A beautiful stillness
He stood in the crowded lobby all in black: boots, jeans, button down shirt, some kind of dark shawl, hair, sunglasses. The cane he leaned on, a Gothic black and silver, expensive. Women rushed to the restroom to freshen their million dollar faces and others swarmed around each other playing the game of who's the bigger celebrity.
Because he was so still and everyone else was so fast. Because he was quiet and they were loud. Because he seemed calm and almost careless with his fame. He was appealing in the same way a crucifix might be, or a statue of the Buddha. It's almost like he stopped time, or at least stopped me as I looked upon him with interest, wholly unseen with no danger of being found out.
Back in the auditorium after the commercial break the buzz was all around me, from the A-list sitting up in the spotlights at the front to the B-list in the rows immediately around me. That I was one row forward of Kathy Griffin seemed less significant than it does now that she has recreated her celebrity as someone who is never first choice.
Me, I got there for one reason only, money. Not mine, of course. The corporation's. I was representing a high profile sponsor, and although I, myself, was on the C-list on the company side, I had fun pretending to be somebody important. Not quite high enough on the food chain to avoid being kicked out of Madonna's closed rehearsal (we simply moved upstairs and slid into the dark balcony), but integral enough to the event to have earned a place at the wildly extravagant and globally televised private affair.
Everything about me, of course, was wrong - too eager, too fat, too poorly dressed, too self-conscious, too uncool, too unconnected. Still, it was fun to watch the buzzing and imagine for just a second that I was one of the bees.
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