Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash
“Dating anyone famous these days?” is how Frankie and I always greet one another. It breaks the ice, sets a tone, helps us assume our positions. As if we might say, “I’m married now.” Or confess our undying love for the other. Or share any intriguing anecdotes in between. Actually, it’s a way to say I knew you when; don’t try to put on airs with me. Or, conversely, a way to say I saw your raw potential before anyone else did, aren’t I discerning? Or just working our vibe as if it were not a fluke, or else, the very definition of one, our vibe that is our fluke and vice versa.
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When I was little, back in Iowa, my dad would bring me the autographs of every (retired) professional athlete who came to our town for a book signing or charity event. I never knew who they were. I felt bad to disappoint him, but to fake enthusiasm, I feared, would only encourage him or come off as phony, or both.
Meanwhile, my mom was best friends with a lady whose niece, a model, was dating a football star. The niece ended up on a hit TV show, then marrying a famous actor, and the football star ended up doing Medicare supplement commercials sponsoring cable news.
Despite my own sports indifference, and lack of modeling potential, I have succeeded beyond my late parents’ wildest dreams. One of my careers is more practical and pays better, the other is more glamorous, and, unless you are literally famous, like most of my teachers and some of my classmates, barely pays at all. I am well-established in both, not famous in either, which is ideal. At the graduation dinner of one of my classmates I sat by her stepfather whose son was a U.S. Senator. All I could think of to say was, “does your son want to be President?” the obvious answer being, “they all do.”
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Frankie lives in the state with the most conventions, resorts, conferences and malls, full of flashy wealthy people and quirky less wealthy people. Frankie is just a nice Midwestern boy, transplanted. He still visits his family up here and I go to a lot of conferences, so we see each other here or there, now and then. At one conference I met a guy who worked at the White House with one U.S. President and who went to college with another.
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One of my cats became famous when she ate some newsworthy tainted food that affected her kidneys and an AP reporter met us at the vet’s office. We were in USA Today. We were in a German paper, in German. And all over the internet. She was 18, at the time, but she ended up living to be 23.
She and Frankie and I used to sleep like three nested spoons: Medium, small, tiny.
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Frankie is sensual, white-boy ethnic, like pumpernickel bread and hearty bean soup. Not the most exciting thing on the menu, but one a young, shell-shocked divorcee might never tire of, meal after meal, never getting old; seemingly something you never want to skip. Until I finally did.
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A C-list celebrity couple used to live in a mansion two doors down from my ugly cinder block apartment building. The guy won that reality show starring the guy who later became POTUS, (the same one my conference buddy went to school with), and would landscape his tiny lawn in a baseball cap. His wife and I had the same hair stylist, who used to play basketball with the other guy who became the (prior, athletic) POTUS.
One of my former co-workers later won a Grammy. She helped me paint my windowsills and I bought her dinner at that Chinese restaurant where I once saw a palm-sized waterbug stride across a platter. I asked her how she had transcended her Appalachian roots and she mentioned “discipline.”
Her friend, another co-worker was the ex-squeeze of a beloved movie critic who name-checked her all over his best-selling memoir as the one he let get away because his mother didn’t approve. One night she and I went to a bar they used to frequent and the bartender said “she used to be so beautiful and all the men wanted her,” which was incredibly rude.
A different job, another beautiful fellow employee, but one I never spoke with directly; she was so tall and driven, although I understood she meant well. She was the wife of my future hair stylist’s then basketball buddy, eventually becoming FLOTUS to his POTUS.
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Frankie’s (estranged) sister was a guest on the talk show of the 90s, the one with its own studio, the one where cars were bestowed on the audience like party favors, claiming she’d witnessed ritual murders. Frankie ponders, with irony, how he and his other siblings could have missed such memorable events. Repression, most likely.
After all, Frankie’s dad used to joke around about a guy they knew being mobbed up, and it was all hilarious until the guy was gang-style executed.
After we broke up, Frankie continued his toil as an actuary then ended up selling a patent to a top tech firm, allowing him to live his low-key life in his famously quirky state.
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In college my then-boyfriend (the only guy, so far, I ended up marrying) and I flooded our college’s assembly bureau suggestion drop boxes using all different handwritings and inks, with intent of nominating a best-selling author for a lecture. It worked, and after the lecture we each brought him a book to autograph. That author was so beautiful then, there was a poster of him in a singlet, and he ended up mega-successful but the kind of creep who would be played by Dominic West in the (hypothetical) movie of his life. I got custody of both books after the divorce. My ex-husband now has a boring job but a side career an actor who only appears in a specific iconic official science fiction fully masked costume, but has probably met a few famous people.
We still text; I call it ‘exting.
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When I Google my (other) old boyfriends, I’m not trying to hook up or even get in touch with them, let alone recycle. And I’m not jealous nor envious; I’m not gonna kidnap or photograph or talk to their offspring. I’m not keeping tabs or score. Just tracing a different path, like time travel—if our paths had converged a little longer, what would be different for either of us? A thought experiment.
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Recently, Frankie and I were in some mall looking for a Dairy Queen. I was suddenly thirsty and Frankie handed me a bottle of grapefruit-flavored water without my asking, his arm brushing mine. I hate grapefruit and felt, after all these years, he really should have known better. Then I took a swig and it was so delicious and I realized that this was a lot like dating and that we are probably, technically the most famous couple either of us actually know.
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An alum of Warren Wilson College's MFA Program for Writers, Julie Benesh is recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant. Her writing can be found in Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Tin House Magazine (print), Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Gulf Stream, Cleaver, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, New World Writing, and other places, and is forthcoming in Hobart. Originally from Iowa, Julie now lives in Chicago where she works as a management consultant, professor of business psychology, and higher education leader and teaches creative writing at The Newberry Library. Reach her at juliebnsh@gmail.com.