I was just listening to Debbie Gibson’s “Only in My Dreams” on my iPod. That song always makes me think of California. It takes me back to being 14 years old in 1988 and wanting to go there.

When I was 14, I had never left the East Coast. I’d been to Florida three times — one time my family drove down to Disney World, staying overnight in Savannah, Georgia — and I’d been to New England several times. But I’d never been off the East Coast.

That was going to change during the summer I was 14. The camp I’d gone to in New Hampshire for the previous two summers, Interlocken (which has since changed its name), had several short-term programs where you’d travel around different parts of the country, or even parts of other countries, for a few weeks — a dozen kids, two trip leaders and a van, mostly staying at campsites. I was going to go on the California trip. We’d start in San Francisco and travel in a big circle around northern California for four weeks. We’d visit Mendocino, drive up the coast, see the Redwoods, hike Mount Shasta, go whitewater rafting on the Klamath River, check out Lassen National Volcanic Park, stay with migrant families, and do other things before spending the last few days of the trip in San Francisco.

At the end of the trip, my parents and my brother were going to fly out and meet me in San Francisco, and we’d spend the next week and a half driving down the California coast, stopping at different places along the way: Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Solvang, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and finally San Diego.

I was so excited whenever I thought about the upcoming trip. What made it even more exciting — and here’s where we remember that I was a proto-gay adolescent — is that I was obsessed with “Days of our Lives,” and I knew it was taped in L.A. I couldn’t believe I was going to be in the same state as Steve and Kayla. Not to mention practically everyone else who was on TV. I know it seems weird to be excited merely to be going to the same state as these people, since California is so enormous that you can be there and still be hundreds of miles from Hollywood. But the idea of California was so magical to me that just the anticipation of being in the same state as these people made my heart race with happy nervous energy.

I’d lie in my bed in New Jersey at night and figure out which way was southwest. If I look at that wall, I’m looking southwest… so if I just extend this line for another 3000 miles, in a sense I’m really looking at California, and Kayla and Steve, and all of Hollywood…

I don’t know why I associate “Only in My Dreams” with that time. Maybe it came on the radio one day while I was thinking about the trip. Maybe the music just sounds like southern California to me, particularly the saxophone bridge. It just sounds so peppy and upbeat and 90210-ish. Who knows why music makes us think of certain things.

All I know is, I miss that feeling of anticipation, that excitement — I miss being naive enough to think that merely being in the same state as Kayla and Steve would bring something to my life, would change me in some way, would make my life that much more exciting — would make my life that much better.