Like most people, I'll almost always crane my neck if a famous face is in the room. And, like most people, I am prone to spurt apparently meaningless anecdotes if you mention stars that I've crossed paths with. Renée Zellweger? Saw her at my gym one day. Colin Farrell? Saw him at a bookstore, all by himself, on opening night of his first big movie.
And yet, if I care what you think of me, I might not tell you how it really made me feel to see them. I might not tell you that, because I saw Renée a few days before the Oscars (the year she was nominated for Chicago), when she looked in my direction I had to quell a desperate urge to walk over, touch her, and exclaim, I know you're going to win!
I'd probably also keep it to myself that, when I saw Colin, I followed him around the bookstore—from far enough away, though, that he wouldn't sense my interest in every move he made. (I wasn't going to bug him, but still inside my head I contemplated lines that I could use to say hello if I were the kind of person who accosted movie stars in bookstores: "Where'd you get that shirt?" No. "Cool shirt. Where'd you get it?" No.) Nor would I tell you that I watched him find something in fiction and pay in cash (exact change). Or that, since I couldn't see the title, I went up to the soporific Goth cashier and said, "What book did that guy buy?" and fibbed, "It was such a cool cover, but I just couldn't see the title," and when the cashier checked the receipt, which didn't give the title, I asked, a little curtly, if he could please just trace the stock number, glared at him until he did, then bought myself a copy of that book and spent the whole of Friday night in my apartment reading it, because—well, because I figured that's what Colin did, and it had made me so happy to see him.
If I told you all that, you might think I'm strange. Starstruck. A fan. And everybody knows what fans are like: little people, taking vicarious relief from lonely lives in fascination with the famous.
Did you want to know the title of the book that Colin bought?
Copyright © 2004/2005 Michael Joseph Gross. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication or distribution is prohibited.