I am a New Kids on the Block fan. Or I was. Err, I mean I am again. Or I am still… It’s all very confusing really.
I think I was around 11 years old when I became obsessed with New Kids. My friends and I talked about them incessantly, eating the details of their lives like vitamins and investing untold hours in concocting elaborate fantasies wherein we would somehow find them, and once we did, they woudl recognize us as their soul mates, and we’d live happily ever after.
Actually, to say that was a “fantasy” is to put too adult a spin on it. It was more like a little music video in my head… shy smiling (me), giggling (them), background music that said everything I couldn’t, and at the end we’d all walk off down the street into the early evening dusk as the camera pulled back – me, my best girlfriend, and the 5 of them. Heading off to…do…something… and it’s this blank spot in all the day dreams that most gets me now. Had I actually had the opportunity to meet them, I wouldn’t have had ANY idea of what to do with them. And when I look at them now, I get a little embarrassed on behalf of that naïve girl I was then.
I look at them today and I think “NOW, I would know what to do with them.” And I immediately get embarrassed on another level because I feel like I’m having lascivious thoughts about children. Of course, they aren’t children, nor were they children the first time around, but I was a child, and so I projected my child’s perspective and child-like fantasies onto them…
So now I don’t know how to relate to them. I don’t know what role they are to play in my life. I’m past the age of being obsessed with bands or movie stars. I don’t have “favorite” singers or bands, I am mostly just a slave to wha’ts on the radio. But that’s not how I understand New Kids on the Block. They aren’t just band responsible for that song on the radio. They were a movement, they were an obsession. The music was the vehicle for the empire that was New Kids on the Block.
Having them back kinda fucks with my head. Part of me wants them to bring me back to that childhood state, a time where a boy band could easily be the center of my entire being. A time when I had ability to be happily entertained for hours by reading about them, listening to them, watching their videos, and day dreaming about meeting them.
But I can’t go back, because its been more than 20 years. I’m all grown up and I see the world through grown up eyes.
Now, when I remember that music video inspired scene of us meeting in a pizza place and walking off into the sunset, it quickly transitions to something between a lifetime movie and a softcore porn in which a young girl learns what happens when you pick up 5 guys in a pizza place.
Now when I try to entertain myself with a fantasy about meeting them, I’m stopped by my grown up voice which says “this is a waste of time. You’ll never meet them. Instead, lets fantasize about this tax lawyer from E-harmony. He’s probably more attractive in person, and you’ll learn to love hearing about his passion for outdoor sports.”
When I look at New Kids on the Block today, (as am I am right now on The Today Show,) they are obscured by veils of what they were, and of what was.
I am watching them in their coordinated outfits, doing their coordinated dance steps, and this little voice in my head says “they’re kinda lame,” and the disloyalty shocks me. I prayed at the alter of KNOTB for my entire adolescence, to not continue to do so now feels like the worst kind of treachery– to them, and to myself. To turn my back on them, would be to turn my back on myself.
But I’m just not the kinda girl who worships at the alters of famous people anymore.
To make it more confusing, I’m not the only one whose changed – they have too. 4 of the 5 have kids. 4 of the 5 have been, or are currently married. And they look older, better in some cases, but older nonetheless. They speak differently and carry themselves differently. So, if i try to relate to them as I did 20 years ago, I’m fantasizing about stealing someone’s husband…
But over analyzing aside, I do enjoy seeing them again. I enjoy the emotional reactions, disconcerting though they may be, that they evoke. Because let’s face it, not many things evoke those kinds of emotions these days. And maybe I should try to reconnect a little with that 13 year old girl who clipped every article about them and saved them in a scrapbook, rejoicing in each of their achievements as if they had something to do with me. Because that can be a fun way to live. And being a grown up can be kinda lonely and a little boring sometimes.
OMG –hang on - I just made the connection that the 1 member of the group who hasn’t been married, and doesn’t have kids, is Jon Knight. He was my favorite. You know what thought raced through my mind before I could stop it? “There’s still a chance.” J
