Almost Famous

Almost Famous
by David Wadler

I could feel them - the 25, maybe 30, pairs of eyes fixated on me. The excited whispers began a slow but constant crescendo as I made my exit from the theater. The rush of cold air stinging my face, I reached the sidewalk. In a few excruciatingly long seconds, I had stepped down from the altar and was now among them. An almost inaudible hush crept over the crowd of teenage girls jockeying for position. Their yearning was silent, but palpable. "Is it him?" they wondered collectively, hoping that their furtive glances would catch my eye, that I would approach them, that I would say something, do something, do anything.

You've seen us in airports and restaurants, grocery stores and cars that pull up alongside yours before speeding into the distance. We are celebrity doppelgangers. Sometimes, we are dead ringers for our more famous brethren. Often times, we come in bizarre combinations.

My friend, Dave, has mastered the art of identifying the piecemeal look-a-like. "It's Kirk Cameron from the nose up and David Duchovny for all parts below."

Dave's roommate, Greg, obviously more acutely aware than most simply by virtue of his cohabitant, is also quick to spot celebrity twins. Once, he sent me an email recounting a chance meeting with the now retired baseball player, Tony Gwynn. "So, I was talking to Gwynn for like ten minutes before I realized something. This guy was Asian. But I swear he looked and sounded so much like Gwynn that I didn't realize."

My brush with celebrity began three years ago when a co-worker and I went to the taping of new talk show that would never make it to air. By chance, we were seated behind a throng of teenage girls who were chattering away as is their wont at that stage in life. Little did I realize that some of the talk centered on me. Finally, one of them worked up the nerve to address me directly. "Excuse me," she said, "you look like just like Joey McIntyre!"

"Who? The New Kid?" I asked.

"He's got a solo career now. And an album," she answered. Her friends filled me in on the details of Joey's post-New Kids life. I struggled to keep up with them. Concerts, facts, figures, details of his romances - they seemed to know everything. Despite the years that had passed, I couldn't imagine anything beyond the adolescent multimillionaire of the first prefab Boy Band the world had ever known. (No, The Monkees don't count!) I was 25 and could grow a beard, for chrissakes. I didn't look anything like some…like some…like some New Kid!

I made the mistake of telling the story to my girlfriend, a journalist at People magazine. She hadn't seen Joey for years, but poked around and found some pictures. These images of the new Joey - or Joe Mac, as he had re-christened himself - were shared with her industry friends who immediately took to calling me Joey. I grudgingly admitted that I could see the resemblance, passing in some photos and striking in others. Sometimes it was downright eerie.

And so it began. Before long, Joey's career began to arc again. When he was in People's Most Eligible Bachelors Issue, I strutted as if I had been similarly anointed. It was all in good fun, of course. And my Halloween costume required little more than some gel in my hair. Perhaps if his career exploded like it once had, I would find myself eating free meals, signing autographs, and hugging teenage girls. If my privacy were being threatened, I could just say, "Nope. I just look like him."

It soon became clear that denying that I was Joey would be harder than I thought. As a joke, I used a photo of my doppelganger as my Instant Messenger icon. My girlfriend, father, and sister all thought it was me. My own family - tricked! If they couldn't differentiate, how could my thousands of fans? Umm, his thousands of fans.

The long-running joke crossed the line when I was walking down Broadway one day. What was it - that poster that caught my eye as I passed? My instinct was to keep going, to continue home. But it beckoned. It called me, imploring me to look, begging me to confirm that what I had seen was no illusion. As I turned around to walk back to it, I tried to piece together the image in my mind's eye. Seconds later, I was staring at it, mouth agape, as if I had stumbled onto Dorian Gray's portrait. What the hell was I doing on a poster? Tick, Tick…Boom!, it said, while beneath the text, a brunette and I smiled at passersby. "No, it can't be me. I'm not in a musical. I can hardly carry a tune," I thought. But he stared at me, the permanent smile on his face turning my confusion into a grin, and my grin into laughter. I too had been fooled.

Back on the sidewalk outside the theater, the expectant girls sighed in unison as they saw that I was not a pop music wunderkind, but a kindred spirit - only twice as old, male, and not head-over-heels in love with Tick, Tick…Boom!'s leading man. "Oh my God," said a twenty year-old, "I thought you were him!" And she had had ample time to differentiate. She was an usher at the theater, had seated me, and watched the show across the aisle from me.

Soon after, Natascia Diaz, the show's female lead came down the stairs, stopping for autographs and pictures. "Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt," I told her, "but do I look like anyone you know?"

"Yeah, you look like Joe," she answered. She was so matter-of-fact, so sure. There were no cognitive processes involved, just an instinctive response. I asked her if she could get him to take a picture with me. This would be the final confirmation. She grabbed Joe and brought him to me. Standing side by side, I introduced myself to him. He put his arm around my shoulder and my girlfriend's face blanched. She would later swear that she had seen my missing twin. "You just feel funny because you're attracted to a New Kid," I would tease her as soon as we were out of earshot. The ushers asked if they, too, could take a picture of Joe and me. Who were we, my twin and I, to slight our fans? Joe approved for the two of us and they took some snapshots too.

Mission accomplished, I remember thinking. I had the picture - the undisputable photographic evidence - and only felt slightly moronic for having asked. Before I could leave, though, I was stopped. "I'm not him," I insisted. These fans didn't care. Joe had walked away before they could capture his visage on film. "Take a picture of his butt," one girl said to the other. His derrière by now out of the camera's range, she turned her gaze to me. "You look just like him," she said. "We thought you were him, coming down the stairs before. Can we take a picture of you?"

"Would you rather just take a picture of me or be in the picture with me?" I asked. In an instant, each arm was draped around a teenage girl. We smiled for the camera as my girlfriend, shaking her head but grinning, lined up the shot. Click!
The wind had picked up and the icy cold once again nipped at me through my clothing. I headed to the 14th Street subway station to make the trip home. Periodically, I'd turn back to see if any of my/his fans were following me. If they stopped me, there was no way I could deny them a picture. But the teenage girls had faded into the distance, doubtless talking about the night that they had seen two for the price of one.

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