Telling It Like It Is

Didn't know how I could have missed this book. I blame THE PILE (of too many unread). 'Naked' by David Sedaris. The stories get a bit heavy here and there. There's humor, pain and most of all, honest. David Sedaris dug deep within himself to talk about...himself and his family. (Reviews here, here and here.)

It's an old one published in 1997, a collection of 17 essays detailing his years growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Like what the title suggested, the stories are starkly honest about his family life, a grandmother who no one cares about except his father, his sister's marriage and eventually his mother's death from cancer. But you should know that the final essay in the collection takes its title- 'Naked' and that talks about the author's visit to a nudist colony. An excerpt that's the last paragraph of the story when he left the colony and saw other clothed humans,

It was as though I'd received the true version of the X-ray specs I'd ordered as a child. The glasses were advertised in the back pages of comic books and promised the ability to see through clothing. I'd counted the days until they arrived and was clinically disappointed to discover that I'd been cheated. These were black plastic frames supporting cardboard lenses. The eyeballs were rendered to appear bloodshot, and the pupils were tiny peepholes backed by plain red acetate. The glasses, when worn, gave me the look of someone both enthused and exhausted by what he saw. They suggested the manic weariness inherent in their promise, capturing the moment when the sheen wears off and your newfound gift becomes something more closely resembling a burden.

The author's coming-out story as a homosexual male in 'I Like Guys' is poignant. Which coming-out story isn't? If you've a problem with reading about that or reading books written by gay authors, then that's your problem. David Sedaris was a teenager with growing pains. He went to summer camp in Greece and had wanted to find a girlfriend, then the guy who he had a crush- Jason, humiliated him with a note he stole from his bed that wrote 'I LIKE GUYS'.

...when our dormitory counselor arrived for inspection shouting, "What are you, a bunch of goddamned faggots who can't make your beds?" 

I giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot. It was the others he needed to worry about. I saw Jason laughing, too, and soon we took to mocking this counselor, referring to each other first as "faggots" and then as "stinking faggots." We were "lazy faggots" and "sunburned faggots" before we eventually became "faggoty faggots." We couldn't protest the word, as that would have meant acknowledging the truth of it. The most we could do was embrace it as a joke. Embodying the term in all its clichéd glory, we minced and pranced about the room for each other's entertainment when the others weren't looking. 

I found myself easily outperforming my teachers, who had failed to capture the proper spirit of loopy bravado inherent in the role. Faggot, as a word, was always delivered in a harsh, unforgiving one befitting those weak or stupid enough to act upon their impulses. We used it as a joke, an accusation, and finally as a dare.

There was a hilarious description in 'The Drama Bug' when the author decided he liked Shakespeare's language enough to try to use it in regular conversation. OMG. We tried that in school too and it was the most annoying thing ever. And the first time he used it at home, it was just incredible.

"Perchance, fair lady, thou dost think me unduly vexed by the sorrowful state of thine quarters," I said to my mother as I ran the vacuum cleaner over the living-room carpet she was inherently too lazy to bother with. "These foul specks, the evidence of life itself, have sullied not only thine shag-tempered mat but also thine character. Be ye mad, woman? Were it a punishable crime to neglect thine dwellings, you, my feeble-spirited mistress, would hang from the tallest tree in penitence for your shameful ways. Be there not garments to launder and iron free of turbulence? See ye not the porcelain plates and hearty mugs waiting to be washed clean of evidence? Get thee to thine work, damnable lady, and quickly, before the products of thine very loins raise their collected fists in a spirit born both of rage and indignation, forcibly coaxing the last breath from the foul chamber of thine vain and upright throat. Go now, wastrel, and get to it!" 

My mother reacted as if I had whipped her with a short length of yarn. The intent was there, but the weapon was strange and inadequate. I could tell by the state of my room that she spent the next day searching my dresser for drugs.