(Dave Smith posted an illustrated version of The Double on his marvelous Ukiah Blog Live, and I liked his version so well I decided to replicate it here. However, I just got nicked for a bunch of money for using a cartoon and images I did not have licenses to use, so several of the illustrations have been removed. This memoir originally appeared in The Anderson Valley Advertiser and was posted many moons ago on this blog.)
I still find it hard to fathom that there are men walking the earth who resemble me so exactly that even their close friends can’t tell us apart. But ever since I was a teenager, and until quite recently (I’m approaching sixty), I have had several remarkable experiences of being taken for someone I am not. These were not incidents of mistaken identity at a distance. No, these were encounters with people—complete strangers—who saw me up close, studied me, spoke to me, and swore that I was the person they thought I was—a person they knew intimately. And when I told them I was Todd, and not Mike or Paul or Huey or Jason, they thought I was either joking or lying. Furthermore, they told me I possessed this other person’s voice and physical mannerisms to such an uncanny degree, that if I was not the person they believed me to be, I must be his identical twin—or his ghost.
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I was a junior in high school—1966—when I was first mistaken so completely for someone else. I was coming out of Discount Records in Menlo Park, California, when an immaculate two-door 1956 Chevrolet, black top, gray bottom, pulled up beside me, and the driver rolled down his window to say, “Hey, Mike. Listen to this. Something doesn’t sound right.” Then he gunned his engine. “See what I mean? Carburetor?”
“I don’t know who you are,” I said, shrugging politely. “And I don’t know anything about cars.”
“Mike?” he said, incredulously. “You’re not Mike?”
“I’m sorry. No.”
“Wow. You look just like him. Clothes and everything. And you sound like him, too.”
My outfit—blue jeans and T-shirt and high-top tennis shoes—was not particularly original in that era, and so I thought no more about this encounter until a week later when I came out of a guitar shop in Redwood City, and another 1956 Chevy, baby blue bottom, white top, white wall tires, pulled up beside me.
“Mike,” said the driver. “Can I come by a little later? Fucker’s missing. Listen.” And then he revved his engine, too.
“I’m not Mike,” I said, shaking my head. “Apparently I look like him, but I’m not him.”
The guy shut off his engine, got out of his car, and confronted me. He was big, and he scared me. “What the fuck you talkin’ about, Mike?”
“I’m not Mike,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. “And I don’t know anything about cars. Nothing.”
He squinted at me. “You trippin’?”
“No, I’m…not Mike. My name is Todd.”
He frowned deeply. “You’re not Mike DeCamilla? Sequoia High?”
“Todd Walton. Woodside High.”
His jaw dropped and he gazed at me open-mouthed for a long time, as if waiting for me to…become Mike.
“Somebody else with a car like yours, only a different color, thought I looked like Mike, too. Black top, gray bottom.”
“Saxon,” said the guy, nodding. “He told us about you. Mike and me and…we thought he was…fuck, man, you not only look like Mike, you sound like him. Exactly.”
In retrospect, I wish I had asked this guy to introduce me to Mike, but I was so intimidated by him, I didn’t think to ask. And the next person who thought I was Mike was the last person I would have asked to introduce me to Mike.
I was in Discount Records, a favorite hangout of mine in the early days of Folk Rock, a place away from our parents where three of us could cram into a listening booth and blast Buffalo Springfield until the clerk banged on the glass and told us to turn Bluebird down.
I was flipping through the Jazz records, looking for a new Herbie Hancock, when a young woman with bleached blond hair, heavy makeup, and big blue eyes brimming with tears, approached me and whispered, “Mike?”
I shook my head. “I’m not Mike. Some people think I’m Mike, but I’m not.”
“I knew you’d be here,” she said, her jaw quivering. “In the Jazz section. I knew it.”
“I’m not Mike,” I said, wanting to console her. “Is he…your boyfriend?”
She gaped at me, shocked. “How can you say that? How can you be so cruel?”
“Because I’m not Mike,” I said, smiling sadly. “I’m Todd. Do you see that guy at the counter buying a record? That’s my friend, Dave. And he will tell you that I am not Mike. You want to go ask him?”
Then she, too, squinted and frowned at me. “You look exactly like him,” she said, nodding. “But now I can see you’re not him. Sorry.”
Shortly thereafter I grew a mustache and was never taken for Mike again.
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Nine years later—1975—I was living with my girlfriend in a garage in Eugene, Oregon. We were poor as church mice.
I love that expression for all its implications. Anyway, one evening we decided to cut loose and go to a café and split a cup of cocoa. This is not fiction. In the year I lived in Eugene, my girlfriend and I went out twice, and going for that cup of cocoa was one of those times.
We entered the student-run café, ordered our cocoa, and sat at a small table, feeling quite decadent to be spending a dollar on cocoa when we might have more prudently spent it on groceries. But we were young and impetuous and wanted to have some fun. Business was slow, only a few tables occupied.
“That guy keeps looking at you,” said my girlfriend, glancing sidewise at a man sitting with a woman across the room from us.
I turned to look at the man, smiled at him, and then said to my girlfriend, “He seems harmless enough.”
“He’s weird,” she said, whispering harshly. “He’s staring at you.”
My girlfriend and I were not on the best of terms, our relationship doomed for the umpteenth time, this cocoa date a last-ditch effort to inject a tiny bit of levity into a life of poverty devoted, for my part, to the practice of learning how to write. And so I took her complaint as part of her ongoing assault.
“Just ignore him,” I said, sipping our cocoa. “Please?”
“Paul?” said the man, calling to me. “Paul.”
“Oh, great,” said my girlfriend, rolling her eyes. “Now he’s talking to you.”
I looked at the man again—early thirties, fine leather jacket, expensive shoes, black curly hair—only this time I didn’t smile, and the poor guy jumped in his seat as if I’d struck him. Then he turned to the woman he was with, a striking brunette, and looked at her with terror in his eyes.
“Let’s get out of here,” said my girlfriend. “This is totally freaking me out.”
“Can we finish our cocoa?” I was furious. “I can’t handle the garage right now.”
“We could go to the library,” she said, plaintively. “Look at art books. Read the paper. Play the card catalogue game.”
So we got up to go, and the man and woman jumped up and hurried over to us.
“Paul,” said the man, reaching out to me. “It’s Jeff. And Rachel. You know us, don’t you?”
“My name is not Paul,” I said, instantly convinced the guy truly believed I was someone he knew—someone named Paul. “My name is Todd.”
“Why?” he asked, searching my face. “Why did you change your name? So we couldn’t find you?”
“I’m very sorry,” I said, looking first at him and then at Rachel, “but I didn’t change my name. I thought about it, but I never did. I’m Todd, not Paul.”
And Rachel said, “That’s exactly what Paul would say. You are Paul, aren’t you? The way your hands move when you talk. Your eyes. You’re Paul.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I am not Paul.” I turned to my girlfriend. “Would you confirm that, please?”
“He’s not Paul,” she said, sneering at me. “He’s definitely Todd.”
But Jeff and Rachel were still not convinced. So we stood there for a short infinity while they struggled to accept the apparently unbelievable proposition that I was not Paul.
Finally, Jeff said, “I’m Jeff Kovacs. We lived together, Paul and Rachel and Andrea and Colin and Fritz and Sarah and I. In Ithaca. New York. You…Paul disappeared five years ago. No word since. You, Paul…it destroyed us. And if you’re not Paul, you’re his identical twin.”
“When was Paul born?” I asked, bringing forth my driver’s license. “I was born in 1949. I’m twenty-six.” I handed Jeff my license. The photo, in which I resembled a mafia hit man, was two years old.
“Oh,” said Jeff, looking from the license to me. “You’re not Paul. I’m so sorry.”
Rachel took the license and looked from the mug shot to me. “Even so, you could be Paul.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Jeff, bowing his head. “Seeing you is like seeing him again.”
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In 1979, I was visiting my sister in Los Angeles. She lived at the end of one of those narrow little canyon roads in the hills behind UCLA, and just down the hill from her place was an outdoor sculpture studio adjacent to a lovely Spanish hacienda—red-tile roof, turquoise window frames, bougainvillea climbing the white walls. The large stone sculptures were the work of the woman who lived there, Anna Mahler, the oft-married daughter of the famous composer Gustav Mahler. My sister said that Anna enjoyed her neighbors visiting her sculptures, so I went down to have a look.
As I was engrossed in looking at the sculptures, Anna, a handsome woman of seventy-five, came out of her house, gave me a startled look, and said, “My father. You look exactly like my father when he was a young man.”
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On a funnier note, some years later (circa 1985), I was walking down a dimly-lit hallway in a Sacramento restaurant en route to the men’s room, when a woman came toward me, stopped suddenly, and gasped, “Oh my God, you’re Huey Lewis. Oh my God. I am such a huge fan. Oh my God. It’s you.”
“I hate to disappoint you,” I said, feeling oddly flattered, “but I’m not Huey Lewis.”
“I totally understand,” she said, placing her hands together and bowing to me. “You must get hassled to death. Could I get your autograph?”
“I’m not Huey Lewis,” I said, shaking my head. “Bad lighting.”
“I won’t tell anybody,” she said, coming closer. “May I kiss your hand? The Power of Love is my favorite song in the whole world.”
“That’s great,” I said, allowing her to kiss the back of my hand. “But I’m really not Huey Lewis. Truly.”
“I understand,” she said, turning my hand over and kissing my palm. “But this is the chance of a lifetime for me.”
“I’m not Huey Lewis,” I said, pulling my hand away and darting into the men’s room.
When I came out of the john, the woman was waiting for me, and she had another woman with her. And this other woman emphatically shook her head and said, “That’s not Huey Lewis. That’s Elliot Gould.”
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Most recently, whilst pondering the peaches in Corners of the Mouth, Mendocino’s finest grocery store, a woman with long white hair sashayed up to me, smiled mischievously, and gave me a very friendly hug. “Jason,” she said, with mock indignation. “When did you get back from India? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I’m not Jason,” I said, looking into her eyes. “And I’ve never been to India, and I’m pretty sure you and I’ve never met.”
She took a step back, held her breath for a long moment, and said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were Jason. You look just like him. You even have his body.”
“Well,” I said, selecting my peach, “I apparently look like lots of people. Or lots of people look like me.”
“Now that,” she said, pointing at me and laughing, “is exactly what Jason would say.”
Todd Walton only looks in the mirror when he shaves and right before he brushes his teeth. His web site is underthetablebooks.com