A letter to David Sedaris

In lieu of an encounter at a book signing

Dear David

I hope this letter finds you.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. I was convinced we were going to meet at your recent event in Melbourne. I’d hoped to inspire an essay or, at the very least, a line or two under Monday 6 February 2023 in a future collection of your diary entries. Instead, I’m sharing my diary entry, of sorts, from that day.

I’d bought my ticket in August last year and spent many months trying to craft an awkward, absurd or amusing remark I’d recite while you signed Calypso and maybe Happy-Go-Lucky, which I didn’t yet own but would, pre-signing. How would I resist the urge, or at least the social pressure, to buy a book being sold within such close proximity to the author with whom I’d soon be speaking?

I wondered whether our encounter would be like the time in 2019 when I fumbled my way through an audience with Zadie Smith.

‘It’s my most favourite book in the world,’ I announced, as I pushed White Teeth toward her and revealed my own pearly whites, nervously.

Then, ‘It’s not how it looks. I purchased it from a library sale, truly,’ as I offered NW to her, holding it solemnly with my left hand the way a waiter would hold a plate, my right hand pressed on the cover, swearing on oath before Judge Smith.

Zadie smiled, amused or acutely aware of the strangeness of the stranger in front of her as she turned the cover of NW with its incriminating Goldfields Library Corporation sticker where my right hand had been. There was a faint black line across part of the sticker, but even if she made it out, it wouldn’t corroborate my story. I mean, I could have stolen the book and simply struck it out with my own sharpie.

There! That’ll show the library! Now it’s mine!

Aside from your event, Monday 6 February was auspicious for a number of reasons: first day of university after summer break, my ex’s birthday (to be fair, he had to have been born to be my baby daddy), and Mercury was sextiling Neptune. I’m sure you and the tourism marketing folk in Uranus, Missouri would get a kick out of knowing that a couple of days later, Mercury was sextiling Uranus.

Events leading up to your event were beset with tech challenges I couldn’t blame on Mercury (too busy sextiling to retrograde).

I’d made a 1.5-hour train trip into the big smoke to see you, sans laptop. The plan was to tune into my first online class in the public library.

At the state library, a staff member, more security guard than librarian, who was in a huddle with others also dressed in faux-police uniforms, pointed to the place I was meant to book a computer.

I approached what looked like a touch screen only to find a framed notice with illustrated Covid-safe practices. Beside the notice was a large tub of hand sanitiser. I stared at the non-screen for a while before catching the faux-policeman staring at me.

‘This is not a computer,’ I said, a little too loudly.

“No.” He said, faux-policeman like.

I turned and saw a computer behind me with a large, red sign affixed to its monitor: COMPUTER BOOKING.

It offered me 10 minutes on a machine, but only after a 25-minute wait. The math wasn’t looking good for a class that would start in 5 minutes and which I’d only planned to tune into for an hour before making my way to you, David.

My university library, a brisk 10-minute walk, or roughly 1,000 steps away, saved the day. I had as much time as I needed on the computer there.

I was intent on focusing for the little time I had once I logged into class. And focus I did. So focused in fact that I forgot to practice the dark art of jiggling my phone charger cable and whispering words of encouragement to it.

My phone’s battery was at 8% by the time I packed up and left.

In hopes of conserving power, I vowed to not check my phone or cave to the temptation of instagramming something, anything, to feed my itch, and the algorithm, until I got to Hamer Hall.

Another 1,000 steps, a rushed sushi, and a short tram ride later, phone battery was 5%, which isn’t much at the best of times, much less to make a goodnight call to one’s child and entertain hopes of a little juice left over to, I don’t know, check stuff.

Contrary to your conviction that parents these days take an hour to get their children to sleep, I did it in record time, although what I saved in time I lost in about 98% of my remaining battery life while bidding my little one goodnight and issuing the imperatives sleep tight! and don’t, under any circumstances, let the bed bugs bite!

Parental duties fulfilled, and nothing more obliging me to be economical with battery life, I checked for messages with short-lived abandon. There were several texts from one of the three friends I’d sent an electronic ticket to in the heady times of double-digit battery life.

Do you have a ticket on your phone for me?

That was all I managed to read before the death knoll of a bright white ‘SΛMSUNG’ appeared then faded to black as my ‘smart’ phone gently quivered in my sweaty palm.

The sight of a pre-pandemic sized crowd in the lobby of Hamer Hall told me there was a slim chance of bugger-all that I’d find my three friends, all of whom, I now assumed, had not received the tickets I’d sent.

I surprised myself with the lucidity of my thoughts as I bee-lined to the ticket desk.

‘Hi, is there anywhere I can charge my phone?’

‘No, sorry.’

The attendant presented me with two options. I could get a print out of each ticket, but that would void previously issued tickets. I didn’t want to extinguish hope all together, so I went for option two, a Lost Ticket Pass to cover all four seats and all bases: if I found them, and they didn’t have their tickets, all would be well, and if I didn’t find them and they did have tickets, all would still be well.

All was not well in my mind though with the fear that I wouldn’t find them and that they didn’t have tickets.

I asked again, this time with fewer words at my disposal, because, stress.

‘No electricity for phone?’

‘Oh yes, we have power outlets, just not chargers.’

I left the names of my three friends at the counter and went off to find a power outlet, buoyed, briefly, by the possibility of being plugged in, and the attendant’s chirpy, ‘you have great seats.’

I wove between queues to the bar, queues to the escalators and queues to who knows where else before finding a power outlet. I stood conspicuously opposite the top of an escalator transporting people up to street level. All my hopes hung on the cord connecting my phone to the power outlet as I scanned the crowd between glances at my still black screen.

What if they’re on the next level down?

I descended, my cable trailing along to an identical version of street level. Predictably, there was a power outlet opposite the top of an escalator transporting people up.

Again, all my hopes hung on the cord connecting my phone to the power outlet.

Again, I scanned the crowd between glances at my still black screen.

I repeated this for what felt like eternity, an Escher drawing of endless loop-de-loops in the padded gold-walled, mirrored, dimly-lit cavern that reached into the murky depths of the Yarra River.

Where are they? Why won’t my phone charge?

When I reached level Outer Molten Core of Earth, it occurred to me that there were people hovering on the periphery of all those queues looking at their phones.

Surely Sedaris fans would be welcoming of random encounters with strange strangers.

I approached a person and shared an abridged version of the events so far.

‘Are your friends smart?’

I didn’t miss a beat and stared blankly in thought. I got the intended laugh, and gave them the Instagram handle of one of my friends (no way I knew their phone numbers).

The Art Centre’s offer of Wi-Fi flashed teasingly across the Sedaris fan’s screen.

At this point of this hero’s journey, it felt like a fairy-tale ending was near, but no, this fairy tale was taking place in the depths of the Earth’s core where mobile reception is only conceptual.

Incidentally, I don’t remember what the Sedaris fan looked like. The best I can come up with is 53 years old, white, carrying a smart phone with 71% battery life but no reception.

There was nothing left to do but climb up, up, up to the Earth’s surface.

ding ding ding

Gentle chimes rung and a calm voice suggested people take their seats.

There was nothing left to do but descend down, down, down to the Earth’s molten core. It may explain my heart palpitations and profuse sweating.

At Door 2, a ticket checker checked my ticket but had little patience for my story or my queries. I had little patience to explain to them that seats H64-H67 indicated four, not three seats, which meant that I was in fact missing three, not two friends.

There was nothing left to do but step down, down, down to the Stalls.

I found row H.

Two seats in from the aisle was an empty seat, mine. Beside the empty seat were three occupied seats with three familiar faces looking calm, happy even, wondering what took me so long.

I realised, during your show, that if you did write about our would-be encounter, every aspect of my being would be acutely observed and documented. By the final draft of the essay, the scene would illicit the full spectrum of laughs, from barely-there snorts to those as loud as what I heard in stereo from the couple who sat behind me at your show. They’d clearly never been slapped across the face in all their lives. I decided it wasn’t my place to change that. Perhaps that’s what I’d have told you, had I queued, had we met.

Would you have described me as black, 46, short curly haired and wearing a yellow dress with black print? Maybe, and you’d be spot on about my age, of course.

In a 2019 interview with The Guardian, Ann Patchett was asked: ‘Who would you like to write the story of you life?’

She answered, ‘David Sedaris. I love him and he’d embarrass me to death.’

I get it, Ann, I get it, and with this letter, here’s hoping, David.

Sincerely,

Mek, from seat H64