Wil Wheaton - Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir

JUST A GEEK is dedicated to Anne,

then and now, the other half of my heartbeat.

STILL JUST A GEEK is dedicated to the memory of

Andrew Hackard and his Red Pen of Doom.

I am not a morning person, but I am awake at 8:00 a.m., so my dog, Ferris, can get a walk before its too hot. This dog means so much to my family and me, we will do anything for her. We do not know that cancer is slowly growing in her belly, and that our time with her, never long enough with any beloved pet, will be cut short in just a few years.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. Thats strange. All my friends know not to call me before ten, and even then theyre probably going to talk to voice mail.

I pull it out of my pocket and look at the tiny, glowing numbers. Its my manager.

I flip it open, loving, as always, that the motion Ive made my whole life in my imagination is now a real thing that I do when I answer my phone.

Hey, whats up?

Youre up early! I was expecting your voice mail.

Its gonna be bullshit degrees today, so I got up early to walk Ferris before it was too hot.

Tell Ferris shes a very good dog.

She knows, but Ill remind her. I scratch her behind her ears. Bearris, Chris Black says youre a very good dog.

He chuckles and says, Entertainment Weekly just called! They requested a review copy of your book, and they said they were planning a feature on you!

Holy shit! That is amazing! My book, Just a Geek, has just been published. Its selling... not very well. The indie publisher and I dont really see eye to eye on the promotion of it. They want to focus hard on the Star Trek audience I believe will already be likely to buy it, and I want to let a wider audience into my world. We both agree the audience Ive built with my blog and website will absolutely buy it, but this is the only thing we agree on. In retrospect, they were probably right and I was probably wrong, but at this moment, I am frustrated and beginning to feel defeated. Any chance I have to touch mainstream entertainment and its audience is a tremendous opportunity that I will not let go.

The sooner we get it to them, the better. Do you have any authors copies at home?

I do, I say. Im only a block from my house, not even halfway through Ferriss normal walk, but Im turning around and heading back to the house.

Do you think you can drive one down here to me? Im going to be in their building this afternoon and I can drop it off.

I can absolutely do that. Even then, it was all about the hustle.

I take Ferris home and tell my wife the good news. Then I walk into my living room, where our kids are on the PlayStation, and I tell them the good news.

We are all so excited. This really could be the big break Ive been waiting for, the big break Ive been hoping against hope will materialize out of this book.

A quick shower and I grab a book out of my personal supply from the publisher. My face somberly looks back at me from the cover. I wonder if anyone gets the symbolism I was going for when I deliberately put half my face in faint shadow. I wonder if Ill ever get to talk about that on late-night television. For the first time in a while, I feel like its happening for me.

I drop the book with my manager and wait until next weeks EW hits the stands.

Whiner of the Week is how they title their review.

Its accompanied by an illustration of me making a pouty face. Two enormous tears explode from the corners of my eyes.

In his new book, Just a Geek, Wil Wheaton endlessly laments that he used to be an actor when I was a kid.

Thats it. Thats the whole review, if thats what they want to call it. Its barely twenty words, an afterthought tucked into the corner of a page thats filled with fawning mentions of whoever is popular at the moment.

I feel like Ive been punched in the stomach, like all the wind has been knocked out of me.

I look up at Anne, my wife, who is sitting across the small breakfast table from me. I feel so humiliated and embarrassed. Did this person even read my book? I will search my manuscript for the phrase they used and variants of it. It shows up three or four timeshardly endlessly.

Worse than the factual error, is that really all they got out of it? Do they know or even care how much this hurts me?

I take everything personally. I am so insecure, so afraid the things my father has told me my whole life about myselfthat Im unworthy, Im a fraud, Im unlovable, nobody really likes meare all true.

Im so sorry, my wife says. Thats not true, and you know its not true.

Im not sure I do know its not true, though. (Note that, now, I know its not true.)

Im never talking to Entertainment Weekly again, I swear. Five or so years later, I will relish telling them to go fuck themselves when they want me to participate in a special Star Trek issue.

They will try to blame the entire thing on an intern who isnt there anymore. I tell them maybe that doesnt make things better the way they think it does. I pass. The issue comes out. Fans love it. Im not in it. I claim the Pyrrhic victory.

I save the magazine with my review. I hope that, someday, I will show them. I will show them all!

Years go by and I dont show anybody anything, but I keep writing and going on auditions that I never book. I begin to accept that, maybe, Im not going to be an actor. I begin to accept and admit to myself that it wasnt my dream, as much as it was my mothers dream, that she sacrificed my childhood, and our relationship, to pursue.

Then, in 2009, Bill Prady calls me and asks if Ill play a delightfully evil version of myself on his show, The Big Bang Theory.

My life changes in an instant, and for the next ten years, I have a recurring role on the most popular sitcom in America, one of the most popular in the world.

And just as importantto me, at leastI keep writing. Eventually, I start a blog post that turns into a novella that turns into a semiautobiographical novel.

When that novel is as close to finished as Im ever going to get it, I give it to my literary agent, who shops it.

It is universally rejected. Nobody is even a little bit interested in it. I am devastated. My deepest fears of failure begin to spiral.

But one of the editors is a fan of the book I wrote in 2004, Just a Geek, and he has this idea to revisit and annotate it.

We decide that well call it Still Just a Geek until we can come up with something good...

... so at this point Im open to suggestions on a title.

(waits for rimshot or crickets)

In 2020, I opened up Just a Geek for the first time in at least ten years. I was immediately confronted with homophobia and a real gross male gaze, and I was reminded that this voice is mine. It wasnt a pretty realization, seeing this ugly side of me (and that it was ugliness that I put out into the world, as opposed to the darkness that was inside me, which I kept from the world). To say I was horrified and embarrassed would be an understatement. To say I wasnt sure I wanted to interact with this side of Past Wilor, really, most sides of Past Wilwould be a lie. But my editor insisted I needed to show everything and respond to it all.

Im going to have a lot of notes, I warned my editor.

Thats the idea, he said.

So I got to work. And... it wasnt great.

Many times during the process, I wanted to quit. I kept coming across material that was embarrassing, poorly written, immature, and worst of all, privileged and myopic. I shared all of this with my editor, my wife, my manager, my literary agent, and anyone else in my orbit who I trusted. This really ought to be buried and forgotten in that landfill with the