32. The NYC Code of Celebrity-Adjacent Behavior
The Year of Paying Attention
(Author’s note: the photos, left and below, discovered long after this chapter was written, are proof of both the author’s faulty memory, and his abject violation of the NYC Code of Celebrity-Adjacent Behavior, for which he apologizes to artists, celebrities, and most of all, to you, dear reader.)
On a warm Brooklyn summer night, Sarah and I sat by the window of a taco joint, two tables over from one of the world’s great guitar improvisers. Modest, quiet Bill Frisell was finishing his dinner.
Earlier that evening, I’d struggled with my costume — the Sun Ra t-shirt from the long-shuttered Lush Life jazz club wasn’t cutting it. It made me look fat. Instead I sported a plain button-down. Returning from the restaurant bathroom, I spied a fellow diner resplendent in a John Coltrane t-shirt. He’d committed. Sitting back down, I honored (or so I thought — ed.) the NYC Code of Celebrity-Adjacent Conduct: Pretend Famous Person Isn’t Right There (while surreptitiously texting friends). Corollary: No Surreptitious Cellphone Photos. Through the front window, code-violating fans walking to the venue gaped and pointed at Frisell, who was settling his bill. At that point, the guy at the next table lost control, and spoke directly to the guitarist. Frisell was polite.
After the musician and his party left, the guy said to his dinner companion, “It’s not like he’s constantly being bothered by people — he probably doesn’t get recognized very often.” This is precisely why the NYC Code of Celebrity-Adjacent Conduct exists: to protect artists. We settled up and went to the performance space, where I’d already placed Sarah’s jacket and my “murse,” or man-purse, on two front-row seats. Worth the risk. In the upper balcony a thin twenty-something wore a black t-shirt with large type reading “Unfuck The World.”
I’m going to describe something offensive. Decades ago at the racetrack where the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival takes place, I saw my most memorable t-shirt. Under a cartoon image of a leering skeleton sitting inside a toilet bowl with bone-legs akimbo outside it, the shirt read: Blow Me While I Take A Shit. Its wearer appeared otherwise unremarkable. I still wonder how he selected it for an afternoon of open-air strolling among thousands of strangers. How many copies of that shirt were printed? What if he saw someone wearing the same shirt — would it be like recognizing a member of one’s tribe, or more like spotting a competing starlet wearing your gown at the Golden Globes?
After a recent inventory, I concluded I could easily make it to my deathbed without acquiring even one more t-shirt, then promptly ordered a Dumpstaphunk model reading: “New Orleans Justice — In Funk We Trust.” Since I trust in funk, I had little choice. My collection includes NRBQ (2), Sun Ra (2), Steve Lacy, Stax Records, Blind Lemon Jefferson, The Louisiana Record Factory, and Dust-To-Digital Records. They rarely leave their drawer. For a while, to amuse myself and my friends Peter (art books) and Sean (poet), I made us all custom t-shirts. The first was the image of a gurney, inspired by a bumper stickers one of us saw, My Other Car Is A Trauma Vehicle. Unless we also made that up. My next creation, simple type on white shirt, read, “this never happened,” followed up by “the good news is we all get to die,” and finally, “Do Not Resuscitate.” Peter and I enjoy the discomfiting black humor of advancing age. We believe we’re unlikely to be shot for what our shirts say.
Sarah noticed Frisell’s audience was predominantly male. Audiences for guitar concerts swing that way, I said. “Maybe this would be a good place for women to meet men,” she said. Except for the higher-than-average dork factor, I countered. “Does that make you a dork?” she asked. I wasn’t wearing a t-shirt with the name of a band on it, so the answer was obvious.
***
On Independence Day, Manhattan predictably quiet and as often happens on a holiday, I felt blue, recalling many Fourth of July family reunions in Rhode Island with my ex-wife’s sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews, and our daughters, all wearing folded newspaper commodore hats, waving American flags, and parading around like jolly idiots.
Maybe I was blue because Sarah and I watched the movie Loving last night, the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the Black woman and white man who were arrested, then banished from Virginia for the crime of being married. This actually happened when I was a toddler in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Maybe it was the holiday news that North Korea has successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile overnight, reminding me that the petulant Narcissist-in-Chief in Washington isn’t the only person making the world less safe.
Next week: How Do I Sign Up For Your Gig?
