theblackdostoyevsky

Which celebrity would you love to meet, and what would you talk about?

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There was a time when I admired celebrities. Growing up without my father, I built a composite personality using the admirable traits I’d found in people everyone considered the most successful and desirable in the world. Will Smith’s charisma. Denzel Washington’s sex appeal. Dave Chappelle’s grave silliness. Lebron James’ athleticism. DMX’s ferocity. Lil’ Wayne’s swag. Frederick Douglass’ resilient intelligence. Toni Morrison’s vision. James Baldwin’s wisdom. Malcolm X’s voice. Lord knows I could go on. I was schizophrenic with the theft; building alters without the trauma and dissociation.

Most of whom I stole from were dead at the time. A single sentence or aphorism from an author would be absorbed into my speaking patterns. The wisdom of fiction was ripe soil for instruction in all manners of emotional intelligence. Through reading I came to understand the thoughts and emotions of men and women, rich and poor, native and stranger, children, the religious, the heathen, the understanding, the feeble-minded, the criminal, the judge, the king, the subject. I learned to focus my attention on those works universally hailed as effective. I became a snobby robber, a Robin Hood of sorts, stealing only from those who remained in print.

And so, I built up this persona, without ever needing to meet these people, by borrowing and practicing their virtues and casting away their vices. I would never meet them. I didn’t want to meet them. Never meet your idols. I would only be disappointed. But I kept their pedestals raised aloft in my heart: Charles Bukowski, Donald Goines, Kendrick Lamar. After all, the best thieves devise ways to never be in the same room as the object of their affections. 

Then, I learned. And I stopped idolizing these people. I learned the cost of fame. I learned that, often enough, fortune shares the same tag. I learned about marketing and public relations. I learned about perspective and how to manipulate it. I learned about lies. I took a hatchet, then, to all of the alters in my heart and cut them down into rubble, pounded the rubble into dust, and cast the dust into the sea of forgetfulness. There’s nobody that I’d want to meet, today. In fact, if I saw a celebrity in person, I’d turn around and walk the other direction. Not out of disgust for them, but out of embarrassment. It must be magnificently embarrassing to be a celebrity, to have to put on everywhere you go. To always be pretending that you’re someone that you aren’t. To be beholden to the imagination that the next person has of you, calling you by the names of characters you’ve played, or deeds you’ve done, or scandals you’ve been named in. I’d be too embarrassed for them to even look them in the eye, to allow my imaginations of them to become superimposed upon them actually. I’d about face and walk away. No fly by. No starry eyes. No acknowledgment. No handshakes. No photo ops. No questions. No quick love. I’d treat them like I’d wanna be treated, if I were that well known:

“Please, just leave me alone.”