Even at age six I knew that you have to pick a favorite boy in the boy band. In New Kids on the Block, I chose Jordan Knight. I wouldn’t say I was an NKOTB super fan, but I heard “Hangin’ Tough,” “Step by Step,” and “The Right Stuff” enough times on the radio to sing along and I saw their faces on enough posters, TV commercials, and lunchboxes to decide that while they were all cute, Jordan was the cutest. 

      I had one of those oversized buttons of Jordan’s face. I remember the very official feeling of pinning it to my jacket, knowing it was a declaration to everyone else in the first grade that Jordan was my chosen New Kid. I suspect that I chose Jordan because he was tall but non-threatening, with impressively voluminous hair and kind eyes. He was the kind of nice boy who might someday swing on the swingset with me or carry my backpack. 

      Jordan’s charm also came through in his impressive falsetto, which was his special ingredient in the boy band recipe. “I’ll Be Loving You,” an early NKOTB hit, puts Jordan’s, sweet, Frankie-Valli-style voice front and center for the whole song. He croons:

      I'm not that kind of guy who can take a broken heart

      So don't ever leave

      I don't want to see us part

      In the video, he wears ripped jeans and a leather jacket, but his message wasn’t tough at all: Jordan was a sensitive boy, a boy who would always be there, always be loving, in a vague but chaste way.  

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      A few years later, after “The Right Stuff” had fully faded from the radio and I lost my giant button, NKOTB was less popular and more of a punchline. I forgot all about Jordan and started crushing on Jeff Goldblum instead. Jeff was also tall and non-threatening and had impressive hair. But instead of carrying my backpack, 12-year-old me wanted Jeff to carry… something else. Maybe my whole body? He stirred feelings in my pubescent body that I couldn’t make sense of.

      Then the spring of 1999 brought Jordan Knight back into my life. I was fifteen and trying hard to be “counterculture” by only listening to “alternative rock” radio and ska/punk mixtapes that my friend Sophie would make for me. But some pop music was inescapable. This was when Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, and Smash Mouth were in their prime and they found their way into my brain from the mall, school dances, and other people’s cars. I couldn’t deny a hit song if it earwormed its way into my brain. 

      I probably heard “Give It To You” for the first time in someone’s car, driving home from track practice or a play rehearsal. Hearing Jordan Knight’s name nearly a decade after my big button years made me nostalgic. “Awww,” I thought “How sweet, that cute New Kid has a solo song.” It was catchy, dancy, and perfect for bopping around in the car. But then I actually listened to the lyrics:

      It's creepin' around in your head

      Me holdin' you down in my bed

      Something lurched deep inside me. Jordan Knight wants to hold me down in his bed? Jordan “I’ll be loving you forever” Knight? I had never kissed a boy, and I had only seen a handful of “sexy” R-rating movies, so being held down in a bed was something I’d never even thought of. 

      And I was into it. 

      The lyrics got better:

      Baby you know, I can give it to you

      You can't deny, I'd do it right

      Just let me know and I'll give it to you

      Show me where, I'll taste you there

      At first I thought he said “I’ll take you there.” But no, it was taste, which was a verb I hadn’t considered in this scenario. It got nastier:

      Anyone can make you sweat

      But I, can keep you wet

      JORDAN!

      This was definitely not the sensitive Jordan I remembered. This new Jordan was commanding, confident, and a MAN. Forget being carried through Jurassic Park by Jeff Goldblum. Now I wanted to be held down, tasted, and wet, with Jordan Knight. AND Jeff Goldblum. I wanted that from any man. 

      Given my stubborn teenage commitment to outward appearances and wanting to staunchly be “alternative,” I never publicly admitted that I like “Give It To You.” I never bought Jordan Knight’s self-titled solo album, despite how the cover showed off his very manly jawline and sensual stare. It wasn’t really about the music, anyway. It was about the sweet, falsetto-voiced Jordan of my childhood, suddenly transformed into a horny man saying nasty things. Had I also transformed? It didn’t feel like it. I was a very chaste teenager. I didn’t kiss anyone until I was 16 and didn’t have sex until college because I was terrified of STDs and pregnancy, convinced that either could happen if I was within five feet of an exposed penis. 

      But whenever I caught the song on the radio I would stop and listen, listening carefully for those particular lyrics, as if I had maybe misheard them the last time. I would imagine being in a bed with Jordan Knight, my body held down, my face close to that powerful jaw. 

      Two decades went by before Jordan Knight caught me off guard again. At work in 2019, in a group Slack chat of lady friends, someone shared a link to the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. I kept it playing as I worked, half watching, both disbelieving and truly feeling that a full 20 years had gone by. And then there it was: Jordan Knight’s “Give It To You” was nominated for Best Dance Video. They played a very brief clip of it, which immediately stirred all the memories. 

      It's creepin' around in your head

      Me holdin' you down in my bed

      “holy crap this jordan knight song” I wrote in Slack, “I forgot all about this!”

      My friend Michelle replied “oh boy that song did things to me”

      “ME TOO” I wrote, with a :flushed_face: emoji. 

     I had to watch the video, which I didn’t recall ever seeing in 1999. As I queued it up on YouTube, I got goosebumps at the thought of being this rebellious at work, watching a sexy music video at my desk.

     I was quickly disappointed. The video is set at a carnival with a very loose last-scene-of-Grease theme, where a “nerdy” popcorn seller longs for “cool” Jordan. By the end— surprise!—she takes her glasses and uniform off and she’s hot. But Jordan, the supposed sex god of his lyrics, had suddenly lost all his sex appeal. Yes, he’s got the sexy face and jawline I remembered so clearly, but he wears a white turtleneck sweater and baggy khakis. It’s a look that was so popular for soulful men in 1999 (look up almost any photo of NSync, Backstreet Boys, or 98° from this time), but it gave me very unsexy home-for-Thanksgiving vibes. He sings with a smirk, like he’s still trying to be cute. And what’s sexy about a carnival?? Nothing. The whole video felt like the inverse of “I’ll Be Loving You Forever”—instead of making the sweet boy look tough, they tried to make the grown man approachable and cute. At least the dancing is excellent. 

     I don’t know how to square all these versions of Jordan in my mind. I hear NKOTB is back together, and apparently they’re even going on tour this year. I’ve tried not to Google too many images of present-day, 52-year-old Jordan, for fear it will erase the way I want to always remember him. It’s like finding my high school crush on Instagram: I’m suddenly faced with a man who has aged 20 years in one second, only because I held the image of him fresh-faced and young so closely for so long. 

     Maybe it’s that I’ve compartmentalized sexy Jordan as a product of his late-nineties time, which hasn’t aged particularly well. And it’s not just the bad turtleneck and khakis; the bravado of a man who thinks he can win a woman over with just his aggressive sexual prowess is a grosser vibe than it used to be. Some light S&M is fun, but “You don't have to say a word / I'm convinced you want this” is borderline assault.

     I also don't need Jordan in the way I used to. I’m a grown woman who has had lots of sex and I live with my partner of a decade. I take it for granted how I share a bed with a man every night, how he would probably hold me down in that bed if I asked him to. I’m living a life that fifteen-year-old me never would have imagined.  

     Still, I can’t help tracking this song down on Spotify or YouTube now and then to relive those teenage feelings. I imagine Jordan as an amalgamation of all his best features: a tall man with a strong jawline, who wears ripped jeans and a leather jacket, who can sing in falsetto, who will hold my hand and sometimes carry my heavy bags, and who—when I want it—can give it to me.