The Story of Steve Burns (or: Boo's Clues)

Within months of moving to New York City in my mid-twenties, I was dating my first actor. Let's call him Alex. Alex was a recent college grad with a BA in Philosophy who spent his mornings finger painting at a pre-school and his evenings performing improv in a Midtown sex emporium that had been converted into a comedy space (the walls behind the stage were still lined with mirrors). We met at a house party where I was miserable. That week I'd answered an ad to be a Bumble and Bumble hair model in order to get a free cut. I hadn't understood that the class theme would be Julia Roberts circa 1991 circa Hook.

I remember slipping away from the party and staring at my hair in the bathroom mirror, sort of poking at it with my vodka stirrer, then taking off my scarf belt and tying it around my head. When I reemerged, I sat next to Alex. We talked for five minutes about Fast Food Nation. (OMG! The chapter on slaughterhouse odors grossed me out, too!) Then that was it. His friend (girlfriend?) was leaving, he had to go.

Three times in my life, I've been on the receiving end of a grand romantic gesture, the kind that convinces you you're in Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. My favorite will always be the first time I met Dan in person. He drove to my Brooklyn apartment at 3AM and surprised me under a streetlight wearing a captain's hat. I was a goner.

The second was when a Catalan cop approached me in a bar in Figueres and told me I had "petty" blue eyes, which was a convenient segue into the story of my recent mugging. He asked permission from my friend's parents to take me on a date the following day, where he spent much of the hour proclaiming, in a bar full of leathery old men, that he would avenge my robbery. As a token of that promise, he even presented me with his boyhood copy of Neruda's odes while we said our forever goodbye in his Fiat. James Blunt's Back to Bedlam played. It was magical. He kissed me with minimal tongue. (We're still long distance friends five years later.)

And the third grand romantic gesture? On the way home that spring night in 2003, Alex called 411 to get the number of the woman whose party we were at so that he could deliver the message that he regretted not staying.

Two months later, when my relationship with Alex had taken a turn for the non-communicative worse (I'm flashing back to our Easter Sunday "stroll" through Prospect Park, when he jogged five paces ahead of me), I started to refer to my time with him as doing improve. As in improve the situation. I thought I could fix things. When we were together, I put on an unscripted one-woman show of denial and low self-esteem. Why won't you go fishing with me in the Adirondacks? Why are you emotionally distant? Why are you getting back on the highway? Alex had once explained to me that he had the awful habit of "fucking shit up" once a relationship got good. "It's like I'm at a really great rest stop," he said. "You're a really great rest stop! One with the best vending machines and bathrooms! And I don't want to get back on the highway and keep driving. Don't let me get back on that highway and keep driving."

That's when I made the very unhelpful, and desperate, suggestion that Alex simply walk alongside the highway for awhile. "Like you're part of a litter clean-up crew," I'd said, to which he'd replied, "You mean like a prisoner."

As part of my ongoing improve performance/adopt-a-highway program, I wanted to get Alex an amazing birthday present. I wanted to return his initial grand romantic gesture. But I was also poor. Just the night before, I'd paid for a can of PBR in dimes. So what was I to do? It wasn't until Alex and I were out buying red bean cakes at a Korean market, and a little girl ran up to him and demanded to know if he was on Blue's Clues, that the plan began to take shape.

"Oh wow," I said. "You do look like that guy."

"Steve Burns."

"No, the guy from Blue's Clues. The one who died."

"That's Steve Burns. And he didn't die."

"It's uncanny!"

"The kids at school always think I'm him. Sometimes I just go with it."

The following statement about the show and its format, taken from the Blue's Clues Wikipedia entry, pretty much speaks to my pathetic efforts at the time to convince Alex I was indispensable: "Its creators believed that if children were more involved in the action of what they were viewing, they would attend to its content longer than previously expected." Basically, I wanted Alex to attend to my content longer than expected. I needed to make his birthday more interactive. There was no better way to accomplish this goal than by getting Steve Burns to attend his party.

Even though I find most TV remotes too complicated to operate, I've always been adept at Google stalking. I have a gift for search terms. Still, just to be safe, I had allocated the better part of my working day at the ol' travel agency to finding Steve Burns' contact info.

I was emailing him in mere minutes. I'd known I'd needed to start slow, woo him with wit and charm, maybe ask for an autographed picture first, before launching into a full-on party invite. Turns out Steve Burns and I got along quite well, despite his wily protests. At one point, he tried to convince me he was Alex.

Steve, I don't think you are Alex, because Alex
would have addressed the main point of my email. That
main point being that I despirately need an autographed
picture of Steve Burns. So, are you in on this or not? -Becca

Becca, Alas, I am out. I kid you not. I gave them all away.

I have to go to Nickelodeon to get more. And I don't

like to go there. - Steve

Steve, you must have SOMETHING you can autograph

for me. An old sock, a paper plate, Nickelodeon

hate mail? I am in doubt as to whether or not you are

truly Steve Burns. Please understand that the state of my

relationship depends on your signature. PS Why do you

hate Nickelodeon? Did you get slimed? -Becca

I don't hate it. I just don't like going there.
And yes I have been slimed. It finds your nethers,
and it stays there. - Steve

I doubt that the famous readily discuss their nethers
online, so from this point out, I am just going to

assume that you are not the real Steve Burns. So, that
means I can't even get the guy pretending to be Steve
Burns to give me his autograph. GREAT. Is there
someway I can get in touch with the guy pretending to be
the guy pretending to be Steve Burns? -Becca

Sigh. What good is this website if I can't convince

people that I am me. This ALWAYS happens. -Steve

My friend Garth has this theory that most celebrities are more accessible that you think -- that their email address either consists of their name (ie, Judith Light@gmail.com) or the worst movie they starred in (Waterworld@hotmail.com). I'm not so sure. Either my emails are going to Judith Light's spam folder, or she's ignoring me. I do know that Steve Burns was gracious enough to humor my absurdity. While he didn't actually attend Alex's party, or my own Beer Garden Geburtstagsfeier a couple months later (something about how I might turn out to be an axe-wielder?), he did call my phone and sing Happy Birthday to Alex. I don't remember Alex much caring. We broke up soon after.

My brief contact with Steve Burns taught me an important relationship lesson -- that grand romantic gestures are fine, so long as they don't double as grand resuscitation gestures. It just took me longer to follow the clues, to piece together the paw prints. I just needed more time in my Thinking Chair.

(And Steve --I'll be in NYC celebrating my 33rd Birthday on June 1st. Just sayin'.)