by Wil Wheaton
The first time I was on stage at a Star Trek convention was in Anaheim, right around the time Next Generation started. I wasn’t there “officially,” but my friend and I had gone to check it out, so that if (when) I was asked (told) to attend cons in the future, I’d know what I was getting into. Star Trek conventions, he informed me, were very different from the comic book and horror movie conventions I was used to.
The promoter found out I was wandering around the show (after I paid my own admission, of course) and offered me the glorious sum of one hundred bucks—in cash!—to speak for an hour. To a 14-year-old who thought an eight-dollar admission refund was a jackpot, a hundred bucks sounded an awful lot like a million. Without knowing how badly I was being ripped off (the average person who speaks at a convention earns between five and ten thousand dollars for their time, with captains commanding sums in excess of twenty-five thousand), I gleefully accepted the “generous” offer and did my best to answer questions for an hour.
If you think it went well, you haven’t spent any quality time recently around a 14-year-old (geek or otherwise)…but I got a hundred bucks, which I spent on books and props in the dealer’s room. If you read my short story “The Trade,” you now know that I learned nothing about negotiation and money management between the ages of eight and fourteen.
When I went to work the following Monday, some of the Star Trek veterans who had originally asked us about cons let me know how badly I’d been had. They put me in touch with people who could arrange for me to travel all over the country—to a different city each weekend if I wanted—to promote Next Generation, meet fans, and tuck a little money away for college, or maybe even a house one day.
Conventions were different in the late ’80s. One company called Creation used licensing agreements with Viacom and exclusivity agreements with actors to force just about all of the regional promoters out of the market. Back then, there were as many convention promoters as there were Holiday Inns around the country that were willing to host a few hundred Trekkies for a weekend, and every single con had its own unique feeling and fanbase.
I remember going to a convention in Philadelphia with my mom. She got food poisoning. I don’t remember a thing about the convention, but I can still see and feel the waiting area in the emergency room: dark wood on the walls, old magazines on the tables and chairs, ugly white and yellow linoleum tiles on the floor. I spent the entire night playing Tetris on my Game Boy and listening to The Final Cut on my Walkman, trying not to be too freaked out that my mom was in the hospital and we were a million miles from home. (“A million” was the default value for “a lot” when I was a kid.)
When I was 18 or 19, I learned that even if the microphone really looks like a Magic Wand massager, it’s probably not the smartest thing to tell the audience, “Wow! I’m talking into some sort of marital aid!”…especially in the middle of the Bible Belt.
I remember flying to New Jersey to do a convention with Marina Sirtis and playing head-to-head Tetris on our Game Boys the entire flight. I had a massive crush on her back then, and though the thought crossed my mind for most of the trip, I didn’t have the courage or the nerve to suggest strip head-to-head Tetris when we arrived. In my 16-year-old mind, it totally would have happened if I had just asked.
Once, in Oklahoma, I was a guest at a dinner where I sat with a few other Trek actors while some Boy Scouts served us. The menu had barbecued chicken, beef, and bologna.
“Wait,” I remember asking the kid, who was about the same age as me, “barbecued bologna?”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s center-cut.”
Neither one of us knew what that meant, but I’d grown up poor enough to know that bologna was not something I wanted to eat, even—no, especially—if it was barbecued. The problem, however, was that barbecued bologna was a local delicacy, and I was seated at the head table. It seemed like every bologna-loving eye in the hall was watching to see what I did.
I ate it, pretended to like it, and until I wrote this paragraph, nobody was the wiser.
At LosCon in Pasadena, right after I’d gotten my driver’s license and my first car (a totally bitchin’ 1989 Honda Prelude Si 4WS, which was one step better than Patrick Stewart’s and, therefore, the subject of much backstage teasing) I met my first science fiction idol, Larry Niven. The meeting went something like this:
Me: Oh my god, you’re Larry Niven!
Him: Oh my god, you’re Wesley on Star Trek!
Both: What?
Both: Can I have your autograph?!
Both: Yes!
Both: COOL!
I still have the copies of Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers that he signed for me.
They weren’t all good times, of course. While most of the cons were fantastic, run by guys who really cared about fans and wanted them to have a good time, others were pretty awful, run by complete crooks who wanted to take the fans’ money and get out of town before anyone figured out what they were up to. There are a couple of guys who still owe a lot of fans and actors money that we’ll never see.
One of those guys (in the pre-Internet days) convinced 15-year-old me that it was a “short drive” from Amarillo to Denton, Texas. Not having the good sense to look on a map for myself, I agreed to do two different cities in two different days. As the drive across Texas entered its third hour without a single recognizable sign of civilization other than Dairy Queen and Stuckey’s, I learned an important lesson about not ever trusting anyone.
On countless occasions, a promoter would tell fans one of us was coming to a show, take their money, and then claim that we’d canceled at the last minute. Of course, the only time any of us ever heard about the show was when irate fans wanted to know why we’d backed out of it.
For you damn kids today who have always had e-mail and the Internets and cell phones, it may be hard to picture a world where a Game Boy was high tech, but it’s where I came of age. The world seemed bigger then than it does today, and from time to time, I miss driving straight from Paramount to LAX on Friday after work and falling asleep on the red-eye somewhere over New Mexico, still wearing Wesley’s helmet hair.
It was a lot of work to travel the country every weekend, and over the years the Holiday Inns all bled together like a smear of Sharpie ink across the heel of my left hand after a marathon autograph session, but there were many more good times than bad. It was fun to see so many different places and people, all united by their love of this thing that I was lucky enough to be part of…at least until the alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die thing really got rolling.
There are still a few regional gaming cons and comic cons and Linux cons and cavecons every year, but not many purely Star Trek conventions anymore, as far as I can tell. Part of it has to be economics and how hard it is to compete with Creation, but I also blame The Powers That Be for making several years of sucktastic Trek that wasn’t worth watching, much less traveling to a Holiday Inn to celebrate.*
Over the last couple of years, I’ve begun attending conventions again, but now I go as a fan. I’m glad that I stopped going to cons exclusively for work, because otherwise I don’t think I would have ever remembered how much fun they are when you’re just there to geek out. Those of us who will cram thirteen of our friends into a hotel room for a weekend to tell awful puns and watch anime have a place to go where we will not only not be laughed at for dressing up but encouraged to do it (except the furries; those weirdos are on their own). We can invade a hotel for a weekend, pretend it’s like the cereal convention in Sandman, and recover enough hit points to go back and endure our real lives until the next one.
In fact, when the annual Grand Slam convention was held in Pasadena—practically my back yard—in 2006, I only spent one day there as a guest, signing autographs and posing for pictures. It was Sunday, typically a slow day for any convention, and I just didn’t feel like sitting at my little table when there was so much cool stuff going on all around me. So I packed up my stuff, trucked it back to my car, grabbed
my camera, and did something I haven’t done for years: I walked around the Grand Slam convention purely as a fan.
I listened to astronauts talk about doing for real what I used to do for fake, which was nothing new for me (I’ve had the great fortune to meet and talk with several different astronauts over the years) but is also something I will never, ever, take for granted. These guys have been telling the same stories for nearly forty years, but whenever they talk about blasting off, or looking back at Earth from orbit, they recreate those moments with such clarity and passion that they could have just stepped out of the capsule after splashdown.
When they were finished, I wandered over to the dealer’s room for a bit of shopping and reminiscing.
At one point, I walked past a booth that had lots of classic Star Wars toys. My eyes fell on an original model of Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter. I had that toy when I was a kid, and just looking at it was like those car commercials where the guy touches the car and gets this rapid-fire burst of images until he takes his hand off of it. I saw myself riding in the car to Kmart with my parents, hoping to buy a new Star Wars toy, playing with the toys on the gold shag carpeting in front of the brick fireplace in the house in Sunland, running around the back yard in the fading evening light in the summer of 1980. I piloted my TIE fighter, chasing my brother who piloted a snow speeder. (We weren’t afraid to combine Star Wars and He-Man, so why not combine Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back?)
I know I only stood there and looked at it for a few seconds, but it felt like several minutes. I like it when that happens. I restrained myself in ways that were not possible before I had a family to support, and bought only one thing: a little keychain that said “geek” on it. Then, I headed over to the main auditorium to listen to Ron Moore.
I knew Ron was coming to the show because I’d read it in his blog late the night before, and I hoped that I’d get a chance to talk with him one-on-one, but I didn’t expect that I’d run right into him backstage before he went on.
He lit up when he saw me. My prepared speech about how I didn’t know if he remembered me from 15 years ago flew out of my head. As he closed the distance between us, some of the things he did for my character flashed through my mind: “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” the first time I got to do something really different on the bridge; “The First Duty,” the first (and only) time we saw Wesley interact with his peers, act his age, and witness his angst-ridden humanity; and “Journey’s End,” the first (and only) time we saw Wesley as an adult, willing to take a principled stand against his father figure, Captain Picard. I felt a surge of emotion well up in my chest. Before I knew the words were coming out of my mouth, I said, “When we worked together on Next Generation, I was too young and too immature to appreciate what you gave me as an actor, and what you did for my character. I know it’s fifteen years late, but I wanted to thank you.”
He smiled warmly. “Thank you,” he said. “It really means a lot to me to hear that.”
I wanted so badly to tell him how I’d do anything in the world to be on Battlestar Galactica, but I couldn’t think of a way to say that without spoiling the moment or coming off like a schmuck, so I just congratulated him on his success, and asked him if he had as much creative control as he wanted.
“I do,” he said. “I’m very lucky to work with great people, and the network is very supportive of what we want to do. Of course, we battle, but they are always good battles that make the show better.”
He was called onto the stage before we could talk any longer, and as he stepped through the curtain to absolutely deafening applause, I felt happy. I’ve discovered that all I want to do as an artist (whether it’s acting, or writing, or whatever) is create something that matters to people. That is true for all the artists I know, particularly the writers. Like Joss Whedon, Ron has done that, and I felt happy for him in a weird I-was-just-talking-to-you way when the crowd went nuts for him.
When Ron was done, I headed out of the convention for some lunch. When I came back into the hall, someone said to me, “Frakes was talking smack about you on stage,” and I instantly knew that Jonathan told the “you used to be cool” story.* I laughed out loud and wished there was some way I could stop time long enough to visit with him before I left to pick up my kids.
I found Jonathan backstage and said, “I can tell, just by looking at you…”
“…That you used to be cool,” he said. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me.
“W,” he said, “it is so great to see you.”
“You too,” I said.
“Are you on your way out, or are you hanging around?” he asked.
“I have to go pick up my kids,” I said.
“How are they?”
“They’re great. They’re teenagers now, you know.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Man, we are getting so old!” I always look for that impish glint I loved when we worked together. It was still in his eye.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“Mostly,” I said. “You?”
“I am great, man.”
We talked as long as we could, about kids, and houses, and Star Trek and work and wives and all the things that I never could have talked about when I was younger. I just adore Jonathan, and I was genuinely sad when I saw that I had to leave to get the kids.
“I gotta go, Jonny,” I said, “and I hope that it won’t be a year again before I get to see you, but I’m pretty sure it will be.”
“You look great, W,” he said. Then he pointed at the huge screen that made up the back of the stage, where Avery Brooks talked about his time as Captain Sisko. “But not as good as Avery.”
Avery Brooks did look great. He looked cooler than Shaft and more stylish than anyone else in the convention hall.
“He’s really fucking up the cool curve for us, isn’t he?” I said.
“Ah, don’t worry, W,” he said with a grin. “I can tell just by looking at you that you used to be cool.”
“You too,” I said.
Star Trek has changed a lot in twenty years, and so have the conventions, but one thing remains unchanged in two decades: As a speaker and as a fan, taking that Friday red-eye sounds like a pretty cool thing to do.
_______________
* This story is in chapter 7 of Just A Geek.
see a little light
Bob Mould’s voice came out of my computer’s speakers—“Listen, there’s music in the air. I hear your voice, coming from somewhere”—as I dug through a cabinet in my office, beneath my desk.
I sensed movement behind me, and felt the presence of another person in the room. I turned and saw Ryan standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m looking for my GURPS Horror book,” I said.
He came into the room and crouched down on the floor next to me. “That GURPS seems cool.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s really fun, and was one of my favorite systems when I was your age.” I thought for a second. “Wait. I mean, when I was even younger than you.”
Goddamn, I feel old.
I pulled out a stack of graphic novels, thinking that maybe my GURPS books were behind them, and carefully set them on the floor between us.
Ryan pointed to V for Vendetta, which was on top. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think the book is better than the movie.”
“It usually is.”
“They should have kept in a lot of stuff that they cut, and they sort of changed the entire meaning of the story with the screenplay.”
I dug deeper in my cabinet, up to my elbows in a lifetime of geeky literature.
“Yeah, I agree with you, and so does Alan Moore.”
My book was not there. I sighed heavily, exasperated, defeated.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I can’t find the book, and I’m pretty sure that means it’s in the garage somewhere.”
“Oh man,” he said. “That’s like -10 to your search roll
right there.” I was too frustrated to laugh, but it put a smile on my face, regardless. I don’t think there’s a parent in the world who would get too frustrated to enjoy a glimpse of himself as it flashes across his son’s face. “Yeah, -10, if I’m lucky.” I picked up my books, and as I began to put them back on my shelf, one of them caught my eye.
“Hey. I think you’d like this.”
I handed him Vertigo’s First Offenses.
“It’s a few first issues from classic Vertigo titles, like Fables, The Invisibles, Sandman Mystery Theater—”
“You gave me this when you got it a few months ago. I really liked it.”
“Oh? Awesome.” I set it on the shelf.
“Yeah, Fables was great.”
I put more of my books back: Watchmen, a few Hellblazer, the entire collection of Preacher, and several hardback Sandman.
Bob Mould finished and Michael Stipe replaced him. “Let’s put our heads together and start a new country up. Our father’s father’s father tried, erased the parts he didn’t like…”
“Ryan, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but…” My throat had suddenly become dry and I stopped to swallow. “I think you’re mature enough to have full access to my comic and graphic novel library.”
“…What?”
“You appreciate the art, you appreciate the writing, and—most importantly—you appreciate the value these books inherently have, as well as their value to me. If you’d like to read them, I’d be happy to share them with you.”
I looked at him, and he said nothing. I didn’t expect it to be as important or significant to him as it was to me, and that was okay. Part of being in high school is not attaching importance or significance to moments like this while attaching them to other things—like what exactly it meant when the cute girl from chemistry said your shirt was “funny.” What kind of funny did she mean? Why did she twirl her pen in her hand when she talked to me? Did that mean something?
“Wow. Thanks! Does that include…” he spoke gravely, “The Collection?”
Oh. I guess he did understand the importance and significance of the moment after all.