Strange Coincidences at Angkor Wat · by Michael McCarthy

“You know, you look real familiar.”

We were at the Riverside Guesthouse, conveniently located right next to the river in Siem Reap, about half a mile south of the central market. Siem Riep is where you stay when going to tour the ruins of Angkor Wat. The guidebook said there was a crocodile farm on the river and a map showed it wasn’t far from the guesthouse. I was thinking of going to look at some crocodiles. It was just after the rainy season in Cambodia and the river was at the top of its banks. Lots of crocodiles.

“Everybody says I look familiar,” he said. His name was Richard. We were both sitting at the same table in the lovely little café outside the guesthouse where the TV had been turned to American cable news on which four middle-aged white men in expensive suits were screaming abuse at each other.

“What the hell ever happened to America?” said Richard, sipping a beer and frowning in disgust.

“I thought you said you were American.”

“I’ve been living mainly in Nepal since 1972,” he said.

“I thought you said you just sold your home in Eureka, California.”

“That’s my second home,” he said, “when I can stand to go back to the U.S.”

“What do you do in California?” I asked, sipping my own beer and thinking where to go for dinner. I was sick of Cambodian food, or anything that tried to crawl off your plate before you could stick a fork in it. “I lived in northern California for 7 years.”

“I have a very strange job,” he replied with a small smile. “It’s really unique.”

”Ah, I love weird jobs. One of my favorite topics of conversation.” I turned to look at him straight in the eyes. “You know, you really DO look familiar. It’s like we met somewhere before, but I know we haven’t.”

”Everybody says that to me,” he said, signaling the waiter for another Angkor beer. “So, you like weird jobs?”

“I once had a conversation with a writer friend about which of us had endued the worst job,” I replied, reaching for my own Angkor. “Writers are remarkable in their ability to be unemployable, largely to the lack of realistic job skills we possess. But the bonus of having to work at really lousy jobs is that you end up with lots to write about.”

“OK, so what lousy jobs have you had?”

“Too many to discuss, thank you very much for asking. What’s so interesting about your job?”

“I work with Elton John,” said Richard, again with a slight smile. “I’m his body double.”

“Say what?”

“His double. I stand in for him on stage if he thinks there’s a security problem. I get to ride in the limo and wave at people. I sign autographs. That sort of thing.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

He pulled two photos out of his pocket. “One is Elton, the other is me,” he said.

I studied them. I couldn’t tell who was who. “No wonder you look familiar.”

“I told you it was a unique job,” he said, reaching for his beer. “I’m the only guy in the world who has ever had this job, and the only one who ever will.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

”Nearly 18 years,” he said, pulling out his business card, “but now I am retiring.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because Elton isn’t touring any more,” he said. “He’s got a regular gig at the Red Piano Lounge, in Las Vegas. He doesn’t need me anymore, because he’s not on tour.”

I looked at his card. It read: Eldon John, Impersonator.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m off to Bollywood to make some TV commercials. I’m the only person in the world who looks exactly like Sir Elton, so I figure it’s time to cash in on my looks.”

He did look like Elton John. It was really uncanny. I looked at the two photos. The two shared the same face, wrinkles, dimples, hair, hair color, eye color, eyebrows, height, weight and glasses. I’d heard that everybody in the world has a double, a doppelgänger as the Germans call it, but I didn’t believe it until now.

According to the dictionary, doppelgängers appear in a variety of fictional works from Dostoyevsky’s The Double to Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. In its simplest incarnation, mistaken identity is a classic ruse used in literature from Twelfth Night to A Tale of Two Cities. This was the first time I had seen the phenomenon occur, and coincidently it just happened to involve the most famous pop singer on the planet.

“Eldon, I bet you have some interesting stories to tell.”

“I do indeed.”

“How often do you get mistaken for Sir Elton?

“About five times a day in the western world,” he smiled, downing his beer. “Over here, maybe once a day. I’m surprised there is any place in the world where people don’t recognize Elton. But I’m on vacation, so it’s nice not to be hassled.”

“Eldon, this is a very weird coincidence. Have you ever heard of intentionality?”

“No, what’s that about?”

I used an anecdote to explain. In the frontispiece of the James Bond novel Goldfinger, Aurel Goldfinger shares with Bond (on the occasion of their third “accidental” meeting), his philosophy. ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.’ In other words, few things are really coincidental. Often there is a plan involved. Some people call it synchronicity.

According to Wikipedia, synchronicity is ‘the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are casually unrelated. In order to be synchronous, the events must be related to one another conceptually, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small.’

Beyond synchronicty there is something else called intentionality. According to the Oxford dictionary, it has five components. An action is considered intentional if the agent has a desire for an outcome, a belief that the action will lead to the outcome, an intention to perform the action, the skill to perform the action, and awareness while performing the action.

“So what’s this all this gobblededook got to do with me?” asked Eldon, signaling for another beer.

“Well, strange things happen when you travel with conscious awareness,” I said. “Traveling with a specific state of mind, which I call intentional travel, often produces strange coincidences. ”

“Does that mean you want another beer? I’m buying,” said Eldon.

“You know there’s a lounge in Siem Reap called the Red Piano?”

“Yeah,” said Eldon, “I heard of it. I was planning to go there.”

“Eldon, my man,” I replied, “I have an idea.”

The Red Piano is located on Bar Street, right at the center of Siem Reap. There is a photo of Angelina Jolie on the wall behind the bar. Jolie starred in Laura Croft, Tomb Raider, shot at Angkor Wat. The film crew partied at the Red Piano every night of the shoot. The bar is mentioned in all the tourist guides, and these days everybody comes to look at the famous photo behind the bar.

“Why don’t we go down to the Red Piano, and sit down where people can see you, and then see what happens?” I said.

“I know exactly what will happen,” said Eldon, standing up. “Let’s go.”

We walked alongside the river on the way to town. There were no crocodiles visible, or at least none that tried to bite us. We turned off at the market to have a look and stopped in at a music shop selling CDs. Eldon went through the pop music section and found what he was looking for, the latest Elton John release.

“Geez, Elton has gotten really fat,” I remarked as Eldon bought the disk. “You’re going to have to stuff your face if you want to catch up.”

We strolled over to the Red Piano. It was a weekend and the restaurant was packed and not a table in sight, but I spotted a single chair by the front door.

“So here’s the idea,” I said. “I’ll save this chair. You go find another. We’ll sit here by the front door and pretend we are the maitre d’s and see what happens.”

“Excellent idea,” said Eldon. He went and scrounged a chair from the bar. A minute later a family came in and waited by the front door to be seated. The man and a woman were in their early fifties, the girl about twelve years old. They gazed around anxiously, looking for a table. Suddenly the man’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Here we go,” said Eldon.

“My God!” burst out the man. “I can’t believe it. Look Emily! Look who it is!”

The man strode forward, holding out his hand, his eyes bugging out of his head. His wife stood back, too nervous to move. The daughter was reading a menu, chewing gum , and didn’t look up. The man stopped right in front of us, gawking. Eldon leaped to his feet, holding out his own hand.

“Hi, I’m Elmer! We have all your albums!” gushed the man, pumping Eldon’s hand like a piston. “Everybody in Atlanta is so grateful for the work you’ve done in our community. We’re such big fans of yours!”

“Thank you,” said Eldon in his strong California accent. He sat down. The family stumbled into the restaurant, knocking over chairs, Elmer looking back over his shoulder in awe.

“What kind of work do you do in the Atlanta community?” I asked.

“Damned if I know,” said Eldon, signaling for a beer. “Maybe they have a lot of land mines there.”

“Does anyone ever ask how you acquired your American accent?”

“Elton spends a lot of time in America,” Eldon replied, opening the menu. “Do you want to share a pizza?”

The waitress came by, a beautiful young Cambodian girl in her early twenties. She was evidently not a pop music fan; no recognition showed on her face. Cambodia has its own brand of pop music, an atonal clashing that sounds like two cats fighting in the alley. In fact, a version of this shrieking was playing on the Red Piano’s sound system.

“Is the owner here?” asked Eldon. He gave the waitress his card.

“OK, what are you up to now?” I asked.

Eldon pulled out a red felt pen he kept in his breast pocket for such occasions, and signed his name on the inside of the CD case. “Best wishes to the Red Piano,” he wrote. “From Eldon John.”

Gert was Belgian. He’d opened the Red Piano several years before. Business was slack until the Jolie film, when it had subsequently exploded. He was a tall, middle-aged man with thinning dark black hair, a silk shirt opened to the waist, and a big smile. He stood at the edge of our table with a look of shock on his face, gazing down at the business card in wonder and then back up again. He burst into a wide grin.

“So pleasant to ‘ave you come to my bar,” he said, thrusting out his hand. “Welcome.”

“I wonder if you could put this on the sound system?” Eldon held out the CD to Gert, who glanced at it momentarily before passing it to the waitress. “Sir Elton is a good friend of mine.”

Gert looked down at the business card again. “Eh? Your frien’?”

“Yes,” said Eldon, pointing to the card. “I work for Sir Elton as a stand-in on his tours. I’m his double. We’re buddies. We’ve been together nearly 20 years.”

Gert grinned from ear to ear. He was in on the game now.

“Do you actually have a red piano here?” inquired Eldon, pulling out his camera. “I’d like to take a picture of us all in front of it.”

“Yes, yes, of course, come,” cried Gert, and we jumped up and went over to the bar. Hanging on the wall was a tiny red piano, the size of a child’s toy. Gert reached up and pulled it down, setting it on the bar. “Do you play?”

“Not a note,” said Eldon. He passed the camera to the waitress. “Could you do the honors?”

We all posed for the shot, Eldon giving his well practiced, mega-millionaire smile.

“I’ll give a copy of this to Elton when I see him next,” he said, “and I’ll get it framed. I’ll send you a copy and you can hang it next to the Angelina picture. Maybe the next time Elton’s on vacation he can come here and play a real piano. Play Crocodile Rock, maybe, right here on Bar Street.”

“I’ll buy a real piano! Electric!” said Gert, shaking both our hands vigorously. “You know, that’s a strange coincidence, I was just planning the other day to order one.”

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