David Sedaris - ‘My Father Said I Was A Bad Influence Because I Was Gay’

0:00Okay, anybody watching this at home, you are a loser, okay? Only losers watch podcasts. I was like 22 and I was addicted to meth and my father gave us a ride to the airport and was just, you're no writer, you're never gonna make, you're a failure, blah, blah, blah. Hello and welcome to How To Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast that reminds us that we all fail, Even if we don't fail in the same way, we all experience it. And it's about what we learn that really counts. Before we get into this episode, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation.

0:39If you know me, you'll know I love reality TV. I find it's great escapism and just the best way to take my mind off work and chill out. My favourite thing to do after a particularly busy period is to position myself on the sofa with my lovely cat Huxley and watch The Real Housewives. Something that makes this ritual even more enticing is a Lola's blanket. It's crafted with ultra-soft luxury faux fur and a signature four-way stretch that sets it apart. What's more, it's machine washable, which is crucial with Huxley around. He does like to molt, bless him. Double-hemmed for durability and stays flawless.

1:18No pilling, no shedding, even after repeated washes. It actually elevates the space where other blankets might make a sofa or room feel scruffy. This makes my home feel cosy and curated. For a limited time, our listeners can get 40 % off select Lola Blankets products with code HOWTOFAIL at checkout. Just head to lolablankets.com and use code HOWTOFAIL to get 40 % off your order. After your purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola Blankets.

2:19The audiobook's out now. Give it a listen. Many of us will have our favourite David Sedaris essay. Perhaps it's his tale of working as a 33-year-old elf at the Macy's department store and pondering why Santa is an anagram of Satan. Or maybe it's Ashes, in which he recounts his mother's cancer diagnosis and death with a trademark combination of poignancy and savage wit. Or it's his account of picking up litter in his adopted home of West Sussex and being baffled by the regularity with which he finds a neatly folded crisp packet screwed into an empty Coca-Cola bottle. Whichever one it might be, his accumulated work has earned him the reputation of being one of our foremost humorists, with over 16 million book sales to his name.

3:09Not bad for the young boy growing up in North Carolina, one of six siblings, whose dream was to co-present a TV show with a monkey. Instead, he graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but rapidly deciding performance art was not for him, he instead took on a range of odd jobs. But he also started keeping a diary, and it was his daily observations of life's absurdities and discoveries that would form the basis for his first collection, published in 1992. Now 69, Sideris still travels with a notebook. His new collection, The Land and Its People, recounts a safari to Kenya in which he didn't take a single photograph because he was too busy writing it all down.

3:53Unlike many authors, he is as famed for his public recitations of his work as he is for the quality of his writing. I don't think it ever occurred to me when I was 12 that you could just read out loud and people would actually show up, he says. It's the perfect job. David Sedaris, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. I would like to begin by registering my protest. I hate it that podcasts are filmed. I'm so sorry. In every single podcast I've done, I get there and they're like, oh, yeah, no, it's filmed. Okay, anybody watching this at home, you are a loser, okay? Only losers watch podcasts. You should be, you listen to podcasts while you do other things.

4:40Well, it makes total sense, given that you started out your career on NPR, that you revere the audio medium. What is it that you like about being audio only? Well, I just like that it frees you. You know, I mean, at the time that I started on the radio, it kind of had to be listening to the radio or you missed it. And I like that, too. I like that things didn't live forever. because your opinions change over time and, you know, everyone has like good days and bad days. So on a bad one, it's just like the idea that it would disappear, you know, and now it just doesn't. Do you think your writing has changed over time?

5:25Yeah. In what ways? So it used to be when I rewrote things on the typewriter, If I was rewriting, I wouldn't make it any longer than it was already because I didn't want to have to retype the whole page. So I would white out and then my rewrite would have to be the same number of words because I didn't want to have to retype the whole page. And then a computer made it so much easier to rewrite. So that was part of it. And then part of it was going on tour and reading things out loud and go back to the room and rewrite it and read it and rewrite it. So the early books, you know, those things were read on stage maybe once or twice as opposed to like 40 times.

6:10There's a beautiful essay in The Land and Its People, which I hugely enjoyed as a collection, as I enjoy all of your collections, where you are on a train carriage and there is a youth listening to music without earphones on his phone. And you go up and confront him. And I think it's a wonderful exercise in you as the writer assessing your own judgment, your own initial judgment. Can you tell us that story for anyone who hasn't read it? Oh, it was this kid and he was listening to music on his phone without any headphones on. And so it just drove me crazy. And so I went and I said, use headphones.

6:50And he said, I don't have any. And I said, turn it off. No, I don't confront people, you know. And he turned it off. And then the second I turned my back, like, then he started threatening me, you know. And I looked around and I realized that I was alone. You know, all the people on my side of the car, they were not going to be any help whatsoever. And anyway, it turned out the kid had just gotten out of rehab, and there was a drinks trolley on the train. And I knew he had just gotten out of rehab because I overheard him on the telephone saying that to somebody. And then he bought a drink when he was on the train.

7:34And I just got so caught up in that because, you know, I haven't had a drink in like, I don't know, 27 years. and so it just kills me when somebody falls back to their addiction and then I saw him get off the train later and he was just tiny he probably came up to my shoulder and he was just carrying this ridiculous boombox and I don't know you could just see his whole future and it was just rotten I was still glad I told him to turn it off I just thought, well, maybe there would have been a better way to do it. And I wouldn't have written that essay except a few weeks later, I was on the train and a woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, excuse me, but everyone can hear the music you're blasting on your laptop.

8:28I thought it was connected by Bluetooth to my speakers and it wasn't. So that's what made me write about it. It was just that it was so funny because here I got so angry and stuff. And then I turned around and then it was me doing it. Well, thank you. Let's get on to your failures. Your first failure is dropping out of university and ending up living in your parents' basement at the age of 20. Tell us about the university and what you were studying. When it came time to go to university, I said, I'm going to take a year off. And a gap year wasn't really a thing when I was in 1975. There wasn't that word for it.

9:10And my father said, you're not doing that. He said, if you do that, you're just going to sit at home in the basement, which was exactly what I would have done, you know. So I went off to college, and I really hated it. It was this college anyone could get into, a university anyone could get into, in the mountains of North Carolina. But I met my best friend there. And then I worked hard so I could improve my grades, So I transferred the next year to Kent State in Ohio. And I thought it was a good school just because people had been killed there. But it wasn't. It was like a bad school. People had been killed at.

9:47It's only reputation. If people hadn't been killed there, I never would have heard of it. And then I was like anti-drug. Oh, my goodness. When I was young, anti-drug. People got high or took acid. I didn't want anything to do with them. And then, you know, when you're at university, I mean, at that time, I mean, you know, people would just hold you down and, you know, give you shotguns. And then that's all it took. Then I was like all drug all the time. So my second year, I dropped out of university. But the good thing is, you know, I had some friends and we, you know, I wound up hitchhiking across the country and living in San Francisco and picking fruit, you know, picking apples and pears and living in migrant camps.

10:38It was real adventure, you know. But then I wound up at 20 back home in my parents' basement and I just felt like such a loser. and I probably had been home for a few months when my father said you have half an hour to get your shed and threw me out of the house like he was like it's not my problem where you go you're just not going to be here anymore so of course at the time I was you know not happy about it but in retrospect and I hate giving my father any credit for anything but he was right about that because I just needed to start my life again. And I wasn't just getting high in the basement and listening to Joni Mitchell albums and hating myself every second.

11:31It's funny, like my brother and his wife have made it very clear to our niece that she's free to live at home for the rest of her life. I'm sure that's a comfort to her. And I know that now young people live at home, you know, in the United States anyway. like well into their 20s. But it wasn't that common when I was young. Yes. And my parents said to my sister Amy, you don't have to go to college, but when you're 18, you have to move out of the house. So they did that to all of us. And in retrospect, and I understand too, it's a different world. I found a job working at a restaurant and I was able to live by myself.

12:13I don't know how many people, young people are able to do that now. You know, you have written about your family a lot. And one of the things that you wrote about your father was that it felt as though he were investing in your failure specifically. Tell us about that and how you drew that conclusion. Well, I just always remember, I mean, ever since childhood, you know, that my father didn't like me. He just didn't like me, you know. So it wasn't like having, it was different than having an enemy in the house. it was just having someone in the house who everything you said or did was irritating to them and they would never and you would try oh I'll try being this person or I'll try being this person but none of it worked and then you thought oh nothing's ever going to work right so I mean my mother was my mother was wonderful You know, so it would be awful when I think about what it would be like to grow up and not have either parent.

13:35You know, that's got to be really terrible. But, you know, at least I had her. But, yeah, no, he was like a negative cheerleader. And he did really, oh, gosh. I mean, I remember when my boyfriend Hugh first met my dad. And my dad, he and I had flown down for, Hugh and I had flown to North Carolina for my older sister's wedding. And I'd been living in New York just for a few months. And my father gave us a ride to the airport and was just, you're no writer. You're never going to make, you're a failure. I'd heard it all my life. I didn't even pay attention. But Hugh was like, he'd never heard anyone talk to their child that way.

14:18But again, it was, you know, I mean, it was just something that I grew up with. But then sometimes, you know, it can help to motivate you, you know, but you think, well, I'll show you. But the thing is, you never show them, you know, because they never really understand what it is you do. You know, just like I never understood what it was he did. I mean, he was an engineer and I was in high school before I realized he didn't drive a train, you know. I never, you know, asked him anything about himself. He would do things that to me seem so cruel and detailed in their strategy, like saying that he was putting money aside for you.

15:09Is it an IRA account that you call it? Yeah. Which is a retirement account. Is that what it is? Yeah, when I graduated from college, my father's whole thing was, you know, you're going to go to college, college, college, college, college, college. Everyone's going to college. But he was really cheap. So for a lot of us, there were six of us, when the time came, he'd say, you know, you're just not college material. And then they paid for me to go to college, you know, in state university my first year. And then I dropped out in the second year. and then when I dropped back in the night before I left he said I'm not paying for you so I wound up getting loans and grants and so I put myself through college which was good because then I wasn't beholden to him I didn't have to hear about how he wasted all his money so that I could get a degree, a fine art degree but when I graduated he said I'm getting you up for graduation president, IRA, you know, when I'm going to put money into it and that money's going to grow.

16:16And when you retire, you're going to be so glad. And I said, well, can't I just have the cash, you know, like I'm broke and I'm really in debt now for going to college. No, you cannot. So anyway, he talked about it for years. Anyway, when he died, I realized he'd never set it up. But that's exactly the kind of thing that he did. I mean, he gave everybody in the family money for Christmas. After my mom died, he started doing that. And it wasn't little money. You know, I mean, it was like, started off as$5 ,000 and it went to$17 ,000. You know, it was the maximum you could give without having to declare it on your taxes, right?

16:59And he said he put the money in my account, right? And this shows how dumb I am. I don't know how to bank online. I never look at my statements. I just throw it all away. And a couple of years before he died, I said to the person who handles my money, I said, oh, I'm going to buy a ticket to Tokyo with the money Dad gave me. And she said, what money he gave you? She said, he's never put a dime into your account. So he gave it to everyone else in the family, but never to me. But every year I wrote him a thank you letter, you know. And he never, until when I confronted him, I said, why didn't you even, like, I could have saved money on stamps.

17:47Like, no one else in the family was writing him a thank you letter. So he messed up. Yeah. But that's exactly who he was, you know.

18:02He really was the perfect preparation for a Trump presidency. You know, the same way that Trump is renowned for not paying people who do work for him. You know, before I moved to New York, he said he had a, my father had some rental property. He had a house he wanted painted. And he said, you could come down and paint it before you move to New York, earn that money, move New York with. So I came and I painted the house. And then, gee, I think he was going to pay me like, oh, I don't know,$2 ,000 for painting a house or something. I think I got$300. That's what he wound up giving me, you know. Do you think he was jealous of you?

18:43Yeah. It really bothered him that his predictions didn't come true, you know. And I think maybe two, oh, I don't know. I think maybe part of it might be generational, you know, to be, you know, I mean, my father loved music and loved jazz and, you know, he never could have played piano or done anything like that because he was an only child and then he had a family. And, you know, I think to see somebody be themselves, be completely themselves and succeed at it really bothered him. Yeah. You know, I just, I, every, all, I just took every bit of advice he ever gave me and did the opposite. And it was a really good strategy.

19:45You mentioned as part of this failure being thrown out of home effectively at age 20. Was that also to do with being gay? Yeah. He said I was a bad influence.

20:02And well, because, you know, when you've got a lot of younger brothers and sisters, you know, sometimes they look up to you. And I mean, I thought I was a pretty good influence. I mean, you know, because I had had some adventures, you know. I had, you know, traveled. I had met all kinds of interesting people that I would not normally, you wouldn't meet. A middle class person wouldn't meet, you know. And all of a sudden you're sleeping on the ground with a bunch of fruit pickers. or you're riding a boxcar or you're, you know, gee, going through a dumpster in Utah. You know, if you have a middle class upbringing and if you know that you have parents at home and then you could call and you could say, I mean, if my mother got on the phone, I could say, oh, I'm really in a bind.

21:01Could I have some money? So you're just kind of, there's an element of play acting to it, you know. but still I was out there and I got out there and it was, to me, those are good things. You mentioned that he just didn't like you. Do you like you now? Do I like me? Yeah. I mean, I always enjoyed my company. I haven't really, I mean, the times that I don't like myself, I see that as a good sign, you know, because I'll think, oh, you're just an asshole, you know. That's really bad. You need to apologize to a bunch of people and beg their forgiveness. And then, you know, you can feel okay about yourself.

21:46But I don't, no, I don't, I don't buy my own press either, you know. You mentioned that the first college you went to, you met your best friend. Is that Dawn? No, it's Ronnie Redrick. And then my second college, I met Dawn. And so, yeah, Ronnie's my best friend and Dawn's my second best friend. Got it. And Dawn is in The Land and Its People, which is why I mentioned her. You also write about friendship so well in this collection. Not just Dawn, but also a childhood best friend, Dan, who you lost, who died. And I think it's one of those things that doesn't get written about very much. the grief that you feel when you lose a friend as opposed to a family member.

22:36I think it's really hard to write about friendship. It is. And I don't know why it should be so hard. I think maybe because we're all conditioned to, with romantic love, you know, so many songs are about it and so many movies are about it. But a friendship, I don't know if we take them more for granted or, But I mean a rich, rich friendship, you know, a long, rich friendship is a difficult thing to write about. And I think, too, because sometimes, like my friend Ronnie, right, is a great person, but not a great character, like on the page, right? Dawn's a better character. and it's not that Dawn is more interesting than Ronnie.

23:32It doesn't have anything to do with that. She's just, Dawn is like, let's get moving. Let's get going. What can we do? What can we fix? What can we, you know, she doesn't want to sit down for any amount of time at all. She just wants to do things and that's another thing that makes her a good character. You know, she's energetic. I could do with reading a whole collection of just you and Dawn, a sort of travelogue. Well, I think the essay that I wrote about her, I think it might be the best thing I ever wrote. Oh, I'm so, gosh, I'm so glad you said that because it really stuck with me. Can you tell us the truck thing?

24:11Because that reveals so much about Dalton. Well, Dawn and I, Dawn got me started on a Fitbit. So we were in Colorado in this dusty, hot town. And we went up to this restaurant for lunch and we were walking back to our dismal hotel. And we saw a truck and it was filled with tires. It was parked and the doors were open. And so I just asked her, I said, if you had a year, do you think you could eat one of those tires? And she said, yeah. I mean, Dawn would be, she's just very methodical and she would, you know, eat a little bit of the tyre every day. And you can just imagine her. I mean, I would do the same thing, but she would really cut the tyre into pill-sized capsules, you know.

25:00But they would be precise. If you know me, you'll know I love reality TV. I find it's great escapism and just the best way to take my mind off work and chill out. My favourite thing to do after a particularly busy period is to position myself on the sofa with my lovely cat Huxley and watch The Real Housewives. Something that makes this ritual even more enticing is a Lola's blanket. It's crafted with ultra-soft luxury faux fur and a signature four-way stretch that sets it apart. What's more, it's machine washable, which is crucial with Huxley around. who does like to molt, bless him, double hemmed for durability and stays flawless.

25:43No pilling, no shedding, even after repeated washes. It actually elevates the space where other blankets might make a sofa or room feel scruffy. This makes my home feel cosy and curated. For a limited time, our listeners can get 40 % off select Lola Blankets products with code HOWTOFAIL at checkout. Just head to lolablankets.com and use code howtofail to get 40 % off your order. After your purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola Blankets. I want to date with Roars, Carty says. Roars? Rucker asks.

26:22This is the love story of real hinge couple Carty and Rucker. Written and read by me, Nicola Dynan. Listen to the free audiobook now. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro Plans. Your second failure is that you broke up with a live-in boyfriend at the age of 32 and you felt like a failure.

27:12I highly relate to this. I went through a divorce in my mid-30s and ended up back in my parents' flat. Oh, wow. And there is something about being back in the place where you remember being a child in a tiny single bed that brings you so face-to-face like a dog being confronted with its own vomit, really, of your own failure. So tell us what was happening here. I never had a boyfriend until I moved to Chicago and I met him a couple days after I moved there in a bar. And I had just turned 27 and we were together for six years. And when we broke up, you know, I just felt like such a failure, you know, like that I couldn't even make this work.

28:02But when I look back on it, for a relationship to work, you have to have the same idea about fidelity. I mean, I know so many gay couples and they just have an open relationship and it works. If this person wants to go and sleep with other people, the other person doesn't mind. They both do it and it works for them. But if one person is for that and the other person absolutely is not, it's never going to work. But still, I just felt like it was my fault. I mean, I was a faithful person. I should have, if I were better, do you know what I mean? He wouldn't want to be with other people. if I had more money I didn't have any money at all if I were you know at the same time I I went to art school and I just knew a lot of people who just talked about doing stuff they didn't do it and you have to do it you have to do the work and that means you're not going to parties that means you're going home to write or to paint or whatever and it means you're getting you're doing it on Christmas day and it means you're doing it on your vacation it means you're putting the hours in and and so that was it too I just I knew I wasn't going to get what I wanted if I didn't work for it I'm not by that time in my life I'd met some people who were really talented and and And I could see that they were more talented than I was.

29:59And I thought, okay, they were born with something I wasn't born with, right? How do I make up for that, right? And I thought, well, I have to work harder. And then there's this young man and sometimes when I'm on tour, I invite a young person to come and read for me, you know, to open for me. A lot of times it's someone who I meet at a book signing. And sometimes, gee, one time it was a kid, he was 12 years old, and he wrote me a letter and then he sent me his poetry. And I said, well, I'm going to be in Atlanta. Why don't you open for me? We had to get a box for him. But he was really earnest and really worked on it hard.

30:45And then I'm still in touch with him. He's a father himself now, and he still opens for me sometimes. and then sometimes anyway there's this young man who I met in the United States and he showed up in Comme des Garcons and he read very animated reader you know you can't take your eyes off of him when he reads and he said well I know my writing's not where it needs to be so I make up for it by being well dressed and my delivery and I thought exactly so that's what I did when I was his age too I just thought, okay, how do I make up for my shortcomings? But I could see how, you know, with my first boyfriend, it would be hard if, like nothing would pull me away from my schedule.

31:40Nothing. You know, he tried all kinds of things. Nothing would get me to leave my desk. and Hugh, my boyfriend now, Hugh's dad was a writer. So to Hugh, to have someone in the next room and the sound of a typewriter was so comforting to him. He didn't see it as him being rejected. It just was what home felt like to him. So he was delighted. Hugh is technically your husband, but you hate that word. Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of with you. I love that you call him your boyfriend. So we've dealt with that. I feel like you've spoken about it enough. But this particular breakup, is it the one, there's one that you briefly mentioned in the book where your mother came to help.