The other day, journalist form the UK asked me about fame. “You’ve written about how when you were young, you wanted to be famous. Now that you’ve achieved fame, is it as you expected? How does that feel?”
And my answer is always, after Pighead (from Dry) died, a lot of things that used to matter to me no longer mattered. And to this day don’t matter. One of the things that died in me was that childhood desire for fame.
And the writer “fame” that I have, if it can even be called, “fame,” isn’t nearly the same thing that I wanted as a child. For the most part, nobody knows or cares much writers. And by “nobody” mean, the mass media. I don’t’ have journalists peeking up my skirt trying to photograph my snatch; I don’t have a camera literally in my face, capturing a macro-shot of my blackheads and pimples and wrinkles (well, if I had wrinkles, that is).
Fame today isn’t nearly as appealing as the fame of my childhood. So what, exactly, was the fame of my childhood? I have described it as, “Silvery curtain fame, Oscar Awards show fame, black Lincoln limousine, one or two flashbulbs, a camera on a dolly fame.
And today, I found on YouTube a perfect example of fame, circa 1970. This, to me, is fame.
Not this.
Just so you know.
Okay, off to take my daily goat milk bath and answer some fan mail, before signing a few autographs in downtown Amherst, when I run out to have my toenails surgically removed and replaced with platinum “hubs.”
