Hawaiian Reeves

Hawaiian has decided that he could definitely use a bit less screen time these days.

Between the countless hours I spend bonding with my laptop and the too many days of my life occupied with surfing channels instead of waves, I’m starting to wonder what exists of me that hasn’t come from my television, been on my television, or will be on my television if I just give it enough time. (Before I get any deeper into this, I just need to give a Hawaiian-style shout out to my girl Melissa, who was rocking some heels, cargo pants, and a fantastic ass at a bar on Friday night. It was, as always, a pleasure.)

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post…

So yes, I’m pretty sure I might be too heavily influenced by my TV, but there might be some reciprocity involved here because parts of my life have been appearing onscreen for as long as I can remember. Take, for example,my relationship with The Wonder Years. Not only did my entanglement with my own Winnie Cooper find itself onscreen, but all events in our relationship were echoed onscreen with about a six-month lag. Just enough time for someone to watch, script it, film it, and add in commericals. And yes, gay boys can have Winnie Coopers. That is, until they become the ball boy for the high school soccer team and get a “World’s Best Ball Boy” plaque to put on their walls. I think that’s really the point at which Kevin Arnold and I started living different lives. Although, Fred Savage and I did go to college together, and he did once ask in a drunken blur if he could have the empty paper plate my nachos had occupied so that he and a Senator’s daughter could set it on fire.

Good times.

So yeah…  my life on TV.  And it didn’t stop there.  In fact, there were episodes of Will & Grace that so closely mirrored my own experience with my own Grace that people would actually call me and ask if I had submitted a story idea.  I still can’t watch the Old-Fashioned Piano Party episode without having flashbacks to a birthday that left more than one person in tears. And then, of course, just like with my own Winnie, once my Grace and I parted ways, the show started to go downhill.  I mean, I don’t know what delusions those showrunners live with, but there’s no way Grace would ever be in a healthy relationship.

But now… now I’m being watched at times and in places that I thought were safe, and it’s all showing up on Gray’s Anatomy.  And despite thinking my most intimate moments of shame were, in fact, quite private, watching George petition Meredith for her attention on Sunday night was just painful.  And all too familiar.  I did all of that in the fall with someone to whom I was mostly invisible and it was disastrous, so I’m just going to give George a little heads up on how all of that could play out.

So George, here’s how it goes… you tell Meredith that you’re not her usual type, that you’re faithful, not an asshole, and won’t stop loving her. And then you hookup and she says that of course it will happen again.  But then she avoids you.  And then she stands you up like six times, but then she calls you on Christmas morning when you’re pretty much over it all.  And you get excited again until you get stood up.  Again.  And then you get over it.  Again.  And two months later, you’ll see that she writes something not nice about your weight in her blog.

So I know it’s only February, George, but now is the time that you say April Fool’s.  Because you know you’re always going to care just a little bit, no matter how hard you try not to, but she doesn’t need to know that.  Not at all.  As a friend of mine put it, “You’re too good to beg for someone else’s affection,” so don’t start doing it now.  And if you can keep yourself from starting, I’ll try to make myself stop.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Dating, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.