Brush With Fame ...

Last night I was at the bar and met a guy who's company I really enjoyed. We laughed, talked and drank. After a couple of beers, my old personality started to surface and I started telling one story after the other. One of those stories was my brush with fame with a short little English celebrity of long ago.

One night several years ago I was out with a friend barhopping until the wee hours of the morning. Our routine after a night drinking would be to go to Little Pete's, a diner in Center City Philadelphia that serves greasy eggs and the best burgers around. It was around 3 in the morning and we settled into our booth and placed our orders.

I had the sudden need to take a leak, so I headed off past the kitchen and down a narrow hall to the bathrooms. One of the best feelings in the world is relieving yourself of a drunken piss. As your bladder empties itself, you get a rush of calmness that seems to envelope your whole body. That was the state I was in cramped up in the tiny little bathroom. Drunk and hungry, I found relief and tranquility as I stared at the small white porcelain tiles on the wall infront of me. My mind was at peace and my thoughts drifted away from my bladder and back to my waiting plate of eggs and sausage.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"I'll be right out." I mumbled softly, not wanting to disturb the delicate flow.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"I'll be right out..." I repeated, alittle louder and slightly more annoyed this time.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"Jesus F. Christ!" The peaceful moment gone, I forced the rest of the beer out, stuffed everything back in and zipped up. "I can't even piss without being bothered." I yelled at the closed door as I quickly washed my hands.

I threw open the door and stepped out into the narrow hall, coming face to face with a guy much shorter than me with a surprised, but cocky look in his eyes. "You can't wait a couple minutes, can you?" I yelled in his face.

With a mousy English accent, he said: "I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was in there."

I stormed off down the hall, through the kitchen and out into the dining area. And I suddenly stopped. Slowly, I turned and looked back the way I had just come. A look of confusion on my face, I tried to place that familiar voice.

The waitress was just placing our food down on the table and I slid into the booth. I looked at my friend sitting across from me.

"You know what?"

"What?"

"I think a Monkey just tried to get into the bathroom when I was in there."

He looked at me through bloodshot eyes, a forkful of scrambled eggs raised to his mouth. "Huh?"

"I was taking a leak and a Monkey tried to break down the door."

"You're fucking drunk!"

I looked off towards the direction of the bathroom, half convinced that I had some strange hallucination. Then he appeared.

"Look!" I pointed.

My friend turned his head and he immediately recognized the has-been singer. He looked back at me and then back at Davey Jones. As the Monkey walked past our table, my friend looked once again at me and burst out laughing. I started laughing and couldn't stop. Tears streamed down my face, my stomach ached and I couldn't catch my breath.

It was probably one of the most surreal moments I've ever had. Here's a guy who, although I liked the old TV show, I couldn't stand him. Even at 4 years old, he skeeved me somethin' awful. It's a guy I haven't seen or thought of in probably 25 years and all of a sudden he's banging down a bathroom door in a 24-hour dive diner at 3 o'clock in the morning!

It was almost as strange as my mom casually announcing at the dinner table one night that a big black man tried to hit on her in an elevator. My dad nearly fell off his chair, not at the fact that my mom was hit on, not at the fact that she was hit on by a "big black man", but at the fact of how she casually made the announcement as if she were asking someone to pass the butter.

Turns out, the "big black man" was James Earl Jones.