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the width of a circle

Posted on By Wil

While watching Discovery to prepare for Ready Room, I had this sudden realization that my journey and Wesley’s journey are almost identical. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it until just now. But check this out.

When we were about 20, we walked away from everything we knew, every expectation that was ever put on us, every person we ever cared about, because we both knew that something was wrong in our lives. We both needed time and space (he needed all of time and space, if you accept my headcanon that he’s a Traveler) to find out who we were, and what was important to us.

Wesley’s bit in Nemesis is not canon, because it was cut. So his whole “I’m going to serve on the Titan” thing we’ve all seen didn’t actually happen. In fact, I think current actual canon is that he wasn’t even there. I think actual current canon is that he is off on some other plane of existence doing donuts on someone’s lawn.

But let’s presume, for a moment, that it actually did happen. I want to talk about how that mirrors my own journey. To get there, let me put his appearance at Troi and Riker’s wedding through my headcanon … uh … headcanonizer.

He’s been off on his own for a long time. He is in touch — barely — with his family, even though he doesn’t serve on their ship or even exist in their reality. He loves them, and he misses them. He wonders if they think about him. He rarely sees them, but when he does, he is so careful about every word he says every choice he makes. He wants to make them proud, though he knows in his heart that he doesn’t have to do anything to achieve that. They love him already. Still, it’s just part of how he’s wired. But he knows he’s loved.

A quick jump cut, now, to me. I’m in my twenties, I’m wearing Wesley’s haircut from The Game and holy shit I have just got to get away from everything. Yeah, it’s mostly my shitty parents, but also it… well, that’s all of it, actually. Every choice I made from my late teens into my early twenties was driven by needing to get away from them and see if I could find myself, find what was important to me. Because what I had been forced to do by them for my whole life wasn’t it. And honestly? I was just so tired of feeling like shit all the time.
Back to Wesley. What he’s been doing his whole life isn’t what was truly important to him, it turns out. Unlike me, he is loved and supported by his mom and all of his father figures. He’s exploring other planes of existence, gaining valuable experience and context that his life had been lacking until that point. I mean, his entire life had been essentially on a starship, doing what other people expected him to do. It’s scary and exhilarating to be Out There, and he discovers this world beyond Nanites and Holodecks and laying in coordinates and impressing people with his science projects. He discovers this world where, as a Traveler, he can actually make a meaningful difference in this universe in a way he never could if he had stayed in Starfleet.

Hi, it’s me again, I’m doing all the stuff that I wrote about in Just A Geek (AND STILL JUST A GEEK WHICH YOU CAN PRE-ORDER NOW THANKS), and I am learning so much about myself. I’m starting to figure out what’s important to me. During this time, I realize how much I love Star Trek and my Star Trek family. I realize that the things associated with Star Trek that hurt me don’t really have anything to do with the show and universe I’ve loved since I was a child, and they have nothing to do with my relationship with the cast. It’s all my parents, a small but relentless group of shitty fans who thought being shitty to a child was great, two greedy and shitty convention promoters who made that child feel unwanted and unworthy, and an executive producer who, like my mother, treated me like a thing. And like my father, didn’t treat me with any kindness, empathy, or respect.
When it was all set out in front of me, I could see the shit that hurt, and I could do the work of separating it from the stuff I loved. WOW was that a lot of work. It’s work that continues, I think.

A significant component of that work was letting go of the shit that hurt. I don’t mean condoning it, I mean not letting it make decisions for me, any more. I had to find a way to stop carrying it, since it didn’t have anything to do with me, in the first place. It was never about me. It was always about the people who hurt me.

I got rid of as much of the shit that hurt as I could, and I looked at all of it, set out in front of me, again. Without all that shit everywhere, what I found was wonderful.

Cut to Wesley, seeing through space and time for the first moment in his new life. He is changed, and he is ready to go home. Not to stay, but to visit, and to love every moment of it while he’s there.

Back to me. I’m ready for it when I am asked to host an after show for Picard. I say yes so fast. I don’t even have to think about it. Are you kidding me? I fucking LOVE Star Trek and you’re telling me I get to be a guy who is not just a Starfleet veteran, but also an unashamed superfan? Who gets to take other nerds into the Room Where It Happens? Yes yes yes a thousand times yes!

And then they ask me to do it again, for Discovery. And then for Lower Decks. And for Prodigy. And Discovery again. And oh my god how is this even real. Maybe I’ll get to do Strange New Worlds. I can not believe this is happening to me.

So, like Wesley, I chose to come back, in a different way. In a different context. As a different, changed, person. What I choose to come back to is everything I loved, and what I have left behind is everything that hurt.

Wesley didn’t need to find he way out of the hurt like I did. He was loved and supported in ways I was not.

But we both left this thing that had been our entire lives, that looked to be the rest of our lives. We left the only thing we knew, because we knew it just wasn’t right for us. I don’t know if it was as risky for him as it was for me. He’s a character. I’m a person.

But if we accept my headcanon, (and if you’re still reading I presume you do) I love it to death that Wesley came back to this thing that he loved, deliberately not the way he was expected to be part of it. The whole “I’m serving on the Titan” thing? I write it out, and just put him at the wedding, in an appropriate uniform, because he loves his family and wants to be with them. I don’t know if he Traveled off again or not, but I know that, when he left that wedding, he knew that he could come back whenever he needed to. He would always have a home with his crew.

And I did the same thing. For him, it’s a cool story arc. For me, it’s one of the most beautiful closings of a circle I’ve experienced to this point in my life.
Now I’m going back to watching Discovery, loooooong before it’s released to the rest of my fellow nerds, because I have the best job in the world. Yes, that was a little bit of a nerd flex. (Disco S4 is AMAZING don’t tell anyone I told you.)

Oh, real quick: don’t read anything into this about the plot of Disco. I have no idea what makes the part of me that writes stuff and thinks about this kind of stuff wake up and go to work, but I know it wasn’t related to the story. I just saw [CHARACTER REDACTED] and my brain was all, “Hey, did you ever think about this?”

That was like 35 minutes ago and I really need to get back to it. I just told Anne, “I should be watching Disco, and instead I’m writing about Wesley and me. This is how you know your husband is, in his heart and soul, a writer.”

still just a geek: an (annotated) memoir

Posted on By Wil

TL;DR:

The first half of this book is my 2004 memoir, Just A Geek. I’ve heavily annotated and reflected on who I was and what I wrote in the early aughts for that book. These footnotes are almost-50 me talking about the experiences of almost-30 me, with the benefit of twenty years in between us. he second half is essays and speeches I’ve written in the last handful of years. If I did this right, you will hopefully see how I grew and changed as a person, and as a writer.

Industry professionals tell me this level of annotation and reflection is kind of a new thing for memoirs, and I wanted to offer a suggestion that may help ease you into the whole experience.

I suspect it will help if you imagine that we are sitting in a room together, and I am just telling you my story. I’m reading to you from the book I wrote 20 years ago, occasionally looking up to reflect on it.

Finally, a content warning. I talk a lot about my traumatic childhood. I talk about experiencing abuse, neglect, and exploitation. A lot of that was incredibly hard for me to read for the audiobook, much more challenging than it was to write. I need you to know that this book gets raw, vulnerable, and intense in a few places. If any of that sounds like it could be difficult for you, I want you to know ahead of time, so you can be prepared.

I wrote a book in 2004 called Just A Geek. Literally dozens of people read it, and a lot of them seemed to like it, but I have felt for years that it’s just been forgotten by pretty much everyone. About two years ago, I wrote a novel, and got it as close to finished as I could. My agent shopped it, and it was universally rejected. Like, it was so rejected, nobody even gave us notes on how to make it better. They were just, like, “NOPE.” I think it’s a neat little story, but clearly capital-P Publishing disagrees. Not gonna lie. I was devastated. But one of those editors remembered Just A Geek. He was also familiar with the writing I’d done since then, my mental health advocacy, and my story of surviving narcissistic abuse and neglect. He had this idea to revisit Just A Geek, annotate it, and include some more recent writing. The whole thing would go together and be an annotated memoir.

So I’ve worked on that for about two years, and today we get to announce that it’s a thing.

My publisher and I have this fantastic plan to do an awesome video announcement for the upcoming release of Still Just A Geek, my annotated memoir, which comes out April 12 in America, and 14 April in the UK.

I had this plan to maybe read a little of it, do some cool video stuff, and be fancy. And then I realized it’s Thursday, which is when all the gardeners come into my neighborhood, and the cacophony of leaf blowers and lawnmowers is just a little too much. I also have a ton of Star Trek: Discovery homework to do for Ready Room tomorrow, and holy crap I suddenly have more things to do than I have hours to get them done.

So that great video idea will be delayed for a little bit. It’ll still happen, I just don’t know when.

Am I just killing it with this book announcement or what? This is how you go viral and get lots of free media attention, y’all.

Really important stuff I want you to know:

I went through the entire text of Just A Geek, and annotated all of it. I feel like I’m only supposed to focus on the stuff I did that’s great, but … well, here’s a little bit from my introduction:

“Many times during the process, I wanted to quit. I kept coming across material that was embarrassing, poorly-written, immature, and worst of all, privileged and myopic. I shared all of this with my editor, my wife, my manager, my literary agent, and anyone else in my orbit who I trusted. “This really ought to be buried and forgotten in that landfill with the E.T. cartridges,” I told them. “Digging it all back up is not going to go well,” I said. They all assured me that confronting and owning that stuff in public, something I’d done privately, was important. I had to confront the parts that still fill me with shame and regret.”

So I did that, and it was uncomfortable, embarrassing, awkward, but ultimately healing and surprisingly cathartic. You may have noticed that I’ve spent much of the last several months remembering and writing about childhood trauma. Now you know why.

I also wrote

“I’m going to be honest: I’m terrified that I didn’t say the right things, take away the right lessons, atone appropriately for the parts of this that are gross. I know that I am not the person I was when I thought it was funny to make a childish, lazy, homophobic, joke. I am not the same person who didn’t even consider that a young woman, doing her job, was worthy of respect and kindness, because she was more useful to my male gaze as a character in a story that isn’t as good as I thought it was. I know I’m not that person, because those things—which are a small but significant part of my origin story—revolted me when I read them for the first time in over a decade. I mean, I physically recoiled from my own book. Those moments, and the privilege and ignorance that fueled them filled me with shame and regret. They still do. But confronting and learning from them allowed me to complete my origin story, as it turns out. It’s another thing I was unaware I needed to do, but, having done it, cannot imagine not doing.”

That’s the first … I don’t know, half, maybe two thirds, of this volume. The rest is new essays and speeches I’ve written in the last few years, which are also annotated.

If it all holds together the way I hope it does, it should tell a story of surviving childhood trauma, surviving a predatory industry, and in the most unexpected way, finding out exactly who I am, versus who I always thought I was supposed to be.

I hope it’s inspiring. I hope it’s entertaining. I hope it doesn’t suck. As you can tell, I am terrified.

I will be doing the audiobook, OBVIOUSLY. It will be released at the same time the print and ebook copies are released. We’re working on a plan to offer signed copies through indie bookshops. We’re talking about a virtual press tour. I’ll give you all more information as it gets locked in.

Finally, we have made a page where you can pre-order right now. Just pick the appropriate link.

Okay. That’s it. That’s the big news. Please tell all your friends.

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everything’s coming up wilhouse

Posted on By Wil

About once a year or so, I look back through my blog archives just to see what I’ve written about, and to see where I am now, relative to where I was then. Years ago, I was writing lots of stuff here almost every day, so I got a pretty granular view. For the last couple years, I’ve been working on this book so much, in addition to all my other jobs, I just haven’t made it a priority to post here. When I have a quick thought, and a quick minute to spit it out, Facebook is where it goes.

I hate Facebook. Facebook is evil and bad for humanity, and it should be regulated like tobacco or alcohol. Zuckerberg ought to be shipped off to some island for sociopaths where he can live a life of luxury and whatever, and let someone with actual human emotions and some semblance of a conscience  make the apparently difficult decisions about promoting Fascism and genocide that Zuckerberg seems to really struggle with.

But I’m an entertainer (so what do I know) and it just makes sense to go where the audience is. You can write the most interesting stuff, make the most beautiful music, perform the most incredible entertainment, but if there’s no audience to receive it, it starts to feel a little pointless. Facebook is where the people are, and something I post there is seen by hundreds of thousands of people, while something I post here is seen by a few thousand at best. Facebook is also where the conversation seems to have moved, and I genuinely enjoy the conversation that used to happen in blog comments, way back in the before times.

“And yet you use Facebook. Interesting.”

Yeah. We’re not doing that.

I’ve taken to cross posting here most of the things I consider important enough to have in my own space, instead of a space controlled by a company that can lock me out for telling a Nazi to go fuck themselves, where I’ll always be able to find them when I do my semi-annual mental clip show. The last few days have been fairly consequential, and I’ve been posting pretty regularly about all this stuff on my Facebook thing. I’m adapting those posts into one big post here, with all my glasses, and my shoes, so I can have them.

22 October, 3:22pm. Feeling Anxious.

I should be working, but…

Huge deadline tomorrow. Just under two years of work coming up to the absolute drop dead date. If I miss it, the whole project dies. The last three or so days has just been this epic, high stakes sprint of rewrites and changes that has been at times exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating … essentially everything that the larger process was for two years, just crammed and concentrated into 72 hours. I don’t really need to do it this way ever again, and will absolutely do again because that’s how I’m wired.

I am so close to being finished! I have two significant things remaining to write. Probably about 2500 or 3000 words, total, before I turn this thing in and don’t get to mess with it any more. I feel like I should be excitedly cranking out those words instead of writing this, so I can get it out the door and get it that much closer to your hands. But I’m holding it more tightly than I have at any other point in the process, because I am so afraid to drop this baby off for its first day of preschool. I know that I have to trust my editors, my publisher, my beta readers, when they tell me they enjoyed it, when I used the valuable notes they gave me to make it better. I know I really have to focus on their supportive voices, even though this loud, insistent voice in my head that’s way too familiar, just will not stop screaming at me THEY’RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU.

I have been writing professionally for about twenty years, but I was today years old when I fully understood what it means when an author says that a book isn’t ever really finished, that it can only be let go. I’m so scared to let this go, y’all. I have this white-hot terror that, if the big, fancy reviewers at the NYT or Publisher’s Weekly or whatever even pay attention to me and this work, that they’re going to be like, “Here’s an extensive examination of all the ways you suck. Zero stars.”

I know a lot of this (okay, all of it) is exclusively in my head and is probably not really supported by an objective reading of the material. I keep reminding myself that all these professionals wouldn’t be supporting this work if my fears and insecurities reflected the material I delivered, instead of just being existential worries inside my skull.

I am doing what I can to get from trembling-with-apprehension to trembling-with-antici-

SAY IT SAY IT SAY IT

…pation. This is a big deal. This is one of those things you work hard for and hope to achieve, and you pour EVERYTHING into it. You work on it so much, it starts to define your days, and on one of those days you look up, realize it’s been two years, and it’s like, “Okay, the work is done and it’s time to put it into the world!”

Oh, here comes that voice in my head, only this time it’s showing me a meme. Gob Bush: I’ve made a horrible mistake.

Thanks, brain. You’re the best. I love you, buddy. Let me know when you’re ready to get back on team Me.

I gotta get back to work. I’m so close. A lot of people are counting on me to turn this in on time.

Gulp.

I think I get to drop the full announcement later this week. Or maybe it’s early next week. That decision is being made by professionals who know what timing is best, and I’m staying in my lane. I do hope you’ll all pretend to be super surprised whenever it hits your feed.

5:25pm

You are all so kind and supportive. I just did about 1000 extremely important words that had to be just right. I read them, and the whole section they go in, to Anne, and she said, “Oh, that’s so much better. I love that.”

I trust her. She loves me enough to be honest with me, and she knows how much I care about this. So I’m letting that whole section go, and heading into the next one.

7:39pm

Okay, maybe this is a little silly? Like it’s liveblogging the last mile of this epic marathon?

But I just finished a very emotional 1000 words, and I’m down to my final thing.

8:28pm

Frodo_its_done.gif

9:51pm

Okay. So.

I finished the writing I had to do. Earlier today, I thought that I needed to do between 2500 and 3000 words, I think I said?

My super great math skills tell me I did just about 2800. My super great estimation skills are just giving me that ‘sup look. Like, they see me. They never doubted me. (My math skills are the kid from Parenthood, running into a wall with a bucket over his head.)

Anyway. I did all those words, put them where they go, annnnnd … I’m done. I’ve been working on this for a couple of years, and tonight, like just a little bit ago, I finished it. This will be one of the most high profile things I will ever do as a writer, maybe the only high profile thing I ever do as a writer, and … now it is … done.

Honestly, I don’t really feel … anything? It’s a little unsatisfying. It feels like something should happen. Like a confetti cannon should go off or something.
What did happen was I leaned forward in the chair I’d been in for ten hours, took a deep breath, and clicked the save icon (which I hear high school kids don’t know is based on the floppy disk? Or what a floppy disk even is?). Then, I let that breath out, as I fell back and then sank into my chair.

I looked over my shoulder at Anne, who I had asked to come look over the last bit to make sure I didn’t leave anyone out, and I said, “Holy shit, I’m finished,” and we did the best fist bump two suburban middle-aged white people have ever done. And then I went and played Mr. Do! to unwind, because I am a 49 year-old teenager.

But I really did expect to feel … something. Maybe not a huge celebration, but at least maybe relief? Or satisfaction? I don’t exactly feel anything as much as I am aware that there had been this thing in front of me that said FINISH THIS, and now that thing isn’t there any more.

I know it was unrealistic to expect the confetti cannon. That’s on me. I would have had to plan that. I don’t know why I thought it would just show up.

I told Anne that I just hope it all holds together, you know? There are parts that I just love, that I’m so proud of, that I loved writing, rewriting, and polishing. There are parts where I feel like I got it as good as I could get it, and I have to trust that somehow nobody will notice because I’m probably the only one who knows exactly what I was going for. Then there are all the parts in between.

And that’s how a bill becomes a law!

Inside my head, that is the funniest goddamn thing I have written in a long time. Maybe in my whole life.

And that is how I know it’s probably time to go lie down forever for a few hours. I get to do a cool thing tomorrow, and I need to be rested, and way more coherent than I am now.

So all of that happened on Monday. On Tuesday, I worked on Ready Room.

26 October 2:14pm

I did an interview for Ready Room today, in our fancy new set that was built specifically for us!

Without getting into spoilers or breaking my NDA, I can safely share that Ian Alexander and Blu del Barrio (who I got to interview today) are two of the most remarkable humans I have have the pleasure of sharing some space and time with. I had to keep reminding myself that they are decades younger than me, because they are so wise and insightful. I know for a fact I was nowhere close to them, intellectually or otherwise, when I was their age. They are just amazing. And Ian is the most stylish person I think I’ve ever been around. I spent WAY more time picking out my clothes for today than I normally would, because I knew he’d be there, and when he (and Blu) noticed, I had a little moment. It was pretty great.

We are members of a very small club, made up of people who were young actors on Star Trek. What are there, like … six? Nine? Of us? It won’t mean to them what it means to me for another decade or so. I hope I still have the privilege of sharing time and space with them when that happens.

I can’t say anything about the episode we shot. That would get me into all sorts of trouble. But I loved every second of it, and I am so grateful.

Sometime between when I posted that, and when we ate dinner, I had a long conversation with my manager about an acting offer I was considering. I’d spent a lot of time talking myself into it and then out of it and then back into it and I just needed some objective counsel from someone who I knew I could trust to have my best interests at heart. I knew he’d help me make the best decision for myself, and for where we hope to steer my professional career in the coming years.

27 October 1:04pm

Okay so I can’t say anything specific about it, but … I just accepted an offer to work a couple days on a network series, even though I’m pretty much retired from on-camera acting.

If you’re familiar with my journey, I think you’ll understand what a big deal it was for me to tell my manager, “I’m really not interested in acting on camera, but I’ll read the script, and if I like it, maybe I’ll do it because I want to, not because I feel like I have to.”

So I did, and I did, and I said yes. On my terms. On my terms, y’all!

What a crazy week this is turning out to be, and it’s only Wednesday.

And because all of this isn’t cool enough already, if everything goes the way we think it will, I’ll get to do a whole book reveal thing tomorrow. It will happen on my Facebook and my Instagram, and eventually find its way here. And then I get to do Ready Room again on Friday. What a crazy week this is turning out to be, and it’s only Wednesday.

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Ensign Wheaton, reporting for duty.

Posted on By Wil

As many of you know, I absolutely love Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Many of you also know that since 2019, I have had the pleasure and privilege of hosting The Ready Room, your home for all things Star Trek Universe. It’s one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had. Top three, for sure. Maybe top two. I’m so grateful that I get to do this thing that brings together my love for all things Star Trek, my 30ish years of experience being part of all things Star Trek, and gives me the opportunity, if I do it right, to be a Trekkie who brings my fellow Trekkies into the room where it happens. I do not take a single second of it for granted.

There’s INSANELY COOL Ready Room stuff coming up that I can’t talk about. In fact, I’ve already said too much, and you should probably forget I said anything. But there’s also an INSANELY COOL thing that I can share right now.

(more…)

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sweet and tender hooligan

Posted on By Wil

Yesterday, I accidentally discovered that a friend of mine loves the same midcentury asthetic the same way I do. Not only that, but she and her husband love the same Exotica, Lounge, easy listening, Hi-Fi Souunds Of Tomorrow music that I love. I’m talking about artists like Esquivel, Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and their contemporaries.

I discovered this genre of music in the mid 90s, and fell in love with it instantly. I thought it was so weird that this guy I was, who loved punk and grunge and metal just absolutely fell head over heels in love with the soothing sounds of midcentury America. Around that time, I also discovered Squirrel Nut Zippers, Asylum Street Spankers, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and their contemporaries. So I kinda lump my midcentury obsession together with those bands, even though they aren’t exactly Hi-Fi.

Well, it turns out that my friend and her husband did the exact same thing, and we never knew it about each other. Pretty cool.

I was inspired by this revelation to build a mega playlist that I could enjoy while I played arcade games last night (this is part of my self care routine, I tell myself). So I fired up the old Spotify + Sonos, and I got to work. I started with my KROQ Happy Place playlist, added a couple Exotica and Lounge playlists to the queue, threw in Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s Halloween playlist, and finally added a Dark Wave playlist to the whole thing. I shuffled it all together, and it was really great. I think it was like 2 days worth of music?

I’d been listening for like half an hour or so. I’d heard a deeply satisfying mix of Hi-Fi and classic punk, some new wave, even some of the Halloween stuff. I was enjoying the SHIT out of it.

I was playing Mr. Do!, as one does, when A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours, by The Smiths, came on.

Holy shit I loved this album when it came out. It was really important to me, when I was in high school.

I stopped playing and let the little dragons kill my Mr. Do! guy, while I listened to the music. Before I knew what was happening, I fell deep into a memory.

I remembered my first significant, meaningful, head-over-heels-in-love experience as a teenager, when I was fourteen, almost fifteen. She was older than me. I think she was a senior when I was a freshman. She was in a drama production with the girl I was dating (and by “dating”, I mean, “endlessly making out with because we were horny teenagers”), and I met her at the cast party for that show.

God, I haven’t thought about this in decades. The girl who was my nominal girlfriend at the time, on our way into the cast party, told me that she’d decided it was time for us to see other people. This blindsided fourteen year-old me. It turns out that there was some dude in the cast she wanted to hook up with, like you do when you’re a teenager, so she sort of … I guess broke up with me for that night, hooked up with this other guy, and then wanted to get back together with me a few days later. I was like, “you broke up with me to hook up with that guy. That’s not cool. We’re staying broken up.” And that was it.

Remember stuff like that when we were kids? How it seemed like the most consequential thing that would ever happen in our lives until the next thing happened to eclipse it, and now when we look back on all of it, with perspective, we’re, like, “Oh boy. LOL.”

So at this party, the girl I was dating pretty much ditched me, and I was kind of alone. Or, more accurately, I was totally alone. This woman (I mean, she was probably 17? But to 14 year-old me she was a woman, unlike the girl I was dating. I feel like this is offensive to say now, but at the time, it made sense) sits down next to me and just starts talking to me about stuff. She’s super kind, and within a few minutes, we’re talking like we’ve known each other forever. We spent the rest of this party just sitting on this balcony, talking about stuff I wish I could remember, until it was time for everyone to go home. She drove me back to my house, in her BMW 2002, and we listened to KROQ on the way. When we got to my house, she gave me a hug, and suggested that we should hang out. I didn’t get any romantic interest from her at all. I just felt like this person and I clicked for whatever reason, and I was totaly into being friends with her. I wrote down my phone number for her, she wrote down hers for me, and I went into my house, much happier than I should have been, considering that my girlfriend essentially dumped me on our way into a party and hooked up with some dude under my nose just a few hours earlier.

I’m not going to name either of the ladies in this story, but I’m going to call the girl who drove me home “Kara”.

Over the next few weeks, Kara and I became insanely good friends. She lived in an apartment with her mom, and we spent endless hours sitting on the floor in her room, listening to records. She is the person who introduced me to Violent Femmes, Siouxie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, The Cure, and The Smiths. I’m positive there were others, but those are the ones that I can clearly remember.

I should have told you this earlier: she was the first real goth girl I knew. She wore a Bettie Page haircut, had incredible style, and was ALWAYS totally put together.

I honestly don’t know what 14 year-old me brought to the table, but she saw something worthwhile in me that I didn’t, and she nurtured the hell out of that part of me. She took me to plays, she took me to art shows, she introduced me to the most interesting people I had ever met to that point in my life.

Once, when I was in my 30s, related a little bit about her to a friend of mine, who is also a giant nerd who married a super cool woman who is way out of his league, and he said, “She made you cool.”

I am not, was not, and never will be cool, but I appreciated the sentiment. She certainly got me as close to cool as I’d ever get. And she opened my world to all this incredible art and culture that I never would have found without her.

So one day we were listening to records, talking about The Stranger, which she had recommended I read, because I liked the song Killing An Arab by The Cure. She pulled out this stack of 12 inch singles. Each one had gorgeous art on it, photographs of old movie stars, it looked like, with a sort of silver tone over it all.

“I collect import singles,” she said. “This is my collection of The Smiths.”

I sort of knew The Smiths, because Strangeways had recently come out, and after hearing Girlfriend in a Coma on KROQ, I went to the Warehouse and bought the CD. But to that point, I hadn’t listened to any of their other records. The extent of my New Wave at that moment was Depeche Mode and Duran Duran, maybe a very little Tears For Fears. I was still mostly punk and (I know this is incredibly weird) Pink Floyd at that moment in my life. It makes no sense, then or now. But it’s where I was, musically.

I forget what was on her turntable, but she took it off, put the record back in its sleeve, and pulled out one of those Smiths import singles. I want to tell you what it was, but I don’t remember. I feel like it could have been Bigmouth Strikes Again, or Shoplifters of the World Unite. Maybe it was This Charming Man.

Remember the first time you heard some music and you thought, “oh my god they are talking about me. They GET me,” and it changes your life?

That’s how I felt about The Smiths. We spent the next hour or so playing all of her import records, and when she drove me home, we stopped at The Warehouse so I could buy Louder Than Bombs, Meat is Murder, and The Queen Is Dead. I remember that she threw a bunch of shade at Louder Than Bombs, because it was the American compilation of the import singles she’d spent considerable time and effort collecting.

Once I started listening to The Queen Is Dead …. wow. It was … everything. I was so sad. It was so lonely. It was so sardonic and biting. He sang about my story, about my life. Oh my god “I know it’s over”? “Bigmouth Strikes Again”? “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”? Holy fucking shit fuck fuck fuck are you serious how does this even exist. This album was taken directly out of that part of my heart I hadn’t had the courage to share with ANYONE.

Okay, real quick, I’m just going to take a moment to make meaningful eye contact with all of you who know precisely what I’m talking about.

I see you, and I just want to remind you all: we made it.

For the next year or so, Kara was one of my best friends. We hung out all the time. We drove around town in her 2002, listening to the music that I still listen to and love today. I don’t remember many of the things we did, but I clearly recall how she made me feel. She was a kind, caring, gentle presence in my life at a time when I desperately needed that person. She exposed me to art, to poetry, to literature, to all the stuff that ended up defining me. She helped me pour the foundation upon which my entire adult life is built. My mother had kept me in a box for my whole life, and Kara showed me that there was a way out of that box.

And then she graduated, moved away, and we lost touch with each other.

The whole year we were friends, I was just completely in love with her. She made me feel so good about myself. She took a genuine interest in me. She just made me feel special. She made me feel, without ever saying anything directly, like I wasn’t the unlovable, unworthy piece of crap my dad made me believe I was. In one year, she did more for my self-esteem than anyone else had in my entire life. And nothing even remotely romantic ever happened between us. I mean, I would listen to The Queen Is Dead on repeat and just fucking pine away for her to love me the way I loved her, but I never said anything because I knew that she was out of my league, probably not interested in me that way anyway, and I didn’t want to risk upsetting what was one of the most important friendships I’d ever had. If she knew that I would have crawled over borken glass for her, (and honestly, I don’t know how she didn’t) she never let on. She was just kind to me, and such a good friend.

I haven’t thought about her in 20 years. But when I thought about her last night, I missed her again the way I did when she moved away back in 1988 or 1989. It only lasted a second, but I felt it, hard, in that little part of teenage me who comes out from time to time and needs to be hugged.

I don’t listen to The Smiths anymore. After Morrissey turned into … what would we even call him, now? He’s such a dick. I can’t stand to hear his voice any more. He’s like kind of a fascist, he’s kind of a bigot, and he’s just gross and awful. Is he an incel? It seems like sad kids like us can go that way, if we don’t have someone to love us and guide us through it, if we don’t have a Kara. I feel like this man who wrote so many songs that were so important to so many of us who felt alone, and alienated, and unlovable, we felt seen and validated by his lyrics. And I feel betrayed by him, now. Like, how did that guy turn into this guy? It’s a giant bummer. And The Smiths was SUCH a significant and meaningful part of my life, I can’t just look past him and separate the art from the artist. Believe me, I’ve tried.

But yesterday, when my massive playlist kicked out one of the Smiths songs that I suspect was part of the dark wave collection I added to the queue, I didn’t skip it. In my head, I created this static warp bubble where 15 year-old me could sit next to me now, and we listened to The Smiths, together. I doubt very much that Kara ever thinks of me, if she remembers me at all. But when I was 14 and 15, my life was so much better because she was in it. Teenage me wanted adult me to remember her, how kind she was to me, and how she exploded my world with her music.

And when it was all over, teenage me felt kind of … soothed, I guess? I can’t explain that part of it. I feel embarrassed and awkward when I try, kind of the way teenage me felt all the time.

Kara is the reason I still clutch my heart when I see goth kids or theatre kids. I remember being them, and I wouldn’t have even known I was one of them, without her.

I will never know why she decided to come sit next to me that night. I was just a weird kid, in a house that was filled with weird kids. I wasn’t special. There was no reason I would have stood out among them. And yet. I like to believe she saw a fellow traveler, and she helped him get as close to cool as he was ever going to get.

I’m so sad that Morrissey is such a shit. I’m so sad that I can’t listen to The Smiths like I once did, because I just can’t separate the art from the artist in this specific case.

But I’m so glad that I heard The Smiths last night, and that it inspired me to build that static warp bubble. I’ve spent a LOT of time lately with teenage me, and he’s been telling me about a lot of his pain and trauma. It was so wonderful to hear him share joyful memories, from an otherwise really tough time in his life.

Kara will never see this, but I’m putting it out into the world, anyway: Thank you. I never told you how much you meant to me, but I think you knew. Thank you for being there for me, and for being exactly who I needed. Teenage me will always miss teenage you, and I hope that adult you is happy and healthy. I hope you have kids, because I bet you’d be the most amazing mom.