The Happiest Days of Our Lives (6 page)

“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.

When it was over, we drove back to La Crescenta in my slightly-better-than-Patrick-Stewart’s Honda Prelude, blasting New Order the whole way with the sunroof open and the windows down. I dropped Darin off at his house, and though I got back home around 3, I was so loaded with caffeine, sugar, and adrenaline that I didn’t fall asleep until the sun came up.

The movie was campy and not especially good, but that wasn’t the point. It was a shared experience, a place for misfits of all stripes to gather once a week and fly our Transylvanian freak flags. For the next two years, Darin and I led an ever-growing group of our friends to Rocky at least once a month, usually more, at the Rialto theater in South Pasadena. I haven’t been since 1991 or 1992, but those years—and the film itself—hold a very special place in my memory. I’m sure the jokes have changed, and I’m sure I’d feel like a stupid old man, but just once more, I’d like to go there at midnight some Saturday, and do the Time Warp again.

i am the modren man

M
y car’s fuel light was on, and though it probably had enough gas to get the kids to school and return me back home, I wasn’t about to risk calling a tow truck in my bathrobe and slippers somewhere in between, so I used Anne’s car. When I turned the key to start the engine, her XM radio sprang to life. It was tuned to the ’80s station.

Ryan hopped into the car a minute later. Even though I was seriously rocking out to NuShooz, he grabbed the radio and changed it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.

“Changing the radio station.” Translation:
You are so lame. I rule because I am sixteen.

“Well, when you’re driving in your car, you can change the radio all you want. But when I’m driving, if you’d like to change the radio, please ask first.” Translation:
I may be lame, but I’m still your parent.