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\n<\/span><\/p>\nNine years later\u20141975\u2014I 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 caf\u00e9 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.<\/span><\/p>\nWe entered the student-run caf\u00e9, 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.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThat guy keeps looking at you,\u201d said my girlfriend, glancing sidewise at a man sitting with a woman across the room from us.<\/span><\/p>\nI turned to look at the man, smiled at him, and then said to my girlfriend, \u201cHe seems harmless enough.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cHe\u2019s weird,\u201d she said, whispering harshly. \u201cHe\u2019s staring at you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMy 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.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cJust ignore him,\u201d I said, sipping our cocoa. \u201cPlease?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cPaul?\u201d said the man, calling to me. \u201cPaul.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOh, great,\u201d said my girlfriend, rolling her eyes. \u201cNow he\u2019s talking to you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nI looked at the man again\u2014early thirties, fine leather jacket, expensive shoes, black curly hair\u2014only this time I didn\u2019t smile, and the poor guy jumped in his seat as if I\u2019d struck him. Then he turned to the woman he was with, a striking brunette, and looked at her with terror in his eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cLet\u2019s get out of here,\u201d said my girlfriend. \u201cThis is totally freaking me out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cCan we finish our cocoa?\u201d I was furious. \u201cI can\u2019t handle the garage right now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe could go to the library,\u201d she said, plaintively. \u201cLook at art books. Read the paper. Play the card catalogue game.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nSo we got up to go, and the man and woman jumped up and hurried over to us.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cPaul,\u201d said the man, reaching out to me. \u201cIt\u2019s Jeff. And Rachel. You know us, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cMy name is not Paul,\u201d I said, instantly convinced the guy truly believed I was someone he knew\u2014someone named Paul. \u201cMy name is Todd.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d he asked, searching my face. \u201cWhy did you change your name? So we couldn\u2019t find you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m very sorry,\u201d I said, looking first at him and then at Rachel, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t change my name. I thought about it, but I never did. I\u2019m Todd, not Paul.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAnd Rachel said, \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what Paul would say. You are Paul, aren\u2019t you? The way your hands move when you talk. Your eyes. You\u2019re Paul.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nI shoved my hands in my pockets. \u201cI am not Paul.\u201d I turned to my girlfriend. \u201cWould you confirm that, please?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cHe\u2019s not Paul,\u201d she said, sneering at me. \u201cHe\u2019s definitely Todd.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBut 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.<\/span><\/p>\nFinally, Jeff said, \u201cI\u2019m Jeff Kovacs. We lived together, Paul and Rachel and Andrea and Colin and Fritz and Sarah and I. In Ithaca. New York. You\u2026Paul disappeared five years ago. No word since. You, Paul\u2026it destroyed us. And if you\u2019re not Paul, you\u2019re his identical twin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhen was Paul born?\u201d I asked, bringing forth my driver\u2019s license. \u201cI was born in 1949. I\u2019m twenty-six.\u201d I handed Jeff my license. The photo, in which I resembled a mafia hit man, was two years old.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOh,\u201d said Jeff, looking from the license to me. \u201cYou\u2019re not Paul. I\u2019m so sorry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nRachel took the license and looked from the mug shot to me. \u201cEven so, you could be Paul.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d said Jeff, bowing his head. \u201cSeeing you is like seeing him again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn 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\u2014red-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.<\/span><\/p>\nAs 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, \u201cMy father. You look exactly like my father when he was a young man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOn 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\u2019s room, when a woman came toward me, stopped suddenly, and gasped, \u201cOh my God, you\u2019re Huey Lewis. Oh my God. I am such a huge fan. Oh my God. It\u2019s you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI hate to disappoint you,\u201d I said, feeling oddly flattered, \u201cbut I\u2019m not Huey Lewis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI totally understand,\u201d she said, placing her hands together and bowing to me. \u201cYou must get hassled to death. Could I get your autograph?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m not Huey Lewis,\u201d I said, shaking my head. \u201cBad lighting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI won\u2019t tell anybody,\u201d she said, coming closer. \u201cMay I kiss your hand? <\/span>The Power of Love<\/em><\/span> is my favorite song in the whole world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019s great,\u201d I said, allowing her to kiss the back of my hand. \u201cBut I\u2019m really not Huey Lewis. Truly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI understand,\u201d she said, turning my hand over and kissing my palm. \u201cBut this is the chance of a lifetime for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m not Huey Lewis,\u201d I said, pulling my hand away and darting into the men\u2019s room.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen 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, \u201cThat\u2019s not Huey Lewis. That\u2019s Elliot Gould.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0Most recently, whilst pondering the peaches in\u00a0Corners of the Mouth,\u00a0Mendocino\u2019s finest grocery store, a woman with long white hair sashayed up to me, smiled mischievously, and gave me a very friendly hug. \u201cJason,” she said, with mock indignation. “When did you get back from India? Why didn\u2019t you call me?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m not Jason,\u201d I said, looking into her eyes. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve never been to India, and I\u2019m pretty sure you and I’ve never met.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe took a step back, held her breath for a long moment, and said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I thought you were Jason. You look just like him. You even have his body.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWell,\u201d I said, selecting my peach, \u201cI apparently look like lots of people. Or lots of people look like me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cNow that,\u201d she said, pointing at me and laughing, \u201cis exactly what Jason would say.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTodd Walton only looks in the mirror when he shaves and right before he brushes his teeth. His web site is underthetablebooks.com<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I still find it hard to fathom that there are men walking the earth who resemble me so exactly that even their close friends can\u2019t tell us apart. But ever since I was a teenager, and until quite recently (I\u2019m approaching sixty), I have had several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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