Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

I really think that good writers should be rewarded with sales. However, while I was waiting for the fireworks yesterday, I dropped by the local chain bookstore monstrosity and read this book, and then put it back on the shelf, so I’m trying to make myself feel better by telling you guys to go buy it.

If you have read any of David Sedaris’ other books (I can't recommed Me Talk Pretty One Day highly enough), then you certainly don’t need me telling you to go buy this book, just go do it. If you haven’t, I’m not sure what to tell you. Let’s see if this clears it up.

I saw his lecture a while back when he was on tour promoting a collection of short stories. The lecture series always provides a sign language interpreter. Ok, before I go on, this is pretty lurid, so hide the kids.

It’s a crime to paraphrase this man, but for the sake of praise, the basic story was that he is taking a taxi from the airport to his sister’s house and the driver figures out that Sedaris is gay. He tries to tell him that he needs to get a women, and hey, he’s got a wife and a woman on the side and that’s what a man needs, yadda yadda, ending with the suggestion that David needed to go home and watch some lesbian porn. Anyway, David kind of snaps at the driver, saying that no, he’s not going to do that. The conversation goes downhill.

When he gets to his sister’s house, she pulls out a great find from a garage sale or trash can or somewhere. It’s an old 70’s European porn magazine. They look though it, laughing like crazy. There’s a pictorial in it about, you guessed it, lesbians. But, there’s also a horse. And a blowjob. So, in the end, he actually went one better (or worse) than the driver’s suggestion.

Ok, so naturally, the story as he told it is infinitely funnier than my depiction, but here’s the best part of the whole thing. All the time he’s been telling the story, the sign language interpreter, as professional as she can be under the circumstances, is giving an account of the story.

In the beginning of the lecture, it seemed that she was trying to spell out the more explicit of Sedaris’ vocabulary, but when she got to the part with the horse, she was using broad gestures, that, well, I don’t know any sign language, but I think I understood what she was saying.

Looking back on that I’m not sure that that will sell anyone on Sedaris’ books. Maybe I should have written about the time he got a job at Macy’s as one of Santa’s elves. That was hilarious.