ON the way to the eye doctor for my annual checkup, I
started wondering what it would be like once my wife and I were best friends
with Beyonce and Jayzee. I’ll learn how to correctly spell my new best friend’s
name soon after we start hanging out I’m sure. This daydream came about for
fairly obvious reasons. One, I was going to pick out new glasses, that day. As
everyone knows, in my mind at least, the fate of the free world rests not so
much on who is elected the president of the United States, or whether or not
Iran obtains nukes, or the euro fails and western Europe descends into another
world war, albeit economic and boring as hell (from afar). No, the fate of the
free worlds rests upon what glasses I choose. Upon picking said marvelous
glasses, a ripple of approving murmurs will spill out from our little town of
Starkville, MS, and gather steam, momentum, the power of the people of our
great nation itself, and people everywhere will begin with a whisper and finish
with a shout, “What amazing glasses, Jim!” Hunger a thing of the past, poverty
eradicated, all weapons of mass destruction fired into space and destroyed… as
long as I make the right decision. The wrong decision, and the whispering to
shouting motif rings real again in my imagination, but with anger and
consternation and pure, joyous schedenfraud at my ridiculous glasses that
channels into the earth, straight to every fault line on the planet, the
derision of all mankind roughly grabbing those plates and cracking them in
their bitter hands like old, tasteless chocolate.
I
have not been diagnosed with narcissism, but I fear its only because I usally
keep these thoughts to myself. Usually.
The
other reason Jay-Z and Beyonce will obviously want to become besties with my
wife and I is because we have a daughter born within a month of their daughter.
I worried we wouldn’t have much to talk about when we go to visit them in
Neeeew Yoooork, or when they come see us in Mississippi, but by then we’ll also
be billionaires, because the fantasy series that’s been kicking around in my
head for a year is going to be pretty darn successful. J.K. Rowling will keep
calling my assistant saying, “One lunch, Damien, a single hour long lunch with
Mr. Hunt,” to which Damien will patiently sigh and say, “J.K., I told you, Mr.
and Mrs. Hunt are still with Mr. and Mrs. Jay-Z. They’re having a month long
play date. He’ll text you when he gets back in town.” So why wouldn’t Jay-Z and
Beyonce want to hang out with us? Probably for fear that they’ll wish their
daughter was as sweet, playful, and full of baby charm as ours, I’d imagine. If
imagining was something I did.
It
used to be, back when I was 12 and I first got a TV in my room, and I was
watching Jay Leno on Friday nights, I’d imagine myself sitting on that couch,
just joshing, just cracking Jay Leno up so bad he’d really want me to come back
all the time. I’d initially be invited on because I was such an amazing
football/basketball player, a white Deion Sanders. I was doing upwards of 50
push ups a day when I wasn’t tired from playing a couple hours of Nintendo
(Secret of Mana) every day after school, or better yet, getting up early in the
mornings to get in some RPG time. I’m not sure how many people really admit to
wanting to be famous; that phrasing itself sounds horrible. I simply want to be
invited to fabulous Hollywood parties, attend them when able, decline when not,
and still get invited back. To be on friendly terms with Tom Brady or Drew
Brees, Beyonce or Jay-Z, to call up M. Night Shamalan and say, “Come on M., the
Village? I didn’t even see the whole thing through to the “climax” on the
sci-fy channel and I know it was dumb. Sure, come over around 7 and we’ll kick
around some ideas over some scotch.”
It’s
not so much that as thinking you are someone more special than you really are.
That someone will stop you as you’re walking back to the truck after the
bi-weekly writer’s group that meets on Saturday mornings and say, “Hey, you’re
an amazing writer, aren’t you! Not bad looking either, I must say, not bad
looking at all!” Why does this person look like Heidi Klum in her youth and
talk like Yukon Cornelius? I don’t know. Childhood plus adolescence pretty much
equals adulthood, and the math never checks out. It is also, for me, a way to
avoid the real work of writing, which is my self-professed dream. I can’t
believe those people, however, who say, “If you don’t love it, it’s just
another job you’re going to hate.” When did George Walker Bush start giving out
shitty life advise to Redbook? Anyone who has truly had a passion for any
avocation and not been a savant at said passion will at some point or other
loath that dream, right? Why this dream, you ask? Why is it so hard? Why won’t
it come easier? I push and I push and I push, but the rock doesn’t even get
close to the top of the hill. It moves a few inches. I give Sisyphus
comparative comfort.
