Читать книгу Fame - Justine Bateman - Страница 11

Love

So here I am, I’m in it. 16, I’m 16 when it starts, and I’m in it, in the Fame. Didn’t see it coming, just in it. People smiling at me. Happy to see me. SO HAPPY to see me. Like a baby or a toddler. Me. Being looked at as if I am the long-awaited child of a couple who thought they couldn’t conceive. Looked at as if I can do no wrong. Everything I do, looked at by others with big, glassy eyes, smiles that cannot be drawn down with any of my actions. Applauded for basic tasks, even. Like a toddler dressing herself, feeding herself, walking, running, scribbling shit on a piece of paper with a crayon and up on the refrigerator with PRIDE. Everybody loving you. You, celebrity. You, newly famous person. Everybody loves you. Is proud to throw their arms round you and call you “pal.” People who would make a show of snubbing you are now claiming your friendship, hat in hand. Or unconsciously so, like an old coat-check ticket to retrieve a long-ignored coat in the back of the closet there by the maître d’.

“YES, that one. The one I refused when you mentioned it to me weeks ago. NOW, I’ll take it. And I’ll wear it now, because it’s CHANGED.”

Yeah, you get those. You get those. You get it all. It will get worse. When you’re in a bar and some guy, drunk, wants you, wants to be with you, takes the “control” road and tries to rip you a new one for smoking. Your regular habit, the one you’ve had since you were 17 in high school, trying it out, getting used to it. Anyway, now, for years, a regular thing, not a change from who you were. But this guy, this guy is on the “control” road of getting at you and says, “Ew, I didn’t know Mallory smoked.” Trying to be controlling. Like you’ve disgusted him; he had such high hopes for you, thought so well of you. You had that! You had this guy thinking so highly of you! There it was and there it goes. You just fucked up. You disappointed him, drove him away, this approval, affection that was so freely yours. You blew it.

Yeah. It will get worse, but for now, oh man, the attention is kind of weird, kind of exciting, kind of feels like an accomplishment, acknowledgment for your work. That’s what it is, right? OK. Maybe there’s some formula here, a correlation. Success = Fame = accomplishment. Just correlation or causation? Whatever, correlation, they’re related. You learn this. You’re 16. Seems right. They keep rising, your ratings and your Fame. They keep going up, both of them, together.