Papa-Paparazzi

I felt like a movie star. If only I had washed my hair, been more careful with my makeup and my outfit. For a few blissful moments, I actually believed I had acquired a fan base.

There I was at our local outdoor summer music festival, enjoying a rare evening out with friends before my daughter arrives home today and I am once again on call every Friday and Saturday night for chauffeuring services. Good food, great people -- a welcome diversion from what has been a pretty stressful week.

Now I realize every guy likes nothing better than to watch a little girl on girl action, and I suppose you take what you can get when you're stuck with an over fifty crowd that has come to relive a bit of youth to the soothing sounds of Steely Dan. And so it was that I noticed, as I sat on my girlfriend's lap catching up on life, there were two men watching us intently, their iphones poised to snap some photos.

I could see the headlines now in the local rag: Blogger Jill Ocean discovers she's a lesbian. Well, we all like a little attention, even negative attention, not that being a lesbian is negative in any way. And, as a quasi public figure, I like to accommodate my fans, so I planted a big wet one on my friend's face (I was aiming for her mouth, but she turned and gave me some cheek instead). I glanced around, thinking my fans would be satisfied with the photo of the century and move on. But they looked disappointed, their iphones still at the ready. The back of my head was apparently not what they were looking for, big lesbian style smooch notwithstanding.

It was then that I realized the chief photographer (we'll call him papa-paparazzi) was my husband's old golf friend and drinking buddy. I didn't recognize the other guy (we'll call him baby-paparazzi) but he was as intent as his friend was on capturing my face in a picture. For what, I couldn't tell you.

They were persistent, papa and baby paparazzi. My friend's husband stood in front of us and tried to block their view, but every time he shifted I could see the iphones rising as the amateur photographers reveled in their good fortune. Somebody was going to have to pull a Charlie Sheen; I was beginning to find the obsessive attention a bit unnerving.

Which brings me to what this post is really about, and that is friendship. True friendship, the kind that makes people step up for you even when they really don't have to. My friend's husband grabbed his own phone, went right up to papa (who was so focused on getting a picture of me he didn't even notice) and snapped a picture of his face. Point blank. Hope the guy remembered to use his wrinkle cream.

To make a long story short, my friend's husband (I suppose he's actually my friend as well, and, to his credit, was not at all threatened or annoyed by our little show of lesbian behavior) politely asked papa and baby to move away because they were making me uncomfortable. Tails between their legs, they moved on, and their phones disappeared into their pockets. I think it was their phones. Or maybe they were just happy to have seen me.

There was nothing that could have made me smile more last night (except, maybe, the text from my neighbor's daughter telling me that my daughter had led her team to victory in "Color Days"). I have not been hung out to dry at all, at least not by everybody. There are folks out there who will stand up for me when I need a little help, go out on a limb for me because they have a clear sense of what's right and what's wrong and don't think I deserve to be going through what I'm going through.

Good riddance to papa and baby paparazzi. I've got a posse of mama and papa bears by my side, and, though nobody's captured that image on film, it's worth millions.