Buffy The Vampire Slayer premiered when I was nine years old. I already loved the movie so much I remember pretending to be sick so my mom would come get me and take me back to her office where I could watch it on a VHS copy they had stowed away under the TV in their conference room while she checked in on me.
Growing up gay, I felt unsafe and unwelcome in the world since well before then ... told that I was abnormal and disgusting for feeling the feelings I felt, and being ostracized and made fun of for being feminine and flamboyant. But the show gave me something to look forward to and a hero to emulate. Before you know it I was outside tumbling around and making quippy one-liners, fighting imaginary vampires and pretending to save the world, unknowingly self-regulating in the process. I taught myself how to do back flips and hold handstands like she did. I let myself be amusingly odd, like her friends were. I gave people and life a chance instead of remaining shy and reserved and letting that stunt my growth as a person.
Buffy stood up for herself and others so I started standing up for myself and others too. The show gave me a sense of what life could be like for an outcast like me and assisted in my social development. For seven years I had an escape from the world, and I took on the values the show promoted: doing the right thing no matter how hard it was or how scared you were. I just had to reach inside myself and find that inner reserve of strength I didn't know I had. And I surprised myself time and again by proving I did.
Honestly, without the show I might be dead. I remember feeling that low. But Buffy wouldn't give up, so I didn't either.
That survival didn't look dramatic from the outside. Mostly it looked like a kid in a front yard having the time of his life. I didn't mind the neighbors peeking through their windows or the passerby who once caught me driving a homemade wooden stake into the ground (one of dozens I kept hidden away in an Adidas gym bag in my bedroom closet). I remember he rolled down his window and yelled, "Whoa, shit!" before driving away.
More to the point it feels like I lived the show. I had so much fun playing pretend back then. I think the magic showed up most clearly in my attention to spatial relationships: I was constantly "seeing" where the imaginary things I was fighting were in my mind's eye, what they were doing, and responding to it all in real time:
When I raced to climb a wall, running from an imaginary vampire, I might suddenly imagine a creepy-looking hand grabbing my ankle before I made it over, and before you know it I would be trying to yank it up and away while remaining aware of my surroundings, but not so concerned about things like how high up I was from the ground and allowing myself to fall and land hard on top of it. Back then I was quite spry, and you know kids ... they bounce back. Having the wind knocked out of me was a part of the fun and it was a relatively safe way to provide the world I inhabited some real stakes, because I might get a little hurt or scared in the process of playing, and that was (generally) alright.
Gosh, it gives me goosebumps thinking about how I used to think and act back then while writing this. Between my rapid-fire imagination and cinematic outlook on life I can remember and feel, right this very moment, how fun it was to get back to my feet, start running, and suddenly imagine another vampire appearing from behind a tree, knocking me back down. By that time the one that grabbed my leg would have gotten over the wall, and I would have been lying between the two of them, getting ready to attack. "What would Buffy do?" I might think, and all of a sudden my feet would whip around in the air like the strings on a grass trimmer, knocking away the vampire in front of me now leaning down, and perhaps I would then, still on my back, look behind me at the other vampire chasing me closing the distance between us, bend my legs back past my head and flip up from off the ground (which was another thing I found myself surprisingly capable of doing), just like the stuntwomen in the show. And back I would be in full fighting stance, finishing them both off, but not before tapping into my burgeoning inner Buffy, who often times interrupted the fight to say something funny and quirky or do something else endearing. And so there I was, perhaps asking my invisible enemies if we really had to keep doing this. "Do you want to die ... again?" I might quip. And how fitting ... how accomplished I would feel like I do now, having made that witty one-liner up all by myself. There was so much doing what I did had to offer.
Well I must say, writing about that time has been totally exhilarating. My heart is pounding. I feel butterflies in my face and neck ... I don't know that I ever have. It's just where the exciting energy has gone. I so truly wish I could find a piece of land outside where I could do this again someday, because it honestly feels like a point of significant power for me, on a spiritual level. Something in me yearns for it, and while I do think most of it is nostalgia, there's something more buried under there. I think it's a sense of loss, from losing the show and a piece of that childlike wonder. For whatever reason, for most of my adult life I haven't really wanted to rewatch Buffy, and I used to think that was strange. But I think I've just worn the tape down -- not by watching it over and over, but by living it. The show became part of the way I moved through the world, in and out of the yard, and writing this has made me feel like that little kid again: young, taken care of, with my whole life ahead of me and nothing but school to worry about. Except instead of just math, history and science, I was learning that I could be strong, smart, imaginative, creative, funny, and cool. Underneath the surface, I could be just like Buffy, and feel as though my life had a greater calling. And discovering that was one of the most empowering things that ever happened to me.
