David Sedaris is quite possibly this generation’s Oscar Wilde. He is an acclaimed American humourist, a NPR radio personality and an award-winning author whose books have sold more than seven million copies worldwide. With a uniquely witty and side splitting style, Sedaris’s work is often candidly autobiographical whether he’s talking about getting crabs from vintage clothing or getting his boyfriend to lance a boil on his ass. His newest book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames, debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and Matt Thomas got the chance to have a long chatty lunch with one of his literary heroes.  Here is an excerpt, with bonus questions below. 

What’s the most ignorant question you get asked about your sexuality? 
I guess it just that constant thing you get about which one of you is the man.  Some people think it’s that cut and dry. People think it’s like a game that children would play where you’re like okay you be the man and I’ll be the woman.  That is always amazing to me. I find too, and I don’t want to make a big deal of it because sometimes you scare people away when you make too big of a deal out of something, but it’s that patronizing thing of like “Did you come with your partner?” You’re saying that like African American because you decided partner was a word you need to use.  I hate the word partner. I did this thing on the public radio years ago, on Morning Edition a show ten million people listen to. The tag for the show was “Last summer and the summer before David Sedaris and his boyfriend went to France.” So the host of the program refused to say boyfriend and they said well then you can say partner. I said, “No, cocksucker would be the only acceptable alternative.” It sat there on the shelf for six weeks until the host went on vacation and there was a substitute who said boyfriend. I guess the word boyfriend kind of indicts the speaker. It’s like boyfriend is the new lover. It insinuates you just sit around the house and make love all day where as partner sounds like you just sit around and talk all the time.  Gay people who say partner are awful, I can imagine them getting married and exchanging really bad poetry.  

Would you and Hugh ever get married? 
No. I guess I just don’t feel like it would change anything or mean anything. Maybe if I wore jewellery or if I really wanted a toaster I would do it.  

Gay bars are often like a world onto themselves, what’s your favourite experience inside one? 
I remember when I moved to New York and I went to this bar and this guy asked me to take my shoe off. He acted like he was interested in my socks so I took my shoe off. The he was like “Oh, take your sock off” and I was like “Okay” and I took my sock off. Anyways, he was interested in feet. He wanted to go into the bathroom and suck on my toes. I was like “Ummm, can’t you just do it here?” I guess I never felt comfortable in those environments. I remember a bar in Raleigh where I grew up, it was a horrible place, just the way you would feel when you left that place and you were alone and you felt like such a fucking loser. Then when you left with someone ultimately you would feel as bad. I did meet some guys in bars that came into my life but they didn’t work out for whatever reason.  I think at gay bars I was always looking for the popular guy in high school, basically the guy who hated me in high school.  There was this guy in Raleigh who was the popular guy in high school and we slept together three times and then I had to leave to go pick apples and I wrote to him every other day. It was like I had a textbook on how to drive someone away, on how to scare somebody. And I made all the postcards myself you know which made it even spookier. Whenever I go to Raleigh and have a reading he’ll come. He’s had a couple facelifts, he’s had his eyes done and his nose done, and he has a tan. It’s interesting that he never got together with anybody and he’s still that same guy but he’s older now. He’s older and going to that same bar and picking people up. I thinks it’s harder for him to be 50 then it’s for me to be 50 because basically anything that comes my way I can write about it and deal with that way, and I think that makes me a lucky person in many respects.  

You talk a lot about aging which is usually a taboo subject for gay men, what do you think is unique to the experience of growing older as a gay man? 
Hugh who I’m with now, I just met him through a friend because he needed someone who had a ladder, and I’m glad. There was something about turning 50 that you become invisible. I’m gonna have to hang out with 80-year-olds to feel spry. Hugh’s mother is like 78 so she makes me feel young. I think too that if you turn 50 and you’ve had kids then you would think I’m 50 years old look what I’ve got. I’ve got these children and any day now I’ll have grandchildren and this is how it’s suppose to be.  But I’m 50 and all I have is like piles and piles of money.  

I read that your calves are your favourite feature and that you hate your ass. What’s your favourite feature you look for in men and what’s you biggest turn off? 
Oh golly. I guess when someone’s super gym’d up. I guess I just always feel I couldn’t compete and that they always had their eye on themselves. That always seemed like a turn off to me. In my early years when I thought I had a type, my type might as well have had tattooed on his face: “I will destroy you. I will hurt you.” When I met Hugh I knew he wasn’t that type and so I almost had to talk myself into staying with him after those first few weeks. I just kept thinking I know this is going to be better for me, I just need to stick this out. But I needed to find something else to feel alive and this is somebody I knew I could trust that way, and I really like him and I think he’s interesting and I think he’s cute so what’s my problem.  Oh…look at this. 

(David pulls out a small envelope) 

This never ever ever happens to me, ever. I go on these books tours all the time right and this guy came up to me and said “I work at your hotel, how is everything?” And I said “It’s fine. There’s not a luggage rack in my room but I already asked the front desk.” He said “I have something for you but don’t open it right now.” And this is what he gave me. This is shocking to me. 

(Inside is a small photo card of sexual photo booth style snapshots of a young twinky boy giving his best steamy shirtless Myspace poses. On it is his name and phone number and this note:  “P.S. You can use it as bookmark!”) 

I’m old enough to be his father. I had to ask someone if it was like a come on, I just can’t wrap my head around the fact he’d do this. It’s so depressing to me, if I was just some guy he wouldn’t have done this.  

It shouldn’t be depressing at all. It should be the opposite. It’s not some David Beckham fan letter, it’s from a young gay man so into your intellect he wants to pose for sexy photos for you as a gift.  
(David breaks out into a fit of laughter) 

And to think you said in The Advocate you didn’t have any gay fans. 
I’m just not gay enough. If I do a reading maybe ten percent of the audience might be gay just like ten percent of people are.  But it’s not more than that, it’s not 50 percent and I don’t know if it’s because I don’t write about sex. It’s just never been my topic. Even in my diary I don’t write about sex and no one reads my diary. In Edmund White’s biography My Lives, he talks about giving a guy a blowjob while he’s defecating and then being peed on. I thought people say to me, “How can you expose yourself?” and I’m like “No, no, no. I just give the illusion I’m exposing myself” but that. The writing was really good though but I was really shocked, I could never write like that. It’s not that I’m hiding anything I’m just squeamish.  

Can you tell me how your experience in a library bathroom showed you your first glimpse of gay? 
My mother took us to the library on a Saturday and I was young, I must have been in the fifth grade and I was doing a report, I think it was a report about whales. I went into the bathroom in the basement of the library and I opened the door and there were two black men having sex in the bathroom. The look on their faces was just…they didn’t threaten me in any way they were obviously frightened, they ran. A regular person might be like “That must have been so hard for you” but I remember thinking I’m not alone. Like, those men, I thought that was my idea. I thought I was the only one because there was no access I mean we’re talking about 1966 or ’67 I had no access to pornography, there was no homosexual section in the library, there were no homosexuals on television. I had no proof that I was not the only one on Earth until I saw those two men. Because I had romantic ideals it didn’t occur to me that they met in the bathroom. It occurred to me that they must have been so in love that they were in the library doing research and just had to go into the bathroom and make love.  

BONUS QUESTIONS: 
Does anyone in your family have a phobia about telling you things for fear of being written about? 
If I write about someone in my family I always give it to them to read first and ask if there is anything they want to change before I publish it.  My sister Tiffany told me years ago I could never write a story about her and that was fine. Then later she said, “Everyone thinks you don’t like me. Will you write a story about me?” So I did and gave it to her to read and asked if it was okay and she said “Oh, I love it you captured me perfectly.” Then when the book came out someone said, “I can’t believe what your brother wrote about you.” and she said “Me neither.” Then she gave an interview with the Boston Globe about how I’d invaded her privacy. It’s always interesting to me when people think that I would say to someone in my family “Oh, I wrote a story about you wait until the book comes out, wait until you see what I wrote about you.” It’s never been that way.  This woman asked at a Q & A a while ago “How can your family stand it after everything you’ve written about them?” and I never do this, it’s the only time in my life and I’ve been doing this for so long that I’ve ever been rude to anyone who asked a question. I said “What do you think you know about my family? You know that raccoons chewed the legs off sister’s turtle, you don’t know anything really personal, you just think you do.” But you should never be rude to anyone who asks a question. Luckily the girl waited in line to get her book sign and I had a chance to apologize because I felt really bad. But people really think “Oh, I know so much about your family.” but do you know what drugs somebody takes, how much somebody drinks, do you know what someone does in bed, someone’s break-up? For people to think I’m in cahoots with them to try to embarrass my family they’d have to believe I’m an asshole 

Do you get a lot of people trying to inject themselves into your stories? 
Sure. I was looking through my diary from the book tour yesterday reading the different stories I’ve been told like the grandmother who fell of the riding mower and had her legs and breasts cut off. That something that came from just asking a question then a follow up question and then before you know it this thing just unfolded and it was spectacular. Usually that’s how that happens. You can have little conversations with people and you can learn things. I was signing books the other night for six and a half hours and everybody came up to me saying, “Oh this must be awful, you must hate this.” But no, I really like it. What’s so hard about people standing in line to say how much they love you? I mean you dream about that when you’re a child and now it’s happening. If someone came up to me to get their book signed and I said nothing then they would say “I really liked your last book” because that silence has to be filled and they’re gonna be polite but I really don’t wanna hear that so I ask them a question when they come up. Depending on the hour into the signing the question can be off, I found myself saying to someone a few days ago, “If you found a Leprechaun in your bathroom, would you be afraid?” and someone said “No” and I said “If you found a big moth next to your toilet would you be afraid” and they said “Yes.” 

Insects are scarier than short people I guess.  
(Laughs)  
On my last book tour I offered priority signing to smokers, figuring that smokers aren’t gonna live as long so their time’s more valuable, right?  But the problem is then people would borrow cigarettes from other people or just buy a pack of cigarettes and it really bothered me that people cheated like that. So I started offering priority signing to men 5’ 6’’ and under and then I thought I have to do something for women so I extended it to women 5’ 10’’ and taller. But the men didn’t like standing next to the giant women. So I changed it to women who have braces on their legs or braces on their teeth or something holding them together. So one woman came up and said, “I just had a mastectomy and I have stitches.” I didn’t ask to see the scars because I just believed her. But it’s interesting to me that I would say that and then I’m signing books for like 4 hours and here comes a guy who’s like 5’ 2’’ and I say “Why didn’t you come up here earlier?” and he said “I didn’t want to cut in front of all of those people.” But if I had said men over 6’ 2’’ and over do you think any of them would have had a problem cutting in front of people.  I guess to me if I had 100 wishes being taller would not make it onto that list, it never occurred to me that it would improve my life in any way. Plus if you’re a homosexual there are all kind of guys who like shorter guys so it’s not actually any kind of hindrance. It’s odd when people think when I get upset about something, “ Oh, he just has a little man complex” it’s like “Oh, fuck you, aren’t I allowed to be mad about something. “ 

Would you and Hugh ever have kids? 
I think the time to do it would have been sooner.  We have a friend who is almost my age and she adopted a three-year-old and I went with her and their kid to a museum in London and the kid was running around and we got tired just watching him.  If you get tired just watching the child then nah. I met a women in Italy recently she and her boyfriend just adopted two kids one is 10 and one is 12 and they are gypsies. I mean how many people told you not to adopt the adolescent gypsy but she did anyway. So maybe like that, a 10 year old or something. I kinda always felt bad for only children. Say I adopted a baby right now, the baby graduates from high school and I’m old and then it says well my dad is really old and can’t really go all around the world and live my life because I have to take care of my sick old dad. I wouldn’t want them to. With my dad he’s 85 and he’s in good shape but there are six of us and I live sooo far away but at least there are people to share that. I think it must be hard to be the only child. It’s not like you would wish you weren’t born I mean there are probably worse things.  

Is marriage not something Hugh would be interested in? 
He’s never asked me. Because it just became legal in California I got a message from the Mayor of Beverly Hills offered too marry me. I assumed that he meant for free but I looked at the message again and he didn’t mention price.  But in France there is something called the PACS and it’s like a civil union and I would do that because right now if I were to die Hugh would have to pay a 60% inheritance tax on our apartment and it would go down to 30% if we were PACS’ed. 

You’re extremely successful in the literary community, which is often seen as being made up of straight men and women in their old age. Have you ever had any awkward moments while reading your edgier subject material? 
I wrote a story in my new book called Town and Country about a day that was extraordinary to me.  I was writing about an experience that most men have had, it’s about this cab driver who starts talking to me about pussy. The last time I was in Toronto I went to get my haircut and the barber asked me where I was from and I said “Paris” and he said “You must get some great pussy about there.”  You know that feeling when straight guys do that and you don’t wanna say that you’d rather not talk about that. It’s not that you’re hiding anything either you don’t want to end it, you just want him to do the talking. If he asks you a question you try and deflect and turn it around to him.  I was surprised because to me it’s not a dirty story. To me if I was writing about my own sexual experiences that’s different then somebody else talking about sex. Somebody else talking about sex is safe in a way and I think it’s interesting and funny. I was always shocked when people would say, “Now that’s going too far” and I would say “Really?” and they’d say “Well, someone having sex with a horse…” and I’d say “Ya but the horse didn’t mind.” I did a reading at this college in Washington State but I forgot that it was Parents Weekend and I read that story.  Then the director of the College wrote with this outraged letter and she said you read that story and nobody laughed.  I’m sorry but I was there and that story worked the same way it did there as it did everywhere else, people howled. Don’t tell me people didn’t laugh. You didn’t laugh and you didn’t like the story. It a skill but I think you can make anything palatable, that you can make anything funny, you just have to manipulate it in the right way.  

Have you ever received any other bizarre gifts? 
I was in San Diego and somebody gave me a package and the theatre manager came and said somebody left this for you. Inside it was six DVDs, six porn DVDs, brand new.  I didn’t want to put them in my suitcase and take them with me but I thought it was a shame to throw them away.  I was reading in a theatre and the guy who produced it, I asked him if he was homosexual, I knew he was but I thought I would ask first. So I said, “Do you want these?” and he was like “No!” He was outraged. If someone offered ’em to me I would have been like “I think I know someone I can give them to” and I would have been really grateful. But I wasn’t going to throw it away. So over the next two days I waited ’til people came along and I’d say, “Excuse me are you homosexual?” Then I’d say “I’ve got something for you,” and I would just give them away.  
 

Did you go back to that washroom sex experience when you got older and were trying to conceptualize what gay life might be like? 
I have a friend who was also a friend of my sister Gretchen who I knew when he was 14 that I didn’t really get to know until he was in college and I was 18.  It turned out he had had this full sex life starting at the age of 13 going to the restroom at the mall and meeting guys. I didn’t even know at that age that people did that in the restroom. People would say, “Oh, That bathroom all kinds of stuff happens there,” but you have to be tuned in or you don’t even notice it. When I moved to NYC and I had to pee and I was in Washington Square Park. Now there you couldn’t help but notice it. I mean I walked into that bathroom and it was like weirdly uncomfortable and I had to get outta there. But other times you have to be tuned in so I was just always oblivious. He told me that university bathrooms on the ground floor or the basement are always like a happening place. So that aspect of meeting guys in the bathroom just never occurred to me.  I remember even because I had no access to pornography, I remember having sex with people and thinking they had pioneered what they were doing that, like that’s got to be your own idea nobody would put something up their ass.  Nobody would want to do that. I just never even imagined that anymore so than putting something in my ear, it just seemed like a new concept.  

I like to think that if you can think of it, it’s been done but that doesn’t stop me from being curious what people are doing to get if it’s new to me. 
I heard about someone taking out their glass eye and being fucked in the eye but that can’t be true. I usually feel if you can think about it it’s been said, generally. I feel really bad when I met someone with a certain name and I make a bad joke. I mean how many times have they heard that. Or I’m signing book and I’m like “My goodness you’re tall.” How many times have they heard, am I telling them something they don’t know?  

Did you remember any boyhood fantasies? 
I remember as a child like even before sex there are things that were erotic without being sexual. There was the idea of being put into a chair, like a ski lift kind of a chair and being force-fed until you got really fat. So it would be all these guys who were being force-fed until they got fat. It was a time before you would even masturbate before you even knew what masturbation was but it would give you pleasure in that same way. You know your clothes would split and you’d just get big. (Laughs) Jeez, I totally forgot about that.  

Were there any telltale signs that your parents saw that caused them to think you might be gay? 
When I was growing up that would be like the worse thing. You wouldn’t even allow yourself to think that your child was gay. My mother had a cousin and just hearing my dad talk about my mother’s cousin was enough… he who used a hair dryer… on his hair.  I knew it was just a really bad bad thing to be.  It’s amazing to me how much has changed in my lifetime.  
 
When You Are Engulfed in Flames is available at Glad Day Bookshop, 598A Yonge St. www.gladdaybookshop.com 

Matt Thomas is naked and hopes to talk pretty one day but first he has to overcome his nasty barrel fever.