In what is truly the best use of journalist powers, the sweet, utterly shocked woman featured in Beyoncé‘s recent Instagram post has been found.
The Boston Globe has identified her as New Jersey resident Susan Monaghan, who was in New York City for her granddaughter’s gymnastics competition.
Her face was all over the internet this week after becoming the visual representation of what we’d all be like upon meeting Queen Bey (skip to Picture #4 for a quick refresher).
Monaghan told the publication that she’d returned from dinner to the hotel, leaving her family in the lobby while she ventured to her room, alone. Suddenly, a hush descended. Wispy trails of smoke flooded the corridor, organ music started playing, and a voice that sounded like honey and fury cried, “WHO DISTURBS THE SLUMBER OF I, SASHA FIERCE?”
In other words, Beyoncé entered the room. I’ve always imagined that’s what it’s like.
What actually happened is this: an entourage of security guards and photographers met her in the hallway. She stood to the side (this being a hallway, she had nowhere to go), and suddenly a “handsome” gentlemen she couldn’t quite place appeared. “You look familiar,” Monaghan recalls saying to Jay Z. “Do I know you?”
Then she looks to her right. It’s Beyoncé.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god!” she said. “I looked at her and all I could think was, ‘No one is going to believe me. No one is going to believe me’.”
Apparently, she started saying that out loud – “No one is going to believe me” – and Bey flashed her a smile, that said, in Monaghan’s mind, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay.”
“I swear, I felt like I was hugged by an angel,” she said.
It was so calming and surreal. And then I realised, and I turned back, I was talking to Jay Z. It was really funny.”
Her own family didn’t believe her until Bey’s Instagram started circulating online. “I think she posted it for me,” says Monaghan. “So people would believe me.”
That’s the power of Beyoncé, y’all. She goddamn giveths.
