by Wil Wheaton
The barefoot dash across the parking lot, stopping at least once on the white painted lines before making it into the cool Thrifty drugstore, where ten-cent scoops of double chocolate malted crunch awaited. The cool linoleum and slightly dry-but-cool air-conditioned air inside is as much a part of summer as swimming and staying up late on weeknights. It was especially wonderful if a day in the swimming pool and chlorine-burned eyes put little halos around all the lights inside and made each breath of cool air burn my chest just a little bit.
Stargate, Mr. Do!, Super Pac-Man, and Gyruss at Sunland Discount Variety and Hober’s Pharmacy (they’ve blurred together in my memory), grabbing sips of a Slush Puppy between levels. I can still see the Slush Puppy cup sweating on the machine next to my hand while I played.
“Wanna go ride bikes? I have cards to put in the spokes!”
“Cool! We’ll race up to the whoop-de-dos by the wash!”
I was surprised to realize that in nearly all of my childhood memories, it’s hot, it’s summer, and it’s smoggy.
An older couple lived down the street from me. They had a pomegranate tree in their front yard, and if you asked them nicely you could pick one and take it home with you, where you’d smash it open on the curb and spit the seeds into the street (or at each other). One summer, they ended up with a few hundred boxes of mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches, and they gave thirty or so boxes to my parents, who had one of those giant freezers that opened on the top out in the garage. That was the same summer that we got Atari 400 and I got completely hooked on Star Raiders.
I grew up in a tract home in the Northeastern San Fernando Valley. All the homes around us were some variation of stucco with asphalt shingle roofs and dark wooden shutters stuck onto the sides of the street-facing windows. If you’ve seen E.T., you’ve seen houses just like the ones I grew up in. Another 1980s film that features a house just like mine is Poltergeist. This is the only movie that still scares the everlivingjesusfuck out of me, and every time I hear Kaja Goo Goo’s “Too Shy,” it reminds me of the afternoon I watched it with my older cousins, stretched out on the floor of our den after swimming in our pool all morning in the middle of summer.
The idea was to watch the very scary movie in the light of day, so that by the time night rolled around, any residual terror would have been washed away by whatever casserole we had for dinner…but it didn’t quite work out that way. Now, you damn kids today, who grew up with the MTV and the VH-1 and the MTV2 and your baggy pants and your coffee-can exhaust pipes don’t remember this, but back in the early ’80s, there was this thing called ON TV. It was one of the first cable movie channels (SelecTV and Z Channel are the other two I remember) and predates HBO. Sometimes, between movies, they’d run something called ON Video Jukebox where they’d play these things that were like concert films and often had little stories and cool grass valley switcher video effects.
To ensure that the top-loading, portable (less than 50 pounds and measuring close to 18 inches square and five inches deep) VCR’s timer function captured the entire program, my dad would set it to start recording five minutes before the show was set to start and end five minutes after. This resulted in catching ON Video Jukebox pretty regularly, and before Poltergeist started, there was this band singing about being shy. I can still see and hear my dad as he stood in the doorway from the den to the pool, silhouetted by the glare of the midday sun (thankfully—my dad insisted on wearing a bikini Speedo throughout my entire childhood, regardless of how many of my friends were over to swim), as he said, “They call them ‘Kaja Goo Goo’ because they sound like they’re singing baby talk,” before cracking up at his own joke and disappearing into the glare seconds before we heard him splash into the pool.
Poltergeist started up, and I instantly noticed how much the house and neighborhood in the film looked like mine. As the movie went on, I noticed other things that were just like my life: a little sister with a terrifying clown toy, a tree just outside my bedroom window, a swimming pool under construction a few houses over, quasi-hippie parents, and Zelda Rubenstein standing in the middle of my living room hollering about going into the light.
Well, most of that, anyway.
The movie terrified me so much, because it all seemed so plausible and looked so much like my neighborhood, that I put Amy’s clown toy in the garage (on top of the freezer with its bounty of ice cream sandwiches, where it was safely out of our house and in the perfect position to scare off any other kids who entertained notions of sneaking one or two out when nobody was looking) before I went to bed, where I slept with the light on. For several nights.
Those memories, and a hundred others, flooded over me like a burst dam in the fifteen minutes it took to drive from the freeway to Ryan’s class along streets that were at once familiar and alien, as memories twenty-five years distant struggled to reveal themselves through the progress of the last two decades…. like the time when I was eight and I didn’t have the courage to tell Kelly that it wasn’t right to shoot a dove on a telephone wire with his BB gun. I watched in horror as he fired. A little poof of feathers burst out of the dove’s side before it flew away.
That haunts me to this day.
my mind is filled with silvery star
Just like close your eyes and then it’s past, this felt like too much of a list, and not enough of a story, to include in the book. My editor convinced me that, if we put them next to each other, it would provide a nice little break toward the middle of the book. I think he was right, and I’m glad we kept it.
You can learn a lot about someone from the songs they listen to, especially if that person is like me and music is much more than just background noise. As an exercise one afternoon, I put my iPod on shuffle and wrote up the immediate—and often most powerful—memory associated with each song. As much as my elementary and middle school years are dominated by sense memories associated with video games and places, my high school memories are inextricably intertwined with pieces of music.
“Cinderella Undercover” by Oingo Boingo—I am driving my brand new 1989 Honda Prelude Si 4WS to work on Star Trek. I don’t know why, but in all of my memories, it’s early morning, it’s cold, and it’s a little foggy. I loved that car, and I feel compelled to remind you that it was just slightly better than Patrick Stewart’s.
“Don’t Be Square, Be There” by Adam and the Ants—My friend Guy (who was also my stand-in on TNG) introduced me to Adam and the Ants via the Kings of the Wild Frontier album. I can still see the tape, an old TDK number with “Adam and the Ants” on one side and “Kings of the Wild Frontier” on the other, written in Guy’s really cool architect writing, in a smoky gray case with no paper insert. Guy lived in Costa Mesa, and after I got my Mac II—in color, with four frakking megabyes of RAM, man!—I’d put it in my car and drive down to Guy’s place on the weekend so we could Appletalk our machines together and play NetTrek and Spaceward Ho!
People often asked me in interviews how I avoided the drugs and partying scene that claimed the futures…and lives…of so many of my peers. I’ve just realized that this is a major reason why: While they were getting high and courting the paparazzi in night clubs they were too young to be in, I was sitting in Guy’s house playing really geeky games.
“Still Ill” by The Smiths—When I was in my very early teens, I had one of those massive teenage crushes that consumes your every waking moment and requires you to listen to endless hours of The Smiths in your bedroom wondering why she doesn’t like you “in that way.” This particular crush was on Kyra, who was so beautiful, and so smart, and so cool, and so a senior when I was a freshman that it was never going to happen. Kyra introduced me to The Smiths (on vinyl, no less) and the Violent Femmes (in her BMW 2002 while we were driving to see Harvey at a local college), and was goth before goth was goth. Though I had such a massive crush on her, we were great friends, and she never broke my heart.
“Pale Shelter” by Tears for Fears—I heard this on the radio in my mom’s car on my
way to my first day at Crescenta Valley High School, and it will always remind me of that day. I was terrified. I remember sitting in first-period history and not even knowing that I was supposed to write “per. 1” on my papers. I remember that it was nothing like I’d seen in movies and on TV, and how the kids in all my classes were so cruel to me. I was shy and I was scared to death, and I was so withdrawn as a result that they all decided I was aloof and arrogant. I never got a chance to correct that first impression. Wow—as I write this, I can feel that terror all over again. I feel it in my muscle memory and in my soul. God, I felt so tiny as I walked across the quad on that first day, like a little kid who lost his mom in the department store. The time I spent at CV was the absolute worst in my life.
“How Beautiful You Are” by The Cure—Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, the first compact disc I had, and it’s a good thing, too. I love this record so much, I would have worn it out in any other medium. This was also during the “W + K 4EVR” phase, and, nerdy little artist that I was, whenever I heard this song I longed to go with her to Paris and dance in the rain together. You know what I just realized? I don’t think I ever told her that I was so fiercely head over heels for her, and she either knew and didn’t call me out, or I had the perfect combination of infatuation and insecurity to keep it to myself. I wonder where she is today, and how she’s doing.
“Charge of the Batmobile” by Danny Elfman—My best friend Darin lived just over one mile from my house, across windy streets up in the hills above La Crescenta. We were such Batman geeks and such stupid teens that we frequently put this song on my tape deck and drove way too fast across those windy streets late at night between our two houses. It’s a miracle we never crashed or hurt anyone or anything.
“Phonetic Alphabet—NATO” This is from disc 2 of The Conet Project. I never heard a numbers station in my teens, but I spent a lot of time listening to my shortwave radio and my police scanner (I told you I was a geek) so it reminds me of sitting in the dark (because shortwave listening is so much better when you’re in the dark, for some reason), late at night when propagation was better, spinning the dial and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world to hear transmissions from the other side of the planet. I’m glad the Cold War is over, but boy do I miss the shortwave propaganda broadcasts.
And the Conet Project is the perfect coda to this trip in the wayback machine. That invisible woman’s voice, sending a message to some unknown person in an unknown land, shot into the ionosphere and back, captured by someone else in another time, is almost too perfect. If I saw it in a movie, I’d never believe it. Good thing this isn’t a movie.
“…romeo, romeo, lima, yankee, november, oscar, oscar, zulu…end of message end of t—”
when you dressed up sharp and you felt all right
This started out as a one-paragraph intro to a rant about how much I didn’t want MTV to remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show. After a few minutes in my text editor, though, it became a lot more fun to just tell this story.
A few days after my sixteenth birthday, I lost my Rocky Horror virginity in a shitty little duplex theater in Van Nuys, California.
I’d wanted to see Rocky since I was ten or eleven 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.
A week or so after my birthday, my best friend Darin and I were at a place on Van Nuys Boulevard called Cafe 50s. These 1950s-themed cafes were everywhere in the ’80s (some blame Stand by Me and Back to the Future for their popularity) but this particular one was my favorite. Though I’d never actually been to a diner in the ’50s, this one felt the most authentic…which means that it copied what I’d seen in movies better than anywhere else and had Del Shannon’s “Runaway” on the jukebox.
We gorged ourselves on patty melts and chocolate shakes and vanilla Cokes and extra fries while we talked about all the things that seemed important after you discovered girls, like how to actually, you know, talk to one…thereby instantly convincing her to take an unforgettable trip with you to second base for sixteen seconds of commitment-free 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 far better 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-Snopes grapevine that gave teens of my generation the truth about Mikey from Life cereal (“Ohmygod he totally died after 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 asked in my most nonchalant voice, grateful that it didn’t obviously crack.
“Not really,” he said, “but if you’re worried about it, we won’t say anything.”
“Okay,” I said, my excitement returning. He was two years older than me, and wise in the ways of the world. I knew I could count on him to keep my secret shame between us.
The waitress came back by our table. “Can I get you guys anything else?”
Before I could demand a shrubbery and a phone number, with equal chances of getting either, Darin asked, “Could we get some slightly burnt white toast?”
The waitress and I gave him the same curious look. He smiled enigmatically.
Twenty minutes later, with burnt toast in my pocket and butterflies swarming in my stomach, I bought my ticket. We stood in a line that grew to about two dozen people and waited for the theater to open. I made nervous small talk 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. We walked into a theater that, Tardis-like, seemed bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. Dirty blue and orange curtains hung on the walls. Two aisles separated three groups of squeaky blue seats. The floor was painted navy blue—blue seemed to be a recurring motif 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 rows in front of us and lit a cigarette, in total violation of the theater’s rules, 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 members knew each other, especially the four people who huddled together at the front, under 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 as 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 shiny 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 asked, “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 separate me from this affliction.
If I’d been standing, I’m certain I would have fainted. “Wuh…what?”
She extended one hand and caressed my face. She repeated herself, even more seductively than the first time. “Are…you…a virgin?”
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.”
Before I could ask if this kind of “fun” came with an instruction manual, 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 since forgotten, and spanked me—not brutally, but not overly gently, either. I remained fully clothed, but by the time my deflowering was done, I was soaked through, as everyone in the theater sprayed me with squirt guns and spray bottles. As quickly as it started, it was over, and she disappeared before I could get her number—much less drop a Life of Brian quote on her.
Like most people’s, my deflowering was nothing like I’d hoped for or expected, but it was still magical. I loved every second of it, and before I knew it, she had vanished into the dim light of the theater.
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 spanked 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.
