i couldn’t fathom what i was doing at boy george’s 50th birthday party — but there i was. it was very decadent, and i felt like i was looking at the party through a camera that was swinging around, sloppily, zooming in on person after person.
after i while at the bar, i decided to go into the vip area. opening the doors marked “vip” revealed a huge olympic-size swimming pool. the lighting was a bit dim, but in the pool was george. he was just swimming around, and looked at me, and said “oh, it’s you again”.
this was the third party of his that i remember being at, and it seemed like an appropriate response from him. being his birthday and all, there was this huge (huge!) birthday cake floating in the middle of the pool. everyone was scooping off big sloppy chunks of cake and frosting, and shoving it into their faces.
then my phone rings, and i wake up. what a fucked up dream! what the hell would cause me to dream of boy george? zoinks!
in the past few weeks, as my new career with xy has ramped up and i’ve settled into my london life even more, i’ve started to get into the celebrity/publicity routine. publicists, agents, film studios, record labels — i’m getting good at this. i finished my extraordinary piece on the pet shop boys for the next issue of xy, and am quite chuffed about it. i think it’s quite thorough and consistently interesting.
but, the closest i got to the pet shop boys [one of my favorite groups] with my connections was some publicity shots and a prerecorded interview. fair enough.
tonight i went to a taping of the bbc show “later with jools holland” — i went cuz a good mate of mine just interviewed the pet shop boys and got us tickets. the show filmed tonight featured cornershop, the doves, pet shop boys and was supposed to feature tony bennett. tony cancelled last minute, and the dozens of gray-haired fans were shocked to learn that the so solid crew were his replacement.
so, here i am, 10 feet away from one of my favorite bands, the pet shop boys, about 30 feet away from so solid crew & the others. small studio, cameras flying around and song after song being performed. i try to keep it real, in general, so i’m not about to clap and scream for no reason. but, for the tunes that i liked, i really broke it down, shook my tail feather, and i think my ugly mug’s gonna be all over the show. like, when so solid crew [all 957 of them] performed 21 seconds, there was nobody, and i mean nobody dancing except for me and my mate tye. i used most [if not all] of my leftover two-step moves from 1998. romeo done.
at the end of the show, i got dragged to neil’s dressing room, and i got to meet neil. i played it cool, chatted for a bit [they knew too much about me from my mate tye], did a photo and off i went. i behaved as i expected i would — totally calm & cool, a master of all situations, always in control. until i left neil’s dressing room, and i felt a very strange tingling sensation all over my body, and then i went numb. the last time i felt that particular emotion was minutes after receiving my college degree, where i was so overwhelmed i had to go chill out by milliken pond for a few minutes.
what a release.
what a performance.
“i was backstage — couldn’t believe my luck was in”
what a nice bloke, but, really.
and thus it starts — nay, continues — this, the next chapter, this, the next career, this, the next city. home and dry.
