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Saturday, Bailey's and fencing and panels, oh MY!
So I lurched out of bed and performed the necessary ablutions the moment the bathroom was free, and discovered the most wonderful thing -- the Crimson Tide was finally flowing. (All the men just went, "EWWWWWWWW!" Sorry, guys, but you should be used to this sort of thing from me by now.) I'm serious about that "wonderful" bit, too -- when I get stressed (like, oh, since the end of April) my period disappears, but the symptoms don't, so I've been bloated, crampy and intermittently miserable for the last month or so. Having it finally arrive felt like a mitzvah, it really did. So I took care of the necessary things and tripped down to breakfast with Julia and Ellan (paid for by the con -- now that's living). Eating in the hotel is always kinda fun because you always wind up running into people and chatting across tables -- frex, Selina stopped by and complained of a hangover while eating a plate of grits, and we waved at Lee and George on our way out. Out, by the way, was a two-pronged trip -- we needed to take Ellan to her dad's, then stop off at a liquor store and get supplies for that night, as I was not playing $5.99 for a bloody shot of Bailey's. Ellan was deposited with a minimum of fanfare and the opinion that she liked SF cons (and liked riding in the elevators even more), and we made a stop at Spec's for alcoholic supplies before heading back to the con and Julia's panel on We Don't Need No Steenking Stereotypes. Being a bad Mellie, I skipped it in favor of skimming through the dealer's room again and stopping in at the end of the Sword Fighting Workshop. Lots of pretty swordwork (nothing that looked like it could withstand anything really determined to cut your head off, but still). I ran into Glenn, who had brought his own heavy weapons for the hands-on demo afterwards, but we left when we found out that we had to pay $10 for the privilege. Um, there were enough fencers in the hotel that we didn't really need to pay for sword time, thank you. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around, hitting various panels, then sitting down for a long lunch in the hotel bar with Bill, Derek, Robert, Julia, Lee, George, Glenn and Selina (you can tell I hung out with the same people all con, right?) and holding a two-sided conversation with people on either side of me while trying to do a final review of the stuff I wanted to read at 6:00 pm. The reading -- ahem. I gave the audience a choice -- the warmup story was "Happily Ever After?" (an interview with Grumpy Dwarf about the aftermath of the Snow White story), and then they could choose "Bartok and the Unicorn" or "Heramaphrodite," as I'd been so damn vocal about my defense of erotic writing last night. There was a slow but steady trickle of people who left the reading, starting with Lee (understandable in her case -- her butt was going numb from being in the chair for so long and she needed to stretch out for a bit). Lisa Holcomb ducked out in the middle of "Bartok" and never returned -- I found out later that her cell phone had gone off and the new mother thought it was a call about her baby, as she had made arrangements with everyone that she was only to be called during the con in an emergency (turned out it was her husband upstairs, wanting to know when the reading would be over. Lisa then discovered that the door to the room was locked, and didn't want to disturb me by knocking), and a few more people left during "Heramaphrodite." Which is cool -- people get tired, they want to do something else, and in reading "Bartok" I realized where I need to make some serious cuts. And "Heramaphrodite" was written for Circlet Press, so it has a shitload of graphic sex in it, some of it gay and lesbian -- oh, and I'd like to hereby congratulate Robert for sitting through the whole thing without blinking. You're a true mensch. The reading ran long, so the Once Upon a Time games had already started by the time Julia, Robert and I collected our stuff together and left. Technically Julia and I were supposed to participate in the games as part of the guest duties, but we figured they had enough players as it was, and all three of us really needed a drink after that. The second hotel bar overlooking the lobby was open but didn't have bar service, so we scooted up to our room for large glasses of Bailey's and pre-made margaritas (chocolate milk and lemonade, if anyone asked), then went back down to the bar to find a comfortable spot and chat while we waited for Derek and Bill, who'd gone out to see A.I. This, by the way, is one of the nicest developments of this con -- before this weekend, FutureClassics was a group of writers who didn't really know each other very well outside of our biweekly critique meetings. But after two hours of sitting there and talking about writing, favorite authors, jobs, and pretty much everything else under the sun, I really felt like Robert and I were friends, rather than just acquaintances (Julia, of course, has been a compatriot in crime for many, many years). And the circle was extended to Derek and Bill when they finally came back -- we teased them about stopping off at the strip clubs on the way back to the hotel. Derek just rolled his eyes and asked if we could go to the room parties now, please.
But man, it was fun. I declared that the stoical Derek had to be a Vulcan (hey, it made sense at the time -- five letters in his name, the last one was a K, and the ears could have been fixed at birth), so Julia asked him if he was suffering from sixth year frustration syndrome yet. He countered genially by calling Julia and me the dirtiest women in the room, and we made the appropriate "ooooooo" noises. Although I could certainly see where he'd get that impression -- poor Bill seemed a bit taken aback at one point when J and I were sitting on the bed in the ConDFW party and invited him to sit between us, reassuring him that we didn't bite -- much. (And right now Lyndon is reading this and thinking, "She did WHAT?") That pretty much was the pattern of the evening -- wander between parties, drink, eat, and taunt each other as evidence of our newly-solidified friendship. Finally, we decided that it was time to hit the hay around 1:00 am, so the boys headed off to their room while Julia and I went up in the elevator to our place on the fifth floor. As we got off, however, someone hurried by and said, "Selina's fencing Claudia Christian on the fourth floor!" DINGDINGDING. We dashed down to the fourth, to find that Selina was actually fencing with Ms. Christian's assistant Holly. Who cares -- there was fencing going on! I ran upstairs to get my gear (yes, after numerous Bailey's, Fuzzy Bunnies and a big shot of Fire and Ice -- what can I say, I like to live dangerously) and got in a solid ten minutes with Selina. And yes, she kicked my ass up and down the hallway -- she trained on heavy weapons with the SCA before starting fencing a year ago, and she's good. My right hand felt like it was about to drop off by the time I peeled off my gloves and she started up with Holly again. Unfortunately, Julia spotted a hotel security guard coming down the hallway by that point, so we (Selina, Selina's wife Lynn, Holly, some guy, Julia and me) hotfooted it into Selina's room, tearing off gear and trying to make it look like we've been lounging in there watching TV all the time. He never knocked, but we decided to stay in anyway and talk. At which point the werelesbian was born. Yes, you read that correctly. See, Selina was mouthing off as usual, and I told her to bite me. Which she proceeded to do, so I immediately declared that I was now a werelesbian. This is not something you should do in a group of writers -- Selina immediately grabbed the idea and said that a werelesbian obviously grew the hair in her armpits and on her legs during the full moon, and Julia said that it should happen to a Baptist preacher's wife, the type with full Tammy Fay makeup and helmet hair, so that her makeup could crumble off as well. This somehow transmuted into a story where a sweet little preacher's wife has a breakdown and has to choose whether to go into an adult theater or a seemingly respectable bar to call for help. She chooses the bar, only to find out that it's a gay bar, and someone she's bitten by a lesbian. During the next full moon, her pits and legs sprout hair, her makeup shatters and crumbles off, and suddenly she wants to have sex with women. Selina is most likely writing the story as we speak, and Julia suggested the name for the anthology -- Full Moon Madness, about new and unusual types of werecreatures. The things that go on at a con. . . After that, it really was time to go back to our room and sleep. I woke up around 3:00 am with a moderate case of dehydration (note for future cons -- lots of alcohol plus intensive fencing do not go well together, so drink more water next time), so I had to get some water and wait for the shivering and general flu-like symptoms to go away before I could get back to sleep. But it was worth it. Man, was it worth it.
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For
reasons I still don't understand, I woke up on my own around 9:00
am this morning. It probably had something to do with the shower
running right next to my bed, come to think of it (Julia had Ellan
stay over that night, and we were going to run her over to her dad's
that morning before Julia's first panel at noon).
There
were only two parties, the one thrown by Baen and hosted by Toni
Weisskopf, and the one thrown by the brand-new 
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