A Celebrity Is Not A People

I’ve had a wonderful week!  Our dear friend (and Jackson’s Big Papi) Will has been in town.  We’ve spent several days on the ski slopes and we made a trip up to Buffalo to shop and see the Muppet movie.  During the show, the Muppets are trying to kidnap someone to act as a celebrity host for their show when Kermit says it’s wrong to kidnap people.  One of the Muppets replies, “A celebrity is not a people.”   Everyone laughed.

The next day we headed back to the ski hill and continued our family vacation.  Friday afternoon when I finally got settled in back at home and started going through my e-mails,  I wasn’t laughing any more.  Amid the literally 1,000+ e-mails were all the usual suspects.  Politicians, charities, petitions to signs, notes from friends, listserv chatter, my mother forgot my textplus number (again), my editor has a question, my publisher needs some paperwork. and a few nice letters from some readers.  I set about deleting some messages, replying to the time sensitive ones and setting aside some to answer when Will goes home today.  But as is becoming more and more the case, there’s a small pile of emails I’m just not sure how to respond to.

Recently I ran a series of funny blogs about the role Diane Gaidry played in the writing of LoveLife.  Well, at least I thought it was funny.  Diane and I have become friends.  I enjoy her company and value her opinions.  We are, however, not an item, not besties, and contrary to google search terms, I am not stalking her from the bushes.  What’s more, I will not give you her address. I will not give you her cell phone number, and I will not tell you what she feels like to hug.  I have been shocked and a little scared by the e-mails I’ve gotten to that effect. Perhaps it’s my fault for trying to set a humorous tone, but you see, despite the fact that Diane is a celebrity, she’s also a person.  I recently told her she was too famous for me to post about anymore because I couldn’t handle the aftermath. Guess I just broke that rule.

While we’re on the topic of famous friends, I’m also very blessed to know Georgia Beers.  Her name is the number two search term on the blog, and her website is my number one reference link, so I think most of you know we’re close.  She is one of the few lesbians I actually consider myself to be very close with, and I get that sometimes that sparks some interest.  We both laugh at the  jokes about her wife, Bonnie, killing me, because that’s what they are, jokes.  I love and respect Bonnie and like to think she feels the same for me. When someone told us there were rumors about our relationship, we laughed, and another writer friend said, “We all know you two started those rumors yourself.”   So naturally I didn’t take it seriously when someone asked me if the rumors were true.  When she pushed harder, I was bemused. I got a little pissed off and thought, “well if they were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you and left it at that.  But now I’ve begun to suspect what pissed me off wasn’t the rumor but the entitlement behind it. Despite her celebrity, Georgia Beers is a person.  So too is her wife and my wife and my son and her niece.  Still, I assumed people just felt entitled to personal information about famous women like Diane and Georgia, and they has misread my humor as opening the door for them.

I thought the trouble started with joking about my more famous friends. I blamed myself. Joking is all fun and good. We all do it, but I’ve started to wonder if maybe some folks just don’t get it. But then I got a Facebook message that wasn’t at all funny.  A reader had emailed me earlier in the week to say she’d enjoyed one of my books.  Then she emailed again to accuse me of being too big to e-mail her back.  She said I must not care about the “little people” and she’d think twice about ever buying my books again.  I was shocked and hurt.  I didn’t respond right away.  I didn’t know how to.  My immediate impulse was to defend myself by explaining I’d been on vacation, and apologize, but why?  Should I apologize for taking a few days to give my attention to my family? Or for occasionally being stretched a little thin? Should I be sorry for not being on call, for not working on her schedule? I alway work very hard to answer every e-mail.  I try to be open and available with blogs and Facebook and e-mails.  Anyone who takes 5 minutes to get to know me usually says, if anything, my problems stem from being too open, too light, too playful.

I’m terribly frustrated. Maybe “celebrity is not a people,” but I’m not even really that famous. Since when do I fall into the category of someone who must be on call 24/7? I am not a surgeon or a medical courier.   No one’s life or livelihood depends on my being available around the clock.  I don’t even have a real cell phone, just a pay-per-minute number I keep in the car for emergencies.  My extended family doesn’t even have unfettered access to my life.  When did complete strangers start to feel entitled to demand I drop everything to respond to them or give them private information?

Maybe some people really do believe “celebrity is not a people,” or maybe we’ve just grown accustomed to not seeing anyone as a person. I suppose it’s possible we just live in a society that’s used to no limits and instant gratification, but I’m not okay with it. I am a person. I have a family full of people. My friends are people. And my readers are people too. We have jobs and interests and responsibilities and passions.  We all make mistakes, we all do great things, we all get overwhelmed, and we all deserve a break.  Maybe the readers who’ve emailed lately have been overwhelmed, or have had bad days, or maybe they really wanted a piece of someone they don’t have  a right to take, but either way my response is the same. I do not regret working with Diane or being friends with Georgia or taking a vacation with my family, and I will not allow myself to be made to feel guilty about those things anymore.

From now on instead of apologizing for not being at someone’s beck and call, I’m going to stay, “Celebrity IS a people.” We are all people, and that’s how we deserve to be treated.