Volume 6, Entry 10: Celebrity Crushed

A conversation about high-profile loss

So I’ve got this friend who you don’t know.

No, seriously: you couldn’t possibly know this guy. There’s no way. Stop thinking that you might because…no. You don’t. You haven’t met him. Zero chance.

Anyway, it’s last week, and I’m with this friend (who you definitely don’t know), and we’re talking about Gene Hackman.

Gene Hackman died last week. Well, he probably died last week—that’s when he and his wife were found dead—but the mysterious circumstances of pills and pacemakers are beside the point. The point was Gene Hackman died, and I always liked Hackman. I can’t watch Hoosiers anymore without a critical eye, but Coach Dale’s speech still gets me fired up. It’s the kind of moment I always hoped I channeled while out on the field.

But yeah: this friend and I, we’re talking about Gene Hackman and his career and, yes, about the tabloid mystery of it all, when suddenly he stops talking completely. One minute he’s chatting aimlessly about a 95-year-old actor, remarking how great it was the guy stopped acting and began writing mystery novels, and the next he’s still, his eyes scrunched up with this odd hurt.

I ask him what’s wrong. It takes him a few moments to remember there’s a planet around him. When he finally returns to the world, he tilts his phone toward me so I can see it. I read the headline on Apple News:

Here’s How Michelle Trachtenberg, 39, Died

“Wow, that’s sad,” I say quietly. And I expect him to get back to whatever carbon-monoxide-in-Santa-Fe speculation he’d been building toward, but the guy just goes quiet again. His eyes glaze over. I can hear him swallow between shallow breaths.

This goes on for some time. Finally, when it strikes me that he’s maybe forgotten about breakfast and work, I clear my throat and get his attention again.

“You okay?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says, but when he looks over, he’s got tears in his eyes.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” I sneak a glance at his phone and see he’s opened up the Trachtenberg story. But she was some actress, not a close personal friend, so I don’t get it.

“Is this about Michelle Trachtenberg?” I ask him. I ask it almost jokingly because, like, what a silly thing to get lost in, but I’m glad for the “almost” because he swallows so loudly it sounds like breaking glass and then nods.

“Really?” I ask it with too much animation, too much judgment, but it’s just that I’m surprised. I expect him to shoot me a fierce look, but the guy looks defeated, like he’s walking into a funeral.

After staring down at his phone once more, he looks up.

“We were growing old together,” he says. It comes out a lamentation. You can hear the pain, like he’s trying to talk after biting his tongue.

I raise an eyebrow at him—I can’t help it—and I say the only thing that comes to mind.

“Wha?”

He takes a breath so deep his shoulders rise like they’ve decided to fly, but there’s no sigh that follows. He lets it out through his nose like he’s trying to control his breathing.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he says.

And then he gets up and walks away.

*****

All day, it irks me how I handled things with my friend. I’m not used to being insensitive, and I know I’d been too dismissive. I swear that wasn’t my intention! I wanted to understand, but his comment made zero sense. Dude was crestfallen, wet-eyed, broken up about the death of Michelle Trachtenberg, a former child actress whose heyday was decades ago. “We were growing old together”??! What the hell is that supposed to mean?

My friend—you definitely don’t know him, by the way—can be a little out there sometimes, but being crushed by a celebrity’s death didn’t compute at all. Did he know her? Was he secretly some big fan? Was it something else entirely?

Good guy that I am, I check in on him later. I catch him on his lunch break, apologize for my reaction, and ask him the key question.

“What was your whole thing with Michelle Trachtenberg?” I ask it with no judgment, my words full of gentle curiosity. The gentle because I care; the curiosity because I really, really wanna know.

To my surprise, he speaks. I can tell he’s been thinking about it.

“I first ran into Michelle Trachtenberg on The Adventures of Pete & Pete. The show’s a hazy fever dream of suburban magic realism, and I barely remember how it worked. Trachtenberg played the younger Pete’s buddy, Nona, but she was only in a third of the episodes. I liked Nona, felt like you could be her friend, but nothing more.

“Then Nickelodeon made her the star of their first feature-length movie, an adaptation of Harriet the Spy. It’s about a sixth grader who writes cruel observations about her family, friends, and classmates and eventually gets discovered. It was the last book my mom read to me and my brother before we moved. It’s a really heavy book, all about contrition and reparation; especially for a reformed playground spy like me, it shouldn’t have been a fun read, but it always felt like home.

“So after we move in June, there’s months where it’s just us. We don’t know any other kids, and the neighborhood’s pretty old. We saw a lot of movies that summer, including Harriet the Spy during its first showing. Somehow, I loved the movie, and when it ended, I hustled down the movie poster. I hung it in my room. Have you ever seen that poster?”

I tell him I haven’t.

“It’s bright blue but centers on Trachtenberg in a yellow rain slicker. The camera angle’s weird—very 90s, very kids' movie. But yeah, it’s basically a poster of Michelle Trachtenberg. I woke up every day of fifth, sixth, and seventh grade to a poster of Michelle Trachtenberg.”

He pauses.

“Also John Travolta.” He gives a dry little laugh. “But only Michelle Trachtenberg made the new home feel like home.”

I nod, finally catching on.

“I get it,” I say. “Michelle Trachtenberg reminds you of childhood. You go way back with her in a way. You had a crush on her at eleven and—”

“No.” He says it with more force than I suspect he wants to because he gets a little red in the cheeks and scowls at the floor.

“That’s not—I didn’t have…it wasn’t then…No.”

I’m sharper this time, so I throw my hands up. “Oh! I’m sorry. I just figured—”

He shakes his head.

“I knew you wouldn’t get it,” my friend says.

And he walks away.

*****

It’s later that day. I’ve finished my work, and I’m collecting my things to walk off campus when my friend shows up. (You still don’t know him. Definitely not.)

Instantly, I can tell my friend needs to talk. I can still taste my sneakers from our previous two chats, so I elect to go silent. I lean back against the desk and let him have the floor.

At first, he opens his mouth, and there’s this little quiver in his chin. I brace for waterworks, scoping out the nearest Kleenex box, but he doesn’t break. He takes a deep breath.

“Michelle Trachtenberg was born on October 11, 1985. She’s less than five months older than me. Whenever I watched her in something, I watched someone my own age.

“When I saw that headline this morning, it caught me first because it was Michelle Trachtenberg. I liked Michelle Trachtenberg in basically everything she did, dating back to Pete & Pete. But what really got me was her age. It said it right there in the headline: ‘Michelle Trachtenberg, 39’. Thirty-nine, man.”

He looks down for a moment, so I interject. Gotta prove I’m listening.

“That’s so young,” I say. It comes out gravelly, like I’m digging down deep to acknowledge it; it’s that painful. I even shake my head in case he looks up. He doesn’t, but he does speak.

“I’m turning thirty-nine this week.”

Comprehension floods my brain. It’s like a lightbulb finally clicks on. Of course. I feel stupid for not connecting it, but also relieved. This makes sense. My friend (who, again, you definitely don’t know) just read an obituary for an actress almost exactly his age. Someone he remembers as a kid from when he was a kid is dead.

“Damn,” I say, and it comes out like a sigh. “Damn, you’re right. That’s gotta be a shock.”

He bites his lip. He nods.

“The little girl from Harriet the Spy, a girl who could have sat next to me in elementary school, died. It breaks your brain, man. It doesn’t compute. I mean, the thought of Michelle Trachtenberg turning forty wouldn’t have been conceivable when I woke up to her poster every day, but now, Michelle Trachtenberg will never turn forty.“

“It’s sobering,” I chime in.

He nods. “Michelle Trachtenberg never made it to forty.” He’s not looking at me as he says it, his eyes hollow as he stares off into the distance. “It reminds me that I might not make it either. None of us might. That noise on the roof might be Death, clearing debris with his scythe.”

“It’s just windy,” I say half-heartedly. But my friend doesn’t hear it.

“The beginning was so long ago.” He says it like he’s an oracle temporarily possessed. “The end feels so close.”

“So that’s why she hit so hard.” It comes out a whisper, more for myself than for him. He looks up at me. The abyss in his pupils stretches to the horizon.

“I’m sorry.” I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, man. Mortality fucking sucks.”

He doesn’t say anything, so I give him a hug. I anticipate tears, but he’s a statue the whole time. When we pull apart, I can see he’s a bit dazed. Before I can suggest getting dinner or something, he gives a window-shattering gulp and looks me in the eyes.

“Thank you.” He says it so quietly I might have imagined it.

Before I can respond with a sturdy smile, he turns on his heel and walks away.

*****

That night, I feel so sure the entire episode is over that I don’t even think about it. I watch a YouTube video about graded cards and fix myself a salad.

Right as I’m about to take a bite, there’s a knock at the door. I’m not expecting anybody—maybe a package?—but when I check the doorbell camera, it’s none other than, you guessed it, my friend that you couldn’t possibly know.

When I open the door, I can see the guy’s tense. His shoulders aren’t moving naturally; it’s like he’s forgotten that his arms swing, that gravity takes care of that for you.

“Hey,” I say, opening the door so he can enter. “What’s going—”

He doesn’t wait for the “on”.

“Do you have Disney Plus?”

Of all the questions he could have asked, that one might have shocked me the most. It’s so out of left field that I don’t even follow up. I have the remote in my hand from pausing to get the door, and I automatically hand it to him.

My friend heads into the living room and switches over. I rarely watch Disney Plus—I only keep it for my parents—but it feels fortuitous here because he’s on a mission. When the hub finally opens, he immediately flips to the search and types furiously into the box one letter at a time.

“The voice control’s activ—” But I cut myself off: he’s already selecting a movie.

I lean around his shoulder to check what he’s picked. Not that he can see it, but I raise an eyebrow.

“Ice Princess?” I mouth the words, knowing they’d come with a rude scoff if I spoke them.

I’m not sure he’d have heard me anyway. As soon as the movie starts, the dude’s locked in. It’s like I’ve disappeared. After a few minutes of skepticism while watching him, I go back to my food and keep cooking, watching the movie but primarily watching him watch it.

The experience is surreal. I know my buddy can get a bit teary now and then, but this Ice Princess movie really hammers the guy. There’s not a single five-minute stretch when he doesn’t get choked up. Sometimes it makes sense—the movie leans inspirational tear-jerker—but a lot of times it just bubbles out of his throat. Even when he’s otherwise silent, I hear micro-sniffles. I offer him a waffle at one point (which he doesn’t even acknowledge), and I see his eyes puffy and his face and shirt drenched. I can’t imagine any person has ever cried this much during any movie ever.

I realize pretty quickly that Ice Princess stars Michelle Trachtenberg. Even though you definitely don’t know my friend, I’m sure you realized it, too—I didn’t want to condescend. But yeah, the movie is basically 95 minutes of Michelle Trachtenberg.

It’s not half bad, by the way. It’s a cliché sports movie, so you get the general trajectory from the beginning, but it’s thoughtful. I chuckle a few times at how the “advanced” Physics Trachtenberg’s character does amounts to saying one-half m-v-squared about 56 times, and then I outright laugh when ESPN televises a regional skating competition, but I like the thing, especially when it breaks into a parental rivalry. I wouldn’t call it a rigorous film, but it’s got some sharpness, and yeah, Trachtenberg is pretty endearing. I think she did most of her own skating.

When the movie ends, I give my friend some time to process. The guy’s a mess. He’s just sitting there, head in his hands, massaging his scalp like he’s making pizza dough with it. When he finally goes without tears for three minutes, I pull up a chair next to him. I stare at the screen where a young Michelle Trachtenberg continues to look out at us for a few moments, but then I look over at my friend.

“Talk,” I say. It reads like a command because it was, but it was delivered with softness, I swear.

It takes him a few tries to get any words out. He’s not sobbing or anything, but it’s like he keeps finding his thoughts and then second-guessing them. Finally, after the eleventh false start, I gently elbow him in the side.

“You can just talk. It doesn’t have to make sense.”

He responds immediately.

“It’s so…stupid.”

“What?”

“I…” He takes a deep breath and then lets out a sigh so large you’d think Atlas just dumped the cosmos from his shoulders.

“Try me,” I say, maybe more impatient than I mean.

He shoots me a skeptical look and then another one. He shakes his head. I open my mouth to reassure him again, but his words beat mine to air.

“When I watched Ice Princess in 2005, she and I were both nineteen. I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Like, I thought those exact words: She’s the most beautiful girl in the world.

“And it makes sense why. Everything in that movie makes her out to be amazing. Some of it is in the fiction—the STEM stuff, the determination—and some of it is engineered movie magic between that corny soundtrack and the tropey-ness of it all. But a lot of it was watching her skate so gracefully around. Her agility, her grace, her dancing. And in beautiful flowing gowns no less. Of course, I would find her beautiful. Michelle Trachtenberg was beautiful.

“I know that sounds superficial and shallow, maybe even a little mouth-breather-y, but I swear it had this intellectualized element to it, too, because Michelle Trachtenberg was almost exactly my age. Less than five months separated her and me. I watched Ice Princess at nineteen while Michelle Trachtenberg was nineteen. We were nineteen.

“It started with the shock of that fact. After taking down her poster in middle school, I hadn’t even thought about her. If someone had said her name—and I didn’t know any Buffy fans then, so they never did—I would have pictured the scrappy eleven-year-old from Harriet the Spy. But Michelle Trachtenberg wasn’t some little kid anymore. She was a gorgeous, graceful woman. While I aged, she had aged, too.

“It wasn’t a crush…I mean, it wasn’t not a crush either. But I didn’t talk about her. I didn’t write about her. I didn’t try to add her on MySpace. I had no little kid delusion like ‘I’m gonna marry her’ or anything dumb like that. Did I cast her as the faceless woman holding my hand or in a white dress? …Maybe a few times, but I was always a realist. It wasn’t like that.

“Again, I swear to you, it was something deeper. From then on, a few times every year, I’d look up Michelle Trachtenberg. Not in a weird way, and not in a stalkery way. Just…checking in. Some years, it happened naturally—she had a role in Take Me Home Tonight and an arc on Sleepy Hollow—but usually, I’d feel a little lonely or feel myself getting older, and I’d pull up her IMDB or search her up on Google. I’d find some current photo and see her being older and feel…well, feel comforted. It felt okay to be growing old because Michelle Trachtenberg was, too. Whenever I’d look, there she’d be. Some years her face was a little rounder, other years the opposite, but no matter what, I always found the same words. She was always beautiful, and finding her beautiful all those years made me happy.

“At nineteen, I thought I was going to meet someone to grow old with. I never did. So I cast Michelle Trachtenberg in the role. I didn’t know her, I harbored no fantasies of knowing her; I never even searched for details about her life. She was a complete and total stranger. But it felt like she wasn’t. It felt like we were growing old together.”

I don’t say anything because what is there to say? They don’t exactly make “Your existential celebrity crush just died” cards. This is uncharted territory.

But my friend wasn’t done.

“It…It…”

It’s like he’s tried the cord on the mower too many times already. He’s frustrated; he’s embarrassed. He’s ready to just let the grass grow.

But I know this guy. I give him another nudge.

“Go ahead, man. Just say it.”

He lifts his hand to his chest. He presses it against his sternum, but he runs his thumb along his ribs. Another epic sigh escapes his throat.

“A part of me feels like I just lost the love of my life.”

*****

We sit there in silence for a spell. Mercifully, the TV goes to screensaver, rescuing us from Michelle Trachtenberg’s face haunting us, but I can tell there’s something else there.

But what could it be? What’s left after you make a confession like that? You don’t know my friend—definitely not—but he’s not one to invoke the L-word casually. All this could be a joke from a lot of guys, but from this friend you definitely haven’t met before? No way. Everything he’s saying oozes sincerity. It’s like he’s kept this pseudo-pretend affection in his heart so long it became real. Or it started to feel real, I dunno. Trying to explain the heart’s a fool’s errand sometimes.

By now, the room is dark. The smell of waffles clings to the air. The buzzing refrigerator might as well be a growling bear, it so fills the space. But still, my friend just sits, lost in silent contemplation.

Eventually, right around the time I start to get restless, he sits up straight. Instinctively, I angle my ear in his direction, ready to listen. He begins.

“I hate that I feel this way.” He says it with authority, like he’s writing a policy speech. It’s my turn to sit up straighter.

“I hate that I’m feeling grief for her. Grief…how can I grieve for someone I didn’t know? This is a selfish feeling right now. It’s not for her because I didn’t know her well enough to even judge the inherent tragedy of her death!”

“Dying at thirty-nine is always a tragedy,” I whisper.

“Yeah…for her sister. For her parents. For the kid who played Pete and for Blake Lively and her actual friends and mentors. Not for me. I’m just some creep in the ether. What kind of monster makes someone else’s death about them? It’s such a soft feeling, this loss, yet it turns my skin to scales. It makes me a monster.”

“You’re not a monster.”

“But I am a monster! I’m sitting here talking about posters and movies, about intellectual infatuation over two decades, when a real woman—not just some fictional character or image on a screen—has died. She’s dead before she even got to forty, man, and I’m talking about how I feel…Fuck.”

“Yeah, but how else are you supposed to respond?”

I speak without any forethought. That’s a risk for sure, especially being tactless as recently as that morning, but I’m emboldened. What I think of this whole thing, I can’t be sure, but I’m not going to let my friend skewer himself for feeling.

“No, but really,” I continue. “What are you supposed to feel right now? Real or imagined, you have a history with Michelle Tractenberg. A history of sorts, at least. You’ve known her, in a way, since you were kids. You didn’t know her, and you don’t know her family or friends. The one thing you know is what you’ve felt across all these years. Their loss is hypothetical to you, but yours is real. Of course, you’re gonna feel the weight of that!

“Besides, it’s not selfish to feel. You’re aware that what they’re feeling is real and unfathomable. You aren’t claiming that your grief is the one that matters. You’re not making the story about you. You’re reflecting. You’re processing. You’re remembering. You’re talking it out. You’re allowed to do that, man. You’re supposed to express the hard feelings, not shove them down deep inside.”

My friend looks at me. The vacancy in his expression has melted a bit. There’s some actual focus in his eyes. I think I’m getting through to him.

“It’s so shallow, though. ‘The most beautiful woman in the world.’ Shit…that doesn’t sound like me.”

“We’re all shallow sometimes, dude.”

“I shouldn’t feel this much. It’s dangerous to feel so much.”

“Feeling’s good. It’s numbness you’ve gotta worry about.”

“And how long did it take me to think about her family? It took me too long—”

“The news was sudden. You didn’t get to brace for it.”

“And to—”

Finally, I cut him off. It comes out with far too much intensity, but this time, I won’t apologize for it.

“Dude!”

His eyes go wide. He watches me with a shocked look, like a triple espresso just kicked in.

“Seriously, man. Show yourself some grace! Stop worrying about the optics of your heart and the viability of your hurt. Just…fucking feel! The emotions don’t have to make sense; they can make you uncomfortable. You can even be frustrated that you feel them at all. But don’t compound the issue by making yourself ache because you ache. One ache is enough, dude. It’s noble that you want to challenge your own grief, but fuck me, it’s okay. It’s okay to grieve the loss of Michelle Trachtenberg!”

“But nobody sane hurts like this over a celebrity crush!”

“So what if they don’t? Who cares if it’s a unique-to-you wound? Everyone’s struggle is different. Everyone’s…” I trail off so he can finish it.

He wrinkles his nose and shoots a venomous glare my way. But then he composes himself.

“Everyone’s struggle is real.”

“Damn straight, dude. Damn straight.”

*****

We sit there a few minutes longer. It’s late enough I can hear a cricket outside. The wind rattles something in the chimney, but it leaves me peaceful because we’re inside, away from the storm.

Finally, my friend stands up. He does a cat-like stretch and then rubs his eyes like he’s a little kid who just woke up.

“I’ve gotta go,” he says without making eye contact. “Thank you.”

I hop out of my chair, too.

“No problem. You’d do the same for me.”

He nods, gives me a bobbly thumbs up, and then shuffles toward the door. After unbolting it and wrapping his hand around the knob, he rotates back to face me.

“What’s up?” I ask.

He grimaces and then exhales through his nose.

“There’s still hurt here. What do I do now?”

My eyes trace the living room as though searching for answers. When I reach the television, I smile.

“Do you have the soundtrack to that Ice Princess movie?”

He rolls his eyes at me. Real petulant-child-like. He shakes his head.

“Of course I do.” He says it through pursed lips.

I snort. I can’t help it.

“Good. Maybe listen to that for a while.” I nod as though a song is playing. “Listen until you can hear it without getting choked up. And maybe buy the movie on Blu-ray or something. Give yourself a trinket to remember her by.”

He opens his mouth to say something and then thinks better of it. Instead, he offers a two-finger salute and opens the door.

“I’ll do that,” he says. “Thank you again.”

As the door closes behind him, I sit myself down one more time. Reaching for the remote, I press a button, and there again I see Michelle Trachtenberg’s face. I look into her digital eyes and think to myself Yeah. I think I’d have crushed on her at nineteen, too.

“I should’ve said that to him.” I say it out loud even though it’s just me in the house. But then I chuckle because I’d bet he didn’t need me to. He’s a funny guy sometimes, that friend of mine, but I admire his willingness to reflect.

It’s too bad you definitely don’t know him.

---

I recorded an extended follow-up of sorts for this piece. It’s less to talk about Michelle Trachtenberg—I think I got all of that out here—and more to talk about how this piece came to exist and what it taught me about writing. The video can be found here.

For posterity: this was my second complete draft of this piece. It says all the same things the first one did, but this one…works.

Rest in peace, Michelle.