5/11/01: I am Captain Jean Luc Picard!
It is Emma's graduation day (congratulations, Emma! also Matty and everyone else who graduated) so after work I meet her at Cinema Classics again to have a little celebration. Bonnie and Sheena are there. Emma is looking a little out of it, so I say, dear, have you eaten anything lately? She says she had had lunch. It being after 7 pm, I take it upon myself to get her a bagel with cream cheese, and I get myself an over-caffeinated coffee beverage at the same time.
When I return, I sip at my coffee and feel the caffiene running through my veins. It's lovely. I am digging through my bag for some chap stick, I find my cute little hardcover copy of Midsummer Night's Dream, which I am reading that day. Bonnie and I begin a little discussion of our favorite Shakespeare, and find we agree completely. We give out our awards: best comedy, Midsummer followed closely by Twelfth Night; best tragedy, MacBeth; best later work, The Tempest. I tell her I saw The Tempest on Broadway, with Patrick Stuart.
“Oh! Oh!” says Bonnie. “Can I tell you my Patrick Stuart story?”
“You have a Patrick Stuart story?” I say. “I like Patrick Stuart. For an old guy, he’s sexy, you know. And also… I mean, he’s Jean-Luc Picard.”
Bonnie finds this an amusing comment, and you shall see why. She does indeed have a Patrick Stuart story, and it’s a doozy.
Apparently, a friend of hers worked as a chauffeur for Mr. Stuart when he was playing Prospero in the Tempest, which was about five years ago. The friend claims that Stuart was aware of his sexiness and took advantage of it, getting drunk and carousing and generally running amuck. On one particular evening, he asked the chauffeur to pull over so that he (Stuart) could kick out a passenger – a girl he had with him who had ceased to amuse him. Stuart then asked to be driven to another area of town so he could pick up a different chick. Stuart was apparently pretty drunk at this point. When he saw some women, he opened up the sunroof, stood up on the seat so his head was outside the car, and he shouted in his booming Star Trek Captain voice:
“I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Star Ship Enterprise. Who wants to fuck me?”
…and apparently, someone took him up on the deal.
We, none of us, have much of a response to this story, except for laughter and startled looks.
I say, “Oh my goodness, Bonnie, can I put this on my website?”
Bonnie says, “Sure. It’s probably something of an urban myth at this point, anyway.”