Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

closet has only one coat hanger in it. Yesterday afternoon the outside temperature reached one
hundred degrees. I’m guessing it was also one hundred in the lobby and hotel restaurant, which were
both without air-conditioning. All in all, it’s the most depressing hotel since the Holiday Inn in
Portland, Maine.
June 13, 2001
San Francisco
On the way to the bookstore I asked Frank, the escort, what he thought of my bow tie. He hesitated
for a moment and then said, “A bow tie tells the world that the person wearing it can no longer get an
erection.”
June 25, 2001
Paris
While I was gone Hugh, Manuela, and Dario attended Franck’s surprise fortieth-birthday party.
One of the guests was a sophisticated mother of three who announced that she hated the zoo at the
Jardin des Plantes because it was cruel to keep the animals in such small cages. She went on and on
and then, at the end of the evening, she unlocked her car and released her golden retriever, who’d
spent the last six hours in the trunk.
July 13, 2001
Tübingen, Germany
This is my new favorite German city, and it’s nice because I really didn’t expect it. It’s a college
town, but the old center is remarkable, crammed with steep-roofed buildings and intersected by a
network of streams. Living here would undoubtedly get dull, but it’s beautiful to look at. We arrived
yesterday afternoon. It was a three-hour ride involving two separate trains and a change in Stuttgart.
On our first train we sat in a smoking compartment and reviewed our evening in Nuremberg. “That
couple last night were really trampling on my nerves,” Tini said. I just love her English. It’s not as
grammatically correct as Gert’s, but I find it infinitely more charming.
On the way to Tübingen we passed a smokestack with the word dick written on it.
July 16, 2001
Paris
While eating, Tini discussed her friends’ upcoming move to New York. They’re a pair of reporters
going from Hamburg to West 68th Street. Hugh said the move will be difficult, especially if they
smoke, and Tini said, “No, they have finished their smoking.” She said it as though when born, they’d