In the Waiting Room

by David Sedaris

Six months after moving to Paris, I gave up on French school and decided to take the easy
way out. All I ever said was “Could you repeat that?” And for what? I rarely understood
things the second time around, and when I did it was usually something banal, the speaker
wondering how I felt about toast, or telling me that the store would close in twenty
minutes. All that work for something that didn’t really matter, and so I began saying,
“D’accord,” which translates to “I am in agreement,” and means, basically, “O.K.” The
word was a key to a magic door, and every time I said it I felt the thrill of possibility.

“D’accord,” I told the concierge, and the next thing I knew I was sewing the eye onto a
stuffed animal belonging to her granddaughter. “D’accord,” I said to the dentist, and she
sent me to a periodontist, who took some X-rays and called me into his conference room
for a little talk. “D’accord,” I said, and a week later I returned to his office, where he sliced
my gums from top to bottom and scraped what smelled like human feces from the roots
of my teeth. If I’d had any idea that this was going to happen, I’d never have said d’accord
to my French publisher, who’d scheduled me the following evening for a television
appearance. It was a weekly cultural program, and very popular. I followed the pop star
Robbie Williams, and, as the producer settled me into my chair, I ran my tongue over my
stitches. It was like having a mouthful of spiders—spooky, but it gave me something to
talk about on TV, and for that I was grateful.

I said d’accord to a waiter, and received a pig’s nose standing erect on a bed of tender
greens. I said it to a woman in a department store and walked away drenched in cologne.
Every day was an adventure.

When I got a kidney stone, I took the Métro to a hospital, and said, “D’accord,” to a
cheerful red-headed nurse, who led me to a private room and hooked me up to a Demerol
drip. That was undoubtedly the best that d’accord got me, and it was followed by the
worst. After the stone had passed, I spoke to a doctor, who filled out an appointment card
and told me to return the following Monday, when we would do whatever it was I’d just
agreed to. “D’accord,” I said, and then I supersized it with “génial,” which means “great.”

On the day of my appointment, I returned to the hospital, where I signed the register and
was led by a slightly less cheerful nurse to a large dressing room. “Strip to your
underwear,” she told me, and I said, “D’accord.” While turning to leave, she said
something else, and looking back, I really should have asked her to repeat it, to draw a
picture if that’s what it took, because once you take your pants off d’accord isn’t really
O.K. anymore.

There were three doors in the dressing room, and after removing my clothes I put my ear
against each one, trying to determine which was the safest for someone in my condition.
The first was loud, with lots of ringing telephones, so that was out. The second didn’t
sound much different, and so I chose the third, and entered a brightly painted waiting
room set with plastic chairs and a glass-topped table stacked high with magazines. A
potted plant stood in the corner, and beside it was a second door, which was open and led
into a hallway.
I took a seat and had been there for a minute or so when a couple came in and filled two
of the unoccupied chairs. The first thing I noticed was that they were fully dressed, and
nicely, too—no sneakers or sweat suits for them. The woman wore a nubby gray skirt that
fell to her knees and matched the fabric of her husband’s sports coat.

Their black hair, which was obviously dyed, formed another match, but looked better on
her than it did on him—less vain, I supposed.

“Bonjour,” I said, and it occurred to me that possibly the nurse had mentioned something
about a robe, perhaps the one that had been hanging in the dressing room. I wanted more
than anything to go back and get it, but were I to do so, the couple would see my mistake.
They’d think I was stupid, so to prove them wrong I decided to remain where I was and
pretend that everything was normal. La la la.

It’s funny the things that run through your mind when you’re sitting in your underpants
before a couple of strangers. Suicide comes up, but, just as you embrace it as a viable
option, you remember that you don’t have the proper tools: no belt to wrap around your
neck, no pen to drive through your nose or ear and up into your brain. I thought briefly of
swallowing my watch, but there was no guarantee I’d choke on it. It’s embarrassing, but,
given the way I normally eat, it would probably go down fairly easily, strap and all. A clock
might be a challenge, but a Timex the size of a fifty-cent piece, no problem.

The man with the dyed black hair pulled a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket, and as he
unfolded them I recalled an early evening in my parents’ back yard. This was thirty-five
years ago, a dinner for my sister Gretchen’s tenth birthday. My father grilled steaks. My
mother set the picnic table with insect repelling candles, and just as we started to eat she
caught me chewing a hunk of beef the size of a coin purse. Gorging always set her off, but
on this occasion it bothered her more than usual.

“I hope you choke to death,” she said.

I was twelve years old, and paused, thinking, did I hear her correctly?

“That’s right, piggy, suffocate.”

In that moment, I hoped that I would choke to death. The knot of beef would lodge itself
in my throat, and for the rest of her life my mother would feel haunted and responsible.
Every time she passed a steak house, or browsed the meat counter of a grocery store, she
would think of me and reflect upon what she had said—the words “hope” and “death” in
the same sentence. But, of course, I hadn’t choked. Instead, I had lived and grown to
adulthood, so that I could sit in this waiting room dressed in nothing but my underpants.
La la la.

It was around this time that two more people entered. The woman looked to be in her
mid-fifties, and accompanied an elderly man who was, if anything, overdressed: a suit, a
sweater, a scarf, and an overcoat, which he removed with great difficulty, every button a
challenge.

Give it to me, I thought. Over here. But he was deaf to my telepathy, and handed his coat
to the woman, who folded it over the back of her chair. Our eyes met for a moment—hers
widening as they moved from my face to my chest—and then she picked a magazine off
the table and handed it to the elderly man, who I now took to be her father. She then
selected a magazine of her own, and as she turned the pages I allowed myself to relax a
little. She was just a woman reading a copy of Paris Match, and I was just the person
sitting across from her. True, I had no clothes on, but maybe she wouldn’t dwell on that,
maybe none of these people would. The old man, the couple with their matching hair:
“How was the hospital?” their friends might ask, and they’d answer, “Fine,” or “Oh, you
know, the same.”

“Did you see anything messed up?”

“No, not that I can think of.”

It sometimes helps to remind myself that not everyone is like me. Not everyone writes
things down in a notebook, and then transcribes them into a diary. Fewer still will take
that diary, clean it up a bit, and read it in front of an audience: “March 14th. Paris. Went
with Dad to the hospital, where we sat across from a man in his underpants. They were
briefs, not boxers, a little on the gray side, the elastic slack from too many washings. I later
said to Father, ‘Other people have to use those chairs, too, you know,’ and he agreed that
it was unsanitary.

“Odd little guy, creepy. Hair on his shoulders. Big idiot smile plastered on his face, just
sitting there, mumbling to himself.”

How conceited I am to think I might be remembered, especially in a busy hospital where

human misery is a matter of course. If any of these people did keep a diary, their day’s
entry would likely have to do with a diagnosis, some piece of news either inconvenient or
life-altering: the liver’s not a match, the cancer has spread to the spinal column.
Compared with that, a man in his underpants is no more remarkable than a dust-covered
plant, or the magazine- subscription card lying on the floor beside the table. Then, too,
good news or bad, these people would eventually leave the hospital and return to the
streets, where any number of things might wipe me from their memory.

Perhaps on their way home they’ll see a dog with a wooden leg, which I saw myself one
afternoon. It was a German shepherd, and his prosthesis looked as though it had been
made from a billy club. The network of straps holding the leg in place was a real eye-
opener, but stranger still was the noise it made against the floor of the subway car, a dull
thud that managed to sound both plaintive and forceful at the same time. Then there was
the dog’s owner, who looked at his pet and then at me, with an expression reading,
“That’s O.K. I took care of it.”

Or maybe they’ll run into something comparatively small yet no less astonishing. I was
walking to the bus stop one morning and came upon a well-dressed woman lying on the
sidewalk in front of an office-supply store. A small crowd had formed, and just as I joined it
a fire truck pulled up. In America, if someone dropped to the ground, you’d call an
ambulance, but in France it’s the firemen who do most of the rescuing. There were four of
them, and, after checking to see that the woman was O.K., one of them returned to the
truck and opened the door. I thought he was looking for an aluminum blanket, the type
they use for people in shock, but instead he pulled out a goblet. Anywhere else it would
 have been a cup, made of paper or plastic, but this was glass, and had a stem. I guess they
carry it around in the front seat, next to the axes or whatever.

The fireman filled the goblet with bottled water, and then he handed it to the woman,
who was sitting up now and running her hand over her hair, the way one might when
waking from a nap. It was the lead story in my diary that night, but, no matter how hard I
fiddled with it, I felt something was missing. Had I mentioned that it was autumn? Did the
leaves on the sidewalk contribute to my sense of utter delight, or was it just the goblet,
and the dignity it bespoke: “Yes, you may be on the ground; yes, this drink may be your
last—but let’s do it right, shall we?”

Everyone has his own standards, but, in my opinion, a sight like that is at least fifty times
better than what I was providing. A goblet will keep you going for years, while a man in his
underpants is good for maybe two days, a week at the most.

Unless, of course, you are the man in his underpants, in which case it will probably stay
with you for the rest of your life—not on the tip of your mind, not handy like a phone
number, but still within easy reach, like a mouthful of steak, or a dog with a wooden leg.
How often you’ll think of the cold plastic chair, and of the nurse’s face as she passes the
room and discovers you with your hands between your knees. Such surprise, such
amusement as she proposes some new adventure, then stands there, waiting for your
“d’accord.”

1. The content for David’s short stories are originally written in a notebook, and then copied into a diary.
2. The people in the waiting room were far less likely to remember the doctor’s findings than they were to
remember David.
3. There were few things outside the hospital which would make the people in the waiting room forget about
David.
4. When David saw the dog in the subway car, he was the most surprised by the sound the artificial leg made as
it hit the floor.
5. The story about the goblet was the first story written in David’s diary.
6. For David, the memory of the embarrassing situation in the waiting room will be helpful, like remembering a
phone number.