Professional Distance

Recently, my fellow high school buddies reconnected on facebook. Our entire click, save one have managed to rekindle that old camaraderie. We eventually found our lost buddy on myspace. She's a famous author now. We each e-mailed her in turn, I left her a voice mail,(we found her phone number on the web) but we haven't heard back from her. This feels odd to all of us. Sonya wasn't shy or reserved in high school. What happened? Why would she not want to reconnect with her old posse?

Last night I started thinking about my very first year as a stripper. I was 22, naive and got turned into a product before I even realized what had happened. Fred Horizon, a big name agent for the girls on the feature circuit named me, "Miss Nude London" because most of the music I played was British stuff that never made it big over here: Hawkwind , Marillion and Barkley James Harvest. My stage name was Kayleigh, after the Marillion song. As Kayleigh, I got put on the circuit and soon found myself shuffling from airport to hotel room to airport to hotel room. I didn't venture out much after the first feature gig. That was at the Hotel Pittsburgh.

When I arrived from the airport the desk clerk told me I had fan mail. "Fan Mail? How do I have fan mail?"

Apparently there was a guy who wrote to every feature who performed there. As I was booked as Miss Nude London, his letter talked about how he understood how lonely I must be being so far from home. He offered to keep me company and to show me around the city. Did I know that Pittsburgh played a prominent role in the shaping of America?

I was born in Colorado, not England, and my name is not Kayleigh. But this man assumed that Kayleigh was real and not some product he was buying into. When I quit dancing the first time, a few months later (it turns out that quitting dancing requires a twelve step program) I had to get a P.O. box for all the fan mail I was getting. All the letters were similar to Mr.Pittsburgh's.
I was relieved that I'd thought to get the p.o. box. I wouldn't want any of these men to have access to my correct address.

The following year, I enrolled at Palm Beach Community College as a theater major. I figured I already had experience on stage, so why not? There I attended classes taught by Frank Leahy. He was as instrumental in the shaping of my perception of the world as Andres Corbin Arthen was. He was the kind of teacher that commanded a following. But after every lecture, in spite of all of us following him to his office with questions and comments, he always slid into his office chair and smiled at us while closing the office door. "He's exercising professional distance." I was told. "It's the right thing to do." This was my first experience with what a boundery was and what enforcing it looked like. Suddenly my P.O. Box took on a new meaning.

I have celebrity crushes as most people do. As a teenager, I'd even written to some of them. But being on the other side and receiving those types of letters taught me a very valuable lesson. We can look at our pop culture icons, who come in varied degrees of celebrity, in one of two ways. We can become mentally unstable fanatics, in which case they have every right to be frightened of the very people who support their fame, or we could take a step back. Exercise some professional distance, and view our icons as archetypes, with qualities we might like to draw down and emulate. What is it we admire about them? What character trait do they possess that we find lacking in ourselves?

What qualities did Mr. Pittsburgh want to take away from getting to know me better? I personally can't think of any. I was 23, and my tit job was brand new. I hated feeling like I had to hide in my hotel room for my own safety. I was lonely. Working out, tanning, and keeping up with manicures, pedicures and waxing took up my whole day. I hated how much time maintaining my appearance took. There was no time for books or libraries or writing. What could Mr. Pittsburgh possibly hope to gain from knowing me?

Years later, after quitting dancing for the third time, I had a dream about one of my own celebrity crushes, Julian Lennon. I was on stage in one of New York's old Harmony lounges and he brushed a finger along the tattoo of theatre masks on my ankle. His touch caused me to turn into a blossoming lotus flower. How nice, I thought. Until I took this dream to the headshrinker, then I wasn't so amused.

Children are supposed to relate to the parent of the opposite sex around age four. Little boys learn to relate to their inner world via their mother and little girls learn to relate to the outer, vocational world via their father. (C.G. Jung) Since my biological father is a misogynist alcoholic, it came as no surprise what I would grow up to be. She then went on to tell me that I wasn't supposed to dream about people I didn't know personally. That it was a sign of ill mental health. Lady, what in the sam fuck do you think I'm here for? If I was healthy would we be having this conversation at all? Still it was disturbing. What did this mean? Could I potentially become another Mr. Pittsburgh? I was frightened by that prospect. Frightened enough to quit listening to his records for years.

At the time I was married to a professional comedian. He taught for the UCB theatre in NYC. This VH1 level of celebrity became our circle. Amy Pheoller was the director of DJ's improv troupe. She also got massages from me. She was lovely, as was Matt Walsh and Ian. Besser was a little aloof and quiet. Parties and nights out on the town kept us rubbing elbows with everyone from Comedy Central and Saturday Night Live. But I was Madame du Chatelet. I was Pamela Des Barres, the girlfriend, disposable. As such I knew my place. I spoke to the people I "consumed" as products briefly but I knew I wasn't privy to the inner circle. Parties like this were common. The hopefuls would sit or converse in one area and the celebs would gather in another, occasionally meeting in the middle politely. Would it be wrong to have dreams about Amy? I know her. She's been to my house. We've talked about marriage and kids, how she loves yoga and I hate it. Should I be scared of dreaming about Amy?

They're just dreams. They can mean something if I want them to, sure. But if I remain cognizant of my place, if I keep my distance, then they're just dreams.

I took a moment to re-visit all of this in my confusion regarding Sonya's apparent separation from her childhood crew. What can I do besides respect her decision? She's a product now. She needs to protect her personal life accordingly.

I looked at my JL dream again for the first time in 12 years. Maybe there was nothing wrong with that dream. Maybe I chose someone I admire to help me relate to the outer world vocationally because the person responsible for teaching me this in reality was so wanting. If I were then, to draw Julian Lennon down as an archetype, what would I want to learn from him?

Well, let's look at him shall we? What little do I actually know? He was chewed up and spat out by the recording industry. He retreated and became freaky crazy mad computer smart. Now he markets himself. That shit is raw and I want it.

As I continue my path toward becoming a professional writer, I am leery of a repeat of what happened to me when I was a dancer. I also know that people with Bi-polar disorder gravitate toward the superficiality of fame. I stopped writing for years because of that too. But I am confident that as long as I remain focused on the art and the art alone, I will be writing for the right reasons. I know I'll be a product again, but I want to be in control this time. Maybe that's what I want to draw down ... from a distance.