Generally, I am running late… wherever I need to go, whenever I am leaving my house, I am typically behind schedule and in a rush… I have accepted this as a curse of physics… or a law of nature… or a truth of the universe…

As if paparazzi were stalking me, I’m always bolting to or from my car… the space between my front door and the door of my car is the only short window of accessibility or visibility… likewise, the only tiny peek that any of my neighbors get to see me is if they happen to be outside in the free air at the exact same lucky moment I am making my mad dash.

Today was no exception. There was no extra time to fiddle or dilly-dally… I had to be somewhere, and I was already late… gotta go, gotta go… grab keys, grab shoes, go, go, go…

With my hands full of all my essentials and day’s necessities, I juggled my keys in and out of the front door’s lock with my two last free fingers (like chop sticks), and headed out… I made it three steps away from the goal line, and…

“Heyyyyyyy… Michaelllllll…”

Like a jungle leopard springing out of the bushes, my friendly neighbor caught me in no-man’s land.

Neighbor: “Heyyy, how have you been?”
Me: “Oh, hi! Great to see you I…”
Neighbor: “Hey, I have been meaning to ask you…”

He went on to chat and wax and I could not find an escape hatch to get out. After ten minutes of niceties, a giant non-sequiter blind-sided me from out of nowhere… he was talking about something to do with the neighborhood, and what it was like 40 years ago when he first moved here (which I do actually find extremely interesting, like seeing those beach photos from the early 1900’s, before your home town was ever born)… then, with the most sincere, sweet-hearted intentions, he said,

Neighbor: “You know, when you first moved here, I remember how I wasn’t sure about you… you had this crazy look… you looked like David Koresh.”

[dumbfounded pause]

Me: “You mean… because of my magnetic, awesome charisma?”

Neighbor: “No, you LOOK like David Koresh.”

In all my years, I have been called many things… I’ve been told that I look like Eric Stoltz… or Jesus… or Chet Baker (Mike Roe would always send me “young” Chet postcards from the road… cruelly followed by postcards of the aged, heroine-worn, craggy Chet to show me how I would look someday)…. or Charlie Sexton… or Andrew Robinson, the actor who played the “Scorpio Killer” villain in Dirty Harry (thanks Kristin)… or the time Waz walked into Jim’s studio and saw my giant portrait on the wall alongside all the celebrities… Harrison Ford, Selma Hayek, Bruce Willis, me… he thought I was Kris Kristofferson… or when I was waking up from surgery, and the nurses gathered around my bed as I was being lifted into a wheelchair, they told me they thought I was Ozzy Osbourne… but I have never heard the David Koresh comparison…

My neighbor plowed through several other topics, and I tried to follow along, or at least look like I could hear what he was saying, but I could only see his lips moving… no sound… I was so lost and distracted, trying to think of what David Koresh looked like …

Besides, I had nothing left to say, anyway. No more clever comebacks, no witty retorts… I was speechless… all I could think about was how all these years, I have been a cult leader in his mind… and it really doesn’t get any better than that…

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