My name is Mike Albo and I’m a D-level celebrity. Well, I’m actually more like a Dminus-level celebrity. A-level celebrities, you know who they are: Madonna, Jessica Alba, George Clooney. B-levels are more like Patricia Clarkson, Michael Cunningham or Judge Judy. C-levels I would say are Sylvia Myles, a lab technician on _CSI_, and Trista, the original Bachelor‘s bachelorette. Most D-levels are porn stars, local newscasters, separated Siamese twins, famous plastic surgeons. So just bring that down a notch and that’s me.
We’re the amphibians of the disgusting celebrity world that we live in. We lie there in the mud between the dry, herbal land of celebrity stardom and the vast, beautiful ocean of obscurity. A- through C-level celebrities and even some D-level celebrities like Kathy Griffin get a lot of cool stuff, but D-minus level celebrities get nothing. No free gift bags, no free Reebok sneakers, no tickets to benefits, no money, no love, nothing. The only thing that you get from being a D-minus celebrity is this vague, desperate hope that some day your life is gonna change. And stalkers.
It’s late spring in 2001, it’s the last gasp of the dot com boom and I appear on the cover of _Next_ Magazine. For those of you who don’t know, _Next_ is the second most important gay weekly. Which makes it like the _Vanity Fair_ for gay guys below New York’s 14th Street. I start getting these calls on my phone from a guy named Larry Acheball. That’s really his name. I was just sitting on the couch one day, deep in my pre-paradigm shift thoughts (“Sex and the City has only two more seasons!” “Will I ever be sick of Prada?” “When will I get the fame and money I deserve as an American?”) when the phone rings. I don’t pick it up and there’s a message: “Hello, I am trying to reach the performer Mike Albo. This is Larry Acheball from my limousine in New Jersey. I am the manager of _Star Search_. Please tell him to call me.”
I’m like, “Oh my God, I could be on Star Search!” But something in me, some strange instinct that I usually don’t have, tells me not to call back. But he keeps calling, keeps calling, keeps calling. I swear to you, there is barely a DNA molecule in me that isn’t dying to return his calls.
One night I decide to go out somewhere gay (to this day I still think I am going to find my husband in a bar). I drink two Maker’s Marks, get involved in some disappointing sexual innuendo, drunkenly take the F train back to Brooklyn, trudge down the street to my building and then I hear someone call my name: “Mike Albo.”
It is so clear that I think it’s in my head so I ignore it. But the minute I walk inside my apartment, the phone rings. Another message: “Yeah, Mike Albo, this is Larry Acheball. I just saw you on the street. I happened to be parked in front of your house in my limousine and I wanted to talk to you about Star Search.”
The next night I go out again somewhere gay to do something gay and drag myself home drunk again and walk up to my building and… something is hanging off of the gate to the front door. One of those huge Mylar helium balloons with a picture of Holly Hobbie-esque ragamuffin lovers kissing. And someone has written my name all over it: “MIKEEE ALBO” with hearts and underlines.
I start putting it together—he’s not from _Star Search_. That’s when he starts sending letters written in that stereotypical stalker scrawl—you know, it’s sort of scribbly and turns to the left (someone should copyright that font, by the way). In the letters he admits that he isn’t from _Star Search_, and he says he saw my picture in _Next_ Magazine. And in the picture, he says, my lips moved and told him that I loved him.
At first I think, “Whatever, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll just sit here in my semiobscurity and live with it.” Of course, neither of those facts stop me from going out again, and every time I do, I come home to more and more gifts at my front gate. A white teddy bear. A glittery plastic butterfly. A stuffed tiger with big, longing eyes. A gallon milk jug cut off at the top with mealy, festering carnations in cellophane stuffed into the opening.
The summer that follows is the worst of my life—I have no money, I’m eating canned food, I’m audited by the IRS and I have a hernia. I spend an entire day at Bellevue registering for hernia surgery and filling out forms to prove I’m “income sensitive.” That night, I’m sitting at home watching network TV (no more frittering away my measly paychecks on restaurants
and $12 appletinis) and I decide to cook up some pasta with peanut butter (pad thai!) when I hear a buzz at my door. I don’t answer, but it buzzes again.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Who’s me?”
“Larry for Mike Albo.”
“He’s not here,” I said, trying to take the gay accent out of my voice.
I peer outside. There is Larry’s “limousine” in front of my house. It’s a white Honda Civic. He had driven from Jersey in his Honda to come buzz my door. I can’t believe my stalker has more money than me! Why can’t he pick on Regis Philbin or someone with a bodyguard and celebrity health insurance and no hernia!?!? I wait in the dark for him to leave. When I see his taillights drive off, I creep downstairs. He had stuck a big white sticker on my door, with my name written in scratchy red magic marker, and there’s another gift of festering carnations and a card:
“I have a confession to make. I made up that story about the _Star Search_ program. Several months ago, when your picture appeared on the _Next_ Magazine cover, I said to myself, ‘This is my man.’ And I know you love me too.”
I decide to continue to ignore it and hope he’ll forget about me. Then September 11th happens, which is, of course, horrible and awful, and I think that maybe that will change things for Larry, you know? Like he’ll have something else to worry about. Then some time in October, I get a letter from him that says that he caused the World Trade Center attacks because of his feelings for me, and if I don’t talk to him or come and see him he is gonna collapse a building on my head. Okay, time to go to the police.
I’m sure you remember what New York was like in October 2001. Everyone was so psychotic and it was the height of the Anthrax scare. So I’m walking through Brooklyn, holding my hernia (since my surgery wasn’t until November) and all my stalker letters. I go up to the precinct and say, “I have a stalker.” They make me open the envelopes before I go inside the
building. The world is so fucked up and freaky and I don’t know what’s right and wrong.
But then in walks this big Sipowicz Jew cop. I tell him the story and he’s like, “Don’t worry, we’ll put the fear of God in him!” He put his beefy, calming hand on my shoulder and I just wanted to fall into his arms like Whitney Houston in _The Bodyguard_.
The story has a happy ending because Larry actually stopped calling. (He did send me a Christmas card last year. It has a swatch of orange fur in the center with two googly eyes glued onto it.)
So since you guys control the entertainment industry, I have a favor to ask of you. If could you do one of two things, either just elevate me to D+ status, or just get me a hotter stalker—just one or the other—I would appreciate it. Thank you.
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