#GuiltyPleasureConfessional: “Dawson’s Creek” Had Me At Hello

High school. I didn’t know what to make of the world at the time. Everything in my life was changing. Puberty turned my body into a walking ocean of chemically induced emotions. Bill Clinton was president. My best friend was dating the girl I’d had a crush on since the sixth grade… After I unintentionally introduced them. It was the best of times, really.

So yeah, when Dawson’s Creek dropped, I was all over it. Was it sappy to the bone? Yes, all the way down to the iconic theme song by Paula Cole. Was it super white? White as a DJ crossfading off iPod nanos in a Brooklyn vegan Mexican restaurant that doubles as a dive bar after nine. And I didn’t care. I was compelled to watch it, it was mirroring my life on so many levels! Obviously I related to Dawson: local homie with the crush on his life-long friend. The melodramatic love triangle had an adolescent brother hooked on pre-Scientology Katie Holmes. And that ain’t the shameful part: I somehow found a way to relate to every one of the main cast. I carried this weight to school every day for four years. That somehow, a six-foot, 190-pound young, Black man with a crispy fade had an inner-self that felt like James Van Der Beek. Stress.

I didn’t tell anyone that the engrossing, suburban, coming-of-age tale told through the tension of unrequited love was my jam. But I listened to Fiona Apple so much that I didn’t really have to. It got more intense for me as time went by, and the real-life curve I was experiencing from my mega c…