My newfound celebrity is ushering in the end times.

In my position as a uniformed toy soldier. . . . . .


I really don't even need to finish that sentence. The impact has already been sufficiently felt by the reader. Like a sharp gust of wind against the face or the quick belch which hits the unsuspecting ear with the force of a percussive rimshot. Hell, I give an involuntary reaction to that introductory phrase, and I received warning about it a month ago.

The other day I was standing guard at the 58th Street entrance – waiving to passing cars, saluting contractors in their work vans and chauffeurs in black Lincoln Town Cars, dispensing goodwill in general – when a man and his family drove by in their SUV. The light turned red, so traffic stopped. He rolled down his window. I saluted, smiled, waived. He yelled, "You need to finish college!" I yelled back, "I have a master's degree!" "Then you're a goddamn fool!" And with that, our uplifting dialogue came to an end.

There are some things one doesn't set out to accomplish: memorizing every lyric to The Bodyguard soundtrack, watching VH1's marathon showing of an entire season of America's Next Top Model, buying a John Tesh album. I'm sure being employed as a "character" at any number of theme parks/tourist attractions must be included in this list. Does anyone aspire to don the cumbersome trappings of Donald Duck and wander around the sprawl of Disneyworld, suffering the whims, fetishes, and tantrums of young and old? Although I'd prefer not to stand outside of FAO Schwarz five or six days a week dressed like an English bobby - being told for the 500th time, "Hey! You're not supposed to move!" and responding for the 500th time, "Bitch, you don't know me! Where d'ya get off judging me!" - it's a necessary irritant. I mean, a job is a job, right? Whether you're a CEO or a plain ol' ho. And while I did not move to New York to be a subservient, though widely celebrated, doorman, the pay isn't awful, the hours are flexible, and the customers are for the most part great.

It's all a matter of choosing the tomorrow over today. I mean, I'm always willing to endure the temporary hassle of post-surgery bandages if I'm promised a stunning new nose or set of cheekbones. Good things come to those who wait. Or sometimes they don't, and you just have sadness.

But an amusing aspect of this job and the supposed subject of this post is my status as one of the most photographed people in New York City. Honest. I am something of a minor celebrity, albeit a nameless figure isolated from any individual identity apart from my association with said employer. But nevertheless, a type of celebrity - an unlikely species in the celebrity genus. I appear in memory cards and photo albums across Europe, Asia, Australia, Central and Latin America, and the contiguous United States. Do people actually compile photo albums in the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand and Six? On average I will have my picture taken 50 to 100 times a day. If it's busy, closer to 200. And we haven't even entered into the holiday season. I hold babies, hug wives (and probably mistresses), pose with countless Flat Stanleys. I salute (right- and left-handed), smile, stiffen, look very stern. I stand next to the genuinely excited, the mocking, the ironic, the unwilling, the crying. Soon I will start popping up in strangers' Christmas cards. A co-worker informed me that I could also make unwished-for showings on the internet with other people's naughty bits superimposed. But this individual is a something of a self-hating drama queen and cannot be relied upon too heavily.

Regardless, here I am being paid to give the appearance of history, to hijack another country’s tradition for profit. But the tourists love it. They, who have actual soldiers guarding actual monarchy in actual castles, will wait their turn to have they’re picture taken with me – a fake soldier in America’s castle, the department store, guarding nothing. In it’s extreme, Europe has Paris; America has Paris Las Vegas with a half scale replica of the Eiffel Tower. But to be fair, we bastardize our own history and landmarks just as frequently (New York-New York Hotel and Casino; the instant nostalgia of any “neighborhood” Applebee’s). It’s this exciting combination of self-consciousness over our own relatively short history and collective greed that has created my current job. So, if being greedy is the American way, at least my enlistment in, what a friend has coined, the Sugar Queen's standing army allows me to be cheerful about the whole mess.

Plus, I get to hear all day long how good I look in uniform.