My Famous Friend, David

OMG! Sorry to sound like a text-messaging teenager but I just went to my bookstore (Kate has this way of calling all the places she likes “my toy store,” “my library,” yadda yadda) to buy the new David Sedaris book (which they were sold out of), and the woman working there casually mentions, “You can order a book and get on the list to have him sign it when he comes here.”

WHEN HE COMES HERE? Like to MY BOOKSTORE, just two blocks from MY HOUSE?? This news was nearly more than I could bear.

If you were about to ask me to do something on Friday, June 27th, sorry, but I’ll be waking up that morning in a tent in front of the bookstore, using a generator to blow dry my hair and iron my fabulous outfit, and preparing myself to get into the sold-out reading later that evening.

My diet starts now! My God. What. Will. I. Wear?

I mean I truly feel far more Tiger Beat pubescent adoration excitement over David Sedaris than I ever did over Shawn Cassidy, or, uh, Michael Jackson. And my feelings for them at one point in my life I must confess were considerable.

I don’t know if I’m alone in playing the Who Would My Celebrity Friend Be? game. It’s not like it’s really a game, but a form of day-dreamery. And puhleeze I really don’t spend all day sitting around thinking about this, if you’re starting to feel all like my life is so pathetic and tragic. Come on! I spend my whole day changing diapers, thank you.

Anyway, so my ex-best celebrity friend was Renee Zellweger. I know, I know, it’s a weird choice, but sometimes these people who you somehow envision as your good old friends from before they got all famous but they still have you as a womb-to-tomb friend, someone who really knows them and is steeped in the real non-celebrity world, someone who they give their cast-off designer clothes to and who they visit on the weekends after they’ve broken up with some famous drummer and just need to not be in LA and not wear make-up and not be followed by paparazzi and feel grounded by coloring in a princess coloring book with your daughter–sometimes you don’t pick those people in your imaginary game. They pick you.

So it’s not like I think she and I have a ton in common, or that she’d even necessarily be super fun to hang out with. (Not like Mark’s imaginary celebrity friend, who is–get this–Cameron Diaz! Someone who he thinks would be fun to hang out with because she seems “game” despite the fact that Mark himself admits that’s he’s not game.)

Anyway, at some point Renee just sort of stopped being my celebrity friend and I realized that of course it should be David Sedaris. And Hugh. I kind of thought maybe Hugh and I were the good old friends and then of course ages ago he and David got together and now, after so many years of me hanging out with them in Paris and Normandy and all those summer rentals in Tuscany that we did together–never mind all the wild times in NYC and their burrito-fest visits to me in SF–I mean after all these years it’s really hard to remember that I was friends with Hugh first since David and I are so close now. (Oh and Anderson Cooper and I are also dear friends. In my mind, that is.)

I a moment which could have turned into one of those times where you say “You know how after you floss your teeth you sometimes swallow the dental floss” to someone and they look at you like, “Are you fucking serious?” and then you nervously laugh and say “Of COURSE not. Of COURSE I don’t ever swallow my dental floss, silly!” Well, in one of those moments I asked my sister-in-law Lori who she envisioned her celebrity friend was. To be honest I can’t remember if she had her answer at the ready, or needed to think about it a bit. (I was too busy being thrilled that she didn’t mock my question.)

Anyway, I think she did think about it for a bit and said, “I think John and I would be a good couple-friend match with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. I figure John and Ben could bond over their Red Sox fan-dom, and Jen and I could talk about the kids.”

That was such a good answer! Of course I emailed David and Hugh right away to tell them all about it.