The Holidays are tough in the best of circumstances, whatever you choose to celebrate. We do secular Christmas, so I’m going to talk about Christmas for the rest of this. Feel free to substitute your own festival if you like. 

There is so much internal and external pressure to do everything just right, to make everything special (more special, even, than the last time you worked so hard to make it special, which was more special than the time before that). The expectations we put on ourselves, always greater than the ones we imagine others are putting on us, that we can never meet. The whole BUT IT’S CHRISTMAS of the season. It’s a lot.

It’s been a hard year for all of us. I mean, it’s been rough in Castle Wheaton, what with my seizure and Anne’s back surgery. But it’s not just the Anne and me us. It’s the all of us … us. Everyone is going through something this year, and whatever that happens to be, it’s magnified by *gestures broadly at everyfucking thing*. I have so much love and respect and appreciation for everyone who is doing everything they can to manifest some of that Magic of the Season those obnoxious car commercials suggest ought to be delivered in the form of matching SUVs. But you know, in a genuinely meaningful way that isn’t tied to spending 140,000 dollars. Seriously, just making that damn Elf on the Shelf move around for 24 fucking nights? In a row? After everything else you have to do just to keep your house from falling apart and your family fed and everything else the rest of your family just expects will magically happen? Respect. Someday, your children will be 49 and writing about That One Christmas During the Third Pandemic Year that you worked your ass off to make special for them. I see you, and I love you.

This year, more than any year in recent memory, the Ghosts of Christmas Past are everywhere I look. They showed up one at a time, and then all at once, starting maybe a week ago. Most of the memories they brought with them are painful. Some of them are joyful. They all weave together into the tapestry of my life, and as much as I’d like to pull the painful threads out, you know what happens when you pluck at threads in your tapestry.

I don’t know why I need to write these things down. I just know that I’ve been reliving them nonstop for several days, and writing them down at least gets them out of my head. 

Most of this is in chronological order, but the first Ghost of Christmas Past to show up was from 1983, so that’s where I’m going to start.

This week’s Ready Room features an interview with Ian Alexander and Blu del Barrio, who play Gray and Adira on Discovery.

I respect, admire, and genuinely like both of these young actors. I can’t imagine the responsibility and weight they carry, not just as young people in a cast of adults (something I’m familiar with and will get into in a quick second), but also as transgender actors who represent so much for so many people. I don’t know how they feel about that. We talk about it a little bit in the interview, but it must be exhausting to constantly hear, “…as a trans person blah blah blah” when something like “…as a person blah blah blah” is an option. It’s a fine line to walk that I’m still learning how to navigate, and I hope I did it with respect and grace.

Now I want to make this all about me for a moment, because this week and next week, you’re going to hear a little bit from me, personally, about how Discovery and its characters have directly touched my life in deeply meaningful ways.

Here’s what I said in this week’s Ready Room, about Adira and Gray:

This week, we have two special guests joining me right here in the studio: Ian Alexander and Blu del Barrio, who play Gray and Adira on Star Trek: Discovery. And real quick before we get to the interview, I’m going to beg your patient indulgence for a brief, personal, sidebar.

It is no secret that I have tremendous respect and admiration for these two actors. We share a similar experience, as the only very young actors on a Star Trek series. And it’s comforting to me to know that there are a few other people in this world who, in their own way, also know what it’s like to be a kid in Starfleet. It’s a small club, and it’s pretty cool to be part of it. At least, it is for me. I do not presume to speak for anyone else who meets the membership requirements.

But I do want to share how much Adira, specifically, means to me, personally. As an ensign on Discovery, Adira is everything I ever hoped Wesley Crusher could be. Surrounded by extraordinary adults, they are a respected, valued, trusted member of their crew. And they don’t take it for granted. We get to watch them work hard to earn and keep it. Starfleet is better, because they are part of it. 

In what I think is my best episode of Next Generation, Final Mission, Picard says, “I envy you, Wesley Crusher. You’re just at the beginning of the adventure.” I didn’t fully understand what that meant, then. But watching Adira and Gray begin their adventure, right now? I do. I get it. And that’s pretty cool, too. 

Thank you for your patient indulgence. We now return to The Ready Room, already in progress.

Hosting Ready Room is so cool for me. I get to occupy this space as both a veteran of the Star Trek universe, part of what we’re calling Legacy Star Trek (let me tell you how old that makes me feel), while I am also a huge fan.

It is my goal as the host of the Ready Room to bring my fellow nerds into the room where it happens, by asking questions and relating to experiences that I hope are as interesting to the audience as they are to me. This season on Ready Room, there are a couple of episodes that really landed on me in unexpected and profound ways. I chose to talk about those experiences with my guests, and the part of me that is just drowning in endless, bottomless, relentless anxiety has been screaming at me ever since that I fucked up. The rational part of me is telling that other part of me to take a deep breath and trust my instincts that it’s all okay, maybe it’s even good. But WOW am I anxious about all of it.

Anyway, I appreciate the opportunity to say in public, in front of Star Trek and the world, how much these actors mean to me, and how much Adira, specifically, means to me, personally, as the guy who played Wesley Crusher.

Yesterday, I posted this to Instagram.

My caption said that I could tell just by looking at those two guys that they used to be cool.

That’s a reference, a call back, to something that happened when I was sixteen. I’ve written about it in at least one of my books, and it’s come up at conventions over the years. But I gather from 24ish hours of comments at Facebook and on Instagram that many of you don’t know what I was talking about.

Allow me to tell you a story that I just love to tell.

When I was a kid on the Enterprise, I idolized Frakes. I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to do everything he did. I wanted to be as cool, as kind, as confident, as Frakes was. Because I looked up to him so much, so did Wesley Crusher. Like, Wesley does The Riker when he sits in chairs because I thought it was cool that Frakes did The Riker when he sat in chairs. Nobody ever asked me about it, but I was ready to defend that choice with my dying breath. Those times Wesley and Commander Riker were on some assignment together were my favorite, because it meant I got to spend my whole day with him at work.

Anyhow. One day, we wrapped at the same time and I just about plotzed when Frakes asked me if I wanted to walk to the parking garage together. Like just imagine. You’re in high school and the coolest person you know, the person you IDOLIZE is just casually like, “hey, want to hang out?” I grabbed my backpack, made sure I had the keys to my car in my pocket, locked my dressing room behind me, and we walked across the back lot, to the garage, together.

I can’t recall exactly what we talked about. It was probably stuff that happened at work that day, and I feel like he asked me about Depeche Mode, which was my absolute favorite band in the world at that time. What I remember like it just happened was how good he made me feel. Frakes made me feel seen. He made me feel valued, and loved, and worthy. I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, but he made me feel the way a loving father makes his kids feel.

As you know, I did not have a loving father. I had a bully. And it sucked. So the time I got to spend with Frakes was like water to a captain who is dying in a cave on some asteroid or whatever.

So we got to the garage, and it turned out that even though our call times were hours apart, we’d parked right next to each other, a few spaces up the ramp from our captain. Frakes pointed to Patrick’s Jaguar. “You know he got that because the car you bought was slightly better than his, right?”

I had heard this around the set, and it was as hilarious as it was unbelievable. But it was true. In 1988, Patrick bought a pretty standard Honda Prelude, and I bought a ridiculously pimped out Honda Prelude si4WS. In TNG lore, it has become known as “Wil Wheaton’s Slightly-Better-Than-Patrick Stewart’s Prelude”.

I told him I had heard that, and that I felt a little badly about it. Again, he pointed to Patrick’s fancy, expensive, luxury car. I wish I could recall his precise words, but he said something about Patrick going all-in on a fancy car, to ensure he didn’t get shown up by the Teen Idol again.

The walk to the parking garage was brief. Like, maybe five minutes. In that five minutes, Frakes was just so kind and gentle with me. He treated me like a peer, like a person he cared about, like a person he genuinely liked. I felt so safe with him, like I could tell him anything.

I never, ever, not once, felt any of those things from the man who was my father. The man who was my father made a choice when I was young to withhold all of those things from me (he gave them freely and generously to my brother and sister so I know he had them to give), and at sixteen years-old, it was getting harder and harder to pretend that he didn’t treat me differently than he treated my siblings. I began to believe that there must be something wrong with me, and if I could just figure out what it was, I could earn his approval and maybe his love. SPOILER: I could not, because it was never about me. It was always about him.

So Frakes and I are standing in the parking garage and I don’t want to get in my car and go home. I want to stay there and talk with this adult who treats me like I’m a good person who is worthy and valued and seen. And before we part ways, I want to convey to Frakes that, if he were my age, I would want to hang out all the time. I want to communicate to him that he’s a role model for me, that he’s made me feel so good about myself, and that I valued the walk to the garage he’d invited me to be part of with him.

So I gather up all my courage and communication skills, and I say, “I can tell just by looking at you, that you used to be cool.”

Frakes laughed that wonderful, boisterous, joyful laugh of his and said, “What do you mean ‘used to be’?”

I was mortified. I was an awkward nerd (yeah, WAS) and I wasn’t good with words in the best of circumstances. I stammered and sputtered and tried my best to explain what I meant. I don’t remember what was said, but I remember that he got it. He knew what I meant, and he received it with kindness and grace.

The next morning at work, we were all on the bridge, the entire cast. We were either just finished with or about to start a rehearsal, and Frakes told the entire cast and crew what I’d said in the garage. EVERYONE laughed … and here’s something really important: nobody was laughing AT me. Everyone was laughing at the idea that Frakes, who was beloved by everyone with good reason, “used to be cool”, according to the kid.

I remember that I didn’t feel embarrassed or humiliated or stupid. I felt a little sheepish, but I didn’t feel judged by anyone.

Can I just tell you how different that was from how I felt at home? For as long as I could remember, the man who was my father would single me out for ridicule, humiliation, and embarrassment. He reveled in making me feel small, unworthy, stupid, and not just worthless to him, but objectively worthless. He laughed and laughed and laughed when he did these things. My brother and mother joined him. Only my sister did not. Guess who remains in my life from my family of origin?

One of the things I’d learned in my family at home was that I couldn’t speak up when something upset me. My parents always turned what someone (usually one of them) had done to me into something that I actually deserved, or was somehow my fault. So the very, very few times I spoke up to my mother about how much her husband was hurting me, it was a big deal. It took courage, and effort. It was also a total waste of courage and effort. “Oh, he’s just teasing you,” she would say. “Try not to be so sensitive,” was a popular bit of unhelpful advice. And always, ALWAYS, it was somehow my fault that he hurt me.

I imagine that’s a bit of a trigger for some of you reading this. I see you, and I’m sorry.

One of the things I saw for the first time that morning on the bridge, while my Star Trek family laughed together with me, was that what the man who was my father did wasn’t “teasing” like my mother said it was. It was bullying. It was hurtful. It was cruel. It was a choice to humiliate and ridicule me for his own gratification. He never did it to anyone else. He only did it to me. And it was her choice to ignore it, enable it, and make it somehow my fault for being hurt by his cruelty. I would spend over two decades in denial about all of this, but that morning, I saw it clearly for the first time.

For months after that day in the garage (indeed, to this very day), Frakes would joke with me about how he used to be cool. He told the story at conventions when we were together, he asked me to tell the story when we were in mixed company. And he always gave me a little shit about it, in a loving, gentle, dare I say fatherly way. And whenever he did, I felt loved. I felt like I was in on the joke, because he made sure I was. For 35 years, we’ve told this story, and it always brings joy to us both.

I look at that photo of us together from yesterday, and I can almost imagine what it must be like to have a dad who loves you, who makes you feel like you’re enough, who wants you to succeed and is proud of everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve.

I am so grateful for my Star Trek family. I am so grateful for this memory.