughters that Social Services has taken. She hasn’t seen them since December 24, but if she and Vic are good, she can maybe get them back. “The woman in one oh three is a hussy,” Faye said. “She’s forty-one, but I’m just twenty-nine and had never been in jail in my life until last year.” She asked if I’d make some puppets for her beautiful daughters and told me that while she was out the other day, Vic had the hussy right there in their bed. To get him back she also made love with someone in the exact same spot. Last Friday she cut Vic, and the police arrived while she still had the knife in her hand. “I threw it under the bed,” she told me. “He beats me up sometimes. I have bruises, but don’t you never call the police on us. We’re not allowed to get into trouble.”

  October 4, 1983

  Raleigh

  Faye’s friend came at seven thirty to use the phone. She’s short and fat and has a tattoo on her left shoulder. Halter tops show it off, so she always wears one, regardless of the weather. The friend has buckteeth and wears a lot of jewelry. I was busy and didn’t want her using my phone, but she said it was an emergency. I’m thinking I need to put a note on my door, though I’m not sure what it will say.

  October 6, 1983

  Raleigh

  Since moving downtown I’ve been going to Jimmy’s Market, which is four blocks from my apartment. I mainly shop for little things. I got cat food, beer, and a pack of cigarettes there late this afternoon and was walking my bike toward home when three men spread across the sidewalk and blocked my path. They were older, in their forties and fifties. Poorly dressed. “Hey, white boy,” one of them said. “Give me a cigarette.”

  I had a freshly lit one in my hand and was proceeding around them when one of the men came from behind and grabbed my shoulder. Meanwhile, another guy planted himself in front of my bike. “Go any further and I’ll beat the shit out of you.” He said that he should take my grocery bag and smack me over the head with it. “What do you think of that?”

  The man wore an army shirt and a stocking cap. His lower teeth were brown and worn down to nubs. He had my bike by the handlebars while his friends stood just behind me. There was no one ahead of me on the sidewalk. There was no traffic. “Goddamn it,” the man said. “I tole you to give me a cigarette.”

  I said nothing, and he called me a sissy white boy—three times. He said he should knock my sissy teeth down my throat, that he would too.

  I looked at him, expecting to get hit and wondering if I might actually lose a few teeth. Then I’d be one of those guys who lives in the Vance Apartments and is missing some teeth—I’d belong there. It never occurred to me that I’d win the fight. I haven’t hit anyone since the third grade, while this guy looked to have been doing it all his life. Plus he had backup, which he kept looking at over my shoulders.

  “I’m going to fuck up this bike,” the man said. He tightened his grip on the handlebars, and I thought that maybe I could buy Julia’s old three-speed from Katherine. I was wondering if she’d maybe just give it to me when the man threw back his head and spat in my face. He did it a second and third time, but nothing came out, just a sound, ptoooo. I guess he was dehydrated from a day of drinking.

  As the spit was running down my forehead, I saw a black woman walking toward us. As she neared, I took my bike from between the man’s legs and went around him, not riding but walking it. From behind I heard the guy calling me a sissy white boy and telling me to stay out of his way. I took a drag off my cigarette, still not riding, as that would give him satisfaction. Instead I walked, spit on my face, feeling victorious. He’d demanded a cigarette and I didn’t give it to him. So doesn’t that make me the winner?

  October 15, 1983

  Raleigh

  Last night was the reception for my SECCA show. I wore a new shirt and a black jacket and combed my hair. Lots of people came, and I went outside twice to smoke pot. Though I was high, the show still looked good to me. It was a solid year of work. Now the party’s over and both Neil and I are feeling sick.

  October 26, 1983

  Raleigh

  I went to Capital Camera this afternoon to buy slide jackets and talk to Mrs. P., the wife of the owner. She’s from Smithfield and told me that her husband suffers from high blood pressure. “His medication is thirty dollars a month!” she said.

  Mrs. P. is very Southern. She calls everyone “honey” and wears half-glasses attached to a chain around her neck. The front door used to be open all the time, but now it’s locked and gets unlocked only when customers come—people like Dr. R., who came to drop off the film he’d shot in Europe. He told Mrs. P. that his wife had gotten sick in Paris, and Mrs. P. said she knows all about sickness. “My husband has high blood pressure, and the medication is costing us thirty dollars per month!”

  Then she said that she was robbed last week. It seemed she’d forgotten to lock the door, and when she turn
ed around a man put his hands around her neck and demanded all her money. She said she couldn’t believe this was happening to her and that she called him “sir.”

  “I told him he was welcome to all the money and that I hoped he spent it wisely.” After she emptied the cash drawer, he asked for a cord or something he could use to tie her up with. “I promised him that if he let me be, I wouldn’t call the police,” she said. “So he didn’t tie me up and I didn’t call them.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Because I promised.”

  “Can’t there be an exception?” I asked. “I mean, do you really have to keep every single promise you make?”

  She said no but that he could have returned or sent one of his friends to rough her up. “I considered calling a private company and having them dust my neck for fingerprints, but I looked in the Yellow Pages and didn’t find any such business,” she said.

  November 4, 1983

  Raleigh

  I washed walls at Tracy’s today. Meanwhile, her maid Julia scrubbed the floors. Julia lives in the Washington Terrace apartments and will not put up with any mess from the people she works for. “It’s not worth the fuss,” she told me. “I will not babysit, and I will be paid extra for holidays, including Labor Day and Memorial Day.”

  After Tracy left, Julia called a number of people on the phone. To one person she described a man she had seen wearing a built-up shoe. “No, girl,” she said to the woman she was talking to, who apparently had questions about it, “you got to have a thing like that made special, and no, you do not got one foot tinier than the other.”