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July 2.2004 • jIISt out
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HUMOR
▼
am not a petty person.
OK, that’s a lie. I’m a very petty person.
If 1 were a rock ’n’ roller, I’d be Tom Petty. If
I were in the Navy, I’d he chief petty officer.
If I were underwear, I’d he a petticoat.
So it’s not surprising that the unprecedent
ed success of humorist David Sedaris would
send me into an emotional tailspin. Think
about it. He’s a gay writer of comic essays. I’m
a gay writer of comic essays. He’s sold upward
of 2.5 million hxiks, packs 2,000-seat audito
riums as if he were the touring company of
The Producers and
owns apartments in
New York, Paris and
London. I’m...well,
I’m going to bed now
and pulling the covers
over my head.
But it’s not just
Sedaris’ success that
1 envy; it’s his unde
niable talent. His
most recently pub
lished collection,
Dress Your Family in
Corduroy and Denim,
once again demon
strates his gift for saying the thing you think,
but in the marvelously clever way you wish
you had said it.
Yet while readers may thrill at seeing their
own thoughts so eloquently expressed, writers
like me mutter contemptuously to ourselves
like Salieri in Amadeus.
Even a favorable comparison, while flat
tering, carries with it the implicit message
that, at best, you are derivative and un
original. Whenever someone says 1 write like
eatingout
LAURELWOOD
PUBLIC HOUJ1
<
'
eatingout
*
The green-eyed
monster
David Sedaris and me
David Sedaris, I have to restrain myself from
snapping, “No, he writes like ME.”
It’s not one of my finer moments.
Shakespeare wrote, “Beware, my lord, of
jealousy; it is rhe green-ey’d monster
which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’
Now, 1 don’t like having my meat
mocked any more than the next guy,
but I do actually believe jealousy is a
useful emotion.
Believe it or not, I am an evolved
enough person not to bear any ill will
toward Sedaris. To wish that he, say,
suffer the slings and arrows of outra
geous fortune is a stingy way of kxiking
at the universe. 1 truly believe if he can
be successful, I can, too.
The way I see it, jealousy is a map,
your subconscious mind’s way of leading you
toward the life you wish to have. For me,
Sedaris is the gas station attendant you ask for
directions.
I asked for even more when I interviewed
him in the summer of 2001. You see, the thing
about meeting celebrities is that it’s not so
much that you want to know about them as
you want THEM to know about YOU.
I already knew plenty about Sedaris, but
MY life was a total mystery to him, so I spent
most of the interview talking about myself,
secretly hoping he would rum to me and say,
“Y’know, Marc, not only is it obvious you are
eatingout
eatingout
you a kindred spirit, but clearly you’re a bril
liant undiscovered talent. Please allow me to
help you advance your career. And let’s be best
friends forever.”
Actually, what he did say was that he
missed the structure of having a day job.
“There’s nothing gtxxl about writing full time,”
he said. “It just means your whole life is based
e
out
eatingout
on a paragraph. If ytxi have to go to work, then
at least you have a feeling of accomplishment.”
I understcxxl what he meant but, at the
time, 1 owned a business 1 loathed so much,
I wanted to chew my arm off. So it was all
I could do to stop myself from flinging my keys
on the table and saying: “You want a job? Take
mine. I’d be happy to live in Paris and write
b<x>ks, you ungrateful son of a bitch."
For his pan, Sedaris was a perfect
gentleman—thoughtful, self-effacing,
eager to please. He even picked up the
tab and sent me a thank-you note in
which he wished me luck with my
novel. Yet meeting him threw me
into a funk that lasted days.
Seven hundred days, to be exact.
That’s how long it was before
Floyd and I finally sold the loath
some business, giving me the free
dom to finish my first novel, which,
in fulfillment of my most feverish
Fantasies, sold to Random House and
was optioned by Columbia Pictures.
The Jealousy Map had led me from a
very dark place to a lighter one indeed.
When the galleys arrived, I thrilled at
the sight of my name on the cover. Flipping it
over 1 read the jacket copy: “A farcical coming-
of-age story. How I Paid for College reads as if
I^avid Sedaris had reimagined The Catcher tn
the Rye.”
Somehow it seems appropriate.
And that, my friends, is The Gospel
According to Marc. jM
M ar < : A( Tro’s Sedans like novel will he published
in September. Send ideas for his next hook to
e
marc@marcacito .com.
e
out
eatingout
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