The Authentic Life: Glee

Guess what?

Last night I had dinner with David Sedaris: Yes, THE David Sedaris! I suppose it was inevitable. I mean you can’t write diligently for eight whole months and not expect to hobnob with modern literary greats. As dinners go, it was fairly unremarkable; some type of baked chicken with green beans, but still, you can’t beat the company. Oh, Paul was there too. But he seemed less than impressed.

But I have gotten ahead of my story. Let me take a step back. The evening began with a reading at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. It turns out that people in New Hampshire really seem to like David Sedaris. The place was packed. Never having heard him speak publicly, I really didn’t know what to expect. So when he quickly marched on stage, eyes down, without much fanfare, to say that it was less than climatic would be an understatement.

“Hello, and thank you for coming” He sounds like a Smurf that just huffed helium.

I let out a loud laugh. When Paul squeezed my leg and told me to shut-up, I realized that this was not part of the act and that I was, in fact, the only one laughing. It was a rough start.

He redeemed himself after reading a few new essays and some quotes from his diary and then told us a joke:

A man is in bed sleeping when he hears a knock at his door. Angrily, the man says to himself “Who would be knocking at my door at this time of night?” He opens the door and there is a small snail standing at his door step. “Hello” the little snail says cheerfully, “I’d like to talk to you about purchasing some magazines!” The man kicks the snail as hard as he can. The tiny snail goes flying across the yard.

Two years later, the man is lying in bed and hears a knock at his door again. He opens the door and there is that same small snail.

“What the fuck was that about?” The snail says.

This time I laughed my ass off with everyone else.

But the real point to my story is that I sat across the table from David Sedaris while we had dinner. Well, I suppose I couldn’t really say “we” as he was doing all of the eating and truth be told, he had devoured most of it before we even got there. But you see the line to talk to him at the book signing was about an hour long.

As we waited in line and moved much like the snail from his joke, Paul said with a disgusted look on his face “He talks with a mouth full of food. Now I know why he moved to Europe. Look at those teeth.”

We watched as a woman with her entire library of David Sedaris books told him her life story. He seemed like a cat that was getting tired of playing with a ball of string, only looking up occasionally as if to say “Ok, I’ll bat this thing one more time”, while stuffing another bite of green beans into his mouth. The poor woman did not take a breath while speaking.

“If you act like that when we finally get to speak to him, I’m going to slap you.” Paul said.

Finally we reached the table. I was calm and collected, determined not to make a fool of myself as I handed him my book.

“Hi.” Mr. Sedaris said.

“Hi, I’m Bill and this is Paul!” Now my voice sounded strangely Smurf-like.

“You guys are together? How long have you been together?”

“Four years, well we’ve been married for one and a half years!” I said

“Where did you get married?” He asked.

“Boston, well Ashby, it’s a little town west of Boston. But originally I’m from North Carolina, but I moved up here. Actually, I’m from Greensboro. Your brother Paul refinished my Brother John’s hardwood floors. Your brother has the same name as my husband!” Oh God, shut-up, shut-up, shut-up, Bill. I could see Paul looking at me out of the corner of his eyes willing me to shut-up too. I flinched while waiting for that slap that he had promised me.

I tried speaking again. “Does Hugh get upset when you write about him?”

“No” he simply replied.

“Are you and Hugh going to get married?” I tried another angle

“NO!” He said this as if someone had just pissed into his green beans.

“Do you guys like Glee?” He asked as his eyes lit up.

“Um, sure” I said.

“I thought a new episode was going to be on this week, but apparently not for two more weeks. Rachel and Finn and oh, what’s that kid’s name?” Mr. Sedaris said.

“Kurt!” I said this too quickly, I thought to myself. This was not the conversation I expected to have with my fellow writer. We both grew up in North Carolina and are ex-pats, well most North Carolinians consider Boston a foreign country, and write about our witty Gay lives. But he has chosen the lowest common denominator and is talking to me about Glee.

“Kurt, yes that’s it! They’re all going to have sex in the next episode!” He says with, well, glee, as he absent-mindedly writes something in my book.

“I’d pay to see that Blaine totally nude.” He continues and looks up at me like a cat about to pounce on a mouse. I look at Paul and his eyes say “Move it along, Dameron.”

“Well, thank you Mr. Sedaris” I say slightly disappointed and pick up my book as we walk away. I open the book and read the inscription: “To Bill and Paul, 2 gay homosexuals who are gay and do homosexual things, David Sedaris.”

I look at Paul and say “What the fuck was that about?”

There is a “Don’t say Gay” bill in the Tennessee senate that prohibits K-8 teachers from discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality and you know what, dammit? I agree with it. No, no, hear me out. Hell, I waited until I was 42 to come out, these kids can wait until ninth grade! But, I don’t think it goes far enough. Really! I have read the bill and honestly, we need to be a little more specific here or some activist judge is going to rip through this thing like last week’s panty hose. No, we need to protect the teachers from accidently discussing anything Gay.

So in a show of bi-partisanship cooperation, big bow, I have graciously made a list of “touchy” subjects that might lead young minds to think of Gay or Homo things. And this list took quite a while. Have you Googled the word Gay? Yikes! There were some things that shocked even me. But let’s start.

Ok, the 1890’s are totally taboo as it was known as the Gay 90’s. 1890-1900 off the list, no questions. Gay Paris? Hello! France, no talkie. And anyway, we’re calling them “Freedom Fries” now. The 1930’s through 1940’s were full of the word gay in musicals; another decade that should not be tolerated. I’m afraid that leaves some holes in History, but we can’t have a teacher accidently discussing world word II and turning young minds gay. But, we still have Greece! Yay for Greece! Oh, wait, there’s that whole Lesbos island thing and I have seen Spartacus. You know what I’m talking about: wink, wink. And the original Olympics with all those oiled up muscular young naked bodies? Greco-Roman wrestling? No, that’s it! No history. We have to be serious now.

Alright that was tough, no history. Science should be OK, but let’s review. First, if someone says Homo, what do you think of? Am I right? Homogenization. And if you talk about that, you have to talk about Pasteurization. Slippery slope. Louis Pasteur. Au revoir! He was French anyway. Homo sapiens? OK, no anthropology. Prisms and weather gets tricky because you have to talk about rainbows and we all know the gays stole the rainbow and as soon as that thing gets projected on the board, they’re going to be singing Judy Garland show tunes and clamoring for a gay straight alliance group. There was this scientific discovery of over 1,500 animal species that practice homosexuality! Did you hear about it? Who turned the animals Gay? I’m going to get all Whitney Houston on your ass: Hell to the No for science!

History. Science. Gone! End of discussion. Literature? Every British poet gets tossed. And don’t get me started on Walt Whitman, “We two boys together clinging, one the other never leaving?” Literature, you’re outta here!

Current Events. OK, there’s this really bad stuff going on in Japan and when you think of Japan? That’s right, Geisha’s. Technically it has the word Gay in it. I feel bad for the Japanese, but if they’re going to turn my children Gay…Lebanon: Did you see Glee? Poor slow Britney calls Santana Lebanese, thinking it means Lesbian. Ha ha! And to lighten things up here, I have to tell you a funny story. I saw a poster advertising a “Lebanese food festival” and I said to myself “What are they going to serve, fish tacos?” Ok, that was crude. But you get my drift. No talk of the Middle East. That’s some f'ed up shit anyway and it’s too much for young minds to handle. Forgive my French. Damn, I mentioned France again. See how difficult this is?

OK, History, Science, Current Events. What’s left? Physical Education? Young boys and showers? Fuggetdaboutit! There is math, but honestly, I was never good in math and when you start talking about the “universal language” of math, some poor slob is going to think that “love” is the universal language.

Let’s bring back Religion! Screw separation of church and state. What we need are some good old fashioned God-fearing children. Oh crap, Leviticus. As they say, one bad apple. I am a father. If I tell my children NOT to do something, you know what they’re going to do, don’t you? Men lying with men. Can’t have it.

Whew! No History, Science, Physical Education, Math, Literature or finally religion (Like they would EVER let us talk about that…). Our children may be dim-witted, but thank God, they won’t be Gay!

p.s. If you want to thank the Tennessee Senator who created this bill, visit Stacey Campfield's blog here. Really, that's his name! I thought it was a drag queen's name too!