Celebrity jeopardy

As The Bollard observes its 10-year anniversary, I thought I should do a little casting back myself, and what better subject to plumb than my penchant for humiliating myself, especially around literary and other luminaries? A mere 10 years is not sufficient to properly capture these foibles. We must take a spin in the Way-Wayback machine to do this topic justice.

Let’s start with my first television appearance, circa 1967. I was a guest on the popular local children’s program Cap’n and the Kids. Most of the guests came in packs — Cub Scouts, Brownies, 4-H, Amway — but I was flying solo. You see, the Cap’n himself was, and remains, a close personal friend, and I (or more likely, my parents) had wrangled an invitation to his show. Wedged in the front row under the hot lights with all those uniformed twerps breathing down my neck, I waited for my big moment, but when the Cap’n and his microphone came my way and he asked if there was anyone I want to say hello to, I just sat there. “Maybe your brothers, or how about your grandparents out in Gorham?” Nothing. I remained frozen in the glaring eye of the camera until he gave up and moved on. This was the first and last time keeping my mouth shut cost me my dignity.

When I was in junior high school my parents brought me along on a business trip to Boston. On one of my several dozen trips up and down our hotel’s elevators (magical contraptions to a young rube from Bath, Maine), I rode with a man who looked familiar. I kept stealing glances. Could it possibly be the new neighbor down the street from us, who had the twin BMW 2002s parked in the driveway? Trying to sound as blasé as possible, I said, “Excuse me, do you happen to live in Bath?” The man looked at me, smiled and shook his head. He didn’t speak, but all of a sudden a TV image flashed in my brain, and I knew who it was as he exited the elevator. When I got to our room I jumped on the bed, screaming over and over, “I just rode the elevator with Beau Bridges!” I now officially had a city story to bring home with me, even though it turned out most of my classmates didn’t know who Beau Bridges was.

In high school I volunteered for one of the early campaigns of William Cohen, because I thought he looked like the dreamy Chad Everett. I had an autographed photo of Chad hanging in my closet, which read, “Dear Elizabeth, We can make it together.” The actor had been the keynote speaker at one of my father’s Credit Union conferences, and I’m guessing that line was used as its theme. But it was powerfully confusing to a young lady who had the strains of David Gates and Bread playing in her head every time she thought about making it together with Chad. Nothing really embarrassing happened during my one-week career with the GOP, but this admission amounts to public shaming on any number of levels.

In the early ‘80s I worked in a record store, where I was often given backstage passes to concerts at the Civic Center and was sometimes recruited to work as crew, as I did for a Pat Benatar show. My job was to shuttle her staff back and forth between the venue and their hotel at the mall. On one particular run, during a raging snowstorm, I was (to my mind) regaling my passengers with tales of my recent cross-country driving trip. So enthralled was I by my own adventures that I missed the exit and had to do an about-face at the tollbooth. Except I also somehow missed the mall’s exit on my return trip, which meant I had to circle around Portland one more time in the blinding snow before heading back. That’s when I heard a low voice from the backseat. It was Benatar’s bass player, whose wife had just had a baby. “Please let me survive this,” he said, “so I can see my child.”

I will spare you the details of the restraining order the author Annie Dillard might have felt compelled to take out on me after I volunteered to drive to New Haven to meet her. I made this suggestion after a brief epistolary exchange in which she described my writing as “unusually vivid.” I was confident this was code for Come, let me mentor you, but it more likely meant Your line “the stale wing of hope hovers by my window” is scary. Please go away.

Then there was the dinner in the ‘90s, organized by my friend John, with rock goddess Patti Smith, during which she double-dipped soft-shelled crab in my wasabi. That Smith used my wasabi wasn’t a big deal. We were all sharing plates. It was the post-facto ruckus I made about it for years. “Oh yes,” I’d say when people started exchanging celebrity-encounter stories. “Patti Smith double-dipped in my wasabi. That’s like swapping spit. I practically swapped spit with Patti Smith.”

My greatest gaffe was the night I nearly chased Calvin Trillin out into a Brunswick parking lot at the funeral of our mutual friend John Cole. For the first time since my Cap’n days, I was too shy to utter a peep — that is, until I heard him ask for directions to the highway. I barged over and started drawing maps that involved parallelograms and rhombuses with elaborate written instructions that spilled off the page. When I wrote down the name of Brunswick’s Maine Street as Main Street, he gently corrected me. “I’ve just been edited by Calvin Trillin!” I cried. (Am I the only one cringing here? Wait, there’s more.) When my instructions grew too complex, I offered to just ride with him to the entrance to Route 1 and walk back to the reception. Somehow he eluded my assistance and made off without me.

The newest bloom in my bouquet of embarrassments occurred when I recently had the chance to meet David Sedaris. I thought I’d play it cool. I was helping my friend Barbara Kelly sell books at Sedaris’s sold-out show at the Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit. Our sales table and his signing table were set up outside, with only the ticket booth separating us. I positioned myself behind the booth so I could spy on him without his noticing me.

Not that he would. This man signs books. I mean, like hardcore. He not only engages in conversation, he instigates it. If you want your book inscribed, you write out your name and message on a Post-it note for him. He signs for an hour before his show and then signs afterward until every single person in line has had an audience with the author — even if that means one sleepy novice bookseller wouldn’t get back to Portland and to bed until almost 2 a.m.

That was fine with me. I had my plan all worked out. I would wait until all the common, ticket-buying fools’ books were signed and then I would sidle up with my copy of Holidays On Ice and my Post-it, which read: “To My New Best Friend Elizabeth Peavey, the greatest writer since Tolstoy.” I thought the Tolstoy bit would really crack him up. (Tolstoy? Where’d you come up with that, you crazy kid? Let’s go back to my hotel and, just for tonight, take up smoking cigarettes again and stay up all night laughing at each other’s jokes, ’K?) Oh, and I had my last copy of my book Outta My Way to give him, just in case.

As the crowd thinned, a few people — staff (like us booksellers) mostly — milled around the front of the theater. Just as I was poised to make my move, one of them stepped up to Sedaris. I caught snatches of their conversation while I packed up books. The fan fawned as he leaned into the table, exchanging quips and laughs with Sedaris for what seemed like for-ever. I fumed behind my booth. Move along, creep. Can’t you see the author is tired… of you, and wants to meet me? Finally, this boor started wrapping up. He reached into his pocket (What? Are you going to give him a lobster key chain?) and pulled out a book. His own book. “Yes,” he chuckled. “I’m a humor writer, too.” Sedaris graciously accepted the offering while I seethed. A book! Being last in line with my own book was my move! This jerk stole my move! I decided I would not saddle the author with another tome to drag home. We’d just exchange witty banter.

At last I leapt forward, with both of our books in hand. I presented the Post-it affixed to his book without comment, waiting for the hilarity to ensue. Sedaris read the inscription and looked up at me with earnest eyes. “So, Elizabeth. You’re a writer?”

I don’t know what overcame me at that point. Call it an overwhelming case of the dulls. “Well, yes, I guess I am.” I slid my book toward him. “You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to,” I said, sounding like an idiot schoolgirl. Why weren’t we laughing? Why hadn’t he picked out an elf name for me, like in Holidays On Ice? Where was his sister Amy with the canapés? Did he like the jerk in front of me better?

I noticed how tired Sedaris looked. It was move-along time. His inscription simply read: “To Elizabeth, I look forward to reading your book.”

In the end, the last laugh was on me.

Elizabeth Peavey has felt the hot burn of shame here for the past 10 years. To follow her other foibles, go to elizabethpeavey.com.