The Story About The Stories

First things first, as always: Crock of SHITE!

Today I am sporting a dorktastic hairdo. This is the direct result of laying abed too late this morning and not having the time to wash my hair. Instead, I brushed it out and put some clips in it. The resulting effect makes me look about 14 years-old. I'm not complaining. It provides inspiration for this post.

This post has been tumbling around in my head for a while, but I'm just so ditzy that I keep forgetting to write it! I have referenced the subject matter once on TwerpsWorld, but I never fully fleshed it out.

However, the other night while I was cooking, my roommate came into the kitchen and said, "Hey! Check out my cool New Kids On The Block flip-flops!" There, on her tiny asian feet, was a pair of brand-new, bright yellow and hot pink flip-flops with a picture of the New Kids On The Block across the top of her foot, which I had seen oh so many times before! I asked to see one and she handed it to me. I read the following, which plunged me into a tailspin of nostalgia:

"© 1990 Big Step Productions"

1990. The tail end of my obsession with NKOTB. Let me take you back...

Before New Kids On The Block exploded onto the music scene with the fury of a category 4 hurricane - effectively rendering acts like Menudo powerless against such English language ballads as "Please Don't Go Girl," and "I'll Be Loving Your Forever," and stealing Tiger Beat space from the likes of Johnny Depp, Chad Allen, and Kirk Cameron - I had been OB.SESSED. with Def Leppard. Joe Elliott to be exact.

I thought I was going to marry him. We were going to split our time between London and New York (when he wasn't rocking the fuck out all over the world, obvi), so that my family could visit our babies. And he would love me forever, because who can resist a woman wearing bright blue spandex leggings, a white, oversized Def Leppard sweatshirt, red legwarmers and high-top Reeboks? OH, and let's NOT FORGET, the IRRESISTIBLE detail of my high, permed, ponytail to the side! C'mon. That's HOT.

My two childhood girlfriends, whom we'll call, in order to protect their privacy, G and C respectively, were already on the NKOTB bandwagon, though G was still hanging back with me and Def Leppard. Then one night I slept over C's house. While listening to Martika, she showed me a few teeny-bopper magazines, from which NKOTB posters already covered her walls. I read some NKOTB bios. "Hmm," thought I, "They ARE pretty cute. And they like a lot of the same things I like! Lasagna, for example!"

C was in love with Jordan Knight. Admittedly, he was the cutest. Girl Code predicated that I was not permitted to declare my attraction to him, so I settled on his brother, Jon. He was older and sensitive. And a Sagittarius, like me!

Commence Pubescent Girlhood Crush. I wish scientists could figure out a way to harness the energy of a young girl in love with a celebrity. It would make the H-bomb look like a firecracker.


Nothing prior to our mutual obsession with NKOTB had been able to unite the three of us so completely. It was all we talked about, thought about, spent our money on, risked our lives for (You doubt our lives were in danger, do you? Have YOU ever attended a concert in a venue that can hold 20,000 screaming, hormonal teenagers? Hmm?), walked into poles for (me...G and I were on our way to buy a new NKOTB VHS release, I was looking over my shoulder and smacked into a giant metal pole)...

We lived, breathed, slept, and dreamed NKOTB. We consumed everything they put out. EVERYTHING. But soon we'd seen all the pictures and read the bios 150,000 times. It would stand to reason that the only way we could sustain such a level of adoration as we had achieved would be to start making shit up. We were no longer satisfied by what we could buy, watch, read or listen to. We needed to create.

C was the first one to do it. She wrote a story about Jordan taking her to The Prom, because when you're 13, The Prom is pretty much what you imagine the pinnacle of your life will be. Already possessing overactive imaginations, and fueled by a hormone push only the young and stupid could withstand, we began writing fantastical scenarios that saw us saving NKOTB from certain peril (A tornado! In Boston! In the dead of winter! Help us, Super Dee!), paving their path to glory, marrying them, having their babies, and being super-duper rich! And super-duper HOT!!

It got to the point where we would fill notebooks upon notebooks...we'd sleep over each other's houses and stay up all night writing (in between frequent trips to the bathroom, the result of drinking 7 gallons of water and eating celery sticks in an attempt to lise 3 pounds before morning). After we were done, we'd switch. C would read what I had written, which featured her and G, of course. G would read what C had written, I would read what G had written in her teeny, tiny handwriting, etc...

I can't be too sure about this next statement. I'm certain at some point we all intimated that we were DOING our respective crushes within the realm of the NKOTB fantasy world we had created, but I think it was me who first wrote a Danielle Steel-style intimacy scenario, since I was the only one who read shit like that at that age. I applied every single sexual scenario I had gleaned from the dozens of romance novels I consumed on a weekly basis and adapted them to fit the storyline.

So, three obsessed teenage girls writing lurid sagas about NKOTB, including sex scenes featuring ourselves and each other (but never together, RockDog! Sorry!).

It started to freak us out, though; having in our individual possession these horrifyingly-filthy-for-our-age tales...I eventually filled over a dozen notebooks, because we also wrote when we weren't sleeping over. I would spend hours laying on my awesome new brass bed in my bedroom, with the new cream-colored lacquer furniture, jamming Rhythm Nation:1814 on the Sanyo, writing until my hand was too fatigued to continue, and sustained only by horrible strawberry-flavored SlimFast shakes and water.

But they started to stress us the FUCK out. G had already been caught; she'd left her notebook wide open on her bed and had been in the process of detailing a lusty scenario between C and Jordan. I don't know HOW she did it, but she managed to convince her mother that we knew NOTHING about it, and that this was something she did on her own. Thanks for taking the heat, G!

It was very reminiscent of Poe's Tell-Tale Heart...everytime I would go to my dad's on the weekends, and his phone would ring, I became convinced it was my mother calling to bitch me out because she'd found my hidden notebooks. Except, that's not really what my mother would have done in that situation, oh no. No, she would have gotten into her car with all my notebooks, driven to my father's, demanded to know what the HELL they were, and then beat the holy living shit out of me. I'm pretty sure that's how it would have gone down. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of them right away.

Eventually the NKOTB flames we each were carrying flickered out and were reignited by boys we actually encountered in our daily lives (and could therefore stalk), and bands with actual musicians in them.

Of course, I never really did stop writing the Porn, and someone eventually started paying me for it!

Wait a minute...Holy shit! I was like Bobby Fisher, except with the Porn! A Porn Prodigy!