Prince & Charlie talk business (09/03/06)

So it's 12:43am, Tuesday night and I'm standing outside of Miceli's talking with Katherine about all sorts of stuff. And I think Katherine's in the middle of a monologue on Mexican courtesans when a modest black limo pulls up beside us. Big deal, could be any average moron, any pee-on could scrap together a few bucks and have a night out. LA is full of limos full of fake tits and real assholes. But the strange thing is that the limo just sits there for a couple minutes and no one gets out.
Finally a passenger side "chauffer" gets out and hurriedly and opens the curb side door to reveal a leggy, leggy beautiful Venezuelan model type followed shortly by the purple one. He steps out and helps the lady get situated with purse and everything. I'm looking and I swear I didn't hear ONE thing Katherine was saying after that. My hearing went out completely I got this weird tunnel vision and all I could sense was my heart beating out of my chest.
I looked back at Katherine who had had her back more towards the scene, my eyes a-bulge unable to utter a sound and she caught on quickly that I was having a seizure or an orgasm and she took a look over her left shoulder and looked back at me like she couldn't believe what she was seeing. But it was great because she looked at me as if to say, "this is so unbelievable, but so much more so because you're here and you're CRAZY about Prince."
He had this great gray suit on that was neither single nor double breasted. All his shit is custom so it's an original but the best way I could describe it would be to say it overlapped very high and had broad shoulders. I couldn't see any shirt but he had a black scarf wrapped around up to his head tight and neat. And of course, he had on his 3 inch heals. That's the number one question; just how short he is. He's a small guy. But he's a giant.
As he stepped up the curb and began walking around us I gathered whatever pathetic scrap of cool and calm I could collect, swallowed the lump in my throat, "nonchalantly" looked over at Prince as he passed me and coughed up a faux casual, "hey, how are ya" as if I was acknowledging a stranger passing by. With authentic cool and no hint of pretense, Prince looked me in the eye and acknowledged me with a glorious, "hey."
As soon as the exchange was over I stared un blinkingly at him as he and the Venezuelan walked through the door opened by his bodyguard and up the stairs to Mamma Juana's Latin night club.
I was completely unable to speak until the door closed with which I caused a scene so lively, so enthusiastic, so bewildered that I collapsed on poor Katherine with screams, whoops, yelps, "can you believe its and rubber legged pacing, jumping and dancing. I swear, I don't think I could give half a good gosh dang about any fool on film, TV or in music. I never have in the past, not to Russell Crowe, LL Cool J, Angelina, Isaac Hayes, Jon Voight or Joaquin Phoenix, but seeing Prince, it was like setting eyes on something that doesn't really exist, like a unicorn.
Imagine if you saw a unicorn in real life. Can you imagine what surprise, what exhilaration, what disbelief you'd experience? It would be surreal to say the least. I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about Prince. I mean, I listen to a lot of Prince. I have paraphernalia in my room, on my walls. I've been to a show. One of my most wonderful friends, Charles Jones has jammed with him. My friend Isabelle did makeup for his Grammy after party. Hearing these stories, listening to music, kind of getting to know an artist through his words and music, I guess I didn't realize how distanced he was from my reality having lived almost exclusively in my mind, which is the case with most things in life.
Most of us have never scene the President, Africa or my 6 pack but they exist, somewhere (under two inches of Mashti Malone's ice cream, Miceli's pizza and international candy.) And if we ever saw them face to face, it would be astonishing and surreal, (shit, it would be mind numbing) because you're not used to experiencing the actual, but just the conceptual. I think perhaps it is the very opposite of death. When someone close dies, you've almost exclusively experienced them in the real and know they are exclusively in the conceptual. Which means that meeting Prince was akin to the opposite of grieving.
So, after he walked in, I thought I'd stick around because I've heard stories about him not liking most clubs he goes to. If it's not cool or the vibe is whack, or what have you, he will leave really quickly. After four or five minutes he walked back out, Leggy McLeggerson in tow and right back up to the limo and off into the night. And I was spent. I told Katherine I had to go home and have some alone time to contemplate my life and stuff. Thusly, I sent out about 100 text messages and spoke with a host of people before I crashed at 3.
Most of what I thought about post encounter was along the lines me wanting to have a more meaningful exchange with Prince. I wanted to have a conversation, plant seeds for a friendship. I guess I just wasn't satisfied with that little morsel. I wanted to be up on stage and dance it up at a show or like another Prince story I heard from Megan, get to break it down on a dance floor with him. Man, that would be cool. Of course, jamming with him would be ridiculous.
It was weird for me to think that he was not somewhere else because I think when you imagine a celebrity, their image or likeness is always so accessible. They're always on TV, DVD or the internet and you can access "them" anytime you want. Which, in a very odd way, makes the "real" them so much more valuable. When I said hello to Prince, he was not in Minneapolis, he was not recording, he was not jamming at a club (yet), he was not making squealing noises or performing or acting strange or was he with anyone else famous. He was right there, in front of me and was a real human being acting like a real human being. I suppose that's a true experience of the surreal; the real seeming unreal or foreign. Like when I went to Maui and caught myself saying, "this looks so much like Adventure land." It's Adventure land that looks like Maui. It's twisted all up.
What I really wanted was desperately to say SOMETHING of import, but anything I could think of at the time was so trite and dull. What hasn't he heard before, "I love your music," "you're awesome"... I mean, there's very little. And most importantly, he was on a date enjoying himself so I didn't want to bother him. I have a lot of celebs who come into Miceli's, Eva Longoria came in last week, Ashlee Simpson and all the Simpsons used to come in all the time, Hassellhoff, Jay Mohr comes in a lot, Adam Sandler, Michael Keaton, Richard Dryfus, Lily Tomlin, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Zeus from that wrestling movie with Hulk Hogan(ha), Sean Astin, Alfonso Ribiera, all sorts, and I try all the time to just be friendly and treat them like normal people because I have empathy for them. I know there are a lot of perks but they are just people and to not be able to go anywhere and not have to second guess everybody's glances, motives and observations, well it must be very hard on a person.
I was thinking how it must be for Prince to go on a date. Holy shit, how do you find a woman to date that will treat you like a human being and not an icon?
Celebrity is very interesting to me, celebrities are not, but the phenomenon is very interesting.

Anyhow, that's my story plus some.