Frolicon, part the third and FINAL
When we last left your humble narrator, oh my brothers...shit. Shit. SHIT. Wrong stolen voice. Although it brings up a question. Where does a little geek like me get off imitating a heavy motherfucker like Dr Thompson, particularly when I'm not even carrying on his fine sense of outrage, and I mean either feeling or creating it... Well, I suppose it's my willingness to _get involved_, instead of standing off to the side like Wolfe in his white suit. And...Because I'm writing it, that's why.
The end of a con is an awful, woozy thing--it feels like a hangover even if you were sober the night before. You get up at some obscenely respectable hour, and soon find yourself schlepping a suitcase under the harsh light of day. Even indoors; that's just how it plays. And real life sneaks around and kicks you in the ass by being much paler than the freaks' shared dream. So you palely loiter for a while, not alone, not even silently, but everybody else sees the piper out of breath with his hand out too, and then you toss your shit in the trunk and roll out. At least the waitress decided to be nice and comp my breakfast. And guess what ungrateful dingbat had absolutely no cash to say thank you?
Hell of a contrast against Friday night. If the energy were any hotter then, we'd have blown out the top of the hotel like Walter Peck just cut the containment. I had fresh marks on my back. Time had no meaning, and anything was possible. But right at the moment we flash back to, I was popping like a champagne cork out of a crowded elevator onto the second floor, a rumour with a hat on her head somewhere in the back of my mind and a drink in the forefront. The official consuite was directly across from the elevators, and there was a party in it again. But this time, people were clustered in the hall like swarming bees, every now and then ducking in and coming back out, drink in hand, as fast as possible.
The party this time was run by one of the con sponsors, a local tattoo studio. And they'd worked up a foolproof crowd control plan--at no time were there more than ten people inside the suite, thanks to the thunderously overpowered sound system that these waterheads had dragged into the room before jacking in a mike and handing it to someone who doubtless had been fired as an office-picnic DJ for being too fake in his enthusiasm. Even when he asked one of the organisers to get her tits out, he still sounded like he might pull out the balloon animals at any moment. The man was failing to move free porn, and people were taking the tattoo and piercing coupons, and forgetting them a minute later.
I got a scanty measure of something green, stopped leaning into the sound waves and let them blow me out of the room.After the previous night's cough syrup schnapps, I was vaguely afraid that the green punch would taste like Nyquil. It didn't, but I can't say much better for it. After my second go at it was even shorter than the first, almost a ripoff for the nothing I paid, I drifted down the hall towards another cluster, where I saw some people I'd met earlier. These people were standing outside a pun. The Froliconstantinople party, hosted by the Sultan of Spankistan. Don't throw things, I didn't make this shit up. Anyway, it was a large group that went all-out on the Hollywood orientalism, both in decor and in costume. It was outside of the Spankistan suite that I was accosted by the harem girls, and my vote was decided.
Well, people were still clustering outside, and you still couldn't hear yourself think--but this time, it was because the place was packed tight. The setup was beautiful, so were the girls, and the drinks may have had stupid middle-Eastern jokes for names, but they were good. Still, the sheer press of people cleared me out by Brownian collisions of personal space, and the smell of real fruit tobacco from a hookah in the same group's other room didn't quite tempt me back in.
I was so keyed up that I sobered fast, but the next part is a blur of rooms, hallways, faces, costumes... The next thing that's distinct is sitting out on the pool terrace, a bit calmed down, into the smoke-and-schmooze routine. Late enough at night that people are actually telling life stories.
Most of what I heard, I'll only remember if I actually run into the people again, which is a real pisser for any writer. Especially given how much I do recall people saying they were surprised to spill so much to me...
Some still stick with me, though. Like the well-dressed woman, a middle-aged therapist with a whorl of red-dyed hair, who I talked to at length. Her purse hid a bottle of Smirnoff and most of a pink riding crop. As with most of the people I chatted with, it was a full-scale cabbages-and-kings bloviation, ranging from education to Goddess worship to the godawful Atlanta traffic, but, eventually, stories went curling up with our smoke. The thing that broke it would have been a conversation killer anywhere less relaxed. We'd gone from the road-hogging idiocy of SUVs to my hating them even more after having learned to drive on one of the dangerous bastards--then, "My husband died in an SUV." This popped up the question mark, as she'd already said she was lesbian--but it got batted down by the too-fucking-usual story of doing what was expected. He'd been a friend but a mistake, except for the existence of a daughter. There'd been a woman who was right, back in those days, but she'd left, and come back a few years and many exploits later, and had just, the day before, dumped our unfortunate top again after a multiday barely-speaking bitchfit. So, she was there, a fellow refugee in the low-bullshit zone, hoping to relax and, yes, maybe see if she could be some mostly-straight girl's first woman.
Our lesbian Lwaxana--and I don't mean "impossible" by this, or anything so negative, but there was a definite reminiscence--was even more impressed by the positive vibe than I was, as she'd been offered a room after she'd hit her bottle too hard to drive home, by a man wearing a nicely made set of leather straps under a sport jacket. He knew that a man wasn't what she was looking for, he'd just caught the Frolicon niceness something fierce--or, as I wisecracked, was lugging around an impossible torch, but I didn't really think so. He was giving off sub vibes as strong as mine, and we just want to be useful.
Sooner or later she went off in that direction, and more people drifted to and from my table by the pool. A while later, some goateed rodent in leather pants and a spider-web shirt appeared out of nowhere and asked if I wanted to "buy some recreational pharmaceuticals." The dingbat was actually waving around a Ziploc full of pills and money in front of God and everybody as he said his line like he was the cleverest Dick ever to walk the earth, and it jangled my nerves badly. He was, I'll grant, more relaxed and in the con's flow than the Abercrombie twit or the man with the backpack full of booze who whooped in the elevator, but...good Lord. And the worst part was, his drugs were redundant. All he had was Ecstasy, and we were already relaxed, empathetic, unselfconscious, and euphoric. Adding thermoregulation problems didn't seem to be a fun idea at all. I sent him on his way; the only thing I'd stick my neck out for was acid, maybe codeine too.
And then a tall woman lay down on the chaise longue next to my chair. It wasn't the first I'd seen of her. She'd been the Drinks Nurse in a tight uniform who had turned up at the Teenage Wasteland party, and I'd randomly volunteered, second in a rapidly-forming line, for her to try out a small flog she'd bought earlier that day. And, as I'd been chattering away, she'd turned up out there by the pool, barefoot in a schoolgirl skirt and a vinyl top, to mysteriously say that the rest of us wouldn't want to hear about her job, but we would at a panel the next day. This was M.
We talked about our lives, blogging, how fun the con was, and the virtues of people-watching, and she rapidly started to look interesting. Of course, there was a lot of praising smart people like me, and dropping half-revealing comments, about the mysterious job and other things, to encourage curiosity, and well-timed shutting-up to get me to fill the silence. The hook was in, and I was swimming towards the boat. Eventually, after my failing to guess what the hell kind of job could invite disapproval at Frolicon, she let it drop. She was taking time off from being the hardest-assed cop in several counties--there is graffiti to attest to this scratched into a county-jail sink somewhere. Law-enforcing types make me nervous, so you might be surprised that I didn't find somewhere else to be--but I liked her already, and she was a Smart Cop, not on a powertrip but genuinely into protecting the innocent and kicking ass on the guilty. We need people like her; they'll keep up the fight when the bleeding hearts like yours truly have gone fatalistic. Said heart did jump into my throat for a second at the thought that she might have seen my conversation with the baggie man, but then I remembered: One, she was very adamantly not working--this was a rare chance to get away from wrestling with the repeat drunks and various other petty perpetrators of a particularly red-necked part of the small-town South. And, two, they haven't made it illegal to refuse an offer of drugs--yet, anyway.
Then one of the tattoo-studio goons came and sat on her. In front of her on the chaise, really, but the difference was academic with him pawing at her legs. You could see light through his buzzed and ugly-bearded head; he had stretched holes in his ears and septum, with nothing in them. And he didn't beat around the bush. "I've just taken some sex drugs [presumably an E/Viagra cocktail, but who knows with an idiot?], and I need to get laid." He went on in this shitheaded vein, bragging about his prowess and throwing comeons like a horny drunk from Central Casting, and she slapped away his hands and comments both as I editorialised just loud enough to hear. The second or third time he mentioned the drugs, she told him her profession, but this put him off for about two seconds. And the damnable thing is, if I take her reports as typical, he was smarter than the average waterhead back home in "Satan's Navel".
She was being fairly polite about it, and I did get worried that he'd wear her down. The dipshit just wouldn't leave, despite saying he was about to at least three times. Then, when excusing herself on grounds of a shower just drew a comment about joining her, M. looked up at me, and said, "With him." Damned if I knew how to take it--I just gave my best grin of "George just lucky, I guess". And damned if _he_ didn't ask if there was room for a third! Still, the dumb ape knuckled off in the direction of a different mark shortly...and she said, maybe teasing, maybe not, that she'd have taken me up to her room if I'd actually taken it seriously. As much as I'd love to say I played it off beautifully, I waffled and sputtered about not knowing if she was joking. And thus she kept me in suspense as we talked on out there, and even in her room, right up to the point that she took my leather cuffs off my wrists.
And then...you voyeurs, do you think I have no sense of privacy?! All I'll say is that it was close, not a cold hookup or even just friends playing, and, unexpectedly for both of us, we stayed together to sleep. The next night too, though we were both too exhausted for anything to happen. In the morning, sober now, she half-jokingly called herself a whore. And I said, "Balls. No one's a whore. It's all for free and for fun. I'm a slut, and you played me like a fish. And I enjoyed it." Maybe I was a presumptuous ass, but I turned out to be a comforting one if I was. Honestly, the whole thing was unlike my self-image as well--but only on the surface; I just sped up my already ridiculous habit of falling fast. And, even sober, she called me her pet--all the bigger compliment for the fact that she usually played more bottom than top, though she was mixed enough that this wasn't absurd. And that was the way we were, until we weren't, and we're friends now--but that's another story, that doesn't really say anything. Goddamnit, JChance, focus.
So, back to that Saturday. There was one wrong thing I did after all--M. overslept her panel, though it was maybe three hours of sleep we got. Then it was the walk of--at Frolicon, I guess it'd be pride really--back to my room, and God did I make it obvious. Shirt untucked, shoes in hand... I had a quick shave, wash, and change, and was contemplating a nap--but, fuck it, Frolicon was still on. Brushed my hair, demolished a smoke and a Scotch, and it was back out...all the way out, at first, under the pale merciless rays from the clear sky, M. and I straggling and stumbling along with the other hungry people towards fast food or greasy spoons...Did I _imagine_ seeing wisps of smoke off a few, out the corner of my eye? As we ate, she told me what she'd heard in my brief absence, that explained why her friends were absent...one of them had driven off from the con despite multiple offers of crash space, and gotten bunged up in a holding cell for driving drunk. The rest were bailing him out. This took all day. As it fell out, the charges wouldn't have stuck if they were written in Krazy Glue, but, while waiting, we amused ourselves by planning to frogmarch him into the pool with its surface layer of cigarette butts, plastic cups, and general filth.
Since he hadn't actually been drunk when he got nicked, we didn't...what a damn disappointment! Not just the stress he caused M. either...some little anxious corner of my mental machinery had been waiting the whole weekend for someone to fall into that ugly soup, and to just make it happen already would have been a colossal relief. ...what was I just saying about being a bleeding heart with compassion for all? Oh, well, I guess I'd have felt really bad for his poor sodden ass after I was done laughing...
As if the fact he stayed dry didn't prove me unworthy of this style I'm still ripping off anyway, I ended up sleeping away a large chunk of the day. Sleeping in the middle of the weirdness...what was I thinking? More than the creators of the pitiful "fashion show" M. and I attended that evening--five or six cheap-looking costumes paraded by us fast, particularly lousy in view of the creativity I'd seen for the costume contest the night before. The only entertaining moment was when I nerly went ass-over-head tripping over the leg of a light stand. That got a big laugh, and I discovered, once again, that I couldn't melt into the floor.
Somewhere before this, the friends had finally finished getting that one poor schmuck out of the grip of The System, and joined up with us--it was while waiting for them to assemble that I finally got introduced to the wonderful crystalgee. We'd met twice before. At the 70s party the first night, she had approached me randomly and offered some of her boyfriend's homemade mead; and at the last Fantasm, last year, I'd seen her shiny black witch hat with lacing up the front, and been compelled to yell "Nanny Ogg!" For once, my ability to paint portraits fails, so...go read her journal. Really.
I'd see her and the brilliant brewer once more, at another pun of a party--the "POLYnesian" bash. When you put geeks together, puns ensue...and, finally, the drinks were decent at a consuite party. But that was later.
Finally, when I wasn't looking for them, the dominant women were out that evening...it looked like a leash was the accessory for a boy to have, that Saturday. I didn't quite act like I had one; M. would hare off towards panels or people, and I'd go my own way, finding Lady G. or just looking around. Mobile-phone signals make a tether that doesn't get tangled...
I'd been called back when it was time for the shows. The con organisers, otherwise brilliant, had pulled a pretty big fuckup, scheduling the Big City Burlesque retro cabaret right opposite the Classic City Kings drag-king preformance. We started out for the first show, but it was packed out the door. So, an audience with--or for--for the kings, and my God, we made the right choice. I've never seen a crowd so in anyone's hands. Men, women, and more complex identifications, we all wanted them...a thrilling both-and-neither, the illusion persisting even stripped down to tape. M. and friends cracked jokes about seizing hold of one and spiriting him-her away, and I can't say I wouldn't have been an accomplice. Desire Itself haunted that stage, and if I hadn't known better I'd have thought I saw Gaiman's verion on it and working the crowd. And, if they schedule them against the retro burlesque again, there will be a fucking riot, even if I have to start it.
Might as well leave you on that high point. The big musical number comes at the end of the picture, right? So, end flashback, cut back to me slumped at the breakfast table, shivering from withdrawal from that nurturing chaos, no longer the terra-stomping figure who made a van-driving mother of three shout "Whoo! Rock on!" at my long hair and head-to-toe black on the way down. Even the Gods of Traffic knew it, and while I made it out of Atlanta with hair unraised, I jammed tight for half an hour in the middle of NC, my only consolation seeing two Outlaws get thus stuck as well, their bikes still not narrow enough to slip through. But that's not the whole story either. Shagged-out as I was, Frolicon still burned in my heart, and I carried the weirdness all the way back here into my own life like an unwitting Chuck Jones Prometheus with his ass on fire.
It's been fun, but that partially explains why I'm a month late getting this SOB out. The rest is writer's block, generic procrastination, and the addictive whooshing sound of deadlines (as per Adams), like a whistling toy that you can't let alone when you get your hands on it, even though the rest of the room wants to strangle you. Pound in the last nail, kick it into the water and hope it floats.
There.
The end of a con is an awful, woozy thing--it feels like a hangover even if you were sober the night before. You get up at some obscenely respectable hour, and soon find yourself schlepping a suitcase under the harsh light of day. Even indoors; that's just how it plays. And real life sneaks around and kicks you in the ass by being much paler than the freaks' shared dream. So you palely loiter for a while, not alone, not even silently, but everybody else sees the piper out of breath with his hand out too, and then you toss your shit in the trunk and roll out. At least the waitress decided to be nice and comp my breakfast. And guess what ungrateful dingbat had absolutely no cash to say thank you?
Hell of a contrast against Friday night. If the energy were any hotter then, we'd have blown out the top of the hotel like Walter Peck just cut the containment. I had fresh marks on my back. Time had no meaning, and anything was possible. But right at the moment we flash back to, I was popping like a champagne cork out of a crowded elevator onto the second floor, a rumour with a hat on her head somewhere in the back of my mind and a drink in the forefront. The official consuite was directly across from the elevators, and there was a party in it again. But this time, people were clustered in the hall like swarming bees, every now and then ducking in and coming back out, drink in hand, as fast as possible.
The party this time was run by one of the con sponsors, a local tattoo studio. And they'd worked up a foolproof crowd control plan--at no time were there more than ten people inside the suite, thanks to the thunderously overpowered sound system that these waterheads had dragged into the room before jacking in a mike and handing it to someone who doubtless had been fired as an office-picnic DJ for being too fake in his enthusiasm. Even when he asked one of the organisers to get her tits out, he still sounded like he might pull out the balloon animals at any moment. The man was failing to move free porn, and people were taking the tattoo and piercing coupons, and forgetting them a minute later.
I got a scanty measure of something green, stopped leaning into the sound waves and let them blow me out of the room.After the previous night's cough syrup schnapps, I was vaguely afraid that the green punch would taste like Nyquil. It didn't, but I can't say much better for it. After my second go at it was even shorter than the first, almost a ripoff for the nothing I paid, I drifted down the hall towards another cluster, where I saw some people I'd met earlier. These people were standing outside a pun. The Froliconstantinople party, hosted by the Sultan of Spankistan. Don't throw things, I didn't make this shit up. Anyway, it was a large group that went all-out on the Hollywood orientalism, both in decor and in costume. It was outside of the Spankistan suite that I was accosted by the harem girls, and my vote was decided.
Well, people were still clustering outside, and you still couldn't hear yourself think--but this time, it was because the place was packed tight. The setup was beautiful, so were the girls, and the drinks may have had stupid middle-Eastern jokes for names, but they were good. Still, the sheer press of people cleared me out by Brownian collisions of personal space, and the smell of real fruit tobacco from a hookah in the same group's other room didn't quite tempt me back in.
I was so keyed up that I sobered fast, but the next part is a blur of rooms, hallways, faces, costumes... The next thing that's distinct is sitting out on the pool terrace, a bit calmed down, into the smoke-and-schmooze routine. Late enough at night that people are actually telling life stories.
Most of what I heard, I'll only remember if I actually run into the people again, which is a real pisser for any writer. Especially given how much I do recall people saying they were surprised to spill so much to me...
Some still stick with me, though. Like the well-dressed woman, a middle-aged therapist with a whorl of red-dyed hair, who I talked to at length. Her purse hid a bottle of Smirnoff and most of a pink riding crop. As with most of the people I chatted with, it was a full-scale cabbages-and-kings bloviation, ranging from education to Goddess worship to the godawful Atlanta traffic, but, eventually, stories went curling up with our smoke. The thing that broke it would have been a conversation killer anywhere less relaxed. We'd gone from the road-hogging idiocy of SUVs to my hating them even more after having learned to drive on one of the dangerous bastards--then, "My husband died in an SUV." This popped up the question mark, as she'd already said she was lesbian--but it got batted down by the too-fucking-usual story of doing what was expected. He'd been a friend but a mistake, except for the existence of a daughter. There'd been a woman who was right, back in those days, but she'd left, and come back a few years and many exploits later, and had just, the day before, dumped our unfortunate top again after a multiday barely-speaking bitchfit. So, she was there, a fellow refugee in the low-bullshit zone, hoping to relax and, yes, maybe see if she could be some mostly-straight girl's first woman.
Our lesbian Lwaxana--and I don't mean "impossible" by this, or anything so negative, but there was a definite reminiscence--was even more impressed by the positive vibe than I was, as she'd been offered a room after she'd hit her bottle too hard to drive home, by a man wearing a nicely made set of leather straps under a sport jacket. He knew that a man wasn't what she was looking for, he'd just caught the Frolicon niceness something fierce--or, as I wisecracked, was lugging around an impossible torch, but I didn't really think so. He was giving off sub vibes as strong as mine, and we just want to be useful.
Sooner or later she went off in that direction, and more people drifted to and from my table by the pool. A while later, some goateed rodent in leather pants and a spider-web shirt appeared out of nowhere and asked if I wanted to "buy some recreational pharmaceuticals." The dingbat was actually waving around a Ziploc full of pills and money in front of God and everybody as he said his line like he was the cleverest Dick ever to walk the earth, and it jangled my nerves badly. He was, I'll grant, more relaxed and in the con's flow than the Abercrombie twit or the man with the backpack full of booze who whooped in the elevator, but...good Lord. And the worst part was, his drugs were redundant. All he had was Ecstasy, and we were already relaxed, empathetic, unselfconscious, and euphoric. Adding thermoregulation problems didn't seem to be a fun idea at all. I sent him on his way; the only thing I'd stick my neck out for was acid, maybe codeine too.
And then a tall woman lay down on the chaise longue next to my chair. It wasn't the first I'd seen of her. She'd been the Drinks Nurse in a tight uniform who had turned up at the Teenage Wasteland party, and I'd randomly volunteered, second in a rapidly-forming line, for her to try out a small flog she'd bought earlier that day. And, as I'd been chattering away, she'd turned up out there by the pool, barefoot in a schoolgirl skirt and a vinyl top, to mysteriously say that the rest of us wouldn't want to hear about her job, but we would at a panel the next day. This was M.
We talked about our lives, blogging, how fun the con was, and the virtues of people-watching, and she rapidly started to look interesting. Of course, there was a lot of praising smart people like me, and dropping half-revealing comments, about the mysterious job and other things, to encourage curiosity, and well-timed shutting-up to get me to fill the silence. The hook was in, and I was swimming towards the boat. Eventually, after my failing to guess what the hell kind of job could invite disapproval at Frolicon, she let it drop. She was taking time off from being the hardest-assed cop in several counties--there is graffiti to attest to this scratched into a county-jail sink somewhere. Law-enforcing types make me nervous, so you might be surprised that I didn't find somewhere else to be--but I liked her already, and she was a Smart Cop, not on a powertrip but genuinely into protecting the innocent and kicking ass on the guilty. We need people like her; they'll keep up the fight when the bleeding hearts like yours truly have gone fatalistic. Said heart did jump into my throat for a second at the thought that she might have seen my conversation with the baggie man, but then I remembered: One, she was very adamantly not working--this was a rare chance to get away from wrestling with the repeat drunks and various other petty perpetrators of a particularly red-necked part of the small-town South. And, two, they haven't made it illegal to refuse an offer of drugs--yet, anyway.
Then one of the tattoo-studio goons came and sat on her. In front of her on the chaise, really, but the difference was academic with him pawing at her legs. You could see light through his buzzed and ugly-bearded head; he had stretched holes in his ears and septum, with nothing in them. And he didn't beat around the bush. "I've just taken some sex drugs [presumably an E/Viagra cocktail, but who knows with an idiot?], and I need to get laid." He went on in this shitheaded vein, bragging about his prowess and throwing comeons like a horny drunk from Central Casting, and she slapped away his hands and comments both as I editorialised just loud enough to hear. The second or third time he mentioned the drugs, she told him her profession, but this put him off for about two seconds. And the damnable thing is, if I take her reports as typical, he was smarter than the average waterhead back home in "Satan's Navel".
She was being fairly polite about it, and I did get worried that he'd wear her down. The dipshit just wouldn't leave, despite saying he was about to at least three times. Then, when excusing herself on grounds of a shower just drew a comment about joining her, M. looked up at me, and said, "With him." Damned if I knew how to take it--I just gave my best grin of "George just lucky, I guess". And damned if _he_ didn't ask if there was room for a third! Still, the dumb ape knuckled off in the direction of a different mark shortly...and she said, maybe teasing, maybe not, that she'd have taken me up to her room if I'd actually taken it seriously. As much as I'd love to say I played it off beautifully, I waffled and sputtered about not knowing if she was joking. And thus she kept me in suspense as we talked on out there, and even in her room, right up to the point that she took my leather cuffs off my wrists.
And then...you voyeurs, do you think I have no sense of privacy?! All I'll say is that it was close, not a cold hookup or even just friends playing, and, unexpectedly for both of us, we stayed together to sleep. The next night too, though we were both too exhausted for anything to happen. In the morning, sober now, she half-jokingly called herself a whore. And I said, "Balls. No one's a whore. It's all for free and for fun. I'm a slut, and you played me like a fish. And I enjoyed it." Maybe I was a presumptuous ass, but I turned out to be a comforting one if I was. Honestly, the whole thing was unlike my self-image as well--but only on the surface; I just sped up my already ridiculous habit of falling fast. And, even sober, she called me her pet--all the bigger compliment for the fact that she usually played more bottom than top, though she was mixed enough that this wasn't absurd. And that was the way we were, until we weren't, and we're friends now--but that's another story, that doesn't really say anything. Goddamnit, JChance, focus.
So, back to that Saturday. There was one wrong thing I did after all--M. overslept her panel, though it was maybe three hours of sleep we got. Then it was the walk of--at Frolicon, I guess it'd be pride really--back to my room, and God did I make it obvious. Shirt untucked, shoes in hand... I had a quick shave, wash, and change, and was contemplating a nap--but, fuck it, Frolicon was still on. Brushed my hair, demolished a smoke and a Scotch, and it was back out...all the way out, at first, under the pale merciless rays from the clear sky, M. and I straggling and stumbling along with the other hungry people towards fast food or greasy spoons...Did I _imagine_ seeing wisps of smoke off a few, out the corner of my eye? As we ate, she told me what she'd heard in my brief absence, that explained why her friends were absent...one of them had driven off from the con despite multiple offers of crash space, and gotten bunged up in a holding cell for driving drunk. The rest were bailing him out. This took all day. As it fell out, the charges wouldn't have stuck if they were written in Krazy Glue, but, while waiting, we amused ourselves by planning to frogmarch him into the pool with its surface layer of cigarette butts, plastic cups, and general filth.
Since he hadn't actually been drunk when he got nicked, we didn't...what a damn disappointment! Not just the stress he caused M. either...some little anxious corner of my mental machinery had been waiting the whole weekend for someone to fall into that ugly soup, and to just make it happen already would have been a colossal relief. ...what was I just saying about being a bleeding heart with compassion for all? Oh, well, I guess I'd have felt really bad for his poor sodden ass after I was done laughing...
As if the fact he stayed dry didn't prove me unworthy of this style I'm still ripping off anyway, I ended up sleeping away a large chunk of the day. Sleeping in the middle of the weirdness...what was I thinking? More than the creators of the pitiful "fashion show" M. and I attended that evening--five or six cheap-looking costumes paraded by us fast, particularly lousy in view of the creativity I'd seen for the costume contest the night before. The only entertaining moment was when I nerly went ass-over-head tripping over the leg of a light stand. That got a big laugh, and I discovered, once again, that I couldn't melt into the floor.
Somewhere before this, the friends had finally finished getting that one poor schmuck out of the grip of The System, and joined up with us--it was while waiting for them to assemble that I finally got introduced to the wonderful crystalgee. We'd met twice before. At the 70s party the first night, she had approached me randomly and offered some of her boyfriend's homemade mead; and at the last Fantasm, last year, I'd seen her shiny black witch hat with lacing up the front, and been compelled to yell "Nanny Ogg!" For once, my ability to paint portraits fails, so...go read her journal. Really.
I'd see her and the brilliant brewer once more, at another pun of a party--the "POLYnesian" bash. When you put geeks together, puns ensue...and, finally, the drinks were decent at a consuite party. But that was later.
Finally, when I wasn't looking for them, the dominant women were out that evening...it looked like a leash was the accessory for a boy to have, that Saturday. I didn't quite act like I had one; M. would hare off towards panels or people, and I'd go my own way, finding Lady G. or just looking around. Mobile-phone signals make a tether that doesn't get tangled...
I'd been called back when it was time for the shows. The con organisers, otherwise brilliant, had pulled a pretty big fuckup, scheduling the Big City Burlesque retro cabaret right opposite the Classic City Kings drag-king preformance. We started out for the first show, but it was packed out the door. So, an audience with--or for--for the kings, and my God, we made the right choice. I've never seen a crowd so in anyone's hands. Men, women, and more complex identifications, we all wanted them...a thrilling both-and-neither, the illusion persisting even stripped down to tape. M. and friends cracked jokes about seizing hold of one and spiriting him-her away, and I can't say I wouldn't have been an accomplice. Desire Itself haunted that stage, and if I hadn't known better I'd have thought I saw Gaiman's verion on it and working the crowd. And, if they schedule them against the retro burlesque again, there will be a fucking riot, even if I have to start it.
Might as well leave you on that high point. The big musical number comes at the end of the picture, right? So, end flashback, cut back to me slumped at the breakfast table, shivering from withdrawal from that nurturing chaos, no longer the terra-stomping figure who made a van-driving mother of three shout "Whoo! Rock on!" at my long hair and head-to-toe black on the way down. Even the Gods of Traffic knew it, and while I made it out of Atlanta with hair unraised, I jammed tight for half an hour in the middle of NC, my only consolation seeing two Outlaws get thus stuck as well, their bikes still not narrow enough to slip through. But that's not the whole story either. Shagged-out as I was, Frolicon still burned in my heart, and I carried the weirdness all the way back here into my own life like an unwitting Chuck Jones Prometheus with his ass on fire.
It's been fun, but that partially explains why I'm a month late getting this SOB out. The rest is writer's block, generic procrastination, and the addictive whooshing sound of deadlines (as per Adams), like a whistling toy that you can't let alone when you get your hands on it, even though the rest of the room wants to strangle you. Pound in the last nail, kick it into the water and hope it floats.
There.