Me Talk Pretty One Day

  When the waiter brings our entrées, I have no idea which plate might be mine. In yesterday’s restaurants it was possible both to visualize and to recognize your meal. There were always subtle differences, but for the most part, a lamb chop tended to maintain its basic shape. That is to say that it looked choplike. It had a handle made of bone and a teardrop of meat hugged by a thin rind of fat. Apparently, though, that was too predictable. Order the modern lamb chop, and it’s likely to look no different than your companion’s order of shackled pompano. The current food is always arranged into a senseless, vertical tower. No longer content to recline, it now reaches for the sky, much like the high-rise buildings lining our city streets. It’s as if the plates were valuable parcels of land and the chef had purchased one small lot and unlimited air rights. Hugh’s saffron linguini resembles a miniature turban, topped with architectural spires of shrimp. It stands there in the center while the rest of the vast, empty plate looks though it’s been leased out as a possible parking lot. I had ordered the steak, which, bowing to the same minimalist fashion, is served without the bone, the thin slices of beef stacked to resemble a funeral pyre. The potatoes I’d been expecting have apparently either been clarified to an essence or were used to stoke the grill.

  “Maybe,” Hugh says, “they’re inside your tower of meat.”

  This is what we have been reduced to. Hugh blows the yucca pollen off his blackened shrimp while I push back the sleeves of my borrowed sport coat and search the meat tower for my promised potatoes.

  “There they are, right there.” Hugh uses his fork to point out what could easily be mistaken for five cavity-riddled molars. The dark spots must be my vegetable.

  Because I am both a glutton and a masochist, my standard complaint, “That was so bad,” is always followed by “And there was so little of it!”

  Our plates are cleared, and we are presented with dessert menus. I learn that spiced ham is no longer considered just a luncheon meat and that even back issues of Smithsonian can be turned into sorbets.

  “I just couldn’t,” I say to the waiter when he recommends the white chocolate and wild loganberry couscous.

  “If we’re counting calories, I could have the chef serve it without the crème fraîche.”

  “No,” I say. “Really, I just couldn’t.”

  We ask for the check, explaining that we have a movie to catch. It’s only a ten-minute walk to the theater, but I’m antsy because I’d like to get something to eat before the show. They’ll have loads of food at the concession stand, but I don’t believe in mixing meat with my movies. Luckily there’s a hot dog cart not too far out of our way.

  Friends always say, “How can you eat those? I read in the paper that they’re made from hog’s lips.”

  “And…?”

  “And hearts and eyelids.”

  That, to my mind, is only three ingredients and constitutes a refreshing change of pace. I order mine with nothing but mustard, and am thrilled to watch the vendor present my hot dog in a horizontal position. So simple and timeless that I can recognize it, immediately, as food.

  City of Angels

  MY CHILDHOOD FRIEND ALISHA LIVES in North Carolina but used to visit me in New York at least twice a year. She was always an easy, undemanding houseguest, and it was a pleasure having her as she was happy following me around on errands or just lying on my sofa reading a magazine. “Just pretend I’m not here,” she’d say — and I sometimes did. Quiet and willing to do whatever anyone else wanted, she was often favorably compared to a shadow.

  A week before one of her regular December visits, Alisha called to say that she’d be bringing along a guest, someone named Bonnie. The woman worked at a sandwich shop and had never traveled more than fifty miles from her home in Greensboro. Alisha hadn’t known her long but said that she seemed like a very sweet person. That’s one of Alisha’s most well-worn adjectives, sweet, and she uses it to describe just about everyone. Were you to kick her in the stomach, the most you could expect would be a demotion to “semisweet.” I’ve never known anyone so willing to withhold judgment and overlook what often strike me as major personality defects. Like all of my friends, she’s a lousy judge of character.

  The two women arrived in New York on a Friday afternoon, and upon greeting them, I noticed an uncommon expression on Alisha’s face. It was the look of someone who’s discovered too late that she’s either set her house on fire or committed herself to traveling with the wrong person. “Run for your life,” she whispered.

  Bonnie was a dour, spindly woman whose thick girlish braids fell like leashes over the innocent puppies pictured on her sweatshirt. She had a pronounced Greensboro accent and had landed at Kennedy convinced that, given half a chance, the people of New York would steal the fillings right out of her mouth — and she was not about to let that happen.

  “The cabdriver said, It sounds to me like you two ladies are from out of town,” and I knew right then that he was planning to rip us off.”

  Alisha placed her head in her hands, massaging what had become a visible headache.

  “I knew exactly what he was up to. I know the rules, I’m not stupid, so I wrote down his name and license number and said I’d report him to the police if he tried any funny business. I didn’t come all this way to be robbed blind, and I told him that, didn’t I, Alisha?”

  She showed me the taxi receipt, and I assured her that this was indeed the correct price. It was a standard thirty-dollar fare from Kennedy Airport to any destination in Manhattan.

  She stuffed the receipt back into her wallet. “Well, I hope he wasn’t expecting a tip, because he didn’t get a dime out of me.”

  “You didn’t tip him?”

  “Hell no!” Bonnie said. “I don’t know about you, but I work hard for my money. It’s mine and I’m not tipping anybody unless they give me the kind of service I expect.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But what kind of service did you expect if you’ve never ridden in a cab before?”

  “I expect to be treated like everybody else is what I expect. I expect to be treated like an American.”

  That was the root of the problem right there. Visiting Americans will find more warmth in Tehran than they will in New York, a city founded on the principle of Us versus Them. I don’t speak Latin but have always assumed that the city motto translates to either Go Home or We Don’t Like You, Either. Like me, most of the people I knew had moved to New York with the express purpose of escaping Americans such as Bonnie. Fear had worked in our favor until a new mayor began promoting the city as a family theme park. His campaign had worked, and now the Bonnies were arriving in droves, demanding the same hospitality they’d received last month in Orlando.

  I’ve had visitors from all over, but Alisha’s friend was the first to arrive with an itinerary, a thick bundle of brochures and schedules she kept in a nylon pouch strapped around her waist. Before leaving North Carolina, she’d spoken to a travel agent who’d provided her with a list of destinations anyone in her right mind would know to avoid, especially around the holidays, when the crowds multiply to Chinese proportions.

  “Well,” I said, “we’ll see what we can do. I’m sure Alisha has places she’d like to go, too, so maybe we can just take turns.”

  The expression on her face suggested that give-and-take was a new and unpleasant concept to Bonnie of Greensboro. Her jaw tightened, and she turned back to her brochures, muttering, “I came to New York to see New York and isn’t nobody going to stop me.”

  Our troubles began the following morning when I disregarded the itinerary and took the two women to the Chelsea flea market. Alisha wanted to look for records and autographs. Bonnie wasn’t much of a shopper, but after a pronounced bout of whining, she decided she wouldn’t mind adding to her lifelong angel collection. Angels, she said, were God’s way of saying howdy.

  The flea market was good for records and autographs, but none of the angels mustered an appropriate howdy. “Not at these prices. I asked some lady
how much she wanted for a little glass angel playing a trumpet, and when she said it cost forty-five dollars, I told her to go straight to you know where. I said there’s no way I’m paying that much when back home I can get ten angels for half that price. ‘And,’ I said,‘they’d be a lot more spiritual than the sorry-looking New York angels y’all have here.’ That’s exactly what I told her.”

  She pronounced the flea market a complete waste of time, adding that she was cold and hungry and ready to leave. It was decided that even though $1.50 was a lot to charge for a ten-minute ride, we would take the subway uptown and get something to eat. Things went smoothly until the transit clerk accidentally shorted her a nickle and Bonnie stuck her mouth into the token window, shouting, “Excuse me, but for your information, I do not appreciate being taken for a fool. I may be from Greensboro, North Carolina, but I can count just as well as anyone else. Now, are you going to give me my five cents, or should I talk to your supervisor?”

  At the restaurant she insisted that the waitress had overcharged her for her milk shake, even though the price was right there on the menu. When I suggested we leave and maybe see a movie, Bonnie pushed herself back from the table and proceeded to sulk. “I wanted to go to a Broadway show, and here you’re talking about a movie I could see back home for three dollars and fifty cents. I flew five hundred miles to see New York, and all I got was a chocolate milk shake and a plate of hash browns. Some damn trip this turned out to be.”

  We should have beaten her to death. It was clearly the best solution to the problem, but instead we went to the half-price ticket booth. Alisha took her monster to a Broadway show, and I met up with them afterward. We hoped the play might satisfy Bonnie, but once she’d gotten a taste of her itinerary, there was no stopping her. The following morning she woke Alisha at seven A.M. so they could get a head start on the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. They visited the UN and the South Street Seaport and returned to the apartment at four in the afternoon. Alisha was ready to throw in the towel, but Bonnie wanted to go for high tea at the Plaza Hotel. High tea is fine if you like that sort of thing, but she became angry when I suggested that she might first want to change into something more appropriate. The woman was wearing what people in the South refer to as “hog washers,” the sort of denim overalls favored by farmers. The crowd at the Plaza would most likely be dressed up, and I worried that she might feel out of place in an outfit most people associate with hard manual labor. I was only trying to help, but Bonnie didn’t see it that way.

  “Let me tell you something, Mr. New York City. I am very comfortable with the way I look, and if the Plaza Hotel doesn’t like what I’m wearing, then that’s their problem, not mine.”

  I’d done my best to warn her but was actually thrilled when she rejected my advice. The scarecrow look was fine by me. I’d never been to the Plaza but felt certain she’d be eaten alive by troops of wealthy, overcaffeinated society women with high standards and excellent aim. Service would be denied, voices would be raised, and she’d wind up drinking her tea at some pancake restaurant in midtown. Alisha changed into a dress, and I dropped them off at the hotel, returning an hour later to find Bonnie wandering the tearoom with her disposable camera. “Would y’all mind taking a picture of me standing next to the waiter? I’d have my friend do it, but she’s got a bug up her butt.”

  I expected her to be physically removed from the building and was horrified to realize that the Plaza Hotel was essentially Bonnie Central. Dressed for comfort in sweatshirts and tracksuits, her fellow scarecrows were more than happy to accommodate her. The flashbulbs were blinding.

  “Now those were some nice New Yorkers,” she said, waving good-bye to the crowd in the tearoom. I tried to explain that they weren’t real New Yorkers, but at that point she’d stopped listening to anything I had to say. She dragged Alisha off for a carriage ride through Central Park, and then it was time for a visit to what she called “Fay-o Schwartz.” The toy store was followed by brutal pilgrimages to Radio City Music Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza. The crowds were such that you could pick your feet off the ground and be carried for blocks in either direction. I was mortified, but Bonnie was in a state of almost narcotic bliss, overjoyed to have discovered a New York without the New Yorkers. Here were out-of-town visitors from Omaha and Chattanooga, outraged over the price of their hot roasted chestnuts. They apologized when stepping on someone’s foot and never thought to complain when some nitwit with a video camera stupidly blocked their path. The crowd was relentlessly, pathologically friendly, and their enthusiasm was deafening. Looking around her, Bonnie saw a glittering paradise filled with decent, like-minded people, sent by God to give the world a howdy. Encircled by her army of angels, she drifted across the avenue to photograph a juggler, while I hobbled off toward home, a clear outsider in a city I’d foolishly thought to call my own.

  A Shiner

  Like a Diamond

  I’D BEEN LIVING IN MANHATTAN for eight years when my father called, excited by the news that my sister Amy was scheduled to appear in a magazine article devoted to the subject of interesting New York women.

  “Can you imagine?” he asked. “My God, put a camera in front of that girl, and she’ll shine like a diamond! Between the single men and the job opportunities, her phone is going to be ringing right off the hook!” He paused for a moment, perhaps imagining the life of a young New York woman whose phone rings off the hook. “We just have to make sure that none of the wrong people call her. You’ll take care of that, right?”

  “I’m putting it on my to-do list as we speak.”

  “Good boy,” he said. “The trouble is that she’s just so darn pretty. That’s the danger right there. Plus, you know, she’s a girl.”

  My father has always placed a great deal of importance on his daughters’ physical beauty. It is, to him, their greatest asset, and he monitors their appearance with the intensity of a pimp. What can I say? He was born a long time ago and is convinced that marriage is a woman’s only real shot at happiness. Because it was always assumed that we would lead professional lives, my brother and I were free to grow as plump and ugly as we liked. Our bodies were viewed as mere vehicles, pasty, potbellied machines designed to transport our thoughts from one place to another. I might wander freely through the house drinking pancake batter from a plastic bucket, but the moment one of my sisters overspilled her bikini, my father was right there to mix his metaphors. “Jesus, Flossie, what are we running here, a dairy farm? Look at you, you’re the size of a house. Two more pounds, and you won’t be able to cross state lines without a trucking license.”

  “Oh, Lou,” my mother would moan, “for Christ’s sake, give it a rest.”

  “Aw, baloney. They’ll thank me for this later.” He honestly thought he was doing his girls a favor, and it confused him when the thanks never came.

  In response to his vigilance and pressure, my sisters grew increasingly defensive and self-conscious. The sole exception turned out to be Amy, who is capable of getting even without first getting mad. Nothing seems to stick to her, partly because she’s so rarely herself. Her fondness for transformation began at an early age and has developed into something closely resembling a multiple personality disorder. She’s Sybil with a better sense of humor, Eve without the crying jags. “And who are we today?” my mother used to ask, leading to Amy’s “Who don’t you want me to be?”

  At the age of ten Amy was caught taking a fistful of twenties from an unguarded till at the grocery store. I was with her and marveled at my sister’s deftness and complete lack of fear. When the manager was called, she calmly explained that she wasn’t stealing, she was simply pretending to be a thief. “And thieves steal,” she said. “So that’s what I was doing.” It all made perfect sense to her.

  She failed first grade by pretending to be stupid, but the setback didn’t seem to bother her. For Amy school was devoted solely to the study of her teachers. She meticulously char
ted the repetition of their shoes and earrings and was quick to pinpoint their mannerisms. After school, alone in her simulated classroom, she would talk like them, dress like them, and assign herself homework she would never complete.

  She became a Girl Scout only to become her Girl Scout leader. For Christmases and birthdays she requested wigs and makeup, hospital gowns and uniforms. Amy became my mother, and then my mother’s friends. She was great as Sooze Grossman and Eleanor Kelliher, but her best impersonation was of Penny Midland, a stylish fifty-year-old woman who worked part-time at an art gallery my parents visited on a regular basis. Penny’s voice was deep and roughly textured. She wasn’t shy, but when she spoke, certain words tended to leave her mouth reluctantly, as if they’d been forced out against their will.

  Dressed in a caftan and an appropriate white pageboy wig, Amy began phoning my father at the office. “Lou Sedaris! Penny Midland here. How the … hell are you?”

  Surprised that this woman would be calling him at work, our father feigned enthusiasm as best he could. “Penny! Well, what do you know. Gosh, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  The first few times she called, Amy discussed gallery business but, little by little, began complaining about her husband, a Westinghouse executive named Van. There were problems at home. Her marriage, it seemed, was on the rocks.

  Our father offered comfort with his standard noncommittal phrases, reminding Penny that there were two sides to every coin and that it’s always darkest before the dawn.

  “Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to … talk to someone who really … understands.”