It’s sort of a dorky name but as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown into loving it.  Still I can’t deny it’s let me down over the years, over and over, without a pang of remorse, pretty much the way Bill Clinton let Hillary down.  The one that comes to mind is when we were on a flight to Vancouver and I was sitting on the aisle, pretty far up, though not in the first class, and it just seemed to me that I was getting a lot of foot traffic brushing by me.  People coming up from behind me, then turning heel when they were a few feet past me, and invariably I saw them looking at me curiously, and then a look of disdain or whatever would cross their faces.  They would peer right at me and then they’d turn away as if from some tragedy.  This happened three or four times, then I thought to myself I was being paranoid.  To test my theory I unbuckled my seat belt and made as if to stretch, then started sauntering towards the restrooms at the rear of the plane.  Was it my imagination or were whole rows recoiling from me?

In Vancouver it all sorted itself out.  A writer I knew was also on the plane, and told her girlfriend she had spotted Kevin Killian way up in the front.  The girlfriend thought she’d said, “Kevin Kline.” There were a whole group of drunk girls on the plane and our flight turned into a game of Telephone as they whispered my name in one ear and out the other.  “Kevin Kline!” By the time the rumor hit Row 26, some had heard the name as Calvin Klein”—all of which explained the mass disappointment when they came sidling up to my seat and instead found not a star, nor a great designer, but instead just a guy with a name that sounds like something else.  I guess I’d feel chagrined too, so I can’t really blame them.

In a way it’s sort of like, when I was in school, I had a boyfriend of sorts who told me I looked like Neil Young—exactly like Neil Young—and he’d say it with such force I had no choice but to accept it as a compliment, but now I wonder.

by Kevin Killian
San Francisco, CA