Today, is my good friend Bill’s birthday. In his honour, I would like to share a story that pretty much captures what life is like when you have Bill as a friend.

In addition to a bunch of legitimate celebrity sightings, I have some sightings of celebrities that weren’t celebrities when I – er- sighted them. This is my favourite of those celebrity sightings–a soon-to-be rock star–although it does mean I do recognize him from a host of angles.

I’m not going to mention his name, but you can get a clue about his band’s name from the first paragraph of this post. (Hint #2, you can also find the name of his band in my List of 100 Things, as one of my least favourite words) It is a little known fact that before said rock star was a rock star, he was a dance student at the same university in which Bill and I were an acting students.

Let me back up and and give a little background information here: I came from what you would call a strict and modest upbringing. Being in the performing arts community was a bit of a culture shock to me. The culture of the performing arts at a university might be strictly disciplined, but it is by no means modest. Our changerooms when were doing a play were not divided into male and female but smoking and non-smoking, (which also tells you a little bit about how long ago it was we were at university–the era when smoking was allowed inside buildings.) It was a big shock to me that people would change into their classroom gear without need of any change room at all, let alone a designated one.

Anyhoo. Back to the story.

I had a locker in the green room of the theatre. There were two sets of lockers–an upper and a lower one and me, being on the short side, I opted for a lower locker. So, this one fateful day, I was getting my stuff out of this lower locker which required me squatting down. I finished getting my stuff and pivoted around on my feet without rising, to better zip up my bag. And right in front of my face was…what the hell was I looking at? It took me a solid 10 seconds to realize I was staring at soon-to-be rock star’s naked ass, as he changed into his dance class gear. Said ass was less than six inches away from my face. I think it was just so far out of the realm of my expectations that I couldn’t process it. (That’s my story, and I am sticking to it.) And, you know, once you realize that you’ve been staring at someone’s butt for 10 seconds, you also realize that in the context of polite, however immodest, society, that ten seconds is actually a VERY. LONG. TIME. 

Once I realized what it was I was staring at, I quickly turned back to my locker, got up and walked quietly away, no one the wiser for my embarassment. I figured the soon-to-be rock star was looking the other way, so didn’t see me, and he was perhaps blocking me from being seen by any other people in the room. Little did I know…

Several days later (I’m not sure why he waited so long, probably to lull me into a false sense of security) my DEAR, dear friend Bill leaned over to me while we were amongst people, having a conversation about SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY, and whispered in my ear

So, what did you think of soon-to-be rock star’s ass?

I yelped. I was so mortified that someone had actually witnessed my faux pas. I had to leave the conversation with Bill in tow, laughing his head off.

To this day, when prompted, and frankly, even when unprompted, Bill will re-enact the whole scenario, generously adding a bum squeeze and doing an exaggerated (It’s EXAGGERATED I tell you!) impression of my gasps of Christian shock.

I’m just glad I could be there to add to his material. 

I love you Bill. I feel so privileged to have been counted among your friends these many years. Thanks for always being there even when I was making an ass out of myself.