#dietofdisappointment

The Beaux Arts white light dripping from the ceiling of the Celeste Bartos discussion room in the New York Public Library bounces off the sea of balding men and shines straight onto my face. The door opens, inviting in a gust of wind as another hairless man with suede elbow patches and thick rimmed glasses waltzes in, his face angled towards the stage as he walks in the opposite direction to the back of the room. This isn't the first time I shivered to see Elvis Costello this week.

Elvis Costello discusses Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink at the NYPL

I took Wednesday off from work to line up all day in Cobble Hill for his book signing. You'd think he would've been surprised to see the first person in line was under fifty but the stale aroma of whiskey in the air and his preoccupation with the frail redhead behind me (a self-proclaimed "moderate fan" whose favorite album was The Best of Elvis Costello: The Complete 10 Years) declared total indifference. I tried to feel flattered when he called my name beautiful, but remained unmoved at large. I'm sure that would have made Frank from Staten Island's day, though. He didn't even care if his copy was inscribed after taking a ferry, a train, and two taxis just to wait four hours for this man.

Heavy with the weight of presumed rejection and two six-hundred-page hardbacks (I bought a copy for Ariel, too), I walk towards the direction of the F train. The idea of respecting this man suddenly felt very alien. He was sixty-one and I was expecting him to flirt with me like he was twenty-four. But he was my Peter Pan, he was twenty four when I was fourteen, and would probably remain twenty-four well after I turn forty. This made it conveniently easy to disregard he was old enough to be my father's uncle, and has three children from two different wives, one of them being Diana Krall.

Now I am sat between two elderly men, embarrassingly holding on to a letter I wrote to Costello in a bathroom stall at work. Krista tried to talk me into dousing it in perfume and signing it with a Fire and Ice kiss (thank you Revlon for aptly articulating my MO in lipstick colors). I dismissed her suggestion but secretly sprayed some Vanilla Cherry body spray when she wasn't looking. I explained: "he might fantasize about Miss Bueno Aires in a world of sexy lingerie in "Tokyo Storm Warning", but he's certainly the late-night, candlelit drinks-and-conversation purist". But, then again, that was a premature notion of mine from when I wholeheartedly believed he could reform the good-girl-gone-groupie because he saw the innocence behind her uncombed blond hair. After reading his autobiography, I realize I may have projected ten years of my life onto songs that essentially stitched newspaper headlines and commuter observations together. I pictured him to be possessive and obsessive, somebody with an appetite for desire, not destruction. In reality he sent the same love letter to twelve different lovers at a safe distance from each other so they could think they were exclusively getting his attention.

I'm not entirely sure what drew me to him in the first place--maybe it was the way he wrote about the misery of being alone with your thoughts growing up. Maybe it was because he sang like he whispered and dreamed his lyrics. Or maybe it was because I hadn't seen these faux Vevo music videos until earlier today. Listening to "Green Shirt" at age twelve authorized an imagined reciprocation of my early crushes. "(Angels Want To Wear My) Red Shoes" mitigated the pain when they laughed and left with another girl. I spent the following years sneaking in "Veronica" and "Green Shirt" in all of the mixtapes I made, CDs I burnt (legally) and, later, collaborative Spotify playlists I shared with my boyfriends. They managed to learn the words, but couldn't see me the way I imagined Elvis would.

He plays a song he finished earlier tonight at the end of the reading. I am enamored once again, and barely mad at the encounter I had with him on Wednesday. I don't end up handing in the letter because he's too far and the security is tight, and I'd rather not confirm my opener ("Your songs were to me what alcohol was to Peter Criss") wasn't going to grant me any favors in the first place. Besides, in the bottom of my heart, I have finally realized: Alison was some chick he saw in aisle 4 at the supermarket and Veronica was a frail, Greatest Hits girl.

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It's been fours year since I hung up the guitar and sold my piano. I mean, no regrets there, considering the best line I probably wrote was the stupidly obvious "Don't forget I pulled the sheets off the bed/ Baby I was sleeping in a twin sized head" for my then-boyfriend, an hour before I broke up with him. But after years of days spent looking forward to rehearsal nights, and having my immediate world revolve around me, it was weird to voluntarily have stripped that thin layer of confidence off myself. My bassist parked his red Ford outside my dorm room in Syracuse every afternoon for two weeks until he didn't. He even left new strings for my Bouzouki outside my door, in hope that I would turn around. I was floating. Suddenly being in college studying music didn't make sense anymore.

I took some time off and moved to New York. I picked up opening shifts at a pretentious Park Slope coffee shop that sold iced coffee for $5, then took the train uptown to work part-time as assistant to English musicians important enough to sue me for using their names online (let's call him "Buzz"). Buzz was very much the Tom Buchanan to my Nick Carraway. I'd leave his office and go to shows because I couldn't bare the thought of being in my room alone, watching the cars drive over the BQE from my window. After the next couple of years, I wasn't Judy Garland straight off the Greyhound looking to make the big-time anymore. I gradually traded the prospect of fame for knowing the boys at the door.

Which I suppose brings me here, standing by the wall next to two of my friends, because at 5'2", it is hard to see the band playing when everyone at the car-wash-venue is trying to be a wallflower in the middle of the room. But that's ok, I have been waiting to see Sheer Mag and Protomartyr for the past six months. Even if I can't see anything besides shiny silver backpacks clinging to denim shoulders, I still sing along. Besides, I am standing adjacent to one of my childhood heroes, discussing a latter X album. I am flattered that he remembers the oddly specific details of my summer, like how this painter I met in the rural depths of India compared Romeo and Juliet to Monica and Bill. But then I don't think it has as much as to do with me as it does with his eidetic memory. I am confused, which is better than being naively gratified.

I excuse myself to the bathroom while Potty Mouth sets up (ha, ha), clasping in my hands my friend's Olympus 35mm. Being--or, in my case, feigning to be--a photographer at a show is the closest a human being can get to parting the Red Sea. I stay for a few songs until I am interrupted by a slew of text messages. I run into Childhood Hero again as I step outside for a smoke. He mentions that he hates the saxophone and I agree, alluding to his two decade old Supertramp review, which politely ridicules Dave Winthrop's instrument of choice. I tell him that I actually got "I play saxophone in a band that was on Conan O'Brien once" as a pick-up line a few days ago. He laughs, probably out of sheer nicety. I keep talking, but as always, I am on my fourth beer and dauntingly self-aware. He's cripplingly polite and I am afraid of coming across as a pushover.

The singer in a band formerly from my college town walks up to him. She shakes my hand purely out of social obligation and starts making conscious eye contact with me the way networking adults do when they talk, only because I am standing next to a known man. I walk over to the bar and order "another" Pilsner. I take out some cash to pay for it but I am told my money is no good here. He's now seen me take part in celebrity conversation, and it doesn't matter if I happened to be there by accident, I am now one degree of separation from DIY stardom. I go back to my spot by the wall and realize the two girls who work at big-name publications followed, and then unfollowed me on Twitter, now stand in front of him, chuckling over an inside joke as they charge their phones. An "important", "past romance" walks past us and winks at me, because I am no longer nineteen and scrounging shows for people on my Twitter timeline. Now I'm up against this wall, so distracted by the girl standing behind me recording my fairly inebriated exchange about upcoming releases that I lose track of who is going on next. Why am I being recorded?

I say goodbye to some acquaintances in my newly absorbed adult manner. I come back to see that the writer I was talking to earlier has already left for the next show with the two girls who followed, then unfollowed me, then followed him out the door. It is depressing to look forward to an event all month and leave empty-handed. I wasn't expecting anything more tangible than following plans, but the chill of the night shortly leaves me to my own, wondering if I can pay rent with compliments as I attempt to take my career home. I no longer want to be the musician I wanted to be growing up but I guess it's easier to choose cigarettes over scales than it is to come to terms with attention deprivation.

As much as I'd like to hold it against them, I don't blame anyone here for wanting to spend time with glorified Twitter celebrities over me. At twenty, I have more married friends of over forty than I do my age. I can't imagine packing up and subjecting myself once again to weekends at the college with film majors, having their Pulp Fiction posters stare me down while I grab my jeans off the floor, and hope they don't notice I'm gone.

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