17 May 2003 ~ Meet the Gumps...

I know that when I refer to Jake and his family, I refer to them by the surname "Jensen." But in all actuality, the Jensen family ought to be called the Gump family.

Mr. Jensen served in the military with Jimi Hendrix, while his brother was helping to stitch up Martin Luther King Jr.'s head wound, Elvis Presley was leaning on the family boat, Jake was starring as one of the kids in "Kindergarten Cop," and Jake's brother was scheduled to hang out with Kim Cobain the day her brother Kurt was murdered.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Me? I've met Alan Sparhawk of the band Low, and Tom Robbins. Which *I* think is pretty fucken impressive. But I didn't meet those people until after I'd become sort of intertwined with the Jensen-Gumps. Before that, I'd met a Nascar driver called Harry Gant, who, to my recollection, never won a race. And that was it. Oh, and a local news anchorman, a local newspaper columnist, and a popular local DJ. They didn't count.

I used to be obsessed with meeting famous people, for one reason and one reason only: bragging rights. I worked with a bunch of people who'd all met bands that had actual CDs out. One guy, Matt swore he'd hung out with Smashmouth (or was it the mighty Mighty Boss-Tones?) for a day... And the way Matt told it, man, they were just the best of buddies, and they were riding the wave of delicious fame, pickin' up bitches, snortin' some of the good stuff, just hangin' out all cooooool...

That may not have been true.

But it didn't matter to me. I just wanted bragging rights.

I met a guy on a Greyhound in New Jersey who claimed to have a band. I looked them up, and even bought their CD. The CD was awful, but at least they had one. I was so impressed. Until my co-workers told me that, whatever, they weren't all THAT famous, and besides, their CD sucked.

(Later, I used that CD to piss off a variety of neighbors... I mean, I played it for the specific purpose of pissing off these neighbors...)

So, until after I met Jake, I never met anybody famous.

Oh, unless you count the time that Aaron and I saw Ani DiFranco from a distance of thirty feet, and Aaron proceeded to ensure that Ani DiFranco would never again play a show in Binghamton, New York. That didn't count. She didn't, like, TALK to us. Just laughed. Hysterically. We won't talk about that.

* * * * * * * * * * *

After awhile, I just sort of stopped caring about famous people. I mean they're not THAT special. Maybe they're pretty good at something, have some special talent or something... Or maybe they just got lucky, did or made something that a lot of people liked, and got famous, even if what they did sucked. Who, after all, gives a shit. So Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse once spit on me. He's just some guy. And he's not THAT important of a guy. He's just the lead singer of a band with some cool music. No big deal.

(Admittedly, I did make a big deal out of getting spit on by Isaac Brock. But I needed bragging rights, you see? I didn't actually CARE that much...)

* * * * * * * * * * *

I was sort of weirded out by meeting Alan Sparhawk. I mean, he wasn't just some guy... He seemed like a pretty normal guy and all; excessively pale, but normal. But you gotta understand, I own four or five of this guy's band's CDs... I LOVE their music.

I didn't CHOKE, exactly, when I said hello to him. I sort of gurgled a little, but I didn't get noticeably freaky. My friends weren't embarrassed or anything by my ill-concealed weirded-out-ness at meeting Alan Sparhawk. I wasn't THAT bad...

But see, this wasn't a "celebrity" thing. I mean, who the fuck's ever heard of Low, anyway? Sure, they've had a lot of CDs, and one of their songs was once in a Gap commercial, but that's as famous as they've ever been. There are no bragging rights in meeting a band nobody's ever heard of. The reason I was weirded out was that I felt like I sorta KNEW the guy... I've heard his voice, either on a CD, or in a song running through my head, for more days than not out of the past two or three years. I think the whole band is just geniusly talented. And there I was face-to-face with this guy, and he has no idea who the fuck I am -- I'm just another generic fan who happened to have the ten bucks or so to buy a ticket to his show. I've got NOTHING to say to this guy except that I like his music. And everybody else around me is thinking, or saying, the same thing. Shaking hands with Alan Sparhawk sort of made me feel like a jerk.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I met Tom Robbins last night at a reading and book-signing on the UW campus in Seattle.

...and I froze...

...I freaked...

I stood there like a total dork, just sort of staring.

Gahd, I'm a loser...

* * * * * * * * * * *

My co-worker Erica was thinking of going with me. We were talking about what we'd do if we had the chance to actually meet Tom Robbins, like, shake his hand and say hello and all.

She, one of the only human beings I've met who has actually read all of his books, said: "I'd like to think that, if I got to meet him, I'd be really cool and everything... I'd just shoot the shit with him, and we'd hang out, and talk about his books, and writing, and all sorts of stuff..."

I said: "Yeah...?"

She said: "And I mean, I don't care about the whole 'celebrity' thing at all. I mean, I've met famous people before, when I was living in Boston, and they're just people. They're not all that different than anybody else."

I said: "Yeah...?"

She said: "But we're talking about Tom Robbins. Realistically, I know I'd freak out. I'd be a total jackass."

I said: "Yeah."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Yeah.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Okay, okay, it wasn't all THAT bad... Really, it wasn't... The way Jake tells it, I stood there drooling on my shirt and saying, "duuuuuuuhh, I like parties..."

It wasn't THAT bad.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Mr. Robbins wears sunglasses in photos because he has very, very red eyes. Up close, he looked like he'd been living in a hotboxed telephone booth for several weeks. And, even after 41 years (he said), of living in the Northwest, he still has a Southern accent, which startled the hell out of me.

I asked him, "I had a question for you..."

He said, "Yes?"

"How do you pronounce this word?"

I had written on my hand the word "ERLEICHDA." It means, according to his book Jitterbug Perfume, "lighten up." Well, something sort of close to that, anyway. It's sort of German. Sort of. Ancient German or something. Maybe Mr. Robbins made it up. I like that word a lot. But I don't exactly know how to say it.

I wrote it in orange ink, with a very cool pen I found. Mr. Robbins strained to see it. The orange was really very bright, but he just couldn't seem to see it. It finally occurred to me: Cripes, Helena, what if the man's color-blind? Orange and green get sort of fucked up if you're colorblind. So then I just felt like a jackass.

Mr Robbins said: "Infinity."

I think, by this point, we were both baffled.

I flipped my hand over, revealing the infinity symbol on my wrist. He looked impressed. I felt like less of a jackass. So we shook hands, and I said, "thank you."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Thank you.

For signing my books?

No... For giving me countless afternoons of giggling into a book. For assuring me that there is a place in the world for weird people. For assuring me that there's a place in the world for weird writers. For convincing me that I'm wrong about a lot of things, and mot making me take it personally. For convincing me that I'm right about a lot of things, and not letting me take it personally. For thinking a lot like me in certain ways, and being a lot more experienced than me at being alive and doing okay. For re-introducing me to books, and words, and language, and God, and breathing, and afternoons of giggling. For "ERLEICHDA."

I looked Mr. Robbins smack in the eyes when I said, "thank you." And I had the eerie sense that he really understood. I also felt that, even in a room that had filled up with several hundred people, even in a line that stretched around the room to have books signed, I was not, to Mr. Tom Robbins, a generic fan. I felt much better about being a jackass.

* * * * * * * * * * *

ERLEICHDA!

* * * * * * * * * * *

So now I'm thinking...

I'm going to finish my book someday. Hopefully someday soon. Hopefully, before this time next year. And hopefully, many people will read it and like it.

But it occurs to me that I don't really WANT fans.

You see, the people sitting next to me while Tom Robbins was reading, were talking about the "funadmental elements" of something or another, in the driest, most boring, Charlie-Brown-teacher voices imaginable. And the people standing behind me in line were talking about comic books and sort of snorting in "Saved By The Bell" stereotypical nerd tones. I cannot imagine people like this lining up to look at me, to get "bragging rights" by having once spoken to me, to hear my voice, to pretend they were special because they'd been in the same room as me...

I've met three or four people who purported to be "fans" of this journal. And almost each time, it was very weird. This one girl was like, obsessed with me or something. She appeared to almost no life of her own, but she'd just about memorized everything I'd ever posted. It bothered the fuck out of me. She looked up to me, that much was obvious -- and that wasn't the part that bothered me. I have no problem with those kinds of inequities between people. I have certain talented friends whom I'll always look up to. But THIS girl couldn't reconcile her near-worship of me with a halfway normal friendship. She didn't SPEAK to me, she just stared. I initiated PLENTY of conversations, and she just couldn't handle them. It was as if she was waiting for me to tell her what to do. Hey, I felt like saying; I'm not ANY more important than you. I'm not any more published than you. I don't have any really interesting connections, and I don't take any really interesting drugs. I don't get stared at when I walk down the street. I don't get all the hot bitches. I don't have a houseboy. I can't even pay my fucken rent. But still, she stared at me like I was the fucken Pope or something.

It was weird. I didn't like it. I don't like being so "above" people -- or being perceived as such -- that I'm untouchable. Oh, if somebody thinks I'm cool and stumbles over their words, or even makes kind of a jackass of themselves, that's no big deal, and it's sort of cute and funny. But the staring thing is just unpleasant.

When I finish my book, and when I publish it (yes, I said, "when," not "if"), I will publish it under my secret name. Not "Helena Thomas." Not my birth certificate name. Not even Jake's last name. I have a secret name; completely androgynous, difficult to spell, and quite lovely, in pronunciation and meaning. Instead of an author-photo on my book, I'll have some cool drawing. So that if anybody ever thinks I'm cool, they're going to have to look around them, and assume everybody around them might be me. So that somebody like Donald Foster will have to track me down in order to ascertain what gender I am, what I look like, what my accent is like, and so forth... So I'll never have "fans." Just friends.

I mean, assuming anybody even wants to read my book...

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jake taunted me mercilessly for being a jackass upon meeting Mr. Robbins.

I said to him: "Oh, you KNOW you'd freak out if you met, say, William Shatner."

Jake insisted that he would be "cool," and just "let the man eat his hot dog." (It would be difficult, if not impossible, to put this accurately into context.)

I said: "No, you KNOW you'd be a total jackass."

Jake swore: "No, I wouldn't!"

And Jake's brother burst into the conversation: "Well, okay then, what about M---?"

(If I liked Jake's brother even just a TINY bit more than I do like him, I would have slapped him five. Or ten.)

"Yeah, Jake! What about M---?"

Jake looked very sheepish, but it served him right for picking on me. M--- was a girl Jake met in third grade. Jake had a huge crush on her. According to reports, Jake once broke his arm whilst trying to impress her. And tripped over a garbage can because he heard her name. And took up the trumpet so that he could perhaps sit next to her in band.

What's funny is that Jake is a guy who can stand next to Arnold Schwarzenegger without batting an eye, but gets unbearably flustered around an especially pretty girl.

("Yeah, but that was when I was like, nine...")

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

* * * * * * * * * * *

So, I'm sitting in a room with a guy who had a date to go out with Kim Cobain on the day her brother was murdered. Upstairs is a guy who was in the service with Jimi Hendrix. And his wife, who met Elvis, either before or after Mr. Presley leaned up against her husband's boat. Earlier, Jake's brother, who didn't remember the thing about Ms. Cobain, recalled an incident in which he met O.J. Simpson in an airport. To be honest, I'm surprised Jake never slept with Monica Lewinsky. If this family was any more connected, they'd have a movie about them. Seems like there's a movie about everybody they've ever met. Meet the Gump family.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I'm going to stop typing now, because my fingers are bored of typing.

Your humble narrator,
~Helena*