Hi there, this is an incomplete piece taken from something I wrote awhile back. I thought I'd stick it in here since it's been so long since I posted anything. The original story was about escape and my life as a social worker and my need for nonsensical obsessions. It needs a lot of cleaning up, but here's a small blurb from it. I kind of hate weebly. I need to look at some new blog option. I also hate the word blog, so it's all quite tiresome. Any suggestions?
I keep starring at pictures of Lee Pace, the actor. It’s rather embarrassing. I expect more from myself. I was raised in Northern California around earthy, political types. My friends went on to Yale, Norte Dame, and Berkeley where they became professors, and nurses, and lawyers. I have a Master’s Degree in Religion that I spent very long hours earning in the basement of my university. I also have a meaningful job counseling the homeless, which should, in theory, keep me busy. But I spent a good 25 hours this past week thinking, reading and looking at Lee Pace. I watched two of his movies and maybe four episodes of his T.V. show. Not productive. I found out, while I was supposed to be working, that he likes to spend time with his dog and takes him for walks in the early morning. I thought that sounded nice. Then I found a photograph of him and the pup on the beach. Lee’s wearing a blue sweater, which I imagined to be soft and his dog has a scarf wrapped around his neck, like a people scarf, which made me abnormally happy. I saved it as my desktop background, the same way that nine year old I know saves photos of Zach from that horrible Disney musical movie.
I blame Megan, at least when it comes to Lee. She’s my longtime friend who told me to watch Pushing Daisies - said I’d love it. So I watched and she was right, I loved, absolutely adored it, because it’s whimsical and romantic and quirky – attributes I love- attributes I might use to describe myself. And he’s the main character, the 6’3, skinny, olive-skinned boy who has the best voice, maybe ever? Embarrassing.
Megan not only knows my quirky taste in T.V. programming (and men), she also shares a similar should-be-secret love for famous people. She has an intricate plan worked out for being the traveling, trophy wife for the lead singer of Snow Patrol. She did temporarily abandon the plan when she found out that the lead singer’s ex-girlfriend played the banjo. I can’t compete with that, she told me over the phone in an exasperated tone. But then Megan’s sister convinced her that she was really good at origami, so she’s back on track now. That a girl, I told her.
Megs and I have a history of encouraging our weird, obsessive celebrity stalking behavior, which is strange because we’re smart, socially responsible girls who in theory, shouldn’t care or know intricate details about celebrities. But we have earnest talks about these famous “friends” of ours. Occasionally, we forget that we aren’t actually acquainted with these people and we’ll find ourselves discussing their lives in a public arena, say at a concert or over dinner in a quiet restaurant. This happened recently when I was elaborating, at a louder than necessary level, how unbalanced I felt John Mayer had become and how he needed to get back to a more centered space for the sake of his music and personal wellbeing. I was authentically concerned for him, as though he was someone I felt responsible to help and advise. Megan had to eventually interrupt and whisper, harshly, You’re doing it again. I promptly shut up and shrunk down in my chair. We might love our celebrities, but we don’t want to be mistaken for “those” girls. Those crazy, obsessive, fanatical, hide in your bushes, sign my chest with that sharpie types. Although I don’t have to stretch my imagination too far to picture Megan and I dressed in black, staked out on someone’s lawn. I already know what our verbal contract would be, No one can EVER know about this.
I don’t quite know when I first started paying attention to celebrities. I apparently missed out on many of the 80’s pop culture icons my friends still reference. I didn’t have a New Kids on The Block sheet set (Megan did. Does, actually), or a trapper keeper covered with the two Coreys’ faces. But perhaps that's because I lived in the mountains until I was nine and was happily occupied with snow. It must have been Jr. High or High School that I started caring about the world outside my cabin. I remember I got a poster of Brad Pitt to put on my wall. I placed it next to a very tragic depiction of Leonardo Dicaprio as Romeo. The blown up photo of Brad is taken from Legends of the Fall and shows him with shaggy, blonde locks and an open shirt that reveals a hairless chest. I can’t remember if I bought it or if it was a gift purchased by my mother, but what I do know, is that after I left for college and she immediately took over my space and remolded it into her “craft room,” the poster stayed put. It looked totally out of place among the stacks of fabric, original paintings of English cottages and old pictures of my grandparents. So, perhaps celebrity interest runs is in the blood. My mom, as long as I can remember, has shown a fond friendliness towards famous people. I can recall her stories about being in love with “her” Beatle and the sincere reverence she felt toward Laurence Olivier, or Lord Lawrence as she would call him in her thickest British accent. And I remember that she cried when Lucianno Pavorotti sang while she was seated in the balcony of the San Francisco opera house. He moved her, she told me later, which seemed perfectly acceptable to me. When he died a few months ago, I called her immediately to offer my condolences and she didn’t laugh, just thanked me and repeated the story of the night he sang to her.
Which is why she was the one I called when I saw Eric Clapton. I was starring at a guitar in an exhibit and glanced up to recognize Clapton's face inches from mine. He was running his fingers over the strings of a newly hand-crafted acoustic guitar. I consider myself to be pretty well-behaved under pressure, a good go-to-girl during major personal crisis, or natural disasters. I’m easy with the one liners and can break tension by inserting, solid, self-depreciating comments at just the right moment. But something about being so close to Mr. Clapton filled me with a frantic energy. I made spastic glances from side to side looking to see who else had noticed. Luckily Megan was there in the distance and so we shared wild eyed smiles. My tongue felt dry and paralyzed in my mouth, which was good because it kept me from yelling something pathetic, like, “I play ‘Running on Faith’ when I’m sad!” I didn’t have time to gather my composure and say hello because this dumb girl stepped in and thanked him for changing her life, or something gross like that, and then some bodyguards stepped in and Eric disappeared. Inside, I made a sour face at her, a sort of “get a hold of yourself” look, but on the outside I was still smiling with my mouth open. I know, cognitively, that he’s just a normal guy, with two legs and some arms, but Eric Clapton has been present at some very intimate moments in my life (okay, technically only his voice). He was a staple in our house, always heard on family vacations and lazy Saturdays. The first boy I ever loved took my hand while, “You look wonderful tonight,” played on the radio. And when my grandfather was dying from brain cancer and I was alone in L.A., I put on “Presence of the Lord” and was wet-faced and snot-ridden by the end of the first verse. So I can understand the dumb girl's strong desire to throw her arms around Eric and gurgle unorganized gratitudes into his ear. Maybe he had changed her life. He at least did something that helped her out and I could respect that.
