David Sedaris spoke for an hour at Collected Works, a book store in down town Santa Fe, on Thursday, free. I listened. I think everyone felt highly entertained. He is fantastically funny. And thought-provoking. Ordinary and mundane to extra-ordinary. There you go.
The theme of this book tour, he said, is breast milk. He’s been collecting and retelling the stories people come up and share with him. It occurred to me (when he first embarked on this subject) that breast milk is a substance that nearly everyone has tried, but hardly anyone knows how it tastes. Strange huh?
As he kept telling stories, I realized more people than I thought did know what it tastes like, including David Sedaris himself who obliged a fan when she brought him a glass.
What surprised me more than trying breast milk, was the audience’s reaction to the stories of women putting it in their coffee or the their pancakes. Upon hearing about trying breast milk, so much of the audience portrayed looks of disgust, wrinkled noses, murmurs of Ew and shaking of heads. I didn’t expect this in Santa Fe.
How is it that we drink cow milk and dairy queen soft serve (and corn syrup) and we think breast milk is gross? When our children drink it and we drank it? Its not any more natural to drink cow or goat milk. We are the only species that drink milk as adults – besides pigs who will consume nearly anything.