Leaving Orbit

by Margaret Lazarus Dean

  So I wait on Seventh Avenue in downtown Nashville, where I am to meet Buzz. It’s a disconcerting sensation, waiting on a sidewalk with my coat over my arm, dress and lipstick on, like waiting to be picked up for a date. Book festival patrons on their way to events meet my eye, seem to wonder why I’m standing here. I’m waiting for Buzz Aldrin, I want to tell them. But I would sound like a lunatic.

  When the limo finally pulls up, Buzz Aldrin pops out of it as if on springs.

  “I’m Buzz Aldrin,” he says as I approach him. But I’d know him anywhere. He is nearly eighty years old, but he is still cartoonishly handsome in a Dudley Do-Right way, with the deep chin cleft and sparkling eyes of a forties movie star. To my delight, he wears the same blue blazer he wore in the YouTube punch video; the color brings out the startling blue of his eyes. Buzz Aldrin is animated, twinkling, even, while we shake hands. He has absolutely no trace of the frailty or hesitation one might expect from a man his age. I introduce myself, and he repeats my name back to me, which thrills me.

  I realize I am holding on to Buzz’s hand too long. I can’t help it. I am exquisitely aware, in that moment, of the fact that his hand has been on the moon. This hand—this eighty-year-old white man’s hand—has traveled farther than anything I will ever again have the chance to touch. This hand, I think in that split second, may still have residual moon molecules on it. I think to myself: I am touching a moon hand. These thoughts are goofy and vaguely childlike, like so many we have about spaceflight, but I know the day is coming, not too long in the future, when there will no longer be any living human beings who have walked on the moon, no more moon molecules lingering in the creases of aging men’s hands. All this makes a handshake hard to pull off elegantly.

  Buzz turns to help his wife, Lois, out of the car. Lois is tiny and elegant, dressed in a sequined NASA shirt. They both carry Louis Vuitton overnight bags, part of his compensation for appearing in the ads connecting the brand with the fortieth anniversary of the moon landings. They have just arrived from a long flight but appear perfectly pressed and alert.

  Once we reach the authors’ green room, Buzz and I put on our name tags, look in our author goodie bags (each containing, among other things, a Moon Pie and an airplane-sized bottle of Jack Daniel’s), and settle in to wait for our event. We have nearly two hours until his talk is scheduled to begin. Lois has brought a magazine and leaves Buzz and me to chat. This is my chance.

  I don’t really know how to bring up my question, though. I am suddenly conscious of how annoying it must be for Buzz Aldrin to have these big questions sprung at him without warning, knowing that his answers may appear in print. He would probably rather relax and make small talk like anyone else. I hate to be the one to do this to him, to force him into interview mode.

  While I dither internally, Buzz asks politely about my book. I hand him a copy (having finished my own book event earlier in the day), then watch as he scans the jacket. Even though my book has been out for a while, has withstood reviews and polite corrections from people like Omar, this still makes me extremely nervous.

  “Did you read Encounter with Tiber?” Buzz asks.

  I murmur vaguely. Encounter with Tiber is a 1996 science fiction novel Buzz cowrote with John Barnes. I own the book—it’s a mass-market paperback with a debossed alien solar system on its cover. I’ve read the chapter that describes a fictional space shuttle disaster with great attention. But the novel spans centuries—millennia, actually—and begins with a seventy-five-character dramatis personae, longer than those of most Russian novels. Despite glowing reviews from the likes of Alan Shepard, Michael Collins, and Arthur C. Clarke, I’ve never gotten around to finishing it.

  Buzz asks a few polite questions—what kind of research I did, whether I, too, had been a thirteen-year-old when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. I tell him I was.

  “A terrible thing,” Buzz says. “We always thought the shuttle project was so much safer. Going to the moon was supposed to be the big risk, and the space shuttle was supposed to be this move toward safety and reliability.”

  This was part of the problem, of course—people thought the shuttle was as safe as an airliner, and were bored by that safety; they felt that much more betrayed when it turned out not even to be reliable. Buzz is right that it was a big risk going to the moon—I’d read the night before that President Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire, had drafted a speech for the president to give in the event the lunar module of Apollo 11 was unable to lift off the moon’s surface. The speech is eloquent and moving, a haunting voice from an alternate universe in which the worst has happened. It begins with the line: “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”

  “It was a terrible thing that one of the crew was a teacher,” Buzz adds.

  I consider telling Buzz about my theory that the inclusion of a schoolteacher on the flight, and the illfated attempts to publicize that particular flight to schoolchildren, altered irrevocably my generation’s feelings not only about spaceflight but also about our country, about the way the world works. American spacecraft had been taking astronauts safely to space and back since long before we were born, and so we understood human spaceflight as a normal state of events, a pre-existing condition, a birthright. For those who were already adults, Challenger was a terrible accident, but for children it was something more like a betrayal of our deepest trust. It permanently damaged our faith that the world made sense and that the adults were properly in charge of it.

  But I’m not confident this line of thinking will interest or engage Buzz. At a certain level, I’m afraid of seeming guilty of a particular type of unappetizing generational self-pity (“Boo-hoo, we watched a rocket explode on TV”) when everyone knows that, especially compared to his, my generation was strangely immune from tragedy. That an accident resulting in the deaths of seven people was, for us, the worst thing that had ever happened was evidence of how very sheltered we had been.

  “I always thought John Denver should have gotten to go on that flight,” Buzz says, interrupting my thoughts.

  “John … Denver?” I repeat, wondering whether he really means the singer.

  “Yeah, you know, ‘Rocky Mountain High’? He was a great advocate of spaceflight, and when NASA first talked about sending a civilian, they considered sending a creative person, a performer. John Denver could have written a song in space that would inspire generations to come.”

  I find myself unsure what to say to this. “I wonder if NASA feared that sending John Denver to space would have seemed more like a publicity stunt,” I offer.

  Buzz furrows his brow at this. He seems to have no idea what I’m talking about.

  “The whole point was publicity,” he says. “A schoolteacher might be a wonderful person, and teachers perform an important role in society, but a popular songwriter like John Denver reaches a lot more people. It’s just the numbers.” Satisfied, Buzz goes back to perusing my book. It’s true that Buzz’s own approach to publicity seems to bear out this philosophy.

  When it’s time, we gather up our things and prepare to depart the safety of the green room. There is a growing crowd of space enthusiasts gathering outside, and it’s time to face them.

  Buzz offers me his arm as we make our way toward the door, and I wish someone would take a picture of us so I can prove to my friends later that this is happening. On our way to the auditorium, we pass through a courtyard, where a table is set up for Buzz’s book signing after his talk; already a line of people, at least a hundred, snakes back and forth in front of the table. Some of those in the line are holding large stacks of books. It is an awkward moment, though one I suppose Buzz is accustomed to—passing within arm’s reach of the autograph seekers who would choose to stand out here for the duration of his talk, to hold their places in line rather than go inside to hear what he has to say. It’s uncomfortable to see the autograph seekers light up when they recognize Buzz, then look away s
heepishly.

  Luckily, there are still far more people who want to hear Buzz talk than those who hope to turn a profit from selling his signature. The auditorium seats sixteen hundred and is packed to capacity when we arrive. We loop our way around to the front, where seats have been reserved for Buzz, Lois, Buzz’s ghostwriter Ken Abraham, and me. I turn in my seat to take in the crowd, all of them watching us intently, and only then does my panic really set in. These people are hungry for Buzz Aldrin. You can see it in their eyes, especially the men of a certain age—the way they lean forward in their seats, fiddling nervously with their hands, searching Buzz’s face with awe. Squint a bit, and you can see them as little boys hunching in front of their TVs in the summer of 1969, their faces bathed in the silver light of the Sea of Tranquility.

  I take the stage shakily and get through my introduction. I start with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line about American lives not having second acts, a claim Buzz Aldrin’s life has clearly refuted. I run down a condensed list of Buzz’s accomplishments, quote from the plaque on the moon, refrain from weeping patriotically. Applause. Two minutes exactly.

  Buzz Aldrin takes my place at the podium and faces an audience now applauding wildly. He greets the crowd.

  They don’t stop clapping. In fact, they jump to their feet and clap harder.

  Buzz Aldrin stands calmly at the podium. He is in no hurry. He watches me walk away, down the length of the long stage.

  Then he turns to the audience and says, “Now, that’s a special lady.”

  This is a polite gesture from Buzz, nothing more, but it’s a moment I expect to see play back before my eyes during any near-death experience. I feel the attention of the crowd flick to me, but they know better than to fall for the distraction. They return their attention to Buzz. The applause grows to a thunderous peak; no one is even thinking about sitting down. Buzz nods graciously, gestures for the crowd to quiet. Sort of a papal gesture.

  I’ve never seen anything like this: it’s as if Elvis came back from the dead, or if the Beatles got back together. It’s palpable, this outpouring of love, of gratitude, just for his being here today, for having done what he did, so long ago.

  Buzz Aldrin speaks for an hour with no notes. His verbal style is roundabout, tangential, loopy, anecdotes starting out and never quite reaching their points; clauses starting out and never quite reaching their verbs. He is charming and handsome and he has walked on the moon, and we hang on his every word. He tells stories about getting to the moon and back, about the world tour he, Neil, and Mike took upon their return, about the travel reimbursement form he received from NASA that detailed his work-related travel: Houston to Cape Canaveral; Cape Canaveral to Moon; Moon to Cape Canaveral; Cape Canaveral to Houston. His total reimbursement for the trip was thirty-three dollars. He tells us about his idea for the Aldrin Cycler, a series of spacecraft put into permanent orbits around Earth and Mars that would allow humans to travel to Mars by hopping from one to the next. (This proposal might sound silly coming from most public figures, but Buzz’s expertise in orbital mechanics demands that we take the idea seriously). He ends by telling us about his idea he calls ShareSpace—a way of paying for human spaceflight through a lottery. Buy a ticket, get a chance in a random drawing to be selected to go to space. If you don’t get chosen, you have the satisfaction of knowing that your money went to help further the project. It’s actually a pretty great idea.

  After Buzz’s talk, followed by more thunderous applause, we make our way out to the table in the courtyard for the book signing. The line of people waiting now traces a winding path though the courtyard and out of sight, several hundred people at least. Buzz is unfazed. We take our seats at the table. Buzz greets the first person in line, signs the first book. The first person in line is, of course, a hard-core autograph collector—a white man in his forties, glasses and sweatshirt, with a workmanlike air and a complete lack of fawning. Though Buzz is polite, the exchange between them is one between people who have agreed to live with a certain amount of animosity. The autograph collector may in fact be a fan of spaceflight, may at one point have worshipped Buzz Aldrin and dreamed of being like him. Buzz, for his part, has probably met this autograph collector before, and at any rate has come to spot the type from a hundred paces. In addition to free events like this one, Buzz also participates in autograph trade shows, where attendees pay fees, often quite steep, for autographs. Buzz charges $500 for a simple autograph, more for signing an artifact, and even more as a “completion fee,” meaning a single photograph or artifact has been signed by all three Apollo 11 astronauts or both Gemini 12 astronauts. These items have exponentially higher value in the autograph market.

  The autograph seekers: there are droves of them, wherever astronauts are to be found. A combination of fandom, profiteering, and cottage industry, the trade in autographs has created an offshoot to the public appearances of astronauts, especially moonwalkers. A person standing in line with a stack of four hardcover copies of Buzz’s book has invested about sixty dollars; once all the books are signed, the same stack will be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. These people follow Buzz and the other moonwalkers everywhere they go, and their presence is both a reminder of the depth of fascination people have for astronauts and of the limitless drive to profit from that same fascination.

  Buzz encounters autograph collectors like this one at the trade shows, and in that context their relationship is more clearly defined—this man pays Buzz money, and in exchange Buzz signs whatever the man wants. But the man’s presence here today is a gray area—by showing up at a free book festival where Buzz is supporting his new book, the man is taking advantage of this appearance in a way that cheats the system, and both he and Buzz know it. The next in line is also an autograph collector, and the next. Buzz refuses to sign more than one book for the second man, though he’d done it for the previous one without complaint. The third autograph collector in line hands Buzz a book missing its title page. This is a trick some autograph collectors pull to get two autographs for the price of one book—he’d had Buzz sign the title page once, then knifed that page out to get the same book signed again. Buzz opens the book to find the title page gone, then slams it shut again and slides it back to the man with a scowl. The autograph collector accepts it and goes on his way without a word.

  Soon we start seeing real space fans, die-hard fans, who want to talk to Buzz about his time on the moon. After an hour, the line has barely moved; things are progressing slowly because every single person not only wants to have a book signed, each also wants the chance to meet Buzz, to speak with him, to get a picture with him. They all want to touch the moon hand. A lot of people in the line are of the right age for the space obsession born in childhood, but not all of them—plenty of autograph seekers are old enough to have already been adults when Buzz walked on the moon or young enough to have missed it.

  Among those of the right age range, everybody wants to tell Buzz Aldrin where they were and what they were doing while he was walking on the moon. These stories are almost uniformly uninteresting, as stories about watching TV tend to be. Buzz Aldrin nods and smiles politely. He is so patient with these stories it’s easy to forget that he has been listening to them for forty years.

  Some people bring objects they want Buzz to sign: a moon-shaped nightlight, the yellowed and brittle front page of a small-town newspaper with Buzz Aldrin’s face, along with those of Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, under the enormous headline MAN WALKS ON MOON. A T-shirt with the NASA logo on it. A book about the planets published in the fifties. Buzz is not entirely consistent in his policy on signing these things—many times he simply takes the object and scribbles on it without comment, but other times he refuses—he’s here to sign his new book today, he explains to those people. One thing he is consistent about is Buzz Lightyear action figures. He signs them all happily. He even carries a special indelible pen that writes well on the white plastic of Buzz Lightyear’s thigh. The connection that ignites betwe
en Buzz Aldrin and the children who love Buzz Lightyear is truly adorable to behold.

  Most people accept Buzz’s refusals politely and move on quickly. The professionals know that arguing or complaining will make no difference and could potentially get them blacklisted from future events; those who wanted his signature for themselves usually seem embarrassed and stammer out an apology.

  But one woman argues with Buzz. She is middle-aged, with dyed red hair and a slightly harried look. She carries a huge autograph book under her arm. She doesn’t have a copy of Buzz’s autobiography, and holds the autograph book out to him instead. For a moment he seems to waver, but he sizes her up and signs the autograph book wordlessly. The woman watches him do it, lips pursed. She does not try to tell him where she was and what she was doing while he walked on the moon.

  “I want to get the autographs of all the men who have walked on the moon in this book,” she says. “Do you know what is the best way to do that? Can I just mail it to people and ask them to mail it back?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Buzz answers sensibly. “We all get a lot of mail and a lot of requests for autographs, and things can get lost. If you really want to get as many as you can, you could go to trade shows.”