Fame can hit a man in two ways. He can get famous overnight, become the new big thing, and suddenly have his name in lights all over town. Or, fame can ease up on him, in a sneaky sort of way, and make him well-known without making him equal parts famous and infamous, which the first kind of fame always seems to do. That kind can engulf a man, distort his priorities, erode his senses, and leave him broken on the back page of a society insert in some nothing newspaper in some nowhere place like Kalamazoo or Tulsa or Amarillo. The second kind, if the man plays it right, can last a lifetime, and follow a man in a long line of sympathy and fondness, right into his well-attended grave.
He might even have some real, red-blooded, male kind of fun with it, too.
Wolf Williams was just a regular guy, with a few quirks (no serious man is without contradictions), and a knack for the right word in the right place at the right time. He might have had a little bit of luck on his side, too. One day he was a rather ordinary copy editor at a small town newspaper, and the next he was a rising columnist, still at that small town newspaper, but with a big city sense of how to read people and how to tell the world what he thought of it.
That part happened fast. The wife of a senor editor was a regular columnist, but she had gotten the itch to go back to school. Her spot was open. Wolf had written only a few short pieces, but enough to catch the eye of the publisher, who wanted to see what he could do with some real space to work. The job was his on a temporary basis. If he caught the attention of enough readers, then, well, there might be some permanent writing in his future. He got to work, and his first column was a hit the moment it was published. Soon, the Wednesday spot was his, and an occasional Sunday piece was assigned to him. After six weeks, he was the paper's leading recipient of e-mails. Life was good, and getting better.
After a six-month run of unqualified success, people started to notice him about town. His face appeared in the column head every week, and although it wasn't a particularly memorable face, if people see something often enough, they get used to it, and soon enough start to see that very thing standing out in crowds. Wolf's face soon stood out in crowds at restaurants, movie theaters, convenience stores, you name it. "Hey, Wolf!" and "Yo, Wolfman!" became regular features of his bike rides and jogs around the town of just over fifteen-thousand people. (There were even a few "You suck, jerk off!" kind of catcalls, but Wolf took the bad with the good.)
Eventually, Wolf's name got so familiar in the mind of the locals that they started coming up and talking to him, like they had known him all their lives. Some even sat down next to him at bars and restaurants, never minding that often he was reading a favorite author or writing out a new column longhand on a notepad. But Wolf's good nature led the folks into feeling they really had know him all along, and the conversations often lasted an hour or more.
It was that very scenario that led Wolf to discover a perk like no other: the effortless hook-up.
On a quiet Monday evening (one of Wolf's regular nights off), he was alone at a table at his favorite restaurant. He had the big screen TV in front of him, tuned to a football game, and his notepad on the table. As he wrote, a shadow came looming over his shoulder. No words followed, so he dropped his pen and looked up. "Hello," she said, followed by a smile topped with friendly, even eager, eyes. "I'm Karen."
"I'm Wo-"
"I know you. Or, I should say, I know who you are, Mr. Williams."
"Wolf, please." He stood and pulled out a chair.
"Thank you, Wolf."
She shook his hand before taking her seat. Wolf ordered another Coke (a tee-totaler; no one's perfect) and sat down.
"Having anything?"
"No, I'm fine," she said.
They let their eyes linger on one another for a few seconds before she broke the spell by looking down at his notes.
"I hope I didn't disturb a masterpiece in process."
"Huh? Oh, no, of course not." They laughed together. "My next masterpiece would be my first, I think."
"Oh, come on! That column you wrote on Mr. Darren Brock, the retiring Latin professor. Pure gold. Just genius."
"Why that's very kind of you to say. Thank you." he nodded to her, and she beamed a smile, her best yet, at him.
"I believe you won something for that one. Am I right?"
"Yes, yes. In fact I did. Thank you for remembering that." he tilted his glass of Coke at her, as if making a mock "Cheers."
"Actually, that's why I came over to you."
"Oh?"
"Yes. I'm Mrs. Brock." She smiled even broader and brighter still. She had just the friendliest face he thought he'd ever seen.
He reflexively reached down for his pen.
"Are you asking me to sign the column?" He had gotten used to people carrying old issues of his work and asking for autographs, a practice he reluctantly agreed to.
"Oh, no, Mr. Wil-.. Wolf. I would never impose on you that way. I really ju-"
"Oh, no, that would be no trou-"
"I just want you to fuck me."
Wolf swallowed his sentence, He cocked his head to the side, his eyebrows slightly raised. "Well..." was all he said.
Then he turned to look at the football game on the big screen. He took a long drink from his Coke, noticing the sound of the ice banging against the sides of the glass. He set the glass down and swirled it, watching and listening to the ice go round and round.
"Oh, my god! You're married! Are you married? Oh, no!"
"Nope," he said. He took another slow drink and replaced the glass on the table.
"I've embarrassed you! I'm so sorry!"
He turned to look at her.
"Karen, do you mind walking to my place?"
He got her friendliest smile yet.
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"You're younger than I imagined," she said. They climbed the back stairs to his second floor apartment. She had not stopped explaining herself the whole four blocks it took to get to his place.
"And you must think I'm crazy to be my age -- I'm almost 53 -- and just go up to a stranger and say 'fuck' the way I did."
