The Ultimate Fan

The ultimate fan has a certain idea of what it means to care. It’s always the little things; The letters sprayed with the star’s favorite perfume, gift packages of their most loved foods, postcards of small towns they really ought to visit. (these rules per see obviously only applied to girl fans and slightly misguided male fans – die hard red blooded males either didn’t give fan mail and kept all their “applause” to the confines of a handy tissue or send eloquent love notes professing their burning passion to “fuck you senseless.”
An ultimate fan is not necessarily loyal; Longevity simply doesn’t need to enter the arena of fandom. Of course by some it is regarded as the touchstone of what being a fan is all about. “I loved them since before it was cool to like them” I’m sure has sparked many an internet debate. There is undeniably some status in those types of fans. It’s like loving the ugly duckling before they become a swan.
However an ultimate fan can be fickle. They can love hard and fast and their passion (as fierce as it is) will burn out and re-ignite for some new flame. The ultimate fan is an obsessive little blighter. Their motto (if they could tear themselves away from their “fanzines” long enough to think of one) would be something along the lines of “eat, sleep, breathe ________”. Perhaps that seems tragic. Or less than that, pathetic. To the outsider, the person not shackled by lust or envy on said star that is correct. It is pathetic. Really, what is the point of investing all this energy into someone (or something in the case of “show” fans such as Trekkies – though they tend to be more of the loyal, consistent type fan despite the reputation they are burdened with)who has absolutely no idea you exist. Who by all possibilities is probably a real asshole who you wouldn’t want to waste your breath on saying “hi” to, let alone getting down on your knees in the privacy of some swanky hotel. It’s not the person you fall for. It’s the idea.
It was Rita Hayworth I believe who said “Men go to bed with Gilda and they wake up to me” (cheers to “Notting Hill” for that quote). What Rita is professing (apart from the subtlest hint of promiscuity – you go Rita! Dawg!) is the very divide of fan and star – but also the unifying degree. We’re all fans of something/someone and that’s what simultaneously makes us equal and creates a hierarchy. I’m serious – it sounds like rubbish but think about it. I’m a fan of so and so whose a fan of so and so (a different so and so – I’m trying to make a point here) who looks up to - and so on and so on. It’s human nature that we envy or desire something that someone else has, regardless of whether that’s as simple as wanting your workmate’s sandwich or Jessica Simpson’s butt. (Please don’t get those two mixed up) We all have our little fantasies and to me that’s as healthy as an apple a day. Unless…
What we as ultimate fans (and the regular average Joe fans too) can tend to forget is that the object of our desire is real. (Again unless it’s a show or something not real, like a car – work with me here)
And that’s when I wonder if it isn’t incredibly inappropriate to think lascivious thoughts about our hot famous counterparts…when these hot counterparts may have families or loved ones…Is it ok to drool and plan a daydream shagathon with a very married Johnny Knoxville(**he was married when I first wrote this**), if it isn’t okay to do that about some married person in regular life? Or on the other hand (which I as a sometime ultimate fan prefer to think like) it’s perfectly okay as long as it stays in the mind and never more. And more specific to that, that it’s natural even so long as your desires for celebrities and a life different to your own doesn’t inhibit or prohibit you from going out and living and loving the life we have been blessed with ourselves…