Warning: capitalization (and swearing) will be used
excessively in this segment because SQUEEEEE!!! OMG
I should preface all of this by saying
I never stalked anyone, I never did anything illegal, and I certainly didn't do or see certain things because I thought Famous Guy wouldn't approve of it or something. My brain simply needed
something of an escape from complicated shit. Today, I feel
compelled to discuss…the Imaginary Celebrity Boyfriend (ICB).
I am officially taking credit for that
turn of phrase and too bad if you don’t believe me. Eye
hemorrhage-inducing perusal of the Livejournal I kept between 2003 and 2010 suggests that I seem to have first used it in an entry dated February 15, 2004. MEANWHILE, I
collected and cultivated ICBs like one might tend to a bonsai tree –
with care and endless dedication. My first true pretend love was
John Taylor of Duran Duran, of COURSE. There was no man my 13-year
old self wanted to jump on more (as if I truly understood what that
really meant at that point in my life) than good old J.T., who was
(and, frankly, REMAINS) almost terrifyingly good-looking, all slender
and angular. I started reading Isabel Allende because of John
Taylor. I learned to play the bass because of John Taylor. And if
you think for one red hot second that John is all looks and no licks
(holy SHIT I NEED TO COPYRIGHT THAT SHIT NOW), think again – the
cat can fucking play. I…well, I can play…to a certain
level. I cannot play at a John Taylor level. I can sort of play at
a Sting level, depending on what song, I am mostly competent when it
comes to a Simon Gallup of the Cure level and I could most likely jam
out with my clam out if I suddenly had to play bass in the live
version of Nine Inch Nails. BUT ANYWAY
My childhood bedroom was an absolute
museum to the glory of John and Duran Duran as a whole. I had to
share this room with one of my sisters, so there was a significant
line of demarcation between my area and hers. Her walls sported a
couple of tasteful Don Johnson and Clark Gable pictures. Mine was an
out of control, massive collage of rapturous celebration of Duran
Duran in both fivesome and threesome status with a decided
concentration in John Christing Taylor. If there was bare wallspace,
I was slapping up a carefully snipped picture from Tiger Beat, Bop,
or Star Hits (the US version of UK mag Smash Hits) of John looking
happy, pensive, moody, sad, thoughtful while walking, posing,
running, jumping, fencing. This genial lunacy continued up until my
brain really decided to short out a few more synapses and the Duran
collage gave way to a more generic collage of actors and musicians I
found intriguing – none more so than...
THE CURE. Ohhhhh, no one spoke to my
shriveled little teen soul more than Robert Smith. When
“Disintegration” was released, I embarked on a mission to BUY AS
MUCH SHIT AS I COULD THAT WAS CURE-RELATED. Posters, magazines,
imports – weekly trips to the Turntable, a local record store that
specialized in imports and rarities as well as merch, merch, merch
were made. The back catalog was purchased in a flash. Seeing the
Cure for the first time in August, 1989 came shortly after I had my
first kiss with a guy that I was convinced I was deeply in love with
and couldn’t imagine my life without. Of course, he didn’t love
me back. So when the lights went down and the massive fogbanks
rolled out and those first quiet windchimes started to play from
“Disintegration”’s opening track, “Plainsong”, I had what
can best be described as a psychobilly hissy fit. I sobbed so
hysterically that people were looking at me with concern. I didn’t
heave those kinds of tears when I saw Duran Duran for the first time
in 1987 and again in January, 1989. Those dandy motherfuckers had
been the center of my universe. However, Robert Smith had a direct
line to the baffled, fucked up battle for survival that was happening
in my brain, he was singing exactly what I felt as a 17-year old girl
who couldn’t understand why she wasn’t worthy of a boy’s love
and why the fuck it was so awful and painful. (I assure you that
once “Plainsong” concluded, I wiped away my tears and returned to
earth to enjoy the rest of the show.)
I discovered another ally in my
internal war not that long after in the form of a deliciously angry
fellow named Trent Reznor and his band Nine Inch Nails. A cursory
search of Wikipedia tells me “Pretty Hate Machine” was released
in October, 1989 and “Head Like a Hole” came out in March, 1990,
so I would wager that “Pretty Hate Machine” served as my
soundtrack for high school graduation and beyond. If you’re a NIN
fan, I’m sure it’s easy for you to guess what became my signature
song as my fruitless pursuit of the guy I wanted to love me back
continued. Go on, guess.
OF COURSE IT WAS “SOMETHING I CAN
NEVER HAVE”. OF COURSE.
I mean, come on. The fucking lyric
sheet in the cassette should have had “This one’s for you,
Jane!*thumbs up*” (If you’re not familiar with the song,
Google it and then you shall have insight into my tear-stained
teenage heart). I damn near wore that cassette out. Of course, in
retrospect (and in light of Trent’s later, mind-blowing work)
“Pretty Hate Machine” sounds terribly dated and very much of the
late 80s/early 90s. But mercy, that was my jam and, though it sounds
cliché, the anger and “fuck you” that that record stirred up in
me helped me to get through some mighty shit times that resulted from
the abortive attempt at love I experienced. It helped me to get
through a serious brush with suicidal ideation – though having a
massive ego that refused to die also helped in that regard. As a
result of such hardcore imprinting, I remain just so in love with
Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor in general. Trent has had a strange
way of making records that supply soundtracks to exactly what sort of
fuckuppery/discombobulation I might be experiencing at any given
time. Going to a Nine Inch Nails show was the ultimate release of
rage and anger and frustration. I found that out almost too late,
since I never made it to a NIN show until 2006 (being agonizingly
broke got in the way before then). Great, now I just want to sit in
a window and sigh while rain falls.
In 1994, I found another object of
affection – one that would help to trigger a massive outpouring of
creativity that…went…nowhere, but still, being creative is good,
it’s a good thing. I stayed loyal (in that batshit crazy way) to
this ICB until he decided to marry someone that wasn’t me. That
Unidentified Foxy Object (GET IT) was…David “Red Speedo”
Duchovny and, by extension, “The X-Files”.
Recently, I convinced my husband to
travel down the “X-Files” rewatch path with me and I felt a
little sad that the mountains of useless trivia I used to know about
the show and David Duchovny had finally exited my brain. Because let
me tell you, if you wanted some minutiae science dropped on you back
when “The X-Files” was in full swing, I was your woman. I had to
know absolutely everything and I had to know it immediately
when I figured out it was a show right up my alley (it didn’t quite
take in my brain until the second season). The internet was
starting to come to the fore, but I didn’t have a computer at the
time. However, my father did. So on Friday nights, I would trek out
to the suburbs (I was living on the north side of Chicago at the
time), watch and tape the show, then proceed to sit in the AOL
X-Files chat room for six or seven hours discussing the show and
bullshitting with folks. It was a good time, a strange time, trying
to navigate this “internet” and finding one bonding with other
people in other parts of the country (or even the world!) over a
freaking TV show. My first internet-inspired transaction was a
bootleg VHS tape of gag reels from the first three seasons. I
couldn’t tell you what her screenname or even her location was now,
but I can remember thinking just how neat the internet was.
My methods of “collecting” changed
with the internet as well. Instead of plastering Duchovny pictures
cut out of magazines all over my walls, I accumulated massive files
of jpegs and gifs and BMPs (yes, even BMPs) of him. I could read
interviews from magazines published in faraway lands like England
and learn every single factoid under the sun that was available.
I began to write spec scripts as well. I had started writing
screenplays towards the end of my abortive attempt at going to
college (three and out, WHOO), and when I wasn’t writing Mrs. Jane
Duchovny on my trapper keeper, I was writing. In the beginning, my
screenplays were crap. Lord love a duck, they were crap. But as I
kept doing it, I kept getting better (I don’t toot my own very
often with any semblance of seriousness, but bitch can write a
screenplay), and when I was in full “X-Files” thrall, I began to
crank out spec scripts. And then, I started sending them to the
production office of executive producer Chris Carter in Los Angeles.
I received some very nice notes from the office’s assistant and one
of the scripts got to the point where network readers actually looked
at it (I had to sign a release). Sadly, I can’t say that I had a
“50 Shades of Grey” moment, but at least I have some cool
souvenirs of…stationery.
In 1998, I caught wind of a comedy
festival and competition taking place at a local theater and, even
though I hadn’t performed on a stage since high school (despite
attending a fine arts school with theater and improvisation training
under my belt) I decided to enter it. I had a title before I had the
text:
David Duchovny (Or the
Socio-Economic Implications of a Celebrity-Hungry Society)
Rather amusing, I thought. I’ve
always been a fan of ridiculous titles for things. But the title
turned out to be just the spark I needed to put my years’ long
fandom of celebrity men and things in general into something
resembling perspective. A goofy title turned into 45 minutes that
started as a generic autobiography and then morphed into a poke at
fame and the sort of strangeness it breeds in those of us who are
decidedly not famous. I was reviewed in the Chicago Reader, where it
was tagged “ingenious” and I figured I would wind up winning the
theater’s grand prize, which was a two-week run of one’s show at
the theater. And then I was finally going to be heading down that
road to fame and fortune and all the things I had dreamed of for so
long!
I totally didn’t win. The show that
did win was pretty anemically reviewed. I was “INGENIOUS”. The
winning show…wasn’t. But at least I got up on stage
and…did…I…did stuff…right? Right? Well, back to the
apartment and my coterie of musicians and actors who will make me
feel less failurey!
Having ICBs helped me cope, to be honest. I spent my 20s and a portion of my early 30s a genial mess. I isolated myself much of the time – when I wasn’t at work, I was either around family or alone at home, writing away and dreaming of a life that would never exist for me. My ICBs were like pets – non-judgmental, no conflicts, ever adoring. Yes, even though the CBs were I. I’d lost my touch for interaction with actual humans, and it wasn’t until a wander around the internet brought me to a website for (get ready) JOHN TAYLOR that I started to re-learn that being around people people was pretty all right.
I don’t have any ICBs to speak of
anymore, not really. My husband and I have mutual ones, like Paul F.
Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, and Jason Mantzoukas. He is sad, though,
because he’s going to miss out on something monumental: my seeing
John Taylor as part of his publicity tour for his autobiography,
“Into the Pleasure Groove”. There’s a slender chance I might
actually get to meet John Taylor (I’m sort of in love with writing
“John Taylor” instead of just “John” right now) which makes
my 40-year old heart pitter patter just a smidge because OH MY GOD
JOHN TAYLOR IN AN INTIMATE SPACE (not my intimate space
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat). There’s a Q and A and I don’t
know that I could manage to Q him because I would be too busy just
gazing lovingly at him like a precious china doll. I’d like to
think I will be suave, clever, charming – but the 13-year old is
itching to emerge and let out one last eardrum-piercing shriek.
