Here It Is

you think im petting you but actually i a,m takig you away

When I was 19, I went to England to meet in person a friend from a BBS I'd been on all through high school (and so that I would know where I was sleeping for a little while, as I was homeless at the time). Traveled around in my then-friend, eventual fiance, eventual ex-I-haven't-spoken-to-in-twenty-years' little white florist van, experiencing the country.

Eventually we ended up in the city of Bath. I was absolutely charmed, but also a bit overwhelmed by the sheer density of flesh, the constant flow of bodies down the main streets. This was 2002; smart phones didn't exist, and both of us had no extra money to spare, so mostly what happened was we'd go to a city and wander around until we found an internet cafe, check email and forums as quick as we could, and then find somewhere we could park the van up for the night. Usually a field behind a pub, or a little campground.

Bath wasn't going to have any of that for us, Bath was going to have hostels where the cost of one bed would have paid for four somewhere else. So in the late afternoon we decided we'd wander around for another hour or two, find something to eat, and then make our way back to the expensive parking lot and go.

It's important for you to know that in those days, I was a starved, feral little thing. I was taking in everything I could, in this land that was similar to but weirdly different from my own, but in many cases I'd choose silence over speech because I just didn't know quite how to behave. So when we got turned around, and we were both getting quite hungry, my companion said "You're cute, ask someone for directions!" and I, quite unlike myself now, quailed. Flat out refused. People had been acting strange about my accent every time I'd opened my mouth for weeks, and I was tired of it. I shook my head.

My companion, wry and a little frustrated, looked around the shady, cobblestoned back street we were wandering down, and located a target; man, with other people, not moving with speed. He strode over and tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me, mate?"

And Anthony Stewart Head turned around with the most exhausted expression I'd ever seen on the face of a person who was moving of their own volition. The shape of his shoulders and the sag of his jaw, the way he choked back a sigh, this was clearly a man who'd had to do too much today by a long way, and we were adding to the burden. There was an instant, before he'd fully turned to face us, of "Oh, god. Fine." and then a gentle, friendly smile stitched itself onto his face from the bottom up. It took a moment to make it to his eyebrows. "Yes?"

"Sorry to bother you, but we're not from 'round here. Do you know where the closest Maccas is?"

And there was just this beat of what? this instant of bafflement, as the actor realized that my companion had no idea who he was. He was just some guy, treating the actor as just some guy. And a real smile bloomed right through the other one, absolutely transforming his face, crinkling up his eyes. The woman standing next to him--blonde, warm-eyed, grinning, wearing a black, BtVS-branded baseball cap--made a little delighted noise.

"No, I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you."

His eyes flickered over to me, where I stood maybe three feet behind my companion, and the smile crinkled more. I can't describe what an expression of recognition looks like, on a human face, but most of us know what it looks like; he knew it, on mine.

And I had a mad instant of wanting to say "I really liked you, in VR5." It had been a terrible show, cancelled before the full season aired, and I'd found parts of it so compelling I couldn't stop chewing on them. I'd handwritten a short piece of fic about the character he played in it. But he looked so tired, and so delighted to be incognito, that I continued to hold my tongue.

My companion said "Aw. All right, then, sorry to trouble you," and turned to walk me toward a brighter street. The actor tilted his head a little toward me and winked, I see you, I see you seeing me, and then the woman I now know for sure was his wife took his arm, and the two of them turned the other direction.

Two hundred feet off, I said "You have no idea who that was, do you." "Who?" "The man you talked to! Look--" the wider street had a Virgin Megastore on it, and I steered my companion over, pulled him inside, went to the poster rack I knew they'd have, flipped through the offerings for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer poster that I knew would be there. "Look!" Giles, looking directly at the viewer, slightly off the middle of the group of serious-looking college students. "Oh, fuck. That was definitely him. Did you want an autograph?" I didn't. I wanted to leave him be. I've thought occasionally for nearly 25 years, now--longer than I'd been alive at that point--that maybe I'd run into the man again and tell him, I'd really liked him in a little show he did thirteen episodes of, two years before Buffy started airing. I'd think, how silly, that I still have such a strong mental image of his character crawling exhausted onto the female lead's couch and falling immediately asleep, and how much that scene changed the things Baby Gen was writing, and the things I've written since.

I won't get to tell him now, not that I probably ever really would have. But I'm still glad I left him be.