A true story.
As a young social person in Chicago who'd heard many firsthand accounts of other young social people in the city meeting R. Kelly, I'd always hoped it was in the cards for me too. Considering the R&B icon and Chicago native isn't afraid of a party, I assumed that I might bump (n' grind) into him at some after-hours thing at a club or maybe at the Rock N Roll McDonald's on Ohio & Ontario where my friend Molly randomly met him once at 3 in the morning. Never did I imagine he would move into the recording studio down the hall from my office. Or ask me on a date.
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My coworker Tristan came rushing into the office one morning. "I'm pretty sure there's a homeless guy in the bathroom," he said in a panic.
"Oh, god." Not again. Prior to our structural engineering firm moving into our new building, we were one of the last tenants in our old building before it was torn down. We'd occasionally run into various riffraff looking for loot in the vacant suites — my wallet was stolen once, and Tristan found a homeless guy in the bathroom. What were the odds?
"Are you sure he's homeless?" I asked him.
"I think so," Tristan told me. "He doesn't have any shoes on. He's only wearing socks, and there's a ratty gym bag outside of the stall. And he's, like, singing to himself."
"Ugh, OK. I'll call Mitch." As the office manager, it was my job to take care of such things. I called the maintenance guy, who said he'd be up right away to handle it.
Five minutes later, a group of three men were storming through the double doors in front of the reception desk where I sat. One of those men was R. Kelly.
"HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!" is what I was screaming in my head. But on the outside, I played it cool. R. had just moved into the recording studio down the hall from our office. Tristan recently saw him in the lobby, so I knew my own encounter with Kellz was imminent. Finally, it was happening.
R. Kelly rested his arm on my desk and leaned in close to my face. "Do we have a problem here?" he asked.
Oh no. That was not the pick-up line I was expecting. Also, I had no idea what he was talking about.
"What do you mean?" I managed to reply, stunned.
"In the bathroom," R. said. "Do we have a problem in the bathroom?"
Oh, shiiiiit: Tristan totally confused R. Kelly for a homeless person. And now it was my job to explain what happened to R. Kelly without actually telling him what happened (that Tristan thought he was homeless). Where was Celine Dion? Because I needed an angel.
"Oh, yeah. Uhhhh, my coworker said there was...suspicious activity going on in the bathroom —" Pro tip: Do not use the phrase "suspicious activity" around R. Kelly. He is not a fan.
"Suspicious activity? What kind of suspicious activity did he say was going on in there?" R. asked.
I was getting red and splotchy, a thing that happens any time I'm nervous or excited or being accosted by R. Kelly. "Well, he said the person didn't have shoes on... They were wearing socks —"
R. Kelly hoisted his shoeless foot onto my desk, pointed to it and asked, "You mean these socks? Since when is wearing socks in public illegal?" This is when I noticed that R. Kelly was not only wearing socks, but also silk pajamas and a robe...as one is wont to do in a professional office building at 10:30 a.m. on a Wednesday.
This was not going well at all. I was so nervous, and R. Kelly was so mad. Instead of him yelling at me, I imagined my first chance meeting with Kellz going much smoother: I would see him running for the elevator, and I'd stick my hand out to hold the doors for him. He'd get on and nod his head thanks. The air would be thick with sexual tension as the silent car descended to the lobby. We'd pass each floor... 7… 6… 5… 4… Right before the doors opened, I would make my move. "Just to let you know," I'd say with a subtle arch of the brow, "'Ignition (Remix)' was my ringtone all of freshman year." Kellz would turn his head, wink, blow me a kiss, and vanish into a cloud of Cognac-scented smoke. The "I'm a Flirt" remix would play as the credits rolled.
"It's not illegal," I reassured R. Kelly about his socks. "And I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but you have to understand it's my job." I had no idea where these words were coming from. "If my coworker says there's a problem in the bathroom, I have to do something." Rules are rules, R. Kelly.
"OK, and I respect that. I understand that," R. said as he started to calm down. "But you need to understand that what that man did to me — what that man did to me — was illegal! That is an invasion of privacy!"
"OK —"
"I have 10 lawyers!" Kellz declared. "One for every situation!"
Obviously. In 2002, a video surfaced that allegedly showed R. Kelly having sex with (and urinating on) an underage girl. He was indicted and later arrested, but in 2004, the charges were dropped. It's the thing people might remember most about R. Kelly. That, and all 33 genius chapters of his hip-hop oeuvre "Trapped in the Closet."
John Gara for BuzzFeed
