I left the office quietly. I was the last to go. It didn't really hit me that I was leaving until I had to hand over my keys. I went from fourteen keys on my keyring to three. Holding those three keys and realizing I only had responsibility for my house and my car... That's when it hit.
My coworkers took me out to the
Pacific Dining Car for my goodbye lunch. Built in the 1920s, I don't think they've changed a thing. The walls were deep green. The chairs and tables carved wood. Old men in kackis were trying to sell each other on strings of racing ponies. Nicholas Cage was sitting somewhere, or so said the paparazzi. The food was the thing of dreams.
One of my coworkers actually tried to quit a few years back. I gave her a shotglass from our gift shop. She's now back with one of our contractors. It's like the Hotel California, really. I kept hugging people and saying, "Don't worry. No one every REALLY leaves."
At lunch, said shotglass coworker gave me a plaster cast of one of the gargoyles on our building. She said his face had a look she had seen me wear from time to time. I couldn't argue.
It was such a mad rush to get out, it was all just a blur. I had to get on the road and tiemwas ticking away. Five million years ago, or last February, I bought a ticket to go see
David Sedaris down in San Diego. Who would this appearance would be the start of the rest of my new life, a grand excursion into the Great Adventure.
I sat in the traffic jam as the minutes ticked by saying to myself, "This is DUMB. Turn around. Go home. You're going to drive two hours and then miss the show. Your car is old. You're going to get lost. Dumb dumb dumb." But the little voice saying, "Just keep your foot on the gas and your wheels headed south..."
I haven't been to San Diego in... well... Three years? Four years? And then it was just to the zoo and the Gas Light District and the airport. I had forgotten how beautiful the rest of the world is. LA is concrete and efficiency and business. San Diego has flowers growing in the medians of the highway.
I cursed myself for running late. I noted one more example of why it really was important to step away from the security of my job - one more example of the life I was missing because I had placed filing papers above human interaction. Not that it was anyone's fault. But I had been missing it. Always late. Always comprimising.
And that's when the highway bent before me. The hills were golden with the sunset. And in the little dip of a valley, two hot air balloons rose into the sky. Twenty minutes in either direction and I would have missed it. The "late" turned out to be perfect timing.
I got to the theater. I was sitting down as David Sedaris took the stage.
I heard a gentleman read "Santaland Diaries" at a Salon thing a few years back and ever since then, that guy's face is David Sedaris to me. It was a little jolting to see the real guy. I found myself closing my eyes at first and grounding myself in his voice. That's the guy I knew. I then took off my glasses and looking at his blurry shape, I could accept that he was himself, but he could also sort of be that other actor. Sort of rolled up into one. And then after a little while, I was able to accept that this was the real David Sedaris and I had better get used to it. And I put on my glasses.
He was funny. So funny. He read stuff that didn't get put into his book and stuff that got rejected from TAL. He said, "Ira is working on the television show so much, that his producer called me for an essay and she rejected it, saying it wasn't good enough. Well. She was wrong." And then he read his essay.
I have never laughed so hard in my life.
He concluded it reiterating, "WRONG."
Absolutely.
He also did this hysterical bit about catch phrases that need to stop, like, "The blind are people, too." The essay ended with, "And you know, of course, the worst one. The one you are saying in your head..." And he left it there.
Cut to the book signing. Before he went to the table he said, "Woke up in the middle of the night wondering something that I keep thinking about. So I'm taking a poll. Tell me what you think when you get to the table. Barack Obama. Circumcised or uncircumcised?"
David took several minutes with every person. Which was great. But long. But great. But long. You hit the hour mark and suddenly to leave and go home would mean to admit defeat. I was going to pick up a few more copies of the book for people, but by the time I got to the table, they sellers had packed up and gone home. I guess people don't work after midnight in San Diego. Slackers.
The girl before me, David was like, "You're a Capricorn?" And she was like, "No, Sagetarius." To which David said, "No you're not. You were adopted. You're actually a Capricorn and your parents have been lying to you." After he signed her book, he said, "Sometimes I get it right and people act all amazed, like I've done something magical."
I got to the front of the line and he asked what my name was and I said, "Kate." He said, "You sound very apologetic about that." I shrugged and said, "What can you do?"
He asked me, as he started sketching an owl in my book if we had a lot of owls around here. I said I worked at a Natural History museum and we had a lot of owls. He then said, "Well, I read this article. And it says that everyone things owls go 'Whooo whooo'... but actually?"
He leaned forward.
"They're saying this."
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