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from page I
is that what you’re saying?
(laughs) That’s exactly what I’m saying.
i also love the story about the
straight cab driver who kept pressur
ing you to discuss your sex life and
hook up with lesbians.
It’s my belief that all men
know that cab driver. I was in
Toronto and I went to a barber
shop and I got my hair cut and
the guy, who was Italian, asked
me where I live and I said I live
in France and he said, “Do you
get a lot of pussy in France? Do
you get a lot of French pussy?”
Does that ever happen to you?
It’ll be a barber or a cab driver
and part of me is like, “Can’t
you tell I’m gay?”
I think you should get
into cabs wearing a bib
that instead of a picture of a lobster
has a picture of a penis.
(laughs) That’s a good one. (laughs more) Oh
goodness.
Have you considered being a Santa’s
elf again? Would you revisit the
experience?
No, I did it for two years and that was kind of
enough for me. It would seem gimmicky. The
reason that [“Santaland Diaries”] story
worked was I just needed a job and they hired
me. I didn’t get the job to write about it. I feel
like when you do things specifically to write
about them you’re trapped into writing about
them. You’re under pressure to find what’s
interesting about them. I would rather have all
that come about organically.
Now that you have mined most of
your life for material, how do you go
about filling up the well with fresh
experiences for stories? Do you ever
turn to Craigslist for ideas? There’s
crackpot everything on there.
No, I-don’t know anything about it. I saw the
internet for the first time last September
and Tgot my very first email about 10 days
ago. The first one in my life. Hugh set some
thing up so I could get email. I can sort of
understand what people are talking about
— email is good if you don’t want to talk to
people. Like sometimes you call and some
body’s girlfriend gets on and you have to
say, “How are you doing?” You’d just as soon
leave a message. I can see that. The internet
is so new to me. I didn’t realize you could
just go on and lie about people. I can get on
a computer right now and write “Michelle
Obama said to me she hates Jews.”
Somebody called me the other day, “Oh
there’s that thing on Gawker that you try to
pick guys up during your readings.” I’ve
never done that. Ever, ever, ever. I will have
gifts for teenage girls when I go on tour
because I’m always honored when they
come and it’s fun to make a big deal out of a
teenager. I take the shampoo and condition
ers from my room, and yesterday I went to
the museum and got a bunch of cheap
bracelets. I’ll often talk about how pretty she
is, like,“It must be so good to be you, and
you’re what guys in prison dream about.”
But a guy? I won’t talk like that to a teenage
boy because I don’t want it to be weird or
uncomfortable. Early on I saw somebody on
a book tour try to pick someone up from the
audience. They respect you and are in awe of
you so it would be weird to put any move on
them. Plus I’m involved with somebody. So I .
was appalled because I’ve never
done a thing like that.
Anything else online that has
surprised you so far?
I went on YouTube to hear Billie
Holiday and then it said, what do you
think of this? It’s Billie Holiday singing
“Strange Fruit” in 1955. What do you
mean what do you think of it? Who
the fuck cares? Are you going to give a
thumbs-down? And then someone
commented, “Oh she needs to take
singing lessons from Diana Ross,
there’s somebody who knows how to
sing.” And then someone below that
responded, “Shut up asshole,” and the
other person said, “You’re an asshole, you shut
up.” I didn’t know that stuff existed! It’s like
talking during a concert — shut the fuck up,
Billie Holiday is singing!
Does your sister Amy pressure you
into putting her in more of your
stories?
I gave her good lines in this book. She has the
best lines. But no, no she doesn’t. I’ve written
about Amy before but 1 never said she was an
actress, because if you write someone is an
actress they become suspicious of their
motives. Oh, that person can’t really be behav
ing that way because they want attention. And
Amy is not really that kind of a person.
During last year’s controversy over
fabrication in memoirs, an article in
The New Republic lumped you in as
one of the guilty. Your thoughts on
that, a year later?
The [author of that article] is an editor at
Outside Magazine, he fact-checks, fixes gram
mar in stories about camping. This guy went
to North Carolina with my book “Naked,” and
this was a book in which a cat is hit by a car,
dies, comes back to life and speaks English
— and that’s the book he’s fact-checking. The
things he came up with, like I got the building
style wrong in the mental hospital where I
volunteered when I was 15.1 don’t really feel
like he came up with anything. If it was a
■ story on the styles of buildings, of mental
hospitals in the United States, then I think
that would be pretty glaring but people don’t
read me for that. I’m a humorist. So I guess I
was surprised.
You have homes in London and
France, where same-sex civil unions
exist. Have you been keeping an eye
on the gay marriage struggle here in
the U.S.A.?
I guess it’s one of those things where when
people oppose it I don’t understand what
they’re talking about. I watched this Chris
Rock concert and he was talking about how
people say gay marriage threatens the sanc
tity of straight marriage but Michael
Jackson got married. There are shows like “I
Want to Marry a Millionaire.” How sacred
can it be? It’s just something 1 don’t under
stand the opposition to. I don’t understand
how, if two lesbians want to exchange bad
poetry on a mountain top, that would
FROM THE P A G ;E S
Sedaris releases essay collection
threaten the marriage of the people who
grew up next door to me in North Carolina.
I don’t get it.
Any plans to get married or a union
with Hugh?
We’ve been together for 17 years. I know
straight people who just don’t see the need
to get married, they just live together, and I
think we’re like that. That said, if you hand
ed me a piece of paper and said you can
save 18 cents by signing this piece of paper,
I would sign the piece of paper. In France
right now they have civil unions but Hugh
and I haven’t done it yet so if I were to die
tomorrow he would have to pay 60 percent
inheritance tax on our apartment. It would
go down to 30 percent if we had a civil
union. It saves money so I would do it
because it saves money.
What else is in the works?
1 just have my hands full on this tour and I
have a book I turn in a year from now, little
fables about animals. It’s all new fiction. I
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JUNE 28.2008 • Q-NOTES I 5