Death by Coffee: Hanging Out with David Sedaris

After I met Cindy House, one thing led to the next...

ONE
You never know who’s going to read your work and where it will lead. In Spring 2017, two years after finishing my MFA at Lesley University, I get a lovely note from a fourth-semester Lesley student, Cindy House. She says she enjoyed my craft essay, “The Self as Antihero in the Essays of Nora Ephron, David Sedaris, and Steve Almond,” which appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle in 2015. It’s about the importance of first-person writers showing their flaws and vulnerabilities. Cindy says she’s known David Sedaris for about thirty years. He was her writing mentor and they’re still close. One thing leads to the next, Cindy and I bond for a bunch of reasons, and, holy crap, she invites me to see David live in Hartford—not just for the show but for their traditional pre-show rendezvous, which they arrange when he’s in her area.

TWO
October 11, 2017: We meet David at his hotel and walk to a nondescript but airy café nearby. I’m nervous about being an interloper, but they put me at ease—all casual, gracious, warm. I’m carrying a package for David and Cindy knows I’m obsessing about when to present it. I wait. We chat. I love witnessing their repartee. We laugh. I love learning about David’s life on the road. He asks about my clinical work. I say I run therapy groups for folks in recovery from addiction and see others individually who are often dubbed the “worried well.” His eyes spark. He whips out his famous pocket-sized spiral notebook and scribbles. Meantime, a bee buzzes nearby, then hovers perilously over David’s coffee. He tries to shoo it away but, finally, it flies into the hot liquid and drowns. David plucks out the corpse and deposits it onto the cup lid. “We warned you,” he says, wagging his finger, and proceeds to finish his coffee.

Old friends Cindy House and David Sedaris pose with the bee corpse.

THREE
We shoot the breeze for a while longer. Soon, he’ll leave for his sound check. I panic-eyeball Cindy and tell David I brought some things for him. I hand him a big manila envelope. Inside, a full-color printout of my “Self as Antihero” essay and a copy of my 1985 scholarly paper about adolescent diary writing. I didn’t know then that David hates reading what people say about his work. And my psychoanalytic paper? Would he even bother? It also didn’t occur to me what a burden this bloody unwieldy envelope might be on tour—what’s he supposed to do? Schlep it on planes and limos for God’s sake? But he accepts it politely.

FOUR
Also inside the envelope is a gift I obsessed about for weeks—curated excerpts from my fifth-grade diary, some of which I’ve performed in Mortified, the comedy show where regular people read from their childhood journals. I figured the theme echoed his tour book, Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977–2002. But how to present my excerpts? After foraging through craft stores and badgering clerks for ideas, I decided to make a small, bound album. I sweated the page color, font type, font size, a sturdy-enough cover, binding—settling on pinks and purples and, to hold it together, colorful curlicues of shoelace-like fabric. I hold my breath as he pages through. He reads some lines out loud and, as Cindy would say, he cackles. David Sedaris cackles at my writing. My ten-year-old self has never felt more seen.

Bonus link! Listen to my interview on “Love Hurts: Grade School Edition” on The Mortified Podcast, in which Mortified co-founder Neil Katcher and I discuss what’s behind all that pre-teen aggression. Features my fifth-grade class picture (!) and an extended clip from a live performance recorded at Club Oberon in Cambridge, Mass. Maybe you’ll cackle too? (My segment runs from about 07:30 to 15:00, but the whole episode’s worth a listen.)

FIVE
One thing leads to the next and, about two years later, Cindy starts opening for David’s shows, reading a short essay before the main event. She invites me to weigh in on those early pieces. And she weighs in on my stuff, too. In 2022, her first book comes out—Mother Noise, a sublime memoir about addiction and motherhood, which earns stellar reviews. Now Cindy tours with David in several cities per season, slaying the audience, just like David. After the show, they sit at the signing table until the wee hours. If they’re in my area, I’ll stop back to say hi. David will sign his latest book or a printed-out New Yorker essay I unfurl from my purse.

Once, he inscribed “Unbuttoned,” a 2020 piece about his 96-year-old father’s decline that knocked me flat. My mother was then 98, her hard, critical edge finally softening, her body frail. I write him a long letter with (yikes) craft comments, which Cindy forwards. I end with, “I wish you peace in your journey with your father. It isn’t easy. And you’re not alone.” He sends a handwritten reply, a gesture he regularly extends to fans. One sentence reads: “It especially means a lot coming from someone with an elderly parent.” He knows. So many of us know. His work from that period oozes rage and relief, confusion and clarity about what it’s like to watch a difficult parent slowly morph into someone pleasantly childlike. I cry when I hear David’s father died at 98 on May 22, 2021. My mom dies exactly 30 days later at 99.

Here’s the thing:

Beyond the trappings of celebrity, David and Cindy are the ultimate writers’ writers. They care about words and sentences and beats and balance. They continually revise. They read prolifically. They share generously. Fame goes only so far. Ultimately, it’s about the work, the art.

If you get a chance to hear David live, go! His recent essays are starkly different from the earlier “jokey” material that catapulted his career. Read Calypso. Read Happy-Go-Lucky. Read The Best of Me, which ends with “Unbuttoned.” Or subscribe to the New Yorker. His latter work is no less funny, edgy, and outrageous than the old stuff, but deeper and more layered, more existentially wise. I can’t wait to see where this phase of life leads him. I’ll be along for the ride, sans unwieldy gifts.

These days, Cindy is on the Lesley MFA faculty and teaches online with Gotham Writers and privately. Through her inspiring classes, I’m getting to know and love a lot of serious, talented writers. Her second book is in progress, but in the meantime, don’t miss her latest gut-punch of a flash piece, “Chipmunk,” which appears in Split Lip Magazine. And be sure to visit her weekly Substack, Writer Noise.

Thank you, Cindy, for sharing your old friend with me that October evening. And thank you, David, for being such a mensch in this often un-menschy world.

Dear Readers: Hope you’re enjoying my Substack, where I post five snippets every Friday. I’m keeping a free subscription option for the foreseeable future, but I’d be grateful if you’d lend your support by subscribing ($7/month or $70/year) and sharing. And stay tuned for updates on my search for a publisher for This Is 70: A Life in Micro-Memoirs, a linked set of 70 micro-memoirs of exactly 70 words each, written to mark my 70th birthday last year. Thanks for visiting!