Box Seats

I went to see David Sedaris the other night at the Peace Center with my husband and our friends. Some of my friends are very familiar with his work, while others just ask, “David Sedaris? He’s that gay writer?” as if being gay defined him or his genre. Last time I checked the Barnes and Noble bookshelves, his work was right out there alongside the heterosexual writers, instead of tucked away in some lurid corner with the books whose jacket photos resemble an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. I don’t think people would feel as comfortable saying, “Nipsey Russell? He’s that black actor?” or “Jerry Seinfeld? He’s that Jewish comedian?” but they feel somehow that Sedaris being gay goes a long way in explaining his literary appeal.

I almost didn’t make it to the show because my daughter, S, was sick and thus home from school that day. It was the first day back after spring break, which was enhanced this year by the observation of Easter Monday, heretofore only recognized by banks and postal employees, but is now bleeding over into the education system. S woke up at two in the morning with a fever and delusions, causing all of us a great deal of distress. I was already awake due to my own allergy issues and stupidity at following my husband’s advice of popping two Sudafed before bedtime. He and I both tend to forget that we are not the same size or weight and what works for his strong constitution wreaks havoc on my chemically sensitive disposition. So I was up from a fitful bout of sleeplessness when I heard S’s screams and delirium, trying to calm her down enough to shove the ear thermometer with the low battery into her ear canal to get enough of an inaccurate reading to justify a dose of Motrin. She calmed down, after sips of water and pats on her back, and I returned to my night of tossing and turning, punctuated by my cat’s late night affections and the occasional neighboring dog bark.

The next morning, after round two of S’s screaming hallucinations, it was clear she was unwell for school that day and that I would begin day 11 of intense mother-daughter togetherness. Only this time , we enjoyed the added value of illness, meaning we would be spending about as much time in front of the television as the average American, with my intermittent pleas for S to drink more, drink more, just one more sip, don’t you want to get better? We watched The Pink Panther, we watched Oswald the Octopus, and then we watched Enchanted, which caused me to sing my requests for her to drink up rather than merely whine them.

Lucky for me, S was only feverish and lazy, with none of the truly fun signs of illness, like simultaneous puking and shitting, commonly referred to as “two exits, no waiting,” nor did she have green mucus streaming out of her nostrils, a dry hacking smoker’s cough, an unusual rash on her face or hands, nor any other sign that causes a babysitter to turn around before entering the quarantined space and flee for less contaminated air. My friend agreed to come over to babysit, knowing that her exposure to anything life threatening was unlikely, and I went about in my usual whirling dervish way to ensure that the kids’ routine was not too disrupted, which included our eating a home cooked meal together, selecting school clothes for the following day, and lovingly packing a nutritionally balanced lunch to take to school. I was so ready to go, it didn’t matter if it was roller derby, a tractor pull, or the living nativity, I just wanted to be out of my house and away from my kids.

We arrived downtown, found decent and affordable parking, and walked over to the Peace Center to look for our friends. The lobby was packed with more left wing types than are ever assembled in this town in one day. David Sedaris sat at a table, signing books and answering preshow questions while a line of witty liberals snaked its way around the available floor space. We decided to go back outside to wait for our friends, and on our way through the door to the seating area, we ran into some Jewish friends from our temple. “I see the Jews are out to support the gays tonight,” I remarked after greeting them. I also saw my writing friends and some of my mom friends, as if the entire local contents of my address book went out together on a Thursday night.

We finally found our friends and made our way to our seats. I was very excited, because I was the one who got the seats, and for the first time ever, I got box seats. They were the same price as orchestra seats, and I have always wanted to sit there, high and to the right, like Statler and Waldorf on The Muppet Show. Ideally, I would get to make snide comments loudly and heckle the whole time to the delight of the other patrons, but I knew my husband would push me from the box if I did that. He was secretly delighted to have box seats as well, and he leaned over and whispered to me that we were above the riff raff, as if we were going to watch a Barnum freak show and not paying $40 a pop to hear some guy read out of his journal.

We entered the box and imagine my surprise to find that our seats were not together. Unlike the seating in the rest of the theater, which is fixed, the box seats were unattached and on wheels. Two of our four seats were in the front row, which had four seats across, but the middle row had only three seats, leaving the last row with one sad lonely chair. Two women sat in the first row, and two women were seated in the middle row. There were small brass plates indicating the seat numbers on the floor, and it turned out that one of the women in the middle row was in one of our seats. Now, I hate to appear petty, but shit, I didn’t want to sit in the time out chair in the back of the box, so we stood there, looking at our tickets, and then looking at the chairs, and then looking at each other, until finally one of the women got up and moved out of our seat. Our husbands, forever the gentlemen, sat in the front row, and my friend, R, and I moved to the middle. I sat and made small talk with R while scanning the audience for more familiar faces. Why, I don’t know. What was I going to do? Stand up and yell like it was a graduation ceremony? While we talked, the woman seated in the lone chair edged it up slightly. We talked some more, and I overheard her complaining how she couldn’t see anything from that spot tucked in the back. Then she rolled forward a bit more. My friend and I continued to chatter, until the woman’s presence looking over my right shoulder took all my attention. If I had looked in her direction, I am sure her nose would have slammed against my cheek. I leaned forward and asked the husbands if they would like to sit on the same row with us. They agreed, so I offered our seats to the woman next to me and the woman who was supposed to be behind me. “Oh, no, honey,” she drawled, “We couldn’t take y’all’s front row seats,” like we had orchestra pit seats. I insisted, and they quickly arose and switched places with our husbands.

After our pleasantries had been exchanged, we started rolling and scooting the chairs around to bring that lone seat up in line with the other three, which was a tight fit, but comfortable with four people who know and like each other, and infinitely more relaxing than the back seat look-over I had been experiencing. By the time we had our seats arranged snugly, David Sedaris strode onto the stage, took a sip of water, and in his squeaky voice, made time fly.