Speak For Yourself Noted writer to read in public, pee in pants. by Leonard Gill You've read him (Barrel Fever, Naked, Holidays on Ice). You've heard him (National Public Radio). Read him again in his latest collection, Me Talk Pretty One Day. But reach him at home in Paris on the brink of a booksigning tour and what you get merely reconfirms what you already knew. Him is David Sedaris, but don't call him the sharpest satirist going. The very idea he'll edit out in an instant, so you didn't read it here. Author's orders. Flyer: One thing first, it's not about you, and forget on or off the record. The bombshell rumor of the week says the star of Gladiator, Russell Crowe, is gay. True or false. David Sedaris: Oh, he's gotta be straight. He has to be? [Hesitation] I ... think ... so. [No hesitation] Who thinks he's gay? People. That's just one of those wishful-thinking things. There's nothing about him that would suggest to me that he is. I mean, did you see him at the Academy Awards? He was just scowling! He was with Jodie Foster. He's still trying to drop the pounds after The Insider. Um ... gosh. No, I think if he were gay he would have said to the director of Gladiator, "Can you give me one scene in a little metal skirt? A little leather skirt? Just one." Okay. Tell me what you do know: What will you be reading from your new book during this tour? Well, I don't like to read for too long. You know, in a bookstore people often don't have seats and it's going to be hot. And why would people want to stand up in a hot place and listen to somebody rattle on? But it'll be okay for me because on this tour I'll be wearing my "Stadium Pal." Stadium ... Pal. I was on a lecture tour a couple of months ago, and I'd had a bunch of coffee and tea in my hotel room. Then I went to read and after about 15 minutes realized that if I didn't pee I was going to die. There were 150 people in the audience. So I asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how rude it would be if I went to the bathroom. People gave it a 2, so I ran. I told this to somebody, and he said, "Oh, you ought to get a Stadium Pal." They sell it in football stadiums, and it's like an external catheter. It's like a condom that fits over your penis that's attached to a rubber tube that goes into a bag that you strap to your ankle. You can pee in your pants. I ordered one and I'm going to wear it on my book tour. It would be fun to just pee in front of a lot of people, and they'd never even know about it. This sounds like an essay in the works. Yeah, I'm going to write about it for Esquire. That's my goal on this trip: to check into a hotel and never flush the toilet. A couple of years ago a journalist described your approach to writing and your career as "passive-aggressive"? What did that mean? Passive-aggressive? I've never done anything to promote myself in any way. People who do that -- and New York's full of them -- kind of scare me. So when I moved to New York I made it a point never to. I just wrote every day and figured, oh, maybe one day somebody will call me and ask if I have a book I want to get published. I wanted certain things, of course, but I didn't see how knocking on people's doors or shoving things in people's faces would make that happen. I figured the best thing to do was work as hard as I could so I'd be prepared when that phone call came. And I just kind of always had faith that at some point before I died the call would come. It did, but since moving to France is there anything about America you miss? [No hesitation] Cops. You miss policemen? Cops, the TV show. They have The Simpsons here, but no Cops. They have The Simpsons, in French? Yes, but it's very hard to understand. Speaking of hard, ever have trouble coming up with something to write? All the time. What do you do? Um, I just keep trying, I suppose. I'm writing something right now for "Morning Edition" and it needs to have something to do with France, with living here. And I'm having a real hard time coming up with something. I can't write about what the French people as a whole are about because I don't know. My French isn't good enough. Plus, I'm just not one of those people who can look at a large group of people and be able to say anything definitive about them one way or another. So I'm just sort of stuck with writing about my own experiences, which I do every day in my diary. But there's good reason most of it's in my diary because no one else would care. Can't you just walk out the door and count on something that strikes you as asinine? This seems to happen to you a lot. The problem is if I look for it too hard it's guaranteed not to happen. But you write every day. Yeah. I get up every morning and I work 'til about 4 in the afternoon and then I go to the movies. Still working on a typewriter? My boyfriend was in the U.S. and he brought me back a computer, which I'd never asked for -- one of those i-book things. I was angry, resentful, because what I wanted were cartons of cigarettes. So I just kind of pouted. And then I was working on something and it wasn't working out and I thought, I wonder what would happen if I tried it on that ... thing. And boy, it took no time at all. I work on a typewriter in the morning, then I switch to the computer in the afternoon. Don't tell me you've started e-mailing. No. My boyfriend has that, so he never gets any letters. He hasn't gotten a letter in months. And that's what happens. People don't send you letters anymore. People come to visit and they'll send me an e-mail saying thanks. THAT DOESN'T COUNT! You're suppose to write a thank-you letter. If someone's father dies, you don't send them an e-mail. While we're on the topic of technology, you don't like being photographed, do you? [No hesitation] I HATE IT! But you don't mind performing in public. No, because I'm a ham. I don't like being photographed because I don't like what I look like and a photograph is proof. If you shave one day, you can say I don't really look like this. But if you spend hours having your picture taken -- hours -- then it's pretty obvious that, yeah, you do look like that. For the latest book, I had to have my picture taken and it was just ... humiliating. I would get to the studio and they would do things like have a bucket of soapy water and say, "Okay, we'd like you to get on your hands and knees and clean the bathroom floor and hold the book in one hand and the sponge with the other." I don't want to be difficult, so I think, okay, I'll do what they tell me to do. One time this guy mounted a sheet of glass in these holders, took a sip of milk, spat onto the glass, then said, "I want you to press your face against that and I'll take a picture from the other side." What for? So I'd have my face all squashed up. It'd be all wet so it'd look grosser. The photographer doesn't even read the book, and I don't expect anyone to read the book. But that's not the problem. Some art director somewhere decides, okay, we need to convey the "spirit" of this book so we need him, meaning me, to be really wacky. I'm not an actor and I'm not a comedian and I'm not wacky. I just hate it, but I don't want to be confrontational. I don't want people to be mad at me. But if you say, look, this just really isn't for me, then they get mad, like I've ruined their day. I mean, really, God help us from a photographer with an "idea." There's nothing scarier. You need to start putting your foot down. When I go on these book tours, I have an escort waiting for me at the airport -- I never learned to drive -- so there's always somebody. But even if I did drive, there'd be someone to take me where I need to go. And I've been surprised at what these people are expecting. They expect me to be a monster! On my last tour I got off the plane and had a little bag with me. I took the bag, threw it on the floor, said, "Pick that up," and kept walking. I turned around and my escort had picked it up and was running after me. I was, like, kidding. What was sad is that she didn't say, "I'm not going to fucking pick up your own bag!" Maybe some people are used to being stepped on. I'm the one used to being stepped on! You're supposed to put your foot on my neck, not the other way round, or I wouldn't have anything to write about. I assume you're prepared to watch where you smoke when you're back in the States. Ugh. I tell you, that is the great thing about the French. I was coming back from the U.S. You get off the plane and you light a cigarette first thing. We were sitting around waiting for our luggage, smoking, and this American woman comes up to these French people and says, "No smoking. There's a sign right there. You're not supposed to be smoking here." I was, like, fuck you. You don't go to someone else's country and tell them to put out their cigarettes. Know what I mean? You can't do that. It's not your home. Can you imagine a day without a cigarette? No. I started with my French periodontist last week -- I hadn't gone to a dentist in 13 years -- my teeth are fucked up. I have this gum disease, and I said to the periodontist, "Well, do I have to quit smoking?" And she said, "Oh, don't be dramatic." Are the people at your publisher, Little, Brown, still expecting a novel out of you? They are. I have 70 pages of something, but I have a 10-page attention span. I know it's good "to stretch" and all, but at the same time, there's a point in your life when you say this is what I do. But they always want you to write a novel, which I don't understand at all. I guess they think if you write one you'll be respectable. But that's something I don't ever expect: respect. I don't even fantasize about it. It's beyond my scope. Part of me is saying, well, I wonder ... but I get bored with something by the first 10 pages. As bored as you were as an art student in college? I'm captivated by anything that will tell me a story. A painting can tell a story. Or a sculpture. But I don't care about spatial relationships. Know what I mean? Color. Anything like that. When I was in art school I would think, Is it just me? I didn't give a fuck about any of that stuff. I bought a painting at a flea market last weekend, though. It's like 150 years old. I thought it was a little girl standing in a drawing room with this great dress on and a rifle over her shoulder. And then the woman who sold it to me explained that it was a boy. So I kind of lost interest. When I thought it was a girl with a rifle over her shoulder it told me stories right off the bat. And it made me invent stories. But it's the stories you don't invent that have made you. They also keep you traveling. On this upcoming tour I'm going to 30 cities in 28 days. After a while it all blurs, but I do want to wear my external catheter and shorts one day. The scary thing is you have to tape it, and that doesn't seem like an area you'd really want tape on. But they sent me a "sizer," which you have to print out, then cut these circles, then put your penis into the circles. The Extra-Large, I swear, was as big as my arm. I'm thinking, who is ordering those? Horses? I want my hands on this company's files. [No hesitation]