Why Dark Shadows?I've written books about it, created Web-site tributes to it, attended conventions…. Sometimes it seems to me that an awfully big chunk of my free time has been taken up by a TV show, and let's admit it, not exactly the greatest show of all time.
Don't get me wrong; I love Dark Shadows. It was way ahead of its time, and that's one of the things that makes it a classic. Because the cast and crew were reaching so high, sometimes they fell a little short, which adds to the charm. Sometimes it's truly scary, which was the intended effect. Other times a flubbed line or a missing prop or an over-the-top performance makes it laugh-out-loud, campy fun.
Over the years it's been difficult to explain to my friends why Dark Shadows has been such a big part of my life. That even played a tiny part in the breakup of my most serious relationship so far, last year. In the "special thanks" part of my most recent book, The Dark Shadows Collectibles Book, I thanked my partner "for trying to understand this whole Dark Shadows thing." In the end, he didn't really understand. But I don't blame him for that; it took me a while to figure it out myself.
My best friend, David, does understand to a degree. He's got his own soap opera to obsess over: The Bold and the Beautiful (click here to check out his sassy comments about that show at his Web site), so he kind of gets it. But the other day he asked me to tell him again: "Now…why Dark Shadows?" And I realized that was something that was missing from my own Web site: the heart and soul reason that I do love this show. So, here goes….
I grew up in a little town in Kansas, called Coffeyville. I was…well, a bit of a nerd. I wore thick glasses, was physically awkward, and loved books more than baseball. I was that stereotypical kid who always got picked last on the playground. I couldn't quote NFL statistics like the rest of the boys my age, but I did know the words to dozens of Broadway show tunes.
And sure, like any other boy my age, I had that famous Farrah Fawcett-Majors
poster on my bedroom door…but already I knew I was more turned on by
her Six Million Dollar Man hubby, Lee Majors.
Like any blossoming gay kid in a small town, I retreated into a world of my imagination. And one of the fixtures of that world was a big, spooky house called Collinwood.
I was born in 1966, the same year Dark Shadows debuted, so I wasn't old enough to see the show during its original run. (It went off the air in 1971.) But as I collected TV-related paperbacks, I found a copy of "Victoria Winters," the second in a set of 32 novels based on the show.
I must've been about 10 years old when I picked up that book, and I'd never even heard of Dark Shadows. But just a few pages in, I was hooked. The story centered on Victoria, a young, beautiful governess at a spooky mansion called Collinwood. Vicki was an orphan, and she had come to Collinwood to discover who she was; she hoped she was related to the Collins family, but she wasn't sure. When that book ended, we still didn't know who Vicki's parents were…and that question compelled me to find the rest of the books in the series.
I
t took me a few years, but I finally collected the whole
set of DS novels. Their distinctive olive-green spines with black, block-letter
titles were easy to pick out in the dusty bookshelves of Coffeyville's used
book stores and church thrift shops.
I was disappointed to find out that Vicki never found the truth about her past. She simply vanished. In one book she was still the governess, and in the next, a character named Maggie had taken her place at Collinwood. But still, I loved the quest, searching for those books. And reading them was a great escape. I dreamed of living in the spooky, big house that was pictured on the cover of some of the books. Eventually I even found a few Dark Shadows comic books, and those were fun to read, too.
Dark Shadows was all mine. No one else my age had ever heard of it. There was nobody to talk to about it, and in a way I liked that. My love for Dark Shadows was just one of many secrets I kept buried when I was a kid. Maybe I identified a little bit with Barnabas Collins, who had to hide the fact he was a vampire, just like I had to hide the fact I was realizing I was gay. Or maybe Victoria's uncertainty seemed familiar; she wasn't sure who she really was. Neither was I.
As I got older, I still didn't feel comfortable being "out" about who I was--not to my friends, or family members, or co-workers. So, I did a lot of self-editing. I didn't talk about my love life (not that there was that much to talk about). And more times than I can count, something amusing would occur to me that I wouldn't say, because it either dealt with my sexuality, or it might offer a clue that would give away my secret.
I'm a little sad to admit that that's how my life was until my mid-20s. And interestingly enough, Dark Shadows--the world that had been a refuge for me as a child--helped me realize it was ok to step out into the light.
I rediscovered Dark Shadows in 1989, when I was 23. I was in college, and years earlier I'd left those paperbacks and comics behind at my parents' house. At a video store, I recognized an old "friend" -- Barnabas Collins on the sleeve of a tape. I rented it, to get a chance after all those years to finally see the show that had inspired the books I'd loved so much.
When I got home, it was a thrill to watch the characters I'd read about spring to life. By modern standards, it wasn't exactly great television: The pace was slow, the sets were obviously put together on a limited budget, and some of the actors had trouble remembering their lines. But there was something almost hypnotically magical about the show. Just like the books had hooked me when I was a kid, the TV show really drew me in.
At the end of the tape, there was an ad with an address for the official Dark Shadows fan club. I wrote and got a list of all the fan-produced newsletters and books that were being published at the time. I ordered a few of them and became aware of "fandom." To my surprise, I wasn't the only person in the world who remembered Dark Shadows…. There were even annual conventions: Dark Shadows Festivals in Los Angeles and New York City.
In 1993, I attended a Dark Shadows Festival at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. I'd been to New York briefly, twice before, but this visit I'd decided to really get a look at the city.
I'd made a friend named Max on the Internet, and we decided to be roommates at the Marquis. Max lived in L.A., but he'd spent a lot of time in New York, so he knew his way around and he showed me the sights. My fondest memory is of a trip we took one night to Greenwhich Village. We went to a piano bar called Marie's Crisis. It was my first visit to a New York gay bar, and I was a bit overwhelmed. The pianist played Broadway show tunes…but unlike when I was a kid, I wasn't the only one who knew the words. Everyone sang along. I got goose-bumps standing in a room with 50 or 60 gay men, all singing "Somewhere…there's a place for us…" It didn't take a ton of bricks to make me realize that place was right where I was.
That weekend, at the Festival, for the first time I didn't edit myself. If something funny popped into my head, and it happened to give away my sexuality, well, what did I have to loose? I said it. And everyone around didn't shun me; they laughed. It was my first tentative step out of the closet. I acted like myself, and I was accepted. And spending that weekend in New York with Max was like a little preview of what it might feel like to have a boyfriend, and to live in a city. It was heady stuff….
When I got back home to Kansas, my mind was reeling. I still wasn't quite ready to come out, but it was finally occurring to me that there was life outside the world I'd lived in so far. Within a couple years, I found the courage to pack a couple of suitcases and move to New York. I didn't have a job… I didn't have a long-term place to stay…. But I knew I had to try.
I've been a lucky Dark Shadows fan. I've written several books about the show, and in the process become friends with some of the cast members. I've collaborated on a writing project with Dan Ross, the author of the DS paperback series. And earlier this year I finally got to visit the house used as Collinwood, with Nancy Barrett--the actress who played Carolyn. (You can read about all these DS adventures here on my Web site.)
One of the books I wrote, "Big Lou," is the biography of Louis Edmonds, who played Roger Collins. I met Louis soon after moving to New York. I approached him with the idea of writing his biography--an idea he loved. And we never specifically discussed whether we'd talk about the fact he was gay, but it was just part of the book, from our first interview. I couldn't imagine telling his life story without talking about the great loves of his life, both of whom were men.
"Big Lou" took about a year to write. And just like I was telling Louis's life story without holding back, I began telling my own that way too. I came out to my friends and family members.
One of the greatest thrills I've had in my career has been reading fan mail about "Big Lou." So many people--gay and straight--have written letters and e-mails to Louis and to me, thanking us for telling his life story bravely--for treating his sexuality very matter-of-factly. And every year, people come up to one or both of us at the Festivals and say the same thing in person. Sometimes they turn out to be gay and visiting the city from a small town, just like I did.
You can't say a story ends "happily ever after," while it's still in progress, and my story is. It took a little while, but eventually I found a great apartment, and got an editing job at a magazine, and even eventually fell in love. Drew and I were together for about a year and a half, and as I said, among the things we just weren't able to work out was the fact that he never quite understood what Dark Shadows meant to me…that it had been such a pivotal factor in my life…that somehow, thanks to this silly old soap opera, I found out who I was and where I was meant to be.
But I think things bode well for me and the current guy in my life. On our second date, instead of flowers Tom brought a very special gift: a well-worn copy of a Dark Shadows comic he'd had since he was a kid.