After two years of carding people, throwing out drunks, breaking up fights, cleaning up vomit, and, every so often, unplunging the backed-up half-bathtub urinal of the four or five gallons of sloshing human urine, I quit my job and moved to Los Angeles. The reasons why I did so, the emotional ones, anyway, seem to change every time I tell the story, and one or two people have even accused me of duplicitousness. Therefore, I won't go into those reasons, although years after the fact I finally found a defense for myself. The best metaphors and symbols in literature are shifting, amorphous things; like all symbols of the unconscious, they stand for more than one thing. And so my move to Los Angeles is best understood as a metaphorical one, representing not one desire but many desires: I was fleeing a woman; I was in trouble with the law; I needed fewer friends; that half-bathtub with its great waves of urine snapping up at my face as I plunged away was starting to represent for me not just my life, but maybe even the human condition in toto, and I was long overdue for a change.

My friend Patrick was living in L.A., working as a reservations manager for a small luxury hotel chain down there, and he offered me a job and a place to live. Until there was an opening in his department, he could put me on one of the hotel's switchboards. For the first three months or so, I was a PBX Operator, a doormat to the stars. Sadly, although I transferred to reservations and stayed there for another year and a half, I rarely mention that year and a half now. It's always those first few months at the beginning (with another month-long stint somewhere later on), when I had no money and worked the early shift because we got fresh croissants and left-over food from the evening's catering events, that I talk about most frequently, that I remember most fondly.

I would like to think I have merely a minor interest in celebrities. But I'm sure I'm only kidding myself. I will stop and read an interview with John Cusack in the store, the whole thing, and then later wonder, "gee, whatever happened to that theater group in Chicago he organized?" which is probably more about John Cusack than just about anyone who doesn't know him personally needs to know.

This explains why I loved that PBX job, as awful as it was. The staff was filled with people who didn't want to work, the system was poorly organized with the operators taking messages by hand, and in the middle of the day the phones would back up 18 deep. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for you to answer the phone?" would be the inevitable surly opener, followed by a lecture while I watched the 18 on the switchboard flash up to 20, 21, 22, 23...

I talked to Diane Keaton, Carol Kane and other middle aged actresses, all of whom were calling for Harvey Keitel. I found Ione Skye's phone number for River Phoenix. I guesstimated the temperature for Max Von Sydow. I phoned wake-up calls to Tonya Tucker. I spelled Burt Bacharach's name correctly, to his amazement. I almost asked Madonna how to spell her name. But, at the time, perhaps my biggest claim to near fame was talking to all of the New Kids on The Block, multiple times.

The NKOTB stayed at our hotel several times, and the lobby filled up with thirteen year old girls in bustiers and short skirts; it was as if we had been invaded by the Encino Middle School's production of Sweet Charity. The "Newkies" were staying under some of the world's worst pseudonyms which they gave out freely to girls they thought were cute. The girls would call persistently: "Could I speak to Donny? Let me speak to Donny Wahlberg." We had been coached with our reply: "I'm sorry. There is no one by that name registered at that hotel." Which was true, he was registered under the horrific appellation Cool Ass D (I sorta like to imagine he's washing cars somewhere with that name sewn onto his shirt). I remember one girl burst into tears when I gave her our canned response. "Why are you lying to me?" She sobbed. "I'm not lying to you," I said and smiled. Ahh, cruelty.

Ahh, cruelty, indeed. We were told to only let through the calls where people got the idiotic noms du pop absolutely correct. I shudder to think how many pre-pubescent maidenheads were preserved at least a little longer by a child's inability to write anything down. "Uhh, let me speak to Big J Mac," I remember this one dazed-sounding girl saying. She was trying to ask for Joey MacIntyre, who was staying under the name "Big Mac J."

"I'm sorry," I said, "there's no one registered here by that name." The 'here' would sometimes throw them off. They'd ask if we had any other hotels and what their phone numbers were and would go call them.

"Uh, Big Joey Mac."

"I'm sorry, no one registered under that name."

"B.J. Mac."

"I'm sorry, no one registered under that name."

"Uh, Big Mac Joey."

"I'm sorry, no one registered under that name."

The voice would change tone from bewildered to petulant. "Eat shit, motherfucker!" CLICK. I smiled. No fights to break up, no vomit to clean up.

On my break once, I went into the offices behind the switchboard and dialed the direct number in. The offices had glass walls so you could see the switchboard operators. The operator answered the phone, not knowing I was calling from behind them.

I tried to make my voice as surly as possible. "Yeah, Lame Ass D, please."

The operator was a short bellicose guy, who would occasionally make fun of me, when he tired of reading fashion magazines. "I'm sorry, sir, there's no one registered here under that name."

I would make my voice grow a bit more hesitant with each additional name I came up with. "Uh, Chunky Ass D, please."

"I'm sorry, no one registered under that name."

"Uhh, Wet. Wet Ass D, please."The operator was trying not to laugh at the names which were increasing exponentially in their stupidity. I, in turn, was trying not to laugh at the resulting tension in his voice. I went through twenty variations, straining the operator's nerves further and further. Stinky Ass D. Phony Ass D. Pale Ass D. Naked Ass D. Funky Ass D. After the twentieth time, I told him to look over his shoulder and waved. The operator put his head on the desk, laughing. When I came back in, he punched me on the shoulder very hard. He was still laughing.

I would like to duck behind the assertions of Nathanael West and insist, as he did, that there is something about L.A. that turns people cruel. But then again, maybe it was only the New Kids. The Front Desk Manager circulated stories about Housekeeping having to wipe gobs of semen off the walls; The "NewKs" apparently had contests jerking off to see who could shoot higher up the walls. The bellhops would swear they would see young men come in through the side entrance late at night, recruited by the group's handlers from the gay bars down the street. The inference was that one or all of NKOTB were closeted, one of the gravest sins the largely gay staff could conceive of (we were working in West Hollywood in the hotel business, it should be pointed out). But I always think of it as the cruelty the non-famous use on the famous, the cruel envy that sells the Enquirer and Star, nothing more than a twisted version of the American dream. All of us are equal and no one can be higher than the rest of us without eventually, one way or another, being taken down a peg or two. As for myself, my feelings about fame became considerably more mixed as a result of the New Kids.

After all, I peed next to Joey MacIntyre. And it seems as fitting a note to end this story on as any. I kept getting tied to Joey throughout his various stays. I would read his messages to him over the phone and he would be the most enthusiastic and grateful. I ended up talking on the phone to Rick Dees, L.A.'s celebrity D.J. as he playfully tried to get me to tell him if Joey MacIntyre was in the hotel. He only admitted who he was at the end of the phone call and asked if I could think of any funny way to end the "sketch," which I guess was the euphemism back then for "recorded and broadcast crank call". "Rick, baby," I wanted to say. "Why are you wasting time on these guys? You recorded 'Disco Duck!' In ten years, they'll be as much of a footnote in pop culture history as you are!" I didn't, of course. The "sketch" ends, if I remember right, with Rick Dees finally asking to speak to Elvis, and I say something like, "I'm sorry, sir, he just checked out." For the next day or two, I would be talking in the lunchroom and someone would suddenly look at me with an odd expression on their face. "I think I heard you on the radio the other day." My claim to fame. You know how I love that regressive loop. I would be an asterisk to the footnote of the footnote of pop culture history.

Anyway, I peed next to Joey MacIntyre. It was in the lobby Men's Room and I wasn't paying any attention to him. It wasn't until I was washing my hands next to him and looked up into the mirror, saw him staring at me, and did a slight double-take that he gave a friendly smile and said, "Hey." I said "Hey." I opened the door for him and walked out behind him. We crossed the lobby, almost side by side. There was a flock of the scarily dressed young girls standing in the lobby and they looked over at us and then looked back. By looking so unlike a New Kid on the Block, I had managed to shield Joey MacIntyre from a lobby of his adoring fans! I glanced over at him, stupidly thinking he would be grateful to avoid a scene. You know, A Hard Day's Night and all that. My glance turned into a long look over my shoulder.

After the girls had glanced in his direction without recognizing him, Joey had stopped walking. He waited a minute for me to clear out of the way and then he did a little dance. I assume they were patented New Kids steps. They looked kinda syncopated and he was making some sort of faux bass noises ("bangity bank! Bank! Bank! Bangity bank!"). If he had fallen over and someone had rushed up to shove a wallet in his mouth, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised.

The girls looked over at him and, with me out of the way and him dancing in the middle of a hotel lobby, did a double take (that same little double take that I realize only now, seven years after the fact, he was looking at me for in the bathroom mirror), and for a moment I thought I was going to get crushed as they swarmed him. They didn't swarm him, though. Two or three of them were so surprised, they actually hopped in place, and then walked over to him with shaky legs and surprisingly calm voices. "Oh, hi," one of them said, with the pleasant oh-there-you-are tone with which a delighted mother greets her hiding newborn. "Hi," he replied breezily, like he was in a hurry to somewhere else but was still really glad to see this person. "What's up?"

I made my way across the rest of the lobby. The girls and Joey MacIntyre receded behind me, into the lobby, into the background, into the folds of the lines between the warps and woofs of pop culture history, leaving me with that memory that I have now, a memory that sounds like a joke (a footnote and an asterisk are standing at a urinal, see....) and the lesson that if I ever do get famous, no matter how I deny it now, I will do the dance. I'm sure I would become just as easily addicted to the attention as any other celebrity, if not more so. And so I would do the dance. If I felt I had to, I would do it until nobody paid any attention any more.

Because that's what celebrity is all about. 

---April 27, 1997

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