A while back I found a fragment from a diary I'd been keeping when I was about 9 years old. Other than revealing a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, characterised by an obsession with figures, distances, velocities, nomenclature, and an extreme punctilliousness about recording insignificant events (e.g. "7.43 P.M. Turned on washing-machine."), these fragments also revealed that even at that tender age I was going to bed at midnight. My extraordinarily long circadian rhythm - one of the banes of my life - was already in evidence (though it meant I got to see the first series of Monty Python, which was on at 10.30 on Tuesdays.) Of course having a 27+ hour circadian cycle has never really seemed like a bane when left to my own devices. It's just when I have to fit in with the rest of civilisation, and deal with the inevitable supposition from others that, even when I've only slept 3 or 4 hours, I must be lazy for getting up so late. What I'm ambling up to, is that getting up at 5.15 am has knobs on it, even when the motivation is a furry convention.
I managed to stumble out of the sofa bed (probably extricating Arnie from whichever crevice of the folding mechanism he'd managed to insert himself into), bleary-eyed into the Baltimore pre-dawn. I stood comatose under the shower for a couple of minutes, and gathered together my things, which I'd had the foresight to assemble in large part the night before (it takes a supreme effort of concentration for me to leave anywhere without leaving something behind, as Brad Austin will probably recall.) Kimba, who's had a bit more practice at this sort of thing than me, put up a slightly better show, which is just as well, as he was driving. (Anyway Lions are less nocturnal than Wolves. Maybe I should mention this to future employers. I have it on good authority that one furry successfully explained his continual lateness to his employer on the basis that he was a red panda.)
This was goodbye to Robin, Neeko and Dan: the first difficult farewell of the tour, as I really didn�t know when or if I'd se them again. The tyranny of distance seems an absurd thing, in this world made so small by the internet, and jet travel. I'm inclined to stay home at night. Except on full moons, if I leave my room it's usually to go overseas. It seems ludicrous and unreal to me that I just can't up and move to wherever my friends are, as if I were moving to any other suburb. The way the world works now makes it deceivingly easy to visit, and achingly impossible to remain.
If I'd made it to AAC the following year, I'd have had the pleasure of the company of the whole family, but back in 97 the clan hadn�t perhaps been entirely indoctrinated, and so it was just me and Kimba who set off for the airport.
Every major airport is bewildering in its own special way. Baltimore/Washington airport, though relatively un-confusing of it itself, has a bewilderingly huge carpark, patrolled by a fleet of buses which ferry people back to the distant terminals. Any bigger, and it'd need it's own airport.
When he linked up with Alex again (oh, an American phrase I picked up in my first few days: 'swung by'. ""We swung by your house on the way to the mortuary, but you were out." I like the idea of swinging by places. It has a nice, centrifugal feel to it), I finally got to meet the much-lauded Flep Rakune. Flep had already received the same rave reviews from Alex as the Kimba's had, and if anything, he out-did his own reputation. I find it hard to imagine someone not liking this modest, intelligent, affable bloke, with his distinctive raccoon-ish.... I dunno... racoonism. Still I'd like to think we hit it off especially well. We only had time to discover a mutual appreciation of Dead Can Dance (to add to our mutual appreciation of HP Lovecraft) before we split up temporarily for the drive to Albany (after a final farewell to that wonderful lakeside campsite.)
I'm pleased at the number of little things I've been able to remember while narrating this story, but here's where my memory fails me. I have no idea where the second car came from which Kimba and I followed Alex and Flep in. Someone must have loaned it to us. Or did we steal it? The trip was unremarkable, other than it rained, and we got lost in Albany. We ought perhaps to have known better than to let a pair of racoons take the lead, given what Alex describes as their propensity for 'exploring'. Naturally, I didn't know whether we were lost or not, but I sussed it when Kimba pointed out to me when we'd just _stopped_ being lost.
It was always a bit hard for me to work out whether or not Albany was big. It seemed small enough not to be big, but clearly big enough to get lost in. What's worse, I found the thing that I forgot to bring with me from Baltimore must have been my sense of direction, and I was inclined to get lost walking around the block. Let's be honest; I was inclined to get lost trying to find the front door of the hotel.
It was the day before the con officially started, but a furry presence was already apparent, noticeable mainly in the number of animal t-shirts getting around the lobby. This was my first experience of furries, in anything approaching an 'en-masse' form, and I felt both somewhat awe-struck and intimidated. A little voice kept harping that these were _professional_ furries. They'd done this con thing before. They'd done this meeting lots of other furries thing before. They skritched people. They knew how to spell 'skritch'. They knew the right silly, squeaking noise to make when being introduced to someone. in short, they knew how to behave around other furries. On my first impression, how to behave around other furries seemed to consist of sitting in groups of 8 to 10, bitching about the organiser of another furry convention, but this turned out to be quite wrong. Any moderately well known furry will do, but it helps if they've sold more art than you.
(disclaimer: this is a rank generalisation based on three or four isolated, conversations between furry artists overheard over a period of four days, and its presence here is inexcusable. The fact that I am apologising about it instead of removing it is inexcusable too, but apologising for things without removing them is something else I've seen furries do - which is also a generalisation: return to start.)
Flep, Alex and I (and apparently Xydexx, judging from a photo I have here - though I hadn't met him at the time, and didn�t know who he was) helped bring in materials from the art show from the vans outside the hotel,
...then we went in search of food (not a very fruitful pursuit in downtown Albany, it turned out. Frustrated, famished furries became a standard feature of the con.)
I gave up on the whole bewildering business of trying to find an open food joint, when I discovered that the bar next to the lobby did good meals for bugger-all. For some reason furries seem to largely spurn this place, so it was a welcome refuge from the con, when it got too much for me. I'd sit with mundanes, drinking Bud, trying to avoid having to explain what furry meant to people, and one occasion having two girls try to pick me up* - which pretty much confirmed I was in a non-furry area. I still think "So which part of Ireland are you from?" is the oddest first lines I've had (come to think of it, one of the only ones - unless I'm just too thick to notice them.)
* I don't wish to appear fussy or anything, but the fact that they had previously been discussing with each other the prospect of 'picking up' most of the talent in the entertainment guide of the local newspaper made me a bit apprehensive.
Anyway on that first excursion, Alex, Flep and I managed to get some ladies to open up a cafe and make us some sandwiches. After we'd taken our stuff to our room, I went across the road to get a film developed. I found a photo place where I was served by a rude black guy (sorry, I don�t know what the present PC term for 'rude black guy' is in the US. The main thing is he was rude, so should I have not mentioned he was black? It had nothing to do with his rudeness. Then again should I not have mentioned that Alex's car was purple, and smelled of crushed vanilla beans? I mean, I'd just like to mention the fact he was black, because it's a little detail that helps bring the trip back to life for me. It's a treasured memory, really. Goddammit, I HATE thinking like this!!!) The point I was going to try to make is that, as far as I can see, as a general rule politeness in American businesses is directly proportional to their distance from major population centres. I suspect this is probably true of anywhere, but I've lived in a provincial small city the most of my life, and my experience is a bit limited.)
In any case I cottoned on to a way of dealing with this rudeness thing. Big city American taxi drivers and shop assistants aren�t actually being rude because they're innately obnoxious; they're merely engaging in a dominance ritual, possibly brought on by the over-populated surroundings. To a wolf-type, whose birth-chart says "You have an 'up-yours' attitude to people who don't like you", this was fairly easy to get the hang of. After a couple of weeks, when I sensed a shop assistant tensing for one of this belligerence rituals, I simply emulated their behaviour: short, clipped, impatient sentences, and absolutely no attempt to make small talk or be pleasant. The aura one needs to projects is that one would prefer to be doing absolutely anything rather than this, and that it's the other person's fault that you're doing it.
As a rule it worked. I had several quite obnoxious people become suddenly conversational and pleasant when I'd established that I knew how to the impatient, bad-ass thing too. If I dare risk another generalisation, I've also noticed that furry artists in the dealer's room are more inclined to want to talk to you if you appear to have no idea who they are, and only an academic or professional interest in what they're selling. It's a sad thought, but I imagine this comes as a result of too many people being unbearably candid about how much they like their work, and which particular anatomical details they particularly enjoy seeing rendered so skilfully.
And now I must mention one of the early highlights of the con. The Wiener-mobile. I have no idea whether these are actually a common sight on American roads (I haven�t seen one since), but the only previous experience I'd had of this amazing vehicle was the episode of Rocko's Modern Life, where Rocko and Heifer drive across the US in one. I thought it was just a made-up thing for that cartoon, and so whereas most people thought it was amusing, I thought it was on at least a par with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Eventually we settled into our room - Kimba, Flep, Alex and myself. My plush started taking over all the unoccupied furniture; Alex's pack of Meeko's started taking over the bits my plush hadn't taken over.
I think it was on this first night that Sarsha met her secret admirer, Lionus. She and I were walking down near the registration desk when Lionus paid Sarsha some compliment, and we invited him up. Lionus became the first and perhaps closest new friend I made at the con, and he still sends Sarsha love-letters sometimes, written in the persona of a 19th century British army officer stationed in India during the mutiny. I needle him and Sarsh now and again to let me print them on Sarsha's plush page, but as yet, no consent :)
Lionus is a cool artist, too. You should look up his page. No, I should look it up, and put the URL here.
That first night was pretty confusing. I know I met a lot of other folks that night, but (except where someone took a photo, with one of those date-stamp things on it, which until now I'd always thought were the 14th worst thing in the universe), I don't always recall which night which meetings took place.
I do know that I met Tirran and Loneheart (AKA Ron and Ann Orr. BTW, try saying "Ron and Ann Orr" ten times quickly) on that first night though, because it's just inconceivable that I would have failed to look them up. Actually I think Galen may have found us first, and led me back to Tirran's room.
It was a pretty special moment for me. Like I said, this wasn�t long after the blossoming of ALF, and we'd kind of been the ones who got the ball rolling. Well, we wrote the FAQ together... well, I mean, we put into words what everyone else... look, someone must have recorded this stuff somewhere else!!) Anyway it was good to meet him in the atmosphere of controlled mayhem which suffused their rooms. His first reaction was to grab me in a big hug, as I seem to recall we'd had some idiotic email misunderstanding a few weeks before (based, as always, on my pattern of being completely affable for 99% of the time, and then unexpectedly flying into an irrational fit of "Just exactly what were you getting at when you said "and" three times in one sentence?!")
Ann had a bloody big missile launcher. It shot twin projectiles of some two feet in length, which, though really quite light and seemingly harmless were nonetheless expelled at a considerable velocity. She managed to shoot me in the nuts with this thing, which was kind of unexpected to say the least, but I decided it must be some Canadian greeting ritual.
And so, eventually we crashed out, recharging our batteries for for the first day of the inaugural Albany Anthrocon - the Fourth of July.
