It was such an obvious metaphor to me—metaphor be with you!—that it was easy to forget that it wasn’t an accepted designation in the common vernacular. Sure, my friends and family got the reference, but all too often I’d forget that I wasn’t sufficiently acquainted with someone who’d only very recently wandered into the eccentric entrance hall of my life. Such as, for example, some place of business where, confronted with the price tag of an overpriced item, I’d say, “Shit, I can’t afford that until after my lap dance next month.”
I’d continue along breezily for a sentence or two until I’d notice the look of astonishment on the high-end shop assistant’s face. “Sorry, sorry,” I’d explain. “I don’t mean an actual lap dance, though it might as well be. It’s this thing where I sign stuff for cash that is all but stuffed into my underwear and—oh, never mind, it doesn’t—could you hold this for me for a few weeks?”
It’s fair to conclude that my lap dancing was required penance for my fondness for shopping—either for gifts for my friends and mere acquaintances, or for yet another amusing antique hand or eye or foot, some gnome, some video art, some British phone booth for my witty and colorful home. (I have the mixed blessing of being able to find the often obscurely hidden charm in many arguable objets d’art, not to mention animals and humans.)
If I didn’t simply have to have things—and to make a donation to this cause, or a loan (inadvertently but inevitably a gift) to that person—I might not have needed to clamor to this city or that country to do the odd speech or the odder-still autograph show.
I was decidedly on the wrong side of forty when, as the new millennium dawned, I was first approached by Ben Stevens (with Official Pix) to see if I would consider doing “a signing.” My nose wrinkled involuntarily with distaste. Don’t you have to be desperate to do something like sitting behind some table piled high with pics and pens and . . . would there be merch, even?!!
Ben smiled compassionately. “There’s no merchandising,” he said emphatically, as if to assure me that this lack of obvious commerce would keep my dignity intact. “Just signing pictures, and if you wanted to make a little extra moolah, you could take a few photos with the fans. No more than fifty, unless you wanted to do more. Mainly, though, me and my staff would be there to make sure things go smoothly and quickly and, of course, that you make as much money as possible.”
How did I get here? I didn’t need money this badly, did I? Well, that all depends on your definition of “need.” Was I as rich as most of the media-saturated public assumed that I was, given that I was associated with one of the biggest moneymaking phenomena in the life of the nation? Not by a long, long, long shot. Holding out for points or a piece of the merchandising was not an option for—or even something that would ever have occurred to—a nineteen-year-old signing on for her first lead role in a little space movie.
To be sure, though, I had a considerable amount of money in my early twenties. Wow! Then I didn’t have to think about such things. I could pay someone to make sure my bills were paid and my money was locked up tight and under no immediate threat of theft. Great! My attitude was, “You take care of it! Just make sure that I can shop and travel as much as possible. I’m no good with numbers, so you count while I cavort!” Carefree!
That went well.
Two decades and a pilfering business manager later, I was out of money. My house—or, more accurately, the house the bank lets me live in, for now—was mortgaged to the skies, and not, as it turned out, friendly ones.
I had become a poor rich person. Cavorting in the style I had unfortunately become accustomed to now required real work. I took jobs writing travel pieces for magazines so I could circle the globe, my young daughter in tow.
When Billie was four or five, I made personal appearances at every Disneyland on the planet. (All she knew was that we didn’t have to stand in lines and got to go on the Matterhorn three times and have lunch with Dumbo!) So, while I might not yet have lost my convention virginity when Ben Stevens came a-calling, I was far from an innocent in the ways of selling myself, or at least my-Leia-self.
Your once upon a time is up
Prince Charming’s been abducted
Tinkerbell’s on angel dust
The Matterhorn’s erupted
Your once upon a time is up
Tammy’s talking dirty,
Dumbo has a PhD
Leia’s age is 2 x 30
? ? ?
there we are in the huge, almost football-field-sized convention center. Many of us, side by side at long tables in front of longer swaths of blue fabric—curtains of blue separating the celebrities from . . . what? From round tables piled high with different sorts and sizes of photographs.
We have gone on—aged, and in some cases (like my own) waists have thickened a bit—but the images have not changed. In the photos we are stopped in our tracks, usually in a scene from a past film, caught for all time smiling or swooning, gazing or considering. And just beneath that momentary expression—that split second out of all the years of our lives—a signature will, for a nominal or near-nominal fee, be scrawled. That souvenir, now yours forever, captures two instants: the long-ago one when the photo was taken, and the more recent one when that signature was written just for you—you or some lucky friend or relative whose life you’ve generously chosen to enhance in this way. Two moments, decades apart, now joined forever.
We sit in various stages of poised, awaiting our next appointment to exchange autograph for cash—yes, actual paper money, the kind that they’re promising to put a picture of a woman on one of these years. That cash entitles people to choose what color ink should be used—the table is festooned with a rainbow of available pens—and which character’s name they might also want inscribed below the actor’s signature. Oh, and perhaps also a key line of dialogue spoken by said character?