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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

David Sedaris, Comments in The Pilot, and Loneliness

Words Jesse Scaccia
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 10:33 am

“I’d like a Jesus so fat he broke the cross,” read David Sedaris at Chrysler Hall last night. “This is a Jesus who conjured 1,000 loaves of bread, then ate 50 of them.”

And then, in the that singular Sedaris style that makes you feel like it’s just you and him telling stories in the back of a cab, he added, “With butter.”

Sedaris’ voice is all that we fear of our own when we first hear it on the answering machine: nasally, almost strained, and completely unsexy. He is a small man who dresses in the neat, nondescript fashion of a man who prefers to fade into the crowd than to have it draw around him. To the type of person who holds skills such as ass-kicking, trash talking, and bedding scores of women as Alpha Male attributes, Sedaris is not your man. Sedaris is just the opposite, actually. He’s the kind of guy Alpha Males pick on.

David Sedaris is zeta boy.

Zeta boy made jokes about Jesus (the lines I quoted were actually not anti-Christianity at all, please trust me). He talked openly about his homosexuality and his boyfriend without caveat or apology, as if these are the normal things they are. He was so excited about somebody else’s book that he held it geekily in the air for a good 45-seconds. In those moments it was easy to conjure imags of zeta boy as a boy, raising his hand eagerly to be the first to give his book report before the class, as all the cool dudes in the back snickered and plotted his recess demise.

The crowd at Chrysler Hall laughed out loud en masse literally dozens of times per essay Sedaris read. We cheered with gusto. It wasn’t deafeningly loud, and nobody had their faces painted in zeta boy’s honor, but this kind of reading was, still, as close as most of us will get to our version of howling for blood.

To people like me–whatever that means–David Sedaris is one of our bohemian warrior gods.

This phrase people like me is something that kept sticking in my mind as I laughed at these off-color jokes that distinctly reflected a liberal set of values. I kept looking around the room and thinking, Damn, lots of people here are like me.

When you believe in your heart in things like gay marriage, taxes, abortion rights, that there might not be a God, that America should disengage from its foreign wars, non-violent solutions to just about every single problem, and even in things like the Sunday New York Times over Sunday football, or Fair Grounds and A Latte (and every other independant coffee shop in this area) over Starbucks, it is easy to feel alone in Virginia. Escpecially in the highly militarized zone we call Hampton Roads.

The Pilot’s online component, HamptonRoads.com, has a way of making me feel particularly lonely and alone here in the 757. Not the newspaper itself, really. While The Pilot is decidedly conservative, it isn’t exactly anti anything I believe in. It’s the comment section that makes me feel like I’ve landed on the South side of the moon.

Last week I was reading an article in The Pilot about that same sex couple that was denied entry as a family to a country club in Norfolk. I was blown away.

“It’s a private club. They can discriminate. End of story,” wrote baobabs727, effectively endorsing privatized segregation.

“The day that Adam and Steve (of the same sex)or Eve and Eva can come together as one and produce a child I will stop my “old fashion” thinking that it takes a man and a woman to join in Holy matrimony,” wrote daniell30825.

Someone calling themself truthjustice wrote, “Why do homosexuals feel compelled to force us to accept that their choice of lifestyle is moral and acceptable to us?”

This one might have been my favorite: “I say let the homosexuals have Rhode Island. They can do whatever the want then… unnaturally.”

There were dozens of others. In fairness, there were also dozens of comments in support of the couple, but still. How is it okay to openly express homophobic views? God was used as justification for anti-gay views on a number of occasions. I’m not gay, but this scares me. Using God as a justification for hate + pro military (and all the guns and norms that come with it) = … I don’t know. I do believe our society is moving forward to being more accepting in terms of sexuality, race, and faith, so I don’t need to put myself through finishing the thought. But the unsaid QED is there.

One thing all of these ideas of hate and loneliness did equal, for me, was a feeling of utter delight at finding myself in a room full of people laughing and clapping for zeta boy. Places like Chrysler Hall and events like last night’s make me feel so much less alone, and I thank the people behind it for that. And in some strange way, I thank all of the ignorant haters who comment on hamptonroads.com. Because, quite frankly, they make me feel more sane than I probably am.

I’m still relatively new here. I admit that my perception of this area is still somewhat wrapped in the stereotypes and preconceptions I brought with me from my New England upbringing. But every time I go to an event like last night’s I start to see in this area a place where someone like me can be happy. Finding places and events like Chrysler Hall–and the Chrysler Museum, The Attucks, Yorgo’s, Fair Grounds, Cogan’s, Stockley Gardens, Hell’s Kitchen, the Opera, green drinks, The Boot, VSC, ODU’s Literary Fest–and all the other great places I’ve discovered through my life here and through this job, have been like the comfort of old sneakers and the excitement of a new love all at once. They’ve been like making new friends I never knew were there, but always have been.

These places make me feel like it’s okay to be me, somebody who, despite appearances, is a whole lot more zeta boy than Alpha Male.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Jesse Scaccia
Jesse has been published a few times on the editorial page of The New York Times; was the executive producer of a 6-part docu-drama for B.E.T.; was the managing editor of The Montauk Pioneer; reported for a San Diego weekly; has an MA in journalism from N.Y.U. and an MA in education from UConn; once made a documentary about American table tennis; also edits TeacherRevised.org; has appeared on Fox News and 20/20 talking about education. The script he co-wrote, Out of Manenberg, is in preproduction with Zen HQ Productions of Cape Town. He is working on a memoir while in ODU's MFA program. Email him: Jesse@AltDaily.com.
Other posts by Jesse Scaccia.