David Sedaris

She was hemming a pair of my pants one afternoon when, standing before her on a kitchen chair, I felt her hands graze my butt

I just want to be friends, I stammered.

Nothing more, nothing less.

She took the pins out of her mouth and studied me for a moment before sighing.

Damn, and here you've been leading me on all this time.

I read the book once more, hoping to recapture my earlier pleasure, but it was too late now.

I couldn't read the phrase, he punched his daughter's rock-hard knopples, without thinking of Gretchen barricading herself in the bedroom.

I thought I might throw the book away or maybe even burn it, but like a perfectly good outgrown sweater, it seemed a shame to destroy it when the world was full of people who might get some use out of it.

With this in mind, I carried the book to the grocery store parking lot and tossed it into the back of a shining new pickup truck.

I then took up my post beside the store's outdoor vending machines, waiting until the truck's owner returned, pushing a cart full of groceries.

He was a wiry man with fashionable mutton-chop sideburns and a half-cast on his arm.

As he placed his bags into the back of the truck, his eyes narrowed upon the book.

I watched as he picked it up and leafed through the first few pages before raising his head to search the parking lot.

He took a cigarette from his pocket and tapped it against the roof of the truck before lighting it.

Then he slipped the book into his pocket and drove away.

David Sedaris, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Thank you so much, Sam.

Your latest collection of essays, The Land and Its People, are pieces you've been reading on tour around the country, I think, for the last four or five years.

Does performing these pieces in front of an audience help you make them better?

Sure.