REFLECTIONS: THE WAY WE

ARE
Of wildflowers and weed
by David Sedaris
FEBRUARY 19, 2007

In Paris, they warn you before cutting off the water, but out in Normandy you’re just

supposed to know. You’re also supposed to be prepared, and it’s this last part that gets

me every time. Still, though, I try to make do. A saucepan of chicken broth will do for

shaving, and in a pinch, I can always find something to pour into the toilet tank: orange

juice, milk, a lesser champagne. If I really got hard up, I suppose I could hike through the

woods and bathe in the river, though it’s never quite come to that.

Most often, our water is shut off because of some reconstruction project, either in our

village or in the next one over. A hole is dug, a pipe is replaced, and within

a few hours things are back to normal. The mystery is that it’s so perfectly timed to my

schedule. This is to say that the tap dries up at the exact moment I roll out of bed, which

is usually between ten and ten-thirty. For me this is early, but for Hugh and most of our

neighbors it’s something closer to midday. What they do at 6 A.M. is anyone’s guess. I

only know that they’re incredibly self-righteous about it and talk about the dawn as if it’s

a personal reward, bestowed on account of their great virtue.

The last time our water went off, it was early summer. I got up at my regular hour,

and saw that Hugh was off somewhere, doing whatever it is he does. This left me alone to

solve the coffee problem—a sort of Catch-22, as in order to think straight I needed

caffeine, and in order to make that happen I needed to think straight. Once, in a half-
sleep, I made it with Perrier, which sounds plausible but really isn’t. On another occasion,

I heated up some leftover tea and poured that over the grounds. Had the tea been black

rather than green, the coffee might have worked out, but, as it was, the result was vile. It

wasn’t the sort of thing you’d try more than once, so this time I skipped the teapot and

headed straight for a vase of wildflowers sitting by the phone on one of the living-room

tables.

Hugh had picked them the previous day, and it broke my heart to think of him

marching across a muddy field with a bouquet in his hand. He does these things that are

somehow beyond faggy and seem better suited to some hardscrabble pioneer wife:

making jam, say, or sewing bedroom curtains out of burlap. Once, I caught him down on

the riverbank, beating our dirty clothes against a rock. This was before we got a washing

machine, but, still, he could have laundered things in the tub. “Who are you?” I’d said,

and, as he turned, I half-expected to see a baby at his breast, not nestled in one of those

comfortable supports but hanging, redfaced, by its gums.

When Hugh beats underpants against river rocks or decides that it might be fun to

grind his own flour, I think of a couple I once met. This was years ago, in the early

nineties. I was living in New York, and had returned to North Carolina for Christmas, my

first priority being to get high and stay that way. My brother Paul knew of a guy who

possibly had some pot to sell, so a phone call was made, and, in the way that these things

happen, we found ourselves in a trailer twentyodd miles outside of Raleigh.

The dealer was named Little Mike, and he addressed Paul as “Bromine.” He looked

like a high-school student, or, closer still, one of those kids who dropped out and then

spent all day hanging around the parking lot: tracksuit, rattail, a wisp of thread looped
through his freshly pierced ear. After a few words regarding my brother’s car, Little Mike

ushered us inside and introduced us to his wife, who was sitting on the sofa watching a

Christmas special. The girl’s stockinged feet were resting on the coffee table, and settled

between her legs, just south of her lap, sat a flat-faced Persian. Both she and the cat had

wide-set eyes, and ginger-colored hair, though hers was partially hidden beneath a

woolen cap. The wife remained seated as my brother, and I entered the room. I guess you

couldn’t blame her for being inhospitable. Here you are, trying to watch a little TV with

your cat, and these two guys show up—people you don’t even know.

“Don’t mind Beth,” Little Mike said, and he smacked the underside of the girl’s foot.

“Owww, asshole.”

He advanced upon the other foot, and I pretended to admire the Christmas tree,

which was miniature and artificial, and stood on a barstool beside the front door. “This is

nice,” I announced, and Beth shot me a withering look. Liar, it said.

You’re just saying that because my stupid husband sells reefer.

She really wanted us out of there, but Little Mike seemed to welcome our

company. “Sit down,” he told me. “Have a libation.” He and Paul went to the refrigerator

to get us some beers, and the girl called after them to bring her a rum and-Coke. Then she

turned back to the TV and glared at the screen, saying, “This show’s boring. Hand me the

nigger.”

I smiled at the cat, as if this would somehow fix things, and when Beth pointed to the

far end of the coffee table, I saw that she was referring to the remote control. Under

different circumstances, I might have listed the various differences between black people,
who had been forced to work for no money, and black, battery-operated channel

changers, which had neither thoughts nor feelings and

didn’t mind doing stuff for free. But the deal hadn’t started yet, and, more than anything,

I wanted my drugs. Thus, the remote was handed over, and I watched as the pot dealer’s

wife flicked from one station to the next, looking for something that might satisfy her.

She had just settled upon a situation comedy when Paul and Little Mike returned with

the drinks. Beth was unsatisfied with her ice-cube count, and, after suggesting that she

could just go fuck herself, our host reached into the waistband of his track pants and

pulled out a bag of marijuana. It was the size of a small cushion, eight ounces at least,

and as I feasted my eyes upon it Little Mike pushed his wife’s feet off the coffee table,

saying, “Bitch, go get me my scales.” “I’m watching TV—get it your own self.”

“Whore,” he said.

“Asshole.”

“See the kind of shit I have to live with?” Little Mike sighed and retreated to the rear

of the trailer—the bedroom, I guessed—returning a minute later with a scale and some

rolling papers. The pot was sticky with lots of buds, and its smell reminded me of a

Christmas tree, though not the one perched atop the barstool. After weighing my ounce

and counting out my money, Little Mike rolled a joint, which he lit, drew upon, and

handed to my brother. It then went to me, and, just as

I was passing it back to our host, his wife piped up, saying, “Hey, don’t I count?”

“Now look who wants to play,” her husband said. “Women. They’ll suck the fucking

paper off a joint, but when old Papa Bear needs a little b.j. action they’ve always got a

sore throat.”
 Beth tried to speak and hold in the smoke at the same time: “Hut hup, hasshole.”

“Either of you guys married?” Little Mike asked, and Paul shook his head no. “I got

preëngaged one time, but David here hasn’t never come close, his being a faggot and

all.”

Little Mike laughed, and then he looked at me. “For real?” he said. “Is

Bromine telling me the truth?”

“Oh, he’s all up inside that shit,” Paul said. “Has hisself a cocksucker—I mean a

boyfriend—and everything.”

I could have done my own talking, but it was sort of nice listening to my

brother, who sounded almost boastful, as if I were a pet that had learned to do math.

“Well, what do you know,” Little Mike said.

His wife stirred to action then and became almost sociable. “So, this boyfriend,” she

said. “Let me ask, which one of you is the woman?”

“Well, neither of us,” I told her. “That’s what makes us a homosexual couple.

We’re both guys.”

“But no,” she said. “I mean, like, in prison or whatnot. One of you has to be in for

murder and the other for child molesting or something like that, right? I mean, one is

more like a normal man.”

I wanted to ask if that would be the murderer or the child molester, but instead

I just accepted the joint, saying, “Oh, we live in New York,” as if that answered the

question.

We stayed in the trailer for another half hour, and during the ride back to
Raleigh, I thought of what the drug dealer’s wife had said. Her examples were a little

skewed, but I knew what she was getting at. People I know, people who live

in houses and don’t call their remote control “the nigger,” have often asked the same

question, though usually in regard to lesbians, who are always either absent or safely out

of earshot. “Which one’s the man?”

It’s astonishing the amount of time that certain straight people devote to gay sex—

trying to determine what goes where, and how often. They can’t imagine any system

outside their own, and seem obsessed with the idea of roles, both in bed and out of it.

Who calls whom a bitch? Who cries harder when the cat dies? Which one spends the

most time in the bathroom? I guess they think that it’s that cut and dried, though of

course it’s not. Hugh might do the cooking, and actually wear an apron while he’s at it,

but he also chops the firewood, repairs the hot-water heater, and could tear off my arm

with no more effort than it takes to uproot a dandelion. Does that make him the murderer,

or do the homemade curtains reduce him to the level of the child molester?

I considered these things as I looked at the wildflowers, he’d collected the day before

the water went out. Some were the color I associate with yield signs, and others a sort of

muted lavender, their stems as thin as wire. I pictured Hugh stooping, or maybe even

kneeling, as he went about picking them, and then I grabbed the entire bunch and tossed

it out the window. That done, I carried the vase into the kitchen, and emptied the yellow

water into a pan, which I then boiled and used to make coffee. There’d be hell to pay

when my man got home, but at least by then I would be awake and able to argue, perhaps

convincingly, that I am all the beauty he will ever need. ♦