Читать книгу Fame - Justine Bateman - Страница 8

Sheath

There’s this moment I keep flashing on. This scene. I’m on a couch, in a room. Closed French doors in front of me. I’m in Miami. At a friend’s place? A hotel? I don’t know. It’s in the early ’90s, I think. ’92, say. I’m sitting there. I’m alone. And I feel utterly lost as to how to handle people coming up to me, recognizing me. I had been solidly famous for a while. I was very famous. Can’t-go-anywhere-without-people-reacting famous. So, I’d had people coming up to me for a while. For a while. What was the fucking problem? Hadn’t I had enough practice? Hadn’t all those years of people coming up to me done it? Where was my resulting proficiency? Why wasn’t I a pro at this now? I still, STILL did not have some reliable way to deal with the public. I so badly wanted some dependable blanket-manner to lean on when people came up. It just never came. I was on edge, on guard, on. Antennae up, all senses pumping, looking, watching, waiting, primed, tense. How’s it going to come at me? It’s going to come at me. At what moment? What person, I mean what kind of person? A man. A dad? Wants an autograph for his daughter. So that’s it, but then a curveball: he tries to flirt with me when I hand the paper back. Me, shift gears, pull back the smile, cut that shit off. He’s pushed into the aren’t-we-having-a-nice-moment-thinking-about-your-daughter and “What’s her name?” Me, writing, Cheryl, All the best, Justine Bateman, and handing it to him. He slips into that door that’s wide open now, no suspicion necessary. The door’s not just ajar or half-open with a foot wedged behind the back of it to limit it, but wide open. The daughter, right? Writing something for the daughter.

Then, “I read that you don’t wear underwear.”

Yeah. Yeah. Y.E.A.H. Yeah, I remember that Playboy magazine interview. I said that. I said that. Oh shit, should I have said that? Surprised at seeing my interview verbatim, a fucking relief that I was finally seeing my words verbatim after years and pages and issues and interview after interview of having my words twisted or made up and shoved in my mouth so I sit there in print with the writer’s ripped and bloody assessment of me or “angle,” or whatever the fuck, spilling out of my mouth as if I had ever said any of that fucking shit or in that stupid way. Yeah, I remember that interview. Panty lines. Pantyhose under jeans on camera so there’d be no panty lines. That’s what I said. THAT’S WHAT I SAID, YOU FUCK.

So, yeah. Here’s the autograph for your daughter. The one who’s, how old is she? Eight, maybe? Nine? Here’s that autograph. And you read Playboy and you want me? Or you just wanted to say that, or you just wanted me to know you read my interviews? Which is it?

You go. You move on and I don’t know how the next person is going to come up to me. Soon. Soon, someone else will come up to me and I don’t know how. I don’t know what they are going to bring to the plate. I don’t know.

* * *

I started this book because I was thinking about how Fame is a mercurial, ephemeral energy, this thing, this smoke, this cloud. This thing that will make everyone in a restaurant stop being themselves, sit differently in their chairs for the whole time the celebrity stays in the room there. Talk differently now to their friend or business associate across the table.

“I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT SO-AND-SO IS SITTING RIGHT OVER THERE. SO CLOSE. RIGHT over there.”

“I remember when I saw that film they were in / that song they wrote / that home run they hit.”

“Oh fuck! People are going to freak when I tell them who I had dinner with. I mean, I could have touched them. That close. I brushed past them on my way to the bathroom!”

“I’ll just make it look like I’m checking my e-mail. Just hold my phone up a bit. Got the shot. Shit, kind of blurry. Do it again. If I hold it up a little higher, I can get my face in it too. Oh, that’s too good! Yeah, get my face in there too, hold the phone up just a little higher. Jesus, I got it. Hold on. Just a minute. I just gotta post this. Oh shit. Gotta post this to my Facebook. Holy shit. OK. OK. What were you saying . . . ? Sorry, you know, when will I ever get the chance, you know? They’re sitting right the fuck THERE!”

So, I was thinking about this, how it’s not even a real thing. Fame. Just this thing that society wants to have. For what? I wanted to cut it open and spread it out, grab a fork and get in it. Get the wisdom. Understand society’s need, the public’s need. So, I started. No big deal. Started writing. Really good academic stuff. But, I had a shipping container full of FEELINGS about it all. Fuck Fuck. FUCK. This was just supposed to be an exploration of the Phenomenon of Fame. Easy. Work, but easy. Not emotional, not some exploration of my own fucking feelings about me, about my Fame, about my current lack of it, relatively speaking. Fuck. But, no going back. Couldn’t pull out. Process them. Press those feelings through the colander. So, OK. My experiences, yeah. I’ll tell you what that was like: The Lifecycle of Fame. The Beginning, the Love, the Hate, the Equilibrium, the Slide, the Descent, the Without.

Fame. This thing that came upon me. I didn’t have it and then it was on me. I was without it, nowhere near it, not cultivating it, not looking for it, knew no one who had it, just unfamiliar with it, and then it was on me, enveloping me, encasing me in a sheath that I could look out of and see the world as I knew it before the Fame happened, but a sheath that now obscured anyone’s vision of me. Can you see me? You see the Fame. Can you ever not see that? Can you ever go back to seeing me without the sheath?

You know I’m not just talking about me, right? I mean any famous person. Can you see them? Like you can see the guy in front of you in line at the drugstore?

“Yeah, he’s cute. I wonder if he has a girlfriend. Where is he from? His shoes are nice, probably has money, a career. Is he from here? Maybe he’s just passing through. He’s not on his phone, poking at it like everyone else in line. That’s weird.” And on and on and on. You’re curious; you wonder. You think about that person, what kind of life that person has, based on the few clues you have in front of you. You make some assumptions. Now, cut to you having seen that person in a movie. He’s famous. Now what’s going on? Does your heart start pumping faster? Yeah. Why? It’s like when you see a guy in school you have a crush on.

“Oh my God, he’s walking this way, he must have changed his class order, ’cause I never see him walking down this hall before lunch. Oh God, he is IT . . .” Heart rate elevated. Pupils dilated.

You fight it, maybe even with this guy, this famous guy in front of you at the drugstore. “He’s just a person. Just a guy. Calm down. You are not going to ask for a picture. No. No. No. Be cool.” But, you are freaking out inside. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

OK. OK. Your heart rate escalates in the hall of your school because you like that guy, you want to be with him, you like how you feel around him; it feels good. But, the actor in front of you at the drugstore? Perhaps it’s similar, that you want to be with him, even though you know nothing about him beyond the characters he’s played. Still, maybe. But what about when you feel that same way when it’s an actress? Or an older actor, or anyone famous? Anyone at all. Now our comparison with your crush in the hall at school falls flat. You don’t want romantic relationships with these famous people. But you suddenly do not entirely feel yourself in line at the drugstore because someone encased in a sheath of Fame is standing in front of you. You are reacting to the Fame. I don’t know what that is, that way it makes people freak out, or the way it makes their heart beat faster, or makes them divest themselves of their own personality when they’re in front of Fame. Maybe by the end of this book we’ll have a robust way to explain it, but for now, let’s just say it’s magic.