Feels like home to me
My laminate list has, for some time, remained constant: Alan Cumming, Javier Bardem, Robert Downey Jr., Hank Azaria and Gary Oldman. (Me? Type? NAH.)
(For those not in with the lingo: a laminate list is that list of five celebrities you're "allowed" to sleep with if you get the chance, regardless of your marital status. I used to call it the Five Exceptions list, but stole the concept of the list being laminated off a sitcom. It's alliteralicious.)
On Sunday night, I went to see the closing night of Mr. Cumming's one-man vaudeville show here in London's glittering west end. I laughed and I whooped and I yelled Falsettos! and Chess!, and at intermission I bought the cd being hawked in the hallway because his love song to his husband was still ricocheting around in my head and my soul. I was totally charmed by his mischevious impishness, all the while contemplating an article I had read years ago in which he had admitted that his stage persona was a complete act and wondering who the real Alan Cumming was, were there clues in the songs he had chosen?
It was a fun show and a good night up to that point, but then wonders of wonders, my friend Meg realizes she knows Alan Cumming's collaborator - the lovely and talented Mr. Lance Horne - from band camp back in the day. Before you can say "Erika's head explodes into a reddish puff of total cellular happiness," we've been invited to the wrap party.
On the way, we get to talking about laminate lists and celebrities we'd like to meet, and Meg mentions that the one actor that would cause her head respectively to explode would be Stephen Ouimette, a Canadian stage legend that I also just happened to have done Oliver with back in 1993. I tell her this. She is amazed. I am a bit amazed in turn that sweet, down-to-earth, salt of the earth Stephen could arouse such fan frenzy. Not that he isn't deserving of it, to be fair, because the man is stupidly talented, only that he's... well, he's Stephen!
And then I meet Alan. It takes me all evening to work up the courage to talk to him, though my stomach makes great leaps for freedom every time I catch sight of him sitting right. over. there. But, swallowing the nerves, I saunter over and I say something devastatingly, utterly cool like: "Um, Alan? Hi, um, yeah. We met earlier. Um, I've been trying to think of something to say all evening, something that would be interesting to YOU, but I have nothing, so I just wanted to say that your show was great and you are great and I have adored you since Cabaret and look, I bought your cd, can I have a picture with you?"
Hey look! Erika's a fangirl!
He was lovely - he signed my cd and showed me the picture of his dogs and hugged me hard when I told him he was on my laminate list (because THAT is not at all a weird and uncomfortable to say to someone: "hi! did you know I'm allowed to sleep with you?"). He was truly truly lovely. As I was leaving, he kissed my cheek and I blushed for an hour afterwards.
But now, five days later, I'm all skeeved out by my behaviour. Why was that necessary? Since when do I need proof of an encounter in the form of a photo?
Worse is the realization that, 16 years ago, my friend's dream-date was "Oh, Stephen..." to me, and now I'm just one of the great unwashed, the great squeeing fangirls who lose all sight of the fact that Stephen Ouimette, Alan Cumming, Graham Norton (who was sitting in our row) - these are just people, normal people, doing a job that just happens to put them in the public eye. Four years after leaving theatre as a career, I am reduced to breathing deeply in the presence of the gilded few, trying to absorb a little of their stardust in order to validate my reality as a person, a normal person, doing a job that just happens to have me stuck behind a desk.
In another world, in a world where I had the intestinal fortitude to withstand the ego blows of being a theatre producer, Alan Cumming and I may have crossed paths professionally. And then I could have smiled as I recalled somesuch witty thing we said that night when we did the thing, and we both would have looked at each other as people and laughed about it as people. Or perhaps we wouldn't have met before, but we'd have met on Sunday as fellow professionals, and we could've chatted about the people we know in common (we do know people in common, actually) and what we're working on and do that theatre-thing of "darling, we HAVE to have coffee and discuss that project, you'd be PERFECT for it." No squeeing, no celebrity, no false expectations.
I love my job and my life here in London, so none of this is to be taken as Erika contemplating a return to her previous incarnation. It's just that, Sunday evening, surrounded by wardrobe mistresses and actors and musicians, shmoozing and networking and sharing trench stories, I was a fish let loose into water for a few minutes. And, from the outside, looking in, it felt more like home than ever.
Hey Alan, good show. I have a script I'm working on again, finally, after years of letting it sit dead in my harddrive. Let's do lunch sometime, hey?
(For those not in with the lingo: a laminate list is that list of five celebrities you're "allowed" to sleep with if you get the chance, regardless of your marital status. I used to call it the Five Exceptions list, but stole the concept of the list being laminated off a sitcom. It's alliteralicious.)
On Sunday night, I went to see the closing night of Mr. Cumming's one-man vaudeville show here in London's glittering west end. I laughed and I whooped and I yelled Falsettos! and Chess!, and at intermission I bought the cd being hawked in the hallway because his love song to his husband was still ricocheting around in my head and my soul. I was totally charmed by his mischevious impishness, all the while contemplating an article I had read years ago in which he had admitted that his stage persona was a complete act and wondering who the real Alan Cumming was, were there clues in the songs he had chosen?
It was a fun show and a good night up to that point, but then wonders of wonders, my friend Meg realizes she knows Alan Cumming's collaborator - the lovely and talented Mr. Lance Horne - from band camp back in the day. Before you can say "Erika's head explodes into a reddish puff of total cellular happiness," we've been invited to the wrap party.
On the way, we get to talking about laminate lists and celebrities we'd like to meet, and Meg mentions that the one actor that would cause her head respectively to explode would be Stephen Ouimette, a Canadian stage legend that I also just happened to have done Oliver with back in 1993. I tell her this. She is amazed. I am a bit amazed in turn that sweet, down-to-earth, salt of the earth Stephen could arouse such fan frenzy. Not that he isn't deserving of it, to be fair, because the man is stupidly talented, only that he's... well, he's Stephen!
And then I meet Alan. It takes me all evening to work up the courage to talk to him, though my stomach makes great leaps for freedom every time I catch sight of him sitting right. over. there. But, swallowing the nerves, I saunter over and I say something devastatingly, utterly cool like: "Um, Alan? Hi, um, yeah. We met earlier. Um, I've been trying to think of something to say all evening, something that would be interesting to YOU, but I have nothing, so I just wanted to say that your show was great and you are great and I have adored you since Cabaret and look, I bought your cd, can I have a picture with you?"
Hey look! Erika's a fangirl!
He was lovely - he signed my cd and showed me the picture of his dogs and hugged me hard when I told him he was on my laminate list (because THAT is not at all a weird and uncomfortable to say to someone: "hi! did you know I'm allowed to sleep with you?"). He was truly truly lovely. As I was leaving, he kissed my cheek and I blushed for an hour afterwards.
But now, five days later, I'm all skeeved out by my behaviour. Why was that necessary? Since when do I need proof of an encounter in the form of a photo?
Worse is the realization that, 16 years ago, my friend's dream-date was "Oh, Stephen..." to me, and now I'm just one of the great unwashed, the great squeeing fangirls who lose all sight of the fact that Stephen Ouimette, Alan Cumming, Graham Norton (who was sitting in our row) - these are just people, normal people, doing a job that just happens to put them in the public eye. Four years after leaving theatre as a career, I am reduced to breathing deeply in the presence of the gilded few, trying to absorb a little of their stardust in order to validate my reality as a person, a normal person, doing a job that just happens to have me stuck behind a desk.
In another world, in a world where I had the intestinal fortitude to withstand the ego blows of being a theatre producer, Alan Cumming and I may have crossed paths professionally. And then I could have smiled as I recalled somesuch witty thing we said that night when we did the thing, and we both would have looked at each other as people and laughed about it as people. Or perhaps we wouldn't have met before, but we'd have met on Sunday as fellow professionals, and we could've chatted about the people we know in common (we do know people in common, actually) and what we're working on and do that theatre-thing of "darling, we HAVE to have coffee and discuss that project, you'd be PERFECT for it." No squeeing, no celebrity, no false expectations.
I love my job and my life here in London, so none of this is to be taken as Erika contemplating a return to her previous incarnation. It's just that, Sunday evening, surrounded by wardrobe mistresses and actors and musicians, shmoozing and networking and sharing trench stories, I was a fish let loose into water for a few minutes. And, from the outside, looking in, it felt more like home than ever.
Hey Alan, good show. I have a script I'm working on again, finally, after years of letting it sit dead in my harddrive. Let's do lunch sometime, hey?
Comments
Seriously, you are SUCH a good writer. Please keep your blog going. :)
You did fine though, tiger. Honestly.
You're so cute!
ST