Bette Midler has taught a very important thing.

I never want to be famous.

I wanted to be a STAR!! from the time I was 12. I felt this was the best way to meet celebrities and they were the people I wanted to be with/like. They were always perfect, looked great, were worshiped by millions and had loads of money. Then I talked my mother into paying for VIP tickets to a party Madame Midler was attending so I could meet her. We were not wealthy and those tickets were expensive. I’ve only very recently realized what my mother sacrificed to buy those tickets so I could meet my hero of many years.

Anyway, we went to the party and there she was. She treated me like garbage. I was nineteen, I had adored her for many years and she looked at me like I was muck on her shoe. This was at a function she was being paid to be at to meet her fans. I was within touching distance of her at Disneyworld a few years prior and didn’t say a world to her because she was on vacation and I didn’t want to bother her, but I felt I was justified this time. This time two thousand dollar tickets to be at the party were involved.

She came into the room thronged by paparazzi (and this was when her career was in a slump). Once she was finally by herself I tried to tell her what a fan I was–that I had come from North Carolina to New York just to see her, but she treated me like scum. I was stunned. It was inconceivable to me that a person I so admired could be such a jerk.

Once my mother and I were back at our crummy hotel I fell apart, crying and so on. I told my mother I couldn’t wait to be famous so I could treat people like crap, too. My mothers’ response: “Most people didn’t even get to touch her coat.” Yes, I got to touch her coat. That was supposed to be worth the two thousand dollars my mother paid.

Once I’d recovered I realized that I didn’t ever want that to be my life. I never wanted to have a life that wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere without being surrounded by the flashing of cameras. I have much more sympathy for celebrities (and am completely baffled by the people who’d court that insanity) and I’m grateful to have seen what being famous entailed before I sacrificed my life in the name of infamy.

I do hope she got what she wanted and I’m grateful for what she taught me.

And I haven’t bought an album or seen a film of hers since that evening–I simply can’t support a person who has so lost touch with her sense of humanity.

This is the first time I’ve written/spoken about that event, which was ten years ago, because it’s still so painful to me. I usually don’t think I’m worth a whole lot, but being treated as garbage by one’s idol is difficult to admit/look at, even a decade on.

Still, I’m grateful for it. I could have spent my life straining to be like her, only to either fail or get what I wanted and be a total bitch. And I can be a bitch without killing myself, thankyouverymuch.

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 8 October, 2007]