"get one cd," she urged us, "that you both want."

and she didn't mean one cd for the each of us either, she meant ONE CD for us to SHARE. ha, as if. my sister was a total bsb fan. there was no way i'd go the entire summer hearing some freaking canadian import of backstreet boys. no way. i cruised along the pop/rock section, uninterested in anything, until i came across a cd with taylor hanson on it.

"my god! - that's not taylor hanson - oh, that's the MOFFATTS. HEY CHECK IT OUT, THE MOFFATTS!"

i caught my little sister by the arm.

"ew!" she said.

(you see, when i was about 10, notorious commercials ran on tv here in midwest america, those ones with the blue background, with the announcer stating "sorry, no cod"'s, the ones selling awesome, warrantied stuff like the george foreman cooker and stainerator and cd compilations like "feel like making love volumes13/14/15" and the "best of such-and-such." there was one commercial in particular that my little sister and i howled at mercilessly whenever it ran - the one for the moffatts. "caterpillar crawl" would be plunking along in the background as song titles ran across the screen and an annoucner who obviously didn't care was revealing the many attributes of buying this cd. i thought it was the funniest thing i'd ever seen in my life, what with the cowprint jacket and everything - hahaha. country sucked!)

i investigated the cd a little more, still trying to convince my then-blind eye that the boy on the front, smiling and keeping the boys behind him from, i don't know, falling over or what have you, was indeed NOT taylor hanson's evil twin from a parallel universe. god . . . some weird feeling came over me, then, staring at the boy and the design of the cd, the orange impact lettering and the song titles (i was supposed to hate cds whose song titles all boasted the words "crazy" and "love"!!! what was this feeling?!?!) . . .

"i want this cd," i found myself saying.

"don't do it," my sister warned, sticking to our We Hate The Stewpid Moffatts roots.

" . . . it wants me to buy it," i said quietly, putting the cd back with the 2 other copies that were hidden amongst the other m-artists.

my sister found a lot of reasons to complain at me. "we're SUPPOSED to get something we BOTH LIKE)!*)!*!%!*)#)_)#$_3-4095!!! i want such and such or this random crappy cd...."

well, you might ask, did we end up getting the moffatts? no. we selected "dazed and confused," and grandma bought the movie for us.

that night, i talked on the phone to my boyfriend, who was leaving for two weeks to go to a boy scout thing. the only snippet of the conversation i remember was me saying,

"well . . . while you're gone . . . i might get myself the moffatts cd."

my boyfriend's scorn was as evident as my little sister's.

he left the next day anyway.

and grandma, who had overheard my interest in the cd (namely my repeating of "no... that cd... that cd was CALLING me to buy it..."), took me back to borders that afternoon and bought me the moffatts cd.

"doesn't he look just like taylor hanson?" i demanded of my poor grandma.

well, for some reason, i couldn't let go of the cd, even though i hadn't even listened to it yet. i took it out to lunch with me, and then out to see wild wild west. i kept staring at the mini-poster, still trying to devulge who was who in the band. and then, that very evening, when i got home, i booted up my computer, opened microsoft word, and began a story. i had no idea who the moffatts really were. i had no clue how old they were, what their personalities were - hell, i could barely tell them all apart. damn family genes. but there was some sort of energy oozing from the cd... I HAD TO WRITE A STORY. who cares if i hadn't heard the whole cd yet?

it began innocently enough. i put the brothers in an airport, i made it through scott's point of view, because he was the only one i could distinguish. i repetitively messed up bob and clint, and for some reason, stuck dave with scott. they went to get a hawaiian ice and ended up laughing at a hanson pin-up. hanson shmanson. we're better than hanson any day. i'll beat up hanson with one hand tied behind my back. we'll have a hanson skull keg party at my house.

then i realized, what would happen if i put hanson in the story with them. everybody was probably doing it. so i made scott run into taylor while running. it was like fusing two atoms together to get a molecule. chemistry immediately. i had 11 chapters by 7 am. yes, i stayed up all night writing, and i knew exactly what was going to happen. taylor and scott needed to hook it up.

all night, and all for the next few days of writing, i listened to chapter 1. i got online, looked up info, made excuses, learned how to tell the difference between the moffatts (oh, how slow i am), and tried to look for moffatt fiction. i didn't find any. hey hey, i am ahead of the game, i realized. at the time, i was running a somewhat clunky hanson erotica site, and since the subject matter of the story was scott-moffatt-gets-with-taylor-hanson (read m/m SSEEXX), i suddenly thought, MAYBE I SHOULD POST THIS.

it took me an entire day to decide. did i even want to risk it? yes, i'd been obsessed with writing the story, but did i even really like it? that night, at 3 am, i found myself making an entire page for the story. i remember every inch of the layout. very ugly, blue and red, taylor and scott, tinted pictures. i posted 8 chapters and gaily pretended people read the story. i even got a guestbook, for the pure fun of registering for a gb. a couple of days later, the day before i was leaving to spend a week at my aforementioned grandma's house, i posted up to chapter 10 (the SSEEXX chapter). the next evening, i actually checked the guestbook. and i discovered something amazing.

people had signed it.

and liked the story.

told me beautiful things.

made my heart race.

suddenly, i saw possibilities. i saw a chapter 11, when i had actually planned to end it at chapter 10, i saw an entire romance schemed out, i saw a fight about values threatening a love you only find once in every thousand years. it was a dorothy/the wizard and cleopatra/marc antony thing. destined. at grandma's house, every night i was there, at 3 am, sitting on webtv, i wrote a chapter. 5 chapters in one week. people flocked to the gb. they liked it. i was amazed.

meanwhile, my horizons as a moffatt fan were broadening. i discovered scott liked to wear ripped jeans (who was i to argue?) and that bob and clint were twins (color me shocked!). but then, i also discovered the world of moffatt webpages. crazy for davey amazed me, and i remember first going to daydreamz.net and stumbling upon whttc, and realizing the moffatts, as their newer non-cowboy selves, had been around for a while, at least in canada and asia.

my story's romance grew. it was obvious to me that zac and dave's characters fit together like puzzle pieces would, as their characters grew tense against the other's when they found out about their brothers, and one sunday morning, experimentally, in purple font in microsoft word, i wrote a shower scene for zac and dave, abstaining from a romance, but leaning towards sexual tension. i went ahead and used it. it was recieved with mixed emotions by the hoard of readers i'd gained. some where enthralled. some felt it was overkill. some felt the tension and were so nervous for zac and dave they felt like vomiting. that was a small triumph for me.

things happened so quickly after that - hansonfiction.com agreed to host me, i saw unending possibilities for my story as well as a sequel, i experienced another moffatts story (fallen stars), i was an outsider looking in on the sudden closing of moffatt fan sites, overload of music pride etc. campaigns, the rise of groupies and the red leather pants/sparkly cowboyhat scare of september, elitism and moffatt domains popping up everywhere. people started to react to my presence or guestbook signature like i WAS a moffatt or hanson. among the seeming chaos, i felt like i was the only one who had no idea what was going on, why so many webmasters had wedgies so far up their butts, and why some moffatt fans were so over-sensitive and bitchy. someone said it once and now i say it again: the hanson online community wasn't NEAR as volitile. i continued on my merry way, and things were looking up. finally, people were reading my writing, finally, my english teacher was recognizing i had a flair for creative writing, and finally, the new hanson album didn't seem so damn far away.

2000, for me personally, saw some changes. thanks to two videos of foreign moffatts appearances delivered to me, i realized scott had a shpeech problem, clint was a canadiomaniac, bob liked girls who liked drummers, and dave was probably the only semi-normal one of the entire group (also, presumably, the gay one... can i get a great big GO FIGURE from the congregation?), even though he talked in his sleep. ap english turned out to be a big heart attack waiting to happen. the step i took next was like the one you take in a pool which suddenly goes from the shallow end to about 3 feet deeper, and you find yourself completely underwater, suffocating.

it became harder and harder to write, or to want to write, or to do anything but sleep, cry, or stare off miserably into space. moments of happiness were consumed into things non-internet related. trouble with my boyfriend didn't help; the only thing that did were the moffatts. i would lay in my bed and cry and fantasize about scott's little stripshows, then feel like vomiting not because it was disgusting, but because i felt guilty for loving it. moreso than taylor hanson, who was hard to access sometimes because he seemed so inhuman, scott had obvious problems and glazed-over, flaring hormones, and i spent many hours watching the portugese concert. i can, honestly, honestly say, that while i was enamoured with the strip tease (not the actual naked flesh, just the process of revealing it), i would watch the entire thing so i could see how incredibly awesome and full of energy, confidence, and the simple love of performing and for music the guys were, so i could see scott become one with his guitar not on a disgusting physical level, but on a musical level, becoming lost in the music and creating riffs isaac hanson could only dream about in his wet jonny lang dreams. i LOVED the way scott and clint reacted to each other on stage. i LOVED dave's growling voice in "shine." i LOVED bob's song - "don't judge this book" - and the harmonies that came with it. i could not believe what good musicians they were. i was beginning to understand why the moffatts had so many devoted fans - the moffatts were WONDERFUL. they exuded a kind of spirit, imperfection, and ultimate musical self-expression that hanson didn't have (not that they lacked it, it was just different... SO different). it seemed like my hours of moffatt-rushing were the only thing that i looked forward to in each day.

i had successfully fallen in love with the moffatts, as a whole, with their music, their way of performing, the way they work together, their personalities, with the quirks each member has and, yes, even how they look. i did not go to the moffatts for a poprock fix while hanson was in the shadows, and i do not intend to give all my attention to one band as they are both coming back with new material this summer. to me, it's though i have been a hanson fan for 3 years and a moffatt fan for only 9 months, it's both bands. what one doesn't give me, the other does. i don't regret ever "hating" the moffatts - if it hadn't have been the moffatts at borders, just some other plain band, i wouldn't have given that cd a second thought. the moffatts? . . . their cd probably sucks . . . but maybe they're like hanson..

i'm glad they're not. i'm thankful for the moffatts. while i'm not in love with any of the members individually, and i don't scream at them, they have given me friends, inspiration, hours of youthful, healthy lusting, and the opportunity to listen to something else besides hanson.

now, if only a duet were possible without taylor and scott ripping each other's hair out...