How Blink-182 Became the Soundtrack to My Gay Y2K Sexual Awakening

Lester Cohen/SGranitz/WireImage/Getty Images. Photo illustration by June Buck

My introduction to Blink-182 happened in the most uncool possible setting: a sixth-grade “leadership convention,” a nerdy field trip for precocious middle schoolers. After a series of workshops I barely remember, the adults threw us a pizza party, complete with all the pop hits of 1998 playing over the radio. Everything about my memory of that day is fuzzy except for one perfect needle drop. The pop-punk band’s iconic breakout single “Dammit” came on and all the “cool kids” at the convention — inasmuch as any of the “future leaders of America” could fit that label — immediately perked up at the perfectly hooky opening guitar riff. I don’t think the adults in charge were prepared for 20 kids to scream “Did you hear / he fucked her?” along with Mark Hoppus at a function meant for the best and brightest Southern California’s public schools had to offer. In that instant of tween rebellion, I was sold. I needed my hands on this CD ASAP.

It wasn’t until Christmas of that year that I would be able to hold Blink-182’s sophomore studio album Dude Ranch. A closeted young Juan was not prepared for what he saw when he opened the liner notes. One photo in particular leapt out at me: a picture of singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge using a broom to scrub singer/bassist Mark Hoppus in his swimsuit area. In the image, Hoppus has a blissed out smile painted across his face while the group’s pre-Travis Barker drummer Scott Raynor — who I personally think is cuter, no shade — serenades the bathers with an acoustic guitar. Even then, I knew this was supposed to be funny, a mere “boys being boys” visual gag, but it was the horniest thing my 13 year-old brain had attempted to process yet.

As a secretive queer teen growing up in the late ’90s and 2000s, that band — along with other unintentionally homoerotic fare like Jackass — became a perfect way to tap into my desires without raising any eyebrows. After all, what could be straighter than listening to scrappy pop punk and watching skaters play stupid pranks on each other? This was an era when casual F-slurs cropped up in almost every major comedy movie. (Seriously, go back and watch Just Friends.) I was surrounded by classmates who used the term “gay” as a substitute for “uncool,” which didn’t exactly create the most affirming environment for a queer kid coming of age.

But necessity is the mother of invention. Just as underwear catalogues provided a secret source of homoerotic imagery for gay Baby Boomers, Millennial queers like me sought after scintillating images of our own in the toxically heteronormative bro culture of a dawning millennium. I strongly maintain that American Pie, which came out the year after that fateful pizza party, offered the same thing to queer people who desired men that Porky’s provided for a generation before mine: lots of male nudity, splashed all over the big screen. But what most excited me about the movie was Blink-182’s surprise cameo during the film’s second cringiest moment, when Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) is caught prematurely ejaculating on an early-internet live stream. The combination of Biggs fumbling in his boxers while my teen crushes looked on altered my brain chemistry. Something inside me had woken up. Way up.

The year 1999 notably played host to some awful displays of masculine angst in the culture, from the disaster of the Woodstock revival, where poor event planning and a lack of infrastructure led to rioting and horrifying sexual assaults. It was against that backdrop that Blink-182 hit the mainstream with their third album Enema of The State offering a refreshing display of masculinity’s softer, sillier, and harmless side. They continued to toe the line of hinting at homoeroticism for laughs, while using their antics as a commentary on the absurdity of bigoted narrow-mindedness. And if the artwork for Dude Ranch hinted at gay moments, the Enema era dove straight in. Like a pop-punk centerfold, that album’s liner notes contained a panorama of half-naked men, with our favorite San Diego punkers among them. Scantily clad guys of all body types — kudos for the body diversity, Blink! — were lined up in a high-school hallway outside the nurse’s office anticipating an exam from the album’s cover star, adult actress Janine Lindemulder. One model above all caught my eye: a chubby, tattooed Latino with glasses standing in front of Barker became a new “type” in my ever-growing Rolodex of secret crushes.

In case that wasn’t enough, Blink’s music video for “What’s My Age Again?” found the trio gallivanting in the buff. Their scrawny and tattooed skater bodies were completely naked except for guitars over their crotches, all while they gave off the same doe-eyed look typically reserved for boy bands. In that moment, they became pop icons. Soon, their faces were emblazoned on teeny bopper magazines like Tiger Beat and Bop that I used to covet from my female classmates. All of a sudden, the girls in my class were wearing Blink merch and pasting photos of the band on their binders. They didn’t know I was obsessed with the band for much the same reason. By the time they reached Beatlemania-level fandom, I felt like I had to distance myself from Blink. It didn’t feel totally safe to have them on my binder anymore; everyone else had caught onto the band’s disarming blend of wacky charm and playful sexuality.

From Chappell Roan to Kehlani, we picked 30 songs for all the frisky freaks out there.

I began listening to “more serious” music around then, swapping Blink-182 for more alternative groups I had discovered on rock radio like Sonic Youth and The Smashing Pumpkins. Though beautiful in their own way, the members of those bands didn’t make me sweat when I stared at their posters in my room. Instead I obsessed over their lyrics, brooding themes, and melancholic vibes. In college, I discovered queer-fronted alternative music, made by actual LGBTQ+ musicians I could look up to and aspire to, which proved particularly meaningful as I started to play in a band of my own. But all the while, I missed what I had given up: the beautiful innocence of having a crush on those goofy boys.

With queer representation of every type more accessible than ever these days, I still think back to the younger version of myself, struggling to find his place in the culture. Recently, as an act of caring for my inner child, I bought a poster on eBay from the band’s Enema of the State era. It’s a simple photo of the trio in their signature baggy boxer shorts in front of a tangerine backdrop, with Hoppus looking as cute as ever. (He’s my favorite, in case that wasn’t clear.) As a middle schooler, I had been too scared to ask my parents to buy it for me lest it raise any suspicions. It sits in my office now, where many of the musicians I interview for Them comment on it, sparking some funny conversations about our queer-coded junior-high faves.

None of us can turn back time. I’ll never be that age again. But there’s a beauty in embracing that scary yet exciting time of discovering what turned me on. I guess that’s growing up.

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Originally Appeared on them.