David Sedaris Is ‘Gay,’ Not ‘Queer’

Humorist Speaks on Age, Dressing Up and Memorable Haircuts

By Frank Rizzo

David Sedaris is proud to be gay.

Not in the marching-in-the-streets-waving-placards way.

He is proud of the word ‘gay’ — as opposed to any number of the homoseuxal-defining terms that he says he has been saddled with over the decades.

The author of such collections of humor essays (Me Talk Pretty One Day, Barrel Fever, Naked) and the hit holiday perennial Santaland Diaries, caused a stir when he spoke on gay identity issues in one of his regular commentaries on CBS’ Sunday Morning. Sedaris presents 90-second mini-essays on the program, reminiscent of the cranky mini-rants that Andy Rooney used to spout at the end of 60 Minutes starting in the late ‘70s and continuing to 2011.

I talked to Sedaris on the phone when he was at his Paris apartment which he shares with his longtime partner, painter and set designer Hugh Hamrick. It was just prior to his popular, twice-annual U.S. tours in which he reads from his works, promotes the work of other authors and chats with the audience. (Sedaris presented his two-hour show at New Haven’s Shubert in late September and at Hartford’s Bushnell in October.)

“It’s like I’m the old man always complaining about stuff,” he says of his Sunday Morning gig where he bitches about relationships with Siri, condescending geniuses at Apple stores, and 21st century etiquette. “But sometimes it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, I do have a point here’ and I’m still allowed to be angry.”

For example, being labeled “queer.”

On Sunday Morning he said: “I started out as a homosexual, became gay, then LGBT and now queer — and for what? Why the makeover? And what will it be next?”

On the phone he told me: “I don’t like the word ‘queer’—and I don’t dislike it because it was a slur. I just dislike it because it’s the fourth time in my life I’ve been re-branded—and nobody asked me. I’m just tired of it. I think its just a generational thing because men who are at my age feel the same way as I do. But young people, well, it’s their word and they like it.”

Don’t get him wrong, though.

“I’m not a bitter person,” he insisted. “I am aware of the fact that I’m a pretty fortunate person. I mean, I really have gotten everything I’ve ever wanted. I just complain about stuff because it’s funny to complain about some of it.”

His life as an older gay man (He turns 68 in December.) is of the sources of his material.

“You reach a certain age and you just become invisible,” he said. “I try not to be bitter about that and I try to look at young people and think, ‘Well, that’s good. This is your time to shine. I had my time. I try to keep that in mind.”

Times change as life goes on, he said, adding:

“We’re getting rid of some furniture at the apartment, and a guy came over last night with his wife. We’ve known him since he was a baby, and now he’s in his 30s, and he has his own apartment in Paris. I was showing him our stuff, and I thought, ‘We’re old men. He doesn’t want any of this. This is not what young men want. Young people don’t want antiques like a writing desk from 1860, which I paid a fortune for. It’s not what they’re interested in.”

His observations—quirky, but relatable—can be seen as simply him being persnickety, but often they speak to larger truths, too. He noted many of them in the diaries he’s kept from 1977 and have since been collected in two books: Thefts By Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 and A Carnival of Snackery, which cover 2003-2020. His published and unpublished diaries, along with his drafts, artwork, miscellaneous writings and other personal ephemera are now housed at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

His fans know that it’s the little, easily dismissed details in life that most catch his eye and ear. That’s the way it’s always been for him. If he were to look back at a diary entry from 30 years ago, he said, it would be something like: “‘I went and got a haircut in Chicago’—and it would be all about the haircut. In fact, I just wrote about a haircut the other day. I’m always happy to hear about a haircut and, if it’s written well, I go right back to that haircut.

“Someone would say to me, ‘Remember that canoe trip we took down the Nile?’ and I would have no memory of it. But that haircut I wrote about 30 years ago! Maybe it was something I saw out the window while I was getting the haircut—or some other little thing—and it can take me right back there in time. I found some woman’s diaries in the trash in Chicago one time…and in it she wrote about going from one crackpot religion to the next. But I just don’t care about that kind of thing. But anyone who can write about a haircut in detail, well, that I would be interested in.”

Besides his CBS gig, his essays for The New Yorker and his touring, this year Sedaris’s first children’s book was published: Pretty Ugly with illustrations by the late, great artist Ian Falconer (Olivia). Sedaris’ most recent book, Happy-Go-Lucky, was published last year and debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. He also promotes the works of other writers at his shows. In New Haven, he raved about Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. He also had local author Cindy House read from her book of humor essays, Mother Noise. (She was terrific. I bought her book.)

Before our conversation ended Sedaris touched on a few other subjects:

On the possibility of someone writing his biography: “I’m a rather dull person on which to base a biography. I do love biographies, though, especially when I was young man. I would read them, and it was always fascinating to me how these [famous] people gravitated towards each other; how they found each other in each other’s lives, and I imagined them all struggling, not knowing they were destined for better things. But for someone to do a biography of me, well, I don’t think I’m dramatic enough. I don’t have affairs or deep fights with people. I just don’t do that much.”

On AI: “It doesn’t know how to be dirty-funny; you know what I mean? It doesn’t know how to sneak on with people with dirty-funny, which is kind of my forte.”

On dressing for the theater — and for travel: “When I talked on Sunday Morning about [dressing up when going to the theatre] people got furious. ‘Oh, you can afford to wear a suit to the theater.’ You know what I want to say to them? ‘You just bought as $200 tickets and you can’t afford a nice shirt. C’mon.’

“Years ago, I was on an airplane, and I was in first class and I overheard one flight attendant say to the other because there was an empty seat in first class: ‘Go find someone in the B section who looks like they’re first class material.’ These days everyone’s wearing shorts in first class. Someone flew in to visit us, and I thought, ‘That’s what you wore on their airplane? Good god.”

On name changing: “I change my name all the time. Like today my name is ‘Girolle.’ Hugh and I went out to lunch, and we were at the market and there were these girolle mushrooms for sale and I said, ‘Can my name be Girolle today?’ Tomorrow it will be something different. I do it all the time.”