David Sedaris - ‘My Father Said I Was A Bad Influence Because I Was Gay’

David Sedaris is one of America’s best-loved humorists, famous for turning the absurdities of everyday life into razor-sharp, deeply human essays. He joins Elizabeth Day on How to Fail to talk about the moments that have shaped him: from dropping out of university and ending up in his parents’ basement at 20, to being thrown out by his father and growing up with a parent who seemed to actively invest in his failure. He talks candidly about heartbreak after a breakup at 32, the fear of being alone, grief at losing the people we love and his past crystal meth addiction and sobriety. We also hear about the embarrassment of dropping out of Japanese school in Tokyo at 50…and the possibility of a cameo on The Archers. IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Intro 03:39 How His Writing Evolved 04:27 Train Music Confrontation 07:03 Failure One: Dropping Out 10:38 A Father Rooting Against Him 13:16 Money Promises and Betrayal 18:03 Thrown Out and Self Worth 20:31 Friendship and Grief 23:22 Failure Two: Breakup at 32 27:38 Writing Love And Routine 28:46 Sharon The Practical Mom 33:08 Heartbreak Versus Grief 35:54 Crystal Meth And Fear 38:59 Conceptual Art On Fire 40:24 Tokyo Japanese School Quit 46:08 The Archers Cameo 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: “I just took every bit of advice [my father] ever gave me and did the opposite, and it was a really good strategy.” “Fear kept me drinking. Fear kept me smoking. Fear kept me from leaving.” “You’re never going to get what you want if you don’t work for it.” “Every day is a new beginning.” 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: The Land and Its People by David Sedaris is widely available across both online retailers and physical bookstores in the US and the UK. Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Dawn French - on fertility, friendship and being an anti-perfectionist http://swap.fm/l/NJDrzxLKhyi6icOrxmHT Simon Cowell - on judgement, power and the uncomfortable responsibility of shaping someone’s future http://swap.fm/l/hSwuCNEuZNgnaG20v0yB 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Elizabeth and David answer listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://lnk.to/7i0moR Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: askhowtofail.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Okay, anybody watching this at home, you are a loser. Okay, only losers watch podcasts. I was like 22 and I was addicted to meth. And my father gave us a ride to the airport and was just, you're no writer. You're never gonna make, you're a failure, blah, blah, blah.

• 0:17Elizabeth Day?

  Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast that reminds us that we all fail. Even if we don't fail in the same way, we all experience it. And it's about what we learn that really counts. Before we get into this episode, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation.

• 0:40Elizabeth Day?

  Confession time. I have a tendency to postpone certain decisions for far longer than is sensible. Not the big life decisions, oddly enough, those I can usually handle. It's the smaller ones that somehow become disproportionately complicated. For me, rugs fall squarely into that category. I've known for a long time that a rug can completely change how a room feels. But I've always found sizing for a space tricky. That's why Ernesta appealed to me. Ernesta makes designer quality rugs custom cut to the exact dimensions of your space. So instead of making do with something that's close enough, you're choosing something made specifically for your home. I also love the fact that you can order five oversized 12 by 12 samples for just $10

• 1:25Elizabeth Day?

  before committing and Ernesta's design team will help with sizing completely free of charge. Visit ernestacom and order five samples for only $10 and you'll get $50 towards any rug of your choice. That's ernestacom.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced government sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  While your neighbor says, I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours and theirs are theirs.

• 2:43Elizabeth Day?

  Many of us will have our favorite David Sedaris essay. Perhaps it's his tale of working as a 33 year old elf at the Macy's department store and pondering why Santa is an anagram of Satan. Or maybe it's Ashes, in which he recounts his mother's cancer diagnosis and death with a trademark combination of poignancy and savage wit. Or it's his account of picking up litter in his adopted home of West Sussex and being baffled by the regularity with which he finds a neatly folded crisp packet screwed into an empty Coca-Cola bottle. Whichever one it might be, his accumulated work has earned him the reputation

• 3:23Elizabeth Day?

  of being one of our foremost tumorists with over 16 million book sales to his name. Not bad for the young boy growing up in North Carolina, one of six siblings, whose dream was to co-present a TV show with a monkey. Instead, he graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. But rapidly deciding performance art was not for him, he instead took on a range of odd jobs. But he also started keeping a diary and it was his daily observations of life's absurdities and discoveries that would form the basis for his first collection, published in 1992. Now 69, Sedaris still travels with a notebook. His new collection, The Land and Its People, recounts a safari to Kenya

• 4:08Elizabeth Day?

  in which he didn't take a single photograph because he was too busy writing it all down. Unlike many authors, he is as famed for his public recitations of his work as he is for the quality of his writing. "I don't think it ever occurred to me when I was 12 that you could just read out loud and people would actually show up," he says. "It's the perfect job." David Sedaris, welcome to How to Fail.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Thank you. I would like to begin by registering my protest. I hate it that podcasts are filmed.

• 4:40Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so sorry.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  And every single podcast I've done, I get there and they're like, oh, yeah, no, it's filmed. Okay, anybody watching this at home, you are a loser. Okay, only losers watch podcasts. You should be, you listen to podcasts while you do other things.

• 5:01Elizabeth Day?

  Well, it makes total sense, given that you started out your career on NPR, that you revere the audio medium. What is it that you like about being audio only?

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Well, I just like that it frees you. You know, I mean, at the time that I started on the radio, it kind of had to be listening to the radio or you missed it. And I like that, too. I like that things didn't live forever. Because your opinions change over time and, uh, you know, everyone has like good days and bad days, but so on a bad one, it just liked the idea that, that it would disappear. You know, and now it just doesn't.

• 5:41Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think your writing has changed over time?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:46Elizabeth Day?

  In what ways?

• 5:47Speaker 00

  So it used to be when I rewrote things on the typewriter, if I was rewriting, I wouldn't make it any longer than it was already because I didn't want to have to retype the whole page. So I would white out and then my rewrite would have to be the same number of words because I didn't want to have to retype the whole page. And then the word, you know, a computer made it so much easier to rewrite. So that was part of it. And then part of it was going on tour and reading things out loud and go back to the room and rewrite it and read it and rewrite it. So the early books, you know, those things were read on stage maybe once or twice as opposed to like 40 times.

• 6:30Elizabeth Day?

  There's a beautiful essay in The Land and Its People, which I hugely enjoyed as a collection, as I enjoy all of your collections, where you are on a train carriage and there is a youth listening to music without earphones on his phone. And you go up and confront him. And I think it's a wonderful exercise in you as the writer assessing your own judgment, your own initial judgment. Can you tell us that story for anyone who hasn't read it?

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Oh, it was this kid and he was listening to music on his phone without any headphones on. And so it just drove me crazy. And so I went and I said, use headphones. And he said, I don't have any. And I said, turn it off. No, I don't confront people, you know, but there I, and he turned it off. And then the second I turned my back, like, then he started threatening me, you know? And I looked around and I realized that I was alone. You know, all the people on my side of the car, they were not going to be any help whatsoever. And anyway, the kid, it turned out the kid had just gotten out of rehab and there were, there was a drinks trolley on the train.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  And I knew he was just gotten out of rehab because I heard, overheard him on the telephone saying that to somebody. And then he bought a drink when he was on the train. And I just got so caught up in that because, you know, I haven't had a drink in like, I don't know, 27 years. And so it just kills me, you know, when somebody like falls back to their addiction. And then I saw him get off the train later and he was just tying, like, he probably came up to my shoulder, you know? And he was just carrying this ridiculous boombox and, I don't know, he was just, you could just see his whole future, you know? And it was just rotten.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  I'm still glad I told him to turn it off, you know? I just thought, well, maybe there would have been a better way to do it. But, and I wouldn't have written that essay, except a few weeks later, I was on the train and a woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me, but everyone can hear the music you're blasting on your laptop." I thought it was connected by Bluetooth to my speakers and it wasn't. So that's what made me write about it. It just said it was so funny because here I got so angry and stuff. And then I turn around and then it was me doing it.

• 9:04Elizabeth Day?

  Well, thank you. Let's get on to your failures. Your first failure is dropping out of university and ending up living in your parents' basement at the age of 20. Tell us about the university and what you were studying.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  When it came time to go to university, I said, I'm going to take a year off. And a gap year wasn't really a thing when I was in 1975. There wasn't that word for it. And my father said, you're not doing that. He said, if you do that, you're just going to sit at home in the basement, which was exactly what I would have done, you know? So I went off to college and I really hated it. It was this college anyone could get into, a university anyone can get into in the mountains of North Carolina. But I met my best friend there. And then I worked hard so I could improve my grades. So I transferred the next year to Kent State in Ohio. And I thought it was a good school just because people had been killed there.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  But it wasn't. It was like a bad school. People had been killed at. It's only refutation. If people hadn't been killed there, I never would have heard of it, you know? So, and then I was like anti-drug. Oh, my goodness, when I was young, anti-drug. Like if people got high or took acid, I didn't want anything to do with them. And then, you know, when you're at university, I mean, at that time, I mean, you know, people would just hold you down and, you know, give you shotguns. And then that's all it took. Then I was like all drug all the time. So my second year, I dropped out of university. But the good thing is, you know, I had some friends and we, you know, I wound up hitchhiking

• 10:49Speaker 00

  across the country and living in San Francisco and picking fruit, you know, picking apples and pears and living in migrant camps. It was real adventure, you know? But then I wound up at 20, back home in my parents' basement. And I just felt like such a loser. And I probably had been home for a few months when my father said, you have half an hour to get your shed and threw me out of the house. Like, he was like, it's not my problem where you go. You're just not going to be here anymore. So of course, at the time, I was, you know, not happy about it.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  But in retrospect, and I hate giving my father any credit for anything, but he was right about that because I just needed to start my life again. And I was just getting high in the basement and listening to Joni Mitchell albums and hating myself every second. It's funny, like my, like my brother and his wife have made it very clear to our niece that she's free to live at home for the rest of her life, you know? I'm sure that's a comfort to her. And I know that now, young people live at home, you know, in the United States anyway, like well into their twenties. But it wasn't that common when I was young.

• 12:13Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  You would, and my parents said to my sister, Amy, you don't have to go to college, but when you're 18, you have to move out of the house. So they, they did that to all of us. And in retrospect, and I understand too, it's a different world, you know, you could, I could have, I found a job working in a restaurant and I was able to live by myself. You know, I don't know how many people, young people are able to do that now, you know?

• 12:40Elizabeth Day?

  You have written about your family a lot. And one of the things that you wrote about your father was that it felt as though he were investing in your failure specifically. Tell us about that and how you drew that conclusion.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Well, I just always remember, I mean, ever since childhood, you know, that, you know, my father didn't like me. He just, he just didn't like me, you know?

• 13:12Speaker 00

  So it wasn't like having, it was different than having an enemy in the house.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  It was just having someone in the house who everything you said or did was irritating to them and they would never, and you would try, oh, I'll try being this person or I'll try being this person, but none of it worked. And then you thought, oh, nothing's ever going to work, right?

• 13:41Speaker 00

  So, I mean, my mother was, my mother was wonderful, you know? So it would be awful when I think about what it would be like to be, to grow up and not have either parent, you know? That's got to be really terrible. But, you know, at least I had her. But, yeah, no, he was like a negative cheerleader and he did really, oh, gosh. I mean, I remember when my boyfriend Hugh first met my dad. My dad, he and I had flown down for, Hugh and I had flown to North Carolina for my older sister's wedding. And I'd been living in New York just for a few months. And my father gave us a ride to the airport and was just, you're no right or you're never

• 14:25Speaker 00

  going to make, you're a failure, blah, blah, blah. I'd heard it all my life. It didn't, I didn't even pay attention. But Hugh was like, he'd never heard anyone talk to their child that way. But again, it was, it was, you know, I mean, it was just something that I grew up with. But then sometimes, you know, it can help to motivate you, you know? But you think, well, I'll show you. But the thing is, you never show them, you know, that, because they never really understand what it is you do, you know? Just like I never understood what it was he did.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  I mean, he was an engineer and I was in high school before I realized he didn't drive a train, you know? I never, you know, asked him anything about himself.

• 15:19Elizabeth Day?

  He would do things that to me seem so cruel and detailed in their strategy, like saying that he was putting money aside for you. And is it an IRA account that you call it?

• 15:31Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:32Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, which is a retirement account? Is that what it is?

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, when I graduated from college, my father's whole thing was, you know, you're going to go to college, college, college, college, college, college, everyone's going to college. But he was really cheap. So for a lot of us, there were six of us, he, when the time came, he'd say, you know, you're just not college material. And then they paid for me to go to college, you know, the in-state university with my first year. And then I dropped out the second year. And then when I dropped back in, the night before I left, he said, I'm not paying for you. So I wound up getting loans and grants. And so I put myself through college, which was good because then I wasn't beholden to him.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  I didn't have to hear about how he wasted all his money so that I could get, you know, a degree, a fine art degree.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  But when I graduated, he said, I'm getting you up for graduation present, IRA, you know, when I'm going to put money into it and that money's going to grow. And when you retire, you're going to be so glad. And, and I said, well, can't I just have the cash, you know, like I'm broke and I'm really in debt now for going to college? No, you cannot. So anyway, he talked about it for years. Anyway, when he died, I realized he'd never set it up. But that's exactly the kind of thing that he did. I mean, he gave everybody in the family money for Christmas. After, after my mom died, he started doing that. And it wasn't little money, you know?

• 17:07Speaker 00

  I mean, it was like, started off as $5,000 and it went to $17,000, you know? It was, it was the maximum you could give without having to declare it on your taxes, right? And he said he put the money in my account, right? And this shows how dumb I am. I, I don't know how to bank online. I never look at my statements. I, I just throw it all away. And a couple of years before he died, I said to the person who handles my money, I said, oh, I'm going to buy a ticket to Tokyo with the money dad gave me. And she said, what money he gave you? She said, he's never put a dime into your account.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  So he gave it to everyone else in the family, but never to me. But every year I wrote him a thank you letter, you know? And he never, and so when I confronted him, I said, why didn't you even, like, I could have saved money on stamps, like, you know? Like no one, no one else in the family was writing him a thank you letter.

• 18:13Elizabeth Day?

  So messed up.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. But that's exactly who he was, you know?

• 18:22Speaker 00

  He really was a perfect preparation for a Trump presidency. You know, the same way that Trump is renowned for not paying people who do work for him. You know, before I moved to New York, he said he had a, my father had some rental property. He had a house he wanted painted and, and he said, you could come down and paint it before you move to New York, earn that money, move New York with. So I came and I painted the house. And then, gee, I think he was going to pay me like, oh, I don't know, $2,000 for painting a house or something. I think I got $300. That's what he wound up giving me, you know?

• 19:01Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think he was jealous of you?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. It really bothered him that, it really bothered him that his predictions didn't come true, you know? And I think maybe too, I don't know, I think maybe part of it might be generational, you know, to be.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, my father loved music and loved jazz and,

• 19:31Speaker 00

  you know, he never could have

• 19:34Speaker 00

  played piano or done anything like that because he was an only child and then he had a family and, you know, I, I think to see somebody be themselves, be completely themselves and, and succeed at it really bothered him.

• 19:53Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  You know?

• 19:56Speaker 00

  I just, I were every, oh, I just took every bit of advice he ever gave me and did the opposite and it was a really good strategy.

• 20:06Elizabeth Day?

  You mentioned as part of this failure, being thrown out of home effectively aged 20. Was that also to do with being gay?

• 20:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. He said I was a bad influence.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  And

• 20:23Speaker 00

  well, because, you know, when you've got a lot of younger brothers and sisters, you know, sometimes they look up to you and, I mean, I thought I was a pretty good influence. I mean,

• 20:33Speaker 00

  you know, because I had had some adventures, you know, I had, you know, travelled, I had, I had met all kinds of interesting people that I would not normally, you wouldn't meet. A middle-class person wouldn't meet, you know, and all of a sudden you're sleeping on the ground with a bunch of fruit pickers or you're riding a boxcar or you're,

• 21:03Speaker 00

  you know, gee,

• 21:07Speaker 00

  going through a dumpster in Utah. You know, if you have a middle-class upbringing and if you know that you have parents at home and then you could call and you could say, oh, I'm, I mean, if my mother got on the phone, I could say, oh, I'm really in a bind. Could I have some money? So you're just kind of, there's an element of play acting to it, you know? But, uh, but still I was out there and I got out there and I, it was, to me, those are, to me, those are good things.

• 21:37Elizabeth Day?

  You mentioned that he just didn't like you. Do you like you?

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Do I like me?

• 21:43Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  I mean, I always enjoyed my company. I haven't really, I mean, the times that I don't like myself, I, I see that as a good sign, you know? Because I'll think, oh, you're just an asshole, you know? That's really bad. You need to apologize to a bunch of people and beg their forgiveness. And then, you know, you can feel okay about yourself, but I don't, no, I don't, um, I don't buy my own press either, you know?

• 22:14Elizabeth Day?

  You mentioned that the first college you went to, you met your best friend. Is that Dawn?

• 22:20Speaker 00

  No, it's Ronnie Riedrich.

• 22:22Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, what a name.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  And then my second college, I met Dawn.

• 22:25Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  And so, yeah, Ronnie's my best friend and Dawn's my second best friend.

• 22:29Elizabeth Day?

  Got it. And Dawn is in The Land and Its People, which is why I mentioned her. You also write about friendship so well in this collection, not just Dawn, but also a childhood best friend, Dan, who you lost, who died. And I think it's one of those things that don't, that it doesn't get written about very much. The grief that you feel when you lose a friend as opposed to a family member.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  I think it's really hard to write about friendship.

• 22:59Elizabeth Day?

  It is.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  And I don't know why it should be so hard. I think maybe because we're all conditioned to, with romantic love, you know, so many songs are about it and so many movies are about it and, but a friendship, I don't know if we take them more for granted or, but I mean, a rich, rich friendship, you know, a long, rich friendship is difficult thing to write about. And I think too, because sometimes, like my friend Ronnie, right, is a great person, but not a great character, like on the page, right?

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Dawn's a better character. And it's, it's not that Dawn is more interesting than Ronnie. It doesn't have anything to do with that. She's just, uh, Dawn is like, let's get moving, let's get going. What can we do? What can we fix? What can we, you know, she, she don't want to sit down for any amount of time at all. She just wants to do things and that's another thing that makes her a good character. You know, she's energetic.

• 24:12Elizabeth Day?

  I could do, uh, I could do with reading a whole collection of just you and Dawn. A sort of travelogue.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Well, I think the essay that I wrote about her, I, I think it might be the, uh, the best thing I ever wrote.

• 24:25Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I'm so, gosh, I'm so glad you said that because it really stuck with me. Can you tell us the truck thing? Because that reveals so much about Dawn.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Oh, well, we, Dawn and I, Dawn got me started on a Fitbit. So we were in Colorado in this dusty, hot town. And we went up to this restaurant for lunch and we were walking back to our dismal hotel and we saw a truck and it was filled with tires. It was parked and the doors were open. And so I just asked her, I said, if you had a year, do you think you could eat one of those tires? And she said, yeah. I mean, Dawn would be, um, she's just very methodical and she would, you know, eat a little bit of the tire every day and you can just imagine her, uh, I mean, I would do the same thing, but she would really cut the tire into pill-sized capsules, you know?

• 25:20Speaker 00

  But they would be precise.

• 25:25Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialized treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's exposure and response prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 26:10Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail. Autumn's here, soup season is back and my kitchen is suddenly working overtime. Quick dinners after a manic day recording and I'm enjoying spending a bit more time at home as the days are getting shorter. The thing that's made all of that easier is Hexclad. I am genuinely obsessed with these pans. They heat evenly, nothing sticks, and the cleanup doesn't turn into just another job at the end of the night. Hexclad combines the searing power of stainless steel with the convenience of non-stick. So you get proper performance without the usual faff.

• 26:55Elizabeth Day?

  They're dishwasher safe, love that, oven safe up to 480 degrees Celsius, and the stay cool handles mean you're not grabbing a scorching pan mid-cook. Hexclad is an at-home lifesaver. Start the new season with cookware that actually works as hard as you do. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off with our exclusive link, hexclad.co.uk/fail. That's hexclad.co.uk/fail. Offer excludes bundles and items already on sale.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone. This is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced government sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe, while your neighbor says,

• 28:11Speaker 02

  I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/getbetter. Because your beliefs are yours and theirs are theirs.

• 28:27Elizabeth Day?

  Your second failure is that you broke up with a live-in boyfriend at the age of 32 and you felt like a failure. I highly relate to this. I went through a divorce in my mid-30s and ended up back in my parents' flat.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 28:42Elizabeth Day?

  And there is something about being back in the place where you remember being a child in a tiny, single bed that brings you so face to face, like a dog being confronted with its own vomit, really, of, of your own failure. So tell us what was happening here.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  I moved, I never had a boyfriend until I moved to Chicago and I met him a couple of days after I moved there in a bar. And I had just turned 27

• 29:12Speaker 00

  and we were together for six years. And when we broke up,

• 29:18Speaker 00

  You know, I just felt like such a failure, you know, like that I couldn't even make this work. But when I look back on it, you know, for a relationship to work, you have to have, you have to have the same idea about fidelity, you know? I mean, I know so many gay couples and they, you know, they just have an open relationship and it works. You know, if this person wants to go and sleep with other people, the other person doesn't mind, you know? And they both do it and it's, works for them, you know? But if one person is for that and the other person absolutely is not, it's never gonna work, you know?

• 30:00Speaker 00

  So, but I just, still, I just felt like it was my fault. Uh, I mean, I was a faithful person. I, I should have, if I were better, it don't mean he wouldn't wanna be with other people. If I had more money, I didn't have any money at all. If I were, you know, at the same time, I, I went to art school and I just knew a lot of people who just talked about doing stuff. They didn't do it. And if you, and you have to do it. You have to do the work. And that means you're not going to parties.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  That means you're going home to write or to paint or whatever. And it means you're getting, you're doing it on Christmas Day. And it means you're doing it on your vacation. And it means you're putting the hours in. And, and so that was it too. I just, I, I, I knew I wasn't gonna get what I wanted if I didn't work for it. I'm not, I, I, by that time in my life, I'd met some people who were really talented. And, and I could see that they were more talented than I was.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  And I thought, okay, they were born with something I wasn't born with, right? How do I make up for that, right? And I thought, well, I have to, you know, I have to work harder. And then there's this young man and sometimes, sometimes when I'm on tour, I invite a, a young person to come and read for, you know, to, to open for me, right? So a lot of times it's someone who I meet at a book signing. And, you know, sometimes, gee, one time it was a kid. He was 12 years old and he wrote me a letter and then he sent me his poetry. And I said, well, I'm gonna be in Atlanta. Why don't you open for me? You know, we had to get a box for him.

• 32:03Elizabeth Day?

  Oh.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  But he was really earnest, you know, and really worked on it hard. And then I'm still in touch with him. He's a father himself now and he still opens for me sometimes. And then sometimes, anyway, there's this young man who I met in the United States. And he showed up and come to Garçon and he read, very animated reader, you know? You can't take your eyes off of him when he reads. And he said, well, I know my writing's not where it needs to be. So I make up for it by being well dressed and my delivery. And I thought, exactly. So that's what I did. You know, that's what I did when I was his age too. I just thought, okay,

• 32:46Speaker 00

  uh, how do I, how do I make up for my shortcomings? But I could see how, you know, with my first boyfriend, it would be hard if, like, nothing would pull me away from my schedule. Nothing, you know? He tried all kinds of things. Nothing would get me to leave my desk. And Hugh, my boyfriend now, Hugh's dad was a writer. So to Hugh, to have someone in the next room in the sound of a typewriter was so comforting to him. He didn't see it as him being rejected. He, it just, it just was what home felt like to him. So he was delighted.

• 33:30Elizabeth Day?

  Hugh is technically your husband, but you hate that word.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:33Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. Uh, I'm kind of with you. I love that you called him your boyfriend. So we've dealt with that. I feel like you've spoken about it enough. Um, but this particular breakup, is it the one? There's one that you briefly mentioned in the book where your mother came to help. Is it this one?

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:49Elizabeth Day?

  So we've spoken about your father. I would love to talk about Sharon, your mother. Was she someone that you could call an extremist and you would know that she would turn up?

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, it was interesting. I was just writing about something similar. I was writing about a, someone I know and I heard her say to her daughter once, that's the beach where your father and I fought for the first time. And I would be like, oh my, I, I, even as an outsider, I was like, oh my God, like, do they really need to know that? So my relationship, my mother wasn't my friend.

• 34:34Elizabeth Day?

  No.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  She was my mother. And we were very close, but we weren't friends. So I did not share everything with my mother. And thank God, my mother didn't share everything with me, right? But like when I broke up with that boyfriend, she came and, uh, you know, just kind of swooped in. And I had, and helped me like paint this new apartment that I was gonna be, you know, living in. And, uh, you know, just, I didn't tell her everything. Like I didn't, you know, it's your mom. But, uh, I felt like such a failure, you know?

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Also felt like a failure 'cause, you know, you're crying in front of your mother and you're in your 30s and you just feel like, you know? I mean, I'd taken a big, long break between crying bouts in front of my mother. Like I did it when I was 10 and then I didn't do it again until, you know, I was 32. But she, when I, when I, when I moved to New York, I got a, opportunity to put a play on, right? So I wrote this play and it was just a off, off Broadway theater, but it was my, uh, and then my, and then my mother like, sent me a thousand dollars.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  I didn't ask for it. She just knew I desperately needed it for the play. And she never would have made me ask, you know? She never, I mean, who doesn't want a thousand dollars? So it wasn't like she sent me a thousand dollars every day, but she just knew that I needed it for this play. And so she was very considerate and very tuned in that way. A considerate person. And that's something that I was just writing about too, that often I'm asked, you know, what's the best advice you ever got, right? Do people ask you that all the time?

• 36:43Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and my mother's advice was always, was to always carry singles on an airplane.

• 36:52Elizabeth Day?

  Dollar bills, you mean?

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because if you needed a drink, you know, let's say a drink back then was three dollars. But I don't drink anymore. But I would notice when I was flying, all these businessmen would have $20 bills. And the flight attendant would have to go up and down the plane looking for change. And then a lot of times she would charge the guy for his drink. So he would know, always have a, you know, pay for a 20. But it's not like he'd pay for a 20 and she'd say, okay, you get a free drink. She's up and down the plane. You know, she's wasting her time that she could be used to serve other people or do any of her duties

• 37:36Speaker 00

  'cause your stupid ass was too inconsiderate to break a $20 bill before you got on the plane. So, I mean, of course now you pay with your phone or you, whatever. But it's, the, the advice was to be, was to be considerate.

• 37:58Elizabeth Day?

  This episode is brought to you by the RSPCA. I know a number of people who've adopted their pet from the RSPCA with huge success. So I am personally a big advocate. Also, producer Hannah actually fostered kittens for the charity called Belinda and Millie. So we're very much aligned with what the RSPCA is trying to do here at How to Fail. We know that animals have rich emotional lives, just like we do. My cat, Huxley, is a prime example of a cat with a lot of empathy and wisdom, for example. And animals deserve the same kindness and respect. Every kind of animal matters, pets, wild or farmed animals. Together, we can create a better world for them.

• 38:43Elizabeth Day?

  Show your love for every kind and find out more and see what action you could take to help animals. Check out rspca.org.uk. There are so many things I wish I'd known when I started this podcast and my production company, Daylight. Like, why am I spending hours trying to make a website look good? Why am I designing everything from scratch? And why am I spending all my time just doing admin? What I really needed was one place that could do all of this for me. Enter Shopify. Shopify has beautiful, ready-made templates that make your website look polished without needing to become a graphic designer overnight. Its AI tools can help you get your site up and running quickly.

• 39:24Elizabeth Day?

  And Shopify Checkout makes it really easy for customers to actually go from, ooh, I like that, to, yes, I'll have one. If Shopify had existed when I started out, I could have saved myself a lot of time, stress, and some rogue design choices. If you're ready to hear the of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.co.uk/fail to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at Shopify.co.uk/fail.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced, government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe, while your neighbor

• 40:39Speaker 02

  says, I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs.

• 40:55Elizabeth Day?

  I'm struck by the fact that you have chosen this as a failure because you now have been with Hugh, your boyfriend, for over 30 years. Is that right? I think.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Thirty-six.

• 41:08Elizabeth Day?

  Thirty-six.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:09Elizabeth Day?

  By any metric, that's a successful relationship. But I think this is evidence that heartbreak just stays with you. The experience of it is so visceral. And you have also experienced the loss of very close family members. Your sister Tiffany by suicide, your beloved mother Sharon. How similar, or not, do you think heartbreak is to grief?

• 41:35Speaker 00

  I don't know. Grief, to me, seems more... I don't know if it just seems more pure, or if it... Like, when my sister Tiffany killed herself, everyone always assumes you must feel so guilty, right? That's an automatic assumption, like, you could have prevented it, right? But if someone is mentally ill and they don't take their medication, it's just a slow-moving train wreck. There's nothing you could do or say, nothing would have changed the outcome of that. I didn't... I don't feel like I had anything to regret with my mother.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  I don't feel that I... Well, one time, my mother wanted to take everybody to Disneyland, right? I was, like, 22, and I was addicted to meth. And so I didn't... I just didn't want to go to Disneyland, so I didn't go. And everybody else went. And it was a situation where the whole family was together, except for me. And I was just being a meth baby, you know? So this is not the end of the world. But I mean, if I could go back in time, I would have not been a meth addict and would have gone to... But I don't remember, like, treating my mother poorly. Or even when I was a teenager, I was never the kind of person who didn't want to be seen with her, you know, always happy to be seen with my mother.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  So it might be different if I had all these regrets with her, but I don't. Yeah, heartbreak is different than grief, I think. With heartbreak, you just... I feel like you keep thinking, like, where did I go wrong? Or if I'd done this instead of this, then that person might still love me. And also, I feel like with heartbreak, for me, anyway, I was positive I was just going to be alone the rest of my life. Because I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 27. I thought, well, I'm going to be another 27 years before I get somebody else. And, you know, when you're young, 54, oh my God, you're like, who would want you when you're 54?

• 43:47Speaker 00

  So that was part of it, too. And that's part of what kept me in my relationship for so long, was my fear that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life. But usually, that's fear that keeps you in everything, you know? Fear kept me, you know, drinking. Fear kept me smoking. Fear kept me from leaving North Carolina. When it was time for me to leave North Carolina, you know, I stayed. I didn't leave till, you know, till I was 27. I mean, I went back when I was 20. That's... And maybe I needed three of those years, you know, there. But on my deathbed, I'm going to wish that I had those four years and had done something with them. And my friends all left.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  You know how that is when your friends all leave and then they come back? And then you act like you're too busy to see them, but you're just jealous and hurt that they left you.

• 44:45Elizabeth Day?

  What's crystal meth like?

• 44:47Speaker 00

  Oh, it just gives you... You know, you're brilliant when you take crystal meth, you know? You're just brilliant. And you have a lot to say. And you feel amazing until it wears off. And then you... All you care about is getting more. And then, when you crash, it's like awful, you know? It's just the lowest you've just ever been. So you've just got to keep it up so you don't ever feel that way. And you... You know, in my case, you know, you wake up a year and a half later and... I mean, I just lucked out.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  My dealer moved town and there was no one to take her place. So I was like Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. I know that's such an old reference. I was just, you know, rolling on the floor and, you know, for days. And then I just thought, I don't ever want to go through that again. And she moved back to town and she hung her shingle back up. But I was like, no, not doing that anymore. And later, I had friends who would have meth and stuff, or I'd be at parties and there'd be meth. And I never did it again, just because I knew I'd be right back there. And if I was going to die in a few months, I wouldn't do it. It's ugly.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  It's really ugly, the hold that it has on you. And it makes you really moody in a way. And I'm not a moody person, you know? And I didn't like being unreliable that way. You know, being the person who you never know from minute to minute what his mood's going to be like. I didn't like being that way. But I got a lot done. But it was, you know, like, painting 1,500 envelopes this big so I could hang them on fishing wire, you know, exactly this far from my ceiling, you know, things like that.

• 46:55Elizabeth Day?

  Was that part of your degree, or you just did that?

• 46:58Speaker 00

  I was out of school at that point, yeah. I mean, I did have some art, you know, success. I mean, I had something in the North Carolina Museum when I was, like, 20 or 21 years old. And, you know, I had my own show, but it was just meth art, you know, it was just meth.

• 47:16Elizabeth Day?

  What's the thing that you had in the North Carolina Museum? Is it still there?

• 47:20Speaker 00

  No, they would have... They had a, you know, a biennial exhibit. I don't have any skill for drawing or painting or anything. And then I discovered Joseph Boyce and conceptual art. And I realized, oh, you just have to have an idea. So I just found these crates and I stuffed them with things that I owned and they got into...

• 47:44Elizabeth Day?

  Et voila.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Into the museum.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  But I mean, I was on fire. You know, I mean, I was reading a lot and I was just curious. As an artist, I don't know that you can. It's part of it, being on fire. It's not anything you ever turn off. It's impossible to turn it off. You're just always.

• 48:13Elizabeth Day?

  Burning.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're just a furnace, you know, when you're just constantly and it doesn't. I don't know, it's never worn off.

• 48:23Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Your final failure, talking of burning, there's no seamless link, is that you dropped out of Japanese school in Tokyo, aged 50. Now, I know you're a Duolingo obsessive and presumably you wanted to learn Japanese. So tell us the story.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  I went to Japan just for a couple of days when I was 49. And you know, like when you find your place and you think, oh, my God, this is. Why haven't I been here all my life? So I felt that way about Tokyo. So then I immediately started learning Japanese. And then I decided I was going to quit smoking in Japan, right? Because you can't smoke on the street there. And I was going to rent an apartment, Hugh and I. And so I'd be in a new environment because I thought I was a heavy smoker. I thought if I tried to quit at home, it would just be kind of ridiculous. But you're going to wake up one day, but you're not going to smoke. I didn't see that happening.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  But if I was in another country and the language was new and the food was new and the apartment was new, I could be new too. So I went to Japan. We went to Tokyo, we rented an apartment, and then I went to Japanese school. And here's the thing, like, when I went to kindergarten, I didn't know how to read. I didn't know the ABCs. Nobody did. You learned them in kindergarten. There was no point. Why would you learn it? Why would you learn to count when you're just going to learn it in school? So we all started off at the same place, right? Now I know all these parents and their kids, you know, they teach the kid and the kid

• 50:11Speaker 00

  goes to, kids go to kindergarten now and everybody can already read, right? But, but I was, so everyone in my class knew the, there are three alphabets in Japanese. And one of them has 10,000 characters and everything looks like a tennis racket. So that, forget it. But everybody knew the other two. And then like a week into class, we're reading out loud and I'm like, wait a minute, I don't, I don't know the alphabet, like. And it was really, and I felt everybody in the class like, oh, don't call on David's son. It's like, oh, David's son, we have to listen to this.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  And I just, and I was so embarrassed and the, I was so embarrassed. And so I dropped out of school and I told them, oh, I had to return to France. An emergency and I had to return to France. And so I lied about it, but, and I felt like a failure because it was the time to, to just work twice as hard as everybody else. You know, that's what the situation called for. And I can't really say, I can't blame smoking, right? I can't say, well, you know, I just quit smoking, so I was feeling tender. I can't, I can't really blame that because it wasn't that hard to quit smoking. I don't know why.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  It wasn't that hard for me.

• 51:37Elizabeth Day?

  Well, you'd quit crystal meth, so I feel like.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  And drinking and the smoking. But anyway, I just felt like, and I think about it all the time, like, and wish that I had stuck with it. I should have, could have hired a tutor. You know, there's all kinds of things I could have done instead of quitting.

• 51:55Elizabeth Day?

  What is it about Japan that you feel fits so well with you?

• 52:01Speaker 00

  Well, shopping. It's the best shopping in the world and people there love to shop. You know, you go into, in America, like in New York, I live a few blocks from Bloomingdale's, right? And I guarantee you Bloomingdale's is empty right now, you know? I don't know what time it is in the United States, but whether it's 10 a.m., whether it's two in the afternoon, whether it's seven at night, Bloomingdale's is empty. And every department store in Tokyo is jumping right now, every. And those are just department stores. Every store is jumping, every, everything is a shop.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  Like you take the subway and the subway stop is in a 15-story building and every one of those 15 floors is lined with shops, you know, on the inside and they're jumping to me. And I always, it didn't matter whether I had money or not, I always loved shopping. I mean, it kind of changed, you know, now I shop in kind of different places, but I just always liked, I always thought it was, I don't know, I like seeing the world that way.

• 53:11Elizabeth Day?

  There's another great anecdote in your latest collection about you buying priests' robes in the company of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Are you getting any use out of those robes? Have you worn them since?

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Oh, I just bought one, I bought a cassock, you know, which is what a Catholic priest wears, it goes to the floor.

• 53:31Elizabeth Day?

  33 buttons, I never knew that, one for every year of Jesus's life.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  And you're supposed to unbutton it and button it every time you put it on. You're putting, you're pulling it over your head the second time. That's just too many buttons. And you're wishing he was crucified at 12, you know? It's just too much work. Gee, the last time I wore it, I wore it to the Federal Express store in my neighborhood in New York. And my doorman walked in and saw me and said, Father David. I was so, I was so impressed by him that he was able to just, you know, he didn't say, what are you, what are you wearing that for? It's fun just to wear. And I don't wear it with the collar and I think that changes it a little.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  I mean, my fear was always that somebody would say, oh, there's somebody dying, you know, we, you know, upstairs, will you come and give him last rites? And I'd be like, well, just have it on because I like it. But it's, it's just a beautiful garment.

• 54:38Elizabeth Day?

  My final question, as an adoptive Brit, you have got into the archers, is that right? I know Hugh listens to it. Yeah, do you not listen to it?

• 54:48Speaker 00

  I, I listen, I'll come into the kitchen and hear it in, in passing and I'll ask them questions, but no, the archers is Hugh's thing.

• 54:57Elizabeth Day?

  Do you have a favorite character from the archers, from what you know about it?

• 55:01Speaker 00

  I would, I would just say Jazzer because I hate the name Jazzer. And I think that's the only person who, whose name I know from the archers, yeah. But they just invited me, I, I met some archers people at the, at this BBC award ceremony and they asked me if I'd like to be on the archers.

• 55:20Elizabeth Day?

  Tell me you said yes.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, of course I said yes.

• 55:23Elizabeth Day?

  That's incredible. When's that happening?

• 55:26Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't know.

• 55:27Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I'm so excited for you.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  But I have to play myself.

• 55:29Elizabeth Day?

  Brilliant. It's the ultimate accolade. In this country, you have truly made it.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Well, I'm often on after, my radio show's on after the archers, which is always such a nice spot, you know, but I think about, I think about Hugh, you know, who listens to the archers and then, so I think, you know, when Hugh hears me on the radio, he would have heard me anyway. It's not like he makes a special, that he has to change his schedule. He would, he would be listening to the radio at that time anyway.

• 56:06Elizabeth Day?

  And will you take Hugh with you when you appear on the archers?

• 56:09Speaker 00

  I'd love to, oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, some, they came, two of these women who I met on, who work on the archers, I gave them free tickets to a show I recently did and they brought me a swag bag, an archer's swag bag, and it has somebody's flapjack recipe, like one of the characters. And Hugh pulled it out and said.

• 56:33Elizabeth Day?

  Jill probably.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  Jill's slack, you know, Jill's flapjack recipe. He was so excited.

• 56:42Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, well, David Sedaris, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for putting up with the cameras and thank you so much for how you write and how you express yourself and this wonderful conversation. Thank you so much.

• 56:57Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, thanks so much for having me.

• 57:02Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.