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Star Trek is bigger than any single one of us, and it has the power to change the world.

Over on my Tumblr thingy, someone asked me if I have ever met any of the original Star Trek cast. I said

Not only have I met them, I am privileged to call many of them my friends. George has been a mentor to me since 1987, and he only found out (because I told him) last year that I’ve been modeling my choices and interaction with fans after what I saw him do for so many years.

You probably know that my father is an abusive, bullying, piece of shit who terrorized me my entire childhood before going out of his way to be cruel to me when I was really struggling with all the attention I got as a teenager. So it was in that environment that I first met George and Walter and Nichelle, and they all treated me with love and kindness that I had never gotten from any of the adults in my life (save my Aunt Val). They made sure I knew that I was part of a family, now, if I wanted to be, and that they accepted me just the way I was.

I had never experienced that before. Attention, approval, even basic affection were all conditional and never freely given in my home. I lived in a house with four other people, but I didn’t have a family because my father wouldn’t let me into the family he made with my brother and sister; I was a thing my mom used to chase her dreams of fame, and — worst of all — they are emotionally immature narcissists who hated each other so much, I got put on her “team” without my knowledge or consent, and my dad treated me accordingly.

It was just an awful, painful, lonely existence that was only made better at all by my Star Trek family, who made me feel loved and valued for 10 hours a day. And that didn’t just start and end on my set; it was handed down to us from the original series cast (well, most of them, anyway) and I do my best now, as a 51 year-old Legacy Trek Cast Member, to be for the new cast members who George and Frakes were and are for me.

I’ve always known, but didn’t grok until recently, that when we are part of Star Trek, we are given the tremendous privilege to carry something precious that deeply matters to millions of people across generations. What we do with it, and the privilege of carrying it, is up to us; there is no wrong way to do it (some folks just do the job and move on, that’s fine). The way I choose to carry it and share it with all the people I interview on Ready Room is inspired by George and Frakes: Star Trek is bigger than any single one of us, and it has the power to change the world. That is an awesome responsibility and privilege, for those of us who choose to accept it. I still want to make them proud, I probably will for the rest of my life.

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may your garden always thrive

I wrote this on Tumblr when someone asked me if I had any hobbies. In the chain of reblogs, I came across this beautiful parable, from which I took this post’s title.

I have a garden that I love to work in every day. It’s one of my very few hobbies that are mostly private, that I keep for myself. I freely and enthusiastically share my love for classic arcade gaming, Tabletop and RPG games, and all my super nerd shit, so I like that I have this one thing that’s just for me, no expectations, no risk of getting dragged into The Discourse. It’s just for me and I love it.

During the lockdowns, I learned the difference between having a garden, and tending a garden. It turns out that I just love to tend my garden. I love to walk in it, smell all the smells, prune it and tie it up where it needs it, keep the soil healthy, and leave it alone when I’ve done enough. I love to listen to the birds, watch the bees and the butterflies, talk to the corvids, feed them the occasional grub or unwelcome insect. Watering is so lovely, carrying the can around and giving everything as close to just what it needs as I can. My coffee tastes better out there, too. It’s science.

In a lot of ways, I use my gardening time as a metaphor. One that was particularly meaningful to me lately came when I was pruning this feral tomato that showed up in one of my beds late last year. As a general rule, when I get any volunteers, I leave them alone, except to keep them away from things I’ve planted myself, as long as they aren’t invasive. I have more wildflowers around the yard than I can keep track of because of this policy, and I get a tomato or potato every other season or so in their respective beds. But in this case, this plant was growing so fast and getting so out of control, I had to rein it in a bit, with some pruning and gentle redirection of the parts which were tied to the trellis. If you can imagine Sideshow Bob’s hair as a tomato plant, you can sort of get the idea.

While I was tending it, I started thinking about the individual stalks as parts of my life experience: here’s one that doesn’t have anything growing on it, but if I follow it all the way to this point, I can see that it’s providing support and nutrients to this huge, thriving, massively flowering hunk of the plant over here. It turns out that that part may look like it isn’t doing anything, but without it, this other part that’s gorgeous wouldn’t exist.

I could have just looked at it and seen a stalk that wasn’t doing anything. I could have easily pruned it right then and there, because it was ugly, and only afterwards would I have discovered this lush, thriving, beautiful part of the plant that can’t exist without this other part. I was so grateful that I took the time to look at the whole thing, to see that bare stem in context, to appreciate it.

I don’t know if this particular metaphor lands on you, but it landed real hard on me. It inspired a wonderful moment of reflection and gratitude, and I also got excited for the … I mean, it’s at least a dozen, but maybe more … little cherry tomatoes I’m going to get when they finish ripening on this little bit of the vine. This plant is threatening to deliver pounds of fruit this season, and I just hope I can get there before the squirrels do.

Another thing about tending my garden is that it is, by design and necessity, slow. It rewards patience. It is entirely about the journey, even if the destination is pretty great on its own. I have recently noticed that, as long as I can remember, I have felt like I can’t slow down, like I can’t take time for myself, that I should always be working or trying to work. I’ve been working on healing as much of my CPTSD as I can, and part of that includes doing my best to give myself permission to slow down, to take entire days or even weeks off, because I was put to work when I was seven, and I have earned it. It’s such a struggle for me to give myself that grace.

And that’s where my garden is a metaphor again: it may not be full of blooming flowers or tons of vegetables right now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t growing. Maybe it needs to be watered and fed today, and tomorrow, I can just walk through it, listen to the birds, watch the bees, notice new buds and leaves, choose to be grateful for the entire experience.

Your garden can be a metaphor, too, if you want.

Or not. I’m not the boss of you.

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i turned myself to face me – from star trek: the cruise vii

When I was a larval nerd in the 1970s and early 1980s, the concept of a Multiverse, as it’s popularly known and understood today, never came across my event horizon. The closest thing for me was the Mirror Universe in Star Trek, which was literally a mirror of our own. That was a concept I could easily understand: it was its own thing, on the other side of a single doorway that separated it from the Prime Universe.

The concept of an infinite number of discrete realities, most with vanishingly small differences between them, each of them as real and unreachable as our own was probably a little much for my tiny mind, but since I read a book called Hyperspace in probably 1989 or 1990, I can’t imagine anything different.

Sometimes, I’ll think about this, and I’ll say hello to the other Wils in their own realities, just in case one of them exists in a universe where hearing me is possible.

The first time I remember encountering this in fiction was Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. It came along at the perfect time for me, and landed in that part of my Venn diagram where fantasy and science overlap.

The first time I encountered a tangible, tactile, oh-this-is-exactly-a-parallel-universe-metaphor was last week, on Star Trek: the Cruise.

I have spent a lot of time Backstage, in theaters, at theme parks, at too many performances to remember. The idea of an area that is specifically for preparing the show, that the audience doesn’t see, is not some profound Plato’s Cave revelation. But an entire ship, with its own public spaces, dining rooms, bars, personal quarters, and all the other things the crew needs to live, silently weaving itself alongside the ship that all the passengers experience for their brief voyage, was a memorable experience. I only saw about 2% of it, mostly elevators (tiny, tiny, tiny elevators oh my god so tiny and unsettling) and corridors, but I saw enough of it to remember reading Neverwhere, and whenever the cruise staff used it to get me from one place to another as quickly as possible, my imagination took off, and I had a lot of fun pretending to pop in and out of this universe.

One of the times I … TRAVELED … like this was to get from my room on the 10th deck aft to the 3rd deck forward, to a space called Studio B. That’s where we did our Crusher Family Comedy Hour, and it’s where I did Wil Wheaton is Still Just A Geek: readings from and inspired by blah blah blah.

Only I didn’t have enough time to do any readings from, so I did inspired by; three pieces, one longer than the others, that I have never done in public before. I hoped they would all fit together to tell a story, and I was scared to death the the story they told wouldn’t resonate with the audience if it did.

But I needed to trust myself, trust Anne and my friend who told me it absolutely was going to work, and take what felt like a very big emotional and creative risk.

So I did, and … I think it landed the way I hoped it would. The audience was receptive, which was not always the case at cons for me but has increasingly become the norm this century. For the rest of the cruise, lots and lots of people told me, in that way only other survivors can, that my story meant a lot to them. And every single time, I’m like, “I’m so sorry, but I’m so glad we see each other,” and they’re like, “yeah, it sucks, but we are here”, and we never do an actual secret handshake, but we also do a secret handshake we wish we didn’t know.

I use my phone to record all of my talks and readings, and then I put them with all my glasses and my shoes, so I have them. Most of them, I keep for myself, but from time to time I want to share them with an audience that’s a little bigger than what we could fit in the room.

So here’s a link to the first performance (of two) I did.

At the beginning, you’re going to barely hear my space brother, Ed Speleers, introducing me. You can’t hear the smile on my face, or the overwhelming joy and gratitude in my heart, but it was there. I had no idea he was going to introduce me, and he was just so kind and lovely and everything you hope he will be.

Then you’re going to hear me read something I titled I Turned Myself To Face Me, which I hope will be part of a larger work later this year.

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star trek the cruise vii was wonderful

We disembarked from Star Trek: The Cruise Thursday morning at 715 in Orlando, waited in the airport for seven hours, and got home to Los Angeles just before midnight, which is when my brain decided to wake all the way up because of course it did.

Strangely, I woke up on my own just after 7am yesterday, and didn’t feel like a big bag of ass. Exhausted, wobbly, and dehydrated, but not like a big bag of ass.

I’m going to power down all nonessential systems and reroute warp power to life support for a few days, but before I do, real quick:

I want to take a moment to thank everyone involved in making this cruise happen for putting together such a special voyage and including me. I want to thank everyone I talked to (and who didn’t talk to me, because I was eating) for being so kind and gentle with me. I felt very Seen on this trip, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that until I did. (Shoutout to all my fellow grown-up Wesley fans!)

And I just want to share how completely in awe I am of my fellow performers, after they shared their tremendous talents with all of us in their shows. Seeing David Ajala and Armin Shimmerman perform full Shakespeare plays is now on my bucket list.

I know how privileged and lucky I am to share a fictional universe with all of these humans. I am so grateful that I can call so many of them my friends and family, and for times like these when I get to feel it in my soul so hard, it charges my creative battery to full power. (Even if all my other batteries are flashing red. It’s a fair trade.)

Oh, also? I got to take a HUGE risk and tell a story I did not know would work (it did), I got to play Doctor McCoy while Picardo and Stashwick killed as Spock and Kirk.

But best of all, I got to perform with my Spacemom for the first time in 30+ years, and my space brother for the first time, ever. What a week. What a gift.

Thank you, so much, to all the fans who allowed me to entertain you a little bit, and to everyone who shared with me that my work has mattered. It means a lot.

Okay. Time to beep boop send this.

Mr. Crusher, you have the Bridge. I will be in my quarters and do not wish to be disturbed.

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wild child

I have a small part in the 1987 television movie (failed pilot) version of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Lewis Smith played the titular character. Beverly D’Angelo played my mom, his love interest. (Fun Star Trek connection: Bob Picardo is also in it).

My character was a Troubled Youth, which I gotta tell you was not a stretch for me at all. I was deeply, deeply hurting at the time we made it. I was struggling not to suffocate on all the emotional and financial burdens my mom put on my shoulders, and fully aware of just how much my dad hated and resented me. You need a kid who doesn’t want to be an actor, whose eyes can’t hide the pain? I’m your guy.

Anyway, one of the scenes I was in took place in a record store, where Troubled Youth steals some albums, before he is chased by the cops and The Man Who Fell To Earth, uses a glowing crystal to save his life from … some scratches on his face.

We filmed the interior of the record store at Sunset and La Brea, in what I think was a Warehouse Records and Tapes, and at the end of the day, I was allowed to buy some records at a modest discount.

I was deep into my metal years, on my way from my punk years to my New Wave years, so I only bought metal albums. I know I bought more than I needed or could carry (I was making a point that I was allowed to spend my own money, mom), but the only ones I can clearly remember are:

Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind

Judas Priest – Turbo and Defenders of the Faith

W.A.S.P – The Last Command

Of those, Piece of Mind is the only one I never really stopped listening to, even through all the different it’s-not-a-phase phases. I still listen to it, today.

Ever since I became an Adult with a Fancy Adult Record Player And All That Bullshit, I have kept my records in two places: stuff I want right now, and stuff I keep in the library because of Reasons.

Generally, records move in one direction toward the library, even if it takes years to happen. I just don’t accumulate albums like I once did, because I’m Old and set in my ways, and every album in the library was something I loved listening to at some point in my life, even if I’ve mostly forgotten them.

Earlier today, I decided that I wanted to listen to an album while I cleaned up the kitchen, and because I wanted to make my life more interesting, I opened the library cabinet for the first time in at least five years. I reached in, and pulled out the first album I touched.

It was the very same W.A.S.P album from that day in March, 1987. I don’t have any of the others — I looked — but The Last Command was right there. I looked at it, curiously. Why do I still have this?

Before I fully knew what I was doing, I put it on the Fancy Adult Record Player and dropped the needle.

I watched four decades of dust build up with a satisfying crackle, and there was something magical and beautiful about hearing all the skips and the scratches, realizing I remembered them from before.

The first track, Wild Child, was just as great as I remembered. It struck all the same chords in me that it did in the late nineteen hundreds. The rest of the first side was … um. It just didn’t connect with me, and during the few moments I spent trying to find a connection, I realized that I don’t think it ever really did. I would remember.

What I did remember how much I loved making those mix tapes, and what a big part of them that song was. I did remember how empowering it felt to not just spend my own money that I earned doing work I didn’t want to do, but to spend it on music my parents hated, right under their noses. I did remember how impressed Robby Lee was, when I showed him my extensive heavy metal album collection, and he gave me a cassette with Screaming for Vengeance on one side, and Metal Health on the other, on one of those iconic Memorex tapes.

Remembering all of that, in one of those cinematic flashes of rapid cut visuals and sped up sounds, told me why I kept this record, while I gradually sold or replaced the other records I bought that day with CDs, then mp3s, then lossless digital files, before finally coming all the way back to records, where I started. This record lives in the library for reasons that have nothing to do with the music.

I didn’t listen to the second side. I didn’t need to. I took it off the Fancy Adult Record Player, and put it back into the library, next to the George Carlin records.

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