Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  I understood her fear, but is that really the way to sell a sofa bed?

  October 17, 2001

  New York

  There certainly are a lot of flags here. The first was the size of a place mat and waved from the taxi I took from JFK. The driver was Polish and said that “the thing” had made it hard for all foreigners. “I call it a thing,” he said, “because I don’t want to say the word for what it is. I won’t say his name neither because, to me, he has no name, he’s just a chickenshit motherfucker.” He said that at least Hitler had been a gentleman about things. He’d said he would start a war, and he did. “But the chickenshit, he didn’t give any warning at all. The motherfucker.”

  I saw flags glued to bumpers and waving from car antennas, and then, when we arrived in the city, I saw them everywhere, mainly in the windows of businesses. Many of the flags are on posters saying either UNITED WE STAND or WE WON’T LET THEM BREAK OUR SPIRIT. Had I known nothing about the events of September 11, I probably would have thought it was some sort of holiday. On my own, though, I wouldn’t have noticed the missing World Trade Center. I walked south a few times but looked at the spot where it used to be only because it was no longer there. On my way downtown I walked through Union Square, but, except for a few signs and posters, the memorial shrines are gone. Mainly it just seems a lot quieter than usual. When someone is loud or overly joyful people stare for a moment, pursing their lips, and then they turn away.

  October 18, 2001

  New York

  Yesterday’s cabdriver told me that anthrax had been piped through the air ducts at the White House and infected three hundred people. He said it with great authority, claiming to have heard it on the radio, but it turns out not to be true. The volume control is broken on my hotel television. I turned on CNN as soon as I got into the room and heard, along with everyone else on my floor, the newscaster screaming that thirty Washingtonians had been infected. She mentioned Tom Daschle’s office but said nothing about the White House. I’m finding it hard to get upset over anthrax. Yes, it’s bad, but I can’t help thinking it’s the work of an American nut. It’s not efficient enough to be a terrorist plot, unless, of course, the goal is simply to spread panic. I thought of watching the news before going to bed, but it was just too loud.

  I’ve gotten spoiled so it put me in a very bad mood when Air France told me I would not be upgraded to business class on yesterday’s flight. Steven had arranged a transfer using my frequent-flyer miles, but according to the woman at the counter, the airline was “not making that today.” The plane was half full and I was on the aisle of an empty, four-seat middle section. Before takeoff, a French couple left their assigned places and took two of the ones on my row, leaving an empty space between us. Moments later, the true owner of the far aisle seat arrived, so the couple moved down, making ours the only full row on the entire plane. I was seething. Then the man in front of me reclined his seat and I was reduced to six inches of lap room. I couldn’t even read a magazine. The movie was Cats and Dogs, but I couldn’t bend forward to get my headphones, so I just sat there, hating the French.

  Ronnie called last night to tell me I’d been a question on Jeopardy!, the answer being “He wrote the SantaLand Diaries.” I don’t know what the category was. She told me that a week after the bombing, members of her local chamber of commerce approached the businesses on her street, asking them to display a picture of the flag with the caption WE MOURN OUR VICTIMS. Ronnie agreed, and a few days later she was approached by the same people, who wanted her to display a sign reading HATE-FREE ZONE.

  She said she’d rather not and they got angry at her, thus betraying the spirit of the sign they were asking her to hang in her window. “Everyone else is doing it,” they said. “You’ve got the flag in the window, so what’s your problem?”

  The problem, she explained, was that it was just stupid. “Like, what,” she said, “some vengeful person is going to see the sign and say, ‘Whoops, I can’t buy shoes here. This is a hate-free zone’?”

  If things truly worked that way, she’d hang up a sign reading SHOPLIFTING-FREE ZONE or IMPULSE-BUYING ZONE. The businesses on either side of her agreed to display the new signs and now regard Ronnie’s shoe store as a haven for the disgruntled.

  October 19, 2001

  New York

  The flags are much larger uptown. On 5th Avenue they’re big enough to cover football fields. Walk down the street and you hear someone playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a trumpet, competing with the guy across the street who’s pounding out “America the Beautiful” on one of those Caribbean oil drums. What’s missing are the tourists who would normally stop to listen. It’s not exactly dead, but most of the people who are out and about seem to have business here. Shops are hurting, and when you enter a store the salesclerks fall all over you. Buying things you don’t want or need has become a patriotic duty, so I went to Barneys and got a tie.

  October 20, 2001

  Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

  Where do I start with Wilkes-Barre? My hotel is located on the town square, which is bedecked with hanging electric flags, these interspersed with regular cloth versions the size of beach towels. They hang from wires, lampposts, and a huge metal armature built to support the dozens of speakers used to broadcast a looped tape of patriotic songs and marches. I arrived to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was followed by “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and, strangely enough, “Dixie.” After these came a number of marches, including the song played when the president enters the room and something I recall hearing once on a coffee commercial. When finished, the tape returned to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and started all over again. The hotel feels like an indoctrination center.

  “Our mayor is crazy,” everyone says. “He’s completely lost his mind.” Wilkes-Barre is shut tight by six o’clock, but still the music blares, playing for an audience of no one.

  October 23, 2001

  Allentown, Pennsylvania

  As part of yesterday’s program I met with students at the local college. Normally I try to get out of things like that, but I wound up having a good time, mainly, I think, because of the teacher, a bearded forty-eight-year-old named Alec. He met me at the airport and after the reading we joined a few of his colleagues for dinner. One of them was a papal scholar who told us that in the eighteenth century, the Catholic Church canonized a dog. Alec asked if that would be Saint Bernard and, though it was corny, I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard.

  October 31, 2001

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  On CNN I watched a discussion about post-9/11 America. One of the panelists was the editor of Good Housekeeping, who reflected our new seriousness by placing the Stars and Stripes atop the traditional gingerbread house gracing the December cover. This is the sort of bullshit CNN is becoming famous for. I looked at this woman, thinking, Just…get the fuck off my TV.

  All Things Considered featured a report on a Kentucky man who was recently recognized as a hermit by the Catholic Church. The segment made it sound as if being a hermit were an occupation, like being an accountant or an engineer. “Tell me,” Linda Wertheimer said to a woman connected with the Kentucky archdiocese, “do you have any guidelines for hermits? Do your hermits live in proximity to other hermits?” The woman said that many of her hermits held part-time jobs as weavers, which, again, sounds so ancient. “Do you think this is on the rise?” Linda Wertheimer asked. “Being a hermit?”

  “Oh, definitely,” the woman said. “Especially now.”

  November 1, 2001

  Dearborn, Michigan

  I had the night off so went to the multiplex across the road from the hotel to see Joy Ride. The only people in the theater were me and an obese woman dressed like a witch. I’d seen her earlier in the lobby, noticed the tall black hat, and thought, That person is going to sit in front of me. And so she did, directly in front of me, though there were hundreds of empty seats for her to choos
e from. “Fucking…witch,” I whispered.

  November 2, 2001

  Dearborn

  I talked to Amy yesterday. She’d just gotten off the phone with Tiffany, who’s having a fight with her boyfriend. He can’t stand it when she pees in front of him so a few days ago, after sitting on the john and groaning, she dropped a bar of soap into the toilet. He thought she was defecating and what was supposed to be a joke soon escalated into a fight. Tiffany argues that because he never takes her out to dinner, this is the sort of girlfriend he deserves. It’s part of her new identity as a poor person, and it illustrates how she’s making things up as she goes along. Tiffany’s poverty is noble, but I guess this nobility doesn’t extend to her boyfriend. Somewhere along the line she’s decided that money has a direct correlation to manners, meaning that a minimum-wage girlfriend shits in view of her company while a salaried woman can afford to close the door. As a poor person, she’s decided to identify with Osama bin Laden, whom she sees as a Middle Eastern Robin Hood.

  She and Paul had a huge fight when he wore a turban and a fake beard to visit a neighbor. She told him he was being disrespectful and he called her a whore.

  November 20, 2001

  New York

  At Provence on Prince Street, our waiter led us to the kitchen, where we saw the restaurant’s prizewinning entry in the recent New York Restaurant Show. The theme was Tragedy, so the chef constructed a replica of the remnants of the World Trade Center surrounded by a trio of firemen. Made from animal fat and sugar, the sculpture literally embodied the term bad taste. “It was nicer last week,” the waiter reflected. “A few days ago it started to melt, and some of the walls have fallen in.”

  November 22, 2001

  New York

  The other day the president pardoned a turkey named Liberty. The two of them were pictured on the front page of the Times, the president joyous, the turkey indifferent. Something tells me she would have been eaten had her name been Chris or Becky. Instead of being served for Thanksgiving, she’ll be sent to a petting zoo.

  Late last night Hugh and I walked up Central Park West to watch them blowing up the balloons for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. In the 1930s Macy’s would cut them free and pay a reward for their return. It sounded like a nice idea, but by the second year they were being brought back with bullet holes in them, shot down by people desperate for reward money. In the past, you could step up close and watch the inflation, but now they block off the streets, either for security or the fear of lawsuits. We got as close as we could, but it wasn’t very satisfying.

  November 23, 2001

  New York

  Dad called last night to say, “You looked terrible.” He’d seen my Letterman appearance and was angry that I hadn’t worn a bow tie. “I told you a hundred times. Hell, I even gave you the ties and still you didn’t listen to me.” My shoes were a disappointment as well. “Jesus, what were you doing up there? You had no personality at all.” It’s Dad’s opinion that a bow tie enhances everything you say, elevates it into a language of elegance. With my brown shoes and knit English tie, I looked common, unspecial, boring. “God, I just…want to shake you.”

  November 25, 2001

  Paris

  On WNYC I listened to a report informing us that New York’s paranoid schizophrenics were having a difficult time coming to terms with the events of September 11. It was another example of something we probably could have figured out for ourselves. The reporter interviewed the tenants of a halfway house, people convinced that the hijacked planes had been aiming for them personally. The solution, as with everything else, is counseling, counseling, counseling.

  December 13, 2001

  Paris

  On Friday we’re supposed to receive our first euros, which will come in little 100-franc packets distributed by the post office and the Bank of France. I say “supposed to” because both the post office and the Bank of France are threatening to strike starting Friday morning. Apparently this euro business is making them work too hard, and before the program’s even started, they’ve decided they need a raise. Elections are coming up so this year the strikes are even heavier than before. All of them want to get their licks in before the new administration.

  December 17, 2001

  Budapest, Hungary

  The Eyewitness Travel Guide describes Budapest as a glittering jewel—“the Paris of the East.” On closer inspection, the book is full of errors. It reports, for example, that in winter the city gets only two and a half hours of sunlight a day and cranks the figure up to eight for the months of June, July, and August. I’d expected it to get dark at around ten a.m., but it turned out we had light until four in the afternoon. What they probably meant to say was that each evening, the city endures two and a half weeks of darkness. The nights feel impossibly long here, partly because it’s cold, but mainly because things are so poorly lit. Everything not pictured in our guidebook fades away once the sun sets.

  It’s as if the country has run out of both paint and lightbulbs. When people leave their apartment buildings—most of which are missing great patches of their facades—we peek into the grim, peeling foyers. They burn brown coal in Budapest, and everything is coated with soot. You just want to put the entire city in a bathtub and take to it with a wire brush.

  I thought our hotel rating was another typo until I realized it had been judged by a different standard. I think in Hungary they give a star for electricity, a star for heat, a star for running water, and so on. The fourth star signifies that the Astoria has cable TV. They boast forty channels, not mentioning that twenty-three of them broadcast the exact same programs. Our hotel is fronted in scaffolding, and our rooms offer a view of a mangy, narrow side street. The one thing they excel at here is stoking the furnace. It’s below zero outdoors, while inside our rooms we could roast chickens by leaving them on the nightstand. There’s a large group of French people at the hotel and I heard one of the women saying she’s so heat-swollen that her rings no longer fit.

  December 21, 2001

  Paris

  Gretchen’s plane was an hour late and landed at de Gaulle alongside three other flights from the United States. It took a while for her to get through passport control, and while waiting, I watched other travelers reunite with their people. Beside me was a family of Americans who’d talk in English and then launch into perfect French, the kids’ phrases ending with slangy quois. I got the idea they’d lived here for quite a while and were waiting for family members who’d gone home to the States for college.

  When the young people appeared, their parents would rush forward—crying, most often. The hugging and kissing that ensued was normal, but I think the tears were for September 11.

  “I’m just…I’m just so glad you’re OK,” one woman said.

  Her son had arrived from Houston. “Well, I’m glad you’re…glad,” he said, embarrassed by the attention.

  Don called last night, and during the course of the conversation, he forgot my name. “So Pietsch said, ‘I don’t know that we can give…can give…can give…Sedaris both the audio rights and the ten percent.’”

  I was thinking he could have solved the problem by using the word you, figuring the discussion probably pertained to the person he was calling. When he forgets other people’s names, I normally help him out, but it seemed more awkward when the name was my own. “Oh, Lord,” he said, “this is going to be a tough day.”

  December 29, 2001

  Paris

  Hugh made me a belated-birthday cake, decorated with the candles Patsy gave us for Christmas. When told to make a wish, I settled back in my chair, realizing I should have given it some prior thought. One option was an apartment in London, but in the end I wished for the opposite: the absence of things. Over the past few years I’ve fallen deeper into the luxury pit. I used to get pleasure from sitting at the pancake house with a new library book, but now I mainly buy things and work crossword puzzles. In my twenties and early thirties I was able to disguise my shallown
ess, but now it’s written all over my shopping bags. On my forty-fifth birthday I looked across the table at the director Mary Zimmerman and thought, That’s what I want, to be like her. I wanted the change to be immediate. Oh, but first there were perfumed soaps to be opened.

  Gretchen went to the National Museum of Natural History with her friend Patty, and I walked alone to the zoo, the little one at the Jardin des Plantes. I hadn’t been in years and it was a good day for it. In the reptile house I saw two small children confined to wheelchairs. Both wore glasses and were pushed by their fathers. Crocodiles dozed on the concrete shores of their pen, and I noticed a number of dead cockroaches floating in the water. I saw a lot of unintentional animals yesterday, mainly birds and insects taking advantage of the free food. The keepers had just fed the vultures, and the floor of their cage was littered with what looked like a medium-size dog chopped in half with a hatchet. I thought vultures were always hungry, but rather than eat, they stared toward the big cats, where a man in a hat chipped away at a block of marble. You often see people drawing and painting at the zoo, but I’d never seen anyone with a chisel, sculpting.