Blowing out the birthday candles with a brief history of my life and pop culture.
Ok, the wrinkle cream is out of the jar, so to speak: tomorrow, I turn 34.
I’ve now officially been making my way through this mad, beautiful, amazing world for well over three decades, the past ten of which have intrinsically shaped and solidified who I am today. Having faced everything in that time from a move to my dream city, the horror and ripple effects of illness and mortality, two major career changes and multiple jobs, the loss and gain of so many friends and lovers—and the invaluably spectacular deepening connection with those soulmates who have earned a permanent place—I can’t help but reflect on all that’s laddered up to my climbing to unforeseen heights in every area of my life as I look towards blowing out a fire hazard’s worth of candles and making a wish. After all, having experienced that fabled moment of crossing over to truly becoming a ‘grown up’ in the recent, latter time of that period—a hard-earned evolution that’s so palpable you can’t even imagine what it feels like until the metamorphosis occurs—this is a moment to not only celebrate life so far, but to also reflect on it.
Over this past decade that at times has seemingly dragged endlessly and at others moved at the speed of sound, I’ve come to learn what I feel are the most important lessons so far: what and who I value; who and how I love; what I want and need; what’s acceptable and what isn’t; how to truly give and be there for other people in the biggest ways, now that I’ve figured out how to give to and be there for myself; and, perhaps most importantly, being able to honestly acknowledge and accept who I have been and who I continue to strive to be. I wrote about this sort of existential experience a few weeks back, reflecting on an ongoing journey: a prism that shows new sides, spheres, colors and depths of bright light every single day. I’m an optimist at heart with a realist approach—always aiming to take something positive from every situation no matter how challenging it may be—which has made the ongoing walk down the long, proverbial road as interesting as it has been enlightening. And it’s only gotten (and getting) better with every step and stride.
Basically, what I’m saying is: I’m already loving being 34, and I’m not even officially there yet.
While all the people, places and experiences that have intersected with my sojourn so far have contributed unique threads to the fabric of the tapestry of my life, I got to thinking about how pop culture has also punctuated significant stops along the way, likely explaining my connection to and interest in the subject, and probably why I choose to spend time pontificating about it on this blog.
It started with my first favorite show, Fraggle Rock. Growing up, we had very little money, with my parents sacrificing everything from new clothes to meals to give my brother and I everything they possibly could. At the time, Fraggle Rock was on HBO—a new premium cable offering that cost as much for a monthly subscription as a few essential tanks of gas for our big green station wagon. I don’t know how they did it, or the true extent of what they did without, to opt-in, but because of my love for the show my parents somehow found a way to make sure it was on the TV. That commitment to the ones you love and making them happy regardless of the cost (literal or figurative) instilled in me a spirit of perseverance and a deeply resonating lesson in selflessness. The byproduct of my having direct access to the fantastical underground world of Jim Henson and the adventures of Red (my favorite), Mokey, Wembley, Gobo and Marjory, the ever-wise Trash Heap, at such a formative young age lit a spark, setting ablaze a creativity, intellectual curiosity, imagination and day dreaming idealism that still burns bright in my mind and heart every single day.
In fact, Fraggle Rock was probably the beginning of my being so drawn to TV as a kid. Because my affinity went beyond simply the entertainment aspect and into how it worked and was created—the behind-the-scenes stories, the insider previews, the in’s and out’s of casting and crafting a story—my favorite day of the week growing up was when my mother would take us food shopping, where I would stand in the aisle and devour the front-end section of TV Guide like it was the greatest story ever told. She once said to me that I should read a book instead (and I did—many, in fact—eventually getting a BA in English Lit), but for me, it was just as satisfying and substantive, again connecting to my young mind in a way that went beyond just passively flicking the remote: to me, it was something to be a part of.
What that taught me was that you don’t have to be just one thing in this world. It was possible to be a complex myriad of many things—a varied melting pot of interests and points of view with different angles and open-minded perspectives. I knew then that I wouldn’t ever put myself in a linear box with a label simply for the sake of easy identification, even if people sometimes didn’t understand it.
And oh, did people not understand it, or me, for many years. As a young kid who gravitated towards being friends with the girls, who was soft-hearted, artistic and sensitive, and who was highly aware of being ‘different’ but not seeing what was wrong with it until others prescribed it as such, like so many of us, I was the target of intense bullying. There was the band of older kids that ran me out of the bus stop by throwing rocks at me; being picked up and slammed to the bus floor by the same boys if I did make it onto that yellow hell on wheels more times than I can even recall; having ‘ladies first’ yelled at me as I passed by a line of 30 classmates, mortified with heat pulsing in my cheeks, on the way to lunch; being called a ‘faggot’ and being spit on with seething hatred seemingly daily; and dealing with some passive teachers who wouldn’t intervene, even one forcing me to play with the boys at recess because I wasn’t ‘normal.’
All that said (and much that has gone unsaid), my allies were few and my anguish deep. In light of this, my father did all he could by trying to teach me how to fight, but I just stood there and cried as he pushed me towards physical aggression. It wasn’t me or how I wanted to be, and made me feel even more lost in a world that required me to inflict pain to get through the day. So, I escaped into my own universe of my bright-walled, music theme-bordered bedroom, where two-sided cassette tapes, all kinds of art and scrapbook-style magazine-making became my escape into pop culture—my sanctuary and my place to imagine, create and explore while a cold world I didn’t understand still spun outside my door.
Then, when I was 12, I read in my weekly Bible—TV Guide, of course—that a new miniseries called Tales of the City was going to be on PBS. Based on the popular book series by Armistead Maupin, it took place in the liberal gay mecca that was ‘70s San Francisco, telling the story of a band of misfits who converged on a multi-story complex on Barbary Lane. One of these colorful characters was Michael ‘Mouse’ Tolliver, an open-hearted, openly gay Southern man looking for love in an era fueled by disconnected bath house encounters, pills and poppers. Knowing I would never be allowed to watch it (we were forbidden from even turning on MTV and most FOX comedies, much less this), I smuggled my father’s six-inch black-and-white TV from the basement, scrunched tin foil around the top of the antenna and sat crouched in a corner on my bedroom floor, tuned into the first channel on the dial the night it premiered.
What I was watching might have been shown in various tones of grey, but it was the most boldly colorful thing I had ever seen. Michael was a confident, caring, heart-on-his-sleeve guy who knew a lot about who he was but was actively working to figure out the rest simply by living and loving with abandon. I had never seen anything like it or him, and my life was forever changed. That series helped me realize who I was, pinpoint why I felt different, and set me on a path to self-discovery and self-acceptance that lasted another seven years before I came out (and in other respects, still continues today). In the bleakest moments along the way, I thought about Mouse and the kid that was so deeply impacted by him, and it kept me afloat even when I felt like I was drowning in the darkness within myself.
As I inched towards coming out the first semester of my sophomore year in college, I was still experiencing bullying. I would occasionally come back to my dorm room to find my white board littered with expletive-laden homophobic slurs, and there was a time during that still raw, anxiety-ridden post-Matthew Shepard era when I genuinely believed that I might be seriously injured or even die for being who I was. Rising above the fear, I came out to my family, and second family of friends both at school and beyond, where shock and awe wasn’t exactly the resounding reaction to my confirming what everyone else had already known.
But my living out loud and it being a spoken reality was something that, despite their support, my parents had to process, as I imagine any would when a life-altering veil of truth about their child is lifted. Of all things, it was TV that became a point of consolation for them and a bridge of connection between us. At the time, Will & Grace had just started its third season, catching fire and mainstream cultural resonance like few other shows with such unique subject matter had before. When I came home early for the first long weekend of that semester on a Thursday night, I walked in to find my mother, father and brother alternately sitting and laying around the living room watching the show. They were hysterical at the central foursome’s usual hijinks, and through their laughter looked at me and said, ‘You’re so Jack.’ I didn’t take any offense—I mean, I certainly was/am closer to him than Will—and having that kind of organic acknowledgement of my sexuality was a comfort beyond anything I could have hoped for. Actually, it was a true relief, because I knew then that everything was going to be ok; it was real progress—and all because of a 30-minute network sitcom.
The next summer, I got into my first serious ‘out’ relationship. Among many other points of pop culture connection, we were both fans of the still-on-the-air, red hot Sex and the City. But what started as an anticipated shared viewing experience when, every Monday, I would bring a VHS tape with the night before’s new episode to his basic cable-outfitted dorm where he spent the off-semester months while we were together later evolved into my roadmap for navigating the as-of-then uncharted territory of heartbreak when we broke up a few months later. Devouring the show in marathons (you remember—and maybe even still have—those boxed sets), Carrie and Co.’s traversing of the tumultuous nature of their romantic relationships came to seemingly reflect insights and clues to solving my own: ‘I’m so Carrie in this episode’; ‘He did something like Miranda just did to Steve, does that mean he really couldn’t commit all along?’; ‘Ugh, he’s so Big.’ These hours-long endeavors into masochistic entertainment—often undertaken in a dorm room with friends and big bottles of cheap contraband wine—became pivot points for discussion, analysis and diagnosis. Hilarious to think now that four fictitious, archetypal stilettoed ladies in what was a world far, far away from my rural college campus supposedly held the answers to all my life’s love problems at 20. But as the years and subsequent relationships have come and gone, it’s almost eerie how the themes of the show resonate even more poignantly the older I get, giving more relevance to the connection between and reflection of real life in art. (For the record, Carrie was two years younger than I’m about to be when the show premiered. Now there’s some pop perspective.)
In the intervening 14 or so years, there have been countless other cultural capstones that have punctuated my life, such as the sound of Paul Simon singing The Only Living Boy In New York through the headphones of my CD Discman as my bus pulled into the city the day I moved in; trying to make a connection with the doctors and nurses right before I was put under for my first melanoma surgery by talking about our mutual love for Grey’s Anatomy, subconsciously hoping that our shared interest would make them work harder to save me; and the various incarnations of my annual Golden Globes, Oscars and Emmy Awards parties, my different apartments that they took place in and the guests who attended serving as mile markers of various chapters of my life.
All of these sights, sounds and storylines, and so many more, have reflected, enhanced, defined and enlightened me, making art and culture a hugely prevalent and relevant part of my life. I feel so grateful that I’m able to pinpoint these moments and milestones within a tangible context. While the rear view isn’t a frame you want to glance in for too long, it’s important on reflective moments like birthdays to look back in order to continue to make significant, meaningful moves ahead, and every person, movie, show and song has contributed to how I see the world today, and those to come will evolve my lens on it tomorrow.
As I hover on the precipice of turning yet another page in the book of my own story, I’m excited by both the things I’m absolutely certain of and the spectacular unknown, and can’t wait to see how good it will all get—and it will, because outlook is everything, and I believe that in large part destiny is manifested by what we put out into the world every day. The old saying is true: you really do get what you give.
But for now, I’m going to look forward to blowing out my candles and making that wish I started out by mentioning, because that’s the stuff that the most powerful things—love, dreams, hope and imagination—are made of. And those are the greatest gifts of all.
Don’t just count your years, make your years count. – George Meredith