Me Talk Pretty One Day

Sedaris’s sister Gretchen proves her impressive artistic abilities early in life, painting beautiful watercolors. As she goes through school, her teachers heap praise on her. Both of her parents eagerly try to take responsibility for her talent, claiming that she inherited it from them. Inspired by his daughter, Lou sets up an easel, paints a number of landscapes, hangs them on the wall, and then stops painting altogether. Seeing this, Sedaris figures that if his father can paint, he can too, so he tries his own hand at art, though his ambitions have less to do with the actual craft and more to do with his fantasy of one day painting nude male models. He imagines becoming a famous artist who dresses in long scarves, and he relishes this image of himself above all else.

When Sedaris leaves for college, he’s relieved to get away from Gretchen’s talent, which makes him outrageously jealous. Deciding to major in art, he worries that he will be too “physically excited” by the nude models in class, but when a model actually comes in to pose, he’s disappointed to discover that she is a woman. Uninspired, he gets frustrated with his lack of ability, so he switches to pottery, making a number of ugly mugs that his mother uses as cat bowls when he gives them to her for Christmas. 

Sedaris transfers to a different college and once again decides to major in art, though he eventually stops going to class and instead spends time with a group of self-proclaimed filmmakers who spend most of their time smoking bongs and watching pretentious movies. Sedaris enjoys this lifestyle but soon drops out because, though he feels quite adept at acting like a genius artist, the school doesn’t offer him any credit for this.

Sedaris moves back to North Carolina, renting his own apartment in Raleigh, where he gets into crystal meth and conceptual art—a combination he says is extremely dangerous. As soon as he takes his first dose of speed, he feels instantly rid of all forms of doubt, no longer asking himself questions like, “Am I smart enough?” and “Will people like me?” All of a sudden, he feels very smart, like an artistic visionary. During this time, he starts hanging out with other conceptual artists who are into taking hard drugs. Together, they celebrate art that is nonsensical, the kind of art that doesn’t require “God-given talent” but, rather, moody and provocative ideas.

One of Sedaris’s conceptual artist friends is a man who has been building a “nest” for six months. The nest is made of human hair, which the artist collects from local barbershops. In this style, Sedaris starts making his own strange art piece by filling wooden crates with garbage and recording everything he puts in, including toenail clippings, eyelashes found on his sink, and other little pieces of trash he finds around his apartment. Eventually, he takes one of these crates to the local museum and submits it for consideration for one of their upcoming shows. Upon learning that his piece has been accepted, he’s quite excited until he realizes that all of his friends were rejected by the museum. Because of this, they speak disparagingly about his art, suggesting that their own proposals were more avant-garde and meaningful than his. 

At the museum exhibition, none of Sedaris’s friends come to see his work. The only people who do come to support him are his drug dealer and his mother. At one point, he hears his mother drunkenly tell the curator that she told a woman in the bathroom a joke about the art. “Honey, why flush it?” Sedaris’s mother said to this woman. “Carry it into the next room and they’ll put it on a goddamn pedestal.” Two months later, when the museum gives Sedaris his crate back, he burns it—an act that his friends respect. From that point on, he focuses on participating in his friends’ performance art pieces. Because they are all on speed, the performances make perfect sense to them, though anybody who’s sober would have no idea what to make of these odd and disturbing showcases. 

Sedaris invites his parents to one of his friends’ performance art pieces that takes place in an old abandoned warehouse. Instead of complimenting the two-and-a-half hour show, though, they complain about the fact that they had to sit on the hard floor for so long, and this upsets him, though he decides that their inability to appreciate the show simply means that he and his friends are “ahead of [their] time.”

Sedaris’s friend group begins to splinter when the person who directed the first performance piece develops an idea for a new show and everyone gets upset that they always have to do his ideas instead of theirs. As the group disassembles, Sedaris is invited by the museum to participate in a performance art festival; he agrees to do it for “political reasons.” In reality, he says yes because he needs drug money. Trying hard to come up with ideas, he realizes that it’s hard to put together a show, even when everything is abstract and strange. When the performance piece takes place, he is extremely high on speed and is freaked out that everybody is watching him. Step by step, he tries to calm himself down by reminding himself what he’s supposed to be doing, thinking, “I’m slicing this pineapple now,” and, “Next I’ll just rip apart these sock monkeys[…].”

Getting on his knees and preparing to cut his own hair in front of the audience, Sedaris hears a voice say, “Just take a little off the back and sides.” The audience titters with laughter, and Sedaris realizes that the voice belongs to his father. Encouraged by the laughter, Lou continues to make humorous remarks, eventually saying that Sedaris actually should open a barbershop because it’s clear he’s “not going anywhere in the show-business world.” Everyone laughs. Furious, Sedaris thinks about how his father has no clue how people are supposed to act in art museums. After the show, though, the curator congratulates him, praising him for thinking to include his father in the piece. The curator adds that the show really improved when Sedaris “loosened up and started making fun of” himself.

Emboldened by audience compliments after Sedaris’s show, Lou starts suggesting ideas for Sedaris’s next show. One day, he calls Sedaris and suggests an idea, and Sedaris responds by saying he’d rather put a gun to his head than hear more of his father’s proposals. Thinking this over, Lou says, “The bit with the gun just might work. Let me think about it and get back to you.” Shortly thereafter, though, Sedaris’s performance art career comes to an end when his drug dealer decides to go to rehab. Sedaris tries to convince her that she doesn’t need rehab, fearing that he won’t be able to finish a performance piece he’s been commissioned to do. Try as he might to dissuade her, though, his drug dealer leaves, and Sedaris loses his will to create. 

An unidentified amount of time passes. Sedaris recovers from the withdrawals he experienced after ceasing his meth habit. Still, he continues to attend performance art shows, but he doesn’t know why because he no longer enjoys them or, for that matter, sees merit in them. After watching a show in which a woman gorges herself on sickening amounts of food, he darts out into the evening and walks home, glad to be sober and happy that he no longer tries to find deeper meaning in the abstract, disparate parts of life.