But there will be another Comic-Con—they’re hardly rare now—where, if your luck with luminaries prevails, you will again find yourself in (or, more accurately, maneuver yourself into) immediate proximity to your chosen celebrity’s latest lap dance, which is when you can say, “Hey, Carrie, it’s me, Jeffrey Altuna! We met at last year’s Florida Con! I was with that girl Corby with the Slave Leia tattoo on her shoulder! Yeah! Right! How you been? We’re down here visiting friends in Houston and, lucky me, this is the weekend for this. And anyway, Cheryl, that’s my wife—say hey, honey—anyway . . . hell, I lost my train of whatever I was saying . . . Only that it’s great to see you again. And Gary! Hey, boy! Tongue still hanging down, I see. Gosh almighty, he is so cute! We have a Westie–poodle mix—my oldest calls it a Woodle—and we love him to bits, but he’s just nowhere near as bright as your little man here. You get him a Twitter page like you said you wanted to? Instagram! Better still! How awesome! Does he have many followers?? 41k?! That’s more than most humans! I’ll follow him right away! What’s his name on it? Gary Fisher @garyfisher! That’s brilliant! How did you think of it? . . . I’m kidding! What do you think I am?? Some fan moron? No, I’m totally kidding again! We are just big fans. We love you for just being who you are—maybe not regular, but not not regular, you know? I hope I’m not talking too much—guess I am ’cause of how Cheryl’s looking at me, she’s got my number, but could I ask you something? And I’m not talking about some super-dark secret inside scoop or anything because I know you’re not allowed to say, but my neighbor Bob reads up on all this and he reckoned that the black boy’s skin is dark because of some hex that the Dark Side puts on him. Is that true? If yes, just nod your . . . I know, I know. I’m sorry—I just promised Bob I’d ask you if I saw you, and well, here we are! I couldn’t let an opportunity like this just—boom!—swish by, right? I mean sure, no, yeah, I see that’s quite a line, I’ll let you go. I just wanted, I’m just glad to see you again like this and I gotta say, we are really looking forward to the opening on December eighteenth. Can’t wait! Okay, bye, Gary! Take good care of your mama now—ya hear? Bye now!”
• • •
i need you to know that I’m not cynical about the fans. (If you thought I was, you would quite properly not like me, which would defeat the purpose of this book and of so much else that I do.) I’m moved by them.
There’s something incredibly sweet and mystifying about people waiting in lines for so long. And with very few exceptions, the people you meet while lap dancing are a fine and darling lot. The Star Wars films touched them in some incredibly profound or significant way. They remember everything about the day they first saw Star Wars one, two, and three (which were officially, of course, IV, V, and VI): where they were, who they were with, what obstacles they had to overcome—cut school? skip practice?—in order to be there. And once they got there, how the experience surpassed any expectations they might have had, resulting in some life-changing experience. How, that day, things for them ceased to be in any way the same from then to forever after.
So of course when they meet me, many of the Forever Altered long to tell me all these things and more, and at length.
There’s the girl with my signature tattooed to her ass, the couple that named their child Leia Carrie, the guy who had his name legally changed to Luke Skywalker. (Imagine the policeman’s face when he stops Luke Skywalker for speeding: “What happened, Obi-Wan wouldn’t let you use the X-wing fighter tonight?”) They have marriage ceremonies where, instead of the more traditional vows, one says, “I love you,” and the other says, “I know.” They come dressed in the outfits, and not only are the women in the metal bikini but some men are wearing it, too, and it looks fantastic.
For the most part they’re kind and courteous, and as if that weren’t enough, they quite frequently appear before you in amazing homemade costumes whipped up by Alderaan-obsessed parents for their Force-fed children. Tiny Ben Kenobis, little Lukes, miniature Darth Vaders, and—my personal favorites—the teensiest of Princess Leias.
These smallest of small Leias are brought to me like tiny offerings, prize possessions held aloft for my blessings and my praise, both of which they receive in abundance. Do the children know that it’s “me” that they are dressed as? Of course not! Those under four—all they know is that they’re hot, that there are way too many people swarming around everywhere, and that they just want to go home, or anywhere other than standing in this line with similarly swaddled sorts spilling out of their sci-fi garb with no imminent sign of escape.
One little girl came by who’d been told she was going to meet Princess Leia; imagine her excitement, that is, until she saw the new me.
“No!” she wailed, squirming her head away from the sight of me. “I want the other Leia, not the old one.”
Her father flushed, then leaned apologetically toward my ear. “Well, no, you see she doesn’t mean that—we’ve just seen the first three films and loved you in them so much—”
“Please!” I interrupted. “You don’t have to apologize for my looking older to your daughter after forty years. I look older to me, too, and I don’t apologize to myself—though perhaps I should.”
Vast airwaves of awkwardness ensued, his daughter unable to look at me and confront what time had done. It all ended well though, with me promising to get plastic surgery (after I explained to the little girl what that was) and getting her father to promise to read his daughter bits of Wishful Drinking, and look at its pictures together, so she’d see what the actual Carrie was like and how pretty she could be once the endlessly extraordinary Leia was finished.
The youngest fans who do know where they are (and where they’re likely to be for quite some time) rarely seem happy, and when they finally reach their inexplicable destination they become paralyzed with shyness and hide behind whatever part of their parents they can access through their stormtrooper getups. The most desperate, confused, or hungry ones cry in fear or embarrassment or exasperation, or all three, while I do my best to soothe them. I bust my ass trying to soothe them, for their pain is palpable and I have rampant empathy.
And while the adults are unfailingly polite, there’s a certain lack of empathy among some of them for me. They know they might be bothering me with their requests—a selfie, a lengthy inscription, an extra few “for my friends, they love Star Wars as much as I do, one of them even more”—and they’re quick to acknowledge this and pretend that they could accept rejection. But fuck it, they know they’re not asking me to do anything that hard. They present their requests with the pretense that I have the option to refuse, but we’re all aware that the exchange could move very quickly to, “Well, you wanted to be in show business, and if you didn’t want people to want your autograph you should never have become an actress.”
They also frequently want you to write a piece of dialogue, and that is how I first came to understand who they thought Leia was. I knew who she was to the women, but the men really liked her unthreatening little bitchiness, which was probably even less intimidating because I’m short. All the lines they want me to write are like “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” The biggest favorite is “Why, you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder.” They can’t get enough of it.
• • •
i sit there in front of all of these different pictures of myself from a million years ago and attempt to make looking at images from other eras somehow interesting to me. I don’t remember when these photos were taken or who the photographers were. One picture in particular makes me feel happy and sad—it’s a very popular one, and in it I look high as a kite. I occasionally like to ask people, “How do I look in that shot?” The kinder people respond “sleepy” or “tired” or “almost available.”
I was signing my nude-ass picture a decade or so ago and I realized that I’d been—and I can’t believe I’m using this word about myself—a sex symbol. Only now the reac
tion I sometimes get is disappointment, occasionally bordering on resentment, for my having desecrated my body by letting my age increase so. It’s like I’ve TPed myself, thrown eggs at myself, defaced myself as if I were a rowdy trick-or-treater, and some of them are appalled. I wish I’d understood the kind of contract I signed by wearing something like that, insinuating I would and will always remain somewhere in the erotic ballpark appearance-wise, enabling fans to remain connected to their younger, yearning selves—longing to be with me without having to realize that we’re both long past all of this in any urgent sense, and accepting it as a memory rather than an ongoing reality.
It is truly an honor to have been the first crush of so many boys. It’s just difficult to get my head around having spent so much time in so many heads—and that time was of a certain quality. It occurred to me one day, as I finished affixing my flowery signature to yet another photograph of my long-ago young self wearing that slave bikini, that it could appear as though someone had convinced me that if I signed enough of these provocative images, I would at some point magically return to being young and slim.
“You were my first crush.” I heard it so much I started asking who their second one was. We know what a first crush is to a teenager, but what does it mean to a five-year-old?
“But I thought you were mine! That I had found you—I was the only one who knew how beautiful you were—because you weren’t beautiful in that usual way women in film are, right?”
He realizes that I might take what he’s saying wrong. He doesn’t mean it that way. I reassure him, touch his arm; why not give him an anecdote? “I know what you mean, it’s fine. Go on.”
He checks my face to see if I mean it. I do. He continues, “So my friend, when I tell him about my crush, he goes, ‘Oh yeah, she’s awesome! I have a total crush on her, too. Everyone does.’ I got upset. I coulda punched him.”
“Why?”
“Because you were mine and I wanted to be the one who loved you. Me, maybe even help you . . .” He got embarrassed. “Anyway—I wanted to tell you.” He shrugs, then adds, “Thanks for my childhood,” and walks off. Wow, what a thing to be given credit for, to be thanked for! Because he didn’t mean his whole childhood—he meant the good bits. The parts he escaped to. I’m grateful for those good bits he shared with me. And this honor is one that should be and is shared massively and gratefully with George Lucas. And Pat McDermott.
• • •
we showed it to our daughter when she was five and we’ve been trying to figure out when to show it to our son, who’s four and a half. What do you think?”
It’s like they’re introducing the child to a tribe; there’s a ritual—you hold your child above your head, bring him toward some Wizard of Oz–like setup, place him down as an offering, and say, “Watch this.” Then you watch him watching Star Wars, trying to find out how much you have in common with your kid, see which character he’ll identify with, who he’ll root for, and hope that at the end of it you can still love your child in the same way. (I showed it to Billie when she was five, and her first reaction was that it was too loud. Also her second and third.)
If you can find a common language that runs from five to eighty-five, you’ve got yourself something, and Star Wars fans have something. In a way, it’s as if they know they have this great gift to bestow, and they want to bestow it as perfectly as possible—the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect situation for passing on this life-defining experience. And the kids will always remember for their entire lives how they first felt when they first saw their now favorite movie. And they were given this gift from their parents, and can now share it together. Truly a family affair.
“My mother showed it to me when I was six,” one mother says, “and it kick-started my life.”
The women forgive me for being in the metal bikini because they know I’m not in it voluntarily, and they let the men like it—even have their fairly innocuous little erections—because they know that I represent something else and not just that sex thing. Capable, reliable, equal to if not better than a man. I’m sure I didn’t pay enough attention to what things were like BL (Before Leia), but the movie came out at the same time as a popular slogan of the day, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” and many females of all ages seem to have been glad I’d arrived on the scene, a heroine for our time.
I was something women and men could agree on. They didn’t like me in the same way, but they liked me with the same intensity, and were all fine with the other sex liking me, too. Isn’t that weird? Think about it. And then stop and ponder something actually important.
• • •
sorry, but could you use a silver pen? Great, thanks. And wait, not there, maybe in that space next to your head? That would be great. And could you write the character’s name just under yours? PLO? What does that mean, Palestine something? Of course! Princess Leia Organa. Very funny. But could you maybe also just write Leia, like in parentheses or something? Thanks.
“This is so great, now I have pretty much everyone—once I get Harrison, I mean. Yeah, right, it sure is a long shot, but no harm in hoping, is there? I didn’t think I’d get Mark in the beginning ’cause at first he wasn’t doing them, and then all of a sudden they said he was going to that celebration in San Diego. At first I didn’t believe—I thought I’d fall over. Not fall fall, but I was light-headed, woozy-like.
“I guess you’ve probably noticed by now that I am really kind of a fanatic. Yet even as I say it, I really don’t feel, like, crazy. Star Wars gives me a feeling of . . . ongoingness, you know? Like it’s been here, and it’s still here, and it’ll stay here. Especially now with the new movie coming out. I mean, when they first said there was going to be a new movie I just—wow. You know? Dreams really can come true. That’s why I believe I’m going to get Harrison’s autograph. Sure, the odds are kind of against it, but who thought there’d really be Episode VII and that you guys were going to be in it? That would’ve seemed crazy to a lot of people. Not me, though, ’cause I believe in it. Not like religion believe, that would be schizo, sort of, but also not not like religion. It’s got good and evil like a religion and miracles and priests and devils.
“The thing about Star Wars for me is the characters. They feel so real to me, like you could know them if you met them. Like I’m talking to you. I always knew I’d talk to you one day. I don’t know how I knew, I just did. When I first saw you in A New Hope—and when did they start calling it that anyway, when did it stop being just Star Wars?—it was like I’d seen you before. No, not in Shampoo, I was too young for that, but you were so familiar. Not in a creepy way familiar, but familiar like . . . like family familiar. Hey! Those words are practically the same, right?
“See, it’s stuff like that! Stuff you didn’t know you knew till . . . till it was like you’d never not known it. That’s how I felt about Star Wars. About all of you guys in Star Wars. You were my family. Sure, your branch of the tree was more special than my actual family, but because of you being amazing, maybe I could be amazing one day. And even if I wasn’t, I was still related to awesome. To you.
“I saw myself in you, and that’s why I can stand here and talk to you. Why I got over being nervous so fast. Because—well, I just said why. Because of the Force. Because it moves through you and around you and into the person standing across from you. It’s like this thing my mom used to say: ‘I salute the light of the God within you.’ That’s the Force for me. I salute the light of the Force within and without you. The light that shines away from the dark side. Whatever it is that the Force wills, I will. I will its will. Its will, not mine, be done. Give me the knowledge of the all-knowing Force—give me the power to carry out the will of the Force. I thank the Force for empowering me with the light that shines its forceful rays on me, through me, and to infinity. May this force be with us all.
“Sorry, I know I must sound wacky—to some pe
ople I sound wacky, to others I don’t—but I can see that light in you, the light of the Force that unites us and binds us to see that we get to the next place. The one that waits for us, and that waiting is what many of us call safety. I feel the Force take my will and move it slowly and evermore its way, move me ever so radiantly into the next thing or things.
“And one of those things is Episode VII. I am a part of it just as it is of me. I’ve waited for it for a very long time. Those prequels weren’t Star Wars—Jar Jar Binks, God! But VII is the epitome of Star Wars. I do its bidding and trust its direction. I pulse with each beat of the Force. Its strength is mine.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go on like that. It happens when I get excited and . . . I don’t? Well, I am. I mean, initially I was but then I must’ve gotten comfortable—for whatever reason I feel comfortable around you. The weird thing is that a bunch of my friends say I look like you. No, I know, you’re not blond, but we have the same eye color—yeah, hazel. No? I thought they were . . . that’s funny. Maybe I’m getting you mixed up with your mom—I read hers were green, but they look hazel in a bunch of her pictures. Did you know that only men can be color-blind? I didn’t either!
“See, it’s stuff like that. Almost everyone I know knew that, but I didn’t, and now you didn’t, too! You get a bunch of little things like that and it adds up, which might be why I remind my friends of you. When you were fat, I was fat, too! And then we had to lose weight—huh? No, Disney didn’t send me a trainer. I guess they were just worried about you, they didn’t need everyone who looked like you to lose weight, too. Did you also get that pre-diabetes thing? No? Maybe you still will—not that I hope that, I was just seeing how else we could be similar.
The Princess Diarist Page 13
