Fame. Justine Bateman

No big deal. Good for you. That sounds clean and easy. Good. I’m talking about—maybe it doesn’t matter how old you are when it happens, when Fame gets sprayed all over you like red paint from a PETA demonstrator on Fifth Avenue and you in the fur coat you just pulled out of storage. Red all over the coat. Everyone knows now. You are covered. So, covered with Fame. To be yourself . . . That’s . . . what is that? Do you know? Are you too young to have that under your belt yet? NOW YOU ARE FUCKED. How are you supposed to get that?

      You were going to learn to be yourself, what that is. You had an idea of the field and the seeds and the watering and all that, and you kind of started on the land there. You tilled the soil of understanding yourself, I guess. But, now you’re on a boat. A fucking boat: the Fame, OK? Fuck. I mean, good, here you’re going on an adventure, but on a boat. Where are you supposed to farm the land now, to become completely yourself? All those things you need to do, to grow, to cultivate your personality, try your choices, see the results? Shit. You find a pallet, a container, something flat, there on the boat. You find some dirt, maybe you brought a little with you. You pull it out of your pocket. A handful, maybe more. You turn the pocket inside out and get all the dirt from the seams of the coat pocket, scrape it out. You have some seeds, not all the seeds you wanted, but some, they’ll grow. Maybe you can get more dirt and more seeds from the islands, the lands you come to in the boat. You make a little plot with the dirt and your seeds and you give the plot its water.

      OK, you see? That plot of dirt and seeds and maybe plants, hopefully, somehow, is YOU. That’s the real you, trying to grow. Trying to be what that large plot of dirt and land was supposed to be, back home, on the mainland, before you got on this Fame boat. The plot of land all the people living in the “real” world get to use—the time they have there, the support of the land and the groundwater and all that. Not this tiny fucking pallet of dirt, this small container of dirt you have to guard from the elements of the sea and the wind and the fucking seagulls who are so damn excited to have the chance to eat some seeds, to have some food without having to be on land, without having to fly ALL the way over to that island they can barely see in the distance. Like that. OK, that’s the real you. You are on a boat, a ship, a huge ship, and you are not the captain. You are not steering this ship. It’s the Master of Fame. Captain Fame, and you are just on it, the ship. Each famous person has her own ship. All these famous people, each with their tiny pallet of dirt, “themselves,” their true selves, guarded by them from the elements and the wind and fucking seagulls.

      You also have some people you can “be yourself with,” your group. And if you’re young and have this little dirt plot on this ship, you are growing your plants when you’re with them, those people who can cross the membrane. That’s how much time you have to do that. Only when you’re with them. Because when you’re alone, you are battling. You’re battling the doubts, the criticisms. You’re reviewing. You’re reviewing everything you’ve done.

      Was I rude to those people when I said I didn’t want to take a picture with them? Shit, was I rude?

      Aw, your mom or your dad said you were rude and “Why couldn’t you have just taken a picture with them? Would that have been so difficult?”

      SHUT THE FUCK UP. Do you have any idea how many fucking times people want my picture, want my autograph, want to have me, stand next to me? Stop, stop. C’mon, not your parents.

      Yes, from their perspective, from sitting outside it, from seeing it just a few times a month, seeing you a few times a month in the crush of the public, to them it seems like no big deal; the refusal of the pictures, the autographs looking rude, uncaring, ungrateful even. They don’t know the crush. They see a small . . . They don’t know, don’t mean it. They’re just adding another straw to the haystack of criticism of your behavior.

      So, you think, you review. You aren’t often practicing being the real you. You can’t. You are when you’re with those people, though. You’ve populated your world where the planting the seeds and the growing the plants can happen with no threat of wind or waves or those fucking seagulls. They’re there, those people. I had them. It was important to have them. Kelly and Billy B. and Howard and New York Fucking City. Leif and Scott and Jonesy and Nina and bean oil burning in Michael Bowen’s Indian motorcycle, riding behind that, in the 2nd Street Tunnel, to the clubs in downtown LA. Those people. Those people who are on the plane or who can pass through the membrane between the “real” world and this plane of existence you have to live on. The ones who will close in around you when they sense the shit is coming down, when they sense the infiltrators are trying to make a move. They get you away from them, get you out the back door, get you to a better place. Those guardians of the universe. Those people. SOLID FUCKING GOLD PEOPLE.

      And you become yourself. You grow that plot. It’s not the same as the big plot, the solid in-the-ground plot you would have had back on the mainland, had you never gotten on this boat, this ship, but it’s good. You kinda get there OK—with different, exotic seeds, to boot. You’ve gotten them from distant lands, new plants. It’s not all bad, that personal development that had to happen on a little pallet of dirt on a ship with Captain Fame. It’s not so bad.

      Not-a-Person

      It’s a whole other plane of living, Fame. Another plane of existence. A parallel universe laid over this one, the “real” one. Or really just the one most everyone else is on. Is it real? Which one is real? Both of them? You can’t get out. No one will let you. You cannot be not-famous. You haven’t changed, but everyone, EVERYONE, looks at your sheath. Not you. You are separate. You’re separate and you’re not real, even. You’re not there, even. You’re not there. You change everything when you walk into a room, but you’re not there. We can talk about you like you’re not there, because you’re not-a-person. We can rip into you because you’re not real. It’s like in a film, when you’re killing a lifelike robot, a replica. Should we feel bad about it? Morally? Is it morally right to kill a replica if they’re not-a-person? Celebrities, same thing. Rip them apart, rip them a new asshole.

      “They signed up for this. They asked for this. They wanted this. Well, here’s what you get. I hate you. I love you. I want to rip your head off.”

      * * *

      I was in an elevator once. An elevator, seven feet by six, something like that, the average size of an elevator. Small. You’ve been in an elevator. OK, put three people in there. Three people. I’m one of them. The other two are people I don’t know. They know each other, they’re together. OK. They’re talking. They’re talking about me. Me.

      They say, “Her hair is darker on TV.” Me. I’m standing there. If I had reached my arm out, I would touch one of them, close. Talking about me, but I’m not there. I’m a poster? An image on a poster? Or I’m on TV. I’m . . . There’s a TV in the elevator and I’m just on it. I’m not really there. Is that it?

      “You know I can hear you.”

      This was after they’d said some other stuff. Can’t remember. Some other stuff before they said my hair was darker or lighter, whatever. It’s happened before. People looking at me, talking about me, gesturing. Everywhere. Everybody. Thinking I can’t see them, hear them. Assuming? Hoping? Assuming I can’t see them recognize me, watching me, whispering about me. Assume I can’t hear.

      So, “You know I can hear you.”

      I already feel bad, they don’t see me, don’t want to see me, have shut me out.

      YOU’RE OVER THERE AND NOT-A-PERSON. We will ignore you. Make you feel shitty.

      OK, I’m already there and, “You know I can hear you.”

      They look at me slightly shocked, offended. Offended that I spoke? That I interrupted them. That I dared to interrupt them. Me and my not-a-person status interrupting them. Two friends, two close friends having a discussion about me. DO NOT INTERRUPT. Who do you think you are, interrupting us? We who are real and having a real conversation. Goddammit, a private conversation. How dare you. Who are you? You’re not even a real person. We will treat you as if you are a joke even. Not-a-real-person and a joke. A monkey who performs for us, but DOES NOT SPEAK. We