Famous People
Page 18
And I didn’t know anything about him—like, I didn’t know if he was still making music, and I didn’t know if he had a family or like, I didn’t know if he was sick or healthy—so I asked him, like: Hey, man. How are you doing? What’s going on with you?
And the old man just kind of looked at me and didn’t say anything.
And I was like: Nice tats, man. When do I get all these?
And the old man just looked at me and didn’t say anything.
And I was like: So I live this long? I live long enough to look like you?
And the old man just looked at me and didn’t say anything.
And I thought about what my fans would think if they could see right then what I was seeing. What would it mean for them if they knew that this was the end game? How would it affect the way they look at me now? Would they still like it when I posted a picture online? Would they still show up at my concerts and scream their heads off when I did my dance moves? They must all know somewhere in the back of their minds that this is where we’re heading, but what would it be like for them to actually SEE it? To actually hold it in their hands?
I noticed that the old man was singing something. He was just like, mouthing it really quietly, and so I listened—I pricked up my ears and really concentrated on what was coming out of his mouth—and even though he sounded like me, like, even though his voice was still undeniably MY voice, I guess just because I was so much older or like, because my voice had gotten really worn down over the years, it just sounded kind of … normal. Like, it wasn’t bad—I still sounded like someone who could carry a tune, maybe even like a professional—but the actual quality of the voice, the actual timbre and resonance, were nothing to write home about.
And I listened to the song he was singing, and I realized that it was “The Star-Spangled Banner.” LOL. It didn’t even really register at first, because the way he was singing it, it was just like he was taking the song at face value, you know? There were no trills, no extra measures, no pyrotechnics—he was just like, doing the song. I realized that without all the extras, without all the embellishments and the showmanship, the song actually kind of … sucks. There’s nothing to hold on to in terms of a hook or a melody.
And I tried to think back to the moment when my twelve-year-old self became a superstar. I tried to travel back in time to when my dad and I recorded that video at my desk in St. James. I was there, pulling out every trick in the book, putting all this energy and emotion and ambition into this thing that was probably never meant to be sung like that in the first place, that wasn’t even a song, really. I tried to connect with the little boy who was putting everything he had into this poem about rockets and bombs and ramparts so that he could prove to the world that he deserved to be where I am now, that the world had no choice but to put him there. And right at the moment when we finished recording, right when my dad pressed the button on the computer and said: That’s it, I paused everything and asked myself: Is this the life you imagined? Is this who you thought you would become?
I snapped out of the void—I came back to the real world, back to the studio with Mandy—and she had turned off the computer speakers that were playing “Be My Baby,” and she was looking at me like: Where did you just go?
And I told her about everything—the old man, the video, the national anthem—and Mandy listened to me for a minute, and then she was like: Go get your guitar.
And I was like: Okay. And I picked up my acoustic off of the little stand.
And Mandy was like: Play something.
And I was like: What do you want me to play?
And Mandy was like: We’re gonna make a new national anthem.
And I was like: Whoa. LOL.
And Mandy was like: It’s gotta be catchy, and it’s gotta be good, and it’s gotta be something that everybody can actually sing.
And I was like: Okay, I’m down.
And so I started playing a chord, and Mandy was like: Perfect.
And then she just lost her mind. LOL. We both did. Mandy and I just created like, one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, one of the best songs that’s ever existed. It’s simple, and beautiful, and the second you hear it, it’s stuck in your head forever. We were firing on all cylinders, surfing right in the middle of the pipe, totally in the zone. If we really wanted to, we could probably get all the signatures we needed and all the votes and pass a law that replaces the old one and makes it official, but I think we both realized as we were singing it that we didn’t really care if anyone else in the world ever heard it.
And I wanted to see how the song would sound if a normal person was singing it—like, I wanted to hear how it would sound if it weren’t being done by these next-level, otherworldly pop megastars—and so I entered the void. I found old-man me just hanging around in the nothingness, and I taught him all the notes. And when I heard how it sounded coming out of his mouth, I almost cried, because it actually sounded better. It was actually like I wasn’t even able to do the song justice with my voice as it is now. I had written the song for him.
And I guess Mandy must’ve been doing the same thing, because pretty soon, I could hear Future Mandy in there too. She showed up with her gray hair and her professor clothes, and she sounded just like Mandy, but her voice was so much richer, so much deeper, so much more full of life.
And pretty soon, Mandy herself showed up, and it was the four of us in the void: me, and Mandy, and Future Mandy the professor, and Future me the naked, saggy, tatted old man. And we were all just singing our hearts out, four normal people who didn’t exist.
* * *
The funny thing about a book like this is that by the time you’re reading it, you’ll probably already know more about my life than I do. Just because I stop writing, that doesn’t mean the gears stop turning. I’ll still be me. You can still count on the fact that whenever I do anything, someone is gonna write about it somewhere. Once, I was arrested in Idaho for having weed on my tour bus, and the news was playing on the TV in the police station, and they interrupted this really serious reporter—she was talking about a protest in Pittsburgh over this black guy who got shot by the cops—and they cut her off mid-sentence and said: We’re sorry, but we have to report on some breaking news. And they cut to a picture of the mugshot I had just taken half an hour ago and started describing the details of my arrest. So I’m not really worried about leaving anything out. If you’re curious about something, you can bet that somebody else will cover it. In a way, it’s easier to know everything about my life than it is to know nothing.
Maybe by the time you’re reading this, the second season of The Winstocks will have already premiered. Or maybe you’ll know what Mandy ended up majoring in in college. Or maybe you’ll know what ended up happening to Oddvar and the seed vault. Or maybe I’ll already be dead or in rehab or living off in the mountains somewhere. I don’t know.
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is what it would be like to read this book if you’d never heard of me before. I mean, obviously, most people who pick it up are gonna be fans of me or at least interested in my story, but I’ve been fantasizing about someone coming across it sometime way in the future, or someone just picking it up randomly at the library or in the airport when they’re in a hurry and wanting something to read. I keep asking myself what it would be like to approach my life totally fresh like that, you know? If the entirety of my being were contained in these pages.
How would that person want the book to end?
What would they be curious about?
I guess I almost wish that person would think this was a piece of fiction—like, I guess I almost wish they’d think someone made me up—because then they could imagine whatever they wanted about me for the rest of their lives. They’d be relieved of the burden of caring about what happens to me, relieved of the stress of keeping tabs.
Sometimes, I just walk around my house or I’m just eating dinner, and I can feel all this stress coming in from all these people I’ve n
ever met, all these people I don’t know. It’s like I can feel it seeping in through the walls—these people grinding their teeth and holding their breath because they can sense that it’s not gonna turn out well for me. Their whole body is telling them that, whether they like it or not, they’re a part of this story, and there’s no way it has a happy ending.
And for a lot of them, I think that makes them resent me, you know, because they never asked for this. I never asked if I could come into their lives, and they never asked for the responsibility. I just sort of opened the door one day and said: Hi! I’m here now. And a lot of them have their own methods of coping: Like, a lot of them are already sort of ironically predicting my downfall, and a lot of them are being really intense all the time about how meaningless I am and how little I matter to them, and a lot of them are sort of hedging their bets with as many people like me as possible so that whenever one of us falls or disappoints them or goes crazy in some predictable way, they can be like: That’s okay. I’ve got so many of these guys in my cupboard that I don’t have to mourn the loss of one of them for more than a second. And even the ones who love me, you know, like even the ones who’ve “chosen” to make me a part of their lives, even they sometimes feel like people who are just trying to make sense of this intrusion, just trying to take ownership over the trauma.
And I guess all I’d like to say to everybody is I’m sorry. I’m sorry you never really asked for me. I’m sorry I forced my way in. I know you’re just trying to live your own life without having to live mine too.
When I started all this, I would tell myself that I was just a kid trying hard to reach out to people, just a guy from St. James trying to touch the whole world. And, in a way, that’s true, but it doesn’t change the fact that I knew. I always knew what I was doing. Even when I was just starting out with my dad, I knew that we were trying to pull off an invasion. We wanted to muscle our way into the bloodstream, sneak ourselves into the soil, infect as many bodies as we could. And we didn’t really care about the violence, we weren’t going to stop until the mission was complete.
And now here we are. Here I am living inside you. And I hope you can forgive me.
Maybe it’d be really healthy for everybody to just think of me as a character for a while. Even if you know it’s a lie, even if the illusion will be broken in a week or a day or a minute, maybe it’d be really good to imagine that I’m no bigger or smaller than anything else you’d ever read in a book.
Maybe then you could close the cover on me and put me away on your shelf.
Maybe then you could move on to the next story.
Maybe then we could all be free.
* * *
The day that Mandy and I created our new national anthem, we didn’t end up kissing or anything.
We actually just ended up watching all our old videos online—we kind of fell into this internet hole where we kept pulling up different music videos and live performances that we’d done over the years. We went through Be My Baby and Heartache/Heartbreak and Roses and Mud and Mobilize, and every video we watched, we just found it so hilarious. We were teasing each other every time one of us would do a stupid dance move, and we were losing our shit at all the outfits we used to wear, and after a while, everybody else from the barbecue started wondering where we were and came to look for us, and they found us down in my studio watching all that shit, and pretty soon, we were all gathered around watching the videos, and it was like we were flipping through a family photo album or something, you know? It was actually really nice.
Later that night, after everyone went home, I ended up going online and posting all those tracks I made with my dad way back in the day—all those covers we recorded at the radio station in St. James. I didn’t have the rights or anything, so I just threw them all up on my website for free. I didn’t even think twice about it. I even included that crazy cover my dad sent me a few days before he killed himself.
And now everybody’s talking about it like that’s the fourth album, and it’s like: Why not, you know? It might as well be.
I haven’t given it a name yet or anything, but I guess once I do, I’ll have to update the tat on my arm with all the album titles.
The next morning, I went out and got a different tattoo.
I called up Optimus, and I was like: Yo, I know it’s a holiday, but do you think you could fit me in for a session? And he was like: Yeah, bro, I got you, drop by the spot.
And so I went to the parlor, and I had Optimus do a little something on my heart right under the seagull. I took a picture of it and emailed it to the graphic designer already so she could update the diagram, but she hasn’t given it a number yet.
For now, I’ll just describe it for you:
It’s a little shotgun going off with the shell flying out of it. And on the shell, in really tiny letters, it says:
“Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Stay safe.”
LOL.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Caroline Zancan, my brilliant editor.
Thank you to Henry Dunow, my agent and friend.
Thank you to Amy Glickman, Eli Gottlieb, and Kerry Cullen, my champions.
Thank you to Beth Heffron and Richard Kuritzkes, my always supportive parents.
Thank you to Jonathan Gordon, Isabel Siskin, Will Epstein, Mark Epstein, David Klass, Sander Gusinow, Sean Patrick McGowan, and Max Grey, my treasured early readers.
Thank you to Dianne McGunigle, my manager and confidant.
Thank you to Nicolas Jaar, my brother.
Thank you to Winnie Song, my eyes, ears, and conscience.
And thank you, finally, to Celine, my love. When I say I couldn’t have written this book without her, I mean it quite literally. This book is dedicated to her, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. I owe her everything and more, and it still won’t be enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JUSTIN KURITZKES was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York. Productions of his plays have been staged by The New Group, JACK, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. He is known on the internet for his “Potion Seller” video and for his pop album, Songs About My Wife. He has been awarded residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. This is his first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
FAMOUS PEOPLE. Copyright © 2019 by Justin Kuritzkes. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
[Cover art credit - we have e-rights for all print cover art]
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Kuritzkes, Justin, author.
Title: Famous people: a novel / Justin Kuritzkes.
Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038351 | ISBN 9781250309020 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Celebrities—Fiction. | Self-perception—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3611.U73228 F36 2019|DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038351
e-ISBN 9781250309037
First Edition: July 2019
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.