An Evening with David Sedaris

When I woke up on Monday morning, I had no idea that by the end of the night I would be eating at gay Denny's with David Sedaris. That particular Denny's is known as "gay Denny's" due to the fact that if you go there on the weekend at two in the morning, it's full of the most fabulous people in town.

At 5:30p.m., Adam and I arrived at Abravanel Hall to help set up our spot where we were going to be selling books for the David Sedaris reading. We met up with Cat, Shari, and John and got everything ready for the 6:30 door opening. People slowly began to filter in, stopping by our little gift shop area just inside the door as the Hall employees were still trying to figure out how to set up the line for the table where Sedaris would be signing.

One of the funny things about Sedaris is that he will just sort of quietly show up without notice. I was selling some books and I turned around and there he was. He sat at the table set up by the employees and began to sign some books before the reading. The lobby started to fill up as it got closer to "show time". Now, I had never been to Abravanel Hall before, so when I heard what sounded like a submarine preparing to submerge, I had no idea that it was a call for people to take their seats. Apparently, everyone in the lobby had no idea either, the beeping went pretty much unnoticed. People only began to go inside when someone got on the loudspeaker and announced that the reading would start in five minutes. I was pleasantly surprised when Cat handed Adam, John, and myself a ticket to go inside and watch. I wasn't sure if we'd actually be able to listen in on the reading, at best I thought we could take turns going inside, or maybe watch on a closed-circuit t.v. - which is what Shari and Cat did, but we got to sit in the front row.

When he took the stage, Sedaris was met with wild applause as he stood shielding his eyes from the audience, asking the booth to turn down the house lights. The booth person complied and as the lights went down, he was visibly more comfortable, explaining, "I can do this just fine as long as I can't see you.". As he was reading from not only his new book, but an essay that didn't get published and a story from "Holidays on Ice", I thought about how much funnier these stories were because he was reading them. They're really funny on their own, but with his inflections and emphasis on certain words, and occasional pausing, it was so much funnier. I don't know how many times I had to catch my breath from laughing.

About an hour and a half in, after reading some diary entries, he said "Thank you" in a way that made us think he was finished. The three of us made for the door to get back to the book selling area before the mass of people emerged from the auditorium, only to find that he wasn't, in fact, finished. Instead of going back inside, we stayed in the lobby and tried to listen on the closed-circuit t.v., which just wasn't the same. We only missed about fifteen to twenty minutes, I think, at the end.

Then we were surrounded. It was a mad rush for books, and just as soon as it had begun, it was over. Everyone was in line for an autograph. And we waited. Every now and then, someone would come up to buy a book to read while waiting for someone who was in line, a line that went down a set of stairs and curved a little, but mostly we waited.

It was midnight when the line was gone. Sedaris walked over to us and signed a few store copies and our own books that we had brought for him to inscribe. None of us had eaten since lunch, so we decided to go to gay Denny's. Adam asked Sedaris if he wanted to join us, and I don't know if it was the intrigue of a gay Denny's, or just the fact that he too was probably really hungry, or a combination of the two, but he agreed to join us.

We drove the books that we didn't sell back to the store and Cat went home. Shari, Adam, John, and I made our way to the gay Denny's, unsure if he really was going to join us. He did. If you're curious as to what David Sedaris ordered from Denny's, it was a Moons Over My Hammy with hash-browns, exactly what I had ordered.