Friday night, after the set-up, I was talked into seeing a series of short plays by my boyfriend’s and my threesome buddy. He had a comp ticket because he helped with the props, but was feeling too tired to go to the show. I didn’t have any plans, since set-up was supposed to last until 10 but miraculously was finished by 7:30, and so I figured ‘what-the-hell?’
Like pretty much any series of short plays, some were good and some were bad and some were painful. My favorite was the one where the woman I hated the most in my recent theatre experience played the fat kid/bully in preschool, and got her comeuppance. Oh, did that uppance need to come, and it was quite cathartic.
I walked home from the theatre, alone, behind an Indian couple. He was middle-aged and balding, and she was impossibly attractive and probably a grad-student. I was irritated that they were taking up the entire sidewalk, and when the path widened I was able to pass them, and only then did I realize that I was walking behind Salman Rushdie getting his mack on (the guy was married to Padma). He’s probably my favorite author (excluding Joel Derfner, of course). I had read that he was giving a book tour in town, but I had previously thought that I would still be at work, and when I got off early, it slipped my mind.
I was all excited, and tried to walk slowly in front of them to catch on to their conversation, but it was in Indian, and I only know how to say five or six words in that language, and they are not so much words but my favorite foods. I recognized the word "Booker," which either means that was talking about how he won the Booker of Bookers the day earlier, or it means that ‘booker’ means “come up to my hotel room for a drink” in an Indian dialect.
Eventually, I kept walking, and started making the way back to my place. About a block later, I mentally berated myself for not asking for an autograph. I still had the program on me, but no pen. Fortunately, I was still close to work, and so I snuck in and grabbed a permanent marker from the break room, and made my way back to where I had seen him.
As soon as I exited the building, I had an epiphany: Salman Rushdie should sign my chest.
Why should rock stars get all of the fun? It’d be a fun reversal, switching up gender and socio-economic roles. If I infer Rushdie’s personal values from his protagonists, he’d totally be up for that shit. Plus, he’d probably think it was funny. At worst, he could say no and have a new topic of conversation with his impossibly hot yet almost generically beauty-pagentesque companion.
It was already humid out, still warm from earlier in the day, and I was walking at a brisk pace. I could feel my face started to get red, but I went out in search of Rushdie. I went back to where I saw him, and continued walking that way, peeking into the windows, hoping to see him. I took peeks in hotel room lobbies, restaurants, bars, but after about 20 minutes I had seen neither hide nor hair of him.
I bumped into a few friends, and all but one had never heard of him, and the only that had heard of him said he wouldn’t recognize him. I passed a college couple who appeared to be Irani or Iraqi or something of that general region, and was tempted to ask if they’d seen the balding middle-aged guy who had a fatwa out against him, but I chickened out, mostly because I didn’t know how to ask the question without sounding (or feeling) racist.
By this time, it was 11:45 and I had been blotting the sweat dripping from my temples and the back of my neck for a while, and I could feel my shirt clinging to my back. I was still searching, though, growing more desperate with every bar he wasn’t in.
Come on. It would be too damn funny to have Salman Rushdie sign my chest. I would take a gay.com-esque picture of me in my bathroom mirror, shirtless with the flash covering my face, and post it here on the blog. I had even started thinking of titles I could use for the post, trying to work in references to Larry Kramer plays or old fifties musicals, and thinking that I could probably get gawker to link to me, or at least somebody and it would boost my page views by 1000% since everyone is using RSS feeds now and my daily site hits have taken a dive in the past two years. But mostly it would just be hilarious, and the perfect story to tell if I ever go on Jeopardy.
I started doing my best Encyclopedia Brown impression and tried to think logically about this. Maybe he’d go to the tapas bar nearby that tries really hard to be trendy. Or maybe his companion would take him to the grad school wine bar to show him off to all of her snotty friends. Or maybe they’d take a walk and see if the Indian restaurant was still open for a late night snack.
By this point, blotting the sweat was futile at best, and every so often I would have to peel my shirt off of my back to let air in in an attempt to keep cool. While I’m walking in front of the bank, on my way to the new French patisserie that for some reason has a liquor license and stays open until bartime even though they run out of baked goods by 3, the strap to my left flip-flop breaks.
Damnit, I say out loud, and take my sandals off and keep going. Or at least I meant to keep going, but after both of my bare feet touched the sidewalk, I realized that I crossed a line. It’s one thing for a sweaty white faggot to ask Salman Rushdie to sign his chest without making him call out for the police, but barefoot too?
Crushed, not only that I failed in my mission to have him sign my chest but also at the realization that I am a loser and should probably never move to a big city like New York where people see celebrities on the street on a regular basis.
I got back to my place and showered and went to bed, where I had another epiphany.
Personal blogging is creative nonfiction at best. Lord knows that blogs are hardly the gospel truth, and a little stretching of the truth is fine. I started searching for a camera to take a shirtless picture, and then I would just photoshop Salman Rushdie’s autograph, since it’s pretty easy to find online. And then I stopped looking for the USB connector cord, because none of you would recognize my chest anyway, and I figured 'in for a penny, in for a pound' when it comes to photoshopping and blogs.
So here is a picture of "my" chest with Salman Rushie’s "autograph," proof that last night’s mission was a success after all.
