Our Secret Self | October 21, 2023

Last night, Ryan and I went to see David Sedaris at Interlochen and not only was it a rare date night for us that included dinner, drinks, and an overnight stay for Duke at Grandmas, it felt like letting Ryan in for a peek at my secret self. 

Not that I'm keeping bits of myself from him, but we all have these parts of ourselves that are just ours, right? They don't overlap with the parts we have in common and so they're sort of secret. I don't know the version of my husband that is a colleague, because I've never worked with him. I can imagine the jokes he'd make or how he'd keep his desk, but I can't actually know that particular man. And likewise, because we do not read together or discuss books very often, I don't think that Ryan can speak much to my taste in writers. He doesn't know that version of me. 

David Sedaris is such a writer hero to me, it felt like I was bringing my boyfriend home to meet my parents. In this case, Sedaris was my boyfriend, Ryan my parents. Please like him, I thought. I glanced over several times to catch his reaction. 

David, I say casually as if we're friends, writes and speaks with an elegant mastery of the English language. He also writes and speaks cleverly about fellatio and dropping acid.  Very high brow, low brow which I enjoy and I thought Ryan would too. He led with an essay about Siri and how we speak to our robot assistants, promptly making an obscene joke about Siri's services. The room laughed. We all did. 

What's interesting to me, and really lovely actually, is after 15 years that I've spent with Ryan, it feels like I unlocked a new door. There's still new things to know about each other. You know all those evenings that I'm quietly on the couch, wearing glasses with a bowl of popcorn in my lap and a book innocently perched in front of my face? Yeah, I'm reading about Dinah, the Christmas Whore. 

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If you are so inclined to accept my recommendations, these are my favorite David Sedaris collections - Calypso, Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, and The Santa Land Diaries.