The Famous Friend in My Head
There is a famous actor who lives in my neighborhood. He’s immediately recognizable, which he must know, as he often wears a KN95 mask. It could be a COVID precaution, but I don’t think so.
I’ve been seeing him around a lot lately. Not a casual sighting now and again, but a near-daily run-in, sometimes more than once a day. I usually see him at the coffee shop, but also at the playground, the bookstore, or just passing by on the street. We have stood arm to arm at the farmers’ market. I once opened a door into his face. Are we cosmically connected, or are we just neighbors in the same age range with the same interests and similarly young families? Is there a difference?
Depending on your definition, the actor is far from the only famous person I see around regularly. There’s the pioneering experimental guitarist, the British character actress, the YouTube cooking star, the kooky supermodel, the artist who wears a lot of Prada, the artist who does not, and the heavily bearded photographer, a legendary documentarian of counterculture. We all live in a small, charming area in Brooklyn, where people have quiet, routine lives. It’s a nice place to raise children, which the actor and I both have. I like to bring my daughter to a coffee shop in the morning and share a muffin with her. That’s where I first started to see the actor. We’d watch him stop by the front door and put on his mask before walking inside. I think everyone still knew who he was, but — message received — we left him alone. Once, though, he went up to the counter barefaced.
“You look like …” the barista said. The actor didn’t say anything. “Are you …?” He nodded. Then he ordered a matcha. I know, because I made a point to listen. I’m not proud of this, but it’s true.
Seeing the actor so much started to short-circuit my brain. It was a feeling not so different from the cognitive dissonance of seeing my teacher in the grocery store as a small boy, but amplified a million times. The actor should be frozen in my TV forever the moment I click “off” on the remote. That he was not, and that with his autonomy and Hollywood money was choosing to do the same stuff as me, felt frankly weird. What did his being omnipresent in my life say about me, about my choices, my desires, my goals? Was there no better place to be than where I already was?
The actor is really an artist. He’s played roles with sensitivity, languor. After getting over being starstruck, I was a mix of emotions. I was envious of his power, money, recognition. His ability to thrive, on his terms. I wanted to step into his spotlight, excited that some of it might shine my way. Surely he must be a sensitive and attentive parent, the rare kind of father with whom I could find companionship and understanding. I’d seen him embody characters with great depth; clearly within him lay a vast ocean of feeling, waiting to be tapped. I too contained a vast ocean. With so much in common, could I ask him to be my friend?
Of course, I mostly talk to non-famous adults, regularly socializing with other parents at the playground. Which can be nice, but being a parent is not a shared interest around which to define a friendship. Once, in an effort to make more dad friends, I found myself at drinks with three other fathers. They talked about basketball and sneakers. It felt posturing, as though they were playacting what dudes on a night out talk about. I had hoped we’d talk about our kids, commune, emote. No such luck.
But it’s often too difficult to find the time or energy to hang out with friends who live outside the immediate radius of my house. My free time is dedicated to sleeping. It can take a Herculean effort to see childless friends who want to hang out after my daughter’s bedtime. Her bedtime is 7 p.m. Mine is 8. I bet the actor doesn’t need so much sleep. He probably puts the kids to bed and stays up late, pondering the lives of others. Empathy is part of his trade.
I quit my job last fall. The company I was working for was beginning to melt down and I figured I’d be laid off soon, so I might as well go out on my own terms. I decided to finally write a book, something I’d longed to do for decades. Things would be tight, but we’d be okay for a year, my wife and I figured as we did the math. I’d pack a lunch, tap into savings. More worrisome was the potential social isolation. What would I do without colleagues? Without the ability to bullshit on Slack? Proximity and routine are a big part of friendship. That’s why co-workers are so important: They are always there. Your days are ruled by similar minutiae. As my company failed, I bonded with my colleagues over the ins and outs of bankruptcy. Not how I imagined I’d find rapport, but you take it where you can get it. If I left, I’d be choosing to transition to interiority, a dicey proposition.
It’s become such a truism that it’s difficult to make friends as an adult that most people don’t even try. But, even as a harried parent, despite the time crunch and the exhaustion, I still do. I love talking to interesting people. So I will ask you for your number; I will follow up. I will suggest plans and give you a proposed date, time, and location. Even then, after breaking the seal and getting beers one evening or sitting on a park bench for a little while one day, it’s really difficult to elevate a new acquaintance into a friend. There is really no way to see a new person regularly enough to have something to build off of in the way you do with your childhood friends, your college friends, your colleagues.
My wife and I could calculate that we’d have enough money to pay for our nanny for a year, but we could not set aside an emergency fund of friendship. The book is a memoir, largely based around the worst thing that I could ever imagine happening to me, which did actually end up happening. Spending my days writing it meant I would need to turn inward; it was not light fare. Would I wither and fall apart inside the hollow chambers of my own brain? More importantly, would I destroy my marriage by live-texting my wife every thought that came into my mind, then repeating myself the second she got home from work? It was a legitimate concern.
To get me out of the house, my wife bought me a membership to a co-working space nearby, a no-frills office lacking in power outlets where people sit around at tables quietly. One day, the famous actor started showing up there. It is not a big place. I saw him in the bathroom line, at the water fountain. No KN95, no pretense. He was, with a bit of a stretch of the imagination, now my co-worker. There is no way he didn’t recognize me. Right? But, if so, he never let on. No smile, no nod. This did not feel good; did I not exist? The whole thing rankled me. It flustered me; it vexed me. If I saw any random person as much as I saw him, I would have said hello a long time ago. It would be rude not to. With the actor, I respected his celebrity wall and quashed my desire to make nice. Instead of pleasantries, we now had months of silent pretending. At least, that’s how it felt on my end. He probably didn’t have a clue, which is arguably worse. There is no proper social etiquette in place for having a movie star confirm your very being.
One day, I saw the actor on the playground with his son and daughter. There are a lot of playgrounds in the neighborhood, but this one is a bit smaller, slightly more out of the way. The actor was over by the swings, doing the same thing I usually do: pushing. He looked not so intimidating; he looked like a dad from the neighborhood. Which he was and he wasn’t. Maybe I’d watched him onscreen for years, but ours wasn’t a parasocial relationship. He was right here in front of me. Even if I accepted the difficulties of making friends as an adult, this scenario could not have been any more dummyproof. Here was an appropriate companion, dropped into my quiet life by the powers that be. Here was the answer to my desire to feel proximity to power, to be acknowledged as worthwhile by the creative elite, as well as to feel simply less alone. All the tantalizing and stupid feelings his presence provoked, all my problems, base and mundane, he could fix everything. We basically were already friends, I just needed to finally break the fourth wall.
“Sorry about the Oscar snub,” I wanted to say. “Always loved your work. Been seeing you around.” What I fantasized he’d say in return was, “Yeah, been seeing you around too. Most people are scared to approach me and I’m quite lonely, so thanks for having the courage to say hello.” And then we’d start the first of many convivial conversations on the road to friendship. None of that happened, of course. I left him alone.
My wife took my daughter to the jungle gym, so I went to sit down on a bench. Nearby, rocking his sleeping child in the stroller, I saw a guy reading a book. He had a mustache, a denim shirt, a lazy stylishness I myself tried to cultivate. A good prospect. As I looked closer, I saw the book was by French philosopher-novelist Michel Houellebecq. I wouldn’t really recommend trying to get any reading at all done on the playground, but that he was tackling such heady literature on a bench next to the swing set made me laugh. So I said something about it to him, and we started talking. He said he’d had his second child not so long ago, and he was trying to fit in reading whenever he could because, at home, during his minimal free time, he could barely stay awake. He was worried he looked silly. I told him no, I admired his ambition and understood his predicament. He asked me if I lived nearby, which I said I did, and took as a sign that maybe he did too. If you see a dad once on the playground, you see him again. Next time, the conversation could build. We could talk fatherhood, books, life, love, sleepiness. We could exchange numbers, meet up with our kids on purpose. If I couldn’t have a globally esteemed thespian for a parent friend, I’d settle for a nice dad to hang out with sometimes, to make the playground seem a bit more like the rest of my world. But said he lived a couple neighborhoods over; he was just passing through on his way to a restaurant where his wife knew the owner. On the walk over, his older daughter saw the playground and demanded they stop. While we were chatting, his wife and daughter came over. I had to do a double-take to confirm that, yes, his wife was a very famous actress. She said it was time to go. I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again. After they left, I looked up the restaurant; it’s co-owned by Michael Cera.
My daughter wandered over to the swings, where the actor still was. She had a small soccer ball that his daughter admired. “How old?” I asked the actor about his son, the younger of the two. A typical playground icebreaker. It was my first time ever speaking to him. He told me. He was very close in age to my daughter. Usually people remark on that, and it’s a doorway to something. Maybe not an entire new friendship, not a life-altering recognition of sameness, but a nod toward acknowledgment of our parallel journeys. But there was nothing. Could it be that the actor was actually unfriendly? That maybe he wasn’t reserved because he was a celebrity, but that he was not particularly nice? Could it be that it was I who did not want to be friends with him? An impossible scenario that I had failed to consider.
His daughter wandered away. I went to push mine in the swings. I was disappointed. In myself, in him. It was not meant to be. I knew I’d see him around again, knew we’d say nothing. Sometimes, even if you want to speak up, it’s better to keep quiet. But better for who?
His daughter returned with a soccer ball of her own and showed it to my daughter and me. “Look,” she said. “Same.” “The same! Yes!” I said. At least she was friendly.
The next time I saw the actor was after a month or two. I imagined he was gone filming something. IMDb confirmed he was in preproduction. Here he was now, back in the neighborhood, crossing the street in front of me, wearing long pants and a flannel on a hot afternoon. I saw him again the next day, or maybe the day after, when I was walking back from the playground. He was standing in the doorway of a supermarket across the street, talking casually to a man I did not recognize. Was he famous too? Or someone like me? The actor was holding something he’d just bought. I tried to see what it was, but I couldn’t get close enough.
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