Dustin Diamond

by Timothy Niedermann

  But then take the case of another guy who wrote me frequently. The content of his letters read like they were from an adult, but the handwriting and spelling looked like there was a developmental-disability issue involved. The letters were in big, fat, balloon handwriting like that of a child. He was a big fan who wrote often, and I wrote back. It was touching, having an impact on his life. Swinging back to the other end of the spectrum, there was a chick who sent me a letter requesting four things: a personal possession, a piece of my clothing, a lock of my hair, and a bodily fluid. She wanted to make a fucking voodoo doll of me! “Yeah, I’ll get right on that, you crazy bitch. Wait by your mailbox. The package is on its way!” Oh yeah, I received everything from fan mail to chain mail.

  And things could take an even more serious turn. During the early years of SBTB, I had my first stalker. The situation was so frightening at my house that I had to move in for a few weeks with Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and her family. The stalker made it clear that his goal was to kidnap me. He had it in his mind that if he could just take me, be close to me, he would wind up rubbing elbows with celebrities and producers and become famous himself. It escalated to the point where it was not safe for me to play in my own neighborhood. One afternoon, the guy actually tried to snatch me off my bicycle.

  After I’d moved in with the Thiessens, my terrier, Scooby, proved his worth as a great watchdog for one of the scariest encounters my family had with that demented psycho. My dad had taken to sleeping with Scooby and a gun under his pillow. One night, Scooby started barking like there was an intruder. Dad saw movement outside, and hurried through the back door as a dark figure ran away into the night.

  Dad smelled gasoline. Our home had been doused, and that fucking whack-job was only moments from setting it ablaze. The full tale behind my stalker episode opens an ominous door into the dark, twisted aspects of my life at home—away from the set of SBTB. That’s the story behind-the-scenes of behind-the-scenes. But it’s a story for another time. Trust the Dust, there’s enough weirdness and violence there for a whole other book.

  I’M GOING TO DISNEYLAND … TO GET LAID

  During most of the time I was on SBTB, I lived in Orange County, located about an hour and a half south of our Burbank studio (in good traffic). That meant I was a neighbor to the bestkept secret for picking up girls in the history of the modern hookup: Disneyland.

  Long before my short-lived stint as a pseudo-employee of the Disney Network during our first season of Good Morning, Miss Bliss, I had a history with Mickey and Minnie and the rest of the gang. When I still lived up in San Jose, every year before we moved, my folks would take us on a six-hour family trek to the Magic Kingdom. It was a big deal. My dad loved Disney, Walt Disney in particular. Dad was born in 1954, and when he was a boy he once got lost at Disneyland. Lillian Disney, Walt’s wife, found him, reassured him and brought him up to Walt’s office, where he sat and chatted with the great man while park workers located my grandparents.

  I would often make my trips to Disneyland with my buddy Brian. I met Brian when I invited a girl I liked to Tori Spelling’s birthday party at Bar One in North Hollywood (the same bar where, years later, Tori’s 90210 co-star Shannen Doherty’s infamous fight went down). The girl’s mom didn’t want her going on a date to some Hollywood party without a chaperone, so she required that her older brother Brian go along. At first I thought that was pretty lame, but it worked out in the end. When the girl and I clearly were not making a love connection, I let her drift her own way to mix and mingle at the soiree while I hung out and joked around with Brian, both of us hitting on chicks together. Later on, Brian worked at Diz—Disneyland—and joined me in many of my magical adventures scoring chicks there. Another of my trusted wingmen was my best friend—and, coincidentally, Ron Howard doppelganger—Mark.

  I became a regular at Disneyland and actually purchased an annual pass. I also made it a point to quickly get to know all the workers; you never know when you need well-placed friends. Disneyland soon became my neighborhood haunt. You need to remember that, sure, during the summertime the place was packed with little kids. But when school was back in session, the little kids disappeared, and I had the park practically to myself to prowl around. Plus, I was set schooled and enjoyed a fourmonth hiatus after we wrapped each season, a hiatus that never fell within the normal public school vacations. And even when we weren’t on hiatus, we filmed three weeks and then had a week off. So, during that week off, I went to Disneyland and found nobody there. Nobody, that is, but hot chicks on international holiday from places like France, Switzerland, and … Sweden! Fifteen-, sixteen-, seventeen-, and eighteen-year-old, big tittied Swedish girls! Happy to be in America, happy to be at Disneyland, and very happy to meet a TV star they instantly recognized from his worldwide syndication in one hundred and six countries, sixteen times a week. I learned fast that overseas customs were very different from our own. Those European girls were way more physical when we first met. They liked to talk real close. I had no problem with that.

  As I grew older, there was a stigma attached to Disneyland by my friends and fellow cast members on SBTB. They thought the park was for adolescents. The cool thing to do at the time was to use your fake ID and go out to the L.A. bar and club scene to meet girls. People don’t realize that Disneyland in the early’90s was the perfect place to meet and hook up with chicks. If you were a teenage guy looking for a no-attachments blow job, to get laid, or even just to score a nice stinkfinger (or, as it later became known: Disneyfinger), Disneyland was where you wanted to be. It was perfect for a guy like me, that is, too young to drive. Every possible amenity for the typical date was there at our beck and call.

  And let’s talk about the rides, shall we? Fifteen minutes, uninterrupted, on the People Mover (or as we called it back then: the People Maker), late at night on four linked trams, high walls below the windows, no cameras. Fifteen glorious minutes of guaranteed alone time. The Haunted Mansion: a totally dark, nine-minute ride. Pirates of the Caribbean: a little more open, a little more exciting, but, if you timed it right (or knew the staff as well as I did) and could get into a boat that had empty boats at the bow and stern, eighteen minutes. And the best first-move ride to take a girl on: Splash Mountain. Why? Because it was a log-flume ride where you would sit, legs spread, behind the girl with your arms wrapped around her waist, fingers interlaced, with just a short jog north to cupping her boobs. If she didn’t slap you away, it was nine to eleven minutes of soaking wet squeezing. Then, if that went well, it was on to the darker, more private rides. It was a practiced courtship, progressing in intensity, compressed into the span of a single day at a fun park. Yes, I have a many fond memories of my skirt chasing days at Disneyland.

  Years later, when I was twenty-one, I realized I hadn’t been to my old haunts in ages. My buddy Mark and I decided to make a triumphant return to see if we could relive the dream, conjuring the old magic. To prep for battle, we chilled in the parking lot before heading in, killing a couple of forty-ouncers. The plan was to pound them as fast as we could, get a good buzz going, then enter the fray.

  Needless to say, it wasn’t the same. Inside the park, everybody looked like a little kid, especially the girls. Yipes! Did we really used to hook up with chicks this young? It didn’t even matter that, at the time, we were the same age—or younger. It was just plain wrong. It was such an odd, foreign sensation: being bored at Disneyland. Or even more so, feeling old at Disneyland! I even started to complain, like an old fogey, that my feet were hurting. Truth be told, we were pretty bummed out.

  Suddenly, across the promenade, we spotted two beauties, and my old hook-up routine came flooding back. First, we would tag along behind the girls who, of course, knew we were following them. We would wait quietly in line behind them until casually striking up a conversation. We’d ask if they would enjoy going on the ride together, and then we’d split up, each with our respective girl. I’m not saying this was a foolproof approach. More often than not, the clear
icebreaker was when the girls recognized me as Screech from SBTB. If that was the case, I’d ask their names, and BOOM! … we were off and running.

  The difference this time was that these two chicks were working their game on us. Mark and I could sense that we were being followed, so we did all the little things to smoke them out: we’d stop, then they’d stop; we’d get a drink and stand along the fence, then they’d do the same. We were like, “These chicks are checking us out. Please God, let them be legal.” Mark and I decided to get in line for the Haunted Mansion. The chicks got in line behind us. It was bizarre having my own hook-up tactics used against me. I felt so dirty, in a good way. We turned and said, “You girls here with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “This may sound forward but, um, can we see some ID to that effect?”

  Yes, indeed, they were nineteen, and Canadian to boot. Mark and I spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening hitting all the rides with them, fooling around. When dinnertime rolled around we said, “What’re you girls up to now? You want to grab something to eat at Denny’s?” (Mark and I were first class all the way.)

  “We thought we’d hang with you guys tonight,” they said. “Maybe go back to your house.”

  Ka-ching!

  “All right,” I said. “That could work. You guys wanna follow us in your car?”

  “Oh, we don’t have a car. We got dropped off. Let’s go back to your house. Where’s your house?”

  “That’s weird,” I thought. Plus, my guard was always up for possible con artists, gold-diggers, and leeches. I didn’t know anything about these chicks. A harder look at them revealed shades of sketchiness in their mannerisms and appearance. I definitely sensed the sketch. I started thinking we could get these chicks back to my place, and they could rob us, or worse. Mark was stoked, but my radar was at DEFCON 4. I was wary of those chicks. But still, per usual, my monster was doing most of the thinking.

  We piled into my car, and I circled the parking lot, making sure there were no sketchy-looking dudes tagging along, giving us the eyeball. The coast looked perfectly clear. Then I drove a long, roundabout, circuitous, and confounding route back to my house. If they were truly Canadian and had no local knowledge of the area, I figured they’d be oblivious. And they were. There was nobody behind us in the rear-view mirror. I thought, “As far as my horny, half-assed investigations are concerned, these hot little Canucks are stone-cold legit.”

  Back at my place, we popped some beers and got right down to some freaky business. Once again, my meat stick had trumped my better judgment, and it had paid off in spades. These girls were good to go. Mark stayed with his chick on the couch while mine led me into my bedroom. After our naked hockey brawl under the sheets we reclined for some pillow talk. Turns out our two maple leafs were runaways. Disneyland had been their golden, American beacon of hope—their West Coast Statue of Liberty—as they escaped the domestic problems of their troubled homeland. It was a beautiful tale: leaving home with the dreams of meeting Mickey Mouse but meeting Screech instead and sucking his hairy sack. I get a little weepy thinking about it. Call me a sentimental patriot.

  The best part about those chicks was that afterwards they were so chill. They finished a couple more beers and prepared to journey along on their aimless way again. I asked where they were headed. They said they had no clue. Ah, the open road. I called them a cab, gave the driver a $20 bill and bid them adieu. That was how I tied a big, fat, red bow on my adventures at Disneyland.

  SCREECH IS A BORN COUGAR HUNTER

  Because of the show, sex started for me way earlier than it would have otherwise. And from the very beginning, it was usually with older chicks. I fumbled through my first clumsy sexual experiences with girls sometimes two and three years older than me. I knew I was lucky to have the advantage of my fame when it came to dealing with the ladies. But even though they had a few years on me, they were still just schoolgirls. In my mind, nothing compared to the lure of a woman. A mature woman could teach me all the things those young girls couldn’t. The fantasy consumed me. It was intoxicating.

  Around 1992, when I was fifteen and after four years of friendship, I started to discuss my sexual escapades with NBC vice-president Linda Mancuso. I would watch a wry smile spread across her face, empathetic but proud. It seemed to say, “Aw, the D-man is growing up.” I knew that, no matter the issue, I could talk with Linda, no holds barred. When I think about it, at that time Linda was around the age I am now: early thirties. From my perspective, it was an ocean of time and experience that separated us. She was so mature, so exotic.

  I mentioned earlier that when I was twelve, my first official “girlfriend” was fifteen. This made me a hero to my pals, a true man of the world. “You’re dating a girl three years older than you?” they’d say. “Dude! She’s got boobs!” She did indeed. I’d bring girls to the set, and Linda would approve or disapprove of whom I took a romantic interest in. She was watching out for me. She didn’t want me to get hurt or taken advantage of. Over the years, she continued to develop into my confidant, my friend, and my protector. No matter how bad things got, Linda was my go-to person. I could tell her whatever was going on and not have to worry that it was going to get spread around as the latest dish (you know, sorta the opposite of what I’m doing in this book). Except for that one time I showed up hungover to the signing in South Carolina, Linda would usually say, “Don’t worry about it, Dustin. We’ll take care of it.” With Linda, I never had a moment where I thought, “Shit, I shouldn’t have told her that.”

  As opposed to St. Peter, the super-born-again Christian. Peter wanted to be your buddy, but he was still the boss. You couldn’t get too comfortable with Peter because if shit came down (and shit always came down), you could guar-an-damn-tee that Peter was going to slip on his asshole hat and bring down the hammer. You could be sure you weren’t going to see the friendly, buddy-buddy St. Peter. No, you were going to be dealing with the get-in-my-office-now, piss-in-your-pants, going-to-the-real-principal’soffice, Executive Producer Peter Engel. In fact, St. Peter could be so strict, he once punished me for handing out Halloween cards to the cast and crew because, to him, Halloween was tantamount to devil worship.

  Linda was a beautiful, powerful woman, widely respected throughout the industry. She had a personal secretary scheduling meetings for her all day with influential, important industry people—and I could just waltz into her office whenever I wanted. I would wander in, plop down into a chair and hang out. Just chill.

  We would sit in her office and talk for a couple of hours at a time. After, we’d always kiss goodbye. It wasn’t anything romantic, everybody did it. It was, and still is, a Hollywood thing. Just a hug, peck on the lips, “Okay, see you later” kind of deal. But after one particular talk, there was a moment where we paused, and the kiss lasted just a teensy bit longer. It was just a half-second more, but you have to remember, my hormones were raging, and I was breaking down every move with fierce scientific analysis. Half a second longer was half a second longer. I thought, “This is definitely something different. Something new.”

  After that day, that talk, that kiss, I started thinking, “Man, Linda is a sexy woman.” I was starting to think I really liked her—as much more than a friend. But I couldn’t say anything. I was sure I was picking up signals, but it would have been devastating if I were to learn I was wrong. As it happened, that wasn’t my most immediate problem.

  In California at the time, you could get a learner’s permit to drive at the age of fifteen and a half and, if all went well and you passed your test, you were awarded a driver’s license at sixteen. But lucky me, I got fucked! Just when I was about to qualify for my learner’s permit, the state changed the law, raising the age of eligibility. But the Golden State wasn’t done having its way with me. After I lost two years of cruising around L.A. on my own, they lowered it back down again once I was finally legal. None of this wou
ld have mattered if those two years weren’t the exact years in my life when I wanted to show Linda how grown up I was by driving, alone, over to her house.

  Did I mention that Linda started inviting me over to her house?

  It began one day in the studio when we stopped to talk in the hall. She asked me if I was free for lunch. I felt giddy, sneaking away from the world of SBTB to spend time with her. That’s when I really started worrying about whether or not I was picking up signals of a sexual vibe or if I was just a clueless idiot. I was suddenly acutely aware of every micro-movement in Linda’s body language. In set school with Sidney, we were studying psychology. Of course what interested me most was the pre-mating dance, the subtle dynamics between a man and a woman. For instance, I learned that some studies suggested it was a subliminal invitation for sex from a woman if, when she sat, she pointed her knees facing inward toward you. So, I had that kind of crap and a whole bunch more amateur, first-year-psych bullshit swimming around in my head, colliding with the surging testosterone coursing through every corpuscle. What can I say? I was nervous and hunting and pecking for it.

  Was Linda really interested in me romantically, or was I allowing a fantasy to cloud reality? The last thing I wanted to do was fuck up the relationship we did have. I treasured our friendship and didn’t want to ruin it. That’s when I decided, if something was ever going to happen between us, she would have to make the first move.

  We continued to meet, talk, and go out to lunch. One day I told her, “Y’know, I tell you everything I do. What do you do when you’re away from the set?” She said she was a homebody. She liked her privacy, preferred hanging on the couch watching a movie to the bar scene around town. Besides, the Hollywood bar scene, for all the mystery and fascination it holds in the imaginations of celebriphiles (thanks almost exclusively to the paparazzi), it’s pretty boring. Places like Bar One and the Viper Room were filled with mostly young—often underage—douchey kids making way too much money, peacocking around, making sure to get noticed. When I went out, I would just hang back, drink my drink, observe, and fade into the wallpaper. Years later, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and their ilk came along and managed to make an already bad scene fucking unbearable.