My Favorite Beatle
Like every girl of my generation, I had a favorite Beatle and about a year ago we actually met!
My husband and I were having lunch at Lexington Candy Shop on Lex & 83rd, a favorite local coffeeshop. The place prides itself on it’s celebrity patronage with signed photos on the walls of Woody Allen and others, and stills from a scene in Three Days of the Condor that was actually filmed there.
At lunchtime the coffeeshop is always crowded and we were lucky to get two stools at the counter. Then my husband tapped my arm, “There’s Paul McCartney.”, he said.
Sure enough there he was walking towards the door followed by an entourage of three or four beautiful young things, and looking pretty young himself for his (gulp) 75 plus years.
I’ve seen other celebs in New York and no big deal – Robin Williams at a art exhibit at MOMA, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward watching modern dance from the next row at the Joyce, Jackie Mason eating at Sammys Romanian, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson at a Szechwan restaurant on upper Broadway, and Woody Allen walking a few feet ahead of me on Madison. Once I even saw Salvador Dali at the old Huntington Hartford Museum.
But this was different – I’d had a big crush on Paul since I saw him on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. And now he was just a few feet away!
I’ll never know what possessed me, but as he passed I grabbed his sleeve and actually heard myself saying to Paul McCartney. “May I kiss you?”
”You certainly may not.” he said. And with that he left the coffeeshop, turned down Lexington Avenue, and my biggest crush walked out of my life – possibly forever.
Needless to say I was crushed!
– Dana Susan Lehrman
Dana Susan LehrmanThis retired librarian loves big city bustle and cozy country weekends, friends and family, good books and theatre, movies and jazz, travel, tennis, Yankee baseball, and writing about life as she sees it on her blog World Thru Brown Eyes!
www.WorldThruBrownEyes.com
Wow, Dana, I can’t believe you asked for a kiss. I probably would have cried like I did when I watched him perform in my younger days. But I wish he had let you hold his hand at least (or maybe take a selfie). I guess at 75, he had earned the right to walk away from his adoring fans.
Laurie you’re right, why oh why didn’t I take a selfie!
Better get back to that coffeeshop and lie in wait!
Great story — and I know the Lexington Candy Shop well from my many years of living on the Upper East Side. But you failed to heed an important lesson that we lawyers know all too well: never ask a question that you don’t know the answer of. You should have just kissed the lucky guy!
Thanx John! Yes I certainly should have or as Laurie says, at least taken a selfie!
Oh Dana, what a story! You were so brave to ask for a kiss! How sad that he said no! I guess a selfie would have been less intrusive, although he might have said no to that as well. Wonder if his answer would have been different if you had been a “beautiful young thing” like the ones in his entourage.
Alas Suzy, we’ll never know!
Wow, amazing, Dana, a celebrity crush come to life. I enjoyed your narrative of it.
Thanx Marian, if only I had taken a selfie with him to post with my story!
Celebrities I have met or seen and didn’t want to kiss; Isaac Asimov, Ric Ocasek, Mario Andretti and Garrison Keillor.
But one fine day I was walking in Manhattan and saw two ludicrously beautiful women walking toward me. One was Cheryl Tiegs. She must have seen me staring because she smiled at me and nodded hello, which reduced me to a puddle of lustful goo inside.
Hard to imagine, but her companion was even more attractive!
Understood Dave, I wouldn’t want to kiss any of those guys either!
I did see Garrison Keillor at Tanglewood a few times and admire his talent, but certainly wouldn’t kiss him now since he was named by some Me Too accusers!
Yeah, that was a huge disappointment. I LOVE his writing.
I agree Dave, and hope you know Keillor’s daily podcast Writers Almanac, if not try it!