I don’t remember how it was that I came to first read a book by David Sedaris (besides some vague recollection of randomly stumbling upon his books in bookstore) but I do remember when I first read a book of his. It was in a  hotel in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia in the summer of 2001. My husband and I had gone back to the east coast to visit family and so I could collect the things I’d put in storage in Halifax. I was luxuriating in the aptly-named heavenly bed and annoying Mike with my staccato bouts of laughter as I read Me Talk Pretty One Day. From then on, I was a fan.

Every so often I would check his appearances site to see if he was going to be in my area, whether I was living in Atlanta, Providence or Charlotte. But I was always too late (he’d been there last week) or I’d be out of town or otherwise unable to go. I consoled myself with audiobook versions and found that I enjoyed listening to Sedaris read his stories even more than I liked reading them myself. I even turned my husband into a fan. But after 8 years of  never seeing him live, I was beginning to think I was destined never to do so. Then, just a few weeks ago, I happened to visit his site again and saw he was coming to Atlanta on April 15th. “Buy Tickets Now!” the site said, and I gleefully clicked over to the Ticketmaster site, entering in my event info, only to have “no results found” come back repeatedly. Then I called Ticketmaster, who informed me that the show was sold out. Argh, not again!

But then my husband, my sweet, resourceful husband, began scouting Craigslist for some ticket-holders who were forced for whatever reason to sell their tickets. Lucky for us, we benefited from someone else’s misfortune (aka out-of-town business meeting) and scored a couple of lower mezzanine tickets for the event. Yes!

Which all leads me up to tonight, the night of the performance. I’d debated about bringing along my books, since I own them all, but foolishly thought that with an audience of approximately 2,700 people, there’s no way he’d be doing book signings. So we get there, and what do I see? A table set up for book signings, of course! No David Sedaris though, as apparently he was stuck in the ubiquitous Atlanta traffic. A Cappella Books was there, however, selling copies of his books. I figured I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to actually talk with Sedaris, so I bought a hardbound copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I justified since it is my sentimental favorite and I only had  the paperback version at home. We were told that he would be signing books after the show and so we went to our seats, wondering if we’d recognize any of the essays he’d share and waiting anxiously for the lights to dim. Finally, after a brief and mostly redundant introduction, David Sedaris came on stage. He was shorter than I thought he’d be. But that could just have been a trick of the stage and our location, as we were seated just close enough so we could just barely but not quite make out his facial expressions.

He regaled us with an hour or so of stories, beginning with the pre- and post-Obama election discussions he encountered around his home in Normandy and elsewhere abroad (no one believed we’d do it), and including other ruminations such as his trip to Australia and his encounter with the strange but wonderful kookaburra (which, now that I see photos of them, don’t look nearly as intimidating as they sounded), random and hilarious diary entries, observations on people who exaggerate the pronunication of certain foreign words (his favorite was an otherwise monotonous professor who said words like “Nicaragua” like some bad Antonio Banderas impersonator), and how his father liked to walk around the house in his underwear.

All too quickly, he was done. But before he opened it up to a short Q&A, he said that he would do something he typically does during a performance, and that’s recommend a book. Actually, in this case, an audiobook: Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. He then went on to play a portion of one of the monologues, A Lady of Letters with Patricia Routledge (Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances for my fellow Britcom fans). The audience Q&A included questions about his quitting smoking (apparently it doesn’t really bother him), whether he Twitters (no, he doesn’t) and if he still uses a typewriter to type his manuscripts (no, he finally switched to the laptop Hugh bought him several years ago).

As soon as he walked off stage, Mike and I were making our way down to the lobby to the book signing area where I was about the 20th person in line. The whole time I’m in line I’m thinking of what I’m going to say. I know he doesn’t just sign the book and wave you on; David Sedaris is nicer than that. He’ll actually engage you in a conversation and spend a few minutes talking to you. Meeting David Sedaris is like meeting a rock star, or the literary equivalent of one; I was so nervous that I’d get up there and sound like an idiot. I decided I’d thank him for the book suggestion since during my time in line I’d remembered that Alan Bennett was the author of The Uncommon Reader, a book I thoroughly enjoyed, and see where it went from there.

The two women in front of me were talking to each other and texting on their iPhones, or more accurately, Twittering on their iPhones. For the 45 minutes or so  I stood in line behind them I got to hear for about 30 minutes what one of them had been entering on Twitter during the show, what she was entering as we stood in line, and what she was planning to enter later on. Now, no offence to all you Twitter fans, but I don’t really get the appeal. Granted, this is coming from the woman who took several years to latch onto the idea of keeping a blog and only got onto Facebook last year. But I digress. When they got up to talk with David, the Twitter-happy one of course gushed about her Twittering and even typed away on her keypad as she talked to him. Now I know I can be a bit of a fuddy-duddy, but to me, that’s about as rude as talking on a cell phone while interacting with someone else in person.

Anyway, finally it’s my turn and I get up there and tell him that I don’t Twitter either, that I can just manage to keep up with blogging. He asks me what I blog about and when I tell him books, he asks me what I’m reading. Now, you’d think I’d be prepared for this question. I get asked it often enough. But no, in front of David Sedaris, my mind goes blank and I desperately try to recall what I’ve been reading lately. I could have mentioned any of the books I’m currently in the midst of: the quirky short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Craig Thompson’s graphic travelogue Carnet de Voyage, the sci-fi novel The Sparrow, or even the fact that I’ve been slogging through Great Expectations for over a month. But no, none of those come to mind. What does? Fannie freakin’ Flagg’s Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, which I’m trying to read by tomorrow night’s library book club. Now there’s probably nothing wrong with Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven (I’m only two chapters in) and I’m sure Fannie Flagg is a wonderful woman and writer, but I would have preferred to come off as a bit less fluffy than that. For all I know he heard the name of the book and wondered what some conservative fundamentalist was doing at one of his shows. So while he doesn’t pursue that any further, he does ask me if I’d read The Lazarus Project, which no, I haven’t, but it is on my list and I did order it for the library. He raves about it for a few moments, saying that he was a little leery of reading it, thinking that it would be over his head but that he absolutely loved it. So that book has immediately shifted from my ‘want to read’ list to ‘must read’ pile. I got my wits back about me and made the comment about Alan Bennett, and then we talked for a couple minutes about audiobooks and he made another recommendation (writing it down for me so I’d remember – yeah, I’m keeping the note) for Tom Courtney’s Pretending to Be Me, which is a piece on poet Philip Larkin. My only recollection of Larkin is that he came across to me back in my early twenties as a stodgy crankpot, but that could just have been youthful arrogance. Another recommendation to add to my list.

That was it for our conversation, which lasted all of about 3 minutes. It was an absolutely fabulous evening and I hope I don’t have to wait another 8 years to hear him perform again.

Oh, as for the title of this post? Well, I was aware that Sedaris tends to write something quirky or nonsensical in his inscription, based perhaps on some obvious characteristic or something the person says. As I make my way back to our car, I open the book to the title page and read: “To Lesley – Diabetes is for Lovers.” OK, so he didn’t call me fat, but my neurotic side kicks into overdrive and in mere nanoseconds I’ve made the connection: diabetes = fat people = me = comment. But hey, if David Sedaris calling you fat won’t make you lose weight, what will?