He was scheduled to appear a third time, but having met him after his first concert no one told me he was scheduled to appear here again. “We thought you knew,” they said. None of us knew it would be his last.
He was that kind of friendly celebrity who talked to his audience, a genial host, and we were guests at his party, this musical performance. Admirers in the audience would run up the aisle and throw notes to him on stage. I did, too. He would read them, requests mostly. “’For Nancy? I never did it to Nancy so I’ll do it for Nancy. [LAUGHTER.] This one’s for Nancy.” He picked my note up. He did not read it aloud. After the concert I drove home, relieved the babysitter and went to bed. The phone rang. It was him. He invited me to visit him in his hotel suite near the airport and I accepted his offer. It’s been over thirty five years now and I remember only two things about that night: that in giving his fingers massage they were wiry from the playing the guitar for a living, and that he asked me and I declined. He was married and I didn’t want to be that kind of groupie.
I searched for a suitable gift to give him the next time, the 2nd time I would see him in concert. I clearance to go backstage to deliver what brought him fame. I was escorted backstage before the concert where he and his musicians were eating together. A large table was set up with food. He got up from the meal, came over to me and accepted my gift with grace. I left then and took my seat in the audience. “No gift can be accompanied by a claim,” John Berger wrote. I wondered afterward how many other people, how many other times in his career fans had given him the same. People in power receive trinkets.
Even the White House has a Gift Department with rules of what is and is not acceptable or even legal; graft, an attempt to corrupt, bribe, or garner favor or influence. Ordinary people will send a stick of gum. “I can’t keep all this junk!” I heard an official say while cleaning out his office.
I heard that a woman in New York City waiting in line for an ice cream cone noticed Paul Newman waiting as well. Afterward she looked for the cone. She remembered buying it. Mr. Newman told her, “It’s in your purse.” Paul Newman signed my parachutist log book, but in my family showing off and tooting your own horn was not acceptable. “Who do you think you are? Better than us?” One-upmanship was roundly despised; however, if you caught a fish you can bet John J. P. caught a bigger one, and it was said John S. P. sired nine children to prove his manhood. Did people fawn over him? Celebrities resent countless invasions and intrusions. Celebrities complain that interviewers ask repetitive boring stupid questions. Attractive people attract people with the traits we admire, traits we crave and wish for ourselves. This singer was neither buff nor washboard abs. His charm was his warmth, his charisma. This morning his name came up and I realized I never wrote about it; that in accepting his offer I put my kids in their pajamas in the back of the station wagon bundled up in blankets still asleep and drove there. They were still asleep when I returned to the locked car. If they stirred they fell back asleep and slept through. It was not unusual to sleep in the car. They’d slept in the car many times on long drives home from visiting grandparents at night or long drives on an overnight trek when we couldn’t afford a hotel and we all slept in the car together. Still, what I did was reprehensible. “We thought you knew better.”
“He shoots, he scores!” She writes, she draws, she’s published. Publication is proof, validation, value. Vindication.