Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (21 page)

David: Um, I don’t know. I’ll probably give up something like seedless grapes.

Corey: What about giving up smoking?

David: I’ll put that on the 60 or 70 list.

Corey: One thing I’ve been thinking about as I get older is the term boyfriend. You still refer to Hugh as your boyfriend.

David: Well, there are these people I used to clean for in New York, and I bet the woman is 70 now. And her boyfriend is younger than she is. The guy said, ‘This is Gene, Marion’s partner.’ I hate the word partner, And I hate it when gay people use it and now straight people are using it. It’s always funny to me how they take the worst of gay things.

No, I still say boyfriend, because I hate partner. I hate lover, because it makes it sounds like all you do is have sex. I’m still using boyfriend. I see what you mean. When he’s like 70. If you say gentleman friend, it doesn’t sound right. Or companion. It sounds like he hooks you up to an IV every night.

I had something on Morning Edition and the introduction was something like, ‘Last summer and the summer before, David Sedaris and his boyfriend went to France.’ Bob Edwards refused to say boyfriend. They offered to change it to partner and I said, ‘No, that’s really queer. That’s my boyfriend.’ I did not see what the big deal was. It sort of sat there until he went on vacation, and Neil Conan or someone took over and said the word ‘boyfriend.’ Then I heard from all these people, ‘I can’t believe they said the word boyfriend on the radio,’ as if they had said, ‘cocksucker.’ To me it was so nothing. I didn’t understand what the big deal was.

That is one thing I will correct people on. If I’m doing a live radio interview and they say, ‘You live with your partner.’ I say, ‘boyfriend.’ Just because I don’t want anyone thinking that I use the word partner.

Corey: Do they ever say husband?

David: No, because I wouldn’t use that either because I wouldn’t get married. I mean, I know people who do, you know. ‘Brad and I are having our commitment ceremony,’ and that’s like a partner thing. Here you can get PAX-ed. There are civil unions in England, too. And I’m up for anything that will save me money. You just go to city hall and you sign a piece of paper. But I wouldn’t wear anything special and I wouldn’t tell people about it. I wouldn’t exchange jewelry or anything like that.

Corey: What kind of parent do you think you would be?

David: I tell myself that I would be so patient and all that stuff. I do enjoy children. I like them. Then I think of the reality. We went to Italy recently to visit this friend of my boyfriend, and she had two white sofas and two children under the age of 5.

If you have white sofas—spotless—and children under the age of 5, you are a horrible mother.

And then I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s the way I would be.’ Order means so much to me. Cleanliness and order mean so much to me. I think it would be so hard to let go of that, and I tell myself I would be so patient, but I would be patient between the hours of like 3 to 3:15 and then after 11 o’clock at night.

Corey: Do you have nieces and nephews that you get to spend time with?

David: I have one niece. No, she lives in North Carolina. Maybe when she’s older. If she’s not too afraid of me, she could come visit us here. If I were like 16 and had an uncle who lived in London and Paris and stuff, I’d be all over it. You never know. Sometimes kids get that age, and they just want to hang out with their friends in front of the Quick Pick.

Corey: When you do these tours, do they offer chances to get together with the whole family?

David: it’s not too often that we all get together at the same time. On this trip, one of my cousins is getting married so I’ll see some of my family then. I’ll see my sister in New York. I think she’s the only one I’ll see on this trip. I saw everyone on my last book tour. They come here and see me sometimes.

Corey: Living in Europe, does it make it tough to collaborate with Amy on plays?

David: When I lived in New York, nothing seemed more important to me than a New York audience. And now because I don’t live there anymore and travel a lot it’s all the same to me. We did a play like five years ago, and it involved going to New York for like two months or something. I guess the way it is now, since I’m in the United States for two months out of the year for these tours, and think about adding another two months two it, I think, ‘Oh no, that’s enough time.’ Maybe later on.

For me, you don’t have to have anything to say when you write a story, but I kind of feel you do when you write a play. And I don’t really have anything to say.

Corey: You have a lot of stories about childhood. Is there a memory that sparks a story?

David: That’s why it helps sometimes. Like sometimes the scene will be provided by somebody else, like the New Yorker asked me to write something about winter and that led to something. Ira did a show called ‘The Super,’ about somebody who’s in charge of a building, and that led me to write about this woman who took care of us when I was young.

Like when I bought my monkey paintings—my midlife crisis—I’ve got to write something about it to earn some of that money back, so I wrote about art collecting. I probably wouldn’t have thought to write about that if I hadn’t bought that painting and panicked about earning some of that money back.

Corey: Do you ever ask your fans for ideas?

David: I’m gonna ask about the graduate thing. Sometimes things will come up. Like for my tour, the theme was defecating in stores, which happens all the time. I mean, I’ve never done it. Anyone who works in a store, customers will come in and go into the dressing room and defecate on the floor. I got some really good stories about that. The problem is—like with those monkey stories I got a few years ago—what you wind up with is a list, which doesn’t make for a story.

It’s still good to know.

Corey: When you’re signing, will people ask for certain things to be written in a book?

David: Sometimes, and I never write what people ask me to write, because I’m the professional and I always imagine the book winding up in a thrift shop and when someone says, ‘Can you write “I want to be the father of your love child?”’, I don’t want that in the Goodwill.

Corey: Do you keep a list of things you do write?

David: I do. I’m always on the lookout for a good thing to write in books, because one thing that’s a problem is you’ll sign somebody’s book and they’ll say, ‘That’s what you wrote last time.’ And I always think, ‘Fuck, why didn’t you tell me we met before?’

This one time I was signing books in Minneapolis, and this woman left her 8-year-old son next to me while she went and got in line. There was a long line. This kid was next to me at the signing table and at one point he said, ‘You just wrote that five books ago,’ and I said, ‘Keep it down. We don’t want people to know that.’

Corey: Do the fans ever get flirty?

David: Nobody does that to me.

Corey: I figured you had some dedicated fans who really get obsessed with the stories.

David: I’ve never really felt that. I’ve never felt that anybody has ever been creepy in that way. The only thing that ever gets uncomfortable—and it happens quite often—people will go to a reading and somebody will say, ‘I can’t afford your book, but here’s a book I’m trying to get published. It would be great if you could read it over and give me some feedback.’

And then I just can’t relate because I never would have done that. I know what it’s like to be an unpublished writer, and I was for many years. But it didn’t occur to me to approach somebody that way. This one woman gave me this book when I was on a book tour and it was like 250 pages. I said, ‘I’m gonna be gone for a month and I have a suitcase that’s already full.’ She said, ‘Well, what are you doing tonight?’

And often people write and say, ‘Can you give me feedback on this?’ All they want is your approval and so you’re tied into this thing. And I’m not a teacher for a good reason. I don’t know how to fix things. You have to be really careful with people. You don’t know them and know if they can take criticism or how they can take criticism. So it’s not anything to be treated lightly. Yesterday I got this sample chapter from this guy who wants to get his book published. I’ll write him back and say, ‘Thank you for your story, which I read with pleasure,’ on a postcard, so it won’t have my return address on it.

Corey: It’s odd that people would assume that just because you’re a writer, you’re an editor.

David: I think that’s what separates a writer from a writing student is that you still have to do it every day and you still have to work at it and that’s how you grow. A lot of people who write me say, ‘I want to get this published as soon as possible.’ When I was 22, I didn’t expect anything I wrote to be published. I might have had a dream that one day I’d have a book. I thought, ‘Well, like I’m still on the stairs in the basement. I haven’t even gotten to the first floor yet.’ I guess that’s my only problem, when I can’t relate to people. Like when people say something stupid, I do that all the time. I can relate to that. When they want me to read stuff for them and I don’t know them then I can’t relate.

Corey: Are you comfortable with your celebrity?

David: Oh, I hope I’m not one. They’re not things that I believe in. You can cross a line and become a personality and that’s what you are. You’re not really a writer anymore; you’re a personality like Truman Capote was a personality when he died. You turn on the TV, and there’s Truman Capote talking about some bullshit.

Whenever I turn things down, I never have any big conflict about turning things down, because that’s not what I want. I didn’t grow up wanting to do a Gap commercial.

Corey: Have you set a timetable for yourself for the animal book or the next book of essays?

David: The publisher would have to pull out the gun and hold it to my head. They’re already reaching around the holster, but I haven’t accepted a deadline yet.

Corey: Is there a lot of pressure when you accept a deadline?

David: If they put the book in the catalogue and say your book is coming out in the spring, it’s really bad to miss a catalogue deadline. They could print a book now in like three minutes, but for some reason they want it like nine months early. The last book I turned in in February, and it came out in June. It’s been like that for the last three books. They know that’s how it is with me. The last book, most of the stories had already been published. They got the book piecemeal, and there were new things I was working on, but the bulk of it had been published.

Corey: Do you have goals to publish something brand-new?

David: I’d like to. The hard thing is I go on these lecture tours twice a year, and I don’t think it would work to get up in front of people and read from a novel for an hour. If you’re in the audience and zone out, it’s hard to zone back in. You’re just sort of stuck there. I think it’s better to read like four things over the course of an hour. Basically I’m having to write two books at one time.

Corey: Have you thought about how you’d like to spend your retirement?

David: I don’t imagine I would retire. I might not publish books anymore, but I don’t imagine my schedule would be much different. I’d still get up and write every day.

Before Stephen Colbert had loads of fun with the right and the left of this country on his hit (fake) Comedy Central conservative news program, “The Colbert Report,” he was one-third of a comedy writing team.

Colbert, Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris met in Chicago at Second City and eventually created one of the funniest sitcoms ever, “Strangers with Candy.”

I chatted with Stephen and Paul about the creation of their show and their characters’—Mr. Noblet and Mr. Jellineck—ambiguously sexual relationship.

Corey: How did you two get involved with Second City?

Paul Dinello: I’m from Chicago, and I took classes, and they asked me to audition.

Stephen Colbert: I was in Chicago with no job and no place to sleep. I slept on a friend’s floor, and she happened to be the box office manager for Second City so I went over there and started taking classes. I started doing improv. Paul and Amy Sedaris and I were all hired on the same day at Second City, and we toured around the country for two wonderful, painful years.