Cher Groupie

Cher Groupie

I am not really an avid music person the way some are.  I wasn’t so much in high school and college and I am now a person who would rather listen to a book on tape or news program than listen to music on a long trip.  However, I do enjoy music at times and my tastes are narrow, but well-defined.  I like oldies, I like Billy Joel and Meatloaf (mostly for their lyrics) and I like Cher.

Liking Cher makes people giggle.  It seems Cher, as a Diva, has become an idol of many gay men.  I guess that’s about flamboyance.  I like Cher for her acting (Silkwood, Mask and Moonstruck are all fabulous movies) as well as her singing.  I liked the Sonny & Cher show when it aired.  I pretty much like everything about Cher and I like the way in which she has embraced celebrity and lived her life to the fullest.

I have seen Cher in concert, something I only do for a few artists (yes, Billy Joel, Meatloaf and selected others).  In fact, I saw Cher in concert in 2002 at her first farewell tour in Las Vegas.  Las Vegas and Cher are synonymous and very much alike.  At that concert, Cyndy Lauper opened for her.  She then came on stage to uproarious applause and told the audience that this was her final tour because she was tired of being “a fricken diva for forty years”.  She said it was time for Madonna, Britany or Lady Gaga (my addition) to take over for her.  Her final and typical admonition to the entertainment world at large was to say, “And follow this, ya bitches!”  And thus, began a great Cher concert seventeen years ago.

I have told that story to my wife Kim many times.  She knows of my love for Cher.  She was sympathetic when I chose to name my vacation/retirement home in San Diego Casa Moonstruck.  She thought it was fun.

Kim is our family representative to the theater world, so it is totally natural that she bought us tickets to go see The Cher Show on Broadway.  This is a show about Cher’s life, with all the attendant music (like Carol King and Beautiful).  There were three separate Cher’s representing the stages of her life.  Kim bought four tickets so we could go with our friends Gary and Oswaldo.  The show was phenomenal, much better than expected.

At the end of the show as the cast was taking its bows, it was announced that the cast was advocating for Broadway Cares Equity Fights Aides charity and for the audience to give generously.  They then announced that there was a fourth Cher on stage as the real Cher, complete with a red/orange wig, came on stage.  The audience went wild with excitement as Cher spoke about how much she was impressed and honored by the show.

It was then announced that they would hold an auction for the opportunity for one theater-goer to come backstage to meet Cher, get a picture with her and get two prime tickets to the Cher Tour visit to Madison Square Garden later this year.  I will note that Kim has already bought us tickets for that show.

To set the stage, I was siting in the back of the house where they got me a more comfortable chair than the tiny set in the fourth row where the rest of my group was seated.  They opened the bidding at $3,000 and my mind went to how cool it would be to meet Cher.

Strangely enough we have two neighbors in our building that have two standard poodles’ named Dolly and Loretta.  We had assumed it was to honor the country music heroes of many.  Our dog-sitter Kristoffer met the neighbors a few days ago and learned that the names were in honor of Cher’s two roles in Silkwood and Moonstruck.  It seems these neighbors were huge Cher fans that had seen The Cher Show twice already and had a room of Cher memorabilia of impressive proportions.

All of this was going through my mind as several people bid the auction up to $6,000.  That was when I decided on the spur of the moment to jump in and bid $7,000.  It seems there was one woman who had her heart set on winning.  She and I stepped the bidding up to $12,000, whereupon someone else weighed in and I backed down to reconsider.  I decided that I would be willing to spend up to $20,000 for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I jumped in again at $16,000, $18,000 and finally $20,000.  The other woman was quick to counter at $21,000 and I motioned that I was out.

All the while, Kim was looking back at me with her hand over her mouth in what seemed to be some combination of excitement and distress (I couldn’t quite tell how much of each from a distance).  I finally shrugged at her as though to say, “I tried.”

When we got out of the theater it took two blocks to talk the excitement out of Kim.  She finally said it was a shame we didn’t offer to pay an additional $20,000 just to meet Cher.  You tend to think of thee great solutions after the dust settles and its too late to change things.  I’m guessing that it would have been an offer that would have surprised them but been acceptable to them.  We, of course, would explain that we already had tickets to the show in December.

If that had happened, we would have met Cher and have a selfie to post.  Oh, well, instead we get a great story, an exciting memory and we still have our $20,000.  Not a bad ending altogether for a Cher Groupie.