The Girl Who Loved Luke Perry

A Story by furlong

Stacy Sanders had one great love in her otherwise ordinary life. This was Luke Perry. Though Stacy was a little too young to have appreciated him in the ‘90s when he was at his peek thanks to his role as the handsome, rich yet brooding Dylan McKay on Beverly hills, 90210 she had, instead, learned to love and adore him while watching the show’s reruns. By the time she was in her early twenties seventy percent of her mind was always clouded with thoughts of Luke Perry or his alter ego, Dylan McKay. Since she’d never met Luke Perry it was really only Dylan McKay that she was supposedly in love with but the concept of loving a fictional character was disconcerting to her. In her mind, Luke Perry and Dylan McKay were forever one and the same.

Stacy’s bedroom wasn’t adorned with posters and teen magazine cut outs of Luke Perry. She didn’t own any of his movies but did own 90210 on DVD. Any stranger who might have walked into her small, one bedroom apartment would have simply guessed that she was a fan of the show and that her interests lay no further than that. This is exactly what Stacy intended. She did, however, keep a scrapbook which was filled with articles, blurbs, photos and anything else she could find that even just referred to Luke Perry. She glued them all neatly beside each other in the large, hard cover notebook which she hid at the very bottom of her underwear drawer.

Her life had been very mundane and normal besides that. She had a steady, full time job as the assistant manager of the local independent movie theatre where she was well liked by her employees and got to watch free movies whenever she pleased. It wasn’t a spectacular job but it was a living she did not mind. She had had three boyfriends in her entire lifetime. The first was a guy she met in her first year of university in an English literature class. She didn’t find him too spectacular but his name was Dillon MacArthur and so she went out with him because his name so closely resembled Dylan McKay’s.

Her second boyfriend she met at her part time job at the supermarket where she worked throughout high school and for two years of university. His name, Eric, had nothing to do with Luke Perry but he had a large and wide forehead that looked like an open road, similar to that of Luke Perry’s. He also had a scar on his eyebrows that prohibited hair to grow on that spot like Luke Perry.

Her third boyfriend with whom she had just recently broken up was one who she actually had been attracted to very much, and not because he had anything to do with Luke Perry. Roger was in teacher’s college when he met Stacy at the movie theatre where she worked. They had hit it off right away and had been together for four years, up until a few months ago when Roger accidentally discovered Stacy’s Luke Perry scrapbook. He was shocked and slightly disturbed and when he confronted her, Stacy burst into tears and confessed her undying love for the actor and admitted that her past relationships had been based on nothing except the fact that the guys resembled Perry in some way. This got Roger thinking that she was dating him for the same reason and nothing Stacy could say could convince him otherwise. Thus, the affair sadly ended.

Now Stacy’s scrapbook once again sat hidden in her underwear drawer and she had not even attempted another relationship since Roger left. Her life went on pretty smoothly with her keeping herself busy with work and the upkeep of her scrapbook, as well as with wild fantasies brought on by hours upon hours of 90210 reruns. Things continued in this mundane way until one day when she happened to see someone on the street.

It happened on her way home after work one evening when she was waiting to cross the street. Her mind was drifting slightly and she paid little to no attention to the people scurrying around her; not that she was missing much, she felt. However, she suddenly caught sight of a man walking in long strides on the opposite side of the street. This man rang a bell in her memory and his long face and casual strut triggered her recognition of the great love of her life. Her eyes widened and darted from the seemingly forever red traffic light to Luke Perry who was walking so fast and was getting further and further away from her. Butterflies began swarming in her stomach and all she could think about was how she just had to cross the street and catch up to him. She didn’t know what she would say to him when she did but it didn’t matter because Luke Perry was less than a hundred feet from her and she just could not – would not – miss this extraordinary opportunity.

At long last the light turned green and Stacy, suddenly with a burst of energy, raced across the street trying to avoid running into pedestrians, while at the same time keeping an eye on Luke Perry so as not to lose sight of him. She saw him heading down the stairs that led to the subway and quickened her pace to an outright sprint. She had to catch him before he got on any train. She had to because if he got on a train without her she would lose him forever and she would never have a chance like this again, ever. She raced down to the subway platform just as a train was pulling in and caught sight of his leather jacket stepping into one of the opening doors. She grabbed all the change from her purse that she could and practically hurled it at the teller before storming towards the rapidly closing doors.

To her dismay she ended up in the car behind the one Luke Perry sat in but she could still see the back of his head and his leather jacket through the windows. She watched him studiously for the twenty minutes they were on the train and as soon as he stood up for an approaching stop, Stacy, too, lurched up and scrambled to the door. She shamelessly pushed people out of the way in order to catch up to Luke Perry who was walking very quickly down to the other end of the platform. While speed walking after him a thought suddenly entered her head: Where exactly was he going? She couldn’t really think of any logical reason for him to be in her city at this time of year because none of the entertainment magazines she read mentioned anything, but she followed him nonetheless; after all, she thought to herself, stars make plans quicker than tabloids can publish them.

Outside of the subway she followed him as he walked for a few minutes and then went into a tall, very classy looking building. She would have followed him right in there too only there was a doorman present who only let in people with business in the building. She loitered across the street, watching closely and feeling slightly chilled at the new night air. He must have been up there for about a half hour or so and when he finally came down there was a woman attached to his arm: a tall woman who was all legs in her mini skirt and leather overcoat, her ridiculously long, dark hair fluttering all around her in a complimentary way. They caught a cab and Stacy hailed one as fast as she could and ordered the driver to follow them. The cab stopped behind Luke Perry’s outside an elegant looking restaurant which Luke Perry and his female companion had just walked into. Stacy paid the cab driver and hurried out of the cab and into the restaurant and darted her eyes around for any sight of the pair. She found them being seated at the far end of the restaurant. She wouldn’t have recognised them had it not been for the leather they were both wearing which looked slightly out of place in the setting. She had just begun to make a beeline for their table when she was stopped by the maitre d’.

“Reservation?” he asked, his eyebrows raised high.

“Uh, no,” Stacy stuttered. “Do I need one?”

“Indeed you do,” the maitre d’ answered. “If you do not have one, I will have to ask you to please leave the restaurant.”

“Oh, okay but I really just only need a couple of minutes to talk to that gentleman there,” she pointed at Luke Perry.

The maitre d’ didn’t even look away from her as he said, “I’m sorry, but you will have to wait till they leave the restaurant.” And before she could say anything else, he ushered her outside.

Stacy huffed and cursed her luck. She had been so close! She considered just giving up and going home just then but a surge of passion made her reconsider that idea.

“How often am I going to be outside the restaurant with Luke Perry dining inside?” she asked herself. “Just about never again!” she replied. Her lips pursed in determination and she took a seat on a bus bench a block down the street, both hands clutching her sides in an attempt to keep warm and both eyes staring firmly at the entrance to the restaurant.

“I am not going to miss out on Luke Perry.” She muttered whenever she felt the urge to leave.

They were inside for nearly three hours, during which time Stacy was glued to the bus bench and had shooed away fourteen buses who thought she was waiting for them. She was alert from the nippy air and when she saw them emerge she stood up and immediately started over. She wasn’t fast enough because they hailed another cab and drove off just as Stacy reached them. She, too, hailed a cab and once again made the driver go after them. She followed them back to the same classy building from which the woman had come out and she once again stood on the opposite side of the building watching them go in. He wasn’t gone for as long this time and when he walked around, she quickly jay-walked across the street and over to him as he headed for the subway again.

“Wait!” she hollered after him. “Wait!” She raced as fast as she could and thumped him on the shoulder when she caught up with him. He spun around in fright and stared down at Stacy who was hunched over, clutching her stomach, attempting to catch her breath.

“So-sorry, sorry to chase you like that, Mr Perry,” she started looking up, then stopped abruptly. “You’re not Luke Perry.”

The man in the leather jacket, who really wasn’t Luke Perry at all, frowned at her.

“Luke Perry?” he repeated. “You thought I was Luke Perry?” A small smile started creeping onto his lips.

“S**t, I’m sorry, I thought you were --,”

“Yeah, Luke Perry! I know!” he was laughing outright now and Stacy stared at him clearly not amused.

“Well, sorry about chasing you,” she mumbled, then turned to walk away.

“Hey!” he called out after her, still chuckling. “Thanks for giving me the best laugh in years!”

Stacy’s ears rushed with blood and her lips were pursed in anger and embarrassment as she walked without direction. The guy she mistook for Luke Perry continued walking in the other direction, but laughed so loudly the whole way that Stacy could hear him for three blocks after.

After that day she couldn’t look at Luke Perry without hearing that awful laughter all over again. It made her sick with embarrassment, so sick, in fact, that one day she ended up giving away all her 90210 DVDs and threw away her Luke Perry scrapbook. She no longer wanted anything to do with Luke Perry or anyone that looked like him. To her surprise, she was through with Luke Perry. It was difficult at first and slightly depressing for her because her life suddenly felt empty and she found she had a lot of free time on her hands. She felt the need for a hobby, possibly a new infatuation.

She found the latter accidentally one night when she was watching Footloose on TV. She’d never noticed how attractive Kevin Bacon had been in his youth and her mind wandered to other Kevin Bacon films she had seen and she realised how much she had underestimated him. He was very talented and good looking to boot. Her heart began fluttering the way it would during reruns of 90210 and she excitedly grabbed the nearest tabloid to see if there were any articles on Kevin Bacon that she could clip for the new scrapbook she was thinking of starting.