Keanu and Me

It was completely by chance that I first met the actor Keanu Reeves. I hadn't gone to a movie premiere or a fan club rally in search of Him, pushing my way past hordes of teenage girls and Bill and Ted lookalikes. I met Him this summer, a fellow guest at a garden party given in honor of my sister's high school graduating class in Toronto, Canada.

The weather on that day was scorchingly hot and humid. The courtyard where the party was held was canopied by ancient oak and maple trees. There was a podium, decorated with the school crest and with flowers wilting from heat exhaustion.

Behind the podium on risers were seats for the graduating class, about 100 teenage girls in pristine white dresses (bought specially for the occasion, with great anxiety for my sister and nuisance to her family). They buzzed about like bees waiting for a honeypot.

They knew He would come. I did not. Just a few minutes earlier, I had strolled from my car to the courtyard, when a red Porsche whisked by me. I thought that I recognized the hand-some chiselled face staring out of the open passenger window, hair tousled by the wind. It reminded me of my neighbor's retriever and how it loved being driven around with its head out the window.

In the courtyard, anxious school-girls eyed the other guests discreetly and whispered hushed worries to their friends. Floating between the small pockets of graduates, I learned that He had attended other school functions, and would certainly come to see his sister (who, being naturally left out of these discussions, made a bunch of quick new friends and awaited Him proudly).

He arrived. He strode up from the road to the courtyard, sporting an air of nonchalance, a Hollywood-chic black outfit, and a seemingly genuine enjoyment of his particular situation on this day. The Keanualert, ever so subtle and unmistakable, went out among the ground troops. I caught sight of the stares that screamed, "HE'S HERE OMIGOD HE'S GORGEOUS!" and saw him for the first time, almost face to face.

I nodded to acknowledge Him--almost in deference--and he nodded to acknowledge me. At that moment I was sold, and there was no turning back. I had actually made a connection which seemed at the time to say, "We grew up in the same home town; I understand you so well you're practically my brother."

And he replied with his nod: "You're right."

It was Keanu Reeves, the famous movie superstar! America had just added the prefix "super" to his title when I saw him, although what he did to be promoted in the legions of teeny-bopper magazines from "star" to "superstar" I do not know.

Weeks before this party I had seen the movie "Little Buddha," in which Keanu played the Enlightened One in a somewhat less than enlightened way. Like millions of others, I watched as he grunted through the "Bill and Ted" series, had sex with River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho," and most recently, appeared on David Letterman just two nights before.

This was a serious player in pop iconography, with the power to melt hearts and save buses from explosion. On The Day That I Met Keanu Reeves, his latest motion picture, "Speed," had just hit the number one spot at the Canadian box office.

I was thrilled.

My soul brother Keanu took a seat at a table at the very back of the courtyard. At the podium, guest speakers who could never hope to grab as much attention as He started to praise and inspire the graduating class with their own humble experiences.

Sure, there were judges and educators. But had any of them appeared on Letterman yet?

In typically Canadian fashion, the audience was far too polite to take any overt notice of Him. We pretended to glance over at the tree he was standing under, looking for a bird whose song we could have sworn we recognized. But under that thin, hard coat of well-bred civility, there was an unsatisfied urge to mob him. Like a dam waiting to burst, we looked around at each other, wondering who would be the first to release the floodgate.

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.)