friend computer can bite my shiny metal ass

Posted on By Wil

When I do an interview, or I guest on a podcast, it never feels like it’s enough of a thing to post about it in my blog. It feels like the sort of thing I should just drop into Threads.

The thing is, Threads suppresses the everlivingfuck out of almost everything I post, lately. It tells me that a little over 1.2 million accounts follow mine, but it typically only shows what I post to an average of about 3000 people. If a post is doing extremely well, it will climb up to 20,000. That’s not nothing, to be sure, but it’s a tiny fraction of the accounts that have expressed a desire to see what I post. It’s incredibly frustrating. We have given away so much of our ability to connect to each other, to communicate with each other, to these profoundly evil and destructive companies that are profiting from our dysregulation.

I wonder if anyone outside of the weird little silos the algorithms create and sort us into even see what we post? Or are we just telling other people who are already furious about the Cornell 7, the murder of Nolan Wells, the endless murders by ICE, the rampant and unchecked construction of fucking concentration camps full of children who are raped by ICE thugs things we already know. I wonder if the evil human rights abusers who sit atop these companies will ever be held accountable for their roles in all of this violence and destruction.

Like, there was real promise in decentralized communication, and we saw entire countries use it to rise up and depose the despots who had been standing on their necks for a generation. Of course it was shitty American Capitalists who saw that, recognized it as a threat to their hegemony, and put us where we are right now.

I don’t know that we will ever be able to undo this, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And I am trying today because I realized something last night while I was very successfully not falling asleep for my second hour: there are more actual humans subscribed to my blog posts than the stupid algorithm shows my posts to on Threads. If I have something to say, something fun or cool I want to share, even if it is just a quick thing, a couple of links, a stray thought with something interesting at its end, I will just make a post here, and show it to all of you.

So, to that end, a few fun things I’ve done lately that I wanted to share:

Years ago, I spoke with John Moe for his program, The Hilarious World of Depression. At that time, I wasn’t aware of the root causes of my mental illness, so we didn’t talk about CPTSD or child abuse, or any of the things I do to work toward healing that part of my life. I’m happy to say that I recently talked with John for a follow-up. His show is now a podcast that you can get wherever you prefer. And while you are there, you can also grab an episode of Sleeping With Celebrities that I did. If you’re unfamiliar (as I was), it’s a podcast designed to help you fall asleep, a soothing conversation about something I care about a lot, delivered in a way that should help ease you to sleep. I talked all about this old TV show I love, The Prisoner.

I did an interview with The Advocate, too, talking about my experiences as an ally, and why being othered in my life pushed me to stand up for people without my privilege.

“The only way I could be a more protected class of citizen in America is if I were an openly performative Christian nationalist. I’m white. I’m male. I’m upper middle class. I’m semi-famous. I have all kinds of privilege. And yet, I’ve been othered my entire life,” Wheaton says.

“I was othered by my parents. I was othered by people in my neighborhood. I was othered on the set,” he adds, explaining that his Star Trek castmates were the exception.

“And when I see other people experiencing that, I cannot help myself. I have to throw myself between those people and the people who are hurting them,” he says. “I’m standing up for my younger self in ways that no one ever, ever did.”

Wheaton offers this promise to the trans community: “Sometimes people who won’t hear you will hear me, even when we’re saying the same thing. And if I can use that privilege to reach that person and make a change, that’s one less person who fucking hassles you for existing.”

Okay, finally, I wanted to draw your attention to last week’s episode of It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, The Glass City by AnaMaria Curtis.

If I described for you a sailor, stranded on an island, a thousand miles of ocean in every direction, it would be easy for you to imagine that person’s sense of loneliness. If I described for you a businessman, who has been on the road for a month straight, sleeping in hotels that blur together and smear across the same lobby restaurant over and over again, some of you could probably relate to and imagine that. If I told you about someone who has been Othered, in their family or in their community, told you how they sat in their bedroom with the door closed and wished that anyone would see them, some of you will, unfortunately, understand precisely. I grew up knowing that particular flavor of loneliness all too well. Even now, as happy and surrounded by love as I am, I can remember, and I can feel it. Loneliness is such a powerful feeling, even when it fades, some part of it lingers … at least for me, lurking, waiting, on the horizon of my memory.

This week’s Storytime is a beautiful, surreal meditation on loneliness from Ana Maria Curtis, who you may remember as the author of The Coffin Maker, a wonderful story I told you about a year ago. (If you haven’t heard it, it’s in the archive.) I’m thrilled and honored to speak her words again, and so grateful that you are choosing to hear them. I’m going to go ahead, and when you’re ready, come and meet me. I’ll be waiting for you, at The Glass City. 

I just really loved this story, and I thought I did especially good work telling it. If you have some time to spend, I hope you’ll consider spending it with me.

That’s all for now. Until next time, maybe it will happen today.

Hi, I’m Wil Wheaton and I write this blog (among other things). I’m glad you are here. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thingy:

just a couple of things

Posted on By Wil

And I have, again, fallen into a trap where I only post long essays to my blog that take days or longer to write. Oh, so many drafts that really go nowhere, because I wasn’t writing to tell a story, I was writing to have something to post. And it was shit, all of it.

That’s okay. Sometimes we have to remember why we do this, and more importantly, why we don’t do it, what stops us, and why. I have some idea, and I think I’m just going to go ahead and post a thing in a place that isn’t controlled by an evil algorithm.

So today, I just wanted to share a couple things that I’m excited about. I hope you’ll get excited about them, too.

This Saturday is the triumphant return of Wil WheatCon with Wil Wheaton 2: 2Wheat 2Con. I had such a wonderful time when we did this a few months ago. Requests to do it again started pouring in before we were even finished, and I’m just so excited to bring it back. If this one hits like the first one does, I’m going to be so happy.

I’ve been working on It’s Storytime a LOT, reviewing submissions and interviewing authors, as well as narrating the stories. We have some plans in place to secure the future of the show! I’m still not making anything from it (the creator is always the only one who doesn’t get paid), and I could not care less. I love that I’m doing good work that is meaningful to a large and growing audience who trust me with their time and attention, especially in the midst of the horrors.

A new episode dropped today, The Glass City, by AnaMaria Curtis. It’s a story about loneliness that was extremely relatable. It is in all the usual places. You can start here if you want.

Tomorrow, I’m doing a Reddit AMA to promote the upcoming Stand By Me Live shows in Louisville and Dayton, Wil WheatCon2: 2Wheat 2Con, It’s Storytime, Conludo, and Rampart. We always stay focused on Rampart.

My two Spacedads, Johnathan Frakes and Brent Spiner, have a podcast together. My episode dropped today, so if you want to see three grown men who love each other hang out and talk about the things they love, now you know.

I’m Wil Wheaton, and I write this blog. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thing:

his name is dinkums. he watches family feud.

Posted on By Wil

Today’s title brought to you by “I have no idea what to call this, so I’ll quote Vacation and hope for the best.”

Back in the old days, when bloggers wanted to post about something, but didn’t have a story to tell, we would do these posts on our blogs that linked to people and stories we thought were interesting. The comments of those particular posts always filled up with cool links of their own, and it’s how we built our communities. “Hey, check this out,” seems to have migrated over to social media, so it feels a little … vestigial? … to do one of those posts, but I want to post something, and the story I’m working on isn’t ready, so. I wanted to share two things I am doing, and then some music and books I’ve been loving.

First off, I had so much fun doing Wil Wheatcon earlier this year, the instant we finished, I asked Momentus and Stands if we could do another one, so I am thrilled to announce the upcoming WIL WHEATCON 2: 2WHEAT 2CON on September 19th. Here’s a video we made to promote and celebrate:

Speaking of me, this weekend I will be appearing for a pair of events at MOPOP in Seattle. On Saturday, I’m joining the museum for its celebration of 60 years of Star Trek. In the afternoon, we’ll be watching an episode of TNG together with a live running commentary from this guy. I’m going to let the audience choose if they want the funny experience of watching Justice, or the more thoughtful, reflective experience of watching Final Mission. Either way, it’s going to be really special for me. Then, Saturday evening, I’ll be part of their Supper Series, featuring a discussion and oral history of my experiences on Next Generation and beyond.

I think there are still some tickets left, if any of that sounds like something you’d enjoy.

Okay, let’s get into the music of it.

A little over a year ago, I stumbled across this phenomenal band from Mexico called The Warning. It’s three sisters from Monterey, who loved playing Rock Band together so much, they formed a real band when they were teenagers. They are so good, their fans crowdfunded their first albums and tours, and I discovered them right as they were breaking out with their incredible album, Keep Me Fed. They are difficult to pin into a single genre; I’ve heard them do punk, metal, hard rock, pop, and collabs with artists I never would have sought out on my own.

I am weirdly invested in their success, same way I am with The Linda Lindas, wanting this group of young women to have everything they ever wanted. I love them so much, I paid way too much for a scalped ticket to see them open for someone I didn’t know about, or stayed to see, when they played at the Greek earlier this year. I love them so much, I will go and pay three scalpers too much to see them three nights in a row when they are back in town later this month.

Their new album, Everything’s Falling, just dropped, and it’s such a gorgeous work of art. If you like the music I like, and you haven’t heard them before now, start with More, from Keep Me Fed, then Kerosene from the new album. If it lands on you, you’re going to have a really good time.

Speaking of The Linda Lindas, they also have a new record out that is blowing me away. GOTTA GET OUT continues the journey they began with No Obligation. I still believe they are The Go-Gos of the 21st century, and I’m waiting for the music industry to notice. If you live in or around Los Angeles, they play local shows all the time for as low as five bucks. Their punk spirit is infectious, and their live show is outstanding.

Oh! And Sincere Engineer, a punk band out of Chicago who are on tour right now, have a new album out called Probable Claws. It’s straight bangers start to finish, but I’m going to direct you to the song LOL, because Deanna invited me to contribute to it in the most Henry Rollins way I could. Can you believe that? I’M ON A PUNK RECORD!

Also: Die Spitz, Amyl and the Sniffers, Lambrini Girls, and Bad Cop/Bad Cop continue to fill my daily playlists with great music.

Books!

I’ve been reading and reading and then reading some more when I’m finished reading. Most of this is reviewing and preparing stories for It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, which has been leading me to pick up novels and collections from those authors.

Real quick: you may have heard me talk about the North Star for the podcast. Here’s how I put it in my Brief History for Uncanny:

The North Star is a concept I developed during TableTop. When faced with an editorial or content choice, we asked ourselves if we were aiming at the North Star. For TableTop, the North Star was Create More Gamers. For It’s Storytime, the North Star is celebrate art and artists, promote literacy, and create space for people to have a break from the ongoing horrors.

When I was at World Con this past weekend, I met a couple of the authors who I have narrated. These are authors I didn’t know about before I narrated them, who are all now on my list of “I will read anything they write.” I had hoped to put authors onto the radars of their biggest fans, who just don’t yet know about their work … without considering that I, too, would become one of those fans. These authors shared with me that a lot of you have become fans of their work, and it’s positively affecting their careers. It was so reassuring to me, to hear from them that we are perfectly aimed at our North Star.

So after I narrated his short story, A Grey Magic, I’ve become a Ray Nayler superfan, and I am just loving his new novel, Palaces of the Crow. I loved Maria Dong so much, I picked up her newest, Aviary. I grabbed Lavie Tidhar‘s The Circumference of the World when I was at World Con. I could go on and on, but you get it, right?

I decided to do a Summer Reading Program with my library, and I’m proud to be on a 62-day streak. Some of the books I finished and loved on my way to earning a personal pan pizza include Foundling Fathers, from Meg Ellison, Earth 7, from Deb Olin Unferth, The Language of Liars from S. L. Huang, Your Behavior Will Be Monitored, by Justin Feinstein, and The Ship of Death, by Kyle Winkler.

Also, I got to read an advance copy of John Scalzi’s upcoming novel, Monsters of Ohio, which was as John Scalzi as I hoped it would be.

I read more than one thing at a time, and I am currently loving Cleopatra, by Saara El-Arifi, Jane Wiedlin’s memoir, TMI, Memoirs of a Go-Go, and I just started Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim.

I think I’ve talked about this a little bit on the podcast and in promotion, but just in case I haven’t mentioned it here: Around ten years ago, I woke up one day without the ability to relax and focus while I read a book, or a short story, or a magazine article, or anything longer than a few paragraphs. I tried and tried to overcome it, but it always eluded me.

A good friend of mine, who is one of the smartest people I know, observed that I was not alone; this had happened to them and a lot of people we both knew. My friend suggested that it was feeling overwhelmed by the horrors inflicted upon us by that fucking peophile rapist war criminal, the trauma of the pandemic, and the two of those things colliding with absolutely devastating results. My friend said they just felt like their brain was full, all the time.

The horrors have gotten worse, not better, so what happened to help me find the space, the focus, the time, and the motivation to rediscover the kid I used to be, who always had his face in a book? I can’t point to one thing, only, but I know all the EMDR and IFS therapy I’ve done to heal and recover from CPTSD has helped a ton. I know that having the responsibility and accountability of reviewing stories to narrate for my podcast has helped a ton. I know that making a choice to wander into the pages of a story and stay there so I can experience it fully has been a challenge, that has also helped a ton.

I want to share something that made a huge difference for me, in case someone else who loves to read has been struggling like I did. I have this app that was developed by Hank Green, called Focus Friend. Basically, you tell it to set a timer for you, and then you focus on an activity until the timer expires. While the timer is doing its thing, you get a little avatar who knits socks and scarves that you cash in to decorate the little house they live in. It’s low-stress, non-judgmental, extremely satisfying gamifying, and allowed me to create time specifically to read.

Your mileage will vary, but I started with 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 60 minutes. I found that 30 minutes is a perfect amount of time. It’s not so long I feel like I’ve overcommitted, but it’s long enough to enjoy a bunch of pages. More often than not, when it tells me my time is up, I add another 10 or 20 minutes, so I can finish the chapter or section I’m reading.

Oh, hey, this is a perfect place to put this! I have a partnership with Blackstone Publishing, who are sponsoring my podcast. I curated a collection of titles they publish, across a wide range of styles, from Lit RPG to Weird Fiction to Epic Fantasy. You can explore the entire Wil Wheaton Recommends collection right here. One of the titles, Acts of God, is in my top ten at the moment. I love the author’s voice so much, I asked them if they had anything that fit the format for It’s Storytime, and they sent me The Council, which I loved so much I bought it from them immediately. If you haven’t heard it, now you know.

I’ve noticed that all this reading has been extremely good for my mental health. I’m choosing to be still, to be quiet, to allow my imagination to paint and hear the words. I’m finding little bursts of artistic inspiration in entirely unexpected places, because my imagination is ravenous at the moment. Creating space and doing the work I needed to do in order to feed it has not been easy. It hasn’t been anything remotely resembling the concept of “easy”. But I remember telling my boys, “everything worth doing is hard, and that’s why is worth doing.” A little tautological, sure, but whenever something gets really hard, I remember that, and it helps me push through it.

I guess what I’m saying in more words than I needed to is that I believe, based on my personal experience, that reading books is extremely important, and if more people read more books, our world would be a measurably better place.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about some of the video games that are giving me joy right now.

I absolutely love Fallout 76. I’ve been playing for almost two years, I’m a level 580 ghoul and I have built the maximum number of CAMPs available. Every night, I spend about an hour doing dailies and wandering the Wasteland, helping players the way I was helped, and enjoying the escape and serenity of fighting Deathclaws and Scorched. It’s one of those things I can talk about for hours, in a level of detail that would make even a casual player’s eyes glaze over. I won’t do that, today. I will exercise restraint and just tell you that after about 50 superb bait over fucking months of failure, I finally caught a local legend. I can solo a nuke silo without glitching in about 15 minutes, and I have probably dumped ten million rounds into Earle. This season didn’t have great rewards, but next season looks like fun.

I don’t remember how I found Ball X Pit, but it’s a supremely fun roguelike that my kids and I are currently trying to 100%. I am also incredibly late to the party on Undertale, which feels and plays like a game Double Fine designed for the NES in 1989. It’s on all platforms.

Okay, I know there’s more I could share today, (I haven’t mentioned any of the tabletop games I’m currently playing) but I have a meeting in fifteen minutes and I’ve been blogging since I woke up, so I need to eat breakfast.

What are you into these days? I’d love to hear what you’re reading or playing.

I’m Wil and I write this blog. I’m so glad you’re here. I host It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton and co-host the official companion podcast for Stuart Fails To Save The Universe. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to you, here’s the thingy:

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Being A Brief History of It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton

Posted on By Wil

I have written for, and been published by, some fancy publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, Salon, and … well, at least two more that I can remember turning in, but not who I turned them in to (being middle aged is GREAT! Why did I come in here, again?)

It always felt like a significant accomplishment, even if the editorial hand from the mainstream publications was heavier than it needed to be. For instance, Wall Street Journal. When I wrote about choosing kindness online in a world where that seemed to be less and less common, I included a passage about my fear that Elon Musk would turn Twitter into exactly what he turned it into. The editors cut it because they knew it was true and they know who their audience is. Still, I got to tell the world how important Noah Grey is to all bloggers, so I accepted the compromise.

Each of these essays took time and effort, and with my eyes wide open and a full understanding of the deal, I wrote them without being paid. The point was to put my ideas into the world as widely as possible, and I was willing to do that while I made my living elsewhere.

But I always wanted to be paid the professional rate for something I wrote and delivered for publication, and today that has finally happened!

I have an essay in this month’s Uncanny Magazine, called Being A Brief History of It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton! I requested payment in a paper check, so I can frame it.

Here’s an excerpt:

I have never been S-tier in anything, but I feel as close as I ever have, during this incredible run. People stop me on the street, in stores and restaurants, because they recognize my voice. They all tell me they love my narration. A lot of them tell me they will listen to anything I narrate. For the first time, ever, I feel respected and recognized in my field. I feel worthy and special. I feel confident and creatively satisfied. I feel like I earned it, that it belongs to me in a way my acting career never did. After nearly thirty years of being told by other people what I want to do, and what I am allowed to do, I finally know what I want to do with my artistic and creative life, until I choose to retire. I just have to find a way to do it without asking for permission.

In early 2024, one of my oldest friends, Christopher Scott, who I have known since I was fourteen, tells me that he finally sold his first story, “The Hidden Heart of Brass Attending,” to a magazine called On Spec (which, like too many indie publications, sadly no longer exists). He isn’t a full-time writer, but he has always been a great writer, a storyteller like me, and I had been waiting for this day for almost forty years. I go to the publication’s website and buy his issue. While I wait for it to arrive, I have this thought that maybe it would be cool to commemorate his achievement, and celebrate him, with a small gift. It had come up more than once that he liked my narrations, so I thought it would be cool to narrate this for him. No music, nothing fancy, no director. Just me and a microphone, doing a fun thing for my friend. 

I sat down to narrate, and right before I hit record, a voice in my head said, “Hey! Stop for a second. You know all those people who tell you that they’ll listen to anything you narrate? What if you tested that? What if you started a weekly audiobook podcast where you narrate short stories like this one? You could ask LeVar if it’s okay to step into the space he is leaving!” For the uninitiated, LeVar had a podcast for years called LeVar Burton Reads, that I loved. Coincidentally, he was ending that series around the time I started to think about mine.

This is such a big deal for me, a real level up moment. It’s just a couple hundred bucks, but it feels like one of the biggest and most significant checks I will ever receive.

I would love for you to read this. If you do, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I also recorded it for this month’s Uncanny Podcast, if you would like to hear it in my voice.

As always, thank you for all your support and enthusiasm over the years. I’m so happy you’re here.

Hi. I’m Wil. I write this blog, Sometimes I’m on TV. I host It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, and co-host the official Stuart Fails to Save the Universe podcast. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your email, here’s the thingy:

Until next time, take care of yourselves, and take care of each other. Never forget that you are enough, you are worthy, and you matter.

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sensual daydreams to treasure forever (can’t you just see it?)

Posted on By Wil

I swear to all the gods, the Grim Reaper is really fucking up. It’s like he caught Mitch McConnell and decided to take the summer off, leaving some intern in charge who just does not understand the assignment.

While we were reeling from the loss of Dolly Parton, we found out that Tim Curry had passed away. Late last night, I heard that he passed on the same day as Dolly, but his estate kept the news private, so as not to step on her memory. That’s such a wonderful thing to do, and it doesn’t surprise me; as far as I can tell, listening to people who knew him, that’s exactly what he would have wanted.

Like a lot of Gen X theater kids, my introduction to Tim Curry’s existence was in a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have never talked about it, ever, but one of the things I took away from my first viewing (my first experience, really) is that drag is more fun than you could ever imagine. I always wanted to do a full-on face and stuff, when I went to a show, but I never had the courage to risk my dad seeing me. So I’d borrow black lipstick and eyeliner from on of my friends, and put it on in the car.

My friend and I are going to a screening soon, and we are both going in full costume. She’s thinking Magenta, and I’m thinking Frank. We’ll see how it goes, and there will be pictures if it does.

Speaking of Gen X theater kids (we never really stop being those kids, do we?), Rocky Horror reassured me that there were lots and lots of weirdoes just like me, and they weren’t the scary deviants the news and my parents told me they were. They were lovely people who welcomed everyone with open arms into a safe place where we could all just … be.

(Don’t dream it, be it, right?)

Way back in 2008, when I was a baby writer, finding my voice and figuring out how I could tell stories like the storytellers I admired, I wrote a couple of blogs that helped me level up. One of them was about the first time I ever saw Rocky Horror Picture Show, when I was a weird teenager who desperately need to belong somewhere.

Today, as we remember and celebrate Tim Curry, I wanted to repost it as a tribute to a man who meant so much to so many.

A few days after my sixteenth birthday, I lost my Rocky Horror virginity with my best friend, in a shitty little duplex theater in Van Nuys.

I’d wanted to see Rocky since I was ten or eleven on my way to an audition and my mom drove us past a marquee advertising a midnight showing every Saturday. My parents couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me what it was about (my memory is hazy on that specific detail) but anything that happened at midnight on a Saturday sounded great to me. The creepy lettering and word “horror” in the title only increased my antici . . . pation.

Darin and I were at a place on Van Nuys Boulevard called Cafe 50s. These fifties cafes were everywhere in the eighties (some blame Stand By Me and Back to the Future for their popularity) but this particular one was my favorite. Though I’ve never actually been in a diner in the fifties, this one felt the most authentic, which means it copied what I’d seen in movies better than anything else, and had Del Shannon’s Runaway on the jukebox.

We gorged ourselves on patty melts and chocolate shakes and vanilla Cokes while we talked about all the things that seemed important after you discovered girls, like how to actually, you know, talk to one and convince her to take an unforgettable trip with you to second base for sixteen seconds of passion. We argued about the time travel paradoxes in Back to the Future, confirmed that quoting Monty Python to the 24 year-old waitress is not the best way to get a stand up double when you’re sixteen (or ever) and admitted that Michael Keaton was a vastly superior Batman than we’d been prepared to give him credit for. In other words, it was a Saturday night like any other, and as midnight (and the restaurant’s closing) drew near, our attention turned toward that most important of teenage activities: doing anything but going home.

“Have you ever seen Rocky?” Darin asked.

“God, I hate that stupid movie,” I said. “And the sequels are even worse. It’s like, we know he’s going to win, so why waste our time wi –“

“I mean Rocky Horror.” He said.

“Oh.” I said. “No, but I’ve always wanted to.”

“It’s playing across the street at midnight. We should go.”

As quickly as I’d gotten excited to see it, I lost my nerve. Through the pre-internet grapevine that gave teens of my generation the truth about Mikey from Life cereal (“Ohmygod he died by eating pop rocks and drinking coke”) I’d heard about Rocky virgins being deflowered in horrifying ways (“Ohmygod this guy I know went to see it in Santa Monica and they made him take off his clothes and wrote VIRGIN on his chest in lipstick!”)

“Don’t they do horrible things to people who haven’t seen it?” I said in my most nonchalant voice, grateful that it didn’t crack.

“Not really,” he said, “but if you’re worried about it, we won’t say anything.”

“Okay,” I said, my excitement returning.

The waitress came back by our table. “Can I get you guys anything else?”

Before I could demand a shrubbery, Darin said, “Could we get some slightly burnt white toast?”

The waitress and I gave him the same curious look. He smiled enigmatically.

Twenty minutes later, we bought our tickets, burnt toast in my pocket, butterflies rising in my stomach. We stood in a line that grew to about two dozen people and waited for the theater to open. I made nervous smalltalk with Darin, talking a little too loudly about the great cast they had in . . . I think I chose Huntington Beach.

The doors opened a few minutes before midnight, and we walked into a theater that, Tardis-like, seemed bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outsider: dirty blue and orange curtains hung on the walls. Two aisles separated three groups of squeaky blue seats. The floor was painted a dark navy blue — blue seemed to be a recurring theme in this particular theater — and was appropriately sticky. We chose seats on the aisle near the back. I should have been freaked out when a guy sat down a few aisles in front of us and lit a cigarette, but being rebel-adjacent excited me.

The theater quickly got as full as it was going to get. It seemed that most of the audience knew each other, especially the four people who huddled together at the front of the house, next to the screen.

A dude with long black hair and bright red lipstick emerged from the group, and spoke to the audience. I can’t remember what he said, because when he began, a hand tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and saw the most phenomenally beautiful girl in the world standing in the aisle. She had short black hair in a Bettie Page cut, bright green eyes, full red lips. She wore a red corset that fit her . . . perfectly.

She bent over and said, “are you a virgin?”

I was, in every way that mattered, and in that moment I would have pushed my mother in front of a train on its way into a lake of fire if it meant that this girl would remove from me this . . . condition.

If I’d been standing, I’m certain I would have fainted. “W-what?” I stammered.

She extended one hand and caressed my face. She repeated herself, even more seductively than the first time.

My voice cracked as I said “YES!” a little too loudly.

Her eyes flashed and she squeaked – squeaked! – a little. “This is going to be fun.”

She stood up abruptly and hollered, “I have a virgin!”

“A VIRGIN!” Replied much of the audience.

Before I knew what was happening, she stood me up, had me repeat some oath that I’ve sinceforgotten, and spanked me. I remained fully clothed, but by the time I was done, I was soaked through after everyone in the theater sprayed me with their squirt guns and spray bottles. As quickly as it started, it was over, and she disappeared before I could get her number.

My deflowering was, like most people’s, nothing like I’d hoped for or expected, but it was still magical. I loved every second of it.

While other regulars repeated similar rituals with a few other virgins in the audience I looked at Darin. He looked back, mirroring my disbelief.

“That was awesome!” I said. Not only had a girl practically showed me her boobs, she’d touched my face! Seductively! And talked to me! And squirted me with a squirt gun! I was beside myself, and the movie hadn’t even started yet.

The lights went down, and the show began. I didn’t know any of the lines, but I quickly figured out what to yell at Brad and Janet. I threw my toast. I did the Time Warp. I watched the girl who’d taken my Rocky virginity play Magenta, which is probably why Magenta is still my favorite character in the whole show to this very day, twenty years later.

When it was over, we drove back to La Crescenta in my slightly-better-than-Patrick-Stewart’s Honda Prelude, blasting New Order the whole way with the sunroof open and the windows down. I dropped Darin off at his house, and though I got back to mine around 3, I didn’t fall asleep until the sun came up, I was so loaded with caffeine, sugar, adrenaline.

The movie, of course, was campy and not especially good, but that wasn’t the point. It was a shared experience, a place for misfits of all stripes to gather once a week, and fly our Transylvanian freak flags. For the next two years, Darin and I lead an ever-growing group of our friends to Rocky at least once a month, usually more, at the Rialto theater in South Pasadena. I haven’t been since 1991 or 1992, but those years — and the film itself — hold a very special place in my memory. Maybe, just once, I’ll go back to a midnight showing, just so I can do the Timewarp again.

I never did go to a midnight showing. I would be brutal on my middle-aged body to even try to stay awake that late … but caffeine exists, and there’s an energy that can infect and propel you all that way into the gloaming dawn, if you allow it. So … maybe. Maybe.

This story was fun to write back then, even though I can see all the incredibly rough edges now, that my experience and I want to sand off and rewrite. I suppose that’s part of its charm? Sure, we’re gonna go with that.

If you have a Tim Curry, or Dolly Parton, or Rocky Horror story you care to share, I’d love to hear it; I think all of us theater kids could use a big hug today, you know?

Hi, I’m Wil. I write this blog, and I’m glad you’re here. If you want to get my updates in your email, here’s the thingy:

I narrate short speculative fiction stories every week for my podcast, It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton. This week’s episode is a gorgeous story called The Flaming Embusen by Tade Thompson. I also co-host the official companion podcast for Stuart Fails To Save The Universe with Felicia Day. Episodes for both shows are available wherever you get your podcasts.