"Did Anybody Ever Tell You. . ."

I walked in to pay the rent on the little art studio that I didn't use all month yesterday wondering why I have become so self-indulgent and feeling guilty about spending money so foolishly when people have lost jobs and are suffering the effects of a bad economy and are cutting back on things like eating out at restaurants and buying expensive meat at the grocery store and even on buying new clothes for their kids first day at school. I mean, things are rough. I was thinking about this knowing it is so shameful that I won't even tell my mother that I have the studio and that she will find out one day and I will then feel all the guilt that I am shoving away down deep in my conscience just now along with the guilt of not making use of it while it is there telling myself that it is not my fault but simply the result of having a job that requires too much of me. That is what I was thinking or trying not to think when I walked into the office of the very large foundation from whom I rent, a foundation that owns the largest collection of a certain type in the world, that has its own museum and more buildings than anyone in the state. I tapped on the glass of the front door which is always locked and which has no buzzer or ringer but only a large pane of glass so that I always feel foolish like an unwelcomed intruder standing there as peevish heads pop out of cubbies and offices to see who might be at the door, one of the heads grimacing a little as the body follows it up out of the chair and across the carpet to where I stand not knowing really what to do with my hands, an apologetic grin foolishly smearing my face. I was greeted by a woman I'd never seen before.

"I've brought the rent check," I said, realizing that there were probably thousands of rent checks coming to them every day as I said it, my saying it being of no importance at all. The dead-panned lady took the check into her hand and said nothing allowing the (for me) awkward silence to fill the room like an expanding balloon which needed pricking, so I said, "Is that right?" wondering along with her exactly what I meant.

She looked at the check and then at me and said, "I don't know," then paused before she said, "Did anyone ever tell you you looked like Mel. . . . that actor, Mel, you know who I mean. . . what's his name?" I didn't want to help her, so I shook my head back and forth helplessly until she said "Mel Gibson, that's it, Mel Gibson. Did anybody ever tell you you look like that?"

"The new one or the old one?" I asked her wondering if she meat the Gibson from "Mad Max" or "The Year of Living Dangerously" or even "Lethal Weapon" or if she was thinking about the recent mug shots of Gibson after being arrested for drunk driving that were smeared all over the tabloid covers for so long.

But it's been awhile since anybody told me I looked like someone, so I decided to feel good about it walking back the way I'd come, thinking over and over again that I was the sort who looked like somebody knowing all along that I don't look anything like him at all.