I Will Always Love You, Dylan McKay
Saying goodbye to Luke Perry.
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Given that a huge chunk of last week's newsletter was devoted to how much I miss the '90s—and love Dylan McKay—I didn't feel like I could wait until Friday to share some initial thoughts on today's terrible news that Luke Perry has died after suffering a massive stroke. He was only 52. 5-2.
Immediately upon the news breaking, my phone (and social media feeds) were blowing up with people checking in, sincerely and in shared grief. (I have really amazing friends.) It's almost impossible to describe the impact of Beverly Hills, 90210 and its stars to younger generations. It was so big. Like ginormously overpoweringly big. Television wasn't geared toward young people back then in the same way that it is now. Not only were there fewer channels, but the youth market wasn't seen as truly viable (read: profitable) and 90210 helped change that.
I didn't know anyone who didn't watch the show and come to school talking about it the next day. Sure, you could record it on the VCR if you had to, but we watched TV live (and week-to-week) in the '90s. And this wasn't just my personal clique of friends, this was my entire giant, diverse public high school. The goings-on of Dylan, Brenda, Kelly, Brandon, Donna, David, Andrea, and Steve were our lifeblood. And they helped to shape who we were and who we became. Fox even aired new episodes of the show during the summer, which was fairly ground-breaking at the time. It sounds crazy now, but we basically had four whole months of torturous reruns every year, right when we had more free time to d*ck around. But not with 9-0 where we got to spend summers at the beach club. The show SAW us. We mattered—and we were desperately loyal in return.
Dylan McKay, I loved you most of all. I always will. And I loved Luke Perry, too. I was 15 years old when the show started, so it's basically like we went to high school together. As I wrote on Twitter earlier, "The love that women my age feel for Luke Perry/Dylan McKay is SO real and started at such a formative time in our lives that this news is truly soul-crushing for so many of us."
Everything just feels MORE when you're a teenager and those imprints stay with you forever. That's why this one hurts so much and cuts so deep. My friend Bonnie likened it to losing a friend from high school and my friend Jenny said, "He will always be a peer in my heart." That's exactly right. It didn't matter that most of those actors were playing younger, they were our friends and they were integral during an important phase of our lives. They were the West Beverly Class of '93. I was the North Central Class of '94. We were forever bonded—and that the Walshes were from the midwest just connected us even more deeply.
Dylan was so fucking cool. He was hot in this James Dean way that made our hormones race a little faster. He surfed. What's cooler than a surfer dude when you're growing up in Indiana? He wore the hell out of bajas. He read literature and quoted it—swoon. Without Dylan, Timothée Chalamet's Kyle in Lady Bird doesn't even exist. He was just enough of a bad boy to feel dangerous, but not so much of one to truly scare you away. And by all accounts, Luke Perry was a really freaking good dude, beloved by crews and co-stars and fans who had interactions with him. He experienced the utter mania of fame at the highest level and wasn't a monster. That's something. I was so happy to see his renewed career success on Riverdale. I can only imagine how that young cast must feel today, losing their friend and a mentor who helped guide them through the furious cycle of newfound fame.
Then there was Brenda and Dylan's relationship. It meant everything to me as if it was my own—and they were most certainly my original OTP. (As I’ve mentioned, I do not abide any talk of Kelly Taylor being better for him.) I didn't have a ton of boyfriends in high school, which somehow magnified the importance of the relationships outside of myself. The scene where they fight and Dylan throws the vase? Burned in my brain until the end of time. That breakup in his car set to REM? Iconic and a fundamental piece of who I am. When they had sex for the first time, IT WAS SIGNFICANT to my own life and, frankly, my own burgeoning sexual awakening. If Brenda wore menswear vests and loosened neck ties to school, so did teenage Abby. Listen, I couldn't fault her for bleaching her hair when she thought Dylan preferred blondes. I would have probably done the same. I could go on forever, but that's what YouTube holes are for.
There's something about loving someone that deeply (and, yes, mildly fanatically) that changes the composition of your soul forever, especially when it happens as a teenager. And Luke Perry did that for me and so many other people my age. Couple that with the fact that he really isn't that much older than a lot of us, and his death is foundation-rocking. Being faced with your own mortality is never fun, even if it comes from the death of someone you didn't know personally. And it's very much okay to grieve—for your youth, for this person who was important to you, for what he did and does signify in your life, and of course for his friends and family.
I'm not ashamed to admit I cried more than a little bit today and you shouldn't be either. Thanks for being so special to all of us, Luke. May you rest in peace.
Until Friday...
xA
