I'm sorry Kevin Bacon

Yup, I’m talking about THAT Kevin Bacon.

In September of 2022, I was in the Austin airport waiting for my flight home to Jersey and passing the time in the United Lounge. I was enjoying their free breakfast with open bar and I was already several glasses of wine in. Nothing says “classy” like pairing buffet style scrambled eggs with cheep Pino grigio at 10:30 in the morning. But, I was about to get on a plane so I had to have some wine to counter my fear of flying. So this behavior was complexly justified in my mind. Not that I ever felt the need to justify my drinking, regardless of how excessive or inappropriate it was.

As I was leaving to go to the gate none other than Kevin Bacon walks right past me. Now, here I am with the opportunity to tell him that he is one of my favorite actors. Or maybe I would tell him that I loved him in every movie he has ever been in (except “sleepers” of course, hated him in that movie but that was to be expected) or maybe I would tell him that I too am an Eagles fan or that I love watching his TikToks where he sings to his goats. I say NONE of these things.

Instead, with this American Treasure standing less than a foot away from me my drunk ass screams in his face “IS THAT KEVIN BACON”? He politely nodded and was whisked away. But not before I screamed again “I LOVE HIM” to which he politely nodded again and entered through a door to get away from the crowd, and people like me.

I was MORTIFIED.

For the entire rest of the day all I talked about was how I screamed “IS THAT KEVIN BACON” in Kevin Bacon’s face. I must have told that story twenty times over the course of the weekend.

Here I had had the opportunity to tell one of my favorite actors of all time how talented and entertaining he is and how much I appreciate his craft and his work. But no, I scream in his face like an asshole.

Little did I know then that I would get sober two days later and have my last drink on 9/25/22.

This encounter replayed in my mind for weeks as yet another reminder of how alcohol altered by judgement and how I didn’t want to behave anymore. I decided that I wanted to do better and be better….so I did just that.

In the last 21 months of my sobriety I have probably flown sober 40 times. There has not one time where I have not thought about that encounter and how disrespectful I was to that man and what a fool I made out of myself.

So, Mr. Bacon, I apologize.