Me + David Sedaris

When I am not the crazy screaming lady in the car, I am the crazy laughing lady. I am the one hunched over the steering wheel in stomach-aching hysterics, the one nearly spitting iced coffee out her nose because a big ha-ha caught her off guard. I blame this entire ridiculous behavior on David Sedaris, to whom I am officially addicted and by whom I wish to be adopted and without whom I cannot travel if the traveling will take longer than two hours. Which, as it turns out, it always does for me.

The three short drunk people, when not vomiting or fighting, are either sleeping, day dreaming, or drawing ("You are drawer," said the GFYO to B, "I am an artist") and pretty much know enough to leave me alone. Especially after hour two. And traffic. And getting lost. Again. So, I am peacefully, joyfully left to the engage in a tete-a-tete with my beloved David.

He speaks to me via the ipod through the car speakers in his high-pitched sorta whine and I am entranced like a snake on acid to a charmer with more acid. When the voice announces "This audio book is brought to you by Audible.com...", I am like putty in his freakishly funny hands, a devotee, a groupie. A crazy lady laughing in her car.

Sometimes, I notice other drivers noticing me ("Is that woman crying? or laughing?" "Is she alone in there?" "Is she on drugs?" "Does she need drugs?") and so I mouth the words to something (like "I love octopus too") over my shoulder as if I am engaged in some really funny funny conversation with some funny funny person in the back seat. This generally assures the gawker I am normal or maybe they can read lips and speed off for other reasons but either way, I am free to indulge again.

I have to turn it down pretty low because David is a potty mouth like me, which isn't so big of a problem; it's the lengthy paragraphs on pot smoking or sex-crazed cabbies that I would prefer the Three Short Drunk People did not hear. So, turn it down I do, and then I just kind of hope for the best. Because really no matter how not PG-13 these stories can get, there is always a sweet almost lovely finish to them all, a moral to the story that you wish you had been smart enough to foresee and one you really wouldn't mind your kids hearing after all.

Once, on a yet another 6 hour long road trip, before any babies were born, the Stud and I were surely the talk of other travelers. We were open-mouthed wailing with laughter, tears in our eyes, fanning ourselves with Dunkin Donuts napkins and just about peeing each others pants. It was Sedaris' "Holidays on Ice" and we were listening to it on the way down to I think what must have been the first or second Christmas since my parents' split up. My dad would be there, as in, in the same house, at the same table, which was fucked up in all sorts of ways, and to say that I was just one nervous tic from a full-blown panic attack would be putting it mildly. But David Sedaris and his dissertation on being a Macy's elf and his impression of said elf channeling Cher (or was it Barbra Streisand?) pretty much saved Christmas for me that year. I just imagined my dad as that elf, or maybe David Sedaris as the elf but with my dad's face, shot-gunned a couple cold ones on arrival and ho-ho-ho. Merry Christmas.

David Sedaris' other books have saved countless other road-trips as well, ones that would be long because of insanely bored children or insanely bad drivers or just because what waited at the other end was more awkwardness or weirdness or sadness or bad news. And this new book, "When You Are Engulfed in Flames," saved this ride too.

Maybe I got lost once or twice because I was too busy howling at David's mother-in-law being eaten by worms, but so be it. I needed to write something to everyone on the Cousin Cancer update list that wouldn't be horribly disappointing (another round of arsenic is needed) or depressing (the numbers aren't going down) and I needed to laugh my ass off to come up with something accurate yet uplifting. Which I haven't yet, but I'll channel my beloved gay 50 year old BFF, and I know it'll work out.