In the sweltering heat (under the pressure of a hundred stares), Keanu got up and started to pace back and forth behind the guests as the speeches droned on. The girls, who sat facing the audience, followed Him with their gazes as He paced back and forth in front of them. Their heads moved so synchronously that they looked like they were following a tennis match.
Finally, He sat next to me. What could I do but introduce myself? I did, and we had a little chat, which, in memory, seems to blend in with his Letterman appearance and the hushed secrets of the graduating class.
I learned that he had gone to school in Toronto, that he was half-Chinese, and that this one man, raised to a god-like status by his admirers and publicists, was an interesting and intelligent human being. I most remember that the sound of his voice was effortlessly projected and his diction was surprisingly formal (far from the barbarisms of Bill--or was it Ted?).
Then came the first crack in the floodgate. Suddenly remembering how fortunate Bill Clinton had been to have had the chance to pose shaking JFK's hand 30 years ago, and combined with my general penchant for photographs, I asked him if he wouldn't mind having a photo taken of us.
He smiled and replied, "Certainly!" and that was that. In a striking display of immodesty (I would later be out-done here), we posed in front of a camera and snapped the shot you see here.
Bill Clinton and JFK. Me and Keanu. It was a start.
Yes, He had had a bad hair day, aggravated by His prancing up and down in one spot to cheer on His sister. His Mona Lisa smile is bit bewildering, although I imagine there are more bizarre poses of Keanu out there.
Some of the graduating girls asked Him for a photo, posing nicely as excited friends, their fingers trembling over the shutter, counted, "Ready, one, two..."--but just before "Three" was heard and the shutter clicked, the girls would fling their arms around Keanu's neck in a hormonal surge, to be caught on film for posterity. Boyfriends looked around uncomfortably as garish lapses of modesty struck graduate after graduate. Other guests joined in.
And it was to be such a pleasant little garden party!
As the afternoon wound down, Keanu fled to the Porsche. The sweet pixie dust fragrance of stardom gave way to the smell of freshly-cut grass, the graduates sighed and the twinkle was extinguished from their eyes.
On that one afternoon He had created a hundred "The Day I Met Keanu Reeves" stories, not unlike this one. I had thought myself immune to the whims of Hollywood's products, but I was sucked in, like all the rest of them.
For one blinding month the realization that there could be no greater actor than Keanu Reeves gripped my thoughts.
Patrick S. Chung '96 is a frequent contributor to the Opinion page. His soul-mate, Keanu, is not (though we'd be happy to have him.)