The more David Sedaris I read, the more I find myself wincing at his judgy and selfish moments—even though his versions of these moments totally appeal to me. Everyone is judgmental and selfish sometimes, and Sedaris’s own descriptions of these times are so entertaining.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames, published in 2008, marks my third consecutive David Sedaris book. This collection of essays, like the others I have read, do not have an obvious theme. But smoking comes up a bit, and the book’s last section is an extended piece about Sedaris’s experience with quitting.
Here are some of my favorite passages from When You Are Engulfed in Flames. First, a moment dealing with a battle-axe of a neighbor named Helen:
While in France, I’d bought Helen some presents, nothing big or expensive, just little things a person could use and then throw away. I placed the bag of gifts n her kitchen table and she halfheartedly pawed through it, holding the objects upside down and sideways, the way a monkey might. A miniature roll of paper towels, disposable napkins with H’s printed on them, kitchen sponges tailored to fit the shape of the hand: “I don’t have any use for this crap,” she said. “Take it away. I don’t want it.”
And here is a passage from an essay about going to the doctor for his kidney stone. Sedaris undressed and found his way to a waiting room—but without having first put on the robe available to him:
It’s funny the things that run through your mind when you’re sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers. Suicide comes up, but, just as you embrace it as a viable option, you remember that you don’t have the proper tools: no belt to wrap around your neck, no pen to drive through your nose or ear and up into your brain. I thought briefly of swallowing my watch, but there was no guarantee I’d choke on it. It’s embarrassing, but, given the way I normally eat, it would probably go down fairly easily, strap and all. A clock might be a challenge, but a Timex the size of a fifty-cent piece, no problem.
Then the conclusion of an essay about his affection for spiders (and disaffection with pet dogs and cats):
I suppose there’s a place in everyone’s heart that’s reserved for another species. My own is covered in cobwebs rather than dog or cat hair, and, because of this, people assume it doesn’t exist. It does, though, and I felt it ache when Katrina hit. The TV was on, the grandmother signaled from her rooftop, and I found myself wondering, with something akin to panic, if there were any spiders in her house.
I love this description of the anxiety he feels before his partner Hugh takes him out for a meal:
“A restaurant? But what will we talk about?”
“I don’t know,” he’ll say. “What does it matter?”
Alone together, I enjoy our companionable silence, but it creeps me out to sit in public, propped in our chairs like a pair of mummies. At a nearby table there’s always a couple in their late seventies, blinking at their menus from behind thick glasses.
“Soup’s a good thing,” the wife will say, and the man will nod or grunt or fool with the stem of his wineglass. Eventually he’ll look my way, and I’ll catch in his eyes a look of grim recognition. “We are your future,” he seems to say. “Get used to it.”
I’m so afraid that Hugh and I won’t have anything to talk about that now, before leaving home, I’ll comb the papers and jot down a half dozen topics that might keep a conversation going at least through the entrĂ©es.
Here is a fun rundown of smokers and their brands:
It was in a little store a block from our hotel that I bought my first pack of cigarettes. The ones I'd smoked earlier had been Ronnie's—Pall Malls, I think—and though they tasted no better or worse than I thought they would, I felt that in the name of individuality I should find my own brand, something separate. Something me. Carltons, Kents, Alpines: it was like choosing a religion, for weren't Vantage people fundamentally different from those who'd taken to Larks or Newports? What I didn't realize was that you could convert, that you were allowed to. The Kent person could, with very little effort, become a Vantage person, though it was harder to go from menthol to regular, or from regular-sized to ultralong. All rules had their exceptions, but the way I came to see things, they generally went like this: Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were tor procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't. One should never loan money to a Marlboro menthol smoker, though you could usually count on a regular Marlboro person to pay you back. The eventual subclasses of milds, lights, and ultralights would not only throw a wrench into the works, but make it nearly impossible for anyone to keep your brand straight, but that all came later, along with warning labels and American Spirits.
And, finally, Sedaris remembers the first time someone asked him for a cigarette:
Take this guy who approached me after I left the store, this guy with a long black braid. It wasn’t the gentle, ropy kind you’d have if you played the flute but something more akin to a bullwhip: a prison braid, I told myself. A month earlier, I might have simply cowered, but now I put a cigarette in my mouth—the way you might if you were about to be executed. This man was going to rob me, then lash me with his braid and set me on fire—but no. “Give me one of those,” he said, and he pointed to the pack I was holding. I handed him a Viceroy, and when he thanked me I smiled and thanked him back.
It was, I later thought, as if I’d been carrying a bouquet and he’d asked me for a single daisy. He loved flowers, I loved flowers, and wasn’t it beautiful that our mutual appreciation could transcend our various differences, and somehow bring us together? I must have thought, too, that had the situation been reversed he would have been happy to give me a cigarette, though my theory was never tested. I may have been a Boy Scout for only two years, but the motto stuck with me forever: “Be Prepared.” This does not mean “Be Prepared to Ask People for Shit”; it means “Think Ahead and Plan Accordingly, Especially in Regard to Your Vices.”
