Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

November 14, 1987
Chicago
Barbara went to clear the dishes off the table behind me at the IHOP tonight. A couple was sitting
there, both in their sixties, and they started smoking the moment they’d finished.
“Was everything all right with your meal?” Barbara asked.
“No,” the woman said. “No, it was not. The meat was all tough and the vegetables was cold.”
“Well, why didn’t you say anything?” Barbara asked.
And the woman said, “We was hongry.”
November 16, 1987
Chicago
Steve Lafreniere loaned me a few copies of a St. Louis newspaper called the Evening Whirl,
which comes out daily and is completely devoted to black-on-black crime. Criminals are pictured on
every page beneath headlines like “Fiend Sneaks In While Parents Are Asleep, Sodomizes Their Two
Sons” and “Mean Pastor of Church Dates Two Brothers, 10 and 11, He’s Caught.”
This man rapes two kids, and the paper calls him mean?
“It was revealed how the sex mad faggot tagged one boy that he especially adored and wrecked
him. He would tie him up by his hands and body and go to work on his victim like a greedy hog that
had missed a meal. He caught the boy like a rooster running after a hen and dragged him into the
office and oh, Glory! What a session, oh, my!”
There is a short article in one issue headlined “You Don’t Know Who in the Hell I Am, Do You?
I’m Mr. Muckity Muck with the Big Buck. Mess with Me and You’ll Have No Luck.”
Another article is titled “Andy Gray Said, ‘I Am Freakish. I Love My Own Sex and I Like ’Em
Young. If They Yield to Me I’ll Give ’Em Some Tongue. I Can’t Help How I Was Born, I’m Gonna
Have Fun and Live, Right On!’” It says in this article that Mr. Gray “snorted and cavorted with other
men.”
This paper is not to be believed. An annual subscription costs $35. The ads are placed by lawyers,
funeral homes, and bail bondsmen.
November 17, 1987
Chicago
Police caught the guy responsible for smashing windows and painting swastikas outside Jewish
businesses on Devon Avenue. He’s out on bail now, and this morning’s paper included a picture of
him. What strikes me is that he has a very small mouth, smaller than a baby’s. I mean, tiny. If you
wanted him to suck your thumb, you’d have to grease it up first. The article says he belongs to a
skinhead group and has tattoos, which is strange, I think, because Jews in concentration camps had
shaved heads and tattoos. You’d think the anti-Semites would go for a different look.