Dead Rabbits and Cut-Up Underpants: How to Tell a Story by Mastering The Art of MasterClass

By: Kelly McCarthy

David Sedaris wants a doctor to cut a tumor out of his body so he can feed it to a snapping turtle. Okay. I understand that the American humorist wants the tumor removed, because well, it is a tumor, not cancerous, fortunately for him, but a tumor all the same. Why he’s decided to feed it to a leathery domed shelled, slow-moving reptile is anyone’s guess. I think he said he wanted to do it, because he could.

You can discover this tidbit in MasterClass.

Spoiler alert: David Sedaris does have the tumor excised from the trunk of his body. To find out the details, if indeed he did feed it to a turtle, you’ll have to subscribe to MasterClass, or Google it.

Sedaris tells this odd tale to demonstrate how crazy shit happens and can make for a good story, or at least, one that sells.

Last night at my boyfriend’s house a stink bug dive bombed into my glass of water.

But wait. There’s this: My brother lives in the Florida Keys. Lucky bastard. Anyway, in the winter, when a 50 degree cold front comes in, and temperatures fall, we Northerners might consider this a welcome, balmy temperature, but in the Keys mid-fifty degrees can feel freezing, what with water on both sides and only a sliver of land mass in-between, the lows temps can actually cause iguanas in palm trees fall to their deaths. If you’ve never seen an iguana, they are scaled, kind of dinosaur like, and can be as large as a small dog.

I’ve never fed anything to an iguana, least of all a tumor.

Once, while visiting my brother, I saw a dead iguana in the road, a big son-of-a-bitch, and I had to straddle it to avoid getting iguana guts on the bumper of my brother’s car.

Again, it’s not a story to garner much attention.

Okay, there’s got to be something. And so, I’m going to delve back into the archives of my mind to resurrect, something —— anything.

Flashback: when I was a kid, around 12-years old, it was raining, pouring actually, and our crazy terrier dog, Tuffy was let out into the yard, where he proceeded to dig up a shallow grave of dead rabbits: more specifically, two adult rabbits and two litters of babies: born hairless, blind, and deaf, which is the norm. What was abnormal was that the wild, and young mother rabbit refused to feed her little kits. I can remember my mother, with nothing but an eyedropper filled with milk in her attempt to hand feed the sad little creatures, something the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School of Medicine said probably wouldn’t work.

They were right.

Slowly, as the babies quietly cried, my mother crying along with them, each baby rabbit died. It was worth a try.

Now back to Tuffy in the yard: my mother is opening the door to let Tuffy back into the house, and as the door swings open she says, out loud, “I smell death.” My Mother then proceeded to take Tuffy up to the bathroom, where she put him into the tub and scrubbed dead rabbits from under his claws.

But, this was not the moment I labeled my mother a “sport.”

That recognition came when she dug a plastic bottle cap out of Poochie’s ass, Poochie being the dog that came after Tuffy. You see, it wasn’t long after Tuffy dug up the dead rabbits that he was sent to “live on a farm.” I believe the last straw came when he peed on the neighbors sheets hanging on the line down the street and chased a feral cat into the house next door, during a rainstorm, soiled the woman’s carpet and almost gave her a nervous breakdown.

I guess writing about other people’s stories can be strangely rewarding. Such as Edward White does in penning The Lives of Others, when he shares an account of a woman named Mary Toft, who in 1726 in Godalming, Surrey, England convinced doctors she gave birth to rabbit parts. Oh, I’ve discovered there’s a book titled Mary Toft; Or, The Rabbit Queen: A Novel, I might read that…but, enough about rabbits.

Let me get back to the odd, or curious occurrences from my own life that I can turn into a yarn worthy of drawing in readers.

Once, I broke my toe onstage; I was a stand-in/stunt double for Estelle Getty in the movie “Mannequin;” when I was fourteen I was kissed on the cheek by Telly Savalas. Now, if you’re not old enough to remember Savalas, in the 1970’s he starred on a show called Kojak.

Clever little anecdote maybe, but I need a juicier tale.

Let’s see, in the mid-eighties, while off to college I had a roommate who coveted my underpants. First semester I’d neatly stacked my undies in the bureau drawer: panties with animal skin patterns like zebra, lion, and cheetah. She’d admired them, and being we were almost the same size, she asked to borrow them. I declined. I mean, sharing undergarments is really taking the whole “best friend” roommate thing too far.

A few months later, while vying for the same role in the theatre department’s auditions for a play, she said, “If you get the part I’ll push you down the steps.” Needless to say I didn’t audition well. She got the role. I was relieved. Some time after that, when I came back to the room and opened the drawer of the bureau, I discover all of my cute little animal print panties were cut up with scissors.

By the end of the first semester, I was starving, lost ten pounds, fearful of gaining what my brother’s friend Eddie called the “Freshman Fifteen” and suffering from what seemed like a month’s long asthma attack, I left that establishment, never to return, and enrolled at state school in Philadelphia, but, that’s another story, for another time, again really not much worth telling.

Wait, one last stab.

Once, in my parent’s living room, when I was forty-years old, a 20-year old Brazilian handyman tried to remove my pants, and when I pushed away his advances he bit me on the neck, all while a batch of corn muffins were baking in the oven. He was cute. And I did flirt with him. Only, I didn’t count on this. And as I ushered him out of the house, and took out the half-baked muffins, and tossed them onto the counter, I’d wondered if the whole encounter was real or a dream. After all, I was in the midst of a thyroid brain fog.

Ten years later, I met the love of my life, Eric, who when he found out I’d already gone through menopause, said he was sorry he wasn’t there for me at the time to be supportive. Eric, who makes me feel safe. Eric, who sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon, or anytime really, will take me into his arms and dance me around his kitchen floor.

Forget tumor-eating turtles, if that’s what it takes to get things published…I’ll take dancing in the kitchen with Eric any day.