A lot of my story ideas involve celebrities, particularly normal people having encounters with celebrities that reveal something about that celebrity's private life or unseen way of being. Why am I so preoccupied with this?

It seems to me that there is something a little inherently queer about celebrity. Or—more accurately—not queer, but closeted.

Celebrities are expected to perform a version of themselves in public that has been carefully crafted so as not to jeopardize their career. Certain topics can't be broached, certain questions have to be laughed off. But to know a celebrity personally—how much more would they reveal of themselves? Getting that much access to someone whose whole appeal is being both visible and unknowable. We know that celebrities aren't who they pretend to be in public. That's why we love talking and thinking about their private lives. It's so strange that in the world today we have a whole class of people whose entire existence is just being partially known to everyone—a universal acquaintance—and yet not fully known by any of them.

How satisfying it would be, then, to develop a closer bond with someone like that, to be one of the chosen few who gets to actually know this person. To be someone to whom a celebrity can come out.