Me Talk Pretty One Day

Sedaris recalls his initial courtship with his partner, Hugh. The two meet when Sedaris borrows Hugh’s twelve-foot ladder. Sedaris believes that only wealthy people in New York City can possess a twelve-foot ladder, which is confirmed when he arrives at Hugh’s SoHo loft and learns that he also owns a place in Normandy, France. Sedaris is determined to make Hugh his boyfriend by channeling the determination of soap opera characters. He eventually succeeds.

Hugh invites Sedaris to go with him to Normandy one summer, which Sedaris declines out of fear of how he might be treated as an American in France. Resolving to overcome this fear, he travels to France with Hugh the following summer, knowing only the French word for “bottleneck.” In the following summers, he gets into the practice of learning new words each day though his vocabulary consists of mainly uncommon words such as “exorcism” (162) and “face swelling” (163). By the end of his sixth trip to France, he has collected enough French vocabulary with the help of locals in the surrounding village to reach a satisfactory level of fluency.

Sedaris concludes the chapter by remarking upon how the rapid changes to New York City has led him to fantasize about moving to France permanently with Hugh.