I blame the radiator, really. After all, if the device in my car that controls the temperature gage had not threatened to erupt at speeds over 30 miles an hour, I wouldn’t have ended up on the Metro that day. And I wouldn’t have met her.
Armed with half a dozen shopping bags and the largest collection of gossip rags I had ever seen, I knew she would be trouble. As she sat down next to me, I looked over the mountain of paper bags that nearly reached my eyes and saw her tucking into Star magazine. Emblazoned across the front was a picture of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, both in black suits, both wearing sour expressions-Tom’s looking something vaguely resembling constipation and Katie’s; utter despondence. Tom’s protective hand was clasped tightly around Katie’s arm, the headline screaming in yellow: “SCIENTOLOGY BOOT CAMP FOR KATIE!”
“Can you believe this?” a voice murmured in a pronounced Southern accent. As I peeked over the bag barricade once more, the woman held up her magazine at me and stabbed a finger at the cover.
“Oh, well, you know,” I said, cautiously, trying to avoid a conversation that would scar me enough to end up in my memoirs, Smiling Through the Pain. “Hollywood and that. It’s probably a lie.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something,” she said. “This girl had better get out while she still can. I was there once, back in my twenties. You think you meet the right person, you think everything’s great and then suddenly BOOM, you end up giving up your whole life because the jackass said ‘jump’ and you think you have to obey. You know what I mean?”
As it turns out, I didn’t know what she meant, but that didn’t stop the remaining 20 minute lecture on her ability to spot abusive spouses from a mile off. I was only saved when my stop finally arrived and I scuttled out, safe from the whirlwind of classified “information” she was apparently privy to.
But this woman still managed to remain in my head for the rest of the day. The mere fact that she thought herself an expert on the many romantic entanglements of the Hollywood elite made me realize how frequently we as a society think we know the true story.
The world of celebrity gossip never sleeps. Before the sun is even up, the whole world knows the current vacancy status of Angelina Jolie’s uterus and how much David Hasselhoff paid for his hair plugs (don’t even try to tell me that Astroturf is real.) We know these people’s every move, every outfit and every relationship due to our over-stimulated gossip culture, so it’s no wonder that we also consider ourselves experts on what goes on behind closed doors.
I don’t think anyone can really assess whether Katie Holmes is happy in her marriage except Katie Holmes. If you’re really that interested, you could accost her on the street and demand to know exactly what her Scientology matrimony entails, whether her daughter was really created from the frozen sperm of L. Ron Hubbard and if Tom actually wears those platform man-heels.
Then again, her bodyguards might tackle you, so you might just want to let it lie.
