Once again, I've come to the close of a wonderful whirlwind pilgrimage. I've connected with dedicated forum sisters, crazy enough to spend large sums of money to travel from the farthest corners of the country just to breath the same rarified air as Gabriel Bryne.
Perhaps because I had met him once before, this evening didnt have quite the heart stopping highs or the heart breaking lows of my last meeting. Perhaps I had steeled myself a little better this time, but it was a wonderful, electric, magical event all the same. I think you never quite get used to seeing him face to face or hearing that voice come waltzing straight out of his perfect lips and directly into your waiting ears. But, this time, I never once felt like I would run and hide, never once felt like I would possibly toss my lunch onto Mr. Byrne's disheveled suite, nor was I reduced to a crying fool on the airplane ride home. In other words, I was better able to keep this meeting in perspective. I hope that's not a disappointment to anyone. I think its just the natural evolution of an obsessed woman.
Ok, but enough of me, everyone reading this post wants to know about the evening, about him, about how we did, what we did, what we said, what we said, no more tidbits...I will do my best, there was a lot of wine consumed, but I will do my best.
The evening began as MissPDX tapped on our hotel room door. Pmungle and I were sharing a room, we were finishing the touches on hair and eyelashes, alternately standing in front of the mirror and fretting over our ass sizes...and PDX tapped on the hotel room door.
She entered in a flurry, all hot and bothered from her trek to our hotel, she came with a bottle of Pinot Noir, laughing and hugging and introducing herself to us, we all paused momentarily to finally place faces with screen personnas, and then the wine began to flow.
We didnt drink long, we had to be at the Athletic Club by 6:00 PM, so we headed out to catch a cab and wind our way through the early evening. We made it to the club, registered for our table, put our name in the "hat" for a free trip to Ireland, checked our coats and entered the anti-chamber, the outter sactum to the inner sanctum, we walked into the "cocktail room" and ordered a little red wine.
P and I stayed in a small perimeter but there was no holding back PDX. She was on fire and on the hunt. She was like a flatfoot detective, pulling aside every hired hand, every waiter, waitress, coat girl, photographer, every person that appeared to have some official task at the Club and always, the interrogation was the same, grilling and digging for the same tidbit of information, with a mad look in her eye and a strange grin on her face, she pleaded:
"Where in the hell is Gabriel Byrne?" I tried to soothe her with more wine. I was worried someone would figure out that we were not, in fact, New York Society, no we were not, we were just 3 obesessed Gabriel Byrne fans, imposters who had snuck past the society guards, In fact, no one suspected a thing, so we drank and we watched and we waited.
We decided to move into the hall so we could sit down, and we could watch as the VIPs of NY paraded past our cocktail room to the "library", the closed door cocktail location where you could sip wine with the stars. While we paid a lot to attend the gala, we didnt pay quite enough to get into that part of the party. So we waited and watched in the hallway like bad little children who werent allowed to eat at the grown up table, we were a group of Cinderellas hungrily hoping to attend the Prince's ball.
I am proud to say that I was the first to spot celebrity. PDX and Pam were sitting to my right on a small couch, I was sitting on a chair. They were chatting when Liam Neeson walked in. I began to chant in a low whisper:
LiamNeesonLiamNeesonLiamNeesonLiamNeesonLiamNeeson..... PDX heard me but Pmungle did not, she missed Liam as he made his entrance. We waited a while longer, our heads like Tennis tournament spectators, looking left, then right, then left, then right, watching the entrance door and the library door, wondering which place would finally yield "pay dirt".
I could stand it no longer. The bathroom was near the library and I was afraid Gabe had snuck in before we began our sentry duty so I announced I was going to the Ladie's room, so I would have an excuse to check out the library doorway.
I was in the bathroom for a minute, no a second, no a nanosecond, but of course, as fate would have it, Gabriel Byrne picked that nanosecond to saunter into the hall and on into the library, and yes he had a date. If you want more about the date, find someone who wants to write about it. I for one, do not.
I came out of the ladie's room to see PDX and Pmungle staring into the library, I swung my head around to the left and there he was, just standing inside the doorway, looking like he does...looking just exactly like he does..
PDX was beside herself, I guess we all were, but somehow, after discussing his beauty, how he walked, what he was wearing, how he looked, how "the date" looked, we managed to go sit back down in the hallway. At some point minutes our hours later, (time ceased to make any sense at that point), we heard one of the girls with a headphone say that Bono was on his way in.
This is the moment where PDX and Pmungle lost all focus.
Touched remained the ever vigilint Gabriel Byrne groupie, but those two women began to lose a bit of focus over the entire Bono issue. They were beside themselves with anticipation. Admmittedly, Bono is pretty high on the richter scale of rock stars, and he is waaaay too cool for school, so I can see how one might lose focus over him, but with Gabe in the house, it was hard for me to assume their level of enthusiasm. However, we sat and we waited on pins and needles for for several minutes more hoping to see thebigrockstarthatwasnotGabrielBryne make his grand entrance.
At somepoint, while I was looking down, Bono whisked in with an entourage and armed guards and secret service. Ok, I could be exaggerating here, but you get the drift. I was looking down at that moment and Pmungle decided to chant "bonobonobonobono" in a very low voice...(and if you've ever met Pmungle, its odd that she used her inside voice for this...she normally does not), but because she chanted so quietly, I never saw him that first time.
I was no longer doing well at the celebrity sighting thing.
We sat and waited for a while longer until they threw all the VIPs out of the library, evidently even the VIPs are not allowed to be in the same room with the superstar Bono. As the VIPs began to file out, I guess Gabe decided it was time for him to head for dinner as well and so our boy walked out of the library and down the hall, escorting the woman who was to receive the award later that evening.
This is where I temporarily parted ways with my partners in crime. They were not going to sit down without getting a picture and a handshake from Bono, who was still hanging back in the library. I was not standing in that hall one more second when I knew that Gabriel Byrne had gone into the dining area, an area where he had a table and I had a table, a room where I could finally share space with MadHandsome. I waved to the girls and told them I was going to the dining room, and I followed my idol. I sat down at my table, number "25" and searched the crowd for Gabe's table. I found it, found the back of his glorious disheveled head and just stared at it, while I waited for P and PDX to come to their senses.
They came in within a few minutes, revelling in their brush with hyperstardom, they had taken a picture and I think maybe shaken hands with Bono. I'm not crystal clear on these details, as they were non Gabriel Byrne in their nature. We began eating and getting to know the couple at our table. We sat through presentations about artists that none of us had any understanding or appreciation for. I kept trying to get the two of them to understand where Gabe was sitting but they were still too frenzied over their Brush-with-Bono to understand that the head I was now rudely point at, that lovely unbrushed head, only 15 feet in front of us was GABRIEL BYRNE'S HEAD. The copious amounts of wine and the Bono sighting made them both loopy and hard to reason with.
We ate dinner and we met the people at our table. The woman was originally from Alabama and when she heard how we 3 had met up and heard how much we adored Gabriel Byrne, she told us she had been on a blind date with him in the 80s. We never were able to verify if she was correct or not. She indicated that nothing happened on the date and that he was just very shy. Anyway, she also said her husband, who was some sort of producer, knew Gabe. Her husband said "yes Of course I know him, come on you guys, lets go meet him"
Our squeals could probably be heard in the parking lot. Fortunately, it was a noisy room already, but we all filed in line to weave our way through the dining room and follow him to the prize, to meet the magic man finally.
I wish I could say I remembered all the details, but girls, you just never ever do. We had all had a lot of wine, all of us. We approached him and the producer man introduced us. He looked even thinner than he did at Camelot. His hair was dark, he's not letting a lot of gray show these days. We was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, perhaps it had pinstripes, I can no longer be certain. I did note it was open, so very very open at the collar. I remember that big smile and his direct gaze and shaking his big dry, warm hand. Someone, either Pam or PDX or I, I couldnt tell you who, managed to tell him we had come to see him before, we had met him in May and that we had brought the quilt. We asked him if he remembered the quilt.
That's when I turned on my little video camera.
And that's when he said it...he said that the quilt was bayooootiful and that it was in his library. He said that friends always asked about it and that it would...stay...there....for...ever.
I remember him enunciating that sentence:
It...will...be...there...fore...ever. I thought I would cry.
Right about then, Pmungle dragged the Alabama woman into the fold and told Gabe he had had a blind date with her in the 80s. He seemed confused and couldnt remember it, so the woman asked him if he knew "so and so"...he became even more confused and said "I had a blind date with him in the 80s?" and she laughed and said "no, he introduced us and set it up!". Gabe acknowledged knowing the man that she mentioned, so I took this to mean that they really did go on the blind date. It was a funny little moment of chatting with Gabe before the picture taking began.
After that, we began the photography portion of the evening. There was some initial confusion over who would stand where and finally, in a totally cute and quite sexy and commanding moment, Gabe grabbed MissPDX and said "you come over on this side" and he pulled her to his right side and then he said "you come here on the left and ....(oh my knees, my knees), he pulled me close on the left side and P was sort of left at that moment to come in on my side. It was completely luck of the draw, but for the moment, Pmungle was completely grumpy about the fact that she was not touching Gabe. However, she was still half crazy over the fact that her quilt was in his library forever, so she waited, albeit, impatientely for her turn.
During the photography session, well, his hand went around my back and my hand went out behind his, and it was hanging low and resting, just resting, not grabbing, not stroking, not cupping or pincing, just resting on the top of his glorious bottom. I cant tell you more, there's nothing more to tell. I held it there while we posed, after all, to move it up at that point, would have seemed obvious, like I was doing something wrong. And of course, I was not.
We took lots of pictures and then I moved because Pmungle's cries of protest were getting very loud. She wanted to be in the picture next to Gabe. She got to pose with Gabe by herself and then PDX asked him if she could kiss his cheek and (maybe before he answered, not sure) PDX grabbed his cheek and kissed it.
He had been very sweet and wonderful for the session but at this point, he seemed to want the picture taking to end or at least that's what I thought. I was conscious of his "date" sitting there right near us, seemingly anxious for her man to rejoin her. I think it was then that Pmungle spilled the contents of her purse on the "date" and really, P had had a lot of wine by then, and she was giggling and feeling around the carpet near "the date's" feet. It was a bit surreal, I have to say.
We all stumbled back to our table, laughing and beaming and squealing and thanking our producer and his wife. The rest of the evening was a blur of speeches, Bono gave one and Gabe gave one. I think MissPDX chanted "God he's so beautiful" over and over again during Gabe's entire speech. We played with our "parting gifts" which were little bags of brochures and beauty products and reviewed our digitial pictures. Then began the auction portion of the evening. They auctioned off gift baskets and artwork and the grand prize was an evening for 10 friends to spend with Liam Neeson. I frantically began calculating how high I would go if a similar prize was offered for Gabriel Byrne. It was not. I guess its a good thing because someone bid 15,000 dollars for Liam, I can only imagine that Gabe would have brought in 6 figures. I could never have afforded it.
The evening began to wind down. Pmungle had consumed much wine and at some point announced proudly that she was going to go back to Gabe's table, try to retrieve some of the leftover contents of her purse and use the occasion to tell "the date" that
she was a lucky woman. And that is just what she did. Evidently the date said "I know"
After P found her way back to the table and recounted her little adventure with "the date" and after she annoyingly annouced how "beautiful" she thought "the date" was, we began reviewing our pictures. None, absolutely none of Me and Gabe, came out. So, sadly there are no pictures of me and Gabe. but .....
I have video ladies. I do have video. The night progressed and finally Gabe and date got up to go. They made their way out of the dining room and I took another picture as he headed out the door. At that moment, he seemed to look over at our table and wave goodbye. We waved at him and he gave us the thumbs up (I have the photo) and he waltzed out of our lives one more time.
The rest of the evening was dedicated to the pursuit of Liam Neeson. I cant tell you much about it because once again, I was having trouble understanding why we should be chasing any other celebs, but PDX and Pmungle really wanted a picture with Liam. They got the picture and talked to him for a moment and then we gathered ourselves together, exchanged goodbyes with the producer and his wife-from-Alabama and we waltzed into the night.
I think that is the long and short of the experience. I had fun, it was wonderful and it was as magical as ever. We took a cab back to the Hilton, had drinks in the bar and giggled and remembered until we all retired for the evening. Well some of us retired, I believe PDX went partying on into the wee hours of the morning but she can talk more about that.
Its been another fabulous evening in the presence of this wonderful man. I wish you all could have been there and I promise to share all visual aids just as soon as I've had a few hours of sleep. I'm off now to dream of a handsome blue eyed Irish man.
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TouchedByThPoet
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