Trek08: Preface
Jan 02Paula.
Not the prettiest name for a high-school crush. Because of the opening “P,” it sort of explodes from the mouth in an unappealing way, then becomes the verbal vomit of the “-aula,” so it makes a sound like someone spitting in your face, then barfing on your shoes.
Nevertheless. Paula was a crush, my crush, during the spring of my sophomore year in high school, when our all-boys institution finally satisfied the desires of ten of its gayest students and started a drama club. Our debut production was West Side Story, and Paula was a dowdy, blousy Maria with not a speck of hispanic blood in her body. Seriously–she was PAINTED SLIGHTLY YELLOW USING MAKEUP.
Which naturally has you thinking, “What does a young Matt see in such an odd choice for a crush?”
That’s an easy one. The day I first saw her, she was wearing a Star Trek T-shirt. Not any old Star Trek T-shirt, but one depicting the cast of the 1966-69 series, or The Original Series, as most nerds know it.
And that was literally her only virtue, as it turned out. Of course, this took me months to figure out, during which time I fantasized about us cuddling together on a couch in some imaginary living room or den, our heads touching tenderly as we thrilled to the exploits of Kirk, Spock and Bones on the flickering television before us.
It’s not that I didn’t like, y’know, HOT CHICKS as a teenager. It’s just that to my tiny and fragile mind, the idea of a GIRL who liked STAR TREK trumped everything else. The mere concept was literally unimaginable to me, like a horse piloting the space shuttle.
It was not the first idiotic situation Star Trek got me into, nor would it be the last.
