Mesmerized
by Mark F.
 
 

In 1998, he was coming to town to do a monologue, It's A Slippery Slope,
and the buzz was that he was going to do a booksigning for the same work.
The catering director of the place I work was trying to wangle a
relationship with the nearby bookstore, a relationship that yielded us
book-signing-luncheons, and we did a few of them and she was trying to get
Spalding for me and I had it all planned, I was going to approach him when
his water glass was low and present him with airplane-sized bottles of
vodka. There was a large portion of Monster In A Box devoted to his mix up
with Russian authorities for smuggling vodka into his empty water glass in
restaurants. Sadly, not enough people signed up for the luncheon so the
idea was scrapped at he instead was only available for a regular book
signing in the bookstore, so I went. And I waited in a sparse meager line
of people, and each of us approached him one at a time with our copies of
his book and he would ask for the name and then sign. It was all very
ordinary. Until I walked up, he just stared at me, it was really weird. He
was seated at a small desk, a dwarfed desk, really low to the ground and I
was standing and looking down at him, strange perspective. He's usually on
a big stage with a much handsomer desk, that's his thing, or was. He was
looking up at me and he didn't really do that for anyone else while I was
waiting, but I will never forget the weird way he was staring at me, the
outside edges of his eyebrows were raised and it really truly looked like
he was scared. Frightened. The look totally shattered me, I wasn't ready
for it and I suddenly felt very sorry for him and wanted to tell him
everything was going to be okay, but that's not what you say to your hero
upon first meeting, you don't bring to attention the incredible strain they
are under, even if you only suspect it, you don't say "I'm not like the
others - I'm your friend", no, but I wanted to. I wanted to say that. I
handed him my copy of his book and he took it silently, never taking his
eyes off of me and I told him my name and that broke the spell, then he
looked down, picked up his pen and wrote

To Mark,
Please Enjoy.
Spalding

And that was it. I thanked him and told him I was looking forward to his
show. He thanked me and I left.
 
I had a lousy seat at his performance, it was a small old theatre in the
middle of downtown, one I had never been to and was happy to get to go
inside, but I wanted to be in the front. I was on the mezzanine stage left.
I saw him just fine, could hear him perfectly, but he never really looked
at my side of the room. It was one of those performances where you remind
yourself every fifteen minutes that you are really there and this is really
happening, totally exhilarating. There he was in his checkered shirt,
sleeves rolled up, his carefully crafted words billowing out through the air.
I was mesmerized.
 
Afterwards I prowled around the neighborhood of the theatre peaking into
dive bars wondering if he was going to be in one. He wasn't.
 
 
Mark F.