One more time, Rob-the-Boyfriend (with no sign-in name of his own) filling in for David, who has been filling in for Faustus. Faustus is back from London, with sordid tales that I’m sure he’ll share. For starters, as to my speculation at the beginning of yesterday’s entry, “blokes” should indeed be plural. But that’s for him to tell.

Let me tell you a little story about a place called Drip. I think David has referred to Drip many times in this blog – the funky-retro coffee house-slash-blind-date-o-rama, where he and I would spend many hours getting overly caffeinated and clacking away on our matching PowerBooks.

I have been going to Drip off and on since it opened (I believe) in the summer of 96, during the first year that I lived on the Upper West Side (having finally fled the Upper East Side via the Breakup Express.) It’s currently “closed for renovations.” The sort of renovations that last for months and don’t involve any actual, you know, renovating. It’s sad. But anyway…

I was in there one weekday afternoon, working on some encyclopedia articles that I was writing. (That always sounds so pretentious. I hahve written for an encyloPEEdia. Maybe I’m just sensitive about it since I was, sadly, one of those kids who actually lived up to the taunts and really DID read the encyclopedia for fun. But anyway…)

So I’m there, writing a 500 word biography of Lotte Lenya or someone, and I go up to order another coffee. The girl behind the counter was slightly Lisa Loeb-ish; nice, maybe a little fragile. She got my giant Fiestaware mug of coffee, looking like she was on the verge of giggling the whole time. She brings it back, and when I dug out my rumpled dollar bills to pay for it, she said, “Oh, Sundance winners don’t have to pay for coffee.”

Well, I’ve done a lot of things, but not being a filmmaker, I’ve never been to Sundance. So it follows that I’ve never won anything Sundance-related. So, simple case of mistaken identity. All I managed to say was, “Oh, no, really…” while pushing the bills at her. Meaning, of course, “Oh, no. Really, I’m not you think I am,” but coming across as “Oh, no, really, I insist that I pay, since I, a Sundance winner, will soon be making wheelbarrows full of money, with which I can buy all the coffee I desire.”

Oh, no, really.

So I went back to my laptop, where I was working on my Groundbreaking Screenplay (FADE IN… “Lotte Lenya was born in a suburb of Vienna in …”) Now I was really mystified. Who was she confusing me with? I mean, I had just gotten a snazzy new pair of downtown-ish looking sunglasses, but had they really transformed me into a double for … who? Who?

My looks have been compared to celebrities a few times over the years. Some were laughable attempts to flatter; some made me want to flatten the person making the comparison. But I do get many instances of people thinking they’ve met me before, or know me from somewhere. But this was a new one.

Obviously, she was into film. Obviously, she knew enough about Sundance to know who was winning what. So I had to have more than a passing resemblance to SOMEONE.

Who was it who was it who was it? It gnawed at me (and I gnawed at David, and not in a way that he enjoyed.) I never solved the mystery.

Luckily, I was spared having to live a real-life Three’s Company episode (pretending to be That Famous Sundance Winner every time I came into the Regal Beagle, er, Drip… or worse, being found out, and being known as That Guy Who Thought He Could Pass Himself Off as That Famous Sundance Winner Just To Get Free Coffee, Fucker) because … I never saw that girl working there again.

I wondered why she left (or was fired), given that she was getting the chance to meet celebrities – okay, fake ones, like me, but still. Maybe she thought everyone was someone else. But some obscure person…

“Oh, the Duchess of Liechtenstein doesn’t have to pay for coffee.”

“Oh, the man who patented the Post-It doesn’t have to pay for coffee.”

“Oh, the original bass guitarist for the Go-Go’s doesn’t have to pay for coffee.”

Maybe it was this all-inclusive policy about Who Doesn’t Have to Pay for Coffee that led to Drip’s current shuttered state. Maybe I should make a documentary about it …

Oh, no. Really.