Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 16

in which i discover analog horror

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the paranormal and the occult. I did not believe any of it was real, but I still loved it. I loved how the show In Search Of put this very respectable, credible sort of mask on, and winked at the audience, like, “Listen, we all know this isn’t real. But … what if it was? What if we all agreed to pretend that it was?”

Jack Palance was so intense on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, it was like he dared you to not believe it. It was so great, that stuff. I just loved it. The Time Life Books series you already know I’m talking about before you even look at the link if you’re my generation was also a favorite. In the early days of the Internet, I just about died when I found all the regional urban legends on usenet that never made it to my little part of Los Angeles County.

I saw Blair Witch in the theater. I lurked on unfiction for what feels like ages back before the server blew up like Ricky’s mom. I watched so many found footage movies when they were just this low budget way to make indies, there was nothing left to surprise me when they went mainstream (though I was thrilled for the creators and the genre). I loved Marble Hornets so much, I tracked down like a 200 page PDF all about the Slenderman mythos that existed at the time, and I printed it out so I could make my own notes in it.

And until recently, it’s all just sort of fallen off my radar. I blame … *gestures broadly at everyfuckingthing*.

But when I came across Night Mind recently, it all came back. All the fun of pretending it’s real, with other people who are also pretending it’s real, while we all agree not to talk about how it isn’t real … oh man it just scratches this very specific itch that I didn’t even realize I had until I was scratching it. The SCP and EAS videos are just fantastic.

For the last minute or so, I’ve been channel surfing around Night Mind, Nexpo, and a few of those “people who watched this also watched” channels.

It’s one of those channels that surprised me and legit scared the evershittingfuck out of me last night.

Last night, I spent the evening watching analog horror videos on YouTube. I love the familiar, nostalgic, VHS feeling. I love remembering, from the safety of 49, how I felt every single time I heard the Emergency Broadcast System when I was 9 and a Cold War Kid. I don’t know what the modern day equivalent of walking into a room lit only by the static from a TV with no signal that you are positive you turned off an hour ago is, but if you know in your guts what I just described, that’s how these videos make me feel. It’s fantastic.

This is where I reveal that, until about 36 hours ago, I had not heard of “analog horror“. I hope you still respect me.

So, the story these videos and their creators are telling is genuinely frightening. Some real bad shit is happening with the moon and the television and even though I haven’t paused it to look, I just know there’s all sorts of creepy shit in the static. The way they are telling their story is impressive to me for a million reasons, technical and creative.

I think I watched three of them from this channel (they’re all very short, just a couple minutes each). Then they get to this video that slowly begins to feel familiar as I watch it. By the end of the first minute, that familiar feeling has become a memory. I have absolutely seen this before. But that’s impossible, because I didn’t know this video, this channel, or even this genre existed until breakfast yesterday morning!

I make this agreement with myself when I watch these channels, that’s essentially the same agreement we make when we play an ARG or engage with unfiction in any way: I know it isn’t real, but I’m going to pretend it’s real, and we aren’t going to talk about how it isn’t real. So my head is in a VERY PARTICULARLY RECEPTIVE AND VULNERABLE PLACE as this video WHICH I HAVE NEVER SEEN BUT TOTALLY REMEMBER plays out in front of me.

The video is tense and unnerving and unsettling on its own. But this unreal, impossible, yet undeinably real memory of seeing it before makes it feel like I am now inside one of these creepypasta shorts I’ve been watching. Somehow this specific video has also come out of my head and jumped into the computer in front of me and now this memory that I can not possibly have is clearly existing in my head and also on this video and I gotta tell you, bob, it isn’t great.

There’s a flash on the screen and I am already looking at exactly the right place to see the entity I know will be there. There has been nothing in this video so far that would lead anyone who hasn’t seen it to expect an entity. WHAT THE FUCK HOW DO I KNOW ANY OF THIS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.

The video plays for about another thirty seconds and then it ends.

I say, out loud, in my empty game room, “What the fuck.” And then the credits roll.

Oh. Okay. This all make sense, now, and I can breathe again. It’s made by Kris Straub, who I’ve known for years. I am a huge fan of Kris’s Candle Cove and Ichor Falls. Then I see that the video is from an idea by Mikey Neumann, who I have done many outstanding creative projects with over the years and love like family.

Mikey and Kris made this video forever ago, and sent it to me before it was uploaded anywhere. In all of the *gestures broadly at everyfuckingthing* of the last few years, I had completely forgotten about it. Like, the part of my brain where it lived was not reformatted, but absolutely marked as “available for storage” in my mental fstab.

I did that loud, nervous, I’m-so-glad-I-didn’t-die-I-really-thought-I-was-going-to-die laugh that we’re all familiar with for reasons none of us want to remember. Then I was like, “Okay. Okay. Well done, Mysterious Person Who Is Writing My Life. You just gave me the first good scare I’ve had in a long, long time.”

The series is called Local 58, and so is the channel, which is what I had been watching when I saw the video that made me metaphorically shit my pants. I am so glad I found it, and all the other channels like it that it either inspired, or was inspired by. This is fun, this stuff. This storytelling is doing the exact same thing for me in 2022 that the original analog horror did for me in 1982. I have just started Gemini Home Entertainment, (I know it’s not precisely the same but this Omega Mart training video is great,) and I haven’t even done the Night Mind Deep Dive into Local 58, which I know will open new doors for me to peek through.

As I am someone who is habitually late to every party, I’m sure there’s a ton of good stuff out there in this genre for me to discover. If there’s an analog horror series or creator you love who I haven’t linked to here, link them in a comment, if you want. I’m so interested to see what’s out there.

Mediocre White Men are So. Fucking. Fragile.

So I’m in Facebook jail again. Because of fragile white men. Again.

Wednesday, I posted this:

And OF COURSE some mediocre white dude had to tell me why I’m wrong for enjoying these tacos. It was such a stupid thing, it was more amusing than anything else. We all had a good laugh, he was widely mocked and ridiculed as he deserved for his idiocy, and we all went on with our lives. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how … exhausting this shit is, how these children run into a room, make as much noise and as much of a mess as they can, and then run just as fast to mommy and daddy when someone who was already in the room is like, “Hey, could you not?”

Anyway, I wrote a post about mediocre white men and their uncontrollable urge to correct everyone all the time, and that post has landed me in Facebook jail. See if you can find the part where I broke a rule:

Remember when that dude was gatekeeping tacos and was really angry about it?

I’m working on a theory that no matter what it is, there is some mediocre white dude out there who will tell you that you’re wrong for liking it, not liking it the right way, and will be angry about it when he does. It literally does not matter what it is. If it’s a thing you like, and you talk about how you like it, some mediocre white dude will show up to be mad about it.

Like, I’m a white dude. I don’t think I’m mediocre, but as a white dude who feels good about himself, I have to at least entertain the notion, right? On account of all the empirical evidence, I mean. I’m a white dude, and I just don’t get mad about stuff like how you eat a taco. Or what you call some activity with a local idiomatic name. It just doesn’t matter to me, and it certainly isn’t worth my time to be mad about it. Sure, I joke about Scalzi’s burrito abominations, and I will stab you in the throat with a french fry if you try to put ketchup on my plate, but none of that is, like, serious.

What is it with mediocre white men? Why are they just CONVINCED that everyone they encounter needs to be corrected for some reason or another? Is there a class or a meeting or something that I just didn’t attend? I don’t have this impulse in my life and I cannot wrap my head around it.

And TACOS? Like, THAT is the thing you’re worked up about? Not creeping Fascism, not Putin’s war crimes, the rampant inequality that is fundamental to the existence of America, gun violence, racism, homophobia, bigotry. Nope. Fucking TACOS, man. I AM HERE TO HOLD THE LINE ON TACOS (also I am factually wrong, but that doesn’t matter because) I AM HERE TO BE THE KING OF TACOLAND. LOOK AT MY DIPLOMA FROM TACO UNIVERSITY WHERE I WAS CLASS PRESIDENT.

…okay, buddy. If it’s that important to you, take this taco outside, and go yell at it until you feel better. If you need to yell a little more, there’s a wall over there waiting for you. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy my taco.

Yeah, I don’t see it, either. I appealed. It will be overturned like it always is. Until then, I guess I can’t TACO ’bout fragile white men and their tissue paper egos on my own Facebook. Okay.

The Backrooms and Night Mind

A few months ago, I started watching YouTube channels every night before bed. Mostly, it’s been explorations of abandoned places, histories of video games and 80s pop culture, and all sorts of weird amusement park stuff that I never thought I’d love, but can’t get enough of.

At some point, I came across a channel called Night Mind. This dude does magnificent deep dives into all sorts of Internet Weirdness, with a focus on ARGs and unfiction. In fact, the first video posted to the channel is all about my first and favorite creepypasta YouTube series, Marble Hornets.

Real quick: Shortly after the Slender Man myth was created, some brilliant filmmakers took the idea and ran with it to create their own found footage series. I’d never seen anything like it, and I was OBSESSED. It was called Marble Hornets and it ran for three seasons. You have probably divided yourselves into two groups, now. Half of you are like OMG MARBLE HORNETS I LOVED THAT and the other half are like I have no idea what you’re talking about.

After Marble Hornets, my life took me in a direction that veered away from internet creepypasta. I’ve been catching up on what I missed, via Night Mind.

Last night, I saw a relatively recent upload about a new found footage webseries called The Backrooms. I started watching it, veered off of Night Mind and to the source (as suggested by Night Mind’s host, Nick Nocturne), and an hour later I was like WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH HOLY SHIT.

As of about an hour ago, I am caught up (mostly) on the current Liminal Space deal that creepypasta kids are exploring. It’s fascinating and squarely in my wheelhouse. The Backrooms is terrifying, if you allow yourself to buy into the story, which of course I did because it’s fun.

Okay. So. I know that for people who are plugged into whatever the current Internet Hotness is, this is all very old news. I guess the Liminal Space deal has been happening for awhile, and this video I’m about to link to was released in January of this year, making it ancient in Internet time.

Here is the original film, The Backrooms (found footage)

You can watch the entire thing, including all the uploads, in around an hour. Now, I know there’s some show you spend an hour watching that doesn’t deserve your time (I’m looking at you, Reality TV) that always leaves you feeling a little unsatisfied, like you gorged yourself on a Wonka Bar and now you are still hungry. If you are nodding along with me, GO TO NIGHT MIND AND START THERE LIKE I DID.

This series is magnificent, and if stuff like this makes your brain light up in the right places, you will LOVE Night Mind (presuming you don’t know about it already).

This morning, I have wandered around lots of Internet I don’t usually visit, reading about and learning more about The Backrooms and the Liminal Space stuff. It’s deeply satisfying, kind of tickles my imagination, and is tremendously engaging. If you like the same things I like, I think you’ll be real glad you spent some time checking this out.

Oh, and one last thing: the guy who created and directed this stuff, Kane Pixels, is sixteen years-old.

Today, I will finish the narration for Still Just A Geek.

Nerds, I have to be honest with you. I suck at self-promotion. There was a time in my life when I was reasonably good at it, but now I’m just terrible.

My memoir, Still Just A Geek, is going to be released in like 34 days. Today, I will finish the audiobook narration. I have lots and lots to say about it, and I will when I have time to catch my breath and reflect.

Until then, though, I wanted everyone to know about this thing we’re offering everyone who has pre-ordered (or pre-orders in the next 33ish days) the book, as posted on my Facebook before the weekend:

When you pre-order (or if you have already pre-ordered) Still Just A Geek, you can get an early audio chapter of my book. All you do is go to this link, and fill out the form. Something something something then you get it like magic!

Okay, self-promo completed, as long as I have your attention, I wanted to share some stuff. I think most of you know that I’ve been narrating Still Just A Geek for audio two weeks. I’ve been given permission to add in occasional thoughts as they occur to me, and because I am working with my favorite director in the industry, who I trust implicitly, I can be as vulnerable as the material deserves and in places demands. I’m emotionally wrung out, and physically exhausted, so I know that I am leaving everything in the booth, putting everything I am capable of putting into this narration.

Still, we (the director and I) felt like the audiobook needed its own introduction, so I wrote one yesterday that I literally just now realized is kind of a good pitch for the audiobook, if someone is on the fence about it. Here it is:

Hey nerds! This introduction is specifically for this audiobook. There are a few things I want you to know before we get started that are obvious to readers, but not to listeners. The first half of this book is my 2004 memoir, Just A Geek. All the material in that book is from around 2000 to about 2004, when I was in my late twenties. The 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.

I’ve heavily annotated and reflected on who I was and what I wrote in the early aughts. In the print version of this book, it’s very easy to see where almost-50 me is talking about the experiences of almost-30 me. In audio, I suspect it will present a challenge, at least at first. I’ve worked to lower my voice and clearly indicate when 2022 me is speaking, and not 2002 me. When I feel that isn’t clear enough, I’m just going to tell you that we’re going into footnotes.

I’ve worked with this director and this studio for over a decade, and this is unlike anything we have ever done together. Industry professionals tell me this is kind of a new thing for audio 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. I’ve adopted a more conversational tone, then, for this narration than I do when I’m narrating someone else’s words. This is a conversation. It isn’t a performance.

I’m actually writing this introduction the day before I finish recording the book. I’ve been working on it for two weeks, saying most of it out loud for the first time in 20 years. It turns out that saying it all out loud woke up stuff in me that stayed asleep when I was writing it, and while I narrated it, I had additional thoughts I wanted to add, additional context or whatever which came up that wasn’t there until it was. You can identify this entirely free bonus content because it is usually preceeded by something like, “this is just for this edition” or “here’s something I’d forgotten until just now,” and so on. I make a joke a couple times about how I’m going to annotate the annotations in another 20 years, but it turns out I have already done that.

There are also a few footnotes from the print edition that I cut, because they really only work in print, and are almost entirely jokes that I don’t think you’re going to miss. But, you know, full disclosure and all that.

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, 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.

We’re going to spend a little over 20 hours together, if you stick with me to the end. I want you to know how grateful I am that you are giving me so much of your time, that you are listening to my story. You’re going to hear about a son who just wanted to be seen and heard, from the father that he grew up to be; a father who will do his best to give that kid, that teenager, that struggling twenty-something the voice he never had. On behalf of every person I’ve been at every stage of my life, I want to say thank you, from all of us for listening.

I feel like the audiobook will be something special. At least, it will be to me, and if anyone else feels the same way, that makes me really happy.

i wanna rock (rock)

I was playing Donkey Kong yesterday, listening to my 80s Arcade playlist, and I got this idea to write something that like ten people in the world would find amusing. Because I am one of those people, and my friend, Josh, who gave me a good note on the bit, is another, I’d like to say a special hello to the eight of you who also enjoy this the way we do.

*Extremely Patrick Bateman Voice*

Twisted Sister found international fame in 1984 with their album Stay Hungry, powered by the success of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, which reached number 21 in the US. Some of the song’s popularity can be attributed to the ambiguity of what “it” was Dee Snyder would not take. Some critics claim it allowed a disaffected generation to claim the “it” for themselves, whatever “it” may be. Snyder spoke for them all, while simultaneously empowering their own voices.

But it is the album’s lesser-known single, “I Wanna Rock”, released in October of that year and only reaching number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100 that is the true anthem for the moment. “I Wanna Rock” asks nothing of the listener. It allows for even less. It declares, “I Wanna Rock, and I don’t care if you’re going to take it or not,” and in so doing, defines the entire decade.

*Ax Swinging Intensifies*

May His Memory Be A Blessing

Late yesterday afternoon, I saw that Howard Hesseman passed away. I didn’t know him, but I worked with him once, and he was wonderful. It was in the 90s, when Anne and I were still dating, in a tiny movie a classmate of mine wrote, produced, directed, and starred in. We filmed it up in San Francisco. Howard and I played rival drag queens. Oh, how I wish I could find a photo of us. It was magnificent.

It was so long ago, I can’t recall much about the movie, but I loved the story and I loved getting to do full-on drag (in a Peg Bundy wig, 10 inch platform thigh-high boots, showing way too much flabby belly God it was glorious) and I loved the unvarnished grind of making an indie movie in the 90s. I’m pretty sure Howard and I were in the same scene at least once, but I can’t recall if our characters interacted at all. I don’t think they did.

I also remember that one day on the set, we were sitting in cast chairs, talking, and the subject of jazz came up. I confessed that my familiarity with jazz musicians was ten feet wide and half an inch deep, but

I enjoyed Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Chet Baker. He asked me if I had ever listened to Charles Mingus. I told him that I hadn’t hear OF him, much less heard him play music, so Howard walked to his car, which he’d driven up from Los Angeles, and came back with a cassette of Mingus Ah Um that I still have today.

“You will love listening to this while you burn through the 5 on your way back to LA,” he said.

I loved the image of burning through interstate, just setting it afire and letting it turn to ash behind you before it blew away, having served its (your) purpose. It was so much more romantic and rebellious than the reality of trudging through mile after mile of “are we there yet” and cattle yards during seven monotonous hours.

“How can I get this back to you?” I asked him.

“You won’t want to,” he said. “I’ll get another copy. Forget it.” I can still hear the glee and enthusiasm that was in his voice. He was giving me so much more than a cassette tape.

Anne, Nolan, and I listened to Mingus Ah Um on the way home, and Howard was right. We loved it. I still love it. And I have Howard Hesseman to thank for it.

Rest easy, Howard. Thank you for being kind to me and my future family. May your memory be a blessing to others, as it is to me.

Let’s do a Flashback Friday

Yesterday, I blew it all up. All the websites I maintain on my server, including this one and Anne’s, blew up when I did … something.

I exhausted my knowledge, and I exhausted my patience searching forums and documentation to figure out what the hell I’d broken, and how to fix it.

So I asked my friend for help, and he saved my bacon. (He probably saved some of your bacon, too. I bet you never even knew your personal bacon was at risk; that’s how nefarious today’s bacon mafia is. THANKS OBAMA.)

While I was trying to solve it myself, I saw that my /public_html directory was a shitshow that needed massive attention. Imagine the directory is a room. In that room are shelves, and on those shelves are the books and drawers where website content lives. This room should be nice and neat, so it’s really easy to find what you need. When something is out of place, it’s super easy to see, because the rest of the room is so orderly.

Now take that imagined room, and replace it with a teenage boy’s bedroom at the end of the week. Into that room, I dumped like fifty bags of website bullshit with the intention of cleaning it all up …. someday.

So that was like ten years ago. I know. It’s so embarrassing. As soon as my buddy finished saving the aforementioned bacon, I went into this appalling mess, and cleaned it all up.

In that process, I came across some old images that made me smile.I’m going to be promoting Still Just A Geek soon (YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT HERE AT A DISCOUNT PLEASE DO OKAY THANKS) and these images from the time Just A Geek was written are going to be relevant and fun to share during the promotion.

One of those images is a screenshot of my website from 2005, when I had done all of it on my own. The layout, the php includes, the PERL, the whole thing. It was a lot back then (it still is, at least to me) and I’m proud of what late 20s/early 30s Wil was able to accomplish.

This very website, in September 2005

It’s all so much easier today (yesterday’s blowing up notwithstanding) and I love that. I love that the distance between “I want a blog” and “I have a blog” is a few clicks. When I did this back in the early aughts, there were at least two HTML books and months of studying to understand gzip, ftp, chmod, mod_rewrite, and holy shit configuring an Apache webserver in 2001 between those two things. I’ve compared it to owning a classic car in the 70s. It wasn’t enough to keep it the fluids topped off; you needed to be some level of a mechanic to hold it all together. It was just part of the price of admission. It was a lot, but I don’t regret it for a second. I learned a lot then (which I’ve clearly forgotten) but I am so happy that some of us who did the heavy lifting back then decided to develop tools and methods that would make it so much easier for everyone who followed us.

Turns out that I was one of those people who was always under the hood then, and I’m one of the people who just want the damn thing to work, now. Thanks, me from the past!

Happy 6th birthday to me.

I wrote this last year. Facebook showed it to me as one of those memory things about fifteen minutes ago, and I had this sudden realization that I quit drinking alcohol six years ago, yesterday. It used to be a thing that I thought of every day. Every day, I erased a number on the whiteboard and wrote down the new one. Then it was every week, every month or so, and now it’s a few times a year that I go “holy crap it’s been [some number that seemed unattainable six years ago] days! Go me!” As of this morning, it’s 2193 days without a drink (well, I had like a thimble of whisky when we were in Scotland at a distillery, on principle) and I am so grateful for the love and support of the people closest to me who helped me get and stay sober.

This thing that I wrote last year is about the why of it all, and how making the choice to stop drinking made it possible for me to take fundamental steps toward healing my pain and trauma. I feel like it’s worth revisiting today.

Yesterday, I marked the fifth sixth anniversary of my decision to quit drinking alcohol. It was the most consequential choice I have ever made in my life, and I am able to stand before you today only because I made it.

I was slowly and steadily killing myself with booze. I was getting drunk every night, because I couldn’t face the incredible pain and PTSD I had from my childhood, at the hands of my abusive father and manipulative mother.

It was unsustainable, and I knew it was unsustainable, but when you’re an addict, knowing something is unhealthy and choosing to do something about it are two very different things.

On January 8, 2016, I was out in the game room, watching TV and getting drunk as usual. I was trying to numb and soothe the pain I felt, while also deliberately hurting myself because at a fundamental level, I believed the lies the man who was my father told me about myself: I was worthless. I was unworthy of love. I was stupid. The things I loved and cared about were stupid. It did not matter if I lived or died. Nobody cared about me, anyway.

I knocked a bottle into the trash, realized I had to pee, and — so I wouldn’t disturb Anne — did not go into the bathroom, but instead walked out into the middle of my backyard and peed on the grass. I turned around, and there was Anne. I will never forget the look on her face, this mixture of sadness and real fear.

“I am so worried about you,” was all she had to say. I’d been feeling it for a long time, and I faced a stark choice that I had known I was going to face sooner or later.

“So am I.”

Roughly 12 hours later, I woke up with the headache (hangover) I always had. For the first time in years, I accepted that I brought it on myself, instead of blaming it on allergies or the wind.

I picked up my phone, and I called Chris Hardwick, my best friend, who had been sober for over a decade at that point.

“I need help,” I said. “I don’t think going to AA is for me, but I absolutely have a problem with alcohol and I need to stop drinking.”

He told me a lot of things, and we stayed on the call for hours. I realized that it was as simple and complicated as making a choice not to drink, one day or even one hour at a time. So I made the choice. HOLY SHIT was it hard. The first 45 days were a real struggle, but with the love and support of my wife and best friend, I got through it.

2016 … remember that year? Remember how bad things got? I was constantly making the joke about how I picked the wrong year to quit drinking, while I continued to make the choice to not drink.

Getting clean allowed (and forced) me to confront why I drank to excess so much. It turns out that being emotionally abused and neglected by both parents, then gaslit by my mother for my entire life had consequences for my emotional development and mental health.

I take responsibility for my choices. I made the choice to become a drunk. I own that.

But I know that, had the man who was my father loved me the way he loves my siblings, had my mother just once put my needs ahead of her own, the overwhelming pain and the black hole where paternal love should be would not have existed in my life.

I made a choice to fill that black hole with booze and self-destructive behavior. That sort of put a weak bandage over the psychic wound, but it never lasted more than a few hours or days before I was right back to believing all the lies that man planted in my head about myself, and feeling like I deserved all of it. If he wasn’t right, I thought, why didn’t my mother ever stand up for me? If he wasn’t right, how come nothing I ever did was good enough for him? I must be as worthless and contemptible as he made me believe I was. Anyone who says otherwise is just being fooled by me. I don’t really deserve any happiness, because I haven’t earned it. Anne’s just settling. She probably feels sorry for me.

All of that was just so much. It was so hard. It hurt, all the time. Because my mother made my success as an actor the most important thing in her life, I grew up believing that being the most successful actor in the world was the only way she’d be happy. And if that would make her happy, maybe it would prove to the man who was my father that I was worthy of his love. When I didn’t book jobs, I took it SO PERSONALLY. Didn’t those casting people know how important this was? This wasn’t just an acting role. This was the only chance I have to make my parents love me!

The thing is, I didn’t like it. I didn’t love acting and auditioning and attention like my mother did. It was never my dream. It was hers, and she sacrificed my childhood, and ultimately my relationship with her and her husband, in pursuit of it.

I didn’t jump straight to “get drunk all the time” as a coping mechanism. For years I tried to have conversations with my parents about how I felt, and every single time, I was dismissed for being ungrateful, overly dramatic, or just making things up. Every single time I tried to have a meaningful conversation about my feelings, I was met with an endless list of excuses, justifications, denials. They just refused to accept that my experiences were true or that my feelings were valid. When the man who was my father didn’t blow me off, he got mad at me, mocked me, humiliated me, made me afraid of him. I began to hope that he’d just blow me off, because it wasn’t as bad as the alternative.

It was so painful, and so frustrating, I just gave up and dove into as many bottles as I could find. And I was varying degrees of a mess, for years.

But then in 2016 I quit, and as my body began to heal from how much I’d abused it, my spirit began to heal, too. I found a room in my heart, and in that room was a small child, terrified and abused and unloved, and I opened my arms to him. I held him the way he should have been held by our parents, and I loved him the way he deserved to be loved: unconditionally. I promised him that I would protect him from them. They could never hurt him again.

I realized I had walked up to that door countless times over the years, and I had always chosen to walk right past it and into a bar, instead.

But because I had made the choice to stop drinking, to stop hiding from my pain, to stop self-medicating, I could see that door clearly now. I could hear that little boy weeping in there, as quietly as possible, because he was so afraid that someone was going to come in and hurt him. Without alcohol numbing me, I clearly saw that my mother had been lying to me, and maybe to herself, about who that man was to me. I realized that the man who was my father had been a bully to me my whole life. I accepted and owned that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t do anything to cause it. It was not may fault. It was a choice he made, and while I will never know why, I knew what had happened to me. I knew my memories were real, and I hoped that, armed with this new certainty and confidence, I could have a heart-to-heart with my parents, and begin to heal these wounds. I sincerely believed this time would be different, because I was different. So I wrote to my parents, shared a lot of my feelings and fears, and finally told them, “I feel like my dad doesn’t love me.”

I know some of you are parents. What do you do when your child says that to you? What is your first instinct? Pick up the phone right away? Send a text right away? Somehow communicate to your child immediately that, no, they are wrong and they are not unloved, right? Well, if you’re my parents, you ignore me and go radio silent (for two months if you’re my mother, four months if you’re my father.) And then when you finally do acknowledge the email, you are incensed and offended. How dare I be so hateful and cruel and ungrateful! Nothing is more important than family! How could I say such hurtful things?! Why would I make all that up?

Well. There it was. I had changed. They had not. They will not. Ever.

So, I want to be clear: I take responsibility for the choice I made to become a full-time drunk. But I also hold my parents accountable for their choices, including the choice to ignore me for weeks when, after a lifetime of failed attempts to be seen and heard, I finally just confessed that I felt like my dad didn’t like me, much less love me. I can not imagine ignoring my child, who is clearly hurting, the way they ignored me. When I do the occasional bargaining part of grief, I always come back to the weeks of silence after I confessed that I, their eldest son, felt unloved by his father. I mean, who does that to their kid? After a lifetime drilling into his head that “nothing is more important than family”?

Their silence during those long weeks told me everything I needed to know, and my sobriety was severely tested for the first time. Everything I had always feared, everything I had been drinking to avoid, was right there, in my face. When they finally acknowledged me, and made it all about their feelings, I knew: this was never going to change. I mean, I’d known that for years, maybe for my whole life, but I still held out hope that, somehow, something would be different. I had known it, but I hadn’t accepted it, until that day.

During those weeks, I spent a lot of time on the phone with Chris, spent a lot of time with Anne, and filled a bunch of journals. But I didn’t make the choice to pick up a drink. I’d committed to taking better care of myself, so I could be the husband and father my family deserved. So I could find the happiness that I deserve.

Once I was clean, I had clarity, and so much time to do activities! I was able to clearly and honestly assess who I was, and why. I was able to love myself and care for myself in ways that I hadn’t before, because I sincerely believed I didn’t deserve it.

I will never forget this epiphany I had one day, while walking through our kitchen: If I was the person the man who was my father made me believe I was, there is no way a woman as amazing and special as Anne would choose to spend her life with me. Why this never occurred to me up to that point can be found under a pile of bottles.

Not having parents sucks. It hurts all the time. But it hurts less than what I had with those people, so I continue to make the choice to keep them out of my life.

After five six years, I don’t miss being drunk at all. It is not a coincidence that the last five six years have been the best five six years of my life, personally and professionally. In spite of everything 2020 took from us (and I know it’s taken far more from others than it took from me), I had the best year I’ve ever had in my career — and this is my career, being a host and a writer and audiobook narrator. This is what I want to do, and I still feel giddy when I take time to really own that I am finally following MY dream. It’s a shame I don’t have parents to share it with, but I have a pretty epic TNG family who celebrate everything I do with me.

I wondered how I would feel, crossing five six years without a drink off the calendar. I thought I’d feel celebratory, but honestly the thing I feel the most is gratitude and resolve. (Updating this a year after I wrote it to observe that I’ve gotten so used to not drinking that I didn’t even realize it had been six years until this morning. I just don’t think about it that often, and I’m so grateful that all of that behavior isn’t part of my life any more.)

I am grateful that I have the love and support of my wife and children. I am grateful that because I have so much privilege, this wasn’t as hard for me as it could have been. I am grateful that, every day, I can make a choice to not drink, and it’s entirely MY CHOICE.

Because I quit drinking, I had the clarity I needed to see WHY I was drinking, and I had the strength to confront it. It didn’t go the way I wanted or hoped, but instead of numbing that pain with booze, I have come to accept it, as painful as it is.

And even with that pain, my life is immeasurably better than it was, and for that I am immeasurably grateful.

Hi. I’m Wil, and it’s been five six years and one day since my last drink. Happy birthday to me.

one year later

January 6 is going to be one of those Never Forget days for me, for a long time. Maybe for the rest of my life.

One year ago today, a violent mob of domestic terrorists, inspired and commanded by an impeached fascist who lost a free and fair election, overran the United States Capitol in an attempted coup.

The coup failed in part because the defeated president was and is surrounded by people who were and are as incompetent as him, but by the end of the night, the fascist movement he leads had successfully assumed complete control of what had been called the Republican party, finally bringing into the open its enthusiastic embrace and promotion of white nationalism after keeping it hidden behind dog whistles for decades.

That was the most shocking thing for me, when I think about it. After all that violence, after the horror of it all, after we all watched our Congress come within a doorway of the unthinkable, they still stood by him. I mean. Wow.

I remember, in the evening of January 6 last year, listening to Lindsey Graham — Lindsey Graham, of all people! — declare from the floor of the Senate that he was done with Trump. Lindsey Graham! I listened to Mitch McConnell — the Senate Minority leader — remind everyone, for the Congressional record, that Trump bore responsibility for the attack. I remember watching two powerful, privileged, coddled men who were clearly shaken by what they had experienced. They seemed like people who had felt, maybe for the first time ever, a real threat to their lives, and they knew who was responsible for it. I remember feeling the faintest hope that, now that it was personal for them, the appalling violence of the insurrection would give Congressional Republicans an opportunity to actually put America first (not in the fascist slogan way, in the patriotic way), and purge Trump and his supporters from government. The McConnells and Grahams in the party got a lot out of him in four years: disatrous, unpopular tax cuts for billionaires, the most cruel and inhumane immigration policies imaginable, three SCOTUS seats, countless unqualified political operatives confirmed to lifelong seats in the federal judiciary. They got so much, moved the Overton Window so far to the right, surely they’d celebrate their victories and cut out the malignant cancer that was rotting not just their party but the entire political system in America. Regroup, and come after the Democrats in the midterms with a message that was aimed at the suburban voters who were appalled by Trump, but remain inexplicably cool with all the GOP policies that created him. A clean break was so easy and right there for the taking. I remember thinking, “If Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell are saying this on the record, it’s finally over. Thank God. It’s finally over. They are done protecting him. They’re still repugnant, but at least they aren’t full-on fascists.”

WELP.

As it turned out, instead of forcing Trump and his fascists back to the fringe of their party, those Vichy Quislings put him in charge of the whole thing. It’s almost like they never had a problem with the appalling behavior that repulsed so much of America and the world: his embrace of white supremacists, his embrace and celebration of autocrats and dictators, his cruelty, his corruption, his belligerent refusal to do a single thing to protect us from Covid. It wasn’t until he almost got them killed that some of them were like “Hey, wait a second,” and even that only lasted for a few hours before all was swept under the rug. 147 Republican members of Congress, just hours after hiding from a violent mob that was there to kill their colleagues and hang the vice president of their party, stood with that mob and refused to accept the election results, as commanded by their defeated leader. When he was rightly impeached (becoming the first president in history to be impeached twice) a few weeks later, so-called “mainstream Republicans” [sic] had their clearest opportunity to reject the violence, the man who instigated it, and his movement. It would be a heavy lift with a lot of their voters, but they could do it. They EXCEL at coordinated, disciplined, communication. They could reasonably claim that maybe they got out over their skis a little bit, but now they could at least bring the country back from the brink of civil war. They could have made a vote to convict all about the Constitution. They could have made an argument to his supporters that they still thought he was awesome, but laws are laws and we all have to follow them. They could make the very reasonable argument that instigating that kind of violence and lawlessness was a bridge too far, even for them. It would have been tough for some of them. Some of them would likely face difficult conversations back home with people who believed the Big Lie, but the future of the country was at stake and like John McCain telling that lunatic woman that President Obama wasn’t a terrorist, show real leadership.

But all of that is predicated on what turns out to be the entirely incorrect presumption that there is any daylight at all between Trump and so-called “mainstream Republicans” [sic]. It would require us to believe that Trump and Trumpism was an outlier, not the logical and anticipated consequence of fifty years of Republican policies and Southern Strategy lies. Holding Trump accountable presumes that Republicans respect their oaths of office, that they hold some fundamental values other than the preservation and expansion of their own power, that they are willing to do the hard work of governing a diverse nation during extraordinary times with a commitment to improving the general welfare.

We all know how that turned out. All but seven Republican Senators — forty-three of fifty members in the upper chamber — protected him and embraced his Big Lie. In the year since, they have doubled down on it, and they have not stopped insisting that we did not see what we saw one year ago today with our own eyes.

Depending on one’s point of view, it’s either a bug or a feature, but FIFTY-NINE PERCENT of Republicans still believe the Big Lie. Fifty. Nine. Percent. The next mob is all primed and ready to go. They are even asking when they get to use their guns to go shoot Democrats. Years ago, it was Republican pundit David Frum who said that when Republicans couldn’t win votes in a democratic election, they wouldn’t change their policies to win over more voters, they’d just reject Democracy entirely. That sounded nuts at the time, but holy shit was he right.

I hope that the people behind the coup attempt will be meaningfully held to account, so this never happens again. I hope they’ll go to prison, all of them. Hannity, Meadows, Bannon, Eastman, Gosar, Boebert, Cawthorn, Hawley, all the Trumps, all of them. They are all traitors. I hope that all the Democrats, including the execrable Joe Manchin and the loathsome Krysten Sinema, do whatever it takes to secure free and fair elections in America at the federal level while they still have the chance. Because if they don’t, the next coup, which is already in motion, will succeed.

So on this one year anniversary of Trump’s failed coup, as we continue to hold him to account, do not forget for one second all the Republicans who enabled and continue to enable him. They’re evil, not stupid. They won’t fail a second time.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

It is Christmas Day, 1983. I’m wearing my red footie pajamas. I’m almost too big for them. The big toe on my left foot is starting to poke out. I love these pajamas, but it’s going to be easy to say goodbye to them when I open my Return of the Jedi pajama set, yellow with a speeder bike on the front, and a green collar, like a Polo shirt collar. On children’s licensed pajamas. My brother will have an identical collar on his Raiders of the Lost Ark pajama set. I guess this is the year we graduate from footie pajamas to fancy pajamas.

My brother and sister and I are in the hallway, behind the closed door, waiting to be gently shuffled, eyes closed, into the living room, where we will wait again, while dad gets set up with the camera. 

Christmas music begins to play in the living room. My summering excitement breaks into a rolling boil. Mom tells us to close our eyes. She opens the door and leads me, then my brother, then my sister, into place. My brother squeezes my hand and I squeeze his back. We are vibrating. It is Christmas morning and whatever Santa has brought us is right there, just a few feet away. It is Schrodinger’s Present, existing and not existing until we observe it. 

“Okay, are you ready?” Dad asks. I can hear that he’s across the living room from us, on the other side of the fireplace.

We all scream that we are! Oh, the excitement and the anticipation! An entire year of wish books, subtle and not subtle hints, visits to Santa at the mall, letters to Santa, follow-up letters to Santa, quiet prayers to Santa … all of it, accelerated and compressed and refined for weeks — an eternity in kid time — crystallized to form this moment.

Mom and Dad count down from ten. When they get to five, Dad forgets what number they were on. They’ll have to start over.

“FIVE!” we scream in unison, eyes still tightly shut. It’s all part of the bargain. Part of the unspoken Rules of Christmas. The suspension of disbelief that allowed for Santa Claus to exist and fill our living room with the gifts we still had not seen.

Mom and dad laugh. It’s a good natured laugh. A happy laugh. It’s not the cruel, mocking laugh I’m used to from him. 

“Are you sure?” Mom asks.

“YES!”

It’s all part of the dance. The beautiful dance of Christmas Morning, and we happily, joyfully, play our roles.

My little brother’s hand is now sweaty with excitement. Or maybe it’s my hand. Maybe it’s both of us.

Dad takes a loud, deep breath. I imagine he and mom make eye contact, nod their heads, and pick up the count together.

“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”

I open my eyes, and before I can register anything, I make the shocked, happy, excited face I’ve been practicing for the picture. I know it’s what mom and dad will want, and I want to make them happy, so I perform. It only lasts a second, but it’s enough for the picture. As the blue afterimage of the flash fades away, I see a bike. A dirt bike! Silver and blue, with pads on the frame and everything! It’s the biggest thing in the room, but it’s not for me. My brother’s stocking hangs from the handlebars. Past it, to my right, a Cabbage Patch Kid, and what I can only remember as “girl stuff”. I was eleven, so. Yanno.

I looked all the way back to the left, holding my breath because I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted it, and it just had to be there, it just had to be.

And it was. Leaning against the tree, with my stocking in front of it, the thing I’d been obsessing about for what felt like my entire life: US 1 Fire Alert Electric Trucking. A slot car thing from Tyco. You drove trucks around the track, filled them up with construction materials like pipes and gravel, and then dropped them off. You didn’t exactly build anything with them, so when the bloom fell off that rose, out came the star of the show; the fire truck, with real flashing red lights and a bell that rang the whole time. 

I look pretty excited in the picture, but that picture does not come close to capturing the mainline hit of joy and excitement I felt when I saw that big box in my living room. I was so overwhelmed, tears sprung out of my eyes and I fell to my knees. 

‘Thank you, Santa!” I holler, knowing that my voice doesn’t have to make it to the North Pole for him to hear me.

My brother and sister celebrate their gifts: his first “big boy” bike, and the coveted Cabbage Patch Kid for her. I don’t notice them any more than they notice me. We have all gotten exactly what we wanted for Christmas. I don’t know it at the time, and I won’t admit it to myself for over forty years, but it will be the only Christmas I remember feeling like my dad loved me.

*

It is Christmas Eve 1981. The whole family is in dad’s Dodge Ram Van, heading toward the 134 on the 405. We’re by the Budweiser brewery in Van Nuys. The smell of brewing beer fills the passenger compartment.

We are driving from Aunt Val’s house in Northridge to my father’s aunt and uncle’s house in Toluca Lake. They are nice to me, but they aren’t kind like Aunt Val is. I won’t know how to vocalize this difference until I am an adult, and I don’t hold it against them. But the difference between the houses couldn’t be more stark. Aunt Val’s house is middle class. It’s warm. It’s welcoming. I feel safe and at home there. By contrast, my great aunt and uncle’s house is upper class. We aren’t allowed to touch anything. We can’t sit down. There are whole rooms we can’t go into. Mom is super stressed before we go there. She fusses with our hair endlessly. She admonishes us to be on our best behavior. We don’t go there to be around loving family, like we do when we go to Aunt Val’s. When we go to their house, we have to pass a test. I doubt very much that’s their intention, but it’s how mom makes me feel. 

I’m not thrilled about leaving the warmth and love of my Aunt Val’s house for a mid-term. But tomorrow is Christmas, and I just have to be on my best behavior, keep my mouth shut, and be essentially invisible for maybe an hour at the most. I can do this. I do it every year. Why would this year be any different.

We are listening to KRTH 101 on the radio. They are playing 24 hours of Christmas music, without commercials. I can’t recall who sponsored it, which is strange because I feel like they told us between each song. I want to say it was Cal Worthington, but it probably wasn’t. 

My brother is sitting to my right. Our sister is to his right. We typically end up in this configuration, which matches our birth order, whenever we go anywhere.

It’s relatively early in the evening, probably around 6 or so. But it’s winter and it’s already dark, so it feels later than it is, which is a cruel trick to play on kids on the one night a year they can’t wait for bedtime to hurry up and get there. The DJ reminds us that they’re playing 24 hours of commercial-free Christmas music thanks to the generosity of … I still want to say Cal Worthington. I mean, I can just say it was Cal Worthington, right? Who’s going to check my work? Let’s just go with that. Cal Worthington. So he thanks Cal Worthington, then he says something about keeping an eye out for Rudolph’s bright red nose, before he drops the needle on Run Rudolph Run.

I lean my head against the window and look up into the dark sky. I like how cool the glass feels against my cheek. I like that I can kind of hear the tires on the road. My mind drifts. I’m nine, and I’m starting to have my doubts about the whole Santa thing. I really want to believe, but parts of the story don’t add up. And my older cousin insists that not only does Santa not bring you presents, he doesn’t even exist. It’s all your parents. My older cousin is kind of a dick, is the thing, and he’s making an extraordinary claim that flies in the face of an entire lifetime of firsthand experience. Surely, if this were true, I would have heard it from a more credible source than my idiot cousin. Still, at the very least, I have some questions, and I am pondering them.

There’s too much light pollution in Los Angeles to see many stars, but helicopters, commercial and private planes criss-cross the sky above us. I’m thinking about the whole Santa Question when I see this lone red spot of light in the sky. My rational brain knows that it’s just a light on an airplane, but it’s the only light I can see, I just heard the guy on the radio tell us to look for Rudolph, and the enormous part of me that wants so desperately to believe that this magical thing is real blurts out, “Dad! I just saw Rudolph’s nose!”

“Really?” He says. There’s something familiar in his tone that tells me I’m stupid.

My heart sinks. “Well, I think so,” I say. 

“Maybe it’s your imagination getting caught up in the Christmas spirit,” my mother offers, helpfully.

“Maybe,” I reply. Of course it isn’t Rudolph. First of all, it’s way too early. Everyone knows that Santa doesn’t fly around while you’re awake. This was such a stupid thing to say. Dad’s right. I’m stupid.

“I can use my imagination, too,” my dad says. He points to the stream of oncoming headlights on the other side of the freeway, flowing down the north side of the Sepulveda Pass. There are hundreds, maybe a thousand, cars coming toward us. They create an unbroken streak of bright lights. “That’s a giant snake.”

I look at my brother. He doesn’t get it, either. Then I catch my dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror. There is no kindness in them. 

“What?” I ask.

“If you can use your imagination, so can I,” he says. “That’s a giant snake.”

It’s so mean, the way he says it. It’s dismissive. It’s condescending. He says it like he can not believe how stupid I am. I don’t know what contempt is, but remembering this moment now (and though I try not to, I’ve remembered it every Christmas for forty years), that’s what it was. 

I look at my brother again. He’s like five, and even he feels it. The whole family feels it. We are all silent as Run Rudolph Run finishes. “Did any of you kids see Rudolph?” The DJ asks. I close my eyes and hold my breath. Dad’s going to say something really mean. I know it.

But nobody says anything. In fact, nobody says anything for the fifteen or so minutes it takes us to get to my great aunt and uncle’s neighborhood. As an adult remembering this, there is something really sad about a family sitting in uncomfortable silence in the van together, while the Christmas music we’d typically sing along with played on the radio. As a kid who was experiencing it, it sucked, but I was also relieved that this appeared to be a one-shot from my dad. He wasn’t going to make it a whole thing until I cried, like he usually did. 

A Christmas miracle.

We exit the freeway in Toluca Lake and after two quick turns, we are in the middle of extravagant wealth. The houses are HUGE. Their yard displays are EPIC. While we drive slowly through the neighborhood, my mother breaks the uncomfortable silence to excitedly point out the wooden cutouts of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, wearing Santa hats, in someone’s yard. My brother and sister pick up her excitement and run with it. Soon, they are also pointing at yard displays. I remember my brother saying “That one’s my favorite,” several times.

I know now, as an adult myself, that she wasn’t equipped to deal with the shitty thing my father did to me. I suspect that he was just as shitty to her. I mean, he’s just a shitty person. I know now, as an adult, that his parents and most of his family treated her the way he treated me. She wasn’t good enough for them, and she spent our entire childhoods trying to prove them wrong. I know now that as we got closer to his family, they both must have felt so much stress and anxiety, and I have a lot of empathy and compassion for the people they were then. It doesn’t excuse how shitty he was to me, or that she just sat there and let it happen, but I’m willing to stipulate that maybe they weren’t their best selves in that moment.

But all of that reflection and this pain is in my future. In my present, I can’t deny that my great aunt and uncle’s neighborhood is amazing. I don’t feel great in their house, but I love their neighborhood. It’s like where the Main Street Electrical parade goes to live when Disneyland closes. Every house, which looks like it could easily hold two or three of my houses, is covered with constellations of colored lights. Some yards have been transformed into animated scenes of Santa’s workshop. One house has a working roller coaster in the front yard, stuffed animals riding around it in an endless loop. There are nativities everywhere. JOY and NOEL and PEACE ON EARTH are spelled out in lights on rooftops. Every single house is a Griswold house. It is amazing. 

We park the van. Mom reminds us again to be on our best behavior. All three of us climb out and wait next to the van while mom fusses with our hair, our collars, my sister’s dress. Mom reminds us not to touch anything, to stay out of the many forbidden rooms, to be polite and to only speak when spoken to. It’s a lot, but we’ve done it several times a year, at every major holiday, for my whole life. I know the drill.

My great aunt answers the door. She greets us with loud enthusiasm. It probably isn’t, but it feels fake. I’m terrified of my dad’s family, and I never feel comfortable or relaxed or safe around them. She’s always nice to me, or at least to the version of me my mother has ensured I present whenever we go to their house, but I never let my guard down. I haven’t really put it all together, yet, but I sort of vaguely know that this is the family that produced my father, and my father is the meanest bully I know, so it stands to reason that if they produced him, maybe they aren’t the kindest people in the world. So, to be safe, I am extremely on guard. Also I’m nine and what the fuck. Why does a nine year-old feel any of these things.

They have an enormous Christmas tree, surrounded by what must be five hundred presents. I know there won’t be anything for us under their tree. There never is. It’s always for my dad’s cousins who I barely know. It’s always a little disappointing. These people can CLEARLY afford to give Atari or Colecovision, but I don’t take it personally. I don’t feel close to them the way I do to my Aunt Val, and that part of my family. I will never feel accepted and loved by my father’s family (with the notable exception of my Godmother) the way I do when I’m with her.

We’re probably there for half an hour, but I’m a kid on Christmas Eve, and it feels much longer. In a way that only makes sense to my tiny mind, time spent here passes more slowly than time in my own house. The very act of being here ensures Christmas will take that much longer to arrive. I do my best to be patient, but I still fidget. My great uncle notices, and takes me and my siblings into his office where we get to see the bearskin he has on his wall. It is a family legend that he shot this bear himself, while it was trying to break into his cabin in Kern county. I believed it then, and I believe it now. He was just that kind of dude, all about the outdoors and hunting and all that stuff. He tells us the story, like he always does, and then he lets us pet it, like he always does. It’s objectively cool, talking to this guy who stared down a bear and won, but I am so afraid I’m going to say or do something wrong, I am laser focused on maintaining my best behavior. And I’m also keeping an eye on my brother and sister, because I’m going to get in double trouble if they do something wrong.

We rejoin the family in the wood-paneled den where the adults are visiting. My great uncle sits in one of those big leather chairs. My siblings and I stand quietly and awkwardly next to our parents for what feels like an eternity.

Eventually, we are allowed to leave. I mean, I’m sure our parents had a lovely visit or whatever, but for us kids, other than the petting of the bearskin, this whole thing is an obligation that can’t end fast enough.

We get into the van. Our mother praises us for being so good. If my dad said anything, I don’t remember it. We drive home, and I lean my head against the window again. This time, when I see a red light in the sky, I keep it to myself. There’s nothing magical about it. It’s just an airplane.

*

It is late December 1988. Probably the week before Christmas. Dad has a small business. I think he has like eight employees. My parents decide to have a company Christmas party, and all the employees come over to our house. So does my mom’s brother, who we rarely see. Mom has made it clear my whole life that her brother, who I think is great, is a total fuck up. I will eventually learn that he’s bipolar, and when he is off his meds, he’s wildly unpredictable. She also insinuates that he does a lot of drugs, which is probably something I didn’t need to know. He’s always kind to me, but it’s clear from my earliest memories that they have a strained relationship.

My bedroom is downstairs in our split level house. While the adults have their party upstairs, I sit in my bedroom with the door closed, listen to music, and play Dark Tower on my Mac II. I love this computer. I disappear into it for entire days playing Defender of the Crown, DeJa Vu, Uninvited, MacVegas. I write stories on it that I will never publish or even show to anyone. It’s a safe place for me to be. My CD changer has five Depeche Mode CDs in it. It is currently playing 1984’s compilation album, People Are People, which is in my collection only because Some Great Reward isn’t available on CD. For the rest of my life, I will associate “Get The Balance Right” with the following moment. 

There is a knock on my door and before I can say anything it swings open, revealing my mom. She has a glass of wine in one hand. She’s definitely buzzed, maybe a little drunk. 

“Come up and visit with your dad’s employees,” she says.

“I don’t want to,” I say. “I don’t know any of them.”

“How are you going to know them if you don’t meet them?” She says.

“Mom! I don’t want to. It’s not my party!”

A cloud passes over her face and everything changes in an instant. “You will come upstairs and you will be polite to your father’s guests. End of discussion.”

I do quick math in my head, and conclude that this fight is just not worth having.

“Fine.” I say. She stops me at the door and fusses with my hair, smooths the shoulders of my T-shirt. “Thank you,” she says, without gratitude.

I walk upstairs, into a room of adults I do not know, except for my uncle who is wrecked and sloppy. He is sitting on the couch with one of my dad’s employees who is equally wrecked and sloppy. They are inappropriately close to each other. They are aggressively flirting. It’s super obvious. It’s super gross. In the coming days, mom will complain about all the champagne they drank. I don’t see my siblings, and I presume that they are in my brother’s room, playing NES. I wonder why they aren’t required to appear at dad’s holiday party. I am about to find out.

Mom introduces me to all of the employees, and I realize I am being showed off. By her. To impress him, and them. I’m not Rick’s son. I’m Debbie’s Thing, the famous actor who she relentlessly reminds me was made famous through her great sacrifice and her hard work. It’s horrible. I hold my breath and wait for my dad to make a joke at my expense. 

But he’s on his best behavior, maintaining the illusion of loving father. His employees don’t care that I’m Debbie’s Thing. Not a single one of them watches Star Trek. If any of them saw Stand By Me, nobody says anything about it. I make awkward small talk before I am allowed to return to my bedroom. The feeling won’t last, but for the rest of the evening, I feel like I have scored a huge victory in the long war to get my mother to see me as a person and not a thing. It will turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory, but I’ll take whatever I can get. 

*

It is the middle of December, 1989. We have completed production on Next Generation for the year, and it’s the day of our cast and crew Christmas party. I am barely seventeen, and I am desperate for the cast and crew to see me as a peer, as an adult. In pursuit of this goal, I tell my parents that I’m going to the cast and crew party alone. I don’t tell them that I have this outrageous fantasy that there will be some girl at the party who will want to hang out with me. Maybe we’ll go make out somewhere. This will not happen. In fact, this will never happen. 

Dad doesn’t care about me, my job, or this particular party, but my mother loses her shit when I tell her I don’t want her to go with me. She goes on and on about how I’m excluding her, how I’m embarrassed of her, how I don’t appreciate her. She reminds me, like she has since I was seven, that she gave up her career so I could have mine. She uses every tool in her manipulative arsenal, but I don’t budge. I’m growing immune to these techniques she uses to control me. I’ve worked on TNG for two years, and she never comes to the set. She doesn’t know any of my coworkers. She has no reason to be there, as far as I am concerned. This is not a party for her. This is a party for me. I won’t be able to vocalize this for another twenty years, but I don’t want her there because she is constantly taking credit for my work. She’s constantly making my acting career – that I don’t want, that she forced on me – all about her. It feels weird. It feels bad. I don’t want to experience any of that when I’m at the cast and crew party. I don’t want to be responsible for her feelings at a time I should just be having fun. I want, as I’ve been telling her since she put me to work at age seven, to just be a kid.

The whole day, she pouts. I mean, she makes a huge production of how upset she is. It’s all passive aggressive, and the thing is, she uses this move on me so much, it’s lost almost all of its effectiveness. It’s like my dad yelling at me for no reason. It’s happened so consistently, for so long, it’s part of the background radiation of my existence. 

And yet, I still feel guilty. So after I get dressed for the party, and about fifteen minutes before I’m supposed to leave, I tell her that I guess it would be okay for her to go with me. I’m counting on fifteen minutes not being enough time for her to get ready. It’s a calculated risk to assuage my guilt for something she never should have put onto my shoulders in the first place, but I can see her running it over in her head. She’s going to find a way to get ready in fifteen minutes. I panic.

She shares a look with my dad, who is as irritated that I exist as he always is. Before either of them can say anything, I grab my keys.

“I guess there isn’t enough time,” I say. Then I add, “sorry,” though I am not sorry at all. I practically run down the driveway to my car. I listen to Oingo Boingo all the way to Paramount. I walk across the liminal space of the Paramount lot at night on a weekend to the soundstage where we are having our party.

Okay so there are the accepted conditions that make something “cool”, then there is the entire mass of everything in the known universe, and on the other side of that, as far away from cool as you can get, we have the 1989 TNG cast and crew Christmas party. We are in an empty soundstage with some banquet tables in it. If there are decorations, I don’t remember them. The band they have on a small stage is terrible. Four pieces of light jazz. Just light jazz garbage from a bad wedding scene in a bad movie of the week. There is no energy in the soundstage, which feels way too big for the party that’s supposed to be happening in it. But it’s early. I’m sure it’ll warm up.

One of my friends, a stand-in who is in his late twenties, asks me if I want something from the bar. I ask him for some orange juice. He comes back with it and I take a pretty big gulp, that I instantly spit back into the glass.

“Dude, there’s vodka in this!”

He chuckles. “I got you a screwdriver. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“No! I just wanted orange juice!” I have been drunk several times with my friends on the weekends. Dumb teenage drinking that we really shouldn’t do, but I’ll get through it without any permanent damage. I do stupid things, but I honestly don’t think I did anything stupid while drunk that I wouldn’t have done while sober. I just felt less anxious about it. But I don’t want to drink alcohol at this party. I know that I can, but I’m still around people who are basically my family, and I feel like I shouldn’t. I want them to respect me, and I’m reasonably sure that drinking alcohol and being stupid is not the best choice. So I go to the bar and get a Pepsi. For the record, I don’t have a side in the cola wars. They both taste the same to me, and they are both inferior to Dr. Pepper.

It comes with a lime, which I guess makes it fancy. While I’m sipping it, Frakes and his wife, Genie, come over to me. We chat for a few minutes. “This band is terrible, isn’t it?” He says.

“The worst, ever,” I agree.

Over the next forty minutes or so, the rest of the cast arrives. Most of them have their partners with them, including Marina. I don’t think she was married to Michael, yet, but he was with her. I just adored him. He was so kind and so cool, so easy to be around. He was a real California surfer, he played the hell out of the guitar, and I knew that if he was the dude Marina wanted to be with, he must be the most amazing dude in the universe.

We all end up together at a table, and very quickly, conversation turns to  just how awful this band is. Marina tells Michael that he needs to get up there and play something that rocks.

The entire cast assents. We implore Michael to save us from this light jazz musical nightmare.

So Michael finishes his beer, and goes to the stage. I watch him talk to someone from the band. I see them reach an agreement. Michael walks onto the stage, stands behind the microphone in the center. The entire cast and crew knows him. He’s Marina’s boyfriend! We love him. We know he plays guitar. I think he may even play in a band, but I’m not sure. He leans toward the microphone and says something about how it’s time to rock. Someone from the band gives him their guitar. The drummer counts them in, and they play Johnny B. Goode, but Michael changes the lyric to “Gene-y be good” in deference to our Great Bird of the Galaxy.

The dance floor fills up. The whole room is rocking. Everyone is having a great time. Michael just kills it. I think he just played the one song, but it’s all we needed. The way I remember it, he saved Christmas. Or at least he saved that party.

Soon after he finishes, someone from production, probably Rick Berman or maybe even Gene himself, takes the stage, wishes us all a happy holiday season, and then rolls the blooper reel of our mistakes and outtakes from the year.

I think it is hilarious and brilliant. They’ve cut together some bits from two different episodes that make it look like Picard and Troi are having real freaky sex, and there are all the usual outtakes of us flubbing lines (there’s a supercut of me swearing angrily at myself when I mess up. It’s a lot, it’s embarrassing to me to see it all in context, and someone will pull me aside before the night is over, to encourage me to give myself a break when I blow a line). Patrick is PISSED that this thing has been cut together. He doesn’t think it’s funny at all to be portrayed that way, and as a result, it will be the last blooper reel we get for a couple seasons. I adore that man, but holy fuck did he need to lighten up in those early seasons.

A couple hours go by. I visit with my coworkers. I hang out with my cast. The party starts to thin out, and I’m thinking about heading home. But some of my castmates are going to walk over to the Cheers party, so I ask if I can go with them. I won’t tell you who, but one of them makes it explicitly clear to me that I am absolutely not allowed to go with them. “That party is going to be full of drugs and not a place for a teenager at all,” they say. I will eventually learn that those Cheers Christmas parties were legendary for their cocaine-fueled debauchery. The part of me who likes to read Hunter S. Thompson and listen to Joe Frank thinks it would have been really cool to witness that. The entire rest of me is like “buddy, you really do not need to be around Woody Harrelson and Kelsey Grammar when they are neck deep in blow at the tail end of the eighties.” I think that part of me is probably right.

I do not talk to any girls. In fact, there were no girls there for teenage me to talk to. And let’s be honest, if there had been, I wouldn’t have had the courage to introduce myself. But I have a great time, anyway. I stay as late as I can, because I just don’t want to go home. But eventually it’s just me, the worst band in the world, and some extremely drunk grips. So I take myself home, where my mother is waiting up and demands a full recounting of the party. I clock the empty wine glass and know how to get out of this. I tell her the music was terrible, but the blooper reel was funny. I tell her she didn’t miss anything. I tell her it wasn’t that great a party. Basically, I tell her what I know she will need to believe to let it go. I don’t tell her about Michael’s incredible performance. She takes so much from me, I keep that to myself. She goes on and on about how she’s glad I had so much fun by myself. Then she goes upstairs, and I go to bed. I try as hard as I can not to, but I still feel a little guilty. I fall asleep listening to disc 2 of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

*

It’s 1997. The week of Christmas. About a year after we started dating, my girlfriend and her kids have moved in with me. We are so excited to share our first Christmas together in what is now our house.

I have wrapped production for the year on Flubber, and driven nine hours down the coast in a torrential Pacific storm to get from San Francisco where we are filming to Los Angeles where I live. I don’t have a cell phone, so I’ve only talked to Anne a couple times when I’ve used a payphone at a gas station. By the time I pull into my driveway, it’s almost midnight and it’s been hours since we talked. She opens the front door, and I can see this warm glow behind her in our house. She has this kind, loving smile that matches a glint in her eye.

“I have a surprise!” She says. She steps aside and I walk into our very small house. When it was built, it was essentially a cabin, so it’s one large room, a very small kitchen, and a hallway that leads to a couple tiny bedrooms.

The warm glow I saw behind her is from fifty feet of garland she’s wrapped with white twinkle lights and hung around the perimeter of the main room. It’s beautiful. 

“I love this,” I say.

“I did it for us, because we live together,” she tells me. She kisses me and I kiss her back. Then, I walk down the hallway to the bedroom where Ryan and Nolan are sleeping. I kiss them on their foreheads.

*

Christmas day 1999. Anne and I have been married for just under two months. It’s our first Christmas as a married couple. We get a lot of Mr and Mrs things, and we love them all. Ryan, age ten, is a hardcore Santa doubter. We’ve done our best to balance the joy a kid feels at the idea of the Santa myth with our commitment to being honest with our kids. “Santa brings gifts, we bring gifts, we help each other out and work together. It’s all kind of a big blur,” I remember saying, like the guy in A Christmas Story who says, “No, that’s them balsams.” 

“So if I asked Santa to draw me a self-portrait, do you think he’d do that?” Ryan asks me. I don’t know what he’s getting at, but I can see wheels turning.

“You don’t know if you don’t ask,” I tell him. 

When he writes his letter to Santa. It includes a request for a self-portrait. He’s pretty sure he has Anne and me dead to rights. There’s no way we can make this happen. He knows neither one of us can draw. He’s gonna blow this whole Santa thing wide open.

What he doesn’t think about, bless his heart, is that our friend Kevin is an artist and he will not let us pay him when he draws the most amazing self-portrait of Santa Claus you’ve ever seen.

When Ryan opens it, his eyes pop out of his head and he looks at both of us, incredulous. “How did you do this?” He asks, astonished, all pretenses dropped.

“Us? What are you talking about? Santa did that,” Anne tells him.

We got him. Dead to rights. The old switcheroo. What’s his next move?

He scrambles across the floor and throws his arms around us. “I love you guys.” He will take that picture with him when he moves into his own house, and as far as I know, he puts it out every year.

*

Christmas Eve 2002. For a couple years, we have had this tacit, unspoken agreement with the kids where we all talk about Santa Claus as if he is a person who exists in this world and not a myth given form by parents who are up way too late putting together a bike that comes with instructions you’re pretty sure are not even for a bike, much less this one. We all have a lot of fun with it. 

Over the previous few years, at great emotional cost to all of us, and great financial cost to me and Anne, a custody agreement has been reached with the boys’ biodad. There’s an alternating Christmas thing that means they are with him tonight and come home to us at noon tomorrow. Next year, it will flip. It’s not great, but we don’t complain about it in front of the kids. It’s probably not great for them, either.

Anne and I don’t have to wait for the kids to go to sleep before we make Christmas happen, so we make dinner, open a bottle of wine, and take our time during the evening getting everything together. It’s just the two of us, and our dogs, Ferris and Riley. We listen to Christmas music, open another bottle of wine, and play that old tabletop game, Sorry! I love having our kids around, but I’m not going to lie. Having these moments together when it’s just the two of us means a lot to me. We didn’t have that part of the relationship when it’s just the two of us. We’ve been a family since day one. But we’ve made a commitment to each other to put our marriage, and our relationship at the center of everything, because that’s the thing that will be here no matter how we’re doing financially, if the kids are with us or not, or when we are three years into a global pandemic for example. It’s not great that we aren’t tucking our kids who are too big to be tucked into bed into bed, but having some wine and playing a game in front of the fireplace isn’t the worst thing in the world.

*

Christmas Day 2004. The Basketball Hoop Year. It’s early afternoon, and I’m on the driveway assembling this fucking thing all day WITH HELP and I can’t believe Anne honestly thought I could do this last night by myself in the dark.

*

It’s 2005. We are at my parents’ house for Christmas dinner. I’m in the kitchen with my sister, helping cut stuff up or whatever, and she asks me what I think about this thing that’s been in the news lately. A guy is about to be executed, and there’s a death penalty debate happening in the media and in our state capitol. I tell her that I think he should spend his life in prison, but I don’t support the death penalty. It’s racist, it’s immoral, and it isn’t an effective deterrent.

Our father, who has not been part of this conversation at all, storms into the room, shoves me away from what I’m doing, and starts jabbing me in the sternum while he screams in my face “AN EYE FOR AN EYE! AN EYE FOR AN EYE! YOU LIBERALS ARE ALL THE SAME! AN EYE FOR AN EYE!”

I am shocked and scared, and I’m embarrassed for him and for me. He did this in front of my kids. He did this in front of my wife. He did this in front of the entire family, now that I think of it, and then he stormed away before I could say anything.

My sister and I look at each other like “What the fuck was that?” But before either of us can say anything, our mom does the distraction deflection thing. I want to say it’s something about a pickle. It’s really kind of pathetic. My dad does not say another word to me for the rest of the evening, not even goodbye when we leave. Dinner is uncomfortable and sad. My mother and brother act like nothing out of the ordinary has happened. I spend the entire meal wishing I’d just gathered my family together and walked out after he yelled at me.

The next day, I write about it. I frame it as part of the nascent War on Christmas narrative. I write honestly about what happened. When it is published, and gains some traction online, my father freaks out. But he doesn’t speak to me directly. He complains to my mother who does the manipulation thing on me. “Your Aunt Val always said there’s nothing more important than family,” she says. It works. She invokes the memory of the most beloved person in my childhood, and fueled by a lifetime of conditioning, I write a big retraction. It’s humiliating. It undermines my entire truth. I lie and lie and lie, to satisfy my parents. It’s not enough. She makes me apologize to him. I do. He shrugs it off.

My father does not, and never will, apologize for how he treated me in front of my family, my wife, and my children, at Christmas.

*

Christmas Day, 2015. Ryan and his wife make tamales to feed the entire family. They are phenomenal. They spent most of two days preparing them, and knowing that they put all that love into them makes them the best tamales I have ever had, or ever will have.

*

Christmas 2020. Fucking Covid. We don’t see our kids at all, for the first time in their lives. I am grateful for all those memories we made together, instead of giving them stuff they wouldn’t even have now. I spend a lot of time looking through my photo roll, missing them. Anne and I can’t even have our chosen family around, because there’s no vaccine and it isn’t safe. She and I make the best out of it, just the two of us, together. Next year, we’ll be back to normal. Thank god.

*

Christmas Eve 2021. WELP. Turns out that stupid, selfish people are determined to make this pandemic last … just a little longer, probably until an election. Sure, let’s just pretend it’s all over, because we’re tired of the inconvenience. We can just wish ourselves out of this, because FREEDOM or whatever. I am so tired.

It’s been a really hard year for all of us. And not just the Anne and me us, who endured a pretty awful summer with my seizure and her back surgery, either. The all of us … us, I mean. Imagine I’m making that big hugging motion with my arms to indicate that we are all in this together. When I say us, I mean you and me and Anne and your partner and your kids and all the people you love who love you back. All of us. If there were a little more us in the world right now, maybe it wouldn’t have been such a hard year.

For the longest time, Christmas has not been about stuff for me. It isn’t about supernatural religious myths. It isn’t about all the crap advertisers work hard to make it about. It’s about the other things, the joyful things that flow through these memories around the painful bits, the moments with my children, the late nights Anne and I stayed up to make Christmas happen for them. It’s about having our chosen family over for dinner. It’s about the people who bring the joy and magic of the holiday season into my life every day of the year. 

It’s mostly about my kids, though. They are adult men with wives who have their own lives, and that is awesome. I’m not going to burden them with the same kind of responsibility that I carried when I was a kid. But I miss them so much, I feel like I’m on the verge of tears from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep, even when I’m happy. At the same time, I’m so grateful to be spending my 25th Christmas with Anne, because we live together. 

The Ghosts of Christmas Past haven’t visited me in a long, long time, but they are everywhere I look this year. Starting about a week ago, they showed up slowly, one at a time, then all at once until the room was just filled up with memories, happy and sad, insisting I do something with them.

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with all this. I love the happy memories. I love that Anne and I still have the box the garland lives in, and I love that we wrote “Xmas 1997. Garland and lights for our house because we live together” on it. I love to look at that every year, whether we put the garland out or not. I love that we’ll be looking at it for the rest of our lives together.

The sad memories are extra sad, especially in comparison to the good ones. I’m sure there are good memories I don’t have, that I can’t recall, that a trip through a photo album would dislodge. The year we got all the WWF toys, including the Sling Em Fling Em Wrestling Ring, for example, and stockings filled with MUSCLE figures. I don’t have that photo album, or access to it, though, so I’m left with the memories that made the greatest impressions on me, good and bad.

And that reality, in itself, is sad. And because of the whole BUT IT’S CHRISTMAS of it all, that reality is especially painful this year.

It’s not a contest. Everyone is going through something. This is what I’m going through. Maybe writing these things down will allow me to heal from the painful stuff, so I can happily and joyfully remember the good stuff. 

I hope that your holidays are wonderful. I hope you are making wonderful memories with people you love. Whatever winter festival you choose to celebrate, I hope you get to celebrate it with people you love who love you back. I hope that, this time next year, all of us are able to safely gather with people we love who love us back.