My Thoughts on This Website

By Matt

I always wanted a tree-house. Who didn't? If the girls wanted to play in doll houses - boys wanted a tree-house. Trees and branches being what they are, a tree-house was near impossible to create so then it became a fort. In the back-yard a couple scrap pieces of plywood, a make-shift lean-to and you had a fort. If you couldn't afford that, maybe you used the dog-house or a shed or SOMETHING to create a place you could call your own.

When I was growing up I had a "fort" that was built for me. It was a paper-shack provided by "The Seattle Times" and I was "shack manager" which meant I had a KEY to it. We had foam on the benches, porn hidden behind slats, a huge battery - with a small light - we even spent the night in the place one time.

What IS it about growing up and seeking out your own space? Is it as natural as your first time wanting the "adult meal" and not the happy meal (though you knew you were going to miss out on the prize).

If you didn't have a "fort" a "shack" a "tree-house" (and even if you did), you eventually grew up and needed a REAL place with a roof over your head. That place became your "buddy's house." For Jason, Eric and Clint it became Paul's Basement. I would put my name in there, too, but I was a late comer in the group. But I had my equivalent: Nate's recreation room.

This was a place of learning where you could "hang out" with your friends. Raid their refrigerator when the parents weren't around. Discuss subjects like girls, sex, movies, sex, comic books, sex, sports, sex, school, sex, music and, of course, sex. If you were lucky, you got to not only "hang out" but you got to "crash" at their place, too. Nothing like sleeping on a basement floor (finally passing out at 3 a.m. after watching the first three "Star Trek" movies). Or trying to figure out, to the best of your abilities, if "Stairway to Heaven" played backwards did say "six, six, six" or "my sweet Satan" or was it "my sweet Santa?"

This sanctuary of a friend's basement enabled one to purchase an album, but then call the others to come listen (thus saving them their precious $$). It was a game room (Pong anyone? Atari anyone?). It was a confessional, a padded cell, a torture chamber and "love nest" (sometimes all at the same time). It was a concert hall, a recording studio, a movie theater, a science lab ("Now, to get the Playboy channel, you just have to break into the cable box here, move this wire here…"). Let's face it…It was life on uncomfortable couches, bean-bag chairs and shag carpeting.

My hope with this site is that we create, to the best of our abilities (and our memories can allow us), another sanctuary of ideas and passions, thoughts and emotions. Where we can pull out of our subconscious those memories that, looking back now, seem to have an amber haze, a wonderful glow, a quaintness, a sweetness about them that they didn't have when we were in the throes of our teenage angst. You know, maybe at the time it meant something to have the gate-fold version of Marillion's "Script for a Jester's Tear" but now…