David Sedaris - Barrel Fever and Other Stories

As I mentioned earlier this evening, while receiving my Academy Award for best actor I arrived here in Los Angeles, California, almost a year ago with no experience whatsoever. I'd never acted or directed or produced a thing in my life. I was just a guy from Cumberland County, North Carolina a man with a dream.

"What's going on here?" you're probably asking yourselves.

"Here this Don, this dreamer, never acted a day in his life and yet there he is sweeping the Academy Awards. How did he do it? What's so special about him?"

Well, that's what my movie,Don's Story, is all about. It's all right there: from my dropping out of high school at age seventeen to my packing for Hollywood at age thirty-six. I imagine it's what's not in the movie that probably interests you right now.

"How did he do it? This nobody, this dreamer."

Well, like I said, I left Cumberland almost a year ago on a Greyhound bus with a small bag of potato chips, eight dollars, and a dream. I stretched out and took two seats until somewhere outside Gatlinburg, when I was forced to surrender one of them to a woman by the name of Mrs. Patricia Toni. Mrs. Toni was headed to Encino, California.

"What's in Encino?" I asked, trying to be a good neighbor.

It turned out that Mrs. Toni's daughter was in Encino, in a hospital suffering from exhaustion. I don't know much about exhaustion, but I imagine it must be very tiring, so I said, "Oh, that's terrible." And she unfolded her newspaper and said, "You're darn right it's terrible."

At every stop along the way Mrs. Toni would buy the local newspaper and discuss the stories about crime and murder.

"Listen here where it says this man walked into a gas station and shot four people. Didn't even get gas or rob the place Just opened fire and killed four people. That's a low deed in my opinion. I think that's really terrible. If I was on that jury I'd convict him so fast it would make his head spin. I wouldn't waste time eating up the taxpayers' money. I'd just fire up the gas chamber and move on to the next case. The son of a bitch. It says here where he shot a five-year-old boy right through the neck. Bullet went in one side and out the other. I think that's terrible, don't you?"

Well, I didn't know the gunman. For all I know he might have had a pretty good reason to do what he did, but to make things easier I agreed and said I thought it was terrible.

"You're darn right it's terrible. Right through the neck. The neck is a very sensitive area. Everyone knows that. This is just terrible. I thought it was terrible the other day when that crack-pot in Little Rock stabbed his mother's collie to death. Stabbed it seventeen times, a beautiful collie named Moxie. The mother cried and cried. Seventeen times he stabbed that dog. Once or twice would have done the job, but he did it seventeen times and I think that's terrible. Don't you?"

Crimes happen all across this country and Mrs. Toni made note of them day and night all the way to Reno, where she slept through our stop and missed her opportunity to buy a fresh newspaper. At this point, after having spent almost three days together, she finally asked me my name and where I was going and why, and I told her that my name was Don and that I was going to the Los Angeles area to make a name for myself in the motion picture industry, and she looked at me and said, "You've got to be kidding You?" Then she turned to the man across the aisle and pointed at me and said, "This one thinks he's going to be some kind of a movie star." And she put her hands on her stomach and bent over laughing and I just sort of. . punched her. I jabbed her real quick with the bathroom key I'd gotten at the last station. I just sort of. . poked her with it just real. . quick and, ha ha, she made just the biggest stink about it. She made the bus driver pull over and she lifted her sweater and showed everybody the little mark on her side just a little nick, and she was pointing at me and saying, "I think this is terrible. I mean it. Here I get on this bus to visit my daughter who is clinically exhausted and I'm practically stabbed to death in broad daylight. This is the sort of thing that makes the papers as far as I'm concerned. 'Woman Stabbed on Bus.' This is terrible."

So the bus driver threw me off onto the dusty highway. No refund or anything, just tossed me out. By this time I had only two dollars left so I stuck out my thumb and was picked up by a man named Enrique Moldonato and tonight, standing onstage here at the Academy Awards, I would like to thank him publicly. As luck would have it he was going all the way to Los Angeles and dropped me off at a Laundromat close to his home. Luckily, the Laundromat had a phone book and I had a quarter so I put two and two together and phoned Paramount Pictures. When the receptionist answered I said, "Let me speak to the per-son in charge there."

She said, "One moment, please."

Then, in the background I heard her say, "Mr. Tartikoff, you have a phone call."

And I heard him say, "Oh, good."

He came to the phone and I said, "Mr. Tartikoff, my name is Don Singleton and I'd like to make a motion picture."

He said, "Hmmmm. A motion picture about what?"

And I looked over and saw someone empty the lint tray from one of the dryers and I said, "A motion picture about my life."

"I'm all ears, Don," Mr. Tartikoff said.

Just then the operator came on the line and told me to deposit more coins and Mr. Tartikoff said, "Don, are you calling from a pay phone?"

I confessed that I was and he asked if there was some way we might talk in person, so I gave him the address and shortly thereafter a big limo pulled up and Mr. Tartikoff entered and put his hands to his mouth and yelled, "Is there a Don Singleton here?" and I said, "Yes, that's me."

We shook hands and he looked around and he said, "Say, Don, this place is really damp. What do you say we go some-place else?"

He said he'd been invited to a big celebrity party and asked would I like to come along and I thought about it for about, ha ha, two seconds and said sure. Then his driver opened the door and we got into the limousine and on the way to the party Mr. Tartikoff, Brandon, asked me questions about my life.

He poured us each a glass of scotch from the bar and studied me and said, "What are you, Don about thirty-five years old?"

"Thirty-six."

"Have you ever worked?"

I told him I'd worked almost four years as a dishwasher at the KandW Cafeteria. I worked there from the age of seventeen until I was twenty-one, when I got fired for spitting in the food.

"They fired you forthat?" Brandon said. "That's crazy. Why, everyone I know spits in things all the time." He spit into his glass and drank it. "That's no reason tofire anyone for God's sake."

Then I spit on my fingers and leaned over and rubbed it into the driver's neck.

Brandon looked at me then and said, "I've got a feeling about you, Don a good one," and we chinked our glasses in a toast.

At about this time, the limousine turned off the road and we headed up a long tree-lined driveway, up to a big mansion with white columns and stained-glass windows and a shallow moat filled with swans and turtles and someone came and opened the limo door and I looked up and saw Barbara Streisand and she was wearing. . well, the exact same thing she's wearing tonight as a matter of fact. She and Brandon embraced and then she turned to me and raised her eyebrows like, "Who the heck is this?" Brandon told Barbara Streisand that my name was Don and that I used to wash dishes at KandW Cafeteria and, ha ha, I tell you, Barbara Streisand just couldn't ask enough questions.

"A dishwasher! Tell me, was it a conveyor run-through Waste King Jet System or a double hot sink layout? What detergents did you use? At what temperature does a drinking glass become quote unquote 'clean'?" She took my arm and led me into the house, which was just absolutely teeming with celebrities: Joey Bishop, Faye Dunaway, Shari Lewis, Kevin Costner, Gene Rayburn, Tatum O'Neal, Tom Cruise, Cathy Lee Crosby, Carol Charming, Buddy Ebsen the list goes on and on and on. Barbara Streisand handed me a champagne cocktail and introduced me around and, ha ha, I felt like giving a press conference, so many people asking questions about my life.