“Check, check… are we rolling?”
Every time I hit record on yet another grainy transfer of our 1991 shenanigans, my chest tightens.
Not from how much hair we’ve lost or the existential horror of mullets (both valid fears), but from the creeping knowledge that most of us vanish two generations after the funeral buffet. I know my kids will remember me; their kids might get a foggy “Grandpa wrote some books” footnote.
After that? Poof. Same fate as the hundred VHS tapes I dumped in an Arizona landfill because the moving truck was already full of life‑or‑death items like winter coats and Lego sets.
So why keep torturing myself with these videos? Because those badly lit videos are the prequel to every good thing in my life: my 19‑year (and counting) marriage, two awesome kids, and a writing career that somehow survived puberty, Unskinny Bop, and the Great Acne Offensive of ’89.
Camelback High: The Unofficial Set of Everything
If you’ve cracked *Stars of the Show* or backed *Duet* on Kickstarter (thanks, by the way), you’ve already visited my fictional Camelback High. Real camelback was rougher—chain‑link fences, random brawls, and the occasional drive‑by insult from a sun‑bleached Pontiac Fiero.
But for story purposes I sand down the razor wire. Fiction has to serve the narrative; reality seldom cooperates.
Still, the bones remain: theatre geeks smoking Marlboros, speech‑team kids quoting Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and the holy trinity of after‑school refuges—Matt’s house, Mike’s roof, and Papago Park under the moonlight.
Those tapes prove it happened. More important, they prove we happened.
Friendship: The Garage‑Band That Went Platinum in My Head
Watch any clip and you’ll spot our greatest hits:
Flashlight Wars at Papago – Full‑contact hide‑and‑seek that ended with war stories and gas‑station Gatorade.
Matt’s Couch Philosophy – Cigarettes, Darkwing Duck, and the realization that a parent who lets you smoke inside is basically Yoda.
Highlander II Midnight Showings – We entered chanting “There can be only one!” and exited chanting “There *should* have been only one.”
We fought, we sulked, we reconciled in three days because somebody said, “Champions this weekend?” and that was that.
Those messy, unconditional bonds are the secret sauce in every Drama Department romance. Cassie & Jesse? Straight lift from “best friends to mortal enemies to maybe‑something‑more” drama that played out in Masque & Gavel.
The Memoir That Won’t Sit Still
The Black Dot Society—part memoir, part documentary, part whatever‑the‑hell it morphs into—is my attempt to bottle that lightning before memory corrosion sets in. Problem is, every editing session triggers a full‑body nostalgia migraine: joy, regret, and an audible ticking clock reminding me I’ll be mulch someday. Fun times!
But I can’t not do it.
Because every VHS hiss is a breadcrumb leading back to the moment I figured out who I wanted to be. If one reader (or viewer, or listener—format TBD) feels less alone in their own origin story, the existential heartburn is worth it.
Why Sweet YA Romance? Because Melodrama Was Our National Sport
Yes, I built a career writing edgy, sometimes brutal YA. But the Drama Department books are (syrup‑free) sweet because that’s another truth of my teens: in between the trauma and testosterone, we were hopeless romantics. We wanted mixtape anthems, drama‑room spotlight kisses, and happily‑for‑now endings. Frankly, after two decades of global dumpster fires, I think we’ve earned a little nostalgia comfort food.
Parents, Good and Otherwise
Real life handed us the full spectrum: from Matt’s mom—who declared her living room a Switzerland for lost boys—to absentee dads and parents who never learned their kid’s best friend’s name.
Both versions show up in my fiction, because both shaped us. One reminded me what safety felt like; the other taught me what happens when safety’s off the menu.
Legacy, or “Why Bother?”
Will this blog post, my books, or those digitized tapes matter in 2135?
Probably not. But they matter now. They matter to my kids when they wonder who Dad was before Spotify algorithms took over his playlists. They matter to the Gen‑X reader who thinks they’re the only one who remembers a time when you could disappear for six hours because every phone had a cord and zero area code.
And maybe they’ll matter to you—whether you’re clinging to your own VHS past or just curious how a bunch of Arizona theatre nerds accidentally launched a middle‑aged author’s second act.
Hit me up in the comments—or better yet, dust off your own teenage war stories and share them. Because if we don’t keep telling them, they fade faster than a sun‑warped VHS label. And some of those stories, ridiculous as they are, might just be the origin spark someone else needs.
Stay weird,
Tom
P.S.
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