It is certainly a higher form of prostitution: the exchange of a signature for money, as opposed to a dance or a grind. Instead of stripping off clothes, the celebrity removes the distance created by film or stage. Both traffic in intimacy.
For many years I, like so many other high-minded celebrities with flourishing careers, could afford to cavalierly wave away any and all arguably undignified appearance offers that, accompanied by a financial enticement, could only be experienced by those engaging in said ignoble acts as, for want of a better word, whoring.
To be sure, it is “selling out,” which comes with feelings of embarrassment and shame. But if you’re selling for high enough numbers, the duration of that humiliation has a more fleeting quality. And the distraction of purchasing the odd luxury item, or—saints preserve us—paying bills, made the sense of shame similar to the embarrassment one feels about a weight gain of a fairly manageable variety.
And then, what is a loss of self-respect when placed in the context of diminishing worry about one’s looming tax bill or monstrous overhead? So, over time I have managed to rejigger my definition of dignity to the point where it comfortably includes lap dancing.
It’s just something that had to be gotten used to—like finding out your older sister is actually your mother, or winning the lottery but only being able to spend the money on Christmas Day. Hardly a hardship—it simply took some form of adaptation. With enough time, anything can be adjusted to, though things like torture would require adjustment of a kind I can scarcely imagine. But accustoming myself to scrawling my name for strangers was certainly within my capacities.
Besides, over time, more and more celebrities have lent their overly familiar names and faces to products of all kinds—from cars to cosmetics to soda, and on into that netherworld just beyond yogurt. Nothing in the ever-evolving world of celebrity endorsement was impossible. So, why should I be ashamed of spending days on end signing eight-by-ten photos of myself, or even signing the flesh of another human who would subsequently get that signature tattooed onto their skin for all time? Why should that embarrass me more than Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt endorsing some high-end perfume that everyone knows they’re not wearing, or Penélope Cruz appearing in a commercial swooning over cappuccino?
Well, there are reasons, the biggest one being that getting seventy dollars per signature doesn’t really compare to the millions the likes of Mr. Pitt or Ms. Roberts receive for a photo shoot lasting a few hours. The difference might be compared to turning tricks in the East Village versus giving a hand job to an appreciative duke or duchess.
When I was initially approached about going to Comic-Con, the giant comic book convention, I said, “I wouldn’t be caught dead at one of those has-been roundups.” But, as it turns out, I’ve been caught alive at those roundups often enough to wish I was dead.
“I don’t like to make a practice of it, but just this once, okay, I’ll sign it Princess Leia. But you do know I’m not actually her, right? I might resemble this character that doesn’t really exist offscreen and in human form—well, maybe I don’t resemble her quite as much as I used to, but for a while there I looked almost exactly like her.”
“Could you make it to Zillondah? That’s two Ls, an O before the N, and A-H at the end. One of the Ls is silent.”
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come on, get the fuck over yourself,” I can hear you saying. “You wanted to be in show business. Deal with it!”
But I didn’t! It’s just that it turned out to be a lot harder to stay out of the famous fray than to enter it.
Perpetual celebrity—the kind where any mention of you will interest a significant percentage of the public until the day you die, even if that day comes decades after your last real contribution to the culture—is exceedingly rare, reserved for the likes of Muhammad Ali.
Most celebrities have the ordinary variety, in which lengthening periods of quiet alternate with brief flare-ups of activity that steadily diminish in intensity and frequency until the starlight fades away entirely, ultimately extinguished, at which point there’s that final blaze of nostalgia that marks the passing of the now-lost icon.
So I knew. I knew that what lies ahead for almost every public figure who arrives on the scene lay ahead for me as well: the attempted comeback, the memoir, the stint(s) in rehab (although the option of lingering on in some reality show lineup didn’t exist yet in the late seventies). I knew that this was just the nature of this unnatural business—that there, but for the bad fortune of someone else in stardom, would go me. I just hadn’t come up with a viable alternative, so when my place in the sun presented itself, I didn’t have the nerve to turn it down. And this wasn’t just a gift horse, it was a gift stampede!
But, as inevitable as it is, you know some people think it will last forever. That beautiful actress over there, a bright young star from a newly successful franchise, beaming happily, or wait, maybe not so happily.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have time to personalize,” she tells the thrilled fan holding out a picture of her in a bikini, lying on a beach under a tropical sun.
The fan’s brow furrows. “But I’ve been waiting for almost two hours,” he pleads. “Couldn’t you just—”
“NO!” she snaps, indicating the long line snaking behind him. “They’ve been waiting just as long as you!” She’s fed up at all these eager devotees crowding her. “One of them stepped on my foot! See?!!” The beautiful actress frowns, indicating a little red mark on her ankle. “Oww,” she adds for emphasis. “How much longer do I have to stay?” she asks her handler, her eyes stormy.
The handler leans down to her nervously, his head covered in sweat. “We’ve cut the line at the east entrance. All you have to do is sign for those who got in before the cut. It shouldn’t take you that long. Can I get you a water? Or a snack or something?”
The beautiful actress rolls her eyes impatiently. “Christ,” she mumbles under her fragrant breath, “get me some fries then. Or an apple crepe.”
Her handler breathes a sigh of relief. “You got it! No worries, I’ll be back in a second.” The beautiful actress smirks, shakes her head moodily, and turns back to the nervously waiting fan. She blinks at him.
“Didn’t I sign your thing already?” she barks, frightening him speechless. “Well, didn’t I?”
Wry and resigned, her older counterparts watch from behind their photo-laden tables in this cavernous convention center, armed only with their pens and their stoic grins, on the dark sides of their once bright, shining stars, their focus-pulling days all but over, not to mention their days in general—there’s Bill Shatner!
Spending much less time signing than waiting to oblige the next long-lost fan in search of a nostalgic signature. Signing photos taken when they were still certain it all lay ahead, their brilliant multicolored futures, populated with throngs of admirers who clung to their every motion, hung on their every word. The staring world barely blinked then. Now it dozes.
Such is the fate that awaits all celebrities, poor dears. Waiting for an audience either no longer living or barely interested, making every effort to seem upbeat as they await the day when their fans will return to them, their current indifference having been merely a result of some temporary misunderstanding soon to be resolved.
Until then, all they have to do is pretend it’s not really happening.
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no, I’m sorry, I can’t do it that weekend. I’ve got a lap dance in San Diego.”