When I recently heard that one of my favorite writers was opening a store in my neighborhood, I was seized by that peculiar series of emotions celebrity inspires: the desire to get close, to somehow enter the celebrity's orbit; the fantasy that said celebrity will find me, a heretofore undiscovered planet, to be suddenly vital, brilliant; and finally, perhaps most strongly, utter disgust with the preceding emotions, with celebrity worship, with myself for having fallen victim to it.

It's such an easy trap. My intellect subscribes to the conventional wisdom that celebrities are just regular people -- or if not exactly regular, certainly not celestial or superhuman. And as such, they are certainly not immune to some of the lesser joys of being mortal. Like rejection, insecurity, locking the keys in the car. If Behind the Music did nothing else, it showed us that even John Mellencamp can have a shitty day. But, though I'd like to claim that I don't secretly get excited to read People magazine in the doctor's office, I can't. And when it comes to celebrities whose work I especially admire, I get caught between People-gossip-hounding and a desire to connect with the celebrity on some personal level. Who doesn't dream about being picked out of the crowd, à la Courteney Cox in Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In the Dark" video? It's a great dream, sure, but one that leaves me feeling a little sheepish in the morning.

So it is with feigned nonchalance that I enter the aforementioned writer's store, a mysterious place that sells pirate gear (pirate gear?). Determined not to seem fazed by the strange conglomeration of dry goods and tchotchkes, I adopt a browsing pace and style that I hope project mild curiosity, vague bemusement. Thanks, but I'm just looking. Just a regular person, just browsing in a regular old pirate store. I might know that this is the store recently opened by a well-known writer -- the closest thing the young, urban aspiring-writer set has to a celebrity -- or I might not. I might just be looking for a new pirate-ship hemp hammock. Then this guy appears from the back, followed closely by a small, graying dog. The guy sits down behind the counter while the dog heads straight for me. I'm grateful for the distraction; I love dogs, and dogs, probably sensing the potential for a doggie treat or tummy rub, usually wag a fair bit around me.

The dog and I are getting along fine by the time I get up the nerve to talk to the guy -- mostly small talk about the store -- and it seems to be going well: I garner the basic background about the store and the writer's move to the neighborhood without letting on my secret identity as a (the horror!) fan. I even get comfortable enough to check the dog's tags, asking the mute animal What's your name?, just so the guy behind the counter understands that I am not in fact looking to see if this is a Celebrity Dog, which is, of course, exactly what I'm doing. And I can tell by the tag that it is: dog is from Chicago, writer is from Chicago. Go-go Gadget arm.

But it is at this moment, as I am rapidly ascending Celebrity Mount, that I falter, remembering my last brush with fame. It was at a conference, one of those where the speakers -- although more or less unknown to the majority of Americans -- are the object of the conference-goers' intense adoration and envy. One speaker was the creator and host of a radio show I'd admired for years. Everyone else at the conference had also admired it for years. So during his lecture we laughed encouragingly at almost everything the famous radio guy said, funny or not, wishing we had come up with his brilliant show before he did, and, since we hadn't, hoping we could at least brush up against his leg. Or something.

Later at a bar, I saw him trailed by a swarm of conference-goers awaiting their chance. I sat with a couple of friends and surveyed the carnage as each aspiring writer, photographer, and radio producer tried to elbow aside the others with a witty story, a name-drop, a cultural reference. Sure, this guy's show was good, even great. But watching these ordinarily self-respecting people turn into fans kept us in our superior corner. He's probably just a regular guy, we said. I bet he hates that shit.

The next morning I made my way to the auditorium, feeling heady with conference stimulation, lack of sleep, and the residue of the previous night's festivities -- and nearly collided with the famous radio guy, who was alone for the first time since the conference began. Suddenly it seemed necessary that we talk, just regular people talking, and so I asked him a question I thought suited our regular-people relationship. But the conversation was terminally awkward. The final self-inflicted blow came in response to his question, Have you ever been in a play? To which I responded, suddenly in Truth's death-grip: Yes, but I was a lightning bug, and they stuck glow sticks to my ass.

Now, sitting on the pirate-store floor with the Celebrity Dog, I realize that I can still save myself from another trip to Celebrity Mount. I think about my brief and ill-fated run-in with the famous radio guy (which ended, by the way, with my climbing over several rows of seats to reach the safe haven of familiar earthlings), and I want nothing more than to keep on petting the writer's dog, who seems to find me more than satisfactory. This writer could be as brilliant and accessible as he is in his work, or he could be a total jerk. And I, I could be flustered and fan-like and reveal some random and unsavory detail about my early childhood. Maybe someday, celebrity -- that pesky creation of ours -- will be less daunting. But today, I'm sticking with the dog.

Rebecca Wieder can be reached at rebezca@juno.com.

Issue Date: May 17 - 23, 2002