‘I never write about my sex life’: What David Sedaris prefers to keep private

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to David Sedaris. The American humorist, satirist and essayist, 65, has written more than a dozen books, which have sold more than 10 million copies in 25 languages. His latest collection of essays is Happy-Go-Lucky.

“You can talk about your relationship with your partner with other people, but you should never talk about it with that person.”Credit: Madison Voelkel/BFA/Australscope

DEATH

What were you told about death growing up? Oh well, I went to the Greek Orthodox Church, where the ceremony was all in Greek. My father is Greek, but my mother isn’t, we never spoke Greek at home, so I never understood what they [at church] were saying. I didn’t grow up with the idea of a punishing God, just a really dull one. So my idea of death didn’t really include an afterlife. The first person I knew to die was my grandfather and no one said, “He’s in heaven now.” Every time I hear that, I just want to throw up.

Where does that reaction come from? It just seems so implausible to me. I don’t think my mother would necessarily want to be with my father for an eternity. The time on Earth was more than enough.

So what happens after we die, do you think? It’s just like being turned off, I think.

And how do you feel about that? I don’t think I have any feelings about it. Huh. It would be nothingness, and I’m fine with that.

Your father, Lou, died aged 98 last year. You’ve also written about your mother, Sharon, who died of cancer in 1991, and your sister, Tiffany, who took her own life in 2013. Does this help you process grief? Well, their deaths were so different. My mother’s death was … I was really close to my mother, so it was just horrible. Just awful. And it was really the first big death that I’d experienced. My sister Tiffany: the tragedy wasn’t her suicide, it was her mental illness. And my dad was 98 and he was a dick, so there was really no grief involved. I was at the table with some other people in my family, we got the news that he had died, and by the time the cheque came, we were talking about other things. I mean, it didn’t even ruin our evening.

How would you like to die? Oh, like everybody: in my sleep.

How would you not like to die? I wouldn’t want to fall out of a window and be impaled. By, like, a fence post.

SEX

We’re going to talk about sex now. Oh, no.

Why “Oh, no”? Because it’s something I just never write about.

Is that a conscious rule that you’ve made for yourself? People say to me, “Oh, you don’t have any secrets!” I just give the illusion of revealing myself: I don’t really do it. Other people’s sex lives I’m happy to talk about, but I don’t write about my own.

Is there anything you wish you were told about sex, growing up? I’m just of an age when no one talked about gay sex. There weren’t any books about it at the library; there weren’t any gay people on television. It wasn’t a thing. I thought I was the only one in the world until I was in the library one day and I walked into the men’s room and there were two men having sex. And I thought, “Oh, I guess there’s three of us.”

[Laughs] When we talk about sex, we’re also talking about romance and relationships. How long have you been with your partner, Hugh Hamrick? Thirty-one years.

That’s incredible. What is the key to such a long partnership, do you think? You can talk about your relationship with your partner with other people, but you should never talk about it with that person.

When did you come to that conclusion? I was with somebody before I met Hugh, and he was like, “We need to go to a couples counsellor.” It was just the beginning of the end. So Hugh and I never talk about our relationship, ever.

What first attracted you to Hugh? Well, I thought he was really handsome. And then I liked everything in his house.

RELIGION

Do you identify with any belief, practice or faith? Nope.

Have you retained anything from growing up Greek Orthodox? I like hanging out with Greeks.

What do you, David Sedaris, believe in? Nothing. I mean, I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in Jesus. I don’t believe that someone’s watching over us. I don’t believe that someone is waiting to punish us. But the worst is when people are spiritual. Like, “I’m not religious, I’m just spiritual.” Oh my god, that makes me want to throw up, too.

Do you have any rituals and superstitions for writing? Nope, I just write.

Do you have commandments for writing? Never ascribe emotions to somebody. I would never say that the housekeeper who just knocked on the door obviously hates me. If she said, “I hate you,” then I would quote her, but it doesn’t ever work to ascribe things to people. And it’s amateurish to write “gonna”. It’s one thing to write “tolt” – “That’s what he tolt me”; “tolt” is pretty great – but it’s a kind of lazy, lame excuse: “I’m just writing how people talk.”

What sins are you most susceptible to? Gluttony.

If not religion, where do you find your community? My friends.

Where do you get a sense of wonder? Reading.

Anything in particular at the moment? The new Ottessa Moshfegh novel, Lapvona.

Complete this sentence: Other people go to church. I, David Sedaris, go … to Sotheby’s.

David Sedaris will return to Australia in February 2023.

Lifeline 13 11 14.

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