The only person who asked me out in high school was my AP Lit teacher, Mrs. Mullins. In order to avoid any pedo bear accusations, I will clarify that she didn’t technically ask me out, but was simply an emissary for one of her former students, Danny, who for some reason still showed up at school after hours. So fine, the pedo bear references are apt.
He graduated a year before me, and would come to Book Club meetings that Mrs. Mullins sponsored. I was usually in attendance since I never caught on to the whole teen mom trend, and along with a few others, would pass the time by watching Danny solve a Rubix Cube in under one minute. In addition to having an unnatural relationship with a plastic toy, Danny rode his bike everywhere (Mormon), wore a fly decal on the right lens of his glasses at all times, and was fluent in Klingon.
I took a playful interest in him, because he was different and, as someone who still carried a Big Bird lunch box around, I felt I could relate in some way. There was nothing even remotely romantic there, just a recognition of our shared unabomber potential. I think I made my first (and last) mistake when I asked him to teach me Klingon and like a dumb ass, followed it up by flashing my Vulcan salute, which I’m sure impressed no one but myself.
Weeks later on my birthday, he presented me with my very own Klingon Dictionary. To this day I don’t know how he even knew it was my birthday, considering that we only saw each other for 20 minutes after school in a group setting and I certainly didn’t make a spectacle out of myself on that day, knowing that the general response would be, “And?”. He made sure that I was aware of the fact that he rode his bike to four different book stores just to acquire a copy and I thanked him, wondering how long it would be until he killed me and started wearing my skin as a coat. He even expected me to learn phrases so we could talk to one another and at future meetings, he would quiz me to the point where I wished someone had brought a gun to school just to get me out of my obligation to unintentionally give him a raging hard-on.
So, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when days later, my teacher pulled me out of class to ask me out on a date. Of course, under normal circumstances, this would be cause for alarm, but this involved an adult male voluntarily coming back to high school while devoting himself simultaneously to Joseph Smith and Spock, so it was par for the course. Since she was my teacher, I thought that she needed to talk to me about an assignment, but when she asked, “What do you think of Danny?”, I wanted to punch her in the cunt and run away. Instead, I said something vague like, “He’s nice”, and apparently, that was her cue to continue to ask me if I would be interested in going out with him sometime. I paused, and all of the reasons why I had to say no flashed before me. First of all, I was graduating soon and would be leaving town, I didn’t feel comfortable enough to bring guys home, especially if they rolled up on a Huffy, and oh yeah, odds are he was building a spaceship out of soda cans, foam noodles, and masking tape so he could take me to his Talarian Homeworld. In one of the most bizarre moments of my life, I almost said yes because I didn’t want to hurt my teacher’s feelings, but instead settled on, “I don’t date.”
Technically, I wasn’t lying. I didn’t refuse because I held myself to some backwards standard of high school normalcy, but because the timing was all kinds of wrong for me and at 17, I couldn’t see myself dating someone who wore pressed Dockers on a daily basis. I regret to say that I never saw Danny again after that, and while I used to feel bad thinking that he assumed I rejected him based on his…unconventional lifestyle, I now realize that to him, he was simply living within his self-defined borders of normal.
This is why the recent barrage of self proclaimed nerdiness from those who, like 7 million other people saw Star Trek over the weekend, is so ridiculous. It’s like calling yourself a foodie because you chase pretzels with a handful of chocolate chips or believing that you can be a model because you look good in low light. I think, yeah, Star Trek fandom was originally the quintessential guarantee that you would spend the rest of your life fucking your Real Doll, but after 40 years, it’s finally mainstream. All it took were a few men hot enough to soak some panties and/or boxer briefs, explosions, and the quirky antics of Simon Pegg.
I’m happy to see that Star Trek is finally universally acceptable and dare I say cool, not only because the series is fairly progressive in its portrayal of women and men, but because it is my firm hope that somewhere out there, a lifelong Star Trek fan can now feel secure enough to ask someone out without making them want to shit their pants.
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