The Potty Mouth at the Table (25 page)

5. How long does it typically take to gather enough material for an essay collection? Do you reject some pieces as “not funny enough” or otherwise not right for the book?

Oh, usually a year to two years. Some of the material in
Potty Mouth
was stuff that needed to be digested for years before I was ready to put my name on it, like the title piece. I needed time to see if I was overreacting or if my arch-nemesis in that piece was really a super asshole. Turns out, he’s a super asshole. So I wrote it. Others I know right away,
and I have it framed and ready to go. So it depends. They tell me when they’re ready to go.

6. In this book you often focus on strangers and their bizarre and rude behavior, and after reading about them one can only conclude: What’s wrong with people?! Is it simply part of the human condition to sometimes be unaware of or unconcerned with our own strangeness?

My theory is that everyone is crazy, it just takes the right circumstance to expose how insane we really are. The terrifying thing is that I have lost my fear of strangers, and before I even know what’s happening, I am asking the guy who made my taco and is just letting it sit there for five minutes while he works on the order of the lady behind me, “Um. Dude. What do we need to do to complete this transaction?” And then, he looks at me like I’m the insane one. Like my taco hasn’t already entered the second stage of decomposition because it has been sitting on his side of the counter for so long. That happened yesterday. Boo for Mucho Gusto. Boo!

7. Your husband and friends feature prominently in some of your stories. Are there instances where your family or friends draw the line or declare a story off-limits to the public?

Oh, my mother said she was going to stop speaking to me a month and a half ago because she didn’t want to be in any more books. So I wrote about it, and I put that conversation in this book. Then she read that, and really did stop speaking to me. Last week, she asked if I was coming home for the holidays, and I said I didn’t know because she wasn’t talking to me. She shot back that it wasn’t true. I reminded her that she hadn’t called me in six weeks. She replied, “Well, that wasn’t because I wasn’t talking to you. It was because nothing happened.” I give her until this book comes out, then she’ll be mad enough to cut me off again. But I’ll just write about that. She clearly doesn’t understand that even if she stops speaking to me, she’s still giving me material.

8. Speaking of off-limits, can you tell us about the first dead body now? Please?

I checked again. He said no. I promise, the first indication that the scab has fallen off, I’ll hit the keyboard. But until then, I have to respect his Finder of the Corpse rights. I told thousands of people in the last book that as a boy, he had a tampon collection. I’m going to have to let this one lie.

9. Looking back, what was worse: human feces in your garden, vomiting on yourself in public, or discovering
that your puff was public property? Is self-inflicted grossness worse than coming into contact with that of others?

Definitely the vomit. Definitely. I really tried to die that day. I mean, it’s the fear we all have, it’s the worst thing you can do, and now, I’ve done it. I’ve peaked. I’m terrified for what’s waiting for me next, and I just pray it doesn’t include a toilet out in the open in Grand Central station. Seriously. What other landscape is open to me? I’ve traversed every humiliating terrain there is. That is a scary thought.

10. The last essay is a bit of a departure in tone, but it’s a beautiful story. What prompted you to include it?

I included it because even in the darkest of circumstances, humor got us through. It was only because we were able to laugh at aspects of what was going on—in this case, the diagnosis of a stage four brain tumor in one of my best friends—that we were able to hold it together and even make it through those weeks. Without that perspective, I can’t imagine what would have happened. It showed me that humor is such a vital mechanism in dealing with the good things in life and the truly terrible, and it’s such an essential part of being human and coping. I wanted to show that despite the grim baseline of that piece, we laughed because we needed to. Because we had to.

11. In an interview, you mentioned being flattered that you were once compared to Erma Bombeck. Who do you think some of the funniest lady writers are these days?

Ha ha ha. Well, I don’t read a lot of contemporary humor of my counterparts, I worry about seepage, crossover, and raw jealousy! But I will tell you which lady writers are absolutely hysterical. I’m in a phase where I’m mainly reading 1930s fiction from American and English writers, and those who I find particularly impressive are Margaret Halsey, Nancy Mitford, Stella Gibbons, and Anita Loos. All of them have made me laugh out loud and consistently. And the funniest book of all time, in my opinion, is
Auntie Mame
by Patrick Dennis. A resolute masterpiece, that book!

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Copyright © 2013 by Laurie Notaro

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition April 2013

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Designed by Jaime Putorti

Cover design by Christopher Sergio

Cover photography by Catherine Casalino

Image of doll head and fork courtesy of the author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Notaro, Laurie

The potty mouth at the table / Laurie Notaro. — First Gallery Books trade paperback edition.

p. cm.

1. Notaro, Laurie. 2. Etiquette—Humor. 3. Humorists, American—20th century—Biography. 4. American wit and humor. I. Title.

PS3614.O785Z476 2013

814'.6—dc23

[B]

2012039338

ISBN 978-1-4516-5939-9

ISBN 978-1-4516-5941-2 (ebook)