Just so you know, I’m not done writing this… what’s here will stay, but I haven’t finished this entry, and I’m taking a break because my freaking hands are tired… (god, I’m windy sometimes)
Wow.
What a weekend.
At first I thought I had met a man on my list, but then I realized that he was a ‘Top Ten’ and not really an Official Listee.
There was pressing of flesh. There was mention of ‘sucking’. He looked longingly into my eyes. He beckoned to me as I walked away with resolve. Damn Antonio Banderas. No, that’s not who I met, that’s the guy who fouled everything all up. Damn him all to hell.
But first I must start at the beginning.
Yesterday, I awoke at 5:30 a.m. after sleeping nary 6 hours (which, as you all know, is roughly half the amount of sleep I require on a normal weekend day). I was going to go the Farmer’s Market before leaving for Milwaukee at 8:00 with Kim V and her husband, who I’m giving the pseudonym of ‘God’, so I got dressed and hopped into the Monte and busted over the Farmer’s Market. Then I realized that while I had plenty of time to go to the Farmer’s Market and shop, if I actually purchased any wonderful, locally grown produce, I would not have time to run back home and throw it into the fridge and then run back to Kim and God’s place. Thus I had two choices: either shop and bring all of my wonderful produce to Milwaukee and back or forego the shopping and get over it. I chose the latter. So I instead had about an hour to kill (I suppose I could have just walked around the Farmer’s Market anyway, but what fun would THAT have been? Hmmm? None, I can assure all.) so I put gas in the car and purchased snacks (which latter melted in the unbelievably cloistering heat). Then I cruised around Kim and God’s ritzy neighborhood until I could stand it no more, pulling into their driveway fifteen minutes early. As it turns out, they had also been ready an hour early and were just killing time waiting for me. Ah, the irony, non?
Then we headed out to Appleton, where we stopped at my most favorite of restaurants, The Machine Shed. I’d never been there for breakfast but I was pretty sure that they had a good one, since I’ve never had a bad meal there. They also had a pretty impressive breakfast buffet going on, which Kim and God opted for, but I really wanted their mouth-watering country-fried steak, so that’s what I ordered. They were so sweet, they waited until my meal came before they partook in the joys of home-like food. Oh, something I never knew about the Machine Shed. You can get a free egg with your meal. You just have to say ‘I love eggs’ and they give you a free egg as long as you have a breakfast with eggs in it. As my breakfast included two eggs, I chimed up with ‘I love eggs’ to get a third egg.
If you’ve ever eaten breakfast with me, you’ll know this: almost unbelievably, in the morning, my eyes are far bigger than my stomach. I will order half the menu because I’m ravenous and then eat three bites and say ‘I’m done’. I’ve never in my entire life eaten two pancakes in one sitting. It’s not so much that I over-order, it’s rather that I want a little of everything. My perfect breakfast meal would be one egg, a half a pancake, two pieces of bacon, two forkfuls of hash browns, a bite of muffin and 68 ounces of orange juice. I love me my vitamin C, ok?
Thus, I picked at my food (which the Machine Shed’s kitchen staff exacerbated by accidentally giving me biscuits and gravy rather than an English Muffin, so the waitress just brought me an English muffin. Well, naturally, I would have three bites of the free biscuits and gravy as well, right?) while God and Kim ate a nutritious and filling breakfast. This is my entire fault, I realize. I know that I do that. I know that I’m going to be hungry two hours later. Normally, I have Esteban along and he reminds me that I’m ordering way too much and I’m going to be hungry later. Not that he actually stops me from ordering, but I always make a mental note that I will be hungry later.
Then we were off again. The plan was that I wanted to stop in Oshkosh to visit a catalog outlet store. Honestly, Kim really wanted to go as well, but God wanted to keep on schedule. Whatever. They kept driving and I went to the store. They had some extremely cool stuff, but the one shelf I was going to buy ended up getting copped by another customer (my fault, I snooze, I lose).
Then I continued solo down to Milwaukee. I ended up hitting gazillions of traffic and had to urinate so much I could actually taste the acrid pee in the back of my throat. I know that was a bit graphic, but it truly doesn’t do it justice. I was actually having fantasies about getting out of the car and dropping trou right on the side of the highway, as all of the traffic for the State Fair and the Brewers Game watched.
The best part of the trip down was a moment when I was passing a bright yellow VW bug. Apparently, a little child was strapped in the backseat, but all I could see was its raised fist through the rear window. It was very poetic and I wished that I had my camera along (it would not be the last time I had that thought yesterday). My drive down was far less dramatic than God and Kim’s though’ they were witness to a drive-by mooning.
I miss out on everything.
Finally, I get to Milwaukee and find Esteban’s hotel. They won’t tell me what room he’s in, but they’ll connect me on the courtesy phone. No one is in his room. I don’t have my cell phone. I finally con the concierge to let me make a long distance call to his cell phone. Turns out Esteban is four blocks away at some auction. He tells me to go purchase my pass and then find him, as he is in the middle of bidding for whatever.
Fine. I go the convention center and apparently, it’s Freak Central. The entire cast and crew of every Star Wars movie were represented in costume. Apparently, there is also a very popular role-playing game called Vampire or something, and it involves live action play and costumes, so there were several Goth Geeks on hand at every function.
GenCon is very strange. There are some people who are so out of it that I am actually embarrassed FOR them. Not that I’m not a geek. Esteban informs me that I am, for the simple reason that I know HTML and maintain a web page. This is not the venue to argue this point, but for the sake of this entry, I’ll go with that. For the most part, any one of the attendees of Gen Con could be perceived as ‘normal’ if viewed outside of GenCon, but as a whole, the similarities between the attendees are striking. Apparently, a black Something t-shirt is the street clothes of choice for a geek. There were an inordinate number of black t-shirts with whatever on them (Deep Space Nine, D&D ‘funny’ sayings, pleas to Bill Gates for employment, etc). Also, many many glasses. And pale legs. Lots and lots of overly white people. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it is possible to use my picture as the ‘Before’ part of a Coppertone ad, but some of these people positively glowed in the dark.
Also, I’m not used to being around so many men who have no clue how to act around a woman. I didn’t realize how much I don’t notice this preferred behavior. I thought it was how civilized people treated each other, however I was mistaken. At one point, I was walking into a building behind a guy and he let the door close in my face. Another point, apparently I had invaded another geek’s personal space perimeter and he gave me a pissed off geeky sneer. I felt like saying to these people ‘Look, I know that you guys have never had a girlfriend and I KNOW WHY TOO!!!!’
But I didn’t.
I then tried to find Esteban. According to the map inside the official magazine of Gen Con, he was located in the Wisconsin Center, which is an arena. Fine. I walked to the Arena and proceeded to walk around the perimeter of the building twice. On the floor of the arena, there were hundreds of curtained off areas filled with people who were gaming.
I stopped one geek (wearing a black t-shirt, by the way) and said ‘I’m looking for Whatever Hall’ and he got all confused’ ‘Uhhh, I’m not sure where that is.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Well, if I show you this map, maybe you can point me to it?’ He looked positively stricken. Obviously, this was the most contact he had had with female (excluding relatives and convenience store clerks) since he graduated from high school. He wiped a little sweat off his brow, ‘Uh, I gotta get back to my game.’
Where he would be saving imaginary damsels in distress, no doubt.
I approached a LESS dorky looking guy and asked him and he pointed me to the right location. You see, the map was fucking wrong. They showed Whatever Hall as being attached to the Arena. It was not. It was in a whole other BUILDING. I thanked him and assured him that he was attractive to the opposite sex, for which he seemed very relieved. His friends looked to him in awe and he puffed out his chest a little bit.
Then I stopped in the bathroom (yes, it had been THAT long since I had gotten there! Unreal, isn’t it?) and flipped open the program to see who was going to be there.
I stopped breathing. There he was, smiling out at me from the glossy nerd bible in my hands.
James Fucking Marsters.
Spike.
Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The guy I almost listed on my list, but substituted Antonio Banderas for instead.
Yes. Before you say it, this is EXACTLY like that episode from Friends with Isabella Rosselini. Exactly.
Except I’m not a freak like Ross and I certainly would have never laminated the damn list.
Anyway, I find Esteban and I can barely contain myself.
‘Do you know who is here?’ I asked.
‘Gary Gygax?’ He said, knowing already who I meant. He knew all along. He knew and didn’t tell me. Sheesh.
‘Jamesfuckingmarstersfrombuffy!’ I exclaimed.
‘Oh.’ He said, continuing to watch the auction, bidding intermittently.
Can you believe that? No excitement whatsoever. I checked out the schedule. Oh my, he’d be signing autographs at 2:00! It was 1:15 right then.
I turned to Esteban. ‘We have to go right now.’
Esteban, however, had other plans. ‘No, you go do what you need to do’ call me on my cell phone when you are done.’ He resumed bidding on the Tome of Insipid Lore or whatever the hell it was that he was trying to buy.
‘Do you realize that Spike is on my list?’ I asked, forgetting that I had removed him in favor of Antonio Banderas (although technically, I have two spots open thus James could be subbed in at any time). ‘There is nothing stopping me from having raunch vampire sex with James Marsters. Nothing.’ I said emphatically.
Esteban checked my hand at that statement. I had forgotten to wear my wedding ring. That would have been suspect except for the fact that he knew that I didn’t know that Spike was going to be at the convention. Esteban started to remove his wedding band and slip it onto my finger.
I scoffed at him. ‘The List doesn’t care about wedding rings. The List is the antithesis of wedding rings!!!’ And bebopped out of the Dork Auction or whatever it was.
I scurried back to the convention hall. There I met up with a lady whose name I later learned was Pam. We learned that James was NOT yet at the convention and the autography signing had been postponed until 6:30 pm, but there would be an informational meeting across the street at the Hilton where we would learn more information about what was keeping James.
Pam and I hustled over to the Hilton, which incidentally was the hotel where I would be staying that night. Together, we booked up to this informational meeting where the lady who plays Na’Toth on Babylon Five informed us that he had been up all night filming the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer until 6 a.m. this morning and had missed his flight to Milwaukee, but he didn’t want to disappoint his fans and was flying out at that very moment.
An aside here: That Julie Caitlin Brown who plays the lizard lady on Babylon Five is scarily skinny. All I kept thinking was this: if girls like her look normal on television and girls like Calista Flockhart look skinny, what must the skinny television girls look like in real life? If they turn sidewise, do they disappear??? What the fuck? And if that’s the kind of chick that sexy James Fucking Marsters is flying away from, won’t he be in for a sweet surprise when he lays his snarky goodness on a bodaciously round Weetabix action?
Then I went back to the main convention and met up with Esteban and his gaggle of geeks. I had some time to kill until James would be arriving, and I was beginning to get a huge headache from lack of food and caffeine (that monkey is solidly riding on my back, thank you very much), so we walked around the convention floor and got some greasy convention food at exorbitant prices. Then I decided that I had better go and line up, but there was not a line present where he would be. No problem, there’s plenty of time, so I figured I would go and get a camera since I was going to see James Marsters, so I bid the gang ‘adieu’ and off I went. I ran to a nearby Walgreens and got a throw-away camera with a flash and also a big bottle of Dasani Water. Then I figured I’d be standing in line for awhile, so I popped over to B&N and picked up a magazine and a Blackberry Sage iced tea, which I drank on the way back to the convention.
When I arrived, I saw that what had been a non-existant line when I left, had grown to colossal proportions. It was roughly four people wide and stretched no less than 400 yards, wrapping all the way around the perimeter of the convention hall. What follows is possibly my darkest moral hour. We here at Weetabix.diaryland.com do not condone the improper and morally bankrupt actions which are represented here in the next paragraph. As I was staring at the line in disbelief, I spotted my acquaintances from the informational meeting, Pam and her friend (whose name I can no longer remember but will refer to her as the Dragon Lady, because she had purchased a large dragon/sea serpent thingy and it was drapped so chicly around her neck during the entire time, like a mythical fur stole of sorts) were standing there in the line. I mosied on up to them and began chatting with them, with no intention of cutting the line. Just asked them how long they’d been waiting, how I’d tried to line up earlier but no one was there, so I left to get a camera. Now I was pretty much regretting this, since the line was now four football fields long and three people thick and there would be no way that he was going to be able to get through all of these people before his other commitments that evening. Dragon Lady then suggests that I join them in the line. And I did. I know. I can’t believe it. The guilt is tremendous today. Tremendous. And yet, I find myself drawn to a life of crime, given the fabulous rewards that I now realize that it has to offer. Stop looking at me like that. We’re talking about James Fucking Marsters here. You’d have done the same thing. You know you would have.
Pam, The Dragon Lady and the Lady who I grabbed and yelled “WOOOOO!” when we thought that we saw James at one point…… it was a bonding moment.
Thus we waited. And waited. My 32 ounce bottle of Dasani was a godsend until the bladder began to complain. However, as a kilted Security Guard informed me, if I left the line, I would lose my spot, thus peeing was out of the question. What was it with Saturday and my inability to pee when I needed to. I wish that I would have picked up a pack of Depends undergarments or something. I could have sold those mofos for $5 a pair in that line.
Standing in the line was not only physically painful. We were also subject to countless people asking why were standing in the line. The pain in my pelvis began to incite me to answer with smartass comments like ‘Oh, we’re waiting to see Ray Parks who played Darth Maul’ and ‘Oh, I saw a line, so I got in it’ and ‘I dunno’ because I got sick of replying ‘James Marsters’ and then answering the ‘Whosdat?’ that inevitably followed. Two and a half hours later, the doors to the room opened. I actually got so excited I grabbed one of the ladies in line and started to shake her! WOOOOOO! I know. I am exactly twelve years old. After an hour, the line had progressed for us to be close enough to SEE James. He seemed nice and kind and very genuine. And hot. Did I mention how fucking hot he was? Those cheekbones are killer. One of the guys behind me actually thought that maybe he had sideburns that made his cheeks look like that, but no, he’s just got incredible cheekbones, people. At one point, someone handed him a baby and he posed for the picture in a scary Spike way. Then he kissed that baby. I have never wanted to be wearing diapers so bad in my whole life. Plus, do they have any idea how much money they could get for that baby on Ebay?
Oh no! Don’t let Spike eat that baby!!!! Also, there was a mean older lady who had the great fortune of sitting next to James the entire time. She kept barking out to people, yelling ‘Remember, you may only bring him one item to sign’ after he kindly signed a calendar for an 80-year-old grandmother. Then she got up at one point and tripped on the podium. What did kind James do? He jumped up and helped her to her feet. Can you believe how yummy he is? 
Then, at one point, he looked up from his many signings and spotted me in the line. His eyes lingered on me, following the outline of my sweaty body. He cocked a little sheepish grin at me and stood up. I approached the podium and he jumped over the table and said ‘Hey there, Lil’ Bix, I hear that I lost out to Antonio Banderas on your List’ but I’ll bet he can’t do this!’ and he grabbed me, bent me backwards and proceeded to vamp out, just like on Buffy, and snarl as he looked at my pale exposed neck. Ok, not really. Finally, the fabulous moment arrived when it was my turn to approach him. He shook my hand and said ‘Hi’, his strong grip lingering in my sweaty hand. I was transfixed by his eyes. He has the bluest eyes. I think we may be related, as I’ve been told that my eyes are that blue, but I’m pretty used to them, but now I know how it is to look at someone with striking blue eyes that isn’t my sister or mom or myself. 
